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Ruth King

Dr. Robin McFee:Putin… Hillary’s lame excuse for losing

To be blunt, it is idiotic to think Putin would prefer Trump over Hillary as the 45th President of the United States…. Especially since Americans didn’t even want Hillary as POTUS, ever the contrarian, he would have likely wanted her to win.

Putin is an opportunist, and agent provocateur, not an ally or proponent of a strong America. Consider Putin’s track record….

Aligned and armed our adversaries
Blackmails Europe bartering heat for compliance
Invader of sovereign nations (Georgia [Bush presidency], Ukraine [Obama])
Grabbing much of the Arctic, including Santa’s Village
Challenger to NATO

Putin is many things – and as I’ve warned over the last 8 years, mostly dangerous, especially to US interests. Putin has made no secret in lamenting (and thus trying to reverse) the fall of the Soviet Union. He will kill, invade, negotiate, intimidate and manipulate to reach his objectives. He has made no secret that Russian interests and global petroleum are interrelated and on his radar screen; no drop of oil, or puff of gas, or LNG ship or pipeline, or transit hub escape his interests or appetite. He has made no secret Russia will be a force to be reckoned with. Remilitarizing and rebuilding alliances, especially with unsavory folks who counter our interests have been part of his efforts for nearly a decade, and without significant pushback from this Administration. The rise of Russia is real, their internal problems, questionable human rights issues, and economic roller coaster notwithstanding. Russia is the agent provocateur in the Middle East, with a growing presence in the Med, and strong ties with Iran and Syria. Russian influence is tenuous but growing in Turkey, and Tel Aviv has not ignored Moscow, nor has Putin ignored Netanyahu.

Then consider how Putin has achieved these under our national noses…President Obama as leader of the US has made it very, very, very easy for the Russian president to forward an aggressive and aggressor agenda. Given Hillary Clinton was part of the Obama Administration – the Secretary of State and titular leader of our foreign policy – a policy that left an international leadership void Putin could exploit. Clinton, as Secretary of State on her first major interaction with Russia, besides the sophomoric stunt of bringing a toy to the meeting, couldn’t even inspire her team to translate “Reset” in Russian correctly. Clinton couldn’t come up with a significant foreign policy win for our great nation. Her record was uninspiring.

National Geographic Puts a 9-Year-Old Transgender Girl on the Cover By Tyler O’Neil (huh????!!!!)

National Geographic magazine announced last week that it will feature its first transgender model on the cover in January, a 9-year-old “girl.”

“She has lived as an openly transgender girl since age 5, and she captured the complexity of the conversation around gender,” wrote National Geographic editor Susan Goldberg in a letter announcing the issue. “Today, we’re not only talking about gender roles for boys and girls — we’re talking about our evolving understanding of people on the gender spectrum.”

Avery Jackson, the 9-year-old transgender from Kansas City, Kansas, will appear on the cover wearing hot pink cheetah-print pants. Confident, laid back, and poised with pink-dyed stripes through shoulder-length hair, she does indeed look like a girl, but is 9 — or 5! for that matter — an old enough age to determine one’s own gender? Especially if it is opposite her biological sex?

The magazine’s issue focuses on the “Gender Revolution,” pointing out 80 different 9-year-olds in eight different countries. It hits shelves on December 27, and is guaranteed to stir up controversy.
Sponsored

Indeed, shortly after the announcement, a Twitter user named Mark Romano declared, “I used to love National Geographic. Unfortunately, it has become nothing but a cesspool of Left-wing insanity.”

Beneath Avery Jackson’s picture stands the single quote, “The best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy.”

Leftists Ally with Jihadis in Our Public Schools By Karin McQuillan

After being subjected to jihadi propaganda by a Palestinian on an illegal visa in their third grade public school class, 8-9 year old American kids were led by their teacher to attack Israel. Watch the video.

It’s like a Maoist Red Guard indoctrination session. The children’s African-American teacher, Brooke Barnett, tells the children that Israel is hiding what’s really going from the world, but that the video they are about to see “is true, we can see what’s happening.”

After the program the third-graders were encouraged to share their reactions. The first child says, “Israel is wrong to think that Palestine could be theirs, because they already have a lot of land and they shouldn’t just take more thinking they own the world.”

“They (Israelis) should be peaceful but they’re not…they should not kill other people.”

“It’s not fair that people (jailed jihadis) will not see get to see their families.”

One child says, “When I grow up I’m going to go to Palestine and protest.’ “Welcome, welcome,” replies the speaker, “We need you to come to make struggle.” Another voice is heard saying, “Thank you.”

In the video, Code Pink leftist Ariel Gold, invited by the school to put on the program, reminds the children, “You guys are studying the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Child, from the United Nations…so the United Nations makes laws around what people can do, what countries can do, and many times Israel violates those laws, and that is what we are working for, for international law.”

Did you know that United Nations law is taught in our elementary schools? Yes, so-called Human Rights, not the U.S. Bill of Rights, is a standard topic in third grade social studies.

Student: “If somebody is attacking…you say Inshallah, so God can help us stop it.” “That’s beautiful,” breathes their teacher. Inshallah, beautiful, God Bless America, forbidden.

Burnett helps the next child, who mumbles something about not being able to protect yourself, “She’s saying it’s not fair they (Israelis) are more powerful. They (the Arabs) should be able to defend themselves but they (the Israelis) are more powerful because they have guns.”

In an unplanned moment of humor, an Arabic-speaking child is confused into thinking that Israeli terrorists are attacking Palestinians, and suggests the Palestinians on the West Bank build their own wall to protect themselves. “If they attack you …build your own wall…use their resources (bricks) against them, if you’re scared, how is that going to help.” A wall is not the answer out leftist teacher Brooke Burnett wants to hear; she asks Bassem Tamimi to comment. He tells the class, “Our children is our resources…our children who will fight….”

Another adult voice, “And the TRUTH, the TRUTH is the resource…if everybody was building walls, then we’d all be separated by walls, that’s not how human beings want to live, we want to be together, like in this classroom.” “Then how are you going to stop Israel,” asks the Arabic-speaking boy. Tamimi: “We would like to protect ourselves with your solidarity…you are all to defend us…to be freedom fighters for Palestine.”

The principal of the elementary school, Susan Eschbach, defended the event (full text here). She falsely claimed:

There were many adults present in the class and at no time was there an anti-Israel, anti-Palestine, anti-Jewish, or anti-Muslim stance. The children took away from this experience several messages. …“ You can make friends across borders and that is a good thing.” “Love will make peace, not hate.”

Ithaca (NY) third grade event shows how anti-Israel indoctrination has moved into elementary schools.

The School District, under pressure from irate parents, later wrote that the program was politically skewed and inflammatory, and apologized.

The Superintendent of schools falsely claimed Tamimi was not an invited guest, and that the lesson was on universal human rights, but admitted to The Blaze:

The suffering of Jewish children was not discussed with the third grade children; nor was the issue of Tamimi’s relative Ahlam Tamimi (Sbarro Pizza suicide bomber) raised. …Nor were the children told that Israel’s security barrier (which Palestinian activists usually call a “wall”) was erected in order to keep suicide bombers out of Israel and that since then suicide attacks have virtually ended, saving scores of children’s lives.

Asked if any pro-Israel voices were invited to the classroom, Brown said, “No other speakers have been into this classroom to talk about human rights at this time.”

The Superintendent has done nothing to drain the swamp. The children have not been debriefed and told they were subjected to jihadi propaganda. The teacher who instigated and presided over this radical hate teaching suffered no consequences and is still in her classroom. The school principal, who enlisted openly anti-Israeli groups to design her school’s curriculum on human rights (and boasts that she wants a designation from them as a “Human Rights School” whatever leftist claptrap that is), is still in place.

William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor and blogger at legalinsurrection.com appeared on Mark Levin’s show to discuss breaking this story and posting the video. It took Jacobsen a year of litigation under the NY Freedom of Information Law to get a partial video of the event.

There were other teachers there, there were staff there, nobody said a word about it, and they tried to cover it up. This is really a microcosm of what’s happening to our educational system. We are allowing these activists … into high schools and elementary schools, and you rarely get video of it, because most people can’t just walk into an elementary school and just start shooting video….

Who was it that the leftist school teacher invited to brainwash her students? Bassem Tamimi is a Palestinian jihadi who uses his own son and daughter attack Israeli soldiers in order to film them to incite jihadi violence. The Alegmeiner:

As the website Legal Insurrection reported in October, Tamimi used his Facebook page to promote an antisemitic blood libel that Israel arrests Palestinian children “To STEAL THEIR ORGANS.” The claim Tamimi reposted included a picture of a person’s torso with a long wound stitched up along the side.

Tamimi uses children as tools to instigate confrontations with Israelis, including having his daughter, dubbed “Shirley Temper,” scream at soldiers in hopes of provoking images that portray them as cruel or brutal.

Tamimi lied about his arrest record in order to get a U.S. visa from the Obama administration and embark on a speaking tour across America in favor of the anti-Semitic BDS movement. He boasted of his broader aim – to create an intifada in America, starting with our children.

“When we are able to get a video like this, we can use it to great effect,” he said. “When enough people here see these videos and hear our stories, it can start a kind of intifada [popular Palestinian uprising] against Israel in the United States.”

Jacobsen explains:

Tamimi’s son, Mohammad, was the subject of a recent media frenzy after he threw rocks at Israeli soldiers and when they moved to arrest him, a soldier was set upon by local women and children, all as the video rolled. Rock throwing has become a serious problem, with numerous motorists killed and injured as a result, yet it is an activity Tamimi encourages (for which he has been arrested).

Yet while Tammi showed videos in Ithaca and led the American children in an anti-Israeli, pro-jihadi discussion in the Ithaca classroom, the teachers and staff in the room noticed nothing wrong.

Hamilton’s Electors Vote Trump The pressure campaign fails, but Clinton has more faithless electors.

The 538 members of the Electoral College met Monday in 50 state capitals, and nearly all followed the public will in the 29 states carried by Donald J. Trump by voting to make the Republican the 45th U.S. President. There will be no Electoral College coup.

On Election Day Mr. Trump won states (including Maine’s second congressional district) worth 306 electoral votes, comfortably more than the 270 needed for victory. While Monday’s final tally wasn’t known when we went to press, the count was headed toward 304 for Mr. Trump, with two dissenting GOP electors from Texas.

It is nonetheless worth noting the extraordinary lengths that Democrats and the progressive media have gone to attempt to lobby electors to vote for Hillary Clinton or a Republican alternative. “Electors under siege,” said a headline in Politico, reporting that many “have been inundated by harassing phone calls and hate mail,” even “death threats.”

So much for the calm deliberation that progressives claim to want as they lobbied electors under the rubric of Hamilton’s Electors. The spectacle of the last month has been an exercise in political intimidation, precisely the kind of pressure politics that Alexander Hamilton wanted an Electoral College to protect the country from. There’s a case for independent judgment by electors, but only in extraordinary circumstances—such as learning something new and disqualifying about a candidate.

The pressure tactics included a gambit by 10 electors, backed by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, for a special intelligence briefing on Russian hacking before they voted. The lobbying was also notable for the number of progressive pundits who urged the electors to deny the results on Election Day in favor of defaulting to 538 electors.

Their supposedly killer argument is that Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote by some 2.86 million votes, at last count. But everyone, including the Clinton campaign, knew that the victor would be determined by electoral votes. No one ordered Mrs. Clinton not to campaign in Wisconsin, which she lost by something like 22,000 votes.

Why Diplomats Are Agog at Trump’s Ambassador to Israel The foreign service resents any outsiders who leapfrog to the top—no matter their skills and qualifications. By Vivian Bercovici

President-elect Trump’s choice for ambassador to Israel, the attorney David Friedman, has been received in some quarters with contempt and disbelief. Mr. Friedman’s presumed failings are said to be many. As a lawyer, he has no diplomatic or foreign policy experience. He is a right-wing “extremist,” supposedly because he supports expanding settlements and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

At its core, criticism of Mr. Friedman reflects the erroneous notion that only professionally trained diplomats can do the job. That is simply false. Modern diplomacy—which I experienced as Canada’s ambassador to Israel—is an anachronistic system of entitlement and privilege aligned with the aristocratic sensibilities of the late 19th century. The “foreign service” model that prevails today was the institutional response to a surfeit of well-bred, indolent men needing something to do. So they were sent abroad to underwrite fancy parties and salons, in the name of the King, Queen or Republic.

Two world wars made a hash of the old order, but Western diplomats have held fast to their entitlements. They indulge a posh lifestyle that mostly disappeared from the private sector as governance standards were enhanced. It is difficult to explain layers of servants and personal drivers to shareholders, never mind taxpayers.

Diplomats used to be important emissaries for their governments. Today that role is greatly diminished. Communication is instant and world leaders are overexposed, like rock stars on MTV. Forty years ago presidents and prime ministers might have attended one international meeting each year; today they are on a summit treadmill. They phone one another and cultivate personal relationships. Diplomats are often sidelined and left to churn out reports that circulate in a bureaucratic vortex.

Diplomacy still turns on the exercise of geopolitical power, as it always has, and on trade, which has changed completely in 50 years. Yet tradition-bound foreign services disdain the sullied world of commerce. In their world view, they—and they alone—are destined to solve the great issues of our time. As a result, there is a notable deficit of business acumen, one of the key elements of modern diplomacy, in many foreign services. Private-sector talent and experience are desperately needed but maligned when recruited.

I know neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Friedman other than through the media. But I do know that Mr. Friedman has been selected to represent America’s democratically elected president. He will serve at the pleasure of Mr. Trump and represent the president’s policies. Mr. Friedman is not anointed to go rogue and indulge in personal fantasies.

Merkel Says Berlin Truck Crash Is Believed to Be Terror Attack Twelve killed and 48 injured as truck plunges into crowded Christmas market By Anton Troianovski, Zeke Turner and Ruth Bender

BERLIN—German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that the deadly truck crash at a Berlin Christmas market was believed to have been a terrorist attack.

She said Monday’s attack, in which a black semitrailer plunged into crowd of holiday revelers at the market in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church killing 12 people and injuring 48 others, may have been perpetrated by a migrant who had sought asylum in Germany.

“I know it would be especially hard to bear for all of us if it should be confirmed that the person who committed this act sought protection and asylum in Germany,” Ms. Merkel told a news conference at the Chancellery in Berlin.

“This would be especially despicable toward the many, many Germans who are daily engaged in helping refugees, and toward the many, many people who truly need this protection and strive to integrate themselves into our country.”

Ms. Merkel urged Germans not to give in to fear. “We do not want to live paralyzed by fear of evil,” she said.

Authorities on Tuesday questioned the sole suspect in a truck assault. The suspect in the truck attack is from Pakistan, a person familiar with the investigation said. The man was born in the 1990s, the person said, noting it wasn’t yet clear whether the man entered Germany as a refugee as some German media reported.
What We Know

Truck Rams Berlin Christmas Market

The black semitrailer with Polish license plates drove onto the sidewalk at the market at about 8 p.m. on Monday, barreling more than 200 feet, the police said, citing witness reports. They driver fled, the said.

Soon after, police apprehended the suspected driver about a mile away, at the Victory Column in Berlin’s sprawling Tiergarten park.

Merkel Government Still in Denial by Vijeta Uniyal

Islamic State took responsibility for the December 19 Berlin truck-ramming attack that killed 12 people, similar to the July 14 attack in the French city of Nice, and countless car-rammings in Israel. Now Europeans feel what Israelis live with every day.

This month, the police union in the German state of Thuringia issued an open letter to the state’s Interior Minister, describing the crumbling law-and-order situation amid the rising migrant crime: “[You] are abandoning us completely helpless to a superior force… But what changes? Nothing. One instead gets a sense of uninterest.”

Meanwhile, representatives of Arab community were reported telling the police in Ruhr, “The police will not win a war with us because we are too many.”

Chancellor Merkel, Germany’s ruling elites and the media can continue putting a happy face on uncontrolled mass-migration from Arab and Muslim lands, or suppress news reporting on rising migrant crime, but they cannot wish away the country’s deteriorating law and order situation.

It should be evident to even a casual observer that her government still does not care about the victims of its own failed “refugee” policy.

Monday’s terrorist attack on a Berlin Christmas market killed at least 12 people and injured 50 others. Islamic State took responsibility for the truck-ramming attack, as recommend by the al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, and similar to the July 14 attack in the French city of Nice, and countless car-rammings in Israel. Now Europeans feel what Israelis live with every day.

Police confer at the site of the December 19 car-ramming attack at a Christmas market in Berlin. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

Earlier this year, Germany was hit by a series of ISIS-inspired attacks and failed terror plots. Despite that almost all the perpetrators were recent Syrian or Afghan migrants, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the middle of a re-election bid, has stuck to her claim that there is “no connection” between terror attacks in the country and uncontrolled mass migration from Arab and Muslim lands.

Ahead of an election year, Merkel and her coalition partners also want to avoid another mass sexual attack — in Cologne.

Draining the swamp:Richard Baehr

In the final months of the presidential campaign, a popular refrain at Donald Trump rallies, ‎second only perhaps to “Lock Her Up,” was “Drain the Swamp.” The chant ‎ostensibly referred to clearing out the bureaucratic/lobbyist control over the ‎federal government, which had resulted in a government committed to serving the ‎needs of the protected few at the expense of the unprotected many and ‎debilitating America’s future growth prospects in the process.‎

There is no reason, however, why the term should not apply equally to the stale ‎thinking that has permeated diplomacy in the Middle East for decades, enabling ‎nonsensical beliefs to remain accepted and unchallenged. The fierce reaction to ‎the announcement that Trump adviser David Friedman will be the next ambassador to Israel is ‎evidence that among those who have actively participated in perpetuating failure ‎in the supposed Israeli-Palestinian peace process there are many now worried ‎about their jobs, their influence, or worse — that common sense, if given an ‎outlet and applied to the region, may produce something outside the allowed set ‎of acceptable policies to which they have adhered for so long.‎

In “Ike’s Gamble,” Michael Doran’s excellent book on the Eisenhower administration’s fumbling and errors ‎in the Middle East, Doran quotes Britain’s then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill in ‎considering why American policy in the region was such a mess. Referring to ‎U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Churchill said: “He was clever ‎enough to be stupid on a rather large scale.”

It would be hard to find a more apt ‎description for the thinking of New Yorker Editor David Remnick, New York Times columnists, or J Street spokespeople in their sustained ‎apoplectic states since the Trump election victory, now reinforced by the Friedman ‎nomination. These people will always make the same arguments, and draw the ‎same conclusions, regardless of the facts, so their current panic mode is not a ‎surprise. ‎

It is worth examining some of the long-running issues that Trump and Friedman should move on, ‎which really belong in the dustbin of history. ‎

Jerusalem: The U.S. Embassy belongs in Jerusalem. In 1995, when Bill Clinton was president, Congress passed the ‎Jerusalem Embassy Act, which called ‎for the embassy to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem but provided a waiver for ‎the president to delay the move due to political or diplomatic considerations. ‎Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama chose to make use of the waiver each year of ‎their presidency, though each had campaigned promising to accomplish the move. ‎Ambassador-designate Friedman has been clear that he expects to perform his ‎duties from Jerusalem, perhaps starting work in the U.S. consulate in the city.‎

Turkey’s Misdiagnosed Kurdish Problem by Burak Bekdil

Turkey’s Kurdish problem is not a military one. On the contrary, the military aspect of the problem is the consequence, not the root cause. Turkey’s Kurds have been demanding a homeland since the 19th century — long before the modern Turkish state was born in 1923.

It is time that Ankara rethinks its diagnosis about the Kurdish dispute. The Turks can start by asking themselves why their Kurdish compatriots choose to live in mountainous hideouts, fight, kill or be killed.

In this year’s Rule of Law Index, released by the World Justice Project, Turkey ranked 99th out of 113 countries, scoring worse than Nigeria and Myanmar.

Turkey can sometimes look like a bad joke. Turkey sits in the lowest ranks of any credible index measuring press freedoms and the rule of law.

Reporters Without Borders, for instance, in its 2016 report, put Turkey into the 151st place out of a list of 180 countries — ranked below Pakistan, Russia and Tajikistan.

In this year’s Rule of Law Index, released by the World Justice Project, Turkey ranked 99th out of 113 countries, scoring worse than Nigeria and Myanmar.

Turkey’s leaders, nevertheless, recently condemned the state of press freedoms in Europe and the United States. An official statement claimed that press freedoms had a problematic and restrictive state in “Western democracies such as, France, Germany, England, Sweden, Spain, Netherlands and the USA.”

But not all Turkish news is equally amusing. On Dec. 10, a twin bomb in Istanbul killed 44 people and injured more than 150. The perpetrators were an urban branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland since 1984. The conflict has already taken nearly 40,000 lives.

The aftermath of one of the two December 10 bombs in Istanbul. The attacks killed 44 people and injured more than 150. (Image source: CCTV America video screenshot)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself announced the more recent bloody picture. Calling for a “national mobilization against all terrorist organizations,” Erdogan said that 1,178 people have been killed since July 2015 in Turkey’s fight with the PKK. Bomb attacks by the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed another 330 lives. Those numbers exclude 248 people who died during the bloody coup attempt of July 15, as well as 9,500 apparent PKK members who were killed by Turkish security forces. Turkey also claims that it killed 1,800 ISIS members since July 2015.

Palestinians: Welcome to the World of Western-Funded Terrorism by Bassam Tawil

Palestinians and their families are being financially rewarded by the West for taking part in terror attacks against Jews. It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that this promotes terrorism.

Palestinian terrorists released from prison have far higher chances of getting a job with the Palestinian Authority (PA) government than people who went to university, because by carrying out an attack against Jews they become heroes, entitled to a superior job and salary.

The more time you spend in an Israeli prison, the more prestigious the job you will receive. Graduating from an Israeli prison is better than graduating from an Ivy League university.

These people have not been imprisoned for running a red light. Most of them are behind bars because they have masterminded suicide bombings and other terror attacks that have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians during the past few decades.

So, when you hear that it is the PLO, not the PA, that pays the terrorists’ salaries, you might want to mention that this statement is a sleight of hand designed to dupe unsuspecting and well-intentioned American and European donors.

It is time to tell Abbas and his associates, in terms that they understand, that the West will no longer fund terrorists. This message, above all others, will discourage terrorism — and perhaps even encourage peace.

Killing Jews has become a profitable business. Palestinians who think of launching a terror attack against Jews can rest assured that their well-being and that of their family will be guaranteed while they are in Israeli prison. Here is how it works:

The Western-funded Palestinian Authority (PA) government, through its various institutions, provides a monthly salary and different financial benefits to jailed Palestinian terrorists and their families. Upon their release, they will continue to receive financial aid, and are given top priority when it comes to employment in the public sector. Their chances of getting a job with the PA government are higher than those who went to university, because by carrying out an attack against Jews they become heroes, entitled to a superior job and salary.