It’s Wednesday, December 9th, 2015…but before we begin, courtesy of Tom Bakke and Powerline Blog

All You Need to Know About the Gun Debate in Two Charts

 

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As William McGurn so eloquently notes in this brilliant piece at the WSJ:

The Liberal Theology of Gun Control

Guns are what you talk about to avoid having to talk about Islamist terrorism.

 

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Perhaps because old White guys are committing the vast majority of gun-related crime, you nitwit!

“How does a man who entered the White House vowing to restore science to its proper place tell us that gun control is the answer to terrorism? After all, California already has strict gun control, as does France, which just had its second terrorist massacre this year. Not to mention that the one time when terrorists with assault rifles and body armor were foiled, it was because an off-duty traffic cop in Garland, Texas, was carrying a gunand used it to shoot the two heavily armed Islamists before they could kill anyone.

Or that “common sense gun control” would have done nothing to stop Richard Reid (the unsuccessful shoe-bomber); the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston (pressure cookers) or the 9/11 hijackers (box-cutters). Maybe the president should be demanding common sense pressure-cooker control.

Yet while the critiques of the president’s antigun pitch are correct, they are also beside the point. Because liberal calls for gun control aren’t about keeping guns from bad guys. It’s what you talk about so you don’t have to talk about the reality of Islamist terror. And focusing on the weaponry is part of a liberal argument that dates to the Cold War, when calls for arms control were likewise used to avoid addressing the ugly reality of communism.

Understand this, and you understand why Senate Democrats reacted to San Bernardino by putting forth antigun legislation. Why the New York Times ran a gun control editorial on its front page, and the Daily News used its own cover to feature the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre underneath San Bernardino killer Syed Farook—labeling them both terrorists. And why President Obama used Sunday night’s address to whine about those resisting his call for gun measures that would not have stopped any of the shooters.

Put simply, today’s liberalism cannot deal with the reality of evil. So liberals inveigh against the instruments the evil use rather than the evil that motivates them.

Not that there aren’t measures society can embrace to keep the innocent from being shot and killed. The best example may be New York City from 2002-13, during Ray Kelly’s last stint as police commissioner, when the NYPD was bringing the murder rate to record lows through America’s most effective gun-control program: stop-and-frisk.

This was gun control for bad guys, under the theory that when you take guns away from bad people—or at least make them afraid to carry guns on the street—you reduce shootings. But it was savaged by liberals. Because they don’t want just the bad guys’ guns. They want yours…”

Barry, like the late, great Chuck Heston said:

…you damn dirty ape!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, writing at Commentary Magazine, Noah Rothmann details the harsh reality of…

Two Obama Speeches, Both Disasters

 

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Among an influential cast of liberal opinion leaders, Republican criticisms of Barack Obama’s prime-time address can only be taken seriously if they also laud the president in some form or fashion. Well then, let’s give them what they want.

The President of the United States finally – finallyacknowledged the domestic threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism directed or inspired by militant organizations overseas. After terrorist attacks attempted or executed by radicalized fundamentalist Muslims in Fort Hood, Time Square, Boston, Garland, Texas, and San Bernardino, California, the president is at last coming to terms with this menace. (No, he’s only acknowledging what is finally undeniable!) To his credit, Obama finally acknowledged Major Nidal Hasan’s murder spree was an act of Islamic terrorism. He also noted that the killing of five at a U.S. Navy recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was inspired by the same murderous ideology. Only three weeks ago, the FBI had contended that we might never know what inspired Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who was described as a devout Muslim, to target American soldiers for death. Finally, Obama noted that the sophisticated attack in California was the work of radicalized Muslims inspired by the Islamic State, but only belatedly and following the lead of his FBI director. If that sounds like damnation with faint praise, it should.

Obama delivered two speeches last night. The first was a remarkably discordant dissertation on the present and growing threat of radical Islamic militancy, which he averred could be mitigated if only we remain on the same course that allowed this threat to thrive. The second, a much more impassioned address, focused exclusively on his favorite subject: the boorish and unenlightened American people, who are in desperate need of a lecture.

When Obama became enthusiastic, it was when he was explaining what we should not do. The president asserted that a 2003-style invasion of the Islamic State’s territory in Iraq and Syria would be the wrong course, as though anyone had suggested it isn’t. Barack Obama insisted that to send over a hundred thousand troops to invade and occupy this territory would only “draw new recruits” for ISIS, which is a popular argument on the left. It is also one that lends undue credence to ISIS’s fevered end of days fantasy. It’s more likely that ISIS is better able to recruit not as a result of battlefield setbacks on its home turf, but by exporting terrorism overseas and slaughtering nearly 1,000 civilians in the space of just over a year.

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Still, the president acknowledged, as do most serious presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle, that an Iraqi and Syrian ground force (read: Sunni) is the only force that can roll back ISIS and fill the ensuing vacuum. He did, however, contradict himself by contending that he will seek “a political resolution to the Syrian war” that assuages the concerns of countries like Russia. But Moscow’s primary concern is in ensuring that Bashar al-Assad remains in power. We might like to tell ourselves that peace can be won around a negotiating table, but too much blood has been spilled for that now. A political resolution that leaves Assad in power will etch the animosities of the Syrian Civil War in stone. As long as Assad remains in control in Damascus, it is unlikely the hostilities that inspired so many Sunnis around the region to flood into Syria to fight against his regime will ever abate.

These were Obama’s counter-terror proposals. From there, he launched into a familiar homily about American intolerance. The president sought to stave off a backlash against Muslim Americans, which has never materialized on a grand scale over the course of the 14 years that elapsed since 9/11. That does not mean it never will, [but] it is the president who is inviting such a backlash by allowing the terrorist threat overseas to metastasize and erode Americans’ sense of security at home. People are afraid now, and Obama knows it. Indeed, the only discernable purpose of the president’s speech was to inspire the public’s confidence in their commander-in-chief. That is a task made more difficult by the fact that the only policy proposal Obama backed which might have addressed the conditions that led to the attack in California was to review the visa waiver program that allowed one of these two attackers to settle inside the United States. Except that one of the two attackers didn’t come to the United States as a result of the visa waiver program but on a fiancé visa. The White House corrected the error after the speech was delivered, but one wonder’s how Obama’s speech writers flubbed it in the first place if their focus is truly on preventing future attacks.

While shifting some of the public’s anxiety onto congressional shoulders, Obama made a handful of demands on American lawmakers. He insisted that Congress pass a new authorization for the use of military force tailored to this unique threat, which isn’t a bad idea. A new AUMF might not bind this president to any course of action, but it will focus the next president on the task at hand. Those who oppose a new AUMF do so, however, for good reason; it was a sticking point Obama himself identified. “Our military will continue to hunt down terrorist plotters in any country where it is necessary,” Obama noted. For the moment, the theater of operations ranges from the Tajikistan border to the shores of Nigeria, and from the Azerbaijan to the Gulf of Aden — not to mention terror cells in non-Islamic countries around the world. Does Obama want Congress to pass a global AUMF?

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Lastly, the president indulged the hysteria overtaking the left on the matter of guns by insisting that the GOP should pass a partisan Democratic proposal to prevent those on the terrorist watch list from purchasing a gun. “What could possibly be the argument for allowing a terrorist suspect to buy a semi-automatic weapon?” he asked. For starters, the deprivation of a constitutional right for American citizens on American soil should, and must, require the application of due process and a formal indictment. A former constitutional law professor, Obama knows this proposal would die an ignominious death in the courts. In fact, its primary value seems to be in the fact that Republicans won’t pass it, as Democrats would not and for the same reasons when it was first floated in 2007.

Missing from Obama’s speech was any mention of the threat of the competing organizational theory of fundamentalist Islam. Without an acknowledgment of the ideology catalyzing this violence, it cannot be stopped. Imagine for a moment if, during the Cold War, Western leaders obsessively repeated the refrain that Soviet-style communism did not represent Marxism, and Marxists everywhere had a duty to denounce it. Like socialism then, no responsible Western leader would contend that the religion of Islam is itself a threat that cannot coexist with the West. Those who do are appropriately ostracized. But a competing ideology cannot be fought without first being defined. Its dissidents cannot be identified; its tenets cannot be discredited; its adherents cannot be recognized and isolated.

Obama’s address contained few new proposals and virtually no strategic pivotsIt was primarily an unconvincing effort to assure the public that the present disastrous course is the correct one, and also that they should resist the temptation to indulge in violent bigotry. One wonder’s what the point of this speech was beyond reminding Americans that the Obama presidency is an utterly spent force.

As Bret Stephens writes at the WSJ

“Nobody who watched Barack Obama’s speech Sunday night outlining his strategy to defeat Islamic State could have come away disappointed by the performance. Disappointment presupposes hope for something better. That ship sailed, and sank, a long time ago.

By now we are familiar with the cast of Mr. Obama’s mind. He does not make a case; he preaches a moral. He mistakes repetition for persuasion. He does not struggle with the direction, details or trade-offs of policy because he’s figured them all out. His policies never fail; it’s our patience that he finds wanting. He asks not what he can do for his country but what his country can do for him.

And what’s that? It is for us to see what has long been obvious to him, like an exasperated teacher explaining simple concepts to a classroom of morons. Anyone? Anyone?

…The more grating parts of Mr. Obama’s speech came when he touched on the subject of Islam and Muslims. “We cannot,” he intoned, “turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam.” Terrorism, as he sees it, is to be feared less for the harm it causes than for the overreaction it risks eliciting. (Gee…where have heard THAT politically-correct…

…propaganda before?!?)

This is the president as master of the pre-emptive self-reproach—the suggestion that Americans are always on the verge of returning to the wickedness whence we came. But since when have we turned against one another, or defined the war on terror as a war on Islam?

Syed Rizwan Farook, a heavily bearded and openly devout Muslim, was a county employee in good standing with his colleagues who didn’t raise an eyebrow until he and his foreign bride opened fire in San Bernardino. The first 48 hours of the investigation amounted to a nationwide flight from the obvious, a heroic exercise in cultural sensitivity and intellectual restraint, as every motive except for jihad was mooted as a potential explanation for mass murder. Had Farook’s wife not sworn allegiance to ISIS moments before the attack, we might still be debating whether an act of Islamist terrorism had really happened.

Hells bells, even MSDNC

…and CNN

…are finally calling this anti-American, ineffective Marxist/Islamist spade an anti-American, ineffective Marxist/Islamist spade!  And the CNN segment was prior to what can only be described as the polar opposite of what Americans wanted and needed to hear.  Instead, we were treated to an expression of this President’s private reality!

In a related item guaranteed to drive The Dear Misleader’s disapproval ratings higher than Teddy’s blood alcohol content approaching the Dyke Bridge…

Iran tests another mid-range ballistic missile in breach of UN resolutions

 

“Iran has carried out a new medium range ballistic missile test in breach of two United Nations Security Council resolutions, a senior U.S. official told Fox News on Monday.

A senior administration official told Fox News on Monday the White House was “aware” of reports of the missile test, but had “no further comment at this time.” The Security Council is still debating how to respond to Iran’s last test in October.

Nothing to see hear folks…

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…move along!

In a related item courtesy of Balls Cotton, writing at Puffington Host, Charles Kolb suggests the answer to ISIS is meeting their murderous mayhem with…

Overwhelming Force

 

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“In September 2013, President Barack Obama blinked, changed course, and decided literally overnight not to take military action against Syrian president Basahr al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people. I said to a French friend at the time: “Just watch. When an American president is perceived as being weak, bad things happen in the world.” In March 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea.

The brutal, coordinated terrorist attacks by ISIS in Paris on November 13, 2015, should surprise no one. Syria and Iraq have become failed states, and the vacuum in Syria provided a large breeding ground for ISIS and its version of “radial Islam” to take root, proclaim itself a state, commandeer oil facilities, and now establish a caliphate the size of Indiana. Moreover, ISIS leaders have warned the West in advance of almost everything they intended to do. We were told weeks ago that ISIS would infiltrate the Syrian refugees flocking to Europe by the tens of thousands – and that is precisely what ISIS appears to have done.

The critical issue now facing Western leaders is what to do. It is no longer a matter of “containing” ISIS; that is impossible. The group and its adherents around the world must be exterminated, and this means taking the fight directly to the caliphate itself, because occupying land is a key aspect of this brand of radical Islam, as noted by Graeme Wood in the September 2015 issue of The Atlantic.

There is a curious reluctance by the Obama administration and the three Democratic presidential candidates to talk frankly about what is happening here. They refuse to recognize that the problem is “radical Islam.” In fact, they cannot even bring themselves to utter the phrase.

This global fight is not against Islam or peace-loving Muslims. The fight is against a radical Islamic group that is determined to impose Sharia law, not just in the caliphate but across the world. We now have what the late Samuel Huntington called a “clash of civilizations.” The battle is pitched between the civilized world and a radical Islamic group that has no respect for human life or civilized values.

As George Orwell taught us, imprecise use of language usually signals imprecise, muddled thinking. This is not a time for political correctness. ISIS never was a “junior varsity” player, and if it can perpetrate mass crimes in Egypt, Beirut, and Paris, all within two weeks, it cannot be “contained” either. This brand of radical Islam has to be eliminated root and branch.

What will it take? It no longer suffices to blame everything on President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. That is now a dodge. The issue is leadership today.

Half measures will not do the job. We should definitely equip the Kurds, continue airstrikes and drone attacks, carefully arm the Syrian opposition (what’s left of it), build support among non-radical Muslims and Muslim nations in the Middle East and elsewhere, establish a no-fly zone over Syria, strengthen human intelligence on the ground, and ramp up shared signals intelligence. These activities will be helpful, but they will not finish the job.

The American public may be understandably war-weary and reluctant to put our service men and women in harm’s way once again in the Middle East. If that is true, we need leadership now to make the case to the American people why this fight is essential. Most American “war presidents” say that committing troops to battle is the most difficult decision they ever made. We need that leadership now, before what happened in Paris last week becomes a reality in other parts of the civilized world.

Unfortunately for our nation and the world, while America possesses the way

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…we lack…

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…the will!

Which brings us to this total shocker, as reported in The Hill:

ISIS has targeted refugee program to enter US, Homeland Security chairman says

 

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Intelligence officials have determined that Islamic extremists have explored using the refugee program to enter the United States, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee said on Monday. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) declined to go into detail about the determination, which the Obama administration has not announced publicly. (Inquiring minds need not ask why!)

Yet the disclosure could add ammunition to critics of the White House’s refugee plans who have warned that the program is vulnerable to infiltration by adherents of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). “ISIS members in Syria have attempted to exploit it to get into the United States,” McCaul said during a speech at the National Defense University. “The U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.”

McCaul would not say specifically who informed him and other lawmakers about the revelation, only describing the sources as “elements of the intelligence community.” That was very courageous for them to come forward with this, to tell me about this personally, given the political debate on the Hill,” he added, suggesting that the news did not come from intelligence leaders. The briefing happened “earlier this week,” McCaul said…”

Suffice it to say, given the craven capitulation which has characterized so much of our senior military and intelligence hierarchy of late, we’re somewhat relieved to see there’s at least a one real man left in D.C.; you know, as Marianna Hill playing Callie Travers in High Plains Drifter observed, one honest-to-God man

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with a full set of balls!!!

Meanwhile, in the interests of full disclosure, though we’re still almost as opposed to a Trump Administration as we are another Clinton, as much as it pains us to admit it, we have to agree with James Taranto’s analysis of what may on the surface simply seem The Donald’s latest publicity ploy:

Did Trump Just Win?

His Muslim-exclusion idea is likely to prove popular.

 

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“…Our own view of the question is complicated. Certainly Islam and the American way of life are compatible inasmuch as America is capable of welcoming Muslims who are not Islamic supremacists. On the other hand, it’s always struck us that categorical statements to the effect that Islam is “a religion of peace” are far more hortatory than empirical—which is to say that there is a gap between Islam as it actually exists and Islam as President Bush or President Obama would like it to be. How wide that gap is, and how dangerous, we do not know.

Thus Trump’s proposal for a pause in Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on” strikes us as entirely reasonable. That’s not to say it’s necessarily a good idea. There are potential costs in American-Muslim relations both internationally and domestically, and humanitarian costs as well. There are practical questions about how it would be implemented. The religious-freedom argument, although legally empty, is not without moral force.

Instead of debating the proposal in a reasoned way, the political class—both parties—and many in the media are treating it as a thoughtcrime. Yet the PRRI poll suggests a large majority of Americans are thinking along similar lines…”

On the Lighter Side

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Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with another titillating tale torn from the pages of The Crime Blotter:

Burglary suspect hides in Florida lake, where gator eats him

 

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Some stories require neither explanation nor editorializing.

Magoo



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