WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peter Smith Monsters of Faith, the Faith of Monsters

Posted By on June 10th, 2017

I don’t want searches outside public events. I don’t want concrete barriers to prevent mad Muslims mowing down pedestrians. I don’t want to hear another smug sophist prattling about lethal refrigerators. What I want is a logical, reasoned response to an evil, growing menace.

A good big ‘un will always beat a good little ‘un is an adage mostly applied to boxing. And it is mostly true. Correspondingly, family units and small communities are vulnerable to raiding bands of pillagers. Cities are vulnerable to sieges by armed forces. Weaker nations are vulnerable to stronger ones.

This all seems terribly dated, does it not? Vikings sacking British monasteries, Muslim armies at the walls of Constantinople, storm troopers sweeping over the Maginot Line, are all relics of past times?

In fact, the difference between then and now is not the advent of a new moral age. Bad guys are as numerous as ever. If you for a moment doubt that, those in Israel don’t. If you think Israel is a special case think of the heady aspirations of North Korea and Iran, not to mention the “junior varsity” upstarts. And, without wishing to add to Russian fear-mongering, Ukraine and the Baltic states have reason to be anxious.

The difference between then and now is purely logistical. Enemies have to cross borders and sometimes open seas. Standing against them are the good guys; disciplined defence forces armed with advanced weaponry, allied across enlightened Western countries. They are ‘the thin red line’ between us and pillage, rape, massacre and enslavement. We can sleep peacefully in our beds.

Hold on, enemies within don’t have to breach borders or engage the thin red line. They are an entirely different kettle of fish. What do you do if the bad guys are on the inside?

The advice that British police give citizens is to “run and hide” from terrorists. Good advice when you’re not armed and armed police at the very (amazing) best will take eight minutes to turn up and kill the assassins, as in the London attack on June 3. Be aware, they should add as part of their advice, “knife, gun, bomb and truck wielding assassins might take only seconds to kill you.”

Why we are concerned but not quaking? Yes, as I said, we have the police and army if needed, but also we have each other. We can rely upon each other. Not to defend us but to be like us. Hardly anyone in our street is a criminal or assassin. Moreover, to the extent criminals and assassins are among us they are not glued together as a cohesive force. Suppose they were? Suppose that the 23,000 known Islamic extremists in the UK and their support networks, their fellow travellers, and fair-weather brothers and sisters, were glued together by a common ideology and purpose?

Be afraid. They are glued together by an extremely widespread perverted and extremist view of their ‘noble faith’. Mind you, how tens upon tens of thousands of Islamic scholars and hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslim folk could get it all so wrong I must leave to your vivid imagination. It is beyond sense that this for example – “fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness” (9:123) – could be a given any kind of threatening interpretation. And those dastardly conservatives dispute the validity of Islamophobia. Really!

EDUCATION Comments turned off

School bans U.S. Marine grad from commencement for wearing dress blues By Victor Skinner

Posted By on June 10th, 2017

Crown Point High School officials refused to allow graduate Jacob Dalton Stanley to wear his Marine dress blues to the Class of 2017’s graduation ceremony Tuesday at the Star Plaza Theatre.

According to the Times of Northwest Indiana:

Stanley, who graduated in December and joined the U.S. Marines, completed boot camp Friday and flew home for his high school graduation. He practiced with his classmates during the day and was reportedly told by high school Principal Chip Pettit that he would not be able to wear his uniform during commencement.

Stanley wore his uniform anyway, and school officials would not allow him to receive his diploma at the ceremony. His name was listed on the graduation program, but officials did not read his name among the graduates.

Stanley’s classmate, graduate Leann Tustison, told the Times the school’s decision to block the newly minted Marine was “absolutely ridiculous.

“He’s in the military putting his life on the line for us,” Tustison said.

“It’s unacceptable that he was not allowed to walk across the stage. If he wants to walk across the stage in his uniform that he worked so hard for and earned, he should have the right to do that. That’s his achievement. They honored other people’s achievements whether they were in triathlon or other activities,” she continued.

“If his achievement is joining the armed forces, he should have been able to do that. The students were outraged. There were some students who were going to walk in solidarity with Jake. It was a disgrace.”

Numerous other students who spoke with the news site agreed with Tustison.

“It was despicable that he wasn’t allowed to wear his uniform. We should be proud of that as Americans. He should have been able to wear his military uniform,” Crown Point graduate Jessica Janda said.

Folks online overwhelmingly sided with Stanley, and lashed out at school officials for the decision.

Stanley declined to comment about the situation, but issued a statement through the 9th Marine Corps District, Naval Station Great Lakes, according to NBC Chicago.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Philip Hopkins A Looming Disaster in Energy Security

Posted By on June 10th, 2017

Renewables will provide, optimistically, 10 to 20 per cent of global energy by 2035. There is no prospect of seriously reducing fossil fuel emissions without an accompanying fall in global standards of living directly implied by large reductions in per capita energy use

The constant headlines say it all: Australia’s energy system is in crisis. “High power costs floor business” says a lead story in the Australian Financial Review: “Shell-shocked businesses are re-assessing investments and jobs slugged by huge increases in electricity bills.” The Energy Users Association of Australia, which represents the country’s largest power users, believes major industries are on the verge of collapse because of the price of power. BlueScope Steel has warned that climate policies could produce an “energy catastrophe”. A country blessed with massive coal and gas reserves, economic resources that traditionally drive economic growth, has suffered a power blackout in South Australia and is suffering from extremely high power prices.

Let’s start with a brief overview of Australia’s energy system. Australia gets 73 per cent of its power from coal, 11 per cent from natural gas, and about 15 per cent from renewables (hydro 7 per cent, wind 4 per cent, rooftop solar 2 per cent and bio-energy 2 per cent). When the Hazelwood power station closed in March, Victoria lost 15 to 20 per cent of its base-load power, and the nation’s power capacity fell by 5 per cent. In Australia, coal is by far the cheapest way to produce energy and we’ve got plenty of it—hundreds of years’ worth in New South Wales and Queensland. Victoria has 200 billion tonnes of brown coal, enough for another 500 years. And it’s easily accessible—we’ve used less than 2 per cent of brown coal reserves since mining began in the early 1920s.

With coal comes greenhouse emissions, blamed by many scientists for “global warming”. Burning coal produces carbon dioxide, particularly Latrobe Valley brown coal, which is two-thirds water and has to be heated and dried before it can be burned. Gas, also a fossil fuel, produces fewer greenhouse emissions than coal, while renewables, hydro and nuclear produce none. So how does Australia go about trying to cut its greenhouse emissions? With no carbon price, the Renewable Energy Target (RET) rules. The current renewable targets are: the federal Coalition wants 23.5 per cent by 2023, with a 28 per cent target by 2030 under the Paris climate agreement; the federal Labor Party has a target of 50 per cent by 2020; South Australian Labor has a target of 50 per cent by 2025 (it’s now at 40 per cent); Queensland is similar; while the Andrews government in Victoria has a target of 25 per cent by 2020, 40 per cent by 2025. Logically, any curtailing of coal for other more expensive energy uses is going to flow through to higher electricity prices, although there are other factors at work, such as rising network charges.

Gas is more expensive than coal. It takes more capital to bring a gas well into operation than to open a coal mine. Gas power stations, though, are cheaper than coal stations to build. Renewables are inherently more expensive and cost at least three times as much as coal. This is mainly due to the materials they use, and the construction cost. The capital expense is borne mostly by the government; huge subsidies allow wind and solar to be considered economic, but is this so in reality? Money spent in capital construction must be recovered in energy, but renewables don’t produce much energy. The income they generate does not cover the capital cost. Renewables do have running costs; they have some operators. More importantly, they also have maintenance; for example, solar can’t afford to have solar panels covered in dust—it reduces their effectiveness. Figures showing the effectiveness of solar panels are determined in the laboratory; the real world is different. There is also the extra cost of building wind and solar connectors to the main grid. In addition there is the impact on the grid itself. With a mix of solar and thermal generators producing electricity, you challenge the stability of the system.

The intermittency of renewables creates pressure in the system. It has two damaging effects. First, the base-load plant has to shut down, but the plant is not built to shut down and come up to speed again. Normally it stays on line between major overhauls. Second, if you start bouncing the network around, you start to get failures of equipment on the network. In Victoria, there are gas turbines that can be brought on line and taken off quickly. These are mainly used for peak power, but with the Hazelwood closure, and the Andrews government planning to dramatically expand renewable power, some gas would effectively form base-load power, pushing up base power prices. Victoria may even end up importing black-coal power from New South Wales! Ironically, that’s why Victoria set up the State Electricity Commission in the first place—to mine brown coal instead of importing black coal from New South Wales.

The brute fact is that wind and solar are more expensive. The panel headed by the industrialist Dick Warburton estimated in its 2013 report that there existed a cross-subsidy for renewables of $9.4 billion between 2001 and 2013, with a further $22 billion required for the remainder of the scheme until 2030. That’s an average subsidy of about $3 billion a year. The report was ignored because Warburton was said to be a “climate change denier”, but the study concentrated purely on the economics of renewables. A recent report by BAEconomics came up with a similar figure, revealing that the government renewables subsidies were $3 billion in 2015-16. On one estimate, this equated to 6 to 9 per cent for the average household and up to 20 per cent for the industrial customer. These subsidies are not transparent, the report said. Almost three quarters come from government mandates paid for by customers and collected by third parties. Higher prices are passed on by retailers and paid for by consumers. These subsidies do not appear in government accounts, and are thus approximate in the report. The report’s other features include:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

About those Comey hearings. Diana West

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

Not one US senator asked former FBI Director James Comey to account for the sinister fact that the source of the explosive determination that “Russia hacked the DNC” computer system is a DNC contractor, not the FBI.

Not one US Senator asked why Comey’s FBI deferred to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s DNC when the DNC refused to permit FBI forensics specialists to examine the DNC computer system; or why the FBI was never able to examine John Podesta’s personal devices, either. Not one member of the Senate Intelligence Committe inquired as to why the DNC servers have not, after all of this time, ever been re-examined by the FBI; or whether it is just possible that this same DNC contractor putting forward the DNC/Russian hacking charge might have destroyed the DNC computer system.

The scene of the crime.

As mysterious and sensational as these unanswered questions are, so, too, are the reasons they have not been asked.

To be sure, there was this exchange:

BURR: Do you have any doubt that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 elections?

COMEY: None.

BURR: Do you have any doubt that the Russian government was behind the intrusions in the DNC and the DCCC systems, and the subsequent leaks of that information?

COMEY: No, no doubt.

Followed by this:

BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate — did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, and, I believe, the DCCC, but I’m sure the DNC, we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn’t get direct access.

The “third party” Comey and Burr discuss is a DNC contractor named Crowdstrike. How “high class” Crowdstrike really is becomes an open question on learning that Crowdstrike has had to retract signficant portions of a recent report — also on “Russia” “hacking” — following “a damaging series of questions over its credibility,” as the Daily Mail explains in detail here. The Daily Mail further reports that Crowdstrike’s co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch and president Shawn Henry themselves refused to testify in March before the House Intelligence Committee, although Committee spox Jack Langer put it more delicately: “They declined the invitation, so we’re communicating with them about speaking to us privately.”

That’s the way to get to the bottom of things never. No doubt special “Russia influence” counsel Robert Mueller will get similar non-results, having, as FBI director, promoted Shawn Henry to big cyber security jobs at least twice during Henry’s FBI career. It’s a safe bet such rapport can only serve to make the Mueller investigation even more non-illuminating to the American people. Isn’t it more and more apparent that this is the point? Ladies and gents, the dreaded Fix is in. Hocus-pocus and the president will be gone.

BURR: But no content?

COMEY: Correct.

BURR: Isn’t content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?

COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks — the people who were my folks at the time — is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.

Here, of course, was the perfect opening for Burr, or any other Senator, to sit up, adjust his microphone and say:

Are you telling the American people, Mr. Comey, that there has been no independent corroboration of this “third party,” this DNC contractor’s investigation, of the DNC servers? That the FBI just took this incendiary information about “Russian hacking” from this “third party” — and that was that? Further, you have stated in previous testimony that the DNC repeatedly denied FBI requests for access to the servers. Why? What reasons did the DNC give you? How is it possible that you, as FBI director, allowed this to stand?

Mr. Comey, please share with the American people your own reasons for acquiescing to the DNC denial of FBI access to the DNC servers, even as the DNC claimed these servers had been breached by a hostile foreign power! Did you ever possibly consider overriding the DNC to ensure that the FBI could enter what was by all accounts a highly sensitive crime scene to conduct professional, non-partisan analysis?

If not, why not? In fact, Mr. Comey, I’d like to hear more about your deliberations. Who was part of the decision-making process that led you to outsource the investigation of a purported foreign cyber strike on the United States, with all of the ramifications for increased tensions and hostilities with a leading nuclear power, to any third party? Do you consider that good police work? And what does this say about the professionalism of the rest of the IC that has relied on this same “third party” for its assessments? And how “high-class” is this “entity,” anyway, when we now know it has had to retract significant sections of a recent report, also on “Russia” “hacking,” due to the exposure of shoddy data and practices?

Tell me, Mr. Comey, is the FBI now outsourcing all of its counter-intelligence investigations to such “high class entities” — ? Or only in this singularly controversial, momentous and internationally explosive one?

Why would that be so, Mr. Comey…?

Instead, Senator Burr — but it could have any one of them — changed the subject.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Trump Wins Will Robert Mueller investigate intelligence agencies for playing in domestic politics? By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

Ex-FBI chief James Comey played well in Thursday’s hearing to the audience he cares about, the media and bicoastal elites. Donald Trump may well have scored a win among the audience he cares about, Trump’s America.

Much was made of Mr. Comey saying he didn’t trust Mr. Trump not to “lie” about what transpired in their private meetings. Yet despite our president’s dubious relation with veracity, President Trump was shown to be the source of important truths. Mr. Comey had indeed told him he was not under personal investigation in the Russia “collusion” matter. As Sen. Marco Rubio, not a big Trump fan, noted, this fact was remarkable for also being widely known among Senate colleagues and yet was the one fact that never leaked to the media.

Mr. Comey made much of conflicting statements about why he was fired. But it was Mr. Trump who, belying his own White House flackery, stated candidly it was because of the “Russia thing.” Even a non-Trump fan listening to the hearing could readily gather that Mr. Trump had reason to be frustrated that his administration was being paralyzed by insinuations of collusion for which there is zero evidence.

As a rule, when there is no evidence of a particular act, the FBI does not investigate. The FBI is investigating now only because Democrats and Trump opponents so filled the airwaves with unsubstantiated speculation.

Now here’s a secret: Most Democrats understand the hunt will come a cropper. If a Trump associate brushed shoulders with a Russian-looking individual on the way to the men’s room, it has leaked. The U.S. government sucks up and archives vast gobs of communication data.

Yet the earnestly desired evidence of collusion has not materialized, so Democrats have turned instead to charging “obstruction of justice,” with many already baying for impeachment.

Here’s another secret: Such “process” crimes don’t impress voters when there is no underlying crime. If Mr. Trump leaned on his intelligence officials to remove the Russian cloud, this was ill-advised on the part of a president whose specialty is the ill-advised. But his behavior will also increasingly appear in a new light if it turns out Washington’s tail-chasing has been partly driven by Russian fabrications.

The Washington Post and CNN reported late last month that the single most shattering series of events for the Hillary Clinton campaign—the events that began with FBI chief Comey’s intervention in the race—was partly influenced by planted Russian fake intelligence.

Likewise the dossier of repulsive Trump allegations, assembled by a retired British spy supposedly tapping his Russian intelligence sources, also appears to have been a Russian plant and yet may have played a role in justifying the Obama administration’s decision to launch an intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

Think about it: To the extent the fruitless hunt for collusion has been promoted by planted Russian intelligence, Russian fiddling is playing a bigger role in shaping our politics today than it did during the campaign.

By the way, we’re not alleging supercompetence on Russia’s part. Planting fake information is routine intelligence work. The World War II battle of Midway was won partly with fake information about water filtration on Midway Island. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION Comments turned off

What Did Your Kids Learn This Week? World War II and American education. By James Freeman

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

A friend in suburban New Jersey was disappointed after conducting an informal survey of his household this week. It seems that not one of his four children who attend local public schools had heard a single word about D-Day. Tuesday was the 73rd anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy that began the liberation of Europe. Unfortunately, the experience of his family is hardly unique.

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a full 30% of recent college graduates don’t know that D-Day occurred during World War II. Looking at U.S. history in general, the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2014 found that just 18% of U.S. eighth-graders were graded as “proficient” or above.

While professional educators certainly deserve much of the blame, the journalistic profession could also do better. To its credit, yesterday the Las Vegas Review-Journal published the following letter from reader Donald Anderson:

I am totally dismayed that the Review-Journal failed to mention D-Day in the June 6 edition. If it hadn’t been for the success of the brave forces who stormed the beaches of Normandy on that fateful day in 1944, I’m sure the world situation would be entirely different.

Yes, I saw the eight lines in the Almanac section. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson could just as easily have sent an even stronger complaint to your humble correspondent. Lacking an Almanac section, this column failed entirely to mention the anniversary. Fortunately readers compensated for your correspondent’s oversight by appropriately marking the occasion in the comments section.

As for the news blackout that seems to have occurred in certain schools on Tuesday, the possible silver lining there is that a contemporary progressive educator’s rendering of World War II might leave parents wishing for complete silence on the subject.

In any case, this job seems to have fallen to non-professional educators, and perhaps a good place to start is by encouraging the youngsters in our households to see what they can learn about the two men pictured at the top of this page. They served as combat medics attached to Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division during World War II. The group is better known as the ‘Band of Brothers’ of book and television fame.

Speaking of the Army, this week the service tells the story of several D-Day veterans who gathered to share their experiences:

When the ramp to his World War II landing craft slammed down onto Utah Beach, then-Cpl. Herman Zeitchik jumped out and dashed across the sand as deadly rounds were shot out from fortified bunkers.

With the amphibious assault underway in the early morning of June 6, 1944, Zeitchik and other 4th Infantry Division Soldiers — who were part of the first wave of troops to land — desperately tried to find safe passage through the German-occupied beach.

“When the front of these landing crafts went down, we just took off,” said Zeitchik, now 93 years old. “We couldn’t see where to fire. We just had to get off the beach and try to find the rest of the unit.”

Along a 50-mile stretch of coastline in northern France, more than 160,000 Allied troops stormed Utah Beach and four other beaches that day to gain a foothold in continental Europe. By the end of the D-Day invasion, over 9,000 of those Allied troops were either dead or wounded — the majority of them Americans. CONTINUE AT SITE

MEDIA Comments turned off

Anonymous Sourcing Under Siege: CNN, NY Times Bungle Trump Reports Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David A. Vise on how press can avoid major mistakes.

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

David A. Vise, the author, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post for 23 years. He has also written several acclaimed non-fiction books, including ‘The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Phillip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History.’

CNN’s publication and retraction of a story about the Trump-Comey conflict illustrates the biggest bias in journalism: the bias in favor of “The Story.”

Similarly, the high-profile reporting by The New York Times on alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was at least partially refuted by Comey. He asserted that “in the main” a February story about alleged contacts between Trump lieutenants and Russian government officials was not true. Hours later, the New York Times reported Comey’s comments, but largely stood by their original story.

From my 23 years as a reporter at The Washington Post, I learned from journalism’s giants that bias must be guarded against with vigilance. Legendary Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee grilled reporters when major stories were based, as the CNN and Times stories were, on anonymous sources. Time and time again, Bradlee emphasized the importance of “getting it right,” a need that is heightened when nameless sources are used.

The pressure on reporters and columnists to publish stories that grab headlines and attention often causes them to overreach. This is what Bradlee’s successor as Editor, Len Downie dubbed “the bias in favor of The Story,” something Downie pushed editors to be aware of, and guard against.

This doesn’t mean that anonymous sources should not be used.

Frequently, cultivating sources that don’t want their names revealed is the only way for journalists to report important news and insights. In fact, the biggest journalism story of the last century, The Washington Post’s pursuit of Watergate—which led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1973—was based on an anonymous source known as “Deep Throat,” who was cultivated in part by my mentor, Bob Woodward.

Nevertheless, the darkest day in Washington Post history occurred just eight years later in 1981 when the newspaper was forced to give back a Pulitzer Prize it won for stories about a six-year-old heroin addict named Little Jimmy. Two of the best in the business, Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee, oversaw that coverage as editors, but reporter Janet Cooke duped both of them into believing a tale she had made up completely—and which prompted a massive police search for the non-existent boy.

On the day The Post won the Pulitzer, Cooke admitted she had fabricated the story and Bradlee, for his part, commissioned a major independent investigation into The Post newsroom to determine what went wrong and how it could be prevented in the future. Safeguards were adopted, and nothing else like it has since occurred at the newspaper.

Bradlee once told me, “We don’t write the truth. We write what people tell us.” Having said that, he demanded that stories meet a high standard for credibility and guarded the newspaper’s reputation for accuracy zealously.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump committed no crime. Democrats need to get over it. By Ed Rogers

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

Before the angry mob of breathless Democrats gets too spun up and ahead of itself, the anti-Trumpers should calm down and try to absorb just how preposterous it is to suggest that President Trump may have committed a criminal offense by supposedly obstructing justice during the Russia/Michael Flynn investigation.

Consider for a moment what would have happened if Trump had placed an op-ed in a prominent newspaper, arguing that the investigation into his campaign and former national security adviser Flynn was misguided, a wasteful use of government resources, and that he thought it should stop. To do so would be foolish, but not criminal.

Similarly, what if the president paraded up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the Justice Department with a bullhorn shouting, “Stop the Flynn investigation!”?

It would be unwise and inappropriate, but no one would say the president committed a crime. And he certainly could not be charged with obstruction of justice.

So, if the president’s wishes about an investigation can be loud and public, how is it possible that he violated the law by having a private conversation with a member of his own administration? How can it be that a bold position made in public would be legal, yet an arguably reserved position made in private is somehow considered criminal?

When it comes to obstructing justice before an audience, does size matter? I would love to hear from lawyers about this.

Anyway, everyone should also carefully consider the arguments made by constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz presented some compelling legal insight. “The president,” he writes, “is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.”

Former FBI director James B. Comey likewise confirmed during yesterday’s testimony that, “as a legal matter, [the] president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but direct that anybody be investigated or anybody not be investigated. I think he has the legal authority because all of us ultimately report in the executive branch up to the president.” “Norms” are important, and Trump is not big on playing by the rules, but that does not mean he has broken a law.

Comey’s testimony should be enough to let this issue of criminality fade away, but the Democrats and their allies in the media are heavily invested in bringing the president down. Yesterday did not go as they wanted it to, and the Democrats’ rage won’t let them see the truth.

Again, Dershowitz argues, “it is important to put to rest the notion that there was anything criminal about the president exercising his constitutional power to fire Comey and to request — ‘hope’ — that he let go the investigation of General Flynn.”

Democrats will continue to lash out and contort Comey’s testimony, but the facts speak for themselves. President Trump has not asked anyone to lie, he has not prevented anyone from performing his or her legal obligations, and he has most certainly not obstructed justice.

Comey’s testimony was not flattering toward the president, but, as I wrote yesterday, it did more to help Trump than to hurt him. No matter how much the Democrats and mainstream media outlets try to spin a crime out of the straw that was Comey’s testimony, the facts just do not take us there.

The president still has the advantage of being innocent. If the Democrats want to impeach Trump, they will have to keep looking. I’m sure they will.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

QATAR, TRUMP AND DOUBLE GAMES : CAROLINE GLICK

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

US President Donald Trump has been attacked by his ubiquitous critics for his apparent about-face on the crisis surrounding Qatar.

In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Trump sided firmly with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and the other Sunni states that cut diplomatic ties with Qatar and instituted an air and land blockade of the sheikhdom on Monday.

On Wednesday, Trump said that he hopes to mediate the dispute, more or less parroting the lines adopted by the State Department and the Pentagon which his Twitter posts disputed the day before.

To understand the apparent turnaround and why it is both understandable and probably not an about-face, it is important to understand the forces at play and the stakes involved in the Sunni Arab world’s showdown with Doha.

Arguably, Qatar’s role in undermining the stability of the Islamic world has been second only to Iran’s.

Beginning in the 1995, after the Pars gas field was discovered and quickly rendered Qatar the wealthiest state in the world, the Qatari regime set about undermining the Sunni regimes of the Arab world by among other things, waging a propaganda war against them and against their US ally and by massively funding terrorism.

The Qatari regime established Al Jazeera in 1996.

Despite its frequent denials, the regime has kept tight control on Al Jazeera’s messaging. That messaging has been unchanging since the network’s founding. The pan-Arab satellite station which reaches hundreds of millions of households in the region and worldwide, opposes the US’s allies in the Sunni Arab world. It supports the Muslim Brotherhood and every terrorist group spawned by it. It supports Iran and Hezbollah.

Al Jazeera is viciously anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

It serves as a propaganda arm not only of al-Qaida and Hezbollah but of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and any other group that attacks the US, Israel, Europe and other Western targets.

Al Jazeera’s reporters have accompanied Hamas and Taliban forces in their wars against Israel and the US. After Israel released Hezbollah arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar from prison in exchange for the bodies of two IDF reservists, Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau hosted an on-air party in his honor.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Going Postal over Health Care By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on June 9th, 2017

Anchor Insurance has announced that it will not offer insurance plans on the Ohio ObamaCare exchange next year, leaving 20 counties without any subsidized insurance options.

Regarding the Anthem departure, the New York Times breezily dismisses the fact that

Although [Anthem’s] departure would leave a small number of people — roughly 10,500 who live in about a fifth of the state’s counties — without an insurance carrier, the move was seized on by Republicans as more evidence that the markets are ‘collapsing’ under the Affordable Care Act.

Don’t you just love the satirical use of the quotations marks around the word collapsing indicating that such a charge is just utter nonsense?

Consequently, when Americans relate their horrific experiences under ObamaCare, they are met with insensitive, foul-mouthed responses and threats of violence for daring to expose the built-in problems of ObamaCare. Michelle Malkin relates how “millions of us who wanted our individual market health insurance plans left alone were branded selfish or liars for the past eight years. Our stories were stifled; our cancellation notices derided; our accounts of skyrocketing health insurance costs and diminished access to doctors mocked.” In fact, “[t]he partisan Beltway press shot down true stories of government-engineered pain and suffering, while hyping countless tall tales spun by the Obamacare Fable Factory.”

John Hayward asserts that Obama “needed to conceal how many people would lose their insurance under his plan. Millions of people lost their insurance plans because of the Affordable Care Act. Quite a few people have lost more than one insurance plan because of Obamacare-related disruptions to the market since 2010.” Moreover, “[i]t matters very much that Obamacare is absurdly expensive and wasteful. That’s real money being siphoned from our productive private economy and thrown around by the bureaucracy. A repeal plan that saves American taxpayers billions of dollars is a good thing and should be promoted to the people who pay all those taxes, insurance premiums, and deductibles as such.”

In addition, physician organizations now predict that in a mere 13 years, there will be a near-catastrophic shortage of primary care doctors and specialists in the United States. Kevin Campbell explains that:

Based on a new report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, it is expected that we will see a shortfall of nearly 100,000 doctors by the year 2030. A closer look at the predictions show that we will have a shortage of 40,000 primary care physicians, as well as a shortage of nearly 60,000 physicians in specialties such as allergy and immunology, cardiology, gastroenterology, and infectious disease. In general surgery, the report predicts that there will be 30,000 fewer surgeons than are needed to provide care to those who need it.

But, rest assured that “all federal employees could see a better rate on their health insurance premiums under a bill to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.” Eric Katz reports that:

A key component of the 2017 Postal Service Reform Act would be the creation of a new health benefits program just for postal employees and retirees, while also requiring all eligible annuitants to enroll in Medicare as their primary provider. Federal workers remaining in their current Federal Employees Health Benefits plans would see their costs shrink, as removing postal employees — who are generally costlier to insure than the rest of the federal workforce — from their pools would decrease the overall expenses associated with their insurance. CBO did not estimate the savings FEHB enrollees would themselves receive, but it did predict the government’s portion of premium costs would decrease by $1.4 billion for federal retirees and $1.9 billion for current employees over 10 years.

Analysts also predicted premiums in the new system ‘for postal employees and annuitants would be lower than the FEHB premiums those people would face under current law.’ Again, CBO did not project savings for the individual, but said USPS would save $2.2 billion for current postal workers and $2.5 billion over 10 years under the postal-specific health care program.