Displaying posts published in

2016

Ohio State Attack Was a Ram-and-Stab with ‘Possibility’ of Terrorism, Say Police By Bridget Johnson

ATTACK COMES AFTER ISIS “STABBING GUIDE”

Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs said officials “have to consider that it is that possibility” that a mass stabbing on the Ohio State University campus this morning was a terrorist attack.

The campus was locked down for an active shooter situation, but authorities said at a press conference that the bullets were fired by a responding officer. “There’s no indication of a firearm being used by that suspect,” Jacobs said.

The attack occurred on 19th Avenue in front of Watts Hall. Shortly before 10 a.m., a vehicle jumped the curb and ran into a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk. That initial impact injured “several,” OSU president Michael Drake said.

Then the suspect, who has not been identified by police, got out and used a butcher knife to cut “multiple” people. Ten were transported to area hospitals, with one victim in critical condition.

Dispatch first received the call of the attack at 9:52 a.m., followed by a call at 9:53 a.m. that an OSU police officer fired at the suspect.

OSU public safety director Monica Moll said officers from multiple jurisdictions responded to the scene and law enforcement personnel in the area continue to investigate, but “we believe the threat was ended when the officer engaged the suspect.”

A few buildings remain shut down “as a precaution,” Moll said, as officers “continue to sweep those.”

Kevin Donnelly Donald Trump’s Class Warfare

Poor American kids, like their Australian counterparts, continue to slide in assessments of educational achievement even as the sums poured into government schools soar. The president-elect’s endorsement of vouchers, choice and competition is the last, best hope to reverse that decline.
The current school-funding model is about to end and the federal, state and territory ministers of education are soon to meet and begin the process of deciding what will happen at the start of 2018. Crucial to the new funding model will be whether it continues the same old approach of governments controlling taxpayers’ money going to schools and thus forcing them to follow the ordained and endorsed policies in regard to curriculum, teacher employment and accountability.

That’s on this side of the pacific. In America president-elect Donald Trump offers an alternative called “school choice”. Trump has just appointed a school-choice advocate, Betsy DeVos, as Education Secretary and committed $20 billion towards “private school choice, magnet schools and charter laws”. That DeVos is already being denounced by all the usual suspects is an encouraging sign.

School choice involves local autonomy versus centralised, bureaucratic control, plus vouchers that see the money follow the child to whatever school his or her parents decide is best. In addition to being inherently good, the belief that parents should have greater control over where their children are educated signals to schools, both government and non-government, that if they are ineffective and fail to meet parental expectations enrolments will suffer. Instead of being run for the benefit of teacher unions, their executives and the thousands of bureaucrats employed at head office the focus is on giving schools the freedom to best reflect the needs of their communities.

Innovations such as charter schools and vouchers involve local control over curriculum and staffing and ensure that parents, especially those in disadvantaged communities, have the financial means to choose between privately managed schools and those controlled by the state. Florida, Washington and Milwaukee pioneered charter schools and the movement has gone international, with conservative and progressive governments in New Zealand, England and Sweden introducing a more market-driven model represented by school choice and increased local autonomy.

While not giving schools the same degree of autonomy and flexibility as charter schools in the US, the Australian government’s Independent Public Schools initiative is also based on the belief that local control leads to greater innovation and improved educational outcomes. As detailed in James Tooley’s book The Beautiful Tree, privately managed and funded schools are also increasingly popular in India where, because they achieve stronger results compared to government schools, poor parents are going without to pay the cost of enrolling their children.

A Savage Thriller: Nature Television as Shakespearean Drama ‘Savage Kingdom,’ on Nat Geo WILD, is darkly enthralling By John Anderson

If one of the hairy cast members of “Savage Kingdom” stood up and recited the St. Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V,” yes, you’d be surprised. But it wouldn’t be inappropriate at all: What Nat Geo is presenting in its ambitious three-part series is nature television as Shakespearean drama, with all the devices: wars of succession, military strategies, sexual politics, conspiracy, assassination, infanticide and exile. Whether the characters consider it history, comedy or tragedy, of course, depends on whether they’re eating, or being eaten.

Narrated by Charles Dance, “Savage Kingdom” opens with “Clash of Queens,” the principal monarch being Matsumi, a lioness leading the pride that dominates life, and death, at Botswana’s Great Marsh. During the production’s yearlong shoot, the marsh suffered through one of its periodic, debilitating droughts and a scarcity of food is just one of the constant threats to Matsumi’s reign—others being rival lions, pregnancies and, to a certain degree, her mate, Sekekama. He’s no benevolent despot: To deny him, Matsumi knows, is to face death (it’s always rough sex at the marsh). Likewise, to challenge his rule, or sexual supremacy: One upstart, ravaged for his audacity by Sekekama, suffers a prolonged and pitiable demise, unable, finally, even to drink water. “Goodnight, sweet prince,” says Mr. Dance. And no, we kid you not.
Savage Kingdom

9 p.m. Fridays, Nat Geo WILD

If Matsumi and her pride are the peers of the realm, the hyenas are its Nazi skinheads. “Hyenas infect the kingdom like a plague,” says Mr. Dance. “Where there is one there will soon be many.” They are pure villainy, and while not the most individually effective of the murderous marsh dwellers, they never attack except en masse and are easily the scariest of a furry lot. (Other species featured in the show include elephants, wild dogs, hippos, warthogs and wildebeest.)Over the years, nature TV has gotten a reputation for being, essentially, about animals eating other animals. There’s no shortage of that here. At the same time, the intimacy with which “Savage Kingdom” was filmed—one can count the flies on Matsumi’s face—and the breathtaking camera work of Brad Bestelink and his Natural History Film Unit, Botswana, add visual luster to what is often stirring and occasionally heartbreaking drama. Children are lost, homes invaded, vicious punishments inflicted. There’s a degree of anthropomorphism at work here, but the intention is a greater appreciation of the animal kingdom, the struggles its members endure and the capricious African environment, which makes the marsh a lush smorgasbord one minute, a fetid swamp the next: One sequence, late in episode one, features the leopard Saba (the favorite player here, for what it’s worth) fishing in the gooey bed of an evaporated river, dragging hefty sharptooth catfish out of the mud for the delectation of her offspring. CONTINUE AT SITE

Ohio State University Says Student Carried Out Attack Suspect is identified as a student, Abdul Razak Ali Artan By Melissa Korn, Kris Maher and Pervaiz Shallwani

COLUMBUS, Ohio—At least 11 people were injured Monday at Ohio State University after a student allegedly jumped a curb in a motor vehicle, then slashed pedestrians with a butcher knife before he was shot and killed.

Officials identified the suspect as Abdul Razak Ali Artan, who was listed in the student directory as a logistics-management major at the business school. Officials didn’t provide a motive for the attack and couldn’t confirm his exact age.

Those injured in the attack were taken to Columbus-area hospitals to be treated for stab wounds and motor-vehicle injuries, as well as other injuries still being assessed. At least two victims have come out of surgery, said officials at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center, where six of the victims were sent. Most of those injured were students, officials said.

“We all live with the fear that things like this could happen to us,” Ohio State President Michael Drake said at a news conference outside the hospital Monday afternoon. “We live in an unstable world.”

Officials said the suspect intentionally drove a vehicle over a curb to hit a number of pedestrians before jumping out of the car with a knife. A campus police officer arrived within a minute and shot and killed the suspect when he failed to comply with the officer’s commands, the officials said.

“The first responders did a remarkable job,” Ohio Governor John Kasich said at a press conference Monday afternoon. “It shows how much practice, how much training, how much expertise and how much coordination existed with campus police, Columbus police” and other agencies, he said.

The car struck seven or eight pedestrians at approximately 9:52 a.m. ET, according to Ohio State Director of Public Safety Monica Moll, and an officer had engaged with the suspect within a minute. The school’s alert system sent out its first message at 9:55 a.m. ET.

Police have recovered the knife used in the attack and were processing the scene.

Gruber Still Lying About Obamacare: David Catron

This character evidently lacks shame as well as veracity.

A stable human being, having earned national notoriety by admitting that he participated in a conspiracy to deceive the voters on an important public policy issue, would not expect them to believe anything else he had to say on the subject. This would be particularly true if he had also said that the deception was predicated on the stupidity of those voters. Jonathan Gruber committed both offences, of course, but he evidently isn’t “stable” in the way psychiatrists use the term. He not only expects to be taken seriously on the same issue, he’s still trying to deceive the public.

Gruber, in case you have forgotten, is the MIT economics professor who frequently referred to himself as the “father of Obamacare” during the long health reform debate that culminated in the passage of the ironically titled “Affordable Care Act.” He became an unperson two years ago when a video emerged in which he delivered himself of the following words of wisdom concerning the law: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.… And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass.”

Now, he’s attempting to make a comeback by defending the “reform” law from repeal. In an opinion piece published yesterday in the NewYork Daily News, Gruber demonstrated that he still thinks we’re a bunch of brain dead morons. He begins by telling the long-suffering readers of that publication that the law has been a success. In support of this preposterous claim, he offers the same talking points we have been getting from the Obama administration. He glibly repeats, for example, the following whopper: “Twenty million Americans have gained insurance coverage.”

This figure was long ago abandoned by all but the most dishonest Obamacare pimps. It first originated in a widely panned report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. When this work of bad fiction first appeared, Reason’s Peter Suderman debunked it in a column titled, “No, 20 Million Haven’t ‘Gained Coverage’ Under Obamacare,” where he pointed out that the report indiscriminately included anyone who bought insurance: “It’s a count of people obtaining coverage, whether or not they had it before, not people who were previously uninsured.”

Another lie Gruber repeats in yesterday’s piece is this long-ago-debunked tale: “Since the ACA’s passage, health-care costs have grown at their slowest rate in measured U.S. history; the innovative cost controls put in place by the law are one important reason why.” He knows perfectly well that this slowdown in health care inflation has nothing to do with Obamacare. As this report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid shows, the slowdown began seven years before the “Affordable Care Act” passed. Gruber hopes his readers are too dumb to know that.

Gruber also claims that the most hated of Obamacare’s provisions, the individual mandate, can’t be repealed because it is needed to “bring the healthy into the insurance pool.” He doesn’t tell us where he has been hiding out since his fall from grace two years ago. But, unless he has been locked up and denied access to newspapers, the internet, television, twitter, etc., he will have noticed that the individual mandate just isn’t working. He knows that, of course. A more plausible explanation is that Dr. Gruber still thinks his readers are just too “stupid” to know the truth.

He is posing as the only person in the galaxy who doesn’t know that the mandate has failed to “bring the healthy into the insurance pool.” As Modern Healthcare reports, “Only 28% of exchange members in 2014 were in the coveted 18-34 age range, and that percentage stayed level for 2016. It’s below the 40% level many actuaries say is needed.” In other words, the individual mandate that Dr. Gruber and Obamacare’s other architects insisted upon over the objections of the electorate has not prevented the adverse selection problem it was ostensibly meant to forestall.

Obama’s Leftovers Jed Babbin

President Trump will soon enough know how inedible they are — and they can’t just be thrown away.

Thanksgiving is four days behind us, which means the leftovers have either been eaten or are ready for the trash. Fifty-three days from now, when Barack Obama finally relinquishes the presidency, he will leave a whole table full of leftovers that our next president will find a lot harder to consume or dispose of.

The sun never sets on President Obama’s leftovers. He entered office promising to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He leaves it with those wars still taking the lives of American servicemen. Wars that didn’t exist in 2009 — Syria, Libya, and Ukraine — continue at the pace prescribed by our enemies. The first American was killed in Syria on Thanksgiving Day.

America has been at war for fifteen years in Afghanistan and thirteen in Iraq. Obama ran as a “peace now” candidate, but — as Gen. James Mattis is quoted as saying — the enemy gets a vote in when a war ends. Worse, as in the Afghanistan conflict, Obama specifically disavowed victory. He continued those wars seeking only to avoid the blame for losing.

Obama has engaged us in new unnecessary wars, such as in Libya, and refused to take timely action to topple Bashar Assad in Syria. His refusal to act created the opportunity for Russia and Iran to seize control of Syria and propel their influence across the Middle East.

Obama never wanted to recognize the most important fact of the Middle Eastern conflicts: that they are religious wars that aren’t going to end. Iraq’s government last week acted to supposedly bring the more than 140,000 Shiite militiamen under its command. Iraq won’t command the Shiite militias, but its alliance with them is more than a formality. Iraq has been an Iranian satrapy for years, as this alliance makes all too clear to Iraq’s Sunni minority.

This past week, the Obama administration advised the incoming Trump team that their number one national security priority should be North Korea. Obama has engaged in a so-called “strategy” of “strategic patience,” which has enabled the Norks to develop and test nuclear weapons and the missiles capable of delivering them. Obama let China off the hook, refusing to pressure them to rein in their client state.

Obama leaves Trump to deal with the Norks and their nukes without any helpful advice except to negotiate with them. Which amounts to no advice that can possibly help deter or even reduce the Norks’ nuke threat to America and its Asian allies.

Those allies, of course, have given up on the idea of American leadership in their region. On Wednesday, South Korea and Japan signed an agreement to share intelligence on North Korean missile and nuclear matters. This agreement is the first real cooperation between the two nations since 1945. They have set aside their historical enmity and decided to eliminate America as a go-between on military matters.

Trump and Enforcement of the Immigration Laws By Andrew C. McCarthy

Given how central concerns over illegal immigration were to Donald Trump’s campaign, it was inevitable that his triumph would spark a strident debate. The rival sides, however, are like ships passing in the night.

Trump emissaries assert that the president-elect will step up border enforcement and prioritize the deportation of criminal aliens – i.e., those who’ve committed serious and/or repetitious state and federal crimes, not just immigration-law violations. Trump detractors, including Democratic mayors of major cities, respond with indignant vows to protect “undocumented” members of their communities who are living peaceful, essentially law-abiding lives.

If you’re thinking the Democratic response is not, well, responsive, you’re onto the game. The immigrants they make a grand show of protecting are exactly the people not being targeted by the Trump camp’s deportation plans. If Democrats oppose Trump on his own terms, they risk being revealed as champions of criminals preying on Americans. So the Left is going demagogue – turning a “right versus wrong” issue into “us versus them.”

To be fair, they have not been alone in this. Throughout the campaign, especially during the GOP primaries, Trump beat his chest about mass deportations and the sea-to-sea wall for which Mexico would supposedly pay. As we’ve observed, much of this was absurd, as was Trump’s suggestion of a touchback amnesty approach: The government would expend untold billions to send millions of illegal aliens back home … only to invite most of them back in with legal status.

As the campaign unfolded and victory seemed increasingly plausible, Trump’s rhetoric grew tamer. As president-elect, it appears he has ended up in a more realistic place.

There is a reason the competing rhetoric – mass deportations versus sanctuary cities – has been so extreme. It’s been so long since our government has enforced the immigration laws, we have forgotten what rational enforcement looks like. In the interim, after two decades of prosecuting terrorism in the federal courts, we’ve lost the distinction between law-enforcement issues and national-security challenges.

Immigration is a law-enforcement issue. Yes, it has some national-security implications, just as other crimes that contribute to terrorist plots do. In the main, though, it is an ordinary crime problem. Our goal is never to extirpate crime problems – not in the way that government agents must prevent and exhibit zero tolerance for terrorism, a national security challenge. Crime problems are managed, not eradicated.

It is not possible to prosecute every immigration offense, just as we have no expectation that the police will arrest every drug dealer or petty thief. No one would want to live in the kind of authoritarian state we would become if we took such an approach to crime. Plus, we do not have the resources it would take even if we were open to it.Like any other crime problem, illegal immigration should be addressed in a manner commensurate with its seriousness. The objective should be to prosecute and/or deport as many of the worst offenders as possible, given the available resources – meaning the amount of investigators, prosecutor-time, court-time, detention space, and deportation administration it is reasonable to devote to immigration enforcement in light of other crime problems that also demand attention. The goal is a degree of enforcement sufficient to remove significant offenders and discourage potential offenders. CONTINUE AT SITE

Leadership and National Unity By Herbert London

President, London Center for Policy Research

The recent American election raised a host of hypotheses about how to make America great again, to quote President Elect Trump. What it suggests is what made America great in the first place. Clearly America is based on a Constitution and Bill of Rights that give and constrain simultaneously in a symphony of Judeo Christian beliefs. The free market opened avenues of wealth and opportunity. Most significantly, the nation was blessed with great leaders from Washington to Reagan.

Unfortunately, much of the past is gone and unlikely to be reclaimed. The ruling class is fraught with corruption – the Clinton Foundation a classic example. Leaders like Biden and the Kennedys cheated on tests without remorse. Churches have embraced the Playboy life. Law is relative and administrative rulings rigid. How do you discover a new ruling class when the precedents of the past put the succeeding generations on the pathway to power?

Moreover, how does one govern a nation when half the population is regarded as deplorable and irredeemable and half is comprised of crybabies? Clearly the nation needs leaders of the kind we were blessed to have in the past. There is, of course, the danger of romanticizing a past that didn’t exist. Andrew Jackson might have committed homicide before being elected president. General Omar Bradley called his colleague Douglas Mac Arthur “primitive” for his comments during the Korean War. Richard Nixon was described by his detractors as a “psychopath.” Since George Washington, none of our presidents were universally admired.

Yet there were leaders who transcended the limits of office. George Marshall was more than a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense, he was a symbol of American strength and generosity. Wallace Stevens, the poet, worked as an executive for an insurance company, but wrote brilliant poetry in a cocoon of quiet dignity which served as a model of civic conduct. Harry Truman was a flawed personality in many ways including, but not restricted to, his association with the Prendergast machine in Kansas City. He was a conventional New Deal Democrat who hardly stood out as a legislative leader in the Senate. However, when he inherited the presidency, he was obliged to make some of the toughest decisions in the twentieth century. He made them with firmness and confidence. When he retired from office, his wife met him outside the White House, and without fanfare or secret service personnel, they drove off to the family home in Independence Missouri. Not everyone loved Truman, but he was a man who rose above his station.

NEWS ITEM FROM 1938….PAST AS PROLOGUE?

From my friend Andy Bostom…..

New York Timesman Arthur Krock provided the following unusually candid assessment of FDR/Obama statist rule, circa April, 1938 (“Congress Discovers Its Own Backbone,” Arthur Krock, April 10, 1938 The New York Times).

It is, of course, entirely fitting and proper, wholly in keeping with our form of government, that the President [FDR] should regularly discuss with the leaders of the Legislature the affairs of the nation. But the remarkable thing about these meetings is that they were virtually forced upon Mr. Roosevelt. He did not want them. He prefers the system he followed from March, 1933, until last January [1938]. Under its workings, the President decided what he wanted to do administratively, and did it, letting the leaders of Congress read about it in the newspapers. He also decided what he wanted to do legislatively, had a bill prepared to carry out the ideas, and sent it ready-made to Congress to be signed on the dotted line.

Often his leaders introduced the measure without reading it. The late Senator [Joseph Taylor] Robinson “introduced” a copy of the morning paper during the bank crisis of 1933 because the bill it was supposed to be was not fully drafted. Always the rank and file of Congress knew nothing of a bill’s contents until they read them in the newspapers. Sometimes they did not trouble to do that, voting “aye” on faith.

Clearly, now lame duck POTUS Obama repeated FDR’s machinations in forcing passage of the disastrous, liberty-crushing, Orwellian-dubbed “Affordable Care Act.” Good riddance—one fervently wishes—to yet another failed iteration of totalitarian “good governance.” Andrew Bostom

MY SAY: KRISTALLNACHT- NOVEMBER 9, 1938

November 9th, 2016 I was celebrating the election of Donald Trump…and the rejection of Hillary Clinton. While wading through the flood of jubilant national news I overlooked the anniversary of Kristallnacht 1938. As Arab arson ignites in Israel terrorizing civilians and wreaking despair, I think now of Kristallnacht which was the tinder that ignited a war against the Jewish people in which one of every three Jews in the world was killed……rsk
Here is a column from November 9, 2015 published in the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2015/11/09/from-kristallnacht-to-the-kindertransport-to-finally-america-a-group-of-berliners-said-a-stain-on-the-street-was-a-jews-blood-even-now-i-can-hear-their-laughter-by-john-h-lang/

From Kristallnacht to the Kindertransport to, Finally, America A group of Berliners said a stain on the street was a Jew’s blood. Even now I can hear their laughter.By John H. Lang

http://www.wsj.com/articles/from-kristallnacht-to-the-kindertransport-to-finally-america-1447019141

Monday, Nov. 9, marks the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazi hordes ran wild throughout Berlin, as well as in other German cities. Jewish houses of worship were desecrated and then set afire. Thousands of Jews were rounded up, some beaten to death, others sent to concentration camps. Jewish-owned businesses and homes were looted.

I will never forget seeing the unimaginable horror of the night and the following day 77 years ago. By luck, my parents were not in Berlin. I was at my grandmother’s. Through the window I could see my beautiful synagogue engulfed in flames as desperate screams rose from the street below. Each knock on our apartment door brought terror, followed by incredible relief. By some miracle, two of my uncles made it to my grandmother’s seeking safety from the savagery of this night.

The next morning as I wandered through my neighborhood, I saw shards of plate glass everywhere, as every Jewish-owned shop had been looted and painted with vile Jew-hating slogans. Uniformed Nazis and their sympathizers were having fun as they surveyed their brutality. One group looked at a large stain on the street that was said to be the blood of a Jew. Even now I can hear their laughter.

At that moment, I was an 8-year-old who had suddenly turned 18. My every thought turned to survival. When my parents returned, I told my father that I would never live to see my ninth birthday. He took my hand and told me that he would always protect me and that nothing would happen to our family—because he had been a decorated front-line soldier during the 1914-18 World War.

Though reports of Kristallnacht—called the night of broken glass—were circulated world-wide, there was no forceful reaction by the world powers, although the U.S. ambassador to Berlin was recalled to Washington for consultations. In retrospect this became a rehearsal for the Holocaust to come. Although my parents already had applied to immigrate to the United States, they were informed by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin that our quota number would not be reached for several years. There was no escape.