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January 2016

North Korea’s Cuban Friends The Castro boys now have a U.S. Hellfire missile to share with Kim Jong Un. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

You’d think that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wouldn’t have a friend in the world these days. His relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and willingness to starve his own people is evil madness. Last week even communist China condemned the supreme leader’s fourth nuclear test, which the chubby little psychopath called “the thrilling sound of our first hydrogen bomb explosion.”

But Mr. Kim is not all alone. He still has the Caribbean’s Cosa Nostra—aka the Castro family—as a friend and ally. The Cold War may be long over, but Cuba is sticking by the North Korean pariah.

This bond exposes Americans to grave risk. Analysts fret that Pyongyang is developing missiles and miniaturized warheads that will allow it to lob a bomb into the continental U.S. But having a desperate ideological pal 90 miles from U.S. shores magnifies the danger. In the past 21/2 years Cuba has tried to smuggle weapons to Pyongyang, engaged in high-level meetings with North Korean officials, and secured U.S. military technology. Anybody want to connect the dots?

Trump and Cruz Have Trouble in the Middle Independents will decide the general election, and they’re far from sold on the Republican front-runners By David W. Brady

A terrible way to forecast the 2016 contest is to gauge whose supporters are the loudest. Presidential elections are not decided by partisans or ideologues.

The arithmetic is pretty simple: 41% of voters in the 2012 presidential election described themselves as moderates, and 29% as independents. Almost all Republicans (93%) and self-described conservatives (82%) voted for Mitt Romney, but that wasn’t enough. Even if Mr. Romney had won every Republican or conservative voter, it still wouldn’t have been enough.

Because there are roughly 5% more Democrats than Republicans, the GOP needs a solid majority of independents to win a national election. In 2012 Mitt Romney outpolled Barack Obama among independents, 50% to 45%. But that didn’t take him across the electoral college finish line.

It is safe to predict that the proportions that held in 2012 will be about the same this year. About two-thirds of the voters will not be Republicans. Thus it is vital to pay early attention to how each of the candidates is doing among independents. A long, drawn-out primary that forces candidates to make strong appeals to the party’s ideological base can hurt the eventual nominee in November

Hillary on Instructing Staffer to Delete Classified Heading: This Is ‘Common Practice’ By Tom S. Elliott

Hillary Clinton today defended a 2011 e-mail instructing her staffer at the State Department, Jacob Sullivan, to remove a document’s classified marking and send it over an unsecured line. “Headings are not classification notices and so oftentimes we’re trying to get the best information we can,” she told John Dickerson on Face the Nation.

“Obviously what I’m asking for is whatever can be transmitted, if it doesn’t come through secure to be transmitted on the unclassified system,” Clinton said. ”So, no, there is nothing to that, like so much else that has been talked about in the last year.”

Dickerson said the e-mail showed she was “very facile” in how to navigate around classification laws and asked, “You’re saying there was never an instance, any other instance in which you did that?”

Clinton replied that her instructions to Sullivan reflect “common practice” and then pivoted to attacking Republicans for throwing things “against the wall … to see what sticks.”

Dickerson followed with a question about another e-mail in which Clinton expressed bewilderment another staffer was using private e-mail to conduct government business — “which is what you were doing.”

The Left’s Embrace of Islamic Rape. Why progressives are sacrificing their own women on the altar of utopian ideals. By Jamie Glazov

Introduction: As the disturbing reports pour in about the New Year’s Eve Muslim sex assaults in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and other European countries, it has become clear that the new Utopian Multicultural Europe that the Left has worked so hard to build is now here. Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker’s response to the assaults under her watch has been to reprimand the victims, suggesting that they had asked for it. She has vowed to make sure that women will change their behavior, so that they don’t provoke Muslims to sexually assault them again. There will now be published “online guidelines” for women to read so they can prepare themselves. One wonders if it will be the burqa or the niqab that will be the solution of choice.

These eerie developments are, of course, completely in line with why Naomi Wolf finds the hijab “sexy” and why Oslo Professor of Anthropology Dr. Unni Wikan’s solution for the high incidence of Muslims raping Norwegian women is not for the rapists to be punished, but for Norwegian women to “take their share of responsibility” for the rapes because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. Norwegian women, she has counseled, “must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

Storm Clouds Form: Bob Woodward Compares Hillary Scandal to Watergate John Fund

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal has been a difficult one for the public to understand and for journalists to explain. But Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter who helped uncover Watergate 40 years ago, clarified things a lot on Fox News Sunday today when he said that an e-mail in the most recently released batch shows Hillary trying to “subvert the rules” that she expected others to follow.

A few days earlier, Joe DiGenova, a well-respected former district attorney for the District of Columbia, told The Laura Ingraham Show that “there is vitriol of an intense amount developing” in the intelligence community and that FBI agents “are already in the process of gearing themselves to basically revolt if [the Justice Department] refuses to bring charges” against either Hillary Clinton or her former State Department staffers.

It was the State Department’s data dump in the wee hours of January 1 that revealed a particularly eyebrow-raising e-mail from Hillary Clinton: In one note in February 2011, she expressed surprise that a State Department employee was using a private e-mail to conduct State business. She wrote this e-mail, seeming to express dissatisfaction at the employee’s use of private e-mail, on her own private e-mail server — through which she sent all her e-mails while secretary of state.

CALIFORNIA DROUGHT-HELP IS ON THE WAY FROM ISRAEL

The IDE facility will produce some 190 million liters of water daily for the residents of southern California.

IDE Technologies dedicated the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere on Monday – a facility that will produce some 190 million liters of water daily for the residents of southern California.

Providing a new source of water in a state that has long suffered severe droughts, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant will be quenching the thirst of roughly 10 percent of San Diego County, according to IDE. Employing advanced pretreatment and seawater reverse osmosis technologies, the plant is able to generate potable water of the highest quality while significantly reducing energy consumption, the company explained.

The desalination plant is the result of a 30-year water purchase agreement between the plant’s local developer and owner, Poseidon Water, and the San Diego County Water Authority, a joint statement said. The plant, which will be operated by IDE, has created some 2,500 jobs and generated about $350 million for the local economy, the statement added.

“Since the last major drought here a little over 20 years ago, the San Diego region has worked to conserve water as well as identify new water sources,” said California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins.

The Islamization of Germany in 2015 “We are importing religious conflict” by Soeren Kern

A mob of a thousand men of “Arab or North African” origin sexually assaulted more than 100 German women in downtown Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Similar attacks also occurred in Hamburg and Stuttgart. Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker, said that “under no circumstances” should the crimes be attributed to asylum seekers. Instead, she blamed the victims for the assaults.

“There is nothing wrong with being proud German patriots. There is nothing wrong with wanting Germany to remain free and democratic. There is nothing wrong with preserving our own Judeo-Christian civilization. That is our duty.” — Geert Wilders, Dutch politician, addressing a rally in Dresden.

“We are importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples, as well as a different understanding of society and law. German security agencies are unable to deal with these imported security problems, and the resulting reactions from the German population.” — From a leaked government document, published by Die Welt.

Germany will spend at least €17 billion ($18.3 billion) on asylum seekers in 2016 — Die Welt.

Saudi Arabia is preparing to finance the construction of 200 new mosques in Germany to accommodate asylum seekers. — Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Germany’s Muslim population skyrocketed by more than 850,000 in 2015, for the first time pushing the total number of Muslims in the country to nearly six million.

Of the one million migrants and refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015, at least 80% (or 800,000) were believed to be Muslim, according to estimates by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (Zentralrat der Muslime in Deutschland, ZMD), a Muslim umbrella group based in Cologne.

What Trump Doesn’t Understand — It’s a Lot — about Our Trade Deficit with China By Kevin D. Williamson

Donald Trump exemplifies one of the strange and lamentable dynamics in democratic discourse: People tend to have the strongest opinions on those things about which they have the least knowledge. Herr Apfelstrudelführer imagines himself issuing decrees that presidents have no power to issue, and he doesn’t seem to understand that illegal immigration — his headline issue — isn’t in the main driven by people walking across the Mexican border. He doesn’t seem to understand how laws are made or how government money is appropriated. He has, to say the least, a lot to learn.

Now he wants to launch a trade war with China over a trade deficit that he isn’t bright enough to understand.

This isn’t that surprising. Trump inherited a fortune, and, like many heirs, he’s a bit thick when it comes to the realities of money — my habitual comparison of him with Paris Hilton is not offered tongue-in-cheek. Those companies didn’t bankrupt themselves. Most of his success as a businessman has been in the entertainment business, and that’s a perfectly respectable racket, but I don’t want to see the troops saluting President Gwyneth Paltrow or President Kim Kardashian, no matter how much money they’ve piled up, and Trump is in essentially the same league, albeit with worse taste than Mrs. Kanye West.

Islamic State Fighter Executes His Own Mother for ‘Apostasy’ By Rick Moran

An Islamic State fighter executed his own mother in public because she encouraged him to leave the group, according to a Syrian monitoring group.

Reuters:

The woman in her 40s had warned her son that a U.S.-backed alliance would wipe out Islamic State and had encouraged him to leave the city with her.

She was detained after he informed the group of her comments, according to the British-based Observatory, which monitors the war through a network of sources on the ground.

Citing local sources, the Observatory said the 20-year-old man executed his mother on Wednesday near the post office building where she worked in front of hundreds of people in Raqqa, a main base of operations for the group in Syria.

The Islamic State group, which controls wide areas of Syria and Iraq, has executed hundreds of people it has accused of working with its enemies or breaching of its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.

Germany brings out water cannons…against the German people By Carol Brown

In response to mass rape perpetuated by Muslim men against German women over New Year’s eve, PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of Europe) organized a demonstration. It was held in a “multi-cultural” district of west Germany that has been supportive of Merkel’s open door immigration policy. Even so, 3,000 people turned out on short notice for the rally.

Breitbart reports that the demonstration began with speeches, including announcements that alcohol, glass bottles, and face-coverings were banned. Despite PEGIDA’s attempts to ensure a peaceful event, a small number of attendees (from outside of Cologne) began to cause trouble by throwing fireworks. This prompted the police to stop the march in order to deal with the perpetrators, which they did by employing a number of tactics including containment, use of a water cannon, and pepper spray.

But it also appears that some, if not all, of those stirring up trouble may have been undercover police plants who try to entice people to engage in bad behavior. Despite that, PEGIDA had only praise, empathy, and appreciation for the police, while also finding it amusing that an extremely large number of officers were on site for the demonstration in comparison to the minimal force of 143 officers expected to maintain order in Cologne on New Year’s eve.

PEGIDA thanked members of law enforcement for protecting them from viol