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October 2019

A Cure Worse Than the Disease by Mark Steyn

https://www.steynonline.com/9785/a-cure-worse-than-the-disease

“As we see in the UK, Canada, Europe and elsewhere, a permanent state power is ever more comfortable suppressing the possibility of political change. But in America the active partnership between the most lavish and secretive agencies on the planet and the Democrat-media complex is a threat of an entirely different order. Matt Taibbi understands that America can survive a “bad president”, but that it cannot survive the normalization of the Comey-Brennan-Clapper-McCabe rogue state.”

Happy Thanksgiving to our Canadian readers, Happy Columbus Day to our American readers, Happy First Day of Sukkot to our Jewish readers. We would wish our Ukrainian readers a Happy Defender of Ukraine Day, but we’re worried it might be the annual celebration of Hunter Biden’s latest oligarch-kissing sinecures.

~Matt Taibbi is a man of the left, but he is an iconoclastic one and The Washington Post’s recent attempt to #MeToo him has probably made him more so. He’s also a much better writer than most lefties, hobbled as they are by the Downton-Abbey-for-progressives rules of identity politics. Ten years ago, I was very admiring of his evisceration of The New York Times’ beloved comic figure Thomas Friedman:

Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: ‘I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, “We need better headlights for our tri-plane.”‘ And off he goes.

Indeed Taibbi can do Friedman rather better than the original:

After Thomas Friedman correlates (on the back of a napkin) freedom and the price of oil, Mr Taibbi correlates, rather more plausibly, happiness and the size of Valerie Bertinelli’s ass (with accompanying graph).

A lot of us were content to do low comedy a decade back. But these are ever more fevered times and Matt Taibbi has written a sobering piece after three years of what he calls “a permanent coup”. The nub of his argument:

My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.

No, James Comey, America Doesn’t Want Your Help Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/14/no-james-comey-america-doesnt-want-your-help/

With so little to unite Americans on the Left and Right, our shared rejection of further assistance from the former FBI director just might be the salve the country needs.

America is a dangerously divided nation. Democrats, unable to accept the results of a presidential election three years ago, would now undo the constitutional expression of American voters by pushing a half-cocked impeachment inquiry. Democratic presidential candidates offer outlandish ideas such as free healthcare to illegal immigrants and subsidized gender reassignment surgery for inmates while Democratic voters fret their field of candidates is too old, too left-wing, and too sluggish to oust Donald Trump in 2020.

Republicans want the House of Representatives back, especially after witnessing the Democrats’ nonstop assault on the president. They also are impatiently awaiting the outcome of multiple investigations into how the Obama Administration weaponized the most powerful government agencies in the world to sabotage Trump’s campaign and destabilize his presidency. (Don’t miss my review of Ball of Collusion, the excellent book by Andrew McCarthy.)

But despite our deep partisan differences and, at times, raging animus toward our political foes, there is one thing on which nearly all Americans can agree:

No, James Comey, we don’t need your help.

Why Trump Is Absolutely Right To Get U.S. Troops Out Of Syria By Sumantra Maitra

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/14/why-trump-is-absolutely-right-to-get-u-s-troops-out-of-syria/

Moving American troops from Syria would be perhaps the most far-sighted thing Trump does as president, and would benefit the United States in the years to come.

In a surprising late-night statement (late for the U.K., anyway), last week the White House declared that American troops will move aside and let Turkey invade Syria. “Turkey will soon be moving forward with its long-planned operation into Northern Syria,” the statement said, adding, “The United States Armed Forces will not support or be involved in the operation, and United States forces, having defeated the ISIS territorial ‘Caliphate,’ will no longer be in the immediate area.”

The statement continued, “The United States Government has pressed France, Germany, and other European nations, from which many captured ISIS fighters came, to take them back, but they did not want them and refused. The United States will not hold them for what could be many years and great cost to the United States taxpayer.”

Even though I am a conservative foreign policy realist, my research deals with great powers and neorealism, and I regularly advocate restraint and retrenchment and amoral realpolitik in these pages, I never in my wildest dreams anticipated waking up to an actual realpolitik move from the White House.

Naturally, the laments are severe. From Sen. Lindsey Graham to The Guardian and BBC, everyone is accusing the White House of giving up on U.S. responsibilities, and worse, “stabbing the Kurds in the back.” None of those is true. Moving American troops would be perhaps the most far-sighted thing Trump does as president, and it would be beneficial to the United States in the years to come.

Buddy Dyer and His Multicultural Committee’s Antisemitism Problem Rasha Mubarak’s Palestinian-based bigotry and terror aimed at Jews. Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/buddy-dyer-and-his-multicultural-committees-joe-kaufman/

This past July, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer convened the first meeting of his newly formed Committee on Multicultural Affairs. According to the group’s website, “This appointed committee is comprised of 17 community leaders that represent diversity in race, gender, age, religious beliefs, national origin, cultural background, profession, sexual orientation and gender identity.” Part of the Mayor’s diversity appears to, as well, include extreme bigotry against Jews and the state of Israel, as fourth down on the list of the 17 member names (on the Orlando government page devoted to the committee) is none other than rabid anti-Semite Rasha Mubarak.

Rasha Ahmad Mubarak has an intense hatred of Israel. As a result, she has affiliated and continues to affiliate herself with radical Muslim groups associated with Hamas, including: CAIR, which has foundational and financial ties to Hamas; Islamic Relief (IR), which the Israeli government has labeled a Hamas front and has banned; and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), which has coordinated activities with the Holy Land Foundation (HRF), a now-defunct Hamas financing wing that the US government named a Specially Designated Terrorist (SDT) in December 2001. Mubarak is currently the President of the PCRF Orlando chapter.

Beyond her radical affiliations, Mubarak has exhibited her own support for Hamas. At the end of the 2014 Israel-Gaza Conflict, along with photos of a jubilant Hamas, who had, bizarrely, just declared victory, Mubarak tweeted, “Thousands of people celebrating in the streets of Gaza for the victory. Alhamdulillah. #VictoryForGaza.” And following continued Hamas rocket attacks against Israel, in November 2012, Mubarak retweeted her fellow CAIR operative, Laila Abdelaziz, who had tweeted, “Don’t worry ya Gaza, we’re working hard for you in Florida.” Mubarak emphatically added, “Yes we are!”

Ukraine Was Investigating Hunter Biden Before Trump’s Phone Call A revelation alters the timeline in the Dems’ surreal ‘impeachment inquiry’. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ukraine-was-investigating-hunter-biden-trumps-matthew-vadum/

Officials in Ukraine reportedly opened an investigation into an energy company that employed former Vice President Joe Biden’s son long before President Donald Trump’s July 25 nothing-burger of a telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that spurred the Democrats’ haphazard, increasingly Kafkaesque impeachment inquiry.

The time element of the revelation, devastating as it is to the 2016-election-nullification push disguised as an impeachment process, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media which is overly preoccupied –as usual— attacking President Trump.

The information came last week from investigative reporter John Solomon, who recently was hired as a Fox News contributor, after Ukraine’s new prosecutor general, Ruslan Ryaboshapka, said Oct. 4 he plans to review previous corruption investigations into Hunter Biden and his former employer, Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. Hunter got the job in 2014 while his father was the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine.

Solomon’s growing prominence in the media ecosystem means that leftist journalists –when they’re not busy making excuses for the secretive un-American Star Chamber-like impeachment process initiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi– now feel obligated to engage in character-assassination efforts against him.

ABC News Issues Correction after Airing Kentucky Gun Range Footage During ‘Slaughter In Syria’ Segment By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/abc-news-issues-correction-after-airing-kentucky-gun-range-footage-during-syria-segment/

ABC News issued a correction Monday after it aired footage from a 2017 Kentucky military demonstration in the middle of a segment on the war in Syria.

“This video, obtained by ABC News, appears to show the fury of the Turkish attack on the border town of Tal Abyad two nights ago,” said foreign correspondent Ian Panell during the Sunday “World News” segment.

The clip was also featured on “Good Morning America” on Monday morning. It depicts explosions that occurred at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky during an event called “Military Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show.”

“CORRECTION: We’ve taken down video that aired on “World News Tonight” Sunday and “Good Morning America” this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy,” ABC wrote in a Monday tweet. “ABC News regrets the error.”

The Origins of the Transgender Movement By Madeleine Kearns

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-origins-of-the-transgender-movement/

We must not ignore cultural blind spots that put children at risk of abuse.

Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from remarks delivered at a Heritage Foundation summit.

I’ve been asked to talk about the origins of transgenderism and how it relates to children and their exploitation. But first, I would like to start with a little story.

Yesterday I was wandering around outside the Supreme Court chatting with some people who were there to support what’s known as the LGBTQ+ community. I spoke with a lovely guy who identified as homosexual and then four teenage girls who identified as lesbian and queer. They asked me what I thought of the Human Rights Campaign, so I told them up front that I think it’s a force for tremendous harm in this country. Then, I asked them what they thought of Martin Luther King’s idea, the one about not defining people by irrelevant characteristics like their skin color, or in this case their sexual desires. They said it sounded like a very good idea.

Later, two men who were slightly less open-minded wanted to tell me about some horrible feminists called “terfs” who are apparently in cahoots with an even more horrible right-wing institution I probably hadn’t heard of because I’m Scottish. It’s called the Heritage Foundation. So, if anyone knows anyone from there, just let me know, because I want to make sure I don’t die by association.

The reason I mention this story, of course, is — other than the Heritage Foundation being a symbol for all that is evil and far-right in American politics — my experience with the LGBTQ+ community was that it wasn’t really a community so much as it was a big mishmash of people who feel they belong to a certain cause for very different reasons. Yet they were all there at the end of the rainbow to claim their pot of gold, which they had been promised by the Human Rights Campaign.

I’ve been asked to get to the origins of this movement, and I’m going to try to do that. Of course, as you know, it’s just one stripe of the rainbow, and I couldn’t possibly do it justice in ten minutes, but I’ll do my absolute best. There are three things that I think have been changing since the mid-20th century. The first is in medicine, the second is what I like to call an ontology of desire, and the third is what I and others call the politicization of everything.

Three Nations That Tried Socialism and Rejected It By Lee Edwards

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/failure-of-socialism-israel-india-united-kingdom-adopted-free-market-policies-and-prospered/

Israel, India, and the United Kingdom each lifted itself from economic stagnation by switching to free-market policies.

Socialists are fond of saying that socialism has never failed because it has never been tried. But in truth, socialism has failed in every country in which it has been tried, from the Soviet Union beginning a century ago to three modern countries that tried but ultimately rejected socialism — Israel, India, and the United Kingdom.

While there were major political differences between the totalitarian rule of the Soviets and the democratic politics of Israel, India, and the U.K., all three of the latter countries adhered to socialist principles, nationalizing their major industries and placing economic decision-making in the hands of the government.

The Soviet failure has been well documented by historians. In 1985, General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev took command of a bankrupt disintegrating empire. After 70 years of Marxism, Soviet farms were unable to feed the people, factories failed to meet their quotas, people lined up for blocks in Moscow and other cities to buy bread and other necessities, and a war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in sight of the body bags of young Soviet soldiers.

The economies of the Communist nations behind the Iron Curtain were similarly enfeebled because they functioned in large measure as colonies of the Soviet Union. With no incentives to compete or modernize, the industrial sector of Eastern and Central Europe became a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency and waste, a “museum of the early industrial age.” As the New York Times pointed out at the time, Singapore, an Asian city-state of only 2 million people, exported 20 percent more machinery to the West in 1987 than all of Eastern Europe.

Political correctness versus common sense By Robert Curry *****

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/political_correctness_versus_common_sense.html

The masters of political correctness in America are moving fast. 

For example, consider the explosion of so-called gender identities.”  In 2016, New York City released a list of 31 genders approved by the city’s Commission on Human Rights.  While writing my book Reclaiming Common Sense, I consulted Google to find out how many genders there were then and was told that the answer was 63.  Today, while writing this article, I re-Googled that question, and it was revealed to me that the latest number is 112.

Political correctness about gender identities is metastasizing rapidly, making it difficult for ordinarily busy people to keep up.  And keep up we must, just as people living in the Soviet Union had to keep up with the constantly changing Communist party line.  Not long ago, everyone understood the unchanging commonsense reality that human beings are either male or female.  Today in New York City, the rules have been changed — and failure to keep up can have dire consequences.  New York City’s special 31 genders are surrounded by special legal protections.  Businesses can now be fined as much as $250,000 for refusing to address someone by his preferred pronoun.  As we have seen in the news, even in cities that have not yet have caught up with New York City in terms of imposing legal penalties, failing a test of political correctness about genders can result in public shaming or the loss of a job.

There is more to this story.  Consider the names given the genders officially approved by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights.  The names include “drag king,” “drag queen,” “butch,” “femme queen,” “gender fluid,” “gender blender,” “gender gifted,” “gender bender,” and “femme person of transgender experience.”  Talk about rubbing our noses in it!  The commissioners have gone out of their way to be outrageously transgressive.  This is not accidental.  They are making it abundantly clear they are ridiculing normal people and the world of common sense — the more outrageous, the better.

Destroying America’s History One Icon at a Time By Fletch Daniels

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/destroying_americas_history_one_icon_at_a_time.html

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Less than two decades later, destroying monuments is becoming a national sport in America with little outcry and support from the media.

Columbus Day brought a refreshing reminder that leftists are effectively erasing America’s heritage as an important step in transforming America into a socialist state. 

As I look, “Happy Indigenous Peoples” day is approaching 100K tweets, which is simply advancing the narrative that was already set in motion by leftists across America. 

A teacher posted some of the proud pictures from her propagandized little ones with sayings like “Christopher Columbus didn’t find America,” and “Christopher Columbus is a really mean man.”  How charming. 

A Christopher Columbus statue was torn down in Los Angeles in 2018 and several others were vandalized this year. 

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan.  The prevailing cultural zeitgeist at the time ran clearly against toppling statues.  Don’t these third-world barbarians know that they are destroying world culture?  It helped elevate the Taliban’s evil in the eyes of the world.