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The Hunt for Red November

October 25, 2017

The Hunt for Red November, American Thinker, David Prentice, October 25, 2017

The dam has broken.   The waters are unleashed, and there’s no stopping them.  Truth is winning.  Even the Washington Post is reporting this story.  The New York Times and the rest will have to follow.  The evidence is too compelling, and the story is out there.  Much like the Weinstein scandal, there is simply too much evidence to deflect it.  The reporting of John Solomon and Sara Carter has been devastating.  They have been doing the work that the leftist American media won’t do.  Which is to report on the real Russian meddling in America’s politics:   Uranium One.  And the Trump dossier.

This is huge.  This will not go away.  Unlike the leftist media narrative of Trump/Russia collusion, there is actual evidence to show we have been compromised, and it’s not Trump who has compromised or colluded.  It’s the group of people the leftist media has vowed to protect.  The Obama/Clinton/Democratic party complex.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The Obama/Clinton administration colluded with Russia in the Uranium One deal.  They knew what the Russians wanted.  They knew the Russians were bribing people.  They knew the Clinton family foundations were getting over a hundred million dollars, that Bill Clinton received half a million dollars for an hour speech from the Russian bank involved with Uranium One.

As for the Clinton/Obama/Democratic Party alliance.  They are in trouble.  Having projected a narrative that was not only untrue about Trump, but was actually true about their own party will be devastating to their base, and the American public will likely not forget.

The leftist media.  The Democratic Party.  The Obama/Clinton families.  Their corruption reaches to the heavens.  They have knowingly deceived America in the worst of ways.  Let’s hope their stature never recovers.

************************************

The Democratic Party has put forth several narratives since their loss in 2016.  They have stuck with those narratives no matter how absurd they have been:  Trump was elected because Russia colluded with him.  Trump is unstable and unfit.  Everything Trump does is wrong, he is a tainted President.

So says the party of Hillary Clinton and Hollywood, the moral arbiters of America.  And the leftist mainstream media has followed in the most scurrilous of ways.   They have reported only what the Democratic Party narrative says they should report.

Until now.

Follow me here.  How long has this search for Trump/Russia collusion been going on?  How long has the leftist media been claiming Trump does everything wrong?

Since he was elected last November.   They have been hunting him since he won.

But the ground has shifted.  It’s been clear for a long time that the Trump/Russia collusion narrative has been just that.  It’s been a fable repeated over and over again, the Democratic Party and its media shills hoping that something would stick, helping them regain power through mindless repetition of an empty narrative.

Until now.

Unfortunately for the left, there is not the tiniest bit of evidence to bolster their narrative.  There is not a scintilla of truth that shows Donald Tramp colluded with Russia to win.  $100,000 of Facebook ads, half of them after November 8, 2016?  That’s proof?  Lord help us.  That is the dumbest idea of proof offered since Piltdown Man.  Donald Trump Jr had a meeting with a with someone claiming to have dirt on Hillary and left the meeting early because he saw nothing?  Wow.   Indict him, and impeach his father.

And that’s all there is?

Yep.  That’s all there is.

But now we have an explosion of information about Russian influence on….. *drum roll*…….the Uranium One deal.  Perhaps the worst political scandal since Teapot Dome.  And then there’s the so-called Trump dossier.  Which apparently was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party.

The Uranium One deal has been a powder keg since Peter Schweizer wrote about the scandal in the book Clinton Cash.  It’s everything a scandal should be.  Corruption, illicit bribes, Russians influencing a deal to control stockpiles of Uranium for their own use.

Tucker Carlson reports there is an extremely credible witness that will testify how the Russians did collude with an American President.  Unfortunately for the left, it’s the Obama Presidency they colluded with, Hillary Clinton being the chief conspirator.   This witness is said to have absolute proof of this collusion.

And the leftist mainstream American media is virtually silent.

But that’s because they aren’t interested in news, or reporting.  They’re only interested in the narratives pushed by the Obama/Clinton/Democratic media complex.

Until now.

The dam has broken.   The waters are unleashed, and there’s no stopping them.  Truth is winning.  Even the Washington Post is reporting this story.  The New York Times and the rest will have to follow.  The evidence is too compelling, and the story is out there.  Much like the Weinstein scandal, there is simply too much evidence to deflect it.  The reporting of John Solomon and Sara Carter has been devastating.  They have been doing the work that the leftist American media won’t do.  Which is to report on the real Russian meddling in America’s politics:   Uranium One.  And the Trump dossier.

This is huge.  This will not go away.  Unlike the leftist media narrative of Trump/Russia collusion, there is actual evidence to show we have been compromised, and it’s not Trump who has compromised or colluded.  It’s the group of people the leftist media has vowed to protect.  The Obama/Clinton/Democratic party complex.

The evidence is overwhelming.

The Obama/Clinton administration colluded with Russia in the Uranium One deal.  They knew what the Russians wanted.  They knew the Russians were bribing people.  They knew the Clinton family foundations were getting over a hundred million dollars, that Bill Clinton received half a million dollars for an hour speech from the Russian bank involved with Uranium One.

Quid pro quo.  As clear as it can be.

They sold out American interests for thirty pieces of silver.

It’s hard to say which is the bigger disgrace.  The Obama Justice Department, the FBI, Obama himself, the Clintons, or our despicably partisan media.  Let’s not mince words, they’re all culpable, all guilty of selling out America.

It’s difficult to say enough negative about all of them.

The Trump Dossier.

The one that the Clinton campaign, and John McCain, tried to pass off on the FBI as truth.  The one that apparently was paid for by the Hillary campaign and the Democratic Party, and perhaps a Republican donor.

The dossier is so embarrassingly bad, so embarrassingly transparent as a political ruse, there aren’t’ enough words to describe its stupidity and disgraceful place in history.

This dossier became the child of the left, and the child of one James Comey.  He pushed it forward with no shame.  This dossier is what informed him of why Trump was unfit?  Good grief, James, were you that obtuse?

I guess so.   You were the one who wanted the Mueller investigation to start.  Purposefully.  Based on your belief in the (Russian) Trump dossier?   Rod Rosenstein appointed your man, Mueller.

And now it’s boomeranging.  Just ask the Podesta family.

Trump clearly did nothing wrong, but now it’s going to be revealed just how incompetent and conniving Mr. Comey, Rod Rosenstein, and Robert Mueller were and are.

The wrong people have been blamed.  And the truth is coming out.

The dam has broken.

The left’s narratives have been reduced to a pile of ashes.

Blaming Trump for colluding with the Russians for almost a year has been a failure.  It’s simple, the narrative was never true.  It was bound to be shown as false.  But the unintended consequence of playing this narrative for the last year has been that a lot of people have come to believe Russia interfered with our political system.

Most of those believers are on the left.  The disciples of Rachel Maddow, CNN, Democratic politicians, and the leftist partisan media masquerading as journalists.

The cognitive dissonance has just begun for all of them.  The proof is clear, they were all wrong.  Extraordinarily wrong.  The collusion and sell out was from the very people they put forth as heroes.  The Obama/Clinton Democratic Party has been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.  Thirty pieces of silver wasn’t enough.  It was millions of dollars and the opportunity to hold power in America that proved to be their downfall.  Colluding with the Russians was what they were willing to do in this power play.

The unwinding of this scandal will take time.  But the implication is clear.   The Trump administration will be fully exonerated.  They did nothing wrong.  Oh yes, the left won’t admit it, they will be furious (aren’t they always?), but this narrative is over except in the minds of total leftist partisans. Just like the man who threw the Russian flags at Trump. He was aiming for the wrong people.

He just didn’t know it yet.  Likewise, the leftist base doesn’t either.

As for the Clinton/Obama/Democratic Party alliance.  They are in trouble.  Having projected a narrative that was not only untrue about Trump, but was actually true about their own party will be devastating to their base, and the American public will likely not forget.

The leftist media.  The Democratic Party.  The Obama/Clinton families.  Their corruption reaches to the heavens.  They have knowingly deceived America in the worst of ways.  Let’s hope their stature never recovers.

Categories: "Trump dossier", Clinton corruption, Clinton cover ups, Clinton Foundation, Clinton lies, Democrat Party, Democrat Party and media, Democrat scandals, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Obama and Clinton Foundation, Obama and Russia, Obama and Uranium for Russia, Uranium One, Washington Post
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‘Collusion’ Collapses: Dem Congressional Espionage Ring Takes Center Ring

July 30, 2017

‘Collusion’ Collapses: Dem Congressional Espionage Ring Takes Center Ring, American Thinker, Clarice Feldman, July 30, 2017

In truth, the Russians “colluded” through GPS Fusion to harm, not help, Trump and the evidence of that is coming out. It’s time to repeal the Special Counsel law which has now been used twice to hamstring two Republican Presidents, has dubious constitutional authority, and will never result in the indictment of a prominent Democratic politician.

Under the Constitution there are three ways to deal with official corruption: the ballot box, impeachment, or criminal prosecution. Instead, in recent years we have tried two different means: the Independent Counsel law, now lapsed, and the Special Counsel law.  Pepperdine Law Professor Douglas M. Kmiec explains the difference and argues that the features of the independent counsel, which the Supreme Court held constitutional, and the special counsel law that has not been challenged, are different, notably that the absence of outside supervision of the prosecutor and failure in both instances of the application of the Special Counsel act — the Plame case, and the Russian interference case now under Mueller — lack what the Court called a necessary predicate for such an investigation: a finding by the attorney general that there is reason to believe that a crime has occurred. That did not occur in the “collusion” investigation. In the Plame case, as I show, the major figures all knew there was no crime before they began the investigation.

In the case of the Independent Counsel investigation of Whitewater, you may recall the prosecutor said that they had reason to believe Hillary Clinton had committed perjury before the grand jury, but as prosecutors should not indict unless they believe a conviction is likely and the case would be brought before an Arkansas jury who would never convict Bill Clinton’s wife, no indictment would be sought.

Absent a dramatic shift in D.C. demography and political sentiment, you can be sure this would be the case should any special prosecutor find criminal wrongdoing by a prominent Democrat, especially Hillary Clinton. She has a ticket to ride (as she did when Comey absolved her of gross misuse of classified information).  In contrast, any prominent Republican tried here already has a strike against him.

My online friend “Ignatz Ratzykywatzky” now describes what we have:

So Comey intentionally leaked his memo to cause Mueller to be appointed to investigate a plan by Putin to generate a fake scandal to fool dopes like Comey.

Top. Men.

But for the addition of a new player, GPS-Fusion, this case is remarkably similar in evolution and cast of characters to the Plame case. The genesis of the Mueller investigation was the recusal of Attorney General Sessions on the ground that he was too close to the subject of the investigation. It was on the same ground that former Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself in the Plame leak case. In both cases the media incited recusal.

On October 31, 2016 David Corn (who worked for the Nation during the Plame case and now for Mother Jones), wrote in Mother Jones “A veteran spy [David Steele of GPS Fusion] has given the FBI information alleging a Russian operation to cultivate Donald Trump.” GPS-Fusion is a smear-for-hire operation. Among the smears created by this outfit of which we are now aware were a number against Mitt Romney, including the tape of his remarks about Obama supporters secretly made at a donors’ meeting; the false claim that the videos of Planned Parenthood negotiating for the sale of fetus body parts was “fake,” and attacks on the credibility of Venezuelan dissidents who had charged Venezuelan officials with graft and money laundering. In addition, they were working to get Russian sanctions via the Magnitsky Act lifted, having been hired to do so by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the woman who tried to entrap Donald J. Trump. Prior to David Corn’s article, GPS met with a Mother Jones “journalist“ according to Steele himself. And that journalist was most certainly the Democrat’s water bearer, David Corn. Steele’s group had shopped the story around and on January 19, 2017 BuzzFeed published the GPS dossier.

After BuzzFeed published Steele’s dossier, individuals mentioned in the dossier sued Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence for defamation. In his defense, Steele blamed Fusion GPS for circulating his dossier among reporters without his permission. However, he admitted “off-the-record briefings to a small number of journalists about the pre-election memoranda in late summer/autumn 2016.” Steele’s defense contended that in October 2016, “Fusion GPS instructed him to brief a journalist from Mother Jones”, as Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross summarized.

Despite Steele admitting that his dossier was never verified, and despite specific allegations in the dossier being disproven, Corn has continued to promote the dossier’s thesis, recently publishing an article claiming that “Donald Trump Jr.’s Emails Sound Like the Steele Dossier”. In his recent piece, Corn argued that Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya vindicates Steele’s dossier:

Trump and his supporters have denounced the Steele memos as unsubstantiated trash, with some Trump backers concocting various conspiracy theories about them. Indeed, key pieces of the information within the memos have been challenged. But the memos were meant to be working documents produced by Steele — full of investigative leads and tips to follow — not finished reports, vetted and confirmed.

[snip]

But that media firestorm, based on nothing but unverified information — probably fed to GPS by the Russians — from a smear for pay outfit caused Sessions to recuse himself.

In the previous special counsel case – Plame — both Mueller, then head of the FBI, and Comey, then acting attorney upon Ashcroft’s recusal, were informed even before Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed that no one had deliberately “outed” her to punish her husband; that the information Novak published came from Richard Armitage, a Colin Powell underling and that it was absolutely inadvertent. And yet they used that to hamstring GW Bush and his administration and to convict Lewis Libby. That conviction is proving to be, as I argued at the time, a prosecution without a crime.

Last year, Libby sought and received a reinstatement of his law license and an investigation was held, with counsel confirming his innocence:

In the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Disciplinary Counsel’s Report readmitting Libby, the Counsel noted that Libby had continued to assert his innocence. As a result, the Counsel had to “undertake a more complex evaluation of a Petition for reinstatement” than when a petitioner admits guilt. But the Counsel found that “Libby has presented credible evidence in support of his version of events and it appears that one key prosecution witnesses [sic], Judith Miller, has changed her recollection of the events in question.” The reference to Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, involved her memoir,The Story, A Reporter’s Journey. In the book, Miller said she read Plame’s memoir and discovered that Plame’s cover was at the State Department, a fact Miller said the prosecution had withheld from her. In rereading what she called her “elliptical” notes (meaning hard to decipher), she realized they were about Plame’s cover, not her job at the CIA. She concluded that her testimony that Libby had told her Plame worked at the CIA was wrong. “Had I helped convict an innocent man?” she asked. Miller went on to note that John Rizzo, a former CIA general counsel, had said in his memoir that there was no evidence that the outing of Plame had caused any damage to CIA operations or agents, including Plame. That statement rebuts the prosecution’s closing argument that as a result of the disclosure of Plame’s identity, a CIA operative could be “arrested, tortured, or killed.”

Who paid for the GPS-Fusion smear job which was used to persuade Sessions to recuse himself and which led to the appointment of Mueller as special counsel? Well, that’s a mystery the Democrats are doing everything to hide.

Kimberley Strassel reports:

What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility. [snip] We know that at the exact time Fusion was working with the Russians, the firm had also hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele compiled his material, according to his memos, based on allegations from unnamed Kremlin insiders and other Russians. Many of the claims sound eerily similar to the sort of “oppo” Mr. Akhmetshin peddled.

We know that Mr. [Glenn] Simpson is tight with Democrats. His current attorney, Joshua Levy, used to work in Congress as counsel to no less than Chuck Schumer. We know from a Grassley letter that Fusion has in the past sheltered its clients’ true identities by filtering money through law firms or shell companies (Bean LLC and Kernel LLC).

Word is Mr. Simpson has made clear he will appear for a voluntary committee interview only if he is not specifically asked who hired him to dig dirt on Mr. Trump. Democrats are going to the mat for him over that demand. Those on the Judiciary Committee pointedly did not sign letters in which Mr. Grassley demanded that Fusion reveal who hired it.

Here’s a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?

[snip]

If the Russian intention was to sow chaos in the American political system, few things could have been more effective than that dossier, which ramped up an FBI investigation and sparked congressional probes and a special counsel, deeply wounding the president. This is all to Mr. Putin’s benefit, and the question is whether Russia engineered it.

While the press has been promoting a ridiculous and ass backwards Russian collusion story, it has been sitting on a far bigger story: The likelihood that the Congressional Democrats financed and enabled the largest espionage ring in U.S. history. This story has been percolating on the internet for weeks with no mainstream media coverage. It got a tiny, misleading smattering of coverage this week when the FBI arrested Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s internet employee, for trying to flee the country after transferring almost $300,000 dollars to Pakistan.

Ignatz sums up the media U Turn:

“1. The wsj, nyt and wapo now all agree what wasn’t a crime didn’t occur.

2. Because they all know what was a series of crimes by the Dems, did occur, so now it’s time to move on to more important things… like not seeing Dems in handcuffs.”

The most detailed coverage of how the Awan brothers were hired, overpaid, and had access to all the Democrat’s communications and how Schultz protected Imran and kept him on her payroll even after the Capitol Police denied him and his three brothers further access to the Democrats’ computers was on the Daily Caller:

Should the press decide it’s past time to sit around promoting GPS Fusion smears and do some work?

1. Who coordinated the hiring of the Awan brothers by dozens of Democratic Congressman?

2. Why were they so grossly overcompensated (millions of dollars) for no work?

3. Were they kicking back money to the Democrats, doing “dirty” work for them, or blackmailing them?

4. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep the Capitol Police from searching her laptop they had confiscated from Imran Awan?

5. Why did Wasserman-Schultz keep him on her payroll after the Capitol Police further barred him and his brothers from accessing Congressional computers?

6. Why did the Iraqi fugitive and Hezb’allah supporter Dr. Ali-al Attar “lend” them $100,000?

7. Who is paying Chris Gowan, a Clinton insider, to represent Imran Awan?

8. Why did the Awan brothers continue to have security clearances when they had declared several bankruptcies and were engaged in financial misdealing?

9. Why were the Awans broke when they were making so much money and living so modestly?

10. Why did eight members of the House Permanent Select committee on Intelligence issue a letter demanding the Awans be granted access to Top Secret information?

11.Were the Awans working for Pakistani intelligence and the Moslem Brotherhood?

12. To whom were the Awans sending data to on an offsite server?

Buckle your seatbelts. Draining the swamp is going to create a lot of waves.

Categories: "Trump dossier", Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Democrat establishment, Democrat National Committee, Democrat Party and media, Democrat scandals, Democrats and "Trump dossier", Democrats and Comey, GPS Fusion, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Hillary Clinton, Trump agenda, Trump and Russia, Trump and the Deep State, Trump under seige, Trump-Russia probe
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The New Meaning of Collusion

July 11, 2017

The New Meaning of Collusion, Power Line,  Scott Johnson, July 11, 2017

There is no evidence that the Russian lawyer had damaging information to deliver. There is no evidence that the Russian lawyer delivered damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. asked the Russian lawyer to come back with damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. would have promised the Russian lawyer anything if she had agreed to return with damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. came away from the meeting with anything but disappointed expectations.

Is this some kind of a joke?

********************************

Today the New York Times credits four reporters with the story advancing the latest installment of the “collusion” story involving the Trump campaign and a mysterious Russian lawyer. We are colluding in comedy.

In today’s episode the Times reports that before Donald Trump, Jr. arranged a meeting with “a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.” The Times has posted related stories here on the pageant angle to provide context.

In today’s installment of the collusion comedy none of the four Times reporters has seen the email. The Times does not report that anything was delivered in the meeting. So far as we can tell from the story, the thing was some kind of a hoax.

With the reporters’ heavy breathing and the anticlimactic plot, we have a laugh riot on our hands.

Commence the heavy breathing:

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.

Now comes the approach to the anticlimax:

There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers.

The story continues, but the Times’s four reporters do not pause to itemize other blanks or holes. This is the true anticlimax. “There is no evidence” for much more. The reader is left on his own to draw the relevant inferences.

There is no evidence that the Russian lawyer had damaging information to deliver. There is no evidence that the Russian lawyer delivered damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. asked the Russian lawyer to come back with damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. would have promised the Russian lawyer anything if she had agreed to return with damaging information. There is no evidence that Trump Jr. came away from the meeting with anything but disappointed expectations.

Is this some kind of a joke?

Categories: 2016 elections and Russia, Collusion, Democrat agenda, Democrat Party and media, Great Trump - Russia conspiracy, Media and Trump, New York Times
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Devin Nunes Has Absolutely No Reason To Recuse Himself

March 28, 2017

Devin Nunes Has Absolutely No Reason To Recuse Himself, The Federalist, , March 28, 2017

The day after Republican House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes held a press conference saying he’d seen reports that show the government may have collected information on Donald Trump’s transition team or family and then inappropriately shared it, journalists jumped into action. Not to dig into the accusation of NSA unmasking or a failure to minimize incidentally collected information — as they most surely would have had any Democrat been president — but to figure out where the congressman had been the past few days.

Most of the subsequent stories skipped over (or brushed past) the issue of abuse altogether to focus on the “incidental” nature of the accusation, which sounds innocent enough and is completely legal and not the issue. As Andrew McCarthy, certainly no squish when it comes to FISA, explains at the NRO:

Of course, any legitimate government power can be abused. If the government’s real objective was to intercept the communications not of the foreigners but of the Trump associates, such that the agencies’ “targeting” of the foreigners was merely a pretext (i.e., they were monitored only because they were in contact with Trump associates, who were the real targets), it could hardly be said that the associates’ communications were intercepted “incidentally.”

This seemed to escape the attention of erstwhile civil libertarians who once breathlessly warned us about the potential abuses of intelligence services, and specifically about the dangers of politicians getting entangled in the exploitation of sensitive information. They wanted to know what Nunes had for dinner last Tuesday night.

CBS This Morning

✔@CBSThisMorning

WATCH: @NorahODonnell & @bdomenech on Nunes controversy

6:27 AM – 28 Mar 2017

Certainly, as part of the larger story, it’s legitimate and useful to cover Nunes’ actions. When it turned out that he had been on White House grounds  — probably to use a sensitive compartmented information facility — it gave Democrats the space they needed to start demanding recusal.

“Calls Grow for Nunes to Step Aside in Inquiry on Surveillance,” says The New York Times. “The remarkable calls,” it goes on to say, “by Representatives Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s top Democrat,” came after revelations that Nunes had met a source at the White House. Democrats claimed that a “bipartisan investigation” could no longer be achieved.

For starters, the idea that Schiff isn’t a full-blown partisan is preposterous. He’s already made a number of wild and irresponsible claims about Russia “hacking our election.” (The California representative contends to have conclusive evidence of collusion, though he’s yet to share the specifics with the group.) There is no reason to treat him like the guardian of a chaste investigation. Others who went on the record to demand recusal were nonpartisan public servants like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

The Times’ headline, by the way, could just as easily have read “Calls Grow for Nunes to Stay on in Inquiry on Surveillance.” Last night, Rep. Trey Gowdy said that “Jesus would not be a satisfactory chairperson to some of my Democratic colleagues.” Rep. Peter King, just as much (or little) a partisan as Pelosi, came out in defense of Nunes. As did others. These “calls” are just as real. (It’s also important to remember that GOP hawks who have been critical of Nunes — although none have asked for recusal — are also defenders of the NSA’s wide authority under Section 702.)

Ostensibly, demanding recusal is framed as an effort to save the impartiality and integrity of the committee. In reality, it’s meant to create the impression that Nunes has done something unethical or illegal to defend Trump. It meant to proactively poison any investigation. Schiff offers two reasons for his position: 1 – Nunes shared information with the White House. 2 – Nunes got his information from someone in the White House.

Nunes has said this isn’t an inquiry into charges of Russian collusion, so why is it inappropriate for the House Intelligence Committee Chair to share intelligence about the president with the president — and then let the world know he’s done so? Furthermore, why is it wrong for the House Intelligence Committee Chair to see classified information from a source at the White House? “If that’s where the information is, and the information is relevant, and it’s authentic, and it’s reliable, wouldn’t you go where the information was?” Gowdy asked The Weekly Standard.

Even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that Nunes had been ethically compromised, does the information attained in the effort become less valid? Were the leaks that cost Mike Flynn his job any less persuasive because they were illegally obtained? Haven’t many Democrats been defending the need for whistleblowers to speak up in the name of democracy?

Schiff has no reason to give up the name of his source. If the NSA abused its power, and the evidence is legitimate, we should welcome the information. If not, Nunes’ credibility will be blown forever. Considering Nunes’ history, the media had no reason to assume the latter, which mirrors the concerns and goals of Democrats.

Of course, Nunes might have nothing. If that’s the case, he’ll no doubt pay a steep political price. We’ll know soon enough.

Categories: Deep state, Democrat agenda, Democrat Party and media, Democrats and Trump, Devin Nunes, Facts Don't Matter, Intelligence community, Intelligence leaks, Media and Trump
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Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms

December 21, 2016

Liberals, drugged on power, suffer withdrawal symptoms, Washington Examiner, December 21, 2016

(Will we ever stop calling them “liberals?” They are leftists or Democrats, not liberals. The term “liberal” has been perverted into what it is not. — DM)

liberalspowerA crop of liberal writers are aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

“Democrats had a knife, and the GOP had a gun,” writes New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, remarking in particular on what he views as disgraceful Republican abuses of power in North Carolina. Having lost the governorship, the GOP used the lame-duck period to pass laws taking power and patronage away from the victorious Democratic governor-elect.

Leonhardt’s broad point about general Republican excess is being made by many a liberal writer. It is a revisionist history put succinctly by Greg Sargent, a liberal blogger at the Washington Post, that the “GOP shreds our norms in [the] quest for power and Dems don’t.”

This is a deeply ignorant or mendacious view of political history.

We do not defend the Republicans’ North Carolina caper; we already criticized it in this space. But it is stomach-turning to see liberal horror that Republicans should resort to the same tactics Democrats used with gusto. If anything is more irritating than hearing partisans justify their behavior with “tu quoque” arguments, it is seeing a crop of liberal writers aghast that Republicans behave just as Democrats did for decades.

The last two times North Carolina’s legislature moved to strip powers from its governor, it was Democrats doing the partisan stripping and Republicans being stripped. It was also an abuse then, and North Carolina Republicans cried foul, not that anyone seems to remember their protests now. Gov. Pat McCrory and legislative Republicans were thoroughly and mercilessly schooled in the art of political warfare by their Democratic adversaries, and finally brought a gun to the gunfight.

Republicans win a few elections and suddenly it is shocking — shocking, we tell you! — that they deploy gerrymandering just as Democrats did for decades. Trump wins an election, and suddenly liberals worry that presidents might govern with pens and phones, and change national immigration policy by fiat.

Suddenly, “obstructionism” is no longer considered a legitimate excuse for a president to announce that his agenda is too important to wait for democratic constitutional processes. Suddenly, liberal writers fear rather than cheer the possibility that a president might start a ruinous and illegal war on his own personal say-so.

When you’re told everything in the political landscape is unprecedented and horrible, you are not hearing a good faith argument. You are hearing the symptoms of defeat. Beginning next month, Democrats will have less power at national and state levels than they’ve had since the Great Depression. They’re losing influence over policy across the map, and it’ll take a lot of political rehab for them to get over it.

If we live in “a new normal in which the America we knew and loved is gone,” perhaps it’s because these people were enjoying liberal abuse of power too much to apply the constitutional brakes when they had the levers in their hands.

Categories: "Liberals", 2016 elections, Democrat Party, Democrat Party and media, Hypocrisy, Leftists
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Are Bannon’s Critics for Real?

November 18, 2016

Are Bannon’s Critics for Real? Front Page Magazine, Paul Gottfried, November 18, 2016

Trying to make sense out of senseless accusations — and an even more absurd double standard.

bannon

I’m beginning this commentary on the recent assaults on Steve Bannon by quoting my response to questions that a CNN-Digital reporter asked me concerning President-elect Trump’s friend and adviser:

There’s no indication that Steve Bannon, the Breitbart executive and Donald Trump adviser, who has been characterized as a white nationalist, is a racist or anti-Semite. Bannon is not a white identitarian or race realist. He comes from the world of Washington politics and journalism, not white identity politics. Although I don’t know the man, I doubt Bannon hangs out with people who burn crosses on other people’s lawns.

I expressed this view, more or less, not only to CNN-Digital. I also expressed it in a phone-call marathon to representatives of a Danish daily and the Jewish Forward and, in an hour and a half German conversation, with an editor of the German conservative weekly Junge Freiheit. In all these exchanges I had to answer the question of whether Steve Bannon was in fact an anti-Semite and racist, a judgment that was coming from, among others, such exemplary American “conservatives” as Glenn Beck, Jonah Goldberg, and writers for the Wall Street Journal. I was also asked whether as the co-inventor of the term “Alternative Right,” which has now been shortened to “Altright,” I could tell if Bannon, who likes the term in question, enjoys the company of “white nationalists.”

I tried to explain that the exceedingly elastic term “Altright” has been claimed by a number of groups that belong to the non-establishment Right. All those on the Right who are at war with the GOP establishment and neoconservative politics and who are combatting PC with particular ferocity have embraced the designation “Altright.” This is especially true of Millennials who scorn establishmentarian positions.  But it’s not at all clear to me that those who write for Bannon’s website publication, some of whom are Orthodox Jews, have much to do with white identitarians who also use the term “Altright.” I would doubt that these writers go out to drink with the Philonazi blogger Matt Heimbach, who also claims the Altright moniker.

Like David Horowitz, David Goldman, Rudolf Giuliani, and dozens of other commentators, I find the charges leveled against Bannon to be outrageous slander. I am also horrified by the double standard in play when Bannon, who may or may not have complained to a now divorced wife about Jewish students in a private school, is depicted as the reincarnation of Hitler. At the same time, attacks on Jews or other ethnic groups coming from the Left are given short shrift by the media.

Disparaging descriptions of blacks, Latinos, and Catholics that have emanated from Hillary’s staff (and which have been revealed by Wikileak) occasioned a yawn from the mass media here and in Europe. And so has Hillary’s hateful obscenity about her husband’s Jewish campaign manager, which has never received the same critical scrutiny as Steve Bannon’s totally fictitious anti-Semitism and racism. What would happen to Bannon’s or any Republican’s career if, like Hillary, he referred to someone as a “f-cking Jew bastard”? Presumably that person would not be the darling of the media establishment and the presidential candidate of George H.W. Bush, Robert Kagan, Max Boot and Alan Dershowitz.

I intend to raise these questions the next time someone calls on me as an expert on the Altright who can document Steve Bannon’s possible connection to neo-Nazi websites. Perhaps the interviewers would be interested in knowing what Hillary and John Podesta said about certain groups. Even more relevant, they might want me to explain how it came to pass that the Democratic National Committee is about to nominate as its new director Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim convert and close friend of Louis Farrakhan. Ellison is entirely explicit in his anti-white and anti-Jewish views and unlike Bannon, does not require reinvention to be turned into what he’s not. The fact that Ellison is heartily endorsed by such presumed idealists as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren is not likely to hurt the reputations of either social justice warrior.

But one must wonder what would happen to a Republican politician who praised David Duke as warmly as Warren and Sanders have extolled the firebrand Keith Ellison. Why are the Black Muslims less distasteful racists than the white supremacist Duke, who by the way quit the Ku Klux Klan decades ago but who remains a code word for (Republican) racism? Or why does Al Sharpton remain a respected confidant of Democratic political leaders, after leading a black race riot against Jewish merchants in Harlem and after engaging in other demagogic incitements to racial violence. (All of Sharpton’s misdeeds are meticulously listed and documented in Carl Horowitz’s Sharpton: The Rise of a Demagogue.)

Meanwhile Steve Bannon is condemned internationally for having possibly said, at least according to an estranged wife, that he objected to spoiled Jewish students in a private school? Perhaps the kids there were spoiled. Why should I even care what he said on this subject, if he really said it?  Another accusation leveled against Bannon is that he allowed Bill Kristol, who made a fetish of belittling Donald Trump, to be attacked as a “renegade Jew.” But that charge, hardly a proof of anti-Semitism, came from the fervently pro-Israeli David Horowitz. In a recent comment Horowitz laments that the “Left has lost touch with the American people.”

Given the Left’s ridiculous double standards, one has to wonder on what planet the Left and the rest of Bannon’s haters are standing.

Categories: Alt-Right, Democrat Party and media, Steven K. Bannon
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Cartoons of the Day

November 16, 2016

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

dorks

 

pain

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

recall

 

triggered

 

Categories: Democrat Party and media, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Obama's America 2016
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Sliming Trump

August 5, 2016

Sliming Trump, Front Page Magazine, Matthew Vadum, August 5, 2016

(Please see also, Mainstream Media: ‘Trump Boots Baby From Rally!’ Non-Media Witnesses: ‘That’s Pure Propaganda’ — DM)

sd_2

Now that Donald Trump is safely ensconced as the official Republican nominee for president, the mainstream media is running an intense around-the-clock operation to deprive him of the relatively unfiltered media exposure he needs to seal the deal with the American people.

Trump being silly and playful in front of TV cameras or utilizing his sense of humor is cast as evidence of a disordered, antisocial mind. The media is focusing on minor benign details and marketing them as the evil deeds of an evil man.

Preventing Trump from communicating effectively with Americans didn’t work so well during the primaries. That was when student radicals, union thugs, Democrat allies in Black Lives Matter, and the remnants of Occupy Wall Street were disrupting Trump rallies and intimidating would-be rally attendees by beating the New Yorker’s supporters up in broad daylight.

This was always less an effort to counter Trump or challenge his policy platform, than a fascistic push to simply suppress his message. With Trump, the master communicator whose outreach skills arguably mirror President Obama’s, the message is everything.

Squelch his voice and he’s finished.

The leftist narrative being deployed against Trump is based on lies, half-truths, and nothing-burgers. They don’t even have to make sense. All they have to accomplish is to hold Trump, the blunt, brash billionaire elitists love to hate because he’s from lowly Queens, the home of the fictional Archie Bunker, up to ridicule. Trump may own country clubs and golf courses but he doesn’t have the manners or the breeding the upper crust expects from those with money. New money is bad money unless you’re a left-winger who gives it to inane social justice-oriented causes, goofy charities, nonprofits pushing radical social engineering on people, and Democrat candidates for office.

So Americans are subjected to a buffet of stupid “news” stories that happen to help journalists make their case against Trump. Meeting the Donald head-on wouldn’t work so instead it’s death by a thousand cuts.

The fact that a veteran admired Trump so much he gave a copy of his Purple Heart medal to the candidate who made a lighthearted joke about always wanting to receive the medal (an obvious absurdity since you have to be injured during military service to get it) was twisted to make the case Trump was a draft dodger who hates military families that have lost loved ones in wars.

The media has been gleefully resurrecting the “chickenhawk” fallacy that was the rage during George W. Bush’s presidency. It held that because Cindy Sheehan lost her son in Bush’s war she was uniquely qualified to pass judgment on matters of war and peace and in general to make a spectacle of herself.

Of course, once the fake dove Barack Obama was sworn in as president, Sheehan’s antiwar yammering was no longer useful to the Left so blessed sister Cindy disappeared from media coverage. When the Left’s favorite president of all time is in power, and he’s a thuggish warmonger who can’t even be bothered to consult Congress before launching an illegal, ill-advised war against Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, having antiwar leftists dog the president at every turn is no longer a positive thing.

Besides, Trump sacrificed nothing, according to the wrathful Khizr Khan, so he needs to shut up. Trump’s run-in with the sleazy immigration lawyer is still receiving media attention. The lie that Trump attacked Khan’s hero son who died in Iraq getting his men to move away from danger won’t die. It’s taken on a life of its own and hardened into fact in the minds of many.

This “chickenhawk” fallacy gives rise to another fallacy that rears its ugly head whenever there is an opportunity to make Republicans look heartless. That is the idea that the words and actions of Gold Star families can never be questioned. Even though Khan, whose sketchy background has been emerging, used a prime speaking spot at the Democrat convention in Philadelphia last week to promote even higher levels of immigration that would financially benefit him as an immigration lawyer, he is supposed to be untouchable because the media wants it that way.

At the same time the media ignores the fact that Hillary Clinton let four men die in Benghazi, Libya, when U.S. facilities came under terrorist attack, and then lied to the surviving family members’ faces, blaming an anti-Islam YouTube video nobody saw. The media also avoids providing a body count for the Arab Spring that Clinton inflicted on North Africa and the Middle East.

“It’s funny to be lectured about respect for vets and the military by a party that’s spent years calling our soldiers rapists and baby killers,” tweeted Legal Insurrection contributor “Aleister.”

Contrast what happened to Trump with what happened when someone gave former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) a Purple Heart that she hadn’t earned. The gift came after she nearly died at the hands of a crazed shooter and it was treated as a heartwarming gesture from an appreciative citizen toward a public servant who had suffered so much for her country.

Trump gets creamed by the media no matter what he does.

After playfully tolerating an infant’s crying from the podium at a rally, Trump eventually asked the mother to remove the baby from an event. That’s what decent people do. It’s called politeness. It’s a non-issue if you’re a normal person with a healthy respect for social norms but rabid feminists seized on it as example of the Republican’s supposed contempt for babies and mothers.

At CNN’s website MoveOn mom Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner berates Trump, claiming he was mocking the mother. Trump doesn’t realize “that when he throws a baby out, the metaphorical bathwater can’t be ignored.” This garden-variety humorless left-wing feminist used the opportunity to blather on about equal pay, how women outnumber men in this country, and the need for crazy-expensive big government programs like paid family parental leave.

To the Left what Trump did is a grievous offense against civility and social norms, yet Clinton’s communistic blueprint It Takes A Village, calls for the state “to teach, train and raise children,” adding that “[p]arents have a secondary role.” Put Hillary in the White House and she’ll solve the problem of crying babies by terminating parental rights. After all, that’s what she says in her book.

And don’t forget that the Left deems this crying baby incident to be far worse than Clinton’s strident, unconditional, unapologetic support for the taxpayer-funded human body parts trafficking concern known as Planned Parenthood.

During the Democratic National Convention last week CNN and the New York Times pushed out the lie that at a presser Trump had invited Russia to somehow hack Hillary Clinton’s emails which are far as anyone can tell no longer exist. The party of sedition and treason went nuts calling Trump a traitor. In reality all Trump did was offer a quip to reporters, urging Russia or any other governments that may have Clinton’s mountain of missing emails in their possession to return them to the United States. Nor was Trump’s statement tantamount to asking Russia to interfere in U.S. elections.

The media left out the fact that Clinton is much closer to Russia than Trump is and that that nation’s government has compromised her. She even cut bad deals with that country to hand over a big chunk of American uranium to the Kremlin.

Journalists are engaging in all this mischief because they are acutely aware that if Trump can somehow penetrate the massive propaganda force-field the mainstream media has erected around his campaign, the party is over. The thinking among the media and the Left – but I repeat myself – is that if they can keep strategically placing nasty little booby-traps in the undisciplined candidate’s path they can keep him off-message and floundering long enough to get would-be federal inmate Hillary Clinton across the finish line Nov. 8.

If he can reach voters with his tremendously popular message of law and order, immigration enforcement and border security, and mostly pro-growth economic policies, he wins – convincingly – in a year of political populism and anti-establishment anger.

If Trump focuses on one issue, specifically, how truly rotten and anemic the Obama-Clinton economy is, he probably wins.

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger said Clinton, whose class warfare-dominated platform calls for far-reaching, even punitive, tax hikes all over the place ought to doom her candidacy. “Trump should be killing her on that point,” he said on the most recent installment of the “John Batchelor Show.”

Despite polling showing Clinton ahead of Trump, seasoned political handicappers know that Hillary’s support is a mile wide and an inch deep. Even gung-ho leftists Michael Moore and Cenk Uygur think Clinton, the ultimate political insider, is such a lousy candidate that she’s destined to take a dive on Nov. 8.

Reporters are doing these terrible things because they are terrified that there will be no third Obama term and that Americans will have to wait a few more years for a president who has a uterus. And worst of all in their view, is the possibility that America just might have a future with Trump in the Oval Office. That is unacceptable to these ink-stained wretches and blow-dried talking heads who insist on influencing the news instead of merely reporting it.

The media is also trying to depict the Trump campaign as in a state of growing disarray, even though Democrats are experiencing unprecedented political meltdowns.

Top staffers were liquidated in a Bolshevik-style purge at the Democratic National Committee after leaked emails showed top Democrats engaged in unethical behavior, including waging war against second-place primary finisher Bernie Sanders.

DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz got the axe and was replaced on an interim basis by Gore-Lieberman 2000 campaign manager Donna Brazile. Brazile, in turn, gave the bum’s rush to DNC CEO Amy Dacey, communications director Luis Miranda, and chief financial officer Brad Marshall.

Although recent polls show Clinton’s lead over Trump growing in the wake of the businessman’s messaging problems, the admittedly subjective anecdotal evidence on the ground suggests Trump is doing fine. His fundraising has dramatically picked up.

Trump continues receiving rock star treatment at rallies around the country such as those held this week in Portland, Me., and Daytona Beach and Jacksonville, Fla. Trump speaks to overflow crowds while Clinton has great difficulty filling more modestly sized venues. There is no passion for Hillary. There are plenty of people who feel they have to vote for her because having a president with a uterus would be a world-historic moment.

But reporters still aren’t asking the Clinton campaign about the candidate’s fall in December 2012 in which she sufferedbrain damage. Her coughing fits at the podium, strange facial expressions at the Democrat convention as celebratory balloons were falling, and jerky body movements also don’t inspire confidence in her ability to physically endure the rigors of the presidency. Nor does the fact that she hasn’t held a press conference in 244 days. She is everywhere on TV and yet she says next to nothing of substance. She is hiding in plain sight and the media is protecting her from having to answer inconvenient questions.

It also should be noted that the Trump candidacy is also bringing out the worst in conservatives who refuse to get behind the GOP nominee.

At Mediaite, conservative talk show host John Ziegler is already pushing for Sean Hannity to be “punished severely” by having his Fox News Channel show canceled because he got on the Trump train early and proved influential among primary voters.

In a sophomoric, oddly written rant, Ziegler accuses Hannity of recently launching a campaign to cover his posterior for boosting Trump, whom he declares was obviously unelectable from the start. He calls Hannity “not at all a bright guy” and “the guy who married the obviously wrong girl, and now wants to try to blame his buddies, who tried to tell him she clearly wasn’t the right one.”

Ziegler is far from the worst offender among right-leaning commentators as anyone who has been following the recent adventures of Mitt Romney, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sens. Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham, George Will, and Bill Kristol can attest.

Meanwhile, the leader of a Republican anti-Trump group is moving her efforts against the candidate to a new level. Liz Mair, the founder of Make America Awesome, an anti-Trump super PAC, is now communications director for something new called Republicans for Johnson-Weld, the Libertarian Party’s presidential ticket.

Mair, a former Republican National Committee online communications director, called Trump a “loudmouthed dick” on CNN Wednesday, adding that she expects him to continue “basically acting as if he’s on a suicide mission and aiming to take the whole rest of the party down with him.”

Critics say the Libertarian ticket is working to elect Clinton by siphoning votes away from Trump.

Aside from politics junkies, most people think of Libertarians as vaguely conservative so it’s hard to argue with that critique.

The ticket this year consists of two former Republicans, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and his would-be vice president, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld.

Both men say nice things about Democrat standard-bearer Hillary Clinton. Weld said she was “by and large a good secretary of state,” and Johnson called her “a wonderful public servant.” Referring to the end run Clinton did around public records laws by maintaining private email servers, Johnson said “I don’t think there was criminal intent on her part.”

The two men are Clinton shills, Breitbart’s Patrick Howley opines.

“The Johnson-Weld team seems to think that libertarianism is mostly about admitting as many immigrants to the United States as possible. This is a far cry from Ron Paul’s pro-borders libertarian movement of a few years ago. The libertarian movement has shifted to the progressive globalist Left.”

Johnson even attacks religious freedom laws, likening them to a “black hole.”

Such laws might “open up a plethora of discrimination that you never believed could exist,” Johnson said. “And it’ll start with Muslims.”

While America is under siege by homicidal Islamofascists, Johnson and the rest of the nation’s left-wingers are worried that somewhere in the country a Muslim woman might have to take her veil off to pose for a driver license photo.

It’s a pretty piddling matter to be concerned about given that America’s future is on the line.

Categories: 2016 elections, Democrat Party and media, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Trump and media
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Khizr Khan, Servant of the Global Umma

August 1, 2016

Khizr Khan, Servant of the Global Umma, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, August 1, 2016

(Please see also, The Disingenuous Outrage Over Khan-Gate. — DM)

kahn

The mainstream media is wild with enthusiasm these days over Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim soldier, Humayun Khan, who was killed fighting in Iraq in 2004. Khizr Khan, brimming with self-righteous anger, spoke at the Democratic National Convention, where he delivered what the Washington Post dubbed a “brutal repudiation of Donald Trump.” Trump responded, elevating Khizr Khan to the status of full-fledged flavor-of-the-moment media celebrity. There’s just one catch: Khizr is using his son’s memory not to advance the cause of the United States, as his son apparently died trying to do, but to advance a quite different cause: that of the global umma.

The well-heeled and powerful backers of the global jihad – those who have enabled the Islamic State (ISIS), al-Qaeda, and other jihad groups to grow as powerful as they have today — are enraged at Donald Trump. They are deeply worried by his call for a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration into the United States, as that will make it much more difficult for jihadis to get into this country. They are anxious to stigmatize any and all resistance to jihad terror – and so, happily enough for them, is the Democratic Party, which has eagerly signed on to the longtime strategy employed by Islamic supremacist advocacy groups in the U.S., to demonize all effective measures against jihad terror as “bigoted” and “Islamophobic.”

So it was that Khizr Khan, in the full fury of his indignation at the DNC, trotted out a straw man, falsely claiming that Trump wanted to “ban us from this country.” Trump has said nothing about banning Muslim citizens of the U.S. from the country, only about a temporary moratorium on immigration from terror states. Even worse, all the effusive praise being showered on Khizr Khan in the last few days overlooks one central point: he is one man. His family is one family. There are no doubt many others like his, but this fact does not mean that there is no jihad, or that all Muslims in the U.S. are loyal citizens.

Khizr Khan is enraged at Donald Trump, but is Trump really the cause of his problem? Jihad terrorists, not Donald Trump or “Islamophobes,” killed his son in Iraq. And if Donald Trump or anyone else looks upon Muslims in the U.S. military with suspicion, it is with good reason: does any other demographic have as high a rate of treason as Muslims in the U.S. military? In 2003, a convert to Islam, Sgt. Hasan Akbar, murdered two of his commanding officers in Kuwait. In 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered 13 Americans at Fort Hood.

Other than those attacks, a Muslim in the U.S. Navy discussed sniper attacks on military personnel. A Muslim U.S. naval engineer allegedly gave an Egyptian agent information on how to sink a U.S. carrier. In 2015, a Muslim National Guard soldier in Illinois planned an Islamic State jihad attack against a U.S. military base. Last February, a U.S. Army enlistee who vowed to “bring the Islamic State straight to your doorstep” pleaded guilty to attempting to detonate a car bomb at Fort Riley military base in Kansas. Just days ago, a U.S. Air Force veteran was convicted of trying to join the Islamic State.

Then there is the U.S. Muslim who gave the Islamic State U.S. military uniforms, combat boots, tactical gear, firearms accessories, and thousands in cash. Where are those uniforms now?

It is good that there are Muslims in the U.S. military who are loyal. But can we have a discussion about those who aren’t, and why they aren’t, and what can be done about it? Such a discussion is vitally necessary, but it wouldn’t serve the classic objective of the global umma, to increase the dar al-Islam (house of Islam) at the dar al-harb (house of war). Nor would an open discussion of Khan’s Sunday morning assertion on Meet the Press that terrorists “have nothing to do with Islam.”

We constantly are told this, but the repetition doesn’t make it true. In the first place, jihadis repeatedly make clear that they think what they’re doing has everything to do with Islam:

“Jihad was a way of life for the Pious Predecessors (Salaf-us-Salih), and the Prophet (SAWS) was a master of the Mujahideen and a model for fortunate inexperienced people. The total number of military excursions which he (SAWS) accompanied was 27. He himself fought in nine of these; namely Badr; Uhud, Al-Muraysi, The Trench, Qurayzah, Khaybar, The Conquest of Makkah, Hunayn and Taif . . . This means that the Messenger of Allah (SAWS) used to go out on military expeditions or send out an army at least every two months.” — Abdullah Azzam, co-founder of al-Qaeda, Join the Caravan, p. 30

“If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.” — Egyptian scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

“Many thanks to God, for his kind gesture, and choosing us to perform the act of Jihad for his cause and to defend Islam and Muslims. Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.” — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 defendants

“Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfil God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” — Taliban terrorist Baitullah Mehsud

“Jihad, holy fighting in Allah’s course, with full force of numbers and weaponry, is given the utmost importance in Islam….By jihad, Islam is established….By abandoning jihad, may Allah protect us from that, Islam is destroyed, and Muslims go into inferior position, their honor is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.” — Times Square car bomb terrorist Faisal Shahzad

“So step by step I became a religiously devout Muslim, Mujahid — meaning one who participates in jihad.” — Little Rock, Arkansas terrorist murderer Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad

“And now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad.” — Texas terrorist bomber Khalid Aldawsari

All of these, of course, may be dismissed as “extremists,” although they were also all devout Muslims who were determined to follow their religion properly. And then there are the many passages of the Qur’an exhorting Muslims to commit acts of violence:

2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”

4:89: “They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

5:33: “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

5:38: “And the thief, male and female: cut off the hands of both, as a recompense for what they have earned, and a punishment exemplary from Allah; Allah is All-mighty, All-wise.”

8:12: “When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!”

8:39: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely; then if they give over, surely Allah sees the things they do.”

8:60: “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to terrify thereby the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5: “Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden — such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book — until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.”

9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123: “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing.”

47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray.”

To be sure, there are some tolerant verses in the Qur’an as well — see, for example, sura 109. But then in Islamic tradition there are authorities who say that violent passages take precedence over these verses. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established.” He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history.

According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).” (The Roman numerals after the names of the chapters of the Qur’an are the numbers of the suras: Sheikh ‘Abdullah is referring to Qur’anic verses such as 2:216, 3:157-158, 9:5, and 9:29.)

How does Khizr Khan explain all that? He doesn’t — and he knows that no one in the mainstream media will ask him to. All this disinformation and obfuscation he is perpetrating serves the interests of the global umma – but not in any sense those of the United States.

Categories: 2016 elections, Caliphate, Democrat National Convention, Democrat Party and media, Donald Trump, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic immigration, Islamic terrorism, Media and Donald Trump, Media and Hillary Clinton, Media and Islam, Quran
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New York Times Hails ‘Our National Poet’ Obama’s ‘Stirring Valedictory Address’

July 29, 2016

New York Times Hails ‘Our National Poet’ Obama’s ‘Stirring Valedictory Address’, MRC Newsbusters,  Clay Waters, July 28, 2016

(All bold face type is in the original. Ain’t media love grand?– DM)

obama blabs

New York Times coverage of Night 3 of the Democratic National Convention could be characterized by an hour-long swoon over Barack Obama’s speech — pardon, his “stirring valedictory address.” Also, Democrats were (again!) finding their voice on gun control, and Bill celebrated Hillary, TMI-style, and Frank Bruni celebrated the president as “our national poet.”

Reporter Maggie Haberman, helping provide live nytimes.com coverage, was smitten by an introductory video: “Adam, as I watch this video, which is quite gauzy at points, it really does remind me that part of why Obama was re-elected in 2012, polls showed, was that a majority of people thought that his heart was in the right place and that he cared about people like them.”

During and after Obama’s speech Haberman hailed Obama’s style over any substance: “The man knows how to give a speech….It’s a dramatic moment….No matter what people think of Obama and Clinton, like them or don’t like them, the first black president just handed the baton to the first major-party female nominee in this country…..”

Jonathan Martin and Patrick Healy were no less laudatory in Thursday’s paper, “Obama Champions Optimism, Passing Baton to Clinton.”

President Obama delivered a stirring valedictory address at the Democratic convention Wednesday night, hailing Hillary Clinton as his rightful political heir and the party’s best hope to protect democracy from “homegrown demagogues” like the Republican Donald J. Trump.

Taking the stage to rapturous roars of “We love you” and “Yes we can,” Mr. Obama acknowledged that Democrats were still divided after a bruising nomination fight and that Mrs. Clinton had made “mistakes.”

….

President Obama’s eyes welled with tearsas he spoke of his faith in the American people and urged voters to transfer their trust to the woman he hoped would succeed him.

“Welled with tears” was a popular phrase in theTimes’ convention coverage. Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear used it in “The Diagnosis: Disunity. His Remedy: ‘This Fighter.’”

Mr. Obama’s eyes welled with tears as he spoke of his faith in the American people and urged voters to transfer their trust in him to the woman he hopes will succeed him. “Time and again, you’ve picked me up and I hope, sometimes, I’ve picked you up, too,” he said. “Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me.”

It was Mr. Obama’s lyrical rejection of “a politics of cynicism” 12 years ago to the night, as the keynote speaker of the 2004 Democratic convention, that dazzled a national audience and thrust him into the spotlight, setting him on his path to two terms in the Oval Office.

Davis consistently hailed Obama, from before the beginning to the very end of his presidency.

In his 2004 convention speech, a testimonial to John Kerry, the Democratic nominee that year, Mr. Obama decried the “spin masters and negative-ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,” and he foreshadowed the political theme that would ultimately carry him into the White House by urging “a politics of hope.”

Then as now, Mr. Obama was vouching for someone else, but what many Americans actually heard was a compelling argument for his own leadership.

White House reporter turned columnist Frank Bruni couldn’t stop quoting the chirpy, optimistic speech of President Obama, “our national poet,” in Thursday’s “Freedom From Fear.”

It’s hard, frankly, to stop quoting from his remarks because they amounted to one of the most moving, inspiring valentines to this country that I’ve ever heard, brimming with regard for it and gratitude to it.

We’re going to miss this man, America. Whatever his flaws, he’s been more than our president. Time and again, he’s been our national poet.

This coming from the same journalists who mocked Reagan’s optimism and spent decades criticizing America for racism, sexism, heartlessness, etc…

And Patrick Healy showed Bill Clinton getting up close and personal with Hillary in the icky “Words Depict Feminine Side of Candidate as Strength.”

He spoke of desiring her: her thick blond hair, her flowery white skirt, her magnetic personality.

He was almost titillating as he recalled chasing after her and getting close enough to “touch her back.”

He used intimate details to reveal her feelings about his three marriage proposals.

Healy portrayed Bill Clinton, womanizer extraordinaire, as doing his bit for feminism.

In doing so, Mr. Clinton began redefining the American presidency as a female institution.

A Clinton win in November would obviously give the country a female president. But for 227 years, the presidency has been associated with stereotypically male qualities — strength, resolve, fearlessness — and the embodiment of power in a deeply patriarchal political system….

….

Whether his speech causes people to see Mrs. Clinton differently — or makes people uncomfortable with the Clinton marriage all over again — will become clearer in time, not only through polls but also in the chatter among voters.

The gush got unbearable by the end.

Political wives often make their husbands sound like saints. Mr. Clinton made Mrs. Clinton sound likable, which is no small thing in politics.

“I married my best friend,” he said. “I have lived a long, full, blessed life. It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971.”

His implication was obvious. America would really take off as well, if voters would just fall in love with that girl, too.

Veteran congressional reporter Carl Hulse’s column, “Gun Laws, Long Avoided, Return to the Agenda,” was devoted to the Democrats (this time for real!) finding “their voice” on gun control. On a busy day for politics, it somehow made the front of Thursday’s paper.

After treating gun control as political poison for two decades, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton are again vigorously championing new gun restrictions as a central element of their campaigns.

Hulse saw current events as helping the Democrats (as he so often does).

But a string of mass shootings involving high-powered weapons, rising anxiety about domestic terrorism, and killings of and by police officers have emboldened Democrats. They say the shootings are intensifying support for gun control, elevating weapons policy to a top-tier issue, with particularly strong appeal to suburban female voters.

Nothing about the spate of terror attacks helping Republicans on national security issues.

Citing polls showing strong support for new restrictions even among gun owners, gun control advocates believe the public is open to expanded background checks, new limits on gun purchases and more scrutiny of gun manufacturers and dealers. They intend to enthusiastically press the case in races across the country.

….

Given deep Republican resistance in Congress, major changes in gun laws anytime soon seem unlikely. But the convention is demonstrating that Democrats have recovered their voice on the issue.

Once again.

Categories: 2016 elections, Clintons, Democrat National Convention, Democrat Party and media, Democrat Party unity, Glass ceiling, Hillary and media, New York Times, Obama - First Poet, Obama and media
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