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September 2016

Peter Smith Those Conservative Inexplicables

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives cannot be policy-based. Yes, it’s true that his positions do not meet the conservative ideal, but there is not the shadow of a doubt they are much closer to that standard than are Hillary Clinton’s.
“Namby-pamby, panty-waisted, weak-kneed,” was the way evangelical preacher Pastor Robert Jeffress didn’t mince words on the Sean Hannity (Fox News) show in describing the never-Trump conservative coterie. Clearly he didn’t take his lead in his choice of words from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Equally clear, he was talking about conservative men. After all, most women, whatever their politics, are in a literal sense panty-waisted.

It set me wondering about the temperament of conservative men who have decided that they can never support Donald Trump. Some seem so nauseatingly precious when I see them on TV. They whine about not being able to bring themselves to support such a vile creature as Trump. And then they dissemble feebly when challenged that they are effectively supporting Hillary Clinton, her left-wing policies, and her left-wing appointments to the US Supreme Court.

For example, I saw Glenn Beck being interviewed. There are candidates to vote for other than Trump or Clinton he mumbled. Really, Gary Johnson or Jill Stein or one of a host of other minor wannabes who’ve put themselves on some state ballots? None of them has any chance and Beck knows that. He spouts about being a constitutional conservative, yet he is willing to risk the Supreme Court being stacked for generations to come with judges who will not give a fig about the US Constitution.

Another never-Trump person is Bret Stephens. He is a conservative columnist (or so he claims) for The Wall Street Journal. Take this recent piece of his, rerun in The Australian on September 14. His piece comprises his answers to a series of Dorothy Dix questions asked of him by a mysterious third party posing as a semi-apologist for Trump. How irritating is that? Never mind, I said to myself, feel the content not the annoyance. It didn’t help.

“How can you call yourself a conservative columnist when you’re rooting for Hillary Clinton?”, the mysterious third party asks. Stephens answers thus: “Because Donald Trump is anti-conservative, un-American, immoral and dangerous.” There are fifteen other questions like this, all with answers beating Trump about the head. I can only advise those who have not read Stephens’ piece to make no effort to do so.

I don’t get it. The disdain for Trump by a small, but significant, minority of conservatives, like Beck and Stephens, cannot be policy-based. Trump’s policies, while admittedly not conforming to a conservative ideal, are much closer to it than are Clinton’s. He also intends appointing solid Supreme Court judges (originalists and literalists) who will uphold the Constitution. He has put out a list of potential appointees, all of whom passed muster among the most ardent conservatives. The choice is between these kinds of judges or flunkies.

It is inexplicable to me why any conservative would prefer Clinton to Trump. That is why I have decided to name them “the inexplicables” and contrast them with the “irredeemable basket of deplorables” who Mrs Clinton believes constitute half of Trump’s supporters. Ah, but as self-identifying deplorable, and irredeemably so to boot, I am not content to leave the mystery unresolved. Is it possible to explain the inexplicable?

The Politics of Weather by Roger Kimball

Since colleges and universities are engaged in an orgy of renaming things—buildings, programs, maybe even the institutions themselves—I’d like to offer a suggestion about an important renaming opportunity. The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, for example, really ought to rename itself “Indoctrination U.” As a recent report on The College Fix revealed, that campus of UCCS is offering to indoctrinate students about the dangers of anthropogenic climate change (formerly known as “global warming”). Only one perspective on this subject will be tolerated.

The three professors teaching the class—Rebecca Laroche, Wendy Haggren and Eileen Skahill—I include their names in case you have the misfortune of attending UCCS so that you can avoid them—announced in an email that “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course.”

Love those scare quotes around “other side,” Comrade! “Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate,” they continue “would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course.”

Gee, and I thought it was only 97% of climate scientists were we (wrongly) said to agree with Al Gore.

I feel sorry for students trapped in those reeducation camps. I’d like to do something to help. One thing I can offer is the alternative that Profs. Laroche, Haggren, and Skahill want to deprive their students of. So, to all students at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, help is on the way. Just head over to The New Criterion and for an extremely modest consideration you can download a PDF of our recent pamphlet called The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 is Good for The Earth. (You can also get a hard copy of the pamhlet here.)

THE CLIMATE SURPRISE coverPAMPHLET—Kimball

The pamphlet is based on a conference The New Criterion hosted in March in collaboration with The CO2 Coalition, whose data those UCCS profs should study but won’t. The pamphlet includes essays by six distinguished scientists, William Happer, Craig Idso, Roy W. Spencer, Richard S. Lindzen, Patrick Moore, and Bruce M. Everett. You can also see a clip of an interview we conducted with the great Mark Steyn, who is being sued by the climate fraudster Michael Mann, here. Finally, as a teaser, here is my introduction to the pamphlet, “The Politics of Weather.” Just don’t let Profs. Laroche, Haggren, and Skahill catch reading such dangerous literature:

Are you weary of the weather wars? Are you alarmed by the extensive beachhead that “pro- gressive” culture warriors, clad in the (borrowed) raiment of science and fired by a moral fury wor- thy of an early-twentieth-century temperance campaigner, have secured in the public debate? You will be grateful, then, for Mark Twain’s 1892 novel The American Claimant, which be- gins with an advisory about “The Weather in This Book.” “No weather will be found in this book,” Twain explains. “This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather.” What a relief! For it is impossible to turn anywhere in our enlightened, environmentally conscious world without being beset by lectures about one’s “carbon footprint” and horror tales about “global warming,” “rising seas,” and imminent ecological catastrophe.

It was with this in mind that The New Criterion partnered this spring with the CO2 Coali- tion, a Washington-based think tank dedicated to combatting misinformation about the effects of CO2 and fossil fuels, on a conference to pon- der The Climate Surprise: Why CO2 Is Good for the Earth.1 We might have added “and for you, your loved ones, and the economy,” but we did not wish to appear gratuitously provocative.

Forget the Economy—It’s the Jihad, Stupid! By Roger L Simon

In presidential elections, traditionally it’s the economy, stupid. But if there’s one thing that trumps the economy, it’s whether you live or die. And as events play out in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota (not to mention Iran, Syria, Libya, etc., etc.), it seems more than ever that for 2016—it’s the jihad, stupid.

There’s little question the Obama administration has done an horrendous job dealing with Islamic terrorism. The rise of ISIS is significantly on the president’s hands, not just because he inanely called the mega-terrorists a JV team, but because his failure to keep sufficient U.S. troops in Iraq gave the Islamic State the opportunity to grow and thrive.

The success of the Islamic State has given rise to a worldwide epidemic of so-called “lone wolves” who aren’t really alone, but local players (sometimes banded together) who take their inspiration from ISIS. They don’t care whether the Islamic State is controlling Mosul or even Raqqa. They care about jihad. And there seem to be more of them every day, in all corners of the world.

As I write this, five men have been taken into custody near the Verrazano Bridge. Are they jihadists? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t bet against it. Meanwhile, after Saturday’s IED explosion on 23rd Street and the near tragedy at a Marine charity run in Seaside Park, New Jersey, more pipe bombs have been found near the train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. (Are there pipe bombs everywhere now?)

By all rights Hillary Clinton, an obvious principal in the development of this ongoing disaster, should have no chance at the presidency in a rational world. But an extraordinarily biased and morally narcissistic media, unable to face their own inadequacies or change a narrative seemingly set in stone, apparently will do anything to see her elected.

Coming soon is an electoral showdown the likes of which we have never seen—and it will largely be over how our country handles the jihad. Do we want to live like this for the rest of our lives? Do we want ongoing terror attacks, large and small, to be the new normal for us, our children and our children’s children?

The time has come to take a serious look at Donald Trump’s “extreme vetting” of Muslim immigrants. So far it is the only proposal that would have much of effect on the status quo. I haven’t seen a single other suggestion of much relevance, especially since there is little appetite for a full-scale war in the Middle East. You can “see something, say something” until you’re blue in the face, but there’s no way everything can be caught.

Unfortunately, “extreme vetting” is, as we are constantly reminded by that same media, a form of discrimination against Muslims. The problem is, allowing a free flow of immigration, or anything close, is discrimination against everyone else.

I could fill the rest of this page and a half-dozen more with all the nationalities and religions that are not waging jihad. There is only one that is.

Until that ends, they must be stopped. We simply have no other choice. Otherwise we will be like Europe before we know it—and the European situation has become almost untenable. We may already be untenable ourselves. The sad events in St. Cloud attest to the great resistance their Somali community has to assimilating. We cannot have more of this. We must shut it down before it overwhelms us. CONTINUE AT SITE

Bomb Explodes in Elizabeth, New Jersey as Robot Tries to Disable It

Early Monday morning, a device found near the Elizabeth, New Jersey Amtrak train station blew up while a robot was trying disable it.

The device in Elizabeth, a city south of Newark, had been left in a backpack placed in a trash can near a train station and a bar, Mayor Christian Bollwage told reporters.

As many as five potential explosive devices tumbled out of the backpack when it was emptied, Bollwage said. After cordoning off the area, a bomb squad used a robot to cut a wire to try to disable the device, but inadvertently set off an explosion, he said.

FBI Bomb Squad is on scene and continuing the investigation at the train station in Midtown Elizabeth. pic.twitter.com/qvmzsgisjC

— Chris Bollwage (@MayorBollwage) September 19, 2016

“I can imagine that if all five of them went off at the same time, that the loss of life could have been enormous if there was an event going on,” Bollwage said.

There was a suspicious package with multiple improvised explosive devices this evening at the Elizabeth Train Station in NJ. #Elizabeth

— FBI Newark (@FBINewark) September 19, 2016

“In the course of rendering one of the devices safe, it detonated. There are no injuries & law enforcement personnel are at the scene processing evidence,” according to a tweet from FBI Newark account.

The device was detonated in a controlled setting, Bollwage said. The sound of the explosion reverberated loudly as heard on video filmed by local media.

“The robots that went in to disarm it, cut a wire and it exploded. I know there are other devices, I don’t know what they’re made up of but they’re going to have to be removed,” Bollwage said.

Authorities are not certain if the bomb was placed at the New Jersey location or if it was discarded to elude investigators. Law enforcement are working to disable the other devices found in the backpack.

The New Jersey backpack was found in the garbage by two men who were looking through the garbage. They reported the backpack to police when they “saw wires and pipes” coming from the pack.

Train service has been suspended in the immediate area. Amtrak released a statement:

Minneapolis Star Tribune Blames ‘Anti-Muslim Tensions’ for St. Cloud Mass Stabbing by ‘Soldier of the Islamic State’ By Patrick Poole

Just hours after a young Somali immigrant stabbed nine people at a shopping mall in St. Cloud, a mid-sized town in central Minnesota, the far-Left Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article hinting that the suspect may have been inspired by “anti-Muslim tensions.” The article was later scrubbed and replaced with a new article that directly raised the question of whether the attack by Dahir Adan was motivated by previous anti-Muslim incidents in the city.

Last night I reported here at PJ Media on the stabbing attack and the reports from local St. Cloud police that the suspect, who at that time hadn’t been named, had made references to “Allah” and asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim.

Earlier today, family members named Dahir Adan, a local Somali man who came to the United States 15 years ago and was a junior at St. Cloud State University, as the attacker.

But at 2:42 p.m. today, Pat Pheifer of the Star Tribune published an article, now removed and replaced on the newspaper’s website, titled “Anti-Muslim Tension Isn’t New in St. Cloud.”

I screen captured the article before it was scrubbed and replaced.

In the opening paragraphs, Pheifer writes so ambiguously that one could easily conclude that someone motivated by anti-Muslim beliefs was responsible for the attack:

A cloud of anti-Muslim sentiment and tension has hung over St. Cloud for the past seven years, with incidents ranging from bullying Somali and other East African immigrants at St. Cloud Technical High School, to women being screamed at in grocery stores, pig intestines wrapped around the door handles of a halal grocery store, and offensive billboards and license plates.

The most physically injurious incident came Saturday evening when a man stabbed nine people at the city’s Crossroads Center before the attacker was killed inside the mall by an off-duty police officer. No one but the attacker was killed.

Authorities said the man reportedly asked at least one victim whether they were Muslim before assaulting them and referred to Allah during the attacks.

So after a recitation of previous anti-Muslim incidents, Pheifer introduces “the most physically injurious incident” — the mass stabbing at Crossroads Center. A reader could understandably think that this new incident was similar in nature to those just recounted.

And the ambiguous description of the incident might lead one to conclude that it was anti-Muslim in nature.

Green Energy Revolution Folly By Janet Levy…

President Obama recently set a goal to double renewable power generation in the U.S. by 2020. At the same time, he suggested ending oil company tax breaks and using them, instead, to bolster solar and wind industries. The U.S. government is investing more than $1 trillion in green energy, the so-called “clean” energy alternative, while choking off coal and natural gas production with increasingly onerous regulations.

In their book, Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, authors Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White argue against the shift to renewables. Using energy-production statistics and the historic contributions of fossil fuels, they explode the myths promulgated by renewables cheerleaders. They expose the extensive misinformation on clean energy resources to effectively argue against what they believe would be a disastrous, energy production shift that would have serious lifestyle and geopolitical consequences for Americans.

Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy

By Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White

Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2016

256 pp., $18.94

Promoters of renewable energy sources — the supposed “low environmental impact” alternative to fossil fuels — are putting forth a false narrative, Moore and White assert.

Rather than worrying that carbon energy resources are destroying the planet and looking to renewable energy as an alternative, the authors suggest we should celebrate the vast contributions fossil fuels made during the past century, advancing mankind and making our lives safer, more productive and economically and politically secure. The U.S. has more recoverable energy supplies than any nation on earth, the authors posit. With fairly recent shale oil and natural gas discoveries and newer technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are in no danger of running out any time soon. It should be welcome news, they urge, that the U.S. can be energy independent within the next few years and be the world’s dominant energy producer. Freedom from OPEC manipulations and the potential for millions of jobs that would substantially add to our gross domestic product, benefits our national security and would be a welcome boon to our relatively stagnant economy.

Moore and White explain how the Industrial Revolution, fueled by carbon energy usage, broke through decades of static human existence and brought significant and historic, upward trends for the average person, including a tripling of life expectancy and a 10- to 30-fold increase in per-capita, real income. Coal and petroleum transformed into energy for mechanical power was the most important energy conversion in industrial civilization. With coal-powered machines, man was suddenly liberated from the physical limitations of muscle and beasts of burden. When electricity became available, heat, power and countless household appliances, industrial motors and electronics were developed, generating a second, energy revolution.

Carbon-resource usage (and the invention of the internal combustion engine) brought liberty, mobility and choice, enabling sustained productivity and economic growth, the authors maintain. Additionally, it revolutionized the science and practice of metallurgy and dramatically transformed textile production. Previously expensive and tedious to produce, clothing became more affordable and warmer; winter clothing became available. Today, 60% of global fibers come from fossil fuels. In addition, fossil fuels played and continue to play an important role in reducing food supply loss by refrigeration, packaging and containers.

The authors marvel at the transformation that took place in a newly industrialized society. Until coal was harnessed on a massive scale, humans were dependent on energy from plants, wood, animals and human muscle, as well as wind and water flows. The dramatic shift from diffuse and variable flows of energy — wind and water — to massive stores of hydrocarbon minerals was a turning point for human progress. Energy became transportable, controllable, affordable, dense, reliable and versatile.

More Clinton Shenanigans in Haiti Emails show the State Department and the Clinton Foundation collaborated on policy. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

On Jan. 27, 2011, Clinton Foundation Chief Operating Officer Laura Graham sent an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills, voicing concern about a rumor. Ms. Graham had heard that Foggy Bottom was thinking about revoking the U.S. visa of Haitian Prime Minister Jean Max Bellerive. “Wjc will be v unhappy if that’s the case,” Ms. Graham warned Ms. Mills, using the initials of the former president.

Ms. Graham, who was also chief of staff to Mr. Clinton at the foundation, had other reasons to worry: “I’m also staying at [Mr. Bellerive’s] house fyi so exposure in general and this weekend in particular for wjc on this.”

So Clinton Foundation staff was hobnobbing with a powerful Haitian politician and using connections at the State Department to try to influence U.S. policy decisions involving that same politician. That’s unethical and it is also contrary to what Mrs. Clinton promised when she went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2009 as president-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of state nominee.

Back then she boasted that the foundation and the incoming administration “decided to go beyond what the law and the ethics rules call for to address even the appearance of conflict” of interest with a “memorandum of understanding” to “address potential concerns” and ensure transparency.

Now a string of State Department emails from January 2011—made public through a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by Citizens United—demonstrates that Mrs. Clinton’s State Department did not separate itself from the Clinton Foundation but instead collaborated with it.

In her Jan. 27 email Ms. Graham also offered advice: “Nor do I think u need remove his visa. Not sure what it gets u. Remove elizabeth’s and prevals people,” she wrote, referring to the wife of Haitian President Rene Preval and his staff.

The next publicly available email from Ms. Mills to Ms. Graham reads, “You also should consider the message it sends to others that you stay at his house.” Ms. Graham shot back that she had “discussed staying at his house w both u and wjc long ago and was told good strategic value.” CONTINUE AT SITE

A Safe Space for Unsafe Spaces Restoring free speech to campus will take resolve, but Chicago shows the way. By L. Gordon Crovitz

A University of Chicago letter welcoming freshmen with the warning they would arrive at a campus committed to “freedom of inquiry and expression” prompted a national debate on restoring free speech on campuses. The most interesting lesson is why it will be so hard for other universities to follow Chicago’s lead.

The letter rejected today’s higher-education fads: “We do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” Rigorous but civilized debate “may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

A few university heads tried to defend their safe spaces and trigger warnings. The president of Wesleyan dismissed the Chicago letter as a publicity stunt. Northwestern’s president wrote that his students need “spaces where members of each [racial or other identity] group feel safe.”

But now that liberal administrators and professors are increasingly becoming targets of political correctness, many would like to restore free speech. Brown University was widely mocked last year for setting up a safe space for students “with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies.” This year Brown’s president, Christina Paxson, declared in her convocation address: “Suppressing ideas at a university is akin to turning off the power at a factory.”

Liberal professors are terrified they will be set upon for an inadvertent offense, as happened last year at Yale when a professor was forced out for suggesting students could pick their own Halloween costumes without instructions from the administration. Recent surveys find most university students resent having to censor themselves out of fear of offending someone else’s beliefs.

Yet restoring free speech is easier said than done. Along with the letter, the incoming Chicago students got a book titled “Academic Freedom and the Modern University.” It recounts in detail the history of freewheeling debate at Chicago since its founding in the 1890s.

One factor that sets Chicago apart from other campuses is that it can rely only on serious academics for its reputation. President Robert Hutchins abolished the football team in 1939—despite many Big 10 championships—in order to focus on the life of the mind. Hutchins justified having communists speak on campus by arguing the way to rebut objectionable ideas “lies through open discussion rather than through prohibition.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump’s School-Choice Fight His plan to let money follow the child is a moral and political winner.

If Donald Trump knew that promoting school choice would cause such a ruckus on the left, maybe he’d have weighed in sooner. The Republican nominee has found a winning issue by pitching a plan to “provide school choice to every disadvantaged student in America.” Amen.

During a visit to the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, Mr. Trump proposed a $20 billion block grant for states by redirecting federal education money to support charter schools and vouchers. He also endorsed merit pay for teachers and said he’d support local candidates who champion school choice.

Most of the $50 billion or so that the federal government spends on K-12 education is targeted to particular programs like teacher training, and rural and STEM education. About $14 billion in Title I funds are earmarked for disadvantaged students. However, this money doesn’t follow kids to private schools, and states often shortchange charter schools.

Mr. Trump wants to let states use federal funds to boost voucher awards, so parents rather than governments get to choose where the money goes. As he noted in Cleveland, “there is no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our government-run education monopoly.” Judging by the panicky reaction on the left, you’d think he’d proposed eliminating public education.

Hillary Clinton said his block-grant plan would “decimate public schools across America.” Yet $20 billion is merely 3% of what states spend on K-12 education each year and less than the increase in school spending in California since 2012. By the way, charters are public schools—freed of union control. CONTINUE AT SITE

Iran Can’t Whitewash Its Record of Terror Saudi Arabia would welcome better ties with Tehran—but first it must stop supporting terrorism. By Adel Al-Jubeir see note please

Remember this oily charmer…”oozing charm from every pore, he oiled his way around the floor”…and apologist for the nation that financed and enabled 15 of the 9/11 terrorists….rsk

Mr. Al-Jubeir is the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia.

Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting John Adams, who famously said: “Facts are stubborn things.” So when Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif made public pronouncements about fighting extremism, the facts show that his comments are ironic at best and little more than insincere propaganda.

The fact is that Iran is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, with government officials directly responsible for numerous terrorist attacks since 1979. These include suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks at Beirut International Airport; the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; attacks against more than a dozen embassies in Iran, including those of Britain, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia; and the assassination of diplomats around the world, to name a few examples.

Nor can one get around the fact that Iran uses terrorism to advance its aggressive policies. Iran cannot talk about fighting extremism while its leaders, Quds Force and Revolutionary Guard continue to fund, train, arm and facilitate acts of terrorism.
If Iran wants to demonstrate sincerity in contributing to the global war on terrorism, it could have begun by handing over al Qaeda leaders who have enjoyed sanctuary in Iran. These have included Osama bin Laden’s son, Saad, and al Qaeda’s chief of operations, Saif al-Adel, along with numerous other operatives guilty of attacks against Saudi Arabia, the U.S. and other targets. It is a fact that Saif al-Adel placed a call from Iran in May 2003 giving orders for the Riyadh bombings that claimed more than 30 lives, including eight Americans. Yet he still benefits from Iranian protection.

Iran could also stop funding terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, whose secretary-general recently boasted that his organization gets 100% of its funding from Iran. Iran could stop producing and distributing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which have killed or injured thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Iran could halt supplying weapons to terrorists and sectarian militias in the region who seek to replace legitimate governments with Iranian puppets.

In Syria, the blood of the more than 500,000 people slaughtered by the regime of Bashar al-Assad stains the hands of Iran, which sent forces—both regular troops and nonstate actors—to prop up the Syrian regime. Iranian leaders have said publicly that if not for their efforts, Assad would have fallen from power. CONTINUE AT SITE