THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TARGETS IRAN’S NUKES: What we should have done all along.
Archive for 2018
May 17, 2018
To the extent that we can stipulate these assertions as facts, I hereby free the right from the obligation to praise John McCain. I further free the right from their vow of silence over McCain’s history of abusing anyone and everyone on the right who disagrees with him. John McCain has been amply compensated for his honorable military service during the Vietnam War. The right has paid its debt to him. We’re even.
Read the whole thing.
HIS QUESTIONS SUGGEST HE ALREADY KNOWS SOMETHING: Rand Paul: I Want To Know What Haspel Knows About The Surveillance Of The Trump Campaign, If CIA Was Involved. Says Paul:
This is a big deal. Now, some are saying, oh, it was just incidentally collected. It`s still a big deal. And there is a question. There are some accusations it was actually ordered by President Obama`s administration, either through John Brennan or others. Gina Haspel is the acting director of the CIA. She is high enough up in the CIA. I think we should know what she knows about whether the Trump campaign was surveilled upon. We do know that John Brennan, since he has left government, has become an outspoken partisan against the president in very defamatory terms. So, yes, I`m concerned about Gina Haspel being a close acolyte of John Brennan. I also would like to know from her before she is appointed, if she is indeed appointed, I would like to know, what does she know about the surveillance of the Trump campaign and why was the CIA involved? …
I think that she is a close acolyte of John Brennan. So, I think some have called her a protégé. And I worry that now we have seen John Brennan`s stripes. We have seen that he is a dyed-in-the-wool partisan, a hater of Donald Trump. And so I don`t want people running our intelligence agencies that have an axe to grind or have some sort of partisanship lurking beneath the service.
Me neither, but the only way to get there is probably by sacking a lot of people.
PARTISAN SPIN ASIDE, IF PERMANENT THIS WOULD BE A HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT: Putting ‘White House’ on the resume is less of a boost.
AN F-22 OPENS WIDE: During a flyover, an F-22 Raptor stealth fighter opens it weapons bay.
OLD TWEETS BECOME A NEW WEAPON: My weekly column at The Daily Caller is up. Bonus (interview with the inimitable Scott Adams!)
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Link fixed!
AS ALWAYS, IT’S WHATEVER THE NARRATIVE REQUIRES AT THE MOMENT: Which is it CNN? Pence is Trump’s top rival or the ‘Kandinsky of kissing up.’
To understand the frustration the White House has with news coverage, officials are pointing to CNN’s whipsawed description of Vice President Mike Pence’s relationship with President Trump over a 24-hour period this week.
CNN Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza, who on Tuesday took down a tweet showing Trump in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, in two successive columns wrote first that Pence was plotting for control of the GOP and angering Trump, then that Pence was Trump’s biggest fan, never missing a chance for “kissing up.”
In his “The Point,” the analyst highlighted a Monday New York Times report on Pence’s midterm election operation. “a) Vice President Mike Pence and his advisers are operating as a sort of de facto political unit within the White House and b) allies of President Donald Trump are none too happy about that fact,” said the column.
Pence is described as a power-grabbing rival. “The Point: Politics abhors a vacuum. Trump’s lack of ties to the GOP campaign establishment and his seeming disinterest in anyone’s politics other than his own create an opening for Pence. The question is whether he can take advantage without seeming like he is taking advantage,” wrote Cillizza.
Then, in the very next “The Point,” was this headline: “Mike Pence’s Mount Rushmore: Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.”
That column describes Pence as an embarrassing suck up.
This is CNN.
ALLIES: Turkey urges Islamic world to unite against Israel, calls summit.
Meanwhile: Young Saudis get behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive, mostly.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia switched places so slowly, I hardly even noticed.
HOW #METOO UNDERMINES PROGRESSIVE MORAL AUTHORITY.
As Richard Fernandez says, the torpedoes the Democrats put in the water to sink Trump keep circling back on them.
JUST ANOTHER PEACEFUL PROTEST: Houses in Sderot Struck by Machine Gun Fire from Gaza.
WHAT DESPERATION LOOKS LIKE:
At least give CNN some credit for honesty, making clear that Trump was talking about MS-13 while so many others pretend that he was talking about all immigrants.
Weird how Trump’s “Fake New” mantra gets so much traction.
AMONG OTHER THINGS: Cynthia Nixon’s selective outrage could kill her career. As much as I’m enjoying her shots at Cuomo, I don’t think she really has a political career to kill.
I DON’T KNOW ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I DON’T LIKE: Stormy Daniels will perform with naked Trump statue in Oregon.
LAW: Mark Levin breaks down the FBI’s secret ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ ‘cabal’ against Trump.
As an aside, a friend on Facebook suggested that — since “crossfire hurricane” comes from the Rolling Stones’ “Jumping Jack Flash” — Trump’s signature rally-ending song from the Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” was his way of trolling them, and letting them know that he knew. Delightful, if true.
CLAIM: Kremlin Used NRA to Help Trump in 2016, Senate Report Says.
The NRA spent a record $30 million on Trump and the FBI is reportedly investigating whether any of the money came from Russia. U.S. law prohibits foreign money to be spent on elections.
Two Russian nationals figure prominently in the alleged scheme: Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Kremlin’s central bank, and his then-deputy Maria Butina.
Torshin met Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA’s 2016 convention in Kentucky and hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2015. Torshin was previously accused by Spanish investigators of laundering money for Russian mobsters, an allegation he denied. (Last month he was sanctioned by the U.S.)
Well, that’s certainly no way to treat someone who supposedly helped get you into the Oval Office.
Plus:
In May 2016, the same month Torshin met Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, Erickson emailed a Trump advisor about setting up a meeting between the candidate and Putin.
“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” he wrote, according to the New York Times. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”
How’d that work out for him?
WHY ARE BLUE STATES SUCH CESSPITS OF POLITICAL CRIMINALITY? Sheldon Silver and the Albany Culture of Corruption.
BUT WHAT IF SOME OF THEIR SJW EMPLOYEES DECIDE YOU’RE GUILTY OF BADTHINK? Google offers free cyber protection to US political groups.
JAMES HOHMANN: The far left is winning the Democratic civil war.
THE BIG IDEA: Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates.
The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.
— In Nebraska, a liberal social worker and political neophyte who built her campaign around “Medicare for All” scored a shocking upset in a Democratic primary to take on Rep. Don Bacon (R). Kara Eastman, 45, beat former congressman Brad Ashford, 68, in an Omaha-area district that national Democrats believed they could pick up in November.
Eastman advocated for universal background checks to buy guns, raising taxes and decriminalizing marijuana. “I’m tired of hearing Democrats don’t have a backbone, that we don’t stand for anything,” she said in a commercial that touted her support for universal health care. “That changes now!”
Ashford had the full-throated support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which must now reevaluate whether to invest in the race.
That’s just the initial bullet point in the wake of this week’s primary races. There’s a lot to unpack in this one — none of it good for Democrats seeking to haul their party back towards the center.
JOHN BRENNAN’S “EXTREMELY SENSITIVE ISSUE:” “Brennan dimly understood that there would be hell to pay if it came out that Hillary partisans in the U.S. government were spying on her opponent’s campaign, making use of opposition research that she had purchased. But Brennan, who was auditioning to be Hillary’s CIA director and choking on his anger at the thought of Trump as president, couldn’t help himself apparently.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Start Having More Sex.
NOT WHAT WAS EXPECTED: Homo naledi’s brain: Like ours, but smaller.