Kelly-Detwiler- EMP; McCarthy – McMaster; Williamson – Mitch?”
NORTH KOREA: Durden – Ukraine builds rockets for NKor; Drudge Links 08-14-17.
CHARLOTTESVILLE – Richmond Times Herald – Malevolence; Ledeen – We shall have more; Reeves – “Secede!” Drudge Links 08-14-17.
HEALTH CARE – Josh Umber sites.
LEADS: Washington Times – Deeper swamp; Crudele – Comey blew it; WSJ – Unmasking Samantha; Phillips – Dome of the Rock; Spencer – Tillerson pro-Islam.
RECOMMENDED: Convention of States; Mark Levin (08-11-17); D’Souza – The Big Lie; Science Daily – Stone-Paper-Scissors by chimps.
Iran in place of Russia, North Korea in place of China?
Peter Kelly-Detwiler, Forbes, “Failure to Protect U.S. against Electromagnetic Pulse Threat Could Make 9/11 Look Trivial Someday”
HT Bill Cunningham
“. . . Since then, there have been an enormous increase in our dependency on electronics, computers, and microelectronics. An attack may never happen. But the more vulnerable the U.S. is to such an attack, the more likely it is to be used against us. In the former days, we worried about Russia. Now we have to be concerned about North Korea and Iran. These could be launched from a not-so-elaborate container ship. The rocket doesn’t have to be accurate. It just has to go up. It’s well within the capability of even an earlier Scud missile, of which thousands have been produced – it just has to have nuclear weapon on top (Author’s note – just this month, the ISIS paraded what they claimed was a captured Scud missile in Syria. U.S. intelligence officials indicate it is likely not operational. Meanwhile, North Korea launched more missiles in July, among numerous launches this year).
“Graham expressed concern that Iran also has this offensive capability within their arsenal, and perhaps within their current military doctrine as well.
“We have data indicating that the Iranians have launched their versions of Scuds off of the Caspian Sea – not from land, but from the sea – and launched them over land. And we’ve also seen them launch missiles that have gone up and apparently exploded near their highest altitude – when you put those two ideas together – that is an EMP attack. . .”
Andrew McCarthy, NRO: “McMaster and the Challenge of Sharia Supremacism”
“Like his familiar bipartisan Beltway camp, he underestimates the threat.
“. . .General McMaster is the main man at the National Security Council. That is a White House staff position. More than any place else in the executive branch, a president should have the people with whom he is most comfortable on his staff. In this administration, though, we reasonably expect that the national-security adviser is at least as much policy maker as policy implementer. We must consequently care what he thinks more than we ordinarily might.
“I confess I cannot work up much angst over two of the strikes counted against McMaster by Trump’s most ardent fans — who, feeling betrayed, direct their wrath at the national-security adviser rather than the guy elected to call the shots.
“McMaster advocates upholding Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. I was as energetic a naysayer on the pact as anyone. That, however, was because I understood that Obama’s objective was to change the facts on the ground so dramatically that no successor could undo the deal. Personally, I would renounce it. I don’t get how the administration can bring itself to reaffirm the deal every 90 days (as the law mandates), since doing so requires saying two things that are not true: Tehran is in compliance, and continuation of the self-defeating arrangement is in our national-security interests. But candidate Trump was never consistently clear on how he would handle this; and McMaster does not really support the deal — he thinks it’s a lousy commitment we need to hold our nose and honor until we find an advantageous off-ramp. Obama so front-loaded the deal that Iran has already gotten much of the benefit; my misgivings aside, I can’t find too much fault in people who, for the time being, want to hold the mullahs to their paltry obligations.
“I also can’t get whipped up about McMaster’s sign-off on a security clearance for Susan Rice. That wasn’t a one-off, as it’s been portrayed. Rice’s was among a stack of pro forma clearance extensions for former national-security officials so they can be consulted by their successors. It’s not like McMaster is in regular mind-melds with Rice — he’s not. Again, no one has been more vocal than I in seeking disclosure of Rice’s role in the unmasking of Americans in intel reporting, and the possible connection of the unmasking to political spying. But as I’ve also contended, what Rice did was not a crime, and whether it amounted to an abuse of power depends on the circumstances — which the Trump administration is in a position to tell us but has chosen not to. You don’t strip people of security clearances because you disagree with them politically; you do it if you have evidence that they abused their privileged access. So, let’s see it . . . or stop complaining about it.
“The policy problem I have with McMaster involves Islam. It’s the same problem I’ve had with Washington for 25 years. I should be less concerned about McMaster’s views on Islam because it is one of the few subjects on which candidate Trump purported to have real convictions. He was going to force us to come to grips with “radical Islamic terrorism.” Alas, as I pointed out during and after the campaign, this might be a sign of real resolve; or, in the alternative, Trump might have no idea what he was talking about — it might be another exhibition of his talent to sense the divide between irate Americans and their smug government, and to tell the former what they want to hear.
“Islam is not going away, we have to deal with it. In figuring out how, desirous of not giving gratuitous offense to Muslims, we’ve overcomplicated something that is actually pretty simple: Islam must be seen either as (1) a big problem that we have to work around, or (2) a part of the solution to our security challenge. I am in the first camp. McMaster seems solidly in the second, and the ‘principled realism’ speech in Saudi Arabia shows the president leaning his way. . .”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450426/h-r-mcmaster-islam-he-minimizes-threat-sharia-supremacism
Kevin Williamson, NRO: “What about It, Mitch?”
“The congressional GOP is AWOL.
“Donald Trump is on the hunt for a scapegoat, and he has settled on Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. He isn’t entirely wrong to do so.
“As a candidate, Trump promised big doings: repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with — well, he was never very clear on that point. He promised big tax reform and sweeping regulatory reform, improved trade terms, and a big, beautiful wall paid for by a magical surcharge on Mexicans. None of that has come to pass, and Trump, who is constitutionally incapable of acknowledging his own surfeit of personal and professional failures, blames Congress.
Trump presented himself to the voters as a master negotiator and dealmaker, but that of course was the character he played on television, not the actual man. Trump cannot sit down with congressional Republicans — much less a bipartisan coalition — and negotiate a deal on health-care reform. The reasons for this are straightforward: There is disagreement among Republicans about what policies should be forwarded, and President Trump does not know what he himself thinks about any of them, because he does not think anything about any of them, because he doesn’t know about them. Trump does not do details — he does adjectives. He wants a “terrific” health-care system. So does Bernie Sanders, but the two of them don’t agree on what that means in practice. At least, they don’t agree anymore: Trump has in the past endorsed the same single-payer system that the grumpy little socialist Muppet from Vermont prefers, which he, or whoever writes the books published under his name, described at some length in his 2000 offering The America We Deserve. He pointed to Canada as an example of how health care in the United States should be organized. He might even have believed that for a week or two, but Trump is simply too lazy to do the intellectual work necessary to develop a coherent position beyond his facile superlatives. Trump’s lazy ignorance encompasses much more than health care. . .”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450391/mitch-mcconnell-senate-majority-leader-congressional-republicans-opposition-party-donald-trump-speaker-house-paul-ryan
NORTH KOREA
Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge: “NYT Shocking Report: US ‘Ally’ Ukraine Is Source of North Korean Missile Engines”
“When the US State Department supported Ukraine domestic forces and nationalist elements to stage a successful and deadly coup against then pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the outcome was supposed to be a nation that is a undisputed US ally and persistent threat, distraction and non-NATO opponent to bordering Russia. Instead, it now appears that it has been Ukraine which was, as the NYT writes, the secret behind the success of North Korea’s ballistic missile program.
Specifically, in a blockbuster report this morning, the NYT alleges that North Korea has been making black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory citing “expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.”
“‘The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.’
“According to the report, analysts who studied photographs of Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. ‘The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.’
“Since the alleged engines have been linked to only a few former Soviet sites, government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence. . .”
Drudge Links 08-14-17
KIM ‘ON STANDBY TO LAUNCH’…
From submarines?
Guam leader backs ‘punch in the nose’ for Pyongyang…
Top US military officer warns…
Xi Grapples With Kim Support…
China bans imports…
Gorka compares Holocaust to NKorea threats…
CHARLOTTESVILLE
Richmond Times Dispatch: “Editorial: Malevolence and Mayhem in Charlottesville”
“It should not have been too much to hope that Charlottesville’s atmosphere of cerebral gentility could withstand the temporary invasion of a backward mob, however cretinous. But even among those who doubted that the demonstration by white supremacists could unfold peacefully, few likely anticipated the horrific scope of the violence that erupted. The blackhearted spirit of the alt-right movement mars whatever it touches — and in Charlottesville it did much worse than that.
Even before Friday night was over, fights were breaking out around the University of Virginia, which white-power marchers defiled with a torchlit rally that would not have looked out of place in Nuremburg. On Saturday morning more white nationalists rolled into town, some dressed up as soldiers, some heavily armed, and at least one wearing a quote from Aldolf Hitler. They were met by masses of counterprotesters, including those from the so-called Antifa movement. (The name is short for anti-fascist, although the group’s behavior is sometimes anything but.)
“The ostensible reason for the rally — Charlottesville’s recent controversy over what to do with its Confederate monuments — merely provided a pretext, a convenient catalyst for neo-segregationist hell-raising. Soon the racists and some counter-protesters were brawling, chucking water bottles at one another, and gassing one another with pepper spray. That was rightly too much for local officials, who pronounced the mobs unlawful assemblies, and for Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who declared a state of emergency.
“Law enforcement moved in. But despite the best efforts of the police, a car careened into a crowd of counterprotesters marching downtown, killing at least one person and injuring at least 19 more. From the video, it looked like a premeditated, cold-blooded act of mayhem. Of, indeed, terrorism — no different from the Bastille Day truck attackin Nice, France. Had been carried out by, say, a Muslim immigrant, nobody would call it anything else.
Donald Trump condemned the hate and the violence, though he undermined his own words by falsely treating all sides as equally culpable. . .”
Michael Ledeen, PJM: “We’ll Have More Charlottesvilles”
“. . . It’s a beautiful campus and a charming town. Just the sort of place you’d expect to be the locus of Mr. Jefferson’s university. And the tumult there puts me in mind of Jefferson’s unhappy experience as university president. I once spent a productive day in the UV archives, which tell the story.
“Jefferson was a passionate believer in democracy at all levels of public life, and it made perfect ideological sense to him that the students should run the university. His university. They should make the basic decisions, from choosing their professors to deciding what they should study. After all, if the people were really going to rule, they were best qualified to judge how the place should be run, weren’t they? Jefferson institutionalized it. With the same predictably bad results as we get nowadays when the kids get their hands on their own schools.
“It went bad quite quickly, as you’d expect. Just as now, the students took to the lawns when they didn’t get what they wanted, and order had to be imposed. All of which forced Jefferson to reconsider, and he redid the governance system at UV. No more student rule. Their elders and betters would make the academic decisions. Including Jefferson himself. . .”
https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2017/08/13/well-have-more-charlottesvilles/
Jay Reeves, WBRC: “Rebel yell: Southern nationalists again crying ‘secede’”
“BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – As 21st century activists seek to topple monuments to the 19th century Confederate rebellion, some white Southerners are again advocating for what the Confederates tried and failed to do: secede from the Union.
It’s not an easy argument to win, and it’s not clear how much support the idea has: The leading Southern nationalist group, the Alabama-based League of the South, has been making the same claim for more than two decades and still has an address in the U.S.A., not the C.S.A.
“But the idea of a break-away Southern nation persists.
“The League of the South’s longtime president, retired university professor Michael Hill of Killen, Alabama, posted a message in July that began, ‘Fight or die white man’ and went on to say Southern nationalists seek ‘nothing less than the complete reconquest and restoration of our patrimony – the whole, entire South.’
“‘And that means the South will once again be in name and in actuality White Man’s Land. A place where we and our progeny can enjoy Christian liberty and the fruits of our own labor, unhindered by parasitical ‘out groups,’’ said Hill’s message, posted on the group’s Facebook page a day after a rally in support of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia. . .”
http://www.wbrc.com/story/36117377/rebel-yell-southern-nationalists-again-crying-secede
Drudge Links 08-14-17
Rally organizer chased away by protesters during press conference…
Fear of ‘violent left’ preceded events in Charlottesville…
GODADDY bans neo-Nazi site…
Now Seattle heats up…
NEXT: Kentucky mayor wants to remove Confederate statues…
Councilman calls for Baltimore monuments to be destroyed…
Richmond protesters scream ‘take down’…
Sides Clash In Dallas…
HEALTH CARE
Hannity: Josh Umber Sites
Notice the abundant ads on radio and television for products that enhance your looks, stamina, or sexual abilities . . . somebody tell McConnell . . .and Trump!
Josh Umber free market program: Standard fee: $50/month for an adult, $10 per child; no limit on number of visits; medication is purchased in bulk and sold to the patient at a 90% discount.
The map below contains a listing of public addresses and website links to 607 DPC practice locations in 47 states + DC (we still have not located any DPC practices in North Dakota, South Dakota, or Iowa,). Website readers should note that these practices met our three part definition of DPC, although they may not always self-describe as DPC. Both “Pure” DPC practices and DPC hybrids are included in the mapper, and they are now color coded! I’m happy to report that over 70% of the practices in the mapper are known to be pure.
http://www.dpcfrontier.com/mapper/
LEADS
Washington Times: “Deeper into the Swamp”
“Fair’s fair, Hillary and her campaign deserve their own investigation
“Democrats are big fans of special prosecutors, especially this year, so maybe Hillary Clinton deserves the scrutiny Robert Mueller and his lawyers are giving Donald Trump & Co. Since nearly all of Mr. Mueller’s lawyers contributed to Hillary’s campaign, they might leap at the opportunity to see how their money was spent. Or maybe Hillary deserves a special prosecutor of her own.
“The only candidate found to have committed “extremely careless” breaches of national security protocols, after all, was Hillary herself, James Comey’s decision not to seek prosecution notwithstanding. There’s lots of colluding (along with the canoodling) in a swamp.
“Tossing an accusation into an accuser’s face without batting an eye is an exceptional skill. Regular folks caught in wrongdoing quail with self-mortification triggered by a guilty conscience. Not everyone has a conscience, nor have the Democrats and Republicans who inhabit our swamp.
“Collusion can be a sign of corruption, but so far the only whiff of corruption anyone is known to have sniffed in Trumpworld is from Donald Jr.’s taking delight in the prospect of finding proof that Hillary benefited from dirty dealing.
“Authentic collusion was more likely in that secret meeting between Loretta Lynch, then the attorney general, and Bill Clinton at the Phoenix airport just when the Justice Department was wrapping up its investigation of Hillary’s slipshod handling of classified information on her private email server. The Obama administration brushed off suggestions that the meeting was anything more nefarious than that Bubba and the lady bumped into each other and were overwhelmed by an urge to talk about Bubba’s new grandchild and his golf game.
“But there’s always someone to smell something on the bottom of someone’s shoe. Freedom of Information Act requests from Judicial Watch and the American Center for Law and Justice have just scored the release of 413 pages of relevant material that Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department first denied even existed.
“The new material reveals that Ms. Lynch hid behind an email alias called ‘Elizabeth Carlisle’ when communicating with others about that tarmac meeting, but not much more. That’s because it was mostly blacked out — evidence that Democrats’ control of the deep state is so complete that the facts about the runway run-in are as cleverly hidden as if Hillary were in the Oval Office after all. . .”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/9/editorial-deeper-into-the-swamp/
John Crudele, NY Post: “Comey botched the Hillary Clinton email investigation”
“. . . I am a retired FBI agent and extremely proud of my career and service. I feel compelled to write. Former FBI Director James Comey’s statements, testimony and behavior are truly abhorrent.
“Comey admitted under oath before Congress that the bureau did not utilize a federal grand jury in the Hillary e-mail investigation.
“Furthermore, he testified that in his experience, when dealing with attorneys, you can obtain information easier and faster than via a federal grand jury.
“Never, I repeat never, in my 25-year career have I or any FBI agent known to me investigated a criminal case without the use of a federal grand jury, federal grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, etc.
“Search warrants and/or subpoenas should have been executed at Clinton’s residences in Chappaqua and Washington and at Platte River
“In fact, Comey frequently cites his vast experience. Well, I am certain that in every case with which he was involved (except this one, conveniently) he employed the use of a federal grand jury and all of the authority that encompasses.
“Comey’s parsing of words to justify his cowardly decision was awkward and juvenile. . .”
http://nypost.com/2017/08/12/comey-botched-the-hillary-clinton-email-investigation/
WSJ: “Unmasking Samantha Power”
“We still don’t know why Obama officials needed to know the names of so many Trump officials.
“Of all the Russia storms raging around Donald Trump —the Christopher Steele dossier, the email to Don Jr. promising dirt on Hillary Clinton —there is still only one clear felony we know about: the leaking of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s name after someone had identified him from a classified intelligence report. Funny how this is a scandal no one seems interested in.
“Well, almost no one. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, recently sent a letter to the Director of National Intelligence with some startling information. The committee has learned that ‘one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence-related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration.’
“Unmasking is simply an official requesting the identity of an American whose name has been redacted from an intelligence report. There is nothing inherently wrong with unmasking, and law enforcement, intelligence operatives and policy makers can have a legitimate need to know who these Americans are.
“But protecting the privacy rights of American citizens as well as not revealing which foreigners U.S. intelligence is targeting is also crucial, which is why U.S. government officials are supposed to give good and specific reason for seeking the identity of a redacted American. Yet in all but one of the requests for names from top-level Obama officials, Mr. Nunes writes, the language was ‘boilerplate’ and did not specify why the official needed to know the names.
“The House committee has not identified the Trump people who were unmasked. Nor has it identified the ‘one official’ who made those hundreds of requests. But it’s pretty obvious this was Samantha Power, Barack Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations. (Emph added, jb) . .”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unmasking-samantha-power-1502492067
Melanie Phillips: INCITEMENT, LIES AND THE STRANGE ECLIPSE OF THE DOME OF THE ROCK”
“In the wake of the recent violence over Temple Mount, a reader wrote to tell me something I hadn’t realised.
“I had wrongly assumed that the al Aqsa mosque as well as the Dome of the Rock were built on top of the actual site of the Jewish Temple. In fact, only the Dome of the Rock is situated on top of where the Temple itself stood. Al Aqsa, which was built later, squats on the southern end of Temple Mount which was extended by Herod.
“This raised a question in my mind. As we all know, the Arab and Muslim world incites murderous violence against Israel by claiming (entirely falsely) that al Aqsa is “in danger” from the Israelis. They use the term al Aqsa as a synonym for the whole area of Temple Mount and not just the mosque of that name.
“But since the Dome of the Rock is a religious shrine, a site of private prayer and pilgrimage; and since it was deliberately built on top of the Jewish Temple in order to bury it both literally and figuratively; and since the Dome of the Rock is a more magnificent edifice and older than al Aqsa, why is it barely mentioned other than in passing? Why is al Aqsa classified as the third holiest Islamic place after Mecca and Medina? Why is it only al Aqsa for which the Arab and Muslim world goes to war against the Jews?. . .”
http://www.melaniephillips.com/incitement-lies-strange-eclipse-dome-rock/
Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch: Tillerson’s State Department hosts Hamas-linked CAIR, radical Islamic groups
Posted August 10, 2017 08:38 PM by Jordan Schachtel
“This is the kind of thing that should have ended with the inception of the ‘Drain the Swamp’ administration. Unfortunately, Trump appointed too many people who did not share his vision, and so that vision is not being implemented, and Obama holdovers are still in charge.
“OPEN SUPPORTERS OF HAMAS TERROR GROUP MEET WITH STATE OFFICIALS.
“The Council on American Islamic Relations, a Hamas-tied Muslim Brotherhood front group, met with officials from the State Department Thursday to discuss the ongoing situation in Jerusalem, the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) posted online.
“The delegation was brought together by an umbrella conglomerate of Islamist outfits known as the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO). They went to the State Dept. to discuss the ‘ongoing Al-Aqsa Mosque crisis and Israel’s denial of religious freedom in Jerusalem, which is holy to the three Abrahamic faiths,’ the AMP website said. . .”
RECOMMENDED:
Convention of States: “https://www.conventionofstates.com”
MARK LEVIN (08-11-17)
On Friday’s Mark Levin show, The situation with North Korea is very dangerous. Past presidents dropped the ball on this and President Trump has every right to be frustrated with how they handled North Korea. People like Bill Cohen, Susan Rice, John Brennan and James Clapper are complaining how Trump is handling the situation when they did nothing about this crisis before Trump was in office. They should be questioned by the media like CNN and MSNBC as to why.
“Also, everyone thinks China is going to assist us in dealing with North Korea. This is the same China saying India better prepare for war and threatening Japan. Where is Congress? Congress has a role to play and should pass a spending bill funding the Department of Defense.
“After that, Jeffery Lord, calls in to talk about his firing from CNN. CNN has done Media Matters’ dirty work. Their purpose is to destroy anybody that disagrees with the Democrats. Lord has tried to stand up to Media Matters and of course they tried to destroy them. Angelo Carusone of Media Matters is the person behind Lord’s firing and has attacked Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh in the past. He is the one who is behaving as a fascist and has done enormous damage to those who embrace Americanism.
“In addition, we cannot make progress in restoring the country as long as Mitch McConnell is leading in the Senate. McConnell he is a power hungry obstructer, and failed to stop Barack Obama in any respect. When it came to Obama’s agenda such as massive cuts to the military budget and the Iran Deal, he paved the way. He can’t get things done because he doesn’t want to get things done.”
http://www.marklevinshow.com/2017/08/11/august-11-2017/
Dinesh D’Souza – The Big Lie
“The real history of the Democratic Party in America was completely covered up following WWII. In D’Souza’s new book The Big Lie, all of this secret, ugly history is brought to light.
“The Big Lie also proves that the Democrats today are the functionally and ideologically the same as the leftists of the 1930s that provided Hitler with blueprints for many of his racist policies.
“Learn about the whole shocking past of the Democratic Party—click here to order The Big Lietoday.”
Science Daily: “Chimpanzees learn rock-paper-scissors”
“New study shows that chimps’ ability to learn simple circular relationships is on a par with that of 4-year-old children.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170810104846.htm
Dead Cats & Clippings 