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February 2016

Iowa Strengthens Republicans, Weakens Democrats Bad news for the Left and good news for the GOP. Daniel Greenfield

Iowa taught two hard election lessons tonight. You can’t win without organization and you can’t win without enthusiasm.

Hillary Clinton came into Iowa with all the organization in the world, but none of the enthusiasm. It will take time to determine whether she managed to eke out a tiny victory against a senescent Socialist, but her shrill speech and deranged expression, eyes wild, draped in blood-red, were not those of a winner.

Bernie Sanders had poor organization, but plenty of enthusiasm. And that paid off. 43% of Iowa caucus goers identified as Socialists and 53% as politically correct. No matter how far to the left Hillary rushed, she couldn’t narrow that enthusiasm gap because she is fundamentally inauthentic.

Organization may have bought her a narrow win. Maybe. But it can’t buy her enthusiasm. And that will be a big problem for her in a general election.

On the Republican side of the dial, enthusiasm without organization also proved to be a disaster. Trump’s campaign had plenty of enthusiasm and was ahead in the polls, but it lacked the organization to capitalize on the enthusiasm and all the free publicity. Rubio had some organization and enthusiasm and came in third. Ted Cruz had the best combination of organization and enthusiasm and came in first.

U of Kentucky Offers ‘Taco Literacy’ Course Taco-identity politics! By Katherine Timpf

The University of Kentucky is offering a course titled “Taco Literacy: Public Advocacy and Mexican Food in the U.S. South ” where students will examine the social and racial issues surrounding tacos.

Or, as the course’s website puts it, “how food literacies situate different spaces, identities, and forms of knowledge.”

“This class allows our students to explore the issues of immigration, inequality, workers, intercultural communication, and literacy through the prism of food,” the course’s professor, Steven Alvarez, told Vice.

This existence of such a course isn’t surprising; tacos are a very controversial subject these days — and plenty of people have gotten into trouble for handling the (apparently) sensitive issue in an (apparently) insensitive way.

A few examples:

In 2013, Northwestern University’s Hispanic/Latino Alliance wrote a letter warning students not to eat tacos on Cinco de Mayo because that could make some students feel “unsafe.”

In 2014, California State University – Fullerton’s chapter of Alpha Delta Pi sorority faced “serious sanctions” from the school for hosting a Taco Tuesday event where students wore sombreros because that’s “culturally insensitive attire.”

Op-Ed: “Europe, learn from Israel!”: Exclusive interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali Bravery is too mild a term for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Giulio Meotti, himself a fighter for truth, talks to her about reforming Islam.

When Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamist on a street in Amsterdam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali could not even attend the funeral because she would have put the lives of others at risk. So the Dutch intelligence agreed to take her to the morgue. The next day, bodyguards accompanied her from her home and gave her three hours to pack and leave. From there she went to the air base at Valkenburg, near The Hague, where she would be embark on a plane. The portholes were closed, they told her not to approach them nor go near the door. The plane was full of soldiers. Hirsi Ali was leaving a country at war. They landed at a military base in Maine, in the United States. This is how the love affair between America and the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust began. A story that continues to this very day.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is still a shadow. But her voice at the telephone is clear, tough, cool. It is that of a young Somali woman who has undergone genital mutilation, who has lived in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, before being betrothed to a Canadian cousin she had never seen before. Hirsi Ali escaped from Germany to the Netherlands.

She worked as an interpreter in the Islamic Dutch ghettos, she graduated, became a Liberal MP, helped Van Gogh to make the film “Submission” and then disappeared. Now she talks with me about Europe from her think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Hirsi Ali recently released her third book on Islam, “Heretic”, an optimistic book on the reform of Islam.

The Case Against Imposing Middle Class Values Robert Weissberg

A strange debate over policing is currently occurring in many large cities. On one side are defenders of “broken windows” policing—cracking down on “little things” like public urination, aggressive panhandling, graffiti, sleeping in doorways and multiple similar offenses which will ultimately reduce more serious offenses. Specifically, a would-be armed robber feels free to commit his crime when he sees a neighborhood rife with vandalism, garbage on the street etc. Moreover, arresting those who don’t pay their bus or subway fares or otherwise commit minor crimes helps apprehend miscreants wanted for more serious offenses.

Nevertheless, crime reduction successes aside, there is growing pressure to roll back broken windows, especially in poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods. In some instances the call is for less aggressive policing—cops should just ignore sleeping drunks in doorways and reduce “stop and frisk.” In New York City, however, the anti-broken windows sentiment focuses on the laws themselves. The police currently ignore those possessing 25 grams or less of marijuana. And further reductions are in the works as the City Council debates downgrading several “quality of life” laws, notably public urination, excessive noise and littering, into civil, not criminal offenses and with reduced penalties.

One argument against aggressive enforcement is that it over-burdens the courts while multiplying potentially troubling resident/police encounters. But more pressing is that “nuisance” law enforcement disproportionally penalizes blacks and Hispanics. After all, few rich whites deal pot in public parks or jump subway turnstiles. In a sense, enforcing broken windows policing is part of a larger effort to equalize an allegedly racially unfair judicial system, for example, reducing the stiff penalties for crack cocaine (favored by African Americans) versus lighter punishment for the powdered cocaine used by whites.

Why would anybody prefer a disorderly environment that breeds more serious criminal behavior? Who wants to stroll through a park filled with small-time drug dealers, snoozing drunks and confrontational beggars?

Let me suggest an awkward, almost unspeakable answer to this question: “quality of life” standards differ across American society and an insufferable public nuisance for some is tolerable for others. Arguing about broken windows is part of our ongoing culture war debate. In particular, critics of broken windows insist that the policy, as currently applied, rests on white middle-class values and they are correct. One only has to observe life in cities populated by large numbers of underclass African Americans, e.g., Detroit, Newark, and East St. Louis among others. Here there is no clamor for broken windows policing and it almost seems that resident want to live in an environment filled with low-level crime, graffiti, open drug dealing and all the rest targeted by broken windows policing. Conversely, enforcing broken windows is irrelevant in upscale largely white communities like Scarsdale NY.

College Program: Follow These Five Steps Before Kissing Someone or It’s Sexual Assault By Katherine Timpf

The University of Southern California hosted a “Consent Carnival” where it taught students that there’s a five-step process they must follow before kissing someone in order for it to not be considered sexual assault

In fact, the checklist also states that following these steps just once is not enough. No, you have to follow them every time you kiss someone, even if you’ve kissed them before.

The exhibit, called “Kissing Booth,” offered students Hershey’s kisses glued on to little white pieces of paper with the words “what exactly does it mean to . . . ‘consent’ to a kiss?” and the following five steps:

Affirmative: We’re really excited to share this kiss with you and we’re letting you know!

Coherent: We’re present and able to recognize exactly what’s happening when we give this kiss to you.

Willing: We made the decision to give you this kiss ourselves, without pressure or manipulation from you or anybody else.

Ongoing: Should you come back for another kiss, check in to see if we’d still like to give you one.

Mutual: Sure, we offered you a kiss, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept it. Coming over to our table doesn’t forfeit your right to say no.

So, in other words: If you are kissing someone, but stop for a half a millisecond to breathe, you have to step back and say “can I kiss you again?” before continuing.

How reasonable and normal and romantic!

Donald Trump’s Business Career Has Been One of Bullying Ordinary Citizens By Mark Antonio Wright

Donald Trump’s pitch to American voters can be summed up as “I’ve been wheeling and dealing all my life. In pursuit of personal advancement, I have made ‘great deals’ to build my company and my net worth. Elect me president of the United States and I will place those talents and services at your disposal.”

To many, it’s a compelling argument. Rather than another weak-kneed politician, America would have a CEO president — a titan of industry who could run a tight ship; a Gordon Gekko out to make America strong and rich again.

But how many Americans are aware of the grimy details of Trump’s famously #winning record?

And how many know that Donald J. Trump’s vaunted “business” career is marked less by innovative, hard-charging business acumen, and more by good old-fashioned bullying? As one might expect, Trump claims to represent the interests of the blue-collar citizenry of this country. But his business record reveals a man with a penchant for persecuting the little man — or even the little old lady:

Trump Asks the Government to Take Out an Atlantic City Widow

If there was ever an example of a caddish play, it was Trump’s persecution of five-foot-three-inch-tall Atlantic City widow, Vera Coking.

Ex-Spies Say That Clinton’s Illegal Server Triggered Widespread Devastation By Deroy Murdock

Three veterans of American intelligence are horrified by the havoc that they believe former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton caused through her epic abuse of state secrets in the E-Mailgate scandal.

“If there really were SAP [special-access programs] material on her server, consider the implications,” a former U.S. intelligence officer tells me. He refers to the “several dozen” messages marked TOP SECRET/SAP that I. Charles McCullough III, inspector general for the intelligence community, reports were on the private server at Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., 267 miles north of the State Department. Special-access programs are America’s most clandestine activities. Their revelation could damage national security severely and possibly get people killed.

In the anonymous words of this one-time American intelligence professional, here is some of the devastation likely caused by Clinton’s exposure of SAP secrets:

Intel officers responsible for those programs must be alerted.
Once alerted that SAP was mishandled and on a system that has been attacked, it is only prudent to end those programs.
What does ending those programs mean? Depending on the SAP involved, it could mean redoing war plans, terminating ongoing covert actions, rethinking how the exposed covert actions must be done and executing on that new plan, or, if it reveals a source, removing that source from his environment.
That has a significant impact. Presume, if you will, that it was a source. If that source were providing intel of such value that it rose to the SecState, now we’ve lost that source.
Intel officers care about their sources, and for two reasons. One, we’re human beings. We don’t want those assisting us and our country to be hurt, even though we recognize the danger in which they are placing themselves. Two, the business model doesn’t work very well if sources think they’ll be outed. The US intel community already has so much trouble in that regard due to Edward Snowden and Bradley [now Chelsea] Manning. This just compounds it. Think about the next meeting between a prospective source and a CIA case officer trying to recruit that source to risk his/her life for the United States: “Are you sure a high-level official won’t out me?”

Jubilant Sanders Supporters Jeer Clinton’s ‘Victory’ Speech after Iowa Tie By Brendan Bordelon —

Des Moines, Iowa — Hillary Clinton’s victory speech Monday night didn’t go over very well here at the Airport Holiday Inn, where Bernie Sanders’s campaign was holding its own victory rally.

“I’m a progressive who gets things done!” she said, before deafening boos drowned out the televisions playing her speech.

“You’re no f***ing progressive!” one man shouted indignantly. “No no no no no!” yelled another. “Turn her off!” The crowd soon broke into a chant of “She’s a liar! She’s a liar! She’s a liar!”

Rowdy as they may have been in making it, Sanders’s supporters had a point. When Clinton took the stage to declare victory, she and Sanders were within 0.2 percentage points of each other. Clinton performed slightly better in rural counties, while Sanders beat her by a slim margin in urban areas. Both seem set to leave Iowa with 21 delegates to their names — and Clinton won at least two Democratic precincts by a coin toss. If Iowa was a victory for the once-inevitable Democratic front-runner, it was a Pyrrhic one.

Sanders certainly thought so. Though he stopped short of declaring victory in his own speech, his enthusiasm could not be contained. “We went up against the most powerful political organization in the United States of America,” he said, before declaring the race a virtual tie. “I think the people of Iowa have sent a very profound message to the political establishment, to the economic establishment, and by the way, to the media establishment,” he said, drawing thunderous applause.

The Rubio Comeback By Alexis Levinson

Des Moines — It’s all relative. That’s been the operating theory of Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, which has confounded both political analysts and the press. And yet Rubio’s team has been firm in its belief that, by under-promising and over-delivering, it can generate the sort of excitement, energy, and yes, actual delegates needed to capture the Republican nomination. They even thought that by notching a strong third-place finish, with over 23 percent of the vote, Rubio would emerge from the Iowa caucuses on Monday evening with more momentum that the winner, Ted Cruz.

That’s why Rubio, who nearly caught the longtime Iowa front runner, Donald Trump, who finished just a point ahead of him, walked on stage to deliver a victory speech here in Des Moines on Monday. “This is the moment they said would never happen,” he declared as he took the stage at the Marriott hotel downtown.

It was a moment the polls had not predicted, and a scenario that Rubio’s advisers had intentionally waved off in the days before the caucuses, when they told reporters they were hoping to reach the high teens.

And so, while Cruz may have won the caucuses, which he needed to do, Rubio did something his campaign considers more important: He defied expectations.

David Archibald Killing Islamists Cost-Effectively

It makes little sense to squander a $250,000 missile on a simple truck, but that is how the US and its allies have been conducting their war against ISIS. There is a better and cheaper to rid the world of jihadis, plus a simple strategy to make sure they turn up for their execution.
In HG Wells’The Shape of Things to Come, published in 1933, the Air Police of the World State establish an air base in Basra, the city in southern Iraq, in 1979 and set about eliminating the Moslem religion by aerial bombardment. About 40 years behind schedule, something like that has been instituted. A number of countries now have aircraft based in the region and are bombarding the world’s most hardcore Islamists, the immolators of Islamic State.

Until Russia joined the effort in 2015, that effort was ineffectual by design. The United States has been spending US$11 million per day in wearing out their fighter aircraft and depleting war stocks of precision guided munitions. Australia has been doing the same, with expenditure appropriately at one-tenth the US level. Islamic State is aware that they are doing their bit to help bankrupt the United States, with one of their videos noting that Maverick missiles cost US$250,000 each while Islamic State uses bullets costing US$0.50 each.

The US rules of engagement are hampered by a desire to not kill civilians. As Dave Deptula, a former US Air Force deputy chief of staff for Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance and who served as the principal attack planner for the Operation Desert Storm air campaign, notes,

“There is little morality inherent in a campaign approach that limits the use of airpower to avoid the possibility of collateral damage when it ensures the certainty of continued Islamic State crimes against humanity. Today’s coalition leaders should factor into their casualty-avoidance calculus how many of the Islamic State’s intentional murders of innocents would be avoided by rapidly collapsing the structural elements of the Islamic State that the coalition now allows to operate out of excessive concern of inadvertent civilian deaths.”