An Updated Idiot’s Guide to the Trump/Russia Controversy

There are legitimate questions here, but they’re not the ones the media are obsessed with.

 

National Review  "Like many who follow politics full-time, I am exhausted with the Trump/Russia narrative, in no small part because it forces me to defend the president from mostly baseless charges rather than challenge his progress on repealing Obamacare, balancing the budget, and filling his own staff positions. 

"Months of theatrics from cable-news hosts and hysterical print journalists alike have crafted a false dichotomy in the minds of the public: Either Russia never even attempted to interfere with the election, or Trump colluded directly with the Kremlin to “hack” the results. The reality of the Trump-Russia question lies in between these two ridiculous strawmen. 

"David French scrupulously detailed the existing evidence and falsehoods back in March in “A Beginner’s Guide to the Trump/Russia Controversy.” Today I will try to get to those who are still falling for false narratives, and to cut through the bogus arguments perpetuated through the 24-hour news cycle. Here are the key facts you should know." . . .  Read more

Trump and de Blasio in Europe: A study in contrasts

De Blasio went to support these people

De Blasio called 'A horrible little man-child'

Avrohom Gordimer  "President Trump and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio were both overseas this week, within a few miles of each other. In fact, the President and the mayor were in Hamburg, Germany for the same exact event. Yet the contrast could not be starker.

"After a very successful trip to Poland, President Trump is tending to state business of the highest order at the G-20 summit in Hamburg. Despite the countless violent, rogue and lawless protesters, the President is moving our country’s agenda forward at the summit, as he temporarily leaves behind an America that is in far better shape than it was half a year ago. New employment and economic data were just released, confirming the great progress. ISIS is on its knees; things are good.

"In contrast, Mayor De Blasio is in Hamburg to join the protesters. The mayor, whose background includes support for the Sandinista regime and who announced last month that he would happily march in New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade despite the parade’s plans to honor a just-released terrorist -- his leftist tendencies should hence come as no surprise -- leaves behind a city which this week lost a police officer to a violent murder, which last week saw another violent murderer gun down people in a hospital, and which has a plunging quality of life problem, increasing homelessness and subway crime, a corrupt child welfare system and a crumbling infrastructure. The media loves De Blasio, yet his accomplishments are few and the problems that arose under his leadership are quite many." . . . 

Avrohom Gordimer is a senior rabbinic fellow at the Coalition for Jewish Values, a public policy institute reflecting traditional Jewish thought.  He serves on the editorial board of Jewish Action magazine, is a staff writer for the Cross-Currents website, and is a frequent contributor to Israel National News and a host of other publications. . .

First Trump Inauguration Protester Sentenced to 4 Months in Prison

Weasel Zippers

Roll Call  . . . "Powell, who faced 14 charges, pleaded guilty to charges of felony rioting and felony assault on a police officer.

"He told prosecutors he broke windows and threw “a brick, large rock, or piece of concrete at uniformed law enforcement,” WTOP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. said in a statement that Powell “admitted being part of a group of rioters who moved approximately 16 blocks over a period of more than 30 minutes.”

“ 'The group formed a ‘black bloc’ in which individual defendants wore black or dark colored clothing, gloves, scarves, sunglasses, ski masks, gas masks, goggles, helmets, hoodies, and other face-concealing and face-protecting items to conceal their identities in an effort to prevent law enforcement from being able to identify the individual perpetrators of violence or property damage. Some of the members of the black bloc were armed with hammers, crowbars, wooden sticks, and other weapons.”

"Powell was sentenced to 36 months in prison, with all but four months suspended. Protesters face up to 75 or 80 years in prison for the charges, with some facing up to eight felony counts, including inciting or urging to riot, engaging in rioting, conspiracy to riot, and destruction of property.

"Activists and other fellow arrestees gathered at D.C. Superior Court Friday to show their support for Powell and expressed their anger at the result." . . .

‘Collusion’ as Farce: The Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers

Do you know what federal prosecutors do when a thief brings the FBI incriminating documents that he has swiped from his victim’s home?  They use the documents to convict the victim.

Andrew C. McCarthy

. . . "If you find such government behavior unseemly, the New York Times will really give you the heebie-jeebies. The Paper of Record, as we shall see, would not only use stolen information; it would encourage the theft—arguably, a felony violation of federal law.

"Once you grasp this, you get a sense of what drivel is the Hunt for Hillary’s Hackers, the latest Russia molehill that the Trump-deranged have fantasized into Mount Elbrus. Served up by the Wall Street Journal, it is the tale of a now-deceased Republican activist’s quest for the 33,000 emails former Secretary of State Clinton hoarded on a private server and attempted to destroy, in violation of various federal laws.

"The heavy breathing belies a principle that should come as no surprise to journalists, as it is their bread and butter. As long as one is not complicit in a theft and has no fiduciary obligation to the victim, he is permitted to exploit stolen information that he chances upon.

"Under the Fourth Amendment, for example, you are protected from the prosecutor’s use against you of evidence the government’s own agents have unlawfully seized from you; you have no protection, though, from a prosecutor’s using against you evidence stolen from you by some non-government actor—as long as the government was not a participant in the theft." . . .

Angela Merkel : "Islam is not the source of terrorism" but the Christians who make Muslims feel angry because of "Islamophobia"

A real Obama yokefellow.

TEO info  "Angela Merkel’s speech that shocked the German people “Europe must take MORE Muslim refugees, ISLAM is a peaceful religion”."

Also this: Oslo Police Declare “We Have Lost The City”…Islam Has Taken Over

Why Progressivism and Religion Don’t Go Together

Hillary, Soros and the political genocide of Christianity  She "seems to have a problem with religious liberty when it conflicts with her progressive goals."

National Review  . . . "In the wake of that demoralizing defeat, some have suggested that the party’s top leadership is the main issue, and Democratic politicians in the House have begun openly grumbling against minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Others on the Left believe that Democratic candidates have been losing because they’ve stayed too close to the center, rather than endorsing the increasingly progressive policies some voters desire. Still others have posited that the underlying issue is the party’s dismissive attitude toward religious values and even organized religion itself.

"While the problems afflicting the party must stem from some combination of these factors, Democrats’ scorn for religion should be their biggest concern. That scorn is compounded by the party’s sudden and dramatic swerve to the Left on key social issues — abortion, contraception, religious liberty, and marriage, to name a few — in a quest for votes from far-Left, progressive Americans.
Just after the election in Georgia, historian Daniel Williams wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times titled “The Democrats’ Religion Problem.” In it, he suggested that Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign might offer the party a way of reaching religious Americans. He writes:

Mr. Sanders’s non-Christian background may have hurt him in the South; he did poorly among African-American voters, despite his consistent civil rights record. But he did what few other secular candidates have done: He won a sympathetic hearing from conservative evangelicals with a speech that gave a religious grounding for his economic views, complete with biblical citations. When Mr. Sanders spoke at Liberty University, he did not pretend to share evangelical Christians’ faith, but he showed respect for his audience’s religious tradition.

"Williams concluded by arguing that Democratic politicians must convince religious voters that they are not enemies of faith, and they ought to do so by “grounding their policy proposals in the religious values of prospective voters.' ”

Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: ‘Transgendered Men Don’t Become Women,’ They Become ‘Feminized Men,’ ‘Impersonators’

In addition, he said, “both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters.”

CNS News  "Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist–in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that “transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men.”

" 'All such people, he explained in an article for The Witherspoon Institute ,  “become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they ‘identify.’”

"Dr. McHugh , who was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital for 26 years, the medical institute that had initially pioneered sex-change surgery – and later ceased the practice – stressed that the cultural meme, or idea that “one’s sex is fluid and a matter of choice” is extremely damaging, especially to young people.

"The idea that one’s sexuality is a feeling and not a biological fact “is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges,” said Dr. McHugh in his article, Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme." . . .

The Necessity of Looking Stupid

"Not being afraid to look stupid has great benefits."

Inside Higher Ed  "When anthropologist Lauren Herckis tried to figure out why new teaching strategies developed at Carnegie Mellon were not being widely adopted, she found that one of the reasons instructors were hesitant was because their “No. 1 challenge was to make sure that they were not an embarrassment to [themselves] in front of students.” 

"For some, I can imagine that this manifests as a fear at looking stupid. In others, it may be a desire to appear smart.

"I sure do remember walking into a classroom consumed with the fear of looking stupid.

"It’s happened both as a student and an instructor. As a student, it was part and parcel of the writing workshops of both college and graduate school where my work was going to be the sole focus of everyone’s attention for an hour. What if my submission was terrible, just shamefully bad? My hands would tremble beneath the seminar table, waiting for the first verdicts to come in.

"As a TA in grad school, I was terrified my students would out me as a fraud. For that reason, early on I stuck to the script of the textbook, sometimes spending entire periods just reading it out loud to them, occasionally adding emphasis to particular sentences where it seemed appropriate." . . .

A blog by John Warner, author of the story collection Tough Day for the Army, and a novel, The Funny Man, on teaching, writing and never knowing when you're going to be asked to leave.

After Cop’s Slaying, A Call For More Bullet-resistant Glass

The Yeshiva World

. . . "Experts say that while fortifying police vehicles is worth it to save even one life, it isn’t a panacea for gun violence against police officers. They also suggest that posting officers in stationary command centers can make them sitting ducks for anyone planning an attack.

"In the case of Wednesday’s slaying of 12-year NYPD veteran Miosotis Familia, she had been assigned to work out of a command vehicle that had been placed in a high-crime section of the Bronx after a triple shooting three months ago." . . .

. . . "Frank Merenda, a former NYPD captain who is now an assistant professor of criminal justice at Marist College, said the extra protection could give officers a tactical advantage but has its limitations.

“ 'It’s important to remember the job of the police is to fight crime and keep communities safe, which begins with engaging the community, not just fortifying themselves from it,” he said."

Tucker Carlson Asks, ‘How Did Maxine Waters Afford $4.3 Million Home?’

Weasel Zippers

Not blasé about de Blasio

Power Line Blog    "The New York Post is not too thrilled by the timing or the mission of Mayor de Blasio’s sudden departure to join the mob in Hamburg. The Post headline reads “De Blasio races to Germany to protest G20 summit.” The Post has five reporters on the story. They bring the heat:

Mayor de Blasio on Thursday skipped an NYPD swearing-in ceremony made somber by this week’s assassination of a cop — then hours later revealed he was busy preparing to jet off on a surprise trip to join leftist protesters at the G-20 summit in Germany. Hizzoner’s overseas jaunt was kept under wraps until just 90 minutes before he took off from Newark Airport. A last-minute announcement said he “will attend several events surrounding the G-20 Summit, including Saturday’s Hamburg Zeigt Haltung rally.” De Blasio will be the keynote speaker, organizers of the demonstration — Hamburg Shows Attitude — tweeted.

"Hamburg Shows Attitude has nothing on the New York Post. The New York Post Shows Attitude…in this classic cover:"

CNN: guardians of our freedom

CNN: The Corleone Network

When CNN reports on the collusion scandal, it focuses on the Trump campaign, Vladimir Putin, and maybe once in a blue moon, Hillary Clinton.  But it chooses not to report on the entity that truly colluded in the Russia claims: the media. 

americanthinker.com

CNN was better when it was boring  "A couple of years ago, you could have described the three cable news channels this way. FOX was dynamic, MSNBC was unwatchable and CNN was boring.   

"Well, CNN is now worse than boring. They are just plain silly and self absorbed, as Roger Kimball wrote:   

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I speculated that CNN, the Crackpot News Network, had reached the terminal stage of malevolent implausibility. 

“[I]t would be a good thing,” I wrote, “were CNN humiliated and sued out of existence. It performs no journalistic function, merely a destructively partisan one.”

As usual, I was too kind. CNN will not have to be sued out of existence, as Gawker Media, another disgusting purveyor of malicious gossip and fake news, was a year or so back. 

No, CNN seems to be performing a species of hara-kiri or seppuku in public.    

"Yes, they are self-destructing indeed, no matter how much they try to put on a happy face.     

"Jeff Zucker, President of CNN, is now complaining that President Trump istrying to intimidate his network. Really Jeff? Are you that soft? What if President Trump had said that CNN is trying to intimidate him? Wouldn't CNN mock that?     

"On a more serious note, "the bean counters" may soon be asking Mr. Zucker for a meeting to discuss ratings. CNN continues to be #3 and way behind #2. In fact, CNN Can’t Crack Top 10 In Cable News Ratings!

"All of this begs a question: What if CNN had responded to Mr. Trump's wrestling video with their own wrestling video? What if they had responded with humor rather than this self-righteous crap that President Trump is threatening journalism? "  (It does not "beg the question; it prompts the question! TD)

Who can ever forget this jewel from CNN's Dan Lothian?

CNN Slides To #13 In Cable Rankings