Displaying posts published in

March 2019

The Steele Dossier’s ‘Corroborated’ Claims Were Old News By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-russia-steele-dossier-claims-old-news/

It spun old facts. It didn’t give us new ones.
Ross Douthat had an excellent column in Times on Sunday about the state of the Trump-Russia investigation. He homed in on the Steele dossier and its four major claims (or, as he put it, the four “big possibilities” it raised). The first of these “was that Russian intelligence was behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the release of stolen emails through WikiLeaks.” Ross adds that this big possibility was “soon well corroborated.”

I want to take issue with both the suggestion that Steele should get any credit for this claim and the implication that the corroboration of it is in any way a corroboration of Steele. On the matter of Russia’s culpability for hacking the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks, Steele was just following the crowd. His vaunted Russian sources clearly gave him no foreknowledge about it, notwithstanding that he’d been poking around for Trump–Russia conspiracy evidence for well over a month by July 22, 2016, when publication of the DNC emails began.

This is worth exploring because it highlights an insidious aspect of the dossier that has gotten too little attention: This opposition-research screed produced by the Clinton campaign did not, through Steele’s purportedly well-placed sources, foretell events. Rather, after events occurred, Steele wove them into the Democrats’ Trump-Russia conspiracy narrative.

Palestinians: No Peace or Reconciliation with the ‘Infidels’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13827/palestinians-peace-infidels

The ruling by the Palestinian Scholars’ Association is also aimed at sending a message to the US administration that the Palestinians and the Muslims will have nothing to do with the “Deal of the Century.” Moreover, it serves as a reminder that even if some Arabs do sign peace treaties with Israel, there will always be those Muslims who will denounce them as “traitors” and accuse them of acting against the Koran and the rulings of Islam.

Mahmoud Abbas, meanwhile, is acutely aware that Muslims will condemn him — and perhaps issue a fatwa calling for his death — if he ever dares to make peace with the Jews. That suspicion might explain his recent comment during a visit to Egypt, when he was reported to have said that he does not intend to end his life as a traitor by making concessions to Israel

In a recent move, Palestinians have begun resorting to Islam to justify their vehement opposition to normalization of relations with Israel. Palestinian leaders and activists have long cited political and nationalist reasons to explain their opposition to any form of normalization with Israel — but Islam is a new factor in the mix.

The increased talk about the possibility of some Arab countries normalizing their relations with Israel has prompted the Palestinians to wage a campaign aimed at pressuring Arab leaders to refrain from embarking on such a move. The most recent campaign is titled: “Normalization is a Crime.”

Pigs on Two Legs Turn on Each Other By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/pigs-on-two-

Tennis great Martina Navratilova until recently had long been coronated as a social justice trailblazer. She was one of the first marquee celebrity athletes to come out as gay, and then to advocate lesbian issues in and out of sports. But suddenly the icon seems out of step with her progressive legend status.

Navratilova had the temerity to suggest that one’s sex is biologically determined. In other words, transgenderism, even with the imprimatur of the social and biological sciences, cannot trump our innate genetic codes.

A frustrated Navratilova was editorializing mostly in the context of men “transitioning” to women, while in many cases still enjoying innate muscular and size advantages over females in same-sex sporting events. As a result, she is being demonized unfairly as an intersectional traitor (“transphobic”) and thus increasingly disinvited from a number of events by what is known as the LGBTQ community.

In other words, her intersectional femaleness and gayness are revoked by improper ideology.

Barack Obama, once the progressive “god” who was acclaimed to have the power to cool the planet and halt the rising of the seas, had the recent audacity to suggest, quite understandably, that young black teens need not ostentatiously show their wealth with gaudy chains, or highlight their sexuality with a cadre of “twerking” girls. Worse, the now multi-million-dollar-mansion-residing Obama sort of suggested that young inner-city African-Americans who do such gauche things might be insecure about either their income or their sexuality.

Now even the divine Obama is having his ankles bitten on social media as a counterrevolutionary, despite his prior denunciations of white bitter clingers, “the 1 percent,” and greedy capitalists who delusionally believed they had built their own businesses.

Trump Has Saved the Free Speech Movement By Troy Worden

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/trump-has

He took a hard punch in the face for all of us.”

With these words, President Donald Trump transformed Hayden Williams, the young conservative campus activist who was viciously punched in the face at UC Berkeley last month, from a victim to conservative folk hero.

Trump went further. With Williams looking on in starstruck awe, the president announced at the Conservative Political Action Convention on Saturday that he would sign an executive order that would oblige American universities to comply with the First Amendment’s free-speech protections or risk losing federal funding.

For President Trump, it was an old refrain: his words echoed sentiments he expressed exactly two years and one month ago on Twitter, the day after the city of Berkeley was set ablaze in a riot over conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’s planned speaking engagement on campus.

Making Korean Lemonade By Angelo Codevilla

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/03/making

Donald Trump bought a Korean lemon in 2018. Last week, he made some lemonade.

By walking out on his second summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Trump stepped out of the policy trap that he had entered the previous year. By showing seriousness in a negotiation that seemed likely to continue along the previous three U.S. administrations’ fanciful pattern, Trump lent force to America’s dealings with China as well as others.

Ending the North Korean “denuclearization” charade is honest and sobering. But it does nothing to meet our dire our need for protection against ballistic missiles, including from Korea.

Making nice with Kim at the 2018 Winter Olympics was among the foolish legacies of Trump’s original foreign policy team. With regard to Korea, as with China, Afghanistan, Europe, and everything else, the intellectual horizon of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was bounded by George W. Bush’s Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama’s Ben Rhodes. Like their predecessors, Tillerson and McMaster followed “the allies,” and believed in “progress.” Hence, they lent themselves to South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s campaign to use the Seoul Olympics to advance his leftist party’s attempt to legitimize the North Korean regime.

Moon knew that America’s buy-in to that campaign was essential to legitimizing it with South Korean public opinion. Kim, for his part, put on his lugubrious charm. And, for the umpteenth time since his father started building nukes and missiles three decades ago, Kim offered to give them all up. This time, for sure!

Biden Apologizes for Calling Mike Pence a “Decent Guy” There is no room for decency in the DNC. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273029/biden-apologizes-calling-mike-pence-decent-guy-daniel-greenfield

The Party of Hate will tolerate no decency.

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday clarified that “there is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ” after he took fire from usually friendly sources over calling Vice President Pence a “decent guy.”

“There is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the vice president,” Biden tweeted.

The context was Cynthia Nixon, who has her own anti-Semitism problems, berating Biden for calling Pence a decent guy.

Cynthia Nixon: .@JoeBiden you’ve just called America’s most anti-LGBT elected leader “a decent guy.”

Please consider how this falls on the ears of our community.

Biden quickly rushed out to appease the DSA wing of the Dems.

Tehran Joe could have said that while he disagrees with Pence on gay rights, he’s still a decent guy and the way to win over people you disagree with is through outreach. But that’s not an acceptable viewpoint in the Hate Party which believes in the absolute evil of everyone it disagrees with. And so Biden is forced to make the first of what will no doubt be many cringing apologies.

Because there is no room for decency in the DNC.

Amer Alhaggagi Gets 15 Years in Prison Bay area ISIS collaborator sought to kill 10,000 with bombs, fire and poison. March 4, 2019 Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273037/amer-alhaggagi-gets-15-years-prison-lloyd-billingsley

Amer Sinan Alhaggagi plotted with ISIS to kill 10,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area, targeting cities with bombs and fire and gay nightclubs with rat-poisoned cocaine. Last week, as Courthouse News reports, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sentenced Alhaggagi to 15 years in prison. Alhaggagi’s attorney and family argued that he was just an online blowhard but Judge Breyer wasn’t going for it.

“His words were very dangerous,” Breyer said. “Words matter.”

According to ABC News, Alhaggagi told a confidential source “I live close to San Francisco, that’s like the gay capital of the world. I’m going to handle them right, LOL. I’m going to place a bomb in a gay club, Wallah or by God, I’m going to tear up the city. The whole Bay Area is going to be up in flames.” Alhaggagi also plotted to kill gays by distributing cocaine laced with rat poison.

As Fox News reported, Alhaggagi opened several Twitter and Facebook accounts for ISIS supporters. He then allegedly told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to kill 10,000 people in the Bay Area and brought three backpacks to be used in a future attack.

His attorney Mary McNamara told reporters Alhaggagi was “a young guy who is immature, said some stupid things online,” and that the FBI “sent out their best people to try to get a sting operation going.” A statement from Alhaggagi’s family claimed “Amer is not a terrorist or a violent person, but a young man born and raised in California who said many foolish things on the Internet. Amer did not commit or plan a violent act.” The FBI didn’t see it that way.

Trump Promises Executive Order Denying Funds to Anti-Free Speech Universities Students must be free to challenge “ridiculous and dangerous ideas,” Trump tells CPAC. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273041/trump-promises-executive-order-denying-funds-anti-matthew-vadum

President Trump vowed to issue an executive order protecting free speech at America’s universities Saturday as he invited Hayden Williams, a conservative victim of leftist violence on campus, to share the stage with him at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

“We reject oppressive speech codes, censorship, political correctness and every other attempt by the hard left to stop people from challenging ridiculous and dangerous ideas. These ideas are dangerous,” Trump said March 2 in a speech that was interrupted by chants of “USA! USA! USA!” “Instead we believe in free speech, including online and including on campus.”

“Today I’m proud to announce that I will be very soon signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research grants.”

“If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they’ve got to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people and old people to speak. Free speech. If they don’t, it will be very costly,” he said. “Every day we’re restoring common sense and the timeless values that unite us all. We believe in the Constitution and the rule of law.”

The president did not provide details about the upcoming executive order. Robby Soave of Reason reports that “an official with knowledge of the executive order confirmed … that a draft exists. Indeed, the plan is to penalize universities that do not protect free speech by taking away their federal grants.”

Can pretty-boy Justin Trudeau survive? By Peter Skurkiss

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/can_prettyboy_justin_trudeau_survive.html

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is on the ropes. He has two thorns in his side that could either force his resignation or at least significantly dim his chances for reelection in October.

The first problem is that Trudeau’s former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, testified under oath before a parliamentary committee that Trudeau and his top aides tried to pressure her to drop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a large engineering company headquartered in Montreal.

The company is accused of paying the late Libyan strongman Muammar Khadafy’s family nearly $50 million in bribes between 2001 and 2011 to secure contracts. This is illegal according to Canadian law. SNC admitted to wrongdoing and was angling for an agreement to pay a fine rather than to be criminally prosecuted. But Wilson-Raybould and her office stood firm and said no. In doing so, she testified: “I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”

Who Is Paying for Sandy O? By James Lewis

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/who_is_paying_for_sandy_o.html

So, a new star is born!

Not just a pop star, but a D.C. power pop star.

Alexandria!

But if we have any political brains, we know perfectly well that miraculous new stars coming out of bartending in the Bronx represent Big Money somewhere. You don’t buy a hot new barrista from the Bronx without a lot of careful stage management, big investments, and payoffs to Nancy Pelosi to back off and let this freshling rise far beyond her actual achievements — and the media, let’s face it, are anti-American.

So we have to ask our own questions and guess at some reasonable answers.

In Hollywood, stars are launched, not “discovered” by magic. They represent huge studio investments. Launch the wrong star, and somebody loses a ton of money. Hollywood is not in biz to lose money.

So here is the puzzle.

Alexandria O-C, AKA Sandy O, is suddenly rising to high headline status, followed by a gazillion Twitter-heads, including some actual human beings, perhaps, and it all happened with amazing speed.