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2016

Worried About Hillary and Trump? This is How to Limit the Carnage By: Benjamin Weingarten –

Two people are currently vying for the highest office in the world: one an alleged criminal with no achievements to her name during a lifetime of public disservice save for audaciously and adroitly “monetizing” her political capital; and the other a demagogic, narcissistic lothario with no apparent ideological principles but an unquenchable thirst for power and self-aggrandizement during a lifetime of public showmanship — one whose populist appeal stems largely from proposing politically incorrect policies (from which he has readily backed away when challenged).

One would think that such a contest might cause Americans to take pause and think through just how it is that in a nation of over 300 million people, either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Donald J. Trump will be the next steward of the republic.

Sure, one could make the case that Hillary and Donald are representative of 21st century America: Clinton as an identity politics-playing “victim” who has made an art of achieving higher and higher offices without accomplishment as is emblematic of our societal move towards politics over merit; and Trump as a reality TV star who has made millions of Americans part of the show, and who like many actors in the American economy has made his fortune off of an “asset-lite” strategy built on leverage and brand value.

But this cynical view aside, a rational response to Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump might entail asking some fundamental questions about politics itself — fundamental questions that are ignored in the day-to-day hurly-burly of a campaign in the era of social media.

There are three deeper questions for those who lament our current predicament:

Why is it that politics seems to reward most those who are so personally flawed and power-hungry?
Why do those who are so personally flawed and power-hungry seek out high office in the first place?
Given these political realities, would we not want to limit the power of the state and thus the appeal of public office to such people?

If you want to win election and stay in office, your singular goal is to ensure 50 percent-plus-one support at all costs.

Michael Copeman No Hope in Obama’s Chicago

Was it only eight years ago that a newly elected president assured an adoring hometown crowd that crime and injustice would wilt before his enlightened moral authority? As the chalked outlines on too many sidewalks attest, it was another false promise
Every May I head to Chicago for a week (a long story, over a drink perhaps…). Great city. Lovely setting beside Lake Michigan. Wonderful architecture. Sensational shopping. Fantastic museums. Pleasant parks along the lakeshore. Easy to get around, but who would want to, who would dare to, anymore?

This year the murder rate in Chicago is up almost 80% on last year. Yes, 80%. No misprint. And that’s compounding on a rise of 20% from the year before — a trend heading towards a total that may well exceed 800 by the time this year is done. Sure, Chicago has seen years with more murders: 970 in 1974 and 943 in 1992. But this time there’s a remarkable difference to the crime statistics: the clear-up rate for murders has plummeted. Some 70% of murders were solved back in the early 1990s. But last year it was just over 30%. Put it another way: Two out of three Chicago murderers now get away with it. Scot free. Permanently.

All this is happening on Barack Obama’s home turf, just around the corner from where he used to live in the South Side’s Hyde Park, in the second term of his supposedly “transformative” presidency. And in the city where Barack’s buddy and former right-hand man, Rahm Emanuel, is current mayor.

These killings are not mass murders perpetrated by isolated, unhinged loners. This is gang violence writ large, with retribution after retribution after retribution. It is tearing apart the mainly black suburban communities that make up the South and the West of Chicago. But more recently shootings have spread into other areas of Chicago.

Chicago’s police, fearing they will get shot (or videoed shooting someone who later turns out to be unarmed — are intervening less and less, it seems. Instead, they come by later to stretch out the tape, mark out the corpses, pick up the cartridges, photograph stray bullet-holes, and hope that a witness dares to come forward. If Crime Scene Investigation is your buzz, then the Windy City is a sure bet for a long, steady career.

Real Clear Thoughts on BDS “free speech” to Misguided Governments. Barry Shaw

The news that the Dutch have followed the Swedes in declaring BDS messaging as free speech leaves me perplexed. Let me see if I’ve got this right.

The Dutch are against BDS, oppose boycott campaigning, oppose their call for the elimination of Israel, but allows their right to do all this. This is more than double Dutch. It’s more like a Dutch pretzel.

“As long as what you say is not illegal you are free to say it,” claims the Dutch Ambassador to Israel, Gilles Beschoor Plug. So let’s see a few of the things that BDS says.

BDS activists claim that they are a non-violent protest movement supporting the Palestinian cause.

Non-violent? Here is what Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS, has said;

“Palestinians have the right of resistance, including armed resistance.”

We Israelis, from our long history of Palestinian “armed resistance” tend to call it “terrorism.” It includes everything from stabbings, shootings, suicide bombings, rocket attacks on our civilians, the killing of our Olympic athletes and, in the past, plane and ship hijackings.

So much for “non- violence.”

Would, I wonder, the Dutch government tolerate the free speech of an organization that called for non-violent protest against some of their policies and then condoned lethal force as part of their campaign? For how long would the Dutch government protect anti-Dutch BDS rights to free speech if they recruited people to their call for the elimination of The Netherlands as part of their protected free speech rights?

‘Dirty Jew!’: Antisemitism Forces French Jews to Leave Suburbs of Paris By Michael van der Galien

During the Second World War, French Jews were persecuted like never before. They lived in Paris and its suburbs for centuries, and were always left alone. They truly felt French… or, to be more precise (anyone who knows anything about Paris knows that the inhabitants consider themselves different from the rest of the country), Parisian.

Hitler and his Nazi scum couldn’t have cared less about any of that, however. They considered Jews to be subhuman and sent them to concentration camps where they were systematically slaughtered.

After the Americans, British and Canadians liberated France, Frenchmen discovered what had happened to their Jewish neighbors. They immediately made clear that they would never allow something like that to happen again. “Never again” became an international rallying cry.

Well, with “never” they apparently meant “until 2016”:

Jews who have lived peacefully in the suburbs of Paris are now having to move to other parts of the country or head for Israel to escape anti-Semitism.

When Alain Benhamou walked into his apartment near Paris in July 2015 and saw the words “dirty Jew” scrawled on the wall, he knew it was time to leave.

It was his second such break-in in less than three months and the 71-year-old no longer felt welcome in Bondy, a Parisian suburb he had called home for more than 40 years.

Hillary’s Service as Secretary of State: A Failure of Leadership (and a National Security Disaster) By Kenneth Eliasberg

In evaluating Hillary Clinton’s competence, a good place to start is to take a close look at her tour of duty as Secretary of State. Is the U.S. safer and/or held in higher regard around the world as a result of her efforts?

Perhaps it might be worthwhile to note why she got that appointment: Not because of either her acumen or experience. Rather it was Barack Obama extending the olive branch in order to bring a fractured Democratic Party together — fractured because of a very heated and divisive Democrat primary.

That said, even a cursory examination of her service in this position yields up a resoundingly negative answer to that question. As has already been frequently noted, her tour began with her screwing up the Russian reset button, and it ended with her Benghazi dereliction, leading to the death of 4 Americans. What happened in between these bookends, and what are the consequences of those happenings?

Let’s start with the Middle East, that boiling cauldron of infidel hatred. Syria, where, you may recall, President Obama drew a red line (apparently in invisible ink) should Assad use chemical weapons against the insurrectionists, is in chaos — after Syria did use chemical weapons and Obama failed to act on his red line. And now, long after Obama declared the importance of taking down the Assad government, Russia is in the country, providing support for Assad remaining in power (and thereby providing the Russians with a Mediterranean access).

Fake-Passports Gangs Arrested in Europe Migration crisis has led to a growing market in forged documents, says Europol chief By Valentina Pop

Nineteen people involved in the production and shipping of thousands of fake European Union passports and other documents were arrested in Greece and the Czech Republic in the past few weeks, the bloc’s law-enforcement agency, Europol, said Tuesday.

Sixteen people suspected of document forgery “on a large scale” and the smuggling of migrants were arrested in Greece last week, and three other suspects were taken into custody in the Czech Republic on May 10, Europol said.

The arrests come as migrants who arrived in the EU last year seek to legalize their stay, while others who are still outside the bloc have fewer options to enter after the route via Turkey, Greece and the Balkan countries was cut off.

The forged documents—passports from EU countries, identity cards, driving licenses, asylum-seeker registration cards, residence permits and visas to the border-free Schengen area—were shipped through courier companies to other EU countries as well as to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Europol said. They cost between €100 ($111) and €3,000, depending on the quality, type and country of issue.

In Athens, the suspected criminal network was composed of two groups—one comprising mainly Bangladeshi nationals, the other mainly Sudanese nationals. The Bangladeshi group sent at least 126 parcels containing travel documents via courier last year, while the Sudanese group sent 431 parcels over the same period, Europol said.

Macra: The Quiet Health-Care Takeover A 962-page rule puts the federal government between doctors and patients. By James C. Capretta and Lanhee J. Chen

The American people have become familiar with ObamaCare’s failings: higher premiums, fewer choices and a more powerful federal health bureaucracy. Yet another important piece of health-care legislation, signed into law last year, has gone almost unnoticed.

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, known simply as Macra, was enacted to replace the outdated and dysfunctional system for paying doctors under Medicare. The old system, based on the universally despised sustainable-growth rate formula, perennially threatened to impose unsustainable cuts in physicians’ fees. Macra passed Congress with bipartisan support and President Obama quickly signed it. Unfortunately, the law empowers the federal bureaucracy at the expense of the doctor-patient relationship, putting the quality of American health care at risk.

In an effort to secure broad support, Congress wrote into the law general guidance but left important details of implementation to the executive branch. What happened next was predictable: In April the administration presented a 962-page regulatory behemoth. This new set of rules uses the power of Medicare to put the federal government in charge of almost every aspect of physician care in the U.S.

Macra adopts the same theory of cost control embedded in ObamaCare. It assumes that the federal government has the knowledge and wherewithal to engineer better health care through “delivery system reforms,” forgetting the utter failure of the bureaucracy’s previous effort. ObamaCare and now Macra use Medicare’s payment regulations to force hospitals and physicians to change how they care for their patients. The administration’s regulations will force doctors to comply with scores of new reporting requirements and intrusions into their practices. Physicians who refuse to bend will see their Medicare fees cut.

Macra and the new regulations force physicians to pick between a “merit-based incentive payment system” or an “alternative-payment model.” Doctors who choose the former will get paid fee-for-service, but they will receive meager annual increases of only 0.25% starting in 2019. Some doctors could earn “bonus payments” but only if the federal bureaucracy approves of their performance. CONTINUE AT SITE

Palestinians: Sex in Gaza City by Khaled Abu Toameh

A 27-year-old female journalist recounted that a Palestinian official working for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza invited her for a job interview. The official “tried to approach and touch her, but she walked away and left the office… The following day… he offered her the job in return for having sexual intercourse with him.”

The victim noted that under Palestinian law, UNRWA officials enjoy immunity from being prosecuted.

Palestinian journalist Amjad Yaghi found that the Palestinian Basic Law does not tackle the issue of sexual harassment in Palestinian society. Meanwhile, the Hamas connections of these criminals will keep them out of jail and in positions of power.

Where are the women’s rights organizations now? Where are the European and American overseers of the international human rights organizations in the Gaza Strip? Do they only awaken from their slumber when they smell fresh Israeli meat? How many women will be sexually assaulted while these watchdogs sleep?

Sex is a taboo topic in the conservative Palestinian society. So it came as a nasty surprise to many when the rampant sexual harassment in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip was recently brought to public attention.

A damning report, entitled “Gaza: Sexual Harassment and Bribery Chase Job-Seekers,” was published in the Beirut-based, Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al-Akhbar. Amjad Yaghi, the young Palestinian journalist who wrote the exposé, showed extraordinary courage in doing so.

Hamas, needless to say, was not amused.

Bangladesh: All about Israel-Hating by Sebastian Bustle

Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media. On May 15, police detectives arrested Chowdhury for alleged “involvement in a plot to oust the Bangladesh government with the support of Israeli intelligence Mossad.”

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, a Bangladeshi journalist, was sentenced in 2014 to seven years in prison, allegedly for trying to travel to Israel, to speak on the rise of Islamic militancy in his country, and how madrassahs (Islamic religious schools) are being used to spawn militants.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques.

Israel, the Mossad and Jews, seen as one, are now a political issue in Bangladesh politics. Accusations and denials about “Israel and Mossad connections” are going on among the rival political parties and leaders. Both the government and largest opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have been trying to cash in on the existing antagonistic sentiment against Israel among the country’s 90%-Muslim population.

Bangladesh has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It is a country where Jews and Israeli people are being cursed in every Friday sermon, from more than 250,000 mosques. Imams across the country shout before the Friday prayer’s sermon audience that Jewish people are infidels.

The latest dirty game of Israel-hating began in early May. A Bangladeshi politician, Aslam Chowdhury, who is a Joint General Secretary of the BNP, visited the Indian capital of Delhi and the historic city of Agra, where he met Mendi N. Safadi, reportedly a member of Israel’s Likud party.[1] Everyone shook hands and greeted each other courteously, but Aslam Chowdhury came under fire in Bangladesh after the photographs of the two men together were published on Safadi’s Facebook page, and then picked up by Bangladeshi media.

JED BABBIN: THE AMERICAN NAVY AS FARCE

Rep. Randy Forbes speaks out on the Farsi Island incident and other threats to our diminishing seapower.

On January 12 two U.S. Navy riverine boats were sailing south through the Persian Gulf to Bahrain near Iran’s Farsi Island. One of the boats had broken down and the other stayed with it. Six Iranian boats surrounded them and demanded their surrender at gunpoint. The Americans did. They were forced to their knees and taken into captivity on the island.

It’s not clear how the Iranians treated the U.S. sailors, but we know a few key facts. The Iranians seized Navy computers aboard the boats and copied their contents. The sailors were interrogated individually — constantly — and paraded before Iranian television crews. In footage broadcast internationally, they were apparently compelled to admit that they were in the wrong for entering Iranian waters — though the evidence showed they had not — and to apologize for doing so.

But every American soldier, sailor, airman and Marine is trained to refuse to aid the enemy in that manner. It’s a violation of their duty to do so. So were they abused? Tortured? Threatened with immediate execution? We don’t know because the Obama administration has classified everything about how the sailors were treated.

They were released after about sixteen hours. The only reaction from President Obama was a statement by Secretary of State John Kerry thanking the Iranians for their cooperation and patting himself on the back for effective diplomacy. There was never even a word condemning the Iranians for violating international law by seizing the American boats in international waters.

Two weeks ago Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) got our attention when he said that the classified information about the incident, if made public, would shock the American people. He said that we would be shocked by not only how Iran treated our sailors but also how the Obama administration responded. As Forbes pointed out, Obama did nothing at all to help the sailors while they were in captivity.