US, North Korea Diplomats Talk in Private as Trump Threatens in Public

Newsmax

"The Trump administration has been quietly engaged in back channel diplomacy with North Korea for several months, addressing Americans imprisoned in the communist country and deteriorating relations between the long-time foes, The Associated Press has learned.

"It had been known the two sides had discussions to secure the June release of an American university student. But it wasn't known until now that the contacts have continued, or that they have broached matters other than U.S. detainees.

"People familiar with the contacts say the interactions have done nothing thus far to quell tensions over North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile advances, which are now fueling fears of military confrontation. But they say the behind-the-scenes discussions could still be a foundation for more serious negotiation, including on North Korea's nuclear weapons, should President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un put aside the bellicose rhetoric of recent days and endorse a dialogue.

"The contacts are occurring regularly between Joseph Yun, the U.S. envoy for North Korea policy, and Pak Song Il, a senior North Korean diplomat at the country's U.N. mission, according to U.S. officials and others briefed on the process. They weren't authorized to discuss the confidential exchanges and spoke on condition of anonymity." . . .

Disney Releases Pro-Gay Marriage Cartoon For Preschoolers

Weasel Zippers

. . .  "(LifeSiteNews) – Disney Junior released an episode of a cartoon aimed at preschoolers that depicted two “married” lesbian moms.

"Doc McStuffins, a show about an aspiring doctor who “fixes” toys with help from friends, featured a family led by two “moms” in its August 5 episode “The Emergency Plan.”

"Although Doc McStuffins has been praised by many cultural critics for its depiction of a young African-American female doctor, it’s now under fire for its most recent episode pushing same-sex “marriage.”[…]

"The creator of the show, Chris Nee, is in a same-sex ‘marriage.’

"Nee has admitted the show gets “political.”

"In a 2012 interview with AfterEllen.com, Nee explained that she’s “definitely” thinking of ways to make Doc McStuffins more pro-gay.

“ 'My son [Theo] has two moms and it’s a huge part of my life as a human being and it’s been an incredible part of the way that I see the world and the way I see characters and the way I want to create characters who are incredibly accepting of each other and whatever is happening in their life,” she said.

“ 'I’ve never been anything but accepted in the world of writing kids’ TV, but I was surprised that Disney has been so beyond willing and excited to sort of publicize this part of my life and this part of who I am,” she said. “That’s progress!”

“ 'Disney has been happy to celebrate who I am and who my family is,” she said.

Keep reading…

Is California Cracking Up?

Victor Davis Hanson  (An intelligent Californian)

With poor education, a budget deficit, and crumbling infrastructure, Californians shouldn’t be focused on idealistic social programs.

"Corporate profits at California-based transnational corporations such as Apple, Facebook, and Google are hitting record highs. 
"California housing prices from La Jolla to Berkeley along the Pacific Coast can top $1,000 a square foot.
" It seems as if all of China is willing to pay premium prices to get their children degreed at Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA, or USC.
"Yet California — after raising its top income tax rate to 13.3 percent and receiving record revenues — is still facing a budget deficit of more than $1 billion. There is a much more foreboding state crisis of unfunded liabilities and pension obligations of nearly $1 trillion.
. . .

"A few things keep California going. Its natural bounty, beauty, and weather draw in people eager to play California roulette. The state is naturally rich in minerals, oil and natural gas, timber, and farmland. The world pays dearly for whatever techies based in California’s universities can dream up.

. . .
"Buying a home on the California coast is nearly impossible. The state budget can only be balanced through constant tax hikes. Finding a good, safe public school is difficult. Building a single new dam during the California drought to capture record runoff water in subsequent wet years proved politically impossible."

Pyongyang challenge: Should US shoot Kim’s missiles down?

AP

"With North Korea threatening to send a salvo of ballistic missiles close to Guam, a U.S. military hub in the Pacific, pressure could grow for Washington to put its multibillion-dollar missile defense system into use and shoot them out of the air.

"If U.S. territory is threatened, countermeasures are a no-brainer. But if the missiles aren’t expected to hit the island — the stated goal is to have them hit waters well offshore — should it? Could it?

It’s not an easy call.

"North Korea claims it is in the final stages of preparing a plan to launch four intermediate-range ballistic missiles over Japan and into waters off the tiny island of Guam, where about 7,000 U.S. troops are based and 160,000 U.S. civilians live.

"Guam is a launching point for U.S. strategic bombers that the North, virtually flattened by U.S. bombs during the 1950-53 Korean War, sees as particularly threatening. U.S. bombers have flown over the Korean Peninsula several times to show American strength after Pyongyang’s missile tests.

"Unlike past missile launches that landed much closer to North Korean territory, firing a barrage near Guam would be extremely provocative, almost compelling a response. Trying to intercept the missiles, however, would open up a whole new range of potential dangers.

"Here’s the calculus." . . . 

Victor Davis Hanson on the North Korea Crisis and the Ongoing Problem with NeverTrumpers

American Greatness

"Victor Davis Hanson returned to the “Seth and Chris Show” to discuss how North Korea became a crisis, what China’s role is, how the United States can reassert itself in Asia, and why so many movement conservatives have become estranged from each other over President Trump. The complete transcript is below."

. . . "And, I think that that it’s possible, and people are advocating that, but we would have to rely on help. Probably from the Japanese, South Koreans, and I don’t think we should count on any of our Europeans. But we need to find ways, first of all, we have about eight different steps as I said, that we could employ immediately and graduate them and escalate them, as far as China’s concerned. Because all the technology, all the capital, all the financing, came from China. And North Korea couldn’t have done anything. They can’t do anything without China. China knew it, they understood that they had a pit bull on their leash, and they cut it off to aggravate us.

"And we know that if South Korea was under a dictatorship like it was in the ’50s and they had nuclear weapons and they were saying, “We’re gonna take out Beijing on Monday, and Shanghai on Tuesday,” China would invade. They would do something. Or they would attack us, or they would yell at us for allowing that to happen. So they know what they’re doing, and I think to be frank, I don’t want to scapegoat the Obama administration too much, but over eight years of fake step-over lines, fake deadlines, fake red lines, getting out of Iraq, ISIS, the Libya fiasco, Putin invited into the Middle East. All that put together created a climate of appeasement without any deterrent. And that’s what we’re looking . . . "

Reviving Missile Defense (After its Obamazation)

"What did President Obama do? He caved in and notified the Poles in a midnight phone call on Sept. 17, 2009 -- the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland -- that we were pulling the plug on that system  due to Russian objections. Putin then watched in 2012 as Obama promised Medvedev at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, that after his re-election he would have more "flexibility" to weaken missile defense, which would help him fulfill his dream of U.S. disarmament."

Daniel John Sobieski  "North Korea’s ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads and place them atop missiles with the range to hit mainland U.S. cities is a very large chicken coming home to roost courtesy of two world-class appeasers, President William Jefferson Clinton and President Barack Hussein Obama. One engineered a “nuclear framework” deal with North Korea. The other practiced “strategic patience” which loosely translated means “wake me up when they nuke Los Angeles.”

. . . "Obama opposed any modernization or expansion of U.S. defenses against missiles or anything else. In his eyes, weapons caused wars just as guns cause crime. Reagan had a mantra of we win, they lose. Obama’s mantra was don’t attack us and we won’t defend ourselves. He laid out his philosophy in a2008 campaign video:

In a video made for the group Caucus for Priorities, Obama pledged:

"I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons; I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material; and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBMs off hair-trigger alert, and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenals."

"It is one campaign promise he has kept.

"One of the missile defense weapons systems we could dearly use now that Obama opposed was the Airborne Laser or ABL. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently spoke on the need to revive missile defense in all its form as a way of getting a nuclear edge over North Korea:" . . .

Progressivism: It's 1984 at Google (Updated already)

The word for today is "monoculture". 

David Limbaugh "Google’s firing of software engineer James Damore for daring to express politically incorrect ideas in an internal memo is the latest example of the political left’s tyrannical propensity to suppress speech, thought and dissent.

"Almost as troubling as the left’s policing is its apparent obliviousness toward its own hypocrisy and the danger it poses to the liberal exchange of ideas. While constitutional issues may not be involved in the Google case because no state action is involved, moral shaming has become a chilling cudgel in the hands of leftist-dominated institutions.

"In his memo, Damore notes that Google’s political bias silences dissenting opinion supposedly to shield employees from offensive ideas and protect their psychological safety. “But shaming into silence,” writes Damore, “is the antithesis of psychological safety. This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.”

"Damore concedes that all people have biases but that open and honest discussion can highlight these biases and help us grow. He says he wrote the memo to encourage such a discussion about Google’s biases, a discussion that is being silenced by “the dominant ideology.”

"Damore opines that both the political left and right have moral biases. “Only facts and reason can shed light on these biases,” he says, “but when it comes to diversity and inclusion, Google’s left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence. This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.' ” . . .

Fired for expressing diverse ideas by non-diverse diversity apparatchik

. . . "Well, then, can this politically correct diversity attitude be traced to Google's founders, oppressive white males Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in search of social justice compensation?  Well, they both have minority backgrounds and heritage – Jewish – and Brin is also a legal immigrant from Russia.

"Whoops again!  Wrong religion and ethnicity for politically correct diversity victimhood, so they too have been silent about this incident." . . .

Update: James Damore has an ´above decent’chance of winning his legal case against Google  "James Damore, the man fired by Google after he published a manifesto that suggested women may have a disadvantage in tech because of their biology, may well prevail in the legal case he has filed against his former employer." 

How about America returns to common sense?

"... the vast experiment against common sense that is liberalism."

Robert Curry  "Donald Trump's proposals – the ones driving so many people crazy – are simply policies that are good for America.  They are just common sense.  Because they are common sense, they deserve broad bipartisan support – which they are not getting.

"America once had common sense coming and going.  These days, not so much.

"America simply works better when common sense is abundant.  That is because the American system is designed to depend on common sense.  This fact earned America the title "the common sense nation," a title it once richly deserved.

"Common sense is consequently the best lens through which to examine what going on in this country.  We have a great example of this over at The American Spectator.  The article, written by George Neumayr, has so much to recommend it!

"Above all, Neumayr does what most needs to be done: he puts common sense precisely where it belongs – at the center of the political debate.  Which of these statements by Neumayr is the more perfect?

"This one?

Without common sense, without respect for the natural order of things, "conservatism" is useless. It is just destructive liberalism at a slightly slower speed.

"Or this one?

... the vast experiment against common sense that is liberalism.

. . .

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute and on the Board of Distinguished Advisers of the Ronald Reagan Center for Freedom and Understanding.  He is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books.  You can preview the book here.

Burying Obama’s legacy from June 16, 2017

Caroline Glick  "It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.

"If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.

"'The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.

"The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.

"The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.

"There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.

"First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured." . . .

dinnertopics

It wasn't all Obama, though: McMaster Purges Pro-Israel, Anti-Iran Deal, Trump Loyalists, from the NSC  . . . "McMaster in contrast is deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump. According to senior officials aware of his behavior, he constantly refers to Israel as the occupying power and insists falsely and constantly that a country named Palestine existed where Israel is located until 1948 when it was destroyed by the Jews.

. . . 

"What hasn’t been reported is that it was McMaster who pressured Trump to agree not to let Netanyahu accompany him to the Western Wall. At the time, I and other reporters were led to believe that this was the decision of rogue anti-Israel officers at the US consulate in Jerusalem. But it wasn’t. It was McMaster." .  . .

Say it ain't so, media

Silvio Canto, Jr.  "During the famous White Sox trial over throwing the World Series, a boy allegedly went up to Shoeless Joe Jackson and said, "Say it ain't so, Joe!"  I guess the young fan was hoping Jackson would tell him the accusations were not true. 

"Some of us today are making plea to the news media: say it ain't so, media.  Say it ain't so that you downplayed the meeting between President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

"For years we've heard, and some of us complained, that the media were in the tank for Democrats.  We just got more evidence that some in the media were indeed playing favorites in 2016. 

"This is the latest example from John Crudele: " . . .

A nation gets the leadership it deserves

Image by The Slammer

Solving the Debbie Blabbermouth mystery  "The disgraced former DNC chairwoman, whom Rush likes to call Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, is under the biggest scandal cloud in Washington thanks to her former I.T. guy, Imran Awan.  Awan was the ringleader of what looks like a genuine Capitol Hill crime ring, which defrauded the government of millions from no-show tech jobs and various other scams.

"Awan is currently in jail, and Schultz isn't talking, nor being prodded much by the establishment media.  A lot of speculation has occurred, though, about Awan possibly blackmailing Schultz and other congressional Democrats through his access to their computers.  It is even suspected that Awan took this access and sold secrets from the House Intel committee, which Schultz would have, to a foreign power.  Given Schultz's fanatic defense of Awan, the idea is also out there that they were having an affair.

"I, however, am more of an Occam's Razor, simple explanation, "follow the money" kind of sleuth, and I would bet dollars to donuts that this is just a case of two inept crooks, Schultz and Awan, getting caught with their hands in the till.

"Schultz doesn't have any family money, but she lucked into high elective office almost right out of college.  She is well known as one of the poorest members of Congress, carrying huge debts. " . . .

As the saying goes, "never steal anything small."  The Clintons are proving the wisdom of that saying once again, judging by the current lack of interest from Congress and the Trump DoJ in looking any more into the various complicated Clinton scandals.  Indeed, Bill Clinton may well get off scot-free and go down in history as our age's Napoleon of Crime.  As for Debbie Blabbermouth, she's only going to the nearest federal women's prison.

As North Korea puts Guam in its crosshairs, harrowing WWII photos show the brutal battle fought by US Marines to liberate the island after it was invaded by Japan

So this is what a "Guam" is!

UK Daily Mail

"Stunning pictures show the American struggle to reclaim island of Guam after it was seized by Japan in 1941

"The Americans lost more than 1,700 men during the fierce fighting and the Japanese lost more than 18,000

"Guam was settled by seafarers from South East Asia in about 2,000BC but Europeans discovered it in 1521

"The Spanish claimed it in 1565 and colonised it in the 17th century but the US captured the island in 1898

"Now bustling Guam - threatened by North Korea - home to over 160,000 people with a booming tourist trade"

A US Marine is given water as he lies on a stretcher with bandages
covering his wounds after seeing action during the 1944 Battle of Guam

"After an eventful history under American rule - and three years under Japanese imperial rule - Guam has evolved into a flourishing economy of more than 160,000 people famous for its beautiful beaches and excellent food.

"But modern citizens of the island are faced with fresh anxiety over the nuclear threat from North Korea as Stalinist dictator Kim Jong-un makes Guam a target for his nuclear weapons and US President Donald Trump threatens remorseless retaliation. "

 

Two US soldiers plant an American flag attached to a boat hook on the beach at Guam, just eight minutes after U.S. Marines and Army assault troops landed on the Central Pacific island on July 20, 1944.

Guam has much to fear:

When Hitler found out about this, things were not pretty