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Freedom of Speech is not Free; it is Beyond Price

June 26, 2016

Freedom of Speech is not Free; it is Beyond Price, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 25, 2016

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

Accurate speech, considered “Islamophobic” or otherwise offensive to some, is now deemed “hateful” and punishable under distorted visions of law or university rules. So, apparently is the mention of God. Sometimes, those who dare to speak are silenced before they even begin.

The First Amendment provides,

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Congress is not permitted to ignore the First Amendment, but the U.S. Airforce and other government entities appear to have done so. Recently, Senior Master Sergeant Oscar Rodriguez, Jr. (ret.) was forcibly removed from a private retirement ceremony at an Air Force base because he was about to deliver his flag folding speech. The retiree had heard the speech previously and had asked Rodriguez to deliver it.

When Roberson’s unit commander discovered that Rodriguez would be delivering the flag-folding speech, which mentions “God,” during the ceremony, he attempted to prevent Rodriguez from attending. After learning that he lacked authority to prevent Rodriguez from attending, the commander then told Roberson that Rodriguez could not give the speech. Rodriguez asked Roberson what he should do, and Roberson responded that it was his personal desire that Rodriguez give the flag-folding speech as planned. . . .

Roberson and Rodriguez tried to clear the speech through higher authorities at Travis Air Force Base, even offering to place notices on the door informing guests that the word “God” would be mentioned. They never received a response from the authorities. As an Air Force veteran himself, Rodriguez stood firm on his commitment to Roberson. [Emphasis added.]

Here is the speech, as Rodriguez had given it previously:

What an offensive word! True, it’s in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, but that’s gotta go. Thought experiment: what if Rodriguez had said “Allah” rather than “God?” Might that have been viewed as sufficiently inclusive to be acceptable? Why not? In its “unredacted” version of the Islamist Orlando shooter’s phone calls, the Department of Justice translated “Allah” into “God.” The DOJ probably didn’t want to hurt Islamists’ feelings by suggesting that the Obama administration thinks that Allah and hence Islamists have anything to do with terrorism.

Are we just beginning to enter a new age of fascism? No, we are already well into it.

Here’s a Bill Whittle segment about Obama, Guns, Islam and Orlando

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked “civil rights” organization, recently published an “Islamophobia” report. In Obama’s America, CAIR and its Islamist affiliates are the Government’s principal “go to” organizations for limiting access to the Muslim community in “countering violent extremism” efforts and during investigations of terror incidents.

According to CAIR, “Islamophobic” utterances are “hate speech;” it has provided a list of “Islamophobes” and their organizations. Below are comments about the list by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a reformist Muslim. He, as well as The Clarion Project (also an advocate for Islamic reform), are on CAIR’s list of “Islamophobes.”

Europe and its Western culture, and now to a somewhat lesser extent our own American culture (such as it is) are being surrendered to Islam. Allied with government authorities, our leftist “friends” are in the forefront of the war on free speech.

[I]n recent years, we’ve witnessed an unrelenting assault on free speech with a concerted effort by the regressive Left to curtail thought and restrict the free exchange of ideas. Last week, I wrote about campus terrorism and how conservatives and others who maintain views that are inconsistent with the leftist narrative have been subjected to campaigns of harassment and abuse by campus hooligans.

Often university officials are apathetic, turning a blind eye to these transgressions, while in other universities the administration is complicit by instructing campus police to stand down, allowing the agitators free reign to shut down speaking engagements through use of bullying tactics. In at least two instances, university presidents were forced to issue rather craven apologies to an alliance of leftists and Islamists for having the temerity to defend the right to free speech.

This disturbing trend of muzzling free speech has now substantially broadened to include criminalizing speech that issues challenges to the so-called science of climate change. Some seventeen left-leaning state attorneys general have launched investigative and intrusive probes against Exxon Mobil and conservative groups because of their involvement in debunking alarmist claims of imminent doom issued by hysterical climate change proponents.

The ringleaders of this anti-free speech witch hunt include Eric Schneiderman (D-New York) and Claude Walker (I-Virgin Islands). At a recent speech at the Bloomberg’s Big Law Business Summit, Schneiderman was dismissive of his critics, accusing them of “First Amendment opportunism.” The more he spoke the more he sounded like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s thuggish dictator who utilized the vast resources of the state to silence anyone who disagreed with him. [Emphasis added.]

I wish I could laugh at the next video. It’s funny in a way, but also deadly serious.

As the “best and brightest” from our top universities come of age and control “our” government, will the First Amendment be their principal target for destruction? Or will they also pursue with unabated vigor their war on the Second Amendment? Here is the text of the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Our British cousins just voted to leave the European Union to restore democracy at home.

For my final broadcast to the nation on the eve of Britain’s Independence Day, the BBC asked me to imagine myself as one of the courtiers to whom Her Majesty had recently asked the question, “In one minute, give three reasons for your opinion on whether my United Kingdom should remain in or leave the European Union.”

My three reasons for departure, in strict order of precedence, were Democracy, Democracy, and Democracy. For the so-called “European Parliament” is no Parliament. It is a mere duma. It lacks even the power to bring forward a bill, and the 28 faceless, unelected, omnipotent Kommissars – the official German name for the shadowy Commissioners who exercise the supreme lawmaking power that was once vested in our elected Parliament – have the power, under the Treaty of Maastricht, to meet behind closed doors to override in secret any decision of that “Parliament” at will, and even to issue “Commission Regulations” that bypass it altogether. [Emphasis added.]

Rather like our own distended Federal and State bureaucracies.

I concluded my one-minute broadcast with these words: “Your Majesty, with my humble duty, I was born in a democracy; I do not live in one; but I am determined to die in one.”  [Emphasis added.]

And now I shall die in one. In the words of William Pitt the Younger after the defeat of Napoleon, “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save Europe by her example.”

. . . .

The people have spoken. And the democratic spirit that inspired just over half the people of Britain to vote for national independence has its roots in the passionate devotion of the Founding Fathers of the United States to democracy. Our former colony showed us the way. Today, then, an even more heartfelt than usual “God bless America!” [Emphasis added.]

I am less than sanguine that we remain as deserving of the high praise the author offers. In any event, we have another version of Brexit coming up in November. Will we be as brave and as far-sighted as our founding fathers were long ago and as the Brits were a couple of days ago?

Quo vadis?

Categories: Academia, BREXIT, Britain, Christianity, Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Department of Justice, European Union, Fascism, Federal Government, First Amendment, Gun control, Hate speech, Islam - submission, Islam and terrorism, Islamic reformation, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Leftists, Obama, Obama's America, U.S. Military, Zuhdi Jasser
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Daniel Horowitz: There Is a Fifth Column in the American Government

June 22, 2016

Daniel Horowitz: There Is a Fifth Column in the American Government

by Dan Riehl

21 Jun 2016Washington, DC

Source: Daniel Horowitz: There Is a Fifth Column in the American Government – Breitbart

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Asked by Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon if there is “essentially a fifth column in the national security and homeland security apparatus of the United States,” Daniel Horowitz, senior editor at Conservative Review, said, “Oh yeah, this is nothing new. It started pretty much in the second term of the Bush administration.”

Horowitz continued:

There’s something called CVE, Countering Violent Extremism. It’s not just an Orwellian term to expunge any mention of Islamic terror and make it about a kind of generic extremism, including so called Right Wing extremism; it’s a term of art. It is a very specific term concocted by the Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR. They have successfully introduced this lexicon in our DHS [Department of Homeland Security]. These people are most commonly found in the Homeland Security Advisory Council, as well as the civil rights and civil liberties division of DHS.

Breitbart News recently highlighted the issue with a piece drawn from a Horowitz item at Conservative Review, “The GOP’s Muslim Brotherhood-Inspired Post-Orlando Agenda”:

Next, Republicans could bring legislation to the House and Senate floors, finally designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, thereby freeing up law enforcement do [sic] expunge them from our government and go after the mosques controlled by Brotherhood front groups. This would cut to the foundation of the radicalization problem inside Muslim communities in this country. It would also remove the Muslim Brotherhood foxes guarding the hen house within our sensitive counterterrorism advisory boards for the FBI and DHS. The bill designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terror group [H.R. 3892] already passed the House Judiciary Committee in February.

But no. Republicans will have none of that. Instead, Republicans plan to package a bunch of nothingburger bills that, in best-case scenario, completely distracts from the core problem, and in the worst case, actually promotes the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

Horowitz’s interview on Breitbart News Daily Tuesday also highlighted:

If you had a situation where there’s rampant, ubiquitous arson all over the country, and you find out it’s the firefighters committing the arson, and they’re everywhere, and they’re being cheered on, and then a group of people who are cheering them on successfully say, “You know what: we need to ban fire in your  kitchen.” And they successfully make the narrative all that. This type of fire. What about fire for someone who’s mentally ill? And nobody is talking about the issues. We literally had a debate all of yesterday, and we’re going to have it all of today, probably for the rest of the week, about how much … how many people do we want to ban from getting a gun. Meanwhile, we are bringing the problem to our shores. A) Through immigration. Then once they’re here – and some of them have been here for several decades – we have the Muslim Brotherhood radicalizing them, writing their textbooks in their schools, obviously sympathizing with the terrorists, making these guys want to identify with them in the mosques and all the community centers. And then most importantly, or most egregiously, they are in every level of our counterterrorism and Homeland Security apparatus: DHS, FBI, State Department.

Republicans, as their response to Orlando, they crafted legislation using the term Countering Violent Extremism, giving them more resources to further the goals and objectives of CVE. So they basically empowered Obama and legitimized this program.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

 

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Cartoons of the Day

June 21, 2016

Via The Jewish Press

No-Profiling-Allowed

 

H/t Kingjester’s Blog

bigot-alert-li-600

 

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

Isl State

 

H/t Freedom is Just Another Word

Islamic Scholar

 

Motive

 

NRA

Categories: Christians, Gun control, Humor, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Profiling
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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 Times,  Andrea 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.

Categories: Donald Trump, Gun control, Islamic terrorism, NRA, Terrorism watch lists, U.S. Congress
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U.S. Attorney General Scrubs Orlando 911 Transcripts

June 20, 2016

U.S. Attorney General Scrubs Orlando 911 Transcripts, Clarion Project, Meira Svirsky, June 20, 2016

Orlando-Attack-HP_3

In an interview with NBC, we learned from the U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch that only a partial transcript of the 911 calls made by the Orlando shooter will be released by the FBI to the public.

Reminiscent of other administration scrubbings, what will be omitted from the transcripts will be references to the motive of the shooter – namely, his pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State as well as his Islamist grievances about American foreign policy vis-à-vis Muslim countries.

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch said. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”

Yet earlier when announcing the release of the transcripts, Lynch told CNN, “It’s been our goal to get as much information into the public domain as possible, so people can understand, as we do, possibly what motivated this killer, what led him to this place, and also provide us with information.”

When pressed by CNN what those transcripts will tell us about his motivation, Lynch calmly answers, “He talked about his pledges of allegiance to a terrorist group. He talked about his motivations for why he was claiming at that time he was committing this horrific act. He talked about American policy…”

Yet, those passages will be the very ones that will be redacted, as Lynch explained in an Orwellian fashion on CNN, “The reason why we’re going to limit these transcripts is to avoid re-victimizing those who went through this horror.”

To the contrary.

The immediate victims of this attack as well as the larger American public deserve to know and be able to discuss the motivations of this attack.

It is hard to imagine how speaking openly about the motive – so that steps can be made to prevent such an attack from happening again – can “re-victimize” the victims. Loved ones have been lost. Nothing will bring them back. Others have been injured – most likely maimed for life both physically and psychologically.

Nothing will make that horror go away.

What will help both the victims and the public at large is trying knowing that proper steps have been taken to prevent such a horror from happening again, and that justice will ultimately prevail.

As pointed out by Daniel Greenfield in an article titled, “Islamophobia Kills,” a culture has been created by the Obama administration along with organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) that has made Americans afraid to call out potential killers for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim racists — Islamophobes.

In the case of the Orlando shooter, when Mateen was reported by a fellow employee for his homophobic and racist comments while working for at G4S Security, the company refused to take action because Mateen was Muslim and did not want to be accused of being Islamophobic.  The employee, Daniel Gilroy, a former police officer who described Mateen as “unhinged and untable,” ended up quitting his own job to avoid Mateen after Mateen began stalking him.

Gilroy said the attack by Maten did not come as a surprise to him.

Later, when he was being investigated by the FBI, Mateen claimed he was reacting to Islamophobic comments by his co-workers. The FBI later concluded that Mateen’s professed Al Qaeda ties and terrorist threats were reactions to “being marginalized because of his Muslim faith.”

We saw a similar refusal to report suspicious activity with the San Bernadino killers. Neighbors noticed suspicious activity but didn’t report it for fear of being labeled anti-Muslim racists — Islamophobes.

The Fort Hood killer, Nidal Hasan, was also on the FBI’s radar. As Greenfield notes, “Nidal Hasan handed out business cards announcing that he was a Jihadist. He delivered a presentation justifying suicide bombings, but no action was taken. Like Omar [Mateen], the FBI was aware of Hasan. It knew that he was talking to Al Qaeda bigwig Anwar Al-Awlaki, yet nothing was done. Instead of worrying about his future victims, the FBI was concerned that investigating him and interviewing him would ‘harm Hasan’s career’.”

Greenfield adds, “One of his classmates later said that the military authorities ‘don’t want to say anything because it would be considered questioning somebody’s religious belief, or they’re afraid of an equal opportunity lawsuit.’”

An interesting poll taken in the wake of the Orlando attack shows just how far this “see something, say nothing” mentality has taken hold in America. When asked if the Orlando incident was more a function of Islamic terrorism or gun violence, 60 percent of Democratic voters answered gun violence, while only 20 percent said Islamic terrorism. (Of Republican voters, 79 percent answered Islamic terrorism.)

While it is true that a man with Mateen’s history should never have been able to have bought a gun (and this in itself is a travesty of the intent of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution), the gun he used was the physical facilitator of his Islamist ideology.

“Re-victimization,” in the words of U.S. Attorney General Lynch, will apply to all of us if the Islamist ideology and motivations of these killers are not openly addressed, taken seriously and made as the basis of a plan of action to counteract them.

In addition to creating an open season for Islamist attacks, ultimately the strategy of the administration will backfire. As noted by former Islamist radical Maajid Nawaz, “If we refuse to isolate, name and shame Islamist extremism, from fear of increasing anti-Muslim bigotry, we only increase anti-Muslim bigotry.“

Categories: CAIR, Censorship, Democrats, Gun control, Islamic State, Islamic terrorism, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, national security, Obama administration, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Orlando massacre, Political correctness, US Attorney General
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How the Democrats are Disarming Us

June 20, 2016

How the Democrats are Disarming Us, Front Page Magazine, David 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.

______________________

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/

Categories: Democrats, Donald Trump, Gun control, Homeland Security, Islamic immigration, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamophobia, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Political correctness, Republican establishment
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Cartoon of the Day

June 19, 2016

H/t Joopklepzeiker

Guns did it

Categories: Gun control, Humor, Islamic terrorism
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Cartoons of the Day

June 18, 2016

H/t Power Line

Trust-More-than-Hillary-copy

 

Media-Assymetry-copy

 

Pass-Laws-copy

 

Gun-Laws-copy

 

Categories: Donald Trump, Gun control, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Media
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Trump rattles Obama on radical Islam

June 16, 2016

Trump rattles Obama on radical Islam, Israel Hayom, Richard Baehr, June 16, 2016

Trump’s critique of the Obama/Hillary Clinton policy on immigration, domestic intelligence gathering, fighting the Islamic State group (or ISIL as the president insists on calling the organization) and protecting homeland security clearly struck a nerve. Trump laid out what should be obvious: Radical Islamists despise gays, Jews and Christians. Islam as generally practiced in large swaths of the globe is extremely bigoted and accepting of violence against non-believers. The West has a much bigger problem than 100,000 active jihadis spread around the globe. There are many millions of radical Islamists.

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

It has been a while since President Barack Obama was so visibly angry on camera.

When Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Obama lost his restrained cool composure for a few seconds. When discussing a few cases in which African-American men or teens were shot by police, he was also a bit enraged, noting that any of those boys could have been his son (as could of course the 6,000 or more African-American men and boys shot by other African-American men on the streets of American cities each year, who go unmentioned by the president except as a prop to support gun control).

Then came the Orlando slaughter of members of the LGBT community over the weekend, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump lost no time tying the attack to the Obama administration’s policy failures. This was simply too much for the president, whose tantrum suggested an inability to accept criticism (especially not from Trump) or admit failure.

Trump’s critique of the Obama/Hillary Clinton policy on immigration, domestic intelligence gathering, fighting the Islamic State group (or ISIL as the president insists on calling the organization) and protecting homeland security clearly struck a nerve. Trump laid out what should be obvious: Radical Islamists despise gays, Jews and Christians. Islam as generally practiced in large swaths of the globe is extremely bigoted and accepting of violence against non-believers. The West has a much bigger problem than 100,000 active jihadis spread around the globe. There are many millions of radical Islamists.

Obama is fiercely protective of his legacy and actions, and seemingly unable to deal with being reminded about parts of his record that are nothing short of abject failures. Has Obama kept the American homeland safer than his predecessor? Has Obama’s withdrawal of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan led to a more peaceful region? Has Obama contributed to the carnage in Syria, Iraq and Libya by his actions or inactions? Has Obama demonstrated weakness abroad and at home by failing even to identify that we face not just random terrorists, but killers tied to a radical strand of Islam, which has rapidly gained adherents all over the Muslim world the last half century, and whose members now control a significant number of Muslim majority countries, including our newest ally Iran? Are people really stupid enough to buy into an argument that the country will be safer and groups like Islamic State more easily defeated so long as Obama never says the words radical Islam? Is that the key recruiting tool that groups like Islamic State have been lacking so far, hence their failure to attract new holy warriors from the West or the Middle East?

Obama’s temper tantrum on Tuesday was much more about reacting to criticism of his record than Trump’s controversial call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to America. Part of the Obama attack on Trump was also of course a feature of a presidential campaign, in which Democrats now have their presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton. Full fire on Trump, whether or not he says something new, will be part of the daily news cycle for the next five months, highlighted by a liberal press corps worshipful and adoring of both Obama and Clinton. The press is behaving this year as if it is doing sacred work by preventing Trump from winning.

Trump’s address in New Hampshire on Monday occurred less than two days after the Orlando mass murder committed by an American-born Muslim, who shot people in the head at short range while simultaneously declaring his allegiance to Islamic State and talking to police during the siege. He was married to a Palestinian woman who helped him scout out targets and dropped him off at the club prior to the attack, but never considered alerting authorities, and who may be indicted as an accomplice for the slaughter. His father claims to be the president of Afghanistan and states that his son was angered when he saw two gay men kissing on a street in Miami. The father says his son’s actions were unnecessary, since God will deal with gays. Afghanistan, the birthplace of Mateen’s parents, is one of the many Muslim majority countries where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Among the family members, the father rates as the “moderate Muslim” — he is O.K. with dead gays, but did not personally kill them or facilitate their murder.

The facts above are all pretty well known, including that Mateen was on the FBI radar as a possible threat twice earlier. But these facts have been utterly ignored as part of the ferocious pushback from the Obama administration and the Left to explain what happened. This is a troublesome attack for the Left — a group of individuals, mostly Latino members of the LGBT community in Orlando, were gunned down by a Muslim. Muslims and gays are two core constituency groups for the Democratic Party, the party that invented identity politics and believes it can win campaigns now and in the future by stroking the various racial/religious/ethnic/nationality groups that lean their way.

The pushback has been designed as a misdirection strategy, to make this horrible attack about anything but radical Islam. The killer was gender-confused. He was a lone wolf. He was deranged. Christians hate gays too (Sally Kohn) and their rhetoric probably inspired the killer (the ACLU). All religions have violent members (Julia Ioffe). This could not have happened had there been stricter gun controls in place in Florida (everybody in the Democratic Party and the mainstream media). This was gun violence, no different than Sandy Hook or Columbine.

So far, the pushback seems to be working. Unlike the primary campaign, when Trump seemed to have the airwaves to himself (good for audience size and advertising rates), now his critics are getting plenty of time and exposure to blast him, with favorable comments by major media personalities always preceding or following the political attacks on him by Obama or Clinton. Trump noted yesterday that Obama seemed angrier at him than he ever has been at terrorists who killed Americans. That is undoubtedly true. After every prior attack before San Bernardino last December, the president could show up at the funeral ceremony, express his sympathies, call for all of us to love one another and heal, and bash the National Rifle Association and Republicans for resisting commonsense gun laws. San Bernardino upset the pattern: The killers were Muslims, and the victims were not a core Democratic constituency, but really a cross-sample of the community. Obama skipped an appearance after this attack.

Americans feel less safe today than they did eight years ago. It is likely that Israeli-type security measures to guard public places will be far more prominent in years to come, especially given that there may be liability exposure for negligence if such places do not hire guards and attacks then occur.

But Israel’s lesson is more than just the need for security — it is that vigilance is a permanent feature of our modern, open societies. A few killers can do immense damage, and in America there is a real needle-in-the-haystack problem.

Categories: 2016 elections, Donald Trump, Gun control, Hillary Clinton, Islam and homosexuals, Islam and terrorism, Islamism, Islamists, Islamists in America, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's legacy, Orlando massacre, Radical Islam
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Cartoons of the Day

June 16, 2016

H/t Vermont Loon Watch

blame video

 

extreme-guns

Categories: Blame the video, Gun control, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Obama and guns
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