Actually not offended by anything, Wednesday.
Actually, impressed by Trump's address, Wednesday.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Correction: David Lowe is retired as VP of National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
+++
The same crowd which offers inane arguments of why we should have more gun controls are, in large measure, the same crowd that offers unscientific evidence to support their claims about climate control. Now they want to arrest you for challenging them.
Left to their desires these same "freaks" would "control" everything that breathes because they believe all power should be centered in government with them in control. They believe government knows best.
They fear freedom and do not understand the creativity freedom has produced and how 'man' has bettered himself accordingly. This is why they fear Capitalism, Democracy and do not understand America. They focus on the unevenness, the lack of perfection as if their answers are better.
Like the Bernie's of the world they offer Socialism and other ISM"s like PC'ism as the way to heaven.
+++
This memo begins as a departure from the norm. I am posting some random thoughts for you to consider/ponder, some humorous and even some wise sayings:
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but can't really understand The New York Times.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could find the time and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Chicago Tribune is read by people who are in prison that used to run the state and would like to do so again, as would their constituents who are currently free on bail.
10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
13. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are gay, handicapped, minority, feminist, atheists, and those who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country, and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but can't really understand The New York Times.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could find the time and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who is running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The Chicago Tribune is read by people who are in prison that used to run the state and would like to do so again, as would their constituents who are currently free on bail.
10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
13. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are gay, handicapped, minority, feminist, atheists, and those who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
+++
"Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble the football" - John Heisman
"I make my practices real hard because if a player is a quitter, I want him to quit in practice, not in a game." – Bear Bryant / Alabama
"It isn't necessary to see a good tackle, you can hear it!” - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"At Georgia Southern, we don't cheat. That costs money, and we don't have any." – Erik Russell / Georgia Southern
"The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped it." - Lou Holtz / Arkansas - Notre Dame
"When you win, nothing hurts." - Joe Namath / Alabama
"In Alabama , an atheist is someone who doesn't believe in Bear Bryant." - Wally Butts / Georgia
"I could have been a Rhodes Scholar except for my grades." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State
"Always remember Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David." - Shug Jordan / Auburn
"Always remember Goliath was a 40 point favorite over David." - Shug Jordan / Auburn
"I asked Darrell Royal, the coach of the Texas Longhorns, why he didn't recruit me ." He said, "Well, Walt, we took a look at you, and you weren't any good." - Walt Garrison / Oklahoma State
"Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel." - Bobby Bowden / Florida State
"Football is NOT a contact sport, it is a collision sport. Dancing IS a contact sport." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State
"Son, you've got a good engine, but your hands aren't on the steering wheel." - Bobby Bowden / Florida State
"Football is NOT a contact sport, it is a collision sport. Dancing IS a contact sport." - Duffy Daugherty / Michigan State
"If lessons are learned in defeat, our team is getting a great education.” - Murray Warmath / Minnesota
"The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb." - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"We live one day at a time and scratch where it itches." - Darrell Royal / Texas
"We didn't tackle well today, but we made up for it by not blocking." - John McKay / USC
"I've found that prayers work best when you have big players." - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"The only qualifications for a lineman are to be big and dumb. To be a back, you only have to be dumb." - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
"We live one day at a time and scratch where it itches." - Darrell Royal / Texas
"We didn't tackle well today, but we made up for it by not blocking." - John McKay / USC
"I've found that prayers work best when you have big players." - Knute Rockne / Notre Dame
Ohio State 's Urban Meyer on one of his players: "He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear. In fact, I just saw his grades and he doesn't know the meaning of a lot of words.”
Why do Tennessee fans wear orange? So they can dress that way for the game on Saturday, go hunting on Sunday, and pick up trash on Monday.
What does the average Alabama player get on his SATs? Drool.
Why do Tennessee fans wear orange? So they can dress that way for the game on Saturday, go hunting on Sunday, and pick up trash on Monday.
What does the average Alabama player get on his SATs? Drool.
How many Michigan State freshmen football players does it take to change a light bulb? None. That's a sophomore course.
How did the Auburn football player die from drinking milk? The cow fell on him.
Two Texas A&M football players were walking in the woods. One of them said, "Look, a dead bird." The other looked up in the sky and said,"Where?"
What do you say to a Florida State University football player dressed in a three-piece suit? "Will the defendant please rise."
How did the Auburn football player die from drinking milk? The cow fell on him.
Two Texas A&M football players were walking in the woods. One of them said, "Look, a dead bird." The other looked up in the sky and said,"Where?"
What do you say to a Florida State University football player dressed in a three-piece suit? "Will the defendant please rise."
How can you tell if a Clemson football player has a girlfriend? There's tobacco juice on both sides of the pickup truck.
.University of Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh is only going to dress half of his players for the game this week; the other half will have to dress themselves.
How is the Kansas football team like an opossum? They play dead at home and get killed on the road.
.University of Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh is only going to dress half of his players for the game this week; the other half will have to dress themselves.
How is the Kansas football team like an opossum? They play dead at home and get killed on the road.
+++
"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage: H.L. Mencken
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program." Milton Friedman
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." P.J. O'Rourke
"The difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." Will Rogers
"An honest politicians is one who,when bought, will stay bought." Simon Cameron
"Damn your principles! Stick to your party." Benjamin Disraeli
+++
Now back to the old format for a few enlightening zingers.
America's soft underbelly, geographically speaking, has always been Latin America.(See 1 below.)
+++
Why they hate us. (See 2 below.)
Understanding why liberals embrace those who oppose every thing they allegedly stand for. (See 2a below.)
===
Caroline Glick and Obama and the moderate Muslims. (See 3 below.)
Though this article focuses on Israel, everyone loses in a radical, delusional world, even radical, delusional Muslims. (See 3a below.)
Though this article focuses on Israel, everyone loses in a radical, delusional world, even radical, delusional Muslims. (See 3a below.)
====
Capitalism always wins. (This was sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 4 below.)
===
Ideologues make bad politicians. To them truth is a relative construct. They start with a pre-existing ideology but facts do not always accommodate so they make new facts to match their ideology when reality does not align. (See 5 below.)
Ideologues make bad politicians. To them truth is a relative construct. They start with a pre-existing ideology but facts do not always accommodate so they make new facts to match their ideology when reality does not align. (See 5 below.)
And thus we have Obama from the git go of his presidency and it will be the same with Hillary, but the consequences will be worse because of America's weakened economic and military condition and that pesky JV team's success after 7 plus years of Obama's failed policies and purposeful deception.
Obama began by telling us we could keep our own doctors after Professor Gruber told him it was unlikely but Americans were stupid so he could get away with this lie.
Then Obama did the same thing with Iran and this time through one of his senior staff people. Mr. Rhodes, lied because Americans are easily fooled when facts are withheld. Many in Congress understood but found no way to stop Obama's circumvention of his constitutional authority.
Throughout, Obama has held to a view that if we appeased adversaries they would come around and they have. Radical Muslims have been encouraged, correctly understood Obama's feckless positions and came around with box cutters, rope, bombs and guns.
Since reality has not validated Obama's ideology he has gone to great lengths to devise new responses in order to deflect attention from his failed policies.
Guns not radical Muslims kill. Just another Obama wedge issue to divide and confuse and if you challenge our monarch you are a racist
As for Hillary, she too drinks ideological Kool Aid because she has no core convictions and alters her moves in the direction of 51% on any given day.
Obama's inability to diagnose the threat posed by radical Muslims and why he cannot call it what it is either is prevented by his faulty ideology and/or because his sympathies lie with Muslims over the words he swore to uphold when he took office. It is not because he is insufficiently intelligent nor because words do not matter unless they are his.
America's economy is not healthy, 2% growth will not cause corporate executives to spend money for capital improvements. Middle class aspirations have been crushed. Our military and intelligence gatherers have been restrained by Obama edicts not to think radical Muslims are at war with us. Obama has allowed various agencies to enforce red tape restrictions but he refuses to enforce his own red lines drawn in Syria"s sand box.
Meanwhile, his lusting power hungry successor wannabe, Hillary Clinton, has violated various rules of her own department and office, has sold access in order to enrich herself and The Clinton Foundation, has accomplished nothing beyond miles of travel but remains steadfast in projecting her own failures on Trump. Unless she has undergone a gender change her main reason for seeking our vote is because she is a woman and it's 'bout time!
This petite essay is no endorsement of Trump but simply is a desire to rebut the consistent tripe and lies that emanate from The White House and Hillary's lips.
As for Trump, can he win against a woman who is prepared to buy her way to The White House with special interest money? Can Trump win with a loose mouth against a woman who is always on message but has nothing to say? Can Trump win as a representative of a party that is undeserved and when so many of its cadre are against him? Can Trump win by attracting votes from those who perceive he made harsh attacks upon?
After Trump's rebuttal Wednesday, the ball is now in Hillary's court and will she be able to respond effectively to a recitation of mostly factually based attacks? Time will tell!
"When all else fails, lower your standards" remains my own rigid ideology.
+++It's about time. (See 6 below.)
+++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Iran's Infiltration of Latin America.
I
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman died of a single bullet to the head in January 2015, a day before he was scheduled to testify to Argentina’s Congress about an alleged government coverup of the 1994 Iranian terrorist bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center. There is still no official court ruling on whether he was murdered, but a new investigative report—to be published Tuesday—goes a long way in proving motive.
Joseph Humire, the executive director of the Washington, D.C., based Center for a Secure Free Society, uses thousands of documents and legal wiretaps released to the public to show how the prosecutor’s death eliminated a key stumbling block for Iran and “paved the way for [it] to move into a new phase of its information and intelligence operations in Latin America.” If the theocracy, which is the No. 1 state-sponsor of terrorism in the world, did not murder Nisman, it was the biggest beneficiary of his death.
Nisman was the special prosecutor investigating the terrorist attack on the Jewish community center—known by its Spanish initials as the AMIA. In 2006 he indicted eight former Iranian officials (including former President Ali Rafsanjani) and one Lebanese national. The following year, at Nisman’s behest, Interpol issued “red notices” for the arrest of six of the accused. But Iran took no action.
Using legal wiretaps, Nisman later built a case that President Cristina Kirchner’s government had a covert agreement with Iran to wipe Tehran’s fingerprints off the AMIA attack in exchange for Iranian oil and reopening Iran’s market to Argentine grain and beef.
Nisman had filed a criminal complaint against members of the Kirchner government the week before he died. Killing him did nothing to stop the public from learning of the contents of his report. Yet his death did put the brakes on his plan to bring the Iranian crime into the international arena. It had the potential to undermine the key foreign-policy objectives of Tehran.
Iran’s asymmetric warfare against the West demands commercial engagement because it allows Tehran to deploy political operatives specializing in propaganda, intelligence and terrorism and to finance their activities under the guise of business activity.
In December 2014, Iran’s priority was to end U.N. sanctions in order to facilitate this capability. This meant securing legitimacy via successful negotiations with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. Nisman was about to get in the way.
In a safe-deposit box in Buenos Aires some months after Nisman’s death, investigators discovered a document signed by him and dated December 2014. It is an appeal to Argentine authorities to formally request that the U.N. invoke its charter and intervene in the AMIA case.
“Iran’s refusal to extradite its accused, according to Nisman, placed it in noncompliance with its international obligations to support a legal case of international terrorism with another U.N. member,” Mr. Humire writes. Moreover, “Nisman cited Sudan and Libya as precedent for U.N. intervention when state sponsorship of terrorism obstructs justice on an international terrorism case.”
By 2015 the nuclear talks were entering a crucial stage. Whether President Obama would have reconsidered the U.S.’s legitimization of Iran, already under way, is far from certain. The U.S. president doesn’t like to let facts get in the way of his legacy agenda.
But if Nisman had a hearing at the U.N., his extensive investigation could not have been ignored. According to Mr. Humire, the prosecutor had produced more than “1,500 pages of open source reporting on Iran and Hezbollah” and another 1,500 pages of classified material that is still not public on the AMIA attack. At a minimum it would have challenged Iran’s denials that it supports terrorism.
Mr. Humire argues that the classified material, which is in a 2003 Argentine report, should be declassified so Argentines have the “knowledge necessary to grasp the seriousness and longevity of Iran’s influence in their country.” The rest of the hemisphere also deserves to know about Iran’s designs. As Mr. Humire says: “At a time when U.S. influence has diminished in the region, Latin America is arguably Iran’s top foreign policy priority outside of the Middle East.”
Authoritarian Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have welcomed the presence and influence of Iran. But others are being surreptitiously invaded, beginning with embassies, cultural centers and mosques. Peru’s southern rural communities are typical targets for launching networks. Front companies in the beef and oil industries in Brazil and Uruguay are used to provide cover for Iranian operatives. As for Chile, Mr. Humire’s report shows how Iran has infiltrated universities.
It’s not hard to see how the end of sanctions on Iran—triggering the liberation of $150 billion in assets and the reopening of international economic channels—will increase Iran’s penetration of the Western Hemisphere.
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2)
Why They Hate Us
By Derek Hunter
A stench of hatred was in the air, so palpable you could taste it. How anyone could feel such animosity toward people they’d never met, who’d done nothing but lead their lives in a way that harmed no one but did not conform to the world view of the man who wished to see them gone is something rational people cannot comprehend.
More confusing still was how that man and his like minded comrades, so full of contempt for their fellow man, had obtained positions of power and gotten their leader twice elected president of the United States.
From President Obama and Hillary Clinton to Senate Democrats and the media, there is nothing out of bounds when it comes to what a progressive liberal can accuse a Republican of doing.
If you only watch network news and read the New York Times you easily could come away with the impression that last Sunday morning a conservative Christian man, draped in crosses and screaming “Make America Great Again,” walked into a gay bar and murdered 49 people on direct orders from Republican National Committee headquarters located in the basement of the National Rifle Association’s headquarters, naturally, in a space they rent from Fox News.
What kind of sick monsters blame the horrific actions of one man on their political opponents? A lot of them, it turns out.
To call the Orlando killer a man is being generous; he’s a now-rotting pile of human garbage stuffed with animal excrement. He also was, unquestionably, a radical Islamo-fascist committing a coward’s act against unsuspecting, unarmed people. Not sure why radical Islam deifies those who slaughter the defenseless – do they really think God looks fondly on the equivalent of pushing grandma down the stairs?
Although the poltroon declared his reasons, unambiguously, to the police and a local news station, Democrats saw an opportunity to advance their agenda of limiting the rights of all Americans. Ignoring the truth, every branch of the progressive left simultaneously and sanctimoniously struck the same cord – it was the gun’s fault.
There are as many, if not more, guns in this country than there are people. Yet, seemingly miraculously, if you believe the left, all but a rounding error percentage of gun owners manage to resist the urge to use that inanimate object to kill. Despite the “homophobic culture” leftists believe Americans live in, real “hate crimes” are rare.
In 2014, there were 1,402 reported “hate crimes” against homosexuals. The FBI defines a hate crime as “as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” When you divide the population of the country by the number of anti-gay hate crimes reported, you have to go 6 zeroes past the decimal point before you hit a number, .000004. Hardly an epidemic.
The Orlando monster may have targeted the Pulse nightclub because it was a gay club (though he scouted Disney World too), but he committed his cowardly act because of radical Islam.
It’s more likely he wanted a soft target with the potential for a large body count with little resistance. People crammed into a small, loud, dark space presented just that.
Yet Democrats would have you believe somehow this jihadi wasn’t spurred to action through radical Islam, but Christianity and conservatism. That attempt is its own breed of evil and can come about only through pure hatred.
Pure hatred is the currency of the Democratic Party in the 21st century. Democrats try to blame their political opponents for every act of evil or terrorism committed on US soil. The media parrots these nefarious charges as gospel. The truth eventually comes out but only after the lie has taken root with many.
That’s how a registered Democrat and radical Islamist walks into a gay bar and murders dozens, and the debate focuses on the NRA and conservatives. The “grand lie” of Democrats becomes the narrative, so much so that when Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., states “due process is what’s killing us now,” it’s viewed as unremarkable by the media. The constitutional guarantee of a presumption of innocence until proven guilty was cast away like a dented penny into a fountain, and journalists treated it as a non-event.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., launched a coordinated filibuster to demand all Americans have their rights curtailed as punishment for the horrific actions of one person. The government doesn’t make all children wards of the state because one parent was neglectful, but all Second Amendment rights must be squeezed because one angry, evil man did wrong.
As the Washington Examiner’s David Freddoso put it, “Not since Strom Thurmond had anyone seized the Senate floor for so long to deprive Americans of constitutional rights.”
Murphy mournfully recalled the memories of the children murdered in Newtown, then danced on their graves and those of the victims in Orlando by sending a fundraising email for Hillary Clinton on the subject the very next day.
Shameless. But not a bit surprising. Emboldened by their protectors with press passes, there is nothing they won’t exploit; nothing sacred or out of bounds.
The ends justify the means for the political left – and always have. Motivated by hate – for opponents, the Constitution and anyone who won’t submit to their belief of moral and intellectual superiority – there is no depth to which they will not sink, no pile of bodies on which they will not dance to advance their agenda. In then end it’s sad, it’s disturbing, it’s fascistic, and it’s progressive…and we are not, which is why they hate us.
2a)
Why Liberals Support Muslims Who Hate Everything They Stand For
By John Hawkins
"I also now realize, with brutal clarity, that in the progressive hierarchy of identity groups, Muslims are above gays. Every pundit and politician -- and that includes President Obama and Hillary Clinton and half the talking heads on TV -- who today have said ‘We don't know what the shooter's motivation could possibly be!’ have revealed to me their true priorities: appeasing Muslims is more important than defending the lives of gay people. Every progressive who runs interference for Islamic murderers is complicit in those murders, and I can no longer be a part of that team." -- Anonymous at PJ Media
At first glance, the liberal approach to Islam makes no sense whatsoever.
Liberalism is generally hostile to Christianity and it particularly seems to dislike anyone who has strong religious convictions that conflict with liberalism. This describes every devout Muslim on the planet.
Liberals go on and on endlessly about a war on women and Islam treats women like garbage. In many parts of the Islamic world, women are forced to wear burkas or veils, are given clitoridectomies to take the pleasure out of sex for them, can’t leave the house or drive without a male relative and may be raped or beaten with impunity.
Libs obsess endlessly about gun violence and constantly trash our troops when they accidentally kill civilians. In a large minority of the Islamic world (and a majority in many more fundamentalist countries), innocent women and children are considered fair game and terrorists who murder them in large numbers in places like the Palestinian territories are considered to be heroes.
The Left has gone so insane over imaginary violations of “gay rights” that liberals are in favor of driving Christians out of any profession that caters to weddings and they insist that women have to use the bathroom with men because the less than .2% of men who “feel like” women would be uncomfortable using the men’s bathroom. Meanwhile, Islam goes with homophobia the way peanut butter goes with jelly. There are a number of Islamic countries where being gay is a crime with jail or even DEATH as the penalty.
So, how can liberals continue to turn a blind eye to all of this?
As my friend Evan Sayet has explained, it has to do with the liberal emphasis on “indiscriminateness.”
They were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative. That the only way to be moral is to not discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lies because your act of discrimination – discriminating between these things might just be a reflection of your personal discrimination, your bigotries.
They were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. The second bullet point, and this is an essential corollary, is that indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.
There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization.
Once you understand this facet of liberal thinking, many of the illogical things that liberals believe make more sense.
Why are American liberals so hostile to the rich? As that old quote often attributed to Honoré de Balzac goes, “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” That’s the thinking.
Why do so many liberals seem to loathe America even though we’re the richest, most successful country in history? Because the very fact that we’re the richest, most successful country in history proves we must be doing something wrong and unfair.
Why do white Americans have to be benefiting from racism and “white privilege?” Because white Americans are a majority in the United States and they’re doing better than most other racial groups.
Additionally, this way of viewing the world makes it extremely difficult for liberals to deal with Islam in a rational way. They are unable to admit that among religions, Islam has a unique problem with terrorism, violence and rape. They are not capable of admitting that there is a particular risk to bringing in Muslim immigrants. Even when a Muslim tells everyone he’s killing people because of his religion, liberals can’t acknowledge his motivation because to do so would mean that they’d have to admit Islam has issues.
Until liberals can get past their “indiscriminateness” blind spot, when it comes to Muslims, expect them to keep blaming anything and everything other than religion for the horrible things radical Islamists do.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
|
As far as the White House is concerned, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s top reporter, is President Barack Obama’s unofficial mouthpiece. This was one of the many things we learned from The New York Times in David Samuels’s profile of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. In the course of explaining how Rhodes was able to sell Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, despite the fact that it cleared Iran’s path to a nuclear arsenal while giving the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism more than a hundred billion dollars, Samuels reported that “handpicked Beltway insiders like Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic... helped retail the administration’s narrative.” Given his White House-assigned role, Goldberg’s explanation of Obama’s refusal to discuss radical Islam is worthwhile reading. It reflects what Obama wants the public to believe about his position. On Wednesday Goldberg wrote that in Obama’s view, discussing radical Islam is counterproductive because it harms the moderates who need to stand up to the radicals. “Obama,” he wrote, “believes that [a] clash is taking place [not between Western and Muslim civilization but] within a single civilization, and that Americans are sometimes collateral damage in this fight between Muslim modernizers and Muslim fundamentalists.” Pointing out that there are Muslim fundamentalists, Obama has argued to Goldberg, will only strengthen them against the modernizers. Over the past week, prominent conservative commentators have agreed with Obama’s position. Eli Lake from Bloomberg and Prof. John Yoo writing in National Review, among others, criticized presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for speaking openly radical Islam. Like Goldberg, they argued that Trump’s outspokenness alienates moderate Muslims. But what moderate Muslims is Obama trying to help? Consider his treatment of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Sisi is without a doubt, the most outspoken and powerful advocate of a moderate reformation of Islam, and of Islamic rejection of jihad, alive today. Sisi has staked his power and his life on his war to defeat the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State and jihadist Islam in general. Sisi speaks openly about the danger of jihadist Islam. In his historic speech before the leading Sunni clerics at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University on January 1, 2015, Sisi challenged the clerics to reform Islam. Among other things he said, “I address the religious clerics. We have to think hard about what we are facing.... It is inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic nation to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! “That thinking – I am not saying ‘religion,’ but ‘thinking’ – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have held sacred over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world!... “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion – so that they themselves may live? Impossible! “I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move...because this Islamic nation is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.” Certainly since September 11, 2001, no Muslim leader has issues a clearer call for moderation in Islam than Sisi did in that speech. And he has continued to speak in the manner ever since. No other Muslim leader of note has put everything on the line as Sisi has to defeat the forces of jihad both on the field and in the mosques. Moreover, Sisi has put his anti-jihadist belief into action by expanding security cooperation between Egypt and Israel and by bringing the Gulf states into his undeclared alliance with the Jewish state. He has also acted to end the demonization of Israel in the Egyptian media. Obviously, supporting Sisi is a no-brainer for a leader who insists that his goal is to empower moderate Muslims. And yet, far from being Sisi’s greatest supporter, Obama opposes him. Since Sisi led the Egyptian military in overthrowing the Obama-backed Muslim Brotherhood regime as it was poised to transform Egypt into a jihadist terrorist state, Obama has worked to undermine him. Obama has denied Sisi weapons critical to his fight with ISIS in Sinai. He has repeatedly and consistently chastised Sisi for human rights abuses against radical Islamists who, if permitted to return to power, would trounce the very notion of human rights while endangering the US’s key interests in Middle East. Then there is Iran. If Obama fears radical Islam, as Goldberg insists that he does, why did he turn his back on the Green Revolution in 2009? Why did he betray the millions of Iranians who rose up against their Islamist leaders in the hopes of installing a democratic order in Iran where women’s rights, and minority rights are respected? Why did he instead side with the radical, jihadist, terrorism-supporting, nuclear weapons-developing and -proliferating ayatollahs? And why has Obama striven to reach an accommodation with the Iranian regime despite its continued dedication to the destruction of the US? Goldberg’s claim that Obama is interested in empowering Muslim moderates in their fight against radicals doesn’t pass the laugh test. Obama’s actual schemes for relating to – as opposed to acknowledging, fighting or defeating – the forces of jihad involve empowering those forces at the expense of the moderates who oppose them. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule – like Obama’s belated assistance to the Kurds in Syria and Iraq. But that doesn’t mean that empowering Islamic jihadists at the expense of moderate Muslims is not Obama’s overarching strategy. In the case of the Kurds, Obama only agreed to help them after spending years training Syrian opposition forces aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. It was only after nearly all of those forces cut contact with their American trainers and popped up in al-Qaida-aligned militias that Obama began actively supporting the Kurds. Then there is his behavior toward American jihadists. Almost every major jihadist attack on US soil since Obama took office has been carried out by US citizens. But Obama has not countered the threat they pose by embracing American Muslims who reject jihad. To the contrary, Obama has spent the past seven- and-a-half years empowering radical Muslims and Islamic groups like the pro-Hamas terrorism apologists from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). This week The Daily Caller reported that MPAC President Salam al-Marayati, is serving as an adviser to the US Department of Homeland Security. Marayati accused Israel of responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the US, and has called on Muslims not to cooperate with federal counter-terrorism probes. According to the report, Marayati has visited the White House 11 times since 2009. The Daily Caller also reported that a Syrian immigrant to the US was hired to serve as a member of Obama’s task for on “violent extremism” last year. Laila Alawa, who joined the task force the day she received US citizenship, referred to the September 11 attacks as an event that “changed the world for good.” According to the Daily Caller, her task force called for the administration to avoid using the terms “jihad” and “Shari’a” in discussing terrorism – as if Obama needed the tip. So far from helping Muslim moderates, Obama’s actual policy is to help radical Muslims. In stark opposition to his talking points to Goldberg, since he entered office, Obama has worked to empower radical Muslims in the US and throughout the Middle East at the expense of moderates. Indeed, it is hard to think of an anti-jihad Muslim leader in the US or in the Middle East whom Obama has supported. The victims in Orlando, San Bernadino, Garland, Amarillo, Boston and beyond are proof that Obama’s actual policies are not making America safer. The rise of ISIS and Iran makes clear that his actual policies are making the world more dangerous. Maybe if his actual policies were what he claims they are, things might be different today. Maybe White House support for anti-jihadist Muslims combined with a purge of all mention of jihad and related terms from the federal lexicon would be the winning policy. But on its face, it is hard to see how forbidding federal employees from discussing jihadists in relevant terms makes sense. How can enforcing ignorance of a problem help you to solve it? How does refusing to call out the Islamic extremists that Islamic moderates like the Green revolutionaries and Sisi risk their lives to fight weaken them? How does empowering jihad apologists from CAIR and MPAC help moderate, anti-jihad American Muslims who currently have no voice in Obama’s White House? Eli Lake argued that it was by keeping mum on jihad that then-president George W. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus convinced Sunni tribal leaders in Iraq to join the US in fighting al-Qaida during the surge campaign in 2007-2008. The same leaders now support ISIS. A counter-argument to Lake’s is that Bush’s policy of playing down the jihadist doctrine of the likes of al-Qaida had nothing to do with the Sunni chieftains’ decision to side with the US forces. Rather, they worked with the Americans first because the Americans paid them a lot of money to do so. And second, because they believed the Americans when they said that they would stay the course in Iraq. They now side with ISIS because they don’t trust America, and would rather live under ISIS rule than under Iranian rule. In other words, for them, the question wasn’t one of political niceties, but of financial gain and power assessments. And that remains the question that determines their actions today. In the 15 years since September 11, first under Bush, and since 2009, to a more extreme degree under Obama, the US has refused to name the enemy that fights America with the expressed aim of destroying it. Maybe, just maybe, this is one of the reasons that the Americans have also failed to truly help anti-jihadist – or moderate – Muslims. Maybe you can’t help one without calling out the other. 3a)
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Most of us call it the Vietnam War. It left millions dead, and millions more wounded over a nearly two decades long conflict.
It caused catastrophic medical and environmental damage from over 75 million liters of the cancer-causing Agent Orange courtesy of the Monsanto Corporation.
And of course there’s all the unexploded ordinance that still exists across the countryside here which continues to maim and kill civilians year after year.
Financially, when adjusted to 2016 dollars, the war in Vietnam cost American taxpayers over $1 TRILLION in direct military costs alone.
So what exactly did Uncle Sam get for this exceptional investment?
Nothing. Certainly nothing positive.
Saigon fell on April 30, 1975, and the north and south were merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
So the US government’s containment agenda to prevent the spread of communism was a total failure.
But then something completely EXPECTED happened: Vietnam went broke.
Under communist rule, Vietnam suffered some of the worst economic conditions imaginable: soaring debt, inflation, corruption, unemployment, rampant poverty, and even famine.
The central planners created extraordinary mismatches in supply and demand and production inefficiencies.
It was just like those old stories from the Soviet Union-- too many factories making left boots without any factories making right boots.
This lunacy lasted for years, resulting in mass migration and a full-on refugee crisis.
Things finally started to change after the Soviet Union collapsed-- a giant warning sign that socialism and central planning simply don’t work.
By the late 1980s, China, Vietnam, and other Asian socialist states were among the most impoverished countries in the world.
Yet market-oriented Hong Kong and Singapore were right next door… and thriving.
Eventually they saw the light, and nearly all of these socialist countries started a long, slow conversion to embrace capitalism.
It really started in earnest about 15 years ago after Vietnam signed a trade deal with the United States.
And since then the changes have been extraordinary.
Vietnam is now consistently one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Here in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), the skyline constantly has new additions with office towers and condo buildings.
The dramatic increase in standard of living here has been astonishing.
All you have to do is walk down any one of the city’s streets and see locals driving their new motorbikes, pulling up to a trendy air-conditioned café for a cup of coffee and high speed Internet on their smart phone.
Last night I walked by the dilapidated headquarters of the local chapter of the Communist Youth Organization.
Next door is the Young Businesspeople Association. Across the street is a luxurious new shopping mall. And a block away you’ll find McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts.
That pretty much sums it up: Capitalism ALWAYS wins.
Rather than fight the war, the US government would have been a lot better off saying, “Oh you want to be Communist? Wonderful! You go ahead an enjoy that, and give us a call in 20 years once you’re totally impoverished…”
It would have saved a hell of a lot of time, money, and lives.
Capitalism always wins because people want the comfort and lifestyle that become possible when talented people have the incentive to work hard and innovate.
It doesn’t even really require too much to create these incentives. The recipe is simple: property rights, financial reward, and limited bureaucracy.
Just bear in mind that all three are critical.
If it takes 4 years and 600 permits to start a business, for example, it won’t matter if tax rates are low and property rights are sacred; there will still be too many disincentives to produce.
So when governments start redistributing wealth and property and creating mountains of regulations to ‘protect’ the people, they degrade all three factors.
Remember the Universal Law of Prosperity: You have to produce more than you consume.
So when there are disincentives that destroy production, prosperity suffers and everyone is worse off. It’s so simple.
Amazingly enough, though, so much of the West seems to be sprinting in the direction of central planning.
The amount of regulations created every single day by the US government is just shocking-- TODAY alone another 507 pages of rules and notices were published.
It’s also astounding to see how prominent socialism is becoming in the Land of the Free.
There’s this pervasive fantasy that people can get a bunch of free stuff and we all end up like Norway.
The reality, of course, is ending up like Venezuela with shortages of toilet paper and a currency in hyperinflation.
What I find so striking, however, is that while the West seems to be moving faster and faster towards this fantasy of socialism and central planning, out here in Asia they’re going in the opposite direction.
Vietnam has already had its horrible socialist experiment. They learned their lesson.
And though Vietnam is starting from a much lower base, and they have a LONG way to go, they’re pushing to become more market oriented, and hence, much more prosperous.
It’s really not rocket science. Where you have freedom, you have prosperity. Where you don’t, you have Venezuela.Until tomorrow,Simon BlackFounder, SovereignMan.com
5)
Ideologues Make for Dangerous Politicians
By Victor Davis Hanson
Hillary Clinton is a seasoned liberal politician, but one with few core beliefs. Her positions on subjects such as gay marriage, free-trade agreements, the Keystone XL pipeline, the Iraq War, the Assad regime in Syria and the use of the term "radical Islam" all seem to hinge on what she perceives 51 percent of the public to believe on any given day.
Such politicians believe truth is a relative construct. Things are deemed false by politicians only if they cannot convince the public that they are true -- and vice versa. When the majority of Americans no longer believe Clinton's yarns about her private email server to the point of not wanting to vote for her, then she will change her narrative and create new, convenient truths to reflect the new consensus.
Donald Trump is an amateur politician but a politician nevertheless. He is ostensibly conservative, but he likewise seems to change his positions on a number of issues -- from abortion to the Iraq War -- depending on what he feels has become the majority position. And as with Clinton, Trump's idea of truth is defined as what works, while falsity is simply any narrative that proved unusable.
Politicians glad-hand, pander and kiss babies as they seek to become megaphones for majority opinions. But ideologues are different. They often brood and lecture that their utopian dreams are not shared by the supposedly less informed public.
To gain power, of course, ideologues can temporarily become political animals. Barack Obama ran in 2008 on popular positions such as reducing the national debt and opposing gay marriage and immigration amnesties, only to flip after he was re-elected and no longer needed to pander to perceived majority opinions.
But otherwise, Obama the ideologue seems to believe that big redistributive government is always necessary to achieve a mandated equality of result -- regardless of whether it ever works or should work in reality. He opposes a reduction in capital gains tax rates even though he concedes that such cuts might bring in more revenue.
The administration has deemed the Affordable Care Act successful even though Obama's assurances that it would lower deductibles and premiums, give patients greater choices, and ensure continuity in medical providers and plans have all proven to be untrue.
No matter: Obamacare fulfills the president's preconceived notion that state-mandated health care is superior to what the private sector can provide.
Abroad, Obama starts from the premise that an overweening U.S. is not to be congratulated for saving the world in World War II, winning the Cold War and ushering in globalization. Instead, its inherent unfairness to indigenous peoples, its opposition to revolutionary regimes and its supposed interventionist bullying disqualify it from being a moral and muscular leader of the world.
As a consequence of all this, facts often must be created to match pre-existing ideology.
A homophobic, radical Islamic terrorist in Orlando shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he mowed down the innocent in a gay nightclub. He called 911 to make sure the world knew that his killing spree was in service to the Islamic State. And in the midst of his murdering, he even called a local TV news station to brag on his jihadist martyrdom in progress. No matter. To Obama, who asserts that radical Islamic terrorism, which he refuses to identify in such terms, poses little threat (far less of a threat, he has said, than the dangers posed by accidental falls in bathtubs), the Orlando shooting was instead a symptom of a lack of gun control or endemic homophobia -- anything other than what the killer himself said it was.
Guns, of course, had nothing to do with the 3,000 people killed on 9/11, with the Boston Marathon bombing, or with recent terrorist attacks in Oklahoma and at the University of California at Merced perpetrated by blade-wielding assailants. Tight restrictions on semi-automatic weapons could no more stop shootings in Europe than stop an epidemic of inner-city shootings in Chicago. No matter: The Orlando shooting must be ascribed to the availability of guns rather than to radical Islamic terrorism.
In both word and deed, Iran, Cuba and Turkey are revolutionary societies in turmoil that have often voiced anti-Americanism. But to Obama, who at times has warmed up to all three, those regimes fit his deductive notion that America's past behavior has earned it understandable antipathy from countries with legitimate grievances.
Bipartisan analyses agree that the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq in December 2011 threw away the victory obtained by the American surge of 2007, eroded the foundation of the nascent Iraqi democracy, and helped to birth and empower the Islamic State.
But to an ideologue like Obama, the withdrawal simply reflected a universal truth that the U.S. must get out and leave the Middle East to its rightful owners -- even if the president has been forced to send nearly 5,000 troops back into Iraq.
In general, politicians are rank opportunists, but at least most of them are malleable and attuned to public opinion.
But ideologues are far more anti-empirical -- and thus dangerous.
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6) CAIR to Stand Trial for Massive Fraud
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) will stand trial on charges of fraud and cover up for alleged crimes perpetrated against hundreds of victims, according to a new ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
The case against CAIR National was originally dismissed by a federal judge but unanimously overturned by the appellate court. Two cases are involved in the suit, which the appellate court consolidated into one, since both cases involve racketeering, a federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) crime.
The lawsuits claim that CAIR National was aware that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” at the now defunct CAIR-Maryland/Virginia chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for legal representation.
Moreover, the suits claim, CAIR knew of this fraud and purposefully conspired with Days to keep the CAIR clients from discovering that their legal matters were being mishandled or not handled at all. In addition, the complaints allege that, according to CAIR’s own internal documents, there were hundreds of victims of the fraud scheme.
While the original federal judge in the case ruled that Days and CAIR’s Virginia chapter were liable for fraud, he concluded that CAIR National was not responsible for Days’ conduct. The appeals court, however, found that, upon a review of the evidence, there was a direct relationship between CAIR National and Days.
David Yerushalmi, senior counsel for the plaintiffs in the case and co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center, remarked, “CAIR engaged in a massive criminal fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized.
“In his ruling, Judge Friedman [the original judge] inexplicably ignored material facts that establish CAIR National’s liability and then engaged in a transparently disingenuous ‘weighing’ of the factual evidence he did address … We are thankful that the appeals court has rectified the trial court’s errors. Now, at long last, our clients will go before a jury and get their day in court.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has a history of Islamist extremism including links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. Justice Department labeled CAIR an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a Hamas-financing trial and listed CAIR as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.
CAIR was also listed by the Justice Department as a part of the Brotherhood’s covert “Palestine Committee” to support Hamas in the United States.
In addition, CAIR was officially designated a terrorist organization on by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on November 15, 2014.
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