It’s Friday, June 17th, 2016…but before we begin, every now and again a photo comes along which so perfectly represents the reality of Progressives policies it deserves a special place in the line-up:
And before we leave the subject of The Dear Misleader’s patent prevarication and rank hypocrisy, though you’d never know it from the MSM’s coverage, as this forward from Bill Meisen demonstrates, The Donald isn’t the first supposed “national leader” to suggest a temporary halt to Islamic refugees entering the United States…
First up, two great takes on the parlous state of what passes for reasoned political debate within contemporary Progressivism. First, Commentary Magazine‘s Jonathan Tobin details…
“It was a moment those of us watching won’t soon forget. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was looking for a target at which to aim his anger over the horrifying crime at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. But his target wasn’t the shooter, or anyone remotely associated with the Islamist groups with which he identified. It was Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was on the air in her capacity as a law enforcement official and said plainly that violence directed at gay Americans would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Cooper did not question her about what was being done to protect gays, such as those 50 people who were slaughtered by a terrorist who proclaimed his Islamist sympathies. Instead, he attacked her for having defended Florida’s law against gay marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court, which then overruled all such laws around the nation. It was an uncomfortable few minutes. Despite her consistent effort to steer the conversation back to the victims, Cooper never let up. He was determined to portray her as an enemy of the LGBT community, of which he is himself an open and proud member, and to portray her as unworthy to comment on the terror attack in her state.
Faced with a terrorist atrocity in which radical Islam had clearly played a key role, Cooper preferred to pivot in such a way as to portray mainstream religious conservatives as the villains, if not unindicted co-conspirators, in the crime.
…It is true that gays are being targeted for violence in 2016, but the people attacking and killing them are not evangelicals or conservatives.They are Islamists. It is ISIS that is persecuting homosexuals, throwing them off rooftops, or executing them in other terrible ways. It is that strain of fundamentalism that is waging war on gays and, whatever the personal proclivities or problems of Omar Mateen, the voices that he heard and read urging him to this crime were Islamist preachers of violence, not American conservative critics of gay marriage or transgender bathroom policies. To pretend anything else or to infer some sort of connection is not only false; it is exactly the sort of polarizing political warfare that has so degraded public discourse in 2016…”
A battle plan developed, practiced and perfected by Progressives; not only have decades of Liberal lies and deliberate deception enabled the rise of Donald Trump, his tactics are simply pages out of their dog-eared playbook.
As Bill Meisen paraphrased an excellent point raised Thursday by Rush: if a woman or man possessing the plumbing appropriate to the sex on their birth certificate suddenly identifies with the opposite gender, The Left not only accepts their claim without question…or psychological testing…but threatens sanctions against those who don’t.
Contrast that with the Orlando shooter who categorically pledged his allegiance to ISIS during the Pulse massacre…yet Liberals refuse to recognize his indisputable connection to radical Islam, while the MSM continues to claim authorities are still struggling to find a motive for the mayhem.
To quote Mr. Meisen, “This guy self-identified as a radical Muslim, and that’s enough for me!” As it should be for anyone with the sense God gave…
Then there’s this from Theodore Kupfer, writing at NRO:
Who describes Orlando as a ‘terror attack,’ and who describes it as ‘mass murder’?
“…Our political language is degenerating along with our moral language. The utility of political terms now lies in their political expediency rather than in the ideas they once denoted. A person who earned millions by flipping houses, as did Elizabeth Warren, can, to great acclaim from the party faithful, warn against predatory business practices, inveigh against Wall Street, and endorse Hillary Clinton. If Trump denies saying something he just said, his backers take it as a sign that he won’t be pushed around by pesky facts or the need for consistency. Of course, politics was never the primary venue for honest and open discourse. But the situation seems more hopeless today than perhaps it did in earlier eras.
The reasons for this degeneration are fundamental. Politics is both instrumental and normative. The instrumental part deals with the common refrain of how to get things done. The normative goals involve what ought to be done. Among the traditional normative ends of politics: preserving institutions that stabilize society, promoting social well-being, and safeguarding the rights that people possess. Political structure provides the boundaries within which these ends can be accomplished. Our Constitution, for instance, charts out in its articles ways to accomplish the normative mission of its Preamble. It does so clearly, packaging certain specific instrumental prescriptions. But enter the new world of slippery language, when presidents can be applauded for hedging on the meaning of “Islamic State.” Madisonian clarity is no defense against the denial of inconvenient knowledge.In a world where staying in office is the main goal for politicians, retaining influence is the main goal for policy wonks, and upping the click counter is the main goal for the news media, what happens to the pursuit of truth?Tired narratives take its place.
Ignore Omar Mateen’s pledge of allegiance to ISIS. Never mind his religious background in conjunction with the new information that he might have been gay. Single out an entire religion for its alleged homophobia only if it’s Christianity. Forget the Bataclan. This is about guns and the Christian Right. Stick to the script. What is sad about the canned analysis of the Orlando murders is that so few of the words are actually designed to move the needle toward True and away from False.Such is discourse in a culture that’s not sure what the difference is any more. The facts of the matter have been replaced with facile abstractions: Take the claim that “Islamophobia and homophobia are interconnected systems of oppressions,” made by Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in an article at Time magazine. What Macintyre warned about is at hand. Nothing said — and perhaps nothing that happens — can sway the devout from their positions.“
Which makes a significant number of the Trumpeteers no different than the vast majority of The Left, despite their good intentions.
Turning from well-intentioned citizens to those consumed with anti-American malice, writing at the New York Post, Michael Goodwin terms…
“If it is true that the best defense is a good offense, President Obama should be celebrating in the end zone now. Obviously furious over criticism that his anti-terror policies are weak and that the Orlando slaughter proves it, he went on a televised tirade to let America know he’s mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
He laid waste to a field of straw men, cable-TV pundits and the always-evil “partisan rhetoric,” by which he means anyone who disagrees with him. It was a striking display of personal anger and pent-up grievances — and a total failure of leadership during a national crisis.
…Obama’s demeanor and tone were far from presidential — tantrums rarely are. Nor was he effective in rallying the nation to his cause. No surprise there. His cause is himself, always and only, and his greatly diminished historic presidency looks especially insignificant next to the bloodshed in Orlando.The iconic redeemer who promised hope and change never seemed so small and hopeless.
America saw Barack Obama at low tide yesterday, revealed as brimming with fury and bankrupt of ideas and even sympathy for the dead. The man who had an answer for everything and a solution to nothing is now also out of excuses…”
For more on the subject of those with answers for everything, solutions to nothing and who are absolutely out of excuses, the editors at the WSJ offer misinformed Liberals…
Hillary’s ban wouldn’t work any better than her husband’s did.
“In the wake of the Orlando terrorist massacre, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have called for reinstating Bill Clinton’s ban on “assault weapons.” If her version works as well as her husband’s did, the terrorists will have won.
From 1994 to 2002 Congress barred the sale of 18 types of rifles and shotguns that had “military style” attributes. This definition was purely political because the difference between a regular rifle and what Washington calls an assault weaponis mostly cosmetic.
This is one reason the ban had anegligible impact on gun crime.So-called assault rifles accounted for about 2% of gun crimes prior to the ban, and the percentage of murders committed with rifles today (2% in 2014) is less than the 3% in the last year of the ban. Overall gun crime fell after 1994, though numerous studies, including one commissioned by the Department of Justice, attribute this to better background checks and other measures. The studies found no link to the ban and reduced crime.
The rifle ban also didn’t matter when it ended. The gun homicide rate remains about half (3.8 deaths per 100,000 people) of what it was prior to the seven deaths per 100,000 in the early 1990s. The media this week are full of stories about gun-death rates, without bothering to note that most of the surge is occurring in cities like Chicago that have the strictest gun laws. Heather Mac Donald nearby (two items below) has a better explanation for the crime resurgence.
As for stopping terrorism, California is among the states that continued to ban assault weapons after the federal version expired. But that didn’t stop the San Bernardino killers, who used modified rifles that violated the law.France’s strict gun laws also didn’t stop the Paris assailants.
There are some 350 million guns in America, including as many as 10 million AR-15 rifles like the one used in Orlando. If Democrats want a ban to have any chance of working, they will have to vote for and enforce a nationwide program of confiscation. The ban Democrats are pushing would be meaningless…”
“Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat who ran for office as a gun rights champion, was challenged on the due process element of this gun control debate (which, again, misses the real point entirely) on television this morning. His response was breathtaking:
The Democratic Party now seeks to curtail the protections of the first, second, fifth and tenth amendments to the Constitution — a document they’ll also insist enshrines a right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy, absent any textual evidence. They demand “action,” ignoring actual crime statistics and trends by proposing failed feel-good ideas while exploiting fear and emotion.They also make dumb, self-defeating arguments:
So gun laws didn’t stopthose killers from getting their hands on deadly weapons and using them to murder cops. That’s what you’re highlighting there, Senator.Nor did anti-murder laws.Call me crazy, but perhaps we should be spending much less time trying to undermine the second amendment and disarm law-abiding US citizens, and more time examining, say, this:
Which brings us to the latest from Heather Mac Donald, also courtesy of the WSJ, who chronicles…
The Ferguson effect, failed city leadership and an ill-advised deal with the ACLU have made the city ever more dangerous.
“Someone was shot in Chicago every 150 minutes during the first five months of 2016. Someone was murdered every 14 hours, and the city saw nearly 1,400 nonfatal shootings and 240 fatalities from gunfire. Over Memorial Day weekend, 69 people were shot, nearly one an hour, topping the previous year’s tally of 53 shootings. The violence is spilling from the Chicago’s gang-infested South and West Sides into the business district downtown. Lake Shore Drive has seen drive-by shootings and robberies.
The growing mayhem is the result of Chicago police officers’ withdrawing from proactive enforcement, making the city a dramatic example of what I have called the Ferguson effect. Since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014, the conceit that American policing is lethally racist has dominated media and political discourse, from the White House on down. Cops in minority neighborhoods in Chicago and other cities have responded by backing away from pedestrian stops and public-order policing; criminals are flourishing in the vacuum.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel warned in October 2015 that officers were going “fetal” as the violence grew. But 2016 produced an even sharper reduction in proactive enforcement. Failures in city leadership after a horrific police shooting, coupled with an ill-considered pact between the American Civil Liberties Union and the police department, are driving that reduction.Residents of Chicago’s high-crime areas are paying the price…”
But as Mac Donald goes on to note, it gets worse:
“Despite the groundlessness of these racial-bias charges, then-Police SuperintendentGarry McCarthy and the city’s corporation counsel signed an agreement in August 2015 giving the ACLU oversight of stop activity. The agreement also created an independent monitor. “Why McCarthy agreed to put the ACLU in charge is beyond us,” a homicide detective told me.
On Jan. 1 the department rolled out a new form for documenting investigatory stops to meet ACLU demands. The new form, called a contact card, was two pages long, with 70 fields of information to be filled out. This template dwarfs even arrest reports and takes at least 30 minutes to complete.Every card goes to the ACLU for review.
The arrangement had the intended deterrent effect: Police stops dropped nearly 90% in the first quarter of 2016. Criminals have become emboldened by the police disengagement. “Gangbangers now realize that no one will stop them,” says a former high-ranking official with the department.People who wouldn’t have carried a gun before are now armed, a South Side officer told me. Cops say the solution is straightforward: “If tomorrow we still had to fill out the new forms, but they no longer went to the ACLU, stops would increase,” a detective said.“
As the young shoplifter in Die Hard: With a Vengeance so eloquently observed:
The ACLU and city authorities are essentially throwing Chicago’s criminal class a party…and the Windy City’s law-abiding citizens are footing the bill!
Next up, the latest on the continuing criminal enterprise which is Team Clinton, as the Washington Examiner via George Lawlor reports…
“Less than half of the projects undertaken by the Clinton Global Initiative have been completed, according to a list posted Monday.
…The Clinton Global Initiative, which is holding its glitzy annual meeting in Atlanta this week, operates by convening powerful CEOs and nonprofit heads and encouraging them to pledge to philanthropic projects called “commitments.” But the report showed fewer than half of those commitments have been completed since 2005, with roughly a third underway and more than 200 others “stalled” or “unfulfilled.”
…Hillary Clinton has struggled to answer questions on the campaign trail about why many donors to the Clinton Foundation received favorable treatment from the State Department while she served as secretary of state…”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Commentary Magazine‘s Peter Wehner suggests the aim of the would-be leader of The Gang Who Still Can’t Shoot Straight grows more errant the longer he practices, and warns us of…
“Donald Trump is in the midst of a fairly dramatic collapse in public opinion polls. What seems to be happening isn’t that Hillary Clinton is on the rise. Rather, Trump’s popularity is dangerously low for a presumptive presidential nominee at this stage (pre-summer) of the race. And since the start of June, the trend for Trump has been alarming.
…So let’s take a step back to place where we are. This should be a moment, late spring/early summer, when Trump is consolidating Republican support and fortifying his position. Instead, the empirical evidence shows he is in perfectly awful shape, as weak and vulnerable as any major presidential candidate in decades. He is positioned to be wiped out in November, despite the fact that Mrs. Clinton is a bad candidate with much baggage.
Just a few weeks ago, Trump supporters were upbeat because he was within just a few points of Hillary Clinton. This was a false dawn. What they didn’t take into account is that she was still in a pitched battle with Bernie Sanders, which meant the Democratic support she can count on in the fall was suppressed. Trump, having effectively won the nomination, was consolidating Republican support. Once Clinton effectively secured the nomination, which she has now done, the gap was bound to increase. The fact that Trump was still losing to Clinton when he had that advantage should actually have been a warning sign.
What should be particularly worrisome for those rooting for Trump is that things have gotten markedly worse. Negative views of Trump have increased 10 points in the last month. That is because he is acting just as he has acted all year. The hope that he’ll flip the switch and become more “presidential,” more unifying, and less repulsive just isn’t happening…”
Nor is it likely to; it’s just who Trump is, will be, and always has been. Should Trump’s numbers continue their free fall in the run-up to Cleveland, it will be the duty of the Republican convention to jettison the jerk and nominate someone with a realistic chance to beat Hillary. As for the threat of die-hard Trumpeteers to stay home November 8th, let ’em; it’s our belief so many people are leaning towards Hillary only as a result of a terminal distaste for Trump, the gains will more than offset any real loss.
Which brings us to The Lighter Side:
Finally, we always get a kick out of “reports” which, if one simply reads the fine print, cannot logically be accurate. We wrap up the week with a case in point, courtesy of OilPrice.com via our buddy Bill Meisen:
“Reliable intelligence sources in the West have indicated that warnings had been received that the Russian Government could in the near future release the text of email messages intercepted from U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from the time she was U.S. Secretary of State. The release would, the messaging indicated, prove that Secretary Clinton had, in fact, laid open U.S. secrets to foreign interception by putting highly-classified Government reports onto a private server in violation of U.S. law, and that, as suspected, the server had been targeted and hacked by foreign intelligence services.”
Here’s where the “reliable intelligence” becomes neither:
“…Moscow’s discreet messaging about a possible leak of the traffic, in time to impact the U.S. elections, was designed to pressure faster U.S. legal action on the matter, but was largely due to Russian concerns about possible U.S. strategic policy in the event of a Hillary Clinton presidency…”
Exactly! As Hillary would undoubtedly be the candidate the Kremlin would most likely see succeed the Manchurian Candidate, what possible benefit would they realize through faster legal action from the United States government?!? Say it ain’t so, Joe. You’re right, kid; it ain’t!
Still, even the remotest possibility such a circumstance could occur should have Hillary looking over her shoulder…
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