FOREIGN POLICY, POLITICS Comments turned off

Kirsten Gillibrand Delivers the World’s Most Ignorant Foreign Policy Speech Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274433/kirsten-gillibrand-delivers-worlds-most-ignorant-daniel-greenfield

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has only one admirable quality. Determination.

Sadly that determination isn’t yoked to anything except her ambition. Gillibrand has no notable skills. She’s managed to rub everyone the wrong way. But that hasn’t made her give up her senseless 2020 campaign. Senator Gillibrand may not know anything or be qualified for anything. But she won’t let that stop her. And so she delivered a speech on foreign policy to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 

The only thing the speech lays out is that Gillibrand is barely qualified to work as a receptionist in an organization dealing with foreign policy.

Gillibrand starts off by boasting that she had traveled to Syria. When you’re from New York, visiting Syria is really impressive.

In Jordan, we met with Syrian refugee mothers. These are women who had to flee their home country because President Bashar al-Assad decimated entire neighborhoods and villages and tortured and killed tens of thousands of political prisoners.

After we spoke for a bit, these women looked me straight in the eye and one got straight to the point: “You are so afraid of Osama Bin Laden. When you turn a blind eye to people suffering here in Syria, you’re creating thousands of Bin Ladens every day.”

No example more powerfully demonstrates how our endless wars, our abandonment of diplomacy, and our lack of strategy have hurt our credibility abroad and made us less safe.

Osama bin Laden wasn’t a war refugee. And if anything, he used American intervention in the Gulf War to kickstart a Jihad against America. 

But Kirsten Gillibrand doesn’t actually know anything. And her speech somehow even gets dumber.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Weissmann Dossier Who really wrote the Mueller Report? Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274432/weissmann-dossier-kenneth-r-timmerman

Anyone who watched more than a few minutes of Wednesday’s painful hearings with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller discovered a sad truth the Democrats and many in the media continue to hide: Mueller neither wrote his report nor did he master the content of it.

Repeatedly during the day, the former FBI director stumbled over what we had been told were his findings. He slowly leafed through a binder, searching for passages that lawmakers were quoting to him, only to say “okay” or “true” when he finally found them.

In the morning’s hearing at the House Judiciary committee, Rep. Doug Collins asked Mueller if “conspiracy” – the criminal law term used in the first part of his report about Russia – and the vernacular term, “collusion” were the same thing. Mueller replied, “No.”

Taken aback, Collins asked if he was changing his earlier testimony – ie, the report – which stated on page 180 that collusion and conspiracy were the same. When Mueller finally found the passage, he withdrew his earlier testimony and stood by the report.

Rep. Collins – and frankly, every member of the two committees who questioned Mueller – had the elegance not to state the obvious: Mueller was non compus mentis.

During the afternoon hearing, Rep. Peter Welch, D, Va, again asked whether he had found collusion. This time, Mueller was so far gone, he couldn’t find his words.

“We don’t use the word collusion,” he said. “The word we usually use is-ah-not collusion-ah. But one of the other-ah-terms that-ah-ah-that fills in when collusion is not used. In any event, we decided not to use the word collusion in so much as it has no relevance to the criminal law arena.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump: A Brawler for Democracy A weak and unlikely and untutored president beats back a concerted campaign of delegitimization. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-a-brawler-for-democracy-11564175760

His partisan opponents and those who believe Donald Trump unfit can still try to remove or at least defame him with allegations that he sought to obstruct Robert Mueller’s investigation even if the investigation found no underlying crime.

That’s part of the political game but context is required. If a statement by John Dowd, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, to reporter Byron York is an accurate reflection of reality, then it reflects well on Mr. Mueller. Of his conversations with the special counsel, Mr. Dowd said: “Bob was a big boy about the political side of it. He understood the president had to address the politics of [the collusion investigation]. . . . People were pounding him about this thing every day, both privately and publicly, and he had to take [Mueller] on.”

Politicians, by the time they’ve asked millions for their money, their time, their support and their votes, are obliged to do just about anything to win. Once elected, they have an even bigger responsibility to defend their power and ability to govern. Ask any president: This, and not governing, is what they spend much of their time doing. And one thing you can say about President Trump: This most unlikely and in some ways weakest of presidents has brawled his way to victory over the most concerted delegitimization campaign any president has ever faced.

He was under attack from day one from partisan and media enemies who promoted the Russia collusion theory without especially caring whether it was true. He had every reason to wonder (and still does) whether he was getting a fair shake from the FBI and intelligence agencies. He has good reason to wonder, especially after Mr. Mueller revealed himself this week to be largely a figurehead in his own inquiry, whether the investigation was dragged out for two years in hopes of inducing him to commit obstruction crimes in place of the nonexistent collusion crimes. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Brave Soldier in the Fight for Minority Rights in Bangladesh By Janet Levy

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/a_brave_soldier_in_the_fight_for_minority_rights_in_bangladesh.html

On July 17th, President Trump met with more than two dozen survivors of religious conflicts, including victims from Iraq, Tibet, China and Bangladesh.  Several individuals stepped forward at the Second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom to tell their stories in hopes of informing him and gaining a commitment for intervention.

Among them was Priya Saha, an officer with the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council (BHBCUC), who was determined to obtain Trump’s assistance with the dire situation faced by minorities in her country.  She testified that since Bangladesh became independent in 1972 and Islam was declared the state religion five years later, non-Muslims have had their land confiscated and, among other atrocities, have been raped and murdered.  Millions of people have disappeared or have fled the country, she said.

As a result of her testimony, the government threatened Saha with sedition charges, angry mobs demonstrated outside her home, she and her family have been targeted on social media and she was expelled from the council.  All this occurred in a Muslim country which claims to observe religious freedoms and declares that all faiths live in harmony.  

As the former organization secretary for the non-profit BHBCUC, Saha is well-versed in the problems resulting from the infringement of minority rights in Bangladesh.  The organization was established  in 1988 to protect the rights of religious and ethnic minorities in the country after Islam was instituted as the state religion by constitutional amendment in 1977.  Secularism had originally been a fundamental principle of Bangladesh’s 1972 Constitution.  But this founding principle was altered by then-President, Ziaur Rahman, who replaced the non-sectarian text with a commitment to the “absolute trust and faith in Almighty Allah.”  Over the years, many challenges arose against the constitutional amendment amid calls for Bangladesh to return to secularism.  All have been rejected and Islam remains as the official state religion.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Computer-based Teaching of Remedial English Skills Just Doesn’t Work By David Solway

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/computerbased_teaching_of_remedial_english_skills_just_doesnt_work.html

College administrators and pedagogues, confronted with the incontrovertible signs of intellectual miasma among their students and perhaps unconsciously aware that they have raised a generation of toffee-nosed misfits and incompetents, have responded by installing a plethora of writing and language courses, mainly of the digital variety. They believe that computer instruction in grammar and syntax will redress the balance by teaching students how to write and think.

The evidence shows otherwise. Nonetheless, many teachers continue to support the online language project as a boon to students who need to amend their so-called “writing skills.” These teachers, many of whom are former colleagues, claim that student reading practices and writing abilities actually improve thanks to three-hour classes in which postulants stare into computer screens, interminably scrolling away, nimbly surfing the Net and sending email messages to one another.

The claim is disingenuous and needs to be put in context. Though some instructors deal with second-language students for whom Web-based drills are pro forma, native-born students have also been subjected to the same laboratory practices with little or nothing to show for them. Many write and speak as if they were indeed of foreign extraction — this is no hyperbole — and their academic work, in tandem with the expression of their ideas, is often, like, you know, embarrassing.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Nadler’s Trump Hunt Is Dead and He’s the Only One Who Doesn’t Know By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/nadlers-trump-hunt-is-dead-and-hes-the-only-one-who-doesnt-know/

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) on Friday outlined details of what he and the House Judiciary Committee will continue doing to further beat the dead horse that is his witch hunt investigation into President Trump.

To much of America, it came off as more of a cry for help. Here is a thirty-six second snippet of Nadler’s babble-fest:

House Judiciary Cmte. will file an application today for the grand jury material underlying the Mueller report, Chairman Nadler says.

For the past couple of years Democrats have been waiting for Robert Mueller to be their Santa Claus, delivering them a litany of impeachable offenses all neatly wrapped up with a pretty bow on top.

When Santa wrote them a letter in the form of the special counsel report and it didn’t include any clear mention of the presents, they were convinced that he would most definitely bring them in person.

So they subpoenaed him.

When Santa came down the Capitol Hill chimney on Wednesday all he brought with him to give the Democrats was a big bag of coal, which he then awkwardly delivered.

Almost everyone but the Democrats knew it was coal.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

U.S. Supreme Court lets Trump use disputed funds for border wall

Posted By on July 27th, 2019

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a victory by letting his administration redirect $2.5 billion in money approved by Congress for the Pentagon to help build his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border even though lawmakers refused to provide funding.

The conservative-majority court on a 5-4 vote with the court’s liberals in dissent blocked in full a ruling by a federal judge in California barring the Republican president from spending the money on the basis that Congress did not specifically authorize the funds to be spent on the wall project fiercely opposed by Democrats and Mexico’s government.

“Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!” Trump tweeted just minutes after the court acted.

A brief order explaining the court’s decision said the government “made a sufficient showing” that the groups challenging the decision did not have grounds to bring a lawsuit.

In a highly unusual move, Trump on Feb. 15 declared a national emergency in a bid to fund the wall without congressional approval, an action Democrats said exceeded his powers under the U.S. Constitution and usurped the authority of Congress.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why I Am Not Celebrating the Mueller Hearings: Diana West

Posted By on July 26th, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-i-am-not-celebrating-the-mueller-hearings_3016865.html

I am certainly no stranger to the far end of a limb, but this time, I am really out there. I watched the Mueller hearings and despaired. I saw the Original Sin of Trump-Russia — “Russia hacked the DNC,” shaped by time and “messaging” into “Russian interference in 2016 on behalf on Donald Trump” — enter the record, accepted and even regurgitated by the GOP.

But Mueller gave a foggy performance! He never even read his own report! Impeachment is dead! The response by the estimable Mollie Hemingway typifies conservative satisfaction.

I rubbed my eyes, tried to smile, but it didn’t work. I still felt snookered and betrayed by Republicans who inexplicably failed to take the kill shot and win a victory for the country by exposing the whole rotten Deep State conspiracy, enabled and amplified by the MSM, to concoct a tale of a massive Russian cyber-strike on our democracy supposedly designed to prevent Hillary Clinton from being elected. This Big Lie has not only delegitimized Trump’s presidency now and forever, it simultaneously aligns Trump supporters — American patriots — with our adversaries in the Kremlin. Believe me, this will come back and haunt us all when Commissars Schiff, Tlaib, Brennan and the rest of the Party get real power.

Why did no Republican want to pull the pin on Russian hacking? I went back to a June 2017 op-ed I wrote by the same name: “Pulling the Pin on Russian Hacking.” Change the names around and it could run this morning.

About those Comey hearings.

Not one US senator asked former FBI Director James Comey to account for the sinister fact that the source of the explosive determination that “Russia hacked the DNC” computer system is a DNC contractor, not the FBI.

Not one US Senator asked why Comey’s FBI deferred to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s DNC when the DNC refused to permit FBI forensics specialists to examine the DNC computer system; or why the FBI was never able to examine John Podesta’s personal devices, either. Not one member of the Senate Intelligence Committe inquired as to why the DNC servers have not, after all of this time, ever been re-examined by the FBI; or whether it is just possible that this same DNC contractor putting forward the DNC/Russian hacking charge might have destroyed the DNC computer system.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Fox’s Donna, Geraldo, and Whitewashing Juan : Gerald Honigman

Posted By on July 26th, 2019

http://q4j-middle-east.com

Channel hopping, I usually can’t help but settle on Fox News for such programming…and at times I have problems with that choice too. So I turn to the wildlife or fishing channels instead.

Fox’s recent hiring of folks like the unscrupulous Democrat honcho (honcha?), Donna Brazile, is a case in point. She and her cohort  south Florida Congressional Democrat Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, would stop at nothing to get their guy or gal elected: in Brazile’s case, feeding at least one question to Hillary Clinton in a major debate. And that’s just what she got caught doing. So, CNN axes her–and then Fox hires her.

No other Lefties in town to choose from for “fair and balanced” reporting?

While there’s been some other problems, it’s the next one that painfully lingers, causing repeated bouts of severe indigestion…

I don’t know what Fox is paying Brazile for her irreplaceable wisdom, but I do know that, when a current co-host of  The Five and frequent participant on some other programs as well, Juan Williams, was hired, he came aboard with a three year, $2 million contract in 2010. I’m sure that has increased substantially since then.

Not only does he continue to be hard to stomach nowadays for anyone with neurons firing properly, but I can’t help remembering a particular day, years ago, when I was driving home from work and listening to National Public Radio.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

THE TRAGIC FIGHT OVER A ZIONIST LEADER’S FINAL RESTING PLACE by Moshe Phillips

Posted By on July 26th, 2019

https://www.thej.ca/post/the-tragic-fight-over-a-zionist-leader-s-final-resting-place https://herutna.org/

The anniversary of the passing of a Jewish leader is often an occasion to reflect on the deceased’s life and legacy, and the death of the Zionist leader in August 1940 is no different. 

But in Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s case, the controversy over his re-interment, decades later, is also a matter of significance—and offers important lessons for our own era.

Jabotinsky was one of the most dynamic and influential Zionist orators of the 20th century. Speeches were vital for inspiring the masses—especially the downtrodden masses of interwar Eastern Europe. He exhorted the Jews of Russia and Poland to take pride in their heritage, to recognize that violent anti-Semitism was on the horizon, and to prepare to settle in the Land of Israel.

Jabotinsky addressing the 1931 World Zionist Congress

But Jabotinsky was much more than just a speechmaker; he also was a man of action. He was the founder, in 1917, of the Jewish Legion, the first Jewish military force in nearly two thousand years. He created the Haganah, in 1920, to protect the Jews of Palestine against Arab pogromists, and spent years in a British prison for the “crime” of organizing Jewish self-defense (He was made a member of the OBE – Order of The British Empire – 2 years later – ed.). He was the spiritual father of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the underground Jewish militia that fought for Jewish independence.

Two of Jabotinsky’s most devoted followers, Jewish underground leaders Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, would later serve as prime minister of the State Of Israel that their leader did not live to see.