Holy War at Home - Andrew Klavan

September 23rd, 2013  

It’s hard for me to believe there is anyone who calls himself a God-fearing, red-blooded American patriot who hasn’t read my novel Empire of Lies, but just in case: there’s a scene toward the end where the protagonist is interviewed on TV about Islamic terrorism — and makes the mistake of speaking plainly. He wonders aloud if maybe we are not engaged in a holy war to determine which image of God will win out. Of course, all politically correct hell breaks loose and he becomes a social pariah.

I remembered this scene this past week when it very much seemed to me that two of the sides in this holy war each opened fire in its own particular way. On the one hand, the Islamists slaughtered Christians and others in Pakistan and Kenya. On the other, the new pope gave an interview in which he expressed a fresh and beautiful vision of God’s merciful love for his human creation. Hey, from each according to his philosophy, as Karl Marx might have said if he had been right about anything.

Almost equally interesting was the reaction of the western media to these events: they did everything they could to mis-represent them both in context and in themselves. According to the Media Research Center, major media tied themselves in knots to keep from conveying the news that the attacks in a Nairobi mall and a Peshawar church were the work of Islamists. Journalists know that religion may be criticized as a retrograde and violent force in the world, but when a religion is criticized it can only be Christianity. That’s a central tenet of the journalistic religion! Which is Stupidity.

As for the Pope Francis interview, in a headline that looked as if the MSM were doing a satire of themselves, the New York Times, a satire of itself, announced dishonestly, “Pope Says Church Is Obsessed With Gays, Abortion and Birth Control.” Like, yeah, that’s what the pope really said. We believe you, New York Times. Cause you so smart. Idiots.

Anyway, the pope’s remarks did cause a bit of a furore, with leftists lamenting that Francis had almost burned the Bible but, damn it, not quite, and conservatives worried that the man was showing liberalizing tendencies and some Catholics trying to pretend that it was all business as usual…  none of which actually got at the freshness, depth and compassion of the papal remarks themselves. The pope held up the individual human and his relationship with his loving heavenly father above rules and regulations…  which is something that doesn’t happen often enough in any church and was, in fact, reminiscent of someone else…  oh yeah!  Jesus.

So I know you’re wondering to yourself:  What’s my completely unpopular and almost universally rejected view of this exchange of holy war gunfire? Actually, I don’t care whether you’re wondering that or not, since I’m going to tell you either way.

To paraphrase the Emperor Glenn Reynolds or maybe Insta-Palatine, one or the other:  All is proceeding as I have foreseen.  The fall of the Soviet Union, which may be seen to have begun with Polish mobs chanting “We want God!” to Pope John Paul II, marked the failure of atheism as a governing philosophy. The fall of the World Trade Center, similarly, marked the end of post-modernity and its hapless relativism. There are large factions that do not want to admit these falls and failures, but they happened just the same and the ramifications are working their ways through the collective consciousness.

And we are slowly realizing: the reports of God’s death have been greatly exaggerated. He’s back — by virtue of the fact that philosophies that exclude Him do not describe reality. They fail because of that in the same way that science that does not describe reality ultimately fails. God is real. So we’re going to have to find a way to work him back into serious intellectual thought. And this is the moment when we are battling over how we will do that.

The Islamists are using murder to win that battle. The Christians are using reason. The Islamists will kill their enemies wherever they find them. The Christians are constrained to love their enemies and forgive them. It is obvious that, under those conditions, the Christians can’t possibly win.

But they will, you know.

Obama Not So Glowing

High Risk, Low Yield

Thomas Sowell

9/24/2013 12:01:00 AM - Thomas Sowell

This has been the worst time, politically, for President Barack Obama since he took office. Recent polls reveal that public confidence in both his domestic and foreign policies has been falling, amid revelations about their defects and dangers. Even people who once supported and defended him have now turned against him.

There have even been rumblings against Barack Obama in the Congressional Black Caucus and among labor unions that were a major factor in helping him get elected and re-elected.

Two of President Obama's own former Secretaries of Defense have publicly criticized his gross mishandling of the Syria crisis, which has emboldened America's enemies and undermined our allies around the world.

As ObamaCare continues to go into effect, step by step, its high costs and dire consequences for jobs have become ever more visible -- as have the lies that Obama blithely told about its costs and consequences when it was rushed into law too fast for anyone to see that it would become a "train wreck," as one of its initial Democratic supporters in the Senate has since called it.

As more and more revelations have come to light about the cynical and dangerous misuse of the Internal Revenue Service to harass and sabotage conservative political groups, the lies that the Obama administration initially told about this, as part of the coverup, have also been exposed.

So have the lies told about what happened in Benghazi when four Americans were killed last year. Their killers remain at large, though they are known and are even giving media interviews in Libya.

With Congressional investigations still going on, and turning up more and more revelations about multiple Obama administration scandals, the political problems of this administration seem to loom ahead as far out as the eye can see.

What could possibly rescue Barack Obama from all these political problems and create a distraction that takes all his scandals off the front page? Only one thing: the Republicans.

By making a futile and foredoomed attempt to defund ObamaCare, Congressional Republicans have created the distraction that Obama so much needs. Already media attention has shifted to the possibility of a government shutdown.

Politically, it doesn't matter that the Republicans are not really trying to shut down the government. What matters is that this distraction solves Barack Obama's political problems that he could not possibly have solved by himself.

Should ObamaCare be defunded? Absolutely. It is an economic disaster and will be a medical disaster, as well as destroying the Constitution's protections of American citizens from the unbridled power of the federal government.

For that matter, President Obama deserves to be impeached for arbitrarily waiving laws he doesn't like, in defiance of his oath of office and the Constitution's separation of powers.

Chief Justice John Roberts also deserves to be impeached for his decision upholding ObamaCare, by allowing the government's taxing power to override all the Constitution's other provisions protecting American citizens from the arbitrary powers of government.

But, for the same reason that it makes no sense to impeach either President Obama or Chief Justice Roberts, it makes no sense to attempt to defund ObamaCare. That reason is that it cannot be done. The world is full of things that ought to be done but cannot in fact be done.

The time, effort and credibility that Republicans are investing in trying to defund ObamaCare is a high risk, low yield investment.

Even if, by some miracle, the Republicans managed to get the Senate to go along with defunding ObamaCare, President Obama can simply veto the bill.

There is a United States of America today only because George Washington understood that his army was not able to fight the British troops everywhere, but had to choose carefully when and where to fight. Futile symbolic confrontations were a luxury that could not be afforded then and cannot be afforded now.

Obama & his thugs stole 2012

US
Obama and Thugs Pulled Off the Heist of the Century

Sep. 28, 2013 9:00am
    
It is increasingly clear that the 2012 elections, both presidential and senate, were stolen by Obama, the Democratic Party, the IRS, and government employee unions. It’s right out of a mob movie like “The Godfather.”

The Obama Crime Family could give the mob lessons. Don Obama plays for keeps. The Don gets what he wants and when he found himself in danger of losing his power and control, Obama went to his enforcers – the IRS.
In a story reminiscent of the mob fixing union elections, the IRS enforcers conspired to destroy Don Obama’s main competition – the Tea Parties and other conservative fundraising groups.

Lois Lerner was only one of many IRS big shots in DC who gave orders to IRS offices across the U.S. to “kill” the Tea Parties and other conservative groups. Their goal – steal the election. As if only days ago, the “fall gal” retired from the IRS. We can only guess what kind of massive payoff she received from Obama’s donors.

The 2010 elections were the biggest embarrassment suffered by a U.S. President in modern history. The power, energy and passion of the Tea Party won the GOP an amazing 63 House seats, six Senate seats, six Governorships, and 680 seats in state legislatures. It was an historic landslide. Obama’s entire agenda was threatened.

Yet, the mainstream media expects us to believe that only two years later (2012) that Tea Party energy and passion was gone…overnight. Or, perhaps they changed back to fans of Obama and the Democratic Party. What a fairytale.

The real story is that the Obama administration ordered the IRS to delay, distract, hound, harass, and intimidate Tea Party groups across the U.S. Without IRS attacks and interference, Tea Parties would have had the same influence and momentum as 2010 – when their raging energy and passion led to a shocking landslide defeat for Obama and his allies.

There is no need to question or debate any longer. We now have emails from IRS officials stating exactly that – the Tea Parties had to be stopped if Democrats wanted to win the election.

And, conservative donations had to be stalled if Democrats wanted to retain control of the U.S. Senate.

Instead of massive Tea Party rallies and record-setting fundraising for conservative candidates, Tea Party groups were busy being distracted, hounded, harassed, and intimidated by the IRS. They were busy being asked about the names of their members, names of their speakers, content of their Facebook posts, and even the content of their prayers.

Conservative media personalities (like yours truly) were attacked with IRS audits, as were Pro-Life, Pro-Israel, and Pro-Constitution groups. The tax-deductible status of Tea Party groups was purposely stalled so they could not raise money for the 2012 election.

What the biased liberal mainstream media refuses to do is connect the dots. None have the courage to state that “the fix” was in. That a fraud perpetrated by government employees handed control of the United States of America to Obama, a politician who supports government employees and their unions.

What did the IRS get out of this? The answer is pure bribery. Republicans, and especially Tea Parties, believe in limited government, smaller budgets, fewer government employees, and cutting bloated salaries, obscene pensions, and early retirement for government employees. Another Tea Party landslide would have threatened the power of government employee unions. Many government employees would have been laid off.

Does anyone believe it a coincidence that Obama met with IRS union boss Colleen Kelley at the White House the day before the targeting of Tea Parties by the IRS began? If you do, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Barack Obama was fraudulently re-elected. Our country was hijacked by government employees protecting their cushy lifetime jobs, bloated salaries, obscene pensions, and powerful unions.

Think I’m wrong? Evidently IRS officials don’t. Several of them have been busy hiring famous and expensive law firms to defend themselves.

Where are they getting the money? Is Obama arranging for big Democratic donors like George Soros, or union political funds, to pay their legal bills? Is Obama scared to death of what these IRS bosses will say under oath? Could their testimony end his Presidency and destroy his legacy?

In the end it’s clear to anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed by government schools or bribed by government checks that the 2012 election was fraudulently stolen by Barack Obama.

What did Obama, Democrats, and the IRS gain?

1. The right to continue to loot the treasury with bailouts, stimulus, corporate welfare, and government contracts to his friends, donors, loyal media lackeys, and corrupt union bosses.

2. The right to continue to redistribute income from the business owners (who vote Republican) to Obama’s voters (the poor, unions, and government employees).

3. The ability to save Obamacare and unionize 15 million healthcare workers – thereby raising $15 billion in union dues to elect Democrats. And of course to overwhelm middle class families with $20,000 annual health insurance bills they can’t pay, thereby addicting them to government handouts.

4. The IRS itself gains tremendously. They are now in charge of policing Obamacare – a huge, new bureaucracy. It also adds thousands of new IRS agents, thereby greatly enriching the IRS union.

5. The opportunity to pass immigration amnesty, thereby producing 10 to 20 million new loyal Democratic voters.

6. The opportunity to bankrupt business owners and permanently weaken the private sector, thereby drying up donations for conservative candidates and causes.

7. The opportunity to weaken American influence internationally (see Egypt, Libya, Syria).

Obama’s re-election also means he may serve long enough to appoint one or two more Supreme Court justices, whose radical leftist views will ensure America is permanently transformed to a big government socialist nation.

This wasn’t just any theft, folks. It was a trillion dollar theft. The Obama Crime Family (so far) has gotten away with the greatest and most daring act of fraud in world history. They stole the election.
–

What's Happening to Middle Class

The Late, Great Middle Class

September 26, 2013 9:53 am / victorhanson

It’s never been harder to find a decent job making something real.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 


The American middle class, like the American economy in general, is ailing. Labor-force participation has hit a 35-year low.

 Median household income is lower than it was five years ago. Only the top 5 percent of households have seen their incomes rise under President Obama.

Commuters are paying more than twice as much for gas as they were in 2008. Federal payouts for food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance have reached unprecedented levels.

Meanwhile, the country is still running near-record budget deficits and is burdened by $17 trillion in aggregate debt. Yet the stock market is soaring.

How can we make sense of all this contradictory nonsense? Irony.

Obama promised to restore the middle class. In truth, he has enacted the very policies that have done it the most damage in years. That paradox may explain why his base of support remains the very rich and the very poor. Goldman Sachs, federal bureaucrats, and aid recipients are helped in a way that the strapped hardware-store owner, Starbucks barista, and part-time welder are not.

For all the talk of infrastructure or stimulus, the latest $6 trillion in federal borrowing seems to have been wasted on bailing out insider banks and green companies, growing the federal work force, regulating the private sector into stasis, and subsidizing those who are not working.

The Federal Reserve still keeps interest rates at near zero. That mostly helps Wall Street, where money flows madly in search of any sort of return.

Most real interest rates for consumer purchases somehow remain exorbitant. Banks obtain their money cheaply and lend it out expensively. No wonder that so many Wall Street and banking executives — Timothy Geithner, Jack Lew, Peter Orszag, Gene Sperling,

Larry Summers — revolve in and out of the highest levels of this “no revolving door” administration.

Middle-class workers see little chance of retiring when their meager savings earn almost no interest, so they are apt to stay on the job longer. Their continuance only makes unemployment rates for young entry-level workers even worse.

Obama always threatened higher taxes on the well-off. He achieved that goal with a new 39.6 percent federal rate on upper incomes, a rate paid on top of state and payroll taxes. Yet such steep taxes do not much affect the super-rich. Their income is often exempted through sophisticated tax-avoidance or, more often, earned through less-taxed capital gains.

Small employers in many states have no such recourse and now pay more than half their incomes in assorted federal, state, and local taxes. Naturally, they are hiring fewer people and making fewer capital investments.

That greater tax hit might have been worth it had the new rates been part of a balanced-budget agreement like the Bill Clinton–Newt Gingrich deal of 1997, which froze spending levels and, for a time, stopped our ruinous borrowing.

Not this time. We end up with the worst of all worlds: once again a 39 percent top tax rate, but now with out-of-control federal spending and more multibillion-dollar budget deficits.

By virtually shutting down gas and oil leases on federal lands, the administration has declined the chance to create millions of new energy jobs and to lower fuel prices. For now, lower power bills and gasoline prices, and the creation of more jobs in energy, depend entirely on those who drill on private lands — despite, not because of, federal efforts.

Even the many sires of Obamacare now deny their paternity. Unions want out of it. Congress demands exclusion from it. Well-connected businesses won exemption from it.

The poor who mostly do not pay federal income taxes will get a largely free, bureaucratized federal health-care system. Many of the rich praise Obamacare but will quietly use their own money to avoid it. The middle class will see their premiums soar and the quality of their coverage erode.

These are surreal times. Wealthy elites who help to shut down jobs in energy, timber, and mining are deemed liberal — but not always so the middle classes, who suffer the consequences in lost jobs and higher prices.

Universities voice progressive bromides, but they care mostly for the tenured and the technocrat, not the part-timer and the indebted student. Thanks to soaring tuition, campus is now the haunt of the very wealthy who can afford it and the very poor who are often exempted from it. The less romantic middle class goes $1 trillion into debt for their high-interest student loans.

Never has it been so good to be invested in a vastly expanding federal government — either to distribute or receive federal subsidies.

Never has it been so lucrative to work in banking or on Wall Street. And never has it been so bad to try to find a decent job making something real.

To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, where we have made a desert of the middle class, we call it a recovery.

DC Navy Yard Shooting

Our Truest Lies

September 24, 2013 10:30 am / victorhanson

If the truth doesn’t deserve social justice — well, tell a noble lie.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

At the end of John Ford’s classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the editor of the local paper decides not to print the truth about who really killed the murderous Valance. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
 
Legends now become facts in America at almost lightning speed. Often when lies are asserted as truth, they become frozen in time. Even the most damning later exposure of their falsity never quite erases their currency. As Jonathan Swift sighed, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.”

After the recent shooting tragedy at the Washington Navy Yard, cable news shows, newspaper reports, and talking heads immediately blasted lax gun laws. The killer, Aaron Alexis, had mowed down 20 innocent people — twelve of them fatally — with yet again the satanic AR-15 semi-automatic “assault” rifle. The mass murdering was supposedly more proof of the lethal pathologies of the National Rifle Association and the evil shooter crowd that prevents good people from enacting proper gun-control laws. Once more an iconic tragedy had the chance — in a way that even the near-simultaneous shooting of 13 in Chicago did not — to energize the nation to do the right thing and ensure that no other such mayhem would follow.

Then the assault weapon vanished into fantasy. Instead, over the course of the week, it was slowly learned that the unhinged Alexis had somehow passed at least two background checks, legally bought a shotgun, modified it, and for 30 minutes shot and reloaded it to slaughter the innocent. Are we to outlaw the owning of shotguns despite background checks and lawful purchases? Vice President Joe Biden, remember, had recently urged Americans to obtain old-fashioned, all-American shotguns for protection rather than dangerous semi-automatic assault rifles. If a shotgun could be used to commit mass murder in the middle of a military installation, how could any gun-control law, short of the confiscation of all guns, ensure that such heinous crimes could not be repeated?

Few seem interested in other, less politically correct, less melodramatic solutions. It was reported that Alexis had been treated for severe bouts of mental illness, yet apparently without endangering his security clearances. Like the deranged Sandy Hook mass murderer, Adam Lanza, Alexis was also pathologically addicted to playing violent video games for hours on end. Further controversy arose over the fact that most military personnel are not allowed to carry weapons at facilities like the Navy Yard.

Unfortunately, few of our elites dared to question the mental-health industry’s approach to treating the unstable, especially its resistance to properly monitoring whether those being treated as outpatients are taking their medications. Few faulted the entertainment industry for the savage genre of the modern video game. Should we also blame the incompetence of the agencies that conducted the background checks? Was the Pentagon to blame for not allowing military personnel and contractors to carry weapons while on their own federal military facilities?

After all, none of those considerations served the larger progressive purpose of restricting gun use and ownership. More likely, these other disturbing truths threatened liberal assumptions about First Amendment rights and freedom of expression. If the white extremist Timothy McVeigh, the iconic anti-government terrorist, long ago showed us how generic right-wing extremism could lead to atrocities such as the Oklahoma bombing, then the African-American, pro-Obama, Buddhist, Thai-speaking Aaron Alexis, who murdered without an AR-15, was hardly useful as an indictment of much of anything deemed Neanderthal.

All this is old hat. We still do not know exactly what happened that night of the tragic fatal confrontation between Travyon Martin and

George Zimmerman. But we at least do know that most of the fables initially peddled by the media were demonstrably false — but even now not remembered as demonstrably false. George Zimmerman was not a bigoted “white Hispanic” who used racist language in his 911 call as he deliberately hunted down a black suspect. And he really did suffer visibly bleeding head wounds from a hard blow of some sort from Trayvon Martin. The latter was not a diminutive model student or the vulnerable pre-teen pictured in most media photos. Even photoshopping and doctoring tapes could not create a teachable moment out of such chaos.

No matter; such a moment was created anyway. Without any statistical support, our moral censors still wished to traffic in narratives of white racist vigilantes hunting down innocent African-American male teens. That narrative served as a reminder of why we have a civil-rights movement of the sort championed by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who fiddle while thousands of minority youths are gunned down each year in our inner cities. In other words, as far as the Zimmerman trial went, the human story of tragedy, misjudgment, accident, reaction, and overreaction simply did not serve the larger liberal effort to address perceived issues of social justice. Tragedy was better served by melodrama, and both Zimmerman and Martin became cutout caricatures rather than tragic individuals.

The same may be unfortunately true of the infamous Matthew Shepard case. The savagely murdered gay youth was probably not, as we were told for years, the victim of the rage of Wyoming redneck homophobes, energized in their hatred by the sexual prejudices of an intolerant culture. The truth was more complicated, though Shepard’s fate just as tragic.

A 13-year-long investigation by a gay writer, who reexamined the Shepard case with the intention of writing a screenplay, instead suggests that it might be more likely that Shepard was cruelly tortured and beaten into a coma by methamphetamine-crazed psychotics, who may on prior occasions have shared their drug use with Shepard and intended to rob him. For all their crude macho talk, the two evil perpetrators may have been bisexual themselves. Shepard’s own homosexuality, in other words, seems to have been incidental to, not the cause of, his lamentable death. If Shepard’s sad fate must be an icon of anything, it more likely serves as a warning that the vicious meth cartels in rural America are out of control, and the addicted can ensnare and murder anyone, including naïve college students. Again, no matter — what was false has served noble purposes in a way that what was true will not.

Many of the progressive tales that Americans grew up with in the 20th century have also been proven either noble lies or half-truths.

The American Left has canonized the narrative that anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were framed, subjected to a show trial, and then executed as a result of widespread American prejudice, xenophobia, and reactionary fear-mongering. Their executions sparked worldwide protests, novels, and plays reacting to the intolerance of a morally suspect America. Yet decades later, most historians, while they concede that the trials of 1921 did not match jurisprudence of a near-century later — nevertheless also quietly accept that the two were indeed anarchist terrorists, and at least one was probably guilty of armed robbery and murder, and the other of being an accessory after the fact. Bigots do not always arrive at bigoted verdicts.

Liberal culture likewise assumed that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on false charges of spying for the Soviet Union and that at least one of them had not really passed on secrets about the American atomic-bomb project. The two accused became causes célèbres as thousands worldwide rallied to save them from dangerous American know-nothings. Their messy electrocutions were supposedly likewise symptomatic of a paranoid America lashing out at easy victims in an era of Red-baiting, anti-Semitism, and rank McCarthyism.

The truth was in comparison banal. While we know that the Soviets would probably have gotten the H-bomb soon anyway, and that they claimed they were still our allies when they received top-secret American information, and while we know too that today the Rosenbergs would probably have received 20-year sentences, we also know from Soviet archives that they both worked as Soviet spies, who passed to our enemies information about nuclear weapons and other valuable classified projects.

There was no greater liberal icon than Alger Hiss, a smooth, debonair diplomat and foundation head, who likewise was supposedly ground up by the right-wing buzz saw with unfounded charges of spying and treason. While we are still not sure of the degree of damage that Hiss actually did, it is clear that he was at some point in his life a Soviet spy — a damning fact for an American diplomat at times entrusted with matters of the nation’s security during the early Cold War. That disturbing truth, however, was minor in comparison to the larger untruth that the Hiss case represented the dangerous excesses of reactionary America. So Hiss became a sort of progressive Great Gatsby, a fake, self-inventing himself into something grand that he was not.

In recent memory, several popular icons of revolutionary resistance have been revealed as frauds and worse. Che Guevara — locks, beard, and motorcycle — was a psychotic thug who enjoyed executing his political opponents. Bill Ayers by his own admission was “guilty as hell” of being a violent terrorist; until he had the bad luck of hawking on 9/11 his memoir of his terrorist days, he was on the road to canonization. Rigoberta Menchú was not quite a gifted author who revealed the horrors of right-wing repression in a cry-of-the-heart memoir of resistance. More likely, she fabricated stories in service to her perceived higher calling of exposing brutal reactionary class violence against the poor.

Popular icon Mumia Abu-Jamal was not framed for a crime he did not commit because of endemic institutionalized racism, but rather really did shoot and kill a Philadelphia police officer. All the progressive protests in the world cannot alter that fact. Angela Davis was not quite a sincere advocate of those unduly incarcerated. While a jury found that the guns she supplied a number of San Francisco murderers did not constitute her own culpability for the attack on the Marin County courthouse, she was nonetheless an unrepentant Stalinist. Of those who suffered in the Communist archipelago, she once scoffed, “They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.”

In more recent days, from Tawana Brawley to the Duke lacrosse team, the theme remains disturbingly the same: The original progressive untruth proves far stronger than subsequent pedestrian correction. The point was not that the Duke players did not rape a black stripper and commit a “hate crime,” but that they were the sort who in theory could have, and she was the sort who in theory could have been raped by virtue of her race and gender — a virtual truth that trumps a known lie.

We are left not with the truth that Aaron Alexis bought a shotgun to murder, but with the conjecture that he could have bought legally an AR-15 and therefore in some sense figuratively did — despite the later and less publicized corrections. If it takes some mythologies about Matthew Shepard to expose the plague of homophobia, why indict a noble lie to promote an ignoble truth? What difference does it make what actually happened between shooter Wesley Cook and slain officer Daniel Faulkner, when the Mumia myth serves larger agencies of social change?

Like Orwell’s dead souls, we live in an age of statist mythology, in which unpleasant facts are replaced by socially useful lies. So we print the legend that better serves our fantasies.

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is The Savior Generals, published this spring byBloomsbury Books.

Kenya Mall Massacre

Unimaginable Horror of Nairobi Terror Attack Revealed

Soldiers taking control of what is left of Nairobi’s Westgate Mall have found that al Shabab’s terror attack was more horrifying than previously known. The Daily Mail has the appalling story:

Soldiers told of the horrific torture meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday with claims hostages were dismembered, had their eyes gouged out and were left hanging from hooks in the ceiling.
Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged.
Children were found dead in the food court fridges with knives still embedded in their bodies, it was claimed. …
The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor

Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside. “You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,” said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named. “They removed eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood.
“They drive knives inside a child’s body.
“Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers. Here it was pain.”
A soldier, who took pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling. …
The collapse happened on Monday when government troops launched a massive assault on the mall where up to 150 people are thought to have been killed.
During the firefight, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies as the siege came to a bloody end. Forensics teams, still sifting through the mountains of rubble, fear many more bodies are yet to be found.
Shell-shocked Kenyan troops said the inside of the Israeli-run mall resembled a “scene from a horror movie” with blood spattered everywhere and dead bodies strewn across the floor.

Reportedly, ten of the terrorists have been captured. It seems odd that subhumans like these, having perpetrated such acts, would allow themselves to be taken alive, but that evidently is the case. Death is, obviously, too kind a fate for them.
But what of root causes? The terrorists reportedly were an international group, with Islam the only common denominator.
What lessons can be learned for the future? I would suggest three. First, al Shabab should be destroyed. It would make sense for an international force to invade Somalia and hunt down all members of that group. Second, with hindsight, Kenyan authorities waited too long to take definitive action to kill the terrorists. They allowed the siege to stretch out over four days. That may have made sense on the assumption that they were dealing with a “normal” hostage situation, but in the future, terrorists should not be allowed to work their evil deeds for so long. Third, far more civilians need to be armed. The Nairobi attack was carried out, authorities say, by only around 15 terrorists. There were hundreds of innocent people in the mall at that time. Unfortunately, hardly any of them were armed. If only 100 of the shoppers had been carrying firearms, the terrorists–notwithstanding their heavier weaponry, including hand grenades–likely could have been stopped, or at least kept at bay until soldiers arrived.
Stephen Hunter wrote a book called Soft Target, in which 12 Somali Muslims launch a terrorist attack against the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. There are chilling similarities between Hunter’s fictional attack and what happened at the Westgate Mall. If Muslim terrorists are shifting their attention toward soft targets like shopping malls, as some observers suggest, we could well see similar attacks here in the U.S. Increased security, such as has been put into effect at the Mall of America, is probably appropriate, but realistically, there are so many possible soft targets that they can’t all be secured. To the extent there is any solution, it rests with armed citizens. If just one-quarter of all adult Americans regularly carried firearms, including long guns like the AR-15, a terrorist attack like the one in Nairobi would be a death trap for the terrorists.
Will that happen here? Not yet. But if an act comparable to the Westgate Mall massacre takes place on American soil, a massive arming of American citizens will be both necessary and inevitable.

MSM - Power to Obfuscaate

How Liberal Media Obfuscate Obamacare’s Individual Mandate

A knowledgeable reader points out that Obama administration shills in the press are peddling misinformation about how Obamacare’s individual mandate works, or doesn’t:

Kabuki dance, or just stupidity? I often cannot tell when it comes to the Obama administration and their MSM flacks in discussions of Obamacare. In particular, the focus on the individual mandate has taken on a surreal character both among the pols and in the MSM. The controversy about “delaying” the mandate to purchase insurance has got the left in a tizzy — because, in theory at least, the individual mandate forcing the young and healthy into Obamacare exchanges at premiums well above their actual health care risk and costs is essential to making the exchanges economically feasible. The young and healthy, by overpaying, subsidize the low premiums charged to those with preëxisting conditions. That’s the whole point; without the mandate the whole scheme falls apart.

This is a key aspect of all government health care schemes; Hillary Clinton acknowledged as much in 1993.

So today two supposedly “wonky” MSM mouthpieces, one in the New York Times, the other in the Washington Post, write detailed explanations of all this. But wait — don’t they know that by the terms of the ACA law, the mandate to buy insurance canNOT be enforced? The law itself specifically forbids any enforcement action to recover the mandate’s “penalty”!! In effect, there is NO mandate at all — it’s a pose, a trick, a sleight-of-hand built into the law. Power Line readers certainly should be aware of this: PL was on top of this point 3 ½ years ago!
And yet today’s MSM “wonks” fail to mention that the law already “guts” the mandate!

For a liberal, the “wonk” bar is set low. If you can add and subtract, you’re in.

This is a continuing pattern…this feature is never mentioned. But it is intentional, we can be highly certain of that. The plan all along was to create the exchanges to serve a powerful constituency, entice them into them…and intentionally make them fail, to create the political pre-conditions for nationalizing health care through single payer.
Now it is possible that many in the MSM do not understand this point. But the two “wonks” writing today have no excuse. Eighteen months ago the original MSM “wonk,” Ezra Klein, let the cat out of the bag by openly revealing that the mandate is unenforceable:

…the Affordable Care Act doesn’t include an actual enforcement mechanism for the individual mandate. If you refuse to pay it, the Internal Revenue Service can’t throw you in jail, dock your wages or really do anything at all. This leads to one of the secrets of Obamacare: Perhaps the best deal in the bill is to pay the mandate penalty year after year and only buy insurance once you get sick. To knowingly free ride, in other words. In that world, the mandate acts as an option to buy insurance at a low price when you need it.

[Emphasis added] The logic is impeccable, except that you don’t even have to “pay the mandate penalty year after year”…and they can’t make you!
But here’s what’s surprising: Sarah Kliff of the Post is Klein’s colleague on “Wonk Blog”…and even more surprising? Annie Lowrey of the Times? She is his wife!!!
So they MUST know about this aspect of Obamacare, yet choose to obscure it.
Unbelievable. But then, everything about Obamacare, and, indeed, anything this administration touches just reeks of dishonesty, disingenuousness and fraud, and the MSM propaganda wing is only too glad to go along.

Ill-informed or mendacious? The perennial question, when it comes to the liberal media. In any event, the evidence is persuasive that Obamacare was designed to fail.

The Turning Point - (Goodbye RINO's)

The Turning Point

Posted By Michael Walsh On September 25, 2013 @ 7:57 pm In Democrats,Health Care,Obama | 19 Comments

King Pyrrhus: No we can’t.

In the decades to come, historians may well look back on the partisan passage of Obamacare during President Obama’s first term and its disastrous implementation in the second as a Pyrrhic victory, the beginning of the end of the Progressive project to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. Whether Senator Ted Cruz ultimately succeeds in his quest to defund Obamacare this time, his electrifying quasi-filibuster yesterday and today nevertheless marks a turning point in modern American political history — the day when conservatives turned their back on the collaborationist Republican Party and finally fought back.

It’s been a long time coming. The tottering bonzes of the GOP were so mesmerized and intimated by a young upstart named Barack Hussein Obama back in 2008 — even though they should have seen him coming as long ago as 2004, when he became the inevitable nominee of a party that could finally put its money where its mouth had long been — that they were utterly incapable of mounting any effective opposition to him. What little pushback there was came, almost by accident, from Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, who was quickly muzzled by the establishment apparatchiks and then marginalized by a compliant and vicious media. The Permanent

Bipartisan Fusion Party protects its own:

John McCain’s former senior adviser Steve Schmidt says he has “deep regret” for helping to create a “freak show” wing of the Republican Party when he had a hand in bringing former McCain running mate Sarah Palin to the national stage.

Schmidt said Monday on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that it’s time for the GOP to stand up to the “asininity” embodied by Palin and others.

“For the last couple of years, we’ve had this wing of the party running roughshod over the rest of the party. Tossing out terms like RINO, saying we’re going to purge, you know, the moderates out of the party,” Schmidt said. “We’ve lost five U.S. Senate seats over the last two election cycles. And fundamentally we need Republicans, whether they’re running for president, whether they’re in the leadership of the Congress, to stand up against a lot of this asininity.”

Well, one man’s asininity is another man’s principles, but principles are something the PBFP doesn’t much understand. The only principle that counts to them is maintenance of office; long ago they realized there’s no percentage in bucking the system. Far better (for Republicans) to pretend to be “conservative” during election season — especially in the Senate — only to return to “Senate comity” once safely past the shoals of the electorate. In the winter, they’re Buddhists, in the summer they’re nudists, to quote the late Joe Gould.

No longer — Cruz’s “filibuster” has changed all that. For Republicans, the year is suddenly 1968 and they are in the same position the Democrats were back then. This time, there’s no pitched battles in the streets of Chicago as Obama’s mentor, Bill Ayers, and others went up against Mayor Daley’s pigs and came out broken, bloodied but unbowed as they fought for control of the party of slavery, segregation, sedition and secularism. Four years later, they had replaced Hubert Humphrey with George McGovern as part of their long march through the institutions.

Marx: The god that failed.

Something similar is happening right now to the GOP — although this being the Republicans, the fighting is symbolic and not visceral.

But the hatred is. It speaks well of Senator Cruz that, even before his stunt, he was widely loathed by the PBFP establishment, whose cowardly members couldn’t wait to knife him, anonymously, to Chris Wallace of Fox News. But happening it is. Earlier today, over at NRO, I posted some bullets points regarding how I think things stand on the right side of the aisle at this moment. Some excerpts:

• After his disgraceful attacks on Cruz, including his reach-across-the-aisle, dog-in-the-manger response today, this should be the end of Senator John McCain as a voice of influence in the Republican Party. Ditto his mini-me, Senator Lindsey Graham. Indeed, the entire Old Guard of business-as-usual “comity” fans passeth. When you care more about what the other side thinks, it’s probably time either to switch teams or step down.
• There is new leadership in the GOP, whether the party wants to admit it or not: Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Jeff Sessions, and the others who stepped into the breach to spell the senator from Texas.
• The Cruz faction in the Senate, and its allies in the House (whose leadership is now up for grabs), must now press their advantage. The louder the Democrats squawk, the more they are wounded; the one thing they’ve long feared is a direct assault on their core beliefs as translated into actions, and the deleterious effects of Obamacare, just now being felt by the population, are the most vivid proof of the failure of Progressivism that conservatives could wish for.
• Win or lose, the battle is now joined: First the struggle for the GOP and then the battle for control of Congress and the presidency. Cruz just struck at the kings he could reach — the Republican “leadership” — and has most likely dealt them a fatal blow. Now the Tea Party hordes must back him up by eliminating his opponents (who tend to be geriatrics, and thus “leaders” by longevity rather than talent or commitment) through the primary process wherever possible. If he can carry off this coup, he and Senator Paul will very quickly find themselves elevated from back-benchers to commanders.

Finally, this:

• Any party that cannot successfully sell freedom and personal liberty doesn’t deserve power. The trick will be to explain — by word and deed — that the Democrats’ Manichean choice (Big Brother or the orphanage) is a false one, that less can be more, and that the restoration of a Republic of self-reliant citizens will benefit all Americans — not simply the government class and its clients.

And this is the key. I’ve been out of the country for the past several months, so I’m just now catching up to my good friend Mark Levin’s wonderful new book, The Liberty Amendments, which strikes at the heart of the great divide in our current political system: the gradual and deliberate corruption of the Constitution at the hands of the “progressives” and the concomitant reduction of personal liberty and individual aspiration in the name of a Marxist “collective good.” (It speaks well of the dishonest genius of the Left that crude, mid-19th century atheism can be successfully repackaged as quasi -Christian do-gooderism and practically no one the wiser.)

Here we are, more than 20 years after the complete collapse of Marxism-Leninism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and we’re still having the same argument.

The Minuteman: Yes, we did.

So how to end this — as end this we must if the survival of the United States of America as founded is to be secured? Remember that “fundamental transformation” is ostensibly meant to contribute toward a “more perfect Union,” but it of course does nothing of the sort. Under Progressivism — a combination ideological movement and criminal enrichment racket — the country is less united, less happy, less free. And, like any movement composed of True Believers, Progressivism brooks no opposition, ascribes no good motives to its opponents, and will impose its way in a heartbeat when given half the chance. The Democrats’ fierce, desperate contortions to sneak Obamacare through the Congress should stand as a monument to how the system can be abused and manipulated by a group of unscrupulous politicians — and care needs to be taken that such a travesty can never happen again.

This doesn’t mean, as the Left would have you believe, that the choice is between Orwell’s Big Brother and Oliver Twist’s workhouse.

I can’t name a single Republican senator who opposes some kind of healthcare “reform” (a misnomer, since the law has to do with insurance, not healthcare). But the reforms on the Right mostly concern the liberated operation of free markets across the country, not a top-down, imposed, statist solution that only aggrandizes more power and wealth in Washington while doing little or nothing about medical care. Only a child, a moron, or a Democrat could believe that you could take a system as complex as medical care/insurance, impose a collectivist solution to a non-existent problem upon it, and expect the markets to function as before, only this time cheaper.

A quick example. In in the old Soviet Union taxis were cheap and closely regulated by the central government. Result: almost no taxis on the streets of Moscow, anywhere. Instead, civilians freelanced as taxi drivers, and the way you got one was either by holding up a pack of Marlboros (the effective currency in the U.S.S.R.) or one or two fingers to signal how many packs you were willing to pay for a ride. Rarely did you have to wait more than a couple of minutes before a car stopped for you.

The revolution that Cruz and his Senate cohort are leading can win — but only if the GOP jettisons its current leadership (who do not believe in it, anyway) and adopts the tactics and techniques of the Left to put it across. (Gee, someone should write a book about that.)

But this means learning how to seize and control the Narrative, to make the personal political, to turn the culture in the direction of the spin. How a political party cannot sell Freedom and Liberty and Leave Me Alone to a formerly free people is beyond me, but if anyone can’t do it, that would be Mitch McConnell, Orrin Hatch and John McCain. The sooner they all go the better, and clear the way for Cruz & Co. before they, too, become corrupted by the Beltway system, and while they still have plenty of fight left in them.

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Article printed from Unexamined Premises: http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh

Syria’s Christians Nearing ‘Extermination’

Russian Patriarch to Obama: Syria’s Christians Nearing ‘Extermination’

September 23, 2013 11:36 am / victorhanson

The leader of Russia’s 150 million Orthodox Christians begs the president not to give aid to Syrian jihadis.

by Raymond Ibrahim // PJ Media 
While many were fixated on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent letter to the American people, another letter from another Russian leader—this one directly addressed to the U.S. president—was missed.

On September 10, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill issued a letter addressed to “His Excellency Mr. Barack Obama, President, United States.”  Whether one wishes to interpret this communique as a product of politics or sincerity, it accurately highlights the plight of Syria’s Christians, especially in the broader context of a larger civilizational struggle.
I repost major portions of the letter below, interspersed with my observations for added context:

Your Excellency, Dear Mr. President,
The tragic events in Syria have raised anxiety and caused pain in the Russian Orthodox Church. We receive information about the situation there not from the news reports but from living evidence coming to us from religious figures, ordinary believers and our compatriots living in that country.

This is an important point: the “news reports” evaluated by the Russian church are from “living evidence coming to us from religious figures, ordinary believers and our compatriots living in that country.”  The fact is, outside of America’s biased “mainstream media,” the evidence concerning what is going on in Syria—namely, that Islamic militants are committing human rights atrocities, including possibly the chemical attacks in question—is overwhelming.  Countless eyewitness testimonies, videos, pictures—all those things that rarely make it to the U.S. MSM—make this abundantly clear.
Ask the average Syrian about the current turmoil engulfing their land—and I have, as have numerous Russian Orthodox representatives in communion with Syria’s ancient Christian community, as noted by Kirill—and few have any illusions as to its nature: an authoritarian, but secular, Assad vs. radical Islamists and jihadis.
Naturally most Syrians choose Assad.
Only in America, and to a lesser extent Western Europe, is the myth of “freedom fighters” trying to “liberate” Syria still being peddled.
Patriarch Kirill:

Syria today has become an arena of the armed conflict. Engaged in it are foreign mercenaries and militants linked with international terrorist centres. The war has become an everyday golgotha for millions of civilians.

To be sure, one of the most obvious indicators that this is no “civil war” in the name of “liberty” is the fact that the majority, up to 95%, of those fighting Assad are not even Syrian, but rather al-Qaeda linked jihadis—from Chechnya to the Philippines—trying to form an Islamic emirate in Syria as they did in the 1980s-90s in Afghanistan. Back then, foreign jihadis like Saudi Osama bin Laden and Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri—again, also supported by the U.S.—traveled to Afghanistan, “liberated” it from the U.S.S.R, and then gave us 9/11 in return a decade later.
Here, for example, is a video of foreign militants in a conquered Syrian town singing praises in honor of Osama bin Laden: “They called me a terrorist and I said ‘that will be my honor,’ this is a divine call …. We defeated America … the Trade [Center] became a bunch of rubble … Greetings from the Taliban and its leader mullah Omar… Victory is ours, winning is ours, and Allah with all his strength is with us, the infidel masses have come together to defeat us but they will not defeat us.”
Patriarch Kirill:

We were deeply alarmed to learn about the plans of the US army to strike the territory of Syria. Undoubtedly, it will bring ever greater sufferings to the Syrian people, first of all, to the civilian population. An external military intervention may result in the radical forces coming to power in Syria who will not be able and will not wish to ensure inter-confessional accord in the Syrian society.
U.S. military intervention would undoubtedly lead to even more human rights abuses, first and foremost at the hands of al-Qaeda jihadis—who in fact are on record vowing to slaughter Christians after the U.S. intervenes and overthrows Assad; Obama justwaived a U.S. law prohibiting the banning of terrorist organizations simply to arm and ultimately help them realize their ambitions.

U.S. military intervention would undoubtedly lead to even more human rights abuses, first and foremost at the hands of al-Qaeda jihadis—who in fact are on record vowing to slaughter Christians after the U.S. intervenes and overthrows Assad; Obama just waived a U.S. law prohibiting the banning of terrorist organizations simply to arm and ultimately help them realize their ambitions.
Patriarch Kirill:

Our special concern is for the fate of the Christian population of Syria, which in that case will come under the threat of total extermination or banishment. It has already happened in the regions of the country seized by militants. An attempt made by the armed groups of the Syrian opposition to seize the town of Ma‘loula whose residents are predominantly Christians has become a new confirmation of our concerns. The militants keep shelling the town in which ancient Christian monasteries are located—the sites of special veneration by the faithful all over the world.

All absolutely true—especially “the threat of total extermination or banishment,” which has been the case wherever and whenever U.S.-backed Islamists come to power:

• Afghanistan: Under U.S. auspices, the supposedly “moderate” Karzai government still upholds the apostasy law—persecuting those who seek to convert to Christianity, making them just as intolerant as the Taliban—and, under U.S. auspices, destroyed the nation’s last Christian church.
• Iraq: After the U.S. “liberated” the nation from Saddam Hussein, the “chemical-weapon-using-tyrant”—sound familiar?—Christians are still being terrorized into extinction, more than half leaving their homeland.
• Libya: Since U.S-backed terrorists came to power—giving American the Benghazi consulate attack on the anniversary of 9/11—the tiny Christian community there has been persecuted, including bombed churches and threatened nuns—things unprecedented under the “tyrant” Gaddafi.
• Egypt: After coming to power, the Obama administration’s Muslim Brotherhood alliesenforced draconian blasphemy codes against Christians and are currently destroying countless churches and in some regions forcing Christians to pay jizya.
• Syria: Atrocities against Christians by the U.S.-backed jihadis know no bounds—such as the recent gang rape and slaughter of a 15-year-old Christian girl by the U.S.-supported “freedom fighters.”   And now in Ma‘loula, Christians are being forced to choose betweenconverting to Islam or dying and other atrocities.

Patriarch Kirill:

The Christian hierarchs of Aleppo, Metropolitans Paul and John Ibrahim, have been held captive by militants since April 22. Nothing is known about their fate despite of the fact that a number of religious figures appealed to the leaders of their states to help to release them.

Indeed, here is yet another example of the nature of the people the U.S. government is supporting.  Paul and John Ibrahim were traveling in Syria doing “humanitarian work” when their driver was killed and they were kidnapped.  Maybe John McCain can phone his al-Qaeda kidnapping allies and ask them to release them?  At any rate, there is no end to the amount of Christians, like Fr. Murad, who have been kidnapped and/or slaughtered by the jihadis in Syria.
Patriarch Kirill:

I am deeply convinced that the countries which belong to the Christian civilization bear a special responsibility for the fate of Christians in the Middle East.

Here the good patriarch speaks a language that may have once resonated with Americans and Europeans—that is, the people from “the countries which belong to the Christian civilization”—but which is increasingly meaningless to those whose “humanitarian concerns” extend to anyone but those unfashionable Christians, and to some American Protestants who are unaware that Christians actually exist outside of the U.S.
As do all eastern churches, however, the Russian Orthodox Church has centuries long experience with Islamic oppression and violence—beginning with the “Tatar yoke” and continuing to the present—and hence, not only sympathizes with the plight of Near East Christians, many of whom are Orthodox, but, as Putin himself recently asserted in a Russian conference dealing with the plight of Christians under Islam, “Russia has tremendous experience in reaching and maintaining inter-confessional peace and accord, and is ready to share it.”
Patriarch Kirill:

The Russian Orthodox Church knows the price of human sufferings and losses since in the 20th century our people survived two devastating world wars which claimed millions of lives and ruined many people’s lives. We also regard as our own pain the pain and losses the American people suffered in the terrible terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001.

Alas, some people remember the lessons of history, to their benefit; others forget, to their regret.

Post Mortim on Syria

Syria Postmortem

September 19, 2013 1:06 pm / victorhanson

by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner 

I think the so-called Syrian crisis is working out as most anticipated:

1) In about a year or so Assad and Putin will announce that they “think” they might have in theory rounded up a lot of the WMD, and will soon make plans to turn it over to “authorities,” subject to further negotiations.

2) John Kerry will periodically announce that “his” plan has worked and that Assad still cannot kill with WMD any of those he kills by other means, as Obama adds that Putin still “owns” the crisis and that the U.S. keeps all options on the table.

3) Assad will stay in power, given his own ability to use Russian weapons to stalemate the insurgents, who increasingly become even more unsympathetic and up the profile of Islamist groups in their midst. We may see 200,000 total casualties, to the extent they are reported, by this time next year.

4) Europe and the U.N. will decide that they really don’t much care what Assad or his enemies do.

5) Most in the region will still argue over who is the new outside arbiter, a militarily and economically stagnant Russia under a canny and audacious authoritarian, or a once overwhelmingly strong U.S. led by Hamlet.

6) Iran will follow the Assad model—welcoming Russian support, and, like Assad, swearing off any intention to ever use WMD, as it requests new rounds of negotiations, and its leaders give TV interviews to showcase their new moderate and engaged attitude.

7) Obama will reference “Bush” and “Iraq” if ever asked about what’s up in Syria.

8) The American public will have a vague idea that about a year earlier something happened sometime to someone in Syria, but what and when and where and why they are not quite sure.

9) A periodic op-ed in the New York Times will deplore the ongoing violence in Syria.

10) Ignore the above if Assad is stupid enough to use WMD yet one more time just to embarrass further the U.S.; the pressure on Obama would be such that he really would have to order an unbelievably small shot across the Syrian bow.

Common Core - What's Being Hidden ?????

Fundamentally Transformed: Rent-A-Cop Manhandles, 

Arrests Maryland Father for Asking Questions About Common Core

Posted By Bryan Preston On September 21, 2013 @ 9:35 pm In Politics | 32 Comments

This past week President Obama mockingly said that America is “not some banana republic.” As usual, he lied.

A father in Towson, Maryland, was forcefully ejected from a local town hall forum for asking the wrong question.
Robert Small had concerns over the Common Core education initiative, feeling that it was dumbing down the curriculum in his local school district.

“My question is, how does lowering America’s educational standards prepare kids for community college?” asked Small, before soon being approached by a security guard — who was also an off-duty cop — and being dragged away from his seat.

The outspoken father then implored the crowd to take action. “Don’t stand for this,” said Small. “You’re sitting here like cowards. You have questions!”

Apparently, Small didn’t follow the proper protocol of submitting his question in writing ahead of the meeting, which is why he was taken outside, and eventually arrested.
Small now faces jail time for the incident, or a fine of up to $2,500.

Video:

Rent-a-cop gets aggressive.
Rent-a-cop gets his handcuffs out to further threaten the father.

At about the 2:50 mark, the rent-a-cop apparently shoves Mr. Small through a closed gymnasium door. If anyone in the situation committed assault, it was the rent-a-cop.

Mr. Small wasn’t doing anything wrong or illegal. He was doing what every parent should do, in being involved in his children’s education. But apparently being involved doesn’t include being informed.

The security guard, who is reportedly a police officer who was working at the meeting in his off-duty time, needs to be investigated.

Was race a factor in his decision to first manhandle an innocent father and then charge that father with crimes? Did he inform Mr. Small that he is a police officer? He apparently did not in the recorded sequence above.

The administrators who led the meeting need to be investigated.
 How was the meeting security trained?
What were they told to look and listen for?
Why were they only addressing edited and softball questions?
What are they so intent to hide that they had security try to humiliate a father and ruin his life with criminal charges?

Nairobi Terror Attack

Gruesome Mall Attack Highlights Growing al-Qaeda in Africa Threat

Posted By Bridget Johnson On September 21, 2013 @ 3:32 pm In Africa,Politics | 25 Comments

Fifteen years after al-Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, one of its burgeoning affiliates in Africa left its macabre calling card at a popular mall — and left myriad concerns about how Washington plans to address this unchecked terrorist growth.

After all, 1998 was an alarm that preceded the 2001 attacks, an assault on two U.S. installations in Africa as al-Qaeda ramped up its ambitions, capabilities and reach.

Several hours after the attack began, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said in a TV address that at least 39 had been killed and 150 were injured in the Westgate Premier Shopping Mall as a hazy hostage situation dragged on. The dead, the president said, included members of his own family.

“We’ve overcome terrorist attacks before. We’ve fought courageously & defeated them within and outside our borders. We will defeat them again,” Kenyatta said.

Al-Shabaab quickly took responsibility for the noontime attack, confirming initial witness reports that the gunmen spoke Somali or
Arabic. “HSM has on numerous occasions warned the #Kenyan government that failure to remove its forces from Somalia would have severe consequences,” the terror group said, promising to release recordings later of the attack.
“Only Kuffar were singled out for this attack. All Muslims inside #Westgate were escorted out by the Mujahideen before beginning the attack,” Al-Shabaab added.

Muslim activists on Twitter cried foul at this claim, insignificant at best because Kenya is 83 percent Christian and just over 11 percent

Muslim. Some photos from the scene showed a handful of Muslim shoppers hiding and fleeing along with everyone else. But a witness told BBC that some Muslims were allowed to leave with their hands up as the gunmen claimed they were there to “rescue ” them, then shot two other people.

“The correspondent in Nairobi for the Economist, Daniel Howden told the BBC he spoke to one man with a Christian first name but a Muslim-sounding surname who managed to escape the attackers by putting his thumb over his first name on his ID,” the BBC reported.

“However, the man told Mr Howden that an Indian man standing next to him who was asked for the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s mother was shot dead when he was unable to answer.”

“They asked people ‘Are you a Muslim?’ and anyone who answered ‘no’ got a bullet,” Moshe Noiman, an Israeli living in Nairobi who witnessed the attack, told Israel’s Channel 10 news.

It was an especially callous assault as it occurred during the filming of a children’s cooking show under a parking lot canopy. Photos showed people crumpled on the ground in blood at the base of cheerful tables holding pots and mini-ovens as kids wailed. People clutched theirs or others’ children and fled for dear life.

Kenyan police said one gunman who was arrested died of his wounds, and other gunmen were cornered in the 350,000-square-foot-mall housing more than 80 stores. Al-Shabaab said it was in contact with its fighters as they kept going at the 10-hour mark.

Gunshots were heard after the sun went down and Al-Shabaab was kicked off Twitter for the third time after complaints.

Gideon Mbuvi, a Nairobi senator, told local media that Israel’s Mossad was assisting Kenyan police. Those on the scene also reported grenade explosions, about 10 gunmen working the mall in pairs, and gunmen targeting foreigners and “westernized” Kenyans.
The State Department confirmed that Americans were among those hit as it advised U.S. citizens in the country to shelter in place.

“We have reports of American citizens injured in the attack, and the U.S. Embassy is actively reaching out to provide assistance,” said spokeswoman Marie Harf. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment on American citizens at this time. The Embassy is also in contact with local authorities and has offered assistance.”

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden released a statement condemning the attack.

“We extend our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who have been killed or injured, including the American citizens who were injured and the staff of our Embassy in Kenya who were tragically affected by this attack. We also commend the courageous response by Kenyan security personnel and first responders, including the Kenyan Red Cross, who stepped forward to help their fellow citizens,” Hayden said.

“The perpetrators of this heinous act must be brought to justice, and we have offered our full support to the Kenyan Government to do so. We will continue to stand with the Kenyan people in their efforts to confront terrorism in all its forms, including the threat posed by al-Shabaab. This cowardly act against innocent civilians will not shake our resolve.”

This was in too many ways a perfect target for Al-Shabaab. The upscale four-story mall, like its kin in America, has detailed maps of each floor posted online as a helpful guide for shoppers. The clientele fleeing from the chaos resembled an American melting pot:
Africans, Americans, Asians, Europeans, taking each other’s hands to escape danger and comfort one another.

It was a chilling reminder that al-Qaeda affiliates are growing unchecked in North Africa, and an attack that came just after Boko Haram killed 159 Nigerians in two roadside attacks this week: putting on army uniforms, stopping cars at checkpoints, dragging people out of their cars and killing them.

Last summer, U.S. Africa Command noted that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was inviting Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab to come train and join forces in a chunk of terrorist-controlled territory the size of Texas. The French pushed al-Qaeda out of some of its Mali territory, but the strength of the allied groups remains.

The State Department has conceded AQIM “played a role” in the Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

At a December hearing about this unholy alliance, Subcommittee on African Affairs Chairman Chris Coons (D-Del.) noted that U.S. policy in the region might not be “forward-leaning enough.”

Coons said AQIM is reported to be “the best-funded, best-equipped, most potentially lethal A.Q. affiliate in the world” with sophisticated weaponry (including support from Iran) and juicy revenue from drug trafficking and kidnapping. They’re also believed to receive support and funding from Algerian expats and AQIM members around the world.

In late May, members of Congress received the State Department’s country-by-country annual report on international terrorism today with a warning that sponsorship of terror by Iran and Hezbollah has surged to “a tempo unseen since the 1990s” with attacks spanning three continents.

The report noted al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s plunge into Mali, Boko Haram’s continued attacks in Nigeria, and Al-Shabaab’s “asymmetric tactics” after being driven out of some southern population centers in Somalia.

It came on the heels of a strategy speech by President Obama that largely advocated a return to pre-9/11 threat thinking, describing the new peril as “more diffuse.” The president didn’t mention Iran once in the lengthy counterterrorism strategy address at the National

Defense University. “In some cases, we continue to confront state-sponsored networks like Hezbollah that engage in acts of terror to achieve political goals,” Obama said.

“And while we are vigilant for signs that these groups may pose a transnational threat, most are focused on operating in the countries and regions where they are based,” the president added.

In July, Al-Shabaab claimed ^[1] that it killed a veteran CIA official who oversaw the agency’s September 2001 plunge into Afghanistan as well as another CIA operative as U.S. officials accompanied an African Union convoy from the airport in Mogadishu.

Repeated attempts by PJM to get government confirmation or denial of Shabaab’s claims were unsuccessful, and there was no public mention of the claim or of the attack by the administration.

Al-Shabaab recently released a PR video ^[2] targeted at Somali-Americans in Minnesota, trying to lure them to jihad as more than two dozen have already done so through the state’s “terror pipeline.”

On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Washington. The day before, the U.S. pledged $69 million to a “new deal” compact forged by the EU to help build up the failed Somali state.
Interestingly, Kerry downgraded the al-Qaeda affiliate to “tribal terror.”

“The United States, obviously, has been engaged in helping Somalia fight back against tribal terror and the challenges to the cohesion of the state of Somalia,” he said. Al-Shabaab officially became a part of al-Qaeda in an agreement last year.

“I’d just say that Somalia is working hard now to create its own ability to defend itself, to defend the state. We will continue to work.

There is a United Nations mission there. We are committed to both – to the independent ability of the state of Somalia as well as the United Nations mission to help it in this transition,” Kerry added.

Mohamud also met with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel over at the Pentagon.

“Secretary Hagel broadly discussed the importance of continued progress on security reform and the importance of a stable and secure Somalia to the region,” said the readout of the meeting from press secretary George Little. “Secretary Hagel and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud expressed their appreciation for both countries’ commitment to normalizing and deepening the U.S.-Somali relationship, and agreed to continue efforts on military cooperation.”

Mocking the multi-million-dollar rewards the U.S. is offering to capture the group’s commanders, Al-Shabaab put a bounty on Obama’s head last year: 10 camels.

Terrorism: Denied by Media

Islamic Terror in Kenya? Not According to the BBC

Posted By Zombie On September 21, 2013 @ 7:42 pm In Uncategorized | 88 Comments

While a horrified world watches the images coming out of Kenya in the aftermath of the massacre at a Nairobi mall perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists, another less bloody but just as morally reprehensible atrocity unfolded online: the sickeningly biased coverage of the attack produced by some mainstream media outlets determined to provide cover for the jihadists.

The BBC’s lead story this afternoon was almost a study in journalistic malfeasance: an archetypal example of how left-leaning Western journalists will violate their own consciences — and the basic principles of reporting — in their relentless quest to hide the truth.

Such bias happens every day, and complaints about it happen just as often, but the sheer volume and speed of partisan reporting makes it difficult to highlight a single example. Even so, let’s pause for just a moment and dissect this typical specimen of ideological media spin.

The article under discussion can be found here — at least for now. Since media outlets often delete articles which they later find embarrassing, I can’t guarantee it will be online forever, so to preserve the evidence I took a screenshot, which you can see here.
Sections of the screenshot are pasted in below as illustrations.

How the BBC Intentionally Obfuscates the Facts

In traditional reporting, all the vital information in any news story should be featured right at the beginning, in an article’s three key elements:

• The headline
• The lede
• The nut graf

Everyone knows what a “headline” is, but the other two terms are journalists’ lingo:

The “lede” in any story is generally defined as its first sentence. In a human interest feature story it’s allowable for the lede to be an anecdote or amusing observation — but in a hardcore news article like this the lede is always supposed to summarize the germane facts of the story. (The headline, of course, should be a condensed version of the lede.)

The “nut graf,” which is short for “nutshell paragraph,” is a single paragraph which gives all relevant information in a further elaboration of the lede. As expected, in news reporting the “nut graf” is always supposed to be the first paragraph of any story (although in feature journalism, which is not what we’re discussing here, the nut graf can appear later in the story).

So, what are the essential pieces of information about today’s Kenya incident? Most everyone (including the perpetrators) would agree that:

Islamic fundamentalist terrorists purposely targeted an exclusive mall in Nairobi frequented by non-Muslims in order to massacre infidels.

So: How does the BBC communicate this information to its readers in its headline? Behold:

Right off the bat, even in the headline itself, the BBC commits a litany of egregious and inexcusable journalistic errors.

The first and most obvious blunder is the missing subject. Who did what? Well, according the the BBC, an entity called a “shoot-out” committed mass murder in Nairobi. Note how there are no human actors in the headline. It wasn’t people who killed 11, it was an inanimate and leaderless “shoot-out” that killed 11.

This is a basic grammatical snafu which even freshmen journalism students quickly learn to avoid. But not the BBC, apparently.

On a second, more subtle, level, use of the word “shoot-out” implies that there were two equal combatants involved, and that therefore blame can be spread around to everyone. But as we know, it wasn’t at first a “shoot-out” — it was a group of terrorists massacring unarmed non-Muslims. (Only much later, after police arrived, did it devolve into a shoot-out.)

Since the BBC has been one of the world’s leading media outlets for nearly a century, and in previous generations set the global standard for news-writing guidelines, they have absolutely no excuse for writing a headline like that — they can’t claim “We’re new at this kind of thing” or “We’re just bloggers — cut us some slack.” No. The BBC literally wrote the book on how to write proper headlines. And if they write a poor headline like this, it must be on purpose.

Before we get to the “Why?” part of the analysis, let’s continue on to the BBC’s lede and nut graf. Surely they conveyed the crucial information the world needed to know — right? Hmmmmm:

Neither the lede, nor the nut graf, nor the two subsequent paragraphs mention terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism, the reason for the attack, that non-Muslims were targeted, nor any other of the truly germane facts about the incident.
Instead, a bizarre and inaccurate outlier quote about the attackers being “armed criminals” is highlighted. Why? There can be no other
explanation other than the BBC is trying to obfuscate the facts.

Studies have shown that most news consumers only read the headline; the few that continue on to the body of the story only read the first paragraph or two. Only a small percentage of news consumers get further than that into the full text of the article. And it is this key detail that the BBC is relying on. They purposely suppress the crucial information from appearing in the headline, in the lede, and in the nut grafs, knowing full well that most people will stop reading after that point.

Right around this stage in the article the BBC changes gears, and having successfuly hidden the truth from the majority of its readers, it enters into what might be termed “cover our ass” mode, in which little by little, in inverse order of importance, they leak out the actual facts, so that if their deception is later noted and criticized, they can claim that they did reveal the truth, albeit later in the report.

Thus, the subsequent paragraphs once again fail to mention Islam or terrorism, but start flirting with the facts:

Here, we finally get the terms “Al Qaeda” and “Al-Shabab” and “Arabic,” but stop short of actually describing the ideology or motivation for the attack.

Then, predictably, there is a photo interrupting the narrative, which the BBC editors assume will drive away the few remaining readers, and only after this interruption, in the eighth paragraph, is the only important fact revealed:

In traditional news style, an article is supposed to be structured as a metaphorical “pyramid” of information, with the most important facts stated as concisely as possible at the very top, and with each sentence more details and more elaboration are added.

But in the postmodern BBC “biased reporting style guide,” the pyramid is intentionally inverted, such that the details you want to obscure are hidden so far down in the article that no one will notice them. The only reason to include these details at all is so that, if later criticized, you can truthfully claim that you reported “all the facts.”

The rest of the BBC article confirms this inverted structure, as much later they finally get around to mentioning the word “terrorism.”

Why?

The real question remains unanswered: Why would the BBC (and innumerable other politically correct media outlets) purposely engage in bad journalism? One must assume that the atheist or nominally Christian BBC reporters in their London offices have no desire to live in a world controlled by Islamic law, nor are they themselves bloodthirsty killers, nor are they members of terrorist organizations. Why then would they go to so such lengths, on a daily basis, to provide cover for Islamic terrorists trying to bully the world into submission through brutality and bloodshed?

One can only speculate. One likely answer is fear: They’re afraid that if they make Muslim terrorists “look bad,” then the infidel reporters (or their offices) will be targeted. But I think the answer is a bit more complicated: The progressive worldview promoted by the BBC and their ilk rests on the notion that first-world nations are oppressors and third-world people are victims, and any incident — such as this one — which undermines this hypothesis must be suppressed. Thus, any time Islamic fundamentalists commit an act of violence, the Western politically correct media does its best to ignore, shrug off or (as we see here) intentionally misreport what happens.

And the next time someone asks for evidence of media bias, send them a link to this essay.
[Note: Like all news Web sites, the BBC is constantly updated, so that by the time you read this essay, the lead article on the BBC will likely have changed to a new one with fresh information, emerging new details, etc. Obviously it would be impossible to analyze each variant of their lead article as it appears; all this essay purports to do is freeze a moment in the ever-shifting news stream and dissect the bias of that moment.]

Dem's Show no Respect for Benghazi Dead

DID THE DEMS WALK? [WITH COMMENTS BY JOHN]

We reported that, with two exceptions, the Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee walked out on Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, the mother and father respectively of two of the men
who were killed by terrorists in Benghazi. The walkout supposedly occurred in connection with their testimony
before the committee on Thursday. In fact, only two Democratic committee members (including execrable ranking
Democrat Elijah Cummings) stuck around for the testimony, and the 15 other Democratic members were off
pursuing other interests.

John wrote about the walkout here. I wrote about the walkout here. I even explained — I thought pretty persuasively
— why the Democrats walked.

In reporting on the walkout, we relied on tweets by Chairman Darrell Issa and a post by Katie Pavlich, who also
relied on Issa’s tweets. Accounts of the walkout appeared on Fox News and elsewhere on the Internet. With the two
exceptions we noted, Democratic committee members did not stick around. But did a walkout take place?

Democrats have pushed back on reports of an alleged walkout. See, for example, this Slate post by Dave Weigel and
this Media Matters summary. Weigel observes that only six of 24 committee Republicans stuck around for the
testimony of the parents.

Linking to Weigel’s post, Pavlich has now added an update walking back her account of the alleged walkout in a
circumlocutory fashion. At least that’s how I interpret her update. It appears to me that the reports of a walkout,
including our own, were not mistaken, but (John may disagree with me and I do not purport to speak for him) they
were inconclusive if not overblown. I would at the least like to draw readers’ attention to the additional information
on offer in Weigel’s post and the Media Matters summary.

JOHN adds: I don’t find the Democrats’ self-exoneration particularly persuasive. It is true that Congressional
committee hearings are chronically underattended by members of both parties, and in Issa’s photo is is obvious that
the Republican side of the room is thinly populated, too. Still, there are quite a few more Republicans than

Democrats present, some of them staffers. One thing we don’t know is how many Democrats and Republicans were
there for the first part of the hearing, on the Accountability Review Board. Issa says that before the parents testified,
Democrats “excused themselves” and “only two decided to stay.” That implies a walkout by at least some Democrats,
and no one, to my knowledge, has rebutted Issa’s observation.

Is my perspective on this colored by the fact that Democrats have studiously ignored, when they have not slandered,
critics of the administration’s performance on Benghazi, including parents of the slain Americans? Well, yes. As it
should be.



BENGHAZI SCANDAL MANAGEMENT


Last night John commented on the behavior of the Democrats during the House Oversight Committee hearing
yesterday on Benghazi. Democratic committee members walked out on the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles
Woods, the mother and father respectively of two of the men who were killed by terrorists in the Benghazi assault.
John observed that the Democrats on the committee didn’t even have the decency to listen to what these victims of
the Obama administration’s gross negligence had to say.

Why would the Democrats do that? They would say that they were protesting the politicization of Benghazi. Their
thesis is that looking back at events in order to assess fault and allocate responsibility. Assessing fault and allocating
responsibility is political in this case because fault and disgrace run up a chain of Democratic officeholders ending in
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The thesis that applies to account for the Democrats’s behavior in this case is the
one from A Few Good Men: They can’t handle the truth.

John focused on the second half of the House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday. The first half of the hearing
was previewed in good stories by Sharyl Attkisson and Josh Rogin earlier this week and also deserves attention.

Following Benghazi then Secretary of State Clinton convened an Accountability Review Board to conduct a a phony
baloney investigation leading to phony baloney findings to protect Clinton and Barack Obama in their phony baloney
jobs. The ARB never got around to interviewing the four mid-level employees it found at fault in connection with the
Benghazi assault. The unclassified version of the ARB report is posted online here.

The unwritten mission of the ARB was to designate a few mid-level employees to serve as scapegoats for more senior
officials including Clinton and Obama. The ARB duly designated four such employees who were placed on
administrative leave on the basis of the ARB report findings. Secretary Kerry has now (rightly) reinstated all four
employees who were disciplined as a result of the ARB report. I wrote about the reinstatement of Ronald Maxwell
here.

The first half of the House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday was devoted to the ARB. ARB leaders (former
Ambassador) Thomas Pickering and (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) Michael Mullen appeared before the
committee as witnesses. How Hillary Clinton got these distinguished gentlemen to lend their good names to the ARB
farce is beyond me.

The Weekly Standard’s Steve Hayes attended the hearing. Steve reports that the testimony validated the skepticism
of ARB critics and raised new questions about the independence of its work as well as the reliability of their
conclusions. Steve concludes that the testimony of Pickering and Mullen discredited the ARB. Among the revelations
in the testimony at yesterday’s hearing:

 *Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handpicked the two leaders of the ARB who were given the job of
investigating her department.

*Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff and senior counselor to Secretary Clinton, was intimately involved
with the ARB panel from the beginning. She called the leaders at Clinton’s behest to ask them to serve,
she was briefed regularly on the investigation as it unfolded and she received a draft copy of the
report before it was finalized.

*Several senior Clinton advisers were provided draft copies of the ARB report before it was released
to the public.

*The vice chairman of the ARB testified that he called Mills to warn her that an impending
appearance of Charlene Lamb before Congress would be problematic for the State Department.
Lamb had done poorly in her interview with the ARB, Mullen said, and he called Mills because he
was worried that a poor performance before Congress would cause problems for the State
Department and its leadership. When Representative Jim Jordan asked Mullen if he would have
placed the call to Mills if Lamb had performed well, he said no.

*The chairman of the panel acknowledged at least one instance in which language in the report was
softened after an early draft was sent to Clinton and her top aides. “The draft, as I believe it went to
her, said the security posture was grossly inadequate for Benghazi, period. And we made the
editorial correction recognizing that there was certainly a very real point that ‘grossly’ was probably
not applicable to Benghazi in light of the changes that the State Department had made, but it was
clearly applicable to dealing with the specific circumstances of the attack.”

*The vice chairman testified in his deposition that the ARB received “very specific tasking from
Secretary Clinton on her expectations with respect to this board” and that nobody on the board had
any input on the scope of their work.

*The panel was largely staffed by current and former State Department officials and worked out of
State Department offices.

*The ARB did not speak with nine key military officials on the ground in Libya or Germany who
were deeply involved in the US response to the attacks. Among those who was never interviewed: Lt.
Colonel Steven Gibson, who was on the ground in Tripoli and whom State Department official Greg
Hicks has testified was on the receiving end of the “stand-down” order that Obama officials have
repeatedly disclaimed.

*Although the ARB did not interview Secretary Clinton as part of its investigation, they provided her
with a two-hour briefing about the details of the report before it was finalized and released to the
public.

*The board did not interview either Cheryl Mills or Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, another
close adviser to Clinton.

*None of the interviews the ARB conducted were recorded in any fashion – no audio, no video, no 
court reporter. The only record of those sessions is in notes taken by a staff member. According to the
vice chairman: “The staff would put a summary of the interview together. We would – the members
would be able to review that summary shortly after the interview.” (Those summaries and the notes
that produced them have not been provided to Congress).

*The ARB did not investigate the Obama administration’s public response to the attack or the role
that senior State Department officials played in shaping that narrative. That response included the
highly misleading claim that the attacks had come as a reaction to an anti-Islam video and many
other claims that were later shown to be false. Emails between top State Department officials and
others in the Obama administration, first reported by TWS last spring, revealed that several top
State Department officials were involved in crafting the administration’s post-attack talking points.
And Susan Rice, then US Ambassador to the United Nations, a top State Department official,
famously blamed the video in her appearances on the Sunday talk shows shortly after the attack. The
ARB wasn’t interested.

Steve begins and ends his report with comments regarding the media’s lack of interest in the proceedings. If the
media were not a Democratic protection racket, of course, this would all be big news. But they are and it’s not.