 |
https://www.yohutube.com/
And:
http://carolineglick.com/
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.....one is by sword.....another is by debt."
John Adams 1826.
And:
http://carolineglick.com/
And Again:
"There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation.....one is by sword.....another is by debt."
John Adams 1826.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
My friend and fellow memo reader speaks out regarding the recent Florida manslaughter's, (See 1 below.)
And:
It has become increasingly evident Broward County officials failed their responsibility and that is a human failure that has nothing to do with guns and/or control. The police had every opportunity to apprehend and blew it. Chicago has plenty of laws against gun ownership and the killings continue.
Laws do not stop behaviour of those who intend to do wrong. It becomes an after the fact method to administer punishment.
++++++++++++++++++
Israel's school teachers are trained in how to shoot. Sad that has to be but it has proved effective.
Not sure that is an effective way for America to handle senseless attacks on school property.
Perhaps that is more appropriate for a nation surrounded by hate and terrorism.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I am going to repeat something I have said before.
You can dislike Trump and, I agree, he gives you a number of reasons to do so but you cannot blame him for:
a) The N Korean Mess
b) The Iranian mess
c) The South China Sea mess
d) The Russian-Syrian mess.
e) The re-arming, by Iran, of Hezbollah mess in Lebanon.
f) The decline in our military preparedness.
g) Years of under-funding of our military because liberals wanted to fund more entitlement programs.
h) The deficit he inherited, which restricts much of what he would like to do.
i) The failure to address many social issues from mass gun shootings, to poor education, to fractured race relations etc.
You can fault him for seeking to redress these failures if you do not like the way he is handling the economy, Obamacare, tax relief, wanting to protect our borders, his argument with sanctuary havens, his willingness to enforce laws pertaining to illegal immigration, and laws which were passed long before he became president and other matters.
The only thing I would suggest is why not offer your solutions rather than express hate for your president.
All I ask is chew on that for a while .
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In several hours our Congressional Representative, Buddy Carter, is coming to our home to speak and answer questions. Buddy used to do this frequently in more open public forums but the haters and disruptive, who have never read and/or understand what our Constitution is all about, would not allow him to have a rational discourse.
When these radicals hear what they do not like , they offer no rational response or rebuttal. Instead they resort to hateful actions using insurrective methods. This has nothing to do with Russian Collusion. This is simply rage and inappropriate behaviour on the part of goons who can't handle what they do not like.
So far they have not resorted to killing just destruction of property and preventing the free exchange of ideas. I guess for this we should be grateful.
We are expecting some 50 or so people and hope those attending will benefit from the opportunity to ask questions and get responses. They may or may not like what they hear by way of a response but this is what our nations should be all about.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ross continues to Rant. (See 2 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Feckless Europe points the way to it's own annihilation. (See 3 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Liberal Jews, who have voted like zombies for decades, now have another compelling reason to reconsider. (See 4 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Kim is correct to call attention to the hypocrisy that tragic events flush up but I do believe we need to close any loop holes when it comes to background checks.
Guns are part of our American culture and Constitutional Right. However, making sure they are sold to those who are stable and lawful citizens is something our entire society has a right to expect.
Addressing matters of this kind lend itself to a rush to pass laws which make for publicity and calm the cacophony but do little to solve the problem which might even be unsolvable, sad as that may be, unless we change our culture.
Tragedies, like the recent Florida school killings, do not lend themselves to studious consideration but rather, understandably/regrettably, foster emotional responses and this can lead, all too frequently, to bad legislation. Dodd-Frank is an excellent example.. (See 5 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)
Freedom is Not License: It’s Not About the 2nd Amendment
By Sherwin Pomerantz
When I was growing up one of the lessons that were drummed into our heads in elementary school was that freedom is not license.
The example that was often used was that for sure America guarantees freedom of speech. People living there can voice their opinions and not fear that they will be arrested, incarcerated or even killed for those opinions. But freedom of speech does not give a person license to cause damage. Therefore, a person cannot go into a packed theatre and yell “FIRE!” And the reasons are obvious.
The parallel in the situation America now finds itself with weapons similar to the AR-15 type rifle used for many of the more recent mass shootings, is of people taking the second amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms and seeing that as license to kill rather than for the purposes of self protection against marauders and intruders.
But what happens when freedom is misused and become license?
For example, the right to drive a car is a freedom that many of us enjoy wherever we live and the government, exercising its responsibilities to protect the populace, says a person must be qualified to drive before he or she is given a driver’s license. But once the person has that license and misuses it, the individual runs the risk of losing the right to drive when doing so would endanger the life of others. And both aspects of this process are respected and generate no demonstrations. People understand the need for government to license drivers and to take that license away if misused.
The same situation applies to doctors for example, who need a license to practice but who can lose that license as a result of malpractice. And the list goes on to cover lawyers, beauticians, and others.
But what happens when a society as a whole misuses a constitutionally guaranteed right as in the case of privately held weapons? Should the government reaction be to take away those weapons from all of society? Is that even practical? Clearly it is not but, at the very least, certain minimums should be established and it would seem that the absence of those minimums is what is rightfully causing the current angst.
So….what should and must be done:
· No one should be allowed to purchase a weapon anywhere in the world without a government issued license that certifies that he/she has taken sufficient lessons to use that weapon responsibly.
· No one should be issued a gun license who has a personal history that would question his or her being able to qualify for a license to own a deadly weapon.
· Individuals should not be allowed to purchase what are commonly classified as “assault rifles”. No one needs an assault rifle for personal protection.
What this would do is to enshrine the right to bear arms as guaranteed by the second amendment to the U.S. constitution while applying the same laws to someone who wants to buy a lethal weapon as someone who wants to drive a car (i.e. a lethal weapon that is mobile).
One would think that a country as powerful as the U.S,. where the rule of law is generally well respected, could figure all of this out and come together in a bi-partisan manner and make this work. But, then again, perhaps obvious logic no longer holds sway in American politics. It would be a sad state of affairs if that were true. It seems to this writer that all it takes is the will to make all of this happen. Let’s hope the political leadership internalizes this so that the 17 young people who died last week in Florida will be the last ones to be so casually slaughtered.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)
I continue to have the same very optimistic outlook for the economy and the stock market despite the recent drops and volatility. The market knows nothing today it did not know weeks ago. Interest rates are rising and the Fed will raise at least 3 times and maybe 4. The ten year will be at or above 3% by year end. Since the tax reform everything changed to the positive and it is being boosted by deregulation. Consumer and business confidence has soared since tax reform. Inflation is picking up slowly and may reach the Fed target of 2% soon. The world economy is doing better than it has for over 10 years. GDP is growing at more than 3%. There will be no collusion nor obstruction charges against Trump and he will not be impeached. We have known all of that, so the overreaction in the market about rates going up and inflation picking up is silly. The economy is picking up more speed and GDP is growing nicely. The inflation gauge used by the Fed is still below its 2% target. All good news. In fact, the 2.9% wage jump last month is likely an anomaly and the real increase is likely around 2.5%, nothing to be concerned about. In fact that is good. Most companies paid one time bonuses of $1000 and the wage increases put in place are not so big as to create issues. Earnings in 2018 are looking as good this week as they looked a week ago- up 18% or maybe more for the S&P. Barring a black swan, I believe the stock market will go up as the year progresses. Fixed income will decline in value. The good news for the stock market is Pelosi is killing the chance for the Dems to take the House and as the economy gets better and more workers see bigger paychecks, she and the Dems look like fools for voting against tax reform. Now it turns out, Ellison, the deputy head of the DNC, lied about meetings with the president of Iran and black anti-Semitic blacks. At some point the Jews are going to realize who he really is.
Commercial real estate deals are getting harder to do as the concern about increased interest rates and cap rates has slowed transactions and financings. Commercial real estate may have peaked in value now. That does not mean profits cannot be made in development deals, and some repositioning deals, but basic properties will likely flat line or decline a little in value from here. As mortgage rates rise, apartment rentals may increase in many markets. Some markets like NYC are over built and are offering concessions to tenants. A lot of new units are coming on the market this year, but then the development pipeline is expected to slow.
If they taught history in school these days, the left and blacks would all vote Republican. I am reading a tome about US Grant and the civil war and reconstruction. It was the Democrats who were against abolition, against reconstruction and it was US Grant who ended the slaughter of blacks and abolitionists in the late 1860’s and early 1870’s. It was the Dems who backed the spread of the KKK after the war, and KKK bands nearly destroyed black life in the south had it not been for Grant sending in federal police and union troops. It was Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who fought reconstruction and it was Grant who forced through the ability of blacks to vote and hold office. It was the Republicans led by Grant who were the real civil rights warriors of the time. Had it been left to the Democrats, the situation in the south after the war would have been far worse. It was the Democrats who held most offices in the south after reconstruction, and it was they who enforced segregation and voter restrictions and other anti-civil rights laws. That lasted all thorough the Woodrow Wilson administration. Wilson was a really terrible president who failed after WWI to lead the world to a lasting peace, and it was Wilson who helped perpetuate discrimination. Wilson was totally incapacitated in his last months in office, but was never removed. It was covered up. (I read that biography as well). The Democrats were a disaster for blacks in the south, yet they mainly vote Democrat. Someone needs to explain that to me. If you doubt any of this go read the biography of Grant and the history of the period. Go look at who controlled everything in the south until the seventies. It was not white Republicans. Grant was not a drunk in office, and he did wonderful things, especially in the area of civil rights, he never gets credit for.
Just to give some perspective on wars and the cost in dead soldiers, 750,000 American soldiers died in the civil war. More than all US wars combined through Vietnam. 20% of all southerners died. There were single battles where 10,000-20,000 soldiers died in a single day. Compare that to Afghanistan where fewer than 3,000 Americans died in 16 years. And out of a population which was a fraction the size of today. One of the good things that grew out of the civil war along with freeing the slaves, was that the US became an industrialized nation with a navy and a large army as a direct result of the war. The US after the war became a world power.
So now we know for sure. San Fran is now considered by Berkeley researchers to be worse than most under developed countries. An inspection of 156 streets all around town found large numbers of homeless, hundreds of discarded needles, and feces on many streets posing a real health hazard. This is what ultra-liberal policies bring along with the not guilty verdict of the illegal who murdered Kate Stienly. In Portland, retail stores are suffering because liberal laws allow homeless to sleep and go to the bathroom in the doorways of stores. Customers get chased away in daytime by homeless bums who threaten them. The cops are helpless. In NYC we had many years of very few homeless sand almost no harassment we had seen before Giuliani. Now it is all back with DeBlasio and the left wing city council. Do you think there is a lesson in this?
There is an answer to approving gun permits and keeping mentally deranged people from guns and off the street before they do anything. The AI company I work with has the top risk profiler software now used by numerous banks and Fortune 500 companies to find everything available on a person, and issue a risk score and profile which is then reviewed by a human analyst. It is exactly what would have stopped Cruz from getting a gun of any kind, and it would not have depended on any human to dig though data bases or files, or to forget to alert FBI headquarters about the threat called in, or on You Tube , or to screw up. In two minutes, it would have found the whole of all the accessible data bases in the world including the 39 police calls to his home, the expelling from school, and all the social media put out by the kid, and issued a warning to the analyst operator to deny the gun permit, and to alert local police to get him off the street quickly. It would not be used to track people, but would only be used only when someone tries to buy a gun. It is proven, off the shelf software run by our AI program, and it is rated by independent consultants as better than any other similar program out there, including Watson. Now we are working to find a way to get to the right people at the White House or Homeland Security to have them listen to us on this. It is an existing, immediately available, cost effective, very effective solution.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
Europe: The Rapid Spread of Dhimmitude
By Judith Bergman
- One of the most troubling aspects of this rapidly spreading dhimmitude, is the de-facto enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws. Local European authorities have been utilizing “hate speech” laws to prohibit criticism of Islam, even though Islam represents an idea, not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most hate-speech laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas.
- The British Foreign Office, which has ignored Iranian women's desperate fight for freedom and stayed shamefully silent during the Iranian people's recent protests against Iran's regime, unbelievably handed out free headscarves to its staff. Meanwhile, at least 29 Iranian women were arrested for shedding the hijab, and were likely subjected to rape and other torture, as is common in Iranian prisons. Yet British MPs and Foreign Office employees were perversely celebrating the hijab as some sort of twisted tool of “female empowerment”.
- Counter-jihad measures have been obstructed by Western leaders everywhere since immediately after 9/11. President George W. Bush declared that “Islam is peace”. President Obama removed all references to Islam in FBI terror training manuals that Muslims deemed offensive. New York City's current leadership threatened New Yorkers, immediately after the October terror attack in Manhattan, not to link the terror attack to Islam. UK Prime Minister Theresa May claimed that Islam is a “religion of peace”.
Although Europe is not part of the Muslim world, many European authorities nevertheless seem to feel obliged to submit to Islam in more or less subtle ways. This voluntary submission appears to be unprecedented: Dhimmi, historically speaking, is the Arabic term for the conquered non-Muslim, who agrees to live as a second-rate, “tolerated” citizen, under Islamic rule, submitting to a separate, demeaning set of laws and the demands of his Islamic masters.
In Europe, submitting to the demands of Islam, in the name of “diversity” and “human rights”, has also been happening voluntarily. This submission to Islam is, of course, highly ironic, as the Western concepts of “diversity” and “human rights” do not exist within the foundational texts of Islam. On the contrary, these texts denounce in the strongest – and supremacist – terms those who refuse to submit to the Islamic concept of divinity, Allah, as infidels who must either convert, pay the jizya [“protection”] tax or die.
One of the most troubling aspects of this rapidly spreading dhimmitude, is the de-facto enforcement of Islamic blasphemy laws within European jurisdictions. Local European authorities have been utilizing “hate speech” laws to prohibit criticism of Islam, even though Islam represents an idea – a religion and ideology – not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most “hate-speech” laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas. It would therefore appear that European authorities are under no legal obligation to prosecute people for criticizing Islam, especially as Islamic law, Sharia, is not part of European law; yet they do so only too willingly.
The most recent example of this kind of dhimmitude comes from Sweden, where a pensioner has been indicted for calling Islam a 'fascist' ideology on Facebook. The legal provision under which he is being charged, (Brottsbalken chapter 16, § 8,1 st), explicitly talks of “incitement” (Swedish: “hets mot folkgrupp“) against groups of people defined by their 'race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual preference'. However, the provision does not criminalize criticism of religion, ideology or ideas, because Western democracies, back when they were genuine democracies, did not criminalize the free exchange of ideas.
Dhimmitude in Europe is manifested in many other respects, as well. On World Hijab Day a yearly recurring February event founded in 2013 by a Bangladeshi immigrant to the US, Nazma Khan, “to fight discrimination against Muslim women through awareness and education”, several British MPs chose to don the hijab. These included MP Anne McLaughlin and Labour's former shadow Equalities Minister Dawn Butler and MP Naseem Shah. Furthermore, the British Foreign Office, which appears to ignore Iranian women's desperate fight for freedom, and which stayed comparatively quiet during the Iranian people's recent protests against the Iranian regime[1], unbelievably handed out free headscarves to its staff. According to the Evening Standard, an email reportedly sent to staff said:
“Would you like to try on a hijab or learn why Muslim women wear the headscarf? Come along to our walk-in event. Free scarves for all those that choose to wear it for the day or part of the day. Muslim women, along with followers of many other religions, choose to wear the hijab. Many find liberation, respect and security through wearing it. #StrongInHijab. Join us for #WorldHijabDay.”
Meanwhile, at least 29 Iranian women were arrested for shedding the hijab, and were likely subjected to rape and other torture, as is common in Iranian prisons. Yet British MPs and Foreign Office employees were perversely celebrating the hijab as some sort of twisted tool of “female empowerment”.
The above incident is hardly surprising: Britain is rife with some of the most jarring examples of dhimmitude. Mass rapes of children by Muslim gangs in many British cities, went on for years with the knowledge of the British authorities, who did not stop these crimes for fear of appearing “racist” or “Islamophobic”
The dhimmitude is also apparent in the lengths to which British authorities will go to excuse or explain away customs that are practiced by British Muslim communities. The police commander responsible for tackling honor crimes, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage, Ivan Balchatchet, recently wrote a letter in which he said that the reason there have not yet been any convictions for FGM (which was criminalized in 1985), despite an estimate that 137,000 women and girls are affected by FGM in England and Wales, is that the crime has “many nuances”. He later apologized for the statement:
“I apologise for this letter… FGM is the appalling abuse of children. It is unacceptable that there have been no successful prosecutions. Working with others, this is something that needs to change.”
Similarly, according to new figures, hundreds of “honor” violence and forced marriage crimes go unpunished in London. Data shows that between 2015 and 2017, police recorded 759 “honor” crimes and 265 forced marriages in London alone — but only 138 people were charged with offenses. Diana Nammi, executive director of the Iranian & Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, which provides refuge for victims, said
“What makes it so alarming is that figures that we obtained through freedom of information requests show that, at the same time, since the criminalisation of forced marriage in 2014, many more people at risk than ever before are coming forward for help”.
Dhimmitude, however, leads not “only” to child rape, female genital mutilation and “honor” killings, all spreading under the willfully blind eyes of national authorities, but also to the obstruction of counterterrorism efforts. In a recent interview for SVT public television, Peder Hyllengren, a researcher at the Swedish Defense College, said:
“You risk being identified as racist in a way that you have not seen in other European countries. There, this question has been as uncontroversial as the importance of combating Nazism and right wing extremism. But in Sweden it took a long time before it was acceptable to discuss jihadism in the same way that we have been discussing Nazism”.
Hyllengren is being too harsh on Sweden: Counter-jihad measures have been obstructed by Western leaders everywhere since immediately after 9/11, when President George W. Bush declared that “Islam is peace”. President Obama removed all references to Islam in FBI terror training manuals that Muslims deemed offensive. Theresa May claimed that Islam is a “religion of peace”. New York City's current leadership threatened New Yorkers, immediately after the October terror attack in Manhattan, not to link the terror attack to Islam.
Most recently, the British government's terror watchdog and independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Max Hill QC, said that it is “fundamentally wrong” to use the phrase “Islamist terrorism” to describe attacks carried out in Britain and elsewhere. According to a report by the Evening Standard, he said that the word terrorism should not be attached “to any of the world religions” and that the term “Daesh-inspired terrorism” should be used instead. Last year, Max Hill opined that some jihadis returning from Syria and Iraq should escape prosecution as they were “naive”.
In Germany, dhimmitude now runs so deep that the minister of family affairs recently suggested that sexual assaults by Muslim migrants could be prevented by inviting more Muslim migrants into the country — the mothers and sisters of the male Muslim migrants already there. This was the German minister's answer to a question in the Bundestag about what “concrete educational and danger prevention measures” her ministry was planning to “protect and inform women and girls in the long term about the disproportionately increased physical and sexual and life threatening attacks that have taken place since 2015” by migrants. This was the minister's pathetic answer:
“… On the one hand this concerns the accommodation where the young unaccompanied refugees live. Also of course to the…yes… the macho culture from which they often come… That one does not conceal this and attempts to discuss this there, and of course influence them, this is quite obvious… We have the expert's report from Professor Pfeiffer here, which gives very precise starting points… we must work with the youth and we also know that family reunification is important… he [the professor] says it is just the same with young men whether they are from here or elsewhere, they are easier to handle when they have their mothers and sisters with them”.
Europe is rife with other recent examples of dhimmitude, exhibited by countless state and commercial actors. There was the removal of a cross by the presiding judge in a German courtroom during the trial of an Afghan charged with threatening another Muslim for converting to Christianity; H&M recalling a range of socks after Muslims complained that the pattern on them resembled the word “Allah” written in Arabic upside down; a French court dropping hate crime charges from the indictment of a Muslim murder suspect, who confessed to killing his 66 year old Jewish neighbor, a woman whom he tortured, before throwing her to her death off her balcony, while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. He had also reportedly called the victim's daughter “dirty Jewess” two years prior to the murder.
The list goes on. Sheikh Yussuf Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has said that Europe will be conquered not through the sword, but through dawa, probably could not be happier. Europe is leaping to fulfill his request.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4)
4)
Israel as a Partisan Issue The Democrats have ceded the Jewish State to the GOP for future political gain. Benjamin Weingarten
Posted By Ruth King
Following Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Israel and the Trump administration’s late 2017 decision to relocate the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, Pew released a telling poll on American views of Israel. The headline figure from the survey: Republicans now sympathize with Israel (as opposed to the Palestinians) by a whopping 52-point margin over Democrats—79 percent to 27 percent—the greatest spread between the two parties in the last 40 years. Republicans have never been more favorably disposed toward Israel, while for Democrats, the opposite holds true.
This rift alarms much of the American Jewish political establishment, which believes that pro-Israel sentiment should remain bipartisan. Aaron David Miller of the Wilson Center writes that “the need for ‘no daylight’ between the U.S. and Israel used to be a talking point wielded by staunchly pro-Israeli supporters against Democratic and Republican presidents alike; Trump has turned it into official policy . . . [which] plays really well among mainstream Republican voters.” But the Pew survey challenges this narrative. Not just conservatives, but every group of American voters surveyed supports Israel over the Palestinians by a wide margin—with the single exception of “Liberal Democrats.”
Could it be that liberal Democrats have grown more Arabist, consistent with the growing anti-Zionist nature of the progressive movement? Does the growth in the percentage of progressives in the Democratic Party explain the declining Democratic support for Israel? Pew’s numbers limn an increasingly left-leaning Democratic Party. In 2001, only 29 percent of Democrats identified as “Liberal”; by 2017, 48 percent did. In 2001, liberal Democrats sympathized with Israel at a rate of 48 percent—11 percentage points higher than “Conservative/Moderate Democrats” at that time and a staggering 29 percentage points more sympathetic than liberals are today.
The divergence between Democrats and Republicans on Israel did not begin under Trump. Pew’s polling data show that Democrats and Republicans were largely aligned on Israel until around 2008, where the divergence began and then rapidly widened, driven largely by the Obama administration’s barely concealed hostility to the Jewish State.
President Obama demonstrated that hostility by, among other things, his “pre-1967 borders” announcement, which appeared to many to make the 1949 Armistice Line the non-negotiable outline for a new Palestinian state; invocation of the “dual-loyalty” canard over Jewish opposition to the Iran Deal; siding with the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement; funding efforts to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the 2015 Israeli election; and de facto support, via abstention, for United Nations Security Council Resolution 2234 (a resolution we now know that Trump administration officials sought to block), which, as noted elsewhere, had the effect of “alienating and delegitimizing Israel while bolstering the position of the Hamas-led Arabs, opening the door to litigation in international courts and increased BDS activity.”
At the same time, Obama took actions that strengthened Israel’s enemies, including his consummation of the Iran deal, flooding the coffers of Iran’s mullocratic regime and its jihadist proxies like Hezbollah with billions of dollars while protecting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The Obama administration apparently spiked an investigation into Hezbollah’s cars-for-cocaine money laundering scheme, at the same time refusing to enforce sanctions, which enabled the Turkey-Iran gas-for-gold trade to generate still billions more for the mullahs. Obama’s reflexive support of the Arab Spring destabilized the Middle East to the benefit of jihadist groups that threatened Israel, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS, and he repeatedly drew a moral equivalence between jihadists and Israeli forces, providing a propaganda coup for Israel’s enemies. In sum, the Democrats’ dramatic decline in support for Israel correlated with the years that the party was headed by America’s most anti-Israel president.
Support for Israel has become a Republican position for various reasons, religious and secular. Evangelical Christians, who vote disproportionately Republican, largely identify with the Zionist cause. Others respect the Jewish State for standing strong as a free nation surrounded by authoritarian Islamic regimes. Many support Israel because it shares a common set of political and moral values and security interests with the United States. But there is an often-unspoken political reason behind the partisan realignment over Israel: it is not so much that Republicans have seized upon Israel as an agenda item, but rather that Democrats have ceded it. Democrats are content to trade the small percentage of pro-Israel Democratic Jewish votes—a dwindling number—for Muslim votes, which means supporting policies deemed favorable toward Muslims, including on the Palestinian question.
Two-thirds of American Muslims today are Democrats, and an equal share support a large government that provides many services; 30 percent identify as “Liberal.” At the Democratic National Convention in 2012, Democrats removed reference to God and to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from the party platform, only to see portions added back by voice vote of convention delegates. In 2016, Democrats added a section to their platform specifically geared toward Muslims, reading, “we condemn Donald Trump’s demonization of . . . Muslims . . . and the climate of bigotry he is creating.”
The political logic here makes sense—American Muslims are where the votes will be. The U.S. Muslim population is expected to double by 2050, to over 2 percent of the U.S. population, while the Jewish population is expected to decline from 1.8 percent to 1.4 percent over the same period. A growing share (though still a minority) of this declining Jewish population is made up of Orthodox Jews, staunchly pro-Israel and overwhelmingly Republican. Conversely, the vast majority of Jews, who have fewer children than other Americans on average and are less likely to prioritize Israel among other issues, vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
In short, Muslim votes will be a growth industry for Democratic political entrepreneurs, while Jewish votes will be worth less and less. When you combine these ideological and political trends, it becomes clear that being pro-Israel has been made into a partisan issue not by President Trump, but by the Left.
Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) is a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. He has written for The Federalist, PJ Media, and Conservative Review. He is founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a conservative media consulting, production and publication advisory firm. You can find his work at benweingarten.com.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5) The GOP’s Gun Temptation
In Parkland’s wake, Trump and Rubio flirt with feel-good but ineffective solutions.
Republicans have held the political high ground on gun rights for decades, and they’ve done it by sticking together and sticking to the facts. Nothing will lose them that credibility faster than if they jump on the false-hope bandwagon.
The Parkland, Fla., school shooting is rightly causing a new national debate. With astounding cynicism, Democrats rushed to capitalize on dead teens, while ineffectually dragging out the same fatigued arguments they’ve been making since the Clinton era. They are back again with the “assault weapons” cry—calling for an arbitrary ban on a handful of scary-looking guns, when millions of other firearms can kill just as efficiently. (The 1994 assault-weapon ban was still in effect at the time of the 1999 Columbine massacre.) They are back again with confiscation, even though they know it’s a nonstarter with the Supreme Court and the public. The Parkland community deserves real policy proposals, not more empty posturing.
The GOP has excelled in recent decades in pointing out the barrenness of this gun-control agenda with statistics and common sense. And they’ve pointed out the unifying thread behind these mass-shooting events: mental illness. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy spent three years pushing legislation to overhaul and bring accountability to federal mental-health programs, and President Obama finally signed it in December 2016.
The Murphy bill was the product of a methodical and thoughtful effort to reform a system that wasn’t working. Such deliberateness is in contrast with the half-baked proposals now emanating from President Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio. Both men have said they favor banning adults under 21 from buying rifles. Mr. Trump is also talking about training and arming schoolteachers, and Mr. Rubio is latching on to restrictions on the size of magazines.
This is the politics of false-hope—Democrat-lite. Age limits may sound good, but most teenage violent criminals steal firearms from adults. An age limit wouldn’t have stopped Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook (who used his mother’s guns) or the Columbine killers (who obtained their guns from adult friends). It wouldn’t have stopped the Virginia Tech shooter or the Umpqua Community College shooter in Oregon, who were 23 and 26, respectively. An age limit is as empty a gesture as a ban on so-called assault weapons. As is a call for a large-capacity magazine ban, which is easily circumvented by reloading quickly. Arming teachers is an interesting idea, but it still doesn’t get to the root of the problem—stopping insane people from getting guns.
The Trump-Rubio proposals stem from that fatal Washington compulsion: a need to be seen as doing something. What’s odd is that it is unnecessary. There’s plenty Republicans could do in Parkland’s wake that is far more sensible, and would do far more good.
House and Senate committees could investigate the FBI’s failure to respond to warnings about the Parkland killer. This doesn’t need to be a bash-the-FBI episode, but law-enforcement failure has—along with mental health—become a defining feature of many mass shootings.
Republicans can also quickly pass the Fix NICS Act, which would fill holes in the background-check system—holes that we know led directly to mass-shooter firearm purchases that should have been barred. Some House Republicans demand that Fix NICS be combined in a single bill with a measure compelling states to recognize one another’s concealed-carry permits. That’s an invitation to the left to portray them as obstructionist. Instead, the House should pass each bill separately and let red-state Senate Democrats face the consequences for killing a gun-rights priority.
The biggest favor the GOP can do is to tackle the mental-health question in all its thorny complexity. The public understands the problem here. A recent Washington Post-ABC poll found that nearly 8 in 10 voters believe more-effective mental health screening and treatment would have prevented Parkland. That’s far more than favor most gun-control measures.
Some politicians are broaching the question of how to ensure the severely mentally ill don’t have access to guns. That would require a rewrite of federal health-privacy law, which currently makes it all but impossible to monitor the severely mentally ill. Rep. Murphy’s bill originally proposed revisions, but Democrats stripped them out at the behest of advocacy groups. Even most Republicans are too timid to venture into this civil-liberties space, since it requires a frank discussion about state commitment laws, court orders and appropriate protections.
But if the GOP wants to keep the public trust, it needs to lead that discussion, be straight with the facts, and force Democrats to justify inaction. Age limits and gun restrictions aren’t an answer. They’re a sideshow.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No comments:
Post a Comment