Archive for April 7, 2016

‘The Chalkening’ Continues: DePaul Accuses ‘Trump 2016’ Conservatives of Hate Crime

April 7, 2016

‘The Chalkening’ Continues: DePaul Accuses ‘Trump 2016’ Conservatives of Hate Crime, Truth RevoltMark Tapson, April 6, 2016

depaul

The College Republicans group apparently chalked the praises of conservative values, the nation of Israel, all candidates in the GOP primary, and the pro-law enforcement Blue Lives Matter movement.

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It’s becoming too cumbersome to list all the schools across the country at which students have recently had panic attacks over pro-Trump chalkings on campus. Let’s just say that the left considers these domestic terror attacks — now known as #TheChalkening — to be an epidemic.

DePaul College is the latest school to be victimized, and a Republican group responsible has been accused of a hate crime, according to Hypeline.

The College Republicans group apparently chalked the praises of conservative values, the nation of Israel, all candidates in the GOP primary, and the pro-law enforcement Blue Lives Matter movement. Outraged students who felt “attacked” want the group to be held responsible, and the Black Student Union at DePaul accused the Republican group of a hate crime. They released this statement:

DePaul statement

“I’m disgusted but not surprised, because these thing happen all the time on campus,” said a student involved with the Black Student Union. He added: “Trump’s racist comments do not need to be included in the conversation and have no place on campus.”

“It’s sad that even at a school as diverse and accepting as DePaul, I still feel attacked,” wrote another student in a DePaul Facebook group. “Diverse and accepting,” that is, except for unacceptable ideas, and we can’t have those at our institutions of higher indoctrination.

College Republicans President Nicole Been said that she met with the administration, which told her that the name “Trump” triggers people, to which she responded:

“So you want to censor a word that is everywhere, who is the last name of the Republican frontrunner? You can’t do that.”

About the chalkings constituting a hate crime, Been said:

“I would just say that nothing we wrote was out of guidelines with University policy. Also, any [College Republican] chapter member, member of conservative group, or frankly any one right of center would most likely write something extremely similar. We just wrote in support of all Republican candidates and basic conservative values. If conservative/ Republican values are hate crimes then we have a much bigger issue in this country than students using sidewalk chalk to voice their opinion.”

Sounds like she’s too smart for this school. How did DePaul even let her in?

Been told Hypeline what she would tell others facing a similar leftist backlash:

“The conservative people in your club, school, local community, family, friends, have your back. They will fight with and for you. You are not in the wrong as long as you are following the rules, people are hypocrites. Don’t back down, don’t let it get to you, and don’t let it silence you. You know you’re doing something right when the far left is speaking out against you.”

According to the University, chalking is allowed on campus. Until it’s not.

The Politicization of the English Language

April 7, 2016

The Politicization of the English Language, Townhall, Victor Davis Hanson, April 7, 2016

Mucky Mucks

Last week, French President Francois Hollande met President Obama in Washington to discuss joint strategies for stopping the sort of radical Islamic terrorists who have killed dozens of innocents in Brussels, Paris and San Bernardino in recent months. Hollande at one point explicitly referred to the violence as “Islamist terrorism.”

The White House initially deleted that phrase from the audio translation of the official video of the Hollande-Obama meeting, only to restore it when questioned. Did the Obama administration assume that if the public could not hear the translation of the French president saying “Islamist terrorism,” then perhaps Hollande did not really say it — and therefore perhaps Islamist terrorism does not really exist?

The Obama administration must be aware that in the 1930s, the Soviet Union wiped clean all photos, recordings and films of Leon Trotsky on orders from Josef Stalin. Trotsky was deemed politically incorrect, and therefore his thoughts and photos simply vanished.

The Library of Congress, under pressure from Dartmouth College students, recently banned not just the term “illegal alien” in subject headings for literature about immigration, but “alien” as well. Will changing the vocabulary mean that from now on, foreign nationals who choose to enter and reside in the United States without being naturalized will not be in violation of the law and will no longer be considered citizens of their homeland?

Did the Library of Congress ever read the work of the Greek historian Thucydides, who warned some 2,500 years ago that in times of social upheaval, partisans would make words “change their ordinary meaning and … take that which was now given them.”

These latest linguistic contortions to advance ideological agendas follow an established pattern of the Obama administration and the departments beneath it.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s described Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood as “largely secular.” CIA Director John Brennan has called jihad “a legitimate tenet of Islam,” a mere effort “to purify oneself.”

Other administration heads have airbrushed out Islamic terrorism by referring to it with phrases such as “man-caused disaster.” The effort to combat terrorism was called an “overseas contingency operation,” perhaps like Haitian earthquake relief.

The White House wordsmiths should reread George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” which warned that “political writing is bad writing” and “has to consist largely of euphemism.”

Obama has said the greatest threat to future generations is “climate change,” a term that metamorphosed from “global warming.” The now anachronistic term “global warming” used to describe a planet that was supposedly heating up rather quickly. But it did not account for the unpleasant fact that there has been negligible global temperature change since 1998.

Rather than modifying the phrase to “suspected global warming” or “episodic global warming,” the new term “climate change” was invented to replace it. That way, new realities could emerge. Changes of all sorts — historic snows, record cold, California drought, El Nino storms — could all be lumped together, supposedly caused by man-made carbon emissions.

Volatile weather such as tornadoes, tsunamis and hurricanes was sometimes rebranded as “climate chaos” — as if Western industry and consumer lifestyles were responsible for what used to be seen as fairly normal occurrences.

The term “sanctuary cities” describes municipalities that in neo-Confederate fashion deny the primacy of federal immigration law and refuse to enforce it.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch used the term “justice-involved youth” to describe young criminals arrested and charged with crimes. From such terminology, one might think the offenders’ “involvement” meant that they were parole officers or young lawyers.

So what is the point of trying to change reality by making up new names and phrases?

It’s mostly politics. If Hollande had used the label “skinheads” to describe European right-wing movements, the White House might not have altered the video. If a half-million right-wing Cubans were pouring illegally into Florida each year, or if 100,000 Serbs were crossing the border from Canada, the Library of Congress might not object to calling them “illegal aliens.” Clapper and Brennan are unlikely to claim that the Crusades were largely secular or an exercise in self-purification.

The Obama administration probably would not describe rogue police officers charged with crimes as “justice-involved police.” If cities with conservative mayors declined to enforce the Endangered Species Act or federal firearms statutes, they probably would not be known as “sanctuary cities,” but rather as “nullification cities.”

Orwell also wrote about a futuristic dystopia ruled by a Big Brother government that created politicized euphemisms to reinvent reality. He placed his novel in the year 1984, warning Westerners about what was in their future.

Moonies for Cruz

April 7, 2016

Moonies for Cruz, Ann Coulter.com, Ann Coulter, April 6, 2016

Congratulations to Ted Cruz for winning his fourth primary! Usually Donald Trump wins the primaries — where you go and vote, like in a real election. Cruz wins the caucuses — run by the state parties, favored by political operators and cheaters.

Until now, the only primaries Cruz has won are in Texas (his home state), Oklahoma (basically the same state) and Idaho (where Trump never campaigned).

So now, Cruz has finally won an honest-to-goodness primary. This is great news for him, provided: (1) the general election is a caucus, and (2) the national media universally denounce Cruz’s Democratic opponent the same way the Wisconsin media denounced Trump.

In that case, Cruz should do fine.

The Cruz-bots don’t care. They don’t care that they’re being used as a cat’s-paw by the Never Trump crowd, and that a brokered Republican convention is more likely to end with Bernie as the nominee than Cruz.

The Cruz cultists don’t even care about plain honesty, which I always thought was a conservative value. Republicans used to be appalled by guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons. Now they are guttersnipe, lying political operators like the Clintons.

It’s all hands on deck to stop the only presidential candidate who wants to save America from the cheap labor plutocrats.

Cruz has flipped to Trump’s side on every important political issue of this campaign — which only ARE issues because of Trump. These are:

— Quadrupling the number of foreign guest workers to help ranchers and farmers get cheap labor: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

— Legalizing illegal aliens: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

— The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal: Cruz was for it, and now is against it.

— Building a wall: Cruz was against it, and now is for it.

These are all positions Cruz has changed since being a senator — most of them he’s flipped on only in the last year. I’m supposed to believe that U.S. senators can sincerely change their minds about policies it was their job to know about, but a New York developer can never change his mind about pop-offs he made more than a decade ago.

Back in 1999 — 17 years ago — when Donald Trump was considering a presidential run on the Reform Party ticket, he said this when asked about abortion by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press”: “Well, look, I’m very pro-choice. I hate the concept of abortion. I hate it. I hate everything it stands for. I cringe when I listen to people debating the subject. But you still — I just believe in choice.”

Russert then asked him specifically if he’d ban partial-birth abortion. Trump said, “No. I am pro-choice in every respect and as far as it goes, but I just hate it.”

A year later, Trump wrote in his book “The America We Deserve”: “When Tim Russert asked me on ‘Meet the Press’ if I would ban partial-birth abortion, my pro-choice instincts led me to say no. After the show, I consulted two doctors I respect and, upon learning more about this procedure, I have concluded that I would indeed support a ban.”

Sometime in the intervening 16 years, Trump became fully pro-life.

You can say you don’t believe him — just as you might say you don’t believe Cruz has truly changed his mind on amnesty, the wall, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership, etc. But to claim Trump is pro-choice today — present tense — is what’s known as a “lie.”

But that’s what Cruz says over and over again, including in a campaign ad — and not one of those “super PAC” ads that count even less than a retweet. A Cruz ad plays the clip from that 1999 interview where Trump says, “I am pro-choice in every respect,” repeats it three times, and then cuts to a narrator proclaiming: “For partial-birth abortion, not a conservative.”

These are the kinds of lies that used to drive conservatives crazy when the Clintons did it. Not anymore. All’s fair in smearing Trump.

Trump has said a million times that he’d scrap Obamacare and replace it with a free market system (which, by the way, he explains a lot more clearly than Washington policy wonks with their think-tank lingo). Merely for Trump saying that we’re “not going to let people die, sitting in the middle of a street in any city in this country,” Cruz accuses him of supporting “Bernie Sanders-style medicine.”

Yes, because Trump is against people dying in the streets, Cruz says that Trump thinks “Obamacare didn’t go far enough and we need to expand it to put the government in charge of our health care, in charge of our relationship with our doctors.” Over and over again, Cruz has repeated this insane lie, telling Fox’s Megyn Kelly: “If you want to see Bernie Sanders-style socialized medicine, Donald Trump is your guy.”

Trump’s alleged support for the kind of national health care they have in Scotland and Canada is another big fat lie. Trump was issuing his usual effusive praise before he drops the hammer — “It actually works incredibly well in Scotland. Some people think it really works in Canada.” Then he continued, in the very same sentence: “I don’t think it would work as well here. What has to happen — I like the concept of private enterprise coming in. … You have to create competition.”

Cruz and his cult-like followers lie about Trump wanting a health care system akin to Canada’s and Scotland’s. They lie about his supporting Obamacare. They lie about his supporting partial-birth abortion. They lie about his ever having been a Democrat. They lie about his campaign manager assaulting a female reporter.

I tried being nice after Florida, when it became clear that Trump was the choice of a majority of Republican voters, nearly choking on a column praising Cruz for his admirable flip-flops to Trump’s positions on immigration and trade. I censored loads of anti-Cruz retweets. But — as with the Clintons — you offer these Cruz-bots an olive branch and they bite off your hand.

The next thing I knew, the Cruz cult was accusing Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski of criminal battery for brushing past a female reporter. Anyone who claims this video shows a “battery” is as big a liar as the liberals who lined up to say Clinton did not commit perjury when he denied having “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky.

If James Carville and Paul Begala had a baby, it would be a Cruz supporter.

They lie about my own tweaking of Trump — I didn’t like the Heidi retweet! — amid a tidal wave of support. Trump is the only presidential candidate in my lifetime who will build a wall, deport illegals and pause the importation of Muslims. He’s the only one who cares more about ordinary Americans than he does about globalist plutocrats. Does anyone really think I’m “tiring” of him because of a retweet?

Apparently, for slavishly devoted Cruz-bots, a normal human making a small criticism of her preferred candidate is unfathomable! That fact alone proves how dishonest they are about their own candidate.

I was under the misimpression that I was dealing with adults and not swine like Carville and Begala, willing to twist someone’s words to win a momentary political advantage. Mostly, I was under the misimpression that honesty was still a conservative value.

It’s Not ‘Islamophobic’ to Protest a Pro-Hamas Speaker

April 7, 2016

It’s Not ‘Islamophobic’ to Protest a Pro-Hamas Speaker, National Review, M. Zuhdi Jasser, April 6, 2016

taleb

This past Good Friday, the Islamic Society of Wichita, Kan., invited a self-declared Hamas supporter, Sheikh Monzer Taleb, as a special guest for its fundraising event. Sheikh Taleb is a notorious figure in the Muslim community, bringing controversy — and hate — wherever he goes. That is, until Representative Mike Pompeo caught wind of the plans and took a stand, calling on the Islamic Society to cancel the event, to the ire of the group and some in the community.

Sheikh Taleb has proudly sung as part of a pro-Hamas group that calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, even declaring on video: “I am from Hamas.” His other extremist ties are also significant and damning: In the 2008 terrorism-financing case against the Holy Land Foundation, Taleb was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” for his deep association with Hamas. The case resulted in guilty verdicts on all 108 counts against leaders of the Foundation.

All Americans have a duty to speak out, like Pompeo did, for if we stay silent, we give Islamists a pass to suffocate critical thinking inside Muslim communities. There is nothing more American, more pro-Islam, and more pro-Muslim than taking a stand against the extremist and anti-Semitic hate spewed by Islamist individuals like Sheikh Taleb. In fact, this tough love is what every Muslim community needs to pursue on its own, long before their elected representative have to intervene.

Marginalizing and exposing the ideas of Sheikh Taleb and others like him is crucial if we are to effectively counter Islamist ideology and radicalization. This is the sort of reform work the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) encourages. Before Islamic terrorists become hell-bent on using violence, extremist Islamist ideologues radicalize them. Islamist movements such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood reject the liberal secular democratic order and seek an Islamic state with sharia law, filled with ugly anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism.

This debate is not about silencing speech, but rather about exposing and defeating extremist Islamist ideas. From San Bernardino to Brussels, radical Islamism will never be defeated unless Muslims and non-Muslims alike expose it, confront it, and marginalize it, much as Mike Pompeo did in Wichita last month.

It seems obvious that Sheikh Taleb’s Hamas sympathies and connections would make any American Muslim organization hesitant to have anything to do with him, much less invite him as a special guest to an event. Particularly in today’s climate, one would think that the Islamic Society of Wichita would want to stay as far away as possible from Taleb. Better yet, one would hope they would protest his appearances at mosques around the country in order to truly convey their dedication to reforming the hateful ideas that radicalize Muslims in our communities.

Instead, the Islamic Society of Wichita was stubborn in its invitation, cancelling the event only when Pompeo expressed serious concern and community pressure mounted. Now, rather than admitting its mistake, the Islamic Society of Wichita has the temerity to play the victim, blaming Kansans for their “Islamophobia.” The Islamic Society is attempting to dodge responsibility and avoid the repercussions of its terrible and even dangerous decision. But the facts remain the same: The Islamic Society invited and was planning to fête a man who has supported Hamas not only in word but also in deed, by raising funds for the terrorist group. In this case, the Islamic Society of Wichita can blame only itself for increased tensions in the community.

The event featuring Sheikh Taleb was canceled, yet it is critical for Kansans and all Americans, both Muslims and non-Muslims, to take a long, hard look at some of the key instigators and ideologies of extremist sentiment: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the other Hamas-sympathizing, Muslim Brotherhood–tied individuals and groups passing themselves off as mainstream.

M. Zuhdi Jasser is the president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and the co-founder of the Muslim Reform Movement. He is a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander and the author of A Battle for the Soul of Islam.