Obama, Hillary, di Blasio et. al Beyond Me When It Comes To Terrorism. They Could Not Win WW 2. Emma! Sabato!

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My oldest granddaughter lives in New York, graduated from  Trinity University in Hartford with a degree in art.

Recently Giphy hired her to create a gif for the 20th anniversary of their debut album. Emma's work received 1.6 million hits  

Frankly, I do not understand what this is all about so my oldest daughter, her mother, tried to clue me in but I am afraid not with much success.


She e mailed me the following:  "Here is a link

http://giphy.com/gifs/spice-girls-baby-l2Sq3Cys6QTUCuyKA

It should take you to a screen and you should see it.

It is really a very complex process whereby she creates

three different sketches for all the different costumes.  

Then another 3 - 6 for each movement that each girl makes.

then there was a layer for the lettering at the top and the

color changes that they go through.  And then there is a

code for putting it on "loop" so that it keeps moving and

for how long.  

They LOVE her work and love how swiftly she was able to 

deliver this.  The company is a solid and successful startup

that has positioned itself to be the google of the GIF world.

In other words people searching for GIFs that signify something

specific, or feature a person or brand, go to giphy.com because

they have the hugest warehouse of these things.

They also have on staff illustrators who work on creating

brand based GIFs, and this is where there could be potential for 

Emma to work for them full time.  But in any event, she will

be getting more freelance from them in the future.  And what they

put up of hers last week received 1.6 million hits in an afternoon.

So, she definitely has a very marketable skill set here.

My granddaughter sent me the following:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spice_Girls

Whether I understand this new world or not, Emma is very talented and her art work is very creative.
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Larry Sabato is one of the best  in my opinion at tracking and interpreting polling results. (See 1 below.)
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I basically have given up trying to understand Obama's avoidance of reality when it comes to terrorism.

His inability to define the perpetrators and to come to grips with what is happening in our nation escapes me.

Furthermore Hillary's desire to build upon Obama's failures is not only befuddling but dangerous.

What possibly will it take for the likes of Obama, Hillary,  di Blasio et al to realize Radical Islam is at war with us?

Today the spokesman for Obama tells us we are in a narrative war.

Can anyone in their right mind believe Obama and Clinton could have defeated The Axis, could have won WW 2?(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Israelis understand what Obama, Hillary and their ilk refuse to comprehend. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Why Syria matters - according to George Friedman. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)

The Trump Surge

A Commentary By Larry J. Sabato, Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley

in Political Commentary

Or is it a Clinton Fallback?

And then, everything changed.

Well, not everything, but enough to generate the first major revision in our electoral map, and all of it is in Donald Trump’s direction for now .

Let us make our view perfectly clear: We still believe that Hillary Clinton is more likely than Trump to win the election, and she still has the advantage in the Electoral College. Yet it is equally apparent that she has stumbled badly in recent weeks, fueling Trump’s polling advance. And the Republican nominee has more pathways to 270 electoral votes than he did before.

Clinton disappeared for long stretches before Labor Day to do fundraising and failed to define any overriding positive message about what a Hillary Clinton presidency would mean. Then came the “basket of deplorables” gaffe (which some believe might actually help Clinton with her party base) and the lie by omission about her pneumonia, a serious condition that deserves scrutiny. Instead of transparency, there was a bold gambit by Clinton to avoid any health disclosure that might give credence to longtime, far-right theories that she was at death’s door. This ill-advised error reinforced the public’s view that Clinton is secretive and untruthful.

At the same time, two other developments helped Trump. His new (third) campaign team, especially Kellyanne Conway, seems to have been able to force some discipline on the unpredictable billionaire. The number of middle-of-the-night tweets has diminished, the use of scripts and the teleprompter is up, and Trump is doing events other than giant rallies filled with true believers who encourage his worst instincts — though he continues to make outrageous statements with some frequency, such as Friday’s suggestion that Clinton’s Secret Service team should be disarmed. (Almost any other candidate would be disqualified by the kinds of remarks Trump has offered. In this sense, there truly is a double standard in media coverage that benefits Trump.)

Second, and as important as anything else we’ve mentioned, the pollsters have switched from highlighting the trial heats of all registered voters to a more select group they themselves define, called likely voters. The composition of this group is influenced by the response rates of partisans and their enthusiasm, or lack of it, to vote in this election. It will surprise no one following this contest to learn that Trump supporters, and Republicans generally, are more committed just now. Clinton has not lit a fire under her supporters, and to the contrary, her missteps have disheartened them a bit. It is also true that Democrats frequently get engaged later in the campaign season, and as a result, we might expect the enthusiasm gap to decline somewhat in the seven weeks remaining until Nov. 8. Clinton’s best surrogates (Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, etc.) can help, but only Hillary Clinton herself can provide enough incentive for many voters to show up.

The third-party candidates aren’t helping Clinton either. Put together, Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Jill Stein seem to be hurting Clinton more than Trump, particularly among the youngest voters — voters who have little use for Trump but also are hardly inspired by Clinton. Politico ’s Steve Shepard found that one survey, from Fox News , showed  about a quarter of voters under 35 backing Johnson or Stein. Another, from Quinnipiac, pegged third-party support amongst millennials at an eye-popping 44%.

Clinton tends to do a little better in most surveys with the one-on-one matchup with Trump than in the four-way polls, and it’s easy to see why.

No doubt the nominee’s better polls have helped nudge some reluctant Republican officeholders and donors more toward Trump, and that’s a plus for him. At the same time, these close surveys may provide fuel to get more Democrats fully motivated. Most have thought Trump couldn’t win; pollsters now say otherwise, and it’s a shock to the Democratic system. Whatever Clinton’s positive message turns out to be, it’s the FOT Factor (Fear of Trump) that is her best weapon. Fear of Hillary (FOH) assists Trump, of course, but Trump himself lights the fire under most of his zealous backers.

Each of these candidates has given the other plenty of ammunition. The latest is a Trump present to Clinton: his somewhat reluctant revival of the odious birther issue. To his great discredit, Trump spent years cheerleading the crackpots, conspiracy theorists, and bigots who pushed the phony claim that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, and thus was ineligible for the presidency. Trump had never renounced that position — until a few days ago, his hand forced by renewed press questioning. For the first time, Trump admitted Obama was born in the U.S., but with breathtaking cheek, he also claimed Hillary Clinton started the controversy in 2008 (false, though some Clinton backers outside the campaign hierarchy mentioned it). Then Trump laughably took credit for ending the controversy by “forcing” Obama to release his birth certificate in 2011 — after which Trump shamelessly continued to talk darkly about the matter. The outrage that flowed from Trump’s rewriting of history galvanized not just African Americans but Democrats of all stripes. Will this have an impact on the polls? We shall see. As we noted last week, the candidate who is the focus of more, usually unfavorable, news coverage this year tends to lose ground. It may be Trump’s turn.

In addition, the very fact that Trump is now seen as tied with Clinton, with some in the media saying he has a fair to good chance to win, may wake up somnolent, unstimulated Democrats and give Clinton a poll and turnout boost by means of the FOT factor.

The debates are just up the road, beginning a week from today. Few voters switch sides, and most tune in to cheer for their side. Still, this election has become mainly about the contrasting engagement of the two party bases. The performance turned in by each candidate will either energize or depress the base, and thus affect the polls somewhat. But that subject is one we’ll address in the next issue.

One more thing before we get to the new map: It’s reasonable to ask why we are making substantial changes to our ratings in a special Monday issue just four days after an update where we made only minor alterations.

In the midst of writing that earlier update, we were stunned by the flood of bad numbers for Clinton, which compounded erosion that had been taking place over the course of the previous few weeks. Some of this was natural — Clinton’s post-convention lead was probably artificially high — but late last week her numbers started to curdle, both before and after our regular Crystal Ball release on Thursday. Credible pollsters like CNN /ORC, Bloomberg /Selzer, CBS News /New York Times and others produced polls showing Trump up three to five points in the typically critical state of Ohio, up in Florida, up in Iowa, and virtually tied nationally.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that we’re just in a low point of Clinton support: She was absent from the trail and suffered from a series of bad headlines, coming to a climax last weekend with her pneumonia-induced fall captured on camera. Democrats across the country might just not have been participating as much in polls, much like what happened to Barack Obama in 2012 after the first debate. Many Democrats believe — hope? — this is the case. But let’s not over-apply the lessons of 2012: That was a more stable race between an incumbent and a traditional challenger — and, crucially, the Democrats were seeking just a second straight term in the White House, not a third, when public fatigue with the ruling party can grow. There was no measurable third-party support in 2012, and the candidates did not have the bad favorability ratings registered by both major nominees this time. Yes, much of the fluctuation in polls can be artificial, but are we so sure that nothing has changed? Some are, but consider us sufficiently moved by the new numbers. Clinton of course can rebound, but it is at least possible that the recent changes are two campaign ships passing in the night, with Clinton dropping and Trump moving into an actual lead.

Many have been considering the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom a few months ago, when in a shock and disappointment to elites across the pond, British voters narrowly opted to leave the European Union. Brexit’s surprising victory is sometimes portrayed as a massive failure of polls, but in aggregate the polls presented a mixed picture. Though “Remain” was leading in the HuffPost Pollster average, it was only by a hair: the final average pegged the race as 45.8% Remain to 45.3% Leave. So it was reasonable to look at that race as a Toss-up, but many assumed the undecideds would move to Remain. That assumption was wrong.

Brexit isn’t necessarily a great parallel for our election, both because it was a ballot issue while ours is a choice among candidates, and because the British Brexit electorate (6% nonwhite) and the U.S. presidential electorate (approaching 30% nonwhite) are dramatically different. Clinton, even now, retains a lead in national polling averages, though it’s dwindling. She’s up a little over three points in HuffPost , and only about a point in RealClearPolitics , which is more sensitive to the most recent surveys. That’s a little bit better for Clinton than the final Brexit polls for Remain but not dramatically so. The danger for analysts, and voters, would be to assume that a basically tied race would break for Clinton, because so few analysts can imagine Trump as president. We cannot make that mistake come November.

Now, to our state-by-state ratings. Our practice here at the Crystal Ball is governed by one word: patience. Many of you have written us for months, wanting to know why we haven’t changed our March 31 map more significantly. The short answer is: We didn’t need to do so. We don’t flip states every time a poll suggests one candidate or the other has moved ahead somewhere. We wait until we see a credible pattern emerge. Our early bet was that Clinton might run the table in the swing states. This has been replaced, at least for the moment, by a recognition that Trump has surged (or Clinton has fallen, or Republicans are more excited than Democrats) in several states.

We are also re-introducing the Toss-up in a few places. Although we tried to avoid the rating this cycle, we assumed circumstances would eventually force our hand and push us to look at a few states as true coin flips. As always, though, the Crystal Ball will call every state and every race for Congress before Election Day.

Simultaneously, and related, the Democratic position in the fierce battle to control the U.S. Senate has deteriorated. Naturally, in an age with relatively little ticket-splitting, when Trump moves up, so do GOP chances to hold the upper chamber. Democrats had counted on a big Clinton victory to lift them to at least 50 Senate seats, if not an outright majority.

That isn’t currently happening, as we explain below. Obviously, if Clinton regains her mojo and revs up the Democratic base to a greater degree, Democrats might still be able to capture the Senate — which will be critical to Clinton’s ability to get Supreme Court and other nominees confirmed, for instance, should she be elected.

Electoral College: Trump’s standing improves across the map

Table 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings changes

Map 1: Crystal Ball Electoral College ratings

Our Electoral College changes this week are considerable.

First of all, Florida, Nevada, and North Carolina, three diverse, growing states, move from Leans Democratic to Toss-up. Polls have been close in all three for months. There are reasons to think Clinton will still win each: She should out-organize and out-advertise Trump in the trio, which may especially be vital in the Sunshine (Mega)State, as Politico ’s Marc Caputo recently noted. But Florida barely voted for Obama in 2012, and Clinton has had persistent weakness in Nevada. You could argue that North Carolina may be the likeliest of the three to vote for Clinton, strange-sounding since the state didn’t even back Obama in 2012 (but did in 2008). But beyond Trump, Republicans have local problems there — Gov. Pat McCrory (R) is unpopular and is a slight underdog for reelection. Be that as it may, all three states look like coin flips to us, as does the single electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District.

Trump’s strength with white voters who do not have a college degree is especially helpful to him in Iowa and Ohio, two places where Trump’s polling has been strong lately. 

Dueling Bloomberg and CNN Ohio polls on Wednesday, both with Trump up five, were reinforced with a Suffolk survey on Thursday finding Trump up three. Ohio, a traditional bellwether state — one of us wrote the book on it recently — typically does vote slightly more Republican than the nation, and it seems like a safe bet that Trump will do better in Ohio than he does nationally. In a very close national race, it’s not hard to imagine Ohio voting for Trump while Clinton wins the Electoral College. If so, it would be just the third time in 31 elections that Ohio would have voted for the loser. What’s essentially impossible to imagine is Ohio voting for Clinton while Trump wins nationally, given history (no Republican has ever won without it) and the state’s demographics (a little more favorable to Trump than much of the rest of the Midwest). Iowa is a state where Democrats have maintained a tenuous advantage based on their over-performance with white voters (compared to the national average). But that edge may be eroding, and Trump has led five of the last eight polls there (and was tied in a sixth). Both states move from Leans Democratic to Leans Republican for now. Iowa doesn’t appear likely to be decisive this year — though Trump may do better there than in any state that Obama won in 2012 — and Ohio probably won’t provide the crucial 270th electoral vote this year either, but a Clinton recovery in the Buckeye State would foreclose Trump’s chances. Maine’s Second Congressional District also moves toward Trump for similar demographic reasons.

Clinton retains an edge in Colorado, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, although as the race got tighter nationally the numbers seemed to close in at least some of these states, too. An NBC News /Marist poll last weekend had Clinton only up two in New Hampshire. The University of Mary Washington had Clinton up just three in Virginia (though the Democratic pollster Public Policy Polling had Clinton up six), and the Detroit Free Press had Clinton up three in Michigan. Clinton got a better poll on Saturday night — Muhlenberg College/The Morning Call found her up eight in Pennsylvania. Still, there’s no Clinton “firewall” if Trump moves into a national tie or even starts taking the lead — the states all move to at least some degree when the national polls swing significantly in one direction. These half-dozen states, which represent the inner walls of Clinton’s Fortress Obama, move from Likely Democratic to Leans Democratic.

Finally, Missouri — a one-time bellwether itself that for a century almost always voted for the winner — has become reliably Republican over the last decade. There’s just no path for Clinton there given the current state of the race, so it moves from Likely Republican to Safe Republican.

Despite all of these ratings changes toward Trump, an Electoral College majority still at least leans toward Clinton — but just 272 electoral votes, a bare majority.

Clinton’s slide boosts Republican Senate chances

Table 2: Crystal Ball Senate ratings changes

Map 2: Crystal Ball Senate ratings

Right before Labor Day — when Clinton still appeared to be on the path to a comfortable, Obama-style national win — we shifted some Senate races toward the Democrats, thinking that Trump would end up sinking Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH). But with national polls very tight, Ayotte and Toomey find themselves in a better position because they’ve both demonstrated the ability to run ahead of Trump in the polls. If Trump wins either New Hampshire or Pennsylvania, it probably means he will be president — and that would almost certainly mean that Ayotte and/or Toomey would be winning as well. If Trump falls off — certainly possible — then Ayotte and Toomey could go back to being underdogs. But in a close national race that is also close in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Ayotte and Toomey could definitely still hang on. So we’re moving both from Leans Democratic back to Toss-up.

Ever since the general election began, the political world has been debating whether Republican Senate candidates should repudiate Trump. At the very least, most have kept their distance. Yet Trump’s improvement in the polls could allow them to survive, even if Trump doesn’t win their states.

Indiana is a different story. There, it’s ex-Sen. Evan Bayh (D) who needs to run ahead of Hillary Clinton, because she almost certainly will lose the state by a wide margin. A recent WTHR/Howey Politics poll showed Bayh up just four points, 44%-40%, a troublesome sign for Bayh: Because the former senator already has strong name ID, his opponent, Rep. Todd Young (R, IN-9), may ultimately have the clearer path to a plurality because he’s the Republican running in a Republican state, although Bayh does mainly have a positive statewide profile. Ultimately, Trump’s margin matters here, too. Mitt Romney won the state by 10 points in 2012. If Trump does as well or better than that, Bayh’s path becomes a lot rockier. So too would the path of Democrat John Gregg, who is seeking the open governorship against Republican Eric Holcomb. Gregg, like Bayh, has a lead and more name ID in the Howey poll but probably has less room to grow. Trump’s vice presidential nominee, incumbent Gov. Mike Pence, has united the GOP factions behind the ticket in a normally Republican state, and it benefits the whole Hoosier GOP ticket.

One other change is shifting Ohio’s Senate race from Leans Republican to Likely Republican. Sen. Rob Portman (R) has been pulling away for the last couple of months, and Democratic outside groups have cut bait on former Gov. Ted Strickland (D). Portman is running a strong campaign and he and fellow Republicans continue to hammer Strickland over his time in office, which coincided with the national 2008 economic collapse. This was entirely predictable, and it has worked quite well. The only dangers to Portman were his lack of statewide name ID – which he has effectively corrected — and a drag from the top of the ticket. Now that Trump could win or come close to winning Ohio, the threat he posed to Portman appears to be eliminated.

What’s worse for Ohio and national Democrats is that while there are some young potential statewide prospects waiting in the weeds for an opportunity — including Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld (D), who Strickland handily defeated in the Senate primary — they used this prominent statewide slot on Strickland, who is almost certainly running his last race. Compare that to Missouri, where Secretary of State Jason Kander (D), a fresh face, is pushing Sen. Roy Blunt (R). Kander, who released one of the best ads of the whole cycle last week, is an underdog, but he has received strong, bipartisan reviews for his performance so far, and even if he loses, he is getting exposure that might help him in a future run. We have Missouri’s Senate race (Leans Republican) now listed as more competitive than Ohio’s (Likely Republican).

Because of the increasing party polarization of the electorate and the erosion of ticket-splitting in recent Senate elections, we’ve thought the winning presidential party would have a leg up in the race for the Senate. That would almost assuredly be the case if Trump won the presidency — it would be very surprising if Democrats won the Senate in such a scenario (and of course Republicans would hold the House, too — a likely outcome in any event). But the now-tight presidential race suggests that perhaps Clinton could pull off a narrow victory that still allows the GOP to hold the Senate. If so, and given the very favorable Senate map coming up for Republicans in 2018, it’s possible that a President Hillary Clinton would face a hostile House and Senate for as long as she was in office (whether one term or two).

Of course, that assumes there is a President Hillary Clinton — an election result that seems to us to be more in question now than at any point since Donald Trump wrapped up the Republican presidential nomination.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Geoffrey Skelley is the Associate Editor at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Larry J. Sabato is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik

See Other Political Commentary by Geoffrey Skelley

See Other Political Commentary by Larry Sabato

See Other Political Commentary in Political Commentary
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2)

The Legacies of Barack Obama

Victor Davis Hanson 

Without policy achievements to hang his hat on, Obama’s rhetoric will be how he’s remembered – and the results have been ugly.

On his recent Asian tour, President Obama characterized his fellow Americans (the most productive workers in the world) as “lazy.”

In fact, he went on to deride Americans for a list of supposed transgressions ranging from the Vietnam War to environmental desecration to the 19th century treatment of Native Americans.

“If you’re in the United States,” the president said, “sometimes you can feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people.”

The attack on supposedly insular Americans was somewhat bizarre, given that Obama himself knows no foreign languages. He often seems confused about even basic world geography. (His birthplace of Hawaii is not “Asia,” Austrians do not speak “Austrian,” and the Falkland Islands are not the Maldives).

Obama’s sense of history is equally weak. Contrary to his past remarks, the Islamic world did not spark either the Western Renaissance or the Enlightenment. Cordoba was not, as he once suggested, an Islamic center of “tolerance” during the Spanish Inquisition; in fact, its Muslim population had been expelled during the early Reconquista over two centuries earlier.

In another eerie ditto of his infamous 2008 attack on the supposedly intolerant Pennsylvania “clingers,” Obama returned to his theme that ignorant Americans “typically” become xenophobic and racist: “Typically, when people feel stressed, they turn on others who don’t look like them.” (“Typically” is not a good Obama word to use in the context of racial relations, since he once dubbed his own grandmother a “typical white person.”)

Too often Obama has gratuitously aroused racial animosities with inflammatory rhetoric such as “punish our enemies,” or injected himself into the middle of hot-button controversies like the Trayvon Martin case, the Henry Louis Gates melodrama, and the “hands up, don’t shoot” Ferguson mayhem.

Most recently, Obama seemed to praise backup 49ers quarterback and multimillionaire Colin Kaepernick for his refusal to stand during the National Anthem, empathizing with Kaepernick’s claims of endemic American racism.

What is going on in Obama’s home stretch?

Apparently Obama is veering even further to the left, in hopes of establishing a rhetorical progressive legacy in lieu of any lasting legislative or foreign-policy achievement. Turning the presidency into an edgy soapbox is seemingly all that is left of Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform” the country.

But divisive sermonizing and the issuing of executive orders are not the same as successfully reforming our health-care system. The Affordable Care Act, born of exaggeration and untruth, is now in peril as insurers pull out and the costs of premiums and deductibles soar.

Even presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not really defending the Obama administration’s past “red line” in Syria, the “reset” with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the bombing of Libya, the Benghazi tragedy, the euphemistic rebranding of Islamic terrorism as mere “violent extremism,” the abrupt pullout from (and subsequent collapse of) Iraq, or the Iran nuclear deal that so far seems to have made the theocracy both rich and emboldened.

The U.S. economy — with its record-low growth over eight years, near-record labor non-participation rates, record national debt, and record consecutive years of zero interest rates — is not much of a legacy either.

Racial relations in this country seem as bad as they have been in a half-century.

Given the scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s use of a private, unsecured e-mail server for official State Department communications, the politicization of the IRS, the messes at the GSA and VA, and the current ethical confusion at the FBI and Justice Department over Clinton’s violations, Obama has not made good on his promise of a transparent, efficient, and honest government.

Near energy independence through fracking is certainly a revolutionary development, but it arrived largely despite, not because of, the Obama administration.

The sharper the sermon, the more Obama preps himself for his post-presidency as a social justice warrior, akin to the pre-political incarnation of Obama as a community organizer.

Following the Clinton model, a post-presidential Obama will no doubt garner huge fees as a “citizen of the world” — squaring the circle of becoming fabulously rich while offering sharp criticism of the cultural landscape of the capitalist West on everything from sports controversies to pending criminal trials.

What, then, is the presidential legacy of Barack Obama?

It will not be found in either foreign- or domestic-policy accomplishment. More likely, he will be viewed as an outspoken progressive who left office loudly in the same manner that he entered it — as a critic of the culture and country in which he has thrived.

But there may be another, unspoken legacy of Obama, and it is his creation of the candidacy of Donald J. Trump.

Trump is running as an angry populist, fueled by the promise that whatever supposed elites such as Obama have done to the country, he will largely undo.

Obama’s only legacy seems to be that “hope and change” begat “make America great again.”

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/michael-flynn-terrorists-jesus-christ-wage/2016/09/19/id/748990/

2a) Hillary...bring ‘em in along with their household furnishings.

If you have doubts about immigration this might clear them up!!!

Greek Border guards found 52 tons of guns and ammunition in 14 Conex containers disguised as "furniture" for Muslim immigrants. 

FOR YOUR INFORMATION--YAVEX USA IS A TURKISH ARMS MANUFACTURING COMPANY THAT IS LICENSED TO DO BUSINESS IN FORT MEYERS, FLORIDA!!!

Yeah, keep letting them into our country!!!

If this doesn’t convince you that the Obama/Clinton IMMIGRATION policy is nothing less than an ARMED INVASION then nothing will.

Wonder still why all those young (military age) men without children or wives are taking on the task of traveling all those miles posing as refugees?

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3)

Summer camps teach Palestinian kids  that stabbers are heroes Jerusalem camp named after murderer of 3, Baha Alyan Bethlehem camp named after 16-year-old stabber Mamoun Ra'ed Muhammad Al-Khatib Camps held "under the auspices of the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs" and "in partnership with" the PA Ministry of Education's Jerusalem Education Directorate   [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 14, 2016] Nan Jacques Zilberdik Click to view on PMW's website One of the ways the Palestinian leadership turns terrorists into role models and heroes is by naming summer camps after them. This summer, Palestinian children in the Jerusalem area were able to join a summer camp that was named "the Martyr Baha Alyan Pioneers" - after terrorist Baha Alyan who with an accomplice murdered 3 Israelis on a bus last October. The camp was arranged "under the supervision of the [PLO] Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs" - which is headed by Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub - and "in partnership with the Jerusalem Suburbs Education Directorate," which is under the PA Ministry of Education. [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 14, 2016; official PA dailyAl-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 16, 2016] Children from the Bethlehem district were able to join the "Martyr Mamoun Al-Khatib Camp." Al-Khatib was a 16-year-old terrorist who tried to stab an Israeli civilian on Dec.1, 2015. Text on banner: "Under the auspices of the [PLO] Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, Al-Dawha Sport Club, and Al-Dawha branch of Fatah are holding the Mamoun Al-Khatib Summer Camp for children for 2016 between Aug. 13-22, 2016" [Facebook page of the Al-Dawha branch of Fatah, accessed Sept. 18, 2016] The Al-Khatib Camp was also held "under the auspices of the [PLO] Supreme Council for Youth and Sports," and the Deputy Secretary-General of its southern council, Najeh Al-Izza, spoke at the opening event. He "emphasized that the Supreme Council is focusing on the youth sector, as it is the foundation of the future and the hope of the present." (Emphasis added.) He went on to explain that "120 boys and girls will participate in the activities of the Martyr Mamoun Al-Khatib Camp." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 17, 2016] At the camp named after murderer Alyan, the 11 to 17-year-old participants were to receive "informational visits" by the PLO's Palestinian Political Guidance Authority and the PA Police, among others. The fact that these official institutions agreed to send speakers to the camp named after a murderer indicates their endorsement of this practice of turning murderers into role models for children. Palestinian Media Watch recently published a report documenting statements by senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub, glorifying terror and inciting to murder. Rajoub heads the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports, which organized the summer camps. PMW has reported on a scouts' course named after murderer Alyan held by the Palestinian Scout Association and the glorification of the murderer by one of its instructors. Jibril Rajoub is also the chairman of the Palestinian Scout Association. Likewise, events at Palestinian universities have honored Alyan. Earlier this year, Fatah held a summer camp named after terrorist Muhammad Al-Shubaki, who stabbed and wounded an Israel soldier in November 2015. One of the camp activities was a play in which the children played "Zionist jailers" executing Palestinian "heroic prisoners." The following are longer excerpts of the reports on the summer camps: "Today [Aug. 14, 2016], the Beit Anan Club, under the supervision of the [PLO] Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs (which is headed by Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub -Ed.) and in partnership with the Jerusalem Suburbs Education Directorate (which is under the PA Ministry of Education-Ed.), launched the activities of the first Free People of Palestine Summer Camp, Martyr (Shahid) Baha Alyan Pioneers, in the village of Beit Anan, northwest of occupied Jerusalem. This was part of a series of activities and summer camps that the council launched in the various villages and cities of the homeland. The camp includes 55 male and female participants aged 11 to 17, who will be supervised by 15 male and female [camp] counselors from among the male and female youth of the village... It should be noted that the first Free People of Palestine Camp, The Martyr Baha Alyan Pioneers, will include... informational visits by the [PLO's] Palestinian Political Guidance [Authority], the Palestinian [Authority] Police, the [Palestinian] Civil Defense, and by a team from the Beit Anan Medical Center." [Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, Aug. 14, 2016;  first two paragraphs also appeared in the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 16, 2016] Note: The Supreme Council for Youth and Sports states on its website that it is "an official government body subordinate to the PLO." Baha Alyan and Bilal Ghanem - 22 and 23-year-old Palestinian terrorists who on Oct. 13, 2015, boarded a bus in Jerusalem's Armon Hanatziv neighborhood with a gun and a knife and attacked passengers, killing Israelis Haviv Haim (78) and Alon Govberg (51), and Richard Lakin (76), and wounding 3 Israelis. Alyan was shot and killed by an Israeli security guard at the scene and Ghanem, a Hamas terrorist who served time in Israeli prison in 2013-2014, was wounded. Ghanem is serving 3 life sentences and an additional 60 years for these murders. Headline: "The [PLO] Supreme Council for Youth and Sports opened 104 summer camps" "Summer camp activities under the auspices of the [PLO] Supreme Council for Youth and Sports (which is headed by Jibril Rajoub, Deputy Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee -Ed.) have opened, and this year there are 104 camps that are divided as follows: 40 camps in the north, 30 in the center, 30 in the south (i.e., north, center and south of the West Bank), and 4 in the Gaza Strip... In the Southern Council, Deputy Secretary-General [of the Southern Council] Najeh Al-Izza opened the Martyr (Shahid) Mamoun Al-Khatib Camp in the city of Al-Dawha in the Bethlehem district, and emphasized that the Supreme Council is focusing on the youth sector, as it is the foundation of the future and the hope of the present. One hundred and twenty boys and girls will participate in the activities of the Martyr Mamoun Al-Khatib Camp, and it will be run by the Al-Dawha Club." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 17, 2016] Mamoun Ra'ed Muhammad Al-Khatib - 16-year-old Palestinian terrorist who tried to stab an Israeli civilian at the Gush Etzion Junction on Dec.1, 2015. Israeli soldiers at the scene shot and killed Al-Khatib. An Israeli civilian driving by in his car was wounded by shrapnel. 3a) Who Do the Terrorists Pray For? By JONATHAN S. TOBIN  Listen to either of our two leading presidential candidates talk about terrorism and you quickly learn one thing: Neither one really has any notion what is motivating terrorists either abroad or at home. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton reacted to the latest series of domestic terror attacks by, unsurprisingly, attacking each other and asserting that America’s foes have a vested interest in the victory of their opponents. Recently, Clinton said in an Israel television interview that the Islamic State was praying to Allah for Donald Trump to win since that will enable them to better sell the conflict with the West as a religious war. She amplified that view today, saying that by speaking so much about the problem as a conflict with IslamTrump is “giving aid and comfort to our adversaries,” which is a textbook definition of treason. Though he didn’t match this by calling Clinton a traitor, Trump did assert today that she “emboldened terrorists” with her weakness and that they are “hoping and praying for her to be elected president so that they can continue their savagery and murder.” But all this talk about the alleged prayers of murderers misses the point. Neither Clinton nor Trump is offering the nation a good choice for confronting terror. Clinton seems to be promising more of the same of what the Obama administration has done. The U.S. has had some successes in the last eight years, but ISIS remains in control of a vast amount of territory in Iraq and Syria and attacks continue in Europe as well as the United States. It’s not clear, therefore, why anyone should think a Clinton presidency will ensure that the tide will turn in the struggle against Islamist terror. In response, all Trump seems to offer is bluster about toughness and vows of racial profiling that may reassure some but are meaningless in the context of a conflict that requires cooperation with Muslim allies. There have always been some voices raised to wrongly assert that Islamist terror is the understandable payback for offenses given the Muslim world by Americans and Europeans. The proponents of that analysis don’t realize that the impulse for terror exists regardless of whether the West is weak or tough, supports Israel or opposes it. So now it appears that many Americans think Islamist attacks are in some way dependent on the vagaries of American politics. The thinking of both candidates denies a deeply ideological, faith-based movement any agency for its own actions. Islamists don’t need Donald Trump to motivate recruits. The notion that Muslims are hated and oppressed by the West has been deeply rooted in the culture of the Arab and Islamic worlds since long before anyone outside of New York had ever heard the name Trump. And the idea that ISIS or any associated group will be more or less inclined to savagery depending on the occupant of the Oval Office is equally absurd. It may be hard for Americans who are immersed in partisan warfare to accept this, but Islamist terrorists don’t see Democrats and Republicans as being all that different. Trump and Clinton strike most U.S. voters as coming from different planets. To those who fight to impose their tyrannical theocratic vision of Islam on the world, however, the differences between them are marginal. No matter who wins in November, the winner will be seen as an enemy with weaknesses to be exploited. More to the point, it isn’t clear that terrorists fear either of them since both are too scared of another Iraq quagmire and too hopeful for a surrogate war in which someone else will do America’s dirty work. Neither candidate is ready to fully engage in an all-out war against ISIS. ISIS’s hopes of prevailing rest on the West’s exhaustion and disillusionment with a generational struggle against Islamism. At the same time, there is a growing and justified fear of terrorism in American society. It remains to be seen whether a President Clinton or a President Trump will come up with a coherent answer to the challenge. But the idea that ISIS has a rooting interest between the two says more about America’s refusal to think seriously about the intractable nature of its enemies than it does about the dismal choice between these two deeply flawed candidates. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 4) Why Syria Matters to You ...And now, let’s dig into this week’s edition of This Week in Geopolitics. The war in Syria is significant in two ways. First, the outcome can reshape the Arab Middle East. Second, and perhaps more important, Syria is not simply about Syrians. The US, Russian, Iranian, Turkish, and French forces are engaged there along with the Islamic State (IS), al-Qaida, and secular Arabs. The Saudis and the rest of the Arab monarchies also exert political and economic influence on Syria. I have written in the past about how the growing crises in Eurasia are increasingly interacting. Syria is the place where that interaction is the greatest and most violent. Prior to World War II, there was a civil war in Spain. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy sent troops. The Soviet Union did as well. In addition, leftists from around the world flocked there to fight. The French and British refused to get involved, trying not to be drawn in. The Spanish Civil War was said to be a rehearsal for World War II. The major players of the European war were there—though some weren’t. New weapons were tried out. The civil war ended in April 1939, five months before Germany invaded Poland, which began World War II. Syria is drawing in major global and regional powers. When, for example, the US and Russia are engaged in a country—with very different goals and supporting hostile factions—it is certainly not something to dismiss out of hand. On the contrary, Syria matters a great deal. If nothing else, it has become a test of the strength of powers with interests far beyond Syria. The Origins of the Syrian Conflict There is a class of conflicts whose importance to us diminishes over time. These conflicts involve intense slaughter and suffering and generate endless conferences, meetings, and wringing of hands by global statesman. But these wars seem never-ending. Their origins are lost in the mists of time, the situations on the battlefield are hard to grasp, and they appear to have little consequence to the rest of the world. The relief workers do a heroic job and try to shame us into caring and giving, but in the end, each conflict seems to be just another war in a faraway place having little to do with our own lives. But Syria is far more than that. The current regime was founded by Hafez al-Assad, an air force general, in a military coup. He was an Alawite, part of the Shiite sect of Islam. He was also a secularist. Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian military officer, had staged a coup in Egypt in 1952 and wanted to create a state based on three principles: secularism, socialism, and Pan-Arabism. His vision was the creation not of a caliphate, but of a secular, socialist, unified Arab world, based on military rule. Many regimes were patterned on this, including Assad’s regime in Syria. But ideology aside, Assad represented the Alawite faction, and what he created was a state built around his faction. Other factions were excluded, oppressed, and not infrequently, killed. However, Alawites are only around 12% of the Syrian population, which was why he relied heavily on the minorities (Christians, mainstream Shiites, Ismailis, Kurds, and Druze) that together constitute 40% of the population. More important, he also relied on many Sunnis. Even today, the regime is alive because a lot of Sunnis have not rebelled against the state. Nevertheless, Assad kept Syria from fragmenting by suppressing any challenge to him. After he died, his son, Bashar al-Assad, kept running the family business.  The Arab Spring in 2011 generated a challenge to his regime. The problem was that the opposition was deeply split. They spent as much time fighting each other as they spent fighting Assad. Democracy had little to do with it. The Alawite-Sunni split had a great deal to do with it. But the Assad regime had a lot of support. One of the misunderstandings of US foreign policy has been that tyrants rule only through the threat of violence. That is true, but in order to have a credible threat of violence, you have to have people who are prepared to carry that violence out. And they need to be loyal to you, or they may turn the violence against you. Tyrants do not live alone in isolated palaces. If they did, they wouldn’t live very long. The Alawites had done extremely well under the Assads. They dominated the military, trade, smuggling, and internal business. They were hated by many Sunnis, especially the more religiously inclined. The Alawites knew that if Assad fell, their position would collapse, and they would become the target. They, therefore, had to resist the uprising, and since they controlled the military, they believed they would not be defeated. Assad was not going to be overthrown by a wildly fragmented and poorly armed and trained opposition.  Enter the Americans The Assads had been a problem for the United States in many ways. They sent weapons and supplies into Iraq during the US occupation from 2003 to 2011. They helped destabilize Lebanon. They fought multiple wars with Israel. And above all, they were closely aligned with the Iranians, fellow Shiites. Hezbollah in Lebanon, also an ally of Iran and Syria, represented a terrorist threat for the US (even in 2011 when the Sunnis were the main enemy). When the Syrian war began, the US saw a chance to crack Assad, dramatically reduce Iranian influence in the region, and break Hezbollah.  The problem was that the US didn’t want to get directly involved in the war, at least not excessively. Since most Sunni groups were jihadist, the US had to find groups that were anti-jihadist, anti-Iranian, and anti-Assad… and that were motivated to fight. The US was looking for secularists not aligned with Assad. It was, to say the least, difficult to find such a group. It was also hard to be certain that they would stay that kind of group, and that they wouldn’t sell the weapons they were given. Still, the US felt it had enough to gain to keep trying. At this point, IS emerged, seizing control of parts of Iraq and Syria. This put the US in a fix. If it brought Assad down, IS might extend its power. If it attacked IS, it would give Assad breathing room and alienate some of the opposition (some of which wanted an all-out attack on Assad while others didn’t want IS hindered). The US found itself “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” as the song about the Vietnam War went, and it had yet to create an effective opposition to Assad anyway. More Global Powers Get Involved Then, the Russians became involved militarily. Russian intelligence had been close to the Assads since they took over in Syria. Russia did not want him to fall. But it had far greater problems than Assad. First, it suffered a strategic setback in a crucial buffer state, Ukraine, when a pro-Russian government was replaced by a pro-Western one. Attempts to foment an uprising in the east failed, and all Russia could claim was control over Crimea, where by treaty it had already based major force. Second, the collapse of oil prices had a massive impact on the economy that was going to pyramid. At the very least, President Vladimir Putin needed to demonstrate that, barring Ukraine, Russia was a major power. The military importance of his decision to deploy a relatively small number of aircraft and special forces in Syria was massively inflated by the Russians, who wanted to appear stronger than they were, and by the Americans, who wanted to make Russia out as an aggressor. Both approaches helped cement Russia’s role. Then, having deployed aircraft and troops, Russia confronted the same problem as the Americans. The Russians could not reshape the Syrian landscape, especially with US resistance. The US, Russia, and Iran were all active in Syria and unable to end the conflict. That left the Turks. The Turks hated the Assad regime, and when the Russians first intervened, the Turks shot down a Russian plane, causing a serious confrontation. Then, there was an attempted coup in Turkey, and the Turks turned against the Americans (who they partly blamed for the failed coup) and got closer to the Russians. Realizing that the Russians were inflexible on Assad, the Turks shifted back toward the Americans and were prepared to fight IS, but only if the US understood that the Turks had a simultaneous war underway with the Kurds.  Syria did not simply draw players in. It sent huge numbers of migrants to Europe as well. This triggered a huge crisis in the European Union, dividing countries that wanted to block migration from those that would encourage it. This compounded already existing tensions in Europe over the economy. It is reasonable to say that Syrian migrants shaped the Brexit vote, encouraged the rise of radical nationalist groups throughout Europe, and redefined the underlying issues.  The Paris terrorist attacks had another effect. The French sent an aircraft carrier to carry out airstrikes in Syria in cooperation with the United States. The Syrian migrants and the inability of European forces to block them, or to take effective unilateral action against IS after the attacks on Paris and other cities, generated not only greater military involvement in Syria, but long-term planning to manage the fallout from the conflict. Syria as a Testing Ground Syria is a battleground in which the United States, Russia, Turkey, and Iran are increasingly involved. Watching barely on the sidelines are the Israelis and the Saudis, while Lebanon is constantly uncertain. Iraq is heavily influenced by what is happening in Syria, while the Kurds, facing IS in Iraq, are now facing Turkish forces in Turkey and Syria. And the Europeans are coping with a wave of terrorism and contemplating rearmament. All of this is driven by Syria, a country that seems gridlocked in a permanent and insoluble war. But it is a country that has brought together friends, enemies, and contenders for power in a small place. It reminds me of nothing as much as Spain in the 1930s. For the first time since the 1940s, all of Eurasia is unstable. Syria is not the pivot of this instability, but it is the showcase. Most major powers are there or nearby, except the Chinese. My eyes glaze over when I hear about Syria, yet they shouldn’t. I have to force myself to see the increasing importance of this test war... George Friedman Editor, This Week in Geopolitics ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++