(Mainstream media reports in the United States, and reports elsewhere reliant upon them, seem to affect perceptions in Israel and elsewhere of Israel, Islam, Iran and the Iran Scam. Here’s a question. To what extent do Israeli media mimic the U.S. mainstream media? — DM)
All the news that fits the desired narrative, and none other, shall be reported by the legitimate “news” media.
On February 11, 2013 Vice President Biden said that he and Obama are “counting on…legitimate news media” to help in their gun control efforts.
He said he knew people would continue to “misrepresent” the positions taken by himself and Obama, but that “legitimate news media” would cover them in a way that’s helpful to the administration.
In this post, I use the term “legitimate ‘news’ media” in the same sense that Biden apparently did.
I have been reading Sharyl Attkisson’s November 2014 book Stonewalled. Its thesis is that favored businesses, Government agencies and politicians set the agenda of the legitimate “news” media, which defer to them in what they report and how they report it.
Since Obama’s 2008 nomination and subsequent election, the legitimate “news” media have embraced Him by reporting (or creating) good news for Him and His administration while ignoring or disparaging any reports that they consider inconsistent with their pro- Obama ideological talking points. In doing so, they have relied excessively on administration spokespersons without verifying, independently, what they have been told.
On December 11th, The Washington Times published an article by Monica Crowley titled How do we protect Barack Obama today? It relates to the ideological perspective of the media as related by a broadcast journalist shortly before the 2012 presidential elections.
When I asked her for an example, she replied, “Every morning, we hold a meeting about how to build that evening’s broadcast. We’ve been doing this for decades. Everybody talks about which stories we’re going to air, what the line-up looks like, and which reporters we’ll have live in the field and which ones will be filing taped pieces. In the past, the left-wing bias was always left unspoken. People just ‘got it,’ because they all thought the same. [Emphasis added.]
“Once Obama pulled ahead of Hillary and certainly once he became president,” she said, “the bias came out of the closet. Now, every morning when we meet to discuss that night’s show, they literally say — out loud — ‘How do we protect Barack Obama today?’” [Emphasis added.]
Shocking? No more shocking than any other common but unpleasant reality. And it is congruent with Ms. Attkisson’s multiple accounts in Stonewalled. Less than half way through her book, I have learned more than I had previously understood about what, how and why the media reported — and did not report — on the green scam, the Benghazi scam, the Fast and Furious scam, the IRS scam and others. It’s disgusting but neither shocking nor surprising.
We have a “free press” in the legitimate “news” media. They are free to lie, to accept officially authorized “news” and to reject as not newsworthy or wrong anything which disputes, or is even merely inconsistent with, the prevailing narrative based on the official line.
Here are two interviews with Ms. Attkisson:
Many viewers and readers of the legitimate “news” media seem to be catching on. Perhaps that explains the decline in their numbers of viewers and readers. Do the legitimate “news” media care? They must, because it impacts their bottom lines. Will they continue their march into oblivion by running ever more bland pap while hoping for change they can believe in? Or will they, eventually, begin to report hard news, regardless of whom it might distress?
Please read Stonewalled. Depending on where you live, it may (or may not) be available at your local public library.
Those who find “racist” repression of Blacks in Ferguson, “racist” repression of Arabs in Israel and “racist” repression of Muslims by non-Muslims everywhere have much in common.
Leftist and mainstream media perceptions of “repression” by Ferguson’s White minority of its Black majority, of Israeli “war crimes” against her minority Muslim residents and of the “peaceful” nature of Islam hinge on increasingly common notions: fairness requires inconvenient facts to be altered if possible to suit an ideology while others, inconsistent with the altered facts, must be ignored. We must speak and act with compassion toward and empathy with the oppressed. Only in this way, it is believed, can true fairness and empathetic compassion be achieved. Then, and only then, will we have true justice.
[T]he Big Lie has been installed among us as the primary form of political and cultural address along the entire gamut of disinformation, from outright interment of fact and customizing of inconvenient truths to unmitigated calumny and virulent libel. The Western media and the “progressivist” left-liberal political class have, over the years, incrementally adopted the discursive techniques of totalitarian states and theocratic dispensations. [Emphasis added.]
Please read the whole article.
Perceptions of Ferguson, Missouri
Michael Brown, a Black “gentle giant,” was shot and killed by a “racist” White police officer, Darren Wilson, on August 9th. There were eyewitnesses and many others who claimed to be eyewitnesses but were not. The latter based their accounts on what others had told them and on what they believed might have happened. Rather than select a new grand jury, an existing grand jury was kept in session, apparently to avoid claims that the members of a new jury had been chosen to exonerate Officer Wilson. On November 23rd, the grand jury determined that Officer Wilson would not be charged with a criminal offense under Missouri law. Here’s what happened next. Although the facts presented to the grand jury have been released, the facts matter but little:
The riots went forward as planned; the media steadfastly distributed its prewritten narrative of evil racist white cop murdering innocent young black man. [Emphasis added.]
Please see also this article by Rich Lowry at Politico. His analysis points to this:
This is a terrible tragedy. It isn’t a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened—Michael Brown murdered in cold blood while trying to give up—into a chant (“hands up, don’t shoot”) and then a mini-movement. [Emphasis added.]
When the facts didn’t back their narrative, they dismissed the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. [Emphasis added.]
Beyond that, I don’t consider it necessary to dwell on what happened in Ferguson last August and what happened thereafter, before and after the grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson for the “murder” of “gentle giant” Michael Brown. Most who will read this article are already familiar with what happened; perceptions and their bases are my focus here.
Reports of “racism” and associated violence help to sell print and broadcast advertising, particularly if the reports can be made consistent with the perceptions of audiences: White people are racist and oppress Black people. Hence, most in the mass media rely, consciously or unconsciously, on confirmation bias,
a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.
The “legitimate” media proceeded in similar fashion when George Zimmerman, a “racist” “White Hispanic,” shot and killed a “defenseless” Black “child” in April of 2012. The “legitimate” media changed or ignored facts in their quests to declare Zimmerman guilty, to encourage rioting and to vindicate their own perceptions that Blacks are “different” and that their actions need to be dealt with more leniently than those of others. Please see also this article about a well to do White kid who said that he deserved to be mugged because of his White privilege. Many in the mass media appear to share his perceptions, at least with respect to the mugging of others.
After digesting the factual evidence the Zimmerman trial jury disagreed with the mass media and the assorted race baiters upon whom the mass media feasted and found him not guilty. After digesting the factual evidence, the grand jury — which had three Black members — disagreed about Officer Wilson and declined to indict him.
It has been reported that, following the grand jury’s refusal to indict Officer Wilson, the Obama administration promoted indoctrination of students on the basis that Brown was “a victim of police violence.” Part of the “White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans,” the indoctrination apparently is to include this:
“During the first few weeks of classes, students can create a memorial to Michael Brown on a classroom bulletin board. This activity involves having students use whatever they feel skilled in to create something that would honor Michael Brown and other people who have been victims of police and other violence. Students may choose to draw, write poetry, design art pieces, paint, or collect news clippings. Students can use this opportunity to create a counter-narrative to negative stories and images about Ferguson and Michael Brown, or even to document stories and images they have seen in the media about the case. Engaging in this type of activity allows teachers to understand youth strengths and form classroom solidarity.” [Emphasis added.]
It is important for young people to learn how to make connections between the Michael Brown shooting and similar cases that have emerged in recent history. While a discussion of the Michael Brown shooting and the current events in Ferguson are powerful, conversations about Michael Brown with a consideration of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha Mcbride and other cases that involve similar scenarios place the events in Ferguson in proper context… [Emphasis added.]
Assuming that the report is accurate, is the Obama administration trying to heal racial divides, or to exacerbate them as it has often done?
David Goldman, in an article at PJ Media titled How Far Down Do You Define Deviancy in Ferguson? summed up the positions of the current “civil rights” movement and the consequences were they to be adopted:
Young black men are disproportionately imprisoned. One in three black men have gone to prison at some time in their life. According to the ACLU, one in fifteen black men are incarcerated, vs. one in 106 white men. That by itself is proof of racism; the fact that these individuals were individually prosecuted for individual crimes has no bearing on the matter. All that matters is the outcome. Because the behavior of young black men is not likely to change, what must change is the way that society recognizes crime itself. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
[T]he solution is to decriminalize behavior that all civilized countries have suppressed and punished since the dawn of history. Because felonious behavior is so widespread and the causes of it so intractable, the criminals’ rights movement insists, society “cannot afford to recognize” criminal behavior below a certain threshold. [Emphasis added.]
If America were to accept this logic, civil society would come to an end. The state would abandon its monopoly of violence to street rule. Large parts of America would come to resemble the gang-ruled, lawless streets of Central America, where violent pathology has overwhelmed the state’s capacity to control it, creating in turn a nightmare for America’s enforcement of its own immigration law. [Emphasis added.]
The response of the African-American “civil rights” establishment and the American Left to the verdict in Ferguson came quickly and predictably. Al Sharpton and other racial demagogues urged their followers to take to the streets if anything but a first degree murder indictment was handed down for Officer Darren Wilson. The protestors and rioters were prepared, but Missouri’s governor wasn’t. He failed to call out the National Guard on the day the verdict was released.
What is particularly galling is the argument that the events in Ferguson, and the no bill for Wilson, are a throwback to the segregationist era of the 1950s and 1960s, when the modern civil rights movement engaged in non-violent civil disobedience. “The Movement,” as they called it then, showed the nation and the world the immoral actions of police chief Bull Connor of Birmingham, Alabama, and others of similar ilk, thereby exposing the injustice of the system of segregation — a system based on power and violence, preventing black Americans from enjoying the rights and liberties guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution. [Emphasis added.]
Israel
Just as confirmation bias caused many in Missouri — and also in distant places — to condemn a “racist” White police officer and to preach about the benign nature of his Black “victim,” so many throughout the world blame Israel for everything bad that people do.
I recently wrote an article titled Hamas, Abbas, Obama and Islamic Savagery. It includes this photo of Palestinians celebrating their brethren’s murders of Jews praying in a Jerusalem synagogue:
Recently, there have been many more attacks on Jews in Israel.
Academia, where leftism now prevails, has done much to slander Israel as a wicked apartheid state, more barbaric than Nazi Germany.
This summer’s Israeli incursion, Operation Protective Edge, provided anti-Semites and loathers of the Jewish state with resurgent justifications for assigning the epithet of Nazi on the Jews yet another time, together with oft-heard accusations of “crimes against humanity, “massacres,” genocide,” and, according to recent comments by Turkey’s prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan, in their treatment of the Palestinians, Israel has demonstrated that “. . . their barbarism has surpassed even Hitler’s.”[Emphasis added.]
The Nazification of Israelis—and by extension Jews—is both breathtaking in its moral inversion and cruel in the way it makes the actual victims of the Third Reich’s horrors a modern-day reincarnation of that same barbarity. It is, in the words of Boston University’s Richard Landes, “moral sadism,” a salient example of Holocaust inversion that is at once ahistorical, disingenuous, and grotesque in its moral and factual inaccuracy. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
[They did so] by redefining Israel as the most glaring example of those human predations, what he called “the embodiment of all evil” of the Twentieth Century: apartheid and Nazism. He defined the process of grafting this opprobrium on Israel as “ideological anti-Semitism,” one which “involves the characterization of Israel not only as an apartheid state—and one that must be dismantled as part of the struggle against racism—but as a Nazi one.” [Emphasis added.]
. . . . [O]nce Israel had been tarred with the libels of racism and Nazism, the Jewish state had been made an international outlaw, a pariah, losing its moral right to even exist—exactly, of course, what its foes have consistently sought. “These very labels of Zionism and Israel as ‘racist, apartheid and Nazi’ supply the criminal indictment,” said Cotler. “No further debate is required. The conviction that this triple racism warrants the dismantling of Israel as a moral obligation has been secured. For who would deny that a ‘racist, apartheid, Nazi’ state should not have any right to exist today?” [Emphasis added.]
Does anyone really think that granting, or recognizing, Palestinian statehood will make them more peaceful? On the contrary. From past experience, any time the Palestinians achieve a political goal without effort, they take that as a reward for their violent behaviour and only increase their terrorist activities.
He did not likely make many friends; calling to people’s attention that they are sadly misguided rarely does.
Why are Islamic nations, where apartheid and violence against non-Muslims prevail, subjected to little anger and disdain while Israel, the only free and democratic nation in the entire region, gets nearly all of the anger and disdain? Might this double standard be useful because it caters to the notion that Israel’s freedom and democracy for all of her citizens, including Arabs — particularly along with her technological and financial successes — set her apart? Make her “the Other?” Might it be that Islamic nations, hugely represented at the U.N. and sadly deficient in freedom, democracy and technological prowess, reject Israeli freedom and democracy while envious of Israel’s technological success? They have substantial wealth, but it is largely based on oil and the technology of others. Little of the resulting wealth is shared with their masses.
Islam
That brings us to Islam, the “religion of peace.” According to Obama and other luminaries, the Islamic State is not Islamic. According to Obama no religion — least of all Islam — countenances the violence in which the Islamic State and other comparable Islamic terrorist groups engage. Remember His Eid-al-Fitr message?
While Eid marks the completion of Ramadan, it also celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict, and disease. [Emphasis added.]
In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy. That is why we stand with people of all faiths, here at home and around the world, to protect and advance their rights to prosper, and we welcome their commitment to giving back to their communities. [Emphasis added.]
Interfaith tolerance and respect? The “very fabric of our nation?” “Strengthening the core of our democracy?”
Let’s have an honest discussion about Islam
In Islam, peace can come only after all other religions have been destroyed or subjugated. That Islamic belief now plagues Israel and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Islamic Palestinians who murder Jews are seen as heroes and more are encouraged to do more of the same.
Many Muslims adhere also to the view that the Peace of Islam can come only after other Muslims who profess variant religious doctrines — Sunni vs. Shia for example — have been destroyed or subjugated and become “true” Muslims. Sect vs. sect violence was common throughout the centuries and now seems to be worse and increasing.
That is to be expected, but why do many nations which do not yet have Muslim majorities tend to ignore these Islamic actions and view Islamic slaughter as not characteristics of Islam? Are they merely ignorant about Islam? Have they been fatally infected with multiculturalism and political correctness? Might they even view adherents to Islam as subhumans, whose violence and other depredations are best ignored or tolerated?
Conclusions
It seems reasonable to conclude that the world is spiraling ever deeper into insanity. Until leaders of “the international community,” academia and the mass media revise their views and act on the basis of facts instead of fictions, and on logic rather than on raw emotion coupled with pandering to those blinded by confirmation bias against “the Others,” sanity will continue to be increasingly rare. Insanity will continue to be manifested through violence as it persists and worsens because perceptions drive actions.
These are not optimistic conclusions, because it seems unlikely that “the international community,” academia or the mass media — which tend to proceed in tandem — will reform anytime soon.
Is it the end of Christianity in the Middle East? Could be, he says, at least so far as Iraq is involved:
What is a Christian life there now? The Bishop of Mosul said recently that for the first time in 2,000 years there was no church in Nineveh [an ancient city that is now part of Mosul]. That’s the reality.
It is indeed the reality, and not just in Iraq. And “the West” is silent, as it has been so often when it faces evil far from its own boundaries. Meanwhile, [Anglican Canon Andrew White] has moved on, to the one country in the Middle East that provides its citizens with religious freedom and the security to practice their faith. He’s in Jerusalem, trying to achieve reconciliation between Muslim and Jewish religious leaders. It’s not an altogether new venture for him; in his last days in Baghdad, he was the “rabbi” for the city’s remaining six Iraqi Jews. And back at that conference in Copenhagen, the guest of honor at the closing banquet was the former chief rabbi of Denmark. [Emphasis added.]
Guess what? During the week, all the Iraqi religious leaders arranged for private meetings with said rabbi. Why? They’d looked at the map, and they knew that if things were going to be ok for them, they’d need help from the Jews in Israel. Andrew knew it too. He still knows it. That’s no doubt why he’s working in Jerusalem. [Emphasis added.]
Imagine, if you can, a fairy tale where a mother teaches her toddler that wolves are simply big, furry, friendly dogs that love a good cuddle. Although she and her child live in a village, nestled against a hillside, in a lush valley where humans and wolves exist in close proximity to each other, she doesn’t warn her little girl that wolves are dangerous.
Instead, as well as teaching her daughter that wolves are just big, furry, friendly dogs that love a good cuddle, she also teaches her that it is deeply wrong, even evil, to think the opposite. She explains that this is a bigoted way of thinking. It is what the people of the village thought in the past, and it led to warfare and unbridled hatred towards noble, peaceful wolves. So, although now and again news spreads throughout the village that a wolf has taken a child in the night, the mother continues to assure her daughter that it is the worst thing imaginable to even think about being wary of wolves.
It might make for a marginally entertaining fairy-tale: one that I may write some day, but the mother would surely be the villain of the story. In that fairy tale rather than referring to the Big Bad Wolf, it would be more fitting to refer to the Big Bad Mum.
Something similar is happening today in the West in relation to Islam. We see the effect of it whenever its followers do something so atrociously violent that the media cannot ignore it, and our rulers rush out to defend the reputation of Islam by telling us that it is a religion of peace. It would be “Islamophobic” not to think so, and there is nothing worse than that. However, if a Muslim does something good, the good act can, and most likely will, be attributed to Islam. The implication being that Islam is good, and that it only inspires good acts in people.
I am not saying that all Muslims are violent or dangerous. What I am saying is that this new dogma being adopted in the West – that there is nothing negative, violent or threatening in the doctrine of Islam – is not just false, it is also dangerous. To cajole people into thinking that Islam poses no danger to them on penalty of being deemed “Islamophobic” is to force people to irrationally view something which is a potential danger to them as harmless. This puts lives at risk. Since one of the prime duties of government is to protect the lives of the governed, this is a dereliction of duty on the part of our rulers.
But it is more than that, because it also shows that, although they like to portray themselves as people who care about the weak and vulnerable in society, the opposite is true. They do not in fact care about their people – weak, vulnerable or otherwise. What they do care about is maintaining the status of their ideology and quelling opposition to the type of society that they have engineered through mass immigration. If their citizens, old and young, male and female, suffer or die as a result, that is a price worth paying. They are worthy sacrifices to the Moloch that is multiculturalism.
This point was made clear recently here in England where staff members at Rotherham council were reported to have been reluctant to identify the ethnic origin of child abusers for fear of being considered “racist”. They would no doubt have been equally nervous about identifying the religion to which these men belonged for fear of being considered “Islamophobic”. It was later reported that child abuse files went missing from the council’s archives.
Of course there are many peaceful Muslims who do not do everything that their religion demands, but there are many Muslims that are not peaceful and who do follow their religion to the letter. The current UK terrorist “threat level” is set at “severe”, which means that “a terrorist attack is highly likely”. Which supposedly means that one should be particularly vigilant as to “suspicious” behaviour. At the same time, since Islam is a “religion of peace” from which only good actions can possibly come forth, people like the staff members at Rotherham council would supposedly be reluctant to report any “suspicious” behaviour on the part of a Muslim for fear of being deemed “Islamophobic”.
It is the same insidious dogma which has led to the kidnapping and/or murder of well-meaning Westerners attempting to help people in the Middle East, the most recent example of which is the murder of American citizen Peter Kassig. The American president has already taken the opportunity to use the beheading of Mr Kassig by a Muslim who justified his actions in Islamic terms, and who belonged to a group calling itself the Islamic State, to defend the reputation of Islam. President Obama is reported as having said: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own”. He failed to highlight the fact that Peter Kassig “adopted” Islam while a captive whose life was at the mercy of his Muslim captors. He also failed to highlight the fact that Mr Kassig had “adopted” the only religion that mandates death for those who apostatise from it.
Others who have followed President Obama’s way of thinking include two female Italian aid workers, Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo, kidnapped by Muslims in northern Syria. And Theo Padnos, whose story I recommend that you read in its entirety. It shows precisely how the “Islam is a religion of peace” dogma renders people unable to recognise danger.
And, lest anyone should think that this is just a European problem, in the US children are also being indoctrinated in school to believe that Islam is a religion of peace.
We should observe not only the strange phenomenon of Western leaders rushing to defend the reputation of Islam, but also that the West is subtly introducing blasphemy laws when it comes to that religion, under the guise of “hate-speech” laws. In parts of the world where Muslims are a majority, it is anathema to say anything that may tarnish Islam’s reputation. The reputation of the ideology must be maintained at all costs. It is even more important than the human being. As such, the human being may be punished or even destroyed for the sake of preserving the status of the doctrine. That is the kind of society that we are drifting towards. It goes against the worldview developed in the West where the individual is central and respect for the individual trumps – or used to trump – any other ideology, thus producing the notion of freedom of speech. Respect for the individual and respect for freedom of speech are two sides of the same coin.
Leaders in Muslim-majority countries and Islamic leaders in this country fear that Muslims will connect the dots by looking at the effect of Islam across the modern world and reach the common-sense conclusion that it is not a good religion and they will therefore abandon it. Leaders in the West fear that their citizens will look at the effect of Islam across the modern world and reach the conclusion that is not a good religion, and therefore that the multicultural project which feeds its growth here in the West is not a good thing either. Both know that, once the illusions they have fostered are shattered, it will be impossible to reconstruct them.
(Some of this is directly pertinent to Israel and the Middle-East, some is pertinent only as U.S. politics affect both. It’s intended to be humorous, in a macabre way. — DM)
The Obama Nation’s multicultural society has become so politically correct and otherwise obtuse that words and phrases are used in any odd ways that may be desired — just as Humpty Dumpty did.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Here are a few examples and explanations.
Religion of peace. Amish? Quakers? Of course not: it’s Islam. Although the Islamic State, according to Obama, is not “Islamic,” the Islamic Republic of Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, et al — which are “Islamic” — are among the world’s foremost sponsors of Islamic terrorism. However, that is irrelevant because Muslims would be offended.
Here’s Andrew Klavan on how to survive an Islamic Quaker massacre:
Islamic extremists are extreme because they follow the Koran and demand Shari Law. So do “moderate Muslims.”
Bitter clingers are Christians in fly-over country who support the Second Amendment, while revering and trying to live according to their Bibles. Islamists who cling to their scimitars, guns and suicide vests, while revering and trying to live by their Korans and Sharia law, are not bitter clingers.
That’s racist! Unless you happen to be Black and therefore not conservative, see Great Uniter, below.
The science is settled and the debate is over. Ipse dixit.
Honest discussion. According to Attorney General Holder, Federal Dick, we need to have an honest discussion about race. “Honest” means agreeing with and favoring his people above all others. Or something.
Gender identity. Don’t like your gender? Try another; it’s probably on the house.
The war on women has long been fought byRepublican scoundrels, not by Democrats like Billie BJ Clinton or various Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey. The (non Islamic) Islamic State and other (non Islamic) freaks may be fighting a war on women and girls, whom they capture as sex slaves, use and sell. However, few engaged in fierce combat against the war on women seem to notice or care, so the vile war on women must still be exclusively a Republican thing.
Feminism rejects the vast powers that men have over women by, among many other things, demanding free contraception and abortion on request. Although opposed by some bitter clingers, both are needed to empower women and girls to have sex as often and with as many men as they may desire, with no illnesses (such as pregnancy) or other adverse consequences. Is lesbianism the cure? Should it replace heterosexual nymphomania?
Truth. “Beauty is truth, Truth is beauty. This is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know.” Truth is beautiful only if it “sounds good” and can become a helpful sound bite to be memorized and used effortlessly.
Party of billionaires. This refers to Republicans. It does not mean Democrats who pay big bucks (up to $32,000 or more in some cases) to hear Obama tell them how filthy rich Republicans are ruining the country and how wonderful He is.
As Gwyneth Paltrow, an impoverished working mother who only “makes $16 million per movie,” said at a recent Obama fundraiser thrown at her humble shanty in California, Obama is
a president who would be studied for generations, and a role model for everyone of this generation.
“It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,” she told the crowd.
Having been reminded of His greatness, attendees contribute more big bucks. It’s a good thing Obama is not a narcissist.
Great uniter refers to Obama, who has done more to unite Blacks against Whites than any other American President. (Conservative Blacks, such as Allen West, Ben Carson and others are White, not Black.) Great progress, Big Guy! Oh. He’s also a like, way cool military strategist.
Oh well. Try not to laugh cry; it may cause even more global warming, cooling, climate change and other demons not yet exploited discovered. As Jon Carson at BarackObama.com advised my spam filter just today,
We’re going to win on climate change. We don’t really have another option.
The question is how long will it take for the other side to take this fight seriously — to push the climate change deniers out of the way, and to defeat the powerful interest groups protecting the status quo.
We’re not waiting.
Climate change is already affecting Americans’ lives now — droughts, wildfires, and super storms have devastated every corner of the country.
“Fat cats” such as Tom Steyer, who is using his billions to impact multiple races in key states in ways that no ordinary voter can? Of course not. He’s the right kind of fat cat, meaning he is on the left. Plus, he controls NextGen and pays Lehane a lot of money to come up with its strategies. The libertarian-minded Koch brothers are the wrong kind of fat cats, so the billionaire-funded NextGen, led by consummate Beltway insider Chris Lehane, is pushing Democrat candidates to attack them. [Emphasis added.]
According to a linked article at Politico, the NextGen strategy of demonizing Republican “billionaires” seems to be working. So is the NextGen strategy:
According to the Lehane [NextGen] memo:
“In virtually every state NextGen is electorally engaged, there is an issue where the Republican candidate”s anti-climate, anti-basic science beliefs has manifested itself in policies with harmful consequences for all voters in state, including Republican voters. Our Republican Haircut Strategy – a precision focus on a specific harm in target Republican markets – we will seek to degrade Republican performance.” [Emphasis added.]
There’s a lot of loaded language in that — “anti-climate, anti-basic science beliefs” could describe anyone who ignores the fact that the climate scare-mongers keep being proved wrong, and that the data shows that the earth has not warmed in the past 15 to 18 years. Climate hysterics systematically rule out the role that the Sun plays in climate stability and change. Which is a very large thing to omit. And we cannot control it with any carbon trade scheme, tax, regulatory regime or any other means. [Emphasis added.]
Having nothing substantive to say, the Dems apparently attract voters by misleading and scaring them. The farce continues apace.
(The rather “defeatist” views expressed here are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic. — DM)
I posted this article from Israel Hayom at Warsclerotic, of which I am an editor. The article argues that to fight the Islamic State we need to change our rules of engagement. The parenthetical comment at the top of the Warsclerotic post is mine and is reproduced below.
(Could the U.S. and her allies put effective boots on the ground, or have the boots and the nation become too multiculturally damaged to do what needs to be done? More than the rules of war needs to change.
When the U.S. responded to the Russian supplied, trained and initially led North Korean invasion on June 25, 1950, we had been at peace for only five years. We were tired and wanted peace to continue but war came to us unexpectedly; it should have been expected. Our peacetime boots were badly supplied, trained and, more often than not, led. Some but not enough officers and senior noncoms had experienced war and knew what to do. Very few in the lower enlisted ranks had or did and “bug out” became a much used phrase. The NK troops had been hardened in combat, were adequately supplied, well trained and well led. Those who did not fight were executed. They pushed us back nearly to Pusan. By mid-September, we had more better led and trained troops; they had also become very angry at the NK troops, and intense anger is a powerful force multiplier. The NK tide was reversed, for a couple of years.
Were we now to try to put green boots on the ground to do what is necessary against well trained, led and financed Islamic troops, a majority of the public would oppose it and it would be politically unpopular. Were we to put boots on the ground anyway, they would likely need to undergo lengthy and deadly immersion-style baptism by fire. There would be substantial casualties and the opposition would increase.
Should we do it anyway if only the rules of engagement change? Can we, or is that now a fantasy? — DM)
Can the Obama Nation field a well trained, led and supplied contingent, of adequate size, to defeat the “non-Islamic” Islamic State, its cohorts and friends? Or are we too multicultural and decadent? Is our multicultural focus more on such nonsense as, for only one example, “gender equality” in the military than on winning wars?
I have few if any concerns about real gender equality. Kurdish women fighting against the Islamic State have disabused me of most that I once had. Please watch the video embedded below. One of the commanders was asked why she joked and smiled when around her troops. She answered, “I have to in order to keep their morale high.” That is a statement one would expect from a seasoned and competent commander.
However, when politically correct gender “equality” means that military training and other standards are lowered so that young ladies can serve, it becomes gender inequality and diminishes the effectiveness of our military. It would be only slightly less absurd, and only slightly less dangerous — to them and to those around them — to send such green “boots” on the ground into combat wearing high heel shoes and carrying only their purses.
Compare the Kurdish women fighters to this specimen of our deranged, multicultural and politically correct society:
Back to the Korea “police action:” President Truman had served in World War I as an artillery battery commander and rose to colonel in the reserves. Although a far from perfect Commander in Chief, he knew more about war than Obama could ever learn. Obama has no desire to learn; the “smartest person” in any room, He commonly ignores advice from those who have learned. Truman knew about the need for good military discipline, Obama has very little discipline himself and does not.
We fared poorly during the June 25 through mid-September period in South Korea. Could we now expect green boots on the ground to do even as well if plucked from a peaceful, multicultural environment and sent to fight against the Islamic State, et al, no less brutal than were the North Korean and later Chinese forces? Is there sufficient reason to try, now, even though our “kinetic activity” can not be successful with air power alone?
Do we even know the enemy, when Obama and others continue to refer to Islam as the “Religion of Peace” and praise its contributions to American culture? From Obama’s 2014 Eid Greeting:
While Eid marks the completion of Ramadan, it also celebrates the common values that unite us in our humanity and reinforces the obligations that people of all faiths have to each other, especially those impacted by poverty, conflict, and disease.
In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy. [Emphasis added.]
When the Islamic State is erroneously deemed non-Islamic? When we continue to label Islamic terrorism at home as “workplace violence?” When, shortly after the recent Oklahoma beheading by an Islamist, Obama sends a special messenger from the White House to deliver a belated note of thanks to the mosque he attended for “helping rebuild the Moore community after a destructive tornado tore through the city in 2013.” [Emphasis added.]
“Your service is a powerful example of the powerful roots of the Abrahamic faiths and how our communities can come together with shared peace with dignity and a sense of justice,” President Barack Obama said.
The Imam, the leader of the prayer service, stated during his sermon that the Muslim faith has been called a “cancer that needs to be cut off from the American society.
It seems unlikely, at best, that we — or at least too many of us — know the enemy that cannot be named.
According to the linked Israel Hayom article,
Islamic State is not an organization that can be defeated with slow, uncertain, limited action. It cannot be defeated without “boots on the ground.” It is imperative to hit them with force; with waves of growing intensity. They must be attacked continuously, without breaks, without cease-fires and with the utmost determination. [Emphasis added.]
I agree, and wish that we could field a fighting force of that caliber to move quickly and effectively, before too many get clobbered and before we have to bring them all home, many in body bags. We seem less able to do that now than we were during the opening months of the “police action” in Korea. Since we can’t defeat the Islamic State, et al, with “slow, uncertain, limited action,” can we dispatch boots in the tens of thousands to do the job effectively? For the reasons suggested above, that seems even less likely.
Unfortunately, fantasy now trumps reality; until that changes, we should not send green boots into combat; we have few others to send. We. Are. Screwed.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
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