RUTHFULLY YOURS

Who can forget the clueless thugs protesting last May in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, holding up their brand new shiny placards––mmmm, where did those pricey things come from?––and expressing rage at….what?

Not at the lack of esteem they believed white America owed to the black-lives-matter movement.
Not at the shooting a year earlier of Michael Brown (for which police officer Darren Wilson was exonerated by a Grand Jury) or the phony “hands-up/don’t shoot” mantra.
Not at the devastating fact that under Barack Obama the unemployment figures for African-Americans were––and remain––at record sky-high levels. According to Larry Elder at Townhall.com, “By every key economic measurement, blacks are worse off under Obama…in some cases, far worse off.”
Not at the tragic fact that black-on-black crime was––and remains––the single biggest killer in the black community (other than abortion).
Oh no. They were protesting because the anarchic, hate-America moneybags who bribed or rather enticed them to show up and act out didn’t pay them! Reportedly, some of the protesters “who looted, rioted, burned buildings and overturned police cars….were promised up to $5,000 per month to join the protests.”

That’s right, according to Newsmax.com, “Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), the successor group to the now-bankrupt St. Louis branch of ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), stiffed the protesters.”

So much for the high-minded ideology that drove these unemployed know-nothings into the streets!

OLD BOTTLE, SAME WINE
This is exactly what we just witnessed in Chicago on Friday night, March 11th, as a bunch of protestors––both black and white––were convinced for a pittance or for a pile of dough to act like hyperactive children off their Ritalin in order to disrupt a massive rally, anticipated to be attended by over 25,000, for presidential-frontrunner Donald J. Trump. It was hilarious to see the protestors, when asked by reporters why they were there, robotically announce, “I’d rather not give my reasons.” Translation: I have no clue why I’m here, but I’m making a few bucks, so what the heck!

The venue was perfect, wasn’t it?––the home of the arch community organizer Barack Obama, who before his ignominious, race-baiting, hate-whitey, loathe-the-opposition tenure in the White House, specialized in fomenting the same kind of protests, almost all of them to bring down “the man.” The goal, of course, has always been to extort money from individuals or corporations perceived to be “racist,” to create or reinforce in the protestors the notion that they are perpetual victims, and to convince them to vote for Democrats who promise to address their grievances––but never do. The net result: The cities in America with the highest crime rates share one thing in common––each one has a Democrat mayor!

My only minor quarrel with what Donald Trump said regarding Islamic “hatred” for the West (see the prior post) involves his assertion that it is “hard to tell who’s who” – i.e., to sort out anti-Western from pro-Western Muslims.

Trump is right in the sense that (a) the American tradition frowns on examining people about their religious beliefs (or even on whether beliefs that they regard as “religious” necessarily are), and (b) even if we conducted such examinations, respondents who are hostile to us can always lie about their true sentiments. Nevertheless, sharia (Islamic law) is useful here.

Sharia is antithetical to Western principles and American constitutional law in fundamental ways. (I have addressed this many times, see, e.g., here.) A Muslim who is overtly sharia-adherent and believes sharia should be adopted as the law of the land is highly likely to be hostile to Western culture. A Muslim who is not overtly sharia-adherent and who does not favor its imposition as governing law is very likely to be pro-Western. (See, e.g., my 2011 column on the “Mapping Sharia” study.)

I am not as sheepish as Republicans tend to be about the propriety of examining the sharia adherence of Muslim aliens who want to enter the United States. The vast majority of sharia seeks to control matters we in the West regard as the province of civil and criminal law, not religious belief. Plus, even if sharia were mainly about religious belief, aliens who want to enter our country have no First Amendment right against questioning by our government.

I’m also not as pessimistic as many commentators about the potential effectiveness of such examinations. To those who say the respondents will lie, I say (a) government interrogators are trained to detect lying; (b) the government is often able to prove lying beyond a reasonable doubt even when the government bears the burden of proof and the person accused of lying is presumed innocent; and (c) we are dealing here with the opposite situation: The burden is on the alien to prove he merits entry into our country, there is no presumption of innocence, and the government does not need a reason to keep a suspected threat out, much less bear a burden of proving that its suspicions are valid. If the government suspects a Muslim alien is lying or is otherwise a threat, the alien should be denied entry, period.

In an interview by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Donald Trump was asked whether he thought “Islam is at war with the West.” He replied, “I think Islam hates us,” adding that there is such a “tremendous” and “unbelievable” amount of “hatred” that we must “get to the bottom of” it. But when Cooper pushed him, it became clear that Trump was far less interested in getting to the bottom of it than shielding the country from its consequences.

Cooper pressed Trump about whether this “hatred” was inherent “in Islam itself?” Trump answered, “You’re going to have to figure that out.” He went on to opine that the cause was less important than what we do to protect ourselves: “We have to be very vigilant, we have to be very careful, and we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States and of people who are not Muslim.”

Cooper, however, continued homing in on the root cause of the hatred: “Is there a war between the West and radical Islam, or is there a war between the West and Islam itself?”

Trump responded, “It’s radical, but it’s very hard to define, it’s very hard to separate because you don’t know who’s who.”

Before I address Trump’s remarks on Islam (in this post and a second one that follows), let’s clear away the underbrush. I am a Cruz supporter. I also do not have a view about whether Trump’s comments reflect what he really thinks or what he thinks people want to hear. On the matter of Trump’s candor, I lean more toward Kevin than Camille Paglia, but for present purposes it is beside the point. My objective here is twofold: (1) to assess what Trump said; and (2) to urge other candidates not to condemn it just because Trump, who often says condemnable things, is the one who said it. Already, the usual suspects are attacking Trump as a bigot and demanding that other candidates do likewise. That would be a mistake. One needn’t be a Trump supporter to see that there is a lot more right than wrong in his remarks.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch suggested Wednesday that the Justice Department would not be obligated to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton for her email infractions even if the FBI recommends criminal charges.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) brought up the topic during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday:

“If the FBI were to make a referral to the Department of Justice to pursue a case by way of indictment and to convene a grand jury for that purpose, the Department of Justice is not required by law to do so, are they — are you?” Cornyn asked.

Lynch didn’t answer directly, but seemed to indicate the department has some wiggle room, and can consult with officials before deciding what to do.

“It would not be an operation of law, it would be an operation of procedures,” Lynch said in reply. She added that the decision to pursue a criminal case would be “done in conjunction with the agents” involved in the investigation. “It’s not something that we would want to cut them out of the process.”

Lynch declined to answer Cornyn’s questions about the decision to grant immunity to Bryan Pagliano, the former Clinton aide who set up the private “homebrew” server at her home in Chappaqua, NY. Asked Cornyn:

If in fact this was immunity granted by a court, that had to be done under the auspices and with the approval of the Department of Justice, which you head.

Bernie Sanders keeps refusing to hit Hillary Clinton over her email. Or so it seems. But maybe the Vermont senator’s relentless assault on Mrs. Clinton’s corporate ties is about her email after all. Maybe Mr. Sanders is betting that Hillary has a bigger problem than classified information.

The question hanging over the Clinton campaign is whether she will be indicted for mishandling state secrets. Under the heroic grilling of Jorge Ramos at the Univision Democratic debate Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton was again forced to roll out a trail of misdirection, to insist (with astonishing brazenness) that an indictment is “not going to happen.”

Classified information matters, and Mrs. Clinton stands accused of sloppy handling. Yet the former secretary of state didn’t set up a home-brew server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets—that was incidental. Mrs. Clinton went to elaborate lengths to build a secret, private system for some other reason. She says it was for “convenience.” Others speculate she did it out of the Clintons’ longtime paranoia over paper trails.
Mr. Sanders is likely hitting closer to the truth. Lost in the classified kerfuffle is the other, lately ignored but still potent, scandal: the Clinton Foundation, and the unethical mixing of Mrs. Clinton’s public work and her personal fundraising/speech-giving/favor-doing. The more evidence that comes out, the more it looks as if that server was set up to provide an off-the-grid means for those two worlds to interact. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Trump steamroller may have hit a bit of a speed bump over the past week, but The Donald still looks like the clear Republican front-runner. At the same time, there is a growing #NeverTrump movement, with Republican, conservative, and libertarian officeholders, media personalities, and voters vowing that they will not vote for Trump if he is the nominee. In fact, polls suggest that roughly half of those Republicans who do not currently back Trump would not support him if he won the nomination. Such numbers tend to shrink as the general election draws nearer and the partisan choices become starker, but there is no doubt that many more Republicans than usual are prepared to bolt the party, rather than support a vulgar charlatan who flirts with bigots and casually urges Americans to commit war crimes.

But if Republicans don’t want to support Trump, what are their options?

A very few might grit their teeth and vote for Hillary Clinton. But one suspects that a dishonest left-winger, who doesn’t think the Obama administration is liberal enough, would not be a palatable choice for most. Could they really vote for her knowing that she would, for example, most likely appoint the next Supreme Court justice? Many more might just stay home, but that would not only lead to a Clinton victory, it would almost certainly guarantee Democratic control of the Senate, and possibly even threaten the House.

Some have talked about a more conventional scenario in which a conservative mounts a third-party challenge, but the barriers to such a run are enormous. Potential candidates would have to meet petition-signature requirements, with filing deadlines as early as mid-August. In California, the candidate would have to get signatures equivalent to 1 percent of the total number of registered voters, which could be roughly 178,000. Oklahoma would require signatures equivalent to 3 percent of the total votes cast in the last general election. Any third-party effort would be extremely costly and require an organizational infrastructure that few minor parties have.

I am a conservative, a Republican, a Tea Partier, and a political commentator who has fought in the trenches with the GOP and on the streets of San Francisco with the Tea Party. Like many of you, I have been furious with the GOP and the politicians we elected. Long before this primary, I wrote about the dangers to the GOP and this country if party elites continue to ignore the base. Clearly such pleas have fallen on deaf ears, and we are now paying for it with a brouhaha of a primary process, a “known unknown” stealing the show, and the devastating prospects of another progressive Democrat victory.

I have been disgusted with the entire process, and judging from the chatter, I am in good company with many of the 60-70% of potential voters in the Republican primary not supporting The Donald – whose numbers have dawdled in the 30+% range with the exception of outliers Massachusetts at 50%, Louisiana at 41%, Alabama at 43%, and Nevada at 46%. His acolytes may be enthralled, but the bulk of voters do not share in that enthusiasm, as evidenced by the failure of votes to shift to Trump as his competitors have dropped out.

I know this is a delegate game, but thus far, Trump’s popular vote average has been 34.8%. While he is admittedly the frontrunner, this hardly reflects the will of Republican primary voters. If anything, that will is splattered all over the conservative spectrum while consensus remains elusive.

Even though conservatives of all stripes are dismayed by the debates and the discourse, the Democrat-Media Complex claims we are all in the tank for Trump – we are racist idiots, thrashing at the red meat tossed our way by our racist-idiot-red-meat-eater-in-chief Donald Trump. And the only Republicans not supporting The Don are members of the “establishment.”

Yet primary results tell us that 60-70% of Republican primary voters are supporting Anyone but Donald, and those voters are not all “establishment.” The recent victories of Ted Cruz (40%) and Marco Rubio (30%) at CPAC – the go-to place for Tea Party conservatives and the strong conservative Republican base – further solidify that point.

The conservative press and punditry aren’t much better, with Ed Rollins recently telling Fox’s Uma Pemmaraju that the Tea Party is throwing in with Trump because of its anti-establishment leanings. This is just ivory-tower don’t-wanna-get-too-close-to-Tea-Party-types claptrap. Party elites, pundits, and journalists have no idea what the average Tea Partier is thinking, let alone what he or she has been doing for the last eight years – one reason we are in this mess. The Tea Party message was anti-big government, Ed, not anti-establishment – a world of difference.

While some Tea Partiers might support Trump, the ones I have been in touch with mostly favor Cruz. If given no other choice, they will vote for a Trump nominee – at a minimum, they see an alignment on the broad issues of making American great again, rebuilding our economic and foreign policy might, securing our borders, and creating jobs. But they do not care for his demeanor or nastiness and fully acknowledge that he is pretty much Pablum Don – all fluff, no stuff. While his conservative street cred is at best dubious, they are willing to risk the future of this country on the devil they don’t know (the “known unknown” of Trump) vs. the devil they know (the “known known” of HRC). They understand that his will be a shoot-from-the-hip presidency – not quite what Tea Partiers have been fighting for the last eight years, but marginally better than Hill or Bern.

“in a Playboy interview, here is what Donald Trump said of the Chinese government’s handling of the Tiananmen Square massacre:

“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak … as being spit on by the rest of the world –”

In the late summer of 1989, I was a doctoral student in American studies. Strangely, there were often many people majoring in American studies from other countries. I had friends from all over the world – France, India, South Korea, Iceland, Austria…and China.

My Chinese friend, Q (not his real name), went home that summer.

I was in my office when he returned, watching the small black-and-white Goodwill-bought television (ask your parents, kids) I had brought in to make the place I spent most of my time more like the place I wanted to spend most of my time. The boxes I hauled up the four flights of stairs (no, we didn’t have an elevator; it was an old building) also contained a 60-cup percolator, a refrigerator box we turned into a closet, a microwave oven, a hot pot (again, kids, ask your parents), and a pull-out cot. We kept family-size jars of peanut butter and jelly, loaves of bread, and Costco-sized boxes of Ramen noodles.

We spent a lot of time there. The people on our floor became very close.

Since it was summer, there were a lot of people I hadn’t seen in a while, and Q was one of them.

I didn’t even have a chance to say hello as he came through my door before he threw a stack of photos on my desk.

“Here,” he said, tersely. “This is what they won’t show you. This is what happened there.”

I had been vaguely aware of recent unrest in China; I’d been busy working on a grant proposal I hoped would fund the rest of my dissertation work. The TV received three stations (sometimes), and I rarely made time for news.

I looked at the pictures. And then I looked again. And then I picked them up, and went through them, one by one.

“Tanks,” he said.

I stared at him. “But these can’t be –”

“People,” he said.