RUTHFULLY YOURS

Senator Jeff Sessions comes under fire for his reasonable proposal. It’s hard to take New York Times editorials seriously, given their parodic parochialism and cluelessness.

Rebutting one feels almost like writing a non-ironic letter to the editor of The Onion. Its commentary on immigration is probably worse than on other topics, and arguably more harmful. In an analysis of “How Arthur Sulzberger Radicalized the New York Times Editorial Page on Immigration,” my colleague (and Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter) Jerry Kammer wrote: “But the Times has carried its good intentions to a destructive extreme.

Its editorials have poisoned the national discussion of a complex and emotional issue.” And the venom continues to flow. It’s no surprise that the Times’ latest hiss on immigration attacks Senator Jeff Sessions. Specifically, Sessions penned a sober op-ed in the Washington Post the other day arguing that “America needs to curb immigration flows,” meaning not just better controls at the borders but also lower levels of future legal immigration: What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together. I happen to agree, but one could certainly offer a thoughtful rebuttal. Not the Times, though. In Times World, Sessions “worries darkly” about the effects of immigration, choosing “to echo an uglier time in our history” by making “a case for yanking America’s welcome mat.” I assume an editor removed the references to Hitler.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused the Holy See of ignoring the pain suffered by Muslims and Turks. Cavusoglu did not say why Muslims and Turks tend to ignore the pain suffered by other faiths and other nations.

Such political controversies as the Pope’s speech always offer golden opportunities to Turkish officials who would not miss exploiting them in order to look pretty to an Islamist government and hope for a brighter career.

It seems as if Turkey’s ruling politicians are in a race to look less and less convincing to an already suspicious international audience. How they defended their ancestors’ sins a century ago earned them new points in the race, and made them look even more odd than before.

Russia and China have also agreed to build nuclear plants for Iran. And North Korea has also been supplying Iran with technology, a “minor detail” hidden from the UN by U.S. President Barack Obama. And the U.S. thinks that if Iran is caught cheating, sanctions can be re-imposed?

Other countries in the region have already started scheduling delivery for their nuclear weapons. They have made it clear they will not sit idly by while Iran goes nuclear.

Iran has already bragged that it will sell “enriched uranium” on the open market, and will be “hopefully making some money” from it, said Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

No agreement was signed between Iran and the P5+1 group[1] on April 2; no agreement will be signed on June 30.

It’s become habitual for movies to pair ordinary (Ben Stiller) or geeky (Adam Driver) comedic men with unusually beautiful women like Naomi Watts and Amanda Seyfried. Of course we would accept this if these men were playing the movie stars they actually are but that type of unbalanced casting starts us off being incredulous when the males are playing losers (Ben Stiller) or wannabes (Adam Driver). The latter is more than a foot taller than Stiller yet there’s a scene where Ben dons Adam’s jacket and roller-blades – both of which fit perfectly. It’s a minor moment but another peg for the incredulity board which is disconcerting in a movie that purports to poke fun in the mores of contemporary urban twenty and forty-somethings. If the object of the poke isn’t recognizably authentic, there’s no stuffing in the satire.

They are what David Mamet called “The Wicked Son(s)”…a pox on them and their ilk….rsk
Members of a group of Jewish supporters of the Democratic Party who met with President Barack Obama this week urged him to remove the long-standing American veto protection of Israel at the United Nations. The group, affiliated with the left-wing lobby group J Street, pledged to support the president within the Jewish community in the event of a Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian State.

The exchange took place in the second of two meetings Obama held with American Jewish leaders to discuss the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as other regional issues. According to a source who was in the room, one J Street supporter told the president that if he decided to back a Palestinian state resolution over Israeli objections, “let us know first, and we’ll do the legwork for you, in the community… so you’re not going to come in cold.” Among the J Street supporters who were part of the delegation meeting with Obama were Alexandra Stanton, Lou Susman and Victor Kovner.

I know the (Aussie) ABC are a bunch of doctrinaire lefties for the most part, but I always enjoy my appearances thereon and Tony Jones is a not un-agreeable host, all things considered. Still, it’s sad to see them providing a platform for serial litigant and Clime Syndicate warmano Michael E Mann.

As you know, Mann is suing me for describing his famous scary “hockey stick” graph as “fraudulent”, which it is. The graph shows a straight-line “shaft” of the stick representing 900 years of stable global temperature, followed by a sharp upturned blade representing the 20th century temperature rocketing up and out the top right-hand corner. The “message” (which Mann and his colleagues were concerned not to “dilute” with any subtleties or qualifications) was simple: We’re all outta graph paper. This thing’s off the charts with nowhere to go but up through the ceiling at an unprecedented rate. Give us all your money or the planet’s gonna fry.

Instead, from the very moment Mann joined the global-warming A-listers, the actual, real-world temperature flatlined and his hockey stick got the worst case of brewer’s droop since records began. As I’ve said before, if you graduated from college last summer, there’s been no “global warming” since you were in kindergarten; if you graduated from high school, there’s been none since you were born. For the generation that had Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (heavily reliant on the hockey stick) shoved down its throat from K through 12, it doesn’t feel like that, but nevertheless it’s a fact: The “pause” in global warming is about to enter its third decade, and simply being a climate-pause denier (to coin a phrase) is no longer tenable.

Mrs Clinton continues her tour of her future subjects, in which selected pre-screened “everyday Americans” are graciously permitted into the van to commune with the ultimate non-everyday American. The effusions of the US media’s court eunuchs over Mrs Clinton’s ability to pass as an “everyday American” and actually visit a Chipotle suggest this is going to be a very long 18 months.

The last time a Clinton was in the White House it was what he was doing outside the White House that dominated the press coverage. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton celebrated beating the rap at his impeachment trial with what appeared to be some desultory bombing of the Serbs, but boy, it was a big bang for Bill and Hill. This was my Sunday Telegraph column of August 1999:

President Obama wielded his pen yesterday to begin the process of removing the longstanding U.S. designation of Communist Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move that pushes the U.S. closer to restoring full diplomatic ties with the brutal Caribbean dictatorship.

Obama’s action comes as watchdog group Judicial Watch yesterday claimed [1] that America has a terrorist problem closer to home than Cuba which is 90 miles away from the U.S. coast in Florida.

The group says the Muslim terrorists of Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) are operating a camp about eight miles from the U.S. border near El Paso, Texas. The base is located in an area called Anapra which is west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Another Islamic State cell is located in Puerto Palomas and is targeting Columbus and Deming, N.M., for easy access to the U.S. Sources for the information include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector, according to Judicial Watch.

It is unclear what, if anything, the Obama administration is doing about this.

We need to stop micromanaging what recipients buy with their food stamps. It would be hard to find someone outside the cocoon of Washington special interests who would defend our current welfare system. We spend nearly $1 trillion a year to fund over 100 separate anti-poverty programs, yet we have achieved only minimal gains in helping people escape poverty. By conventional measures, the poverty rate today is as high as when the War on Poverty was declared more than 50 years ago. Even alternative poverty measures that are arguably more accurate show few gains in recent years. We may have made poverty more comfortable, but we are not helping people become independent and self-sufficient. The need for reform is obvious.

The apostate author has done something of an about-face since her last book, in which she dismissed any reasonable hope that the Creed of the Sword might be reformed. Take away its supremacist worldview, as she thinks might be possible, and it doesn’t leave much for reformed Muslims to pray for.

From Caged Virgin to Infidel to Nomad, Ayaan Hirsi Ali milked the memoir, which is fine because she has an important story to tell and it bears reiteration and elaboration. Now there is Heretic (Harper Collins, 2015, 272 pages), which continues the catchy one-word titles that Ann Coulter has made into an art form but which jumps genre. Heretic is not primarily a memoir; it is a structured call for reformation within Islam. It also represents a mind change.

In Nomad Hirsi Ali “believed that Islam was beyond reform, that perhaps the best thing for religious believers in Islam to do was to pick another god”. In Heretic she not only calls for reform but believes in its feasibility and possibility. While I think she was right in Nomad – as I will explain – that doesn’t take away from the instructive value of Heretic; for non-Muslims and, perhaps, even more so for Muslims prepared to be seen reading it.

“It simply will not do for Muslims to claim their religion has been ‘hijacked’ by extremists. The killers of IS and Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.”