State official tries to block Trump from speaking in Calif., Fox News via YouTube, April 30, 2016
Archive for April 2016
State official tries to block Trump from speaking in Calif.
April 30, 2016What do YOU belong to?
April 30, 2016What do YOU belong to? Dan Miller’s Blog, April 30, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. –DM
The Demorat and Publican parties appear to believe that since we belong to them they own us and can control us. Until recently, they were right. Now, at least for the Publican Party, not so much.
The Federal Government also believes that we belong to it, that it owns us and that hordes of unelected bureaucrats can and should control us; it’s all for our own good, of course, they would say (but it’s mainly for theirs). Perhaps, if we continue to change the Publican Party, we will have opportunities to change the Federal Government as well. The Demorat Party is hopeless.
Doesn’t thinking about the loving, benign dictators who believe they own us send warm, pleasant tingles down your leg? Or was that just a painful muscle spasm? They don’t mind, so it doesn’t matter.
The Political Parties
Many if not most now belong, or have belonged, to either the Democrat or Publican party. They tend to reward us by selecting the candidates, particularly the presidential candidates, whom they believe can keep or put them in power. They work very hard to save us from having to make such difficult choices. Since we “belong” to them, it must be only fair to accede gratefully to their wishes and vote as directed. At least that seems to be their view.
Until the current presidential election cycle, it worked quite well for the establishments of both parties. This time, it has not worked at all well for the Publican establishment. Despite its efforts to have a congenial establishment member nominated, it has not succeeded. Trump now has about 1,002 of the 1,273 delegates needed to get the nomination on the first ballot; the only other candidate with a significant number of delegates, Cruz, has only 571 and appears to be crumbling in his “must win” state of Indiana, where Trump has a substantial lead in the polls.
Trump is the top choice among the solely self-reported Republicans surveyed, taking 42 percent compared to 34 percent for Cruz and 17 percent for Kasich.
The businessman is also the top choice among the self-reported independents and Democrats deemed likely to vote in the primary, leading Cruz by 10 points among that group.
While Trump holds a 13-point lead over Cruz among men, 45 to 32 percent, his lead among women is narrower — 36 to 32 percent.
According to an article by The Washington Examiner, a generally anti-Trump publication,
Ted Cruz has a problem that a win in Indiana Tuesday may or may not be able to fix.
Not only might he be unable to stop Donald Trump from winning the 1,237 delegates needed to win the Republican presidential nomination on the first ballot, but Cruz is now so far behind Trump that it will detract from the credibility of a contested convention choosing anyone else even if he is still able to force one. [Emphasis added.]
The Tea Party senator from Texas is well ahead of John Kasich, but is now in Kasich territory. He will likely need hundreds of delegates to switch in order to push him over the top.
That’s not really what Republicans had in mind.
Most reasonable contested convention scenarios assumed a certain degree of closeness in the race. “Donald is going to come out with a whole bunch of delegates,” Cruz explained in February. “We will come out with a whole bunch of delegates.”
Cruz is now 431 delegates behind Trump and 672 short of a majority. He has won 3.2 million fewer votes while Trump’s tally is now higher than Mitt Romney’s at the end of the 2012 primaries. [Emphasis added.]
Are Republicans really still contemplating handing Ted Cruz the nomination in Cleveland? Or worse, Kasich who has won only Ohio? Or some white knight who has received zero votes?
“Those are the rules!” anti-Trump Republicans exclaim. In widely misinterpreted comments, Marco Rubio argued that as a private organization it’s up to GOP delegates to decide the nomination.
“That’s the meaning of being a delegate,” he said, “is choosing a nominee who can win.”
But the delegates’ role in the nomination process has largely been a formality for forty years. The American public has come to understand their primary votes as deciding the major party nominees. And in practice, that is how it has now worked for decades. [Emphasis added.]
For the nominee selection to be made by ignoring the primary votes at a contested convention,
The delegates would regain their power at the precise time faith in the Republican establishment is at an all-time low and its preferred candidates were all rejected by the voters. Some GOP voters don’t even like the alleged Cruz-Kasich alliance. [Emphasis added.]
And it would all clearly be happening because influential Republicans didn’t like the outcome of the election. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, Trump is at risk of a contested convention because he is a weak front-runner. He is facing higher than normal intraparty opposition at this phase of the campaign.
The alternative is to nominate candidates from other factions of the party that have demonstrated that they are even weaker, people who have been rejected by an even higher percentage of Republicans.
For all the talk of Trump’s inability to win in November, national polling shows Trump with comparable support to Clinton on the Democratic side, with Cruz and Kasich not doing as well as Bernie Sanders.
Even if Cruz wins in Indiana, Trump should have easy wins in most of the remaining primary states and should, therefore, win substantially more than a majority on the first convention vote. If he does not, Cruz and Jeb Bush will be happy; or at least Cruz will be happy until the nomination goes to someone else.
I do not “belong” to any party; I am merely a registered Publican. Being either a member or a registered Publican allows one to vote in Publican primaries when they are generous enough to have them. Party caucuses? In some cases, members considered sufficiently subservient to the party establishment have at least a modest say in selecting the delegates to the national Publican convention. Those merely registered get to gripe if delegates pledged to someone they don’t want are chosen, but that’s about it.
The public has, to a greater extent than I can recall, been focused on this year’s selection of delegates. That may well be due in large part to Trump and his supporters. The public will very likely be no less focused on what those delegates do at the nominating conventions. Assuming that the Publican establishment is aware of that focus and takes it seriously, it may well affect the outcome.
The Feral Federal Government
Our selected, and elected, Congresscriters and Presidents get to shape “our” enormous unelected bureaucracies which usurp the role of Congress in legislating. Then, “our” unelected civil “servants” selflessly undertake the difficult task of interpreting the rules they created as well as those the Congress bothered to enact and the President didn’t veto. As noted at The Federalist,
Administrative agencies are creatures of legislation but directed by the executive branch, which has no constitutional authority to pass laws. Their powers derive from statutes that delegate the quasi-legislative authority to issue binding commands in specified contexts. Administrative agencies generally operate independently from Congress and the courts and possess discretionary rulemaking authority.
. . . .
It will take a new kind of president to roll back the administrative state altogether. State resistance alone is no longer enough. Without any pressure from the executive branch, Congress will remain content to pass off touchy political decisions to administrative agencies, which, unlike politicians, cannot be voted out of power. Congress, in turn, can blame the agencies for any negative political consequences of those choices. [Emphasis added.]
We may never recover the framework of ordered liberty that the Founding generation celebrated and enjoyed. But for the sake of our future, and to secure the hope of freedom for our sons and daughters, our grandchildren and their children, we must expose and undo the regulatory regime of administrative agencies. It’s our duty to do so. [Emphasis added.]
In far too many ways, “our” Feral Federal Government resembles that of the European Union. The de facto seat of the EU is in Brussels, Belgium, where hordes of unelected bureaucrats dictate to the member states and their citizens. The seat of “our” Federal Government is in Washington, D.C., where hordes of unelected bureaucrats dictate to the States and to the “folks” who live there. According to Pat Condell, the EU is on the verge of collapse. Will that also be the fate of “our” own little EU? And of the political parties which empower it?
Conclusions
A more efficient and less costly Federal Government would be nice. A smaller, more efficient and less costly Federal Government, much of the power of which has been returned to the States, will be much better. Perhaps the return of significant powers to the States will even awaken some of the more somnolent States and their citizens. For the most part, people in States far removed from Washinton pay little attention to Federal actions until they have significant direct impact on them. Decisions made locally are more likely to have direct local impacts and to attract higher levels of local interest. “Mere” local citizens seem likely to demand voices in what is to be done and how.
Which of the still viable candidates for President is likely to give us the type of Federal Government I envision? Hillary Clinton and her supporters? They like their party and the Federal Government as they are. Trump and his supporters have done much to diminish the power of the Publican Party establishment. They have broken some stuff that needed to be broken and are rebuilding the system on a more populist foundation. As I wrote last September, To bring America back we need to break some stuff. Perhaps they can begin to break “our” bloated Nanny State and recast it in ways comparable to what they have done to the Publican establishment. Doing so could and should put power back where it belongs, in the hands of the States and of the people.
UN Doesn’t Know What “Cessation of Hostilities” Means
April 30, 2016UN Doesn’t Know What “Cessation of Hostilities” Means, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, April 30, 2016
The only purpose of the Syria peace talks was to distract everyone from all the fighting in Syria. This is a Shiite vs Sunni holy war, with the addition of ISIS to make it a triangle. Most of the parties doing the fighting are not represented at the peace table. And the only reason the Russians were pushing the scam is to help Assad gain an advantage. Which he did.
So now we are going right back to where we started. And the UN is doing its useless grandstanding.
The United Nations envoy mediating a resolution to the crisis in Syria warned that the latest round of talks was overshadowed by a substantial deterioration of the cessation of hostilities, and called on the leaders of the Russian Federation and United States to help salvage the “barely alive” pact.
“What we need to do and to hear is that the cessation of hostilities is salvaged and […] is saved from a total collapse,” Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria, told reporters following a briefing to the Security Council yesterday.
Except that all the bombing and fighting casts some slight doubt on the existence of any “cessation of hostilities”.
“This round of talks has instead been overshadowed, let’s be frank, by a substantial and indeed worrisome deterioration of the cessation of hostilities,” he said. “We cannot ignore that and we have not ignored it.”
Cessation of hostilities means that the hostilities have ceased. If you have ongoing hostilities, then that’s not a deterioration of a cessation of hostilities. It means that the cessation of hostilities doesn’t exist.
“Let’s put it in a few words: In the last 48 hours, we have had an average of one Syrian killed every 25 minutes. One Syrian wounded every 13 minutes,” he said.
But other than that the hostilities have ceased.
“You remember when the word transition, at least in certain area, was taboo? Not anymore. Everyone acknowledges that that is the agenda,” the envoy stressed.
The envoy also said that there is a clear understanding that a credible political transition should be overseen by a new credible and inclusive transitional governance that will be replacing the present governance arrangements. The other common point is that the transitional governance should include members of the present Government, opposition, independents and others, he said.
Great plan. Also we should invite the unicorns. And plant a money tree.
Russia has no reason to agree to a transition since it’s winning. The UN helped make that happen with its truce. The Sunni Jihadists, not to mention ISIS, have already shown in Libya what that kind of transition would look like.
The UN. It’s worse than useless.
Britain? Moderates? How’s That Again?
April 30, 2016Britain? Moderates? How’s That Again? Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, April 30, 2016
♦ A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have “some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks” at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
♦ Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of “Muslim community leaders” try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
♦ If I had always known my “community” harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
♦ If there were indeed a “moderate majority,” when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.
One often hears about the “moderate Muslim majority.” ‘After any terrorist attack, politicians tell us that, “The moderate majority of Muslims utterly condemn this.” After any outrage, commentators and pundits spring up to say, “Of course the vast majority of Muslims are moderate.” But is it true? Are the vast majority of Muslims really “moderate”?
A number of factors suggest perhaps not — most obviously the problem repeatedly revealed by opinion polls. Time and again, the results of opinion polls in the Western world, never mind in the Middle East or North Africa, show a quite different picture from the “moderate majority” aquatint.
True, such polls can often show that, for instance, only 27% of British Muslims have “some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks” at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year. True, that is only between a quarter and a third of British Muslims sympathizing with the blasphemy enforcement squad. On other occasions, such as recently in Britain with a new ICM poll commissioned by Channel 4, they find that a majority of Muslims hold views with which most British people would disagree. So for instance, the recent ICM poll found that 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. That’s a striking figure. Not 52% of British Muslims saying homosexuality is “not their cup of tea” or that they are “not entirely on board with gay marriage,” but 52% of British Muslims thinking that homosexuality should be made a crime under the law.
But it is what happens after such polls emerge that the “moderate majority” idea really comes under strain. First, of course, there is always an attempt to put a positive spin on the results. So for instance, when the post-Charlie Hebdo poll came out last year, the BBC (which had commissioned the poll) ran it with the headline, “Most British Muslims ‘oppose Muhammad cartoon reprisals.’” Although true, it is not the most striking aspect of its findings. But it is what happens next that is most revealing and more truly calls into question whether we are really dealing with a “moderate majority” or, more truthfully, with a “moderate minority.” Because whenever the results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of “Muslim community leaders,” try to prove that the poll is a fraud. It happened with the release of the ICM poll in the UK, as it has happened with every previous poll. With the exception of only one or two prominent dissident Muslims, every Muslim voice in the media and every Muslim group decided not to concern themselves with the ICM findings, but to try to pull apart the validity, methodology and even ‘motives’ of the poll. This is deeply revealing.
It is worth trying a thought-experiment here. Whatever community you come from, imagine your reaction if a poll like the ICM one on British Muslims had come out about whatever community you feel a part of. Imagine you are a Jew and a poll had come out saying the majority of other Jews in your country want to make being gay a crime. What would your first reaction be? My impression is that most Jews would be deeply embarrassed. Very shortly after that first reaction, you might begin to wonder what could be done to change such a terrible statistic around. It is possible, if you knew nobody of your faith who thought that homosexuality should be criminalized and had never come across this position before (or any previous polling which suggested the same thing) that you might question the credibility and methodology of the poll. But otherwise, you would probably sigh and wonder what could be done to improve things. If you knew the findings to be fairly accurate, why would you try to tear apart the findings?
Likewise, if tomorrow a poll were published of the opinions of white British people of Christian upbringing in the UK, I would take some interest in it. If it revealed that 39% of British Christians believed that wives should always obey their husbands (as the ICM poll showed British Muslims believe) then I would have some worries. If it also found that almost a quarter (23%) of British people of Christian origin wanted areas of the UK to divest themselves of the law of the land and be run instead on some Biblical literalist “take” on the law, I would worry some more.
Of course, neither of these eventualities is remotely likely to arise. But let us say that it did. What would be my reaction? The first would be to hang my head in shame. And I would hang it just that bit lower if the findings came as absolutely no surprise to me. If I had always known my “community” harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed that what I had always known was now known by everyone else in the country.
What is most interesting then, when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never, ever, any hint of such introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack. If there were indeed a “moderate majority,” then when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia law, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them. It is a tiny symptom of a much larger problem, the repercussions of which our societies have hardly begun to face.
Upcoming film will delve into Hillary Clinton’s fundraising and charity work
April 30, 2016Clinton Cash’ rears its head again, just as Hillary is getting a leg up over Bernie
Source: Upcoming film will delve into Hillary Clinton’s fundraising and charity work | Daily Mail Online
Clinton Cash’ rears its head again, just as Hillary is getting a leg up over Bernie – and now the the harsh expose of political payback is being turned into a movie showing at the Cannes film festival
- Movie will be in theaters this summer just as Republicans are cranking up attacks on leading Democrat to try to keep her out of the White House
- Trailer features blood-stained cash and accusations of favor-trading
- Features reporting from author Peter Schweitzer, who rocked Clinton’s primary campaign with deep dive into odiferous practices
- Clinton already had to weather another embarrassing film about former Rep Anthony Weiner that featured her longtime aide Huma Abedin
The book that raked through the complex web of political, campaign fundraising, and political practices of Bill and Hillary Clinton last year and muddied Clinton’s presidential campaign launch is coming to the big screen just in time to cause Clinton trouble in the general election.
‘Clinton Cash’ is set to premiere the day before the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and is based on the book by the same title by author Peter Schweizer.
Schweizer is joined by fellow producer Stephan K. Bannon of conservative outlet Breitbart news on the project.
A trailer for the film, which is directed by M.A. Taylor., features images of blood dripping down piles of cash, Bloomberg News reported.
The film takes the tone of the book, which claims cash given to the Clintons was part of a ‘transaction’
The new film will be a bloody problem for Clinton’s campaign this summer if she gets party nod
The trailer kicks off with clip of Clinton complimenting foreign governments for ‘rooting out corruption’ – even as Schweizer, who is interviewed as part of the film, says the Clintons ‘created a model for massive self enrichment that allows you to go into so-called pub service but get extremely rich at the same time.’
The book’s release in May prompted a series of investigations by major news outlets into the fundraising practices of the Clinton foundation, which had accepted major contributions from corporations and foreign governments.
It also probed hefty speaking fees earned by the Clintons from foreign and domestic corporations after Bill Clinton left the White House, the foundation’s charity work, and Clinton’s time at the State Department.
‘Clinton Cash’ probed speaking fees Clinton Foundation gifts and searched for evidence of favors
Schweizer wrote that the Clintons ‘put millions in their own pockets,’ and charged that donations were linked to official acts like a free trade agreement that benefited a donor.
The book catalogues 13 speeches that Bill Clinton made for more than $500,000, and suggests entities paid to curry favor with his wife when she became secretary of state, since 11 of those speeches occured after 2009.
The Clinton camp ripped the book after it came out as being filled with ‘wild accusations.’
‘The entire premise of the book has been widely debunked,’ Clinton’s campaign wrote in a ‘fact check,’ adding: ‘There’s no proof of the book’s central thesis. Even Schweizer — the author of the book — admits he doesn’t have direct evidence to back up his claims.’
The Clinton camp called a charge that Clinton took actions on a Colombia free trade deal to help a foundation donor a ‘conspiracy theory.’
Trump is already planning to use the book to tarnish ‘crooked Hillary’
Bad timing: the US premiere comes just as Clinton would try to sell herself to the American people
After showing at Cannes, the film will get its U.S. in Philadelphia on July 24, the day before the Democratic Convention in the same city, Bannon told Bloomberg. In August, just as Democrats are set to take their campaign on the road, the film is set for limited release in New York, LA, Chicago, and San Francisco.
The Clintons have weathered unfavorable Hollywood treatment before. Last November, Michael Bay’s film ’13 Hours’ depicted failed leadership in DC leading up to the 2012 Benghazi attacks. The film ‘Weiner’ shows longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband contending with a sexting scandal during Weiner’s campaign for mayor of New York in 2013.
Clinton Cash – Official Trailer
Protesters storm Iraqi parliament in Baghdad
April 30, 2016Protesters storm Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, Washington Post, Loveday Morris, April 30, 2016
(Here’s a short video.
— DM)
BAGHDAD — Protesters stormed Iraq’s parliament on Saturday, bursting into the capital’s fortified Green Zone, where other key buildings, including the U.S. Embassy, are located.
Live footage on Iraqi television showed swarms of protesters, who have been demanding government reform, inside the parliament building, waving flags and chanting. Lawmakers were berated and beaten with flags as they fled the building, while demonstrators smashed the windows of politicians’ cars.
Baghdad Operations Command declared a state of emergency and said all roads into the capital had been closed. A U.S. Embassy official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that staff were not being evacuated from their compound, which is about a mile away from the parliament building.
Iraq is in the grip of a political crisis, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi attempting to reshuffle his cabinet and meet the demands of the demonstrators, who have been spurred on by the powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But Abadi has been hampered by chaotic parliament sessions, where lawmakers have thrown water bottles and punches at one another.
The political unrest has brought a new level of instability to a country that is facing multiple crises, including the fight against the Islamic State militant group and the struggling economy.
“This is a new era in the history of Iraq,” screamed one demonstrator in the main lobby of the parliament, in footage on Iraqi television. “They have been robbing us for the past 13 years,” said another.
Earlier in the day, not enough lawmakers had turned up in parliament to officially convene a session in which Abadi was due to present names for a cabinet reshuffle.
The session had been postponed until the afternoon, however before it was held, Sadr, a leader in the resistance to the American troop presence in Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion, held a news conference from the southern city of Najaf.
“They are against reform, they hope to behead the will of the Iraqi people,” he said of the country’s politicians. “I’m with the people, no matter what they decide. I’m standing and waiting for a major uprising of the Iraqi people.”
Shortly afterward, protesters, many of whom are Sadr loyalists, pushed through the multiple security cordons around parliament.
U.S. officials are concerned that the political crisis will have a negative impact on the country’s fight against the Islamic State, leading to a flurry of high level visits in recent weeks. “Now is not the time for government gridlock or bickering,” President Obama said of the crisis in Iraq during a visit to Saudi Arabia last week. He said that he was “concerned”.
The Third Jihad
April 30, 2016
The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision For America is a 2008 documentary film directed by Wayne Kopping of South Africa and Erik Werth, and produced by Erik Werth and Raphael Shore, a Canadian–Israeli, with financing from the Clarion Fund.
Film dwells on idea of alleged threat of radical Islam in the United States, and centers around a Muslim Brotherhood document,[1] accepted as evidence in the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development terror financing trial.
The filmmakers contend, based on that document, that radical Islamists are engaging in a “multifaceted strategy to overcome the western world,” waging a “cultural jihad” to “infiltrate and undermine our society from within”.[2] The film, narrated by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a controversial Muslim American.
Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters
April 30, 2016Hundreds Swarm SDSU President to Protest Freedom Center Anti-BDS Posters, Front Page Magazine, Sara Dogan, April 29. 2016
A series of posters created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center targeting proponents of the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against the Jewish state have incited a storm of controversy on the San Diego State University campus where hundreds of students swarmed University President Elliot Hirshman to claim that he did not condemn the posters forcefully enough and demanding an apology.
The Freedom Center’s posters identified by name a number of prominent student and faculty BDS activists on the campus and described them as having “allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus.” The posters also contained the hashtag #StopTheJewHatredonCampus, the slogan of the Freedom Center campaign which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and refute the genocidal lies spread by Palestinian terrorists and their campus allies. These lies include the claims that Israel occupies Palestinian land and that Israel is an apartheid state.
Protestors were also incensed by a print ad taken out by the Freedom Center in the Daily Aztec.
The ad states:
There is an epidemic of Jew hatred on American campuses and at San Diego State University. This Jew hatred is incited by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Students Association and assorted leftist groups, all of whom support the terrorist organizations Hamas and Fatah.
The ad goes on to explain that both SJP and MSA were created by operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and that both groups “disseminate genocidal lies about Israel whose purpose is to weaken and destroy the world’s only Jewish state.”
Posters for the campaign appeared on five California campuses, including at UCLA and UC-Berkeley, where they also sparked protests from anti-Israel activists, as well as university administrators who falsely characterized them as “hate speech.” Images of all the posters may be viewed here. Accounts of the protests and administrator responses can be read here.
In an email sent to San Diego State’s entire student body on Tuesday, Hirshman criticized the posters but also defended the importance of free speech: “First, we recognize and fully support the rights of all parties to voice their positions on political issues, whether supportive or critical. We also understand that when parties adopt a specific political position they become responsible for their actions and these actions may produce criticism.”
Hirshman’s failure to outright condemn the posters did not sit well with SDSU’s anti-Israel activists and the campus left. The protestors first held a silent protest of Hirshman during the swearing-in ceremony of incoming Associated Students President Jamie Miller. Following that protest, students surrounded a police car in which Hirshman was traveling and detained him for over two hours, chanting “Hirshman, Hirshman, come on out. We have something to talk about.” The Daily Aztec, San Diego State’s campus paper, reported the incident this way:
After leaving the council chambers, protesters got word that Hirshman was in a police cruiser near the Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theater, and rushed to “trap” him. The police cruiser was surrounded for over two hours as students chanted and even began praying.
Hirshman eventually got out of the police vehicle and stood to the side, surrounded by members of his administrative staff, who formed a barrier around Hirshman and several leaders of the protest so they could speak.
Photos of the protest taken by the Aztec reveal students holding signs proclaiming “We Demand An Apology” and “Respect My Name.” A large banner hung on a fence adjacent to the protest reads “SDSU THINKS WE ARE TERRORISTS.” Video footage of the protest taken by a local ABC affiliate can be viewed below:
Despite the protestors’ claims to the contrary, it is notable that neither the Freedom Center’s ad nor its posters call SJP and MSA members terrorists. They merely declare that they support anti-Israel terrorists and parrot their propaganda, a claim which any photo of a mock “Israeli apartheid wall” will confirm.
President Hirshman himself confirmed this point while speaking with protestors, saying, “I don’t think they’re saying our students are terrorists. If there was a statement that our students were terrorists and they weren’t, I would certainly condemn that.”
Student activists interviewed by the Aztec defended their actions in detaining President Hirshman. One of the protestors, Hassan Abdinur, who was named on the Freedom Center’s poster as an SJP and MSA activist, stated: “Things have been building up and building up and the university hasn’t done anything so this was our opportunity to kind of stand face-to-face, really close, actually I smelled his breath, with the president of the university and tell him how we feel about what’s going on.”
According to The San Diego Union-Tribune which also reported the story, Hirshman eventually gave the student protestors a brief and nonspecific apology. “If we have done things inadvertently that have upset or hurt people, we are sorry for that,” Hirshman said.
While the protestors finally dispersed following that apology, they remain unsatisfied by Hirshman’s failure to condemn the posters outright. Presumably they were looking for a reaction more in line with UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang who sent an email attacking Horowitz to the entire UCLA community calling the Freedom Center’s posters “repulsive” and “personalized intimidation” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm.”
“[We wanted] an apology to the entire student body for his disrespect and disregard for the student voice [and] opinion,” Mustafa Alemi, a member of SDSU’s Associated Students Board of Directors, and also one of the SJP and MSA activists named on the posters, told the Daily Aztec. “Without our tuition money he’s not living the life he has right now and the fact that it took two to three hundred students to block his car to have a conversation with us is incredibly disrespectful.”
David Horowitz is scheduled to speak on SDSU’s campus on May 5th. It will be interesting to see just how respectful the conduct of SJP and MSA activists will be during his address.
Erdoğan Calls for Faith-Based UN Reform
April 29, 2016Erdoğan Calls for Faith-Based UN Reform, Hurriyat Daily News, Burak Bekdil, April 27, 2016
(Please see also, Turkey’s Islamic Supremacist Foreign Policy. — DM)
Tragically, and in his own words, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks (or pretends to think) that “the primary reason behind terror in Turkey is to prevent Turkey from getting into the world’s top 10 economies.”
In fact that diagnosis explains why Turkey must still fight the war it has been fighting since 1984 – wrong diagnosis. But it does not explain if Turkey, three decades ago, was also heading for the top 10 list but was barred by a global network of conspirators who all of a sudden sparked terrorism on Turkish soil. So it was all because the world’s top 10 economies did not want Turkey on the list; they held secret meetings and decided that the best way to stop Turkey’s rise was to plot terror in a land that was best known for its peaceful past?
But then, ironically, Mr. Erdoğan also thinks that Turkey (or a Muslim) country should be sharing the same seat and powers as the same countries that are most probably the culprits of the global plot against Turkey: The United Nations Security Council (or the five permanent members of the UNSC).
In a recent speech, Mr. Erdoğan renewed his famous “the-world-is-greater-than-five” dictum. “There is no Muslim country among the five – all of them are Christian, non-Muslim. What is that approach? Is it fair? It’s not!” he roared, reminding everyone that he wants a Muslim member state at the UNSC “only to make the world fair” (not to be confused with the fact that Mr. Erdogan is Muslim).
Just smile and forget the fact that Mr. Erdoğan thinks that permanent member China is a Christian country.
There may be a boom in the number of house churches in the country but I have not read about the Communist Party declaring the country’s official religion to be Christianity.
If not five, what does the world equal, then, in Mr. Erdogan’s thinking? All 193 U.N. member nations as permanent members of the Security Council, all with veto powers? That would not be practical. Then, one country representing each monotheistic faith? Is Mr. Erdoğan implying that he wants Israel as a permanent member?
Should China and North Korea spell each other off and represent the atheist seat? Then the new UNSC should have India as a permanent member representing Hinduism and Japan representing Shintoism.
But the Muslim representation in UNSC could be more problematic than Mr. Erdoğan envisages. To begin with, which Islamic sect should win a seat at UNSC? Sunni or Shiite, or both? If it would be Sunni only, would that not go against Mr. Erdoğan’s preaching that all faiths must be represented? So, it will be Iran and a Sunni permanent member. But which Sunni country? It is not too hard to guess Mr. Erdoğan’s idea on the ideal candidate. But what would be the fair criteria? The world’s “most Muslim Sunni country?” Sadly science has not yet invented a Muslim-meter.
One natural candidate could be Saudi Arabia, the custodian of Islam’s holy place. It would also be fun to have both Saudi Arabia and Iran sitting on the UNSC together and in peace – and with Israel, too.
Another criterion could be to nominate the most populous Muslim country in the world. That would point to Indonesia and even Pakistan and Egypt would come before Turkey. Not just that: India where, according to the 2011 population census, the Muslim population is twice as big as Turkey, would be a far better candidate than the Crescent and Star.
Mr. Erdoğan complains that all five permanent members are Christian but since in the new “faith-based setting” there will be Sunni and Shiite members, what if the Christians want representation on the grounds of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant (and other) faiths? What about the animists in Africa? Or Zoroastrians – for whom Mr. Erdoğan has never hidden his deep disdain?
And, by the way, are we talking about a security council or a world congress of the faithful including those with faith in no faith?
The problem with Ted Cruz
April 29, 2016The problem with Ted Cruz, The Hill, Charles Hurt, April 29, 2016
In the past eight years, no one has captivated the realistic hopes of conservative constitutionalists the way that Cruz has in this election. On every single issue of importance to conservatives, Cruz is right. He is a walking, living, breathing Supreme Court dissent, masterfully articulated and extensively annotated on paper.
Then, he opens his mouth. And people scream. They run for the exits as if their hair is on fire. They want to take a shower.
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Real estate mogul Donald Trump has run an outsider’s juggernaut campaign, the likes of which nobody has seen in modern politics.
Democrats publicly say they are thrilled to face him in the general election. But, privately, they fret that the master marketer and media maestro is so unpredictable and so original and so fearless that they just might regret getting the match-up they had hoped for.
Trump has done all this in the face of unprecedented opposition from establishment Republican Party officials and many principled conservatives who make up the core base of the GOP. At this point in the primary cycle, any other candidate with numbers like Trump’s would have been granted “presumptive nominee” status by party bosses as well as any final remaining active candidates.
It is not new that party establishment types are terrified of doing anything outside of their regular playbook — like recognizing the game-changing power of an apolitical populist who is winning millions of supporters by turning everything upside down. While the media attention has focused entirely on the exuberant and entertaining traveling carnival nature of the Trump campaign, this overlooks another, deeper problem conservatives have today: Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas).
In the past eight years, no one has captivated the realistic hopes of conservative constitutionalists the way that Cruz has in this election. On every single issue of importance to conservatives, Cruz is right. He is a walking, living, breathing Supreme Court dissent, masterfully articulated and extensively annotated on paper.
Then, he opens his mouth. And people scream. They run for the exits as if their hair is on fire. They want to take a shower.
Even hardcore conservatives still stewing over the shabby defenestration of Robert Bork find Cruz cloying and unctuous. Leading conservatives who publicly support Cruz’s presidential campaign groan in private when he starts talking.
Cruz may entertain himself by impersonating characters from “The Simpsons,” but it is hard to get out of your mind that Cruz just might, in fact, be Mr. Burns, with those evil snake eyes and the sharp, downward curved beak. Heartless, robotic, ever-calculating, willing to do anything to maximize profits at his nuclear power plant.
“Who is that firebrand, Smithers?” you can almost hear Cruz inquire of a top campaign staffer as he suspiciously eyes Trump and taps his fingertips together.
Or, maybe he is the unholy spawn of Count Dracula and “The Penguin” from Batman.
So, what, exactly, is the problem with Cruz? Why is he so terrible?
For starters, his face and natural demeanor appear bionically opposed to a sunny disposition. The forced smiles only make him look more demonic. And because his facial contortions are so clearly faked, he always looks like he must be lying. “Lyin’ Ted,” you might say.
Then there are the promises he makes and the things he says.
Again and again in recent years, Cruz promised supporters that he would mount a great filibuster in the Senate and defund ObamaCare. Of course, there was no hope of success since even if he had miraculously managed to get such legislation to the president, the president for whom Obamacare is named most definitely would have vetoed it. And Cruz knew that even as he repeated his bold promises to frustrated supporters. Even Dr. Seuss got maligned in the spectacle.
In the end, Cruz utterly and predictably failed and turned the anti-Obamacare effort into something of a mockery. That year a kid in my neighborhood showed up for Halloween dressed as Cruz, carrying a copy of Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham.”
With every such stunt, Cruz’s grand promises always failed. His only success was raising his own profile, raking in piles of donations and advancing his own professional political career. This is the reason Cruz is so despised on both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Senate — not because he is some kind of heroic stalwart standing up the leadership.
He is every bit the Harvard master debater, the professional politician he claims not to be and denounces at every opportunity. And if that is not odious enough, he now wears the hat of an election lawyer as he taunts Trump about his own prowess at using arcane and arbitrary electoral rules to wheedle convention delegates out of election losses.
Now in desperate collusion with hopeless Ohio Gov. John Kasich to block Trump from clinching the nomination, Cruz’s campaign issued talking points to supporters, urging them to say: “We never tell voters who to vote for.”
Really? Isn’t that the whole purpose of a campaign?
A shameless professional politician capable of such blatant and ludicrous distortions will soon become indistinguishable from Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Lyin’ Ted. Crooked Hillary. Is there any difference?
It is true that Clinton’s cackles are like claws on a chalkboard for even many Democrats. But that visceral, revolting antipathy is nothing compared to people’s reaction to Cruz.
Even when he says things you agree with, Cruz sounds and looks like the oiliest money-grubbing television evangelist. He invokes Almighty God and Jesus Christ at every campaign event. He talks about praying for this and praying for that and then undulates about “God’s will.”
He turns his face to heaven and splays his arms back as if willing to be crucified for his political convictions. He tightens his fists and brings them to his chin as if in prayer.
After imploring and haranguing and intoning, Cruz drops into a prayerful whisper, the way preachers do when they are winding up their sermons. Except Lyin’ Ted never seems to get to the end of his sermons. He just goes on and on and on. For eternity, one might say.
One of his most famous surrogates, Glenn Beck, actually invoked divine intervention in the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As an altar-call to vote for Cruz.
All this desperate sermonizing, as if God is sitting on his golden throne in the clouds looking down at His errant creation with all man’s problems and for some reason is rooting for Cruz to win the Republican nomination for president of the United States of America.
“I will get that Donald Trump. Finally!” God grumbles, clinching his giant Michelangelo fist.
“Two Corinthians,” He scoffs under his divine breath. “‘The Art of the Deal’ is not even a close second!”
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