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September 2019

Downton Abbey – A Review By Marilyn Penn

http://politicalmavens.com/

One of the more interesting aspects of the long-running television series was how skillfully Julian Fellowes managed the transition from 19th century British mores to the 20th. From the introduction of the automobile to the radical concept of a chauffeur marrying into an aristocratic family, almost every episode had some element of gradual change in the lives of upper class gentry and glimpses of how the downstairs servants could begin to see their aspirations materialize, frequently with the support of their benevolent upper class employers. While all this was happening, we had the best-written character of Lady Grantham, played to perfection by Dame Maggie Smith to represent the other side of these “advances” with her clever and witty pronouncements of the old-fashioned way of thinking and doing.

So it was particularly disappointing to see Fellowes’ graceful touch become heavy-handed in the movie version. The film begins with the announcement of an imminent visit from the King and Queen who will stay at Downton overnight. Without giving away the specific twists in the plot, there are hurt feelings among the staff at the planned usurpation of their usual jobs for this occasion and an overly absurd plan is hatched to level the playing field. Devoid of subtlety, it also defies credibility, particularly in several of the staff whom we have come to know so well over a long period of time. Concomitant with this is the introduction of homosexual freedom surfacing in a private club attended by a member of the staff, something that might be believable if it were not taking place during the hoopla of the royal visit. Other sub-plots involve theft, jealousy, adultery, illegitimacy and paternity rights and wrongs. It made me feel as if Fellowes was consulting his checklist of issues and inserting them without regard to logic or the long friendship and understanding most viewers would have with his characters who were very real to us.

To its credit, Downton Abbey is lush, scenic, photogenic and helped by a magnificent score. Fans of the series are legion and will see the movie regardless of its defects but I wish Fellowes had not sullied his almost perfect track record for having written every episode with this clunky finale. Too bad Lady Grantham wasn’t his editor for the screenplay.

The Humanitarian Hoax of Impeachment: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 49 by Linda Goudsmit

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

The entire 2020 lineup of leftist Democrats and their Congressional sycophants have assured the nation that impeachment of President Trump is necessary to protect the nation. It is an odd assertion considering that President Trump has been wildly successful by pro-America standards. Let’s review.

In less than three years President Trump has added 6 million jobs to the workforce, unemployment is the lowest it has ever been for the black, Hispanic, and Asian communities. The United States is energy independent and we are now the leading exporter of energy in the world. So, what exactly do the Democrats mean when they say that YOU, the nation, will be safer without POTUS? Let’s find out.

It appears there is pervasive pronoun confusion in the Democrat assertion! The corrupt pay-to-play Democrats would definitely be safer without America-first President Trump in charge, but YOU, the American taxpaying voter, will definitely not be safer. Let me explain.

In 1994, ice skater Tonya Harding stunned the world with her participation in the unprecedented and shocking physical attack against competitor Nancy Kerrigan. Fans were familiar with anabolic steroid doping schemes in athletics, but a physical assault intended to break Nancy Kerrigan’s leg?? The attack was simply beyond the threshold of public tolerance. Fans want a fair fight – a fair competition between athletes who perform and compete fairly for the competition prize – no cheating or dirty tricks allowed.

So it is with politics. The radical leftist Democrat party has pushed the public past the threshold of tolerance. Americans voters want a fair fight – a fair competition between politicians who present their positions and compete fairly for the election prize – no cheating or dirty tricks allowed.

Real-Life ‘Schindler’s List’ Holocaust Survivor Introduces Algemeiner Honoree Sir Ben Kingsley at ‘J100’ Gala

DPS Request:
This is special – very special. You can see from the short report below what the story is, but you cannot begin to appreciate how it was told unless you were at this Algemeiner Dinner (I was) or, barring that, watching the video which accompanies the story. There are 3 parts. All are marvelous and need to be watched in order to fully grasp the importance of what was being said. The 10 minutes that Sir Ben Kingsley spoke left me profoundly moved but also awestruck as I watched a truly great actor deliver a finely crafted, important and moving speech in a way which only those who are gifted with the ability to transmit thoughts and feelings through physical presence and spoken words can do. No notes. No pauses. No hesitations. Perfectly crafted. Every gesture and movement clearly designed to enhance his words. The words were the substance, of course, but their delivery was the work of a master craftsman.

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https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/09/27/real-life-schindlers-list-holocaust-survivor-introduces-algemeiner-honoree-sir-ben-kingsley-at-j100-gala/
Real-Life ‘Schindler’s List’ Holocaust Survivor Introduces Algemeiner Honoree Sir Ben Kingsley at ‘J100’ Gala
By Algemeiner Staff – 9/27/19

Daniela Lavender, Sir Ben Kingsley, Halina Silber, Mushka Efune and Dovid Efune at the 6th annual Algemeiner J100 gala in New York City, Sept. 27, 2019. Photo: PMC / Sean Zanni for The Algemeiner.
Famed British actor Sir Ben Kingsley was honored with the prestigious “Warrior for Truth” award on Thursday at the 6th annual Algemeiner ‘J100’ gala in New York City.
Kingsley, whose most prominent Jewish role was as Itzhak Stern in the 1993 Steven Spielberg film “Schindler’s List,” was introduced by Holocaust survivor Halina Silber — who was No. 16 on the real-life list compiled by German industrialist Oskar Schindler.
In his subsequent remarks, Kingsley remembered, “When I met with the great Steven Spielberg to discuss playing Itzhak Stern, I asked him, ‘What is my narrative function in this role?’ and he said, ‘Conscience. Witness.’ As I was filming, I had in my pocket a photograph of Anne Frank and I would say to this beautiful photograph, ‘Dear girl, I’m doing this for you.’ Everyday on the set I would say that.”
“Well, dear friends, tonight I can assure you that if given another opportunity to tell your story I can say wholeheartedly, ‘I’m doing this for you,’” he added.
Watch the speeches of Silber and Kingsley here:

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/09/27/real-life-schindlers-list-holocaust-survivor-introduces-algemeiner-honoree-sir-ben-kingsley-at-j100-gala/

Italy: Salvini Out, Migrants In by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14933/italy-salvini-immigration

During just the past several weeks, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy has increased incrementally…. Many of the new arrivals are reaching Italy by using new people-smuggling routes that originate in Turkey.

The interior ministers from France, Germany, Italy and Malta met on September 23 in the Maltese capital, Valletta, where they agreed to a tentative proposal for shipwrecked migrants to be “voluntarily redistributed” throughout the European Union…. Similar proposals have failed in the past and there is no reason to believe this one will be different, largely because the concept of European solidarity is a myth. So far only six EU states have agreed to migrant redistribution: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain.

NGOs such as Open Arms claim to be playing an invaluable humanitarian role in saving the lives of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression in their home countries. Statistics show something else entirely.

Salvini has condemned the new government as one “produced by Paris and Berlin, born out of a fear of giving up power, without dignity and without ideals, with the wrong people in the wrong place.”

Italy’s new government, which has pledged to reverse former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s hardline approach to migration policy, appears to have triggered a new wave of mass migration from northern Africa.

More than 1,400 migrants reached Italian shores since the new government took office on September 5, according to data compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

During just the past several weeks, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy has increased incrementally: 59 migrants arrived on September 6; 67 arrived on September 9; 121 arrived on September 14; 259 arrived on September 15; 275 arrived on September 18; and 475 arrived between September 19 and September 25, according to the IOM. Overall, the number of migrant arrivals in September 2019 is up by more than 100% over the number of arrivals in September 2018.

MARK STEYN ON BIDEN*****

https://www.steynonline.com/9755/hunted-biden

Joe Biden is not Bill Clinton in his artful prime; indeed, Hunter Biden does not even rise to Chelsea Clinton at her dopiest. The Dems can accuse Trump of trying to “dirty up” the Bidens, but it’s hard to dirty up an overflowing sewer:

The defense of Democrats is that Joe Biden may have said he got rid of this prosecutor, but all the governments, every government in Europe wanted this prosecutor gone. That may be true. But the foreign minister of Germany and the foreign minister of France didn’t go on TV and brag about how he gave a six-hour ultimatum to a foreign government to fire its prosecutor-general. The only politician on earth who did that is Joe Biden – and then you’re surprised that suddenly people are excited about why Hunter Biden is getting 50 grand a month in a country where the average wage at that time was $200 a month.

In April 2014, a sleazy Ukrainian oligarch called Mykola Zlochevsky put Hunter Biden and Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, on the board of Ukraine’s biggest oil-&-gas company, Burisma.

How did it get to be so big?

Well, Mr Zlochevsky and his business partner Nikolay Lysin were respectively Minister of Natural Resources and the chairman of the Natural Resources parliamentary committee for much of the previous twelve years. There is a rule in Kiev that no Member of Parliament should have any business beyond his parliamentary responsibilities – so, as Messrs Zlochevsky and Lysin’s parliamentary responsibilities included oil and gas, they happily spent their terms of office handing out oil and gas licenses to companies they personally controlled (for which Burisma is the overarching holding company).

Mr Lysin did not live to enjoy his oil-gotten gains. A healthy fortysomething, he swerved to avoid a rabbit in the road one night and ploughed his Lamborghini at 150mph into (appropriately) a set of gas pumps. That’s the official story. So now Mr Zlochevsky owns all of Burisma.

That said, it is not, technically, a Ukrainian company. It’s registered in Limmerssol, the second biggest city in Cyprus but one that the locals now call Limmerssolgrad, because it’s the preferred destination for Russian money-launderers. As to how preferred it is with Ukrainian launderers, by the time Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board virtually the entire national economy was Cypriot: In 2014 92 per cent of Ukraine’s outward investment went to Cyprus.

False Testimony Sworn statements at a recent congressional hearing on policing veered sharply from the truth: here are the facts. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/police-shootings-racial-bias

The House Judiciary Committee, now controlled by Democrats, had called a hearing to address a “series of deaths of unarmed African-American men while in police custody” as well as the “mistrust between police and marginalized communities.” Throughout the four-hour session, a photo array of blacks killed by the police played continuously on video screens around the room, interspersed with statistics allegedly proving that the police harbor lethal racist bias. Committee chairman Jerry Nadler claimed in his opening remarks that the “frequency of these killings and the absence of full accountability for those responsible send a message to members of the African American community that Black Lives Do Not Matter.” Nadler invoked the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, as examples of “police misconduct against African-Americans,” though Barack Obama’s Justice Department found no misconduct in the first case, and criminal charges against the Freddie Gray officers were dismissed either before or after trial.

Minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin, Al Sharpton escorted Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, to the witness table, surrounded by a mob of photographers. Garner had tragically died of a heart attack after New York Police Department officers tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes in July 2014; Garner resisted arrest, and one of the officers used a chokehold to take him down. Garner’s repeated last words—“I can’t breathe”—became an international rallying cry against police brutality. Carr gave impassioned testimony denouncing the lack of consequences for the police “murder” of her son: after five years of federal and local investigation, the officer who used the fatal chokehold was fired, but no prosecutions or other actions in the case have taken place. Carr left the witness table after her remarks to sit in the spectator section, but she remained a frequent reference point for the Democratic argument that the police devalue minority lives.

The Ukraine ‘Whistleblower’ Isn’t a Whistleblower This bureaucrat is endangering national security by abusing his access to confidential diplomatic information in order to interfere in the 2020 election. Adam Mill

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/27/the-ukraine-whistleblower-isnt-a-whistleblower/

Nobody is above the law, not even the former vice president. Not even a deep state leaker who is using his access to confidential diplomatic information to sway the 2020 election.

Yet this is not the position of the recent leak disguised as a “whistleblower’s disclosure” addressed to Representative Adam (still waiting for “direct” collusion evidence) Schiff (D-Calif.) and Senator Richard Burr (R.-N.C.). The complaint is a tantrum by a self-appointed guardian of elite privilege whose nonsensical monograph seeks to criminalize the president’s inquiry into the 2016 collusion hoax and the apparent leveraging of U.S. aid by Joe Biden to protect his son and his son’s company from criminal prosecution.

I say it is nonsensical because this Ukraine “scandal” is a perfect shoe-on-the-other foot demonstration of the elite’s sacred belief that their hatred of Trump immunizes them from the effects of laws they seek to use as weapons against the president. To paraphrase the famous exchange between Richard Nixon and David Frost:

Question: “Would you say that there are certain situations . . . where a deep-state Resistance bureaucrat can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation, and do something illegal?”

The Left: “Well, when somebody on our team does it, that means it’s not illegal.”

That’s the only way to make sense of how the self-sainted bureaucrat and the press can call what he did “whistleblowing.”

The term “whistleblower” has a legal definition and, for the author of the August 12 letter, it means an employee “who reasonably believes there has been a violation of law, rule, or regulation; gross mismanagement; waste of resources; abuse of authority; or a substantial danger to public health and safety.”

By contrast, a person who leaks “a difference of opinion over policy, strategy, analysis, or priorities for intelligence funding or collection,” is not a whistleblower.

Dems’ impeachment frenzy is the prelude to the coming time bombs about to explode in their faces By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/dems_impeachment_frenzy_is_the_prelude_to_the_coming_time_bombs_about_to_explode_in_their_faces.html

Lost in all the frenzy over impeachment — sparked by the Deep State leaker posing as a “whistleblower” (passing along hearsay does not qualify for protection under whistleblower statutes) — is the trio of ticking time bombs that Democrats know are about to detonate in their faces.

The three time bombs have names: Horowitz, Huber, and Durham.  When the Department of Justice inspector general issues his report, then John Huber and John Durham, the U.S. attorneys tasked with investigating crimes suspected in the Clinton Foundation; Uranium One; and the FISA warrants used to spy on the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency will be free to start seeking indictments, or to unseal indictments that may have already been issued by their grand juries.  The reports and the unleashing of the two U.S. attorneys are coming soon, as those mentioned in the I.G. report are currently submitting their responses for inclusion in the final report.

One poker tell of the Dems’ panic is the demand that Attorney General Barr recuse himself, or even be impeached.  Having left his lucrative law practice and returned to the attorney generalship out of a sense of duty to correct the corruption that has spread through the Justice Department and its subsidiary, the FBI, William Barr will not flinch in going after miscreants once they are indicted.  That’s why they desperately want him out of the game.

Solomon: These once-secret memos cast doubt on Joe Biden’s Ukraine story By John Solomon,

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/463307-solomon-these-once-secret-memos-cast-doubt-on-joe-bidens-ukraine-story

Former Vice President Joe Biden, now a 2020 Democratic presidential contender, has locked into a specific story about the controversy in Ukraine.

He insists that, in spring 2016, he strong-armed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor solely because Biden believed that official was corrupt and inept, not because the Ukrainian was investigating a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, that hired Biden’s son, Hunter, into a lucrative job.

There’s just one problem.

Hundreds of pages of never-released memos and documents — many from inside the American team helping Burisma to stave off its legal troubles — conflict with Biden’s narrative.

And they raise the troubling prospect that U.S. officials may have painted a false picture in Ukraine that helped ease Burisma’s legal troubles and stop prosecutors’ plans to interview Hunter Biden during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Yale Alumni Stage an Intervention By Nathan Harden

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2019/09/27/yale_alumni_stage_intervention_110360.html

When a somber-looking group of family and friends tell you to sit down because it’s time for a serious heart-to-heart conversation about your drug addiction or some other destructive behavior, we call it an intervention. Imagine you are Yale University, and the man telling you to sit down is Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz. Behind him are a host of other concerned alumni, each wearing the look of tough love. 

Rosenkranz is currently campaigning for a seat on the Yale Corporation, the university’s governing body. Backed by a grassroots effort of alumni, his campaign comes in the wake of several high-profile controversies at Yale in the areas of racial politics, free speech, and academic freedom. Perhaps the best known of these controversies resulted in Nicholas Christakis, a prominent member of the Yale faculty, resigning his position as a college master after becoming the target of an angry student protest over views he and his wife expressed on the censorship of Halloween costumes. Mr. Rosenkranz agreed to a brief email interview with RealClearEducation to discuss his bid to become a Yale trustee, his ideas for reform at Yale, and his vision for higher education more broadly. 

Can you tell readers a little about yourself, your career, and your interest in higher education? 

I teach constitutional law at Georgetown. For many years, my primary extracurricular activity has been my work to support free speech and intellectual diversity at American universities. I serve on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which is the preeminent defender of free speech on campus, and on the Board of Directors of the Federalist Society, which is the leading proponent of intellectual diversity and debate in legal education. In 2015, Jonathan Haidt and I co-founded Heterodox Academy, which promotes intellectual diversity of university faculty and unfettered debate on university campuses.