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Peter Smith The Madness of a Raving Realist

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

It seems the world — the Western part of it at least — has been infected with a galloping derangement that insists on viewing events, motives and one particular creed not as they are but as so many would wish them to be. Get that straitjacket ready! I must be a suitable case for treatment.

Visiting an asylum for people who, to put it delicately, have intellectual deficits is a salutary experience. I entered a large open space where the inmates were gathering for communal recreation. It was hard to take it in at first, until my mind became more focused. Let me give you a taste of this delusional world inside the asylum.

A tall, careworn chap was plaintively explaining to anyone who would listen that there was a rationale for the Charlie Hebdo murders. The pen is mightier than the sword, he said with a grimace, as though this cliche were decisive and proved his point beyond all doubt. It’s a setback is all, his buddy euphoniously intoned when told of the latest massacre in Paris. He broke into song and a soft-shoe shuffle. ♫ You say Islam and I say ISAL. You say Muslim and I say peaceful. Islam – ISAL, Muslim – peaceful, let’s call the whole thing off, I needs me a round of golf.♫. It was completely unnerving.

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Steven Kates: Drawing the Wrong Conclusions

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

Global warming and Keynesian theory are natural bedmates, each built on the notion that only harm can come of trusting market forces. As both aim to suppress individual freedom, those who fancy themselves best equipped to regulate the world’s affairs tolerate neither naysayers nor contradictory evidence.
Let me state at the start where this is heading, since it may not be apparent from the way it begins. Two of the great intellectual disasters of our age are Keynesian economics and anthropogenic global warming (AGW). For both there is a theory which most of the specialists in each area take to be an unshakeable truth. For Keynesians, it is the belief that aggregate demand is the single most important factor determining the level of output and employment. For those who accept AGW, there is the so-called “settled science” that greenhouse gases will over the next half-century lead to an upwards movement in global temperatures with a series of ecological calamities to follow.

Both theories have had a single diagram that has provided the conceptual framework on which millions have built their understanding of what’s involved. In economics, it has been what is known as the Keynesian-cross diagram that relates aggregate demand to the level of current production. For AGW it has been what has become known as “the hockey stick”, which shows temperatures more or less flat for the past thousand years until the beginning of the twentieth century, after which they rise dramatically with no peak in sight.

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Germans Opposed to Mass Migration are “Free to Leave” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

After factoring in family reunifications, the actual number of migrants could exceed 10 million, and some believe that Germany’s Muslim population is on track to nearly quadruple to an astonishing 20 million by 2020.

N24 television news reports that up to 50% of the asylum seekers arriving in Germany have gone into hiding and their whereabouts are unknown by German authorities.

“It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically… and there are no consequences. … We are losing control of the streets.” — Tania Kambouri, a German police officer.

“We are not excluding anyone, we are just trying to run a business. If we ignore the complaints of our female guests, we have to expect that many of our regular customers will stay away…. Financially, we do not know how long can we cope with this.” — Thomas Greil, manager of the discotheque “Brucklyn,” Bad Tölz, Bavaria.

“We are reproducing faster and faster. You Germans are not getting any children. In the best case you get two children. We make seven to eight children. Okay mate? And then we take four wives each, then we have 22 children. Maybe you Germans have one child and a dog. Huh? And that’s it.” — Video showing a Muslim threatening a German man openly on the street.

In Berlin, lawmakers are considering emergency legislation that would allow local authorities to seize private residences to accommodate asylum seekers. The proposal was kept secret from the public until November 9, when the leader of the Free Democrats (FDP) in Berlin warned the measure would violate the German Constitution. Berlin Mayor Michael Müller now wants to expand the scope for warrantless inspections to include “preventing homelessness.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Mrs. Clinton’s Intelligence ISIS was more careful with its sensitive communications than Hillary was. By William McGurn

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

Here’s a post-Paris question:

Will America really elect as president someone who, as secretary of state, was more reckless communicating sensitive information than the Islamic State terrorists who pulled off their bloody attack?

The question has become more urgent now that Hillary Clinton has vowed to put an “immediate intelligence surge” at the top of her security agenda. Leave aside Mrs. Clinton’s belated embrace of the word “surge,” or that her call for an intelligence surge against ISIS is her way of not calling for a troop surge. In so doing, she inadvertently raises the question why, so many years after 9/11, we don’t have the intel we should.
One answer is Mrs. Clinton herself. Because there is little in her record—either as senator from New York or as secretary of state for President Obama—to indicate she would be a president who would give our intelligence agencies more and better tools. Not to mention protecting and defending them when, as inevitably happens, they come under political fire for doing their jobs.

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Radical Parents, Despotic Children Sooner or later, Orwellian methods on campus will lead to Orwellian outcomes. Bret Stephens

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

“Liberal Parents, Radical Children,” was the title of a 1975 book by Midge Decter, which tried to make sense of how a generation of munificent parents raised that self-obsessed, politically spastic generation known as the Baby Boomers. The book was a case study in the tragedy of good intentions.

“We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling,” Miss Decter told the Boomers. “While you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices.”

Meager devices came to mind last week while reading the “Statement of Solidarity” from Nancy Cantor, chancellor of the Newark, N.J., campus of Rutgers University. Solidarity with whom, or what? Well, Paris, but that was just for starters. Ms. Cantor also made a point of mentioning lives lost to terrorist attacks this year in Beirut and Kenya, and children “lost at sea seeking freedom,” and “lives lost that so mattered in Ferguson and Baltimore and on,” and “students facing racial harassment on campuses from Missouri to Ithaca and on.”

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Time to Remove the Surveillance Blinders The terror threat is rising while Obama and Congress have moved to limit U.S. intelligence capabilities. By Michael B. Mukasey And Jamil N. Jaffer

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

As we learn more about the Islamic State-backed terror attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, and about other threats like the one that caused Brussels to go on highest alert over the weekend, it has become increasingly clear: America and its allies have failed to gather and process the intelligence necessary to protect their citizens.

It is unsurprising that Americans are worried about the threat at home. Islamic State, or ISIS, has long sought to conduct attacks in the U.S. by recruiting Americans to its cause through various social media outlets, from Twitter to YouTube. In the past week alone, ISIS has claimed that it has operatives in the U.S. ready to take action, including specifically against New York City and Washington, D.C.

Some of this is undoubtedly classic terrorist rhetoric, but the Paris attacks show that ISIS has both the capacity and the desire to inflict mass casualties on Western countries. Al Qaeda is hardly out of the picture; its allies in Mali claimed responsibility for the bloody rampage Friday in Bamako at a Radisson hotel favored by Western visitors, leaving 27 dead.

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Turkey Shoots Down Likely Russian Jet Near Syria Border Turkish officials say jet violated its airspace By Dion Nissenbaum and Emre Peker

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

ISTANBUL—The Turkish military shot down what is likely to be a Russian jet fighter along the Syrian border on Tuesday after the plane violated Turkey’s airspace and ignored warnings to return, Turkish officials said.

Turkish authorities didn’t give the nationality of the jet but Russia separately said one of its jets had been downed in the region, it said the jet had flown exclusively in Syrian airspace and that the plane had likely been brought down by shelling from the ground.

The Turkish military said two of its F-16s shot down the jet fighter after it crossed into Turkish airspace and ignored 10 warnings in five minutes to return to Syrian airspace.

Television footage showed a jet catching fire and crashing into the mountains along the Turkey-Syria border.

The plane crashed on a part of the border where Russian and Syrian planes have been targeting Turkmen fighters, a group that has been seeking more support from Ankara in their fight against the Syrian regime.

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The Invasion That Dare Not Speak Its Name By Michael Walsh

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

More “Syrian doctors” showing up on the U.S.-Mexican border.

Five more “Syrians” have showed up at the border crossing at Laredo:

Five more Syrians have been stopped at a Laredo port of entry on Friday. This brings the total number of Syrians seeking to enter the US through our city this week up to 13.

According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security, five Syrian nationals presented themselves at the Gateway to the Americas Bridge. A family consisting of a man, woman and child, and two other men were taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection — a standard procedure.

The statement reads that CBP “checked their identities against numerous law enforcement and national security related databases. Records checks revealed no derogatory information about the individuals. CBP turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for further processing and placement in an ICE facility.”

As you may recall, a group of eight Syrians were also taken by CBP at a Laredo port of entry on Tuesday.

I didn’t recall, but hey — when the president of the United States throws open the country’s borders, leaving it essentially defenseless in the face of a growing Islamic threat — who’s counting?

Further — last time I checked a map it showed a wide ocean between “Syria” and America, which means these “migrants” didn’t walk, unless they can walk on water. So who’s paying for this?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

State Dept. ‘A Bit Concerned’ About ‘Terrible Tragedy’ of Palestinian Terrorism By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

The State Department said Secretary of State John Kerry finally called the Massachusetts family of a teen killed last week in a West Bank terror attack.

But that was just a couple of days after a State Department official, previewing Kerry’s visit this week to the Middle East, said the administration was just “a bit concerned” about attacks on Americans by Palestinians.

President Obama and Kerry have been mum on the attack in which Ezra Schwartz, 18, of Sharon, Mass., was killed Thursday.

Schwartz was a gap-year student attending Yeshivat Ashreinu in Beit Shemesh. He was in a van with five other friends taking food to IDF soldiers Thursday near the Gush Etzion junction when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire on cars stuck in traffic. The terrorist then rammed his car into another vehicle and was arrested.

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Travel Abroad Is Safe, Provided You Teleport Into Rural New Zealand By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on November 24th, 2015

Over the years since President Obama first took office, he has lectured Americans about the receding tide of war, al Qaeda on the run, and, more recently, ISIS (or, as the administration has it, ISIL) being degraded, slated for ultimate destruction, and, even more recently, “contained.” Meanwhile, the world is getting ever more dangerous. Over the past six months alone, the State Department in its efforts to keep up with the turmoil and threats has issued more than three dozen travel warnings for Americans thinking of visiting places from Eritrea to Mali, Lebanon, Colombia, Sudan, El Salvador, Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Burma, Nepal, Mali, the Philippines, Kenya, Turkey… and of course Syria, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Now, in the aftermath of the ISIS terrorist attacks on Paris, with ISIS threatening strikes on America, and Brussels heading into its fourth day on lockdown, the State Department is taking a more wholesale approach. Today, as PJ Media’s Bridget Johnson reports, the State Department issued a “Worldwide Travel Alert,” warning U.S. citizens of “possible risks of travel due to increased terrorist threats.”