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Trump Is a Global Bully By Ian Tuttle

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

Donald Trump is not content to bully the residents of just one continent, it seems.

In the mid 1990s, there was Vera Coking, the septuagenarian widow whom Donald Trump tried to squeeze out of her Atlantic City apartment to make room for a limousine parking lot for his nearby casino. Ten years later, in Scotland, trying to foist a golf course and resort onto a stretch of Scottish coastline, Trump encountered a set of equally incorrigible homeowners — and did his best to run them out of their homes, too.

In March 2006, Trump visited Scotland and proposed to build a 36-hole golf course — “the greatest golf course anywhere in the world,” as he would reiterate time and again — along with a 450-room hotel with a conference center and spa, 950 time-share apartments, 36 golf villas, and 500 for-sale houses, and accommodations for hundreds of full-time employees, in Balmedie, Aberdeenshire. He billed it as an economic boon to the country and, in his usual theatrical fashion, as a “homecoming,” waxing poetic about his immigrant mother, who departed Scotland’s Western Isles for the U.S. as a young woman. In reality, it was a vanity project.

“I always wanted to do a golf course in Europe, and of the 211 sites we have looked at, we have seen some incredible places,” said Trump. “But this was something special.” Indeed — more than Trump understood. The Menie Links, north of Aberdeen, is home to the Foveran Links, a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The Foveran Links – which is a dynamic dune system that moves several meters annually, giving rise to a unique collection of plants and wildlife — is unique in the United Kingdom.

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Obama Skips Scalia Funeral -–Will Visit Cuba to Honor the Castro Brothers The president’s romance with tyranny on full display. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

I ask on behalf of Raul Castro–because Barack Obama seems infatuated with him. Seems that every time the Stalinist terror-sponsoring dictator (who craved to nuke the U.S.) looks over his shoulder, there’s the President of the U.S. making goo-goo eyes at him.

“People characterized as stalkers,” explains Wikipedia, “may be accused of having a mistaken belief that another person loves them (erotomania) or that they need rescuing.”

As announced just yesterday by his spokespersons, the possible “erotomaniac” twice elected U.S. President even found a way to get himself invited to his stalk victim’s fiefdom. Yes, President Obama will visit Cuba next month. The meet-up is scheduled for March 21st.

There’s a famous scene in the movie Scarface where the late actor Robert Loggia makes an urgent request of Cuban gangster Tony “Scarface” Montana. I’m betting that Robert Loggia will look gallant, powerful and dignified in front of the Cuban shown in that scene compared to Obama in front of the Cuban he’ll visit next month. See here for details.

I say “stalker” because Obama’s meet-up and handshake (warm abrazos too, perhaps?) with Raul Castro next month will mark the fourth such meet-up between Obama and Castro in 26 months. FDR and Churchill certainly matched this frequency and timeline for chummy handshakes. But have any other U.S. Presidents matched it with foreign “leaders”?

“Funnier” still, when Benjamin Netanyahu−president of a “close U.S. ally”−supposedly visited Capitol Hill, in Feb. 2015, Obama pointedly snubbed him. But when it came to the terror-sponsor who craved to nuke his nation, who burglarized, tortured and murdered U.S. citizens without the slightest remorse–when it comes to the unrepentant Stalinist Raul Castro−U.S. president Obama somehow found a way to buttonhole and shake hands with him, everyplace, from Johannesburg South Africa, to Panama City, Panama, to New York City. Film clips of this “bromance” here.

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Iranian Rockers Face Execution The Mullahs embark on a mad killing spree. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

The news out of Iran these days travels exclusively in one direction: from bad to worse. The latest abomination from the Islamic Republic involves the seizure and arrest of members of an Iranian heavy metal band, Confess, on such charges as “blasphemy,” writing “satanic” lyrics and meeting with forbidden foreign radio stations.

Two of the band’s leaders, Nikan Siyanor Khosravi, 23 and Khosravi Arash Ilkhani, 21 were arrested by the intelligence wing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard on November 10, 2015 and were held in Iran’s notorious Evin prison in solitary confinement until their release on February 5. They are currently free on $30,000 bond, a fortune in Iran and face the prospect of execution if convicted of the most serious offense.

The seizure of the duo comes on the heels of a major crack down by government goons acting on orders of Iran’s religious authorities. At least 170 people were arrested by regime forces in November. A leading member of an Iranian human rights group described the arrests as “abductions” because the Iranian judiciary has stated that they know nothing of the arrests.

Arrests were made without warrants and those arrested were transferred to unknown locations without ever seeing a judge. That is the norm in the Islamic Republic where human rights are trounced upon with banal regularity and due process is virtually non-existent.

The depravity of Iran’s mullahs knows no bounds. On January 27, Iran executed Hashem Shaabani, a poet whose only weapon was his pen. The Iranians murdered him with the approval of President Hassan Rouhani for “waging war on God.” Rouhani is the same sordid character that some myopic Western lackeys often describe as a “moderate” and a “reformer.”

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Will Black Voters Leave Hillary’s Plantation? Keeping them on the plantation is the only way she can win. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

In her desperate scramble to the top every Hillary victory is accompanied by a setback. The corrupt Democratic machine that has kept her going this far eked out a victory in Nevada, but took down her minority firewall.

In earlier primaries, Hillary had lost women and young voters. In Nevada, she lost Latinos.

The last and only element of the Obama coalition that she has retained are black voters. Black voters helped Hillary in Nevada. While Latinos defected to Sandernistan, black voters remained loyally behind on Hillary’s Happy Plantation. If the black voters, primarily women who powered the Obama campaign, wave goodbye to life on the Clinton Tara, then Hillary’s path to the White House ends with Sanders’ Socialist march to the Potomac.

Despite her victory in Nevada, the Clinton crisis is now real. Hillary Clinton has lost nearly every demographic of what was supposed to be her base. She has become a purely political machine candidate with no supporters, only staffers, no appeal, only strategy, and no way forward except increasingly grotesque forms of electoral fraud that risk alienating Democrats until she becomes unelectable in a general election as the voters who saw their efforts to vote for Bernie Sanders thwarted resentfully decide to stay home.

A similar stolen nomination in which Hillary Clinton was the victim led to a crisis in ’08 which was only resolved with a deal between Obama and Clintonworld that allowed her to use his administration as the platform for her own future presidential campaign. But Hillary may not be able to buy the elderly Bernie Sanders, who would be 82 in time for Hillary’s two terms to end, and his supporters off in the same way.

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Palestinians: Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

This “intifada” is simply a further phase in a larger plan to destroy Israel. When the plan began officially, with the establishment of the PLO in 1964, there were no “settlements” — not until after the June 1967 War — so what exactly were the Palestinians planning to “liberate”?

The current conflict is not about “defending” any mosque from being contaminated by the “filthy feet” of Jews: it is about seeing Israel forced to its knees. Abbas and others seek to reap delicious political fruits from this “intifada.”

Here is a novel idea: Kerry could put pressure on the Palestinian and Jordanian leadership to cease anti-Israeli incitement and indoctrination. Now that would be pressure well applied.

Abbas is expected to become a partner in the fight against ISIS and radical Islamist groups. All well and good. Why then is he not expected to stop cheering on and glorifying young Palestinians who attack Jewish Israelis?

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is back in town. This time he is meeting with Jordanian and Palestinian leaders about “ongoing security issues in the region and continued tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.”

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What to Expect in Iran by Jagdish N. Singh

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

“The destruction of Israel is non-negotiable.” — Mohammad Neza Naghdi, Commander of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force.

Sanctions relief will mainly benefit Ayatollah Khamenei and members of the Revolutionary Guards: they control up to one-third of Iran’s economy.

Part of the Iranian regime’s grand strategy is to inflict “death to America” and replace it with its own radical version of Islamic governance. Ayatollah Khamenei himself called for America’s destruction amid nuclear negotiations.

Officials also believe Iran is indirectly funding the Islamic State (IS) in the Sinai. “Suitcases of cash” are sent directly to Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip; part of the money is then transferred to IS.

Iran now poses an even greater threat. If democracies today continue their present policies towards Iran, it will only embolden Iran’s regime to continue its quest to obtain nuclear weapons as well as its terrorism and human rights violations.

Humanity seldom seems to learn its lessons. The governments of the world’s leading democracies appear to be suffering from this predicament in their nuclear dealings with the Islamic Republic of Iran. To avoid catastrophe, democracies need quickly to correct their course.

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Primary 2016: The Pause that Refreshes By Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

To listen to some of the commentary about yesterday’s primary in South Carolina, you would think that Donald Trump now had the nomination sewn up. Yesterday, the pundits crow, Trump won by a comfortable ten points, beating Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz 32.5 to 22.5 (22.3 for Cruz). Gosh. Slam dunk, what? Time for Mrs. Trump to start thinking about new curtains for the Oval Office or at least battling against whoever the Democratic nominee will be after Hillary Clinton drops out sometime (I predict) before the end of March.

But there are several things to note about yesterday’s primary that make this exercise in congratulation premature.

First of all, a scant week ago, the polls had Trump at 38, Cruz at 28.5, Rubio at 13.5. Clearly, this is one of those “plastic moments” of political fermentation that Karl Marx told us about. Things can change quickly.

Second, it is worth casting one’s mind way back to ancient times, to the winter of 2012, when Newt Gingrich won South Carolina with 40.4% of the vote. Mitt Romney took 27.8, Rick Santorum (remember him?) took 17%.

Gingrich lost no time announcing on some talk show that it was obvious that he was going to be the nominee.

It didn’t turn out that way, but he came in a respectable second in Florida and won decisively with 48.5% in the key southern state of Georgia.

How do you spell “Romney”?

I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump — the man who supports single-payer health care (Obamacare on steroids), who didn’t know about the nuclear triad until a few weeks ago, who once proposed a 14.25% wealth tax on “the rich,” and until 15 minutes ago was an enthusiastic proponent of abortion on demand, even that form of infanticide euphemistically described as “partial birth abortion” by its partisans — I suppose it is possible that Donald Trump will get the country to rally around him and hand him the Republican nomination.

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Backlash After Tens of Thousands of Criminals Now Allowed to Vote in Maryland By Rod Kackley

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

Maryland Senate President Mike Miller (D) is accusing Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and his “staff of right-wing people haters” of orchestrating a hate mail and phone call campaign aimed at him and 28 other Democrats who voted to override Hogan’s veto of legislation that allows felons on parole to vote.

The Baltimore Sun reported the new law, which goes into effect March 10, will unleash a herd of new voters. More than 40,000 former prison inmates will be eligible to register to vote in Baltimore’s mayoral, city council and presidential primary elections this spring.

This is happening in a state where Democrats already outnumber Republicans 2-1.

Under current Maryland law, felons have to complete their probation and parole before being allowed to register to vote, a system that Democrats have called demoralizing and confusing for those released from prison, along with being unnecessary.

The American Probation and Parole Association testified during a General Assembly debate that “civic participation is integral to successful rehabilitation” of prison inmates.

The Baltimore City Council voiced its collective support for General Assembly Democrats by approving a city council resolution that read: “Denying so many of our neighbors the right to vote makes it much more difficult to engage them in the process.”

“The General Assembly was right to open the door to meaningful participation in our society to all non-incarcerated ex-offenders, and it should complete the process by overriding the Governor’s veto at the earliest opportunity in the 2016 legislative session,” the city council resolution concluded.

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Is Our Children Learning? By Michael Walsh

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

Patrick Deneen puts his finger on the biggest problem facing the American future: a generation of students who know nothing about anything:

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

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Weimar America By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 22nd, 2016

2016 is a pivotal year in which accustomed referents of a stable West are now disappearing. We seem to be living in a chaotic age, akin to the mid-1930s, of cynicism and skepticism. Government, religion, and popular culture are corrupt and irrelevant—and the world order of the last 70 years has all but collapsed.

Neither the president nor his would-be successors talk much about the fact that we are now nearing $20 trillion in debt—in an ossified economy of near-zero interest rates, little if any GDP growth, and record numbers of able-bodied but non-working adults. (The most frequent complaint I hear in my hometown is that the government lags behind in their cost-of-living raises in Social Security disability payments.)

No one can figure out how and why America’s youth have borrowed a collective $1 trillion for college tuition, and yet received so little education and skills in the bargain. Today’s campuses have become as foreign to American traditions of tolerance and free expression as what followed the Weimar Republic. To appreciate cry-bully censorship, visit a campus “free-speech” area. To witness segregation, walk into a college “safe space.” To hear unapologetic anti-Semitism, attend a university lecture. To learn of the absence of due process, read of a campus hearing on alleged sexual assault. To see a brown shirt in action, watch faculty call for muscle at a campus demonstration. To relearn the mentality of a Chamberlain or Daladier, listen to the contextualizations of a college president. And to talk to an uneducated person, approach a recent college graduate.

If all that is confusing, factor in the Trimalchio banquet of campus rock-climbing walls, students glued to their iPhone 6s, $200 sneakers, latte bars, late-model foreign cars in the parking lot, and yoga classes. Affluence, arrogance, and ignorance are quite a trifecta.