China is a bad country 168

The coronavirus is Chinese. It comes from China.

President Trump is right to call it “the Chinese Virus”.

China is virulent. Infections seep out of it and poison the world.

Ann Coulter writes at Townhall:

Here’s a thought: While self-quarantining with their families in multimillion-dollar Manhattan co-ops, Wall Street wives ought to have a chat with their Master of the Universe husbands about China, globalism and political correctness. Those are the vectors of their robber-baron wealth.

Thanks to “globalism” – i.e., cheap goods from China – we’ve gotten many wondrous things, for example:

Toothpaste on American shelves made with a poison found in antifreeze;

Toxic Chinese drywall installed in about 100,000 U.S. homes, emitting noxious fumes that destroyed electrical wiring and metal fixtures and sickened homeowners. Replacement of the drywall, pipes and wiring cost Americans billions of dollars.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of American dogs killed by melamine-laced Chinese dog food in 2007.

The loss of about 200,000 beautiful maple trees lining the streets of small New England towns, eaten by Asian long-horned beetles that arrived on Chinese cargo ships in 1996. The U.S. taxpayer spends hundreds of millions of dollars to eradicate the repeated outbreaks that continue to this day, despite promises from the Chinese to do better.

Viral pandemics – H1N1 (from China), bird flu (from China), SARS (from China) and now the Wuhan virus (from China).

Is it really worth paying $3 for a T-shirt at Walmart, rather than $9? The precise reason Chinese goods are so cheap is that they skip the crucial quality-control step.

The media’s reaction to this latest pandemic out of China is to say …

Let’s get one thing straight: the Chinese have nothing to do with this! 

Well, like most animal-to-human viruses, this one did originate in China and then spread across the globe when Chinese tourists infected people in other countries. …

When the pandemic arrived, at least the World Health Organization leapt to action. First step: Find a cure? Develop a vaccine? Demand protections for the elderly?

NO!

WHO officials got together and worked on coming up with a new name for the “Wuhan virus” that sounded less Asian.

Next, the WHO put out a “Fact Sheet” to ensure that those with Kung Flu would not be stigmatized. It instructed:

DO talk about people “acquiring” or “contracting” #COVID-19.

DON’T talk about people “transmitting COVID-19”, “infecting others” or “spreading the virus” as it implies intentional transmission & assigns blame.

The WHO is a UN agency and therefore incurably corrupt, friendly to tyrannies, deceitful, anti-American, and evil through and through.

And therefore Americans on the Left appreciate it immensely.

Americans on the Left “think” that to be racist is much worse than to be a spreader of coronavirus:

As fear of the Chinese virus spread, Gloria Allred brought a lawsuit against a Los Angeles school for sending an Asian student to the school nurse after he coughed in class.

Americans are cowering in their homes. Airlines, restaurants, beaches, ski resorts, professional sports, colleges and stores have been shut down. But we must never violate the fundamental civil right of an Asian to cough in class and refuse to see the nurse!

The New York Times has also been on the racism beat, with these pressing stories:

As Chinese Grapple With a New Illness, an Old Stigma Is Revived

An Outbreak of Racist Sentiment as Coronavirus Reaches Australia

As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Sentiment

And there’s more!

Virus Fuels Anti-Chinese Sentiment Overseas

Coronavirus Outbreak Risks Reviving Stigma for China

… A few weeks ago – before a trillion dollars in wealth was destroyed by the coronavirus panic and we learned the real disease was racism – everyone, including the [New York] Times, admitted that the virus was brought to Italy by two Chinese tourists.

“[T]here had not yet been any confirmed cases in Italy,” the Times reported, “until Jan. 30, when the government announced the first two cases.” The scientific director of an infectious diseases hospital in Rome identified them: “Two Chinese tourists visiting Rome.”

[But then] the Times buried this fact in an article perversely titled: “Cruise Passengers Are Held at Italian Port in False Alarm Over Coronavirus.” On one hand, a bunch of cruise passengers were inconvenienced for 12 hours; on the other hand, a viral pandemic that could kill millions was introduced to Italy. You write the headline.

Lombardy is the Italian region most devastated by the Wuhan virus. As far back as 2003, a Library of Congress report cited Lombardy as having the highest concentration of Chinese immigrants in Italy. Our media refuses to tell us this fact today – or any day. …

According to the dire estimates of the Imperial College of London – whose assessment we are following – excepting those with underlying medical conditions, the new coronavirus is far less deadly than the seasonal flu to anyone under 60 years old. It’s no worse than the 2017-18 flu season for those in their 60s.

But it’s five to 10 times more deadly than the regular flu for those in their 70s and 80s, respectively.

We ought to surround old folks homes with the National Guard and call it a day. It would probably save more lives and wouldn’t destroy the economy.

But there’s no time to think about saving lives.

The important thing is to stamp out the idea that a virus that originated in China has anything to do China.

Because in truth it has everything to do with China.

Democrats object to that being said, not only because in their race-obsessed minds saying so is “racist”, but also because their policies for America are of a Chinese Communist kind.

The whole line of Democratic presidential candidates were for Communist policies: national health (death panel) service, open borders (for world Communist government), abortion on an industrial scale, leaving newborn babies to die, censoring news, disarming the citizens

John Nolte writes at Breitbart:

With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now?

Hey, we don’t know what’s going to happen with the coronavirus. What we do know, though, is that between last Sunday and this Sunday, things went from Zero to Crazy in one week: We shut down our economy, store shelves are empty or emptying, the president’s on television every day, and there’s serious talk of a national quarantine.

We are also learning, at a fairly rapid pace, how a pandemic operates, how a virus spreads, and how vulnerable we are to such things, and just how so many leftist ideas have made us even more vulnerable.

Just for a moment, close your eyes, and picture the establishment media’s and left’s (but I repeat myself) idea of The Virtuous American…

    • Virtuous American wakes up in a small efficiency apartment located in a densely populated high-rise, eco-friendly building where there’s no fresh air because you can’t open the windows. But all that recycled air ensures a perfect 72 degree lifestyle.
    • Virtuous American exits his high-rise building for a half-mile walk through Virtue City, which is teeming with people.
    • Along the way, Virtuous American stops at a coffee shop, which is packed with other Virtuous Americans, who are handing reusable, eco-friendly containers to a barista who fills everyone’s order without changing his gloves (to save plastic) or washing his hands (to save water).
    • Virtuous American rides to work in jam-packed subway car.
    • Virtuous American exits the subway and walks to work through a sanctuary city teeming with illegal aliens who have been allowed to sneak in from every foreign country and stay without being screened or tested.
    • Virtuous American goes to work in an urban high-rise building that is hermetically sealed to save energy, which means recycled air instead of fresh air… You can’t open the windows.
    • Throughout the day, Virtuous American sips water from a bacteria-infested reusable bottle (that he might have rinsed out with cold water a few days ago). He refills his environmentally friendly, reusable bottle from a centrally located, environmentally friendly dispenser everyone touches throughout the day.
    • For lunch, Virtuous American enters a crowded deli and orders food prepared and served by illegal aliens who have never been screened or tested.
    • On the way back to the office, Virtuous American digs into his man-purse and removes a bacteria-infested reusable straw (he or may not have run a little cold water through a couple of days ago) and pops it into his iced coffee while gingerly walking through a poopy homeless encampment because Virtue City’s building regulations protect Gaia.
    • After work, Virtuous American stops at the grocery store and fills his environmentally friendly bacteria-infested reusable cloth grocery bags (that he might have washed two weeks ago) with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Then the pandemic hits… And thanks to a dense population, crowded mass transit, recycled air, poopy streets, bacteria-infested (but environmentally friendly) cups, straws, bottles, and bags, it spreads like wildfire though Virtue City.

Will Virtuous American be laughing at McMansion American while looking for a place in that tiny (but environmentally friendly) apartment to store enough food and water for four weeks?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Gun-Nut American when tensions increase due to empty store shelves and the only thing between Virtuous American and I’m Taking All Your Shit American is a door made from 100% recycled paper products?

Will Virtuous American be laughing at Hick American who lives anywhere from 50 feet to 50 acres from any potential Possibly Infected American?

And what about Globalist American? When his parents can’t get their medications because they’re made in China, how funny is America First American looking now, pal?

And let’s not forget Social Justice American, the American who demands the Centers for Disease Control atomize its focus to include obesity and guns.

What do these environmental loons think? That the whole idea of disposable items was just for laughs? That single-use was developed by some Bond villain desperate to destroy the planet? That going out to the country for “fresh air” was just some quaint concept?

No, the reason disposable items became so popular was sanitation. What could be safer than removing a straw from a sealed paper sleeve? Those straws are now outlawed in California.

What could be safer than single-use grocery bags where you throw away that leaked meat juice instead of carrying it around until you finally throw the bags in the wash? Those single-use bags are now banned in eight states, including New York, whose ban took effect on March 1.

What could be safer than opening your own factory-sealed water bottle?

What could be more secure and safe than a home large enough to self-quarantine for two months and the firearms to protect it?

What could be smarter than not relying on China, a country that is infamous for being Pandemic Ground Zero, for our supply chains?

Why do you think we had immigrants funneled through Ellis Island? So we knew who was coming in. So we could give them a medical check, dumbass.

Oh, and by all means Medicare for All! Even as the private sector gears us up for the testing our government couldn’t handle, even as Democrat governors beg for more state autonomy to handle these health issues… By all means, it’s time to hand our health care over to the one-size-fits-all geniuses whose health care killed countless American veterans. 

But there was Joe Biden … promising that in the first 100 days of his administration the borders will be wide open.

And he’s going to pass tougher gun laws.

And he’s going to make us even more dependent on foreign oil.

And he doesn’t take the threat of China seriously.

And he opposes travel bans [even when they help to stop the spread of a disease].

And, and, and…

And no matter what happens, the Left will never, ever, ever change their ways or stop promoting their ideal of The Virtuous American.

*

Not only did the virus originate in China – the Chinese dictatorship went to some trouble to let it spread.

To emphasize China’s guilt we quote this, by Guy Benson writing at Townhall:

A recent study determined that if the Chinese government had listened to an early whistleblower and quickly initiated containment efforts, rather than punishing and censoring the information, cases in their country could have been reduced by up to 95 percent: “The early detection and isolation of cases was estimated to prevent more infections than travel restrictions and contact reductions, but integrated NPIs would achieve the strongest and most rapid effect. If NPIs could have been conducted one week, two weeks, or three weeks earlier in China, cases could have been reduced by 66%, 86%, and 95%, respectively, together with significantly reducing the number of affected areas.”

We are living through another grave legacy of Communism. That won’t do much to help alleviate our current immense health and economic challenges, and it doesn’t absolve western leaders of any accountability for poor decisions, but it’s still the truth.

Reward the bad and honor the worst 175

Many of the most celebrated American universities – Princeton, Harvard, Yale, for example – exclude applicants with records of exceptional academic achievement if they are Asian because there are too many such Asian applicants; if they are Jewish because the presence of Jews is an offense to Muslims and Muslim sympathizers; if they are white because the success of the white race makes other races feel oppressed; and if they are conservatives because they offend the Left. If these types were not excluded, the great institutions’ common policy of “diversity and inclusion” would be compromised.

Accepted are: students whose parents pay large bribes; students and staff who falsely claim membership of an ethnic minority; and – most valued – students and staff who are terrorist murderers or the children of terrorist murderers.

On the rewards to be found in a career as a terrorist murderer, we quote an article by Ann Coulter. (We often agree with her political observations, and we enjoy her wit. We generally overlook her devout Christianity. And she doesn’t talk about her faith here. The article is, however, tinged with anti-Semitism in sentences we have omitted.)

Ann Coulter writes at Breitbart:

If you’re looking for a shortcut to get your kid into a prestigious college, but your little one doesn’t have high enough cheekbones to claim to be an Indian, consider the petal-strewn path of the newly elected San Francisco district attorney, Chesa Boudin.

Chesa’s sparkling credentials are: He is the son of celebrated cop-killers Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert! That was enough to win him admission to Yale, Oxford, and Yale Law School.

His mother consciously parlayed her way to success by becoming a violent revolutionary after realizing that she wasn’t going to set the world on fire with her SAT and LSAT scores.

Poor Kathy couldn’t get into Oberlin — and then she couldn’t get into Yale Law. …

The only thing Kathy could do to impress her father — and our nation’s elite institutions — was to become a domestic terrorist.

It worked. Her parents showily displayed Kathy’s motorcycle helmet from her participation in the “Days of Rage” in Chicago. …

In addition to the “Days of Rage”, which left a Democratic politician paralyzed, Kathy was part of the Weather Underground brain trust that blew up a Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970, killing three of the radicals. The bomb they were building was intended to kill servicemen and their dates at a Fort Dix dance. With body parts flying and walls collapsing around her, Kathy made it out of the house one step ahead of the police.

Again, Kathy’s parents were delighted with the townhouse bombing. Her mother had always envied the owners for their wealth, anyway. Her father thought seeing his daughter on FBI “wanted” posters was “good for his legend”.

As luck would have it, going underground after the townhouse explosion finally gave Kathy an excuse to get a nose job. She also dyed her hair bright red, mimicking Bernadine Dohrn …

While Kathy and David play-acted being on the run, the FBI wasn’t even looking for them anymore. A newspaper in Wisconsin published David Gilbert’s whereabouts and — Oh my gosh … nothing happened. …

It was time for drastic action. Those LSAT scores weren’t going to bury themselves. So in 1981, Kathy conspired with violent drug-addicted members of the Black Liberation Army to rob a Brinks armored truck in Rockland County, New York. They wanted drug money and she wanted fame.

At the Nanuet Mall, her BLA co-conspirators murdered Brinks guard Peter Paige and wounded two others, then hopped in the getaway truck being driven by Kathy and David.

The truck was stopped by the police minutes later, but 38-year-old Kathy emerged from the truck’s cab, playing an innocent housewife, frightened by all the guns. She begged the perplexed police to lower their weapons. No sooner were their firearms holstered than six BLA members leapt out, guns blazing. They instantly killed the force’s only black officer, Waverly Brown. Sergeant Edward O’Grady died a few hours later on the operating table.

She’d done it. Kathy was a bona fide success! In jail, she received a string of celebrity visitors and fawning journalists. There would be documentaries, glorious write-ups, Oscar nominations, and poetry awards.

After decades of recounting her sufferings since the robbery that left Brown dead, Kathy was told that Brown’s son still attended the memorial service held for his father and Sgt. O’Grady at 4 p.m. every Oct. 20.

“Really?” Kathy said. “I never knew the guy had a son.”

According to our betters, that’s an “idealist.”

She was granted parole in 2003 — supported by none other than William F. Buckley. (The elites circle the wagons!) Soon she was a professor at Columbia University and director of the school’s Center for Justice.

That stands repeating: SOON THIS COLD-BLOODED TERRORIST MURDERER BECAME A PROFESSOR AT COLOMBIA UNIVERSITY AND DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL’S CENTER FOR JUSTICE.

These status-obsessed Yale rejects became “radicals” in order to win a lifetime of good press and cushy academic positions unavailable to them any other way.

Look at David Hogg, rejected from a half-dozen non-elite schools, only to be accepted by Harvard — all for raising his scrawny little arm in a preposterous one-arm salute after a speech denouncing the National Rifle Association. True, Hogg’s SAT score (1270) was far below that of the average Harvard student (1484). It was even below that of recruited athletes at Harvard (1297). But he had turned himself into a left-wing activist just in the nick of time. Harvard here I come!

The two “idealists” who raised Chesa Boudin were William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. On account of putting a bomb in the Pentagon, Ayers became a distinguished professor of education and senior university scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. For praising the Manson family and leading a group of protesters in a little ditty that mocked the government official paralyzed during the “Days of Rage” rampage, Dohrn was made a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.

Another leftist celebrity, Susan Rosenberg, had conspired to kill cops, blow up buildings and rob a Brinks truck; she was sentenced to 58 years in prison for felony murder and possession of more than 700 pounds of explosives. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

A couple years later, Rosenberg was offered a teaching position at Hamilton College. Apart from her fondness for bombs and cop-killing, Rosenberg’s credentials consisted of: a master’s degree in writing from a correspondence course in prison.

It’s one thing to say a person shouldn’t be punished for the sins of his parents. But America’s elite institutions treat cop-killing — even merely being the child of cop-killers — as the equivalent of being a star athlete or getting double-800s on your SATs.

No – with much more esteem than they treat Asian, Jewish, white and conservative applicants who gets double-800s on their SATs.  

Furious indignation is the only decent, civilized, humane response to this inversion of values now adopted and applied by America’s greatest intellectual institutions, news media, prize-giving panels and self-appointed guardians of virtue.

*

Post Script:

Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who told a monstrous lie in an effort to ruin the life and reputation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has been honored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California with an award for courage.

Seventeen victims of a demented ideology 180

The massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida, was carried out by the psychopath Nikolas Cruz. He was ably assisted by the incompetence of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Scott Israel. And it was also the result of a policy hatched and implemented by the Obama administration.

Daniel Horowitz writes at Conservative Review:

 It turns out that Broward County has been promoting a program … to incentivize local officials to do everything they can to keep juveniles out of jail. …

That’s what the Broward County “PROMISE” program (Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports & Education) did. Not prevent crimes, but prevent young criminals being punished by the law.

Broward County “had the highest number of school-related arrests statewide at 1,062” before Obama began his Common Core-style grant programs for local jailbreak agendas. Once millions of dollars were doled out for juvenile feel-good programs to avoid arrest, such as the PROMISE program, the number of arrests plummeted by 63 percent from 2011-2012 to the 2015-2016 school year. …

Every nook and cranny of the [Obama] federal government’s law enforcement and education programs are filled with a culture of leniency on crime. Up until the very last month of the Obama administration, the Department of Education, along with senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and former Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz, were promoting “the continuing need to rethink discipline.”

If there was ever an argument for abolishing the Department of Education, the growing concern over school violence and the role of the federal government in pressuring local communities to weaken their disciplinary standards should be the number one reason.

There is certainly [reason] to believe the particular leadership of Broward County was corrupt, incompetent, and even had ties to unindicted co-conspirators with Hamas. … Speaking at a mosque with his Hamas-supporting deputy, Nezar Hamze, Scott Israel said, “I have said over and over again, we have to measure the success of the Broward Sherriff’s office by the kids we keep out of jail, not by the kids we put in jail. We have to give our children second chances and third chances.” Or maybe 45 chances.

That was the number of times the police were called to criminal disturbances at the home of Nikolas Cruz. 45 times! And still he wasn’t arrested and charged.

Lest you think [Scott] Israel is uniquely radical, his statement is the gospel of the bipartisan leniency factions in almost every state.

Amazingly, the entire political class is attempting to expand these programs and apply them at a federal level as well, while decrying guns. Even Rep. Mark Walker, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, is mindlessly touting vague “criminal justice reform” initiatives as if they are a positive.

Where is the clamor, even on the Right, to end the “reform” of criminal justice rather than attack the Second Amendment? After all, you can’t target the guns going into the wrong hands if you don’t target “the wrong hands” in the first place. The irony is that the bipartisan criminal justice reform agenda will make any background checks moot, particularly for juveniles who escape the entire criminal justice system through programs set up with federal funds, local liberal judges, and Soros-backed NGOs designed to expunge their records and treat them outside the system.

The soft-on-crime crowd can’t have it both ways. They can’t seek tougher laws on guns while seeking lenient laws on the violent criminals. They can’t promote federal policies that incentivize or bully states into putting more names in a NICs database while promoting policies that encourage states to lock up as few criminals as possible. The entire criminal justice “reform” movement has created a culture, pressure, and incentive for cops and county governments to be as lenient as possible when it comes to incarcerating juveniles, the exact opposite of the cultural pressure from the past two decades.

Rather than pandering on gun control while simultaneously promoting jailbreak legislation, Republicans would do better to cut off all funding for jailbreak grant programs through the Department of Justice and Department of Education and call upon Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to rescind all Obama-era memorandums pressuring local school districts to change their methods of discipline.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline refers to, and quotes, the Horowitz article, and comments:

If law enforcement had retained discretion, there’s a good chance Cruz would have been arrested and/or committed. After all, the sheriff’s department received dozens of credible complaints against him. Some described his violent acts and tendencies, others his threats to shoot up the school. …

Cruz was expelled for bringing weapons to school. And when he got into a fight in September of 2016, he was referred to social workers rather than to the police. Similarly, when he allegedly assaulted a student in January 2017, it triggered a school-based threat assessment, but no police involvement.The Washington Post notes that Cruz “was well-known to school and mental health authorities and was entrenched in the process for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement“. …

Sheriff Scott Israel provides a perfect example of the new mentality — the culture of leniency.

Speaking at a mosque, he remarked:

I have said over and over again, we have to measure the success of the Broward Sherriff’s office by the kids we keep out of jail, not by the kids we put in jail. We have to give our children second chances and third chances.

 Unfortunately, Nikolas Cruz’s victims never even had a first chance.

The idea of measuring the success of a law enforcement agency by the number of people not in jail is sheer lunacy. The only valid measurements of success are (1) prevention of crime and (2) apprehension and successful prosecution of criminals. If, instead, we were to measure success by the number of people not in jail, then the most successful sheriffs would be the ones who didn’t arrest anyone, or at least any youths. And the logical way to build on that “success” would be to release those already in custody. …

It’s not enough to condemn Scott Israel as incompetent. His incompetence is only part of the story. The rest of the story is the culture of leniency, enshrined in federal policy, that encouraged Israel’s department to keep Nikolas Cruz free to kill.

And Ann Coulter writes at Townhall:

If Cruz had taken out full-page ads in the local newspapers, he could not have demonstrated more clearly that he was a dangerous psychotic. He assaulted students, cursed out teachers, kicked in classroom doors, started fist fights, threw chairs, threatened to kill other students, mutilated small animals, pulled a rifle on his mother, drank gasoline and cut himself, among other “red flags”.

Over and over again, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported Cruz’s terrifying behavior to school administrators, including Kelvin Greenleaf, “security specialist”,  and Peter Mahmood, head of [the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps] JROTC.

At least three students showed school administrators Cruz’s near-constant messages threatening to kill them — e.g., “I am going to enjoy seeing you down on the grass,” “Im going to watch ypu bleed,” “iam going to shoot you dead” — including one that came with a photo of Cruz’s guns. They warned school authorities that he was bringing weapons to school. They filed written reports.

Threatening to kill someone is a felony. …

If Cruz had been charged and jailed, not only would a dangerous criminal have been locked up for a while, but also …

Having a felony record would have prevented him from purchasing a gun. …

Cruz was never arrested. …

Of course, killjoys will say that removing the consequences of bad behavior only encourages more bad behavior. But that’s not the view of Learned Professionals, who took summer courses at Michigan State Ed School.

In a stroke of genius, they realized that the only problem criminals have is that people keep lists of their criminal activities. It’s the list that prevents them from getting into M.I.T. and designing space stations on Mars. Where they will cure cancer.

This primitive, stone-age thinking was made official Broward County policy in a Nov. 5, 2013, agreement titled “Collaborative Agreement on School Discipline.”

The first “whereas” clause of the agreement states that “the use of arrests and referrals to the criminal justice system may decrease a student’s chance of graduation, entering higher education, joining the military and getting a job.”

Get it? It’s the arrest – not the behavior that led to the arrest – that reduces a student’s chance at a successful life. (For example, just look at how much the district’s refusal to arrest Nikolas Cruz helped him!)

The agreement’s third “whereas” clause specifically cites “students of color” as victims of the old, racist policy of treating criminal behavior criminally. …

Just a few months ago, the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools, Robert W. Runcie, was actually bragging about how student arrests had plummeted under his bold leadership.

When he took over in 2011, the district had “the highest number of school-related arrests in the state”. But today, he boasted, Broward has “one of the lowest rates of arrest in the state.” By the simple expedient of ignoring criminal behavior, student arrests had declined by a whopping 78 percent. …

When it comes to spectacular crimes, it’s usually hard to say how it could have been prevented. But in this case, we have a paper trail. In the pursuit of a demented ideology, specific people agreed not to report, arrest or prosecute dangerous students like Nikolas Cruz.

These were the parties to the Nov. 5, 2013, agreement that ensured Cruz would be out on the street with full access to firearms:

Robert W. Runcie, Superintendent of Schools

Peter M. Weinstein, Chief Judge of the 17th Judicial Circuit

Michael J. Satz, State Attorney

Howard Finkelstein, Public Defender

Scott Israel, Broward County Sheriff

Franklin Adderley, Chief of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department

Wansley Walters, Secretary of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice

Marsha Ellison, President of the Fort Lauderdale Branch of the NAACP and Chair of the Juvenile Justice Advisory Board

Nikolas Cruz may be crazy, but the parties to that agreement are crazy, too. They decided to make high school students their guinea pigs for an experiment based on a noxious ideology. The blood of 17 people is on their hands.

And there will be many more victims of the noxious and demented ideology.

Bitter disappointment? 260

If President Trump:

Grants amnesty to illegal aliens

Does not build the Wall

Does not reduce taxes for all

Does not get Congress to repeal Obamacare

Does not tear up the Iran deal

Does not crush ISIS

Does not continue to call Islamic terrorism by its name

Does not move the US embassy in Israel to its capital Jerusalem

Does not put an end to Kim Jong-un

Does not put a stop to the investigation of his non-existent collusion with Russia

Does not insist that his Department of Justice indict known felons of the Clinton Foundation

Ditto of the IRS

Does not stop the State Department continuing Obama policies

Allows himself to continue being putty in the hands of McMaster and Kelly

Does not protect free speech

The 63 million people who voted for him, the thousands who applaud him at his rallies, and all who have put their hopes in him, will be bitterly disappointed.

 

Ann Coulter on amnesty at Townhall:

Donald Trump is being told that amnesty for “Dreamers,” or DACA recipients, will only apply to a small, narrowly defined group of totally innocent, eminently deserving illegal immigrants, who were brought to this country “through no fault of their own” as “children.” (Children who are up to 36 years old.)

Every syllable of that claim is a lie, and I can prove it. …

In 2005 — nearly 20 years after the 1986 amnesty — the Ninth Circuit was still granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens who claimed they had been unfairly denied because they were not in the country for the first amnesty. Seriously.

No matter how the law is written, as long as anyone is eligible for amnesty, everybody’s getting amnesty.

President Trump is the last president who will ever have a chance to make the right decision on immigration. After this, it’s over. The boat will have sailed.

If he succeeds, all the pussy-grabbing and Russia nonsense will burn off like a morning fog. He will be the president who saved the American nation, its character, its sovereignty, its core identity. But if he fails, Donald Trump will go down in history as the man who killed America.

Breitbart on the Wall:

President Donald Trump admitted that he wasn’t actually going to build a great new wall on the southern border but repair existing fences and build selective strategic border structures.

[Yet] “The WALL, which is already under construction in the form of new renovation of old and existing fences and walls, will continue to be built,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning.

Politico on no tax relief for “the rich”:

President Donald Trump declared Wednesday that the rich won’t be getting richer under his administration’s tax plan and even signaled a willingness to raise taxes on the wealthy.

“The rich will not be gaining at all with this plan,” he told reporters ahead of a meeting with a bipartisan group of House members at the White House.

NBC reports on Obamacare repeal failure (so not the president’s fault?):

Obamacare stays. For now.

Senate Republicans failed to pass a pared-down Obamacare repeal bill early Friday on a vote of 49-51 that saw three of their own dramatically break ranks.

Three Republican senators — John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — and all Democrats voted against the bill, dealing a stinging defeat to Republicans and President Donald Trump who made repeal of Obamacare a cornerstone their campaigns.

The late-night debate capped the GOP’s months-long effort to fulfill a seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

ABC News reports on maintaining the Iran deal: 

The Trump administration is poised to extend sanctions relief to Iran, avoiding imminent action that could implode the landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

But the move expected Thursday comes as the White House seeks ways to find that Tehran is not complying with the agreement. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized the deal, but has yet to pull out of it.

Trump is working against a Thursday deadline to decide whether to extend the sanctions waivers, which were first issued by the Obama administration.

In exchange for Tehran rolling back its nuclear program, the U.S. and other world powers agreed to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy.

Administration officials say Trump is ready to extend the waivers and that no serious alternatives have been presented.

The American Center on Law and Justice reports on the spread of ISIS:

ISIS is spreading, just like they promised.

Six months ago we warned that “the need to defeat ISIS is not a problem isolated to Iraq and Syria. It is, indeed, an international concern.” As Iraqi President Fuad Masum observed in 2014, “the whole world is realizing that this is not an ordinary enemy with small ambitions. ISIS is a cancer that can spread very quickly.” And spreading it is.

ISIS is on the move and is expanding into Southeast Asia.  One U.S. intelligence official explained that ISIS “harbors global ambitions and seeks to expand its influence in Southeast Asia by cultivating a network of adherents and supporters”.

Breitbart deplores President Trump’s failure to use the word “Islamic” to describe Islamic terrorism:

On the sixteenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, President Donald Trump did not once mention the terms “radical Islam” or “Islamic terrorism” during a commemoration ceremony at the Pentagon.

The Financial Times reports on President Trump’s failure to move the US embassy to Jerusalem:

Donald Trump has decided not to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, marking a reversal of one of the president’s core campaign pledges. Mr Trump issued a waiver to a congressional requirement to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. Congress in 1995 mandated that the US diplomatic mission in Israel be moved to Jerusalem, but Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama all signed repeated six-month waivers postponing the move for national security reasons.

On regime change in North Korea:

Dr. Sebastian Gorka – Trump Not Interested In Regime Change In North Korea (video).

USA today reports that trump will not fire “special counsel” Robert Mueller:

President Trump said he does not intend to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, whose federal investigation into Russia’s election meddling he frequently denounces as a “witch hunt” or a “hoax.”

Breitbart reports on FBI investigations of the Clinton Foundation (on this one there seems to be some cause for hope, but it is not strong):

Fox News Special Report anchor Bret Baier reports that two sources with “intimate knowledge” of the Clinton Foundation FBI investigation say that an indictment is “likely” down the road in the case.

“I pressed again and again on this very issue, and these sources said, ‘Yes, the investigations will continue,’” if Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump on election day, Baier said Wednesday night. His sources added, as he said, “There is a lot of evidence.”

“And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they’ll continue to likely an indictment,” Baier said.

Baier made the bombshell announcement in an appearance with his fellow anchor on Brit Hume’s program On The Record, after earlier on his own program breaking the news that the FBI was indeed investigating the Clinton Foundation and the investigation was expansive, wide-reaching, and has gone on for a year.

PowerLine comments on the DIJ’s decision not to prosecute Lois Lerner for her IRS crimes:

The Trump Justice Department has decided not to prosecute Lois Lerner for her leading role in the IRS targeting scandal. The Obama Justice Department made that call in 2015, but House Republicans asked the Trump administration to take a fresh look.

Having done so, the Justice Department today notified members of Congress that it will not alter the Obama administration’s decision.

Breitbart reports on Tillerson’s State Department continuing Obama’s policies:

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has presided over a department … eager to contradict statements out of the White House or other agencies of the executive government. Below are seven of the strangest, most contradictory, and often baffling statements and actions from the State Department and the nation’s top diplomat.

U.S. Denies Millions in Funding to Egypt over ‘Human Rights’ Concerns [offends President al-Sisi who opposes the Muslim Brotherhood and is regarded as a friend by President Trump].

State Department Welcomes Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Group [to the State Department]

Tillerson Soft on Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran During Confirmation Hearing

Tillerson Signs Climate Change Provisions, Including Commitment to Paris Agreement [from which President Trump withdrew]. 

State Department Refusing to Withdraw Presence in Cuba After Sonic Attacks

Tillerson to North Korea Following Missile Test: ‘We Are Not Your Enemy’

Tillerson: “Trump and I Have Differences of Views on Iran Deal”

PJ Media reports that McMaster yells at Israeli defense officials and denies Hizbollah is a terrorist organization:

During the week of August 27, an Israeli delegation met with members of the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House to discuss the current threat to Israel by the terror group Hezbollah.

Israel believes this threat is currently dire. This meeting preceded a two-week long Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) exercise to rehearse for possible war with Hezbollah. The Jerusalem Post described this exercise, which commenced on September 4 and is ongoing, as the IDF’s largest in 20 years.

Hezbollah has been a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997. However, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster brought NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism Mustafa Javed Ali to the White House meeting with Israel. Ali, a McMaster appointee, is described by a senior administration source as being “opposed to Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization”. 

What then transpired at the meeting has been confirmed to PJ Media by several administration sources, by members of non-governmental organizations involved in national security, and by a source within the Israeli government.

The Israeli delegation demanded that Mustafa Javed Ali leave the room.

This demand was made despite the clear likelihood that Ali would later be privy to the meeting’s materials and discussion. As such, sources speculated that Israel intended the demand to serve as a message to President Trump that McMaster’s behavior has constituted a subversion of Trump’s stated Middle East policy. None of the several sources were aware if Trump had been made aware of the incident.

As has been widely reported, Trump’s Chief of Staff General Kelly has instituted tight restrictions on information and contacts reaching the president. Additionally, Kelly has been said to be working closely with General McMaster on issues related to the flow of information within the administration.

Friction between General McMaster and the Israeli delegation did not end with Israel’s demand that Ali leave the room.

Sources reported that McMaster went on to explicitly dismiss the Israelis’ specific concerns about Hezbollah.

In particular, the Israelis expressed concern that the “safe zone” currently being established within Syria — an idea that had been vociferously supported by Hezbollah’s sponsor, Iran — would immediately become a safe zone for Hezbollah to operate.

McMaster was said to “blow off” this major Israeli concern, and to be “yelling at the Israelis” during the meeting. …

I put the responsibility on Mr. Trump. With regard to radical Islam, he simply seems to have lost interest.

Yet senior administration sources are far less charitable about McMaster and his appointee Mustafa Javed Ali. … They described Ali as taking the breathtaking position that Hezbollah should not be a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizationThey described Ali as holding the same view regarding the Muslim Brotherhood.

They claimed Ali’s work within the NSC essentially amounts to her attempting to prevent the Trump administration from using any of the means at its disposal to target Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood as organizations. …

These are recognizable as Obama-era policies – the “smart set” foreign policy strategies behind the Obama administration’s disastrous “Countering Violent Extremism” programs. This is the thinking that marched the Middle East to bloody catastrophe: a half-million dead in Syria.

Yet General McMaster appointed Ali as NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism, and purged the NSC of voices supporting President Trump’s Mideast agenda. Then McMaster reportedly sat Ali in front of an Israeli delegation visiting the White House to share its concerns about Hezbollah.

Raheem Kassam on free speech and Trump being overMcMastered at Breitbart:

Many Americans don’t seem to appreciate as much as outside admirers do, that the United States is the only country in the world with a commitment to free speech enshrined in the nation’s Constitution. Many nations do not even have codified constitution of which to speak.

Which is why it is almost more egregious to the outsider than the American that such protections are under assault, not just on the streets of Berkeley or Charlottesville, but in your legislature — and soon in your Oval Office.

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmedPresident Trump would “absolutely” be signing a resolution drafted by Republican and Democrat lawmakers “condemning” hatred.

“He and Senator Tim Scott talked about that and discussed that and agreed that that was the appropriate place to be,” Sanders said. “In terms of whether or not he’ll sign the joint resolution, absolutely, and he looks forward to doing so as soon as he receives it.”

But the resolution is manifestly a ruse — the first line of attack in a new wave of assaults against free speech in America.

Let’s examine what the motion, passed by both legislative chambers early this week, says.

The preamble, in addition to expressing “support for the Charlottesville community,” demands of the President that he rejects “White nationalists, White supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and other hate groups” and urges him and his cabinet to “use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups”.

From the outset this is disingenuous and troublesome.

The President has already disavowed these groups, including Neo Nazis and the KKK. Why are elected members, alongside the White House, wasting time virtue signaling over it?

Perhaps because it backs POTUS into a corner, especially when you consider many establishment media organizations call his former Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon — who has mocked and derided ethno-nationalists — a “white nationalist” or “white supremacist”. This week, ESPN even let one of its hosts off with no more than a slapped wrist for suggesting the President himself was a “white supremacist”.

So by whose definitions are we going? And what exactly does “use all available resources” mean?

The President and his cabinet ostensibly have all resources available to them. The U.S. military, trillions of dollars, three and a half years of power. To what is the President subscribing? …

The U.S. Constitution is perfectly clear on this too. No matter how vile your views — as those of the KKK and Neo Nazi groups are — you still have a right to express them in America.

The five page document the President is now committed to signing refers to violence on the side of Neo Nazi protesters, but fails to mention Antifa, or any other leftist-inspired violence, including but not limited to the Bernie Sanders supporter who recently attempted to murder Republican congressmen.

It demands signatories “speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy” — laudable aims were it not for the fact that the political left has abused and debased these terms, effectively stripping them of all meaning.

Today, a “racist” is someone who believes in legal immigration. An “extremist” is someone who doesn’t believe in mass, state-funded abortion. A “xenophobe” is someone who takes pride in their nation. An “anti-Semite” is — curiously — someone who supports the State of Israel, and “white supremacy” now occupies the Oval Office. …

Speaking of Islamophobia, why has that been left out of this resolution? Will there be — as Islamic supremacists often demand — a special case and motion for Muslims alone, to go before the President later this year? Will the White House be equally excited to sign what would effectively be a blasphemy law?

Perhaps the most insidious part of this document comes right at the end, where the President will accede to ensuring “the heads of other Federal agencies… improve the reporting of hate crimes and… emphasize the importance of the collection, and… reporting to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of hate crime data by State and local agencies”.

Given the precedent set in Europe for the monitoring and prosecution of so-called “hate crimes”, it should be of gravest concern that the White House has been so readily bounced into endorsing the idea of limiting speech and the freedom of assembly.

Has President Trump given up?

Does he not want a second term?

Have the Left and Islam won?

Is Trump “killing America”?

The scoffers who must now eat crow 87

Trump supporters, enjoy!

Posted under Humor by Jillian Becker on Sunday, November 13, 2016

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Who’re you calling a racist? 14

Straight White Men banned From Equality Conference reads a headline. And the article contains the declaration: “One cannot deny the privileges that straight white men have in today’s society.”

Can’t one? What are they exactly? They are not named. But let’s assume the statement is true. Who grants those privileges? Is there a body, a committee, a secret cabal, that allots them? Is it the Bilderbergers? The Elders of Zion? A convention of Harvard finals clubs? The Finnish Sons of Odin? PEGIDA? The Pacific-Union Club of San Francisco? Or “God”?

Or is White Privilege a specter conjured up by the imagination of the envious, the resentful, the grudging, the failing, the self-pitying and the paranoid? All of them would see success as “privilege”.

It is the “white” as accusation that gives the clue.

The specter has been conjured up by racists. America wanted so much to make up for a past of race discrimination that it elected a totally unqualified black president. And the black president has deliberately made race a stinging issue throughout the land.

A most unintended consequence. An unforeseen development. An enormous irony.

“Racist!” is now considered the worst of insults. Of course anyone can hurl it at anyone just to be nasty. It’s a cuss word. It needs no cause in the speech or behavior of the accused.

But in the unwritten lexicon of political correctness authored and held under continual review by the Left; in the abstract agoras of popular discourse – the media, both mainstream and social; in the institutions of higher learning, where the deep thinkers are – the academies; in the universal legislature of fashionable opinion – Hollywood, it is the law that only Whites can be “racist”.

And the worst of Whites are Republicans. And the worst of Republicans is Donald Trump. Ergo, Donald Trump is the worst racist.

Yet try as they might, the Left, the media, the professoriate and its furious disciples, the propagandists of the entertainment industry cannot find anything useful that Trump has said against Blacks.

However …

Ann Coulter writes:

Annoyed at federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel’s persistent rulings against him in the Trump University case (brought by a law firm that has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches by Bill and Hillary), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that maybe it’s because the judge is a second-generation Mexican immigrant.

The entire media — and most of the GOP — have spent 10 months telling us that Mexicans in the United States are going to HATE Trump for saying he’ll build a wall. Now they’re outraged that Trump thinks one Mexican hates him for saying he’ll build a wall.

Curiel has distributed scholarships to illegal aliens. He belongs to an organization that sends lawyers to the border to ensure that no illegal aliens’ “human rights” are violated. The name of the organization? The San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association – “La Raza” meaning THE RACE.

Let’s pause to imagine the nomination hearings for a white male who belonged to any organization for white people – much less one with the words “THE RACE” in its title.

The media were going to call Trump a racist whatever he did, and his attack on a Hispanic judge is way better than when they said it was racist for Republicans to talk about Obama’s golfing.

Has anyone ever complained about the ethnicity of white judges or white juries? I’ve done some research and it turns out … THAT’S ALL WE’VE HEARD FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS.

The New York Times alone has published hundreds of articles, editorials, op-eds, movie reviews, sports articles and crossword puzzles darkly invoking “white judges” and “all-white” juries, as if that is ipso facto proof of racist justice.

Two weeks ago – that’s not an error; I didn’t mean to type “decades” and it came out “weeks” – the Times published an op-ed by a federal appeals judge stating: “All-white juries risk undermining the perception of justice in minority communities, even if a mixed-race jury would have reached the same verdict or imposed the same sentence.”

In other words, even when provably not unfair, white jurors create the “perception” of unfairness solely by virtue of the color of their skin. …

I have approximately 1 million … examples of the media going mental about a “white judge” or “all-white jury”, and guess what? In none of them were any of the white people involved members of organizations dedicated to promoting white people, called “THE RACE”. …

The model of a fair jury was the O.J. [Simpson] trial. Nine blacks, one Hispanic and two whites, who had made up their minds before the lawyers’ opening statements. (For my younger readers: O.J. was guilty; the jury acquitted him after 20 seconds of deliberation.) At the end of the trial, one juror gave O.J. the black power salute. Nothing to see here. It was [police officer] Mark Fuhrman’s fault!

In defiance of everyday experience, known facts and common sense, we are all required to publicly endorse the left’s religious belief that [male] whites are always racist, but women and minorities are incapable of any form of bias. …

At least when we’re talking about American blacks, there’s a history of white racism, so the double standard is not so enraging. What did we ever do to Mexicans? Note to Hispanics, Muslims, women, immigrants and gays: You’re not black.

Other than a few right-wingers, no one denounced now-sitting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her “wise Latina” speech, in which she said “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging”.

But Trump is a “racist” for saying the same thing.

Six months ago, a Times editorial demanded that the Republican Senate confirm Obama judicial nominee Luis Felipe Restrepo, on the grounds that “as a Hispani”, Restrepo would bring “ethnic … diversity to the court”.

You see how confusing this is. On one hand, it’s vital that we have more women and Latinos on the courts because white men can’t be trusted to be fair. But to suggest that women and Latinos could ever be unfair in the way that white men can, well, that’s “racist”.

The effrontery of this double standard is so blinding, that the only way liberals can bluff their way through it is with indignation. DO I HEAR YOU RIGHT? ARE YOU SAYING A JUDGE’S ETHNICITY COULD INFLUENCE HIS DECISIONS? (Please, please, please don’t bring up everything we’ve said about white judges and juries for the past four decades.)

They’re betting they can intimidate Republicans – and boy, are they right! The entire Republican Brain Trust has joined the media in their denunciations of Trump for his crazy idea that anyone other than white men can be biased. … 

The NeverTrump crowd is going to get a real workout if they plan to do this every week between now and the election.

What do Republicans think they’re getting out of this appeasement? Proving to voters that elected Republicans are pathetic, impotent media suck-ups is, surprisingly, not hurting Trump.

We appreciate Coulter’s sarcasm. It’s not surprising at all, of course. The more the Republican establishment attacks Trump – led in the outcry by Speaker Paul Ryan who says Trump’s objection to Judge Curiel is “textbook racism” – the more votes Trump can be sure of getting.

Posted under Race by Jillian Becker on Thursday, June 9, 2016

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Please, America – no more Mr Nice Guy 81

Ann Coulter, a woman of wonderful wit and intelligence even though a creationist, sensibly ignores the Christian teaching that you must not resist evil, must love your enemies, and must provide for everyone else’s needs before your own, and writes at Townhall:

For decades, the United States has taken in far more refugees than the entire rest of the world combined. Nearly half of the refugees we take in are Muslim.

And it’s worked out great!

Fazliddin Kurbanov, or “Idaho man,” as he is dutifully described in the American media, was brought to the U.S. as a refugee in 2009, joining hundreds of other Uzbeks in Boise, Idaho. He came with his wife and young child, his sister and his two ailing parents. (What an economic powerhouse that family must be. Marco Rubio is right: We’re making all kinds of money off of immigrants!)

So grateful was Kurbanov to America for rescuing his entire family from “persecution” that he spent the next few years conspiring to commit jihad against us.

As he cheerfully told his terrorist buddies back in Uzbekistan: “We are the closest ones to infidels. We have almost everything. What would you say if, with the help of God, we implement a martyrdom act? … There are military installations right here, targets, and vehicles are available as well.”

Kurbanov had plenty of time on his hands to plot terrorist attacks in the U.S. because he was being supported by you, taxpayer. As the Lewiston Morning Tribune (Idaho) reported: He was “struggling” to find a job – preferably something that involved either marketing or killing all the Jews.

Last month, Kurbanov was convicted of various terrorism charges, based on his possession of Tannerite, ammonium nitrate, bullets and aluminum powder, as well as his stated intention, in conversations recorded by the FBI, to bomb military bases in Idaho and Texas.

For the cherry on top, the whole welfare-dependent, Islamic terrorist-nurturing family won refugee status in America by claiming they were persecuted in Uzbekistan for being Christians.

I am 100 percent sure there will be no thought given to deporting the rest of this useless family. To the contrary, we’re probably bringing in their cousins. You wouldn’t want to separate families, would you? …

The Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had received asylum in the U.S., before launching the 2013 attacks that left four dead and thousands injured in Boston. That’s not including the three Jewish men whose throats Tamerlan slit in Waltham, Massachusetts, a few years earlier.

The entire extended Tsarnaev family got asylum based on Russia’s brutal crackdown on Chechnyan Muslims – persecution so unspeakable that various family members continued to vacation there.

Hundreds of “refugees” from Somalia and elsewhere, who have been granted fast-track U.S. citizenship because of their sworn fear of persecution in their home countries, seem to forget all about that “credible fear” as soon as the time comes to go back and engage in jihad. …

And the list goes on …

She gives more examples of “refugees” avenging themselves on the US for giving them asylum and and money.

She concludes:

Even the refugees who don’t specifically come here to murder Americans aren’t fleeing persecution. They’re fleeing countries with less generous welfare policies than we have in the West. Which won’t exist anymore, if we don’t turn off the spigot from the Third World.

For at least half a century, the U.S. has taken in the vast majority of the world’s refugees. Isn’t it somebody else’s turn, now?

How about Mexico take in a few “refugees”? Why not El Salvador or Honduras? Could the pope have a word with his co-religionists about the suffering in Syria? How about Vatican City? Talk about the perfect place to build some low-income housing projects!

Yes! We applaud the suggestion. We’d love to see the Vatican itself take in many thousands of Muslim refugees.

But to some uncomfortable facts, Coulter turns a blind eye. She writes in the same article:

Among the benefits of Donald Trump’s proposed immigration moratorium is that we won’t have to keep importing hordes of Third World “refugees,” such as the ones currently swarming across Europe.

Perhaps she wrote that before Trump said on Fox News Channel – displaying a humanitarian side to him which few would have suspected he had –  that “the United States will have to accept some of the refugees fleeing the chaos in Syria”.

Appearing Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor, Trump said he does worry that –

Some in the group could be terrorists and a screening process will be needed. But something has to be done. It’s an unbelievable humanitarian problem.

Yet he knows that “the rise in Europe of Middle Eastern immigrants has made the continent a much different place”.

“I’m not sure that’s what they want,” he added, but stressed that the refugees can’t be ignored on humanitarian grounds.

He blamed the crisis on President Barack Obama, who said in 2012 that Syrian President Basher Assad would cross a “red line” if he used chemical weapons. When Assad crossed the line, Obama did nothing.

Trump said he would have taken action against Assad.

“But, you know, it’s living in hell in Syria, there is no question about it,” Trump said.

It’s a living hell that the Syrians have made for themselves.

Truly the Christian world and the Islamic world are made (by themselves) for each other. At least in theory, the Christian wants to give, forgive, and suffer uncomplainingly at the hands of persecutors. Muslims want to persecute, enslave, kill, conquer, and seize all they can lay their hands on. If there were a heaven, and if matches were made in it, this would be the most perfect of them all.

Firing with enthusiasm 69

We have one huge difference of opinion (as well as quite a few small ones) with Ann Coulter: she is a Christian, we dislike and oppose all religion.

But we often agree with her on political issues, and we relish her irony for which she has a gift.

She writes:

Earlier this week, Mitt Romney got into trouble for saying, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” To comprehend why the political class reacted as if Romney had just praised Hitler, you must understand that his critics live in a world in which no one can ever be fired — a world known as “the government.”  …

Romney’s statement about being able to fire people was an arrow directed straight to the heart of Obamacare. …Talking about insurance providers, he said:

“I want individuals to have their own insurance. That means the insurance company will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don’t like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me a good service that I need, I want to say I’m going to go get someone else to provide that service to me.”

Obamacare, you will recall, will be administered by the same people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles. They will operate under the same self-paced, self-evaluated work rules that have made government offices the envy of efficiency specialists everywhere.

And no one will be able to fire them — unless they’re caught doing something truly vile and criminal, such as stealing from patients in nursing homes.

Oops, I take that back: Government employees who rob the elderly also can’t be fired.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that, after a spate of burglaries at a veterans hospital in California several years ago, authorities set up video cameras to catch the perpetrators. In short order, nurse’s aide Linda Riccitelli was videotaped sneaking into the room of 93-year-old Raymond Germain as he slept, sticking her hand into his dresser drawer and stealing the bait money that had been left there. Riccitelli was fired and a burglary prosecution initiated. A few years later, the California Personnel Board rescinded her firing and awarded her three-years back pay. The board dismissed the videotape of Riccitelli stealing the money as “circumstantial.”

But surely we’ll be able to fire a government employee who commits a physical assault on a mentally disturbed patient? No, wrong again.

Psychiatric technician Gregory Powell was working at a government center for the mentally retarded when he hit a severely disturbed individual with a shoe so hard that the impression of the shoe’s sole was visible on the victim three hours later. A psychologist who witnessed the attack said the patient was cowering on the couch before being struck. Powell was fired, but, again, the California Personnel Board ordered him rehired.

Now, let’s turn to New York City and look for any clues about why it might be the highest-taxed city in the nation.

For years, the New York City school budget included $35 million to $65 million a year to place hundreds of teachers in “rubber rooms,” after they had committed such serious offenses that they were barred from classrooms. Teachers accused of raping students sat in rooms doing no work all day, still collecting government paychecks because they couldn’t be fired.

After an uproar over the rubber rooms a few years ago, Michael Bloomberg got rid of the rooms. But the teachers still can’t be fired.

Wherever there is government, there is malfeasance and criminality — and government employees who can never be fired.

In 2010, 33 employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission — half making $100,000 to $200,000 per year — were found to have spent most of their workdays downloading Internet pornography over a five-year period. (Thank goodness there were no financial shenanigans going on then, so the SEC guys had plenty of time on their hands.) One, a senior lawyer at SEC headquarters in Washington, D.C., admitted to spending eight hours a day looking at Internet pornography, sometimes even “working” through his lunch hour. Another admitted watching up to five hours a day of pornography in his office. …  Not one of the porn-surfing employees of the SEC was fired.

In 2009, the inspector general of the National Science Foundation was forced to abandon an investigation of grant fraud when he stumbled across dozens of NSF employees, including senior management, surfing pornographic websites on government computers during working hours. A senior official who had spent 331 workdays talking to fully or partially nude women online was allowed to resign (but was not fired). I hope they gave him his computer as a parting gift.

The others kept their jobs — including an NSF employee who had downloaded hundreds of pornographic videos and pictures and even developed pornographic PowerPoint slide shows. (And you thought PowerPoint presentations were always boring.) …

These are the people who are going to be controlling your access to medical services if Obamacare isn’t repealed. There will be only one insurance provider, and you won’t be able to switch, even if the service is lousy (and it will be). 

Obamacare employees will spend their days surfing pornography, instead of approving your heart operation. They can steal from you and even physically assault you. And they can never be fired. 

That’s one gargantuan difference with “Romneycare” right there: If you don’t like what your insurer is doing in Massachusetts, you can get a new one.

Nothing much to quarrel with there. Only we don’t think there’s anything to be said for “Romneycare” or any government-run medical services, actual or conceivable.

Armed with apologies and shielded with hope 9

No satire could surpass the reality of the Obama administration’s stupid pretense that the attempt by the Muslim terrorist, Faisal Shahzad, to set off a car bomb in New York had nothing to do with Islam’s jihad against America and the whole non-Muslim world.

Ann Coulter – whom we like for making us laugh, though we stop our ears when she beats her Christian drum – writes here about the administration’s non-existent strategy for combating terrorism while refusing to notice the common motivation of the terrorists.

Extract:

It would be a little easier for the rest of us not to live in fear if the president’s entire national security strategy didn’t depend on average citizens happening to notice a smoldering SUV in Times Square or smoke coming from a fellow airline passenger’s crotch.

But after the car bomber and the diaper bomber, it has become increasingly clear that Obama’s only national defense strategy is: Let’s hope their bombs don’t work!

If only Dr. Hasan’s gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.

The administration’s fingers-crossed strategy is a follow-up to Obama’s earlier and less successful “Let’s Make Them Love Us!” plan.

In the past year, Obama has repeatedly apologized to Muslims for America’s “mistakes.” …

He has apologized to the entire Muslim world for the French and English colonizing them — i.e. building them flush toilets.

He promised to shut down Guantanamo. And he ordered the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to be tried in the same courthouse that tried Martha Stewart.

There was also Obama’s 90-degree-bow tour of the East and Middle East. For his next visit, he plans to roll on his back and have his belly scratched like Fido.

Despite favorable reviews in The New York Times, none of this put an end to Islamic terrorism.

So now, I gather, our only strategy is to hope the terrorists’ bombs keep fizzling. …

If our only defense to terrorism is counting on alert civilians, how about not bothering them before they board airplanes, instead of harassing them with useless airport “security” procedures?

Both of the attempted bombers who sailed through airport security, I note, were young males of Middle Eastern descent. I wonder if we could develop a security plan based on that information? …

Who on earth made the decision to allow Shahzad the unparalleled privilege of becoming a U.S. citizen in April 2009?

Our “Europeans Need Not Apply” immigration policies were absurd enough before 9/11. But after 19 foreign-born Muslims, legally admitted to the U.S., murdered 3,000 Americans in New York and Washington in a single day, couldn’t we tighten up our admission policies toward people from countries still performing stonings and clitorectomies?