Posted tagged ‘Donald Trump’

Donald Trump’s Full Anti-Hillary Clinton Speech in NYC (6-22-16)

June 22, 2016

Donald Trump’s Full Anti-Hillary Clinton Speech in NYC (6-22-16) via YouTube, June 22, 2016

Trump Rips Clinton, Associated Press Rips Trump

June 22, 2016

Trump Rips Clinton, Associated Press Rips Trump, Power LineJohn Hinderaker, June 22, 2016

Today Donald Trump delivered a major speech attacking Hillary Clinton. We may have more to say about the speech later, but for now I want to highlight one of the more remarkable instances of media bias in a long time.

The Associated Press has historically been regarded as a straight, relatively non-partisan news source. That has changed in recent years, because of stories like this one on Trump’s speech, by Julie Pace and Jill Colvin. It begins:

Donald Trump launched a broad rebuke of his presidential rival Hillary Clinton Wednesday, accusing her of being “a world class liar” who personally profited from her tenure at the State Department. “She gets rich making you poor,” Trump said.

Seeking to steady his campaign after a difficult stretch, the presumptive Republican nominee cast himself as the White House candidate best positioned to address Americans’ economic interests.

“This election will decide whether we’re ruled by the people or the politicians,” Trump said during an address at his hotel in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. He made his arguments in a pointed yet measured tone, less loud and strident than has been typical in most previous campaign speeches.

The AP can’t wait any longer before telling the reader: don’t you believe it!

Yet his remarks included erroneous statements and distortions about Clinton’s record, and he frequently referenced sources of information that have been widely questioned, including the book “Clinton Cash” by Peter Schweizer.

Wow! Nothing like a little up-front editorializing. Curiously, however, the AP fails to cite a single alleged instance of an “erroneous statement” by Trump. And Schweizer’s book is meticulously researched; it is the definitive work on Bill and Hillary Clinton’s corruption. Has it been “questioned”? Well, sure: by Hillary.

I think the media campaign to defeat Donald Trump and elect Hillary Clinton will exceed anything we have ever seen.

If you want to learn more about Clinton Cash, check out our podcast interview with Peter.

Trump HAMMERS Hillary: ‘World Class Liar…She Gets Rich By Making You Poor’

June 22, 2016

Trump HAMMERS Hillary: ‘World Class Liar…She Gets Rich By Making You Poor’ The Daily WireBen Shapiro, June 22, 2016

(Shapiro has been anti-Trump. In this article, he acknowledges the good and hopes that the “bad” Trump will shut up. — DM)

Trump hammers Hillary

Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy last year, I have repeatedly stated that Trump is a hammer in search of a nail. He knows only one tactic: brute force. But when he applies that brute force in the right place, he can do significant damage.

On Tuesday, Trump found the Hillary nail, and he pounded it repeatedly.

Every day is an exercise in Good Trump/Bad Trump. Good Trump is the attack dog who won’t let go of a bone once he’s got it in his teeth. Bad Trump is the dog who bites small children, “Mexican” judges, the disabled.

Today, we got Good Trump.

Trump, with his unerring instinct for the identifying the growling beast within us all, understands that Americans don’t trust Hillary for one crucial reason: they think, correctly, that she’s out for herself. And he hit this point over and over in his well-crafted (!) speech. Trump first had to position himself as an altruistic candidate driven by concern for country, which he did in lackluster fashion. But when he turned his guns on Hillary, he hit paydirt. He called Hillary a “world class liar,” concluding, “Brian Williams’ career was destroyed” for lesser lies than Hillary has told.

He slammed Hillary for her corruption. “Hillary Clinton has perfected the politics of personal profit and theft,” he said. “She ran the State Department like her own personal hedge fund – doing favors for oppressive regimes, and many others, in exchange for cash.” He added, “She gets rich making you poor.”

Yes. Yes, yes, and yes.

He rightly attacked Hillary’s foreign policy:

The Hillary Clinton foreign policy has cost America thousands of lives and trillions of dollars – and unleashed ISIS across the world. No Secretary of State has been more wrong, more often, and in more places than Hillary Clinton. Her decisions spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched. Among the victims is our late Ambassador, Chris Stevens….She started the war that put him in Libya, denied him the security he asked for, then left him there to die. To cover her tracks, Hillary lied about a video being the cause of his death.

He added:

Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is that she refuses to acknowledge the threat posed by Radical Islam…. I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people. Hillary Clinton wants to bring in people who believe women should be enslaved and gays put to death.

Excellent stuff.

And here’s Trump on Hillary’s private email server:

Then there are the 33,000 emails she deleted. While we may not know what is in those deleted emails, our enemies probably do. So they probably now have a blackmail file over someone who wants to be President of the United States. This fact alone disqualifies her from the Presidency. We can’t hand over our government to someone whose deepest, darkest secrets may be in the hands of our enemies.

The best line of the speech, by a long shot, was this one: “She believes she is entitled to the office. Her campaign slogan is ‘I’m with her.’ You know what my response to that is? I’m with you: the American people. She thinks it’s all about her. I know it’s all about you – I know it’s all about making America Great Again for All Americans.”

This goes right to the heart of Hillary’s failures as a candidate.

That doesn’t mean Trump’s speech was flawless, by any means. He did his usual caudillo routine in which he represents America’s Great Savior, Hugo Chavez-style (“I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton – only by me”). He sprinkled his speech with the usual Trumpian stylistic twitches (“Jobs, jobs, jobs!”). He mirrored the Bernie Sanders routine on trade and corporatism, even though he’s a full-scale corporatist and knows full well that trade restrictions destroy economies. Lines like this one – “It’s rigged by big businesses who want to leave our country, fire our workers, and sell their products back into the U.S. with absolutely no consequences for them” – insult Americans’ intelligence. His claim that there is “a wave of globalization that wipes out our middle class and our jobs” is utterly asinine. His pledges to end special interest politics ring hollow, given his cozy relationship with politicians for decades, and the fact that he brags about paying them off.

But overall, this was one of Trump’s two best speeches. His other great speech came last week on the heels of the Orlando jihadist attack, regarding the threat of radical Islam.

Two weeks, two great speeches. Teleprompter Trump is better than Unscripted Donald.

And so today, Republicans pray that Teleprompter Trump sticks around, and that Unscripted Donald doesn’t say anything stupid for a few hours, to let this speech work its way into Americans’ consciousness. They hope beyond hope that Trump sticks to the talking points.

None of this will change who Trump is; it doesn’t make Trump conservative, it doesn’t make him palatable, it doesn’t mean his campaign isn’t a disorganized scam, it doesn’t change the fact that Trump once funded Hillary and called her a terrific Secretary of State before deciding to run against her. But the speech does change the narrative. If Trump sticks to attacking Hillary, pro-Trump Republicans will be able to justify their argument that Trump was the only Republican in the field willing to pummel Hillary. And if Trump begins to climb in the polls, pro-Trump Republicans will be able exert renewed pressure on #NeverTrump conservatives. Trump will lock up the convention delegates without hassle.

Now we find out: is this the beginning of the fabled Trump Pivot, or was it just another mirage in a desert of political hot air?

Paul Ryan’s Treason

June 21, 2016

Paul Ryan’s Treason, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 21, 2016

paul_ryan

In an awkward interview with the Huffington Post, House Speaker Paul Ryan threatened to sue Donald Trump if he were to ban Muslim immigration or build a border wall with Mexico. Considering the current track record of suing Obama over abuses of power, this is little more than a confession of impotence.

And yet it’s deeply troubling that a top Republican is willing to go to such lengths to fight for Muslim migration or for that matter illegal immigration in general.

Paul Ryan insists that he will continue to “speak up in defense of our principles, in defense of not just our party’s principles, but our country’s principles”, but it’s telling that these principles seem to involve illegal immigration and Muslim migration.

Since when are either of these representative of our party’s principles or our country’s principles?

And yet they are indeed core principles for Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan had complained that a Muslim ban was, “not reflective of our principles not just as a party but as a country.” Like Obama, Ryan speaks of “our principles” without actually referencing specifics. While a constitutional conservative, speaks in terms of the Constitution, Ryan uses the “values” language of the left which references no laws, only general sentiments attributed to no specific law or document.

Though Paul Ryan claims that he wants to maintain the traditional separation of powers, and quotes the exact basis for it, he seems reluctant to do so when he claims that a Muslim ban would be wrong. Ryan knows quite well that his opposition to a Muslim migration ban is not based on the law. Like his support for illegal alien amnesty, it is based on the values construct of the left and not on the Constitution.

Paul Ryan was a longtime supporter of illegal alien amnesty. Back when amnesty was still being disguised as “immigration reform”, Ryan was a key player in pushing it forward. Ryan was so notorious for his support for illegal alien amnesty that he had to promise not to move forward on it under Obama in order to gain enough support to become Speaker. And yet despite this Ryan continues to sound amnesty notes.

Like most of the left, Paul Ryan describes illegal aliens as “undocumented immigrants.” Last year, he once again endorsed some measure of legalization for illegal aliens. Even now his website’s top 5 issues includes a call for “immigration reform” which remains a euphemism for illegal alien amnesty.

As is typical of stealth amnesty bids, up front are a raft of security measures and at the very back is a plan for more guest workers and finally a call to “give people a chance to get right with the law”.

That is yet another amnesty euphemism.

Paul Ryan’s amnesty pledge expires when Obama leaves office. That means that, if we take his website at its word, he would like to push amnesty measures under the next administration. A few years ago he was anticipating a move on “immigration reform” in 2017. And so it is not surprising that he remains less than fond of any calls to crack down on illegal immigration.

While Paul Ryan has currently been fairly quiet about amnesty, there was a time when he was one of the more vocal national legislators throwing out amnesty talking points about a “broken immigration system” and “de facto amnesty”. Ryan was certainly not the only prominent Republican to climb on board the amnesty express, but he remained aboard it long after it was leaving the station.

Despite the general shift in the GOP, there is no sign that Ryan has abandoned it. Instead he views Obama’s divisive tone as having poisoned the wall on amnesty. He’s still the same politician who complained two years ago, “People say, ‘amnesty!’ No, it’s taking a problem that’s intractable, that’s been around forever, and trying to fix it in a way that as best guarantees as you can that we’re not going to be in the same [situation] ten years from now.”

Trump’s victory has made it quite clear that Ryan’s view of amnesty, once mainstream in the GOP, is now on the outs. If Trump were to win a national election, then the country would have ratified a rejection of amnesty. The thing that Ryan once fought so hard for, turning illegal aliens into guest workers, was thoroughly rejected by Republican voters.

But there is no sign that Ryan is willing to give up or give in. And that is the problem.

Paul Ryan insists that a ban on Muslim migration would be wrong because, “Muslims are our partners.” That would come as news to all the Americans killed at home and abroad by “our partners” from Saudi Arabia to Muslim refugees and terrorists operating in the United States. And yet even after the latest Muslim terrorist attack in Orlando, Paul Ryan shows no sign of being willing to reconsider his position.

And that’s not surprising.

Paul Ryan doesn’t represent any kind of national Republican consensus. Instead he is a vocal and effective spokesman for the point of view of his backers and sponsors. That is why Ryan not only supports illegal alien amnesty, but also backs “sentencing reform”, a euphemism for freeing criminals.

Despite the anti-establishment election, Paul Ryan continues to represent a particular strain of elitist establishment politics which is concerned with the advocacy of very specific and specifically destructive policies without regard to their consequences, whether it involves criminals, illegal aliens or Muslim terrorists. These principles are often put forward as conservative, but in fact they are a particular species of libertarianism that has very little regard for national interests and none for their victims.

Ryan’s support for illegal immigration and Muslim migration is treasonous. And yet the deeper treason is his treason to the ordinary Republicans whose views and interests he simply does not seem to care about. This is a problem that did not begin with this election and is not likely to end with it.

And yet it is a problem that must be confronted.

The GOP came dangerously close to endorsing amnesty because special interest agendas mattered more than national interests and community interests. And we are not out of the woods yet.

Paul Ryan represents everything wrong with allowing a handful of special interests to set the agenda for the GOP. The agenda has been repudiated at the polls, but it will take far more work to repudiate it in the GOP.

On Crime, Trump’s Right and Polifact is Wrong

June 21, 2016

On Crime, Trump’s Right and Polifact is Wrong, Power LinePaul Mirengoff, June 21, 2016

These days, the mainstream media barely pretends to be other than anti-conservative and anti-Trump. But even by the MSM’s revoltingly low standards, Polifact’s analysis of Trump’s statement on crime is a disgrace.

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Polifact, a biased liberal operation that purports to fact-check political claims, recently examined Donald Trump’s statement that “crime is rising.” It found the claim to be false, rating it “pants on fire,” the worst rating these liberals dole out.

But Trump, in this instance, is correct. Crime is rising.

How did Polifact err on such a basic question? It erred by looking at no data past 2014. Sean Kennedy at AEI Ideas blows the whistle.

Trump made his statement on June 7, 2016. Thus, his claim that crime is rising can only be fact-checked by analyzing current data. By failing to do so, Polifact confirmed that it is either incompetent, hopelessly biased, or both.

Kennedy did what Polifact was obligated to do before proclaiming Trump a liar. He looked at data that would illuminate whether crime is increasing.

Specifically, Kennedy examined local agency data for 2016 and compared it to 2014 and 2015 data. He found that violent crime in most major US cities, especially homicide, is up substantially since 2014.

Kennedy also cites a March 2016 Gallup poll finding that 53 percent of Americans “personally worry about crime and violence…a great deal.” That’s up 14 percent since the question was last asked in 2014. This dramatic increase in concern surely reflects a change in the facts on the ground — i.e., increased crime and violence.

But Polifact’s bias and/or incompetence wasn’t limited to its failure to dig up 2016 data. Kennedy notes that the source Polifact did use — the FBI, per its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) database — provided preliminary figures for 2015.

The preliminary 2015 numbers show crime rising in most categories across the country between 2014 and 2015. Violent crime (i.e. murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) is up. The murder rate rose 6.2 percent; rape rose 9.6 percent.

This information was readily available as of January 2016, well before Polifact wrote its June hit piece on Trump.

Why didn’t Polifact use the preliminary 2015 data? The information was, of course, “preliminary.” But it still represented the FBI’s best estimate as to whether crime was increasing as of the beginning of 2016.

This data was sufficient to show that, at a minimum, Trump’s claim that “crime is rising” is plausible. I would say it shows he is probably right (and the 2016 numbers show he is right). Yet Polifact gave Trump’s statement the lowest possible rating for veracity.

These days, the mainstream media barely pretends to be other than anti-conservative and anti-Trump. But even by the MSM’s revoltingly low standards, Polifact’s analysis of Trump’s statement on crime is a disgrace.

Authorities: Man at Vegas rally said he wanted to kill Trump

June 20, 2016

Authorities: Man at Vegas rally said he wanted to kill Trump, AP, June 20, 2016

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal officer says a man arrested at a Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas told authorities he tried to grab an officer’s gun so he could kill the candidate.

A complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Nevada charges Michael Steven Sandford with an act of violence on restricted grounds.

It cites a report by Special Agent Swierkowski, whose first name was not included, saying Sandford told officers he drove from California to kill Trump and went to a Las Vegas gun range the day before to learn to shoot.

Sandford later went to a Trump rally at the Treasure Island Casino and approached a Las Vegas police officer to say he wanted an autograph from Trump.
The report says Sandford was arrested after grabbing the handle of an officer’s gun in an attempt to remove it.

It wasn’t immediately clear if he had an attorney. Las Vegas police say Sandford is 19.

Donald Trump, NRA agree on gun-control scrutiny for terrorist watch list

June 20, 2016

Donald Trump, NRA agree on gun-control scrutiny for terrorist watch list, Washington TimesAndrea Noble and S.A. Miller, June 20, 2016

Trump NRARepublican presidential candidate Donald Trump is introduced by National Rifle Association executive director Chris W. Cox (left) and NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre as he takes the stage to speak at the NRA convention on May 20 in Louisville

Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association smoothed over a hiccup in their alliance Sunday, agreeing that the government’s terrorist watch lists are unreliable and should not be used to revoke Second Amendment rights, a position also being taken by liberal-leaning civil liberties groups not usually allied with the NRA or Mr. Trump.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee and the NRA synchronized their views as the U.S. Senate prepared to vote on Democrat-backed legislation that would do just that. The bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California would ban firearm sales to people on a terrorist watch list or no-fly list. The bill is one of four gun control measures going before the Senate on Monday in response to the terrorist attack last week in Orlando.

All four measures — two Republican and two Democratic — are expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to advance. But the Orlando bloodshed and fresh calls for more gun control laws from President Obama promised to keep the issue at the forefront in Washington and on the campaign trail.

“There is not a difference between what Mr. Trump is saying and what the NRA’s position is. That’s a media-created diversion there,” NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“The FBI should investigate every single person who’s on a terrorist watch list if they try to buy a gun. That’s what they’re doing now,” he said. “If there’s a reason to believe in probable cause that they’re engaged in terrorist activity, they ought to not only be prevented from getting a firearm; they ought to be arrested.”

Mr. Trump raised eyebrows among gun rights advocates when, in response to the Orlando massacre, he pledged to work with the NRA regarding gun sales to people on the government’s famously inaccurate no-fly list.

How the Democrats are Disarming Us

June 20, 2016

How the Democrats are Disarming Us, Front Page MagazineDavid Horowitz, June 20, 2016

obama-wc2 (1)

Reprinted from Breitbart.com

According to a Gallup poll taken in the week after the atrocity in Orlando, only 29% of Democrats thought this was an Islamic terror attack. Fully 60% of all Democrats attributed the attack to “domestic gun violence.” Moreover 42% of independents felt the same way. Only 44% attributed it to the Islamic holy war that has been declared on America and the West.1

How is this possible? During the massacre, the terrorist himself took pains to post messages declaring that his acts were acts of Islamic terror against America. “Now taste the Islamic state vengeance,” one message said. Another warned, “in the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic state in the USA.”2 Moreover, in the days following the attack a dossier of his behavior and associations going back more than fifteen years showed that he saw himself as a warrior for Islam and a jihadist in the making. The FBI had interviewed him twice – once in 2013 after co-workers reported that he made “inflammatory” comments to them about radical Islamic propaganda, and the following year because of ties with a fellow Muslim who traveled to Syria to become a suicide bomber.

How then could 60% of Democrats and 42% of Independents think that the killings in Orlando had nothing to do with radical Islam or Islamic terror? How could they think it was simply a matter of domestic gun violence similar to other mass shootings by deranged individuals whose motives had nothing to do with Islam or the Islamic state? The reason they could be so misled is because the president himself said it had nothing to do with Islam and warned that thinking it did was a form of bigotry that could hurt America – indeed would be a betrayal of America’s true self. He went out of his way to mock Trump who had said that it was radical Islamic terror, and to insinuate that he was a bigot. The president’s disinformation and attack on Trump were seconded and amplified by the Democratic Party and the Democrat’s kept national media, who spent the days after Orlando pushing gun control legislation, and stressing the shooter’s “instability” and the alleged indeterminacy of his motives. And also tarring Trump as a bigot for taking the shooter at his word.

In this we have a microcosm of why all eight domestic terror attacks on Obama’s watch – beginning with the Fort Hood massacre and the Boston Marathon bombing – were carried out by individuals on the FBI’s radar who could have been stopped if the early warning signs of their commitments to the Islamic jihad hadn’t been dismissed.

Political correctness is a euphemism for the active, ideologically motivated denial that has characterized the Democrats’ approach to Islamic terror going back to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In that attack 1,000 people were wounded and six were killed, but president Clinton refused to visit the site, while his administration took the view that the perpetrators were merely individuals who needed to be tried in criminal courts. In fact, they were soldiers in a holy war that radical Islamists had declared against America and the West. 3

Obama’s main concern, which has been manifest in his statements after each incidence of Islamic terror, has been to absolve the Islamists of any responsibility for the attacks. The Ft. Hood massacre was carried out by a disciple of Anwar al-Awlaki, the head of al-Qaeda in Libya, who described himself as a “Muslim Soldier” even though he was a Major in the U.S. army, and said his murders were to avenge the Muslims that America had killed in Afghanistan. Yet the Obama administration dismissed his terrorist act as “workplace violence.” The Obama administration has expunged all references to Islam from terrorist guidelines. Worse it has enjoined the FBI from looking at the religious affiliations and commitments of potential suspects. This is the way the FBI was able to dismiss the warnings from Russian intelligence agents about the Boston Marathon bombers, who were Islamist militants. It is how American immigration officials allowed the Pakistani-born San Bernardino shooter to enter the country, despite her residence in a country that created the Taliban and protected Osama bin Laden, and her association with a terrorist mosque.

This denial is also what has allowed Obama to respond to the Orlando massacre by issuing a million visas to Syrian Muslims, who will not be adequately vetted and will flood this country with individuals whose ranks ISIS and other Islamic terrorist groups have already infiltrated and who may be sympathetic to radical Islamic agendas in very large numbers.4

Obama’s denial of the religious nature of the war that Islamic radicals have declared on America and his ability to require the FBI and other first responders to join in this denial is a form of unilateral disarmament paralleled by his determination to reduce America’s defense forces to their lowest levels since World War II. This denial – shared by the Democratic Party – is why we are losing the war with Islamic fanatics, and why the homeland has become an increasingly dangerous place.

That Obama is able to seduce a very large number of Americans into sharing his denial is fact with ominous implications for the election in November, and for America’s ability to right its current dangerous course. Obama has been abetted in this sinister effort by the feckless leadership of the Republican Party. In the days following the Orlando massacre instead of hammering the president and the Democrats as a unified force, Republicans directed their fire at Donald Trump, joining Democrats in attempting to discredit not only his much needed warning, but his practical recommendations for turning the ship of state around: recognize the religious nature of the war against us; halt immigration from Muslim war zones until a proper vetting process is in place; surveil mosques and other recruitment centers for the jihadist enemy; restore America’s military power.

The self-serving anti-Trump salvos from Paul Ryan and other misguided Republican leaders made the Republican message – gun violence is not the problem, radical Islam is – incoherent or at least so diluted as to allow Obama and the Democrats to prevail in the debate. If the Orlando post-mortem is an indication, the election may not go well in November. If that is the case not only Donald Trump, but America’s hopes for a safer future, will fail.

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1http://www.gallup.com/poll/192842/republicans-democrats-interpret-orlando-incident-differently.aspx

2http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dangerous-denial-just-29-of-democrats-say-orlando-was-an-islamic-terror-attack/

3http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/why-does-obama-keep-missing-red-flags-before-islamic-terror-attacks/

4http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/06/17/obama-admin-pace-issue-one-million-green-cards-migrants-majority-muslim-countries/

Trump Is Right on Profiling

June 20, 2016

Trump Is Right on Profiling, PJ MediaRoger L Simon, June 19, 2016

Terrorism for Dummies

Before we have another Orlando, our politically correct/morally narcissistic leadership must be made to face this reality. Time for our government to allow rational  profiling throughout our institutions and at our borders,  to make life at least somewhat safer for our citizens. We should also be demanding long-run answers to the problem, some strategy. Other than Trump, our politicians have nothing to say — and he isn’t saying enough.

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In the wake of Orlando, the topic of profiling has come up again via Donald Trump and others. Given the horrific extent of the massacre, this is highly understandable, even though profiling has always struck me as an ironic subject for an obvious reasons: everybody already profiles!

Well, maybe not everybody. Some of those we call leaders (presidents, vice presidents, secretaries of state, etc.) — perpetually cosseted by the Secret Service — have the luxury of pontificating in true morally narcissistic fashion about the supposed evils of this activity and demanding their minions follow suit. The rest of us live in the real world. We profile.

Among those who have admitted to profiling are Mr. Rainbow Coalition Jesse Jackson and Fox News’ resident liberal Juan Willams (this cost Williams dearly with NPR, speaking of moral narcissists). Are these men racists?  I think not — although in Jackson’s case, he does his best to exploit racism.

Are you a racist or an Islamophobe or whatever if you feel uneasy when a Middle Eastern-looking man, carrying a backpack or perhaps an instrument case, sits down beside you on a plane? I think not again. It’s just the way things are. You have to deal with them.  If you’re like me, you try to fight your apprehension, try to hold back your judgment — most of the time it’s nothing — but you stay keyed up anyway until you’re relieved to hear the guy next to you is a Portuguese violinist on his way to a recital.

Few of us like to profile, but we have been forced into it, in part by an administration so resistant to reality, so full of its own moral rectitude, it has infected — and to a great degree neutered — the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Dead bodies in San Bernardino and Orlando have been the result. Undoubtedly, there are more to come.

So I had to agree when Donald Trump said on Face the Nation Sunday: “I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense.”

Although this is considered by our media, even Fox News, a “controversial” statement, I don’t think it is. In actuality, an adult should be able to profile without being bigoted — meaning you can vet Muslims more thoroughly for terrorism than you would that little old lady from Pasadena at the same time you can know that not all Muslims are terrorists. That’s what adults are supposed to do — hold conflicting or complex ideas in their heads so they can make mature, unbiased decisions.  I’m sure that’s what most of us do, although our government doesn’t trust us to do it.

Instead, Obama treats us like children, warning us forever about our Islamophobia that does not exist. (I assume that if I know there have been considerably more hate crimes against Jews in the U.S. recently than against Muslims, the president must know that too. He evidently doesn’t care.)

Trump thinks we can learn from Israel, which does a sophisticated form of profiling before you can get on a flight to Tel Aviv.  I’ve been through it several times. They profile everybody really, even nice Jewish boys like me who supposedly love Israel. But I’m not so sure we can learn that much from them.   The very sophistication involved, a highly psychological approach, necessitates an educated employee pool not available to a country the size of ours. Israeli border personnel are closer to MI6 than they are to the TSA. But Trump’s right — we have to do something.

Meanwhile, whether we profile or not, the total number of global deaths due to Islamic fundamentalism continues to grow at an extraordinary pace with no end in sight, indeed with no one even suggesting how we would end it. That religion is in the midst of a nervous breakdown in its collision with modernity that affects all of us and has already destroyed several countries, but we are supposed to ignore it because it is not politically correct to tell the truth. Groups like CAIR — actually an Islamist front — always try to change the subject to Islamophobia, when the real problem is that so few Muslims, moderate or otherwise, are willing to stand up against the fundamentalists in any effective way.

Islam — or radical Islam, if you prefer — has altered our lives beyond recognition. We have been lining up for what seems like forever for security at airports and to have our belongings checked at museums, concerts, the theater, public buildings, etc., etc. Soon enough — and quite reasonably — all night clubs will have scanners. Our shopping malls — perhaps our most vulnerable target — will have to have protection. None of this would be happening, of course, without Islam.  The security is not there to deter Buddhists or Zoroastrians.

Before we have another Orlando, our politically correct/morally narcissistic leadership must be made to face this reality. Time for our government to allow rational  profiling throughout our institutions and at our borders,  to make life at least somewhat safer for our citizens. We should also be demanding long-run answers to the problem, some strategy. Other than Trump, our politicians have nothing to say — and he isn’t saying enough.

(Needless to say, I discount gun control, which will have as much effect on radical Islam as a pea shooter.)

Trump suggests ‘profiling’ in US to stop domestic terrorism

June 19, 2016

Trump suggests ‘profiling’ in U.S. to stop domestic terrorism, Fox News, June 19, 2016

(Most of the articles I have read refer to Trump’s proposal as “racial” profiling. Islam is, of course, not a race. It is a religion, many of the members of which do dreadful things. — DM)

Trump profilingTrump doubles down on Muslim ban following Orlando massacre

Donald Trump suggested Sunday that the U.S. start “profiling” people inside the country to thwart terrorism, calling it a hateful but “common sense” tactic, in the aftermath of recent terror attacks.

“I think profiling is something we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” Trump said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense.”

The presumptive GOP presidential nominee also argued that other countries, including Israel, profile “and they do it successfully.”

Trump, as he has frequently argued, said radical Islam groups are creating “big problems.”

However, he didn’t directly say those groups should be the sole focus of profiling — a strategy in which individuals or groups are targeted for additional law-enforcement scrutiny because of race or other characteristics.

Omar Mateen, the shooter in the June 12 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., was a radicalized Muslim and the subject of two FBI investigations into possible connections to terrorism.

Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State terror group, even during the attack in which he fatally shot 49 people and injured dozens of others inside the gay nightclub before being killed by police.

This is not the first time Trump has made controversial comments related to terrorism and radical Islam, particularly after the Orlando attack and the 2015 Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., strikes, all connected to ISIS and radicalized Muslims.

Trump, a billionaire businessman and first-time candidate, told the Fox Business Network in October 2015 that the U.S. should “absolutely” shut down mosques in the fight against ISIS, if it had the legal authority and as France and Britain have attempted.

And he has been supportive of a post-9/11 effort between the FBI and the New York City police department in which mosques were put under surveillance. The effort apparently ended in 2014 under Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques, because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques,” Trump told MSNBC in November. “In the old days, meaning a while ago, we had great surveillance going on in and around mosques in New York City.”

In the wake of the 2015 attacks and after the Orlando massacre, Trump called for a temporary ban on all Muslims coming into the United States, until the government improved its vetting process.

The idea was widely criticized last year and last week.

“I’ve talked before about how this approach is un-American. It goes against everything we stand for as a country founded on religious freedom. But it is also dangerous,” said presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump’s likely general election rival.

And House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., last week repeated his disapproval of such a ban, saying it was not “in our country’s interests.”