NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Tight and Tangled ‘Collusion’ Web By Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/09/a-

You really have to give it to the suits in Barack Obama’s intelligence services and Department of Justice (many of whom, of course, are still strutting about in Donald Trump’s administration). It was quite a web they wove, and tangled with complexity. Yet their prodigious practice also made it nearly impenetrable to anyone not inside their charmed circle.

That adamantine carapace of impenetrability is a sign of their high style, their assiduity, the reason that a “word of encouragement” did not come amiss.

Put your hand on your heart. Can you really tell me what happened and who all the major players are in the Get Trump farce that has been occupying the nation for more than two years now? There have been various worthy efforts to unpack the drama—I’ve made a few myself—but at bottom it is like Russia according to Winston Churchill, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Part of the problem is the shifting roles of the main players. Or rather, the shifting roles that elevate one or more players at one moment only to demote them back to the chorus a week or two later. How many people were suddenly cast into starring roles only, a few days or weeks later, to find themselves pushed back into bit-player status? George Papadopoulos: remember him? For a brief shining moment, he was the key to the whole “Russian Collusion” mythos. The New York Times told us so. But after he strutted and fretted his hour upon the stage he faded from sight and now is heard no more.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

VIDEO: THE BRAINS BEHIND AOC ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h5iv6sECGU&feature=youtu.be

BOOKS, POLITICS Comments turned off

Democratic presidents behaved a lot worse than Trump in the White House Victor Davis Hanson,

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/03/09/democratic-presidents-behaved-a-lot-worse-than-trump-in-the-white-house/

Adapted excerpt from “The Case for Trump” by Victor Davis Hanson. Copyright © 2019. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a division of PBG Publishing, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

It’s more likely history will judge President Trump for accomplishments in office than for character flaws.Progressives claim President Trump marks a new low in American political and presidential history, personifying a singularly odious message.But if we examine the present pantheon of progressive icons, and strip away their reliance on liberal-media protection and transfer them instead into the present age of tabloid promiscuity and cyber omnipresence, would we now have a very different view of their presidencies?

The progressive Woodrow Wilson administration likely would never have completed its two elected terms had it operated on media protocols common just a half-century later.For nearly a year during the failing health and death of First Lady Ellen Axson Wilson, the president fell into a state of debilitating depression, carefully hidden from the press. Much later, during the last 17 months of Wilson’s presidency, he was more or less unable to fulfill his duties due to a series of strokes that left him partially paralyzed and visually impaired. Those realities were carefully hidden from the public by the efforts of his second wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, and physician Dr. Cary Grayson.In the present case, we know that Trump is neither comatose nor is Melania running the country.

The country never learned the full extent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s paralysis. Much less did it know of FDR’s past and ongoing affairs — the mechanics of which were sometimes carried out in the White House and with the skillful aid of his own daughter Anna. By fall 1944, Roosevelt, seeking a fourth term, was suffering from a series of life-threatening conditions. Worrying that the public would not vote yet again for a terminally ill president, sympathetic journalists and military physicians covered up Roosevelt’s illnesses — on the theory that FDR would survive long enough to get elected to a fourth term and ensure a continued Democratic administration.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mullahs Pushed Off the Gravy Train by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13861/mullahs-pushed-off-the-gravy-train

If you are one of the 3,400 mullahs who work as Friday Prayer Leader (Imam Jum’ah) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, you better start getting worried, very worried. The reason is that you may soon find yourself disembarked from the gravy train and your cushy seat given to a spring chicken novice.

Last week eight “imams” were disembarked, among them heavyweights from Tabriz, Shiraz, Rasht and Ahvaz. And, if Tehran rumor-mills are right, 25 more are already scheduled for disembarkation. Judging by the “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s latest message to the nation, an ambitious “change of generations” scheme is to be implemented in the months ahead.

People, especially the younger generation, are not interested in the shopworn anti-American discourse seasoned with empty pseudo-Islamic slogans. The anti-American discourse sounds even more hollow when the Islamic Majlis publishes claims that some 15,000 children of senior Islamic Republic officials, including many mullahs, are in the United States for further studies and that hundreds of top Khomeinist officials are either US citizens or hold American “Green Cards” (permanent residence documents.) Reports of top officials and mullahs or their families traveling to the West for holidays, medical services and shopping further contribute to the falseness of official Friday sermons.

In the past few weeks, sermon texts coming from Tehran have been peppered with patriotic themes about the Iranian “nation” rather than the “ummah” and Tehran’s attempts at dominating several Arab countries justified, in the words of Quds (Jerusalem) Force chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani, as “moves necessary to protect our national territory.”

In the final analysis, however, a change of personnel and official discourse may not be enough to save a tired system in deep crisis. The core question in the debate about Iran’s future remains: change within the regime or regime change?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Is It Really Human Beings Doing This?” Persecution of Christians, January 2019 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13851/christians-persecution-january

Police “behaved with the priests as they would with killers.” — Human rights lawyer, Minya, Egypt.

“The common factor among all [church] closures, however, is that they were done to appease fundamentalists and extremists to the detriment of the Copts. It appears to indicate that extremists now hold the upper hand, and appeasing them is the easy way out of problems…” — The local Christian bishopric, Minya, Egypt.

When it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christian minorities from Muslim nations. Statistics confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.” — Nicholas Hellen, Barnabas Fund, January 20, 2019, United Kingdom.

A New Zealand government spokesman said that refugees were considered for resettlement on the basis of “their protection needs and not religious affiliation.” However, considering that the Islamic State regularly targets people based on their “religious affiliation” suggests that Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities have more “protection needs” than Muslims.

Massacres Inside Churches and Attacks on Them

Philippines: On Sunday, January 27, Islamic militants bombed a Roman Catholic cathedral during Mass. At least 20 people were killed and 111 wounded. Two explosives were detonated about a minute apart in the vicinity of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo at around 8:45 a.m. According to one report, “The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the cathedral.”

Photos on social media showed human bodies and remains strewn on the street just outside the building. The officiating priest, Fr. Ricky Bacolcol, “was still in shock and could not speak about what happened,” to quote a colleague. After the first bomb detonated, army troops and police posted outside the cathedral rushed in, then a second bomb went off. Fifteen of the slain were civilians; five military men; 90 of the wounded were civilians. The cathedral, located in a Muslim-majority area, was heavily guarded: it had been hit before. In 2010, grenades had been hurled at it twice, damaging the building; and in 1997, Bishop Benjamin de Jesus had been gunned down just outside the cathedral. The Islamic State claimed the attack, and adding that the massacre had been carried out by “two knights of martyrdom” against a “crusader temple.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Why Do Renewable Energy Sources Need Government Subsidies? Francis Menton

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-3-8-why-do-renewable-energy-sourc

If you read the progressive press, or even a little of it, with an interest in matters of energy policy, then surely you know by now that it has become cheaper to produce electricity using the wind and sun than using fossil fuels. You know that because you have read it over and over again, in authoritative articles written by, and quoting, people who seem to know what they are talking about, and with no one ever raising any skeptical questions.

Here are some of the articles that may be among what you have read on this subject:

There was the Financial Times on November 8, 2018, in a piece titled “New wind and solar generation costs fall below existing coal plants.” The Financial Times — now there are people who really know what they are talking about. The article mainly relies on a study then just out from investment bank Lazard, reporting on what is called the “Levelized Cost of Energy” for various sources of generation: “The cost of new wind and solar power generation has fallen below the cost of running existing coal-fired plants in many parts of the US . . . New estimates published on Thursday by Lazard, the investment bank, show that it can often be profitable for US generation companies to shut working coal plants and replace their output with wind and solar power.”

Or perhaps you read the piece from CBS News on November 16, mostly relying on the same Lazard study, and titled “It’s now cheaper to build a new wind farm than to keep a coal plant running.” “The cost of building a new utility-scale solar or wind farm has now dropped below the cost of operating an existing coal plant, according to an analysis by the investment bank Lazard. . . . ‘There are some scenarios, in some parts of the U.S., where it is cheaper to build and operate wind and solar than keep a coal plant running,’ said a Lazard banker who was involved in the report.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fed-Up House Republican Releases Bruce Ohr Testimony Showing Major Conflict of Interest By Debra Heine

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fed-up-house-republican-releases-bruce-ohr-testimony-showing-major-conflict-of-interest/

In a surprise move Friday, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, unilaterally released the 268-page transcript of an August 2018 interview with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr.

Collins explained that his patience with the Justice Department “has grown thin.” He took to the House floor and asked that the full, unredacted transcript be put on the record.

In his testimony, Ohr revealed that former British spy Christopher Steele was simultaneously paid by both the FBI and the Democrat opposition research firm Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.

The transcript also shows claims conflicting with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson on several key points, including the timing of their meeting to discuss the Steele dossier.

Additionally, Ohr testified that Simpson provided false information to federal officials regarding Cleta Mitchell, a Republican campaign finance attorney who used to work for the NRA.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Yet another hate crime hoax at yet another expensive college By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/yet_another_the_crime_hoax_at_yet_another_expensive_college.html

Another hate crime hoax has convulsed an expensive private college and yielded a mass demonstration by “more than 100” black students (out of a student body of 1,450), and the predictable list of seven demands, including race-based hiring favoring blacks and brainwashing (AKA mandatory “cultural competency” training).

So far as I can tell, no national media have picked up the story of the arrest of Ajani Arthur, a black student at Goucher College (tuition: $43,440) who allegedly created graffiti that “depicted swastikas, the letters ‘KKK’ and appeared to include the last names of four black students, including Arthur.” A previous incident last November, one floor below where the current graffiti were found and attributed to Arthur, said, “all ‘n——‘ on campus would be killed.”

The U.K. Daily Mail is doing the job that the American national media refuse to do, with the most extensive coverage of the fraud (though local media, including the Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, and the alleged perp’s hometown paper, along with the College Fix, managed to take notice). A Google search for Goucher College yields no note of the incident at all:

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Race and Gender Hustlers in the Classics Departments By Peter Wood

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/classics-departments-threatened-race-gender-politics/

A professional association rebukes a scholar for suggesting that a colleague got his job because of his merit, not his race.

What would Livy think? The ancient historian had a high regard for facts. The field in which Livy now lives, however — classics — is finding facts more and more of a nuisance.

In January, a classicist named Mary Frances Williams stood up at the annual meeting of the Society for Classical Studies and asked about the strange views that several panelists had promulgated on “the future of Classics.” One of the panelists, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an assistant professor at Princeton’s classics departments, inveighed that the whole discipline was guilty of “the systemic marginalization of people of color in the credentialed and accredited knowledge production of the discipline.” Professor Padilla said much more in this patois of “critical race theory” all to the effect that white people should shut up and get out of the way.

Williams, an independent scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, decided to speak up for the merit of teaching students works by the great authors of the past. Thrown off stride by one of the panelists, Williams responded, pointing to Padilla, “You may have got your job because you’re black, but I’d prefer to think you got your job because of merit.”

It was a maladroit sentence, though perhaps not a great deal more maladroit than Padilla’s response, “I hope the field dies, that you’ve outlined [sic], dies, and that it dies as swiftly as possible!”

The outcome of this exchange is that Williams was ejected from the meeting and the Association of Ancient Historians fired her as an editor of its newsletter. Padilla, by contrast, received a public “affirmation of his value to our department and the future of classics” from the chairman of the Princeton department.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Swamp Fights Back By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-fights-deep-state-swamp-fights-back/

Never before in the history of the presidency had a commander-in-chief earned the antipathy of so many — and lived to tell the tale.

Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s new book, The Case for Trump. It appears here with permission.

T rump was warned by friends, enemies, and neutrals that his fight against the deep state was suicidal. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, just a few days before Trump’s inauguration, cheerfully forecast (in a precursor to Samantha Power’s later admonition) what might happen to Trump once he attacked the intelligence services: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

Former administrative-state careerists were not shy about warning Trump of what was ahead. The counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd, who had worked in the CIA and the FBI under Robert Mueller, warned CNN host Jake Tapper in August 2017 that “the government is going to kill” President Donald Trump. Kill? And what was the reason the melodramatic Mudd adduced for his astounding prediction? “Because he doesn’t support them.” Mudd then elaborated: “Let me give you one bottom line as a former government official. The government is going to kill this guy. The government is going to kill this guy because he doesn’t support them.” Mudd further clarified his assassination metaphor: “What I’m saying is government — people talk about the deep state — when you disrespect government officials who’ve done 30 years, they’re going to say, ‘Really?’”

It was difficult to ascertain to what degree Mudd was serious or exaggerating the depth of deep-state loathing of Trump.

A writer for the London Review of Books, Adam Schatz, seemed even more direct. He reported a supposed conversation that he had with an American political scientist knowledgeable of the Washington permanent caste. He purportedly had assured Schatz that if Trump were elected, he would likely not survive his full term: “He will have to be removed from power by the deep state, or be assassinated.”