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2016

Philly Shooter: I Did It For Allah. Philly Mayor: No, You Didn’t. Philly Mayor Jim Kenney would be the funniest man in the City of Brotherly Love, if the stakes weren’t so high.Robert Spencer ****

Philadelphia comedian Jim Kenney has a flair for absurdist humor, and his talents were on abundant display Thursday, when a local jihadi, a convert to Islam named Edward Archer, shot and seriously wounded police officer Jesse Hartnett, and then explained: “I follow Allah. I pledge my allegiance to the Islamic state. That is why I did what I did.” Kenney’s response was as dazzling a sendup of the willful ignorance of today’s public officials as you’ll ever see.

Pretending to be the Mayor of Philadelphia, Kenney, one of the most daring and imaginative comedians on the scene today, said this after showing a surveillance video of Archer garbed in Islamic dress and shooting at Hartnett: “In no way shape or form does anyone in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam has anything to do with what you’ve seen on the screen….It is abhorrent. It is terrible and it does not represent the religion or any of its teachings. This is a criminal with a stolen gun who tried to kill one of our officers. It has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

Brilliant! Kenney had the audience laughing, clapping and howling for more with his poker-faced impersonation of an intentionally clueless contemporary public official. His performance recalled some of the career highlights of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and their British colleague in comedy, David Cameron, such as Obama’s classifying the Fort Hood jihad massacre as “workplace violence” and Kerry’s suggesting that all jihadis needed to discard their romantic dreams of being a modern-day warrior for Allah would be a chance to say “Would you like fries with that?”

Notes on a Phenomenon by Mark Steyn

On Tuesday night, my daughter and her friends went down to Claremont, New Hampshire to see Donald Trump in action. She and her chums range from the not terribly political to those with the usual enthusiasms of youth, so they went mainly because Trump’s a hot ticket, and we don’t get a lot of those in the Granite State. Her only other candidate encounter this season was at the North Haverhill Fair last summer when Lindsey Graham pounced outside the 4-H barn, no doubt with an eye to recruiting her for one of his “rotating first ladies”.

At any rate, after hearing my daughter’s account of the night, my sons said they wanted to see Trump, too. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic, having wasted far too much of my time in New Hampshire on campaign events, going all the way back to the oxymoronic “Dole rallies” of 1996. But they persisted. So we checked out the schedule and discovered that he was due to be in Bernie Sanders’ socialist fortress of Vermont on Thursday. Which is how we wound up crossing the Connecticut River and traversing the Green Mountain State, and eventually found ourselves in an unusually lively Burlington. Herewith, a few notes on what I saw:

~THE VENUE: When was the last time a GOP presidential candidate held (in the frantic run-up to Iowa and New Hampshire) an event in Vermont? Every fourth January, Republican campaigns are focused on the first caucus and the first primary states, as Bush, Rubio, Christie, Kasich, Huckabee, Fiorina et al are right now. But in fact the Green Mountain primary is on March 1st, and its delegates count as much as any other state’s. In recent cycles, the American electoral system has diminished and degraded itself by retreating into turnout-model reductionism and seriously competing only over a handful of purple states. Even if he’s only doing it as a massive head-fake, Trump understands the importance of symbolism: By going into Berniestan, he’s saying he’s going for every voter and he’s happy to play down the other guy’s half of the field.

Would You Tell Your Citizens to Boycott This, President Zuma?

The year 2015 closed with the BDS movement in South Africa releasing a triumphalist video.They’re not alone in that: a number of Israel-hating activists around the world have been doing likewise. But unlike the BDS movement in most countries, their efforts to isolate, undermine, and destroy Israel as we know it are supported by their country’s head of state.

“We reiterate that we discourage travel to Israel for ANC leaders, members, and representatives, for business and leisure purposes. The ANC encourages our government to continue its programme of talking to all parties in the Palestinian territory and calls on the people of Palestine to work together to bring about self-determination.”

Thus declared South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma on 8th January, during the ANC’s 104th anniversary celebrations.

President Zuma went on:

“The ANC is very concerned about the deteriorating situation in the Middle East as this has the potential to trigger a global conflagration. We urge parties to co-operate in line with principles of international law and resolutions of the United Nations.”

Now, President Zuma, it’s a sad and well-known fact that more people in your country are suffering from the AIDs virus than are any other people in the world.

APPALLING BREAKDOWN OF INFRASTRUCTURE IN MICHIGAN

Michigan Democrats have a second issue for which they hope to roast Gov. Rick Snyder (R) over a fire of public outrage. The first was, and still is, Michigan’s terrible, pothole-filled roads. That is bad. But the new issue could be even more emotional: the poisoning of children.

Gov. Snyder, who was mentioned briefly as a GOP presidential primary candidate because of his perceived ability to just get things done without worrying about politics, had to apologize Dec. 29 for his administration’s inability to keep lead out of the drinking water of Flint, Mich.

A week later, Snyder declared a state of emergency for Flint and Genesee County, which means state officials decided local resources would not be enough to clean the water and keep it pure.

Snyder also forced the former head of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, Dan Wyant, out of office that day, as the Republican admitted it was because the DEQ botched the testing of Flint’s water that the children of Flint have been poisoned by lead in the water.

Two VA Administrators Responsible for Fake Wait List Going Back to Work By Rick Moran

Two Veterans Affairs managers from the Phoenix VA facility who faked wait lists for treatment that led to the deaths of dozens of veterans are going back to work after being suspended — with pay — for nearly two years.

Agency investigations into their wrongdoing proved to be “inconclusive,” says the VA.

Washington Free Beacon:

Two top administrators at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs health system in Phoenix, Arizona, who were suspended following revelations of fake waitlists and delayed patient care will return to agency jobs Monday.

The Arizona Republic reported:

Lance Robinson, associate director of the Phoenix VA Health Care System, will be assigned as a planner at the VA’s southwest regional office in Gilbert, known as VISN 18, according to spokeswoman Jean Schaefer. Brad Curry, the system’s chief of Health Administration Services, will serve as a data analyst. The two men have been focal points in a controversy over the VA’s perceived failure to hold leaders accountable for mismanagement and misconduct that caused a breakdown in care for veterans in Arizona and nationwide.

Robinson and Curry were placed on paid leave and given termination notices in May 2014. During their suspensions, they have been given hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay and benefits.

Trump Gives ‘Amazing’ NoKo ‘Maniac’ Kim Jong Un ‘Credit’ for Strong Leadership By Rick Moran

“There is absolutely nothing to admire in Kim or Putin. They are the enemies of civilized behavior and should be held in utter contempt. That Trump doesn’t place their actions in a moral context should be worrying to anyone who cares about U.S. leadership.”

First, candidate Trump carried on a long-distance bromance with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, calling him “a strong leader” and saying it was a “great honor” to have Putin compliment him.

Now Trump has expressed admiration for an even loonier goon: North Korea’s boy tyrant Kim Jong Un. Speaking at a rally in Ottumwa, IA, Trump veritably gushed about the leadership qualities of Kim.

The Hill:

“If you look at North Korea, this guy, he’s like a maniac, OK?” Trump said at a rally in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Saturday.

“And you’ve got to give him credit: How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals and all of a sudden, you know, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it. How does he do that?” he added.

Reflections on Wise and Suicidal Immigration By Victor Davis Hanson

Legal immigration has historically been classically liberal and a great boon for the United States.

Immigrants often bring in energy and fresh ideas.

In the past, newcomers from around the world were eager for a second start in the United States. They nearly all worked hard, reminding American-born citizens that that they can never rest on their laurels.

Immigrants honed American competition and helped to keep the nation productive.

Immigrants were typically hyper-patriotic. They reminded complacent Americans how lucky they were to be born in the U.S.

No one knew better how uninviting were the alternatives abroad than did those who had been forced to live under fascism, communism, totalitarianism, tribalism, or endemic poverty and corruption. Most immigrants believed that they always had been Americans in spirit, just unfortunately born in the wrong country.

Immigrants characteristically had rejected their native cultures and were eager to adopt a new American identity. So they were not foolish enough to question what had made America attractive to them in the first place: constitutional government, the rule of law, personal freedom, free-market capitalism, and an independent judiciary and press.

Instead, immigrants often enriched that immutable Western core with diverse contributions of food, music, literature, and art.

Through integration and intermarriage immigrants quickly became part of the American dream. The path from Italian to Italian-American to American usually was completed in two generations.

What then were the ingredients of past successful American immigration policy?

POLL INDICATES WEAKNESS IN HILLARY’S NUMBERS

40-something Hillary Clinton should Worry DemocratsBy Silvio Canto, Jr.
The latest FOX poll is bad news for Mrs Clinton:

She loses to Senator Rubio (50-41%),
Senator Cruz is up 7 (50-43%),
she ties Bush (44-44%),
Trump leads (47-44%),
and Christie leads (47-44%).

Dr. Carson is the only candidate that she defeats, according to this poll.

It takes more than one poll to persuade me one way or another. However, there is a trend in the polls that should scare Democrats: Hillary is 40-something time after time.

Hillary Clinton is between 42-45% in the average of polls. This is scary for such a well-known candidate.

Democrats Press Obama Administration Over Iran Lawmakers want sanctions to move forward after the nation’s ballistic-missile testingBy Kristina Peterson

WASHINGTON—Congressional Democrats are intensifying pressure on the Obama administration to hold Iran accountable for its testing of ballistic missiles.

Both supporters and opponents of the multinational nuclear accord with Iran say that to maintain U.S. credibility in enforcing the deal, the White House must move forward with sanctions on Iran after two missile tests in the fall.

The administration in late December told lawmakers it planned to impose new financial penalties on nearly a dozen companies and individuals for their alleged role in developing Iran’s ballistic missile program. It then reversed course, saying it needed more time for diplomatic work with the Iranian government, but it hasn’t given a timeline for when they would be imposed.

The delay has put some Democrats, particularly those who represent large Jewish constituencies and donors, in an uncomfortable position. Many such lawmakers agonized this summer over whether to support the nuclear deal, which was opposed by Israel, saying their backing was contingent on strict oversight of Iran’s behavior.

“They ought to impose sanctions because we have to show we take this seriously,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.), who backed the nuclear deal, said in a recent interview. “Iran is very destabilizing, very aggressive and very badly behaved and we have to do what we can to stop that.”

“We will issue those sanctions and those designations at the appropriate time. There’s no question about it,” Denis McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, said on Fox News Sunday.
The House is expected to vote Wednesday on GOP legislation ensuring that as the administration eases sanctions on Iran under the nuclear deal, it doesn’t lift sanctions against individuals involved in the country’s ballistic missiles program or terrorism. Many Democrats said they were reviewing the legislation.

Mr. Obama also faced resistance from his own party in November when nearly four dozen House Democrats defied his veto threat to support legislation to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees after the Islamic State attacks in Paris. That biil hasn’t been passed by the Senate.

The debate over the nuclear deal reached with Iran in July is likely to intensify as it is formally implemented and sanctions against Tehran are lifted. “I’m hopeful that Democrats, even those who voted to support the president’s deal, will recognize we’re in a bad place” under the agreement, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) said.

The Federal Failure to Counter Jihad By J.R. Dunn

With the incidents of the past two months, ranging from San Bernardino to Merced to Rochester, we now know that we are essentially unprotected from terrorist attacks.

What San Bernardino amounted to is that government fumbled the ball and then refused to pick it up. Every single error made on the federal level concerning terror since the first inauguration of Barack Obama came to a head, from encouraging Muslim immigration to enabling terrorists to enter the country to crippling security investigations in the name of PC.

The federal government has unilaterally broken a basic element of the social contract — that the citizen will give up private use of violence and support the government in exchange for protection.

That protection is no longer forthcoming. Both the military and police have given up any pretense of attempting to control Islamic terrorism. Homeland Defense was founded to create a new basis for a public employee’s union. It fulfills that role admirably. It does nothing else. (Consider the Lutchman case in Rochester, N.Y. in which Emanuel Lutchman, a near-lunatic, was infatuated by ISIS websites but transparently unable to act upon them without help. He obtained this from government agents, who not only encouraged him, but in fact purchased the items he was going to use in the attack. That he was groomed as a trophy bust is difficult to deny.)