ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Netanyahu Fails to Form New Government President Rivlin gives Benny Gantz 28 days to try to hammer out ruling coalition By Felicia Schwartz and Dov Lieber

Posted By on October 22nd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-netanyahu-says-hes-failed-to-form-new-government-11571679595

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he failed to form Israel’s next government after a September election that saw no clear winner, giving rival Benny Gantz the opportunity to create a coalition that could end the tenure of the country’s longest-serving premier.

President Reuven Rivlin said he would begin consultations with the parties in the Knesset to initiate Mr. Gantz’s 28-day turn at trying to form a majority government of at least 61 seats in Israel’s parliament. However, Mr. Gantz will face many of the same political hurdles that sidelined Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts.

Mr. Gantz’s Blue and White party won the most seats in the September elections, 33 to Likud’s 32, but Mr. Netanyahu was given the first chance to form a government because he had more support from other smaller parties elected to the 120-seat Knesset. He faced a deadline later this week to form a government or return the mandate.

Mr. Netanyahu’s announcement, on his 70th birthday, marks a setback for the prime minister who has earned the nickname “the magician” for his ability to wiggle out of tight spots in a political career spanning three decades. After the attorney general announced in February his intent to indict Mr. Netanyahu on corruption charges pending a hearing, Mr. Netanyahu campaigned on his security credentials and strong relationships with President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders. But he failed to form a government after the April elections, triggering the second vote.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obviously People In The Permanent Bureaucracy Are Working To Undermine And Remove President Trump: Francis Menton

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&i

In recent months the phrase “conspiracy theory” seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. At one time the phrase was reserved for only the craziest of crazy far-out and unprovable theories. For example, there was Lyndon LaRouche’s theory that Queen Elizabeth was secretly running the international drug trade. Or how about the theory that Freemasons conspired to bring about the sinking of the Titanic? Now those were truly worthy of the label of “conspiracy theories”!

Obviously, those kind of crazy theories could only be promoted by people who were severely mentally deficient. And that implication is likely how we have come to the new usage of the phrase “conspiracy theory.” In the new usage, the phrase is simply a label you apply to the someone’s position when you want to convey that you think that person advocating that position is mentally deficient. The great thing about tossing out the “conspiracy theory” phrase is that it relieves you of having to go to the trouble of refuting the position itself.

And thus we now have voices in the media using the phrase “conspiracy theory” to refer to President Trump’s assertions that people in the permanent bureaucracy are working to undermine his administration and remove him from office. From the Daily Beast, October 8, headline “The Deep State Conspiracy Is About to Go Into Overdrive”:

Trump is now reactivating and trafficking a theory that started after his election, but that was left to fringe elements on the right and largely ignored. This is the belief that Trump’s opponents, most coming from the camp of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters, and their holdovers still sitting in major government positions in various agencies, are using their positions to slowly undertake a coup d’état, meant to remove from power the legally elected president and destroy his administration.

Or consider this piece from the Independent on September 30, with the headline “The Deep State conspiracy theory is making us all play defense”. Excerpt:

The “Deep State” is a supposed cabal of powerful, unelected bureaucrats secretly pursuing their own agenda, as opposed to that of the president and his administration. In the case of Trump, it’s a bunch of career operatives in the State Department and the intelligence community, hell-bent on making sure Trump’s agenda gets foiled at every turn.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Kurds, Turkey, and Attack of the Swamp Jonathan Moseley

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-kurds-turkey-and-attack-of-the-swamp

So it’s getting absurd again.  The Kurds were fighting Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran long before President Donald Trump was even born.   And The Donald has been on the public scene for a while.  But he was not yet born when this war was raging.

Yet, in typical dishonesty, the liberal news media and the Democrat/Republican establishment is (as always) blaming President Trump for problems that the establishment actually created themselves or they failed to solve decades before Trump announced his candidacy.

President Trump pulled around 28 special forces troops out from near the Syrian border with Turkey.  Trump did not explain any of this.  Public relations matters.  Trump’s roll out of his decision was a blunder.  Trump has still not explained fully.  But for critics to argue that moving 28 soldiers caused a war is just delusional.

The Kurds earned a place in our hearts when these brave but lightly-armed warriors, without a professional standing army, fought the ISIS Caliphate.  The Kurds did the job that Barack Obama just wouldn’t do.  While the Obama Administration pretended to fight ISIS, and actually strengthened the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurds (also Muslims in most cases) fought the radical Islamic Jihadis for real.  Americans love the underdog.

So America’s political world is stirred by the cry that the Kurds were our allies in the war against ISIS.  That’s confusion.  Turkey is also our ally….  and by binding treaty.  

Around Syria and Iraq everyone was fighting everyone.   Advocates for moral outrage wanted to over-throw the evil Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  But the Obama Administration repeatedly supported Muslim Brotherhood extremists to overthrow secular and moderate Middle Eastern leaders.  Others would stop breathing because Russians breathe air, and we wouldn’t want to do anything that Russians do.  Some would cut off their noses if Russia told them not to.  The free-for-all was nowhere near as simple as suggested now. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Age of Invective Nasty, illiberal rhetoric threatens liberal democracy Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://spectator.us/age-invective/

A healthy democracy requires free speech and free assembly, tolerance for different views, and peaceful transfers of power among contending parties. It requires honest elections, where losers do more than concede. They acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome, as Al Gore did in a highly-contested 2000 president contest. These fundamental pillars of liberal self-government are now being challenged across Europe and the United States. It is crucial to recognize the challenge, call out the worst violations, and push back.

Vitriolic, white-hot rhetoric now paints political opponents not as loyal opponents but as traitors, determined to overthrow not only specific leaders but the democratic system itself. It paints elections and their winners as illegitimate. Democrat Stacey Abrams, who lost the 2018 governor’s race in Georgia, does so explicitly and has been supported, not rebuked, by her party’s national leaders. Worse, national Democrats have implicitly rejected Donald Trump’s legitimacy as the duly-elected president. They began the day after the election, and they haven’t let up. The national media are their active allies. Democracy dies in such derangement.

President Trump’s own rhetoric is equally damaging. For years, he implied Barack Obama was not a legitimate president because he was allegedly born in Kenya. No evidence to the contrary was enough for him. These false claims fed our country’s worst instincts, and Trump only abandoned them when he ran for office himself.

Since Trump’s victory in 2016, he has frequently claimed – with no evidence at all – that he actually won the popular vote. He was deprived of that honest result, he says, only because millions of illegal ballots were cast. Not thousands. Millions. At recent political rallies, he compounded the damage by charging his political opponents ‘hate’ the United States (his words). They don’t.

The proliferation of these accusations is a troubling sign of political decay. It’s time to recognize the cumulative damage this noxious rhetoric is doing to our country. It’s time to shout ‘no’ and make that shout heard over the vitriol.

The latest invective came from Hillary Clinton, who called two other American politicians ‘Russian assets’. Without supporting evidence – she presented none – it’s an execrable charge. It echoes her constant refrain that she lost to Trump only because the Kremlin opposed her. Now, in excuse number 6,327, she damns the Green party candidate, Jill Stein, for siphoning away her votes. Last week, Hillary said flatly that Stein was a Russian asset and added that the Kremlin was now ‘grooming’ a Democrat to run as a third-party spoiler in 2020. Hillary didn’t mention any name, but it was obvious she meant Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard is an elected member of the US House from Hawaii, running (near the bottom of the field) for president. She has served honorably in the US military and is still in the National Guard. Now, Clinton is effectively charging her with treason. Did Hillary present any evidence? Nope. Did she present any evidence against Stein? Nope. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, ‘Facts fly out the door when accusations come innuendo.’

POLITICS Comments turned off

Warren Threatens Israel: ‘Everything Is On the Table’ Adam Kredo

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://freebeacon.com/politics/warren-threatens-israel-everything-table/

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) took a hard line on Israel Saturday saying “everything is on the table” in imposing a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table,” Warren said during a press availability with reporters Saturday.

In a formulation more commonly deployed by previous presidents in threatening the use of force against America’s enemies, Warren repeated the phrase but did not clarify precisely what pressure—military or otherwise—might be brought to bear.

“Right now, [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements, [but] that does not move us in the direction of a two-state solution,” Warren was quoted as saying.

Warren’s remarks come as the left wing of the Democratic Party has increasingly embraced boycotts of the Jewish state.

Her remarks are likely to raise eyebrows in the Jewish and pro-Israel communities, which, while largely Democratic, continue to favor the U.S. alliance with the region’s only democracy.

U.S. support for Israel has historically been a bipartisan issue. The aid the United States sends to Israel is largely used to bolster the country’s defense systems and is reciprocal in nature, meaning the technology developed is shared with and often employed by America.

Pro-Israel groups criticized Warren in recent months over the hiring of an aide who worked with IfNotNow, a group highly critical of the Jewish state.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Deep State Comes Out Of The Shadows by John Merline

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/

“Trump’s critics say that his claims about a deep state are the result of his paranoid delusions. But after what the country has witnessed over the past three years, and now the bragging by State Department officials bent on getting Trump out of Washington, it’s the denial of the deep state that is delusional.”

Two news stories published over the weekend had the same message. The State Department was out to get President Donald Trump after suffering years of “frustration.” At least these denizens of the deep state are being honest.

Politico’s 2,000-word story – titled “The Revenge of the State Department” – begins by reporting on the fact “current and former Foreign Service officers have defied Trump administration orders and trudged to Capitol Hill to testify before House committees investigating whether to impeach the president.”

These officials, the story says, are “furious,” “terrified,” “incredulous,” “disappointed,” “fed up,” “livid,” with a “deep well of resentment,” in an “unbearable” situation.

Some of them, Politico reports, are using the hearings as a “platform to air long-held grievances over Trump.”

And their colleagues are “hailing them as heroes.”

What, exactly, are these career State Department bureaucrats angry about?

They’re mad that several of them “were demoted or sidelined following attacks by the conservative media.”

They complain about what they see as Trump’s “dangerous brand of diplomatic malpractice.”

They’re upset that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t publicly support Marie Yavonovitch after Trump removed her from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and that Pompeo “is willing to sell out the department to keep favor with Trump.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Poll: Majority of Germans alarmed over anti-Semitism following synagogue attack The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism.

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/10/20/poll-majority-of-germans-alarmed-over-anti-semitism-following-synagogue-attack/

A majority of Germans expressed that “a lot more” anti-Semitism has spread throughout their country, according to a new poll taken one week after the Oct. 9 attack on a synagogue in the German town of Halle.

“That’s a lot more – +19 points – than one year ago,” stated the German broadcaster ARD, which conducted the poll, on its website, in comparison to last year’s finding that just 40% of Germans believed anti-Semitism in the country is alarming.

Only 35% of respondents thought Jew-hatred wasn’t increasing in Germany.

The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced on Thursday a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism through tougher regulations to limit online hate speech along with cracking down on purchases of illegal guns and other weapons by members of the far Right.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It’s time critics saw Boris for the Churchillian figure he is Tim Stanley

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/20/time-critics-saw-boris-churchillian-figure/

Boris Johnson was fantastic yesterday. I’m not going to bother to be objective about it. No one else does, so why should I?

Ever since the blond magnificence threw his hat into the leadership ring, we’ve been told he’s incompetent and far-Right. Well, an idiot doesn’t do “the impossible” and renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, and as for far-Right, his words in the Commons were so temperate and liberal they could teach the world to sing.

Let us “bring together the two halves of our hearts”, he told the Commons, meaning Leave and Remain. It was a strategic appeal, of course: the deal can only pass if enough Labour MPs back it, so he has to soften his language. But this also happens to be what the PM believes. He sits in the One Nation tradition and his Euroscepticism has always been nuanced by a love of the continent. He is anti-EU but pro-European.

That’s the sense in which he’s truly Churchillian. I can hear teeth itching when I write that. No, I’m not saying he’s a reincarnation of one of the greatest Britons who ever lived: BoJo has never won a war or the Nobel Prize for literature. But the comparison is there in the rhetoric.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Alliance With Turkey Through NATO Is a Mistake Valuing means over ends is a bad idea. And alliances should never become ends in themselves. Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/our-alliance-with-turkey-through-nato-is-a-mistake/

Who wags? Who gets wagged? What good are alliances? Most defenses of President Trump’s abandonment of America’s Kurdish co-belligerents to Turkey’s cruelties are insincere—for example, Trump was elected to leave the Middle East; his detractors want to stay there. No doubt some do. But the real argument is over how we leave. Nothing obliges us to leave in a way that puts our friends into the hands of our enemies.

Another insincere defense: Americans should not die in a fight between foreign peoples. Of course not! But the Kurds—by far the region’s most formidable fighters—don’t need us to die for them. In fact, they died for us in the fight against ISIS. If we were to give them good weapons, they could take care of themselves. Why not do that?

One of the more thoughtful arguments against this, however, so touches the heart of the matter as to be self-indicting: Yes, the Kurds are our friends. But they are not our allies. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is an enemy. But Turkey is an ally, part of NATO, and hosts an important U.S. air base.

The truth of that, however, raises the substantive question: how do the benefits we get from this or any alliance stack up against the costs of forbearing an ally who works against our interest?

The question applies not just to our alliance with Turkey today but, more importantly, to NATO as a whole. The closer we look at NATO, the more difficult it is to judge that it has ever been of net value to America. That, in turn, leads us to a deeper appreciation of how American statesmen from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt—the men on Mount Rushmore—regarded alliances.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Do They Hate Him So? Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 21st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/why-do-they-hate-him-so/

Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, left-liberal celebrities, journalists, and academics all revile Donald Trump because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

Joe Biden claims he wants to take Trump behind the gym and beat him up.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) jokes that she would like to go into an elevator with him and see Trump never come out alive. Robert De Niro has exhausted the ways in which he dreams of punching Trump out and the intonations in which he yells to audiences, “F—k Trump!”

The humanists and social justice warriors of Hollywood, from Madonna to Johnny Depp, cannot agree whether their elected president should be beheaded, blown up, stabbed, shot, or incinerated. All the Democratic would-be presidential nominees agree that Trump is the worst something-or-other in history—from human being to mere president.

Former subordinates like Anthony Scaramucci, Omarosa, and Michael Cohen insist that he is a racist, a sexist, a crook, a bully, or mentally deranged—and they all support their firsthand appraisals on the basis they eagerly worked for him and were unceremoniously fired by him.

The so-called deep state detests him. An anonymous op-ed writer in the September 5, 2018 New York Times bragged about the bureaucracy’s successful efforts to ignore Trump’s legal mandates—a sort of more methodical version of the comical Rosenstein-McCabe attempt to stage a palace coup and remove Trump, or the Democrats efforts to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump crazy, bolstered by an array of Ivy League psychiatrists who had neither met nor examined him.