FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The President, China and the Spooks By David P. Goldman

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-president-china-and-the-spooks/

“I’m an Always Trumper. I want the president to win another term. If I complain about tactics, it’s because I want him to succeed. The right thing to do now is to declare an armistice in the long-run economic war with China, and concentrate on building up American semiconductor and communications manufacturing to out-compete the Chinese.”

Why is it that every time Donald Trump gets together with Xi Jinping, someone gets busted on a sanctions violation? I’m not privy to the inner workings of our cops and spooks, so I’m just asking. While Trump and Xi sat down to dinner at the November 2018 Group of 20 meeting in Argentina, the chief financial officer of Huawei was arrested in a Vancouver airport transit lounge. Now that Trump and Xi are meeting again next week at the Osaka Group of 20 meeting, there are reports of a contempt-of-court order against Chinese banks for violation of North Korea sanctions. This has caused more than a flutter, as I report this morning at Asia Times.

President Trump’s relationship with the U.S. intelligence establishment is less than satisfactory. The spooks didn’t like it when Attorney General William Barr proposed to declassify documents relating to surveillance of his 2016 presidential campaign. Elements of spookdom evidently conspired with the FBI to sandbag the Trump campaign using alleged Russian contamination as a pretext. I have argued in this space that CIA set up Gen. Michael Flynn, the only senior intelligence official to call them out for incompetence and (probably) corruption.

During the past month, we’ve observed a president who steers away from unnecessary confrontation. He suppressed the advice of his National Security Adviser and chose to sanction and threaten Iran rather than start a firefight. In May, Trump overruled his advisers and declared that North Korea’s latest missile launch was not a violation of UN resolutions, contradicting then Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan. Shanahan since stepped down, reportedly for personal reasons. He chose to declare victory with Mexico and forbear from imposing tariffs over the immigration issue. And, unlike most of his administration and the Senate neo-cons (Romney, Rubio, et al.), he wants to fold the Huawei issue into the broader trade negotiations.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Adam Schiff’s latest scheme will blow up in Democrats’ faces By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on June 27th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/adam_schiffs_latest_scheme_will_blow_up_in_democrats_faces.html

Much has been written about the perpetual imbecility of Adam Schiff, gadfly of the Left, one of many, sad to say.  Jerrold Nadler is equally thick.  But Schiff may be the most annoying, the least self-aware.

Despite the conclusion of the Mueller Report, “no collusion,” Schiff is a rabid dog with a bone.  He is convinced that his long campaign to prove that Trump won because he was in cahoots with Russia is still viable, despite the fact that not one of the numerous investigations has proven this to be so.  Schiff, as we all surely know by now, is the man who actually was enthusiastically willing to collude with Russia when he was pranked by a couple of comedians who pretended to offer compromising information on candidate Trump.  He made a complete and utter fool of himself, so excited was he to get his hands on that material.  Still, he cannot let go of his dogged determination to disprove what has already been proven: there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and any Russians.  Do the Russians interfere with elections all over the world?  Yes, have been for decades.  Everyone knows this, except Schiff, apparently.

Schiff is puffing up his feathers now because Mueller has agreed to honor his “friendly subpoena” to testify before two committees, Judiciary and Intelligence — misnamed panels, to be sure.  Better they should be called what they are: injudicious and unintelligent, except for the few stalwart Republicans who will be present who are actually smart; Jordan, Ratcliffe, and Gaetz specifically.  Those Republicans will make Mueller’s visit most uncomfortable; they’ve long known what he was up to and why.  Schiff thinks he has won something, that his questions will finally bring Trump to ground, that Mueller is going to spill some beans unrevealed in his ridiculous report, which was a 400-plus-page op-ed, not a legitimate legal document.  Schiff’s dream is not likely to come true. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Uriel Heyd on Turkey’s Re-Islamization, Circa 1968: Over Four Decades Ahead of Today’s “Analysts”

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2010/08/uriel-heyd-on-turkeys-re-islamization-circa-

Professor Uriel Heyd (d. 1968) described Turkey’s tenuous secularization and aggressive re-Islamization fully 42 years before todays “learned analysts” have finally come to the same pathetically belated realization…

…

Since the recent Mavi Marmara flotilla affair—facilitated, and perhaps even orchestrated by the Turkish government—we have been inundated with excruciatingly belated, if not downright delinquent hand-wringing assessments by so-called “expert analysts” of Turkey. These “experts” lament what they view as Turkey’s “precipitous” return to Islamic fundamentalism under the current Erdogan-led AKP regime—as if this dangerous phenomenon emerged suddenly and fully formed from the head of Zeus al-Zawahiri.

A sobering, highly informed corrective to this cacophony of ill-informed Johnny and Janey-Come –Lately “learned analyst” voices was provided by the Israeli scholar of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, Professor Uriel Heyd (1913-1968)—just over forty-two years ago!

First, a brief biography of Heyd, derived from Professor Gabriel Baer’s opening tribute and Preface (pp. 5-6) to Heyd’s “Revival of Islam in Modern Turkey,” The Magnes Press, Jerusalem, 1968, pp. 5-27, and Professor Aharon Layish’s, “Uriel Heyd’s Contribution to the Study of the Legal, Religious, Cultural, and Political History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey,” Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1982, pp. 35-54.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Top U.S. “Non-Profit” Hospitals & CEOs Are Racking Up Huge Profits Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/06/26/top-u-s-non-profit-hospitals-ceos-are-racking-up-huge-profits/#362955119dfb

The rising cost of healthcare is undermining the American Dream. Families who are working hard to get ahead now pay nearly $20,000 per year in insurance premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs for healthcare.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at America’s healthcare system and found that so-called “non-profit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting healthcare poorer.

Our new oversight report Investigating The Top 82 U.S. Non-Profit Hospitals, Quantifying Government Payments and Financial Assets specifically looked at large nonprofits organized as charities under IRS Section 501(c)3 with the mission of delivering affordable healthcare to their communities.

We found that these hospitals add billions of dollars annually to their bottom line, lavishly compensate their CEOs, and spend millions of dollars, which are generated by patient fees, lobbying government to defend the status quo.

Last year, patients spent 1 out of every 7 U.S. healthcare dollars within these powerful networks. Many are household names like Mayo Clinic* in Rochester, MN; Cleveland Clinic*, in Cleveland, OH; and Partners HealthCare in Massachusetts.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Shocking……..Not by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

Most Arabs–especially those who didn’t tactically rename themselves “Palestinians” until the 1960s (and only then primarily to negate the rebirth of the Jews’ sole, minuscule state)–rejected President Trump’s long-awaited peace plan before its details were even announced. They repeatedly stated that it would be dead on arrival. See what PLO executive Committee member, Zuheir Mohsen, had to say about that above “Palestinian” thing on March 31, 1977, in the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese… Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism…”http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13146

Trump’s team, led by top advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, unveiled the economic part of the plan in Bahrain on June 25, 2019. The idea was to present a vision of what peace could bring not only to the combatants, but to the entire region and world as well.

In many ways, this is nothing new. Dennis Ross, chief Middle East honcho for President Clinton, was present when Yasir Arafat walked away from a similar deal almost two decades ago which would have given him and his people almost all of the disputed territories in Judea and Samaria (aka “West Bank” only since the 20thcentury) along with over $30 billion to sweeten the pot. There were later plans as well–all rejected by Arabs.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Groups Fight Trump’s Oil-Drilling Deregulation By Robert L. Bradley Jr.

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/green-groups-fight-donald-trumps-oil-drilling-deregulation/

He’s cutting pointless red tape and they’re angry about it.

The Interior Department just revised a series of Obama-era regulations governing offshore oil and gas drilling — and environmentalists are hopping mad.

Recently, green groups including the Sierra Club and EarthJustice filed a lawsuit against Interior’s update. These groups claim the Trump administration is “softening” and “relaxing” safety standards.

That’s not true. The revision simply cuts redundant federal regulations, making it easier for private offshore companies to manage risks, and the department deserves applause for boosting workers’ economic opportunities.

As many as 90 billion barrels of oil and 328 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lie buried in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf — the federally owned land beneath the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. To collect these energy riches, oil and gas firms use offshore rigs or platforms to drill wells into the ocean floor.

Interior’s update eliminates bureaucratic red tape around this process. The revision gets rid of redundant tests on wells and blowout preventers, the specialized valves that quickly seal wells to prevent oil spills. Without these repetitive tests, offshore workers have more time to focus on other, more effective safety measures.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Hawley Slams Fellow Lawmakers’ ‘Pathetic’ Inaction on Border Crisis By Jack Crowe

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hawley-slams-fellow-lawmakers-pa

Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) lashed out at fellow lawmakers during a Wednesday hearing, expressing frustration with the lack of substantive legislative responses to the ongoing crisis at the southern border.

Hawley cited grisly reports of inhumane conditions that migrants, especially children, are being forced to endure, and argued that those hardships are the direct result of Congress’s failure to allocate more resources to the agencies tasked with sheltering and providing medical care to the record number of asylum-seekers arriving at the border.

“The behavior of this Congress is absolutely pathetic. I mean, it is just pathetic,” Hawley began. “The problem is this Congress never does anything. This Congress refuses to do anything. We know what the facts are, you’ve outlined them again today: CBP is overcapacity, underfunded, undermanned. ICE: overcapacity, underfunded. HHS: overcapacity, underfunded. Yet this Congress will do nothing.”

Hawley’s testimony comes one day after acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief John Sanders announced his resignation amid continued reports of migrant children receiving inadequate housing and medical care at Border Patrol holding facilities, where the migrants are held until they can be transferred to HHS custody. That transfer process now routinely exceeds the 72 hours allotted by law due to HHS’s own inadequate funding and staffing.

The Senate plans to vote this week on a $4.5 billion spending package that would provide increased funding to CBP, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and HHS. The bill’s passage has been threatened by a companion bill, which passed the House Tuesday, that bars the allocation of funds for certain Department of Defense enforcement actions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hawley’s Plan to Regulate Social-Media Giants Draws Muted Response on Capitol Hill By John McCormack

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/josh-hawleys-plan-to-regulate-social-media-giants-draws-muted-response-on-capitol-hill/

Many Senate Republicans, and some Senate Democrats, appear to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the Missouri freshman’s controversial proposal.

One week ago today, freshman senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) introduced a bill requiring large social-media companies to prove to the Federal Trade Commission that their platforms are not politically biased. Failure to satisfy the FTC in this regard would result in companies such as Facebook and Twitter losing immunity from liability for defamatory content posted by their users, meaning they could be sued out of existence.

Hawley’s proposal drew sharp criticism from several voices on the right, including our own David French, who wrote that the bill is both unconstitutional and unwise. On Capitol Hill, there hasn’t been a groundswell of support for Hawley’s legislation, which currently has zero cosponsors. But neither has there been much pushback from Hawley’s Republican colleagues.

Representative Justin Amash (R., Mich.), a frequent thorn in his caucus’s side, tweeted that the bill is “a sweetheart deal for Big Government. It empowers the one entity that should have no say over our speech to regulate and influence what we say online.” But only one of more than a dozen Republican senators contacted by National Review expressed any criticism of Hawley’s legislation: Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, who “is not a co-sponsor of this government-control approach and has concerns that this could open the door to the left for a new government Fairness Doctrine,” his spokesman, James Wegmann, tells National Review.

“My gut reaction is it’s a pretty blunt instrument. But I’m going to take a look at it,” says John Kennedy of Louisiana.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Inventing Victimhood Universities too often serve as “hate-crime hoax” mills. Andy Ngo

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/campus-hate-crime-hoaxes

This month, an Ohio jury awarded the owners of Gibson’s Food Mart and Bakery in Oberlin $44 million in combined punitive and compensatory damages in its defamation action against Oberlin College and a top university administrator. The incident at the heart of the lawsuit stems from a 2016 hate-crime hoax involving three black students, occurring the day after Donald Trump’s presidential victory. Gibson’s, owned and operated by the same family for over a century, has been a popular spot for Oberlin College students looking to buy groceries within walking distance of campus. Gibson’s also supplied the college dining hall with baked goods.

On November 9, 2016, Oberlin students Jonathan Aladin, Endia Lawrence, and Cecelia Whettstone fought with Allyn Gibson, the owner’s grandson, after he tried to apprehend Aladin for stealing alcohol. The students claimed that they had been racially profiled. Students, professors, and even some in the Oberlin administration launched a boycott of the bakery, including protests and pickets. The school cancelled its contracts with Gibson’s. But the allegations proved baseless: the students had in fact been caught stealing from the store, and they admitted as much when they pled guilty the following August.

Advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center make headlines by claiming that hate crimes have surged since Trump’s election, but the real surge is in hate-crime hoaxes, especially among university students. The day after the 2016 election, Eleesha Long, a student at Bowling Green State University—about 90 miles west of Oberlin—said that she was attacked by white Trump supporters, who threw rocks at her. Police concluded that she had fabricated the story. That same day, Kathy Mirah Tu, a University of Minnesota student, claimed in a viral social-media post that she was detained by police after fighting a racist man who had attacked her. Campus and local police said that they had had no contact with her. And again that day, a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette made up a story about being attacked and robbed by Trump supporters, who supposedly ripped off her hijab. For weeks after Trump’s election, America was fed a series of outrageous stories of campus race hatred that fell apart upon examination.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Arab Officials Mute Criticism of Israel at Trump Administration’s Middle-East Peace Conference Jared Kushner puts focus on $50 billion economic plan; warmer ties between Gulf states and Israel: Felicia Schwartz

Posted By on June 26th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arab-leaders-mute-criticism-of-israel-at-trump-administrations-middle-east-peace-conference-11561578645

MANAMA, Bahrain—The most striking feature of the Trump administration’s conference showcasing the economic side of its Middle East peace plan was what was largely absent: Criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinian territories.

Arab officials steered clear of speaking about Palestinian statehood or Israeli policies at the two-day gathering, which wrapped up Wednesday in Bahrain, a contrast with their comments at other international forums.

That was by design. U.S. officials sought to avoid the political issues that have dogged talks on the conflict for years and focus instead on the economic potential should peace be achieved. The Israeli government wasn’t invited, but Israeli businesspeople were. Arab government ministers with political portfolios didn’t attend, and most Arab governments sent either midlevel officials or ministers overseeing fiscal affairs.

The Trump administration hoped to build support from Arab states and investors for a $50 billion program to invest in and around the Palestinian territories over 10 years, before unrolling the much thornier political half of its peace plan.

Images beamed out of the conference showed Gulf Arabs in full national dress chatting casually with the small Israeli business contingent that Bahrain allowed to travel here—encounters that some here said would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.