Olivia Frances is named.
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Why Trump wants to challenge illegal voting pertaining to an election he won is strange but even more strange is watching Democrats challenge Trump for doing so when after the campaign they were questioning the legality of the vote in order to try and save Hillary from defeat.
What is not strange is Pelosi offering to pray for Trump. I guess she will have to pass the prayer in order to later find out what she meant.
Apparently Trump is playing with the mass media again and seeking to legitimize his election and silence the challengers. Much to do about nothing in my book and a waste of time and effort.
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Cliff May and defending the world. (See 1 below.)
State Department reneges. (See 1a below.)
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Schumer continues to slow walk Trump's Cabinet nominations but when it comes to spending money on infrastructure, like all good liberals, he is all on board and champing at the brace.
Conservatives in Congress are hesitant and thus Trump may meet resistance from within. Perhaps the Republican's period in Philadelphia will help resolve issues of potential conflict.
Meanwhile, Trump has steered two issues to the center of the stage and it would appear he has placed Democrats in a losing position.
If there are significant numbers of illegals voting why would Democrats support not wanting to verify voters are legitimate. By throwing out a large number, Trump has the mass media in a frenzy.
I believe voting is a one of the most sacred rights Americans have.
Second, why would Democrats want to be placed in a position of suggesting America has no legal right to protect its borders? Liberals can argue about what our immigration laws should be but to oppose secure borders places them on shaky turf in my opinion.
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The mass media just cannot help themselves when it comes to being dishonest. This time it is ABC. (See 2 below.)
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I recently had a session with my computer guru and I hope future memos will now be appropriately margin-ed. Time will tell. If they are not it is me not him that is messin up!
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Leaving for Orlando to participate in Grandparents Day at Blake and Dagny's school which has been threatened, in the last few weeks, by terrorist bomb calls . These calls have become heightened and regular since the beginning of the year. Whether pranks or real they are disrupting and sad.
When a school becomes Guantanamo like we will have lost the battle for freedom. With what is happening on American University campuses we are on our way. Sad indeed.
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Dick
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1)
Defending the civilized world
Eradicating ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ will require a long war
In an inaugural address that was more purposeful than poetic, President Trump last Friday vowed to “unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate from the face of the Earth.” I hope we can agree, across party and ideological lines, that those are worthwhile objectives. But let’s acknowledge, too, that achieving them will require a much more strenuous and strategic effort than previous administrations have undertaken.
The least likely place for uniting nations: the United Nations, an organization that has never managed even to define terrorism. A few U.N. members fight terrorism day after day (e.g. Egypt, Jordan, Israel). Others, however, condone and even sponsor it (e.g. Iran). The U.N. includes representatives of both the civilized and uncivilized worlds, and cannot be said to prefer one over the other.
Our Europeans allies are civilized – perhaps to a fault. Many embrace moral relativism as expressed in the mantra: “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Bringing Europe into a meaningful union against terrorism will require a heavy lift.
A straightforward definition of terrorism: violence intentionally directed against non-combatants for political purposes. That should, indeed, be seen as a barbaric practice. But terrorism is not the enemy. It is only a weapon the enemy deploys.
Most contemporary terrorism is, as Mr. Trump suggested, driven by “radical Islam,” an adequate term for a variety of ideologies rooted in totalitarian, supremacist and medievalist readings of Islamic scripture. Those who understand this also grasp why the Islamic State and the Islamic Republic of Iran are more alike than different.
Not for the first time is America threatened by such totalitarian foes. The goal of the Communists was domination by one class. The Nazis sought to establish the supremacy of one race. Today, the Islamists fight for one religion uber alles. They want all of us, Muslim and “infidel” alike, to obey sharia -- Islamic law as they interpret it. And if you don’t think they’ve been making progress over recent years you haven’t been paying close attention.
To defeat the Nazis and their allies required battles on many fronts from North Africa to the South Pacific. World War II, though relatively brief, was exceedingly lethal: More than sixty million people killed, about 3 percent of the world’s population at the time.
The Cold War followed. In 1946, diplomat George Kennan sent his “Long Telegram” from Moscow analyzing Joseph Stalin’s ideology and intentions. Largely on this basis, President Truman, in 1947, decided to “contain” the Soviet Union and assist those threated by communist aggression.
Three years after that, as military strategist Sebastian Gorka recalls in his 2016 book, “Defeating Jihad,” a State-Defense Policy Review Group was established under the chairmanship of Paul Nitze, then director of policy planning in the State Department. It produced NSC-68, a 58-page National Security Council report on the USSR, its “fanatic faith” and its determination to “impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”
NSC-68 explained why the Soviets were unlikely to sincerely embrace peaceful coexistence: “The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.” On this basis, President Truman implemented a robust set of policies, including covert actions and psychological warfare, aimed at weakening the Kremlin and frustrating its imperialist designs.
Fast forward to 1983, when President Reagan came to the conclusion that containment had proven insufficient and attempts at détente unavailing. He accused his predecessor, President Carter, of “vacillation, appeasement and aimlessness.”
It is sometimes said that Mr. Reagan’s strategy was “We win, they lose.” In fact, that was his desired outcome. The essence of his strategy was articulated in National Security Decision Directive 75. “NSDD-75” was an extraordinarily ambitious, across-the-board assault on the Soviet Union,” in the words of Paul Kengor, author of “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.”
To the disapproval of many academics and State Department officials, Mr. Reagan would call the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and exert pressure – diplomatic, political, military, ideological and, not least, economic – on a regime that was not as strong or stable as it looked to most observers, the CIA included.
On Dec. 25, 1991, three years after President Reagan left office, the hammer-and-sickle flag that had flown over Moscow since early in the 20th century would be lowered for the final time.
In retrospect, it may appear that the defeat of communism was inevitable. More plausibly, it was the result of Mr. Reagan’s revival of national strength and purpose – combined with solid research, analysis and, above all, strategic planning.
Many Americans and Europeans disapproved of the project. They believed the Soviets had a thing or two to teach us about social justice and they looked forward to communism and capitalism “converging.” Such people are with us still.
“The future is unknowable,” Churchill recognized, “but the past should give us hope.” Islamic radicalism and the terrorism it inspires can be defeated – though eradication, at least in the near-term, may be too ambitious a goal. We should not imagine that the process will be quick or easy.
A global revolution is underway. It threatens free nations. It is led by true believers – Sunni and Shia alike – who nurture ancient resentments and exhibit a formidable “will to power.” They have a strategy and they are prepared to fight a long war. Not until the same can be said of us, will it be possible to defeat them.
Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times.
1a) State Department Blocks Transfer of Funds to Palestinian Authority
JERUSALEM, Israel – In a stunning reversal, the U.S. State Department froze $221 million designated by former President Barack Obama to the Palestinian Authority on his last full day in office. The funds had previously been budgeted to the Palestinian Authority but blocked by Congress. Obama released the funds just hours before Trump was sworn-in as president.
Officials at the State Department decided to freeze the transfer until the appointment of former Secretary of State John Kerry's replacement. Trump's nomination, Exxon CEO Ray Tillerson, generated some controversy because of his business dealings with countries considered human rights violators and concern that he might show favoritism to his Russian contacts.
On Monday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed his nomination, albeit split along party lines, paving the way for confirmation by the full Senate.
The 11-10 vote came after Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., decided to back the former Exxon Mobil Corp. chairman's nomination. During the confirmation hearings, Rubio was reportedly the most vocal of the three senators.
Representatives Ed Royce, R-Calif., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Kay Granger, R-Texas, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, blocked the funding packages in 2015 and 2016 in response to the P.A.'s efforts to join international organizations.
Granger said she'd "worked to make sure that no American taxpayer dollars would fund the Palestinian Authority unless very strict conditions were met," israel national news reported on its website, Arutz Sheva.
"While none of these funds will go the Palestinian Authority because of those conditions, they will go to programs in the Palestinian territories that were still under review by Congress," Granger said, adding "The Obama administration's decision to release these funds was inappropriate."
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2)
ABC News apologized late Tuesday after being caught deceptively altering a quote from former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. The quote appeared during the Monday night edition of Nightline and ABC used the quote to attack Trump press secretary Sean Spicer.
Nightline quoted Fleischer as saying, “[Spicer’s] briefing made me uncomfortable. It was too truculent, too tough. It looks as if the ball was dropped on Saturday.” But that is not what Fleischer meant to convey at all. The point he was trying to make was actually complimentary of Spicer.
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ABC Caught RED HANDED – Apologizes For Deceptively Editing Quote About Sean Spicer
ABC News apologized late Tuesday after being caught deceptively altering a quote from former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. The quote appeared during the Monday night edition of Nightline and ABC used the quote to attack Trump press secretary Sean Spicer.
Nightline quoted Fleischer as saying, “[Spicer’s] briefing made me uncomfortable. It was too truculent, too tough. It looks as if the ball was dropped on Saturday.” But that is not what Fleischer meant to convey at all. The point he was trying to make was actually complimentary of Spicer.
He posted a series of tweets complaining about ABC’s duplicity Tuesday morning, prompting the network’s apology
@Nightline proves Spicer right about MSM's dedication to negativity. Here is what I told them in a taped interview: 1/4
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