Press That Sicced Mob On Teenagers Based On 10-Second Video Clip Unsure Why Some People Call Them ‘Fake News’

Paul Bedard:

“…A top Trump ambassador is winning kudos for his part in convincing Germany to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air amid allegations it ran weapons to Syria.

Officials said that Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany, played a key role and scored his latest victory since landing last May when he warned, “German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.”

Since arriving in Berlin, Ambassador Grenell has literally hit the ground running delivering on the president’s priorities,” said a key ally and senior Senate Republican aide.

“At the top of that list has been to ensure Europe doesn’t circumvent President Trump on Iran,” said the aide, adding, “Today is a massive win for President Trump. Because of Ambassador Grenell’s perseverance, this Iranian airline will no longer be able to fly to the largest economy in Europe. Make no mistake, Ric Grenell has become President Trump’s go-to diplomat in Europe. He delivers.”…”

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He said U.K. membership would weaken the EU and divide Britain.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD:

“…Britain’s problem with the EU goes back decades. From the 1957 Treaty of Rome to the present day, Europe has been both the opportunity Britain cannot embrace and the problem Britain cannot solve. In the 1950s, Britain stood aloof from the increasingly integrated Continent as it clung to the remnants of its empire. In the 1960s it applied, twice, to join; both times its application was scuttled, twice by the implacable, but arguably correct, French President Charles de Gaulle. In 1973 Britain finally succeeded in joining the club, but euroskepticism was already so strong in British politics that the country held a referendum on leaving in 1975. Remain won that round, but British ambivalence over Europe has never gone away.

De Gaulle—the leader of the Free French resistance in World War II who went on to found the Fifth Republic under which France still lives today—understood the problem best. He thought Britain would never truly be at home in a European union. “England in effect is insular, she is maritime,” he said in his remarks blocking Britain’s entry into what was then called the Common Market in 1963. “She has in all her doings very marked and very original habits and traditions.” He added that “the nature, the structure, the very situation that are England’s differ profoundly from those of the continentals.”

Moreover, from de Gaulle’s point of view, admitting Britain into Europe was like letting a Trojan horse through the gates. He believed Europe faced a choice between pursuing its original goal of a deep integration of the original six members and opting for a larger, looser association that included Britain. A larger and looser Europe, he believed, would be a weaker Europe. It would be unable to develop into a true world power that could face Russia and the U.S. as an equal.

Today de Gaulle looks like a prophet. EU membership has left Britain miserable and divided. The rest of the 28-member EU is overextended, stressed and geopolitically weak…”

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OCASIO-CORTEZ ON MILLENNIALS: ‘WE’RE LIKE THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 12 YEARS IF WE DON’T ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE’

Related:

I keep forgetting civilization is still humming along after all these predictions of it’s demise:

● President Obama ‘has four years to save Earth.’

—The London Guardian, January 17, 2009.

● Warming expert: Only decade left to act in time.

—NBC News, September 14, 2006.

● U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked:

A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco- refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

—AP, June 29, 1989.

US Oil Boom Is Defying Expectations, Experts Say

Michael Brendan Dougherty:

“…Like so many stories that supposedly conveyed the reality of Trump’s America, that so perfectly displayed white Christian menace, it turned out to be fake. Fake, like the Ohio University student who sent herself anti-gay hate mail; manufactured, like the racist harassment on a bus that Hilary Clinton tweeted about; an attempted frame-up, with liberal credulity made into the co-conspirator, like the vandalism of a Jewish cemetery done by a progressive reporter. But good enough to share, good enough to cause doxxing, and justify the harassment and assault of children. I’m still chuckling at the New York Times and the Washington Post rushing out misleading and false stories — the latter with three bylines — without doing any original reporting besides a phone call to the Native American Elder, and a survey of reactions on Twitter…”

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 What A Weekend for Media Accuracy

Amelia Irvine:

“…She doesn’t deserve to be lauded as millennials’ feminist icon. Her incompetence with numbers and jumbled facts validate every negative stereotype women have been trying to erase for years.

I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” Ocasio-Cortez told Cooper after he asked about her careless and incorrect analysis of the defense budget. In one sentence, Ocasio-Cortez portrayed herself as a woman who is ready to subordinate facts to her moral convictions, confirming achingly anti-female stereotypes. She may as well have driven erratically down the highway or failed to catch a gently thrown ball. Of course, she later admitted that being factually correct is “absolutely important.” She just doesn’t seem to care much about facts and numbers when she’s tweeting.

Or, for that matter, when she’s speaking. In discussing with Cooper her proposal for a “Green New Deal,” which would use the full force of the government in an attempt to convert the United States to 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, she could not offer an actual answer for how such an enormous transformation would be possible. “It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now,” was all she could say.

Shockingly, the reason we “don’t conceive of it as possible” is because it is not possible…”

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“…More than 109 lobbyists and 39 Democrat members of Congress attended a “winter retreat” last weekend in Puerto Rico, ostensibly to help raise funds for damage caused by hurricane Maria in 2017, reports Fox News. The fun in the sun was enhanced by a limited run of the Broadway hit “Hamilton,” starring its creator, lead actor, and Democrat partisan, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Much of the media ignored what used to be called a “junket,” probably because the cast of characters were Democrats and the major media prefer to focus on bashing President Donald Trump and Republicans.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., was there, which seems surprising given his acquittal (“not enough evidence,” the judge said) a year ago on corruption charges that included allegations that he cavorted with underage prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. It’s not exactly the kind of image one should want to project after so much bad publicity, but he’s a Democrat and the standards and expectations of members of that party are different…”

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Related and always evergreen:

 Democrats Immediately Reject Trump’s Offer to End Shutdown

Kimberly Ross:

“…What began as a response to President Trump’s election and his questionable behavior toward women has morphed into a symbol of another sickness, that of toxic femininity. The organizers of the Women’s March insist they promote equality, diversity, and freedom — while contradicting these values with their words and actions. Included on their page of unity principles are the terms human rights, gender justice/gender norms, racial justice, and reproductive freedom. Meanwhile, women directly associated with the campaign’s very formulation, Tamika Mallory and Sharia law-loving Linda Sarsour, are unabashed anti-Semites. Mallory, who reveres the blatantly racist Louis Farrakhan, refused to publicly condemn his words of hate during a recent exchange on “The View” with Meghan McCain. Mallory even tried to cover up her clear endorsement of hate by making it a gender issue and stating that she “should never be judged through the lens of a man.”…”

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“…Former top FBI attorney James Baker admitted to House lawmakers in October last year that the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia was riddled with abnormalities.

Confronted with a damning summary of abnormalities, bias, and omissions, which transpired during the investigation, Baker told Congress that the investigation indeed was “highly unusual.” . . .

As general counsel, Baker advised senior FBI leaders on the legal aspects of key investigations and served as the liaison with the Department of Justice (DOJ). In testimony, he detailed a series of unusual steps he took in the Trump-Russia investigation, including serving as the conduit between Perkins Coie—the firm working for the Clinton 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—and the FBI.

Baker left his position as general counsel in early January 2018 and then resigned from the FBI in early May 2018.

Baker testified that it was Michael Sussman, a partner at Perkins Coie, who shared with him information that detailed alleged communications between servers in Trump Tower and servers located in Russia at Alfa Bank, which were eventually debunked. Sussmann was also the lawyer who spearheaded the handling of the alleged hack of the DNC servers. Baker admitted that it was highly unusual to interact with an outside counsel…”

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Gail Heriot:

“…I can’t help it. Yesterday morning when I ran across the shutdown notice on the web site of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (of which I am a member), I smiled so much I spilled my coffee. So far, I am enjoying the break from writing dissents.

If you’d like to get a sense of how the Commission works, check out my dissent on immigration detention centers or on environmental justice. My guess is that after reading them you won’t shed any tears over the Commission’s failure to issue reports over the last few weeks.

While I am waiting for things to start up again maybe I’ll have some time to tend to my cactus garden.  Dealing with prickly plants is good practice for Commission work…”

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KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL:

“…Everybody knew. Everybody of consequence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department understood fully in the middle of 2016—as the FBI embarked on its counterintelligence probe of Donald Trump—that it was doing so based on disinformation provided by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That’s the big revelation from the transcript of the testimony Justice Department official Bruce Ohr gave Congress in August. The transcripts haven’t been released, but parts were confirmed for me by congressional sources.

Mr. Ohr testified that he sat down with dossier author Christopher Steele on July 30, 2016, and received salacious information the opposition researcher had compiled on Mr. Trump. Mr. Ohr immediately took that to the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andy McCabe and lawyer Lisa Page. In August he took it to Peter Strzok, the bureau’s lead investigator. In the same month, Mr. Ohr believes, he briefed senior personnel in the Justice Department’s criminal division: Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, lawyer Zainab Ahmad and fraud unit head Andrew Weissman. The last two now work for special counsel Robert Mueller.

More important, Mr. Ohr told this team the information came from the Clinton camp and warned that it was likely biased, certainly unproven. “When I provided [the Steele information] to the FBI, I tried to be clear that this is source information,” he testified. “I don’t know how reliable it is. You’re going to have to check it out and be aware. These guys were hired by somebody relating to—who’s related to the Clinton campaign, and be aware.”

He said he told them that Mr. Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected,” and that his own wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier. He confirmed sounding all these warnings before the FBI filed its October application for a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. We broke some of this in August, though the transcript provides new detail.

The FBI and Justice Department have gone to extraordinary lengths to muddy these details, with cover from Democrats and friendly journalists. A January 2017 memo from Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, flatly (and incorrectly) insisted “the FBI’s closely-held investigative team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September.” A May 2018 New York Times report repeated that claim, saying Mr. Steele’s reports didn’t reach the “Crossfire Hurricane team,” which ran the counterintelligence investigation, until “mid-September.”

This line was essential for upholding the claim that the dossier played no role in the unprecedented July 31, 2016, decision to investigate a presidential campaign. Former officials have insisted they rushed to take this dramatic step on the basis of a conversation involving a low-level campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, which took place in May, before the dossier officially came into the picture. And maybe that is the case. Yet now Mr. Ohr has testified that top personnel had dossier details around the time they opened the probe.

The Ohr testimony is also further evidence that the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in its Page warrant application. We already knew the bureau failed to inform the court it knew the dossier had come from a rival campaign. But the FISA application additionally claimed the FBI was “unaware of any derogatory information pertaining” to Mr. Steele, that he was “reliable,” that his “reporting” in this case was “credible.” and that the FBI only “speculates” that Mr. Steele’s bosses “likely” wanted to “discredit” Mr. Trump.

Speculates? Likely? Mr. Ohr makes clear FBI and Justice officials knew from the earliest days that Mr. Steele was working for the Clinton campaign, which had an obvious desire to discredit Mr. Trump. And Mr. Ohr specifically told investigators that they had every reason to worry Mr. Steele’s work product was tainted.

This testimony has two other implications. First, it further demonstrates the accuracy of the House Intelligence Committee Republicans’ memo of 2018—which noted Mr. Ohr’s role and pointed out that the FBI had not been honest about its knowledge of the dossier and failed to inform the court of Mrs. Ohr’s employment at Fusion GPS. The testimony also destroys any remaining credibility of the Democratic response, in which Mr. Schiff and his colleagues claimed Mr. Ohr hadn’t met with the FBI or told them anything about his wife or about Mr. Steele’s bias until after the election.

Second, the testimony raises new concerns about Mr. Mueller’s team. Critics have noted Mr. Weissman’s donations to Mrs. Clinton and his unseemly support of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates’s obstruction of Trump orders. It now turns out that senior Mueller players were central to the dossier scandal. The conflicts of interest boggle the mind.

The Ohr testimony is evidence the FBI itself knows how seriously it erred. The FBI has been hiding and twisting facts from the start…”

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