Intersectionality is the newest fad in political activism. What is it? Who’s involved? And, what does it even mean? Nobody is better prepared to answer these questions than Daily Wire editor-in-chief and podcast sensation, Ben Shapiro. He breaks it all down in this invaluable video.
And:
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Kim's WSJ Op Ed appeared last week.
I knew when Comey's book came out it was trash and I take trash to the dump rather than spend money on it. (See 1 below.)
Gowdy continues to be stiffed by our Justice Department and FBI who claim they are contrite after the IG Report. (See 1a below.)
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Punishing people for speech is the first step towards fascism. Hitler tried it with brown shirts and arm bands , Soros sponsors it with money and Strassel wrote about it when she warned us about Obama's manipulations of Federal Agencies and support of the police etc. in her book on "Intimidation."
In essence, Obama warned "don't cross my Rubicon or I will smash you" and now he is building a library monument to his accomplishments about how he transformed America.
It takes courage to go against crowds while defending freedom all alone. Demagogues understand this and use it to their advantage.(See 2 below.)
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Bill Eiland, The Director of The State Museum, located on the campus of The Univ. of Ga. in Athens, will be giving a "virtual tour", at The Learning Center on 3025 Bull Street, at 12 Noon, Wednesday July 25.
I urge you to come if you are interested in culture and art. Bill is a delightful speaker , an internationally recognized museum director. You can make a reservation by calling Debbie Hornsby at 236 0363 or e mailing her at dhornsby@senior citizens-inc.org
I have served on the Museum's Board of Advisors for many years. Hope to see you there. (See 3 below.)
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Israel targets Hamas' Kite Man. (See 4 below.)
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Rebuttal from a dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Dick,
Stlll think you would enjoy the Comey book. He had an exemplary career, got to be FBI head on merit. Yes he screwed up, who has not ?
Where was the Kissinger piece, and did he actually write it ? 94 is OLD and his brain has failed
I am still unable to see Trump as other than an amoral liar with a limitless ego, who has alienated our allies and friends, who has not a clue about trade, and with Rudy, continues to surround himself with Toadies, He has no IG's in most Departments, even today; where is the control ? None.
When you need Kelly Ann and Rudy to defend you, you are in real trouble
D===="
My response: "I suspect Kissinger did not write that. Agree with some of your arguments but not about self-serving Comey. OK to screw up but don't try and absolve yourself while raising money to defend yourself against being a crook. I will not contribute to his defense. Me"
And:
From a dear friend and fellow emo reader: "
And:
From a dear friend and fellow emo reader: "
Let me see if I got this straight....
If we get nuked by missiles from North Korea, it'll be by missiles built with technology given to China by Bill Clinton, funded by Iran with money Obama gave them, with warheads developed from uranium sold to Russia by Hillary and refined by Iran into weapons-grade plutonium in Russian centrifuges bought with money Obama gave them.
And Trump's trying to undo this crap storm...but he's the Traitor??
OK, THANKS TO OUR MEDIA, I THINK I GOT IT NOW."
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This is from a reliable source, long time friend and fellow memo reader and I have not checked it because no way I can but sounds like could be factual. Cover ups are nothing new and if a female is involved it probably has to be handled with asbestos gloves. (See 5 below.)
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This is from a reliable source, long time friend and fellow memo reader and I have not checked it because no way I can but sounds like could be factual. Cover ups are nothing new and if a female is involved it probably has to be handled with asbestos gloves. (See 5 below.)
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There is one more personal rant I meant to include in my previous memo and it relates to Trump and N Korea.
I am concerned Trump may well have backed himself into a corner regarding his efforts to tame N Korea and force its leader to de-denuclearize. Yes, it will take time for the actual event to take place but suppose Jung un drags his feet, engages in obfuscation etc. Does Trump go to war? I trust Bolton and Pompeo to keep both men's feet to the fire but Trump is also a man who seeks headlines as all presidents and politicians do and the history of doing so leaves a lot of untied knots for others and dangerous consequences.
I do not fault Trump for trying something different but I can only hope it is not going to become a Hollywood setting, all up front nothing in the rear. We had that with Obama's 8 years and some of that with G.W.
We must never allow the carrot to become larger than the stick. You lose all advantage if you do. Bullies, like rabbits, thrive on carrots
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Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1) Insubordination and bias at FBI
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 500-page report covers plenty, but it can be distilled to two words he uses to describe the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the 2016 election: insubordination and bias. Two terms that are chilling in connection with such a powerful agency.
That won’t be the message from Democrats and most of the press, who will focus on a few episodes they will claim cost Hillary Clinton an election. Watch for them to blame former FBI Director James Comey, whom the report faults for “a serious error of judgment,” for having “concealed information” from superiors, and for “violation of or disregard for” departmental and bureau policies.
True, the report is damning about the man who lectures Americans on “higher loyalty.” It describes how an “insubordinate” Mr. Comey was, as early as April 2016, considering how to cut his Justice Department bosses from a public statement exonerating Hillary Clinton. He hid this scheme for fear “they would instruct him not to do it”—and therefore was able to “avoid supervision.” He then “violated long-standing Department practice and protocol” by using his July 5 press conference for “criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.” In October, he made public that the FBI had reopened the investigation, even though the Justice Department recommended he not do so. Mr. Comey went rogue, and President Trump had plenty of justification in firing him in May 2017.
Yet it is the report’s findings on the wider culture of the FBI and Justice Department that are most alarming. The report depicts agencies that operate outside the rules to which they hold everybody else, and that showed extraordinary bias while investigating two presidential candidates.
There’s Loretta Lynch, who felt it perfectly fine to have a long catch-up with her friend Bill Clinton on a Phoenix tarmac and whom the inspector general slams for an “error in judgment.” Mr. Comey’s entire staff was complicit in concealing the contents of the July press conference from Justice officials. We discover that significant FBI “resources” were dedicated in October to spinning FBI “talking points” about the Clinton investigation—rather than actually investigating the new Anthony Weiner laptop emails the bureau discovered in September. We even find that Mr. Comey used personal email and laptops to conduct government work.
There’s former Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik, who was tipping off the Clinton campaign even as he took part in the investigation, and who “failed to strictly adhere to [his] recusal” when he finally stepped away. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe also did not “fully comply with his recusal,” and he’d already been found to have lied to the bureau about a leak to the media. Speaking of leaks, Mr. Horowitz needed full attachments and charts to list the entire “volume of communication” between FBI employees and the press. Not only did these folks have “no official reason to be in contact with the media,” but they also “improperly received benefits from reporters, including tickets to sporting events, golfing outings, drinks and meals, and admittance to nonpublic social events.”
Be ready to hear the report absolves the FBI and DOJ of “bias.” Not true. It very carefully states that “our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigative decisions we reviewed.” Put another way, he never caught anyone writing down: Let’s start this Trump investigation so we can help Hillary win.
But the bias is everywhere. It’s in the texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and those of three other employees who are routinely “hostile” to Candidate Trump. It’s in Ms. Page’s freak-out that Mr. Trump might win the presidency and Mr. Strzok’s reply: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” It’s in a message from an unnamed agent in November 2016 who writes that although the FBI found Clinton aide Huma Abedin had “lied,” it doesn’t matter since “no one at DOJ is going to prosecute.” To which a second agent replies. “Rog—noone is going to pros[ecute] even if we find unique classified.”
It’s in the Justice Department’s decision to cut deals with Mrs. Clinton and her staff and shelter them from a grand jury. And to agree to limitations in searching for and in devices. And in immunity agreements. The report is largely neutral on all this, giving officials the broad benefit of the doubt on “discretionary judgments made during the course of an investigation.” But it immediately follows that statement by noting that its job of evaluating the integrity of decisions was “made significantly more difficult” by the obvious bias among key players, which “cast a cloud” over the entire “investigation’s credibility.”
The current FBI and Justice Department leadership can no longer justify its refusal to come clean on its other actions. A neutral arbiter has found they made a hash of the Clinton investigation, and it is reasonable to assume that those same players made a hash of the Trump probe. The sooner they acknowledge it, the sooner Congress can move to reform these agencies so that no such thing ever happens again.
1a)Gowdy Fires Warning Shot Stern warning!
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy issued a stern warning to the DOJ and FBI. He explained that is was imperative to comply with House subpoenas or Congress would come down on the hard.
According to The Daily Caller:
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy warned the DOJ and the FBI on Sunday that Republicans will come after them if they choose not to comply with subpoena requests
Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday” that House Speaker Paul Ryan led a meeting with FBI and DOJ officials on Friday night and “made very clear there’s going to be action on the floor of the House this week if FBI and DOJ do not comply with our subpoena request.”
“Paul Ryan led this meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of those outstanding subpoenas,” Gowdy explained. “We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were present at Ryan’s meeting, according to Gowdy.
1a)Gowdy Fires Warning Shot Stern warning!
Speaking to Fox News on Sunday House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy issued a stern warning to the DOJ and FBI. He explained that is was imperative to comply with House subpoenas or Congress would come down on the hard.
According to The Daily Caller:
House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy warned the DOJ and the FBI on Sunday that Republicans will come after them if they choose not to comply with subpoena requests
Gowdy told “Fox News Sunday” that House Speaker Paul Ryan led a meeting with FBI and DOJ officials on Friday night and “made very clear there’s going to be action on the floor of the House this week if FBI and DOJ do not comply with our subpoena request.”
“Paul Ryan led this meeting. You had Devin Nunes, Bob Goodlatte, myself and everyone you can think of from the FBI and the DOJ, and we went item by item on both of those outstanding subpoenas,” Gowdy explained. “We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray were present at Ryan’s meeting, according to Gowdy.
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2) A New Approach to Fighting Campus Antisemitism
By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
College campuses today are being challenged by profoundly intolerant behavior, the goal of which is to prevent some individuals and groups from expressing their opinions, beliefs, or identity — or from fully participating in campus life.
For Jewish and pro-Israel students, such behavior has become especially prevalent and challenging. On many college campuses, not only are positive statements about Israel demonized and delegitimized, but individuals who express these opinions are often intimidated, ostracized, and literally bullied into silence.
In the past few months alone, pro-Israel events have been aggressively disrupted at New York University, Syracuse University, UCLA, and the University of California, Irvine. Numerous flyers and graffiti stating “Zionists Not Welcome on Our Campus” were found all over San Francisco State University after an SFSU professor wrote on her department’s Facebook page that welcoming Zionist students on campus was a “declaration of war.” And a formal complaint was filed by Jewish students at Columbia University against anti-Zionist student groups for systematically harassing and silencing them for more than a year.
In the wake of recent controversies involving the disruption and canceling of campus events, many university leaders have adopted the University of Chicago’s statement on freedom of speech, which has become the gold standard on free speech for universities across the country. Not only does the statement commit to upholding students’ rights under the First Amendment, but it makes it crystal clear that to do so the university must ensure students are protected from the harassment and intolerant behavior that directly impedes this right.
In theory, the adoption and implementation of a free speech statement like the one at the University of Chicago should benefit Jewish students enormously. It promises to offer protection from the peer-on-peer harassment that has made it difficult and sometimes impossible for Jewish students to freely express pro-Israel views and fully participate in campus life. In practice, however, such a statement runs the risk of making Jewish students even more vulnerable to those same acts of aggression intended to silence them.
Here’s why.
While freedom of speech is constitutionally guaranteed to each and every student regardless of opinion, belief, or identity, this is not the case when it comes to freedom from harassment. In fact, federal anti-discrimination law administered by the US Department of Education, which defines “harassment” as behavior that is “sufficiently severe, pervasive, or persistent so as to interfere with or limit the ability of an individual to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by any recipient [of federal funds],” only deems such behavior “harassment” if it is directed at individuals because of their race, color, national origin, gender, or other federally protected characteristics.
Identical behavior directed against students who do not share those protected characteristics is not considered harassment under federal law and these students are denied the protection afforded their peers.
This inequity trickles down to federally funded colleges and universities. For example, at the University of Chicago, protection from harassment is limited to students who are targeted on the basis of their “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, age, status as an individual with a disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, or other protected classes under the law.”
Although the list is quite long, many University of Chicago students remain unprotected from the harassment and intolerant behaviors that could impede their free speech and full participation in campus life. If in implementing its free speech statement, the university were to rely on its own harassment policy — using it as a standard for determining when a student’s freedom of expression had been impeded — it would beg the question of whether the university’s commitment to ensuring its students’ free speech applies to all students or only to those who share certain characteristics.
The same is true on campuses across the country. Take California, for example. Although the state’s two massive university systems — California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) — both tout the importance of freedom of speech for all members of the campus community, they also have harassment policies that effectively limit protection from behavior that suppresses speech to only a portion of the student body.
At CSU, Executive Order 1074 defines harassment as “unwelcome conduct engaged in because of a Protected Status” and a CSU student who wishes to file a university complaint form in order to find relief from harassing behavior must indicate “the protected status(es) that was/were the basis(es) of the alleged … harassment.” UC policy on harassment is similarly limited in its scope to protected classes and so too is UC’s online form allowing students to seek redress.
In theory, federal anti-discrimination law and university harassment policies should afford protection to Jewish students, either by virtue of their ethnicity in the case of federal law or their religion in the case of university policy. But, in practice, Jewish students have been denied protected status in both cases when those same harassing and intolerant behaviors are motivated by anti-Zionism. This is a double whammy for pro-Israel Jewish students. They must not only suffer the routine suppression of their speech and assembly, as well as the freedom to fully participate in campus life, but must also accept the reality that their aggressors — often members of a protected class — will go unpunished and receive a free pass to carry on their unfettered harassment.
For many Jewish students, this has created a sense of egregious inequity and increased vulnerability, which has led to further suppression of their willingness to freely express themselves.
It’s relevant to note that there are important efforts afoot to ensure that Jewish students are afforded legally protected status at the federal and state levels. But these efforts will take time.
There is, however, an immediate, easy, and equitable solution to the problem. University leaders must make a public pledge that all students will be equally protected from behavior that violates their rights to freedom of expression and full participation in campus life. To be effective, the statement should include a description of all university policies in addition to state and Federal laws that prohibit harassment and discrimination, along with a firm commitment to their equitable enforcement for all students, regardless of identity, opinion, or legally-protected status.
Harassment is harassment. The effects of this intolerant and exclusionary behavior on students are the same, regardless of the motivation of the perpetrator or the identity of the victim. And the abhorrent behavior that prevents students from an education free from discrimination must be addressed equitably. Students cannot freely express themselves and learn from their professors or each other if they face ongoing and pervasive intolerance, harassment, and discrimination — as Jewish and pro-Israel students do now. Only once all students are secure in the knowledge that they will be equally protected from hateful, bigoted behavior can a university guarantee its students freedom of speech and the right to full participation in campus life.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is the director of the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that combats antisemitism on college campuses, and was a faculty member at the University of California for 20 years.
The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.
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4) . Israel Retaliates for Terror Kites With Air Strikes
Israel launched overnight air strikes on Hamas positions in Gaza in retaliation for continued terror kites and balloons. Palestinians fired three rockets back. No casualties were reported from the air strikes or rocket fire. Take your pick of Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Ynet and Times of Israel coverage. Meanwhile, the Washington Post took a closer look at the terror kite threat.
Israel busted a Hamas terror cell near Nablus planning bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was an unusually large terror cell — 20 people were arrested. The Times of Israel explains:
“During the suspects’ interrogations by the Shin Bet, it was determined that the cell planned to carry out terrorist bombings in central cities in Israel and the northern West Bank, including a bombing in Tel Aviv, a suicide bombing and an explosive attack in Jerusalem, a bombing in the Itamar settlement and shooting attacks in the Samaria region,” the security service said, referring to the biblical name of the northern West Bank.
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5)An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning:
4) . Israel Retaliates for Terror Kites With Air Strikes
Israel launched overnight air strikes on Hamas positions in Gaza in retaliation for continued terror kites and balloons. Palestinians fired three rockets back. No casualties were reported from the air strikes or rocket fire. Take your pick of Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Ynet and Times of Israel coverage. Meanwhile, the Washington Post took a closer look at the terror kite threat.
Israel busted a Hamas terror cell near Nablus planning bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It was an unusually large terror cell — 20 people were arrested. The Times of Israel explains:
“During the suspects’ interrogations by the Shin Bet, it was determined that the cell planned to carry out terrorist bombings in central cities in Israel and the northern West Bank, including a bombing in Tel Aviv, a suicide bombing and an explosive attack in Jerusalem, a bombing in the Itamar settlement and shooting attacks in the Samaria region,” the security service said, referring to the biblical name of the northern West Bank.
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5)An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning:
Hi, Stacy.
During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two miles.
Not until a year later, when the final reports are made public and the guilty parties have been court-martialed, does the truth come out. The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!! The Tactical Action Officer would normally be in near constant communication with the OOD, but there is no record of any communication between them that entire shift!
Another fun fact: In the Navy that won WWII, the damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge. She handled the aftermath of the accident remotely, without lifting a finger herself!
Look it up: The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs. . . .
When I noticed last year that they were doing all they could to keep the OOD’s name out of the headlines, I speculated to my son that it was a she. Turns out all the key people (except one officer in the CIC) were female!
During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two miles.
Not until a year later, when the final reports are made public and the guilty parties have been court-martialed, does the truth come out. The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!! The Tactical Action Officer would normally be in near constant communication with the OOD, but there is no record of any communication between them that entire shift!
Another fun fact: In the Navy that won WWII, the damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge. She handled the aftermath of the accident remotely, without lifting a finger herself!
Look it up: The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs. . . .
When I noticed last year that they were doing all they could to keep the OOD’s name out of the headlines, I speculated to my son that it was a she. Turns out all the key people (except one officer in the CIC) were female!
Indeed, I did some searching, and Lt. Coppock pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty. Lt. Combs faced a hearing last month:
In an 11-hour hearing, prosecutors painted a picture of Lt. Irian Woodley, the ship’s surface warfare coordinator, and Lt. Natalie Combs, the tactical action officer, as failing at their jobs, not using the tools at their disposal properly and not communicating adequately. They became complacent with faulty equipment and did not seek to get it fixed, and they failed to communicate with the bridge, the prosecution argued. Had they done those things, the government contended, they would have been able to avert the collision.
That two of the officers — Coppock and Combs — involved in this fatal incident were female suggests that discipline and training standards have been lowered for the sake of “gender integration,” which was a major policy push at the Pentagon during the Obama administration. It could be that senior officers, knowing their promotions may hinge on enthusiastic support for “gender integration,” are reluctant to enforce standards for the women under their command.
This was the story of Kara Hultgreen, the Navy pilot who died in a 1994 F-14 crash. Investigation showed that Hultgreen had been allowed to proceed in her training after errors that would have meant a washout for any male pilot. But the Clinton administration was pushing for female fighter pilots, which resulted in a competition between the Navy and Air Force to put women into these combat roles. It is not necessary to believe that (a) women shouldn’t be fighter pilots, in order to believe (b) lowering standards for the sake of quotas is a bad idea. Of course, you may believe both (a) and (b), but it is (b) that gets people killed.
It seems obvious that the Pentagon (and the liberal media) sought to suppress full knowledge of what happened to the Fitzgerald in the immediate aftermath of the June 2017 incident that killed seven sailors, in the same way the details of Kara Hultgreen’s death were suppressed. It took investigative reporters like Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times a lot of hard work to find out what actually happened to Hultgreen. Let’s hope other reporters will dig into what’s happening in our military with the “gender intergration” agenda at the Pentagon now.
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