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A SAUDI PEACE PLAN THAT COULD ACTUALLY WORK

Mahmoud Abbas and Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh
Mahmoud Abbas and Crown Prince Salman in Riyadh

On Sunday (12/3), The New York Times published the Palestinian response to an alleged Saudi peace plan, headlined Talk of a Peace Plan That Snubs Palestinians Roils Middle East.

Saudi Crown Prince MBS bin Salman (known as MBS) reportedly presented it to PLO chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas last month.  According to the Times’ report, MBS told Abbas he has two months to either accept the Saudi proposal or leave office to make way for a new Palestinian leader who will accept it.

The Palestinians and their European supporters are up in arms about the content of MBS’s plan. MBS has become a hated figure in wide circles of the foreign policy establishment in the West due to his trenchant opposition to Iran’s rise as a hegemonic power in the region.

Yes, surprise, the voices leading the charge against MBS are the same ones that developed the media echo chamber in pursuit of then president Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.  The truth is, they hate MBS’s plan because it actually could work.

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NOTHING ABOUT COLLUSION

trump-tweet_120317 While working with Lt. General Michael Flynn on The Field of Fight, I interviewed many of his former colleagues in order to better understand my co-author.

Virtually all of them described a man who cared deeply about the truth and presented it in circumstances that were certainly not favorable to him. These people portrayed General Flynn as a compulsive truth-teller.

So why has he now confessed to making false statements to the FBI?

Not only would such behavior be totally out of character, but it contradicts the bureau’s own publicly announced findings last February, and would have us believe that Gen. Flynn lied about actions that were themselves perfectly legal.

Thus the “guilty” plea tells us more about the Mueller investigation, and about the politicization of “justice” more generally, than it does about presumed malefactions by the retired general.

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WHY WOULD FLYNN LIE?

sperry-trump-tweetsMy esteemed TTP colleague Michael Ledeen offered his explanation to this puzzle today: Nothing About Collusion.  I have a conjecture that might serve as an alternative.

For ‘tis a puzzle.  Why would LTG Michael Flynn lie to the FBI about telephone conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak that were not illegal, improper, or unusual?

As a career intelligence officer, Flynn had to know we were listening in on Kislyak’s phone calls. He ought to have assumed the FBI would listen to the intercepts, or read transcripts of them.

As in fact the FBI did, the Washington Post reported the day before Flynn's interview.

Since the FBI already knew what Flynn said to Kislyak, determined he’d done nothing wrong, why was the FBI interviewing him?

We may get answers to those questions – and much more – very soon.

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I DARE YOU

Shame that this is only satire. You know that PDJT would love to tweet this gag but he knows he dare not!

humor-trump-tweet-120817

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TRUMP ENDS THE SNIPE HUNT FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE

When my father pledged the Phi Delta Theta house at Stanford in 1931, catching a snipe was a requirement to join.  He was taken out to a forest, told to stand along a small trail, crouch down holding a bag, and wait for a snipe – a bird that runs on the ground like a roadrunner only bigger – to catch.

“They run really fast so you’ve got to stay alert – we’ll chase them to you,” they said.  Left alone in the dark, crouching down intensely waiting for the elusive snipe’s fast approach, it took my father a while to realize he’d been had “holding the bag” for something that would never come.

A “snipe hunt” is a time-honored practical joke pulled on generations of kids at summer camps, Boy Scout outings, and college fraternity hazings.  It’s a harmless prank that everyone laughs about afterwards, like my Dad did when he got back to the Phi Delt house.

Yet the Snipe Hunt for Peace that American and Western diplomats have been engaging in for nigh-on two-thirds of a century has been far from harmless.  All of them have been left stupidly “holding the bag” while Palestinian Arabs laugh and sneer at them – because the “peace” being sought after is as imaginary as a snipe.

Nothing could more exemplify Trump’s strategic genius than to put an end to this game.

He set the stage by obliterating ISIS in Iraq and Syria; by going to the capital of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, and telling a conference of Moslem world leaders right to their faces they will now ally with America in putting an end to Islamic terrorism; by supporting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in an anti-Wahhabi revolution; and forging an alliance between Sisi’s Egypt, MBS’ Saudi Arabia, and Israel.

And now today (12/06), he puts an end to the Moslem Myth of Jerusalem.

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HALF-FULL REPORT 12/01/17

murder-of-kate-steinleEver hear the term “prison justice”?  It’s retribution – often lethal – meted out by prisoners in jail to those guilty of the most sickening crimes, such as child rapists and murderers of defenseless women.

Let’s hope that will be the fate of Jose Garcia Zarate.

As you know, he is the dirtbag illegal alien who murdered Kate Steinle in cold blood, and was found not guilty last night (11/30) by a dirtbag San Francisco jury.  ICE says he will now be taken into custody for deportation back to Mexico – for the sixth time.  He needs to never make it out of that custody jail cell.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to effect prison justice on the entire city government of San Francisco – as Hannity declared last night, “It Was San Francisco’s Sanctuary City Policies that Killed Kate Steinle.”

Nor, sadly, on the Zarate’s dirtbag defense lawyer Matt Gonzalez, who had the idiotic hubris to warn the President, Vice-President, and Attorney General of the United States not to criticize the verdict, as “they are under investigation themselves.”

So is there any silver lining? Jack Kelly’s answer is Yes.  He just sent me his predictions of what will now happen.

We have to talk about Mike Flynn.  Special Swamp Rat Robert Mueller announced this morning Flynn will plead guilty to lying to the FBI.  Every Trump-Hater in the country is all a-flutter that Flynn will plea bargain in order to implicate Trump in crimes.  But as Flynn is a confessed liar to both the FBI and the Vice President, how’s he going to prove he isn’t lying now?

That said, designating Flynn to head the National Security Council was an impossibly bad decision by Trump.  He can’t say he wasn’t warned.  The week after his election, this is what the HFR of November 18, 2016 had to say.  We know it was circulated among his people in Trump Tower.

With all that over, we get to have fun with good news of the week.  Let’s go…

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WHAT MAKES AMERICA GREAT IS WHY THE LEFT HATES AMERICA

trump-thumbs-upNothing exemplifies Donald Trump’s political genius better than his campaign and now presidential slogan MAGA – Make America Great Again.

Just compare it to his opponent’s pathetically stupid and empty, I’m With Her.  A campaign about nothing but Her, focused entirely on Her, devoted completely and totally to the egomania of Her.

By contrast, Trump’s campaign was about America – the America that every normal voter knew used to be great until Obama opened the gates of the Left’s insane asylum creating a mayhem of cultural lunacy, the America that every normal voter wanted once more.

Trump’s question to the voters – “Do you want more lunacy with Her or do you want to make America great again instead?” turned out to be rhetorical.

But just what is it that made America great in the first place?  And whatever that is, why does it drive Lefties insane?

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DONALD TRUMP, FEMINIST HERO

donald-the-feminist-heroWhy is it that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism?  Maybe there’s a reason the Left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions.

The firing this week of Matt Lauer from NBC, the latest sex scandal of leftie journos and Hollywood bigs, brings to mind an interview with “feminist” actress Amber Tamblyn about the Harvey Weinstein scandal that started all this.

The Cosmopolitan magazine interview, dated October 26, was headlined:

Amber Tamblyn Doesn't Think the Harvey Weinstein Allegations Would Have Come Out if Hillary Clinton Had Won

Yes, although she doesn’t realize it, she’s arguing the President is a Feminist Hero.

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THE MEDIA PLAYS CHECKERS – TRUMP PLAYS 3-D CHESS

level-of-stupidThe checkers-chess cliché is overused but often accurate.  It was the media's meme for George W. Bush; he played checkers, and China and the rest of the world played chess.

The media hated W. almost as much as they loathe Trump, but this time, it is Trump who plays the media as Isaac Stern plays the violin.

He tweets or tosses off a line, as he did this week when he referenced Elizabeth Warren, then sits back and watches the fun begin.  The press corps goes berserk and accuses Trump of all the usual crimes: racism, sexism, etc.

The "racial slur" allegation was particularly off the mark.  These lefty journalists leap into the expected fray before they remember to think.  Trump knows this and enjoys trolling the press.  The reporters rise to the occasion every time.  They put on a show of perpetual outrage, no matter how flimsy, misplaced, or phony their indignation.

So convinced are the media that they are Trump's intellectual superiors that they make utter fools of themselves on an almost daily basis.

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CALLING WARREN POCAHONTAS IS THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT RACISM

sen-warren-calls-trump-a-fraudSenator Elizabeth Warren, America’s greatest living Fake Indian, is outraged.

"There he was, at a ceremony to honor Native Americans,” the former Harvard Law prof, who claimed to be Native American on account of her grandfather’s high cheekbones, fumed on Monday (11/27), “And President Trump couldn't even make it through a ceremony to honor these men without throwing in a racial slur.”

The “racial slur” was calling a woman who is as Indian as the pilgrims, Pocahontas.

Taunting an American Indian that way might be a racial slur. Taunting Warren that way doesn’t insult her race. The millionaire former asbestos lawyer is as white as cottage cheese. It insults her character. It reminds everyone that Warren is as much a fighter for the “little guy” as she was a Cherokee.

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UNDOING THE DIS-EDUCATION OF MILLENNIALS

condemn-freedom-of-speechI teach in a law school. For several years now my students have been mostly Millennials. Contrary to stereotype, I have found that the vast majority of them want to learn.

But true to stereotype, I increasingly find that most of them cannot think, don’t know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.

They cannot learn until their minds are freed from that prison. This year in my Foundations of Law course for first-year law students, I found my students especially impervious to the ancient wisdom of foundational texts, such as Plato’s Crito and the Code of Hammurabi.

Many of them were quick to dismiss unfamiliar ideas as “classist” and “racist,” and thus unable to engage with those ideas on the merits. So, a couple of weeks into the semester, I decided to lay down some ground rules. I gave them these rules just before beginning our annual unit on legal reasoning.

Here is the speech I gave them.

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MEDIA BIAS VS. REALITY

reality-bats-last

Why is it that those who have been right in the past are often ignored, while great attention is paid to those who have been wrong?

Many “politically correct” forecasters’ words are accepted as gospel by the media despite dismal records. New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman, who has a long record of gross error, said immediately after Donald Trump won the presidency a year ago: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

His forecast was off by a mere $5 trillion (the rise in the value of the market since Election Day), and those who followed his advice are poorer — but Mr. Krugman still has his job, because he works for a fake news outlet rather than a profit-making investment group.

The debate about climate change, the minimum wage and the proposals for tax reform illustrate why so many get it wrong.  Yet rather than admit error, many forecasters and their media allies double down instead of lauding those who were closer to the mark.  Why do you think?

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HALF-FULL REPORT 11/24/17

 

Day after Thanksgiving, might as well have some fun while we’re recuperating from last night’s caloric extravaganza.

We begin with the Snowflake Social Justice Buffoons at Reed College in Oregon – whose parents are stupid enough to pay $53,900 a year for them to be uneducated laughingstocks to the world.

On Tuesday (11/21), the NYPost revealed their descent to new low of Leftie Buffoonery by claiming Stave Martin’s famous 1978 SNL skit of King Tut is racist.  You don’t know which is funnier, Martin’s skit (video above), or the self-lampooning brainless twits at Reed.

That’s just the start of this fun Thanksgiving Weekend HFR.  Let’s go!

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THANKFUL FOR AMERICA

american-eagleAll my life, I have always thought it was the coolest thing on planet Earth to be an American.

I have been to something close to 300 countries and distinct political jurisdictions in the world, and whenever someone asks me, “Where are you from?” it is a special thrill to be able to answer, “America – I’m an American.”

Thanksgiving is the unique American holiday. We share Christmas and Easter with every other Christian nation. Most every country celebrates its Independence Day, and the birthdays of their founding heroes. Thanksgiving is ours, where we give our deepest thanks to Providence for the extraordinary gift of America to mankind.

Other countries have their special times to celebrate their uniqueness, when their citizens take pride in their country’s achievements, and all to the good. Thanksgiving is America’s Day, the time when all Americans – all – get to celebrate the achievements of the most successful society in history.

It is a tragedy that so many of our fellow citizens are mired in a quicksand of rage and bitterness towards their country and their President.  For them, this day is bittersweet, trying to enjoy a bountiful dinner with friends and family yet unable to feel a boundless joy in simply being an American.

Let’s answer why.

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