I WASN’T SURE SHE WAS CAPABLE OF LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE: Angela Merkel signals she may back down from open-door refugee policy after disastrous Berlin election.
Archive for 2016
September 19, 2016
YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP: Well, I guess a slick novelist could, but who’d believe it? Linking a plunge in the peso to Hillary’s health? No no no no no. Pay attention. Hillary’s a weak and utterly dishonest candidate. Trump has a genius for political perception.
PEOPLE ARE SURE PROMISING A LOT ON SELF-DRIVING CARS: Exec: Most Lyft rides will be in autonomous cars in 5 years.
ATTEMPTED MURDER OF TWO POLICEMEN: New Jersey authorities have charged the Manhattan (Chelsea) bomber with attempted murder. He tried to kill two policemen. The jerk attempted mass homicide in New York and wounded 29 people. Is terrorism a crime in New York? Why, indeed it is. Will Loretta Lynch’s Justice Dept. also file federal charges?…Stay tuned.
THE SYRIAN MESS ON OBAMA’S WATCH: Syrian and Russian aircraft attacked an aid convoy and destroyed 18 aid trucks. The hapless John Kerry claims it’s too early to say the casefire he negotiated with the Russians has collapsed. Ah, Smart Diplomacy.
JAMES ROBBINS: Trump’s Winning Terrorist Narrative.
For more than a year, Donald Trump has been raising an alarm about the upswing of terrorism in the United States, promising to address it head-on without any of Washington’s usual political pieties. Jargon-laden responses to terror attacks from the White House and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign only tend to confirm Trump voters’ worst fears about the Washington establishment, rather than build support for the Obama-Clinton approach to fighting the Islamic State terrorist group.
On Saturday a pressure cooker bomb detonated in a Manhattan dumpster, wounding 29. A second device was found blocks away and disarmed. This followed a pipe bombing that morning in Seaside Park, N.J., targeting the Marine Semper Fi 5K fundraising race. Fortunately, only one bomb detonated and no one was harmed.
On Sunday, five bombs were found in a backpack near a train station in Elizabeth, N.J. On Monday one suspected terrorist, Afghan immigrant Ahmad Rahami, was arrested after a shootout with police in Linden.
While all this was playing out on the East Coast, on Saturday a man went on a stabbing rampage at a mall in St. Cloud, Minn., wounding nine people before being gunned down by an off-duty police officer. The assailant, Somali immigrant Dahir Adan, whom ISIL claimed as a “soldier,” asked one of his victims whether he was a Muslim before stabbing him.
Monday morning, White House spokesman Josh Earnest attempted to calm rattled public nerves, saying that “when it comes to ISIL, we are in a fight, a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle.” He assured us we are winning it. Democratic presidential candidate Clinton quickly echoed this line, and accused Trump of giving “aid and comfort” to the terrorists by counseling a get-tough approach against radical Islam that strays from the administration’s more restrained rhetoric.
The White House response that America is successfully challenging ISIL’s “narrative” is cold comfort when explosion devices are blowing up on American streets.
It sounds coldblooded, academic, and out-of-touch.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s why air turbulence isn’t as scary as you think.
INDIA MULLS RETALIATION: Four gunmen attacked an Indian Army garrison in Kashmir and killed 18 soldiers. India blames Pakistan for the attack– or at least sponsoring the attackers. Several Muslim militant groups operate in Kashmir. Remember, both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.
THAT WILL BE BETTER FOR THE PORN: High-End, Cord-Free VR Headsets Are Nearing Reality.
OUR WOULD-BE NEW FDR HAS NOTHING TO OFFER BUT SNEER ITSELF: Black Princeton Professor Rips Obama For “Condescending” Speech To Congressional Black Caucus.
WELL, IT’S NOT LIKE IT’S GONNA BE A #GUNSENSE GUY: Man Who Shot Crossroads Mall Terrorist Is USPSA Competitor, 3-Gun Shooter.
GOD FORBID THEY SHOULD DO ANYTHING EFFECTIVE: Outcry Erupts Over Miami Beach’s Pesticide Spraying to Curb Zika.
BEHEADING IS TOO GOOD FOR THEM: Copyright Trolls Now Threatening College Students With Loss of Scholarship, Deportation.
INTELLECTUAL YET IDIOT: “Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t tell science from scientism — in fact in their eyes scientism looks more scientific than real science…Beware the semi-erudite who thinks he is an erudite. He fails to naturally detect sophistry.”
Found via Steve Bartin of Newsalert, who advises correctly, “You’ll want to read the entire article.”
Related: Steve Hayward of Power Line on “Economic Macroaggression.”
JIM BROWN’S TOUGHEST DAY IN THE NFL: Attempting to talk sense into Colin Kaepernick:
Brown says he’s been heartened by signs of athletes recently speaking out on social issues, but says using the national anthem as a forum can be hurtful to veterans and others.
“You can point it out but you don’t necessarily want to disrespect the national anthem or the flag,” Brown said. “There are outside entities that are trying to bring this country down. We have to go back to the memories of 9-11. If that memory doesn’t do anything to you as an American, then you’re not really that sensitive a human being.
“When you think of the sacrifices our firefighters make, think about the service of soldiers in foreign lands and listen to their lives, you have to be careful that whatever you do, don’t cast a shadow on what these great people do. They make sure you have the right to speak out without retaliation, or at least no retaliation other than other people criticizing you.”
Brown said he voiced his concerns to Kaepernick.
“I talked to (Kaepernick) and I expressed my thought that his intentions are great and I back that 100 percent, because I’m glad to hear a young man speak out,” Brown said. “But when it comes to our country and our flag, I don’t want to tamper with that. I want to take off my gloves and work hard to deal with a process and bring about change.”
In contrast, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is perfectly fine with his players trashing the National Anthem:
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league will encourage players to use their voice to promote social change as the demonstrations during the national anthem started by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick last month continue to spread to other teams.
Speaking before the Minnesota Vikings’ first regular-season game at their new stadium against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday night, Goodell told a group of reporters the movement from “protests to progress” is a positive sign.
“As I’ve said before, I truly respect our players wanting to speak out and change the community,” Goodell said. “We don’t live in a perfect society. We want them to use that voice. And they’re moving from protests to progress and trying to make things happen in the communities. And I admire that about our players, (being) willing to do that.
“Obviously, we want to respect people. We want to respect our differences. We want to respect our flag and our country, and our players understand that. So I think where they’re moving and how they’re moving there is very productive, and we’re going to encourage that.
Goodell said he hasn’t reached out to Kaepernick directly.
Kaepernick once again kneeled during The Star-Spangled Banner before the 49ers’ loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. Members of the Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers were among others demonstrating in different ways during the anthem. Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said in a radio interview his team will do some sort of demonstration before Monday night’s game against the Chicago Bears.
Pete Rozelle, the former PR man who became legendary as the NFL’s commissioner from 1960 to 1989, who won an anti-trust exemption from Congress, presided over the merger of the NFL and the AFL, the creation of the Super Bowl, Monday Night Football, and the NFL’s ascendancy into America’s most popular pro sport, worked very hard to craft an image of his players as gentleman warriors. Rozelle kept his political opinions very close to his vest while alive, and I can’t imagine he would let protests against the American flag go on for very long without tamping them down behind the scenes and hard. But of course, that was before the fundamental transformation and “woke-ness.”
NEWS YOUR DM CAN USE: How to Successfully Have RPGs at Your Convention.
MSNBC WISHES AMERICA LUCK WITH A CAPITAL ‘F:’ Chris Hayes: ‘Lucky’ that Bombs Were Used Instead of Guns in Weekend Attacks.
UPDATE: “Old and busted: OMG Trump is so irresponsible for calling it a bombing. New hotness: Aren’t we so lucky it was a bombing and not a shooting?”
(Classical allusion in headline.)
FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Let’s Make a Bad Deal. The new book, The Iran Wars by Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal is reviewed by Omri Ceren In Commentary:
As [Solomon] makes clear, beginning in 2006, officials from the Treasury Department had been traveling around the world systematically building pressure on Iran because of its nuclear program. American officials occasionally cajoled, but just as often they unapologetically deployed American economic power against reluctant foreign entities: businesses, banks, and countries were told they had to choose between having access to the U.S. financial system or doing business with Iran.
* * * * * *
Solomon matter-of-factly describes Barack Obama as obsessed with changing the U.S. position toward Iran, and willing to subordinate much of American foreign policy in service of that goal. Obama started his administration sending secret letters to the head of state, the Ayatollah Khamenei, which recognized the prerogatives of the “Islamic republic” and foreswore regime change. He broadly cut funding to anti-regime groups and specifically abandoned Iranian moderates during the early days of the Green Revolution in 2009, after the regime fixed an election. When nuclear talks seemed to be stumbling, he sent another letter to Khamenei effectively offering Syria as within Iran’s sphere of influence.
* * * * * *
Rhodes and his NSC colleagues would later boast to David Samuels in the New York Times Magazine that they sold the nuclear deal in 2015 by channeling exactly such claims through an “echo chamber” of Iran-issue lobbyists, White House–minted experts, and juvenile journalists. The administration line was that the sanctions regime had been collapsing, it could not have been saved, and no American diplomat could deliver a better deal. Creating and insulating that narrative required obfuscating everything in the previous decade—not just what was in the deal, but how it squandered—and then reversed—a decade’s worth of effort to constrain Iran.
Read the whole thing.
HE CHOSE…POORLY: Tone-Deaf Governor Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (D for Dhimmitude) Calls for ‘Tolerance’ After ISIS Stabbing.
James Lileks also pushes back against Dayton’s boilerplate:
Why is someone in International Falls or Pipestone being asked to rise above this? What did they do?
That quote above, taken from the paper’s website, excised one line from the Governor’s statement:
There is no place in Minnesota for intolerance of all Americans’ constitutional right to worship according to their beliefs.
You know, they weren’t worshipping. They were shopping.
Daughter came home at 8:30 after a long happy day. The street fair went great.
No one blew up anything.
Talk about “fundamentally transformed.” As during WWI and the later years of the Vietnam War* have we once again reached the point where that’s the baseline for a successful day in America?
* These involved a few minor bits of youthful unpleasantness involving a young man feeling alienated from bourgeois society who would later – purely coincidentally, of course – eventually spend some time in the same neighborhood as our semi-retired President.)