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Newt discusses Trump and his prospects. (See 1 below.)
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Either our intelligence agencies are beyond incompetent or spies will always slip through. (See 2 below.)
Israel's Rafael unveils new bunker buster rocket.(See 3 below.)
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So you want to vacation in Mexico? (See 4 below.)
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I would like to pose a few questions:
a) Suppose you are standing in a long line at the Savannah Music Festival and ten people break in ahead of you and you are a progressive liberal. Would that make you angry? I suspect it would. If so, why are you not angry when illegal immigrants do this?
b) If you care about hustlers who break in would you protest if the theater put up ropes to separate those standing in line as requested and a rope barrier for those who wish to break in line?
If your answer is yes, as I suspect it is, why are you protesting the same barriers for our borders?
c) Suppose the theater was owned by SCAD or Trump? Would that change your view when the rope barriers were put up to protect you from those who want to hustle? Would you think them immoral if Trump owned the theater?
d) Now suppose you had a dispute about a legal matter and you went to court and the judge favored your opponent and gave his/her lawyer more leeway in allowing evidence, asking questions of you and the judge constantly overruled your lawyer but gave a pass to the opposing lawyer etc.
Suppose that same judge used new defining language in giving his charge to the jury which seemed to favor the outcome of their decision against you. Would that make you upset?
Would you feel taken advantage of and that a double standard, with respect to the rule of law, had been applied that harmed you? I suspect you would.
Comey did that for Hillary.
e) Let's suppose the jury ruled against you in the above legal matter and the newspapers reported the results yet, made no mention of the judge's bias? Would that bother you if doing so turned the public against you and people began to parade around your business, break your windows and throw MOLOTOV COCKTAILS in your store and attack your children at school?
f) Now let's suppose you happened to be Jewish and the protesters began to justify their activities because you supported Israel. Would that bother you even more?
g) Now, let's move to a college campus where you are paying a significant amount of money to attend a prestigious school. Your roommate and college professors make your life miserable because they do not agree with your views. Worse yet, your professor gives you bad grades, never calls on you, is unwilling to discuss your grades and you notice he attends protests against invited speakers whose views you want to listen to but who are unable to speak because the university will not protect them?
Would you feel you are not getting your money's worth and that your low grades might impact your future ability to get employment.
h) Finally, let discuss the realm of politics.
All your life you have worked hard at whatever you did. Your efforts were recognized, you lived in a nice home, you obeyed the laws, you even attended church, your parents remained married were charitable and your father made a great deal of money because he was a valuable employee.
Because our nation had done some bad things in the past the progeny of those whose forefathers had been abused were allowed to get special affirmative treatment. To make up for past sins you had nothing to do with, you were told you have to break the egg to make the omelette. In other words, under the circumstances and to rectify past wrongs that you had nothing to do with, you had to allow reverse discrimination and because you were white you should feel guilty.
As a result of affirmative action and because of past sins, your government began to introduce all kind of legislation that was based on entitlements that were not specifically written into the Constitution and, over time, your society changed. Education declined, families were broken up, attendance at religious facilities declined, feelings of respect for the flag and patriotism were challenged and discord between the races heightened.
The views of a former great man about the content of a person's character and not their color was lost sight of as rancor and hatred began to spread. Much of this occurred during the 8 years of a president of color who wanted to transform our nation.
Those who believed they were making up for these past sins were warned by a professor turned Senator, named Moynihan, whose predictions proved prophetic but who was vilified by his own party.
Progressive liberals spent trillions on their self-righteous ideas which were draped in the mantle of doing the right thing but actually they were buying votes with taxpayer funds in order to increase their own hold on power so they could also enrich themselves.
They became known as" the establishment" and eventually there was an awakening.a Consequently, a man,who had never been engaged, decided something had to be done about the nation's decline so he ran and won. This angered the "establishment" and they decided to reject him and do everything they could to bring him down and because of his quirky personality, his un-presidential behaviour he provided them with ammunition even though his policies were working.
There were people in high places who took it upon themselves to engage in treasonous behaviour to thwart this new president. Furthermore, "the establishment" had powerful friends in the mass media who had their own agenda so the two joined forces.
The end of this story is yet to be revealed because we must wait til Nov, 2020, to learn the outcome. Meanwhile, "the establishment party" has changed and now is full of radical young people who embrace unorthodox views. They appear driven by hate and ideas that will bring great harm to the country they wish to lead.
This party now has been infiltrated by those who embrace ideas that vastly differ from what made America a great, powerful and good nation driven by an amazing, industrious and generous people.
There is an opposition party but it too no longer is in touch with it's own roots and no longer adheres to it's own principles so the contrast has blurred.
This is not a healthy situation but then they were told by a man who wore a powdered wig and wrote an Almanac: "We have a republic if we can keep it."
This is a very important op ed by Victor Davis Hanson setting forth some meaningful paradoxes:
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So you like socialism? San Francisco has had only Democrat Mayors since 1965. Prior to that, we had a two term Mayor (1956-1965) George Christopher.
The streets were clean. Law and order prevailed. Police were allowed to do their jobs without Liberal Judges hampering them.What has changed? See Stossels report, here.
And:
It always take another Jew who is ashamed and/or intimidated by being Jewish. (See
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Dick
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From Newt Gingrich:
As you listen to the liberal media, the Never Trumpers and the left-wing Trump haters chatter on about President Trump’s current situation, remember these two numbers — 35 and 49.
The first number was President Ronald Reagan’s approval in January 1983.
The second number was the number of states Reagan
carried 22 months later.
carried 22 months later.
I am not predicting President Trump will carry 49 states. This is a different environment, and the tribalism that divides the country is deeper than it was 36 years ago.
However, in contrast to the enthusiastic doomsayers on television, I am willing to predict President Trump will recover. Also, he is much more likely to be re-elected than any of his opponents at The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the liberal networks currently believe.
President Trump’s resilience, despite two straight years of the most negative media coverage of any President since Lincoln (at least 90 percent negative according to studies by the Media Research Center that analyzed nightly broadcasts) is a sign that he has a devoted base that will stick with him. The most recent unemployment applications are the lowest since November 1969 (when there were a lot fewer Americans at work). There are powerful initiatives underway to continue to increase American jobs and economic growth.
The Left will do for Trump what it did for President Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and what it is currently doing for Prime Minister Theresa May (who is surviving because the alternative is so terrible). A few more proposals for 70 percent tax rates, sanctuary states, tax paid health care for everyone including illegal immigrants, open borders, anti-Semitism, and anti-Israeli hostility and the Democrats will begin driving away everyone but the hard left. Governor Gavin Newsom’s wildly left-wing ideas are going to be a striking contrast to President Trump’s comparatively mainstream views (Newsom was mayor of San Francisco and is carrying its leftist ideology to the entire state). Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may set a new standard for willful ignorance by a non-Hollywood personality.
There is a point where smiling while saying things that are factually false simply doesn’t sustain a national movement.
There is a point where smiling while saying things that are factually false simply doesn’t sustain a national movement.
The energy in the Democratic Party is entirely on the left, and as Hillary Clinton discovered, the nominating process is going to drive the Democratic candidates to get as nutty as necessary to please the new generation of radical bigots.
The media’s new enthusiasm for third-party billionaires (Starbucks anyone?) is a big help to Trump’s re-election. Any third-party candidate will divide the anti-Trump vote and have no effect on the pro-Trump vote. The White House should encourage every would-be third-party leader. The more the merrier from the Trump perspective.
The Never Trump Republicans will get a lot of media and will be socially celebrated by the Washington, New York, and Hollywood crowds. They will do Sunday shows, be invited to speak at establishment events, and have paid staff egging them on (so they can continue to get paid). The Never Trump candidates will also be crushed by President Trump in Republican primaries.
Trump, like Reagan, learns and thinks a lot more than his detractors acknowledge.
He is accomplishing far more around the world than anyone thought possible (note the head of NATO just said Trump had gotten the alliance to add $100 billion toward defense and commended Trump’s tactics to contain Russia). The Chinese are losing the trade fight, and they know it. NAFTA has been renegotiated. Kim Jong Un has marginally changed his behavior in the right direction. Trump has a remarkable number of personal relations with heads of government and communicates with them by telephone as often as any president in history.
Mueller and the anti-Trump Deep State will continue to be annoying, and their news media manipulation will keep the Left enthralled. Need to lock an American up in isolation for 23 hours a day while awaiting trial? That is what Mueller has done to Paul Manafort. Need to ensure TV coverage of a fully armed dawn FBI raid? Just invite CNN along as Mueller did last week at Roger Stone’s house. Mueller will continue to use armed force in the middle of the night against non-violent Americans who have indicated they would cooperate.
And yet, as Andy McCarthy wrote after the Stone indictments, none of this proves anything about Trump and Russia which was the original story.
In fact, President Trump has been much tougher on Russia than President Obama ever dreamed of being. From sanctions to the military buildup of NATO, to rebuilding missile defenses and forward positioning in the Balkans, to offensive weapons for Ukraine, the President has been tougher not softer. Yet, the Left’s innuendos and attacks continue to paint Trump, as The New York Times hysterically put it, as a potential Russian agent.
The Mueller investigation will eventually be put in perspective and will lead to serious reforms to limit the threat of an out-of-control deep state in the Justice Department.
The American people will gradually realize that this whole effort has been a political hoax to smear the President, which has weakened the country and undermined the rule of law.
The hard Left will go into the summer of 2020 chanting hatred and believing everything bad about Trump. They will represent about 40 percent of the country. The hardcore Trump supporters will go into the summer of 2020 amazed at how much their leader has achieved despite unending news media, Democratic hostility, and splits in the GOP. They will make up 45 percent of the country.
The 15 percent who will have been repelled by the Left’s craziness and turned off by President Trump’s style will enter the summer of 2020 wishing they had a better choice. In the end, they will have to gamble on the least dangerous and least bad future. When that happened in 2016, they broke overwhelmingly for Trump over Clinton, and the late deciders made him president.
There will be three big things helping Trump in 2020:
1. The Trump Administration’s accomplishments will be real (a future column will outline the wave of breakthroughs in our lives that will start being felt in the next 18 months).
2. The hysteria and dishonesty of the investigations and their irrelevancy in terms of Trump as president will be obvious, and only the Left will pay them any attention.
3. Breakthroughs like criminal justice reform, a cure for sickle cell disease, better education through parental choice, the best African American employment rate in history, and the like will lead to Republican breakthroughs with minorities (as happened surprisingly in both Florida and Georgia against Democratic African American candidates for Governor – in both states the margin of victory was African Americans voting Republican).
Over the next few weeks, as you listen to the anti-Trumpers relish the winter of discontent and pronounce the end of the Trump presidency, just remember — they were wrong in 2015 when they said he couldn’t be a serious candidate; they were wrong in the spring of 2016 when they said he couldn’t win the GOP nomination; they were wrong in 2018 when they said he should withdraw Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Why should you believe them now?
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2)An Indictment Exposes America’s Witless Intelligence Agencies
U.S. officials revealed last week that a federal grand jury indicted Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence official, on charges of passing extremely sensitive secrets to agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps
.
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2)An Indictment Exposes America’s Witless Intelligence Agencies
U.S. officials revealed last week that a federal grand jury indicted Monica Witt, a former Air Force counterintelligence official, on charges of passing extremely sensitive secrets to agents of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps
.
The case highlights how broken the U.S. intelligence system has become. For more than 30 years it has demonstrated an inability to keep secrets, to protect itself from foreign penetrations by hostile spy services, or to prevent current and former officials from defecting.
The result: Brave foreign nationals who risk their lives inside harsh regimes to spy for America are being killed and imprisoned on a significant scale.
Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials portrayed Ms. Witt’s indictment as a victory of sorts, lauding the exposure of a foreign spy after a multiyear probe. Yet the real story is not Ms. Witt’s indictment but her defection to Iran in 2013. She brought with her details of a secret communications system American handlers use to talk to their recruited agents.
The FBI fumbled the case in 2012 by warning Ms. Witt she might be targeted for recruitment by Iranian intelligence. A trained counterspy, she knew that the tip-off meant she was under investigation and surveillance. It likely set in motion her flight to Iran a year later. As she boarded the plane, she texted her handler: “I’m signing off and heading out! Coming home.” Other texts reveal she “told all” to an Iranian ambassador in Central Asia and had plans to go public in the manner of renegade National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The indictment is largely symbolic, since the prospects of bringing the case to trial are slim to none. But it is one way for the FBI to dispose of the matter.
Officials did not detail the impact of Ms. Witt’s betrayal. Jay Taub, the FBI’s assistant director for national security, would say only that she became an “ideological” defector after converting to Islam. Her actions, he added, inflicted “serious damage to national security.”
According to prosecutors, Ms. Witt worked at the Air Force Office of Special Investigations from 2003-08 and then as a contractor, running an ultrasecret Special Access Program, or SAP, until August 2010. The program gave her access to details about counterintelligence operations, true names of recruited agents, and identities of U.S. intelligence operatives in charge of recruiting foreign agents. One program “allowed agents to communicate in the open without disclosing the nature of their operations,” the indictment states.
Ms. Witt left the contractor in August 2010 for unspecified reasons. In May 2011, Iranian state media announced that 30 people had been arrested as CIA spies and 42 others were suspected of involvement with U.S. intelligence.
It is not known how the agents were discovered, but a likely cause was a breakdown in agent-handler communications. Ms. Witt could conceivably have been involved. The indictment states that she provided defense information to Iran but does not say when. The spy charges cover the period from 2012-15. And that communications compromise appears to link the roundup in Iran to a second colossal intelligence failure under the Obama administration: the loss of all recruited agents in China.
Last year, the New York Times and Yahoo News both reported that between 20 and 30 recruited Chinese agents were killed or imprisoned between 2009 and 2013. Yahoo reported the loss was caused by a breach in an internet messaging system used to communicate with agents in Iran that spread to other countries. The Times blamed the loss on a former CIA officer, Jerry Chung Shin Lee, who was arrested in January 2018 and is suspected of passing along their names to China.
These recent losses follow decades of similar disasters. Aldrich Ames, a CIA counterintelligence officer, spied for Moscow and gave up the agency’s network of agents working against the Soviet Union and Russia between 1985 until his arrest in 1993. At nearly the same time, FBI agent Robert Hanssen, also a turncoat counterspy, gave over secrets on recruited agents to Moscow between 1979 and 2001.
Ana Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s senior analyst on Cuba, had already been recruited to spy for Havana when she joined DIA in 1985. Until her arrest in 2001, she helped Cuba neutralize all recruited CIA agents in the country. Another failure compromised all recruited agents in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.
These disasters and others can be traced to a lack of effective counterintelligence—finding and neutralizing foreign spies. Critics of the late CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton dismissed the efforts as “sickthink,” and since Angleton was ousted in the 1970s, counterintelligence has been the bastard stepchild of American intelligence.
Congress should demand quality controls on the $60 billion it appropriates for intelligence services each year. New and more effective counterintelligence programs should be a priority. A good first step would be to elevate the practice of neutralizing foreign spies to a strategic level of importance. This would involve better vetting and monitoring of those granted access to agent secrets, including after they leave government.
The most effective way to prevent further spy betrayals is to shift the focus toward offensive counterintelligence operations. That means devoting more people and funds to getting inside hostile spy services before they can penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.
Mr. Gertz is senior editor of The Washington Free Beacon and national security columnist for The Washington Times. His most recent book is “War and Peace in the Information Age.”
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3)
Rocks is launched from significant standoff range, far beyond the coverage areas of enemy air defense systems and performs a high velocity trajectory towards the target, reducing the exposure of the aircraft as well as improves the chances of successfully hitting targets.
“Rocks provides a cutting edge and cost-effective solution that combines several combat-proven technologies inherited from our latest generation SPICE system. Rocks effectively answers a growing demand for long range, GPS-independent Air-to-Ground precision strike capability,” said Yuval Miller, Executive Vice-President and General-Manager of Rafael's Air & C4ISR Systems Division.
“AeroIndia is an excellent opportunity to present this new system, and we can proudly say that as of today Rafael is well-situated in Inia with a broad industrial base, joint-ventures, indigenous companies and a substantial Indian supply-chain, as part of our commitment to the Made in India policy,” Miller added.
Also on Wednesday, Rafael and businessman Avihai Stolero announced that they had finalized a merger agreement to acquire Yavne-based unmanned aerial systems (UAV) manufacturer Aeronautics in a deal worth NIS 850 million ($235m.)
Under the terms of the acquisition, the companies will seek to retain the employees of Aeronautics, who will receive a total of NIS 8.5 million ($2.35m.) as part of the deal.
With the completion of the deal, Aeronautics will become a full subsidiary of a new company jointly owned by Rafael and Stolero, and will be de-listed from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Eytan Halon contributed to this report.
3)
Israel unveils Rafael's new advanced bunker buster missile, 'Rocks'
By ANNA AHRONHEIM
With tensions still high between Israel and Iran a new air-to-surface long-range missile designed for the annihilation of high quality targets deep underground in heavily defended areas has been developed by Israeli defense giant Rafael.
Dubbed “Rocks,” the innovative missile is being presented this week for the first time at the AeroIndia Air Show in Bengaluru , India.
Earlier in February, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander threatened his country would "raze Tel Aviv and Hafia to the ground" if the United States attacked the Islamic Republic.
According to a statement released by Rafael, the new missile is equipped with a penetration or blast fragmentation warhead capable of destroying targets above the surface or deep underground in heavily surface-to-air defended areas.
It can be used against quality targets, whether stationary or mobile, and even in arenas where the enemy uses countermeasures against GPS systems.
Dubbed “Rocks,” the innovative missile is being presented this week for the first time at the AeroIndia Air Show in Bengaluru , India.
Earlier in February, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander threatened his country would "raze Tel Aviv and Hafia to the ground" if the United States attacked the Islamic Republic.
According to a statement released by Rafael, the new missile is equipped with a penetration or blast fragmentation warhead capable of destroying targets above the surface or deep underground in heavily surface-to-air defended areas.
It can be used against quality targets, whether stationary or mobile, and even in arenas where the enemy uses countermeasures against GPS systems.
“Rocks uses its INS/GPS for mid-course navigation while homing on to the target is performed by using its EO seeker and advanced image processing algorithms, which ensures hitting targets with great precision, overcoming GPS jamming or denial,” read the statement.
Rocks is launched from significant standoff range, far beyond the coverage areas of enemy air defense systems and performs a high velocity trajectory towards the target, reducing the exposure of the aircraft as well as improves the chances of successfully hitting targets.
“Rocks provides a cutting edge and cost-effective solution that combines several combat-proven technologies inherited from our latest generation SPICE system. Rocks effectively answers a growing demand for long range, GPS-independent Air-to-Ground precision strike capability,” said Yuval Miller, Executive Vice-President and General-Manager of Rafael's Air & C4ISR Systems Division.
“AeroIndia is an excellent opportunity to present this new system, and we can proudly say that as of today Rafael is well-situated in Inia with a broad industrial base, joint-ventures, indigenous companies and a substantial Indian supply-chain, as part of our commitment to the Made in India policy,” Miller added.
Also on Wednesday, Rafael and businessman Avihai Stolero announced that they had finalized a merger agreement to acquire Yavne-based unmanned aerial systems (UAV) manufacturer Aeronautics in a deal worth NIS 850 million ($235m.)
Under the terms of the acquisition, the companies will seek to retain the employees of Aeronautics, who will receive a total of NIS 8.5 million ($2.35m.) as part of the deal.
With the completion of the deal, Aeronautics will become a full subsidiary of a new company jointly owned by Rafael and Stolero, and will be de-listed from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Eytan Halon contributed to this report.
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