Yes! These are picture of a West Point cadet who has repeatedly and publicly expressed his hatred of  the Army and his country, was guilty of numerous misdemeanors, treated his superior officers with rude contempt – yet was allowed to go on wearing the uniform he despised, to graduate as a soldier in the US Army and become a commissioned officer.

The Daily Caller reports:

The Army officer who outed himself as a radical Marxist had been reported back in 2015 for publishing inappropriate and outright anti-American views online, according to a scathing report obtained by The Daily Caller.

So what? The Army didn’t care.

The report gave details on 2nd Lt. Spenser Rapone’s insubordination at the U.S. Military Academy and out-of-regulations online activity. Rapone graduated almost two years later in 2016.

Then – “Rapone made the news last week for his pro-communism tweets during the #VetsForKaepernick social media craze.”

Oh, gosh! The scandal was out! Only then did the Army swing into action.

West Point’s Public Affairs office quickly released a statement last week condemning Rapone’s actions, saying that they “in no way reflect the values of the U.S. Military Academy or the U.S.  Army … Second Lieutenant Rapone’s chain of command is aware of his actions and is looking into the matter”.

They are going to “look into the matter” which came to their attention in 2015.

The statement leaves readers with the idea that Rapone’s chain of command (and indeed the academy at large) was unaware of his radicalism and frequent Uniform Code of Military Justice violations. [But] it turns out a senior officer reported Rapone to his chain of command nearly two years ago.

In a social media post that concerned retired Army Lt. Col. Robert Heffington, an Academy history professor at the time, Rapone wrote, “F*ck this country and its false freedom.”

In November 2015, after being removed from his Ranger battalion for violating standards, Rapone was a cadet in his final year at the academy. According to the report obtained by TheDC, after the latest in a series of incidents involving Rapone’s penchant for insubordination, Heffington became aware of Rapone’s radical leftist activity on social media and notified the cadet’s chain of command.

“From his various online rantings and posts, it appears that DCT Rapone is an avowed Marxist, which is completely out of line with the values of this nation and its Army,” Heffington said in a sworn statement. “Moreover, CDT Rapone’s posts indicate that he hates West Point, the U.S. Army, and indeed this country. One post dated 16 November 2015 states, ‘F*ck this country and its false freedom.’ He also … even implicitly justifies the actions of ISIS and blames the United States for terrorist attacks.”

Heffington concluded in his report, “I cannot reconcile the image of a first class cadet at West Point with the things he has posted online for the world to see. To me, these are red flags that cannot be ignored, and I fail to see how this individual can possibly graduate and become a commissioned officer in six months.”

The same day he wrote this report, Heffington contacted then-cadet Rapone’s training, advising, and counseling officer. The officer was disgusted, but not shocked, Heffington said.

“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised,” the officer said, according to Heffington.

This reaction is merely one of many indications that Rapone’s activism, radical views and immature opposition to authority were well known around the academy — and especially obvious to his chain of command. According to a former head of the Military History and International History divisions at the U.S. Military Academy, Rapone’s plebe year history professor also reported him to the chain of command.

Heffington characterized Rapone as routinely “going out of his way to flout authority”. 

In one incident described in the report, the lieutenant colonel confronted Rapone when he heard yelling in a professor’s office. The cadet reportedly answered in a “loud and extremely disrespectful tone,” “Sir, you don’t have the right to use my honor against me!”

Rapone — a supposedly brilliant cadet, according to his mentor, Professor Rasheed Hosein of the History Department — responded with a childish tantrum: “Sir, this isn’t fair! You’re just putting me on blast!”

One has to wonder what Professor Rasheed Hosein taught Spenser Rapone.

Heffington notes in his report that he told Rapone he did not understand what “putting someone on blast” meant, a rare comedic moment in an otherwise infuriating account. Rapone’s response, that he felt “singled out” is puzzling when one considers the lengths to which the cadet went in order to cast himself as a righteous nonconformist.

In fact, Rapone had singled himself out during his confrontation with Heffington, being in civilian clothes in an academic building (a violation of regulations), by refusing to stand when a superior officer entered the room (a breach of military protocol), and by refusing to answer a superior officer’s direct question regarding who had been yelling (refusal to obey a lawful order).

Most incredibly, Rapone had the gall to respond with righteous indignation.

“He seemed to look at me with nothing but contempt and hatred, no matter what I said or how I tried to reason with him to show him how wrong he was,” Heffington said in his 2015 report.

Multiple other sources contend that Rapone willfully put his anti-capitalist, anti-military and anti-American views on display for the world to see, both in person and over social media. Two recent academy graduates, when reached for comment, suggested that Rapone’s reputation at the academy preceded him. Although they did not personally know Rapone, they stated that they were aware of his radical leftist views and his rebellious reputation long before his activism hit the news this September.

On social media, Rapone’s account (including his Instagram, with the handle “punkproletarian”) abound with praise of communist leaders, interspersed with scathing criticism of his nation, its military and even his chain of command.

Rapone’s rantings unequivocally condemn what he refers to as the military’s “brutally hierarchical rank structure,” and he deems Defense Secretary Mattis “the most vile f*ck in the current administration”. 

This 2015 report unambiguously states that Rapone’s vehement anti-American views and his obsessive insubordination made him a dangerous liability to this nation’s military. Its author urged his chain of command not to allow then-cadet Rapone to commission as an officer. And, according to Heffington, every officer he spoke to agreed with this conclusion.

So why wasn’t he kicked out of West Point?

The conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter comments at Townhall:

It gives me no pleasure to have to wonder whether the Army I served in both in active and reserve status for close to 28 years is broken. And it’s not just the Army.  The Marines and the Special Ops community, well, they seem to be holding on to the standards the rest have forgotten, but the Navy and the Air Force – they’re broken too. Our military – in terms of strategy, equipment, and leadership, is in crisis. American troops will die if we don’t fix it.

Hell, they already have.

We have a Navy that can’t even sail its few remaining ships without running into giant cargo vessels. …

It is, in fact, a disgrace. Our sailors, the precious young men and women we commissioned officers are charged with leading and protecting, are dying because our officer corps tolerates incompetence. One collision is an accident. Two is a lifestyle.

And yeah, they’ve fired some admirals, and that’s a good start, but the problem is a cultural rot, not just one ‘ed-up command. The Navy focused on things besides its mission – “to maintain, train and equip combat-ready Naval forces capable of winning wars, deterring aggression and maintaining freedom of the seas” – and in the last few months that misplaced focus has killed 17 sailors and taken two major vessels out of action in the Western Pacific at the very moment we are on the edge of war.

Did you know several senior Navy officers are being or have been charged for corruption? Corruption. Graft. Bribes. Hookers. Senior leaders, and they’re scumbugs – criminal scumbags. But hey, the Army has its problems too. General Petraeus…sheesh, what a punch in the gut it was to see him use the Army values as a latrine. Then there was the 82^nd Airborne general court martialed for using his billet to build himself a sex harem. And how about the colonel who played games with contracts and ditched his wife to marry an Iraqi chick – the Army was so upset he got a reprimand and to keep his pension. No jail time.

Let me say that again. No jail time. Yeah, that would totally have happened to a sergeant who did the same thing, according to several high-ranking unicorns in the Judge Advocate Office.

Want to know what generals and admirals don’t get in trouble for? Failing to win wars.

The military senior leadership has turned into a fraternity, where they cover up for each other and make sure everyone graduates with a gentleman’s “C”. And it’s not even a fun fraternity – the senior leadership is painfully politically correct, parroting all the right buzzwords and received wisdom of our failed ruling caste. Many of these people are courageous on the battlefield – they’ll happily charge a Taliban warrior wielding an AK-47. But they quake in their boots back home in the face of an enemy they don’t understand and that can destroy their careers – the Social Justice Warrior.

That’s why you don’t see them saying what every damn one of them knows is true – that women, despite their heart and commitment, are a net liability in ground combat units, that trans troops are an expensive distraction and damaging to morale, and that the insane focus on “diversity” programs sucks up priceless training time and fuels, rather than quells, discord in the ranks.

But they don’t dare object. That’d be risky. And these are the senior leaders who we will allow to lead our sons and daughters in battle if Korea goes hot. How’s your confidence level?

And we have now reached the pinnacle of the military’s moral bankruptcy with the revelation that one Second Lieutenant Spenser Rapone is a communist. Not like a wannabe communist, not like a routine college-years liberal dummy, but a full-on, dictatorship-of-the-proletariat communist.

While at West Point.

Yeah, and the Academy knew. The chain of command knew what this guy was, because he told them (Army alumni have done the job the MSM, which probably sympathizes with this idiot, has failed to do, digging up plenty about him and putting it out on social media). But the Academy let this creep slide through anyway.

They let a guy who unequivocally stated his hatred for this country get a security clearance. … Then they gave Rapone a commission as a United States Army officer.

And they did it knowing who he was, because in the leftist-loving environment Obama created, they were terrified to throw the bum out on his Marx.

Hell, he felt comfortable enough to post this all on social media, and the Army chain of command didn’t act until we outside the military made a stink and it had to do something.

You’ve seen the photo of this disgrace wearing a Che t-shirt under his uniform and showing it off. Question: Who took the photo? He was with other cadets so some other cadet saw it and did nothing – doesn’t West Point have an honor code, or is honor now a microaggression? Imagine how interested CNN and the Democrats would suddenly be if his undergarment icon was Hitler, or even Robert E. Lee, instead of the racist, gay-murdering dorm room darling of the campus commies.

“But, he has a right to express his…”

No, he doesn’t.

A United States officer cannot be a communist, or a Nazi, or a jihadist. These vile allegiances are incompatible with military service, and we are under no moral obligation to enter into a suicide pact by letting these vermin into our officer corps. Haven’t enough people died, like at Fort Hood, because the chain of command was too cowardly to risk getting called jihadiphobic to get rid of an insider threat?

Apparently not. …

But the real story isn’t this one loser. It’s not even the other losers who knew what he was and said and did nothing. It’s the chain of command.

We need to know exactly what the faculty and staff at West Point knew about Comrade Cadet Rapone’s treachery. If they did know – and I bet we will find out that he was counseled in writing about it – every officer from his first line supervisor to the USMA Superintendent must be relieved and reprimanded. West Point is supposed to be the heart of the Army, but we may find that, after the pernicious influence of Obama and his ilk, it won’t even take its own side in a fight.

This is a symptom of a bigger disease. The Army, and the military in general, has lost its way.

Fortunately, we [now] have a president who actually loves America …

So will the US military switch its allegiance back to the United States?

The US government has two foreign policies: one is President Trump’s, the other is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s.

In the case of US policy towards Iran, for instance, President Trump abominates the “deal” Obama made with that evil regime and wants to tear it up, while the Secretary of State wants to preserve it.

The “deal” (it is not a treaty, it isn’t even signed by either side) requires the president of the United States to certify, every 90 days, that Iran is complying with it.

Iran is not complying with it.

Against his better judgment, for reasons we have to assume were sound at the time, President Trump has re-certified it twice. He must have done so with great reluctance, such a horrible thing it is, giving the America-hating mullahs the right to start building a nuclear arsenal in a few years from now. Under its cover, Iran isn’t even waiting the few years; it is working constantly towards its nuclear goal.

So President Trump cannot certify for a third time that it is in compliance.

And according to AP, he won’t.

AP reports:

President Donald Trump could announce his secret decision on the future of the Iran nuclear deal next week.

U.S. officials familiar with the president’s planning said Wednesday he is preparing to deliver an Iran policy speech in which he is expected to declare the landmark 2015 agreement contrary to America’s national security interests. …

Trump faces an Oct. 15 deadline to tell Congress if he believes Iran is complying with the seven-nation pact and if it advances US interests.

The president has called the 2015 deal, which forced Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for broad relief from international economic sanctions, one of the nation’s “worst and most one-sided transactions” ever. But many of his top national security aides don’t want to dismantle the deal, and America’s European allies have lobbied the Trump administration heavily not to walk away from the agreement.

Even AP – which cannot conceal which of the two US foreign policies it favors – cannot claim more for the “deal” than that it “forced Iran to scale back its nuclear program”. But it is not scaling it back much, if at all. So much for the “forced”.

“We’re going to give him a couple of options of how to move forward to advance the important policy toward Iran,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Wednesday. He said the Iran deal comprised “only a small part” of the government’s approach to Iran, a traditional US  adversary in the Middle East that Washington considers the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

President Trump’s Secretary of State is going to give him, the president, a couple of options.

Tillerson will preserve the deal, but will do it in such a way that the president doesn’t lose face!

The Iran deal’s future may hinge on a face-saving fix for Trump so he doesn’t have to recertify the Islamic republic’s compliance every 90 days …

Several officials familiar with internal discussions say the periodic deadlines have become such a source of embarrassment for Trump that his aides are trying to find ways for him to stop signing off on the accord without scuttling it entirely.

So having to certify that Iran is in compliance when it isn’t, is only a source of embarrassment to President Trump? Not a lie to America and the world against his own will and principles? Those officials should not be in the White House or the State Department or wherever they are lurking!

Trump has said repeatedly that he doesn’t want to certify Iranian compliance again after having done so twice already, declaring last month he even had made his mind up about what he’ll do next. “Decertification” could lead Congress to reintroduce economic sanctions on Iran that were suspended under the deal. If that happens, Iran has threatened to walk away from the arrangement and restart activities that could take it closer to nuclear weapons.

That last sentence is one of many in the report which shows AP’s bias. A warning to the president. “Walk away from the deal?” It is walking away from it. “Closer to nuclear weapons”? It is close to them now.

The UN (along with Europe) is on the side of keeping the deal. Because (like Europe) it is on the side of Iran. Its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has recently admitted that it cannot verify that Iran is implementing the most important part of the “deal”, Section T – the part that prohibits Iran from developing nuclear weapons for 10 to 15 years from the time the “deal” was agreed.

The plain fact is  that the IAEA is not just useless in keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power, it is helping it on the excuse that if it asked for the permission of Iran to inspect its  military bases – which according to the stupid “deal” it must – it knows Iran will not give it. And that would confirm President  Trump’s criticism of the deal. “We just don’t want to give them [the US] an excuse” to “bring down the deal”, an IAEA official said.

Since the IAEA cannot inspect the sites, and so cannot say that Iran is not keeping to the “deal”, AP declares that the agency has found Iran in compliance:

Because the UN nuclear watchdog has found Iran in compliance, it’s difficult for the US administration to say otherwise. However, Trump and other officials, including Tillerson, have said Iran is violating the spirit of the agreement because of its testing of ballistic missiles, threats to US allies in the Middle East, and support for US-designated terrorist organizations and Syria’s government.

So Tillerson does at least admit that Iran is “violating the spirit of the agreement”.

But he and US Defense department officials, including the Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, still want to keep it. Since the IAEA has not certified that Iran is in breach of it, they pretend that means it is not in breach of it.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that Iran “is not in material breach of the agreement”.

Why do they pretend this?  Because –

At the same hearing, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he believed the deal is still in the US national security interest.

For US officials involved in the decision-making process, the focus on finding a way for Trump to avoid anything looking like approval for the accord has become a source of frustration. Various options are in play to resolve the problem, but none are clean solutions, according to officials.

And they will  not consider simply accepting President Trumps wish to scrap the useless “accord”. So all their difficulties are of their own making – finding a way to implement their own policy rather than the president’s, while making the president think that they are implementing his!

The most likely strategy centers on Trump not certifying Iran’s compliance. Below the president, diplomats and officials would then strive to manage any fallout with Tehran and US allies by emphasizing that Washington isn’t leaving the deal or immediately applying new nuclear sanctions on Iran. After that, Trump wouldn’t have to address the certification matter again, officials said.

And as long as the issue doesn’t come before him for his signature, they can merrily proceed with their own plans?

Whether AP is aware of it or not, its report reveals a contempt for President Trump on the part of Tillerson and the generals. It suggests that they regard the president as so naive that he can be hoodwinked by a trick which removes the need for him to certify that Iran is keeping the deal, but yet preserves the deal. 

Mattis hinted his boss may try to decertify without breaking the deal.

His boss may try? He, Mattis – along with Tillerson – will try.

“You can talk about the conditions under one of those, and not walk away from the other,” he said.

While Mattis described the issues of certification and upholding the deal as “different pieces”, they overlap.

How can Iran’s breaking of the deal – which is what decertifying means – not cancel it? The breaking cannot just be a “different piece” which “overlaps” the deal as a whole. It is the essence of an agreement that it must be kept by both sides or it is invalidated. By a “different piece” they can only mean that the clause calling for certification is not the whole of the agreement. By saying it “overlaps” the clauses, they are tacitly acknowledging that declaring the agreement broken by Iran does affect the whole thing.

They are trying to preserve a broken deal!  Of course it’s a strain even on the skills of an equivocating diplomat to reconcile “broken” with “not so broken we have to discard it”.

Why are they straining to keep it?

In January, Tillerson must waive multiple sets of sanctions on Iran for the US to uphold its part of the deal. The issue of US national security interests is relevant to those decisions.

How “US national interests” are protected or advanced by the “deal” is not explained. It has never been explained.

Obama’s “deal” makes it possible for the belligerent, America-hating theocrats of Iran,  who believe absolutely in Shia Islam and its centuries-long ambition to subdue the world under Shia Muslim rule, to become a nuclear power. How is that in the interests of the United States?

President Trump sees that it is not. As AP itself reports: President Trump “is expected to declare the landmark 2015 agreement contrary to America’s national security interests”. 

May he do so! Then let’s see by what contorted argument the resistance within the administration tries to justify preserving the abominable “deal”.

This seems to be Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas mass murderer, at an anti-Trump rally, wearing a pink “pussy hat” …

… among the demonstrators against “hate”.

https://youtu.be/Pbsa1CiO5Ls 

What do our readers think – is it Stephen Paddock in the video?

This is a near-repeat of our post Morality, Crime, and Justice (December 6, 2012). We have adapted it to be a comment on the mass-murder that was carried out last night (Sunday October 1, 2017) in Las Vegas:

An all-powerful all-knowing good god was at work again last night when 58 people were shot to death and 515 injured (as known at the time of this writing) at a concert in Las Vegas by a 64 year old man named Stephen Craig Paddock. God will be thanked for saving some of the audience. And there will be much talk by Christians of praying, and about forgiveness. Forgiving by the unharmed on behalf of the victims is arrogant and foolish, but forgiveness is part of the Christian doctrinal revolt against justice.

If some must believe in an all-powerful all-knowing god who controls the universe, it would make a lot more sense to believe he is evil. An evil god can be whimsical. He can decide not to do evil now and then. Believers could even ascribe good deeds to him without falling into a mess of inconsistency, since an evil god would enjoy confusing his creatures.

But enough bothering with absurd beliefs. Let’s say how we view such human deeds. Throughout our lives we are continually and inevitably to a certain extent in the hands of other people. We should try not to do harm to one another. That is a very high standard of morality. We will not always succeed, but we can and should try.

And what of those who deliberately do harm? Whenever possible they should be punished. He who has taken a life (and lives on) should have his life taken from him. If he has taken many lives,  nothing more than that can be done. Punishment of the mass-murderer cannot be commensurate with his crime. Justice is elusive. We cannot always, or often, achieve it. But again, we can and should try.

When someone who has killed 58 people then kills himself as Stephen Craig Paddock has done, so putting himself beyond even such justice as is within our power, all we can do is blame him and express – yes – our hatred not just of the crime but of the criminal. Hold him responsible. That is all we can do in such a case to uphold the principle of justice. To forgive him, even if only in theory, would be to commit another crime – and betray the principle.

As we say in our Articles of reason: Justice may be elusive, but judgment is inescapable.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center has published a new booklet by David Horowitz himself titled The Left’s Racist War Against Trump and America.

Here are some extracts which we have selected because they provide the gist of his argument – with which we completely agree:

[The] creed of the Democratic Party – “identity politics’ – is … the antithesis of the American idea. It regards diverse origins – color, ethnicities, genders and classes – as primary, and proposes a hierarchy of privilege based on them, which it justifies as a reversal of past oppressions. …

For the second time in its history, the Democratic Party has opted to secede from the Union and its social contract. The first time was over the issue of slavery [the Democrats were for it]; this time it is over the issue of whether Americans are to be divided by race, gender, sexual orientation and class.

But chiefly RACE.

This time there will be no actual civil war … The passions of an irreconcilable conflict are still present but they are channeled into a political confrontation over the executive power. …

[T]he animus behind Democratic assaults on Republicans and their support for law and order as “racist” is the direct consequences of viewing all social disparities through the distorted lens of oppression politics. Thus, the “over-representation” of African –Americans in the prison system is not because of systemic racism. Police forces have been integrated for decades, as has the entire criminal justice system. African-American are “over-represented” in the prison population because they are “over-represented” in the commission of actual crimes. Democrats’ embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement and its efforts to cast career criminals as civil rights victims and law enforcement officials as villains is an inevitable consequence of ignoring the specifics of cases and forcing them into the melodramatic framework of “racism” and “oppression”. …

The ideology that drives the left and divides our country is “identity politics” – the idea that the world consists of two groups – “people of color” who are guiltless and oppressed, and white people who are guilty and oppressors. This is the real race war. Its noxious themes inform the mindless, hysterical hatred for President Trump, and the equally mindless support for racist mobs like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It is a war from which no good can come. …

In a nation which for eight years was headed by a black president, had two chief law enforcement officers who were black, has recently had two black secretaries of state and three black national security advisers, and has elected more than 10,000 black government officials; in a nation that has been governed for fifty years by statutes that outlaw discrimination by race and whose national culture is saturated with non-white heroes and icons – in such a nation, people who refer to America as “white supremacist” would normally be dismissed as an oddball fringe …

In contrast to the trivial representatives of organized Nazism, there are … tens of thousands of members of the American Communist Party, also a defeated totalitarian foe. Yet no one seems alarmed. There have been “Million Man” marches led by black racists Farrakhan and Sharpton. But “white nationalists” and Klan members can’t attract a sufficient number of supporters to even constitute a “march”. Black Lives Matter is an overly racist and violent group that is led by avowed communists and has allied itself with Hamas terrorists. It is an organization officially endorsed by the Democratic Party and lavishly funded by tens of millions of dollars contributed by Democratic donors like George Soros. But the self-congratulating denouncers of Nazism and white racism find nothing wrong with them. …

Democrats not Republicans were the principal resistors to the Civil Rights Acts. …

Who is oppressed in America? There are an estimated 65 million refugees in the world today fleeing oppression, but none of them are fleeing oppression in the United States. Why do Haitians and Mexicans risk life and limb to come to America? To be oppressed? They come because in America they have more rights, more privileges and more opportunities than they would in Mexico or Haiti, which have been governed by Hispanics and blacks for a hundred years and more. … America is the least racist most tolerant multi-ethnic, multi-racial society in the history of the world. America has outlawed racial supremacies of any kind. …

[W]hat the anti-Trump movement comes down to [is] the racist accusation that white supremacists, backed by 63 million American voters, have seized control of the American government and need to be overthrown.

But this is not really about Trump. It is about America, and beyond that it is the central theme of the attack on the democratic societies of the West, in particular their foundations in individual rights rather than group identities. This was evident in the reactions to the major foreign policy address Trump delivered in Poland on July 6 [2017]. His speech was a … defense of the West and its values … above all [the value] of individual freedom – that the wars against Nazism and Communism had been fought to defend. …

Trump issued a call to the people of the West to rally again to the defense of these values in the face of the new totalitarianism that confronts us: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? … Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?” …

Trump’s speech was immediately attacked by the political left. The common theme of these attacks was once again the left’s race war against Trump and the country he leads.. …

The left is simply relentless in its commitment to identity politics … This animus is rooted in a racial and gender collectivism that is antagonistic to the fundamental American idea of individual rights applied universally and without regard to origins – to race, ethnicity or gender. The war to defend this idea is what created Trump’s candidacy and has shaped his political persona.

An American patriotism – which is precisely not about blood and soil, [and] which is the antithesis of racism and collectivism – is what drives Trump and his presidency. … Patriotism – a specifically American patriotism – is the loyalty that unites us and makes us equal. It is this patriotism with which the political left is at war, and the reason they hate this president and are determined to destroy him.

The Democratic Party is a racist party – now, still, as it always has been. And it is increasingly collectivist and totalitarian. 

It also aids and abets the advance of militant Islam, which is supremacist, totalitarian, homophobic, misogynist, anti-Semitic, savagely cruel and  murderous – and totally intolerant of all ideas that are not part of its primitive ideology. 

Left-leaning Time, taking a view from the left – so a softer one than would a cold observer from Mars – diagnoses causes of morbidity in the Democratic Party. And prescribes no cure. 

In its habitual irritating style, packing in irrelevant detail, it narrates and asserts:

Like virtually all Democrats, Tim Ryan is no fan of Donald Trump. But as he [Tim Ryan] speeds through his northeastern Ohio district in a silver Chevy Suburban, the eight-term Congressman sounds almost as frustrated with his own party. Popping fistfuls of almonds in the backseat, Ryan gripes about its fixation on divisive issues and its “demonization” of business owners. Ryan, 44, was briefly considered for the role of Hillary Clinton’s running mate last year. Now he sounds ready to brawl with his political kin. “We’re going to have a fight,” Ryan says. “There’s no question about it.”

That fight has already begun, though you’d be forgiven for missing it. On the surface, the Democratic Party has been united and energized by its shared disgust for Trump. But dig an inch deeper and it’s clear that the party is divided, split on issues including free trade, health care, foreign affairs and Wall Street. They even disagree over the political wisdom of doing deals with Trump.

Every party cast out of power endures a period of soul-searching. But the Democrats’ dilemma was unimaginable even a year ago, when Clinton seemed to be coasting toward the White House and demographic change fueled dreams of a permanent national majority. Now, eight months into the Trump presidency, the party looks to face its toughest odds since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984.

The Democrats are in their deepest congressional rut since the class of 1946 was elected, and hold the fewest governors’ mansions–15–since 1922. Of the 98 partisan legislatures in the U.S., Republicans control 67. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats lost 970 seats in state legislatures, leaving the party’s bench almost bare. The median age of their congressional leadership is 67, and many of the obvious early presidential front runners will be in their 70s by the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, there’s still no sign the Democrats have learned the lessons of the last one. “I’ve tried to learn from my own mistakes. There are plenty,” Clinton writes in her campaign memoir What Happened. The book, released on Sept. 12, casts blame on Russia, the FBI and the candidate herself, but never quite finds a satisfying answer to the titular question. Even if it did, these days the party seems to prize ideological purity over Clintonian pragmatism. “There is no confusion about what we Democrats are against. The only disagreement,” says strategist Neil Sroka, “is what we’re for.”

Which leaves the party confronting a puzzle. The momentum may be on the left, but picking up the 24 seats required to retake the House, and the three states needed for control of the Senate, will mean luring back blue collar workers in places like Ryan’s Mahoning Valley district, where the steel plants are shells of their former selves, small businesses are boarded up and payday lenders seem to be on every corner. This used to be a Democratic stronghold, but Trump won three of the five counties in Ryan’s district. If Democrats don’t refine their pitch to alienated white voters, Trump could win re-election with ease. “The resistance can only be part of it,” Ryan says. “We have to be on the offense too.”

It’s not clear who has the influence or inclination to spearhead that shift. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi are seasoned dealmakers who can raise Brink’s trucks full of cash. Their Sept. 6 pact with Trump, which pushed back a pair of fiscal showdowns and delivered hurricane relief money to storm-stricken southeastern Texas, was hailed as a fleecing by the Democrats. After a dinner of Chinese food in the Blue Room of the White House a week later, the pair said they had reached a tentative agreement with Trump to sidestep the Justice Department’s rollback of an Obama-era program that helped young immigrants who were in the country illegally. But among the grassroots, any agreement with the President is viewed as cause for suspicion. When Schumer dared to back a handful of Trump’s Cabinet picks earlier this year, activists protested outside his Brooklyn apartment, hoisting signs with slogans like Grow a spine, Chuck. In her San Francisco district on Sept. 18, Pelosi was shouted down by activists who were angry that her proposed immigration deal with Trump did not cover more people.

For all these challenges, the party’s time in the wilderness could prove to be an opportunity. … But before the party comes together, first it has to banish the furies that threaten to tear it apart.

The counterpoint to Ryan’s call for moderation could be found onstage in August in a Hyatt ballroom in Atlanta. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the former Harvard Law School professor and consumer advocate, had come to deliver a battle cry to 1,000 grassroots activists. “The Democratic Party isn’t going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill,” she said in not-at-all-veiled criticism of President Bill Clinton’s mid-’90s strategy to peel off Republican votes. “We are not a wing of today’s Democratic Party,” Warren declared to her fellow liberals. “We are the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party.”

Warren is clearly thinking of running for President in 2020. If she does, a crowd will be waiting to cheer her on: a year ago, under pressure from supporters of insurgent Senator Bernie Sanders, the Democrats adopted the most progressive platform in their history, which called for free college for families earning $125,000 or less and Medicare options for Americans as young as 55. This march to the left has become a sprint since Clinton’s defeat.

Groups that support abortion rights have stopped offering polite silence to Democrats who disagree. Others are demanding jail time for bank executives. Small-dollar donors are goading progressive groups to advance liberal policies and challenge lawmakers who balk. A group of prominent liberal Democrats, including some 2020 hopefuls, are pushing a national single-payer health care plan – even though its strongest backers acknowledge that it has zero chance of becoming law in this Republican-controlled Congress. Representative Luis Gutiérrez of Illinois threatened on Sept. 8 that Democrats may shut down the government in December if Congress doesn’t provide a pathway for undocumented immigrants to become citizens. “Running on progressive values,” strategist Adam Green told a candidates’ training session in Washington this summer, “is how Democrats will win.” …

Efforts to mend the rifts of the 2016 election have fallen flat. Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) launched a national tour with Sanders and newly minted party chairman Tom Perez, who was elected in February. Things didn’t go well. When Sanders thanked Perez at rallies, his so-called Bernie bros heckled the new chairman. The attempt at unity was a footnote within a month. “The current model and the current strategy of the Democratic Party is an absolute failure,” declared Sanders, who plans to seek a third term in the Senate next year as an independent.

Activists aligned with Sanders are working to mount primary challenges against centrist Democrats. Our Revolution, a group that rose from the ashes of Sanders’ presidential campaign, led a protest in August outside the DNC, demanding a more liberal platform. Party staffers tried handing out snacks and bottles of water, but the hospitality did little to defuse the tension. “They tried to seduce us with doughnuts,” said former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a protest organizer.

Some of the grievances hinge on strategy as much as substance. Kamala Harris, the popular junior Senator from California, backs Sanders’ health plan and won an endorsement from Warren during her election last year. But as California’s former top cop, Harris declined to prosecute bankers, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, for their role in the 2008 financial crisis. She also spent part of her summer raising cash in the tony precincts of the Hamptons. As a result, Sanders allies say she’s a Wall Street shill. “Follow the money,” says Nomiki Konst, a Sanders supporter who serves on the DNC panel tasked with forging postelection unity.

No one waits on the horizon to broker a peace. The DNC has been hollowed out, first by Obama’s neglect and then by a Clinton campaign that raided its talent. Now it is trying to play catch-up, sending $10,000 a month to each state party to help add bodies and channel activists’ energy into permanent organizations. But the party is still $3.5 million in the red, and Republicans are outraising it by a margin of roughly 2 to 1. Meanwhile, Perez is serving as a visiting fellow at Brown University, where he teaches a course called Governance and Leadership in Challenging Times.

Schumer says the party lost the White House in 2016 because it had a “namby-pamby” message on the economy. He’s not risking that again, working with members from both chambers on an aggressive, worker-focused message. The blueprint, dubbed “A Better Deal”, has Warren’s fingerprints all over it, calling for a national $15-per-hour minimum wage and cheaper drugs, colleges and child care. “The focus starts on economic issues,” Schumer said. “That’s where the American people are hurting.” …

Governing in Washington these days is “the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done,” complains Senator Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. “Most of my life, there was about 20% on the right fringe and the left fringe, but 60% in the middle, where common sense would prevail. Now I’m thinking 40% on each fringe.”

Part of the problem is that red states are getting redder, while blue states are growing ever more blue. Consider West Virginia, where Manchin is still popular from his days as governor. When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992, he carried 42 of the state’s 55 counties. That number climbed to 43 four years later. But by 2000, West Virginia residents were sour on Democratic trade policies that many saw as costing them coal and steel jobs. Al Gore won 13 counties that year, and John Kerry took just nine in 2004. It’s little wonder that during Manchin’s first campaign for Senate, in 2010, he cut an ad that showed him firing a rifle at an Obama-backed environmental bill. Obama would go on to lose all 55 counties in 2012–a feat Hillary Clinton repeated.

Democrats still outnumber Republicans in West Virginia by 12 percentage points [according to heavily Democrat-weighted polls -ed].  These Democrats, however, don’t want to hear about NFL players protesting during the national anthem or the latest in the ongoing investigation into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow. They care far less about Black Lives Matter than keeping their checking accounts in the black. Add in the 21% of West Virginians who say they don’t identify with either party, and it’s a dangerous proposition for candidates like Manchin to parrot talking points from MSNBC. It’s not that he’s a squish on cultural issues; it’s that he’d rather talk about lifting the economy in his state, where 18% live in poverty.

The Democrats’ focus on identity politics is one reason Manchin suggested, half-heartedly, that he doesn’t care if he wins another term next year. “The Washington Democrats’ mentality has been more urban,” he says. “They forgot about rural America and rural states. They don’t want you to tell them about their bathrooms or their bedrooms or all this other stuff we’re trying to control.”

Some say another problem is Pelosi. The first female House speaker and a legendary vote wrangler, she was widely, if wrongly, blamed for a series of special-election defeats in the spring, even though Democrats fared far better than usual in places like Kansas and Georgia. A special election in June became less about the candidates than about the specter of Pelosi, whom Republicans cast as a puppet mistress for the Democratic nominee. … [Tim] Ryan’s long-shot bid to replace her as House Democratic leader won [only] 63 votes last year.

Part of Ryan’s pitch has been to put away the pitchforks and modulate the tone. “We cannot be a party that is hostile to business. We need those businesspeople to hire our people, who just want a shot,” Ryan fumes. “We can be business-friendly and still be progressive.” And while it puts him at odds with some peers, such arguments have also won him some unlikely fans. “The smart guys in the Democratic Party, they understand what’s going on. [Ohio Democratic Senator] Sherrod Brown gets this. Tim Ryan gets this.” Trump’s former chief strategist Stephen Bannon told 60 Minutes’ Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on Sept. 10. “The only question before us: Is it going to be a left-wing populism or a right-wing populism?” …

One only needs to look at the shuttered mom-and-pop businesses dotting Ryan’s district to see why voters were inclined to listen to Trump’s promises. Which is why Ryan is pushing plans to bring high-speed Internet to the farming communities and to recruit tech giants to the cheap real estate in local cities and towns.

On a Friday in late July, Ryan was padding through the Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s annual Italian festival in Youngstown. Simmering red sauce was heaped on polenta, and elephant ears layered with powdered sugar were matched with mostaccioli showered with ground Parmesan from plastic tubes. It was a throwback to a time when church socials defined communities. “These are my peeps,” Ryan says to no one in particular as voters swarm him. …

If Ryan has bigger ambitions to lead, he is not alone. A shadow campaign for the 2020 nomination is quietly taking shape in early-nominating states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Some of the most interesting names are unfamiliar ones. Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., visited Iowa in early September to check in. Jason Kander, the former Missouri secretary of state who is viewed as a rising party star, recruited a Sanders aide to stake out territory in Iowa and has announced plans to open offices for his voting-rights group in five states. …

“We have the next generation of Democratic leaders. We need to lift them up in the public eye,” says Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List, a group dedicated to electing women who support abortion rights. “This is not a party of one leader. It’s just not.”

Back in Youngstown, you can see the wheels spinning in Ryan’s head. He sees a role for a Midwesterner who can connect with the working-class voters who took comfort in Trump’s rage. Indeed, he thinks the Democrats’ future depends on it. “We can get the party back on track,” Ryan says as his SUV rolls away from a meeting with Ohio union chiefs. “Someone’s going to figure this out. Someone needs to.”

Now to take a view – not from disinterested Mars but – from the conservative Right.

What we see is a party riven by irreconcilable contradictions.

Its leaders are not just old but out of touch with the rising generation of “progressives”. Who will represent the women in pink pussy hats who cheer Hamas-supporting Linda Sarsour more enthusiastically than they did Hillary Clinton? The thousands of possible voters of all colors and ethnicities who march with Black Lives Matter and call for the killing of cops? The black students who are demanding black-only living quarters and graduation ceremonies in their colleges? And those – mostly white – who appear in black clothes and hoods and masks to set fires and smash windows and clobber Trump supporters in the name of “anti-fascism”?  The opponents of free speech?  The loud decriers – black brown and white – of “white privilege”? The SJWs – social justice warriors – who want guaranteed free everything from housing and meals to surgery and university, from condoms and marijuana to Teslas and abortions?

How will the lions of feminism lie down with the lambs of the burkha?

How will the Muslims who hate the Jews even more than they hate everyone else reconcile with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Bernie Sanders?

How will those rising “progressives” who want free stuff but hate whitey, accept the leadership of the only one offering it: Bernie? Whether as Democrat or Independent, would he be voted for by the free-goodies multitude who remain uncontaminated by knowledge of economics  – as an old white man?

How will the Congressional Party thrive when its House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, has declined all the way into her rapidly advancing senile dementia?

What store of riches will it plunder when it has taxed the rich into poverty?

How will it light, cool, warm, transport the people and keep their iPhones active on wind-power?

How will it use, and to what end, a House, a Senate, a White House, or any seat of government if it concedes to its strengthening lobby for the abolition of national borders?

How will it survive long enough to say “I told you so” when breathing driving manufacturing humans and flatulent cows heat up the planet to an unbearable extra degree or two in a hundred years’ time, if it allows Iran to become a nuclear power in a mere ten years or so?

Speed on, Tim Ryan, in your silver Chevy Suburban, popping fistfuls of almonds, to your Italian festivals; pad through basilicas; heap simmering red sauce on polenta, match elephant ears layered with powdered sugar with mostaccioli showered with ground Parmesan from plastic tubes!

Way to go – to political oblivion?

President Trump may have actually persuaded China to stop all financial transactions with North Korea.

According to the Washington Times –

Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin called the head of China’s central bank very early Thursday to alert him that Mr. Trump was preparing an executive order to sanction any financial institutions doing business with North Korea.  He asked for the cooperation of China, the main source of North Korea’s cash. Hours later, the People’s Bank of China announced it was directing all other banks in China to halt financial transactions with North Korea.

China is complying with US demands?

Will it really happen? Will the freeze last as long as it needs to?

Mnuchin said the sanctions will be more effective than previous efforts because Treasury now has the authority to “freeze or block any transactions, with any financial institution, anywhere in the world”. 

If the US Treasury now has that power and uses it fully, then this is, as the Washington Times report says, “a major diplomatic victory” for President Trump.

It will surely be impossible for Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian Communist regime to survive such sanctions. The regime has been almost wholly dependent on China, and only able to fund its missile and nuke arsenals because China supported it.

So this is an enormously important – as well as extremely dramatic – development in world affairs. Not only because it can defeat Kim Jong-un, but perhaps even more importantly, because it has brought China into compliance with America’s wishes.

If it really happens, it is a towering achievement of President Trump. 

How low, petty, foolish, and nasty the visible members of the Congressional Democratic Party and their media shills have become!

They shrink even smaller when contrasted with the huge figure that President Trump now appears on the world stage.

The tiny people on the Democratic side being so close to the ground that they cannot see higher than the shoes of the First Lady, make do with them to criticize. There’s contemporary political opposition for you!

Pathetic they plainly are. They are also naive. A bunch of them have been taken for a ride by a gang of Pakistani Muslim crooks. (See also seven articles about them here.)

And now it turns out that the Muslims crooks are not only conmen and conwomen; not only thieves; not only bank defrauders; not only in possession of heaps of confidential information about the United States Congress; not only potential or actual blackmailers; but at least one of them is also a slaver, polygamist, and sadist:

From the Daily Caller:

Women in relationships with Imran Awan, the indicted former IT aide for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have recently called Virginia law enforcement and alleged being abused by him, police reports obtained under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act show.

Officers found one of the women bloodied and she told them she “just wanted to leave,” while the second said she felt like a “slave,” according to Fairfax County Police reports … A third woman claimed she was being kept “in captivity”.

The third woman is Awan’s stepmother, Samina Gilani, who said in court documents that Awan invoked his authority as a congressional employee to intimidate immigrant women, in part by telling them he had the power to have people kidnapped.

All but two of the nearly two dozen Democratic women Awan worked for in the House declined to comment on the police reports.

Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, refused to fire Awan for months after his Feb. 2, 2017 banishment from the House computer network due to his being a suspect in a criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police into a major cybersecurity breach.

Wasserman Schultz said that “as a mother, a Jew, and a member of Congress,” she wanted to defend his rights, a sentiment echoed by Rep. Marcia Fudge, an Ohio Democrat. Rep. Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat. Wasserman Schultz also claimed allegations against Awan might stem from Islamophobia. All three women are Muslim.

The sentimental slop that fills their minds! No wonder they were taken advantage of by the Awan gang. Meekly and gratefully, with no doubt a sense of relief, they handed over their passwords – not knowing a thing about computers other than to barely make use of them, if that.

And now they are trying  to fudge the issue by claiming (as the Left always does) that they were doing it out of compassion – thinking of their exploiters as children who needed mothering, and because  … what? What could Debbie Wasserman Shultz mean by wanting “as a Jew” to defend their rights? One shudders to think what connections her synapses make between “being a Jew” and condoning theft, fraud, and cruelty. And “as a member of Congress”? Ah, yes. Congress = government = Big Mother to  the world, in particular to Muslims.

Awan’s attorney, Chris Gowen, a former aide to Bill and Hillary Clinton, has blasted journalists covering the investigation. The press “should be reminded that Imran Awan is a husband and a father, not a political pawn”, Gowen said. …

Neither of the other two women who complained are married to Awan, though both were apparently in relationships with him. Awan’s wife, Hina Alvi, worked as an IT aide for dozens of members of Congress, including Wasserman Schultz. The two women who called the police both lived in the same Alexandria, Va., complex but in different apartments for which Imran paid.

A crying Salam Chaudry called police in December 2015 to the Manitoba Apartment complex for a “domestic dispute”, according to a Fairfax County police report.

The investigating officer wrote that “Imran Awan was not supposed to live there and [Chaudry] wanted him to leave … It appeared that the two people were in a romantic relationship. Ms. Salam had a [redacted] [read wound – ed] that she said happened when she was doing dishes. Ms. Salam said she just wanted to leave and go to a shelter as she has no money. Ms. Salam has two children that were both at the residence both under the age of 8″.

The officer wrote that he “asked Ms. Salam why she was crying and calling police. Ms. Salam insisted nothing happened but that she wanted to leave. I went and spoke to Mr. Awan who quickly advised that he wanted to speak with a lawyer”. “I asked him about the small amount of dried blood that appeared to be on his left hand,” the officer wrote. “He stated that it was from when his ‘roommate’ was getting the phone from him … After he left, I stayed and spoke with Ms. Salam about getting a protective order.”

Samara Siddique told authorities in a July 18 …  that “her boyfriend treat her bad and keep her there like a slave … [she] wants him out of her life. Ms. Siddique wanted info on how to obtain a restraining order against him”.  The July 18 incident was the third time in less than a year police had responded to altercations between Siddique and Awan, once finding “small cut[s] on stomach and arm”.

The stepmother, Gilani, said … that after she had called the police, “Imran Awan showed up and threatened me for calling the police. Mr. Shahid Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police [he] will do harm to me and my family members back in Pakistan and one of my cousins here in Baltimore.”

She continued: “Imran Awan did admit to me that my phone is tapped and there are devices installed in my house to listen my all conversations … Imran Awan introduces himself as someone from US Congress or someone from federal agencies … Imran Awan manages to have police mobile based on his position in US congress or Federal Agencies to escort him during his visit to Pakistan.” …

Gilani claimed Siddique is Awan’s second wife by Pakistani law, but that he had taken her copy of the marriage license away from her in order to render her helpless.

Just the sort of person, this Imran Awan, whom Congressional Democrats would judge ideal for the job of looking after their information technology.

And they want to rule the country?

The historian H.W. Crocker III defies “political correctness” in praising the British Empire. We agree with him. (Though we are on the colonists’ side in the matter of the American Revolution.)

President Trump gave A GREAT SPEECH at the nefarious UN today: for the nation state, against “Islamic terrorism” (he used those very words), naming our enemies and warning them in strong terms …

Watch, and listen to it all. (As usual we politely disregard references to religion and “God”.)

https://youtu.be/3gqyPOuVHD0 

The text of the speech may be found here.

The UN must be destroyed!