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February 2020

Stone Sentencing Ends Russia Collusion, Part I By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/roger-stone-sentencing-ends-russia-collusion-part-i/

But the Democrats are cooking up an even weaker sequel

The Roger Stone sentencing farce is as fitting an end to the Russia Collusion saga as one could conjure up . . .  though it might be more fitting to call it the end of Russia Collusion, Part I. No sooner did the first flick conclusively bomb than the media-Democrat complex was issuing the casting call for Russia Collusion, Part II.

In the sequel, you’re asked to believe that Putin is manipulating the chesspieces to steal a second term for President Trump – somehow preferring an incumbent who beefs up the U.S. armed forces, pressures NATO allies to beef up theirs, imposes painful sanctions on Moscow, provides lethal aid to Ukraine, ramps up U.S. energy production, and seeks to thwart the Kremlin’s coveted natural-gas partnership with Germany, over an unabashed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and whose policies would wreck the American economy, end the resurgence of American energy production, and hollow out the American armed forces.

It’s a lunatic plot. But the scriptwriters no doubt figure that if they can peddle what they’ve been peddling for the last two weeks, they can peddle anything.

Stone was sentenced to 40 months’ imprisonment. This was smack in the middle of the federal sentencing guidelines’ range — 37 to 46 months — that Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department argued would be a reasonable term. The AG’s position was a second-guess of the Stone trial’s prosecutors. That team, dominated by Mueller fabulists who portrayed the Stone case as Watergate revisited, had recommended something closer to a nine-year sentence.

For Ilhan Omar, the best defense is always . . . anti-Semitism By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/for_ilhan_omar_the_best_defense_is_always____antisemitism.html

On Thursday, Britain’s Daily Mail ran a story that America’s media has refused to cover: the strong evidence that Ilhan Omar married her own brother, Ahmed Elmi, in order to commit immigration and student loan fraud. Omar’s first response was precisely what everyone expected: She claimed anti-Muslim hate speech.

By Friday, though, Omar had escalated her rhetoric, not directly but by proxy. She retweeted a post from Humans 4 Human Rights asserting that any challenge to Omar is a Zionist conspiracy.

Reading through the site, it’s apparent that the people behind it are from the Jeremy Corbyn left. It calls Boris Johnson a “rich men’s lapdog,” and inveigles against the “BLATANT UGLY FACTS of the SLEAZY SCHEMING foundation & agenda of #BREXIT, pushed & supported by the WHITE PRIVILEGED CORPORATE BANKSTERHOOD, #UK’s elite #RulingClass, whose only aim is to get richer and damn the ordinary poor f***ks, the #BRITISH #PEOPLE.” It warns that, in a post-Brexit UK, “children . . . the sick, vulnerable and homeless” won’t survive.

The site doesn’t like Trump, calling his administration a “kakistocracy” (rule by bad people), and it hates and fears Jews. On the subject of a “Free Palestine,” it states that “‘Antisemitism’ is the weapon of choice for Psychological Warfare to silence all of us who demand a #FreePalestine!” The one thing it really loves is Ilhan Omar

A whiny Meghan Markle retreats when the Queen bans her use of the royal name By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/a_whiny_meghan_markle_retreats_when_the_queen_bans_her_use_of_the_royal_name.html

On Tuesday, news broke that the Queen had banned Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from marketing the “Sussex Royal” brand. Friday morning, another story broke, saying that Meghan was whining about this because she and Harry had already invested money in selling themselves. Also on Friday, the Queen won and Meghan backed down.

Queen Elizabeth comes from a generation that holds that you can’t eat your cake and have it. In other words, when you make choices, you have to take both the benefit and the burden of that choice.

Meghan Markle, on the other hand, is a child of the Veruca Salt generation. For those who are not fans of the classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie, Veruca is the spoiled brat who sings “I Want It Now.” Although Veruca gets her comeuppance, too many people have bought into the Veruca Salt theory that the world is hers for the taking:

A Hollywood Legend Talks Politics Actor-director Clint Eastwood, 89, weighs in on Bloomberg, Trump, #MeToo and the dispute over a reporter’s depiction in his latest film. By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-hollywood-legend-talks-politics-11582311359?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

‘Many years ago,” Clint Eastwood says—drawing close to me as if to share a secret—“I was in Las Vegas.” The Hollywood actor and director was staying at a hotel owned by Steve Wynn, the casino billionaire. “Steve called me up in the room and said, ‘Do you want to go play golf? We’re going out with Trump.’ I said, ‘Who?’ and Steve said, ‘Trump. You know Trump?’ ”

So Messrs. Eastwood and Wynn ventured out for a morning on the course with Donald Trump. “It was funny,” Mr. Eastwood says, “because every time I was together with Steve”—with the future president out of earshot—“he would say, ‘You know, Trump is doing those damn casinos. He’s going to lose his ass.’ ” And when Mr. Wynn couldn’t hear, “Trump would say, ‘You know, Steve is going to do this big hotel. He’s going to land right on his ass. There are too many hotels now.’ ”

Back and forth the dissing went for hours, Mr. Eastwood recalls: “Together, they were great friends, but separately they were giving each other a hard time. I don’t know how much tongue-in-cheek was in all of that, but it was very amusing for me, the lone guy.”

Mr. Eastwood relates this story over a frugal lunch, in response to my asking for his thoughts on Mr. Trump. We’re seated outdoors at the Tehama Golf Club, which he owns, with views of Carmel Valley and the Monterey Peninsula, among the most expensive slivers of real estate in America.

Victor Davis Hanson: 2020 presidential race will ‘split’ the Dems in a way the Republica Julia Mustons have never fractured

https://www.foxnews.com/media/victor-davis-hanson-bill-hemmer-2020-democratic

The 2020 presidential election will split the Democratic Party in a way that the Republican Party has never, Stanford University professor and author Victor Davis Hanson predicted Thursday.

In a wide-ranging interview on host Bill Hemmer’s “Hemmertime” podcast, Hanson said that during Wednesday’s ninth presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, Democrats should have gone for front-runner Sanders’ jugular instead of billionaire Mike Bloomberg who was making his onstage debut.

“Democrats should have been going after Bernie Sanders because he poses an existential threat to the Democratic Party,” he said.

“I mean, we talk about the Republican fractures and Never-Trumpers. But, Donald Trump ran on … essentially a Reaganesque agenda: conservative judges, tax reform, more energy. … Even the thing with China — get tough with China — was nationalistic,” Hanson continued.

“But Sanders,” he notes is “not running on anything remotely similar to what Bill Clinton embodied or even Barack Obama. This is a radically socialist agenda that will split the Democratic Party in a way the Republican Party has never fractured.”

Furthermore, numbers show the Democratic race is increasingly neck-and-neck between the former three-term New York City mayor and the millionaire Democratic socialist.

‘A threat to Israel is a threat to Canada’: Peter MacKay to Jewish commander Newly released documents suggest Canada stands ready to help defend the Jewish state

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/a-threat-to-israel-is-a-threat-to-canada-peter-mackay-to-jewish-commander

Israel has received private assurances Canada stands ready to help defend the Jewish state, but just how far the Harper government intends to take that commitment remains unclear.

Newly released documents say Defence Minister Peter MacKay told Israel’s top military commander, Maj.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, during a 2011 visit to the Middle East, that “a threat to Israel is a threat to Canada.”

The statement came a year after cabinet colleague Peter Kent was upbraided as junior foreign affairs minister for telling a Toronto-based publication that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

The declaration, appearing in an internal summary of Mr. MacKay’s trip to Israel, could have important implications given the increasing military co-operation between the two countries. Under the Harper government, Canada’s support of Israel has been unwavering, even in the face of mounting international tensions over Iran’s nuclear program.

When he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Ottawa in March, Prime Minister Stephen Harper emphasized Canada wants to see a peaceful resolution in the troubled region, but it’s unclear how far Canada has committed itself in the volatile region.

A spokesman for Mr. MacKay said the defence minister’s comment was intended as an expression of support.

Anti-Jewish Hatred Is Alive and Well by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15601/anti-jewish-hatred

Just as in the 1930s, National Socialist anti-Semitism and far-right anti-Semitism — and their consequences for the Jews — were of no interest to anyone, the anti-Semitism growing today seems of no interest to anyone.

None of the countries represented at the ceremony to commemorate the Holocaust, except the United States, appeared interested in the threats to Israel or the genocidal intentions of its enemies.

If, seven decades ago, the existence of the new State of Israel had depended on the countries represented this year in Jerusalem… the war that resulted would effectively have been a second Holocaust.

The ceremony held in Jerusalem on January 23 for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp created the opportunity to remind the world about the Holocaust. The commemoration of the only attempt totally to exterminate an entire people by industrial means, which was among the worst crimes in history, offered the international leaders who attended the opportunity to reaffirm the need to fight anti-Jewish hatred at a time when, throughout the world, it is rapidly gaining ground.

“The industrial mass murder of six million Jews, the worst crime in the history of humanity, was committed by my countrymen”, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier humbly said.

One nevertheless feels the need to ask whether those international leaders who attended are actually ready to align their actions with their words.

Almost all the speeches there defined anti-Semitism in a vague way, and when the words became more specific, they pointed only at National Socialism (Nazism) and the “far right”.

People nostalgic for Nationalist Socialism still exist, as well as far-right political movements, of course; so the world, it seems, does need to remain vigilant. Today, however, in the West, political parties that openly supporting National Socialism, or right-wing movements that promote antisemitic ideas, do not, bluntly, exist. Since the end of World War II, there have been no anti-Semitic murders committed in Europe by people from the “right.”