Archive for 2016

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: ISIS Members Posing as Refugees Planned Paris-Style Attack on Düsseldorf.

It will be pointed out—and is true—that only a tiny fraction of Europe’s migrant population represent this kind of threat. But with machine guns and bombs, just a few bad actors can kill hundreds. If there is another attack like Paris, European public opinion will not coldly calculate the statistical relationship between refugees and terrorists. Unlike their elites, who derive a psychic benefit from seeing their countries be so generous, the European public sees this not as the “cost” of an otherwise-desirable “refugees welcome” policy, but an added downside to a situation that increasingly they deplore to begin with.

Europe’s elite has an unspoken but increasingly clear plan for dealing with all of this: give the security services wide latitude (often much wider than their counterparts have in the U.S.) to chase down the bad guys, don’t say anything more than is absolutely necessary to the public that suggests that immigrants or Islam might have anything to do with it, police the public square and keep the far-right down (including online), and pray it all passes quietly. The main focus is to prevent a backlash against Muslims and/or immigrants on the one hand, while preventing terror on the other—two concerns seen as balanced poles to be avoided.

But there’s a problem—or rather two. Firstly, as long as Europe doesn’t have answers either to the root of the refugee problem—Syria and Libya—or to the enforcement situation at its borders (other than “pray Erdogan doesn’t alter the deal any further), then the elites have no real idea how long this will persist, while the strain wears away on the fabric of European politics. And the second is that, as an older generation of terrorists once said, “[R]emember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.”

That’s the problem with playing defense.

L.A. TIMES: The violence at Donald Trump’s rally is unwelcome news for Democrats.

The violent protests that erupted outside Donald Trump’s rally in San Jose on Thursday night, which included punches thrown, eggs pelted and Trump supporters’ hats stolen off their heads and set ablaze, are likely to have political fallout for Democrats.

The scene was an unwelcome one for the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Campaign Chairman John Podesta quickly moved to condemn this brand of civil disobedience, admonishing the violence in a tweet in which he included video of a Trump supporter being beaten.

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon reiterated the point on MSNBC on Friday morning, saying: “We absolutely reject and condemn the violence that we saw in California last night.”

But while the underlings mumble the correct formulas, Hillary says it’s Trump’s fault:

Hillary Clinton says Donald Trump is partly to blame for protests around his events, including violent clashes that broke out in San Jose on Thursday night.

Clinton told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead” Friday that while she condemns “all violence in our political arena,” it is up to Trump to also condemn violence and set a standard that both his supporters and those protesting against him should follow.

Uh huh.

THE LEFT AND ‘RIOT IDEOLOGY.’ In his latest G-File, Jonah Goldberg explores the left’s double-standard when it comes political violence, including:

The Tea Parties were not a white identity-politics movement. But liberal elites treated it as such and now we’ve got the beginnings of one. And while I’d be happy to engage in a debate about who started it, I don’t think it’s necessary because it’s so frickin’ obvious. Moreover, as any parent knows, identifying who started unacceptable behavior is not an exercise in excusing unacceptable behavior (no matter how much Trump thinks “He started it!” is a justification for any calumny, including suggesting that Ted Cruz’s father was in on the Kennedy assassination). If two brothers are throwing rocks at each other, you might punish Timmy more for starting it, but you wouldn’t tell Tommy it’s okay to have rock fights.

And this points to why the anti-Trump protesters are such monumental morons. Every time they live down to our expectations, they stoke the coal in the Trump Train’s furnace. The ultimate result of the 1968 Democratic convention riots was to get Richard Nixon elected. And as sure as shinola you can expect the Left to start talking about how such violence is justified. Indeed, they already have.

Read the whole thing.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN THESE WERE CONSIDERED UNACCEPTABLE EXCUSES:

Hey, you wear a skirt that short, what did you expect was going to happen?

Related: “Commenting in a tweet showing video of a female Trump supporter having eggs hurled at her, CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford opined that ‘[t]his is incredibly disturbing’ and asked followers to ‘[i]magine the reaction if she’d been leaving an HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] rally and assaulted [sic] like this.’

NOT-SO-READY FOR HILLARY AFTER ALL? Democrats’ Dumping of Torricelli Could Be Blueprint for What Happens to Hillary.

Hillary Clinton’s mounting political — and possibly legal — problems over her e-mail server led me to write a column speculating that Democrats might move to install Vice President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee if her poll numbers tank between now and the Democratic convention in late July. Biden might be joined on the ticket by fiery progressive senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in an effort to placate furious backers of Senator Bernie Sanders.

If I were a Bernie backer, that wouldn’t placate me.

JOHN HINDERAKER: Videos and Photos of Fascist Violence in San Jose. “When people refer to fascism, they generally mean ‘opinions I disagree with.’ But the real thing, sadly, is not extinct. For the first time in our modern history, Brownshirts are on the march. As always, they are on the Left.”