FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Amid the Fog, Trump’s Real Agenda in Iran U.S. president uses economic sanctions to generate unprecedented pressure on Iran, with two apparent goals in mind By Gerald F. Seib

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-the-fog-trumps-real-agenda-in-iran-11558357519?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

Whatever other assets and liabilities he brings to the table, President Trump certainly offers this: He is a master at sowing uncertainty, so neither friend nor foe really knows what he’s up to.

And so it is right now with Iran, where Mr. Trump and his aides have in the past two weeks alternately raised and lowered fears about armed conflict. American warships moved toward Iran amid intelligence reports on pending Iranian attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East.

Then, Mr. Trump lowered the temperature, telling aides he didn’t want a fight and tweeting: “I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.”On Sunday, he ramped the heat back up, tweeting: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” Then he backed it down again, saying in a Fox News interview: “No, I don’t want to fight.”

It’s confusing, which may be the goal. Yet the underlying question is simple: What is Mr. Trump really trying to accomplish?

Here’s a reasonable guess, based on conversations with officials and diplomats tracking the situation:Mr. Trump almost certainly doesn’t seek armed conflict with Iran. He’s gone out of his way to avoid or end clashes involving American forces in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea, and has done little to suggest a military move against Venezuela.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rumi Hasan: A review of Identity, Islam, and the Twilight of Liberal Values by Terri Murray

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/05/20/identity-islam-and-the-twilight-of-liberal-values-a-review/

After the collapse of the totalitarian Communist regimes in 1989-91, Francis Fukuyama famously wrote in The End of History and the Last Man that “we may have reached the end of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government.” Terri Murray begins Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values by arguing that Fukuyama’s optimism was premature, because the rise of religious fundamentalism—especially radical Islam—has become a powerful bulwark against the spread of liberal democracy. Rather than exposing and opposing the damage done by Islamism in the West, soi disant liberals, leftists, and progressives have acted as its supporters and cheerleaders. Murray instead labels them as “pseudo-liberals” and the “regressive Left” as a result of their abandonment of bedrock liberal principles, and progressive and secular values.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Grievance Proxies The College Board plans to introduce a new “adversity score” as a backdoor to racial quotas in college admissions. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/college-boards-sat-adversity-score

For decades, the College Board defended the SAT, which it writes and administers, against charges that the test gives an unfair advantage to middle-class white students. No longer. Under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board has now caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity.” The Board will calculate for each SAT-taker an “adversity score” that purports to measure a student’s socioeconomic position, according to the Wall Street Journal. Colleges can use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission.

Advocates of this change claim that it is not about race. That is a fiction. In fact, the SAT adversity score is simply the latest response on the part of mainstream institutions to the seeming intractability of the racial academic-achievement gap. If that gap did not exist, the entire discourse about “diversity” would evaporate overnight. The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels. The University of California has calculated that race predicts SAT scores better than class.

POLITICS Comments turned off

This Republican Wants To Impeach Trump :Thomas McArdle

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/20/michigans-amash-lets-the-stupid-be-the-enemy-of-the-good/

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Amash declared that “Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

In opining that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, Amash is all alone among GOP members of Congress, disgracefully echoing the very worst, most socialistic Democrats. And it gets worse, with Amash accusing Attorney General William Barr of lying to protect the President.

It’s ironic in the extreme for someone who fancies himself a purist libertarian, with an absolutist interpretation of First Amendment freedom of speech, to call a distinguished, two-time AG’s considered opinions lies, simply because it suits his purposes to disagree.

So absolutist is Amash on speech that shortly after Trump’s election he couldn’t restrain himself from responding to the President-elect’s tweet condemning flag burning. “Nobody should burn the American flag,” Amash wrote, repeating Trump’s words exactly, then adding: “but our Constitution secures our right to do so. No president is allowed to burn the First Amendment.”

The ratifiers of the Bill of Rights in 1791 would have held open the door of the prison cell as law enforcement incarcerated someone desecrating Old Glory. No doubt Amash would accuse them too of burning what they brought into being.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Australia’s Election Did Not Involve a ‘Populist Wave’ By Douglas Murray

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/australias-election-did-not-involve-a-populist-wave/

The term is merely a way to put scare-quotes around any electoral victory for a conservative.

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of the term ‘populism’. As I mentioned here in January, over the last three years the term has been turned into one more way to insult the decisions made by the general public in country after country.

In Britain, the “Brexit” vote was derided as a “populist” vote. The U.S. election of 2016 have repeatedly been described as a victory for “populism.” And in Europe, every time anybody on the political right looks set to achieve any electoral success, this is whipped up as being yet another victory for this amorphous, ill-defined but unarguably dark force.
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This has rarely been made clearer than in the New York Times coverage of the results of last week’s Australian elections. This was not a contest between Matteo Salvini and the Left. It was not even a debate about sovereignty. It was merely an election — of the kind Australia tends to have — between a party to the left of center, and one slightly to the right. But the New York Times managed to write it up as follows: “Scott Morrison, Australia’s conservative prime minister, scored a surprise victory in federal elections on Saturday, propelled by a populist wave.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Great Misdirection By Rich Lowry

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/mueller-report-democrats-impeachment-theater/

T he House Democrats are frustrated, very frustrated.

They’ve gotten themselves entangled in procedural disputes with the Trump administration that no one particularly cares about and that might be litigated for a very long time.

A Washington Post report over the weekend spelled out how stymied Democrats feel and that they are considering, via the power of inherent contempt, fining or arresting people who are defying their subpoenas.

This is very unlikely to happen, obviously. A New York Times report a few days ago on the Democrats’ exasperation said they might consider having hearings with empty chairs. Oh, the drama.

Jerry Nadler, per the Times, “conceded that the White House strategy had thus far succeeded in tamping down energy around the Mueller report and investigations.”

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary state of Oregon releases illegal alien who raped a dog to death after serving only 60 days in jail By Thomas Lifson !!!!????

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/sanctuary_state_of_oregon_releases_illegal_alien_who_raped_a_dog_to_death_after_serving_only_60_days_in_jail.html

People who abuse animals are sick and dangerous to rest of society.  Something is very wrong with the mental and moral wiring.  When the abuse involves sex and is such violent sexual assault that death results, the dangers are acute.

Now, consider what the sanctuary state policy in Oregon has released into society, even though the perp is not legally entitled to be in this country, free to express his sick urges again, next time possibly with a human victim.  John Binder reports at Breitbart:

As Breitbart News reported, illegal alien Fidel Lopez, 52-years-old, was convicted last month and sentenced to 60 days in prison after raping his girlfriend’s small Lhasa Apso which led to the dog’s death. The judge in the case said he would have given the illegal alien more prison time but that 60 days is the maximum sentence allowed in Oregon.

Following his sentence, Lopez was immediately released because he had already served 60 days while waiting to stand trial. Despite his illegal alien status, Multnomah County, Oregon officials released Lopez back into the community.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Uprooting the EPA’s climate fraud By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/uprooting_the_epas_climate_fraud.html

During the Barack Obama presidency, a poisonous seed was planted by bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to enable radical regulation of CO2 emissions, eventually strangling the economy. That seed was an official “endangerment finding” (E.F.) that declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” — absurd on its face, since CO2 is necessary for life.

Writing at Townhall, Paul Driessen explains how the roots that have sprouted from the poisonous seed can and must be pulled up by action from President Trump:

[T]here has never been any formal, public review of the EF conclusion or of the secretive process EPA employed to ensure the result of its “analysis” could only be “endangerment” — and no awkward questions or public hearings would get in the way.

Review, transparency and accountability may finally be on the way, however, in the form of potential Executive Branch actions. If they occur — and they certainly should — both are likely to find that there is no valid scientific basis for the EF, and EPA violated important federal procedural rules in rendering its predetermined EF outcome. (One could even say the EF was obtained primarily because of prosecutorial misconduct, a kangaroo court proceeding, and scientific fraud.) Failure to examine and reverse the EF would mean it hangs like Damocles’ sword over the USA, To the consternation and outrage of climate alarmists, keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground radicals, and predictable politicians and pundits, President Trump may soon appoint a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, to review “dangerous manmade climate change” reports by federal agencies awaiting the next climate-focused president.

POLITICS Comments turned off

What’s Mitt Romney’s problem? By Monica Showalter

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/whats_mitt_romneys_problem.html

After taking President Trump’s endorsement to get himself elected senator, Mitt Romney has made quite a show of turning on Trump.

The last two incidents have been notable:

He declared GOP “maverick” congressman Justin Amash “courageous” for joining the Democrats and calling for the impeachment of President Trump in the House.

He also made this ad hominem attack on Trump over the weekend, playing Puritan for us:

On Sunday, Romney was back at it, attacking the president’s character. “I think he could substantially improve his game when it comes to helping shape the character of the country,” Romney said on CNN.

“I think young people, as well as people around the world, look at the president of the United States and say, ‘Does he exhibit the kind of qualities that we would want to emulate?’ And those are qualities of humility, of honesty, integrity, and those are things where I think there’s been some call, where the president has distanced himself from some of the best qualities of the human character.”

BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

Why Herman Wouk’s ‘War’ Novels Deserve Remembrance Today by Warren Henry

Posted By on May 20th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/20/herman-wouks-war-novels-deserve-remembrance-today/

The best way to remember—or discover—the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Herman Wouk may be his World War II epics.

Best-selling author Herman Wouk passed away last week, ten days short of his 104th birthday. Wouk is probably best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Caine Mutiny” (1951), if only for Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of the cowardly and paranoid Capt. Queeg in the movie adaptation (of which Wouk was not a fan).

However, the best way to remember—or discover—Wouk may be his World War II epics: “The Winds of War” (1971) and “War and Remembrance” (1978). As a writer whose Jewish faith often informed his work, Wouk set out to write a novel about the Holocaust. It is a doubly impressive achievement that he first wrote another highly entertaining novel just to provide the context for the second.

The “War” novels are melodramas told through the lives of two families. The first is led by a U.S. naval officer, Victor “Pug” Henry, the other by a Jewish-American scholar and author, Aaron Jastrow (paralleling Wouk, Jastrow found popular success when his book, “A Jew’s Jesus,” became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection). The families become connected when Pug’s youngest son Byron goes to work for Jastrow in Italy and falls in love with Jastrow’s niece, Natalie.

The chief conceit of the books is that Pug, while serving as a naval attaché in Berlin, becomes an informal errand-runner for President Roosevelt. As a result, Pug finds himself dispatched to Washington, London, Rome, Moscow, Tehran, and the Pacific. Pug’s brushes with historical figures—Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill, to name a few—may give modern readers a Forrest Gump feeling, but there are historical examples of FDR using these sorts of emissaries.