Displaying posts published in

February 2016

POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Agonistes His competitors try to expose his weaknesses for the first time.

By on February 27th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-agonistes-1456531598

The Republican presidential race entered its blitzkrieg phase Thursday as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz finally turned their fire on Donald Trump instead of playing for second place. The brawling was entertaining if often ugly, but the debate was important in surfacing the vulnerabilities that Democrats are sure to exploit if Mr. Trump is the GOP nominee.

The debate marked the first competitive vetting of the businessman, who had remained untouched as the other candidates vied to become the last non-Trump standing. Or as Mr. Trump would put it, “losers.” Messrs. Rubio and Cruz had to take on Mr. Trump, and now we’ll find out if the New Yorker can take the same mockery he dishes out.
***Start with his policy knowledge, which is thinner than topsoil and not as rich. Mr. Rubio challenged Mr. Trump to go beyond his stock line that he’d replace ObamaCare by allowing competition across state lines, which is a good idea but hardly sufficient as a reform. Yet Mr. Trump couldn’t come up with another specific idea to expand private health coverage.

This is typical of Mr. Trump, who told us in November that the voters don’t care about policy details. But Americans want a President to know something about the biggest problems, and Hillary Clinton wouldn’t let him get away with a simple soundbite. The exchange revealed that Mr. Trump doesn’t like to work all that hard to learn anything new. He gets by on instinct and insult.

Speaking of which, in Texas Friday Mr. Trump took his attacks on the press corps to a new level by promising to change the libel laws. “We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected,” he said, sounding like Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. READ MORE AT SITE

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A FASCIST COUP IN POLAND? AGNIESZKA KOLAKOWSKA

By on February 27th, 2016

Give Us Poles A Break

By all accounts, things are rotten in the state of Poland. A fascist dictatorship has been installed — a bit like the one in Hungary, apparently, but worse. Ostensibly, democratic elections were held. But that is just a smokescreen. There has been a coup. By or against whom is unclear, but democracy, freedom of the press and civil liberties are definitely threatened. Poland is on the road to ruin, and liable to take the whole of the EU down with it. The European Commission is worried.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this alarming news appeared in headlines eight years ago, when the bunch that has just been ousted — Civic Platform (PO) — came to power and purged the media, sacking anyone not to their liking and replacing them with their own cronies. Or when those cronies proceeded to use the public media as a vehicle for virulent and relentless propaganda against the current bunch, Law and Justice (PiS). Or at just about any time during those eight years, which saw a long string of scandals including — besides fraud, embezzlement and misuse of funds on a massive scale — the illegal wiretapping of journalists and police raids on editorial offices. Or when it emerged that newspapers loyal to PO were subsidised under the table through government advertising. Or just before the elections, when PO, in a manoeuvre of dubious legality, forced through five of its people onto the Constitutional Tribunal.

Not a peep out of the European Commission then. But then that was a (supposedly) left-wing government, so that was all right. And this is (allegedly) a right-wing government. Hence the current hysteria.

Except that PiS is actually about as right-wing as Bernie Sanders. Well, perhaps I exaggerate slightly. But it’s certainly not right-wing fiscally or economically. This is not small-government and low-taxes conservatism; rolling back the State is not on the agenda. The conservatism is social, cultural and moral, and comes with a strong emphasis on national sovereignty. In the Polish context this means upholding tradition and family values, a tiny smidgeon of Euroscepticism, the refusal to submit to bullying by the EU and Germany in particular, an acknowledgement of our Judaeo-Christian heritage and the conviction that Christianity must be restored to its proper place in the public sphere, where the Church must play a role. You might call them culturally conservative old-style socialists. But whatever label you stick on them, none of this warrants investigation by the European Commission, let alone cries to topple the governent.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It’s Sharia, Not Alcohol, That Threatens Women Julie Bindel

By on February 27th, 2016

There is nothing wrong with moderate drinking, and I do not consider the amount I put away anyone else’s business than my own. Despite the government’s rather dramatic health warnings, I believe that the odd glass of wine or beer does more good than harm for most people. But soon, thanks to a growing dual legal system in Britain, we may have an alcohol-free parliament. It would seem that sharia courts and councils, on which I have reported previously in this magazine, are not the only example of how the UK law is being bent to accommodate Islamic custom.

Later this year, Members of Parliament move out of the Palace of Westminster while it undergoes renovations over the next decade. But the temporary building into which they will move is governed by sharia law. The building, located in Whitehall, was discreetly transferred to an Islamic bond scheme in 2014. Under terms of the lease, alcohol is banned on the premises. It is shocking but not surprising that any government buildings in the UK could be governed by Islamic law.

Last month, the women’s rights organisation Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK) demanded the resignation of the leaders of Birmingham Central Mosque after they dismissed the group’s concerns about domestic violence and forced marriages. According to MWNUK, the mosque’s chairman, Labour councillor and mayoral candidate for the city Muhammad Afzal, said that forced marriages were no longer a problem; that domestic violence only affected Christian communities because they get drunk; and that more men than women were the victims of domestic violence. Afzal has since withdrawn from the mayoral contest.

Alcohol is forbidden under Islam, although most Muslims in the UK drink it. When Islamists blame the West for the moral decay among young Muslims living in Western societies, alcohol is often cited. Alcohol was also blamed by some devout Muslims for the grotesque sexual assaults on more than 100 women and girls in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Pressure group MuslimStern, which has 20,000 followers on Facebook, said its mission was to “highlight the way the media was using the incidents to promote racism against minorities”. The group complained that the female victims had brought the unwanted attention to themselves by dressing in a manner that North African men were not accustomed to.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

John Fonte Ideologies :Have Consequences

By on February 27th, 2016

What might be called “transnational progressivism” is the ideology for an age once thought not to need one. President Obama, for example, was hailed as ‘not a doctinaire liberal’ and ‘centrist and pragmatic’. The truth, as eight sorry years have shown, is very different
For more than half a century leading global thinkers have heralded the death of ideology. Beginning with Daniel Bell’s famous 1962 book The End of Ideology, prominent scholars have repeatedly maintained that the role of ideology was diminishing and the exercise of pragmatism ascending throughout the Western world. In The End of Ideology (listed by the Times Literary Supplement as among the “100 most influential non-fiction books since World War II”), Bell declared that the “ideological age has ended” in the West (although it would intensify in the developing world).

Bell argued that the rise of affluence and the advance of social modernisation had led to a broad consensus on political values and an exhaustion with grand ideological debates in the developed world. Bell’s thesis was amplified by leading American social scientists including Edward Shils and Seymour Martin Lipset.

Decades later Francis Fukuyama declared that with the collapse of communism we had reached “the end of history”, meaning the great ideological issues of politics (who should govern and why) had been solved. Although (small h) history in the sense of wars and political upheavals might continue for hundreds of years, (capital H) History in the Hegelian sense was over, because liberal democracy had triumphed in the realm of ideas. Fukuyama maintained liberal democracy was the ideological endpoint of humankind’s age-old quest for the best regime. In the future, even autocratic rulers would claim to be democratic or cite democracy as their end goal.

In January 2009 as Barack Obama was being inaugurated as President of the United States, David Brooks wrote in the New York Times that “Obama aims to realize the end of ideology politics that Daniel Bell and others glimpsed in the early 1960s. He sees himself as a pragmatist, an empiricist.” Indeed, from the beginning of Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign to the present, scores of books, essays and blogs have been marshalled to argue that Obama eschews ideology and embraces pragmatism. Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein (who served in the White House from 2009 to 2012) wrote that Obama was “not a doctrinaire liberal”, that “his skepticism about conventional ideological categories is principled”, and that, above all, he is an empirical pragmatist who understands that “real change requires consensus, learning, and accommodation”. The journalist Fareed Zakaria declared that “Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist”. Academics and public intellectuals compared Obama’s thought to the tradition of the pragmatist school of American philosophy embodied by Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Wants to ‘Open Up’ Libel Laws to Easily Sue Media Conservative senator: “Front-runners of both political parties attacking the First Amendment” By Bridget Johnson,

By on February 27th, 2016

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who was elected to Congress with the help of conservatives such as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and talk show host Mark Levin, ripped Trump on Twitter for attacking press freedom. Sasse has not endorsed any candidate, but campaigned against Trump with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in Iowa.

A freshman senator whose endorsements included Sarah Palin is going after Donald Trump for talking about changing libel laws so he can more easily sue news organizations.

At a rally today in Fort Worth, Texas, Trump railed against major newspapers and said if he wins the presidency he’ll “open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”

“We’re going to open up those libel laws. So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace or when The Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected,” Trump said.

The WaPo’s editorial board has published editorials on the opinion page advocating that Trump be stopped, including one this week criticizing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “If Mr. Trump is to be stopped, now is the time for leaders of conscience to say they will not and cannot support him and to do what they can to stop him,” the editorial board wrote.

“You see, with me, they’re not protected, because I’m not like other people but I’m not taking money. I’m not taking their money,” Trump said. “We’re going to open up libel laws, and we’re going to have people sue you like you’ve never got sued before.”

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Donald Trump: The gift that keeps on giving…to the left By Patricia McCarthy

By on February 27th, 2016

How anyone who watched last night’s debate could continue to support Donald Trump is a mystery. The man is a bundle of character flaws, large and small. His behavior betrays his megalomania, his narcissism, and his venal, childish hostility to anyone who dares to disagree with him. He lies so often his opponents on the debate stage could not begin to counter them all.

This man should never, never become the president of the United States. He has never matured beyond the lower elementary school age, and given today’s tyranny of political correctness that regulates how even toddlers in pre-school must conduct themselves and restrict their speech, Mr. Trump would very likely be expelled from any pre-school in the country, let alone a high school or university. The man is the worst America has to offer, an example of the gross deterioration of our national culture.

That this man has a following is a permanent black mark on our nation. Support for “The Donald” relegates us to just a few degrees separate from those who celebrated Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Juan Perón, or any other tyrant who came to power via a cult of personality, no matter how warped his character. Has our educational system failed so badly that we have been brought to our knees by an obvious charlatan? Have we become a reality show nation? It seems that we have indeed. We elected Obama twice; Trump would be the natural successor to Obama’s duplicity and disdain for our founding document. It is a safe bet that Trump has never read the Constitution and has not a clue how profound it is.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

How Did We Get Obama and Trump? By Janice Shaw Crouse

By on February 27th, 2016

Many Americans shook their heads in 2008 wondering how in the world President Obama was elected when he had told us plainly that he wanted to “fundamentally transform” our country. Then, the perplexity increased when he was reelected in 2012 long after his radical policies and disdain for the Constitution were abundantly evident. Unbelievably, after suffering through the effrontery of the Obama Administration’s arrogance and his flaunting of executive actions instead of bipartisanship, the nation is now enthralled with Donald Trump’s bombastic, flamboyant, but empty promises – based solely on his ability to capitalize on the public’s anger and to manipulate people’s fears, rather than specific policy proposals or potential for effective constitutional governance — to come in and liberate us from the overweening government bureaucrats with their endless thirst for control and restore America’s greatness. The Washington Post summarized the situation by claiming that Donald Trump is giving the establishment (on both Capitol Hill and K Street) the “middle finger” and “his supporters love it.” One analyst likened Trump to a parasite eating up the host; another called him America’s “Fatal Attraction.”

Clearly, Donald Trump is a brash, arrogant bully with a “yuuge” ego who sees things in black and white, winners and losers. Trump offends sensibilities with unpresidential behavior, crudities and bad manners, along with insults and accusations of lying against other candidates. Still, the more obnoxious he has become, the better his ratings. He has tapped into middle-America’s need for a “straight-up guy” who’ll “tell things like they are” without any consideration for how he offends the PC crowd. The public has had enough of politicians who talk out of “both sides of their mouths” to say one thing to the voters during election campaigns while planning to do another. At this point, the public doesn’t believe any politician; they want an outsider. They’ll take the crudity because it least it’s an authentic expression of their frustration and anger.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Rubio, Trump and Israel: Ruthie Blum

By on February 27th, 2016

During Thursday night’s CNN-hosted Republican debate in Houston, Texas, candidate Marco Rubio finally took on leading contender Donald Trump, face-to-face, about Israel. Referring to Trump’s statements that he would be a “neutral broker” between Israel and the Palestinians, Rubio argued, “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.”

“A deal is a deal,” Trump replied.

“A deal is not a deal when you’re dealing with terrorists,” Rubio said.

This is what Rubio knows in a nutshell — something the Obama administration has ignored for the past seven years, and not only in relation to the Palestinian Authority. It is a key reason, though by no means an exclusive one, for getting the Democrats out of the White House and State Department.

Rubio has been consistent about his grasp of why Israel and America are both the globe’s good guys and natural allies.

At a rally on Wednesday night, in the lead-up to the final debate before Super Tuesday on March 1, Rubio was inspired and inspiring on this point.

“We’re going to have a policy of moral clarity,” he said. “I’ll give you a perfect example — Israel. Israel is the only pro-American free-enterprise democracy in the entire Middle East. I’ll put it to you this way: If there were more Israels in the Middle East — more pro-American, free-enterprise democracies — the world would be so much safer.”

He also attacked the UN for being “obsessed” with the Jewish state. “Every week, they’ve got new resolutions condemning Israel,” he said, using this to illustrate the “new face of anti-Semitism in the world.”

As for the Palestinians, Rubio said, “They teach little kids — five-year-olds — that it’s a glorious thing to kill Jews.”

Indeed, he emphasized, “The Palestinians don’t want a deal, [and] they’ve already said, ‘We want to destroy Israel.’ So what are you going to negotiate? The rate of the destruction? The date of the destruction? We will not be an impartial advocate when it comes to the issue of Israel. When I’m president, we’re going to take sides. We are going to be on Israel’s side.”

Even before Rubio announced he would be running for America’s highest office, however, he made impassioned speeches on Israel’s behalf.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Books and Burqas By Marilyn Penn

By on February 27th, 2016

A disturbing trend in fostering American-Muslim “otherness” can be seen in Simon & Schuster’s decision to create a new imprint called Salaam Reads. Targeted at age groups from early readers to young adults, it will present Muslim characters, stressing their own customs and ways, presumably to highlight their integration into our culture, not to stress Islamic theology or doctrine. If that last disclaimer is to be believed, we have to wonder why there is a necessity for a separate imprint with a guaranteed minimum of nine books a year – does Simon & Schuster have one for Catholic , Jewish or Buddhist Americans? What happened to the idea of America as the place that welcomed immigrants from all over the world so that they would have the freedom to believe and achieve what they wished, no longer bound by the strictures of birth or class structure. Are we now reverting to the notion that a Muslim child growing up in America must see her exact counterpart represented in story-books before she can feel comfortable in her own skin? According to Zareen Jaffery, the hyphenated Pakistani-American who heads the new imprint and remembers her own childhood: “I didn’t see myself reflected in books back then.” (NYT 2/25/16). Lest we forget, we are now living in the age of social media and selfies.

But beyond this rather innocuous explanation lies a more telling motive expressed by Ms. Jaffery in an online interview with storyandchai.com: “while I am answering these questions from a business perspective, it would be remiss and naïve of me not to state the obvious: racism is real. As is Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia – the list goes on.” So the emphasis for this imprint is on correcting the supposedly inaccurate image of Muslim Americans and showing them in a more positive light. This sounds very much like an agenda that might have financial backing from sources other than the publisher who isn’t generally interested in righting wrongs perceived by special interest groups.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

Changing Minds By Tabitha Korol

By on February 27th, 2016

Two of the finest institutions of higher education in the United States, Columbia and Cornell, have been identified as leading the list of “most anti-Semitic,” as they continue to host Jew hatred events on campus. By the time our students enter this new phase in their education, they have been well primed for the venomous climate, having been molded into frustrated, resentful, disrespectful, demanding, angry young adults, ill prepared for anything, unable to accept responsibility, and ripe to lash out at others. These young people have already been activated and prepared to join any group that uses “social justice” language, whether warranted or not.

The K-12 classes provide the first toxic element. Education is being restructured according to a radical political ideology promoted by the White House, Bill and Melinda Gates, and other supporters of a federal takeover of education. The purpose is to produce workers for a Global Economy (aka Agenda 21). The major players are Valerie Jarrett’s mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, a member of the Muslim Sisterhood; native-born terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn Ayers (Weather Underground) who support a radical network to defeat America; and Secretary of Education (ret.) Arne Duncan, who promoted the Common Core Standards, with its drastic, untried curriculum overhaul that has lowered school standards to ensure that no child is left behind or excels at the expense of others. This is accompanied by the disturbing data mining that profiles the children (into adulthood) and their families.

Continue reading →