There is good reason to refrain from bandying about the word “Holocaust” with abandon. The defining atrocity of the 20th century has to be given the gravitas it deserves. Comparing lesser events to the meticulously planned genocide of Europe’s Jews is both cheapening and a cheap trick. Indeed, invoking the Nazis frivolously is as sinful as denying the mass murder they carefully carried out.
Nevertheless, both the former and the latter have grown so commonplace that they barely elicit a yawn any more. This is the case even when they are used interchangeably — and simultaneously — by the same source, usually by Islamists, who alternate between Holocaust denial and accusing Israel of Holocaust perpetration.
Occasionally, however, a World War II analogy emerges which causes surprising levels of consternation.
Take, for example, a statement made over the weekend by former Arkansas governor and current Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
The Donald’s life has been seven decades of buffoonery.
If there was a good reason to distrust presidential candidate Mitt Romney, it had to do with his views on abortion. Not his position per se — as difficult as it is to understand the pro-choice tendency, there are people of good faith on both sides of the abortion question — but the fact that he arrived at that position so late in life and at a moment when his change of heart was politically convenient. Even if we assume that this was not simple cowardly political calculation, as in the matter of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama’s evolving views on gay marriage, the situation must give us pause: If a man hasn’t figured out what he believes about abortion by the age of 50 — after having been a father, a governor, a business leader, and an influential figure in an important religious congregation — it may be the case that he is not ready for the responsibilities of the presidency.
Donald Trump is looking at 70 candles on his next birthday cake, and his mind is, when it comes to the issues relevant to a Republican presidential candidate, unsettled.
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Barack Obama is the first American president from Chicago. That fact will be the trailblazing Obama’s most lasting legacy.
Chicago has long been stereotyped as a city where any-means-necessary politics have ruled, and where excess is preferable to moderation. Convicted felon Tony Rezko, leftist extremists Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger, radical Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky’s take-no-prisoners Rules for Radicals, felon and former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich — all these were part of Barack Obama’s Chicago tutelage. Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel’s infamous adage — “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before” — was the unofficial motto of the Obama administration’s efforts to grow government, up-regulate, and borrow immense sums — measures impossible without a climate of induced panic and fear.
Director Brian De Palma’s 1987 film The Untouchables rejuvenated Chicago’s reputation for muscle over niceties. The film dramatized Chicago’s institutionalized bribery and corruption during the effort to bring down Roaring Twenties mobster Al Capone. Screenwriter David Mamet famously had characters brag of “the Chicago way.” On more than one occasion, a cop advised: “They pull a knife, you pull a gun.” Gun-control advocate and Chicagoan Barack Obama made waves in his 2008 presidential run when he echoed the film’s advice to a Philadelphia audience. He joked of what his campaign might do to his rival, John McCain: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Obama exemplified the Chicago stereotype of how to get business done when, that same campaign year, he advised his followers to confront their political opponents: “I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”
“Chicago politics” seems a common denominator in serial scandals involving political bias, cronyism, and incompetence at the VA, IRS, DHS, ICE, NSA, Secret Service, and, most recently, Office of Personnel Management. The NSA’s monitoring of the Associated Press journalists fit perfectly the Chicago stereotype, which often involves two prime characteristics: sending a message to political opponents that the power of government can be unleashed against unwise criticism, and using off-the record understandings and under-the-table sweeteners to close a deal.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and other lawmakers blasted the Obama administration for improving the rankings of Cuba and Malaysia on this year’s State Department human trafficking report for political reasons.
Cuba has been Tier 3 — the worst ranking — since the State Department began issuing the report in 2003. Nearly 200 lawmakers lobbied the administration to keep Malaysia at Tier 3 for failing to stop human trafficking. Both appeared in today’s report on the “Tier 2 Watch List.”
According to the State Department, that includes “countries whose governments do not fully comply with the TVPA’s [Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s] minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards AND the absolute number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing; there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year; or the determination that a country is making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with minimum standards was based on commitments by the country to take additional future steps over the next year.”
Declaring that the “reality of climate change is unforgiving — no matter what the deniers say,” Hillary Clinton unveiled a climate agenda Monday that industry critics immediately branded an “energy poverty agenda.”
“I know there are still people who would rather not hear this. Some deny climate change exists at all. Others throw up their hands and say, ‘Sorry, I’m not a scientist,’” Clinton said today in Des Moines.
“Well, I’m not a scientist either. That’s why I think it’s important to listen to scientists. It’s important to heed the warnings based on extensive scientific research to see what’s going on here in our own country and certainly around the world.”
Veteran, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Colbert King has published a crude, scurrilous attack [1] on Israelis and American Jews for opposing President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
King says:
Those who regard the Iran nuclear deal as a grave threat to Israeli and U.S. interests have a moral duty to vigorously oppose it, just as those of us who view the deal as the best way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon should work for its adoption.
Yet King goes on to say that opponents of the deal who exercise their “moral duty”—that is, if they’re Israelis—are guilty of racism and endangering what he calls the “alliance between blacks and Jews in this country,” meaning America.
King starts by quoting a stupid, offensive tweet last June 21 by Judy Mozes, wife of Israeli vice prime minister and interior minister Silvan Shalom: “Do u know what Obama Coffee is? Black and weak.”
The Iran deal does not prevent a nuclear Iran. At best, it only delays it a few years.
Under the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, $150 billion would go to a single regime that has been a state sponsor of terrorism for the entire 36 years of its existence.
The Iran deal, in five years, will actually lift a ban on sending Iran conventional weapons, including (in eight years) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. But Iran is already wasting no time buying weapons and producing weapons on its own.
When Obama leaves office, he may think that any catastrophe the Iran deal causes will not “technically” be his, but the next president’s. But it is his. It’s as if someone is lighting a long fuse and will then say he was not near the dynamite when it went off. Any explosions that result from this huge military and financial payday to Iran will, and should, be known as “Obama’s war.”
In 1947 President Truman made history by launching the Marshall Plan, sending $13 billion (about $120 billion in today’s dollars) to help rebuild post-war Europe to prevent Western Europe from falling to Communist expansion.
Obama’s Iran deal is a direct manifestation of the President’s fundamentally misguided worldview, one which wishes away danger and then believes in the wishes.
Even more concerning is that the Iran deal may directly conflict with U.S. obligations as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Iran deal may be unconstitutional, violate international law and feature commitments that President Obama could not otherwise lawfully make. By seeking approval of the deal under the UN Security Council, Obama has bound the U.S. under international law without Senate consent.
The gravest consequence of Obama’s Iran deal is that the world bestowed ideological legitimacy on the Islamic Republic’s radical theocracy, and in so doing has consigned the people of Iran to near permanent rule under the iron fist of Shi’a Islamism.
A total reversal of the Iranian regime’s behavior should have been, and still can be, a precondition for the removal of any sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear program. An end to Iran’s financial and material support for terrorist forces such as Hezbollah and Hamas must be demanded, along with the return of the four American hostages Iran is holding.
I am beginning to dread Hillary Clinton quitting the presidential race. Here I have been gleefully looking forward to reporting on her many criminal acts, not just the classified email crimes, but bribery and many other acts – depending on how far back you want to go. But now, things have gotten so bad that Michael Walsh of PJ Media is chortling, “The betting windows are now open: Hillary! Clinton’s Last Day As a Presidential Candidate. Get your markers down.”
He links to an article by Philip Bump of the Washington Post, examining how Hillary’s poll numbers are crashing in ‘”the states that matter,” and how her net approval/disapproval numbers are in the tank. In summary:
Recent surveys suggest that Hillary Clinton may be more reliant on the non-white vote in November 2016 than you might have assumed.
A poll released Sunday from NBC/Marist reinforces one from last week by Quinnipiac University that found her to be as unpopular as Donald Trump in key swing states. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton’s net favorability — those who view her positively minus those who don’t — was negative-23 and negative-20, respectively.
NYT apologizes for saying Hillary was under investigation July 28, 2015 The Paper of Record is really reaching this time to protect its star candidate.
The public editor of the New York Times, whose job it is to excuse the enormities found in the biased articles of the Times on a weekly basis, had, for once, the reverse of his usual task. Instead of explaining away a slanted article (which can be a full-time job, if there are serious takers), the public editor was apologizing for the Times having “erroneously” reported that Hillary was under investigation for having classified information on her private email server.
It wasn’t really Mrs. Clinton directly who was the focus of the request for an investigation. It was more general: whether government information was handled improperly in connection with her use of a personal email account.
