The Council Has Spoken - Our Watcher's Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed." - William Shakespeare in 'Othello'


"The conservative-media revolution has caused the liberal media to abandon any pretense of objectivity and fairness and actively advocate on the Left’s behalf."
- Rush Limbaugh

"My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes. - Psalm 63:10



This week's winning essay,Bookworm Room's -The New York Times’ latest attack on Ted Cruz backfires, highlighting his virtues is pretty much about what the title implies it is as Bookworm turns the tables on Pravda-by-the-Hudson's execrable Frank Bruni's pathetic attempt at character assassination. Here's a slice:

Early last week, the New York Times published Frank Bruni’s overwrought essay, Anyone But Ted Cruz. The piece is clearly meant to assassinate Ted Cruz’s character by explaining why conservative voters should hate and fear him as much as Progressives do.

As a preliminary matter, of course, any conservative who accepts advice from the New York Times about preferred Republican candidates is a fool. The Times does not have Republicans’ best interests at heart, and the past fifteen years make it highly questionable whether it has America’s best interests at heart either. Listening to the Times’ advice about Republican candidates is kind of like taking dating advice from Ted Bundy.

But back to Bruni. . . . After opening with some quick character assassination from the Left, Bruni works hard to explain that it’s not only the obvious suspects – i.e., Leftists – who dislike Cruz, but Republicans as well. His opinion piece is basically a “Dear Conservative voter” letter, claiming that, if these savvy Republican political figures hate Cruz, you, the voter, should too.

Bruni’s problem is that his explanations for Cruz’s unpopularity with Washington D.C.’s “in-crowd” Republicans manage to establish that Cruz has dedicated his entire adult life to advancing American constitutionalism and exceptionalism, notions that mainstream Republicans abandoned long ago. Thus, for anyone who rejects the Leftist and establishment assumptions underlying Bruni’s hit piece, it’s obvious that, during these troubled times at home and abroad, Ted Cruz is not ballot box poison. Instead, he is the best man to return America to her core values of personal liberty, economic freedom, and national security policies that benefit America and her friends.

There are, of course, some virtues Cruz possesses that no one can deny. Like the defense attorney who tries to immunize his client against the most damning facts by ingenuously acknowledging them when trial begins, Bruni opens his latest piece by accepting that Cruz is likely the ‘smartest man in the room’:

He’s clearly brilliant — maybe smarter than any of the others. He’s a whirlwind of energy. And man oh man can he give a presentation. On any subject, he’s informed, inflamed, precise.

Bruni’s statement comports with the opinion of many people who actually know Ted Cruz, including famed liberal Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz. So what is Bruni’s problem with Ted Cruz?

But then you talk with people who’ve worked with [Cruz] at various stages of his career. They dislike him.

No, scratch that.

They loathe him.

Let’s leave aside for a moment whether personal popularity — or skin color or type of sexual organs — should be a reason to vote for a person for President, since the job description for President is based on precisely none of those characteristics. Let’s also ignore for now that the practical experience we’ve gained from our recent experiment in voting for a President based on skin color shows how dangerous identity voting is. Instead, let’s examine at face value Bruni’s claim that Cruz’s lack of popularity should be disqualifying, complete with its insinuation that the lack of popularity arises from some sort of deep, dark character flaw.

Bruni certainly makes the case that Cruz is a polarizing figure in a political world in which Progressives take no prisoners and old-line Republicans valiantly try not to upset the Washington establishment apple cart. The real question for thoughtful voters is whether Cruz is “loathed,” not because he’s loathsome, but because he unnerves the people who need to be unnerved. That question requires delving more deeply into why Congress people, on both the Left and the Right, dislike Cruz.

To explain his own side’s hatred for Cruz, Bruni briefly looks to a Daily Beast article that reveals that, during Cruz’s first year at uber-liberal Princeton College, his roommate did not particularly like him:

His freshman roommate, Craig Mazin, told Patricia Murphy of The Daily Beast: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.

Given that so many hate Cruz for being an unrepentant Constitutional conservative idealist, it is ironic that Bruni’s choice of Mazin’s quotable quote, wittingly or not, plays on arch-conservative William F. Buckley’s famous quip, “I would sooner be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than by the four hundred members of the faculty of Harvard.” Neither Bruni nor the Daily Beast author seem to pick up on that irony.

Bruni quickly abandons The Daily Beast article to get to the meat of his piece, which is to explain why Republicans also hate Cruz. Before we do the same, it’s worthwhile to delve deeper into the Daily Beast article, both because it explains why Mazin hated his roommate and because (obviously unwittingly from The Daily Beast’s world view) it gives valuable – and highly flattering – insight into the young Cruz.

First, at least as far as The Daily Beast article is concerned, we learn that seemingly the only substantive reason for Mazin’s disliking Cruz was that the 17-year-old Cruz was reading a rather startling book:

“I remember very specifically that he had a book in Spanish and the title was Was Karl Marx a Satanist? And I thought, who is this person?” Mazin says of Ted Cruz. “Even in 1988, he was politically extreme in a way that was surprising to me.”

Wow! A 17-year-old kid – more accurately, a 17-year-old bilingual kid – was reading a wacky book. For Progressives and mainline Republicans, that’s certainly a reason to hate him twenty-seven years later.

As an aside, Karl Marx probably wasn’t a Satanist, but he was most certainly a hate-filled anti-Semite whose writing unleashed a worldwide killing spree that, over 150 years, has murdered hundreds of millions of people everywhere from Russia to China to Germany to North Korea to all points in between. The irony is that few people today would label as extremists those who read Karl Marx or, worse, who think he’s brilliant. Instead, these people are just referred to as “Bernie Sanders supporters.”

The Daily Beast article reveals something more interesting than a silly book, which is that, when young Cruz erred, he then repented and reformed, at great cost to himself:

Cruz also angered a number of upperclassmen his freshman year when he joined in a regular poker game and quickly ran up $1,800 in debt to other students from his losses. Cruz’s spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said Cruz acknowledges playing in the poker games, which he now considers “foolish.”

He went to his aunt, who worked at a bank in Dallas, and borrowed $1,800 from her, which he paid in cash and promptly quit the game,” Frazier told The Daily Beast, explaining that Cruz worked two jobs and made monthly payments to his aunt for the next two years to repay the debt.

So to recap: a 17-year-old away from home for the first time foolishly gambled away money he did not have. Rather than walking away from what the British used to call “a debt of honor” or passing the debt on to his parents, he instead went to a reliable person for a loan, fully repaid his gambling debt, and then worked extremely hard to repay his loan. Moreover, there’s no indication that Cruz subsequently had a gambling problem. So not only did he face up to his failure, he learned from it. Call me old-fashioned, but that strikes me as laudable, not disgraceful, conduct.

Nor, despite Princeton’s overwhelmingly Progressive student body and faculty, was Cruz without friends:

While Cruz may have been disliked, and intensely so, by many of his classmates, he found a close and longtime friend in a gregarious, popular student from Jamaica named David Panton, who became Cruz’s tag-team partner on Princeton’s renowned debate squad, as well as his roommate for the remainder of their time at Princeton and when they both attended Harvard Law School.

Unlike what others may say, I consider Ted to be very kind. He is a very, very gentle-hearted person,” Panton told The Daily Beast. “He took me under his wing and was a mentor to me. He was very kind to me. I am a much smarter and much better person today because of Ted Cruz.”

Panton’s statement is a lovely encomium. Additionally, given our nation’s current obsession with identity politics, it seems worthwhile to point out something about the Jamaican-born Panton: he’s black. In other words, both Panton, who had a Hispanic friend in Cruz, and Cruz, who had a black friend in Panton, truly heeded Martin Luther King’s dictum, with each judging the other by the content of his character, rather than by the color of his skin. That speaks well of both men, who at a young age already had a principled belief that character matters.

Cruz and Panton were a dynamic debating duo, and their experience shows that Cruz was indeed brilliant, that he was socially comfortable, that he worked extremely hard, and that he was willing to mentor others to help them along as well

Cruz and Panton debated together for four years at Princeton and came to dominate the collegiate parliamentary debate circuit, winning the North American championships in 1992 and being named the top two collegiate debaters in the country (Cruz was No. 1). The competitive debate world also gave Cruz a different social circle, with fellow debaters congregating in his room to hang out and play Super Mario Bros. Debate weekends included Friday night parties that Cruz often attended, where he was remembered to be “sort of a stud” with girls on the debate circuit. Princeton debaters also said he spent extra time mentoring them to improve their skills, even though they competed against each other.

Cruz’s long-term friendship with Panton allows Panton to offer a deeper insight about Cruz than we get from Mazin’s simplistic scorn regarding Cruz’s reading material. It turns out that, as his supporters have known all along, Cruz is a bone deep conservative, as opposed to the unprincipled weathervane many in the GOP are trying to suggest that he is:

Throughout those years, Cruz and Panton remained friends, and Panton still speaks highly of him, saying with praise that the one word that describes Cruz best is “consistent.”

He’s not someone who shifts in the wind,” Panton says. “The Ted Cruz that I knew at 17 years old is exactly the same as the Ted Cruz I know at 42 years old. He was very conservative then, and an outspoken conservative. He remains strongly conservative today.”

Even at a young age, Cruz understood what his conservativism was about. Unlike today’s screeching Progressive college students, Cruz wasn’t a conservative because it was trendy (which it wasn’t during his time at Princeton, just as it isn’t now), nor was he unthinkingly following his parents’ lead, as so many less politically aware young people do. Instead, he delved deep into his ideas:

That [conservative] consistency reveals itself in Cruz’s senior thesis, which he completed under the mentorship of Robert George, a professor of jurisprudence whom The New York Times called “the reigning brain of the Christian right.” [Talk about your dog whistles.]

Cruz’s thesis, “Clipping the Wings of Angels,” quoted James Madison in the Federalist Papers saying in part that, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Cruz focused on the history and theory behind the Ninth and 10th [sic] Amendments in a constitutional defense that reads like a speech he could give at any Tea Party event in the country.

The time-capsule quality of Cruz’s politics is lost on no one who knew him at Princeton, none of whom could point to a political position that he held 25 years ago that he does not seem to still hold today. For some, that amounts to a laudably consistent belief system. For others, it reveals a man of calcified thinking, dangerously impervious to facts, reality, and a changing world.

For Progressives, it is damning that Sen. Cruz has not “evolved” and, instead, has remained “dangerously impervious to facts, reality and a changing world.” That indictment is true, however, only if one is holding the wrong idea for too long.


More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Sharyl Atkisson in the with an extraordinary piece, The “Post Truth” News Media submitted by Joshuapundit. In it, the veteran investigative reporter gives us nothing less than a detailed analysis of how the news media got to its present sordid state, where it is and how it works today and the various techniques it uses to distort the news for partisan political purposes. A must read.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes!-Bookworm Room – The New York Times’ latest attack on Ted Cruz backfires, highlighting his virtues


• Second place with 3 votes – The Noisy Room –ISIS Plots World Domination… Obama Color Codes It


• Third place *t* with 2 1/3 votes –The Right Planet – Islamic Attack on San Bernardino: Why It Happened and What to Do


• Third place *t* with 2 1/3 votes –Joshuapundit-The Heart Of The Matter


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –VA Right! - San Bernardino Proves Muslims Are Peaceful – Right Up Until They Start Shooting


• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote –Maggie's Notebook–Rabid Anti-Semite of Syrian Descent to Advise on ISIS: Robert Malley, Hamas Supporter, Fired by Obama, Rehired by Obama


• Fifth place with 2/3 vote –The Independent Sentinel – Another Socialist Paradise Goes Down for the Count


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –Fausta's Blog – Venezuela: Opposition gets qualified majority. What next?


• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Razor – The Watch

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 1/3 votes! –Sharyl Attkisson – The “Post Truth” News Media submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Andrew McCarthy/NRO -Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban Should Touch Off a Badly Needed Discussion submitted by Nice Deb


• Third place with 1 2/3 votes –Michael Doran/Mosaic-Our Man In Moscowsubmitted by Bookworm Room

li> Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes –Michael Walsh/PJ Media – End The War With ISIS Now submitted by The Glittering Eye

• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote -Larry Correia/Monster Hunter Nation –Guns And Vultures submitted by The Noisy Room


• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote -Mark Perry/Strategy Bridge – What Would Clausewitz Do? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Sixth place with 2/3 votes -Judicial Watch–New Benghazi Email Shows DOD Offered State Department “Forces that Could Move to Benghazi” Immediately – Specifics Blacked Out in New Document submitted by The Watcher


• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage – Carter Banned Iranians From Coming To The US During Hostage Crisissubmitted by VA Right!


• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -PopeHat –Talking Productively About Guns submitted by The Razor


• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote -Nidra Poller/The New English Review – What Do They Want? submitted by The Watcher


• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote - Politically Short – Islam, Jihad, and our Ignorance submitted by The Right Planet

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. and every  Tuesday morning, when we reveal the weeks' nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Our Weasel Of The Week!!!

Yes, once again, It's time to present this week's statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special, 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week's nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner...the envelope please...

 

Prog-Faschist New York Daily News Columnist Linda Stasi !!

 Nice Deb : New York Daily News columnist, Linda Stasi, has been accurately described as a “foul, disgusting liberal.” One could also argue that she is a particularly repellent weasel.

The aptly named columnist "blamed of the victim" and engaged in gross moral relativism in her horrific Dec. 6 article asserting "that the interaction between 'two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees' led to the deaths of '13 innocent people' who were killed in an act of “unspeakable carnage.”

The post's title read: “San Bernardino Killers Were ISIS-Loving Monsters -- But One of Their Victims Was Just as Bigoted."

Stasi stated:

One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion.
The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied.
"What they didn’t realize,” she stated, “is that except for their different religions, they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.”

What an absolutely repulsive weasel this Stasi creature is.

 Repellent isn't the word for it. You have to wonder about the sanity of people like this. Among other things, the major difference between the men is that one of them was a cold blooded murderer and his victim wasn't, but try telling that to this creature!

But in terms of the weaselness which we commemorate here, Ms. Stasi is perfect. She has her morality disengaged and will twist, warp and/or excuse anything as long as it helps the Cause, even if it means dragging a murder victim's name through the mud before his corpse is even cold and while his family is still in mourning.

Like many of the Weasels we give awards to here, she's one of those enemies inside the gates we have to be very concerned about, especially since she has such a public megaphone.

Enjoy your weasel Ms. Stasi. I have no doubt you will continue to be worthy of it.

Res Ipsa Loquiter.

 Well, there it is.

Check back next Tuesday to see who next week's nominees for Weasel of the Week are!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum, and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Watcher's Council Nominations - Obama's Strategy Edition

Oh,I bet that'll work. He'll talk them to death.

Welcome to the Watcher's Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the 'sphere, and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing on Friday morning.

Council News:

Tom White of Virginia Right is very much active in working the Old Dominion for his preferred candidate Donald Trump. Last week, on December 2nd, he speechified a crowd at a campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia estimated at 1,500 people!

Bookworm continued to attract more admirers for her unique style and lucid prose,this time none other than talk radio star Mark Levin, who Facebooked and tweeted her piece on Ted Cruz that appears as her entry this week!




So, without further ado, let's see what we have for you this week....

Council Submissions

• The Noisy Room – ISIS Plots World Domination… Obama Color Codes It


• The Right Planet – Islamic Attack on San Bernardino: Why It Happened and What to Do


• Puma By Design – Obama/Jarrett Warned FBI Director Over Anti-Muslim Tone


• Bookworm Room – The New York Times’ latest attack on Ted Cruz backfires, highlighting his virtues


• The Glittering Eye -These Are the Times That Try Men’s Souls


• Maggie's Notebook–Rabid Anti-Semite of Syrian Descent to Advise on ISIS: Robert Malley, Hamas Supporter, Fired by Obama, Rehired by Obama


• VA Right! - San Bernardino Proves Muslims Are Peaceful – Right Up Until They Start Shooting


• The Razor – The Watch


• Joshuapundit-The Heart Of The Matter


• Nice Deb – Saturday Movie Matinee: Obama’s Our Greatest National Security Threat


• GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD – Underwhelming


• Fausta's Blog – Venezuela: Opposition gets qualified majority. What next?


• The Independent Sentinel – Another Socialist Paradise Goes Down for the Count

Non-Council Submissions

• Larry Correia/Monster Hunter Nation –Guns And Vultures submitted by The Noisy Room


• Politically Short – Islam, Jihad, and our Ignorance submitted by The Right Planet


• Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage –FDR Halted German, Japanese Naturalization After Pearl Harbor submitted by Puma By Design


• Michael Doran/Mosaic-Our Man In Moscowsubmitted by Bookworm Room


• Michael Walsh/PJ Media – End The War With ISIS Now submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Ron A. Y. Rich/Canada Free Press –Trump Proposal on Muslims More Liberal than that of FDR and the Other Liberals of his time submitted by Maggie's Notebook


• Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage – Carter Banned Iranians From Coming To The US During Hostage Crisissubmitted by VA Right!


• PopeHat –Talking Productively About Guns submitted by The Razor


• Sharyl Attkisson – The “Post Truth” News Media submitted by Joshuapundit


• Andrew McCarthy/NRO -Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban Should Touch Off a Badly Needed Discussion submitted by Nice Deb


• Mark Perry/Strategy Bridge – What Would Clausewitz Do? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Nidra Poller/The New English Review – What Do They Want? submitted by The Watcher


• Benjamin Weingarten/City Journal – Did Inequality Cause ISIS submitted by The Watcher


• Judicial Watch–New Benghazi Email Shows DOD Offered State Department “Forces that Could Move to Benghazi” Immediately – Specifics Blacked Out in New Document submitted by The Watcher


• Der Spiegel – Ex-US Intelligence Chief on Islamic State's Rise: 'We Were Too Dumb' submitted by The Watcher

Enjoy! And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!And don't forget to tune in Friday for the results!

The Heart Of The Matter

A great deal has been written and said about the attacks in San Bernardino, President Obama's unserious, know nothing speech in response and subjects like ISIS, Muslim 'radicalization', Islam and immigration.

Much of it has been pretty good, some of it has been insightful and a lot of it has been deliberately misleading. For a good sample of the latter read Obama bootlicker Dan Balz's piece in the Washington Post essentially calling Donald Trump the equivalent of Adolf Hitler for merely proposing the entirely reasonable suggestion that we put a temporary moratorium on migrations from certain Muslim countries until we have the ability to vet them better. At one point,Balz even equates The Donald with - wait for it- anti-Semites like Father Coughlin in the 1930's. You can't make this stuff up.

Like Obama spokesmouth Josh Earnest, it's ironic that these two minions both have surnames that are the exact opposites of their actual characters.

Another thing that's funny is that that the same people, both Republicans and Democrats whom whine constantly about our 'broken immigration system' are absolutely horrified at the idea of stopping migration to America  from an increasingly dangerous part of the world until it's fixed.And that, of course, includes our president.

You might almost think they're Up To Something...and of course they are.

Have you ever wondered how things got to this state, when the most powerful military and the huge intrusive security apparatus that was assembled after 9/11 is so ineffectual that this war still goes on 14 years after 9/11 and a couple of ISIS groupies could assemble explosive devices and acquire AK 47's and thousands of rounds of ammo with their own little jihadi cell in a place like San Bernardino, plan an attack and carry it off so easily? Have you ever wondered why so many Muslims, especially younger ones become jihadis and why the problem keeps increasing?

Part of it, of course is the actual nature of Islam, much of which is fascist, cruel, misogynist and violent. Most Muslims aren't, not by any means. But it is the Islamic fascism brand name that is increasingly being imported into America and elsewhere in the Western world, and as that continues, more and more Muslims, especially younger ones are going to identify with it, because it appears to be winning.

The same thing occurred in Nazi Germany. I call it my 20-60-20 formula. Any political movement or ideology, which is exactly what Islamic fascism is, will start with a hardened core of True Believers willing to go to any lengths to win. As they get more notoriety and become more established, there will be a roughly equal amount of people who are horrified by them and who rigidly, sometimes vociferously oppose them.And then there's the 60% in the middle, some of whom may lean one way or the other but essentially are more interested in just day to day life. But as one side or the other appears to be winning, more and more of the 60% start drifting more and more to what looks the winning side. That's exactly what we're seeing now. Why has this happened?

The fact is that the last two presidents (and Mrs. Clinton) were essentially bought and sold by the Saudis, Qatar and the Emirates, along with a lot of other politicians, diplomats,and other government functionaries.

Their reward for faithful service once they left office was the funding of presidential libraries, six figure speaking fees, honorariums and 'consulting' fees, lucrative business opportunities (just research how Bill Clinton became a multi-millionaire) and generous gifts to presidential 'foundations' like the Clinton Foundation. All one needs to do is to follow the money and watch where it leads.

What the Arabs bought with their money was the US military to use as needed for their personal mercenaries, a guaranteed market for their oil while we sold our domestic oil elsewhere, immunity from any prosecution for their support for terrorism, policy influence...and oh yes, a free hand to do aggressive dawa and indoctrination for their extremely fundamentalist version of Islam via the Muslim Brotherhood front organizations who took over something like 80% of America's mosques via the North American Islamic Trust - and replaced the imams with their own radical choices.

Add appeasement of Iran and a clueless president to the mix and you have our present situation in a nutshell.

This is why whenever a jihadi attack occurs on American soil, the perpetrators can almost always be traced to attendance at a Muslim Brotherhood owned mosque with a radical imam in charge and lots of 'educational materials' promoting jihad, Islamist doctrine and martyrdom. President George W. Bush actually spoke at one of these mosques, the Saudi funded Washington Islamic Center.

The Saudis and the others were particularly willing to fund this effort not only to spread Wahhabi Islam but  to get the Muslim Brotherhood firebrands out of their countries, where they posed a risk to the House of Saud and other autocratically ruled kingdoms. And they continue to fund it today, with increasing success because of the increase in Muslim migration to America, aided and abetted by the last three administrations. President Barack Hussein Obama alone has brought almost one million Muslims into America and many of them are bringing certain attitudes with them that do not mix at all well with Western culture.

Our current president is a True Believer who welcomes the alliance between prog-fascists and Islamists. And he has a number of Islamists and their sympathizers in low profile but influential positions, even in Homeland Security. If you look at his domestic and foreign policy, one common thread in both is to protect and empower Islamist and the Muslim Brotherhood, whether it's keeping them out of jail for aiding and abetting terrorism, getting into an illegal war in Libya to empower them, siccing his Department of Justice on anyone whom opposes them in the least , liberating dangerous jihadis from Guantanamo or doing his best to allow them to take over Egypt.

And that of course is the heart of the matter. Most average people in the Western World have finally gotten beyond the media fog and the absurd rhetoric of many of their so called leaders and elites to realize what many of us figured out a long time ago, that we're in a war with at least a significant portion of Islam, with what I prefer to call Islamist fascism. That's at least a start, to actually realize that we're fighting an ideology rather than 'terrorists' or 'terrorism'. And there are any number of good ideas on how to fight that war and win.

We defeated the Nazis and the Japanese in 3 and half years, starting out with a much weaker military than we have now, and they were far stronger than our present adversaries.

But the biggest problem we have, and the one that could defeat us is leadership. It is lack of it that got us to this point and a continued lack of it that will cost us even more dearly than it has already.

Hearing Barack Obama refer to himself as 'commander in chief' in his absurd 13-minute speech the other night brings the problem home. Any military leader with his record would have been relieved of command long ago.

A different Congress would have impeached Barack Obama long ago for this and many other reasons, but that's unfortunately not likely. Elections have consequences, and so does passively tolerating the results and not insisting that our representatives fulfill their oats and take action.

No progress is going to occur on winning this war until Barack Obama and his sordid gang are out of office, because winning this war is the last thing they want, believe it or not. They'd prefer to maintain their relationships with our enemies, 'manage' this and run out the clock, because while they mouth platitudes about how they're serving the country, their own personal interests take precedence over that. And that includes political interests as well as financial ones. Can anyone imagine Hillary Clinton making demands or taking the fight to some of the biggest donors to her 'charitable foundation?'

For all the bold words out there about taking out ISIS and 'fighting terrorism', it's leadership we need to focus on most of all right now. We've already seen in the last 23 years what happens without it.
And there are signs that the leadership we need is developing as the West awakens from its long, enforced slumber and realizes that the knife is at its throat.

In the meantime, we can work to install that leadership and insist that the entire baggage of political correctness and appeasement of Islamic fascism our elites have fostered is ridiculed, shamed, opposed and shouted down for the lethal poison it is. If we don't it will kill us.


-selah-

Our Weasel Of The Week Nominations

It's time once again for the Watcher's Council's 'Weasel Of The Week' nominations, where we pick our choices to compete for the award of the famed Golden Weasel to a public figure who particularly deserves to be slimed and mocked for his or her dastardly deeds during the week. Every Tuesday morning, tune in for the Weasel of the Week nominations!

Here are the nominees...

 
 Bengahzi Babe, Server Wiping Expert And Foundation Fundraising Ace Hillary Clinton!!


 The Noisy Room : My nomination this week is Hillary Clinton for calling on Silicon Valley to stop ISIS. I kid you not. She's going for ripping up the Constitution just the way Obama is:

“You are going to hear all the familiar complaints: ‘freedom of speech,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said in an hourlong speech and question-and-answer session at the Saban Forum, an annual gathering at the Brookings Institution that focuses mostly on Israel’s security issues.

In a reference to Silicon Valley’s reverence for disruptive technologies, Mrs. Clinton said, “We need to put the great disrupters at work at disrupting ISIS,” an acronym used for the militant group.

It was the second time in two weeks that Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, had thrown herself into the brewing battle between Silicon Valley and the government over what steps should be taken to block the use of Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and a range of encrypted apps that are adopted by terrorist groups.

Then the hag had the nerve to say that if Iran violated any of the agreement, that she would make sure America responded swiftly and mercilessly. First off, the agreement is not valid. Never was. Second, she alluded to using nuclear weapons against Iran. She pretended to be corrected over it as if it were a slip, but I suspect it wasn't. “Declaring war on Islam, or demonizing the Muslim community, is not only counter to our values; it plays right into the hands of the terrorists,” Hillary said. Right, because it isn't like the vast majority of killers slaughtering Americans out there are Muslim... oh, wait. Trust me when I say that if the Hildabeast ever got her way with technology, she would use it against Americans, not the enemy. For being a fascist, she should get the golden weasel this week.

 
Obama's Own Racialist And Islamist Friendly Attorney General, Loretta Lynch!!

Bookworm Room : My nominee is Loretta Lynch who, in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, went full dhimmi by announcing that speech that merely edges towards violence will justify full federal prosecution:

“Now obviously this is a country that is based on free speech,” she said. “but when it edges towards violence, when we see the potential for someone lifting that mantle of anti-Muslim rhetoric or, as we saw after 9/11, violence against individuals… when we see that, we will take action.”…

“I think it’s important that as we again talk about the importance of free speech we make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not America. They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted,” she concluded.

That Lynch acknowledges that a First Amendment exists doesn't change the fact that she's created a standard that doesn't exist under the First Amendment. If I remember my law correctly, the standard is that the speech has to be of such a nature that it is an imminent incitement to violence. That would be along the lines of "Hey, you! Take this gun and go shoot the man standing in the doorway." That is not protected speech.

Saying, "We are witnessing a dangerous problem with the rise of radical Islam in America and we need to do something about it," is the epitome of free speech. It does not directly incite or order violence, but it does raise serious political issues that a free people may loudly and publicly discuss.

Lynch, however, has just given herself permission to prosecute this language in case some Yahoo in Nowhereville gets it into his head to send a bomb to or crash a car into a mosque. Free speech can never be limited by the fact that a handful of auditors may be stupid, vicious or crazy. To hold otherwise is to go full sharia and, to the extent I don't believe Lynch is a Muslim, for her to be the perfect dhimmi subject of a Muslim nation.

As Pamela Geller rightly said, if you want to tackle something that has explicit instructions for immediate violence, Lynch had better go after the Koran first.

 
Charlene Storey, New Jersey Councilwoman!

Maggie's Notebook : I nominate Charlene Storey, New Jersey Councilwoman for the borough of Roselle Park, for Weasel of the Week because she's a loser, literally, who tendered her resignation, before rescinding her resignation over the issue of calling the town Christmas tree a "Christmas" tree. The council voted to change the name of the town ceremony from "A Tree Lighting" to "A Christmas Tree Lighting." The vote was 4 to 2 in favor of the change. Ms. Storey doesn't like losing. She resigned, and then, reportedly changed her mind. According to this source, she is a "Councilwoman at Large" and her term expires on January 7, 2016, so she made some noise before disappearing back into the crowd.

Ms. Storey's story is not unusual. So many Weasels like her, but the Mayor of the town is unusual. Mayor Hokanson, a Democrat, is quoted saying "I feel strongly that it is a Christmas tree, and it is a lighting. So therefore, it will be a 'Christmas tree lighting. Just like the Easter Bunny is the Easter Bunny and not the Holiday Bunny."

A man of uncommon sense and good will, he will honor Ms. Storey by saying "Happy Holiday" to her, and "Merry Christmas to everyone else.

In addition to being a Democrat, the Mayor is a retired Roselle Park Police lieutenant and a life-long resident of the borough. He said he has received many phone calls supporting the "Christmas" tree from the good people of Roselle Park. Growing up in the town, he said the tree was always a "Christmas tree," until the lawsuit. And isn't there always one?

February 1999: "For now, Jersey City has a court's approval to continue its 35-year tradition of erecting a holiday display of a menorah and a creche outside City Hall as long as officials make sure to include Santa, Frosty the Snowman, and little red sleigh and an evergreen decorated with Kwanzaa ribbons."

How many years did the townspeople of Judeo-Christian belief show up for the "Tree" lighting? Storey called the renaming "exclusionary," although she may show up if she chooses to do so. Only she makes it "exclusionary." The tree lighting is a lighting. She is not required to have a religious experience as the lights flash on, just as we are not required to lose our faith in a Higher Power or Jesus Christ because she is offended.


Prog-Faschist New York Daily News Columnist Linda Stasi !!

 Nice Deb : New York Daily News columnist, Linda Stasi, has been accurately described as a “foul, disgusting liberal.” One could also argue that she is a particularly repellent weasel.

The aptly named columnist "blamed of the victim" and engaged in gross moral relativism in her horrific Dec. 6 article asserting "that the interaction between 'two hate-filled, bigoted municipal employees' led to the deaths of '13 innocent people' who were killed in an act of “unspeakable carnage.”

The post's title read: “San Bernardino Killers Were ISIS-Loving Monsters -- But One of Their Victims Was Just as Bigoted."

Stasi stated:

One man spent his free time writing frightening, NRA-loving, hate-filled screeds on Facebook about the other’s religion.

The other man quietly stewed and brewed his bigotry, collecting the kind of arsenal that the Facebook poster would have envied.

"What they didn’t realize,” she stated, “is that except for their different religions, they were in many ways similar men who even had the same job.”

What an absolutely repulsive weasel this Stasi creature is.

  Well, there it is. What a despicable group of  Weasels...ANY OF THEM COULD WIN! Check back Thursday to see which Weasel walks off with the statuette of shame!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum.

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it...or any of the other fantabulous Watcher's Council content.

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Forum: What Is Your Reaction To The Terrorism In San Bernardino?

 
 
Every week on Monday morning , the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher's Forum, short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture, or daily living. This week's question: What is your reaction to the terrorism in  San Bernardino?

The Glittering Eye : Since the murders by Syed Farook and his wife in San Bernardino last week, I've written fourteen posts. Five have been on the subject of the police execution of Laquan McDonald. I'm actually surprised that my fellow Council members have not latched onto this subject, considering their antipathy to the Democratic Party. Not only does it have the potential to throttle Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations, it could rend the whole Democratic coalition apart.

Four of my posts were on a variety of topics. The other five have been devoted to the murders in San Bernardino:

Folie à deux
The Faceless
Threats
Reasonable Inferences
These Are the Times That Try Men's Souls

Rather than try to summarize them, I'll just set out some bullet points:

• As of this writing, the president has apparently decided that the most effective strategy for opposing such incidents in the future is gun control. What specific measures does he have in mind? I predict that no Democratic candidate (or very few and those running in safe seats) will run on a platform of gun control in 2016.
• The Democratic talking points about the strength of our vetting process and the moral necessity of accepting women and children refugees are as dead as the victims in San Bernardino.
• Why are we accepting immigrants from Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, UAE, Libya, etc. at all? Why are we accepting immigrants from Afghanistan and Iraq other than those who worked as translators for our armed forces or their immediate families at all? And those after a rigorous vetting process? We need a moratorium on immigration to the U. S. from that part of the world and I include fiance, compassionate, refugee, and asylum visas in that.
• Why do we allow CAIR to continue to violate the Foreign Agent Registration Act?
• Indeed, why are U. S. imams who are supported wholly or in part by foreign donations not required to register under FARA?

 JoshuaPundit : My immediate reaction, even before the names of the attackers were belatedly revealed by the media was 'smells like jihad, but not ISIS.'  

Baghdadi is smart, and he picks his targets carefully for maximum impact. A Resource center in a place like San Bernardino  wasn't it. I know the area pretty well, and San Berdoo as the locals call it is a midsize, fairly depressed inland city over two hours away from Los Angeles, traffic willing. Redlands where the jihadis were living is San Bernardino's slightly more upscale college town neighbor to the east. Unlike Paris, there was little or no strategic value and what shock value existed was from the sheer body count. Jihad Barbi and Ken were essentially ISIS groupies. That doesn't mean that they weren't connected to like-minded individuals, even given some training and assistance but I doubt they were actually part of the Varsity team.

There's a great deal we won't find out since the FBI (almost certainly under President Obama's orders) released the crime scene after only an unheard of forty eight hours and allowed the media  to trample the crime scene and even handle physical evidence.

And of course, that's the heart of the matter. We can make all the laws and  take all the precautionary action we want, but with dysfunctional leadership that's always going to sabotage it,  we will always be stepping on our own feet. Impeachment is the first step towards winning this war.

I heard President Obama last night, and the only part of this dysfunctional jackass's 13 minute speech that didn't surprise me was that he failed to work in a mention of climate change. Of course, he will never admit the major part his policies have played in strengthening jihad in America and worldwide, like his illegal war in Libya and his protection and appeasement of Islamists. And that includes his role in arming, training and financing ISIS and later,  al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra, now going under the name of Jaish-al-Fatah, The Army of Conquest. Or, as President Obama's creatures refer to them, 'the free Syrian rebels.'

I also wonder if anyone but me who was watching and heard the gun control part appreciated as I did the irony of someone  whose administration sold AK-47's to Mexican drug cartels and did his best to stonewall any kind of investigation of it talking to the rest of us about 'sensible gun control.' 

GrEaT sAtAn"S gIrLfRiEnD : Practicing that ol' time religion.

It was maddening to hear press and political cats contort themselves into risible positions to find something – anything – to smoke screen the Cali Jihad.

Again it was a big surprise to the jihadists' family, his mosque members etc etc. Always the same Really strange too that CAIR was right on top of this with their other worldly press conference, the family attorneys press call and how about the FBI or whomever allowing the land lord to open up the apartment to the press and public before investigators were able to haul off anything.

Almost like the FBI didn't want to investigate the place, seize stuff, get fingerprints and all.

Very tough to watch after the Chattanooga Jihad - in me very own back yard, yet a pattern seems to emerge. Boston, Chattanooga and now San Bernardino - the children of mohammedist immigrants are attacking us - and with ultra conventional weaponry - rifles and bombs.

Despite the fact that the killers Boston and Chattanooga mosques are hip and haunch together in the North American 'You Know What' Trust - still awaiting to see in the Riverside mosque in Cali is hooked up with NAIT (same affiliated mosque that the Pentagon plane hi jackers went to in VA) and if any action can be taken against NAIT.


Laura Rambeau Lee, Right Reason : I must confess when I heard of the massacre I was not surprised. I knew it was only a matter of where and when the next attack would occur.

In the aftermath of the massacre in San Bernardino, CA by radical Islamic terrorists we discovered the two killers were named as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. The media appeared shocked to learn a woman was involved in the murders. It took awhile for them to report the killers’ names although early on many of us were learning their identities via Twitter and Facebook. As the relationship between the two was revealed it occurred to me the K-1 visa bride more than likely radicalized her American born husband.

With gun stores reporting record sales it appears the majority of Americans now understand, if they had not before, we are at war with radical Islamists. And it is not just America these terrorists have declared war against; it is all of Western culture and non fundamentalist Muslims. They have been waging a war on “infidels” for centuries, so anyone who says that we brought it upon ourselves must acknowledge this fight has been going on long before America was discovered.

Americans have been preparing for this war and I pray more people will arm themselves and be able to stop or at least minimize any damage visited upon us by Islamic, or any domestic, terrorists. I have faith in our resolve and our courage.

We know the potential threat of terrorists whether they are Islamic or any other fanatical individual or group. What is more concerning is a government consistently shifting the narrative away from speaking the name of our enemy and instead focusing on gun violence or climate change as urgent issues that need to be addressed.

Speaking about the San Bernardino massacre and other attacks the Obama Administration and the left seems more concerned with not offending the Muslim community than recognizing and conveying the truth to the American people or taking measures to protect us. Attorney General Loretta Lynch even went so far as to say she would prosecute anyone guilty of what she considered violence-inspiring speech. So now we have the head of the Justice Department threatening to deprive the American people of their constitutional right to free speech if they speak out against radical Islam. Can we say “shari’ah?” Interesting we haven’t heard her say the same about the #BlackLivesMatter group who calls for the killing of law enforcement officers.

Americans will not tolerate any gun control measures. We are born out of revolution and hold our God given rights sacred. Conservatives should be conveying to the American people that the Bill of Rights is a list of our human rights. These are not rights given to us by government; they predate any laws of man. The right to speak freely and the right to protect ourselves, our families, loved ones, and co-workers should never be the subject of political debate.

This is our reality and will be for the future. We must realize electing a Republican will not immediately make this threat go away. The threat is in our country and in our cities. Learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones. Take firearms classes and learn how to use a firearm safely and properly. Get your concealed license permit. Refuse to be a victim.

Stealing from the British World Word II poster, all I can say is KEEP CALM AND CARRY!

 Well, there you have it.

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum. And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council, and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere, and you won’t want to miss it.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that, y'know?

Hanukkah..The Festival Of Lights And Freedom

Tonight marks the first night of Hannukah, the Festival of Lights .

While many of you may be familiar with the story of the Miracle of the Oil, what is frequently overlooked is that Hannukah celebrates another miracle - the miracle of a group of farmers and tradesman utterly defeating the professional armies of the Seleucid Empire, a victory for freedom that belongs to all of us alike, Jew and Gentile.

Hanukkah celebrates one of the important miracles in Jewish history and reminds us of the triumph of faith. It takes place every year,usually in mid to late December. While its date varies if you go by the western calendar, in the Hebrew calendar Hanukkah always falls on the 25th day of Kislev.

Hanukkah celebrates the victorious Jewish war for independence in the second century B.C. E. The story is told in the First Book of Maccabees, and retold in the Second Book of Maccabees. A contemporary military history of the war can be found in Battles of the Bible, coauthored by Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon.

After his death, Alexander the Great's empire broke into several parts, and Israel was under the control of the Seleucid empire, based in Syria. Israel had lived peacefully under the Persian Empire and under the Ptolemic empire (of Egypt), both which tolerated Judaism; but the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes was an arrogant, bigoted Hellenizer, who attempted to force the Jews to abandon their religion and to adopt the Seleucid's Greek customs and worship,which included idolatry. And his efforts were not without success in some quarters.

There were those Jews who considered themselves `modern' and `assimilated' who were willing to go along with this, even to the extent of having surgical operations to reverse circumcision.

Others did not, and they were prosecuted vigorously and brutalized by the Seleucid Greeks.

The start of the Maccabean Revolt sprang from a single spontaneous act of resistance. In the foothills village of Modiin in 167BCE, a Greek army unit set up an altar, and ordered the local Jewish rabbi, Mattathias, to sacrifice a pig and eat it. He refused, as did his five sons. When a Jewish collaborator came forward to offer the sacrifice, a furious Mattathias "ran and killed him on the spot, killed the king's officer who was forcing them to sacrifice, and tore down the altar" (1 Mac. 2:15-25).

Mattathias, his sons and their followers then headed for the Judean hills, to launch a guerrilla war. They were farmers who had no military training,fighting a professional army. There had not been a Jewish army since Babylon had destroyed the Judean kingdom four centuries before. Their only weapons were farming tools and whatever simple weapons they could construct, such as maces or slings. During this first year, Mattathias died, and his middle son Judah took over command as his successor.

Nicknamed "the hammer" ("Maccabee," in Hebrew), Judah constructed a guerrilla army that staged daring nighttime raids on the Greek outposts, then melted back into the countryside. His successes attracted more supporters, and the revolt spread.

The war went on for 25 years, one of the most singular wars for independence in history. The miracle, perhaps is that it was fought at all, let alone won.

The Seleucids and Antiochus sent huge, well equipped armies into Israel to subdue the Jews. They were all defeated, at odds that seem miraculous even today. Judah Maccabee turned out to be a tactical genius, using unheard of tactics, leading the Greek phalanxes into the hills where they could not maneuver and destroying them.

To give you an idea of how essential the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria was and is to Israel's survival then and now, the map below shows where the major battles of the war took place.(hat tip, Carl) Click on it to enlarge it:



One thing that is seldom mentioned about the war is the fact that a significant part of it took place against the Hellenized, `modern',`assimilated' Jewish traitors I mentioned earlier, who were more than willing abandon the Jewish way of life and supported their Seleucid masters against their fellow Jews.

As Ecclesiastes famously said in the Megillot, there's nothing new under the sun.

In 164 BCE, the Jews defeated a force commanded by the Viceroy Lysias that outnumbered them two to one. That battle took place six miles north of Hebron, near the Jewish fortress of Beth-zur. The victory allowed Judah and his army to retake Jerusalem.

When they entered Jerusalem, Judah and his followers entered the Holy Temple on the Temple Mount. The Temple had been wrecked and horribly desecrated, with profanities scrawled on the walls and the Ark by the Seleucids.

The Maccabees built a new altar. When the time came to light the N'er Tamid, the Eternal Light of the Temple, the Jews could find only one sanctified jar of oil marked with the seal of the High Priest. It was only enough to last one evening. On the 25th of Kislev, in the year 164 BCE,the lamp was lit with this small jar of oil and, miraculously, stayed lit for eight days, until more oil suitable for the temple was made. The eight days of Hanukkah celebrate that miracle, as well as the divine intervention that had led the Jews to amazing victories over well-equipped professional armies far superior in numbers. "Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wants and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to Him who had given success to the purifying of His own holy place" (2 Mac. 10:7).

The war itself continued. In 160 BCE, near modern-day Ramallah, Judah was killed, but Judah's brother Jonathan, and then his brother Simon took command of the Jewish army, finally winning complete independence in 142 BCE. At last, "All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees, and there was none to make them afraid" (1 Mac. 14:12).

That verse, by the way, was the one quoted by George Washington in his famous letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island's Truro synagogue, assuring them the the new American government welcomed them as citizens and countrymen. Considering the history of Jewish persecution and expulsion in Europe, that letter of welcome meant a great deal to the Jews of 1790.

President Washington obviously was familiar with the Book of Maccabee, and knew exactly what that war was fought over.

You see, the War of the Maccabees was the first war ever fought for religious freedom. Somehow, a group of farmers with no military training who refused to bow to their oppressors defeated a mighty empire and its immense standing armies. There seems to be no plausible explanation for the victory of the Jews except that it was a miracle...as was the American Revolution itself.

Towards the end of the war, Antiochus and the Seleucids became so obsessed with defeating the Israelites that they sacked their own cities and sold their own citizens into slavery to get money to pursue the war against the Jews. The war bankrupted and destroyed their empire.

Hanukkah reminds us that with G-d's help, victory over evil is assured, that light conquers darkness and no miracle is impossible. Modern Israel and the survival of the Jewish people against all odds are proof of that.


Symbols in Hanukkah

Aside from the Hanukkiah (candlesticks), the other great symbol of Hanukkah are those small spinning tops known as dreidels.


The four letters which appear on the four corners of a dreidel allude to the miracle of Hanukkah. They spell out: Nes (N-miracle), Gadol (G-great), Haya (H-happened) and Sham (S-there, meaning in Israel). Or, `a great miracle happened there.'

Indeed it did.

Chag Sameach! Happy Hanukkah!

How Donald Trump May Just Have Blown His Election Chances

Donald Trump may have just  done himself some serious damage politically.

Last Thursday, Trump delivered a speech to the Republican Jewish coalition that revealed a lot of ignorance of the Middle East and Israel with some highly questionable remarks.

He started out well before a sympathetic crowd, joking about how his daughter Ivanka, a convert to Orthodox Judaism is no longer reachable on the Jewish Sabbath and was greeted with warm applause and laughter. And then he went nuts:

Peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority "has to do with Israel and whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things," Trump told the Jewish Republican Coalition. This, despite his acknowledgement that Israel had already made many difficult moves for the sake of a peace agreement.[...]

Later he said, not antagonistically, “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t negotiate deals? Probably more than any room I’ve ever spoken." He added that the Jews would not support him for president "even though you know I’m the best thing that could ever happen to Israel… You're not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”

These remarks by Trump doubled down on ones he made in an AP interview ( which, since it's the AP might have been selectively edited) implying that he intends to force negotiations between Israel and the PLO and that he feels the onus is on Israel:

"I have a real question as to whether or not both sides want to make it," Trump told The Associated Press, clarifying that he has more concerns regarding "one side in particular."

"A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal - whether or not Israel's willing to sacrifice certain things," Trump said. "They may not be, and I understand that, and I'm OK with that. But then you're just not going to have a deal."

He also refused to rule out dividing Jerusalem as part of any peace settlement.

Both Ted Cruz,Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio have stated explicitly that they recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capitol and would move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv in accordance with a bill congress passed years ago. I believe Cruz and Huckabee.

Let's go over what these remarks reveal about Donald Trump. And let me start out by saying that certain allegations of 'anti-semitism' by the Anti-Defamation League (a largely Democrat Jewish version of the NAACP)are abysmally stupid. Trump is no Jew hater, although his phrasing of his remarks about 'Jewish money' were equally dumb and self-defeating. What sense did it make to make these remarks in front of a friendly audience like the Republican Jewish Coalition? He may not need their money, but both Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel tend to have a lot of political influence on both sides of the aisle. Alienating them as an unforced error is a huge  mistake.

And those Israeli concessions Trump expects to negotiate? I notice he didn't mention negotiating any concessions with Abbas and the PLO. He may even realize that Abbas has time and time again said he's not making any concessions, ever.Now, with Obama, being the anti-Israel ideologue he is, it's understandable that Hamas and the PLO would literally be allowed to get away with murder. I would have expected Trump to be more sensible, or to hire an adviser that was. Obviously I was mistaken.

The Israelis have already made quite a few concessions for peace, and none of them mattered, because the basic cause of the violence is that Abbas,Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and others simply reject the very existence of Israel and indeed Jews in the Middle East. That's the bottom line.Does anyone really think that even if Israel gave Abbas everything he wants (and idiots like former Israeli PM/felon Ehud Olmert came pretty close) that the violence and the attempt to drive the Jews into the sea would cease? It would simply increase. The 'peace' the Arabs intend for the Jews of Israel is the peace of the grave.

Negotiate that, Mr.Trump!



That's the end game, and any concessions Israel is stupid enough to give them are only a means to that intended end.

And as others have found out before Trump, Israel is never going to agree to redividing Jerusalem - ever. Nor should they. During the 19 years Jordan illegally controlled East Jerusalem after they and the British ethnically cleansed what was a Jewish majority in that part of the city, no Jews were allowed in East Jerusalem, not even to visit any of their Holy sites. Nor were any claims ever paid for their stolen homes. Twenty eight historical synagogues were burned the ground, others were used as latrines and stables and the Kotel, the Western Wall was used as a garbage dump. Jewish cemeteries like the one on the Mount of Olives had the graves desecrated and the gravestones, some dating back centuries used as paving stones.

If that wasn't reason enough in view of the PLO's consistent support and abetting of terrorist attacks on Jews before during and since Oslo, would any sensible person expect Israel to give Abbas and the PLO a closer base to launch attacks from?

Trump's stance also reveals an ignorance of the Middle East I find surprising. Israel is an integral US ally in the region, especially now. Chuck Hagel, Obama's former Secretary of Defense who used to be fairly anti-Israel had an epiphany once he got the job, and realized this. In fact, his changed views cost him his job, simply for following normal procedure in shipping arms to Israel during the Gaza War against Hamas via the Pentagon. President Obama fired him for not clearing it through the White House first and cut off all arms shipments to Israel for the remainder of the war, the first time a US president has ever done that since Israel became a US ally during the Nixon Administration.

As Hagel learned, a weakened Israel is a major detriment to US security. And the US gets nothing from a third 'Palestinian' state whatsoever. Any serious candidate for office ought to realize that before he opens his mouth the way Trump did.

Trump's remarks also make little sense from a political standpoint. While a lot of leftist, secular Jews have and will continue to vote Democrat, recent events, especially when it comes to a questionable candidate like Hillary Clinton as well as certain trends within the Democrat party are making changes in some quarters. Not only that, but frankly, much of Israel's support in America comes from non-Jews. There are plenty of them, especially but not exclusively among Evangelicals, Mormons, and conservative Catholics.

Trump just gave a lot of these people a reason to sit on their hands and stay home if he's the nominee. And that includes a lot of people like me who were warming to him but are now having second thoughts.

Regardless of how you might feel about Jews and Israel, electing someone capable of making this kind of unforced error as president merits serious thought.

 

The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher's Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years." - Carl Sanberg

“GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism.” - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


"Oh, dear G-d. Can't this town go one day without a riot?" - Diamond Joe Quimby, Mayor of Springfield, The Simpson's home town.





This week's winning essay,The Noisy Room's -Chicago’s Communists Lead Anti-Cop Protests Over McDonald Shooting in which she provides us with an inside look at who's leader Chicago protests over the shooting of one Lauchan McDonald by police. Here's a slice:

Guess who’s behind the protests in Chicago? Old, white communists from the ’60s – again. These agitators helped organize and coordinate last week’s protests in Chicago over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald. He was a 17 year-old black thug. A dashcam video shows him being shot 16 times by a white police officer. Cue the riots led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

These communists belong to the Revolutionary Communist Party. They are a far-left Maoist group who is all for violent revolution.

The festivities began at about 4 pm last Wednesday, downtown on the corner of Jackson and State Streets. The night before, these same communists enthusiastically handed out fliers stating their intention to be the driving force in the protest movement there. Retirement is so boring.




It didn’t start out as much of a protest evidently, but that changed as they made their way to downtown Chicago. Hundreds gathered to follow the radicals. The communists worked diligently together carrying a bullhorn, a connected loud speaker and a carefully crafted sign from an October protest in New York City. The primary agitator at the protest screaming nonstop into the bullhorn with a barrage of chants was longtime communist Chicago activist Grant Newburger.

Newburger claimed to be the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade when he was in his 40’s. Now he’s 57 and still at it. During Wednesday’s protest, he kept shouting to the crowd political stances pushing his communist agenda. Newburger and other communists urged people to show up for the protest on Black Friday, so they could shut down the “Magnificent Mile.” Newburger led moronic chants like, “16 shots!” Another shout-back recital was: “CPD. KKK. How many kids did you kill today?”

Here is Newburger in 2007 at his apartment in the now-demolished Cabrini–Green public housing project. (Note the prominent poster of Chairman Mao on the wall.)

 

Enter another commie, Lou Downey. He’s also a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. “Send the killer cops to jail,” Downey urged protesters to chant. He was followed by yet another middle-aged white communist woman yelling into the bullhorn.

The meandering crowd was halted by police around 6 pm on Wednesday before they could get to Lake Shore Drive, which is a bustling thoroughfare. So, they turned around and headed south. They eventually made their way to the Trump International Hotel & Tower blocking traffic as they went. “We are the people! The mighty mighty, mighty people,” was a communist agitator-led chant. Also: “Whose streets? OUR STREETS!” These people need to get some seriously new chants going. It’s trite. In front of Trump’s place, protesters yelled “hands up, don’t shoot” at an assembled throng of police officers. What an insult and a lie to boot.

“How many bullets in the clip?” an enraged white protester shouted at the cops while marching. “Fuck y’all.” “We are not products! We cannot be bought or sold!” was another Mensa moment. Next in line were the offices of ESPN radio and the local ABC affiliate.

By 9 pm, the white-communist-led protesters had made their way to the south Loop chanting “fuck the police.” Also: “We’re black. We’re strong. We’re marchin’ all night long.” If they weren’t so violent and dangerous, I’d compare them to four year-olds who are colorblind. For kicks, when they got to Millennium Park, they ripped the lights from the City of Chicago Christmas tree. If there’s one thing commies hate more than cops, it’s Christians.

From the beginning of the protests across the nation, including the Occupy movement and now Black Lives Matter, I have said that you would find communists behind the radicals. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a big player in all this, with their aging hippie Marxists who feel this is their last chance to cause upheaval in the nation. They have always hated the police and now they have a vehicle to work on that hatred. Charlie Manson would be proud.

You saw these same people in Ferguson, Missouri. They paid protesters and were behind the movements there. Now they are in Chicago. But trust me, wherever you see racial division and violent chaos in the streets, the communists are not far behind. And not all of them are old… there are a lot of young ones joining the ranks these days.

“We are revolutionaries,” Downey, the well-traveled communist agitator, told The Kansas City Star in August 2014. “We’re working to do this in a way that puts an end to the system that for generations has criminalized youth, especially black youth.”

More at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Matthew Bracken with an interesting piece, Tet, Take Two – Islam’s 2016 European Offensive submitted by The Noisy Room. In it. Mr. Bracken discusses his views on Islam and makes some interesting predictions on what he feels is in store for Europe. Strictly speaking for myself, I think he's mostly right on but misses some important factors, something I plan to comment on over at my place shortly. Definitely a must read.

Here are this week’s full results. Only The Independent Sentinel was unable to vote, but was unaffected by the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 and 2/3 votes!-The Noisy Room – Chicago’s Communists Lead Anti-Cop Protests Over McDonald Shooting


• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Bookworm Room – Some of us (i.e., me) predicted Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls months ago


• Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes –The Right Planet – The Censors at Facebook


• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit-The EU's Israel 'Labeling' Farce - Cutting Your Nose To Spite Your Face


• Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Nice Deb – Everything Bad Skyrockets Under Obama, Part II


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –VA Right! - Why I Am Supporting Donald Trump


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Maggie's Notebook – Texas Ranchers Blamed for Illegals Dying in the Brush on their Land


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes –Fausta's Blog – Venezuela issuing passports, voter registrations, to Hezbollah & Syrians


• Fifth place with 1/3 votes –Puma By Design – Rahm Emanuel Terminates Chicago Police Chief

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! –Matthew Bracken–Tet, Take Two – Islam’s 2016 European Offensive submitted by The Noisy Room


• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Zero Hedge – Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED” submitted by The Glittering Eye


• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –David Harsanyi/ The Federalist – Why Can’t We Talk About Islam Honestly? submitted by Joshuapundit


• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –Andrew McCarthy/NRO -The Controversy over Syrian Refugees Misses the Question We Should Be Asking submitted by Nice Deb


• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes –David Goldman/PJ Media-Top 10 Reasons to Vote For Ted Cruzsubmitted by Bookworm Room


• Third place with 1 vote –Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage – Rename the Racist Democratic Party submitted by The Right Planet


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -John Hawkins/Townhall –The Conservative Case For Ted Cruz submitted by Maggie's Notebook


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Jane's.com – Chinese Bombers Affirm ADIZ Claims in East China Sea submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -Ben Domenech/The Federalist –Stop Blaming Pro-Lifers For The Colorado Springs Shooting submitted by Puma By Design


• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes -The Other McCain – Crazy People Are Dangerous submitted by The Watcher


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Gavin McInnes/Taki's Magazine –Give Hate A Chance submitted by The Razor


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -Liberty Unyielding – What really happened in the Colorado Springs shooting? submitted by Fausta's Blog


• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote -News.Com AU – Behind the ‘white student unions’ springing up at Australian universitiessubmitted by VA Right!

See you next week!

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