NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democrats on Soleimani Biden, Buttigieg and Sanders say they would not have killed the Iranian terror master.

Posted By on February 10th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-on-soleimani-11581289385?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

One of Vice President Joe Biden’s better lines in 2012 was “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” The crowd at the Democratic convention loved it. This year it sounds like the Democratic campaign theme may be that Iranian terror master Qasem Soleimani is dead and the world is more dangerous because of it.

That’s a fair judgment from Friday’s debate in New Hampshire when ABC’s David Muir asked the candidates “if your national security team came to you with an opportunity to strike, would Soleimani have been dead or would he still be alive under your Presidency?”

Pete Buttigieg responded: “In the situation that we saw with President Trump’s decision, there is no evidence that made our country safer.” He deplored Soleimani’s “murder and mayhem” but then zagged to the Iraq war, the Iranian nuclear pact, and a wounded veteran friend he saw in an airport. Mr. Muir tried again, but the former mayor came down with a decisive, “It depends on the circumstances.”

Mr. Muir then moved to Mr. Biden, who at least didn’t fudge. “No. And the reason I wouldn’t have ordered the strike, there is no evidence yet of imminent threat that was going to come from him,” Mr. Biden said, before veering to “America First policies” and NATO. No mention that bin Laden wasn’t an “imminent threat” by the time he was killed.

Next up was Bernie Sanders, who listed several of the world’s “very bad leaders” but said we can’t “assassinate” them because that would open the door to “international anarchy.” He said the only recourse is diplomacy.

The answers were revealing and mark a sharp difference in the coming campaign. Mr. Trump shares some of the isolationist impulses of Democrats, but he is willing to use force to kill America’s enemies. The mayhem that critics said would follow the killing of Soleimani hasn’t happened. Mr. Sanders’s answer is no surprise. But Messrs. Buttigieg and Biden missed a chance to show they would act decisively as President to deter those who kill Americans.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

I.J. Benjamin on Jews in Mid-19th Century Islamdom, Versus America:  Sharia Versus Freedom   Andrew Bostom

Posted By on February 10th, 2020

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2020/02/i-j-benjamin-on-jews-in-mid-19th-century-islamdom-versus-america-sharia-versus-freedom/

Israel Joseph (I.J.) Benjamin [1818-1864], was a “maggid”, an itinerant Jewish preacher, best known for his extensive first hand mid-19th century travelogue accounts of the Jewish communities of Africa and Asia (“Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855”), and subsequently, America (“Three years in America, 1859-1862”). Benjamin’s writings were supported by letters and various other memorabilia he collected during his journeys, and ultimately garnered contemporary approval as “truthful and simple narrative” accounts, by respected scholars of his era such as Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Ritter, andJulius Heinrich Petermann.

I am unaware of any direct juxtaposition of Benjamin’s observations on the condition of Jews in mid-19thcentury Islamdom, i.e., under the jurisdiction of Islamic Law, Sharia, relative to their simultaneous American experience. Extracts from “Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855”, and “Three years in America, 1859-1862”, allow direct, res ipsa loquitur comparisons of Jews living under Sunni Ottoman Sharia in their indigenous homeland of Israel (historical “Palestine”), as well as the Shiite Persian Sharia, versus American Constitutional law, while the United States, in addition, was a devoutly Christian country (i.e., in the mid-19th century words of Tocqueville, “there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.”)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yesterday’s Gone: Iowa Was Waterloo for Democrats In a fiasco for the ages, the blue party faceplants in Iowa Matt Taibbi

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iowa-caucus-democrats-disaster-trump-sanders-949655/amp/

EXCERPT

“What happened over the five days after the caucus was a mind-boggling display of fecklessness and ineptitude. Delay after inexplicable delay halted the process, to the point where it began to feel like the caucus had not really taken place. Results were released in chunks, turning what should have been a single news story into many, often with Buttigieg “in the lead.”

The delays and errors cut in many directions, not just against Sanders. Buttigieg, objectively, performed above poll expectations, and might have gotten more momentum even with a close, clear loss, but because of the fiasco he ended up hashtagged as #MayorCheat and lumped in headlines tied to what the Daily Beast called a “Clusterfuck.”

Though Sanders won the popular vote by a fair margin, both in terms of initial preference (6,000 votes) and final preference (2,000), Mayor Pete’s lead for most of the week with “state delegate equivalents” — the number used to calculate how many national delegates are sent to the Democratic convention — made him the technical winner in the eyes of most. By the end of the week, however, Sanders had regained so much ground, to within 1.5 state delegate equivalents, that news organizations like the AP were despairing at calling a winner. 

This wasn’t necessarily incorrect. The awarding of delegates in a state like Iowa is inherently somewhat random. If there’s a tie in votes in a district awarding five delegates, a preposterous system of coin flips is used to break the odd number. The geographical calculation for state delegate equivalents is also uneven, weighted toward the rural. A wide popular-vote winner can surely lose.

But the storylines of caucus week sure looked terrible for the people who ran the vote. The results released early favored Buttigieg, while Sanders-heavy districts came out later. There were massive, obvious errors. Over 2,000 votes that should have gone to Sanders and Warren went to Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer in one case the Iowa Democrats termed a “minor error.” In multiple other districts (Des Moines 14 for example), the “delegate equivalents” appeared to be calculated incorrectly, in ways that punished all the candidates, not just Sanders. By the end of the week, even the New York Times was saying the caucus was plagued with “inconsistencies and errors.”

Emily Connor, a Sanders precinct captain in Boone County, spent much of the week checking results, waiting for her Bernie-heavy district to be recorded. It took a while. By the end of the week, she was fatalistic.

“If you’re a millennial, you basically grew up in an era where popular votes are stolen,” she said. “The system is riddled with loopholes.”

Others felt the party was in denial about how bad the caucus night looked.

“They’re kind of brainwashed,” said Joe Grabinski, who caucused in West Des Moines. “They think they’re on the side of the right… they’ll do anything to save their careers.

An example of how screwed up the process was from the start involved a new twist on the process, the so-called “Presidential Preference Cards.”

In 2020, caucus-goers were handed index cards that seemed simple enough. On side one, marked with a big “1,” caucus-goers were asked to write in their initial preference. Side 2, with a “2,” was meant to be where you wrote in who you ended up supporting, if your first choice was not viable.

The “PPCs” were supposedly there to “ensure a recount is possible,” as the Polk County Democrats put it. But caucus-goers didn’t understand the cards.

Morgan Baethke, who volunteered at Indianola 4, watched as older caucus-goers struggled. Some began filling out both sides as soon as they were given them. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment and Amnesia By Andrew Mccarthy

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/impeachment-and-amnesia/

When it comes to executive excess, Trump lacks remorse and Democrats lack self-awareness.

‘If this had happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail by now.” So went President Trump’s morning-after remarks, following the GOP-controlled Senate’s acquittal vote, the denouement of the Democrat-controlled House’s approval of two thin-gruel articles of impeachment.

To say the president is defiant, that he is without remorse, understates the matter.

In a midweek speech explaining her not-guilty vote, Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) maintained that the president had “learned his lesson.” By week’s end, she sheepishly allowed that her assessment had been “aspirational” — Collins’ aspiration, that is, not Trump’s.

The president would not pretend to be either sorry or grateful for his reprieve. This is a big part of what ardent Trump supporters love about their man. Alas, it is just as big a part of why the president’s approval numbers languish in the 40s when they ought to be in the 60s, with a humming economy, record low unemployment, and the nation at relative peace.

President Clinton was not sorry either — not really. As shown by his occasional outbursts in recent years, he internalized the storyline that he was the victim, not the villain, of the Lewinsky scandal that led to his impeachment. But 21 years ago, his peerless political instincts told him, a just-acquitted sitting president, that it was important to feign contrition. He apologized to the American people, conceding that his misdeeds were shameful and had put the country and the Congress through a painful ordeal.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Thank heaven for fools Nothing will do for them except 100 percent of everything, Jack Engelhard ****

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25162

Thank heaven for fools

The worry is that these people, such as Abbas and Olmert, will wake up and realize that the deal of the century is a boon for the Palestinian Arabs.

Meantime, the big deal is a big flop, for reasons some people, like this observer, don’t understand.

I mean, I hate it too, but for opposite reasons. I registered my qualms here, here and here, but would rather not mention it again, lest it gives them ideas.

Ideas about how sweet it is for the Arab side, and how bitter it is for the Israelis, for whom a two-state solution has always been anathema. 

The Palestinian Arabs, under Kushner’s plan, get their own country, for crying out land. What more do they want? Plenty, I know.

But having your own country means you get to pretend you’re part of the civilized world. The Palestinian Arabs get it after producing, some would say, nothing, except terrorism.

Shouldn’t they be thankful? Doesn’t work that way, apparently, and not for the rest of the world, either, neither the UN or the EU.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

KIMBALL ON “PETE”, SCALISE ON DURHAM INVESTIGATION, THE COUP THAT FAILED

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://spectator.us/mayor-pete-moderate-bernie-sanders/

Pete Buttigieg Is not Going to Win Roger Kimball,

I see that various pundits are competing to write the political epitaph for Joe ‘son-of-a-bitch‘ Biden. That’s entirely understandable. It’s been clear for some time that Biden is on the threshold of senility, and it is only my charitable disposition that prevents me from speculating about which side of the threshold he occupies.

And then there was the desolation wrought by the Democrats’ impeachment entertainment. From the start, it was clear that the chief casualty of that amateur theatrics was going to be Joe Biden and his sniff, sniff, sniffing son Hunter.

Everyone who is not Bill Kristol understood that the bullet of that purely partisan hit job would miss President Trump. I do not understand why it was not also understood that the Bidens, knee- or perhaps even neck-deep in the influence-peddling nepotism-is-neat corruption biz, would be the prime victims of that bizarre soap opera. Or maybe it was understood and the real point was to give old Joe the shove that he required but to do it covertly. Deep waters.  CONTINUE READING

www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/scalise-ive-seen-classified-information-showing-people-ought-to-go-to-jail-over-durham-investigation

SCALISE: “I’ve seen classified information showing ‘people ought to go to jail’ over Durham investigation.”Andrew Mark Miller

Rep. Steve Scalise said that after seeing classified information, he believes that some people should be in jail after U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia inquiry concludes.

“People ought to go to jail,” the Louisiana Republican said to Sean Hannity after explaining there are still “dirty cops” in Washington undermining the president’s agenda.

“I have seen some classified information I can’t go into — but, I can say this: Hopefully, Durham names names. I think the attorney general is waiting to see what comes out of that. And then, hopefully, they go after those people and put them in jail.”

Scalise assured the public that Durham’s report will exonerate “99%” of FBI rank-in-file employees who are “good people” at an important agency. 

Durham was given the task of investigating the origins of the Russia investigation and the surveillance of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with a wider scope than Inspector General Michael Horowitz had while putting together and eventually releasing his report documenting FISA abuses. CONTINUE READING

http://andmagazine.com/talk/2020/02/03/the-coup-failed-now-what/ 

THE COUP FAILED – NOW WHAT? Charles “Sam” Faddis

Throughout history, political succession has been a bloody, chaotic business. The Romans and the Ottomans among others engaged in palace intrigue, assassination and civil war as a means of determining who would rule next when an emperor or sultan was replaced.We have been, for over two hundred and fifty years, a rare example of the legal, peaceful transfer of power.

Until now. Until 2016.

The absurd Ukrainian impeachment attempt is dying. A final stake will be put through its heart within days. Three years of unprecedented extralegal efforts by members of the Democratic Party and rogue federal bureaucrats to overturn the results of a free and fair election are coming to an end. CONTINUE READING

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France Quietly Reintroducing the Crime of Blasphemy by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15526/france-blasphemy-censorship

Today, in France, using freedom of expression to criticize Islam is clearly an extremely dangerous act, even if you, like Mila, are a child.

France is rapidly going from laïcité (secularism) to lâcheté(cowardice); from freedom of expression to unconditional surrender. France keeps trying to procrastinate while Islamism thrives on the elites’ rapidly abandoning their Judeo-Christian values.

Feminist organizations, so quick to denounce “toxic masculinity” and “patriarchal structures of domination”, were also silent.

Today, in France, the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which always sanctified freedom of expression and the right to criticize religion and ideologies, some within the justice system…. are quietly and de facto reintroducing the crime of blasphemy.

France had just come out of the fifth anniversary of the massacre at its satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo than it was plunged into a similar case. On January 18, Mila O., a 16-year-old French girl, made insulting comments about Islam during an Instagram livestream.

“During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a ‘dirty lesbian’. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she ‘hates religion'”.

Mila continued, saying among other things:

“Are you familiar with freedom of expression? I didn’t hesitate to say what I thought. I hate religion. The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it. That’s what I think. I say what I think… Islam is sh*t… I’m not a racist at all. One cannot simply be racist against a religion… I say what I want, I say what I think. Your religion is sh*t. I’d stick a finger up your god’s a**h*le…”

What she said might be considered a bit raw, but does she have the right to say it? After all, Jews are called the descendants of pigs and apes without the speech police having a stroke.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Man of a Thousand Faces Wears a New Mask by Amir Taheri

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15556/hassan-rouhani-mask

In the meantime, conscious of the fact that Iranians are suckers for real or fake academic titles, to enhance his persona, Rouhani enrolled in a British college in Glasgow to obtain a PhD in Islamic law. Thus, in a few years’ time, he was able to rebrand himself as Dr. Hassan Rouhani, the “moderate reformist with Western education.”

By the 1990s, in Western policy circles, Rouhani had acquired the reputation of “a man with whom we can work”.

Rouhani’s message, peddled by cronies including Foreign Minister Muhammad-Javad Zarif, is that the internal opposition and foreign powers worried about Iran should be patient and help “moderates” re-orient the storm-stricken ship of the regime towards calmer waters.

Will Rouhani’s scenario, for easing Khamenei off his pedestal, work? I doubt it. Rouhani may be a talented man of a thousand faces, but 40 years of experience has shown that every one of those faces turned out to be a mask.

Whatever one might think of Hassan Rouhani, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, one thing is certain: had things gone differently in Iran 40 years ago, he might have become a writer of penny-dreadfuls with provincial themes. Rouhani’s talent for fiction writing is demonstrated by the way he has reinvented himself over the decades.

In 1977, when the first rumbles of revolution roared in Iran, he was a student, going by the name of Hassan Fereidun, in England, seeking a degree in textile design.

A few months later, he re-named himself Rouhani, meaning spiritual or clerical. Fereidun was a Persian nationalistic name and would not do for a man plotting to cast himself as a champion of faith.

He then spent a few weeks of holidays taking classes in Shiite theology. In the meantime, he grew a beard and cast off Western clothes, thus creating a persona soon aggrandized by the claim which he minted that he was the first to grant Khomeini the title of Imam. Rouhani claims that he did so when addressing a memorial service for Khomeini’s son Mostafa, who had passed away in Iraq. There is, of course, no evidence that Rouhani was even present at the service which, incidentally was reported complete with a photo in the daily Kayhan.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Vassar College Workshop: ‘All White People Are Racist’ Catherine Smith

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/07/vassar-college-workshop-all-white-people-are-racist/

Students that attended a recent workshop at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, were reportedly told that “all white people are racist,” Breitbart reports.

According to a report by The College Fix, The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond’s “Undoing Racism” workshop, hosted on various college campuses and other community locations across the nation, works to end systemic racism and institutional oppression, teaching students that racism is woven into the fabric of American society.

One way it does that is by telling attendees “all white people are racist.”

An op-ed in Vassar College’s student newspaper states that during an Undoing Racism workshop there during the fall 2019 semester, instructors made that statement and highlighted specific ways in which they believe American society is racist.

“We looked into each other’s souls as we discussed hardships and shared truths. For some spotting racism is easy, while for others it comes to light that racism is not always this blatant use of the n-word or making someone sit in the back of the bus. It’s oppression. It’s a lack of opportunities. Racism is thinking you are being progressive by allowing a Black child into your predominantly white school, but not wanting your white child to attend a predominantly Black school.”

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Bernie Owes Obama Big Time Barack Obama set the stage for the Vermont socialist’s rise to national prominence. But the Democrat’s Marxist coming-out party happened too soon for America. Karin McQuillan

Posted By on February 9th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/08/bernie-owes-obama-big-time/

Those who are surprised by Bernie Sanders’ power in the Democrat primaries of 2016 and 2020 have not been paying attention. The self-styled “democratic socialist” from Vermont has inherited what President Obama sowed. Sanders is riding a wave of well-funded and highly trained young Marxists weaponized by President Obama. It is Obama’s hard work that allowed Bernie to jump from fringe character to viable presidential candidate.

These 21st-century progressives are not the loser SDS-types familiar to Baby Boomers. They know all about power. They are fundraising juggernauts on social media. Democratic candidates cater to them or drop out.

They foisted the “resistance” on traditional liberal Democrats. After Trump’s inauguration, Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) were talking about working with the president. Hordes of activists descended on them, threatening their positions and threatening their homes.

The growing power of the hard Left within the Democratic Party’s ranks is not new. It is not the result of Trump derangement. It is the cause of Trump derangement.

Progressives punch way above their weight class, first writing the regulations as government bureaucrats and then using threats of lawsuits to control corporations and colleges. They write the federal and state regulations that require racial and gender quotas. They run the human resources departments to enforce compliance. Activists invade and intimidate boardrooms (one of the things Obama led and taught as a community organizer) insisting corporations adopt woke policies by accusing them of racism, homophobia, and misogyny, and threatening lawsuits.