Fire Hydrant of Freedom

The ‘Never Trump’ Murder-Suicide Pact

June 17, 2016
David Horowitz

Reprinted from Breitbart.com.

Barack Obama delivers nuclear weapons and $150 billion to America’s mortal enemy in the Middle East – and every Democrat to a man and woman defends his betrayal; Hillary Clinton violates the Espionage Act and delivers classified secrets, including information on an impending drone attack, to America’s enemies – and every Democrat to a man and woman defends her. Obama and Clinton lie about matters of war and peace – and every progressive publicly swears they are telling the truth.

But when Donald Trump insinuates the president is a man of uncertain loyalties, Republican leaders back away from him. When Trump proposes fighting “radical Islam,” securing America’s borders, stopping unvetted immigration from Muslim terrorist states, surveilling mosques, and scrutinizing the families of terrorist actors, Republicans join Democrats in denouncing him, or take an uncomfortable distance or maintain a silence that leaves him to fend for himself.

The left is blaming Christians, Republicans, and guns for the Orlando slaughter. The president and Hillary are claiming that ISIS is on the run – a lie flatly contradicted by the CIA director himself. They want to disarm Americans. If Hillary is elected, borders will stay open, and protecting Muslims will take priority over fighting Islam’s holy war against us.

In other words, Democrat betrayers of America are on the attack, while Republican leaders who claim to be patriots are on the run. Where, to take one example, is Ted Cruz? He claims to be a patriot and care about the Constitution, but he is AWOL — sulking like Achilles in his tent over personal slights he can’t get past to fight for his country’s survival. The Republican leader of the Senate and his second-in-command have both announced they will not participate in the presidential election, while the leader of the House makes clear his extreme embarrassment over Trump’s proposals to establish immigration policies appropriate to a nation under siege. This is the sad state of the Republican forces in retreat in an election campaign that will decide the fate of our country.

There are actually two wars we are engaged in– one with the Islamic caliphate and the other with an American left that refuses to recognize the enemy we face or the magnitude and nature of the threat. In this internal war, too many on the right have taken a course whose only practical effect can be seen as a betrayal of their cause. Erick Erickson has summed up the view of the Republican renegades in this succinct phrase: “We are in the midst of a murder-suicide pact that will be our ruination.”

This is, in fact, a precise description of what the #NeverTrump right is up to. But in Erickson’s inversion of reality, it is “the Republican Party [that] intends to murder the nation and commit suicide along the way.” What Erickson and his fellow saboteurs, led by Mitt Romney and Bill Kristol, want is for the Republican Party to block Trump and repudiate the record number of Republican primary voters who nominated him. This would actually be a Republican suicide in November – one that would indeed “murder the nation.”

Although the defection of the Republican leadership from the field of battle is still ongoing, there has been a break in the ranks of the #NeverTrump spoilers. Two of their leading intellectual figures, Hugh Hewitt and Andy McCarthy, have finally come to realize not just the futility of their efforts but their destructiveness as well. For the sake of the nation, let’s hope that there are a lot more such reversals on the way.

Meanwhile, the really big problem remains that of the Republican leadership, which thinks that “We’re stuck with Trump but we won’t dump him!” is an appropriate battle cry. As we all know, the Democrats are vicious, unprincipled attack dogs with a kept and unprincipled media in their camp. Passivity in the face of this blitzkrieg is, in practice, no different than a white-flag surrender. Paul Ryan summed up Republican fatuity in his answers to media questions in the wake of Orlando about whether he’s still supporting Trump. Ryan’s answer: he would be defending Republican principles in this election. Well, Paul, principles aren’t running in this election. Candidates are. And unless Republicans rally around Trump, and Trump beats Hillary, Republican principles are going down with him.

Islamic Terrorism Is Not Domestic Terrorism

The Orlando massacre is not “homegrown extremism.”

June 15, 2016
Daniel Greenfield


Obama described the massacre carried out by Muslim mass murderer Omar Mateen as “an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been concerned about.” But there’s nothing “homegrown” about Omar Mateen. Omar was fighting for a foreign ideology. He just happened to be born in this country. Being born in America does not make him a domestic terrorist.

One of our biggest errors in the fight against Islamic terrorism has been to treat it as a domestic terrorism problem. Islamic terrorism is not domestic terrorism. Not even when its perpetrators, like Omar Mateen or Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood killer, are born in the United States.

What distinguishes domestic terrorism from international terrorism is not the perpetrator’s place of birth.

One of the worst foreign terrorists in American history was Anton Dilger, who, like Hasan, was born in Virginia. As part of the German terrorist campaign against the United States during WW1, which included attacks such as the Black Tom explosion that damaged the Statue of Liberty and was heard in Philadelphia, Dilger plotted a biological warfare campaign that would decimate American horses. Working out of a laboratory near the White House, he experimented with anthrax on animals and his fellow operatives worked to infect as many horses as they could.

This entire episode of history has been largely forgotten. As have its lessons.

Anton Dilger was an international terrorist, despite being born to a Civil War hero, because his agenda was foreign, not domestic. Domestic terrorists seek political change in the United States. International terrorists seek to damage the United States. They are interested in domestic politics only to the extent that it serves their larger agenda for damaging the United States.

Islamic terrorists are not seeking domestic political change the way that Bill Ayers was. They are not domestic elements, but foreign elements. And yet we treat them as if they were domestic terrorists.

Our current strategy of trying to prevent radicalization while assuming that what Islamic terrorists want is to destabilize our political system by “dividing” us is a domestic terrorism response. It might or might not be effective if we were dealing with a domestic terror threat, but we aren’t.

Contrary to what Obama claims, Islam has not always been a part of our history. It isn’t part of us today. It is no more a “part of us” than the German nationalists of WW1 and WW2 who plotted against us were a part of us. Even the most radical left-wing terrorist has something in common with us. The Islamic terrorist has nothing in common with us. He does not share any part of our worldview. He did not emerge from some fork in the road of our history like the left-wing terrorist did. He does not seek to modify our system, but to utterly destroy it and replace it with something completely alien.

Left-wingers radicalize Americans. But they do so by exploiting existing liberal beliefs. Obama demonstrates this every time he invokes some element of American history or thought to push a radical agenda. One crisis after another is manufactured to push people further to the extremes of the left.

This is how radicalization actually works.

Nidal Hasan was not “radicalized”. He was never an American. He was a proud Muslim who happened to be born in the United States. His beliefs did not shift along a domestic political spectrum. Instead, like the German terrorists of WW1, he found that his allegiance to a foreign power impelled him to work against America. This isn’t radicalization. It’s patriotism. But his “Patria”, his homeland, was not ours.

The “Patria” of Islamic terrorists may be the Islamic State, some Al Qaeda emirate or Pakistan or Iran. It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that they are a foreign enemy. And our strategy of fighting “radicalization” makes no sense because the problem isn’t radicalism, it’s alienism.

Domestic terrorism springs from a structural conflict within the politics, history and worldview of a nation. Typical examples are left-wing and right-wing terrorism. Contradictions within a nation’s ideals are pushed to the limits resulting in conflict. Arguments over which values should be emphasized and to what degree can lead to radicalism. But Islamic terrorism does not spring from a conflict within America.

Islamic terrorism is a foreign element that has been imported into the United States. It does not emerge from structural conflicts within our society. It cannot be resolved by moving in any direction on the domestic spectrum. It is purely an alien entity that has no natural home within the United States.

In Islamic terrorism, radicalization can only occur within the spectrum of Islam, not within an American spectrum. Which is why Countering Violent Extremism programs to combat Islamic terrorism awkwardly lecture to Muslims about Islam. Underlying the botched CVE enterprise is the recognition that Islamic terrorism is a foreign element. But if Islamic terrorism is a foreign element then efforts to counter it by treating it as a domestic problem are doomed to fail just as treating a sore toe with an antacid is doomed to fail. CVE covertly carries within it the acknowledgement of its own failure.

There is only one element driving Islamic terrorism in the United States. And that is Muslim immigration.

Once we recognize that Islamic terrorism is a foreign element, not a domestic element, then we must also recognize that there can only be only one answer to it. If one of your glands is malfunctioning, then medical intervention will attempt to restore your body to its proper balance. But if the problem is that you are drinking poison, then the only possible solution is to stop drinking poison.

Domestic political radicalism needs to be treated. Foreign radicals just have to be kept out of the country. They are not our problem because they are not a part of us.

The solution to Islamic terrorism is to stop treating it as a domestic problem. Once upon a time we viewed Islamic terrorism as a foreign problem. When the World Trade Center was first bombed, we did not think in terms of radicalization. We saw foreign enemies infiltrating the United States and plotting against us. We didn’t worry what made them that way. Their mindset was not our problem.

After 9/11, we began treating Islamic terrorism as a domestic problem. The process really took off under Obama. The only accepted view now is that Islamic terrorism has to be countered at a domestic level. We have to work with Muslim groups to counter radicalization while making them feel as included as possible in our society. This same program has failed miserably in Europe. It will fail in America.

The only answer to Islamic terrorism is to treat it as a foreign threat. To quarantine its carriers and to build barriers against the entry of the alien virus of its ideology.  

We must recognize that Islamic terrorism is not a domestic insurrection, but a foreign act of war and that it must be fought abroad by force and at home through border control.

And if we do that, we will win.

FINALLY: A REALISTIC PLAN FOR FIGHTING THE JIHAD AND PROTECTING AMERICANS

Courtesy of Donald Trump.

June 14, 2016  Robert Spencer

We’ve gotten so used to politically correct obfuscation about Islam being a religion of peace that preaches tolerance and non-violence that Donald Trump’s words in his address Monday were startling: “Many of the principles of radical Islam are incompatible with Western values and institutions. Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American. I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, Jewish people are targets of persecution and intimation by radical Islamic preachers of hate and violence.”

Trump continued: “This is not just a national security issue. It’s a quality of life issue. If we want to protect the quality of life for all Americans — women and children, gay and straight, Jews and Christians and all people then we need to tell the truth about radical Islam and we need to do it now.”

One may quibble about whether jihad violence and Sharia oppression in Islam are really “radical,” but the fact is that Donald Trump has become the first nominee of either party since 9/11 to reject the usual nonsense about how jihadis believe in and preach a twisted, hijacked version of the religion of peace. Even more importantly, Trump is now the first presidential candidate since maybe John Quincy Adams to recognize that the problem posed by Islam is not just restricted to the specter of violent jihad attacks, but is, given Sharia oppression of women, gays, and non-Muslims, very much, as Trump put it, a “quality of life issue.”

Trump declared his determination to prevent more jihad attacks such as the one in Orlando Saturday night above all by reiterating his proposal temporarily to “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies until we fully understand how to end these threats.” CNN huffed: “Critics of Trump's policies, however, have pointed out that the perpetrator of the Orlando massacre was born in the U.S.”

Those critics are not being honest. What Trump actually said was that the Orlando jihad mass murderer was born “of Afghan parents, who immigrated to the United States.” He noted, quite correctly, that “the bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place, was because we allowed his family to come here,” and pointed out, quite rightly, that “we have a dysfunctional immigration system, which does not permit us to know who we let into our country, and it does not permit us to protect our citizens properly….We’re importing radical Islamic terrorism into the West through a failed immigration system and through an intelligence community held back by our president. Even our own FBI director has admitted that we cannot effectively check the backgrounds of people we’re letting into America. ”

Can any truthful person seriously dispute that? Tashfeen Malik, who, along with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook murdered fourteen people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino last December 2, had passed five separate background checks from five different U.S. government agencies. If the U.S. did not have a “dysfunctional immigration system,” she would never have been in the country in the first place. And neither would her husband, about whom Trump noted that he was “the child of immigrants from Pakistan and he brought his wife, the other terrorist from Saudi Arabia through another one of our easily exploited visa programs.”

Trump skewered Hillary Clinton for having “repeatedly refused to even say the words radical Islam until I challenged her yesterday.” He quoted her fatuous words: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism” and opined “she’s in total denial, and her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the entire world — true weakness.” Clinton wants, he said, “to take away American’s guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don’t have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want….The bottom line is that Hillary supports policies that bring the threat of radical Islam into American and allow it to grow overseas, and it is growing.”

Trump’s point was sound. In what way was it not? Combining unrestricted immigration and a massive influx of Muslim migrants, among whom the Islamic State has promised to embed jihadis, with a disarmed American population is simply an invitation to jihad massacres on a frequency never hitherto imagined. Could there be an Orlando-style attack every day? Why not, in the America of the near future that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are busy preparing for us?

Trump declared: “The burden is on Hillary Clinton to tell us why she believes immigration from these dangerous countries should be increased without any effective system to really to screen.” Again, his point his sound: all those, including Hillary, who are busy excoriating Trump for the “racism” and “bigotry” of his immigration proposal have not bothered to suggest any alternative plan for preventing jihadis from entering the country. The bottom line, to borrow one of Trump’s pet phrases, is that Hillary and the rest of the political and media elites would rather see Americans subjected to jihad mass murder on a huge scale than do anything that is politically incorrect.

Another foray into political incorrectness in Trump’s speech was his insistence that the Muslim community in the U.S. has “to work with us. They have to cooperate with law enforcement and turn in the people who they know are bad. They know it. And they have to do it, and they have to do it forthwith….The Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad. They knew the people in San Bernardino were bad. But you know what? They didn’t turn them in. And you know what? We had death, and destruction.”

The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was furious. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper claimed that “law enforcement authorities have repeatedly stated that they have tremendous cooperation from the Muslim community.” CAIR’s hypocrisy is astounding, as it has more than once advised Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. In January 2011, its San Francisco chapter featured on its website a poster that read, “Build A Wall of Resistance / Don’t Talk to the FBI.” In November 2014, CAIR-Florida’s “14th Annual Banquet Rooted in Faith” in Tampa distributed pamphlets entitled “What to do if the FBI comes for you” and featuring a graphic of a person holding a finger to his lips in the “shhh” signal.

Another CAIR pamphlet, entitled “Know Your Rights: Defending Rights, Defeating Intolerance” featured a graphic of the Statue of Liberty likewise making the “shhh” symbol. Cyrus McGoldrick, a former official of Hamas-linked CAIR’s New York chapter, even threatened informants, tweeting with brutal succinctness: “Snitches get stitches.” Zahra Billoo of CAIR-San Francisco regularly tweets that Muslims have no obligation to talk to the FBI, and should contact Hamas-linked CAIR if the FBI asks to talk to them.

This is the group criticizing Trump for noting that Muslim communities have not been any significant help in rooting out jihadis from among them?

Trump’s most revolutionary proposal was for an overhaul of our entire foreign policy establishment and the assumptions upon which it rests – assumptions that have led us into numerous blind alleys and failed initiatives. He said: “The decision to overthrow the regime in Libya, then pushing for the overthrow of the regime in Syria, among other things, without plans for the day after, have created space for ISIS to expand and grow like nobody has ever seen before. These actions, along with our disastrous Iran deal, have also reduced our ability to work in partnership with our Muslim allies in the region. That is why our new goal must be to defeat Islamic terrorism not nation building. No more nation building. It’s never going to work.”

Indeed. It didn’t work in Iraq. It hasn’t worked in Afghanistan. We have poured billions into Pakistan since 9/11 to help them fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and the Pakistani government has funneled a good deal of that money to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Trump said it: “And by the way we’ve spent almost $5 trillion over the years on trying to nation build in the Middle East and it has been complete and total disaster.” Yet despite the fact that its policies have failed again and again and again, the foreign policy establishment keeps reappointing and promoting those responsible for those failures, allowing them to make more mistakes in ever-larger arenas. But no candidate has ever challenged that establishment – until now.

Trump offered one more common sense that no establishment politician has thought to or dared to make: he suggested that there needs to be a reconfiguration of our alliances, which are still based on the Cold War. “NATO,” he said, “needs to change its focus and stop terrorism....America must unite the whole civilized world in the fight against Islamic terrorism.”

Indeed. The world is on fire courtesy of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. If America votes in November for more of the same, we will soon be engulfed in those flames as well. On Monday, Donald Trump outlined an unprecedentedly realistic plan for putting out the fire.

That is the salient point to take away from this event - finally.  Islam is INHERENTLY violent.  Imams around the world have called for slaughtering infidels during the month of Ramadan.

When will the media stop using these bullshit "hate crime" and "lone wolf" terms?  The enemy is known - his motivation is KNOWN.  It is ISLAM.  Not "radical Islam,"  - ISLAM.

We are at war - and the enemy is HERE on our soil.  Either you recognize and acknowledge this or you make yourself a willing victim.  It is long past time for we in the warrior community to be vigilant and armed EVERYWHERE we go.  This could happen anywhere - and I think that sadly - it has only begun.

CCP:

I must respectfully disagree with you.  Democrats are ROUTINELY much more vulgar than Trump has ever been.  The media simply don't focus on it endlessly - in fact they treat it as if it's no big deal.  Witness Joe Biden's comments about Indians, Harry Reid about Obama being a "Clean, articulate black guy," etc., etc., etc.  This idea that independents are SO OFFENDED by vulgarity and will go running straight into the Democrats' arms at the first mean word out of a Republican's mouth is absurd.  The Democrats OWN racist, bigoted and vulgar commentary, and it surely hasn't hurt them with independents in any of the last several elections.  It's high time someone called out the Democrats for exactly the scum they are - and simply told the truth about how they have destroyed the inner cities of every place they have controlled politically for 50 years or more.  I repeat - no Republican has had the balls to simply do this.  Trump does.

IN THE WAKE OF SAN JOSE, PATRIOTS MUST STEP UP TO PROTECT ALL AMERICANS AGAINST ASSAULT BY VIOLENT THUGS

An article posted in the morning hours of June 09, 2016, [HERE] is titled:

San Jose Undercover Cops: “Trump Supporters were running for their lives – We were unable to help”…

In light of several key factors arising from the article at Conservative Treehouse, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes wishes to issue a statement, which I will post below.  However, let us first set the tone by viewing a video clip from YouTube:



In addition to posting the above video in their article, the “Conservative Treehouse” also has furnished some police reports from City of San Jose, California, which include —

Under Cover San Jose Officer #1: […] Throughout the afternoon and evening I watched several individuals wearing “Trump” articles of clothing getting punched, kicked and pushed.

Under Cover #2: […] I was assigned to the Covert Response Unit and dressed in a plainclothes capacity. … As time came closer to 18:00 more protesters arrived; mostly younger males and females between the ages of 14 to 25.  … some began burning the United States flag in the middle of the street. It became inherently dangerous for anyone wearing a hat or T-Shirt in support of Trump.  I observed Trump supporters being spit on, objects being thrown at them, punched, kicked and even robbed of their personal belongings.  In these instances I observed victims running for their lives because protesters began adopting the mob mentality and attacking people.  I was unable to make contact with any of these victims due to my undercover capacity and fear for my own safety as well.

I strongly recommend going to the original article and following their embedded links, where readers will learn about the Mayor’s complicity in the police stand-down and the official policy for police to allow this to take place outside a Trump for President rally on June 02.  Example:

San Jose Police Chief Garcia admitted his officers were instructed not to stop violent protesters from beating the Trump rally attendees. In addition the San Jose Mayor has openly admitted to approving the San Jose police departments plans, and blamed Donald Trump for having the audacity to have a rally in “his city“.

Do go to the original site and check the other embedded links to get yet more insight into what transpired, and did not transpire but should have. And if you want to go up a level or two in your perception of today’s America, check out Michael Shaw’s outstanding work on the Globalization of California.

Message From Stewart Rhodes

No American, anywhere, whether you agree with their views or not, should be attacked for expressing their God given (and Constitution protected) rights of free speech and assembly, and their right to participate in our political process. And no police officer, who has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution, should obey any order to not protect the rights of people to peaceably assemble and express their views, and should refuse any order to stand by and do nothing as violent, criminal thugs assault Americans who are simply exercising their rights. It is a disgrace to have the police obey such orders, and an act of treason for the politicians to give such orders.

If officers are so outnumbered that they are concerned for their own safety, that is one thing, but to not intervene because some oath breaking, partisan scumbag politician orders them to stand down, so the politician’s thuggish foot-soldiers have a free hand to terrorize and assault other Americans, is inexcusable. Whatever happened to “Protect and Serve”? The fundamental justification for having police, or having government at all, is to protect people against predatory violence. These violent communist and La Raza racist thugs are the true “Brownshirts” of modern America, attempting to use violence and intimidation to shut down free speech and assembly.

If the police will not protect Americans from violent assault meant to punish them for their political views, and meant to silence them by force, then Americans will have to protect themselves, and each other, from such violence.

I call on all patriotic Americans to step up and protect the weak, the elderly, the vulnerable among them against these thugs, wherever they strike. Veterans, you have a particular obligation and duty, under your oath, to step up and protect your fellow Americans by stepping in between them and these thugs.  In the absence of police protection, Veterans need to step in the gap and form up five to eight man security teams who can serve as escorts and rescue people from being beaten.

As anyone versed in defensive tactics or combatives will tell you, whenever anyone is sucker punched there is a very real and serious risk that they will fall and then hit their head on the concrete, on a parking block, on a curb, on a parked car, etc and that secondary impact can, and does, result in death.  A person can also be stomped and kicked to death by a mob in short order. These are deadly threat mob assaults and must be treated as such.

Anyone attending any event targeted by these radical leftist extremists needs to realize they are in a tactical situation that requires them to prepare for the worst and to take steps to protect themselves. They should go in groups of four or more, and among them needs to be people who are fit enough, and trained enough, to hold their own in a melee. If you are a fit, strong veteran, you have a duty to be the “sheepdog” and walk with those who are less able to defend themselves. Go in groups, and be ready to defend yourselves and others.

Any Oath Keeper who goes out and protects people who are under such threat of assault is doing the right thing. And we need to be willing to do that for ANY American under such threat, even if we disagree with their political views (for example, even if you disagree with Democrats who will be attending the DNC, or any other Democrat gathering, you should be willing to protect them if they are assaulted by violent radicals, and the same for Republicans attending the RNC). This org is non-partisan for a very good reason. We must stand for the rights of all Americans, at all times, in all places.

When we stepped up in Ferguson, MO and protected Natalie, of Natalie’s Cakes and More (who happens to be a black woman), and her neighbors, we didn’t ask them what political party they belonged to, or what their politics were. It didn’t matter. We protected them because it was the right thing to do, and because no American should be assaulted, murdered by arsonists, or raped, robbed, or looted. Same here.

I will be holding an urgent Oath Keepers BOD and leadership call tomorrow night to discuss this situation and how we can help. But all patriots, regardless of what group they are in, need to step up and protect people against such violence and attempts to use force to chill their speech.

These are intolerable acts of thuggery that must be stopped.

For the Republic,

Stewart Rhodes

PS – the San Jose Police Department has issued a statement, defending their inaction, saying:

While several physical assaults did occur, the police personnel on scene had the difficult task of weighing the need to immediately apprehend the suspect(s) against the possibility that police action involving the use of physical force under the circumstances would further insight the crowd and produce more violent behavior.

What a load of bull.  I just got off the phone with veteran police officers and tactical trainers Greg McWhirter (former Indianapolis cop and current Montana corrections) and John Karriman (Missouri Police Academy Defensive Tactics instructor) and both of them stated that standing down is exactly opposite of what the San Jose police should have done, and only emboldened the thugs, producing more violent behavior, since the thugs could clearly see that the police would do nothing to stop them.  The right answer was to drop a hammer on the first thugs to commit assault, including using less than lethal rubber baton shotgun rounds if needed (thugs hate and fear shotguns) and pepper balls.  Make an example of a few, and the rest tend to back off (just like any gaggle of bullies).  The excuse given by the department is akin to a cowardly husband saying “don’t resist Martha, or it will make them angry, just let them have their way” which usually results in rape and murder of both of them.   It gives the thugs a green light and the thrill of doing as they wish right in front of the police.  What’s next?   Will “politically correct” cops let someone be beaten to death in front of them out of fear of inciting the crowd to more violent behavior?   Given how fast someone can be beaten to death by a mob, that nobody was killed here was just blind luck, and certainly not because of anything the San Jose Police Department did.

Hugh Fitzgerald: You Don’t Have To Be Muslim To Love Ramadan

June 8, 2016 3:48 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

Why is it that Western politicians, including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and David Cameron, think they must send out messages of such heartfelt solidarity to the world’s Muslims on Ramadan? Of course they send out messages as well for Diwali (Hindus and Buddhists), Passover (Jews), Christmas and Easter (Christians), but not with the suggestion that this or that religious holiday is somehow meant to include all of us as well-wishers, when some of us only wish to be counted out, or – equally disturbing – to sing the praises of a religious observance that is insufficiently understood.

Why does Ramadan appear to get special treatment? And why do these politicians presume to speak for us, as when Hillary Clinton sends a brief message that starts “As we begin Ramadan,” with that “we” implicating non-Muslims in what is, after all, a religious observance for Muslims only. That “we” is properly a “they.” Why did she not write, more accurately because less inclusively: “As Ramadan begins, I wish all Muslims….”or “As Ramadan begins for Muslims, I wish them…,” thus being polite, but no longer implying that “we” all share in Ramadan?

David Cameron offered an especially treacly and “inclusive” Ramadan greeting this year, and the very first sentence of his message to Muslims everywhere insists on implicating all of us in what should only be their epithet:

    It’s the holy month of Ramadan…

Why did Cameron have to say that Ramadan is “holy” to non-Muslims? Why could he not have said “It’s Ramadan, that month holy to Muslims,” or “It’s the month of Ramadan, holy to Muslims”?

    – a time when mosques open their doors, community centers welcome in their neighbors, and even churches and synagogues offer up their spaces as Muslims break their fasts – and people of all faiths and none are often asked to join.” (But these open-to-all iftars are not just for simple breaking-bread fellowship, but occasions for propagandizing, or even proselytizing, for Islam, as those who have attended these affairs well know.)

    Coventry Cathedral is holding its own multi-faith iftar. In Manchester, they’re combining an iftar with England’s European Championships appearance. And homeless shelters up and down the country are holding ‘Iftars with the Homeless’.

    Of course, fasting is what comes to mind when we think of Ramadan.

Not all Muslims agree; what comes to mind for some of them, when they think of Ramadan, is that it’s the perfect time to conduct Jihad: “The month of Ramadan in the life of the Prophet (pbuh) and the righteous ancestors was a month of forthcoming. The greatest battles during the lifetime of the Prophet (pbuh) occurred in this blessed month, the month of jihad, zeal, and enthusiasm.” For more on Ramadan as the month of Jihad, see here.

    It’s part of the month that really puts Muslims’ faith to the test, especially during these long, warm days. But there is much more to it. There is all the energy and money people donate to those who are less fortunate, and all the extra time spent in prayer and contemplation.

Cameron ought to know, but may not, that Muslim charity is directed only toward fellow Muslims; he ought to have said “all the energy and money Muslims devote to less fortunate fellow Muslims” — which changes the sense considerably.

    Uppermost in all our minds…

“All our minds”? Are we all Muslims now?

    …this Ramadan are those whose lives have been torn apart by the twin evils of Assad and Daesh,…

Are these equivalent evils — the Alawite aligned with Shi’a Muslim Iran and hereditary despot, Assad, and the Sunni Muslim fanatics of Daesh (the Islamic State)? Or are the latter far more dangerous to non-Muslims than the former?

    …all those families spending this holy month…

The epithet is again imposed on non-Muslims for whom Ramadan is not “holy.” Why?

    …in refugee camps, mourning loved ones, yearning to go back to school or to work…

News of the scandal of the “Syrian refugees,” so many of whom are not from Syria, but assorted Muslims from as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan, many of them seeking “refuge” in those European countries offering the most generous benefits, where they need not trouble themselves to seek work, has apparently not reached 10 Downing Street. Just consider the demonstration of the Muslim migrants’ “yearning for work” in Sweden where, last year, out of 162,000 “refugees” who arrived, exactly 464 are now employed. Some yearning.

    …wondering whether they’ll ever return home again.

And how many of those Muslim “refugees” have given any sign, over the last decade, of wanting to return home from Europe?

    Our thoughts, whatever our backgrounds or beliefs, are with them.

Again Cameron presumes to speak for all of us: “Our thoughts.” Notice, too, the casual feelgood dismissal of differences – “whatever our backgrounds or beliefs” — which no Muslim would endorse.

    And we must continue to support the people of Syria and the region, as we work towards a lasting political solution. Because that’s who we are as a country. We won’t walk on by again.

    So this Ramadan, let’s renew our resolve to help those victims. Let’s continue to come together for iftars and community events. Let’s celebrate the proud, multi-racial, multi-faith democracy we live in.

Cameron attributes to Ramadan a significance for non-Muslims that it does not as yet possess: it’s because it’s Ramadan that, he suggests, we renew, we continue, we celebrate. That is, all of us, in first-person-plural harmony. He might have written more to the real point: “Both Muslims and non-Muslims should renew their resolve to fight fanaticism and to ensure that minorities everywhere are safe.” Not a sentiment to which Muslims could openly object, even if they know to whom – themselves — it is really being addressed. And the distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim is usefully maintained.

    To everyone in Britain and around the world, Ramadan Mubarak.

Ramadan Mubarak “to everyone,” not just Muslims? Are we all Muslims now? And greetings not only in Britain but “around the world”? Why not at least limit greetings, if greetings there must be: “To Muslims in Britain, Ramadan Mubarak”?

Muslims would not have taken kindly to having Cameron presume to speak for them by having them appear to share in his Christmas or Easter or Passover or Diwali greetings, and he has been careful not to do so. Muslims are taught not to acknowledge the religious observances of others. But he does presume to speak for all non-Muslims in his specious sharing of the observance of Ramadan.

As for his “proud, multi-racial, multi-faith democracy,” this is a pollyannish figment of Cameron’s imaginative multicultural boosterism. Not everyone in Britain has forgotten the Muslim terrorist attacks on the buses and Underground, the butchering of Fusilier Rigby, and the sex-grooming gangs up and down the land, all contributing to a justified and growing anxiety over the Muslim presence in the country.

Barack Obama has issued his own equally fulsome Ramadan greetings:

    For many…

Should this not be “For many Muslims…”?

    …this month is an opportunity to focus on reflection and spiritual growth, forgiveness, patience and resilience, compassion for those less fortunate, and unity across communities.

To repeat yet again: “compassion” — i.e., charity — “for those less fortunate” is, in Islam, limited to fellow Muslims; Muslims are not supposed to give alms (zakat) to non-Muslims. This is often overlooked, because many non-Muslims are unaware of it, and even if they do know about the rules for Muslim “charity,” it seems churlish for non-Muslims to mention them (“Muslims are supposed to aid only other Muslims”), and Obama does nothing to set things straight. He might, however, simply have omitted that misleading phrase about “compassion for those less fortunate,” or he might have praised Muslims for “making a special effort during Ramadan to support less fortunate members of their own community,” which is less stark than “Muslims offering support for less fortunate Muslims.”

As for Ramadan being the perfect time to “focus on…unity across communities,” Obama presumably means a “unity” of Muslims with other faith groups. But Muslims are taught to regard themselves as the “best of peoples,” and non-Muslims as the “vilest of creatures” for whom all manner of punishments await. What “unity” could there possibly be between the “best of peoples” and the “vilest of creatures”?

Obama also remarks on the history of Muslims in America: “There are those whose heritage can be traced back to the very beginning of our nation, as well as those who have only just arrived.” This fits in with incessant Muslim attempts at backdating their presence in America, to insert themselves into the historical narrative much earlier, as a means of legitimizing their presence, and then pushing that “Islam has always been part of America” nonsense. This campaign reached its absurd zenith when State’s Phyllis McIntosh issued a report in 2004 entitled “Islamic Influence Runs Deep in American Culture.” In this report, she found a non-existent Muslim in Columbus’s crew: “Islamic influences may date back to the very beginning of American history. It is likely that Christopher Columbus, who discovered America in 1492, charted his way across the Atlantic Ocean with the help of an Arab navigator” (flatly untrue). “May date back” and “It is likely that” are weasel words designed to protect from criticism a claim that is made up entirely out of whole cloth. Then there is the other dubious claim — made with very slight supporting evidence — that, among the African slaves brought to America were some who had been Muslims in Africa. But even were that to have been true, a handful of Muslim slaves, living in an overwhelmingly Christian environment, outside a Muslim community, without either mosques or the texts necessary to help perpetuate the faith, would have had their Islam extinguished by the next generation.

In fact, a scarcely discernible, and very tiny, Muslim presence came very late to America. The first community of Muslims to have founded a mosque in the United States did so in a building borrowed for that purpose, in 1929; the first building erected as a mosque dates to 1935. Obama ought to have left out claims that Muslims arrived “at the very beginning of our nation,” rather than transmit what is a staple of Muslim propaganda. Or he might have written, with studied vagueness: “While many American Muslims have only just arrived, others can trace their heritage to earlier periods of our history.”

Then there is Obama’s parting remark about wishing “to honor the contributions of Muslims in America and across the world.” I have no idea what impressive contributions he has in mind, but along with others “in America and across the world,” I await with bated breath President Obama’s detailed list of Muslim Achievers.

To sum up:

Despite their extravagant expressions of solidarity with, and admiration for, Muslims on the occasion of Ramadan, nowhere in their remarks do either Cameron or Obama demonstrate real understanding of Islam. They should be – are they? — aware that Muslims are forbidden to reciprocate, that is, to offer similar greetings to non-Muslims on the occasion of any non-Muslim religious holiday – e.g., Christmas, Easter, Passover, Diwali. Some Muslims become incensed even at the non-religious observances of non-Muslims; campaigns by clerics to convince Muslims not to participate in such innocuous holidays as Valentine’s Day, or Thanksgiving, are not unknown. That being the case, there should be even less felt need or sense of obligation for non-Muslims to offer up such fulsome praise for this Muslim religious observance; a few sentences would have been quite enough.

In their choice of words, both Cameron and Obama make it appear that Muslim charity is extended to non-Muslims, but the only sanctioned object of Muslim alms-giving (zakat), during Ramadan (as at all other times), is fellow Muslims. And neither one explains why, during this month which – Obama informs us – “is an opportunity to focus on reflection and spiritual growth, forgiveness, patience and resilience,” Muslim violence does not recede, but surges.

One hopes that other commentators — freer to speak the truth than do our leaders, or those “taking a leadership role” — will continue to correct the record, dialing back on this insensate Infidel enthusiasm for Ramadan, both silly and sinister, before it becomes “not just for Muslims anymore.”

Hillary Clinton has a decades-long documented history of dishonesty and outright disregard for the law.  Let's not forget that she was kicked off the subcommittee investigating Watergate by a DEMOCRAT, who called her "extremely dishonest."  That the press has covered for her all these years is despicable.  Donald Trump is correct that she should not even be eligible to run for President considering her history.  What she has done makes what Richard Nixon did pale in comparison - and yet he was crucified in the press and in the court of public opinion for those relatively minor offenses.  How far we have sunk as a nation from a moral sense when 70% of Democrats believe that Hillary should continue to run EVEN IF SHE IS INDICTED. 

I personally find the oft-repeated refrain that Trump is equally as bad as Hillary both laughable and disgusting.  A Hillary presidency would consign this nation to a 4 or 8-year continuation of Barack Obama's policies, from which we would never recover in our lifetimes.  That the anti-Trumpers can't see this obvious fact and see the obvious and easy choice to be made between the two bodes very badly for the future of this country.

The False Comparison of Trump to Hillary

Unveiling the false equivalence.

June 7, 2016
Bruce Thornton

A lot of Republicans still upset over Donald Trump winning the nomination resort to a false equivalence between Trump and Clinton in order to justify sitting the election out or even voting for Hillary.

Take a recent example by the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru. First he lists Hillary’s manifold sins that Trump is innocent of: lying to the parents of the Benghazi victims, promising to nominate hard-left jurists to the Supreme Court, and supporting Obamas’ high-tax economics and unconstitutional amnesty of illegal aliens.

Then Ponnuru offers a catalogue of Trump’s sins Hillary hasn’t committed: mocking a reporter’s disability, indulging a preposterous conspiracy theory about Ted Cruz’s father and Lee Harvey Oswald, threatening a trade war with China, or threatening war crimes against the families of terrorists. Trump’s list presumably balances Hillary’s flaws, in order to make the point that both Trump and Hillary are equally distasteful, thus making the election a Hobson’s choice for principled conservatives.

But this comparison is false and misleading, for Trump and Clinton have had very different careers with different obligations and responsibilities.

Most obviously, Donald Trump is a private citizen who has never held public office. He is a businessman in a world where decorum and class often aren’t as important as sharp elbows and tough negotiating skills, where making a profit is more important than consistency or sparing people’s feelings. His goal is to make money, and his flamboyant life-style is our culture’s sign of his skills and success at doing so. Moreover, his flaws of personality and character, like his rude bluster and outrageous claims, are not, alas, that exceptional or different from those of millions of other private citizens, which may explain his populist appeal. And in his line of work, especially as a reality television star, such braggadocio and insensitivity may be assets. Intellectuals of more delicate sensibilities and refined manners may not like such déclassé qualities or grubby dealings, but most of them don’t live in a hard, risky world of tough negotiations and profit and loss.

Hillary Clinton is in a very different line of work from Trump’s. Her whole life has been spent as what we laughably call a public servant. In other words, she is supposed to be working not for profit or her own status and enrichment, but for the public weal. For progressives, that means striving for “social justice,” income equality, the abolition of prejudice and bigotry, the emancipation of women, the improvement of the middle class, and the salvation of the planet from the merchants of death by carbon. This is what she tells us over and over, and this is her case for why she should be president.

But while Trump’s character flaws have been assets in his profession, Hillary’s arrogant sense of entitlement, relentless money-grubbing, chronic mendacity, and obvious dislike of people other than her minions all undercut her claims to be a public servant, and help explain why she has serially failed at that role.

Of course, some presidents have shared the same flaws as Hillary, but they at least showed some restraint in exploiting their position for private gain, and at least could pretend to be a warm “people person,” as the ghastly phrase goes. Even Richard Nixon appeared on Laugh In. But Hillary has been inept at camouflaging her unseemly ambitions and even pretending to be a caring tribune of the people––in contrast, say, to Elizabeth Warren, who is just as much a hypocritical one-percenter as Hillary, but manages to come across as sincerely passionate. With Trump, however, you know exactly what you’re getting.

Finally, if a businessman like Trump fails, he reaps most of the damage. But if a “public servant” like Hillary fails, the security and interests of every single one of us are damaged, even as she advances her own political and fiscal interests as much as Trump does. Trump’s alleged shenanigans with Trump University are nothing compared to Hillary’s exploitation of her position as Secretary of State to steer money to her foundation, which is to say to herself, her husband, her daughter, her friends and political cronies, no matter the damage to America’s interests. Trump’s inconsistencies and alleged exaggerations about his net worth or charitable contributions are a dog-bites-man story compared to Hillary’s lies about Benghazi and her private email server. Nothing Trump has publicly said or done is as self-servingly despicable as Hillary’s implications that the grieving families of the four dead Americans in Benghazi are not telling the truth about her personal promise to them to “get” the obscure producer of the on-line video supposedly responsible for the attacks, when she knew that claim was untrue.

In short, Trump has been accountable to the bottom line. Hillary has been accountable to the people. Trump has succeeded in his job; Hillary has failed abysmally at hers. Making the two equally unpalatable to the principled voter is making a false equivalence between two different kinds of public life.

Perhaps Trump’s flaws would make him a bad president. But other presidents who had flaws equally distasteful––such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, or Bill Clinton––managed to do some good things as president regardless. With Trump there’s at least a chance he could turn out to be a better president than his bluster and insults suggest. Hillary, on the other hand, has a long public record of using her position for personal gain, and putting her ambition ahead of her responsibilities to the country she supposedly serves. Her role as First Lady was marked by bungling health care reform, indulging silly fantasies of a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” and allowing herself––an “I am woman hear me roar” feminist––to be publicly humiliated by her satyr husband while attacking his victims. Her tenure in the Senate lacked any substantive legislative achievements, and her stint as Secretary of State furthered Obama’s destruction of America’s global influence, power, and security from Syria to the South China Sea. It may be possible that she could experience a road-to-the-White House conversion and become a good president, but given everything we know from her 25 years of public “service,” the probability is close to zero.

With Trump, in contrast, we know that at least he won’t be as destructive to our political order as Obama has been. With Hillary the odds are much higher that she will continue Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of our country into an E.U.-like technocratic regime of smug elites whose aim is to erode individual freedom and compromise our country’s sovereignty. Worse yet, if she becomes president, she will most likely nominate two or three Supreme Court justices, creating a court that will gut the and First and Second Amendments and legitimize further the dismantling of the Constitution’s divided powers and limited executive. And don’t put your faith in the Republican Senate that confirmed Loretta Lynch to shoot down every one of Hillary’s picks, even if that means eight years of an eight-member court.

The November election is not a choice between two equally bad candidates. It’s the moment when we reject the candidate who we know, based on her long public record of corruption, lying, and grasping for power and wealth, will take us further down the road to political perdition.

The Never-Trump Diehards

Time to admit defeat and fold your tents.

June 2, 2016
David Horowitz

Reprinted from Breitbart.

One would have though that having failed to stop Trump’s nomination and then failed to find a prominent figure to lead their third-party effort, the beltway renegades would have been embarrassed enough to crawl under a nearby rock where they might ponder their lost credibility and squandered influence. Who, after all, could take seriously a movement launched through a tweet announcing an “impressive” candidate with a “good chance” to alter a national election, who turned out to be an obscure writer with no footprint in the political world?

But if one expected the beltway boys to have second thoughts about their nihilism, one would have been wrong, at least for now. Eyebrows had barely settled when the magazine whose manifesto launched the movement published a list of reasons for their anti-Trump sentiment that others must have missed. Why did they miss them? Because they were “obscured by the fog of political war,” and therefore “insufficiently studied and understood.” Preposterous as this explanation might seem after seven or eight months of Trump-pounding by National Review, Commentary, the Weekly Standard and the vast liberal media conspiracy, the actual reasons proposed by Nicholas Frankovich are even more so.

I will confine myself to the three coherent ones:

“The so-called alt-right, a fusion of nationalism with anti-Semitism and white separatism, has attached itself to Trumpism. Feed the host, and you feed the parasite.” That’s the reason, according to Frankovich – insufficiently studied and understood. But this makes about as much sense as blaming Trump for the violent fascists who “protest” his speeches. To be fair, Frankovich concedes that Trump himself is not a racist or anti-Semite, and also that most of his supporters are innocent, as well. But then he leaps to absurdities like this: “One reason that conservative writers are more likely than the average conservative to be Never Trump may be that they know that the alt-right exists. They spend more time in the political corners of the Internet where that particular virus that the Trump campaign has emboldened is still largely confined.”

So the big, insufficiently understood reason for Never Trump is that somewhere in the political corners of the Internet is a virus that Trump has somehow emboldened, but which is still largely confined to those corners. Perhaps the Never Trumpers haven’t noticed that the virus of anti-Semitic, anti-white racism is out in the streets in large and violent numbers, protesting Trump rallies, or swelling the ranks of Bernie supporters, or that Bernie himself has picked three anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist allies to be on the platform committee of the Democratic Party. If Trump’s virus is still confined to fringe characters on the Internet and Bernie’s and Hillary’s are out in the streets and on the Democrats’ platform committee, what reason can there be for opposing the one man (because he’s the candidate, fellas) who can stop them?

This leads Frankovich “to a second under-examined reason that many conservatives oppose Trump’s candidacy: It has had the effect of legitimizing race-based grievance and of expanding the sphere of speech that is considered taboo, or politically incorrect.” In other words, since Trump has had the balls to blast through the orthodoxy of the left-wing party line, he has also expanded the sphere of politically incorrect speech, which includes racism! How about the racism of the Democratic Party, which remains, after all is said and done, politically correct?

Democrats support racial preferences in hiring, in school admissions — in fact, in virtually every aspect of public life. Democrats control every large inner city, every killing zone – Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis – and control them 100%, and have done so for fifty to a hundred years. Every racist oppression in inner-city America, the failed schools that deny minority children a shot at the American dream, the welfare systems that drive fathers out of the homes and encourage dependency at every level, are products of Democratic policies.

Yet, the Never Trumpers are upset not over the perpetuation of this racist nightmare, which their campaign could make possible, but over the fact that Trump has expanded the discourse – the freedom to speak! – of American politicians and their constituents.

Finally, according to Frankovich, “Trumpism reflects a degradation of American culture but also promotes it. Some of Trump’s fans thrill to his transgression of commonly accepted standards of decency and decorum. Others tolerate it, for the sake of some good they hope he might achieve.” Thinking about this transgression, I am put in mind of a quip from Woody Allen’s Annie Hall: “Lyndon Johnson is a politician. You know the ethics those guys have. It’s like a notch beneath child molester.”

The transgression is ongoing; only one side gets to do it more than the other. When Democrats warn voters that black churches will burn if Republicans are elected, as they have done in several presidential campaigns, or accuse Republicans of wanting to put blacks back in chains, as Joe Biden did in the last election, does that lie within the bounds of “accepted standards of decency and decorum”?

The degradation of the political culture is now a fact of political life, as Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton knows all too well. Does fighting back in kind equate to a promotion of degradation? If it does, should one not do it? Should Trump fight with one hand tied behind his back like other Republicans? Should Trump’s chief Republican rivals also have refrained from taunts in kind?

What Frankovich and the Never Trumpers refuse to see is that the political contest as waged by Democrats – and not only Democrats – is already a form of war. Trump’s political style and tactics have allowed him to prevail on a primary battlefield where no one thought he could survive.

Now the battle is with a racist party that wants to dismantle our borders and cripple our defenses in the holy war that Islamists are waging against us. There is no neutral ground. Nor is there a referee to impose rules of decorum and punish transgressors. Only the electorate can do that. The Republican electorate, however, has already spoken on this issue. Their nominee is Trump, and anyone who cherishes our constitutional system is bound to respect that.

Or have the honesty to declare their support for the other side. Or sit the battle out. What is not acceptable is to sabotage your own army in the field and pretend that you don’t want the enemy to win.

Obama State Department admits briefing footage ACKNOWLEDGING DECEPTION on Iran deal INTENTIONALLY DELETED

Posted By Pamela Geller On June 4, 2016

The Obama administration can do whatever it wants. It can lie openly and brazenly to the American people — in service of Iran’s jihad — and there is never any accountability. And this comes after Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and a myriad of other scandals at which the lapdog media did everything it could to cover for this corrupt and feckless regime. Treason on a massive scale.



“State Department admits briefing footage on Iran deal intentionally deleted,” Fox News [1], June 1, 2016:

The State Department, in a stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.

“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor “excise” the segment.

The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013 briefing. At that briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.

Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”

However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect.

Officials initially suggested a “glitch” occurred.

But on Wednesday, current State Department spokesman Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He said he couldn’t find out who was responsible, but described such action as unacceptable.

While saying there were “no rules [or] regulations in place that prohibited” this at the time, Kirby said: “Deliberately removing a portion of the video was not and is not in keeping with the State Department’s commitment to transparency and public accountability.”

Kirby said he learned that on the same day of the 2013 briefing, a video editor received a call from a State Department public affairs official who made “a specific request … to excise that portion of the briefing.”

Kirby says he has since ordered the original video restored on all platforms and asked the State Department’s legal adviser to examine the matter. He said no further investigation will be made, primarily because no rules were in place against such actions….

Obama State Department admits briefing footage ACKNOWLEDGING DECEPTION on Iran deal INTENTIONALLY DELETED

Posted By Pamela Geller On June 4, 2016

The Obama administration can do whatever it wants. It can lie openly and brazenly to the American people — in service of Iran’s jihad — and there is never any accountability. And this comes after Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and a myriad of other scandals at which the lapdog media did everything it could to cover for this corrupt and feckless regime. Treason on a massive scale.



“State Department admits briefing footage on Iran deal intentionally deleted,” Fox News [1], June 1, 2016:

The State Department, in a stunning admission, acknowledged Wednesday that an official intentionally deleted several minutes of video footage from a 2013 press briefing, where a top spokeswoman seemed to acknowledge misleading the press over the Iran nuclear deal.

“There was a deliberate request [to delete the footage] – this wasn’t a technical glitch,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday, in admitting that an unidentified official had a video editor “excise” the segment.

The State Department had faced questions earlier this year over the block of missing tape from a December 2013 briefing. At that briefing, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki was asked by Fox News’ James Rosen about an earlier claim that no direct, secret talks were underway between the U.S. and Iran – when, in fact, they were.

Psaki at the time seemed to admit the discrepancy, saying: “There are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”

However, Fox News later discovered the Psaki exchange was missing from the department’s official website and its YouTube channel. Eight minutes from the briefing, including the comments on the Iran deal, were edited out and replaced with a white-flash effect.

Officials initially suggested a “glitch” occurred.

But on Wednesday, current State Department spokesman Kirby said someone had censored the video intentionally. He said he couldn’t find out who was responsible, but described such action as unacceptable.

While saying there were “no rules [or] regulations in place that prohibited” this at the time, Kirby said: “Deliberately removing a portion of the video was not and is not in keeping with the State Department’s commitment to transparency and public accountability.”

Kirby said he learned that on the same day of the 2013 briefing, a video editor received a call from a State Department public affairs official who made “a specific request … to excise that portion of the briefing.”

Kirby says he has since ordered the original video restored on all platforms and asked the State Department’s legal adviser to examine the matter. He said no further investigation will be made, primarily because no rules were in place against such actions….

These people (Bill Kristol, Ben Shapiro, Erick Erickson, et. al.) are pathetic and detestable in my view.  They clearly value their own establishment connections and power base above the general welfare of the country, and are perfectly willing to see Hillary Clinton elected president.  In fact, I think many of them get a perverse schadenfreude moment just thinking about a Hillary victory.  See Erickson's latest article below.

Perhaps No Scapegoat

By Erick Erickson  |  June 1, 2016, 05:00am


Should David French make it on the ballot in Georgia, I would gladly vote for him. David French, unlike any other candidate for President, left his job after 9/11 and joined the military to fight for his country. He is a conservative scholar, has provided a lot of pro bono legal work to good causes, and is someone I could vote for as opposed to having others suggest I choose between the evils of two lessers.

I know who David French is, but had never spoken to him until around 10 o’clock on Monday evening. He appears to be the candidate behind Bill Kristol’s tweet about a third party candidate. I told David on Monday night I thought he needed to come out with a pile of money committed. Kristol’s tweet, however, along with an article mentioning David, rushed the story quicker than David wanted. It was an unforced error that forces David out quicker than I think he intended. A bit humorously, I suddenly find myself getting credit and blame for something I played no role in and did not know about until just over 24 hours ago.

Over the past few weeks a lot of names have circulated for an independent or third party run. I focused on Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney, neither of whom will do it. As friends of mine have increasingly become desperate for a candidate, i have moved more and more to thinking perhaps we should not offer up a candidate.

Donald Trump and his chief supporters have said over and over again that they do not need me or any other conservative in order to win in November. According to Trump, he is going to reshape the Republican coalition and beat the Democrats. More and more I am inclined to let him try.

I do not think Donald Trump will win. Should Trump lose in November, he and his supporters will be desperate to find someone to blame other than Trump himself. An independent candidate provides them a scapegoat to avoid responsibility.

It is very similar to Al Gore in 2000. Gore had Ralph Nader to blame and the Democrats never had to take seriously their fundamental problems. They had to again get clobbered with John Kerry in order to take a hint and find a happy warrior who was going to campaign on “hope and change” instead of piss, vinegar, and Mexican rapists like Trump is doing now.

The Republican Party, with Trump, is embracing a campaign of racism, nativism, and fear mongering wrapped in a Messiah complex of a man who promises everything without limits. If it wins in November, I will gladly say I had no role to play in that victory. If it loses in November, I will gladly cheer Donald Trump’s defeat. But I am increasingly convinced an independent candidate just gives Trump one more excuse and one more target of blame for what I think is his inevitable defeat.

Should David French raise the money and get out the ballot, I’d relish being able to support him and vote for him. I had to hold my nose for McCain. I had to hold my nose for Romney. I will not hold my nose for Trump. I will not vote for the man. I would gladly vote for David French — a man willing to drop everything to serve his country at war, a far more noble endeavor than anything Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump have ever done. I will contribute money to David French. For the first time in two cycles I’d have a candidate I want to vote for.

But more and more I wonder if, for the good of the conservative movement, we should watch Trump fall on his own instead of providing him a conservative scapegoat.

The biggest racial lie

Far from still racist, America is the world’s most inclusive nation

By David Horowitz - - Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Let's begin with two statements on race — one that is offensive and false, the other self-evidently true. Taken together, they illuminate the toxic state of the national dialogue on race.

The false statement is that America is a racist country or, in its unhinged version: America is a "white supremacist" nation. This accusation is one that so-called progressives regularly make against a country that outlaws racial discrimination, has twice elected a black president, two black secretaries of state, three black national security advisers and two successive black attorneys general along with thousands of black elected officials, mayors, police chiefs and congressmen. In addition, blacks play dominant roles in shaping America's popular and sports cultures, and thus in shaping the outlooks and expectations of American youth.

The claim that America is a white supremacist nation is not only deranged and racist against whites, but is an act of hostility toward blacks, who enjoy opportunities and rights as Americans that are greater than those of any other country under the sun, including every African nation and Caribbean country governed by blacks for hundreds and even thousands of years.

The self-evidently true statement about race in America is that America is not a racist country but, in fact, the most tolerant and inclusive nation embracing large ethnic minorities on earth. Yet this true statement cannot be uttered in public without inviting charges of "racism" against the speaker. Consequently, all public figures and most people generally, clear their throats before speaking about race by genuflecting to the claim that racism against blacks is still a prevalent and systemic problem even though there is no credible evidence to sustain either claim.

By contrast, the offensively false statement that America is a racist nation, is one that our current (black) president has endorsed. According to President Obama, "racism is still part of our DNA that's passed on." Variations of the claim are ubiquitous among self-styled liberals, progressives, so-called civil rights leaders and campus protesters. The title of a recent book by a black university professor summarizes this politically correct slander: "Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul." The core claim of the Black Lives Matter movement — which is the chief activist force in advancing this claim, and is "strongly supported" by 46 percent of Democrats, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll — is that America is a white supremacist nation, whose law enforcement agencies regularly gun down innocent blacks.

Contrary to Mr. Obama's malicious assertion about his own country, the DNA of America — unique among the nations of the world — is not racism but the exact opposite. In its very beginnings, America dedicated itself to the proposition that all men are created equal and were endowed by their Creator with the right to be free. Over the next two generations, America made good on that proposition, though this achievement is regularly slighted by "progressives" because it didn't take place overnight.

The historically accurate view of what happened is this: Black Africans were enslaved by other black Africans and sold at slave markets to Western slavers. America inherited this slave system from the British Empire, and once it was independent, ended the slave trade and almost all slavery in the Northern states within 20 years of its birth. America then risked its survival as a nation and sacrificed 350,000 mostly white Union lives, to end slavery in the South as well. In other words, as far as blacks are concerned, America's true legacy is not slavery, but freedom. As noted, American blacks today have more freedom, rights and privileges than blacks in any black nation in the world.

These are important facts that have been obscured in our politically correct university culture and throughout the K-12 systems whose teachers are trained in university schools of education. Our literary culture is itself infected with a crude anti-white racism that beggars belief. The National Book Award this year was given to a poisonous racial tract called "Between the World and Me," written by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the form of a letter to his son. In the book, Mr. Coates explains to his son that cops who murder innocent black teens "are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy." In an all-too-typical "history" lesson, Mr. Coates informs his son: "We did not choose our fences. They were imposed on us by Virginia planters obsessed with enslaving as many Americans as possible."

In fact, Virginia planters did not enslave blacks originally and could not buy more black slaves once America ended the slave trade in 1807. Mr. Coates singles out Virginia planters because some of America's most prominent Founders, in particular the author of the Declaration of Independence, were Virginians and owned slaves. But Mr. Coates and every other black in America and throughout the Western Hemisphere is free because of Virginia planters like Thomas Jefferson. We need to begin our racial discussions with these facts, and treat the claim that America is a "white supremacist" nation, for what it is: anti-American and anti-white racism.

• David Horowitz is the author of the newly published "Progressive Racism" (Encounter Books, 2016).

Business Debt Delinquencies Are Now Higher Than When Lehman Brothers Collapsed In 2008

Monday, 23 May 2016    Michael Snyder  www.alt-market.com/articles/2901-business-debt-delinquencies-are-now-higher-than-when-lehman-brothers-collapsed-in-2008

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at The Economic Collapse

You are about to see more very clear evidence that a new economic crisis has already begun.  During economic recoveries, business debt delinquencies generally fall, and during times of economic recession business debt delinquencies generally rise.  In fact, you will see below that business debt delinquencies shot up dramatically just prior to the last two recessions, and the exact same thing is happening again right now.  In 2008, business debt delinquencies increased at a very frightening pace just before Lehman Brothers collapsed, and this was a very clear sign that big trouble was ahead.  Unfortunately for us, in 2016 business debt delinquencies have already shot up above the level they were sitting at just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and every time debt delinquencies have ever gotten this high the U.S. economy has always fallen into recession.

In article after article, I have shown that key indicators for the U.S. economy started falling in either late 2014 or at some point during 2015.  Well, business debt delinquencies are another example of this phenomenon.  According to Wolf Richter, business debt delinquencies have shot up an astounding 137 percent since the fourth quarter of 2014…

Delinquencies of commercial and industrial loans at all banks, after hitting a low point in Q4 2014 of $11.7 billion, have begun to balloon (they’re delinquent when they’re 30 days or more past due). Initially, this was due to the oil & gas fiasco, but increasingly it’s due to trouble in many other sectors, including retail.

Between Q4 2014 and Q1 2016, delinquencies spiked 137% to $27.8 billion.

And we never see this kind of rise unless the U.S. economy is heading into a recession.  Here is more from Wolf Richter…

Note how, in this chart by the Board of Governors of the Fed, delinquencies of C&I loans start rising before recessions (shaded areas). I added the red marks to point out where we stand in relationship to the Lehman moment:


Business loan delinquencies are a leading indicator of big economic trouble.

To me, this couldn’t be any clearer.

Just like the U.S. government and just like U.S. consumers, U.S. businesses are absolutely drowning in debt.

In fact, a report that was just released found that debt at U.S. companies has been growing at a pace that is 50 times faster than the rate that cash has been growing.

Just imagine what it would mean for your family if your debt was growing 50 times faster than your bank account.  Needless to say, this is an extremely troubling development…

Well, American companies may just have a mountain’s worth of problems, according to a new report from Andrew Chang and David Tesher of S&P Global Ratings.

“At the same time, the imbalance between cash and debt outstanding we reported on last year has gotten even worse: Debt outstanding increased 50x that of cash in 2015,” wrote Chang and Tesher.

“Total debt rose by roughly $850 billion to $6.6 trillion last year, dwarfing the 1% cash growth ($17 billion).”

And the really bad news is that banks all across the country are starting to tighten credit to businesses.

In other words, they are beginning to become much more reluctant to loan money to businesses because debts are going bad at such an alarming rate.

When the flow of credit to the business community starts to slow down, it is inevitable that the overall economy slows down as well.  It is just basic economics.  So the deterioration of the U.S. economy that we have witnessed so far is just the beginning of a process that is going to take quite a while to play out.

And let us not forget that most of the rest of the world is already is much worse shape than we are.  Most global financial markets are officially in bear market territory right now, and some nations are already experiencing full-blown economic depression.

Now that the early chapters of the “next crisis” are here, most American families find themselves ill-equipped to deal with another major downturn.  In fact, USA Today is reporting that approximately two-thirds of the country is currently living paycheck to paycheck…

Two-thirds of Americans would have difficulty coming up with the money to cover a $1,000 emergency, according to an exclusive poll, a signal that despite years after the Great Recession, Americans’ finances remain precarious as ever.

These difficulties span all incomes, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Three-quarters of people in households making less than $50,000 a year and two-thirds of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 would have difficulty coming up with $1,000 to cover an unexpected bill.

What are these people going to do when they lose their jobs or their businesses go under?

If you have any doubt that the U.S. economy is already in recession mode, just look at this chart over and over.

For months, I have been warning that the same patterns that immediately preceded previous recessions were happening once again, and this rise in debt delinquencies is another striking example of this phenomenon.

This stuff isn’t complicated.  Anyone that is willing to be honest with themselves should be able to see it.  As a society, we have been making very, very bad decisions for a very, very long period of time, and what we are watching unfold right now are the inevitable consequences of those decisions.

Oil Market Hype And Crisis Signal Greater Troubles Ahead

Wednesday, 20 April 2016   Brandon Smith - www.alt-market.com


Most people are not avid followers of economic news, and I don’t blame them. Financial analysis is for the most part boring and tedious and you would have to be some kind of crazy to commit a large slice of your life to it.

However, those of us who are that crazy do what we do (and do it independently) because underneath all the data and the charts and the overnight news feeds we see keys to future events. And if we are observant enough, we might even be able to warn people who don’t have the same proclivities but still deserve to know the reality of the world around them.

Most Americans and much of the rest of the planet probably were not aware of the recent oil producer’s meeting in Doha, Qatar this past Sunday, nor would they have cared. A bunch of rich guys in white dresses talking about oil production levels does not exactly spark the imagination. What the masses missed, though, was an event that could affect them deeply and economically for many months to come.

A little background highly summarized…

After the derivatives and credit crisis launched in 2007/2008 the Federal Reserve responded to disastrous levels of deflation with a fiat money printing bonanza. Everyone knows this. The problem was the central bankers never had any intention of actually using all that “cash” to support Main Street or the fundamentals of the economy.

Instead, they used their printing press and digital loan transfers to artificially re-inflate the coffers of banks and major corporations. It was a blood transfusion for vampires, if you will.

Through the use of TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), quantitative easing, artificially low interest rates, and probably a host of secret actions we’ll never hear about, a steady stream of capital (or debt, to be more precise) was pumped through corporate conduits. The goal? To keep the U.S. from immediate bankruptcy through treasury bond purchases, to boost bank credit, and to allow companies to institute an unprecedented program of stock buybacks (a method by which a corporation buys back its own shares to reduce the amount on the market, thereby manipulating the value of the remaining shares to higher prices).

As the former head of the Federal Reserve Dallas branch, Richard Fisher admitted in an interview with CNBC:

“What the Fed did — and I was part of that group — is we front-loaded a tremendous market rally, starting in 2009.

It’s sort of what I call the “reverse Whimpy factor” — give me two hamburgers today for one tomorrow."

Why would the Fed want to engineer a hollow rally in stocks? As I have said in the past, they did this because they know that the average American watches about 15 minutes of television news a day and gauges the health of the economy only on whether the Dow is green or red. From 2009 to 2015, the Fed felt it needed to support markets through fiat and keep the public placated and apathetic.

Stocks and bonds were not the only assets being propped up by the Fed, though. In tandem, oil markets were artificially inflated.

Oil suffered a historic spike in 2008, then collapsed to near $40 (WTI). Starting in 2009 and the initiation of major stimulus measures by the Fed, oil prices came back with a vengeance; almost as if the spike in 2008 was merely a measure to psychologically prepare the public for what was to come. In 2010 prices climbed near the $90 mark, then in 2011 they peaked at around $115 a barrel.

Then, something magical happened — in December, 2013, the Fed announced the Taper of QE3, something very few people predicted would actually happen (you can read this article breaking down why I predicted it would happen).

The taper involved slowly cycling out Fed purchases a month at a time. By mid-2014 the taper was nearing completion. Suddenly, oil markets began to tank. By October, 2014 the Fed finished the taper and oil collapsed, from $95 a barrel to a low of under $30 a barrel at the beginning of 2016. The correlation between the Fed taper and the overwhelming drop in oil prices is undeniable. Clearly, high oil prices were primarily dependent on Fed QE.



While equities fluctuated heavily after the end of QE3, they were still supported by the Fed’s other pillar – near zero interest rates. NIRP allowed the Fed to continue funneling cheap or free money to banks and corporations so they could keep stock buybacks rolling, but oil was done for.

Now, until recently, oil markets have NOT reflected the true state of the global economy. All other fundamental indicators have been in decline since the crash of 2008, including global exports, imports, the Baltic Dry Index, manufacturing, wages, real employment numbers, etc. Oil consumption in the U.S., according to the World Economic Forum, has sunk to lows not seen since 1997. Current levels of oil consumption are FAR below projections made in 2003 by the Energy Information Administration. By most tangible measurements, we never left the crisis of 2008.



Oil demand continued to fall but prices remained high because of Fed intervention. My theory: As with stocks, the Fed at that time needed to pump up the only other indicator the mainstream might notice as a sign of dangerous deflation – energy prices.  Dwindling demand is the real problem being hidden in chaos surrounding arguments over production.  The establishment prefers we focus completely on supply while ignoring the warnings of falling demand.

QE was the first pillar to be pulled from the false recovery, and oil markets plunged. At the end of 2015, the Fed removed the second pillar of NIRP and raised interest rates. OPEC members met to discuss a possible production freeze agreement but the conference failed to produce anything legitimate. This resulted in stocks crashing in extreme volatility to meet up with oil.

Then something magical happened once again. In mid-February, OPEC members and non-members arranged yet another meeting, this time with much fanfare and steady rumors hinting at a guaranteed production freeze deal. Oil began to climb back from the brink, and stocks rallied over the course of six more weeks.  All eyes were on Doha, Qatar and the oil agreement that would "save markets".

I bring up the recent history of oil markets because I want to give some perspective to those people who suffer from a disease I call "ticker tracking".  This disease causes extreme short attention span issues and loss of long term memory.  The dopamine addiction of ticker tracking makes people forget about long term trends and their relation to the events of today, to the point that they ignore all fundamentals in the name of watching little red and green lines day in and day out.

For example, the fact that the Doha meeting failed but did not result in an immediate and massive slide in oil and stocks sent ticker trackers crowing that the market "will never be allowed to fall".  Their affliction keeps them from realizing that the effects of Doha, like any other major financial event in the past, take TIME to set in.  Not to mention, they seem oblivious to the implications of oil struggling to move comfortably beyond $40 a barrel.

Remember, oil was around $60 (WTI) six months ago, and had held over $100 (WTI) for years before then.  The crash in oil markets has ALREADY happened, folks.  What we are witnessing today is the last vestiges of that crash playing out in extreme volatility.  Now we wait for equities to fall and meet oil, as they did at the beginning of 2016, and as they eventually will again.

Are stocks tracking oil prices? It may not be an absolute correlation, and they do tend to decouple at times, but the overall trend has been consistent; when oil falls, stocks loosely follow.

The Doha meeting was always a farce; that much was obvious before it even took place. Bloomberg along with other media outlets were planting rumors of backroom deals between Russia and Saudi Arabia before the Doha event which would solidify a production freeze. Numerous mainstream “experts” claimed an agreement was essentially a sure thing. Even some skeptics within the liberty movement were doubtless that a deal was certain because “the internationalists would never allow oil prices to continue to drag on the public perception of the economy.”

First, I am not a believer in the idea that global economic decisions are really made at these meetings. Any nation that has a central bank that is tied to the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund is a CONTROLLED nation. Period. Economic arrangements are handed down from on high, not debated spontaneously in open forums. Read Harper’s 1983 article on the BIS titled “Ruling The World Of Money” for more information on how globalists control the economic policies of nations.

Second, even if a person believes that such vital economic decisions as a global oil production freeze are decided in closed meetings while the press waits just outside, why would anyone buy into the Doha event?

I am not quite sure why some people were gullible enough to think that after 15 YEARS of oil producers refusing to come together on any form of meaningful agreement they would suddenly shake hands this year. The only hope markets had was the possibility that the Doha meeting would result in an empty deal that they could spin in the mainstream news as a legitimate “production freeze.” Apparently they won’t even be getting that.

The Doha talks ended in failure. All the signs said this would happen. As I wrote in my article “Lost Faith In Central Banks And The Economic End Game”:

For anyone who was betting on oil markets to continue their rally past the $40 per barrel mark, there was a lot of bad news. Saudi Arabia crushed optimism by announcing that it would not be entertaining a “production freeze” proposal unless ALL other oil producing nations, including Iran, also agreed to it.

Iran then doubly crushed optimism by announcing an increase in production rather than committing to a freeze.

Russia then administered the final blow by releasing data showing that their oil output had risen to historic levels, indicating that they will not be entering into any agreement on a production freeze.

Besides a recent overly optimistic (and rather suspicious inventory draw) which has caused a short term rebound, all indicators show that oil will be headed back to the lows seen at the beginning of this year.

The effects of the Doha failure were delayed by a convenient labor strike in Kuwait, which caused algo trading computers to buy en masse despite the negative news.  As I pointed out on Monday, though, the Kuwait situation would be very short lived.  Now, it is time to watch and wait for Saudi Arabia and Iran to begin battling over market share and increasing production even more.  These things take a little time to develop.

Currently oil has dropped back below $40(WTI) and markets are extremely volatile. I do not believe the failure of the Doha meeting alone will translate to a fantastic drop in stocks. But, I do believe that it is a very heavy straw added to the camel's back, and there is a negative trend developing before our very eyes that will become apparent in the next couple of months.

As I have said in the past, a market entirely supported by rumors and hearsay can rally quickly, but also lose all gains at the drop of a hat. What the Doha debacle represents is a signal that the establishment is incrementally abandoning support for market systems.  This is translating to a loss of faith in central banks and major financial institutions.

On top of this, look at the incredible amount of misinformation and misdirection that went into Doha, now completely exposed. The truth is crystal; the MSM lied and obfuscated helping the establishment to drive up oil prices and stocks, all for a mere six to eight weeks of market security.  As soon as these lies were revealed, volatility began to return.

If the oil market bubble can implode (as it already has) in such a way due to the striking of fundamentals, then stocks can also be destabilized as well. It will happen, and I believe 2016 is the year it will happen.

There are those out there that miscalled how the Doha meeting would end because they were blinded by a particularly dangerous bias; they have assumed that central banks and internationalists want or need to continue propping up markets indefinitely. This is not necessarily true. In fact, I have outlined time and again evidence showing that they are planning the opposite. That is to say, they are planning to deliberately bring down markets in a controlled manner.

Oil was the most recent system to be undermined, and stocks will likely follow before the year is out. The fall in oil and the circus at Doha signals a change in strategy by the globalists. It signals a shift towards the controlled demolition of our economy and the centralization of fiscal power into a single global administrative entity. Order out of chaos.

There is a steady stream of events in the next few months that can be used as a steam valve for sinking global markets. Watch the April Fed meeting carefully. The Fed recently held two “emergency meetings” along with a third surprise meeting between President Barack Obama and Fed Chair Janet Yellen. The last time such a meeting occurred the Fed hiked rates less than a month later. I expect that the Fed will raise rates once again either this month or in June.

Also, watch for the Brexit (the British exit from the EU) referendum in June. Such a development would greatly shock an already unsteady Europe as well as the rest of the West.

And, of course, watch for trends in oil and stocks, but do not get caught up in the day-to-day mindlessness of ticker tracking. It is pointless and will not help you to understand what is happening economically. In any economic crisis, stocks are the LAST indicator to turn negative and daily analysis by itself is in no way a crystal ball.

The next couple of months should be very interesting. Stay vigilant.

Muslim Offers $10,000 to Anyone Who Can Show That Qur’an Promotes Terrorism

March 28, 2016 - Robert Spencer

Dear Omar Alnatour:

Thank you so very much for offering “anyone $10,000 if they can find me a verse in the Quran that says it’s ok to kill innocent people or to commit acts of terror.” My 1999 Toyota is on its last legs, and your generous gift will enable me to replace it with a modest but fully operational used midsize sedan. Or maybe (since it has been years since I’ve had a break), if I can keep the jalopy going for awhile, I will use your ten grand take a vacation to Paris and Brussels -- before it’s too late, you know?

Anyway, here is my entry, which I am confident will win the $10,000 prize. I’ll make sure of that by giving you even more than you asked for: you wanted just a single Qur’anic verse that “says it’s ok to kill innocent people or to commit acts of terror,” I’ll give you more than one of each, just so there is no doubt:

    The Qur’an says it’s ok to kill innocent people

“Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.” (Qur’an 9:5)

The verse says to kill the idolaters – mushrikun – those who worship others besides Allah. Now I don’t know, Mr. Alnatour, if you might think “idolaters” are by virtue of being “idolaters” are not innocent and therefore worth killing, but I’m with Thomas Jefferson: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” I don’t think my neighbor to have forfeited his innocence if he prays to gods I don’t recognize, and I hope you don’t, either.

Now I expect that you will say that this Qur’an verse refers not to all idolaters, but only to one very specific group of idolaters, the polytheist Quraysh tribe of Mecca that was making war against Muhammad, and that this verse has no force now that they have been conquered and Islamized, and doesn’t apply to any other idolaters. It would have been nice for Allah to make that clear in the pages of his perfect book, but who am I to question the will of a deity?

What’s more, classic Muslim commentators on this Qur’an verse give no hint that it has long expired. On the contrary, Ibn Juzayy notes that it cancels out peaceful verses; he says that it abrogates “every peace treaty in the Qur’an,” and specifically abrogates the Qur’an’s directive to “set free or ransom” captive unbelievers (47:4). As-Suyuti agrees: “This is an Ayat of the Sword which abrogates pardon, truce and overlooking” — that is, perhaps the overlooking of the pagans’ offenses. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn says that the Muslims must “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, be it during a lawful [period] or a sacred [one], and take them, captive, and confine them, to castles and forts, until they have no choice except death or Islam.” He is offering this as instruction for Muslims in his day; he seems to have no idea that this verse doesn’t apply to them.

Neither does Ibn Kathir. He writes that Muslims should “not wait until you find them. Rather, seek and besiege them in their areas and forts, gather intelligence about them in the various roads and fairways so that what is made wide looks ever smaller to them. This way, they will have no choice, but to die or embrace Islam.” He also doesn’t seem to subscribe to the view that this verse applies only to the pagans of Arabia in Muhammad’s time, and has no further application. He asserts, on the contrary, that “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” means just that: the unbelievers must be killed “on the earth in general, except for the Sacred Area” — that is, the sacred mosque in Mecca, in accord with Qur’an 2:191.

So there you are, Mr. Alnatour: the Qur’an calling for the murder of those who are innocent, except for the crime of being “idolaters” – a “crime” that requires earthly punishment only in the Qur’an.

And there’s more:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, of the People of the Book, until they pay the jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” (Qur’an 9:29)

The “People of the Book” are Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. The verse doesn’t provide any reason why they should be fought and made to submit to the Muslims except that they are People of the Book and don’t acknowledge Islam. Here again, you might consider them not innocent on that basis, but I hope you don’t, as I’m sure you would agree that people may differ on key questions in good faith.

Ibn Juzayy, however, does believe that the People of the Book should be fought simply because they are not Muslims. He says that this verse is “a command to fight the People of the Book” and explains that they must be fought because of their “denying their belief in Allah because of the words of the Jews, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah” and the words of the Christians, ‘The Messiah is the son of Allah’” (cf. Qur’an 9:30). He adds that Muslims must also fight them “because they consider as lawful carrion, blood, pork, etc.” and because “they do not enter Islam.”

So the Qur’an says that the People of the Book must be fought because they believe differently from the Muslims. But that is not a crime. These people are innocent.

    The Qur’an says it’s ok to commit acts of terror

“We will cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, for that they have associated with Allah that for which He sent down never authority; their lodging shall be the Fire; evil is the lodging of the evildoers.” (Qur’an 3:151)

Now, Mr. Alnatour (may I call you Omar?), I know what you’ll say here: this is Allah saying he will terrorize the unbelievers, not commanding the Muslims to do so. Fair enough, although I can’t help but recall that the Qur’an also says: “Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands” (9:14). So if Allah is punishing the unbelievers by the hands of the believers, might part of that punishment involve casting terror into the hearts of the unbelievers? And that’s what terrorism is all about, right?

And yes, there is still more. “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.” (Qur’an 8:60)

Strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy. Now you no doubt have some explanation for this, Mr. Alnatour, but I wonder how you would explain to a young member of the Islamic State (ISIS) or al-Qaeda that Allah’s command to strike terror into the enemy of Allah doesn’t mean that they should behead, or blow up, or otherwise terrorize unbelievers.

So there you have it. Not just one verse, but four, and I have plenty more. You don’t have to pay me $40,000 even though I fulfilled your requirements four times over; I’ll take the $10,000, and thank you very much for your generosity. I must say that I very much enjoyed your article in which you made this offer, “Why Muslims Should Never Have To Apologize for Terrorism"  (Huffingtonpost.com - 3-24-2016,)  if it is proper to say that one enjoyed such a lamentable tale as your own. It is lamentable to read about how your wife screams at you and your children hate you for matters beyond your control, and that then on top of that, Infidels have the temerity to want you to do something about Islamic terrorism beyond issuing pro forma condemnations.

My mind goes back, however, to those who were murdered by Islamic terrorists recently in Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, and so many other places. I’m sure you would agree that the suffering of their families far exceeds that of Muslims who must suffer Infidels asking them (quite patiently, for over fourteen years now since 9/11) to clean their own house. I do hope that you will think a bit about them, and about your Qur’an. Instead of obfuscating its contents, as you’re writing out my check, you could do us all a favor by starting to ponder some strategies about how to limit the capacity of your holy book to incite murder and bloodshed. In light of my confidence that you will do that, I very much look forward to your next article.

With cordial best wishes from your fellow human being,

Robert Spencer

Doug: EXACTLY.

To Scott Grannis:  Thank you for that brilliant analysis, Captain F**cking Obvious!

FROM FERGUSON TO CHICAGO

March 14, 2016  Matthew Vadum - frontpagemag.com

The riot planned and executed by the Left at the canceled Donald Trump campaign rally in Chicago on Friday was just the latest in a long series of mob disturbances manufactured by radicals to advance their political agendas.

Even so, it is a particularly poisonous assault on the American body politic that imperils the nation's most important free institution – the ballot.

"The meticulously orchestrated #Chicago assault on our free election process is as unAmerican as it gets," tweeted actor James Woods. "It is a dangerous precedent."

This so-called protest, and the disruptions at subsequent Trump events over the weekend, were not spontaneous, organic demonstrations. The usual culprits were involved behind the scenes. The George Soros-funded organizers of the riot at the University of Illinois at Chicago relied on the same fascistic tactics the Left has been perfecting for decades – including claiming to be peaceful and pro-democracy even as they use violence to disrupt the democratic process.

Activists associated with MoveOn, Black Lives Matter, and Occupy Wall Street, all of which have been embraced by Democrats and funded by radical speculator George Soros, participated in shutting down the Trump campaign event. Soros recently also launched a $15 million voter-mobilization effort against Trump in Colorado, Florida, and Nevada through a new super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win. The title is a characteristic misdirection since Trump supports immigration that is legal. It’s the invasion of illegals who have not been vetted and are filling America’s welfare rolls and jails that is the problem.

Among the extremist groups involved in disrupting the Trump rally in Chicago were the revolutionary communist organization ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), National Council of La Raza (“the Race”), and the Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Rights Reform. President Obama's unrepentant terrorist collaborator Bill Ayers, who was one of the leaders of Days of Rage the precursor riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, also showed up to stir the pot.

The goal was to help reinforce the media narrative that Trump is a dangerous authoritarian figure who needs to be stopped now before he upsets too many people and proclaims himself emperor, or some fevered fantasy like that. The organized rioters who showed up at UIC to taunt and bait Trump supporters, hoped to generate compelling TV clips that could be used to attack the Republican front-runner.

The people who infiltrated the Trump rally and attacked his supporters weren't mere protesters and were not nonviolent. By now, after decades of getting away with lawlessness and mayhem, nonviolent left-wing protesters are as rare as four-leaf clovers.

They are violent agitators, trained in Alinsky-style disruption, aiming to shut Trump and his supporters down by any means they can get away with. These modern-day brownshirts use force and the threat of force to harass and intimidate, and to provoke people who have come to a peaceful assembly to hear their candidate speak.

"Many of these people come from Bernie [Sanders]," Trump said, pointing out how since the 1968 riot at the Democratic convention street radicals and party radicals have become a seamless force. On "Face the Nation" Trump called them "professional disrupters" a polite name for incipient fascists.

Since the liberal media was already blaming him for the anti-Trump thuggery, he told them, "I don't accept responsibility," Trump said on Sunday TV. "I do not condone violence in any shape."

In speeches since Friday Trump regularly invokes Bernie Sanders when an activist disrupts. He calls them "Bernie's people." At one stop, Trump said, "Get 'em out. Hey Bernie, get your people in line."

Although Sanders supporters are well-represented among the anti-Trump thugs, the self-described socialist senator from Vermont denied the charge. But Bernie’s campaign is so focused on demonizing the rich and blaming them for America’s problems, the hatred he is retailing can reasonably be called an incitement to those who buy his propaganda and support him.

Sanders after all is a lifetime admirer of Communist states like the Soviet Union and Cuba where this kind of thuggery is a political norm.  So even if he’s telling the truth and did give the orders to his followers to be there, he’s lying. They came because they hate rich people too.

Major organizations of the left who are backing Sanders, like Moveon.org openly bragged about trampling on Trump's free speech rights in Chicago, and promised more of it.

Incredibly, instead of blaming the Left for the attacks on Trump, all three of Trump's remaining rivals for the GOP nomination are joining the left in blaming him for the violence that unfolded. If the roles were reversed, leftists would call it blaming the victim.

Continuing the scorched earth policy that has damaged his campaign Marco Rubio laid the blame at Trump’s door. "This is what a culture and a society looks like when everyone goes around saying whatever the heck they want. The result is, it all breaks down. It's called chaos. It's called anarchy and that's what we're careening towards."

Breaking of ranks on the right in order to blame Trump is a betrayal that has ominous implications for the future of the conservative cause.

Rubio and John Kasich have gone even further, wavering on their pledge to support Trump if he wins the party's nomination.

Rubio downplays the fact that it's the activist Left that is generating chaos, not Donald Trump and his supporters, a dagger aimed right at the heart of the Republican coalition.

Robert Spencer reflects that these Republican attacks "have tacitly encouraged the rioters by claiming that Trump is at least partially responsible for what they did." It’s a re-imposition of political correctness. Spencer explains: "In that scenario, you see, it becomes incumbent upon Trump not to say anything that Leftist thugs might dislike, or he will bear partial responsibility for what they do. Cruz, Rubio and Kasich, of course, will also have to be careful not to 'create an environment' that might force the Left-fascists to shut them down as well. But unless they become clones of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, they will inevitably end up creating that 'environment' anyway, despite their being more decorous and careful than Trump. And then they will be responsible for what they get, won’t they?"

The left didn’t need a Trump provocation. For the left, the issue is never the issue: the issue is always the revolution, that is, the war against Amerikkka, as an SDS radical put it many years ago. Everything is an excuse to advance the radical cause.

Meanwhile, leftist Alex Seitz-Wald wrote a glowing review at NBC.com of the activists' anti-democratic efforts in Chicago, as if silencing candidates were a legitimate form of political activity as American as apple pie. "What made Chicago different,” Seitz wrote, were its scale and the organization behind the effort. Hundreds of young, largely black and brown people poured in from across the city, taking over whole sections of the arena and bracing for trouble. And as the repeated chants of 'Ber-nie' demonstrated, it was largely organized by supporters of Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who has struggled to win over black voters but whose revolutionary streak has excited radicals of all racial demographics.”

Seitz urged his readers to "'Remember the #TrumpRally wasn't just luck. It took organizers from dozens of organizations and thousands of people to pull off. Great work,' tweeted People for Bernie, a large unofficial pro-Sanders organization founded by veterans of the Occupy movement and other leftist activists."

Chicago is overrun by radical leftists and is in a constant state of turmoil nowadays so throwing together a demonstration against anyone to the right of Che Guevara wasn't too difficult a task. Sanders backers and Black Lives Matter thugs were easy to find on social media. At the UIC campus, the Black Student Union and a group called Fearless and Undocumented got to work recruiting disrupters.

Illegal alien Jorge Mena, a graduate student at UIC, started a petition at MoveOn.org demanding the school cancel the event. It garnered in excess of 50,000 signatures including UIC faculty. MoveOn paid for signs and a banner and emailed its Chicagoland members, urging them to get involved.

On the night of the rally, activists snuck into the venue and assembled at "designated multiple rallying points around the venue to avoid arousing suspicion of authorities with large congregations," Seitz-Wald writes.

"As activists slipped into the lines, they were told to blend in with the crowd and act natural. Inside, about 100 protesters received coveted orange wristbands allowing them access to the floor. Even as organizers tried to maintain calm, some scuffles with Trump fans started right away, and police began removing people." And that was all that was necessary. The powder was in place and the fuse was lit. But then Trump consulted with his security people and cancelled the event.

This is only the beginning, regardless of whether Trump secures the GOP nomination for president. Socialism is coming to America – at the ballot box and in the streets.

Editors’ note: The Freedom Center is a 501c3 non-profit organization. Therefore we do not endorse political candidates either in primary or general elections. However, as defenders of America’s social contract, we insist that the rules laid down by both parties at the outset of campaigns be respected, and that the results be decided by free elections. We will oppose any attempt to rig the system and deny voters of either party their constitutional right to elect candidates of their choice.

Frankly, though I prefer Ted Cruz over Donald Trump, I was disgusted over the weekend with BOTH Rubio and Cruz - not to mention the media - for blaming Trump for the violence at the rally in Chicago, which Trump wisely - in my opinion - cancelled.  Free speech is the bedrock of this republic.  The First Amendment is first for a reason - the Founders understood its importance.  Both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio know better - but they are choosing to leverage this to their own political advantage by blaming Trump and his supporters.  MANY of those protesters who participated in the altercations at the Chicago event were holding Bernie Sanders signs and chanting "Bernie! Bernie!"  Yet no one in the media or anywhere else is placing blame on Bernie Sanders - and rightly so.  So reverse the situation for a moment - what if TRUMP supporters were filmed physically assaulting others in the crowd at a Bernie Sanders rally.  Do you think we would hear condemnation of Trump for "inciting" this violence?  You damn well better believe we would.  There is a clear double-standard here, and Trump-haters - including other candidates and the media - are doing their best to promote the absurd idea that Trump is to blame for this situation by "inciting" his supporters.  This was CLEARLY an organized protest designed to garner exactly the type of media attention and condemnation of Trump that it did.

Judge Jeanine Pirro did a SUPERB job of exposing this in her opening statement this past Saturday night:  http://video.foxnews.com/v/4799320342001/judge-jeanine-words-are-not-an-excuse-to-become-violent/?playlist_id=937116552001#sp=show-clips

The reason, GM, is that the whole notion of "radicalization" is nonsense to begin with.  The violent elements of Islam are explicitly taught in the Koran and Hadith.  They are integral to the faith.  To the extent that there are Muslims who do not believe in, or act upon these violent precepts of the religion, those Muslims are either ignorant of them, or are choosing to ignore them.  Authentic, orthodox Islam is inherently violent, repressive, and expansionistic.  It tolerates no other belief system.  It recognizes no inherent human rights.  It is a comprehensive totalitarian world-view and political system.  Therefore - whenever anyone chooses to study Islam and follow its teachings more closely, i.e., become "more devout,"  by definition they adopt this predator mindset toward all non-Muslims.  No other "religion" incorporates these totalitarian fundamentals.

To phrase it more simply - while there are certainly peaceful people who call themselves Muslim, there IS NO PEACEFUL ISLAM.

Why Sensible People Are Bothered When Women Wear Hijabs

Thursday - www.citizenwarrior.com


There are Muslim women all over the world who don't wear a hijab, yet consider themselves Muslim. But the doctrine says a believing woman should cover herself.

So when Muslim women begin to cover themselves, it is a visible signal of increasing orthodoxy. In other words, if there are Muslims in your area, and the women start covering themselves, it is an indication that the Muslims in your area are beginning to take the written doctrine more seriously.

And it is never just that particular written doctrine only — it is all the written doctrine, which includes hatred toward non-Muslims, political action to put the reins of power in Muslim hands, increasing demands for Islamic standards of dress, behavior, Islamic limits on free speech, etc. Because of the political nature of Islamic doctrine, these Islamic standards are not to be only applied to Muslims; as Muslims gain political power, those standards are to be applied to everyone.

Already in some parts of European countries where there is a high Muslim percentage, non-Muslim women are harassed (or worse) if they don't cover themselves.

Many of the signs of increasing devotion to Islamic ideals cannot be seen by non-Muslims. But the hijab can be seen by everyone.

Rush Limbaugh talked about this on Friday.  "First-time unemployment numbers" is what Obama quoted.  Translation:  "Not counting the 94 million plus workers who have stopped looking for work."  Complete fraud.

Bernie Sanders Beats Hillary in a Lying Contest

The angry old leftist future of the Democrats.

February 5, 2016


Daniel Greenfield - frontpagemag.com


The future of the Democratic Party was two angry old leftists screaming at each other for two hours to decide who hates capitalism more.


With the MSNBC and the Democratic Party's logos on a red background, the stage was set for a redder than red debate. Red was everywhere, reflected in the thick glasses of Bernie Sanders and in the garish red lipstick around Hillary Clinton's orifice of lies, and in their clamorous rants about Wall Street and the evils of capitalism that could have come from a back alley Communist pamphleteer in the 50s.


Bernie Sanders promised to end “a rigged economy” with Socialism, which is the very definition of a rigged economy. Both candidates showed their Socialist bona fides by rattling off the names of the corporations they hated the most. Bernie Sanders cheered normalizing relations with Cuba, ridiculing the idea that being Communist is objectionable. But he did express some concerns about the nuclear weapons being held by his fellow Socialists in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea.


NBC’s Chuck Todd, who was born for Archie Bunker to call him “Meathead”, and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, whose giant fake eyelashes made it impossible for her to wear her trademark glasses, moderated a debate that had no reason for existing because none of the participants had developed a new idea since the 1970s (and in Bernie Sander’ case, possibly even the 1870s) and were just yelling the same things that they had yelled at all the previous debates, only louder, as if we hadn’t heard them the first time. The MSNBC audience applauded every line as if it were the only job they were qualified for.


Except maybe teaching gender justice or reviewing organic cruelty-free smoothie places on Yelp.


Meanwhile Bernie Sanders picked his ear and Hillary Clinton nodded frantically during every question as if she were a bobblehead doll that had come to life and wanted to go right from plastic to president.


Anyone who had the misfortune to sit, stand or sleep through the previous Democratic debates kept hearing the same tired lines both candidates have been repeating for months; rigged economy, Donald Trump's kids, the middle class bailed out Wall Street, a progressive is someone who gets thing done, political revolution, not radical ideas, not only did I vote against the bill and “Moozlimb” countries.


Maybe it’s too much to expect two career leftists with a combined total age of 142 to come up with any new ideas, but would it really have killed Bernie and Hillary to come up with some new lines?


Instead the future of the Democratic Party recited their memorized lines and rants from the previous debates. It got so bad that in response to a question about Afghanistan, Bernie Sanders reeled off the same exact rant about ISIS, Muslim souls and the King of Jordan that he had recited in the last debate until Chuck Todd gave up on the senile Socialist as a hopeless case and switched to Hillary Clinton.


The only thing that Bernie Sanders appeared to know about foreign policy was that Hillary Clinton had voted for the Iraq War twelve years ago and he hadn’t. That is the only thing he will ever know.


Don’t ask Bernie Sanders to find Afghanistan, Iran or Ukraine on a map. But wake him up in the middle of the night and he’ll tell you that he voted against the Iraq War and that we need to raise taxes.


But what Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders lacked in the way of ideas, they more than made up for in volume. Hillary Clinton screamed, "I can get things done" as if she were pitching a product on an infomercial. Bernie Sanders ran his own telethon, stumbling over words as he boasted how much moolah he had taken in, “a million people” and “27 bucks a piece”.


Eat your heart out, Wall Street. Bernie is better at suckering small-time investors than you are.


Hillary Clinton compensated for her complete lack of likability by falling back on playing the victim. She accused Bernie Sanders of ignoring feminism, black people and gay rights. She sputtered that, “Senator Sanders is the only one who would describe me, a woman running to be president, as exemplifying the establishment.” Somehow a fabulously wealthy woman who is backed by the entire Democratic political establishment isn’t the “establishment” because of her gender.

Hillary Clinton had tried to use 9/11 as a shield for her Wall Street donations and now she switched to using Obama's Wall Street donations as her human shield. Accusing her of being bought by special interests was engaging in an “artful smear”, she indignantly insisted. Like Picasso or Jackson Pollock.


It was neither artful, nor a smear though. It was just common sense that no one was giving Hillary Clinton money because of 9/11. And a genuinely honest opponent would have made that case.


But when Hillary Clinton dared Bernie Sanders to accuse her of being bought off by special interests, the courageous political revolutionary turned tail and fled. Instead of confronting her with the facts, he began mewling something about Republicans and the Koch Brothers. Just as with the emails, Bernie Sanders backed off his criticism and showed that he didn’t have the spine to stand up to Hillary Clinton.


Under all the “authenticity”, Bernie Sanders is just as fake as Hillary. He paradoxically insists that he wants a political revolution, but that his ideas are not radical. After all his rants about the SuperPAC devil, he admitted that he had contemplated setting up his own SuperPAC.


Between Hillary Clinton’s painfully tight smiles and Bernie Sanders checking his watch, this debate was just another infomercial for a fake election between two candidates who voted the same way 93 percent of the time. All that was left was the inane rhetoric and memorized applause lines.


“A progressive is someone who makes progress,” Hillary Clinton blathered. No one asked her what progress she had ever made. Besides the progress from defending a 12-year-old girl’s rapist in Arkansas to defending her rapist husband in the White House.


“I want to see major changes in the Democratic Party,” Bernie Sanders demanded. He could just rename it the Communist Party.


“I have a record,” Hillary Clinton boasted. But that’s really up to the FBI. She promised the country half-a-billion solar panels, which it needs about as much as it needs another Clinton in the White House.


There was no truth in the New Hampshire Democratic debate, but it was child’s play to spot the three biggest lies.

“I say what I believe,” Hillary Clinton said. And somehow, no one laughed.


“I have been moved by my heart,” Hillary Clinton said in her closing statement. “I will bring my heart with me.” Medical records have already revealed that Hillary Clinton has no heart.


“I love this country,” Bernie Sanders said. And for once, someone else beat Hillary in a lying contest.

For your consideration.  I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this analysis:

Trump’s Essence Is Winning, Christ’s Is Sacrifice, Now Choose

By Steve Berman  |  January 21, 2016


I daresay more words have been spilled on the topic of Donald Trump in the past six months than on any candidate in any race since Ronald Reagan, but it’s been difficult to get to what Aristotle called the “teleology” of Trump. Teleology: It’s the reason for his existence.

Aristotle asked “what causes something to be what it is, to have the characteristics that it has, or to change in the way that it does?” And from that question, he developed his philosophical concepts of substance and form.

We know a table is a table when we look at it because of its form, but the substance is wood, glue and nails.

The substance of Trump is a man obsessed with success. It doesn’t matter what endeavor he’s in, he wants to win. He discards whatever is not advancing him toward a win, and acquires what does advance him. He wakes up every morning with that same belief and goes to bed knowing he’s done all he can do achieve it that day.

And now the form: a man shaped by the power of positive thought. Trump’s religion is the Christianity of Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking.”

    “The great Norman Vincent Peale was my minister for years,” Trump told CNN last July, a sentiment he repeated in Atlanta and in Iowa during stops in Ames and Dubuque.

    Peale, for his part, described Trump as “kindly and courteous” with “a streak of honest humility,” and touted him as “one of America’s top positive thinkers and doers.” The minister also called Trump “ingenious” and predicted that he would be “the greatest builder of our time.”

Peale preached a Christianity styled on what today is called “Word of Faith.” I’ve been to some churches where Jesus is the name, but the game is “name it, claim it.” This brand of faith relies on verses like John 14:13-14 “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

Oh, and do they ask.

For Trump, who answered “I try not make mistakes where I have to ask forgiveness” when asked for his views on asking for God’s forgiveness by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, it’s all about living for the purpose for which he believes God placed him here. And to Trump, that purpose is to succeed in everything he does.

To win.

He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He doesn’t do drugs. And he doesn’t believe that his relationships are as important as the service he can give to his country by succeeding. For that, Trump feels he owes no apology to man or to God. Psychologists might call this a narcissistic personality disorder, but it’s really not. It’s his personal brand of faith, based not so much in the Bible as it is in his own ability to picture his success, and then attain it.

Trump has been planning this run for president for a very long time. He’s kicked it around since he was in his late 20’s. It’s never been far from his peripheral gaze: A prize of all prizes, and the success of all successes. That’s his essence. That’s the reason Trump believes God made him for such a time as this.

Substance, form, purpose were Aristotle’s tools. The substance of Trump running for president versus him being president are two different things. But the form and the essence are the same: Trump wants to win, and that’s problematic.

Jesus cautioned against too much success in this life. Matthew 19:23-24:

    Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

1 Timothy 6:9-10, the Apostle Paul wrote:

    Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Making the deal, building the wall, whatever it is that Trump wants to do is not what God’s Word recommends. Should he become president, Trump will stay true to form, in the Aristotelian sense. Bible-believing Christians must be careful about supporting Trump. It brings to mind the story of the scorpion and frog, which I’ve used before as an illustration.

    One day, a scorpion decided he wanted to leave his desert home and live in a forest, so he set out on a journey.  Reaching a river he could not cross, he came across a frog, and asked for help.  Here’s how their conversation went.

    “Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

    “Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

    “Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

    Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

    “This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

    “Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

    “Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

You can guess what happened.  Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the frog.

    “You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

    The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drowning frog’s back.

    “I could not help myself. It is my nature.”

    Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

We cannot expect Trump to suddenly change his nature or his faith. We can pray for him (we should pray for him, and for President Obama also and a number of leaders who need Jesus), but we should not base our assumptions on what the man says, but on who he really is.

Trump will do what he needs to do to succeed. I don’t believe those who say he’ll trash the Constitution, or go for an authoritarian style. That’s not his nature. He wants his opponents to agree with him and to make the deal. He’ll stake a position, summon supporters, build consensus, fight off attacks, and move forward until the deal is done. That’s what he’s always done, and that’s what he will continue to do.

But for Christians, be careful what you ask for, because it might not be what you’re really getting. To “make America great,” Trump will sacrifice Biblical values, sink the country to a moral low point (defining success as winning in monetary, military, and nationalistic terms), and attack anyone who opposes him.

As one pastor (who I will leave unnamed) put it, “if we elect this man to the White House, the first time Christians disagree with him, we will get everything that’s coming to us.”

Scary words. Now choose.