It’s hard not to participate at CPAC and not leave excited, fired-up and optimistic of the conservative movement! I first started attending CPAC in 1999 with “hundreds†of conservative activists, which has now turned into “thousands†in attendance. More importantly, key CPAC participants and members of the American Conservative Union that have been regulars here are more often now “regulars†in various Republican Administrations, including President Trump’s Administration.
It’s a diverse group of conservative, representing the spectrum of many on the right of center philosophical divide. Neo-cons to libertarians, pro-life to gay rights activists, intellectuals to populists line the halls, fills the sessions and network throughout.
I’m already looking forward to next year’s event as the theme of Making America Great Again will very likely be the official public kick-off of the President’s re-election campaign!
R.I.P. Congressman Bill Broomfield: U.S. Rep. Bill Broomfield, who represented the metro Detroit are of Michigan in Congress for 36 years and as of the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, died on Wednesday. He was 96.
A staunch supporter of independence for the “captive nations†under then Soviet rule, he was at the front lines of the Cold War with the Soviets. I had an opportunity to meet his several times in my early days of politics as often visited with an supporter our Lithuanian-American community. Our thoughts and prayers are with him family.
60 Plus Weekly Newsreel: A great, short and easy to listen to summary of the week’s news in a short video for those who just don’t want to read it all:) Please enjoy and share with friends.
-Saul Anuzis
Why President Trump Will Likely Be Reelected, And What It Means For Global Security
Donald Trump’s presidency has been so widely derided in the national media that a casual observer might easily conclude his prospects for reelection are dim. However, that is not what the odds makers are saying. They give Trump a solid edge over any Democratic candidate in 2020.
The odds makers are right. Trump will probably be reelected if he chooses to run. What follows is an explanation of why the odds favor Trump, and what eight years of his leadership would mean for global security. Let’s start with the factors favoring a second term.
First of all, candidates who get elected to the presidency once tend to get reelected if they run. Only two chief executives seeking reelection over the last 50 years—Carter and Bush 41—failed in their bid for a second term. Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama all won reelection, even though at least two of them were highly controversial. In fact, the most controversial presidents tend to roll up the biggest reelection victories.
Trump fires up CPAC with expletive-laden description of Mueller probe
President Trump, in an expletive-laden speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Saturday, accused FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team of trying to take him out with “bt†and accused a top Clinton aide of not having recovered “from getting his a** kicked.â€
Trump accused his opponents of moving away from a narrative of Russian collusion as Mueller prepares to file his report on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He said that the report was being produced “by people who weren’t elected.â€
“Unfortunately you put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people for a long time that shouldn’t be there and all of a sudden they’re trying to take you out with bt,†he mused to the delighted crowd in Maryland, as he mocked “the collusion delusion.â€
RNC assembles team to reelect Trump
The Republican National Committee has finalized its senior staff for the 2020 election cycle with a focus on disrupting the Democratic presidential primary and continuing to build up the party’s field and digital infrastructure, the party told POLITICO.
“Our team will be working hand-in-glove with the Trump campaign to ensure President Trump is re-elected and to grow our Party in 2020,†RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement on Friday. The RNC leadership team is a mix of internal promotions, outside hires and people staying in their roles from the 2018 cycle.
Michael Ahrens, the RNC’s rapid response director for the 2018 cycle, who brought a “troll the libs†approach to his work, will be promoted to communications director as the party tries to roil the Democratic presidential primary. Mike Reed, the party’s research director last cycle who was heavily involved in Elizabeth Warren’s 2012 race as research director for the GOP’s Senate committee, will be the RNC’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications.
‘Shame’: Victor Davis Hanson delivers scathing indictment of failed ‘coup’
The first “coup†in U.S. history in which government bureaucrats sought to overturn an election and to remove a sitting U.S. president has failed, a columnist noted.
“Not thugs in sunglasses and epaulettes, not oligarchs in private jets, not shaggy would-be Marxists, but sanctimonious arrogant bureaucrats in suits and ties used their government agencies to seek to overturn the 2016 election, abort a presidency, and subvert the U.S. Constitution,†Victor Davis Hanson wrote on Feb. 17 in an op-ed titled ‘Autopsy of a Dead Coup’ for the Center for American Greatness.
“And they did all that and more on the premise that they were our moral superiors and had uniquely divine rights to destroy a presidency that they loathed,†Hanson wrote.
The effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign “to create, disseminate among court media, and then salt among high Obama administration officials, a fabricated, opposition smear dossier failed,†Hanson noted.
“So has the second special prosecutor phase of the coup to abort the Trump presidency failed. There are many elements to what in time likely will become recognized as the greatest scandal in American political history.â€
AOC Threatens to Put Moderate Dems on a Primary ‘List’ If They Vote With GOP
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) threatened her moderate colleagues during a Thursday Democratic caucus meeting, telling the lawmakers she plans to provide progressive activists searching for primary targets with a list of Democrats who work across the aisle.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi began the meeting by chastising the two dozen moderates who voted on Tuesday in favor of a Republican amendment to a gun control bill that requires gun retailers to report illegal immigrants who attempt to buy a gun.
“We are either a team or we’re not, and we have to make that decision,†Pelosi said, two people who were present told the Washington Post.
Man Arrested In Attack On Conservative Activist At UC Berkeley
A man being sought for the assault of a conservative activist on the University of California, Berkeley campus last month has been arrested.
A statement from UC Berkeley Public Affairs said a warrant was issued for suspect Zachary Greenberg and UC police arrested him Friday, booking him into jail at 1 p.m.
Greenberg was identified as one of two men who confronted a conservative activist who had set up a table in Sproul Plaza. Hayden Williams, volunteer with conservative group Turning Points USA was displaying signs that read, “Hate Crimes Hoaxes Hurt Real Victims†– a reference to the Jussie Smollett case – and another saying “This is MAGA Country.â€
Greenberg was seen on video landing two punches on Williams – one a glancing blow and another much harder directly on his face.
Putin’s One Weapon: The ‘Intelligence State’
Russia’s leader has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries.
According to this year’s National Intelligence Worldwide Threat Assessment and Senate testimony by top-ranked intelligence officials, Americans can expect Vladimir Putin’s Russia to continue its efforts to aggravate social, political and racial tensions in the United States and among its allies.
So, to best prepare for future Russian assaults, we should look to the past and study the mind-set of the Cold War K.G.B. — the intelligence service in which President Putin spent his formative years. The history of the brutal Soviet security services lays bare the roots of Russia’s current use of political arrests, subversion, disinformation, assassination, espionage and the weaponization of lies. None of those tactics is new to the Kremlin.
In fact, those tactics made Soviet Russia the world’s first “intelligence state,†and they also distinguished it from authoritarian states run by militaries. Today’s Russia has become even more of an intelligence state after Mr. Putin’s almost 20-year tenure as its strongman. In the U.S.S.R., the party ruled. It was only after the rise in the 1980s of Yuri Andropov — Mr. Putin’s role model and mentor — that the K.G.B. became the state’s most important institution. Then, a decade after the Soviet Union fell, Mr. Putin rose to power and recruited many of his former K.G.B. colleagues to help rebuild the state. The result is a regime with the policies and philosophy of a supercharged secret police service, a regime that relies on intelligence operations to deal with foreign policy challenges and maintain control at home.
Supreme Court’s 9-0 Ruling Protects Americans Against Excessive Fines
It’s a good day when all nine justices of the Supreme Court make a stand for liberty. On Wednesday, the court held unanimously that the excessive fines clause of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment applies to the states. The ruling is potentially a major win for property owners and individual citizens facing excessive fines, fees, and forfeitures—to say nothing of Tyson Timbs, the man who fought the seizure of his SUV all the way to the Supreme Court.
Timbs was arrested after selling $225 worth of heroin to undercover police officers on two occasions, and he pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a year of home confinement and five years’ probation, and was ordered to pay approximately $1,200 in fees and court costs.
But then, Indiana moved to forfeit the car he was driving when he was arrested: a $42,000 Land Rover, which he had bought with money from his father’s life insurance policy.
Chinese authorities blow up Christian megachurch with dynamite
Chinese authorities have demolished a well-known Christian megachurch, inflaming long-standing tensions between religious groups and the Communist Party.
Witnesses and overseas activists said the paramilitary People’s Armed Police used dynamite and excavators to destroy the Golden Lampstand Church, which has a congregation of more than 50,000, in the city of Linfen in Shanxi province.
ChinaAid, a US-based Christian advocacy group, said local authorities planted explosives in an underground worship hall to demolish the building following, constructed with nearly $2.6m (£1.9m) in contributions from local worshippers in one of China’s poorest regions.
Two Simple Questions Keynesians Can’t Answer
Let us say that a carpenter wishes to cut fifty boards for the purpose of laying the floor of a house. He has marked his boards. He has set his saw. He begins at one end of the mark on the board. But he does not know that his seven-year old son has tampered with the saw and changed its set. The result is that every board he saws is cut slantwise and thus unusable because [the board is] too short except at the point where the saw first made its contact with the wood. As long as the set of the saw is not changed, the result will always be the same.– Cornelius Van Til
I first read this in the summer of 1963. I spent the academic year 1963/64 studying under Dr. Van Til. I have never forgotten this analogy. Just as a sharp buzz saw cannot cut straight if it is set at a crooked angle, sharp people cannot think straight if they are set at a crooked angle. You can sharpen a crooked buzz saw ever so precisely. It will still not cut straight. The same is true of intellectual defenders of obvious nonsense. This analogy has served me well ever since.
Over the years, I have become convinced about just how well this analogy applies to Keynesians.
Keynesians have above-average IQs. Sometimes they are mathematically skilled. They graduate from institutions of higher learning with advanced degrees. Yet becoming a Keynesian intellectually incapacitates the person who has chosen this intellectual career path. He must become a defender of obvious nonsense. The more rigorously that a Keynesian trains himself to defend the system, the more crooked he cuts, conceptually speaking.
How the Emiratis Are Poaching Our Spies, Legally
If a foreign country is recruiting our spies, and these recruits ultimately spy on Americans, can they be considered traitors?
Unfortunately that isn’t a rhetorical question. Recent reporting has revealed that a number of former NSA hackers were hired by the United Arab Emirates to conduct surveillance and cyber attacks on their so-called enemies, domestic and foreign. While the United States is considered an ally and the cyber operations were largely blessed by the Washington, Americans were inevitably caught up in the dragnet.
On January 30, Reuters published two stories (here and here) reporting that in 2014, the United Arab Emirates had put together a clandestine team of former U.S. intelligence operatives called “Project Raven.†According to Lori Stroud, a former agent of Project Raven who went on the record with her story, the group used methods gleaned from a decade or more in the American intel community (as well as their state of the art cyber tools) to help the UAE gather intelligence and engage in cyber warfare against other governments—including top government officials—militants, and human rights activists critical of the UAE and considered “national security threats†to the monarchy.
Russia’s Soft Strategy to Hostile Measures in Europe
They’ve been called political warfare, measures short of war, gray zone warfare, and a host of other terms. Whatever the preferred term of art, Russia has used a wide range of hostile measures — political, economic, diplomatic, intelligence, and military activities — to expand its influence and undermine governments across the European continent. And yet, for all the attention paid to the subject, there remains a basic paradox in Russia’s actions. On the one hand, Russia’s actions are widespread and sophisticated, employing a varied toolset to differing degrees depending on local circumstances. On the other, in most of Europe, the results so far have been lackluster at best. There are two keys to unraveling this enigma. First, Russia faces a structural problem: Its leverage tends to be greatest in countries in its near abroad, and not necessarily in those countries best positioned to accomplish Russia’s other key foreign priorities of changing the overall bent of Western policy, undermining institutions like the European Union and NATO or promoting its vision of itself as a great power. Second, because its hostile measures are unpredictable and generally unlikely to succeed, Russia has adopted a “soft strategy†for employing these measures, using a wide array of tactics without a clear picture of how they will ultimately serve its interests.
Russian hostile measures span the continent of Europe, from Sweden to Italy and Spain to Moldova. While some measures are similar in many countries, such as its RT television network and its control of energy resources, Russia also tailors its approach. Russia can reach out to the population of Russian and Soviet migrants and their children in Estonia and Latvia. It can seek to exacerbate ethnic conflict in the Balkans by training paramilitaries in Bosnia or stir up strife by sowing discord in the Hungarian minority in Romania. While Russian ties to the far right across Europe have attracted much of the attention, Russia has also allegedly forged relationships with far-left parties. And modern Russian propaganda is similarly tailored, if inconsistent, in its messages. Not all of these threats are equally concerning, but virtually no country on the continent is wholly untouched and in no two countries is Russia’s approach precisely the same.
Despite their prevalence and seeming sophistication, however, Russian hostile measures produce few clear victories. To be sure, disillusionment with the European Union is up, particularly across Eastern Europe, and support for far-right populism has increased across the continent. How much of either trend can be chalked up to Russian hostile measures versus other confounding variables, most notably Europe’s own internal monetary and domestic policy problems, is not clear. Similarly, recent investigations reveal that Russia launched a disinformation campaign to shape the Brexit vote, leveraging RT and Sputnik to promote pro-“Leave†messages and activating 3,800 fake Twitter accounts during the day of the Brexit vote alone to drum up support. And yet, the impact of Russia’s effort is more ambiguous: Viewership data suggest that RT only comprised 0.04 percent of the U.K.’s television viewing for the week of the referendum and polls leading up to the Brexit vote suggest that the outcome was quite close, especially once we consider different polling methodologies. More clear is the failure of alleged Russian efforts, including a campaign to influence the 2017 French election and a coup attempt in Montenegro.
Michelle Malkin Delivers Scorching Immigration Speech at CPAC
Conservative powerhouse Michelle Malkin took aim directly from the CPAC main stage Friday, at the lack of immigration focus while delivering fuel for the fight against longstanding abuses of the American immigration system.
“The most important issue we face is immigration and we need to be talking about it for more than one panel for 20 minutes,†Malkin charged from the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) stage. “My first CPAC in 2002 was to talk about my very first book Invasion which exposed how border failures and systemic non-enforcement of our visa program rules created the national security crisis that led to 9/11.â€
Immigration was a defining issue in the 2016 election that saw the American people make Donald Trump President of the United States. Malkin hailed President Donald Trump “as he battles the Beltway swamp, the deep state, the administrative state, and the fake news fourth estate. But there is no sugarcoating America’s long-term forecast.â€
WaPo Admits Inaccuracies in Its Reporting About Covington High School Students
The Washington Post issued an editor’s note Thursday admitting inaccuracies in its initial reporting on a January incident involving Native American protesters, high school students from Covington, Ky., and a group known as Black Hebrew Israelites.
The note sweeps away the provocative details that turned the story into a phenomenon, including the accusation that Covington students prevented Native American activist Nathan Phillips from moving away.
“A Washington Post article first posted online on Jan. 19 reported on a Jan. 18 incident at the Lincoln Memorial,” the statement begins. “Subsequent reporting, a student’s statement and additional video allow for a more complete assessment of what occurred, either contradicting or failing to confirm accounts provided in that story — including that Native American activist Nathan Phillips was prevented by one student from moving on, that his group had been taunted by the students in the lead-up to the encounter, and that the students were trying to instigate a conflict.”
The editor’s note acknowledges that the high school student facing Phillips contradicted the latter’s account of the incident, and that “an investigation conducted for the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School found the students’ accounts consistent with videos.” The statement adds that the Post reported on these subsequent developments.
