Archive for the ‘U.S. Constitution’ category

Off Topic | Trump, Conservative Ideolgues and Populists

January 24, 2016

Trump, Conservative Ideolgues and Populists, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 24, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Conservative ideologues want to keep things essentially as they are, making only marginal and generally ineffective changes. Populists want to change things to be more consistent with what “we the people” want. Often, what we the people want is better than what our “leaders” want or try to provide. Under these definitions, Trump is a populist, not a conservative ideologue. That’s good.

According to Dictionary. com, these are attributes of “conservatives:”

Disposed to preserve existing conditions, restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

According to the same source, “populism” means:

Any of various, often anti-establishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies.

Grass-roots democracy; working class activism; egalitarianism.

National Review recently published an entire special edition devoted to attacking Trump on the ground that he is insufficiently conservative. Whom did National Review support in 2008 and 2012? Guess or go to the link. He did not win.

NR - Trump

Writing at PJ Media about National Review’s special issue, Roger L. Simon argued that 

Many of their arguments revolve around whether Trump is a “true conservative.” Instead of wading into the definitional weeds on that one — as they say on the Internet, YMMV [Your Milleage May Vary] — allow me to address the macro question of what the purpose of ideology actually is. For me, it is to provide a theoretical basis on which to act, a set of principles. But that’s all it is. It’s not a religion, although it can be mistaken for one (communism). [Insert and Emphasis added.]

Ideology should function as a guide, not a faith, because in the real world you may have to violate it, when the rubber meets the road, as they say. For those of us in the punditocracy, the rubber rarely if ever meets the road.  All we have is our theories. They are the road for us. If we’re lucky, we’re paid for them.  In that case, we hardly ever vary them. It would be bad for business.

Trump’s perspective was the reverse. The rubber was constantly meeting the road. In fact, it rarely did anything else. He always had to change and adjust. Ideological principles were just background noise, barely audible sounds above the jack hammers. [Emphasis added.]

When National Review takes up arms against Trump, it is men and women of theory against a man of action. The public, if we are to believe the polls, prefers the action. It’s not hard to see why. The theory has failed and become increasingly disconnected from the people. It doesn’t go anywhere and hasn’t for years. I’m guilty of it too. (Our current president is 150% a man of theory.) Too many people — left and right — are drunk on ideology. [Emphasis added.]

Were the “old White men” who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence, and those who fought for the colonies in the Revolutionary War, conservative ideologues? Did they want to preserve existing conditions under the King of England, his governors and military? Or were they pragmatic populists, as well as men of action, who opposed the King’s establishment and offered unorthodox solutions appealing to the “common” people? It took a lot of pushing from such revolutionaries as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, but the pragmatic populists won.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3TGbKfkwGA&list=PLqWUmyBq_P8LZ1jP9XwPuv_4xWhMPiKs1

I don’t want to suggest that Donald Trump is this generation’s George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin. Times are now sufficiently different that doing so would be frivolous. Among other differences, there should be no need to go to war now because we still have an electoral process, flawed though it may be. Nor are we ruled by an unelected, hereditary king; we are ruled by an elected president who considers Himself a king, ignores or twists the Constitution to fit His needs, often ideological, and acts by royal executive decree when the Congress declines to do His bidding or goes about it too slowly to suit Him.

Be that as it may, what’s wrong with the populist notion encouraging members of the governed class — the “vulgarians” — to have greater voices in how they are governed than those who govern them, often to their own benefit, while mocking those whom they govern? Sometimes we the people make mistakes and sometimes we get it right. Ditto our dear leaders. Why not give us a chance for a change?

Into which category — conservative ideologue or populist — if either, does Donald Trump fit, do we need him now and, if so, why?

Here’s the 2012 video Whittle referred to in the video above:

Which of the current Republican candidates has taken, or is the most likely to take, positions comparable to those suggested in the above video?

In September of last year, I wrote an article titled To bring America back we need to break some stuff. There, I quoted Daniel Greenfield for the following proposition:

What we have now is not a movement because we have not defined what it is we hope to win. We have built reactive movements to stave off despair. We must do better than that. We must not settle for striving to restore some idealized lost world. Instead we must dream big. We must think of the nation we want and of the civilization we want to live in and what it will take to build it. [Emphasis added.]

Our enemies have set out big goals. We must set out bigger ones. We must become more than conservatives. If we remain conservatives, then all we will have is the America we live in now. And even if our children and grandchildren become conservatives, that is the culture and nation they will fight to conserve. We must become revolutionaries. [Emphasis added.]

I also suggested that if we don’t seek real — even revolutionary — change we might as well try to join the European Union. That would keep things pretty much as they now are and would, therefore, be more the “conservative” than the populist thing to do.

Our unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy could merge with that of the EU and our Congress could merge with the impotent EU Parliament.

Here’s a new Trifecta video about a proposal by the Governor of Texas to amend the Constitution which, he contends, has been broken by those who have improperly increased the power of the Federal Government while diminishing that of the states.

The Constitution is not broken. It’s just been poorly interpreted, twisted and otherwise ignored. In recent years Obama — who claims to be a “constitutional scholar” — has done more to ignore, twist and misinterpret it than any other president I can remember. Depending on what amendments might be adopted and ratified, an Obama clone (Hillary Clinton?) might well do the same; perhaps even worse. A president can personally stop that process by not doing it. A president can halt poor judicial interpretations only by nominating judges unlikely to make them.

Conclusions

Trump is not perfect; nobody is. However, he says what he thinks rather than spew multiculturally correct pablum. Few are sufficiently thick-skinned to do that. A “vulgarian,” he is not politically correct. Others are because they don’t want to offend. Trump recognizes that Islam is the religion of war, death and oppression and does not want the further Islamisation of America, which is already proceeding apace. Few leaders of either party are willing to take that position, mean it and act on it effectively if elected.

We are mad, not insane. We want to give we the people a bigger and stronger voice in how and by whom we are governed. If, by voting to make Trump our President, we make a big mistake so be it. Worse candidates with fewer qualifications have been elected and reelected. During His first and second term as President, Obama has gone far in His quest to transform America fundamentally and in the wrong directions. If Trump does not come sufficiently close to correcting course to meet our expectations during his first term, we won’t vote to reelect him. In the meantime,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ6XdwGt7Ls

Opps. I almost forgot this

House Democrats Mover to Criminalize Criticism of Islam

December 29, 2015

House Democrats Mover to Criminalize Criticism of Islam, Front Page MagazineRobert Spencer, December 29, 2015

(Please see also, Islam: Hate, Honor, Women’s Rights and Congress. — DM)

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December 17, 2015 ought henceforth to be a date which will live in infamy, as that was the day that some of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives came out in favor of the destruction of the First Amendment. Sponsored by among others, Muslim Congressmen Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, as well as Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta Sanchez, Charles Rangel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Kennedy, Al Green, Judy Chu, Debbie Dingell, Niki Tsongas, John Conyers, José Serrano, Hank Johnson, and many others, House Resolution 569 condemns “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.” The Resolution has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

That’s right: “violence, bigotry and hateful rhetoric.” The implications of those five words will fly by most people who read them, and the mainstream media, of course, will do nothing to elucidate them. But what H. Res. 569 does is conflate violence — attacks on innocent civilians, which have no justification under any circumstances – with “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric,” which are identified on the basis of subjective judgments. The inclusion of condemnations of “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric” in this Resolution, while appearing to be high-minded, take on an ominous character when one recalls the fact that for years, Ellison, Carson, and his allies (including groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR) have been smearing any and all honest examination of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to incite hatred and violence as “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” This Resolution is using the specter of violence against Muslims to try to quash legitimate research into the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy us, which will have the effect of allowing the jihad to advance unimpeded and unopposed.

That’s not what this H. Res. 569 would do, you say? It’s just about condemning “hate speech,” not free speech? That kind of sloppy reasoning may pass for thought on most campuses today, but there is really no excuse for it. Take, for example, the wife of Paris jihad murderer Samy Amimour – please. It was recently revealed that she happily boasted about his role in the murder of 130 Paris infidels: “I encouraged my husband to leave in order to terrorize the people of France who have so much blood on their hands […] I’m so proud of my husband and to boast about his virtue, ah la la, I am so happy.” Proud wifey added: “As long as you continue to offend Islam and Muslims, you will be potential targets, and not just cops and Jews but everyone.”

Now Samy Amimour’s wife sounds as if she would be very happy with H. Res. 569, and its sponsors would no doubt gladly avow that we should stop offending Islam and Muslims – that is, cut out the “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” If we are going to be “potential targets” even if we’re not “cops” or “Jews,” as long as we “continue to offend Islam and Muslims,” then the obvious solution, according to the Western intelligentsia, is to stop doing anything that might offend Islam and Muslims – oh, and stop being cops and Jews. Barack “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” says it. Hillary “We’re going to have that filmmaker arrested” Clinton says it. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, certain that anyone who speaks honestly about Islam and jihad is a continuing danger to the Church, says it.

And it should be easy. What offends Islam and Muslims? It ought to be a simple matter to cross those things off our list, right? Making a few sacrifices for the sake of our future of glorious diversity should be a no-brainer for every millennial, and everyone of every age who is concerned about “hate,” right? So let’s see. Drawing Muhammad – that’s right out. And of course, Christmas celebrations, officially banned this year in three Muslim countries and frowned upon (at best) in many others, will have to go as well. Alcohol and pork? Not in public, at least. Conversion from Islam to Christianity? No more of that. Building churches? Come on, you’ve got to be more multicultural!

Everyone agrees. The leaders of free societies are eagerly lining up to relinquish those freedoms. The glorious diversity of our multicultural future demands it. And that future will be grand indeed, a gorgeous mosaic, as everyone assures us, once those horrible “Islamophobes” are forcibly silenced. Everyone will applaud that. Most won’t even remember, once the jihad agenda becomes clear and undeniable to everyone in the U.S. on a daily basis and no one is able to say a single thing about it, that there used to be some people around who tried to warn them.

Satire(?) | Obama declares Islamophobia a felony hate crime

November 23, 2015

Obama declares Islamophobia a felony hate crime, Dan Miller’s Blog, November 23, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Phobia is an abnormal, irrational fear. As now defined, however, Islamophobia is merely “prejudice against, hatred towards, or fear of the religion of Islam or Muslims.” Rational “Prejudice,” “hatred” and “fear” of Islam are, therefore, now Islamophobic.

islamophobe1

Obama often proclaims that there is no reason to fear Islam —  the religion of truth and love — and that He welcomes it in His America. It is permissible, indeed even patriotic, to fear and oppose the Non-Islamic Islamic State, but to fear and to oppose Islam runs counter to American values and is, therefore, worse than merely vile.

By virtue of His constitutional obligation under Article II to do whatever He damn well pleases, He has determined that anyone who criticises Islam is guilty of felony hate speech, which has long been recognized not to be entitled to protections under the First Amendment. To think Islamophobic thoughts leads to hate speech and must also be criminalised as hate thought.

Once again, Obama shows that He is a great leader — not a mere follower — in America’s quest finally to become a great nation of which He can finally be proud. An article by Jonathan Turley is titled Forty Percent of Millennials Favor Censorship of Offensive Speech By Government. Turley, a liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word and among the few “liberals” to remain strong defenders of free speech, notes that

I have long argued that the West appears to have fallen out of love with free speech, which is more often viewed as a rising scourge rather than a defining value in some countries. A recent poll of the Pew Research Center shows just how many people we have lost to those calling for greater censorship and criminalization of speech. It is not surprisingly more prevalent with younger age groups, though Democrats are almost twice as likely favor censorship than Republicans. The largest (and most alarming) group is the millennials — 40% of whom favor government censorship of speech offensive to minority groups. [Emphasis added.]

Clearly, Obama is — as always — on the right side of history, leading from the front.

obama_muslim3

Here is the text of Obama’s address to the nation, to be delivered on Thanksgiving Day.

My fellow, blessedly multicultural, Americans, Thanksgiving is the day we all now understand was forced upon us to commemorate the vile treatment of Native Americans by settlers — just as Israeli settlers now abuse native Palestinians. To treat Muslims as we treated Native Americans, as Israel treats peaceful Palestinians — and indeed as Christian Crusaders just a short time ago treated peaceful Muslims  — is the worst type of anti-American prejudice I can imagine. Therefore, under the powers vested in Me under the U.S. Constitution, I hereby decree that anyone — no matter who or where and even in the halls of Congress — criticises the Religion of Peace and Love shall be tried and summarily convicted of felony Hate speech.

Some may say — falsely — that this is a drastic and unwarranted measure. It is neither. Islamophobia is intensely harmful to Muslims fleeing persecution by Christians and Jews abroad. It may even deter Muslims from coming to My America to enjoy the benefits of liberty and freedom as ordaned under the Constitution. They all desire to be assimilated into America and to live here with peace and honour killings in accord with our traditions of freedom and justice; traditions which are envied by those fleeing persecution and which they yearn to enjoy in My America. To persecute innocent Muslims here, as they are persecuted abroad is a disgrace; as long as I am your President I shall not permit it.

The spectre of hate thought also now darkens America and leads to hate speech against Muslims everywhere — even those in The Islamic State Republic of Iran, with which I successfully negotiated an historic deal to eliminate the spectre of nuclear weapons in, and to bring peace to, most of the Middle East.

Just as I have decreed that hate speech against Muslims shall be punished, so must hate thought. Accordingly, all candidates for public office in My America will now be required to answer questions seeking to probe their deepest unspoken, but dreadful, anti-Islamic thoughts. The Council on Islamic-American Relations will prepare the questions and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation will ask them. Those found to harbour anti-Islamic  — and therefore un-American — thoughts will be declared unfit for, and disqualified from holding, public office. The First Amendment, of course, provides no protection for freedom of thought; even if it did, it would provide no protection for hate thought.  This is necessary if My America is, once again, to lead the free world.

(Wait for vigorous applause.)

Thank you. Now, for your Thanksgiving pleasure, here is a tribute to Me by my favorite vocal group, the Muslim Brotherhood Chorus.

The Elephant In The Room

October 2, 2015

The Elephant In The Room, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yigal Carmon*, October 2, 2015

(Please see also, Iran wants to renegotiate parts of the nuke “deal.” That may be good. Have opponents of the “deal” given up? If so, why? — DM)

It may be that these opponents believe that the agreement is a done deal that cannot be stopped and that the current U.S. administration will follow through with it no matter what. This approach reflects not realism but ignorance. Obviously the administration wants to follow through with the deal. But the deal is no longer in it hands. It is Khamenei who is throwing a spanner in the works, declaring that he will not implement the agreement that the West believed it concluded on July 14.

In order to get Iran to implement the agreement, the language of the JCPOA will have to be changed and a new Security Council resolution will have to be passed. While in theory this would not be impossible, it would require a new process, entailing, at the very least, a public political debate in the West – one that would reveal Iran’s unreliability as a partner and would cost valuable time. And time is not on the side of the U.S. administration.

*****************

On September 3, 2015, not two months after the July 14 announcement of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at Vienna and its celebration at the White House and in Europe, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dropped a bombshell.

In a speech to the Iranian Assembly of Experts, he backtracked from the agreement, demanding a new concession: that the sanctions be “lifted,” not merely “suspended.”[1] If that term is not changed, said Khamenei, there is no agreement. If the West only “suspends” the sanctions, he added, Iran will merely “suspend” its obligations. Giving further credence to his threat, he announced that it is the Iranian Majlis that must discuss and approve the agreement (or not), because it represents the people – when it is well known that the majority of its members oppose it, and Iranian President Hassan Rohani made every effort to prevent such a discussion in the Majlis from taking place.

Adding insult to injury, Ali Akbar Velayati, senior advisor to Khamenei and head of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, said on September 19 that the negotiations, concluded and celebrated less than two months previously on July 14, are actually “not over yet.”[2]

Khamenei’s demand to replace “suspension” with “lifting” is not just semantic. It is a fundamental change, because the snapback of sanctions – the major security mechanism for the entire agreement – cannot take place with “lifting,” but only with “suspension.”

Ever since Khamenei dropped this bombshell, the Western media has maintained total silence, as if this were a trivial matter not worthy of mention, let alone analysis.

One might understand this reaction on the part of those who support the deal. Perhaps they are shocked, at a loss, and therefore hope that if they pretend they don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Indeed, this is the futile policy regularly adopted by ostriches.

However, one cannot but be astounded by the silence on the part of the opponents of the deal, including – oddly enough – Israel and the U.S. Republicans. One would expect these opponents to pounce on Khamenei’s statement and raise hell over Iran’s infanticide of the two-month-old agreement. One would expect them to bring it to the forefront of a new debate over the deal in any possible forum – in the U.S., the U.N., and the E.U.

But – nothing.

It may be that these opponents believe that the agreement is a done deal that cannot be stopped and that the current U.S. administration will follow through with it no matter what. This approach reflects not realism but ignorance. Obviously the administration wants to follow through with the deal. But the deal is no longer in it hands. It is Khamenei who is throwing a spanner in the works, declaring that he will not implement the agreement that the West believed it concluded on July 14.

In order to get Iran to implement the agreement, the language of the JCPOA will have to be changed and a new Security Council resolution will have to be passed. While in theory this would not be impossible, it would require a new process, entailing, at the very least, a public political debate in the West – one that would reveal Iran’s unreliability as a partner and would cost valuable time. And time is not on the side of the U.S. administration.

Right now, Iran is exposed almost daily as the ally of Russia against the U.S. Three months after the “historic” agreement declared by the White House, Iran continues to seek “Death to America,” and the Iranian foreign minister, the “hero” of the agreement, needs to apologize in Iran for “accidentally” shaking hands with the U.S. president. The truth of the agreement is emerging, and it is not certain that what Iran is now demanding will pass.

Interestingly enough, the White House’s first reaction was to brush off Khamenei’s demand. Iran, said Josh Earnest, should just do what it what it had undertaken to do in the agreement, and stop roiling the waters.[3]

A more sober response followed. There was hope that the meeting set for September 28 between the P5+1 and Iranian foreign ministers, on the margins of the 70th session of the U.N. General Assembly, would produce a solution, but this hope was in vain. Iranian President Rohani fled back to Iran, on the pretext of the hajj tragedy in Mecca, and no one in the West knows how to proceed.

The Western media, for its part, is perpetuating its total blackout on the issue, hoping perhaps for a miracle in the secret U.S.-Iran talks, which this administration has been conducting for years. But even a secret U.S. concession will be no solution. Even if it were to offer a secret commitment to remove the sanctions altogether, Khamenei will not be satisfied. He openly challenged the U.S., and he needs its public capitulation. He will celebrate publicly any secret concession. Moreover, any new U.S. concession will prompt Khamenei to make ever more demands.

The most recent developments, and the emergence of Russia as a new-old contender for power vis-à-vis the U.S. in the world, particularly in the Middle East, will only encourage Khamenei to cling to his tried and true ally, Russia. Indeed, this administration has no objection to Russia’s resurgence in the Middle East, but Russia’s blatant anti-U.S. stance in every venue except in the private, honeyed Putin-Obama talks will ultimately lead even the blindest of Democrats to realize that Iran is indeed an enemy of the U.S. – as Iran plainly declares – and that any further concessions to it make no sense.

It seems that the worst nightmare of the supporters of the deal – that Iran will do away with the July 14 agreement – is about to come to pass.

*Y. Carmon is president and founder of MEMRI.

Endnotes:

[3] Earnest said: “What we have indicated all along is that once an agreement was reached, as it was back in mid-July, that we would be focused on Iran’s actions and not their words, and that we will be able to tell if Iran follows through on the commitments that they made in the context of these negotiations. And that is what will determine our path forward here. We’ve been crystal clear about the fact that Iran will have to take a variety of serious steps to significantly roll back their nuclear program before any sanctions relief is offered – and this is everything from reducing their nuclear uranium stockpile by 98 percent, disconnecting thousands of centrifuges, essentially gutting the core of their heavy-water reactor at Arak, giving the IAEA the information and access they need in order to complete their report about the potential military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. And then we need to see Iran begin to comply with the inspections regime that the IAEA will put in place to verify their compliance with the agreement. And only after those steps and several others have been effectively completed, will Iran begin to receive sanctions relief.  The good news is all of this is codified in the agreement that was reached between Iran and the rest of the international community. And that’s what we will be focused on, is their compliance with the agreement.” Whitehouse.gov, September 4, 2015.

Satire? | Election 2048 – Under the peace of Islam

September 30, 2015

Election 2048 – Under the peace of Islam, Sultan Knish Blog, Daniel Greenfield, September 30, 2015

Election Coverage 2048 – Al-CNN

As the election of 2048 approaches, the candidates from both parties continue to exchange strong views on the issues that affect the lives of Americans. The Party of Democracy and Justice (Hezb-Al-Dimukratie-Wa’al Adalah) continues to maintain that the election will come down to social justice issues.

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“With 34 percent unemployment and the price of goat so far out of range of most working families that they have been forced to switch to chicken, it is time that our opponents stopped dodging the issues and took a serious look at the economic consequences of their policies,” Bashar Mohammed Hussein Al-Hamdani, said during a campaign stop at a HalalBurger in Peoria, Illinois.

However the ruling Freedom and Religion Party (Hezb Al-Hurriyah Wa’al Allah) denounced this as class warfare. Still preoccupied with the ongoing occupation of the Netherlands and Greece, the party has taken criticism for ignoring the economic problems of the United States while being preoccupied with waging foreign wars in the name of Islam.

Nevertheless President Mohammed Al-Thani, fresh off a pilgrimage from Mecca, vigorously defended his record while conducting a photo op at a San Diego Madrassa. “The Freedom and Religion Party believes in creating opportunities, rather than offering hand outs. Our subjugation of infidel nations has opened up new territories to be dominated by the believers and our vigorous drive for national morality has revived the family unit as an economic force. Our program of heavily fining women who go out with their naked hair exposed and raising the Jizya tax on the People of the Book has also raised billions of dollars that will go toward repaying the nation 93 trillion dollar debt.”

The high Jizya tax has provoked outrage in some parts of the United States, but the continuing decline of the nation’s non-Muslim population has made the Christian vote much less of a factor in the election. Hamdani has promised to cut the Jizya tax by 20 percent if elected, but it is unclear whether conservative elements in his own party will allow him to do it. National surveys show that since making the proposal, Hamdani’s ratings have gone down 9 points in Illinois and 14 points in California.

President Al-Thani’s advisors view the 2 million conversions to Islam since the Jizya tax was tripled as a major benefit to the party which lost its Christian support during the Great Transition. Since then the Freedom and Justice Party has picked up a Christian and Jewish bloc vote, but the value of that bloc has not held up well over the last two elections.

Christian rights activists attribute the decline of American Christians to the Jizya tax which has made it impossible for many Christian families to earn a living. They also blame the bloody 2045 Riots which marked the end of the Christian presence in former strongholds such as Nashville and Cedar Rapids, as well as rumors about the kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian girls.

However popular talk show host and pundit, Abdul Greene countered that the decrease was best explained by the large scale immigration of Christians out of the country. “The Christians are too bigoted to live in the same country with us, just like their parents and grandparents. If they can’t control the country, they refuse to live here and accept our laws.”

Christian rights activists have accused Greene of playing a major role in stirring up the 2045 Riots which torched Christian areas in major cities across the United States after a Christian man was accused of having an intimate encounter with a Muslim woman. Greene however insists that the Christians are the ones to blame. Greene’s support of the Freedom and Religion Party has been controversial, but President Al-Thani has refused to disavow him.

The latest round of attacks by Greek guerrillas on liberation forces in Athens led to smaller attacks on Christian businesses in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles last month. They also accentuated the debate over the continuing occupation of Greece which began in 2031 when the United States government intervened to protect the territorial claims of the Turkish Republic of Cyprus. Much as in the Netherlands, the intervention to protect a Muslim community turned into a full blown occupation and a war against an insurgency that is believed to be backed and supplied by rogue states such as the breakaway Arctic Republic and the Zionist Entity.

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The Freedom and Religion Party under President Al-Thani continues to take the position that American prosperity is closely linked to the welfare of the rest of the Muslim world. In the State of the Union address the president stated that, “We cannot repeat the folly of the Americans of the pagan period who believed that they could have material wealth without religion. Our prosperity comes from Allah and it is only by spreading the way of Allah and conducting our Jihad in the way of Allah on behalf of our endangered brothers and sisters in Europe and Asia that we will be deserving of Allah’s bounty.”

Hoping to exploit the widespread economic dissatisfaction, Hamdani, a former Wisconsin governor, has promised to withdraw troops from Greece within two years and the Netherlands within five years with the majority of remaining liberation forces being drawn from other Muslim countries. “We can best aid our fellow believers in the Muslim world by being a model of stability and a beacon of tolerance.”

Yusuf Al-Amiriki, a member of Hamdini’s foreign policy defense team and a first generation convert descended from two American presidents, courted controversy with a proposal to set up a coalition government of Muslim and moderate Christian groups in the Netherlands. Such governments had been tried in Europe before during the 2030’s, but invariably fell apart. Leading Senators from the Freedom and Justice Party accused Hamdani of selling out Muslim interests in order to court the Christian vote. Hamdani’s spokeswoman, Aisha Zubedi, has refused to comment on the Amiriki proposal except to say that Hamdani was open to any solution that would restore peace to the people of the Netherlands and protect the rights of European Muslims.

Hamdani courted further controversy by appearing at the funeral of former President Bob Thompson. Thompson had served two terms and while his administration had worked hard on outreach to the Muslim world, he also engaged in the targeted murder of Muslim religious leaders and provided aid to the Zionist entity. For these reasons, President Al-Thani chose not to appear at his funeral even though President Thompson had been a member of the pre-transition Freedom and Religion Party, which was then known as the Republican Party.

Despite the official disapproval, Thompson was viewed positively by many in the Muslim community. Tens of millions of Pakistani-Americans remember how after the India-Pakistan war, the Thompson Administration generously opened its borders to victims of the nuclear fallout in Pakistan. Without that step it might have taken decades more before America achieved a Muslim majority.

During the beginning of his second term, Thompson became the first president to take the oath of office on both a Bible and a Koran declaring that he wanted to make no separation between the books of god. At the Thompson funeral, Hamdani appeared to promise that he would repeat that gesture, but his spokeswoman quickly disavowed any notion that he would ever take an oath on a text that was not the Koran.

“No American president has taken an oath on a bible in over a decade, all that the governor meant was that he would keep both Christians and Muslims in mind as the people of Allah when he takes his oath to protect and defend the Sharia,” Aisha Zubedi said.

While the Democracy and Justice Party has often appealed to the poor, its missteps have raised concerns in traditional Muslim communities that Hamdani is going too far in pandering to non-Muslims. “Next thing you know he’ll say we should let the Jews come back to America,” Congressman Mohammed Mogabe declared. “If Hamdani wants votes out of Cleveland then he is going to show he will fight for us, not for the enemies of the prophets.”

Hamdani has hurriedly scheduled an upcoming visit to the Ground Zero Mosque, but it may not be enough to improve his image in the eyes those who have accused him of flirting with apostasy. While the Mosque is a traditional stop for presidential candidates, Hamdani is unlikely to pay tribute to the souls of the 19 martyrs as Al-Thani did during the previous election.

Hoping to refocus attention on his economic program, Hamdani called for higher corporate taxes and accused some corporations of abusing Islamic banking, in particular Hibah payments, to avoid paying taxes. Such charges are not new, but particularly galling at a time when over half the country is out of work and tycoons like Ahmed Shalafi and Sheikh Johnson have used their connections with the Al-Thani government to become billionaires.

To counter Hamdani, Al-Thani’s economic advisers have offered up a stimulus plan that raises the Jizya tax on infidels for the second time in a year and vowed to cut spending even further without affecting subsidies to Islamic schools or military preparedness for the Global Jihad. Though the election is still some time away, the Al-Thani campaign has also rolled out a series of ads targeting poor communities which accuse Hamdani of plotting with Jewish and Christian tycoons to subvert the Islamic system of finance through freemasonry and Communist class warfare tactics.

americanislam

Adding further drama to the election is the possibility of a third party campaign. Andrew McMillan who has been running as an independent in elections for almost twenty years without appealing to anyone but the same racist groups who have been disavowed even by most Christians and Jews, but there is talk that McMillan’s America Party might consider replacing the eccentric millionaire with sports star Ted March. As leading goalscorer who helped the United States win the 2042 World Cup, March is one of the most admired non-Muslims in the country. With him on the ticket, the America Party might be able to adopt a new moderate image that is no longer associated with bigotry and intolerance. But frustrating his own party members, the septuagenarian McMillan appeared to an event commemorating the 2045 riots and gave a rousing speech which hit on many of the same old themes. “For thirty-six years I’ve been involved in politics and the only thing that I can tell you about politics is that it’s all bunk. We weren’t talking about the things that mattered thirty-six years ago and we aren’t talking about them now.”

Iran wants to renegotiate parts of the nuke “deal.” That may be good.

September 22, 2015

Iran wants to renegotiate parts of the nuke “deal.” That may be good. Dan Miller’s Blog, September 22, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or those of its other editors. — DM)

 

Iran wants sanctions relief to be lifted, immediately, and not merely suspended. Iran should not get that. If it doesn’t, it may well terminate the “deal” unilaterally. If Iran gets what it wants, the Senate should review the “deal” as a treaty and reject it. Either outcome would be a substantial improvement over the current “deal” and the morass in which it is embedded.

This post is based on a September 21st article at Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) titled “Expected September 28 NY Meeting Between P5+1 Foreign Ministers And Iran Could Signify Reopening Of Nuclear Negotiations To Address Khamenei’s September 3 Threat That If Sanctions Are Not Lifted, But Merely Suspended, There Will Be No Agreement.”

The MEMRI article cites statements by Supreme Leader Khamenei and one of his senior advisers, Ali Akbar Velayat. The latter said, on September 19th,  “the nuclear negotiations are not over yet.” Khamenei has said much the same thing.

Khamenei said, in a September 3, 2015 speech to the Assembly of Experts, that he did not accept the terms of the agreement and demanded that the sanctions be immediately lifted rather than merely suspended; otherwise, he said, there would either be no agreement, or Iran too would merely suspend its execution of its obligations under the JCPOA.

. . . .

“Freezing or suspension [of the sanctions] is unacceptable to me… If they suspend [the sanctions], we too will suspend [what is incumbent upon us]. If we are to implement what [is required of us], the sanctions must be [actually] cancelled.

Iran has thus made clear that it will not abide by the nuke “deal” as written; unless it gets the changes it now demands, it will either terminate the deal or violate it. If, as seems likely for the reasons cited in the MEMRI article, the September 28th meeting involves discussion of the deal, it will either be renegotiated or it won’t be.

If the “deal” is not renegotiated, or is renegotiated and Iran does not get what it demands, it may very well terminate the deal. Iran has already received substantial sanctions relief, is already open for business and is already doing lots of it with many more nations than previously. Termination would be a rebuff to the “Great Satan,” would not damage Iran much economically and it could proceed with its “peaceful” nuke program without even farcical nuke self-inspections.

If The Obama administration and others cave and Iran gets what it demands or enough to satisfy it, the “deal” will be very different from what was previously presented to the Congress under the Corker legislation. That legislation purported to eliminate the constitutional requirement of approval of the “deal” by a two-thirds Senate majority before going into effect and permitted it to go into effect unless rejected by half of the membership of both houses; Obama promised to veto such a rejection and put the “deal” into effect. The House has disapproved the “deal” but the Senate has not acted because of Democrat fillibusters, urged by the White House. Under the new “deal,” the ability of the United States to “snap back” sanctions would be vitiated; a possible but very difficult if not impossible to accomplish, “snap back” had been among the reasons cited by many of those who favored the “deal” (often despite its many other flaws) for supporting it.

If a deal eliminating the “snap back” is struck, Obama, et al, may well claim that it’s none of the business of the Congress since, by virtue of the Corker legislation, it has already eliminated its constitutional authority to deal with the JCPOA as a treaty, regardless of any “minor” change.

I hope, but am less than confident, that both houses of the Congress will reject this contention vigorously and repeal the Corker legislation. Whatever benefits or other legitimacy the Corker legislation may once have been thought to have it no longer has. Repeal will probably require use of the “nuclear option” to invoke cloture to end a Democrat filibuster in the Senate. If — as seems likely — Obama vetoes the rejection, the Congress should state that it no longer considers itself bound by the Corker legislation. Next, the Senate should treat the renegotiated “deal” as a treaty, regardless of whether Obama agrees to send it to the Senate, and reject it. It should do so even if, as also seems likely, that requires use of the “nuclear option” to invoke cloture.

Obama has precipitated what may well become a constitutional crisis. If the Congress does its job, Obama will be the loser and America will be the winner — even if it becomes necessary to take out Iran’s nukes militarily.

Iran appears to wants changes in the JCPOA

September 22, 2015

Expected September 28 NY Meeting Between P5+1 Foreign Ministers And Iran Could Signify Reopening Of Nuclear Negotiations To Address Khamenei’s September 3 Threat That If Sanctions Are Not Lifted, But Merely Suspended, There Will Be No Agreement, MEMRI, September 21, 2015

(If the JCPOA is renegotiated, in any respect, will Congress get another opportunity to challenge it? If so, will a way be found to deal with it as a treaty? The answer to both questions should be yes. — DM)

The expected meeting between the P5+1 foreign ministers and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif may be evidence of a shift in the White House position and also evidence that it intends to discuss the Iranian demand for further concessions from the superpowers.

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Recent reports indicate that the foreign ministers of the P5+1 are set to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in New York on September 28, 2015, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, to “examine the recent developments of the JCPOA.”[1]

On September 20, 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said, at a joint press conference in Berlin with his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, that he would meet Zarif in New York to discuss “Iran and other matters.”[2]

Additionally, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the head of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research, said on September 19, 2015 that “the nuclear negotiations are not over yet.”[3]

As will be recalled, Khamenei said, in a September 3, 2015 speech to the Assembly of Experts, that he did not accept the terms of the agreement and demanded that the sanctions be immediately lifted rather than merely suspended; otherwise, he said, there would either be no agreement, or Iran too would merely suspend its execution of its obligations under the JCPOA. He said: “We negotiated [with the Americans] in order to have the sanctions lifted, and the sanctions will be lifted. Now, if we are supposed to uphold this framework… this completely contradicts the reason for Iran’s participation in the talks to begin with. Otherwise, what was the point of our participation in the talks? We would have continued to do what we were doing [prior to the talks]… The fact that we sat down and held talks and made concessions on certain issues was mainly in order to have the sanctions lifted. If the sanctions are not going to be lifted, there will be no agreement… [Our] officials [i.e. Rohani’s government and his Ministry of Foreign Affairs] should make this clear…

“Freezing or suspension [of the sanctions] is unacceptable to me… If they suspend [the sanctions], we too will suspend [what is incumbent upon us]. If we are to implement what [is required of us], the sanctions must be [actually] cancelled. True, the other side says that some of the sanctions are not [up to them entirely] to be lifted. We say in response that [with regard to those sanctions] we will use our legal rights to freeze them. But regarding [the sanctions that are] in the hands of the American and European governments – those must be totally lifted.”[4]

The apparent meaning of all the above is that the nuclear negotiations, which Iran considers unfinished, will be reopened, with the aim of achieving the complete lifting of sanctions – instead of a mere suspension of them as was agreed in the JCPOA and adopted in UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

It will also be recalled that following Khamenei’s September 3 demands, on September 4 the White House responded; spokesman Josh Earnest said that Iran was charged with meeting its obligations under the JCPOA: “What we have indicated all along is that once an agreement was reached, as it was back in mid-July, that we would be focused on Iran’s actions and not their words, and that we will be able to tell if Iran follows through on the commitments that they made in the context of these negotiations. And that is what will determine our path forward here.

“We’ve been crystal clear about the fact that Iran will have to take a variety of serious steps to significantly roll back their nuclear program before any sanctions relief is offered – and this is everything from reducing their nuclear uranium stockpile by 98 percent, disconnecting thousands of centrifuges, essentially gutting the core of their heavy-water reactor at Arak, giving the IAEA the information and access they need in order to complete their report about the potential military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. And then we need to see Iran begin to comply with the inspections regime that the IAEA will put in place to verify their compliance with the agreement.

“And only after those steps and several others have been effectively completed, will Iran begin to receive sanctions relief.  The good news is all of this is codified in the agreement that was reached between Iran and the rest of the international community. And that’s what we will be focused on, is their compliance with the agreement.”[5]

The expected meeting between the P5+1 foreign ministers and Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif may be evidence of a shift in the White House position and also evidence that it intends to discuss the Iranian demand for further concessions from the superpowers.

It should be clarified that agreement on the part of the U.S. to lifting the sanctions would constitute a fundamental change to the JCPOA. This is because lifting the sanctions, rather than suspending them, will render impossible a snapback in case of Iranian violations, and the guarantee of a snapback is one of the central justifications for the JCPOA, according to President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

Endnotes:

[1] Fars (Iran), September 21, 2015.

[2] State.gov, September 20, 2015.

[3] Fars (Iran), September 19, 2015. It should be mentioned that Majlis member Hamid Rasaei said that the language of the agreement signed by Abbas Araghchi that was delivered to Majlis committees was “a partial document with many translating errors and omissions.” He added that the government must present the agreement to the Majlis in the form of a draft law and that a Majlis committee is currently “examining a version that is neither a proposal nor a draft law.” Tasnim (Iran), September 20, 2015.

[5] Whitehouse.gov, September 4, 2015.

Ben Carson: Let’s not have a Muslim Prez

September 20, 2015

Ben Carson: Let’s not have a Muslim Prez, Power LineJohn Hinderaker, September 20, 2015

It is hard to imagine the abuse that Carson is going to take for those remarks. He’d better batten down the hatches. But what he said is true: Islam is incompatible with the Constitution because it does not recognize a separation between church and state.

*********************

On Meet the Press this morning, Ben Carson said that Islam is incompatible with our Constitution, and that he would not endorse having a Muslim president. As far as I can see, all news outlets are quoting the same words, and a complete transcript may reveal additional nuance. But this is what is being quoted:

Asked whether his faith or the faith of a president should matter, Carson said, “It depends on what that faith is.”

“If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the constitution, no problem,” he explained, according to a transcript.

Todd then asked Carson, whose rise in the polls has been powered in large part by Christian conservatives, if he believed that “Islam is consistent with the Constitution.”

“No, I don’t, I do not,” he responded, adding, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

Carson added these more positive comments about Islam:

But for Carson, the matter of voting for a Muslim for Congress “is a different story, but it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else says, you know.”

“And, you know, if there’s somebody who’s of any faith, but they say things, and their life has been consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed, and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them,” he went on to say.

It is hard to imagine the abuse that Carson is going to take for those remarks. He’d better batten down the hatches. But what he said is true: Islam is incompatible with the Constitution because it does not recognize a separation between church and state.

In this respect Islam is entirely different from Judaism and Christianity. The Jewish prophets were often critics of Israel’s kings, and Jesus built on Judaic tradition when he said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” There is no similar doctrine in Islam. This is one of many instances where the simple-minded belief that all religions are essentially the same–a belief commonly held by the non-religious–is dangerously wrong.

In short, either our Constitution must give way to Islam, or American Muslims must give way to our Constitution. In many cases, no doubt, the latter has happened, and most American Muslims are good citizens. Over time, an American strand of Islam that is more compatible with our laws and political traditions may come to predominate. Maybe it already has.

But world-wide, the trend in Islam is more toward resurgent fundamentalism than toward tolerant moderation. And, as I understand Islam, Carson is correct that a person who holds faithfully to Islamic doctrine has views that are incompatible with our Constitution. Carson will take enormous abuse for saying the unsayable, but he deserves credit for putting an important issue–which bears strongly, to cite just one example, on our immigration policy–on the table. If his understanding of Islam (and mine) is wrong, no doubt correction will follow. But that is a candid discussion that needs to take place.

The nuclear option to stop the nuclear Iran?

September 16, 2015

The nuclear option to stop the nuclear Iran? Power LineSteven Hayward, September 16, 2015

No, I’m not talking about using nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, though I have several times over the last few years heard from very knowledgeable and well-placed people in the defense and foreign policy community that if it comes down to Israel having to defend itself alone against the imminent deployment of Iranian nukes they might have to resort to using their nuclear capacities to stop it, because they lack our conventional capacity to penetrate Iran’s hardened nuclear facilities. It would be an awful moment for the world as well as Israel itself, but it serves as a prompt to ponder the consequences of Obama’s obvious decision to take U.S. military action off the table.

Rather, I’m speaking of using the so-called “nuclear option” in the Senate to abolish the filibuster for a vote on the disapproval of this terrible agreement, which right now Senate Democrats will block with a filibuster so they don’t have to go on record with a vote, and so Obama won’t have to cast an unpopular veto. With polls showing that public support for the Iran agreement is as low as 21 percent, Senate Republicans can quote Harry Reid’s arguments for invoking the “nuclear option” for confirming judges last session: surely having the Senate cast a vote on this treaty is way more important than confirming judges? Make Obama veto the bill disapproving the deal, and make Senate Democrats vote against overriding the veto.

If the Senate GOP took this step, it would go a long way toward showing the conservative grassroots that they can indeed stand up to Obama and the Democrats on the Hill. Plus they’d be reasserting their constitutional duty to render “advice and consent” on treaties, even if Obama has evaded this constitutional requirement by calling it an “executive agreement.”

Off topic (?) | To bring America back we need to break some stuff

September 15, 2015

To bring America back we need to break some stuff, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 14, 2015

(The article is not immediately pertinent to Israel because the current President will continue to be Obama and his tame Congress will continue to go along to get along. However, the 2016 U.S. presidential elections are very pertinent to Israel’s future, so I am taking the liberty of posting it here. For those not familiar with the acronym “RINO,” it is a term of disparagement referring to Republicans who would probably be happier if they were Democrats. Needless to say, the views expressed in the article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

In December of 2011, I wrote an article titled The U.S. Constitution and Civil War. A remark by Cokie Roberts — that we need to ignore parts of the Constitution to save the rest — inspired my article. To bring America back, we don’t need to, nor should we, ignore or otherwise break the Constitution; it is America’s foundation. We do need to destroy and rebuild much of the mess that has been wrongly erected atop that foundation.

Obama and Constitution

Who should be our next President?

Daniel Greenfield, in an article titled This is the America We Live in Now, wrote,

We are not this culture. We are not our media. We are not our politicians. We are better than that.

We must win, but we must also remember what it is we hope to win. If we forget that, we lose. If we forget that, we will embrace dead end policies that cannot restore hope or bring victory.

What we have now is not a movement because we have not defined what it is we hope to win. We have built reactive movements to stave off despair. We must do better than that. We must not settle for striving to restore some idealized lost world. Instead we must dream big. We must think of the nation we want and of the civilization we want to live in and what it will take to build it. [Emphasis added.]

Our enemies have set out big goals. We must set out bigger ones. We must become more than conservatives. If we remain conservatives, then all we will have is the America we live in now. And even if our children and grandchildren become conservatives, that is the culture and nation they will fight to conserve. We must become revolutionaries. [Emphasis added.]

If we don’t, perhaps we should surrender and petition to join the European Union. Our unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy could merge with that of the EU and our Congress could merge with the impotent EU Parliament.

Joining the EU would not fit well with the U.S. Constitution, but so what? Obama and “pragmatic” judges have twisted and distorted it. They pay but scant attention to its clear language or that of the statutes they misconstrue. Most in the current crop of Republicans in the Congress have been willing to surrender whenever Obama blows His dog whistle and run to Him with hopes that He may offer them small bones.

Our once great nation is itself broken, but not necessarily beyond repair. It needs to be fixed before it gets to the point where it can’t be, and we are rapidly approaching that point. Our Constitution must be revived, and as revived survive, if America herself is to survive. America can’t be fixed with fresh paint and new floral arrangements featuring a “new” Bush.

When Ronald Reagan was first mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate, my first thought was that we don’t need a washed-up grade B movie actor/former Democrat leftist as President. I was wrong. He became the best President America has seen in my thus far seventy-four years on Earth. We need another Reagan, but who should it be? There are only a few good candidates and the Republican establishment opposes, with such insipid vigor as it can muster, all of them. It wants Jeb Bush, or in any event a Bush clone, to march stolidly toward a new Amerika.

Donald Trump

The mainstream media cannot understand why Trump continues to lead in the polls. Neither can the RINOs. Trump can’t possibly continue to lead; why, he is not even a politician! On September 12th, Sharyl Attkisson posted an article titled Donald’s Duck: 7 Reasons Why Nothing Sticks to Teflon Trump. In it, she explored seven of the reasons why it is claimed that Trump “can’t win.”

1. Trump doesn’t know the names of terror leaders.

2. Trump doesn’t have a plan.

3. Trump isn’t conservative enough.

4. Trump has flip-flopped.

5. Trump personally insults people.

6. Trump is against immigrants.

7. Trump won’t apologize.

Please read her analysis pointing out the fallacies behind these talking points as seen by Trump supporters; I think they are correct.

On September 13th Sundance, writing at The Last Refuge, posted an article titled The GOPe Roadmap, Status Update and The Event Horizon… There, he pointed out the RINOs’ multifaceted plan to defeat Trump and to install Jeb Bush as “our” next President. Jeb wants to lead us to more of the same namby-pamby nonsense that gave us Obama, the “great healer.” I don’t want to go there and want to stay as far away from there as possible. Please read Sundance’s article in its entirety. It’s excellent and so is this sequel about the upcoming CNN debate and the night of the long knives.

What will Trump do if elected?

I don’t know what Trump will do if elected President. He probably can’t make things worse, will try very hard to make them better and may well succeed. Please watch “lunatic” Trump respond to questions during this interview.

The only thing I am confident that the RINO candidates would do is to continue America’s collective swirl down the toilet. I very much like Ted Cruz (he would also be an excellent Secretary of State) and Ben Carson (Secretary of Health and Human Services?). Carina Fiorina? I like her thus far but need to learn more.

Trump has captured the public attention and, in many cases, its admiration and trust. Apparently many of his supporters feel as I do and are “mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore.”

Please compare and contrast these Obama and Hillary campaign videos:

Obama won His last two elections by campaigning for change “we” can believe in. Trump has thus far campaigned for change those who think America was great before Obama got to mucking around with her do believe in and want to have implemented.

Much is yet unknown about where and how Trump will lead the nation as her President. One thing seems clear, at least to me: he will discard that which is broken and replace it with what we need. So long as he does not muck around with the Constitution (as Obama has done with abandon), I think we should give him an opportunity to try.

gop-elite

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

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H/t Kingjester’s Blog