THIS WAS POORLY THOUGHT OUT: Hillary Tweets All Sexual Abuse Accusers Deserve To Be ‘Believed,’ Is Reminded Of Her Husband.

Related: “In one of her first media appearances in nearly a decade, Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who famously accused Bill Clinton of rape, is now speaking out against Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president.”

LIFE BEFORE “HOPE AND CHANGE:” 2002: “The United States is the most-admired country according to a poll of educated young Muslims. Japan was number two. Egypt and Britain were numbers three and four.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: “After Assad’s chemical attack, when he crossed the so-called ‘red line,’ the U.S. just took the weapons. It made America look like a liar and weak.”

HERE’S MY RECIPE FOR Thanksgiving Leg Of Lamb. And here’s a review! I’ll be cooking a turkey and two legs of lamb once again this year, for Helen’s family and mine. We’ve been having a joint Thanksgiving since we first started cohabiting, now over 20 years ago, and it’s still a major family event.

MUSLIMS IN N.J. CHEERING AFTER 9/11? This is what Donald Trump has asserted, and according to the Washington Post report of Sept. 18, 2001, Trump is right.  John Hinderaker over at Power Line has uncovered this Washington Post piece–conveniently archived and available only if one pays $3.95 for it–that the Washington Post’s own fact checker, Glenn Kessler, apparently could not find.

Here’s an excerpt from the 2001 Washington Post story:

In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.

So the real question here is this: Why is the mainstream media–and even conservative media–unable to find a story like this, that appeared immediately after 9/11, in one of the largest papers in the country? I think Hinderaker gets it right:

Why does this happen? Are NPR, the Times and the AP incapable of using Google? Perhaps. But here is another possibility: note that the Times and the AP coyly limited their denials to news accounts of “mass cheering” or “mass celebrations” in Jersey City. I think they found the Washington Post story but preferred not to mention it. Instead, they deceived their readers by silently making the implicit judgment that “a number of people” are not a “mass.”

I think that these news outlets are so hysterically eager to discredit any concerns about Islam that they won’t let something as minor as the facts get in their way. There is dishonesty here, but it is on the part of NPR, the New York Times and the Associated Press, not Donald Trump.

Yep. Muslims in New Jersey cheering after 9/11 doesn’t further the liberal/progressive narrative (so it is simply ignored).  And many of the conservative outlets are still hoping that Trump goes away very soon, so they’re not likely to jump to his defense.

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WHAT HATH DAN RATHER WROUGHT? We’re celebrating our tenth anniversary with a look back at “The Evolution of PJ Media” at World Net Daily. While the piece has my byline on it, Roger L. Simon, Stephen Green, Aaron Hanscom, Joan Seavey, and several others from PJM also made large contributions to the piece.

TERRORISM: James Gillespie Reports From Paris.

WHY DOES THE NEW YORK TIMES HATE IMMIGRANTS? Dear New York Times: Please Don’t Lie.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON Politics and What Remains of the English Language:

What Has Happened to Language?

This tiny vocabulary sampling reflects another recent epidemic of victimhood, as the English language is further squeezed and massaged to create reality from fantasy.

First, over a half-century of institutionalized equal opportunity has not led to an equality of result. Particular self-identified groups feel collectively that they are less well off than others and are bewildered that this is still possible, since they can point to no law or custom that precludes their opportunity by race, class, or gender. Therefore, inventing a vocabulary of grievances is far more effective in gaining concessions than self-criticism and self-reliance are in winning parity.

Second, in an affluent, leisured and postmodern society of $300 Jordan-label sneakers that sell out in hours, big-screen televisions at Walmart that become prizes for warring consumers on Black Friday, and over 50% of the population exempt from income taxes, it is becoming harder to define, in the material sense, oppression-driven victimhood. In such a world, even multi-billionaire Oprah has difficulty finding discrimination and so becomes reduced to whining about a perceived snub in a Swiss boutique that sells six-figure purses. Language is pressed into service to create victims where there are few, but where many are sorely needed, psychologically — and on the chance such a prized status might lead to a profitable trajectory otherwise impossible by passé notions of work and achievement.

It’s doubleplusgood; read the whole thing.

GUN TURN-IN PROGRAM not living up to media spin:

Police-community partnerships are a positive measure to increase public safety, but good intentions aren’t the same thing as a good (or effective) plan. A report by Time-Warner Cable News tried to put a positive spin on things by noting that “almost 1,000 people” responded to take the pledge, leading one to believe that 1,000 firearms had been turned in, but this was hardly the case. As evidenced by the footage accompanying the story, the gun turn-in apparently resulted in a single BB pistol and a single sheathed hunting knife being “taken off the streets.”

It’s Potemkin coverage all the way down.

I GUESS, UNLIKE OBAMA, SHE ACTUALLY READS THE INTEL REPORTS: Top Dem to Obama: We’re running out of time to beat Islamic State. “Sen. Dianne Feinstein criticized the president’s strategy against the Islamic State on Sunday, saying that the terrorist group has grown despite Pentagon claims that it has lost ground. . . . Analysts said that the president’s unwillingness to revise the plan suggests an overconfidence, while other countries like France and Russia are increasing their strikes in Syria.”

Overconfidence in the face of reality is a hallmark of our president.

Related: CBS News: Majority Of Democrats Say Obama Lacks A Plan To Deal with ISIS. “Just over a week after the terrorist attacks in Paris, only 23 percent of Americans think President Barack Obama has a clear plan for dealing with the militant group ISIS, the lowest number yet recorded in the CBS News Poll. Sixty-six percent do not think he has a clear plan – a new high. Large majorities of Republicans and independents say the President doesn’t have a clear plan, and almost half of Democrats (40 percent) agree. More Democrats (45 percent) say he doesn’t have a plan than say he does.”

WHAT NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW about Ted Cruz’s past.

At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman.

Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.”

Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats.

Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.

interesting.

DURING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, LET’S ALL PRAISE THE SOFTER SIDE OF ISIS: In a tweet Sunday afternoon, Joyce Carol Oates asked why “All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive?”

Why, yes it is. On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious from their snuff films that ISIS does lots of joyous celebrating after each beheading. But why rely on hearsay? “I suspect that you have the funds to visit Raqqa and come to your own conclusions,” Bob Owens tweets in reply. “I suspect you’ll come out a head.”

Related: “Remember the time Joyce Carol Oates tweeted about the dead Triceratops? Yeah … this one on ISIS is worse.”

DAWKINS’ ACTIONS SURPRISE ME LESS THAN THIS SUDDEN ASSERTIVENESS BY THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: Richard Dawkins says UK cinemas should screen the Lord’s Prayer: Vociferous critic of religion says anyone thin-skinned enough to be offended by church advert deserves to be offended. I certainly agree with Dawkins. I’m tired of rewarding cry-bullies for being easily offended. Toughen up or shut up.

Dawkins has been a long time advocate for free speech, arguing that protecting religious sensibilities is not a reason for censorship. And despite attracting controversy over his views on religion, the author of the God Delusion has previously described himself as a “cultural Anglican”.

The advert he was defending is to promote a new Church of England website, JustPray.uk, which encourages people to pray. The film shows Christians, beginning with the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, saying one line of the Lord’s Prayer. The following lines are said by a diverse range of people including weightlifters, a police officer, a commuter, refugees in a support centre, schoolchildren, a mourner at a graveside and a festivalgoer.

Video at the link. And Dawkins isn’t the only one:

The Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston, also an atheist, rejected the idea of the advert causing offence. She wrote on Twitter: “As a gentle atheist, I’m not offended by Church screening gentle cinema adverts; we shouldn’t reject our deep cultural roots in Christianity.”

The assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, told the Mail on Sunday he was “flabbergasted that anyone would find this prayer offensive to anybody, including people of no particular religious belief”.

Well, several people might have complained. And in the PC world, that’s enough to shut something down, so long as they’re the right several people.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: In Paris’s wake, a changed presidential contest — and electorate. “The attacks that killed 130 and injured more than 350 in France’s capital Nov. 13 changed the 2016 contest for president — by changing what voters worried about. Across the country, among both Republicans and Democrats, have come pronouncements of anger and fear not seen after the terrorist attacks in London or Madrid — or even, in some ways, after Sept. 11, 2001.”

The sense that the people running things don’t really care what happens to ordinary Americans is what makes it different this time.

AUSTIN BAY: War For The Terms Of Modernity:

The terms of modernity in the free societies Bin Laden and his successors despise have historical roots; the Enlightenment and the Treaty of Westphalia are two significant examples. Enlightenment skepticism spurred scientific inquiry and technological success that spurred economic development.

After the disaster of the 30 Years War, Westphalia attempted to separate religion and politics. Catholic princes would tolerate Protestant subjects, and vice versa. It took a couple of centuries, but Europe and North America began producing societies that were experiments in “liberating reform”; they were political experiments permitting individual freedom of expression, which would include free expression of religious faith.

In contrast, violent Islamist utopian idealists only permit their expression of religious faith.

Democracy, as a vehicle for freedom, is never perfected. Because they hold regular and meaningful elections — which produce peaceful changes in power — democracies structurally deny the possibility of human perfection, at least on Earth. Like communists, violent Islamists are peculiar utopians, convinced they create a perfect society that, once created, will remain perfect. Shared utopianism is one reason al-Qaida — and now ISIL — find it useful to rework anti-U.S. and anti-democracy communist propaganda tropes. The Guantanamo Bay gnashing and wailing is revised communist Cold War-era agitprop.

Al-Bagdadhi shares Bin Laden’ s goals of correcting history. He did Bin Laden one better by proclaiming himself caliph. History has been going wrong for Islamic expansionists since at least the 16th century, but really took a nosedive in 1924 when Turkey’s reforming general and political genius, Kemal Ataturk, ended the caliphate.

In fall 2001, Bin Laden released a tape where he damned “80 years” of Muslim indignation. He was referring to Ataturk’s decision.

Erdogan, sadly, is no Ataturk.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Amidst 32% Enrollment Decline, Gonzaga Law School Offers Buyouts To All 17 Tenured Faculty (4 Accept).

THE CITY OF THE WHITED SEPULCHRES: “Brussels today is the West’s tomorrow; unless we change course we will find ourselves more and more living in a world in which reality mocks our aspirations,” Walter Russell Mead writes.

Reality has mocked President Obama’s aspirations since almost immediately after he took office; yet his desire to transform America into Europe is unshakeable, not least of which, because it’s been fundamental to the American “Progressives’” vision for over a century. As Mead writes, consider their current state a useful sneak preview of what’s to come for America unless the fundamental transformation is fundamentally stopped.

MEET THE PRESS PANEL ACCUSES AMERICANS OF ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA:’

Notice that ISIS does something terrible, and the overwhelming thrust of the conversation on Meet the Press is that the American people have done something wrong and must look inside their hearts and feel guilty over the overwhelming racism and Islamaphobia in their society. “News flash: We’re not the villains here,” Jim Geraghty reminds NBC.

We’ve seen this movie before a few times in the last 14 years, haven’t we? In August of 2010, in response to the infamous Ground Zero Mosque, the DNC-MSM was lashing out at the American people over “Islamophobia” largely because they knew they were about to lose control over Congress, and possibly the Senate as well during the year of the Tea Party. (And remembering the previous year when all things seemed possible in the era of Hopenchange, when Newsweek (then controlled by the Washington Post) proclaimed “We Are Socialists Now” and James Carville predicted “40 years” of Democrat rule made the prospect of November of 2010 all the more painful.)

This time around? Partially it’s the media’s fear that Hillary doesn’t quite have that Rich Corinthian New Candidate Smell that Obama had in 2008 and thus won’t be able to make it over the finish line no matter how much assistance they can provide as her operatives with bylines. But far more, as Jonah Goldberg wrote on Friday, the real reason is that the MSM is responding to terrorism by retreating to the “Safe Space” of “Progressive” ideology and biting down hard on their binkies. As for why, the reasons are multifaceted. The MSM is (a) very well aware of the debacle that Obama made of the Middle East, after bragging about “his” success there in 2012, (b) has no concrete answer for fighting terrorism beyond singing “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance,” and (c) knows that Hillary, as Obama’s first Secretary of State, must follow down the landmined path he’s set out for her.

And (d) — any day the MSM gets to scold the American people is a good one in their book, particularly after they rejected the glorious utopian revolution of 2008. (QED.)

Oh, and speaking of Islamophobia among presidential candidates…

THEY’RE NOT WHAT THE LEFT THINKS: The Lessons of U.S. Refugee Failures Past.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Half Of People Who Went To College In The Recession Haven’t Graduated. So, a better deal for colleges than for students.

CHOOSE TO BE GRATEFUL. It will make you happier.

WHEN THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT ARE EXHAUSTED: When will our leaders face up to the truth that the EU is a gigantic sham? “The shambles that was the migrant crisis was predictably exploited by terrorists, but the chaos itself might have been avoided if separate nations had been dealing with migration instead of being forced to accept the consequences of the EU’s failure to act. All attempts to institute some organised response to mass migration collapsed with mortifying speed.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Does Global Warming Only Turn Muslims Into Terrorists?