RUTHFULLY YOURS

“It is a comfort that Trump will have some solid people around him, but the truth remains that he is uninformed on many topics, ill-informed on others, untrustworthy, and pathologically vindictive. I will never be able to say I want him to win — only that I’m certain I want Hillary Clinton to lose.”

You reap what you sow. For a generation since Ronald Reagan left Washington — that would be the Ronald Reagan who knew that “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” was a punch line — the “conservative” Republican party has sown an incoherent statism that has trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys. On Thursday night came the harvest: The party was formally taken over by an incoherent statist whose “conservatism” is not done justice by scare quotes. Oh . . . and he has trouble telling the good guys from the bad guys.

Of course, you wouldn’t get that from his acceptance speech. Donald Trump doesn’t know much, but he has a genius for self-promotion and marketing. The conservative intellectuals and Washington political class so dismissive of his bravura 72-minute performance for its high-decibel staccato and occasional rambling repetitiveness are missing the point, as they have throughout Trump’s ascent.

From 30,000 feet, which is as close as most Americans get to government policy in all its intricacies, Trump gave a great speech. If you knew nothing of Trump, if your only impression was the Donald bestriding the Manichaean world he portrayed Thursday night, you wanted to be with him.

He’s with the cops against the thugs who shoot them down. He’s with peace-loving Americans (and don’t forget the “Q” after “LGBT”) against the barbaric Islamic terrorists who besiege them. He’s with wall-deprived communities preyed upon by illegal aliens. He’s now with the upright American middle class screwed over by the cabal of Beltway insiders and crony capitalists (of which he was, until moments ago, a member in good standing). He is the embodiment of law and order, pitted against Hillary Clinton, a recidivist felon in the court of public opinion — one the throng in Cleveland wants “locked up,” pronto.

You can see why it would drive an informed person nuts. But a note to all eggheads: Save your dissertation on why free trade does not actually undermine the dignity of work. Forget the stubborn facts that manufacturing is thriving in America, that a trade war with China is a moronic idea, and that Trump has forsworn any action on the entitlement spending that drives the ruinous $19 trillion national debt he decries. And don’t dare mention the bombshell Trump conveniently omitted in his stemwinder: his commitment to give legal status (pssst– that means amnesty) to millions of the illegal aliens he risibly promises to deport.

Hillary Clinton settled on Virginia Senator Tim Kaine to be her running mate. Senator Kaine’s self-effacing description of himself is “boring,” a trait that Hillary appears to relish. “I love that about him,” she told CBS News. Hillary also was looking for someone with knowledge of national security issues. Senator Kaine serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Arms Services Committee. What she really found in Senator Kaine is a running mate who epitomizes the Democratic Party’s increased willingness to turn on our close ally Israel and give the benefit of the doubt to Iran and the Islamists.

“Boring” is not the first trait that comes to mind when describing Senator Kaine. His moral cowardice and faulty judgment were on full display as he supported the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran. Kaine obsequiously followed the direction of President Obama and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid in supporting a filibuster to block the Senate majority opposed to the deal from conducting an up-or-down vote on Obama’s appeasement pact. Bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress opposed the deal. Senator Kaine himself admitted to having reservations in light of Iran’s past record of cheating and state sponsorship of terrorism. Yet he gave the thuggish Iranian regime the benefit of the doubt.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously accepted an invitation to address a joint session of Congress regarding his concerns about the path the negotiations leading to the final deal was taking, Senator Kaine joined seven other Senate Democrats in boycotting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech.

During an interview with the Forward in March 2015, Kaine claimed that “I’m a strongly pro-Israel Democrat.” If Kaine were such a “strongly pro-Israel Democrat,” he would not have been one of only 12 senators whom, as the New York Sun recounted, “refused to sign a letter to President Obama warning of legislated legal constraints on funding the Palestinian Arab authority after it struck its alliance with Hamas.”

By elevating Senator Kaine as her choice for vice president, Hillary Clinton demonstrated how the Democratic Party she aspires to lead is moving towards breaking the decades-long bipartisan support for the Jewish State of Israel. However, it gets even worse than that. Hillary’s running mate exemplifies the Democratic Party’s willingness to risk the security of the American people by opening the door to admit large numbers of Islamist “refugees” from Syria. Hillary Clinton herself has called for a 500 percent increase of admissions over Obama’s irresponsible target of 10,000 Syrians to be admitted by the end of this fiscal year. Kaine appears to agree with those who do not think that the Obama administration has been processing the applications for asylum fast enough. And he opposed a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would have required more careful vetting of Syrians and Iraqis before they can be admitted to the United States as “refugees.”

“These refugees are people who are terrorized, not terrorists,” Kaine said in an interview conducted by Vox Media following the ISIS attack in Paris last November. Kaine made this statement even though he has no way of knowing whom the “refugees” from jihadi terrorist-plagued parts of the Middle East seeking to enter our country really are. Top U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have acknowledged that they have no real way of determining whether jihadist groups are infiltrating their fighters into the flow of refugees, as ISIS indicated it had every intention of doing. In particular, there is no reliable database to use in vetting Syrian refugees. Yet Kaine thinks he knows better, just like the top of his ticket thinks she does. He claimed that “the refugee vetting process is one of the safest areas that we have.” And he is willing to put American lives at risk to test his unfounded assumption.

Trump accused Hillary Clinton of being the beneficiary of a rigged system. Then the DNC leaks proved it by showing just how aggressively the Democratic National Committee was working to push Hillary and suppress any of her rivals to the crown. Not only was the process rigged with the superdelegates, but the DNC functioned like an arm of the Clinton campaign.

The Sanders campaign demanded someone’s head. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ frizzy scalp was delivered to Bernie’s door. But Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose last original idea was trying to score a block of Hamilton tickets from an RNC official, certainly didn’t do any of this on her own.

Hillary Clinton lost her last bid for the White House inside her own party. And she wasn’t about to allow that to happen twice. So the Clintons just took over the DNC. They bought it and it sold out to them.

Sergeant Schultz is a patsy. Another disposable Clintonite in a long line of them from Susan McDougal, who spent 18 months in jail for covering for the Clintons before getting a presidential pardon from Bill, to Sandy Berger, who ducked in to stuff some classified documents about Bill’s terror policies into his socks and got 100 hours of community service for building his own “sock server” full of classified documents. If Hillary wins, then Debbie will become Chief of Staff Schultz, Defense Secretary Schultz or, since we already know she’s willing to do anything for Hillary, Attorney General Schultz.

Top DNC officials targeted Bernie Sanders, raising questions about his religion, testing anti-Bernie narratives, slamming him and cheerleading their candidate. They vetted media pieces about Hillary, suppressed material featuring Bernie Sanders and spied on the Sanders campaign from the inside.

The Democratic National Committee functioned like an arm of the Clinton campaign. The primaries were a fiction whose only purpose and only possible outcome was the coronation of Queen Hillary.

Wiser candidates knew that and stayed away. Those who did show up were really applying to be her second banana, a spot that none of them managed to pick up despite their refusal to hit her hard on any of her glaringly ultraviolet vulnerabilities. Only Bernie Sanders proved to be as deluded in his ambitions as he was in his politics. Only he thought that he could actually win a rigged race against Hillary.

The DNC taught him better. Eventually. It took lawsuits, voter fraud and every dirty trick in the book.

“Real men don’t put their children on the firing line.”

Malcolm X

Although Malcolm X was denouncing the Children’s Crusade during the tumultuous times of the civil rights era, and the use of kids as protestors, taking them out of school to publicly challenge the likes of Bull Connor and George Wallace, his words perhaps ring truer today than fifty years ago. Because in the time it takes for me to write this article, and you to read it, very likely another child has been victimized by senseless violence, and probably in Chicago or Oakland or Philadelphia or Los Angeles or Detroit or, well you get the idea. As a society we are allowing children to be caught in the cross fire of special interest groups, the racial divide, politics, and gunfire. And they aren’t the only ones senselessly murdered. People from 1 – 60 are gunned down in our cities on a weekly basis. Just this 4th of July according to the Chicago Sun Times, four homicides and 50 shooting victims in the Windy City; this is considered progress compared to years prior. Small consolation given there is a 49 percent increase in both shootings and homicides during the first six months of 2016 in Chicago. Think of the irreplaceable loss of human capital…..

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Not too long ago my friends invited me to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Company perform in Boston. Had Sir Isaac Newton attended, he might have rethought his theory of gravity. As if unbound by the laws of nature and gravitational pull, these magnificent athlete/dancers would glide through the air, seemingly flying, and demonstrating artistic expression one can only describe as incredible. The dancers revealed a marvel in motion that was truly breathtaking. But somewhere in my reverie, lost in thought enjoying the performance, a deep sadness fell over me, because it dawned on me so many children in our inner cities, especially Chicago, very likely from similar backgrounds as the dancers, will never get the chance to realize their God given potential. It is difficult to dance, or attend medical school, become a teacher, a preacher or pilot, when death comes early, and people from toddler to young adult are killed senselessly.

Early in med school, doing a pediatric clerkship at an urban hospital, one of my first patients was a 12 year old boy, and victim of multiple gunshot wounds – in doctor speak multiple GSW. Here was a beautiful African American child who was just minding his own business walking home from school. I will never forget the look in his eyes as I held his hand; we bonded instantly, as he bravely tried to hide his pain, before the meds took over. His insides looked like they went through a Cuisinart ® machine. He survived, but without much of his colon, small intestines, part of a lung, and spleen. His life will never be the same. Having run a free practice in a resource challenged part of New York I saw the hardships kids of all color and ethnicity faced, the resilience with which they tried to grow in spite of harsh circumstances, and possessed of talent some may never have fully realized because of violence, poverty, and lack of sufficient affirming, positive role models.

What is it about Virginia?

Already this year, six men from the “Cavalier State” have been arrested on terror-related charges – two of them in July alone. Another man has joined the Islamic State in Syria. Two of those charged were stopped from making a similar trip.

These most recent arrests, one on July 3, the other on July 8, were based on charges of planning to provide material support to ISIS. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who was arrested July 3, allegedly discussed planning an attack against U.S. military in the homeland inspired by fellow Virginian Nidal Hasan’s 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. According to court documents, Jalloh quit the Guard and later attempted to obtain funds and weapons for a domestic attack after being inspired by Anwar al Awlaki’s videos on YouTube.

Five days later, Virginia law enforcement arrested Haris Qamar, following an extended FBI sting operation. According to an FBI affidavit, Qamar made statements to an informant such as, “By-bye, DC, stupid a- kufar [infidels], kill ’em all,” and posted to his Twitter account a prayer for “strength to the mujahedeen to slaughter every single US military officer.”

Earlier arrests this year – two in June and one in January – involved men planning to join the jihad in Syria, rather than waging domestic battles. In one case, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, who had already joined the Islamic State, surrendered to Kurdish forces in Iraq in an apparent effort to escape the hell of life in the new caliphate. Now awaiting sentencing in the United States, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Why does this keep happening in Virginia? What makes its young Muslims more susceptible to the radical messages from Awlaki and ISIS social media?

Virginia has proved to be an active center for radical Islamist activity over the years and has bred more than its share of terrorists since 9/11. It was at the Hamas-linked Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, for instance, that terrorist icon Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American whom counter-terrorism officials say inspired hundreds of other Muslims to take arms in violent jihad, once served as imam. Among his disciples: Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of collaborating with al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; and several of the 9/11 hijackers.

Everything has changed, save the commentariat’s way of thinking. That’s why, when the Brexit vote confounded the chattering classes and Pauline Hanson rose again, the reaction was one of outraged bafflement. Trump will soon increase that dyspepsia by an order of magnitude.
Last Wednesday, President Obama said “the world has never been less violent…than it is today.” He didn’t explain his precise measure but asked us to “think about” the fact that “it has been decades since a war between major powers.” I am underwhelmed by this presidential insight. In fact, it is a disturbing line of argument. Let me extend it to show how disturbing it is.

The oppression and beheadings of Christians and Yazidis in Syria by ISIS is a mere blip when put against the Holocaust. The execution of five police officers in Dallas and three in Baton Rouge is not so violent when put against the 72 officers who lost their lives on 9/11. Obviously one could go on. For example, presumably, nothing could possibly happen again in Japan to equal Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ipso facto, get real about the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

War, murder, enslavement and mayhem in the Middle East and North Africa; one barbaric Islamic terrorist atrocity after another throughout the world, including in the United States; millions of Muslim refugees swamping Europe — none of it compares with a world war. On that scale, Obama is right. It is when being right is breathtakingly vacuous.

The current president of the United States lives in his own relativistic world. Cops kill blacks; it’s a racially-driven epidemic; even though the data shows there is no racial bias at work.[i] Islamic violence, on the other hand, must be left unnamed and minimized by being put on a cock-eyed historical scale. The man has shown yet again why he is monumentally unfit to be president; and, just think, he might be followed by “what difference does it make” Hillary Clinton. And some people are concerned about Donald Trump. There has never been an easier act to follow than Obama.

I found it interesting to compare the initial take of Fox News and CNN to Trump’s speech at the Republican Convention. “Inspirational and uplifting” versus “dark”. “Dark”, by the way, was reiterated by Clinton. I understand other US news outlets also used the description “dark”, for example, NBC. Did Clinton simply copy the media’s language or was it more collegial?

With the Democratic Party set to officially anoint Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia this week, and with accusations of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s supposed close associations with Russia, it is worth noting that Clinton has her Russia issues as well.

In March 2009 (the early days of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State), in Clinton’s first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, she presented him with a “reset” button said to be emblematic of the Obama administration’s new openness to Russia after the Bush administration.

Sadly, for Clinton, the word printed on the “reset” button was “peregruzka” [“overcharged”] rather than “perezagruzka” [“reset”].

That is not the only occasion that Clinton has got “lost in translation” with Russia.

Just yesterday the Clinton campaign blamed Russia for the hack on damaging internal DNC emails released by WikiLeaks this past Friday that revealed a cozy relationship between the DNC and Clinton during the Democratic primaries.

So it is a bit embarrassing that two years ago today, Clinton bragged in an interview with NPR that the Russia “reset” worked:

And yet even the pro-Hillary shills at the Washington Post have admitted that Clinton’s Russia “reset failed.

On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, thousands of Bernie supporters marched in the streets of Philly, chanting, beating drums, and holding anti-Hillary signs. The protesters chanted “Hey-hey, ho-ho, HRC has got to go” and “Lock her up.” They held signs that read “Hillary for Prison” or called for her indictment.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Erica Albanese, who traveled from Oregon, wore a “Hillary for Prison” shirt as she wandered around the park after the four mile march.

She said that Mrs. Clinton was guilty of “perjury” adding: “She lied about her documents and her emails.”

Dylan Melnik, 24, from Boston carried a sign in the march that said “Hillary 4 Prison 2016.”

“He basically inferred under any other circumstances she might be indicted, but because she’s Hillary, she won’t be indicted,” Mr. Melnik said about Mr. Comey’s press conference.

Those same sentiments were on display last week at the Republican National Convention, where delegates also chanted “Lock her up!” and vendors hawked buttons, t-shirts and bumper stickers that said “Hillary for Prison” and “Vote no to Monica’s ex-boyfriend’s wife in 2016,” among other things. Democrats were scandalized.

“When I see this, you know, ‘Crooked Hillary,’ or I see the ‘Lock her up,’ it’s just ridiculous. It is ridiculous,” Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine said in a preview of an interview on 60 Minutes.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow also expressed her disapproval of the notion that Hillary Clinton should go to jail. Last week, she denounced offensive signs that said “Hillary Clinton for prison,” and complained that “we’ve seen calls from the stage that she ought to be in stripes, that she ought to be locked up.”

She even offered a “trigger warning” to viewers before showing them a clip of the anti-Hillary buttons vendors were selling, because the pins might have made them “uncomfortable.” The buttons included the admittedly crass “Clinton KFC Special: 2 fat thighs, 2 small breasts, left wing.”

“You may not want to look at this stuff,” Maddow warned viewers.

It’s too bad Maddow wasn’t on the air Sunday morning, because terrible things were being chanted about Hillary Clinton on MSNBC at that time and no one was there to warn viewers that it might make them uncomfortable.