Maybe they should have been plying at an airport. Just great:
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Just another attempt by the liberals to engage in identity politics in order to intimidate and threaten those whose views are different. (See 1 below.)
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Everyone seems to have become exercised because Trump spoke with the leader of Taiwan. Those at our State Department are particularly upset because Trump broke with tradition/protocol and did not enlist their thinking which generally has proven wrong.
The Chinese make demands and we bow and they play us for the weak fool Obama has proven to be..
Trump has done something the Chinese do not like and we attack Trump because our diplomatic initiatives are determined by a hostile nation?
I doubt China will go to war over this incident. Now the Chinese have been shown two can play their game and it might leave them wondering what they can expect next. It is employing leverage. (See 1 a below.)
I, for one, applaud Trump. He beats Obama's apology tour which lost the Middle East, allowed Russia to gain the upper hand and cost untold millions to lose or have to flee in fear of their lives.
While I am on the mass media's Trump fault finding, should the radical left, that has taken over the Demwit Party, oppose Gen. Matten as Sec. of Defense, it will fail but before it does it will simply be one more piece of evidence why they are so out of touch with reality.
The man appears to be the right choice, at a crucial time in our military and foreign policy decline, to rectify the consequences of Obama's fecklessness.
Perhaps Trump will have decided whom he wants for Sec. of State by the time I send this memo out and, once again, I would like to assume he is seeking someone who will not misplace $6 billion dollars, will not use the office to enrich a personal foundation, support and/or propose bad policy and fail to act in defense of our nation and those who serve unlike Obama's two predecessors.
The State Department diplomats , like the mass media, are schooled at colleges and universities who have produced a succession of far too many who bow to their superiors in order to advance their careers, have been on the wrong side of history and are too timid. Those who are creative diplomats' see their effectiveness undercut by the cookie and tea crowd.
In recent decades, except for George Shultz and maybe Kissinger, the Department has been run by some of the worst Secretaries in history. (See 1b below.)
Finally, because Trump is being active prior to assuming the presidency it has afforded the mass media an opportunity to begin their diatribe early. Nothing Trump will do will be acceptable to them and he knows this. I expect he will go out of his way to irritate and freeze them out because he will communicate directly. There is both good and bad in this approach but the mass media have mostly no one to blame but themselves for the predicament they are in because they have earned their status/plight.
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A moral code, the underpinning of any society. (See 2 below.)
This is also true when discussing the merits of a specific political party.
One of two things will eventually happen:
a) Either the Democrats will regain control of their party from the radical left wingers whom Obama allowed to take over and, if not, Democrats will remain out of office for a long time
or
b) America will turn far to the left and no longer be the nation it once was and/or was meant to be.
Any successful tug to the far left by Democrat successes and influence will accelerate America's decline. (See 2a and 2b below.)
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Why does Obama want to swamp America with immigrants and then lie abut how well they are vetted? (See 3 below.)
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Recently, Chuck Schumer attacked Dr. Ben Carson as being unqualified to serve as Sec. of HUD. No one in the mass media accused Schumer of being racist. Yet, when conservatives attack Obama as being uniquely unqualified to serve as president the entire sky falls on them. Double standard? And the press wonders why they are no longer relevant, trusted and listened to or read.
Yes, the mass media have lost their credibility and no longer have an important role to play and this will neither serve the mass media nor the Republic well but they brought it on themselves and the price they will pay is both steep for them and not healthy for the nation. (See 4 below.)
Technology allows Trump and all future presidents another social media outlet should they choose to use it and, no doubt, he will and has already begun.
After decades of bias, the Fourth Estate has buried itself and middle America has finally spoken.
As Trump ignores the mass media and resorts to other methods of getting his message to the people it will be interesting to watch the mass media as they continue to find fault with everything Trump does as evidenced by their witless knee jerk attack/response to his beginning to right the balance between China and ourselves.
Obviously The State Department's nose was bent out of shape because Trump did not consider their protocol and 'drop our pants' policy relevant. The Chinese played Obama for the impotent sucker he is as they steal our wealth through cyber attacks, expand their military in The South China Sea and take advantage of trade and currency imbalances. Trump told us during his campaign about these abuses and now he is sending a message a new sheriff is in town and liberals, The State Department cookie and tea crowd and mass media have gone bonkers fearing China is about to go to war as they circle Taiwan with planes capable of mass destruction.
The next four years should prove roller coaster like as I predicted and as Trump tries to restore America's lost position and the mass media defend Obama's mistaken, apologetic and pathetic policies.
I find Trump's attitude and actions refreshing and very Uncle Sam like and he has not even begun to sit behind the Oval Office desk. It is time to question the consequences of following protocol established in a different era and which has outlived its pro America usefulness.
Either America reasserts itself or we will continue to decline as China, Russia, Iran and N Korea continue to assert themselves and gain the upper hand both militarily and diplomatically while America sinks along with Europe.
Hopefully, Gen. Flynn brings some reality to diplomacy (See 4a below.)
Hopefully, Gen. Flynn brings some reality to diplomacy (See 4a below.)
Go "bad and unpredictable" Donald!
Also, saw where my friend, Allen West, been asked into the loop. Hope something positive comes of it. Trump could use his "take no prisoner" judgement. Brilliant mind.
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This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader on occasion. (See 5 below.)
DickThis from a dear friend and fellow memo reader on occasion. (See 5 below.)
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1) My Experience with the Alt-Right
By Bruce Bialosky
During the last election campaign all of a sudden I kept hearing about the Alt-Right. Since I thought I was pretty well read and had never heard of them, I considered them to have the same social relevance as a Miley Cyrus song. I decided to investigate this supposed social phenomenon as soon as the election was over and I was done writing about real issues important to the campaign.
I started by sending emails to mainstream Republicans asking them if they knew anyone who considered themselves members of the Alt-Right. The answer was a universal no. Then I sent emails to my friends who consider themselves conservative Republicans. These are people I respect, but I consider a little more hardcore. The answer was again we don't know any of these people.
I did get one positive response suggesting I contact Jon Fleischman, someone I have known for 20 years, who in the past five years or so has been the California editor for Breitbart. I have also written for Jon's publication Flashreport.org.
Jon is Jewish and works for Breitbart which has been accused of being anti-Semitic. Jon is a pretty knowledgeable guy -- doing his own publication and working for Breitbart -- but was totally ignorant about the Alt-Right. I asked him what he knew about Richard Spencer (someone who has gotten recent publicity as supposedly a leader of the Alt-Right) and he said "Who is he?" He then told me that Breitbart has an intercompany communication system called a Slack Network where they exchange ideas about columns and items to be published at Breitbart. He stated "I have never seen once anything indicating any racist or anti-Semitic attitudes, not once."
I did have an extended email conversation with a gentleman, who said he was a member of the Alt-Right. His name is John Preston though he told me that was a pseudonym. He is with the Council of Conservative Citizens. He stated he used a pseudonym (as most of the people he knows do) because a lot of people who are members of the Alt-Right are afraid of employment discrimination and other factors. John was very forthcoming and seemingly intelligent. He wrote in a very lucid manner and stated he has been part of this movement for 15 years. He also made clear he has no idea how many people are in the Alt-Right because so much of it is underground.
When I asked Preston why he believes his viewpoints are controversial and not just anti-PC, he answered with this statement: "We stick up for white people. We believe white people have interests, too. It's a big taboo to hold that position in our society. Jewish people can advocate for Jewish interests like a pro-Israel foreign policy. Black people can advocate for black interests. There is an LGBT community now with its interests and public policy agenda. White people though ... that's where the line is drawn. It's *racist* to identify as white, to have a positive sense of white identity, and to advocate on behalf of white interests like reduced immigration or, say, law and order. There are groups like the SPLC which exist to get people fired from their jobs for holding our views. That's why our cause is controversial and our movement has been driven underground. I'm not sure how much longer that can continue though."
1a)
1a)
Trump’s Taiwan Play
The phone call with the island’s president looks like a calculated move.
This combo of file photos shows Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (L) in St. Louis, Missouri on October 9, 2016 and Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen in Panama City on June 27, 2016. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Americans had to get used to Donald Trump breaking all the rules of presidential
campaigning, and it looks like the world will have to adjust to a President Trump who
will also violate diplomatic convention. One early lesson is not to overreact to every
break with State Department protocol as if it’s the start of World War III.
The U.S. media had their 19th nervous breakdown Friday after the Trump transition said
the President-elect had taken a congratulatory call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.
Mr. Trump also later tweeted that he had spoken to “the President of Taiwan.” Doesn’t he
understand this simply isn’t done? No American President or President-elect has talked
to a Taiwanese President since 1979, and this violation of tradition is being portrayed as
a careless, bone-headed provocation to Beijing.
Well, maybe it was calculated—and perhaps even useful. Trump Asia adviser Peter
Navarro has advocated cabinet-level visits to Taiwan and an end to the U.S. bow to
Beijing’s “one China” policy, which insists that Taiwan is part of China and shouldn’t be
treated as an independent state. Perhaps that goes too far, but it is past time for the U.S. to recalibrate its Taiwan policy.
Ned Price, spokesman at the Obama National Security Council, suggested that Mr. Trump made a mistake, saying the U.S. remains “firmly committed to our ‘one China’ policy based on
the three Joint Communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act.” But the communiqués from
the 1970s and ’80s do not say that the U.S. supports Beijing’s view of “one China,” only
that the U.S. acknowledges that both China and Taiwan agree on that principle. That is a
crucial distinction.
Taiwan and the world have also changed since those communiqués. Taiwan has become a prosperous and democratic polity integrated into the world economy. Most Taiwanese
now want to maintain their de facto independence. They resent Beijing’s bullying to force
their leaders to move toward reunification.
Previous U.S. Presidents have eased restrictions on contact with Taiwanese officials to
reflect this reality. Bill Clinton let President Lee Teng-hui give a speech at Cornell
University in 1995. George W. Bush allowed President Chen Shui-bian to visit the U.S.
in transit to countries in Latin America that maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
The U.S. is obligated to assist the self-governing territory in defending itself under the
1979 Taiwan Relations Act, and every Administration since has sold weapons to Taiwan.
Mr. Clinton sent a U.S. carrier through the Taiwan Strait in 1996 when China was
especially threatening.
Previous Taiwanese leaders tried to exploit U.S. support to push for a formal declaration
of independence, which Beijing warns would be cause for war. Mr. Trump has to be
careful not to encourage Ms. Tsai, who has advocated for independence in the past, to
make the same mistake. But Ms. Tsai has studiously avoided such declarations since her
election earlier this year, and she has been careful to say she wants good relations with
Beijing despite China’s attempt to isolate her.
Mr. Trump shouldn’t concede Beijing’s power to intimidate the world’s democracies into
isolating Taiwan. The U.S. has an interest in supporting Taiwan as a model for China’s
future development. And adapting Taiwan policy could benefit the wider U.S.-China
relationship.
Beijing says denying sovereignty for Taiwan is a core interest. But the U.S. has a core
interest in preventing North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear-armed
missiles. The rest of Asia has a core interest in preventing China from unilaterally
asserting its dominance over the East and South China Seas. Respect for core interests
goes both ways.
It’s notable that China has reacted better than the U.S. media to Mr. Trump’s phone
conversation. Beijing protested but its Foreign Minister dismissed it as a “petty trick” by
Ms. Tsai. Beijing censored the news inside China, while the English-language China
Daily suggested Mr. Trump simply made a mistake.
President Obama had no success convincing China to rein in Pyongyang, and Chinese
officials walked all over him on his first visit in 2009. Mr. Trump’s tougher stance may
prove to be a better opening move in the deal-making to come.
1b) Kerry: Israel 'Heading to a Place of Danger'
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks to the Saban Forum in Washington, D.C., Dec. 7, 2014. Speaking Sunday at the annual forum, Kerry said that the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is “getting worse” and “moving in the wrong direction.”
Remarks by the U.S. secretary of state on Sunday are being quickly interpreted by the Israeli media as harsh criticism and undiplomatic.
Before a predominately pro-Israel audience in Washington, John Kerry warned that the Jewish state is “heading to a place of danger” because of its government’s policies toward the Palestinians.
Kerry, responding to questions from a journalist moderator and several people in the audience at the Brookings Institution’s annual Saban Forum, characterized the long-stalled peace process as “getting worse” and “moving in the wrong direction.”
A “stinging rebuke” is how the independent Times of Israel characterized his remarks in an online headline.
Kerry, while professing a love of Israel and saying that during his tenure he has talked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than 375 times and made 40 visits to the country, called Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s recent comments applauding the demise of the two-state solution as “profoundly disturbing.”
Kerry said Israelis should stop waiting for Fatah, which controls the West Bank, to turn into a perfect negotiating partner and told the audience that the United States believes any deal must come with the assurance “of not turning the West Bank into another Gaza,” which is administered by the more hardline Hamas.
U.S. officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the Israeli government ignoring American official criticism of settlements in the occupied territories.
Growing frustration in Washington
Obama administration officials last week ruled out any last-minute pressure to be applied on Israel, including at the United Nations.
Kerry said that settling the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is still relevant despite more serious current conflagrations in neighboring Syria and in Iraq.
U.S. officials have grown increasingly frustrated with the Israeli government ignoring American official criticism of settlements in the occupied territories.
Despite the strained relations, the two governments recently finalized a package that sends $38 billion of military aid to Israel over a 10-year period.
The secretary of state said the Arab world is ready to move to a different security posture regarding Israel.
Israel’s new engagement is “quiet, covert with the rest of the Arab world,” former U.S. senator Joe Lieberman told VOA.
The real challenge for the incoming Trump administration is “whether they can prove that some progress is possible between Israelis and Palestinians,” said Lieberman, who was in the audience during Kerry’s remarks.
The two-state solution, which Lieberman supports, is not going to be reached anytime soon, added the former Democratic vice presidential nominee, “but maybe there are some interim steps that can raise hopes” that the Trump administration will be able to work towards.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, speaking to the forum via satellite from Israel prior to Kerry’s remarks, said he will discuss with Trump the West's “bad” nuclear deal with Iran after the president-elect enters the White House.
“I opposed the deal because it doesn't prevent Iran from getting nukes. It paves the way for Iran to get nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said on Sunday.
Trump on the campaign trail, as a Republican candidate for president, called the West’s nuclear pact with Iran a “disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated.”
. Both Netanyahu and president-elect Donald Trump have disparaged the Iran nuclear deal as dangerous.
Kerry on Trump diplomacy
Kerry told the audience at a Washington hotel on Sunday that it would be valuable for the Trump transition team to consult with the State Department before having telephone calls with foreign leaders.
“We have not been contacted before any of these conversations,” Kerry told the think tank conference. “I think it's valuable to ask people who work the desk.”
Trump’s conversations in recent days with government leaders – especially those of Pakistan, the Philippines and Taiwan – have generated controversy and the president-elect has been accused of violating diplomatic protocol.
Trump, a wealthy businessman who last month defeated former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for the presidency in his first bid for public office, has no foreign policy experience.
“We’re very sensitive to the fact that for the next six-and-a-half weeks we already have a president and a commander-in-chief and we’re respectful of that fact,” Trump senior advisor Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Sunday. “So nobody is making policy, nobody is making significant moves in any one direction or the other.”
When President Barack Obama first came to power in 2009 after serving nearly four years as a U.S. senator, he, too, had no foreign policy experience in a leadership position.
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2a)
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www.nationalreview.com
Keith Ellison (or Keith E. Hakim, or Keith X. Ellison, or Keith Muhammad, etc.) is campaigning for office. Not for the safe House seat he holds, but for the leadership of the Democratic party, a job until recently held by the hilariously incompetent and boundlessly vapid Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who was forced to resign — “resign” here meaning “transfer formally to the Clinton campaign” — when she was exposed conniving to stack the presidential primary elections against Senator Bernie Sanders (S., Portlandia)), who was temporarily replaced by Donna Brazile, who was exposed leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign, a violation of trust for which she remains adamantly impenitent. Republicans should take a minute to simply enjoy all this before getting on to the serious business at hand. If they cannot have Debbie Wasserman Schultz organizing opposition to them, former Farrakhan fanboy Keith Ellison of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party is a great second choice. Ellison is the first Muslim el
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A Problem Like Keith Ellison
And the more serious question of the Muslim Brotherhood
by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON
Keith Ellison (or Keith E. Hakim, or Keith X. Ellison, or Keith Muhammad, etc.) is campaigning for office. Not for the safe House seat he holds, but for the leadership of the Democratic party, a job until recently held by the hilariously incompetent and boundlessly vapid Debbie Wasserman Schultz (who was forced to resign — “resign” here meaning “transfer formally to the Clinton campaign” — when she was exposed conniving to stack the presidential primary elections against Senator Bernie Sanders (S., Portlandia)), who was temporarily replaced by Donna Brazile, who was exposed leaking debate questions to the Clinton campaign, a violation of trust for which she remains adamantly impenitent.
Republicans should take a minute to simply enjoy all this before getting on to the serious business at hand. If they cannot have Debbie Wasserman Schultz organizing opposition to them, former Farrakhan fanboy Keith Ellison of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party is a great second choice.
Ellison is the first Muslim elected to the House, and he complains that the recent spate of criticism directed at him is rooted in — ridiculous word — Islamophobia. But there is a bit more to it than that.
Ellison has long been a vocal defender of the so-called Nation of Islam, the bow-tie gang founded by Elijah Muhammad whose relationship to orthodox Islam is approximately that of a UFO cult to the Anglican communion. The NOI and its charismatic leader, the former calypso musician Louis Farrakhan, is an explicitly racist organization, holding as a matter of doctrine that the white race is the result of a doomed mad-science experiment conducted by the biblical Jacob while he was living on the isle of Patmos. Farrakhan is a true religious entrepreneur who has attempted to graft L. Ron Hubbard’s fanciful “Dianetics” onto his own cracked version of Islam, but he has mostly relied on a very old and reliable tradition: Jew-hating.
Farrakhan’s history of vicious anti-Semitism was already well established when Ellison was helping him organize the Million Man March. The Democratic representative says that he rejects anti-Semitism, but he has a long history of sticking up for Jew-hating weirdos, and not only Farrakhan. When Kwame Ture — you may remember him as Stokely Carmichael — claimed that Jews had collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust as a pretext for establishing the state of Israel, Ellison was there to defend him from criticism. When the head of a Minneapolis political group declared that the allegations of anti-Semitism against Farrakhan were made up and insisted that the real problem is racist Jews, Ellison said: “She is correct.” He is a defender of the terrorist Sara Jane Olson and the murderer Assata Shakur and the Islamic terrorist Sami al-Arian. He is a longtime admirer of the murderous dictator Fidel Castro.
Ellison has said that he has since “rejected” the Nation of Islam and its anti-Semitism, and that his involvement with Farrakhan was simply an exercise in community organizing, i.e. the usual liberals-in-a-hurry bull. Ellison is invoking the unwritten Robert Byrd Rule: Democrats get a pass on associating with crackpot racist cults if they vote the right way on the minimum wage.
If he has outgrown Farrakhan, then hurray for him. More joy in Heaven and all that. Ellison’s real problem may not be his association with Louis Farrakhan’s unorthodox Islam but with the Muslim Brotherhood’s very orthodox version.
The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by the Egyptian scholar Hassan al-Banna, is a Sunni-supremacist organization operating under the motto: “Allah is our objective; the Qur’an is the Constitution; the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.” It is linked at various levels of intimacy to Hamas — which is an immediate offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — along with sundry Sunni extremist groups, one or two degrees of separation removed from al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, and the like. But its reach is sprawling, and it also is closely linked with such purportedly respectable Islamic organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which our Andrew C. McCarthy rightly describes as “a Muslim Brotherhood creation conceived to be a Western-media-savvy shill for Islamic supremacism in general and Hamas in particular.”The question is not whether a U.S. political party should be led by a Muslim man, but by this Muslim man.
Ellison has spoken at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America, which is part of the CAIR-Hamas network, at least according to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that “the government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA, NAIT, with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas” during the Holy Land Foundation case. These links have been discussed in these pages at great length by McCarthy and by our colleague Daniel Pipes, among others. Ellison went on a pilgrimage to Mecca sponsored by the Muslim American Society, which is simply the Muslim Brotherhood under another name. In Mecca, he met with Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, an officer of a Muslim Brotherhood group that issued a fatwa against U.S. troops in Iraq and supports Palestinian terrorists in Israel. He met with terror-linked Saudi financiers and other unsavory characters, too.
The question is not whether a U.S. political party should be led by a Muslim man, but by this Muslim man. We are not talking about Namık Kemal or Robert Crane.Keith Ellison is one representative. In the short term, the focus will be on the man — but in the long term, it will be on the movement.
Specifically, Congress has considered, and may revive, legislation supported by Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, as the Egyptians and the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council insist it is. The case is not too terribly difficult to make, and the main defense of the Muslim Brotherhood offered by critics such as Marc Lynch is that the organization is not what it used to be, that it is no longer the same group that founded Hamas and cultivated generations of Islamic radicals but is instead broken, scattered, and less significant. Perhaps it is so, but if it is so, this is precisely the sort of organization that you want to kick while it is down.
The real problem is that the Muslim Brotherhood’s fingers are in practically every Islamic pie in the United States and much of the rest of the world, and turning over that rock almost certainly will expose any number of queasy reminders that the distance between the Islamic mainstream and Islamic extremism is not so great as we sometimes imagine. A great many media-friendly Muslims and so-called moderates will be put in a very difficult position — and we should welcome that. We have for too long made it too easy for the so-called respectable Islamist organizations in the West to play both sides of the fence.
Republicans should designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, based simply on the weight of the evidence. But if they’re feeling a little bit mean — and why not? — they should wait until the Democrats have put Keith Ellison in charge of their party to do it.
— Kevin D. Williamson is National Review’s roving correspondent.
2b) Weakness in the Face of Terrorism
An Ohio State University student named Mackenzie was well placed to observe her campus’s response to the terrorist act committed by Abdul Razak Ali Artan.
She was also well placed to compare the reaction to terrorism with student and faculty reaction to the election of Donald Trump.
Last week she called in to Sean Hannity’s radio program to explain what she saw. Her testimony is nothing less than breathtaking. The report comes from PJ Media via Maggie’s Farm.
First, the campus reacted to Trump’s election with an outpouring of hysteria. Sad to say, no other word describes it as well. You would have thought that the world had come to an end and that the Nazis had just taken over America. One also notes that they don’t make professors like they used to. The dumbing down of American university faculties continues apace.
In Mackenzie’s words:
After the election, my professors went crazy. I remember calling my mom and saying, 'You would think Hitler just got elected and massacred half the country.' It was ridiculous. Trump was called a Nazi, a rapist, a white supremacist, one of my professors actually said we should be terrified because Mike Pence believes women don't have the right to exist, or deserve to exist is actually what she said.
Under the aegis of their professors college students are not being taught to exercise their rational faculties. They are being taught to indulge in irrational and histrionic displays.
Mackenzie continued:
People were crying, my classes were canceled, massive protests on campus ... emails from professors about staying strong and how we are all going to lose our rights but it's going to be O.K. And it was crazy — I just couldn't believe it.
When the terrorist attack occurred on the same campus, some classes were canceled for safety reasons. Some students held a candlelight vigil. And yet, the lesson that was imparted to students was: we must all become more sympathetic and compassionate toward Islam.
Mackenzie explained:
I've heard things about how we need to understand Islam, the vibrant Somali community we have here, how we need to embrace them even though this is the third attack by a Somali in the last year here in Columbus, and all this stuff about, you know, Muslim sensitivity.
That's all they care about. They are more scared of the right and Trump than they are of this terrorist attack that just happened on our campus. It's sickening to me because I feel like they are gambling with my life in order to reach this multiculturalism lie that they worship in all of my classes — and it's crazy.
What does this tell us?
For one, it tells us that terrorism works. Terrorists want to produce a specific effect. They want to intimidate the population while gaining respect for their cause. The Obama administration has done just what the terrorists want: it has refused to call Islamist terrorism by its name—lest people feel less respect for Islam—and it has gone on the attack against Islamophobia.
The more people respond to Islamic terrorism by showing respect for Islam, the more terrorism we will see. The more Americans submit to Islam the more the terrorists believe that their strategy is working.
In another context it’s called appeasement. Obviously, it is cowardly. It has designated its enemies as those who would fight terrorism with force of arms. Obviously, George W. Bush is high on the list.
Those who want to appease terrorists insist that the fault for 9/11 lies with the Bush administration. And yet, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack saw things differently.
Writing in the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen—a former Bush administration official—recounted the results of the enhanced interrogation of KSM. The interrogator, James Mitchell, has just written a book about it, so Thiessen is reporting the results from the book.
In Thiessen’s words:
But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.
For the pusillanimous left any military response is necessarily wrong. The left is, as the saying goes, “too proud to fight.”
But note that the first evidence of American weakness was shown by… none other than Ronald Reagan. When the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut in1983, killing nearly 300 marines, the Reagan administration did not respond vigorously. It did not hunt down the killers. It “turned tail and ran.”
Denizens of the American right like to pin this all on liberal Democrats, but the first American president to show of weakness in the face of terror was Ronald Reagan.
The next was Bill Clinton. Having seen the way a weak and decadent Clinton responded to terrorism, KSM planned his next attack, confident that a helpless America would not respond.
He was in for a surprise. Thiessen reports KSM’s words:
“Then he looked at me [Mitchell] and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”
The next time you ask yourself about what deters terrorism, you might consider KSM’s thoughts. Those who treat terrorism like a law enforcement matter invite terrorism. Apparently, the cowboy Bush’s response had a deterrent effect, even more than if he had called for an attack on Islamophobia.
KSM’s purpose is to convert America to Islam, to see Shariah Law as the law of the American land. He cannot defeat America by force of arms but he can help America to defeat itself. America—and other European nations—invite terrorism by showing weakness and submission in the face of terrorism:
But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize . . . we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”
KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’ ” KSM “said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States” and “wrap themselves in America’s rights and laws” until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”
“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”
Already American universities and the Democratic Party have succumbed.It remains to be seen whether the rest of the nation follows.
One notes that Mackenzie could not divulge her last name. So much for free expression and the first amendment.
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3)
Some 175 immigrants were approved for citizenship even though their names weren’t properly run through the FBI’s name-check databases, potentially missing red flags that may have disqualified them from naturalization, the Obama administration admitted this weekend.
Homeland Security officials blamed computer code for the problem, which affected about 15,000 applications in total.
4) 7 Whoppers Inside Politico’s Hit Piece On HHS Nominee Tom Price
5) The attached link is to an article that gives only a brief overview of this very important issue. I have focused on this statistic ever since the recession began and it is alarming.
3)
Obama administration fails to check immigrants against FBI databases, approves citizenship
Some 175 immigrants were approved for citizenship even though their names weren’t properly run through the FBI’s name-check databases, potentially missing red flags that may have disqualified them from naturalization, the Obama administration admitted this weekend.
Homeland Security officials blamed computer code for the problem, which affected about 15,000 applications in total.
From Washington Times
The problem was significant enough that the government halted all naturalization ceremonies already in the pipeline and banned U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers from approving new citizenship applications beginning on Nov. 29, when officials acknowledged the problem in an internal email that was later obtained by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
In the internal email, Daniel M. Renaud, associate director at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, ordered all officers “not to approve or oath any naturalization cases in ELIS,” referring to the Electronic Immigration System that serves as the case management system for processing applications.
“At this point we are not confident that proper FBI Name Checks have been run on certain ELIS cases. At this point we are uncertain of the scope of the problem,” he wrote.It was another embarrassing black eye for USCIS, which earlier this year admitted it had granted citizenship to hundreds of criminals who should have been barred but who escaped notice because the agency wasn’t properly checking their fingerprints. Tens of thousands of fingerprints remain in paper files, and the agency was only checking electronic records, an internal audit said.Mr. Goodlatte said he was stunned that USCIS didn’t notify him, as the chairman of the committee that oversees the agency, of the new problem. He only learned about it after a source provided him with Mr. Renaud’s internal email.
Homeland Security said the problem arose as part of the ongoing push to digital processing of citizenship applications.
Some 15,000 applications were affected, including about 175 people who had their applications approved despite not having an accurate name check, the department said. Those persons have all had their names resubmitted to the FBI for an update.
FBI name checks are a critical part of the application process, giving immigration officers a look at potential criminal histories or other national security red flags that would make someone ineligible for citizenship.
Mr. Goodlatte demanded USCIS detail when it discovered the problem and how many cases were affected, and said the agency should take steps to strip citizenship from anyone who shouldn’t have been approved.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Homeland Security spokesman Aaron Rodriguez said the department will respond directly to Mr. Goodlatte, but insisted officials take the background process seriously.
4) 7 Whoppers Inside Politico’s Hit Piece On HHS Nominee Tom Price
Politico appears to publish Democrat talking points as ‘facts,’ if a recent hit on Tom Price, Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, is any indication.
On Tuesday evening, Politico
The article goes on to quote seven separate liberal analysts, including the President of Planned Parenthood, while not including a single substantive Republican quote until the very last paragraph of a 27-paragraph piece. Given this opinion piece masqueraded as “journalism,” it’s worth pointing out several important facts, falsehoods, and omissions in the Politico story.
CLAIM 1: Republicans “may look beyond repealing and replacing Obamacare to try to scale back Medicare and Medicaid, popular entitlements that cover roughly 130 million people, many of whom are sick, poor, and vulnerable.”
FACT: It’s ironic that the Politico reporters suddenly care about the “sick, poor, and vulnerable.” I’ve been writing about how Obamacare encourages discriminationagainst the vulnerable literally for years, including a few short weeks ago. If any Politicoreporters have written on how Obamacare encourages states to expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults rather than to cover individuals with disabilities, I have yet to read those articles.
This week came a report that no fewer than 752 individuals with disabilities have died—yes, died—while on waiting lists to receive Medicaid services since that state expanded coverage under Obamacare to able-bodied adults. If the Politico reporters—much less the liberal advocates the reporters interviewed for the article—care so much about the “sick, poor, and vulnerable,” when will they cover this Obamacare-induced tragedy?
CLAIM 2: “Price…has proposed policies that are more conservative than those of many House Republican colleagues.”
FACT: Price’s fiscal year 2016 budget, which included provisions related to Obamacare repeal, premium support for Medicare, and block grants for Medicaid, passed the House with 228 votes. How can Politico claim Price’s policies “are more conservative than those of many House Republican colleagues,” when more than 93 percent of them publicly endorsed his vision?
CLAIM 3: “The vast majority of the 20 million people now covered under Obamacare would have far less robust coverage—if they got anything at all.”
FACT: This claim presupposes 1) that all individuals covered under
Obamacare want to buy health coverage, and 2) that they want to buy the type of health coverage Obamacare forces them to purchase. It ignores the fact that premiums increased by thousands of dollars in 2014 because individuals were forced to buy richer coverage.
It also ignores the fact that nearly 8 million individuals have paid the tax penalty associated with not buying Obamacare-compliant health coverage—because they cannot afford it, do not want it, or both—and another 12.4 million have requested exemptions from the Obamacare mandate. Depending on the degree of overlap between individuals who paid the mandate tax penalty and individuals who claimed exemptions, the number of Obamacare refuseniks could actually exceed the number of individuals newly covered under the law.
Instead, this claim comes at the question of insurance coverage from President Obama’s liberal, paternalistic perspective. When millions of people started receiving Obamacare-related cancellation notices in the mail, the president gave a speech stating how all those plans were “substandard:” “A lot of people thought they were buying coverage, and it turned out not to be so good.” In other words, “If you liked your plan, you’re an idiot.”
CLAIM 4: “Price also supports privatizing Medicare…”
FACT: The premium support plan included in the House Republican budget includes 1) a federal contribution that increases every year to fund 2) a federally regulated plan with 3) federally mandated benefits and 4) the option to continue in government-run Medicare if beneficiaries so choose. Which of these four points would the Politico reporters deem “privatizing?”
CLAIM 5: “…an approach that Democrats lambaste as a voucher system…”
FACT: That claim is both ironic and hypocritical coming from Democrats, as a version of premium support endorsed by House Speaker Ryan and Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden in 2011 would have utilized the exact same bidding mechanism as Obamacare itself. Do Democrats “lambaste” Obamacare’s exchanges as a “voucher system?” Interestingly enough, the Politico reporters neither note this irony, nor apparently bothered to ask the question.
CLAIM 6: “…that would gut a 50-year-old social contract and shift a growing share of health care costs onto seniors.”
FACT: The form of premium support Price endorsed in this year’s House Republican budget would, according to a September 2013 analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), save both the federal government and seniors money. Don’t take my word for it—here’s a quote from the CBO paper (emphasis added):
CBO’s analysis implies that beneficiaries’ total payments would be about 6 percent lower, on average, under the average-bid option than under current law. That reduction results from the combination of the lower average premiums paid above and a reduction in average out-of-pocket costs, which would result primarily from higher enrollment in lower-bidding private plans.
Where exactly among the highlighted phrases did the Politico reporters get the idea that premium support will “shift a growing share of health care costs onto seniors?”
CLAIM 7: “Price also wants to limit federal Medicaid spending to give states a lump sum, or block grant, and more control over how they could use it—a dream of conservative Republicans for years, and a nightmare for advocates for the poor who fear that many would lose coverage.”
FACT: A block grant would increase federal spending on Medicaid annually, just by slightly less than prior estimates. Only in Washington could granting a program a 3 percent increase rather than a 5 percent increase classify as a “cut.”
Having provided actual facts to rebut the piece’s nonsensical claims, I’ll offer some free advice: If the folks on Politico’s payroll want to publish liberal talking points unchallenged, they should quit their jobs, go out on their own, and do what I do for a living. I’m all for a free press, and freedom of speech, but passing opinion—and one-sided opinion at that—as “journalism” does a disservice to the name.
Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, a policy consulting firm based in Washington. He's on Twitter @chrisjacobshc.
4a)
| Our World: Michael Flynn and what he means for Trump’s foreign policy | ||
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| In the US and around the world, people are anxiously awaiting US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of his choice to serve as secretary of state. There is no doubt that Trump’s choice for the position will tell us a great deal about the direction his foreign policy is likely to take. But the fact is that we already have sufficient information to understand what his greatest focus will be. Trump’s announcement last week that he has selected Marine General James Mattis to serve as his defense secretary is a key piece of the puzzle. Mattis has a sterling reputation as a brilliant strategist and a sober-minded leader. His appointment has garnered plaudits across the ideological spectrum. In 2013, US President Barack Obama summarily removed Mattis from his command as head of the US Military’s Central Command. According to media reports, Mattis was fired due to his opposition to Obama’s strategy of embracing Iran, first and foremost through his nuclear diplomacy. Mattis argued that Iran’s nuclear program was far from the only threat Iran constituted to the US and its allies. By empowering Iran through the nuclear deal, Obama was enabling Iran’s rise as a hegemonic power throughout the region. Mattis’s dim view of Iran is shared by Trump’s choice to serve as his national security adviser. Lt. General Michael Flynn’s appointment has been met with far less enthusiasm among Washington’s foreign policy elites. Tom Ricks of The New York Times, for instance, attacked Flynn as “erratic” in an article Saturday where he praised Mattis. It is difficult to understand the basis for Ricks’ criticism. Flynn is considered the most talented intelligence officer of his generation. Like Mattis, Obama promoted Flynn only to fire him over disagreements regarding Obama’s strategy of embracing Iran and pretending away the war that radical Islamists are waging against the US and across the globe. Flynn served under Obama as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was fired in 2014 for his refusal to toe the administration’s mendacious lines that radical Islam is not the doctrine informing and inspiring the enemy, and that al-Qaida and its fellows are losing their war. What Obama and his advisers didn’t want to hear about the US’s enemies and about how best to defeat them Flynn shared with the public in his recently published book Field of Fight, which he coauthored with Michael Ledeen, who served in various national security positions during the Reagan administration. Flynn’s book is a breath of fresh air in the acrid intellectual environment that Washington has become during the Obama administration. Writing it in this intellectually corrupt atmosphere was an act of intellectual courage. In Field of Fight, Flynn disposes of the political correctness that has dictated the policy discourse in Washington throughout the Bush and Obama administrations. He forthrightly identifies the enemy that the US is facing as “radical Islam,” and provides a detailed, learned description of its totalitarian ideology and supremacist goals. Noting that no strategy based on denying the truth about the enemy can lead to victory, Flynn explains how his understanding of the enemy’s doctrine and modes of operation enabled him to formulate strategies for winning the ground wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And win them he did. As he explains in his book, Flynn oversaw the transformation of the US’s strategies for fighting in both theaters from strategies based on top-down decapitation of the enemy’s leadership to a groundup destruction of the terrorist networks. Flynn’s strategy, which worked in both countries, was based on the premise that it wasn’t enough to kill “high value” targets. The US needed to develop a granular understanding of the terrorist networks from the village level up the line. Only by taking out the local terrorist leaders would the US be able to destroy the ability of the likes of al-Qaida, the Iranian-controlled Shi’ite militias and the Taliban to quickly mobilize new forces and reignite fighting shortly after every successful US operation. Flynn’s book contributes three essential insights to the discussion of the global jihad. First, he explains that the Bush and Obama administrations were both unable to translate military victories on the ground into strategic victories because they both refused to join their military war with a war of ideas. The purpose of a war of ideas is to discredit the cause for which the enemy fights. Without such a war, on the one hand the American people sour on the war because they don’t understand why it is important to win. On the other hand, without a war of ideas directed specifically at the Islamic world, Muslims worldwide have continued to be susceptible to recruitment by the likes of ISIS and al-Qaida. As Flynn notes, the popularity of radical Islam has skyrocketed during the Obama years. Whereas in 2011 there were 20,000 foreign recruits fighting for ISIS in Iraq and Syria, by 2015, the number had risen to 35,000. Flynn’s second contribution is his forthright discussion of the central role the Iranian regime plays in the global jihad. Flynn chronicles not only Iran’s leadership of the war against the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. He shows that their cooperation is global and predates 9/11 by several years. Flynn recalls for instance that in 1996 British troops confiscated an al-Qaida training manual written by Iranian intelligence in a terrorist training facility in Bosnia. Six Iranian “diplomats” were arrested at the scene. Flynn is unflinching in his criticism of the Obama administration’s moves to develop an alliance with Iran. And he is almost equally critical of George W. Bush’s war against terror. For instance, Flynn argues, “It was a huge strategic mistake for the United States to invade Iraq militarily.” Iran, he said was the main culprit in 2001 and remains the main enemy today. “If, as we claimed, our basic mission after 9/11 was the defeat of the terrorists and their state sponsors then our primary target should have been Tehran, not Baghdad, and that method should have been political – support of the internal Iranian opposition.” Flynn’s final major contribution to the intellectual discourse regarding the war is his blunt identification of the members of the enemy axis. Flynn states that the radical Islamic terrorist armies operate in cooperation with and at the pleasure of a state alliance dominated by Russia and Iran and joined by North Korea, Venezuela and other rogue regimes. Flynn’s frank discussion of Russia’s pivotal role in the alliance exposes the widely touted claims that he is somehow pro-Russian as utter nonsense. In Flynn’s view, while Russia is Iran’s primary partner in its war for global domination, it should not be the primary focus of US efforts. Iran should be the focus. In his words, the best place to unravel the enemy alliance is at its “weakest point,” which, he argues, is Iran. Flynn explains that the basic and endemic weakness of the Iranian regime owes to the fact that the Iranian people hate it. To defeat the regime, Flynn recommends a strategy of political war and subversion that empowers the Iranian people to overthrow the regime as they sought to do in the 2009 Green Revolution. Flynn makes the case that the Green Revolution failed in large part because the Obama administration refused to stand with the Iranian people. Flynn is both an experienced commander and an innovative, critical, strategic thinker. As his book makes clear, while flamboyant and blunt he is not at all erratic. He is far-sighted and determined, and locked on his target: Iran. Whoever Trump selects as secretary of state, his appointment of Mattis on the one hand and Flynn on the other exposes his hand. Trump is interested in ending the war that the forces of radical Islam started with the US not on September 11, 2001, but on November 4, 1979, with the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran. With Mattis and Flynn at his side, Trump intends to bring down the Iranian regime as a first step toward securing an unconditional victory in the war against radical Islam. |
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5) The attached link is to an article that gives only a brief overview of this very important issue. I have focused on this statistic ever since the recession began and it is alarming.
The Democrats want to surface the reasons they lost the election and point in every direction but at themselves. I would proffer that by their ignoring of the Labor Participation Rate and the liberal media's refusal to focus and educate the masses on it (presumably because it would have been negative for Obama, so they almost exclusively only reported on the Unemployment Rate which on the surface seemed positive), they ignored one the very constituency that helped cost them the election.
If you take the 4.6% unemployment rate for Nov. and add back 3.6% for the lower Labor Participation Rate in 2016 vs. 2006 (as published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics) you effectively have 8.2% unemployment as compared to prior to the recession and this number would have been unacceptable for presidential approval ratings. Maybe that is why many people voted for Trump, they wanted real Hope not just the "Audacity of Hope.
If you ignore the people and their needs, you pay the price.
Best regards,
D--
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