NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats’ Attack Machine Revs Up Against Ratcliffe By Julie Kelly

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/29/democrats-attack-machine-revs-up-against-ratcliffe/

Twenty minutes before President Trump announced Sunday afternoon on Twitter that Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) would be his choice to replace Dan Coats as the director of national intelligence, the Democrats’ attack machine already was in action.

“John Ratcliffe, by one measure the second most conservative member of Congress, appears to believe that the Russia investigation was cooked up by Democrats who ‘committed crimes.’ Now Trump reportedly is considering placing atop the US intelligence community,” tweeted NBC News analyst Ken Dilanian, pejoratively known as “Fusion Ken” for his ties to the infamous opposition research shop, Fusion GPS.

(Take note of Dilanian’s scare quotes around “committed crimes” as if the whole thing was legit and not under criminal investigation by a U.S. attorney or a separate probe by the Justice Department inspector general.)

Trump then confirmed the pick on Twitter, saying Ratcliffe will “lead and inspire greatness for the Country he loves.”

Ratcliffe, a member of both the House Intelligence and House Judiciary committees, earned plaudits last week during the disastrous Robert Mueller hearings for his verbal vivisection of Mueller’s claims about not exonerating Donald Trump on alleged obstruction of justice offenses.

“The special counsel’s job, nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence,” Ratcliffe told the bewildered prosecutor. “It’s not in any of the documents, it’s not in your appointment order, it’s not in the special counsel regulations, it’s not in the OLC opinions, it’s not in Department of Justice manual.”

Pointing out that the president, like any other American, is entitled to a presumption of innocence immediately caused the Left to brand Ratcliffe a Trump shill, lackey and suck-up.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The One Debate Question That Must Be Asked — But CNN Won’t

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/07/30/the-one-debate-question-that-must-be-asked-but-cnn-wont/

Bringing greatness back to crime-ridden cities like Baltimore, reducing the cost of quality health care, jobs, secure borders, and plenty of other issues will determine the voters’ decision in 2020. But another concern is growing steadily, about a multi-pronged menace that directly threatens American lives, our rule of law, even the integrity of elections — and, by extension, the operation of our Constitution itself.

It is vital that the Democrats running for president be asked about fighting this violent threat during their debates Tuesday and Wednesday nights in Detroit — a city suffering the second-highest violent crime rate in the country, and run by Democrats for the last 60 years.

The question is this:

‘Do You Unreservedly Condemn Antifa?’

Nothing like that question will pass the lips of CNN’s Dana Bash, Don Lemon, and Jake Tapper, however.

Urban crime lacking an ideological motive is bad enough. The video of this Leninist domestic terrorist organization brutalizing the courageous, young Portland, Oregon-based internet journalist Andy Ngo during a June 29 violent demonstration has gone viral. Ngo was punched, kicked, his recording equipment stolen, his face and head doused with eggs and thick liquids, possibly including quick-drying concrete that blinded him.

As Ngo described Antifa’s “black bloc” practice last week to journalist Katrina Trinko, they wear “a uniform of … black clothing, long sleeve, and mask and sunglasses” letting them “easily melt into the crowd when some of them engage in criminal activities such as violence against individuals or property destruction.”

Ngo was hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage from which he has still not recovered.

As Ngo himself recently wrote, “CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon have defended Antifa on-air.” And NBC’s “Chuck Todd invited Antifa ideologue Mark Bray on ‘Meet the Press’ to explain why Antifa’s political violence is ‘ethical.’”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Finally, An American President Stands up to Sharpton An in-depth look at the “con man.” John Perazzo

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274468/finally-american-president-stands-sharpton-john-perazzo

Al Sharpton has been in the public limelight for just over 30 years – ever since he first burst upon the scene by promoting the fake story of a white-on-black gang rape in upstate New York in 1987. But not until now has America had a president with enough courage to tell the nation exactly what Sharpton is: “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score,” said Donald Trump on Monday.  In response, Sharpton did the only thing he’s ever really learned how to do: He accused the president of harboring “a particular venom for blacks and people of color.” What a surprise. “Trump says I’m a troublemaker & con man,” Sharpton added. “I do make trouble for bigots.”

Let’s take a brief look at some of the career highlights of this self-anointed “troublemaker for bigots” shall we?

Supporting a Communist Front and Angela Davis

The February 9, 1971 edition of the Communist Party USA newspaper Daily World, noted that Sharpton had recently addressed a White Plains, New York rally in support of a CPUSA front group called The Committee to Free Angela Davis. At that time, the Marxist revolutionary Davis was in prison for her role in abetting the murder of a California judge.

Sharpton Praises the Marxist Holiday, Kwanzaa

On December 24, 1971, the New York Times quoted Sharpton praising Kwanzaa, the race-centered winter holiday that had been recently established by Maulana Karenga, a Marxist black nationalist who had once been arrested for assaulting and torturing two women. The philosophy underlying Kwanzaa is known as Kawaida, a variation of classical Marxism that also includes enmity toward white people. Practitioners of Kawaida believe that one’s racial identity “determines life conditions, life chances, and self-understanding” — just as Marxists identify class as the determining factor of one’s life conditions.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Russia and China Are Joining Forces The past few years have witnessed a marked increase in American power. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-russia-and-china-are-joining-forces-11564441072

Russian and Chinese military aircraft probed South Korean and Japanese air defenses last week, leading the South Koreans to fire more than 300 warning shots before the intruders departed.

This was just the latest manifestation of a deepening alliance between Russia and China. James Dobbins, Howard Shatz and Ali Wyne described the emerging alignment in an April essay in the Diplomat. In 2016, Russia displaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest source of imported oil. In 2017, the two countries held their first joint naval exercise in the Baltic Sea. In June 2018, Xi Jinping called Vladimir Putin “my best, most intimate friend,” and later that year Chinese forces participated in the largest military exercise on Russian soil since 1981.

The departing director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, says the two Eurasian supergiants are as close as they were in the 1950s. From Venezuela to Syria to Serbia, they are working to frustrate the West. They are also increasingly cooperating in sub-Saharan Africa and have found ways to reduce their competition in Central Asia.

Many analysts discounted the prospects for deep Sino-Russian coordination. Mr. Putin’s overarching foreign policy objective has long been to build up Russia as an independent great power between Europe and China; a close alliance with a rising China works against this goal. Tensions along their lengthy border, commercial rivalries, and Russian suspicion of Chinese designs on its Far Eastern territories tend to drive the two countries apart. Given Russia’s slow decline and China’s rapid rise, some expected Russia would support Western efforts to balance China rather than undermine them.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump, Cummings, Pelosi and Baltimore Democrats have run the violent city longer than most of its residents have been alive. By James Freeman

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-cummings-pelosi-and-baltimore-11564433687

“For example, a Member of Congress named Elijah Cummings said at a House subcommittee hearing in June of 1999: “I live in a drug-infested neighborhood. I know people who have been trying to get treatment for years.” Rep. Cummings elaborated on the horrific conditions in Baltimore:

I’ve known… little girls who I’ve watched grow up from babies and they’re selling their bodies for $5, at 14 years old. I see them everyday. I know the pain of coming home and seeing my home ransacked. My car broken into. Because people are in so much pain they don’t even know they’re in pain…”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosisuggests that President Trump is launching “racist attacks” when he points out the mess Democrats have made of Baltimore. At some point Democrats may have to explain why the city they’ve been running since her brother became mayor in the 1960s consistently fails to protect public safety.

This latest ugly Beltway argument began after Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), who has represented part of Baltimore for 22 years in the House, berated the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security for the condition of illegal immigrants detained by the Border Patrol. In a series of tweets last week, Mr. Trump compared U.S. border facilities favorably with Mr. Cummings’ congressional district, which the President called “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.” Mr. Trump added that if Rep. Cummings “spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”

It certainly is dangerous. Mr. Cummings’ ideological allies at New York University’s Brennan Center recently issued a report on violent crime last year in the nation’s 30 largest cities. Citing data from the Baltimore Police Department, the liberal Brennan crew reports that Baltimore has by far the highest murder rate of any of the 26 big cities for which 2018 data are available. Despite a decline in murders since Baltimore’s horrific 2017, Brennan reports that Baltimore’s 50.7 murders per 100,000 people add up to more than ten times the rate in New York City or San Diego.

The Brennan report makes the understatement of the year in calling Baltimore a “city that continues to struggle with violence.” And President Trump isn’t the only person who has noticed this tragic situation. Some people have been raising the alarm for years.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Demolishes Illegal Buildings; International Leaders, Media Demolish Truth By Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Posted By on July 30th, 2019

https://saraacarter.com/israel-demolishes-illegal-buildings-international-leaders-media-demolish-truth/?

Last week Israel demolished 13 illegally built buildings which were being erected by Arab Palestinians. Arab leaders screamed “war crimes” and “ethnic cleansing.” That the denunciations were absurd and based on utterly false predicates had no impact on the international response. In a perfect Pavlovian chorus, the media amplified the hysteria, followed by the United Nations the EU and other European leaders who claimed Israel’s action was akin to the destruction of peace in the Middle East. Only the refusal of the United States to join in the lynch mob prevented a formal UN Security Council measure against Israel.

But the real outrage was not Israel’s action in demolishing the buildings. The audacity, and the sloppiness, of the international media and international political leadership is the real outrage.

Because as anyone can see by reading the Israel Supreme Court opinion authorizing these demolitions, every single material “fact” asserted by these outraged protectors of the peace process is wrong:
– The land on which the buildings stood is not under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority, but, as explicitly provided by the Oslo Accords, under the jurisdiction, for security purposes, of the Government of Israel
– Instead it was included inside Israel’s security barrier at the request of the very Arabs who are now complaining;
– The Arab complainants had the benefit of years of due process, which they flaunted by continuously disobeying orders of the Israeli courts that required both the Army and the Arabs to maintain the status quo until the courts could assess the legal merits of the Arabs’ claims;
– The Arabs chose to build right up against Israel’s security barrier even though they had clear notice that such construction was illegal because it impeded the Israeli army’s ability to defend Israel’s citizenry from Arab terrorist attacks.
The fact that these realities are completely ignored by all of the outraged international “authorities” is a disgrace.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Robert Mueller’s Feet of Clay Peter Smith

Posted By on July 29th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/07/robert-muellers-feet-of-clay/

If your knowledge of the Robert Mueller fiasco in the United States is informed by any news service in Australia then you are ignorant of the facts. Therefore, let me give you the unvarnished facts as I see them.

First fact: Donald Trump is the most innocent politician in the world. How do I know this, you might ask? Nineteen, Hillary-loving, radical Democrat activists with law degrees, posing as impartial lawyers, investigated the heck out of him for two years on an unlimited budget and with the power to coerce witnesses, to threaten their families, to financially ruin them and to jail them. And yet they came up with squat. There is no other politician in the world who would have survived this kind of inquisition. None. Hence my conclusion that Trump is cleaner than Mother Teresa.

Second fact: Mueller had nothing to do with his own probe. He was titular. He came in each day to have coffee and engage in sheltered-workshop activities. Andrew Weissmann led the probe. He was the de facto Special Counsel. He hired all of the conflicted activists to assist him. He oversaw the writing of the report and the public statement that Mueller made after the report came out; sensibly instructing the doddery Mueller to take no questions about the report of which he had only passing acquaintance.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Rashida Tlaib: Israel ‘exists’ to the ‘detriment’ of Palestinians By Thomas Lifson VIDEO

Posted By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/rashida_tlaib_israel_exists_to_the_detriment_of_palestinians.html

As the Democrats prepare for the second round of presidential debates in her own congressional district, Rep. Rashida Tlaib takes the opportunity of the spotlight to imply that Israel should not exist, echoing the “drive the Jews into the sea” rhetoric of previous Arab wars on Israel.

Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper in downtown Detroit, Tlaib reiterated her support for the BDS movement and laughably claimed that she would support resolutions supporting boycotts of human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, except that there aren’t congressional resolutions doing so. This is absurd, since she could introduce such resolutions.

Here is the entire interview

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/trump_to_nominate_rep_john_ratcliffe_to_replace_dan_coats_as_director_of_national_intelligence.html

The appointment of a former US Attorney, who is also a master of the details of the attempted plot to oust Trump, signals that the “investigate the investigators” phase of the biggest political scandal in history is moving into high gear.

Jonathan Swan of Axios published a scoop, now confirmed by presidential tweet, that Rep. John Ratcliffe will be nominated to replace Dan Coast as the Director of National Intelligence. This almost certainly means that the “investigate the investigators” phase of the biggest political scandal in American history is going to get very serious, with the intelligence community cooperating rather than stonewalling.

Two guys who like each other. A lot.

Ratcliffe has deeply impressed me with his questioning of witnesses and comments on television interviews. He is right up there with Devin Nunes in terms of his mastery of the details of the plot.

Swan writes:

President Trump announced on Twitter Sunday that he will nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, confirming Axios’ earlier reporting that Ratcliffe was favored for the job. Coats will leave office on August 15.

Behind the scenes: Trump was thrilled by Ratcliffe’s admonishment of former special counsel Robert Mueller in last week’s House Judiciary Committee hearing. “The special counsel’s job, nowhere does it say that you were to conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence or that the special counsel report should determine whether or not to exonerate him,” Ratcliffe, a former prosecutor, said to Mueller.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fossil Fuel Divestment versus Institutional Neutrality: A North Carolina Test Case By Stanley Kurtz

Posted By on July 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fossil-fuel-divestment-versus-institutional-neutrality-a-north-carolina-test-case/

An important test of “institutional neutrality” — a pillar of campus free speech — is now playing out in North Carolina, where the University of North Carolina Asheville (UNCA) recently chose to divest a portion of its endowment from companies selling “fossil fuels” (coal, oil, and natural gas).

Institutional neutrality means that universities should avoid taking official political stands at the institutional level, such as divestment from fossil fuels, since such actions tend to pressure faculty and students holding contrary views into silence. This is particularly true for public universities such as UNCA, for they belong to every citizen of the state.

What makes the UNCA test case especially important is that two years ago North Carolina passed HB 527, one of the first comprehensive campus free-speech laws in the country. HB 527 not only affirms institutional neutrality as a foundational principle of campus free speech at UNC schools, it mandates that an annual report by a committee of the UNC Board of Governors (which oversees the entire state university system) weigh in on any “difficulties, controversies, or successes in maintaining a posture of administrative and institutional neutrality with regard to political or social issues.”

The question now is how the annual report, due in September, will handle this decision by a public university to throw in its lot with the fossil-fuel-divestment movement. More broadly, the question is whether the UNC Board of Governors will act to halt and reverse this clear violation of institutional neutrality by UNC Asheville. Students and administrators at UNCA intend their move to pressure the entire UNC system to divest. That means the UNC Board of Governors’ response to UNCA’s divestment bandwagon will have an enormous impact on the survival of institutional neutrality at every public campus in the state.

Students and faculty at public universities have every right to take whatever stand they like on issues like fossil-fuel divestment, climate change, and the Green New Deal. It is precisely the neutrality of public universities at the official institutional level that supports and guarantees the ability of individual faculty and students to freely speak their minds on these issues. Public universities shouldn’t have an official political line. We wouldn’t tolerate a public university endorsing Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump for president. Nor should a public university throw its official institutional weight behind a thoroughly political movement whose aims are the subject of active, widespread, and unresolved public debate, particularly when state law cites the principle of institutional neutrality as an essential component of campus free speech.