Et Tu, Maureen?

Maureen Dowd, a leftist stalwart, has an op-ed in which she opines about the shady dealings of Hillary Clinton that are contaminating everyone who comes in contact: FBI Director Comey who recommended against indictment while offering a very strong indictment during his testimony to Congress, AG Loretta Lynch who regretted her ill-considered meeting on the Phoenix tarmac with Bill Clinton only moments after he left the plane, and President Obama who was endorsing Hillary precisely when Comey was exposing her 'extreme carelessness.'  The sheer volume and repetition of Clinton scandals through the years has worn down even Dowd's willingness to view it as the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy or only an 'appearance' of impropriety.  Though she doesn't directly say it, Dowd certainly paints a picture of 'Crooked Hillary.'  And despite it all, she offers a resigned sigh that it is probably better to have an ethically bankrupt Hillary than Trump.  Now there's an endorsement for you.

Trump for Saddam?

There is a stink about Donald Trump speaking well of Saddam Hussein, especially in regards to Saddam's ability to kill terrorists.  This is also a reason why Trump holds that the Iraq War should never have been fought and has led to the rise of ISIS.  Ditto the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.  He has a point.

Saddam Hussein was an evil, miserable human being but one could argue that the political situation was much better under his tyranny than it is now.  That same case can be made for Gaddafi.  We have toppled tyrants and now have terrorist havens and a refugee crisis that is contributing to a crackup of the European Union.  Seeing how it turned out, how many politicians would have preferred to stick with the status quo ante?  Donald Trump has declared that, as bad as Saddam was, he was better than what we've got now.

 

Of course, though Trump has made this point repeatedly, it has only made big news lately because the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party needs to report about something other than 'Crooked Hillary' and the rigged system that let her skate.  Interestingly, Hillary voted to invade Iraq and was the architect of Libya.  "We came, we saw, he died!"  The anti-war crowd, which has been in the Democratic camp since Vietnam, may be wooed by a comparatively dovish Trump.

Marvel Madness

First, Thor became a woman.  Next, Captain America was a member of Hydra all along.  Now, Iron Man is a teenaged black girl.  I haven't read a comic book in years  and, as far as I know, this may be absolutely brilliant story-telling in each case.  However, with the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), why do this to clearly popular characters?  If I am entranced by Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man to the point that I want to start reading the comic, won't I be upset to discover Iron Man is now a teenaged girl?  I am reminded of some sci-fi series I had loved but were canceled when they tried to fix what wasn't broken.  Space: 1999 was absolutely awesome when I was kid.  But the second season 'fixed' the show by writing out characters and changing the format.  It was promptly canceled.  Buck Rogers, a campy sci-fi show, turned into a bad copy of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek in its second season.  It was canceled.  Since I mention Battlestar Galactica (the 70s version, not the reboot crap), it too suffered a complete format change when it was revived as Galactica 1980.  Why doesn't anyone get the message to not mess with success?  The MCU is having hit after hit in films but the comic universe is undermining or replacing these popular characters.  I don't get it.  Do the comic books not want to attract the movie fans?  I don't know why I bother to rant on this as I don't read the comics and have no intention of doing so.

 

End of rant.

Above the Law

FBI Director Comey's announcement this morning can be broken down to say essentially this: Yeah, Hillary Clinton was extremely careless (synonymous with grossly negligent, which is the language in the applicable law) in handling sensitive intelligence on an unsecured server.  If she were anyone else, I would recommend indictment - because she's pretty clearly guilty - but, as she could be my boss in a few months, I advise against it.  Also, no reasonable prosecutor who cares about career prospects would take this case.

 

As Glenn Reynolds often notes: Laws are for little people.  He has a column on this today. 

 

It is interesting that Bill Clinton 'coincidentally' met with Attorney General Lynch and, less than a week later, Hillary is 'cleared' by the FBI.

 

Here is Austin Bay's take on Comey, which is the harshest assessment I have encountered.

 

All of this does feed into Trump's constant refrain of 'Crooked Hillary' and Bernie's 'Rigged System' talk.  As I mentioned during the primaries, of the 4 remaining contenders, Hillary was the most establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year.  Though she has dodged the indictment, Director Comey has provided a very unfriendly bunch of sound bites that most Republicans (e.g. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney) would never lower themselves to use in attack ads during the coming campaign.  Donald Trump is not that kind of Republican.

No Progress beyond Equality

 Found on Instapundit today:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

 

Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

 

Silent Cal could pack a heck of a wallop in a single paragraph.  Self-government reached its apogee with the Declaration and can only fall from that point.  It is great how he tosses out that line about totalitarian regimes that clothe themselves in the language of democracy [oops, I didn't copy that part]; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on.  It is a telling point that this practice persists 90 years later.

 

Interestingly, Coolidge was a contemporary with the original Progressive Movement that morphed into Liberalism and has now reclaimed the Progressive label (cf . Hillary Clinton).  Progressives want more power for government and therefore less to the people.  They want to progress back to the good old days when these pesky voters didn't demand Brexit, upend immigration (i.e. voter importation) laws, oppose Amnesty, or grouse about spending.  Government could get so much important stuff done if the rubes in flyover country would just shut up and realize it was for their own good.  Ah, the arrogance of power.

Killing Terrorism

Seen on Facebook:

With guns, you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.

Malala Yousafzai

 

Wow, that sounds deep.  For those not in the know, Malala is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.  She had been outspoken in favor of education rights in 2008, which she was only 11.  By the time she was 15, she had become famous among Westerners but infamous among Taliban-supporters.  Living in Pakistan made her a target.  She was shot in the face in 2012 but survived to continue to call for education rights.  She is a truly extraordinary person and I wish her well.  However, her claim is demonstrably false.

Khalid Sheik Muhammad - one of the major figures in the 9/11 attack - has a BS in Mechanical Engineering (earned in North Carolina!).  Osama Bin Laden had at least a couple years of college where he studied civil engineering or public administration.  Muhammad Atta - who flew into the twin towers - had a degree in architecture.  Ayman al-Zawahiri - current leader of al-Qaeda - is a surgeon. Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheikh who instigated the 1993 bombing of the twin towers) is a Doctor of Theology. Nidal Hasan - the Fort Hood Shooter - has a BS in Biochemistry and an MD.  Syed Farook - the San Bernadino shooter - had a bachelor's degree in environmental health.  His wife, Tashfeen Malik, had a pharmacology degree.  Omar Mateen - the Orlando shooter - had an associates degree in Criminal Justice, of all things.

 

These are not uneducated bumpkins with no better options than to kill themselves and others in the name of Allah.  Each could have had a bright future by Western standards.  Maybe they didn't get the education that Malala thinks would kill terrorism.  The only education that is going to do that is to teach them that Islam is an evil religion.  Indeed, every Islamic terrorist can give a solid argument for their actions by quoting the Koran or the Hadith.  It should be noted that the Koran is the word of Allah while the Hadith is Muhammad's interpretation of the Koran.  Of course, it is utterly unthinkable that one could teach against Islam in Muslim countries.  To do so is to court imprisonment or death.

 

The Religion of Peace website has an instructive graphic: Ramadan Bombathon 2016.  It shows how many people have been killed in the name of religion or by Islamaphobes.  So far, Islam is in the lead with 220 attacks and 1573 deaths.  All other religions combined come in a distant second of 0 attacks and 0 deaths.  Islamophobes also had 0 attacks for 0 deaths.  Huh.

 

All right, so we've tossed education as a way to stop terrorism.  What other alternatives might we have?  Sadly, the only way to stop people willing to detonate themselves is to kill them before they get the chance.  Oh, but that is SO politically incorrect as to be hate speech.  Terrorism must become so counterproductive that the terrorists abandon it.  But it is part of their religion.  That's a really tough nut to crack.  First, much like we did with Communism, we should contain Islam.  Where it spreads, rape, murder, and explosions follow.  Yes, containment.  Conversion.  Oh, that is really, really politically incorrect!  Unlike Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and other evil ideologies, Islam is integrated into a religion.  This makes it a particularly nasty ideology when coming against Western tolerance of religious belief.  Abridge the 1st Amendment freedom of religion or suffer more Fort Hoods, Orlandos, and San Bernardinos?  There are many reasons why the War on Terror has been so hard to win.

 

Of course, my prescriptions are irrelevant.  No Western nation will implement them.  Islam is most likely going to find Russia or China as their main foe.  These countries are not constrained by Western values and will pulverize Muslim countries when given enough cause to do so.  Whether Clinton or Trump wins, the US is going to mostly leave the Middle East to stew, perhaps offering some bombing to satisfy the hawks.

Here is David Wood also blasting the "Education prevents terrorism" myth.  He provides excellent sourcing for why Islam is the cause of terrorism.

Kate Steinle Redux

On July 1st of last year, Kate Steinle was out with her parents on Pier 14 in San Francisco when she was shot and killed by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez.  Sanchez was illegally in the United States, a chronic 'undocumented worker' who had been deported 5 times.  You know, the border has never been more secure, so the administration has said on multiple occasions.  To make matters worse, San Francisco had declined to transfer Sanchez to ICE in March 2015 because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.  Sanchez only had 7 felony convictions.  No big deal, right?  And one wonders why Trump gets support for his border wall.

The Steinle story got a lot of press but the Woodburn triple homicide is getting a lot less press.  Yes, now it is Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez who killed three and wounded one in Woodburn, Oregon.  Where Sanchez had been deported 5 times since 1994, Gonzalez had been deported 6 times since 2003!  You know, the border has never been more secure.

 

Why has the press been relatively quiet on this 'mass shooting?'  Simple.  It isn't easily converted into a call for gun control.  If it can't fit into the gun control narrative, the press is only too happy to ignore it.  That it plays into Trump's calls for more border security and deporting illegals doesn't help either.