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William McGurn:About Those Loser ‘Trumpkins’ What is it that the much-vilified Trump voters are trying to tell us?

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

In the land of NeverTrump, it turns out one American is more reviled than Donald Trump. This would be the Donald Trump voter.

Lincoln famously described government as of, by, and for the people. Even so, the people are now getting a hard lesson about what happens when they reject the advice of their betters and go with a nominee of their own choosing. What happens is an outpouring of condescension and contempt.

This contempt is most naked on the left. No surprise here, for two reasons. First, since at least Woodrow Wilson progressives have always preferred rule by a technocratic elite over democracy. Second, today’s Democratic Party routinely portrays its Republican Party rivals as an assortment of nasty ists (racists, sexists, nativists, etc.) making war on minorities, women, foreigners and innocent goatherds who somehow end up in Guantanamo.

Thus Mr. Trump confirms to many on the left what they have always told themselves about the GOP. A New York Times writer put it this way: “Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.”

Still, the contempt for the great Republican unwashed does not emanate exclusively from liberals or Democrats. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s run for office, it is now ascendant in conservative and Republican quarters as well.

Start with the fondness for the word “Trumpkin,” meant at once to describe and demean his supporters. Or consider an article from National Review, which describes a “vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles” and whose members find that “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.” Scarcely a day goes by without a fresh tweet or article taking the same tone, an echo of the old Washington Post slur against evangelicals as “largely poor, uneducated and easy to command.”

We get it: Trump voters are stupid whites who are embittered because they are losing out in the global economy. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Egyptian Olympic Committee Sends Judoka Home Islam El Shehaby had refused to shake the hand of Israeli opponent Or Sasson after losing to him By Benjamin Parkin

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

RIO DE JANEIRO—The Egyptian Olympic Committee has sent judoka Islam El Shehaby home after his refusal to shake an Israeli opponent’s hand following a bout last week, the International Olympic Committee said.

El Shehaby broke with judo and Olympic tradition when he snubbed Israeli opponent Or Sasson’s offer of a handshake after being defeated in a men’s heavyweight bout on Friday. Sasson went on to win a bronze medal.

The IOC’s disciplinary commission investigated the incident and issued a “severe reprimand” to the athlete, as well as warning the Egyptian Olympic Committee to make sure its athletes receive “proper education on the Olympic values.”

El Shehaby also initially refused to bow to Sasson after the bout, but was called back onto the mat to do so. Some Egyptian commentators had suggested he should have refused to compete against an Israeli opponent in the first place.

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Donald Trump Calls for a New War on Terror GOP nominee says limits on immigrants needed to fight groups like Islamic State By Janet Hook and Beth Reinhard

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump, expanding on the provocative immigration ideas that have propelled his presidential candidacy, proposed on Monday a new ideological test that would limit immigrants seeking admission to the U.S. to “those who share our values and respect our people.”

He argued in a speech fleshing out his plans to combat terrorism that tighter immigration standards were needed to fight Islamic State with the same vigor with which the U.S. fought the Cold War. “We will be tough, and we will be even extreme,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the test—he called it “extreme vetting,” a phrase that didn’t appear in his prepared remarks—would include, but Mr. Trump suggested he would ban not only terrorist sympathizers but those who believe in Shariah law, don’t believe in the U.S. Constitution or “support bigotry and hatred.” Shariah law is the legal system of Islam that governs public and private behavior.

The speech represented a response to Mr. Trump’s critics, including many Republicans, who have expressed doubts that he has the experience and temperament to lead the U.S. in a dangerous world. Last week, 50 Republican foreign policy experts signed a statement saying they wouldn’t vote for Mr. Trump because they question his capacity to serve as commander in chief.

Democrats on Monday sought to rebut Mr. Trump even before he spoke. Appearing with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally in Scranton, Pa., Vice President Joe Biden said Mr. Trump’s comments had been quoted approvingly by the leader of Hezbollah and posed a threat to U.S. troops in the region. “Trump is already making our country less safe,” Mr. Biden said.

“This man is totally, thoroughly unqualified to be president of the United States of America,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Trump. “On every issue that matters most to our security, Donald Trump has no clue what it takes to lead this great country.”

In his speech at Youngstown State University in Ohio, Mr. Trump unfurled a broad-gauge critique of the antiterrorism policies of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Clinton, his former secretary of state.

“The rise of ISIS is the direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton,” he said. “Our current strategy of nation building and regime change is a proven absolute failure.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Gitmo Detainee Transfer: A Closer Look Who was transferred and why; how many prisoners are left at the detention center By Felicia Schwartz

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

The U.S. announced the transfer of 15 detainees from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Here is a look at the various ramifications of the move.

Who was transferred? Where were they sent, and why?

Fifteen prisoners—12 Yemenis and three Afghans—were transferred from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates. The 15 were longtime terrorism suspects, but were never charged with crimes and were part of a group of detainees that the Obama administration has been trying to move to make progress in its efforts to close the facility.
They were sent to the U.A.E. because the Obama administration doesn’t transfer prisoners to Yemen due to the civil war there. The U.S. has no blanket policy against repatriating detainees to Afghanistan, but officials said they defer to the guidance of senior military officials when making decisions about where to transfer them.

Is the administration increasing the tempo of transfers? If so, why?

The rate of transfers out of Guantanamo has picked up, although President Barack Obama’s pledge to shutter the prison has proved elusive, in part because of congressional restrictions against relocating prisoners to the U.S. Meanwhile, officials are trying to whittle the facility’s population by moving out all prisoners eligible for transfer—security conditions permitting—so that the remaining detainee population will make the prison appear too costly to run. The Obama administration also has sped up the parole-like process that is involved in clearing those who have never faced charges for release.

How many detainees are left, and who are they?

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Trump’s Anti-Terror Strategy This is a debate the American public deserves to hear.

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump made another pivot back to the issues on Monday, this time laying out his strategy to fight radical Islam. As usual it included some good ideas and some bad, but if we’re lucky he’ll stick with the subject long enough to force Hillary Clinton to debate something other than his temperament.

The polls show Mr. Trump still has a slight edge over the Democrat in fighting terror, thanks in large part to President Obama’s eight-year record. Islamic State incubated in the vacuum left by American retreat in Iraq and Syria, and its poison has spread throughout the world. Mrs. Clinton is promising to continue Mr. Obama’s strategy, which gives the Republican an opening.

“The failure to establish a new Status of Forces Agreement in Iraq, and the election-driven timetable for withdrawal, surrendered our gains in that country and led directly to the rise of ISIS,” Mr. Trump said as he read from a prepared text in Youngstown, Ohio. That’s exactly right, though he should have added Mr. Obama’s decision to let the Syrian civil war rage out of control.

Then again, Mr. Trump has sometimes said the U.S. should stay out of Syria’s civil war because it amounts to the “nation-building” that Mr. Trump again promised to end. That’s a good applause line on the right and left these days, but setting up safe zones in Syria so millions of refugees won’t flood Turkey, Jordan and Europe is a long way from nation-building. The U.S. did that for the Kurds after the first Gulf War, and the Kurdish territory of Iraq is a rare American success in the Middle East.

If Mr. Obama had kept 10,000 U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011, the critics might have called that nation-building too. But it would have blocked the march of Islamic State and spared us from having to refight the war in Iraq today. Mr. Trump’s caricature of nation-building is closer to Barack Obama’s view than he would like to admit.

The better news is that Mr. Trump seems to be warming to the idea that the U.S. needs coalitions to defeat radical Islam. Most notably, he reversed course on NATO in his speech, praising its role in fighting terrorism. He also called for “an international conference” on fighting radical Islam and he cited Israel, Egypt and Jordan as particular allies in the fight.

Mr. Trump still seems naive in expecting Vladimir Putin’s Russia to assist in this effort, but then so were Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in 2009. Mr. Trump hasn’t seemed to notice that Mr. Obama recently agreed to share intelligence with Russia in Syria over the vociferous objections of the Pentagon. The Republican nominee would have to learn the hard way that Mr. Putin is a hard man who only responds to the logic of hard geopolitical facts. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Peter Smith: Daze of ‘Swine’ and Posers

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

Donald Trump gives his critics plenty of ammunition, no doubt about it, but the vitriol he inspires, even from fellow Republicans, is out of all proportion with his offences. As with the media’s pile-on of Tony Abbott, he is the pundits’ excuse to signal contempt and virtue in equal measure.
In his excellent recent speech to the Samuel Griffith Society, Tony Abbott regretted the loss of civility in public life. One aspect of this loss of civility that strikes me is the readiness of commentators (those outside of the arena looking in from their armchairs) to hurl gratuitous personal insults at those within the arena with whom they disagree. I think those on the left are especially guilty, but Donald Trump has brought out the worst in commentators across the political spectrum.

The American MSM is running a no-holds-barred campaign to demonise Trump. Admittedly he provides a flow of ammunition, but make no mistake: that simply makes their job easier. They would get it done however sparse the ammunition. That’s America; what of the Australian media?

In March this year, I commented on Tom Switzer calling Donald Trump “a buffoon.” This kind of language to describe someone is regrettable because it replaces reasoned comment and analysis with a cheap shot. Imagine trying to defend yourself against it. What do you say: “I am not a buffoon?” But Switzer’s cheap shot is mild in the scheme of things.

Take the Australian media at face value and Trump is a nightmare incarnate; Freddy Krueger on the loose. SMH readers were recently told that comparing Trump to Hitler “isn’t as farfetched as it sounds.” Go to the polar political opposite of the SMH; to an interview of P J O’Rourke by Andrew Bolt.

Here is a list of the descriptors the putative conservative O’Rourke applied to Trump: horrible, shallow, vulgarian, narcissist, one-dimensional. Bolt himself, a true conservative, used the descriptors scary, coarse, and rude. Wait on! Undoubtedly Trump has said some coarse things. But Bolt didn’t say that. He said that Trump was coarse. This is uncivil. Bolt does not know Trump. Trump’s family appear to respect and love him. I have seen numbers of people who do know him describe him as warm and caring.

But this is mild stuff. Want venom with a vengeance? Nikki Sava supplied the goods.

Here is a ‘selective list’ of the adjectives and adjectival phrases wielded by Sava to describe Trump, all in the space of about 1200 words in The Australian on August 11:

A pig
Nothing suggests he can be civilised, or tamed or controlled
Not a single decent bone in his body
Kim Jong-un seems perfectively normal next to Trump
Unstable
Cruel
Irrational
Amoral
Egotistical
An absolute pig of a man
Ruts deep in mud
Embraces racism, sexism and any other negative ism
Mr Piggy

That is not all. According to Sava, Trump has “glued orange hair”, “a pointy finger and pursed lips”, and reportedly was “the only child who would throw the cake at birthday parties,” What an absolute bounder!

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Obama’s No First Use Proposal By Herbert London

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

When President Obama received his Nobel Prize, he argued that he would regard nuclear proliferation as his primary challenge. This is hardly surprising since even as a Columbia College student he advocated a nuclear free world – a position consistent with the idealism of a student who knew very little about the ambitions of U.S. adversaries. Yet now after eight years in office, the president retains this same arms control illusion.

Since he assumed the oath of office in 2009 the president has pressed for the shrinking and weakening of the U.S. nuclear arsenal armed as evidence by this signing of the New Start Treaty with Russia and avoiding modernization of the aging nuclear platforms.

Japan, Taiwan, among others, reliant on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for security are increasingly uncomfortable with the direction in America policy and are dubious about the reliability of our pledge for nuclear assistance.

To make matters even more confusing for U.S. allies, it appears as if the president is prepared to declare a new policy of “no first use” – a doctrine that contends America would never use nuclear weapons unless an adversary does so first. This seemingly benign gesture undermines decades of intentional ambiguity and the basis of deterrence.

In fact, State Department officials questioned about the matter argue the president’s position is wrongheaded. The fatal weakness in his contention is that it signals to our enemies that they need not fear nuclear retaliation from the U.S. even if they attack us with conventional, chemical, or biological weapons. In any war gaming escalation scenario, our battlefield initiatives end where nuclear weapons might be entertained. No first use suggests to foes that they should act as aggressively as possible short of nuclear war.

Deterrence, which has kept the lid on nuclear weapons since 1945, is undergoing a monumental shift. The Obama Administration 2010 Nuclear Posture Review contended Russia was no longer an adversary, a contention that recent history in Crimea and Syria would challenge. Moreover, it is likely the president will overlook Constitutional restraints on this matter by submitting a proposal to the United Nations Security Council thereby usurping Senate Treaty power as he did with the Iran Nuclear deal.

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“A LONG TRAIN OF ABUSES AND USURPATIONS: EDWARD CLINE

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

Does this not describe the administration of Barak Obama? His eight-year tenure in the White House has been nothing less than a “train of abuses and usurpations,” abuses of the office of president and usurpations of Congressional authority. His “Object” has always been to reduce Americans under absolute Despotism.

“…A long train of abuses and usurpations….”

Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, in detailing the numerous charges against King George III, that “…mankind are disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Does this not describe the administration of Barak Obama? His eight-year tenure in the White House has been nothing less than a “train of abuses and usurpations,” abuses of the office of president and usurpations of Congressional authority. His “Object” has always been to reduce Americans under absolute Despotism.

In 1920, H.L. Mencken made some observations that have proven to be prescient and not altogether irrelevant to the character of today’s Social Justice Warriors, aspiring collectivists, and nation transformers:

“No doubt my distaste for democracy as a political theory is…a defect that is a good deal less in the theory than in myself. In this case it is very probably my incapacity for envy….The fact that John D. Rockefeller had more money than I have is as uninteresting to me as the fact that he believed in total immersion and wore detachable cuffs.

“Thus I am never envious, and so it is impossible for me to feel any sympathy for men who are. Per corollary, it is impossible for me to get any glow out of such hallucinations as democracy and Puritanism, for if you pump envy out of them you empty them of their life blood: they are all immovably grounded upon the inferior man’s hatred of the man who is having a better time. There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and the impulse is to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness – to bring him down to the miserable level of the ‘good’ men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly and chronically unhappy men. And there is only one sound argument for democracy, that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men…and the most heinous offense for him is to prove it.

“…Such an attitude is palpably impossible to a democrat. His distinguishing mark is the fact that he always attacks his opponents, not just with open arms, but also with snorts and objurations – that he is always filled with moral indignation – that he is incapable of imagining honor in an antagonist, and hence incapable of it himself….”*

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The Meaning of an Olympic Snub The Arab world has a problem of the mind, and its name is anti-Semitism. Bret Stephens

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

An Israeli heavyweight judoka named Or Sasson defeated an Egyptian opponent named Islam El Shehaby Friday in a first-round match at the Rio Olympics. The Egyptian refused to shake his opponent’s extended hand, earning boos from the crowd. Mr. Sasson went on to win a bronze medal.

If you want the short answer for why the Arab world is sliding into the abyss, look no further than this little incident. It did itself in chiefly through its long-abiding and all-consuming hatred of Israel, and of Jews.

That’s not a point you will find in a long article about the Arab crackup by Scott Anderson in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, where hatred of Israel is treated like sand in Arabia—a given of the landscape. Nor is it much mentioned in the wide literature about the legacy of colonialism in the Middle East, or the oil curse, governance gap, democracy deficit, youth bulge, sectarian divide, legitimacy crisis and every other explanation for Arab decline.

Yet the fact remains that over the past 70 years the Arab world got rid of its Jews, some 900,000 people, while holding on to its hatred of them. Over time the result proved fatal: a combination of lost human capital, ruinously expensive wars, misdirected ideological obsessions, and an intellectual life perverted by conspiracy theory and the perpetual search for scapegoats. The Arab world’s problems are a problem of the Arab mind, and the name for that problem is anti-Semitism.

As a historical phenomenon, this is not unique. In a 2005 essay in Commentary, historian Paul Johnson noted that wherever anti-Semitism took hold, social and political decline almost inevitably followed.

Spain expelled its Jews with the Alhambra Decree of 1492. The effect, Mr. Johnson noted, “was to deprive Spain (and its colonies) of a class already notable for the astute handling of finance.” In czarist Russia, anti-Semitic laws led to mass Jewish emigration as well as an “immense increase in administrative corruption produced by the system of restrictions.” Germany might well have won the race for an atomic bomb if Hitler hadn’t sent Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller into exile in the U.S.

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RACHEL EHRENFELD: PALESTINIAN TERRORISM FUNDING GOES ON

Posted By on August 16th, 2016

The news that the Israeli government charged Mohammed el-Halabi, the Gaza director of World Vision, a major international evangelical Christian aid organization, with funneling millions to fortify Hamas government’s terrorist capabilities has reportedly “shocked” the organization.

The reason for this “shock” is not the evidence of his diverting 60% of the charity’s Gaza budget to further Hamas terrorism. The organization was “shocked” because the Israelis, after years of complaining and warning, are bringing him to justice.

World Vision did not even pretend to be embarrassed by el-Halabi’s use of $50 million not to help the needy in Gaza, but to pay Hamas members, buy weapons and transfer “building supplies intended to support farming projects… to Hamas for constructing tunnels and military installations.” Instead, World Vision’s German spokesperson protested the “huge gap” between “what we know” and the Israeli charges, while the Australian CEO declared he was “profoundly perplexed and mystified.”

Claims like this and outright denials of international aid diversion for Palestinian terrorist activities are nothing new.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood branch in Gaza, was established in December 1987, days into the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) first Intifada against Israel. And as soon as the Internet was made available for public use in the early 1990s, the Palestinians began using it to portray the people they use as human shields throughout the territories and Gaza not as the casualties of its own murderous agenda, but as victims of Israeli retaliations. Like the Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas realized that posting photos of wounded children and crying mothers has a considerable effect in the ‘hearts’ and ‘minds’ battle for gaining support from the international community. Indeed, the strategy of extracting maximum civilian casualties from among their constituents has always yielded larger funding.

In December 2003, for example, as Yasser Arafat’s second Intifada (28 September 2000 – 8 February 2005) against Israel was raging, an international donors’ conference in Rome awarded the Palestinian Authority with $1 billion, ignoring the PA’s funding of terrorist activities.

Evidence that Hamas suicide bombers were paid with EU aid money did not move an Austrian member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament, Hannes Swoboda. He insisted in writing and while arguing against my testimony before the European Parliament on this issue that “No wrongdoing or misuse of funds by the Palestinian Authority, no instances of funds being used for terrorist activities instead of infrastructure development, have been proved. Only if the DNA of the suicide bombers will match the DNA of those who received euros will we accept it as evidence.”