NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

From Russia to the FBI, with Love How the FBI agent who spied for Russia set the stage for the FBI’s betrayal of the American people. by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-russia-to-the-fbi-with-love/

Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous dossier deployed against Donald Trump in 2016, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI. If the verdict seems surprising, consider the back story. Danchenko, a Russian national, was once on the FBI payroll.

As Julie Kelly explains, that made the Russian part of the bureau’s untouchable “sources and methods,” protecting him and any documents referencing him from congressional and other outside scrutiny. That invites a look at another man on the bureau’s payroll, the FBI agent who spied for Russia and escaped scrutiny for 15 years.

According to the FBI, Robert Phillip Hanssen was “the most damaging spy in Bureau history,” arrested on February 18, 2001, and charged with espionage on behalf of Russia and the former Soviet Union. The FBI man, who swore an oath to enforce the law and protect the nation as an FBI agent, “provided highly classified national security information to the Russians in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds, and diamonds.”

Hanssen held “key counterintelligence positions” and beginning in 1985, he used encrypted communications, ‘dead drops,’ and other clandestine methods to provide information to the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR. The information he delivered compromised numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, dozens of classified U.S. government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance and value.”

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What the Firing of Prof. Maitland Jones Says about Our Democracy Too many people have been let into the future. by Jason D. Hill

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/what-the-firing-of-prof-maitland-jones-says-about-our-democracy/

The swift firing of the renowned chemist Maitland Jones by New York University is still being discussed in the academic world and even among the commentariat that generally would have moved on to the next topic the day after the event had occurred.

Perhaps there is something perturbing about an 85-year-old esteemed professor who had had a distinguished career at Princeton before joining NYU being fired under such nefarious circumstances. After 82 of his 350 students signed a petition complaining that his organic chemistry course was too difficult, and that they did not like the way he ran his course, he was discharged. They further claimed that he lacked empathy; empathy towards those students who had family problems and mental health issues. But basically, his workload was regarded as too demanding against the backdrop of myriad courses students had to take aside from chemistry.

That less than a quarter of his students (23.4%, actually), could marshal enough power to have him discharged from a career spanning over five decades is frightening and disgraceful. Not one of the students came forward and publicly identified him- or herself. They signed a petition anonymously—these cowardly perverse members of the Olympics Oppression team who fail to realize that college is designed to provide one with skill sets and information in particular fields and then to certify that the individual has mastered them. Universities and colleges, too, are not just educative institutions. They are ones that, in the ideal sense, weed out those who are unfit to be in them; that is, those who fail to qualify to meet the standards required to be certified as mastering the skills and knowledge in a field, whether it be in chemistry, medicine, history, nursing, the law, or philosophy. We are, though, wedded to the egalitarian progressive idea that everyone who enrolls in a university has a constitutional and democratic right to graduate. Hell hath no fury like a parent whose child, after repeatedly failing all his courses, is given an honorable and noble piece of advice: The academic life is not meant for you. You’re smart, and your smarts lie in a trade school. You’d actually make a superb plumber, or carpenter.

But back to Professor Jones. How did we arrive at a point in our society where 82 village idiots had the temerity to make such preposterous demands, and were granted the institutional power to have their intellectual superior fired from his professorship?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel-Lebanon maritime accord vs. Israel-Arab peace treaties: impact on US interests Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3TafFML

The US-engineered and guaranteed Israel-Lebanon maritime/gas accord is supposed to follow in the footsteps of the Israel-Arab peace treaties with Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, reducing regional terrorism and instability, inducing moderation and enhancing US interests.  Does it?

Hezbollah and Lebanon

*The Shiite Hezbollah – Iran’s proxy and globally recognized terrorist organization – is a dominant player in the increasingly imploding, failed-state, Lebanon, politically, militarily, socially, educationally, religiously and journalistically.

Hezbollah has dramatically bolstered its capabilities and clout since its establishment in 1982 – by Iran’s Shiite Ayatollahs – as a vehicle to export the Shiite Islamic Revolution, extend the Ayatollahs’ reach from the Persian Gulf, through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to the eastern Mediterranean, and undermine the US strategic posture in the Middle East. 

Hezbollah has collaborated with Iran’s Ayatollahs in the Middle East, West Africa and throughout Latin America, all the way to the US-Mexico border. It has gained substantial sway due to its major contribution to the survival of the Assad regime.  Hezbollah has benefited from the Ayatollahs’ financial support, combat training, and the supply of precise missiles and predator unmanned aerial vehicles.  

*Hezbollah’s dominant role in Lebanon’s decision-making has led the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to ostracize Lebanon and suspend financial aid to Beirut, lest it bolsters Hezbollah’s stature.

Israel’s maritime accord vs. Israel-Arab peace treaties

*Israel’s peace treaties with the relatively-stable, pro-US, anti-Iran and anti-terrorist Sunni Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, with the blessing of Saudi Arabia, which generated a critical impetus to the Abraham Accords. Their policy and vision do not extend beyond their own national boundaries. 

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Moderna CEO says most people don’t need COVID booster–and young people should consider not getting the shot: David Strom

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/10/18/whoa-moderna-ceo-says-most-people-dont-need-covid-booster-and-young-people-should-consider-not-getting-the-shot-n504221

The COVID narrative is breaking down. While the CDC and most state governments are unsuccessfully pushing us all to get yet another COVID booster shot, the CEO of Moderna says the quiet part out loud: relatively few people would benefit from getting the booster because, like the flu, COVID is only dangerous to people who are aged or have significant co-morbidities.

Not everyone needs to get an annual Covid booster, according to the head of pharma giant Moderna who also likened the virus to seasonal flu.

Stéphane Bancel said his company’s shots should mainly be targeted at over-50s and people with underlying health conditions.

His comments seem to be at odds with the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) which is urging everyone over the age of five to get boosted.

Covid is now predominantly only killing the most vulnerable because the US has built up strong immunity through high infection rates and repeated vaccine rollouts.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden costs average Americans $34,000 in retirement savings in 2022 —study By Monica Showalter

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/biden_costs_average_americans_34000_in_retirement_savings_in_2022_study.html

We already know that Joe Biden has cost Americans an average of $6,000 in paycheck power from the inflation that has come of his billions and trillions in government spending, including his mockingly misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022.

While Biden has at various times claimed that inflation comes from Russia, greedy oil companies, Republicans, or chicken factories, and in any case is transitory, if not zero, inflation is something serious economists recognize as a monetary phenomenon.  Inflation, after all, is priced in money, and monetary agencies such as the Federal Reserve print up the cash it takes for all that government spending. The inflation comes from Joe.

But inflation is hitting far more than just pocketbooks and savings accounts — it’s also eating away at Americans’ retirement savings, in their 401(k)s and other retirement accounts.

Economists Stephen Moore and E.J. Antoni decided to calculate just how much in a column for the New York Post.  They did the math:

We’ve just completed an analysis of how the highest inflation rate in almost 40 years has impacted the retirement funds of ordinary Americans. Here is what we found.

Not surprisingly, since President Biden took office, monthly savings have collapsed, falling 83%. (We could never understand how Biden could say with a straight face that Americans are saving more. His “transformation” of the US economy has had just the opposite effect.) Many millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck just don’t have the money after paying the inflated bills to save much.

But to add insult to injury, even what has been already saved and invested by older Americans over past years and even over several decades has been erased from these accounts.

Thanks to the thief of inflation.

Inflation has not only cut the value of stocks, and bonds, for that matter, it has reduced the value of the savings that are still left.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Steven Hayward : Dems Hitting the Panic Button

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/10/dems-hitting-the-panic-button.php

Democrats are filling up their diapers over yesterday’s New York Times/Siena poll that offers a picture of all the macro-indicators lining up for a Republican tidal wave in next month’s election.

There is one curious aspect of the demographic breakdown that is prompting a question: why does the GOP seem to be doing best among “Gen-X” voters age 45-64, as seen in this chart:

I can actually think of one very simple reason this age group leans more Republican:

But let’s keep going with the NY Times/Siena poll, because the racial breakdown is really cause for Democratic panic and nightmares:

The surging Republican share of the hispanic vote has been noted for months now, but if Republicans approach 20 percent of the black vote, it’s lights out for Democrats.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Here Come The Tantrums

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/19/here-come-the-tantrums/

Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 led to an election denial that still runs hot today in Democrat circles. But the left also threw anti-Trump tantrums across the country, many of them long before anyone had voted. Should Republicans unseat the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in the coming midterms, as is expected, we will again see the childishness and narcissism that drives the Democratic Party.

Who can forget the videos of celebrities as well as the unknowns wailing and shrieking and coming apart at the thought of Trump in the White House? In several instances, the demonstrations against the president-elect on the evening of the 2016 election and after turned violent. These political hissy fits have been a combination of performative art and a childish expression of emotion. Despite the differences, the aim is the same: Extortion.

When a toddler has a conniption, flails about and pounds the floor, he is saying: “Give me what I want or I will make your life miserable.” In the case of frothy political meltdowns, the adult children are saying that if they don’t get their way in elections, they will continue to cry, screech, and hold their breath. And of course the high temperatures are stoked by the Democratic Party-media industrial complex, which has become somewhat indistinguishable from a playroom swarming with spoiled tots.

Even after Trump left office, the deranged venting of spleens remained a staple of the left. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Democrats again looked liked overgrown preschoolers. At the time we pointed out, in an editorial headlined The American Mushroom Cloud, that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth “Warren’s fevered tirade clearly shows we have reached the point that the left has decided that policy will not be made like sausage but through tantrum, intimidation, and riot.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden’s Iranian Nuclear Obsession by Con Coughlin

Posted By on October 19th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19007/biden-iran-nuclear-obsession

If US President Joe Biden really is “gravely concerned” about the plight of Iranian schoolgirls being attacked and killed by Iran’s authoritarian regime, then the best way to help them would be to abandon his ill-considered attempt to broker a new nuclear deal with Tehran.
The death toll is now said to have passed the 200 mark, with many of the fatalities reported to be children as young as 11 years old.
Consequently, Mr Biden’s response is being seen as little more than a token gesture….
Rather than holding the Iranian regime to account for its atrocious conduct, Mr Biden’s priority remains to secure another flawed nuclear deal with Tehran, one that would result in enabling Iran to have nuclear weapons with no prohibition on the missiles to deliver them, as well as the lifting of punitive economic sanctions and up to a trillion dollars in additional revenues to “export the revolution.”
If, as now seems increasingly likely, the White House commits to a new nuclear deal once next month’s midterm elections are out of the way, the US Congress will be in Christmas recess and therefore unable to block it.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), designated by the US as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, together with all the other instruments of state-sponsored oppression in Iran, would receive extra funding dollars once the sanctions are lifted that will enable them to further develop their hostile activities.
Iran has already destroyed four Arab countries in addition to its own: Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
The Biden administration’s intransigence on the Iran issue also helps to explain the recent decision by Saudi Arabia to reach an agreement to reduce oil production….
The Saudis remain frustrated by Mr Biden’s obsession with trying to revive the Iran nuclear deal, which to the kingdom is a mortal threat…. How could Biden have expected them to help him?
Biden seems to be threatening “consequences” for the Saudis because they are trying try to prevent Iran from annihilating them?
Iran is also now supplying Russia with hundreds of “kamikaze” drones and lethal missiles which Russia is using to target civilians and destroy Ukraine — all while Biden has been relying on Russia to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal on America’s behalf: US negotiators are even not allowed in the room.
Consequently, rather than making the world a safer place, Mr Biden’s pro-Iran stance is merely fanning the flames of even greater global instability.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The FBI’s Million-Dollar Men Three high-profile trials are shining much-needed light on how the bureau uses highly paid informants as political hit men. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on October 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/17/the-fbis-million-dollar-men/

Proceedings underway in three U.S. courtrooms are providing a coordinated view into the abuse of the FBI’s confidential human source (CHS) program, a cash-flush operation now primarily used to bolster Democratic Party narratives instead of detecting and preventing crime.

As I’ve reported, the FBI spends an average of $42 million per year to pay informants and does so with absolutely no financial or legal accountability. Confidential human sources are paid in cash; they can offer their services for a variety of reasons including financial need or to obtain a change in immigration status. FBI agents are required to keep at least one informant on the books, an FBI whistleblower told me; successfully using a CHS to bust up a crime is one way to get promoted.

But ongoing trials related to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, January 6, and the Whitmer fednapping case are once again shining a light on the way the bureau hires snitches to advance political goals.

After numerous investigations over the course of more than six years—not to mention an obsessive fixation by the national media—the scandal known as Russiagate produced another bombshell revelation during the perjury trial of Igor Danchenko, the key source for the Steele dossier. The FBI offered to pay Christopher Steele, its author, up to $1 million in cash if he could verify the dossier’s declarations about Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. He could not.

Described for years as a “former British intelligence officer,” Steele, in fact, was a private consultant with several paymasters in 2016. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee retained Steele to write his dossier that alleged shadowy connections between the Kremlin and Trump associates. At the same time, Steele was lobbying the U.S. government on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who ran afoul of the Obama Administration.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Protests in Iran: The Silence of the ‘Feminists’ and ‘Progressives’ Talk about “men telling women what to do with their bodies”! by Larry Elder

Posted By on October 18th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/protests-in-iran-the-silence-of-the-feminists-and-progressives/

Where are the American feminists and “progressives” when we need them? You know, the men-versus-women, pro-abortion types who say things like the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents “men wanting to tell women what to do with their bodies”?

Last month, on Sept. 16, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman living in Iran, died in a hospital three days after being arrested in Tehran by the state’s morality police known as “Guidance Patrols.” Her “crime”? She showed too much hair underneath her hijab, or headscarf.

The New York Times reported: “The police did not offer an explanation for why Ms. Amini was detained, other than that it involved the hijab rule. Her mother said in an interview with Iranian news media that her daughter was observing the rules and wearing a long, loose robe. She said Ms. Amini was arrested as she exited the subway with her brother, and that his pleas that they were visitors to the city were ignored.”

According to the BBC: “Eyewitnesses said Mahsa Amini was beaten while inside a police van when she was picked up in Tehran on Tuesday. Police have denied the allegations, saying Ms Amini had ‘suddenly suffered a heart problem.’” However, at least one Iranian judicial official, according to state media, said the woman suffered “multiple fractures … in the pelvis, head, upper and lower limbs, arms and legs, which indicate that the person was thrown from a height.”

In protest, women in Iran are cutting their hair, with some taking to social media and burning their hijabs. Two weeks ago, CNN reported: “Protests have swept through more than 40 Iranian cities, including the capital Tehran. Iranian security forces have been cracking down on protesters, with hundreds arrested and at least 41 killed, according to state media. Some human rights organizations say the death toll is as high as 76.” As for Iran, Human Right Watch states: “Since March 21, 2022, at the beginning of Iranian New Year, Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) has documented 306 executions, 130 of them for drug-related charges and 151 of them based on the Islamic principle of qisas, or ‘retribution in kind’ punishments. Between May 21 and June 21 alone, the group documented 99 executions.”