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April 2016

MY SAY :WHEREFORE IS THIS CANDIDATE DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHERS? BRYAN MAST FOR CONGRESS R-DISTRICT 18 FLORIDA

“I will serve you in Congress like I served you on the battlefield…without regard for personal gain and without regard for personal sacrifice.”After graduating from South Christian High School in 1999, Mast followed in his father’s footsteps and enlisted in the military, where for over 12 years, Brian Mast served our country as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Brian’s service also included the honor of serving under the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) as a bomb disposal expert. Working under JSOC meant that Brian fought at the tip of the spear for the U.S. military in the ongoing war against radical Islamic terrorism. Being a bomb technician in this high level of special operations came with the responsibility of protecting his fellow soldiers from the wars most deadly enemy, the improvised explosive device (IED). For Mast this meant putting himself directly in the line of fire without the use of bomb suits or robots.

While on his last deployment in Afghanistan, Mast was tasked with protecting his brothers from IED’s on a nightly basis. While he was able to detect and destroy most of these IED’s, the very last IED Mast found resulted in him sustaining catastrophic injuries, which included the loss of both his legs.As a result of his service and sacrifice to our country, Mast was awarded medals for Valor, Merit, and Sacrifice, to include The Bronze Star Medal, The Army Commendation Medal for Valor, The Purple Heart Medal, and The Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

While recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., Mast’s focus was singular: get better and get back to serving America, which is exactly what he did. Each day for him consisted of 8 hours of grueling physical therapy, after which he would also provide his requested expertise to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), all on top of his ongoing military duties.

Mast recently donned an army uniform again in a show of support for the nation of Israel and the freedom it represents in the Middle East and around the world, as he volunteered along side the Israeli Defensive Forces (IDF).

The Self-Contradictory Liberals by Denis MacEoin

Many liberals — not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, white people and other supposed public enemies — are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, often in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.

These liberals repeatedly contradict their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.

It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere “whitewashing” to cover Israel’s original “sin” of being Jewish.

Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought and even gave their lives.

Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women’s rights — a remarkable step for the world’s best-known human rights agency.

It is no secret that politicians on both the “right” and “left” lie, dissemble, equivocate, misrepresent, misinform, falsify, whitewash and cover up. Not even the noble and honest Cicero was immune to fudging and shifting sides. It is the nature of politics. For much of the time we put up with it until it grows so far-fetched, we can no longer shut our eyes and let ourselves be lulled into further acquiescence. We all put up with this, do our best to spot the lies, or rely on investigative journalists to dig beneath the surface of what governments claim or their opponents hide.

Son of Saul: The Holocaust Seen Anew László Nemes’s first film brings a new perspective on to the Holocaust. By Thomas S. Hibbs

Son of Saul, the first film (to be released next week on DVD) of László Nemes — he both directed and co-wrote it, and it won both the grand prize at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film — is the latest in a seemingly endless string of Holocaust films. However, both in its peculiar plot — which focuses exclusively on the story of one man, Saul, brilliantly performed by Géza Röhrig — and in its cinematography — a hand-held, mobile camera that remains persistently and tightly focused on Saul — it marks out its own territory. The film is simultaneously an immersive, physically taxing experience of life in a camp and a self-conscious reflection on the conditions of, and motives for, Holocaust movies.

Saul is distinctive in a number of ways. Consider, for example, its focus on one man. As Nemes observes in a brief scene analysis of the film’s opening segment, this is the “story of one man,” Saul, who has “become almost like a robot.” Saul is a Sonderkommando, whom Nemes describes thus:

The Sonderkommandos were a group of prisoners who were actually separated from the rest of the other prisoners — male prisoners who were forced to assist the Nazis in the extermination process. These were the prisoners who had to accompany the deported people to the gas chamber and then take out their corpses and burn the corpses in the ovens at the crematorium and then scatter the ashes. So these were the people who were at the heart of the extermination machine. They were, in exchange, better fed and better clothed, but they knew that they would be liquidated in a few months [NPR interview, “Fresh Air”].​

In preparation for the film, Nemes worked his way through volumes of testimonies, known as the Scrolls of Auschwitz, from members of this group.

Because the Sonderkommandos had intermediate status between the Nazis and their fellow Jews, and because their jobs afforded them greater liberty of movement than the other prisoners, the film’s concentration on Saul offers a compressed and highly particularized access to the entire camp. Early in the film, Saul observes a Nazi doctor standing over the body of a young boy who has inexplicably survived the gas chamber. As the doctor calmly smothers the boy to death, he orders an autopsy. It is a mark of the morally topsy-turvy world of the camp that an autopsy is necessary to determine, not the cause of death, but the cause of survival. His attention riveted on the boy’s body, Saul asks another worker in the camp to hide the body so that he can find a rabbi to say Kaddish and provide a proper burial. Saul’s motives are mysterious. He repeatedly claims the boy is his son, even as others counter: “You don’t have a son.” Saul is as mechanical in his burial quest as he is in his assigned duties in the camp, and that raises a basic question about his mission — whether it marks a kind of transcendence of, or at least an ennobling rebellion against, the dehumanization of the camp, or whether it is merely a mechanized obsession rendered absurd and even futile by the very existence of the camps. Revolt pervades the conversations of the Sonderkommandos, who hatch plots to try to undermine the Nazis. (There was in fact a Sonderkommando rebellion at Auschwitz in 1944.)

Because it never leaves him, the camera forces viewers to come to terms with Saul’s pursuit. The film’s director of photography, Mátyás Erdély, employs two techniques: Besides the hand-held camera, he uses shallow focus, which leaves everything beyond the center of the frame blurry. The jittery, mobile camera is unsettling. That the camera remains fixed on Saul creates a nervous uncertainty in the viewer, who longs not just for the camera to be still but also for it to show us what Saul sees, or at least to provide a wider context for Saul’s movements and facial expressions. Nemes himself notes that the film deliberately excludes location images. There are no long train tracks leading into the concentration camp or signs indicating arrival at Auschwitz.

The result is that the film is continuously disorienting and physically exhausting, almost sickening. We hear screams, moans, and screeches; we see indistinctly the piles of mutilated bodies; and we feel the encroachment, on one side, of the lurking guards and, on the other, of the mounting piles of ashes. What we see and hear most is the non-stop work of the Sonderkommandos: the scrubbing of the crematoria, the shoveling of ashes, and the transporting of carts full of what the Nazis call “pieces.”

White Lies Matter By Matthew Continetti

How bad is Hillary Clinton’s image? This bad:

Fifty-six percent of Americans view her unfavorably, according to the Huffington Post pollster trend.

One-third of New York Democratic primary voters say she is neither honest nor trustworthy.

Her image, writes Dan Balz, “is at or near record lows among major demographic groups.”

Like, all of them.

Among men, she is at minus 40. Among women, she is at minus 9. Among whites, she is at minus 39. Among white women, she is at minus 25. Among white men, she is 17 positive, 72 negative. Her favorability among whites at this point in the election cycle is worse than President Obama’s ever has been. . . . Among African Americans nationally the NBC–Wall Street Journal poll shows her with a net positive of 51 points. But that’s down 13 points from her first-quarter average and is about at her lowest ever. Among Latinos, her net positive is just two points, down from plus 21 points during the first quarter.

Emphasis mine. No doubt some of this degradation is related to a primary that has turned out to be much more competitive than Clinton imagined. But it’s also worth asking why that campaign has lasted so much longer than we assumed.

A lot of the reason is Clinton: her tin ear, her aloofness, her phony eagerness to please, her suspicion of the press and of outsiders, her — let us say –complicated relationship with the truth, the blithe way in which she dissembles and deceives.

Over the course of three decades in public life Hillary Clinton has misspoken and misled the public and mismanaged herself and her team to such a degree that voters cannot help noticing. Yes, many of her falsehoods are white lies. But white lies accumulate. They matter. Not only do they harm the truth. They are turning Clinton into one of the least popular candidates in history.

Since 1998 Clinton has blamed her poor reputation on the vast right-wing conspiracy. Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, the health-care disaster — it was all the fault of the Republicans. What’s forgotten is that Clinton has been lying in the service of her ambitions — most notably by protecting her husband from the truth of his infidelities — since long before Bill ran for president. Nor can she blame conservatives for her failure to win the Democratic nomination eight years ago. Hillary can’t help being secretive and deceptive. It’s her nature.

First, Let’s Get the Facts on Saudis and Iranian Involvement in 9/11 By Andrew C. McCarthy

The 9/11 attacks were not civil torts. They were acts of war. It is important to keep that fact in the front of our minds as we press for long-overdue disclosure of evidence linking the Saudi Arabian government to the mass murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, to say nothing of the even more overdue investigation of Iran’s contributory role — an investigation that should have been in high gear immediately after the planes struck their targets.

Over the years in these pages, we have catalogued the damage done to national security by regarding international terrorism as a mere law-enforcement problem — the 1990s Clinton counterterrorism paradigm that President Obama has gradually reinstated. We haven’t much considered, though, another problem with thinking about violent jihadism as a litigation matter: It leads us to lose perspective about who was attacked, and why.

Much as our hearts ache for the victims whose lives were lost, and for the families whose lives were ripped apart, 9/11 was not principally an attack on the victims and their families. It was an attack on the United States of America. It was a stealth combat operation against the American people, all of us, by foreign enemies who had quite publicly declared war on our nation. Those killed and wounded are more accurately thought of as casualties than as victims.

This is why it is so unfortunate that the drive to get public accountability for the attacks has been intertwined with the effort to get financial compensation for the families by way of civil lawsuits against complicit nations.

Don’t get me wrong: All of us should demand that state sponsors of terrorism be made to pay dearly for their atrocities – although, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit, legislation permitting victims to sue is a counterproductive way to go about this. But for all the incalculable pain and suffering inflicted on our fallen fellow Americans and their families, the laudable desire to see them awarded hefty money damages is, at best, a secondary priority.

GOP Delegates Getting Death Threats From Trump Supporters By Rick Moran

I’m so glad The Donald brings out the best in his supporters.

Politico:

First it was an email warning Steve House, the Colorado GOP chairman, to hide his family members and “pray you make it to Cleveland.” Then there was the angry man who called his cell phone and told him to put a gun down his throat.

“He said, ‘I’ll call back in two minutes and if you’re still there, I’ll come over and help you’,” House recalled.

Since Donald Trump came up empty in his quest for delegates at the Republican state assembly in Colorado Springs nearly two weeks ago, his angry supporters have responded to Trump’s own claims of a “rigged” nomination process by lashing out at Republican National Committee delegates that they believe won’t support Trump at the party’s convention — including House.

The mild-mannered chairman estimates he’s gotten between 4,000 and 5,000 calls on his cell phone. Many, he says, have ended with productive conversations. He’s referred the more threatening, violent calls to police. His cell phone is still buzzing this week, as he attends the RNC quarterly meetings in Florida, and he’s not the only one.

In hotel hallways and across dinner tables, many party leaders attending this week’s meetings shared similar stories. One party chair says a Trump supporter recently got in his face and promised “bloodshed” if he didn’t win the GOP nomination. An Indiana delegate who criticized Trump received a note warning against “traditional burial” that ended with, “We are watching you.”

The threats come months ahead of a possible contested convention, where Trump is all-but certain to enter with a plurality of delegates bound to him on the first ballot, but he could lose support on subsequent ballots as rules will allow delegates to vote however they choose. And although the harassers are typically anonymous, many party leaders on the receiving end of these threats hold Trump himself at least partly responsible, viewing the intimidation efforts as a natural and obvious outgrowth of the candidate’s incendiary rhetoric.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

I understand that Trump’s supporters — and most Americans — are angry. But this is something unique to the Trump campaign: the overt threat of physical violence that surrounds the candidate.

About Obama’s Receding Tide of War… By Claudia Rosett

Years ago, looking out at the Pacific surf from a beach in Chile, a friend — alert to the ways of tsunamis — gave me some advice about what to do if suddenly the water all went away. “Run. Run for your life. Because it’s all coming back.”

That advice has come to mind all too often since President Obama made his 2012 reelection campaign proclamations about the receding tide of war. Not that the tide of war has receded anywhere except perhaps in the fantasies of Obama and his followers. But after more than seven years of U.S. policy predicated on such propaganda, it’s getting ever harder to read the daily headlines without the sense that there’s a deluge coming our way.

Just a modest sampling of some of the latest warning signs:

— Russian warplanes have been demonstrating that they can with impunity buzz our military aircraft and ships. Which is by now no surprise, because Russian President Vladimir Putin has already learned — in the flexible era of the Obama “reset” — that the U.S. is no serious obstacle to such stunts as Russia swiping the entire territory of Crimea from Ukraine, moving back into the Middle East, propping up Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and offering fugitive Edward Snowden a home after the grand hack of the National Security Agency.

— China, while brushing off U.S. protests, keeps pushing its power plays and territorial grabs in East Asia — and has just landed a military jet on an island it has built, complete with runway, in the South China Sea.

— Iran, having pocketed the Obama-legacy rotten nuclear deal, has continued testing ballistic missiles, with Iran’s Fars News Agency advertising that two of the missiles launched just last month were emblazoned in Hebrew with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out.” Presumably these missiles are being developed just in case Iran feels a need to propel toward a target some highly unpeaceful products of its “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program? Meantime, Iran is wielding the nuclear agreement itself as a threat. Just this past week, we had the head of Iran’s Central Bank in Washington threatening that Iran will walk away from Obama’s cherished nuclear deal unless the Obama administration provides yet more concessions — in this instance, a U.S. welcome mat for Iran’s banking transactions, so Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, can avail itself of easy access to dollars.

— Saudi authorities have been threatening that if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi government to be held responsible for any part in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they will dump hundreds of billions worth of U.S. assets. (What’s most arresting here is less the prospect of a self-defeating Saudi fire sale on U.S. assets than the reality that the Saudis — beset by everything from relatively low oil prices to regional tumult, including an aggressively expansionist Iran — feel free to try to bully the U.S.).

Obama Kicks Off Meetings with Cameron with a Couple Prince Tracks By Bridget Johnson

At a London press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron today, President Obama said the death of Prince is a “remarkable loss.”

The White House put out a statement Thursday after the music legend’s body was found at his studio compound outside of Minneapolis.

“Michelle and I join millions of fans from around the world in mourning the sudden death of Prince,” the statement from Obama said. “Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. R&B. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer.”
Today, Obama was asked what made him a fan.

“I love Prince because he put out great music and he was a great performer. I didn’t not know him well. He came to perform at the White House last year and was extraordinary and creative and original and full of energy,” Obama replied.

“And so, it is a remarkable loss. And I’m staying at Wyndfield House, the U.S. Ambassador’s residence. It so happens our ambassador has a turntable and so this morning we played ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Delirious,’ just to get warmed up before we left the house for important bilateral meetings like this,” the president quipped.

Obama paid tribute not only to Prince but the Queen, saying his London visit was in part to wish a happy 90th birthday to Elizabeth II.

‘Love the Guy’: In Britain, Obama Explains Relocation of Churchill Bust By Bridget Johnson

President Obama defended his decision to evict a bust of Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office during his first term, telling Britons today that he loves the legendary prime minister but wanted to keep tables from “looking a little cluttered.”

After Obama took office, he returned a Churchill bust that the White House said had been lent to President Bush by Prime Minister Tony Blair. That replaced a Churchill bust that had been in the White House since the 1960s, which the administration said was being “worked on at the time and was later returned to the residence.”

In 2010, the original Churchill bust was moved from the Oval Office to outside the Treaty Room.

“I don’t know if people are aware of this, but in the residence, on the second floor, my office, my private office, is called the Treaty Room. And right outside the door of the Treaty Room, so that I see it every day, including on weekends when I’m going into that office to watch a basketball game, the primary image I see is a bust of Winston Churchill. It is there voluntarily ’cause I can do anything on the second floor,” Obama said today at a press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron at which he was asked about the U.S.-UK special relationship. “I love Winston Churchill. Love the guy.”

Failing to Learn from History By Amil Imani

Is it a case of ordained fate we cannot escape or is it that “We the People” are too dense to learn from our mistakes? Paging through humanity’s history, time and again we find numerous instances of costly historical errors where people ignore facts and reason by entrusting their lives to a “savior.” And time and again, we have ended up paying the price for our folly. If we are not genetically doomed to make these ruinous mistakes –which I am certain we are not — then do we commit them out of wishful thinking, laziness, desperation, or some combination of the three?

History has warned us of three kinds of people: charlatans, demagogues, and politicians. And more often than not, someone will rise up who is all three of these characters wrapped into one. Our liberty is our most precious possession. Many will aim to rob us of it and, by so doing, add to their own power, while trying to force us to become robots.

Desperate situations spawn desperate measures. Not having learned the lessons of history, many people will turn to charlatans, demagogues, and politicians with dire consequences. Just a few old and recent cases of this tragic misstep should warn us not to be victimized in the future by frauds.

From the primitive land of the Arabian Peninsula of over 14 centuries ago arose Muhammad, an illiterate hired hand of a rich widow Khadija, claiming that he was the bearer of a perfect life prescription from God — the Quran. He claimed humanity could do no better than to follow its precepts as well as to emulate Muhammad’s own life example for a guarantee of bliss and salvation. In exchange for this, people must embrace Islam — surrender — by surrendering their liberty to Muhammad.

To this day, in places where Islam rules, many books are banned, newspapers and magazines are systematically either censored or shut down, and other non-print media are methodically blocked. Liberty, deeply cherished by democracies, is replaced by submission — unquestioning obedience and adherence to the dictates and precepts of the all-knowing and all-wise Allah.

In no time at all, the savages of Arabia, won over by the allure of the win-win promise of Muhammad — you kill and you get the booty from your victims in this world; you get killed and your abode will be the unimaginably glorious sensuous paradise of Allah — sword-in-hand, sallied forth to lands near and far.

From the “civilized” land of Germany arose a syphilitic lout who called on the German people to surrender their liberty to him in exchange for a surefire solution to all their economic and social ills. He successfully portrayed the Jews as the main cause of the nation’s suffering. Before long, the masses of gullible easy-solution seekers formed long lines in towns and villages of the land, tripping over each other in their eagerness to surrender their liberty to the savior Führer.