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The Brexit Party Poses an Existential Threat to the Tories By John O’Sullivan

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/brexit-party-poses-an-existential-threat-to-the-tories/

Theresa May is probably on the way out, but the European parliamentary elections suggest a bigger threat is on the horizon for the Conservative party.

Theresa May’s departure from Downing Street and the premiership has been promised so many times and not materialized once that I react to the latest version of it like the Charlie Ruggles character to a rival suitor in the great Lubitsch comedy, Trouble in Paradise: “See here. You keep saying you’re leaving and then you stay. Why don’t you say you’ll stay and then leave?”

Last week it certainly looked as if May would finally gratify the wishes of almost all Tories outside Parliament (and now, it seems, most inside Parliament too) and resign as prime minister in early June. She and Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers, agreed on a statement that kind of promised she would go but also left open the delicate question of when:

The prime minister is determined to secure our departure from the European Union and is devoting her efforts to securing the second reading of the withdrawal agreement bill in the week commencing 3rd June 2019 and the passage of that bill and the consequent departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union by the summer. We have agreed that she and I will meet following the second reading of the bill to agree a timetable for the election of a new leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party.

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The 24 Democrats By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-running-for-president-crowded-field/

Twenty or so are going to end this presidential-election cycle deeply disappointed.

Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low expectations get to enjoy a form of moral victory. (Ben Carson and Rick Perry might be happy how the 2016 cycle ended, with both taking roles in Trump’s cabinet. Bernie Sanders might be, too.) But running for president and flopping is a deep disappointment, and while the occasional figure can emerge from a failed bid to move on to different victories — Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole became senators, Jerry Brown became governor again, Howard Dean became chair of the Democratic National Committee — a lot of failed presidential candidates fade away into the private sector and obscurity beyond occasional cable-news appearances: Bill Bradley, Tommy Thompson, Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt, Alan Keyes, Bob Graham, Bill Richardson, Evan Bayh, Michele Bachmann.

The 2020 Democratic primary is going to end with about 23 campaigns falling short of actual victory and any moral victories. Perhaps two candidates will end up in a unity ticket, and perhaps one or two will have set themselves up for another run for another office someday. But the coming year will bring a lot of anticlimax, frustration, and disillusionment for a lot of once-promising figures in the party.

Here are the 24 Democratic presidential candidates, more or less in order of their position, although outside the top four or five, the ranking barely matters.

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A $32 Million ‘War on Rats’ campaign isn’t working. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a ‘war on rats’ in July 2017, demanding “more rat corpses.”

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com created an interactive map of all 22,000+ rat sightings in 2018/2019 alone.

However, our co-investigation with the New York Times found that rat sightings are up 38% between 2014 and 2018. In the first four months this year, rat sightings are again up versus the same period last year.

HERE IS THE NYTIMES COLUMN

Rats Are Taking Over New York City Gentrifying neighborhoods are a key reason behind the vermin outbreak, which extends beyond New York — Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles are also confronting issues. By Winnie Hu

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/nyregion/rat-infestation-nyc.html

So many rats regularly lurk on a sidewalk in Brooklyn that it is the humans who avoid the rats, not the other way around. Not even cars are safe: Rats have chewed clean through engine wires.

A Manhattan avenue lined with trendy restaurants has become a destination for foodies — and rats who help themselves to their leftovers. Tenants at a public housing complex in the South Bronx worry about tripping over rats that routinely run over their feet.

New York has always been forced to coexist with the four-legged vermin, but the infestation has expanded exponentially in recent years, spreading to just about every corner of the city.

“I’m a former Marine so I’m not going to be squeamish, but this is bad,” said Pablo Herrera, a 58-year-old mechanic who has counted up to 30 rats while walking on his block in Prospect Heights, just around the corner from the stately Brooklyn Museum.

Rat sightings reported to the city’s 311 hotline have soared nearly 38 percent, to 17,353 last year from 12,617 in 2014, according to an analysis of city data by OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit watchdog group, and The New York Times. In the same period, the number of times that city health inspections found active signs of rats nearly doubled.

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Kamala’s Contradictions By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/21/kamalas-contradictions/

Kamala Harris, the junior U.S. senator from California who is battling among some two-dozen other candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, didn’t have much of a career before 1994. That was the year she became the new “steady” of California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a man who is a full 30 years her senior. In a process of poontronage, Brown appointed Harris to lucrative sinecures in state government and raised money for her successful run for San Francisco district attorney.

Harris went on to win election as state attorney general in 2010, even though the Sacramento Bee endorsed her Republican rival, Steve Cooley. (So much for the power of endorsements!) In 2016, Brown urged former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to drop out of the U.S. Senate race, and his former steady went on to win the November election handily. Harris now wants to be president, but she is hardly the only Willie Brown understudy on the rise.

In 1995, a year after he met Harris, Brown encountered fundraiser Carolyn Carpeneti, an elegant blond of 32, and the two became romantically involved. In fact, the pair had a daughter in 2001, when Carpeneti was 38 and Brown 67. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted in 2003, “people familiar with her career—political professionals, city officials, her ex-husband—say Carpeneti’s success is rooted in her relationship with Brown.”

Over a five-year period, groups controlled by Brown paid $2.3 million to Carpeneti, recently granted a sweetheart no-bid deal to recruit for California’s online college project. As Dan Morain noted in CALmatters, the person who selected Carpeneti, Heather Hiles, “is connected to San Francisco politics, having overseen communications for Gov. Gavin Newsom while he was running to succeed Brown as mayor of San Francisco in 2003.”

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The Epidemic of Electronic Deletions By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democratic-government-officials-epidemic-electronic-deletions/

Many Democratic government officials, not just Hillary, have gotten away with destroying evidence.

One method might be to see whether those targeted by Robert Mueller had ever begun accusing each other of “collusion” to save their own skins. That did not happen.

Even the perjurer Michael Cohen, who accused Trump of all sorts of improper business practices in an effort to negotiate a lighter sentence, never claimed that the president had colluded with the Russians — the Holy Grail search of the Mueller “all-stars.”

Yet John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe are suddenly alleging that someone other than themselves is the guilty instigator in seeding the dossier into a presidential intelligence report, is the guilty party that deceived a FISA court, and is the guilty culprit who was leaking to the media. So apparently the new climate is now no longer “There was no crime committed” but rather “He did it, not me.”

Yet another calibration might be who exactly is deleting documents and who is not. So far Robert Mueller has not accused Donald Trump or his subordinates of deleting Trump’s emails. Indeed, Trump’s campaign and administration reportedly turned over 1.4 million documents to Special Counsel Mueller. Again, no one has claimed that they have been destroyed.

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Can the Brits Define ‘Islamophobia’? By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/islamophobia-definition-debate-united-kindgom/

A proposed definition of Islamophobia gives relatively few clues about how it would be applied.

What criticisms of Muslims can be censured, sanctioned, or prosecuted? What kind of statements will we deem Islamophobic? The debate is starting to happen in the United Kingdom, and it will surely happen soon in American universities, corporations, and perhaps our legislatures. We ought to start thinking it through.

In the United Kingdom, the All Party Parliamentary Group of Muslims proposed a working definition of Islamophobia that runs this way: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” This definition has been rapidly adopted by smaller parties in the U.K., such as the Liberal Democrats, but rejected by the Tories and the government of Theresa May. It’s also been criticized by Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), who says such a definition, if it spread, could hamper anti-terror investigations.

Would such a definition, if adopted, apply to any of the following statements?

“They seek to enslave the bodies of women.”

“[H]e prefers theocracy to democracy. He preaches a message of enduring hatred and personifies the kind of politics that is inimical to everything the Labour party stands for. ”

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America: Willful Blindness Amil Imani

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.capitolhilloutsider.com/america-willful-blindness/

It is hard to believe how quickly we’ve forgotten the largest terrorist attack on American soil. So, let me remind our readers once again:

On September 11, 2001, nineteen Muslim terrorists, mostly Saudi Arabian citizens, hijacked four commercial aircraft. In a synchronized attack, the hijackers deliberately flew two of the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and a third into the Pentagon. The passengers on the fourth plane launched a counterattack, spurring the hijacker pilot to crash the plane into a field in Pennsylvania.

Approximately 3,000 people died on that day, the single largest loss of life that resulted from a terrorist attack on American soil.

After these attacks, I saw many stickers on many cars saying “Everything I Needed to Know About Islam I Learned on 9/11.” Well, apparently not.

Islam and Sharia continue to stealthily creep into every aspect of American culture. And too few people know it or are talking about it. Why? Because Americans have been conditioned by the liberal elites to be tolerant and compassionate, to embrace multiculturalism and respect each other’s beliefs, ideals and values. That would be wonderful in a Utopian world, but the fact is, Islam doesn’t embrace any aspect of Western civilization—much less American culture.

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EXCLUSIVE Interview with Jewish Couple in Paris Beaten by Muslim Home invaders By Pamela Geller

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/05/exclusive-interview-with-jewish-couple-in-paris-beaten-by-muslim-home-invaders

The last of the remaining Jews living in Aubervilliers were brutally beaten and robbed in their own home. A Jewish couple in Paris was assaulted and robbed in their own home in the projects earlier this month raising the concern that the attack was the latest in a series of “home invasions” targeting Jews. A Muslim gang of four saw the *mezuzah on the door and stormed in. The Jewish couple were brutally beaten and robbed. Seine-Saint-Denis is increasingly a Muslim no-go zone. Once home to a thriving Jewish community, Seine-Saint-Denis has been ethnically cleansed.

I have an exclusive interview with the couple. Photos are exclusive as well.

The doorbell rang in the small Hazan apartment in the projects of the deprived Paris suburb of Aubervilliers. Shalom Hazan was expecting his brother so he thought nothing of opening the door. Like a scene out of ‘Death Wish’, four Muslim men in their twenties stormed into his home and spent the next 30 minutes beating Mr. Hazan and his wife.

Their faces covered (like the burka), the four demanded money, “We know you have money.” That old anti-semitic trope. Hazan lives in the projects in a tiny apartment. He has a mezzuzah on the doorpost outside his home the only mezuzahs in the building because Shalom Hazan and his wife Joelle are the only Jews remaining in the building.

63 year old Hazan tried to fight them off. While three goons pummeled him, the fourth attacked his wife while shouting “show us where the money is or we will kill your husband!” They took everything —Shalom Hazan and Joelle Hazan have lived in this tiny apartment since in 1985. Back then it was a Jewish neighborhood, safe. As Muslims moved in, they Jews were forced out. The projects that the Hazans live in was at one time 90% Jewish. Now Shalom Hazan is the last Jew. He has decided he too must leave. He is terrified and so is his wife.

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Harvard’s Insatiable Identity-Politics Cannibals Appeasing unhinged rabble-rousing mobs. Michelle Malkin

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273835/harvards-insatiable-identity-politics-cannibals-michelle-malkin

I have no love for left-wing, Hillary-promoting Hollywood producer and accused #MeToo villain Harvey Weinstein. Nor am I a fan of those who perpetrated the cop-bashing “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” fiction involving social justice martyr Michael Brown. But I do strongly believe that a grave injustice has been committed by Harvard’s witch-hunt mobsters against a law professor who joined Weinstein’s legal team and had represented Brown’s family in a civil suit against Ferguson, Missouri.

Too bad Ivy League elitist bubbles have purged themselves of people with the backbone, integrity, and courage to end the madness.

Ronald Sullivan, faculty dean of the undergraduate dorm Winthrop House, was terminated from the honored position after hysterical student protesters condemned his decision to take on Weinstein’s case as “trauma-inducing.” Protests, sit-ins, temper tantrums, an online Change.org petition and even litigation by offended female students created pressure on the university for months. The administration sought to appease the mob with a “climate review,” no doubt hoping to quell the rebellion against Sullivan as the school year came to a close. No dice. Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced over the weekend that both Sullivan and his wife, Stephanie Robinson, co-faculty dean at Winthrop House, will be removed on June 30.

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DHS: Facebook Being Used for Elaborate ‘Terrorist Donation’ Scam By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/facebook-being-used-for-elaborate-terrorist-donation-scam/

Facebook may still be the 800-pound gorilla on the social media block, but that isn’t providing the platform with any kind of immunity from bad publicity. Mark Zuckerberg’s money maker has been getting the side-eye from almost everyone since the 2016 election.

The negativity surrounding Facebook has gotten so bad that a co-founder of the site recently wrote an op-ed for The New York Times calling for its breakup.

Many who disagreed with that sentiment still believe that Facebook should be punished for a variety of things.

There is now a new twist on the awfulness that is Facebook:

According to a new warning from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, the scammers make contact through a messaging app or even Words with Friends and sometimes fake a romantic interest. Eventually, the scammer makes up a story about financial hardship and asks for money.

The day after the victim sends the money, they receive a phone call from the fraudster who poses as a law enforcement official — often spoofing the caller ID of a legitimate agency such as DHS.

The caller tells the victim that they gave money to a criminal enterprise or terrorist group the day before, such as the Islamic State or Al Qaeda and threatens them with imprisonment.