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2016

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Les Déplorables Hillary Clinton names the five phobias of Donald Trump’s political supporters. By Daniel Henninger

By on September 15th, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s comment that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”—a heck of a lot of phobia for anyone to lug around all day—puts back in play what will be seen as one of the 2016 campaign’s defining forces: the revolt of the politically incorrect.

They may not live at the level of Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” but it was only a matter of time before les déplorables—our own writhing mass of unheard Americans—rebelled against the intellectual elites’ ancien régime of political correctness.
It remains to be seen what effect Hillary’s five phobias will have on the race, which tightened even before these remarks and Pneumonia-gate. The two events produced one of Mrs. Clinton’s worst weeks in opposite ways.

As with the irrepressible email server, Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her infirmity—“I feel great,” the pneumonia-infected candidate said while hugging a little girl—deepened the hole of distrust she lives in. At the same time, her dismissal, at Barbra Streisand’s LGBT fundraiser, of uncounted millions of Americans as deplorables had the ring of genuine belief.

Perhaps sensing that public knowledge of what she really thinks could be a political liability, Mrs. Clinton went on to describe “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them . . . and they’re just desperate for change.”

She is of course describing the people in Charles Murray’s recent and compelling book on cultural disintegration among the working class, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” This is indeed the bedrock of the broader Trump base.

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The Burkini Ban Protects Women — a Daniel Greenfield Moment

By on September 15th, 2016

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed The Burkini Ban Protects Women, explaining why France’s burkini ban is right.

Don’t miss it!

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Engraved in Stone by Tabitha Korol

By on September 14th, 2016

The Children of Abraham of the Southern Tier, an interfaith organization in Johnson City, has taken offense at the 9/11 memorial raised in the nearby Town of Owego, New York. This association of misguided multiculturalists and Muslim moderates allege that identifying the perpetrators of the worst individual act of aggression on American soil would encourage Muslim hatred, never once excoriating the very act that resulted in the death and injury to more than 3,000 American victims and 453 responders and boundless grief for their families and for all Americans.

Did the moderates ever attempt to apologize for the horrific crime that forced people to jump to their death rather than be burned alive? Did they express their sorrow for the victims and heroic rescue workers, or atone in a way to benefit the families that suffered such tragic loss? Do they even acknowledge that Islamic terrorists continue their march of evil, putting America and Europe on high alert for 9/11, or that this was part of Islam’s perpetual holy war against every living being on the planet. No. And the city manager’s overtures were also snubbed.

The Muslim residents of Johnson City may be moderates who never take up a lethal weapon for Allah, but they are engaging in a subtle act of civilizational or settlement jihad. Such people are comparatively discreet in Western society, going about their lives inconspicuously, but effecting regime changes in gradual increments. By their refusal to acknowledge the obvious links between Islam and 9/11, they shield those who spew hatred against America, Israel and democracy; they empower the academics and students who vilify Israel and Jewish students on campus, and they facilitate the crossing of borders for hijra (conquest by increased population). Under the guise of injured sensibilities, they insist on the removal of anything that may identify those who pursue our destruction and conquest with Islam, hoping to erase the ugly truth that fourteen centuries of barbarism continues unabated in every country where Islam is found.

They would have us believe that a tiny minority is to blame, but a recent Pew Research poll shows that 51 percent of American Muslims choose to be governed by sharia; 30% believe it is legitimate to use violence against those who insult Muhammed, the Koran, or Islam; 25 percent believe violence against Americans can be justified as part of the global jihad; and nearly 20% believe the use of violence in the US is justified in order to make sharia the law of the land. When presented with a choice when sharia conflicts with the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, 33% say sharia should be supreme. That’s some minority! Politically, 48% are Democrats, 19 percent Independents, and 19 percent Republicans.

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Vanderbilt: Share and Ask Pronouns When Making Introductions ‘Even to Familiar Colleagues and Students’ By Katherine Timpf

By on September 14th, 2016

Vanderbilt University is asking faculty to tell everyone they meet on campus which pronouns they prefer and to ask other people to tell them theirs, even when dealing with “familiar colleagues and students.”

“When introducing yourself, offer your name and pronouns — even to familiar colleagues and students,” asks a poster created by the school’s Faculty Senate Gender Inclusivity Task Force. “Offer your name and pronoun in faculty meetings, committees, and other spaces where students may not be present.”

The poster also gives faculty several examples of how to do this:

“I’m Steve and I use he/him/his pronouns. What should I call you?” and “My pronouns are they/them/theirs. What should I call you?”

Now, personally, I consider it showing basic respect to call people by the pronouns that they choose to use, and I believe that people who choose to use pronouns that might be different from what people might expect should feel comfortable sharing that with others.

This policy, though, makes no sense for one glaring reason: Why the hell would people who are already “familiar” with each other have to share and ask their pronouns when making introductions? After all, at least in most cases, I’m sure that being “familiar” with someone would mean you already know this kind of basic information about them. Certainly, anyone even remotely “familiar” with me would already know that I’m a cisgender woman who uses the pronouns “she/her/hers.” What on earth could be the benefit of pressuring a person to have to ask “What should I call you?” if that person already knows?

What’s more, the poster also advises faculty to include their pronouns in their email signatures, and MRCTV reports that it has also started listing preferred pronouns on faculty member’s nameplates — and knowing about these two suggestions makes the suggestion for an automatic, without-exception pronoun discussion upon meeting even more ridiculous. After all, an email exchange or walking past a person’s office and seeing the nameplate are excellent examples of how people might already be “familiar” with each other before actually having made “introductions.” If two people on Vanderbilt’s campus — people who were following all of the school’s pronoun-related suggestions — found themselves in this situation, they would already know that person’s pronouns before meeting. In order to continue to follow the guidelines, however, they would still have to ask — because it specifies that being “familiar” is no excuse.

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Hillary’s Health Is a Valid Issue By concealing the truth, Camp Clinton turned a minor issue into the biggest story of the week. By Jonah Goldberg

By on September 14th, 2016

One of the most amusing spectacles of this election season has been the whipsawing of the loyalists. Repeatedly, spinners for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been sent out to hammer this or that talking point, only to be left holding the bag when the candidate goes another way.

So far, Trump has been narrowly ahead in this important competition. But after Sunday, Clinton may have taken the lead.

For weeks, the official position of the chattering classes was that any inquiry into Clinton’s health was “sexist.”

As Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on September 2, “I have seen her personally. You’ve seen her personally, Andrea. She is in shape. She is strong. She just has a ton of energy. And I find this actually quite sexist when these guys are saying this. I think that that is not an issue at all and the American voters know that.”

Glamour magazine ran an item headlined, “Yes, It’s Sexist to Speculate about Hillary Clinton’s Health.”

Last week, Clinton herself was asked if discussion of her health was sexist. She replied with a long, ironic “hmmmmmm” that typified her gift for political subtlety and nuance.

The same day, the headline for Chris Cillizza’s Washington Post column captured the prevailing attitude: “Can We Just Stop Talking about Hillary Clinton’s Health Now?”

Five days later, after Clinton’s near-collapse at Ground Zero, another Cillizza column carried this headline: “Hillary Clinton’s Health Just Became a Real Issue in the Presidential Campaign.”

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Following The Clinton Playbook On Hillary’s Health Secrecy The Democratic candidate’s brazen contempt for the public. Joseph Klein

By on September 14th, 2016

According to the Clinton campaign, Hillary is currently ill with pneumonia. That much we finally learned on Sunday, hours after she suddenly left the 9/11 memorial ceremony she was attending at Ground Zero. She had to be escorted away to her daughter Chelsea’s Manhattan apartment to recover from what her campaign spokesperson first described as an “overheated” condition. At the time of the incident, the temperature outside was approximately 80 degrees, with relatively low humidity.

The press traveling with Hillary was first kept in the dark. Had not a video captured her nearly stumbling and being held up to prevent her from falling as she was helped into a van, Hillary’s campaign might not have admitted that anything was wrong at all. Only towards the end of the day did her doctor disclose that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia last Friday.

Health is normally a private matter. If Bill or Chelsea Clinton had taken ill, for example, it would be none of our business what was wrong. But Hillary Clinton is running to become the next president and commander-in-chief of the United States. Physical and mental fitness for performance of the duties of the highest and most demanding job in the land is a legitimate public concern. When one runs for the presidency of the United States, the public has a right to know, before they vote, whether the candidates asking for their votes are likely to be capable of performing under intense stress for at least the next four years.

Doubts about Hillary Clinton’s health were already making the rounds on the Internet and cable TV before this latest episode. Such doubts have been fueled by her prolonged coughing fits, stumbles, fainting spells, a concussion and self-proclaimed memory lapses regarding briefings on the handling of classified information while she was Secretary of State. The Clinton campaign and her supporters have tried to label those who have raised legitimate questions regarding Hillary’s health as conspiracists. Clinton aides had gone so far as to belittle a reporter for saying that Hillary looked “low energy” and sounded “absolutely exhausted” at her press conference last Friday and even issued a veiled threat that the reporter’s job was in jeopardy. The reporter had the temerity to tweet: “I half expect her to slump over and collapse any second now.” Nick Merrill, Clinton’s traveling press secretary, tweeted the reporter the message: “delete your account.”

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Anti-Semite in the Classroom The disturbing case of a Jew-hating professor at Oberlin College. John Perazzo

By on September 14th, 2016

Joy Karega, an assistant professor who teaches rhetoric and composition at Oberlin College in Ohio, is a passionate, proud, committed Jew-hater. So profound is this hatred, and so deep is Karega’s need to broadcast it to the world, that she has been unable to restrain herself from littering her own Facebook page with all sorts of anti-Semitic scrawlings.

In December 2014, for example, Karega posted a photograph of the Jewish billionaire banker Jacob Rothschild, with accompanying text that read: “We [Jews] own nearly every central bank in the world. We financed both sides of every war since Napoleon. We own your news, the media, your oil and your government.”

The following month, Karega quoted a conspiracy-theory blog that blamed Israel for the July 2014 downing of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet, an incident that killed 298 people. The text which Karega excerpted from the blog cited “the Rothschild-led banksters” who, having been “exposed and hated and out of economic options to stave off the coming global deflationary depression,” were now “implementing the World War III option.” “It seems obvious,” added Karega, “that the same people behind the massacre in Gaza are behind the shooting down” of the Malaysian plane. Contrary to Karega’s delusions, however, a subsequent investigation concluded that the aircraft had probably been struck by a Russian-made missile.

But hey, Professor Karega still had lots of other things she could blame on the Jews. On January 13, 2015—a mere six days after two masked jihadists armed with AK-47s and shouting “Allahu Akbar” had murdered twelve people in the Paris headquarters of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo—Karega posted an image of an ISIL/ISIS terrorist removing, from his own head, a mask resembling the face of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The terrorist’s forearm bore a tattoo of the Star of David and the words “JSIL Israel”—an acronym for “Jewish State In the Levant,” meant to convey the notion that Israel is the moral equivalent of the bloodthirsty barbarians of ISIL (Islamic State In the Levant). The text superimposed on the image read, “France wants to free Palestine? Time for a false flag …” In other words, the Paris massacre was an Israeli operation designed to turn public opinion against Muslims in the Palestinian Territories. “Folks who turn off the indoctrinated media and do their homework,” Karega wrote, know where Charlie Hebdo receives its support and backing.”

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North Korea and the Delusions of International Diplomacy The high cost of clinging to our superstitions and myths about our superior knowledge. Bruce Thornton

By on September 14th, 2016

Last week North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test, this one a 10-kiloton, miniaturized warhead that can be put on a missile. If North Korean claims are true, this successful test, along with the 20 long-range missile tests conducted this year, shows that a rogue thug state is on the brink of being able to send a nuclear-tipped missile as far as Chicago. President Obama responded with the usual empty diplomatic bluster, threatening “additional significant steps, including new sanctions to demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to its unlawful and dangerous actions.” Once again, the magical thinking of international diplomacy puts our national interests and security in mortal danger.

We’re well beyond a century’s worth of the delusional idealism of what historian Corelli Barnett calls “moralizing internationalism.” This is the notion that non-violent diplomatic “engagement,” economic sanctions, and transnational covenants and institutions like the U.N. can deter or stop aggression without a credible threat to use force.

A particularly surreal version of this stubborn belief appeared in early 1914, in the British National Peace Council Peace Yearbook:

Peace, the babe of the nineteenth century, is the strong youth of the twentieth century; for War, the product of anarchy and fear, is passing away under the growing and persistent pressure of world organization, economic necessity, human intercourse, and that change of spirit, that social sense and newer aspect of worldwide life which is the insistent note, the Zeitgeist of the age.

A few months later the world exploded into the gruesome carnage wrought by trench warfare, machine guns, poison gas, and a billion artillery shells fired. Despite that horrific lesson, the victors, still in thrall to the same internationalist delusions, created the League of Nations. The League spent twenty years in diplomatic chatter, feeble sanctions, and feckless appeasement that culminated in 60 million dead in World War II. Followed, of course by the creation of the U.N., yet another feckless and corrupt manifestation of historical amnesia.

Seventy years later we still haven’t learned anything. The history of the West’s attempts to keep North Korea from acquiring a nuclear weapon is a depressing chronicle of diplomatic failure. Consider just two years of that history:

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Confusion, muddle, obfuscation and racism by Paul Driessen

By on September 14th, 2016

Winston Churchill called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We could say Obama’s energy and climate policy is confusion wrapped in muddled thinking inside obfuscation – and driven by autocratic diktats that bring job-killing, economy-strangling, racist and deadly outcomes.

President Obama was recently in China, where his vainglorious arrival turned into an inglorious snub, when he had to use Air Force 1’s rear exit. He was there mostly to join Chinese President Xi Jinping and UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, to formally sign the Paris climate treaty that Mr. Obama insists is not a treaty (and thus does not require Senate “advice and consent” under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) because it is not binding – yet.

However, once it has been “signed and delivered” by 55 nations representing 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it will be hailed as binding. China and the US alone represent 38% of total emissions, so adding a few more big nations (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan and Germany, eg) would reach the emission threshold. Adding a bunch of countries that merely want their “fair share” of the billions of dollars in annual climate “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” cash would hit the country minimum.

Few if any developing nations will reduce their oil, natural gas or coal use anytime soon. That would be economic and political suicide. In fact, China and India plan to build some 1,600 new coal-fired power plants by 2030, Japan 43, Turkey 80, Poland a dozen, and the list goes on and on, around the globe.

Meanwhile, the United States is shutting down its coal-fueled units. Under Obama’s treaty, the USA will be required to go even further, slashing its carbon dioxide emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. That will unleash energy, economic and environmental impacts far beyond what the Administration’s endless, baseless climate decrees are already imposing.

Federal agencies constantly harp on wildly exaggerated and fabricated “social costs of carbon” – but completely and deliberately ignore the incredible benefits of carbon-based energy.

The battle is now shifting to natural gas – methane. Hillary Clinton and Democrats promise to regulate drilling and fracking into oblivion on federal lands. California regulators are targeting cow flatulence!

EPA continues to expand ethanol requirements, even though this fuel additive reduces mileage, damages small engines, uses acreage equivalent to Iowa, requires enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticides, gasoline, methane and diesel fuel – and releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it removes.

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More U.S. Ransom Payments to Iran Revealed by Fred Fleitz

By on September 14th, 2016

The Obama administration finally admitted that, in addition to the $400 million in foreign currency secretly flown to Iran on January 17, 2016, it also sent Iran two more planeloads of $1.3 billion in cash over the following 19 days.

Since these payments coincided with the release of four Americans illegally held by Iran, they have been widely condemned as ransom. The Obama administration disputes this and claims that the payments were to settle a U.S. debt to Iran incurred during the rule of the Shah. However, after initially insisting there was no link between the $400 million payment and the release of the Americans, the administration said on August 18 that it delayed this payment as leverage to ensure that Iran would release the U.S. prisoners.

The additional payments were an open secret in Washington ever since an August 22 New York Sun article by Claudia Rosett revealed 13 transfers of $99,999,999.99 from the Treasury Department to the State Department’s “Judgment Fund” (a fund used to resolve foreign claims) on January 19, 2016, to pay an undisclosed foreign claim. Rosett wrote that the State Department acknowledged in letters to Congress in March that the United States paid $1.3 billion out of the Judgment Fund to Iran as interest on the $400 million payment but did not explain how this money was paid.

The administration continues to peddle the preposterous claim that that the $1.7 billion payment was not linked to the prisoner release and was paid to resolve a dispute pending before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal at The Hague. Obama administration officials maintain that this payment may have saved the U.S. taxpayer billions because the court was likely to order the United States to pay a much larger settlement. These claims are so ridiculous that even liberal late-night host Stephen Colbert mocked the administration for making them, saying that “a lot of people are saying this sounds like ransom because they know what the word ‘ransom’ means.”

Many Republican Congressmen insist that these payments set a dangerous precedent of normalizing the payment of ransoms to a state sponsor of terror. Senator Marco Rubio yesterday introduced the “No Ransom Act” to prohibit the federal government from paying ransom to Iran. The bill would also stop any further payments to Iran from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund until Iran returns the ransom money it received and pays the American victims of Iranian terrorism what they are owed, a sum estimated to be $53 billion. Rubio’s bill is co-sponsored by Republicans senators Cornyn, Kirk, Ayotte, Barrasso, Capito, Scott, Burr, Johnson, Fischer, Cotton, Perdue, Collins, Isakson, Risch, and Heller. Congressman Mike Pompeo introduced the same bill in the House and will be joined by many GOP co-sponsors.

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