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How Far Can Trump Go on Shock Value Alone? By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

‘She was favored to win — and she got schlonged. She lost, I mean she lost,” Donald Trump said, describing Hillary Clinton’s 2008 White House bid at a Grand Rapids campaign event Monday night.

This is our presidential race in 2015: “linguistic investigations” into whether the term “schlonged” is accurate Yiddish, consternation over whether it’s unacceptably sexist or vulgar, and the Clinton campaign’s insistence that the remark requires a response from “everyone who understands the humiliation this degrading language inflicts on all women.”

Trump is the race’s shock-jock, a master at gleefully overstepping boundaries we didn’t even know were there, and there’s little reason to think that the “schlonged” comment will hurt his standing in the polls. Nor will we see immediate fallout from Trump’s lengthy assurance on Monday night that he wasn’t going to discuss the “disgusting” bathroom break Clinton took during last Saturday’s Democratic debate. While he’s bobbled the lead in Iowa, Trump is still ahead nationally and in the other early states; so far, the cycle of controversy, outrage, and denunciation hasn’t hurt him.

But does this sort of talk help Trump at all? If it brings him closer to the Republican nomination, what does it say about Republicans? And is there any way it won’t repel a significant number of voters who might otherwise consider supporting the Republican standard-bearer in November 2016?

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College Students Sign ‘Petition’ to Ban ‘White Christmas’ Because It’s Racist By Katherine Timpf (#Stupidity Matters!!!!)

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

In “Getting Hard to Tell Satire from Reality” News: A group of college kids actually signed a fake petition demanding that the song “White Christmas” be banned from radio stations because it’s racist.

In a how-bad-has-it-gotten experiment, conservative MRCTV reporter Dan Joseph took the seemingly ridiculous petition to a college campus (Joseph doesn’t name which campus in the video, but George Mason University signage can be seen in the background of at least one of the shots) to see how many students would sign it.

“Tell Local Radio Stations to Stop Playing the Song ‘White Christmas’ as it is Insulting to People of Color and Perpetuates the Idea That Being White is Automatically A Positive Attribute in Our Society,” the petition stated.

The fake petition received 18 signatures in about an hour, according to MRCTV.

While students were signing the petition, Joseph made comments such as calling the song a “microaggression” and saying that he preferred “racially ambiguous” Christmases.

FYI: The “white” in the song refers to snow — the preferred color of which is usually white for reasons completely unrelated to race.

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Habitual Liar Lies Habitually By Kevin D. Williamson —

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

The proposition that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a committed liar hardly need be litigated in the fact-check columns. It is as plain as her surname. It is practically syllogistic: All Clintons are liars, Herself is a Clinton, ergo . . .

The specific lie here is Herself’s claim that Donald Trump’s boobish pronouncements are used in ISIS recruiting videos. This isn’t true. Even Trump, a habitual liar who wouldn’t know the truth if it were printed in gigantic gilt letters across a second-rate hotel tower in Las Vegas, knows that this isn’t true. So: Habitual liar lies habitually about habitual liar, who demands apology. Not the most edifying spectacle in American public life, but what the hell do you expect from an encounter between these two great hemorrhoids on the body politic?

Here’s the thing, though: You can’t tell lies. Even about a lying cretin like Donald Trump.

Never mind the question of personal character: Judging a Clinton–Trump conflict on character grounds is like judging the Iran–Iraq war on human-rights grounds — one wants both sides to lose. Never mind what this says about Herself’s fitness for the presidency: We all know that she is morally, ethically, and intellectually unfit for the job. She’s unfit to manage a Walmart in Muleshoe, Texas. She’s unfit to have a route delivering the Buck County Courier Times. From cattle futures to bimbo eruptions to Internet auteurs inspiring terror attacks in Benghazi, anybody who is paying any attention understands that Herself’s relationship with the truth is a lot like her relationship with the Big Creep: all politics, a marriage of convenience.

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250,000 Refugees Have Disappeared After Entering Germany By Rick Moran

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

German authorities are searching for 12 refugees from Syria who entered the country using fake passports from the same source used by the Paris attackers. The passports were reportedly stolen from a passport office in Raqqa, the unofficial capital of Islamic State, in 2013 following the city’s capture.

The news comes a week after two men were arrested at a refugee center on suspicion of having links to the Paris attacks. The men entered the country at the same time as the Paris attackers and were also using false Syrian passports.

But Germany’s problems go far beyond a few potential terrorists with false passports. The German newspaper Bild is reporting that more than 250,000 of the refugees who have entered the country this year cannot be located because the system of registering refugees was so bad.

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Iran Military Leaders: Missile Production ‘Increased’ After P5+1 Deal Defiant declarations come as Congress demands Obama address missile test violations. By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

As some congressional Democrats fume over the Obama administration’s reticence to confront Iran about its ballistic missile tests — nevermind introduce any real consequences — the Islamic Republic is defiantly expanding its missile programs.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said at a ceremony in northern Iran on Monday that Tehran is not scaling back its program or even keeping production at pre-deal levels.

“We have not halted designing, producing and testing our missiles, (on the contrary) we have even increased our production,” Dehqan said, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

The news agency said the defense minister ranked missile production and military upgrades at the top of the country’s agenda “to ensure protection against enemies.”

On Tuesday, the second-highest-ranking commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said that “anti-Iran resolutions” would have no bearing on the IRGC’s determination to increase its “defense and deterrent power.”

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It’s not about ‘Muslims’, it’s about Terror By Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

The president says, “Muslims are our neighbors,” which, in fact, they are. Newspapers, including the influential Washington Post, have run stories extoling the virtues of Muslim refugees, Muslim soldiers, and Muslims as just-about-everyone, which, in fact, they are.

And because of that, perhaps, Americans have not exactly been on an “anti-Muslim” rampage since the San Bernardino jihadist attack that killed 14 people, despite the fear-mongering of CAIR. Americans don’t need condescending lectures by the president or threats by the attorney general. There are more than 318 million people living in the United States. In 2014, law enforcement totaled 1,014 religion-based hate crimes including 609 against Jews (60%) and 154 (15%) against Muslims. The FBI totals are slightly different: 1,140 crimes, of which 648 (56.8%) were against Jews and 184 (16%) against Muslims.

Using the law enforcement totals, there was a spike in crimes against Muslims 2001 to 481 (26%), and then a decline to 155 (11%) in 2002. The numbers until 2014 ran between 105 (11%) in 2008 and 160 (12%) in 2010.

Both the patriotism and the fear in the Muslim community are real, and a spike in 2015 is likely, so caution is in order. But Americans in general aren’t viscerally — or even notably — antagonistic toward their Muslim neighbors.

On the other hand, Americans have reacted very strongly against the possibility of bringing large numbers of Syrian refugees into the country, and strongly in favor of efforts to enhance the vetting of potential immigrants — even including calls to halt Muslim immigration for a time while the process is reviewed.

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An Unsung Hero of Black Education Businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald helped build thousands of quality elementary schools in the segregated South. By Jason L. Riley

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

“Rosenwald,” a documentary film about the early 20th-century philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, disappeared from theaters much too quickly after being released in August. An Academy Award nomination next month, when the honorees will be announced, may be a long shot for writer-director Aviva Kempner, but it would give the film the wider audience it deserves. It also would be a public service.

The Chicago-based Rosenwald, a son of German-Jewish immigrants, made his fortune in the early 1900s running Sears, Roebuck & Company when it was the nation’s largest retailer. The film’s main focus, however, is Rosenwald’s largely unsung philanthropic collaboration with Booker T. Washington, the former slave and black educator best known for his self-help philosophy and for training black teachers in the post-Civil War South. After Reconstruction ended, white backlash resulted in scarce funding for black public education in southern states, where nearly 90% of the black population lived. Washington therefore sought assistance from northern philanthropists like Rosenwald, who graciously obliged.

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Brushing Back a Lawless EPA Congress crimps its budget and forces two Obama vetoes.

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

President Obama continued to use executive agencies to exceed his constitutional power in 2015, none more so than the Environmental Protection Agency. The courts have pushed back on occasion, and now Congress is beginning to use its powers to do the same.

Though it didn’t get much media attention, Congress used the Congressional Review Act to put two bills blocking EPA rules on Mr. Obama’s desk the past two months. One would have nullified the EPA’s draconian new Clean Power Plan that will force lower emissions from existing power plants. A second measure is designed to block new coal-fired plants.

The Congressional Review Act allows a bill to pass without 60 votes in the Senate, and the GOP put together a bipartisan majority in both houses. Mr. Obama rejected both measures with rare pocket vetoes that let a President refuse to sign a bill when Congress is out of session, as it has been since Friday.

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Hillary Has Her Running Mate: Obama The president is free to be Clinton’s designated partisan attack dog.By Juan Williams

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

The 2016 presidential race will be defined by the relationship between two titans of American politics: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. For the first time in more than two decades—since President Reagan campaigned with then-Vice President George H.W. Bush—an incumbent two-term president will be an active player in the campaign and possibly even an active presence at events.

Right now, President Obama is free to be the designated partisan attack dog for Mrs. Clinton, allowing her to remain above the nastiness likely to arise in a race with a sharply divided electorate. Bill Clinton has played that role for her in past races. This time Mr. Obama’s presence allows Mr. Clinton, with his high poll numbers, to lead a chorus of nostalgia-stirring reminders of good feelings about the last time a Clinton was in the White House.

The Obama team is already backing her. John Podesta, Mr. Obama’s former adviser, runs her campaign. President Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, once a Hillary Clinton critic, is now supporting her, writing Oct. 24 on Medium.com that, “She’s the right person to protect President Obama’s legacy.”

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Islamic State’s Authentic-Looking Fake Passports Pose Threat Militants are using blank passport books and other equipment captured in territory they control By Matthew Dalton

Posted By on December 23rd, 2015

PARIS—Western security officials are struggling to respond to the threat that Islamic State can make authentic-looking Syrian and Iraqi passports, which could be used to hide operatives planning attacks in Europe or the U.S. among refugees.

Islamic State has likely obtained equipment and blank passport books needed to make Syrian passports when the group took control of the Syrian cities of Raqqa and Deir Ezzour, those officials said. It has also gained control of materials to make Iraqi passports when it occupied the Iraqi city of Mosul, a Belgian counterterrorism official disclosed for the first time.

But the near-absence of communication with the Syrian government means Western officials are lacking key information that could be used to identify the passports, according to a confidential analysis by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.