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Ruth King

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A March to Nowhere Leftist protesters have taken to the streets in opposition to President-elect Trump — but what are they trying to accomplish? By Carrie Lukas

By on November 17th, 2016

Anti-Trump protests are ongoing, with hundreds still gathering around the country to denounce the results of the 2016 election. This may just be the beginning: The Daily Mail reports that a “women’s march on Washington” is being planned to coincide with the inauguration in January. Within 24 hours of the announcement of the effort, more than 35,000 people had signed on to participate.

Protests and demonstrations have a noble history in the United States, and have been used effectively to awaken people to worthy causes and issues. When done right, they can encourage others who share the protesters’ concerns, but who are reticent to speak up, to join them, thereby building momentum for action.

The Americans planning to march on Washington to protest the incoming president must be hoping to build on this tradition. Yet strategic thinkers on the left ought to consider what these protests will accomplish, and whether they are likely to advance — or might actually hinder — their larger cause.

After all, protests have become increasingly common in recent years. Students on college campuses now regularly stage demonstrations. Many of these protests seem to be an end in themselves, with students rallying against innocuous administration policies or for higher wages on campus, but mostly seeming to enjoy the experience and camaraderie of the protest itself. Yes, some protests are seriously undertaken with the intention of bringing about results: Take the 2015 protests — which include a student hunger strike — at the University of Missouri against the university’s policies related to race and their response to racial incidents on campus, which resulted in both the president and chancellor stepping down.

While that protest succeeded in bringing about changes that the protesters were calling for, they failed to build support among the public. In fact, a poll taken in Missouri after the protest found that “by a fairly wide margin, the state’s public does not view the University of Missouri’s recent protests and associated events very favorably.” Twice as many Missourians disagreed with student protesters’ message as agreed with them. Sixty-two percent disagreed with student protesters’ actions, while just 20 percent agreed.

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Trump’s Bizarre Winning Formula Reformulating the Republican message, Donald Trump was able to exploit political mistakes that the Democrats have made. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 17th, 2016

The Democratic party handed Donald Trump a rare opportunity to make radical changes to the electoral map that could last for years to come.

First, the Democrats gave Trump a great gift by completing the ongoing radicalization of their party under President Obama. After 2008, it was no longer a party of the working and middle classes, but a lopsided political pyramid.

On top were the cynical elites who turned up in the WikiLeaks John Podesta e-mail trove: self-important media members, Ivy League grandees, Silicon Valley billionaires, Wall Street plutocrats, and coastal-corridor snobs. They talk left-wing but live royally. They court minorities to vote in lockstep, then deride them in private. The vast lower tier of the party comprises government employees, the poor, minorities, and the millions dependent on state and federal assistance. The Democrats in between were ignored, and so they kept fleeing the party. Look at the red/blue map of the election. Democratic strength retreated to the inner cities and the rich coastal suburbs.

The Democrats also, in suicidal fashion, stoked racial chauvinism, or the notion that one’s tribe should transcend all other affiliations. After pandering to various minority groups, Hillary Clinton apparently believed that they suddenly would forget her emphasis on race and ethnicity to vote for her, a 69-year-old white multimillionaire.

But the Democrats learned a bitter lesson in 2016: Obama’s left-wing, rich/poor ideological agendas do not appeal to most of the country. Despite a hard progressive agenda, Obama was able to win two terms by relying on racial and ethnic solidarity, earning record numbers of Latino and black votes.

The logic of such a formula could not be easily transferred to a non-minority Democratic candidate. So Clinton lost key blue states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because minority turnout in cities such as Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee fell off from 2008 and 2012.

Worse for Democrats, by pandering to tribal solidarity, they polarized the white working classes. When physical similarity is touted as the best argument to vote for someone, it green-lights everybody to do the same — including huge numbers of less affluent whites who voted for Trump.

Trump took advantage of these openings. By reformulating the old Republican messages to include so-called fair (rather than free) trade, by leaving Social Security alone, and by promising to create more jobs, Trump plucked millions of lower- and middle-class voters from the Democratic party.

Republican elites may have been appalled that Trump blasted global trade agreements and promised to punish corporations that outsourced jobs overseas. But those who have been left out of the globalized economy flocked to that message after not warming up to John McCain and Mitt Romney in earlier presidential elections.

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Tom Hanks Breaks from Hollywood Pack and Says He Hopes Trump Does Well By Stephen Kruiser

By on November 17th, 2016

In what is certainly sure to draw ire from some, if not many, in the Hollywood community, two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks opted for grace and class when speaking about President-elect Donald Trump. After a week of hysteria-laden open letters and Twitter rants from entertainment industry liberals like Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon, Hanks’ calm demeanor and response really stood out. The actor was being honored at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when he offered a refreshing dose of perspective.

We are going to be all right because we constantly get to tell the world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as American. We do have the greatest country in the world. We move at a slow pace. We have the greatest country in the world because we are always moving towards a more perfect union. That journey never ceases, it never stops. Sometimes, to quote a Springsteen song, it’s “one step forward, two steps back,” but we still aggregately move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so, but we will move forward because if we do not move forward, what is to be said of us?

Then Hanks said something that would probably be career suicide for a less established actor:

“This is the United States of America. We’ll go on. There’s great like-minded people out there who are Americans first and Republicans or Democrats second,” Hanks told THR. “I hope the president-elect does such a great job that I vote for his re-election in four years.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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The ‘Cry In’ of 2016 A disturbing glance at the post-election hysteria on college campuses. Jack Kerwick

By on November 17th, 2016

Since Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton on November 8, college campuses across the nation expanded their “safe spaces” for students and faculty whose world had been turned upside down by this historic election.

In at least three respects, the Great Meltdown of 2016 is a truly tragic commentary on the state of higher education today:

First, it reveals the dominance of a single left-leaning ideology at an institution that is supposed to be a free marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying, after all, that no safe spaces would’ve been created or would have needed to have been created had the election gone the other way.

Second, the hyper-emotionality accentuates the intellectual flaccidness that prevails at the one place that is supposed to exist for the sake of instilling into the next generation intellectual virtue, men and women with strength and toughness of mind.

Third, the Great Meltdown betrays the stunning arrogance on the part of just those people—professors—whose calling to a life in education requires the cultivation of humility. Given that students were just as unprepared as were their teachers for even the possibility that their candidate could lose proves that neither have they been acquiring the virtue of humility while in college.

The College Fix, a campus watchdog publication run by students, is a national treasure. Here are some of the happenings in the academic world from last week that it reports:

At Converse College, an all-female institution, students organized “silent protests,” walked the campus in tears, and posted pictures of themselves crying on Snapchat. At least one professor held off on giving a midterm exam, and another told her students that the day after Election Day was the worst day in American history second only to September 11, 2001.

The President of the college, Krista Newkirk, issued an email to the campus community in which she expressed her sadness that “once again our young girls and women have failed to see the shattering of that glass ceiling and the first female president of the United States” (How much would you be willing to bet that no such email was sent when Barack Obama prevented Hillary Clinton her chance of shattering that glass ceiling in 2008?)

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Trump Derangement Syndrome Democrats believe in democracy only until they lose an election. Daniel Greenfield

By on November 17th, 2016

Like all dictators, the Democrats believe in democracy only until they lose an election.

And then they lose their minds.

The last time a national mental breakdown this severe happened was sixteen years ago when Bush beat Gore. The Democrats reacted gracefully to their defeat by insisting that they didn’t really lose because Bush stole the election. Psychiatrists were soon tending to lefties suffering from depression. Others protested outside the Florida Supreme Court, President Bush’s home and their parents’ basement.

Jesse Jackson accused Republicans of a “coup.” Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson warned that “without justice there will be no peace.” Thousands protested Bush’s inauguration waving signs like, “We want Bush out of D.C.” and “You’re not our president.”

The Congressional Black Caucus tried to obstruct the certification of the Electoral College vote. Then when Bush won again in the next election, they did it all over again. Expect them to try it one more time.

Because they don’t believe in democracy. They believe in their own absolute entitlement to power. Any election that they win is legitimate. Any election that they lose is illegitimate.

But if Bush Derangement Syndrome was bad, Trump Derangement Syndrome is even worse.

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Arab Democracy’s Failure Eludes So-Called Experts By Andrew E. Harrod

By on November 17th, 2016

Given American policymakers’ ignorance of Islam, “I am just worried about people like me running around with big theories trying to set foreign policy,” stated famed intellectual historian Francis Fukuyama in Washington, D.C. His confession occurred at “Democracy in the Arab World: The Obama Legacy and Beyond,” a recent conference that did little to alleviate the knowledge deficit among hackneyed Islamism apologists.

Fukuyama’s luncheon address at the downtown JW Marriot luxury hotel focused on the cultural factors that aided the development of modern societies. While China benefited from the appearance 2,300 years ago of the “first modern, relatively impersonal state,” Fukuyama said, the “Arab world [is] where I think the fundamental problem is” for human progress today. Although he worried that the U.S. had not made an effort to understand Muslim societies comparable to its Cold War study of Russia, Fukuyama’s own knowledge of Islam was spotty. He described an often repressive and all-encompassing sharia law as a mere “balance to political power.”

Referencing the late scholar Ernest Gellner, Fukuyama maintained that “contemporary Islamism is basically just a different version of European nationalism in the nineteenth century.” Just as Europeans transitioning from intimate rural communities to urban anonymity during industrialization sought a new identity, Islamists invoke a “universal umma that extends all the way from Morocco to Jakarta.” Similarly, this Islamism appeals to alienated second-generation European Muslim immigrants. Left unexamined was whether the cosmic worldview of a faith like Islam has considerably more ideological content, and can incite far more zeal, than nationalist allegiances, particularly in an increasingly globalized world.

At least Fukuyama didn’t minimize jihadist terrorism, unlike the preceding panelist, anti-Israel commentator Peter Beinart. He decried the “rise of ISIS and a massive increase fueled by cable news [coverage] of the threat of terror that emerged in 2014” and reflected upon President Barack Obama’s shared view that the “threat of terrorism had been exaggerated.” Obama rejected former President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” as the “new Cold War, the new World War II; there was fascism and communism, and now there was jihadism.”

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Europe: Let’s End Free Speech! Are European Countries Now Police States? by Judith Bergman

By on November 17th, 2016

According to New Europe, in Leeuwarden, “about twenty opponents of the plans [to establish asylum centers] in the region received police visits at home.” In other words, the Netherlands are engaging in state censorship, thereby raising the question: Is the Netherlands now a police state?

In the town of Sliedrecht, police came to Mark Jongeneel’s office and told him that he tweeted “too much” and that he should “watch his tone”: his tweets “may seem seditious”. His offense? One tweet said: “The College of #Sliedrecht comes up with a proposal to take 250 refugees over the next two years. What a bad idea!”

In September 2015, Die Welt reported that people who air “xenophobic” views on social media, risk losing the right to see their own children.

While ordinary European citizens risk arrest and prosecution for “xenophobic” remarks, a German EU Commissioner, Günther Oettinger, called a visiting Chinese delegation of ministers “slant eyes” (“Schlitzaugen”). European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has promoted Oettinger to be in charge of the EU budget.

Clearly, the law is not equal. EU Commissioners can make “xenophobic” remarks and get a promotion; European citizens, for exercising their right to free speech, are arrested and prosecuted.

In Europe, is the enemy now the governments? Evidence is mounting that expressing even a mild opinion that runs counter to official government policy can land you in prison, or at least ensure a visit from your friendly local Kafkaesque police. Has Europe effectively become a police state?

Several European governments are making it clear to their citizens that criticizing migrants or European migrant policies is criminally off limits. People who go “too far,” according to the authorities, are being arrested, prosecuted and at times convicted.

In the Netherlands, the police visited people who naïvely made critical comments about asylum centers on Twitter in October 2015. In the town of Sliedrecht, police came to Mark Jongeneel’s office and told him that he tweeted “too much” and that he should “watch his tone”: his tweets “may seem seditious”. His offense? The town had held a citizens meeting about a refugee center in the region, and Jongeneel had posted a few tweets. One said: “The College of #Sliedrecht comes up with a proposal to take 250 refugees over the next two years. What a bad idea!” Earlier he had also tweeted: “Should we let this happen?!”

He was not the only one. In Leeuwarden, according to New Europe:

“…about twenty opponents of the plans [to establish asylum centers] in the region received police visits at home. It also happened in Enschede, and in some places in the Brabant, where, according to the Dutch media, people who had been critical of the arrival of refugees and ran a page on social media on the topic were told to stop”.

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Israel Puts the Spike Missile on its Apache Helicopters by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen

By on November 17th, 2016

For this reason, Israel concluded that the U.S. under Obama was not a reliable supplier of either helicopters or missiles.

Israel’s Spike is superior to the Hellfire. It has longer range, making it safer to use against an enemy that possesses shoulder-fired ground to air missiles.

Worse yet, despite Saudi Arabia’s horrible bombing performance in Yemen, the U.S. continues to sell billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and has stepped up shipments of munitions.

The Spike is a better option than the Hellfire and safer to use, which is why 25 nations now use the missile and 25,000 or more have been produced.

Sometimes when decisions do not work out exactly as intended, they work out just fine.

In the midst of Operation Protective Edge — Israel’s response to 182 Hamas rockets and mortars fired at Israeli towns and villages in the first week of July 2014 — the Obama administration accused Israel of “heavy handed battlefield tactics,” including the use of artillery instead of precision-guided munitions. U.S. President Barack Obama halted the supply of Hellfire missiles and announced that all military equipment supplied to Israel would be vetted individually in the White House, instead of shipped, according to prior agreements, by the Pentagon to Israel.

The President, it appears, had been reading wild press stories about the damage to Gaza — which ultimately turned out to be concentrated in areas in which Hamas was stockpiling munitions and rockets and conducting command and control operations, which included firing more than 2,700 rockets and missiles during the rest of July. Israel struck an UNRWA-administered school, prompting cries of outrage, but UNRWA later admitted that it covered up that Hamas had used the school for military operations.

The Hellfire decision was especially ironic because it is a precision munition, generally less broadly damaging than bombs dropped from aircraft. The Hellfire can be fired from airplanes, drones and helicopters.

Ironic, too, because the United States has used Hellfire missiles against terrorists — often without the permission of the countries in which the terrorists were killed. A Hellfire was used to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn, American citizens, in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was designated a terrorist, and Kahn the editor of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, but U.S. law may have been violated by their assassination.

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U.N. Agency Warns Iran on Nuclear Deal Notice follows disclosure that Iran had produced more than the permitted amount of heavy waterBy Laurence Norman

By on November 17th, 2016

The head of the United Nations agency that oversees the Iranian nuclear deal warned Tehran on Thursday to stick to the accord after it was found for the second time to have breached one of its terms.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that Iran had stockpiled slightly more than the allowable 130 metric tons of heavy water. Spent fuel can be taken from the heavy water to produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon.

Details of the violation emerged the day after Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president. During the campaign, Mr. Trump talked about tearing up the July 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S. and five other world powers. Since election day, he hasn’t commented publicly on the agreement.

Yukiya Amano, head of the IAEA, told the agency’s board Thursday that it was the second time Iran’s inventory of heavy water had exceeded 130 metric tons. He confirmed that Iran had pledged to transfer its excess heavy water out of the country under the agency’s supervision.

“It is important that such situations should be avoided in future in order to maintain international confidence in the implementation of the JCPOA, which represents a clear gain for nuclear verification in Iran,” Mr. Amano said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear accord’s formal name.

In a press conference Monday afternoon from the IAEA’s Vienna headquarters, Mr. Amano said Iran “is preparing to transfer a quantity of heavy water to other countries” and the agency is monitoring this.

However, he said the agency doesn’t yet know when that transfer will take place or how much heavy water will be exported. Mr. Amano said he would update the IAEA Board when there is more information.

Asked if his decision to express his concerns was connected to Mr. Trump’s recent election win, Mr. Amano said “by no means.”

“The reason why I expressed this concern is the fact that the inventory of heavy water surpassed 130 tonnes for the second time,” he said.

Besides the issue of excess heavy water, Iran is meeting its other commitments under the nuclear deal, the IAEA has repeatedly said. Those include a commitment not to separate plutonium or reprocess spent fuel for 15 years. Iran has also pledged to redesign and rebuild its Arak nuclear reactor in coming years so it doesn’t produce weapons-grade plutonium.

When the second violation of the deal’s provision on heavy water surfaced last week, U.S. officials played down it down, stressing that Tehran had made no effort to hide the excess material from the agency and had pledged to correct the situation.

Under the agreement, Iran is permitted to continue producing heavy water at its Arak production plant as long as any amount in excess of 130 tons is transferred out of the country. Officials familiar with the deal say Iran has struggled to find buyers for heavy water on the international market.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, estimates Iran is producing heavy water at a rate of around 25 tonnes a year.

“Thus, under current arrangements, Iran is likely to continue pushing up against this cap,” he said in a report published Tuesday.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration bought heavy water from Iran for nearly $10 million to help it meet the 130-metric-ton limit.

For its part, Iran claims the U.S. hasn’t upheld the spirit of the nuclear deal. It has failed, Tehran says, to do more to encourage European and other international banks to resume business with Iranian firms following the suspension of most economic and financial sanctions in January. Many U.S. sanctions remain in place. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The New Trump Democrats Trump voters have become journalism’s biggest archaeological excavation site. Daniel Henninger

By on November 17th, 2016

Will the donkey lie down with the elephant?

Two days after the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren told the AFL-CIO executive council, “I will work with” Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders: “I and other progressives are prepared to work with him.”

The Washington Post: “Pelosi says Democrats are willing to work with Trump.”

That was easy. Someone should tweet the news to the Occupy Trump Tower mobs on Fifth Avenue.

Of course this burst of Trumpian bonhomie comes with the word “if” attached: They’ll work with Donald Trump . . . if he becomes one of them. Which is to say, if he adopts the progressive policies and attitudes that just got the Democratic Party wiped out, from the presidency down to dogcatcher.

“If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts,” thundered Sen. Warren, “we will fight them every step of the way.”

Even by the normal standards of postelection schadenfreude, it is hard not to be agog at the spectacle of Democrats trying to figure out what hit them and what to do about it.

A personal favorite is that Democrats must now distance themselves from “wealthy donors.” Party check-writers from Barbra Streisand to Jay Z put it all out there for Hillary, and this is the thanks they get—Bernie Sanders denouncing them to Stephen Colbert as “the liberal elite.”

A conclusion has emerged that the party forgot the forgotten man. In the past week, Trump voters have become the biggest archaeological dig in journalism, with the New York Times last weekend outputting three reports on lost tribes in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

President Obama paused during his trip to Greece to admit Mr. Trump won because of voter “anxiety” over the economy. That is the emerging Democratic consensus: The party needs to rediscover the economic well-being of the kind of people who voted Democratic from FDR to Bill Clinton. It is a good question how a party could forget an 80-year constituency.

Nancy Pelosi’s leadership of House Democrats is now under challenge, we are supposed to believe, from members who seethed in silence for years as the party became defined by the Streisandian elites on the East and West Coasts.

Ohio’s Rep. Marcy Kaptur and fellow Ohioan Tim Ryan are both considering an attempt to overthrow the party’s most-famous San Francisco Democrat after Thanksgiving.

Will the progressive websites publish their annual advice column, “How to talk to your uncle at Thanksgiving dinner”? Maybe this year they should just listen.CONTINUE AT SITE

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