It’s Wednesday, November 1st, 2017…but before we begin, Townhall.com‘s Christine Rousselle presents another great moment in Progressive hypocrisy:

DNC Email: Straight White Men Need Not Apply

 

“…(“Cisgender” is a term meaning someone who identifies as the gender assigned to them at birth, i.e. someone who is not transgender.)

First off, kudos to the DNC for recognizing that their technology department probably needed an upgrade, so that’s at least a positive step. But second–was it really necessary to straight-up single out a group of people who shouldn’t apply? If the best candidate for the job is a straight white male, they should hire the straight white male. His hypothetical “life experiences” aren’t any less valuable due to his sexuality or skin tone and could certainly contribute to a diverse workplace. 

Anyhow, for what it’s worth, saying this is potentially a violation of the DNC’s own policies:

Yeah,…

As if rank hypocrisy and perpetual prevarication ever presented a problem…

…for Progressives.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up…

Eight people killed after terrorist Sayfullo Saipov of Uzbekistan drives Home Depot truck through bike lane

 

“Eight people were killed Tuesday afternoon in a Tribeca terrorist attack as a rental truck plowed through helpless riders on a lower Manhattan bike path, officials said. Driver Sayfullo Saipov yelled “Allahu Akbar!” — Arabic for “God is great!” — after running the riders down from behind, their mangled bodies left scattered behind his runaway white pickup.

The 29-year-old suspect, a native of Uzbekistan, was arrested after a hero police officer shot him in the right hip following a Tribeca crash between the truck and a school bus. Saipov, who came to the U.S. in 2010 and lived in Paterson, N.J., was waving a paintball gun and a pellet gun when Officer Ryan Nash arrived. The cop opened fire when the suspect refused to drop his weapons…”

…Gov. Cuomo said early indications were that the unidentified killer was acting alone, with “no evidence to suggest a wider plot or a wider scheme.”…”

Think about what Cuomo’s saying: the good citizens of New York should take comfort in the fact, if it is indeed a “fact”, this Muslim maniac acted alone, without the benefit of any kind of cell or system of support!

The problem is as clear as the ears on The Obamao’s head: what was true in the Frederick Forsyth thriller Day of the Jackal…

…remains true today: the ISIS/Al Queda-inspired lone wolf is the worst possible scenario for law enforcement to detect, let alone prevent.

Yet in the La-La Land of Liberalism, this is a good thing, primarily because it takes the collective Islam out of Islamic terror.

We should add it’s literally all we can do not to ask Liberals if the vehicle pictured above is an “assault truck”, but instead we’ll say a prayer for the slain, the wounded and their families.

For more on the subject of Progressive-tolerated totalitarian terror, we turn to NRO, and Douglas Murray’s examination of…

The Russian Revolution, 100 Years On: Its Enduring Allure and Menace

Violent Communist leaders of the past are still embraced on the far left, where their discredited ideas remain in circulation.

 

“If there is one line we surely will never hear uttered, even in these times, it is any variant of this statement: “I grant that the Nazis committed excesses, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be said for Fascism.” While there certainly are groupuscules of neo-Nazis around, they do not get a polite reception on campuses, let alone tenure. Watered-down versions of Fascism do not emerge in the manifestos of mainstream political parties in the West. No student is ever seen sporting a T-shirt with a chic Reinhard Heydrich likeness emblazoned across the front.

If the bacillus of Fascism is never dormant, then at least we appear to have retained significant stockpiles of societal antibiotics with which to counter it. It is unlikely that Richard Spencer will address the Conservative Political Action Conference anytime soon. Unlikely that there will be celebratory centennials for Mussolini’s rise to power. And less likely still (despite the cries to the contrary of professional anti-Fascists, who need Fascists for business purposes) that anyone dreaming of a fairer Fascism will reach the White House in any coming electoral cycle.

Yet 100 years on from the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, can the same be said about the Communist dream? Only the wildest optimist could say so. For in fact wherever you turn in the world today, it seems that the virus of Communism — in every Marxist, socialist strain — remains alive and well. Conditions for its spreading range from moderate to good.

In June, Russians were asked in an opinion poll to name “the top ten outstanding people of all time and all nations.” Perhaps it is unsurprising that the joint second most commonly given name was Pushkin. Even less surprising that Russia’s national poet should have shared this position with the country’s current strongman, Vladimir Putin. What is more startling for any outsider is that the person whom the largest number of Russians declared the “most outstanding” person in world history was Joseph Stalin. It is true that the man responsible for the deaths (around 20 million, by most moderate estimates) of more people than any other in Russian history has slipped slightly. This year he was at 38 percent, down from 42 percent in a 2012 survey. Yet still he leads the polls. Were the greatest mass murderer in Russian history able to return from his grave today, he could resume power without even needing to fix the ballot.

Of course, if Adolf Hitler remained the most popular figure in modern Germany, the world would be worried. But with the Communists it was always different. An admirer of General Franco who opposed Primo de Rivera is somehow not the same as a Trotskyist who opposed Leninism (a type that remains a staple of the media and academic worlds). Perhaps the 20th century’s greatest remaining mystery is how, between the twin totalitarian nightmares, it remains acceptable to have spent a portion of your life envying, emulating, or celebrating the global cataclysm that commenced in 1917.

…Last year, the research firm Survation conducted a poll to ascertain the attitudes of young British people in the 16–24 age bracket. The oldest among this group would have been born in the year the Soviet Union collapsed, the youngest around a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The respondents were asked to look at a list of names and say which ones they most associated with “crimes against humanity.”

Adolf Hitler finished first, with 87 percent of young people seeing him in a negative light. Much further down (below Saddam Hussein) came Joseph Stalin, whom 61 percent of young people associated with such crimes, with 28 percent of all respondents admitting that they had never heard of him. Half of young people admitted they had never heard of Lenin. And while 8 percent were ignorant of Adolf Hitler, and therefore clearly as ignorant as swans, it is what happened farther down the name-recognition list that was more alarming.

Fully 39 percent of young people associated George W. Bush with crimes against humanity, and 34 percent associated Tony Blair with the same. Which were higher percentages than for either Mao Tse-tung (20 percent) or Pol Pot (19 percent). The cause is not fellow-traveling but sheer ignorance. No less than 70 percent of young people said they had never heard of Chairman Mao, while 72 percent had never heard of the Cambodian génocidaire.

Were the low numbers replicated for historical figures related to the Holocaust or Fascism, they would cause an outcry. There would be calls for great education drives and the erection of museums and monuments to the victims of Nazism and Fascism. If young people were discovered to know so little about those crimes, every teacher in the land would be hollering about the inevitability of replaying history we do not remember.

But it is always different with the Communist virus let loose on the world a century ago. The figure of 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust is rightly set in our collective consciousness and conscience during our years of education and constantly reinforced through popular culture, political reference, and a whole panoply of institutions devoted to keeping memories alive. Consider the recent film Denial, about the attempt by David Irving to sue the American historian Deborah Lipstadt for accurately identifying him as a Holocaust-denier. Some people might have thought this comparatively tangential corner of Nazi history to have been well furrowed, only to discover that a new generation hadn’t seen it done and that it was understandable and even necessary to see it furrowed again.

But what are the consequences of societies with so little memory of 20 million deaths in the USSR? Or the 65 million deaths caused by efforts to instill Communism in China? If those 65 million Chinese deaths cannot detain us, what are the chances that anyone will care about the 2 million deaths in Cambodia? The million in Eastern Europe? The million in Vietnam? The 2 million (and counting) in North Korea? The nearly 2 million across Africa? The 1.5 million in Afghanistan? The 150,000 in Latin America? Not to mention the thousands of murders committed by Communist movements not in power, a number that could almost seem meager compared with the official slaughter?

Who could survey this wreckage — 100 million deaths in a century alone — and not recoil? Who would stand on top of these 100 million tragedies and think “Once more, comrades, though this time with subtly different emphases”?…”

Not surprising, at least to us, is the list of of so-called “intellectuals” the author goes on to list who actually would…and do…defend the indefensible…including the former UNC-Wilmington Communist Mike Adams excoriates in his latest column.

It’s also worth noting The New York Times has yet to surrender the Pulitzer Prize awarded the infamous Stalin apologist Walter Duranty for his fabricated accounts of life in the former Workers’ Paradise…in which over 20,000,000 of his fellow human beings were shot, starved, frozen or worked to death.  Which simply makes Duranty an inspiration for later Liberal liars…

…masquerading as journalists.  

Next up, writing at the WSJ, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, who practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington after serving in the White House Counsel’s office and Justice Department under Reagan and Bush I respectively, suggest… 

Begging Your Pardon, Mr. President

How Trump can shut down the special counsel probe and leave the Russia investigations to Congress.

 

Clockwise from top left, Presidents Ford, Washington, Lincoln and Carter all used the pardon power in politically charged cases.

“…Mr. Mueller’s investigation has been widely interpreted as partisan from the start. Mr. Trump’s opponents instantaneously started talking of impeachment—never mind that a special counsel, unlike an independent counsel, has no authority to release a report to Congress or the public. Mr. Trump’s supporters count the number of Democratic donors on the special-counsel staff. The Mueller investigation is fostering tremendous bitterness among Trump voters, who see it as an effort by Washington mandarins to nullify their votes.

Mr. Trump can end this madness by immediately issuing a blanket presidential pardon to anyone involved in supposed collusion with Russia or Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign, to anyone involved with Russian acquisition of an American uranium company during the Obama administration, and to anyone for any offense that has been investigated by Mr. Mueller’s office. Political weaponization of criminal law should give way to a politically accountable democratic process. Nefarious Russian activities, including possible interference in U.S. elections, can and should be investigated by Congress.

Partisan bitterness will not evaporate if lawmakers take up the investigation. But at least those conducting the inquiry will be legitimate and politically accountable. And the question of whether Russia intervened in the 2016 election, and of whether it made efforts to influence U.S. policy makers in previous administrations, is first and foremost one of policy and national security, not criminal law…”

As many have opined, the firestorm such pardons would likely ignite might make Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre look like a marshmallow roast.  But given the treatment Trump’s been accorded thus far by both the MSM and Congress, irrespective of political affiliation, could you blame The Donald for wondering, “What’s the difference?!?”  Particularly if the pardons were legal?

In a related item, FOX News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett offers this must-read analysis of the facts which clearly indicate, at least thus far, there’s…

Still no evidence of Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ – but Hillary is a different matter

 

“Over the weekend, the mainstream media was absolutely giddy with delight upon learning there would be an indictment by special counsel, Robert Mueller. This was proof positive, they insisted, that Trump “colluded” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.  Their exuberance was the equivalent of a two day-long tailgate party. Too bad it was premature…

…The celebration came to a crashing end when the indictments of Paul Manafort and his business associate, Rick Gates, were unsealed Monday morning.  It turns out the charges are, basically, a tax fraud case.  The two men stand accused of hiding their income from their lobbying work for Ukraine in order to avoid paying taxes, then lying about it.  That’s it.

The 31-page indictment makes no mention of Trump or Russia or “collusion.”  The media seemed as dejected as a kid who wakes up on Christmas morning, only to find there are no presents under the tree.  Gee whiz.

…But wait.  Shortly after the indictments were unsealed, the media’s spirits were suddenly boosted when the special counsel revealed that a former adviser to Trump pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian national during his time on the Trump campaign.  Surely this was evidence of illegal “collusion,” right?

Wrong.  George Papadopoulos pled guilty to a single charge of making a false statement to the FBI.  He was not charged with so-called “collusion” because no such crime exists in American statutory law, except in anti-trust matters.  It has no application to elections and political campaigns.

It is not a crime to talk to a Russian.  Or, in Papadopoulos’s case, attempting to talk with a Russian through an intermediary.  Not that the media would ever understand that.  They have never managed to point to a single statute that makes “colluding” with a foreign government in a political campaign a crime, likely because it does not exist in the criminal codes.

But that did not stop them from accusing Donald Trump, Jr., of illegally conspiring with the Russians when he met with a Russian lawyer to obtain information on Hillary Clinton.  What law did he break?  None.  The Federal Election Commission has made it clear that it is perfectly lawful for foreign nationals to be involved in campaigns, as long as they are not paid and do not donate money. Which brings us to Hillary Clinton.

…It is against the law for the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to funnel millions of dollars to a British spy and to Russian sources in order to obtain the infamous and discredited Trump “dossier.”  The Federal Election Campaign Act (52 USC 30101) prohibits foreign nationals and governments from giving or receiving money in U.S. campaigns.  It also prohibits the filing of false or misleading campaign reports to hide the true purpose of the money (52 USC 30121).  This is what Clinton and the DNC appear to have done.

Most often the penalty for violating this law is a fine, but in egregious cases, like this one, criminal prosecutions have been sought and convictions obtained.  In this sense, it could be said that Hillary Clinton is the one who was conspiring with the Russians by breaking campaign finance laws with impunity.

But that’s not all.  Damning new evidence appears to show that Clinton used her office as Secretary of State to confer benefits to Russia in exchange for millions of dollars in donations to her foundation and cash to her husband.  Secret recordings, intercepted emails, financial records, and eyewitness accounts allegedly show that Russian nuclear officials enriched the Clintons at the very time Hillary presided over a governing body which unanimously approved the sale of one-fifth of America’s uranium supply to Russia.

If this proves to be a corrupt “pay-to-play” scheme, it would constitute a myriad of crimes, including bribery (18 USC 201-b), mail fraud (18 USC 1341), and wire fraud (18 USC 1343).  It might also qualify for racketeering charges (18 USC 1961-1968), if her foundation is determined to have been used as a criminal enterprise.

Despite all the incriminating evidence, Clinton has managed to avoid being pursued by a special counsel.  Trump, on the other hand, is being chased by Robert Mueller and his team, notwithstanding a dearth of evidence.

…The indictments of Manafort and Gates now present a unique opportunity to challenge the authority of the special counsel.

Until now, no one had legal “standing” to argue in court that the appointment of Mueller was illegal.  The criminal charges change all that.  The two defendants will be able to argue before a judge that Mueller’s appointment by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein violated the special counsel law.

“Gracias, Jeff Sessions!”

As I pointed out in a column last May, the law (28 CFR 600) grants legal authority to appoint a special counsel to investigate crimes.  Only crimes.  He has limited jurisdiction.  Yet, in his order appointing Mueller as special counsel (Order No. 3915-2017), Rosenstein directed him to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.”   It fails to identify any specific crimes, likely because none are applicable.

To put it plainly, Mueller is tasked with finding a crime that does not exist in the law.  It is a legal impossibility.  He is being asked to do something that is manifestly unattainable.

If the federal judge agrees, Mueller and his team would be disbanded by judicial order.  The Department of Justice would have to seek a new indictment of Manafort and Gates without the special counsel or drop the case entirely.

The naming of Robert Mueller was tainted with disqualifying conflicts of interest from the beginning.  Fired FBI Director James Comey admitted he leaked presidential memos to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel who just happens to be Comey’s longtime friend, ally and partner.

It is no coincidence that Rosenstein appointed Mueller.  We now know both men were overseeing the corrupt Uranium One sale which involved Russian bribes, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering.  They appear to have kept it secret, even hiding it from Congress which would surely have cancelled the transaction involving a vital national security asset.  A cover-up?  It has the stench of one.

How can Americans have confidence in the outcome of the Trump-Russia matter if the integrity and impartiality of Mueller and Rosenstein has been compromised by their suspected cover-up of the Clinton-Russia case?   Both men should resign.

And a new special counsel should be appointed – this time to investigate Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.“

And let’s not forget another aspect of the Mueller charges the MSM won’t report, as recounted by James Freeman at Best of the Web:

“Making the case even less fun for anti-Trumpers was the related news about Tony Podesta, who worked on the Ukraine effort along with the defendants and is the brother of John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Politico reports:

Democratic power lobbyist Tony Podesta, founder of the Podesta Group, is stepping down from the firm that bears his name after coming under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Podesta announced his decision during a firm-wide meeting Monday morning and is alerting clients of his impending departure… 

The investigation into Podesta and his firm grew out of investigators’ examination of Manafort’s finances. Manafort organized a PR campaign on behalf of a nonprofit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Podesta Group was one of several firms that were paid to do work on the PR campaign to promote Ukraine in the U.S.…”

For more on the Mueller matter, we recommend two additional offerings from NRO, the first, as the editors detail, being…

Mueller’s First Indictments

Little evidence, so far, against President Trump

 

“Little”?!?  Try none whatsoever!

Then there’s Andy McCarthy’s take, when it comes to…

The Manafort Indictment: Not Much There, and a Boon for Trump

Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading.

 

“The Paul Manafort indictment is much ado about nothing…except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective — as we have been arguing for three months (see here, here, and here).

Do not be fooled by the “Conspiracy against the United States” heading on Count One (page 23 of the indictment). This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, supposedly in “collusion” with the Trump campaign). Essentially, Manafort and his associate, Richard W. Gates, are charged with (a) conspiring to conceal from the U.S. government about $75 million they made as unregistered foreign agents for Ukraine, years before the 2016 election (mainly, from 2006 through 2014), and (b) a money-laundering conspiracy.

…Even from Paul Manafort’s perspective, there may be less to this indictment than meets the eye — it’s not so much a serious allegation of “conspiracy against the United States” as a dubious case of disclosure violations and money movement that would never have been brought had he not drawn attention to himself by temporarily joining the Trump campaign.

From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.“

Which, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, he actually is…regardless of what the definition of “is” is!

If you’re of a mind for a dissenting opinion, here’s David French’s take, though we vociferously disagree with his conclusion:

“…If anyone thought Mueller’s investigation wasn’t necessary before today, the revelations from the special counsel’s office should dispel all doubt.“

We love, respect and admire David French; but his Never-Trumpism appears, at least in this case, to have outweighed his objectivity.

Turning now to the Faith File, courtesy of The Daily Caller, Mark Tapscott wonders why anyone should be…

Surprised? Data Shows Faithful Are Most Generous, Marriage Best For America

 

“Examining the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Dr. Bradford Wilcox and Dr. Wendy Wang found that 97 percent of Millennials who follow the “success sequence”—receive at least a high school degree, work, marry, and lastly bear children—never experience poverty in their young adult years (ages 28-34).

“Married couples also create the best economic environment for children. Their children experience more economic mobility and less poverty in childhood and are more likely to earn a higher income and work more hours as an adult than those raised in alternative family structures.

Primarily because those responsible for the vicious, inescapable circle of entitlement are dependent upon such enslavement for their…

…power!

In a related item also courtesy of Mark Tapscott…

Did CERN Just Say The Universe Couldn’t Have Been Created Without God?

 

“…CERN is a research facility based in switzerland that is home to a massive Hedron Collider, measuring 27 kilometres long. The idea? To recreate conditions from the Big Bang, and to fire particles at each other in order to study the reaction and find the ‘God particle.’ The only problem? CERN seem to have just realized that according to their calculations, the universe should not be possible.

“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” said one researcher in a press release. In order for the Big Bang theory to work in practice, there must  be some sort of imbalance amongst particles. But the researchers have found perfect metaphysical cohesion. 

“This is the riddle we need to solve,” the researchers conclude…”

Allow us to offer a hint: “In the beginning, GOD created the heavens and the earth…”

Which brings us, inappropriately enough, to The Lighter Side…

Then there’s this series of memes forwarded by Mark Foster:

Finally, in the If Ignorance is Bliss, These Clowns are in Nirvana segment, aka The Sports Section:

NBA players share pictures of scary plane damage

 

“The Oklahoma City Thunder basketball team took a night flight from Minnesota to Chicago. When they landed, the players noticed something strange about their plane. The chartered plane had apparently encountered some unexpected object while flying and was left with a giant dent in the nose.

The players were concerned about the massive depression in the plane’s front and took to social media to show the damage, and question how it got there. “What possibly could we have hit in the SKY at this time of night?” Carmelo Anthony wrote alongside a shot of the damaged plane on Instagram.

Another player simply wrote on Twitter, “Guess we hit something? 30,000 feet up…”

But New Zealand player Steven Adams wanted an explanation, so he reached out to NASA, Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye on Twitter to see if they could identity what happened.

…But before the scientific community could reach out, Delta offered some answers in a statement to The Oklahoman. “Delta flight 8935, operating from Minneapolis to Chicago-Midway as a charter flight for the Oklahoma City Thunder, likely encountered a bird while on descent into Chicago,” a Delta spokesperson said.

Twitter isn’t exactly buying the birdstrike – one user tweeted a picture of Sesame Street’s Big Bird saying it was the “only type of bird that could have caused this.”…”

Which is only fitting since Bill Nye and the Twitter community (we’re excepting Neil Degrasse Tyson) know as much about birdstrikes as NBA players…or the vast majority of NFL athletes…know about the facts surrounding the myth of targeted police racism.

After all, unlike US Airways Flight 1549…

…having been fortunate enough to escape the hazard of birdstrikes on their take-off, climb out and ascent, it’s not like Flight 8935 had to descend from FL 310 through lower altitudes to actually land…

…at Midway!

Further proof, as if any were needed, while in college, the vast majority of professional athletes majored in their respective sports, NOT in anything remotely connected with the real world…let alone aeronautics!

Magoo