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Trump Knows When to Fold ‘Em By Michael Walsh

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/01/

“So Kim, a dead man walking now, gets back in his armored train while Trump flies back to freedom aboard Air Force One, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before the phone rings again. And this time, his terms for what in effect will be North Korea’s final surrender will be even tougher than the ones he offered now.”

In the course of a high-stakes negotiation, the player who walks away from the table is the one with the least to lose. Ronald Reagan did it to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986, and Donald Trump did it to Kim Jong-un this week in Vietnam. Good for the president.

A lot of people have brought up Reykjavik; I discussed the similarities on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with guest host Kurt Schlichter on Thursday. Reagan met Gorbachev in Iceland in the fall of 1986 and the two men were approaching an agreement that might have included the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the Soviet premier wanted the Americans to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars.” That was a bridge too far for Reagan, who abandoned the talks and went home.

Naturally, the hostile press was appalled—the abolition of all nukes! And this cowboy won’t give up a pet program that probably won’t work anyway! Warmonger! Reagan was widely viewed at the time as an “amiable dunce” who didn’t understand the first thing about the complexities of international diplomacy; why, the doddering old fool actually thought “We win, they lose” was a strategy.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Politics and MusicBy David Solway

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/politics_and_music.html

“Politics is for old men.” Thus a Serbian friend informed me when I visited Belgrade shortly before everything fell apart. He wanted me to send him Beatles albums not easily obtainable at the time so he could listen to “happy music,” by which he meant just music. Unfortunately, politics is for young men (and women) too, and although good music uncorrupted by politics can still be found, bad music with a political or subversive agenda abounds.

As Michael Walsh argues in his magisterial The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, “we must see music and art as separate and apart from politics, no matter the quotidian circumstances that give them birth.” Certainly, aside from military marches and national anthems, music is for the most part not the right medium for political feelings, commentary and themes — except indirectly, as in Country and Western, when the singer expresses his or her love of country or commitment to traditional ways of life.

Far too much music exists to peddle a political or disruptive message, often a predictably leftist screed. Historian Victor Davis Hanson ruefully states in an essay titled Epitaph for a Dying Culture that many people now skip popular music “on the expectation that it is not just vulgar and foul, but incoherently politicalized.” As I pointed out in an earlier article for American Thinker, typical examples are furnished by such truly execrable groups as Rage Against the Machine, the violence-prone deathcore Slipknot (whose fans are known as “maggots”), the ludicrously named Prophets of Rage, the ostentatiously punky Red Hot Chili Peppers, along with Vampire Weekend and Foster the People shilling for socialist hack Bernie Sanders, the manically feminist co-ed War On Women advancing its new wave feminism agenda, and the hardcore rocker band Stick To Your Guns, the latter dedicating their piece of cacophonic rubbish “What Choice Did You Give Us” to the families of hooligans like Eric Garner, Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin.

BOOKS Comments turned off

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “THE CASE FOR TRUMP”

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

From an award-winning historian and regular Fox contributor, the true story of how Donald Trump has become one of the most successful presidents in history — and why America needs him now more than ever.

In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the United States — and an extremely successful president.

Trump alone saw a political opportunity in defending the working people of America’s interior whom the coastal elite of both parties had come to scorn, Hanson argues. And Trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue this opening to victory, dismantle a corrupt old order, and bring long-overdue policy changes at home and abroad. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump’s. But after decades of drift, America needs the outsider Trump to do what normal politicians would not and could not do.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canadian Court Rules Parents Can’t Stop 14-Year-Old From Taking Trans Hormones by Jeremiah Keenan

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/

The Supreme Court of British Columbia thinks it’s okay for doctors to override a parent’s wishes and administer trans hormones to his child.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ordered that a 14-year-old girl receive testosterone injections without parental consent. The court also declared that if either of her parents referred to her using female pronouns or addressed her by her birth name, they would be considered guilty of family violence.

As previously reported, Maxine* was encouraged by her school counselor in BC’s Delta School District to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. When Maxine was 13 years old, Dr. Brenden Hursh and his colleagues at BC Children’s Hospital decided that Maxine should begin taking testosterone injections in order to develop a more masculine appearance.

Although Maxine’s mother was ultimately willing to support hormone injections, her father Clark* was concerned about the permanent ramifications of cross-sex hormones. Suspecting that his daughter’s mental health issues might be more the cause than the effect of her gender dysphoria, he ultimately decided that it would be better for her to wait until she was older before she embarked on any irreversible course of treatment.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Sanders: Government ‘Cannot Go Too Far’ in Addressing Climate Change By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-government-cannot-go-too-far-in-addressing-climate-change/

Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) dismissed Friday the notion that the recently introduced Green New Deal plan is extreme and unrealistic, arguing instead that there is no action too drastic for the government to take to address climate change.

“Does the Green New Deal go too far?” Sunny Hostin asked Sanders Friday on ABC’s The View.

“No. You cannot go too far on the issue of climate change. The future of the planet is at stake, ok? . . . According to the best scientists in the world, we have twelve years to begin substantially cutting carbon emissions,” Sanders responded.

Hostin also pressed Sanders on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent suggestion that couples are rightfully hesitant to have children because of the threat of climate change.

“[Ocasio-Cortez] claimed that the looming threat of climate change that continues to exacerbate global conflicts has gotten so dire that it is a legitimate question to ask whether it is moral for people to have children now. Does she have a point there or is that too radical?” Hostin asked.

“Obviously that’s an enormously personal choice that every couple is going to have to make,” Sanders said before redirecting the conversation to President Trump’s past skepticism of the threat posed by climate change.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Washington Governor Announces Presidential Bid With Focus on Climate Change By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/washington-governor-announces-pre

Washington governor Jay Inslee announced Friday that he will enter the already crowded 2020 Democratic presidential field, citing the “existential threat” of climate change as the primary motivation for his run.

Inslee, who represented Washington in Congress for 20 years before becoming governor in 2012, sought to differentiate himself from the eleven other Democrats in the field by emphasizing his commitment to addressing climate change.

“I’m Jay Inslee and I’m running for president because I’m the only candidate that will make defeating climate change our number one priority,” Inslee said in his announcement video released Friday

POLITICS Comments turned off

Don’t Root for a Trump Primary Challenge By Rich Lowry

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/trump-primary-challenge-2020-trouble-republican-party/

Does anyone really believe that Weld, Hogan, or Kasich is going to define the future of the post-Trump Republican party?

The race for 2020 is taking shape, although there are still significant unknowns, including whether Donald Trump will get a serious primary challenge.

His fiercest Republican critics say, “Yes — please, please, yes.”

They are probably wrong, and it’s certainly nothing to root for.

Trump’s dominance of the party begins with his lockdown support of the right, forcing any primary challenger to the left. This isn’t fertile territory. Self-identified moderates and liberals are only a fraction of the party, and it is grass-roots conservative activists who have fueled the most potent Republican primary challenges (Ronald Reagan in 1976, Pat Buchanan in 1992).

Because a primary challenge would naturally come from the left and is unlikely to succeed, it will tend to attract people who don’t have a future in GOP national politics and lack conservative bona fides — the wayward former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld; the centrist governor of Maryland Larry Hogan; the former Ohio governor John Kasich, who convincingly demonstrated his lack of national electoral appeal in 2016.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Takeaways from the House Democrats’ Cohen Hearing By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/takeaways-from-the-house-democrats-cohen-hearing/

It was cinéma not so vérité.

‘Lanny Davis Productions.” That should have been the credit on this week’s big Michael Cohen drama. It’s a better fit than “House Oversight Committee.”

Knowledge may be power, but electoral victory is subpoena power. That’s of more practical use when the objective, under all the chatter about “collusion” and impeachment, is to render Donald Trump unelectable. Expect another 18 months of this.

The Democrats are entitled to the spectacle orchestrated Wednesday by Chairman Elijah Cummings and Cohen lawyer (and, not coincidentally, sharp Democratic strategist) Lanny Davis. They won the midterm elections, not just fair and square but going away. The spoils that go to the victor include the authority to compel the appearance of witnesses who will support the 2020 narrative: Trump as “racist, conman, and cheat,” the theme of Cohen’s opening statement — which we may suspect the rough-edged, ambulance-chaser-turned-wannabe-Trump-bullyboy had just a tad of Lanny’s help writing. Chairman Scorsese, um, I mean Cummings, gave Cohen an extraordinary half hour to read it to America without interruption.

Republicans are not nearly as good at this stuff, mainly for reasons beyond their control. While in the House majority, they tried their best to put the Obama legacy Justice Department and FBI under the microscope for politicization and abuses of power in the investigations that bore on the 2016 election. But the anti-Trump press didn’t care, which meant the public never heard much about it.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea’s Single-Minded Ambition by Peter Rowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine

THINK of North Korea as a liberation movement with unfinished business—the reunification of Korea—and you have the surest guide to explain its past actions and likely future behaviour. It is vital to keep this in mind, as President Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in claim success in reducing the threat from North Korea.

Summits between enemies like Trump and Kim Jong-un, and Kim and Moon, may grab attention as firsts and breakthroughs. But they do not signal a shift in the North’s ambitions. Rather, they fit into patterns of tactical manoeuvring that Pyongyang has engaged in for decades to meet short-term goals. This is especially necessary for a regime like North Korea which sees itself as an insurgency pitted against a superior occupying force like the US.

North Korea is one of the few successful Stalinist dictatorships. In a small, compact country with a manageable population, the founder, Kim Il-sung, was able to wipe out all his opponents and opposing factions in the first ten years of his rule. His successors, chosen for their ruthlessness, have been able to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the North’s Stalinist party organisation, the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), both to them personally and to their vision of a unified state. The North’s state apparatus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a shadow, even less well-formed than other Leninist countries. It has no independent existence. The premier and cabinet ministers are all senior members of the ruling KWP. They carry out administrative functions decided and overseen by the party.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Three-Front War Scenario The daunting challenges of confronting symmetrical and asymmetrical threats. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273003/israels-three-front-war-scenario-ari-lieberman

With the conclusion of Operation Northern Shield, Israel’s successful effort to locate Hezbollah-constructed cross-border tunnels, Israeli residents of the north can breathe a sigh of relief. In all, six tunnels of various lengths and complexity were uncovered. While a tense calm prevails in the north, there is still no respite for Israel’s southern residents, particularly for those living in the Gaza periphery who must endure kite terror, periodic rocket attacks and daily violent riots along the border.

Adding fuel to the fire, this week the Gazan-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad unveiled a rocket construction/storage facility housing rockets that the group claims can hit Tel Aviv and beyond. The PIJ alleged that the rocket was designed and developed with assistance from Iran demonstrating once again the Islamic Republic’s malign influence on the world stage.

The PIJ and Hamas, the entity that controls the Gaza Strip, share similar goals and ideologies but their tactics somewhat differ. Both groups are funded by Iran but Hamas is the principle orchestrator and instigator of the ritual weekly riots that occur along the border. Hamas is also the principle schemer behind the systematic effort to cause ecological mayhem in Israel’s south using incendiary balloons. As Gaza Strip’s governing entity, Hamas is constrained by political and military realities and is not as ready to deploy its rocket arsenal as its smaller but no less pernicious ally, the PIJ. Hamas prefers to keep tensions simmering in an effort to maintain relevancy but has no interest in sparking another war that it will surely lose.