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October 2016

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Trump’s Best Debate Mike Pence shows how to make an optimistic case for change.

By on October 5th, 2016

If Donald Trump could make the case for Donald Trump half as well as Mike Pence makes the case for Donald Trump, the New York businessman would be well on his way to the White House. That’s our conclusion from Tuesday’s vice presidential debate, in which the Indiana Governor made the sustained case against the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama status quo in Washington that Mr. Trump should have made last week.

Mr. Pence is a former radio talk show host, and it showed with his cool, articulate delivery. His earnest, low-key demeanor was a notable contrast to Tim Kaine, whose strategy seemed to be to interrupt Mr. Pence at every opportunity. Perhaps the Virginia Senator studied Joe Biden’s strategy from four years ago when the Vice President did the same against Paul Ryan, but Mr. Kaine is not a natural bully. Our guess is that his endless interruptions grated on millions of viewers.

Mr. Kaine’s marching orders clearly were to absorb the Clinton campaign’s opposition research file on Mr. Trump, keep repeating it, and dare Mr. Pence to defend it. The point seemed to be to remind Americans that Mr. Trump can be crude, nasty and untutored. This fits the Clinton campaign strategy to delegitimize Mr. Trump personally as a potential President. His affirmative case for Mrs. Clinton and her agenda were almost afterthoughts.

For the most part Mr. Pence dodged this trap, going back on offense against the Clinton-Obama record rather than defend every Trump statement, many of which are indefensible. This is a useful lesson for Mr. Trump to take into the next debate on Sunday night, a town hall in which audience members will ask the questions. People want to like their Presidents.

The most notable substantive exchanges occurred on foreign policy, with Mr. Pence offering a detailed critique of Mr. Obama’s record and growing global disorder. Mr. Kaine kept saying that Hillary Clinton was part of the team that killed Osama bin Laden, but that is old antiterror news. Mr. Pence replied that the main terror threat now is Islamic State, which he rightly said grew out of “the vacuum” left when President Obama withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Also notable was the debate on Russia, with Mr. Kaine claiming that Mr. Trump has business ties with “oligarchs” that cause him to apologize for Vladimir Putin. Mr. Trump’s admiration for Mr. Putin is mysterious and worrisome. But Mr. Pence pointed out that Mrs. Clinton’s hawkishness-come-lately on Russia follows years of weak policy that invited Mr. Putin’s aggression. Mr. Pence reminded the audience what a classic Republican security policy sounds like—if only Mr. Trump would adopt it. CONTINUE AT SITE

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BOOKS Comments turned off

MY SAY: A SOPHOMORE’S LAMENT

By on October 4th, 2016

I am a sophomore sapien majoring in Genderal Studies with emphasis on violence and transphobia.

Before we can end violence against anyone we have to outlaw guns and all references to them that can evoke fear and despair and hives among students.

We must abolish terms like “bulletin” or verbs like “rifle” and “shoot” as in photography.

“Butt” is offensive and also evokes a weapon’s handle and “caliber” should never be used to describe character. “Target” should really change its name and logo.

Numbers that can cause a panic attack are “22” “38” and “45” and must be used with great care. “Magazines” should henceforth be called periodicals and any use of the words “ammunition “, “rounds “or “magnum” (even to describe booze) may cause vapors in a delicate sapien. “Arms” should be referred to as “upper limbs” and “ballistic” must be replaced with “outraged.” To “cock” is disgusting on several grounds and “barrel” is edgy and “muzzle” has two awful meanings.

Guns kill and words have consequences and Sapiens are soulful and determined to ban words that can drive us into safe spaces.

When assigned writing contains those words, we demand a statement at the start alerting us to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material.

We need and we demand trigger warnings.!!!!

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Debating Hillary, Part 1: The Economy Wow, Hillary: so many falsehoods and so little time

By on October 4th, 2016

Today TruthRevolt unleashes Part 1 of a six part — that’s right, six-part — series from Firewall host Bill Whittle in response to the issues left untouched in the first presidential debate. Part 1 focuses on countering Hillary Clinton’s ECONOMIC proposals.

Transcript below:

Well, the first Trump-Clinton debate is behind us, and the thing that struck me so much about this first debate was not so much what Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton, but rather what he did not say.

So let me give the Conservative response to many of the points that Madam Clinton made and went unanswered.

CLINTON: We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women’s work. I also want to see more companies do profit-sharing. If you help create the profits, you should be able to share in them, not just the executives at the top.

How are we going to do it? We’re going to do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes.

Wow, Hillary: so many falsehoods and so little time…

Let’s start with the $15 minimum wage.

Some cities, like Seattle, have instituted $15/hr minimum wage laws. It turns out that small business owners – the kind of people that pay minimum wage – did not reluctantly lurk to their underground money cavern and drag up more sacks of gold stolen from the workers. The minimum wage was never INTENDED to be a “living wage:” it is and should be for entry-level jobs for people who want to START their work resume in a minimum-wage job – not END it there.

As far as unequal pay for women – the 80 cents on the dollar argument — well that is a gigantic lie and you know it. It is true that if you average all the male salaries, and all the female salaries, men do make more then women, and the reason they make more than women is because they put in longer hours at higher-paying and often vastly more dangerous jobs. The idea that someone at Wal-Mart could say to a woman applicant that the job pays $35,000 a year – for men — but only $27,000 for you sweet cheeks is absurd and you know it. It’s also illegal, and has been for decades, but needless to say, knowledge of and obedience to the law doesn’t seem to be one of your primary virtues.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Dunbar High School After 100 Years Lessons from the destruction of an educational success story for black students. Thomas Sowell

By on October 4th, 2016

One hundred years ago, on October 2, 1916, a new public high school building for black youngsters was opened in Washington, D.C. and named for black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Its history is a story inspiring in many ways and appalling in many other ways.

Prior to 1916, the same high school had existed under other names, housed in other buildings — and with a remarkable academic record.

In 1899, when it was called “the M Street School,” a test was given in Washington’s four academic public high schools, three white and one black. The black high school scored higher than two of the three white high schools. Today, it would be considered Utopian even to set that as a goal, much less expect to see it happen.

The M Street School had neither of two so-called “prerequisites” for quality education. There was no “diversity.” It was an all-black school from its beginning, and on through its life as a high quality institution under the name Dunbar High School.

But its days as a high quality institution ended abruptly in the middle of the 1950s. After that, it became just another failing ghetto school.

The other so-called “prerequisite” that the M Street School lacked was an adequate building. Its student body was 50 percent larger than the building’s capacity, a fact that led eventually to the new Dunbar High School building. But its students excelled even in their overcrowded building.

Some students at the M Street School began going to some of the leading colleges in the country in the late 19th century. The first of its graduates to go to Harvard did so in 1903. Over the years from 1892 to 1954, thirty-four of the graduates from the M Street School and Dunbar went on to Amherst.

Of these, 74 percent graduated from Amherst and 28 percent of these graduates were Phi Beta Kappas. Other graduates from M Street High School and Dunbar became Phi Beta Kappas at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and other elite institutions.

Graduates of this same high school pioneered as the first black in many places. These included the first black man to graduate from Annapolis, the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from an American institution, the first black federal judge, the first black general, the first black Cabinet member and, among other notables, a doctor who became internationally renowned for his pioneering work in developing the use of blood plasma.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Voter Fraud Rising Illegal interference in the battleground states. Matthew Vadum

By on October 4th, 2016

There is already evidence that voter fraud is being perpetrated in critical battleground states like Virginia and Colorado a month before Election Day.

Voter fraud is commonplace. Completely eliminating it is impossible. The most policymakers can do is create laws and policies that attempt to minimize it.

Voter fraud is unlawful interference with the electoral process in an effort to bring about a desired result. Voter fraud is also called vote fraud, election fraud, and electoral fraud. It refers to fraudulent voting, impersonation, intimidation, perjury, voter registration fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery, destroying already cast ballots, and a multitude of crimes related to the electoral process.

Reasonable people can disagree over how serious a problem voter fraud is in today’s America, but the evidence it actually exists cannot be ignored.

This is where people on the Right and Left differ. Conservatives think fighting voter fraud is important; liberals and progressives don’t care — and many of them go further, arguing that voter fraud is an imaginary problem.

News of the illegal voting in Virginia and Colorado comes as Republican candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed in campaign speeches that the system, including the electoral system, is “rigged.”

Trump has been issuing this warning about the election for months. After a series of anti-voter fraud laws were struck down in several states by federal courts, the candidate raised the possibility that people will vote over and over in the election, voting for which is already underway in many states.

“There’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged,” Trump said two months ago. “I would not be surprised. The voter ID, they’re fighting as hard as you can fight so that they don’t have to show voter ID. So, what’s the purpose of that?”

People will be able to vote “multiple times,” he said. “How about like 10 times. Why not? If you don’t have voter ID [requirements], you can just keep voting and voting and voting.”

In fact the Left has made it easy to commit voter fraud. Bill Clinton’s Motor-Voter law of 1993 opened the floodgates to fraud.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Deepwater Horizon and Everyday Heroes Director Peter Berg’s latest film brings viewers up close to a gripping catastrophe, and also to a hidden world of some of America’s finest. By Kyle Smith

By on October 4th, 2016

The climactic images of an American flag rippling against darkness and fire in the brilliant new film Deepwater Horizon recall many a war film, or indeed the writing of The Star Spangled Banner itself, near Fort McHenry as the War of 1812 raged. But this is not a war film. Or is it?

The civilians who populate the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana are military-like types — practical engineers, men who solve problems in real time under immense pressure, some of it literal and lethal. They make their living with their hands, wear casual clothing, drink bad coffee out of paper cups, and power America.

In short, these are manly men, played by manly actors like Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell, as two of the many technically savvy guys who keep America’s oil flowing. As we flick on a light switch or pump gas into our cars, rarely do we think about how our carbon-based energy system works, or the ingenuity, skill, and courage of those who bring us cheap, abundant fuel. Deepwater Horizon urges us to spare a thought for these people, most of them men, who make the country work, often at huge risk to themselves. Until the world figures out a way to operate on puppy dog dreams and unicorn sighs, carbon-based fuels will remain the foundation of our existence, the sine qua non without which earth-mother poets, sullen America-hating vegan performance artists, and the private jets that shuttle Al Gore to ecological conferences would find it difficult to operate.

Eleven men died in the explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 26, 2010, and dozens more were lucky to escape with their lives. And yet the media simply shrugged at the human toll of this event and rushed off to cover the damage to marine life in the resulting oil spill of 210 million gallons. Today, the media reaction looks like a bit of an overreaction –nature has a way of erasing even man’s biggest mistakes, and life in the Gulf of Mexico has largely bounced back — but such topics are outside the scope of the movie.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

In debate No. 2, Trump owes it to the ‘deplorables’ to focus on the issues and exert some self-control. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 4th, 2016

“Trump owes it to these forgotten Deplorables to prepare for the last two debates and to talk about them, and not himself. If he doesn’t, he will wreck their hopes, betray their trust, and walk away a loser as few others in history.But if Trump fights Hillary with a coherent plan that is the antithesis of the last eight years, rather than harping about his business reputation and obsessing with the trivial, he still might win a conservative Congress, a cadre of loyal conservative cabinet officers, a rare chance to remake the Supreme Court in a fashion not seen since the 1930s — and at 70 years of age make all his prior celebrity achievements of the past seem as nothing in comparison.”

In the first debate, Hillary stuck out her jaw on cybersecurity, the treatment of women, sermons on the need for restrained language, and talk about the shenanigans of the rich — and Trump passed on her e-mail scandals, her denigration of Bill’s women, her reckless smears like “deplorables,” and her pay-for-pay Clinton Foundation enrichment, obsessed instead with the irrelevant and insignificant.

In fact, the first presidential debate resembled the final scene out of the Caine Mutiny. Trump was melting down like the baited Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), in his convoluted wild-goose-chase defenses of his arcane business career. Watching it was as painful as it was for the admiral judges in the movie who saw fellow officer Queeg reduced to empty shouting about strawberries.

Hillary Clinton egged him on in the role of the know-it-all, conniver of the same movie, the smug lieutenant Tom Keefer (Fred MacMurray), who had goaded Queeg, playacted sophisticated and learned — but ultimately proved a vain, empty, and unattractive vessel.

In sum, conservative viewers tuned in, in hopes of seeing Trump as Bull Halsey, the heroic admiral of the Navy’s Third Fleet in WWII, and they got instead Hollywood’s Captain Queeg.

Trump’s detours de nihilo, the constant unanswered race/class/gender jabs by a haughty Hillary, and Trump’s addictions to broken-off phrases, and loud empty superlative adjectives (tremendous, awesome, great, and fantastic) won’t win him the necessary extra 3–4 percent of women, independents, and establishment Never Trump Republicans. Trump’s bragging that he has “properties” in your state or that he found a way to creatively account his way out of income taxes does not come off as synonymous with a plan to make you well off, too.

Moderator Lester Holt did what all mainstream debate moderators of a now corrupt profession customarily do: Before the debate he leaked that they might possibly be conservative, feigned fairness, and then reestablished his left-wing credentials by focusing solely on fact-checking Trump, so that he wouldn’t be targeted later by leftist elites whose pique could lead to temporary ostracism from the people and places Holt values.

So, of course, he audited Trump and exempted Clinton, as if Trump’s businesses were as overtly crooked as the play-for-pay Clinton syndicate, or Trump’s supposed insensitivities to a pampered beauty queen (with a checkered past) were morally equivalent to Hillary’s denigration of Bill’s women who had claimed sexual assault or her eerie post facto chortling over getting a defendant, accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, off with lesser charges.

Most newsreaders know little more than how to news read. So we should not have been surprised that Holt’s audits of Trump on the legality of stop-and-frisk, or Holt’s denial that violent crime was up, was about as accurate as Candy Crowley’s hijacking of the second 2012 debate to rewrite what Barack Obama said into what she thought he should have said. Trump, in fact, was right that his microphone did not work properly and right that the media was biased — but wrong that bringing any of that up mattered in analyses of his debate performance.

The Clinton debate formula should have been clear: Bait and prod Trump to go into egocentric rants about his businesses, or a beauty queen, or another non-story, and then let the moderator massage the playing field, and let Hillary fill in dead time with empty platitudes (we are all racists/we need more solar panels/the wealthy don’t pay their fair share), and unfunded promises, while pandering along race, class, and gender lines.

Trump has to find a way to blow apart that script — largely by repressing his ego and simply not talking about any of his businesses or going down into the Clinton muck. Period.

Who cares about an ancient writ or a spat with a contractor?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Radical Islamists Gaining Strength in Kashmir by Jagdish N. Singh

By on October 4th, 2016

The separatist leaders in Kashmir, as often happens with opponents (such as the Palestinians or Iran) seem to take any willingness to negotiate as sign of weakness, and start pursuing their own agendas with even more aggression.

Their agenda of the separatists has consistently been one of radical Islamist rule in Kashmir.

“They [the separatists] are not ready for it [a political solution]. They are not ready even to open their doors. They enjoy fuelling violence and getting innocents killed,” said Ram Madhav, General Secretary of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party.

The refusal of Kashmiri separatist leaders to meet an all-party Indian parliamentary delegation led by India’s Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, that visited Kashmir on September 4-5 to strike a political solution for the strife-torn state, was hardly surprising. The separatist leaders in Kashmir, as often happens with opponents (such as the Palestinians or Iran) seem to take any willingness to negotiate as sign of weakness, and start pursuing their own agendas with even more aggression.

“They [the separatists] are not ready for it [a political solution]. They are not ready even to open their doors. They enjoy fuelling violence and getting innocents killed,” said Ram Madhav, General Secretary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party.

If New Delhi is serious about establishing peace in the Kashmir Valley, it is futile to waste any more time with separatist leaders belonging to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), a united front of 26 political, social and religious organizations all committed to the cause of Kashmiri independence from India. It would be naïve to entertain any hope of a positive response from them.

The history of the behaviour of APHC leaders and similar groups shows that they evidently have little interest in the values of peace, secularism and development, which are dear to India and all democratic societies. Their agenda has consistently been one of radical Islamist rule in Kashmir. Their approach during the current crisis there merely confirms this pattern. They continue to spread a message of hatred and violence against the Indian authorities by portraying them as “anti-people.”

These separatists are allegedly aligned with the establishment in Islamabad, Pakistan, to foment unrest in Kashmir. APHC leader Ali Shah Geelani holds an Indian passport, only to indulge in an anti-India rhetoric . On August 14, 2015, another separatist, Asiya Andrabi, hoisted the Pakistani flag in Jammu and Kashmir. Both Geelani and Andrabi addressed a Jama’at-ud-Da’wah rally in Pakistan, led by Hafiz Saeed, a co-founder of Lashkar-e-Toiba and chief of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah, which has had sanctions placed against it by the United Nations as a terrorist outfit promoting an anti-India agenda.

These leaders also seem to have financial interests in being close to Pakistan. Recently, the separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s son, Nayeem Geelani, has come to the attention of India’s National Intelligence Agency, for having transferred a large amount of money into the bank account of reported terrorist, Syed Salahuddin, based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian Murderers and their Western Enablers by Guy Millière

By on October 4th, 2016

The Palestinian Authority not only celebrates murderers: it produces new ones every day — and does so knowlingly and voluntarily. For this it uses textbooks, television and radio programs, and articles in newspapers, all paid for with money from Western governments.

The Palestinian Authority also financially rewards the murderers’ families and the murderers themselves. These financial rewards are also paid for with money from Western governments.

How can Western politicians explain that they condemn the murders and still fund the incitement to kill? How come they keep giving money that rewards murdering Jews “by all available means”?

How can they define as “moderate” an organization such as the Palestinian Authority that admits sending terrorists to kill Israelis and that teaches children, on its Facebook page, how to stab Jews to death? And how can they consider it urgent to give such an organization its own State?

Israeli Jews know they can only rely on themselves. They know that others, such as France, are holding knives that are sharpened.

The sport of murdering Jews does not stop. On June 30, at dawn, in Kiryat Arba, a young Arab broke through a window, and stabbed a 13-year-old American-Israeli girl, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, to death.

The young Arab who stabbed Hallel Yaffa Ariel was shot dead just after the assault. His mother said she was proud of her son. The Palestinian Authority (PA) said he was a hero and a “martyr.”

This year alone, 24 Israeli Jews were murdered, many gruesomely. Every time one of the murderers was shot, his family declared how proud they were, and the Palestinian Authority celebrated him. New murderers are preparing new attacks.

What sort of society is it where parents say they how proud they are that their children are murderers? And what sort of leadership is it that celebrates killers?

Further, what sort of Western journalists and “human rights” groups are those that fail to voice their outrage at the murder of a sleeping 13-year-old girl?

These journalists and human rights groups voice their outrage at people killed in European soccer stadiums, musical theaters and editorial rooms, but never, it seems, for Israeli Jews killed over so many years.

Why also is it that they never speak of the moral depravity of the Palestinian Authority?

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Tony Thomas: Hillary, the Alleged Rapist’s Enabler

By on October 4th, 2016

She presents herself as the champion of all women everywhere, but there are more than a few exceptions — starting with the cavalcade of underlings, willing and unwilling, who have enjoyed or endured her priapic husband’s attentions. Whenever their names emerge, she leads the charge to silence them.
On September 14, 2015, this message occupied pride of place on Hillary Clinton’s campaign site: “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault: Don’t let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard.” By February 4, 2016, the quote had been stealth edited to and “You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you” had been deleted.

Hillary Clinton presented herself as defender of liberal womanhood at last month’s presidential debate. She berated Trump: “This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs.”[1]

Trump should have responded: “This is a woman whose President-husband paid $US850,000 to settle a lawsuit by Paula Jones alleging sexual harassment.[2] This is a conniving woman who has disparaged and harassed women who were sexually assaulted by her husband.”

I’d like to issue a trigger warning now that my corroborative detail may be sordid and upsetting to unsophisticated Quadrant readers. The Clinton couple exist in a miasma of sexual sleaze. Bill has indulged his sexual appetites with third-party women before, during and after his presidency. Hillary winks at it. Victims of Bill’s predations also claim Hillary has led campaigns to discredit them.

Interviewed after the debate, Trump claimed he had held back on Bill because he didn’t want to parade Bill’s vices in front of the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, who was in the audience.[3] I’d therefore give him credit as a gentleman, especially as Chelsea is no impressionable teen but a married woman, now 36, who owns an apartment stretching across an entire block of lower Manhattan.

Here are a few names of Bill’s other women, on whom he either forced himself or exploited their subordinate status in ways rightly banned in private enterprise and academia: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jone, Monica Lewinsky, Christy Zercher, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, Carolyn Moffett. All were Democrat supporters, all took enormous risks in going public and taking on the super-powerful Democrat machine. Their lives and reputations typically suffered irreparable damage. Who knows how many others stayed fearfully silent?

No lesser a reporter than Watergate’s Carl Bernstein wrote of Hillary’s response when Gennifer Flowers alleged she had a long-term affair with Bill. Hillary’s response, Bernstein said, was to throw herself into efforts to discredit Flowers. This included trying to persuade horrified campaign aides to bring out rumors that George Bush (Sr) had not always been faithful to wife Barbara. Nice one, Hillary!

In July last year Bernstein on CNN TV said of Hillary’s penchant for “fudging”, i.e. lying,[4] She “has become a kind of specialist at it. Why has she become a kind of specialist? It has to do I think with the peculiarity of the Clinton situation. It had partly to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she’s had to defend him. It’s been very difficult to do with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Sorry, Carl, but this supposed champion of downtrodden women didn’t have to defend Bill, she could have defended his victims. Bernstein’s biography also documents how Hillary undertook an “aggressive, explicit direction of the campaign to discredit” Gennifer Flowers.

How does the Bill/Hillary marriage since 1975 work? One needs to trawl back to 1979 for Hillary’s only candid description:

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