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Should Democrats recapture The House will they cut funding on military technology and spend it on universal health care? They historically under fund the military and leave the residual problem on Republican's doorstep.
We, apparently, are falling behind in the former. (See 1 below.)
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Stonewalling by Hillary allies engaged in a cover-up continues and Congress remains feckless.
It seems the continuing effort to keep the public from learning about Hillary's fake dossier, false FISA warrants, connection with The FBI to do her bidding in an effort to smear Trump now leads to a man named Sussmann who has decided taking the 5th is preferable to drinking one.
Why would he be doing this?
First, he has every legal right to do so as long as we continue to abide by the right that you cannot be forced to incriminate yourself.
Second, by doing so he continues to deny exposing how The FBI corrupted itself for a variety of reasons and does not want to embarrass itself if the news of such is revealed.
Third, the connection between Sussmann and senior officials at The FBI, The Steele Dossier and all the skulduggery involving Hillary, the law firm hired by the DNC and The DNC's involvement is all related.
What Sussmann did is another key that unlocks the safe full of information The FBI and various intelligence agencies do not want released and/or known because it would not only be embarrassing but could lead to a legal basis for bringing those involved to justice. (See 2 below.)
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Hillary's recent outburst about "civility" sets the stage for Democrats to continue engaging in incivility because they are frightened the Kavanaugh Hearings cut the ground out from under their efforts to smear Republicans and create fear among American Voters.
Their uncivil mudslide of trash talk continues extending to slurs against our elegant and courageous First Lady.
If feminists had guts to live up to their worthless claims they would be marching in defense of the scurrilous attacks on Melania but no, they would rather spray paint Republican facilities and harass conservatives having dinner in public restaurants. What I most admire about Melania, like my own wife, she is her own woman and that is more than I can can for so many of the feminists crowd who are brainless puppets.
This mass marches are organized and financed by Soros type sources and is right out of Alinsky's play book. Spread chaos has become the method employed by the radicals who have captured The Democrat Party. (See 3 below.)
http://insider.foxnews.com/
Democrats and feminists have nothing constructive to offer except blatant social discord, character assassination and Salem Witch "Hexes."
Democrats want and/or will seek:
a) Open borders
b) Expanded Sanctuary Cities.
c) Eliminating judicial clause: "Innocent until prove guilty."
c) Eliminating Electoral College
d) Increasing The SCOTUS so Progressive Justices prevail
e) Healthcare entitlement for all, regardless of cost.
f) Socialism.
g) Impeaching Trump and Kavanaugh: https://patriotpost.us/article
h) Re-imposition of Obama Rules and Regulations.
i) Raising taxes and overturn tax cut.
j) Eliminating all historical statutes that offend their sensibilities
k) Eliminating various amendments, most particularly one protecting free speech and right to bear arms.
Also, when the November election is over I suspect Hillary will revert back to her typical syrupy "cooing." She associated with the “San Francisco Democrats” crowd to radicalize her rhetoric for the campaign,
WAKE UP AMERICA or say good bye to your Republic.. (See 3a, 3b, 3c and 3d below.)
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Trump solves one crisis with Turkey and another surfaces with The Saudis. Unlike Obama, Trump apparently gave nothing and defended Christianity in the process. (See 4 below.)
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Several months ago, I warned Facebook and comparable social media technology companies would become targets of Congressional Legislative action. Since that time, these companies have proven how vulnerable they are to cyber attacks, and when same occurs and result in compromising sensitive information of their users, they are not diligent in reporting these incursions. Such is now being acknowledged by FACEBOOK.
I believe it is only a matter of time before legislation will be proposed and, perhaps, even extend to breaking some of these companies up to lessen their monopolistic omnipotent influence and power.
Stay Tuned.
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Bhutam, Chapter 4. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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Defining Defense Down
Across the spectrum of military technologies, the U.S. is losing its edge as competitors gain ground.
By
While America indulges in an asylum-worthy, self-destructive political struggle, largely unheralded changes are quietly shaping its destiny. Rapid advances in military technology, and the shifting correlation of forces among the U.S., China, and Russia, do not augur well. Our military deficiencies remain largely unaddressed, but rather than seeking remedy we are adjusting doctrine to accommodate them. This, the martial equivalent of Pat Moynihan’s “defining deviancy down,” is potentially as dangerous as the weakness it is intended to compensate.
Summarizing the deficiencies hardly does them justice. In the nuclear realm: China is now a major, destabilizing power that, unlike Russia and the U.S., is subject neither to numerical nor qualitative limitations, nor to inspections of its uniquely opaque nuclear infrastructure. And yet there is no effort to bring it into an arms-control regime. American nuclear modernization—rather, renovation—fails to match, among other things, the relatively invulnerable mobile missiles possessed by Russia, China and even North Korea, as U.S. land-based missiles remain at risk. Starved in the cradle, America’s ballistic-missile defenses cannot fulfill their primary purpose of deterring a first strike by protecting the portion of retaliatory capacity confined to fixed silos. In response to a Russian underwater nuclear “missile” putting America’s 10 great port cities in the path of destruction, the U.S. has done . . . nothing. And the military persists in packing the safest part of the nuclear deterrent in fewer and fewer submarines—14 as opposed to 41 four decades ago. All the above serve to institutionalize nuclear instability, as do deficiencies in conventional weapons.
China and Russia variously are ahead in quantum communications, anti-satellite weapons, directed energy, and hypersonics. Whereas the U.S. is entirely dependent upon electronics and satellites, the American military cannot jam quantum communications, protect its satellite net, or defend against hypersonics. The Navy’s already diminished fleet may soon be vulnerable to missiles flying so fast that the only way to stop them is with directed-energy weapons that even the latest class of ships has neither the electrical capacity to support nor the hull size for retrofitting.
This, combined with America’s failure to build its own fortified islands in the South China Sea and line their shores with a gauntlet of anti-shipping missiles, will amount to the de facto surrender of international waters to a covetous competitor. The Senate voted in 2009 to terminate the F-22, the world’s premier fighter plane, at a quarter of the originally requested buy. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Four Thirties Strategy aims to stand up 30 air squadrons, 30 ships, and 30 battalions in 30 days: that is, 25 days after Russia has swallowed the Baltic republics and morsels of Poland.
If the U.S. cedes international waters, watches as parts of Europe fall away (as in Crimea and the Donbas), deploys a defenseless fleet, and by default opens vulnerabilities in its nuclear deterrent, the international system will shatter as allies defect to rivals for whom American capitulationists will arise to do the rivals’ bidding and adopt their principles. We have seen the dawn of such things in the Iran deal, “strategic patience,” apology tours and fundamental transformation.
Have Americans the wit to prevent this? So far, not. Despite recent, welcome increases in defense spending, it isn’t merely a question of money but of its proper allocation, of strategic clarity and of political will. According to Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), “We are not in a position to have the defense budget that a lot of people envision when they start spelling out these nightmare scenarios.” That is, should Democrats take the House, the blinders will tighten.
But that is not all. The un-remediated military decline in relation to potential enemies is the cause of a dangerous alteration in doctrine, which in itself is a form of early, if unconscious, appeasement. The new doctrine is expressed by Gen. John Raymond, chief of Air Force Space Command, who stated in April that the U.S. will respond to an attack on its assets in space “at a time, place, manner, and domain of our choosing.” He called this “a huge change in our overall strategy,” and it is. Former Defense Secretary William Perry protests low-yield nuclear weapons because “the president might feel less restrained . . . in a crisis.” And a former operations planner at U.S. Cyber Command endorses “the right to respond to cyber attacks with conventional means.”
These are admissions that the U.S. cannot proportionally and equally defend itself in space, cyber, and response to tactical nuclear weapons except through the threat of escalation and intrusion into other domains. At the beginning of the nuclear age, American withdrawal of conventional forces in Europe led to reliance on strategic nuclear weapons as a response to Soviet invasion. As the Soviets acquired their own nuclear arsenal, doctrine matured and it became obvious that a flexible response, restricted as much as possible to matching methods and means of the challenge, was necessary to avoid disastrous escalation.
As Michael Griffin, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for research and engineering, succinctly warns, if the U.S. fails to shape up in regard to, for example, defense against hypersonics alone, China and Russia will “hold at risk our carrier battle groups . . . our entire surface fleet . . . our forward deployed forces and land-based forces,” with the only choice “either to let them have their way or go nuclear.”
Thus the U.S. will have put itself in the position of Russia, which has continued the promiscuous and dangerous Soviet nuclear doctrines upon which it relies because of weakness in its conventional forces and a dearth of “soft” powers. In short, American failures in vigilance may force a doctrinal step up the escalation ladder, and a step back into a more perilous nuclear age.
Save for the near miracles of ingenuity that have in the past served the U.S. so well, the only way to prevent this is with a massive, properly directed, long-overdue infusion of funds that will allow us to avoid the knife edge of risk upon which otherwise we will soon be dancing.
Mr. Helprin, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute, is author of “Paris in the Present Tense.”
2)
Who Is Michael Sussmann?
The FBI’s general counsel met with a Clinton lawyer in September 2016.
By
When Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked about the origin of the infamous Trump dossier, James Comey brushed off most of the questions. The former Federal Bureau of Investigations director said someone on his “senior staff”—he couldn’t remember who—had “briefed” him on the dossier “sometime in the fall” of 2016. Mr. Comey had been told it came “from a reliable source.” He insisted he “never knew exactly which Democrats had funded” it. He then continued on about his book, which meditated on the importance of “truth.”
That interview, in April 2018, is relevant in light of a recent report from the Hill’s John Solomon that James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel from 2014-17, met “weeks before the 2016 election” with a lawyer from Perkins Coie. That’s the firm that hired Fusion GPS to compile the dossier on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
My sources confirm that the Perkins partner who bent Mr. Baker’s ear and handed over documents was Michael Sussmann, point man for the firm’s DNC and Clinton campaign accounts. They also confirm the subject of the meeting was Russian interference in the election, including hacking and supposed ties to Donald Trump. Much of this comes from an interview House investigators conducted last week with Mr. Baker.
The significance of this revelation is enormous for everything from FBI investigatory malpractice, to its dishonesty, to its current fight with the White House over document disclosure. That the FBI’s general counsel was even meeting with a top lawyer for the Clinton campaign shortly before the election is proof of that the bureau strayed beyond obvious guardrails.
It’s alarming enough that the FBI felt free to open a counterintelligence investigation into an active presidential campaign. That it also felt free to gather information for that probe from the opposing campaign is mind-boggling. Team Clinton had the most powerful position on earth to gain from Mr. Trump’s downfall. No conflict there, right?
It is unclear whether Mr. Sussmann supplied any dossier-related information to Mr. Baker. But we know from the House Intelligence Committee’s February Russia memo that “senior DOJ and FBI officials” by this time knew the DNC and the Clinton campaign were behind the dossier. The Baker-Sussmann meeting raises the likelihood that those “senior officials” extended into Mr. Comey’s inner circle and that quite a few people understood the bureau was moving against a campaign based on the rival campaign’s opposition research.
Yet those officials marched into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and never revealed in any of their warrant applications that the dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign. It now appears the FBI also didn’t tell the court that its investigation had been informed directly by a lawyer for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Sussmann, as a former Justice Department employee, would presumably add credibility to any FISA application—unless the FBI was worried about revealing how much it was relying on the Clinton camp. By the way, Mr. Baker told congressional investigators that he personally reviewed the initial FISA application.
The news of this meeting also gives cause to doubt the FBI’s stated reasons for refusing to release documents to Congress. For more than a year the bureau has argued that it would hurt national security and U.S. ties with foreign intelligence. It played the same card recently with Mr. Trump, persuading him to back down on his order for disclosure of redacted portions of the FISA warrants and related materials. It has heavily redacted other documents, again claiming national security.
Among the redactions are portions of footnote 43 in the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia report. That footnote states that Mr. Baker met in September 2016 with a person who provided information about supposed Russian links to the Trump campaign. It noted this same person was also communicating with the press. The person’s name is blacked out. We now know it is Mr. Sussmann.
National security? No, this was redacted to save the FBI the embarrassment of having to admit it was cooperating with the Clinton campaign. This is the same FBI that blacked out of a key text message the detail that former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s office sported a $70,000 conference table. And the same FBI that claimed it would be a national-security nightmare if House Republicans divulged the name of the FBI’s spy against the Trump campaign (Stefan Halper), only to leak the name itself to friendly media.
The Baker-Sussmann revelation underscores that we will never get the truth about the FBI’s behavior until those documents are made public. Mr. Trump: Disclose.
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3) Antifa Says GOP Headquarters Attack
is Only the Beginning
By AAN Staff
Daylight revealed the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan's posh Upper East Side had smashed windows, leftist graffiti, and an ominous message – suggesting the "attack is merely a beginning." (The Daily Caller)
3) Antifa Says GOP Headquarters Attack
is Only the Beginning
By AAN Staff
Daylight revealed the Metropolitan Republican Club in Manhattan's posh Upper East Side had smashed windows, leftist graffiti, and an ominous message – suggesting the "attack is merely a beginning." (The Daily Caller)
The building is the headquarters of the Manhattan Republican Party and the New York City regional office for the New York Republican Party.
The note reads:
Tonight, we put the Republican Party on notice, in defiance to the policy of mass misery they have championed.
Our attack is merely a beginning. We are not passive, we are not civil, and we will not apologize. Those of good conscience and clear mind know this state of oppression cannot remain. The US fascist political system is one of the most savage institutions in history and we will combat it relentlessly until all are free of American barbarism.
3a)‘You Cannot Be Civil’
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree on the current state of the Democratic party.
At a time when it’s said that anything is possible in American politics, the impossible just happened. Hillary Clinton has aligned herself with Donald Trump’s view of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Trump has been using his political rallies to denounce “the radical Democrats” as “an angry mob.” On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton told CNN: “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” You cannot be civil. Behold the Trump sun and the Clinton moon in a moment of political eclipse.
It’s hard to pick out exactly when in the past month the Democrats shifted the national focus away from Mr. Trump and onto their own behavior. I’d say it was the Senate’s final vote Saturday on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
Democrats had thrown everything at Judge Kavanaugh, and it was over. But not in the Senate gallery. On cue, literally, spectators started shrieking at the senators on the floor. Guards moved toward the chamber’s doors, and the vote stopped while the screamers were removed.
During Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was Jeane Kirkpatrick, who in some ways was a template for Nikki Haley’s U.N. tenure as an unapologetic defender of America’s interests. At the Republicans’ 1984 national convention, Kirkpatrick delivered a speech memorable for one phrase—“the San Francisco Democrats.” The idea behind “the San Francisco Democrats” has never died. It stands for a party of the un-electable left. That year, Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by 525 to 13 electoral votes.
Democrats will complain it is beyond chutzpah for Donald Trump to brand them as divisive or radical after he has spent his presidency polarizing the electorate with his rhetoric and Twitter account. Maybe, but that was then. Whatever else was at issue in the midterm elections, it has been overtaken by the Kavanaugh nomination, which transfixed the nation for weeks.
The Democrats were in OK shape through phase one of the Kavanaugh hearings, a sometimes intense back-and-forth about his judicial beliefs. But it was phase two—the Christine Blasey Ford weeks, brought forth by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Democratic Party activists—that defined the battle lines for the November elections.
The hearings began as a familiar narrative—Republicans are hostile to women. But that spun out of control into broader issues of fundamental fairness and due process.
In conversations I’ve had recently with Democrats, once past the Kavanaugh arguments, most express a desire for more political civility. This is wishful thinking. The party has a problem: The San Francisco Democrats are back.
There are policy types on the left who would rather contest campaigns over health care and income disparities. But the Kavanaugh episode shows that the party is being taken over by what I would call the Code Pink Left.
The professional network of the Code Pink Left, typified by the George-Soros-funded woman who trapped Sen. Jeff Flake in an elevator, has virtually no interest in substantive policy goals.
The Code Pink Left specializes in creating political story lines or “frames”—such as that conservatives are weak on sexual abuse—which it promotes with theatrical protests, distributes on social media, and depends on mainstream media for constant repetition. This is something familiar. It is called agitprop.
The goal is to make the broader electorate nervous and doubtful. It worked. Many voters are now nervous about the Democrats’ street-fighting men and women. Every Republican from Donald Trump down to dogcatcher is running against the Democrats’ “angry mob” of Senate screamers and restaurant marauders.
What about the alt-right’s role in the new incivility? Good question. The answer is, they’re gone. The most visible face of conservatism through the Kavanaugh fight was . . . Sen. Chuck Grassley.
A valid criticism of Donald Trump is that he hasn’t expanded his base into a broader coalition. But his luck in attracting self-destructive opponents is astonishing.
The Democrats are contracting whatever coalition Barack Obama left them into a delimited activist resistance, whose “rage” is mostly a practiced act.
Democrats are becoming too taken with their own tactics. They’ve turned Twitter into basically a 24/7 open-mic night. Look how cool and clever we are. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker are mostly milking this niche audience for applause. It’s all so rote and theatrical.
Eric Holder at a campaign event in Georgia: “Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them.”
Eric Holder at a campaign event in Georgia: “Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them.”
Maybe it’s historical determinism. The constant-protest left captured the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and frightened the country into Richard Nixon’s overwhelming win against George McGovern in 1972. Four-and-a-half decades later, another generation of Democratic politicians is answering the same old radical siren song, “You can’t be civil.”
For a time, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, governors from the American South, taught them that won’t win. One thing never changes with the American left: It always goes too far.
3b What if Obama Voters
Remember How Lousy the
Obama Era Was?
By James Freeman
The left worries that young people and minorities don’t hate Trump enough.
During the Obama administration there was much confident chatter on the left about the “coalition of the ascendant.” This rising population of young people, social liberals and minority voters not only carried Barack Obama to two national victories but was allegedly destined by demography to exert an increasing leftward tug on American politics. The potential problem for leaders of this coalition is that along the way some of their followers may have noticed the results of their policies.
A few warning signs have been appearing lately as the Obama generation makes it way into the workplace and as minority voters seem unwilling to hate President Donald Trump as much as Democratic politicians and the press expect them to do.
“It’s time for some alarm about the midterms,” writes David Leonhardt of the New York Times. “The most recent polls have underscored the real possibility that Republicans will keep control of both the Senate and House.” According to Mr. Leonhardt:
Democrats now appear highly unlikely to take back the Senate, which was always going to be hard for them, given the conservatism of the states holding Senate elections this year. And while Democrats are still favored to win the House, many races remain so close — with neither candidate yet polling above 50 percent — that they could break either way in the final weeks. It’s easy to see a scenario in which many Democratic-leaning voters fail to turn out, as often happens in the midterms, and many Republican-leaning voters remain loyal to the party.
How could turnout possibly be a problem for Democrats, given all of the rage from professional leftists directed at Mr. Trump? Apparently amateur leftists aren’t as angry and in many cases may not even be leftists.
Mr. Leonhardt writes that a big challenge for Democrats is “their apparent inability to win big margins among Hispanics.” His column in the Times makes clear that Mr. Leonhardt isn’t the only one concerned about the lack of ill feelings toward our duly-elected President:
“The fact that Donald Trump is viewed in a relatively favorable light by as many as 1 in 4 Hispanic voters should be alarming for Democrats,” León Krauze, of Univision and Slate, writes, “but it’s not even their biggest problem. That would be turnout.” Ron Brownstein, of The Atlantic and CNN, quotes a pollster making a similar point.
As the Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman tweeted, “Why do Dems have a serious midterm problem w/ Hispanics? Lower-income/young/urban Hispanics just aren’t that motivated to vote. And guess who’s left: higher-income/older/suburban Hispanics who aren’t nearly as reliably Dem.”
It also remains unclear how strong the turnout of younger voters will be. As Ariel Edwards-Levy of HuffPost has noted, many Americans under 30 believe that people should not vote unless they’re well-informed about politics. Americans over 65 tend to believe all citizens should vote, regardless of how informed they are.
It’s almost as if the coalition of the ascendant isn’t really a coalition at all but a large, diverse group of individuals who make independent voting decisions. Is it possible that some members of the coalition have noticed today’s ascendant economy and compared it to the one they lived through when their coalition was in charge?
“Gen Z Is Coming to Your Office. Get Ready to Adapt.” That’s the headline on an interesting recent Journal report on young people joining the U.S. workforce. It also raises interesting questions about what will happen as they enter the voting booth next month and in 2020. The Journal’s Janet Adamy reports:
About 17 million members of Generation Z are now adults and starting to enter the U.S. workforce, and employers haven’t seen a generation like this since the Great Depression. They came of age during recessions, financial crises, war, terror threats, school shootings and under the constant glare of technology and social media. The broad result is a scarred generation, cautious and hardened by economic and social turbulence.
Gen Z totals about 67 million, including those born roughly beginning in 1997 up until a few years ago. Its members are more eager to get rich than the past three generations but are less interested in owning their own businesses, according to surveys. As teenagers many postponed risk-taking rites of passage such as sex, drinking and getting driver’s licenses. Now they are eschewing student debt, having seen prior generations drive it to records, and trying to forge careers that can withstand economic crisis.
Ms. Adamy quotes various employers and analysts saying that the youngsters are quick learners with a stronger work ethic than some previous generations. She writes:
Gen Z’s attitudes about work reflect a craving for financial security. The share of college freshmen nationwide who prioritize becoming well off rose to around 82% when Gen Z began entering college a few years ago, according to the University of California, Los Angeles. That is the highest level since the school began surveying the subject in 1966. The lowest point was 36% in 1970.
The oldest Gen Zers also are more interested in making work a central part of their lives and are more willing to work overtime than most millennials, according to the University of Michigan’s annual survey of teens.
Sounds like a group of kids who are focused on winning, not whining. Growing up during the challenging Obama years, perhaps they now understand just how little value identity politics adds to their lives.
Breaks her silence!
Melania’s own history of getting bullied was brought up and discussed with the interviewer. She said she is the most bullied person in the world and that she may be strong but kids who get bullied might not be able to deal with it. This brought her talking about her Be Best campaign.
Melania’s Be Best campaign to help reduce bullying in the world at large was discussed at length during the interview. She talked about how the main focus of the campaign is social media and online behavior. She wants to give kids the tools to ignore the bad behavior and bullying online and the understanding that they should not be engaging in these bullying behaviors.
Melania came out boldly in the interview and stated that she still loves Trump despite his alleged infidelity. This has been the sole focus of media attention when it comes to her interview, it is pathetic because it was such a small part of the said interview. She did state that most of these questions needed to be asked of RudyGiuliani because he has been the one talking about them in interviews.
The question of how Melania felt about a second term was floated during the interview, she said that she would undoubtedly support her husband if he were to run for re-election. Many are speculating that Trump might break the norm and not run, but we sure hope he does because this would be great for the United States!
Melania was asked about her often “controversial” outfits, these being silly questions she responded as such. She stated that she was there to talk about her trips, not her outfits. This shut the press down real quick, but it, without a doubt, will not stop them from conspiracy-mongering on their outlets.
3d) Yes, Democrats, It’s a Mob
Former Attorney General Eric Holder believes that Michelle Obama was wrong when she famously advised, “When they go low, we go high.” Rather, he told Democrats at a gathering in Georgia, “When they go low, we kick them.”
3d) Yes, Democrats, It’s a Mob
Former Attorney General Eric Holder believes that Michelle Obama was wrong when she famously advised, “When they go low, we go high.” Rather, he told Democrats at a gathering in Georgia, “When they go low, we kick them.”
If Holder had been honest, he would have said, “When they win a presidency via the constitutionally mandated route and the duly elected president nominates a Supreme Court justice with a 12-year exceptional record on the bench and then the duly elected Senate follows all the rules and precedents set by Democrats—offering numerous hearings and investigations along the way—and confirms that nominee, we kick them, because we’re frustrated.”
There’s nothing wrong with “fighting” in politics. We don’t need to be hypersensitive about every metaphorical overindulgence (unless it’s Donald Trump; then we must take it literally, seriously, and hysterically). But the problem is that Democrats have a bad habit of acting as if every political setback they experience is caused by some act of criminality. This instigates a lot of people to act like a bunch of children—or worse.
When Democrats lose the House, it’s because of mythical unilateral gerrymandering or mythical mass voter suppression. When they lose the Senate, it’s because the system suddenly became an antiquated relic of the 1700s. When they lose the Supreme Court, there is a “legitimacy crisis.” When they lost the 2000 election, it was because it had been stolen by the Supreme Court. When they lost in 2004, George W. Bush had rigged the election in Ohio. When they lost in 2016, omnipotent Russians and the unfair Electoral College had snatched the office from its preordained owner.
And every legislative action that fails to comport with liberal thinking is to them an apocalyptic event and the end of “democracy.”
If all of this were true, the question would be: Why aren’t more people joining a mob? If your government is stealing your country, why wouldn’t you embrace boorishness or even violence?
“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” Hillary Clinton recently explained, egging on one of those mobs. If you allow politics to become a stand-in for religion, the apostates don’t deserve decency. “Civility can start again,” Clinton went on to helpfully inform us, when Democrats run Congress.
Of course, it’s easy to embrace fake magnanimity when you hold power. Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” came during her 2016 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it was aimed at Trumpian rhetoric when nearly everyone in power believed that Clinton would triumph.
Obama offered her axiom after liberals had spent eight years trying to use executive power to coerce, demean, and morally micromanage the deplorables—yet those clingy God-loving gun nuts stubbornly refused to accept the progressive reinvention of patriotism.
They went low all the time. It was Joe Biden, not Trump, who accused Republicans and their presidential candidate, a man who had dutifully engaged in civic life for quite some time, of betting against America.
Yet Democrats still act perplexed by the backlash. Even now the mob within their ranks is being cast, predictably, as a conservative fiction. “Republicans Seize On ‘Angry Mob’ Mantra To Keep Their Midterm Base Fired Up,” says NPR. CNN insists that it’s a normal, everyday demonstration of free expression to chase politicians’ wives out of public places. You may not use the word “mob” in their presence.
No, it’s not the Parisian mob. Not yet. It’s more like one of those illiberal campus mobs that attempt, often successfully, to shut down debate. A mob is a disorderly crowd of people who have the intent of causing trouble or violence.
So, for example, that means people who interrupt lawful proceedings or people who wildly bang on the Supreme Court doors when a vote doesn’t go their way or people who surround politicians (and their families) and chase them out of restaurants or people who join groups that smear other Americans without evidence—those who try to undermine the rule of law through intimidation.
As a First Amendment absolutist, I say yell at politicians in public spaces all you like. That just means you’re a buffoon. But once you surround people and restrict their movements, you are engaging in more than incivility. Those actions will almost surely compound and become dangerous. And should I even mention that if any of this were directed at Democrats, the nation would be plunged into an overwrought discussion about the importance of civility in American life?
“This is what happens,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said this week. If you act as if every traditionally conservative policy position and legal appointment to the court portends the Fourth Reich, this is indeed what happens. For now, though, partisan incivility isn’t really a mainstream problem. But some Democrats seem to want to change this.
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4) A Royal Saudi Mess
The Editorial Board
The disappearance of a journalist could mean a crisis in U.S.-Saudi ties.
The disappearance of dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Turkey last week is a debacle that could have far-reaching consequences for the Middle East and U.S. interests. President Trump has to seek a full accounting lest he lose control of his foreign-policy agenda in the region.
Mr. Khashoggi entered the consulate on Oct. 2 and there is no evidence he left alive. The Turks are whispering to everyone that they have audio surveillance tapes of Mr. Khashoggi’s interrogation, torture and murder, though they have released nothing to the public. The Saudis deny foul play, but Turkish and U.S. intelligence say Saudi agents entered Turkey by private aircraft on the day that Mr. Khashoggi disappeared. The evidence is building that this was a kidnapping, or murder, ordered by senior officials in Riyadh.
All of this is a crisis for Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, the 33-year-old Crown Prince who has been using authoritarian methods to reform Saudi Arabia’s economy, politics and culture. The Trump Administration has formed an especially strong alliance with MBS, and that has made sense given his desire to contain Iran, his willingness to cooperate behind the scenes with Israel, and his modernization agenda.
All of this is now at risk if MBS or one of his deputies ordered a hit on Mr. Khashoggi, who was arguably the Crown Prince’s most important critic from his perch as a Washington Post columnist well known throughout the Arab world. MBS has developed a reputation for hell-bent decision-making, as in his war in Yemen. But it takes a special kind of reckless arrogance to think you can kidnap or kill a world-famous critic and get away with it inside a Saudi consulate on foreign soil. Vladimir Putin’s critics are usually murdered in Russia.
Mr. Khashoggi is a more complicated figure than the liberal democrat he is portrayed to be in the Western press. He is a longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood and favors Islamic theocracy, as John Bradley explains this week in the British Spectator. He has longtime ties to the Saudi royal family as a journalist and adviser, and some reports suggest MBS recently offered him a significant government post if he returned from exile in Washington, D.C. Some speculate that his refusal to accept that offer may have triggered the Saudi assault in Turkey.
None of this justifies a brazen murder, if that’s what happened, which would be a blunder and a crime. The fiasco puts enormous pressure on aging King Salman, who put the Crown Prince in charge. The Saudi royal family can be like feuding Borgias in the best of times, and the rivals of MBS will see a moment to strike at his power and agenda.
The episode is not the fault of Mr. Trump or son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, despite the predictable claims of the American left. Any sensible U.S. Administration would support a Saudi reformer willing to help restrain Iranian military adventurism. But a murder of this sordid kind would inevitably have bilateral consequences.
Senators of both parties are already warning that the episode, if proven, could lead to Magnitsky Act sanctions on the individuals involved. U.S. military aid and cooperation could be at risk. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says there would be “hell to pay.” While the Saudis could buy arms from the Russians or Chinese if Congress balks, the U.S. can’t afford an unstable Kingdom that would be vulnerable to Iranian or Sunni radical subversion.
Some of the most difficult foreign-policy decisions for any President are how to deal with authoritarian governments that offend American values but are important to U.S. interests. MBS seemed like a good bet as he pursued a more modern Saudi Arabia, but that has to be reconsidered if he is the architect of the Khashoggi disappearance.
Mr. Trump needs to show public concern, as he has, while the White House thinks through the consequences of American sanctions or policy change. The only people happy about all this reside in Tehran.
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5) Bhutan, Chapter 4
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5) Bhutan, Chapter 4
When last we met, we were in Thimphu. After our shopping expedition, we headed back
to Paro, a little over an hour’s drive back west through the mountains. When we got to town, we were greeted by a
herd of cattle being driven down the main street, so traffic had to come to a
stop while they sauntered through town.
Ugyen and Jazzy drove us up the hill to the same lovely hotel where
we had stayed our first night in Bhutan, the Nak-Sel Resort and Spa. The first night, we had had a “superior”
room, which was lovely. This time, we
had been upgraded to a “deluxe” room, which was definitely superior to
superior. It was larger and had a nicer
view and there were no stairs to climb.
Still had that dumb drizzle showerhead, though.
We were up early, excited for our trip to Tiger’s Nest. This is
probably the most famous place in Bhutan for tourists to visit, and one of the
most difficult. It is believed that Guru Rinpoche, who
introduced Buddhism to Bhutan, meditated in a cave on this cliff in the eighth
century. He was flown there on the back
of a tigress to subdue a demon. Later,
the Tiger’s Nest (Monastery) was built in 1692 by Gyalse Tenzin Rabgye,
Bhutan’s leader at the time. For various reasons, some people believe that
Gyalse Tenzin Rabgye was the reincarnation of Guru Rinpoche. The monastery was
burned down in 1998 due to a butter lamp, which I think is a candle. It was rebuilt in 2005 and has been the cultural
icon of Bhutan ever since.
One would not normally look at this cliff and think “that
looks like a good place to build.” We
knew the climb would be a challenge, but had been told that, if we took it
slowly, we could do it. When I actually
saw how high it was on the mountain, and heard that you had to climb up even
higher and then take stairs DOWN to it, I wasn’t so sure, but we had brought
our hiking boots all this way, just for this adventure, so we were going to
give it a go.
It took about 20 minutes to reach the “base camp” from the
hotel. We rented walking sticks and were
ready for our adventure.
There were horses available to take you to the cafeteria,
about halfway up, which sounded like a fine idea to me. Jim opted for two legs rather than four, so
we paid a lady for one horse. I handed the
boys my walking sticks and began to follow her to the horses.
She was moving along at a rapid clip and I was trying to
keep up with her, and not watching where I was going. Suddenly, a large rock was all I saw as I
fell forward and jammed my chin into the stone.
It was a jolting hit, snapping my head back and giving my jaw a good
punch. Ugyen, Jazzy, and Jim were there
in an instant. Ugyen was saying, “We
must go to the hospital, please.” I was
still trying to figure out if I had all my teeth (yes) and if I had any broken
bones (no). Given those two answers, I
couldn’t see why we would need to go to the hospital until Jim said, “You’re
bleeding a lot.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you need some stitches.”
Ugyen gave me a cloth to hold on my chin and they picked me
up off the ground. At that point, I saw
the rock, which did have a good splattering of blood on it. We got into the car and headed back to Paro
to the local hospital.
I think Jim and I have been in about 65 different
countries, and we have never before visited a hospital looking for
treatment. We were both pretty wary
about what we might find.
The hospital in Paro is perched on a hillside, which seems
very impractical for poor people to reach, but that’s where it is. It looked very small but nice and white from
the outside, with the Red Cross symbol on the gate. (That struck me as very odd in a Buddhist
country.) We went in, and went upstairs,
all the while holding a cloth on my chin (and wondering what kind of germs were
on that cloth). We were shown right in
to a treatment room with two gurneys.
One was occupied by a very small man, lying on his side all curled up,
who never moved a muscle while we were there.
I lay down on the other one.
A kind and efficient doctor appeared immediately, looked at
my chin, and prepared to sew me up.
Those of you who know me know that I have a wee tremor. Well, after any kind of shock, that turns
into a full body shake, so Jim and the nurse and Ugyen were all holding me down
so that the doctor could sew up my chin.
Despite the somewhat primitive looking conditions of the facility, Jim
kept telling me what a good job the doctor was doing. (Compared to what?) Within an hour, the stitches were in, he had
reassured me that my neck would be fine in a few days, and he had given me some
antibiotics, a shot to fight infection, and some pain killers. Medical care is free in Bhutan, even for
foreigners.
We gave up all hope of seeing Tiger’s Nest and went back to
the hotel for a nice, quiet day and evening.
Given all the damage that the rock might have done to me – a lost eye,
broken jaw, cracked teeth, broken bones, or a skull fracture or broken neck, I
was extremely lucky. And Ugyen and Jazzy
displayed great care and sympathy. Their
god of compassion must have been very proud.
A few photos can be
viewed at: https://www.mmemery.com/Bhutan-4
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