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November 2016

MY SAY: A TRIBUTE TO VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Thank you Victor Davis Hanson for all your columns on the recent election. The media, including conservative journals was engaged in a gang fatwa against Donald Trump, feeding on every word, every misstep, every vulgarity, every alleged misdeed. You rose above the din to understand and eloquently explain the dynamics that propelled “forgotten” Americans to support Trump. You exposed the chicanery and corruption of the Clinton swamp to disclose the difference between the candidates.

You are a scholar and a gentleman who never stoops to profanity and yet you saw beyond crass talk, something that many of your colleagues in the media failed to do. Your columns inspired and educated faltering Republicans. Nobody said it as well as you did.

Thank you. You were at the top of the “savior” journalists. You deserve medals.

You deserve medals.

Sincerely,

Ruth King

A Blow to the Non-Elite Elite Biased and incompetent elites polluted the 2016 election, and they are getting what they deserved. By Victor Davis Hanson —

There were a lot of losers in this election, well beyond Hillary Clinton and the smug, incompetent pollsters and know-it-all, groupthink pundits who embarrassed themselves.

From hacked e-mail troves we received a glimpse of the bankrupt values of Washington journalists, lawyers, politicians, lobbyists, and wealthy donors. Despite their brand-name Ivy League degrees and 1 percenter ré​sumé​s, dozens of the highly paid grandees who run our country and shape our news appear petty and spiteful — and clueless about the America that exists beyond their Beltway habitat.

Leveraging rich people for favors and money seems an obsession. They brag about wealth and status in the fashion of preteens.

Journalists often violated their own ethics codes during the campaign. Political analyst Donna Brazile even leaked debate topics to the Clinton team. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reportedly asked the Democratic National Committee to provide him with anti-Trump research.

Reading about the characters who inhabit the Clinton campaign e-mail trove, one wonders about the purpose of their Yale degrees, their tenures at Goldman Sachs, even their very stints in the Clinton campaign. Was the end game to lose their souls?

One big loser is the Obama Justice Department — or rather the very concept of justice as administered by the present administration. It has gone the tainted way of the IRS, VA, and NSA. The Justice Department clearly pressured the FBI to limit its investigation of pay-for-play corruption at the Clinton Foundation and the State Department.

Seemingly every few weeks of the campaign, FBI director James Comey flip-flopped — depending on whether the most recent pressure on him came from rank-and-file FBI agents, the Clinton campaign, or his boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Lynch met with Bill Clinton in a secret “accidental” encounter on an airport tarmac while Hillary Clinton was under investigation. Immunity was granted to several Clinton aides without the FBI obtaining much cooperation in return. Clinton techies invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to testify before Congress.

Clinton campaign organizer John Podesta was in direct contact with his old friend, Peter Kadzik, a high-ranking Justice Department official who was tipping off the Clinton campaign about an impending hearing and a legal filing regarding Clinton’s e-mails. Until he was reassigned, Kadzik was in charge of the Justice Department’s probe of the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner e-mail trove.

A special prosecutor should have been appointed. But Democrats and Republicans alike had long ago soured on the use of special prosecutors. Democrats felt that Ken Starr went way beyond his mandates in pursuing Bill Clinton’s excesses. Republicans charged that Lawrence Walsh’s investigation of the Iran-Contra affair had turned into a witch hunt.

REALITY INTRUDES

It isn’t nice to delight in another’s misery, but in the case of Hillary Clinton an exception can be made.

Fairfax correspondent Paul McGeough, just two days ago assured his SMH and Age readers with the full measure of his magisterial authority:

On Wednesday, Americans will awake from a nightmare. Donald Trump will not be their president.

But relief will be short-lived. It will be more a “ha, ha, gotcha” moment appropriate to a lingering Halloween mood; because Trump is likely to be a sore loser, ready to inflict serial new nightmares on the US before he’s done with politics.

What’s all this based on? The losing part is a gut feel, supplemented by the late polling and high turnout numbers in early voting, especially on a Latino surge that is especially ominous for Trump.

And those nightmares to come? That’s based on what I suspect will be Trump’s inability to walk away from the crater of his campaign, without attempting to make it into something else – remember his claim that he always makes success from failure?

Americans woke up as usual. The Fairfax rags continue sleep-walking to their doom.

Roger Franklin Morning in America? (Update 2)

Quadrant Online spent the day watching Americans exercise their franchise in a presidential election that has already re-written the rule book. Can Donald Trump, the abrasive, egomaniacal outsider the Establishment loves to hate, pull it off? To borrow from Obama: Yes he did!

WEDNESDAY, 10am: So it’s President Trump, who should end up with around 300 Electoral College votes.

As I type, Hillary Clinton is preparing to make her belated concession speech. The TV footage of her walk to the waiting limo, Bill by her side, showed a woman wearing a fawn pant suit* and a supercilious smile. It is the same grin one sees on public figures who find themselves in court, where the defeated presidential candidate may well find herself.

Yes, she has been “cleared” of the email scandal, sort of, by the Eastern District investigators based in Brooklyn. But there is another probe being conducted across the East River by the Southern District, where the focus is on pay-to-play allegations involving the Clinton Foundation. This office is run and staffed by people who were hired by Rudy Giuliani, a Trump surrogate and hot tip to become Attorney General. The Brooklyn operation, by contrast, is run and staffed by people hired for the most part by Loretta Lynch, who was appointed to that post under Bill Clinton and subsequently elevated to Attorney General by Obama.

Does one need to be terminally suspicious to see why the foot-dragging email probe took so long and why, having identified a rash of violations, the Brooklynites deemed them unworthy of prosecution?

Now the Manhattan crew will be able to get the co-operation they have been requesting from across the river. Expect a grand jury to be convened and, if the leaks and whispers are correct, charges brought.

Should that happen there will be both justice and poetic justice in the wind. Throughout their public lives the Clintons have used and discarded those who might and did help them — Whitewater associates, the future trader who made Hillary a small fortune in the cattle market by assigning profitable trades to her account after the market closed.

Now, denied the White House, the Clintons aren’t of much use to anyone.

This is going to be marvelous theatre, count on it.

*rather than do a McGeough, let it be admitted that the footage of Hillary and Bill just screened on CNN was, as it turns out, from the archives. The colour of her pant suit is not yet known, but she will be wearing that felon’s smile. It is all she has left to hide behind

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

WASHINGTON DC, 7.30pm: Once upon a time, in a more innocent age, Americans liked to crow that their electoral system was the fairest, best and most reliable in the world. Mind you, they said much the same about the cars that poured out of Detroit as well, only to be disabused of such ill-founded confidence by the plagues of Toyotas, VWs and other imports that, with the help of a bloody-minded United Auto Workers, humbled Ford and General Motors while seeing Chrysler sold off to Fiat.

Democracy might prove more vigorous, though no less prone to breakdowns, if today’s 170-mile tour of Pennsylvania and its polling places is any indication.

Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania obliges its citizens to vote on Election Day and not a second earlier. Today, in Philadelphia, that heavily black city was queueing with a patience that would have put a Londoner to shame. The City of Brotherly Love, it need hardly to said, always go Democrat, although you have to wonder why. Time after time, mayors and City Hall pols, hangers-on, judges, police, state legislators, local officials and union leaders have traded their offices first for monetary gain and later, in the case of the less careful, for jail cells. Corruption in Philly is as much a part of the local culture as the cheesesteak and it has been that way for quite some time, at least since the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens observed that the city was corrupt and content to stay that way. That was back in 1903 and the contentment yesterday was palpable.

Roger Franklin: The Unspeakable vs the Unpalatable

Ever the gentleman, Ronald Reagan would have disapproved of his party’s latest presidential candidate’s language and vulgarian demeanour, but he would also have recognised a man whose message, like his own, resonates with an electorate sick of business-as-usual politics.
Monday night in Washington DC, election eve, and who, apart from the pollsters, knows what to think? Hillary by two-to-four percent, that seems to be the final consensus of all their sampling, weighting, adjusting, tickling, divining and projecting as the grand kabuki drama of this year’s presidential race staggers toward its climax 24 hours from now and the foot-stomping, snarling and grimacing is done. Or do you ‘go with your gut’, as a Trump acolyte put it this afternoon while picking through a bargain bin of marked-down Hillary ’16 T-shirts at a shop on E Street specialising in electionabilia.

“Would they be discounting them if she had a chance?” wondered Emily Shernhoff, 47, who was visiting the US capital from Iowa and wanted some small-change gifts for Democrat friends back home. “They want the White House,” she began, paraphrasing an old gag, “but all they’ll get is a lousy T-shirt.”

As theories and auguries go, the 70% discount on Hillarywear seemed as good as any, possibly better than most. At the counter, the young black woman ringing up my purchases endorsed that particular prognostication more than somewhat. Who would win tomorrow’s vote, she was asked, going by the merchandise her store has been moving?

“Trump,” she said. “We’ve sold a lot more of his T-shirts than hers.”

So that must be why Hillary’s T-shirts are discounted.

“No, Trump’s are marked down too.”

I took the full-price unit back to the shelf, found the bargain bin and saved myself $12. At the counter once again, it was hard not to smile. The handsome T-shirt, in Republican red and bearing the Trump name above his campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again’, bears a label proclaiming it was made in Honduras – imported tariff-free under the NAFTA pact that the man whose cause it espouses has vowed to “renegotiate”, if not scrap altogether.

Canada: Parliament Condemns Free Speech by Judith Bergman

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning.” — Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. Majzoub is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

What exactly are they condemning? Criticism of Islam? Criticism of Muslims? Debating Mohammed? Depicting Mohammed? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? Is any Canadian who now writes critically of Islam or disagrees with the petitioners that ISIS “does not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam” now to be considered an “Islamophobe”?

The question, naturally, is whether Canada’s motion will be replicated in other parliaments in the West. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is particularly active in Europe, having opened a Permanent Observer Mission to the European Union in 2013.

In what parallel universe can the efforts of the OIC to stifle free speech possibly be considered advancement of freedom of speech and religion?

As the OIC steps up its media campaign and efforts in Europe, European parliaments are likely to experience initiatives like the petition in Canada. The European Union, for one, looks as if it would be to happy facilitate such a motion.

On October 26, Canada’s parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion, which was the result of a petition initiated by Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. The petition garnered almost 70,000 signatures.

According to the text of the petition,

“Recently an infinitesimally small number of extremist individuals have conducted terrorist activities while claiming to speak for the religion of Islam. Their actions have been used as a pretext for a notable rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Canada; and these violent individuals do not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam. In fact, they misrepresent the religion. We categorically reject all their activities. They in no way represent the religion, the beliefs and the desire of Muslims to co-exist in peace with all peoples of the world. We, the undersigned, Citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to join us in recognizing that extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia”.

Iran’s Threats Louder after Obama Appeasement by Majid Rafizadeh

Chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” were heard across Iranian cities as thousands of Iranians marked the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of 52 American hostages for 444 days by militant students.

The State Department’s reaction is classic: ignoring these developments and continuing with appeasement policies.

These anti-American demonstrations are not rhetoric, but are the cornerstone of Iran’s revolutionary principles and foreign policies, which manifest themselves in Iran’s support for terrorist proxies, support for Assad’s regime, and the scuttling of US and Israeli foreign policies in the region.

Many other Iranian officials who were engaged in attacks against the US currently serve in high positions. Hossein Salami, who enjoys one of these high-level positions, is the deputy commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. He stated at the rally: “America should know that if they do not honor their agreement in the nuclear deal, we will resume uranium enrichment…”

After eight years of President Barack Obama’s policies of appeasement, Iran’s threats, such as “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel,” have grown even louder.

This week, the Iranian government orchestrated one the largest anti-American and anti-Israeli demonstrations, since 1979, echoing Iran Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s recent messages.

The government provided facilities for the protesters. Chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” were heard across Iranian cities as thousands of Iranians marked the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of 52 American hostages for 444 days by militant students.

Elite Media Meltdown The most egregious reactions from the mainstream press on the Trump victory. November 10, 2016 Joseph Klein

President Obama and Hillary Clinton struck positive notes of healing and reconciliation in their public remarks following President-elect Donald Trump’s stunning victory. However, the elite liberal media establishment, which had largely served as a propaganda arm of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, continues to lash out at the president-elect as if the campaign were still in full swing.

The New York Times’ lead editorial on November 9th, entitled “The Trump Revolt,” regurgitated the charges the Times’ editors and columnists have leveled at Trump so frequently during the last year. Trump “has shown himself to be temperamentally unfit to lead a diverse nation of 320 million people,” the post-election editorial proclaimed. “We know he lies without compunction,” intoned the Times’ editors, who seem to have forgotten the description by the Times’ late columnist William Safire of Hillary Clinton as a “congenital liar.” Using typical left-wing race-baiting tactics, the editors wrote that Trump “has recruited as his allies a dark combination of racists, white supremacists and anti-Semites,” citing a celebratory tweet by David Duke, whom Trump and his campaign have repeatedly disavowed.

To top it off, the Times’ editors darkly warned that the change Trump’s supporters had voted for risks placing the United States “on a precipice.”

One of the New York Times’ lead op-ed writers, Thomas Friedman, wailed that “at the moment I am in anguish, frightened for my country and for our unity. And for the first time, I feel homeless in America.”

The leftist Huffington Post’s senior politics editor, Sam Stein, wrote that Americans “chose to jump into the abyss” by electing Trump. Mirroring the Times’ race-baiting, Stein wrote that Trump “is a nativist, and one who has brought in his wake a scary thread of anti-Semitism and racism that has marred the entire 16-month presidential campaign.”

Slate featured articles with such outrageous headlines as “White Women Sold Out the Sisterhood and the World by Voting for Trump” and “White Won.” The latter article’s sub-heading was “We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.” One headline Slate did probably get right was “Donald Trump Will Erase the Obama Era.” Obama had made the election a referendum on his own legacy and the voters gave him their verdict.

David Corn wrote in Mother Jones that “America is broken.” Trying to be too clever by half, Corn added that “Hate did trump.”

American University Students Burn Flags to Protest Trump Win Daniel Greenfield

Trump wins. Race, sexuality and gender studies graduate students hardest hit.

People at American University burned American flags Wednesday at the Northwest, D.C. campus.

Several dozen people were gathered around a man who held up a small American flag while he pulled out a lighter and set it on fire. At one point, a woman tried to help.

“Watch as your precious little flag of patriarchic white supremacy burns in your f****** flesh and eyes,” the man said to the crowd while the upside down flag went up in flames.

Twitter user Saira tweeted videos of the scene, including one where a woman screamed “This is a representation of America” while holding up the burning flag.

Saira also reported people in the crowd chanting “F*** white America.”

Dissent is the new patriotism all over again. And aren’t these folks just so patriotic.

Let’s All Go To the Arafat Museum The best way to remember the terrorist is by exposing his lies. Daniel Greenfield

On the anniversary of his death, it is important that we remember Yasser Arafat (8 or 9 other names, including the ubiquitous Mohammed, may be added as needed) as a murderer, a liar and a thief.

Twelve years ago, Arafat, the Egyptian terrorist leader who founded an imaginary country on mass murder and our foreign aid, died covered in his own vomit and diarrhea. The possible causes of death, in order of probability, were AIDS, according to his private doctor and the head of the PFLP terror group, an Israeli laser, according to the Palestinian ambassador to Sri Lanka, thallium poisoning by Israel, polonium poisoning by his Palestinian rivals and the trained ape from Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.

The investigation into Arafat’s death went on for over a decade and dragged in the Institut de Radiophysique in Switzerland, Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency and a mysteriously nameless team of French experts. Arafat’s “temporary” mausoleum, a building that looks like a Florida motel outhouse built on a giant scale, was rummaged and his rotting remains were poked over by three international teams who could agree on nothing except that the dead terrorist was probably dead.

Probably. It was hard to tell if Arafat was alive even back when he was still breathing and ranting.

After a decade of the minions of the occupying Muslim terror regime in Ramallah accusing each other, and occasionally the Jews with their lasers, the Arafat Museum has finally debuted the centerpiece of its exhibit, the dead Egyptian terrorist’s bedroom. Last month the museum managed to wrest Arafat’s Nobel Peace Prize from Hamas without anyone being dragged behind a motorcycle or thrown off a building. This marked a major improvement in relations between the two aspiring Palestinian terror states. If that doesn’t merit handing out more peace prizes to everyone involved, what would?