While kings and presidents came to get their pictures taken at the World Holocaust Forum, Texas Governor Greg Abbott offered genuine support
By Ryan Jones
Israel Today
January 24, 2020
We all know that one simply doesn’t mess with Texas.
Texas is now warning that anyone who messes with the Jewish state will likewise earn the ire of the Lone Star State.
Practical support beats photo-ops
While the visiting kings and presidents of the Western world were busy trying to be seen ahead of this week’s Holocaust commemoration event, Texas Governor Greg Abbott quietly visited a week earlier to show his support for Israel in a much more practical way.
The primary reason for Abbott’s visit was to scout for new Israeli technology for Texas to either invest in or purchase.
The trip was facilitated by Start-Up Nation Central, a local non-profit that exists to connect Israeli innovations with the people and regions that need them most.
Texas is already one of Israel’s biggest trade partners, and vice versa, and Abbott vowed that would continue.
“There is a connection between business in Israel and Texas that make both Israel and Texas far better,” he told the gathering in Tel Aviv.
Mess with Israel, you mess with Texas
Later, Abbott came up to Jerusalem, where he was honored with the “Friends of Zion Award” by the Friends of Zion Heritage Center.
In his acceptance speech, Abbott firmly planted his state’s flag of support for Israel.
“There are strong relations between Texas and Israel,” said the governor. “Anybody who is an enemy of Israel is an enemy of Texas. Whenever anybody threatens Israel, we come side by side with Israel to support Israel in any way we can.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies at Fatah better be careful or Governor Greg is liable to send a handful of Texas Rangers to clean house.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
TRUMP BELIEVES CONCUSSIONS ARE ‘NOT VERY SERIOUS’
Pentagon reveals 34 US troops suffered traumatic brain injuries in Iran's missile attack
By Ryan Pickrell
Business Insider
January 24, 2020
The Department of Defense told reporters Friday that nearly three dozen US service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries in the aftermath of the Iranian missile attack on US forces in Iraq earlier this month, according to multiple reports.
The Pentagon, following repeated questions, revealed Friday that a total of 34 US service members have been diagnosed with concussions and traumatic brain injuries, some of whom were flown to Germany and the US for treatment. (The Pentagon is reportedly using those two terms interchangeably).
The department said that the delays in reporting the TBIs is that these injuries are not always immediately apparent. "Some of these conditions manifest over time, symptoms can get better and get worse. This is a snapshot in time," Pentagon spokesman John Hoffman explained.
A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury — damage affecting the brain's normal function caused by a sudden blow to the head or the severe shaking of the head and body.
Immediately following the Jan. 8 ballistic missile attack on US and coalition forces at Al Asad Air Base and in Irbil, President Donald Trump proudly announced that "no Americans were harmed."
A little over a week later, US Central Command revealed that there were, in fact, injuries.
"While no U.S. service members were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad Air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed," CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban explained in a statement.
He said that a total of 11 US service members had to be transported to facilities in Germany and Kuwait for additional screening and treatment.
On Tuesday, Jan. 21, The Washington Post reported that the number was higher, although it did not give a specific number.
When questioned Wednesday about his earlier statement, now known to be inaccurate, Trump downplayed the severity of the injuries, saying they are "not very serious."
"I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things, but I would say and I can report that it's not very serious," the president told the press in Davos, Switzerland. "I don't consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I've seen."
When an Associated Press reporter asked for more information about these injuries on Jan. 23, a CENTCOM spokesman told him they'll no longer "play this game."
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think Trump is downplaying the seriousness of brain injuries because he does not want to carry out his threat to punish Iran if they cause any harm to Americans. Either that, or he is an ignoramus.
By Ryan Pickrell
Business Insider
January 24, 2020
The Department of Defense told reporters Friday that nearly three dozen US service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries in the aftermath of the Iranian missile attack on US forces in Iraq earlier this month, according to multiple reports.
The Pentagon, following repeated questions, revealed Friday that a total of 34 US service members have been diagnosed with concussions and traumatic brain injuries, some of whom were flown to Germany and the US for treatment. (The Pentagon is reportedly using those two terms interchangeably).
The department said that the delays in reporting the TBIs is that these injuries are not always immediately apparent. "Some of these conditions manifest over time, symptoms can get better and get worse. This is a snapshot in time," Pentagon spokesman John Hoffman explained.
A concussion is a type of traumatic brain injury — damage affecting the brain's normal function caused by a sudden blow to the head or the severe shaking of the head and body.
Immediately following the Jan. 8 ballistic missile attack on US and coalition forces at Al Asad Air Base and in Irbil, President Donald Trump proudly announced that "no Americans were harmed."
A little over a week later, US Central Command revealed that there were, in fact, injuries.
"While no U.S. service members were killed in the Jan. 8 Iranian attack on Al Asad Air base, several were treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed," CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban explained in a statement.
He said that a total of 11 US service members had to be transported to facilities in Germany and Kuwait for additional screening and treatment.
On Tuesday, Jan. 21, The Washington Post reported that the number was higher, although it did not give a specific number.
When questioned Wednesday about his earlier statement, now known to be inaccurate, Trump downplayed the severity of the injuries, saying they are "not very serious."
"I heard that they had headaches and a couple of other things, but I would say and I can report that it's not very serious," the president told the press in Davos, Switzerland. "I don't consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries that I've seen."
When an Associated Press reporter asked for more information about these injuries on Jan. 23, a CENTCOM spokesman told him they'll no longer "play this game."
EDITOR’S NOTE: I think Trump is downplaying the seriousness of brain injuries because he does not want to carry out his threat to punish Iran if they cause any harm to Americans. Either that, or he is an ignoramus.
CHINA SHUTTING DOWN MORE CITIES
by Bob Walsh
It seems that China is shutting down more cities, movie theaters and other places where people get together in close quarters in large numbers. Schools in some areas are being closed.
The American authorities are openly speculating that China is low-balling their stats to cut into public unrest over the problem. I don't doubt that for a minute.
It seems that China is shutting down more cities, movie theaters and other places where people get together in close quarters in large numbers. Schools in some areas are being closed.
The American authorities are openly speculating that China is low-balling their stats to cut into public unrest over the problem. I don't doubt that for a minute.
ANGRY FATHER CONFRONTS WARREN OVER HER STUDENT DEBT CANCELLATION PLAN
Elizabeth Warren confronted by Iowa dad over student loan plan, saying people paying for tuition would get 'screwed'
By Morgan Phillips
Fox News
January 23, 2020
An angry father confronted Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying those who responsibly saved to pay for student loans themselves would get “screwed” under her student debt cancellation plan.
"I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter is getting out of school. I've saved all my money. She doesn't have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?" the father asked Warren in a photo line after a presidential campaign town hall in Grimes, Iowa, on Monday.
“Of course not,” Warren answered, without hesitation.
"So you're going to pay for people who didn't save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?” the father pressed.
Warren as a campaign platform has introduced not only universal free public college but also a cancellation of federal student loan debt for up to $50,000 for those making under $100,000 per year. She even said she'd do so on her first day in the White House, and bypass Congress if necessary.
She claimed this policy would “cancel debt for more than 95 percent of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt.” She also said it would mitigate the racial wealth gap.
“My buddy had fun, bought a car, and went on all the vacations, I saved my money. He makes more than I did. I worked a double shift,” the father continued.
“Youre laughing at me,” the man said, which Warren denied. “Yeah that’s exactly what you’re doing. We did the right thing and we get screwed,” he can be heard telling Warren.
“I appreciate your time,” Warren responded.
Warren has said she would pay for the plan, estimated to cost $640 billion, with a 2 percent "wealth tax" on individuals earning greater than $50 million. She's said the wealth tax would raise enough to fund not only student loan debt cancellation and free public college but also universal pre-K.
The senator earlier introduced a student loan debt bill in Congress with fellow Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. But Warren, writing on the website Medium, said that she would act without waiting for Congress because the Secretary of Education can “use its discretion to wipe away loans even when they do not meet the eligibility criteria for more specific cancellation programs.”
By Morgan Phillips
Fox News
January 23, 2020
An angry father confronted Sen. Elizabeth Warren saying those who responsibly saved to pay for student loans themselves would get “screwed” under her student debt cancellation plan.
"I just wanted to ask one question. My daughter is getting out of school. I've saved all my money. She doesn't have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?" the father asked Warren in a photo line after a presidential campaign town hall in Grimes, Iowa, on Monday.
“Of course not,” Warren answered, without hesitation.
"So you're going to pay for people who didn't save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?” the father pressed.
Warren as a campaign platform has introduced not only universal free public college but also a cancellation of federal student loan debt for up to $50,000 for those making under $100,000 per year. She even said she'd do so on her first day in the White House, and bypass Congress if necessary.
She claimed this policy would “cancel debt for more than 95 percent of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt.” She also said it would mitigate the racial wealth gap.
“My buddy had fun, bought a car, and went on all the vacations, I saved my money. He makes more than I did. I worked a double shift,” the father continued.
“Youre laughing at me,” the man said, which Warren denied. “Yeah that’s exactly what you’re doing. We did the right thing and we get screwed,” he can be heard telling Warren.
“I appreciate your time,” Warren responded.
Warren has said she would pay for the plan, estimated to cost $640 billion, with a 2 percent "wealth tax" on individuals earning greater than $50 million. She's said the wealth tax would raise enough to fund not only student loan debt cancellation and free public college but also universal pre-K.
The senator earlier introduced a student loan debt bill in Congress with fellow Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. But Warren, writing on the website Medium, said that she would act without waiting for Congress because the Secretary of Education can “use its discretion to wipe away loans even when they do not meet the eligibility criteria for more specific cancellation programs.”
SEND HER BACK THEY WILL ….. BUT NOT TO SOMALIA
Rep. Ilhan Omar launches reelection bid with big advantages, including a massive bank account
By Steve Karnowski
Associated Press
January 23, 2020
MINNEAPOLIS -- Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional career got off to a rocky start just a year ago, with her provocative remarks on Israel and Jews stirring anger across the country and raising speculation that some other Minnesota Democrat might step forward to challenge her in 2020.
That was then.
Omar was kicking off her reelection campaign Thursday night with a massive bank account and no challengers who pose a serious threat from either party. Her campaign slogan — “Send her back to Congress!” — gleefully evokes President Donald Trump’s personal attacks on her.
In an overwhelmingly Democratic district that where Omar took 78% of the vote in 2018, University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs gives her opponents no chance.
“This is one of the most progressive-liberal districts in the country and Rep. Omar is one of the most progressive-liberal members of Congress,” Jacobs said. “She’s a fit for the district even if Democrats around the country are uncomfortable with her positions and her style.”
Omar, a Somali American immigrant, became a national figure in 2018 as one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. But her tweets last February insinuating that lawmakers support Israel because they have been bought off came under intense bipartisan criticism. She added fuel to the fire last March by suggesting that Jewish Americans have divided loyalties between the U.S. and Israel.
Trump moved quickly to try to make Omar and three other freshmen congresswomen of color — known as “The Squad” — the face of his opposition, saying they should “go back” to their counties, even though only Omar was foreign born. His supporters chanted, "Send her back!" at a rally a few days later in North Carolina. But Omar received a hero’s welcome at the airport when she returned home from Washington that week.
Trump's attention to Omar has helped her raise enormous amounts of money, and she's used the national stage effectively, Jacobs said.
Omar raised more than $2.5 million through last year’s third quarter, the latest figures available, and had $1.56 million in the bank. Her fundraising was more than triple the House incumbent average, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Omar did not immediately respond to a request for an interview ahead of her kickoff.
Omar's only real primary threat would have to come from a Democratic officeholder, but none has stepped forward, said Kathryn Pearson, another University of Minnesota political scientist.
One of her three little-known Democratic challengers, mediator Antone Melton-Meaux, did raise more than $200,000 in the fourth quarter, with more than $180,000 in the bank. His strong support for Israel and opposition to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement contrast with Omar’s positions.
“I don’t think he poses a serious threat, but the fact that he raised a chunk of money fairly quickly, it shows that while Rep. Omar is pretty safe, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some Democrats who are unhappy with her performance in Congress so far,” Pearson said.
Taking advantage of conservative dislike of Omar nationally, her likely GOP opponent, black businessman Lacy Johnson, raised nearly $478,000 by the end of the third quarter but had spent most of that.
Divisions still remain between Omar and some Jewish community leaders, though they’re not expected to make a big dent in her margin of victory.
“The injury and ill-confidence ... have not been adequately addressed,” said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, who lives in her district. “The community will pay close attention to her in the 2020 election cycle.”
While Omar’s job seems secure for now, her long-range future is less clear.
“This is the beginning of what I think will be a series of nationally prominent and contested races against Rep. Omar,” Jacobs said. “I think at some point it’s going to beat her down.”
By Steve Karnowski
Associated Press
January 23, 2020
MINNEAPOLIS -- Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional career got off to a rocky start just a year ago, with her provocative remarks on Israel and Jews stirring anger across the country and raising speculation that some other Minnesota Democrat might step forward to challenge her in 2020.
That was then.
Omar was kicking off her reelection campaign Thursday night with a massive bank account and no challengers who pose a serious threat from either party. Her campaign slogan — “Send her back to Congress!” — gleefully evokes President Donald Trump’s personal attacks on her.
In an overwhelmingly Democratic district that where Omar took 78% of the vote in 2018, University of Minnesota political scientist Larry Jacobs gives her opponents no chance.
“This is one of the most progressive-liberal districts in the country and Rep. Omar is one of the most progressive-liberal members of Congress,” Jacobs said. “She’s a fit for the district even if Democrats around the country are uncomfortable with her positions and her style.”
Omar, a Somali American immigrant, became a national figure in 2018 as one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. But her tweets last February insinuating that lawmakers support Israel because they have been bought off came under intense bipartisan criticism. She added fuel to the fire last March by suggesting that Jewish Americans have divided loyalties between the U.S. and Israel.
Trump moved quickly to try to make Omar and three other freshmen congresswomen of color — known as “The Squad” — the face of his opposition, saying they should “go back” to their counties, even though only Omar was foreign born. His supporters chanted, "Send her back!" at a rally a few days later in North Carolina. But Omar received a hero’s welcome at the airport when she returned home from Washington that week.
Trump's attention to Omar has helped her raise enormous amounts of money, and she's used the national stage effectively, Jacobs said.
Omar raised more than $2.5 million through last year’s third quarter, the latest figures available, and had $1.56 million in the bank. Her fundraising was more than triple the House incumbent average, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Omar did not immediately respond to a request for an interview ahead of her kickoff.
Omar's only real primary threat would have to come from a Democratic officeholder, but none has stepped forward, said Kathryn Pearson, another University of Minnesota political scientist.
One of her three little-known Democratic challengers, mediator Antone Melton-Meaux, did raise more than $200,000 in the fourth quarter, with more than $180,000 in the bank. His strong support for Israel and opposition to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement contrast with Omar’s positions.
“I don’t think he poses a serious threat, but the fact that he raised a chunk of money fairly quickly, it shows that while Rep. Omar is pretty safe, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some Democrats who are unhappy with her performance in Congress so far,” Pearson said.
Taking advantage of conservative dislike of Omar nationally, her likely GOP opponent, black businessman Lacy Johnson, raised nearly $478,000 by the end of the third quarter but had spent most of that.
Divisions still remain between Omar and some Jewish community leaders, though they’re not expected to make a big dent in her margin of victory.
“The injury and ill-confidence ... have not been adequately addressed,” said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, who lives in her district. “The community will pay close attention to her in the 2020 election cycle.”
While Omar’s job seems secure for now, her long-range future is less clear.
“This is the beginning of what I think will be a series of nationally prominent and contested races against Rep. Omar,” Jacobs said. “I think at some point it’s going to beat her down.”
STORMY BUSTING COPS CANNED
Two Ohio police officers fired over Stormy Daniels arrest
By Adam Schrader
New York Post
January 23, 2020
The Columbus Police Department in Ohio fired two officers Thursday over their controversial arrest of porn star Stormy Daniels, 40, at a strip club in 2018.
Columbus’ Director of Public Safety Ned Pettus Jr. officially canned Steven Rosser and Whitney Lancaster after agreeing with a recommendation from Police Chief Thomas Quinlan — who hit the cops with departmental charges last year.
The disgraced cops have 10 days to appeal the decision.
Rosser and Lancaster were two of the four cops who conducted the arrest at Sirens Gentlemen’s Club and accused Daniels of letting patrons touch her, a violation of state law, Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti said at the time.
The charges were quickly dropped by prosecutors.
Daniels — who was paid $130,000 in hush money by Michael Cohen over her alleged 2006 affair with Donald Trump — has sued the cops, claiming they orchestrated the arrest to protect the president.
Documents viewed by WSYZ show that Rosser lied when he said in an interview he wanted to search for an underage stripper named “Pearl” in a human trafficking investigation — but never actually conducted the search.
The other two officers, Sgt. Scott Soha and Lt. Ronald Kemmerling, were suspended, WSYZ reported.
In September, Daniels received a $450,000 payout after the city settled another lawsuit she had filed for the improper arrest.
Avenatti, who is no longer representing Daniels, pleaded not guilty last May to stealing $300,000 from his client. He was recently arrested for bail violation — after allegedly trying to extort Nike.
By Adam Schrader
New York Post
January 23, 2020
The Columbus Police Department in Ohio fired two officers Thursday over their controversial arrest of porn star Stormy Daniels, 40, at a strip club in 2018.
Columbus’ Director of Public Safety Ned Pettus Jr. officially canned Steven Rosser and Whitney Lancaster after agreeing with a recommendation from Police Chief Thomas Quinlan — who hit the cops with departmental charges last year.
The disgraced cops have 10 days to appeal the decision.
Rosser and Lancaster were two of the four cops who conducted the arrest at Sirens Gentlemen’s Club and accused Daniels of letting patrons touch her, a violation of state law, Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti said at the time.
The charges were quickly dropped by prosecutors.
Daniels — who was paid $130,000 in hush money by Michael Cohen over her alleged 2006 affair with Donald Trump — has sued the cops, claiming they orchestrated the arrest to protect the president.
Documents viewed by WSYZ show that Rosser lied when he said in an interview he wanted to search for an underage stripper named “Pearl” in a human trafficking investigation — but never actually conducted the search.
The other two officers, Sgt. Scott Soha and Lt. Ronald Kemmerling, were suspended, WSYZ reported.
In September, Daniels received a $450,000 payout after the city settled another lawsuit she had filed for the improper arrest.
Avenatti, who is no longer representing Daniels, pleaded not guilty last May to stealing $300,000 from his client. He was recently arrested for bail violation — after allegedly trying to extort Nike.
NETANYAHU GETS SUMMONED TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Trump's invitation has changed the stakes of the Israeli elections
By Caroline B. Glick
Israel Hayom
January 24, 2020
Leaks about the details of President Donald Trump's peace plan are contradictory. Until the President releases his plan officially, we won’t know for certain what it involves. But from what we have experienced so far with the Trump administration generally and President Trump in particular, it is clear that Trump does not accept the premise that formed the foundation of the Oslo peace process with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The 1993 Oslo framework for peace, and every peace plan that derived from it since, was based on the assumption that the PLO gets a veto over Israel's right to secure its interests and assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria.
Comments this week from Blue and White Party officials, from party head Benny Gantz on down the line demonstrated that Israel’s largest center-left faction, the party competing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud for national leadership, adheres to this assumption unequivocally. Without the PLO’s permission, or what Gantz referred to on Tuesday as "coordination with the international community," (which amounts to the same thing), Gantz and his colleagues assert that Israel mustn’t apply its laws to the Jordan Valley or to any other part of Judea and Samaria.
Trump's sudden decision to summon Netanyahu to the White House for a meeting next Tuesday and his acceptance of Netanyahu’s request that Gantz also be invited, puts Gantz in a bind.
Clearly Trump’s move is dictated by U.S. electoral considerations. With the Democratic presidential primaries set to begin in just over a week, Trump cannot wait for the March 2 elections to make his move. By the time a government is finally formed in Israel – assuming the election results are conclusive this time around – Trump will be too busy with his reelection campaign to focus on Israel and the Palestinians.
Which brings us to Gantz and his invitation to the White House.
On the one hand, by agreeing to let Gantz join Netanyahu, Trump is granting the opposition leader the stature of a national leader, almost on par with Netanyahu.
But on the other hand, Trump is driving a wedge into the heart of Gantz’s party. Blue and White is not an organic party. It is a combined list of three different parties. Two of those parties lean left to various degrees. One leans right. To win over swing voters, Gantz has placed the right-wing candidates front and center and tried to keep the more leftist ideological majority of his party members on the sidelines.
The problem is that the left-leaning majority of his party cannot accept Trump’s rejection of the PLO veto. The likes of MKs Yael German and Ofer Shelah, who represent the majority of his party members have made clear that they will not accept any deviation from the Oslo line. They accept the anti-Israel narrative of the post-Zionist left and the "international community" which places all the blame on Israel for the absence of peace.
They believe that Israel must appease the PLO by giving up all – or nearly all – of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem, even if that means mass expulsions of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jews from their homes. Moreover, as German made clear this week, as far as she and her colleagues are concerned, if the PLO won’t agree to a deal, then Israel should repeat its 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in Judea and Samaria. The fact that Hamas was quick to seize control over the Gaza Strip after Israel’s withdrawal is of no concern to her.
For Gantz to accept Trump’s peace plan, he will have to break away from the anti-Israeli narrative of the post-Zionist Left, held by the majority of his party members. Doing so would help him win the election. But it will also unravel his party.
If Gantz chooses instead to reject Trump’s plan and stand with Garmen and Shelah and the rest, if he rejects the administration’s pro-Israel approach which negates the notion that Israel’s enemies get to decide if Israel can assert its rights and secure its interests as a sovereign state, Gantz’s chances of winning the elections will diminish.
It’s hard to know how Gantz will respond. What we know for sure is that Trump's abrupt invitation changed the face of the election.
Until Thursday evening, the third election in a year was nothing more than an annoying beauty pageant where Israelis, already weary and fed up with our politicians, were expected to choose from a list of unattractive options. After Thursday evening, the March 2 vote was transformed into a referendum about national sovereignty and Zionism.
While we still don’t know what the Trump plan entails, we know for sure that things just got a lot more interesting.
By Caroline B. Glick
Israel Hayom
January 24, 2020
Leaks about the details of President Donald Trump's peace plan are contradictory. Until the President releases his plan officially, we won’t know for certain what it involves. But from what we have experienced so far with the Trump administration generally and President Trump in particular, it is clear that Trump does not accept the premise that formed the foundation of the Oslo peace process with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The 1993 Oslo framework for peace, and every peace plan that derived from it since, was based on the assumption that the PLO gets a veto over Israel's right to secure its interests and assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria.
Comments this week from Blue and White Party officials, from party head Benny Gantz on down the line demonstrated that Israel’s largest center-left faction, the party competing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud for national leadership, adheres to this assumption unequivocally. Without the PLO’s permission, or what Gantz referred to on Tuesday as "coordination with the international community," (which amounts to the same thing), Gantz and his colleagues assert that Israel mustn’t apply its laws to the Jordan Valley or to any other part of Judea and Samaria.
Trump's sudden decision to summon Netanyahu to the White House for a meeting next Tuesday and his acceptance of Netanyahu’s request that Gantz also be invited, puts Gantz in a bind.
Clearly Trump’s move is dictated by U.S. electoral considerations. With the Democratic presidential primaries set to begin in just over a week, Trump cannot wait for the March 2 elections to make his move. By the time a government is finally formed in Israel – assuming the election results are conclusive this time around – Trump will be too busy with his reelection campaign to focus on Israel and the Palestinians.
Which brings us to Gantz and his invitation to the White House.
On the one hand, by agreeing to let Gantz join Netanyahu, Trump is granting the opposition leader the stature of a national leader, almost on par with Netanyahu.
But on the other hand, Trump is driving a wedge into the heart of Gantz’s party. Blue and White is not an organic party. It is a combined list of three different parties. Two of those parties lean left to various degrees. One leans right. To win over swing voters, Gantz has placed the right-wing candidates front and center and tried to keep the more leftist ideological majority of his party members on the sidelines.
The problem is that the left-leaning majority of his party cannot accept Trump’s rejection of the PLO veto. The likes of MKs Yael German and Ofer Shelah, who represent the majority of his party members have made clear that they will not accept any deviation from the Oslo line. They accept the anti-Israel narrative of the post-Zionist left and the "international community" which places all the blame on Israel for the absence of peace.
They believe that Israel must appease the PLO by giving up all – or nearly all – of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem, even if that means mass expulsions of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Jews from their homes. Moreover, as German made clear this week, as far as she and her colleagues are concerned, if the PLO won’t agree to a deal, then Israel should repeat its 2005 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in Judea and Samaria. The fact that Hamas was quick to seize control over the Gaza Strip after Israel’s withdrawal is of no concern to her.
For Gantz to accept Trump’s peace plan, he will have to break away from the anti-Israeli narrative of the post-Zionist Left, held by the majority of his party members. Doing so would help him win the election. But it will also unravel his party.
If Gantz chooses instead to reject Trump’s plan and stand with Garmen and Shelah and the rest, if he rejects the administration’s pro-Israel approach which negates the notion that Israel’s enemies get to decide if Israel can assert its rights and secure its interests as a sovereign state, Gantz’s chances of winning the elections will diminish.
It’s hard to know how Gantz will respond. What we know for sure is that Trump's abrupt invitation changed the face of the election.
Until Thursday evening, the third election in a year was nothing more than an annoying beauty pageant where Israelis, already weary and fed up with our politicians, were expected to choose from a list of unattractive options. After Thursday evening, the March 2 vote was transformed into a referendum about national sovereignty and Zionism.
While we still don’t know what the Trump plan entails, we know for sure that things just got a lot more interesting.
METH, WHAT METH … WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?
Border Patrol Seizes More Than 200 Pounds Of Meth Allegedly Hidden In Car By Grandma, Granddaughter
LAPPL News Watch
January 24, 2020
A woman and her granddaughter were apprehended at ports of entry in San Diego County on suspicion of trying to take more than 200 pounds of meth over the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The incident happened around 12:40 p.m. on Jan. 19 near ports of entry in San Diego and Imperial Valley counties.
A CBP K-9 team went through vehicle lanes at the Andrade Port of Entry when one of the dogs alerted officers to the passenger’s side door of a 2006 Dodge Durango.
The 65-year-old woman and her 19-year-old granddaughter, who are both U.S. citizens, were in the vehicle. Officers had the women and vehicle moved to another spot for further inspection, according to the agency.
After CBP officers searched the vehicle, they removed 299 packages of meth from the roof, doors and quarter panels. The packages weighed a total of 219 pounds and had an estimated street value of more than $416,000.
LAPPL News Watch
January 24, 2020
A woman and her granddaughter were apprehended at ports of entry in San Diego County on suspicion of trying to take more than 200 pounds of meth over the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The incident happened around 12:40 p.m. on Jan. 19 near ports of entry in San Diego and Imperial Valley counties.
A CBP K-9 team went through vehicle lanes at the Andrade Port of Entry when one of the dogs alerted officers to the passenger’s side door of a 2006 Dodge Durango.
The 65-year-old woman and her 19-year-old granddaughter, who are both U.S. citizens, were in the vehicle. Officers had the women and vehicle moved to another spot for further inspection, according to the agency.
After CBP officers searched the vehicle, they removed 299 packages of meth from the roof, doors and quarter panels. The packages weighed a total of 219 pounds and had an estimated street value of more than $416,000.
Friday, January 24, 2020
DOJ SAYS TWO FISA WARANTS AGAINST CARTER PAGE ARE INVALID
by Bob Walsh
Yesterday the Justice Department said that the last two of the four wiretap warrants used by the FBI against former Trump aide Carter Page are in fact invalid, according to a FISA court order which was declassified and released yesterday.
The FBI has been ordered to submit not later than January 28 outlines of plans to sequester information obtained via these wiretaps.
While this may or may not have much to do with the current impeachment bullshit it will probably help Carter Page to breath a lot easier.
In order for secret warrants to function in a free society it is absolutely necessary that everybody involved in the process be both competent and scrupulously honest. Clearly that has NOT been the case.
Were I the guy making the rules I would make it difficult to damn near impossible to surveil a U.S. citizen in this manner.
Yesterday the Justice Department said that the last two of the four wiretap warrants used by the FBI against former Trump aide Carter Page are in fact invalid, according to a FISA court order which was declassified and released yesterday.
The FBI has been ordered to submit not later than January 28 outlines of plans to sequester information obtained via these wiretaps.
While this may or may not have much to do with the current impeachment bullshit it will probably help Carter Page to breath a lot easier.
In order for secret warrants to function in a free society it is absolutely necessary that everybody involved in the process be both competent and scrupulously honest. Clearly that has NOT been the case.
Were I the guy making the rules I would make it difficult to damn near impossible to surveil a U.S. citizen in this manner.
CALIFORNIA PD BITES THE DUST
by Bob Walsh
Rio Vista is a small city on the edge of the Sacramento River in Solano County. It is a very nice little town. Unfortunately it is not a rich nice little town and they have had a very hard time keeping staff. Since October the County SO has been covering most of the police duties in the city. That arrangement has now been officially implemented and finalized. The Rio Vista PD is official now being operated fully by members of the sheriff's office, with a Lieutenant as the functioning Chief of Police.
Rio Vista is a small city on the edge of the Sacramento River in Solano County. It is a very nice little town. Unfortunately it is not a rich nice little town and they have had a very hard time keeping staff. Since October the County SO has been covering most of the police duties in the city. That arrangement has now been officially implemented and finalized. The Rio Vista PD is official now being operated fully by members of the sheriff's office, with a Lieutenant as the functioning Chief of Police.
CHINA LOCKS DOWN TWO MORE CITIES
One Mexico to US Traveler Quarantined
by Bob Walsh
If you need any ADDITIONAL reasons to not fucking travel to Mexico, you now have one. China has now essentially shut down 20 million people in three cities.
Anybody remember the movie World War Z? It probably really isn't THAT bad. Yet. That being said, you better stock up on antibiotics, fuel, small arms ammunition and armored cars. (What, you don't own a zombie-proof vehicle? Not very smart of you.)
by Bob Walsh
If you need any ADDITIONAL reasons to not fucking travel to Mexico, you now have one. China has now essentially shut down 20 million people in three cities.
Anybody remember the movie World War Z? It probably really isn't THAT bad. Yet. That being said, you better stock up on antibiotics, fuel, small arms ammunition and armored cars. (What, you don't own a zombie-proof vehicle? Not very smart of you.)
ONLY PROTECTING HIMSELF OR COLD-BLOODED MURDER?
During heated parking lot dispute, off-duty officer fatally shoots man running away
By Erik Ortiz
NBC News
January 22, 2020
Surveillance video from a busy parking lot in Northern California captures a tense dispute flaring into violence when an off-duty police officer fired his weapon at a man running away, leaving him mortally wounded and raising questions over the need for deadly force.
The city of Vallejo released four videos Tuesday giving alternate viewpoints of the Nov. 10, 2019, incident in a busy strip mall. The footage is a key piece of evidence in a case that remains under investigation by the city and the Solano County District Attorney's Office.
"Those videos show a cold-blooded murder," said Melissa Nold, an attorney representing the mother of Eric Reason, the man who was killed. Nold said Reason was shot in the back of the head and died at the scene.
An attorney for the off-duty officer, identified as Virgil Thomas, a police sergeant in the nearby city of Richmond, said his client was only protecting himself when Reason pulled a gun, and Thomas was left with "no other choice" but to shoot.
In the video, which has no audio, Thomas appears to drive toward an empty parking spot just as Reason pulls away from a nearby gas station pump. After Thomas parks, Reason stops his van several feet behind and steps out. They get in each other's faces for a few seconds, the video shows.
Reason then walks away and appears to grab an object from the hood of his van. He goes back to Thomas, who pulls out a weapon and fires, appearing to shoot out a back window of Reason's car.
At that moment, Reason runs away and Thomas continues to fire at him in the parking lot, even advancing closer to Reason before the video cuts off.
Vallejo police said Reason was armed and had retrieved a rag containing a handgun from his van when he confronted Thomas.
Nold said that without the video being enhanced, it's difficult to identify what's in his hand, and there's no indication Reason pointed a gun at Thomas. Vallejo police, however, have previously said Reason fled with a gun and "at some point raised" the weapon.
Nold said that with the release of the video, "history prevents us from assuming the police narrative is truthful."
In the days after the shooting, Nold had been concerned by a photo shared on social media that appeared to show Thomas later hovering over Reason's body and taking a picture while a Vallejo Police Department officer stood by. She contended that allowing Thomas to be so close to the body was a failure of protocol and he should have been properly sequestered away from the crime scene.
Thomas was not arrested, but was placed on administrative leave.
His attorney, Justin Buffington, said the argument was sparked over a misunderstanding when Thomas, who was with his wife at the time, pulled into the parking lot as Reason was leaving.
"Thomas attempted to deescalate the situation but ultimately had no other choice but to draw his own firearm," Buffington said Wednesday, adding, "Once Reason realized that he had attempted to attack someone capable of protecting himself, he ran through the parking lot, still armed with his pistol, in what reasonably appeared to be an effort to obtain a position of tactical advantage from which to shoot at Sgt. Thomas."
Ben Therriault, the president of the Richmond Police Officers Association, said in a statement that the video only "reinforces that unfortunately, a firearm was introduced unnecessarily by Mr. Reason."
Solano County prosecutors did not have an immediate comment in response to the release of the surveillance video or the investigation itself, and Vallejo police made it public without comment after receiving a records request from Open Vallejo, a local independent newsroom.
Unlike other states, California does not have an explicit "stand your ground" law, but there is self-defense legislation that allows someone in their home to use deadly force if they have a "reasonable fear of imminent peril or great bodily injury." In addition, juries weighing homicide charges can consider whether a defendant's use of force was justified as self-defense.
Such incidents could have occurred outside of the home as well. And in those cases, the defendant does not have to retreat and, if necessary, can pursue the assailant until the threat of bodily harm is over.
But Reason's family believes he would still be alive if Thomas had identified himself as a police officer.
"He didn't deserve to die like that," his mother, Stephanie Bass, told NBC Bay Area in November.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Me thinks Sgt. Thomas is in deep, deep dodo. Shooting a guy who is running away is definitely a no no!
SCOTUS has ruled cops cannot shoot a fleeing suspect unless he is an imminent threat to the officer or if he were to get away, he would be a threat to the public. In this case Reason was no longer an imminent threat to Thomas and if he were to say Reason was a threat to the public if he got away, well maybe so, but that just isn’t likely to fly.
Look for Sgt. Thomas to give up his sergeant stripes for a striped shirt and striped pants.
By Erik Ortiz
NBC News
January 22, 2020
Surveillance video from a busy parking lot in Northern California captures a tense dispute flaring into violence when an off-duty police officer fired his weapon at a man running away, leaving him mortally wounded and raising questions over the need for deadly force.
The city of Vallejo released four videos Tuesday giving alternate viewpoints of the Nov. 10, 2019, incident in a busy strip mall. The footage is a key piece of evidence in a case that remains under investigation by the city and the Solano County District Attorney's Office.
"Those videos show a cold-blooded murder," said Melissa Nold, an attorney representing the mother of Eric Reason, the man who was killed. Nold said Reason was shot in the back of the head and died at the scene.
An attorney for the off-duty officer, identified as Virgil Thomas, a police sergeant in the nearby city of Richmond, said his client was only protecting himself when Reason pulled a gun, and Thomas was left with "no other choice" but to shoot.
In the video, which has no audio, Thomas appears to drive toward an empty parking spot just as Reason pulls away from a nearby gas station pump. After Thomas parks, Reason stops his van several feet behind and steps out. They get in each other's faces for a few seconds, the video shows.
Reason then walks away and appears to grab an object from the hood of his van. He goes back to Thomas, who pulls out a weapon and fires, appearing to shoot out a back window of Reason's car.
At that moment, Reason runs away and Thomas continues to fire at him in the parking lot, even advancing closer to Reason before the video cuts off.
Vallejo police said Reason was armed and had retrieved a rag containing a handgun from his van when he confronted Thomas.
Nold said that without the video being enhanced, it's difficult to identify what's in his hand, and there's no indication Reason pointed a gun at Thomas. Vallejo police, however, have previously said Reason fled with a gun and "at some point raised" the weapon.
Nold said that with the release of the video, "history prevents us from assuming the police narrative is truthful."
In the days after the shooting, Nold had been concerned by a photo shared on social media that appeared to show Thomas later hovering over Reason's body and taking a picture while a Vallejo Police Department officer stood by. She contended that allowing Thomas to be so close to the body was a failure of protocol and he should have been properly sequestered away from the crime scene.
Thomas was not arrested, but was placed on administrative leave.
His attorney, Justin Buffington, said the argument was sparked over a misunderstanding when Thomas, who was with his wife at the time, pulled into the parking lot as Reason was leaving.
"Thomas attempted to deescalate the situation but ultimately had no other choice but to draw his own firearm," Buffington said Wednesday, adding, "Once Reason realized that he had attempted to attack someone capable of protecting himself, he ran through the parking lot, still armed with his pistol, in what reasonably appeared to be an effort to obtain a position of tactical advantage from which to shoot at Sgt. Thomas."
Ben Therriault, the president of the Richmond Police Officers Association, said in a statement that the video only "reinforces that unfortunately, a firearm was introduced unnecessarily by Mr. Reason."
Solano County prosecutors did not have an immediate comment in response to the release of the surveillance video or the investigation itself, and Vallejo police made it public without comment after receiving a records request from Open Vallejo, a local independent newsroom.
Unlike other states, California does not have an explicit "stand your ground" law, but there is self-defense legislation that allows someone in their home to use deadly force if they have a "reasonable fear of imminent peril or great bodily injury." In addition, juries weighing homicide charges can consider whether a defendant's use of force was justified as self-defense.
Such incidents could have occurred outside of the home as well. And in those cases, the defendant does not have to retreat and, if necessary, can pursue the assailant until the threat of bodily harm is over.
But Reason's family believes he would still be alive if Thomas had identified himself as a police officer.
"He didn't deserve to die like that," his mother, Stephanie Bass, told NBC Bay Area in November.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Me thinks Sgt. Thomas is in deep, deep dodo. Shooting a guy who is running away is definitely a no no!
SCOTUS has ruled cops cannot shoot a fleeing suspect unless he is an imminent threat to the officer or if he were to get away, he would be a threat to the public. In this case Reason was no longer an imminent threat to Thomas and if he were to say Reason was a threat to the public if he got away, well maybe so, but that just isn’t likely to fly.
Look for Sgt. Thomas to give up his sergeant stripes for a striped shirt and striped pants.
‘NOT WHITE OR HISPANIC’ BLACK COP SUSPENDED
Miami Cop Javier Ortiz Suspended With Pay After Claiming He's Black
By Jerry Iannelli
Miami New Times
January 23, 2020
Days after claiming he was a black man at a Miami City Commission meeting, Capt. Javier Ortiz was suspended with pay today, the Miami Police Department (MPD) informed New Times.
"We can confirm that Captain J. Ortiz has been relieved of duty with pay," spokesperson Michael Vega said via email.
Late last year, the Miami Community Police Benevolent Association (MCPBA) unearthed records showing Ortiz had claimed he was a white Hispanic man when he applied to work at MPD but then claimed in 2014 and 2017 on paperwork provided to New Times that he was a black man. The U.S. Department of Justice was monitoring the department at the time, and black officers accused Ortiz — already the most controversial cop in Miami with a long history of racist statements — of faking his race to boost the department's diversity statistics. At a city commission meeting last Friday, the MCPBA demanded Chief Jorge Colina address racism in his department or resign.
During that meeting, Ortiz stood up and defended himself. He claimed he was "a black male" and said that, after finding out he had black family members, the "one-drop rule" means he's actually black. He also said he was "a black male, or a Negro," while staring directly at the city's only black commissioner, Keon Hardemon. Over the weekend, the Miami-Dade County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called Ortiz's comments "downright disturbing" and has since called for his termination.
New Times asked MPD its exact reasons for suspending the former union chief, but the department declined to comment further. Ortiz did not immediately respond to a message from New Times. Neither did Colina and Mayor Francis Suarez.
Ortiz is far and away the most controversial cop in Miami. As the former head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) from 2011 to 2017, he fought police oversight at every turn, praised Donald Trump constantly, and spent his free time defending cops who've killed black people. He once drew demonic eyes and teeth on a mugshot of a black defendant. He also infamously tried to start a nationwide Beyoncé boycott after claiming her 2016 Super Bowl performance was anti-police. He has tweeted to support the officers who've killed Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, and event 12-year-old Tamir Rice, whom Ortiz called a "thug."
Ortiz has also repeatedly been accused of falsely arresting black people, including NFL players Jonathan Vilma and Robby Anderson. NBC Miami last year reported that the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office is investigating whether Ortiz's apparent abuse of the city's off-duty work rules violated the law. Ortiz was also accused of fabricating an arrest report that conflicted with video evidence taken from a beating he was involved in during the 2011 Ultra Music Festival. The matter was referred to prosecutors, but the State Attorney's Office took no action.
He nearly lost his job in 2017 after he doxxed a police critic who had complained about an officer driving at dangerously high speeds. Ortiz posted the woman's personal contact information online, so the woman, Claudia Castillo, obtained a temporary restraining order against him. He was taken off the street until a judge lifted the stay-away order. As of 2019, Ortiz had amassed 42 citizen complaints and been involved in 18 use-of-force incidents, according to city documents.
Despite those concerns, Ortiz was promoted through the department and is now a captain. He stepped down from running the FOP upon his latest promotion and installed the man he called his "best friend," fellow officer Edward Lugo, in the union's top role. Lugo lost his union election in 2018 to Tommy and Matt Reyes, brothers who said during their campaign that Ortiz and Lugo were actually hurting the cops they were supposed to be helping.
Ortiz's latest comments sparked national headlines once again and renewed calls for the department to fire him. Earlier this week, Rodney Jacobs, the assistant director of the Miami Civilian Investigative Panel, which reviews complaints against Miami cops, wrote a scathing Miami Herald op-ed calling Ortiz an embarrassment to the city. In a statement to New Times today, Jacobs said that although Ortiz's potential firing might involve "a long process," Miami residents, especially the city's black community, can rest a bit easier knowing the system finally took Ortiz off the street. Jacobs also thanked Colina for suspending Ortiz.
"This is a monumental day for the City of Miami," Jacobs said. "For a long time, Captain Ortiz has engaged in misconduct in this city. He has harmed the community, visitors, and police. Today, I hope, marks the beginning of the end of his time at MPD."
By Jerry Iannelli
Miami New Times
January 23, 2020
Days after claiming he was a black man at a Miami City Commission meeting, Capt. Javier Ortiz was suspended with pay today, the Miami Police Department (MPD) informed New Times.
"We can confirm that Captain J. Ortiz has been relieved of duty with pay," spokesperson Michael Vega said via email.
Late last year, the Miami Community Police Benevolent Association (MCPBA) unearthed records showing Ortiz had claimed he was a white Hispanic man when he applied to work at MPD but then claimed in 2014 and 2017 on paperwork provided to New Times that he was a black man. The U.S. Department of Justice was monitoring the department at the time, and black officers accused Ortiz — already the most controversial cop in Miami with a long history of racist statements — of faking his race to boost the department's diversity statistics. At a city commission meeting last Friday, the MCPBA demanded Chief Jorge Colina address racism in his department or resign.
During that meeting, Ortiz stood up and defended himself. He claimed he was "a black male" and said that, after finding out he had black family members, the "one-drop rule" means he's actually black. He also said he was "a black male, or a Negro," while staring directly at the city's only black commissioner, Keon Hardemon. Over the weekend, the Miami-Dade County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) called Ortiz's comments "downright disturbing" and has since called for his termination.
New Times asked MPD its exact reasons for suspending the former union chief, but the department declined to comment further. Ortiz did not immediately respond to a message from New Times. Neither did Colina and Mayor Francis Suarez.
Ortiz is far and away the most controversial cop in Miami. As the former head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) from 2011 to 2017, he fought police oversight at every turn, praised Donald Trump constantly, and spent his free time defending cops who've killed black people. He once drew demonic eyes and teeth on a mugshot of a black defendant. He also infamously tried to start a nationwide Beyoncé boycott after claiming her 2016 Super Bowl performance was anti-police. He has tweeted to support the officers who've killed Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, and event 12-year-old Tamir Rice, whom Ortiz called a "thug."
Ortiz has also repeatedly been accused of falsely arresting black people, including NFL players Jonathan Vilma and Robby Anderson. NBC Miami last year reported that the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office is investigating whether Ortiz's apparent abuse of the city's off-duty work rules violated the law. Ortiz was also accused of fabricating an arrest report that conflicted with video evidence taken from a beating he was involved in during the 2011 Ultra Music Festival. The matter was referred to prosecutors, but the State Attorney's Office took no action.
He nearly lost his job in 2017 after he doxxed a police critic who had complained about an officer driving at dangerously high speeds. Ortiz posted the woman's personal contact information online, so the woman, Claudia Castillo, obtained a temporary restraining order against him. He was taken off the street until a judge lifted the stay-away order. As of 2019, Ortiz had amassed 42 citizen complaints and been involved in 18 use-of-force incidents, according to city documents.
Despite those concerns, Ortiz was promoted through the department and is now a captain. He stepped down from running the FOP upon his latest promotion and installed the man he called his "best friend," fellow officer Edward Lugo, in the union's top role. Lugo lost his union election in 2018 to Tommy and Matt Reyes, brothers who said during their campaign that Ortiz and Lugo were actually hurting the cops they were supposed to be helping.
Ortiz's latest comments sparked national headlines once again and renewed calls for the department to fire him. Earlier this week, Rodney Jacobs, the assistant director of the Miami Civilian Investigative Panel, which reviews complaints against Miami cops, wrote a scathing Miami Herald op-ed calling Ortiz an embarrassment to the city. In a statement to New Times today, Jacobs said that although Ortiz's potential firing might involve "a long process," Miami residents, especially the city's black community, can rest a bit easier knowing the system finally took Ortiz off the street. Jacobs also thanked Colina for suspending Ortiz.
"This is a monumental day for the City of Miami," Jacobs said. "For a long time, Captain Ortiz has engaged in misconduct in this city. He has harmed the community, visitors, and police. Today, I hope, marks the beginning of the end of his time at MPD."
GRETA SPEAKS ON MATTERS OF WHICH SHE IS LARGELY IGNORANT AND COMPLETELY UNSCHOOLED
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin puts Greta Thunberg in her place
By Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
January 23, 2020
It’s not that children don’t have the right to have their opinions.
It’s just that children who speak on matters of which they’re largely ignorant and completely unschooled shouldn’t expect to order sovereign countries around and tell U.S. leaders what to do and dictate radical policies to the world. Or at least, they shouldn’t expect the sovereign countries and U.S. leaders to listen to them when they try and dictate.
That’s all U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was trying to say about 17-year-old Swedish climate alarmist Greta Thunbuerg.
When asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, if America should immediately divest from fossil fuels — as Thunberg had hours before demanded and scolded and chided — Mnuchin said, CNBC reported: “Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused.”
He then added that he was joking — that he was only making “a joke, that was funny.”
But then he chimed in with this: “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that [demand] to us.”
Sounds reasonable.
After all, Thunberg’s scientific credentials are — well, none. But she does have parents who are theater people. And she does have a background that involves acting. And she does have that particular quality of the left that allows for speaking boldly, without regret, and with complete passion on topics about which she knows little. And she does have that double-whammy combo of youth plus Asperger’s that makes her a magnificent tool for the left because it sets her as untouchable — it allows her supporters to label her critics as cruel child haters.
So see?
She’s the perfect voice of the environmental movement, in the eyes of the left, anyway.
“[The world], in case you hadn’t noticed,” Thunberg said at Davos, “is currently on fire.”
And, Thunberg suggests, fossil fuels are to blame; drivers are to blame; developers are to blame; those darned politicians and Americans who won’t listen to these facts, facts, facts of the world “on fire” are to blame.
Then again, there’s this, from CNBC: “Thunberg was catapulted to fame for skipping school every Friday to hold a weekly [climate] vigil outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018. It sparked an international wave of school strikes — also known as ‘Fridays for Future’ — with millions of children taking part in rallies around the world.”
Maybe she should have stayed in school.
Maybe, as Mnuchin suggested, she should head back there before making more demands of the world.
By Cheryl K. Chumley
The Washington Times
January 23, 2020
It’s not that children don’t have the right to have their opinions.
It’s just that children who speak on matters of which they’re largely ignorant and completely unschooled shouldn’t expect to order sovereign countries around and tell U.S. leaders what to do and dictate radical policies to the world. Or at least, they shouldn’t expect the sovereign countries and U.S. leaders to listen to them when they try and dictate.
That’s all U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was trying to say about 17-year-old Swedish climate alarmist Greta Thunbuerg.
When asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, if America should immediately divest from fossil fuels — as Thunberg had hours before demanded and scolded and chided — Mnuchin said, CNBC reported: “Is she the chief economist or who is she? I’m confused.”
He then added that he was joking — that he was only making “a joke, that was funny.”
But then he chimed in with this: “After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that [demand] to us.”
Sounds reasonable.
After all, Thunberg’s scientific credentials are — well, none. But she does have parents who are theater people. And she does have a background that involves acting. And she does have that particular quality of the left that allows for speaking boldly, without regret, and with complete passion on topics about which she knows little. And she does have that double-whammy combo of youth plus Asperger’s that makes her a magnificent tool for the left because it sets her as untouchable — it allows her supporters to label her critics as cruel child haters.
So see?
She’s the perfect voice of the environmental movement, in the eyes of the left, anyway.
“[The world], in case you hadn’t noticed,” Thunberg said at Davos, “is currently on fire.”
And, Thunberg suggests, fossil fuels are to blame; drivers are to blame; developers are to blame; those darned politicians and Americans who won’t listen to these facts, facts, facts of the world “on fire” are to blame.
Then again, there’s this, from CNBC: “Thunberg was catapulted to fame for skipping school every Friday to hold a weekly [climate] vigil outside the Swedish Parliament in 2018. It sparked an international wave of school strikes — also known as ‘Fridays for Future’ — with millions of children taking part in rallies around the world.”
Maybe she should have stayed in school.
Maybe, as Mnuchin suggested, she should head back there before making more demands of the world.
HATE CRIMES ABOUND IN L.A.
Los Angeles Faces 40% Increase In Hate Crimes Since 2016, LAPD Data Shows
LAPPL News Watch
January 23, 2020
The city of Los Angeles saw a 10.3% increase in hate crimes from 2018 to 2019, according to new data shared at a Los Angeles Council Public Safety Committee meeting Wednesday.
Hate crimes have steadily increased in the city, rising 40% from 229 reported acts in 2016 to 322 in 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department announced at the meeting.
The largest increase in hate crimes were against the Muslim community, with a 150% increase from 2018 to 2019, according to LAPD data.
There was a 60.5% increase in anti-Jewish crimes, with the number rising from 43 in 2018 to 69 in 2019, the data showed.
Similarly, there were 68 hate crimes reported against African Americans in 2019 and 53 against gay men.
The new data also showed a 23.5% increase in hate crimes against transgender people in 2019, for a total of 21 reported incidents — nearly three times more than in 2016.
LAPPL News Watch
January 23, 2020
The city of Los Angeles saw a 10.3% increase in hate crimes from 2018 to 2019, according to new data shared at a Los Angeles Council Public Safety Committee meeting Wednesday.
Hate crimes have steadily increased in the city, rising 40% from 229 reported acts in 2016 to 322 in 2019, the Los Angeles Police Department announced at the meeting.
The largest increase in hate crimes were against the Muslim community, with a 150% increase from 2018 to 2019, according to LAPD data.
There was a 60.5% increase in anti-Jewish crimes, with the number rising from 43 in 2018 to 69 in 2019, the data showed.
Similarly, there were 68 hate crimes reported against African Americans in 2019 and 53 against gay men.
The new data also showed a 23.5% increase in hate crimes against transgender people in 2019, for a total of 21 reported incidents — nearly three times more than in 2016.
DID ARKANSAS EXECUTE AN INNOCENT MAN?
'The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions'
By Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
January 23, 2020
The day before Ledell Lee was executed on 20 April 2017, he talked to the BBC from death row. He said that while he could not prevent the state of Arkansas from killing him, he had a message for his executioners: “My dying words will always be, as it has been: ‘I am an innocent man’.”
Almost two years after Lee was strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs, it looks increasingly likely he was telling the truth: he went to his death an innocent man. New evidence has emerged that suggests Lee was not guilty of the brutal murder of a woman in 1993 for which his life was taken.
The deceased inmate’s sister Patricia Young lodged a lawsuit on Thursday with the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas, petitioning city authorities and the local police department in Jacksonville to release crime scene materials to her family.
The ACLU and the Innocence Project, who are investigating the case on the family’s behalf, believe state-of-the-art forensic examination of the materials, including DNA testing and fingerprint analysis, could definitively prove Arkansas did indeed execute an innocent man.
An 81-page filing in the lawsuit provides damning new evidence that key aspects of the prosecution case against Lee were deeply flawed. The complaint includes expert opinion from a number of world-leading specialists who find glaring errors in the way forensic science and other evidence was interpreted.
The lawsuit also includes a bombshell affidavit from Lee’s post-conviction attorney who admits to having struggled with substance abuse and addiction throughout the years in which he represented him.
Lawyers who prepared the filing, led by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU and the Innocence Project’s Nina Morrison, conclude: “It is now clear that the state’s forensic experts from trial misinterpreted the evidence in plain sight, and their flawed opinions were further distorted by the state in its zeal to convict [Lee] of the crime. The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions about the shaky evidentiary pillars on which the state executed Ledell Lee.”
Innocence has always been the achilles heel of America’s death penalty: how to justify judicially killing prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted. The question is far from academic: since 1973 no fewer than 167 death row inmates have been exonerated.
The most harrowing question is whether innocent prisoners have been executed before the flawed nature of their convictions emerged. In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest that innocent men have been put to death.
They include Cameron Todd Willingham executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly having caused a fire that killed his three young daughters. After the execution, further evidence emerged that conclusively showed that he could not have set the fire.
The Columbia Human Rights Law Review carried out a groundbreaking investigation in which it concluded Carlos DeLuna was innocent when he was executed – also by Texas – in 1989. The six-year study discovered that the convicted prisoner had almost certainly been confused with another man, a violent criminal who shared the name Carlos.
Now Ledell Lee looks as though he may be added to the grim rollcall of the wrongly executed. He relentlessly insisted he was not guilty from the moment he was arrested less than two hours after the brutally beaten body of Debra Reese was discovered in her home in Jacksonville on 9 February 1993.
The difficulties with the case against Lee began almost immediately. He was picked up nowhere near the crime scene and was not in possession of any possessions that could be linked to the break-in at Reese’s home.
The only evidence against him was inconclusive at best. There were two eyewitnesses, but they gave conflicting reports of the suspect’s identification.
The crime scene was shocking, with blood splattered over the walls and floor. Yet when Lee was arrested on the same day detectives could find no blood on his clothes or body including under his fingernails and nothing was found in a forensic search of his house.
Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that it took two trials to find Lee guilty and sentence him to death. The first trial collapsed after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
The ACLU and Innocence Project took up Lee’s case very late in the day having been asked to get involved shortly before his scheduled execution date. What they discovered when they opened the case records astounded even these experienced death penalty lawyers.
Very quickly they established there were major problems with the prosecution case against Lee. One area that especially concerned them was the inadequacy of Lee’s legal representation, both during the second trial in which defense attorneys inexplicably failed to call alibi witnesses that could have placed Lee elsewhere at the time of the murder, and in terms of the help he received at the appeal stage of his case.
At one post-conviction hearing, a lawyer working for the state of Arkansas approached the judge and raised concerns about Lee’s attorney, Craig Lambert. “Your honor, I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to ask that the court require him to submit to a drug test,” the counsel said. “He’s just not with us … His speech is slurred.”
In an affidavit obtained since Lee’s execution, signed by Lambert in October, the lawyer admits: “I was struggling with substance abuse and addiction in those years. I attended inpatient rehab. Ledell’s case was massive and I wasn’t in the best place personally to do what was necessary.”
Partly as a result of poor legal representation, terrible errors were made in Lee’s defense – both at trial and for years afterwards during the appeals process. The complaint goes into detail about these “deeply troubling” shortcomings.
One of the key examples relates to the marks found on the victim’s cheek. The state’s experts mistakenly interpreted the marks as having come from a pattern on a rug in Reese’s bedroom where she had been beaten to death with a wooden tire club.
In fact, the filing says, the pattern on the body’s cheek did not match that on the rug. Instead it was consistent with the murderer stomping on Reese’s face directly with his shoe.
That is critically significant because the shoes that Lee was wearing that day, which the state used during the trial as evidence against him, were incompatible in the composition of their soles with the injury pattern on Reese’s face.
To establish this point, an affidavit is provided by Michael Baden, former chief pathologist for New York who is recognized internationally as a leading forensic pathologist. He concludes: “The soles of Mr Lee’s sneakers have a much more closely spaced pattern than was transferred in the cheek imprint.”
That inconsistency is just one of many that were uncovered when Baden and four other specialists were invited to review the case.
Lee was executed in a flurry. When the state of Arkansas realized its supply of one of its three lethal drugs, the sedative midazolam, was about to expire at the end of 2017 with no hope of replacing it due to a global ban on medicines being sent to the US for use in executions, it went into overdrive.
It announced plans to kill eight prisoners in 11 days.
The declaration prompted revulsion from around the US and the world and accusations that the state was engaging in conveyor-belt executions. It was in that climate that attempts by the ACLU and the Innocence Project to have materials gathered at the crime scene of Reese’s murder released for DNA testing fell on deaf ears.
Though the lawyers presented a strong argument that DNA testing could be crucial in casting doubt on Lee’s conviction and pointing towards the real killer, a federal district court denied the request on grounds that Lee had “simply delayed too long” in asking for the materials.
It is too late now for Lee. But his lawyers hope that it is not too late to get to the bottom of the case posthumously.
The city of Jacksonville is in possession of a rich array of crime scene materials including “Negroid” hairs collected from Reese’s bedroom and fingernail scrapings likely to contain DNA from the actual killer – Lee or otherwise.
“This evidence can now be tested with state-of-the-art methods unavailable at trial, and compared to Mr Lee’s unique DNA profile,” the filing says.
After a welter of legal challenges, Arkansas succeeded in killing four prisoners in one week, including the first double execution held in the US in a single day since 2001. The first of the four to die was Ledell Lee.
Should Arkansas now agree belatedly to hand over the crime scene materials for testing, he may yet be proven to have been, just as he always said he was, an innocent man.
By Ed Pilkington
The Guardian
January 23, 2020
The day before Ledell Lee was executed on 20 April 2017, he talked to the BBC from death row. He said that while he could not prevent the state of Arkansas from killing him, he had a message for his executioners: “My dying words will always be, as it has been: ‘I am an innocent man’.”
Almost two years after Lee was strapped to a gurney and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs, it looks increasingly likely he was telling the truth: he went to his death an innocent man. New evidence has emerged that suggests Lee was not guilty of the brutal murder of a woman in 1993 for which his life was taken.
The deceased inmate’s sister Patricia Young lodged a lawsuit on Thursday with the circuit court of Pulaski county, Arkansas, petitioning city authorities and the local police department in Jacksonville to release crime scene materials to her family.
The ACLU and the Innocence Project, who are investigating the case on the family’s behalf, believe state-of-the-art forensic examination of the materials, including DNA testing and fingerprint analysis, could definitively prove Arkansas did indeed execute an innocent man.
An 81-page filing in the lawsuit provides damning new evidence that key aspects of the prosecution case against Lee were deeply flawed. The complaint includes expert opinion from a number of world-leading specialists who find glaring errors in the way forensic science and other evidence was interpreted.
The lawsuit also includes a bombshell affidavit from Lee’s post-conviction attorney who admits to having struggled with substance abuse and addiction throughout the years in which he represented him.
Lawyers who prepared the filing, led by Cassandra Stubbs of the ACLU and the Innocence Project’s Nina Morrison, conclude: “It is now clear that the state’s forensic experts from trial misinterpreted the evidence in plain sight, and their flawed opinions were further distorted by the state in its zeal to convict [Lee] of the crime. The new evidence raises deeply troubling questions about the shaky evidentiary pillars on which the state executed Ledell Lee.”
Innocence has always been the achilles heel of America’s death penalty: how to justify judicially killing prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted. The question is far from academic: since 1973 no fewer than 167 death row inmates have been exonerated.
The most harrowing question is whether innocent prisoners have been executed before the flawed nature of their convictions emerged. In recent years, there have been several cases that, with near certainty, suggest that innocent men have been put to death.
They include Cameron Todd Willingham executed in Texas in 2004 for allegedly having caused a fire that killed his three young daughters. After the execution, further evidence emerged that conclusively showed that he could not have set the fire.
The Columbia Human Rights Law Review carried out a groundbreaking investigation in which it concluded Carlos DeLuna was innocent when he was executed – also by Texas – in 1989. The six-year study discovered that the convicted prisoner had almost certainly been confused with another man, a violent criminal who shared the name Carlos.
Now Ledell Lee looks as though he may be added to the grim rollcall of the wrongly executed. He relentlessly insisted he was not guilty from the moment he was arrested less than two hours after the brutally beaten body of Debra Reese was discovered in her home in Jacksonville on 9 February 1993.
The difficulties with the case against Lee began almost immediately. He was picked up nowhere near the crime scene and was not in possession of any possessions that could be linked to the break-in at Reese’s home.
The only evidence against him was inconclusive at best. There were two eyewitnesses, but they gave conflicting reports of the suspect’s identification.
The crime scene was shocking, with blood splattered over the walls and floor. Yet when Lee was arrested on the same day detectives could find no blood on his clothes or body including under his fingernails and nothing was found in a forensic search of his house.
Given the paucity of evidence, it is not surprising that it took two trials to find Lee guilty and sentence him to death. The first trial collapsed after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.
The ACLU and Innocence Project took up Lee’s case very late in the day having been asked to get involved shortly before his scheduled execution date. What they discovered when they opened the case records astounded even these experienced death penalty lawyers.
Very quickly they established there were major problems with the prosecution case against Lee. One area that especially concerned them was the inadequacy of Lee’s legal representation, both during the second trial in which defense attorneys inexplicably failed to call alibi witnesses that could have placed Lee elsewhere at the time of the murder, and in terms of the help he received at the appeal stage of his case.
At one post-conviction hearing, a lawyer working for the state of Arkansas approached the judge and raised concerns about Lee’s attorney, Craig Lambert. “Your honor, I don’t do this lightly, but I’m going to ask that the court require him to submit to a drug test,” the counsel said. “He’s just not with us … His speech is slurred.”
In an affidavit obtained since Lee’s execution, signed by Lambert in October, the lawyer admits: “I was struggling with substance abuse and addiction in those years. I attended inpatient rehab. Ledell’s case was massive and I wasn’t in the best place personally to do what was necessary.”
Partly as a result of poor legal representation, terrible errors were made in Lee’s defense – both at trial and for years afterwards during the appeals process. The complaint goes into detail about these “deeply troubling” shortcomings.
One of the key examples relates to the marks found on the victim’s cheek. The state’s experts mistakenly interpreted the marks as having come from a pattern on a rug in Reese’s bedroom where she had been beaten to death with a wooden tire club.
In fact, the filing says, the pattern on the body’s cheek did not match that on the rug. Instead it was consistent with the murderer stomping on Reese’s face directly with his shoe.
That is critically significant because the shoes that Lee was wearing that day, which the state used during the trial as evidence against him, were incompatible in the composition of their soles with the injury pattern on Reese’s face.
To establish this point, an affidavit is provided by Michael Baden, former chief pathologist for New York who is recognized internationally as a leading forensic pathologist. He concludes: “The soles of Mr Lee’s sneakers have a much more closely spaced pattern than was transferred in the cheek imprint.”
That inconsistency is just one of many that were uncovered when Baden and four other specialists were invited to review the case.
Lee was executed in a flurry. When the state of Arkansas realized its supply of one of its three lethal drugs, the sedative midazolam, was about to expire at the end of 2017 with no hope of replacing it due to a global ban on medicines being sent to the US for use in executions, it went into overdrive.
It announced plans to kill eight prisoners in 11 days.
The declaration prompted revulsion from around the US and the world and accusations that the state was engaging in conveyor-belt executions. It was in that climate that attempts by the ACLU and the Innocence Project to have materials gathered at the crime scene of Reese’s murder released for DNA testing fell on deaf ears.
Though the lawyers presented a strong argument that DNA testing could be crucial in casting doubt on Lee’s conviction and pointing towards the real killer, a federal district court denied the request on grounds that Lee had “simply delayed too long” in asking for the materials.
It is too late now for Lee. But his lawyers hope that it is not too late to get to the bottom of the case posthumously.
The city of Jacksonville is in possession of a rich array of crime scene materials including “Negroid” hairs collected from Reese’s bedroom and fingernail scrapings likely to contain DNA from the actual killer – Lee or otherwise.
“This evidence can now be tested with state-of-the-art methods unavailable at trial, and compared to Mr Lee’s unique DNA profile,” the filing says.
After a welter of legal challenges, Arkansas succeeded in killing four prisoners in one week, including the first double execution held in the US in a single day since 2001. The first of the four to die was Ledell Lee.
Should Arkansas now agree belatedly to hand over the crime scene materials for testing, he may yet be proven to have been, just as he always said he was, an innocent man.
IMPEACHMENT OF TRUMP IS A ‘JEW COUP’ AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BETTER WAKE UP TO IT
White House Under Fire for Credentialing Anti-Semitic TruNews, Which Called Trump Impeachment a ‘Jew Coup’
By Joe DePaolo
Mediaite
January 22, 2020
The White House is coming under intense, bipartisan criticism for issuing press credentials to TruNews — a far-right outlet which has a history of blatant anti-Semitism.
In footage flagged by Right Wing Watch, TruNews founder Rick Wiles — along with correspondents Doc Burkhart and Edward Szall — was seen broadcasting live from Davos, Switzerland, site of the World Economic Fourm. CNN’s Jake Tapper confirmed that TruNews was credentialed by the White House.
Wiles, during a broadcast in November, referred to the impeachment of President Donald Trump as a “Jew coup.”
“That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda,” Wiles said. “This ‘impeach Trump’ effort is a Jew coup and the American people better wake up to it really fast because this thing is moving now toward a vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate. We could have a trial before Christmas. This country could be in civil war at Christmastime. Members of the U.S. military are going to have to take a stand just like they did in the 1860s with the Civil War. They are going to have to decide: are you fighting for the North or the South?”
The TruNews founder has also previous called Barack Obama “a devil from hell” and accused him of “spiritually sodomiz[ing]” America. Wiles also claimed the Las Vegas shooting massacre was carried out by a global cabal comprised of “gay/lesbian Nazi[s]”
Nonetheless, the White House has continued to give him press credentials. And back in March, Donald Trump Jr. participated in an interview with them — although a spokesman later denied that Trump Jr. knew the affiliation of who he had spoken with
The condemnation has been swift, and it has come from both sides of the aisle.
EDITOR’S NOTE; Trump complains all the time about fake news. Yet the White House grants press credentials to a known purveyor of fake news and an anti-Semitic one at that.
Here is the TrueNews mission statement:
Reporting the Countdown to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ
TruNews is the world’s leading news source that reports, analyzes, and comments on global events and trends with a conservative, orthodox Christian worldview. Our vision is to build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news, events, and trends while giving respect and honor to Christians of all major denominations — Evangelical, Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic, and Protestant.
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti–Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media.
Question: Could the granting of press credentials to TrueNews amount to a courtship of religious voters by Trump?
By Joe DePaolo
Mediaite
January 22, 2020
The White House is coming under intense, bipartisan criticism for issuing press credentials to TruNews — a far-right outlet which has a history of blatant anti-Semitism.
In footage flagged by Right Wing Watch, TruNews founder Rick Wiles — along with correspondents Doc Burkhart and Edward Szall — was seen broadcasting live from Davos, Switzerland, site of the World Economic Fourm. CNN’s Jake Tapper confirmed that TruNews was credentialed by the White House.
Wiles, during a broadcast in November, referred to the impeachment of President Donald Trump as a “Jew coup.”
“That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda,” Wiles said. “This ‘impeach Trump’ effort is a Jew coup and the American people better wake up to it really fast because this thing is moving now toward a vote in the House and then a trial in the Senate. We could have a trial before Christmas. This country could be in civil war at Christmastime. Members of the U.S. military are going to have to take a stand just like they did in the 1860s with the Civil War. They are going to have to decide: are you fighting for the North or the South?”
The TruNews founder has also previous called Barack Obama “a devil from hell” and accused him of “spiritually sodomiz[ing]” America. Wiles also claimed the Las Vegas shooting massacre was carried out by a global cabal comprised of “gay/lesbian Nazi[s]”
Nonetheless, the White House has continued to give him press credentials. And back in March, Donald Trump Jr. participated in an interview with them — although a spokesman later denied that Trump Jr. knew the affiliation of who he had spoken with
The condemnation has been swift, and it has come from both sides of the aisle.
EDITOR’S NOTE; Trump complains all the time about fake news. Yet the White House grants press credentials to a known purveyor of fake news and an anti-Semitic one at that.
Here is the TrueNews mission statement:
Reporting the Countdown to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ
TruNews is the world’s leading news source that reports, analyzes, and comments on global events and trends with a conservative, orthodox Christian worldview. Our vision is to build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news, events, and trends while giving respect and honor to Christians of all major denominations — Evangelical, Orthodox, Anglican, Catholic, and Protestant.
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti–Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media.
Question: Could the granting of press credentials to TrueNews amount to a courtship of religious voters by Trump?
Thursday, January 23, 2020
PIERS SHREDS THE HILDEBEAST FOR HER ‘SAVAGE ASSAULT’ ON BERNIE AND THE DEMS FOR MAKING TRUMP THE MOST UNFAIRLY ATTACKED PRESIDENT IN HISTORY
President Trump’s got Davos cheering the US economy, Hillary beating up a socialist heading the Dem polls, and an Impeachment farce heading towards another big win for him. No wonder he’s laughing his way back to the White House
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
January 22, 2020
‘Nobody likes him,’ rages Hillary Clinton in a new documentary film. ‘Nobody wants to work with him. He gets nothing done.’
She expanded on her vicious personal attack in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: ‘It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters….and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.’
She concluded: ‘I think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, degrading behavior that we’ve seen… it’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.’
Wow.
Even by Hillary’s standards, this was a savage assault on a man she clearly believes is an absolute disgrace and shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more withering anti-endorsement and I imagine it may well end up being used in 2020 Election attack ads.
There’s just one problem…
She wasn’t talking, as you may have assumed, about Donald Trump.
She was talking about Bernie Sanders, a fellow Democrat and the man who is now leading the polls to be the party’s official nominee.
It’s hard to imagine a more glorious bone for President Trump to delightedly gnaw on with his KFC as he flies back home today from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Here’s the last Democrat he faced – and beat - in an election ripping apart someone who may be the next one, in language so harsh it makes even Trump look like a linguistic choirboy.
And Hillary’s brutal takedown of Bernie comes just days after millions of TV viewers watched another presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren, furiously harangue him at the end of a CNN debate for saying she lied about her claim that he told her no woman could be elected president.
It’s staggering to see the Democrats eat each other alive like this at the start of Election year.
But then this is a party that seems to specialize in acts of spectacular self-harm.
Take Trump’s Impeachment trial that’s just begun in the Senate.
It’s already descended into such a pathetic, petty, partisan farce that Chief Justice John Roberts had to warn both sides to stop behaving like squabbling children as they branded each other traitors and liars in unedifying late-night slanging matches.
Yet what is the point of it at all?
Everyone already knows the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’
At some time in the next two weeks, Trump’s going to be acquitted by a Republican majority Senate that has absolutely zero intention of bowing to what they see as a purely political attempt to unseat their President.
So, this is all a complete waste of time.
But worse than that, from a Democrat perspective, it’s going to hand their sworn enemy a gigantic vote-boosting win political victory just as they move into caucus game mode for the 2020 election.
I can see Trump now, right after the Senate announces its verdict, making a celebratory speech from the Oval Office.
He’ll brand the whole thing a ‘witch-hunt’ and ‘fake news’, and point to it as further ‘evidence’ that he is the most unfairly attacked president in history.
Now, none of this will have anything to do with the reality which is that Trump behaved very badly over the Ukraine scandal.
As I’ve said many times, his conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky was a stupendously dumb thing to do, especially coming so soon after he was cleared by Special Counsel Mueller of colluding with Russia to fix the 2016 Election.
For the President of the United States to ask a foreign leader to investigate his main domestic political opponent, Joe Biden, was unquestionably an abuse of his power.
But I’ve never felt it reached the very high bar for impeachment, which requires one of these four criteria: ‘Treason, Bribery or other high crimes and Misdemeanors.’
Not least because what Trump is accused of doing – denying Ukraine $400 million in military US aid unless it formally investigated Joe Biden for alleged corruption while he was Vice-President – never actually happened.
The aid WAS given, albeit later than originally intended, and NO such investigation into Biden was ever launched.
So, if there was any kind of ‘quid pro quo’ deal, it never materialized.
But even without the fire, there’s enough grubby smoke blowing around Trump’s actions to warrant a firm reprimand.
That, though, is all it should have been.
For the Democrats to pursue an impeachment they know they can’t win is mind-blowingly stupid politics.
And they will find out just how mind-blowing when Trump embarks on his lengthy victory tour and rubs their noses in it.
The President will be sitting on Air Force One now, basking in the joyous double whammy of his opponents destroying each other, and severely damaging their election hopes with a D.O.A. impeachment.
He’ll be even more emboldened by what happened in Davos, where the undeniably strong performance of the U.S. economy, including record job numbers and stock market highs, was met with widespread approval and admiration by a crowd who in previous years have been rather sniffy towards all things Trump.
Ironically, it was a Ukranian oligarch and politician who best summed up the mood of many delegates to Trump’s claim that America was experiencing an ‘economic boom’ that was ‘nothing short of spectacular'.
‘It was a speech of a country’s leader,’ said Vadym Novynskyi. ‘This is actually what we lack in Ukraine… so our country would demonstrate great results like Mr Trump has just demonstrated.’
Of course, being Donald Trump, he wasn’t content to ride the wave of a well-received speech and proceeded to conduct a lengthy free-wheeling press conference today that will override many positive headlines he may have got.
But overall, I’d say this has been a brilliant 24 hours for him.
I don’t know what a state of Utopia feels like for Trump, but it’s not hard to imagine it involves his opponents tearing themselves to pieces, an ardent old socialist roaring into the lead for Democrat nominee, the purring U.S. economy being lauded by the world’s top business brains, and an Impeachment trial circus that is 100% guaranteed to end in a big win for him just as election fever hots up.
The President’s laughing all the way back to the White House.
By Piers Morgan
Daily Mail
January 22, 2020
‘Nobody likes him,’ rages Hillary Clinton in a new documentary film. ‘Nobody wants to work with him. He gets nothing done.’
She expanded on her vicious personal attack in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: ‘It’s not only him, it’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent supporters….and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women.’
She concluded: ‘I think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, degrading behavior that we’ve seen… it’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.’
Wow.
Even by Hillary’s standards, this was a savage assault on a man she clearly believes is an absolute disgrace and shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House.
In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more withering anti-endorsement and I imagine it may well end up being used in 2020 Election attack ads.
There’s just one problem…
She wasn’t talking, as you may have assumed, about Donald Trump.
She was talking about Bernie Sanders, a fellow Democrat and the man who is now leading the polls to be the party’s official nominee.
It’s hard to imagine a more glorious bone for President Trump to delightedly gnaw on with his KFC as he flies back home today from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Here’s the last Democrat he faced – and beat - in an election ripping apart someone who may be the next one, in language so harsh it makes even Trump look like a linguistic choirboy.
And Hillary’s brutal takedown of Bernie comes just days after millions of TV viewers watched another presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren, furiously harangue him at the end of a CNN debate for saying she lied about her claim that he told her no woman could be elected president.
It’s staggering to see the Democrats eat each other alive like this at the start of Election year.
But then this is a party that seems to specialize in acts of spectacular self-harm.
Take Trump’s Impeachment trial that’s just begun in the Senate.
It’s already descended into such a pathetic, petty, partisan farce that Chief Justice John Roberts had to warn both sides to stop behaving like squabbling children as they branded each other traitors and liars in unedifying late-night slanging matches.
Yet what is the point of it at all?
Everyone already knows the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’
At some time in the next two weeks, Trump’s going to be acquitted by a Republican majority Senate that has absolutely zero intention of bowing to what they see as a purely political attempt to unseat their President.
So, this is all a complete waste of time.
But worse than that, from a Democrat perspective, it’s going to hand their sworn enemy a gigantic vote-boosting win political victory just as they move into caucus game mode for the 2020 election.
I can see Trump now, right after the Senate announces its verdict, making a celebratory speech from the Oval Office.
He’ll brand the whole thing a ‘witch-hunt’ and ‘fake news’, and point to it as further ‘evidence’ that he is the most unfairly attacked president in history.
Now, none of this will have anything to do with the reality which is that Trump behaved very badly over the Ukraine scandal.
As I’ve said many times, his conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky was a stupendously dumb thing to do, especially coming so soon after he was cleared by Special Counsel Mueller of colluding with Russia to fix the 2016 Election.
For the President of the United States to ask a foreign leader to investigate his main domestic political opponent, Joe Biden, was unquestionably an abuse of his power.
But I’ve never felt it reached the very high bar for impeachment, which requires one of these four criteria: ‘Treason, Bribery or other high crimes and Misdemeanors.’
Not least because what Trump is accused of doing – denying Ukraine $400 million in military US aid unless it formally investigated Joe Biden for alleged corruption while he was Vice-President – never actually happened.
The aid WAS given, albeit later than originally intended, and NO such investigation into Biden was ever launched.
So, if there was any kind of ‘quid pro quo’ deal, it never materialized.
But even without the fire, there’s enough grubby smoke blowing around Trump’s actions to warrant a firm reprimand.
That, though, is all it should have been.
For the Democrats to pursue an impeachment they know they can’t win is mind-blowingly stupid politics.
And they will find out just how mind-blowing when Trump embarks on his lengthy victory tour and rubs their noses in it.
The President will be sitting on Air Force One now, basking in the joyous double whammy of his opponents destroying each other, and severely damaging their election hopes with a D.O.A. impeachment.
He’ll be even more emboldened by what happened in Davos, where the undeniably strong performance of the U.S. economy, including record job numbers and stock market highs, was met with widespread approval and admiration by a crowd who in previous years have been rather sniffy towards all things Trump.
Ironically, it was a Ukranian oligarch and politician who best summed up the mood of many delegates to Trump’s claim that America was experiencing an ‘economic boom’ that was ‘nothing short of spectacular'.
‘It was a speech of a country’s leader,’ said Vadym Novynskyi. ‘This is actually what we lack in Ukraine… so our country would demonstrate great results like Mr Trump has just demonstrated.’
Of course, being Donald Trump, he wasn’t content to ride the wave of a well-received speech and proceeded to conduct a lengthy free-wheeling press conference today that will override many positive headlines he may have got.
But overall, I’d say this has been a brilliant 24 hours for him.
I don’t know what a state of Utopia feels like for Trump, but it’s not hard to imagine it involves his opponents tearing themselves to pieces, an ardent old socialist roaring into the lead for Democrat nominee, the purring U.S. economy being lauded by the world’s top business brains, and an Impeachment trial circus that is 100% guaranteed to end in a big win for him just as election fever hots up.
The President’s laughing all the way back to the White House.
HILLARY BACKS BERNIE......SORT-OF
by Bob Walsh
Doing a very sharp 180 on Tuesday night HIllary backed away from an interview with THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER last Wednesday that strongly said that she would not support Bernie even if he is nominated. In the earlier statement she also went after the Bernie Bros, especially for their "relentless attacks on women." She also added that "nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he gets nothing done."
Obviously nobody really thinks that Hillary WANTS Bernie to get the nomination, but it does not do her or the party any good to have her appear as a churlish, shrewish psychobitch (even if that is her actual persona).
Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokeshole, asserted on her behalf that "we all need to work out heart out for the nominee,whoever that is, and @HillaryClinton, as usual, will be no excetion." Nobody noted if his nose grew longer or if monkeys were flying out of his ass when he tweeted it.
Doing a very sharp 180 on Tuesday night HIllary backed away from an interview with THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER last Wednesday that strongly said that she would not support Bernie even if he is nominated. In the earlier statement she also went after the Bernie Bros, especially for their "relentless attacks on women." She also added that "nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he gets nothing done."
Obviously nobody really thinks that Hillary WANTS Bernie to get the nomination, but it does not do her or the party any good to have her appear as a churlish, shrewish psychobitch (even if that is her actual persona).
Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokeshole, asserted on her behalf that "we all need to work out heart out for the nominee,whoever that is, and @HillaryClinton, as usual, will be no excetion." Nobody noted if his nose grew longer or if monkeys were flying out of his ass when he tweeted it.
MUST BE NICE AT TIMES TO BE A COMMIE DICTATOR
by Bob Walsh
The ChiComs are seriously bothered by the Corona Virus spreading. So they just slammed the city of Wuhan. It is larger than NY city. About 11 million people live there. Travel in and out of the city has been stopped and public transportation within the city has been curtailed.
Must be nice to not have to care what the peasants think. (In this case it is completely possible the ChiComs are right.)
The ChiComs are seriously bothered by the Corona Virus spreading. So they just slammed the city of Wuhan. It is larger than NY city. About 11 million people live there. Travel in and out of the city has been stopped and public transportation within the city has been curtailed.
Must be nice to not have to care what the peasants think. (In this case it is completely possible the ChiComs are right.)
SO, ARE YOU BORED SHITLESS YET?
by Bob Walsh
Are reruns of Gilligan's Island starting to look good to you after only one day of THE IMPEACHMENT SHOW? That's good, that means your brain has not yet turned completely to Oatmeal. There is still hope for you.
Are reruns of Gilligan's Island starting to look good to you after only one day of THE IMPEACHMENT SHOW? That's good, that means your brain has not yet turned completely to Oatmeal. There is still hope for you.
ROAD RAGE?
by Bob Walsh
I admit to not wild about the Prius. I do not, however, approve of killing people just for being in one.
On Sunday night about 1030 a Toyota Prius containing six teenage boys (how the hell did they manage that) was rammed off the road deliberately. Three of the boys died when the car hit a tree.
The wreck happened in Temescal Valley, in Riverside County, CA. The other driver, Anurag Chandra, 43, fled the scene but was taken into custody shortly after. They CHP offered no information on motive, but said they had no doubt it was intentional.
I admit to not wild about the Prius. I do not, however, approve of killing people just for being in one.
On Sunday night about 1030 a Toyota Prius containing six teenage boys (how the hell did they manage that) was rammed off the road deliberately. Three of the boys died when the car hit a tree.
The wreck happened in Temescal Valley, in Riverside County, CA. The other driver, Anurag Chandra, 43, fled the scene but was taken into custody shortly after. They CHP offered no information on motive, but said they had no doubt it was intentional.
UNDO OBAMA’S GENEROSITY AND MAKE THE MULLAHS RUN OUT OF MOOLAH
What If America Were to Take Out Iran’s Main Oil Refineries?
By Dov Fischer
Today, the greatest threat to our long-term security comes from Iran. (Honorable mention: our American-based Corrupt Journalist Corps.) If Iran’s mullahs aimed solely at driving other Muslim countries crazy, in an effort to make Shiite Islam regnant over Sunni or Wahhabi Islam, that would be their religious problem, none of our business anywhere in America except in Ilhan Omar’s anti-Jewish Somali district. The thing is, Iran is fixated on “Death to America,” and they are determined to create a nuclear bomb with intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them. In 1979 they took our embassy for 444 days into the 1981 Reagan inauguration, and they recently started up again. Yet, in the aftermath of the Qassem Soleimani elimination, something became unexpectedly more clear to many of us: They are trying at warp speed to get to the point that they can destroy us, but right now they actually are much weaker than many of us realized. Under the impact of the Trump Administration’s economic sanctions, the mullahs are breaking financially. They cannot afford a war. The mullahs are running out of moolah. And they are encountering enormous trouble at home.
The Corrupt Journalist Corps do not cover in our media the anti-government riots that take place in Iran, but I also watch an hour every night of news out of Israel on their Hebrew-language Kan Channel 11. For obvious reasons, they devote less time to Nancy Pelosi, Sanctuary Homelessness in San Francisco, and weekend shootings in Chicago — and more time to their survival issues, including nightly footage out of Iran. There is an entire segment of the Iran population that wants to take down the mullahs. Many of them long for the pre-Khomeini years of prosperity and comparative freedom. The Shah did have a terrible internal police force, the SAVAK, which so many of us detested reading about, but many of us now understand forty years later what he was dealing with. The indigenous Iranian population that wants to take down the mullahs includes an amalgam of those whose values yearn for what was, and others who do not share those values but want their country to stop bankrolling international terror adventurism that is bankrupting them at home by sending hundreds of millions of dollars to foment terror via the mullahs’ surrogates throughout the Mideast from Afghanistan to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria to Gaza. They are feeling it really hard in Iran. The sanctions are taking their toll, despite the disaster of Joe Biden and Obama having sent the mullahs between $55 billion and $150 billion, including $1.7 billion in cash, highlighted by the $400 million that Biden and Obama flew to them. As reported by CNN in the days before Trump:
President Barack Obama approved the $400 million transfer, which he had announced in January as part of the Iran nuclear deal. The money was flown into Iran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies as the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving claims at an international tribunal at The Hague over a failed arms deal under the time of the Shah.
That money that Joe Biden and Obama sent them went into funding the terror, the mayhem, the bombs, the nuclear development. It is a matter of semantics as to whether the cash was made payable to “Nuclear Weapons Account” or “Persian Rug Research and Development.” Money is fungible. Give me money to buy my kids Chanukah presents, and I have more money for groceries because otherwise I have to use some of the groceries money for presents. But the Trump sanctions are forcing Iran to cut back on funding international terror, and they are leaving less money at home. Under the sanctions, Iran’s economy was estimated by the International Monetary Fund to have contracted by 9.5 percent in 2019, while unemployment rose to 16.8 percent. Iran’s Brent Crude exports have dropped precipitously. The rial, Iran’s currency, has lost more than half its value. Inflation has risen from 9 percent to 35.7 percent.
The Iranian people are hurting very intensely, and they are rising up against the mullahs. And that leads me to wonder: What if we were to prepare now, upon the next Iranian provocation, to bomb to smithereens Iran’s main oil refineries in Abadan, Esfahan, Bandar-e Abbas, Tehran, Rak, and Tabriz? No boots on the ground. No adventures, no regime change from outside. Just a boost to those inside Iran who want to overthrow a medieval theocracy that is prepared to bring the whole world — and especially us — to Armageddon if they are not stopped. Yes, the first footage from Tehran will show the usual “Death to America!” demonstrations, as they did after Soleimani was eliminated. And then the impact will set in. There was a time when Hitler could have been stopped. Europe let it pass by appeasing him. A time right after World War II when Stalin could have been reined in. He was appeased with his Warsaw Bloc. When Mao could have been stopped. We passed.
The weakness of Iran’s response to Soleimani’s removal raises the question whether this is the time to raise the economic ante for Iranians to contemplate what half a century of the mullahs have wrought for them. And whether they would be happier with a government less intent on building nuclear weapons and exporting hundreds of millions to finance overseas terror, and more focused on feeding the citizenry at home.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an article that appeared in The American Spectator on January 12.
By Dov Fischer
Today, the greatest threat to our long-term security comes from Iran. (Honorable mention: our American-based Corrupt Journalist Corps.) If Iran’s mullahs aimed solely at driving other Muslim countries crazy, in an effort to make Shiite Islam regnant over Sunni or Wahhabi Islam, that would be their religious problem, none of our business anywhere in America except in Ilhan Omar’s anti-Jewish Somali district. The thing is, Iran is fixated on “Death to America,” and they are determined to create a nuclear bomb with intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them. In 1979 they took our embassy for 444 days into the 1981 Reagan inauguration, and they recently started up again. Yet, in the aftermath of the Qassem Soleimani elimination, something became unexpectedly more clear to many of us: They are trying at warp speed to get to the point that they can destroy us, but right now they actually are much weaker than many of us realized. Under the impact of the Trump Administration’s economic sanctions, the mullahs are breaking financially. They cannot afford a war. The mullahs are running out of moolah. And they are encountering enormous trouble at home.
The Corrupt Journalist Corps do not cover in our media the anti-government riots that take place in Iran, but I also watch an hour every night of news out of Israel on their Hebrew-language Kan Channel 11. For obvious reasons, they devote less time to Nancy Pelosi, Sanctuary Homelessness in San Francisco, and weekend shootings in Chicago — and more time to their survival issues, including nightly footage out of Iran. There is an entire segment of the Iran population that wants to take down the mullahs. Many of them long for the pre-Khomeini years of prosperity and comparative freedom. The Shah did have a terrible internal police force, the SAVAK, which so many of us detested reading about, but many of us now understand forty years later what he was dealing with. The indigenous Iranian population that wants to take down the mullahs includes an amalgam of those whose values yearn for what was, and others who do not share those values but want their country to stop bankrolling international terror adventurism that is bankrupting them at home by sending hundreds of millions of dollars to foment terror via the mullahs’ surrogates throughout the Mideast from Afghanistan to Yemen to Lebanon to Syria to Gaza. They are feeling it really hard in Iran. The sanctions are taking their toll, despite the disaster of Joe Biden and Obama having sent the mullahs between $55 billion and $150 billion, including $1.7 billion in cash, highlighted by the $400 million that Biden and Obama flew to them. As reported by CNN in the days before Trump:
President Barack Obama approved the $400 million transfer, which he had announced in January as part of the Iran nuclear deal. The money was flown into Iran on wooden pallets stacked with Swiss francs, euros and other currencies as the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement resolving claims at an international tribunal at The Hague over a failed arms deal under the time of the Shah.
That money that Joe Biden and Obama sent them went into funding the terror, the mayhem, the bombs, the nuclear development. It is a matter of semantics as to whether the cash was made payable to “Nuclear Weapons Account” or “Persian Rug Research and Development.” Money is fungible. Give me money to buy my kids Chanukah presents, and I have more money for groceries because otherwise I have to use some of the groceries money for presents. But the Trump sanctions are forcing Iran to cut back on funding international terror, and they are leaving less money at home. Under the sanctions, Iran’s economy was estimated by the International Monetary Fund to have contracted by 9.5 percent in 2019, while unemployment rose to 16.8 percent. Iran’s Brent Crude exports have dropped precipitously. The rial, Iran’s currency, has lost more than half its value. Inflation has risen from 9 percent to 35.7 percent.
The Iranian people are hurting very intensely, and they are rising up against the mullahs. And that leads me to wonder: What if we were to prepare now, upon the next Iranian provocation, to bomb to smithereens Iran’s main oil refineries in Abadan, Esfahan, Bandar-e Abbas, Tehran, Rak, and Tabriz? No boots on the ground. No adventures, no regime change from outside. Just a boost to those inside Iran who want to overthrow a medieval theocracy that is prepared to bring the whole world — and especially us — to Armageddon if they are not stopped. Yes, the first footage from Tehran will show the usual “Death to America!” demonstrations, as they did after Soleimani was eliminated. And then the impact will set in. There was a time when Hitler could have been stopped. Europe let it pass by appeasing him. A time right after World War II when Stalin could have been reined in. He was appeased with his Warsaw Bloc. When Mao could have been stopped. We passed.
The weakness of Iran’s response to Soleimani’s removal raises the question whether this is the time to raise the economic ante for Iranians to contemplate what half a century of the mullahs have wrought for them. And whether they would be happier with a government less intent on building nuclear weapons and exporting hundreds of millions to finance overseas terror, and more focused on feeding the citizenry at home.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an article that appeared in The American Spectator on January 12.
HOPE TULSI MAKES A HUGE DENT IN THE HILDEBEAST’S BANK ACCOUNT
Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton for defamation for calling her a “Russian Asset”
By Emily Saul
New York Post
January 22, 2020
Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has filed a defamation suit against Hillary Clinton for calling her a “Russian asset,” according to newly filed court papers.
“Tulsi Gabbard is running for President of the United States, a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain,” Wednesday’s Manhattan federal lawsuit reads. “In October 2019 — whether out of personal animus, political enmity, or fear of real change within a political party Clinton and her allies have long dominated — Clinton lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard. She did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent.”
The former secretary of state has refused to walk back comments she made during an Oct. 17 appearance on a podcast, in which she referred to the Hawaii congresswoman as a “favorite of the Russians.”
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far,” Clinton told “Campaign HQ” host and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
“And, that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset,” added Clinton.
The next day, when asked to clarify the comment, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill doubled down, allegedly telling reporters “If the nesting doll fits.”
“This is not some outlandish claim. This is reality,” Merrill added.
The lawsuit goes on to claim that Clinton demonstrated actual malice — and says the failed Democratic presidential candidate has had it in for Gabbard since the congresswoman endorsed Clinton rival Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Gabbard is suing for an unspecified monetary amount, citing defamation claims.
“Tulsi is not a Russian asset. No one — Russia or anyone else — controls her or her presidential campaign. Instead, Tulsi is a loyal American servant, declaring her allegiance to the United States of America both as a soldier and as a member of Congress,” read the court papers.
A Clinton spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
__________
TULSI IS SUING HILLARY
by Bob Walsh
Tulsi Gabbard has filed a lawsuit for $50 million alleging defamation against Hillary Clinton for describing her as a "Russian Asset" in public.
Ms. Gabbard will find that, as a practical matter, it is ALMOST impossible for a public figure, especially a voluntary public figure such as a politician, to sue for defamation.
If I recall correctly the plaintiff must prove that the statement was false, that the defendant knew it was false and made the statement anyway with malicious intent.
Much of the basis of the suit is the assertion that Hillary was personally pissed because Gabbard endorsed Crazy Bernie last time around.
I have only heard of one such suit being successful in recent years (though there may well be others). That was a race in Nevada about five or six years back, the details of which I don't recall.
Nevertheless I wish Ms. Gabbard good luck.
By Emily Saul
New York Post
January 22, 2020
Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has filed a defamation suit against Hillary Clinton for calling her a “Russian asset,” according to newly filed court papers.
“Tulsi Gabbard is running for President of the United States, a position Clinton has long coveted, but has not been able to attain,” Wednesday’s Manhattan federal lawsuit reads. “In October 2019 — whether out of personal animus, political enmity, or fear of real change within a political party Clinton and her allies have long dominated — Clinton lied about her perceived rival Tulsi Gabbard. She did so publicly, unambiguously, and with obvious malicious intent.”
The former secretary of state has refused to walk back comments she made during an Oct. 17 appearance on a podcast, in which she referred to the Hawaii congresswoman as a “favorite of the Russians.”
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far,” Clinton told “Campaign HQ” host and former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
“And, that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset,” added Clinton.
The next day, when asked to clarify the comment, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill doubled down, allegedly telling reporters “If the nesting doll fits.”
“This is not some outlandish claim. This is reality,” Merrill added.
The lawsuit goes on to claim that Clinton demonstrated actual malice — and says the failed Democratic presidential candidate has had it in for Gabbard since the congresswoman endorsed Clinton rival Bernie Sanders in 2016.
Gabbard is suing for an unspecified monetary amount, citing defamation claims.
“Tulsi is not a Russian asset. No one — Russia or anyone else — controls her or her presidential campaign. Instead, Tulsi is a loyal American servant, declaring her allegiance to the United States of America both as a soldier and as a member of Congress,” read the court papers.
A Clinton spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
__________
TULSI IS SUING HILLARY
by Bob Walsh
Tulsi Gabbard has filed a lawsuit for $50 million alleging defamation against Hillary Clinton for describing her as a "Russian Asset" in public.
Ms. Gabbard will find that, as a practical matter, it is ALMOST impossible for a public figure, especially a voluntary public figure such as a politician, to sue for defamation.
If I recall correctly the plaintiff must prove that the statement was false, that the defendant knew it was false and made the statement anyway with malicious intent.
Much of the basis of the suit is the assertion that Hillary was personally pissed because Gabbard endorsed Crazy Bernie last time around.
I have only heard of one such suit being successful in recent years (though there may well be others). That was a race in Nevada about five or six years back, the details of which I don't recall.
Nevertheless I wish Ms. Gabbard good luck.
PROOF THAT EVERY L.A. CITY COUNCIL MEMBER IS A KOOK OR HIGH ON POT
L.A. City Council Votes To Ask MLB To Award 2017, 2018 World Series Titles To Dodgers
LAPPL News Watch
January 22, 2020
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask the commissioner of baseball to award the Dodgers the 2017 and 2018 World Series titles after Major League Baseball punished the Houston Astros for cheating and continues to investigate the Boston Red Sox for possible misconduct.
The resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmen Gil Cedillo and Paul Koretz, originated after Commissioner Rob Manfred released a nine-page report on Jan. 13 detailing how the Astros used technology in violation of baseball rules to steal opposing teams’ pitching signs during the 2017 season.
Both councilmen said the resolution is symbolic and represents a larger ideological fight. With President Trump impeached and wealthy families facing charges in the college admissions scandal, Koretz said he hopes the resolution sets an example that cheating shouldn’t be tolerated.
EDITOR’S NOTE: What a crock of shit! Instead of wasting time on a meaningless resolution, the city council’s time could have been better spent on trying to solve L.A.’s huge homeless problem.
The council members knew there is no way in hell the commissioner would ever consider awarding the championships to the Dodgers. Even though they were victims of cheating, the Dodgers could very well have lost to the Astros and Red Sox without the foul play.
And that crap about not tolerating cheating … this is not Japan with its traditional Bushido code of honor. Cheating is the American way! You can bet your life that each of those L.A. city council members has cheated, and more than once, in their lives.
LAPPL News Watch
January 22, 2020
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ask the commissioner of baseball to award the Dodgers the 2017 and 2018 World Series titles after Major League Baseball punished the Houston Astros for cheating and continues to investigate the Boston Red Sox for possible misconduct.
The resolution, co-sponsored by Councilmen Gil Cedillo and Paul Koretz, originated after Commissioner Rob Manfred released a nine-page report on Jan. 13 detailing how the Astros used technology in violation of baseball rules to steal opposing teams’ pitching signs during the 2017 season.
Both councilmen said the resolution is symbolic and represents a larger ideological fight. With President Trump impeached and wealthy families facing charges in the college admissions scandal, Koretz said he hopes the resolution sets an example that cheating shouldn’t be tolerated.
EDITOR’S NOTE: What a crock of shit! Instead of wasting time on a meaningless resolution, the city council’s time could have been better spent on trying to solve L.A.’s huge homeless problem.
The council members knew there is no way in hell the commissioner would ever consider awarding the championships to the Dodgers. Even though they were victims of cheating, the Dodgers could very well have lost to the Astros and Red Sox without the foul play.
And that crap about not tolerating cheating … this is not Japan with its traditional Bushido code of honor. Cheating is the American way! You can bet your life that each of those L.A. city council members has cheated, and more than once, in their lives.
TAKE A BITE OUT OF CRIME? NO, FLORIDA WOMAN TOOK A BITE OUT OF COP’S LEG
Palm Coast woman bites, injures deputy during wild arrest
By Matt Bruce
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
January 21, 2020
PALM COAST, Fla. -- Flagler County sheriff’s deputies are known to take a bite out of crime every day. But during a recent arrest, a Palm Coast woman bit a deputy and he wound up in the hospital.
Cherie Saunders, 38, of Brookside Lane, was arrested Friday night following reports that she had slapped one of her housemates. She began cursing at deputies and became unruly while being taken into custody, biting one of the arresting deputies on the leg.
Deputies charged Saunders with domestic battery, battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence-aggravated assault. She was released from the Flagler County jail on Saturday after posting $10,000 bail, booking records show.
According to an arrest report, deputies responded to Saunders’ home Friday night after her boyfriend’s 21-year-old son, reported that she slapped him during an argument. The 21-year-old said he had confronted Saunders for being too rough with his 10-year-old brother when she and the child were horse playing. He said she began yelling at him and slapped him.
Deputies described Saunders as hostile, agitated and uncooperative when they encountered her in the driveway outside the home. She was barefoot and red-faced, her make-up was smeared, and officers indicated she reeked of alcohol, according to reports.
She became enraged when officers asked if her 6-year-old daughter was in the home and she tried to close her garage door while two deputies were standing in the doorway. She then began screaming in one officer’s face, prompting a struggle between her and at least three deputies who were attempting to restrain her, reports state.
During the struggle, Saunders kicked and screamed at officers as they tried to handcuff her and she bit one of the officers on the right calf.
An agency release indicates Saunders refused to unlock her bite on the deputy’s leg until another officer pulled her off. Reports indicate the officer used a defensive maneuver described as a “hollow behind the jaw.”
Saunders’ bite broke the officer’s skin and left a two-inch mark on his calf, which immediately started swelling and bruising. Moments after the scuffle, the bitten deputy, whose name was redacted from reports, said he felt ill and and he lost consciousness seconds later. The officer was taken to the hospital for medical evaluation.
Court records show Saunders pleaded not guilty to her slate of charges during her first appearance Tuesday.
She was also charged with resisting arrest in May 2018 stemming from an incident at Tortugas in Flagler Beach, according to court documents. Police arrested her after she was found lying in grass outside the bar, and later cursed at one of the managers who refused to allow her back in, according to a charging affidavit. The charge was later dismissed by prosecutors, court records show.
By Matt Bruce
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
January 21, 2020
PALM COAST, Fla. -- Flagler County sheriff’s deputies are known to take a bite out of crime every day. But during a recent arrest, a Palm Coast woman bit a deputy and he wound up in the hospital.
Cherie Saunders, 38, of Brookside Lane, was arrested Friday night following reports that she had slapped one of her housemates. She began cursing at deputies and became unruly while being taken into custody, biting one of the arresting deputies on the leg.
Deputies charged Saunders with domestic battery, battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest with violence-aggravated assault. She was released from the Flagler County jail on Saturday after posting $10,000 bail, booking records show.
According to an arrest report, deputies responded to Saunders’ home Friday night after her boyfriend’s 21-year-old son, reported that she slapped him during an argument. The 21-year-old said he had confronted Saunders for being too rough with his 10-year-old brother when she and the child were horse playing. He said she began yelling at him and slapped him.
Deputies described Saunders as hostile, agitated and uncooperative when they encountered her in the driveway outside the home. She was barefoot and red-faced, her make-up was smeared, and officers indicated she reeked of alcohol, according to reports.
She became enraged when officers asked if her 6-year-old daughter was in the home and she tried to close her garage door while two deputies were standing in the doorway. She then began screaming in one officer’s face, prompting a struggle between her and at least three deputies who were attempting to restrain her, reports state.
During the struggle, Saunders kicked and screamed at officers as they tried to handcuff her and she bit one of the officers on the right calf.
An agency release indicates Saunders refused to unlock her bite on the deputy’s leg until another officer pulled her off. Reports indicate the officer used a defensive maneuver described as a “hollow behind the jaw.”
Saunders’ bite broke the officer’s skin and left a two-inch mark on his calf, which immediately started swelling and bruising. Moments after the scuffle, the bitten deputy, whose name was redacted from reports, said he felt ill and and he lost consciousness seconds later. The officer was taken to the hospital for medical evaluation.
Court records show Saunders pleaded not guilty to her slate of charges during her first appearance Tuesday.
She was also charged with resisting arrest in May 2018 stemming from an incident at Tortugas in Flagler Beach, according to court documents. Police arrested her after she was found lying in grass outside the bar, and later cursed at one of the managers who refused to allow her back in, according to a charging affidavit. The charge was later dismissed by prosecutors, court records show.
FAMILY ASSIATANCE UNIT POLICE LIEUTENANT MAY BE IN NEED OF FAMILY ASSISTANCE
NYPD officers stripped of their guns and badges for alleged on-the-job bathroom sex romp
By Tina Moore and Kenneth Garger
New York Post
January 21, 2020
A half-dressed female NYPD lieutenant was caught in a drunken, on-the-job sex romp with a male sergeant at a Manhattan police building Saturday night, sources said.
Lt. Brandi Sanchez, 39, and Sgt. Lambros Gavalas, 46, were stripped of their guns and badges for the alleged rendezvous in a department bathroom inside a building used by NYPD personnel at 90 Church St., the sources said.
The 39-year-old lieutenant lives with and has a child with the commanding officer of Brooklyn’s 79th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Timothy Skretch — though that’s not the man she was allegedly caught with, sources said.
The NYPD did not deny the allegations and said the incident is under internal review.
A separate NYPD sergeant first noticed Sanchez, who is assigned to the Family Assistance Section, and Gavalas “occupying a closed stall, apparently engaged in what were believed to be sexual interactions,” according to a department report obtained by The Post.
The pair were caught five minutes before Sanchez’s shift was scheduled to end, the report says. Family Assistance Section has offices in the Tribeca building.
The sergeant left the restroom and reported what she witnessed to another department lieutenant, who entered the bathroom and told the couple to scram.
When the officers who found the couple returned to the bathroom shortly after, the alleged lovers were still in the stall, the report noted.
At that point, the lieutenant again ordered them to leave and Gavalas walked out without saying a word.
Once he left the bathroom, the female sergeant entered the adjacent stall, climbed up on a toilet seat and peered over a partition to find a still-exposed Sanchez.
Sanchez identified herself as a cop as she finally left the stall, wearing a black coat, burgundy dress and black shoes.
She was not armed at the time of the alleged rendezvous and was “unable to be interviewed due to her compromised mental state,” the department record states.
Sanchez and her paramour were both placed on modified duty, sources said.
Sanchez could not immediately be reached for comment.
The unit where she is assigned offers peer counseling to members of the department experiencing stress on the job.
By Tina Moore and Kenneth Garger
New York Post
January 21, 2020
A half-dressed female NYPD lieutenant was caught in a drunken, on-the-job sex romp with a male sergeant at a Manhattan police building Saturday night, sources said.
Lt. Brandi Sanchez, 39, and Sgt. Lambros Gavalas, 46, were stripped of their guns and badges for the alleged rendezvous in a department bathroom inside a building used by NYPD personnel at 90 Church St., the sources said.
The 39-year-old lieutenant lives with and has a child with the commanding officer of Brooklyn’s 79th Precinct, Deputy Inspector Timothy Skretch — though that’s not the man she was allegedly caught with, sources said.
The NYPD did not deny the allegations and said the incident is under internal review.
A separate NYPD sergeant first noticed Sanchez, who is assigned to the Family Assistance Section, and Gavalas “occupying a closed stall, apparently engaged in what were believed to be sexual interactions,” according to a department report obtained by The Post.
The pair were caught five minutes before Sanchez’s shift was scheduled to end, the report says. Family Assistance Section has offices in the Tribeca building.
The sergeant left the restroom and reported what she witnessed to another department lieutenant, who entered the bathroom and told the couple to scram.
When the officers who found the couple returned to the bathroom shortly after, the alleged lovers were still in the stall, the report noted.
At that point, the lieutenant again ordered them to leave and Gavalas walked out without saying a word.
Once he left the bathroom, the female sergeant entered the adjacent stall, climbed up on a toilet seat and peered over a partition to find a still-exposed Sanchez.
Sanchez identified herself as a cop as she finally left the stall, wearing a black coat, burgundy dress and black shoes.
She was not armed at the time of the alleged rendezvous and was “unable to be interviewed due to her compromised mental state,” the department record states.
Sanchez and her paramour were both placed on modified duty, sources said.
Sanchez could not immediately be reached for comment.
The unit where she is assigned offers peer counseling to members of the department experiencing stress on the job.
FORMER MEXICAN SECURITY CHIEF CHARGED WITH TAKING TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN NARCOTRAFFICKING BRIBES
Indicted former Mexico security chief not interested in plea bargaining
Associated Press
January 21, 2020
NEW YORK, NY — Mexico’s former top security official is “very much looking forward” to fighting charges he took tens of millions of dollars in drug-money bribes to protect Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, a defense attorney said Tuesday.
Genaro Garcia Luna “adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes” and is not interested in negotiating a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, defense attorney Cesar de Castro told reporters.
“He intends to go to trial,” de Castro said, adding Garcia Luna is in “very good spirits” .
De Castro’s remarks followed a hearing in Brooklyn federal court in which U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan urged prosecutors to begin handing over discovery to Garcia Luna’s defense.
Prosecutors asked the case be designated as “complex,” given the large volume of records involved, including evidence they said would be “provided by foreign countries.”
Mexico recently restricted Garcia Luna’s access to its financial system, de Castro said, a move that could complicate his client’s efforts to fund his defense.
Prosecutors say Garcia Luna amassed a fortune allowing Guzman’s narcotrafficking syndicate to operate with impunity in Mexico. He is accused of accepting tens of millions of dollars in bribes — often briefcases full of cash — to protect the Sinaloa cartel.
During Guzman’s New York trial, jurors heard former cartel member Jesus Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to Garcia Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Prosecutors say the cartel sent multi-ton drug loads to New York and other American cities, including the federal district covering Brooklyn and Queens.
Garcia Luna lived in Miami before his arrest last month in Texas. He led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005, and from 2006 to 2012 served as Mexico’s secretary of public security before relocating to the U.S.
Associated Press
January 21, 2020
NEW YORK, NY — Mexico’s former top security official is “very much looking forward” to fighting charges he took tens of millions of dollars in drug-money bribes to protect Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, a defense attorney said Tuesday.
Genaro Garcia Luna “adamantly denies that he accepted any bribes” and is not interested in negotiating a plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, defense attorney Cesar de Castro told reporters.
“He intends to go to trial,” de Castro said, adding Garcia Luna is in “very good spirits” .
De Castro’s remarks followed a hearing in Brooklyn federal court in which U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan urged prosecutors to begin handing over discovery to Garcia Luna’s defense.
Prosecutors asked the case be designated as “complex,” given the large volume of records involved, including evidence they said would be “provided by foreign countries.”
Mexico recently restricted Garcia Luna’s access to its financial system, de Castro said, a move that could complicate his client’s efforts to fund his defense.
Prosecutors say Garcia Luna amassed a fortune allowing Guzman’s narcotrafficking syndicate to operate with impunity in Mexico. He is accused of accepting tens of millions of dollars in bribes — often briefcases full of cash — to protect the Sinaloa cartel.
During Guzman’s New York trial, jurors heard former cartel member Jesus Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to Garcia Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Prosecutors say the cartel sent multi-ton drug loads to New York and other American cities, including the federal district covering Brooklyn and Queens.
Garcia Luna lived in Miami before his arrest last month in Texas. He led Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency from 2001 to 2005, and from 2006 to 2012 served as Mexico’s secretary of public security before relocating to the U.S.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
BERNIE GETS THE ENDORSEMENT OF ANOTHER ANTI-ISRAEL CONGRESSWOMAN
Washington Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal joins AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in backing Bernie Sanders
By Howie Katz
Bernie Sanders picked up the endorsement of yet another anti-Israel congresswoman. On Sunday, Pramila Jayapal announced her backing of Sanders. She joined previous Bernie endorsers AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Jayapal, an Indian-American, represents a Seattle congressional district and is a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Her fellow caucus members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are well known for making anti-Semitic statements and for voting, along with AOC, against the interests of Israel.
Here is Jayapal’s record of anti-Israel bias.
In April, Jayapal and AOC co-sponsored the ‘Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.’ Betty McCollum, its main author, explained that the act is ”expressly intended to end US support and funding for Israel's systematic military detention, interrogation, abuse, torture, and prosecution of Palestinian children.”
In July, Jayapal was one of the only 17 members to vote against the bipartisan legislation that outlawed the BDS movement against Israel.
In December, Jayapal voted for a resolution supporting a two-state solution, but then complained afterwards that it was too slanted in Israel's favor. She explained: “My vote does not tie me at all to providing future aid to Israel should it continue to abuse the human rights of the Palestinians.”
Jayapal has also accused Israel of being undemocratic and racist, and hinted that, like Bernie Sanders, she favors withholding military aid to the Jewish state.
Anti-Israel Bernie must be extremely pleased to have four outspoken anti-Israel congresswomen on his bandwagon.
Meanwhile on Sunday, the nation’s foremost bird cage liner made a dual endorsement that left Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden out in the cold. The New York Times endorsed Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. That endorsement may help Warren and Klobuchar in NYC, but because it was made by The New York Times, it won’t sit well with voters outside of New York.
By Howie Katz
Bernie Sanders picked up the endorsement of yet another anti-Israel congresswoman. On Sunday, Pramila Jayapal announced her backing of Sanders. She joined previous Bernie endorsers AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
Jayapal, an Indian-American, represents a Seattle congressional district and is a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Her fellow caucus members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are well known for making anti-Semitic statements and for voting, along with AOC, against the interests of Israel.
Here is Jayapal’s record of anti-Israel bias.
In April, Jayapal and AOC co-sponsored the ‘Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.’ Betty McCollum, its main author, explained that the act is ”expressly intended to end US support and funding for Israel's systematic military detention, interrogation, abuse, torture, and prosecution of Palestinian children.”
In July, Jayapal was one of the only 17 members to vote against the bipartisan legislation that outlawed the BDS movement against Israel.
In December, Jayapal voted for a resolution supporting a two-state solution, but then complained afterwards that it was too slanted in Israel's favor. She explained: “My vote does not tie me at all to providing future aid to Israel should it continue to abuse the human rights of the Palestinians.”
Jayapal has also accused Israel of being undemocratic and racist, and hinted that, like Bernie Sanders, she favors withholding military aid to the Jewish state.
Anti-Israel Bernie must be extremely pleased to have four outspoken anti-Israel congresswomen on his bandwagon.
Meanwhile on Sunday, the nation’s foremost bird cage liner made a dual endorsement that left Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden out in the cold. The New York Times endorsed Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar. That endorsement may help Warren and Klobuchar in NYC, but because it was made by The New York Times, it won’t sit well with voters outside of New York.
WILL ADAM SCHIFF AND JERRY NADLER CONTRIBUTE TO THE REWAR FUND?
A member of the Iranian parliament is offering a $3 million reward to anyone who assassinates Donald Trump
By Howie Katz
The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), one of the major news agencies in Iran, reports that Ahmad Hamzeh, a member of the Iranian parliament from the city of Kerman, told the 290-sea legislature: “On behalf of the people of Kerman province, we will pay a $3 million reward in cash to whoever kills Trump.”
The city of Kerman, in the province south of the capital, is the hometown of Qassem Soleimani, the now departed general who led Iran’s notorious Quds Force and was assassinated in Baghdad on January3 by Trump.
Hamzeh also said, “If we had nuclear weapons today, we would be protected from threats ... We should put the production of long-range missiles capable of carrying unconventional warheads on our agenda. This is our natural right.”
I suspect that Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, along with the AOC squad, would not be above contributing to the reward fund. And they might even be joined by Nancy Pelosi.
By Howie Katz
The Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA), one of the major news agencies in Iran, reports that Ahmad Hamzeh, a member of the Iranian parliament from the city of Kerman, told the 290-sea legislature: “On behalf of the people of Kerman province, we will pay a $3 million reward in cash to whoever kills Trump.”
The city of Kerman, in the province south of the capital, is the hometown of Qassem Soleimani, the now departed general who led Iran’s notorious Quds Force and was assassinated in Baghdad on January3 by Trump.
Hamzeh also said, “If we had nuclear weapons today, we would be protected from threats ... We should put the production of long-range missiles capable of carrying unconventional warheads on our agenda. This is our natural right.”
I suspect that Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, along with the AOC squad, would not be above contributing to the reward fund. And they might even be joined by Nancy Pelosi.
OMNIVORES BEAT OUT VEGANS
by Bob Walsh
There used to be a restaurant called MOTHERS in oldtown Sacramento. It was vegan. It went tits up effective 01-01-20. NASH AND PROPER, an outfit that operates a number of highly though of food trucks, is moving into the location. Their specialty is a fried chicken sandwich that is said to be absolutely SCREAMING.
GO OMNIVORES.
There used to be a restaurant called MOTHERS in oldtown Sacramento. It was vegan. It went tits up effective 01-01-20. NASH AND PROPER, an outfit that operates a number of highly though of food trucks, is moving into the location. Their specialty is a fried chicken sandwich that is said to be absolutely SCREAMING.
GO OMNIVORES.
FAITHLESS ELECTOR CASES TO GO TO SCOTUS
by Bob Walsh
SCOTUS has agreed to hear two cases in which states are attempting to penalize members of the Electoral College who refuse to vote for the candidate that they pledged to support.
These electors are selected by each party under the laws of the state in which they are elected. According to some organization called FairVote, which is allegedly a nonpartisan voting rights organization, over the last 224 years a total of 150 electors have NOT voted for the candidate they were pledged to vote for. States have tried to prevent this from happening by writing laws to remove or otherwise penalize these so-called "faithless electors."
Colorado and Washington are two such states. SCOTUS has agreed to hear these cases and will with a bit of luck settle the matter before the 2020 election.
SCOTUS has agreed to hear two cases in which states are attempting to penalize members of the Electoral College who refuse to vote for the candidate that they pledged to support.
These electors are selected by each party under the laws of the state in which they are elected. According to some organization called FairVote, which is allegedly a nonpartisan voting rights organization, over the last 224 years a total of 150 electors have NOT voted for the candidate they were pledged to vote for. States have tried to prevent this from happening by writing laws to remove or otherwise penalize these so-called "faithless electors."
Colorado and Washington are two such states. SCOTUS has agreed to hear these cases and will with a bit of luck settle the matter before the 2020 election.
A LOT OF THE VOTERS WILL LOOK AT BIDEN AND TRUMP AND SAY: ‘THEY’RE ALL DIRTY’
‘Middle Class’ Joe Biden has a corruption problem – it makes him a weak candidate
By Zephyr Teachout
The Guardian
January 20, 2020
Democrats are trying to choose a candidate to beat Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history. Some think nominating Joe Biden, a moderate white man who calls himself “Middle Class” Joe, makes sense.
But Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. I know it seems crazy, but a lot of the voters we need – independents and people who might stay home – will look at Biden and Trump and say: “They’re all dirty.”
It looks like “Middle Class” Joe has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn’t being “moderate”. It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe.
There are three clear examples.
First, Biden’s support for finance over working-class Americans. His career was bankrolled by the credit card industry. He delivered for it by spearheading a bankruptcy bill that made it harder for Americans to reduce their debts and helped cause the financial crisis. He not only authored and voted for that bill, he split with Barack Obama and led the battle to vote down Democratic amendments.
His explanations for carrying water for the credit card industry have changed over time. They have never rung true.
The simplest explanation is the most likely: he did it for his donors. At a fundraiser last year, Biden promised his Wall Street donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” for them if he became president. Now the financial world is raising huge money for his campaign. It clearly thinks he’s going to be its friend if elected. Most Americans, who get ripped off by the financial sector on a daily basis, aren’t looking for a candidate who has made their life harder.
Second, healthcare. On 25 April, the day he announced his campaign, Biden went straight to a fundraiser co-hosted by the chief executive of a major health insurance corporation. He refuses to sign a pledge to reject money from insurance and pharma execs and continues to raise money from healthcare industry donors. His campaign is being bankrolled by a super Pac run by healthcare lobbyists.
What did all these donors get? A healthcare proposal that preserves the power of the insurance industry and leaves 10 million Americans uninsured.
Third, climate change. Biden signed a pledge not to take money from the fossil fuel industry, then broke his promise. Right after a CNN town hall on climate change, he held a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a fossil fuel conglomerate. He is pushing climate policy that has gotten dismal reviews from several leading environmental groups.
There are plenty of other examples that raise questions, like housing and social security. Big real estate moguls are playing a major role in Biden’s campaign. Unlike his rivals, he has no comprehensive housing plan. When he pushed for cuts to Social Security, was he serving donors or his constituents?
I can already hear the howls: But look at Trump! Trump is 1,000 times worse!
You don’t need to convince me. I have spent my life writing about and fighting against corruption, and in America I have never seen anything like the current administration. In the last three years, I have made combatting Trump’s corruption the heart of my work.
I was on the first lawsuit against him for corrupt constitutional violations and I ran for attorney general in New York on a platform of pointing out just how dangerous he is, and how important unused state laws are to stopping him. My work on corruption was cited in the House judiciary committee’s report on impeachment.
But here’s the thing: nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. It will allow Trump to muddy the water, to once again pretend he is the one “draining the swamp”, running against Washington culture. Trump and the Cambridge Analytica of 2020 will campaign, as they did in 2016, on a message of radical nihilism: everybody lies, everybody is corrupt, nothing matters, there is no truth.
Corrupt politicians always use whataboutism. With Biden, we are basically handing Trump a whataboutism playbook. The comparison won’t be fair, but if you think he won’t use Biden’s closeness to donors as a cudgel to try to keep people home, you haven’t been paying attention. Unlike Democrats, who must give voters a reason to come out, Trump doesn’t need voters to love him. He just needs to convince people the whole game is ugly.
Whether or not Biden is making choices to please donors, there is no doubt his record represents the transactional, grossly corrupt culture in Washington that long precedes Trump. We cannot allow Trump to so lower our standards that we aren’t even allowed to call out that culture, which has not only stymied progress but also harmed the Democratic party.
The good news is that we still have time to break with this culture of corruption. We don’t have to choose Biden’s way, which would give Trump a perfect foil. The 2020 election should be about a crystal clear contrast between truth and lies, corruption and integrity, compassion and cruelty.
We have a rare opportunity to end a larger culture of corruption and we should take it – we will regret it if we don’t.
__________
Bernie Sanders apologizes to Joe Biden after his campaign surrogate said the former Vice President had a 'big corruption problem' as sparks fly in Democratic race
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
Bernie Sanders has apologized to Democratic rival Joe Biden after one of his campaign surrogates said the former Vice President has a 'big corruption problem'.
The Vermont Senator distanced himself from an op-ed written by Professor Zephyr Teachout, who branded Biden a 'weak candidate' and accused him of sucking up to big businesses and donors.
With exactly two weeks until the crunch Iowa caucus, Sanders scrambled to defuse the friction and bat away accusations of dirty campaigning.
He said Monday night: 'It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way. And I'm sorry that that op-ed appeared.'
Teachout is not officially on the Sanders campaign team, but has championed his left-wing movement and introduced him at rallies.
By Zephyr Teachout
The Guardian
January 20, 2020
Democrats are trying to choose a candidate to beat Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history. Some think nominating Joe Biden, a moderate white man who calls himself “Middle Class” Joe, makes sense.
But Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. I know it seems crazy, but a lot of the voters we need – independents and people who might stay home – will look at Biden and Trump and say: “They’re all dirty.”
It looks like “Middle Class” Joe has perfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn’t being “moderate”. It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe.
There are three clear examples.
First, Biden’s support for finance over working-class Americans. His career was bankrolled by the credit card industry. He delivered for it by spearheading a bankruptcy bill that made it harder for Americans to reduce their debts and helped cause the financial crisis. He not only authored and voted for that bill, he split with Barack Obama and led the battle to vote down Democratic amendments.
His explanations for carrying water for the credit card industry have changed over time. They have never rung true.
The simplest explanation is the most likely: he did it for his donors. At a fundraiser last year, Biden promised his Wall Street donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” for them if he became president. Now the financial world is raising huge money for his campaign. It clearly thinks he’s going to be its friend if elected. Most Americans, who get ripped off by the financial sector on a daily basis, aren’t looking for a candidate who has made their life harder.
Second, healthcare. On 25 April, the day he announced his campaign, Biden went straight to a fundraiser co-hosted by the chief executive of a major health insurance corporation. He refuses to sign a pledge to reject money from insurance and pharma execs and continues to raise money from healthcare industry donors. His campaign is being bankrolled by a super Pac run by healthcare lobbyists.
What did all these donors get? A healthcare proposal that preserves the power of the insurance industry and leaves 10 million Americans uninsured.
Third, climate change. Biden signed a pledge not to take money from the fossil fuel industry, then broke his promise. Right after a CNN town hall on climate change, he held a fundraiser hosted by the founder of a fossil fuel conglomerate. He is pushing climate policy that has gotten dismal reviews from several leading environmental groups.
There are plenty of other examples that raise questions, like housing and social security. Big real estate moguls are playing a major role in Biden’s campaign. Unlike his rivals, he has no comprehensive housing plan. When he pushed for cuts to Social Security, was he serving donors or his constituents?
I can already hear the howls: But look at Trump! Trump is 1,000 times worse!
You don’t need to convince me. I have spent my life writing about and fighting against corruption, and in America I have never seen anything like the current administration. In the last three years, I have made combatting Trump’s corruption the heart of my work.
I was on the first lawsuit against him for corrupt constitutional violations and I ran for attorney general in New York on a platform of pointing out just how dangerous he is, and how important unused state laws are to stopping him. My work on corruption was cited in the House judiciary committee’s report on impeachment.
But here’s the thing: nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. It will allow Trump to muddy the water, to once again pretend he is the one “draining the swamp”, running against Washington culture. Trump and the Cambridge Analytica of 2020 will campaign, as they did in 2016, on a message of radical nihilism: everybody lies, everybody is corrupt, nothing matters, there is no truth.
Corrupt politicians always use whataboutism. With Biden, we are basically handing Trump a whataboutism playbook. The comparison won’t be fair, but if you think he won’t use Biden’s closeness to donors as a cudgel to try to keep people home, you haven’t been paying attention. Unlike Democrats, who must give voters a reason to come out, Trump doesn’t need voters to love him. He just needs to convince people the whole game is ugly.
Whether or not Biden is making choices to please donors, there is no doubt his record represents the transactional, grossly corrupt culture in Washington that long precedes Trump. We cannot allow Trump to so lower our standards that we aren’t even allowed to call out that culture, which has not only stymied progress but also harmed the Democratic party.
The good news is that we still have time to break with this culture of corruption. We don’t have to choose Biden’s way, which would give Trump a perfect foil. The 2020 election should be about a crystal clear contrast between truth and lies, corruption and integrity, compassion and cruelty.
We have a rare opportunity to end a larger culture of corruption and we should take it – we will regret it if we don’t.
__________
Bernie Sanders apologizes to Joe Biden after his campaign surrogate said the former Vice President had a 'big corruption problem' as sparks fly in Democratic race
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
Bernie Sanders has apologized to Democratic rival Joe Biden after one of his campaign surrogates said the former Vice President has a 'big corruption problem'.
The Vermont Senator distanced himself from an op-ed written by Professor Zephyr Teachout, who branded Biden a 'weak candidate' and accused him of sucking up to big businesses and donors.
With exactly two weeks until the crunch Iowa caucus, Sanders scrambled to defuse the friction and bat away accusations of dirty campaigning.
He said Monday night: 'It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way. And I'm sorry that that op-ed appeared.'
Teachout is not officially on the Sanders campaign team, but has championed his left-wing movement and introduced him at rallies.
HILLARY POINTS TO OBAMA TO JUSTIFY TAKING DONATIONS FROM HARVEY WEINSTEIN
'How could we have known?': Hillary Clinton defends taking money from Harvey Weinstein and says the Obamas took it too when asked if she has any regrets over her lengthy association with him
By Lauren Fruen
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
Hillary Clinton has defended taking money from Harvey Weinstein, arguing the Obamas did it too and she 'could not have possibly known' about the raft of sexual assault allegations against him.
The former presidential candidate, 72, was asked if she had any regrets about her lengthy association and close friendship with the disgraced movie mogul, 67, in a wide ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Weinsten, who is facing life in prison if convicted in his upcoming rape and sexual assault trial, had been a longtime major donor to the Clintons. He donated $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and $10,000 to Bill's legal fund when he faced impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But when asked about her association with the shamed producer Clinton told The Hollywood Reporter: 'How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general.
'And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior.'
However, a New York Times article revealed Clinton's campaigned had been warned about the rumors swirling around about Weinstein.
Actress Lena Dunham - one of Hillary's biggest celebrity endorsers - emailed her campaign's deputy communications director in 2016.
The email stated: 'I just want you to let you know that Harvey's a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.
'I think it's a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it's an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.'
By Lauren Fruen
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
Hillary Clinton has defended taking money from Harvey Weinstein, arguing the Obamas did it too and she 'could not have possibly known' about the raft of sexual assault allegations against him.
The former presidential candidate, 72, was asked if she had any regrets about her lengthy association and close friendship with the disgraced movie mogul, 67, in a wide ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Weinsten, who is facing life in prison if convicted in his upcoming rape and sexual assault trial, had been a longtime major donor to the Clintons. He donated $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation and $10,000 to Bill's legal fund when he faced impeachment during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But when asked about her association with the shamed producer Clinton told The Hollywood Reporter: 'How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general.
'And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior.'
However, a New York Times article revealed Clinton's campaigned had been warned about the rumors swirling around about Weinstein.
Actress Lena Dunham - one of Hillary's biggest celebrity endorsers - emailed her campaign's deputy communications director in 2016.
The email stated: 'I just want you to let you know that Harvey's a rapist and this is going to come out at some point.
'I think it's a really bad idea for him to host fund-raisers and be involved because it's an open secret in Hollywood that he has a problem with sexual assault.'
GO BACK TO SCHOOL GRETA
Trump takes ANOTHER swipe at 'very angry' Greta Thunberg after calling climate activists 'fortune tellers' and 'prophets of doom' in Davos speech - after teen warned NOTHING has been done on global warming
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
President Trump said climate activists were out-of-touch 'alarmists' and the 'heirs of yesterday's fortune tellers' during his appearance at the World Economic Forum, as prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg looked on.
'This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism,' Trump said in Davos, Switzerland Tuesday, in stark constrast to Thunberg and others, who used the conference to warn that the Australian wildfires and other disasters were only the beginning of the climate chaos that lie ahead.
To 'embrace the possibilities of tomorrow,' Trump said, 'we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.' 'They are the heirs of yesterday's fortune tellers,' Trump stated. 'They predicted an over-population crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s.'
'These alarmists always demand the same thing - absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives,' Trump continued. 'We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: I do not think taking on a 17-year-old girl is a good idea.
Daily Mail
January 21, 2020
President Trump said climate activists were out-of-touch 'alarmists' and the 'heirs of yesterday's fortune tellers' during his appearance at the World Economic Forum, as prominent climate activist Greta Thunberg looked on.
'This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism,' Trump said in Davos, Switzerland Tuesday, in stark constrast to Thunberg and others, who used the conference to warn that the Australian wildfires and other disasters were only the beginning of the climate chaos that lie ahead.
To 'embrace the possibilities of tomorrow,' Trump said, 'we must reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse.' 'They are the heirs of yesterday's fortune tellers,' Trump stated. 'They predicted an over-population crisis in the 1960s, mass starvation in the 70s, and an end of oil in the 1990s.'
'These alarmists always demand the same thing - absolute power to dominate, transform and control every aspect of our lives,' Trump continued. 'We will never let radical socialists destroy our economy, wreck our country or eradicate our liberty.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: I do not think taking on a 17-year-old girl is a good idea.
MIAMI OFFICIALS LOOKING FOR WAY TO FIRE ‘NOT WHITE OR HISPANIC’ BLACK COP
Miami-Dade NAACP: It's "Downright Disturbing" That Miami Cop Claims He's Black
By Jerry Iannelli
Miami New Times
January 21, 2020
Last Friday, the Miami Police Department's former union boss, Capt. Javier Ortiz, stood stone-faced at a lectern at Miami City Hall and claimed he is neither white nor Hispanic but "a black male."
After writing he was a white Hispanic man on an application to work for Miami PD, Ortiz in 2014 and 2017 claimed he was black on official paperwork. The Miami Community Police Benevolent Association, a union for black officers, has since demanded that Ortiz be punished and that Chief Jorge Colina either deal with racists operating inside his department or step down.
After the video of Ortiz's speech went viral, the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote on Instagram that it was baffled and outraged by Ortiz's comments.
"This is video of an active City of Miami cop at a commission meeting where the topic of discussion is on Racial Equity within the police department," the NAACP wrote Saturday. "His comments are disturbing. And in the manner of how he used them, downright disturbing to say the least."
Neither Mayor Francis Suarez nor Colina responded to messages from New Times yesterday. But over the weekend, the Miami Times reported that the two officials had discussed Ortiz's comments and that the city was exploring firing the captain. In the article, Suarez called Ortiz's statements "not good" and said Colina "will explore his options and can do whatever's legally permitted to do."
Ortiz did not respond to a message from New Times yesterday afternoon.
Ortiz, far and away the most controversial and well-known cop in Miami, has for years fended off critics. He has faced lawsuits from victims who've said he falsely arrested or racially profiled them, repeatedly defended cops who've killed unarmed black people, drawn a demon face on the mugshot of a black defendant, started a "We Support Darren Wilson" Facebook page, attempted to initiate a boycott of Beyoncé, and been accused of falsely arresting two black NFL players in separate incidents. Ortiz also nearly lost his job in 2017 after he doxxed a police critic online and told his followers to contact her at her personal number.
Somehow, he has remained on the force and even been promoted. But the city is now reportedly looking into whether he is abusing the city's off-duty work rules and whether he lied on his 2014 lieutenant's application and 2017 captain's application by claiming he's black. Ortiz last Friday, though, claimed he correctly identified his race.
"I'm a black male," he said at the commission meeting. "Yes, I am. And I am not Hispanic. I was born in this country. That's how I feel."
After some questions from city commissioners, Ortiz then told Commissioner Keon Hardemon: "Oh, no, you're blacker than me — that's obvious. And if you know anything about the one-drop rule, which started in the 20th Century, which is what identifies and defines what a black male is, or a Negro, you would know that if you have one drop of black in you, you're considered black."
After his comments caused a stir online, Ortiz tweeted that everyone was making a big deal out of nothing.
"This isn't news," he wrote over the weekend. "People love making stereotypes. It’s actually refreshing to be who you are, like an American."
By Jerry Iannelli
Miami New Times
January 21, 2020
Last Friday, the Miami Police Department's former union boss, Capt. Javier Ortiz, stood stone-faced at a lectern at Miami City Hall and claimed he is neither white nor Hispanic but "a black male."
After writing he was a white Hispanic man on an application to work for Miami PD, Ortiz in 2014 and 2017 claimed he was black on official paperwork. The Miami Community Police Benevolent Association, a union for black officers, has since demanded that Ortiz be punished and that Chief Jorge Colina either deal with racists operating inside his department or step down.
After the video of Ortiz's speech went viral, the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote on Instagram that it was baffled and outraged by Ortiz's comments.
"This is video of an active City of Miami cop at a commission meeting where the topic of discussion is on Racial Equity within the police department," the NAACP wrote Saturday. "His comments are disturbing. And in the manner of how he used them, downright disturbing to say the least."
Neither Mayor Francis Suarez nor Colina responded to messages from New Times yesterday. But over the weekend, the Miami Times reported that the two officials had discussed Ortiz's comments and that the city was exploring firing the captain. In the article, Suarez called Ortiz's statements "not good" and said Colina "will explore his options and can do whatever's legally permitted to do."
Ortiz did not respond to a message from New Times yesterday afternoon.
Ortiz, far and away the most controversial and well-known cop in Miami, has for years fended off critics. He has faced lawsuits from victims who've said he falsely arrested or racially profiled them, repeatedly defended cops who've killed unarmed black people, drawn a demon face on the mugshot of a black defendant, started a "We Support Darren Wilson" Facebook page, attempted to initiate a boycott of Beyoncé, and been accused of falsely arresting two black NFL players in separate incidents. Ortiz also nearly lost his job in 2017 after he doxxed a police critic online and told his followers to contact her at her personal number.
Somehow, he has remained on the force and even been promoted. But the city is now reportedly looking into whether he is abusing the city's off-duty work rules and whether he lied on his 2014 lieutenant's application and 2017 captain's application by claiming he's black. Ortiz last Friday, though, claimed he correctly identified his race.
"I'm a black male," he said at the commission meeting. "Yes, I am. And I am not Hispanic. I was born in this country. That's how I feel."
After some questions from city commissioners, Ortiz then told Commissioner Keon Hardemon: "Oh, no, you're blacker than me — that's obvious. And if you know anything about the one-drop rule, which started in the 20th Century, which is what identifies and defines what a black male is, or a Negro, you would know that if you have one drop of black in you, you're considered black."
After his comments caused a stir online, Ortiz tweeted that everyone was making a big deal out of nothing.
"This isn't news," he wrote over the weekend. "People love making stereotypes. It’s actually refreshing to be who you are, like an American."
WHEN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES REFUSED TO PROTECT JWEISH STUDENTS, PRESIDENT TRUMP CAME TO THE RESCUE
Campus Anti-Semitism Reaches New Highs—Or Lows—in America
By Ken Cohen
Flame
January 21, 2020
Last month, President Trump issued an Executive Order aimed at combatting anti-Semitism on American college campuses. For ideological as well as financial reasons, his action caused outrage on numerous campuses—eliciting cries of censorship from administrators, faculty, student governments and others. Yet these same academics are quick to condemn similar offenses directed at African-American, Muslim, women or transgender students.
Equal protection on campus is everybody’s business—not just that of the academic community. Anti-Semitism on campus is a reflection of a greater societal sickness that threatens every minority, whether racial, religious, sexual or ethnic.
Yet college anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions and deserves not only outrage from every American—but also public pressure to eliminate it directed at university administrators and elected representatives at every level.
Numbers tell a horrific story of hate directed at American Jewish college students—reminiscent of early warnings in 1930s Germany.
Acts of campus anti-Semitism last year rose to 201 reported incidents, an 86% increase in just two years. These included numerous acts of harassment and vandalism, but also several assaults of Jewish students according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Annual Report.
There were also a half-dozen bomb threats to Jewish campus institutions. At the University of California at Berkeley, campus police found a fake bomb covered with anti-Semitic statements, including “All Jews fuck off and evaporate.”
Horrifically, during the week of national grieving for victims of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, memorials set up at four universities—the University of Tennessee, Pomona College, Eastern Michigan University and Duke University—were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti and Nazi swastikas.
Nationwide, many meetings and events of Jewish organizations like Hillel were disrupted by raucous protesters, typically shouting anti-Zionist and outright anti-Semitic chants. On campuses from coast to coast, national pro-Palestinian groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the despicable Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) have usually orchestrated the anti-Semitic verbal—and sometimes physically threatening—assaults.
Jewish students are scared to wear outward signs of their Jewishness—like Chai or Magen David necklaces, kippot, and pro-Israel or pro-Jewish shirts—because they are harassed and sometimes even assaulted for their membership in the Jewish people.
The new Executive Order issued by President Trump relates to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a generous federal funding program for colleges. Title VI specifically denies funding to colleges that do not prevent and/or punish perpetrators of discrimination or harassment based on “race, color, or national origin.”
The new rules extend the list to include anti-Semitic actions, and clearly state that anti-Zionism—that is, the denial of the Jewish people’s right to a nation in their indigenous home—is a form of anti-Semitism covered by the rubrics of Title VI. (It also states that normal criticism of particular Israel policies is no different than, say, critiquing American immigration policy or Great Britain’s Brexit policy.)
The President’s order states that a school’s Title VI obligations are triggered when harassment is “based on the group’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, rather than solely on its members’ religious practices.” It also suggests that funding agencies use the definition of anti-Semitism advanced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The IHRA guidelines include “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
The anti-Semitic activities on campuses go beyond the sort of incidents that the ADL tallies. At several schools (including McGill University in Canada), student and faculty groups have tried to eliminate study-abroad programs at Israeli universities. At the University of Michigan, a professor—based on his advocacy of a total academic boycott of Israel—refused to write of letter of recommendation for a Jewish student who wished to study at the University of Haifa. (Fortunately, in this case, the campus administration remedied the situation.)
Columbia University and the University of North Carolina have already been put on notice that various campus goings-on regarding Jewish students and groups may endanger their Title VI funding. Even the notoriously anti-Semitic San Francisco State University has taken steps to ameliorate the hostile atmosphere for Jewish students at the hand of pro-Palestinian groups.
It is tragic that the state of American universities has degenerated to the point that Jewish students and groups must look to a presidential Executive Order for protection from rampant anti-Semitism. Apparently, though, this is the only way to make cowardly campus administrations sit up and take action when their Jewish students are harassed and made to feel unwelcome on campus.
By Ken Cohen
Flame
January 21, 2020
Last month, President Trump issued an Executive Order aimed at combatting anti-Semitism on American college campuses. For ideological as well as financial reasons, his action caused outrage on numerous campuses—eliciting cries of censorship from administrators, faculty, student governments and others. Yet these same academics are quick to condemn similar offenses directed at African-American, Muslim, women or transgender students.
Equal protection on campus is everybody’s business—not just that of the academic community. Anti-Semitism on campus is a reflection of a greater societal sickness that threatens every minority, whether racial, religious, sexual or ethnic.
Yet college anti-Semitism has reached epidemic proportions and deserves not only outrage from every American—but also public pressure to eliminate it directed at university administrators and elected representatives at every level.
Numbers tell a horrific story of hate directed at American Jewish college students—reminiscent of early warnings in 1930s Germany.
Acts of campus anti-Semitism last year rose to 201 reported incidents, an 86% increase in just two years. These included numerous acts of harassment and vandalism, but also several assaults of Jewish students according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Annual Report.
There were also a half-dozen bomb threats to Jewish campus institutions. At the University of California at Berkeley, campus police found a fake bomb covered with anti-Semitic statements, including “All Jews fuck off and evaporate.”
Horrifically, during the week of national grieving for victims of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, memorials set up at four universities—the University of Tennessee, Pomona College, Eastern Michigan University and Duke University—were defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti and Nazi swastikas.
Nationwide, many meetings and events of Jewish organizations like Hillel were disrupted by raucous protesters, typically shouting anti-Zionist and outright anti-Semitic chants. On campuses from coast to coast, national pro-Palestinian groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the despicable Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) have usually orchestrated the anti-Semitic verbal—and sometimes physically threatening—assaults.
Jewish students are scared to wear outward signs of their Jewishness—like Chai or Magen David necklaces, kippot, and pro-Israel or pro-Jewish shirts—because they are harassed and sometimes even assaulted for their membership in the Jewish people.
The new Executive Order issued by President Trump relates to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a generous federal funding program for colleges. Title VI specifically denies funding to colleges that do not prevent and/or punish perpetrators of discrimination or harassment based on “race, color, or national origin.”
The new rules extend the list to include anti-Semitic actions, and clearly state that anti-Zionism—that is, the denial of the Jewish people’s right to a nation in their indigenous home—is a form of anti-Semitism covered by the rubrics of Title VI. (It also states that normal criticism of particular Israel policies is no different than, say, critiquing American immigration policy or Great Britain’s Brexit policy.)
The President’s order states that a school’s Title VI obligations are triggered when harassment is “based on the group’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, rather than solely on its members’ religious practices.” It also suggests that funding agencies use the definition of anti-Semitism advanced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The IHRA guidelines include “applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”
The anti-Semitic activities on campuses go beyond the sort of incidents that the ADL tallies. At several schools (including McGill University in Canada), student and faculty groups have tried to eliminate study-abroad programs at Israeli universities. At the University of Michigan, a professor—based on his advocacy of a total academic boycott of Israel—refused to write of letter of recommendation for a Jewish student who wished to study at the University of Haifa. (Fortunately, in this case, the campus administration remedied the situation.)
Columbia University and the University of North Carolina have already been put on notice that various campus goings-on regarding Jewish students and groups may endanger their Title VI funding. Even the notoriously anti-Semitic San Francisco State University has taken steps to ameliorate the hostile atmosphere for Jewish students at the hand of pro-Palestinian groups.
It is tragic that the state of American universities has degenerated to the point that Jewish students and groups must look to a presidential Executive Order for protection from rampant anti-Semitism. Apparently, though, this is the only way to make cowardly campus administrations sit up and take action when their Jewish students are harassed and made to feel unwelcome on campus.
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