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April 2016

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MELANIE PHILLIPS: MUSSOLINI VS. LUCREZIA BORGIA? THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE

By on April 16th, 2016

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-see-it-Mussolini-vs-Lucrezia-Borgia-There-is-an-alternative-451287
American Jews are horrified by the choice they think will face them at November’s presidential election. If they adjust their perspective, however, there is another option.

Traveling in the US last week I found Jews, like many others, in a state of extreme agitation.

The Trump phenomenon, they raged, was beyond belief. How could America be doing this to itself, possibly nominating as a presidential candidate a man who was a crude and unstable know-nothing, a bigoted authoritarian and potential despot, a threat to America’s future and the entire world? They might have no option, said Republican Jews in despair, but to vote for Hillary.

No! cried others who were equally despairing.

How could you even think of voting for Hillary, what with the email scandal, with her past support for the PLO and the bullying way she treated Israel while she was secretary of state, with the Muslim Brotherhood types and other Israel-bashers in her close circle? Yes, granted, said the first group, but at least she’s an experienced politician, at least she’s kinda done the job already, at least she knows how to behave in government. What, came the response, after Benghazi? After the murder there of the ambassador and three others on her watch, the attempt to sanitize the atrocity and then the cover-up of that attempt, after her “What difference does it make” outburst at the congressional hearing? So it went on back and forth with voices raised: Trump vs Hillary, the unspeakable versus the uneatable, Mussolini versus Lucrezia Borgia. There was, it seemed, no alternative. None.

Um, what about, I asked in a very small voice, Ted Cruz? Wouldn’t he be an acceptable alternative? Both sides looked at me in horror. On this they were agreed. Ted Cruz was totally, but totally, unacceptable. Why? Because he was an ultra-conservative, evangelical Christian.

They’d all rather have even Hillary than Cruz as president. Really? So Hillary was not such a threat to America, the Jews and the world after all? I hold no particular brief for Cruz. I observe him from afar, and my information is necessarily inadequate as a result. But if you really believe that both Trump and Hillary pose such a threat to all we hold dear, what on earth does Ted Cruz stand for that makes him even worse than those two priceless specimens? I understand that many American Jews are socially liberal. I understand that, for them, social liberalism is in fact their religion. But in the context of today’s terrifying world, to consider a socially conservative viewpoint to be the biggest threat of all takes some explaining.

One obvious reason is the profound antipathy felt by many American Jews toward evangelical Christians. This is strange given that such Christians are the most stalwart and passionate supporters of Israel in the world today, far more so than Diaspora Jews.

Nevertheless, many American Jews regard them as a dire threat to the Jewish people.

The much-stated reason is that they want to convert the Jews at the “end of days.” Well, some evangelicals do and others don’t. And with those who do, I don’t know about you but I’ll take my chances on that when the apocalypse finally arrives.

Ah, say the American Christophobes, but these evangelicals are theologically anti-Semitic.

Well, many of these Jews’ liberal friends are politically anti-Semitic, singling out Israel as they do for blood libels and demonization. Is that perhaps a tolerable form of anti-Semitism in these Jews’ minds? To put it another way, which is better – the anti-Semite who hates Israel or the supposed anti-Semite (who may not be that at all) who loves Israel? Of all the presidential candidates, Cruz is the one who takes Israel’s part with the greatest clarity, passion and absence of any equivocation. He really gets it.

Last weekend, he wooed the Republican Jewish convention in Las Vegas and received a warm reception but from a wary crowd.

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MY SAY: THE NEW YORK POST STOOPS

By on April 16th, 2016

I love the New York Post…since we used to get The Bronx Home News which merged with The New York Post in 1948. It was delivered to our “stoop” on Bryant Avenue along with The Jewish Forward and the Herold Tribune. The “stoop” in those days was the flight of steps leading to the front door of a building….large or small, against which we played “stoop ball.”

Now the word “stoop” means ” to lower one’s moral standards so far as to do something reprehensible.”

And that is what the newspaper has done in it’s endorsement of a cur:
New York Post Criticizes ‘Rookie’ Trump in Scary Endorsement By Tyler O’Neil

“You can love Ted Cruz or hate him, but the Texas senator is actually clear on what he supports. John Kasich, who just received the endorsement of former New York Governor George Pataki, is a little fuzzier, but even he actually has a few concrete proposals. The Donald shifts in the political wind, and his supporters actually like that.

Like many Trump backers, the Post admits that The Donald is “a divisive, coarse, amateur,” as New York’s competing newspaper, the Daily News, shot back. The candidate will turn 70 years old this year, and they are expecting him to mature in record time, before the election.

“This endorsement of a man, in spite of himself, for the most powerful position in the world, is a shameful reflection not on what makes America great, but what makes us dumb as hell,” the Daily News’ Shaun King concludes.”

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WES PRUDEN: THE GLOBAL WARMING ASSAULT ON FREE SPEECH

By on April 16th, 2016

“Climate change” is all about us. Nearly everybody believes in it. Who could not? Sometimes a sunny day changes to rain, sometimes snow changes to sleet. The wind blows on Tuesday but changes on Wednesday, from knocking down trees to barely putting a ripple on the surface of the lake. Mark Twain, noticing that some things lie beyond the meddling of man, observed that “everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.”

Now someone has. The attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands thinks he has found the way to silence, once and for all, the debate over global warming, or climate change, or whatever the radicals-that-be are calling the scheme this week. Global-warming jeremiahs are determined to intimidate, frighten and eventually fine or put in prison anyone who says the wrong thing about this best laid scheme of government. They’re determined to eliminate traditional sources of energy and replace them with politically correct but unreliable sources of energy, such as wind and solar power. That’s the beginning.

Claude Walker, the Blackstone of the Caribbean who leads the assault of the attorneys general, presented a subpoena this week to compel the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public policy think tank in Washington skeptical of the climate scam, to turn over all its documents relating to the Institute’s research.

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JOHN KASICH- GO AWAY!

By on April 16th, 2016

What Does John Kasich Think He’s Doing? By Matthew Continetti —

When John Kasich departs this earthly vale of tears, he ought to donate his brain to science. It could teach us a lot about irrational thinking.

The Ohio governor has won a single state: his own. He has 143 delegates. That puts him fourth in the count behind Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio — who is no longer a candidate.

To win the nomination on the first ballot of the Republican convention, Kasich would have to win 138 percent of the remaining delegates. This is impossible. Even a politician should be able to do that math.

To win on the second ballot, Kasich would have to outmaneuver Ted Cruz and his impressive delegate operation. That seems, let us say, beyond implausible.

To win on a subsequent ballot, when the nomination is up for grabs, Kasich would have to do something over the next two months that he seems constitutionally incapable of doing: show the slightest bit of selflessness and concern for the cause and the country and put those feelings ahead of his own narcissism, vanity, condescension, and sneering disdain for the party he seeks to lead.

What does that mean for Kasich in practice? Running against Trump where he’s strongest and ceding ground to Cruz where he’s weakest.

Kasich helps Trump. He can’t pretend otherwise. For months the anti-Trump forces have wanted nothing more than the ability to coalesce around a single challenger. One goofy man has stood in the way all along. He bit into Bush’s vote, into Christie’s, into Rubio’s. Now he’s biting into Cruz’s.

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No, I Will Never ‘Come Around’ to Supporting Trump By Jonah Goldberg

By on April 16th, 2016

Dear Reader (including those of you who think we need a president who would leave the whole world blind, which would be inconvenient since e-mail newsletters in braille are technologically complicated),

It looks like the Trump body snatching virus I wrote about last month is spreading again. For a moment, after Wisconsin, it seemed like it might be going into remission. Nope, it’s actually spiking.

Last night the New York Post endorsed Donald Trump. After I criticized the editorial on Twitter, a Trump supporter tweeted at me “No Goldberg, you are wrong. Support the front runner and stop trying to burn the party. Unite it.”

This lover of unity and champion of party loyalty goes by the Twitter handle “TrumpOrRiot.” In all of the bilious argy-bargy and venomous folderol I’ve heard the last few months, nothing so economically encapsulates Trumpism more than calls for unity from a maroon who self-identifies as someone who thinks rioting is the only righteous alternative to his dashboard saint’s victory.

On the drive in to my office this morning, I heard Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn, one of the wisest and gentlest souls I’ve ever encountered, describe Trump as a “good and honest man” and “quite brilliant.” A few minutes ago on Twitter, the great semi-retired editorialist Don Surber said to me, regarding Trump, “You will come around. Others may not because they are childish.”

No. Just, no.

I won’t. Indeed, the only childishness I see are the masses of beer-muscled goons and sycophants stomping their feet over the object of their man-crushes.

The Trump Calculus

If a president Trump does the right thing, I will say he did the right thing — because that’s my job. But I will never look at that fleshy pile of vanity, crudity, and deceit and say, “There’s a good and honest man.” Yes, yes, we all believe in redemption, so maybe he could have some Oval Office conversion, find a God that doesn’t consider profit maximization to be the key measure of a man’s soul, and become a good and honest man. Maybe the sudden bowel-stewing realization that he’s wildly unqualified for the job of commander-in-chief will arouse in him a humility never displayed in his gaudy romp across our airwaves.

But that’s not the way I would bet. (It’s also a bit of a moot point, since I’m convinced Trump would lose very badly against either Sanders or Clinton.)

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Willful Blindness and Our Saudi ‘Friends’ By Andrew C. McCarthy ****

By on April 16th, 2016

For many years, I was reluctant to write a memoir of my experience leading the investigation and prosecution of the jihadists against whom we are still at war over 20 years later. For one thing, while an exhilarating experience for a trial lawyer, it was also a very hard time for my family, for obvious reasons. Also, with all the tough judgment calls we had to make, we inevitably made some mistakes — “we” very much including me. A triumphant outcome has a pleasant way of bleaching away any memory of errors; to write honestly about the case would mean revisiting them. Who needed that?

And about that triumph: I had, and have, a gnawing sense that we failed. Yes, the conviction of the Blind Sheikh and his henchmen was a great law-enforcement success. Throughout the long trial and in the years that followed, though, I came to appreciate that national security is principally about keeping Americans safe, not winning court cases. Sure, winning in this instance meant justice was done and some terrorists were incarcerated. How safe, though, had we really kept Americans?

For all the effort and expense, the number of jihadists neutralized was negligible compared to the overall threat. The attacks kept coming, as one might expect when one side detonates bombs and the other responds with subpoenas. As the years passed, the tally of casualties far outstripped that of convicted terrorists. When 9/11 finally happened, killing nearly 3,000 of our fellow Americans, al-Qaeda credited none other than the Blind Sheikh with issuing the fatwa — the sharia edict — that authorized the attack. We had imprisoned him, but we had not stopped him.

That is mainly why I finally wrote the memoir in 2008. I called it Willful Blindness . . . and not just because my infamous defendant was both blind and willful. American counterterrorism, even seven years after 9/11 (and fully 15 years after the jihadists declared war by bombing the World Trade Center), had bored its head ever deeper in the sand. It consciously avoided the central truths driving the terrorist threat against the United States.

The most significant of these is that violent jihadism is the inexorable result of the vibrance in Islam of sharia supremacism — a scripturally-rooted summons to Muslims to strive for conquest over infidels until Allah’s law (sharia) is established everywhere on earth.

This ideology — also referred to as “Islamism,” “Islamic supremacism,” “radical Islam,” “political Islam,” and other descriptors that endeavor to distinguish it from Islam (and to imply that such a distinction should be drawn) — is not the only way of interpreting Islam. Indeed, it is rejected by millions of Muslims. The conquest for which it strives, moreover, is not necessarily to be achieved by violence. Sharia supremacism is, nevertheless, a mainstream interpretation of Islam. Inevitably, it leads some believers to carry out jihadist violence, and an even greater number of believers to support the jihadists’ objectives, if not their methods.

Since 1993, the bipartisan American ruling class, throughout administrations of both parties, has refused to acknowledge, much less grapple with, this central truth of the threat we face. It has insisted, against fact and reason, that Islam is a monolithic “religion of peace,” and therefore that there can be no causal connection between Islamic doctrine and terrorism committed by Muslims. It has fraudulently maintained that jihadist violence is not jihadist at all — after all, we are to understand jihad (notwithstanding its roots as a belligerent concept, as holy war to establish sharia) to be a noble internal struggle to become a better person, to vanquish corruption, and the like. Terrorist attacks must be airbrushed into “violent extremism,” shorn of any ideological component — as if the killing were wanton, not purposeful. The fact that the attacks are so ubiquitously committed by Muslims (who explicitly cite scriptural chapter and verse to justify themselves), is to be ignored — as if all religions and ideologies were equally prone to inspire mass-murder attacks if believed too fervently.

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New York Post Criticizes ‘Rookie’ Trump in Scary Endorsement By Tyler O’Neil

By on April 16th, 2016

New York Post Criticizes ‘Rookie’ Trump in Scary Endorsement By Tyler O’Neil

The New York Post made a surprise endorsement on Thursday night, but it wasn’t exactly logical. Indeed, the editorial board seemed to be suffering under the same delusions hardcore supporters of Donald Trump entertain.

The Post based its endorsement on the fact that Trump is an accomplished businessman, but that he is also a “rookie” when it comes to politics. They assume he will do a full about-face from the primary to the general. This not only explains Trump’s policy simplicity and angry eccentricities, it excuses them. As the New York Daily News’ Shaun King declares, this “is so sad it’s actually kind of funny.”

The editors of the Post not only expect Trump to change his positions, they advise him on how to do so.

Should he win the nomination, we expect Trump to pivot — not just on the issues, but in his manner. The post-pivot Trump needs to be more presidential: better informed on policy, more self-disciplined and less thin-skinned.

Yet the promise is clearly there in the rookie who is, after all, leading the field as the finals near.

Besides Trump’s astonishing success, the editors of the Post cannot name any concrete goals of his that they actually like. Oh, they find plenty of things they disagree with: pulling US troops out of Japan and South Korea, building a border wall, opposing trade deals without supporting free trade, and Trump’s coarse language and manners.

Nevertheless, Trump must be supported, because “he’s challenging the victim culture that has turned into a victimizing culture.” This is true, but how does it not apply to Ted Cruz? The editors “expect Trump to stay true to his voters,” but not to the positions or the personal style which attracted them in the first place.

Indeed, the publication goes so far as to call The Donald “an imperfect messenger carrying a vital message.” What is that message? It is “the best hope for all Americans who rightly feel betrayed by the political class.”

In the end, the Post trusts Trump because “he has the potential — the skills, the know-how, the values — to live up to his campaign slogan: to make America great again.” It ignores all evidence to contrary, much of which the editors themselves have mentioned in that very article!

This reminds me of something Jonah Goldberg wrote in National Review in March. The fact that Trump has attracted voters is treated as a justification for his outlandish proposals, even inviting comparisons to Ronald Reagan (who was also widely attacked in the media).

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John Bolton: ‘I Hope Obama Doesn’t Apologize For Our Destroyer Getting in the Way of That Russian Airplane’ By Debra Heine

By on April 16th, 2016

Former Ambassador John Bolton expressed hope today that President Obama would not apologize to the Russians following their dangerous military provocation on the Baltic Sea earlier this week. Russian attack planes buzzed dangerously close to a U.S. Navy destroyer on Monday and Tuesday in what the U.S. described as a “simulated attack.”

During an appearance on Fox News Friday morning, Bolton also predicted “there’s more” Russian aggression to come. “If that airplane had caught a gust of wind, it could have been right up against that destroyer,” he said.

“Russia’s latest stint in the Baltic Sea signals to our NATO allies that the U.S. can’t take care of itself,” he continued.

“I just hope Obama doesn’t apologize for [our] destroyer getting in the way of that airplane.”

It’s not an unfair barb given the Obama administration’s culture of weakness, apology, and moral equivalence on the world stage.

Via Cortney O’Brien at Townhall:

Before the Russian airplane flew near our destroyer, Iran captured 10 of our American sailors and celebrated it. Secretary of State John Kerry actually thanked Iran for their compassion during the ordeal. President Obama, meanwhile, continues to defend his nuclear deal with the nation, which has basically given Iran a pass for its bad behavior. A Middle East expert who is very critical of that agreement argues it has severely damaged America’s image as a superpower.

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Madeleine Halfbright: ‘War on Terror’ Bad Term for ‘Just Murderers’ see note please

By on April 16th, 2016

You think Kerry is a dunce?….rsk
Albright: ‘War on Terror’ Bad Term for ‘Just Murderers’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she dislikes the use of the phrase “war on terror,” arguing that it makes terrorists look like warriors.

“For me, I’ve had a very hard time with the vocabulary of all of this and I have not liked the words ‘war on terror’ because it makes those that are fighting us warriors when they are actually just murderers and they get a greater kind of reverence in their societies if we make warriors out of them. They are murderers, plain and simple,” Albright said during a discussion about religion, peace and world affairs at Georgetown University.

While she did not mention any presidential candidates by name, Albright criticized Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. as a way to combat Islamic extremism.

“The challenge for us is to harness the unifying potential of faith while containing its capacity to divide. Now this is not easy to do, particularly in a political season where candidates are vilifying Muslims and exploiting the fear factor. The irony with all of this is that Daesh [ISIS] is the one that wants to divide the world along religious lines,” she said.

“We should not play into their game by provoking a clash of civilizations or leading Muslims to believe they are under attack by the West, but that is what happens when we suggest that our country should shut our borders to Muslims or patrol the streets of Muslim-American neighborhoods,” she added.

Albright said Americans must remember that the first rule in public life is to “frame the choice.”

“We will win if people believe the great divide in the world is between those who believe it is OK to murder innocent people and those who think it is wrong – between terrorists and those who are not terrorists,” Albright said.

“We will be in for a very long struggle if people believe the choice is between the supporters and defenders of Islam. This is precisely the fight that Daesh wants to have, but the truth is when Muslims commit terrorist attacks they are not practicing their faith – they are betraying it,” she added.

Albright repeated a message she conveyed in the past at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on engaging Muslims.

“In the end, both the Bible and the Quran include enough rhetorical ammunition to start a war and enough moral uplift to engender permanent peace,” she said.

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Michael Warren Davis Refugee Advocates’ Unholy Nonsense

By on April 16th, 2016

Those who argue loudest for open borders seldom resist the temptation to verbal Jesus, preaching that He would want us to take in all who show up. When Tony Abbott can be painted as a hypocrite in the same breath, so much the better.
I’m not going to get into the habit of defending Tony Abbott, but why are his critics so damn trivial? You could blame him for allowing Peta Credlin to terrorize the ministry – or, alternatively, you could blame thirty grown men and women for allowing themselves to be terrorized by Peta Credlin. You could say, as his detractors do, that resurrecting knighthoods was the waste of a day, but there’s no need to waste the next three months saying it. And if God didn’t want us to eat an onion, he wouldn’t have put it there.

Now we have The Guardian dragging out an infamous Abbott quote from Q&A a few years back, which goes: ‘Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.’ In response, Josh Bornstein writes, ‘If Christianity helps us understand the federal government, then it is a particularly aggressive and intolerant strain.’ While we’re rightly loathe to dignify Mr. Bornstein’s flogging of a dead monk by acknowledging his doing so, this habit of some to justify open borders with half-baked theology is really quite dangerous.

Mr. Abbott’s wording was, admittedly, clumsy. But you’d have to go rather out of your way to believe he meant that Jesus doesn’t want boat people to land on the shores of the Northern Territory. He meant that Christ was comfortable with the idea that there are nations, and that those nations have an integrity beyond a mere reference to a location. That is to say, ‘Australia’ must mean more than ‘at the end of the street’ or ‘the third parking spot from the left’.

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