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Why the Conventional Wisdom Has Been All Wrong This Election Season By Victor Davis Hanson —

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

The current presidential campaign is blowing up lots of political myths.

For years, the conventional lament was that the “wrong” Bush had run for president in 2000. George W. Bush was supposedly tongue-tied. He was said to be polarizing. He was derided as too much the twangy, conservative Texas Christian.

If only his younger, softer-spoken brother, then–Florida governor Jeb Bush, had run instead!

So the myth went.

Jeb was said to be far more bipartisan and judicious. Jeb, not W., was deemed by many to be the more likable and more competent descendent of their father, former president George H. W. Bush.

The 2015 debates now remind us how false that comparison was. W. may have been more controversial, but he was decisive, unshakeable, charismatic, and connected with crowds in a way the bookish, distracted, and “low-energy” Jeb has not been so far.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India-born Sikh is Canada’s new defense minister

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Indian-born Harjit Singh Sajjan, 44, a former police officer and veteran of three military deployments to Afghanistan, was named Canada’s new minister of defense Wednesday, bringing first-hand expertise to one of the country’s top cabinet positions, agencies report.

Sajjan will oversee an anticipated change in Canada’s military involvement in the battle against militants in Syria and Iraq.

“He has a taste for the reality of war and that’s very, very important,” David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, told National Post.

“He will have seen the aftermath of the effect of war on some of our men and women, which is a major issue with veteran’s affairs,” said Bercuson.

Newly sworn-in Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already said he wants to end Canada’s air strikes in the region in favour of providing humanitarian help.

Elected to Parliament for the first time in last month’s election, Sajjan is illustrative of the younger, more diverse cabinet Trudeau had aimed to create.

Outgoing Conservative defence minister Jason Kenney had taken a hardline stance on security, saying Canada needed to be fighting against Islamic State militants to prevent them from becoming a threat to Canada.

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DAVID GOLDMAN: CHALABI- SNOW WHITE AND PINOCCHIO ****see note please

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Thank you David Goldman for puncturing the love affair with a huckster by the same folks who thought the “Arab Spring” was the birth of democracy…..rsk
Meredith Wilson’s sappy 1962 Broadway show “The Music Man” illuminates an inscrutable side of American foreign policy: Why do Americans persist in believing that they can remake the world in their own image, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? We Ameicans love crooks and swindlers who appeal to our national narcissism, even when we know that they are crooks and swindlers. Wilson’s hero is a turn-of-the-twentieth-century rogue who styles himself a professor of music, and sells marching band equipment to midwestern towns with the promise that he will teach the local kids to play–but disappears before keeping his end of the bargain. In one Iowa town, the “music man” is caught red-handed, but pardoned by the townsfolk who bask in the warmth of his flattery. He has a long list of antecedents, such as Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry.

The Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose death last week revived the controversy about the 2003 Iraq war, lives on in the hearts of the neoconservatives for the same reason that the burghers of River City, Iowa embraced Wilson’s swindler. It reveals the better side of the American character: We’re too dumb to lie about other countries’ politics, which we understand about as well as Sanskrit, and we have no natural defense against sociopaths who lie whenever their lips are moving. There are very few uniquely American jokes: one queries what Snow White said to Pinocchio (“Lie to me, Baby”). We Americans love it when the Pinocchios of foreign policy lie to us. Those who view American democracy as an export industry still haven’t managed to fall out of love with Chalabi.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Rundown: Democrats Take It on the Chin in Tuesday’s Elections Posted By Debra Heine

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Voters roundly rejected Democrats and “progressive” ballot initiatives favored by President Obama in local and statewide elections Tuesday. In many cases it wasn’t close, and in many cases the left failed despite a heavily Democratic local population:

– The transgender “bathroom ordinance” was flushed by voters in liberal Houston, 61 percent to 39 percent, thus “staining the city’s reputation” for tolerance, according to the mayor.

– Anti-ObamaCare and Tea Party favorite Matt Bevin easily defeated Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) to become governor. Bevin is only the state’s second Republican governor in more than 40 years. The race was expected to be close, but Bevin triumphed by nearly nine points.

– In Virginia, where Democrats fought hard to turn some districts blue, the Republican Party retained control of the state Senate. With both of the state’s chambers still controlled by Republicans, Governor Terry McAuliffe will struggle to enact his left-wing agenda, which includes a push for more gun control laws, before his term is up in 2017.

– In Pennsylvania, the GOP will have a 31-19 edge in the Senate. This is the largest majority since 1954.

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Bomb May Have Brought Down Airliner Over Sinai By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

The likely cause of Friday’s crash of a Russian Metrojet over the Sinai Peninsula turned to terrorism as sources indicated a bomb may have been placed on board the aircraft before takeoff.

The flight was carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members; there were no survivors. The plane had departed from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, headed toward St. Petersburg, when it came down over the Sinai — a desert now teeming with restive Islamist terrorists.

PJM reported this spring on an April call from ISIS to jihadists in Egypt to activate, noting that “wolves” are “one of the first jihad work stages” and simply indicates “individual small cells” who have a greater chance of taking the enemy by surprise.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Dems in shock over near landslide loss of Kentucky governorship to Tea Party Republican By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Democrats outspent and outpolled Republican novice Matt Bevin and expected their candidate, Attorney General Jack Conway, to keep the Kentucky governorship in Democrat hands, where it had been for all but one term of the last half-century. Instead, Tea Partier Bevin, who had previously challenged Mitch McConnell for the GOP nomination for senator and lost big, pulled off a near landslide victory with an 85,000-vote margin.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Alan Blinder of the New York Times:

In beating his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, by almost nine percentage points, Mr. Bevin, 48, shocked people in his own party, who believed that the climate in Kentucky was ripe for a Republican but feared that Mr. Bevin, a charismatic conservative with a go-it-alone style, was too far out of the mainstream and too inexperienced to win.

But in a year when outsiders like Donald J. Trump and Ben Carson have captured the attention of voters in the Republican presidential race, Mr. Bevin’s tendency to thumb his nose at the political establishment — coupled with President Obama’s deep unpopularity here — helped him upend Kentucky’s political status quo.

Richard Baehr emails:

I was in Kentucky 8 days last month and everyone thought Conway would win. Bevin ran against Mitch McConnell in the GOP Senate primary in 2014. Pretty hard right guy. This will be a boost for Cruz backers – that very conservative candidates can win.

The GOP establishment, in the form of the Republican Governors’ Association, wrote off the race until late in the contest. Kevin Robillard of Politico:

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Good News and Bad News as the Federal Government Faces Global Jihad By Carol Brown

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

First the good news: Congress is taking steps to designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a terrorist organization. Again. They tried to do this last year and failed. The fact that the MB hasn’t already been labeled a terror organization is pathetic. Five countries in the Middle East have designated them a terror organization, but the United States has yet to do so. As I said, pathetic (to say the least).

But here we are. At least Congress is taking action now, with Ted Cruz (R-TX) leading the way in the Senate and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) leading in the House. The Washington Free Beacon reports that the bill includes a detailed history of the MB’s links to terror and concludes that “the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization.”

Per Senator Cruz:

“We have to stop pretending that the Brotherhood are not responsible for the terrorism they advocate and finance. We have to see it for what it is: a key international organization dedicated to waging violent jihad…Congress owes it to the American people to tell them the truth about this threat. This bill puts the lie to the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a peaceful political organization that can be a legitimate partner for America. In 2008 the Justice Department successfully prosecuted the largest terrorism-financing trial in American history arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood directed U.S. affiliates such as the Holy Land Foundation to provide ‘media, money and men’ to Hamas. That support was used for terrorist attacks against Americans and our allies in the Middle East. When they are capable they will try to do the same thing here.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

What Does the Latest Wave of Violence in Israel Portend? A Conversation with George Deek Arab/Israeli Diplomat and Fulbright Scholar

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

http://www.hudson.org/events/1292-what-does-the-latest-wave-of-violence-in-israel-portend-a-conversation-with-george-deek102015

The latest eruption of violence in Israel has left many worried observers wondering whether a third intifada will soon get underway. Mass shootings, random stabbings, and other deadly attacks on Jewish civilians have again become commonplace—and are being celebrated not just by extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but by senior officials of the mainstream, U.S.-allied Fatah movement. Worse yet, some of the perpetrators have been Arab citizens of Israel. And not all the victims have been Jews—as this month’s “mistaken identity” mob-reprisal attack on an Eritrean asylum seeker made clear.

Can the violence be contained? Does a two-state solution with the Palestinians remain possible in its wake—and can Israel preserve its political and social coherence as a nation in which Jews and Arabs live together peacefully?

On October 29, Hudson Senior Fellow Lee Smith and his special guest, George Deek—a man uniquely positioned to address the current situation from a multi-layered point of view, discussed these and other aspects of the conflict. Attorney George Deek is a Palestinian Arab from a Christian Orthodox family; a native of Jaffa and Israeli citizen; and a veteran diplomat, having served his country throughout the world, with postings as Israel’s Chargé d’Affaires in Norway and Deputy Chief of Mission in Nigeria, among others. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign affairs named Deek its outstanding diplomat of the year in 2014, and he has since become a frequent and celebrated public speaker—and a postgraduate Fulbright Scholar in international law at Georgetown University.

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A Dovish Israeli Academic Shouted Down in Lecture at University of Minnesota :Dale Carpenter

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Dale Carpenter is the Distinguished University Teaching Professor and Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law; the freedoms of speech, association, and religion; and sexual orientation and the law.

On Tuesday afternoon an Israeli academic was shouted down by two dozen protesters as he tried to begin a lecture before about 100 students and faculty at the University of Minnesota. The speaker was Moshe Halbertal, a professor at NYU Law School and a professor of Jewish thought and philosophy at Hebrew University. He was invited to deliver the Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, which is organized annually by the law school. That the freedom to present a lecture is threatened in this way at a public university is appalling, calling not only for punishment of violations but for a clear statement by university officials defending the free exchange of ideas.

The lecture, which I attended, was delayed half an hour as one by one the protesters stood up to shout denunciations of Israel and were escorted from the hall by university police. One young woman came screaming back into the lecture after having been ejected. Outside the hall, the protesters chanted so loudly that it was difficult to hear Halbertal, much less to concentrate on what he was saying, until 45 minutes after the lecture was to have begun.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Ben Carson’s Jeb Bush Problem If Carson had the policy chops of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, he’d be over 50% in the polls. By Daniel Henninger

Posted By on November 5th, 2015

Ben Carson is the candidate most Republicans would like to see become president. “Like” is the keyword. They like his demeanor, his personality and his remarkable life story. This personal affinity has translated into a six-point lead over Donald Trump in The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll. His unfavorable numbers are the lowest in the poll.

Jeb Bush is the most qualified candidate to be president. For all the “establishment” criticism, any fair reading of his eight years in office shows it would be hard to design a more successful conservative governorship—lower taxes, limited spending, Medicaid reform, landmark school-choice initiatives. He left office in 2007 with a 60% approval rating.

With all this potential, how is it that Ben Carson and Jeb Bush have been the two most poorly prepared candidates in the GOP debates, including the undercard?
Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that a sitting president of the United States actually would have to know something about things like federal spending, tax policy, entitlements and foreign affairs.