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Wed. June 28, 2017
'Activity' seen at Syrian base where chemical attack originated, defense officials say
By Lucas Tomlinson
The Pentagon is seeing new activity "associated with chemical weapons" at a Syrian aircraft hangar where a previous chemical attack on civilians is believed to have originated, multiple defense officials said Tuesday, hours after the White House issued its new warning to President Bashar Assad.
A man carries his child into a hospital following a chemical attack in Syria in April. (AP)The hangar, at the Shayrat Air Base outside the city of Homs, is the same Assad regime base the U.S. military struck with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in early April.
“We have seen activity at Shayrat Airfield . . . associated with chemical weapons,” Capt. Jeff Davis said.
It’s not immediately clear what specific actions at the base prompted the White House statement, but Davis said the new activity began in the last few days and became more "compelling" in the last 24 hours.
American officials at the U.S.-led coalition headquarters in Baghdad told Fox News they stood firmly behind the White House message, which warned the Syrian government against deploying chemical weapons again.
A satellite image of the Shayrat air base in Syria where the Pentagon is seeing renewed "activity." (APShould President Trump decide to go beyond merely warning Assad, there is plenty of U.S. firepower in the region to serve as further deterrent or eventual retribution.
The USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier strike group is operating in the Mediterranean Sea, striking ISIS positions in Syria. Along with the carrier’s dozens of strike aircraft, there are numerous guided-missile destroyers capable of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles in a strike that would be similar to the one launched on Syria from warships in early April.
Last week, a U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornet launched from USS George H.W. Bush shot down a Syrian warplane -- the first time the U.S. military shot down a jet in air-to-air combat in 18 years. The U.S. jet first fired a short-range sidewinder missile, but missed when the Syrian jet launched flares and took evasive action. But the American pilot did not miss a second time, firing a medium-range air-to-air missile called an Aim-120 Amraam, U.S. officials said.
The USS Ross fires a tomahawk missile bound for a Syrian air base. (AP)Since late May, there have been five U.S. attacks on pro-Assad forces in Syria, including Iranian-backed forces such as Hezbollah that had moved near a U.S. coalition training base in southern Syria.
Justifying the April attack on the Syrian base, senior U.S. military officials said at the time there was evidence the regime launched the deadly chemical weapons attack in northern Syria from Shayrat. At least 80 people, including women and children, were killed in the town of Khan Sheikhoun by a weapon deployed from a lone Syrian jet, according to officials.
Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: FMR. ATTORNEY GENERAL LYNCH COULD FACE 5-10 YEARS IN PRISON
Senate probes improper communication between former AG and Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Adan Salazar
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch could be jailed for up to ten years if found guilty of misconduct, Judge Andrew Napolitano claimed Monday.
If emails exist between Lynch and former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz improperly discussing the Clinton email investigation, the former attorney general could be charged with “misconduct in office,” a felony carrying five to ten years in jail, the Fox Business contributor stated.
“It is alleged, this document has not seen the light of day if it exists, that there are one or several emails between Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Loretta Lynch concerning the behavior that Loretta Lynch will take to further the DNC interests while Mrs. Lynch was attorney general,” Napolitano stated. “That, if it happened, would be ‘misconduct in office.'”
“It’s a felony. Depending upon exactly what they charged her with, it could be five or 10 years in jail. It’s very serious. It’s the equivalent of obstruction of justice. It’s the same allegation they are making about the president.”
In a letter to Lynch last Thursday announcing a Senate probe into her conduct while in office, Sen. Chuck Grassley asked if she’d ever communicated with Schultz.
“During your time in the Justice Department, did you ever have communications with Rep. Wasserman Schultz, her staff, her associates, or any other current or former DNC officials about the Clinton email investigation?” Grassley’s letter read, with another question asking if “any of your Justice Department staff or your other associates” had similar communications.
Grassley’s inquiry followed testimony from former FBI Director James Comey earlier this month claiming he felt “queasy” after Lynch asked him to refer to the FBI’s probe of Clinton’s emails as a “matter” instead of an “investigation.”
This “terminology,” Napolitano stated, “may be indicative of a mindset on the part of Attorney General Lynch that she was going to do whatever she could to prevent Mrs. Clinton from getting indicted.”
Comey had previously stated under oath he believed Ms. Lynch’s tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton also destroyed the FBI’s ability to carry out the Clinton email investigation in a credible manner.
Three Employees Resign from CNN Amid Very Fake News Scandal
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Three CNN employees have resigned amid the network’s very fake news scandal in which it was forced to retract a hit piece on President Donald Trump and his associates.
“CNN said Monday that three journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported late Monday. “Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN.”
Stelter quoted an anonymous CNN spokesperson—the network refused to comment to him on Sunday night over the scandal—as saying the network accepted their resignations. As Stelter acknowledged — not in this piece, but in his Sunday evening “Reliable Sources” newsletter — it was a Breitbart News investigation that forced CNN’s retraction and now the resignations of three top network officials.
“In the aftermath of the retraction of a story published on CNN.com, CNN has accepted the resignations of the employees involved in the story’s publication,” the CNN spokesperson said. Stelter continued:
An internal investigation by CNN management found that some standard editorial processes were not followed when the article was published, people briefed on the results of the investigation said. The story, which reported that Congress was investigating a ‘Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials,’ cited a single anonymous source. These types of stories are typically reviewed by several departments within CNN — including fact-checkers, journalism standards experts and lawyers — before publication. This breakdown in editorial workflow disturbed the CNN executives who learned about it. In a staff meeting Monday afternoon, investigative unit members were told that the retraction did not mean the facts of the story were necessarily wrong. Rather, it meant that ‘the story wasn’t solid enough to publish as-is,’ one of the people briefed on the investigation said. The reporting about the Russian investment fund and Trump officials was not relayed on CNN’s television channels, but it was published on the web and shared on social media. On Friday, one of the people named in the story, Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci, disputed Frank’s reporting and said, ‘I did nothing wrong.’ Friday night, once it was determined that editorial processes were not followed, CNN deleted the story from CNN.com. Soon thereafter, the story was officially retracted and replaced with an editor’s note.
CNN is still not commenting via official on-record statements from its public relations department and continues refusing to provide network President Jeff Zucker for interviews. There are many questions the network is still not answering about what is now the most serious scandal in its history.
Haris, the head of the CNN investigative unit who has resigned, is the only CNN official who resigned who gave a statement for the story. Stelter wrote that he “was named the executive editor of CNN Investigates in January” and was previously the executive editor of CNNMoney.
“On Friday, CNN retracted a story published by my team. As Executive Editor of that team, I have resigned,” Haris said. ”I’ve been with CNN since 2001, and am sure about one thing: This is a news organization that prizes accuracy and fairness above all else. I am leaving, but will carry those principles wherever I go.”
Neither Lichtblau nor Frank are quoted in the story. But Stelter describes their previous, seemingly impeccable credentials:
Frank worked for USA Today and Newsday for three decades, pursuing investigations and covering the Iraq war as an embedded reporter, before coming to work at CNN. He was part of an ambitious new investigative unit that was created last winter, bringing together existing teams from within the company and new hires like Lichtblau. A veteran of The New York Times who won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2006, Lichtblau joined CNN just three months ago.
This is a developing story. More information is forthcoming.
Fake News: Washington Post Claims Thomas Jefferson Held White House Iftar Dinner to ‘Celebrate Ramadan’
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The establishment media became upset this weekend after President Donald Trump canceled the “White House Muslim Iftar Dinner tradition started by Thomas Jefferson.” But the media is wrong in every respect. Thomas Jefferson never held any Iftar dinner and only three out of 45 presidents ever hosted one, so there is no such “tradition” to cancel.
Amy B. Wang of the Washington Post led the pack with this nonsense that Thomas Jefferson held the “first Iftar dinner” with a June 24 piece entitled, “Trump just ended a long tradition of celebrating Ramadan at the White House.”
The often-used claim that Thomas Jefferson held the first Iftar dinner at the White House was trotted out by the Post’s Wang. She recounted the time when the diplomatic envoy from the Bey of Tunis, Sidi Soliman Melli Melli, visited Washington during Ramadan in 1805.
Jefferson invited the envoy to the White House for dinner at 3:30 PM—the time most Washingtonians had dinner in those days. But after he sent the invitation he was told that Melli Melli could not partake of a meal until after sunset because of Ramadan. Thomas Jefferson was faced with two choices: cancel the dinner entirely or simply have the meal later in the evening at a time when his guest could attend. As a good host and a decent person, Jefferson chose the latter.
In fact, all Jefferson did was change the time of his meal. He had no intention of honoring Islam. Jefferson simply was not honoring the religion of “the Musselmen”—as he termed Muslims at the time—when he changed the time of the meal. Also, there is no evidence that Jefferson asked Melli Melli what sort of food a “Musselman” would eat, so no special food was prepared to suit a Muslim’s religious needs. Jefferson neither inquired about religious accommodations nor was any made. All he did was move the time of the meal as a courtesy.
Further, Jefferson sent no letters containing proclamations about the meal being an Iftar dinner nor mentioning Islam, he never mentioned such honors in his private papers, and there is no record that he spoke to anyone about his intentions to honor the Muslim practice of an Iftar dinner.
To the Post’s Wang, that Jefferson had a dinner at all was somehow proof positive that he invented a “tradition” of some sort. As “proof” that it was an Iftar dinner, Wang quoted the words of liberal historian John Ragosta who gave the scintillating argument, “Yeah, it sounds to me like an Iftar dinner.”
Wang went on to insist there has been a “modern tradition” of having an Iftar dinner at the White House. But in truth, only three presidents in all of American history ever held an Iftar dinner.
Bill Clinton held the first one, a politically motivated dinner aimed at peeling Muslim voters away from the GOP, since at the time the growing Muslim-American community leaned toward becoming a Republican constituency.
George W. Bush, in a diplomatic effort, followed Clinton’s practice of holding Iftar dinners because he wanted to prove that the U.S. wasn’t looking to go to war with all of Islam in the wake of the attacks on 9/11/2001 and the subsequent implementation of the war on terror.
Naturally, Barack Obama held them because he had a personal connection to Islam through his childhood, growing up in Indonesia and raised during that time as a Muslim.
But three presidents out of 45 does not make a “tradition.”
In her ahistorical article, Wang also quotes John Quincy Adams who expressed “with an air of fascination” his dinner with the Tunisian envoy, but quotes Adams without also noting that the president thought Islam was a terrible and brutal creed.
What Adams thought about Islam is instructive. For instance, he described Islam as a religion of hate in a piece he wrote in the late 1820s:
The natural hatred of the Mussulmen towards the infidels is in just accordance with the precepts of the Koran. … The fundamental doctrine of the Christian religion is the extirpation of hatred from the human heart. It forbids the exercise of it, even towards enemies. … In the 7th century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab … spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. … He declared undistinguishing and exterminating war as a part of his religion. … The essence of his doctrine was violence and lust, to exalt the brutal over the spiritual part of human nature.
Other prominent Americans at the time also disparaged Islam.
Mahomet aimed to establish his pretensions to divine authority, by the power of the sword and the terrors of his government; while he carefully avoided any attempts at miracles in the presence of his followers, and all pretences to foretell things to come. His acknowledging the divine mission of Moses and Christ confirms their authority as far as his influence will go while their doctrines entirely destroy all his pretensions to the like authority. … And now, where is the comparison between the supposed prophet of Mecca, and the Son of God; or with what propriety ought they to be named together? …The difference between these characters is so great, that the facts need not be further applied.
Other founders agreed. Both Ben Franklin and John Quincy’s famed father, John Adams, criticized Islam as a doctrine of war, not a religion.
It is true, of course, that the founders intended that Americans should be allowed to practice Islam if they wanted to. There was no thought to outlaw Islam. In fact, some even wrote that Muslims should be allowed to attain political office. After all, we did start the country on the ideal of religious freedom. But no founder felt that Islam was something we should emulate. None felt that Islam had ideas that could be incorporated into the American ethos. And Islam played no part at all in our founding. Those who say it did, such as Barack Obama, are bending over backwards — and illegitimately so — to try and shoehorn Islam into our founding.
After all, it should also be remembered that one of our earliest military actions was against Muslims when Jefferson fought the Barbary Pirates. But historical facts do not seem to enter into the liberal world view.
During several of his Iftar dinners, Barack Obama also regurgitated the nonsense that Islam is part of our founding and that Jefferson held the “first Iftar dinner in the White House.”
No better example of this garbling of the truth can be seen than that in the words of Barack Obama. For his 2012 Iftar dinner celebration, for instance, Obama said the following:
As I’ve noted before, Thomas Jefferson once held a sunset dinner here with an envoy from Tunisia—perhaps the first Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago. And some of you, as you arrived tonight, may have seen our special display, courtesy of our friends at the Library of Congress—the Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson. And that’s a reminder, along with the generations of patriotic Muslims in America, that Islam—like so many faiths—is part of our national story.
The reference to Jefferson’s so-called Iftar dinner in the 2012 speech was at least a step closer to reality than in the past when he was less equivocal. In 2010 Obama said straight out that Jefferson’s was the first Iftar dinner:
Tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity. And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America. The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan—making it the first known Iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.
But it is historical revisionism to say this. Jefferson’s dinner is neither a sure thing nor a “perhaps.” President Thomas Jefferson simply did not hold any Iftar dinner in the White House, nor did he intend to honor Islam that day. To claim that the very first president to authorize war against Muslims would have hosted a dinner to honor Islam is an absurdity of the first order.
Buffett’s Vice Chair – Al Gore Is ‘An Idiot’ Who Just Got Lucky Obsessing About ‘Climate Change’
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by JAMES DELINGPOLE
Al Gore is ‘an idiot’ who only made his vast fortune just because he happened to get lucky by obsessing about climate change.
Possibly we’d all guessed this already. Now it has been confirmed by an expert in the field of finance – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman and fellow investment billionaire Charlie Munger.
Munger, who was speaking at an informal investors’ Q & A – recorded here – clearly does not rate Gore’s intelligence or investment acumen.
“Al Gore has come into you fellas business, Munger said. “He has made $3 or $400 million in your business. And he’s not very smart. He smoked a lot of pot as he coaxed through Harvard with a gentleman’s C. But he had one obsessive idea that global warming was a terrible thing and he would protect the world from it,” he explained. [Note: Gentleman’s C is defined by Urban Dictionary as “A grade given to a student (traditionally with wealthy parents) instead of a failing grade.”]
“So his idea when he went into investment counseling is he was not going to put any CO2 in the air,” Meager explained to the investors noting that Gore’s simple strategy of buying only service company stocks enabled the former Vice President to become very rich.
Meager explained: “So he found some partner to go into investment counseling with and says we’re not going to have any (carbon dioxide). But this partner is a value investor and a good one. So what they did is, is Gore hired staff to find people who didn’t put CO2 in the air. Of course that put him into services. Microsoft and all these service companies were just ideally located. And this value investor picked the best service companies. So all of a sudden the clients are making hundreds of millions of dollars and they are paying part of it to Al Gore. Al Gore has hundreds of millions dollars in your profession. And he’s an idiot. It’s an interesting story. And a true one.”
Though the meeting took place in February, it only recently came to light via a report on CNBC.
The most depressing part of the story is Munger’s belief that Al Gore’s fortune is almost totally down to luck: like war, pestilence and famine it’s one of those terrible pieces of news that prompts many people to wonder “How can a loving God allow such things?”
But there is a positive element to it too. It’s interesting to note that, even in a market as heavily rigged as the one associated with CO2 reduction, Munger still puts Gore’s profits down to the fact that he invested in the service sector generally rather than that green-related stocks were a particularly canny buy.
This augurs very well for those of us who are hoping that the Enron-style Potemkin industry that is the renewables sector collapses very soon.
Too late in the investment cycle, unfortunately, to take Al Gore with it.
G’day…Ciao…….Helen and Moe Lauzier
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