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August 2020

 Joe Biden’s & Other Rice Selections…Redux                                                                                                                        by Gerald A. Honigman

http://q4j-middle-east.com/

 Months ago, I was having a discussion with friends about favorite rice dishes. I usually prefer wild varieties.

A bit later, the story surfaced about the horrendous travesty of justice that General Michael Flynn, a much decorated career army officer and President Trump’s former National Security Adviser, was subjected to via the machinations of the previous Obama Administration–whose real target was/is President Trump himself. So this got me thinking about various “rice species” even more fervently again. 

The clincher prompting what follows below came at the end of the first week of August 2020. Breaking news said that President Trump’s opponent in the upcoming American election, former Obama VP Joe Biden, narrowed had his choice for a vice-presidential running mate down quite substantially.

Dr. Susan Rice–like Biden, another former pea in President Obama’s like-minded, carefully chosen pod–had made the final cut.

Given the above, let’s focus on certain “rice species” in particular…

The first is preferred by Republicans–that would be the Condoleezza variety—the one which/who shares many of her fellow Republican petro-business-related buddies’ interests in the Middle East. Think the likes of James (“F-the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway”) Baker III, the Bush family, John Sununu, and numerous others who made mucho dinero off of assorted autocratic Arab petro-potentates’ black gold. James Baker’s law firm, for example, was chosen by the Saudis to represent them against American 9/11 victims, and his law partner was the American ambassador to that desert kingdom.

Let’s turn the clock back to learn more about this bright, attractive, but somewhat troublesome rice variety–at least for those folks hoping that Israel would get a fair shake in Washington.

Mail-in voting could accidentally disenfranchise millions of voters Marc A. Thiessen

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/mail-in-voting-could-accidentally-disenfranchise-millions-of-voters/

President Trump is suing Nevada over its recent decision to send absentee ballots to all voters, and warning the country “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent.” Trump’s critics argue that there is no evidence that voting by mail results in fraud. Trump is right that mail-in voting is a source of potential voter fraud, especially on the scale that is being proposed. But the bigger problem is not vote fraud — it’s vote failure.

There is plenty of evidence that mail-in voting has the unintended consequence of disenfranchising of millions of eligible voters. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study of the 2008 presidential election found that about 3.9 million voters said they requested mail ballots but never received them; 2.9 million ballots that were sent out did not make it back to election officials; and about 800,000 were rejected for a variety of reasons — either because they were postmarked after the election, arrived without a signature, were improperly filled out or did not match voting records. “The pipeline that moves mail ballots between voters and election officials is very leaky,” the study concluded.

More recently, the 2020 Democratic primaries should serve as a cautionary tale. About six weeks after New York’s congressional primaries, winners were not declared in two closely watched House races until Tuesday. That’s thanks to complications in counting the surge of more than 400,000 mail-in ballots, of which state officials have already invalidated 84,000. In California, election officials rejected more than 100,000 mail-in ballots in the state’s March presidential primary. To put these numbers in perspective, Trump won the White House in 2016 thanks to roughly 80,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined. In Pennsylvania alone, mail ballot problems kept about 92,000 people from voting in a primary in a state that Trump won by just 44,000 votes four years ago. In Florida, about 18,500 mail-in ballots were not counted, and in Nevada, about 6,700 were rejected. In a close race, such failures could easily call the results into question.

Should Judge Sullivan Be Disqualified from Flynn Case? An Appeals Court Is Asking By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/should-judge-sullivan-be-disqualified-from-flynn-case-an-appeals-court-is-asking/

D.C. Circuit judges seem disturbed by the degree to which Judge Sullivan has exhibited bias in Flynn’s case.

Maybe Judge Luttig was right all along.

I had the misgivings you’d expect back in late May, when I disagreed with J. Michael Luttig, the stellar scholar and former federal appeals court judge, regarding how the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals should handle the Flynn case.

At the time, that court’s three-judge panel had not yet heard oral argument on Michael Flynn’s mandamus petition — i.e., Flynn’s request that the panel find that federal district judge Emmet Sullivan was acting lawlessly. Sullivan had not only failed to grant the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn; he had appointed a former federal judge (the overtly anti-Trump John Gleeson) to posit the argument abandoned by DOJ — to wit, that Flynn should proceed to sentencing because he had pled guilty to a false-statements charge, waiving his right to contest the case any further in exchange for the government’s agreement not to file any other charges. Basically, Flynn was asking the appellate court to order Judge Sullivan to dismiss the case.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Luttig contended that “there are ample grounds in the actions the district court has already taken for the appeals court to order that the government’s motion to dismiss be heard by a different judge, and it should so order.”

It is interesting to revisit this assessment in light of an order issued by the D.C. Circuit on Wednesday. The Circuit directed that the participants in the dispute over Judge Sullivan’s actions, including Judge Sullivan himself, must address the question of whether Sullivan should either recuse himself or be disqualified by the Circuit. Arguments in the case will be heard this coming Tuesday, August 11, in a rare en banc review by the full Circuit (i.e., all active judges who have not taken senior status, minus one who has recused himself, so it will be a ten-judge panel).

Let’s back up for a moment.

COWARDICE A LA CARTE: EDWARD CLINE

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/08/cowardice-la-carte.html

cowardice

: lack of courage or firmness of purpose

Synonyms

cowardliness, 
cravenness, 
dastardliness, 
gutlessness, 
poltroonery, 
pusillanimity, 
spinelessness

High Noon

I never mind all the political “Red Scare” info surrounding “High Noon” (released 1952), nor the conflicts between Carl Forman and  Fred Zinnemann, the associate producers. What fascinates me about the film is not the gun fights, but rather the variety of  expressions of cowardice and of the betrayal of Will Kane, (played by Gary Cooper ) the marshal of the town of Hadleyville in the Arizona Territory, as he prepares to face a gang of killers who arrive to kill him. He can find no one willing to be deputized to help him face the gang. He experiences hostility, indifference, and hatred,

The cowardice evokes  for me the current cowardice of Americans who are willing to submit to the COVID-19 panic and are willing to don face masks and buckle into “social distancing” in their behavior. They are willing to wear face masks even during their personal, one-on-one  encounters.

Seth Rich Case Blown Wide Open, Judge Makes Shocking Move Mark Megahan

http://newshourfirst.com/2020/08/07/breaking-seth-rich-case-blown-wide-open-judge-makes-shocking-move/

The Seth Rich case just got a fresh breath of life this week as a judge made a shocking request of the British government. Beltway pundits are jumping for joy because they think this is the crack in the lid which will blow the Deep State cover right off the whole can of worms.
 
Way back in the mists of time, on May 16, 2017, Fox news published a story then quickly retracted it. Fox claimed, at the time, that Seth Rich was the one who leaked emails to Wikileaks, not the Russians. The source they relied on backed down when he got a cease and desist order from the family. His parents cried foul and sued Fox News for intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them by “slandering” their murdered son.
 

It seems the only way to get to the bottom of it and decide whether the article was a “sham” as the Rich family claims, or “substantially true” as Fox News insists, is to ask Julian Assange. Federal Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn started the ball rolling to do exactly that. Fox news is the side which needs the evidence but the judge was the one required to make the formal request. “Mr. Assange, as founder of WikiLeaks, is exceptionally suited to provide testimony that will be highly relevant to these issues. Therefore, Fox News, by and through this letter of request issued by the District Court, is formally requesting the testimony of Mr. Assange for use at trial.”

Judge Netburn sent a formal Hague Convention request for testimony from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Many beltway insiders are convinced Assange’s testimony will blow the case “wide open and finally provide answers concerning the unsolved murder.” Assange has always denied he got the emails from Russia and also has hinted that the DNC employee was the real leaker. Right after the material was released, Seth Rich was killed in what police call a robbery, “even though his wallet, phone, jewelry and other valuables were not taken.

Convergence: Pandemic Amid the Seventh Crisis Bob MacGuffie and Antony Stark

http://www.independentsentinel.com/convergence-pandemic-amid-the-seventh-crisis/

As the events precipitated by the Pandemic have unfolded over the past six months, their impact on our culture, the economy, and politics have converged with a Seventh Crisis already underway in America.

Why is this the seventh crisis?  In their 1997 book, “The Fourth Turning” demographers William Strauss and Neil Howe view Anglo-American history through a generational lens.  Their compelling account organizes Anglo-American history into seven repeating cycles starting in the fifteenth century.

Referring to historical cycles as a “saeculum,” they use a Roman term that basically covers a long human life, say eighty to one hundred years.  As the generations are born, mature, age and pass, they give each saeculum a seasonal and cyclical quality.  The authors note many recurring patterns over the ages giving each saeculum a repeating seasonal pattern.  Their study and organization of history along these recurring cycles has informed the names they have applied to identify each of the phases: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, the Crisis.

They have also distinguished four generations by the phase into which each was born:

Prophets born in a High, Nomads in an Awakening, Heroes in an Unraveling and Artists in a Crisis.  As each saeculum proceeds, the dominant characteristics of each generation are formed by the forces at play specific to the saeculum phase within which it is born.  By examining the seven saecula from 1435 onward, the authors make a compelling case that man’s nature as forged by generation, drives history through amazingly similar cycles.  The book examines the twentieth century’s conclusion of the sixth “Great Power” and seventh “Millennial” saecula and their generations in detail.  They illuminate the “Unraveling” of the 1920s leading to the “Crisis” of the ‘30s, which climaxed with WWII.

Was Booker T. Washington Too White? Harold F. Callahan

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/08/was-booker-t-washington-too-white/

According to the Washington Post, on May 31, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture’s “Talking about Race” portal published a graphic of “Some Aspects and Assumptions of White Culture in the United States.” As reported by Thomas DiLorenzo, it characterized “most U.S. white people most of the time” as including “self-reliance, independence, merit, competitiveness, belief in equality under the law, protection of property rights, ability to speak and write plain English, avoidance of conflict, politeness, Christianity, the Judeo-Christian tradition, the work ethic, associating ‘pay’ with work, the scientific method, respect for authority, planning for the future (i.e., savings, delayed gratification), and belief in the traditional nuclear family.”

As people started noticing the claims that such characteristics represented whiteness, rather than what Frederic Hess and R.J. Martin termed “intellectual and personal traits that promote personal and civic success – in the U.S. or anywhere else,” it created enough controversy that the graphic was taken down last month, leaving many unanswered questions in its wake.

However, that graphic helped me understand something that has puzzled me for a long time. That something is that every Black History Month, which annually promotes many role models for imitation, gives such short shrift to Booker T. Washington. While my research has led me to conclude that he was an exemplar of the moral means to success – self-improvement that benefits others as well through voluntary arrangements – apparently that makes him “too white” to emulate today. But that is a hard conclusion to defend.  

Iran: China’s Newest Colony? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16309/iran-china-colony

The deal is a clear win for China; the $400 billion will be invested over 25 years, which is a small amount of money for the second-largest economy in the world. China will also have full authority over Iran’s islands, gain access to Iran’s oil at a highly discounted rate and increase its influence and presence in almost every sector of Iranian industry, including telecommunications, energy, ports, railways, and banking. China, incidentally, is the world’s largest importer of oil.

Even some of Iran’s politicians and state-owned newspapers have begun criticizing the deal. A headline in the Iranian newspaper Arman-e Melli, for example, surprisingly criticized the government: “Iran is not Kenya or Sri Lanka (to be colonized by China).”

The ruling mullahs are selling off the country to China, just as some African governments did. Beijing appears more than happy to make deals with dictators, ignore their human rights abuses and plunder their nations to advance its own global hegemonic ambitions.

A slogan in which Iran’s ruling mullahs have taken pride since they came to power in 1979 is: “Neither East nor West.” The Iranian regime has long boasted about its independence from both Western and Eastern powers. A new secret deal with China, however, appears to be giving Beijing significant control over Iran.

The 25-year secret deal, which looks like a colonial agreement, grants China significant rights over the nation’s resources. Leaked information reveals that one of its terms is that China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also receive a 12% discount and it can delay payments by up to two years. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses. It is also estimated that, in total, China will receive discounts of nearly 32%.

Bad medicine: Fauci’s HCQ Waterloo By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/bad_medicine_on_hcq_faucis_waterloo.html

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been hailed in the press as the nation’s top infectious disease expert.  He’s been feted with presidential honors and high praise for his medical acumen.  His policy disagreements with President Trump, supposedly as the voice of “science,” have made him a hero on the left.  Such laurels and the implied power conveyed have led to some weird side-effects — such as his image featured on ladies’ underwear and declarations that he’s the sexiest man alive.

But it’s about time this idol topples, based on this summary about Fauci’s startlingly bad medicine and bad medical policy on COVID, which has in fact cost thousands of lives.  And yes, he is very specifically to blame. 

Virologist Steven Hatfill, writing in RealClearPolitics, summed up just how disastrous Fauci has been for America’s COVID response, based on Fauci’s suppression of evidence about hydroxychloroquine, the safest and most effective treatment for COVID based on all reputable studies, and the political power he’s used to halt its treatment even as the rest of the world got well from the inexpensive medication’s use.

To mask or not to mask? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/to_mask_or_not_to_mask_.html

Americans are being urged to, forced to, guilted into, and bullied into wearing masks. If we don’t wear masks, Democrats smugly tell us, we’re selfish killers who have no regard for the life and safety of others. But is that true? It turns out that the science about masks is anything but settled – and that masks come with some significant downsides.

Even as Fauci the Hypocrite says masks for thee but not for me, serious scientific authorities are moving in the other direction. Holland’s scientific community holds that masks don’t help and could hurt:

‘Face masks in public places are not necessary, based on all the current evidence,’ said Coen Berends, spokesman for the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. ‘There is no benefit and there may even be negative impact.’

[snip]

[The Outbreak Management Team] believes they detract from a clear three-pronged message that has kept deaths from coronavirus down to less than half the rate in Britain: wash hands regularly, maintain social distancing of 1.5 metres and stay at home if suffering any symptoms.

The one exception outside of the medical frontline has been on public transport, where masks are mandatory on the basis it is difficult to stay apart on crowded buses, ferries and trains.

[snip]

‘The evidence for them is contradictory. In general, we think you must be careful with face masks because they can give a false sense of security. People think they’re immune from disease or stop social distancing. That is very negative.’