Blinken subpoenaed by House Foreign Affairs Committee

Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps ducking requests to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee regarding the Biden-Harris screwup with the Afghanistan withdrawal that resulted in the deaths of 13 US service personnel. So Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) issued a subpoena.

McCaul, in his letter says that he asked Blinken several times for a commitment to show up to the Committee, but he didn't, neither for the May 22, 2024 or August 12, 2024 hearings, which requested he confirm by August 19th that he would show up for the September 10, 2024 hearing. The letter included a warning to Blinken.

Crickets.

"This letter further indicated that should you choose 'not to appear voluntarily,' I would be obligated to proceed with compulsory process to compel your appearance. The Committee is holding this hearing because the Department of State was central to the Afghanistan withdrawal and served as the senior authority during the August non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO)," this September 3 letter pointed out. "As Secretary of State throughout the withdrawal and NEO, you were entrusted to lead these efforts and to secure the safe evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies. In testimony before the Committee, current and former State Department officials have confirmed that you served as the final decision-maker for the Department on the withdrawal and evacuation. You are therefore in a position to inform the Committee’s consideration of potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal, including potential reforms to the Department’s legislative authorization."

"Pursuant to your request for a telephone call and our subsequent discussion on August 19 – the response deadline – I informed you that the Committee’s report on the withdrawal will be released on September 9 and that you needed to appear at a hearing to address the findings set forth in the report. During this call, in the interest of the investigation, I agreed to provide you with additional time to finalize a scheduled date for your appearance, which you indicated would be “nail[ed] []down in the next week," McCaul wrote.

McCaul further reminded that there were additional attempts to secure assurances from Blinken regarding his appearance. These included communications from Committee Staff to the Department on August 26 and August 27. Another request was made as recently as August 30.

But who are we kidding? Blinken et al, are above the law because we allow it and the media covers for our top politicians. 

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GOP Rep. okay with anti-Semite on House Foreign Affairs Committee

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) thinks that it would be hypocritical for the GOP to remove one of the most outspoken anti-Semites in Congress, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mace said that kicking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the committee over anti-Semitic comments, is tantamount to "cancel culture," evidently, even if offends the Jews and people who find Omar repulsive for this hateful view.

"There's a First Amendment in this country. We don't have to agree with everything that members say," Mace said Friday in order to appeal to fellow anti-Semites, when Fox News asked if she supported Speaker Kevin McCarthy's vow to block Omar from the committee.

"I think we have to be very careful about what we are as a constitutional republic," she said.

 "I am not a fan of Ilhan Omar. She's an anti-Semite. She's a bigot. She's a racist. She's a socialist. But that doesn't mean that we cancel people in this country. Republicans don't stand for cancel culture. And that's essentially what this is."

Except when a political party is in charge of one of the Houses, they can remove the dirt to clean the House, at least when it comes to a committee assignment that actually calls for members whose characters are in line with decent, American values. It isn't cancel culture to remove Omar from a committee--it would be cancel culture to remove her from Congress and Mace should know this.

Mace indicate that there were a "handful" of Republicans who are aligned in her thinking and that just sucks, doesn't it?

"I think it sets a very dangerous precedent. And you know, there's so much anti-Semitism in this country. We should be condemning it right and left as we always have, but there's also the First Amendment right to do that," she said. 

But there is no constitutional right to be on a committee, especially when you are the wrong person for that committee. 

Should Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) be allowed to remain on the House Intelligence Committee knowing that Swalwell slept with a Chinese spy and Schiff allegedly used information from that committee to falsely attack former President Donald Trump?

So this isn't about censoring Omar, it's about keeping her off a committee that deals with sensitive issues that she has shown personal bias towards, such as Israel and the Middle East.

Mace said that a resolution to remove Omar was yet to be circulated, and she would wait to read it before making her final decision.

"So I'm going to read the resolution. We haven't seen it. I'm going to read it before I make that final decision next week. But we've been asking for it, and it hasn't been released to public yet," she said.

I do not know if Mace is an anti-Zionist/anti-Semite, but for her to equate Omar being kept off a committee, that is finally controlled by the GOP, to a constitutional right and to cancel culture, says more about Mace than it does about Omar.

The Republican Party is its own worst enemy.

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Omar 'chuckles' when calling Israel a democracy: compares it to Iran

Rep[ulsive] Ilhan Omar (D-MN) a congressional freshman, is getting blowback after she compared Israel to Iran, a country that has just made it illegal for their citizens to walk a dog in public and hangs gay people.

The anti-Semite Muslim said that she "almost chuckle[s]" when the Jewish state is described as a democracy, a remark she made on a Yahoo! News interview on Tuesday.

She also likes Venezuela's dictator and other U.S. adversaries.

When she was asked about how the U.S. can facilitate the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, she criticized the U.S. for not having “an equal approach” in dealing with both sides, not realizing that Israel is an ally and the so-called Palestinians are not.

“Most of the things that have been aggravating to me is that we have had a policy that makes one superior to the other. And we mask it with a conversation about justice and a two-state solution. When you have policies that clearly prioritize one over the other,” she said.

Omar, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked to explain in more detail what she meant, prompting her to criticize America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

“I mean just our relationship with the Israeli government and the Israeli state. And so when I see Israel institute laws that recognize it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it,” she said, because she is clueless and not very fair-minded.

“And we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East I almost chuckle because I know that if we see that any other society we would criticize it, call it out,” the lawmaker continued. “We do that to Iran, we do that to any other place that sort of upholds its religion. And I see that now happening with Saudi Arabia and so I am aggravated, truly, in those contradictions.”

The truth is, Israel is superior to the Palestinians in several ways. To begin, let's look at Israel and where it stands in terms of democracy and fairness:

1. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2013, the Israeli population was comprised of 1,658,000 Arabs, or 21 percent of the population. Arabs in the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem living there after the 1967 Six Day War, were offered Israeli citizenship. While most turned it down, they were given permanent residency status with a future option of becoming citizens.

2. There are three main Arab political parties in Israel: a) Hadash, which is a joint Arab-Jewish party; b) Balad; and c) United Arab List, which is a coalition of political organizations including Islamic Movement in Israel and Ta'al. There are no Israeli-Jewish political parties in the Palestinian Authority. In fact, there are no living Jews in so-called Palestine that are free to walk the streets.

3. Palestinian Arabs sat in Israel's very first parliamentary assembly in 1949.

4. In 2011, 13 of the 120 members of the Israeli Parliament are Arab citizens, compared to zero Israelis in the Palestinian Authority government in any context. 

5. There is one Arab on the Israeli Supreme Court. There are no Israelis involved in any capacity with Palestinian law.

6. In 2004, then-Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, declared that every state-run company must have at least one Arab on its board of directors. 

7. In 2015, there were 18 Arabs elected to the Knesset. There are no Israelis in the Palestinian Authority.

Omar's anti-Semitic comments sparked condemnation on social media, with former New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat, criticizing her comparing Israel with Iran.

“Who objects to Saudi Arabia being Islamic? Or any of the other 48 Muslim states? The issue with Iran isn’t their state religion; it’s their terror-loving leaders that are condemned. @IlhanMN needs to learn about the world before she’s out of excuses for her antisemitism,” he wrote.

Jim Hanson, president of Security Studies Group who also served in U.S. Army Special Forces, meanwhile, accused Omar of being an “anti-Semite” and lamented that she’s a member of Congress.

“@IlhanMN is an anti-Semite. Give her an opportunity to speak her mind & like most bigots she'll tell you. She laughs at the idea Israel is a democracy & compares it to Iran. Shameful to have those ideas represented in Congress,” he wrote.

This isn’t the first time Omar has been slammed for her comments regarding Israel. She had to apologize earlier this month for a tweet that read: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine#Israel.”

Yeah, the evil doings of Israel--that's why Hamassholes hurl stones and fire rockets and mortars at Israeli school buses and kill families, mothers, fathers and babies while they sleep. They do it to stop Israeli evil.

Like Antifa stops fascism. 

I hope that 2019 will be the year you follow Brain Flushings and have a few laughs while you get a conservative viewpoint. Politics is the new NFL without the mindless kneeling and this blog will both inform you and hopefully entertain you bigly.

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House to combine Russia, NoKo and Iran sanctions into one bill

The House of Representatives appears ready on Tuesday to combine a sanctions bill on Russia, North Korean and Iran.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released a chamber's legislative agenda for next week showing that sanctions agains the three human-rights violators will be rolled into one "Russia, Iran, and North Korea Sanctions Act."

It's like one-stop shopping and be led by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The text of the bill has not been posted by McCarthy.

The Republican-led Senate already overwhelmingly approved a bill that sanctions Russia, coming on the heels of the U.S. intelligence community mostly agreeing the Kremlin meddled in last year's presidential election whereby Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton and still is President of the United States of America and she isn't.

Sen. Ben Cardin

It is uncertain whether Trump would sign such legislation passed by the Republican-led Congress, considering his associates have been implicated in colluding with Russia in the meddling. One Trump official was actually observed pouring Russian dressing on his or her salad, which led Maxine Waters to call for President Trump's impeachment.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Saturday that he would've preferred the House adopt the upper chamber's bill, but welcomed the effort.

"A nearly united Congress is poised to sent President Putin a clear message on behalf of the American people and our allies, and we need President Trump to help us deliver that message," Cardin said.


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