MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

British Royalty and Why You Shouldn’t Trust TV By Michael Curtis

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/british_royalty_and_why_you_shouldnt_trust_tv.html

At a moment when Britain is disquieted by scandal about Prince Andrew, disgraced for his friendship with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein; the ongoing drama of Megxit, the withdrawal of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from royal duties; and the rift between the two royal brothers, William and Harry, the British TV soap opera, ten episodes of The Crown, season 4, has appeared to provide alleged entertainment of the doings of the British Royal Family.

Because it is lavishly produced, well written, carefully acted, and cleverly invented, it is easy to accept The Crown as an accurate representation of a twenty-year period in British history.  However, no one should be confused.  It is not a documentary of the life and behavior of Queen Elizabeth II, members of the Royal Family and associates, in the stately homes of Buckingham Palace, Windsor, and Balmoral, and the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher.  Rather, it is a psychodrama written with what can generously be termed artistic license about the actions and motivations of the leading figures.

Some of the invented incidents in The Crown can be noted.  Discussions concerning Lord Mountbatten and Prince Charles, or the supposed political dialogue between Queen Elizabeth II and Michael Fagan, who infiltrated Buckingham Palace and spoke to the queen in her bedroom, or the tension with Margaret Thatcher because of personal concerns about the safety of her son and public concerns over the Falklands war, are not accurate representations of history.  In particular, all of the remarks of Elizabeth, who bestrides the series as a colossus, are invented.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Judge: Republicans Will Likely Win Pennsylvania Election Lawsuit By Ivan Pentchoukov

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/judge-republicans-will-likely-win-pennsylvania-election-lawsuit_3596477.html

The judge who ordered Pennsylvania to not certify the results of the 2020 election wrote in an opinion on Friday that the Republicans who filed the related lawsuit will likely win the case.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Judge Patricia McCullough made the assessment as part of an opinion explaining her rationale for blocking Pennsylvania’s election certification.

A group of Republican lawmakers and candidates sued the Keystone State earlier this week, arguing that the state legislature’s mail-in voting law—Act 77—violated the commonwealth’s constitution.

“Petitioners appear to have established a likelihood to succeed on the merits because petitioners have asserted the Constitution does not provide a mechanism for the legislature to allow for expansion of absentee voting without a constitutional amendment,” McCullough wrote.

When ruling on an emergency injunction, judges have to consider whether the party which requested the injunction is likely to win the case or “succeed on the merits.” McCullough opined that the “petitioners appear to have a viable claim that the mail-in ballot procedures set forth in Act 77 contravene” the plain language of the provision of the Pennsylvania Constitution which deals with absentee voting.

Pennsylvania said that it had certified the results of the election for president and vice president on Nov. 24 while the court was reviewing briefings from both parties. In response, the plaintiffs filed a request for an emergency injunction, arguing that that state need not have acted so fast.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s national security picks are great news — for China

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/joe-bidens-national-security-picks-are-great-news-for-china

President-elect Joe Biden has been quick to shape his national security team. Jake Sullivan will serve as national security adviser, Antony Blinken is to be nominated for Secretary of State, Avril Haines will be the director of national intelligence, and John Kerry will take on the role of a Cabinet-level climate czar.

These selections give us confidence (if that’s the right word) of three things. First, that Biden will desperately try to return America to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. Second, that the European Union will be happy. Third, that Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, is feeling pretty good right now.

The contrast between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kerry is one of night and day. Where Pompeo has prioritized retraining China’s aggressive tendencies worldwide and its undermining of American interests, Kerry’s record of standing up for our interests, especially against our rivals and enemies, is flaccid. He spent his time as secretary of state proclaiming the virtues of positive engagement with Beijing. And his willingness to give Iran everything it wanted in the 2015 nuclear deal should make China optimistic that he’ll be generous in the coming climate negotiations.

Climate change activists should share our concerns because China’s climate strategy is a disingenuous absurdity. It is building hundreds of new, heavily polluting coal plants each year, while simultaneously pledging to be carbon-neutral by 2060. It is highly unlikely that Kerry will force China to agree to having its promised emission cuts independently verified. (Remember that the inspection regime built into the Iran deal contained loopholes big enough to drive an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tank through.) He’s far more likely to commit America to economically damaging emission cuts without getting other nations to do the same.

Concerns about Kerry go considerably beyond how he’ll manage climate policy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

JUSTICE FOR COL. (ret.)LAWRENCE FRANKLIN….MUST READ

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

http://A Call for Late Justice for Col. Larry Franklin

Last month, in a small town in West Virginia, a 74-year-old husband and his invalid wife were hospitalized for several days after eating rotten food the husband fished out of a dumpster.

For the past decade and a half, former Pentagon intelligence analyst and operative Col. (retired) Lawrence (Larry) Franklin and his wife Patricia have lived in utter destitution. During his 35 years of service, Col. Franklin was celebrated as a brilliant, fearless intelligence officer by his colleagues and bosses at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), in the U.S. Air Force and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Now, the aging hero who saved countless U.S. servicemen lives in war zones is a broken man. Col. Franklin subsists on the meager wages he earns from washing dishes, cleaning septic tanks and parking cars, while also taking care of his invalid wife.

Col. Franklin’s fall from grace is a tale that cries out for justice.

In 2003, Col. Franklin, a survivor of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, was working as the Iran desk officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld needed constant information on Iran: namely, its efforts to undermine the U.S. war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, its sprawling terror networks and its burgeoning nuclear weapons program.

In the framework of his duties, Col. Franklin was authorized to share intelligence with U.S. allies, including Israel. He had a long-standing, warm relationship with Israeli military and intelligence officers dating back to his tenure as Air Force Defense Attaché in Israel during the 1990s. Col. Franklin also had close contacts with officials who worked on Iran-related issues for the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Election theft and the Audacity of Evil Don Surber

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

Newt Gingrich wrote, “Laziness leads to sloppiness, and sloppiness is how the most brazen heist in American history is being exposed.”

Let me tell you where he is wrong.

Gingrich was correct in his next paragraph, ”

“Stealing the 2020 election was a mammoth undertaking, involving widespread lawlessness and illicit partnerships between private actors and public officials. They’ve been working to cover their tracks since Election Day, but they didn’t work fast enough. Now, the courts need to stop them from destroying any more evidence so that the people of Pennsylvania — and the rest of the country — can accurately assess the ramifications of their wrongdoing.”

Which is why he was incorrect in his first paragraph.

These people were good enough to plan and execute a heist involving 10 million ballots in 11 key states (the six they swiped plus their failed attempts in Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas; why do you think Fox was so slow in calling those last two states).

They could have done so stealthily. Instead they wanted to get caught. They wanted to rub their theft in the noses of their opponents. This is an act of political sabotage. Like all terrorist acts, the perpetrators want full credit.

The left already has caused Americans to lose faith in the press, in the government, and in science. Donald John Trump gave us one last hope in that we could defeat Satan at the polls.

This year, his minions took that away from us.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Squad, the Quint and the Quad Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2020/11/27/the-importance-of-the-quint-and-the

We’re rather familiar with “the Squad,” but what about “the Quint” and “the Quad”? For now, the latter two are more likely than the former to have importance to a potential Biden administration. With the announcement of Tony Blinken as Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, the anti-Israel far left is at bay for now – both men are known to be personally reasonably disposed toward Israel. (Reema Dodin is another matter.) But if the Quint has an impact on the administration’s Middle East policy, both regarding Israel and Iran, and the Squad joins in, the U.S. position in the region will suffer.

The Quad, on the other hand, offers the potential for a far-reaching and long-lasting alliance in the Indo-Pacific if a new administration is willing to take advantage of the groundwork laid by its predecessor.

First, the Quint. Announced by the British Foreign Ministry in October of last year, the Quint (the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France) is a response to the collapse of the anti-Israel coalition of the European Union (EU). EU Resolutions have to be unanimous, and Israel’s burgeoning relations and understandings with the Visegrad Countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) as well as the Baltic States and parts of Southern Europe collapsed the wall.

 The first crack actually appeared in May 2018 when Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Romania blocked an EU denunciation of President Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. France, the Netherlands, and Ireland, among others criticized the move individually, but the impact was not the same.  In February 2020, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josip Borrell tried to push through a resolution condemning the Trump Middle East peace plan after meetings with Iranian officials – but 6 of 27 members refused, including Italy, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic. In April, he posited: “The EU does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. The EU reiterates that any annexation would constitute a serious violation of international law.” The resolution failed and an Israeli diplomat noted that the largest number of EU delegates to date had been opposed.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Social Media Fact-Check Farce A study says Twitter’s anti-Trump ‘corrections’ make some people more likely to believe Trump.

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-social-media-fact-check-farce-11606519380?mod

In recent years liberals have successfully lobbied social-media companies to police conservative content more and more aggressively. But there’s little evidence that this political interference has reduced the prevalence of misinformation online—and a new study shows how it could make the problem worse.

In the study—by Dino Christenson of Boston University and Sarah Kreps and Douglas Kriner of Cornell—volunteers were shown a May 26 tweet by President Trump attacking mail-in voting and claiming that “Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.”

Groups of participants were also shown “corrections” to Mr. Trump’s tweet, including Twitter’s “explanatory text labeling the claims ‘unsubstantiated’ according to major media outlets, including CNN and the Washington Post.”

Conservatives did not find mainstream-media assurances convincing. For Republicans who were shown Twitter’s effort to debunk the President, “belief that mail voter fraud occurs was more than 13% higher than in the control.” Or as the authors put it, “corrections increased misperceptions among those predisposed to believe President Trump.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden, Iran and the Bomb Will he throw away Trump’s Mideast gains to return to a bad nuclear deal?

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-iran-and-the-bomb-11606519663?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Democratic establishment will soon be back in charge of U.S. foreign policy, and the question is how much they’ve learned in exile. One early test will be Iran, and whether Joe Biden will abandon the strategic gains that President Trump has made in the Middle East in a rush to return to the deeply flawed 2015 nuclear deal.

The apparent assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist near Tehran on Friday shows that Iran’s nuclear program remains a global security problem. No one took responsibility, but any number of countries have reason to act now in case the Biden Administration returns to a policy of appeasing Iran.

The U.S. left the nuclear accord in May 2018 and embarked on a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. After restoring pre-deal sanctions, the Trump Administration has added new restrictions across the Iranian economy, which is rigged to enrich the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and elites in Tehran. The White House plans to announce more sanctions through Jan. 20.

The sanctions have succeeded in weakening the rogue regime. Today Tehran exports about a quarter of the 2.5 million barrels of oil a day it shipped when the U.S. was still in the deal. This deprives the government of $50 billion in annual revenue. The economy has shrunk, while the Iranian rial has lost 80% of its value against the dollar.

Iran has responded by increasing its violations of the nuclear deal. It now has 12 times the limit of enriched uranium allowed under the accord, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said this month. It also is enriching uranium to 4.5% purity, above the 3.67% allowed under the deal but far from the 90% concentration needed for a bomb.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When the Experts Fail, Everyone Else Pays the Price What happens when the most respected authorities get it wrong and ruin lives and economies? Not much. David Mamet *****

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-the-experts-fail-everyone-else-pays-the-price-11606519279?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

The wealthy and powerful must constantly expand their operations. But even if they let their capital sit, they will need accountants, auditors, stockbrokers and consultants. How will they choose these subordinates? According to the opinions of other advisers. Those closest to the boss will have the most influence—and they can keep it, even in failure, by flattery and deference. 

This is the case with governmental power. We are all, in a sense, fools, since no one person can know everything. We all have to trust others for their expertise, and we all make mistakes. The horror of a command economy is not that officials will make mistakes, but that those mistakes will never be acknowledged or corrected.

What about our allegedly market economy? Who will be held accountable for destroying it? No doubt the destruction was carried out in good faith, but the shutdown didn’t accomplish what it was supposed to accomplish. 

We have seen shameless incompetence rewarded before.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Challenges Biden: Prove Votes Were Not Illegally Obtained to Enter White House By Janita Kan

Posted By on November 28th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-challenges-biden-prove-votes-were-not-illegally-obtained-to-enter-white-house_3594840.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-11-27-5

President Donald Trump said on Friday that Democratic nominee Joe Biden can only enter the White House as the next commander-in-chief if he is able to prove votes were not “fraudulently or illegally obtained.”

“Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous ‘80,000,000 votes’ were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.

The post is the latest indication that Trump is not giving up his efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 general election in several battleground states. The Trump campaign is facing an uphill battle in its legal challenges filed in Pennsylvania and Michigan aimed at protecting the integrity and accuracy of elections. The campaign has also expressed support for lawsuits filed in other battleground states challenging the Nov. 3 results.

Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell is representing Trump-pledged presidential electors in Georgia and Michigan in challenging election results in both states over allegations of “massive fraud” in particular ballot stuffing and voter manipulation through the use of the Dominion voting system. Trump had previously announced that Powell was part of the campaign’s team but in a later statement the campaign said Powell was “practicing law on her own.”