Furniture legs are there to hold up respective objects to which they are attached objects and in the dark to provide something to stub your toe on.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
At least one college president has guts: http://
We have gone from independence to dependency.
We have gone from tough and active to weak and passive.
We have gone from confident and assertive to confused and tentative.
We have gone from the ability to reason to being desperate and frightened.
We have gone from being red blooded Americans to being a wimpy petulant shadows.
We have lost our lust for patriotism and prefer to kneel.
We have lost our zest for life because we fear future's uncertainty
We have embraced political correctness to such a degree I no longer recognize my country.
We owe these miraculous negative changes because we allowed government to wreck our way of life.
Our republic is at risk and the radicals who have taken over the Democrat Party are smug and joyous.
All they care about is impeaching Trump because he has not acted in accord with their views. Consequently, they are seeking to deprive 62 million plus voters their choice of president. To hear them they are protecting our nation from a man who has putt America at grave risk because he sought to get at the bottom of Democrat skulduggery.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stop and think about this new hypocrisy:
While Pelosi is hell bent on impeaching Trump for his alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine, and doing so through her lackey, Schiff head, major presidential candidates in her party are proposing a quid pro quo when it comes to foreign aid to Israel. (See 1, 1a, and 1b below.)
Radical Democrats are actually trying to impeach and overturn an honest election. (See 1c below.)
And:
Merkel has become Germany's equivalent of Elizabeth Warren with some Kamala Harris thrown in for good measure. (See 1d below.)
Finally:
Warren came up with a 52 trillion tax cut by giving everyone "free"health care and making the wealthy and corporate America pay for it while she admits millions will be unemployed.
This was revealed while Trump's economic program continues to improve assuming you look at employment figures which rose dramatically.
Of course the Warren stock market will collapse so the cost to America will balloon and I suspect now that her health care program has been spelled out her candidacy should begin to sink.
Warren learned nothing while she was playing Pocahontas. Everything free has a cost.
No White House for Warren as she returns to the tepee.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Zito on Western Pa.and the 2020 election. (See 2 below.)
And:
Trump Rally. (See 2a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
At least one college president has guts: http://
We have gone from independence to dependency.
We have gone from tough and active to weak and passive.
We have gone from confident and assertive to confused and tentative.
We have gone from the ability to reason to being desperate and frightened.
We have gone from being red blooded Americans to being a wimpy petulant shadows.
We have lost our lust for patriotism and prefer to kneel.
We have lost our zest for life because we fear future's uncertainty
We have embraced political correctness to such a degree I no longer recognize my country.
We owe these miraculous negative changes because we allowed government to wreck our way of life.
Our republic is at risk and the radicals who have taken over the Democrat Party are smug and joyous.
All they care about is impeaching Trump because he has not acted in accord with their views. Consequently, they are seeking to deprive 62 million plus voters their choice of president. To hear them they are protecting our nation from a man who has putt America at grave risk because he sought to get at the bottom of Democrat skulduggery.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stop and think about this new hypocrisy:
While Pelosi is hell bent on impeaching Trump for his alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine, and doing so through her lackey, Schiff head, major presidential candidates in her party are proposing a quid pro quo when it comes to foreign aid to Israel. (See 1, 1a, and 1b below.)
Radical Democrats are actually trying to impeach and overturn an honest election. (See 1c below.)
And:
Merkel has become Germany's equivalent of Elizabeth Warren with some Kamala Harris thrown in for good measure. (See 1d below.)
Finally:
Warren came up with a 52 trillion tax cut by giving everyone "free"health care and making the wealthy and corporate America pay for it while she admits millions will be unemployed.
This was revealed while Trump's economic program continues to improve assuming you look at employment figures which rose dramatically.
Of course the Warren stock market will collapse so the cost to America will balloon and I suspect now that her health care program has been spelled out her candidacy should begin to sink.
Warren learned nothing while she was playing Pocahontas. Everything free has a cost.
No White House for Warren as she returns to the tepee.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Zito on Western Pa.and the 2020 election. (See 2 below.)
And:
Trump Rally. (See 2a below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Joe Biden opposes cutting military aid to Israel: 'gigantic mistake'
By OMRI NAHMIAS
Washington - Former Vice President and Democratic presidential hopeful, Joe Biden, sharply criticized some of his fellow candidates for offering to use military aid to Israel as leverage, and called the idea "outrageous."
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said on Monday that the aid could be used as leverage on the Israeli government. "I would use the leverage of 3.8 billion dollars - it is a lot of money - and we cannot give it 'carte blanche' to the Israeli government or for that matter to any government at all, we have a right to demand respect for human rights and democracy."
Speaking at J Street's annual conference in Washington, he added that "some of that $3.8 billion should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza."
Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and presidential hopeful, Pete Buttigieg, addressed the issue as well, saying that the US has mechanisms to ensure that US taxpayer support to Israel "does not get turned into US taxpayer support for a move like annexation."
When asked if he would also try to put pressure on Israel to change its settlements through cutting US military assistance Biden told the Wall Street Journal that he won't be the person to do such a thing. "Not me," was his reply.
"I have been on record from very early on opposed to the settlements, and I think it's a mistake, he clarified. "And [Prime Minister] Netanyahu knows my position. But the idea that we would draw military assistance from Israel, on the condition that they change a specific policy, I find to be absolutely outrageous."
"Anyway, no, I would not condition it, and I think it's a gigantic mistake. And I hope some of my candidates who are running with me for the nomination; I hope they misspoke, or they were taken out of context."
1a) Sordid Ruse Is All That’s Left Of Impeachment
By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the Sun
You may read it here first: This sordid, contemptible impeachment ruse is finally disintegrating. It was another fraud, and I predict that this time the polls will move clearly in the president’s favor. There are limits to how often his enemies can get the public and the world to the edges of their chairs with their fantastic accusations.
The Economist, a long-respected magazine in earlier times, told us a year ago that the Trump presidency was hanging on the thread of Michael Cohen’s testimony. Most of the American press gave the public to understand for two years that there was a high chance that he would be thrown out once the Mueller investigation established his “treasonous” links to the Russians.
President Trump appalls many reasonable people by some of his antics and utterances, but his supporters are rock-solid at only slightly less than half the country, and enough to have got him elected. The vitriolic antagonism of about 90% of the press, though, and the fear and loathing of the political class, which he assaulted in its entirety, have sustained an artificial levitation of morbid expectation that he will be overthrown and removed.
My research and intuition indicate that we have reached a turning point, and that all but the outright Trump-haters are disconcerted, and in growing numbers disgusted, by the cumulative pettiness, nastiness, and dishonesty of the assault on this president. As the longest-serving occupant of the office, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said, “The president is, preeminently, the head of the American people.”
This fact is frequently lost sight of in partisan skirmishing, but it is always capable of being asserted if the facts warrant. This president has only, to my recollection, addressed the whole country on a national issue from his office once, and his appearance then was unexceptionable. However ill-considered some of his comments may have seemed (and been), he has not squandered or abused his ability to ascend to that role and has endured these three years of contumely and spurious challenge somewhat equably. He has presumably believed that eventually the effort to portray and convict him as an illegitimate felon would be seen as an outrage.
I believe the country is now sick of it. To be sure, Mr. Trump has exhausted even his supporters; it is hard work defending him, and that is why he generally outperforms the polls. The country, though, is beginning to see that it has been duped. There are a couple of almost hidden traits of the American people that are profound and imperishable and capable of being stirred, and that once aroused are invincible.
One is the puritanical conscience of the country. Despite cynicism, hucksterism, all the gaucheries and inanities of banal and often craven political hacks, the plagues of bad taste, and the inundation of public life with money, often in unwholesome interests, almost all Americans fundamentally believe in America and all its legitimate institutions.
For reasons as familiar to readers as they are to me, this presidency has not been the beneficiary of this inbred respect for the institutions of national public life. But the instantly confected fraud of an impeachable offense in the president’s relations with Ukraine and its president has now snapped the patience and indulgence of all but the Trump-haters so rabid they should be in straitjackets and padded cells. (There are millions of them, but they aren’t more than about a quarter of the adult population.)
A shabby fraud launched by a partisan whistleblower who is acting on hearsay about an innocuous telephone call whose summary, though perhaps not entirely complete, was immediately released to the public cannot go much farther. It has been kept alive by a Star Chamber in which the president is not represented and the Republican questioning and calling of witnesses is done at the behest of the Democratic leadership.
It cannot produce a serious offense that the president could actually be accused of committing, and now it is to be sustained by a dubious vote that will only slightly alter its almost totalitarian one-sidedness. This ghastly farce has been presided over by a pathological public liar, Representative Adam Schiff, who has outdone even his previous fiasco of failing to produce his “conclusive evidence” of the president’s “treason” with Russia. The country will not tolerate seeing its elected leader defamed and smeared by odious little people who would strip him of his elected office.
It is one thing to resent and disparage some of the president’s foibles, and it is regrettable but inevitable that many are so offended by what they take to be his garishness and bluster that they are prepared to believe negative views of Mr. Trump despite his undeniable successes in dealing with the economy, illegal immigration, nuclear non-proliferation, trade, avoidance of Green madness, and intelligent judicial appointments.
The American people, though, will not stand for the president and his wife being booed at a baseball game; they will not stand for morally bankrupt congressmen operating a constitutional desecration of an impeachment inquiry; they will not stand for a national political press that denounces the president of the United States for describing as a coward an infamous terrorist who murdered three children as he committed suicide.
They will not abide a long-influential newspaper (the Washington Post) that headlined the violent death of the world’s leading terrorist as “Austere Religious Scholar Dies at 48.” In these wildly unjustified orgies of hate and misinformation, the country will consider Trump describing some of his enemies as “human scum” as the lesser of evils, or even excusable (and accurate).
The country wants the President to address national questions with calm and reasonable displays of leadership, as when President Franklin Roosevelt called for the country to be “the great arsenal of democracy,” President Truman disclosed the use of the atomic bomb, President Eisenhower deployed elite Army units to integrate schools in Little Rock. President Kennedy explained the Cuban missile crisis, President Johnson called for the enactment of civil-rights legislation, President Nixon asked the support of the “silent majority” in disengaging from Vietnam, and President Reagan spoke of the astronauts who had died.
Now, finally, the majority realizes that the chief culprits for the venomous indignity of the political atmosphere are the president’s enemies. At a certain point, late and far down on the behavioral scale, the country demands that the president be treated with the dignity due to the person they have chosen to be not just the leader of the government but the personification of the state, the head of the people, as Roosevelt said. Whatever else he may be, Donald Trump is the rightful president, and those who don’t like it can vote against him next year.
The press terror has gone too far, and the executioners of the innocent are about to be executed by the survivors; this is the pattern of revolutionary movements that frighten and revolt their former partisans. The reassuring thing is that the system is working, as the eminent lawyer Alan Dershowitz has remarked.
The executive branch and part of the legislative branch are at loggerheads. I doubt that the House of Representatives can pass an article of impeachment that accuses the president of an offense worthy of his removal from office, not that there is any chance on what is now public that he will be convicted of anything by the Senate. If the Schiff sleaze-cabal can’t get a real charge adopted, there may instead be a pallid attempt at a vote of censure, which will not be taken up by the Senate.
Under any scenario, the wheels are coming off this disgraceful Democratic garbage cart in all directions. Impeachment will fizzle ignominiously while the former administration is arraigned on serious charges from the Russian scandal, and the Democrats will wallow in their squalid failure to produce a feasible candidate for the White House. Normalcy, for which the country longs, is not dead; it is reawakening at last.
CMBLetters@gmail.com. From the National Review.
1b) Defining Impeachment Down
The House vote resolution and vote reveal a partisan inquiry.
Opinion: A Partisan Impeachment Vote
Senators demanded a fair inquiry. That isn’t what the House delivered Thursday
Democrats on Thursday finally held a vote on their impeachment inquiry against President Trump, but the resolution and the party-line vote already foretell the likely outcome. This is a partisan impeachment driven mainly by hatred of Mr. Trump that, barring new facts, will fail in the Senate and have to be settled by the voters next November.
“It’s a sad day because nobody comes to Congress to impeach a President of the United States. No one,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Thursday. This is insincere even by the standards of Congress. Democrats have wanted to impeach Mr. Trump since Inauguration Day in 2017. Her resolution of inquiry is merely a formality on the superhighway to a foregone conclusion.
The one political virtue of Thursday’s vote is that at least the House had to go on record. This meant Members in swing districts could no longer hide, and all but two House Democrats supported the resolution in the 232-196 vote. The exceptions were New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew and Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson, whose district was carried by Mr. Trump by 31 points.
Not a single Republican voted in favor, not even Members who are retiring from Congress next year, which is notably different from the last two presidential impeachments. The House resolution authorizing an inquiry into Richard Nixon passed 410-4, and the resolution offered by a Republican-controlled House against Bill Clinton passed 258-176, with 31 Democrats in support.
The text of the resolution, which was finally unveiled Tuesday, shows that Democrats didn’t even try to attract GOP votes. The resolution essentially keeps Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff in charge and able to continue his secret hearings as long as he wants.
Mr. Schiff’s main obligation to public disclosure is sending a report to the Judiciary Committee with his “findings and any recommendations,” which can include whatever his committee “may deem appropriate.” He is under no obligation to make the hearing transcripts public—even after Democrats have spent weeks selectively leaking what they claim witnesses said. His committee can leak opening statements, as it has, while keeping questions and answers secret, as it has. This is unprecedented in an inquiry to remove a sitting President.
The resolution makes a pretense of honoring minority rights by saying the GOP can seek to subpoena witnesses. But the request is subject to “the concurrence of the chair” of the Intelligence or Judiciary Committees. This Democratic veto power means that you should not expect Hunter Biden to make an appearance. The Nixon and Clinton resolutions gave the majority and minority equal power to subpoena witnesses.
Democrats and the impeachment press dismiss these objections as obfuscation over mere “process.” But the U.S. Constitution is dedicated to process because rules are crucial to democratic accountability. Article I doesn’t define rules for impeachment, but on a matter as grave as ousting a President the public deserves to know that the process is fair and transparent. Any process run by the hyper-partisan Mr. Schiff and under the terms of Thursday’s House resolution is likely to be neither.
The question is why Mrs. Pelosi thinks this helps the impeachment cause. She must know that a partisan impeachment will be less credible with the public. It is unlikely to change the minds of swing voters, much less of Republicans who could sway Senators.
Then again, maybe she and Democrats don’t care. Perhaps they believe, in these polarized times, that they are unlikely to change many minds. Maybe they want to charge ahead on a partisan basis simply to satisfy the Democratic voters and interest groups that have long wanted Mr. Trump gone. Brand the President with the scarlet I and use that as another tool for motivating Democratic voters in 2020.
This is defining impeachment down. Holding Presidents accountable under the Constitution is among the most serious issues in American democracy. Bill Clinton committed a crime by lying under oath to a grand jury. Democrats said that wasn’t impeachable. Richard Nixon was forced to resign when the tapes revealed he had obstructed justice by ordering a cover-up of the Watergate break-in. When the facts were fully known, Republicans and most of the country agreed.
Democrats want to impeach Mr. Trump for asking a foreign government to investigate his political rival for corruption, though the probe never happened, and for withholding aid to Ukraine that in the end wasn’t withheld. Assuming the facts bear this out, the attempt was self-serving and reckless and a long way from the “perfect” behavior Mr. Trump claims.
But Democrats will need more than the facts on the public record so far to justify short-circuiting a Presidency. Their partisan rush to impeachment suggests that their real purpose is revenge for the humiliation of having lost in 2016 to a man they think is unworthy of the office. The impeachers have the burden of showing why this shouldn’t all be left to the judgment of American voters in 2020.
1c) A Partisan Impeachment Vote
Senators demanded a fair inquiry. That isn’t what the House delivered Thursday.
By Kimberley . A. Strassel
The nation focused on the House this week, where Democrats voted Thursday to formalize an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Less noticed, but equally important, was the prebuttal on the Senate floor.
That’s why every House Republican—even vulnerable ones—felt confident in voting “no” on Thursday’s resolution. Republicans pointed out that even as Democrats were claiming the vote meant “transparency,” Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff was holding another closed hearing, to which most of the House and the president’s legal counsel weren’t privy. “Democrats cannot fix this process,” said House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney after the vote. “This is a process that has been fundamentally tainted.”
It’s also the hint to take from Mr. McConnell’s speech. The majority leader has made clear he believes Senate rules require him to “take up” a House impeachment—he can’t simply ignore it. But as he noted all the way back in September, “how long you are on it is a different matter.”
Perhaps Mr. McConnell has 1999 in mind. The Senate convened for Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, and West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd filed a “motion to dismiss” the proceeding up front—by a simple majority vote. It was defeated nearly along party lines (one Democrat crossed the aisle), and the trial proceeded. But the precedent is available.
And because of the House’s secrecy and disregard for due process, Republican senators are under increasing pressure to invoke it. Their constituents are demanding they acknowledge that any House-drawn articles of impeachment will have derived from an unfair process. That’s why Sen. Lindsey Graham produced 50 Republican co-sponsors for his own resolution condemning the House impeachment effort and demanding a formal inquiry.
Mr. Graham maintains that Thursday’s resolution is a further “sham,” since it allows Mr. Schiff to keep conducting proceedings in secret and to deny GOP requests for evidence and witnesses. Some Republican senators are beginning to make the point that their duty is to the Constitution, and to warn the House that they won’t sanction misuse of the solemn impeachment tool. Thus any Republican who votes to proceed to trial—and thereby legitimates Thursday’s House vote—is taking a political risk.
Mrs. Pelosi’s vote also handed Republicans the gift of bipartisanship. In what was something of an embarrassment for the speaker, two Democrats, New Jersey’s Rep. Jeff Van Drew and Minnesota’s Rep. Collin Peterson, voted with Republicans against the impeachment resolution. “I have some serious concerns with the way the closed-door depositions were run, and am skeptical that we will have a process that is open, transparent and fair,” Mr. Peterson said in a statement.
This is all a long way from the “bipartisanship” Mrs. Pelosi earlier this year claimed was necessary to sustain an impeachment inquiry. And what’s striking is how hard Democrats have worked to blow up any potential for cooperation with Republicans. Democrats had the ability from the start to hold transparent, fair hearings. And this week Mrs. Pelosi had the opportunity again to open up the process and potentially bring along some Republican votes. That she didn’t suggests Democrats fear that a full airing of the facts wouldn’t add up to much on the merits.
Meanwhile, the decision has produced a biased process, and given Republicans a powerful argument against the proceedings—one that isn’t going away.
Senators demanded a fair inquiry. That isn’t what the House delivered Thursday.
By Kimberley . A. Strassel
The nation focused on the House this week, where Democrats voted Thursday to formalize an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Less noticed, but equally important, was the prebuttal on the Senate floor.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered Wednesday a speech devoted to the glaring deficiencies in the House impeachment proceedings. The Kentuckian excoriated it for its lack of fairness and transparency, and listed the affronts to due process: secret hearings, the refusal to let Republicans call witnesses or obtain answers, the exclusion of Mr. Trump’s legal counsel from the proceedings. And he noted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s resolution would include no guarantee of a remedy. The Democratic approach, Mr. McConnell said, amounts to: “No due process now, maybe some later, but only if we feel like it.”
The Pelosi impeachment resolution was supposed to deprive the GOP of its complaint that the process wasn’t formal. Instead, it formalized a rigged process—and gives Republicans a solid rationale for rejecting the entire proceeding. Democrats gripe that the GOP refuses to talk about the substance of the case against the president. But it is Democrats who have made that impossible, given the secrecy and one-sided approach. Due process is at the heart of America’s system of ordered liberty, and the “evidence” Democrats are secretly compiling in the basement of the House is already soiled.That’s why every House Republican—even vulnerable ones—felt confident in voting “no” on Thursday’s resolution. Republicans pointed out that even as Democrats were claiming the vote meant “transparency,” Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff was holding another closed hearing, to which most of the House and the president’s legal counsel weren’t privy. “Democrats cannot fix this process,” said House GOP Conference Chair Liz Cheney after the vote. “This is a process that has been fundamentally tainted.”
It’s also the hint to take from Mr. McConnell’s speech. The majority leader has made clear he believes Senate rules require him to “take up” a House impeachment—he can’t simply ignore it. But as he noted all the way back in September, “how long you are on it is a different matter.”
Perhaps Mr. McConnell has 1999 in mind. The Senate convened for Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, and West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd filed a “motion to dismiss” the proceeding up front—by a simple majority vote. It was defeated nearly along party lines (one Democrat crossed the aisle), and the trial proceeded. But the precedent is available.
And because of the House’s secrecy and disregard for due process, Republican senators are under increasing pressure to invoke it. Their constituents are demanding they acknowledge that any House-drawn articles of impeachment will have derived from an unfair process. That’s why Sen. Lindsey Graham produced 50 Republican co-sponsors for his own resolution condemning the House impeachment effort and demanding a formal inquiry.
Mr. Graham maintains that Thursday’s resolution is a further “sham,” since it allows Mr. Schiff to keep conducting proceedings in secret and to deny GOP requests for evidence and witnesses. Some Republican senators are beginning to make the point that their duty is to the Constitution, and to warn the House that they won’t sanction misuse of the solemn impeachment tool. Thus any Republican who votes to proceed to trial—and thereby legitimates Thursday’s House vote—is taking a political risk.
Mrs. Pelosi’s vote also handed Republicans the gift of bipartisanship. In what was something of an embarrassment for the speaker, two Democrats, New Jersey’s Rep. Jeff Van Drew and Minnesota’s Rep. Collin Peterson, voted with Republicans against the impeachment resolution. “I have some serious concerns with the way the closed-door depositions were run, and am skeptical that we will have a process that is open, transparent and fair,” Mr. Peterson said in a statement.
This is all a long way from the “bipartisanship” Mrs. Pelosi earlier this year claimed was necessary to sustain an impeachment inquiry. And what’s striking is how hard Democrats have worked to blow up any potential for cooperation with Republicans. Democrats had the ability from the start to hold transparent, fair hearings. And this week Mrs. Pelosi had the opportunity again to open up the process and potentially bring along some Republican votes. That she didn’t suggests Democrats fear that a full airing of the facts wouldn’t add up to much on the merits.
1d) US ambassador slams Merkel’s dismissal of Iran’s call to destroy Israel
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
Richard Grenell, the US government’s most high-profile ambassador, on Wednesday sharply criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government for its blasé dismissal of Iran’s threat to destroy the Jewish state.
“Threatening the destruction of Israel is something that should not be dismissed, especially when the threats come from Iranian regime officials who regularly use terrorism as a weapon of intimidation. When someone shows you who they are, believe them,” Grenell, told Fox News.
The pro-Israel US ambassador Grenell, who enjoys enormous popularity among German Jews, pro-Israel advocates and Israeli government officials, responded to two Iranian officials who called for the obliteration of Israel in October.
Mojtaba Zonnour, chairman of National Security and Foreign Policy Committee in Iran’s Majlis legislature,: “If Israel or America make a mistake, Israel won’t live for longer than 20 or 30 minutes.”
Major General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), told an audience of IRGC leaders, declared, “This sinister regime [Israel] must be wiped off the map and this is no longer… a dream [but] it is an achievable goal.”
He said the Islamic Republic of Iran had “managed to obtain the capacity to destroy the impostor Zionist regime.”
When asked by Fox News whether the statements by Salami and Zonnour are antisemitic, Grenell said, “Yes.”
A spokesman for German foreign minister Heiko Maas told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that “We condemn the recent threats by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps against Israel in the strongest possible terms. Such anti-Israel rhetoric is completely unacceptable. Israel’s right to exist is not negotiable. We urge Iran to commit to maintaining peaceful relations with all states in the region and to take practical steps to de-escalate tensions.”
A Merkel representative from her spokesman Steffen Seibert's office simply repeated that Iran’s threats to wipe Israel off the map are “anti-Israel rhetoric.”When pressed by the Post if the Iranian regime’s call to exterminate the nearly 7 million Jews in Israel meets the definition of antisemitism, the spokespeople said it is just “anti-Israel rhetoric.”
The Post first reported on Merkel's administration labelling Iran's call to destroy Israel "anti-Israel rhetoric" and not antisemitism.
Antisemitism experts in the United States and Germany expressed outrage over the Merkel government’s cavalier attitude toward Iran’s genocidal antisemitism targeting Israel.
The Hamburg-based political scientist Dr. Matthias Küntzel wrote on the website of Perlentaucher on Thursday:”While Berlin has no problem describing a Nazi who wants to wipe out Israel as an antisemite, in the case of Iran sugarcoated language is cultivated: Here one shies away from the A-word; here you want to leave it with the term ‘anti-Israel rhetoric. '' '
The “A-Word “is a reference to antisemitsim.
Dr. Asaf Romirowsky, the US-based executive director of the 40,000-member Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), told the Post, “As per the recent IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition [the Working Definition of Antisemitism] and the U.S. State Department definition, any calls for the destruction of the State of Israel should be viewed as clear antisemitism. Trying to calls these statements anti-Israel dilutes Iran’s real intentions and gives them a pass. The German government should unequivocally define these statements for what they are: antisemitism, and should not tolerate them.”
Dr. Charles Small, a top expert on contemporary antisemitism and a visiting fellow at Oxford University in the UK, told the Post, “For the post-Holocaust German government to remain silent and not denounce, with force and outrage, the Iranian revolutionary regime’s ideologically based commitment to destroy Israel and Jewish sovereignty, is unconscionable, especially given the history of German antisemitism and the mass murder and destruction it caused.”
Small, who is also the founder and director of the New York City-based Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), added, “The Iranian regime’s twisted form of political revolutionary Islam is based on a theology that combines Nazi-inspired antisemitism and Holocaust denial. For the contemporary German government to ignore and dismiss this ideology and incitement to antisemitism makes Germany morally complicit in the hatred and crimes that the Iranian regime carries out daily within its borders and increasingly throughout the Middle East and beyond.”
Dr. Elvira Groezinger, the Berlin-based deputy director of the German branch of SPME, told the Post that said Merkel’s “words, however, had no effect whatsoever and did not urge the murderous Mullah regime to modify its policy towards Israel.
On the contrary, Iran keeps threatening Israel with extinction every second day.
As long as Germany continues its traditionally close economic relations with Iran, the Chancellor’s declarations will remain ineffective and the situation dangerous for Israel.
Therefore, I can only expect and hope that Germany will keep its word and stand on the side of Israel in case of Iran‘s further attacks on Theodor Herzl's The Jewish State.“
Post attempts to secure comments on Twitter from Germany's ambassador to the US, Emily Haber, Berlins' ambassador to Iran,Michael Klor-Berchtold, and its envoy in Israel, Susanne.Wasum-Rainer, went unanswered.
Post attempts to secure comments on Twitter from Germany's ambassador to the US, Emily Haber, Berlins' ambassador to Iran,Michael Klor-Berchtold, and its envoy in Israel, Susanne.Wasum-Rainer, went unanswered.
We also hope for a clear condemnation of these [Iranian regime] statements from the federal government at the highest level,” Dr. Remko Leemhuis, the acting director of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin office, told the Post. He added that members of the federal government should not meet Iranian regime representatives who issue these statements.
Last week, the widely-read Bild paper wrote that Germany's deputy foreign miniser Niels Annen “makes antisemitism socially respectable” in Germany because he celebrated Iran's Islamic revolution at Tehran's embassy in Berlin in February.
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2)![]()
Western Pennsylvania is home to the Bellwether race of 2020
Click here for the full story
Let me address the organized chaos first, because this part is truly incredible. By 2:45 pm, I overheard security talking to each other reporting that from on the ground counts plus sky views via helicopter, they estimated there were 16,000 people in line. Sixteen thousand of anything is a lot, but these were 16,000 individuals, some who had already spent the night outside the American Airlines Arena, others had arrived before daybreak to stand in line. All the hundreds of individuals I spoke with yesterday had already been standing or sitting in line for 17 to 10 hours. No one was upset, frustrated or tired. Around 2 pm security started adding in extra “lanes” for the increasing crowds, so the people that had been sitting or standing all day were now having to get up and move. Then, as I was moving through the crowds I see the diversity of the people in line. ALL economic backgrounds were represented including every other demographic: white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, straight, gay, etc. All the little boxes the media like to separate individuals into were present, but they were all patriotic Trump supporters. There were a lot of young people (18-25), many late 20s to mid 30s. The majority were 35-55 age range with the second largest age group being 55-75. However, I also met at least two dozen amazing individuals who were 86-97 years old and they patiently and eagerly waited in line over 14 hours to see President Trump.
There were couples, families, friends and co-workers there together, waiting for hours in line with strangers at the beginning of the day, but friends by mid day. They were helping each other move chairs and coolers, sharing drinks, food and snacks, and friending each other on social media platforms. How were all these individuals of various backgrounds kept in line for over 18 hours until the doors opened to the arena? You’d expect there to be a heavy security presence amongst the lines, police intervening often and settling disputes. Here’s the thing - they weren’t needed. There was a plethora of law enforcement at the rally and arena and in the sky and on rooftops. But they didn’t have to watch the 50,000 plus Trump supporters that showed up for the rally. They kept a secure perimeter, monitored media (more on these idiots later), kept the small amount of protestors that showed up away from the crowds and mostly assisted for medical issues. And each time there was a need for medical assistance, such as someone getting hot, tired or dehydrated from standing in line, although the EMTs were quick to respond, before they arrived, fellow Trump supporters in line who were medical professionals would rush to them, assist and begin assessing them in seconds so when EMT arrived minutes later, in most cases, the individual had already been evaluated by a doctor or nurse. Trump supporters took care of each other so there simply wasn’t an urgent need for police to monitor the rally attendees.
As I walked through the lines and spoke with the attendees patiently waiting they all had definitive personal reasons for why they support President Trump. They weren’t regurgitating political talking points, but told me what President Trump meant to them individually. While each were different and unique, many had similar themes. Since I did not ask for permission to share their specific personal stories - or even think to ask at the time - I will share their general sentiments. They respect his honesty and bluntness. His tweets do not offend them and they appreciate the time and effort he makes to speak directly to the public. They do not trust the media AT ALL. They are sad and disappointed that they can’t trust anything they say, but they’ve come to terms with it. They agree with President Trump that Nancy Pelosi is crazy. They think Adam Schiff should be locked up. Another interesting recurring sentiment is while they do not trust or respect any Democrats, they aren’t particularly supportive of Republicans either. They trust Trump and support his efforts and successes on draining the swamp, and they REALLY want a big swamp draining.
Everything they talked about and shared were contrary to anything ever reported by mainstream media. You don’t hear about these testimonies on television nor do you read about them in newspapers or publications. I have always wondered why it is that the media never share pro-Trump interviews. Is it because they don’t want to be interviewed? It it because they tried but their responses were inarticulate and not worthy of publication? No to both of the above scenarios. These individuals are very articulate, extremely knowledgeable and more than willing to vocally speak up on why they unequivocally support President Trump. The reason you won’t see it in media is because THEY IGNORE THEM! Less than 50 yards separated the media entrance to the main vein of the attendee line. Less than 10 yards separated the press entrance from the VIP line. I watched one media outlet after another walk right past thousands of rally attendees without stopping once to interview anyone and went directly into the building. They weren’t running late and didn’t have time. Most had their cameras out and on their shoulders, they just weren’t interested in filming the Trump supporters. It doesn’t fit their narrative and radical left wing propaganda they are so dedicated to promoting. Watching this unfold really put it into perspective how they aren’t at all interested in reporting truth or what’s important to viewers. They only care about transmitting information that fits the narrative they’re selling.
I didn’t get into the arena until around 6:30 pm. The Trump Team volunteers fortunately had a suite reserved so there wasn’t a rush to find a seat. The place was packed floor to ceiling. Around 7:15 pm I walked out of the suite which overlooked the entrance and there were still people pouring into the arena. At 7:42 pm, President Trump arrived and the cheering was so loud you could feel it in your internal organs. It shook you physically and emotionally in the most amazing way. I’ve watched several rallies on television or live feed from YouTube and while you could get a sense of the crowd response to certain things he would say, to witness it first hand is completely different. When the crowd roars with applause, you physically feel it. When he mentions the fake news media and the crowd boos, the vibration is indescribable. I can state without any hesitation that Trump supporters absolutely do not trust the media & they resent them for lying to the public. I loved being there and watching the 20,000 plus crowd cheer, boo and then fall silent to listen to their President speak. They love him, respect him and they trust him. Looking in front of the stage where the VIPs were standing, I could see three men close together with their arms around each other. They were veterans and two of them were holding up their friend in the middle who was a double amputee so he could see Trump. It was such a powerful image and one I’ll never forget. A few times I found myself wiping away tears because I was seeing and experiencing such beautiful moments that not only warmed my heart, but strengthened my resolve. When President Trump says the media and democrats are not fighting him, they’re fighting us, he’s right. When he chose to run for President, he made a decision to stand in between the corrupt politicians of the deep state and be our gladiator to fight them off from destroying our country and the values we hold so dear.
I’ve heard media pundits and ignorant politicians refer to Trump supporters as a cult, as ignorant and that we blindly follow him without knowing what we’re doing. That’s a flat out lie. Every single person I spoke to was extremely knowledgeable and knew exactly what the truth was and saw through every lie presented by the fake news media and the politicians who only care about themselves. They don’t look at President Trump as a god, but they love and respect him as a hero. They care about him and his family and they pray for their health and safety. These are people who cannot be bought, manipulated or swayed by lies. President Trump awakened a sleeping giant. He has empowered a nation with truth, honesty & keeping his campaign promises. Trump supporters believe in him because he’s earned our respect. He’s fought for us, so he’s earned our affection. He has made America great again in every sense of the phrase and people have noticed. One of the things that I loved most about this experience was the realization that in every city at every rally, tens of thousands of supporters wait 10-24 hours just for the opportunity to attend a free event to see and support President Trump. And anyone that will do that, will certainly turn out to vote. Trump is unbeatable & any candidate hoping to win any election needs to only say three words and mean them to win any election, “I’m with Trump.” Because here’s the truth, you’re either with us or against us and WE ARE WITH HIM!
2)
MT. LEBANON, Pennsylvania —Army combat veteran Sean Parnell kicked off his race as a Republican running for the U.S. House here at Pamela’s Diner. It's within a stone’s throw of the district office of Rep. Conor Lamb, the Democrat he is challenging for the 17th Congressional District seat in 2020.
“My plan for today is just to tell the voters who I am, give them a sense of what I stand for, and just listen to them and figure out what they feel is important,” said Parnell before he headed off to two other diners in the district in Beaver and Butler counties in the western and northern suburbs of Pittsburgh.
The district is made up of neatly trimmed Allegheny County upper-middle-class, left-leaning suburbs such as Mt. Lebanon, working-class communities in Beaver County packed with labor families, and fiscal conservatives and enough rural and exurban Butler County voters to make the whole district a smidge Republican leaning.
Parnell spent his time talking mostly with customers but took a beeline to the kitchen before he left to talk to the cooks and servers. “I worked at Smartie Arties as a bus boy, then as a cook from the time I was 15 until I was 21. I know how hard that job is and I just want to thank them,” he said.
Parnell was born in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh and went to Greensburg Central Catholic High School in Westmoreland County. While attending Clarion University, he watched events unfold on 9/11 and said he felt a call to duty to join the Army. His service began in Afghanistan in 2006, commanding a platoon called "The Outlaws," who were stationed near the Pakistani border.
The experience and his bravery there earned him two Bronze Stars, one for valor, and the Purple Heart, as well as a New York Times bestseller, Outlaw Platoon, which captures in vivid detail his platoon's grueling 16 months spent engaging in endless firefights in the mountains of Paktika Province to upend the Haqqani network.
Lamb, the scion of a western Pennsylvania Democratic dynasty, is a former federal prosecutor and Marine Corps officer. He narrowly won his first race, beating Republican Rick Saccone for a seat in the 18th Congressional District in a special election in the spring of 2018.
Lamb then chose to run in the 17th Congressional District after the controversial move by the majority-Democrat state Supreme Court, which redrew all of the congressional lines in the middle of last year after it determined the seats were politically drawn to favor Republicans, only to turn around and redraw them to favor Democrats.
The next race pitted two incumbents against each other, Lamb and Republican Keith Rothfus, who lost the seat to Lamb by a whopping 12 percentage points last November.
Before Parnell’s surprise jump in, Lamb was considered to have an easy glide to the finish line next year. No one expected House Republicans to be able to recruit a quality candidate to run in any of the swing districts that the GOP lost last year that placed them in the wilderness, let alone one in western Pennsylvania.
Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said the Army Ranger’s entrance into the race is a good development for the GOP, “I think this makes the district more competitive
Click here for the full story
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2a) Subject: Fwd: Trump Rally Dallas
What is it REALLY like at a Trump Rally? It’s like nothing you could ever imagine and it’s certainly not like anything portrayed in the media. I was incredibly fortunate to be a volunteer at the Trump Rally in Dallas last night, and I want to share with everyone the truth about the these events. A Trump Rally is a beautiful symphony of gratitude, love, appreciation and patriotism wrapped in organized chaos.Let me address the organized chaos first, because this part is truly incredible. By 2:45 pm, I overheard security talking to each other reporting that from on the ground counts plus sky views via helicopter, they estimated there were 16,000 people in line. Sixteen thousand of anything is a lot, but these were 16,000 individuals, some who had already spent the night outside the American Airlines Arena, others had arrived before daybreak to stand in line. All the hundreds of individuals I spoke with yesterday had already been standing or sitting in line for 17 to 10 hours. No one was upset, frustrated or tired. Around 2 pm security started adding in extra “lanes” for the increasing crowds, so the people that had been sitting or standing all day were now having to get up and move. Then, as I was moving through the crowds I see the diversity of the people in line. ALL economic backgrounds were represented including every other demographic: white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, straight, gay, etc. All the little boxes the media like to separate individuals into were present, but they were all patriotic Trump supporters. There were a lot of young people (18-25), many late 20s to mid 30s. The majority were 35-55 age range with the second largest age group being 55-75. However, I also met at least two dozen amazing individuals who were 86-97 years old and they patiently and eagerly waited in line over 14 hours to see President Trump.
There were couples, families, friends and co-workers there together, waiting for hours in line with strangers at the beginning of the day, but friends by mid day. They were helping each other move chairs and coolers, sharing drinks, food and snacks, and friending each other on social media platforms. How were all these individuals of various backgrounds kept in line for over 18 hours until the doors opened to the arena? You’d expect there to be a heavy security presence amongst the lines, police intervening often and settling disputes. Here’s the thing - they weren’t needed. There was a plethora of law enforcement at the rally and arena and in the sky and on rooftops. But they didn’t have to watch the 50,000 plus Trump supporters that showed up for the rally. They kept a secure perimeter, monitored media (more on these idiots later), kept the small amount of protestors that showed up away from the crowds and mostly assisted for medical issues. And each time there was a need for medical assistance, such as someone getting hot, tired or dehydrated from standing in line, although the EMTs were quick to respond, before they arrived, fellow Trump supporters in line who were medical professionals would rush to them, assist and begin assessing them in seconds so when EMT arrived minutes later, in most cases, the individual had already been evaluated by a doctor or nurse. Trump supporters took care of each other so there simply wasn’t an urgent need for police to monitor the rally attendees.
As I walked through the lines and spoke with the attendees patiently waiting they all had definitive personal reasons for why they support President Trump. They weren’t regurgitating political talking points, but told me what President Trump meant to them individually. While each were different and unique, many had similar themes. Since I did not ask for permission to share their specific personal stories - or even think to ask at the time - I will share their general sentiments. They respect his honesty and bluntness. His tweets do not offend them and they appreciate the time and effort he makes to speak directly to the public. They do not trust the media AT ALL. They are sad and disappointed that they can’t trust anything they say, but they’ve come to terms with it. They agree with President Trump that Nancy Pelosi is crazy. They think Adam Schiff should be locked up. Another interesting recurring sentiment is while they do not trust or respect any Democrats, they aren’t particularly supportive of Republicans either. They trust Trump and support his efforts and successes on draining the swamp, and they REALLY want a big swamp draining.
Everything they talked about and shared were contrary to anything ever reported by mainstream media. You don’t hear about these testimonies on television nor do you read about them in newspapers or publications. I have always wondered why it is that the media never share pro-Trump interviews. Is it because they don’t want to be interviewed? It it because they tried but their responses were inarticulate and not worthy of publication? No to both of the above scenarios. These individuals are very articulate, extremely knowledgeable and more than willing to vocally speak up on why they unequivocally support President Trump. The reason you won’t see it in media is because THEY IGNORE THEM! Less than 50 yards separated the media entrance to the main vein of the attendee line. Less than 10 yards separated the press entrance from the VIP line. I watched one media outlet after another walk right past thousands of rally attendees without stopping once to interview anyone and went directly into the building. They weren’t running late and didn’t have time. Most had their cameras out and on their shoulders, they just weren’t interested in filming the Trump supporters. It doesn’t fit their narrative and radical left wing propaganda they are so dedicated to promoting. Watching this unfold really put it into perspective how they aren’t at all interested in reporting truth or what’s important to viewers. They only care about transmitting information that fits the narrative they’re selling.
I didn’t get into the arena until around 6:30 pm. The Trump Team volunteers fortunately had a suite reserved so there wasn’t a rush to find a seat. The place was packed floor to ceiling. Around 7:15 pm I walked out of the suite which overlooked the entrance and there were still people pouring into the arena. At 7:42 pm, President Trump arrived and the cheering was so loud you could feel it in your internal organs. It shook you physically and emotionally in the most amazing way. I’ve watched several rallies on television or live feed from YouTube and while you could get a sense of the crowd response to certain things he would say, to witness it first hand is completely different. When the crowd roars with applause, you physically feel it. When he mentions the fake news media and the crowd boos, the vibration is indescribable. I can state without any hesitation that Trump supporters absolutely do not trust the media & they resent them for lying to the public. I loved being there and watching the 20,000 plus crowd cheer, boo and then fall silent to listen to their President speak. They love him, respect him and they trust him. Looking in front of the stage where the VIPs were standing, I could see three men close together with their arms around each other. They were veterans and two of them were holding up their friend in the middle who was a double amputee so he could see Trump. It was such a powerful image and one I’ll never forget. A few times I found myself wiping away tears because I was seeing and experiencing such beautiful moments that not only warmed my heart, but strengthened my resolve. When President Trump says the media and democrats are not fighting him, they’re fighting us, he’s right. When he chose to run for President, he made a decision to stand in between the corrupt politicians of the deep state and be our gladiator to fight them off from destroying our country and the values we hold so dear.
I’ve heard media pundits and ignorant politicians refer to Trump supporters as a cult, as ignorant and that we blindly follow him without knowing what we’re doing. That’s a flat out lie. Every single person I spoke to was extremely knowledgeable and knew exactly what the truth was and saw through every lie presented by the fake news media and the politicians who only care about themselves. They don’t look at President Trump as a god, but they love and respect him as a hero. They care about him and his family and they pray for their health and safety. These are people who cannot be bought, manipulated or swayed by lies. President Trump awakened a sleeping giant. He has empowered a nation with truth, honesty & keeping his campaign promises. Trump supporters believe in him because he’s earned our respect. He’s fought for us, so he’s earned our affection. He has made America great again in every sense of the phrase and people have noticed. One of the things that I loved most about this experience was the realization that in every city at every rally, tens of thousands of supporters wait 10-24 hours just for the opportunity to attend a free event to see and support President Trump. And anyone that will do that, will certainly turn out to vote. Trump is unbeatable & any candidate hoping to win any election needs to only say three words and mean them to win any election, “I’m with Trump.” Because here’s the truth, you’re either with us or against us and WE ARE WITH HIM!
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