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Why Vote for Trump? Part of the electorate thinks it has nothing to lose. Most of us do.

Posted By on January 27th, 2016

Can Republicans and conservatives bring themselves to maybe support Donald Trump after all?

The question has come up as people like Bob Dole and Rudy Giuliani have begun to express themselves on the preferability of Mr. Trump to Ted Cruz, though it’s far from obvious that the choice comes down to those two. At the other end are the conservative writers at National Review who’ve tried to excommunicate Trump from themselves, or vice versa.

Mr. Trump calls himself a conservative because it is convenient to do so when stumping for GOP primary votes. He has adopted positions on abortion and guns that nobody believes.

He’s an avatar of New York values, goes the slur, but that’s a way of saying he fits the mold that umpty-million upscale voters say they want; a socially liberal, fiscally conservative candidate.

Indeed, if Mr. Trump bothered to know what he really thinks, as a lifelong New Yorker, business person and multiple divorcee, he probably slots right in with GOPers who aren’t social conservatives or evangelicals. And yet his success so far has been almost entirely with the social conservatives and evangelicals.

If angry white populists can make the unlikely Mr. Trump a vessel for their hopes, why not economic conservatives with NYC values? Coalition building!

Immigration has been central to his campaign but try to figure out what he’s saying. A respected social scientist like Christopher Jencks can admit that low-skill migrants may undermine the earnings of low-skill workers. The phrase downward assimilation has been adopted for the fact that not all second- and third-generation immigrant kids climb the educational and income ladder; some expand the ranks of the underclass.

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Hypocrisy Toward Israel on Display By Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

Lawrence J. Haas, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, is author of the forthcoming book Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World.
With rising “tensions and violence between Israelis and Palestinians” and “a diplomatic stalemate,” America’s ambassador to Israel said the other day, “we must find ways of preserving the viability of a two-state solution for the future – Israel’s only path to avoid becoming a bi-national state, arrest negative trends that pull us away from the goal and prevent the terrible violence we have recently seen.”

Speaking in Tel Aviv, Dan Shapiro went on to criticize Israel’s settlements and then sharply condemned its West Bank policy: “Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities, too much vigilantism goes unchecked and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.”

That’s rich. Israel’s not perfect, but the bigger double standard emanates from Washington, where a blind administration applies it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – too critical of Israel, too forgiving of the Palestinian leadership.

Even Shapiro acknowledged the odd timing of his blast, for it came in the aftermath of brutal Palestinian terror. The day before he spoke, a Palestinian terrorist slashed Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old mother of six, to death at the entrance of her home in a West Bank settlement, in front of her children. A day later, as Meir’s funeral convoy was traveling to Jerusalem, another Palestinian terrorist slashed and badly wounded a 30-year-old pregnant woman who was shopping in the West Bank.

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Missing in America: Millions of Non-Immigrant Aliens DHS report documents hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who entered last year. Michael Cutler

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

In January 19, 2016 The Department of Homeland Security posted a notice in its official website about a report with important national security implications “DHS Report: Entry/Exit Overstay Report for FY 2015.”

The actual report “Entry and Exit Overstay Report, Fiscal Year 2015” focused only on the arrival and departure of nonimmigrant aliens (temporary visitors) though international airports and seaports but did not include aliens who were admitted at land border ports of entry.

This report noted that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who have failed to depart the United States represented a very small percentage of the total number of nonimmigrant aliens who departed from the United States within the time limit imposed at the time they entered the United States- however, we must remember that we are still dealing with hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who had been admitted into the United States during FY 2015 and that each and every year more such aliens enter the United States and fail to depart or otherwise violate the terms of their admission into the United States.

The DHS report noted that the number of overstays represented only a tiny proportion of the number of aliens who left the United States within the time they were granted to visit the United States, however, the number of aliens who violated the terms of their admission approached a half million and this is without including aliens who entered through land border ports of entry and/or aliens who may have otherwise failed to abide by the terms of their admission.

The administration has done virtually nothing to locate these illegal aliens.

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The “More Muslims, Less Homicides” Hoax Islam provides Muslims with a license to kill. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

“No, Islam Isn’t Inherently Violent, And The Math Proves It,” M. Steven Fish declared in the Daily Beast. Vox’s headline writers went one better, “This study obliterates the myth that Muslims are more violent”. Salon claimed that Richard Dawkins and Bill Mater were wrong about Islam. “Here’s how data proves it”.

The left is enamored with claiming that science proves something. It rarely however bothers looking at the actual data. That would spoil all the fun.

How did M. Steven Fish, a Berkeley political science professor, prove that Islam isn’t inherently violent? In the Washington Post’s fishwrap, Fish wrote, “Predominantly, Muslim countries average 2.4 murders per annum per 100,000 people, compared to 7.5 in non-Muslim countries.”

Fish concluded that, “More Muslims, less homicide.”

Is this really true? It’s as true as the data that Fish uses as the basis for his alternate version of reality. And this data claims that Sudan is much safer than Canada, that you’re as safe in Iraq as in America and that Egypt is one of the safest places on earth.

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San Bernardino, Paris, and Jerusalem: Israeli Experience and Obama’s Risky Strategy When it comes to radical Islamism, the president is dangerously ‘patient’ By Hillel Fradkin & Lewis Libby

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

The Obama administration is talking tough about terror, and its focus is revealing. President Obama’s State of the Union address proclaimed that terrorists

pose a direct threat to our people, because in today’s world, even a handful of terrorists . . . can do a lot of damage. They use the Internet to poison the minds of individuals inside our country. Their actions undermine and destabilize our allies. We have to take them out.

Only a few days earlier, an NSC spokesman noted that “the horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino this winter underscored the need” to prevent “violent extremists” from radicalizing and mobilizing recruits at home and abroad. Stopping terror’s spread, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes proclaims, requires taking away terrorists’ safe havens and their control of “major swaths of territory and population centers.”

The California and Paris attacks rightly spurred Western anger and action to staunch the radicalization that kills innocents. Yet in these same months there were dozens of other terror attacks that also merit anger and appropriate response.

Starting last October, Palestinians launched a new wave of daily terror against Israelis. We have seen the videos: Palestinians wielding kitchen knives stab unsuspecting Israelis from behind; Palestinian drivers crush Israelis awaiting buses. Israeli women, men over 70, and an Israeli pushing a baby carriage are among the score of dead. Just last week, a pregnant Israeli woman was stabbed, and a mother of six killed in her home. Taken together, Israeli deaths in this period exceed proportionally those suffered in Paris.

A sad but common bond ties Israeli dead to their Parisian and San Bernardino counterparts: Their killers were inspired, applauded, and rewarded by those holding power in sanctuary states. In the Islamic State, black-clad spokesmen publicly behead Westerners. In Palestinian territories, authorities encourage mayhem more subtly, but clearly enough for those they influence.

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Cruz Dares to Take On King Corn By Rich Lowry

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

Ted Cruz has dared to provoke the ire of one of the most ruthless and vengeful political forces on the planet, and it’s not Donald Trump. The Texas senator has crossed the ethanol industry in Iowa, which is a little like getting on the wrong side of the Catholic Church in Vatican City.

Cruz’s core theme is fighting the “Washington cartel,” which would be a lot easier if its tentacles didn’t extend all the way into the state crucial to Cruz’s presidential hopes.

Other Republicans have refused to bow and scrape before the ethanol industry — John McCain wouldn’t do it in 2000, but he didn’t compete in Iowa. Cruz, in contrast, has staked an enormous amount there. His campaign could have been engineered in a lab for Iowa: He is an evangelical who is a hard-liner on immigration and has organized relentlessly on the ground. The only dissonant note is his opposition to the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard that is a government prop for the industry. Cruz’s stand against it is an act of reckless courage.

The Renewable Fuel Standard requires that ethanol is blended into the nation’s gasoline, and in ever-increasing amounts. The mandate increases the price of gas while doing nothing for the environment. Even former boosters like Al Gore have given up on ethanol as a green wonder fuel. It does much less than advertised to reduce carbon emissions once the entire process of producing it is taken into account.

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Hillary’s Last Hurrah Jed Babbin

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

At sixty-eight years old, Hillary Clinton is very old and very tired. This week, she’s slogging along the campaign road, her media minions in tow, trying to convince the gullible among Iowa’s likely caucus-goers that she’s not part of the Democratic establishment.

Everyone knows, especially Clinton, that this is her last shot at the presidency. The greatest obstacle to her nomination is not Bernie Sanders. It’s the FBI’s long-term investigation of her conduct as secretary of state.

The FBI is investigating two aspects of Clinton’s conduct while she was secretary of state: first, the handling of classified information — up to and including top secret/special access program information — on her private email system; second, the possibility that Clinton, as secretary of state, sold American foreign policy to the highest bidder who wanted to contribute to the Clinton Family Foundation or pay Bill another $500,000 for a twenty-minute speech.

To begin we have to recognize the obvious: that her private email system was set up for a corrupt purpose, namely to ensure that she had control over all the communications she sent or received as secretary of state. We know that she tried to erase tens of thousands of emails to the State Department for their review, an act in furtherance of the corrupt purpose. The FBI has probably recovered most or all of them. Keep that in mind as you read what follows.

By establishing her non-government system, Clinton intended to thwart the government’s ownership of her in-the-line-of-duty communications and to keep the emails under her control at all times. From that fact, and the actions she took, arises the problem she has under the federal criminal law.

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RUTHIE BLUM: OH NO CANADA

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

It was clear that it wouldn’t take long for Canada’s new government to sink its liberal fangs into Israel. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s loss to Justin Trudeau in October virtually guaranteed an end to the honeymoon between Ottawa and Jerusalem.

Sunday’s message from Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion to the Jewish state, then, though contemptible, was not the least bit surprising.

Borrowing a page from the U.S. State Department’s playbook — and emulating an abusive marriage — Dion professed his love and commitment while throwing a punch.

“As a steadfast ally and friend to Israel,” his statement read, “Canada calls for all efforts to be made to reduce violence and incitement and to help build the conditions for a return to the negotiating table.”

This little of piece of immoral parity came on the heels of a couple of particularly horrifying stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists against two Israeli women — one slashed to death in front of her traumatized teenage daughter; the other wounded while pregnant.

But the above brutal assaults are merely drops in the bucket of the uprising that began in September and has been continuing daily without letup.

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The ‘Anti-Establishment’ Candidate Boasts about His History of Bribing Politicians By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

I’m not sure what is worse: Donald Trump bragging about paying off politicians, or the cheering by Republican-debate audiences when Donald Trump brags about paying off politicians. See, when I worked for the Justice Department, we didn’t just indict the slimy pols — from both parties — on the receiving end. We also indicted the deep-pocketed cronies who greased their palms, expecting top-shelf service in return.

Even if you’re not the queasy type, how nauseating to watch a crowd of people, many of whom would tell you they’re strong law-and-order conservatives, giddily applauding as a guy confesses that he’s the corrupter who makes the corruption work.

“I was a businessman,” Trump smarmed at a debate earlier this year. He was being pressed about the piles of dough he has deposited in Democratic coffers through the years — for his pals the Clintons (including the Clinton Ca-ching Foundation), Schumer, Reid, Pelosi, Cuomo, Rahm, and the rest of the gang.

“I give to everybody. When they call, I give.” Yup, although more to the progressives, to implement the very policies he now complains are destroying the country.

And why? Trump’s allocution continued:

“You know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, and they are there for me. . . . And that’s a broken system.”

Well, yeah, when you spend years breaking something, it tends to get broken.

EDITORIAL: Against Trump

Diagnosing the break might be thought the occasion for an apology, not a curtain call. But Trump gets the curtain call. And being Trump, he knows he’s on a roll and doubles down.

Rival Rand Paul needled, “You’ve donated to several Democratic candidates. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related affairs. And you said recently, quote, ‘When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.’”

This is the point where the guy suspected of bribery, if he can afford a lawyer (or a million lawyers!), takes the Fifth . . . or at least whines, “You’re taking my words out of context!”

Not The Donald. He grins and squeals, “You better believe it.”

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The Dangerous Fantasy behind Obama’s Iran Deal By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on January 26th, 2016

On January 16, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Iran had satisfied the conditions necessary to achieve a lifting of most international sanctions under its nuclear deal with the Obama administration. In exchange for reducing its number of operational uranium-enrichment centrifuges, sending most of its enriched uranium out of the country, and removing the core of a plutonium-producing heavy-water reactor, Iran received approximately $150 billion in sanctions relief, and the United States returned $400 million in Iranian funds it seized in 1979, plus $1.3 billion in interest. The same day, Iran released five Americans it had held prisoner in exchange for the release of seven Iranian criminals held by the United States.

The White House and its supporters did victory laps, arguing that Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal and its willingness to swap prisoners had proven the wisdom of the president’s Iran policy. But there are many reasons to believe that these developments, far from strengthening American national security, are actually dangerous wins for Iran.

Before all else, it should be noted that American officials had to relax certain requirements of the deal so Iran could receive sanctions relief in the first place. Language barring the testing of ballistic missiles was removed from the agreement’s text and buried in the annex to a UN Security Council resolution. The U.S. also dropped a stipulation that Iran resolve questions about its past nuclear activities, choosing to address those questions in a secret side deal between the IAEA and Iran. As a result, even though Iran conducted two ballistic-missile tests last fall and did not fully cooperate with an IAEA investigation into its nuclear history, the IAEA was able to certify that Tehran met the Implementation Day requirements to have sanctions lifted because these issues had been dropped from the agreement.