Rand Paul's neighbors rip media 'landscaping dispute' reports

Posted at 9:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

THE MEDIA SEEM TO BE BENDING OVER BACKWARD TO JUSTIFY HIS BEATING

Harvard Just Hosted an Anal Sex Workshop Called 'What What in the Butt

About what you would expect at Harvard

The workshop, titled "What What in the Butt: Anal 101," was part of Sex Week at Harvard,

Do as I say, not as I do: "Rep. Behind Sexual Harassment Bill - Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich. - Accused of Ignoring Claims About Top Aide

Rep. Brenda Lawrence thinks Congress needs to do something about sexual harassment following all that has occurred following Harvey Weinstein's fall from grace. It's the typical knee-jerk reaction from a politician who feels it's imperative to be seen taking action.

One problem, though. Several women have voiced complaints about her own chief of staff, according to a report at Politico. Lawrence reportedly has taken no action on this alleged harassment in her own office.

Three women who used to work for Lawrence claim they told the congresswoman directly about how they had been treated by Dwayne Duron Marshall. Two explicitly stated that his inappropriate comments and physical contact were the reasons they left their jobs there.

Despite the complaints, Marshall still works for the Democrat from Michigan.

Why do Democrats harass women and then cover up sexual harassment? 

Botched Trump-Russia findings threaten intelligence chiefs’ motives

The Washington Times:

Fourteen days before President Trump took the oath of office, the Obama administration’s intelligence chiefs made public a unanimous assessment claiming Russian operatives, under orders from President Vladimir Putin, had orchestrated an influence campaign to help Mr. Trump win the presidential contest.

It was a watershed moment: the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI challenging the legitimacy of a U.S. presidential victory.

The conclusions in the Jan. 6 document were sharp, but the findings unraveled 10 months later, raising questions about the basis for the evidence and the motives of the Obama appointees leading the nation’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

“It left me scratching my head,” said one intelligence source with personal access to former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and former CIA Director John O. Brennan, two of the men who had signed off on the assessment.

The 15-page document presented to the president-elect at Trump Tower in Manhattan was mostly filler — a republication of a years-old CIA analysis of the Kremlin’s global television network Russia Today. A mere five pages were dedicated to charge that Moscow blended cyberhacking with state-backed propaganda and social media trolls to defeat Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

There was no supporting documentation of how America’s top spies arrived at the brazen conclusion that Russians had “gained access to” and “exfiltrated large volumes of data” from Democratic National Committee computers, an explosive claim that sent shock waves across the U.S. political and intelligence landscapes.

The five pages of the report have hung over Mr. Trump’s presidency ever since, hurting his credibility abroad and at home and shaping the narrative of five ongoing federal and congressional investigations into suspected Russian meddling, even though the document’s core conclusion looks increasingly weak in hindsight. Both Democrats and Republicans now say that Russian efforts were intended not to elect Mr. Trump but to sow chaos in American politics no matter who emerged as the victor.

Read the whole thing.

This is not a hoax but a hate crime

Air Force Says That Racial Slurs Written in Its Prep School's Message Boards, Which Provoked a Blistering Speech Against Racism and Viral Panic, Was a Hoax

After an unidentified troll wrote the threatening words "Go home n----r" on dormitory message boards at the Air Force Academy prep school in September, Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria, the academy's superintendent, delivered a blistering speech on tolerance. With 4,000 students standing at attention, he said, "If you demean someone in any way, you need to get out."
The speech went viral, garnering more than 2 million views on YouTube.

Now the academy says one of the five African-American cadet candidates thought to be a victim was actually the perpetrator. The student is no longer enrolled, school officials said Tuesday.

The prep school, which offers a year of training for academy prospects who need academic help, wouldn't offer details on the circumstances surrounding the hoax. But The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, citing anonymous sources, reported that the unidentified student wrote the messages "in a bizarre bid to get out of trouble he faced at the school for other misconduct."

Ace makes a great point:

Why does someone write a real bit of hate-graffiti? For these reasons:

1. To threaten/worry a racial minority.

2. To stir up racial divisions.

3. To encourage others to express their own racial hatreds (for minorities).

Now, why does a member of a minority group write hate-graffiti?

1. To threaten/worry a racial minority.

2. To stir up racial divisions.

3. To encourage others to express their own racial hatreds (for the group presumed responsible for the graffiti, usually straight white Christian men).

Now, notice that in both cases, the motivations and the intent and the act and even the very words used are precisely the same.

So why is the same sort of hatred written by a white person treated a hate crime -- all prosecutorial tools deployed, minor crimes like vandalism pushed to the hilt, even possible charges of intent to make terroristic threats added -- and the hate graffiti, when written by a not-white, though with the exact same intentions of making minorities fear for their safety, stirring up racial divisions, and directing hatred and contempt at one racial group -- treated as mere mischief?

This is not a hoax -- this is a hate-crime, or, more accurately, malicious vandalism with the sentencing intensifier of being committed with the intent to spread fear and hatred, just as it would be if a white guy did it.

The fact that a non-white did it does not change those facts -- and neither should it change the criminal penalty nor the social opprobrium heaped on the miscreant who did it, unless our nation is prepared to officially declare, unconstutionally but with the authority of Spike Lee, that non-whites are incapable of racism and hence any laws regarding racialized crime apply only to one race.

This is not a hoax. This is a hate crime, just committed by a black kid.

Prosecute him like you would a white malefactor, or confess that only white people are targeted by laws which are claimed to be race-neutral when it comes to Supreme Court review.

The fact that these minority race-criminals are permitted, without any sanction beyond a slap on the wrist, to write hate-messages to terrorize their fellow minorities to direct hate against white people is why we have so much of this.

Do liberals think this is helping heal the racial divide by encouraging minorities to spread #FalseFlag racial slurs? Does that reduce the racial tension minorities feel? Does that reduce the racial tension that whites/men/straights/Christians -- the usual targets of these #FaleFlag hate crimes -- feel?

I encourage any conservative leaning news organization to FOIA the information on this particular race criminal.

It's time to stop pretending these things are just some "understandable mischief" when committed by a minority. It's time to stop with the condescending racism pushed on us by progressives that anyone who's not white, male, straight and Christian had no moral agency and no ability to restrain himself from committing evil acts.

It's time to start applying the law equally to all races.

Crazy idea, huh?

Crossing the Trump Rubicon - Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson

Like it or not, Donald Trump in fits and starts has chosen not to accommodate the progressive vision. But in most unlikely fashion he leads the fight against it.

Those who found him too crude, who saw his tweets as too adolescent, and who vowed never to vote for such an antithesis of conservative and family values have all weighed in.

So have those who are embarrassed that Trump—as did Obama during the Henry Louis Gates fiasco, the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case, and the Ferguson shooting and subsequent riots—quite inappropriately weighs in on current criminal investigations and trials.

And yet, warts and all, the Trump presidency on all fronts is all that now stands in the way of the completion of what was started in 2009.

The Age of Intolerance

We are no longer in the late 1950s era of liberal reform. It is now a postmodern world of intolerance and lockstep orthodoxy.

There are few Berkeley-like free speech areas on college campuses any more. Students charged with particular crimes enjoy little due process. There is no Joan Baez-style acknowledgement of the tragedy of good Southern poor men fighting for an awful cause. No one acknowledges tragedy anywhere at all; it has all become melodrama. We may yet see Joan Baez’s version of The Band’s ballad or Shelby Foote’s commentaries in Ken Burn’s epic Civil War documentary Trotskyized.

The media is not disinterested. Networks such as CNN see their role actively on the barricades, devoted to the higher cause of destroying the Trump presidency, not as reporting its successes or failures. The danger to free expression and a free media is not even Trumpian bombast. It is the far more deliberate and insidious transformation (begun in full under Obama) of journalism into a progressive ministry of truth. Even if he wished, Trump could not take away what the professional press already surrendered voluntarily.

The Cultural Abyss

After the nocturnal effort to tear down historic statuary, the NFL player psychodramas, the therapeutic reactions to radical Islamic terror attacks inside the United States, and the often unhinged profanity and assassination chic of the anti-Trump “Resistance,” Trump almost alone seems to sound off in opposition.

On one side are traditionalists who believe the United States is the most exceptional nation of a uniquely self-critical West. They believe that we need not be perfect, past or present, to be good and certainly are and were always far better than the alternative. And while reform and protest may be innate to the American character, traditions and values of the past simply cannot be airbrushed away because a particular generation suddenly believes that the dead of a far more hazardous and impoverished age must meet their own transitory mores of the present. Oddly, few of the Republican establishment speak out for them.

The new progressive Left believes that America has always been defined by its collective sins, which outweigh those of other cultures. They identify the white heterosexual male as the font of most pathologies (cf. the Democratic National Committee’s unapologetic effort not to hire white males for some of its jobs). Like it or not, Trump is now a central figure in resisting a full-scale dismantling of the idea of the uniquely individual, free, and outspoken American.

Like it or not, Donald Trump is the unlikely savior of America.

Paradise Papers: Apple's secret tax bolthole revealed

The world's most profitable firm has a secretive new structure that would enable it to continue avoiding billions in taxes, the Paradise Papers show.

They reveal how Apple sidestepped a 2013 crackdown on its controversial Irish tax practices by actively shopping around for a tax haven.

It then moved the firm holding most of its untaxed offshore cash, now $252bn, to the Channel Island of Jersey.

Up until 2014, the tech company had been exploiting a loophole in tax laws in the US and the Republic of Ireland known as the "double Irish".

This allowed Apple to funnel all its sales outside of the Americas - currently about 55% of its revenue - through Irish subsidiaries that were effectively stateless for taxation purposes, and so incurred hardly any tax.

Instead of paying Irish corporation tax of 12.5%, or the US rate of 35%, Apple's avoidance structure helped it reduce its tax rate on profits outside of the US to the extent that its foreign tax payments rarely amounted to more than 5% of its foreign profits, and in some years dipped below 2%.

The European Commission calculated the rate of tax for one of Apple's Irish companies for one year had been just 0.005%.

 

Texas killer was militant atheist.

'Creepy, crazy and weird': Former classmates say Texas gunman was an 'outcast' who 'preached his atheism' online before killing 26 in the state’s worst ever mass shooting

• Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, shot dead 26 people and injured 24 others in Texas
• Walked into First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in Texas and opened fire 
• He was wearing black, tactical gear and carrying a military style assault rifle
• Kelley was shot by local Stephen Willeford, 55, and died after a car chase
• Former classmates have described him as an 'outcast', 'creepy' and 'weird'
• Another said he talked 'about how people who believe in God were stupid'
• LinkedIn reveals Kelley was an Air Force veteran and ex-Bible studies teacher
• He was court martialed in 2014 for two counts of assault on his spouse and child
• He was living in New Braunfels, a suburb of San Antonio, and was married 

Byron York: Spinning in circles on the Trump dossier

Byron York on the "Russian Dossier"

It's always important to understand how you know what you know, or what you think you know. It's particularly important in the case of the Trump dossier.

Consider the increasing number of claims that the incendiary allegations of the dossier "check out," in the words of New York Times columnist Bret Stephens.

...

"What's relevant is [Steele's] credibility, the reliability of his sources and the truthfulness of their claims," Stephens wrote recently. "These check out."

But do they? In reality, most reasonable people not named Mueller would have to say we don't know.

"As it relates to the Steele dossier, unfortunately the committee has hit a wall," Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr noted last month. The committee's investigation, the best probe outside of the Mueller special prosecutor operation, has not even been able to discover who Steele's sources were, Burr said.

So how do outsiders conclude that the document's key allegations check out? How do they know what they know?

...

Voila: Isikoff reported, accurately, U.S. intelligence agencies received intelligence reports on Page's trip. The alleged actions involving Page that Isikoff reported -- attributed to a "Western intelligence source," which was some reporters' shorthand for the former British spy -- lined up precisely with the contents of Steele's dossier. (Even John Sipher conceded that, "Admittedly, Isikoff's reporting may have relied on Steele himself for that information.")

Given all that, Stephens' point that the dossier "checks out" is basically saying the dossier proves the dossier.

A Foundation of Nonsense

From the ZBlog

What we know to be western liberal democracy, assumes certain things about humanity to be true all the time. The blank slate is the most obvious example. Everything about our politics and culture assumes that humans are infinitely malleable. From school policy to prison reform, public policy is based on the assumption that people can be whatever they choose, because they have free will and a blank slate that can be erased and re-illustrated at any point in their life. You are what you make of yourself.

It’s how our rulers arrived at the idea of importing millions of foreigners. Those foreigners can be re-purposed into tax paying westerners, through education and enculturation, to pay the pensions of the native stock. Those Somali goatherds can be plopped down into Minnesota and over time, develop all of the habits of the average Minnesotan, just by emulation and proximity. Race laws are all based on the assumption that you can train people to stop noticing racial difference and therefore, end racism.

....

It seems today that Western societies are painfully re-learning things that were common knowledge a few generations ago. The old axiom, fences make good neighbors, was replaced with “diversity is our strength.” Every time a swarthy fellow blows up in the public square, we inch a bit closer to the realization that diversity is a nightmare. That’s the part we see. The part we don’t see, at least not yet, is the crumbling of the foundation stones of the modern West. That foundation of nonsense is giving way to biological reality.

After taking a quick meeting with The Diversity’s Lottery Winner in New York City

Battle Hymn of the Republic - Mormon Tabernacle Choir

This is Your Fight Song (Rachel Platten Scottish Cover) - The Piano Guys

Shortage of competence

Richard Fernandez

Though it is common to describe the past two years as a "revolt from the right" they have also been times of a very real uprising on the left. From ideologues who have seen their principles betrayed to apparatchiks who feel robbed of their deserts, the revolutionaries are revolting. The image of Donna Brazile finding the DNC coffers empty of everything but pawn tickets captures the shock operatives must feel upon realizing the big payday they counted on isn't going to happen. The activists can't be happy either. Not only isn't the long overdue socialist paradise never going to come, but they must feel like fools for believing the political, entertainment and media celebrities who promised it now they stand revealed as scoundrels.

The "deplorables" have long sensed something was awry, the difference is the elite institutions are now feeling it too.

Yet with the notable exception of the Navy, which realized it had to up its game to survive against both the perils of the sea and the action of the enemy, much of the response to the growing spate of disasters has been to reach reflexively for the fix. The nostrums are depressingly old whether firing the special prosecutor to stop the indictments, pushing Silicon Valley into censoring everyone or feeling sorry that poor Hillary was hacked by mean old Putin. The urge to make it go away, to be the victim in chief rather than commander in chief still reigns supreme.

If that could stop the rot it would make sense; but it won't. The Narrative is dime a dozen. Sense is the one thing in short supply.

Hillary responds to Donna Brazile

Amazing Grace

Happy Sunday

“Republican 2016 Presidential Candidate Who Survived Assassination Attempt By Bernie Sanders Supporter Is Physically Assaulted By Angry Kentucky Democrat.”

Kelsey Cooper, Paul’s Kentucky communications director, issued a statement to the Daily News indicating that “Senator Paul is fine.”

“Senator Paul was blindsided and the victim of an assault,” Cooper said in an email. “The assailant was arrested and it is now a matter for the police.”

The arrest warrant in the case indicates that Paul told police his neighbor came onto his property and tackled him from behind, forcing him to the ground and causing pain. According to the warrant, Paul had injuries to his face and had trouble breathing due to a rib injury.

The KSP news release said troopers were called to the Paul residence at 3:21 p.m. Friday.

According to the release, Boucher was arrested by Trooper Bartley Weaver and charged with assaulting Paul, a Republican who has been Kentucky’s junior senator since 2011.

Le Corbusier: Liar, Cheat, Thief, and Plagiarist

The French fascist architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, was another of this charmless ilk, though cleaner than Brecht (a Marxist, the latter’s decision not to wash was his tribute, albeit not a very flattering one, to the proletariat). Jeanneret’s inhumanity, his rage against humans, is evident in his architecture and in his writings. He felt the level of affection and concern for them that most people feel for cockroaches.

Like Hitler, Jeanneret wanted to be an artist, and, as with Hitler, the world would have been a better place if he had achieved his ambition. Had he been merely an artist, one could have avoided his productions if one so wished; but the buildings that he and his myriad acolytes have built unavoidably scour the retina of the viewer and cause a decline in the pleasure of his existence.

One of Jeanneret’s buildings can devastate a landscape or destroy an ancient townscape once and for all, with a finality that is quite without appeal; as for his city planning, it was of a childish inhumanity and rank amateurism that would have been mildly amusing had it remained purely theoretical and had no one taken it seriously.

Mr. Millais is able to prove not only that Jeanneret was a liar, cheat, thief, and plagiarist in the most literal sense of the words, a criminal as well as being personally unpleasant on many occasions, but that he was technically grossly ignorant and incompetent, indeed laughably so. His roofs leaked, his materials deteriorated. He never grasped the elementary principles of engineering. All his ideas were gimcrack at best, and often far worse than merely bad. To commission a building from Jeanneret was to tie a ball and chain around one’s own ankle, committing oneself to endless, Sisyphean bills for alteration and maintenance, as well as to a dishonest estimate of what the building would cost to build in the first place. A house by Jeanneret was not so much a machine for living in (to quote the most famous of his many fatuous dicta) as a machine for generating costs and for moving out of. In the name of functionality, Jeanneret built what did not work; in the name of mass production, everything he used had to be individually fashioned. Having no human qualities himself, and lacking all imagination, he did not even understand that shade in a hot climate was desirable, indeed essential.

Read the whole thing.

Rand Paul Assaulted At His Kentucky Home by Trump Hating Democrat

Rene Albert Boucher, 59, was arrested and charged with one count of assault in the fourth degree. Paul, a Republican, suffered minor injuries in the attack, details of which are still unknown.

Kentucky State Board of Election voting records list Boucher as a registered Democrat. A person with the same name also works as an anesthesiologist in Bowling Green.

Paul was also on the field when a Bernie supporter tried to assassinate Republicans on the ball field.

Twenty years ago, in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist asshole—and possibly worse

From Matt Tiabbi's book.

(And there's more, but it's stomach churning.)



These are the people who have been lecturing real America about its morals.

It Feels Good to Be a Clinton

It feels good to be a member of the Clinton Crime Family when the entire Washington Press Corps is your wing-man.

Nets Refuse to Acknowledge Revelation Dem Primary Was ‘Rigged’ for Clinton

AS IOWAHAWK SAYS, JOURNALISM IS ABOUT COVERING STORIES. WITH A PILLOW. UNTIL THEY STOP MOVING

In an essay for Politico on Thursday, former interim Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile dropped a bombshell on the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. In the piece, which was an excerpt from her upcoming book, Brazile exposed how “the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary” through a shady and ethically questionable financial arrangement. Even though it seemed like a plot in House of Cards, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had a complete blackout of any mention of the news during their evening broadcasts.

The reason the networks wanted to keep Brazile’s findings secret was simple: They didn’t want to ruin their narrative that Clinton was a pure angel who was a victim of Donald Trump and Russian collusion. But in recent weeks, it had come out that Clinton had the DNC in her pocket and they both were funneling money to Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele so they could work with Russian agents to get dirt on Donald Trump.

For the Spanish-language networks, NBC-owned Telemundo followed the example and omitted Brazile from their broadcast. In stark contrast, Univision was the only one to mention the Brazile revelation and dedicated two minutes and 30 seconds to it.

It makes sense if you realize that the press are Democrat operatives with bylines.

David Corn investigated for inappropriate workplace behavior

Why are liberal publications such fetid swamps of sexual perversion?

Mother Jones magazine’s editor and chief executive acknowledged on Thursday that they investigated Washington bureau chief David Corn for inappropriate workplace behavior three years ago, warning him about touching female staffers and insensitive descriptions of sexual violence, and would now probe the allegations further in light of two emails written by former staffers in 2014 and 2015 and obtained by POLITICO.

One of the emails, written in 2015 by a former staffer outlining concerns she had heard from other women in the Washington office, said Corn, now 58, made “rape jokes,” “regularly gave [several women] unwelcome shoulder rubs and engaged in uninvited touching of their legs, arms, backs, and waists,” and “made inappropriate comments about women’s sexuality and anatomy.” The other email, from 2014, was by a former female staffer who claimed that Corn “came up behind me and put his hands and arms around my body in a way that felt sexual and domineering.”

Drudge headline: Prince William warns there are too many people in world...

Clinton’s link to Putin is the underreported ‘dossier’ bombshell

The news that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid for research used in the discredited Trump-Russia “dossier” is a bombshell. But even more shocking — and overlooked — is the revelation that the firm the Clinton campaign hired to compile that dossier, Fusion GPS, is the same firm that has been accused in recent congressional testimony of launching a smear campaign in Washington against Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who was tortured and killed in a Russian prison in 2009 after uncovering a $230 million tax theft by 23 Kremlin-linked companies and individuals close to President Vladimir Putin.

Which raises the question no one seems to be asking: Why was Hillary Clinton using an opposition research company with Putin-linked clients to dig up dirt on Donald Trump?

Glenn Reynolds comments:

Weird that no one is asking that.

Thousands Protested Trump Last November In Rally Organized By Russia

Last November, a few days after the election, thousands of people gathered for a rally in New York to protest Donald Trump. The Guardian reported on the scale of the Nov. 12 rally at the time:

More than 10,000 people indicated on Facebook that they would attend a noon march from Union Square to Trump Tower, the future president’s home and corporate headquarters.

As marchers mustered at East 17th Street and Broadway, organisers estimated the turnout at 2,000. As the march began to move, however, the true figure seemed closer to the promised 10,000.

Chanting “Not my president!”, the crowd set off up Fifth Avenue under heavy police escort. A call-and-response developed, protesters chanting: “Whose streets? ‎Our streets!”…

Denise Mustafa, a video editor holding a sign that read “Adolf Trump”, said: “I want Donald Trump to know democracy is not going to be pushed aside. I want him to know we’re educated about what’s going on. This is a way to vent our anger in a healthy way and to let people know it’s not hopeless.”

It turns out those were also Russia’s streets. The Hill reports that this particular protest was organized on Facebook by a Russian group calling itself BlackMattersUS, which many people mistakenly assumed was some kind of Black Lives Matter offshoot

It's becoming clearer that a lot of the activity opposed to Trump after the election was organized and paid for by the Russians, and aided and abetted by Democrats.

Steve Kelly cartoon

Top Imam Warned NYC Mayor De Blasio About Terror Threats: ‘He Did Nothing — Ignored!’

Top Imam Tawhidi revealed Tuesday he warned New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio that his city was a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. According to the Imam, De Blasio ignored his ‘in person,’ and ‘online,’ warnings. News of Tawhidi’s warnings come after the Manhattan terror attack.

Imam Tawhidi 

✔@Imamofpeace

About #NYC terrorist attack, I personally sent letters to Mayor De Blasio online & in person about terrorist breeding in NYC.He did nothing.

6:41 PM - Oct 31, 2017

•  276276 Replies
 
•  4,0404,040 Retweets
 
•  5,6695,669 likes

Imam Tawhidi 

 ✔@Imamofpeace

Replying to @Imamofpeace

In 2016, I told Mayor De Blasio that I was in NYC and noticed some hot radical centres. I was willing to point out serious cases. Ignored!

Get used to it New York.  DeBlasio is sacrificing your lives on the altar of  multicultural political correctness.

In other news: Robert Mueller delivering highly enriched uranium to Russia in 2009.

The suicide lottery of diversity

Mark Steyn:  Jihad on the Bike Path

The Hudson River Greenway is not, formally, a 9/11 "memorial bike path". But it does run within 300 feet or so of the World Trade Center as it begins its progress up the West Side Highway toward the Bronx. So close enough. Yet on the central point I was wrong. The "bike-path left" will surrender the bike path as they surrender everything else.

As I write, eight are dead - all men, five Argentines, one Belgian, all in the path of an Uzbek Muslim who decided to take a Home Depot pick-up truck down the bike path for 20 blocks mowing down bicycle after bicycle after bicycle before exiting the vehicle and yelling - go on, take a wild guess - "Allahu Akbar!" Well, I never! You could knock me over with a feather duster - which the Mohammedans will no doubt find a way of weaponizing any day now.

So two hours after the attack, Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and other New York bigwigs assembled for the usual press conference to give the usual passive shrug - this is the way we live now, nothing to be done about it, etc, etc. Every so often in New York, as in London as in Stockholm as in Berlin as in Nice as in Brussels as in Paris as in Manchester as in Orlando, your loved one will leave the home and never return because he went to a pop concert or a gay club or a restaurant or an airport, or just strolled the sidewalk or bicycled the bike path. "Allahu Akbar"? That's Arabic for "Nothing can be done".

...

And now eight people are dead and dozens more injured - at the hands of a guy who came here in 2010 because he won a Green Card in the so-called "diversity lottery". Why was that stupid program not suspended on September 12th 2001?

Because even 3,000 dead cannot be allowed to question the virtues of "diversity". ..And so, on a buckled, broken bicycle on the Hudson River Greenway, the wheel comes full circle. America and every other major western nation thought the appropriate response to 9/11 was to show how nice we are by dramatically increasing the rate of mass Muslim immigration.

...

So now eight grieving families and dozens more who'll be living with horrific injuries for the rest of their lives are told by Cuomo and De Blasio and the rest of the gutless political class behind their security details that there's nothing to do except to get used to it.

I don't want to get used to it - and I reiterate my minimum demand of western politicians that I last made after the London Bridge attacks: How many more corpses need to pile up on our streets before you guys decide to stop importing more of it?

If your congressman or senator says that's not on his agenda, what he means is he's willing to sacrifice you and your loved ones in the suicide lottery of diversity.

You can bet that the press will scream about a terrorist attack in New York and then proclaim that Muslims are the hardest hit.

EXPLAINING THE LIBERAL CESSPOOL

Why is it, Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism? To adapt this slightly, maybe there’s a reason the left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions.

These thoughts come to mind in looking over the peculiar Cosmopolitan magazine (yes, Power Line’s research staff reads Cosmo so that you don’t have to) interview with actress Amber Tamblyn, in which she makes the startling claim that the Harvey Weinstein scandal would likely never have come to light if Hillary Clinton had won the election.

Let that claim sit there and sink in for a moment.

Here’s how Tamblyn actually puts the argument:

Read the whole thing.

The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There, and a Boon for Trump

Andrew McCarthy

The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months (see here, here, and here). Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

...

Now, it is surely a terrible thing to take money, under the guise of “political consulting,” from an unsavory Ukranian political faction that is doing the Kremlin’s bidding. But it is not a violation of American law to do so. The violations occur when, as outlined above, there is a lack of compliance with various disclosure requirements. Mueller seems to acknowledge this: The money-laundering count does not allege that it was illegal for Manafort and Gates to be paid by the Ukrainian faction. It is alleged, rather, that they moved the money around to promote a scheme to function as unregistered foreign agents, and specifically to avoid the registration requirement. That seems like a stretch.

Even from Paul Manafort’s perspective, there may be less to this indictment than meets the eye — it’s not so much a serious allegation of “conspiracy against the United States” as a dubious case of disclosure violations and money movement that would never have been brought had he not drawn attention to himself by temporarily joining the Trump campaign. From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.

Read the whole thing.

Alan Dershowitz: GOP, Dems Playing 'Same Dangerous Game' on Russia

It's too late. 

The Democrats were determined to overturn the election. 

Trump was the subject of a coup attempt.  And as I said in this post,

But the reaction of the Democrats and the rabid Left is unprecedented as they attempt to erase the results of a free and fair election.

And Trump is not your run-of-the-mill Republican "establishment" mush mouth. We may be witnessing the result of the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson “when you strike at the king you must kill him.”

I believe that Trump expected that the Left would act like any regular political party of the past when they lose an election.

They did not.

Instead, they attempted a political coup involving the FBI, the DOJ, riots in the streets … and a press that is 95% Democrats with bylines.

Trump is known for one big thing among others: when he’s attacked he strikes back. For the first time I have a feeling that some very high profile Democrats are going to end up in jail.

The Democrats had evidence that Trump was not your typical Republican pol; that's the reason he was elected.   He's not conventional.  He's not constrained by the "Old Boys" rules of the game.  He's not a crook and will not, like Richard Nixon, allow himself to be ushered out of office by the establishment.  If I could look into Nixon's soul during Watergate I would have seen a man who knew that he was doing wrong; and when confronted by the Republicans who went to see him he "knew" that what he had done was wrong.  Trump is blameless of the things he has been accused of.  and he does not revere the establishment ... he calls them the Swamp.

This will get uglier before it gets better.  But then, that's always the case, isn't it?

Investigate This: 1,2,3,4

A very good series of posts at Powerline about the importance of the Fake Dossier commissioned by the Clinton campaign.

INVESTIGATE THIS

INVESTIGATE THIS (2)

INVESTIGATE THIS (3)

INVESTIGATE THIS (4)

As a retired FBI Special Agent with over two decades of experience in counterintelligence, I’d like to make a point that Scott and Paul are surely aware of, but which it’s useful to keep at the front of your mind.

Scott regularly refers to the Trump dossier as the “Rosetta Stone” of the “muh Russia” narrative. That’s true, but it’s helpful to go one step further. The real importance of the Trump dossier from a criminal law standpoint lies in the use it was put to for official government purposes. To understand that we need to know whether the dossier was used to justify the initiation of Full Investigations (FIs), according to the relevant AG Guidelines for National Security investigations.

The full relevance of these considerations can be seen from Scott and Paul’s review of just how threadbare the dossier really was in terms of authentication. If it was used in applications to the FISC with the knowledge that it was “oppo research” and likely not credible, and if that knowledge was withheld from the FISC, I suspect we’re looking at the real possibility of criminal conduct. And bear in mind that such applications (for FISA coverage relating to a candidate for President or a President-elect) would have been approved only at the highest levels before submission to the FISC.

To put two names to that process: James Comey and Loretta Lynch. If they knowingly deceived the FISC–and that depends, as far as we can tell at this point, largely on how they may have used the “dossier”–they’re looking at serious criminal liability.

All of this explains the FBI and DoJ stonewalling. Comey and the rest are well aware of the implications for them. Bear in mind too that the stonewalling isn’t limited to document production–important as that may be. FBI and DoJ have been refusing to allow their personnel to testify to Congressional committees–that is, personnel below the top few officials.

I have said this before, but the evidence against criminal actions by the Obama administration and its FBI and DOJ is becoming stronger.  They though they would win and as a result left too many clues.

This time around some very high profile politicians may go to jail

No one really expected that Trump would win, so the Democrats left too many threads to their crimes lying around loose.

America has a long history of new administrations turning a blind eye to crimes and peccadilloes committed by members of previous administrations. Doing so is considered bad form and smacks of the flavor of a Banana Republic, where new leaders jail their predecessors.

But the reaction of the Democrats and the rabid Left is unprecedented as they attempt to erase the results of a free and fair election.

And Trump is not your run-of-the-mill Republican "establishment" mush mouth. We may be witnessing the result of the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson “when you strike at the king you must kill him.”

The Trouble With Maggie Haberman

Andrew Klavan on the culture.

Haberman is a White House correspondent for the New York Times, a former newspaper. Haberman's father was a long-time Times journalist and Maggie herself got to know Donald Trump while covering him for the New York Post, giving her a useful relationship with the president.

The job she holds now was once held by Jeff Zeleny, who famously used his first chance to ask Barack Obama some tough questions by asking him what "enchanted" him most about being president. In doing so, Dreamy Jeff kicked off eight years of embarrassing non-coverage of one of the most corrupt administrations in American history. At the end of Obama's IRS scandal, the Fast and Furious scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the Lynch-Clinton scandal and — as we're now finding out — a possible spying on Donald Trump scandal, the American press corps almost universally declared Obama "scandal free." Like Admiral Nelson putting his telescope to his blind eye, they really did not see the corruption! They thus sacrificed their credibility on the altar of their politics, leaving themselves open to Trump's Godzilla-like destruction of whatever moral authority they had left.

And what was Maggie Haberman, then a reporter for Politico, doing during that time? Let's turn for answers to actual journalist Sharyl Attkisson. Attkisson had to leave CBS News because they repeatedly quashed her exposes about Obama administration corruption. During her reporting on Fast and Furious, she claims Obama's corrupt Justice Department broke into her computer, planted classified documents and riffled through her files. She says the DOJ not only tried to smear her but also her whistle-blowing source as well.

In her excellent new book Smear, Attkisson describes how political operatives use friendly journalists to skew coverage.

"In a January 2015 strategic memo about 'Shaping a Public Narrative,' Clinton officials describe Politico reporter Maggie Haberman as an ideal, friendly journalist willing to generate positive press for the campaign. Under the title 'Placing a Story,' the memo states, 'We feel that it's important to go with what is safe and what has worked in the past. We've had a very good relationship with Maggie Haberman of Politico over the last year. We have had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. While we should have a larger conversation in the near future about a broader strategy for re-engaging the beat press that covers HRC, for this we think we can achieve our objective and do the most shaping by going to Maggie.' It almost makes it sound as if Haberman is on the payroll of the Clinton campaign."

It does, doesn't it?

Since we now know that Robert Mueller's FBI covered up Russian malfeasance during Vladimir Putin's successful attempts to acquire some of our uranium supplies — malfeasance that seems to have included millions of dollars in payoffs to the Clintons — Haberman's friendliness with the Clinton people brings much of her other reporting into question. For instance, who are Haberman's sources and what are they using her for when they anonymously feed her stories about Muller's current investigation into Trump's dealing with Russia?

But then, Haberman says the relentlessly left-wing, anti-Trump Times has no bias whatsoever. "I think we try and play this straight down the middle," she says. Imagine how shocked — shocked — she's going to be when she finds out the truth!

Glenn Reynolds: If some evil right-wing genius set out to marginalize and destroy the academy, xe could do no better than the campus left is doing on its own.

From the Washington Post, a Left-wing opinion broadsheet that is one of the actors that helped destroy the American academia. Written by Lucía Martínez Valdivia, an assistant professor of English and humanities at Reed College and harassed by Stalinists student cadres.

At Reed College in Oregon, where I work, a group of students began protesting the required first-year humanities course a year ago. Three times a week, students sat in the lecture space holding signs — many too obscene to be printed here — condemning the course and its faculty as white supremacists, as anti-black, as not open to dialogue and criticism, on the grounds that we continue to teach, among many other things, Aristotle and Plato.

In the interest of supporting dissent and the free exchange of ideas, the faculty and administration allowed this. Those who felt able to do so lectured surrounded by those signs for the better part of a year. I lectured, but dealt with physical anxiety — lack of sleep, nausea, loss of appetite, inability to focus — in the weeks leading up to my lecture. Instead of walking around or standing at the lectern, as I typically do, I sat as I tried to teach students how to read the poetry of Sappho. Inadvertently, I spoke more quietly, more timidly....

This academic year, the first lecture was to be a panel introduction of the course: Along with two colleagues, I was going to offer my thoughts on the course, the study of the humanities and the importance of students’ knowing the history of the education they were beginning.

We introduced ourselves and took our seats. But as we were about to begin, the protesters seized our microphones, stood in front of us and shut down the lecture.

The right to speak freely is not the same as the right to rob others of their voices.

Understanding this argument requires an ability to detect and follow nuance, but nuance has largely been dismissed from the debates about speech raging on college campuses. Absolutist postures and the binary reign supreme. You are pro- or anti-, radical or fascist, angel or demon. Even small differences of opinion are seized on and characterized as moral and intellectual failures, unacceptable thought crimes that cancel out anything else you might say.

No one should have to pass someone else’s ideological purity test to be allowed to speak. University life — along with civic life — dies without the free exchange of ideas.

In the face of intimidation, educators must speak up, not shut down. Ours is a position of unique responsibility: We teach people not what to think, but how to think.

Realizing and accepting this has made me — an eminently replaceable, untenured, gay, mixed-race woman with PTSD — realize that no matter the precariousness of my situation, I have a responsibility to model the appreciation of difference and care of thought I try to foster in my students.

If I, like so many colleagues nationwide, am afraid to say what I think, am I not complicit in the problem?

At Reed and nationwide, we have largely stayed silent, probably hoping that this extremist moment in campus politics eventually peters out. But it is wishful thinking to imagine that the conversation will change on its own. It certainly won’t change if more voices representing more positions aren’t added to it.

But at the end of her plea for understanding she still doesn't get it. Stalinism isn't about dialog. It's about power; it's about crushing your enemies. Better yet, if you can get your enemies to love Big Brother your job is complete.

Actual Malice at Vassar College

Hundreds of students, faculty and staff were whipped into a frenzy by factually false accusations against me and regarding my appearance. There were many false accusations. In this post, I’ll address just one aspect, that I supposedly posed a threat to campus safety.

The campus was misled into thinking that I, and supposed “neo-Nazis and white supremacists” who were likely to attend with me, were going to target non-white, LGBT and Jewish students. It was a fabrication.

Ben Shapiro vs. The Fascist Left

MUELLER PROBE'S FIRST ACT: LEAK TO CNN

So, if the CNN story is to be believed, the Mueller probe decided to leak to CNN that there will be an arrest and indictment on  Monday.  

There are two possibilities about this CNN story.  

The first is that it’s another example of CNN’s “Fake News.”   In other words, they’re making it up.  They’ve done that before.

The second possibility is that it’s true.

In either case, this will be the topic of this weekend’s news stories. 

And the timing of the story means that it’s designed to change the focus from the fact that the Clinton campaign appears to have colluded with the Russians to affect the election.  

Let's see how Trump reacts.

P.S. Mark Steyn on How To Steel an Election: 

....everyone was colluding with the Russians except Trump - Hillary, the DNC, Democrat lawyers, the FBI, all frantically pointing fingers at the only non-colluding guy in the room. 

Wall Street Journal to Robert Mueller: Resign. You Are Hopelessly Conflicted in This Investigation.

Mueller's old FBI is up to its gills in Uranium One and his prodigy and pal Comey basically engineered this entire special counsel situation to get back at a man who fired him.

Mueller is not impartial, and it's a great help to have a respected, more establishment voice like the WSJ editorial board say the obvious.

Read the whole thing.

CNN’s Undisclosed Ties To Fusion GPS

It's all one big incestuous swamp.

MUELLER PROBE'S FIRST ACT: LEAK TO CNN

The Russia investigation into President Trump's alleged collusion with Russia is being conducted by former FBI director Robert Mueller, who today saw the grand jury he impaneled recommend charges.

At least one person could face arrest as soon as this Monday.

But while the charges remain sealed until Monday, one news organization had the scoop Friday night.

CNN exclusively reported the news Friday, citing anonymous sources connected to the probe.

The news channel reports:

A federal grand jury in Washington, DC, on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are.

A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.

Mueller has recently come under criticism for his role conducting the Russian probe. As the FBI director who oversaw his agency's investigation into Uranium One and Russian racketeering, some have argued he's not a disinterested observer on matters related to the FBI's reputation investigating Russia. There are calls for his recusal.

As of publication, every other media outlet reporting the story is sourcing it back to CNN.

CNN itself reported tonight that typically the subjects of grand jury charges are notified immediately, but in this case neither any subjects, nor their attorneys, have been notified.

CNN, meanwhile, did not disclose who affiliated with the Muller probe offered these updates. The network's report began with a reference to "sources briefed on the matter" but never shed any light on who the sources are.

Panetta: Intelligence Committee Needs to Look into Clinton/DNC Dossier Payment

Trying to retain some shred of dignity when you're part of the Swamp.

This time around some very high profile politicians may go to jail

No one really expected that Trump would win, so the Democrats left too many threads to their crimes lying around loose. 

America has a long history of new administrations turning a blind eye to crimes and peccadilloes committed by members of previous administrations. Doing so is considered bad form and smacks of  the flavor of a Banana Republic, where new leaders jail their predecessors.

But the reaction of the Democrats and the rabid Left is unprecedented as they attempt to erase the results of a free and fair election. 

And Trump is not your run-of-the-mill Republican "establishment" mush mouth. We may be witnessing the result of the quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson “when you strike at the king you must kill him.” 

I believe that Trump expected that the Left would act like any regular political party of the past when they lose an election. 

They did not. 

Instead, they attempted a political coup involving the FBI, the DOJ, riots in the streets … and a press that is 95% Democrats with bylines. 

Trump is known for one big thing among others: when he’s attacked he strikes back. For the first time I have a feeling that some very high profile Democrats are going to end up in jail. 

It’s well deserved, but sad at the same time. It did not have to come to this.

SIX SECONDS TO LIVE

General Kelly via Powerline:

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had about five seconds left to live.

It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing nonstop, the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe, because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty—into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

The moment CBS NEWS realizes Donald Trump will WIN THE ELECTION !!

Update on the Russia News

The Hillary Clinton campaign – after a year of vehement denial –

•  Now admits it paid for the discredited Russia “dossier” on Trump,
• Used Fusion GPS to hire a British spy – Christopher Steele, once head of the Russia Desk for MI6 - to contact Russian officials to gather dirt on Trump and destabilize his administration,
• Induced the FBI to pay the Steele to continue spying,
• Who then used disinformation supplied by the Russians to get a FISA court order to spy on the Trump campaign.

This is worse than Watergate since Nixon's FBI was not a willing accomplice to the attempted bugging of the DNC. 

Even Hillary’s Campaign Chairman, John Podesta, has ties to Russia via the Podesta Group which did business with both Ukrainians and Russians.

At this point the evidence points to the fact that the only person in the last election who was not actively colluding with the Russians was President Trump. 

Meanwhile the American press, the media arm of the Democrat Party, has been wall-to-wall 24/7 accusing Trump of being a Russian agent.

This morning Senator Grassley called for a new Special Prosecutor to investigate the Uranium One deal which now implicates Robert Mueller, James Comey and Rod Rosenstein. 

At this point, trust nobody.  The Russians may well have accomplished their objectives thanks to Hillary, the FBI, the CIA and the MSM.  The time has come for a thorough airing to renew the trust of the citizenry. That means a special investigator, but one with a wide berth to look into the entire DOJ and FBI, its patterns and practices, and, let’s be honest, our intelligence agencies as well. We’re living in a bureaucratic nightmare.

The universe shouldn’t exist, according to science

“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” Christian Smorra, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. 

Stop existing. Don't be a science denier.