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Lust for Destruction-by Waller Newell

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

Posted: November 6, 2018https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lust-for-destruction/

Journalist Victor Sebestyen’s Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror is a fast-paced, absorbing new biography of one of history’s greatest revolutionaries—or, if you share my perspective, political mass murderers. Scrupulously researched and vividly written, it is the first major new biography of Vladimir Lenin in 20 years and makes extensive use of the archival materials that have become available in that time. It will be an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the founder of the Soviet Union.

Much of the interest in the book has been over its revelations about Lenin’s personal life, hitherto largely unknown. Although his wife, Nadya Krupskaya, has often been portrayed as a dour helpmate in a loveless marriage who cooked and cleaned for the Iron Man, Sebestyen reveals real depth of feeling and complexity in their private lives. At the same time, Lenin carried on a passionate love affair for a decade with a beautiful French émigré, Inessa Armand, “by far the most glamorous of all the Russian émigrés in the radical circles of Paris.” His “ménage à trois” with Inessa and Nadya (who condoned the affair) was “central to Lenin’s emotional life.” According to Sebestyen, the Soviet leader was “not a monster” but, in personal relationships, “invariably kind.” He could even laugh at himself, “occasionally.” What’s more, he didn’t revel in “the details of his victims’ deaths” as did Hitler or Mao, because, for Lenin, “the deaths were theoretical, mere numbers.” I’m afraid Sebestyen may have succumbed to the temptation every biographer faces of getting too attached to his subject.

After he led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 against the crumbling Czarist autocracy, Lenin’s socialist state quickly became a totalitarian hell of mass executions, forced collectivization, and slave labor. Newly revealed details about his personal life furnish no further insight into this vast project of institutionalized terrorism. Countless men display traits of loyalty in marriage as well as lapses from that loyalty; very few emerge as political murderers on such a grand scale. The most that these details can establish is the sickening contrast between someone capable of tenderness and affection in private life and capable at the same time of mobilizing the deaths of millions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

PRESIDENT TRUMP ON ILHAN OMAR

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

President Trump on Rep. @IlhanMN:https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1095382455735988225

“Her lame apology, and that’s what it was, it was lame, and she didn’t mean a word of it was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Furies in Congress by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22344/the-furies-in-congress http://goudsmit.pundicity.com
http://lindagoudsmit.com

In ancient Greek mythology the Furies are the three goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger. They are the daughters of Mother Earth Gaia and her son Father Sky Uranus. The Furies are infamous for taking vengeance on men and punishing all crimes including breaking the rules of society by striking the offenders with madness.

The Furies in ancient mythology dispensed vigilante justice and were the “guardians of the law when the state had not yet intervened or did not exist, or when the crime was a crime of ethics and not actual law.” Here is the problem – we don’t live in ancient Greece and we are not characters in a mythological story. We live in the United States of America, the greatest experiment in liberty and individual freedom the world has ever known.

For 242 years our Constitution has been the supreme law of the land that provides the national frame of government and rules of society to guide American life. Our Founding Fathers envisioned ordered liberty based on individualism, personal responsibility, and the meritocracy. Their economic principles included property rights, free markets, and sound money.

In the last several decades the radical left has engaged in a culture war against the United States that seeks to undermine the Constitution and replace it with a “living document” that would support collectivism aka socialism.

The Furies in Congress Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar are the spawn of the radical leftist narrative that embraces liberalism’s dogmatic tenets of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. These three women were elected by a segment of the American electorate who embrace radical leftism’s orthodoxy.

The new secular religion Leftism embraces the antisemitism of Islamic sharia law, the Marxist hatred of American capitalism, and the misandry (hatred of men) of the ancient Greek Furies. The Leftists in Washington have common cause to collapse America’s representative republic but what are they offering to replace it? This is where the Leftist alliance collapses.

POLITICS Comments turned off

2020 LINEUP SO FAR

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

De Blasio heads to New Hampshire as he contemplates run for president By SALLY GOLDENBERG

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2019/02/11/de-blasio-heads-to-new-hampshire-as-he-contemplates-run-for-president-848323
‘This Is My Space’: Kirsten Gillibrand’s Unabashedly Feminist Campaign

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/us/politics/kirsten
Klobuchar dismisses ‘moderate’ label, says she should be seen as ‘progressive’Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/klobuchar-dismisses-moderate-label-people-should-see-me-as-a-progressive
Kamala Harris Backs Legalization: I Smoked Marijuana, “I Think It Gives A Lot Of People Joy”Posted By Ian Schwartz

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/11/kamala_harris_backs_legalization_i_smoked_marijuana_i_think_it_gives_a_lot_of_people_joy.html
Will Sherrod Brown Carry the Blue-Collar Torch in 2020? By Philip Wegmann

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/12/will_sherrod_brown_carry_the_blue-collar_torch_in_2020_139439.html

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump tax returns: House Democrats ready for ultimate fishing expedition by Byron York

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-trump-tax-returns-house-dems-ready-for-ultimate-fishing-expedition

Yes, Democrats want to start a new investigation into already-under-investigation Trump-Russia allegations. And yes, they want to investigate Trump associates like Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and others. But by far the biggest thing Democrats want, now that they have the majority in the House, is to get their hands on the president’s tax returns.

House Democrats want to use a 1924 law that allows any one of three entities — the House Ways & Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, or the Joint Committee on Taxation — to demand that the Treasury Department turn over the returns of any individual. Passed in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal and controversy over the finances of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, the law has almost never been used. For the first 50 years of the law’s existence, no one tried to get a president’s returns — although the law played a role in the fight over Richard Nixon’s finances — and in the years since Gerald Ford took office, presidents have voluntarily made their returns public. Until Donald Trump.

POLITICS Comments turned off

In El Paso, Beto O’Rourke Makes It Easy For Trump To Target ‘Extreme’ Democrats By John Daniel Davidson

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/12/el-paso-trump-sets-sights-extreme-democrats/

With Beto O’Rourke as a perfect foil, Trump kicked off his 2020 reelection bid by painting Democrats as ‘outside the mainstream.’

EL PASO, Texas — It was altogether fitting that President Trump’s rally Monday night in El Paso was something of a circus. After all, it was the first official campaign event of his 2020 reelection bid.

The rally had all the trappings of any other Trump rally: itinerant Trump vendors hawking their wares outside the venue, supporters decked out in MAGA gear who traveled from several states away, a handful of angry protesters who managed to sneak signs into the stadium and disrupt things for a minute or two.

But it also had something extra. There were the theatrics of being right on the U.S.-Mexico border while another government shutdown looms over funding for Trump’s border wall. There was also the spectacle of a protest march and counter-rally a few hundred yards away featuring none other than Beto O’Rourke, a likely 2020 Democratic contender.

It was a perfect setting for Trump to draw out the contrasts between his GOP and the Democratic Party heading into the 2020 cycle. On everything from the border wall to abortion to the Mueller investigation to the booming economy and the Democrats’ Green New Deal, Trump presented himself as reasonable and Democrats as extreme.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: ILHAN IS A SYMPTOM OF A MAJOR EPIDEMIC

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

Oooh….defenders of the Democrat party have their knickers in a knot….what to do about Ilhan Omar and anti-Semitic tantrums of other members of Congress. Their scoldings and her apology are perfunctory. I suggest they look for the locus of this resurgence of the ancient hatred of Jews which has seeped into the corridors of power in America.

Listen to the sermons in mosques throughout the nation. Read the New York Times. Check out the academics who teach “Mid-East Studies” in all the Universities in every single state in America. Their lectures are defined by MESA (Middle East Studies Association) which toes the line of Edward Said to schools which receive serious funding from the Arab Emirates.

And to legitimate their bias, there are myriad Jewish groups of “social justice warriors” who focus their hatred on Israel.

It is easy to target Ilhan, but difficult and not comfy to confront the disease and its promulgators. I call it the silence of the ostriches….rsk

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hamas, Islamic Jihad War Crimes Against Children and Women by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13710/hamas-war-crimes-children

It is worth noting that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who were killed while participating in the violence near the Gaza-Israel border did not come there dressed in military uniforms or carrying their weapons. Instead, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad men participated in the weekly protests dressed in civilian clothes. They pretended they were ordinary and innocent civilians protesting against the economic crisis in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

While they are in Cairo, the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders continue to send thousands of women and children to engage in violent attacks on Israeli soldiers. These leaders do not care about the safety or welfare of their women and children. On the contrary; the more dead women and children, the better. That way, they can blame Israel for killing innocent civilians and incite more Palestinians to join the jihad against Jews.

Those who are encouraging women and children to take part in a violent confrontation with the Israeli army should be held accountable for war crimes. It is time for the international community to call on Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip to stop hiding behind women and children and to stop using them as human shields in their jihad to eliminate Israel.

When Hamas launched its weekly demonstrations along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel 10 months ago, it first sent its men and their family members to participate in the protests. A few weeks later, however, Hamas instructed its men to stay away from the border after many were detected and killed by the Israeli army. Most of the Hamas men who were killed during the violence belonged to the group’s military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam. Others belonged to the military wing of another terrorist group, Islamic Jihad.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Imprisoned Former Opposition Lawmaker Symbol of Unjust Justice System by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13716/turkey-eren-erdem

During his tenure as an Turkish member of parliament, Eren Erdem exposed ISIS and al-Qaeda activities across Turkey and often called on the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to stop those activities and bring the militants to account. For that, he has been subject to pressure, investigations and trials.

In 2015, Turkey’s president Erdogan condemned Erdem and called him a “traitor”. An investigation into treason was launched against Erdem, who also received death threats over social media, with his home address posted by pro-government Twitter users, presumably to enable an attack on his house.

“On January 7, the court decided to release me by unanimous vote, as there is not a single piece of evidence against me….” – Eren Erdem, letter written from prison around January 28.

A former deputy of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Eren Erdem, who has been under arrest for seven months on terrorism charges, remains incarcerated — even though a court ruled on January 7 that he would be released pending trial.

Just before he was to be let out of prison, Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor’s office objected to his release. A higher court accepted the objection and once again issued a detention warrant against him.

In reaction to Erdem’s re-arrest despite the court ruling, his father, Hasan Erdem, said: “I’m talking to the person who is giving the instructions for this. You should know that my son and I are not afraid of you. You will not be able to bring us to our knees.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Watchdog Group Files Fundraising Ethics Violation Complaint Against Gillibrand By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/kirsten-gillibrand-fundraising-ethics-violation-complaint/

A watchdog group filed an ethics complaint on Monday against Democratic 2020 presidential contender Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, saying she violated Senate ethics rules by using improper fundraising methods.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed the complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, noting that the New York Democrat sent out a tweet during President Trump’s State of the Union speech inappropriately asking for campaign donations by using footage of herself on the House floor during the speech.

“Chip in $5 so we can put an end to this,” Gillibrand’s tweet said.

The watchdog requested that the committee “immediately investigate” Gillibrand, who announced her run for president last month and vowed to take on institutional racism, corruption and greed in Washington, and special interests.

“Presumably Senator Gillibrand is aware of her ethics violation because she later removed the tweet after raising funds in violation of ethics rules, all of which should be returned,” FACT wrote in its letter.