Democrats, NeverTrump Finally Have a Jobs Plan By Julie Kelly

With the decisive midterm elections just months away, Democrats are finally rolling out a long-awaited jobs program in hopes of wooing disaffected, working-class voters back to their party this November.

Their message is sure to win the hearts and minds of millions of blue-collar workers in the heartland who abandoned the party in 2016 to vote for Donald Trump. It is unflinching in its commitment to protect the most vulnerable employees—those who are at-risk of having their jobs taken away on a whim by powerful forces—and rendered unable to pay their bills or find other work.

It is “The Special Counsel Independence Protection Act.” Or, as I prefer to call it, the Robert Mueller Job Protection Act.

What, you say? You thought this effort would target steelworkers or coal miners or tradesmen who are struggling to find work? You hoped this would appeal to small business owners who are drowning under rising healthcare costs and expensive federal regulations? You expected a compelling plan from party leaders desperate to take control of Congress next year that would earn back voters in the 206 counties that flipped from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016?

Oh, LOL! You don’t think Democrats actually give a rip about the deplorables in “backward” areas of the country where nothing ever happens and no one of value lives, do you? As Hillary Clinton just reminded us, Democrats are all about serving our betters in “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving-forward” areas of the country. You losers in Mattoon, Illinois? Suck it.

These brave warriors are charging the Trump Tower at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to defend Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his merry band of Democrat donors, er, investigators, and make sure their jobs are protected ad infinitum. Despite the obvious vicissitude of the Mueller investigation—which has yet to find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime before the presidential election—bold coastal liberals are staking their political fortunes on the taxpayer-funded probe they have wagered will destroy Trump’s presidency.

Although the legislation was introduced last year and has since stalled, Democrats are re-upping their plea after President Trump tweeted about Mueller over the weekend. In response, Senator Christopher Coons (D-Del.) issued this statement:

I understand that many of my colleagues don’t believe that President Trump will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller without cause, and some have cited that as their reason for not backing the legislation I’ve introduced. Unfortunately, the statements and actions from the President and his lawyer over the weekend have led me to believe that the Special Counsel is now at real, immediate risk of being removed, and I believe the Senate needs to pass legislation to ensure that does not happen.

Scandal Questions Never Asked, Much Less Answered By Victor Davis Hanson

Sometimes the hysteria of crowds causes them to overlook the obvious. Here is a series of 12 questions that do not seem to trouble anyone, but the answers to these should expose why so many of the people today alleging scandals should themselves be considered scandalous.

1) Had Hillary Clinton won the election, would we now even know of a Fusion GPS dossier? Would assorted miscreants such as Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page, Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, or Peter Strzok now be under a cloud of suspicion? Or would they instead have been quietly lionized by a President Clinton grateful for noble services in the shadows rendered during the campaign?

2) If Clinton had won, would we now know of any Russian-supplied smears against Donald Trump? Would a FISA judge now be complaining that he was misled in a warrant request? Would likely Attorney General Loretta Lynch be reassigning Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr for his consultations with Fusion GPS operatives? Or would Russian operatives alone be likely, at an opportune moment, to threaten to leak to the media that they had given salacious material to Clinton operatives to ensure her election, and thus they were to be owed for their supposed help in ensuring a Clinton victory? Would anyone be now listening to a losing candidate Donald Trump making wild charges that he had been smeared in the closing days of his campaign by leaks of a Clinton cabal that drew on Russian help?

3) Are any Russian related interests currently still donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation? Why is Bill Clinton not being asked to speak by various groups—including those with Russian-ties—for $500,000 and above per talk? Is he now less persuasive than he was between 2009 and 2015?

4) Why did Andrew McCabe believe that two Democratic political action funds, one controlled by Clinton “best friend” Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, donated a total of $675,288 to his wife’s campaign for a rather obscure state senate post? What percentage of Jill McCabe’s actual campaign budget did the $675,288 comprise? And why after her defeat would Andrew McCabe still not recuse himself from directing FBI inquiries into allegations of (likely next president and past generous benefactor) Hillary Clinton’s prior improper use of an email server while Secretary of State? Does quid pro quo refer really more often to simultaneous benefactions or rather sequential ones?

Mark Zuckerberg Is No James Madison The Constitution was designed to constrain our worst impulses. Facebook encourages them. By Paul Bergevin

One of the many conceits of the digital age is that so-called platforms are a new invention. In some respects they are. Built with computer code, powered by microchips and operated in the cloud, these digital building blocks did not exist until relatively recently. But in other respects, platforms are simply large aggregations of people coming together to search information online, shop or connect with friends.

Compare today’s platforms to the American Constitution: a large aggregation of citizens organized on the principle of self-government. As a work of design, the Constitution is a brilliant piece of architecture, an intellectual foundation that has stood the test of time. If James Madison were a software developer in a Harvard dorm room and not a Virginia planter, we might say he was a better coder than Mark Zuckerberg. The Constitution understands human nature. Facebook , dangerously at times, does not.

In designing the Constitution, Madison managed to appeal to people’s better angels while at the same time calculating man’s capacity to harm and behave badly. Facebook’s designers, on the other hand, appear to have assumed the best about people. They apparently expected users to connect with friends only in benign ways. While the site features plenty of baby and puppy photos, it has also become a place where ISIS brags about beheadings and Russians peddling misinformation seek to undermine the institutions of a free society.CONTINUE AT SITE

Much-vaunted Robert Mueller’s record shows bad investigations By Monica Showalter

As President Trump deliberates on whether to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, a look at Mueller’s record of indicting ham sandwiches ought to give him pause.

Mueller, as The Federalist points out, botches high-profile cases and can drag them out for a decade. Reporter Daniel Ashman found this case with Mueller’s name on it, the anthrax attacks case dating back to 2001. That was when some maniac or terrorist, some beast, sent anthrax powder in the mail to news agencies, injuring people who opened the packages. I worked at Forbes magazine in New York at the time and remember how the mail was quarantined, depriving us of that communication line, and I remember how terrified people were at this nasty coda to the horrific 9/11 terror attacks.

The Federalist reports:

The anthrax letters began just a week after the 9/11 attack. While planning the airplane hijackings, Al-Qaeda had been weaponizing anthrax, setting up a lab in Afghanistan manned by Yazid Sufaat, the same man who housed two of the 9/11 hijackers. Two hijackers later sought medical help due to conditions consistent with infection via anthrax: Al Haznawi went to the emergency room for a skin lesion which he claimed was from “bumping into a suitcase,” and ringleader Mohamed Atta needed medicine for “skin irritation.” A team of bioterrorism experts from Johns Hopkins confirmed that anthrax was the most likely cause of the lesion. Meanwhile, the 9/11 hijackers were also trying to obtain crop-dusting airplanes.

So how did Mueller’s investigative team handle the case?

Mueller issued a statement in October of 2001, while anthrax victims were still dying: the FBI had found “no direct link to organized terrorism.” The John Hopkins team of experts was mistaken, the FBI continued, Al Haznawi never had an anthrax infection. The crop-dusting airplanes they needed was possibly for a separate and unrelated anthrax attack.

Global Warming: The Evolution of a Hoax By Dale Leuck

Only forty-some years ago, “climate science” suddenly turned from advancing a theory of global cooling to one of global warming. A 123-page paper by Christopher Booker, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), explains this sudden change in terms of a “groupthink” belief system formulated and perpetuated by a few strong personalities. Through key positions, and with sympathetic lobbyist groups, the theory overwhelmed politics during its formative years in the 1970s from its center in various United Nations agencies until its unraveling began in the late 1990s.

The first of those personalities was Swedish meteorologist Professor Bert Bolin (1925-2007), who believed that increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide from industrialization would inevitably lead to global warming. Bolin presented his views in 1979 at a first-ever meeting of the “World Climate Conference,” sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO is a 191-member-country agency of the United Nations (U.N.), headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

Bolin had developed his theory in the 1950s during thirty-five years of declining temperatures. Through the 1970s, many scientists, activists, and policymakers had voiced alarm at global cooling. A common view was that the cooling effect of more dust in the atmosphere, from volcanoes and industrial smokestacks, more than offset the warming effects of carbon dioxide and might require dire policies, such as those proposed by Dr. Arnold Reitze, to include banning the internal combustion engine, regulating industrial research and development, and limiting population.

John Brennan: Deep State Political Hack By Daniel John Sobieski

Considering that John Brennan once proudly admitted that he voted for Communist Party leader Gus Hall and openly supports liars and perjurers like Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, and James Comey, he redefines chutzpah when in a tweet he describes President Trump in words that sound as though they were plagiarized from FBI lead investigator Peter Strzok:

When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.

The only “disgraced demagogues” in this scenario are John Brennan; James Clapper; Andrew McCabe; James Comey; Peter Strzok; and, yes, Rod Rosenstein and Robert Mueller, all parties in a political resistance whose purpose was to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House. And John Brennan dares to talk about political corruption?

So much for an apolitical intelligence community that is supposed to gather intelligence on and about America’s enemies to guarantee the safety and security of the United States, its people, and the leaders they have democratically elected. Brennan’s venomous tweet, like Strzok’s infamous text messages to his lover and co-conspirator in the FBI, Lisa Page, show the depth of the political corruption infesting an intelligence community that conspired to interfere in our elections to deny Donald Trump the presidency. Brennan and his colleagues are supposed to serve the president, not conspire against him.

Women-Only College Objects to Professors Using the Word ‘Women’ By Tom Knighton

There’s something horribly wrong with the world when language is policed to such a degree that calling a woman a woman is controversial. However, that’s the world we live in.

The most recent example comes from Mount Holyoke College.

For those unfamiliar with Mount Holyoke, it’s a small college in Massachusetts with an enrollment of just over 2,200. All students are women.

That’s right. Mount Holyoke does not allow men. So you might think they would not have the absurd SJW issues with gender that you see at co-ed universities, because Mount Holyoke clearly believes that gender is a fact.

Nope. A school-produced guide titled Supporting Trans and Non-Binary Students instructs professors: “When discussing the student body, say ‘Mount Holyoke students’ rather than ‘Mount Holyoke women.'”

It adds: “Avoid making statements like ‘We’re all women here … ‘, or referring to ‘… the two genders.'”

Hold on: why might someone who does not identify as a woman be at an all-women’s school?

The guide continues: “[M]any students spend the first day of class braced against various types of disrespect … professors who mispronounce their names, call them by the wrong name entirely, misgender them, and so on.”

CONTINUE AT SITE

Transparency on federal employee bonuses isn’t a privilege, it’s a right by Rep. Mark Sanford and Adam Andrzejewski

President Trump wants to make the federal bureaucracy a meritocracy. He has proposed slapping a cap on federal employee salaries and shifting more dollars to merit-based performance bonuses.

Many will consider this a great proposal, but there’s a catch. While taxpayers can see most federal salaries, they can’t see performance bonuses.

In fiscal year 2016, the federal government awarded 1 million performance bonuses, racking up a $1.1 billion tab paid for by taxpayers. Every cent, however, was hidden from public disclosure. Anti-transparency language inserted into government union contracts is blocking the right of taxpayers to see how their money is being spent.

Last month, a Treasury Department watchdog uncovered$1.7 million in bonuses to IRS employees who had been disciplined by the agency during fiscal year 2016-2017. These 2,000 IRS employees received “high-performing” bonuses despite their record of “serious misconduct such as unauthorized access to tax return information, substance abuse, and sexual misconduct.”

Transparency is especially crucial for federal agencies that have failed in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs has an ugly history with performance bonuses. For example, in 2014, the VA doled out up to $100 million in undeserved performance bonuses while sick veterans died waiting to see a doctor.

What the Saudi Prince’s Visit Really Means by Ahmed Charai

Perhaps the most dramatic Saudi reform is the one that has received virtually no attention in America. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has led an effort to sweep out the Muslim Brotherhood from teaching and leadership positions in elementary, middle and high schools as well as colleges and universities.

MBS is kicking a dragon and he knows it.

The stakes of his fight with the Brotherhood could not be higher. If MBS succeeds, Saudi Arabia returns to pre-1979 roots, with movie theaters, women in the workplace, and features of a modern developing country. If MBS fails, he will be killed by the Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia will become more repressive than ever.

The global stakes of MBS’s internal fight with the Brotherhood are large, too. If the crown price wins, nearly all Saudi funding for violent Islamic radicals ends — and if he dies, it grows to new heights.

His “Vision 2030” is the biggest planned change in any country since Turkey’s Ataturk or Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew. With America’s encouragement, Saudi Arabia could lead a regional transformation that would be truly historic.

Saudi Arabia, with the visit of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the United States this week, opens a new front in its war with Iran.

Demographic time bomb? Mistaken or misleading! Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

The “demographic time bomb” concept accords mythical standards to Arab fertility and European standards to Jewish fertility, ignoring the Westernization of Arab fertility and the surging secular Jewish fertility, while significantly underestimating the potential of Jewish immigration (Aliyah) to Israel, which has been steady and continuous since 1882.

In March 1898, the leading Jewish demographer-historian, Shimon Dubnov, published a demographic projection, aiming to dissuade Theodore Herzl from the vision of the reconstruction of the Jewish State in the Land of Israel: “in 1998, there will be only half a million Jews in the Land of Israel…. Political Zionism is wishful-thinking….” Herzl was not deterred, although there was a meager 9% Jewish minority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel.

In October, 1944, Prof. Roberto Bachi, the founder of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, published a demographic projection, intending to convince Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion, that a population of then 600,000 Jews was not a critical mass for the re-establishment of the Jewish State: “In 2001, there will be, under the best case scenario, 2.3MN Jews, a 34% minority….” Ben Gurion proceeded to re-establish the Jewish State despite the mere 55% Jewish majority in the area partitioned for the Jewish State, and the 39% Jewish minority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel.

In 1946, Ben Gurion published Israel Trivus document – No Arab Majority in the Land of Israel – which exposed substantial deficiencies in the population censuses conducted by the British Mandate in 1922 and 1931, similar to the deficiencies of the contemporary Palestinian census: the inclusion of overseas residents in the census; the double-count of people moving from rural areas to urban centers; the inflation of numbers by clan leaders for political and economic reasons; the under-reporting of deaths. A June 10, 1993 document of Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics noted that according to Palestinian reporting, Palestinian life expectancy, supposedly, exceeded life expectancy in the USA….