The appearance of impropriety

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, whose FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, met secretly in a parked plane at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix with Hillary's husband Bill, who, when he was president, appointed Ms. Lynch to be a federal judge in New York.

What did they talk about? Why are high level Democrats like David Axelrod, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer rushing forward to assure us there is nothing to see here?



Rush Limbaugh points out that Bill Clinton is not a man to whom the benefit of the doubt has been earned regarding ethical behavior. Nevertheless, many people called in to Rush's show to give their theories of why Bill and Loretta met on the tarmac in Phoenix. Here's one caller:

RUSH: Mark in Big Lake, Minnesota. Great to have you, sir. You're next.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: Yes, sir.

CALLER: I have a different theory about why Bill Clinton requested that meeting with Loretta

Lynch. I think he went there to beg her to indict.

RUSH: (Laughing).

CALLER: Think about it. Think about it. If you're married to Hillary, wouldn't you want her to go away for 10 to 20?



RUSH: You know, you're funny. Your call is uproariously funny, and intriguingly attractive as a theory. But I think people don't understand the Clinton relationship. Bill's got everything in the world he could possibly want. He's got a wife that covers for him when he cheats. He's got a wife that tries to destroy the concubines, not him. He's got a wife who has perfected making a quarter million dollars for a 20-minute speech. He has a wife who is as obsessed about money as he is. He has a wife who is as obsessed ideologically as he is.

He has all the freedom in the world. He can fly around the world on a pedophile-owned jet, and he has it with impunity. He can go play golf anywhere he wants. He can stay at home at Chappaqua and have the women come to him. He can pal around with anybody. He's got this foundation and this charitable organization that has netted these people influence and hundreds of millions of dollars. And now he's about to be vaulted back into the White House with no responsibilities once he gets there. He's going redefine what first lady is. I don't think he has any desire to be rid of Hillary Clinton.

Read more here.

Farage addresses the E.U.

Trump hires Cruz's senior communications adviser to be his senior adviser for communications

Bloomberg reports,

Donald Trump has landed a Republican operative to be his new senior adviser for communications, a move meant to further professionalize his unconventional campaign.

Jason Miller, who was the senior communications adviser for Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, will take the lead role over the Trump campaign’s message and interactions with the news media.

Read more here.

Who are the fascists?

Michael Bastach reports at The Daily Caller,

Democratic operatives responsible for creating their party’s platform this year have unanimously adopted a provision calling for the Department of Justice to investigate companies who disagree with Democrats on global warming science.

Read about it here.

Anarchy, not fascism, better describes the program and campaign methodology of Team Trump.

At National Review Victor Davis Hanson shares his thoughts about the 2016 presidential campaigns:

...in response to Trump’s charges, Hillary is starting to resort to her naturally unpleasant side, both in form and in content. She should learn from Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. When Trump unloaded on them in turn, each eventually stooped to reply in like kind — and seemed suddenly unpresidential.

...Does Hillary think that she can match Trump’s mastery of the arts of personal slander and invective? This time around, the target is not Marco Rubio’s stature, Jeb Bush’s energy level, or Ted Cruz’s hardball delegate hunting, but a scandal that won’t go away, because it cannot, given the meteoric rise of the Clintons’ net worth predicated on the misuse of government power.

...Both Never Trumpers and those who expect to hold their nose and vote for the less disastrous Trump over the specter of a 16-year Obama–Clinton continuum face challenges in the upcoming months.

Those who may reluctantly vote for Trump over Hillary always have to deal with the liability that Trump on any given day can say anything — from convincing political agendas to crude and cruel invective to abject conspiracy theories to sensational rumors. And such straws grow heavy on the camel’s back as voters become aware that acknowledgement of voting for Trump is assumed to be an investment in his outrageousness. Key here is Trump’s own arc: Will he refine his teleprompted attacks on Hillary, advance and defend a conservative agenda, and draw in respected advisors, or will he continue to detour into the swamp to defend his various past deals? Will we be asking these questions still on the eve of the election? So far, Trump has a wondrous ability to blow openings — the inspector general’s report on Hillary’s nefariousness, the unhinged liberal reaction to the Orlando tragedy, the uproar over Brexit — by referencing himself in his initial response. Meanwhile, time is running out, and Trump needs money, organization, and handlers who can direct his grapeshot to the proper targets.

But Never Trumpers have their own dilemmas. Trump’s historic attack on Hillary delighted Ted Cruz conservatives, radio talk shows, and the right-wing base. The more Trump wounds Clinton, attacks the entire liberal agenda, and drops the names of conservatives a President Trump might appoint as Supreme Court justices and Cabinet officials, the more problematic it is to adhere to the various arguments that the latest version of Trump is not conservative and that he will guarantee a Republican catastrophe in November. Is citing Trump’s prior liberal incarnation proof that he is now worse than Hillary’s present, far more left-wing one? Why do not principled liberals write op-eds confessing that they cannot vote for a Democrat who may be the first presidential candidate in history to face criminal indictment in the course of the campaign, in the way that conservatives make “not in my name” promises to vote against the Republican nominee? Is the logic that principled conservative losers are always preferable to liberal unprincipled winners?

Never Trumpers, then, face a sort of existential quandary: The more they attack Hillary Clinton, the more it becomes surreal to attack simultaneously (and far more frequently) Trump, who has attacked Clinton in a fashion never before seen in her long political history. And if Never Trumpers insist that the two candidates are of equal odiousness, what then is the point of daily reiterating their oppositions: On Monday attack Trump, on Tuesday Clinton, on Wednesday Trump again? Very quickly the message is received that the two are equally terrible people and therefore the election should not warrant any more commentary or interest, given that any outcome will be wretched. The logic of Trump voters trashing Clinton and Clinton voters trashing Trump is obvious; but what is the rationale of trashing both, other than a sort of detached depression that does not wear well in daily doses?

Over the summer, how will Hillary handle Obama if the news cycle continues to reveal his narcissistic ineptitude? Hillary was a Cabinet officer in the Obama administration, whereas John McCain had not been part of the Bush administration when he ran in 2008. She is perhaps more akin to Hubert Humphrey, who tried to follow and not follow Lyndon Johnson. Added to the mix is her own criminal exposure, which pressures her to show continued fealty to the Obama administration and its record in hopes of avoiding prosecution. Does she campaign on successes in Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Iraq that she oversaw? Reset with Russia? An ironclad end to the Iranian bomb? A better relationship with Israel? Al-Qaeda and the jayvee ISIS on the run? The wisdom of never mentioning radical Islam after Islamic terrorists kill and maim? How did raising income taxes and slashing defense spending still lead to half-a-trillion-dollar budget deficits?

Is the economy humming, or is it mired in no growth, overregulation, record labor non-participation, zero interest rates, and unprecedented debt? Is Clinton happy with Obamacare, as rates soar, plans are canceled, doctors are reassigned, and insurers leave the field? To suggest that Hillary would do x or y about terrorism or the economy would be to certify that Obama has not done and apparently will not do either. Any agenda Clinton advances will either be antithetical to Obama’s or advocate its continuance. Neither offers her much of an edge — given that a thin-skinned Obama would resent any course of Clinton triangulation.

By early June, the Trump campaign was broke, without reputable pollsters, voter-registration drives, serious staffers, or much of an advertising or ground game at all — and was attacked as much by Republicans as by Hillary supporters. Trump was at his worst, self-referencing, barreling down dead-end streets, fighting chimeras, and always off message. Despite the charges of fascism and worse, Trump’s campaign was not lockstep but an unorganized mess, without either big donors or ideologues. The grammar-school pointers in The Art of the Deal are not the agendas of Mein Kampf. Anarchy, not fascism, better describes the program and campaign methodology of Team Trump. (How did some outraged conservatives miss the obvious point that the natural arc of Obama-style progressivism is always anti-constitutional fascism, and thus still warn about what might come when much of it is already here?)

As the months pass, if Trump focuses on the moral and ideological bankruptcies of Hillary Clinton and the corrupt elite apparat she represents, he has an outside chance — given that her scandals will not fade, and some of Trump’s conservative opponents will appreciate his harsh attacks on the Clintons more than they will object to the outlandish manner in which he launches them.

The Brexit vote taught us that this summer nothing can be trusted, not polls, not establishment endorsements, not traditional campaign formulas.

Read more here.

Who would come look for me until all of me was found?

At A Holy Experience today Ann Voskamp writes about adopting a little Chinese girl.

I just know there’s a whole lot I don’t know at all and no one ever brings home any new child, born or adopted, without pain. Children only come to us through pain — like love only comes to us with pain.

There are scars you can’t erase —- all you can do is write more love into them.

I honour her with shy space. She has universe of her own that doesn’t know where to place me. Who knew that right now, 18 million children spin about in galaxies of their own, completely untethered orphans, with both parents dead — that’s enough children to fill 180 Superbowl stadiums — 18 million children who have no people of their own anywhere on the planet.

The day she lets me hold her, enfold her, the day I get to pull her slowly close—

when I touch her cheek and inhale the scent of her skin warm against mine —

I listen to the thrumming heart of her and it’s so faint, it’s almost like a murmur, this cry against abandonment that beats like a drumming in her broken heart, that echoes like a howl through the chambers of every single one of our broken hearts —

If I broke into a thousand pieces — who would come to gather and pick me up?

If I up and lost my way —- who would come look for me until all of me was found?

If I forgot who I really am — who would come make me remember my real name?

I will. I will — my heart beats it back like a promise to hers.

And it can feel like a rising, all our voices saying to the forgotten: I will be your astronomer — I will find the pieces of you, connect the blazing bits of you in the black, gather you into a constellation of the brave, point the way to the Truest North Morning Star, and I will keep murmuring your realest name.

We are the exact same, her and I, the whole universe: Lost — and He found me.

Pull her closer.

Broken — and He picked me up. Picked me. Chosen.

Read more here.

That is no way to protect our country

I often excerpt the writings of Andrew McCarthy, the successful prosecutor of the jihadists who conducted the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. The leader of that attack was Omar Abdel Rahman. This week McCarthy spoke to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on “Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts to Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”

Omar Abdel Rahman was not merely blind. He was beset by several other medical handicaps. Terrorism is hard work. Yet, here was a man who seemed utterly incapable of doing anything that would be useful to a terrorist organization: he couldn’t build a bomb, hijack a plane, or carry out an assassination.

Still, he was the unquestioned leader of terror cells and revered by jihadists across the globe. How could that be?

The answer is straightforward, though it plainly remains one we do not want to hear.

The Blind Sheikh is a doctor of Islamic jurisprudence graduated from al-Azhar University in Cairo, the seat of Sunni Islamic learning for over a millennium. His area of expertise is sharia -- Islam’s legal code and societal framework.

The jihadists who listened to him did so because he is an internationally recognized authority in the political ideology that draws on Islamic scripture to inspire attacks against the West.

The centrality of ideology tells us why terrorists obeyed the Blind Sheikh. It tells us why terrorists act. This is something we must grasp if we have any hope of defending ourselves and defeating our enemies.

Yet, instead of focusing on this ideology, we have wasted much of the last two decades on a fool’s errand: attempting to define a “true Islam,” in the futile hope of discrediting terrorists as purveyors of a false Islam.

The stubborn fact is that there may not be a “true Islam.” Islam has a rich and diverse history, and there are various interpretations of it, all vying for the mantle of “true Islam” and denying it to one another. Innumerable factions of Muslims have been debating one another, often violently fighting amongst each other, for fourteen centuries. They have not settled the question, “What is the true Islam?”

The United States is not going to settle it, either.

From a humanitarian standpoint, we have to hope courageous reformers prevail – devout Muslims like my co-panelist here this afternoon, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. We should do what we can to help them, including marginalizing – instead of taking our cues from – sharia-supremacist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

But from the standpoint of American national security, it is irrelevant whether there is a true Islam. What matters is that there is a sharia-supremacist construction of Islam to which hundreds of millions of Muslims have adhered for centuries. They are supported by centuries of scholarship and scriptural literalism. We are not going to convince them that they are wrong.

They do not care what American politicians and commentators think about “the true Islam.” They judge themselves by their own civilization and culture principles – just as we in the West do by ours. It is absurd to believe, as what passes for today’s counterterrorism strategy maintains, that they are motivated or even affected by the language we use to speak about them, or by our stated beliefs about Islam.

Sharia supremacism, their interpretation of Islam, is not a religion as we understand religion. It is political radicalism with a religious veneer. Sharia supremacism is virulently anti-Western, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. It rejects basic tenets of Western liberalism, including the power of people to chart their own destiny and make their own laws in contravention of sharia. It rejects individual liberty and equality. It brooks no separation between spiritual life and civil society. It endorses violent jihad to implement and spread sharia. And it regards the United States, closely trailed by Israel and Europe, as the principal enemies of Islam that must be defeated.

That is something we desperately need to understand and highlight, not obscure and avoid.

There has been a reluctance to do this. Government counterterrorism policy has been willfully blind for a quarter-century to the ideological underpinnings of radical Islamic terrorism. The reluctance has been rationalized on the wayward theory that because a person’s religious beliefs and political speech are constitutionally shielded from prosecution, they are similarly shielded from mere inquiry and investigation – notwithstanding that we know they are often precursors to violence.

A sensible national security policy cannot regard the objective presentation of evidence as if it were the promotion of hate speech.

There is nothing inherently wrong with, much less constitutionally offensive about, the concept that radical religious or political beliefs should trigger investigations. That is especially the case if those beliefs are conveyed by aggressive language, or by association with other radicals or mosques known to endorse jihadism.

Here’s an important principle we must get right:

It cannot be that evidence an investigator may use to prove guilt of terrorism offenses is somehow insulated from an investigator’s suspicions about potential terrorism offenses.

The goal of counterterrorism is supposed to be the prevention of jihadist attacks, not the hope that there may be a living terrorist or two still around to be indicted and tried only after Americans have been murdered.

In 1996, I was awarded the Justice Department’s highest honor for proving the nexus between (a) jihadist commands in Islamic scripture, (b) their exploitation by sharia jurists like the Blind Shiekh, and (c) the commission of jihadist atrocities by the young Muslims he inflamed. Today, to say aloud what the Clinton administration honored me for twenty years ago, is to be ostracized as an Islamophobic bigot.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, that is no way to protect our country.

Read more here.

Did I vote for the right person?

Today is primary day in Colorado. The most interesting race is the one for the U.S. Senate. I voted, but I think I may have not voted for the best candidate. It is so frustrating to try to choose whom to vote for, when you do not know any of the candidates.

I voted for Darryl Glenn. He won the top line on the ballot due to a terrific speech he gave at the state convention. He also is supported by Ted Cruz, Ben Sasse, and other nationally known conservatives. But I am not sure he is the best man for the job.

If I would have waited until today to mark my ballot, I would have voted for Jon Keyser, a young man who has fought jihadis in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I heard him on the Dan Caplis radio show on KNUS this morning. He pointed out that he is the only one of the five GOP candidates who is being attacked by Democrat-financed groups. He received a lot of negative publicity when a petition-gatherer put fake signatures on ballots she turned in. Keyser pointed out that he hired an organization to gather signatures, and that organization hired another group, which hired the woman who turned in fake signatures. I watched the video from 7 News that brought the matter to the attention of the public, and that was the reason I did not vote for Keyser. Was I influenced by the liberal media? Yes!

"Urban Travelers"

Now for some local news. Denver has a mall downtown called the 16th Street Mall. My kids and I enjoy riding the free bus and getting off and walking around the mall. Lately, though, there have been roving groups of homeless teens and young adults who have been violently attacking innocent citizens walking on the mall.

Don't worry, though, the dying Denver Post, which takes huge sums of advertising money from marijuana drug dealers, and city officials, who are also in the financial pockets of the marijuana drug dealers, have come up with a plan to deal with the "Urban Travelers!" Yes, that is their politically correct term they have come up with to describe these bands of young people who come to Denver on April 20 to participate in the 4-20 Celebration of the legalization of marijuana, then stay here through the warm summer months. When arrested for violent crimes, 40% of these thug punks urban travelers have marijuana in their systems.

Now the city is putting one unarmed security person on every one or two blocks of the mall, which covers the length of the downtown area. Will that solve the problem?

Can we hold a sit-in at the FBI until someone finds her?

At Conservative Review Michelle Malkin writes,

Am I the only one bothered by the fact that the Orlando jihadist’s wife is a missing, AWOL, gone girl?

Where the hell is Noor Salman? Can we hold a sit-in at the FBI until someone finds her?

The keystone cops in Washington admit they lost track of her last week. So what are they doing to hunt her down? Playing Marco Polo in the pool with their eyes closed?

How crazy is this? In America in 2016 you can real-time track your dog, your kid, your iPhone, your luggage, and your Uber driver around the corner.

But the people in charge of homeland security are losing a dangerous game of Ji-hide-y and Seek with the devout Muslim Palestinian woman who chauffeured her radicalized Orlando jihadist husband around as he scoped out massacre locations and shopped for weapons.

Does FBI stand for fumbling, bumbling idiots? Get your shizzle together, please!

- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/06/watch-where-the-hell-is-the-orlando-jihadists-missing-wife#sthash.snle7AJY.dpuf

Placing the blame for global warming where it belongs

Manhattan Infidel reports that the Sun plans to attend the 2017 World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland.

While at Davos the Sun also hopes to counter propaganda from science-denying U.S. Republicans that it is the Sun that is primarily responsible for climate change.

“I hate Republicans” he said.

What have they got against me? I’m just a big nuclear-fusion ball with an average temperature of 10,000 degrees. I do my bit but I’m tired of taking the blame for warming temperatures on Earth. I won’t have it anymore and I’m going to Davos to state my case and place the blame for global warming where it belongs: on SUVs and 100 watt light bulbs. And let’s not forget that global warming leads to terrorism. I just thought I’d throw that in there.

Science-denying Republicans for their part call the Sun’s appearance at the World Economic forum a gimmick.

Said Marco Rubio:

Instead of going to Switzerland the Sun should be focused on helping us increase the size of our Federal government and opening our borders. This is something that all mainstream Republicans believe in.

Read more here.

Crickets from Trump on SCOTUS abortion decision

Josh Vorhees notes at Slate that the person who is usually quick to give us his response to news items, Donald Trump, has uttered not one word or tweet on the SCOTUS decision this morning striking down Texas's abortion laws. Hillary has two tweets:

SCOTUS's decision is a victory for women in Texas and across America. Safe abortion should be a right—not just on paper, but in reality. -H

and

This fight isn't over: The next president has to protect women's health. Women won't be "punished" for exercising their basic rights. -H

Read more here.

A radical act of trust

Ann Voskamp notes today at A Holy Experience that

He who is hurried by worry, delays the comfort of God.

In a world of fists and demands and tight grips for control — patiently waiting with open hand is a radical act — a radical art.

Open hands defy the dark — and testify to a radical act of trust.

Grace beyond our imaginings can fall into open hands.

New things will happen to us — unknown, unwanted, unexpected things — and we can name those things grace.

In a world preoccupied with control — the most radical act is openhanded trust.

Wanting things your way — can destroy any way at all.

All sins and brokenness — turn out to be watered by impatience.

We cannot make things grow… ours is only to grow in grace.

Ours is only to let God grow good things in us.

Read more here.

Just who are the feds planning to battle?

Jeff Jacoby writes in the Boston Globe,

...
In the space of eight years, the group amassed a stockpile of pistols, shotguns, and semiautomatic rifles, along with ample supplies of ammunition, liquid explosives, gun scopes, and suppressors. In its cache as well are night-vision goggles, gas cannons, plus armored vests, drones, and surveillance equipment. Between 2006 and 2014, this organization spent nearly $4.8 million to arm itself. Yet its aggressive weapons buildup has drawn almost no public attention.

Does all this firepower belong to a jihadist terror cell? A right-wing hate group? A vicious urban gang?

None of the above. It is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an agency of the US Department of Agriculture, that has built up such a formidable collection of munitions. And far from being an outlier, it is one of dozens of federal agencies that spends lavishly on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.

A report issued this month by American Transparency, a nonpartisan watchdog that compiles data on public expenditures, chronicles the explosive — and expensive — trend toward militarizing federal agencies, most of which have no military responsibilities. Between 2006 and 2014, the report shows, 67 federal bureaus, departments, offices, and services spent at least $1.48 billion on ammunition and materiel one might expect to find in the hands of SWAT teams, Special Forces soldiers — or terrorists.

The largest share of that spending has gone to traditional law enforcement agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the US Secret Service. But the arms race has metastasized to federal agencies with strictly regulatory or administrative functions. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, now spends more than $1 million annually on firearms, ammunition, and military gear, double what it was spending a decade ago. Since 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs — which has been sharply criticized for episodes of fatal incompetence in patient care — has poured nearly $11.7 million into guns and ammo. Even the Smithsonian Institution and the Social Security Administration have each devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars to weaponry.

Incredibly, there are now fewer US Marines than there are officers at federal administrative agencies with the authority to carry weapons and make arrests. The soaring growth of this federal arsenal alarms Adam Andrzejewski, the head of American Transparency’s OpenTheBooks.com, which researched and assembled the new report. “Just who,” he asks, “are the feds planning to battle?”

Read more here.

Would-be Trump assassin was an illegal immigrant who overstayed his visa

Sundance reports at Conservative Treehouse that the illegal immigrant who tried to kill Donald Trump this month in Las Vegas had overstayed his visa from the United Kingdom.

Read more here.

The world will never be the same again.

Michael Kennedy writes about Brexit at Chicago Boyz,

...the political left is hysterical at the idea that voters don’t want to be governed by remote elites.

...Who could imagine that people would not want a thousand bureaucrats in Brussels, or for that matter Washington DC, micromanaging their lives ? Well, I know someone.

Donald Trump is a happy guy today, and his timing seems to be excellent. Last week, when the “Remain” side was expected to win, he was told it was a serious mistake to go there.

Trump, on his first trip overseas since he embarked on his White House bid, faced criticism in the US for making what was essentially a business trip at a time when his campaign has been faltering, falling behind Clinton in the polls and in fundraising.

Yes, who can imagine a politician actually conducting business and creating real jobs ?

...There were two referendums on Thursday. The first was on membership of the EU. The second was on the British establishment. Leave won both, and the world will never be the same again.

...Can the GOP really be so out of touch with the legions of out-of-work Americans — many of whom don’t show up in the “official” unemployment rate because they’ve given up looking for work in the Obama economy? With the returning military vets frustrated with lawyer-driven, politically correct rules of engagement that have tied their hands in a fight against a mortal enemy? With those who, in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino massacres by Muslims, reasonably fear an influx of culturally alien “refugees” and “migrants” from the Middle East?

Read more here.

Obama's third term

At Bookworm Room, Bookworm writes,

Keep in mind that Hillary’s will not be a brand new presidency, one in which she starts from scratch, changing the previous administration’s status quo. Instead, she will be Obama’s third term (and that’s separate from worrying about whether, thanks to the blackmail potential from the dirt in her hacked emails, she’ll also be Russia’s and China’s first term in the White House). Think of what Obama has already done, all of which Hillary will continue to do:

Pretended that Islam isn’t a problem, a position that goes beyond merely refusing to admit the problem, but which has also extended to destroying national security databases containing information about radical Islam within this country.

Weakened our military by shrinking it in terms of both troops and arms, changing its focus to social justice and climate change, and removing higher echelon officials who can’t get with the social justice, climate change, anti-God, pro-Islam paradigm.

Erased our Southern borders and doing everything possible to turn illegal immigrants into voting citizens.
Corrupted the Justice Department, which has become a completely politicized institution.
Placed two young, hard-Left justices on the Supreme Court.

Dramatically increased the reach of the administrative state (e.g., the EPA’s new legislating ability).
Weaponized the IRS, both in terms of actual weapons and in terms of using it as the mafia arm of the Democrat party.
Enriched the Iranians and effectively promoting their ability to have nuclear weapons.

Isolated Israel, putting her at imminent existential risk.

Destroyed our existing medical insurance infrastructure, thereby creating an opening for socialized medicine (which has long been Hillary’s dream)

Relentlessly promoted the idea that America is a racist, sexist nation, filled with rapey, hate-filled white men.

Obsessed with climate change, to the detriment of our economy, our military, and scientific integrity.

Attacked the Second Amendment as an illegitimate doctrine that the government must destroy.

Reinstated welfare to pre-1994 levels, to the detriment of generations of Americans.
That’s off the top of my head. You can add to the list.

To date, Obama has been way too effective in implementing the fundamental transformation he promised. Hillary will complete this transformation. The likelihood is that Trump will not. He may have goofy ideas, but he also has asserted good values tied in to core constitutional issues or national security:

he supports the Second Amendment;

he believes a sovereign nation should control its own borders (although, as we all knew he would, he’s backing off from his primary stance regarding Muslim immigrants);

he has not backed off his list of genuinely conservative judges for the Supreme Court;

he’s actively (indeed, aggressively) hostile to the mental Marxism that is political correctness;

he challenges the relentlessly hard Left mainstream media, which too often sets the tone for America’s social and political discourse;

he recognizes that Islamists are an enemy and a threat to Americans at home; and
he supports Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East; and he genuinely loves America.
If you like Trump, I’m sure you can name other values he espouses.

Read more here.

Lessons

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today,

So the post-Brexit number-crunching is over and it turns out that the decisive support for Britain’s leaving the EU came not from right-wing nationalists but from working-class Labour voters. This offers some lessons for British and European politicians — and for us in America, too.

Read the whole thing here.

I don't see any resemblance

Does this guy look anything like Barack Obama? I don't think so. It is a photo of Barack Obama Sr. Dr. Jerome Corsi has been digging into some newly found correspondence around the time of Barack Jr.'s birth and early years, and there is no mention of the newborn son or his mother.
Read more here.

Which country has the most sovereign debt?

Jeff Desjardins brings us the answer in visual form at Visual Capitalist.

The numbers that stand out the most, especially when comparing to the previous world economy graphic:

The United States constitutes 23.3% of the world economy but 29.1% of world debt. It’s debt-to-GDP ratio is 103.4% using IMF figures.
Japan makes up only 6.18% of total economic production, but has amounted 19.99% of global debt.

China, the world’s second largest economy (and largest by other measures), accounts for 13.9% of production. They only have 6.25% of world debt and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 39.4%.

7 of the 15 countries with the most total debt are European. Together, excluding Russia, the European continent holds over 26% of total world debt.

Combining the debt of the United States, Japan, and Europe together accounts for 75% of total global debt.

Read more here.

Always by his side

Michael Grinbaum writes in the New York Times,

Hillary Clinton employs a half-dozen battle-hardened media handlers who field hundreds of daily requests. Mr. Trump has Ms. Hicks, who was working for his daughter Ivanka’s luxury lines and for the Trump real estate brand when the candidate called her to his office in early 2015 and declared that she was joining his campaign.

Hope Hicks, a political newcomer (like her boss), at a news conference at Trump Tower in May. Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times

Ms. Hicks, a onetime champion lacrosse player who signed a Ford modeling contract as a teenager, had never worked in politics before last year, and her widest exposure had been as a co-star in a Nickelodeon children’s television special about golf.

Now she plays confidante and sometime gatekeeper to the presumptive Republican nominee for president and, improbably, serves as Mr. Trump’s sole liaison to the teeming national press corps.


Suddenly, she found herself a near-constant presence by Mr. Trump’s side, flying in his jet, living rent-free in a Trump-owned apartment and attending to his mercurial moods.

Read more here.

Media manipulation

My thoughts exactly. From Bookworm Room:

I loved Ted Cruz, but as I also remind myself, Ted Cruz is not running anymore in this presidential election. Donald Trump is. The voters have spoken and, while he was my last choice, I’m learning to tolerate him and he’s better than Hillary. Hillary will gut the Second Amendment, gut the First Amendment, deny that we are engaged in an existential war against fundamentalist Islam, and sell off the White House piece by piece. And in all this, she’ll be abetted by the media.

Keep in mind when you hear horrible stories about Trump that the media is telling these stories and they lie like cheap Persian rugs. They will ignore assassination attempts on Donald Trump while magnifying every single thing he says or does that can be wrongly construed. Meanwhile, they’ll be perfectly complacent about the fact that Hillary hasn’t had a press conference in 200 days and will actively hide anything that does not reflect well on her.

You are being manipulated every minute of every day every time you see anything coming from the media. The media’s animus towards Trump and its reverential handling of Hillary alone are reasons to vote for him and do anything to avoid her. (Are you listening to me RNC? The voters got tired of your efforts to placate, instead of fight, the media and they went for the Donald. Now you and some rarefied conservatives are trying to upend the will of the voters. I confidently predict that one of my friends is right when he says that, while President Trump might spell the end of the GOP, a coup against candidate Trump will spell the GOP’s end.)

Read more here.

A malignant narcissist

Bookworm watched the entire ESPN series on O.J. Simpson. Some of her thoughts:

watching the trajectory of OJ’s career, I went from admiration to disgust. This was separate from my certainty that he slaughtered two people. Instead, I was following the life story starting in high school, when he was a talented guy who always let his friends take the rap — yet his friends remained devoted to him. In the beginning of his career, when OJ refused to be defined by his race, I thought that was admirable. After all, I do take seriously Martin Luther King’s admonition that America will have achieved racial redemption when we start judging people, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That’s what OJ seemed to want.

However, as his career progressed, it became clear that OJ was not making a civil rights statement. Instead, he actually thought he was a special being. He was the ultimate malignant narcissist who believed himself to be somewhat divorced from and better than the rest of the human race. A malignant narcissist has a host of problems and is not the type of person anyone should ever want to marry. The narcissist is brutal in a marriage. Some are just mentally abusive; others, like OJ, are physically abusive. And narcissists are the type of people who, when their ego suffers a severe wound (such as seeing an ex-wife start dating a younger, more successful protegé), will kill.

In his relationship with Nicole, OJ did what all malignant narcissists do: Because they are utterly devoid of insight, everything wrong in their life is always everyone else’s fault. They cannot change, they cannot grow and, when things go bad, they cannot recover. Like the rats they are, when trapped, they are utterly vicious, all the while being pathetically whiny.

...even though I accept as true that blacks have been on the receiving end of appalling racism in America for centuries, especially police racism, I do think that the victim message obscures another message that the black community needs to hear: Lift yourself up. Police yourself. Improve yourself. Don’t let racists define you as lackluster, criminal, do-nothings. When you hear the activists speak (and they spoke a lot in this show), they are as narcissistic as OJ — there is no self-reflection, no change, no growth. It’s a dead-end devoid of individual responsibility. The activists stoke the rage but refuse to acknowledge that, racism notwithstanding, the black community needs to improve itself too.

Read more here.

The most powerful video you will see today.

They've learned their lesson!

h/t Bookworm Room

Progressive denigration of men

Spandrell writes at Bloody Shovel,

...What is now known as the “alt-right” is a composite of many different movements. I once wrote about a very diverse bunch of how Christian traditionalists, outright fascists, libertarians aware of human biodiversity, futurists and pick-up artists all started to become friends in the internet, and nobody really understood why. The only common is the realization that modernity is a bad deal for men. Progressive honchos have started to understand that, and now openly attack men as “brutes”, and blame Islamic terrorism on “toxic masculinity”.

They have a point. The basic thing that keeps Muslims attached to Islam is their toxic masculinity. Because they realize that Islam is a better deal for men. It’s not a good deal in general; Muslim countries are in general basket cases, and Islam itself is in some part to blame for it. But at any rate, for the average men there’s absolute no good reason to abandon Islam, even nominally. Becoming progressive will only get you called a “brute” and openly discriminated against, likely killing your chances of reproducing and much social status. Of course second and third generation Muslims are more religious than their parents.

...The more hostile Muslims are against Europeans, the more progressive can get away with, the farther left the leftist singularity can advance, as White men close ranks around the only thing they’re allowed to close ranks around: progressive denigration of men. Which again drives Muslim men into further hostility, as they see what assimilation would require of them. This means the Left has absolutely no incentive to crack down on Islamic extremism. Until it gets out of hand. If it ever does.

Read more here.

Who will decide the terms of Brexit?

I don't pretend to understand British politics. The latest confusion for me is that MP Douglas Carswell and his colleague at Vote Leave, Daniel Hannan, have stated that UKIP leader and long-time Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage would not be invited to the cross-party committee which will negotiate Britain’s exit from the EU.
Read more here.

Why she is supporting Trump

This is a guest post from Suzann Darnell.

We Need Real Hope and Real Change!

My husband and I took a trip this past week to visit some historic places in Arkansas. We travelled mostly on back roads, avoiding the highways, and hoping to visit some quaint little shops along the way to and from Texas. Did not quite turn out as well as we planned.

Lots of the little, rural, back road communities and businesses have closed up shop . . . literally! In some places we could even see where there had been a boom, with building and rebuilding, followed by a bust. Upon our return home I spoke to my daughter and she mentioned that she and her family had seen the decline of these small towns and their economies over the past several years. Hmmm . . . would that be over the years that Obama has been in office and pretty much declared war on small businesses?

Obama’s administration has implemented excessive regulations on small businesses, put ObamaCare in place, raised taxes, and just generally made an unfriendly business environment across this nation. Sometimes these kinds of negative impact events are harder on some places than others.

Places like rural, back road antique shops, diners, gas stations, and B-n-B’s, that rely to a great extent on tourism, get hit doubly hard. They get impacted by the government interference which costs them money as well as losing customers ‘cause those customers are unable to travel due to their own higher costs of government intervention in their finances.

This is why I am supporting Trump for President. We need someone who understand that business is the economy. A person who realizes that money in the hands of citizens and businesses will do more to stimulate our economy than all the stimulus packages and welfare programs that DC can cobble together. A businessman who knows that tax BREAKS, not tax HIKES will actually bring in more money as the financial situation all across America rebounds with a new feeling of security as prosperity once again rears its head from Main Street to Wall Street to the streets where we live! But, this all starts with a change of the mindset of the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!

I want a NOT politician in the Oval Office. I want a person who understands budgets, expenditures, incomes, pay checks, business models, and just plain ol’ money in general. I want someone who knows what it means to build something, to make money, to face loss, and to start again. I want my president to know what it is like to meet deadlines, pay bills, and know the value of a dollar. I am tired of pie-in-the-sky politicians who deal with trillions so often that a taxpayer’s monthly paycheck is too piddling a sum for them to care about.

I know Donald Trump is a man with wealth beyond anything I can imagine. But, I also know that he cares about the business environment of this country. He knows that what is good for business is good for the economy, good for citizens, and good for America. He knows this ‘cause this is what he does. He does business. He deals with finances all the time. He knows the bottom line ‘cause that is his line of work. He builds stuff and pays people. He is a realist. He is my choice. I hope all y’all make him your choice too.

We need real hope and real change in the White House, in Washington DC, and in America. We need someone who cares about workers, businesses, and the economy. Really cares. And, someone who actually has an idea about what all those $$$ really mean! That money is food, housing, transportation for families, and not just taxes for an over-greedy government!

Let’s make that change. Let’s give ourselves some hope. Put The Donald in the White House!

You mean it's not inevitable that we will continue to be ruled by progressives?

David French writes at National Review,

And so we launch yet another phase in human history, where what’s old — nations pursuing their own interests — is new again. On one end of the European continent sits Russia, a nation that is flexing its muscles and seeking to reclaim its traditional power. On the other end is Britain, a nation that has reclaimed its independence and now faces an uncertain future defining its new relationship with the world.

Across the ocean, America faces its own crisis. Our technocratic elite has constructed its own self-serving system — one that mirrors the very system that Britain rejected yesterday. Our politics are more uncertain and chaotic than at any time in decades. We can’t predict what will happen. But one thing I do know — history never truly had a “side.” Instead, it is the story of action and reaction, and no outcome is inevitable. Britain has acted. The world is set to change, and history can’t tell us what’s next.

Read more here.

Sovereignty, patriotism, rejection of the politics of fear, dawn of a populist uprising

Telling the truth

Caroline May reports at Breitbart,

Released Criminal Aliens Committed Nearly 10 Times More Crimes Than Obama Admin. Told Congress.

The Obama Administration “grossly misrepresented” the number of crimes the criminal aliens it released from custody in FY 2014 subsequently committed by nearly tenfold, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) charges.
According to FAIR, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request on FAIR’s behalf reveal that the 30,558 criminal aliens ICE released in FY 2014 committed 13,288 additional crimes.

The number of subsequent convictions contained in FIOA documents is far higher than the 1,423 additional offenses ICE reported to the House Judiciary Committee last July.

Read more here.

Sand is the essential ingredient that makes modern life possible. And we are starting to run out.

Vince Beiser writes in the New York Times,

Sand is the essential ingredient that makes modern life possible. And we are starting to run out.

That’s mainly because the number and size of cities is exploding, especially in the developing world. Every year there are more people on the planet, and every year more of them move to cities. Since 1950, the world’s urban population has ballooned to over 3.9 billion from 746 million.

According to the United Nations Environment Program, in 2012 alone the world used enough concrete to build a wall 89 feet high and 89 feet wide around the Equator. From 2011 to 2013, China used more cement than the United States used in the entire 20th century.

To build those cities, people are pulling untold amounts of sand out of the ground. Usable sand is a finite resource. Desert sand, shaped more by wind than by water, generally doesn’t work for construction. To get the sand we need, we are stripping riverbeds, floodplains and beaches.

Extracting the stuff is an estimated $70 billion industry. It runs the gamut from multinational companies’ deploying enormous dredges to villagers toting shovels and buckets. In places where onshore sources have been exhausted, sand miners are turning to the seas.

This often inflicts terrible costs on the environment. In India, river sand mining is disrupting ecosystems, killing countless fish and birds. In Indonesia, some two dozen small islands are believed to have disappeared since 2005 because of sand mining. In Vietnam, miners have torn up hundreds of acres of forest to get at the sandy soil underneath.

Sand miners have damaged coral reefs in Kenya and undermined bridges in Liberia and Nigeria. Environmentalists tie sand dredging in San Francisco Bay to the erosion of nearby beaches.

...Sand is the thing modern cities are made of. Pretty much every apartment block, office tower and shopping mall from Beijing to Lagos, Nigeria, is made at least partly with concrete, which is basically just sand and gravel stuck together with cement. Every yard of asphalt road that connects all those buildings is also made with sand. So is every window in every one of those buildings.

Read more here.

Persistent humiliation for simply being male

Hillary Clinton supporter Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) writes,

If you are following the election polls, you know that Clinton has greater support from women while Trump has greater support from men. Trump probably can’t win the presidency unless he gets massive voter turnout from American men.

Will that happen?

The dishwasher soap commercial should give you a hint of how big that turnout might be. You might not notice the size of the coming tsunami because American men generally don’t voice their humiliation in public. That would just make it worse.

But in the privacy of the polling booth, the men who don’t talk are free to act.

...My point is that the psychological state of American men in 2016 is one of persistent humiliation for simply being male. That sense of humiliation might be more imagined than real – which is not an important distinction – because either way it affects how people act.

Read more here.

Other public figures won’t admit they agree with Trump — but they often quietly adopt his ideas.

Victor Davis Hanson writes in National Review,

the central truth of 2016: Trump is a symptom, not a catalyst. He was created by the hyperpartisan unconstitutional overreach of Barack Obama, and by the appeasement of much of the Republican establishment, who wished to be liked and admired for their restraint and Beltway moderation rather than feared for their insistence on adherence to the Constitution and the protection of the individual from an always growing and encroaching government.

Read much more here.

Trump's statement on Brexit

Statement of Donald Trump Regarding British Referendum on E.U. Membership

The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy. A Trump Administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense. The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump Administration.

Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people. I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.

Demographic transformation in America

Walter Russell Mead links to a Wall Street Journal story reporting,

White Americans no longer account for the majority in hundreds of counties across the U.S., a trend transforming America’s social and political landscape as Latinos, Asians and blacks outpace white population growth, according to census figures out Thursday.

In 370 counties across 36 states and the District of Columbia, non-Hispanic whites accounted for less than half the population as of July 2015. That includes 31 additional counties since 2010, such as those encompassing Fort Worth and Austin in Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Savannah, Ga.; and parts of suburban Atlanta and Sacramento, Calif.

Mead concludes,

Throughout its history, American society has been tolerant of and even supportive of the identity politics of various minority groups, from the Irish and Italians a century ago to Hispanics and Asians today. This tradition has been good for the country, overall, in that it has encouraged assimilation while making our society more dynamic. But if we are moving toward “majority-minority” status in many states and localities, we should probably expect to see a rise in white identity politics as well. It’s hard to argue that this would similarly salutary, or that the balkanization of American society along racial and ethnic lines will make the country a better place.

Much of the fire fueling Trump’s populist campaign comes from those who fear mass immigration is changing the racial and ethnic balance of America in ways that will leave them marginalized and powerless in a country that used to be theirs. This is a monster that should not be underestimated, and poking and prodding it is not a wise thing to do, as elites across the Western world are beginning, belatedly, to recognize.

Read more here.

Italy, France and the Netherlands may be next

Matthew Holehouse writes at The Telegraph that Italy, France and the Netherlands also have considerable support for leaving the European Union.
Read more here.

When the Americans walk away, Europe tends to fail.

Walter russell Mead writes at The American Interest about the British vote to leave the European Union.

...The vote, and weakening of the West that it heralds, will diminish President Obama’s foreign policy legacy. American policy toward Europe under his leadership has been an abject failure. His most obvious failure, and one that historians will view severely, is his failure to prevent the meltdown of Syria. The millions of desperate refugees fleeing for their lives are much more than a humanitarian disaster; they are a political disaster, and the strain of coping with the refugee flow on top of Europe’s other problems stoked suspicion and fear across the continent and greatly strengthened the power of the Leave campaign in the UK.

But beyond the horrors of Syria, Obama has done less for Europe than any American president since the 1930s. The American response to the euro crisis and its long and bitter aftermath was both shortsighted and feeble. To the extent it did anything, Obama irritated the Germans by critiquing their handling of the crisis while disappointing the debtor countries by an absence of effective support. The United States had great interests at stake when it came to Cameron’s negotiations with the EU; from all one can tell, President Obama spent more time playing golf during those negotiations than he did working to prevent a damaging split between some of our most important partners and allies. Smart American diplomacy would have worked intensely and unremittingly to get a deal between London and its partners that the British people would support, but despite the President’s breathtaking self-confidence, smart diplomacy is not actually part of his skill set.

The British people have the right to choose whether or not to remain in the European Union, and while there will be some in Europe who want to punish them for this choice, the American interest in this matter is clear. We want a strong Britain, a strong Europe, good relations on both sides of the Channel and a trading system that doesn’t put new bureaucratic obstacles in the path of American exports or investment. We do not want bitterness and friction over the break to throw sand in the gears of western political and security cooperation in an increasingly dangerous world. We do not want Europe’s divisions to become Putin’s opportunities. We want Europe to be united, and we want Britain to be Great.

At the same time, the U.S. government needs to do something else that the current administration has unaccountably failed to do over the last seven years: develop a strategy to help save the EU. The European Union is in trouble; the world’s most audacious experiment in international relations is looking both fragile and sclerotic. The British aren’t the only Europeans who think Brussels is a disaster, and the chance that a post-Brexit EU will continue to weaken and fragment is dangerously high. Refugee flows from the Middle East and North Africa are bound to continue. There are few signs of real economic revival in the south. The torpid bureaucracies and dysfunctional political organizations of Brussels can’t deliver real solutions to Europe’s problems, but European nation states have given so many of their powers to the EU that in many cases they lack the ability to act when Brussels fails.

From the 1920s to the present day, American engagement in Europe has been a necessary though not a sufficient condition for European success. And when the Americans walk away, Europe tends to fail. The Americans walked away during the Bush and Obama years, and the consequences of that withdrawal are becoming apparent. If we had engaged earlier and more effectively, Brexit might never have happened. Now that it has, a thoughtful and serious American re-engagement with our friends and allies in Europe is more important than ever.

Read more here.

Simple, isn't it?

At PJ Media Roger L. Simon writes,

News flash: The revolt against elites is real in the UK and America and it's only getting started. Maybe there will always be an England.

In a surprise, Leave won the Brexit referendum on whether to stay in the European Union by an equally surprising amount. British sovereignty won. David Cameron lost. Jeremy Corbyn lost. The EU lost. Bureaucrats lost. Angela Merkel lost. Barack Obama lost. Globalism lost. Authority figures almost everywhere lost. And, most of all, unlimited immigration lost.

So what happened to the vaunted British betting market that is almost invariably correct and was predicting by 80 percent a Remain victory? Or all those recent polls that were tilting Remain?

Answer: Those same elites had convinced each other they would win and therefore convinced the usual suspects—media, pollsters and, sadly, financial markets—that they were right. They were wrong. Watching them now on the BBC they still cannot comprehend what has happened. The peasants have revolted—oh no, oh no. There must be some mistake. Didn't they get the memo? The sky would fall if they left the EU.

Earth to elites: Citizens of truly democratic countries don't want unlimited immigration into their countries by people who couldn't be less interested in democracy. They also don't want to be governed by the rules and regulations of faceless bureaucrats whose not-so-hidden goals are power and riches for themselves and their friends. Simple, isn't it?

...That most elite of presidents, Barack Obama, who opened his morally narcissistic mouth supporting the Remain side and warning the British people, as he is wont to do, that there would be "consequences" if they voted to leave the EU, is in no position to do anything, even if he wanted to. And he doesn't.

Hillary Clinton is so elitist she practically defines the term. She was probably up all night figuring out what to do about the situation. I have a suggestion—move to Brussels.

Meanwhile, Trump should take up the gauntlet for the U.S. and the UK now. Why wait? Act like the president—we could use one. Donald has a natural ally in the leading Leave spokesperson conservative Boris Johnson. The two men are said to be similar and in many ways they are.

Read more here.

A confession

The mainstream media is freaking out about the Brexit vote. Maybe it's time for a confession from me. When my preferred candidate was losing his battle with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries, I tuned out Trump supporters like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Roger L. Simon. I even started listening to NPR!

I'm over my tantrum. Today I turned on NPR for what I hope will be one of the last times, during a thunderstorm which was interferring with my AM radio reception. The NPR person started sobbing about the Brexit vote as she rode her bicycle into Munich and talked with her friends. Immediately I laughed uproariously, and changed back to the staticky AM radio program.

Laura Ingraham was excitedly celebrating the Brexit vote. So was Sean Hannity later in the day. And Roger L. Simon has been writing his best stuff ever.

And where was Donald Trump? In London congratulating the people of Britain for their "fantastic" vote! Unlike Barack Obama who scolded them and threatened them prior to the vote, which surely influenced the vote just as happened in 2010 and 2014 in America.

You should probably answer that knock at your door.

Stephen Kruiser is very pessimistic about our country's future. He writes at PJ Media,

Those in academia, who along with teachers’ unions form the Indoctrination Wing of the Democratic Party, have been assailing free speech for years (they’ve been doing a lot of the ground work in the assault on due process too). Anything uttered on most college campuses that doesn’t fit the liberal narrative is deemed “hate speech” or blamed for “triggering” an unhinged emotional response in weak students who would probably be better served by full-time supervision in a mental health facility. Many American campuses now have their own little KGB response teams to ID and punish verbal offenders.

Some hope might exist if the press were responsible and worried about their freedom. Sadly, major media is now a fully functioning propaganda apparatus for the Democrats, shamelessly pimping the Narrative du jour. They know that as long as they remain faithful lapdogs, their jobs are safe.

...Should the Democrats retake the Senate, that means Dame van der Cankles is in the White House and the Executive Action Machine will be working overtime. Oh, they'll also have a Supreme Court judge, and won't have to worry about any more pesky judicial branch interference with the Executive dream.

...The Democrats have dropped the veil on their decades-long Soviet fetish and there are precious few scenarios which don't favor them getting their wishes, either incrementally or by Christmas 2017.

Of course, they won't be calling it "Christmas" then.

And you should probably answer that knock at your door.

Read more here.

Today, perhaps for the last time in a generation, the British voters have a choice.

Roger Kimball is in Britain observing the debate over "continued subjugation to Brussels versus those keen on reasserting British sovereignty." He writes at PJ Media,

The class division in the debate is fascinating. The establishment, beginning with Prime Minister David Cameron, is firmly, not to say irrationally, in the Remain camp. On his side are the huge corporations, the banks, and all the multinational entities whose lives are barely affected by the morass of intrusive regulation imposed on British business by Brussels. They are large enough to outsource all the compliance requirements, while small or new enterprises stagger under the burden. From the point of view of the establishment, membership in the EU is a good thing if only because it keeps the field clear of rivals.

The Brexiteers are a mixed lot. Their ranks include readers of tabloids like The Daily Mail and The Sun, but also articulate spokesmen for British sovereignty like Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London; Daniel Hannan, a conservative member of the European Parliament; and Michael Gove, the lord chancellor.

...In an interview in The Telegraph this morning, Johnson said that the vote was more important than his political career because at stake was the future of Britain as a free and democratic polity:

"This is an absolute turning point in the story of our country, because ... if we go on with being enmeshed in the EU it will continue to erode our democracy."

...Things didn’t really pick up steam until the Maastricht Treaty came on line at the end of 1993. Then there was the introduction of the single European currency, the euro, in 2002. That was a prelude to a continent-wide Constitution. Unfortunately, those old selfish nationalist interests reared their parochial heads again in the mid-2000s, when a European Constitution was offered to the voters of Europe to approve. Mirabile dictu: voters both in France and the Netherlands declined their ticket to EUtopia. This temporary setback was addressed by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2008. This was essentially the same document as the European Constitution, but rewritten to be impenetrable to ordinary readers.

And what does the Lisbon Treaty provide for? Leaders who are appointed, not elected; leaders who are accountable to each other, not the people. Rule, that is to say, by self-perpetuating elites who can mostly dispense with the inconvenience of the consent of the governed. The consent of those who govern is so much easier to negotiate.

...At bottom, the European Project is an effort to seize power (“transfer” sounds much nicer though, doesn’t it?) from local and national entities and invest it in a central authority. An early step on this road is what Mr. González-Páramo calls “integration,” i.e., what the Germans in the late 1930s called “Gleichschaltung,” bringing all aspects of life into harmony with certain central dictates.

“Gleichschaltung” is not the only ominous German word one hears about Europe these days. Another is “Anschluss.” Back in 1938, that’s what happened when Germany suddenly absorbed Austria.

...So long as Britain remains tethered to the European Union, Brussels will be able to impose all the regulations it wants via other treaties. Ultimately the debate over Brexit is a debate over sovereignty, which is a fancy word for freedom. Today's vote is historic because on it rests the future freedom of Great Britain.

Will it be absorbed still further into the (more or less) soft bureaucratic totalitarianism of the European Union, gradually extinguishing its common law traditions, or will it reassert its prerogatives of self-rule? My record as a political prognosticator has been ostentatiously poor, yet I venture, with some trepidation, to say that my reading of the tea leaves suggests that the spirit of independence has not been entirely bred out of the British electorate.

There are apparently no exit polls for the referendum, so we won't know until very late tonight whether (to end with another song) Britain will still be able to sing "Rule, Britannia" and its famous refrain "Britons never, never, never will be slaves." That's not the fate that David Cameron, to say nothing of his Continental masters, have in mind, but today, perhaps for the last time in a generation, the British voters have a choice.

Democrats sit-in

Glenn Reynolds writes at Instapundit,

DULY NOTED: With Democrats’ sit-in, time for breaking rules has arrived. So I guess if a few thousand citizens decide to occupy the House floor, or the White House, that will be okay, too.

Mecca Muslims, Medina Muslims, and dissident Muslims

Michael Totten writes in World Affairs Journal,

Every literate person who knows what letters and words mean must at the absolute minimum recognize that ISIS claims to be Islamic. It sure as hell isn’t Christian, nor is it Jewish. It is not Buddhist, Hindu or Zoroastrian. No human being on this planet thinks ISIS is atheist.

...The Saudis are kinda sorta allies, yet they preside over and promote the most puritanical sect of Sunni Islam in the world—that of the Wahhabis, founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century. The Saudis spend enormous amounts of money spreading this noxious and dangerous brand of Islam all over the world. It’s a serious problem, and it’s long past time for the United States to demand they halt it or else, but the Saudis are nevertheless helpful in other ways and have been for almost a hundred years.

So yes, we have fanatical as well as moderate and liberal Muslim allies, and Obama, like Bush before him, is reluctant to alienate them. American presidents have to weigh the diplomatic consequences of their words. Journalists, intellectuals, activists and historians don’t.

Middle Easterners are among the least “politically correct” people in the entire world. The very idea of Western-style “political correctness” in the Middle East is absurd. They are far less “sensitive,” in the progressive sense of that word, than virtually anyone in the United States. And they know damn well that ISIS is Islamic. We’re not earning any points with our allies in the Muslim world by denying this, nor would we alienate any of them by acknowledging it.

...Whatever Obama and Trump say, the rest of us need to get something straight. At one end of the American spectrum is the notion that Islam is a religion of peace while the other end insists that it’s a religion of war and jihad. They’re both right, and they’re both wrong. Islam is not a single monolithic thing any more than Christianity is.

Former Muslim and Somalia-native Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains this better than almost anyone in her latest book, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, which I reviewed last year for Commentary.

She divides Muslims into three groups, ignoring the theological and cultural distinctions between Sunnis and Shias and smaller sects like Wahhabis and Sufis. She also sets aside national differences between countries like Kosovo and Azerbaijan, where almost everybody is secular, and ultraconservative realms like Saudi Arabia where almost nobody is.

First there are those she calls Mecca Muslims, traditional and largely peaceful people inspired by Mohammad’s benign example during the religion’s early years when he lived in Mecca and politely invited others to follow him. The majority of the world’s Muslims fall into this camp.

Then there are the Medina Muslims, the often violent minority that follows Mohammad’s example when he lived in Medina and assaulted those who refused to convert. Medina Muslims include the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and the ayatollahs in Iran.

Both types of people are authentic Muslims. Both can cite the Koran to back up their beliefs and behavior. Both can say they’re following Mohammad’s example.

Hirsi Ali’s third group are the dissidents like herself. Some are ex-Muslims while others are reformers—including imams and respected scholars—who are doing everything they can to modernize the religion and discredit the Medina Muslims.

Insisting that the Medina Muslims aren’t Muslims is as pointless as it is wrong. It may be defensible as a diplomatic fiction, but it’s also unnecessary. The dissidents and the reformers know damn well who and what they’re up against. They wouldn’t need to reform the religion if it did not need reforming. They also know perfectly well that the Islamic State is Islamic. These people are our best friends in the Islamic world, and they won’t be the least bit offended if Obama or anyone else calls a radical Islamic terrorist a radical Islamic terrorist.

The Saudis wouldn’t sever the alliance either if the White House calls a spade a spade. They need us more than we need them, after all. People like the sheikhs of Iraq’s Anbar Province wouldn’t refuse to work with an American president for using phrases like “radical Islam” either as long as the White House made it clear we’re not at war with an entire religion.

Obama is far more worried about this than he needs to be, and Trump isn’t worried enough. A commander-in-chief who bares his teeth at 1.2 billion Muslims in the world would be a catastrophe for a reason that ought to be obvious: winning wars against radical Muslims without enlisting the help of friendly moderate Muslims is impossible.

Making strides?

Amy Otto writes at The Federalist,

Besides falling behind women academically, men are working dramatically less in the twenty-first century than in previous centuries.

...We are now riding on the immense technological advancement—often made by men, as Camille Paglia frequently points out—that has made us more free and prosperous than ever before. Now the risk is what to make of that new gift of leisure time. Do we take it and create even more successful families, businesses, inventions, cures? Or are many men who would have spent their twenties working hard if given the right social incentives instead spending that time watching the unrated version of “Blurred Lines” one too many times?

...While it’s wonderful women are making strides in college education and the workplace, there’s no reason this must be at the expense of men. Less stability for unmarried men diminishes their success all through life. That loss means less success for all of us.

Even worse, in dropping their standards women have reduced their capacity to get what they really want. Less commitment, less caring, less respect, and an increased emphasis on appearance are poor outcomes for women, too. Their random “empowerment” pictures on social media in emulating Kardashian are the only lever they have left in the arsenal because they’ve given everything else away. In an attempt to be known for our personhood, we thrown ourselves back on the most obvious weapon in a woman’s arsenal: curves.

Reverting to a primitive charm offensive in hopes of luring a man’s attention for 10 uninterrupted minutes is not empowerment. Nor is it what makes married women happy: “The biggest predictor of women’s happiness is their husband’s emotional engagement. The extent to which he is affectionate, to which he is empathetic, to which he is basically tuned into his wife, this is the most important factor in predicting the wife’s happiness. This basically drowns out every other factor in our models.”

Instead you have young girls today pushing themselves too early into pleasing men without expecting reciprocity. “College women are more likely than men to use their partner’s physical pleasure as the yardstick for their satisfaction, saying things like ‘If he’s sexually satisfied, then I’m sexually satisfied,’” says Sara McClelland, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. “Men are more likely to measure satisfaction by their own orgasm.”

Obama’s FBI let a Muslim registered Democrat kill 49 people, and then let his accomplice-wife escape. And the press played along, as per usual.

Glenn Reynolds writes at Instapundit about the Democrats sit-in,

But do remember: The point wasn’t to pass a bill. The point was to distract people from the reality that Obama’s FBI let a Muslim registered Democrat kill 49 people, and then let his accomplice-wife escape. And the press played along, as per usual.

Our gun-control debate is mainly about punishing the law-abiding and ignoring violent criminals.

Kevin Williamson writes at National Review,

In the wake of the San Bernardino shooting, the actor Samuel L. Jackson said that he hoped it would turn out that the killer was a white man. David Sirota wrote the same thing after the Boston marathon bombing, in an article headlined “Let’s hope the Boston marathon bomber is a white American.” Jackson and Sirota were disappointed: Both atrocities were carried out by Muslims as expressions of solidarity with the worldwide Islamist enterprise. The massacre in Orlando was perpetrated by a Muslim, the son of an Afghan immigrant, a man of the sort we have been taught to call a “person of color,” I suppose. (Do Afghans count? This is never made clear.) He may or may not have been suffering from some sort of crisis of sexuality: It isn’t clear whether his earlier presence in the Florida gay club was cruising or casing.

But as a son of immigrants and a member of at least one minority group, Omar Mateen makes a poor poster-boy for the Left, which prefers that its enemies be white, male, Christian, and, if possible, middle-aged, middle-American, and overweight. Remember how, during the Tea Party rallies, so much attention was paid to the fact that some participants were obese and using mobility scooters? That wasn’t an accident. It’s loathing substituting for analysis. For much the same reason, cartoons purporting to depict gun-rights supporters after Orlando almost invariably depicted obese, aging, white, and downscale (rumpled, ill-kempt) subjects. That is whom the Left believes to be the problem when it comes to violence in these United States — and most other problems, too. The relevant psychology here is that of intellectual development arrested in adolescence. If you’ve ever heard a 50-year-old lefty raging about Middle America and thought that it sounded a lot like a 14-year-old raging about his stick-in-the-mud father, you’re not the first to whom that has occurred.

You’ll notice that we generally have these national crises about gun control when there’s a Newtown or an Aurora, not after a typical weekend in Chicago, during the course of which several dozen people will be shot, and many killed. Part of this is because we have a tendency to worry more about shark attacks (which almost never happen) rather than lethal bee stings (which happen all the time), but part of it is that the Left is not culturally inclined to organize one of these pageants of exhibitionistic grief over the low-level criminal escapades of young black men in Chicago or Philadelphia. For the same reason, almost all of the gun-control measures that excite our progressive friends — bans on so-called assault weapons, restrictions on gun shows — are aimed at the hobbies of middle-aged white guys, rural types, Second Amendment devotees who mistrust the federal government, etc.: the enemy, in other words. These proposals have little or nothing to do with the vast majority of crime.

...our gun-control debate is mainly about punishing the law-abiding and ignoring violent criminals.

Read more here.

Citizenship vs. subjectship

Kevin Williamson writes in National Review,

The bearing of arms is a sign of citizenship, which is to say, of being a full participant in government who acts through it, as opposed to subjectship, the state of being a passive being who does not act through government but who is acted upon. In that sense, it is like the ability to vote or to be eligible for service in government. Frederick Douglass understood this linkage perfectly, inasmuch as these ideas were much better understood in those more literate days. “A man’s rights rest in three boxes,” he said. “The ballot box, jury box, and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.” The militias contemplated by the Second Amendment were armed citizen volunteers who could act to use the force of arms to keep the peace in an emergency; they are entitled to act in the peacekeeping role generally reserved for the state because, being the citizens of a republic, they are the state, the very seat of its sovereignty. The formal government is a provisional arrangement (hence regular elections) constituted as a convenience. While the Second Amendment may not codify a “right of revolution,” as some put it, the idea of armed citizens pushing out a government that had become inconvenient, a burden on their liberties rather than a guarantor of them, could hardly have been alien to a group of men who had just risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor doing just that.

...It is a measure of the corruption of the Democratic party and its ability to inspire corruption in others that John Lewis, once a civil-rights leader, is today leading a movement to strip Americans of their civil rights based on secret lists of subversives compiled by police agencies and the military. Perhaps it has not occurred to Representative Lewis that his mentor, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., also was on a secret government list, as indeed was Lewis himself under the watchful eye of J. Edgar Hoover.

The Democrats demand that Americans be stripped of their Second Amendment rights with no attention paid to the Fifth Amendment, to due process. They propose that Americans be stripped of their legal protections under the Bill of Rights even when they have not been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime. They propose that this be done on the basis of a series of secret government lists, whose contents, criteria, and keepers are treated as state secrets.

The Democratic party in 2016 is not a liberal party. It is a party that is working diligently to rescind free-speech rights on one front and to undermine due-process protections on another. It has abandoned the notion of procedural justice in pursuit of substantive outcomes demanded by its supporters, the rule of law be damned. There is a term for the armed pursuit of justice, real or perceived, outside the rule of law, and that term is “lynching.” The Democrats have lynching in their political DNA, and they seem to be unable to evolve past it. Ironically, their abandonment of due process and their flirtation with tyranny are reminders of one of the reasons why the Founders believed it necessary to have an armed citizenry.

Read more here.

You can't be ruled only by your heart!

The big banks have captured the Brussels machine. They love regulation! When Britain joined the E.U. in 1973 the 28 member countries were 36% of the world economy. Last year it was 17% and falling.

Daniel Hannan is certain the Brits will do better outside the E.U., and he is inviting Brits to fire him today. Why? Democracy!

Why isn't Hannan the Prime Minister?

First Amendment

A deadly game

Roger L. Simon writes at PJ Media,

Of course Mateen was a mentally ill homophobic gay, unfortunate or not. So what? The point is he was a mentally ill homophobic gay who believed in radical Islam. It is radical Islam that gave him the license to kill, indeed urged him to kill with its precepts, all those innocent people. Without radical Islam, they would all be alive today.

If every non-Islamic guilty homosexual in America acted out like that, our country would be a charnel house of human remains in every major city and in a state of mass hysteria. It's not. Why not? Radical Islam, to repeat myself, is the missing ingredient. Gays -- guilty and otherwise -- there are plenty.

I imagine if we went to Rakka we would find almost all the ISIS members we met to be mentally ill in some way and certainly homophobic -- and not just because they are throwing gays off buildings, but because it is built into their culture, a culture imitated and admired by Mateen.

...And is this radical Islam in any way sane? By Western standards, not at all, unless you consider lopping off the heads of people of other religions and throwing their women in rape rooms to be normal behavior approved of by the DSM. ISIS leader al-Baghdadi is no less than a religiously motivated serial killer.

"Liberals" don't want to face that much of Islamic society is absolutely off its rocker because that would undermine their absurd lib-prog, morally narcissistic, cultural relativist narrative about the Third World. This would all be funny because, in a certain macabre way, it is, but we are all the butt of this bleak joke. We have to sit there, incredulous, when our own Justice Department, obviously on orders from the top, redacts the transcript of Mateen's 911 call by omitting the references to ISIS and changing what is obviously the word "Allah" to "God." It's hard to decide if the people who do that are stupid or immoral -- probably both. Highly political too, of course. But that's the obvious (and most shameful) part.

Some, like certain State Department personnel and White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, sound as if they have undergone twenty years of the Stockholm Syndrome when they discuss the topic. In a certain way they have. The insularity of the Obama administration does recapitulate the Stockholm Syndrome in the way it reinforces an entirely dishonest world view.

And then where are we -- innnocent bystanders in this deadly game? What do we do? Are we next?

Read more here.

Fifth Amendment rights

Catherine Herridge and Pamela Brown write at Fox News,

than 125 times in deposition

Hillary Clinton IT specialist Bryan Pagliano invoked the Fifth more than 125 times during a 90-minute, closed-door deposition Wednesday with the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, a source with the group told Fox News.

The official said Pagliano was working off an index card and read the same crafted statement each time.

“It was a sad day for government transparency,” the Judicial Watch official said, adding they asked all their questions and Pagliano invoked the Fifth Amendment right not to answer them.

Read more here.
Glenn Reynolds notes at Instapundit,

WHILE DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMEMBERS ENACT A SAD PARODY OF CIVIL RIGHTS SIT-INS ON THE HOUSE FLOOR IN SUPPORT OF ELIMINATING FIFTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS FOR CITIZENS, Clinton IT specialist invokes 5th Amendment more than 125 times in deposition.

Sit in leader John Lewis has also been on the no fly list! Read more here.

Can you talk to anyone about growing older?

Robert Goldfarb is 85. He writes in the New York Times,

That I feel robust doesn’t matter; the man I see and the man they see are two very different people.

I recently read something the philosopher Montaigne wrote over 400 years ago: “The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it.” His words inspired me to seek a path through old age without surrendering to it or ignoring its reality.

Interestingly, he writes that he was shaped by the 1950s:

I’m a product of the 1950s and its pressure to conform, to avoid risk, to shun anything that marked one as “different.”

He has tried to explore the subject of aging with men his own age, but they don't much want to talk about it.

My wife suggested I meet with younger acquaintances to learn if they would talk with me about aging. I did, and found that men just 10 years younger spoke openly about changes in their minds and bodies. No one joked or changed the subject when one of them confided, “My father had Alzheimer’s, and I’m beginning to forget the same things he did,” or, “My firm’s managing partner said I was slowing younger associates and had to retire.”

It puzzled me that they felt so much freer to discuss feelings than men born just a decade earlier. Could it be because they were shaped by the ’60s, rather than the ’50s? Growing up, they protested what we accepted, challenged authority we obeyed, celebrated their individuality while we hoped to be one of the men in a gray flannel suit. They were the “me” generation, defined by Woodstock and rock ‘n’ roll, while my generation found comfort in Eisenhower’s paternal leadership and listening to soothing ballads like George Shearing’s “I’ll Remember April” and Margaret Whiting’s “Moonlight in Vermont.” Separated by a sliver of time, the two decades seem an eternity apart.

Read more here.