To read the full article, visit NewsBusters.
Although the Mueller report did not recommend any charges against the President, liberal journalists on cable and broadcast networks spent Thursday suggesting to audiences that impeachment was imminent, if not inevitable. Throughout Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, liberal talking heads on cable and broadcast news networks mentioned impeachment an astonishing 309 times during their coverage the of the newly-released Mueller report.
That’s the word I kept hearing repeated as women gathered in Texas hill country last week for A Girl & A Gun‘s sold out national conference.
And, after spending a few days among the ladies, it wasn’t hard to see why.
About an hour away from the BBQ pits of Austin, among the Bluebonnet-covered rolling hills, where there’s a Whataburger in every small town, lies the massive Reveille Peak Ranch. It’s there where 450 women congregated to take courses from 60 different professional firearms trainers over the course of 3 days. They came from all across the country and all different backgrounds to improve their shooting.
And they did it together.
Women in Gun Sisterhood jackets at A Girl & A Gun’s national conference / Stephen Gutowski
"Oh my gosh. You will never go anywhere in the world other than this event where you will find 400 women and no drama," Gabriella Marra, a club facilitator from Newington, Conn., told me during the event. "They are a drama-free bunch. All they want to do is shoot, be safe, have fun. They are probably the nicest people you’ll ever encounter."
"It’s a sisterhood," Samantha Brengard, a member from Florida, said. "It’s not ‘what can I get back,’ it’s ‘what can I do for you?’"
The camaraderie and kinship really radiated. Whether it was borrowing ammo to finish a class or some cash for dinner, the women were there for each other. If somebody couldn’t get a shooting drill quite right there was guidance from not just the instructors but the other attendees and it was given with a considerate touch.
The atmosphere was inviting—something akin to a church outing. It was refreshing to see firearms training that’s as professional as any I’ve experienced but with a different approach than the adrenaline-soaked, high-pressure atmosphere that certainly can be effective but shouldn’t be the only option.
"I think everybody really does a great job of being here for each other," Lynn Dao, a member from Philadelphia, said. "For instance, I left my holster and my girls got me. They already hooked me up with another holster and another firearm to borrow."
"It’s that connection," Brengard told me while tearing up. "It’s that connection you get. It’s the relief of having somebody there at 3 o’clock in the morning when you gotta call somebody and say ‘help me!"
That connection, Dao told me, is something she thinks can encourage women like her to embrace their gun rights.
"If you’re thinking about getting into firearms, if you’re not sure about getting into firearms, just look up A Girl & A Gun. See what they have to offer," she said. "It’s a really great resource and it really does promote the best of being a woman and taking control of your safety and your independence. It’s been a really monumental part of my life."
The gun rights movement and firearms industry have been saying for years that women are the fastest growing demographic among gun owners and has been making efforts to bring in even more. The National Rifle Association has a program for women’s outreach. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the industry’s trade group, has been recommending new approaches to attracting more female customers. However, A Girl & A Gun sets itself apart by being founded by women, run by women, and its events are designed with women in mind.
The 2019 national conference is no exception. For $400, the attendees were treated to three days of non-stop training from competitive shooters, law enforcement officers, military trainers, and medical professionals. And many of the trainers were the top female shooters in the country. From Tracy Barnes, to Tatiana Whitlock, to Gabby Franco, to Dianna Muller, to Vicki Farnam.
Classes were offered for all skill levels but it was apparent to me after a few days of watching and interacting with them that most of the women in attendance were somewhere between intermediate or expert shooters.
Some of the classes dealt with female-specific issues, like the best holsters and carry styles to suit the unique concerns of women, but most, like the tactical medical training course, were focused on issues faced by all gun owners or concealed carriers. There was a class for shooting on the move. There was training for shooting from and around cars. There were classes for unarmed self-defense. There was training for shooting sporting clays. There was an AR-15 building class. The list goes on and on.
That variety of quality courses and the uniquely pleasant atmosphere—one I haven’t experienced to the same level at other shooting events—is what seemed to draw women from all over the country.
"For that price, you really cannot find that amount of classes with these caliber of instructors anywhere else," Dao said. "I think that’s what sets it apart on top of the sisterhood spirit."
The trainers were just as impressed by the women as the women were by the trainers.
"They’re very competent gun handlers and they have an ethic of safety I don’t find anywhere else," Austin Davis, who owns the Virtual Tactical Academy, said. "There really isn’t a competition here. The only time they look down is to reach down and give somebody a hand up. It is the most supportive environment I’ve ever been in and I’ve been a professional speaker for 30 years."
"We threw a lot of different things at these ladies to try and test their skills," Tracy Barnes, Olympic shooter and firearms trainer, said. "The women are great. They’re having such a great time. They’re very eager to learn. They’re just sponges. They’re absorbing it all in."
"That’s a real refreshing thing, to come to a class where everyone is very eager to either be with you specifically or to learn a specific subject that you’re offering," Craig Smith, one of the owners of Immersive Training Solutions, told me. "That’s really cool. It’s a great environment. It’s very electric."
Of course, the professional training wasn’t the only thing going on at the conference. There was plenty of pure fun to be had too.
There was a demo day where some of the firearms industry’s biggest players like Sig Sauer, Mossberg, Glock, STI, and more let the ladies sample their latest guns and accessories. A full day was dedicated to letting the women interact with the gun companies hoping to win at least a slice of
Samantha Brengard in Heligunner’s Robinson R44 / Stephen Gutowski
this fastest-growing demographic.
There was also a helicopter with a machinegun. That part was just for fun. And, I can tell you, flying along at tree top level in a Robinson R44 with the doors off and a fully-automatic M4 hanging out the side is *chefs kiss*.
But, as fun as trying out new guns at demo day and zipping around in that helicopter was, when I think about my week in Texas with the women of A Girl & A Gun it’s that atmosphere of sisterhood, that camaraderie and kinship which really sticks out most. In a shooting world still dominated by tacticool testosterone junkies—if less so than ever before—we could use more of that.
MSNBC didn’t get the answer they were looking for when they asked a New Hampshire voter about the garbage Mueller report that was released on Thursday.
MSNBC asked a New Hampshire voter named Harold Chase about the Mueller report and he said that the Democrats were just trying to find something on Trump to run with it.
“When you’re saying ‘they’…I think you’re talking about Democrats — when you say they’re going to run with it, do you think that they should talk about this as they campaign for president?” MSNBC asked the New Hampshire voter.
The man’s response certainly wasn’t what MSNBC was digging for.
“Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” the man said. “It’s going to destroy them so they won’t win in 2020 if they keep pushing this.”
MSNBC kept pushing and asking about the Mueller report — MSNBC wanted to hear the word ‘impeachment.’
“And what do you think the most important thing is now that the Mueller report is out? What do you want to see happen next?” the reporter asked.
“I think they just need to move on and just drop it…they just keep going forward. They’re not gonna get anywhere,” the voter said.
Voters don’t care about the Mueller report — real Americans care about immigration, jobs, wages, healthcare etc., not some garbage report written by biased lawyers in DC fighting for power.
WATCH:
NH voter to MSNBC on Mueller investigation: Democrats need to “move on and just drop it.” pic.twitter.com/cFMnTgDEVs
That’s not what she meant, April Ryan’s defenders will say, but it’s not conservatives who cry “incitement” over every criticism and metaphor. To say that reporter Ryan and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have a rocky relationship is to understate their working relationship. I’ve written about the dust-ups between the two women, as have others on this site. Remember #PieGate? Yes, April Ryan actually turned a pie into a story to own Sanders.
With the release of the Mueller report, April Ryan, a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks and CNN contributor, quickly began a call for the firing of Sanders. The Mueller report shows that Sanders acknowledged to Mueller’s investigators that she misled reporters by stating that rank and file FBI agents had lost confidence in James Comey in the lead up to his firing.
The special counsel’s report, released Thursday, cited Sanders’s multiple false statements to reporters as part of its review of whether President Trump obstructed justice in firing Comey. Sanders told investigators that her misstatements were a “slip of the tongue,” and that the claims were not founded on anything.
In a draft termination letter, Trump cited low morale within the bureau in his reasoning for firing Comey on May 9, 2017. The next day, Sanders, then the deputy press secretary, spoke to Trump about his decision before a press briefing with reporters, Mueller wrote.
“The president, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey,” Sanders said in an opening statement at the May 10 briefing. “The DOJ [Department of Justice] lost confidence in Director Comey. Bipartisan members of Congress made it clear that they had lost confidence in Director Comey. And most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.
“Accordingly, the president accepted the recommendation of his deputy attorney general to remove James Comey from his position,” she added.
As reported by Newsbusters, Ryan appeared on CNN and her rhetoric truly went to the dark side. April Ryan asserted that Sanders lied and cannot be trusted. “Start lopping the heads off.”
“Not only does she not have credibility, she lied. She out and out lied,” she declared as emotion welled up in her voice. “And the people, the American people can’t trust her. They can’t trust what’s said from the President’s mouthpiece-spokesperson from the people’s house. Therefore, she should be let go. She should be fired, end of story.”
Things got very dark as Ryan rhetorically suggested that since there was “a lack of credibility there, you have to start and start lopping the heads off.” She added: “It’s fire me Thursday or fire me Good Friday. She needs to go.”
By the standards of the Left on rhetoric and violence, isn’t that “incitement”? What exactly do most people visualize when someone starts talking about “lopping” heads off? It’s not exactly Christianity’s Holy Week, that’s for sure. That bit of hyperbole was a metaphor uttered to drive home a point, of course, but the Left has freaked out over any criticism of its leading lights as incitement over much less than “lopping off heads” metaphors. If we’re going to start imposing standards on “incitement,” we’d better be prepared to impose them equally.
Sanders appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox show Thursday night and responded about the story. She jabbed Comey as she spoke.
Sanders told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday night that she was wrong to use the word “countless,” but did say it was “not untrue” that “a number of current and former FBI agents agreed with the president” about Comey while referring to him as a “disgraced leaker.”
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that April Ryan’s opinion on personnel matters probably carry little weight with President Trump. She can call for Sarah’s termination but it will likely only result in a tweet by him if even that. Ryan may think Sanders will be made the fall guy in this matter but as things stand, it’s highly unlikely.
Liar, Liar dress on fire! The stakes are too high for folks to be making up stories and lying from the White House podium! Remember the propaganda video of Jim Acosta allegedly hitting an intern? Another fact, lying about “countless” fbi agents who lost confidence in Comey!
MSNBC shows their sterling journalism again, from Williams who has history of difficulty with truth. Via Daily Caller: President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, read directly from the Mueller report Thursday when MSNBC’s Brian Williams asked him how Attorney General William Barr came to the conclusion that there was no collusion. Barr held a Thursday […]
CNN really is the Comedy News Network when it tries to proclaim that it’s "Facts First" — and they’re running their "apple" ads again right now — and that it’s somehow NOT partisan. See the "Reliable Sources" newsletter that was issued early Friday morning. It’s a pompous potpourri of poppycock.
Spin, spin, spin… Via Daily Wire: On his radio program Thursday, conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh offered a one-sentence summary of the 400+ page final report by Robert Mueller that took two years to compile: “We found no evidence of collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, period, and we don’t have enough to say […]
This article is from Hillsdale College’s Imprimis. To view the original, click here: Imprimis.
To understand a political scandal fully, one must take into account all of the interests of those involved. The problem is that these interests are rarely revealed—which is precisely why it is so tempting for partisans, particularly if they are at a political disadvantage, to resort to scandal to attack their opponents.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report was released to the public Thursday morning following AG Bill Barr’s press conference.
The report was lightly redacted — only 855 redactions were made to Mueller’s report.
Mueller’s report addressed the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and other Trump associates and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Donald Trump Jr. was totally exonerated and Mueller’s report CRUSHED fake news CNN, Lanny Davis and Michael Cohen’s lies, conspiracy theories and propaganda surrounding the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Recall, Trump’s former lawyer-turned-rat Michael Cohen claimed in a 2017 Senate Intel testimony that Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the meeting at Trump Tower between his son, Kushner and Veselnitskaya.
In July of 2018, CNN rolled out another “bombshell” story using anonymous sources wherein they reported Michael Cohen claimed Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with Veselnitskaya in advance.
The CNN story quickly turned into a dumpster fire because Michael Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis admitted he lied to the media when he claimed he confirmed a CNN report with anonymous sources about President Trump’s foreknowledge of the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016.
CNN said in its report that Cohen was ready to spill the beans to Mueller that Trump not only knew about the meeting with Veselnitskaya, but approved it.
As usual, CNN was reporting fake news and curiously Lanny Davis himself confirmed to being one of the anonymous sources at the time it was published.
CNN never retracted or corrected their fake news story — but Mueller’s report just crushed their propaganda machine.
“Michael Cohen recalled that Trump Jr. may have told candidate Trump about an upcoming meeting to receive adverse information about Clinton, without linking the meeting to Russia,” the report stated. “According to written answers submitted by President Trump, he has no recollections of learning of the meeting at the time, and the Office found NO DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE SHOWING THAT HE WAS MADE AWARE OF THE MEETING — OR ITS RUSSIA CONNECTION — BEFORE IT OCCURRED.”
The report further stated that “Veselnitskaya made additional efforts to follow up on the meeting, but the Trump Transition Team did not engage.”
Curiously, Mueller’s report completely omitted the fact that Natalia Veselnitskaya’s PR partner, FUSION GPS, was working for Hillary Clinton.
The report also leaves out that Veselnitskaya met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting.
Should we expect any different? This report was written by a team of Trump haters so it is obvious that it was written with an anti-Trump, pro-Hillary bias.
Amarah (Iraq) (AFP) Two weeks into Mariam’s forced marriage to her cousin according to Iraqi tribal custom, she desperately doused herself in fuel, flicked on a lighter and attempted suicide by self-immolation.
The 22-year-old spent three days in hospital in Iraq’s southern Misan province last summer before succumbing to her wounds, recalled sheikh Haydar Saadoun.
“A university classmate from a different tribe had proposed, but her relatives refused,” said Saadoun, an official from the Bani Lam tribe in the town of Amarah in Misan.
“They said they had rights over her because of ‘nahwa’,” he said, referring to a tribal custom that authorises the men of a clan to reject marriage proposals to a female member.
They arranged for her to wed her cousin instead.
“He was already married, had fathered multiple children and was illiterate, while Mariam was going to university,” Saadoun said.
Wearing a modern three-piece suit under a traditional cape, he told AFP he tried to dissuade Mariam’s fiance but was overruled.
“He told me: ‘I’ll break her nose. I’ll marry her and rub her face in it’,” Saadoun recounted.
Iraqi society remains largely conservative, bound by tribal traditions and religious customs practised from its sprawling capital Baghdad to far-flung rural provinces.
In the country of nearly 40 million, clan names can carry weight in securing work, a spouse and even votes.
They often trump government institutions, as tribes look to their own mediation methods to resolve disputes instead of the official court system.
– ‘Accept your fate’ –
Women and girls often suffer under these patriarchal systems, with many forced to marry against their will, subject to domestic abuse and deprived of an education.
The southern provinces of Misan and Basra, where tribal influence is widespread, have the highest rates of child marriage in Iraq, the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF said in 2018.
In Misan, 35 percent of married women between 20 and 45 said they wed as teenagers, and in Basra the rate is 31.5 percent.
In one tribal custom known as “fasliya”, women are married off as restitution for blood spilt between two tribes.
Karima al-Tai, a women’s rights activist in Misan, said the custom had ravaged her own family.
“Twenty years ago, a conflict broke out between my tribe and another. During the fighting, a man from the other clan was killed,” said Tai, 50.
Calling for a truce, Tai’s tribe offered “five virgins” to the opposing tribe — including her cousin, Sahar, who was married off to the victim’s brother.
Over “20 years of hell” Sahar was bullied and harassed by her husband’s family, Tai recalled. Even her children were publicly branded “children of the fasliya”.
But when Sahar asked her family for help, said Tai, “her relatives would tell her, ‘you’re a fasliya. Accept your fate’.”
“Fasliya” is still being practised. In 2015, a tribe in the southern province of Basra married off 50 girls and women to another tribe under a truce.
– ‘Modern slavery’ –
With no family support or access to outside help, some Iraqi women and girls have turned to suicide.
A 2017 study of 62 attempted self-immolation cases in Basra found that family problems, including marital issues, were the precipitating factor in 80 percent of the cases.
Authorities in Misan said 198 women had attempted suicide over the past two years, and 14 of them lost their lives.
But details are scarce. Mental health problems in Iraq remain taboo, and efforts to discuss them with tribal leaders have seen little success.
Even Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top religious authority for most Iraqi Shiites, called last year for an end to “nahwas” and other tribal practices, to no avail.
The customs were criminalised in Iraq’s 1959 personal status law, which was strictly implemented under Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule.
Marrying a woman by force under “nahwa” is punishable by three years in jail for a cousin and 10 years for a more distant relative.
But as the central government lost influence across swathes of Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion, tribal power structures took precedence.
Now, “this law is not applied because no woman would file a complaint against her own family,” said lawmaker Intissar al-Juburi.
And efforts to introduce tough laws to protect women have been hampered by political stalemates and an emphasis on security and economic issues.
Meanwhile, tribal customs are becoming further entrenched, according to Maytham al-Saadi, a professor at Misan University.
“In the past, fasliyas would be proposed only in cases needing blood money, but in recent decades they’ve been used to end the simplest disputes between tribes,” he said.
