NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Open Secret of the FBI’s Investigation of Trump’s Campaign By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 26th, 2018

For the past several days, the American public has been treated to quite a spectacle. Since President Trump first suggested in March 2017 that his campaign had been “wiretapped” by President Obama, we have been assured by our betters across the political spectrum that claim was not true and Trump’s accusations were the unhinged hallucinations of a mad man.

But as congressional investigators get closer to the truth, and the media begins casually to admit that yes, Obama (i.e., his Justice Department) did wiretap (i.e., surveil) the campaign (i.e., Trump Tower) as well as one member of his transition team, we are getting a shiny new spin: Well of course the Obama folks investigated the Trump campaign and of course it was not conducted by spies and of course this was all for the good of the country and of course it is Trump’s fault anyway.

The most mendacious tale now emerging from the news media, Democratic propagandists, and the NeverTrump Right is how the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign just months before Election Day actually helped Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton. Why? Because voters allegedly were unaware that Trump campaign associates were being “investigated” by the FBI for their tenuous ties to Russia; if we had known before November 8, 2016, Hillary would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

The latest dream sequence from #TheResistance originates from the May 16 scoop in the New York Times about President Obama’s FBI initiated probe called “Crossfire Hurricane” which was tasked to investigate four Trump campaign aides exactly 100 days before the presidential election. The general angle of the lengthy story is how former FBI Director James Comey was far tougher on the Clinton email probe and more cautious about the Trump campaign investigation. (Pause to chortle.)

The Times story appears to serve two purposes: First, to soften the blow of the upcoming Justice Department inspector general’s report on the Clinton email investigation, which is expected to cite misconduct by a number of Justice officials; and second, to get ahead of the news that the Obama Justice Department spied (yes, spied) on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn beginning as early as August 2016.

But it was this little nugget—“News organizations did not publish Steele’s reports or reveal the FBI’s interest in them until after Election Day”—that sent Trump foes into the stratosphere. The voters-didn’t-know-about-the-FBI-investigating-Trump! meme joined Russian social media bots and brainwashed suburban moms as the latest part of the continuously evolving excuse for why Clinton suffered the most humiliating loss in electoral history.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/25/the-open-secret-of-the-fbis-investigation-of-trumps-campaign/
For days, the anti-Trump mob has leveraged that single sentence into a whole new plotline: The FBI helped Trump win the election by concealing the investigation from voters.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Great Wall of Harvard By Ken Masugi

Posted By on May 26th, 2018

President Trump’s vow to change a “rigged system” helped propel him to victory over stodgy supporters of “liberal” and “conservative” non-alternatives. His Department of Justice has sided with Asian-Americans claiming discrimination in admissions at Harvard and, again on their behalf, expressed interest in the possibility of antitrust violations in early admissions to elite schools.

As the putatively Chinese proverb has it, one picture is worth a thousand words (or even a whole article). This graph depicts the issue:

Source: Althea Nagai, “Too Many Asian Americans: Affirmative Discrimination in Elite College Admissions,” Center for Equal Opportunity, May 22, 2018.

Displayed are the percentages of Asian-American undergraduate students at California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, from 1980 to 2015, based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics of the Department of Education.

Do elite universities in America discriminate against Asian-Americans and establish a quota in the form of a ceiling on their numbers? The graph above (the only one among the thousand or so words here) shows a plateau for MIT and Harvard against the results at Caltech, where undergraduate Asian-American enrollment has risen over 40 percent Caltech does not practice affirmative action (forbidden by the California constitution, courtesy of Proposition 209).

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bill Kristol barks at the moon By Peter Skurkiss

Posted By on May 26th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/bill_kristol_barks_at_the_moon.html

Some #NeverTrumpers won’t quit. Indeed, so chained are they to their hurt pride and delusions, they can’t. Foremost among them is Bill Kristol, former editor of the Weekly Standard.

Speaking at a New Hampshire gathering of businessmen called “Politics and Eggs,” Mr. Kristol asserted that President Trump should be challenged in the 2020 GOP primary. That in and of itself is not a bad idea. Clearing the air between opposing philosophies have value. In this instance, it would come about in two ways. First, it allows the president to expound on his successes and ongoing efforts to MAGA and contrast them with his opponents. On the other side of the coin, as the likes of Jeff Flake, John Kasich, Mitt Romney, or any of the other establishment Republican regulars drone on, they make promises that they either never intend or lack the fortitude to keep. Their schtick is so transparent, so tedious, so yesterday. At least with Trump in the mix, there is great entertainment value when the GOPe try their old boilerplate rhetoric on him face-to-face.

Kristol’s rationale for challenging Trump is from the Far Side. He admits the president’s approval rating is quite high — over 80-percent among Republicans. But Kristol says (hopes) that could change. And anyway, he feels Trump’s success and high approval ratings are only due to good luck. Kristol acknowledges that Trump could actually win the 2020 primary because: “He [Trump] could just get very lucky, that happens in life. People aren’t very good pitchers, but they pitch one very good game.” See, the 2016 election was the one good game Trump had in him. Now he’s spent.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bill Kristol Searches Out Republicans to Primary President Trump in 2020 By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on May 26th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/election/bill-kristol-searches-out-republicans-to-primary-president-trump-in-2020/

Bill Kristol, anti-Trump activist and editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard, set his sights Wednesday on finding a Republican to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020. Kristol attempted to convince New Hampshire activists that primarying a sitting president is possible.

“I have a feeling that we are now entering … a turbulent era, when the character of both parties is up for grabs,” Kristol told activists at Saint Anselm College over breakfast.

The Weekly Standard editor floated five potential #NeverTrump candidates in an interview with BuzzFeed News’s Henry J. Gomez.

Kristol mentioned former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Defense Secretary James Mattis — all three of whom were on his 2016 wish list — and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Kristol also praised Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), whom the Weekly Standard editor visited in Ohio earlier this month. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The London-to-Langley Spy Ring by George Neumayr

Posted By on May 26th, 2018

https://spectator.org/the-london-to-langley-spy-ring/?utm_source=American+Spectator+Emails&utm_campaign=ba81b6746c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_25_06_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_797a38d487-ba81b6746c-104438465

The roots of Obamagate become clearer.

Even before the first Republican primary, a London-to-Langley spy ring had begun to form against Donald Trump. British spies sent to CIA director John Brennan in late 2015 alleged intelligence on contacts between Trumpworld and the Russians, according to the Guardian.

Here’s the crucial paragraph in the story:

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Notice it doesn’t say the “Trump campaign” but “figures connected to Trump.” One of those figures was Michael Flynn, who didn’t join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign’s ranks.

It appears that Halper had won Brennan’s confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014 — a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian historian. Halper had passed this absurdly simpleminded tattle to a British spy who in turn gave it to Brennan, as one can deduce from this euphemistic account in the New York Times about Halper as the “informant”.

IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU: How to Stop Mass-migration from Africa? Bring Everyone to Europe by Judith Bergman

Posted By on May 25th, 2018

While the focus on illegal migration remains, the original goal of stopping African citizens from migrating into Europe appears to have been lost entirely. Instead, the declaration pronounces African legal migration to be a positive thing, even stressing the beneficial idea of migration of certain groups, such as researchers and business people.

No one seems to ask how draining Africa of skilled labor, such as businessmen and researchers, is going to help the continent develop and thus stem the trend of migration?

The Hungarian government appears to be the only government that considers whether the citizens it was elected to serve would support the declaration. Other European governments appear to think that asking their electorates what they think about African migration into Europe is irrelevant.

“Migration is a priority for all of us here” said EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, at the recent Fifth Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development in Marrakesh at the beginning of May. The conference is a part of the Euro-African Ministerial Dialogue on Migration and Development (also known as the Rabat Process[1]).

The Euro-African Ministerial Dialogue on Migration and Development was founded in 2006 to contain migration from Africa into Europe, specifically, at the time, the increase of migrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco into Spain and from there into the rest of Europe.

The 2006 Rabat Declaration established that the purpose of the process was to

“offer a … response to the fundamental issue of controlling migratory flows … the management of migration between Africa and Europe must be carried out within the context of a partnership to combat poverty and promote sustainable development and co-development”.

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mr. Mueller Goes To Jerusalem Unhinged Russia collusion investigation spreads to Israel. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on May 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270261/mr-mueller-goes-jerusalem-ari-lieberman

Robert Mueller’s criminal probe of President Donald Trump, his associates and the Trump campaign has passed the 1-year benchmark, and the DOJ-appointed special counsel is no closer to proving Russian collusion or obstruction of justice than when he first commenced his investigation. What Mueller has succeeded in doing is wasting in excess of $20 million in taxpayer money.

Actually, Mueller’s investigation may not have been a complete waste for it inadvertently succeeded in exposing the rot and sewage of the deep state. Thus far, five FBI and DOJ officials involved with Mueller and his McCarthy-like witch hunt have been fired or demoted. More demotions, terminations and possible criminal indictments of officials at the highest levels are expected as more of what has hitherto been unknown is unearthed through the efforts of Congress and NGOs like Judicial Watch.

The latest disgrace to hit the deep state is the revelation of an anti-Trump spy ring run out of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia under the stewardship of former CIA director and party hack, John Brennan, in the hope of entrapping Trump campaign staffers and advisers. James Comey and James Clapper, the former directors of the FBI and National Intelligence respectively, also played their roles in this nefarious scheme. Add to this the disclosure of egregious government FISA and unmasking abuses under the Obama administration and you have the makings of the biggest and most consequential political scandal in United States history. Watergate will look like child’s play by comparison.

But despite hitting multiple brick walls, Mueller continues to trudge along with his unwieldly and unfocused investigation. It has taken him a year to secure indictments and guilty pleas on a few peripheral figures on matters having nothing to do with his original mandate. Additional indictments have been secured against Russian entities and individuals who will never set foot in the U.S.

Mueller has now set his sights on, of all places, Israel. The special counsel has sent agents to Israel – no doubt on private government jets – to investigate the activities of an Israeli social media company which employed former members of Israeli intelligence and collected user data ostensibly for the purpose of manipulating public opinion. Their target is Joel Zamel who headed the company and allegedly met with Trump or his associates during the campaign and visited the White House after Trump’s inauguration.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Radical Dems Rising There weren’t too many moderates left in the party anyway. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on May 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270260/radical-dems-rising-matthew-vadum

Radical in-your-face left-wing candidates are gaining new electoral momentum in the already radical Democratic Party.

As Townhall’s Matt Vespa opines, far-left candidates have been making “a meal of the establishment, knocking off the more centrist candidates in primaries across the country.”

While Democratic enthusiasm appears to have stalled according to some polling, it was not apparent in [this month’s] primaries. There were historic numbers of Democratic voters turning out in Idaho and Pennsylvania, the latter of which is key in the Left’s road to retaking the House.

May 15 “was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates,” according to the Washington Post.

The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.

In Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district, Kara Eastman, a social worker who supports “Medicare for All,” unexpectedly picked off former one-term U.S. Rep. Brad Ashford, who had been backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Eastman is a walking, talking leftist cliché. She supports hiking taxes, decriminalizing marijuana, and imposing universal background checks on gun purchases.

“I’m tired of hearing Democrats don’t have a backbone, that we don’t stand for anything,” she said in a campaign ad. “That changes now!”

Democrat strategists believe they have an opening in Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district after the recent resignation of annoying NeverTrumper Rep. Charlie Dent (R) from his seat.

The early Democrat leader in PA-15, local district attorney John Morganelli, was defeated by lawyer Susan Wild, who was backed by EMILY’s List. Morganelli opposes abortion rights and so-called sanctuary cities and said positive things about Trump, which helped to seal his doom.

In Pennsylvania’s 1st congressional district, young Navy veteran Rachel Reddick, was beaten despite an endorsement by EMILY’s List. “Proud progressive” Scott Wallace triumphed over Reddick by attacking her for being a registered Republican up until two years ago. Wallace, the grandson of kooky communist-sympathizer Henry Wallace, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s vice presidents, said in his victory speech, “Together, we can make America sane again.”

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Max Boot’s Turn Against Israel Is Pure Trump Derangement by David Harsanyi

Posted By on May 25th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/05/24/max-boots-turn-against-israel-is-pure-trump-derangement/

It’s possible to detest Donald Trump with the fire of a thousand suns and still concede that he’s done something positive. Possible, but rare. More often these days Trump antagonists adopt rigid positions that are predicated on the assumption that anything the president does must be immoral and destructive. Few people illustrate this intellectual cratering more dramatically than Max Boot.

This week, the one-time Israel supporter embraced a slate of J-Street talking points in The Washington Post — including ominous references to nefarious puppet-string pulling Jewish financiers. What supposedly irks Boot is the “emerging conservative talking point that Trump ‘is the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history.’”

Though, I grant, it’s too early to make wide-ranging historical pronouncements about a presidency, Trump certainly has a strong case. Not only has his administration improve the long-term projections for peace by finally following U.S. law and moving the American embassy to the Israeli capital — a move Boot claims to support, but says doesn’t really matter — the president also exited the broken Iran deal, despite what must have been tremendous international pressure to remain, and gave Israel unequivocal support in both its military campaign against Iranian targets in Syria and Hamas terrorists on the border of Gaza.

If we were to apply pre-Trump standards to these moves, they would undeniably be considered pro-Israel. And judging from reaction of Israel’s most reliable enemies, and the reaction of the vast majority of Israel’s citizens, we can still consider them pro-Israel. Only one variable has changed in the equation.

Boot adopts the well-worn progressive position that argues that Israeli people don’t know what’s best for them, the Left does. Trump, Boot says, “may be the most closely aligned with Israel’s current government, led by a fellow scandal-plagued right-winger, but that doesn’t mean Trump is safeguarding Israel’s interests. He is, in fact, inflicting long-term damage on the U.S.-Israeli alliance.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Making the Iranians Mad By Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on May 25th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/05/making_the_iranians_mad.html

There is much to be learned from the endgame between the Reagan administration and the final leaders of the Soviet empire that can be applied to the current situation with Iran.

When Ronald Reagan proposed the “Zero-Zero Option” for no intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the pundits – and the Europeans – said, “The Russians will never agree to that.” They demanded that Reagan put forward what the Russians could accept – or not aggravate the Russians by putting U.S. Pershing missiles in Europe.
When Israel defines its aims in negotiations as recognition of its legitimacy and permanence as a Jewish State in the Middle East, pundits – and lots of other people – say, “The Arabs will never agree to that.” They demand that Israel not build houses in places the Palestinians don’t want them, not welcome the U.S. embassy in its capital, and not ensure that rioting Palestinians determined to enter Israel to “rip the hearts out of Jews” are stopped before they get to the aforementioned Jews. It will only make the Palestinians angry and there won’t be any more “peace process.”
When President Trump said his goal in discussion with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is the de-nuclearization of North Korea, pundits – and Democrats – said, “He’ll never agree to that.” Other administrations bribed the Kim family to abandon their nuclear project. It didn’t work, but hey, at least we weren’t making them mad.

So it was inevitable that when secretary of state Mike Pompeo listed twelve objectives that would make Iran a positive actor on the international stage – objectives the United States plans to pursue – the pundits would cry, “They’ll never agree to that.”

Inevitable, but the level of angst is actually a bit startling. “Sound, fury, and ‘regime change’ lite.” “Economic war on Iran.” In an ironic nod to pop culture and perhaps a veiled threat to President Trump, “[i]n the 1976 media satire Network, the frustrated and emotionally unhinged anchor Howard Beale, facing termination, goes on air and shouts ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.'” And Pompeo used “elements of a presentation … by Benjamin Netanyahu, a strident critic of the accord.” “European allies alarmed.” “Iran’s people will punch U.S. Secretary of State in the mouth.”