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ELECTIONS ARE COMING: TEXAS GOP TED CRUZ VS. DEMOCRAT BETO O’ROURKE

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/beto-orourke-media-coverage-embarrassing-spectacle/
The Embarrassing Spectacle of Betomania By Heather Wilhelm

It’s enough to drive even the most mild-mannered Texan crazy.

Attention, journalists of America: Time is running out! You have under three weeks left to publish your last batch of over-the-top pre-election puff pieces on Texas Democrat/cross-country liberal sensation/wing-and-a-prayer Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke!

It is here that we must face the difficult truth: Barring a GOP-related disaster of some sort, O’Rourke — he of that ineffable “cool factor” and “special sauce,” at least according to easily impressed columnists at the Washington Post — is likely to lose big. According to the latest polls, Senator Ted Cruz leads him by anywhere between seven and nine points. Tuesday’s debate between the two, meanwhile, was so mismatched that O’Rourke’s best moment might have involved a random deer-in-the-headlights story in which he described how he “got to meet this blind squirrel who is slowly regaining its sight.”

In summary, this year’s Betomania — a somewhat weird phenomenon, as we’ll explore in a bit — seems set to disappear from view just as quickly as it arrived, at least in the Lone Star State. On one hand, this possibility warms my heart, given that in my neck of Texas, it has grown rather exasperating to have to wade through 15,000 blaring BETO yard signs when I’m simply trying to get a breakfast taco or four. On the other hand, I also feel a tinge of melancholy and regret about all of this, given that I never got my act together enough to print ironic t-shirts with the following brilliant slogan I made up all by myself: “You BETO vote for Ted Cruz.”

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I’d like to further discuss the debate between O’Rourke and Ted Cruz, and also actual policy issues, and also perhaps the fact that many people in politics seem to be slowly going insane. But first, can we talk about how embarrassing Betomania is? Friends, I am deeply concerned for our culture. When you look at a middle-aged establishment politician as an icon of “rock star” cool, you’re doing something wrong.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why is Germany beefing up its military? Jonathan Marcus

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45863448

In the face of new challenges, Germany is recommitting itself to the Nato alliance. But what will playing a more central military role mean to a country that has often been accused of reluctance about its armed forces?

It was an unseasonably mild morning as the Sun rose slowly over the training range at Pabrade in Lithuania. This is effectively Nato’s eastern front. Belarus is just a few kilometres away, with Russia beyond.

Lurking just outside the perimeter wire loom several Leopard battle tanks of a German armoured battalion.

So what are the Germans doing here and what is the significance of this deployment for Berlin and for the Atlantic alliance as a whole?

Germany commands the Nato multinational battle group in Lithuania, intended to reassure a small ally in the face of a more assertive and aggressive Russia.

Other countries command similar formations in the two other Baltic states – Estonia and Latvia – and in Poland, the whole mission being known in Nato-speak as an “enhanced forward presence”.

Here in Lithuania, Germany is the so-called framework nation, providing the headquarters and a significant proportion of the troops. Other smaller Nato countries also provide troops for the German-led force.

Currently there are contributions from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Norway and the Netherlands. The whole German battle group then forms part of a larger Lithuanian brigade.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard’s Discrimination Isn’t ‘Likeable’ By David Randall

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow just sent out a letter to Harvard’s alumni and donors to reassure them that there’s no merit to Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. Students for Fair Admissions argues that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants. Bacow, however, is confident that “The College’s admissions process does not discriminate against anybody.” After all, “The Supreme Court has twice ruled on this issue and has held up our admissions process as an exemplar of how, in seeking to achieve a diverse student body, race may enter the process as one factor among many in consideration.”

What Bacow means is that the Supreme Court licenses racial discrimination so long as it isn’t too obvious, and that Harvard has been sufficiently discreet. In any case, Harvard has never before had to defend its admission policies in Federal court. It received honorable mention in Justice Lewis Powell’s eccentric 1978 opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, but no other justice concurred with Powell’s view on the subject. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her 2003 opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger endorsed Powell’s view. That’s the foundation of Bacow’s claim—which seems awfully close to wishful thinking.

How wishful? Harvard uses ugly tactics to get the “diversity” it wants—where “diversity” looks remarkably like the “race quotas” that the Supreme Court said are illegal. Harvard uses “personality” evaluations to help it decide which students to admit, but it appears that “Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being ‘widely respected.’” Harvard admissions officers didn’t even have to see the Asian-American applicants to know they weren’t likable enough.

A 2013 internal review by Harvard concluded that just accounting for extracurricular and personal ratings reduced the Asian-American share of the Harvard class by one sixth, from 31% to 26%. “Demographic” imperatives, which increased the number of admitted African Americans and Hispanics, reduced the number of Asian Americans by another third, down to 18% of the Harvard class.

18%. Which is a remarkably familiar number. Asian enrollment at elite universities has stabilized at around 18% for a generation, even as the proportion of Asian Americans in the population has risen substantially. Harvard’s Rube Goldberg admission procedures just happen to achieve the same result that you would have gotten by a simple racial quota—of the sort that once kept down the number of Rube Goldbergs at Harvard.

It’s no wonder that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has come out in support of the plaintiffs against Harvard. “Harvard has failed to carry its demanding burden to show that its use of race does not inflict unlawful racial discrimination on Asian-Americans,” said the Justice Department. CONTINUE AT SITE

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Move Over Vagina Costumes: Fendi Debuts $990 Designer ‘Vulva Scarf’ By Megan Fox (!!!!????)

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/move-over-vagina-costumes-fendi-debuts-1300-designer-vulva-scarf/

Move over vagina costumes and pu**y hats! There’s a new ridiculously offensive genitalia-themed apparel on the loose thanks to designer Fendi.

Yes, just imagine! The Women’s Marchers have really got to be jumping on this one, although $990 for a hairy muff seems a little steep. But when you’re woke, no amount of money is too much to spend on protest gear.

The photoshop opportunities for this monstrosity cannot be underestimated, though.I don’t know what this says, but whatever it is, it’s super hilarious when you turn this scarf upside down. This tweet is proof that Fendi is reaching a worldwide audience with this horror of a fall “must-not-have.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

GOP Candidate Recovering From Assault Blames Maxine Waters, Hillary Clinton, and Eric Holder By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/gop-candidate-recovering-from-assault-blames-maxine-waters-hillary-clinton-and-eric-holder/

Shane Mekeland, a Republican candidate for the Minnesota House of Representatives, blamed Democrats for the climate of incivility and violence that led to the assault against him last weekend. He also called out the Minnesota Democratic Party for refusing to fire a staffer who posted on Facebook that Democrats would “guillotine” Republicans after the election.

On Friday evening, he suffered a concussion after being sucker-punched in the head in a politically motivated attack. A full recovery will take 4 to 6 weeks. The election is in 19 days.

In an interview with PJ Media on Wednesday, Mekeland described his struggles with memory loss and light sensitivity after the attack, and blamed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former attorney general Eric Holder for stoking a climate of incivility and violence that led to his assault.

“Right as he hit me, he said, ‘You f*cking people don’t give a sh*t about the middle class,'” Mekeland told PJ Media, recounting the assault. “How can you take my getting sucker-punched in the head to be anything other than politically motivated?”

The candidate recounted the suspect’s interview with police after the assault. The assailant, remorseful after the attack, admitted that Mekeland did nothing to provoke him, and confessed, “I hit him right in the side of his head by his eye, and I think I hit his nose, too.”

As the candidate got hit, he remembered, “The chair goes flying over, it whacked my head on the floor and that’s the last thing I remember. I guess the guy jumped on me, he wasn’t done.”

The assault has wreaked havoc on Mekeland’s day-to-day life. “Right now, I’m taking round 6 of Advil,” the candidate told PJ Media. “No TV, stay away from computer screens. I went into town on Monday, I didn’t realize the sun was giving me a headache! I’m sitting there thinking, ‘How the hell am I going to get home?’ CONTINUE AT SITE

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrat Official Excommunicated for Saying He Stands for the Flag, Kneels for the Cross By Jeff Reynolds

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/democrat-official-excommunicated-for-saying-he-stands-for-the-flag-kneels-for-the-cross/

Behold the latest scalp claimed by social justice warriors intent on enforcing groupthink: a Gulf War veteran hired as the executive director of the Allegheny County, Pa., Democratic Party. His crime? Expressing support for the national anthem and asking for prayers for a cop involved in a shooting of an unarmed teenager. Evidently, no room exists for such insensitivity toward the Black Lives Matter movement in today’s Democratic Party.

The Allegheny County Democratic Party hired Mark Salvas as their executive director in September. Merely one month later, he resigned after Democratic officials expressed concern over two posts on Facebook they deemed controversial.

In the more recent post, in July 2018, his wife — not Salvas himself — expressed concern for a personal family friend, a cop involved in a fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager. She asked for prayers for their personal friend in the aftermath of the shooting.

The other post goes all the way back to 2017, in which Salvas posted a picture of himself and his wife with a popular frame saying, “I stand for the flag and kneel for the cross.”

Salvas shared his love of country, patriotism, and personal service on his Facebook profile:

Apparently this didn’t sit well with Pennsylvania Democrats, many of whom protested his hire and spoke of his insensitivity toward African Americans. KDKA-TV, the Pittsburgh CBS affiliate, reported:

“I was asked by the chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Party to resign my position due to the controversy that was taking place on social media, and I did,” Salvas told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Wednesday. “It’s never easy when people you have never met accuse you of things and call you names, and you’ve never met them.”

A former Marine and Gulf War veteran, Salvas was just hired in September as executive director of the county party, long after he posted a picture of his wife and him on Facebook with the words, “I stand for the flag, I kneel at the cross.”

“I’m not ashamed of my patriotism, not one bit. I fought for this country. I think I have a right to have a voice and be patriotic,” says Salvas. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Taliban Try to Kill U.S. Commander Days After Lauding Talks with U.S. Envoy By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/taliban-try-to-kill-u-s-commander-days-after-lauding-talks-with-u-s-envoy/

The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan escaped unhurt today after a gunman opened fire on officials leaving a high-profile meeting that included Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller.

The Taliban claimed on their website that “amid the series of ongoing Al Khandaq crushing operations, mujahideen carried out” the attack. Al Khandaq is the name of the Taliban’s spring offensive launched in April.

“At Kandahar palace today: Afghan-on-Afghan incident, as initial reports indicate. 3 Americans wounded. Gen. Miller uninjured, attacker reportedly dead,” tweeted the official account of Resolute Support, the NATO mission in the country.

According to Afghanistan’s TOLO News, “The incident happened when officials were leaving the governor’s office and while on their way to a helipad.”

“Sources also say the attack was initiated by at least one of the governor’s bodyguards,” TOLO added.

Kandahar’s anti-Taliban police chief Gen. Abdul Raziq, 39, was killed; TOLO described him as “a fierce patriot … committed to stamping out terrorism.” His father and uncle were killed by the Taliban in 1994; he became the provincial police chief in 2011, after his predecessor was murdered in a suicide bombing.

Raziq had, by his estimation last year, survived about 29 assassination attempts. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Victimization of Glenn Simpson By Julie Kelly

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

It takes some kind of convoluted thinking to turn Glenn Simpson into a victim.

After all, the Fusion GPS chief is one of a handful of people primarily responsible for concocting and peddling the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax for the past three years. There is not an investigation or a news article or a human target related to the Trump-Russia scheme that doesn’t have Simpson’s fingerprints on it. When the complete story of the biggest political scandal in U.S. history finally is written, Glenn Simpson will be the prologue.

But his pals in the elite media see Simpson as a martyr, a victim of congressional investigators hounding an innocent guy just trying to make a buck. News coverage about Simpson’s refusal to answer questions on Capitol Hill bordered on laughable—if not satirical—and willfully overlooked big parts of Simpson’s tale of self-inflicted woe.

Members of both the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees called Simpson back this week to testify amid new information that disputes his previous statements to Congress. After defying their request, he was served with a subpoena to appear; for nearly an hour on Tuesday morning, Simpson invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Now before I get too deep into the headlines from the elite media, let’s think back just six months ago when Michael Cohen took the Fifth in connection with the Stormy Daniels lawsuit. Reporters and pundits exploded with glee, insisting Cohen’s move was a “huge development” that could lead to more trouble for the president.

But Simpson’s constitutional tactic, on the other hand, was met either with sympathy or silence. The Washington Post downplayed Simpson’s appearance simply as part of the “probe into how FBI and Justice Department officials conducted themselves during investigations of Trump’s Russia ties and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.” (Nah, Washington Post, Congress actually is trying to figure out who lied, who misled a FISA court, who illegally leaked classified information and who was part of an unprecedented, politically-motivated FBI investigation into a presidential campaign. These are, like, real crimes, not trivial matters like whether or not they returned emails on time. But whatevs.)

POLITICS Comments turned off

Could Trump Win 20 Percent of the Black Vote in 2020? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/18/could-

The provocative Donald Trump certainly seems to be disliked by a majority of African-American professional athletes, cable news hosts, academics and the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet there are subtle but increasing indications that his approval among other African-Americans may be reaching historic highs for a modern Republican president.

Some polls have indicated that Trump’s approval rating among black voters is close to 20 percent. That is far higher than the 8 percent of the African-American vote that Trump received on Election Day 2016.

A recent, admittedly controversial Rasmussen Reports poll showed African-American approval of Trump at 36 percent.

Even 20 percent African-American support for Trump would all but dismantle Democratic Party presidential hopes for 2020. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election with 88 percent of the black vote. That was about a six-point falloff from Barack Obama’s share of the black vote in 2012.

But far more importantly, an estimated 2 million of the African-American voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 simply did not show up at the polls in 2016 to vote for the off-putting Clinton.

Even a small drop in African-American turnout or anything less than the usual 85 percent to 90 percent supermajority for a Democratic presidential candidate on Election Day can prove fatal. Why?

Republican presidential candidates now routinely win 55 percent to 60 percent of the so-called white vote, and about 70 percent of voters are white. That lopsided margin may widen further, given that progressive Democrats are not making any effort to recapture turned-off white working-class voters.

With continually diminishing white support, Democrats must increasingly count on massive minority turnout and bloc voting—especially among African-American voters, who make up about 12 percent of the electorate.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fed Judge: Hillary’s Top Crony Committed Perjury in Email Investigation Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 18th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271675/fed-judge-hillarys-top-crony-committed-perjury-daniel-greenfield

The FBI didn’t investigate Hillary Clinton’s email crimes. It covered them up by helping destroy the evidence while handing out immunity agreements like candy. It was one of the worst abuses of power in an administration already swimming in abuses of power.

At the heart of it all were Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills.

Mills was Hillary’s right-hand woman who had been accused of playing a role in various cover-ups. Including this one.

In a combative exchange at a hearing Friday in Washington, D.C., a federal judge unabashedly accused career State Department officials of lying and signing “clearly false” affidavits to derail a series of lawsuits seeking information about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her handling of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he was “shocked” and “dumbfounded” when he learned that FBI had granted immunity to former Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills during its investigation into the use of Clinton’s server, according to a court transcript of his remarks.

“I had myself found that Cheryl Mills had committed perjury and lied under oath in a published opinion I had issued in a Judicial Watch case where I found her unworthy of belief, and I was quite shocked to find out she had been given immunity in — by the Justice Department in the Hillary Clinton email case,” Lamberth said during Friday’s hearing.

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General (IG), Michael Horowitz, noted in a bombshell reportin June that it was “inconsistent with typical investigative strategy” for the FBI to allow Mills to sit in during the agency’s interview of Clinton during the email probe, given that classified information traveled through Mills’ personal email account. “[T]here are serious potential ramifications when one witness attends another witness’ interview,” the IG wrote.

Mills was wrongly allowed to act as if she were Hillary Clinton’s lawyer.