A one way street

The importance of assimilation. Fear. We should get to know our neighbors better, and not let terrorists take advantage of our inclination to isolate ourselves.

First Amendment

h/t Stephen Green

Equipment doesn't matter?

Kristina Cook writes,

To all those defending the right of transgender folks using the wrong bathroom - one of you just told me that the equipment doesn't matter. Really?

Get your period for the first time in the middle of school wearing white jeans. Then tell me that I have to deal with that situation in the same bathroom as some confused hormone-raged male, and tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."
For the next 60+ years of your life, put your feet in stirrups and have someone put a pair of cold spoons in you and then call you back two weeks later because the giant Q-tip they stuck in there came back with something abnormal. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

Despair about the size of your breasts from the fourth grade on, and then find a lump in middle age and realize those pieces of equipment have betrayed you. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

Carry around a life for 9 months and then squeeze that life out of your womb, expanding the equipment WAY beyond normal operating tolerances. And then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter." Or worse, spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to get that equipment to work so you can do that, knowing you've been paying the price for it all these years and now it's your turn to carry that life, only to be denied that blessing. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."

On the day you go off to college and move into your first dorm room, receive your first rape whistle to be used in case your equipment matters more to someone than your dignity or consent. Then tell me "Equipment doesn't matter."
I earned my right to be a woman. I have paid for it, literally, in blood, sweat and tears. Being uncomfortable with your sexuality does not give you the right to claim my gender for your own. If you want to be some other thing, be my guest. You don't have to be society's idea of a man - whatever that idea is. But you will NEVER be a woman.

‘What the hell am I doing here?’

Cynthia Fagan wrote in the New York Post in 2005,

In case you haven’t already overdosed on The Donald’s very public private life, here’s another delicious Trump tidbit: The real-estate mogul confesses he was already “bored” by Marla Maples on the very day he married her.

“I was bored when she was walking down the aisle. I kept thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ ” he admits in a just released financial tell-all, “TrumpNation,” by Tim O’Brien.

Read more here.

"There is nothing more important to me than being a good wife and a good mother!"

Amanda Carpenter categorically denies ever having anything but a "purely" professional relationship with Ted Cruz.

Equality

A woman throws a punch and then gets pepper-sprayed as protesters yelled outside a Trump event in Janesville Wisconsin Monday.


Ann Althouse writes,

The young woman is pepper sprayed, which looks terrible, but she's also seen smacking or trying to smack a man on the head. There's some confusing discussion of "groping." There might be a groping off camera. I've looked at several of the available angles, and I do see 2 hands holding her back, touching her on one shoulder (as she is getting very fervent vocally, aiming the word "fuck" right in the face of the white-haired man).

I'm connecting this incident with the San Francisco State dreadlocks confrontation — blogged here — and the charging of Corey Lewandowski. In the SFSU case, the woman grabs the man, and in the Corey Lewandowski case, the woman is touched only after she touches Donald Trump twice. There seems to be a traditional stereotype at play that ignores or minimizes battery by a female and holds the male responsible to refrain from doing anything physical, even in self-defense. It's an interesting stereotype. Perhaps you support it. The man should never hit the woman, even if she is hitting him. But how does that traditional model work in modern conditions of demanded equality, in which a woman actively participates in a rowdy protest or pursues journalism aggressively or instigates a confrontation with a passing stranger?

Flip-Flop

You may have heard Donald Trump say last night that a woman who gets an abortion ought to be punished. That is no longer his position. Ace of Spades brings us his new position. Ace has this headline for the story: Trump: Nevermind What I Said About Punishing Women Who Get Abortions An Hour Ago. My Position Has Always Been Consistent. Reagan!

Ace adds,

In all fairness to Trump, he doesn't care about policy and isn't very smart.

Pro-life groups are piling on Trump, because, well, he tends to destroy the viability of any position he holds.

I'm pretty upset that he's clowning up the immigration issue.

Three hours later Trump recanted:

If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.

Ann Althouse writes,

The woman is a victim of her own decision? How does that respect the autonomy and full personhood of the woman? Those who want to ban abortion should take responsibility for what they are really saying about women, that they should be denied a choice they want to make. Unless you think the denial is based on women's inability to think for themselves and ascertain what's right and wrong and define the meaning of life for themselves, then you should hold women responsible for choosing to do something that you think the majority has the power to forbid and you want to forbid. If you think women are incapable of thinking for themselves, say that outright. It would take political courage. If you think women are capable and would be choosing to do something that is properly forbidden, then admit that they deserve punishment. Ah, but that too would take political courage.

The most secretive White House

How does the government of the United States treat the press? Chris Deaton writes at The Weekly Standard,

This is an issue of constitutional law at the most fundamental level, and one of responsibility and transparency to the populace daily. It doesn't take a person of a particular politics to deny a public records request.

According to the Associated Press, the current White House set a record for it last year.

"In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed last year. Such cases contributed to an alarming measurement: People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record," it reported this month.

This covers requests from journalists and other private citizens through the Freedom of Information Act. It doesn't regard the president's own government, of which 47 inspectors general formally complained to the congressional oversight committees that some of their colleagues were being stymied by federal agencies. Such restrictions "represent potentially serious challenges to ... our ability to conduct our work thoroughly, independently, and in a timely manner," they wrote.

The administration's secrecy has earned critical and unprecedented reviews from many working in and with the media, including the New York Times's James Risen ("the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation") and former executive editor Jill Abramson ("the most secretive White House I have ever been involved in covering"), Pentagon Papers lawyer James C. Goodale ("... Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom"), and the non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists, which published a harsh report of the Obama White House in 2013.

"Even as the appetite for information and data flowing through the Internet is voracious, we've seen newsrooms closed. The bottom line has shrunk. The news cycle has, as well," the president said Monday. "And too often, there is enormous pressure on journalists to fill the void and feed the beast with instant commentary and Twitter rumors, and celebrity gossip, and softer stories."

Perhaps if his administration were more open, members of the press would have other things to write about.

Read more here.

The greatest act of courage is to simply keep facing one direction when everything in you wants to turn and run.

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy Experience about what she learned from some events of the last year: her losing her voice, her son being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and what is happening next week: she is traveling to China where there is a little girl waiting to be adopted into one of the best families I know of.

...every story that you’ve ever lived wraps itself around your DNA. Your stories will express themselves, your stories will manifest themselves —- even if you never whisper a word of your story aloud.

You can think you can wear masks to hide your story from the world —-but maybe the masks we wear are really just a way for us to hide pieces of us from ourselves?

Our stories are always stronger than our masks.

There is no mask in the world that eventually our story won’t bleed through.

...Sometimes you don’t feel God’s smile until after you take a step of obedience into God’s will.

...Certain peace may not come until after you take a certain step of faith. And a step of faith often feels like a step through fear.

...Every time you take a step of faith — there is this fear that you won’t be enough.

...It can feel like if you show anyone your brokenness — it’s your dreams that will get broken.

...the greatest act of courage is to simply keep facing one direction when everything in you wants to turn and run.

...When you’ve got a big enough hope in your heart — you’re willing to risk being told you’re not enough.

...There’s some risks you have got to take because it turns out you can’t live not taking them.

...You can’t expect to keep breathing if you aren’t breathing in hope.

...Even if you don’t feel like enough — you have to risk enough — or you will die without ever having lived enough.Even if you don’t feel like enough — you have to risk enough — or you will die without ever having lived enough.
Even when you’re afraid of not being enough — you’ve got to be more afraid of not having stepped out enough.

Death by living is far preferable to death by being too scared to really live at all.

...You clearly not being enough —- is what makes the enoughness of God most clearly seen.

Denver police ends hostage-taking.

h/t Clash Daily

Poverty in America

Being poor isn't what it used to be. I am writing this from the local laundromat in Parker, Colorado. Yes, they have internet! Guess what magazines are available for the poor people to use? Vogue, In Style, Elle, People Style Watch, Pendleton, and American Style. That's it! That's the complete collection! No National Enquirer to read about all of Ted Cruz's mistresses! No Globe. No Star. No People. The poor are not going to be informed on the important issues that affect their every day lives. Oh wait, there's the t.v. up on the wall. Phew!

New washing machine to be delivered Tuesday, by which time I will have nearly paid for a good used washing machine at Good Will.

Cruz blames Pecker for Enquirer story about mistresses

Don't take my word for it: New York Times says so here.

What, you thought I'd let Manhattan Infidel or The Onion beat me to that headline?

Finding homes

Manhattan Infidel interviews Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and two people who may have been Ricky Ricardo. Oh, and by the way, the quarterback found a home:

Solving problems of hunger and conscience

One lonely blogger has come up with a solution to the hunger and crisis of conscience problems in America. It all started when

On Easter Sunday animal rights activists disrupted Easter Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Concerned that ham would be eaten on Easter, six animal rights protesters jumped up in their pews and shouted “Easter is a time of love. No more shedding animal blood!”

Read Manhattan Infidel's solution to the problem here.

15 "middle eastern men" detained in California, after shooting and chanting at 3 a.m.

U.S. News reports,

BREAKING: Muslim Terror Cell Opened Fire In California!!
A heavily armed group of men with Middle Eastern appearance was arrested two hours ago outside Los Angeles after opening fire upon hikers and campers in a large State Park in the area.

Super Station 95: Photos taken by one of the victims of the attack have been supplied to SuperStation95 as have screen shots of MMS messages sent/received during the incident. They appear below.

No word yet from authorities about the identities or affiliation of the men arrested. The Adelanto, CA Police Department effectuated the arrests.

According to the victim/witness, there were two groups of men, about 15 per group, armed with heavy weapons, who began shouting “Allah u Akbar” and started firing. The firing allegedly lasted upwards of TWO HOURS before police were able to find callers in the vast California parkland.

When police were responding, one group of 15 or so men took-off into the hills, while the other group was captured by police.

According to one of the victim/witnesses, his cellphone GPS map indicates below where the incident took place – At a camping area near Deep Creek Hot Springs, north of Lake Arrowhead and east of Hisperia.

Photo and police scanner audio at the link below:

www.vvng.com

That's it: they just need a little government education!

Allan Hall reports from Berlin for the UK Express,

REFUGEES in Germany are being taught to search for the female G-spot, sex during pregnancy and how to enjoy homosexual sex.

The bizarre project - complete with graphic graphics - is being financed by the German government and comes at a time when tensions between migrants and natives are still tense following the mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year's Eve.

In 13 languages on the government website Zanzu all aspects of sexuality - from how to enjoy "the first time" and how to avoid veneral diseases are tackled.

The government said the guide was necessary because many of the 1.1 million-plus refugees who have arrived in Germany since last year received no sexual education whatsoever in their homelands.

And because many hold what are considered "backward" views towards gay people - including attacking them in asylum centres - Berlin decided to issue the charts.

Refugees who have not been in the country long "will receive discreet and direct access to knowledge in this area", said Elke Ferner, parliamentary state secretary in the ministry for family affairs.

Read more here.

It happened 35 years ago today

Do you struggle with a propensity toward obsessive-compulsive personality? 35 years ago today that phenomena had profound consequences for the leader of the free world. Tom Krannawitter explains:

For those who don't remember the man who attempted to assassinate President Reagan, John Hinckley Jr., he was obsessed with the 1976 dark drama movie "Taxi Driver" and in particular then-young actress Jodi Foster, whose character was pivotal to the "Taxi Driver" story.

Hinckley stalked Ms. Foster for years. His communication to her never stopped. He was determined to inject himself into her life, even though she wanted nothing to do with him.

As his obsession with Ms. Foster grew, he started to dream that if he committed a criminal act similar to what Travis Bickle did -- the lead character of "Taxi Driver" played by Robert DeNiro -- that she would be impressed.
That is when Hinckley started to plot opportunities to shoot the President. He tried with President Carter, but his plans were foiled. Then it all came together on that fateful day late in March, 1981, with recently sworn-in President Reagan as his target.

And the last thing he did before he pulled the trigger? He wrote yet another letter to Jodie Foster expressing his sincere desire to impress her by what he was about to do.

If you want to know the bizarre lengths personal obsession can take some souls, John Hinckley Jr. makes for a revealing case study.

Read more here.

Penis transplants

Alexandra Ossola reports in Popular Mechanics what it would entail to undergo a penis transplant.

Soldiers give up a lot when they’re defending their country. For those who fall victim to snipers and explosives, and who survive, that could mean losing a limb or an organ or their sight. An often unspoken injury is the loss of genitalia. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs are a constant threat, have left more than 1,300 American soldiers mangled in this way. But a team of doctors and scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine is now ready to help—by performing the first penis transplant in the U.S. (Similar but less extensive procedures have been carried out in China on patients who lost parts of their penises in accidents and in South Africa to repair botched circumcisions).
There isn't just one reason why penis transplants have taken so long to come about in the U.S. Part of it is probably that the transplant is still experimental--the patient in China had to get the procedure reversed after his body rejected the transplant. To many in the medical establishment, that's an unnecessary risk for patients who have already undergone so much physical trauma—a patient’s life isn’t in danger if he doesn’t get a penis, as he would be if he needed a new liver or a kidney. Many doctors think restoring genitalia is medically (and ethically) wrong, that it's not worth compromising the patient's immune system for the rest of his life.
Many doctors think it's not worth compromising the patient's immune system for the rest of his life.
Arthur Burnett, a urologist and director of the sexual medicine fellowship program at Johns Hopkins Medicine who is on the surgical team, and his colleagues, disagree. “We argue that these portions of people’s bodies need to be considered in a different light,” he says. “Many of these guys are 25 and their genitalia is gone. They just want to be whole again.”
Any day now, the Johns Hopkins team is prepared to implant a donor penis on a young soldier who lost his penis in an Afghan bomb explosion. What they're waiting for is a donor, or specifically for the family of a newly deceased man (who has volunteered for organ donation) to approve the unorthodox procedure. Unlike other organ donations—which are meant to save lives—penis transplants are considered cosmetic and therefore optional. The donor, in addition to the usual transplant requirements like matching blood type, must also possess the same skin tone, and have been within five or 10 years of age of the recipient. Only then can the surgery proceed.
How will it work?

First, to be eligible for a transplant, a wounded solider must have intact pelvic bones—“Like a foundation for a house,” Burnett says. The first recipient meets this requirement, as do 60 other wounded veterans whom Johns Hopkins has approved for the surgery. None of them are eligible for reconstructive surgery in which the penis is rebuilt from tissue taken from elsewhere in the body, often from their forearms--they've lost too much tissue from the penis for doctors to rebuild it.
Once a donor is found, doctors have just a few hours to remove the man's penis and pelvic muscles (matching the size of the wounded soldier's pelvic area) and quickly transport it to the operating room. Burnett and a team of over 20 medical professionals will have already prepped the soldier, cutting away skin, scar and muscle and exposing dozens of blood vessels, nerves and the urethra, through which urine and semen flow. As in other organ transplants, surgeons must stitch all these to the donor's tissues, but a penis transplant is more technically complex because the connections are so numerous and tiny. The procedure, according to one of the Johns Hopkins surgeons, will take about 12 hours.



Even then, there's no guarantee the penis will be fully functional, especially when it comes to sex. “We hope we can reconstitute things in a way where men can get a true erection,” Burnett says. “But we might find that we’ve put everything back together and they might still not be getting quality erections. That may require some assistance, like Viagra, or some guys might have to come back to receive a penile prosthetic.” A penile prosthetic is an inflatable synthetic device surgically implanted in the chambers of the penis. A man with the implant can pump in fluid whenever he wants an erection. Burnett performs 80 of these implants every year in men who suffer erectile dysfunction.

...While the medical establishment seems to be reluctant to advocate for these procedures, the public tends to be understanding of these needs, Burnett has found. These men want to be fathers, to be intimate with their significant others. This operation can make that happen. If anything, their desire for the transplant is a testament to how much a human will do to feel normal again.

Burnett does not know if the donor for his first transplant will turn up in a few days or a few months. But his surgical team is ready--they've performed mock procedures on cadavers, Burnett says, and have done dry runs and rehearsals. “It could conceivably be very successful,” he says. He hopes that one day others in his field acknowledge the importance of this surgery, and that all 60 veterans who have signed up will get their transplants as soon as possible.

"Hopefully we’re going to move forward,” Burnett says. “I hope that, with this communication, even medical professionals will accept that this is something that’s meaningful to patients.”

Read more here.

Connections

Who will manage the convention for Donald Trump? Rick Moran reports at PJ Media,

New Trump Convention Manager Has Close Ties to Putin's Ukrainian Puppet, Viktor Yanukovych

Ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, wanted for embezzlement and other crimes, has a close relationship with Paul Manafort, Donald Trump's new convention manager, according to Jim Geraghty at National Review.

Yanukovych, who served as president from 2010 until he was removed from office by parliament following special forces gunning down protesters in Maidan Square in January, 2014, hired Manafort to run his successful presidential campaign and kept him around as an advisor.

The former president was pro-Russian at a time when most Ukrainians were eager to join the EU. His stance on Russia led to demonstrations that turned violent and brought the country to the brink of civil war. After being voted out by parliament, Russian special forces whisked Yanukovych away before he could be arrested.

Geraghty reports that Manafort played a pivotal role in getting Yanukovych elected. This Politico article from 2007 explains the mysterious, behind-the-scenes part played by Manafort:

Manafort’s friends describe his relationship with Yanukovych as a political love connection, born out of Yanukovych’s first downfall when he was driven from power by the 2004 Orange Revolution. Feeling that his domestic political advisers had failed him, Yanukovych turned to a foreign company, Davis Manafort, which was already doing work for the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. The former Ukrainian PM and Manafort, the Georgetown-educated son of a Connecticut politician, hit it off.

Manafort’s firm had a set of international clients and produced an analysis of the Orange Revolution that Yanukovych found instructive, according to one operative involved in Yanukovych’s political rehabilitation. Manafort became, in effect, a general consultant to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, shaping big-picture messaging, coaching Yanukovych to speak in punchy, American-style sound bites and managing teams of consultants and attorneys in both Ukraine and the United States ahead of an anticipated Yanukovych comeback. While it’s difficult to track payments in foreign elections, a former associate familiar with Manafort’s earnings say they ran into the seven figures over several years.

After Yanukovych’s 2010 victory, Manafort stayed on as an adviser to the Russia-friendly president and became involved in other business projects in Eastern Europe.

Yanukovych was known for his opulent lifestyle, living on a 300-acre estate with gold-plated everything. Wikipedia notes:

"The property contained a private zoo, underground shooting range, 18-hole golf course, tennis, and bowling. After describing the mansion's complicated ownership scheme, the article author noted, "The story of Viktor Yanukovych and his residence highlights a paradox. Having completely rejected such European values as human rights and democracy, the Ukrainian president uses Europe as a place to hide his dirty money with impunity."

All of this constructed for a man who spent most of his career as a civil servant or parliamentary deputy, never pulling down more than $2,000 a month.

What is your image of your life?

Good Samaritan

Fox News reports,

Roy Lopez, a 98-year-old World War II veteran, stood in front of his burning Los Angeles house. Then he walked to the front porch and attempted to enter the inferno.

But a Good Samaritan, known to LA firefighters only as “Andres,” saw Lopez heading toward the fire, according to CBS Los Angeles. Andres, driving by the blaze, jumped out of his car, hopped a fence and stopped Lopez from making what could have been a deadly decision.

“He jumped over the fence like one boost and jump, he literally cleared it like this far from the gate,” neighbor William Rodas told CBS LA. “I was like ‘Wow.’ It was amazing, all this while his girlfriend is calling the fire department. It was like a tag team. Just amazing to see.”

Andres and Lopez waited together for the fire department to arrive, and then watched as 32 firefighters extinguished the blaze in 18 minutes. The fire may have originated with a candle, CBS LA reported.

No one was injured – thanks to Andres’ quick action.

“Glad somebody was there,” said Raymond Lopez, Roy’s son. “I’ll remember this for a long time.”

Political correctness versus breach of basic privacy and etiquette

Leah Barkoukis reports at Town Hall,

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is apparently so disturbed by the fact that transgender people in North Carolina cannot choose which restroom or locker room to use based on their gender identity that he has banned all non-essential travel to the state.

...The new legislation was “passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette,” Gov. Pat McCrory said last week after signing the bill into law.

It should be noted that transgender people who have transitioned to the opposite sex and have changed their birth certificate aren’t affected by this law. Lawmakers were simply concerned about the safety of women and children in very private settings given that the language in Charlotte’s anti-discrimination rules would’ve allowed anyone who called themselves transgender—including perhaps sex offenders— to enter a women’s restroom or locker room.

...UPDATE: It is worth pointing out that Cuomo recently visited Cuba and even teamed up with JetBlue to encourage travel to the nation, which would “[open] the door to new economic opportunities” for New York businesses. As The Washington Free Beacon points out, however, this move is quite hypocritical in light of the governor’s ban on state travel to North Carolina. Cuba has a horrible history of sending gay and transgender people to prison and labor camps for their ‘deviant lifestyle.’ And while things have certainly improved on the island nation for this minority group, many say they are still harassed and detained by police, and have a difficult time finding work.

Read more here.

As one would hope, Manhattan Infidel is already pouncing on this story with appropriate satire here.

Good luck turned to bad

Newser reports,

Authorities say seven people have been charged in the shooting death of a recent Georgia Lottery winner, the AP reports. Ben Hill County Sheriff Bobby McLemore tells WFXL-TV the seven suspects, who range in age from 17 to 28 years old, all face charges of malice murder, aggravated assault, armed robbery, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. Authorities say three masked men broke into 20-year-old Craigory Burch Jr.'s Fitzgerald home in January and demanded money as he was holding his 2-year-old child. The men reportedly first shot Burch in the legs before leaving, but they then came back inside and shot him again. The attack came two months after Burch won $434,272 from hitting the Fantasy 5 jackpot.

Previously, in Florida, there was this man:

A woman who befriended a Florida lottery winner by telling him she wanted to write a book about his life has been charged with his murder. DeeDee Moore was already behind bars, charged with being an accessory after the fact to the murder of Abraham Shakespeare, when the charges against her were upgraded to first-degree murder yesterday, the Tampa Tribune reports.
Moore contacted Shakespeare after he won $30 million in the Florida Lottery in 2006 and became his unofficial financial adviser. His body was found last month buried under a concrete slab behind a home owned by Moore and her boyfriend. Police say Moore—whose various explanations for the killing have involved her 14-year-old-son, her attorney, and Shakespeare's cousin—shifted $1 million from the lottery winner's accounts into hers after his death and used his phone to text relatives to make them believe he was still alive.

This file photo provided by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office shows Dorice "DeeDee" Moore. (AP Photo/Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, File)

For those of you who missed last night's GOP townhall

Did you miss last night's CNN GOP town hall event in Milwaukee? CNN has a website that does a very good job highlighting all the key topics that were discussed by each candidate.

"I'm self-funding"

Blaming reality?

Seth Godin writes,

Human beings are prediction machines. Successful humans skate to where the puck is going to be, predict what's going to happen next, have an inkling of what's to come.

We do this by creating models. A really good model is a theory, a testable method for asserting what's going to happen next under certain conditions--and being right.

The pundits have models, of course. In writing about this one, the Times admits that they've been consistently wrong--in both directions--with their predictions. But rather than acknowledging that they have a broken model, they persist.

The thing is, when your model doesn't match reality (when you have trouble predicting how your investments will do, whether a sales call will resonate, whether a presentation will work, whether a new hire will work out) it's tempting to blame reality.

Consider that it might be much more effective to get a better model instead.

"But mother, she's worked for it!"

Sally Miller (former Miss Arkansas) who had a three month affair with Bill Clinton, tells about Bill Clinton snorting cocaine. She also has some interesting things to say about the importance of Bill's mother in his life.



Sally Miller tells us about Hillary's abortions and about her lesbian experimentation.

ISIS a zealot advocate for civil liberties?

Heather Mac Donald writes in City Journal,

...ISIS has no respect for civil liberties. Its advocates preach an autocratic, theocratic, tribal society that beheads innocents without the slightest due process of the law. Its power is total and brutal. It seeks to dominate as much of the West as it can by acts of violence that violate every Western norm of combat.

Yet, when it comes to Muslims living in the West, ISIS suddenly becomes a zealous advocate for the same civil liberties that are unknown in its own territory. It allegedly expects Muslims in the West to be protected by an ACLU-certified panoply of rights that it automatically denies residents of its imaginary caliphate. Furthermore, according to this counterintuitive narrative, though ISIS detests the West and would never allow Jews or Christians to colonize ISIS territories, it allegedly gets really hot under the collar at the prospect of any diminishment of open Muslim migration into the hated dens of Western decadence. And ISIS is killing people not because it wants to kill the infidels, but for a far more complicated, two-step reason: to induce Western security measures that only a radical civil libertarian would object to, but that will allegedly arouse Muslim residents of the West into deadly rebellion.

Reality check: ISIS isn’t “seeking to manipulate European fears of terrorism;” it is creating those fears by its own actions. Those fears wouldn’t exist but for Islamic terrorism. Any heightened security and immigration measures that Europe may belatedly implement are not the product of some irrational paranoia; they are the product of the demonstrated failure of existing policies to protect innocent lives. ISIS engages in the same brutal tactics in countries with civil liberties and in countries without civil liberties. Those tactics are not designed to trigger a lessening of civil liberties, but to kill as many people as possible.

It is perfectly appropriate and legitimate for the West to institute whatever immigration measures it believes will best protect it from terrorism. Outside very limited exceptions for asylum-seekers and refugees, a nation’s immigration policies should be developed exclusively to further its own self-interest. It owes entry to no one outside its borders. Europe’s immigration policies have been a patent disaster; the desperate manhunts across the continent since last week for confederates of the Brussels attackers speak for themselves. Though the horse is already out of the barn, Europe would be insane to preserve the immigration status quo from which it is now reeling, and the United States would be equally insane to follow it down the same self-destructive path.

A country has an obligation to gather the intelligence needed to keep its citizens safe. When the threat is Islamic terrorism, that intelligence-gathering will by definition concern itself with Muslim targets; that is not invidious racism, it is a tautology. Western security investigations remain well within a constitutional framework of checks and balances.

The liberal intelligentsia’s reflexive blaming of Western society for anti-Western barbarity is the ultimate act of narcissism. That intelligentsia believes that everything that happens is about us. In fact, it’s not. The remaining pockets of savagery in the world exist independently of the West. According to the liberal elites, however, the West has no right to take common-sense security measures to defend itself against that savagery.

One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads on Hillary Clinton email scandal

From a Washington Post story on the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton's email scandal:

One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey. The FBI has accelerated the investigation because officials want to avoid the possibility of announcing any action too close to the election.

Trump's campaign manager says he didn't touch reporter Michelle Fields.

This video shows that he grabbed her. Jupiter,florida police have charged him with assault.

JV squad. Contained. Not an existential threat.

Headlines at Ace of Spades:

Pentagon Orders US Military Families to Evacuate Southern Turkey Due to ISIS Threat
—Ace

JV squad. Contained. Not an existential threat.

Read more here.

She woke up

Stephanie Cegielski was the Communications Director of The Make America Great again Super PAC. She writes,

...I don't dismiss any single Trump constituent, which is why I believe it's important to let you know that the candidate does.

I, too, think our country has gone off track in its values. I, too, think that we need a dramatic change of course. But I am, in my heart, a policy wonk and a believer in coming to the table with necessary knowledge for leading the free world.

The man does not know policy, nor does he have the humility to admit what he does not know — the most frightening position of all.

I remember watching the second Trump debate and thinking, After this, he is going to have to start hammering it home on policy; the country needs substance to make an informed decision.

I wished for it six months ago and am still waiting for it today. He had an opportunity after the terror attacks in Belgium and instead he used the opportunity to talk about closing the borders and what a mess that country had become. I was appalled that he offered no condolences or words of support; he merely gave his "build a wall" stump speech and talked about his greatness.

I felt sad for him at that moment.

And now, with the latest horrifying terror attack in Pakistan, my sadness has turned into anger.

I consider myself a part of the silent majority that led to Trump’s rise, which is why I want you to know that I am with you — I wanted Trump to be real, too.

He is not.

He even says so himself. His misogyny? That's the character.

His presidential candidacy? That's a character, too.

The problem with characters is they are the stuff of soap operas and sitcoms and reality competitions — not political legacies.

Trump made me believe. Until I woke up.



...Unfortunately, the more vitriolic Trump has become, the more the people responded to him. That drove him to push the boundaries further and further.

I also started seeing a trend of incompetence and deniability.

...He refused to take responsibility for his actions while frequently demanding apologies from others.

Imagine Trump wronged you, even in the smallest possible way. He would go to the grave denying he had ever done anything wrong to you — ever.

No matter how many times he repeats it, Trump would not be the "best" at being a president, being in shape, fighting terrorism, selling steaks, and whatever other "best" claim he has made in the last 15 minutes.

He would be the best at something, though. He is the best at looking out for Donald Trump — at all costs.

Don’t let our country pay that price.

Read more here.

Nasty

Will Stauff writes at Conservative Review,

IF YOU SPEND ANYTIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA THEN YOU SEE A TROUBLING TREND. THE MORE YOU ENCOUNTER TRUMP SUPPORTERS THE MORE NASTY THEY BECOME.

I'm not sure why he leads off his piece writing in all capital letters, but I do understand what he is saying, because I have experienced it myself.
Read more here.

Trump's new campaign manager

h/t J. Arthur Bloom

"We are not taking this threat seriously enough."

Chris at Conservative Read reports,

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday that he’s worried about reports that the terrorists who attacked Brussels had also staked out and planned a strike on a nuclear power plant.

“I’m highly concerned about that, but not only in Europe — look at the attack on the Metcalf power station in California. We have not solved that. That’s a very disconcerting chain of events here,” Johnson said, referring to the 2013 sniper attack on a California energy grid substation, which took out power to parts of Silicon Valley. He continued: “So trust me, our critical infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber-attack, to potential terrorist attack, and we are not taking this threat seriously enough.

A triple bank shot from behind the eight ball

Hugh Hewitt says that if Cruz or Trump do not get 1237 votes on the first or second ballot, the nomination will go to John Kasich! Why? Because Cruz and Trump hate each other, and Kasich is the only other person still in the race.

Betsy Newmark writes,

Since Kasich has little hope of winning delegates in Wisconsin and his only hope is a contested convention, it should be in his best interests to get out of Cruz's way instead of splitting the anti-Trump vote and making it more likely that Trump will get to 1,237. Kasich's actions seem to indicate that he doesn't understand this reality.

Red Jahncke writes in the New York Sun,

Pennsylvania is the biggest of five contests on April 26. It will be the big prime-time story of the night. To lose the popular vote in such a huge state would be another crushing defeat for that guy who always wins. Moreover, a Kasich win in the Keystone State would be especially important as an offset to Mr. Trump’s almost inevitable win a week earlier in the proportional contest at New York.

Realistically, if Mr. Kasich doesn’t win Pennsylvania, his campaign will be dead and his entire effort and reputation will be colored permanently with all the pejoratives currently being leveled – quixotic, vain, crazy, self-aggrandizing, etc. His campaign may succumb to these characterizations even beforehand if he isn’t seen as refocusing his efforts on the one contest where his odds are good.

At present, the Ohioan is attempting a triple bank shot from behind the eight ball. He is trying both to deny The Donald and the Texan and to undermine the case for Senator Cruz as the alternative to the New Yorker at an “open” convention — while advancing his own chances. It is an impossible shot.

A busy week for ISIS

Indian Catholic priest Father Tom Uzhunnalil was kidnapped by ISIS gunmen in Yemen three weeks ago and was reportedly crucified on Good Friday

Sara Malm reports for Mailonline,

Yemeni authorities have blamed ISIS for the March 4 attack on the refuge for the elderly operated by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in main southern city Aden.
Four gunmen posing as relatives of one of the guests at the home burst inside, killing four Indian nuns, two Yemeni female staff members, eight elderly residents and a guard.

What is it like for females?

Read more here.

Arguing with liberals

h/t Oregon Muse

Evidence? We're waiting.

On Twitter Ron Fournier posts this about the allegations about Ted Cruz having mistresses:

"There is more evidence that ties Trump to planting the story than there is to the story itself tying anything to Cruz"

To which Chuck Todd tweets: "Bravo!"

What happens to Muslims who reach out in love on Easter?

Shopkeeper Asad Shah

Murder of a man of peace: Muslim shopkeeper who wished his 'beloved Christian nation' a Happy Easter is stabbed 30 times by a FELLOW MUSLIM who sat laughing on his dying victim's chest

A 32-year-old man has been arrested after murder of Asad Shah last night

The 'peace-loving' victim was popular in his neighbourhood of Glasgow

Hours before his death, he posted message advertising inter-faith meeting

Police confirmed all those currently involved in investigation were Muslim

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon joins 400 others on late night vigil

Sara Smythe reports for The Daily Mail,

A newsagent was murdered by a fellow Muslim after he wished his Christian friends a peaceful Easter.
Asad Shah, who was stabbed up to 30 times at his shop, had praised both the life of Jesus and ‘his beloved Christian nation’. Left lying in a pool of blood, the 40-year-old died in hospital.
Police, who were questioning a 32-year-old suspect last night, said the killing was religiously motivated.
Mohammad Faisal, a family friend, said a bearded Muslim wearing a long religious robe entered Mr Shah’s shop and spoke to him in his native language before stabbing him in the head with a kitchen knife.

Mr Shah’s brother, who was working next door, rushed out to find the killer laughing while sitting on the Glasgow newsagent’s bleeding chest.

Read more here.

How great thou art!

My favorite song I sang over and over in 1958.

Suicide bomber kills Christians at a park in Pakistan on Easter

At least 60 have been reported killed in Lahore, Pakistan, after an alleged suicide-bomb attack.
March 27, 2016 Women comfort each other as they mourn over the death of a family member who was killed in the bomb blast at a hospital in Lahore. K.M. Chuadary/AP
Read more here.

Ted Cruz's speech to AIPAC

Our last, best hope?

David Goldman (Spengler) writes at PJ Media,

America's elite is arrogant and corrupt, but the state of the American people is just as alarming. America had 90% adult literacy in 1790, when only half of Englishmen and a fifth of Spaniards and Italians could sign their names. We had the best educated, most motivated, and healthiest workforce in the world by an overwhelming margin.

Now Americans aged 16 to 24 rank at the bottom of a 22-country evaluation of numeracy, literacy, and technological problem-solving.

Poor student performance should be no surprise: America's family structure is falling apart. Nearly 30% of non-Hispanic white children are born out of wedlock, as well as 53% of Hispanics and 73% of African-Americans. When Reagan took office, 18% of all American births were to unmarried mothers. By 2014 the figure was above 40%.

Self-educated outsiders like Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan have been our ablest leaders, not the valedictorians of Harvard or Yale. Lincoln might have been self-educated, but he was the best thinker of his generation. Reagan also was self-taught, but he had a broad and detailed grasp of foreign policy and understood Robert Mundell's supply-side economics early on. They were also profoundly good men.

Ted Cruz is the a gifted outsider with unique leadership capacities. He has a brilliant grasp of Constitutional law from his service as Texas' solicitor general, a granular understanding of business economics from his service at the Federal Trade Commission, and a clear vision of what America should and shouldn't do in foreign policy. He was an academic superstar at Ivy League universities but never let his success flatter him into complacency. He has deep religious conviction. He also has the will to lead. It's not surprising he isn't popular among his Senate colleagues: if Cruz is elected president, it will shut down a corrupt and cozy game. He has the brains to understand the problem and the guts to clear the obstacles to a solution.

Trump is horribly wrong about big issues. America's economic problems are not due to Mexican immigrants or Chinese imports, as I wrote in this space last July. I give him credit for punching through the "Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace" idiocy peddled by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. A plurality of Americans (46% to 40%) support his proposed ban on Muslim immigration. That's the wrong way to go about it; the right way is to treat the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, as Cruz proposes, and then roll up its supporters. I also give Trump credit for lambasting the awful Iran nuclear deal earlier this week at the AIPAC conference. Cruz did it a lot better.

Unless Hitler or Goebbels were to rise from the grave and run for president, I will not vote for Hillary Clinton; in a Trump-Clinton race, I will vote for Trump without a second's hesitation. One can't exclude the possibility that Trump might be a good president; he knows little and makes things up as he goes along, and might conceivably stumble on good solutions. But it is much more likely that he will preside over America's continuing decline while saturating us with self-consoling rhetoric.

We are in deep trouble. We need a president who can lead us out of our economic and moral slump. I fear that Ted Cruz is our last, best hope before we follow former superpowers like Britain down the slippery slope to national mediocrity.

Read more here.

Can we confront the problem?

Bruce Bialosky writes in Town Hall,

We have had these attacks going on since at least 1979. Our political leaders immediately warn us about not displaying intolerance for Muslims instead of confronting the problem. President Obama spoke of that in the State of the Union address. Why was he not railing about the fact that in the United States there are four times as many anti-Semitic acts recorded as anti-Muslim acts? Why do these people keep warning us against hating Muslims or acting out when there is no evidence of such?

There is only one conclusion I came to and that is that these elected leaders of the left don’t really understand religion or God. Their catering to these Muslim misfits needs to stop.

We, who actively practice religion and believe in God, understand that as long as they placate these Muslims they will only be enablers and we will never have peace in the world. Isn’t that what we all want, including the vast majority of followers of Islam?

Read more here.

It's me!

The Risen Christ carries the marks of his human life. Suffering is never the last word. Life triumphs over death.

A message that refuses to be tamed

I don't know if this guy is right. James Martin writes at Wall Street Journal,

Easter has stubbornly resisted the kind of commercialization, commodification and general crassification that long ago swallowed up the celebration of Christmas, at least in the U.S.

My experience is that Easter is fast gaining on Christmas. Can you get through Easter without eating a Peep? I didn't think so. Did you buy a ham? I thought so.

Jesus of Nazareth, the man whose followers claim that he healed the sick, stilled storms, raised people from the dead and made the poor the center of his ministry, was crucified under the orders of Pontius Pilate and died an agonizing death in Jerusalem. Then, as his followers believe—myself included—after three days in the tomb, he rose from the dead.

If you don’t believe in the Resurrection, you can go on living your life while perhaps admiring Jesus the man, appreciating his example and even putting into practice some of his teachings. At the same time, you can set aside those teachings that you disagree with or that make you uncomfortable—say, forgiving your enemies, praying for your persecutors, living simply or helping the poor. You can set them aside because he’s just another teacher. A great one, to be sure, but just one of many.

If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, however, everything changes. In that case, you cannot set aside any of his teachings. Because a person who rises from the grave, who demonstrates his power over death and who has definitively proven his divine authority needs to be listened to. What that person says demands a response.

In short, the Resurrection makes a claim on you.

...the Christmas story is largely nonthreatening to nonbelievers: Jesus in the manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph and the adoring shepherds, is easy to take. As the Gospels of Matthew and Luke recount, there was no little danger involved for Mary and Joseph. But for the most part, it can be accepted as a charming story. Even nonbelievers might appreciate the birth of a great teacher.

By contrast, the Easter story is both appalling and astonishing: the craven betrayal of Jesus by one of his closest followers, the triple denial by his best friend, the gruesome crucifixion and the brutal end to his earthly life. Then, of course, there is the stunning turnaround three days later.

In the Gospel of John, for example, Jesus first appears to Mary Magdalene, one of the few disciples who did not desert him at the Crucifixion. (The fidelity of the women disciples—in contrast to all but one of the men—is an undervalued aspect of the narratives of the death and resurrection of Jesus.) Mary arrives at the place of Jesus’ burial early in the morning, peers into the empty tomb and eventually sees someone. It is the Risen Christ.

...Ghostly and yet physical, recognizable but unrecognizable. Which is it? How could Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have presented the details of such an important story with such seeming contradictions? The agnostic or atheist will point to this as proof that it never happened. I would suggest that it’s quite the opposite.

... “Showing them ‘his hands and his side,’ which bore the marks of the crucifixion and the pierce of the lance, was not a mere theatrical gesture, but the necessary credentials of the identity of the risen Lord, who stood before them, with the crucified Jesus whom they knew.”

...Jesus carries upon himself the visible marks of his human life. In other words, he remembers his suffering. So when one prays to Jesus, one prays to someone who knows, in the most intimate way possible, what it means to live a human life. One also prays to someone who is not only God but man. Who understands you.

This is the mystery of Jesus’ two “natures”: human and divine. The divine one suffered human pain, and the human one is now raised from the dead.

But this was true before the Resurrection.

...What difference does Easter make in the life of the Christian? The message of Easter is, all at once, easy to understand, radical, subversive and life-changing. Easter means that nothing is impossible with God. Moreover, that life triumphs over death. Love triumphs over hatred. Hope triumphs over despair. And that suffering is not the last word.

Easter says, above all, that Jesus Christ is Lord. That is an odd thing to read in a secular newspaper. But I’m merely stating a central Christian belief. And if he is Lord, and if you’re a Christian, then what he says has a claim on you. His teachings are invitations, to be sure, but they are also commands: Love your neighbors. Forgive. Care for the poor and the marginalized. Live a simple life. Put the needs of others before your own.

By walking out of the tomb on Easter, Jesus declared something life-changing, something subversive and something that cannot be overcome by commercialism. It is a message that refuses to be tamed. The Resurrection says not only that Christ has the power of life over death, but something more subversive.

The Resurrection says, “Listen.”

Read more here.

How much further can we descend?

Mia De Graff reports for The Daily Mail,

An Easter egg hunt descended into chaos on Saturday after parents in Orange, Connecticut, stormed the field.
Children as young as four were trampled by adults in a rampage to steal buckets and grab as many of the 9,000 hidden eggs as possible from the third annual free event at the PEZ headquarters.
One four-year-old son was left 'bloody' on the sports field and a two-year-old girl was shoved into the mud, witnesses claimed.




'When it came time at like 10.30am, the parents just bum-rushed that area,' West Haven resident Nicole Welch, at the event with her four-year-old son, told WFSB.
'When my son left he had a broken basket and he was hysterically crying,' Welch said.
A grandparent wrote on Facebook: 'My grandson ended up with a bloody from an ADULT in the 9-12 year old section knocking into him!!!!

Read more here.

Madness?

Ann Althouse reports that

Jonathan Karl talked to Donald Trump on "This Week" this morning:
KARL: OK. Now, you're getting closer and closer to getting the delegates you need to clinch the nomination. But look at what happened in Louisiana. You won the state of Louisiana. But it looks like Ted Cruz is coming out of there with more delegates, maybe as many as 10 more delegates. And he's getting them on the key committees that will write the rules for the Republican convention. Is Ted Cruz trying to steal this nomination from you?

TRUMP: Well, it tells you what a crooked system we have and what a rotten political system we have. And frankly, I'm so -- I'm millions of votes more than -- I have millions of votes more than "Lying Ted." I have millions -- millions of votes more. I have many, many delegates more. I've won areas. And he's trying to steal things because that's the way Ted works, OK. Uh, the system is a broken system. The Republican tabulation system is a broken system. It's not fair. I have so many millions of votes more. I've brought people into this party by the millions. You understand that. They voted by the millions more. It's one of the biggest stories in all of politics. And what do I have? I have a guy going around trying to steal people's delegates. This is supposed to be America, a free America. This is supposed to be a system of votes where you go out, you have elections, free elections, not elections where I won. I won Louisiana and now I hear he's trying to steal delegates. You know, welcome to, uh, the Republican Party. What's going on in the Republican Party is a disgrace. I have so many more votes and so many more delegates. And, frankly, whoever at the end, whoever has the most votes and the most delegates should be the nominee.
So the Cruz campaign is hard at work on some tactics that Trump will be characterizing as not merely too dirty to be used but further evidence that Cruz is a liar.

On "Meet the Press," there was some discussion of "delegate double agents" and "zombie delegates":

CHUCK TODD: [T]he race is already on to create sort of delegate double agents. If Trump fails to win that majority on the first ballot these are people who will promise to dump Trump on the second ballot. And then there's an effort underway to mobilize zombie delegates. These are delegates who are pledged to candidates who have dropped out of the race. They could switch their vote over to someone else in the race, maybe even on the first ballot. Maybe it's Cruz, maybe it's Trump. So to discuss all of this, I'm joined by our resident zombie expert, Ben Ginsberg, Republican delegate guru, who served, of course, as lead counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign of 2000 and he was Mitt Romney's lawyer in 2012. So the zombie apocalypse will hit Cleveland. So we have free-agent delegates, we have zombie delegates. I want to talk about the free-agent delegates first, because we have Donald Trump this morning already angry about this. Louisiana, he wins the primary big, he should get a lion's share of the delegates. The Cruz campaign claims they actually are going to have more delegates out of Louisiana, a state they lost, than Trump. How did they do it? Explain.

BEN GINSBERG: The way they managed to do it is that 44 of the 56 states and territories give the candidates no role in choosing who the delegates will pick.... Who the individuals are. And so a well-organized campaign will go into all these state conventions and state executive committee meetings and manage to get supporters of theirs. They'll be bound on the first ballot to the winner of their state primary, but not for any of the procedural rules issues, and not for the second ballot.

CHUCK TODD: All right. So they're the double agents. Now, let's talk about zombie delegates. These are the people, and I want to put up a graphic here. There are a group of unbound delegates. We know there were always going to be over about a hundred, we've done the math here, over about a hundred of them, 169 of them come from states that have chosen not to hold a contest, Colorado chief among them. And then there's another 175 of the zombie delegates. These are people, mostly Marco Rubio delegates out of Virginia and Minnesota, but there a handful of Carson, maybe one or two Jeb Bush's. What is their role in all of this?

BEN GINSBERG: Well, their role in all of this is almost the equivalent of the Democrat superdelegate. In other words, they can be for whatever candidate they want.....

CHUCK TODD: Meanwhile, Katy, I've got to ask... the Trump campaign doesn't like this narrative that they don't know what they're doing.

KATY TUR: Absolutely. And so they do have a team in place, about a dozen people, their delegate convention team. And they are going out and they're trying to convince delegates to get on their side. Their internal projections say that they're going to get to 1,400, 1,450.... If they don't get that, they believe that they have a real opportunity, especially in that 40-day window between the last primary and the convention to go and woo these unbound delegates by negotiating for whatever they want.

CHUCK TODD: And there are no rules.... As we know. And he is a negotiator, as we know, Donald Trump.

KATY TUR: That's it. He's a deal maker.

CHUCK TODD: But these delegates have a mind of their own.... And guess what? We don't have convention rules yet, do we?... That's the point of this that Donald Trump yet doesn't understand.

BEN GINSBERG: They must be passed by each convention for that convention....

CHUCK TODD: This is going to be madness....

Why do birds suddenly appear?

Ann Althouse reports that Bernie Sanders won big over Hillary Clinton in yesterday's three primaries: Washington 73%. Alaska, 82%. Hawaii, 71%.
Clinton this week won the Arizona primary and lost to challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders in Idaho, Utah, Alaska, Hawaii and Washington.
He then went to Oregon, where a bird suddenly appeared.

He is Risen!

From 1 Corinthians 15

17...if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless;

57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

h/t John Schroeder

He doesn't believe the Enquirer story

Jeff Dunetz at The Lid writes,

But on Friday the Cruz story erupted, and things I should have noticed when I first read the story on Wednesday came to light.
For example, three of the five women have been identified, one of the women Amanda Carpenter I know personally. Not that we are good friends but she is more of a friend to some of my good friends. And from everything I know about Amanda, everything I’ve read about her, and from posts on her Facebook page about her family, I feel comfortable betting big money on the fact that Amanda has never cheated on her husband with Ted Cruz, or any one else.

Amanda vehemently denied the story on CNN today (see the video below). Another of the five women who have been identified is Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson who has denied the accusations and a third who has been identified is former Carly Fiorina staffer Sarah Isgur Flores who hasn’t denied it yet, but I am sure it’s coming.

The Enquirer piece neglected to mention that National Enquirer owner David Pecker is a close friend of Trump’s and this is not the first time the magazine tried to destroy a Trump rival.

his past October 7th issue, on the same cover that announced Ben Afflack and Jennifer Lopez were once again an item (no one told them), the National Enquirer promoted a story about how Ben Carson butchered a child’s brain. Inside they published a story about Dr. Ben Carson (who just so happened to be catching up to Donald Trump in the polls) called “Bungling Surgeon Ben Carson Left Sponge in Patient’s Brain!” (which btw sounds like the title of a great horror film). Per the article, Carson “brandished a scalpel like a meat cleaver!” (meat cleaver? Who knew he did circumcisions). The article said he botched surgeries leaving patients disfigured and in pain. According to the author of the piece “Judging by White House wannabe Ben Carson’s track record as a neurosurgeon, his presidential campaign should be declared dead on arrival!”



When Carly Fiorina had an excellent debate in September and began to rise in the polls the Enquirer ran an article called, “Homewrecker Carly Fiorina Lied About Druggie Daughter”joan-rivers2

Why would the Enquirer run a hit pieces on Donald Trump’s opponents when they just so happened to be creeping up in the polls on “The Donald?” According ot an October 2o15 issue of New York Magazine:
Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for years. “They’re very close,” said a source close to the Enquirer. In July 2013, Trump even tweeted that Pecker should become CEO of Time magazine, which at the time was being spun off from its corporate parent, Time Warner. “He’d make it exciting and win awards!”

Read more here.

Sanders v. Trump: This may not be the debate you get, but it is the debate you deserve!

Did you know that among voters who shop at Whole Foods and yet feel guilty for shopping at Whole Foods, Bernie Sanders is winning 92% of the vote? Among voters whose primary means of transportation is a bicycle, Sanders is winning 88% of the vote.

Did you know that Donald Trump has the same policy on China as he does on women, which is that China is our enemy? Did you know Trump has a Mexican guy who reads the internet to him? "Wonderful guy! Hello Baca!"

Senator Sanders, the tree man in Seattle came down this afternoon, but how do you respond to this growing trend of tree dwellers? "As the only candidate for president who has himself lived in a tree,..." "It's a fantastic way to solve the housing crisis, by having people climb up trees, rather than cut them down!"

Donald Trump, how do you respond? "I promise you this. When I am president, we will get rid of every tree. We gotta use these nukes, we haven't used them in years!"

Senator Sanders, Why did the chicken cross the road? "...He crossed the road to bring attention to the crumbling infrastructure that chickens have to face everyday of their lives! If I am president, I promise I will spend billions of dollars on chicken wire..."

Mr. Trump do you have a reply? "Unbelievable, unbelievable. We should wipe em all out and use their eggs, just like women."

The perils of dating a billionaire

At Salon a woman named Lucy Klebanow remembers her one date with Donald Trump. The restaurant did not accept credit cards. He had no cash. She paid. As they left, he promised over and over to pay her back, but never did.

Selfies

Apparently Amanda Carpenter likes to take selfies. This one was posted by Donald Trump LA on Twitter.

Stone rules

On Twitter Amanda Carpenter recommended a 2008 New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin called The Dirty Trickster. It is about Roger Stone, who has worked on and off for Donald Trump. Carpenter believes the Trump campaign is behind the National Enquirer campaign to impugn Ted Cruz. Stone has certain "rules," like those of Saul Alinsky. Trump does seem to be following many of the rules written about in the New Yorker article.

Amanda Carpenter's sister-in-law confirms Amanda's affair with Cruz

Someone who calls himself or herself "Enforcer for Trump," posted this yesterday on Medium:

The Cruz campaign has yet to respond to the allegations, but a short phone call with the sister in-law of one of the women, after I found her online through use of the White Pages, appears to confirm the allegations.

The woman, whose brother is married to the alleged paramour — who appears on CNN as contributor, said, “It’s true. They were together only a few times.” She added her sister-in-law, “was transfixed by Ted. He has a way of selling ice to an Eskimo.” I asked when the affairs occurred. “Right before Ted’s campaign for Senate,” she said. “They’d get together when Cruz visited DC.” She added, “The whole family knows, everybody knows about this.”

Cruz’s lover is married and has children.

Notice how none of these people ever uses their own names when they post on social media?

Here is Amanda Carpenter appearing on Hannity and Colmes in 2008 discussing the Enquirer's story about John Edwards

Pervy vs. Bully

Are we down to Pervy vs. Bully? Washington Times has fired columnist Drew Johnson for tweeting that he knew of the accuracy of claims pertaining to at least two of the five women mentioned in the National Enquirer story about Ted Cruz having five mistresses. Johnson said that an "online media outlet" has had the story for a while, but not yet reporting it. Twitter has pictures of Ted Cruz and Amanda Carpenter showing off temporary tattoos of Winston Churchill on the same day. Someone who calls himself the Avenger posted what is supposedly a transcript of a detective interviewing an "escort" in a trailer park in West Texas. The woman claims to have flown to meet Cruz in Dallas, Houston, and Alexandria, where he allegedly asked her to dress up as a Catholic school girl and a judge.

Twitter users are having a field day on this one.

Electromagnetic pulse attacks on the energy grid now a top concern for the U.S. Air Force

Paul Bedard writes at The Washington Examiner,

Electromagnetic pulse attacks on the energy grid, a topic that used to prompt eye-rolling in Washington, is now a top concern for the U.S. Air Force.

Officials have raised new worries that "determined adversaries" want to attack the grid, either with a physical hit or a potential EMP attack.

Experts have suggested that North Korea, for example, is testing missiles to launch a nuclear weapon from a ship off the U.S. coast into the atmosphere where an explosion could shut off electricity for months through an atmospheric EMP explosion.

In an Air Force briefing provided to the Examiner, the service raised concerns about "aging infrastructure," a "growing number of cyberattacks" on the grid, "coordinated physical attacks on key grid components" and "risks from state and non-state actors," presumably such as the Islamic State or North Korea.

Read more here.

This ends in tears no matter what. Get over it and pick a side.

Jonah Goldberg writes at Right Wing News,

Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.

Denial has been Trump’s greatest ally. Republicans and commentators didn’t believe he would run. They didn’t believe he could be an attractive candidate to rational people, no matter how angry with “the establishment” voters said they were. They — which includes me — were wrong.

The denial lasted longer for some than others. Long after many observers had come to the realization that Trump was the front-runner, Jeb Bush’s super PAC, Right to Rise, believed Bush’s real rival was Marco Rubio. It spent $35 million trying to destroy Rubio before it dropped its first $25,000 attacking Trump.

Over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus showed the first public signs of acceptance about what’s in store for the party. He finally acknowledged that the Republican nominee was probably going to be determined on the convention floor in Cleveland.

Trump is

right that if he’s denied the nomination, many — not all, but many — of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party.

Left out of Trump’s unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he’s not denied the nomination.

...This ends in tears no matter what. Get over it and pick a side.

Mad like they are

I just reread a piece by Victor Davis Hanson written on March 6 at PJ Media. I think it explains better than anything I have read why

at least for a while longer, millions of Republicans and lots of Reagan Democrats would gladly prefer to be wrong with Trump than right with anyone else.

Trump supporters

care only that someone for a moment seems mad like they are, and does not lecture them on their own supposed biases and shortcomings. The way to further empower Trump is certainly to parody and mock his supporters.

...In Palo Alto where I work, there is no epidemic of bronze plaque and copper wire thievery, as there is near my home, where everything metal—Romex conduit, the dedicatory plaque at a Masonic temple, or bronze fittings on irrigation pipe—is in danger of being carted off, Vandal-like. I don’t think Mitt Romney has had a dead pit bull, in ripe rigor mortis with a rope tied around its neck, dumped on his lawn, or a beautiful Queensland Heeler, torn to shreds from dog fighting, thrown into his vineyard. Does the Gang of Eight ever get accosted in the evening by a group of tattooed thugs, claiming at your door they “are lost,” as they case your rural home? Or were they dreamers and future UC brain surgeons incognito?

...For half the week, I live at ground zero of Trump’s so-called poor white support, such as it is in blue California, and half the week I am with his critics on the Stanford campus. Aside from logic and to be crude, class is the chief divide that reveals attitudes about Mr. Trump. “Comprehensive immigration reform” for elites is a catchword that your children are not going to schools with Mexican illegal immigrants, who are not all dreamers but often include at least a few quite dangerous gang members. I know open-borders advocate Mark Zuckerberg’s kids will not enjoy a diverse Redwood City immigrant experience. (Why exactly has he stealthily bought up his surrounding neighborhood and staffed it with private security teams to adjudicate whom he sees while entering and leaving his compound?)

The children of Republican elites do not sit in classes where a quarter of the students do not speak English. When that specter of diversity looms, parents yank their kids and put them in the prep schools of Silicon Valley that are rapidly reaching New England numbers (or maybe better southern academies that followed integration). Their children are not on buses where an altercation between squabbling eight year olds leads to a tattooed parent arriving at your home to challenge you to a fight over “disrespecting” his family name. The establishment Republicans have rarely jogged around their neighborhoods only to be attacked by pit bulls, whose owners have little desire to speak English, much less to cage, vaccinate, or license their dogs. They have never been hit by illegal-alien drivers in Palo Alto. In other words, they do not wish to live anywhere near those who, as a result of an act of love, are desperately poor, here under illegal auspices, and assume California works and should work on the premises of Oaxaca.

But in rural Fresno County it is not uncommon to have been sideswiped and rear-ended by those who fled the scene, leaving their wrecked cars without insurance and registration. I doubt that CNN morning anchors have woken up to an abandoned Crown Victoria in their yard that swerved and went airborne in the night—its driver (who spoke neither Spanish nor English but a dialect of Mixteca Baja) found in the shrubs still sleeping it off.

Read much more here.

Differences and similarities between socialism and fascism

Thomas Sowell writes at Town Hall,

It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism.

What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.

Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time.

...the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies.

...One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.

Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely -- and correctly -- regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.

Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.

What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people -- like themselves -- need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat.

The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..."

That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters.

...Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.

Read more here.

Acting on our principles

Seth Godin writes,

"I agree in principle..."
"But in practice, I'll need to be more hard-hearted, practical, selfish, mass-oriented, short-term, callous..." Principles, it seems, are for other people.

Because business is business.

Because my boss won't let me.

Because he'll never get elected.

Because we've never done it that way.

Because the buyer will never take it for the store.

Because it's too risky.

Because I'm under a lot of pressure.

Because I'm afraid.

Principle, of course, is for us, not only for other people. One of the great privileges of not living on the edge of disaster is that we have the ability to act on our principles.

The hard part is realizing that it's never the edge of disaster, and that the long run is always shorter than we imagine.

On defeating radical jihadism

Peggy Noonan writes at the Wall Street Journal,

The usual glib talk of politicians — calls for unity, vows that we will not give in to fear—will produce in the future what they’ve produced in the past: nothing. “The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium,” said the president, vigorously refusing to dodge clichés. “We must unite and be together, regardless of nationality, race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism.” It is not an “existential threat,” he noted, as he does. But if you were at San Bernardino or Fort Hood, the Paris concert hall or the Brussels subway, it would feel pretty existential to you.

There are many books, magazine long-reads and online symposia on the subject of violent Islam. I have written of my admiration for “What ISIS Really Wants” by Graeme Wood, published a year ago in the Atlantic. ISIS supporters have tried hard to make their project knowable and understood, Mr. Wood reported: “We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change . . . and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.” ISIS is essentially “medieval” in its religious nature, and “committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people.” They intend to eliminate the infidel and raise up the caliphate—one like the Ottoman empire, which peaked in the 16th century and then began its decline.

...Normal people have seen that a long time, but the leaders of the West — its political class, media powers and opinion shapers — have had a hard time coming to terms. I continue to believe part of the reason is that religion isn’t very important to many of them, so they have trouble taking it seriously as a motivation of others. An ardent Catholic, evangelical Christian or devout Jew would be able to take the religious aspect seriously when discussing ISIS. An essentially agnostic U.S. or European political class is less able. Thus they cast about — if only we give young Islamist men jobs programs or social integration schemes, we can stop this trouble. But jihadists don’t want to be integrated. They want trouble.

...Our own president still won’t call radical Islam what it is, thinking apparently that if we name them clearly they’ll only hate us more, and Americans on the ground, being racist ignoramuses, will be incited by candor to attack their peaceful Muslim neighbors.

Read more here.