How Obama manipulated sensitive secret intelligence for political gain

Washington Times

Cartoon added byTD

"They wanted him dead.

"For years, a clandestine U.S. intelligence team had tracked a man they knew was high in the leadership of al Qaeda — an operative some believed had a hand in plotting the gruesome 2009 suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers.

"Their pursuit was personal, and by early 2014, according to a source directly involved in the operation, the agency had the target under tight drone surveillance. “We literally had a bead on this guy’s head and just needed authorization from Washington to pull the trigger,” said the source.

"Then something unexpected happened. While agents waited for the green light, the al Qaeda operative’s name, as well as information about the CIA’s classified surveillance and plan to kill him in Pakistan, suddenly appeared in the U.S. press.

"Abdullah al-Shami, it turned out, was an American citizen, and President Obama and his national security advisers were torn over whether the benefits of killing him would outweigh the political and civil liberties backlash that was sure to follow." . . .

HuffPo Contributor Apologizes to Sen. Scott for His Prop Tweet

Legal Insurrection

Tim Scott

✔@SenatorTimScott

Uh probably because I helped write the bill for the past year, have multiple provisions included, got multiple Senators on board over the last week and have worked on tax reform my entire time in Congress. But if you'd rather just see my skin color, pls feel free. https://twitter.com/andyostroy/status/943575916424450049 …

3:23 PM - Dec 20, 2017

"BOOM! Of course people quickly quickly came to Scott’s side to defend the senator.

"Ostroy deleted the tweet and apologized to Scott." . . .

Anti-American UN General Assembly vote presents Trump an opportunity to turn a loss into a win

Legal Insurrection

"Shrink the size of the UN bureaucracy, and undo Obama’s legacy of leveraging the UN against America and Israel."

. . . "Needless to say, the Palestinian leadership, which funnels an enormous percentage of its budget to paying rewards to terrorists and their families, declared it a big victory:

“The vote is a victory for Palestine,” said Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah. “We will continue our efforts in the United Nations and at all international forums to put an end to this occupation and to establish our Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital.”

"Anti-Israel extremist group “Jewish Voice for Peace” portrayed it as a loss for Trump’s alleged evangelical Christian base:

The number of countries that voted with Palestine today affirms that a U.S. foreign policy designed to bolster Trump’s donors and evangelical Christian base will only serve to further isolate both the U.S. and Israel and inspire a global movement to realize Palestinian rights.

"A more sober view is that while it was a loss for the U.S. and Trump, it wasn’t as big a loss as Israel usually received in the General Assembly. Raphael Ahrens at The Times of Israel writes, Why Israel’s massive defeat at the UN isn’t quite as bad as it looks:

In Israeli diplomacy, everything is relative.

Was the outcome of Thursday’s vote at the United Nations General Assembly on the status of Jerusalem a stinging loss or a surprising success for Israel? Depends on how you look at it. But it certainly wasn’t as bad as many expected.

Palestinian officials, naturally, emphasized the fact that there were a whopping 128 yays and only 9 nays….

Israeli officials, however, chose to look at the other side of the coin, focusing on those that countries that did not support the resolution….

The fact that a total of 65 nations did not actively vote against US President Donald Trump’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his announced intention to move the US embassy to the holy city was “hugely significant,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nachshon cheered.

 . . . 

Nikki Haley's Finest Hour

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.  That's a fact.  It will remain a fact.  It has been US policy to recognize that fact since 1995, reaffirmed overwhelmingly by Congress this past summer."

Guy Benson  "Aside from the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Scalia on the US Supreme Court, I'm not sure I've ever been any prouder of the Trump administration than I was during Nikki Haley's scathing and righteous speech before the UN General Assembly on Thursday. Katie wrote up Haley's remarks and the subsequent vote, in which the large majority of the UN's "community of nations" purported to declare the United States' decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel (which it is) 'null and void.' Your empty, symbolic votes to single out America for our unwavering support for a country you loathe mean nothing, Haley warned delegates. We've made our decision as a sovereign nation, and there's nothing you can do about it -- but we will remember your actions the next time you come, hat in hand, begging us for more money. Here's the video, in case you missed Amb. Haley's tour de force:

Text of Ambassador Haley's Remarks Before a UN General Assembly Vote on Jerusalem

. . . "Contrast that moral clarity with the shameful and craven actions of the previous administration, and the gratuitous and disloyal votes of normal US allies.  Good for her.  Israel was one of just eight nations who joined the United States on this vote, with a few dozen more abstaining.  Haley is hosting a 'friendship reception' for the nations that chose not to vote against the US on this issue  Israel's Prime Minister tweeted a short video thanking America and Amb. Haley for their leadership:"   Here:

Thank you, Ambassador Haley. On Hanukkah, you spoke like a Maccabi. You lit a candle of truth. You dispel the darkness. One defeated the many. Truth defeated lies. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you, Nikki Haley.

Haley Hammers the UN: America Doesn't Pay for the Privilege of Being Disrespected

Jonathan S. Tobin writes, Nikki Haley’s Right: Time to Start ‘Taking Names’ at the U.N.  . . . "That is especially true when recipients not only lack gratitude for American largesse but actively resent their indebtedness to Washington. 
"Trump’s predecessor encouraged this attitude, since he often seemed more inclined to apologize for America’s sins, and to deprecate the presumption that it could teach the world a thing or two about freedom, than to make demands on international organizations. Career diplomats may loathe language they think makes the U.S. appear to be a bully. But one needn’t embrace Trump’s “America First” mantra — though the foreign-policy doctrine published under that name is more realist than isolationist — to understand that the U.S. has every right to call aid recipients and allies to account when they cross the line into unfair attacks on Washington."

Israel doesn't stand much of a chance with liberal cartoonists You will see here that the left and Arab cartoonists are of the same mind. With this exception:

Appeals court orders military to recruit from the mentally ill

So much for keeping firearms away from the mentally unstable.

Ed Straker  . . . "The Fifth Amendment basically talks about giving people due process when they are charged with a crime and protection against taking of private property.  What does that have to do with mentally ill people joining the military?

"The answer: absolutely nothing.

"But the judiciary is so riddled with hardcore leftists that they are creating imaginary rights as easily as they ignore actual ones they don't like, like the ones protected by the Second Amendment.

"Here are some interesting facts.

1) During most of the Obama administration, it wasn't legal for transvestites to join the military.  Right before President Obama stepped out the door, he issued an executive order saying the military should permit transvestites but should start admitting them only after he had left office.  Perhaps Obama was rightly worried about the disruption that would be caused by a whole platoon of Mary Poppinses or Corporal Klingers and didn't want to take the heat when his efforts at social engineering in the military went bad.

2) Before Obama issued this executive order, transvestites didn't have the right to join the military.  And yet until that time, not a single court found the "right" for cross-dressers to join the military.  This "right" was discovered only after Obama legalized it, and his ability to legalize it, without an act of Congress, was questionable at best.

3) This "right" is a lot more than just allowing cross-dressers to join the military.  It is a way for them to get free surgery and hormones so they can "Dr. Frankenstein" themselves at taxpayer expense.

Black, female ex-Charlie Rose staffer suggests racism because he didn't harass her

Thomas Lifson  "It's always something," as the late Gilda Radner's comedy character Roseanne Roseannadanna would conclude – usually about trivial or completely misguided complaints she voiced (a classic example here).  Those words echoed in my mind as I read the litany of complaints one of Charlie Rose's former staffers lodged in the pages of Esquire earlier this month.  Ms. Rebecca Carroll wrote:

His language around race felt consistently coded. Charlie demanded I book the black guests he wanted but previously had been unable to get – black guests of a perceived level of respectability and intelligence (Sidney Poitier) – while dismissing the black guests I pitched, (Vivica Fox, for example). He accused me of pushing my own agenda several times, memorably when I pitched a panel on hip-hop. (I did not hear my white colleagues receive criticism that they were pushing any sort of agenda when they pitched potential guests and segments.)

 "It is unclear if being asked to book black guests he wanted was in itself offensive to her.  One could argue that this was racist – segregating the booking process.  But one could also argue that not asking her to book black guests was racist, as in "keeping it within the community" or "cultural appropriation" claims of turf.

"But she was just warming up.  A similar ambivalence attends her words about sexual harassment:    (Wait for it, here it comes:)

[W]hile many of us on staff were subject to Charlie's unsolicited shoulder massages and physical intimidation, as he towered above us at a height over six feet tall, the women Charlie preferred and preyed upon – at least that I witnessed – were white. It was an environment that all but erased me, while simultaneously exploiting me as a black woman. . . . 

Good Riddance, Evangelicalism Incorporated

American Thinker  "Trump's base in 2016 was defined not by race or class, but by belief in God.  Evangelical Christians and Catholics came together and pushed Trump to the win, in defiance of the media, academia, Hollywood, the professional class, elite Republicans, the Democrat masses, libertarians, and self-professed moralists.

"Both the pope and many prominent Protestant leaders expressed antagonism toward Trump, so this mass of religious voters defied their church elders as well.

"This was nothing less than stunning.  It was perhaps one of the great revolutions in America's religious history.  Rather than a serious study of this event, we have had a spasmic flood of pedantry from the very people whose authority these Christian voters rejected in the first place.

"I count myself among evangelical Trump voters.  As I am sure this issue is for almost everyone in America, the historical questions feel very personal.

"I resent being mocked and reviled by secular liberals who I know hate all religion.

"My patience has worn thin with people claiming to embrace a new liberal Christianity that I recognize as a warmed over version of the liberation theology my radical leftist family held in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Conservative Christians who position themselves as valiant defenders of the Bible and Trump opponents have been exposed in brutal ways as the "Evangelical Deep State.' " . . .

UN Votes to Condemn the United States for Jerusalem Move

Katie Pavlich

#UNGA adopts resolution on status of Jerusalem. Votes: 128 in favour; 9 against; 35 abstentions.

"Before the final tally, Ambassador Nikki Haley warned the U.S. would be taking names and remembering which countries voted against the move. She also reminded the international body that the move reflects U.S. law passed in 1995, which President Trump is simply choosing to enforce. 

Ulysses S. Grant: What makes a consequential president?

Lee surrenders at Appomattox

Bookworm Room

*Fifty years of school histories have lied about Ulysses S. Grant, who was a gifted man and consequential president. Not being a career politician helped.

"Three percent of a book about a man who was a towering figure in the mid-19th century America isn’t much, but it’s been enough to tell me that everything I’ve ever learned in American history classes about Ulysses S. Grant is wrong.

According to those classes, he was an intellectually weak, drunken, ineffectual, plodding man, who rose as a general by being a blood-thirsty butcher on the field of war, and he was an ignoramus once in politics.

"Chernow has already informed me that Grant did have a binge-drinking problem, but he fought valiantly; that he was brilliant at math and military strategy; that he was an intelligent man; that he was highly principled and utterly reliable; that he was a middling (not failing) student at West Point; that he had a horror of blood and violence that led him to fighting war rigorously to end it swiftly; and that he was a consequential and effective president. Some of this Chernow has already proven in writing about Grant’s youth and young adulthood; other parts Chernow promises in his introduction that he will prove in the book and I believe him.

"The mismatch between my education about Grant and the reality has led me to two thoughts. Thought Number One is to wonder whether Grant has been so maligned in history because he was a Republican. I’ve learned in the past few years that, barring Lincoln, whose Republicanism is glossed over when possible, Republican presidents do not fair well in the history books. Even when Democrats / Progressives / Leftists don’t win the political wars, they still write the histories.

"Thought Number Two is to note that . . . "

*Looking at things in this way, with a president’s worth measured by his years outside of, not inside of, politics, the fact that Hillary was greeted as the “most qualified candidate ever” due to her lifelong career in and near in politics is just one more reason to be grateful that Trump won. Trump has had to deal with politics all his working life, so he knows precisely how the sausage is made, but he’s not a politician.

Marie Harf Defends Obama's Aid to Hezb'allah

Daniel John Sobieski "Only someone who worked in Hillary Clinton’s State Department and thought giving ISIS summer jobs would stop their beheadings and terrorist attacks could dispute Josh Meyer’s lengthy, well-researched article in Politico detailing “how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” by undermining his own government’s efforts to take down the terrorist group’s drug trafficking operations:" . . .

"This rivals anything the Clintons did at the Clinton Foundation or in the Uranium One deal with Russia. And it is not out of character for an 

Obama administration that precipitously withdrew from Iraq, creating a vacuum ISIS gladly filled while Obama silently watched. It is not out of character for an administration that traded six top Taliban leaders for deserter Bowe Bergdahl. Obama has a soft spot for terrorists and Marie Harf has a soft spot for Obama. Why Fox News hired such a shameless and clueless shill for the loony left remains a mystery."

"Fox News, presumably in the interests of being fair and balanced, hired an Obama administration -- which includes the State Department of Hillary Clinton -- sock puppet who spread the false narrative that ISIS was not a virulent and existential threat, but rather just another community that needed organizing. She pushed the administration line that terrorism was just a reaction to climate change and the lack of jobs. 

"Not long ago, Harf opined on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that the rise of terrorist groups like ISIS could be prevented by a good jobs program."

"Fair and balanced" must have been the goal the night Sally Kohn was part of the all-star panel on Fox News Special Report, finishing her comments on an unrelated subject with the phrase "war on women" for no discernable reason. TD

Texas Imam Calls on Muslims to Kill Jews

Clarion Project  Video

"Al-Rousan was objecting to President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move America’s embassy there.

“ 'Judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews,” Sheikh Raed Saleh Al-Rousan thundered, quoting a famous hadith (saying of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.) “The Muslims will kill the Jews, and the Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him, except for the Gharqad tree, which is one of their trees.”

“ 'The hour [i.e. Judgment Day] will not start until Muslims fight the Jews there, in Palestine. And they know that fact. And the Muslims will have the victory.”

"Earlier in the speech he said Jews “killed the prophets and the messengers of Allah” and altered the Torah. He also accused Jews of having no connection to the land of Israel.

"Al-Rousan is a Jordanian national who arrived in the United States in 2007. He founded the Tajweed Institute “to spread the skills of Tajweed [proper recitation of the Qur’an] to all Muslims, young and old.”

"Al-Rousan declined to clarify his position and whether or not it reflects the position of the Tajweed Institute when asked to do so by Algemeiner.

"Al Rousan is just the latest in a string of preachers to be caught on camera inciting hatred against Jews. Imam Aymen Elkasaby of the Islamic Center of Jersey City was suspended without pay for a month after a sermon he gave calling on Allah to count and kill Jews “down to the very last one.' ” . . .

Via Weasel Zippers, which posted this as well: Islamist CAIR Official To Run For Congress….  As a Democrat, of course.

Students file complaint, tear down ‘racist’ pictures of Kate Steinle

The left for all of us to see.

Washington Times

"Students at the University of California San Diego filed a complaint and triggered an administrative probe after pictures of Kate Steinle were hung on campus.

"Gregory Lu said he hung up 150 posters picturing Steinle with the caption, “She had dreams too,” on Dec. 7. Four days later, he said he received an email from the Office for the Prevention of Harassment & Discrimination asking to meet with him.

“ 'Our office received an online incident report and I would like to schedule a time to speak with you about it,” an investigator wrote in the email, reported The College Fix. “Are you free this week by phone or in person.”

"Mr. Lu said the meeting has not taken place and he has contacted an attorney. He said the probe is an attempt to intimidate conservative students on campus, arguing that the same scrutiny would not be applied to a poster advocating a liberal stance on immigration.

“ 'We have had a bunch of left-wing posters go up all the time,” he said. “So the argument they might make is, ‘This is a political poster, we don’t want you to put it up,’ is a nonsensical argument because leftists put up posters all the time.' ” . . .