Displaying posts published in

May 2017

You Gotta Lie Oh! What a tangled progressive web we weave . . . By Victor Davis Hanson

Red/blue, conservative/liberal, and Republican/Democrat mark traditional American divides. But one fault line is not so 50/50 — that of the contemporary hard progressive movement versus traditional politics, values, and customs.

The entire menu of race, class, and gender identity politics, lead-from-behind foreign policy, political correctness, and radical environmentalism so far have not won over most Americans.

Proof of that fact are the serial reliance of their supporters on deception, and the erosion of language on campus and in politics and the media. The progressive movement requires both deceit and euphemism to mask its apparently unpopular agenda.

What the Benghazi scandal, the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and the Iran Deal all had in common was their reliance on ruse. If the White House and its allies had told the whole truth about all these incidents, Americans probably would have widely rejected the ideological premises that framed them.

In the case of Benghazi, most Americans would not fault an obscure video for causing scripted rioting and death at an American consulate and CIA annex. They would hardly believe that a policy of maintaining deliberately thin security at U.S. facilities would encourage reciprocal local good will in the Middle East. They would not agree that holding back American rescue forces was a wise move likely to forestall an international confrontation or escalation.

In other words, Americans wanted their consulate in Benghazi well fortified and protected from seasoned terrorists, and they favored rapid deployment of maximum relief forces in times of crises — but, unfortunately, these were not the agendas of the Obama administration. So, to disguise that unpleasant reality, Americans were treated to Susan Rice’s yarns about a spontaneous, unexpected riot that was prompted by a right-wing video, and endangered Americans far beyond the reach of U.S. military help.

Ditto the Bowe Bergdahl caper, the American deserter on the Afghan front. Aside from the useful publicity of “bringing home” an American hostage, there was an implicit progressive subtext to both his earlier flight and eventual return: Young introspective soldiers are often troubled about their nation’s ambiguous role in the Middle East and so, understandably, sometimes err in their search for meaning. When they do, and when they perhaps “wander off,” the government has win-win resources to address their temporary lapse — in this case, killing two birds with one stone by downsizing the apparently repulsive Guantanamo Bay detention facility and returning punished-enough Taliban combatants to their families.

What Susan Rice (ostensibly the go-to consigliere in such deals) could not say is that the Obama administration released five dangerous terrorists in order to bring home one likely deserter, whose selfish AWOL behavior may have contributed over the years to the injury or even deaths of several American soldiers tasked with finding him. Instead, we got the lie that Bergdahl was a brave solider who served with honor and distinction and was captured in mediis rebus on the battlefield, with the implication that his personal odyssey inadvertently led to the bonus of returning in-limbo foreign detainees and reducing the population of an embarrassing gulag.

Would an intelligent person pay a penny more for ‘organic’ food? By Ed Straker

The WaPo, of all places, had a great investigative piece about the continuing sham of “organic” foods, this time focusing on dairy products.

Organic dairies are required to allow the cows to graze daily throughout the growing season — that is, the cows are supposed to be grass-fed, not confined to barns and feedlots. This method is considered more natural and alters the constituents of the cows’ milk in ways consumers deem beneficial.

But during visits by The Washington Post to Aurora’s High Plains complex across eight days last year, signs of grazing were sparse, at best. Aurora said its animals were out on pasture day and night, but during most Post visits the number of cows seen on pasture numbered only in the hundreds. At no point was any more than 10 percent of the herd out. A high-resolution satellite photo taken in mid-July by Digital Globe, a space imagery vendor, shows a typical situation — only a few hundred on pasture.

In response, Aurora spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele dismissed the Post visits as anomalies and “drive-bys.”

“The requirements of the USDA National Organic Program allow for an extremely wide range of grazing practices that comply with the rule,” Tuitele said by email.

The milk from Aurora also indicates that its cows may not graze as required by organic rules. Testing conducted for The Post by Virginia Tech scientists shows that on a key indicator of grass-feeding, the Aurora milk matched conventional milk, not organic.

Tuitele dismissed the tests as “isolated.”

In the case of milk, consumers pay extra — often double — when the carton says “USDA Organic,” in the belief they are getting something different. Organic dairy sales amounted to $6 billion last year in the United States.

Under organic rules, the USDA typically does not inspect farms. Instead, farmers hire their own inspectors from lists of private companies and other organizations licensed by the USDA. An inspector makes an annual visit, arranged days or weeks in advance. Only 5 percent of inspections are expected to be done unannounced.

Philadelphia Protesters Chant ‘Kill Trump, Kill Pence’ VIDEO

https://pjmedia.com/video/these-philadelphia-protesters-literally-want-to-kill-trump-and-pence/

Mayday protesters in Philadelphia were caught chanting “Kill Trump, kill Pence.” So much for non-violent protests. Maybe these guys should be investigated?

Portland’s May Day March Quickly Spins Out of Control By Debra Heine

Antifa anarchists participating in the Portland May Day march attacked police officers and emergency workers and destroyed property Monday night, forcing the city of Portland to pull the May Day parade permit. Before the march began, police officers confiscated several “homemade shields” from anarchists who had come prepared to do battle.

Once the march began, the agitators proceeded to throw rocks, paint, glass bottles, soda cans, smoke bombs, and molotov cocktails at police officers and police cars.

About an hour into the event, the violent and disorderly conduct escalated into a full-blown riot and marchers were told to disburse or risk being arrested. Portland PD warned the agitators that they were preparing to deploy “impact munitions” and “chemical munitions” due to the numerous projectiles that were being thrown their way. But the rioters defied their orders, instead continuing to taunt the police and throw projectiles at them.Officers started pushing the anarchists forward, and they grabbed everything that could burn near SW 3rd Ave and Morrison St and lit a bonfire in the intersection. The rioters were smashing store windows and throwing flares inside.

Then the asskicking came. Portland PD rushed forward, arrested three anarchists, and put out the fire. They kept pushing the crowd forward, arresting more and more anarchists along the way, until finally, there were no more anarchists left to riot.According to Portland PD, the anarchists destroyed a police car, damaged numerous windows and property, started fires, and attacked police.

Trump ‘very happy’ with bill outlawing future border wall By Ed Straker

While it’s commonly known by now that the new spending bill that Congress and the Trump administration agreed to funds mostly Democratic priorities, and doesn’t fund President Trump’s border wall, what’s not widely known is that the new legislation goes even farther than this. Not only does it not fund the border wall, but it prevents the government from constructing a border wall with any funds.

This is important because the government is already authorized, under a 2006 law, to build the wall. It was just a question of funding. Before this bill, the President could conceivable reallocate border security funding from things like “technology” to the border wall because the wall was authorized. Now, when the president signs this bill, he will no longer have the option to build the wall by reallocating funds. Even if Donald Trump somehow got the Mexicans to pay for it, this legislation would still prohibit him from building the wall. Trump has incredibly agreed to give up the authorization already on the books to allow him to build a wall.

And what is Trump’s reaction to this? The president says he’s “very happy” with the pending legislation and plans to sign it.

This legislation funded all the Democrats’ priorities–Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and a big bailout to Puerto Rico. Furthermore, the president, who wanted to cut the EPA by a third, has to settle for a tiny 1% cut. He got less than half of what he wanted for the military, and all of the environmental regulations he wanted to cut were rejected by Democrats. Democrats were incredulous that they, out of power in all branches of the government, got everything they wanted and Trump got nearly nothing. They are now emboldened to demand even more when the next spending bill comes up in September. Just look at this WaPo headline:

Democrats confident they can block Trump’s agenda after spending-bill win.

How to Defuse the Crisis with North Korea By Herbert E. Meyer

The looming crisis with North Korea provides a perfect illustration of what’s gone wrong with the way Washington works. Everyone is so eager to propose a policy, no one can be bothered to articulate an objective. So policymakers start arguing about what to do, before deciding what they want to accomplish. That’s like arguing over what route to take, before deciding where you want to go. (Which, to point out the obvious, is why we keep ending up in the middle of nowhere, or upside down in a ditch.)

Here’s one possible objective that would defuse this crisis and perhaps even bring a few decades of stability: to turn North Korea into a modern version of East Germany.

For those of you too young to remember the Cold War, during those decades after World War II Germany was divided. West Germany was free, prosperous, and an American ally. East Germany was a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a Soviet satellite. (To get a feel for what life was like in East Germany, watch the great movie The Lives of Others, and the German television series Weissensee.) But during all these decades, East Germany was never a threat to West Germany, or to the U.S. Its communist regime wanted only to be left alone. And in return, the West Germans and the Americans made it absolutely clear they had no intention of unifying Germany by attacking or otherwise bringing down the East.

When the Korean war ended with an armistice in 1953, that country was divided. South Korea became free, prosperous, and an American ally. North Korea became a miserable dictatorship, not very prosperous, and a sort-of satellite of China. The difference between Germany and Korea is that while East Germany wanted only to be left alone, North Korea keeps threatening to conquer South Korea and reunify the country under its control, and to fire nuclear-armed missiles at the U.S. itself.

President Trump’s Got Their Attention

But now, for the first time in its history — and thanks entirely to President Trump — North Korea faces the real possibility of a massive military attack, certainly to destroy its nuclear facilities and perhaps even to obliterate the regime itself. And there’s nothing like the looming prospect of an attack by the United States to get a government’s attention.

Simply put, it may be possible to defuse the current crisis without a war by cutting a deal along these lines: If North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons and cease threatening South Korea and the U.S., the U.S. and South Korea will guarantee North Korea’s sovereignty.

Once again, there’s an historic parallel between Korea and Germany: Adolf Hitler was crazy; a foaming-at-the-mouth, chewing-the-carpet raving lunatic. He was also a brilliant, cunning politician who not only held onto power, but who kept within his grip the total loyalty of Germany’s military leaders. These generals weren’t crazy; they were hard, practical, highly intelligent men who had fought and lost World War I and then rebuilt Germany’s war machine. They knew in their bones that another world war would devastate their country. They understood that invading Russia would end in catastrophe.

Every Senator Agrees the U.N. Must Change It’s past time for the U.S. to stop tolerating Turtle Bay’s pervasive anti-Israel bias.By Chris Coons and Marco Rubio

Mr. Coons, a Delaware Democrat, and Mr. Rubio, a Florida Republican, are U.S. senators.

It’s rare, especially these days, for all 100 U.S. Senators—from Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz, from Elizabeth Warren to Mitch McConnell —to agree on something. But the scourge of anti-Israel bias at the United Nations is such an issue. Last week, every senator signed our letter to Secretary-General António Guterres, urging him to improve the U.N.’s treatment of Israel and eliminate anti-Semitism in all its forms.

While the U.N. has achieved some important successes since its founding 70 years ago, too many of its member states and agencies use the world body as a vehicle for targeting Israel rather than as a forum committed to advancing peace and human rights. This encourages and supports the broader scourge of anti-Semitism, and distracts key U.N. entities from their original missions.

As both the U.N.’s principal founding member and its largest financial contributor, the U.S. must insist on real reforms. We in Congress have a responsibility to conduct rigorous oversight of U.S. engagement at the U.N. and its use of our citizens’ tax dollars. We commend Ambassador Nikki Haley for stating that “the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias . . . is long overdue for change.” In another hopeful sign, Mr. Guterres recently disavowed an anti-Israel report by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and demanded that it be withdrawn.

Still, the U.N. continues to fund and maintain many standing committees that serve no purpose other than to attack Israel and inspire the anti-Israel boycott, sanctions and divestment movement. These committees must be eliminated or reformed.

While the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization does important work on Holocaust education and preserving world heritage sites, some member states persist in pushing measures to target Israel and deny Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalem. Unesco member states must understand that these actions only undermine the credibility of their organization.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East has faced troubling allegations of inciting violence against Israelis and aiding Hamas. If it does not cease these activities, it risks losing support of U.S. lawmakers.

Perhaps most troubling is the Human Rights Council. Charged with drawing the world’s attention to gross human-rights violations, its members include some of the world’s worst human-rights violators, who devote far too much time to baseless attacks against the Jewish state. The HRC even maintains a permanent item on its agenda targeting Israel—Agenda Item 7. No actual human-rights violator is targeted in this way.

Speaking recently before the HRC in Geneva, Erin Barclay, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, criticized the council’s anti-Israel focus as “unfair and unbalanced,” noting that its “obsession with Israel . . . is the largest threat to the council’s credibility” and “limits the good we can accomplish by making a mockery of this council.”

The HRC should be the premier international body addressing the many pressing human-rights challenges of our time in countries such as China, Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Russia, South Sudan and Venezuela. We therefore urge specific reforms to end the HRC’s imbalanced focus on Israel, including the elimination of Agenda Item 7 and a competitive admission process in order to broaden and better balance membership on the council.

In his April 25, 1945, address to the United Nations, President Harry S. Truman challenged the authors of the U.N. Charter to create an organization rooted in lofty humanitarian principles, dedicated to the benefit of all mankind, and capable of achieving “a just and lasting peace.”

For too long the world body has fallen far short of those ideals. In order for it to be more effective in advancing peace and human rights around the world, America must remain vigilant. We stand ready to lead sustained bipartisan efforts in Congress and with our international partners to eliminate the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias, and to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.

Gorka is a casualty of a Jewish civil war : David Goldman

Jews are sadly accustomed to becoming collateral damage in disputes in other peoples’ civil wars. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a senior White House official, is one of the few gentile victims of a Jewish civil war. Dr. Gorka, long a Fox News commentator on counter-terrorism, will speak at the Jerusalem Post’s annual New York conference in May and at this year’s Zionist Organization of America Gala. But a left-leaning Jewish website, the Forward, has published 39 articles alleging that Gorka has neo-Nazi ties in Hungary, the country of his parents’ birth where he was active in politics during the 2000s.

American media have been carrying unconfirmed reports that Gorka will leave the White House, where he works in the Strategic Initiatives Group, perhaps for another post in the government. It is not clear whether he will leave, much less whether his possible departure was motivated by the campaign against him. The bigger issue for the Jewish world, though, is whether we can contest our differences without resorting to mendacity and slander.

Gorka’s supporters in the Jewish world are playing whack-a-mole with the Forward, refuting each charge as it appears while the Forward staff devises new ones. The exchange reached a depth of absurdity when the Forward posted a heavily spliced and truncated video clip of a 2007 interview with Gorka on Hungarian television. The Forward claimed April 4 that Gorka endorsed the proposal of anti-Semitic political parties for a popular militia. The next morning, the Hungarian-speaking Jewish journalist David Reaboi posted an unedited version of the same video on the Redstate website, showing that Gorka had denounced the militia plan that the Forward claimed he had supported.

The merits of the Forward’s claims and Reaboi’s rebuttal can be verified by any reader who takes the time to watch the two clips. Riots instigated by supporters of the discredited Communist regime had stormed Hungary’s National Television Station in 2006, injuring 141 policeman in a pitched battle on the Budapest streets. In response the explicitly anti-Semitic Jobbik Party proposed to create a popular militia. Gorka, a leader of the New Democratic Coalition (UDK), was asked to respond. Choosing his words carefully, Gorka stated he had no objection to the principle of a popular militia, but that Jobbik sought to exploit fears of civil unrest, and the notionally respectable FIDESZ party (which has ruled Hungary since 2010) was using Jobbik for its own purposes.

The Forward’s heavily-edited segment cut Gorka off in mid-sentence, at the moment he said that he had no objection to militias in principle, and just before he denounced the specific proposal in question. The Forward left out what Gorka said next: “And the most important thing of all, and I stress, the most important thing of all is that this isn’t anything to do with the UDK [Gorka’s party], but with Jobbik and that FIDESZ is really behind them and supporting it from the sidelines.”

Some Jewish leaders, including Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein, repudiated the Forward’s charges as a smear. Writing in PJ Media April 4, I abhorred the Forward’s spliced video as the most transparent falsification I had seen in forty years of journalism.

Pre-Existing Confusion Here’s how the House health reform will cover high-risk patients.

Insurance coverage for pre-existing health conditions can be confusing, as President Trump and a journalist showed in a television interview over the weekend. Allow us to explain how the GOP reform would work in practice and why pre-existing conditions have been exaggerated as a political problem.

Mr. Trump told CBS ’s John Dickerson that “I watch some of the news reports, which are so unfair, and they say we don’t cover pre-existing conditions, we cover it beautifully.” Mr. Dickerson seemed surprised: “Okay. Well, that’s a development, sir. So you’re saying it’s going to be pre-existing to everybody?” Mr. Trump said the House bill had “evolved” but as usual didn’t explain how.

House conservatives rebelled over the original version of the American Health Care Act, which only partially deregulated insurance markets. The bill maintained the rule known as guaranteed issue, which requires insurers to cover all applicants regardless of medical history. It also relaxed community rating, which limits how much premiums can vary among beneficiaries.

The media and the left thus claim that conservatives want to allow insurers to charge sick people more, and some conservatives agree, which spooks the moderates. But the latest compromise between conservatives and centrists doesn’t repeal guaranteed issue or community rating. It keeps these regulations as the default baseline, and states could apply for a federal waiver if they want to pursue other regulatory relief.

But the waivers aren’t a license to leave cancer survivors without insurance. States can only receive a waiver if they avail themselves of the bill’s $100 billion fund to set up high-risk pools. These state-based programs, which were run in 35 states until they were pre-empted by ObamaCare, subsidize coverage for older and sicker patients. This helps these individuals and keeps coverage cheaper for everyone else.

Why might a Governor prefer such an arrangement over the ObamaCare status quo? Well, the law’s price controls are a raw deal for most consumers, which leads to a cycle of rising premiums and falling enrollment. Average premiums rose by 40% or more in 11 states this year, and insurance markets in states like Tennessee, Kentucky and Minnesota are in crisis.

Community rating and guaranteed issue also punish the sick by degrading quality. When insurers can profit by being the best plan for, say, cancer or diabetes, they invest in such care. When both the healthy and sick pay the same rates, the incentive is to load up on healthier people and discourage people with expensive ailments or chronic conditions from enrolling by using higher copays, narrow provider networks or tiered prescription drug formularies.

‘Nationalist’ Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word Trump will be successful if he puts U.S. interests first—while still helping to maintain global order.By Walter Russell Mead

If Donald Trump were a liberal Democrat, some of the media’s descriptions of “chaos” and “disarray” in the White House probably would be replaced with stories about “creative tension” among a “team of rivals.” As it is, the struggle between “nationalists” like Steve Bannon and “globalists” like Gary Cohn is characterized in near-apocalyptic terms. Yet as Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal last week, “I’m a nationalist and a globalist.” That is good news: Mr. Trump and the Republican Party should be weaving nationalist and globalist themes together rather than picking them apart.

Nationalism—the sense that Americans are bound together into a single people with a common destiny—is a noble and necessary force without which American democracy would fail. A nationalist and patriotic elite produces leaders like George Washington, who aim to promote the well-being of the country they love. An unpatriotic and antinationalist elite produces people who feather their nests without regard to the common good.

Mr. Trump is president in large part because millions of Americans, rightly or wrongly, believed that large sections of their country’s elite were no longer nationalist. Flawed he may be, but the president bears an important message, and Trump-hating elites have only themselves to blame for his ascendancy. A cosmopolitan and technocratic political class that neither speaks the language nor feels the pull of nationalist solidarity cannot successfully lead a democratic society.

The president symbolized his nationalist commitment by hanging a portrait of Andrew Jackson in a place of honor in the Oval Office. Now Mr. Trump must stay true to that commitment or he will lose his political base and American politics will spin even further off balance. But life is rarely simple. Jacksonian means will not always achieve Jacksonian goals. Sometimes, they even get in the way.

Jackson learned this when his populist fight against the Second Bank of the United States ultimately led to a depression that turned the country over to his hated Whig rivals. As Mr. Trump comes to grips with the tough international economic reality, he is realizing that not everything the Jacksonians think they want will actually help them. The president has already discovered that ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement won’t help the middle-class voters who put him in office.

Jacksonian voters don’t want North Korea to have the ability to threaten the U.S. with nuclear weapons. They also don’t want a second Korean War. Reaching the best outcome on Korea could mean giving China a better deal on trade than many Trump voters would desire. Populists like to rail against globalization and world order. Yet the security and prosperity of the American people depend on an intricate web of military, diplomatic, political and economic arrangements that an American president must manage and conserve.

Mr. Trump is learning that some of the core goals of his Jacksonian program can be realized only by judiciously employing the global military, diplomatic and economic statesmanship associated with Alexander Hamilton. Bringing those two visions into alignment isn’t easy. Up until the Civil War, the American party system revolved around the rivalry of the Jacksonian Democrats with the Hamiltonian Whigs. Abraham Lincoln fused Jacksonian unionism with Henry Clay’s Hamiltonian vision when he created the modern Republican Party. Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan revitalized the party of their times by returning to the Jacksonian-Hamiltonian coalition that made the old party grand. CONTINUE AT SITE