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February 2016

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MY SAY: THOMAS SOWELL ON DONALD TRUMP….EXACTLY!

By on February 26th, 2016

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430533/donald-trump-grow-up

“………It is amazing how many people have been oblivious to this middle-aged man’s spoiled-brat behavior, his childish boastfulness about things he says he is going to do, and his petulant response to every criticism with ad hominem replies. He has boasted that his followers would stick by him even if he committed murder. But is that something to boast about? Is it not an insult to his followers, if it is true?

Moreover, his cockiness is misplaced, because he still does not have a majority among Republican voters, while you need a majority of all the voters to win any state in the general election.

Trump has a showman’s talent for telling people what they want to hear. But you can listen in vain for a coherent argument from him, based on facts and logic, much less an understanding of the inherent limitations of the office of president. ….. In a world where the future of this country is threatened from within by increasingly angry polarization, and where external threats can become nuclear, are we really going to entrust the safety or this country to a man who still needs to grow up?

Is the fact that he loudly expressed our own disgust with the political establishment a sufficient reason to gamble the whole future of the country by putting him in the White House?”

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JAN POLLER: THE ELECTION IN A NUTSHELL

By on February 26th, 2016

Republicans

Ben Carson

Carson may be a brilliant surgeon and a really nice guy but he is not presidential material. Carson has only 4 delegates and is unlikely to get any more. He will only be relevant in a closely contested convention where he could try and swing his delegate to a particular candidate.

John Kasich

If Economic policy where the only concern I had, Kasich would get my vote. He has proven his ability to handle economic policy.

His social policies are to Fundamentalist for me.

Even after the debates, I am not sure where he stands on foreign policy issues. Being called to give advice to the President after the 9/11 attacks doesn’t answer the question.

Donald Trump

Trump comes across as rather shallow and bombastic, like a school yard bully. His personal attacks are wearing rather thin. Even if they are 100% true it doesn’t say why we should vote for him.

He can build a wall but, despite his claims, he can’t make Mexico pay for it. Realistically, he is not going to be able to deport 11 million people. I find his idea that we should let Russia and ISIS fight it out is not different than Obama’s “lead from behind” or Rand Paul’s isolationism.

Trump’s (and others’) insistence that the Iraq war was fraudulent and a mistake really bothers me. Years ago, Jerry Gordon put me in touch with Tierney, the UNSCOM inspector. Tierney made it very clear to me that WMD’s were present and we all know that Saddam used them to kill about 5,000 in Halabja. About a year ago, the New York Times showed pictures of depots filled with gas weapons. Most important of all, Khadafy of Libya gave up his nuclear and chemical weapons programs because of the fall of Saddam.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio

Of the choices we have, Cruz and Rubio are my picks. I haven’t decided which of the two is best. I am afraid that their splitting the vote means Trump gets nominated.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton

There are a lot of things we know about Clinton such as the emails, the Russian uranium deal and Benghazi. Whether of not there is a vast right wing conspiracy we know they happened. What her supporters haven’t done is tell me why we should vote for her.

We know on foreign policy her experience has not yielded a more peaceful world or a safer U.S.

Just the other day, she reiterated her support for a two state solution even though the Palestinians have rejected a two state solution that gave them virtually everything they supposedly want. Palestinian terrorism, including teaching infants to “grow up and blow up”, is pretty much dopwnp;layed and blamed on Israel.++

Bernie Sanders

I look around and see socialism at work and it doesn’t work.

We contribute to unemployment insurance, Social Security and Medicare. That is not socialism.

Yes, we do need some policies that could be considered socialism like medical care and welfare for the indigent.

Countries that have been or have become capitalistic have done well. Point out Greece as an example of failed socialism gets a response of “Swedeen”.

As for foreign policy, there seems to be no difference between Sanders and Obama.

Conclusion

No matter who I want, the choice is collective. I only hope the people choose wisely. Unfortunately, there is little discussion across party lines and the press is too partisan and not objective enough. I fear for the future.

Jan Mel Poller

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The Rise of the Undocumented Republicans By John O’Sullivan

By on February 26th, 2016

An exchange on the BBC after the Nevada caucuses had given Donald Trump 46 percent of the vote said it all. A perfectly pleasant BBC interviewer asked a political consultant (as best I recall): “Well, at present they’re voting for him,” he said.

Good heavens, so they are. Not fellows wearing three-piece suits in Washington, the consultant added, but people who think of themselves as Republicans or as conservatives in towns and cities across America.

Now, that might not continue. It’s always an error to suppose that the future will be nothing more than a continuation of the present. Extrapolating current trends gets both economists and political pundits into big trouble. Besides, Trump is a phenomenon, like a comet, and sometimes they just cross the sky and disappear in a welcome blaze, like, for instance, a tax-returns scandal. Even without that, he has high negatives in national polls, which means there’s a real risk of his being denied the nomination or imploding after getting it.

On the other hand, it’s equally mistaken to assume that everyone not voting for Trump is consciously voting against him, in a way that isn’t true in the case of other candidates. In reality, it’s very unlikely that if either Rubio or Cruz dropped out, his votes would transfer en masse to the remaining one. That’s a general truth of politics, but it also seems to be confirmed by the evidence of current polls that Trump is making inroads into all sorts of voter categories where no Republican has gone lately. Trump’s boast of this progress doesn’t automatically refute it.

To reduce any tension (and also to enable us to concentrate on questions more important even than the horse race), let me declare my hand. Though I’m not enthusiastic about any of the candidates — after Reagan and Thatcher, anyone else is a letdown — my sympathies are with Ted Cruz, for the pedestrian reason that I agree with him more on most issues than with the other candidates. If he were to be eliminated, I would almost certainly prefer Trump to Rubio (for reasons that will emerge later). And though it’s just possible that I would endorse a worthy third-party conservative if nominee Trump were shown to be even more of an unguided missile than hitherto, I cannot see myself casting a vote for Hillary Clinton — not least because, as a British citizen with a green card, I don’t have a vote to cast.

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Why the ISIS WMD Threat Is Massively Underestimated By Tom Rogan

By on February 26th, 2016

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light / As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. – Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est”

Chemical agents, by disrupting a military adversary and sowing terror among its civilian population, make for powerful psychological weapons. And, as attested by Bashar al-Assad’s ongoing suffocation of innocent Syrians, chemical weapons are also tools of torture. The National Institutes of Health describes how concentrated chlorine gas affects a human body: “respiratory failure, pulmonary edema, likely acute pulmonary hypertension, cardiomegaly, pulmonary vascular congestion, acute burns of the upper and especially the proximal lower airways, and death.”

For ISIS, weaponized chlorine is a perfect instrument. And ISIS is using it. Reports suggest that ISIS has employed mustard- and chlorine-gas–based weapons in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately, far worse is likely to come. After all, it’s increasingly obvious that ISIS regards its chemical-weapons programs as a key strategic priority. Last October, for example, the Associated Press described how European organized-crime groups are offering radioactive material to ISIS. And just last week, the Independent reported on the disruption of a ten-person ISIS cell in Morocco — a cell masterminded by ISIS leaders in Libya. The connecting threads are clear: Morocco, a favored destination of Western tourists, offered ISIS an opportunity to follow up in 2016 on its 2015 massacre of 38 people — including 30 Britons — in Sousse, Tunisia. ISIS wants to scare Western tourist investment away from moderate-Muslim nations and implode those nations into chaos. ISIS chemical weapons also threaten U.S. personnel. As ISIS confronts higher stakes — as it does in the battle for its Iraqi capital, Mosul — U.S. personnel will face a growing threat of chemical attack.

This threat demands the strengthening of the U.S. deterrent posture against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. At present, that posture stands eviscerated because of the failure to punish Assad’s breach of President Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons. But that’s only half the story. Consider, too, that an AP report from October highlighted how senior figures in WMD conspiracies are escaping consequences for their actions. That must end. In future, those who enable ISIS WMD programs should face one of two simple repercussions: detention by Jordan’s GID intelligence service, or death. The special urgency of this threat is unique. From Morocco and France to Turkey and Indonesia, ISIS has proven its ability to launch attacks from separate bases in Iraq, Syria, and Libya — and to do so while evading detection by Western intelligence. ISIS chemical-weapons plots must not be underestimated.

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Rank Hypocrite-Donald Trump Turned Down 94.4 Percent of American Job Applicants, Applied for Hundreds of ‘H’ Visas Instead By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on February 26th, 2016

Surprise! Donald Trump is a rank hypocrite on immigration. Per the New York Times:

Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach describes itself as “one of the most highly regarded private clubs in the world,” and it is not just the very-well-to-do who want to get in.

Since 2010, nearly 300 United States residents have applied or been referred for jobs as waiters, waitresses, cooks and housekeepers there. But according to federal records, only 17 have been hired.

In all but a handful of cases, Mar-a-Lago sought to fill the jobs with hundreds of foreign guest workers from Romania and other countries.

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Trump has stoked his crowds by promising to bring back jobs that have been snatched by illegal immigrants or outsourced by corporations, and voters worried about immigration have been his strongest backers.

But he has also pursued more than 500 visas for foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago since 2010, according to the United States Department of Labor, while hundreds of domestic applicants failed to get the same jobs.

Or, put another way, Trump has deliberately chosen to hire foreign workers to fill those jobs that “Americans just won’t do.” 17 out of 300? That’s 5.6 percent. 17 out of 500? That’s 3.4 percent. Bad!

So what’s Trump’s excuse? That’s he’s a businessman and that these are the realities on the ground? That, I’m afraid, won’t wash. When Disney behaved like this, there was a loud and sustained outcry from . . . well, no less than Donald Trump himself. In an interview with Breitbart, Trump argued that Disney should be forced to rehire any Americans it had overlooked or replaced. Trump also said this:

If I am President, I will not issue any H-1B visas to companies that replace American workers and my Department of Justice will pursue action against them.

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No, Mr. President — Gitmo Should Be a Source of Pride for America By Joe Connor

By on February 26th, 2016

– Joe Connor co-author of The New Founders, testified at Eric Holder’s AG confirmation hearing, appeared in Citizens United’s Hillary: The Movie, and writes on wewinamerica.com. He works in New York’s financial-services industry.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camps have been attacked by many, including our own president, as contrary to American values, as not “who we are” and “recruitment tools for ISIS.”

Those of us who have been there have observed the terrorists in court at Camp Justice. We have witnessed the great lengths to which our judiciary goes to provide due process to the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the red-bearded, evil, boastful mastermind of the 9/l1 attacks that murdered 2,976 individuals and shattered countless lives. Gitmo is a symbol of American goodness and greatness.

Please, Mr. President: I am honored to be part of a small group of 9/11 family members chosen to observe the pretrial proceedings. Objections to this facility and these proceedings, in my opinion, are unfounded. Gitmo represents the very best of America.

Eight of us arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, on the morning of Saturday, February 13, hopeful but apprehensive about our trip to Guantanamo to face the murderers of our family members. Aside from the deaths of our loved ones, we all brought something in common: the pursuit of justice.

After a most rewarding week, we parted perfectly unified, with the utmost respect for the prosecutors, for our fantastic military, for American justice, and for one another. We took home with us hope, a steelier resolve for justice than ever, spiritual connections, and a renewed sense of pride in America.

Those are the American values that I was raised with but that have been lost on this president.

This is a president who has authorized hundreds of deadly drone strikes resulting in thousands of deaths. Unlike the rights afforded at Gitmo, none of those killed was provided any due process nor were they allowed a seat before a just Military Commission.

This is a president whose trusted attorney general for six years, Eric Holder, engineered the politically driven 1999 Clinton clemencies for the convicted terrorists of the FALN. This Puerto Rican terror group murdered my father, Frank Connor, in the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing (which was among over 115 bombings and five murders they perpetrated). Is releasing unrepentant terrorists now “who we are”?

This president pushes the normalization of relations with terror-supporting Cuba (even planning a state visit) without demanding the return of convicted fugitive FALN bomb-maker William Morales or BLA cop killer Joanne Chesimard, who have received safe harbor for decades in Cuba.

So whose values does this president represent and whose values does he condemn?

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SFSU’s Deafening Silence on Partnership with Palestinian University A hotbed of terrorism and Jew hatred finds a friend at San Francisco State University. Cinnamon Stillwell

By on February 26th, 2016

Late last year, during the ongoing frenzy of violence directed at Israelis known as the “stabbing intifada,” 20-year-old Maram Hassoneh was killed in her second attempted knife attack on IDF soldiers manning a checkpoint. Hassoneh, a devout Muslim, was a top English student at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus. Described by Hamas as “greenhouse for martyrs,” An-Najah may very well be San Francisco State University (SFSU)’s first academic partner in the Arab and Muslim world.

Under the leadership of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, SFSU reportedly established a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah in 2014. Though there is no official corroboration of the relationship other than a recommendation in the All-University Committee on International Programs annual report (which Abdulhadi touted on Facebook), An-Najah claimed in a statement at its website last year that the MOU was signed on September 10, 2014, while a 2015 Xpress Magazine interview with Abdulhadi presented it as a fait accompli.

At a November, 2015 AMED panel discussion on “Palestine, Iran, and Syria” for which Campus Watch obtained a recording, Abdulhadi—in introducing notorious Israel-bashers Hatem Bazian of UC Berkeley and As’ad Abu Khalil of Cal State Stanislaus—spoke proudly of the partnership:

We . . . have the first agreement between San Francisco State and any Arab or Muslim communities . . . a memorandum of understanding with An-Najah University in Nablus, Palestine.

She reiterated her longstanding intention to do the same with another West Bank university, the Hamas-dominated Bir Zeit, and to set up a student exchange program, before delivering this telling disclaimer:

We believe that we need to produce knowledge for justice. We do not want to produce knowledge and teach students how to grow up and build bombs and destroy other people.

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Trump, the EU Crack-Up and Israel How would a President Trump govern? Caroline Glick

By on February 26th, 2016

After his smashing back-to-back victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses, going into next week’s Super Tuesday contests in 12 states, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump looks increasingly unbeatable.

What accounts for the billionaire populist’s success? And if Trump does become the next US president, what sort of leader will the former reality television star be? Trump is popular because he has a rare ability to channel the deep-seated frustrations that much of the American public harbors toward its political and cultural elites.

Trump’s presidential bid isn’t based on specific, defined economic or foreign policy platforms or plans. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he even has any.

Trump’s campaign is based on his capacity to resonate two deeply felt frustrations harbored by a large cross-section of American citizens.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger explained recently, a very large group of Americans is frustrated – or enraged – by the intellectual and social terror exercised upon them by the commissars of political correctness.

Trump’s support levels rise each time he says something “politically incorrect.” His candidacy took off last summer when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border. It rose again last November when, following the Islamic massacre in Paris, he said that if elected he will ban Muslim immigration to the US.

The many millions of Americans who are sick of being called racist, chauvinist, homophobic, privileged or extremist every time they breathe feel that in Trump they have found their voice.

Then there is that gnawing sense that under Obama, America has been transformed from history’s greatest winner into history’s biggest sucker.

Trump’s continuous exposition on his superhuman deal-making talents speaks to this fear.

Trump’s ability to viscerally connect to the deep-seated concerns of American voters and assuage them frees him from the normal campaign requirement of developing plans to accomplish his campaign promises.

Trump’s supporters don’t care that his economic policies contradict one another. They don’t care that his foreign policy declarations are a muddle of contradictions.

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How American Soldiers Used Pig’s Blood and Corpses to Fight Muslim Terrorism Before political correctness, our soldiers were free to fight back. Daniel Greenfield

By on February 26th, 2016

A century before American soldiers fought Muslim terrorism in the Middle East, they fought it in the Philippines. Their attackers were Moro Muslims whose savage fanaticism appeared inexplicable. A formerly friendly Muslim might suddenly attack American soldiers, local Muslim rulers promised friendship while secretly aiding the terrorists and the yellow left-wing press at home seized on every report of an atrocity to denounce American soldiers as murderers whose honor was forever soiled.

Much of what went on in that conflict, including the sacrifices of our soldiers, has been forgotten. The erasure has been so thorough that the media casually claims that the American forces did not use pig corpses and pig’s blood to deter Muslim terrorists. Media fact checks have deemed it a “legend”.

It’s not a legend. It’s history.

The practice began in the Spanish period. A source as mainstream as the New Cambridge History of Islam informs us that, “To discourage Juramentados, the Spaniards buried their corpses with dead pigs.”

Juramentados was the Spanish term for the Muslim Jihadists who carried out suicide attacks against Christians while shouting about Allah. American forces, who had little experience with Muslim terrorists, adopted the term and the Spanish tactics of burying Muslim terrorists alongside dead pigs.

It was a less sensitive age and even the New York Times blithely observed that, “The Moros, though they still admire these frenzied exits from the world, have practically ceased to utilize them, since when a pig and a man occupy a single grave the future of the one and the other are in their opinions about equal.”

The New York Times conceded that the story “shocked a large number of sensitive people,” but concluded that, “while regretting the necessity of adopting a plan so repugnant to humane ideas, we also note that the Moros can stop its application as soon as they choose, and therefore we feel no impulse either to condemn its invention or to advise its abandonment. The scheme involves the waste of a certain amount of pork, but pork in hot climates is an unwholesome diet, anyhow, and the less of it our soldiers and other ‘infidels’ in the Philippines have to eat the better for them.”

Colonel Willis A. Wallace of the 15th Cavalry claimed credit for innovating the practice in March 1903 to dissuade the Muslim terrorist who believed that “every Christian he kills places him so much closer in contact with the Mohammedan heaven.”

“Conviction and punishment of these men seemed to have no effect,” Colonel Wallace related. After a “more than usually atrocious slaughter” in the marketplace, he had the bodies of the killers placed on display and encouraged “all the Moros in the vicinity who cared to do so to come and see the remains”.

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Kenyan FM: Most African Countries “See Israel as a Very Close Friend”

By on February 26th, 2016

Claims that Israel is being diplomatically isolated are not true because the majority of African countries “see Israel as a very close friend,” the foreign minister of Kenya told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Amina Mohamed, who is on a visit to Israel with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, said that Israel “has more friends than not on the continent.” She pointed to the growing economic ties between African countries and Israel. Although Mohamed acknowledged that “it is very difficult to break the African bloc” that often votes against Israel at the United Nations, she noted that Kenya and other countries “actually have been quite courageous in breaking away sometimes.” Kenya sided with Israel in a vote at the International Atomic Energy Agency last September.

Mohamed stressed the importance of high-level Israeli trips to the continent, and said that her country was “obviously looking forward” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned trip to Kenya and Uganda in the summer to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Israeli rescue of hostages from the Entebbe airport. Kenya helped Israel in carrying out the Entebbe raid, and Israel rendered aid when al-Qaeda blew up the American embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Israel has also assisted Kenya in fighting al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda affiliate based in Somalia.

“High level visits bring their own wind with them,” she said. “They enhance their relationship, they make it clear to everybody, send a very clear signal that these two countries agree to cooperate on the highest level, speak the same language, and deal with issues in the same manner. It is an affirmation that this is a strong relationship.”

“Israel is proud of the cooperation between our peoples,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said when he formally greeted Kenyatta on Tuesday. “Thanks to MASHAV [Israel’s international aid agency] we are working to educate people, develop agriculture, and protect the environment. It is my hope this cooperation will continue to grow and that the close ties between our people will become stronger. Your visit is an important step in building this friendship.”

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