monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

[Besides, wasn't it prince Harry who once went to a costumed party in a nazi uniform?

“The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do.”

Hate crimes in the US rose by 17% in 2017, the third straight year that incidents of bias-motivated attacks have grown, according to the FBI.

The data is collected from local police departments that contribute to the survey voluntarily. But not all do.

The rise in hate crimes is attributed to an increase of about 1,000 police departments that are now choosing to report these incidents, the FBI says.

The report found the surge especially affected black and Jewish Americans.

Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker - who who was named by President Donald Trump last week after the sacking of Jeff Sessions - called the report a "call to action" and condemned the offences as "despicable violations of our core values as Americans".

What did the report find?
The annual report released on Tuesday found 7,175 hate crimes across the US last year - 1,054 more than in 2016.

According to the report, 59.6% of incidents were motivated by bias against race, ethnicity or ancestry.

Crimes motivated by a victim's religion constituted 20.6% of attacks, and crimes against a person's sexual orientation made up 15.8%.

What did the report find?

As it happens, I have written about the Left’s fantasy war against fascism before. (Link here.) Thus, I am happy to see that Kevin Williamson raises the issue. Which issue might that be? It’s about the way America’s radical left has moved out of the present in order to travel back into the past and to join the French Resistance.

Of course, identifying yourself as a member of the disloyal opposition defies the most basic democratic value. And, lest we forget, the people who liberated France from the Nazi occupation were not Resistance fighters-- however brave they were-- but the armies of the Anglosphere… you know, the same Anglosphere that is routinely denounced as a bastion of poisonous white privilege.

One thing we note in this political posturing is that it is animated by mindless stupidity.

But, it’s also about the way that today’s radical left is fighting a war against what Williamson calls fantasy Nazis.

Again, fighting fantasy Nazis sends you back in time to the era where Nazis were a power in central Europe. We recall that America had one president during the Nazi scourge, and that said president spent the first eight years of his administration doing essentially nothing about the growing Nazi threat in Europe.

Williamson offers his analysis:

Calling yourself an “antifascist” while defining “fascism” as “the enforcement of ordinary immigration laws” or “thinking that Bernie Sanders is a grumpy Muppet who should be kept far from the levers of power” is entirely childish and deeply stupid. (These absurd characterizations also, not that anybody really cares, drown out legitimate criticisms of the Trump administration and congressional Republicans.) These play-acting buffoons aren’t the moral equivalent of the French Resistance — they are mincing would-be thugs looking for something that will make them feel better about themselves. Apparently, terrorizing Tucker Carlson’s wife scratches an itch that weed and NetFlix don’t.

US President Donald Trump has gone on Twitter to mock his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, after an awkward Armistice Day visit.

He attacked Mr Macron over nationalism, plans for a European army, French tariffs on US wine imports, and the French leader's popularity rating.

Mr Macron had urged world leaders to reject nationalism, describing it as a "betrayal of patriotism".

Some observers interpreted the remarks as a thinly-veiled attack on Mr Trump.

"By saying 'our interests first and never mind the others' you stamp out the most precious thing a nation has - its moral values," Mr Macron said, in a speech to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War One.

Mr Trump's relations with European and fellow Nato leaders have long been strained.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Mr Macron's defence on Tuesday, echoing his call for a "real European army".

FBI 2017 stats: Antisemitic attacks soar, anti-Muslim attacks decline

Trump Is Right: Honest Vote Count No Longer Possible

In Georgia a judge ordered three heavily Democratic precincts to stay open late, introducing thousands of provisional ballots into the election.

Richard Barron, Fulton County, Georgia’s director of registration and elections, said the issue at Booker T. Washington and Archer Hall precincts was college students. Many were registered to vote elsewhere, but insisted on filling out provisional ballots where they were. Barron said there were so many people filling out provisional ballots at the high school that the precinct ran out of them and had to print more.

“I think it’s setting a bad precedent for the future,” Barron said of the efforts to keep those three locations open later. “It seemed to be judicial activism.”

Stealing elections by totally outrageous and open fraud. Is this the country the Left wants? It sure is, who really wants to be part of that? Count me out. This is fascism.
http://www.conservativehq.com/article/29121-trump-right-honest-vote-count-no-longer-possible

Of course, provisional ballots equals fascism.

The Ticking Time Bomb of Islamic Jew-hatred in the USA

When Imams in mosques in North Carolina, New Jersey, Texas and California called for the killing of Jews, American organizations were quiet. No one protested or called on President Donald Trump to confront Muslim supremacy.

He attacked Mr Macron over nationalism, plans for a European army, French tariffs on US wine imports, and the French leader's popularity rating.

you slammed them?

The state of Maryland is challenging the legality of President Trump’s appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, arguing the move violates the Constitution and federal statute.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh asked the U.S. District Court in Maryland to recognize Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, not Whitaker, as the nation’s acting chief law enforcement officer, according to documents filed with the court Tuesday.

The state of Maryland is using a lawsuit filed in September that involves provisions of the Affordable Care Act as the vehicle for its challenge to Trump’s move.

In court filings, Maryland asked U.S. District Court in Maryland to block the Justice Department from responding to the lawsuit and proceeding in the case with Whitaker appearing in his capacity as acting attorney general.

Whitaker, the state said, does not have the authority to represent the U.S. government.

“Few positions are more critical than that of the U.S. attorney general, an office that wields enormous enforcement power and authority over the lives of all Americans,” Frosh said in a statement. “President Trump’s brazen attempt to flout the law and Constitution in bypassing Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rosenstein in favor of a partisan and unqualified staffer cannot stand.”

Lawyers for Maryland argue that Whitaker’s appointment as acting attorney general violates the Constitution’s Appointments Clause and federal law.

The Appointments Clause requires “principal” officers, such as the attorney general, to be confirmed by the Senate.

Under the statute regarding the succession of the attorney general, meanwhile, the Senate-confirmed deputy attorney general has the authority to serve in the acting role in the event of a vacancy or the attorney general’s absence.

“Absent the Attorney General Succession Act, the President could fire the Attorney General (or demand his resignation), then appoint a hand-picked junior Senate-confirmed officer from an entirely different agency, or a carefully selected senior employee who he was confident would terminate or otherwise severely limit the investigation,” Maryland’s lawyers wrote in court documents.

“Indeed, the President could appoint and then remove a series of hand- picked individuals as Acting Attorney General until one finally acceded to the President’s demands, with the Senate left powerless to intercede,” they continued. “The Attorney General Succession Act makes that impossible; without it, the possibility seems far from theoretical.”

Rosenstein, Maryland’s lawyers said, is the acting attorney general “as a matter of law.”

Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign his post last week and subsequently announced via Twitter that Whitaker, Sessions’ chief of staff, would replace him on a temporary basis.

Whitaker, though, has been rebuked by congressional Democrats who argue that he should recuse himself from special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Democrats have raised concerns about Whitaker’s prior comments about Mueller’s investigation, as well as his qualifications to serve as attorney general.

Rosenstein had been overseeing Mueller’s probe after Sessions recused himself in March 2017.

Whitaker’s appointment has come under scrutiny by top lawyers who argue Trump ran afoul of the Constitution when he named him as acting attorney general.