POLITICS Comments turned off

I Can Defeat Trump and the Clinton Doctrine The U.S. will stop trying to overthrow governments and police the world. By Tulsi Gabbard

Posted By on October 30th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-can-defeat-trump-and-the-clinton-doctrine-11572389508

Hillary Clinton emerged recently to claim, with no basis in fact, that I am being “groomed” by the Russian government to undermine America. As a major in the National Guard who served in Iraq—one of the many disastrous regime-change wars Mrs. Clinton championed over her career—I swore an oath to only one authority: the U.S. Constitution.

I’m running for president to undo Mrs. Clinton’s failed legacy. From Iraq to Libya to Syria, her record is replete with foreign-policy catastrophes. It’s a primary reason why I resigned as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders. Mrs. Clinton and the powerful media and political network she built up over decades have never forgiven this slight. The smears have been nonstop ever since.

Hardly a week goes by when I’m not asked a question about how I’m being secretly backed by Russia or other foreign powers—on top of countless other falsehoods intended to destroy my reputation. Those who are indebted to the war machine and the overreaching intelligence agencies, as well as their cheerleaders in the media, are determined to take me down because they know they can’t control me. I’m directly challenging their power.

This isn’t a petty “spat” between Mrs. Clinton and me. It’s a serious contrast in views about the choice voters face as they decide which Democratic candidate is best equipped to defeat President Trump. Mrs. Clinton already lost to Mr. Trump once. Why would Democrats think a Hillary 2.0 candidate would result in anything different?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Dead Caliph and the Eternal Jihad Trump deserves praise for winning this battle. But is America winning the war? Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on October 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/dead-caliph-and-eternal-jihad-raymond-ibrahim/

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head or “caliph” of the Islamic State, is finally dead.  This is certainly welcome news—if only because someone like al-Baghdadi deserves his fate. And President Trump deserves much credit for eliminating this evil leader of ISIS.

But while we can all celebrate this monster getting his just deserts, al-Baghdadi’s death will, unfortunately, likely have zero impact on the jihad.  This dismal prognostication is fortified by the fact that, for nearly 14 years now, every time an Islamic terror leader was killed, politicians and media exulted, portraying the death as a major blow to the jihad; and, for nearly 14 years now, I have responded by recycling an article that I first wrote in 2006, titled “The West’s Multi-Headed Monster.”

Although I changed the names of the jihadi leaders killed to suit the occasion—first Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi, then Abu Hamza al-Masri, then Abu Laith al-Libi, then Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayub al-Misri, then Osama bin Laden, and now Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi—my conclusion has remained the same:

The West’s plight vis-à-vis radical Islam is therefore akin to Hercules’ epic encounter with the multi-headed Hydra-monster.  Every time the mythical strongman lopped off one of the monster’s heads, two new ones grew in its place.  To slay the beast once and for all, Hercules learned to cauterize the stumps with fire, thereby preventing any more heads from sprouting out.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdogan Lauds Koranic Harshness Toward Non-Muslims Urging Koranic conquest. Andrew Bostom

Posted By on October 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/erdogan-lauds-koranic-harshness-toward-non-muslims-andrew-bostom/

Notwithstanding any limited “support” Turkey may (or may not) have provided the successful U.S. raid which liquidated ISIS’s al-Baghdadi, Turkish President Erdogan made some revealing, indeed pathognomonic remarks, during last Friday’s (10/25/19) prayers in Istanbul’s Great Camlica Mosque.

A Turkish writer in exile who is a very fluent, gifted Turkish to English translator, translated (below) the triumphal report by Yeni Akit, an outlet enamored of the Turkish President and his traditionalist Islamic political party, the AKP.

On October 25, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan attended the Friday prayers at the Great Çamlıca Mosque in Istanbul. He was accompanied by Istanbul’s governor Ali Yerlikaya, mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s chief of police Mustafa Çalışkan and the head of the Istanbul branch of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Bayram Şenocak.   After the Friday prayers, hafiz İshak Danış recited from the Koran Sura Al-Fath (which means “victory, triumph, conquest” in English, Koran 48:29: “Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah ; and those with him are forceful against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves.” ). Then Erdogan took the microphone, reciting a part of the verse in Arabic and then in Turkish. He told the congregants: “My dear brothers. First of all, I congratulate your holy Friday. The Koranic verses that Danış just recited commands us to be violent towards the kuffar (infidels). Who are we? The ummah [nation] of Mohammed. So [the Koran] also commands us to be merciful to each other. So we will be merciful to each other. And we will be violent to the kuffar. Like in Syria.” Erdogan then went on to refer to another Koranic verse (61:13: “And [you will obtain] another [favor] that you love – victory from Allah and an imminent conquest; and give good tidings to the believers.”)  in Arabic: “Inshallah, God has promised us in Syria (in Turkish): ‘Nasrun minallahi ve fethun karib ve beşşiril mu’minin.’ [‘Victory from Allah and an imminent conquest; and give good tidings to the believers.’]. We see it is happening right now. With the permission of Allah, we will see it even more. I will meet some presidents of foreign countries at the Dolmabahce Palace today. I ask for your permission now to go there.”

Authoritative Koranic commentaries—classical and modern—as well as canonical hadith, traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, support Erdogan’s hateful and predatory views toward non-Muslims.

The Egyptian polymath al-Suyuti (d. 1505) was recognized as a brilliant jurist, historian, and biographer, among whose many scholarly contributions are about twenty works of Koranic studies, including seminal Koranic commentaries. Suytui’s Tafsir al-Jalalayn (co-written with his mentor al-Mahalli), as the great contemporary Dutch Islamologist Johannes J.G. Jansen (d. 2015) noted in his treatise “The Interpretation of the Koran in Modern Egypt,”  remains one of the most popular as well as the most authoritative Koranic commentaries in Egypt. Maulana Muhammad Shafi (d.1976), was a former grand mufti of India (prior to the August, 1947 partition), and author of Maariful Quran, which remains the best-known Koranic commentary in Urdu, and a major, influential modern interpretation of the Koran. Shafi also wrote more than three hundred books, and in addition to these literary works, broadcasted tafsir of the Koran on Radio Pakistan for a number of years.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Baghdadi’s Death Tells Us About the Real Terror Threat Always look for the country behind the curtain. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/what-baghdadis-death-tells-us-about-real-terror-daniel-greenfield/

What’s the best place to look for the terrorist leader of a defeated Islamic terrorist group? When his men are on the run, look for his hideout in or near the country that sponsors him.

We didn’t find Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, but in a compound in a Pakistani military city. And Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former Caliph of ISIS, wasn’t hanging out in his home turf, but in an area controlled by Turkey and its allied Islamist militias right off the Turkish border.

Osama bin Laden’s death confirmed the reports of his ties to Pakistan, and Baghdadi’s death confirmed the rumors of the links between ISIS and Turkey. Those links may not as run as deep as those between Pakistan, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda, but when Baghdadi wanted someplace to hide out with his family, he didn’t huddle with his forces, but picked a location under the shadow of the Turkish military.

As Robert Spencer, an expert on the theology and geopolitics of Islamic terrorism, noted, “It strains credulity that Turkey, with its interests in northern Syria, did not know he was there. Al-Baghdadi was killed in Barisha in the Idlib province, a town of no more than 2,500 people right on the Turkish border.”

Where did we actually find the Caliph of ISIS? Allegedly, he’d been living in the home of Abu Mohammed Salama, a Hurras al-Din leader. The Islamic terror group, whose name means Guardians of Religion, had been listed as Al Qaeda in Syria in its Specially Designated Global Terrorist designation. Hurras al-Din had formerly been part of Tahrir al-Sham which has been cooperating closely with Turkey.

One of Tahrir’s four components was the Al-Nusra Front, which was formerly the official Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. While the US bombs Tahrir al-Sham, Turkey, a NATO member, works with it.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

What the Left Tells Young Americans Dennis Prager

Posted By on October 30th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/what-the-left-tells-young-americans/

Here are some of the messages the Left has been giving America’s young people:

Your past is terrible, and your future is terrible.

The American past is a story of genocide, slavery, racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. You should be ashamed of it.

As regards your future, your very existence is in jeopardy. You may well die at a young age unless society completely shifts from fossil fuels to wind and solar power. In fact, your future is so bleak you should probably not consider getting married and having children.

If you are a girl, you should know that American society has contempt for you. You will be paid less than a man for the exact same work and exact same number of hours of work. You will have between a 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 chance of being sexually assaulted if you attend college. There is a glass ceiling that will prevent you from professional success. And professional success, not marriage and family, is what you should concentrate on.

That none of the above is true is irrelevant to the Left. What is relevant to the Left is that these messages make young women into leftists — because they make them angry (virtually all leftists are angry), sad (there are happy liberals and happy conservatives but very few happy leftists), and lonely (singles are overwhelmingly on the left).

If you are a young black, the most important thing for you to know is that this country loathes you — that racism is “part of our DNA,” as President Barack Obama put it — and that just being black gets you suspended or expelled from school, shot by police, denied the vote whenever possible, and disproportionately imprisoned.

HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

1776, not 1619 America’s Founding was not defined by slavery and white supremacy—quite the contrary. Arthur Milikh

Posted By on October 29th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/new-york-times-1619-project

For decades, much of academia, the liberal activist class, and the public school system have operated on the premise that America is fundamentally racist. The latest manifestation of this outlook is the 1619 Project, rolled out last month by the New York Times. Claiming that “anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” it “aims to reframe the country’s history” by making 1619—the year slavery was first introduced by the British to Virginia—the year of “our true founding.”

This narrative is akin to the Jacobins’ alteration of the calendar to make their revolution the decisive turning point in human history. Just as they would save France from the monarchy, so, too, will the Times save America from white supremacy. The Times encourages public schools to adopt an accompanying curriculum that spreads the 1619 Project’s message to young Americans. Its goal is to brand our founding documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—as immoral and thus unworthy of our allegiance.

To make America’s Founding contemptible, one must hide, ignore, and distort the Founders’ writings and thoughts. Irresponsibly omitted from this narrative is the fact that not a single major Founder endorsed slavery. On the contrary, the Founders unambiguously saw slavery as evil. George Washington said, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it,” and Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence calls the slave trade an “execrable commerce” and an affront “against human nature itself.” Gouverneur Morris called slavery a “nefarious institution” and “the curse of heaven,” and John Jay said, “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. . . . To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Rich Get Richer. Good Peter Smith

Posted By on October 29th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/

“Don’t get me wrong, as I am all in favour of taxing the well-heeled. But soaking the rich, as the Left forever advocates, will see investment stall, capital stock run down, progress go into reverse and poverty increase. Welcome to your socialist paradise: an equality of impoverishment for all.”

Line up any bunch of political lefties anywhere and their key to delivering free stuff is taxing the rich. This applies to all of the Democrat presidential candidates in the USA. In addition to confiscatory income taxes, Pocahontas (aka Elizabeth Warren) wants to impose a wealth tax, in the style of French socialist economist Thomas Piketty.

Apparently, those rich people are selfishly keeping goodies from us ninety-five percenters. This is the grievous money delusion (GMD) which seduces callow minds. It can only be compared to the grievous warming delusion (GWD) which has swept away reason among so many in recent years. It is perhaps no coincidence that those particularly susceptible to GMD succumb to GWD.

It is also disappointing that economists, worthy of the name, in other words, excluding sad lefties like Paul Krugman and his ilk, hardly ever explain the position clearly. They generally go to the point that high taxes undermine incentive. They do to an extent. But only to an extent.

There was an instructive survey of Ford Motor company workers in the late Sixties I think it was. They were asked whether they thought their fellow workers would likely work less overtime if taxes were increased. Something like ninety percent said yes. They were then asked whether they personally would work less overtime. Something like ninety percent said no.

The real argument against confiscatory taxes is not to do with incentive, it is to do with the with the driving force of successful capitalist economies. That driving force is capital investment fuelled by saving and augmented by invention. Saving some of what is produced and using it to sustain life while things are built like, factories and machines, which help make more goodies, cheaper goodies, better goodies and new (previously unthought of) goodies.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s Time for Every American Patriot to Rally Around Trump: The American Republic Is at Stake By David P. Goldman

Posted By on October 29th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/i-killed-my-parents-and-now-i-ask-for-mercy-on-the-grounds-that-im-an-orphan/

I killed my parents and now I ask for mercy because I am an orphan….

That’s the canonical definition of chutzpah — shameless effrontery — and it summarizes the Democratic position on the attempted impeachment of President Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign paid for the Steele dossier, assembled out of bits handed to ex-MI6 spook Christopher Steele from his Russian intelligence sources, and the FBI used this concoction to obtain FISA warrants to bug the Trump presidential campaign. Now, THAT’S foreign interference. And those facts aren’t in dispute. When the Trump administration tries to get the truth out of foreign governments about their involvement in nefarious activities in the U.S., the Democrats scream, “Impeachment!”

The Wall Street Journal editors got this exactly right:

Democrats want to impeach Donald Trump for inviting Ukraine to investigate 2020 election rival Joe Biden. But then why are they opposed to investigating whether Democrats used Russian disinformation to get the FBI to investigate Donald Trump in 2016?

That’s the double standard now on gaudy public display over multiple news reports that U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the origins of the Russian fiasco of 2016 has become a criminal probe. Attorney General William Barr this year appointed Mr. Durham, a highly regarded and veteran prosecutor, to examine this part of the Russia tale that special counsel Robert Mueller chose to ignore.

Nothing less than the American republic is at stake here. It’s time for every American patriot to rally around the president. Some of my neo-conservative ex-friends are cheering for the wrong side. Shame on them.

For the record, I don’t care whether there was quid pro quo with Ukraine or not. If President Trump used military aid as a bargaining chip to persuade the government of Ukraine to investigate foreign subversion of our political system, he was doing his job as commander-in-chief to protect this country from its external enemies. The parade of striped-pants cookie-pushers from the State Department feeding information to closed-door Democratic Party kangaroo courts in the House of Representatives is irrelevant. Trump is fighting a mutiny by the U.S. intelligence community. If the mutineers succeed, it will be the end of the republic. If a cabal of bureaucrats nestling in the bowls of our $80 billion a year intelligence bureaucracy can bring down an elected president of the United States, the republic is finished.

The impeachment issue is a load of baloney, period. No less a constitutional scholar than Prof. Alan Dershowitz wrote (on the website of the Gatestone Institute):

So, the question remains: did President Trump commit impeachable offenses when he spoke on the phone to the president of Ukraine and/or when he directed members of the Executive Branch to refuse to cooperate, absent a court order, with congressional Democrats who are seeking his impeachment?

The answers are plainly no and no. There is a constitutionally significant difference between a political “sin,” on the one hand, and a crime or impeachable offenses, on the other.

Even taking the worst-case scenario regarding Ukraine — a quid pro quo exchange of foreign aid for a political favor — that might be a political sin, but not a crime or impeachable offense.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anatomy of 2020: Weighing Issues, Candidates, and the State of Our Union By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 29th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/anatomies-of-the-2020-election/Impeachment, and then what?

I n the 20th century, no Congress brought impeachment proceedings against a first-term president facing a reelection. Both the Nixon and Clinton efforts were aimed at reelected presidents, perhaps on the theory that there was supposedly no other means of bringing them to account once they had been elected twice.

In contrast, Trump faces reelection in about a year. The prevailing mood may soon be just to let the voters adjudicate his purported sins and for a year allow the Congress to get back to — or begin — governing.

The makeup of the Senate matters. Nixon resigned before House impeachment because he feared that, if he were impeached, there might be enough Republican senators to give the Democratic majority a possible two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict him, given that the media hated his guts and the economy was souring and draining public support.

Bill Clinton knew that impeachment, facts aside, did not matter much, because the Republican Senate majority was never going to find the necessary votes to convict him, the media was on his side, and the economy was still robust.

In Trump’s case, there is little likelihood that a Republican Senate majority will lose control of its membership to render a two-thirds majority guilty vote. The economy is strong, and impeachment will become unpopular when the public knows that it will not, and cannot, remove a president. The Democrats are more likely seeking a symbolic 51 percent conviction vote, and a year of “the walls are closing in” anti-Trump chant in the press.

Polls matter. When the media and Democrats started impeachment stories and investigations, Nixon’s favorability was near 70 percent, after his landslide reelection and second inaugural. After twelve months of Watergate, he ended 1973 at about 30 percent approval. When he left office in August 1973 before impeachment, his approval was at about 24 percent.

Clinton, in contrast, enjoyed about 70 percent favorability when impeachment started and he went down only about 10 points — before rebounding and leaving office impeached but quite popular at 65 percent approval. The therapeutic Clinton lived in a pre-Internet age, and “I feel your pain” still resonated.

Three years’ worth of talk of Trump impeachment waxes and wanes. His polls accordingly slide to the low forties when “bombshells” and “turning point” frenzies flood the media, and then they inch back up to the middle forties when the bombast passes.

At this point in his presidency, Bill Clinton was gradually climbing back to near 50 percent approval; Barack Obama was right where Trump is now, at about 42-43 percent. It is hard to know whether impeachment helped or hurt Clinton because the economy was booming, he was seen as bipartisan, and the debt was finally declining. Impeachment was either irrelevant to his status or seen as a threat to it. Either way, Clinton was popular right before and after impeachment.

In Trump’s case, it may be that he ends up at about 44 percent favorability after the impeachment circus either fades or is realized, about where he was when the whistleblower hysteria commenced.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our media ignore, but Mullahs don’t: US assembling a devastating strike force in the Middle East By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on October 29th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/our_media_ignore_but_mullahs_dont_us_assembling_a_devastating_strike_force_in_the_middle_east.html

The American media are paying no attention to it, but you can be sure that the mullahs in Tehran have noticed: The United States is openly deploying the weapons necessary to launch a devastating attack on Iran, should the need arise. The Australian media are not so shy, as news.com.au shows:

The United States is quietly building up its forces in striking range of Iran.

B-1B bombers have arrived in the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with stealth fighters, missile batteries and specialist troops.

Exactly why they’re there depends on who you listen to.

Everything changed when, on September 14, wave after wave of cruise missiles and drones burst among Saudi Arabian oil facilities. Shockwaves rippled around the world.

According to international intelligence agencies, the brazen strikes came from Iranian soil. But few have openly come out and accused the Government in Tehran of being behind them.

Iran insists it has had nothing to do with raids on oil tankers or the bombing of Saudi Arabia. But claims that Yemeni Houthi rebels were responsible have been dismissed as implausible.

It’s a classic example of modern grey warfare, where even implausible deniability shields rogue nations from international consequences.