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August 2020

Is Racism in America Worse than in Nazi Germany? Oprah’s new favorite writer thinks so. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/racism-america-worse-nazi-germany-bruce-bawer/

As Shelby Steele has famously pointed out, there are two basic approaches that black American public figures take when addressing whites. There are “challengers,” such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who “say you are racist until you prove otherwise.” Then there are “bargainers,” who send white Americans a message to the effect that “I won’t rub America’s racism in your face if you won’t hold my race against me.” Writing in 2007, Steele identified Oprah Winfrey and then presidential candidate Barack Obama as bargainers. Of course, after the election Obama flipped, transforming into a world-class racism scold. That left Oprah, who for a long time was America’s #1 bargainer, and who owes her popularity – and hence her status as the richest black person in America – largely to her longtime tendency to celebrate America for the opportunities it offers rather than to excoriate it for its sins.

Oprah remained a bargainer, more or less, until very recently, when, in a transparent effort to play catch-up with the Black Lives Matter movement, she put Breonna Taylor – who was shot to death on March 13 by Louisville police officers – on the cover of O Magazine and paid for 26 billboards demanding the perpetrators’ arrest. Continuing down the same path, Oprah has now glowingly endorsed Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, the latest in the current wave of bestselling, poorly written jeremiads depicting America as a cesspit of race hatred. Announcing on August 5 that Caste was her new Book Club selection, Oprah gushed: “I don’t think that there has ever been another pick that has been as vital as this one. This book might well save us.”

Is Wilkerson’s book the key to America’s salvation? On the contrary, Wilkerson, a former Chicago bureau chief of the New York Times and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, has written a truly execrable and genuinely dangerous tome which, along with Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, seems destined to further Obama’s wicked work of sowing racial discord in the least racist county on earth.

Politico defames as ‘racist’ a Republican candidate for the House By Andrea Widburg

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

“Listen to Greene. You’ll discover she comes, not from a place of hate or racism, but from a belief in love for mankind, the equality of all people, and the Constitution.The same article describes how GOP House Members, instead of supporting Greene, fell over themselves to disavow her. Say the word “racist,” and every Republican other than Trump turns into a slimy, quivering mass of groveling, apologetic jelly. But voters know that Green, although perhaps tactless, is about 95% factually accurate (which is more than most politicians can say). That’s why she won. She has high expectations for every American in a constitutional system.

The leftist media’s so-called “objective” standards or absolute “values” always favor Democrats. When honest conservatives present accurate opposing views representing different values, the media slander them and, to their shame, the GOP spineless hacks grovel.”

…….Marjorie Taylor Greene won the GOP nomination for a Georgia seat in the House of Representatives. Politico paints this as a GOP disaster because it claims that Greene says racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic things. House Republicans, who have learned nothing from Donald Trump about fighting back against media calumnies, dutifully piled on. In fact, Politico is defaming Greene, who is not racist, is not anti-Semitic, and is not unreasonably concerned about Sharia Islam in American politics.

Tuesday’s Politico article is entitled “New GOP headache as candidate condemned for racist videos wins Republican primary.” It relies on an earlier Politico article that purports to have discovered that Greene made “incendiary” comments against Muslims, Jews, and blacks.

In the earlier article, entitled “House Republican leaders condemn GOP candidate who made racist videos,” Politico offers up baseless leftist opinions. The following are a few examples of things that Greene said that are neither anti-Semitic, unreasonably Islamophobic, nor racist.

It says a lot that Biden chose Kamala, and none of what it says is good By Andrea Widburg

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

Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris to be his running mate shows the shallowness of the Democrat’s talent pool. Biden handicapped himself by explicitly pledging to ignore men and then implicitly bowing to the demand that his female choice be black. However, it’s still somewhat shocking that, out of all the black, female, Democrat politicians in America, the best he could do was Kamala.

What’s most striking about Kamala is that, like Barack Obama, she has nothing in common with the American black experience. Despite her slamming the race card on the table, the only thing she shares with the generic “black vote” is skin color.

Kamala did not come from a family that has traveled through generations of the American black experience. There’s no history of Southern slavery, no Reconstruction, and no being part of the endless variety of post-Reconstruction stories. Some blacks struggled through the Jim Crow South, some reveled in the Harlem Renaissance, some roped cows in the Wild West, some were part of the single biggest American migration when they moved to the upper Midwest, some embraced the middle class, and some got sucked into the undertow of the underclass. Each is an American story.

The Spies Who Hijacked America Steven P. Schrage, PhD – Reported by Matt Taibbi

Excerpted concluding segment of a very long, but fascinating report about the intrigue between British intelligence and our intel bureaucracy to bring down President Trump, using Michael Flynn as the ‘kill shot.’  Unbelievable information written by Matt Taibbi.Read it all when you have the time. Impossible to format on email.

Thanks to Jim O’Neill for the tip about this profoundly researched piece of genuine investigative journalism. C.B…

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-spies-who-hijacked-america

The Getaway

My former supervisor, using his booming voice and bold ideas, likes to be the center of attention. Yet for two years his allies with powerful intelligence, political, and media ties seem to have done the impossible. They made this massive figure almost completely disappear.

The Mueller and DOJ IG investigations of these scandals relied in large part on input from DOJ and FBI officials linked to potential abuses — including the FBI’s Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Lisa Page and DOJ’s Andrew Weisman. When Congress grilled long-time FBI leader Mueller about why he didn’t interview “Steven Schrage” or others who might expose DOJ or FBI improprieties, he stammered: “[i]n those areas, I am going to stay away from…I stand by that which is in the report and not so necessarily with that, which is – which is not in the report.” 

Given Mueller’s stated preference to “stay away” from those with information that might implicate members of his team and the DOJ IG’s reliance on DOJ insiders, it’s not surprising that people like me who were in a position to expose the Russiagate narrative were not interviewed.