Sunday, June 5, 2016

op ed review 6/5



THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Trump supporters in San Jose, California subjected to astonishing levels of violence. An angry mob pelted eggs, tomatoes, and bottles at the spectators—as well as the police, who tried (and failed) to maintain some semblance of order. Other Trump supporters were set upon and punched. One was left with blood streaming down his face. The mayor of San Jose, Democrat Sam Liccardo, reacted angrily to the events, by blaming Donald Trump. "
Protesters waved Mexican flags and one could be seen burning an American flag,
The ugly protest scenes outside Donald Trump’s rallies are doing more damage to the protesters than to Mr. Trump’s political chances, according to analysts who say the violence and anti-American sentiments are backfiring.

Donald Trump and Bikers Share Affection at Rolling Thunder Rally

“Trump turns Obama into Stuttering Mess”
Many observers were mystified when Donald Trump attacked New Mexico Republican Gov. Susana Martinez. But the story was really very simple: Martinez hit Trump, so Trump hit back…..it's the tactic he used to beat 15 rivals for the GOP nomination.

A new poll has confirmed that Bernie Sanders has caught Hillary Clinton in the California primary, reaching a statistical dead heat with less than a week to go before the June 7 primary.
“The Dowager Empress of Chappaqua´s doomed campaign begins to creak to a close. Veteran Democrat strategist Doug Schoen has the gory details: There is now more than a theoretical chance that Hillary Clinton may not be the Democratic nominee for president.”
More than twenty thousand people have committed to protest Hillary Clinton’s likely nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia — and that number is quickly growing.

71% of Democrats say Hillary should keep running, even if indicted.

President Obama said his order that public schools allow transgender students to use the bathroom they want is based on the law and the best interests of children.
Epiphany:  ACLU leader quits after daughters encounter men in the women’s restroom

Illegal immigration has exploded 57 percent in less than two years, with at least 550,000 new undocumented aliens pouring into America in a trend that is set to continue growing, according to new Census data.
Europe has been torn apart... we can almost call it a civil war. Many Muslim refugees are wreaking havoc on their Western European towns.

A woman destroyed a convenience store in the US after being told her benefits card would not be accepted. Shocking footage shows the woman throwing stock from shelves and screaming before being restrained and physically removed from the store.

The U.S. created only 38,000 new jobs in May and hiring in the prior two months was weaker than originally reported, casting doubt on whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later in June. The number of new jobs was the smallest the economy has created since the fall of 2010.
President Obama accused “right wing” talk radio and cable channels like Fox News of angering white people in America about the economy, arguing that it was actually doing really well under his administration.

RNC Chair Priebus: ‘People Involved’ with Bill Kristol’s independent ‘Never Trump’ campaign are ‘Embarrassing Themselves’ with their ‘Suicide Mission’

President Obama has had a chance to yell "FORE" at least 5,238 times as president after playing his 291st round of golf Saturday. His latest outing, to the course at Fort Belvoir Golf Course in Northern Virginia, means he has played over 48 full, 24-hour days of golf, and probably more since he can average over four hours per round.
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK

For nearly 200 years the United States and Mexico coexisted as a series of antonyms separated by a desert. The United States was prosperous and free. Mexico was poor and despotic. For a time, the United States was the preeminent middle-class society. Mexico has been a society of extremes. For most Americans, Mexico was a place to score some peyote or escape from the law, and the only Mexicans seen were in movies directed by Sam Peckinpah and John Ford.

Today, Mexicans can be seen in every region of the United States, and together with other “Latinos” are now the largest ethnic minority in the country……..  We have a multicultural society now, fierce racial antagonisms, a weak sense of national identity, a class of superrich who live mostly apart from the rest of the people, a ruling oligarchy, imperial presidents who possess dictatorial powers, a corrupt congress bought and paid for by corporate wealth, a police-ridden surveillance state, and a vainglorious military that, despite its long record of lost wars, remains the only institution in society that commands respect.

William T. Vollmann, in his 2009 book Imperial, writes that Americans have believed too literally and uncritically in their national myths of abundance (unlimited space and resources), money (bringing happiness, success, and national cohesion), progress (everything is getting better) and meliorism (every problem can be solved), and innocence.  There are also the conflicting immigration myths of assimilation and mosaic.  The first assures us that Mexicans will become like us, and the second that Mexicans will enrich us because they are different.  Yet America’s overly generous and undiscriminating immigration policy is driven also by ethnic resentments and politico-economic calculations.  As Americans have turned against the policy, naked power has stepped forward to tell them that the policy will remain the same, whether they like it or not.  And this is another way that we have become like Mexico: We have awakened to realize that our government is not our own, that we are ruled, essentially, by our enemies.

The neoliberal dream promises peace and prosperity if trade is free, borders are open, and labor is abundant.  Yet the fruits of NAFTA have been lower wages, a drug war, a flood of illegals, and the spread of organized crime.

Fifteen years ago, George W. Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, promised a “secure” and “modern” border that would be “closed to drugs and terrorists” but “open to trade and legitimate travel.”  The promise cannot be fulfilled.  Drugs are trade, and the freer the market, the greater the volume of sales.  And what of illegals?  Bush had no intention of keeping them out of the land of the free, for “migrants make a valuable contribution to America.”  But what about criminals, gang members, and cartel hitmen?  Upon crossing the border, migrants emerge as new Americans, clean and innocent, ready to be made into whatever the media think they should be.  On the same visit to El Norte, President Fox told the California legislature that the border was “more a joining line than a dividing line.”  We are building “an historic partnership,” Bush said.  But the real partners are the ruling oligarchies of Mexico and the United States.

President Fox went on to address a meeting of La Raza, during which he praised Mexican emigrants as “national heroes.”  Fleeing your country is a curious form of heroism, yet he was praising those whom he no longer wanted in his country (mestizos, indios, paisanos).  Migration serves to strengthen the Mexican state both internally and externally.  Without the U.S. pressure-release valve, the long-festering anger and frustration of the Mexican masses toward their corrupt and self-serving oligarchy might erupt in revolution.  Instead, the Mexican masses can take the path of flight instead of a fight with the Mexican army, whose real purpose, Charles Bowden argues, is not to fight drugs but “to repress and terrorize the people of Mexico.”  They can salvage their pride by redirecting their anger away from their own largely ethnic-European ruling class, which has bested them, to the white North American majority.  Hence the cheering that greeted Fox when he addressed “The Race.”  It was a clear demonstration that the members of La Raza regard their swelling presence here as a reconquista.

For the past ten years Americans who want legal immigration reduced and illegal immigration stopped have been told that they cannot do that, or even want that, without losing the Hispanic vote forever.  This cedes the making of immigration policy to a small minority—only recently arrived—of the population.  And why is it so important to Mexican political leaders to increase the numbers of Mexicans in the United States if their only desire is to work, raise a family, and live in safety?

“The concept of revenge is part of the Mexican political system,” writes the late Charles Bowden in his bracing Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields (2010).  What is reconquista but a kind of collective revenge?  Mexicans are taught from infancy that the North Americans stole half their country from them.  Reconquista transforms unwanted migrants into avenging heroes.

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FROM OTHER COLUMNS
“The earned income tax credit, a bipartisan-supported ‘anti-poverty’ benefit, is robbing honest, law-abiding Americans blind. Originally intended to help low- to moderate-income working individuals and couples with children, the refundable tax credit has ballooned into a massive welfare entitlement for politically correct constituents who pay no income taxes — yet are still eligible for payouts. According to a new report from the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, a whopping 23.8 percent of EITC payments, worth an estimated $15.6 billion, were issued improperly in fiscal year 2015 alone. … Instead of stopping the rip-offs, the Obama administration has fueled an entire industry of illegal immigration vultures gaming the already fraud-plagued system. In addition to blanket deportation waivers and work permits, Obama’s executive amnesty orders extended EITC eligibility (retroactive to the last three tax years) to the so-called Dreamers and their parents. It’s a proven recipe for bamboozlement. … When the enormous costs of such tax code social engineering outweigh the benefits in an era of unfettered open borders, it’s time to pull the plug.”
              -Michelle Malkin
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BOOKS, FILM
The alleged fraud and corruption within the Clinton Foundation is, by now, old news to political junkies. It was all skillfully laid out last year in Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book Clinton Cash. Now, with the Clintons on the verge of re-occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Schweizer’s book has been made into a one-hour documentary that will clarify the depths of their iniquity and greed in the minds of voters — if it finds a distributor. In watching a review copy of the film, I was struck by the phrase, “follow the money,” which is woven like a thread throughout.
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SECOND AMENDMENT
Katie Couric has reversed course and taken responsibility for an edit that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she poses in a new documentary. The segment in "Under the Gun" shows nearly 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks the activists how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.

Katie Couric, the executive producer and narrator of the documentary “Under the Gun,” has apologized for a deliberate and deceptive edit that makes a group of gun rights advocates look like dumbfounded dolts.
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LEFTIST WATCH
More than 80 percent of basic consumer products including food and medicine are now in short supply in the socialist paradise of Venezuela.

California Billionaire Tom Steyer Launches Spanish-Language Ads Attacking Donald Trump
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ISLAM
A woman clad in a burka attacked a Georgia homeowner with an American flag that was flying in front of the victim’s home. 

A Pakistani father of 35 is now searching for a fourth wife as he romps towards his goal of 100 children

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GLOBALONEY
Secretary of State John Kerry told high school students that “your parents’ money is going to pay for the harder impact of storms…..because of climate change.”
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ARTICLES
Brazil moves to shrink the state.  How do you shrink a government? That is a thorny political question anywhere in the world but especially in Brazil, which has traditionally favored a bloated state. Proposed is a constitutional amendment to freeze for the foreseeable future public expenses in real terms at 2016 levels. If implemented, the move could help cure one of Brazil’s biggest ills — a spendthrift budget with constitutionally mandated expenditures that have led to constant increases in government spending. (sound familiar?  What a concept!)

Overlooked in the recent controversy over the death of Bill Clinton’s Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster is the fact that FBI agents investigating the case found that Hillary Clinton triggered his suicide when she attacked and humiliated her mentor from their former Rose Law Firm in front of other White House aides a week before he took his own life. “Hillary put him down really, really bad in a pretty good-size meeting,” Mr. Copeland says. “She told him he didn’t get the picture, and he would always be a little hick town lawyer who was obviously not ready for the big time.” “Foster was profoundly depressed, but Hillary lambasting him was the final straw because she publicly embarrassed him in front of others.”

It seems like every day another self-described conservative either comes out in favor of Hillary Clinton or supports a third-party candidacy against Donald Trump, which would have the same effect as electing Clinton. This is what our liberal friends like to call a "teachable moment."   For some years now I have been endeavoring to instruct my readers on the difference between  conservatives and "neo" conservatives. I have Donald Trump to thank for making that distinction quite clear. The emergence of Trump as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party has sent the neocons into a frenzy. Meanwhile we genuine conservatives consider him a huge improvement over the prior Republican presidential nominee.

David Horowitz:  I understand that a lot of conservatives are still skeptical about Donald Trump as the Republican nominee. I respect their skepticism when it is attached to reasonable arguments, since no candidate is perfect and no one can know the future……In mounting a third-party run which would split the Republican vote and elect Hillary, Bill Kristol seems to be forgetting that the Iranians and their Jew-hating allies are openly preparing a second Holocaust in the Middle East (and then for the rest of us). Obama, Hillary, Huma Abedin, and the Democrats are the chief enablers of this already planned Holocaust. Splitting the Republican vote and electing Hillary is a betrayal of the Jews in an hour in which their backs are to the wall. Hence the designation renegade for those who are planning a third-party run, and for which I make no apologies.

Never Trump? Don’t stop there! Never anybody!  The Never Trump movement may be dead, but like Frankenstein’s monster, it keeps being sewn back together out of a hodgepodge of scary parts. The mad scientist in this case is National Standard editor Bill Kristol, assisted ably by his own Igor, Erick Erickson of TheResurgent.com (and both of Fox News).Together they have invented a monstrous pastiche of faults supposedly inhabited by Donald J. Trump, the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party. So let’s consider why the Never Trumpers applying their Olympian standards to mere mortal presidents over the past 227 years could NEVER have supported any of them.
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INTERESTING WEBSITES
Where Republicans Stand on Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet…..Who has jumped on the bandwagon? Who’s sticking with #NeverTrump? And who hasn’t made up their mind yet? A continually updated inventory……

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WISE WORDS
“Let anyone who believes that a high standard of living is the achievement of labor unions and government controls ask himself the following question: If one had a ‘time machine’ and transported the united labor chieftains of America, plus three million government bureaucrats, back to the tenth century — would they be able to provide the medieval serf with electric light, refrigerators, automobiles, and television sets?”
                      -Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.”
                      -Frédéric Bastiat

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