Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Kathy Griffin's and Hillary Clinton's Insanity Is the Trademark of Progressive Democrats Living in a Dangerous Fantasyland

THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY -- SANITY AND INSANITY ARE SEPARATED BY A FINE LINE. • • • KATHY GRIFFIN. Kathy Griffin just proved this in spades, posing for a photo with a blood-soaked head that looks unmistakably like President Trump. My first reaction was to say to Kathy 'turn in your US passport and get out of America. You are trash of the lowest kind.' But, reflecting on the vulgarity and garbled thought process that pass for comedy when Griffin is "on" -- whether with CNN's Anderson Cooper or someone else -- we have to admit that we've always known she is not funny but certifiable. The despicable photo is proof that Kathy Griffin may be unfit to live in America. • CNN has dropped Griffin from its line-up. There are social media comments calling her a "recruiter" for ISIS, as well as calls to boycott her current national tour and to arrest and try her for an act of domestic terrorism under The Patriot Act. The Secret Service is investigating the affair, and let's hope there is more effort to make an example of Griffin's disgusting behavior than there was when Madonna suggested on live TV that she sometimes thinks of blowing up the White House. First Lady Melania Trump issued a public statement : "As a mother, a wife, and a human being, that photo is very disturbing. When you consider some of the atrocities happening in the world today, a photo opportunity like this is simply wrong and makes you wonder about the mental health of the person who did it.” Mrs. Trump had real reason to react because the Trump's 11-year-old son Barron saw the photo on TV and panicked, calling for his mother. Barron had no idea who Griffin is or that the photo was fake. President Trump said : "Kathy Griffin should be ashamed of herself. My children, especially my 11 year old son, Barron, are having a hard time with this." So is America, Mr, President, so is America. • Perhaps, instead of stripping her of her citizenship and deporting her, and after she has been tried for the hate crime she committed, we could arrange an adjoining padded cell for her and Hillary Clinton. • • • HILLARY CLINTON HAS LOST IT. Griffin's outrageous hate crime photo reminds us that the line between sanity and insanity is fine and easily breached. Political Exhibit Number One is Our Paranoid Girl Hillary Clinton -- who lost the presidential election in 2016, in case you may be confused by the possibly seditious anti-Trump talk of the mainstream media. Paranoid Hillary is currently on an “I actually won the election” speaking tour. Hillary told the New York Magazine recently : “I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin.” That bit about the suppression of the Wisconsin vote is a new chapter in Hillary's paranoid attack on everyone who might have voted against her last November. • Paranoid Hillary then went on to blame the conservative press for her loss : “Look, we have an advocacy press on the right that has done a really good job for the last 25 years. They have a mission. They use the rights given to them under the First Amendment to advocate a set of policies that are in their interests, their commercial, corporate, religious interests. Because the advocacy media occupies the right, and the center needs to be focused on providing as accurate information as possible. Not both-sides-ism and not false equivalency.” • Our Girl Hillary got that one a little screwed up -- actually the press she calls "the center" is the Progressive leftist propagandist mainstream media that has abandoned facts for lies as it tries to unseat Trump and give the White House to Hillary. Just how that would work is a little fuzzy, but then, so is the MSM. • But, Paranoid Hillary's lapdog MSM didn't get off scott free. She lambasted MSNBC and the New York Times for hiring moderate conservatives such as George Will and Bret Stephens : “Why…would…you…do…that?” • They do that perhaps because there are at least two sides to every political issue, and although it has abandoned its objectivity in favor of propagandist advocacy for Hillary and the Progressive Democrat apparatus, the New York Times must see some sort of fake virtue in pretending it is still a real newspaper. • Then, Hillary rose to her favorite self-confirming talking point, telling the New York Magazine : "Sixty-six million people voted for me, plus, you know, the crazy third-party people. So there’s a lot of people who would actually appreciate stronger arguments on behalf of the most existential challenges facing our country and the world, climate change being one of them! It’s clearly a commercial decision. But I don’t think it will work. I mean, they’re laughing on the right at these puny efforts to try to appease people on the right.“ • "Crazy third-party people”??? That sounds like Hillary's infamous “deplorable” comment that helped torpedo her candidacy. Like the ProgDems, Hillary never ever learns from experience. • Hillary then blamed her opponents in the primary and the general election for using citizen anger. When asked if Trump and Sanders capitalized on anger, Clinton said, “Yes,” and added, “And I beat both of them.” Wrong!!! But, there it is -- Paranoid Hillary has crossed the line from reality to fantasyland, from sanity to insanity. • And, there is always the spectre of "sexism" for Hillary -- despite the fact that voting for women is on a continuing upward curve and Americans scarcely talk about a candidate's sex anymore -- unless it is the often-exposed sexual aberrations of Anthony Weiner, husband of Uma Abedin, Hillary's top aide. But, I digress -- Paranoid Hillary blamed her defeat on sexism : “Once I moved from serving someone -- a man, the President -- to seeking that job on my own, I was once again vulnerable to the barrage of innuendo and negativity and attacks that come with the territory of a woman who is striving to go further.” • In Hillary's paranoid blur, Benghazi, a private email server that mishandled classified documents and a lifetime of skirting the truth and dodging criminal investigations had nothing to do with her loss. But, we Deplorable Crazies get it. • The same day Clinton talked to New York Magazine, she gave the commencement address at her alma mater Wellesley College, warning against politicians who invent their own facts and “attempt to control reality" : “When people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them, it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society. That is not hyperbole, it is what authoritarian regimes throughout history have done....They attempt to control reality.” • My guess is that Paranoid Hillary has so completely lost contact with reality that controlling it is not possible -- you cannot control what you do not recognize. • Both Kathy Griffin and Hillary Clinton need professional help. They are no longer safe for themselves or for others. To continue to treat them as rational human beings is wrong, for them and for us. And, along with mental health treatment, they both need to be brought to the bar of justice. • • • DEAR READERS, America and the world has had enough of all the Progressive Democrat flailing at the result of the presidential election. Hillary Clinton lost. End of discussion. If the ProgDems are foolish enough to keep Hillary front and center, they will be laughed out of the mid-term elections. We have to ask ourselves if ProgDem leaders are as irrational as Päranoid Hillary??? Have they so totally lost sight of what actually happened in November, are they so out of touch with reality, that they, like Kathy Griffin and Hillary Clinton, should be hospitalized for their own and society's safety. • The ProgDem rants and lies about President Trump are poisoning America's relations with Europe and the world. Sadly, the world sees America through the prism of CNN, NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Read any European article about American politics in any European newspaper and you will see quotes only from CNN, the NYT and the WP. Of course, that fits Europe's socialist welfare-state frame of reference, but it also drastically and dangerously distorts Europe's view of America. • On Wednesday, American Thinker published an article that makes a strong point about all this ranting : "It is indeed time that Republicans spoke up -- spoke up against the campaign to disrupt the election. This charge made by the Oust Trump campaign to describe Russian intentions certainly describes the actions of Democrats, their Never Trump Republican allies and the monolithic media since January 20, 2017 and the Inauguration of President Trump -- following failed attempts to derail the inauguration by vote-recount demands and then a pathetic attempt to rig the Electoral College vote against Trump. It is time that Republicans spoke out against the Obama use of surveillance for purpose of spying on the Trump presidential campaign, and spoke out, too, against the illegal leaking of classified information to the monolithic media by the anti-Trump forces. [53% of Americans think the leaks are not only illegal but acts of treason.] Failure to prosecute the illegal unmasking of Trump campaign aides and leaking of classified information makes a mockery of leftist cries that 'No one is above the law.' The left brazenly asserts that The Law is whatever they say it is -- and Republicans are silent." • The media has now taken to saying that Trump is becoming impatient with the congressional GOP. Well he might. They have dithered over most of his agenda -- one that America supports but that is sometimes not their preferred course, so they pick and choose from the Trump menu to take on the issues that fit their swampy agenda. The result is that there is no Republican member of the House or Senate with the guts to tell Progressive Democrats to 'stuff it.' The message coming loud and clear from the GOP ought to be 'We will not stand idly by and allow you to overturn the results of the November 8, 2016, election. We will not let you destroy democracy in America and replace our liberty with a Progressive, leftist dictatorship of the elites.' The Republicans in Congress need to speak up, defend the Constitution, and demonstrate that they stand with We the People. The GOP must stop buckling under to the ProgDems, who are not in charge in Congress, although those who still watch the MSM could be forgiven for thinking they are. The GOP must give President Trump a fair chance to keep his campaign promises. Right now, the Swamp is showing firm determination and resourcefulness in refusing to be drained. If the Swamp wins, instead of us, then the next phase of We the People's outcry will be another declaration of independence from the Swamp, complete with the removal and replacement not just of Obamacare, but of the entire establishment. Will the cold and criminal brutality of Kathy Griffin's photo finally bring the Progressive Democrats to their senses?? • Edmund Burke said many things that guided America in its quest to build a constitutional Republic, things that apply to President Trump's effort to drain the Swamp; but, today, perhaps the most urgent of Burke's admonitions to all citizens is : "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." • Do whatever you can do to help save the Republic. Support President Trump and all those who stand with him in Washington and around Awerica. There is no such thing as a "little" contribution. Do whatever you can !!!

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Mrs. Merkel Jettisons UK and US, Says Europe Must Take Its Fate into Its Own Hands -- It's About Time !!

THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY -- CHANCELLOR MERKEL SAYS THE US AND UK ARE NOT RELIABLE ALLIES. That's right -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a German campaign rally in Munich on Sunday : "Europe must take its fate into its own hands.” Merkel on Saturday had already labelled the result of the “six against one” G7 discussions “very difficult, not to say very unsatisfactory.” • The Chancellor sounded like a teenager who has just been told to earn his own pocket money. But, there it is. She said the reason is that Europe is faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency : “The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.” • • • IT'S ABOUT TIME, Mrs. Merkel. And, maybe with a chunk of your own money -- money the IMF and the US have been telling you to spend more freely for EU nations impoverished by your fiscal demands and budget surplus hoarding, and money for NATO defense. You see, Mrs. Merkel, while you sock away your Deutsch Marks, sorry Euros, the rest of the EU is breaking up fiscally trying to live with your draconian spending-to-GDP ratios. And at 1.2% -- against America's 4% and Britain's 2%, your commitment to NATO and defending your own country looks pretty shabby. • • • WHAT DOES GERMANY BRING TO NATO? Not much. The Chancellor told her audience that while Germany and Europe would strive to remain on good terms with America and Britain, “we have to fight for our own destiny.” • We hope the Chancellor wasn't referring to fighting with ground troops and equipment, because without the UK and US component, aided by the French, there would be no NATO troops. • Mrs. Merkel fell back on what she called the special emphasis needed on safeguarding warm relations between Berlin and newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron. But, if Mrs. Merkel thinks France has extra Euros to spare either for defense or for being lend-lease pals with the Bundesbank, forget it. The fact is that even France, beaten up fiscally and economically by being "friends" with Germany, spends a bigger percent of its GDP on defense and NATO than Germany does. And, France's major military commitment of ground troops in North Africa has prevented the region from crumbling in the face of the fierce assault by ISIS and al-Qaida in the Magreb. • • • MERKEL ISN'T USED TO OTHER LEADERS CALLING HER BLUFF. France may be Chancellor Merkel's pal, but it is not the crutch she seems to suggest she needs as she whines about the US and the UK actually being independent enough to disagree with her. Britain and America do not like being roughed up by unelected German-approved EU bureaucrats or being lectured to about climate change nonsense. The Chancellor isn't used to open disagreement from her EU "partners" -- because they are at her doorstep with their empty central bank cups held out, begging for fiscal relief and help with their tattered economies caused by Mrs. Merkel's "austerity." • • • DEAR READERS, my measured guess is that the rest of the EU is thinking "we must take our fate into our own hands because we can't completely depend on Germany." • Just one more thought -- the US and the UK bailed Germany out after World War II and set it up to be the industrial engine that would put Europe back in working order after Germans had methodically destroyed it. In the past 50 years, German politicians have increasingly shattered that trust by looking out for 'Numero Uno' while ignoring the needs of other EU countries. So, if Angela Merkel is now being given a cold shower of reality by the UK's Brexit and President Trump's pay-up-and-shut-up stance over Germany's unkept NATO financing promises, there is only one place to put the blame -- Mrs. Merkel, LOOK IN THE MIRROR.

Monday, May 29, 2017

Memorial Day 2017 and the Duke of Wellington

Memorial Day is the day set aside by America to honor its war dead and those who serve in the armed forces. We devote much of the day to remembering and giving thanks for all those who have worn the US military uniform and served with valor to protect the United States and preserve the freedom and personal liberties of its citizens. • But, as anyone who has ever served in any military knows, there is a great deal of bureaucratic interference and control by staff groups over the soldiers and their commanders in the field. It sometimes prevents the best use of the military's resources and is often the butt of insider jokes. • The Duke of Wellington, famous for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo, led the allied troops in what is called the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal. The war lasted from 1807 to 1814, as the the allied powers of Spain, Britain and Portugal sought to break the power of Napoleon's empire. The Peninsular War was part of the larger struggle that is called the Napoleonic Wars. The Peninsular War started when French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807, and escalated in 1808 when France turned on Spain, previously its ally. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation, significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare. Indeed, the word 'guerrilla' came into the English language at this time when local guerrilla fighters augmented the regular allied forces to great effect. • The bureaucrats in Whitehall, the complex of buildings that then and now houses the administration of the British government, were apparently relentless in pursuing the British ground force in Spain under the Duke of Wellington. It seems that finally Wellington had had enough and wrote the following letter to the bureaucrats in London. -- "Letter from the Duke of Wellington dispatched from Spain in August 1812 : Gentlemen, Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence. Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall. This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both : 1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or, perchance, 2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain. Your most obedient servant, Wellington • That may be my favorite letter of all time. It certainly raises the spectre of the hordes of staff bureaucrats who had completely lost sight of the reason wars are fought. • As we remember our fallen hero soldiers and their brothers in arms lucky enough to come back home from war, let's give a thought not only to their valor but also to their patience with all of us who have never been in the field or faced the enemy. • In heartfelt gratitude to America's fighting men and women. Bless you all on this Memorial Day 2017.

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Manchester Bombing, Cairo Christians Killed, MS-13 Gangs Harbored, Greece in Tatters -- and Only President Trump Cares about Us

IT'S MONDAY -- HERE'S THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY. Christians. Greece. Manchester. MS-13. • • • CHRISTIANS SLAUGHTERED NEAR CAIRO. On Friday, masked militants in three SUVs opened fire on a bus carrying Coptic Christians, including many children, south of Cairo in the Sinai, killing at least 28 and wounding 25, according to the Interior Ministry. On Saturday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, the fourth to target Christians since December. Islamic militants have for years been waging an insurgency in the troubled northern part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, although a growing number of attacks have recently also taken place on mainland Egypt. The assault happened while the bus was traveling on a side road in the desert leading to the remote monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Maghagha, in Minya governorate, about 140 miles south of Cairo. The victims were enroute from the nearby province of Beni Suef. Security officials said witnesses told them they saw between 8 and 10 attackers, dressed in military uniforms and wearing masks. Khaled Mogahed, Egypt's Health Ministry spokesman, said the death toll could rise further. According to Copts United news, 10 children were killed and only three children survived the attack. Arab TV stations showed images of a badly damaged bus along a roadside, many of its windows blown out. Ambulances were parked around it with bodies on the ground covered with black plastic sheets. • Hours after Friday's attack, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi announced that Egypt had launched airstrikes against militant training bases in eastern Libya. Senior Egyptian officials said fighter jets targeted bases in Libya of the Shura Council, an Islamist militia known to be linked to al-Qaida, not ISIS. El-Sissi told Pope Towadros II, the Pope of the Coptic church in Egypt, in a phone call on Friday that the state would not rest until the perpetrators of the attack were punished. El-Sissi had already declared a three-month state of emergency following the targeting of two churches north of Cairo on Palm Sunday. In December, a suicide bomber targeted a Cairo church. The three attacks, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, killed at least 75 people. • On Friday, US President Trump vowed to crush “evil organizations of terror.” In a sharply worded statement, Trump condemned terrorists "engaged in a war against civilization" and the "merciless slaughter of Christians in Egypt." El-Sissi, in his televised address, said of the US President: "I direct my appeal to President Trump : I trust you, your word and your ability to make fighting global terror your primary task." He said the attack on a bus carrying Christians, many of them children, would steel the nation's resolve to destroy terrorist organizations and expose "their depraved, twisted and thuggish ideology." Egypt’s Copts, the Middle East’s largest and oldest Christian community, have repeatedly been targets for discrimination and attacks at the hands of the country’s majority Moslem population. They account for about 10% of Egypt’s 93 million people. Copts rallied around el-Sissi, a general who was elected president, in 2013 when he ousted his Islamist predecessor Mohammed Morsi, of the Moslem Brotherhood, under whose leadership attacks on Christian homes, businesses and churches surged, especially in the country’s south, the heartland of Egypt’s Christians. • After Pope Francis visited Egypt in April, in part to show his support for Christians in this Moslem majority Arab nation who have been increasingly targeted by Islamic militants, ISIS vowed to escalate attacks against Christians, urging Moslems to stay away from Christian gatherings and Western embassies, saying they are targets for the group’s followers. • The systematic genocide of the Middle East Christian community must soon be stopped before all traces of the oldest religious sect in the region are obliterated. Where is the European outrage at the massacre of its fellow Christians -- or is this yet another atrocity that the EU looks to America to master for it? • • • GREEKS, LIKE CHRISTIANS, ARE IGNORED BY THE EU. Former Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was wounded Thursday in an explosion in a car in central Athens, police said. According to the AP, Papademos, 69, opened an envelope inside his car that contained explosives. This was confirmed by local news in Athens. However, police did not immediately confirm that it was a parcel bomb -- then, what was it?? Papademos was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Papademos served as prime minister for six months from 2011 to 2012 and is a former deputy governor of the European Central Bank. Police said two other people in the car were also wounded. • A recent protest in Athens, during a general strike against a new round of austerity cuts, took hundreds of thousands of Greeks off the job as they heeded the call of labor unions to join a 24-hour general strike. The effects of the strike came in response to pledges made by the leftist-led government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Greece’s international creditors. Flights and public transportation were disrupted, ships remained anchored in ports, government offices were closed and hospitals operated with limited staff. • Greece has struggled for years to dig its way out of an economic crisis, and even though there has been progress, overall unemployment is at 23%, with the country largely dependent on outside help. National unions were strident in their rejection of the new round of austerity cuts : pension cuts starting in 2019 and tax increases beginning in 2020 that together would save about 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion). In a statement, the Greek civil servants’ union, Adedy, called the austerity measures “barbaric,” calling them the “looting of wages and pensions” and a “sellout” of state assets, referring to plans to privatize the power board and other public bodies. Thanos Vasilopoulos of Greece’s private sector union, GSEE, told Greek media : “The memorandums have consciously crushed small- and medium-size businesses," he said, referring to three foreign bailouts that successive governments have agreed to since 2010, adding “Basically, they have created an army of 1.5 million unemployed.” • Some members of the Tsipras government expressed opposition to the measures, but coalition lawmakers approved them after Tsipras placated wavering lawmakers and a public weary of seven years of austerity by preparing legislation that would introduce some so-called countermeasures, including social benefits for the poor. • The parliamentary approval before Greek finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, met his Eurozone counterparts at a meeting in Brussels last Monday was supposed to guarantee the release of €7 billion that Greece needs to meet debt obligations due in July, as well as to start a discussion of relief for Greece’s huge debt burden, which is equivalent to nearly 180% of GDP. Greece, which has been under the supervision of international creditors since 2010, has imposed wave after wave of austerity measures in return for bailout loans to keep the economy afloat. Fiscal discipline has improved Greece’s finances, but it has left one in four Greeks unemployed and cut household incomes by a third, and the ratio of the country’s debt to its GDP is the highest in the Eurozone. • BUT, after Tsipras herculean effort to force through his coalition parliamant yet another painful set of austerity measures, much to everyone's shocked surprise, Eurozone finance ministers failed to agree on a debt relief plan for Greece, raising the prospect of a summer crisis for the Eurozone if Athens misses a loan repayment. The meeting of the Eurozone’s 19 finance ministers broke up late last Monday, amid a row with the International Monetary Fund about Greece’s debt burden. The standoff came just hours after France and Germany pledged to deepen co-operation in the Euro and reform the Euyrozone in order to stave off populist groups from the left and right from taking power in some EU countries. After eight hours of talks in Brussels, Greece’s creditors -- the Eurozone members states and the IMF -- were unable to bridge their differences on Greece’s ability to repay its debts in the long run. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, who chaired the meeting, said : “We were very close and we were just unable to manage it tonight.” He said he hoped for a deal at the next Eurozone meeting on 15 June. The Eurozone-IMF fight is the final obstacle to Greece's receipt of a tranche of bailout funds that will let it repay €7.3 billion of loans due to be paid in July. The EU agreed to a €86 billion rescue package for Greece in July 2015, an unprecedented third bailout that stopped the country from crashing out of the Eurozone, but Greece needs to carry out scores of detailed reforms before receiving the cash, which is paid in installments. It secured €10.3 billion last May, but the latest payment has been held up for months. • The problem is that northern European countries do not want to lend Greece more money unless the IMF agrees to be part of the third bailout. Countries such as Germany and the Netherlands think the IMF will add discipline to the program and fear the EU alone would be too soft on Athens. But the IMF has so far refused to get involved in Greece’s third bailout because officials think the country’s debts cannot be managed in the long-run. The Washington-based IMF has repeatedly said it is looking for “a credible strategy to restore debt sustainability.” The dispute centers on a demand that Greece run a budget surplus equivalent to 3.5% of GDP. The EU thinks Greece can hit this target, but the IMF has long argued that any country with such high unemployment would struggle to meet such demanding fiscal targets over decades. In a sign of a possible concession, Dijsselbloem said there had been “full agreement that the 3.5% primary surplus should remain for five years” and eventually fall, although he did not specify a figure. The IMF continues to insist anything higher than a 1.5% surplus is not credible, and it is urging the Eurozone to be realistic about Greece’s ability to keep a tight cap on public spending over decades. Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s European department, wants to see “more realism” in the EU’s growth forecasts for Greece and “a bit more specificity” on how the Eurozone will ease Greece’s debt burden in the long-run. • So, not only does the EU turn a blind eye to the genocide of Middle East Christians, it is apparently willing to inflict severe and increasing economic hardship on one of its own -- Greece -- which happens to be the major gatekeeper preventing a wholesale influx of illegal migrants who are pouring onto its islands by raft from Turkey. Does the EU care either about Greece or about being overrun by illegals who harbor terrorists??? Apparently not. • • • OBAMA PLACED MS-13 GANG MEMBERS THROUGHOUT THE US. The EU indifference to infiltration by illegal terrorists isn't very different from the Obama administration's transferring MS-13 gang members to placement centers across America in 2014. This was confirmed in a May 23 letter to Scott Lloyd, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, in which Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, stated that at least 16 self-proclaimed MS-13 gang members were transferred out of federal custody and into community placement centers across the country during the border surge of unaccompanied “children” from Central America in 2014. Johnson pointed out that the image of Unaccompanied Children, UACs, as little children is misleading. The reality is that out of nearly 200,000 UACs apprehended between 2012 and 2016, 68% were ages 15, 16 or 17, that is, older teens. Furthermore, the majority of these teenagers were male, making them prime targets for gang recruiting. Senator Johnson said the FBI has identified five hot spots that have a concentrated MS-13 presence and violence -- Los Angeles, Houston, the Washington DC region, Long Island, and Boston. He cited figures showing an estimated 10,000 MS-13 members in the United States and another 30,000 in Central America. • A Fox News report on May 17, written before Johnson’s committee began its hearings, quoted statements from Sheriff Vincent DeMarco of Suffolk County, New York -- the eastern two-thirds of Long Island. He said that the unaccompanied minor program initiated by former President Obama provided an avenue for members of MS-13 to infiltrate communities across the country : “These unaccompanied minors who are already MS-13 members in El Salvador have made their way to communities throughout the country, but Suffolk County has been extremely hard hit with this program in that 4,000 minors from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, a lot of them MS-13 members before they came, are now in Suffolk County." The Fox News report went on to note that President Trump has put MS-13 on notice and vowed to “really go after” the brutal criminal gangs and drug cartels that prey upon Americans, stating : “For too long Washington has gone after law abiding gun owners while making life easier for criminals, drug dealers, traffickers and gang members -- MS-13. You know about MS-13. It’s not pleasant for them anymore,” Trump told the National Rifle Association Leadership Forum in Atlanta in April. DeMarco told Fox News he is hopeful the Trump administration will continue to combat the increasing gang violence by appointing officials that believe in law, order, and justice. DeMArco said : “Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly is doing a great job and [DHS] is working very closely with us now, too. They’ve expanded a gang task force.” • • • AND WHAT ABOUT BRITAIN PAYING STUDENT BENEFITS TO TERRORISTS. Does the UK care any more than the EU or Obama about illegal immigrant terrorist infiltration? A You Tube posted by Blabber buzz shows that in the UK, terrorists are “able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMdHxmqyoe4). The UK Telegraph reports that police say the Manchester suicide bomber used taxpayer-funded student loan and benefits to bankroll the terror plot. Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp. In another development, a barber shop in Manchester was raided on the theory that Abedi may have obtained hydrogen peroxide -- a chemical used in the hairdressing industry that can also be used to construct bombs -- from the salon. Abedi’s finances are a major "theme" of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing. One former detective told the Telegraph that jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up.” Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015. • If that isn't enough, consider that UK government sources have confessed that there are at least 23,000 jihadists in Britain -- more than seven times more than previously revealed. Until recently, the public had been led to believe there were around 3,000 known jihadists in Britain, with 500 being subject to active investigations led by MI5. Whitehall officials have now disclosed that a further 20,000 individuals have been identified as posing a “residual risk”, according to The Times of London. "Residual threat"??? -- Khalid Masood, who ran down a number of pedestrians and stabbed a police constable to death outside the Palace of Westminster in March was among the pool of individuals who had been reported to the authorities but was not under active surveillance; and, Manchester Arena killer Salman Abedi, a son of Libyan refugees with Islamist links, had also been reported to the authorities, but, as with Masood, “limited resources” allowed him to slip through the surveillance net. Senior National Co-ordinator for Counter-Terrorism Neil Basu revealed that terror suspects are now being arrested “on a near daily basis” in Britain after the Westminster attack -- an early hint at the scale of the challenge Britain is facing. • Anthony Glees, the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies director who recently estimated the number of jihadists in Britain at “between 6,000 and 10,000”, described the Whitehall revelations as “horrifying” : “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can’t go on as if this wasn’t happening.” And, Colonel Richard Kemp, a former member of the COBRA committee and Joint Intelligence Committee, as well as commander of British forces in Helmand, Afghanistan, has also called for robust action, saying that all foreign nationals on the terror watch list who cannot be prosecuted should be deported or interned. Kemp tweeted : "We do not allow them to roam free on our streets to murder and maim our children....“Every single person who we have intelligence upon, who is known to be involved in terrorism, who is not a UK citizen, and who we cannot prosecute in the courts, we get rid of out this country. We deport them; we send them back to where they came from." • And how many terrorists are hiding among illegal immigrants in France and Germany...and among 'refugees' admitted to the US?? If officials know, they aren't telling us. • • • DEAR READERS, if the massacre of Coptic Christians in Egypt and the bombing of teenagers and children in Manchester has taught us anything, it is that President Trump is indispensable -- he is right to be hyper-cautious about admitting refugees from Middle East war zones and he is right about stamping out ISIS and other terrorist groups with the greatest force and cooperation of America's allies possible. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the Trump travel ban as an unconstitutional ban on Moslems was wrongheaded and suicidal. Worse, it came from unelected judges who are taking on the mantle of the legislature, a role reserved to the Congress in the US Constitution. What do these federal judges think about after they rule so dangerously and then read about bodies of dead Christians murdered by radical Islamic terrorists in Egypt and in Britain? Do they, like the EU and Britain's homeland intelligence agency, MI-5, and Barack Obama, simply shrug their shoulders while innocents are being slaughtered by those they are protecting?? Compassion and full legal protection for illegal terrorists -- but what about the victims?? • Fortunately, the case is now likely to go to the Supreme Court where, thanks to President Trump, Justice Neil Gorsuch now holds the Scalia seat. Manchester and Egypt and the MS-13 dispersion are chilling reminders of the threats we face from those who respect neither laws nor any religion. The terrorists of Egypt and Manchester would slaughter the judges of the Fourth Circuit just as they slaughtered Christians and children. • No wonder Republican Greg Gianforte beat the hostile media's odds in Montana’s special House election Thursday. Gianforte’s victory won following reports that only 24 hours before, he had grabbed Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs by the throat and allegedly “body-slammed” the journalist and broke his glasses after the reporter jammed a microphone into Gianforte's face and insisted he answer a negative question. The encounter raised questions about whether hostility toward the liberal media among conservatives and Republicans in general has grown so intense that the so-called “body slam heard round the world” didn’t harm and may have helped Gianforte. After reports worldwide that the embattled Republican received $100,000 in unsolicited small donations following his encounter with Jacobs, Laure Mandeville, editor-at-large of the venerable 'conservative' French publication Le Figaro said to Newsmax : “Incredible, indeed. Are journalists hated that much [by conservatives]? It’s worrying.” • But, all things taken together, nothing beats Hillary Clinton's charge that President Trump will be impeached. Hillary made the comment during a commencement speech this weekend. If Hillary were to feel the full weight of the law, that gratuitous slur would have come from a federal prison cell. • Even Hillary Clinton’s own former campaign manager John Podesta disagrees with her. Podesta said last week that he does not see any indication that President Donald Trump will be impeached, despite the fact that many in his party are calling for it : “I see no sign that there’s any likelihood that he’ll be impeached.” Podesta was not being kind to Trump or having a drastic change of heart. He was being realistic. And if any American speaks for George Soros, it most likely is John Podesta, so we may assume that the Progressive camp hierarchy has folded the impeachment tent and will satisfy its bloodlust for Trump's scalp by sending out its minions to nip at his heels every step of the way along his presidency. • And, that is the News of the Day -- not very pretty, is it??? Who but Donald Trump is looking out for us?? Nobody.

Friday, May 26, 2017

Casing the Colors © Week 11

Casing the Colors © Week 11 • • • CHAPTER 21 • • "Who is it?" Kate asked, bewildered by the voice in the dark bedroom. "Vice President Wilson is dead," her father repeated, switching on the light. "His plane exploded in mid-air while he was on his way back to Washington from a party fund-raiser in Des Moines. His wife and the GOP national chairman were on board, along with two aides." "Exploded?" Kate choked, suddenly fully awake, "you mean a bomb?" "That's my reading. I just got the call from the White House. Stu's on his way to the President. If you want to come with me, you have fifteen minutes. Pack your bag for Mexico, just in case." Mexico, she thought as she dressed and tossed things into her travel case. What luck. And, poor Jack Wilson. Killed by shrapnel from the war on terror. Did Chelenko know last night that Jack was hours away from death? Trust me, he had said. Who did Jack trust? Poor, dumb, ambitious, dead Jack. It was almost 4 a.m. when they arrived at the White House. The President was hysterical. "How in God's name could anyone simply blow up the Vice President's plane?" he thundered, slamming his hand on the desk. "The plane disintegrated," Stu said. "It will take several days for the initial report, but it was almost certainly a bomb of some sort." "I thought we secured our goddamned planes," the President demanded. "How did a fucking bomb get into his plane, for Christ's sake? What in the hell are we going to do?" The others, trying to ignore his panic, reviewed a press release drafted by Stu Wellford and the chief of staff. The President retreated to his desk and sat tapping his pencil nervously, staring blankly at the draft someone had handed him. Gradually, everyone stopped working and watched him. He didn't notice. His rhythmical tapping continued for long seconds as his half closed eyes lost contact with his surroundings. Stu Wellford called the President's doctor, who took him to his apartment, gave him a sedative and stayed with him until it took effect. The White House press secretary read the prepared release to the assembled night shift press corps, just before the Oval Office swearing-in of the Speaker of the House as Vice President. Attorney General Morrison had decided to follow presidential succession law to avoid political problems. Congress would later ratify the Attorney General's act. The press secretary confirmed that the President was resting, but he told them that he was alert and taking diplomatic calls. The networks ran lengthy, glowing biographies of Jack Wilson from canned materials routinely prepared to cover such emergencies. The White House media corps talked into TV cameras about his campaign troubles and his courting of the GOP extreme right wing in an effort to find sufficient convention votes to secure the party's presidential nomination. The reports, analysis and interviews went on without interruption while the media scrambled to find anyone who knew what was going on in the White House or at the crash site, which had been sealed off. Stu Wellford had long since been accepted by White House staff as the person who wielded presidential authority. So when he arrived at the Oval Office early the next morning to give orders for the day's activities, no one questioned him. He sent the newly sworn-in Vice President back to Capitol Hill to brief congressional leaders and then he spoke to the President's doctor. Afterward, he settled in with General Gordon, Kate Gordon and Secretary Stevens to monitor world reaction to the Vice President's death. The first batch of official condolences arrived from Europe, where it was early afternoon. European politicians hadn't known Vice President Wilson very well, but they feared his conservatism and so they had one common, although unspoken, reaction. Relief that the next American President would not be Jack Wilson. Stu put down the sheaf of telegrams Bill Stevens handed to him. "We can deal with these later," he said. "First, we have to decide what to do about Mexico." "Keep the appointment," Bill Stevens replied. "It may be our only chance to contact Miguel." "I don't want to put Kate and Dave in danger," Stu answered. "They'll be completely safe," General Gordon said. "Jack Wilson was killed by someone who was afraid of being identified. Whoever it was had to know that Jack was too weak to stand up under our questioning." "Does Chelenko know who the source is?" Kate asked. "I don't think Russia was involved," Bill Stevens answered. "Katerinov wouldn't have gone out of his way to connect Jack to Raqqa knowing that Jack would be eliminated immediately afterward. He knows that he would have won nothing by delivering a dead link between Raqqa and his White House source. On the other hand, Jack's source had every reason to be terrified of what the Russians might be telling us." "In any event, we can assume that the source now knows that neither Kate nor any of us can identify him. So why would he want to kill her? General Gordon asked. "Whoever blew up Jack's plane realized soon after the meeting here yesterday that Jack was under suspicion," Stu said. "The list includes all of us, plus the Joint Chiefs, General Bennett, George Morrison and the President." "I'll have Intel check everyone out again," General Gordon said. "What are we going to do about the President? I'm worried as hell about him," Bill reminded them. "Can we walk him through his public appearances for Jack Wilson's funeral." "Stu, monitor his condition," Kate said, "and if it begins to look as if we've got real problems, we'll deal with it. I'm going to pay a visit to GOP headquarters. I think it's time to deal." "Be at Andrews by 10 a.m.," General Gordon ordered. "Don't forget you've got a date in Mexico this afternoon." • • At GOP headquarters, the trailing media quickly positioned themselves, cameras and microphones ready. "Miss Gordon, are you coming to mend fences? Did the President or Mr. Washington send you? What's your reaction to the Vice President's death?" She brushed past them, dodging the mikes held out as barriers to stop her. In the headquarters kitchen, she found what she was looking for. "Hello, Pete. Do you have a spare cup of coffee?" Peter Lowell, at thirty-eight, was the young wizard of the GOP. He had grown up on conservative Middle America Republican politics, where everyone was expected to believe and to work. He went to college, majoring in political science...and the election of Republican candidates. His campaigns at state and congressional levels were legendary for their skillful attack on every opposition weakness while wrapping the winner, always Pete's boy, in red, white and blue. He had a wife and a couple of kids somewhere, but his life was conservative Republican politics. He was campaign director for the national committee. "What the hell are you doing here? If you're applying for the candidate job, you'll have to get in line," he said bitterly. "Thanks for the terrific welcome," Kate replied, pouring herself a cup of cold coffee. "I suppose they're all over you already." "Yeah, and no one's wasting much time on sympathy." "I'm sorry, Pete, but you know this town as well as I do." "Just why the hell are you here?" he asked, by this time actually curious. "Well, I certainly don't want to be the candidate. We need to talk, Pete. Not today, but soon. Without Jack, you've got a real problem. Maybe we can solve it together." "You mean jump on the American Agenda bandwagon," he sneered. "No thanks, Kate. The GOP isn't interested." "We both know the party will be interested in whatever saves its bacon," she shot back. "After the funeral, we'll talk. Meantime, stay flexible." She swallowed the cold coffee in silence. "Shit," he muttered as he got up to get a Coke. "Shit." "Pete, I've got to go. I don't want to get caught in your staff's panic." "Okay. Call me, Kate, when the cameras are gone. I've got other problems right now. Thanks for coming," he added, not wanting to ruin what could be a new opportunity. "I don't know what we're going to do about Jack's replacement, but I'll stay loose until you and I talk. Kate," he added as she turned toward the door, "we both know that Jack was a bastard, but he was a lovable bastard." She fought her way back through the gauntlet of reporters. "A lovable bastard," she repeated mentally. "Pete had got part of it right." • • • CHAPTER 22 • • Dave Browning was pacing in front of the Andrews Air Field hangar when Kate Gordon's limousine arrived. He opened the car door and started shouting before she could say hello. "What the hell's going on, Kate? Secretary Stevens called me at five this morning to tell me a military plane was on its way with pilots to fly my plane. My pilots are with me, but they were forced to ride shotgun from New York." "Dave, everybody's jumpy after what happened to the Vice President's plane. It's just a routine precaution," she said, trying to calm him. "I promised there'd be no military with us in Monterrey. No military. Do you understand?" he demanded. "They can wear your pilots' uniforms. Your guys will wait here for us. We're just flying down for some tacos, right?" She put her arm through his and snuggled him until he smiled at her. He patted her backside and they walked through the hangar to the executive lounge. Kate found some coffee. "Dave, if the Vice President's plane was sabotaged, the military want to protect us. They're checking out your plane very thoroughly. It makes sense to have military pilots, just in case." "Just in case what?" Dave asked, raising his voice again. "What the hell good will military pilots be if there's a bomb on board?" Kate shrugged her shoulders sympathetically. "I don't know. Do you really object or are you just worried about your plane?" "Hell, doll, I can buy fifty of these babies. I just don't want to be caught lying in Monterrey." She suddenly realized what Dave was frightened of. The tough as nails wheeler and dealer who handled Carlos Miguel and caught rattlesnakes for fun was scared of the boys in Monterrey. Well, you're not the only one, friend, Kate thought, but I'll never admit it. General Barber arrived to see them off. He addressed Dave Browning's fears, telling him about the devices that had been installed in his plane to detect sabotage and explaining the military pilots' use of special codes that would bring instant Air Force support if there was trouble. "I know it's all going to be unnecessary," Tony Barber ended, nodding toward Kate, "but we'll feel better if you agree." "Well, General, now that you've spelled out the details, I guess it makes sense. Wheels up," Dave said with false bravado as he warmed to the game. Sixty minutes into the flight, General Gordon made radio contact with the plane. "Bill Stevens has received a message from Chelenko," he told the pilot. "You are to go to Veracruz, not Monterrey. Do you read me?" The pilot responded affirmatively. "We won't have time to check out the area in detail, but we'll have operatives in place for your arrival. The phone number Chelenko gave my daughter is for the Yucatan Hotel in Veracruz. That's your destination. A private limousine will be waiting at the airport for you. Good luck." Kate began to explain the conversation to Dave, but he waved her off. "Don't bother, it would only confuse me. Veracruz," he repeated several times, "not my idea of paradise." "I met a lawyer for you in Veracruz last year," Kate said. "It is definitely not Acapulco."

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Democrats Cheat, Spy and Lie about It, but America Has President Trump's Back

THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY -- PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS CHEAT, SPY, AND LIE ABOUT IT. • • • OBAMA ILLEGALLY VIOLATED THE PRIVACY OF AMERICANS. Newsmax reported on Wednesday that Circa has revealed that the National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama frequently violated privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts -- and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until late last fall. According to Circa, declassified documents unveil serious constitutional abuses by the intelligence community -- showing more than 5% of searches seeking internet data on Americans inside the NSA's controversial Section 702 database violated safeguards. The Obama administration disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing last October 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Circa reported. The FISA court even rebuked administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an "institutional lack of candor" and the improper searches constituted a "very serious Fourth Amendment issue," Circa reported, citing a court document from April. Circa reported finding a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans -- and a rise in the unmasking of American citizens' identities -- since 2011 when so-called minimization rule changes were made by the Obama administration. Though Obama administration officials have said the unmaskings were legal and intelligence agencies were monitored to avoid abuses, Circa reported that the FISA court and NSA's own internal watchdog found otherwise. The April FISA court ruling stated : "Since 2011, NSA's minimization procedures have prohibited use of US-person identifiers to query the results of upstream Internet collections under Section 702. The October 26, 2016, notice informed the court that NSA analysts had been conducting such queries in violation of that prohibition, with much greater frequency than had been previously disclosed to the Court." • Senator Rand Paul, who had already asked officials for a verification whether he was surveilled or unmasked, told Fox News : "If we determine this to be true, this is an enormous abuse of power. This will dwarf all other stories. There are hundreds and hundreds of people." • Surprisingly, the leftist American Civil Liberties Union called the lack of oversight "shocking." According to Circa, Neema Singh Guliani, the ACLU's legislative counsel in Washington, said : "You have these problems going on for years that only come to the attention of the court late in the game, and then it takes additional years to change its practices. I think it does call into question all those defenses that we kept hearing, that we always have a robust oversight structure and we have culture of adherence to privacy standards." • NSA acknowledged it self-disclosed the mass violations to the court last fall and said that in April it suspended the type of searches that were violating the rules, even deleting prior collected data on Americans to avoid any further violations : "NSA will no longer collect certain internet communications that merely mention a foreign intelligence target," the agency said in the statement dated April 28. But, since NSA and Obama have been lying to America since 2011 about this sweep surveillance and unmasking, why should we believe NSA now?? • In fact, Judge Andrew Napolitano said on Fox Business last week that the late Justice Antonin Scalia told him "that he often thought that the Court was being surveilled" roughly four or five years ago. Yes, the Supreme Court. The full story of the Obama administration’s crimes against the American people -- and the Constitution -- has yet to be uncovered. But we’re getting glimpses -- the first threads into this story -- a story that is far bigger and far more real than imaginary conspiracies dreamed up by the left about Trump and Russia. Obama was engaged, it appears, in years of Fourth Amendment violations, but, does anyone outside the Republican Party even care about Susan Rice’s unmasking of Trump associates? She isn’t even being compelled to testify before Congress. It's just taking her word for it that she did it in the interests of national security. • • • COMEY USED FAKE DOCUMENT TO JUSTIFY HILLARY'S GET-OUT-OF-JAIL CARD. Slmange Reyner of Newsmax reported on Wednesday that former FBI Director James Comey used a possibly fake Russian document to justify his decision to end the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to send classified information during her tenure as Secretary of State. Reymer cited a Washington Post report. The document, received by the FBI in March 2016, mentioned a supposed email between then-Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schlultz and Leonard Benardo, an official at the Open Society Foundations founded by George Soros, where Wasserman-Schultz said then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch told a top Clinton campaign aide she would not allow the Clinton probe to go too deep. The WP reported that Comey might have used the document to go public with his decision in order to make it clear the FBI, and not the Justice Department, was making the call. The WP story quoted a source familiar with the matter, who said : "It was a very powerful factor in the decision to go forward in July with the statement that there shouldn't be a prosecution. The point is that the bureau picked up hacked material that hadn't been dumped by the bad guys [the Russians] involving Lynch. And that would have pulled the rug out of any authoritative announcement." • BUT, the FBI later found the document was bad intelligence and some sources believed it to be a fake planted to confuse the FBI. Wasserman Schultz and Bernardo told the Post they do not know each other and have never communicated. The Clinton campaign aide, Amanda Renteria, said she does not know Lynch. People close to Lynch said she does not know Renteria. • Even if we take all those self-serving statements as factual, the truth seems to be that Comey is now prepared to use a fake document successfully planted to confuse him as his excuse for saving Hillary from indictment. A source told the WP : "It didn't mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves. Then they decided it was important. But it's junk, and they already knew that." • Can James Comey sink any deeper into the swamp of lies and politicizing of the FBI in trying to play nice with the Clintons? What could Bill and Hillary have on Comey that would make him carry out the destruction of his own career and integrity??? • • • DONNA BRAZILE DEMANDED PRIVATE DETECTIVE STOP INVESTIGATING SETH RICH MURDER. The Ex-DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile, already disgraced for passing questions to Hillay before presidential debates with Donald Trump, apparently had another Hillary role in the DNC -- stopping uncomfortable murder investigations. Brazile reportedly asked Washington police why an investigator was "snooping" into a mysterious, unsolved murder of a DNC stafff member. WND revealed that it was Brazile, after earlier stories had said such phone calls had occurred but did not name the caller. WND's Alicia Powe and Liz Crokin reported : "Former Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman Donna Brazile is the high-ranking DNC representative who allegedly called police and the family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich and demanded to know why a private investigator was 'snooping' into Rich’s death." The private investigator, Rod Wheeler, told the WND reporters that it was Brazile. Rod Wheeler, a veteran homocide detective, told WND : “The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich’s case was Donna Brazile. Why shouldn’t I reveal who it was?” • Brazile, who was also a CNN contributor and a Hillary for America donor at the time, was caught providing Democrat Party nominee Hillary Clinton with questions that would later be asked of Clinton at a televised CNN town hall. In an interview with Fox News before the election, Brazile denied leaking the questions to Clinton. But in a March 17, 2017, column for Time magazine, she finally admitted doing so, saying it was a “mistake I will forever regret.” • A spokesman for the Rich family has repeatedly criticized Wheeler, who was hired by Rich’s family in March to find the DNC staffer’s murderer, for not ruling out the possibility that Rich may have leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. The Rich family recently sent Wheeler a “cease and desist” order to stop his investigation into the murder. [Is the family being pressured or paid by the Clinton clique to clamp down on all efforts to investigate their son's murder? The FBI and Washington police have already practically 'cold-cased' the file. • On July 22, just 12 days after Rich’s murder and days before the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia, WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails from DNC officials. Wheeler said in several interviews last week that a federal investigator has elaborate details about Rich’s connection to WikiLeaks and is a credible source. Wheeler told Fox News' Sean Hannity : “I don’t like to suggest things without saying the person’s name, but I can’t say that person’s name, because that person would be thrown under the bus. This person, we checked him out, we have to check him out, he’s very credible -- he said he laid eyes on the computer and he laid eyes on the case file. When you look at that with the totality of everything else that I’ve found on this case, it’s very consistent for a person with my experience to begin to think, perhaps there were some email communications between Seth and WikiLeaks.” Wheeler told Fox's Hannity : “There were some problems that Seth was having on his job at the DNC right before he was killed. And the person that called the father after I called the police to get information (Brazile), that’s the person that Seth was having problems with at the DNC. So connect the dots, here; it’s starting to all come together. I don’t know for sure, I don’t know as matter of fact, if the emails went out to WikiLeaks or anybody else. But it sure appears that way.” • Wheeler said he felt less compelled to stay quiet about Brazile’s identity after what he believed to be an unrelenting assassination of his character by the Rich family’s spokesman, Democrat political crisis consultant Brad Bauman, who excoriated Wheeler for not eliminating the possibility that Rich leaked emails, accusing the veteran detective of fabricating his claims in a desperate attempt for media attention. • Bauman's personal attack on Wheeler in n WND interview had all the earmarks of a Clinton attempt ar character assassination : “I don’t think at this point, given Detective Wheeler’s lack of credibility – that I am going to dignify any accusations that he makes with any sort of discussion, I’m sorry. Anyone who believes Rich may have leaked DNC e-mails “deserve(s) a place in hell.” • While Wheeler has concluded after months of extensive investigation that the idea that Rich was killed during a robbery is implausible, he maintains that his motivation to find Rich’s murderer has nothing to do with politics : “Now if that murderer is a neighborhood knucklehead who had a gun and killed him that night, then that is who I want to capture. Then the story ends for me when I find him. If that murderer is someone who worked with him on his job, then that is who I want to capture.” • Donna Brazile's retort was to say : “Seth Rich was a hard worker and proud to be an American. This desire to scar Seth’s legacy to his country and party is shameful." Is this another character assassination by a Clinton insider meant opeate as a gag order for inconvenient facts?? • • • IS SETH RICH ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS MURDER VICTIM? Rush Limbaugh on Monday said Americans are determined to uncover the truth about Rich’s murder : “This story is now starting to get legs, that Seth Rich was murdered. It was [allegedly] a contract hire killing because he was leaking to WikiLeaks. He was the one -- he may have been a Bernie supporter -- and the only colluding and rigging here, folks, is the Democrat primary election. KimDotCom, the noted hacker, has now come forward and said he was working with Seth Rich to get the documents to WikiLeaks. Right now it’s conspiracy-theory status. But it won’t go away. It just won’t go away. That’s about as much as I can say right now.” [“Kim Dotcom” is the Twitter handle for the German-Finnish hacker described as an “entrepreneur, innovator, gamer, artist, Internet freedom fighter,” who founded Megaupload. On May 20, “Kim Dotcom” tweeted: “I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved.”] • On Sunday, Fox's Sean Hannity called on Congress to get to the bottom of Rich’s murder. In a Twitter response to “Kim Dotcom” that received nearly 19,000 “likes,” Hannity wrote: “Congress, investigate Seth Rich Murder! @JulianAssange made comments u need to listen to! If Seth was wiki source, no Trump/Russia collusion.” Hannity was referencing comments by WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange during an August 2016 interview on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur. Assange appeared to suggest that Rich was the source of the WikiLeaks-exposed DNC emails. • Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on “Fox & Friends” Sunday and called Rich’s murder an “assassination” : "We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments. Nobody’s investigating that, and what does that tell you about what’s going on? Because it turns out, it wasn’t the Russians. It was this young guy who, I suspect, was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. He’s been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigative his murder." • • • THE END OF CONSERVATIVE NEWS OUTLETS? The strangest news yet in the Seth Rich affair is that on Tuesday on Fox News' Sean Hannity said he was no longer “discussing” the matter of now-deceased Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich and the suggestion that he was behind DNC emails being leaked to Wikileaks. Hannity alluded to communications with the Rich family as for why he had made that decision. Hannity said to his followers : “I totally and completely understand how upset and how hard this is on this family, especially over the recent coverage of Seth’s death. I’ve been communicating with them. I got a very heartfelt note. I also sent them a heartfelt note back. However, out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time. I want to say this to you -- my loyal audience, which is very important : Please do not interpret what I’m saying tonight to mean anything. Don’t read into this. I promise you I am not going to stop doing my job to the extent of my ability. I am not going to stop trying to find the truth. That’s what we do here every single day. That effort is not stopping in any way, shape, matter or form. I am continuing the work I promised to do every day for you and at the proper time, we shall continue and talk a lot more. As for my job here at the Fox News Channel, there is now an effort now abound to silence me. Media Matters is attacking my advertising base. That is what we have called on this program ‘liberal fascism’ -- attack, boycott -- all in an effort to silence conservatives. I serve at the pleasure of the Fox News Channel. And I am here to do my job every night. I’m under contract, as long as they seem to want me.” • Could Hannity have a reason to fear Clinton disclosures, or is he simply reacting to his advertisers waffling, as they are pressured by Progressive activists to withdraw their ads from his program. Is this the beginning of the end of Hannity, as it was for Bill O'Reilly?? Is Fox News strong enough and honorable enough to keep Hannity even if all his advertisers leave?? This attack on conservative news has to end somewhere if America is to be saved. It is a totalitarian tactic being used by ProgDems to get rid of the few voices who actually defend conservative ideals and President Trump. Hannity, like O'Reilly, is vastly more popular than the Progressive propagandists on CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS -- but the conservative voice demanded by Americans requires an outlet. If Fox does not provide it, nobody else will, and George Soros and Hillary will have won the battle by killing off all 'nonconforming' news. The second vital step of the destruction of America, of the Republic, will have been completed. • • • DEMOCRATS IN TROUBLE DESPITE THEIR BRAVADO. Thomas Lifson of American Thinker reported earlier this week that he was "under the impression that Democrats are fired-up, energized by the sheer awfulness of Donald Trump, all those women marching in funny hats, all the anger, all that negative media coverage must assuredly mean that the Democratic Party is prospering, buoyed by anger-fueled donations." Actually, not so much, says Lifson : "WeaselZippers highlights the dismal fundraising picture over the weekend in a tweet that the RNC raised $9.6 million in April and has $41.4 million in the bank, while the DNC raised $4.7 million in April and has just $8.8 million in the bank. The DNC actully spent more than it saved according to the latest FEC filing. For a political party that is supposed to be energized by #Resistance to the President, the Democrats are running into #FundraisingResistance. Maybe if the party chairman didn’t use obscenities in speeches and flip the bird onstage, the grownups would loosen their purse strings. Or maybe even Democrats realize that it is a swamp out there." • • • FOR DEMOCRATS, REALPOLITIK DOESN'T EXIST. What the Democrats lack is a sense of reality. Another American Thinker writer, James Lewis, recently nailed it : "When Abraham Lincoln came to town as the first Republican president, the Democrats hated him on sight. They were the party of African-American slavery, after all, and while Lincoln phrased his beliefs carefully to give minimal offense, he was clear that 'no nation can survive half slave and half free.' The mildest curse they flung at him was to call him a hairy ape. Until the Civil War broke out, nobody thought that this uneducated hick from the backwoods of Illinois would be anything but a disaster. The DC establishment hated him as an outsider. Even his own cabinet members plotted against him. His early generals were half-hearted and incompetent. Lincoln saved the nation because he was focused on reality, not on some barmy fantasy, like Democratic Presidents from Jimmy Carter to Obama. They all refused to face the reality of reactionary jihad in the Moslem world, starting with Khomeini in Iran, and the massacre of 9/11....Trump is a realist, because you can't have two major careers in two tough businesses if you live in fantasy. Plus winning the presidency as one of the biggest outsiders in history. Trump 'uses' PR images, but he doesn't fall for them. Unlike other Presidents since Bill Clinton, Trump is not in gross denial about jihad. Trump and Mattis understand the enemy's pre-medieval doctrine using fanatics who are will to die as long as they can kill infidels at the same time.....James Mattis, who is a deep scholar of war, has said that this enemy is no different than the ones faced by Alexander the Great." And, says Lewis : "It was Lincoln's ability to face painful facts that ended up abolishing slavery and preserving the Union. It also led to his assassination. Lincoln took minimal precautions. He was ready to die in the worst war in US history, but not because he believed he would be rewarded in heaven. Lincoln had a deep sense of guilt about all the bloodshed, but he was also a realist, and he saw no other way. Lincoln was a tragic figure, not an evil one." Consider Trump's statement to the assembled Moslem world in Riyadh : "This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects or different civilizations... this is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it. This is a battle between good and evil." • Lewis wrote : "Saudi Arabia is big, with a small population. Their real protector is Egypt, which needs Saudi oil to survive. In return, Sisi has the military manpower to protect Saudi Arabia -- with the support of the United States, and the secret help of Israel. (The Saudis are de facto recognizing Israel in return). What we are seeing is the beginning of a workable settlement in the Middle East, with only Iran and Turkey on the outs. • And, in a display of realism that has frightened Democrats into a frenzied self-interested attack on him, Trump has, says Lewis : "signaled his interest in a shared US-Russian great power guarantee for a Middle East settlement; so has Putin. The only thing standing in the way is...the Democrats, who are deliberately sabotaging Trump's attempts to bring Putin to the bargaining table. The Democrats have been bought up, lock, stock and barrel by the Moslem Brotherhood, who are never-say-die fanatics with a big money investment in the Clintons. Huma Abedin is only their public face, but the Democrats are deeply penetrated by the MB's and probably by radical Iran." • The Brotherhood will not let Russia again play a major role in the Middle East wihtout a fight. They want it for themselves -- and for their ProgDem puppets. It would give them the "riches of Araby" and end sunni domination of Islam through jihad, murder and terrorism. This multidimensional chess game took a lot of planning and preliminary contacts, says Lewis : "Israel and Russia were part of the conversation, because they had to be....I think it's brilliant, and let's all pray it works." • • • DEAR READERS, from Obama illegal spying and unmasking to a DNC staff member's murder that reaks of Hillary cover-up to Democrat attempts to destroy President Trump before he can disable their networks in the Deep State and free America of its Progressive traitors, there is much to discuss and something for each of us to do. Blind obedience is never the answer, but when prominent Republicans attack their President Trump and refuse, if they do not attack, to be weak or ambivalent in his support, I can only ask myself again and again -- where is the Evidence? Where is the crime? The answer is always the same -- there is No Evidence of any crime. It is these same Republicans -- RINOs -- who for eight years of a cheating, spying, lying Obama administration, stayed in their congressional offices or at home, silent for the most part. Now that they have a President who is worthy of the name, they attack or cringe like the Progressive lapdogs who spout propaganda instead of reporting the news. The enemies of America are both within and without, in an array of political opposition never before aligned against a duly elected US President. • But, President Trump's base remains loyal. It is voters who continue to support him and his agenda. Trump MUST clean out the leakers and those in his administration actively trying to undermine him and his presidency. He would not tolerate such actions in any of his businesses. And, at the same time, President Trump MUST find the ways to plow ahead with his policy initiatives -- build the wall even if it takes voluteer workers; repeal Obamacare; cut taxes, help Veterans; pump up the defense budget, continue to deport illegals; CREATE JOBS. There is the key. Whatever Trump does, jobs are essential if America is to survive as a constitutional Republic and not sink into being a welfare state. Americans have President Trump's back. He should use its protectiive shield to get on with the job of draining the swamp. Remember the Trump voter from Michigan who reminded us : "Don't try to win over the people who don't support you. They're never gonna support you. There's nothing you can do to please them. Remember: the people who elected you are still strongly behind you. We have your back."

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Appeasing Islamic Jihadist Terrorism Is Civilizational Suicide -- Drive Them Out of the Middle East, Europe, America, and the World

THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY -- ISLAMIC JIHADIST TERRORISM IS CHOKING THE WEST. • • • MANCHESTER. Three suspects were arrested in Manchester in connection with Monday's deadly concert bombing, as Fox News reported "the British authorities raced to prevent another attack that could be imminent." Multiple law enforcement agencies swept through Manchester in a bid to head off a follow-up to the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert that left 22 dead and 59 injured. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, 22, is unlikely to have acted alone, officials said, as they searched for the cell behind Abedi. Salman Abedi had been known to security forces "up to a point," Home Secretary Amber Rudd said. • "Up to a point"!!! As a British friend often tells me, if you want to know what the BBC will tell you in ten days, read the Daily Mail today. Here's what the Daily Mail wrote on Wednesday about Salman Abedi. He was a British-born jihadi from a family of Libyan refugees. He was known to the security services before he walked into Manchester Arena on Monday night and detonated a bomb packed with nails, nuts and bolts, killing 22 people including children as young as eight. He was friends with an 'ISIS recruiter' in Manchester named Raphael Hostey, also known as Abu Qaqa al-Britani, who served as an ISIS recruiter until he was killed in 2016 in Syria by a drone strike. Abedi may have spent time in a Middle East conflict zone, where he may have received terrorist training, while he had only recently returned from a three-week trip to Libya days before the bombing. Abedi was described as growing up in his Fallowfield neighborhood with a 'face of hate,' but others said he was football mad and a passionate Manchester United fan. It has also been claimed that he had travelled by train from London to Manchester on Monday in advance of the attacks, now raising suspicions that he may have met co-conspirators or been supplied with his explosive device by an as-yet-unidentified bombmaker. It was claimed that his father -- an airport security officer -- had left the UK to fight in Libya. Sources also said his mother had raised concerns about her son’s radical views before she herself left for Libya. His brother Ismail, 23, is under arrest and being questioned about his possible involvement in the bombing. • The Daily Mail then puts some detail around these facts : "Although Abedi was known to the security services, he was not under surveillance and officers had no inkling he was building a bomb. Last night, a chilling picture emerged of the terrorist who grew up in an anonymous suburb of Manchester. Born in Manchester in 1994, the third of four children, his parents were Libyan refugees who came to the UK to escape the Qaddafi regime and his father is a suspected [jihadist] fighter who left the UK in 2011 to try to overthrow Qaddafi. Ramadan Abedi, an airport security officer who is thought to have worked at Manchester Airport, emigrated to London with his wife Samia Tabbal, 50, before moving to the Fallowfield area of south Manchester where they settled in a housing association-owned home about two miles from the scene of Monday night’s terror attack....Friends and neighbours said Abedi appeared to be a normal football-mad teenager who...spent hours playing computer games on the PS4. But everything changed in 2011 when his father abruptly left his job and home in the anonymous suburb to fight in Libya, leaving his family to fend for themselves, according to a local imam. Abedi and his brothers appear to have followed in his footsteps by sharing stories of British jihadis fighting in Syria on social networks and even praying in the street....It is believed that Ismail, who worked as a teaching assistant giving Arabic classes and IT support at Didsbury mosque Quran school, was once reported to a counter- terrorism unit after concerns were raised by members of the Moslem community....Last night a source suggested anti-terror officers also tried to engage with Abedi, but he refused to co-operate. ‘Salman Abedi is a troublemaker, that is the understanding we have from the community,’ he said. ‘He is a loose cannon, someone who is troubled.’ The imam of Didsbury Mosque, Mohammed Saeed, revealed Salman stopped going to the mosque in 2015 as he objected to anti-IS comments. He said: ‘Salman used to come to the mosque occasionally, he wasn’t particularly friendly towards me because he didn’t like my anti-IS sermons. He didn’t like what I was saying and showed me the face of hate. He came to the mosque less and less after that.’ " • • • THE WEST HAS BEEN DUPED. American Thinker writer George Ford said on Wednesday : "This guy checks every single jihadist box. When people like this are allowed to walk the streets -- there’s a report that there are 3,500 Abedis roaming free in the UK -- the public can be excused for assuming that a suicide bombing at a pop concert is the 'new normal.' " Ford goes on to say : "It would be abnormal for the US to implement a commonsense immigration policy, or to deport Islamist preachers promoting Sharia. But it is normal, as per Tucker Carlson’s report this evening, for the US immigration authorities to find homes for M18 gang members in communities around the country....It is not productive to fantasize about our governments in the West finally waking up to the threat. 'Tipping point' analyses are pointless....Major Hasan presented his views in a Power Point presentation to other officers, on an American military base, eight years after 9-11, and eight years ago. Has the US military changed its personnel policies since Hasan killed 13 fellow soldiers? Or would today’s military turn a blind eye to a 'we love death more than you love life!' presentation? Asking the question is painful, because the answer is far from certain. Those in charge haven’t convinced me that the term 'counterterrorism' has a fixed, settled and dependable meaning. It mostly refers to plans, organizations, and people. It doesn’t refer to a consequence or an end-point the way that 'J. Edgar Hoover and His G-Men' meant that die-hard, ruthless criminals were marked for death. Americans are taught that Hoover was the enemy, and Bonnie and Clyde were cool. The jihad will be with us for our lifetimes. Admitting it is to accept the truth." • • • THE UK TRIES TO STEP UP TO THE JIHADIST THREAT. British Prime Minister Theresa May Wednesday chaired a meeting of her emergency security cabinet group, known as COBRA, to review intelligence reports about Abedi and concerns that he might have had outside support. The UK raised its threat level to the highest level -- "critical" -- which May said "means that the assessment is that, not only is a further attack likely, but that it could be imminent." Police raided Abedi's house, using a controlled explosion to blast down the door. Police also raided and searched a property elsewhere in Manchester where Abedi's brother Ismail is thought to have lived. A 23-year-old man has also been arrested as part of the investigation but officials have released no details about him. In a very unusual step for the UK, British soldiers have been deployed in place of police officers to guard high-profile sites such as Buckingham Palace and Parliament. London Police Commander Jane Connors said the goal is to "make our city as hostile an environment as possible for terrorists to plan and operate." She said police will also be ready to respond quickly to any incidents with armed officers, and have added more armed police walking patrols. • • • FRANCE HAS FACED JIHADISTS FOR A LONG TIME. France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said Abedi is believed to have traveled to Syria and had "proven" links with ISIS. Collomb did not provide details, and said it's unclear whether Abedi was part of a larger network of attackers. But, whime the French are giving details, British officials have only late on Tuesday begun commenting on whether Abedi had links to ISIS or other extremist groups, and for a time in the first 24 hours after the bombing, they allegedly asked media to report no details about Abedi. Collomb, who spoke with May after the attack, said the two countries should continue cooperating closely on counterterrorism efforts despite Britain's pending exit from the European Union. • And, that is perhaps the critical point -- European countries do work together against islamic jihadist terrorism, but they have no centralized agency that can take in information, review it and then disseminate it for practical use by EU state intelligence and law enforcement agencies. But, even with a recognition of the coordination flaw in Europe, what is the response to George Ford's questions : Could a TV scriptwriter make up a more obvious jihadist than the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi? Is any UK jihadist ever deported, for anything? Abedi was the son of refugees from Libya -- Who fled Libya? Jihadists. Why? Qaddafi cracked down on jihadists. Why would the UK take people fleeing from Qaddafi when so many would be jihadists or sympathizers? Is the answer really what Ford suggests : "It is not productive to fantasize about our governments in the West finally waking up to the threat....When you have government agencies seeped for decades in multicultural religion and diversity dogma, it will take decades, if ever, to reach a stage when bad people are tossed out." • • • DRIVING OUT JIHADISTS. American Thinker published on Wednesday an article by Karin McQuillan titled "Drive them out: Time to deport known American jihadis." McQuillan says that the children of Manchester were killed by a jihadist known to authorities. So were the victims of 12 of the 14 Islamic terrorist attacks in America under Obama. She says : "That must end. Our terror watch list must become a terror deportation list. President Trump went to the very heart of Islam, Saudi Arabia, and told the assembled leaders of the Moslem world they must drive the Jihadists out of their mosques, out of their communities, out of their country and out of this earth. The Saudis are responsible for their country. We are responsible for America. Let us start right here and right now. We need to drive all those who preach Jihad out of our American mosques, community, and country." • Preachers in America are not allowed to encourage murder or the overthrow of the US government. It is illegal to preach Jihad in American mosques. Yet, says McQuillan, " time after time, whenever we have an Islamic atrocity in our country, we discover the killer attended a radical mosque. One estimate is that half of the mosques in our country were founded by radical Moslem Brotherhood members." • In 2012, French President Nicolas Sarkozy banned radical imams from entering France. In 2016, France closed down a handful of radical mosques where they found terrorist weapons caches. In France, within hours, national security risks are put on a plane to their country of origin; appeals may follow from the home country. McQuillan says America should follow the French example -- close all radical mosques because they aren't true religious institutions, but centers promoting Moslem supremacy, violence, and the suppression of other religions. • • • MULTICULTURALISM. Multiculturalists dominate American mainstream media, universities and the Democrat Party. Their unrelenting moral imperative is to protect their addlebrained ideals. Progressives would sacrifice all of us to those absurd ideals. They seem oblivious to the kidnappings, sex slavery, rapes, beheadings and torture inflicted on innocent Moslems, Christians and Jews in the Middle East. That obliviousness has translated into mini-versions of the same islamic jihadist atrocities in Europe where innocent people are gunned down, blown up and run over by trucks. • Yet, in the face of this undeniable reality, American multiculturalists point their fingers of moral superiority at us and preach tolerance of islamic jihadist terrorism, even if we are slaughtered, because they see the sensitivities of American or European Moslems as more important than our lives -- and, unfortunately this week, the lives of our children. Terrorism, President Obama lectured us, is not an existential threat. Well, his "JV" ISIS recruits are now a threat everywhere in the West, thanks to his turning a blind eye to reality. Andrew McCarthy says : "The idea that we are helpless to stop Islamist murderers before they act is a purposeful lie, pushed by Progressives and the DC swamp because they wish to do nothing." • • • THE "LONE WOLF" CHARADE. McQuillan points out that virtually every time a jihadist terrorist attack has occurred, the actor is initially portrayed as a solo plotter lurking beneath the government’s radar. And, every time it turns out to be untrue -- after a little investigating, an already known (sometimes even, notorious) islamic jihadist extremist is revealed to be what Patrick Poole calls a "known wolf." Poole’s reporting shows that "lone wolves" -- virtually every single one -- end up having actually had extensive connections to other Islamic extremists, radical mosques, and often jihadist training facilities. There are no lone wolves. McQuillan says : "The very concept is inane, and only stems from a willfully blind aversion to the ideological foundation of jihadist terror : Islamic supremacism. The global, scripturally rooted movement to impose sharia -- in the West, to incrementally supersede our culture of reason, liberty, and equality with the repressive, discriminatory norms of classical Islamic law -- is a pack. The wolves are members of the pack, and that’s why they are the antithesis of “lone” actors. And, indeed, they always turn out to be “known” precisely because their association with the pack, with components of the global movement, is what ought to have alerted us to the danger they portended before they struck." Patrick Poole explains : "As I've noted here at PJ Media going back to October 2014, the 'lone wolf' canard was spun by the Obama administration to exonerate themselves whenever a terror attack occurred." • The "known wolves" are not just in the US. They abound in Europe. Consider Germany. A Syrian migrant with known ISIS sympathies was intercepted at the German-Danish border with materials for making explosives and will be charged with plotting a terror attack – but only after spending six months in custody as authorities claimed they had difficulty bringing charges against him because he attempted to cross the border with 17,000 matches, radio equipment, and an ignition device, even though German prosecutors say the asylum seeker has been known as a radical Islamist to German authorities as far back as 2015. In another case, in February of 2016, two Algerian asylum seekers living in asylum centers were arrested after German police suspected they were plotting a terror attack in Berlin. In July, 2016, four Syrian asylum seekers were taken into custody in Dusseldorf where police say they were plotting a similar attack to the November 2015 Bataclan massacre in Paris. In July, 2016, Germany also had its first suicide bombing, carried out by a young Syrian asylum seeker, who attempted to carry out the attack in a crowded music festival, but, after being denied entry, detonated himself outside a bar injuring a dozen people. In December, 2016, Germany had its first major terrorist attack after rejected Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri hijacked a truck and used it to kill 12 and injure 56 at Berlin’s annual Christmas market. Earlier this year, a survey found that 67% of Germans feared they were at risk of being involved in a terrorist attack. The study, published by German legal expenses insurance group ROLAND, said: “A large part of the population doesn’t feel safe anymore when visiting crowded places. The fear of becoming the victim of a terrorist attack with a high number of casualties is considerable.” • • • OFFENSE IS THE BEST DEFENSE. Would America be suffering from terrorism if our law enforcement agents had not been stymied by the Obama/Hillary "politically correct" approach to monitoring Moslem suspects. They placed the sensitivities of Moslem Americans ahead of public safety. To quote McQuillan : "Make no mistake. Islamism in America reaches far beyond mosque walls. We have a pro-Jihadi curriculum in our schools, Jihadi preachers and speakers in our mosques and prisons, Jihadi bureaucrats and support staff in our government, Jihadi judges in our courts (one appointed by New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie), and Jihadis serving on oversight committees of police departments, the FBI and Homeland Security....Defending ourselves from Jihadi murderers is impossible, we are told by multiculturalists, without doing irreparable damage to freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Wrong. Our freedom of religion and speech will be impossible unless we stop the immigration of adherents of Sharia, and drive out American Jihadis. Our Constitution does not require us to adopt as fellow citizens people who hate our constitutional freedoms, let alone those who are crazed with an evil piety to maim and kill infidels. Free speech has never protected those organizing violence. Naturalized citizens who break their oath of citizenship can have their citizenship revoked. Their American-born children and other American Moslems involved with terror supporting-Islamist groups should be declared enemy combatants, and appropriate action taken." • • • THE TIME IS NOW -- BIN LADEN IS BACK. Ali Soufan, the FBI's lead investigator on al-Qaida after the 9/11 terror attacks, said Osama bin Laden's son may be ready to seek revenge for his father's death. Soufan says : "I think we're not done with the bin Ladens yet." Hamza bin Laden, now 28, "exhibited leadership skills early on," Soufan told CBS "60 Minutes" recently, and is believed to look and and sound like his father. He explained that as a child Hamza was used in propaganda materials, but no photo is known to exist of him as an adult. Soufan states : "We killed Osama bin Laden. But, his message lives....Interestingly enough, his recent message that came out, he delivered the speech as if it's his father delivering the speech, using sentences, terminology that was used by Osama bin Laden. He's basically saying, America and American people, we're coming and you're gonna feel it. And, we're gonna take revenge for what you did to my father. We're gonna revenge what you did in Iraq. We're gonna revenge what you did in Afghanistan." • In a 10-minute video released in mid-May, Hamza bin Laden urged Moslems in “America, the West and occupied Palestine” to carry out the attacks where they are. The video includes clips of terrorist attacks that have been perpetrated around the world, including in Israel. Bin Laden says that it is not necessary, or even preferable, to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State. “Know that inflicting punishment on Jews and crusaders where you are present is more vexing and severe for the enemy,” he said, adding that American and NATO targets are appropriate where there are no Jewish targets. • DEAR READERS, why do Europeans and Americans refuse to protect their own interests against the onslaught of islamic jihadist terrorism? Ayn Rand said : "Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them." Marine Le Pen's loss in France, a country riddled with jihadists but electing a president who says the open door will continue, is proof of Ayn Rand's statement. There is also the fact that mainstream media routinely plays down the Islamic roots of terrorism. And, consider that London presently has 100 sharia courts that are based on the rejection of the inviolability of human rights -- the values of freedom and equality that are the basis of English Common Law. And, yes -- 33% of UK Moslems do not feel 'part of British culture.' To quote Ayn Rand again : "You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality." The new French President Macron symbolizes the consequences of "avoiding reality" -- his multicultural manifesto is that "French culture doesn't exist in and of itself; there is no such thing as a single French culture. There is culture in France and it is diverse and multiple." Judith Friedman Rosen states that in Normandy, where tourists "pay tribute to those who died pursuing liberty," there is a pervasive fear as the "French open door policy to Moslem immigrants, who reject Western values and liberty" has given way to "terror, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian murders." The "clash of culture and civilization" continues, and "unlike the Asian and Indian immigrants...many of the Moslems are not willing to integrate into the society -- and are trying to force their values such as Halal, [and] the prohibition of pork...onto the French populace." Rosen asks : "What will be the future of France when 30% of French Moslems want Sharia law and less than 25% identify as French citizens?" Bruce Thornton asks, "How much worse will the destruction and death have to be to wake us up?" These "indulgences of naive idealism," dangerous delusions, and jihad denial still paralyze the West. Ayn Rand reminds us that "there are two sides to every issue. One side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil." • So, indeed, President Trump is right to tell Saudi Arabia and the Moslem world to"drive out" jihadist terrorists. And, while he is monitoring that program, Trump ought to start following his own advice and "drive out" the jihadist terrorists plotting the destruction of America.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Will We One Day Look Back and Say that Peace in the Middle East Was President Trump's Greatest Achievement

THE REAL NEWS OF THE DAY -- PEACE IS POSSIBLE. On Monday, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Trump at a press briefing : “I also look forward to working closely with you to advance peace in our region, because you have noted so succinctly that common dangers are turning former enemies into partners,” Netanyahu said. “It won’t be simple. But for the first time in many years -- and, Mr. President, for the first time in my lifetime -- I see a real hope for change." • Then, on Tuesday, as President Trump traveled by motorcade to Bethlehem in the West Bank to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Associated Press quoted a senior Palestinian official as saying he expects President Trump's visit to the Holy Land to reopen a path toward resuming long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. President Trump has said he wants to broker a deal that has proven elusive for the past two decades. The Palestinians want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Abbas advisor Majdi Khaldi told the Voice of Palestine radio that in the short term, renewed negotiations must address the Palestinians' economic problems that are linked to continued conflict and Israeli restrictions on trade and movement. Khaldi said : "This visit will open the way for relaunching the peace process." • • • TRUMP STANDS WITH ISRAEL WHILE COURTING SAUDI ARABIA AND ARABS. Even the Washington Post had to comment on the obvious close friendship between Trump and Netanyahu : "Even by their standards, the bromance between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed particularly deep in Jerusalem on Monday. Netanyahu, relaxed and beaming, welcomed the American President to the “united capital of the Jewish state,” the second stop on Trump's overseas tour. 'I think we quote each other,' said Netanyahu, with Trump grinning at his side. 'We understand each other and so much of the things that we wish to accomplish for both our countries.' ” • What a change from the sullen meetings between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama. Netanyahu and Obama disagreed fundamentally over the American role in concluding a nuclear deal with Iran -- a deal that Netanyahu actively lobbied against, even addressing the US Congress to make his case against it. But, the American refusal to veto a UN Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements in the waning weeks of the Obama presidency led to resounding fury from the Israeli government, as well as from most Americans who saw the Obama action as both personally spiteful and a betrayal of America's rock-solid support for Israel. • President Trump displayed a refreshing openness and honesty in addressing both the Saudi-organized Arab/Moslem conclave in Riyadh and with the Israelis gathered in Jerusalem. Trump seems genuinely eager to find a road to peace and, to the disappointment of conservative Israelis, has softened his promise to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, in order to avoid a gesture that would enrage Palestinians and infuriate the Arab statesmen Trump hopes to enlist in his peace efforts. On the Arab/Moslem side of the delicate balancing act, there is no indication so far that the President is moving to scrap the Iran nuclear deal that Netanyahu and his allies hoped would be jettisoned soon after Trump took office -- that will not happen prior to recommendations in a pending formal policy review about whether the nuclear deal advances vital American national interests. But, Trump's harsh language on Iran must have pleased both the Arab world and the Israelis. Trump said the United States would work with Israel to roll back “the threat of an Iranian regime that is threatening the region and causing so much violence and suffering.” And, Trump's unprecedented visit to the Western Wall, something no sitting American President has ever done because of the sensitivities around the site, included no Israeli political figures, although Netanyahu celebrated the act, telling Trump that the “people of Israel applaud you for it.” As would be expected, leftist Israeli media outlet Haaretz journalist Anshel Pfeffer found fault : “The bottom line is that not only does Trump have no intention of jeopardizing his relations with sunni Arab leaders by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, he won’t even make the tiniest gesture in that direction by allowing Netanyahu to join him for a few minutes in the Old City.” On Tuesday, Trump traveled to Bethlehem to meet Palestinian Authority President Abbas, a politician increasingly unpopular at home but still championed by foreign leaders as a key player in arriving at a Mideast peace. Trump has said good things about Abbas, and welcomed him to the White House, but treating Abbas with respect will be meaningless if Trump does not get some movement from the Netanyahu government -- and rumors are floating that Trump has already asked Netanyahu to find ways to help Palestinians grow their economy.” • • • TRUMP TARGETS IRAN. The Heritage Daily Signal's Jarrett Stepman wrote on Tuesday : "Conflicts over policy and philosophy strained the relations between former President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and led to distrust between the two countries....Israel plays an essential role in American foreign policy -- and not only in the Middle East. The war against radical Islamists has global implications in which the two countries have overlapping interests....But the national threats of Syria and Iran, which have acted recalcitrantly toward the West and are well-known funders of terrorist groups, are of particular concern and also require close cooperation with Israel. Trump has already shown that he is willing to make limited strikes in Syria to enforce the red line on chemical weapons. This action was strongly supported by Israel, and was seen as a rebuke to both Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria and also Iran. On Monday, Trump sent a strong message to Iran that its terror funding and nuclear ambitions would not be tolerated....Trump said in a speech that Iran was guilty of 'deadly funding, training, and equipping of terrorists and militias,' and that it acted inappropriately after the deal took place." • President Trump's strong words to Iran seemed to indicate that he is going to get either full transparent non-terrorist compliance from Iran or the deal will be scrapped. Iran's decidedly critical comments on Trump's Middle East visit show that Iran got the message, even if the ayatollahs are waiting to see if Trump follows through with his threats. • • • GAZA. The "impossible" will take a little longer. Trump must now get Israeli support to kick-start the Palestinian economy, while insisting on a halt to aggressive Palestinian terrorist acts and rewards for the terrorists from Abbas. Hamas must be dismantled and that will be difficult since Abbas, although owning a home in Gaza, is practically persona non grata there today. A way to provide jobs, freer movement and the beginning of the end of the reign of Hamas terror for the people of Gaza is essential. The way to do that again must come from Israel, already badly burned by their "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 that led immediately to a free election of Hamas in 2006 -- Hamas won a plurality of 42.9% of the total vote and 74 of 132 total seats (56%). Since 2007, there have been truces but no peace between Hamas and Israel, and very little peace between Hamas and the Palestinian Fatah government of Abbas in the West Bank. • • • DEAR READERS, Israeli Prime Minsiter Yitzhak Rabin said in 1992 : "I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won't happen, and a solution must be found." No American President from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama has found that solution. It is now President Trump's turn at bat. The issues are deeply entrenched on both sides and will demand untying the Gordian Knot, one hopes without resort to a sword. The 'untying' will have to include a step-by-step agreement with incremental progress to address Israeli security concerns and facilitate Palestinian economic development, which would help develop the beginnings of mutual trust and create a more supportive environment for later addressing difficult final status issues, such as recognition of Israel's right to exist as a nation, the “right of return” for Palestinians, the status of Jerusalem, the future of Israeli settlements, and an agreement on permanent borders. None of these is likely to be resolved soon, given the huge lack of trust and wide gaps in the negotiating positions of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But, with the continuing firm and even-handed leadership of Donald Trump, perhaps the "hope for change" Netanyahu says he senses because of Trump' presence and the "relaunching of the peace process" Abbas feels possible with Trump, will actually happen. Peace in the Middle East will not come without peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We may one day look back and say that this was President Trump's greatest achievement.