Questions. You Answer! No Decision Yet! La La Land!

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In view of recent events, these are legitimate random questions I believe I am justified in posing.

Am I a racist for raising them?

Is Muslim Extremism an oxymoron?

Does the Muslim tribal based harsh desert culture lend itself to extremism? (Have you read Leon Uris': "The Haj?")

Does Islam lend itself to being politicized?

If you had Muslim neighbors and they gave every appearance of being Americanized and assimilated should you still be concerned they could be radicalized without you knowing?

Can Muslims, who embrace Islam be assimilated or does an irrefutable conflict prevent same?

Do you agree with Obama that American arrogance and air pollution, economic decline and unemployment are the root cause of ISIS' appeal and the increase in Islamic Terrorism? If so, why are not those of Christian persuasion running around acting in the same manner?

Or did ISIS come about because of Obama's premature withdrawal from Iraq?

Does the fact that Muslims have generally failed to openly oppose and declare the reprehensible terrorist acts of their brethren, worldwide, concern you?

Does the fact that Tafsheen Malik lied on her Visa Application undercuts Obama's claim that we can adequately vet Syrian refugees without a credible database and flies in the face of challenges by The FBI Chief?

Would Americans be safer if we disarmed? Is Obama delusional to suggest same?

Is Obama correct when he asserts mass killings demand more gun control laws when cities that already have strict gun laws experience out sized murder statistics?

The New York Times Editorial Board has joined Obama's band wagon and now calls for Americans to disarm. Do you agree? Are they also delusional? 

Because of recent events, would it be credible if one were to raise the issue of specific gaps in Obama's own background, thereby, resurrecting the previous claim, Obama was a Manchurian Candidate President?

Should our Constitutional Rights be made subservient to the needs of refugees legal or otherwise? (See 1 below.)

Can a nation that refuses to control its borders survive?

Should English become our national language?

If Obama believes women should be allowed to participate in combat why not let them also play in the NFL?

Finally, is Obama purposely saying things that are un-explainable in order to cause Republicans to select a non-winning extreme candidate?

Happy to post responses!

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I am constantly being asked whom I favor as the Republican Nominee. I have not made a decision. This is my general answer: " At this point, it depends on where I put my emphasis." 

Non Political experience, self funding campaign large risk loose cannon but worthy of consideration based on past history of business accomplishments - Trump.  (see 2 below.)

JEB, Kasich and Christie - based on executive accomplishments in a political setting quite acceptable but first two lacking the fire in their campaigning.

Rubio says all the right things but are would we be  nominating another Obama  when it comes to depth of executive experience?

Cruz,very bright, too self centered  and probably not electable nationwide.

I would vote for any of the above over Hillarious.  Even the devil would be a preferable choice over Hillarious who has no worthy accomplishments, is an unmitigated liar, has placed her personal wealth and questionable Foundation's funding ahead of her service to the nation. The list of her negatives and unethical behaviour is insurmountable for me and I have yet to mention her personality

Eight years of Obama has ruined my appetite for more of Hillarious' insincerity and grating disingenuous laugh.

I would say the same were she running on The Republican Ticket - God forbid! I am a Conservative and politically schizophrenic in that I am socially liberal, militarily a hawk and ruled by my fiscal conservatism.

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Always blame  recipients of terrorism. For decades the Palestinians have been doing no less. 

Their message goes as follows:  Palestinians attack Israel, Israel defends itself and Israel is  blamed for killing those Palestinians who attack them   because Israel used disproportionate force, Israel did things that made Palestinians angry, Israel is an occupier of land won in wars they did not start and the U.N says so! 

If repeated enough, this crap gets believed and is also bought by gullible Western media and print folks and the tide of blame shifts. Of course, some of the rationale for doing so is based on anti-Semitic attitudes held by liberals and progressives and another part of the reason is liberal's and progressives always defend so called "victims," ie. a terrorist is another name for a  freedom fighter. It is just something liberals and progressives do because it is part of their DNA and self belief they are more compassionate than most mortals who are rational.

Compassion trumps logic in la la land (See 3 below.)

Meanwhile, this explanation should clear matters up regarding Assad  (See 3a below.) 

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Obama has accomplished much of his goal by over seeing our military's de-funding due to his  budget busting spending and increasing focus on entitlements.

Now Obama has accomplished his next objective of making our military less effective, based on studies he and his lackeys ignore, by opening combat duties to women.

Next, I assume Obama will press for women playing in the NFL.

Protecting female sensibilities trumps over winning wars but then: "what difference does it matter."

Seems we no longer care about being winners because we re-elected a loser of a president and all he has done is kept us on the loser's track..

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Dick

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1)

I shot holes in the NY Times editorial By Erick Erickson

This is what I think of the New York Times editorial today. The United States suffered its worst terrorist attacks since September 11 and the New York Times' response is that all law-abiding citizens need their guns taken away. Screw them. The New York Times wants you to be sitting ducks for a bunch of arms jihadists who the New York Times thinks no doubt got that way because of the United States. It should be striking to every American citizen that the New York Times believes the nation should have unfettered abortion rights, a right not made explicit in the Constitution, but can have the Second Amendment right curtailed at will though it is explicitly in the Constitution. Again, we have suffered the worst terrorist attack in more than a decade and the New York Times believes now we must have our rights taken away as a response to terrorism. I hope everyone will join me in posting pictures of bullet holes in the New York Times editorial. Send them your response. Put them on Instagram and use the hashtag for my radio show and I may give you a shoutout. #EERS All the best Erick ======================================================== 2) Why We Don’t Need a Dealmaker JONATHAN S. TOBIN Donald Trump prides himself as being a great dealmaker. As far as real estate is concerned, his self-regard may well be justified. But as he markets himself as our next commander-in-chief, his obsession with the art of the deal may not prove to be as good for the country, or the world, as his fans seem to think. A good example of Trump’s false faith in deal making comes in an Associated Press interview in which he touches on the Middle East. Though he believes that his talent in driving a better bargain will make Mexico pay for a wall along the Rio Grande, Chinese trading partners quiver, and Vladimir Putin give in on all points, his hubristic blather trips him up even further when he starts opining on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump clearly means well. When asked about the Middle East in an interview prior to his appearance before a forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, he said he planned to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu “sometime after Christmas.” He added that he was a “big, big fan” of the Jewish state. Trump also indicated his sympathy for the suffering that the ongoing violence causes and then indicated it was his ambition to cut the Gordian Knot that had defeated every previous American statesman of the past several decades. “I think if I get elected, that would be something I’d really like to do,” Trump said during the interview at his golf club in northern Virginia. “Because so much death, so much turmoil, so much hatred — that would be to me a great achievement. As a single achievement, that would be a really great achievement.” That sort of ambition is a dangerous thing in a leader and has repeatedly led to disaster before. To his credit, Trump later notes that the only way to solve the problem is, “if you had a real dealmaker, somebody that knew what he or she is doing.” We know Trump is referring to himself there. But other comments in the interview shows us that he knows nothing about the subject and is, in fact, the epitome of the Washington politician dabbling in deal making that he purports to despise. The Republican presidential front-runner said his concerns are greater regarding “one side in particular.” While Trump wouldn’t say whether he was referring to the Israelis or the Palestinians, he said the chances for a lasting peace rest with Israel. “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things,” Trump said. “They may not be, and I understand that, and I’m OK with that. But then you’re just not going to have a deal.” “If I win, I’ll let you know six months from the time I take office,” he added. For those who think Trump will be a breath of fresh air in Washington if he’s elected, this passage should be a wake-up call. Far from bringing any real insight to the issue, he appears to know nothing of the history of the conflict or even the last 22 years of peace processing. If that wasn’t bad enough, by putting the onus on Israel to make sacrifices for peace, he’s playing the same tired and utterly false tune about the Middle East we’ve been hearing from Barack Obama for the last seven years. For Trump’s information, Israel has been taking risks for peace since it signed the Oslo Accords in 1993. It brought the Palestine Liberation Organization back from exile and placed in charge of an autonomous government of the West Bank and Gaza. It also withdrew every last soldier, settler, and settlement from Gaza in 2005 in the hope of advancing peace only to see that territory become a terrorist base run by Hamas that functions as an independent Palestinian state in all but name. More importantly it has made several peace offers that would have given the Palestinians the state they claim to want. With Bill Clinton’s approval, Ehud Barak offered Yasir Arafat independence in almost all the West Bank, a share of Jerusalem and Gaza at Camp David in 2000. The answer was a flat refusal and the launching of a terrorist war of attrition known as the second intifada. Barak sweetened the offer in 2001 and got the same answer. In 2008, Ehud Olmert offered even more and, as he recently admitted, Mahmoud Abbas also refused him. Since then, Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted the idea of a two-state solution and offered the Palestinians virtually all of the West Bank but Abbas has refused to negotiate seriously and instead continues a campaign of incitement that has led to the current surge in bloody terrorism. But all this appears to be news to the man who purports to know what he’s doing. If he were elected president, it appears that Trump would repeat the same pattern of his predecessors in which Israel would be considered the obstacle to peace. He may be sympathetic to the Jewish state, but his knowledge of the conflict seems to be the same recycled misinformation that animates the views of liberals like Obama and Hillary Clinton. Israel has ceaselessly worked for peace under both Labor and Likud prime ministers but to this day most Westerners cling to the myth that its behavior and refusal to make sacrifices is the reason why the conflict continues. But speaking in much the same spirit as Obama has done, Trump seems to labor under the delusion that Israel has the power to make peace. It doesn’t. The reason why there is no peace remains the Palestinian desire to eliminate Israel. That’s why Abbas won’t recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Palestinian national identity remains as inextricably linked to the war on Zionism today as it was in 2000 or 1948 for that matter. A president or secretary of state who wants to understand the Middle East needs to know this. But Trump clearly doesn’t. Like every other naïf without a clue about foreign policy who winds up in the White House he’ll find himself being led by advisors who know more than he does and wind up with the same false conclusions and bad policies. The point is what is needed here isn’t a dealmaker but a leader with a grasp of reality. Someone who actually knew something about the topic wouldn’t have to wait, as Trump says he will, to sit down with the two leaders to know what the problem has been. Anyone who does play that game will wind up being deceived by Abbas and be led down the same garden path that American leaders have traveled before. The conflict between Jews and Arabs over that one small conflict isn’t something that can be fixed with traditional American faith in compromises or even Trump’s art of the deal. It requires knowledge, and that is something that Trump seems to pride himself on not having. Anyone who thinks this would be good for Israel needs to think long and hard about the prospect of having a president burdened by such illusions. Trump may not harbor malice toward Israel, as Obama often appears to demonstrate. But instead of bringing change, as far as this issue is concerned, Donald Trump will be more of the same wrongheaded ignorance that has been the keystone of the administration he seeks to replace. =========================================================== 3)

Muslim Leader: America Bears Some Blame for Terror Attacks

America bears some of the blame for the bloody wave of Islamic extremism that has brought terrorism to San Bernardino, Paris and locations around the world, according to a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

In a Friday CNN interview, Hussam Ayloush, of the group's Los Angeles chapter, said American foreign policy has helped fuel the rage that drives Muslim radicals to kill in the name of their faith.

"Let's not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the west, have fueled that extremism," Ayloush told "New Day" host Chris Cuomo during a discussion about Wednesday's terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., where a Muslim married couple killed 14 and wounded 21 at a holiday party for the county health department that employed the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook.

3a) Clearing Up The Syrian Mess

President Assad (who is bad) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his people rebelled and the Rebels (who are good) started winning. But then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic State (who are definitely bad) and some continued to support democracy (who are still good).  So the Americans (who are good) started bombing Islamic State (who are bad) and giving arms to the Syrian Rebels (who are good) so they could fight Assad (who is still bad) which was good.  By the way, there is a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds who want to fight IS (which is a good thing) but the Turkish authorities think they are bad, so we have to say they are bad whilst secretly thinking they're good and giving them guns to fight IS (which is good) but that is another matter. Getting back to Syria. President Putin (bad, as he invaded Crimea and the Ukraine and killed lots of folks including that nice Russian man in London with polonium) has decided to back Assad (who is still bad) by attacking IS (who are also bad) which is sort of a good thing? But Putin (still bad) thinks the Syrian Rebels (who are good) are also bad, and so he bombs them too, much to the annoyance of the Americans (who are good) who are busy backing and arming the rebels (who are also good).  Now Iran (who used to be bad, but now they have agreed not to build any nuclear weapons and bomb Israel are now good) are going to provide ground troops to support Assad (still bad) as are the Russians (bad) who now have ground troops and aircraft in Syria. So, a Coalition of Assad (still bad) Putin (extra bad) and the Iranians (good, but in a bad sort of way) are going to attack IS (who are bad) which is a good thing, but also the Syrian Rebels (who are good) which is bad.  Now the British (obviously good, except Corbyn who is probably bad) and the  Americans (also good) cannot attack Assad (still bad) for fear of upsetting Putin (bad) and Iran (good / bad) and now they have to accept that Assad might not be that bad after all compared to IS (who are super bad). So Assad (bad) is now probably good, being better than IS (no real choice there) and since Putin and Iran are also fighting IS that may now make them good. America (still good) will find it hard to arm a group of rebels being attacked by the Russians for fear of upsetting Mr Putin (now good) and that mad ayatollah in Iran (also good) and so they may be forced to say that the Rebels are now bad, or at the very least abandon them to their fate. This will lead most of them to flee to Turkey and on to Europe or join IS (still the only constantly bad group). To Sunni Muslims, an attack by Shia Muslims (Assad and Iran) backed by Russians will be seen as something of a Holy War, and the ranks of IS will now be seen by the Sunnis as the only Jihadis fighting in the Holy War and hence many Muslims will now see IS as good (doh!). Sunni Muslims will also see the lack of action by Britain and America in support of their Sunni rebel brothers as something of a betrayal (might have a point) and hence we will be seen as bad. So now we have America (now bad) and Britain (also bad) providing limited support to Sunni Rebels (bad) many of whom are looking to IS (good / bad) for support against Assad (now good) who, along with Iran (also good) and Putin (also, now, unbelievably, good ) are attempting to retake the country Assad used to run before all this started? This should clear it all up for you. ==================================================================