TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Graffiti A Sign of Cultural Decay
Tom McLaughlin
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As Predicted – Mueller Will Not Testify Alone – Handler Aaron Zebley Now Added
by sundance
{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ The schemes of liar-Nancy Pulosi, scumbag-Adam Schiff and scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler are predictable. As we said three months ago, Robert Mueller would not be allowed to testify without a handler... Small group participant Aaron Zebly will now join Mueller for his testimony. This has always been the plan, but strategically announced today. Remember, Mueller’s team is working closely with scumbag liar-Nadler’s team; they are part of the same purpose. They are all part of the same network. The impeachment objective is a group effort from inside government & outside Lawfare. These are not separate groups. The pre-planning was why Chairman scumbag liar-Nadler hired Lawfare Group members to become committee staff. Chairman scumbag-Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman, and Chairman scumbag liar-Nadler hired scumbag/liar -nObama administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke. All these participants are within the Lawfare network. Aaron Zebly is just another key player in the coordinated group. Former special counsel Robert Mueller has made a last-minute request to have one of his longtime aides appear as a witness during his highly-anticipated testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, one congressional source told NBC News on Tuesday. Mueller has requested that Aaron Zebley appear with him when he testifies on Wednesday about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and collusion and obstruction by President Donald Trump... https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/23/as-predicted-mueller-will-not-testify-alone-handler-aaron-zebley-now-added/ .
Mueller asked Barr for Letter
Outlining Testimony Restrictions
by sundance
{ theconservativetreehouse.com } ~ The media has been apoplectic in selling outrage over the U.S. Department of Justice sending a letter to Robert Mueller with guidelines for his testimony... House Judiciary Committee Chairman scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler appeared on morning TV shows today to decry the hubris of the letter calling it “incredibly arrogant” of Bill Barr to send such instructions. However, in the background, for those who watch these manufactured events, you can see that everything around this “letter” was staged. Everything around this letter was intentionally designed by the Lawfare group; which includes scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler’s staff. Yes, it is revealed today…. the Lawfare staff of Chairman scumbag liar-Nadler -who are coordinating with Mueller’s staff- requested the letter to set-up a manufactured narrative before the testimony. Essentially, team scumbag liar-Nadler and team Mueller requested the letter, so that swcumbag liar-Nadler could decry it. That’s the textbook definition of manufacturing outrage: House Judiciary Committee Chairman scumbag liar-Jerrold Nadler said Mueller did not need to follow the instructions contained in the letter. “He does not have to comply with that letter. He doesn’t work for them. And that letter asks things that are beyond the power of the agency to ask even if he still worked for them,” scumbag liar-Nadler said in a CNN interview. “I think it’s incredibly arrogant of the department to try to instruct him in what to say,” scumbag liar-Nadler added. “It’s part of the ongoing cover-up by the administration to keep information away from the American people.”...scumbag liar-Nadler is full of you know what is a big fat liar..
Ramifications of Social Security 2100 Act for
Program Participants Would Be Substantial
By Charles Blahous
{ cnsnews.com } ~ Advocates of Social Security expansion have declared their intention to move the “Social Security 2100 Act” through the House of Representatives before August recess... The bill, introduced by Rep. John Larson (D., Conn.), has more than 200 co-sponsors. Its sponsors deserve credit for putting forth a comprehensive Social Security plan that is specific, scored by the Social Security Administration Chief Actuary and, though it contains elements clearly designed to appeal to certain ideological and special interests, also doesn’t shy away from difficult policy and political choices. But even granting this credit to the legislation’s sponsors, the bill nevertheless reflects highly controversial positions with respect to a number of serious policy challenges facing Social Security. Rather than debate the subjective value judgments made in the legislation, this article presents key facts and figures that highlight some of its problematic features. #1: Low-income workers’ payroll tax burdens would rise 19 percent. In order to fund its significant benefit expansion, the Social Security 2100 Act would increase payroll taxes on all U.S. workers, including the poorest ones. While many low-income American workers pay no federal income taxes, they nevertheless do pay payroll taxes. The Social Security tax rate would gradually rise over several years from 12.4 percent to 14.8 percent, which when fully phased in would represent a 19% increase in low-income workers’ payroll tax burdens. #2: Real (inflation-adjusted) benefits for high-income workers would be 66 percent higher by mid-century. Much of the bill’s tax increase on low-income workers would be spent on higher benefits for richer ones. Initial Social Security benefit levels already grow faster than price inflation because of an indexing mechanism in current law. The legislation would accelerate this benefit growth, doing so especially rapidly for the highest-income beneficiaries. This can be illustrated via the example of a high-income worker with earnings consistently at twice the Social Security taxable maximum an annual earnings level of about $266,000 today. Under current-law, benefits for a retiree in 2050 with earnings of twice the current-law taxable maximum are scheduled to be a full 51 percent higher than what’s paid to today’s high-income retiree, adjusted for inflation. Most mainstream analysts believe that this benefit growth needs to be moderated, at least for higher-income workers, to protect Social Security’s finances. But the bill would actually increase this growth still further, to 66 percent by 2050. #3: Total Social Security payroll tax burdens would rise by over 40 percent. Under current law, one substantial cost of employment is the 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax assessed up to a maximum of $132,900 of a worker’s earnings. This cap is statutorily indexed to grow in most years. The bill would gradually increase the Social Security payroll tax rate to 14.8 percent as well as eventually eliminate the cap. These two effects together would increase total Social Security payroll tax burdens nationally by over 40 percent. This would also increase the total Social Security plus Medicare payroll tax rate from its current 15.3 percent to 17.7 percent. #4: Retirement benefits for the lowest-income quintile of workers would exceed 95 percent of their prior earnings. #5: Social Security payroll tax burdens for high-income workers would be multiplied 2.4 times. #6: Errors under the bill’s proposed method for measuring price inflation would cause benefit overpayments of over 10 percent relative to accurate calculations, mostly benefiting higher-income people who live longer. #7: Typical beneficiaries in mid-century would spend over 37 percent of their adult lives collecting Social Security benefits. #8: Young workers’ lifetime income would be reduced by more than 2 percent of their career earnings because of Social Security....
Congress to Vote On Anti-BDS Resolution
By ZACHARY LESHIN
{ jewishjournal.com } ~ The House of Representatives will hold a vote this week on a resolution to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement... The resolution, H.R.246, unanimously passed the House Committee on Foreign Affairs by voice vote on July 18 as part of an en bloc package with several other pieces of legislation. Rep. worthless-Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was present during the markup hearing and stated she will not support the en bloc package the resolution was a part of, and left the committee room before the vote was held. The resolution states that the House of Representatives opposes the BDS movement; affirms that the BDS movement undermines the possibility for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; urges Israelis and Palestinians to return to direct negotiations; supports the full implementation of the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014; and reaffirms support for the two-state solution. The resolution has been formally endorsed by the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan caucus co-chaired by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Rep. Tom Reid (R-N.Y.). “BDS is anti-Israel, anti-peace and harmful to America’s interests,” Gottheimer said. “I’m proud that all members of the Problem Solvers Caucus are committed to opposing BDS and standing up for the U.S.-Israel relationship because these should not be partisan political issues. Thanks to the leadership of Congressmen Brad Schneider and Steve Watkins, this bipartisan resolution has even more momentum for a vote on the House floor.” “Israel is an unwavering ally of the United States and one of our most important strategic partners around the globe,” Reid said. “I am proud of our Problem Solvers Caucus members who have to stood up to ensure Jewish people are treated fairly and spoken out to show we care about this great nation.” Schneider is an Illinois Democrat and Watkins is a Kansas Republican. Other members of the Problem Solvers Caucus spoke about their support for the resolution as well. “This resolution makes clear that Congress continues to support preserving a path to a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with two peoples living side by side in peace, security and prosperity,” said Schneider, who introduced the resolution. “Towards that end, we also oppose the global BDS movement, which seeks to delegitimize the state of Israel by denying the Jewish people’s claim to a homeland. I appreciate the support of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus for this resolution and stand with my colleagues against efforts to push further out of reach a two-state solution and peace for both Israel and the Palestinians.”....
CAIR Leader's Consequence-Free Anti-Semitism
by Steven Emerson
{ investigativeproject.org } ~ He's a public figure who repeatedly preaches about the evil done by Jews. They're accursed, he said last month, justifying the claim with scripture. They incurred God's justifiable wrath, he said in 2012, also citing scripture... And today, he argues that the Jewish state is partly to blame when American police officers kill unarmed black people. It might sound like Louis Farrakhan, but it's not. It's not even someone generally regarded as a fringe character. These blatantly anti-Semitic statements come from Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan office. He's also an assistant imam at Detroit's Masjid Wali Muhammad. In a June 21 khutbah, or sermon, Walid rails against sexual immorality, particularly adultery, sodomy, and lesbianism, saying that "even us here in this society that is majority non-Muslim, if we want to protect the society, to help the society be healthy, then we have to be involved in promoting that which is just and wholesome and forbid that which is unjust and not wholesome." That sounds like a call to prohibit homosexuality. Societies which "openly promote sin" lose Allah's favor, he said. "Allah will not change a condition of a people until they change what is inside of themselves." Jews provided his historical examples. "Beni Israel" – the children of Israel – "invoked a punishment upon themselves for giving this up," he said. He quoted Quran 5:78: "Cursed were those who disbelieved among the Children of Israel by the tongue of David and of Jesus, the son of Mary." "So they were specifically cursed, meaning Allah's mercy was withheld from them because they saw the injustice, they saw the anti-social behavior, they saw the lewdness, and they just were complacent," Walid said. "They were cool with it. They didn't speak out against it. They allowed it to become part of the status quo."....
City of Champaign Appoints Notorious
Anti-Semitic Islamist to Anti-Discrimination Commission
by Sam Westrop
{ meforum.org } ~ When Deb Feinen, Mayor of Champaign, Illinois, suddenly and unexpectedly decided to replace one of the members of her city's Human Relations Commission... she cited the importance of "diversity" as the reason. Out went Kenton Elmore, an unquestionably white Commission member; and in came Ahmed Taha, an Egyptian immigrant and a prominent figure in the city's Muslim community. Elmore appeared to have been a popular member of the Human Relations Commission, and his abrupt removal left other members of the Commission a little unsettled. But the mayor said she felt the city was "underrepresenting the Muslim-American community." At a cursory glance, the decision to appoint Ahmed Taha made sense. Champaign has a significant Muslim community, and Ahmed Taha is a significant figure in that community. But just a slightly closer look would have found that he is significant for one thing more than anything else: his hatred of Jews. Taha's anti-Semitism is no secret, and has been written about before – mostly because of his involvement with two prominent Islamist organizations – the Muslim American Society, for which he runs the Champaign branch; and the Islamic Circle of North America, which is a proxy for Jamaat-e-Islami, a violent South Asian extremist movement. In 2013, Taha republished a photo on his Facebook page, ostensibly of a brutally killed Egyptian teenage boy, which was accompanied by the text: "O Muslim, O servant of God. There is a Jew behind me, come kill him." In March 2014, Taha shared a conspiracy theory by a far-Right website claiming that the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was secretly Jewish. "Is that true?" Taha asked, "If yes, this is a castastroph [sic]." In October that year, he then posted a video supposedly exposing loose lips liar-Joe Biden as a "Zionist" and revealing the "Rothschild Zionism Secret Regime in America."... https://www.meforum.org/islamist-watch/58999/city-of-champaign-appoints-anti-jewish-extremist?utm_source=Middle+East+Forum&utm_campaign=fda275a0e6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_23_05_56&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_086cfd423c-fda275a0e6-33703665&goal=0_086cfd423c-fda275a0e6-33703665 .
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Graffiti A Sign of Cultural Decay
Tom McLaughlin
{tommclaughlin.blogspot.com} ~ It was a bad sign and disheartening to see. While strolling along the new, upper-cliff walk at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth, Maine — one of my favorite places — I saw the graffiti. Park officials had cleared brush from a small level area and put in a picnic table surrounded by a semicircle of ten or twelve boulders rolled into place. Then some selfish, depraved individual came along with a can of red spray paint and defaced them.
I’ve witnessed the phenomenon over the past seven years driving up and down Portland, Maine’s Forest Avenue every week. Stuck in traffic, I’d stare at graffiti on buildings and rooftops. At first, property owners would hastily remove it either by sandblasting it off brick walls or painting over it on other surfaces. After a year or two, however, those efforts slowed down. Now it appears proprietors have given up and the contagion is getting out of control.
"Graffiti is Art, Not Vandalism" claims an article in the Temple University newspaper Temple News. The argument is ridiculous at best. Graffiti spoils someone else’s property. I’d liken it to a dog lifting his leg on a building to mark his territory. How would a genuine artist feel if he or she purchased a large canvas and a graffiti “artist” sprayed on it in the dark of night? If vandal “artists” won’t rent billboards, how about they walk around wearing a sandwich board to display their “art”? One commenter wrote: “Graffiti is filth, period. That is like saying I took an artistic dump on the sidewalk.”
In Rome four years ago I hired a guide to show us around the Eternal City. He pointed out endless fountains — repetitive, stone-carved, muscular nudes laying around displaying genitalia. We, especially my grandson and I, were more interested in historical sites like the Colosseum and the Vatican, but each day I would ask him his opinion of the graffiti we were seeing everywhere. “Oh, that’s art too,” he insisted. On the third day, we encountered old paintings under an archway defaced by someone with a spray can. Finally, he admitted, “That is sh*t!”
Guides are licensed by Italy’s government to comment only in certain ways, but our guide got so exasperated he finally ignored those constraints. Rome was bad, but Athens, Greece is by far the worst graffiti-ridden European city I’ve seen so far. It’s a rather ugly city anyway, apart from the Acropolis and a few other sites, and graffiti is epidemic. On that trip, I was part of a larger family group and didn’t want to rain on the parade by asking our guide about it — a lovely older woman named Dora. There was much less in the rest of Greece outside Athens which was amazingly beautiful.
The graffiti I saw at Fort Williams was fresh. Park officials there are very diligent and I hope they will have either painted the stones or replaced them by the time I return next weekend. The City of Portland is attempting to alleviate their problem by advising property owners, but I’m sad to report that it seems to be losing the battle.
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