Saturday, February 13, 2016

Bernie - Mr. Freebie.

A belated Happy Valentine Day to all my girl friends and fellow memo readers.

My bleeding heart card went to Hillarious!
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"To anger a conservative, lie to him.
To anger a liberal, tell him the truth"...
Theodore Roosevelt
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Now is the time for many American Corporations to repurchase and retire their stock.  Though the market may not have bottomed, many are flush with unneeded cash and there is little reason to expand and/or spend on unnecessary R and D.

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Believe it is very cogent and insightful. (See 1 below.)
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A re-post but worth repeating. (See 2 below.)
and  
What Israelis are doing during the Syrian refugee crisis.   https://vimeo.com/151279276
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Blood on Obama's hands because of his feckless threats and abandoned red lines in the sand? 
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/video-calais-womans-gut-wrenching-testimony-migrant-invasion
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Once Upon A Time is a pretty accurate video if you are old enough In the land that made me, me! Me
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ J55S38xwxnQ?rel=0
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The author is the political correspondent for Bloomberg and wrote extensively about Obama even before he was elected and did it with facts and more facts. (See 3 below.)

I also received an e mail suggesting NBC has purchased a devastation video interview by a British female journalist regarding a come on by Trump that is akin to the one that devastated the Justice Thomas nomination process and like the Jennifer Flowers- "Ole" Bill epsiode. 
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All lives matter and so do lies ginned up to stir trouble. (See 4 below.)
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Let's end with some corny one liners:

I got invited to a party and was told to dress to kill. Apparently a turban, beard, and a backpack wasn't what they had in mind.

A teenage boy asks his granny: “Have you seen my pills? They were labeled LSD?” Granny replies: “ The hell with the pills, did you see the dragons in the kitchen?” 

BACTERIA...It's the only culture some people have
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Dick
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1)  "Do not think that (all) Jews are liberal. A lot has to do with where they came from.  I believe if you were to take a poll of everyone in our group of Jews from Egypt, a large majority would say they are conservative.

American Jews of European origin are liberal primarily because when they came to the US in large numbers, at the start of the 20th century, many already had leftist leanings and  they found anti-Semitism among the WASP population which was primarily represented by the Republican Party. Consequently, they naturally migrated to the Democrat Party.  This tradition remained with successive generations up until today even though:

(1) there has been a significant shift in attitudes towards Jews over the last 100 years so that Republicans now appear more pro-Jewish, certainly more pro-Israel, than the Democrats, 

(2) American Jews are among the better educated and more affluent classes in the US and you would think they would move to the Party that best protects their economic interests.
A-"
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2)  The flipside of Obama's apologetics for radical Islamists 
By Caroline B. Glick


Article Tools
On Wednesday the US media interrupted its saturation coverage of the presidential primaries to report on President Barack Obama’s visit to a mosque in Maryland. The visit was Obama’s first public one to a mosque in the US since entering the White House seven years ago. The mosque Obama chose to visit demonstrated once again that his views of radical Islam are deeply problematic.

Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a mosque with longstanding ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. During Operation Protective Edge, the leaders of the mosque accused Israel of genocide and demanded that the administration end US support for the Jewish state.

According to The Daily Caller, the mosque’s former imam Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh was active in the Islamic American Relief Agency, a charity deemed a terror group in 2004 after the US Treasury Department determined it had transferred funds to Osama bin Laden, Hamas, al-Qaida and other terrorist groups.

El-Sheikh left the Baltimore mosque to take over the Dar el-Hijra mosque in northern Virginia. He replaced Anwar al-Awlaki as imam after Awlaki moved to Yemen in 2003. In Yemen Awlaki rose to become a senior al-Qaida commander.

Awlaki radicalized many American jihadists both through direct contact and online. He radicalized US Army major Nidal Malik Hasan, and inspired him to carry out the 2009 massacre of 13 US soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood in Texas. Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in 2011.

In 2010, a member of the Islamic Society of Baltimore was arrested for planning to attack an army recruiting office. According to the Mediaite news portail, the mosque reportedly refused to cooperate with the FBI in its investigation.

Obama’s visit to the radical mosque now is a clear signal of how he intends to spend his last year in office. It tells us that during this period, Obama will adopt ever more extreme positions regarding radical Islam.

Obama’s apologetics for radical Islamists is the flipside of his hostility for Israel. This too is escalating and will continue to rise through the end of his tenure in office.

The US Customs authority’s announcement last week that it will begin enforcing a 20-year old decision to require goods imported from Judea and Samaria to be labeled “Made in the West Bank,” rather than “Made in Israel,” signals Obama’s intentions. So, too, it is abundantly clear that France’s plan to use the UN Security Council to dictate Israel’s borders was coordinated in advance with the Obama administration.

Part of the reason Obama is acting with such urgency and intensity is that he knows that regardless of who is elected to replace him, the next president will not be as viscerally hostile to Israel or as emotionally attached to Islam as he is.

On the Democratic side, neither candidate is a particularly energetic supporter of Israel or counter- jihad warrior. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s recently released email discussions of Israel with her closest advisers indicate that all of Clinton’s closest counselors are hostile to Israel.

For his part, Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders harbors the far Left’s now standard anti-Israel attitudes. Not only did Sanders – like Clinton – support Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. He boycotted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the Joint Houses of Congress where Netanyahu laid out Israel’s reasons for opposing the deal. Sanders gave television interviews condemning Netanyahu for making the speech, accusing him of electioneering on the back of the US Congress. Sanders criticized Israel during Operation Protective Edge and supports decreasing US military aid to Israel.

For all their anti-Israel sensibilities, though, neither Clinton nor Sanders gives the impression that they are driven by them as Obama is.
Unlike Obama, neither appear to be animated by their hostility toward Israel. Neither seem to be passionate in their support for Muslim Brotherhood- affiliated groups or in their desire to realign the US away from Israel, from its traditional Arab allies and toward Iran. This lack of passion makes it safe to assume that if elected president, while they will adopt anti-Israel policies, they will not seek out ways to weaken Israel or strengthen its sworn enemies.

On the Republican side, the situation is entirely different. All of the Republican presidential candidates are pro-Israel. To be sure, some are more pro-Israel than others. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, is more supportive than his competitors. But all of the Republicans candidates are significantly more supportive of Israel than the Democratic candidates. So it is simply an objective fact that Israel will be better off if a Republican is elected in November no matter who he is and no matter who the Democratic candidate is.

It hasn’t always been this way. And it doesn’t have to remain this way.

Back in 1992 when Bill Clinton was running against George H.W. Bush, if Israel was your issue, you voted for Clinton because he was rightly viewed as more pro-Israel than Bush.

Twenty-four years ago, supporting Israel carried no cost for Clinton. According to Gallup, in 1992, 52 percent of Democrats were pro-Israel.

On the other hand, Bush was probably harmed somewhat for the widespread perception that he was anti-Israel. In 1992, 62% of Republicans were pro-Israel.

Over the past 15 years, the situation has altered considerably.

Today, Republicans are near unanimous in their support for Israel. According to a Gallup poll from February 2015, 83% of Republicans support Israel.

Only 48% of Democrats do. From 2014 to 2015, Democratic support for Israel plunged 10 points.

The cleavage on Israel is particularly acute among partisan elites.

Last summer, pollster Frank Luntz conducted a survey of US elite partisan opinion on Israel. His data were devastating. According to Luntz’s data, 76% of Democratic elite believe that Israel has too much influence over US foreign policy. Only 20% of Republicans do.

Nearly half (47%) of highly educated, wealthy and politically active Democrats think that Israel is a racist country. Thirteen percent of their Republican counterparts agree.

And whereas only 48% of Democrats believe that Israel wants peace, 88% of Republicans believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors.

These trends affect voting habits. According to Luntz, while only 18% of Democrats say they would be more likely to vote for a politician who supports Israel, 31% said they are less likely to vote for a pro-Israel candidate. In contrast, 76% of Republicans say they want their representatives to support Israel.

Forty-five percent of Democrats said they would be more likely to vote for a politician who is critical of Israel and 75% of Republicans said they would be less likely to vote for an anti-Israel candidate.

These data tell us two important things. Today Democratic candidates will gain nothing and may lose significant support if they support Israel.

In contrast, a Republican who opposes Israel will have a hard time getting elected, much less winning a primary.

Partisan sensibilities aren’t the only reason that Israel is will be better off if a Republican wins in November. There is also the issue of policy continuity.

Even though neither Clinton nor Sanders share Obama’s anti-Israel passion, their default position will be to maintain his policies. Traditionally, when an outgoing president is replaced by a successor from his own party, many of his foreign policy advisers stay on to serve his successor.

Moreover, if American voters elect a Democrat to succeed Obama, their decision will rightly be viewed as a vote of confidence in his policies.

Obama has radicalized the Democratic Party in his seven years in office. When Obama was inaugurated, the Blue Dog caucus of conservative Democratic members of the House of Representatives had 54 members. Today only 14 remain.

Obama’s Democratic Party is not Bill Clinton’s party.

A party that isn’t forced to pay a price for its policies isn’t likely to change them. If the Democrats are not defeated in the run for the White House in November, their party will not reassess its shift to radicalism and reconsider its increasingly hostile stance on Israel.

That then brings us to the state of the presidential race following the Iowa caucuses and ahead of next Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire. The Iowa caucuses showed a significant gap in enthusiasm among partisan voters. Participation rates in the Republican caucuses were unprecedented.

Cruz shattered the record for vote getting in the state that saw participation rates up 30% from 2012. On the Democratic side, participation rates were below the 2008 level.

On the Republican side, the three top candidates – Cruz, businessman Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio – are all backed by committed, fervent supporters. On the Democratic side, Clinton’s supporters are reportedly diffident about her. And while Sanders enjoys enthusiastic support from voters under 45, he can’t seem to convince people who actually know what socialism is to support him.

If Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, on the face of it, it is difficult to see his path to victory in the general election. Whereas Obama was elected by hiding his radical positions, Sanders is running openly as a socialist and attacks Obama from the Left. Whether America is a center-right or center-left country, the undisputed truth is that it is a centrist country.

As for Clinton, the likelihood grows by the day that by the general election, her inability to inspire her base will be the least of her problems.

The FBI’s ongoing probe of her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state is devastating her chances of getting elected.

The State Department’s revelation last week that 22 of Clinton’s emails were too classified to be released, even with parts blacked out, makes it impossible to dismiss the prospect that she will be indicted for serious felony offenses. Yet, as Jonah Goldberg argued Wednesday in National Review, with her narrow victory in Iowa, Clinton blocked the opening for a less damaged candidate – like Vice President Joe Biden or former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg – to step into the race.

In other words, the Republican nominee will have an energized base and will face either a legally challenged or openly socialist Democratic opponent.

According to terrorism expert Steven Emerson, before Obama visited the Islamic Society of Baltimore, he asked the FBI for its opinion of the mosque. FBI investigators informed Obama of the mosque’s ties to terrorism. They urged him not to confer it with the legitimacy that comes with a presidential visit.Obama ignored the FBI’s advice.
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3)"Who is Donald Trump?"  The better question may be, "What is Donald Trump?"  The answer?  A giant middle finger from average Americans to the political and media establishment.

Some Trump supporters are like the 60s white girls who dated black guys just to annoy their parents.  But most Trump supporters have simply had it with the Demo-socialists and the "Republicans In Name Only."  They know there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Hillary Rodham and Jeb Bush, and only a few cents worth between Rodham and the other GOP candidates.

Ben Carson is not an "establishment" candidate, but the Clinton machine would pulverize Carson; and the somewhat rebellious Ted Cruz will (justifiably so) be tied up with natural born citizen lawsuits (as might Marco Rubio).  The Trump supporters figure they may as well have some fun tossing Molotov cocktails at Wall Street and Georgetown while they watch the nation collapse.  Besides - lightning might strike, Trump might get elected, and he might actually fix a few things.  Stranger things have happened (the nation elected an[islamo-]Marxist in 2008 and Bruce Jenner now wears designer dresses.)

Millions of conservatives are justifiably furious.  They gave the Republicans control of the House in 2010 and control of the Senate in 2014, and have seen them govern no differently than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.  Yet those same voters are supposed to trust the GOP in 2016?  Why?

Trump did not come from out of nowhere.  His candidacy was created by the last six years of Republican failures.

No reasonable person can believe that any of the establishment candidates [dems or reps] will slash federal spending, rein in the Federal Reserve, cut burdensome business regulations, reform the tax code, or eliminate useless federal departments (the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, etc.).  Even Ronald Reagan was unable to eliminate the Department of Education.  (Of course, getting shot at tends to make a person less of a risk-taker.)  No reasonable person can believe that any of the nation's major problems will be solved by Rodham, Bush, and the other dishers of donkey fazoo now eagerly eating corn in Iowa and pancakes in New Hampshire.

Many Americans, and especially Trump supporters, have had it with:
·     Anyone named Bush
·     Anyone named Clinton
·     Anyone who's held political office
·     Political correctness
·     Illegal immigration
·     Massive unemployment
·     Phony "official" unemployment and inflation figures
·     Welfare waste and fraud
·     People faking disabilities to go on the dole
·     VA waiting lists
·     TSA airport groping
·     ObamaCare
·     The Federal Reserve's money-printing schemes
·     Wall Street crooks like Jon Corzine
·     Michelle Obama's vacations
·     Michelle Obama's food police
·     Barack Obama's golf
·     Barack Obama's arrogant and condescending lectures
·     Barack Obama's criticism/hatred of America
·     Valerie Jarrett
·     "Holiday trees"
·     Hollywood hypocrites
·     Global warming nonsense
·     Cop killers
·     Gun confiscation threats
·     Stagnant wages
·     Boys in girls' bathrooms
·     Whiny, spoiled college students who can't even place the Civil War in the correct century... and that's just the short list.

Trump supporters believe that no Democrat wants to address these issues, and that few Republicans have the courage to address these issues.  They certainly know that none of the establishment candidates are better than barely listening to them, and Trump is their way of saying, "Screw you, Hillary Rodham Rove Bush!"  The more the talking head political pundits insult the Trump supporters, the more supporters he gains.  (The only pundits who seem to understand what is going on are Democrats Doug Schoen and PatCaddell and Republican John LeBoutillier.  All the others argue that the voters will eventually "come to their senses" and support an establishment candidate.)

But America does not need a tune-up at the same old garage.  It needs a new engine installed by experts - and neither Rodham nor Bush are mechanics with the skills or experience to install it.  Hillary Rodham is not a mechanic; she merely manages a garage her philandering husband abandoned.  Jeb Bush is not a mechanic; he merely inherited a garage.  Granted, Trump is also not a mechanic, but he knows where to find the best ones to work in his garage.  He won't hire his brother-in-law or someone to whom he owes a favor; he will hire someone who lives and breathes cars.

"How dare they revolt!" the "elites" are bellowing.  Well, the citizens are daring to revolt, and the RINOs had better get used to it.  "But Trump will hand the election to Clinton!"  That is what the Karl Rove-types want people to believe, just as the leftist media eagerly shoved "Maverick" McCain down GOP throats in 2008 - knowing he would lose to Obama.  But even if Trump loses and Rodham wins, she would not be dramatically different than Bush or most of his fellow candidates.  They would be nothing more than caretakers, not working to restore America's greatness but merely presiding over the collapse of a massively in-debt nation.  A nation can perhaps survive open borders; a nation can perhaps survive a generous welfare system.  But no nation can survive both - and there is little evidence that the establishment candidates of either party understand that.  The United States cannot forever continue on the path it is on.  At some point it will be destroyed by its debt.

Yes, Trump speaks like a bull wander[ing] through a china shop, but the truth is that the borders do need to be sealed; we cannot afford to feed, house, and clothe 200,000 Syrian immigrants for decades (even if we get inordinately lucky and none of them are ISIS infiltrators or Syed Farook wannabes); the world is at war with radical Islamists; all the world's glaciers are not melting; and Rosie O'Donnell is a fat pig.

Is Trump the perfect candidate?  Of course not.  Neither was Ronald Reagan.  But unless we close our borders and restrict immigration, all the other issues are irrelevant.  One terrorist blowing up a bridge or a tunnel could kill thousands.  One jihadist poisoning a city's water supply could kill tens of thousands.  One electromagnetic pulse attack from a single Iranian nuclear device could kill tens of millions.  Faced with those possibilities, most Americans probably don't care that Trump relied on eminent domain to grab up a final quarter acre of
property for a hotel, or that he boils the blood of the Muslim Brotherhood thugs running the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  While Attorney General Loretta Lynch's greatest fear is someone giving a Muslim a dirty look, most Americans are more worried about being gunned down at a shopping mall by a crazed [islamic] lunatic who treats his prayer mat better than his three wives and who thinks 72 virgins are waiting for him in paradise.

The establishment is frightened to death that Trump will win, but not because they believe he will harm the nation.  They are afraid he will upset their taxpayer-subsidized apple carts.  While Obama threatens to veto legislation that spends too little, they worry that Trump will veto legislation that spends too much. 

You can be certain that if an establishment candidate wins in November 2016, ... [their] cabinet positions will be filled with the same people we've seen before.  The washed-up has-beens of the Clinton and Bush administrations will be back in charge.  The hacks from Goldman Sachs will continue to call the shots.  Whether it is Bush's Karl Rove or Clinton's John Podesta, who makes the decisions in the White House will matter little. If the establishment wins, America loses.
==========================================================4) The Myths of Black Lives Matter

The movement has won over Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But what if its claims are fiction?

By Heather Mac Donald

A television ad for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign now airing in South Carolina shows the candidate declaring that “too many encounters with law enforcement end tragically.” She later adds: “We have to face up to the hard truth of injustice and systemic racism.”

Her Democratic presidential rival, Bernie Sanders, met with the Rev. Al Sharpton on Wednesday. Mr. Sanders then tweeted that “As President, let me be very clear that no one will fight harder to end racism and reform our broken criminal justice system than I will.” And he appeared on the TV talk show “The View” saying, “It is not acceptable to see unarmed people being shot by police officers.”

Apparently the Black Lives Matter movement has convinced Democrats and progressives that there is an epidemic of racist white police officers killing young black men. Such rhetoric is going to heat up as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders court minority voters before the Feb. 27 South Carolina primary.

But what if the Black Lives Matter movement is based on fiction? Not just the fictional account of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., but the utter misrepresentation of police shootings generally.

To judge from Black Lives Matter protesters and their media and political allies, you would think that killer cops pose the biggest threat to young black men today. But this perception, like almost everything else that many people think they know about fatal police shootings, is wrong.

The Washington Post has been gathering data on fatal police shootings over the past year and a half to correct acknowledged deficiencies in federal tallies. The emerging data should open many eyes.

For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black homicide deaths. According to the Post database, in 2015 officers killed 662 whites and Hispanics, and 258 blacks. (The overwhelming majority of all those police-shooting victims were attacking the officer, often with a gun.) Using the 2014 homicide numbers as an approximation of 2015’s, those 662 white and Hispanic victims of police shootings would make up 12% of all white and Hispanic homicide deaths. That is three times the proportion of black deaths that result from police shootings.

The lower proportion of black deaths due to police shootings can be attributed to the lamentable black-on-black homicide rate. There were 6,095 black homicide deaths in 2014—the most recent year for which such data are available—compared with 5,397 homicide deaths for whites and Hispanics combined. Almost all of those black homicide victims had black killers.

Police officers—of all races—are also disproportionately endangered by black assailants. Over the past decade, according to FBI data, 40% of cop killers have been black. Officers are killed by blacks at a rate 2.5 times higher than the rate at which blacks are killed by police.

Some may find evidence of police bias in the fact that blacks make up 26% of the police-shooting victims, compared with their 13% representation in the national population. But as residents of poor black neighborhoods know too well, violent crimes are disproportionately committed by blacks. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, blacks were charged with 62% of all robberies, 57% of murders and 45% of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009, though they made up roughly 15% of the population there.

Such a concentration of criminal violence in minority communities means that officers will be disproportionately confronting armed and often resisting suspects in those communities, raising officers’ own risk of using lethal force.

The Black Lives Matter movement claims that white officers are especially prone to shooting innocent blacks due to racial bias, but this too is a myth. A March 2015 Justice Department report on the Philadelphia Police Department found that black and Hispanic officers were much more likely than white officers to shoot blacks based on “threat misperception”—that is, the mistaken belief that a civilian is armed.

A 2015 study by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Greg Ridgeway, formerly acting director of the National Institute of Justice, found that, at a crime scene where gunfire is involved, black officers in the New York City Police Department were 3.3 times more likely to discharge their weapons than other officers at the scene.

The Black Lives Matter movement has been stunningly successful in changing the subject from the realities of violent crime. The world knows the name of Michael Brown but not Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year-old black child lured into an alley and killed by gang members in Chicago last fall. Tyshawn was one of dozens of black children gunned down in America last year. The Baltimore Sun reported on Jan. 1: “Blood was shed in Baltimore at an unprecedented pace in 2015, with mostly young, black men shot to death in a near-daily crush of violence.”

Those were black lives that mattered, and it is a scandal that outrage is heaped less on the dysfunctional culture that produces so many victims than on the police officers who try to protect them.

Ms. Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of “The War on Cops,” forthcoming in July from Encounter Books.
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