I used to be a fan of Marvel comics. Not anymore. The reason is the latest edition of 18 films in Marvel studios Avengers series titled “Infinity War.” After watching the film I was very disturbed by the message. Here is a key exchange between Thanos, the alien invader/protagonist, and Dr. Strange, one of the Avengers:
Thanos: When we faced extinction I offered a solution
Dr. Stephen Strange: Genocide?
Thanos: But random, dispassion is fair for rich and poor a like. They called me a mad man. What I predict came unannounced.
Dr. Stephen Strange: Congratulations, you’re a prophet
Thanos: I’m a survivor
Dr. Stephen Strange: Who wants to murder trillions
Thanos: With all the six stones I can simply snap my fingers, they will all cease to exist. I call that… mercy.
Dr. Stephen Strange: Then what?
Thanos: [I] finally rest, watch the sunrise on an ungrateful universe. The hardest choices require the strongest will.
In the end Thanos wins and trillions of people in the universe are slaughtered. The final scene is of Thanos in a green pasture admiring his work.
REDEMPTION
After watching “Avengers Endgame” I give credit to Marvel Studios for redeeming itself. While the film lasts 3 hours I was riveted to my seat.
Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame – Official Trailer.
The film picks up where “Infinity War” left off. The opening scenes are compelling. The film personalizes the catastrophic losses suffered by those who Thanos did not slaughter, the survivors. This reminded me of those who lost family and loved ones during the Holocaust, during the reigns of Joseph Stalin and Mao, the Armenian genocide and in the killing fields of Pol Pot.
Of course there really are no super heroes with super powers. But we have witnessed over our brief American history the actions of real heroes who have done extraordinary things. This is the lesson of mankind.
As English writer, poet and philosopher G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
What is behind mankind are the memories of those who were taken away from them by pure evil. Thanos, evil incarnate, slaughters half of all living creatures in the name of saving the universe from itself. This is not unlike those who today want to enslave all of mankind in the name of saving the planet earth (e.g. environmentalism, Green New Deal, One World Order).
MANKIND’S GOD GIVEN ABILITY TO THINK
As University of Maryland economist Julian Simon noted in his 1981 book that the human brain is the “ultimate resource.” And so it is in “Avengers Endgame.” We have seen the idea of time travel repeatedly in films. The fantasy of going back in time to stop evil is just that, a fantasy. “Avengers Endgame” pokes fun at this fantasy and shows how, in part, how this is folly.
Of course this is Hollywood and all things are possible, even time travel to get a human redo.
The key to this film is redemption. The surviving Avengers know they failed in their quest to protect humanity. Their losses, on a personal level, drive them to use their own ultimate resources, their brains, to redeem themselves and put things right.
AVENGERS AS CRUSADERS
At the end all but two survive their quest for redemption. It reminded me of the Christian Crusades.
Thomas F. Madden, professor of Medieval History and Renaissance Studies as Saint Louis University, is a recognized expert on the Crusades. Professor Madden in his book “The Crusades Controversy: Setting the Record Straight” notes,
“Pope Urban II called the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war.” Why did they do it? For two reasons:
The first was to redeem [free from oppression] the Christians of the East.
The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ.
Professor Madden writes:
The word crusade is modern. Medieval crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher.
[ … ]
The re-conquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was understood by Christians as an act of restoration and an open declaration of one’s love of God.
Perhaps we as humans need to turn to the God Abraham for our redemption and not to Hollywood?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-04-27 06:34:382019-04-28 05:49:06MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Avengers Endgame’ has redeemed itself! A film that is pro-family, pro-humanity & patriotic
Joe Biden announced today and he is running on one of the core lies about President Trump. And it is a lie that is at once pervasive and really easy to reveal. It’s the lie about what Trump said after Charlottesville and represents everything wrong with the Democrat/media establishment.
Trump painfully clearly and obviously was talking about the debate over taking down confederate statues and monuments. His comments were not about Antifa and the neo-Nazis or some such. They were about the country’s history, which I’m not in favor of erasing because people don’t like it today.
This is about basic honesty. And the media, Joe Biden and virtually all Democrat leaders are blatantly lying about Trump’s Charlottesville comments. Most Americans don’t know it. Trump makes misstatements and sometimes lies. When he does, he gets called out by the media pretty quickly. Even when he doesn’t, he still does by hilariously named “fact-checkers.” But who calls out the media for lying? (Let’s not even start on Trump Russia collusion. This is just so easy.)
Recall that Trump’s comments came in the midst of tearing down confederate statues all over the South and so there was this rally planned in Charlottesville. It attracted some of the country’s worst elements, from alt righters and white supremacists to Antifa and BLM. That was where you get all of those pictures of violence. It also attracted people who wanted to preserve Southern and/or American history — the originators of the rally — people who were then generally shocked at what went on. One evil person drove his car into the crowd and killed a woman.
In the aftermath, Trump held a press conference, and this is where the big, fat lie comes in.
Here’s the full transcript of the presser from Politico. It’s right out here in the open. Everyone in the Democrat/media establishment knows this. And yet the lie continues.
Here’s the context for those who don’t have time to go through the transcript:
TRUMP: “Those people were also there, because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue Robert E. Lee. So – excuse me – and you take a look at some of the groups and you see, and you’d know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases you’re not. Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week, it’s Robert E. Lee, I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after. You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
Trump is continually talking about the confederate statue controversy — not the so-called neo-Nazis — and asks where it all ends. A lot of Americans were asking the same question.
These press conferences are always a revelation as to how reporters just hound the President like they never, ever did Obama. No Democrat strategist could have done better than the press corps does in trying to trap the President.
Here’s the money line:
TRUMP: “Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”
Again, obviously talking about the confederate statues debate when he says “very fine people on both sides,” not the violence between Antifa and the alt right thugs.
But he went on to make it even more clear.
I mean this is just crystal clear:
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
Right, he was talking about taking down confederate monuments or leaving them up.
The media has lied for a year and a half about this, playing ad infinitum “very fine people on both sides” and pretending — nay, lying — that he is talking about white nationalists and neo-Nazis, when he makes clear throughout the press conference his condemnation of them.
But for the next year and a half, they will continue endlessly playing his words wildly out of context. Nay, just lying. Democrats will repeat them and run them on ads. Lies.
Every Democrat leader, including Joe Biden and the whole Democrat field, is lying. The base believes the lie because they want to or are ignorant, trusting that CNN and NYT is telling them the truth.
No one else should. The slimming of an American President should be repudiated by all people of good will.
RELATED VIDEO: Basing your entire campaign on a LIE… Bold strategy Creepy Joe by Carpe Donktum.
EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Rod Thomsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRod Thomson2019-04-25 16:48:422019-04-27 15:49:48Biden Will Run On A Central Lie About Donald Trump
It seems that Democratic candidate for president Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has gotten donations from the sworn enemy of the United States of America – the Islamic Republic of Iran. Senator Gillibrand also has received donations from Hassan Nemazee, a multimillionaire Iranian-American investment banker and convicted felon.
Senator Markey has announced his support for the Iran deal that will let the terrorist regime inspect its own Parchin nuclear weapons research site, conduct uranium enrichment, build advanced centrifuges, buy ballistic missiles, fund terrorism and have a near zero breakout time to a nuclear bomb.
[ … ]
As did Senator Gillibrand, who had benefited from IAPAC [Iranian American Political Action Committee] money back when she first ran for senator and whose position on the deal should have come as no surprise.
[ … ]
Gillibrand had also picked up money from the Iran Lobby’s Hassan Nemazee. Namazee [sic] was Hillary’s national campaign finance director who had raised a fortune for both her and Kerry before pleading guilty to a fraud scheme encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars. Nemazee had been an IAPAC trustee and had helped set up the organization.
Senator Gillibrand has strange bed fellows. You see, besides the Iranian chants of “death to America”, Hassan Nemazee is currently in prison for bank fraud. OpenSecrets.org in March 24, 2010 reported:
HOW DOES THE DEFENDANT PLEAD? Guilty. Hassan Nemazee, a prominent donor to Democrats, pleaded guilty to three counts of bank fraud and a count of wire fraud, according to Colin Moynihan at the New York Times. In the past, the Capital Eyereported on Nemazee and his immediate family’s contributions to federal candidates and political action committees, including thousands of dollars since 1990 to the likes of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama. (Many of the politicos have vowed to return or donate their Nemazee-related contributions.) As part of the plea agreement, Nemazee will forfeit assets totaling $292 million and spend between 15 to nearly 20 years in prison, Moynihan reports.
As the presidential primaries move forward it seems that this candidate has some skeletons in her closet. The question is will these revelations hurt or help Senator Gillibrand’s chances for the nomination?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-04-25 06:42:472019-04-25 08:01:33GO FIGURE: U.S. Presidential Candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) took money from Iranian PAC & Donor guilty of $292 million bank/wire fraud
For six years, the only luxuries Bopha Sayavong dreamed of were peace, quiet, food, and shelter.
It wasn’t until she landed in Little Rock, Arkansas, as a refugee from communist Cambodia on Oct. 31, 1981, that she began to imagine the luxuries freedom would bring.
Even after arriving in the U.S., though, life was not easy.
“We just build it up from there, little by little, to figure it out,” Sayavong, now 59, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview from Marion, Illinois.
Child Labor Under The Khmer Rouge Regime
Anything would beat the four years from 1975 to 1979 she spent as a teenager in work camps created by the oppressive communist regime known as the Khmer Rouge.
Cambodia fell to communism in April 1975 when an attempted coup by the right-leaning military failed to push King Norodom Sihanouk out of power. Sihanouk then joined forces with the Communist Party.
After a five-year civil war beginning in 1970, the Khmer Rouge had seized enough land to end the conflict. However, the communists didn’t restore power to Sihanouk, but to the ruthless leader Pol Pot, who historians hold responsible for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.
Once the communists seized Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, they told all residents to evacuate to the provinces for three days.
Sayavong, whose name then was Bopha Huot, was 13. Her father was a small business owner who, while in the Cambodian army, had helped Americans training during the Vietnam War. Her family was considered to be in the lower ranks of the upper class.
“The evacuation was supposed to be three days, leave your home and return back in three days, but actually it … was a false statement. It was a lie by the communist regime just to take people out of their homes,” Sayavong said.
The Effects of Communism
During the four years of the Khmer Rouge’s reign, the government owned all resources; currency did not exist.
Sayavong said she was separated from her family during the evacuation as all Cambodians were divided by age, sex, and marital status. It was four years before she was reunited with her family.
“Their model is that everybody is equal, nobody is richer, nobody is poor,” Sayavong said of socialists and communists. “Sounds great, isn’t it? But that’s not true because the government owns everything. So guess who is the richest one? The government.”
She added:
People that refer to themselves as the millennial [generation], they have no clue what socialism is. I lived in both socialism and communism, and then I lived in the world of the U.S. One thing I can tell you is there is no place like the U.S. …
People think [socialism] is so wonderful, it’s so fantastic, but that’s not true. It’s just like a painting: It looks fantastic, but when you live in it, then you know it.
What about young Americans’ attraction to socialism?
It brings me pain to even think that our children go that far,” she said. “I do believe in equality. I want … no rich, no poor, all even. But as a human being, think about it: If the government tells you what to do, how to eat, how to breathe, how could that be equal? They are above you.
Horrible Death Toll
Nearly 2 million Cambodians died between 1975 and 1979 as a result of the promised equality under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.
Life under the communists was oppressive, and there was no such thing as a “full” stomach in the work camps, Sayavong said:
In the very beginning, they gave you a reasonable amount of portions, but [it] is never a generous amount and it’s never what you want to eat. Whatever they provide, that’s what you eat.
Let’s just say today you’re going to have vegetables and rice; that’s what you have, vegetables and rice. And tomorrow, maybe you have a meat. But as the times goes by, as it’s progressed, like in the second year or so, you lose even more [food]. The third year you get even less. You get to the point where you have one tablespoon of rice a day. It’s not one serving, it’s [for] a day. They don’t even have enough salt.
We … were so hungry, we eat grass and wild vegetables, and I don’t mean the grass that a cow eats. I mean any wild vegetation. We’d just taste it to see if it can be eaten, [then] we eat it. But our stomach is not made to digest those kind of plants. We don’t have two or three layers like the cows. So most people have disease, and the water is not treated [but] dirty.
Her malnutrition was so bad, Sayavong said, that she couldn’t see at night from a lack of proper vitamins and minerals to support night vision.
There was no clock in her work camp; workers would start when the sun came up and stop when it went down. She said she worked every day in the fields to stay alive.
Grueling Work Schedule
“You wake up in the morning, you go to work … ,” she said. “When you cannot work, they will decide to eliminate you because you are a waste of their food and supply.”
She added:
They want everybody equal. So they have you work the field, building [a] village, growing rice, and farming because in order, in their stupidity, in order for you to be equals you have to start somewhere equal. …
So they have everybody start at the same thing. They abandon the manufacturer, they abandon cattle ranges and all those stuff, they start everybody on the same level. Except themselves. Everybody else, except themselves. They don’t work, they manage you.
“You know, I prayed every night, silly as that sounds,” Sayavong recalled. “I didn’t know what God I’m praying to at the time. I was hoping my… breath would never come the next morning, because it’s just unbearable. And each day I say, ‘God, please, just take me, I’m ready.’ … This is not it. I kept waking up. Never die.”
With the fall of the Khmer Rouge and end of its work camps, Sayavong said, she wandered through the jungle and found her mother, brother, and sister. Her father had died in a work camp.
In the jungle, her sister had discovered a poncho-covered boy hiding from the rain. It turned out to be Tom, a family friend before the communists had taken over and segregated everyone.
Tom was 10 when his family died in the work camps, Sayavong said.
Her family adopted him.
To survive, Sayavong said, she spent the next year smuggling food on the border with Thailand. One day, a group of Americans with a “little red cross on their arm” came to the rescue, she recalled.
The American Red Cross
The American Red Cross set up refugee camps in Thailand for Cambodian citizens fleeing their country. After two years in a refugee camp in Khao-I-Dang, Sayavong’s family was transferred to a camp in the Philippines where they eventually found a friend who was a U.S. citizen and would sponsor them.
Finally, it seemed as if there would be some security. Sayavong went through an immigration process that took her and her family to Little Rock, Arkansas.
With the assistance of a local church, she learned to speak English, got a job in a factory that paid $3.25 an hour, and earned her GED certificate.
Today, Sayavong works as a pharmacist in southern Illinois.
She has been married since 1984 to Patrick Sayavong, a refugee from Laos whom she met in Arkansas at a Baptist church. They have two daughters—Sarah, 30, and Nicole, 22.
“There’s some heartache, and there’s some misstep, and that’s just part of life,” Sayavong said. “There are things we’ve done right, and there are things we’ve done wrong. You just tweak it as you go each year, each time, and look at where we are right now.”
Courtney Joyner is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. She was a Journalism and Political Science major at The University of Texas at Austin.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. Bopha Sayavong is a longtime friend of the parents of the reporter, who has known her since age 9.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-04-24 13:12:302019-04-24 13:21:38A Teen Refugee’s Flight to Freedom From Communist Cambodia
Democrats have spent the past two-plus years accusing the president of the United States and his allies of seditiously conspiring with our enemies to destroy “democracy.”
For the most part, this fairytale has been cynically deployed by politicians to undermine the legitimacy of a Republican presidency, yet millions of Americans now believe their votes were upended by a foreign power. There is no more serious charge against an elected official than treason.
Then again, for decades before the 2016 election, Democrats argued that Republicans were literally killing their fellow Americans when cutting taxes, murdering the sick when rejecting nationalized health care, and sentencing the poor to death when dismissing socialist schemes.
Not to mention suppressing the minority vote when asking for ID, engaging in Nazi-like actions when enforcing existing border laws, and destroying the world when failing to embrace a takeover of the economy. And so on.
This overwrought rhetoric is embedded in the everyday arguments of the mainstream left, and its intensity is only growing.
The same liberals are now demanding that conservatives stop quoting and posting videos of progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar belittling the 9/11 attacks, because doing so puts her life in danger. That’s quite the deal they’ve cooked up for themselves.
Nearly every presidential candidate and major Democratic leader has argued that Donald Trump’s criticism of Omar is out of line because of increased death threats against her. I do wonder how many death threats Trump or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Rep. Steve Scalise receives every week. I imagine it’s considerable.
But as usual, most of the media took up the Democrats’ cause, trying to infantilize a 38-year-old woman. “Trump clearly unmoved over increased concerns raised by Dems over Omar’s safety,” noted CNN’s Manu Raju after Trump attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s handling of the Minnesota representative.
Do reporters and columnists consider the safety of the Trump administration before writing critically about it? I hope not. Because free speech—political discourse and good faith political reporting included—shouldn’t be inhibited by prospective actions of third-party nuts.
It is imperative, in fact, that we don’t let those nuts undercut our ability to freely express our political disagreements. If Americans pondered the actions of political terrorists every time they took a position, they would only be empowering criminals.
Not one of Trump’s critical comments about Omar called for violence in any way. He didn’t rationalize chasing Omar out of a restaurant or standing in front of her home with a bullhorn. The idea that politicians should have immunity from criticism is not something journalists, or anyone who values free expression, should give any credence. Yet, here we are.
Let’s remember one of the times we actually saw overt political violence was when a progressive activist and Sen. Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer attempted to assassinate the entire Republican congressional delegation. As far as I can tell, no one in the media asked Sanders or any other Democrats to temper their political rhetoric about Republicans.
If the reverse had occurred, we would have been plunged into a national discussion about right-wing rhetoric. (Wait, what am I saying, Republicans are already asked to take responsibility for violent actions of people who have nothing to do with them.)
Attempting to chill speech isn’t a new tactic for Democrats, and certainly not when it comes to Omar. As an African-American Muslim woman, the congresswoman has reached the pinnacle of special status, and thus any criticism, even quoting her verbatim or playing a video of her, is categorized as racist.
There are no specific guidelines for when it’s acceptable to be critical of the things an African-American Muslim woman politician says, though, for most people, the answer is “never.”
Of course, the notion that someone’s color or ethnicity or religion offers them dispensation from political debate is one of the most destructive aspects of this debate.
It was Democrats who chose to rally around Omar, celebrating her immigrant story and appearing with her on magazine covers. Now those Democrats are compelled to cover up and rationalize her incendiary comments.
There is no freshman-level Marxist gobbledygook or conspiracy theory that Omar won’t regurgitate, from claiming that the U.S. was “founded by genocide” to claiming that American power is built through “neocolonialism” to embracing morally decrepit ideas about the Middle East and Jews.
Democrats first covered for her actions by watering down an already-useless resolution condemning her anti-Semitic comments with a bunch of vacuous censures of all bigotry.
It is clear to me that Omar minimized 9/11, as she does Islamic terrorism in general. It’s clear to me she is a defender of theocrats and an apologist for terror organizations like Hamas. You might disagree. You can view her comments and decide for yourself.
Whatever the case, threats of violence against politicians are illegal and should be condemned by any decent person. In the end, though, whether Omar has increased threats against her or not, she is a public figure and deserves no special dispensation from debate.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-04-23 16:04:042019-04-23 16:19:45Liberals Are Using Rep. Ilhan Omar as an Excuse to Chill Speech
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear three cases centered on whether federal law against discrimination in employment applies to sexual orientation and gender identity.
After hearing Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the high court will decide whether the words “because of … sex,” found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also forbid employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. The court consolidated Bostock with a similar case, Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda.
The high court also will hear arguments in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before ruling on whether Title VII as worded bars discrimination against transgender individuals.
Title VII specifically prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It does not mention lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender Americans.
Lower federal courts came to conflicting decisions in Bostock, in which a child welfare worker said he was fired for being gay, and Zarda, in which a sky-diving instructor argued the same.
The Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit decided that Title VII doesn’t prohibit “discharge for homosexuality,” while the New York-based 2nd Circuit ruled for the instructor, saying that discrimination based on sexual orientation “is motivated, at least in part, by sex and is thus a subset of sex discrimination.”
In Harris Funeral Homes, a funeral director in Michigan was fired by the family-owned business after disclosing a transition from man to woman, which also involved dressing as a woman.
The Cincinnati-based Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit sided with the employee, concluding: “Discrimination ‘because of sex’ inherently includes discrimination against employees because of a change in their sex.”
While many liberals see the Supreme Court as poised to restrict LGBT rights, conservatives argue that federal law doesn’t go as far as activists claim.
“There is a reason why, for the past 25 years, activists have tried to legislatively amend federal civil rights law to include ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity.’ That reason is simple: because it doesn’t include those categories,” Heritage Foundation scholar Ryan T. Anderson said, adding:
Courts should not do what activists have failed to do: Redefine ‘sex’ to mean ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’ Doing so not only gets the law wrong, it also has serious negative consequences for women’s equality, safety, and privacy.
The Christian legal aid group Alliance Defending Freedom last fall petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the funeral home case, arguing that only Congress may rewrite a federal statute to allow a male employee who identifies as female to dress in women’s clothing in violation of a company dress code.
Although a federal district judge decided in the employer’s favor, on appeal the 6th Circuit sided with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the agency’s lawsuit against Harris Funeral Homes, and Alliance Defending Freedom hopes to reverse that outcome at the high court.
“Neither government agencies nor the courts have authority to rewrite federal law by replacing ‘sex’ with ‘gender identity’—a change with widespread consequences for everyone,” John Bursch, the organization’s vice president of appellate advocacy, said.
“Businesses have the right to rely on what the law is—not what government agencies want it to be—when they create and enforce employment policies,” Bursch said.
Ken McIntyre, a 30-year veteran of national and local newspapers, serves as senior editor at The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation’s Marilyn and Fred Guardabassi Fellow in Media and Public Policy Studies. Send an email to Ken. Twitter: @KenMac55.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
Just a few months ago, in an article entitled “Still the Smartest Guy in the Room,” I wrote the following about President Trump:
Well, whaddaya know? In the midterm elections of November 6, 2018, the American people rewarded the president—for only the third time in almost a hundred years—with a net gain of three and possibly four Senate seats, lost half the House seats that his predecessor lost, and left the radical leftwing Democrats not rejoicing at their meager gains, but still chomping at the bit to bring down the president who has effectively destroyed everything they believed in, worked for, and thought they achieved over the past 75 years.
Yes, President Trump posed a mortal threat to the Left’s very raison d’être––a globalist one-world order controlled by them! And so way back in 2015, when he announced his intention to run for the presidency, the “connected” guys of the D.C. swamp ––to use the vocabulary of the mob––decided to pool their formidable resources to “clip” the billionaire business mogul, if not physically (although I wouldn’t put it that past them), then by proving that their manufactured fiction of candidate Trump’s collusion with Russia to win the presidency was, in fact, true and therefore impeachable.
In that article, I listed all the fanatical Detectives Javert––the top dogs at our top-secret intelligence agencies (and many of their wives who also played central roles)––and elaborated on their impressive credentials, privileged educations, vast experience, and, oh, their appointments to high office by the former occupant of the Oval Office, Barack Obama.
Don’t forget––the fish always stinks from the head!
THE WITCH HUNT
Special Counsel Robert Mueller took his time––more than two years––as he hired almost two-dozen partisan Democrats (who contributed to the Obama and Clinton campaigns) to join his “objective” truth-finding effort. Here is a breakdown of the invasive colonoscopy he performed on the President of the United States.
Over 675-days,
Over $30 million dollars,
Over 2,800 subpoenas,
Over 500 warrants,
Over 500 witness interviews, including those whose lives were ruined for offenses unrelated to President Trump,
Over a million documents submitted by the White House.
The net result, as we all now know––the president committed no collusion and no obstruction, although the Regressives who continue to pursue some bogus crime––I refer to the obsessed Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Adam Schiff (D-CA), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a few others, who, as they say, can’t let go!
But why? Most of these people once figuratively kissed the ring of businessman Donald Trump when he was a Democrat and they groveled for the campaign cash he generously doled out and lusted for an invitation to play golf with the mega-mogul or to dine in the company of his exquisite wife at the palatial Mar-a-Lago resort or at numerous other residences, including his Manhattan penthouse in Trump Tower.
Why then the wild-eyed, ferocious animosity when he announced for the presidency and––to their horror––was elected America’s 45th president?
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BENJAMINS, BABY!
In most cases in politics, when you peel back the layers of the onion, it’s all about the money. But not in this case.
And it’s not about the bogus excuse that Hillary lost the election. Most people can’t stand the woman. While some women would have reflexively voted for any person with the right plumbing, who can take feminists seriously anymore, now that they’ve embraced infanticide as a “human right”? In truth, most people cringed throughout Hillary’s coughing-fit, seizure-plagued, issue-impoverished campaign and were––and are––happy, finally, to have her off the national stage.
And it wasn’t candidate Trump’s “treatment” of women or his locker-room talk, when Americans had already endured eight years of Bill Clinton spitting in Hillary’s face every day with his serial philandering or, without his Secret Service detail flying 26 times on the “Lolita Express” to Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
And it wasn’t the right-of-center platform candidate Trump was running on because Democrats had already raised to an art form the softening up and watering down of other Republican presidents’ wish lists. And they’d already succeeded in inflicting Americans with socialized medicine (Obamacare) and socialized education (Common Core), with degrading our military, contaminating the public imagination with the hoax of global warming, and actualizing the Cloward-Piven strategy to overload the welfare system by establishing Sanctuary Cities with the goal of segueing from socialism to their preferred system of government, communism.
And it wasn’t about the power of the media to shape/influence/determine public opinion. As I wrote in a former article, “Media Whores,” people who have the conceit to call themselves journalists are really employees who take direct orders from their employers. Today, only six media empires rule radio, TV and print publications––five of them run by globalists and only one by soon-to-retire conservative Rupert Murdoch (Fox TV, the NY Post, the Wall St. Journal, et al)––and now by his liberal sons, Lachlan and James…hence the unfortunate leftist infiltration of Fox.
And it wasn’t even my original theory, which was that Mr. Trump threatened to disrupt the globalists’ One World Order. The powers-that-be in the D.C. swamp are too arrogant and narcissistic to entertain the notion that a single individual could upset their decades-old, carefully constructed apple cart.
None of these things inspired the predatory animus of the Democrats that we’ve witnessed for the past three years. Instead, as candidate Trump’s campaign proceeded and he summarily withered “Low-energy Jeb,” “Lyin’ Ted,” “Little Marco,” “Crooked Hillary,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Pocahontas,” on and on, a cold chill began to rise in the ranks of the left: Nothing can touch this guy!
They saw that even before the election he could single-handedly destroy a hot career like Megyn Kelly’s.
And nothing they threw at him succeeded in denting the natural ebullience and epic energy that infuriates them to this day.
THE COUP DE GRÁCE
And then it happened! The Kiss of Death, so to speak––the nine words that locked the Regressives in combat with candidate and then President Trump forever.
It was in early October of 2016 when Mr. Trump was engaged in one of the campaign’s many debates that he said the following: “If I were president, Hillary would be in jail.”
That was it––simple as that!
Now you know what this three-year safari for Big Game has been all about! It’s been about all the deeply corrupt––indeed criminal––swamp creatures creating so much chaos, so many dirt roads, so many bogus accusations and innuendos and tabloid headlines in order to keep the real collusion experts and the real obstructers of justice out of the spotlight, out of the courthouse, and out of Leavenworth!
There are so many crimes––or potential crimes––involved in what the Obama White House orchestrated through his Justice Department and FBI (among other departments) that it’s impossible to list them all.
In a stunning analysis in the World Tribune entitled Justice: Suddenly, the hunters have become the hunted, historian Victor Davis Hanson is quoted as saying that those “who cried the loudest about leaking, collusion, lying, and obstruction are themselves soon very likely to be accused of just those crimes.” Among them, Hanson lists the following:
James Comey: The former FBI director falsely testified that the Steele dossier was not the main basis for obtaining FISA court warrants. On at least 245 occasions, Comey swore under oath that he either did not know, or could not remember, when asked direct questions about his conduct at the FBI. He likely lied when he testified that he did not conclude his assessment of the Clinton illegal email use before he had even interviewed Clinton, an assertion contradicted by his own written report. I guess his credo and modus operandi are reflected in the subtitle of his recent autobiography A Higher Loyalty: “Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
Andrew McCabe: The former FBI deputy director currently is under criminal referral for lying to federal investigators about leaking to the media. He and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein each have accused each other of not telling the whole truth about their shared caper of trying to force President Trump out of office by invoking the 25th Amendment.
James Clapper: The former director of national intelligence has admitted to lying under oath to Congress – and since lied about his earlier admission of that lying. His recent sworn congressional testimony of not having leaked information about the Steele dossier to the media is again likely to be untrue, given that Clapper had admitted to speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper about the dossier’s contents. CNN, remember, would in turn go on to hire the mendacious Clapper as an analyst. And once on air, Clapper would insist that Trump was both a Russian asset and thus guilty of collusion crimes greater than those of Watergate. Lies. All lies.
John Brennan: The former CIA director has admitted to lying under oath to Congress on two occasions. He may well face further legal exposure. When he lost his security clearance, he repeatedly lied that Trump was guilty of collusion, however that non-crime is defined. And as the Mueller probe wound down, Brennan with pseudo-authority and trumped-up hints of phony access to secret intelligence sources deceitfully assured the nation that Trump within days would face indictment – perhaps along with his family members.
Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills: The Hillary Clinton aides likely also lied to FBI investigators when they claimed they had no knowledge while working at the State Department that their boss was using an illegal private email server. In fact, they had read her communications on it and actually inquired about its efficacy.
Samantha Power: The former UN ambassador in her last year in office requested on more than 260 occasions to unmask names of Americans monitored by the government. Yet Power later claimed that most of these requests were not made by her. And yet she either does not know or does not cite who exactly used her name to make such requests during the election cycle. In any case, no one has come forward to admit to the improper use of Power’s name to request the hundreds of unmaskings.
Susan Rice: The former Obama national security adviser could have made a number of unmasking requests in Power’s name, although she initially denied making any requests in her own name – a lie she immediately amended. Rice, remember, repeatedly lied on national television about the cause and origins of the Benghazi attack, denied there were cash payments for hostages in the Iran deal, misled about the conduct of Beau Bergdahl, and prevaricated over the existence and destruction of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.
Bruce Ohr, the former deputy attorney general did not tell the truth on a federal written disclosure required by law when he omitted the key fact that his wife Nellie worked on Christopher Steele’s Fusion GPS dossier. Ohr’s testimony that he completely briefed key FBI officials on the dossier in July or August 2016 is not compatible to what former FBI attorney Lisa Page has testified to concerning the dates of her own knowledge of the Steele material.
Hanson has also written at length about the bogus Obstruction of Justice accusation, the illegally obtained FISA warrants, the phony Steele dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton, the fishy “coincidental” meeting of Bill Clinton with AG Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix airport tarmac, and the wrongness of Andrew McCabe, Ron Rosenstein, and so many others ever having been in charge of investigations that smacked of conflicts of interest and other malfeasances––all worthy of criminal investigation and, from what I’ve read, indictment!
And that is not to omit the destruction of 33,000 e-mails by Ms. Hillary, and the much more egregious and criminal issue of Benghazi!
Well, well well, what we have all been waiting for has finally now begun. I for one, have written about this subject for over two years and knew that this day would arrive. No collusion, no obstruction, game over.
Historic events now begin as Trump goes on the offense. Yes, of course we know that the Democrats and the fake news will continue to challenge and go after President Trump on a never ending list of baseless, useless attacks as we know their mission is to de-legitimize this president and our movement for freedom. We know their mission is to remove President Trump from office and to see that Trump is not re-elected in 2020. They will continue on this pathway, attempting to accomplish this by any means whatsoever. Why? Because those guilty of treason, crimes and misdemeanors have everything to lose, thus the frenzied panic we now see before us. They will do whatever they can to double down on the Mueller Report, pursue obstruction and then impeachment with a vengeance, and go after tax returns and who knows what else they will conjure up. Why? Because they know they have been caught. They know they will soon be held accountable. They will rat each other out and eat each other alive. I suspect real suicides and individuals “suicided” over time. The fake news, Hollywood, corrupt elected officials, individuals in the DOJ, FBI, CIA and the deep state apparatus at large, are in meltdown mode. Those who scream the loudest have the most to lose, and there are quite a few noise makers. They are panicking as President Trump and the patriots are now on the offense. Soon, like in a matter of a few short weeks at best, they will lose control over the narrative as Trump goes on the offense. Game over. As always, stay alert for more false flags. Get the popcorn, enjoy the show, it’s a great time to be an American!
Trump on the Offense
With an estimated 93,000 federal sealed indictments prepared against the global deep state syndicate, which includes many elected officials, this will create a cascading avalanche like never seen before in our political history. Everything I talked about on June 13, 2018 in the article I wrote titled Scale of Discovery & Action They are on the Run, particularly steps six, seven and eight has arrived and are now unfolding. What can we look forward to in the coming weeks and months ahead? De-classification. President Trump when asked by Sean Hannity about FISA and the de-class in an interview dated March 27, 2019, the President stated that “I do, I have plans to declassify and release”. Trump went on to discuss Hillary Clinton in the Hannity interview and indicated he will go after Clinton now as well. So what else can we expect? In the end, Clinton’s, Bush’s and Obama’s will all be held accountable. Lyndsey Graham is pursuing hearings as well for former FBI agents like Comey, McCabe and others. Devin Nunezhas submitted eight criminal referrals to AG Barr with more on the way. And Julian Assange? Can’t wait for this hero to reveal much of what the world needs to hear as soon as he gets in court. He may be the only one who has lived to testify against the Clinton’s.
Conclusion
And so, probes, hearings, subpoenas, indictments, grand juries, trials, as well as the resuming of the military tribunals are what will soon dominate world news. The tens of millions of dollars that GITMO has received will prove to have been well spent. Yes, Trump and team is changing the narrative. Military tribunals you say? This subject I wrote about as well back on August 12, 2017. Yes that’s right, military tribunals. Two individuals have already had their tribunals. John McCain and George Herbert Walker Bush. Oh yeah, and what did the founding fathers say the punishment is for elected officials found guilty of treason, high crimes and misdemeanors? Execution. I’ll let you connect the dots on that. If this subject matter is foreign to you, I suggest you change the channel. Venezuelans are starving for food (thanks to socialism), while Americans are starving for truth. Get on board. Get some skin in the game. I have provided but a few resources below to help guide you. And soon it will be easy for you as all the world will see. From dark to light.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00John Michael Chambershttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJohn Michael Chambers2019-04-21 06:19:402019-04-21 06:19:40VIDEO: Historic Events Now Begin — Trump on the Offense
The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky analyzes the redacted report about the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller, and why it’s time to investigate why President Donald Trump was ever suspected of collusion in the first place. Read the transcript, posted below, or listen to the interview in the podcast:
We also cover these stories:
Democrats are trying to get Mueller to testify in May.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that protects the lives of abortion survivors.
New York City is actually losing residents for the first time in recent years.
Kate Trinko: Joining us today to discuss the newly released Mueller Report is Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky, a legal expert. Hans, have you looked at the report? What are your takeaways?
Hans von Spakovsky: Yes, I’ve been skimming through it all day, putting my speed-reading lessons to work.
Trinko: It’s only 400 or so pages, right?
von Spakovsky: Right. The key thing that I get out of it is that, remember when the Attorney General William Barr sent his letter to Congress in which he basically gave what the conclusions of the report were? One, there was no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and two, there was no obstruction of justice.
There were a lot of claims by Democrats, including people like Jerry Nadler, who’s head of the Judiciary Committee, that, “Oh, well, we don’t believe you. We think you’re leaving things out.”
Well, reading through the report, it’s very clear that Barr was 100% accurate in his summary of it and that the two-volume report—half of which is the Russian collusion claim, the other half is the obstruction of justice claim.
No one can read that and come to any conclusion other than the whole Russian collusion claim was a hoax. There was just nothing to that at all. And none of the actions that were taken by the president could be considered obstruction of justice.
Now, it’s very clear when you read it, and you see they relate some of the internal conversations in meetings at the White House about this, it’s clear the president was very angry. But that is a sentiment that I think most people would share if they’ve been falsely accused of a crime and that’s exactly the situation here.
The key thing is that he took no official actions of any kind that could in any way actually be considered obstruction of justice.
Daniel Davis: Yeah. On that point, the report says that he gave orders to do things that were not obeyed, so Mueller says, quote, “The president’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the person declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
So it’s kind of a moot point then because it didn’t happen, but is that even a crime if he tried to get them to break the law but they didn’t?
von Spakovsky: No, I don’t think so, particularly because, and this is something that General Barr and others have talked about, is that it’s very clear when you read the report that he had no corrupt intent.
And what I mean by that is it’s one thing if you act because you’re innocent and you don’t believe the government should be investigating you because you haven’t committed a crime. That’s very different from having a corrupt intent to interfere with an investigation because, in fact, you did commit a crime and you want to cover it up.
Davis: So legally there’s a distinction there?
von Spakovsky: There is a distinction and they talk about the fact that the president’s anger over this makes it clear to General Barr that there was no corrupt intent with any of his hot talk, if I can call it that, over what Bob Mueller and others were doing.
And again, key point there, remember there were no restrictions placed on Bob Mueller. He had all the resources he needed, he had 19 lawyers, 40 FBI agents, and he did a very comprehensive, wide-ranging investigation.
I’ve already heard some folks claiming, “Well, he didn’t have everything he needed to do a complete investigation.” Again, that’s just not correct.
Trinko: The report says that President Trump did try to remove Mueller, or presumably a special council, but that people didn’t follow his orders … it didn’t happen. Is that telling or significant?
von Spakovsky: I don’t think so when it comes down to the obstruction of justice charge. It didn’t happen and the investigation was completely and thoroughly done. So again, I just don’t see how you could bring an obstruction of justice charge and the attorney general agrees with that assessment.
Davis:The report also said that Trump was asked a lot of written questions by Mueller and that Mueller was sort of unsatisfied with those answers.
I’ll just read from the report here. Mueller says, “The President stated on more than 30 occasions that he does not recall or remember or have an independent recollection of information called for by the questions. Other answers were incomplete or imprecise.”
It sounds like maybe he just got good legal advice.
von Spakovsky: It could be, and so what that Mueller wasn’t satisfied with that? That’s just Mueller’s claim. He hasn’t proved in a court of law that somehow those answers were untruthful. So again, I don’t pay much attention to accusations by a prosecutor who in the end concludes there’s not enough evidence for a prosecution.
Trinko: Liberals are calling for Mueller to testify before Congress—
von Spakovsky: Right.
Trinko: … in May. Is that a good idea? Is that something he should do? What do you think?
von Spakovsky: Well, he can do it, but if Democrats think they’re going to somehow get something out of it more than they’ve already gotten in his report, I think they’re going to be sadly disappointed.
If they believe that Mueller’s going to come up with some kind of smoking gun that’s not in the report, I just don’t believe that. I think Mueller put everything he could into that report and they’re just not going to discover anything else.
Trinko: That’s a real problem for all the liberals with the Mueller tattoos and all that other stuff, there’s going to be no smoking gun.
Davis: But it seems like there’s enough in this report for both sides to really build a narrative. Trump clearly has the no collusion and no criminal charges, no indictment, but Democrats do have what seemed like the president potentially trying to undermine the investigation, although that didn’t happen. What do you think is the political fallout?
von Spakovsky: I actually don’t think, from the standpoint of an ordinary American, that there’s going to be much fallout because I think the ordinary American will look at what happened and say, “Boy, if I was falsely accused of a crime in my neighborhood or at my work, I would have been just as angry and just as frustrated as the president.” And I also probably would have wanted to tell off the prosecutor who was investigating me with no valid reason to do so.
Davis: In light of the fact that they found no collusion despite two years of efforts, a huge amount of manpower, and financial resources, frankly, applied this, they’re talking about looking into further the spying on the Trump campaign and how this whole thing began.
Do you think there needs to be much more of a investigation and why they even thought there was collusion to investigate in the first place?
von Spakovsky: The answer to that is yes, and the reason being that people should not forget that this did not start off as a regular law enforcement investigation, it started off as a counterintelligence operation. Because, in fact, what the FBI did is they went to the secret FISA Court. That’s the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
That’s the court that our intelligence agencies and the FBI go to when they suspect there’s a foreign spy in the United States and they want to, for example, initiate secret electronic surveillance.
There are certain evidentiary standards you have to meet to justify that and never before in the history of the United States has a counterintelligence operation been opened, sanctioned by a court against a presidential campaign.
And now that we know that in fact there was no basis for the claims that were being made and the claims that were used to open up the investigation, we need to find out: Was there actually a sufficient basis? Was there sufficient evidence for them to open up the investigation?
If there wasn’t, then people at the FBI and DOJ abused their law enforcement powers and not only do they need to be punished for that, but we need to be sure that never happens again.
Davis: As Sen. Lindsey Graham has pointed out, usually when those FISA investigations happen, it’s to protect the American entities and they will notify them and say, “Hey, these Russians or whoever are trying to spy on you,” but that never happens. So, it certainly allows for the possibility that there was some foul play.
von Spakovsky: Yeah. I have to say I heard the senator say that and I have to agree with him, that makes what happened highly suspicious to me.
If the FBI had knowledge that Russians were contacting the campaign, and as we now know in many efforts, there were many efforts where they were disguising themselves and trying to fool folks into not realizing they were Russian, why didn’t they go to the campaign and warn them about it?
Davis: Right. So how does this investigation into the FISA warrant happen? Does the attorney general now launch this or does Senator Graham have a special investigation?
von Spakovsky: Well, they both could happen at the same time because obviously the Senate and the House intelligence committees, and the judiciary committees, potentially, have jurisdiction over this.
But, in fact, if I was the attorney general, I would appoint a special inside task force. Not a special council, but a group of lawyers on the inside who can take a look at this and examine all the documents, interview the FBI agents and original DOJ lawyers involved, and find out did they actually have a real basis for opening up the investigation?
Trinko: Hans, thanks so much for making time and pulling away from the 400-page tome to talk to us today.
With the recent conservative victories related to tax cuts, the Supreme Court, and other major issues, it is easy to become complacent.
However, the liberal Left is not backing down. They are rallying supporters to advance their agenda, moving this nation further from the vision of our founding fathers.
If we are to continue to bring this nation back to our founding principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, we need to come together as a group of likeminded conservatives.
This is the mission of The Heritage Foundation. We want to continue to develop and present conservative solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. And we cannot do this alone.
We are looking for a select few conservatives to become a Heritage Foundation member. With your membership, you’ll qualify for all associated benefits and you’ll help keep our nation great for future generations.
April 15th, President Macron was scheduled to address the nation at 8 PM, to present a sort of executive summary of government policy, revised but not diverted by five months of weekly Gilet Jaune actions. I switched on the television 10 minutes before the hour, expecting to hear the usual quibbling: The Gilets Jaunes expect nothing and won’t be satisfied until the president resigns. What a surprise. Commentators, specialists, journalists and the man in the street don’t think any real problem will be really solved. That’s a safe bet. They will all, who knows why, entertain the confusion between the Gilets Jaunes, boiled down to some thirty thousand seditionists, and French voters that may or may not have joined in the great national debate. President Macron does not have to satisfy the Gilets Jaunes. We live in a democracy, not a tyranny of turbulent minorities.
I turn on the television.
No, it’s not the panel waiting to pounce on the president.
It’s Notre Dame in flames.
You don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, or a lover of cathedral architecture. You don’t have to be Parisian, French, or a citizen of the western world. Raging flames devouring Notre Dame can bring tears to your eyes. It is universally heartbreaking.
Here in Paris, awestruck pedestrians stopped in their tracks. Gasped. Prayed. Exclaimed. Sobbed. Watched in disbelief as the sky-high inferno defied our will and determination. On the doorstep of Holy Week, Notre Dame was going up in flames and it looked like nothing could stop it. Do leaden roof tiles burn and melt, do stones go white hot and lose their grip, will we watch, helpless, as fire consumes the entire edifice, leaving a gaping black hole in the heart of Paris?
Is it terrorism? No one knows. It is absolutely terrifying. What if nothing could stop the blaze? It could spread across the Ile St. Louis, swallowing up mansions and touristy restaurants, leveling expensive hotels and sizzling a dozen Berthillon ice cream parlors.
Time stands still, the 19th century Viollet-le-Duc spire fills to bursting with red hot flames, dense turbulent multi-color smoke billows and roars. It seems like nothing can get on top of the fire. No ladder can reach that high. President Trump slaps us with a scorching tweet: Bring on the water bombardiers! Commentators, originally brought in to haggle over President Macron’s speech, mumble and stutter. Hmmm, maybe the Canadairs are too far south? I can hear my American friends snickering. “Those stupid French don’t even know how to extinguish cathedral fires.” It takes a while before we learn that a cathedral is not a forest, even when the roof beams are made of hoary oak. You can’t bombard Notre Dame with tons of water. The walls would come tumbling down.
The spire bends and collapses like a spent candle.
Later, we join the stream of people coming from all directions, on foot, on scooters, bikes, and motorcycles, converging in hushed tones at vista points on Ile St. Louis. An urban pilgrimage that reminds us, on a very small scale, of the millions that walked through the city after the Charlie Hebdo / Hyper Cacher / Montrouge jihad attack. Leaving the fire behind, we walk along the quai, embraced by a mild spring evening and the enduring beauty of bridges spanning the Seine, lights glittering on the softly flowing river.
Synagogues brûlées République en danger
“Torched Synagogues Troubled République.” We marched behind that banner in April 2002. The synagogue in Trappes had burned to the ground in October 2000. They said it was caused by a short circuit. And today we discover that French churches by the hundreds are desecrated, vandalized, sullied and cursed with Allahu akhbars. Arson is suspected in a March 17th fire at l’Eglise St. Sulpice. A week earlier a suspect was arrested for vandalizing the Basilique St. Denis. Inès Madani, ringleader of a cluster of niqab-clad jihadists was just sentenced to eight years in prison for enlisting and inciting terrorists. She will be tried six months from now for the botched car bomb attack on a side street near Notre Dame in 2016.
Two and two make four but the agonizing repetition of jihad assaults on the Western world does not prove that the spectacular Notre Dame fire is part of the series. While many, of all origins, shed tears over the blaze, others are exulting. Including antifas, left wing ultras, and ranking members of the French Students’ Union. France’s chief rabbi Haim Korsia was one of the first to express solidarity. Muslims can be found on both sides of the divide. Before the Notre Dame fire, Gilets Jaunes and assorted allies solemnly promised to burn and bleed Paris this Saturday. Apocalypse now. It is their prepaid reaction to the president’s — now postponed — speech. The government has been on the defensive since mid-November, allowing Yellow Saturdays to become an abiding feature of the cityscape. Thugs — of the gilet jaune, black blocs or banlieue persuasion — attack the police, torch cars and banks, sack and plunder boutiques, pelt firemen with rocks, and spout trash ideologies. They are the ones that vandalized l’Arc de Triomphe, fellow of the Tour Eiffel – Notre Dame trinity.
What do we know now, what will we know eventually? At this stage, the fire is being investigated by a criminal police unit… as accidental. They cannot go into the cathedral until inspectors have eliminated the danger of structural collapse. We don’t know if concrete evidence of the fire’s origin has gone up in smoke or is lurking in the charred and sodden remains that skulk on the cathedral floor. Officials have access to countless sources of information, while those who suspect a jihad attack rely on shaky “if x then y” logic. They assume that mainstream media, hand in hand with the government, will hide the truth.
Spontaneous combustion
The logic of real life is not so simple. The monumental Notre Dame fire may have been caused by a careless gesture or by an arsonist hell bent on destruction. A moment of inattention, a slight misjudgment, a stupid coincidence can have tragic consequences in a human life. A small spark could be responsible for the inferno that almost destroyed Notre Dame. According to published reports, when the first alarm rang at 6:20 PM the cathedral was evacuated but the source of the fire was not detected. 23 minutes later, the fire alarm rang again, and it was already too late to keep the fire from spreading to the entire roof. From there on, it’s a story of courage and heroism. The crown of thorns, the tunic of St. Louis the Crusader, and other treasures were saved. The belfries did not collapse. No fatalities. One firefighter slightly injured. The stained glass windows and the organ are apparently intact.
And the soul-searching begins. Was the cathedral, like so many national monuments, pauperized, bereft of safety features that would have prevented this colossal damage? Is it the lack of faith and penury of the faithful that reduces the Catholic architectural heritage to one more Disneyland? Has our capitalist, individualist, globalized, consumerist society turned its back on past glory and failed in its duty of transmission? The shame of the Church mired in abject pedophile scandals could, in itself, destroy one cathedral after the other by spontaneous combustion. And the Pope? Too busy compromising with Islam, shielding Jerusalem from Jewish sovereignty, and exhorting us to welcome immigrants to protect the fast-disappearing Christians of the Levant.
Mixed feelings
Holy Week was mortally dangerous for Jews in Christian lands. The main entrance to Notre Dame is flanked on the left by the statue of the blindfolded Sinagoga and on right by the noble Ecclesia. Ramadan is perilous for Jews in Islamic countries… or neighborhoods. The fiery Erdogan wants to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque. And today, when the great fortunes of France have pledged hundreds of millions of euros to restore Notre Dame… the social justice gang gives them boos and sneers. If they had so much money, why didn’t they give it to us… the people?
Jihad, cheap Facebook unrest, social media gutterish, anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, incendiary balloons from Gaza, seething hatred, vituperation, depravity, raging transgenderism, identity politics, cultural impoverishment, and flames leaping from the age-old rooftops of Notre Dame that bring tears to my eyes. I weep for the fragility of civilization, here in its concrete monumental form, there in the eloquent expression of noble values. For one night, the flames of Notre Dame portrayed those devouring forces that stubbornly defy our humanity.
But we don’t have the housing and the resources to care for them, Mayor Lovely Warren said earlier this week!
Exactly!
And, she thinks America does (in some other city)?
The other day I mentioned an ideathat apparently is being kicked around in the more-immigration-is-better crowd and that is to turn the asylum seekers (aka illegal aliens) over to refugee resettlement agencies for care.
But, of course, the kicker is that those phony-baloney non-profits are all living off the US taxpayer to begin with.
But what the heck, at least it isn’t the Rochester citizens carrying the burden, right Mayor Warren?
Here is the news from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle,
Mayor on Trump’s tweets: Rochester will welcome asylum seekers. But there’s a problem.
Mayor Lovely Warren says Rochester would welcome asylum seekers if President Donald Trump follows through on his tweets to deliver them to Sanctuary Cities.
The problem comes in housing and providing basic necessities as they await adjudication of their cases amid an historic backlog in the nation’s immigration courts.
Faced with a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, Trump has latched onto a potentially solution that the Whitehouse confirmed Tuesday it was still exploring; to send asylum seekers to those communities that have declared themselves Sanctuary Cities. Rochester is one, having reaffirmed that stance shortly after Trump took office, in essence stating that it would follow the law but not actively participate in immigration enforcement activities. [See Rochester as Sanctuary City, here.—ed]
Tapping the once-robustresettlement programs for refugees would seem logical— particularly since Trump policies have sharply curtailed the number of refugees coming in. But this is a different population, not legally allowed to participate in resettlement programs.
Asylum seekershave no residency status, are not legally permitted to work while awaiting adjudication, and have no access to government assistance. Thus, those who are released either stay with relatives or crowd into shelters.
“You’d have to change the law, get cooperation at the state and federal level,” said Jim Morris, vice president for family services with the Catholic Family Center, which operates refugee resettlement programs locally.
So there it is, all this talk about how the law would need to be changed in order for Trump to move asylum seekers to other cities—it is all about federal money (or the lack of it) for asylum seekers.
The local do-gooders want federal dollars to follow the migrants!
Where is the “funding mechanism” they want to know!
“There is no funding mechanism here to pay for services for asylum seekers. But what a wonderful proposition that would be.”
[….]
“Catholic Family Center would be a likely agency. But nobody has talked to us about it. It doesn’t seem like a serious proposal.”
James Murphy with St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality in Rochester is having initial conversations with a shelter in Texas about assisting a single asylum seeker. And St. Joe’s already is housing one who is working through the process.
But that is about the capacity of the local nonprofit, Murphy said, and there are whole families at the border. If the government doesn’t step in, he said, it would require a network of host families to come froward.
And therein lies the rub!
It is easy to talk big about being a welcoming sanctuary city, but only if the government (in Washington) is going to take care of everything because we sure can’t find enough host families who would take on the burden out of Christian charity alone!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2019-04-17 08:18:052019-04-17 08:18:05Rochester Mayor Responds to Trump Suggestion that Border Jumpers be Sent to Sanctuary Cities
The criteria used for making these selections were:
Does the country actually operate terrorist groups in the territory of other countries?
Does the country finance 3rd party terrorist groups operating in the territory of other countries and/or provide military equipment and/or training to said terrorist groups.
Does the country support other known state sponsors of terrorism either through the sale of weapons to them, the sending of cash, and/or providing military protection for said state sponsors of terrorism.
Does the country provide diplomatic cover for other state sponsors of terrorism.
Does the government of said country allow international terrorist groups to recruit freely within its borders and/or allow the front groups of known terrorist groups to collect donations which are sent to 3rd party countries for terrorist acts there.
Using this criteria, the first three selections were rather obvious, and easy. Numbers 4 through 10 were much more difficult and perhaps interchangeable. But with all of this in mind, here is the list as of April 2019.
#1 – TURKEY
Turkey. Turkey served as the incubator for ISIS, then once they had launched ISIS into action in neighboring Iraq, and then Syria, they continued to help finance it by selling its stolen oil on the black market, and by providing transportation to jihadi wannabes from all over the world to facilitate their joining up with ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Turkey provided medical care for wounded ISIS fighters, including its chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Turkey also smuggled al-Baghdadi into Libya where he would be safe from allied attacks.
Turkey continues to arm ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Muslim Brotherhood militias in Libya, and has formed its own militias composed of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Muslim Brotherhood personnel with which to ethnic cleanse portions of northern Syrian. Turkey remains as one of the primary supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood international.
Egyptian sources claim that ISIS’s stolen millions are safely stashed in Turkish banks.
The Turkish fascist Grey Wolves terrorist group, once outlawed by the Turkish state,
and which tried to assassinate Pope John Paul, is now a part of Turkish mainstream, and a favorite group of Erdogan. In addition to harassing and terrorizing minorities inside Turkey itself, Turkey has established numerous cells and franchises of this group all over the world. In Germany and other West European countries, the Grey Wolves have enough clout, through the threat of violence, etc., to hold Europe nearly hostage to Erdogan’s whims.
Turkey also supports the Maduro regime in Venezueala which has become a chief transit point for Middle Eastern terrorists to enter the new world, interface with Latin drug cartels, and smuggle personnel, drugs, and God knows what else, into the United States.
#2 – IRAN
Some would place Iran in the top slot based on the sheer volume of terrorist activities it supports. But, I felt that Turkey edged Iran out of first place due primarily to its extensive involvement with ISIS, the most vile terrorist entity in history. Iran, nonetheless has an impressive record in its own right.
Iran’s own Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) conducts terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria, and via its al-quds (Jerusalem) brigade, it trains numerous other terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah and is active across the globe.
Iran and/or its IRGC and al-quds units have staged bombings in Europe, Asia, and South America.
Iran also operates terrorist training camps in the Tri-border region of South America, and is one of the leading rogue nations that supports the failed Maduro regime in Venezuela, which Iran then uses as a funnel for launching terrorist personnel towards the United States.
Iran supports far leftist and revolutionary entities across Latin American, and in Europe as well–not to mention the U.S. Democrat Party since the 1990s. Iranian money aided Spain’s Marxist podemos party to win seats in Spain’s parliament. Podemos used the slogan si se puede to gain supporters. The literal translation of si se puede is “it can be done,” but is usually translated as “Yes we can.”
This was the slogan used by the mass murderer Che Chevara, and by the Democrat candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Barack Obama.
Shi’a Iran coordinated with Sunni terrorist group al-Qaeda in the run-up to 9/11, and has since maintained a close working relationship with it. For example, Iran has allowed, and still allows, al-Qaeda to use its training camps in South America where Hezbollah also trains.
#3 – QATAR
This tiny natural gas rich country not only is a close ally of the top two state sponsors of terrorism above, but has earned impressive credentials of its own.
Qatar is the primary state financial supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood International.
Qatar also finances and arms al-Qaeda and other MB spin off groups in several countries, chiefly Syria and Libya.
Qatar is paying Tariq Ramadhan 35,000 Euros per month. Who is Tariq Ramadhan, and why is this important? Tariq Ramadhan, who has been under trial in France for sexual harassment and rape, is the grandson of MB founder Hasan al-Banna. I doubt seriously that Qatar would be paying him that much just out of nostalgia for his grandfather. He has to be doing a heck of a lot for Qatar and the MB cause.
Qatar flies out-of-region jihadis into Libya to join ISIS, al-Qaeda, and MB groups there.
Egyptian reporting indicates that Qatar’s ministry of defense might be actually training terrorist militias in Libya.
Qatar’s penetration of the American political and media arenas, and its influence over the American political decision-making have prevented that giant from declaring the MB to be a terrorist group, and helps to prevent the United States from taking any action to unravel the ideological and theological underpinnings of terrorism.
#4 – THE UNITED STATES
This country has made tremendous progress under the Trump regime, moving from the lofty first place it held under the Obama regime (refer to Ch. 15 in Confessions of an (ex) NSA spy for details), down to fourth by 2019. Unfortunately, much more house cleaning needs to be done.
The United States thus continues to cling to the 4th spot for the following reasons:
The U.S. continues to coddle Turkey and Qatar, two of the top three state sponsors of terrorism, by selling weapons to both countries, and refusing to call them out for their own support of international terrorism, thus providing them with diplomatic cover for their activities.
The United States also continues to maintain large military bases in both countries which serve as a “shield” protecting these state sponsors of terrorism from any possible military retaliation by any of the countries they are abusing by supporting terrorism in these 3rd party countries.
In Syrian and Egyptian quarters, the United States is blamed for Turning Erdogan and the MB loose against the Arab World. Even with Obama gone, this resentment still holds true after two years of Trump, because of Trump’s apparent encouragement of Erdogan’s conquests of N. Syria, and his lack of action against the MB.
The Trump administration also recently sold weapons to the ruling regime of Nigeria some of which are used by the Islamic Fulani tribesmen against minority Christian groups in Nigeria.
The U.S. continues to allow dozens of front entities for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to recruit large fan bases, to propagandize, and to collect funds for use overseas. These entities are also deeply entrenched in the U.S. political system and exert tremendous pressure to silence free-speech so their activities may go undetected and uninterrupted.
So, while the United States leads the world in fighting the War on Terror with one hand, with its other massive hand it (perhaps unwittingly) continues to ensure that Terrorism will flourish across the face of the planet for a long time to come.
#5 – U.K.
The U.K is still a part of Europe as I write this, but may soon be out. At any rate, they deserve special attention because it is considered to be the capital of the Muslim Brotherhood International, edging out Turkey and Qatar for that dubious title.
This is based on the absolute freedom of operation that MB members are allowed in the UK, and the vast amount of sums from donations that the MB and its allies are able to collect and use for terrorist purposes in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Huma Abadin’s brother, a high official in the MB, resides in the UK.
The UK also shares in the sins of the EU which are mentioned below.
The UK, like the U.S., is one of the leaders in terms of physically fighting the War on Terror, while at the same time it pursues bone headed policies that guarantee that the planet will be plagued by the cancer of terrorism for may years to come.
#6 – EUROPEAN UNION
The EU coddles and trades with all of the top three state sponsors of terrorism.
The EU has placed itself in a near hostage situation vis-à-vis state sponsor of terrorism number one, Turkey, while also coddling Iran, and continuing to trade with it while sometimes paying lip service to Trump’s call for re-instating the boycott.
As a pseudo hostage to Erdogan, the EU allows the Turkish fascist terrorist group the Grey Wolves to roam freely throughout the continent where they can harass and intimidate Turkish ethnic groups there to support Erdogan policies, collect funds, and pressure European governments to adhere to pro-Erdogan policies.
The EU also allows the MB to operate freely within its member countries, resulting in huge sums flowing from Europe to Middle East terrorist entities.
The EU also tends to take hostile political and diplomatic positions towards any Middle Eastern state that takes measures to halt religious extremism and jihadism. The EU thus helps to perpetuate the cycles of violence in the Middle East, and in Europe itself.
#7 – LEBANON
Lebanon has been taken over by Iran’s puppet terrorist group the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Lebanon itself, has thus become a state sponsor of terrorism–even though the majority of the Lebanese people (primarily the Christian and Sunni elements) are peace-loving, anti-terrorists individuals.
#8 – PAKISTAN
The Pakistani intelligence service has long been divided 50/50 on whether to support the U.S. in the War on Terror, or to be active participants . . . on the side of al-Qaeda, etc.
That ambivalent attitude is pervasive throughout the Pakistani military and government.
As a result, Pakistan has done less than nothing to root out the al-Qaeda and ISIS cells that operate more or less freely in its territory.
Pakistani intelligence entities themselves run terrorist activities in India’s Kashmir province, and in India proper, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Pakistan also allows Balochi tribesmen resident in the SW corner of Pakistan, to conduct terrorist attacks against Iranian interests across the border (not that we should care about that little bit of shenanigans).
#9 – SUDAN
While Sudan does not actually run terrorist operations on the soil of other countries soil (except for one exception to be mentioned shortly), it has always been a safe haven for groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS to set up shop, recruit volunteers, and collect funding.
With neighboring Libya in a state of chaos with over 300 militias operating just across its borders, Sudan could not resist sending its own personnel to operate one or more of these militias.
#10 – RUSSIA
While Russia is the one state most responsible for turning the tide on ISIS in Syria, it, like the U.S., UK, and EU, continues to support terrorism in other ways.
Russia diplomatically supports the number two state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, and sells weapons to it.
Russia has recently added the number one state sponsor of terrorism to the list with weapons sales to Turkey. Expect to see more such arms deals in the near future.
Russia also supports the Maduro regime, having sold weapons to it and offered training to its military and security personal so that they can better terrorize the Venezuelan population. Russia also lends diplomatic support to the Maduro regime allowing it continue to function as a terrorist transit depot.
Russian state institutions have done nothing to reign in Russian Mafia activities, either at home or abroad. The Russian mafia is now reputed to be the most powerful of crime cartels in Mexico, and thus plays a role in the crime/drugs/terrorism nexus on the U.S. border.
DIS-HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, China, Iraq, Cuba
If I have left anyone’s favorite country off of this list, I apologize for the oversight
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Barry Webbhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngBarry Webb2019-04-16 06:05:392019-04-16 06:05:39Top Ten State Sponsors of Terrorism
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”– Mark Twain
Recently Candice Owens appeared before the House Judiciary Committee. The Committee was meeting to discuss white supremacism and nationalism. White supremacism was created in America in part by Margaret Sanger. Sanger wrote a letter about the “Negro Project” to Dr. Clarence J. Gamble, dated December 10, 1939. The “Negro Project,” headed by Miss Rose a Sanger staffer, was created to engage black doctors and black pastors to promote birth control and abortion of Negro babies. In her letter Sanger wrote:
“We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population…”
Adolph Hitler picked up on the progressive American ideal of Eugenics, the creation of a superior race, from Margaret Sanger and the Eugenics movement in America. The end result was slaughter on an industrial scale, today known as the the Holocaust. The Nazis (socialists party of Germany) justified the slaughter to create a pure Aryan race.
Watch these three videos of the exchange between Candice Owens and members of the House Judiciary Committee:
Calling a black woman a white supremacist is the big lie. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, wrote this about the big lie:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Democrats are adept at telling the big lie. Lies and damn lies include:
Russian collusion
Obstruction of justice
Those who voted for Donald J. Trump are racists, misogynists, homophobic, Islamophobic, white supremacists.
The perpetrators of 9/11 were “some people [who] did something.”
Infanticide is a woman’s choice.
Taxing the rich (punishing the successful) in the name of social justice.
Illegal aliens have a civil right to break American immigration laws.
Illegal aliens have a right to vote in elections.
Putting a question on the Census form that asks a person’s citizenship status is racist.
The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.
Uncontested absurdities have become today’s slogans and public policies. Below are just 20 uncontested absurdities:
You are a racist.
You are homophobic.
You are Islamophobic.
You are a misogynist.
A male can choose to be a female and visa versa or both.
The nuclear family is bad, divorce/single parenthood is good.
God is dead.
Islam is the religion of peace.
Believing there is no religion (Atheism) is a religion.
Hate speech is any speech I disagree with or that causes me to be uncomfortable.
Facts no longer matter.
Truth is relative.
Me, Myself and I feeling good is the only thing that counts.
People don’t kill people, only guns kill people.
Welfare is better than work.
Self defense is bad.
Killing the unborn is necessary to save the planet.
Communism is better than Capitalism.
I need to be protected from free speech.
In order to “save humanity” we must give government more power.
Voltaire said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
RELATED VIDEO: 21 Quotes by Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-04-11 08:38:212019-04-25 16:13:30There are three kinds of liars: liars, damn liars and Democrats. But I repeat myself. [Videos]
It’s all but certain now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will continue in office for a fifth term, following Tuesday’s national election. His main opponent – retired Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Alliance – conceded defeat Wednesday.
Israeli media report that Netanyahu’s Likud Party will be able to put together a coalition government with conservative and Orthodox Jewish parties that will hold 65 seats in the Knesset, the 120-member Israeli parliament.
With almost all votes counted it appears that Likud and the Blue and White Alliance (named for the colors of the Israeli flag) will each control 35 seats in the Knesset. But four right-wing and religious parties pledged support for Likud, while another party was expected to join a coalition with Likud as well, cementing Netanyahu’s majority.
President Trump, who didn’t officially endorse Netanyahu but whose strong support of Israel boosted Netanyahu’s popularity, told reporters at the White House Wednesday: “Everybody said you can’t have peace in the Middle East with Israel and the Palestinians. I think we have a chance. I think we have now a better chance with Bibi having won.”
Trump’s actions strengthening Netanyahu’s position included: moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal; recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights that were captured from Syria in 1967; and branding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a “foreign terrorist organization.”
The Trump-Netanyahu relationship was far better than Netanyahu’s relationship with President Obama, who frequently criticized Israeli actions under Netanyahu and sought to strengthen U.S. ties with Palestinians.
Netanyahu welcomed “a night of great victory” once election results confirmed his Likud party had gained seats in the Knesset. He promised to form a new government “swiftly” with his conservative coalition partners.
The past 25 years in Israel have been the Netanyahu years. You can tell how much Israel has changed by looking at those opposing the prime minister in the election.
In earlier years, Netanyahu was challenged on the left by a “pro-peace” Labor Party. Indeed, President Clinton weighed in heavily in support of the Labor Party to defeat Netanyahu twice after the Oslo Peace Accords were reached with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But since the second intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) erupted in 2000 and Palestinians turned to suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other actions to strike Israeli civilians, the mood in Israel has shifted dramatically to the right.
The Israeli government under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon started to build a wall to keep out the terrorists from the West Bank. Sharon was widely criticized for it at the time, including by the administration of President George W. Bush, because the wall cut through some Palestinian neighborhoods.
Israelis called it the “Oslo Fence,” noting that it only became necessary after the Oslo Peace accords brought armed terrorists to their doorsteps. Israelis have also built walls along the northern border with Lebanon and the southwest border with Gaza.
Few Israelis still retain any illusions about the possibilities of a negotiated peace agreement with the Palestinians. With Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – the most “moderate” of Palestinian leaders – vowing to never recognize the state of Israel, there simply is no partner for peace.
And so in Tuesday’s election, Netanyahu’s main opponents were three former Israeli Defense Forces chiefs of staff, who criticized him for being too soft on the Palestinians – not too hardline. They wanted him to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza last November when Hamas and Iranian-backed militias stepped up rocket attacks into Israel.
Netanyahu argued, to the surprise of many, that he had received “secret intelligence” that convinced him to respond more cautiously, causing then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to resign in protest.
I believe that intelligence focused on Iran’s troop and missile infrastructure buildup inside Syria, and Iran’s repeated vows to open a “land bridge” from Iran through Iraq into Syria that would allow Iran to send massive numbers of ground troops and equipment right up to the Israeli border unhindered.
I reported from the front lines of the 2006 Lebanon war the last time an Israeli prime minister made the mistake of overestimating the threat from Gaza and underestimating the threat from Iranian-backed militias to the north.
At the time, Hezbollah fired some 4,400 unguided rockets into Israel, causing relatively few casualties. Today, Hezbollah alone claims it possesses 150,000 Iranian rockets, many of them equipped with sophisticated GPS guidance systems.
The Islamic State of Iran has long boasted that it will “eradicate” the state of Israel and “annihilate Tel Aviv” if Israel attacks; nothing new, for sure. But Iran has patiently built up new capabilities to make those threats much more convincing.
Iran today can open a three-front war against the Jewish state using proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. This is a proven capability, not an idle threat. So far, Netanyahu has kept all three at bay.
In December 2017, for example, a senior Iranian-backed militia leader from Iraq posed for selfies on the Golan Heights peering down into the Galilee in northern Israel after he drove in a small convoy across the newly opened “land bridge” from Iraq.
The Iranians today command an estimated 80,000 militiamen in Syria from Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders have said that the “land bridge” will allow them to flow in another 100,000 troops to Israel’s borders, clearly the prelude to war.
And this is why Israel, under Netanyahu’s cautious leadership, has been relentlessly striking at Iranian military and intelligence bases in Syria over the past two years, pushing the Iranians as much as 80 kilometers from Israel’s northern border.
Netanyahu has shown himself to be a consummate diplomat, regularly flying to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin to win Russian acquiescence to the Israeli air strikes.
Netanyahu’s calm behavior contrasts starkly with the hot-headed remarks of opposition candidate Ganz, the most gaffe-prone of the three former Israeli military chiefs. Ganz has called for annihilating not the Iranian threat but the Palestinian one, boasting in campaign ads of having sent parts of Gaza “back to the stone age” when he was chief of staff during the 2014 war.
Many Israelis may be fed up with Netanyahu the politician. They may be tired of the corruption allegations swirling around him – allegations he denies.
But Israelis increasingly appreciate Netanyahu’s steady hand on the tiller, and his ability to avoid war without appeasing Israel’s enemies. That alone is worth awarding him another term.
EDITORS NOTE: This Fox News column is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kenneth R. Timmermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKenneth R. Timmerman2019-04-11 06:58:082019-04-11 06:59:27Netanyahu expected to remain Israel’s prime minister, after getting a boost from Trump
The chief prosecutor in Ukraine recently revealed that he’s reopening a corruption probe into Ukraine’s largest private gas company that could have profound implications for the presidential aspirations of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The company, Burisma Holdings, appointed Biden’s son, Hunter, to its board of directors in 2014, and reportedly paid him more than $3 million during a 14-month period to head its legal team.
Burisma was then facing a state investigation over allegations that company Chairman Nikolai Zlochevskiy had used his official position as Minister of Environment in the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych to award the company lucrative oil and gas permits.
While the probe was underway, then-Vice President Biden made more than a dozen trips to Ukraine, ostensibly to support the new government of Petro Poroshenko. But during one of those trips in 2016, the vice president threatened to withdraw U.S. aid if Poroshenko didn’t fire the prosecutor general in charge of the Burisma probe.
Biden boasted of his success in getting Poroshenko to fire the prosecutor in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in January 2018, a year after leaving office.
“And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee,” Biden said. When Poroshenko refused to fire the prosecutor, Biden said he had authority from President Barack Obama to pull the loan guarantee.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ … He got fired.”
Current Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told The Hill’s John Solomon that he was reopening the investigation his office had closed after Biden succeeded in convincing the Ukrainian president to remove his predecessor, Viktor Shokin.
Shokin himself confirmed in written answers to questions from Solomon that before he was fired, he was planning to conduct “interrogations and other crime-investigation procedures into all members of the [Burisma] executive board, including Hunter Biden.”
Biden’s staff and, indeed, the Democratic National Committee leadership should have seen this coming. It’s not as if Hunter Biden’s appointment to the Burisma board was a secret, nor the fact that he got paid large sums of money for his services, at the same time that his powerful father was intervening in the company’s favor with the president of Ukraine.
This is no skeleton in Uncle Joe’s closet. It’s a raw cadaver, and it stinks to high heaven, despite the mounds of dirt piled on top of it by the national media.
The Wall Street Journal first announced Hunter Biden’s appointment to the Burisma board in May 2014 in a Page 4 item; one columnist in The Washington Post called Hunter Biden’s behavior “nefarious.”
But when asked by a reporter around the time of the appointment to comment, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney said the White House saw no problem with the younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
“Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president,” Carney said.
Following that White House comment, the media obediently buried Joe Biden’s gross conflict of interest until 2018, when Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, detailed the allegations in a book titled “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.”
“The bottom line is, Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point-person on policy towards Ukraine,” Schweizer said on April 2. “He steered $1.8 billion in aid to that government, and while he was doing so, his son got a sweetheart deal with this energy company—that we’ve been able to trace over just a 14-month period—paid $3.1 million into an account where Hunter Biden was getting paid.”
Schweizer supported his allegation that the payments amounted to a sweetheart deal by noting that Hunter Biden had “no background in Ukraine” and “no background in energy policy.”
“There’s really no legitimate explanation as to why he got this deal with the energy company, other than the fact his father was responsible for doling out money in Ukraine itself,” Schweizer said.
The Ukrainian prosecutor general promises to turn over investigative files to the U.S. Department of Justice, so Joe Biden’s Ukraine scandal could just be getting started.
A source close to the prosecutor said last week that he was also investigating a corrupt intervention by Ukrainian authorities in the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, when they leaked the so-called “black ledger” of the pro-Russian Party of Regions to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yavonovitch, an Obama appointee who remains on the job today.
They also leaked the ledger to The New York Times, which ran a front-page story alleging that the ledger included $12.7 million in payments to then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, leading candidate Trump to fire Manafort from the campaign.
Joe Biden might soon be looking back on the inappropriate touching allegations with regret. Not regret for his actions, but regret that public attention so quickly drifted off to other, more damaging scandals.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Epoch Times and is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kenneth R. Timmermanhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKenneth R. Timmerman2019-04-10 17:08:252019-04-10 17:08:25Ukrainian Prosecutor Reopens Corruption Case Involving Biden
