Reflections on the Trump Circus By Andrew C. McCarthy

I’ve paid very little attention to the Donald Trump boomlet. I confess to enjoying Kevin and Jonah’s columns on the subject, but I’d enjoy their columns if they were writing about toothpicks. When asked about it, I’ve told people, “Ignore it and it will flame out on its own.” I’ve never met Donald Trump that I can recall. He’s a big New York personality and I’m Bronx born and bred, so of course I’m familiar with him. But I’ve never seen his TV shows, his news interviews are vapid, and I haven’t taken his presidential campaign any more seriously than I took his high-profile handwringing about running for this or that in the past.

What about all this psychoanalysis of the conservative base? We’ve heard the trope: Trump’s poll numbers can’t be ignored because they are not so much about him as about the anger he is tapping into – anger at the bipartisan Beltway political establishment. Well, as anyone who cares to read my columns knows, I am not exactly a stranger to that anger. I don’t need Donald Trump to draw my attention to it, and I don’t see him as a viable vehicle for representing it since he has a history of supporting positions and politicians responsible for a lot of that anger.

David Singer: Chickens Coming Home To Roost For Turkey

Turkey’s championing of the Palestinian Arabs in their quest for an independent State has come back to bite Turkey with a vengeance – as Kurdish Statehood is once again firmly placed on the political agenda.

Turkey became the first country in the world with an ambassador to “Palestine” – after its envoy in Ramallah, Şakir Özkan Torunlar, presented his Letter of Credence to “State of Palestine” President Mahmoud Abbas on 14 April 2013.

Incredibly this self-declared “State of Palestine” – admitted as a member State of UNESCO on 31 October 2011 and as a non-State observer to the United Nations on 29 November 2012 with Turkey’s active support – lacks the four following criteria required by the 1933 Montevideo Convention to qualify as a State:

1. a permanent population;
2. a defined territory;
3. a government; and
4. capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Turkey’s swift recognition of this illegally constituted state for the “Palestinians” – a people only created for the first time in 1964 by the PLO Charter – starkly contrasts with Turkey’s consistent refusal to grant its 15 million ancient Kurdish community – part of the largest stateless minority group in the world -– the identical right to their own State in Northern Turkey for the last 90 years.

Marco Rubio Personifies the American Dream for RedState Gathering By Scott Ott

Marco Rubio presents a strong and stirring vision of a greater America than we’ve ever seen, for more people than ever.

Marco Rubio in person is like his book, America Dreams – inspiring, passionate, engaging, personal and a public policy proposal firehose. He brought all of that to RedState Gathering in Atlanta Friday, and the crowd of conservatives responded enthusiastically.

Early in his remarks, he grabbed the third-rail and talked about reforms to Social Security that would not only preserve it for future generations (including his own) without affecting current retirees (like his Mom), but would also lead to an economic revival by relieving the crushing weight of debt from our economy.

His youth, he says, will set him off from Hillary Clinton, but his forward-looking, innovative, technology-embracing attitude may do so even more. The best jobs of the 21st century will be here in America if we break the higher-education monopoly, refocus on vocational education, and realize that though we’ll be ordering our McDonald’s meals from a touchscreen, the people who make those touchscreens will make a lot more money.

Ted Cruz Offers Full-Throated Conservatism and RedState Rises By Scott Ott

The conventional wisdom says that true conservatism cannot win a presidential election, but Ted Cruz challenged that claim today in Atlanta with a full-throated endorsement of vigorous conservative leadership. A hotel ballroom filled with conservative activists ate it up. Like Carly Fiorina before him, Cruz was unstinting in his critique of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. But he took it even further, practically taunting Republican congressional leadership.

Cruz, speaking from in front of the podium without notes, said he welcomes the large field of GOP competitors, and joked that it’s different on the other side.

“The Democrat debate consists of Hillary and the Chipotle clerk. [LAUGHTER] That’s not fair…Bernie Sanders has entered the race. [LAUGHTER] So, they have a wild-eyed socialist with ideas that are endangering American’s place in the world…and Bernie Sanders. [WILD LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] They’re not even having a debate. They did plan to have a debate earlier, the problem was the invitation was emailed to Hillary.” (H/T to the Cruz joke writer. He killed, as they say in the comedy clubs.)

“There is a reason that the life, vibrancy, energy and excitement is with conservatives this year. Our country is in crisis,” he said, effortlessly shifting the mood in the room. He knows the RedState audience better than most, having spoken here in each of the event’s seven years.

Obama Chillin’ in Chilmark By Jeannie DeAngelis

President Barack Obama must have felt that after doing a decent amount of damage to the country this week, he earned the right to leave early for his 17-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. This year the president will be kicking back at the same $12-million Chilmark seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom estate that he and Michelle and their entourage rented last year.

The president’s convoy includes the usual tagalongs and top aides, among whom are the gravelly-voiced national security adviser Susan Rice and Obama’s Iranian-born senior adviser/muse Valerie Jarrett.

Also accompanying him on the trip are younger daughter Sasha and wife Michelle and her donut-shaped hair bun, which, of late, she’s been balancing like a bird’s nest on the top of her head.

Oldest daughter Malia is still in New York City, where she’s summer-interning with Lena Dunham.

Lena is the writer/producer/star of the raunchy HBO series Girls. In addition to dreaming up Girls, Malia’s summer supervisor, whose father Caroll does giant-sized paintings of giant-sized women with giant-sized genitals, also admitted to sexually molesting her younger sister Grace when they were kids.

FNC Debate Moderators: ‘Oh, the Cleverness of Me’ By Patricia McCarthy…See note please

I totally agree with this assessment…..trading on Trump’s outsize popularity they got enormous coverage but the questions should have been sharper, they should have give more time to Ted Cruz and avoided the self congratulatory cackling…and the question about God was ridiculous……rsk

Millions of conservatives were looking forward to the GOP debate like kids waiting for a new Avengers film. Sick to death of leftist moderators going after Republican candidates with malicious intent, this debate was going to be different. With the moderators being from Fox, this debate would be classy and substantive. There would be none of Stephanopoulos’s trick questions meant to destroy, like when he asked Romney if he thought birth control should be legal. Chris Wallace has a lefty bent and, like his father, can be quite arrogant, but Bret Baier is one of the best in the business. And Megyn Kelly, whom we’ve watched since she was Megyn Kendall, is usually incisive and elegant.

JAMIE GLAZOV AND THE CJC TAKE THE TRUTH ABOUT ISLAM TO 3RD ST. PROMENADE

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/08/09/jamie-glazov-and-the-cjc-take-the-truth-about-islam-to-3rd-st-promenade/

On Saturday evenings, the Counter Jihad Coalition (CJC) comes to 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica to spread the truth about Islam.

Below the pictures is a video of Jamie’s activism on 3rd St. and then a Glazov Gang episode with Steve Amundson, president of the CJC, about his group’s efforts.

The CJC ‘s website is CounterJihadCoalition.org and its Facebook page can be found HERE. The group can be contacted at: CounterJihadCoalition@gmail.com and see all of its Tri-Fold Brochures Here.

Trump-ettes, You Can’t Have It Both Ways By Frank Salvato

A funny thing happened on the way to the “Forum,” the “guy who doesn’t back down,” the “fighter,” got his nose bloodied and his sycophants didn’t care for it one bit. If that sounds harsh, then let me borrow from the “fighter’s” own words. I don’t have time for political correctness. I also don’t have time for so-called Republicans and Conservatives who want the game disingenuously skewed to their advantage. Nor do I have time for hypocrites.

This is not a screed that poses to apologize for FOX News. I have my own reasons – events that happened to me personally when I was asked to appear on The O’Reilly Factor so many years ago – for not kneeling at the FOX altar. But neither will I bow to the knee-jerk canonization of Donald Trump as the end-all-be-all for the Conservative cause in 2016. Nor will I acquiesce to the Janus-faced whining of those who don’t want to see the “guy who doesn’t back down” asked legitimate questions.

Obama and the ‘Amen Corner’ Elliott Abrams

With accusations of warmongering, the president feeds anti-Semitism.

This week President Obama sealed his legacy as the most divisive president in modern times, who will leave behind both worsened race relations and a set of arguments about Iran that will surely feed anti-Semitism.

That race relations have worsened under Obama is crystal clear, as even publications like The New York Times have acknowledged. A Times/CBS poll conducted in July revealed that “nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad, and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.” And Americans did link the downturn to the president: “almost half of those questioned said the Obama presidency had had no effect on bringing the races together, while about a third said it had driven them further apart.”

Think of that: a third of the American people, over a hundred million Americans, hold the president responsible for worsening race relations in the country. Why would that be? It’s reasonable to say the Mr. Obama’s close relationship with people who make a living from bitter race relations, such as Al Sharpton, plays a part. And so does Mr. Obama’s repeated insertion of himself into divisive racial situations even before the facts were fully known—starting with the famous case of the Harvard professor, Skip Gates, arrested in 2009.

The Islamic State’s Christian and Yizidi Sex Slaves: Nina Shea

Women, children, even toddlers—the Islamic State’s goal is to sell them on an open market to men of all means, especially the young jihadis on whom the caliphate depends.

Unlike Muslims, who can conform and wait out ISIS until the day it is defeated, Christians, along with “polytheist” Yizidis, can don veils and give up cigarettes and alcohol, but, as non-Muslims, their very presence is an intolerable offense to the year-old “caliphate.” These minority religious groups in Iraq and Syria, lacking protecting armies or militias of their own, find themselves in unique peril. During his Bolivian trip this month, Pope Francis called it “genocide.”

ISIS demands nothing less than the conversion of all Christians and Yizidis to Islam under penalty of death for men and enslavement for women and children. (Another frequently cited option for Christian “People of the Book”, the payment of jizya, is a ruse, for the tax is raised until it becomes unpayable and property and lives are taken after all. Hence, last summer, Mosul’s bishops chose exile for their communities, rather than attend an ISIS meeting to learn of its jizya terms.)