Saturday, April 22, 2017
Never forget
On this day in 2004, Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, was killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan. Tillman, who was only 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, a fact which the military attempted to cover up. After a criminal investigation, the Army censured retired three-star general Philip Kensinger for lying to investigators and other violations. Several brigadier generals and other lower-ranking officers were also disciplined.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)
New Behind-the-Scenes Book Brutalizes the Clinton Campaign
'Shattered,' a campaign tell-all fueled by anonymous sources, outlines a generational political disaster
Shattered is what happens when political parties become too disconnected from their voters. Even if you think the election was stolen, any Democrat who reads this book will come away believing he or she belongs to a party stuck in a profound identity crisis. Trump or no Trump, the Democrats need therapy – and soon.Matt Taibbi gets it
Reasonably objective analysis of Trump's first 100 days from Nate Silver
But I strongly disagree with Trump on how to deal with the drug crisis
Trump Isn’t A Do-Nothing President
He's Done a Lot of Undoing
Taking all these things together, it appears that Trump may not yet have done much to secure his own legacy, but he is making significant progress toward undoing Obama’s. In the long term, for Trump’s presidency to be a success, he will need to begin making policies and passing legislation, steps he has so far been slow to take. But don’t mistake the lack of clear early-term victories for inaction — the consequences of Trump’s first 100 days, good or ill, will be felt for years.
But I strongly disagree with Trump on how to deal with the drug crisis
Law Prof Althouse
Rips Berkeley's Handling of
Coulter Speech
Citing First Amendment
Berkeley is making a fool of itself. I laughed out loud when I heard the spokesperson on TV:The Mainstream Media ought to be condemning Berkeley - Mario Savio sure would
University spokesman Dan Mogulof responded to the lawsuit threat, saying, “We are confident that we are on very solid legal grounds.... We are concerned about her disregard for the assessment and recommendations of law enforcement professionals whose primary focus is the safety and well-being of our students and other members of our campus community"...Pathetic. At best, "confident that we are on very solid legal grounds" is a bald-faced lie.
Pat Buchanan - the man who presaged Trump's election:
Is Democracy in a Death Spiral?
In Federalist No. 2, John Jay called us a “band of brethren” and “one united people” who shared the same ancestors, language, religion, principles, manners, customs.Seventy years later, the brethren went to war with one another, though they seem to have had more in common in 1861 than we do today.Forty percent of Americans now trace their ancestral roots to Latin America, Asia and Africa. The Christian component of the nation shrinks, as the numbers of Muslims, Hindu, atheists, agnostics grow. We have two major languages now. Scores of other languages are taught in schools.Not only do we disagree on God, gays and guns, but on politics and ideology, morality and faith, right and wrong. One-half of America sees the other as “a basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic … bigots.”How, outside an external attack that unites us, like 9/11, do we find unity among people who dislike each other so much and regard each other’s ideas and ideals as hateful and repellent?Democracy requires common ground on which all can stand, but that ground is sinking beneath our feet, and democracy may be going down the sinkhole with it.Where liberals see as an ever-more splendid diversity of colors, creeds, ethnicities, ideologies, beliefs and lifestyles, the right sees the disintegration of a country, a nation, a people, and its replacement with a Tower of Babel.Visions in conflict that democracy cannot reconcile.
Diversity has its limits
Althouse Rips NYT/WaPo Coverage of Trump's Successful Negotiation Resulting in Egypt's Release of an American Aid Worker
It's hard — isn't it? — for the liberal media to give President Trump credit for anything, but they should gracefully give him the credit he genuinely deserves. Imagine what the NYT would look like if President Obama had brought Aya Hijazi home! Trump was portrayed in a negative light for cozying up to Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, but the Obama administration tried and failed to bring Hijazi home.
WaPo prods us to think of the Trump administration in terms of "confusion" (it's the old "chaos" template, that alternates with "evil" in the elite media's coverage of Trump):
"What the White House plans to celebrate as vindication of its early diplomacy comes at the end of a week in which the administration has combated charges of foreign policy confusion. Although the president received wide praise for his decision to punish Syria for its presumed chemical weapons attack with a barrage of cruise missiles, the administration has been criticized for contradictions over policy toward Syria and Turkey, and misstatements on the U.S. response to North Korea’s weapons activity. "
Successful action is camouflaged in verbiage about things that have been said. Some of his words may sound like confusion, but that doesn't mean Trump is confused about what he is saying. Maybe he knows how to use words. There's an awful lot of evidence that he does. You can look down on him and call him confused, but when the results come in, you ought to question your analysis of what he is doing with words.
Direct Hit Again
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Australian Gov’t Adopts ‘Extreme Vetting’ for Islamic Migrants, Reforms Foreign Worker Visas
The Australian government has taken the lead from President Donald Trump in the race to improve vetting of immigrants who may hold hostile Islamic attitudes, and to reform wage-slashing guest-worker programs like the H-1B white-collar outsourcing visa.
April 20, 1980
Castro Announces Mariel "Boatlift"
On this day in 1980, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave the country could do so. 125,000 Cubans left and settled mostly in Miami. Among those who made the trip were many felons and mental patients whom Castro had slipped into the crowds in order to get rid of them. This was the last time Cubans had a chance to leave Cuba without fear of repercussions.
April 20, 1914
The Ludlow Massacre
On this day in 1914, the Colorado National Guard killed dozens of men, women and children who had assembled to support a strike against Colorado Fuel & Iron Company in Ludlow, Colorado. The company was owned by John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. The murders ended a strike by 11,000 miners who failed in their efforts to obtain better wages and working conditions. Sixty-six men, women, and children died during the strike, but not a single militiaman or private detective was charged with any crime.
April 20, 1898
President McKinley Declares War Against Spain
Charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill
On this day in 1898, President McKinley asked Congress to declare war against Spain in what many historians now characterize as a war of American Imperialism. The purpose of the war declaration was to side with the Cubans in their fight for independence from Spain. McKinley asked for the war declaration after the USS Maine was sunk in Havana harbor and 254 men were lost. Teddy Roosevelt and his Roughriders defeated Spain in a series of battles which resulted four months later in the Treaty of Paris, which ceded Puerto Rico, Guan and the Philippine Islands to the United States.
Gender Reversal 2016 Debates - New Play Opens in New York
Audience Agrees - Male Hillary Even Less Likable
The two creators are admittedly liberal and expected the project to reinforce the shock they experienced on election night — “I was struck by the aggressive body language that Trump was using and thought it would never be tolerated by a woman,” recalls [co-creator Maria Guadalupe]of the debates — but found themselves understanding how the outspoken businessman and reality TV star won the presidency. After each performance, [director Joe] Salvatore conducts a discussion with the audience, who generally dislike the male Clinton character’s mansplained fact flood and “all the nodding and smiling that a woman needs to do to be listened to,” says Guadalupe, and favor the female Trump character’s visible passion and clear messaging.But it is still the fault of the Russians
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Time to do something radical
Heroin Overdose Insurance Claims Jump 1,078 Percent In Opioid-Plagued Ohio
Link to article
Mainstream Media Disappointed
There is no real evidence that Trump voters are
turning on Trump
We are nearly 100 days into Donald Trump's presidency, and the most remarkable aspect of it thus far is that the political environment hasn't changed much at all. The same media that largely ignored the widespread dissatisfaction with the political establishment and wrote off Trump's electoral chances continue looking for evidence that the president has lost traction with the people who elected him. The effort to write the Trump-remorse narrative began in the Republican primaries, when analysts and the media expected GOP voters to eventually rally around a Trump alternative, and continues even now. But still, reality continues to confound those efforts.
* * *
Perhaps there will come a time when Trump voters actually do turn on him and either vote for Democrats or don't turn out at all. So far, though, there is no actual evidence that's happening now. There is enough polling and anecdotal evidence to conclude that Trump voters have enough patience to give their candidate more than 90 days to get his agenda accomplished. They seem to have more patience than the media does in jumping to conclusions, at any rate.Link to article: Cant wait to read this elsewhere
Mostly Democrat Voter Althouse:
"Could the Democrats grow up and stop being so offputting... so ossoffputting?
I get really tired of Democratic partisan emotion. I'm someone who sometimes votes for Democrats, and I've voted for a lot more Democratic candidates than Republicans over the years, but I have nothing but a negative reaction to all this anger at losing. If they'd won, they'd be exulting and gloating, with no empathy for the other side. Republicans don't act like that. I mean, maybe some Republicans somewhere do, but mostly they're better sports about winning and losing. It makes them look more responsible and more respectful of democracy. Could the Democrats grow up and stop being so offputting... so ossoffputting?I'm glad the Dems don't get it
89% Negative
Honeymoon from Hell: The Liberal Media vs. President Trump
As President Trump approaches the end of his first 100 days in office, he has received by far the most hostile press treatment of any incoming American president, with the broadcast networks punishing him with coverage that has been 89% negative. The networks largely ignored important national priorities such as jobs and the fight against ISIS, in favor of a news agenda that has been dominated by anti-Trump controversies and which closely matches what would be expected from an opposition party.And still the Dems failed to win the GA special election
It's time to do something radical
DHS Gen. Kelly: Almost as Many Americans Died of Drug Overdoses in 2015 as in ’12 Years in Vietnam’
It’s the highest number of drug-related deaths our country has ever seen. It’s more deaths than the peak of the AIDS epidemic in 1995. In a single year, we’ve lost nearly as many Americans to drug overdose as we lost in battle in World War I. Almost as many as was lost in 12 years in Vietnam.And that’s just overdose deaths. That number—as high as it is—says nothing about the long-term health damage to our citizens who survive, to say nothing about the human misery, the families ripped apart, and the extremes of crime and violence inherent in the illegal-drug enterprise.
* * *
The damage TCOs do is not only violence and potential terror. It is also vast tonnages of marijuana and hard drugs—cocaine, heroin, counterfeit opiates, fentanyl, and meth amphetamines—they smuggle across our borders to feed both the recreational and addictive U.S. drug demand.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the U.S. Coast Guard all bear witness to the massive quantity of drugs TCOs are bringing to our homeland every day—with devastating consequences.
* * *
Echoing the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Kelly said that most of the heroin in the United States originates in Mexico.Why isn't the media talking about the Obama admin's failed policies?
Scott Walker Deals Another Blow to Big Labor in Wisconsin
Now let's start rebuilding our infrastructureThe legislation, Senate Bill 3, prohibits state and local governments from requiring a bidder on a public works project to enter into an agreement with a labor organization. The bill also prohibits local and state governments from considering whether or not the bidder has entered into a labor agreement as a factor when awarding a project.Republicans point to the construction of a new arena for the state’s professional basketball team the Milwaukee Bucks as a reason behind the measure. The team partnered with construction companies and firms to draft labor agreements that set wages and working conditions.The Bucks agreed to pay workers at least $12 an hour in 2017 and $15 per hour by 2023. Wisconsin taxpayers are partly funding the $500 million arena, and conservatives complained that labor agreements shut out competition and increased taxpayer costs.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
DHS Secretary Gen. Kelly Proclaims
Sacred Duty to Protect America
The Department of Homeland Security was improperly restricted by officials working for President Barack Obama, says John Kelly, the new DHS secretary.
"We have a sacred duty and that is the continuation of the United States as we know it. To protect our way of life and the exceptional people we are,” he said, echoing the oath taken by new legal immigrants, and implicitly dismissing Obama’s claim that American is not exceptional.
* * *
But make no mistake—we are a nation under attack.We are under attack from criminals who think their greed justifies raping young girls at knifepoint, dealing poison to our youth, or killing just for fun.We are under attack from people who hate us, hate our freedoms, hate our laws, hate our values, hate the way we simply live our lives.We are under attack from failed states, cyber-terrorists, vicious smugglers, and sadistic radicals.And we are under attack every single day. The threats are relentless.… We are under attack from terrorists both within and outside of our borders. They are without conscience, and they operate without rules. They despise the United States, because we are a nation of rights, laws, and freedoms. They have a single mission, and that is our destruction.And I tell you, without exaggeration, they try to carry out this mission each and every single day and no one can tell you how to stop it. No one.”
More good stuff here plus the text of his speech
On this day at the Diet of Worms, 1521
Martin Luther Refuses to Recant
Holy Roman Emperor Declares Luther a Heretic
Issues Death Sentence
"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves-I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen." - Martin Luther.
Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Gen. John Kelly:
DHS Secretary: Transnational Criminal Organizations Are A Top Threat To U.S.
Kelly said that if there is another terrorist attack in the U.S. from a foreigner that he would be confident that the individual came “through the southwest border.”
* * *
Kelly also noted that an estimated 10,000 Europeans have traveled to Iraq and Syria for fight for the Islamic State. “Many are citizens of countries in our Visa Waiver Program, they can more easily travel to the United States which makes us a prime target for their exported violence.”
Blames weak Obama illegal immigration policies
Monday, April 17, 2017
How many Americans know that Isis tried to kill the Coptic pope last week?
From Palm Sunday to Easter Peace
The cross is shared. The evil of ISIS terror reminds like no other.
They're just Christians
David French/National Review
The Battle of Berkeley
The leftist mob has sown the wind. Now, the whirlwind looms.
We are now teetering on the edge of a truly terrifying incident, one trigger-pull away from a slaughter. Campus and urban progressives have a choice to make. Is this a nation of laws? If it is, then it’s time to grow a backbone, protect free speech, punish rioters, and expel those who disrupt the educational environment regardless of ideology. There should be no more sympathy or leniency for the lawless social-justice warrior than there is for the lawless neo-Nazi.
Every single time the progressive establishment ignores, minimizes, or whitewashes leftist violence, it sows the wind. Americans have watched mobs attack police and burn buildings in Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte, and Minneapolis. They have watched mobs riot over politics and free speech in Middlebury, Berkeley, Portland, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Is anyone at all shocked that when the police hang back, others will step into the void? Leftists are fond of saying “violence begets violence.” If we don’t restore the rule of law, we’ll all find out just how right they are.
Let's hope French is wrong
April 17, 1961
JFK Launches Doomed Bay of Pigs Invasion Against Castro
President John F. Kennedy waits for word on the success of a covert plan to overthrow Cuba’s government on this day in 1961. Kennedy had authorized Operation Zapata, the attempt to overthrow Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro, on April 15. The failed coup became what many have called the worst foreign-policy decision of Kennedy’s administration.When Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961, he inherited from his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, an ongoing conflict with the leftist regime in Cuba. Aided by Soviet-bloc weaponry, Castro led a brutal clampdown on human rights and dissent after taking power in 1959. That same year, Eisenhower had implemented a trade embargo on Cuban goods and, in 1960, broke off diplomatic relations with the island nation. Before he left office, Eisenhower had approved, but did not launch, a covert plan devised by his vice president, Richard Nixon, and the CIA to overthrow Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro. When Kennedy assumed the presidency, he retained Eisenhower’s CIA and military advisors who had helped plan the mission. At their urging, Kennedy made the final decision to send approximately 1,200 CIA-trained Cuban exiles to land at the bay on Cuba’s southern coast called Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). The attempted coup failed miserably, largely due to faulty intelligence. Kennedy and the CIA leaders in charge of the mission (all inherited from Eisenhower) believed that Cuba’s people and its military would spontaneously rise up to help the exile army overthrow Castro, a grave miscalculation. Instead, Castro’s forces captured most of the exile army, executed some and held the rest prisoner until private American groups raised funds for their ransom.The CIA and JFK’s administration blamed each other for the plan’s failure. The CIA cited JFK’s failure to order prolonged offensive air strikes against Cuba’s air force at the same time as the land operation, while JFK and his advisors blamed the CIA for keeping information from the president, including several analysts’ conclusions that the plan’s success was dubious. The ensuing tension between the president and his military and intelligence advisors prompted JFK to rely even more heavily on the advice of his brother, Robert F. Bobby Kennedy, who was also his attorney general, when making future foreign-policy decisions.A former special assistant to JFK, Arthur Schlesinger, has since recorded Bobby Kennedy’s recollections of the Bay of Pigs invasion. In a memorandum written in June 1961, Bobby Kennedy concluded that the mission broke down from the incompetency of the CIA and a complete lack of communication. He also noticed that the disaster weighed heavily on his brother, who was concerned about how it would reflect upon his leadership and the nation’s credibility. In an oral history interview, Bobby Kennedy recounted that he and his brother had been through a lot of things together, and he was more upset [by the Bay of Pigs failure] than any other.
Althouse rips "Weirdly Feminizing Headline about Trump at NYT"
"A Homebody President Sits Out His Honeymoon Period."
Thanks . . . , but remember how Trump went out all over the country for a year and a half making his case before the election? You know what name doesn't appear in this article? Hillary Clinton. Don't think about how she failed to travel to those blue-wall states she lost, how she never made her case to Americans she took for granted.
Another word I don't see in this article is "yacht." That's the word I think of when I see the comparison to Barack Obama. I was just reading the Daily Mail article "A picture perfect moment! Barack and Michelle Obama pose on billionaire David Geffen's superyacht during day out with Oprah, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks in French Polynesia/Barack and Michelle Obama were guests on David Geffen's 454ft superyacht Rising Sun on Friday/Oprah, Tom Hanks and Bruce Springsteen were also on board the stunning $300million vessel /The Obamas have been holidaying at the Brando resort in French Polynesia for the past month /Since leaving the White House, they have also visited Palm Springs, Hawaii and toured the Caribbean."
What charming wanderlust, compared to our new "homebody" President.
* * *
I can't get over that word "homebody" in the NYT headline.Althouse is becoming increasingly critical of her favorite paper's coverage of President Trump
1. It's a putdown, but why is it a putdown? The feminist answer is: Staying home, loving home, working within the home are traditionally associated with women, and things associated with women are viewed as inferior. To put "homebody" and "honeymoon" together is, I assert, feminizing.
Dilbert: How to Structure a Deal with North Korea
In persuasion language, you need to give North Korea a “fake because.” They probably already want peace, but they don’t have a good public excuse for why they would cave to pressure and settle for it. Giving them something that has little value but can be exaggerated to seem like it has great value becomes the “fake because.”
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Gay Porn Kingpin: Protect America From Muslim ‘Barbarians’
The United States and the West in general must protect themselves from Muslim “barbarians as vigorously as they (Muslims) protect their society, their way of living, their way of thinking,” Michael Lucas, a gay pornographic film actor and director, charged in a radio interview.
Lucas recommended strictly limiting the U.S. refugee program and other immigration to cultures and societies that “share our values.”“We can be like a sports team,” argued Lucas. “We can choose the crème de la crème. Doctors. Engineers. Programmers from all over the world. But from the world that is sharing our values. That is my very strong belief.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)