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September 2018

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS-THE MONTH THAT WAS AUGUST 2018

By on September 1st, 2018

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

As we consider the news, it is worth a reminder that bias, arrogance and hypocrisy are natural adjuncts of the media. Too often, in recent times, they have become rent-seekers, compromising integrity for collusion with those they are supposed to cover. Politicians have many of the same attributes, but for them it is primarily about power. Control of the federal bureaucracy wields enormous influence and, as we have seen, can be self-sustaining across succeeding Administrations. In 2016, the Presidential elections was not about finding the angel hidden among heathens, but deciding which candidate was the least Beelzebub-like, in terms of character and values. But also, which espoused policies most like one’s own. No matter whether one is conservative or liberal, we should all be able to agree that freedom, progress and well-being hinge on economic growth. Elections determine which policies allow for the greatest growth that does the most good for the most people, in terms of providing opportunity, encouraging self-reliance and lifting people from poverty, while doing the least harm in terms of safety and the environment. Admittedly, that is a judgement call and people can and will disagree. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump was my choice in November 2016. Nothing I have heard or read since causes me to re-think that decision.

Apart from primaries in a number of states, the conviction of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen, real news, as is typical in August, was sparse – a lot of chaff but little wheat. (The midterm elections will begin in earnest after Labor Day.) Europe continues to struggle over Brexit, Greece, Poland, Turkey and illegal immigration, all of which manifest the coercive and undemocratic tendencies of Brussels-quartered bureaucrats. China continues to chase its Belt and Road Initiative, while bullying its neighbors. Terrorism and war in the Middle East are unending. The domestic economy is strong. The bull market in stocks persisted. A trade deal between the U.S. and Mexico was announced. Wildfires in California burned tens of thousands of acres, destroying hundreds of homes. The Angel of Death appeared and bore away some good people, including the heroic John McCain. And Mr. Trump remained a lightning rod – a willing one – for harried Democrats who struggle to find a coherent message, apart from disparaging Mr. Trump with hate-filled messages. It is ironic that the party that bears the name “democrat” refuses to accept the outcome of a democratic election almost two years ago. They claim Mr. Trump is a fascist, yet he has curtailed regulations, reduced taxes and dismantled a federal bureaucracy that had been built stronger by Mr. Obama. Abnegation of power is not the way of tyrants. As well, the Left accuses the President of obstructing free speech, while newspapers, TV, cable news shows, and social media are afire in opposition, and their comrades on college campuses shut out conservative speakers. While real news was light, the air was thick with irony and hypocrisy.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo Taps Foreign Policy Scholar Kiron Skinner as Chief State Department Planner Secretary of state describes professor as a ‘national security powerhouse’ bu Courtney McBride

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-taps-foreign-policy-scholar-as-chief-state-department-planner-1535623201

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has tapped Carnegie Mellon University Professor Kiron Skinner, a nationally known author and Hoover Institution research fellow, as the State Department’s top planner.

Ms. Skinner, who has worked with former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and George Shultz, represents what Mr. Pompeo said is a major personnel addition as he moves to fulfill promises to rebuild department staffing.

Mr. Pompeo described Ms. Skinner as “a national security powerhouse” and “a one-woman, strategic thinking tour de force” in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “I’m confident that she will enhance our influence overseas, protect the American people, and promote our prosperity,” he said.

Foreign policy experts and former holders of the post said Ms. Skinner’s impact will depend on how Mr. Pompeo structures the job, and whether the administration is open to her ideas. “The real question is how will the new director’s role be defined?” said longtime diplomat Dennis Ross, who held the post during the George H.W. Bush administration.

As director of the Policy Planning Staff, Ms. Skinner will be responsible for providing strategic guidance and helping ensure that the day-to-day efforts of the department serve the overall strategy. Ms. Skinner will start on Sept. 4, succeeding Brian Hook, who now heads the State Department’s Iran Action Group.

A key role will be framing U.S. foreign policy against the backdrop of President Trump’s Twitter posts and offhand comments, which frequently catch top advisers by surprise.

During Mr. Trump’s presidential run, Ms. Skinner served as a foreign policy surrogate for the campaign, appearing on television to discuss his objectives. She later joined the State Department and National Security Council “landing teams” during the presidential transition to help staff both entities. She also helped prepare former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for Senate confirmation proceedings.

In an interview, Ms. Skinner described an emerging “Trump Doctrine, or America First foreign policy,” in which the U.S. exercises global leadership while simultaneously sharing the burdens of world crises with other countries. While the past two administrations struggled following the 2001 terrorist attacks, she said, the current administration can craft a longer-term approach.

“I really see the Trump administration as an opportunity to lead us into a grand strategy,” she said.

Ms. Skinner aims to use the administration’s national-security strategy published in December 2017 as the “baseline” for her work, but anticipates updates to the strategy.

Ms. Skinner is director of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University and the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She previously served on the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from Spelman College. She also has been a Fox News contributor.

Ms. Skinner invoked history in describing her new post, citing guidance issued in 1947 by then-Secretary of State George Marshall to George Kennan, founding director of the Policy Planning Staff, to “avoid trivia”—suggesting this will guide her approach to the role.

Born on Chicago’s South Side and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area by parents “deeply involved in the civil-rights movement,” Ms. Skinner said that she shares the commitment—though not the party affiliation—of her grandmother, a Democratic Party precinct captain in Chicago.

“I care more about the republic than partisan politics in the United States,” she said.

“I really feel as an African American that we have a deep stake in the direction of our country and that there’s a natural connection between who we are and America’s role in the world, and that we need to be at the table across all political parties in the United States,” Ms. Skinner said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Italy and Hungary Create ‘Anti-Immigration Axis’ by Soeren Kern

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12945/italy-hungary-immigration

“We are close to a historic turning point at the continental level. I am astonished at the stupor of a political left that now exists only to challenge others and believes that Milan should not host the president of a European country, as if the left has the authority to decide who has the right to speak and who does not — and then they wonder why no one votes for them anymore.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

“This is the first of a long series of meetings to change destinies, not only of Italy and of Hungary, but of the whole European continent.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

“We need a new European Commission that is committed to the defense of Europe’s borders. We need a Commission after the European elections that does not punish those countries — like Hungary — that protect their borders.” — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini have pledged to create an “anti-immigration axis” aimed at countering the pro-migration policies of the European Union.

Meeting in Milan on August 28, Orbán and Salvini, vowed to work together with Austria and the Visegrad Group — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — to oppose a pro-migration group of EU countries led by French President Emmanuel Macron.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment over porn-star payoffs is just a liberal fantasy by Marc Thiessen

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeachment-over-porn-star-payoffs-is-just-a-liberal-fantasy/2018/08/30/809d75b8-ac68-11e8-8a0c-70b618c98d3c_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.08d997d01288

Michael Cohen’s decision to plead guilty for making hush-money payments on Donald Trump’s behalf has raised the prospect that if Democrats take control of Congress, they might try to impeach the president over a matter completely unrelated to a criminal conspiracy with Russia. Good luck with that: Even if Democrats win back both the House and Senate, there is zero chance a two-thirds majority of senators will convict President Trump for paying off an adult-film star.

It would be the height of hypocrisy if Democrats tried to remove the president over allegations of illegality relating to extramarital affairs. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, congressional Democrats told us the private sexual conduct of a president does not matter, and that lying under oath to cover up a “consensual relationship” is not an impeachable offense. Then-Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said President Bill Clinton’s lies about his sexual relationship with a White House intern might have been illegal, but declared the scandal “a tawdry but not impeachable affair” — right before heading off to a fundraiser with Clinton. At the time, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) declared that the Starr investigation “vindicates President Clinton in the conduct of his public life because we’re only left with this personal stuff” and that Founding Fathers “would say it was not for the investigation of a president’s personal life that we risked our life, our liberty, and our sacred honor.”

But now that a Republican president is accused of covering up an affair, suddenly Democrats are channeling their inner Kenneth W. Starr.

Today, Democrats are outraged and appalled when Trump attacks special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and calls his inquiry a “witch hunt.” But back then, then-Sen. Joe Biden called the Starr investigation . . . wait for it . . . a “witch hunt.” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) declared Starr was “out of control” and accused him of having a “fixation of trying to topple the president of the United States.” Rahm Emanuel, then a White House senior adviser, accused Starr of engaging in “a partisan political pursuit of the president” while White House special counsel Lanny Davis (who is now representing Cohen) said Starr was a “desperate prosecutor who can’t make a case on Whitewater” and who should face “possible removal because of his conduct.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Vicious Anti-Trump Diatribes Mar Aretha Franklin’s Memorial Service: ‘Orange Apparition,’ ‘Leech’ By Debra Heine

By on September 1st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/vicious-anti-trump-diatribes-mar-aretha-franklins-memorial-service-orange-apparition-leech/

Continuing a sickening Democratic tradition of politicizing public memorial services.

The late great Aretha Franklin demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T, but that didn’t stop at least a couple of speakers at her funeral service in Detroit on Friday from trivializing her memory.

Democrats Michael Eric Dyson and Al Sharpton both took the opportunity to blast President Trump during their eulogies, continuing a sickening Democratic tradition of politicizing public memorial services.

Former presidents and preachers and legendary singers took to the stage at Greater Grace Temple to pay their respects to the Queen of Soul during the farewell extravaganza.

Marring the event, was the hateful and partisan tone taken by Dyson and Sharpton, who whipped the mourning crowd into a frenzy at every mention of Trump.

Dyson lauded Aretha Franklin for being socially conscious and politically active throughout her life — before viciously laying into the president.

“Then this orange apparition had the nerve to say she worked for him! You lugubrious leech!” he bellowed, apparently meaning that President Trump is a sad and mournful bloodsucker. “You dopey doppelganger of deceit and deviancy!” he continued, sticking with the alliteration theme. “You lethal liar, you dimwitted dictator! You foolish fascist!!!”

His use of the word “fascist” brought many in the cheering crowd to their feet.

“She didn’t work for you! She worked above you!” he howled angrily. “She worked beyond you! Get your preposition right! CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Signs Executive Order on Retirement Savings Directive aims to allow retirement money to be spread out over a longer period, make 401(k) plans more accessible to small businesses By Vivian Salama

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-executive-order-on-retirement-savings-1535673624?mod=trending_now_1

President Trump signed an executive order Friday directing the government to review rules requiring retirees to start taking annual withdrawals from retirement funds after they turn 70 ½ and to consider making it easier for small businesses to offer employees 401(k) plans.

The action, signed during a ceremony in Charlotte, N.C., ahead of the Labor Day weekend, was billed by the White House as a push to better prepare workers for retirement.

As part of the initiative, the Treasury Department would review the rules on required minimum distributions from retirement plans to see if investors can keep more money for a longer time in 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts and other tax-sheltered savings plans. If successful, it could allow retirees to spread retirement savings over a longer period.

The executive order also would direct the Treasury and Labor departments to consider issuing regulations that could make it easier and cheaper for smaller employers to band together to offer 401(k)-type plans for their workers.

“Such a big thing—they’ll be banding together,” Mr. Trump told an auditorium of supporters in Charlotte. “Small businesses will be able to pool their resources so that they can have the same purchasing power or even more, frankly, as large businesses.”

The arrangement has been available, but only to employers with an affiliation or connection, such as members of the same industry trade association.

“We will try to find policy ideas that will make joining a 401(k) plan a more attractive proposition for small employers to the ultimate benefit of their employees,” said Preston Rutledge, assistant secretary of labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration.

Dan Kowalski, counselor to the secretary of the Treasury, said the initiative aims to make multiemployer plans more understandable and useful for employees and less costly and burdensome for employers. It will also look to modernize the life-expectancy tables that are used to determine required minimum distributions. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

U.S., Germany at Odds Over Serbia-Kosovo Land Swap U.S. support for a land swap in Europe’s southeast is among a number of issues on which Berlin and Washington disagreeBy Laurence Norman and Drew Hinshaw

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-germany-at-odds-over-serbia-kosovo-land-swap-1535729377?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

VIENNA—The U.S. and Germany are at odds over a possible plan to redraw the border between Serbia and Kosovo and resolve one of Europe’s last major territorial disputes, with Berlin concerned the move could open a Pandora’s box of ethnic recriminations in some of the region’s poorest countries.

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, is regarded by Serbia as a breakaway state. But to seek backing for eventual European Union membership, the leaders of both nations have said they are considering border changes that could make the countries more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. There have been repeated clashes since 1999 between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, especially in the ethnically divided northern city of Mitrovica.

National security adviser John Bolton said last week that Washington had no qualms with the idea, despite two decades of Western opposition. But German officials said Friday they remain deeply skeptical.

“We don’t think discussions on a land swap between Kosovo and Serbia are constructive,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, on his way into discussions in Vienna between EU foreign ministers and Balkan officials. “It can open up too many old wounds among the people there.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anatomy of a Fusion Smear Democrats and their media friends made false claims about a lawyer.

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/anatomy-of-a-fusion-smear-1535757026

Cleta Mitchell is a top campaign-finance lawyer in Washington, D.C. This year she’s also been the target of a political and media smear that reveals some of the nastiness at work in the allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

A partner at Foley & Lardner, Ms. Mitchell was astonished to find herself dragged into the Russia investigation on March 13 when Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee issued an interim report. They wrote that they still wanted to interview “key witnesses,” including Ms. Mitchell, who they claimed was “involved in or may have knowledge of third-party political outreach from the Kremlin to the Trump campaign, including persons linked to the National Rifle Association (NRA).”

Two days later the McClatchy news service published a story with the headline “NRA lawyer expressed concerns about group’s Russia ties, investigators told.” The story cited two anonymous sources claiming Congress was investigating Ms. Mitchell’s worries that the NRA had been “channeling Russia funds into the 2016 elections to help Donald Trump.”

Ms. Mitchell says none of this is true. She hadn’t done legal work for the NRA in at least a decade, had zero contact with it in 2016, and had spoken to no one about its actions. She says she told this to McClatchy, which published the story anyway.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Off The Shelf: Seasons Change By Michael Brendan Dougherty

By on September 1st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/book-review-the-russian-revolution-revisionist-history-sean-mcmeekin/

EXCERPT

Some observations about the Russian Revolution, and about Sean McMeekin’s new revisionist history of it.

Editor’s Note: Every week, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes an “Off the Shelf” column sharing casual observations on the books he’s reading and the passing scene.

“…….Luckily, in the midst of all this, I assigned myself the utterly light reading of Sean McMeekin’s blockbuster revisionist history, The Russian Revolution. Actually, I’m not even kidding. Compared with the history books I was reading in earlier editions of this column, the death counts in this one were much lower. Fewer long descriptions of mass torture; Stalin is not yet in full flower in this volume, which follows in the tradition of Richard Pipes’s history of the same. McMeekin’s book, however, does more to locate Lenin’s success as due to the assistance and wishes of Germany.

I was raised in an era where Communism was largely detested and laughed at even on the left. By the time I got to Bard College (where McMeekin teaches now), the presence at the school of an Alger Hiss Chair of Social Science was kind of a joke among the politically aware on campus. In fact, I still have a hard time taking McMeekin’s conclusory warnings against radical socialism and Communism seriously precisely because it all seemed so obviously discredited in my life, even in places that vestigially venerated Alger Hiss. Still, I’m grateful for McMeekin’s work, which corrects the dim and entirely incomplete picture of the Russian Revolution given to me in my high-school education.

McMeekin is very helpful in making observations about the state of pre-revolutionary Russia:

The strength and also the weakness of autocracy was that there were few intermediary institutions between the tsar and his subjects to absorb and dampen popular frustrations. Labor unions were illegal. There was no national parliament to focus the government’s attention on social problems. In the brief era of liberal concessions that had followed Russia’s humiliating defeat in the Crimean War (1853–1856), Tsar Alexander II had allowed the creation of small provincial assemblies known as zemstvos in 1864, but their power had been substantially curtailed by his more conservative successor, Alexander III, in 1890, when the zemstvo councils were subordinated to regional governors appointed by the tsar.

Pre-revolutionary Russia was also shocked by its embarrassing showing in a war with Japan in 1905, a conflict that began in divergent interests and could even be said to have made a permanent mark on Tsar Nicholas II, in the form of a three-and-a-half-inch scar, given to him in all the way back in 1891 when a Japanese police escort lunged at him with his saber.

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