Here in the desert fastness of Santa Fe, the air is thin and Donald Trump seems very far away. I have been partly amused, partly alarmed, by the frenzied cataract of abuse Republicans have heaped upon the Donald. Just a few weeks ago, he was merely an annoyance, entertaining if you like bluster, but certainly not serious. Then he made his remarks about John McCain not being a war hero, or at least, not the sort of war hero he, D. Trump, really likes [1]. I was at a dinner party the day Trump made that remark and was assured by a prominent pundit that Trump was now finished and good riddance. That hasn’t happened yet. In fact, Trump seems to keep rising in the polls. Today’s RealClearPolitics running average [2] has Trump at 18.2 with someone named Bush a fairly distant second at 13.7. At this point in the game, that same pundit assured us assembled serious thinkers, polls don’t matter. So we can discount the numbers.
Charges filed against a New York man for “attempting to provide material support and resources” to ISIS show that he stocked up on everything needed for a terror attack, including Shahada flags, on eBay.
Arafat M. Nagi, 44, a U.S. citizen who lived in Lackawanna, N.Y., made his first appearance in court today on the charges that could bring up to 15 years in prison.
A person “previously convicted of terrorism offenses” from Nagi’s home city was interviewed by the FBI in August 2014 and told agents that the unemployed, divorced father of two adult children was talking about jihad around the community and it was “common for Nagi to get into verbal altercations over his jihadi beliefs.”
Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has warned that the Obama/Kerry deal with Iran could lead to an Iranian-lead nuclear Holocaust against Israel that would, “take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven.”
Hillary Clinton, who has endorsed the Iranian deal, has denounced Mr. Huckabee, saying Huckabee’s comments are “personally offensive”. President Obama is likewise offended, as is Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida who is the go-to Jewish member of Congress Mr. Obama uses when he wishes to bar Mr. Netanyahu from speaking or when he needs “Jewish” support for policies and actions that appear harmful to Israel.
He is arrogant, egomaniacal and loose of lip, but surely nowhere near so dim that he actually believes he can win the Republican nomination and, after that, the White House. So what’s his game? Could it be that he has cast himself as the hidden ally and promoter of Ted Cruz?
What is the meaning of the Donald Trump phenomenon? You can say what you like about him. He seems to be an exasperating mixture of buffoonery, narcissism and political cunning. Irrespective of the contempt expressed by conservative pundits, neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives and libertarians alike, the Donald has surged to nearly 25% support of the Republican Party base.
The respected conservative, Jonah Goldberg, sees Trump as both a CINO (conservative in name only), and a RINO, (Republican in name only). Yet, he has blown previous political calculations out of the water. I agree with Quadrant‘s Michael Warren Davis that Trump will not, we trust, win the nomination, and that if by some mischance he did last the distance to the Republican Convention in 2016, he would effectively destroy the GOP.
What really explains Trump’s rapid climb to the top of the polls.
Donald Trump’s blunt and clumsy comments about illegal immigration sparked the usual firestorm of criticism from the well heeled of both parties. Particularly vocal were those Republicans who think that an amorphous, make-believe category comprising “Hispanics” or “Latinos” will vote Republican if only Republican meanies like Trump would stop insulting them by complaining about illegal aliens. As usual, willful ignorance or blindness about the costs of illegal immigration underwrites these dubious ideas.
Trump’s comments about crimes committed by illegal aliens, for example, were attacked by the usual denial and obfuscation. Various statistics, some mixing illegal and legal immigrants, were touted as showing illegal criminal activity was proportionately less than that of the native-born. But as Brietbart reported, while illegal aliens are 3.5% of the population, based on federal sentencing data they represent 12% of murder convictions. Add state crime data, and according to an analysis at American Thinker illegals commit 10 times more murders than do citizens.
Those who think the Iranians outwitted us fail to recognize one very important thing: the White House never intended to contain Iran.
The nuclear deal with Iran is a wildly lopsided agreement. Whereas Iran received permanent concessions, the United States and its partners managed only to buy a little time. The agreement will delay the advent of a nuclear-capable Iran for about a decade—and much less than that should Tehran decide to cheat. Meanwhile, thanks to the deal, Iranian influence in the Middle East is set to grow. All of these benefits accrue to Iran without its ever having given any guarantee that it will change its revolutionary, expansionist, and brutal ways.
Why did the Obama administration accept such a deal? In trying to answer this question, some critics have claimed that the president and his negotiator, Secretary of State John Kerry, were simply no match for their opponents. The Iranians, so the argument goes, are master negotiators—they play chess while the Americans play checkers. “You guys have been bamboozled and the American people are going to pay for that,” Senator Jim Risch of Idaho told Kerry during recent hearings on the nuclear deal.
Can we be honest about illegal immigration?
It is a common challenge to almost every advanced Western country that is adjacent to poorer nations.
American employers and ethnic activists have long colluded to weaken border enforcement and render immigration law meaningless. The former wanted greater profits from cheaper labor, the latter wished more political clout for themselves.
A ‘third way’ approach to state-building gets a one-way ticket to trouble.
Salam Fayyad was once seen as a bright hope for peace in the Middle East. By the time he became prime minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2007, Mr. Fayyad had already earned credentials in the West as a World Bank technocrat. During his six years as a reformist prime minister, per capita GDP among Palestinians in the West Bank rose by 222%. Perceptions of Palestinian government corruption, as measured by Transparency International, also dropped dramatically.
No wonder David Welch, a former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, once called Mr. Fayyad’s administration “the best Palestinian Authority government in history.” President Obama praised him as “a true partner.”
In 2013 Mr. Fayyad resigned as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority after a series of policy disagreements with PA President Mahmoud Abbas—who is now serving the 11th year of his elected four-year term. Mr. Fayyad’s anticorruption crusade did not last beyond his tenure. But he has continued to press for reform. That may help explain why he is in legal trouble today, over a development organization he founded.
In “The Music Man,” Meredith Willson’s great musical, super salesman Harold Hill talks the townspeople of River City, Iowa, into buying trombones, bassoons and drums to form a boys’ band. Then, after the people of River City have committed belief and money to him, he’ll skip town.
Donald Trump is America’s Music Man, and the United States is his River City. Unlike the original, the Trump version isn’t going to have a happy ending.
Like Professor Harold Hill, Donald Trump must know it’s all a fabulous scam. How else to explain that on June 4—just before his presidential announcement—the Donald came to Mason City, Iowa, Meredith Willson’s hometown and the model for River City. And where did Donald Trump address Mason City’s locals? In Music Man Square.
Donations to family foundation increased after secretary of state’s involvement in tax case
A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts.
If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.
Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.
