Displaying posts published in

May 2017

TRADITIONAL YIDDISH SONG A HIT ON MONGOLIAN NATIONAL TV

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001701.html

Last week, Amalia Rubin, an American Jew who works as an English teacher in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar, received a robust round of applause when she sung Moishe Nadir’s 1927 Yiddish classic, “The Rebbe Elimelech,” live on one of Mongolian TVs most popular programs, the Mongolian equivalent of American Idol.

Rubin also sings in both Mongolian and Tibetan and she is popular the Tibetan Diaspora for being one of the few westerners to promotes traditional Tibetan songs long repressed by China.

Trump’s ‘Principled Realism’ Is Not Very Realistic about Islam The principal fiction in the president’s speech in Saudi Arabia was the claim that we share ‘common values’ with the sharia society. By Andrew C. McCarthy

So for what exactly is the “extreme vetting” going to vet?

That was the question I could not shake from my mind while listening to President Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia on Sunday to dozens of Sunni Islamic leaders and a global television audience.

There were certainly some positives in the president’s rhetoric. Trump did not cite American policy or “arrogance” as a contributory cause of jihadist savagery, as President Obama was wont to do. He was less delusional about the splendor of Islam than were Obama and President George W. Bush. Gone were absurd inflations of Islam’s historical achievements and place in the American fabric; gone were allusions to the “religion of peace and love.” In their place was an acknowledgment that Islam is besieged by a “crisis” of terror that is engulfing the world, a crisis that is ideological in nature and that only Muslims themselves can solve.

All true. Nevertheless, the theme that came through the speech is that terrorism is something that happens to Islam, rather than something that happens because of Islam. That is simply not the case, even though it is true, as Trump asserted, that the vast majority of those killed by Muslim terrorists are themselves Muslims.

There is thus a good deal that is not real about “Principled Realism,” Trump’s name for what he heralds as a new American strategy — “new approaches informed by experience and judgment,” a “discarding” of strategies “that have not worked.”

The principal fiction in “principled realism” is that we share “common values” with Sunni Arab sharia societies. That is problematic because these purported “common values” — in conjunction with “shared interests” — are said to be the roots of Trump’s approach.

The president stressed that during his first overseas trip as president, he would be “visiting many of the holiest places in the three Abrahamic faiths.” The irony was palpable, at least to some of us. Trump is not visiting the holiest places of Islam.

Yes, upon departing Saudi Arabia, he headed to Israel where he prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. In the offing is a jaunt to Rome, to the Vatican for an audience with Pope Francis. But for all the treacle about “why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation [Saudi Arabia] that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic faith,” Trump sidestepped the fact that he is not welcome in those two sites, Mecca and Medina.

Why? Because the president is a non-Muslim. Non-Muslims are not allowed to step their infidel feet in Islam’s sacred cities.

That iteration of Islamic intolerance is squarely based on scripture — see, e.g., the Koran’s Sura 9:28: “Oh you who believe! Truly the idolaters are unclean, so let them not, after this year, approach the sacred mosque” — a verse that specifically relates to the Grand Mosque in Mecca (Makkah), and has been extended by Islamic scholars to Medina. That is why Trump’s House of Saud hosts enforce a ban on entry by non-Muslims to both cities.

I say that this ban is just one “iteration of Islamic intolerance” for two reasons.

First, there are many other iterations. Scripturally based Islamic doctrine systematically discriminates against non-Muslims in many particulars, and against women in many others. Since Trump’s “principled realism” is said to be rooted in “common values,” it might be worth a gander at the guidance Trump’s State Department provides to Americans pondering a trip to the kingdom:

Criminal Penalties: You are subject to local laws. If you violate local laws, even unknowingly, you may be expelled, arrested, imprisoned, subject to physical punishments, or even executed. Penalties for the import, manufacture, possession, and consumption of alcohol or illegal drugs in Saudi Arabia are severe. Convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences, heavy fines, public floggings, and/or deportation. The penalty for drug trafficking is death . . .

Faith-Based Travelers: Islam is the official religion of the country and pervades all aspects of life in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi authorities do not permit criticism of Islam, religious figures, or the royal family.

The government prohibits the public practice of religions other than Islam. Non-Muslims suspected of violating these restrictions have been jailed. Church services in private homes have been raided, and participants have been jailed.

Muslims who do not adhere to the strict interpretations of Islam prevalent in much of Saudi Arabia frequently encounter societal discrimination and constraints on worship.

Public display of non-Islamic religious articles, such as crosses and Bibles, is not permitted.

[And, of course . . .] Non-Muslims are forbidden to travel to Makkah (Mecca) and Medina, the cities where two of Islam’s holiest mosques are located . . .

LGBTI Travelers: Same-sex sexual relations, even when they are consensual, are criminalized in Saudi Arabia. Violations of Saudi laws governing perceived expressions of, or support for, same sex sexual relations, including on social media, may be subject to severe punishment. Potential penalties include fines, jail time, or death.

The State Department guidance suggests that readers consult the International Religious Freedom Report produced in 2015 by State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. It relates the brutal punishments meted out by some Islamic countries — not jihadist organizations, but governments in Muslim-majority countries — for blasphemy and apostasy. The paragraph on the Kingdom is worth reading:

How to Stop Complaining and Start Fixing America’s Higher Education Crisis Peter Wood

How much would it cost to fix American higher education? Think big. In 2015, colleges and universities spent about $532 billion to teach 20.5 million students enrolled in two-year and four-year colleges.

That $532 billion figure is the lowest estimate in circulation. The National Center for Education Statistics gives the figure as $605 billion for 2013-14. But let’s stick with the humble $532 billion.

So how much would it cost to fix our $532 billion worth of colleges and universities? The answer depends, of course, on what you think is wrong with them and which of the possible repairs you favor. But let’s not get overly complicated.

Here’s What’s Wrong with Higher Education

American higher education is subject to five broad categories of complaint.

The progressive left criticizes it for reinforcing oppression based on race, class, and sex. American higher education favors the rich and abets unjust capitalism.

Pro-market and libertarian observers criticize its dependence on public funding; guild-like stifling of innovation; and hostility to capitalism. American higher education privileges itself.

Liberals, moderates, and conservatives criticize it for putting identity politics at the center of curriculum and student life. It fosters inter-group hostility, a grievance culture, psychological fragility, incivility, and contempt for free expression. American higher education is illiberal.

Those who support the classical liberal arts criticize it for trivializing higher education, turning the curriculum into a shopping cart, neglecting the formation of mind and character in favor of political advocacy, and estranging students from their civilization by elevating the false ideal of multiculturalism. American higher education is culturally corrosive.

A wide variety of people criticize its high price, frivolous expenditures, and increasingly uncertain rewards for graduates. The gigantic growth in the number of campus administrative positions relative to the faculty comes under this heading too. American higher education is too expensive.

It would be easy to add more items or expand any of these into a whole book. Many have done just that. But my goal here is to cut a path through the forest, not to linger over the variety of trees.

When I speak of fixing higher education, I discard the first category, the criticisms of the university as a font of capitalist oppression. It simply has no basis in reality. Each of the other four categories is cogent, and any real repair would have to address all of them. Moreover, they are deeply connected.

I won’t linger over their interconnections either, but it is important to keep in mind that the guild-like or oligarchic aspects of higher education undergird its illiberalism, incoherence, and excessive expense; and its culturally corrosive quality licenses its voracious appetite for public funding, suppression of intellectual freedom, and frivolity.

Four Proposed Repairs to Higher Education

Corresponding to the four legitimate categories of complaint are four broad categories of possible repair:

Fix the financial model. Reduce and restructure federal and state support for colleges and universities. Eliminate the regulations that favor the guild and prop up oligarchy. Unleash the marketplace, including for-profit, online, and other entrepreneurial alternatives to the dominant model of two and four-year colleges. Steer Americans away from the idea that a college degree is necessary for a prosperous career. Find new and better ways to credential people as competent in specific endeavors. The general-purpose undergraduate degree should face competition from alternative credentialing.

Dismantle the infrastructure of campus illiberalism. Eliminate grievance deans and programs; rescind all government programs that subsidize identity politics; insist that colleges and universities punish those who disrupt events or otherwise undermine free expression. Some call for eliminating tenure because it has become a bulwark for the faculty members most intent on redirecting higher education into political activism.

Restore a meaningful core curriculum. This repair has three varieties: create an optional core curriculum at existing colleges, leaving everything else alone; create a mandatory core curriculum for all the students at a college; create new colleges that start out with their own core curricula. Reversing the cultural corrosion of American higher education will take more than reviving core curricula, but by common consent, that is the first step.

Charting Academic Freedom: 102 Years of Debate *****

https://www.nas.org/ https://www.nas.org/articles/finding_academic_freedom

New York, NY (May 22, 2017) – The National Association of Scholars has released a chart that compares the ten most important statements on academic freedom in American history. “Charting Academic Freedom: 102 Years of Debate” starts with the World War I era “Statement of Principles” from the newly founded American Association of University Professors, and extends to recent declarations by Middlebury College professors and two Princeton professors.

The chart makes clear at a glance that “academic freedom” has changed its meaning many times in the last 102 years. During World War I, professors were worried that college trustees posed a risk to their right to speak out on controversial issues. They sought protection by claiming that their “scientific” pursuit of truth deserved a special status in society. By contrast, 107 Middlebury College professors issued a statement in March, decrying the “incivility and coarseness” of their own students, who had violently suppressed a speech by a visiting scholar.

“The NAS has published this chart to improve the quality of the national debate over academic freedom,” said Peter W. Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars. “The American public is rightly concerned that the freedom to learn in American colleges and universities has been damaged. Disinvitations to prominent speakers; riots at places such as Berkeley, Middlebury, and Claremont McKenna; and other efforts to intimidate both faculty members and fellow students have become all too common,” said Wood. “But efforts to repair the situation have been hampered by confusion over what ‘academic freedom’ really is. Our chart is meant to give all sides of the debate a roadmap of the major policy statements.”

https://www.nas.org/images/documents/NAS_freeSpeechChart_1.2.pdf

Graduates get lesson in courage and tenacity By Thomas Farragher

He has come to America’s college capital this weekend to watch two of his grandsons walk across finely appointed stages to collect their degrees: a pair of life’s milestone moments that Andrew Burian will treasure like none other.

Commencement season is a time of hugs and handshakes and high-fives. Everywhere you look there is a story. Under every cap and gown, through the sometimes glistening eyes of every mom and dad, there are personal tales ranging from utter relief to absolute triumph.

Andrew Burian, now 86, has a story like that. Except his is stunning, horrific, and life-changing.

And even though his body and his memory are not what they used to be, as he cheers his beloved grandkids’ academic accomplishments on Sunday, his mind will doubtlessly carry him back to those darkest of days when a future of sunshine and splendor — any future at all, really — seemed beyond imagination.

Get Fast Forward in your inbox:

Forget yesterday’s news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email.

Sign Up

“It’s extremely powerful,’’ said Jordan Anhalt, 23, who will receive his bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Brandeis on Sunday. “I grew up with the duality in which other people recognized him as a survivor. He is a hero. But to me, he’s always been my grandfather. I’m so grateful he’s here.’’

He’s here.

It’s such a simple thought. But it belies an unspeakable, awful history that makes Burian’s presence all the more powerful. The blue-ink tattoo on his arm — B 14611 — helps tell his story.

He grew up in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains in a small town in Czechoslovakia, where his father ran a lumber company and young Andrew lived an idyllic childhood surrounded by cousins, aunts, and uncles, and a loving extended family that circumscribed his little world.

And then a madman named Hitler, whose maniacal voice blared from loudspeakers, tightened his grip. Burian’s family home was confiscated and converted into a police station. Curfews were enforced. Jews were forced to wear yellow stars that made them targets.

What followed, recorded on the pages of history books, is forever seared into Burian’s memory.

At the tip of a bayonet, his family was deported to a ghetto in Hungary. Ahead lay cattle cars with barbed-wire windows, the brutal searches of women, the screams of small children — and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

His mother, grandfather, and great-uncle were murdered immediately upon arrival. Young Andrew’s survival would depend on wit and courage in the face of German soldiers who shot into the ranks of concentration camp crowds just for the sport of it.

In his memoir, “A Boy from Bustina. A son. A survivor. A witness,’’ Burian recalls the moment when he was separated from his father and brother.

“My blood drained to my feet as I realized that I was left alone in Birkenau without parents and without a sibling,’’ he wrote. “All I could do was attempt to stifle my sobs and hold my hand across my mouth as I called for my mama, papa, and Tibi” — his brother.

Before he was forced to leave his son, Ernest Burian gave instructions to him that the boy remembered for the rest of his life:

“My child, I have three things to say to you: Keep yourself clean so you don’t get sick; be a mensch and don’t let them make an animal out of you; and remember, whoever lives through this inferno goes home and waits for the others. God willing, we will all meet at home.’’

Andrew Burian, who was reunited with his brother and their father, after the camps’ liberation, arrived at Ellis Island in New York Harbor in the spring of 1948. He was 17 and had $10 in his pocket.

War, Peace and Stability By Herbert London President, London Center for Policy Research

For utopians viewing the world stage there is war or unending conflict and peace. However, the reality of world affairs offers nuanced meaning of each. Every action can be understood horizontally through a sequence of causes and vertically in the structure of things. The precipitating factors for war involve causes such as territorial claims, alliance commitment, ideological fervor and competing national interests. Beyond these material factors are the historic factors and genetic disposition for conflict. The tocsin in the air is often an expression of DNA.

At the moment the world is in disarray, Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, expresses concern that the nations of the world are arrayed against him. His saber rattling gestures include everything from missile testing to rhetoric that describes inflicting devastation on the United States. What no one knows is what motivates this leader of the Hermit Kingdom other than financial concessions from the West in return for empty promises. Like his father and grandfather before him, Kim is an extortion artist.

Denuclearizing the Korean peninsula makes sense from an American perspective, but North Korea has nothing to trade or influence to save its nuclear arsenal. As a consequence, a military option to eliminate the threat of nuclear exchange cannot be removed from the negotiating table. Yet war in the nuclear age is a prospect so horrific that it cannot be “another option;” it is the unpalatable option.

Hence the real option in most cases of conflict is stability. In the North Korean case, this may entail protocols and verification on the testing, use and placement of nuclear weapons.

There is a difference between crime and tragedy. The world now unfolding is comprised of many criminals whose notion of war defies the horror of nuclear exchange, believing as they do that the West will never use weapons of mass destruction even if it means surrender.

Solzhenitsyn made it clear that the elimination of war is a grand theme that enters the realm of the utopian and non-existent. The opposite of war is not peace, but stability. Should one consider this to be the appropriate backdrop for analysis, North Korean nukes must be controlled since their elimination is likely to lead to war. And this may be achieved through regional negotiation among China, South Korea and Japan.

Solzhenitsyn also noted that a state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. Surely North Korea reinforces this claim. The country is in a dire condition since it can neither feed itself, nor provide electricity. War chatter has a chilling effect on North Koreans and an even more frightening effect on regional neighbors. That explains why the U.S. is the “Great Satan.” The challenger, in this case the U.S. – it is argued – doesn’t lead the free world; it coerces allies into the adoption of key policies.

Where this crisis is headed is anyone’s guess, but I am persuaded that the conditions for stability will emerge even if they are unclear at the moment. Should North Korea actually precipitate a war, it would be eliminated from the map in minutes. However erratic Mr. Kim may be, he knows that.

In Leo Tolstoy’s majestic novel, War and Peace, fact or fiction merge into a tapestry of Russian life in the Napoleonic Wars. What the book demonstrates is the moral depravity and philosophical stagnation as war’s effect. Despite the devastation, war holds out promise of resolution, of that moment when stability emerges – a reprieve from horror. That is the only realistic prospect for North Korea now that the beasts of war have been unleashed and the threat is so great a response is inevitable. It is hoped that cool heads will seek the pathway to stability without the bombs bursting in air. God help us if this isn’t the case.

Why the ‘two-state solution’ hasn’t worked, and can’t By Moshe Dann

With Islamist forces waiting to take advantage of any power vacuum, the area would plunge into Somalia-like chaos.Much has been written about the “two state solution” (TSS) or “two states for two peoples” (TSTP) as the path to resolving the conflict between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries and Palestinians, but at the same time there appears to be little understanding of why it consistently fails. It fails because it is focused on territory, Palestinian statehood, rather than ideology – Palestinian nationalism and Palestinianism, the belief that Jews have no right to a state and that Jewish nationalism, Zionism, is anathema and that Jewish history is a fraud.

The idea of separating Israeli Jews and Arab Palestinians into two separate states is logical, but practically it involves other issues which remain obstacles. Supporting Palestinian statehood, therefore, without including a resolution of or reference to other problems prevents a rational, comprehensive approach to finding a realistic solution.The principle behind the TSS/TSTP seems simple: since Arabs don’t want to live under Israeli rule and Israelis don’t want to rule over them, give them a state in all or most of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem.

Jews would be expelled from the Arab Palestinian state and not permitted to live there, but Israeli Arabs would remain in Israel as citizens. A population transfer/ethnic cleansing would occur in only one state.

Granting statehood, however, depends on resolving all other issues which were included in previous “peace plans” and agreements such as the Oslo accords: 1) ending the conflict, ending violence and incitement; 2) ending all claims against Israel, abandoning “the Nakba” (the catastrophe, Israel’s establishment); 3) ending the “Palestinian Right of Return” of refugees and their descendants to Israel; 4) shared status of the Temple Mount and Jewish rights in eastern Jerusalem and the Old City; 5) continued IDF presence in the Jordan Valley and other strategic areas; 6) land swaps to include areas of major settlement; 7) access to all holy sites; and 8) recognizing Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish People and its historical and religious connection to the land of Israel and the Temple Mount.

Anti-Trump Democrats Invite Chaos If they succeed in bouncing the president from office, they may find that what comes next is even worse. By Ted Van Dyk

‘A jackass can kick down a barn,” said the legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn. “But it takes a carpenter to build one.”

Democrats should reflect on that wisdom as they consider the special counsel now appointed to investigate President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. In the short term, the inquiry will probably hurt Mr. Trump and feed attempts to drive him from office. But in the end the president’s attackers will pay a price.

The political and media hysteria surrounding the Trump administration lies somewhere on the repulsiveness scale between the Jacobin excesses of the French Revolution and the McCarthy era. Thus far the public knows of no presidential action that would justify impeachment. Never mind, the crowd cries, let us have the verdict now. We can do the trial later.

What about discussions between Trump campaign advisers and Russian or other foreign leaders? Don’t they count as high crimes and misdemeanors? No, such conversations take place all the time in national campaigns.

What about the firing of FBI Director James Comey ? Wasn’t that suspicious? No, Mr. Comey disregarded the Justice Department chain of command and the normal proprieties of his office. He made public statements about ongoing investigations. He allowed it to leak that the president had suggested leniency for Mike Flynn, the former White House adviser now under investigation. A presidential suggestion of that nature would be neither illegal nor unprecedented.

What about Mr. Trump’s disclosure of classified information during a meeting with Russian leaders? It’s a tempest in a teapot. The president has the authority to classify or declassify information as he wishes. I have witnessed other presidents doing it.

What about Mr. Trump’s executive order declaring a short-term pause on immigration from countries with active terrorist movements? It may have been poorly handled, but other presidents have done similar things.

What about all Mr. Trump’s flip-flopping? Shouldn’t a president be trustworthy and reliable? Yes, but when Mr. Trump has reversed his campaign pledges it has been mostly for the good.

If Mr. Trump were a conventional president, these missteps would be shrugged off as growing pains or considered worthy of only mild reproof. President Trump, it is true, lacks the knowledge, experience and temperament for the office. His crude narcissism is grating. He has carelessly contributed to his problems with heedless public statements. He nonetheless was duly elected and should be given the leeway that new presidents are traditionally afforded. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump Moves U.S. Towards a Realistic Approach to Jihad Threat By Robert Spencer

President Trump’s much-anticipated speech at the Islamic Summit in Riyadh didn’t begin auspiciously. Trump started with: “I want to thank King Salman for his extraordinary words” — yet among Salman’s “extraordinary words” were the risible claims that “Islam was and will always be the religion of mercy, tolerance, and coexistence,” and that “in its prosperous times, Islam provided the best examples of coexistence and harmony between countries and individuals.”

However, Trump’s speech did include some elements of a realistic approach to the jihad threat, ideas that have been glaringly lacking from U.S. foreign policy for nearly sixteen years now.

Trump sounded conciliatory notes, saying that he came to “deliver a message of friendship and hope,” and “that is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith.” Accordingly, he reminded the assembled Muslim leaders of his inaugural address, in which he “promised that America will not seek to impose our way of life on others.”

Trump no doubt thought that Muslim leaders would welcome this promise in light of the ill-fated Bush/Obama attempts to establish Western-style republics in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the disastrous effects of “regime change” in Libya and elsewhere. And that is doubtless true: a respite from Obama’s reckless and self-defeating interventionism is most welcome.

But it should also be remembered that America never tried in any serious way to impose its way of life upon Iraq or Afghanistan. In both countries, American forces oversaw the implementation of constitutions that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land.

America did not stand strongly for the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women and non-Muslims — all of which Sharia denies. If America had offered refuge to those who wanted to live in freedom, who knows how many millions of Muslims would have chosen liberty over Sharia. But we will never know.

Trump also spoke proudly of “a $110 billion Saudi-funded defense purchase,” which “will help the Saudi military to take a greater role in security operations.” The clear target here is Iran. But later in the speech, he included among the Iranian mullahs’ transgressions their “vowing the destruction of Israel” — and surely, many among his Sunni audience thought: “Well, that’s the one thing Shia Iran gets right.”

It is all too easy to imagine a scenario in which these Saudi arms are used against Israel.

President Trump also announced “a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology — located right here, in this central part of the Islamic World.” That its name is similar to Obama’s euphemistic “Countering Violent Extremism” program, so named to avoid any hint that Islam might have something to do with terrorism, was not a good sign.

Nor was Trump’s statement that “this groundbreaking new center represents a clear declaration that Muslim-majority countries must take the lead in combatting radicalization.” The world has been calling upon, and waiting, for Muslim-majority countries to take the lead in combatting radicalization since 9/11, and long before that.

So where is the global Muslim movement to reform Islam and counter the jihadists’ interpretation of its core texts? Egypt’s al-Sisi, who was present at Trump’s speech, several years ago called upon the Islamic scholars of al-Azhar, the most prestigious and influential institution in Sunni Islam, to work toward reforming Islam to curb its violent elements. Nothing has yet been done.

How long will we wait? How much longer will non-Muslim and reformist Muslim leaders issue these calls before realizing nothing is going to be done?

Trump did make several positive departures from the Obama legacy, however. He spoke of “defeating terrorism and the ideology that drives it,” and later put teeth on his call for defeating the jihad ideology — in a way Barack Obama never did — by calling for “honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires.”

An actual honest confrontation of the crisis of Islamist extremism would require an honest and thorough examination of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists. President George W. Bush hamstrung this effort when he declared, shortly after 9/11, that Islam was a “religion of peace.” Barack Obama made it altogether impossible when he heeded the demands of Muslim, Leftist, and other allied groups in 2011 by ordering the removal of all mentions of Islam and jihad from counterterror training.

Trump, to his credit, assumed that the terrorists were Muslim, calling upon the Muslim leaders to “drive them out of your places of worship.”

This was a far cry from Hillary Clinton’s 2015 statement: “Let’s be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” And this was worlds away from Obama’s claims: “For more than a thousand years, people have been drawn to Islam’s message of peace,” and “Islam is rooted in a commitment to compassion and mercy and justice and charity.” CONTINUE AT SITE

McCain: Mueller Appointment Means We’ve Reached ‘Scandal’ Stage By Michael van der Galien

Leave it to John McCain to pour fuel on an anti-Trump fire. Said the senator yesterday on Fox News:

With the appointment of Mr. Mueller, we are now at that stage of a scandal. And now the question is how is it handled. Is it handled the way Watergate was where drip, drip, drip with every day, more and more?

Or do we handle it like Ronald Reagan handled Iran-Contra? It was a scandal. He fired people. He went on national television and said we made mistakes, we did wrong, and we’re not going to do it again and the American people let him move forward.

Here’s the video:

For all the talk of scandal, McCain and his establishment friends are glossing over the major detail: there is absolutely no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to win last year’s election.

Yes, he’s a bit too friendly toward Putin for my taste, but attempting diplomatic relations with an adversary does not a traitor make. If it did, Hillary Clinton should’ve been jailed years ago when she gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov a bizarre “reset” button in 2009.

McCain and the rest of the irrational Trump opposition — there’s a difference between being critical of the man, as I am, and being unable to assess his performance reasonably — are making fools of themselves with talk of “scandal” and “Watergate.”

Trump Derangement Syndrome is clearly an even worse malady than Bush Derangement Syndrome, the version that infected so many liberals in the first decade of this century. And that’s saying something.