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June 2016

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Stop Talking Like Progressives How Republican Trumpophobes confirm the very suspicions that have driven much of Trump’s support. Bruce Thornton

By on June 23rd, 2016

Every drop in the polls or bit of blunt talk from Donald Trump ignites another explosion of Trump Derangement Syndrome from Republican pundits and politicians. And every time such Republicans open their mouths, they strengthen the perception that they are an out of touch elite having more in common with the Democrats with whom they share the same university credentials and tony zip codes. So they confirm the very suspicions that have driven much of Trump’s support.

It doesn’t help that too many Republicans use the same loaded language and share the same assumptions of the progressives. For example, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens wrote a whole column on the historical parallels with the 1930s, linking Trump to Italian fascism. In the Washington Post, the Brookings Institute’s Robert Kagan explained “this is how fascism comes to America.” More recently, NRO’s Jay Nordlinger meditated on whether the “F-word” applies to Trump, and concluded, “I’m not sure.”

The remoteness of the chance that America could move that far right leaves the topic of Trump’s fascistic tendencies a mere device for tarring Trump with the fascist brush. Everyone knows that “fascist” is the left’s favorite insult, and its use depends on massive ignorance of historical fascism, the differences between authoritarian and fascist regimes, and the distinctions between Italian fascism and German Nazism. But it’s an effective smear, at once tainting the target with the excesses of Nazism, but containing little content other than the speaker’s ideological dislike of whatever he is branding “fascist.” It should be a tenet of conservativism to respect the integrity of language and history, and not to indulge the linguistic dishonesty that defines progressive propaganda.

Then there’s the flap over Trump’s remarks about the judge who is hearing the suit over Trump University. House Speaker Paul Ryan, currently the lodestar of anti-Trump Republicans, called Trump’s charges that the judge might be biased toward him “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” Sure it is, if your “textbook” is the Progressive Lexicon of Orwellian Smears.

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Liar, Liar Pantsuit On Fire And with Donald Trump’s renewed focus, is the comeuppance of economically illiterate “Crooked Hillary” at hand?Matthew Vadum

By on June 23rd, 2016

Editor’s note: Credit goes to Dr. Bob Shillman for the title of this article.

Hillary Clinton’s bizarre claim that billionaire businessman Donald Trump will cause a recession if elected to the presidency was overshadowed yesterday as Trump took deadly aim at the pathological liar’s horrifying public service track record.

For her part, Clinton glibly dismissed Trump.

“As I said yesterday in Ohio, Donald Trump offers no real solutions for the economic challenges we face,” Clinton said in a speech to the faithful in Raleigh, N.C. “He just continues to spout reckless ideas that will run up our debt and cause another economic crash.”

Around the same time, Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, laid into “Crooked Hillary” with a vigor and focus that Americans haven’t seen for a while. Trump’s speech, in which he accurately described Clinton as a “world-class liar,” was very well received and is making left-wing pundits nervous — for good reason.

Unlike Trump’s address, Clinton’s speech was a carefully constructed alternate reality held together by a tissue of leftist lies. Clinton’s oration was an economically illiterate catalog of hoary Marxist cliches, or as Dr. Bob Shillman quipped, “liar, liar, pantsuit on fire.”

Clinton offered a vague outline of her disastrous socialistic economic agenda, largely a continuation of President Obama’s anti-growth policies and tainted as it is by a focus on so-called social justice objectives at the expense of economic growth and individual rights.

She spoke nonsensically of “growth that’s strong, fair, and lasting … that reduces inequality, increases upward mobility, that reaches into every corner of our country.” To keep her union thugs happy, Clinton vowed to “say no to bad trade deals and unfair trade practices, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” and no to the “assault on the right to organize and bargain collectively.”

Ignoring the fact that she served front and center in a radically left-wing administration that over the last nearly seven and a half years has presided over the weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression, Clinton promised “to make this economy work for everybody … building it from the ground up, from every home and every community, all the way to Washington.”

Leftists like Hillary enjoy anthropomorphizing inanimate objects and abstract concepts because they can’t win policy arguments on the merits. They prefer fabricating monsters they can slay.

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N. Korea Launches 2 Missiles; White House Vows to ‘Do What We Have Done in the Past’ By Bridget Johnson

By on June 23rd, 2016

WASHINGTON — The White House confirmed today that North Korea conducted more “provocative actions” in “a flagrant violation of their international obligations.”

“U.S. Strategic Command did, in fact, detect and track what we assessed were two North Korean missile launches yesterday. The missiles were tracked over the Sea of Japan, where initial indications are that they fell,” press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the daily briefing. “NORAD was also monitoring the launches and determined that they did not pose a threat to North America.”

“But I do think that the impact of these provocations will be to only strengthen the resolve of the international community that has such serious concerns with North Korea’s behavior,” he added.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that, of the test launches of the two Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles, at least one appeared to have been unsuccessful.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the first missile was launched at 5:58 a.m. and was unsuccessful, followed by a second launch at 8:05 a.m. “The second Musudan-like missile flew about 400 km,” the JCS said without elaborating. “South Korea and the United States are carrying out an in-depth analysis on it.”

Yonhap cited military sources saying that the first missile “burst into pieces in the air after flying some 150 km.”

“The South Korean military reportedly concluded that the second missile soared to an altitude of some 1,000 kilometers, which could indicate the country has improved the performance of the Musudan missile’s engine,” the news agency added.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is believed to have watched the launches.

Pyongyang began testing the Musudan this April.

Washington’s response?”The United States will do what we have done in the past, which is work with the international community, particularly our allies in South Korea and Japan,” Earnest said. “We’ll also continue our ongoing dialogue with the Chinese and the Russians about what additional pressure can be applied to the North Koreans. And the key here will be to continue to work with our allies and partners to address this destabilizing threat in Northeast Asia.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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House Sit-In: A Brief Tutorial on How American Government Works Now By Paula Bolyard

By on June 23rd, 2016

For those of you who may still be laboring under the illusion that we live in something resembling the antiquated notion of a constitutional republic, allow me to enlighten you about how things have changed since your high school government class. Here’s how the legislative branch works now:

When the Democrats are in power they get everything they want, even if it means ramming through legislation in the middle of the night and twisting the rules until they are virtually unrecognizable. When the Republicans are in power, the Democrats still get everything they want because the Republicans basically just hand it to them to avoid being called racists or misogynists. When they don’t get what they want, Democrats throw temper tantrums and hold their breath until they get what they want. Either way, they win. Always.

This is definitely not how I learned it in government class, but trust me, this is how it works now.

Right now, House Democrats, led by 1960s civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, are staging a childish sit-in—Occupy-style—on the floor of the House because Republicans won’t cave fast enough on taking away our Second Amendment rights. (Don’t worry, Trump will be here to do it soon enough…I heard his surrogate say it on CNN tonight!) Despite the fact that the terrorist who shot up the nightclub in Orlando wasn’t on the no-fly list, the Twilight Zone-dwellers in the Democratic Party are sure, so very sure, that preventing people on the no-fly list from buying guns would have stopped the attack. (What was that Reagan said about Democrats knowing so many things that aren’t so?)
Democrats Can’t Even Get ‘Gawker’ to Support Their Stupid Sit-In

If you’re envisioning Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. when you picture this House sit-in in your mind, you’d be way off. Think a slumber party with a bunch of 7th grade girls. Our well-paid members of Congress are enjoying Starbuck’s, Chinese food, and taking many, many selfies with their friends (I wouldn’t be surprised if there are manis and pedis too!). They’ve also sent out for pillows and blankies, because you definitely need pillows if you’re going to sit on that luxurious carpet all night.

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Connecticut and Gun Control By Dave Rybarczyk (The NUTmeg state)

By on June 23rd, 2016

As a long-time resident of Connecticut, I have been patient and respectful while my representatives in Congress have railed against “gun violence” and called for new and sweeping restrictions on gun ownership. The Newtown, Connecticut, incident was tragic and, politics aside, recognition of the tragedy was appropriate and necessary.

But now they have gone too far. Senator Chris Murphy has been focused on expanding gun control to the exclusion of everything else. He led a filibuster in the Senate to highlight his position — fair enough. But after the gun-control proposals were voted down, Murphy accused Republicans of “sell[ing] weapons to ISIS.” Connecticut’s other senator, Richard Blumenthal, has been a less visible but equally engaged activist for increased gun restrictions. Congressman Jim Himes and other Connecticut representatives walked out of a moment of silence for Orlando in the House of Representatives, saying that silence mocks the victims.

To these legislators, the Orlando incident was little more than an opportunity to revive the memory of Newtown and once again advance their gun control agenda.

These people need to understand some basic truths:

1. Citizens have a natural right to own a gun. This is an unalienable right — by virtue of our right to life, liberty, and property — to defend family, self, and possessions.

2. The right to “keep and bear arms” is not granted to citizens by virtue of the Second Amendment. It is not bestowed upon us by government or by our elected representatives. Rather, it is a fundamental citizen right, and therefore one that government is morally obliged to protect for all citizens.

3. The Second Amendment exists to protect citizens from precisely the gun-rights abuses we are seeing from government today. It exists to prevent our representatives from interfering with our fundamental human right to keep (own) and bear (carry) arms, and all else that gun ownership entails (such as access to ammunition and indemnification of gun manufacturers).

4. When I need to defend my family and possessions, the police will surely be far away. Our town police force is capable and competent, the department is certified to high standards, but the town is sprawling, the force is modest, and response times are long. My representatives in government will be even farther away in the event of trouble.

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Funding Israel’s Missile Defense — and America’s By Shoshana Bryen

By on June 23rd, 2016

Congress has passed a $576 billion Defense Appropriations bill for 2016 with a wide and bipartisan majority: 282-138, according to Defense News. The Obama administration takes issue with various parts of the bill, including presenting a six-page memo specifically calling for the elimination of Congress’s allocation of $635 million for Israel.

The money for Israel includes $268.7 million in R&D for U.S.-Israel cooperative missile defense programs; $72 million for the procurement of Iron Dome; $150 million for the procurement of David’s Sling; $120 million for procurement of Arrow III; and $42.7 million for U.S.-Israel anti-tunnel cooperation.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the administration opposed the funding increase for Israel because it “would consume a growing share of a shrinking U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s budget… Additional support for Israel means fewer resources that are available for critical U.S. programs at a time when the missile threat from North Korea, in particular, is increasing.”

Here’s a thought for Adm. Kirby and the administration: Man up.

Fund U.S. missile defense programs – and the rest of the U.S. defense budget — at levels appropriate to the threat America faces without shortchanging an ally facing broad, increasing and unremitting threats.

How did we get here?

Thirty years ago, Israel was invited to join President Reagan’s missile defense program by LTG James Abrahamson, the first director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Office (SDIO). It was a serious philosophical leap for the IDF, which had until that time understood the only response to rockets and missiles to be offensive — hence escalatory. If Hizb’allah fired one at Israel; Israel fired two in return until the “international community” sought a ceasefire. Uzi Rubin, former director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO), explained in inFOCUS Quarterly:

The IDF high command was generally skeptical about the strategic value of active defense, and doubted Israel’s defense industries’ ability to master the required technologies. This skepticism was mirrored by the media and elaborated on by civilian military analysts. Only shock and dismay from missiles and rockets hitting Israel’s undefended population centers in 1991 (the Gulf War) and 2006 (the Second Lebanon War), coupled with Iron Dome’s successful defense on the Gaza front brought a change of heart…

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Peter Smith: The Platitudes of a Pantywaist President

By on June 23rd, 2016

“Unfortunately Obama is not alone. The European big three — Cameron, Hollande and Merkel — all parrot the ‘religion of peace’ hoax. Mind you, let’s put it in perspective, they don’t have the same aversion to referring to radical Islamic terrorism; and, so far as I know, have not gone so far as Obama in purging all references to the religion that dare not speak its name from the lexicon of their military and security agencies. The words Islam, sharia law, and jihad are verboten apparently. The words extremism and terrorism, and now presumably ‘thuggism’, are allowed provided they are devoid of any link to Islam. We are in serious trouble. Islamists are beheading infidels and the Commander-in-Chief is parsing his language to cloud the threat. In these circumstances, whether he offends tender sensibilities or not, Trump is what the Western world needs now. Love sweet love will have to wait for a different time.”

The only thing more certain than the next Islamist assault is the parade of world leaders who can be counted to mouth their kumbaya pieties, even as the blood is wiped off the walls. In this, if nothing else, President Obama is the undisputed world leader.
Though the roots of ISIS go back a fair way it did not begin coming to prominence until President Obama withdrew remaining US troops from Iraq in December, 2011, leaving behind, as he put it, “a sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq.” And it was after that, in April, 2013, that al-Baghdadi announced its formation. Yet, wall-to-wall conservative commentators apparently believe that defeating ISIS is the key to preventing the recent atrocities in Orlando, in San Bernardino, in Brussels, and in Paris.

Talk about memory loss. The London, Madrid, Bali and Mumbai bombings and countless other Islamist attacks occurred before ISIS was a glint in al-Baghdadi’s eye. Thomas Jefferson was fighting Muslim Tripoli pirates at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is the religion stupid! And if and when ISIS is defeated, whatever that looks like, the religion, and its integral supremacist ideology, will persist. The only permanent solution is to degrade and marginalize Islam itself so that its remaining fundamentalist adherents resemble a small group of whacko religious snake dancers.

The religion cannot be saved. It cannot be saved because its very scripture is immutable and corrupting. That’s it, full stop, no argument. Where it holds sway warped views bloom: e.g., support for sharia law, religious intolerance, the inferiority of women, death for apostasy, and for blasphemy, heresy, homosexuality and adultery. Does anyone think that is a coincidence?

Sure, external and home-grown terrorists have to be killed. But the creed of Islam has to be confronted. The made-up hateful words of Allah and the hateful sayings and doings of his earthly amanuensis Mohammed cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged and infect hundreds of millions of people, here now and still to be born. It is a plague on humanity and must be confronted as resolutely as Reagan confronted ‘the evil empire’ and all that it stood for.

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John O’Sullivan An Epitaph That Might Yet Be Written

By on June 23rd, 2016

Not to say ‘I told them so’, but in June, 1975, I wrote to lament Britain’s dismissal of old friends, traditions and, indeed, national self-esteem itself. All these years later, as UK voters make their verdict known, I yearn to hear that decades of folly and false promise are finally at an end.
On June 4, 1975, I sat down at my clattering typewriter in the offices of the Daily Telegraph in Fleet Street and embarked on a melancholy task. As one of the leader-writers opposed to Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community (as it was then called), I had been asked by editor Bill Deedes to write a fairly light account of the referendum campaign that would appear on morning of the vote. Bill said he wanted my squib to offset the solemnity of the editorial, but my suspicion was that he was a secret No voter who wanted it to offset the Telegraph’s admonition to vote Yes.

In principle Bill could have ordered a “No” editorial, but pressure from the establishment for an endorsement of Britain’s EU membership was so overwhelming in 1975 that it would have seemed eccentric, unpatriotic, even treasonous. So I read through “the files” of the previous month and started bashing it out:

From the Establishment and the respectable anti-Establishment, from the Economist and the New Statesman, from the Lord Feather [of the TUC] and Mr Campbell Adamson [of the CBI], from Mr Wilson and Mr Heath, from the Royal Commission Volunteers to “Actors and Actresses for Europe”, from the farthest reaches of the civilized West End, the same advice, the same dire predictions of life outside the Market (“God, it was hell out there in 1972”), the same comforting assurances of a bright future inside, less ecstatic admittedly than similar forecasts before we had entered (“Come in, come in, the water’s lukewarm”) have been proclaimed with an almost religious fervour.

Religion itself had been conscripted for the European cause. The Bishop of London, preaching in St Paul’s, had said that those concerned about sovereignty were guilty of the heresy “My Country Right or Wrong” which was “essentially selfish and inward-looking”. As for Big Business, that spoke with one voice: the CBI’s Ralph Bateman declared that it would be “madness” to leave the EEC, and Mr Barrie Heath told the workers at Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds that membership of the EEC was not a political issue at all.

“Is he Sir Barrie?” asked Mr Enoch Powell, the leading right-wing campaigner for a No vote. “No? Well, he soon will be.” He was too—given a knighthood three years later “for services to exporting”.

Australia played a discreet part too:

There was a commendable reluctance on the part of overseas dignitaries to interfere in Britain’s internal political arguments. Mr Gough Whitlam, for instance, revealed how he had virtuously resisted the blandishments of certain anti-Marketeers to call for Britain’s withdrawal. Why had he refused? Because he did not wish Britain to lapse into the sad decline of Spain, he declared in neutral Australian tones.

But that, of course, might have been delivered in the spirit of “Let them have what they want—good and hard” in revenge for Heath’s betrayal of the Antipodes and the Commonwealth in the European negotiations. At least I sort of hope so.

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Why Is the U.S. Embracing Iran – AGAIN? by Peter Huessy

By on June 23rd, 2016

“You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans,” Ayatollah Khomeini said, and promised to President Jimmy Carter that Iran would be a “tolerant democracy.”

Although the State Department has in its just released annual report on world-wide terror designated Iran as the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, the Obama administration has assisted Iranian militias in Iraq with air support, provided intelligence to Hezbollah’s allies on Israeli air strikes, and has steadfastly refused to use any military force against any elements of the Assad regime.

America is apparently bent on repeating — yet again — the historic wrong turn it took in 1979 by once again embracing the radical Islamic regime in Iran. Why would the U.S. administration think doing the same thing again will have a different outcome?

Senior leaders from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are in Washington, meeting with top U.S. diplomatic and defense officials, and are deeply concerned America has significantly worsened the situation in the Middle East by creating a “strategic partnership” with Iran.

Thirty-seven years ago, former American President Carter paved the way for Iran’s Islamic theocratic dictatorship to come to power according to newly declassified secret documents, reports the BBC Persian News Service. The documents show that former President Carter pledged to “hold back” the Iranian military from attempting a coup, which would have prevented the return of the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from France.

The documents also reveal that the Carter administration believed –erroneously– that bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini into power in Iran, and in the process abandoning the Shah, would preserve American interests, keep the Soviets out of the region, protect U.S. allies, and ensure the flow of oil to the world’s industrial nations.

In one of his many messages to President Jimmy Carter, Khomeini played into that belief. “You will see we are not in any particular animosity with the Americans,” Khomeini said and promised that Iran would be a “tolerant democracy.”

Unfortunately, the mullahs did not stop their terrorist ways; and the U.S. government, through successive administrations, did not stopped them, either.

The Reagan administration, for example, deployed “peacekeepers” to Lebanon under Congressionally mandated rules of engagement that, tragically, only facilitated the Iranian- and Syrian-directed bombings of the U.S. Beirut Marine barracks and embassy.

Then, the Clinton administration refused to lift an arms embargo and provide weapons to Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, ensuring that Iranian weapons and influence would fill the void.

The result of decades of the U.S. policy in Iran is that since Islamic terrorists took power in Tehran in 1979, Iran has murdered thousands of Americans[1] in addition to those killed in the bombings in Lebanon, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the African embassies, and the World Trade Towers in New York.

U.S. court decisions have so far held Iran responsible for more than $50 billion in damages owed to American citizens for these terror attacks directed by the mullahs and their terrorist proxies.

America’s military has also suffered. Thousands of American and allied soldiers have been killed and maimed by Iranian Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) in Iraq and Afghanistan.[2]

It could be argued that the United States has at times had to make deals with unsavory countries. It was allied with the Soviet Union, for instance, in the fight to destroy Nazism in World War II. So, the thinking might go, a genuine agreement to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program might require some compromise and thus a type of “partnership”.

The Obama administration has, in fact, sought to justify its embrace of Iran by citing the assumed benefits from a nuclear agreement with Iran.[3] But the current “nuclear deal” with Iran is not a real agreement. The Iranians never signed it.

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Obama’s Fracking Comeuppance A judge he appointed rebukes an anti-drilling regulation as lawless.

By on June 23rd, 2016

Another day, another judicial rebuke to President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law. On Wednesday a federal judge struck down an oil and gas drilling rule imposed with no statutory authority.

In 2015 the Bureau of Land Management published new regulations about well construction and water management for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that takes place on federal and Indian lands. The BLM asserted “broad authority” to control oil and gas operations on the basis of laws that were passed in 1920, 1930, 1938, 1976 and 1982 and were allegedly ambiguous. Thus the agency said it deserved the benefit of the interpretive doubt that the courts call Chevron deference.

Abusing Chevron is an Obama specialty. But BLM’s overreach was notably egregious because Congress passed an energy law in 2005 that stripped the executive branch of fracking jurisdiction and gave that power to the states.

The BLM argued that Congress’s choice didn’t matter because the bureau wasn’t mentioned by name in the 2005 law. That claim inspired Judge Scott Skavdahl of Wyoming—an Obama appointee—to conduct a remedial seminar in the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under the BLM argument, Judge Skavdahl writes, “there would be no limit to the scope or extent of congressionally delegated authority BLM has. . . . Having explicitly removed the only source of specific federal agency authority over fracking, it defies common sense for the BLM to argue that Congress intended to allow it to regulate the same activity under a general statute that says nothing about hydraulic fracturing.”

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