Archive for July, 2016

Interesting comment on Hillary’s career.

Friday, July 29th, 2016

This was posted on facebook as a comment to a WSJ piece on her campaign strategy.

Dick Morris, former political adviser to President Bill Clinton: If you happen to see the Bill Clinton five-minute TV ad for Hillary in which he introduces the commercial by saying he wants to share some things we may not know about Hillary’s background, beware as I was there for most of their presidency and know them better than just about anyone. I offer a few corrections:
Bill says: “In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.”
Facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in ‘Law School’ was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a ‘Federal Agent.’ She went to Court every day as part of a Law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Was this true ? Snopes has a sort of rebuttal.

Hillary Rodham (as she was known then) wasn’t a lawyer then, either: She was a Yale law student, and like many of her politically-minded fellow law students who saw the latest “trial of the century” taking place just outside the main gate of their school, she took advantage of an opportunity to be involved in the case in a minor, peripheral way by organizing other students to help the American Civil Liberties Union monitor the trials for civil rights violations. Her tangential participation in the trial in no way helped “free” Black Panthers tried for the murder of Alex Rackley

So the description credited to Morris is correct.

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The leftward shift of Fox News.

Tuesday, July 19th, 2016

I have not been a big fan of Fox News but it was the only source of relatively neutral political reporting on TV for years. Some years ago, Charles Krauthammer famously said, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes found a “niche market ” with 50% of the population.

I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn’t even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.

Now, in a trend that has become depressingly common, the heirs of Murdoch are taking over and shifting the programming left. Roger Ailes has been named by a disgruntled ex-employee in a fairly laughable sexual harassment suit. Carlson was fired and then, after being fired, sued alleging harassment.

Ailes, predictably, dismissed the charges as false.

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The Turkish Coup Attempt

Sunday, July 17th, 2016

The attempted coup d’etat in Turkey has failed and the repercussions will follow.

Edward Luttwak has an important column on why it happened and why it failed.

The failure was so sudden and the coup was so poorly organized that some have questioned whether it was a false flag operation.

A US-based Turkish cleric accused of plotting a coup to overthrow the Ankara government has claimed President Recep Erdogan staged the rebellion himself to justify a major clampdown on opposition forces.
Fethullah Gulen, who was a former key ally of Erdogan has been blamed by the politician of using his contacts to develop a ‘parallel structure’ to overthrow the state.
Erdogan has called on US President Barack Obama to extradite Gulen, who is based in Pennsylvania.

Erdogan has requested the US turn over the imam who has been living in Pennsylvania. Why ?

Luttwak has a pretty good explanation.

The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was left free to call out his followers to resist the attempted military coup, first by iPhone and then in something resembling a televised press conference at Istanbul’s airport. It was richly ironic that he was speaking under the official portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey’s modern secular state, because Erdogan’s overriding aim since entering politics has been to replace it with an Islamic republic by measures across the board: from closing secular high schools so as to drive pupils into Islamic schools to creeping alcohol prohibitions to a frenzied program of mosque-building everywhere — including major ex-church museums and university campuses, where, until recently, headscarves were prohibited.

When we were in Istanbul ten years ago, Hagia Sophia, the original Christian church that has been converted to a mosque after Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, was being converted to a museum.

INSIDEHAGIASOPHIA2

The huge panels of calligraphy were being removed and, beneath the panels, the workmen were finding that the previous workmen in 1453 had carefully preserved the mosaics being covered, possibly anticipating the city would be retaken by the Byzantines.

Mosaic at entrance

Few of the mosaics survived but a few could be seen. That one is above a door into the church.

Will the restoration continue under Erdogan ? I wonder. I also wonder how many tourists there will be to see it if it continues.

More from Luttwak.

Erdogan has been doing everything possible to dismantle Turkey’s fragile democracy: from ordering the arrest of journalists who criticized him, including the outright seizure and closure of the country’s largest newspaper, Zaman, to the very exercise of presidential power, since Turkey is not a presidential republic like the United States or France, but rather a parliamentary republic like Germany or Italy, with a mostly ceremonial president and the real power left to the prime minister. Unable to change the constitution because his Justice and Development Party (AKP) does not have enough votes in parliament, Erdogan instead installed the slavishly obedient (and mustachioed) Binali Yildirim as prime minister — his predecessor, Ahmet Davutoglu, had been very loyal, but not quite a slave — and further subverted the constitutional order by convening cabinet meetings under his own chairmanship in his new 1,000-room palace: a multibillion-dollar, 3.2 million-square-foot monstrosity (the White House is approximately 55,000 square feet), which was built without authorized funding or legal permits in a nature reserve.

I think Turkey is lost to the West and modern civilization. I saw those angry young men when we were entering mosques, like the Blue Mosque, where they kept angry and careful watch to see that we took off shoes and women wore head scarves. Now, they are running the country,

Nice and terror.

Thursday, July 14th, 2016

Nice, a city on the French Riviera, has been attacked on Bastille Day, almost certainly by a Muslim terrorist.

An Australian tourist in Nice has told the Australian Associated Press she could hear gunshots as the truck ploughed through crowds.
Katie Baronie Shaw, 21, said she and a friend had walked from a foreshore fireworks display to a nearby bar when the music stopped and gunfire rang out.
“We had no idea what was going on. Then all we could hear was gunshots. My friend just grabbed me and we all went out the back stairs and had to sprint out staying low with guys ushering us away from the foreshore.”
Shaw sheltered inside the bar as staff pushed everyone to the back and pulled down roller doors.
“We just sprinted, heads down, I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”

There wer thousands of tourists and celebrants. We were in Nice a few years ago and loved it. My daughter, Annie, was so enthralled by the area that I found her checking real estate listings. She majored in French in college because she loves France so much.

And now this.

Beach club Nice

Here is the Beach Club where the girls sunbathed. It is right on the Promenade des Anglais, a tourist site since World War I.

Nice map

Here is a map showing the Promenade des Anglais

The “credit” for the attack has not yet been claimed.

What the Hell is going on ?

Thursday, July 7th, 2016

Brig-4

I have been ruminating about the Hillary case since the Bill and Loretta meeting at the Phoenix Airport last weekend.

What is going on ?

The meeting was a big secret and no reporters were supposed to be there. However, a local TV station was at the airport.

The temperature was 115 degrees. Bill Clinton was alleged to be playing golf but HE DID NOT DO SO. He was meeting with a donor.

Former President Clinton was visiting the Phoenix area and arrived to Sky Harbor Monday evening to depart.

Sources tell ABC15 Clinton was notified Lynch would be arriving at the airport soon and waited for her arrival.

Lynch was arriving in Phoenix for a planned visit as part of her national tour to promote community policing.

ABC15 asked Lynch about the meeting during her news conference at the Phoenix Police Department.

I did see President Clinton at the Phoenix airport as he was leaving and spoke to myself and my husband on the plane,” said Lynch.

She made some risible remark about discussing golf and grandchildren. She had no children, let alone grandchildren.

This story stinks to high heaven.

Then Comey had his short announcement. CNN, of course, loved it.

Comey last navigated politics this turbulent in 2004, when he was deputy attorney general and he was at the center of a dramatic showdown with the White House over a surveillance program ordered by President George W. Bush. Comey and other Justice Department and FBI officials threatened to resign in the dispute, and Comey, a Republican, emerged a hero to the political left.

This is a lie. Comey was hip deep in the controversies of the Bush Administration and not in an impartial way.

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Government is Failing. At Everything.

Friday, July 1st, 2016

surprise

Today, Daniel Henninger has a pretty good column on Brexit.

The Wall Street Journal is not exactly on board with the “Leave” vote or certainly with Trump but this is pretty good.

The vote by the people of the United Kingdom to separate from the European Union was actually Brexit the Sequel. The first Brexit vote took place 35 years ago in the United States, with the election of Ronald Reagan, who carried 44 states.

Reagan, in his first inaugural address in 1981, could not have been more explicit about what his election stood for: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Brexit is shorthand for “government is the problem.”

Liberal intellectuals have mocked Reagan for reducing his theory of government to a bumper sticker. But he elaborated on the idea with words that would have fit in the Founders’ debates:

“We have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

Reagan is being misrepresented by a lot of Republicans these days. They don’t remember what a radical he was in GOP eyes back in 1976. I do.

Why even George Will thought he was too radical in 1976.

In a November 12, 1974 column appearing in the Washington Post on a potential 1976 challenge by Reagan to incumbent Establishment GOP President Gerald Ford, (titled “Ronald Reagan, the GOP and ’76”), Will wrote of Reagan: “But Reagan is 63 and looks it. His hair is still remarkably free of gray. But around the mouth and neck he looks like an old man. He’s never demonstrated substantial national appeal, his hard core support today consists primarily of the kamikaze conservatives who thought the 1964 Goldwater campaign was jolly fun. And there’s a reason to doubt that Reagan is well suited to appeal to the electorate that just produced a Democratic landslide. If a Reagan third party would just lead the ‘Nixon was lynched’ crowd away from the Republican Party and into outer darkness where there is a wailing and gnashing of teeth, it might be at worst a mixed course for the Republican Party. It would cost the party some support, but it would make the party seem cleansed.”

Will certainly has a way with words. The Administrative State has come to the end of its usefulness, if it ever had any.

Richard Fernandez, as usual, has something useful to say.

Basically, the Benghazi consulate was overrun because the administration had established an embassy beyond the wire and outside the artillery fan. They had deceived themselves into thinking it was tenable. They entrusted its defense to unreliable militias. When it was attacked, they had no forces within practical range of relief. To explain the resulting disaster, they peddled a fairy tale which even they did not believe. It was all wishful thinking from beginning to end and beyond. We are now in that beyond.

The Administrative State may be incompetent but it has good PR.

Benghazi was a foreseeable disaster they failed to prevent. And in the aftermath it was a catastrophe whose lessons they were determined to ignore. In summary, the report depicts an administration that was not so much malignant as completely incompetent. The Obama never saw what hit them in Benghazi, had no comeback when it did, and denied they were sucker punched even as they picked themselves up from the floor.

The true story of Benghazi is in many ways more disturbing than the wildest conspiracy theories can be.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh, a Muslim state, is exploding.

Armed attackers are holding as many as 20 hostages at a cafe in a diplomatic zone of Bangladesh’s capital. A gunbattle with police left at least two senior police officers dead and 40 people were injured.

ISIS claimed responsibility, according to Amaq News Agency, an ISIS media branch.
As police exchanged fire with the gunmen, the attackers threw explosives at officers, a source at the scene said.
Here’s the latest:
• Gunmen are holding the hostages at Holey Artisan Bakery, a cafe popular with expats, cafe owner Sumon Reza told CNN. Reza said he managed to escape as six to eight gunmen entered the cafe. About 20 people, some of them foreigners, were in the restaurant, he said.
• A police officer in charge of a nearby station was shot dead, Maruf Hasan of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said. A second officer later died from gunshot wounds, Detective Police Deputy Commissioner Sheikh Nazmul Alam tells CNN.

The attack is in an area frequented by foreigners. Bangladesh has had a rising tide of violence for over a year. The rising tide is directed agaunst foreigners and locals who are secular.

Over the past year, Bangladesh – an overwhelmingly Muslim country of 150 million people – has seen growing violence against both foreigners and locals deemed to be enemies of extremist Islam: secular bloggers, outspoken critics of fundamentalism, members of religious minorities such as Hindus and Christians, police officers and others.

Until now, the violence has taken the form of largely low-tech attacks involving small groups of militants or even individuals armed with knives or small arms.

Friday’s attack, however, was an operation of a much greater magnitude. Early reports suggest at least five gunmen, armed with sufficient automatic weapons and grenades to repel at least one assault by local police.

Western intelligence have been nervous about a major operation for at least 18 months. Indications of a complex plan to attack a diplomatic ball last year prompted much alarm – and pressure from western capitals on Dhaka to move effectively against the militant networks existing in the unstable south Asian nation.

Such attacks are likely here if the ISIS recruiters can get enough US residents to organize. In the meantime, Obama moves to imitate Brussels.

The Obama presidency has been an American version of the European Commission from which the Brits fled. Except that U.S. courts still review, rather than rubber-stamp, the Obama Commission’s executive orders ranging across labor, the environment, the internet, financial institutions and universities.

Had U.S. courts not pushed back against many of the Obama government’s rules and “guidance” directives, the famous “pen-and-phone” authority, this presidency would have come close to putting the states in the same relation to Washington as that between the once-sovereign states of Europe and Brussels.

The US military, our only real bulwark against militant Islam, is being pressed to allow open transgender personnel.

The Pentagon’s decades-old policy considers transgender people to be sexual deviants, allowing the military to discharge them. The services — and later, Carter — decided last year to move that discharge authority to higher levels in the military, making it more difficult to force out transgender people. The lack of a new policy, however, continues to create complicated situations for transgender service members and their commanders.

In one case, Army Sgt. Shane Ortega, a transgender man, was required last summer to go to a uniform shop where he was stationed at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii with a senior enlisted soldier to obtain a female dress uniform in order to meet Army officials at the Pentagon to discuss transgender policy concerns, according to Ortega and Army officials.

Ortega said the incident showed “a real lack of leadership and a lack of human compassion” and demonstrated the level of discrimination and ignorance in the military about transgender people is huge.

The article alleges there are 12,500 transgender people in the military, an astonishing claim as transgender is about 0.0001% of the US population.

And the clock is running on when the next Muslim attack on US soil will occur.