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2016

Trump: A Bogeyman or Just a Man? Trump is crude and politically clueless, but no more so than the Clintons, Sanders — or Obama. By Victor Davis Hanson

Donald J. Trump thus far has not shown that he has the level-headedness to be president. He has no political ideology and could just as well govern to the left of Hillary Clinton as to the right of her. Yet his sloppy way of speaking has earned him equally sloppy, over-the-top analogies — to Mussolini, Hitler, George Wallace, and a host of other populist and racist demagogues.

But is he uniquely dangerous, ignorant, or cruel in terms of either distant or recent American presidential history?

I don’t think so.

There are many ways to assess Trump. The debates and rallies give us glimpses of his ill-preparedness (at least in comparison to his rivals). So far his vision has not transcended banalities and generalities. He seems to have no team of respected advisers, at least not yet. Indeed, at this point, advising Trump apparently would be a career-killer in the Boston–New York–Washington corridor. No one quite knows who talks to him on foreign policy. He is an empty slate onto which millions write their hopes and dreams, as “Make America great again” channels the empty “Hope and Change.”

Those are grounds enough for rejecting him. But what we don’t need is high talk about Trump as something uniquely sinister, a villain without precedent in American electoral history or indeed public life. That is simply demonstrably false. Trump thrives despite, not because of, his crudity, and largely because of anger at Barack Obama’s divisive and polarizing governance and sermonizing — and the Republican party’s habitual consideration of trade issues, debt, immigration, and education largely from the vantage point of either abstraction or privilege.

Take Trump’s worst, most repugnant rhetoric, and there will always pop up a parallel worse — and often from the lips of the heroes of those who are blasting Trump as singularly foul. He crudely brags of his past infidelities and sexual conquests — reminding us that he has an affinity with JFK and Bill Clinton (is it worse to boast or to lie about such sins?). Whether he would attempt to match either man’s sexual gymnastics while in the Oval Office is, I think, doubtful. I don’t believe the Trump jet so far has followed Bill Clinton south to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual fantasy island. Is Clinton ostracized by the liberal media or pundit class because of his fawning over and cavorting with a convicted sex offender? Should Harvard have rejected Epstein’s cash?

Obama’s Path to War The Mullahs’ missile message to Israel and its ominous implications. Ari Lieberman

Last week, the deputy commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Hossein Salami boasted that Iran has ten times as many missiles as its Hezbollah proxy and threatened that those missiles “are ready to hit enemies and targets from different parts of the country.” By conservative estimates, Hezbollah has accumulated a stockpile of roughly 100,000 missiles. If Salami’s boasts are to be believed, that means that the Iranians have accumulated a staggering missile arsenal of 1,000,000 or roughly one missile for every 8.5 Israelis.

The antagonistic comments followed two Iranian missile launches fired from Iran’s eastern Alborz mountain range. The missiles are said to have a range of 2,000 kilometers and are believed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Written in both Hebrew and Farsi and emblazoned on the missiles was the phrase, “Israel must be wiped out from the face of the earth.”

If the threats written on the missiles were not clear enough, the head of the IRGC’s aerospace division, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, emphasized that the missile tests were designed to demonstrate that Israel was well within range of Iran’s missiles. He noted that the missiles were intended to “confront the Zionist regime” and that “Israel is surrounded by Islamic countries and it will not last long in a war. It will collapse even before being hit by these missiles.” Not to be outdone, other Iranian political and military officials weighed in with similar threats and bombast.

It appears that the launches were timed to coincide with Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to Israel. In response to the launches, Biden stated that “A nuclear-armed Iran is an absolutely unacceptable threat to Israel, to the region and the United States. And I want to reiterate which I know people still doubt here: If in fact they break the deal, we will act.” Biden however, qualified his remarks by stating, “And all their conventional activity outside of the deal is still beyond the deal, and we will and are attempting to act wherever we can find it.” The latter comment was deliberately designed to provide the administration with some wiggle room to argue that the Iranian missile launches constitute conventional weapons tests and therefore fall beyond the scope of the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Islam and Iran’s Aishas: Girl Marriages Under 10 The legalized rape of children — and how it’s justified. Dr. Majid Rafizadeh

It was not solely 1400 years ago that a little girl named Aisha married a 55-year-old man, although Muslims, their scholars, Sheiks and Imams argue to the contrary. Tens of thousands of “Aishas” are being forced to marry elder man on a daily basis under the name of Islam in Muslim nations in the 21st century. No one is even raising an eyebrow. For example, according to the latest reports from Persian news outlets, the number of the child marriages has been dramatically increasing in the Islamic Republic. According to the Students’ News Agency and Radio Farda, these marriages include girls under 10 years old.

On the other hand, the hypocritical politicians in the Islamist regime of Iran point out that there is gender equality in Iran and that Islam respects both women and men. For example, recently, Shahindokht Molaverdi, the Islamic Republic’s vice president for women and family affairs who led a delegation to the United Nations in New York, lied to the international community in stating that “the Islamic Republic of Iran has always had the empowerment of women and improving their status…on its agenda.”

What is also hidden by the ruling clerics, and from most of the reports, is the fact that the notion of forcing a child girls into marriage is encouraged in Iran. In addition, the groom is normally a much older man. These children are forced to sleep with their older male husbands on the first night of the marriage so that the family of the groom can be certain that the child is a virgin.

Many of these girls are forced into marriage due to the fact that their parents want to get rid of their daughters since a girl is considered much more inferior to a man. There exists a plenitude of verses from the Quran and hadiths from Muhammad declaring that women are legally, physically, socially and intellectually inferior to men.

The Marriage of Black Lives Matter & Jew Hatred How BLM and anti-Israel activists found common cause. John Perazzo

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement’s welcoming embrace of the slogan “From Palestine To Ferguson” makes it abundantly clear that left-wing racists in America have found their ideological soul mates in the Palestinian anti-Semites of the Middle East.

BLM, you may recall, was born in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic” who had infamously shot and killed Trayvon Martin the previous year. The phrase quickly became a rallying cry for radicals and rioters demanding an end to what BLM termed the “virulent anti-Black racism” that “permeates our society.” Then, when a white policeman in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed the young black criminal Michael Brown in August 2014, BLM ramped up its allegations of police brutality against “people of color” in America’s “white supremacist system.” The fact that police are significantly more likely to shoot white criminal suspects rather than black suspects has never meant anything to BLM. The movement’s purpose is to promote racial hatred and street riots, not to uncover any truths.

Just a few days after Brown’s death, a worldwide alliance of Palestinian activists—who detested Israel and its Jewish citizens every bit as fiercely as BLM loathed America and white people—decided to draw public attention to their own particular grievances by piggybacking on the turmoil in Ferguson. The timing was favorable for these anti-Semites, given that the Israeli military was then engaged in an effort to dismantle Hamas’s massive terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. The activists adopted the meme “From Palestine To Ferguson” (FPTF)—a pithy catchphrase that, like “Black Lives Matter,” quickly evolved into shorthand for trumped-up charges of victimization, calls to revolution in the name of “social justice,” and vindictive hatred disguised as a plea for respect.

Voicing empathy for the sense of “hurt,” “anger,” and “moral outrage” which BLM feels as a result of “the oppression that continues to target our Black brothers and sisters in nearly every aspect of their lives,” FPTF mouthpieces proudly affirm their own “solidarity with the family of Michael Brown, a young unarmed Black man gunned down by police”; their support for the “struggle” of black Ferguson residents against “a militarized police occupation”; and their contempt for the “racist capitalist system” that “systematically pushes” American blacks “to the margins of humanity.”

In a like manner, adherents of the FPTF mindset routinely portray Israel as a “capitalist settler-state” that pursues “economic expansion” by subjecting the Palestinians to “collective punishment,” “subjugation,” and “war crimes.” In short, says one FPTF spokesman, “the rejection of peace” is structurally “built into [Israel’s] current existence”—a remarkable allegation, in light of the fact that Arab states have flatly rejected favorable opportunities for peace with Israel more than 30 times since 1937.

Kim Jung Un: ‘I’ll Take Manhattan’ By James Jay Carafano

The dear leader of North Korea, Kim Jung Un, threatened to take out New York City with a nuclear weapon. His threat responds to a new round of sanctions imposed by the international community after Pyongyang’s most recent nuclear test. Kim might be posturing—more than a little. Still there is every reason to take seriously the chance of waking up one morning in a mushroom cloud.

One of the top analysts of the danger posed by North Korea concludes that the regime has a working long-range ballistic missile that can range U.S. territory and it is more than likely that they can top their weapon with a functioning nuclear warhead. That is not the same, however, as saying Pyongyang could hit New York with a bomb big enough to take out the city.

Still, don’t dance in the streets of Times Square. Kim Jung Un continues to press the development of the regime’s nuclear arsenal. It is only a matter of time before Kim does have a city-killing missile or the ability to destroy the U.S. nuclear grid with a EMP attack in his hands.

When North Korea gets a weapon that can take out the Big Apple, here is what the results might look like. With a low-altitude explosion with a 10-kiloton weapon “about 50 percent of the energy released by the detonation takes the form of the ‘blast,’ an enormous wave of over pressurized air caused by the nuclear explosion. Within seconds, nearly all of the buildings within a half-mile radius would be destroyed by the concussion from the initial blast. Roughly half of the population within the blast radius would die almost instantaneously from collapsing buildings. Many others, without hope of rescue or aid, would soon die from mortal injuries inflicted by the blast. The blast would turn debris from collapsing buildings into makeshift missiles, extending as far out as 3.5 miles.”

Study: More than 100 Illegal Aliens Charged with Murder After Being Released by DHS By Rick Moran

The Center for Immigration Studies is releasing a report today showing that 124 illegal aliens who were subsequently released over the last five years by the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security have been charged with murder.

Washington Times:

In all, some 121 immigrants who were freed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between 2010 and 2014 went on to be charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes. Another three immigrants were charged with murders in 2015, bringing to 124 the total number of murder suspects the government had, then released.

Two of the immigrants in question had even been convicted of homicide before, but they were released anyway and went on to rack up new murder charges again, the report said. The others had amassed 464 total criminal charges, ranging from drugs to drunken driving, before they landed on the homicide list.

The information was released to Congress by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies analyzed the data and said it shows dangerous practices.

“The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes,” Ms. Vaughan wrote.

Latest Survey Finds 25% of French Teenagers Are Muslims By Michel Gurfinkiel

The French see René Descartes, a 17th century philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, as the truest expression of their national mind. I am afraid they are right.

Descartes rejected authority in intellectual life and insisted on reconstructing knowledge on plain sense and strict reasoning, hence his famous motto, cogito ergo sum (“I think and therefore I am”). However, he also disdained experience as long as it could not be boiled down into logical and mathematical terms. This approach, so much at odds with the empirical and pragmatic approach favored in the Anglo-Saxon world, is indeed a hallmark of French culture — including politics.

The French elites relish in abstract, “élégant,” symmetrically organized concepts; they have problems with hard, rough, irregular facts. And should it come to pass that facts do not fit with concepts, they would rather ignore the former than question the latter. Even if major aspects of reality are being denied in the process, and the concepts themselves turned into inert dogmas or voided of any meaning.

Such a tendency was worrisome enough in the past, as some of the greatest French authors or thinkers realized, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Hippolyte Taine to Marc Bloch. It grew into an intractable problem after 1945, when France was reorganized as a statist nation, and a new administrative elite, engineered and trained by meritocratic academic institutions like Sciences Po (Political Science Schools), Ecole Normale Superieure (the Higher School for Education), and above all, Ecole nationale d’Administration (National School of Administration) engulfed the political class. Admission to ENA — through competitive examination — and graduation from ENA depend largely on mastering the required conceptual framework and never departing from it.

European Union Caving to Turkey’s Blackmail? by Burak Bekdil

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger, and said he would not obey the supreme court’s ruling.

Turkish courts, controlled by Erdogan’s government, put the newspaper Zaman, one of the last remaining media critics of Erdogan, under state control. A court actually appointed administrators to run the newspaper. Editor-in-chief Sevgi Akarcesme said that this was effectively the end of media freedom in Turkey.

Turkey ranks 149th amongst the 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index 2015.

Quite realistically, Nigel Farage, a British opposition figure, accused Turkey of “blackmailing” the EU over the Syrian refugee crisis and its proposed EU membership.

Turkey has been sliding into an ugly Islamist despotism. Yet its relations with the European Union (EU) which it aspires to join has rarely been better. Some call it a mutually “transactional” improvement: “pragmatism.” Others, in less diplomatic language, call it Turkish blackmailing on the back of the refugee crisis. Even Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogu admitted that his latest round of negotiations with Europe’s leaders was a fine bargaining “a la Kayseri,” a Turkish city famous for its tough-bargaining merchants.

In reality, modern Turkey has never been this galactically distant from the core values enshrined by the European civilization and its institutions, including even the EU.

When Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the detention for 92 days of two journalists, Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, constituted a breach of their basic rights, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not hide his anger. He said he would not respect or obey the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The journalists had been charged with espionage and terrorism after their secular newspaper, Cumhuriyet, ran photos and a story about Turkish intelligence sending trucks full of arms to jihadists fighting in Syria. Prosecutors demand life sentences for the prominent journalists.

U.S. Policy Made 2015 the Worst Persecution of Christians “in Modern History” by Raymond Ibrahim

In 35 nations Islamic extremism “has risen to a level akin to ethnic cleansing” of Christians.

Something else stands behind this rise of genocidal “Islamic extremism”: U.S. foreign policy. In every Muslim nation where the U.S. has intervened in the name of “freedom and democracy,” Christian life has exponentially worsened.

For years the Obama administration has refused to list Boko Haram as a terrorist organization, and has argued that its violence had nothing to do with Islam and was a result of poverty and grievances. Instead, the U.S. pressured the Nigerian government to make concessions, including by building more mosques—the very structures, as the Nigerian lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe said, where Muslims are radicalized and recruited for the jihad.

Globally empowering forces hostile to Christians is synonymous with globally empowering forces hostile to America.

The primary achievement of U.S. foreign policies, apart from wasted American blood and treasure—

is the unprecedented rise in Muslim nations of Islamic forces outspokenly bent on destroying America.

2015 was the “worst year in modern history for Christian persecution,” according to Open Doors, a human rights organization that has been documenting the persecution of Christians since 1955.

When Trump Blamed Pamela Geller for Inciting Violence By Daniel John Sobieski

Donald Trump, who denies that his provocative and sometimes profane rhetoric (particularly against Muslims_ has anything to do with violence and protests at his University of Illinois-Chicago rally, once blamed conservative activist Pamela Geller for provoking an attempted armed assault by – wait for it – unnecessarily provoking Muslims.

As Gideon Resnick noted last December in the Daily Beast, pre-candidate Trump was not as passionately concerned with Pamela Geller’s First Amendment free speech rights as he now is about his own:

On May 4 of this year, Trump tweeted: “The U.S. has enough problems without publicity seekers going out and openly mocking religion in order to provoke attacks and death. BE SMART.”

His declaration was in response to the news that two men attempted to shoot up the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas, during a “Draw the Prophet” event organized by Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI).

Geller and her group, which has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an “anti-Muslim hate group,” defended her First Amendment rights in the face of violence.

“Freedom of speech is under violent assault here,” Geller defiantly said at the time.

Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, would seemingly agree—he’s spoken a great deal about “political correctness” and his belief that free speech is under attack. But pre-candidate Donald Trump apparently felt otherwise.

“It looks like she’s just taunting everybody. What is she doing?” he told Fox & Friends. “Drawing Mohammed and it looks like she’s actually taunting people. You know, I’m one that believes in free speech, probably more than she does. But what’s the purpose of this?”

Pamela Geller “taunted” Muslims, said the man who is himself accused of taunting Muslims by banning all immigration until he figures things out The purpose of the Garland event, Mr., Trump, was to exercise her free speech rights which, under the U.S. Constitution if not Sharia law, are not punishable by death. Trump, who openly and generically mocks Islam and has threatened protesters with physical violence, says he is innocent of incitement while Geller was guilty. Geller merely sponsored a cartoon contest. Her supporter did not punch an African-American at her event nor manhandle a female reporter as his campaign manager is accused of doing to Michelle Fields.