Think another pallet of cash will cool things down with Iran?

Rich Terrell

Iran threatens to shoot down more US aircraft, say reports "Iran bragged about its “collection” of U.S. drones and said it’s prepared to add to that collection by shooting down more U.S. aircraft, according to Iranian media.
“ 'We possess a collection of US drones which is a proof that US has violated Iran’s airspace and shows that they don’t want to respect the international law,” the Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh told Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reporters on Saturday, as Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.
“ 'If such aggression is repeated, we will add other US [military] products to complete this collection,” he added, according to Mehr." . . .

What role did John Kerry play in Iran’s attacks on foreign tankers and the downing of an American surveillance drone?  . . . "These actions, taken together, reflect an emboldened, empowered Iran — a country that cannot possibly withstand a full-on assault by the United States. Did Kerry tell the Iranians some things — about U.S. capabilities, about the Trump administration, about things that would or could force POTUS Trump to reconsider any retaliatory strikes — so their government could remain intact and compete its nuclear work?

"Given his history of Logan Act violations and recent discussions with this rogue regime, following by Iran’s challenging behavior, it would behoove the president to have his attorney general, William Barr, impanel a grand jury, then haul Kerry in front of it and ask him, under oath and penalty of perjury, just what it was he and his Iranian buddies talked about." . . .

Trump’s Iran Policy Upstages Obama Disaster "Democrats so wanted President Donald Trump to blast Iran. I think many Americans believe that the shooting down of our drone by Iran was a setup. Democrats hoped Trump would overreact and blast Iran into next week. But he sniffed out the ruse, and instead provided a measured response."

U.S. Holds All the Cards in the Showdown with Iran by Victor Davis Hanson:  . . . "The Iranian theocrats despise the Trump administration. They yearn for the good old days of the Obama administration, when the U.S. agreed to a nuclear deal that all but guaranteed future Iranian nuclear proliferation, ignored Iranian terrorism and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in shakedown payments to the Iranian regime." . . .
"Iran believed that the Obama administration saw it as a valuable Shiite counterweight to Israel and the traditionally American-allied Sunni monarchies in the Gulf region. Tehran assumes that an even more left-wing American administration would also endorse Iran-friendly policies, and so it is fishing for ways to see that happen in 2020 with a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Joe Biden presidency.
"Desperate Iranian officials have already met secretly with former secretary of state John Kerry and openly with Senator Diane Feinstein, likely to commiserate over Trump’s cancellation of the nuclear deal and to find ways to revive the Obama-era agreement after Trump leaves office." . . .

Dem staffer likely heads to prison for behavior during Kavanaugh hearing, largest known data theft in Senate history

BPR

• A former Democratic congressional aide who doxxed Republican senators during a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will likely be sentenced to prison Wednesday.
• Former computer administrator Jackson Cosko carried out what prosecutors said was the largest known data theft in Senate history and used it to blackmail a witness, to plot to extort a senator and to threaten others.
• He left operational spy devices on the Senate network that went undetected by police even after he was arrested and his plot was discovered, prosecutors said.
• Prosecutors are seeking to make an example of Cosko for criminally attacking people who disagreed with him politically, citing a rise in such incidents.

"A former aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is likely headed to prison Wednesday for what prosecutors said was the largest known data theft in Senate history.
"The former aide, Jackson Cosko, pleaded guilty in April to crimes related to an unparalleled effort to ransack a Senate office, extorting a Democratic senator, illegally harming Republicans for their political views, and blackmailing a witness." . . .

Please Don't Shut Up, AOC

 . . . On Instagram she said: "The United States is running concentration camps on the southern border. And that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps. And if that doesn't bother you, I don't — I like — we can have — OK, whatever. I wanna talk to people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ... 'Never Again' means something." . . . 

David Limbaugh

"Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may seem harmless, but she's a virtue signaler on steroids and a nonstop headline-manufacturing machine.

"The left adores her, and for conservatives she's a gift that keeps on giving —because she is either too naive or arrogant to rein herself in. Don't listen to those who advise not to be roped into her spotlight-seeking trap. Give her all the attention she craves — and more rope.
AOC conspicuously put her foot in her mouth again, but she clearly likes the taste of it because she refuses to remove it. "This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying," she tweeted. "This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis." What?
"On Instagram she said: "The United States is running concentration camps on the southern border. And that is exactly what they are. They are concentration camps. And if that doesn't bother you, I don't — I like — we can have — OK, whatever. I wanna talk to people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ... 'Never Again' means something. And that the fact that concentration camps are now an institutionalized practice in the home of the free is extraordinarily disturbing. And we need to do something about it. ... This is not even about a crisis for — this is not just about the immigrant communities being held in concentration camps being a crisis. This is a crisis for ourselves. This is a crisis on if America will remain America ... or if we are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency."
"AOC immediately came under fire. On Twitter, Rep. Liz Cheney told her that she demeaned the memory of the 6 million Jews who were exterminated in the Holocaust and disgraces herself with her remarks.

"AOC took umbrage, . . . "  Read more...

Ocasio-Cortez Refuses Invite To Visit Concentration Camps With Holocaust Survivor

Daily Wire  "On Sunday, socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declined an invitation from a Holocaust remembrance group to visit Nazi concentration camps with a Holocaust survivor, suggesting that it was part of a "far-right" scheme designed for "political gain.' "
. . . 
"It's important to note that King was not inviting her to visit the Nazi concentration camps with him but rather was encouraging her to accept the offer from the Holocaust remembrance group. The article from The Hill that King included in his tweet stated:

A Holocaust commemoration group on Friday invited Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to tour the Nazi death camp Auschwitz with a 93-year-old survivor.Jonny Daniels, the founder of From the Depths, wrote the open invitation to the progressive freshman asking her to participate in the educational tour during her summer recess from Congress.From the Depths president Edward Mosberg, a Holocaust survivor, would travel with her for the tour, which includes visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen and Majdanek concentration camps.

" 'We at From The Depths, have brought over 100 international parliamentarians to visit the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination camps, parliamentarians from across the political spectrum, including over 20 Representatives of the United States Congress, both Republicans and Democrats alike," Daniels wrote in the invitation to Ocasio-Cortez. "From The Depths is the only foundation dealing with Holocaust memory, memorial and education run entirely by millennials, we feel that this would be great opportunity for you to learn more about this horrendous past, and understand how it impacts lives and education until today."

" 'In the invitation, Daniels wrote: "The opportunity you will have of visiting the German Nazi Concentration Camps along with Mr. Mosberg, a 93 year old survivor of history's most brutal genocidal regime, will enable you to become a witness of a witness, something that our generation will sadly be the last to do, as result of the fact that the survivors are passing away at an ever increasing rate," Daniels concluded. "We await your response and look forward to learning together with you about this painful history.' "

Breitbart reports on AOC's refusal   . . . Alan Dershowitz, who recently said he would support Joe Biden over President Donald Trump in 2020, said Ocasio-Cortez’s “concentration camp” claim made her a “Holocaust denier.” Bill Maher, host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and a determined foe of President Trump, criticized her on his show Friday evening: “If you want to run a campaign based on reparations and concentration camps then it’s going to be very hard to win the election.” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (who is also a Breitbart News contributor) published a full-page ad in the New York Times:" . . .

Rabbi Shmuley

Discussing Joe Biden

From American Thinker columnists:

Biden unwittingly reveals the Democratic Party's scope of racism . . . "We always view Democrats as the essence of 'wokeness,' now. But what we are seeing is the delineation of the main part of the Democratic Party, the segregationists and racists, and the other part, the hippie McGovernite utopian socialists. These days, the McGovernites rule the roost. But even they aren't colorblind. Their fascination with counting skin color as a criteria for voting for someone or counting black faces in groups with affirmative action in mind is marketed as being pro-Black. But actually, it's just another variety of the Dixiecrat racism. It's the same skin-obsession that the segregationists had in mind, just in a different form.

"Even I was surprised at how much of the Democratic Party has been neck-deep in racism until Joe Biden started praising his friends. But Biden himself is old enough to be the story of the Democratic Party. And his gaffes on this merit a closer look at just who the Democrats are and what they stand for." . . .

Buttigieg vs. Biden on pandering to the crazy base  . . . "Buttigieg has tarnished the reputation of the officer involved as well as police officers nationally by associating the incident with systemic racism.  There is no evidence yet that this shooting was racially -motivated, but Buttigieg is trying to harness the public outrage among the black community to save face during a contentious Democratic primary." . . .

Joe Biden can’t keep his story straight  . . . "This story is yet another nail in the coffin of Biden’s campaign. He simply cannot withstand the sort of close scrutiny a presidential candidate is subjected to. That’s why his previous runs at the presidency failed.  

"The basic problem is that Biden is not smart enough yet loves to talk.  He says what he thinks will ingratiate hiself with the audience he faces. " . . .

"But on a national scale, Biden’s already occupied the only office he was qualified for, the Vice Presidency. I firmly believe that he was chosen a Barack Obama’s running mate because he was no threat to the top of the ticket as a rival and offered the image of a veteran establishment figure to take some of the rawness off of a candidate who had served only part of one term as a senator before going for the Oval Office. ". . . 

Elsewhere:
Biden Compares Trump’s Election to the Assassinations of MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy  Sort of. According to Weasel Zippers.

Joe and the Segs  "What Biden's latest gaffe, and the reaction to it, can tell us.
"Joe Biden has stepped in it, good and deep.

Don Lemon Was Not the First to Make the Trump-Is-Like-Hitler Comparison

To make such comparisons is, at best, naïve, and, at worst, a gross display of extraordinary historical ignorance.
“Anybody who compares Trump or anybody else to Hitler essentially is a Holocaust denier,” said Alan Dershowitz, another Harvard Law Professor. “To compare the American political system to anything that happened in the Holocaust is just outrageous.”

The Spectator
It is part of a much larger and ongoing narrative.

"Remember when Hank Williams Jr. was fired from his Monday Night Football gig when he compared then President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler? This led Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood to sing “You can’t compare the president to Hitler!” in their opening to the 2011 Country Music Awards.

"Apparently, Brad and Carrie were wrong.

"As you have no doubt heard by now, earlier this past week, CNN’s pompous news anchor Don Lemon compared President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. To be fair to Lemon, he acknowledged this to be an “extreme example,” but this did not prevent him from making the extreme comparison anyway, suggesting that media should not give a platform to Trump — “a bad person doing bad things” — the way they supposedly gave it to Hitler.

"Fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo rightly pointed out to Lemon that to make such a comparison is absurd: “You are now taking a guy who says things you don’t like and comparing him to a genocidal maniac.”

"Unmoved — and apparently unnoticed by those viewers who were still processing the Hitler remark — Lemon, seeking to clarify, then went on to imply that Trump voters were like the people who drank the Kool-Aid at the Peoples Temple in Guyana. As clarifications go, this one was not helpful.

"Lemon is not the first to make the Trump — Hitler comparison. On the contrary, it seems part of a larger strategy. To wit:" . . .

Perhaps most worrisome in all of this is what everyone appears to have missed in Lemon’s remarks, and that is why he referenced Hitler in the first place: Lemon was essentially advocating the suppression of free speech, the denial of “space” as he put it, to “bad people who do bad things.” Implicit in his commentary is the notion that media — that is, guys like Don Lemon — will determine for the rest of us what constitutes “bad.” Given the direction that Big Tech is headed on censorship, this should be of concern to all Americans, be they Left, Right, or Center.

Tunnel Dweller on hiatus for about eight days...

... "so here are some cartoons that didn't get used yet. Use 'em or lose 'em. TD

Tony Branco

There Must Be a Better Way for Republicans to Deal with the Media

Rush Limbaugh  . . . "And yet it remains ineffective. It remains ineffective in persuading people’s minds. My point is, everybody that pays even a little bit of attention to this knows the media is unfair. They know the media is, call it biased or selective, whatever term you want to use, most people know it. Pointing it out, pointing out the hypocrisy, pointing out how the media treats Democrats totally differently than the way they treat Republicans." . . .

. . . "So we keep pointing it out. We keep pointing out the hypocrisy. We continue to point out the disparity, the unfairness, whatever it is, all for naught, it seems. So what I’m saying is there has to be another way of going about this. There has to be another way of dealing with it. And one of the ways I have determined would be: don’t appear with them. When Good Morning America calls you, understand it’s not Good Morning America, it’s the Hillary Clinton campaign calling you because George Stephanopoulos is at Good Morning America and where he really works is the Hillary campaign, or the Bill Clinton war room.

"You would no more accept invitation to be interviewed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign consultant, so why would you accept an invitation to be interviewed by Hillary’s campaign consultant disguised as an anchor on Good Morning America? And the same thing goes for whoever it is that moderates these debates that are yet to happen. If the Republicans fall for this business of letting Clinton campaign operatives moderate their debates we’re told that, “Rush, look, that’s the lay of the land, everybody knows it, and it’s an obstacle the Republicans have, it’s a reality that the Democrats don’t. And everybody knows it, and therefore the Republicans have to prove they can overcome this unfairness.”

Really? Why is that case? It’s apparently been required of the Republicans for 35 years that they demonstrate they’re willing to deal with this unfairness. It seems like they’ve demonstrated for a number of decades they’re willing to do it. The point is it doesn’t seem to help them much. " . . .

Tony Branco

Why Are the Western Middle Classes So Angry?

Victor Davis Hanson Cutting to the chase here: . . . "Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors, and adjusters who could not be fired and were never accountable.
"Four, the new global media reached billions and indoctrinated rather than reported.
"Five, academia, rather than focusing on education, became politicized as a shrill agent of cultural transformation — while charging more for less learning.
"Six, utopian social planning increased housing, energy, and transportation costs.
"One common gripe framed all these diverse issues: The wealthy had the means and influence not to be bothered by higher taxes and fees, or to avoid them altogether. Not so much the middle classes, who lacked the clout of the virtue-signaling rich and the romance of the distant poor.
"In other words, elites never suffered the firsthand consequences of their own ideological fiats." . . .

Sex Strike Activist Alyssa Milano Releases Abortion Map To Inform Hollywood Where They Should And Shouldn’t Film

RedState  "Incensed over her failure to stop Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) from signing the state’s fetal heartbeat bill into law last month, but emboldened by her role in getting close pal and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden to flip on the Hyde Amendment, abortion queen and sex strike activist Alyssa Milano is on a new mission.

"Variety reports on a state-by-state abortion map she collaborated on that will help inform Hollywood virtue signalers where they should and should not film:

In response to the introduction of multiple “heartbeat bills” across the country, actress and advocate Alyssa Milano has created a shoot location tool for filmmakers that lists the status of abortion legislation in all 50 states. The bills have caused uproar in Hollywood and inspired boycotts in production-heavy states like Georgia.

“Following the passage of a number of draconian attacks on a pregnant person’s right to choose in 2019, including those in states in which the motion picture and television industries conduct significant business, it has become apparent that those in our industry need to be able to make informed choices,” Milano and activist co-author Ben Jackson said in a mission statement accompanying the report. . . .

The Selective Prosecution of Kellyanne Conway

Roger L. Simon  

"As if the woman didn't have enough to deal with the-most-jealous-husband-on-the-planet, Kellyanne Conway is now being prosecuted, or is it persecuted, by a hitherto little-discussed operation called the  U.S. Office of Special Counsel or OSC (not to be confused with Mueller, et al.).

"These unknown bureaucrats and/or legal eagles want Kellyanne fired for.... wait for it... making political comments while in the White House, specifically: "Given that Ms. Conway is a repeat offender and has shown disregard for the law, OSC recommends that she be removed from federal service,".

"What utter garbage!  What member of any administration since any of us have been alive could not be accused of making political comments while in the White House, overtly or covertly? At least when they're doing it overtly we can see what they're up to. Kudos to Kellyanne for that.

"So why Conway and why now? . . . "

FLASHBACK: Two Obama-Era Officials Violated Hatch Act But Weren't Removed from Office
I repeat: "Two Obama-Era Officials Violated Hatch Act But Weren't Removed from Office".
One of the several cited was this: 

. . . Solis "left a voicemail message on a subordinate employee's government-issued Blackberry in which you asked the employee to contribute toward and assist with organizing others to attend a fundraiser for the President's reelection campaign." . . .

The flawed case for firing Kellyanne Conway

Monica Showalter  "In a weird case of uneven enforcement, the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel recommended that President Trump's presidential advisor, Kellyanne Conway, be fired for making political statements in a violation of the Hatch Act. Here's the Washington Examiner's listing of her supposed 'violations':

Specific violations listed by Kerner related to Conway's comments during interviews about several 2020 Democratic candidates. For instance, she insinuated Sen. Cory Booker was “sexist” and a “tinny” “motivational speaker.” She castigated former Rep. Beto O'Rourke “think[ing] the women running are good enough to be President" and said Sen. Elizabeth Warren was "lying” about her ethnicity and “appropriating somebody else’s heritage.”

Townhall Toon added by TD

 . . . Which is kind of weird, given that it pretty well posits that no one, not even a political appointee, is allowed to have an opinion of any kind once in the White House. And by the way, the press asked for these opinions, Kellyanne didn't just give them.

"It also implies by default that no one in the Obama White House ever had or gave an opinion, which is laughable. Hello, Valerie Jarrett? Hello, Ben Rhodes. Double standard anyone? Spotty enforcement? And how is this not giving a political opinion, even without words? Shouldn't all the creatures in that picture have been slapped with the Hatch Act, too? There was some politicking in that opinion, too, by the Special Counsel's standard.

"Thirdly, it suggests that everyone can have an opinion at whatever level, even the level of a political appointee in an advisory role, but they need to keep the public in the dark about it. Which doesn't sound too good for transparency.

"The criticizing office, as the Examiner notes, is not affiliated with Robert Mueller's special counsel, but it is led by a Trump appointee, responding to complaints from leftists, and then going one further by attempting to micromanage President Trump's personnel decisions. (When Julian Castro was found in violation for the exact same thing, nothing but nothing happened to him, and he certainly wasn't fired.)" . . .

Trump on ‘Fox & Friends’: I will not fire Kellyanne Conway after watchdog rebuke

. . . Trump, though, said: “It looks to me like they’re trying to take away her right of free speech.”
He even suggested he would not counsel Conway to tone it down.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Trump said, arguing that Conway was merely responding to political attacks against him. “A person wouldn’t be able to express themselves, and I just don’t see it.”
Trump noted that he will be getting a briefing on the findings.