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2016

BRUCE WALKER: THE LESSONS OF PEARL HARBOR

Seventy-five years ago, on December 7, 1941, the American Navy suffered the worst defeat in its history when a force led by six Japanese fleet carriers launched a surprise attack at the battleships at Pearl Harbor. Two of the eight battleships, Arizona and Oklahoma, were destroyed, and the other six were knocked out of action for many months. The Army Air Corps fields were attacked with great loss, and other smaller naval vessels were attacked as well.

The American carriers were at sea. Had those carriers been at Pearl Harbor, the whole course of the Pacific War would have been very different. During the first year of that conflict, only the carriers were able to slow down the Japanese advance. Battleships proved too vulnerable to air attack to fight major fleet actions alone. American submarines, which eventually would prove an incredibly potent force in the Pacific, were plagued by multiple problems with torpedoes which made them almost useless for many months.

The Japanese still might have inflicted crippling damage even with the carriers gone. The fuel depots for the American Fleet were at Pearl Harbor and so were major repair and maintenance facilities. Without these, the American Fleet could have had to operate out of San Diego, thousands of miles east.

The Japanese could also have utterly destroyed all the battleships, instead of just Arizona and Oklahoma, and these other battleships in two years were refitted and fighting the Japanese Navy. There were a number of other, smaller naval vessels at Pearl Harbor, which would be desperately needed in the first six months of 1942 and which follow-up attacks by the Japanese would have damaged or sunk.

Admiral Nagumo might have also done what Newt Gingrich played out in one of his brilliant counterfactual novels and ordered the two Japanese battleships with their 14-inch guns to pound every target those guns could reach while coyly holding the six Japanese fleet carriers back to pound on returning American carriers.

As America enters an increasingly dangerous world with our European allies threatened from within and our Pacific allies doubting our resolve, our incoming President Trump ought to grasp the dangers we face. (The superb team of capable military commanders he is surrounding himself with will surely help him with this task.)

Obama Goes Out Lying About Islamic Terror Daniel Greenfield

Obama began his misspent time in office lying about Islamic terrorism and he ends it in the same shameful way. From Afghanistan to Iraq and right back to Islamic terror at home, he has never stopped lying about the threat that we face.

The speech was bizarre. After two terms of insisting that we weren’t at war with the terrorists, he grandly boasts that, “I will become the first President of the United States to serve two full terms during a time of war.”

Considering that the war was largely caused by his refusal to fight it, it’s an odd form of self-glorification. It’s like a fire chief boasting that the building next door has been on fire for two weeks because he refuses to put out the flames.

Having crippled the military, he claims that he believes it “must remain, the strongest fighting force the world has ever known”.Then there’s the bizarre revisionism of his disastrous Afghan surge and Iraq withdrawal, which considering the rise of ISIS now seems more insane than ever, being replayed one more time.

“When I took office, the United States was focused overwhelmingly on Iraq, where nearly 150,000 American troops had spent years fighting an insurgency and helping to build a democratic government. Meanwhile, al Qaeda had regrouped in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was actively planning attacks against our homeland. So we brought nearly 150,000 troops home from Iraq, consistent with the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated by the previous administration, and we surged our efforts along with our allies in Afghanistan, which allowed us to focus on dismantling al Qaeda and give the Afghan government the opportunity to succeed.”

Except the CIA had pointed out that there 50 to 100 Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama’s description Tuesday of the al Qaeda “cancer” in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.

Not All the News That’s Fit to Print College newspapers display anti-Israel bias on behalf of Palestinianism. Richard L. Cravatts

When Elmer Davis, director of FDR’s Office of War Information, observed that “. . . you cannot do much with people who are convinced that they are the sole authorized custodians of Truth and that whoever differs from them is ipso facto wrong” he may well have been speaking about editors of college newspapers who have purposely violated the central purpose of journalism and have allowed one ideology, not facts and alternate opinions, to hijack the editorial composition of their publications and purge their respective newspapers of any content—news or opinion—that contradicts a pro-Palestinian narrative and would provide a defense of Israel.

The latest example is a controversy involving The McGill Daily and its recent astonishing admission that it is the paper’s policy to not publish “pieces which promote a Zionist worldview, or any other ideology which we consider oppressive.”

“While we recognize that, for some, Zionism represents an important freedom project,” the editors wrote in a defense of their odious policy, “we also recognize that it functions as a settler-colonial ideology that perpetuates the displacement and the oppression of the Palestinian people.”

A McGill student, Molly Harris, had filed a complaint with the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) equity committee. In that complaint, Harris contended that, based on the paper’s obvious anti-Israel bias, and “a set of virulently anti-Semitic tweets from a McGill Daily writer,” a “culture of anti-Semitism” defined the Daily—a belief seemingly confirmed by the fact that several of the paper’s editors themselves are BDS supporters and none of the staffers are Jewish.

Of course, in addition to the existence of a fundamental anti-Semitism permeating the editorial environment of The Daily, there is also the core issue of what responsibility a newspaper has to not insert personal biases and ideology into its stories, and to provide space for alternate views on many issues—including the Israeli/Palestinian conflict—in the opinion sections of the paper.

At Connecticut College, Professor Andrew Pessin also found himself vilified on campus, not only by a cadre of ethnic hustlers and activists, but by fellow faculty and an administration that were slow to defend Pessin’s right to express himself—even when, as in this case, his ideas were certainly within the realm of reasonable conversation about a difficult topic: the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Central to the campaign of libels waged against Pessin was the part played by the College’s student newspaper, The College Voice.

In August of 2014, during Israel’s incursions into Gaza to suppress deadly rocket fire aimed at Jewish citizens, Pessin, a teacher of religion and philosophy, wrote on his Facebook page a description of how he perceived Hamas, the ruling political entity in Gaza: “One image which essentializes the current situation in Gaza might be this. You’ve got a rabid pit bull chained in a cage, regularly making mass efforts to escape.”

The Left’s Panic Attack Over Dr. Ben Carson Progressive prejudices unleashed. December 7, 2016 Joseph Klein

The progressive Left’s opposition to President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Ben Carson to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is predictably condescending, biased and hypocritical. For example, out-of-touch Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called Carson a “disconcerting and disturbingly unqualified choice.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer said he had “serious concerns about Dr. Carson’s lack of expertise and experience in dealing with housing issues. Someone who is as anti-government as him is a strange fit for housing secretary, to say the least.”

It is incredible how progressives such as Pelosi and Schumer, neither of whom experienced real poverty first hand, are ready to demean Ben Carson, who grew up in abject poverty. They cannot deal with the fact that an incredibly accomplished African-American, who does not buy into the failed progressive ideology of big government social engineering, is poised to take over the leadership of a failing government bureaucracy that would rather dabble in social engineering than get its own house in order. Ben Carson simply does not fit the progressive image of how an African-American should think and act.

“I think the way that I’m treated, you know, by the left is racism,” Ben Carson has said. “Because they assume because you’re black, you have to think a certain way. And if you don’t think that way, you’re ‘Uncle Tom,’ you’re worthy of every horrible epithet they can come up with,” he added.

Ben Carson’s credentials for reforming the bloated, mismanaged Department of Housing and Urban Development come from his real life experience. “I grew up in Detroit, and I grew up in Boston. In Boston, we lived in the ghetto. There were a lot of violent episodes there. There were rats, there were roaches. It was dire poverty,” Carson said.

Carson’s opposition to government-imposed dependency is not based on some abstract conservative theory. He is not anti-government per se, but rejects the vicious circle of the dependency culture that progressive big government policies have fostered. “I’m interested in getting rid of dependency, and I want us to find a way to allow people to excel in our society, and as more and more people hear that message, they will recognize who is truly on their side and who is trying to keep them suppressed and cultivate their votes,” Carson said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2015.

Carson’s views are informed by what he saw first-hand growing up, including his own mother’s willingness to work at multiple jobs while raising her children as a single mother. She refused to simply rely on government handouts and instilled her work ethic in Ben Carson himself, which helped him escape the black hole of dependency. As a friend of Carson’s tweeted on Monday, “Dr. Carson’s mother worked 3 jobs at a time to keep them out of public housing, but he grew up around many who utilized housing programs.”

HUD is a failing government bureaucracy, which needs the kind of thorough overhaul that Ben Carson has the analytical skills to deliver, and the life experience to draw upon. He will not be trapped inside the bubble of conventional bureaucratic thinking that has led to gross financial mismanagement of HUD’s $50 billion annual budget during President Obama’s time in office, as well as poor performance. The fact that this renowned neurosurgeon, now retired, is willing to enter public service and bring a fresh outsider’s perspective to an entrenched government bureaucracy is to be lauded, not ridiculed.

During the tenure of the current HUD Secretary, Julián Castro, HUD’s own Office of Inspector General identified in its audit for fiscal years 2016 and 2015 eleven “material weaknesses,” seven “significant deficiencies” in internal controls, and five instances of “noncompliance” with applicable laws and regulations. “Overall, we determined that HUD’s financial management governance remained ineffective,” the Inspector General’s audit report concluded.

HUD’s management ignored over 60 prior recommendations on financial management presented by the Inspector General since 2012. Julián Castro became HUD Secretary in mid-2014, doing nothing since that time to fix the systemic problems at HUD. As Curtis Kalin, spokesman for Citizens Against Government Waste said to the Daily Caller News Foundation, “HUD’s failure to properly maintain basic financial documents calls into question the department’s commitment to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.”

The Anti-Breitbart Blacklist The angry Left looks to punish conservative media for Trump’s victory. Matthew Vadum

Someone behind an anonymous Twitter account is trying to destroy the influential conservative Breitbart News website by smearing it as “racist” – and he’s already scared at least 47 advertisers away from Breitbart.

In the current atmosphere of left-wing hysteria over the surprise election of Donald Trump as president, this blacklisting project has already earned an impressive return on investment. Breitbart is a target of the wrath of social justice warriors because it reports the truth about the Left and it used to be run by Stephen Bannon, now slated to become chief strategist in the Trump White House. Hurting Breitbart hurts Trump and Republicans in general, the thinking goes.

The campaign takes screenshots of advertisements on Breitbart and then harasses the advertisers, demanding that they stop advertising there. It also encourages people who hate Breitbart or Trump to take screenshots of a target company’s ads placed beside content deemed objectionable and tweet the images at advertisers along with a threat to stop patronizing that company.

The cowardly crusader hiding behind this effort to frighten advertisers away from Breitbart by lying about and mischaracterizing the provocative news website’s content goes by the user name Sleeping Giants.

The user’s identity seems safe for the moment but if Breitbart files a defamation lawsuit, Twitter could be forced to disclose the user’s identity.

So far the identity of the individual or individuals behind Sleeping Giants is not known, except to Shareen Pathak, managing editor at the DigiDay blog.

Pathak reports, “The creator of the account said he would prefer to remain anonymous to avoid being harassed by Trump supporters on the internet. He said he started the account because fake news and disinformation, are, in his opinion, two of the reasons why the election turned out in favor of Trump.”

The creator of Sleeping Giants reportedly told DigiDay, “The biggest way that this disinformation will continue is ad revenue, just like any news source. Beyond really wanting to stop this nonsense, this effort was really born out of the need to inform advertisers about the kind of material that they’re sponsoring. This isn’t supposed to be a boycotting effort as much as an information effort.”

The Sleeping Giants (Twitter handle: @slpng_giants) account was created last month. At time of writing the account had 3,144 tweets and 11,200 followers. Sleeping Giants says “We are trying to stop racist websites by stopping their ad dollars. Many companies don’t even know it’s happening. It’s time to tell them.”

France: Decomposing in Front of Our Eyes by Yves Mamou

Four officers were injured (two badly burned) when a group of around 15 Muslim gang-members swarmed their cars and hurled rocks and firebombs at them. Police were aggrieved when the minister of interior called the attackers “little wild ones.” Police and opposition politicians replied that the attackers were not “little wild ones but criminals who attacked police to kill.”

Two students at a vocational training school in Calais attacked a teacher, and one fractured the teacher’s jaw and several teeth — because the teacher had asked one of the students to get back to work.

“This is a warning. These young people did not attack the school by chance; they wanted to attack the institution, to attack the State.” — Yacine, 21, a student at the University of Paris II.

The riot lasted for four nights, after the arrest of a driver who did not stop after being asked to by a policeman.

This revolt of one pillar of French society, the police, was the biggest that ever happened in modern France. Yet, virtually no one in France’s mainstream media covered the event.

“Everything that represents state institutions (…) is now subjected to violence based on essentially sectarian and sometimes ethnic excesses, fueled by an incredible hatred of our country. We must be blind or unconscious not to feel concern for national cohesion”. — Thibaud de Montbrial, lawyer and expert on terrorism.

France will elect a new president in May 2017. Politicians are already campaigning and debating about deficits, welfare recipients, GDP growth, and so on, but they look like puppets disconnected from the real country.

What is reality in France today?

Violence. It is spreading. Not just terrorist attacks; pure gang violence. It instills a growing feeling of insecurity in hospitals, at schools, in the streets — even in the police. The media does not dare to say that this violence is coming mainly from Muslim gangs – the “youths,” as they say in the French media, to avoid naming who they are. A climate of civil war, however, is spreading visibly in the police, schools, hospitals and politics.

Trump Victory Spurs Israeli Talk of West Bank Annexation Some lawmakers and settlers are exploring the idea in the wake of the U.S. election By Rory Jones

TEL AVIV—Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., some Israeli lawmakers and Jewish settlers are pushing the contentious notion of annexing parts of the West Bank, which could threaten the long-stated goal of establishing a separate Palestinian state.

Since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the U.S., Israel and Palestinians have sought the establishment of a Palestinian state in the rough boundaries of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A move to even partially annex the West Bank and impose Israeli law would depart from longstanding U.S. policy toward Israel, and would likely spark condemnation in Europe and parts of the Middle East.

But some of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisers have argued that the U.S. shouldn’t force a so-called two-state solution on the parties. The potential for a major shift in U.S. policy by the incoming Trump administration has stirred hopes of annexation among Jewish settlers.

“It’s easily doable,” said Eliana Passentin, 42, who lives in the settlement of Eli in the central West Bank. “I see it happening soon.”

The U.S. election has also changed the way Israeli officials discuss the status of the West Bank publicly.

“We can’t reach a Palestinian state. I oppose it, others favor it. But we all agree that it’s not going to happen tomorrow,” Naftali Bennett, the conservative leader of the Jewish Home party and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, said last month at a conference in Jerusalem after the election.

Mr. Bennett advocates giving Palestinians in West Bank cities limited autonomy and imposing Israeli law in parts of the territory, while boosting spending on infrastructure to improve the quality of life for Palestinians and Jewish settlers alike.

On Monday, the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, have preliminary approval to legislation proposed by Mr. Bennett’s party that would legitimize thousands of Jewish settler homes in the West Bank that are illegal under current Israeli law. The legislation still faces further votes in the Knesset.

Officials with the Palestinian Authority, which governs cities in the West Bank, condemn talk of Israeli annexation. The Gaza Strip is governed separately by the Islamist movement Hamas.

At the same time, a Trump administration could bring fresh perspective to the conflict, according to Shukri Bishara, minister of finance in the Palestinian Authority. “This conflict requires creative thinking,” he said.

The Palestinians plan to put forward a United Nations Security Council resolution before the end of the year that would label settlements illegal, officials said. They hope that the U.S., which has consistently vetoed resolutions Israel objects to, won’t oppose such a move.

Washington Price Choppers Liberals melt down over Trump’s anti-ObamaCare nominee for HHS.

The belief among Democrat that a Republican could never win another presidential election was apparently so firm that they’re still in a state of shock. They’re even more stunned that Donald Trump has dared to name an ObamaCare critic as his health-care point man—which makes for an instructive moment.

Tom Price, a six-term Georgia Congressman and mild-mannered orthopedic surgeon, is an unlikely villain. But liberals are already saying the Health and Human Services nominee will shred the social contract, leave poor people and cancer patients panhandling for care, and jail women for their reproductive decisions. Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood claims that Mr. Price “poses a grave threat to women’s health in this country.” Earth to the abortion lobby: Declining to mandate and federally subsidize birth control coverage is not the same as “banning” it.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association is facing an internal and social-media revolt over an anodyne statement that called Mr. Price “a leader in the development of health policies to advance patient choice and market-based solutions as well as reduce excessive regulatory burdens.” Supposedly this was a betrayal of doctors and patients, or something, but the big health-care societies always cater to power. They do so because so much of medicine is decided by government.
Mr. Price’s nomination is a refreshing signal that such state control isn’t an inevitability or necessity, starting with replacing ObamaCare. Most liberals are getting the bends coming up from their false triumphalism. They’ve spent years claiming the center-right vision for health care isn’t worth serious study while mocking Republicans for supposedly futile repeal votes. Maybe Republicans meant what they said.

You’d think that the people who designed and enforced a failed program might show more humility, or at least stop lecturing others. Even Hillary Clinton’s staff recognized the law is imploding. In a private Nov. 23, 2015 memo published by WikiLeaks, Chris Jennings, a former Obama aide who joined the campaign, wrote that the law’s performance is “at best, disconcerting” and identified other “troubling” signs.

One of them is that only about eight million people have paid the tax penalty for violating the individual mandate to buy insurance, and another 12 million have received regulatory exemptions. In other words, more people who were supposed to benefit from ObamaCare have opted out than have enrolled.

Now Democrats are assailing Mr. Price for proposing alternatives to the mess they created. The Republican, who took over the House Budget Committee from Paul Ryan, is a thoughtful and well-informed problem solver. Unlike many of his colleagues, Mr. Price hasn’t dodged details and specifics. He proposed an alternative to ObamaCare during the 2009-10 debate and in the years since he’s put flesh on the bones, including with legislative language.

Mr. Price’s Empowering Patients First Act relies on fixed-value tax credits to stabilize the insurance markets outside of employer-sponsored coverage. The switch to a defined contribution from a defined-benefit model is based on the transition to 401(k)s from pensions. CONTINUE AT SITE

What the Dakota Access Pipeline Is Really About The standoff isn’t about tribal rights or water, but a White House that ignores the rule of law. By Kevin Cramer

http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-dakota-access-pipeline-is-really-about-1481071218

A little more than two weeks ago, during a confrontation between protesters and law enforcement, an improvised explosive device was detonated on a public bridge in southern North Dakota. That was simply the latest manifestation of the “prayerful” and “peaceful” protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Escalating tensions were temporarily defused Sunday when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, at the direction of the Obama administration, announced it would refuse to grant the final permit needed to complete the $3.8 billion project. The pipeline, which runs nearly 1,200 miles from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota to Illinois, is nearly complete except for a small section where it needs to pass under the Missouri River. Denying the permit for that construction only punts the issue to next month—to a new president who won’t thumb his nose at the rule of law.

Like many North Dakotans, I’ve had to endure preaching about the pipeline from the press, environmental activists, musicians and politicians in other states. More often than not, these sermons are informed by little more than a Facebook post. At the risk of spoiling the protesters’ narrative, I’d like to bring us back to ground truth.

• This isn’t about tribal rights or protecting cultural resources. The pipeline does not cross any land owned by the Standing Rock Sioux. The land under discussion belongs to private owners and the federal government. To suggest that the Standing Rock tribe has the legal ability to block the pipeline is to turn America’s property rights upside down.

• Two federal courts have rejected claims that the tribe wasn’t consulted. The project’s developer and the Army Corps made dozens of overtures to the Standing Rock Sioux over more than two years. Often these attempts were ignored or rejected, with the message that the tribe would only accept termination of the project.

• Other tribes and parties did participate in the process. More than 50 tribes were consulted, and their concerns resulted in 140 adjustments to the pipeline’s route. The project’s developer and the Army Corps were clearly concerned about protecting tribal artifacts and cultural sites. Any claim otherwise is unsupported by the record. The pipeline’s route was also studied—and ultimately supported—by the North Dakota Public Service Commission (on which I formerly served), the State Historic Preservation Office, and multiple independent archaeologists.

• This isn’t about water protection. Years before the pipeline was announced, the tribe was working with the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps to relocate its drinking-water intake. The new site sits roughly 70 miles downstream of where the pipeline is slated to cross the Missouri River. Notably, the new intake, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, will be 1.6 miles downstream of an elevated railroad bridge that carries tanker cars carrying crude oil.

Further, the pipeline will be installed about 100 feet below the riverbed. Automatic shut-off valves will be employed on either side of the river, and the pipeline will be constructed to exceed many federal safety requirements.

Other pipelines carrying oil, gas and refined products already cross the Missouri River at least a dozen times upstream of the tribe’s intake. The corridor where the Dakota Access Pipeline will run is directly adjacent to another pipeline, which carries natural gas under the riverbed, as well as an overhead electric transmission line. This site was chosen because it is largely a brownfield area that was disturbed long ago by previous infrastructure.

• This isn’t about the climate. The oil that will be shipped through the pipeline is already being produced. But right now it is transported in more carbon-intensive ways, such as by railroad or long-haul tanker truck. So trying to thwart the pipeline to reduce greenhouse gas could have the opposite effect. CONTINUE AT SITE

Angela Merkel calls for burqa ban in bid for reelection Marie Solis (Are lederhosen next?)

In an address on Tuesday at the Christian Democrats party conference, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a burqa ban in her bid to be reelected the country’s chancellor in a fourth term.

“The full-face veil is not acceptable in our country,” Merkel told the crowd, according to the Independent. “It should be banned, wherever it is legally possible.”

Merkel’s pitch for a ban on the Islamic religious garb echoes those of the Christian Democrat party more broadly, members of which have called for similar restrictions in the past. In August, Peter Tauber, the party’s general secretary, said the the full-face veil was “contrary to integration,” the Independentreported. At the time, German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said such a ban would be “constitutionally problematic,” and a possible violation of Germany’s laws on religious freedom.

Germany’s Basic Law maintains the “the undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed,” with no specific mention of religious dress.

However, Merkel’s latest call for a burqa ban runs alongside her focus on the refugee crisis and amid Germany’s fluctuating attitudes toward accepting refugees into the country.

“A situation like the one in the late summer of 2015 cannot, should not and must not be repeated,” Merkel said on Tuesday. “That was and is our, and my, declared political aim.”

The Independent suggested Merkel was referring to September 2015, when she drew criticism for opening Germany’s borders. Later, many blamed Merkel for a string of New Year’s Eve sexual assaults and robberies that many alleged had beenperpetrated by refugees. (According to a February report from the Independent,three of the 58 men arrested for the mass attack were refugees from Syria or Iraq.)

Merkel condemned the attacks, promising to ensure the country’s deportation system was fully functional.

“There are some very serious questions which arise from what has happened which have relevance beyond Cologne,” she said at the time, according toReuters. The outlet reported Merkel had alluded to “establishing whether there are common patterns of behavior by some groups of people who do not respect women” — a rather pointed dig at Muslim refugees.

Following the attacks, the chancellor also emphasized the question of “cultural coexistence,” a notion that seems to underpin Merkel and her allies’ insistence on a burqa ban. The true motivation behind such a policy, though, is usually more insidious, driven by a prejudice toward Islam and its religious principles.