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November 2017

ISIS Group Issues Threat Before Paris Attack Anniversary, Vows to Kill Kids By Bridget Johnson

A pro-ISIS group that threatened “more bitter and greater” Manhattan attacks after last week’s deadly ramming on the West Side bike path urged more attacks on the West today with a propaganda poster showing the Eiffel Tower extending upward as a rifle.

Monday is the two-year anniversary of coordinated attacks on Paris in which nine terrorists killed 130 people.

The Wafa’ Media Foundation titled the PR poster “The Specter of Terrorism,” stating in English, “You will pay very expensive price for your war on Islam.”

The message adds: “We will take revenge for the blood of Muslims on your land, we will kill the young before the older watch this.”

Wafa’ issued a justification for the bombing of British teens at a May concert in Manchester, UK. As ISIS has placed a heavy focus on training youths, they’ve also encouraged targeting them: the first issue of their Rumiyah magazine justified killing civilians including “the young adults (post-pubescent ‘children’) engaged in sports activities in the park.”

The Wafa’ posters are circulated largely on Telegram. One released last week was labeled “Manhattan” with a backdrop of burning, crumbling skyscrapers and a semi-truck — significantly more truck than the flatbed pickup Sayfullo Saipov rented from Home Depot — and showed a masked, armed jihadist standing before the scene. Whereas this jihadist wielded a rifle, Saipov brandished a paintball gun and a pellet gun — and had a stun gun in his truck — before he was shot in the abdomen by a real bullet from an NYPD officer.
New ISIS Video Features 10-Year-Old American Living in …

“O worshippers of the cross in USA,” the poster stated. “Our lone wolves will come to you from where you do not know and we will terrorize you wherever you are and we will show you multitudes of terror and pain that you showed to the Muslims, and what is coming is more bitter and greater.”

In May 2016, Wafa’ warned in a message to the citizens of Spain and all Spanish-speaking countries that lone jihadists existing in those areas would kill the “disbelievers” as “previously planned.” In August 2016, the media foundation said that jihadists had to step up their game to make attacks in Spain worse than terrorist operations in France. Wafa’ pressed jihadists to kidnap or kill Spanish nationals. CONTINUE AT SITE

Down the Memory Hole: Obama Stole the 2008 Primary with Help of DNC By Karin McQuillan

The country is shocked, shocked that the DNC colluded with the Hillary campaign to anoint her as their nominee. In her 2015 caper, Clinton made a backroom deal with the DNC. But in 2008, Barack Obama combined muscular Chicago-style clout with community organizing acumen to steal the nomination directly from the voters.

Obama’s illegal shenanigans in the 2008 Democrat primaries were far worse than Clinton’s – and will never be widely reported. Obama used outright election fraud and thuggery, the tried and true Chicago methods. When he got far enough, the DNC pressured Hillary’s pledged superdelegates to violate their voters’ wishes and award Obama an unearned victory.

It’s an odd experience to dig this information out of the memory hole. No one in the Democratic Party, their media, or their base cares – not about rule of law, not about fair elections. Their primaries reveal how their will to power trumps every other value. What these corrupt Democrat primaries show is that progressives want permanent power, not a functioning republic. They don’t want fair and free elections – witness their dirty attempts to overturn the last one and deprive Trump voters of their victory.

As Hillary might say, Democrat corruption, like Hollywood corruption, takes a village.

Like the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s abuses, one big dog gets punished, while the even bigger dog (Bill Clinton for sexual abuse, Barack Obama for political abuse) remains untouchable.

A documentary by Hillary supporters on Obama’s cheating and abuse was reported on Fox & Friends only in 2010; at the time of the election, no one would cover their complaints. Read about it here.

In one documentary interview, civil rights activist Helene Latimer recounts seeing an elderly woman being intimidated at the polls. “As she approached the entrance way to go into the building, one of the young men said to her, ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home because you’re not voting here today.'”

“It’s our right as Americans to be able to vote and everybody was alerted, we went to press, we went to Fox, we went to CNN, nobody wanted to hear the story (in 2008),” Gaston told Fox’s Alisyn Camerota. “Nobody wants to deal with this.”

From “How Obama Used an Army of Thugs to Steal the 2008 Democratic Party Nomination”:

… the Obama Campaign… encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stalk them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices and stop their right to vote.

Reflections on Terrorism: Iran and Bin Laden By Angelo Codevilla

So little practical consequence does the relationship between the Iranian government and al-Qaeda have that, had not the recently released “Bin Laden papers” revealed it, hardly anyone would notice it. Both sides are getting from it what reality allows.https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/08/reflections-on-terrorism-iran-and-bin-laden/
Iran looms large for al-Qaeda’s sequestered and largely impotent leadership. But as Iranian foreign policy deals with big issues to which bin Laden’s little band is marginal, it sets the price of its services. Some have expressed surprise that any relationship should exist between the center of Shia power and ultra-Sunni al-Qaeda. Yet it exists precisely to the extent of the coincidence between the two sides’ power and interests.

Comparing and contrasting al-Qaeda’s present relationship with Shia Iran and its past relationship with Sunni-led Iraq helps us understand the nature of the relationships that exist between the Muslim world’s governments and terrorist groups in general. Al-Qaeda is a prime example of the fact that these relationships are constantly shifting with circumstances, but that the states are always calling the shots.

The Bin Laden papers dispose summarily of the Sunni/Shia conflict: the Iranians are as much the enemies of unbelieving Westerners as are the Sunni Bin Laden followers. One can only imagine the Iranian side reciprocating. According to al-Qaeda’s headquarters, Iran’s practical importance is as a channel to the outside world—presumably because Sunni Pakistan, al-Qaeda’s headquarters, is not allowing the group to do business through its territory. But Iran’s contribution to AQ does not extend beyond transit of people and money. Some of that sustains AQ affiliates in Syria which are “frenemies” to groups fighting under Iranian leadership. No doubt Iran’s intimate acquaintance with this traffic gives it intelligence as well as the opportunity to “turn” these “frenemies.” It may well demand a cut of the money from the Gulf. Al-Qaeda seems to have little alternative.

Whatever grandiose ideas Bin Laden might have had during the 1980s of using contributions from friends in the Gulf to weld international Islamist recruits into military units to defeat the Muslim world’s bad guys evaporated fast. Unable to survive in the post-Soviet Afghan environment, he moved his band to Saudi Arabia. In 1990, King Fahd laughed when Bin Laden urged him not to call on the Americans to stop Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait because AQ’s troops could do it.

U.K. Minister Resigns Over Unauthorized Meetings With Israeli Officials International development secretary Priti Patel’s departure adds to a list of Cabinet woes facing Prime Minister Theresa May

LONDON—The second minister in just over a week resigned from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, as the British leader tried to regain command after a series of blunders by members of her cabinet.

Mrs. May summoned Priti Patel, the international development secretary, back to London from an official trip to Uganda after details emerged about unauthorized meetings Ms. Patel had in August and September with Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mrs. May said in a letter to Ms. Patel that work with Israel should be done “formally and through official channels.”

The development is the latest in a quick succession of challenges for Mrs. May, who has struggled to contain political fires and rein in ministers since losing her party’s majority in a June election gamble.

The British leader is also grappling with stalled talks on Brexit, the country’s greatest foreign-policy shift in decades, and a wave of sexual-misconduct allegations in Parliament. Defense Secretary Michael Fallon resigned last week following allegations of inappropriate conduct toward women, saying that his past behavior was below the “high standard” of the armed forces.

Ms. Patel, a rising star who was largely known for her strong Brexit support, apologized this week for not informing the prime minister and foreign secretary about her meetings in Israel, which she said occurred during an August family vacation.

Mrs. May wrote in a letter to Ms. Patel that she had been satisfied with the apology, but had to take action after information had surfaced that Ms. Patel had also met Israeli officials in September in London and New York. “Now that further details have come to light, it is right that you have decided to resign,” she said.

“While my actions were meant with the best intentions, my actions also fell below the standards of transparency and openness that I have promoted and advanced,” Ms. Patel wrote in her resignation letter. The international development department said the foreign office was aware of the Israel meetings while they were under way, but not in advance. CONTINUE AT SITE

New York’s Not So Finest Forcing bad teachers into classrooms but good teachers out.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio cruised to re-election Tuesday against opponents who had little money or name recognition. New Yorkers can now look forward to four more years of Mr. de Blasio’s political contributions to the United Federation of Teachers union that backs him.

One reason the UFT loves the mayor is his recent decision to ensure that unhireable teachers are also unfireable. Worse, the Department of Education is now forcing schools to fill hundreds of vacancies from its Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR), putting failed instructors back in the classroom full-time.

New York’s statistics show how awful many of these teachers are. Those in the absent teacher pool were deemed either “ineffective” or “unsatisfactory” at a rate 12 times higher than the city average. Roughly a third were yanked from the classroom because of a legal or disciplinary case. Teachers in the ATR can apply at any vacant position across New York City’s 1,700 public schools, so it’s worth wondering why 37% of ATR teachers haven’t managed to find any principal willing to give them a permanent job for four years or more.

Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña has promised that ATR teachers won’t be foisted on any of the 86 struggling K-12s in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal School Program. That’s a tacit admission that these instructors pose a risk to student education. But ATR teachers can be forcibly placed at other troubled non-renewal schools, including East Fordham Academy for the Arts in the Bronx, where 98% of students lack basic math skills, and Brooklyn’s Lyon Community School, where just 8% of students achieve reading and writing proficiency.

Ms. Fariña also claims New York is “not putting people who have a record of not behaving in any school.” Then again, three years ago, she also promised that “there will be no forced placement of staff.”

The College Tax Reform Tantrum Higher ed howls at the modest cut in subsidies in the House bill.

Colleges have been rocked by student protests, but now they’re launching a demonstration of their own in Washington against reductions to their tax subsidies. They’re throwing a tantrum because they may, at long last, have to rationalize their spending.

The IRS code contains about a dozen individual tax subsidies for higher education, all with disparate rules that the IRS describes in a 95-page brochure that makes academic prose look lucid. Parents and students can claim three different tax credits, deduct loan interest, and receive an exemption for some discharged loans and tuition assistance.

These dispensations are layered on top of low-interest federal loans (4.45% for undergrads), grants and loan-forgiveness programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the government will lose about 25 cents on every dollar of subsidized Stafford loans.

Colleges that have been riding this gravy train are howling that Republican House reforms repealing and consolidating their tax carveouts will raise tuition. But stripping down the subsidies might make students and parents more aware of costs and impel colleges to curb unnecessary spending.

Take the three tax credits, which the House bill proposes to combine into a partly refundable $2,500 American Opportunity Tax Credit that can be claimed for up to five years. This simplification would yield about $17.5 billion in revenue over 10 years and reduce the enticement for students to drag out their education. The Lifetime Learning Credit, which is part of the consolidation, can now be claimed indefinitely.

Dems’ Tax Demagoguery By Betsy McCaughey

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party are trying to torpedo the biggest tax cut since 1986. Schumer accuses GOP tax cutters of “messing up the good economy the president inherited from President Obama and hurting the middle class.” The senator must think we’re stupid. The Obama economy wasn’t “good.” It was lousy, sputtering along at a pathetic 2.1 percent, far below the 3.8 percent norm for this nation. Who got clobbered? The middle class, who had to settle for almost no increase in wages and disappointing job prospects.

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act, unveiled by House Republicans on Thursday, is designed to ignite the nation’s economy, producing higher wages and more job opportunities for workers. America taxes corporations at the highest rate of any industrialized country. That drives companies overseas, sabotaging our workforce. The GOP tax cut lowers the corporate from 35 to 20 percent, to make the U.S. competitive again.

As for the middle class, they’ll benefit in two ways — from a faster growing economy and from tax breaks for individual filers. The GOP plan nearly doubles the standard deduction to $12,200 for single filers and $24,400 for married couples, and lowers most rates. It pays for those changes by eliminating certain deductions.

The impact on your wallet will depend on the deductions you’re used to taking. But a typical family earning $73,000 a year would save about $1,600 the first year.

Trump’s Spectacular Speech From Seoul By Claudia Rosett

Wow. President Trump wrapped up his visit to South Korea with a speech square in the tradition of President Ronald Reagan. It’s not just that he talked about the long conflict on the Korean peninsula: the “dazzling light” of South Korea versus the “impenetrable darkness” of the North, the glories of freedom versus the toll of tyranny, the line that separates them just north of Seoul, and America’s commitment to defending it. What made this a landmark speech is that Trump explained, vividly and in detail, why the internal depravities of the North Korean regime are intimately entwined with its nuclear program and its threats to South Korea, and the rest of the Free World. Coming from an American president, this was a speech the world has long needed to hear.

In recent decades, previous American presidents have talked about the monstrous character of North Korea’s regime, periodically chiding and deploring, but without illuminating in depth and detail the full picture. President Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union Address, listed North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, as part of an “axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” But in that speech Bush devoted only a single sentence to North Korea itself, summarizing that its regime was “arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction while starving its citizens.” Such short shrift has been pretty much the approach of recent American presidents — Clinton, Bush and Obama — in speaking publicly about North Korea. Chasing the Chimera that appeasement might help promote peace with Pyongyang, they’ve usually left it to their underlings to make the most damning pronouncements, piecemeal, rather than wield the presidential prerogative to speak fully and forthrightly from the bully pulpit.