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2016

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CUI BONO BY MARILYN PENN

By on August 31st, 2016

The media coverage blares that Anthony Weiner has been “at it again” – sexting to women, this time with his 4 year old son next to him in bed. But the date on the text tells a different story; this actually occurred more than a year ago on July 31, 2015. Why then has it just been splashed across front pages and tv screens? The eponymous legal title – Latin for who benefits – may offer some plausible explanations.

After last week’s revelations of Huma Abedin’s pivotal role in arranging for various international donors to the Clinton Foundation to receive consideration and favors from our Secretary of State, it became necessary to deflect negative criticism of both her and her boss. What better way to turn Huma into an object of sympathy than to make her the ongoing victim of a serial sexual pervert. It worked well for Mrs. Clinton when the news reported Bill’s novel use of a cigar with Monica Lewinsky, turning him into someone far less palatable to mainstream America than a routine adulterer and shooing Hillary into her victorious election as senator from a state to which she was barely connected. Anyone who has seen the documentary of Weiner, released this year, would have reason to question the judgment of Ms. Abedin, not only for staying married to a man who cannot control his sexual cravings or his temper when baited by hecklers, but for her acquiescence in allowing their young son to be photographed as a prop to make both father and mother appear more wholesome. Even publicity-hungry celebrities in our Kardashian-crazed culture draw the line at letting their innocent children be photographed or filmed. One watched this documentary wondering why nobody called Child Protective Services, something which has suddenly been mentioned after the release of the sext in the current spotlight.

Politicos understand that it’s better to control your candidate’s negative publicity pre-emptively – in this case, before the debates begin and with sufficient lead time to insure that a fickle public will have forgotten all this by November. Huma needed a divestment from her unsavory husband so that Hillary would not be tarnished with the hangover from Bill’s sordid pecadilloes just before voters pulled the election levers. End of August is traditionally a time when many Americans are on vacation, not reading the daily papers and less concerned with the daily ritual of watching the news on tv. In two weeks’ time, this will all be stale and Huma will be the aggrieved little woman who stood by her man until he left her no choice. The truth is that we don’t know whether Anthony Weiner has continued with his exhibitionistic perversions since July, 2015 – we only know that the Post dug up an old picture and smeared it across its front page to divert our interest from Huma’s role in Hillary’s sordid and illegal involvement with many foreign interests, not to mention her foundation’s enormous monetary gain from this indefensible pay for play.

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Hands of Stone By Steve Feinstein

By on August 31st, 2016

Let me cut right to the chase here — this is a great movie.

Hands of Stone is a movie about the great Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran, active from the 1970’s until his retirement in 2002, at age 50.

I almost didn’t see this movie, despite my intense interest in 1960’s-2000 boxing, which was the Ali-Frazier-Duran-Leonard-Hagler-Holmes-Tyson-Holyfield golden era of the sport. Stone received many mediocre reviews prior to its release and I said to my wife, “Let’s skip it.” She said, “No. I’ve heard some good reviews and besides, most of the negative reviews are from people who know nothing about boxing or its history. We should see this.”

As usual, she was completely, totally right. Like the 2000 movie Ali starring Will Smith, Hands of Stone gets all the important things correct and captures the essence and manner of the main character perfectly. Duran grew up on the streets of Panama’s slums, using boxing as a way out. He earned the nickname Hands of Stone early on, because of his ability to hit so hard, in spite of his small stature (a 5’ 7” 135-lb lightweight).

After coming to the U.S, a string of impressive wins put him in line for a title fight against highly regarded lightweight champion Ken Buchannan of Scotland in September 1972. Buchannan was no match for Duran’s relentless aggression, and Duran won after the fight was stopped following the 13th round, with Buchannan faking having taken a low blow, claiming he couldn’t continue. What a prophetic and ironic way this would prove to be for Duran to win the title. The referee rightly discounted Buchannan’s hollow claim and awarded the fight to Duran on a technical knockout (a TKO in boxing terminology).

In 1976, the U.S. Olympic boxing team won an unprecedented five gold medals in Montreal, a team featuring the soon-to-be famous Spinks brothers (Michael and Leon). The star of the team, however, was unquestionably the charismatic and telegenic Ray Leonard, who took the nickname of a former boxing great “Sugar,” after Sugar Ray Robinson. A new generation of sports fans now knew only of ‘Sugar Ray’ Leonard.

Turning professional right after the Olympic Games ended, Leonard proved that his talents and abilities as a boxer were truly special. His articulate manner and sharp wit — along with his handsome looks and cool demeanor — reminded many people of the previous boxing generation’s big attraction, Muhammad Ali. That he was trained/managed by the same person as Ali (Angelo Dundee) and hyped by boxing’s biggest broadcaster (Howard Cosell) as was Ali, only added to that perception. Leonard was boxing’s big draw, in an era when boxing enjoyed perhaps its greatest popularity and — because of satellite broadcast technology — its biggest worldwide audience.

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Guilt by Association, Real vs Imagined By Karin McQuillan

By on August 31st, 2016

Hillary Clinton would have us believe that Trump is a scary member of the white supremacist radical fringe. Democrats are happy to believe her, even though Trump has zero relationship with hate groups. None, nada, zilch. Their only evidence is gotcha questions from liberal reporters asking Trump to repudiate David Duke over and over, tarring him by association. But there is no association, except in liberal minds that see Republicans, that is, the majority of whites in this country, as hate-filled kooks.

In contrast, Hillary actually does support BLM, a racist organization that promotes murder of whites. She repeats the cop-killing lie that we have a racist justice system. This lie was first promulgated by President Obama before the Zimmerman trail because Obama was hemorrhaging black voters during his 2012 e-election bid. Hillary is repeating it for the same cynical purpose.

We are living through the results — cops afraid to police high crime neighborhoods, leaving their residents to be murdered. Now cops being assassinated in cold blood.

Hillary has blood on her hands, destroying the country with this demagoguery. There is no institutionalized police racism. There are have no facts on her side, just a false abuse of statistics.

Yet Hillary keeps piling on her accusations that Americans are racist. She has ginned up black fear, pain and victimization for her political benefit and provided legitimacy to the anti-cop radicals. Hundreds of black lives have been lost as a result. Real lives, real people, real dead.

Hillary’s support of BLM and other radical left groups is not new or out of character. This is not guilt by association, but actual associations.

Hillary actually was an acolyte of Marxist Saul Alinsky, whom she idolized. Young Hillary was thrilled to meet personally with Alinsky, a meeting so successful that he offered her a job at his Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

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The Populist Revolt Against Failure What erodes faith in the ruling class are bungled wars, uneven growth and insecurity. By William A. Galston

By on August 31st, 2016

The populist revolt against governing elites sweeping advanced democracies is the latest chapter in the oldest political story. Every society, regardless of its form of government, has a ruling class. The crucial question is whether elites rule in their own interest or for the common good.

In the decades after World War II, the ruling classes in Western Europe and the U.S. managed their economies and social policies in ways that improved the well-being of the overwhelming majority of their citizens. In return, citizens accorded elites a measure of deference. Trust in government was high.

These ruling classes weren’t filled by the traditional aristocracy, and only partly by the wealthy. As time passed, educated professionals assumed the leading role. Many came from relatively humble backgrounds, but they attended the best schools and formed enduring networks with fellow students.

Some were economists, others specialists in public policy and administration, still others scientists whose contributions to the war effort translated into peacetime prestige. Many were lawyers able to train their honed analytical powers on governance. They were, in a term coined in the late 1950s, the “meritocracy.”

In some human endeavors, meritocratic claims are largely unproblematic. In sports, we celebrate the excellence of those who win. In the sciences, peer review identifies accomplishment; most people in each specialty can name the handful of individuals likely to win the Nobel Prize.

Politics, especially in democracies, is more complicated. Democratic equality stands in tension with hierarchical claims of every type, including merit. In a letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson characterized elections as the best way of elevating the “natural aristoi” into positions of authority. He had in mind people like himself, liberally educated and trained in the subtle art of governance.

This view didn’t survive the 1820s, when Andrew Jackson led a popular revolt against it. Alleging that a “corrupt bargain” among elites had cheated him out of the presidency in 1824, he swept to a victory in 1828 that he portrayed as a triumph for the common man—farmers, craftsmen, sturdy pioneers—against the moneyed interests. Ever since, the trope of the virtuous people against the self-dealing elites has endured in American politics.

Yet this is more than an American story. In democracies, meritocracy will always be on the defensive. Its legitimacy will always depend on its performance—its ability to provide physical security and broadly shared prosperity, as well as to conduct foreign policy and armed conflict successfully. When it fails to deliver, all bets are off. CONTINUE AT SITE

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State Department Says 30-Odd Hillary Clinton Emails Could Be Linked to Benghazi Messages were among the 15,000 emails turned over by the FBIBy Byron Tau

By on August 31st, 2016

WASHINGTON—The State Department said Tuesday it has found approximately 30 emails from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s account that could be related to the 2012 attacks on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

The new documents were found among the roughly 15,000 emails forensically recovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from Mrs. Clinton’s personal email server as part of its investigation into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information.

Those emails were turned over to the State Department in the wake of the FBI probe, which resulted in no charges against Mrs. Clinton earlier this year. The messages are expected to be made public in the coming months.

The State Department couldn’t say how many of the 30-odd emails previously have been made public, raising the possibility that some were among the 55,000 pages of emails already provided to the State Department by Mrs. Clinton’s attorneys and released to the public. The department also couldn’t say with any certainty that the identified messages were related to the Benghazi attacks.

“Using broad search terms, we have identified approximately 30 documents potentially responsive to a Benghazi-related request. At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive, or whether they are duplicates of materials already provided to the Department by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

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Names—Like ‘America First’ or ‘Progressive’—Have Histories Neither Donald Trump nor anti-Israel boycotters can duck the political origin of their campaign slogans. By Cynthia Ozick

By on August 31st, 2016

It was recently revealed that Donald Trump’s family, immigrants from Germany, chose early on to live a lie: They called themselves Swedes. There is more pathos than blame in this deceit. After all, they were by then established Americans residing in Queens, N.Y., far from the venomous swastikas of Munich. Understandably, they were in fear of stigma, much as today a Muslim immigrant from, say, Sri Lanka might dread being associated with the Islamists of Hamas.

Yet Mr. Trump’s heritage of self-conscious deception discloses something else. His choice of “America First” as a slogan to inspire is unlikely to have been made out of innocence, and still less out of ignorance. Historical amnesia—a later generation having forgotten the Lindbergh era and its prevailing nativism, including anti-Semitism—in this instance cannot apply. He knew the phrase well. Responsibility for the baleful implications of Charles Lindbergh’s cry of “America First” was exactly what those fake Swedes were hoping to evade.

Names, like families, have histories. Academics, particularly the historians among them, and writers (not omitting the journalists) who term themselves “progressives” are hardly invoking the admirable but nearly eclipsed Robert La Follette, the Wisconsin reformer of the early 20th century who founded an ephemeral American party of that name. Not unlike Mr. Trump when he pretends that “America First” is an expression new-born and pure, they mean to offer the label they flaunt as altogether free of the impress of the past.

It cannot be done, at least not naively. No name is a vacant well. For thinking citizens who are reluctant to toss history into Orwell’s memory hole, these self-defined progressives carry, willy-nilly, the tainted name of those earlier progressives, Stalin’s fellow travelers, who were willfully blind to the reality of the Great Promise and its gulags and show trials. What’s in a name? The date and place and meaning of its birth. And as a German is not a Swede, so is a progressive not a La Follette.

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Jason Riley:Trump’s Immigration Shift Is a Winner The older whites cheering for walls and deportation don’t represent most of the GOP, let alone the country.

By on August 31st, 2016

It’s anyone’s guess where Donald Trump really stands these days on illegal immigration. Even Donald Trump may not know for certain, which is why the Republican presidential nominee apparently feels compelled to clarify his stance in a speech scheduled for Wednesday.

Given the centrality of immigration to Mr. Trump’s presidential run, this ambiguity is noteworthy. No one puzzled over where Ronald Reagan stood on tax cuts or defense spending 10 weeks before Election Day in 1980. Barack Obama’s health-care ambitions were unwavering and clear to all in August 2008. If you knew nothing else about Mr. Trump’s candidacy this year, it was that he vowed to wall off the southern border and remove every cotton-pickin’ foreign national here illegally. Until the past week or so, that is.

To be accurate, skepticism about Mr. Trump’s sincerity on deportation isn’t new. In February, BuzzFeed reported that the candidate had told the New York Times in an off-the-record interview that his views on expelling illegal immigrants were more flexible than he had let on. Asked about the story, Mr. Trump allowed that “everything’s negotiable” but declined the Times’s offer to Since then, Mr. Trump’s immigration shift has became more overt. In November he was proposing a “deportation force” to hunt down the undocumented. Last week, however, he said that giving millions of people the boot is impractical and that enforcement should focus on “the bad ones”—which is the Obama administration’s policy. For those who obey the law and contribute to society, Mr. Trump says that no citizenship should be offered and opposes “amnesty as such.” But if they “pay back taxes” he would be willing to “work with them.” Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio ought to sue for plagiarism.

The weekend brought more confusion. Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, told CNN that “there’ll be no path to legalization, no path to citizenship unless people leave the country.” But when Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was asked by Fox News whether her candidate still supported mass deportation, she answered that his approach was “softening.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Some Observations From the Man Who Created Alt-Right An intellectual movement that Democrats want to use to smear Breitbart and Trump. Paul Gottfried

By on August 30th, 2016

Editor’s note: Frontpage’s recent article by Matthew Vadum, The Alt-Right is Coming! Hillary Shrieks, exposed the dishonest nature of Hillary’s and the Left’s slanderous attacks on Trump, Breitbart and the “Alt-Right,” revealing that the situation is far more complicated than their smear campaign would suggest. For instance, Clinton and leftists blame individuals such Richard Spencer for the Alt-Right, but it was Dr. Paul Gottfried, Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Elizabethtown College, who actually invented the term for the movement. Below we are publishing Gottfried’s account of the narrative to help clarify matters for our readers.

Last week I was reminded by a call from Associated Press that I had invented the term “Alternative Right.” When I asked about how I had accomplished that, the woman on the other end of the phone referred to a speech I had given in November 2008 in which I urged the creation of an “Alternative Right.” The same caller said that I was considered the “godfather” of what had become Altright, something that the Democratic presidential candidate would be denouncing later in the week. Thereupon I tried to explain in what modest ways I may have inspired the movement that Hillary was about to go after (namely, in a quadrennial ritual in presidential races in which the Democratic candidate accuses her GOP rival of being the second coming of Adolf Hitler).

I pointed out that Altright authors, some of whom I knew, shared my revulsion for the neoconservatives and deplored their influence on the American Right. I also noted that Altright publicists believed that modern liberal democracies had become dangerously fixated on promoting equality; and I’ve made this observation repeatedly in my books. Finally, as someone who had published entire works on the European Right in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (and most recently a book on the career of fascism as a concept), I had provided the Altright with food for thought. This was the case, even if the writers in question didn’t bother to look at my qualifying phrases.

Except for being a very occasional contributor to vdare.com, I am not exactly part of the Altright stable of writers. Recently I expressed interest in an email in writing for Breitbart, which is rumored to have some connection to Altright. Alas, I may have to wait until Hell freezes over before hearing from this website. More importantly, I couldn’t recall until a few days ago that I had spoken to fifty attendants at the H.L. Mencken Club eight years ago on the subject of the “Alternative Right.” I am president of the Mencken Club, and in November 2008 gave an inaugural address, in which I called for an “Alternative Right” to combat the high degree of neoconservative control over the intellectual Right.

This speech may have been a rousing affair, but until someone in the national news service retrieved it a few weeks ago, I had forgotten about my oration. Although I still support the project mentioned in that speech, I’ve never had the means to bring it about. Indeed, I’ve been largely marginalized by both the entire Left and most of the Right since the late 1980s. My works (perhaps we should look at the bright side) do get read but mostly in translation in Poland, Russia, Romania and other Eastern European countries. To link me to the Altright may be more of a stretch than the person from AP was aware of.

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ISIS’s Child Terrorists and Their Palestinian Precedents Somehow, evil practiced against Israel doesn’t register. P. David Hornik

By on August 30th, 2016

“There is no safety for honest men, but by believing all possible evil of evil men, and by acting with promptitude, decision, and steadiness on that belief.”

Those words, written in 1791 by Irish philosopher Edmund Burke, should be deeply internalized by anyone who wants to deal seriously with international affairs. In our present era of Islamic State and other Islamic terror groups, the phrase “all possible evil” seems to take on new meaning almost every day.

As in a chilling new video, first reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and reported on by Fox News here, that shows IS “cubs”—child warriors, in this case as young as ten—executing five Kurdish fighters.

The video features scenes of beheadings and other carnage before zeroing-in on the five boys and their victims. One of the boys, identified as Abu al-Baraa al-Tunisi, warns: “The war against you has not started yet and the U.S., France, the U.K., Germany, and neither humans nor Jinn devils will avail you. Prepare you coffins, dig your graves, and await a fate similar to that of these men.”

The boys then shout “Allah Akbar” and shoot the five kneeling, red-suited men in the backs of their heads.

Although this is not the first IS video to show executions by children, it is believed, Fox News notes, “to be the first showing a mass execution carried out by multiple children.”

But for all that IS is reaching new depths of “all possible evil,” it should not be forgotten that the pioneers of various modes of terrorism in our time were, and remain, the Palestinians. That includes the phenomenon of child terrorism.

As far back as the Second Intifada (2000-2005), at least nine suicide bombings were perpetrated by Palestinian minors. And the wave of stabbing, shooting, and vehicle-ramming attacks that began last September (and has lately abated) has included numerous cases of teenage terrorists and one case of an eleven-year-old terrorist.

These minors, unlike the IS “cubs,” were not explicitly delegated their tasks by adults. Yet they were responding to endemic incitement in the Palestinian Authority, and the sorts of acts they committed have been systematically glorified—up to the recent naming of a scouts’ leadership course after a terrorist who, with an accomplice, murdered a middle-aged man and two elderly men on a Jerusalem bus last October.

Gaza-based Hamas, of course—a direct ally of IS—is hardly to be outdone by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority when it comes to linking children and terrorism.

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Hillary Is Way More Awful than Trump Never Trump equals Hillary, plain and simple By Deroy Murdock

By on August 30th, 2016

If Never Trump Republicans succeed on Election Day, Donald J. Trump will return to real estate, his political dreams shattered.

Hence, the bigger headline on Wednesday, November 9, would read: hillary clinton elected 45th president. Neither independent Evan McMullin, nor the Green party’s Jill Stein, nor Libertarian Gary Johnson will leapfrog Clinton and Trump to win the White House. So, ipso facto, Never Trump = President Hillary Clinton. Full stop.

A President Hillary Clinton would be Obama with a work ethic. Rather than slacking off on putting greens, she will dedicate her impressive work ethic to turbocharging Obama’s policies, America be damned. Thus, here is some of what to expect if Never Trump triumphs:

Hillary Clinton would appoint at least one justice to the Supreme Court. If she only replaces the late Antonin Scalia with a liberal, the 5–4 center-right high court will go 5–4 center-left. And if, among justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, one or more departs, Clinton would shift the Court even farther left. On issue after issue, the Supremes consequently would order less liberty and more government. They would be eager to reverse the Heller and Citizens United cases and thus jeopardize gun rights and non-union political speech.

Also, scores of Clinton’s judicial appointees would use their federal trial and appeals courtrooms to apply her statist legal philosophy for life.

“We are going to start immediately on comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship,” Clinton recently promised. From illegal aliens to the lightly vetted Syrian refugees that America’s Angela Merkel would vacuum into the U.S., Clinton would convert these individuals as swiftly as possible into freshly minted Democratic voters. Republicans will find it even harder to win elections as Clinton builds a permanent Democratic majority.

To that end, Clinton’s Justice Department would double down on Obama’s war on voter ID and other ballot-integrity measures. This would expand opportunities for pro-Democrat vote fraud and rigged elections. Good luck, GOP candidates.

Clinton ignored the candidate questionnaire from the 335,000-member National Fraternal Order of Police. “I was disappointed and shocked,” the cops’-union president, Chuck Canterbury, told The Hill. This exposes Clinton’s cold shoulder towards blue lives, even as 2016’s shooting deaths of police officers have climbed 61 percent through August 25, compared to the same period in 2015, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. Clinton likely would turn her back on cops, even as they increasingly endure bull’s-eyes on theirs.

“I want us to defend and build on the Affordable Care Act,” Clinton declared. “That is one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, of the Democratic party, and of our country.” Rather than a temporary aberration, Obamacare would become permanent — unless Clinton transforms it into full-blown, single-payer, socialized medicine.

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