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Trump Triumphed Due to Downward Mobility : David Goldman

Posted By on March 2nd, 2016

It’s still a horse race, but only just: Donald Trump’s Super Tuesday victories in Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas and Massachusetts outweigh the Ted Cruz victory in his home state of Texas and neighboring Oklahoma. The Republican Establishment will not close ranks around Cruz as the last candidate capable of beating Trump. Marco Rubio’s consolation price was the Minnesota caucuses with 37% of the vote.

For the past six months my Republican friends and I have Donald Trump’s ascendancy and asked ourselves whether the voters had gone crazy. The voters aren’t crazy. We in the Republican elite were crazy: we thought we could allow the American economy to remain a rigged game indefinitely. The voters think otherwise. That’s why Trump is winning. That’s also why Bernie Sanders, the least likely presidential candidate in living memory, gave Hillary Clinton a run for her money. If you don’t give people capitalism, the late Jude Wanniski used to say, they’ll take socialism.

Americans are shrewd. You can’t spit on them and tell them it’s raining. They know the game is rigged against them. They know it’s rigged the same way that they know a lottery is rigged: There aren’t any winners. They know that they are downwardly mobile because they aren’t upwardly mobile. Americans don’t mind playing against bad odds–they play the lottery all the time–but they think that they are playing against zero odds. Ordinary Americans had an outside chance to get rich until 2008. Now they have no chance at all.

Upward mobility is America’s gauge of well-being. It’s not the decline of median family income that gets under Americans’ skin, but the perception that the elites have pulled the ladder up behind them. During the quarter-century after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, it was only a slight exaggeration to say that someone in every family got rich. They bought a cable television franchise, started a website, got some stock in a high-flying tech company, flipped real estate, or ran a small business that became a big business. Inequality didn’t bother Americans as long as they had a chance at a winning ticket–not necessarily a fair chance, but at least the kind of chance that paid off occasionally for ordinary people. As long they could see that people like them were becoming rich, they kept playing the game.

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Obama’s Empty Judicial Chairs :Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

On a hot day in June, the grandson of a bank president took to the floor of the Senate to denounce the daughter of sharecroppers. “I feel compelled to rise on this issue to express, in the strongest terms, my opposition to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the DC Circuit,” Senator Obama said.

Born in segregated Alabama, Janice Rogers Brown had been a leftist like Obama before becoming conservative. When Obama rose to denounce the respected African-American jurist for her political views it had been almost a full two years since President Bush had nominated her in the summer of ’03.

Obama had arrived a few months earlier on his way to the White House and was eager to impress his left-wing backers with his political radicalism. He held forth complaining that Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who had gone to segregated schools and become the first African-American woman on the California Supreme Court, was guilty of “an unyielding belief in an unfettered free market.”

And he filibustered Judge Brown, along with other nominee, trying to deny them a vote.

“She has equated altruism with communism. She equates even the most modest efforts to level life’s playing field with somehow inhibiting our liberty,” he fumed.

Brown, who due to her family background knew far more of slavery than Obama, had indeed warned about the dangers of a powerful government. “In the heyday of liberal democracy, all roads lead to slavery. And we no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate — the drug of choice — for multinational corporations and single moms, for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.”

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SYDNEY WILLIAMS: THE MONTH THAT WAS-FEBRUARY 2016

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

February is always short in days, but this month was long in news – more than I could cover.

Antonin Scalia’s death, which came as a surprise and disappointment, showed the partisan divide in Washington. As well, it highlighted the functions and responsibilities of our three branches of government. The President has the right, and indeed the obligation, to nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement. The Senate has the right, and indeed the obligation, to advise the President and to consent to the nomination, table it or deny it. Our system was not designed to be efficient – to “get stuff done” – but to be true to the principles of representative government. Justice Scalia felt personal preferences should play no role in a justice’s interpretation of the Constitution. His greatest contribution was his sense that contentious social issues, like abortion and gay marriage, are better resolved at the ballot box than determined by nine unelected individuals who are in no way representative of the people. As Justice Scalia often reminded us, four of the justices grew up in New York City and all nine received their law degrees from either Harvard or Yale.

Justice Scalia’s death was not the only one in February. The reclusive Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird died at age 89, less than a year after her second novel Go Set a Watchman was published, a book unlikely to enhance her reputation. Umberto Eco, author, philosopher, essayist and semiotician – best known for his mystery The Name of the Rose – died at age eighty-four. The world lost two wonderful women, both friends: Betsy LeGard, who with her husband Ed have been friends for forty-five years, and Barbara Perkins, who with her husband Ned have been friends in Old Lyme for the past twenty years. Jerry Gold, a friend for over forty years and the OM (oldest member) of the Drones of New York – a swarm of P.G. Wodehouse fans – died last week. Thank God for memories.

As it has been for most of the past eight months (and will for the next eight!), the endless election process dominated domestic news. On the Democrat side, while the popular vote has been fairly close between Clinton and Sanders, the delegate count (502-70) has not, because of the undemocratic way Democrats assign Super Delegates. On the Republican side, Trump (who at the end of the month gained the endorsement of Chris Christie) has taken about a third of the popular vote and about two thirds of delegates. In terms of delegates, Republicans are more democratic than Democrats. The outlook may change with today’s “super Tuesday” primaries, but at this point the leading candidates are a demagogic man who has nothing nice to say about anyone (apart from himself and his family) and who has, unsurprisingly, the most negative poll numbers of any candidate, and an ethically-challenged, demagogic woman who was Secretary of State when $6 billion went missing and who lied about Benghazi. As former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would put it, in the first instance we have a known unknown and in the second, a known known. Neither’s appealing.

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No new dawn in Iran: Ruthie Blum

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

For the past three years, the West has been tricking itself into seeing the Islamic Republic of Iran as a country undergoing a gradual process of reform. The outcome of Friday’s two elections — one for the Majlis (parliament) and the other for the Assembly of Experts — is serving as the latest mirage in the delusion.

In 2013, when Hassan Rouhani replaced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, the United States and Europe took it as a sign of a new dawn. Even Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the chief mullah controlling Iran’s “elected” leader, came to understand that Rouhani was preferable to the volatile and fanatic Ahmadinejad, whose repeated pronouncements about wiping Israel off the map before attending to America were not serving Tehran in good stead.

Rouhani’s appearance on the international stage provided particular fantasy-fodder for supporters of a diplomatic solution to the problem of Iran’s race to obtain nuclear weapons and to guarantee its regional, and eventually global, hegemony.

Those people today feel vindicated for two reasons. The first is that world powers finally did reach a nuclear deal with Iran. The second is that Rouhani’s “pro-deal” camp emerged victorious in the latest parliamentary election, and two of the most hard-line ayatollahs were voted out of the Assembly of Experts, the body charged with appointing the supreme leader. And considering Khamenei’s advancing age and questionable health, this clerical assembly, which sits for eight years, is likely to end up selecting his successor.

To understand why the above is no cause for celebration, two crucial things need to be kept in mind: the only thing the nuclear deal accomplished was to enable Iran to step up its nuclear program, but with lots more money at its disposal; and Rouhani is no moderate.

Indeed, Iran continues to assert its right to nuclear power, while flexing its military muscles nearly daily by testing missiles and threatening the West not to intervene. In addition, celebrations less than three weeks ago marking the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that turned Iran into an Islamic state included chants of “death to America,” “death to Israel” and a reenactment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy’s humiliation of U.S. sailors who had strayed into Tehran’s territorial waters.

A review of Rouhani’s record also leaves little room for optimism. Though the Shiite cleric was not Khamenei’s preferred choice, he would never have been approved as a candidate in the first place if his revolutionary credentials had not been impeccable. And they certainly were.

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MY SAY: DONALD GOLDENLOCKS AND THE ART OF THE HEEL

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Is the GOP now the Gone Old Party? Donald Goldenlock’s book “The Art of the Deal” only reveals how the lout inherited money from his father the real entrepreneur, and went on to “negotiate” by suing, bullying, deceiving, and bending rules in real estate.

How a vain, boastful, narcissistic, serial adulterer, liar, know nothing, con man got as far as he has in the political arena will be the subject of many columns and books.rsk

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Rubio Is Already Uniting the GOP By Deroy Murdock

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

‘I’m as conservative as anyone in this race, but I’m the conservative that can unify the Republican party,” Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) often says on the campaign trail. This is not just an empty slogan. Rubio already is keeping this promise.

The first indication that Rubio is welding together the disparate wings of the GOP came when he united two sons of the same state. Within hours on February 3, Rubio won the endorsement of both Senator Pat Toomey – the unassuming, easygoing free-marketer and former head of the economics-focused Club for Growth — and former senator Rick Santorum, a stalwart social conservative and sometimes strident opponent of gay marriage. While Toomey and Santorum are both Pennsylvanians, they epitomize different wings of the GOP. Toomey is an economic libertarian. Santorum is a cultural conservative.

Rubio also has gained supporters from the GOP’s third wing: foreign-policy conservatives. (In this vividly mixed metaphor, the Republican elephant is a three-winged bird. Also, the average Republican combines these elements, although typically with one of these three wings being first among equals.)

Rubio has scored an array of endorsements across the party’s philosophical spectrum. From roughly the center-right to the right-right, these include — among many others – liberal to moderate Republicans such as former governor George Pataki of New York, Governor Bill Haslam of Tennessee, and Representative Peter King of New York, a national-security hawk. “Most important of all for me,” King said, “Marco has a thorough knowledge of foreign policy and fully understands the true nature of the terrorist threat.”

Moderate Republicans for Rubio include senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Orrin Hatch of Utah; former senators Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Bob Dole of Kansas; and former governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota. Hatch said, “Marco has a unique ability to effectively communicate detailed, conservative plans in a way that attracts people who do not normally vote for Republicans.”

Prominent economic/libertarian Republicans in Rubio’s corner include senators Jeff Flake of Arizona, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Representative Matt Salmon of Arizona, former senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and past president of the Club for Growth and former Indiana congressman Chris Chocola. “I am proud to support Marco Rubio, a strong fiscal conservative and living testament to the American Dream,” Chocola said.

Among social conservatives, Rubio counts Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas, former governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, and David Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby, the company that sued to stop Obama from forcing it to include free abortifacients in its employee health plan. “Marco Rubio has impressed us with his preparation and the way he carries himself,” Green said. “But most importantly, Marco regularly exhibits humility and gives the glory to God.”

Some of Rubio’s most fervent detractors will point to Rubio’s appeal across the Republican party as proof that he is the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller. This charge is utterly preposterous, given Rubio’s 100 percent legislative-vote ratings from the American Security Council, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and the National Right to Life Committee and his 0 percent approval from Peace Action West, Americans for Democratic Action, and NARAL/Pro-Choice America. Nonetheless, this accusation is virtually antibiotic resistant in some circles, largely due to lingering suspicions over Rubio’s membership in the Senate’s informal Gang of Eight comprehensive-immigration-reform task force.

Still, it’s important for Rubio’s fans and foes alike to remember that fighting the general election with the Republican party in splinters is a splendid way to lose to socialist senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont or socialist crook Hillary Clinton of New York. Party unity will be key to defeating the Democrats and their standing army of activists, street thugs, union volunteers, and loyal cheerleaders in show business and the old-guard news media.

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The Rats Are Scurrying: Republican Officeholders Who Endorse Trump Are Sellouts By Ian Tuttle

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

The arch-villain in Donald Trump’s storybook account of American politics is the Republican party. The malign forces of progressivism may have been on the march for the past several years. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been hovering like Nazgûls over the bucolic expanses of middle America. Barack Obama has wielded vengefully the One Pen to Rule Them All. But it’s Republicans who are the real problem. The Grand Old Party has aided and abetted the country’s leftward lurch, proving themselves quislings and cowards all the way down, from John Boehner to John McCain. Breitbart.com hath surveyed the nation, and, lo, there was not a conservative to be found among them!

It turns out that Trump fans were right all along — just not in the way they thought.

On Friday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump in what was surely the most transparent display of affection since Judas Iscariot’s Gethsemane smooch. Not only had Christie spent the last several months blasting his tri-state opponent on the campaign trail — for, among other things, his absurd promise to make Mexico pay for a wall on the United States’ southern border, his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, and his refusal to address entitlement reform — he reportedly told the New Hampshire Union Leader’s publisher, Joe McQuaid, that he would “never” endorse Trump. Christie says McQuaid is misremembering.

Presumably, Christie thinks an endorsement will increase the likelihood of his securing a position in a Trump administration (and given Trump’s financial history, that is a likelier prospect than his receiving 30 pieces of silver). But he has agreed to be, for the next several months, willingly at the end of Trump’s leash, evidence of which was Trump and Christie’s brief exchange after Christie’s speech in Arkansas: “Get on the plane and go home,” Trump said, caught on a hot mic. “It’s over. Go home.” There are pimps and prostitutes with more equitable relationships.

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Of Time and Trump : Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

Both Donald Trump and his opponents are up against the constraints of time.

Trump wants to run out the clock; Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio want overtime. Trump does not want any more Texas-debate–style fights with Rubio and Cruz, and yet he still has four more debates on his schedule. In each one, we will see a geometric increase in attacks on Trump — all the more so if Carson or Kasich, or both, drop out, and the allotted debate time is split just three ways.

For the first time in the already too long series of debates, candidates descended to Trump’s brash style of street fighting. And they wounded him — not enough to seriously injure his candidacy, but enough for us to see how more of the same certainly might (and how more far earlier might have done so already).

The problem for Trump is not just that he cannot score points on ideas and so he monotonously strikes back with ad hominem slurs, but also that, off the cuff and in passing, he is capable of saying almost anything. Over two hours, those anythings — especially when they are windows into his past and his present values — finally add up.

So far Trump’s supporters have put up with his hypocrisies, self-contradictions, and unhinged statements — as if all that is felt to be a small price for hearing him pulverize Washington careerists, media flunkies, hypocritical grandees, and Republican sellouts. Americans are sick and tired of Black Lives Matter careerists and abject racists calling them racists, of wealthy apartheid liberals lecturing them about their white-privileged middle-class status, of crony green capitalists with huge carbon footprints, of hypocritical multimillionaire Malibu scolds, of the media hectoring the 52 percent who pay income taxes and canonizing the 48 percent who do not, of illegal aliens laying down to them a set of ultimatums while praising the country they were glad to leave and ankle-biting the one they want to stay in, of elites worrying more about the feelings of Islamic radicals than the terrorism that jihadists commit, and of our elected representatives borrowing more money for more government programs that make things far worse for everybody except those who run them.

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BARRY SHAW: BDS FOR IDIOTS

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

http://www.amazon.com/BDS-IDIOTS-BOYCOTT-ISRAEL-honestly/dp/152372157X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456832008&sr=8-1&keywords=barry+shaw

Shaw humiliates the cretins who ignore all human rights violations, and all the carnage and savagery in the world to condemn the only democracy in the world…rsk

From Reviews:

“BDS (“Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment”) is the name of the umbrella organisation for all those people who want to shelter their antisemitism under the guise of ‘only seeking’ the destruction of the State of Israel. As the author says: “BDS is a three letter metaphor for negativity. In their practice their initials stand for Bias, Deception and Slander. We need to out them, to name them, and shame them. They need to be exposed for the fraudsters they are. It’s time to humiliate them. This book does that with facts, anecdotes and humor”. And indeed that is exactly what the book does. It contains a combination of the author’s own thoughts and anecdotes along with contributions from others who have been active in combating the wave of antisemitism dressed up as anti-Israel sentiments (Mitchell Bard, Pat Condell, Edgar Davidson, Alan Dershowitz, Bassem Eid, Matti Friedman, Caroline Glick, Howard Jacobson, and Denis Prager). There does not seem to be a kindle version available yet, but the book is well worth the £7.”

“An amazing book. Funny and fighting the right fight. It is time to expose BDS supporter for what they are. At best, a bunch of uneducated dreamers, but mostly, anti-Semites, pro-dictatorships, anti-West, anti-basic human values. BDS supporters are criminals and, certainly, the worst enemies to Palestinians, since their action affect Arabs living in Judea Samaria much more than it affect Israel’s economy.”

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Time to Draw Lines and Defend Them Caroline Glick

Posted By on March 1st, 2016

At a certain point, you just have to know when draw a line in the sand.

Sloan and Guy Rachmuth, Jewish parents in Durham, North Carolina, reached that point in 2014 when they opted to walk away from their local Jewish day school and home school their two children.

The Rachmuths pulled their children out of the Lerner School when they concluded the school would not abide by its commitment to assist “all students in developing a positive Jewish identity and pride in their Jewish heritage.”

As committed Zionists, the Rachmuths were dismayed to see that far from fulfilling its commitment, the Lerner school was cultivating a learning environment that questioned the legitimacy of the Jewish national liberation movement and of the State of Israel.

Perhaps the turning point was when the school took down all the maps of Israel from the classroom walls. Perhaps it was when their five-year-old son came home and asked them why the map of Israel hurt some people’s feelings.

Perhaps it was when they discovered that the school had employed a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activist as a Hebrew teacher. Perhaps it was when they discovered that the school’s development director and former president of the board was an anti-Israel activist whose group, Jews for a Just Peace, had joined forces with the anti-Semitic and rabidly anti-Israel BDS groups Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestinian Solidarity Movement.

Perhaps it was when the school refused to back Israel during Operation Protective Edge during the summer of 2014.

Or perhaps the Rachmuths felt obliged to draw their line and walk away when they got the sense that the school rejected not only their Zionism, but vigorously opposed their right to defend their values.

According to Andrew Passin’s two-part report on the Rachmuth family’s ordeal published by JNS, in internal memos, the current school board president Tal Wittle referred to Sloan Rachmuth’s repeated complaints about the school’s diffident position on Israel, and the dominant role BDS supporters played at the school as “bigotry.”