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May 2018

Trump and the Two Americas Why the anti-Trumpers just can’t give credit to the president for his successes. Bruce Thornton

Nearly a year-and-a-half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Trump Derangement Syndrome continues to rage. No number of successes––from tax reform and low unemployment rates not seen since 2000, to bringing North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table––can lower the fever of the anti-Trump disease. Even those few who are willing to give grudging recognition to Trump’s achievements feel compelled to add snarky asides about his person and style in order to assert their anti-Trump bona fides.

How can we explain this bizarre obsession with image and style in the teeth of successful substance?

I’m not talking so much about the progressive Dems. Like the scorpion in the fable, poisonous slander is in their nature. Their slogan has always been “by any means necessary,” a dogma at home in the breviary of every looney cult. So too is their aggressive belief in their own self-righteousness and entitlement to rule, which the election of Trump has challenged. This certainty of their own purity allows them to excuse any number of inconsistencies and double standards. That’s why they will complain hysterically about Trump’s past sexual peccadillos, while shrugging off Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults and sordid adventures on the Lolita Express; or they will hyperventilate at Trump’s vulgar tweets while enjoying Michelle Wolfe’s mean-girl insults and pornographic “humor” at the media’s nerd prom, aka White House Correspondents Dinner.

More interesting is the continuing resentment and anti-Trump animus on the part of self-proclaimed Republicans and conservatives. Even when acknowledging Trump’s successes, they too can’t resist some attack on Trump that signals their lofty virtue. They still reflexively insist that “principle” and “values” lie behind their disdain, that Trump has violated the “norms and traditions,” as serial liar and Democrat toady James Comey put it, that previous presidents have honored. Trump’s lack of decorum and his braggadocio, we continually hear, is “not who we are.”

Trump Ends Obama’s Iran Hostage Crisis In 1,251 words, Trump crushed every lie about the Iran deal. Daniel Greenfield

Jimmy Carter began the first Iranian hostage crisis and Reagan ended it. Obama began America’s second Iranian hostage crisis.

President Trump just ended it.

On January 12, 2016, Iran’s IRGC terror force seized 2 US Navy vessels, extracted classified information from their crews at gunpoint, broadcast images of American sailors on their knees and forced an officer to read an apology. A day later, the Islamic terror state released its American hostages.

Three days later, Implementation Day lifted sanctions on Iran. By next month, Iran was claiming that it had received over $100 billion in sanctions relief.

It was not the last ransom payment linked to the nuclear deal.

On January 17, Obama illegally airlifted $400 million in foreign currency on unmarked cargo planes to the IRGC as a down payment on a $1.7 billion ransom for four American hostages being held in Iran.

Since then, Iran has taken more American hostages.

President Trump made it clear that there will be no more dirty deals and payoffs. “America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.”

The hostage he set free was American foreign policy. Obama didn’t ship $1.7 billion to Iran because he cared about the four American prisoners or the Navy sailors. They were just icing on the yellowcake. Iran wasn’t able to dictate to the White House because it was holding American prisoners as hostages, but because it had imprisoned Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize and was holding his beloved legacy hostage.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: WEST VIRGINIA DEMOCRAT SENATOR JOE MANCHIN WILL BE CHALLENGED BY GOP CANDIDATE PATRICK MORRISEY

https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/patrick-morrisey-wins-west-virginia-gop-senate-primary

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has won the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III in November in what’s likely to be one of the most closely watched races in the country.

He took 35 percent of the vote in a six-way GOP primary field, besting Rep. Evan Jenkins and former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship who finished with 29 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

The defeat of Blankenship, a former convict, is a win for national Republicans who spent upward of a million dollars attacking him.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: INDIANA DEMOCRAT SENATOR JOE DONNELLY WILL BE CHALLENGED BY GOP NEWCOMER MIKE BRAUN

Indiana Senate race: Mike Braun wins GOP primary in huge upset over 2 sitting congressmen
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/08/indiana-primary-election-senate-race-results-braun-wins-over-congressmen-rokita-and-messer/572321002/

In a huge upset against two well-established names in Indiana Republican politics, wealthy businessman Mike Braun won Indiana’s high-stakes GOP Senate primary.

Braun, who fueled his bid with millions of dollars of his own money, defeated U.S. Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita in what has been called the nation’s nastiest and most expensive U.S. Senate primary.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: OHIO DEMOCRAT SEN.SHERROD BROWN WILL BE CHALLENGED BY REP. JIM RENACCI

Trump-Endorsed Ohio Senate Candidate Jim Renacci Blows Out Four Opponents by Paula Boyard-
https://pjmedia.com/election/trump-endorsed-ohio-senate-candidate-jim-renacci-blows-out-opponents/

Congressman Jim Renacci, who touted President Trump’s endorsement during his campaign, blew out four opponents on Tuesday, paving the way for him to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown in November.

The Bias Response Team Is Watching A lawsuit challenging the University of Michigan’s speech police may serve as a nationwide model. By Jillian Kay Melchior

‘The most important indication of bias is your own feelings,” the University of Michigan advises students. It then urges them to report on their peers, anonymously if they prefer, “and to encourage others to report if they have been the target or witness of a bias incident.”

The Bias Response Team is there, ready to investigate and mete out justice. More than 200 American campuses have established similar administrative offices to handle alleged acts of “bias” that violate no law. A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday against the University of Michigan is the first in the nation to challenge the constitutionality of these Bias Response Teams.

The case is brought by Speech First, a membership group primarily made up of college students, alumni and their families. It alleges that Michigan’s student code and Bias Response Team violate the First Amendment by threatening to penalize protected expression. “Even apart from any punishments that may result at the end of the process,” the lawsuit argues, the team’s existence has a chilling effect on speech. Speech First seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the Bias Response Team from investigating students.

University spokeswoman Kim Broekhuizen said the Bias Response Team has operated “for a number of years, and we have certainly not seen it chill speech here.” Team members include top administrators and campus law enforcement. Despite repeated inquiries, no one from the team was available to answer questions.

Students found responsible for a “bias incident” face discipline, which ranges from training sessions to suspension or expulsion. As for what constitutes bias, that’s vague—unconstitutionally so, argues Speech First. The existence of an offended party can be sufficient to prove “bias.” The team warns potential offenders that bias “may be intentional or unintentional.” Similarly, the student code prohibits “harassment,” which it defines as “unwanted negative attention perceived as intimidating, demeaning or bothersome to an individual.” Here, subjective perception serves as evidence.

What if the expression of a controversial or unpopular opinion bothers someone? Under the University of Michigan’s rules, “the most sensitive student on campus effectively dictates the terms under which others may speak,” Speech First says. Since April 2017, students have reported more than 150 bias incidents. These include complaints about social-media posts, drawings, comments, phone calls and even “intentional item placement”—whatever that means. The Bias Response Team has also investigated speech or other expression even when it occurred off-campus.

These details come from the bare-bones bias-incident log the university publishes online. I wanted a deeper look, so two years ago I requested a year’s worth of bias reports and the notes from any investigation or response. The university thwarted this inquiry by imposing a fee of more than $2,400 for the public records. But the log shows that in one reported incident of verbal bias in the classroom, the Bias Response Team said it referred a university employee to administrators who “shared concerns with the academic department involved.” In several other cases, the Bias Response Team determined that some reported acts of verbal bias could constitute sex discrimination under Title IX, referring them to the Office of Institutional Equity.

Even if the Bias Response Team doesn’t officially discipline an alleged bias offender, its handling of the incident can chill speech, as a recent case at the University of Northern Colorado illustrates. Adjunct professor Mike Jensen had asked his students to read Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” and debate controversial subjects, including gay marriage and transgender issues. CONTINUE AT SITE

The World’s Youngest Billionaires Are Shadowed by a WWII Weapons Fortune The Flicks are worth $1.8 billion each. Their industrialist grandfather was postwar Germany’s richest man. David De Jong

Their grandfather was said to be Nazi Germany’s richest man after building a weapons empire on the backs of slave labor.Their father was involved in one of postwar Germany’s biggest political scandals. He almost frittered away the family fortune.
Enough remained for Viktoria-Katharina Flick and twin brother Karl-Friedrich Flick to lay claim, at 19, to being the world’s youngest billionaires. Each has $1.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Behind the riches, discreetly managed by their family office in Austria, lies a dark history of one of Germany’s wealthiest industrial dynasties.

The Flicks’ wealth traces its roots to Friedrich Flick, who spent three years in prison after he was convicted by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal of using slave labor to produce armaments for the Nazis, among other crimes. He created a steel empire, which expanded by seizing companies in Nazi-occupied territories and in Germany through Aryanizations—the expropriation and forced sale of Jewish-owned businesses. As many as 40,000 laborers may have died working for Flick companies, according to a study of his Nazi-era businesses published in 2008.

The Trump Land Mine By Victor Davis Hanson

Explosives require careful handling. Sometimes they blow up in your face.

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the Trump executive branch; filing lawsuits and judge shopping; organizing the Resistance; pursuing impeachment writs; warping the FISA courts; weaponizing the DOJ and FBI; attempting to disrupt the Electoral College; angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

Silicon Valley likewise has lost its luster. Once upon a time, America loved a hip Steve Jobs, decked out in black, fiddling with a new Apple gadget on stage in front of an entranced televised audience of millions. Jobs appeared as a brilliant and typically American entrepreneur, not a partisan talking down to hoi polloi.

Things have radically changed since then. The reputation of Big Tech is one of hyper-partisan politics, data miners, snoops, Bowdlerizers and censors, monopolists, progressive multibillionaires, and adolescents in arrested development who exempt themselves from the consequences of what their ideologies inflict on others.

If the deep state really wanted to dismantle and disarm Donald Trump, it would have been wise first to carefully learn how he was constructed and wired — and thus why he was especially dangerous to them.

Thoughts on ‘Unfettered Power’ By Roger Kimball

Where to start? The phrase “unfettered power,” to which I will return, may put you in mind of Lord Acton’s famous observation that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But the context of Acton’s mot was grand politics. “Great men,” he went on to say, “are almost always bad men.”

What we see in the present case—the case of the hall-of-mirrors, matryoshka-doll-like investigation tirelessly pursued by Robert Mueller and his band of merry Democratic prosecutors—is not grand but shabby.

In just a week, we will have reached the first anniversary of what threatens to be an interminable investigation of—what? It’s hard to keep track. Is it charges dating back to 2005 of bank fraud against Paul Manafort, who was briefly Donald Trump’s campaign manager? Or does it have to do with a taxi business in which Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is involved? It’s hard to say.

Mission Creep
Robert Mueller’s original marching orders authorized him to look into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” That was the main thing. Acting Attorney General (as he was then) Rod Rosenstein also added that Mueller was authorized to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise [my emphasis] directly from the investigation” as well as “any other matters within the scope” of the governing statute.

That was last May. In August, Rosenstein issued another memo. I would like to tell you what it says, but can only give you the most general sense because, in the version released to the public, most of it is blacked out—“redacted,” to use the term of art that has replaced “collusion” as the political word du jour. Someday I hope to see a communication from the Justice Department or our intelligence services that is 100 percent redacted. The memo was released, just not the words on the memo.

An Israel-Iran war is unlikely – for the time being Israel won’t take the risk of war short of an immediate existential threat, and Iran is unlikely to present one

An Israeli-Iran war would not be a limited conflict. Both sides would attempt to destroy the other’s capacity to fight, and the odds for the moment favor Israel.

Two dozen Israeli missiles or bomber sorties could wipe out Iran’s economy in a matter of hours, and that makes a war unlikely for the time being. Fewer than a dozen power plants generate 60% of Iran’s electricity, and eight refineries produce 80% of its distillates. A single missile strike could disable each of these facilities, and bunker-buster bombs of the kind that Israel used last month in Lebanon would entirely destroy them. And as Hillel Frisch points out in the Jerusalem Post, with a bit more effort Israel could eliminate the Port of Kharg from which Iran exports 90% of its hydrocarbons.

After Israeli intelligence stole half a ton of Iranian secret documents in an operation that reportedly involved 100 Mossad agents, Iran must assume that Israel has mapped every point of vulnerability in the country and has considerable capacity for sabotage in the event of war. Iran doesn’t want a war that might end in a Carthaginian peace.