Left-Wing Racists Endorse Deranged White Loser Assaulting Law-Abiding Black Armed Shopper (with Concealed-Carry Permit)

Talk about the first law of holes.

The racism in this is just utterly mind-boggling. An armed black man, minding his own business and legally carrying, is attacked by a white loser looking to be some kind of anti-gun hero.

At Say Uncle, "Why are anti-gun activists so violent?":

Did you see that? A law-abiding black man minding his own business when suddenly an obviously racist white guy batters him. I wonder when Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest this injustice!

And the racist left-wing response, right on cue: At Balloon Juice, "What Could Possibly Go Wrong," and the idiot Mahablog, "Please Be Careful Out There."

(Note for the racist left the "bad guy" is not the one assaulting the law-abiding citizen minding his own business. With leftists evil is good and good is evil, but you knew that.)

BONUS: At Twitchy, "Gun-grabber Shannon Watts fires off what may be her dumbest tweet ever."

Obama's SOTU in Denial

From Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Obama's disconnected, out of touch, in denial State of the Union":

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 — 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.

Not that the president would ever acknowledge that. Indeed, in more than an hour of speaking, Obama never once acknowledged that there was a big election in November and that the leadership of the Senate has changed. Obama's silence on that political reality stood in stark contrast to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in which he graciously and at some length acknowledged the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterms. Bush said it was an honor to address Nancy Pelosi as "Madam Speaker." He spoke of the pride Pelosi's late father would have felt to see his daughter lead the House. "I congratulate the new Democrat majority," Bush said. "Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities."

If one cannot imagine Obama saying such a thing — well, he didn't.

Just as remarkable, against the backdrop of the Democratic electoral carnage of his years in office, was that the president's most memorable line of the night was a bit of ad-lib bragging about his own election victories. When Obama said, "I have no more campaigns to run," some Republicans snarkily began to applaud, whereupon the president shot back, "I know, because I won both of them." Some Democrats dutifully cheered Obama's comeback line, even though his victories ended up costing them a lot.

Beyond failing to acknowledge the new reality on Capitol Hill, Obama at times seemed equally out of touch with reality both in the nation and the world.

"In Iraq and Syria, American leadership — including our military power — is stopping ISIL's advance," Obama said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The claim left some foreign policy observers aghast, since there is a general consensus that the Islamic State is making progress in the face of limited American air attacks. "That just isn't the case, according to military officials I've been speaking to," NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel said of Obama's statement. "[The Islamic State] are taking new territory." Of Obama's description of a world in which the Islamic State is retreating, Afghanistan is on the road to peace, and terrorists are on the run from South Asia to North Africa, Engel concluded, "It sounded like the president was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in."

Obama sounded equally disconnected from reality on some domestic issues. For example, when discussing the nation's veterans, he said, "Already, we've made strides towards ensuring that every veteran has access to the highest quality care." A listener wouldn't know it from Obama's speech, but there has been a huge VA scandal since Obama's last State of the Union; his secretary of Veterans Affairs had to resign because of it. Veterans died waiting for treatment. All Obama said Wednesday night was, "We're slashing the backlog that had too many veterans waiting years to get the benefits they need." By "benefits," the president apparently meant "life-saving medical care."

At another point, Obama claimed credit for a "re-energized space program." The remark surely led to some jaws dropping among laid-off National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers who believe Obama has nearly killed the place.

The president's final disconnect was perhaps the biggest. After a "vicious recession … tonight, we turn the page," Obama said. "With a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production, we have risen from recession." For some Americans, that is the case, although even for them, "bustling" might be a bit much. For other Americans, the news is still pretty bad. When a recent Fox News poll asked, "For you and your family, does it feel like the recession is over, or does it feel like the country is still in a recession?" 64 percent of respondents said it feels like there is still a recession. Indeed, it's widely conceded that part of the reason the unemployment rate has fallen is because a core of discouraged workers dropped out of the job search altogether. So for many listeners, Obama's "turn the page" declaration will seem as out of touch as his claim that Islamic State's advance has been stopped...

Two more years of nihilist partisanship and narcissistic mendacity. It's a countdown mode for American politics, two more years to go. Then we can start fresh.

More.

'Britain First' Launches 'Christian Patrols'

Looks like some kind of EDL group, and they're taking the cultural war to the no-go zones in Britain.

Here's the groups Facebook page, "Britain First: Fighting Islamization."

And at CBS Evening News, "U.K. civilian patrols monitor neighborhoods for Muslim extremists."

More at Newsweek, "Far-Right Group Distributes Anti-Muslim Leaflets in East London."

Obama's 'Not American, not African-American, not any-American, he embodies nothing that places him in the historic stream of people who have defined this country...'

From Roger Cohen, in the comments at Daniel Henninger's commentary at WSJ, "Obama's American Sniper":

There is no American impulse of any kind in this person. Not American, not African-American, not any-American, he embodies nothing that places him in the historic stream of people who have defined this country. An utter alien, he has wasted opportunities at home and abroad, confused our friends, encouraged our potential adversaries, and squandered the investment that many had made in his vacuous slogans and promises.

And that's precisely why he's worshiped by the America-hating left.

Lots more excellent comments at the thread.

Oh, and don't miss Henninger's outstanding column.

Victoria's Secret Angels Take on the Superbowl

At Fashionista, "Now you have a legitimate excuse to just watch for the commercials."

The Global War on Modernity

From Garry Kasparov, at WSJ:

The recent terror attacks in Paris at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and at a kosher supermarket, leaving 17 people dead, represented the latest offensive in a struggle that most people, even many of its casualties, are unaware is even taking place.

Globalization has effectively compressed the world in size, increasing the mobility of goods, capital and labor. Simultaneously this has led to globalization across time, as the 21st century collides with cultures and regimes intent on existing as in centuries past. It is less the famous clash of civilizations than an attempt by these “time travelers” to hold on to their waning authority by stopping the advance of the ideas essential to an open society.

Radical Islamists, from the Taliban and al Qaeda to Boko Haram and Islamic State, set the time machine to the Dark Ages and encourage the murder of all who oppose them, often supported by fatwas and funds from terror sponsors like Iran. The religious monarchies in the Middle East are guilty by association, creating favorable conditions for extremism by clamping down on any stirring of freedom.

Vladimir Putin wants Russia to exist in the Great Power era of czars and monarchs, dominating its neighbors by force and undisturbed by elections and rights complaints. The post-Communist autocracies, led by Mr. Putin’s closest dictator allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan, exploit ideology only as a means of hanging on to power at any cost.

In the East, Kim Jong Un ’s North Korea attempts to freeze time in a Stalinist prison-camp bubble. In the West, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the Castros in Cuba use anachronistic socialist propaganda to resist increasing pressure for human rights.

What unites the time travelers is their rejection of modernity—or what we should instead call modern values, to replace the obsolete and condescending term “Western values.” With violence and with violent rhetoric, the time travelers’ natural target is often the traditional champion of the rights that threaten them: the United States. The guaranteed freedoms represented by the First Amendment frighten the radical mullahs and dictators more than any drone strike or economic sanction.

In addition to bringing these relics into contact and competition with the modern world that threatens their power, globalization provides the time travelers with markets for their natural resources and with the technology they use for murder and repression. Thus they cannot disengage from the modern world entirely. Since the time travelers cannot fight head-to-head with the ideas and prosperity of the Free World, they fall back on their arsenal of ideology, violence and disregard for human life. They combat the lure of free speech and free markets with irrationality: radical religion and nationalism, cults of personality and dogma, hatred and fear.

Many politicians and pundits in the Free World seem to think that refusing to acknowledge you are in a fight means you can avoid losing it. But ignoring the reality of the conflict puts more innocents like the Paris victims—instead of trained soldiers and law enforcement—on the front lines. There are no easy ways to deter homegrown terrorists or nuclear-armed dictators, but this culture of denial must end before true progress can be made...

More.

Sun News Trolls Feminist Campaigners, Brings Back 'Page 3'

Hey, this is great!

On Twitter.

And at Telegraph UK, "The Sun brings back page 3":

The tabloid prints a picture of a topless model on page three under the headline 'clarifications and corrections'.

The Sun has printed a topless model on Page 3, ending days of speculation that the feature was dead.

The newspaper has tweeted out a picture of Thursday’s Page 3 which features a topless woman, with a notice underneath saying: “Further to recent reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth.

“We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us.”

The campaign group No More Page 3, which began in 2012 and attracted 217,000 signatures to a petition calling for a ban, acknowledged that "the fight might be back on".

Topless women have been a fixture on Page 3 of the Sun for more than four decades.

However it was understood that executives at the tabloid had decided to quietly shelve the tradition after a growing army of critics branded it sexist.

Rather than bare breasts, it was thought that the pictures would now show scantily-clad women wearing bras and pants.

Over the past three days, there have been no topless models on Page 3, fuelling speculation the feature was on its way out. This appeared to be confirmed by a report in The Times, a fellow News UK paper, on Tusday.

In Monday's issue of The Sun, the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was shown wearing Marks & Spencer underwear.

Tuesday’s first edition had a photograph of two bikini-wearing actresses running on a beach, which was later replaced by four pages on Anne Kirkbride, the Coronation Street actress who had died the previous evening.

Pages 2 and 3 of Wednesday's paper were taken up by a Sainsbury’s advert, but Page 5 ran a comparison of cosmetic surgery undertaken by two Celebrity Big Brother contestants, featuring Katie Price and Alicia Douvall wearing garments which left little to the imagination.

Topless models were first introduced by the Sun in 1970, less than a year after Rupert Murdoch bought the title.

In recent years, the paper has faced growing criticism from campaigners who said the feature was out of date in the modern world.

Note that it's not just topless women.

The "no on page 3" campaign wants to ban all women from appearing in the paper. They're freakin' totalitarians!

UPDATE: Linked at Instapundit! Thanks!

VIDEO: Palestinian Man Stabs Israelis in Tel Aviv Attack (GRAPHIC)

Elise Labott has the report at CNN below. At the clip, the attacker sinks his knife into a woman quite deep. He has to yank on it to get it to pull back out. Sickening.

And see the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Palestinian Man Stabs Israelis on Bus in Tel Aviv, Police Say."

And see the Times of Israel, "Hamas leaders praise Tel Aviv stabbing as ‘heroic’":

Cartoon depicting bloodied knife colored as the Palestinian flag zooms around the Internet.

Hamas leaders on Wednesday took to social media to praise a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv that morning, expressing hopes that similar attacks will follow.

Three weeks after an instructional video on stabbing attributed to Hamas emerged online, movement members gleefully extolled the bus assault, heralding it as a sign of things to come.

“A morning of resistance, a morning for the nation,” wrote Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum on his Facebook page, above a photo of a black-handled combat knife lying on the pavement encircled by police tape.

Gaza-based Hamas official Husam Badran praised the act on Facebook as “extraordinary” and called for more “acts of resistance” either by individuals or groups.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau based in Qatar, called the attack “heroic and brave,” adding that it is “the natural response to the crimes of the occupation and its terror against our people.”

Spoken like true "peace partners."

Also, "Tel Aviv stabber wanted to ‘reach paradise’." Of course. It's was a jihad martyrdom attack.

Plus, bloody video of the jihadist, "Tel Aviv Terrorist After his Arrest."

We Don't Need to Pay More Gas Taxes

From the editors, at the O.C. Register:

Some members of Congress – apparently intent on ensuring that no positive development in American life goes unpunished – have had a surprising reaction to the steep decline in gas prices that has taken place in recent months: It’s time to make fueling your car more expensive.

That’s the message coming from many Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans – foremost amongst them Tennessee’s Bob Corker, who joined with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy to propose increasing the levy by 12 cents over two years and indexing it to inflation. Other members of the GOP – Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, for instance – have refused to rule out such a proposal.

We’re not unsympathetic to the underlying concern in this case. The federal gas tax – currently 18.4 cents per gallon – hasn’t been raised since 1993. That’s salient because the revenue from the tax goes to finance the Highway Trust Fund, the mechanism by which the feds fund transportation infrastructure projects. Without a doubt, these kinds of expenditures represent a legitimate use of public money.

Equally unquestionable is that there are serious problems besetting the fund. Current estimates have it facing a shortfall of $160 billion over the next decade. Moreover, much of the country’s infrastructure is in dire need of a facelift.

However, this is more than a question of simple economics. It’s a question as to how best to organize public finance. We believe that federal money ought only to be spent for truly federal purposes. On that front, the Highway Trust Fund falls short.

Originally organized to finance the Interstate Highway System – a genuinely federal project if ever there was one – the fund now suffers from severe mission creep. About a quarter of its revenues aren’t even spent on highway projects, going, instead, to decidedly local concerns like mass transit or bicycle paths. According to congressional testimony from the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, that spending adds up to about $9 billion a year.

As John Marshall observed, “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s why we regard any proposal for higher levies with caution. We believe that tax increases are only ever justified when the federal government can prove three things: 1) That it is only spending public money on legitimate public purposes; 2) that it is not spending public money on tasks better left to state and local governments; and 3) that it is spending public money efficiently. The Highway Trust Fund fails on all three counts...

Raising gas taxes precisely as Americans get a break is particularly sleazy as well.

Still more.

Santa Barbara News-Press Won't Back Down on 'Illegals'

Good.

At LAT, "Amid outcry, News-Press is adamant on provocative term for immigrants":

A few decades ago, it wasn't unusual for American newspapers to refer to people living in the United States without legal permission as "illegal aliens," or even "illegals."

Those terms were criticized as offensive and eventually gave way to "illegal immigrant," a label that itself was jettisoned by most outlets two years ago, when the Associated Press banned the term from its stylebook in favor of language that more precisely describes a person's immigration status.

That approach — adopted by The Times in 2013 — seemed to have taken root and defused the criticism in most places. But the local newspaper's decision to call such immigrants "illegals" has turned idyllic Santa Barbara into an unlikely flashpoint in the nation's immigration battles.

The News-Press ran the headline "Illegals Line Up for Driver's Licenses" on Jan. 3, prompting protests and a message painted in red on the wall of the newspaper's offices. The paper used the term again last Friday in another front page story: "Driving Legal Opens Door to Illegals' Past."

News-Press officials have stuck by their choice of language, saying that describing someone living in the country illegally as an "illegal" is accurate, and compared the vandalism on their offices to the deadly attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

"We will not give in to the thugs who are attempting to use political correctness as a tool of censorship and a weapon to shut down this newspaper," News-Press co-publisher Arthur von Wiesenberger wrote on the website of the Minuteman Project, which opposes illegal immigration.

But community groups have denounced the newspaper, calling for an advertising boycott.

"They have a racist perspective and they don't seem very apologetic about it," said Savanah Maya, a Santa Barbara City College student and member of People Organizing for the Defense and Equal Rights of Santa Barbara Youth.

The dispute erupted anew Monday, when protesters for and against the newspaper staged dueling rallies in a downtown plaza.

Using the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a backdrop for their positions framed as human rights and freedom of speech issues, one side argued that the headline was racist and the other argued that it was an accurate description of immigrants applying for driver's licenses without having to prove citizenship. The licenses became available under a state law that took effect Jan. 1.

The two sides had limited interaction during the peaceful rallies, which attracted several hundred people. Police put up a temporary fence to separate the groups.

"I respect their right to free speech," said City Councilwoman Cathy Murillo, who attended the pro-immigrant rally, "but they don't have to be hateful. It's like the 'N-word' for blacks."

The rally in support of the News-Press was staged by We the People Rising, a Claremont-based group that favors tough enforcement of laws against illegal immigration.

"They should be allowed to decide the type of language they want to use," said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising. "They have a right to use that word. Where do you stop?"

The News-Press, which began in 1855, has experienced diminished goodwill in the community since 2006, when reporters and editors began departing en masse, citing editorial meddling from billionaire owner and publisher Wendy McCaw.

Don Katich, director of news operations for the News-Press, said Monday that the newspaper has used the word "illegals" for a decade to describe immigrants in the United States without permission, and does not plan on changing its policy despite criticism or financial pressure.

He said that the federal government uses the word online and on official documents, and that a vast majority of people agree that it's an appropriate term.

"It accurately describes the 800-pound gorilla in this whole story," Katich said. "People are in this country illegally.… I think that's why this has tapped a national nerve."...

More.

Video here: "Santa Barbara News-Press Protested by Open Border Extremists."

BONUS: At Michelle Malkin's, "Attack of the Open-Borders Mau-Mau-ers":

News-Press publisher Wendy McCaw told me this week that the free speech-stifling thugs “have threatened to return on January 19 to deliver a petition and stage another protest against us if we do not offer a retraction by 3 p.m. that day.” McCaw vows she will not bend to the ultimatum or any other — and she has a track record to prove her toughness.

McCaw has defied the progressive forces of political correctness for years in previous First Amendment battles over whom she should hire and how she should run her newspaper. Radical elements in her community and industry have long held a grudge against her and her paper for resisting union pressure and refusing to conform to left-wing orthodoxy.
And boy, do these people know how to hold grudges.

In addition to the paint bombs, unhinged mau-mau-ers spray-painted a radical Reconquista slogan on the News-Press building: “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it.”

Yes, they’re still trying to re-fight the Mexican-American War of 1848 and re-litigate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. No surprise. Santa Barbara has been a longstanding hotbed of tribal grievance politics. In the late 1960s, liberal Latinos at the University of California at Santa Barbara unveiled El Plan de Aztlan, which states:

“We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner ‘gabacho’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.”

The Aztlan plan birthed Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) — an identity politics indoctrination machine on publicly subsidized college and high school campuses nationwide whose members have rioted in Los Angeles and editorialized that federal immigration “pigs should be killed, every single one” in San Diego.

As I’ve reported previously, the MEChA Constitution calls on members to “promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza (race) with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlan.” “Aztlan” is the group’s term for the vast southwestern U.S. expanse, from parts of Washington and Oregon down to California and Arizona and over to Texas, which MEChA claims to be a mythical homeland and seeks to reconquer for Mexico.

MEChA’s symbol is an eagle clutching a dynamite stick and a machete-like weapon in its claws; its motto is “Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.” Translation: For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing.”

Tell me who the racists are again.

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftist Open-Borders Vigilantes Attack Santa-Barbara News-Press for Accurately Identifying Illegal Aliens."

Joni Ernst's Camouflage Pumps

From Jennifer Jacobs, on Twitter: "Check out the shoes Iowa U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst is wearing tonight for her State of the Union rebuttal."

Plus, "Reaction on Joni Ernst's camo heels is mixed."

Packing Time for France's Jews

From Bret Stephens, at WSJ:

Should French Jews move out? Does it make sense for a community that, in this century, has lost roughly 10 people to jihad in France, to pack up and go to Israel—where jihadis have claimed more than 1,000 Jewish lives? Haven’t the leaders of the Fifth Republic demonstrated in word and deed that they are committed to the protection of Jewish property and life?

The answer to that last question is yes, they have. The problem isn’t the Fifth Republic, in which French Jews have, on the whole, thrived. The problem is the arrival, sooner or later, of the Sixth. Which is why French Jews need to leave sooner rather than later, despite the disruption and risk, while the exits are not blocked and the way is still open.

Perhaps inadvertently, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls made the basic point last week when he told his Parliament that “history has taught us that the awakening of anti-Semitism is a symptom of a crisis for democracy and of a crisis for the Republic.” Very true, but if anti-Semitism is the symptom of the crisis, then ringing Jewish schools, synagogues, groceries and neighborhoods with gendarmes is not its cure. Necessity is proof of insufficiency.

So what is the crisis of France’s democracy and Republic?

Partly it’s political: Every Fifth Republic presidency (with the arguable exception of François Mitterrand’s) has ended in failure. Partly it’s economic: Since 1978, French economic growth has clocked in at an average rate of 0.45%; unemployment hasn’t fallen below 7% in over 30 years. Partly it’s ideological: Égalité begat egalitarianism, and egalitarianism is what animates the politics of envy. Partly it’s cultural: Too many French Muslims don’t want to conform to the norms of modern society, and too many French don’t want to conform to the realities of a globalized world. When National Front leader Marine Le Pen says “the multinational interests that impose their own ways are not good for France,” she is attempting to stuff the French body politic into an economic burqa.

Above all, it’s cumulative. Similar-size countries like Germany or Britain have had their highs and lows in recent decades, periods of growth or recession, feelings of confidence or malaise. French decline has been constant, unrelieved, embittering. “In one of my finance seminars, every single French student intends to go abroad,” Sorbonne economics Prof. Jacques Régniez told the Daily Telegraph in 2013. It isn’t just the Jews who want out.

But it’s especially the Jews who need out.

They need out because they are threatened from too many corners. A current French best seller, “Le Suicide Français,” by journalist Éric Zemmour, makes the case that the collaborationist Vichy regime gets a bad rap. France’s most notorious comedian, Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, took to Facebook after last week’s solidarity marches to say “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly, ” conflating “Je Suis Charlie” with Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher-supermarket killer. The French Parliament reacted to Hamas’s summer war on Israel by voting last month to recognize, albeit symbolically, a Palestinian state.

“Anti-Semitism still crops up in casual conversation in a way that would be rare in England or America,” observes Jonathan Fenby in the updated edition of his 1999 book, “France on the Brink.” One example Mr. Fenby offers is especially notable.

“In 2013 a comedian introduced a Jewish actor on a popular television show with the words ‘You never plunged into [Jewish] communitarianism. . . . You could have posted yourself in the street selling jeans and diamonds from the back of a minivan saying, “Israel is always right, f— Palestinians.” You show it is possible to be of the Jewish faith without being completely disgusting.’ ” This was supposed to be a compliment.

All this takes place while the Fifth Republic remains essentially intact. Some comparisons have been made between this month’s attacks in Paris and the attacks of 9/11, but that’s wildly overblown. The Eiffel Tower did not fall. Seventeen dead is not 3,000.

But what happens when the real crisis hits—not necessarily in the form of a mass-casualty attack on a Jewish target, but perhaps an election that brings Ms. Le Pen to power, or a systemic banking crisis that discovers a Jewish villain, or an economic crisis that inspires a more confiscatory tax policy? French history is a tale of stagnation punctured by crisis: 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1940, 1958, 1968. Another crisis is overdue.

What such a crisis might bring in its wake is anyone’s guess, but French Jews should not stick around to find out. In the 20th century, Jewish fate was split between those who got out in time and those who didn’t. There’s no reason why that won’t be the case in this century as well...

Stephens is hardly the only one making this argument, that the Jews should get out. He is the only one arguing the French Fifth Republic is doomed. And there I expect he's onto something, big time.

Keep reading.

Obama Declares End to Economic Crisis — #SOTU

O phoned it in. Yawn.

At WSJ, "In State of the Union, Obama Makes Middle-Class Pitch: President Lays Out Steps to Aid Moderate-Income Americans to a Skeptical Congress":

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Tuesday night declared an end to the U.S. economic crisis as he made the case to Americans, and a skeptical Congress, that now is time to shift focus to resolving the most stubborn impediment to a full-fledged recovery: lagging progress among the middle class.

In his annual State of the Union address, Mr. Obama outlined a broad vision for his remaining two years in office, emphasizing what he described as “middle-class economics” and making a personal plea for lawmakers of both parties to “commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort.”

“The shadow of crisis has passed,” Mr. Obama said. “At this moment—with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, and booming energy production—we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth.”

The president’s vision, however, faced a deeply uncertain path in a Congress that for the first time in his presidency is fully controlled by Republicans, as it hinges on raising taxes on high-income Americans to fund initiatives to benefit those at lower income levels.

Mr. Obama also declared that U.S. leadership and military intervention “is stopping” the advance of Islamic State militants and call on Congress to pass a resolution authorizing force against the group. And Mr. Obama called on Congress to pass legislation to toughen cybersecurity.

Republicans and Democrats alike cite a stagnant middle class as the most vexing economic problem facing the country, but GOP lawmakers have long opposed Mr. Obama’s call for tax increases on wealthier Americans to fund programs that benefit those further down the income scale. Still, the two parties’ shared interest in speaking more directly to economic anxiety and wage stagnation has the potential to push them to find common ground. Mr. Obama’s plan also extends the discussion beyond corporate taxation to include individual taxes, as Republicans want.

New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Mr. Obama’s expected proposal to raise taxes on high-income Americans—$320 billion over 10 years—damped hopes for making progress on an overhaul of the tax code. But underscoring the prospects for deal-making, remote as they may be, Mr. McConnell didn’t rule out an eventual compromise on taxes. He also cited trade pacts and cybersecurity legislation as potential areas of agreement with the president.

“The American people aren’t demanding talking-point proposals designed to excite the base but not designed to pass” in Congress, Mr. McConnell said. “What they said they’re hungry for is substance and accomplishment. They want Washington to get back to work and focus on a serious jobs and reform agenda.”

The coming months will tell how far Mr. Obama and GOP leaders might go in pushing their parties’ core supporters to compromise for the sake of agreement on taxes and other matters. Mr. Obama has primarily shown interest in pushing his party only on one issue recently—to allow easier passage of trade deals that he and most Republicans support.

Only a handful of Democrats have come forward to support the renewal of legislation for trade-promotion authority, known as fast track, which would ease the passage of a trade pact with Japan and 10 other Pacific nations, as well as a trade deal with the European Union...

More.

And at USA Today, "Analysis: A better economy, a more hostile Congress."

#MSNBC Hosts Lead Chorus of Vile Misogynist Tweets Against Republican Joni Ernst

Predictable.

At Sooper Mexican.

Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman Found Dead

I had this story linked at the sidebar News Item Finder, "Argentine Prosecutor Found Dead Just Before Releasing Report on Cover Up of 1994 Bombing."

I'm pulling this over to the front page because it's so interesting.

See David Horovitz, at the Times of Israel, "Alberto Nisman committed suicide? Let’s kill that lie":

When I sat down Monday to write about the appalling death of the courageous Buenos Aires prosecutor who exposed the Iranian and Hezbollah orchestration of the 1994 AMIA bombing, I didn’t even mention the Argentinian authorities’ initial contention that Alberto Nisman had committed suicide, so insulting and ridiculous was the notion.

A day later, however, and the preposterous idea that Nisman took his own life has become the Argentinian authorities’ dominant assertion. Let’s kill that lie stone dead. Alberto Nisman was no suicide.

(That he was forced to put a gun to his own head, a possibility left open by the Argentinian investigating prosecutor, is quite plausible, however. But that’s not suicide; that’s murder.)

I’ve just come back from a conversation with the Argentinian-born Israeli author Gustavo Perednik, who wrote a book last year about the AMIA case — “To Kill Without A Trace” — and was a good friend of Nisman’s. “It’s rubbish. It’s lies,” Perednik says briskly of the despicable suicide claim.

Perednik, who was in constant contact with Nisman and last met with him in Buenos Aires a month ago, notes that both Nisman’s personality and the timing of his death render the suicide notion beyond risible.

Nisman the man was a tennis-playing optimist who loved and enjoyed life, who spoke of his separation from his long-term partner a year ago as a “liberation,” and who was utterly dedicated to his work, notes Perednik. He was a man who firmly shrugged off death threats, was balanced, and focused, and decent, and fine.

As for the timing, Perednik despairs at the naivete of anyone prepared to countenance that a prosecutor who has spent a decade heading a 30-strong team investigating the worst terror attack ever committed in Argentina; who has identified the Iranian leaders who ordered it and had them placed on Interpol watch lists; who has traced and named the Hezbollah terrorists who carried out the bombing; who has exposed Iran’s still-active terror networks in South America; and who was about to detail the alleged efforts of Argentinian President Cristina Fernández and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman to whitewash Iran’s role — that this man would choose to take his own life just a few hours before giving his testimony to a Congressional hearing.

But Nisman was found dead by “self-inflicted” bullet wound in a locked apartment with no sign of forced entry, the Argentinian authorities say? Perednik is succinct and withering about both motivation and capability: Does anyone doubt that a government capable of whitewashing Iran is capable of producing a dead prosecutor in a locked apartment? he asks. “In our last conversation, Nisman told me that his evidence would either force [those top Argentinian leaders] to flee or send them to jail. He told me, ‘I’m going to put them in jail.'” Sunday was their last chance to stop him...

Keep reading.

Also, "Who will obtain justice for Alberto Nisman?"

'This is a man who wants to punish the rich regardless of its effect on the economy...'

From the inimitable Charles Krauthammer:



Hat Tip: Legal Insurrection.

'Page 3' Models Lead Backlash Against 'Comfy Shoe-Wearing, No Bra-Wearing, Man-Haters...'

And Ms. Rhian Sugden is leading the "Page 3" models. I RT'd her early this morning.

At Telegraph UK:

It's only a matter of time before everything we do will be dictated by comfy shoe wearing... No bra wearing... man haters #page3

— Rhian Sugden (@Rhianmarie) January 20, 2015

Page 3 girls have led the backlash against The Sun's decision to end its topless tradition, claiming the move has been "dictated by comfy shoe-wearing, no bra-wearing, man-haters".

Model Rhian Sugden, 28, criticised at the move, suggesting it was "only a matter of time" before everything they did was dictated by such people.

Former glamour model Jodie Marsh insisted that "telling girls they shouldn't do Page 3 is not being a feminist".
She said she "loved" posing for Page 3 and that it made her feel powerful and earned her good money.
"Women should empower and encourage other women," she wrote on Twitter. "For that is the only way to truly be 'equal' and have rights..."

She said campaigners should focus on more important issues that affect women, such as female genital mutilation.

Former glamour model Nicola McLean said she did not think Page 3 was a "sexual equality" issue.

She told ITV's Good Morning Britain: "It has been going for many years, which is one of the reasons I feel so sad that it has seemingly come to an end.

"I don't think it is outdated. I think the girls still look fantastic on the page, they still clearly enjoy what they are doing, people still want to see it.

"Everybody still wants Page 3, apart from the feminists who are fighting an argument I just don't agree with.

"If you meet any Page 3 girl who has gone on to pose for the Sun, we are all very strong-minded women that have made our own choice and feel very happy with what we are doing.

"We certainly don't feel like we have been victimised."

More.

Plus, from yesterday, "Britain's Sun News Cancels 'Page 3' Topless Girls."

No Myth: The Urgent Reality of Dangerous French 'No-Go Zones' (VIDEO)

Seems to me that left and right could come together on the problem of the French "no-go zones."

Frankly, the fact that French Arab and North African Muslims often reside in dangerous ethnic enclaves would challenge treasured leftist ideals of assimilation and upward mobility. And it's not like the problem of Muslim segregation in France is anything new. Anyone remotely familiar with French politics would have long recognized the banlieues as distinct demographic areas notorious for crime and unrest. Indeed, the day after the Paris attacks, Donald Morrison commented on the banlieues as "no-go zones" at the left-wing New Republic:

Visitors to Paris—and there are plenty in this, the world’s most beautiful city (I’m biased; I’ve lived here a decade)—sometimes stumble across the neighborhood where Charlie Hebdo’s offices are located. It’s an agreeable part of town, not far from the Place de la Bastille, with a Brooklyn-y mix of workers and hipsters, traditional shops and trendy bistros. Like the rest of central Paris, it is mostly white and prosperous.

It's also vastly unlike what you might call the real Paris, the tourist-free area where 80 percent of Parisians live: that doughnut of banlieues, on the other side of the Périphérique ring road. The word banlieue ("suburb") now connotes a no-go zone of high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants and their angry offspring. The banlieues erupted in 1981 and in 2005, when rioters burned hundreds of cars and President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to clean out the area with a high-pressure hose. He did not mention that the vast majority of its residents are French citizens, speak perfect French and, unlike his father, were born in France.

It is there, and in the banlieues that blight other French cities, that attention is likely to focus once the shock of this week’s attack subsides. Early reports have pointed to two men as suspects-at-large: brothers Chérif Kouachi, 32, and Said Kouachi, 34. That they were born in Paris will spare them no scorn. The incident comes as France is tearing itself apart over questions of immigration and identity. The United States and much of Europe are having similar debates; in France, the fight is intensified by a toxic mix of politics and history, idealism and ideology...

Keep reading, but you get the picture.

Shoot, the French government established official "sensitive urban zones" as distinct demographic zones in 1996. These are discussed in official French sources, for example, at the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, "Sensitive urban zone / ZUS." And at the SIG du Secrétariat Général du Comité Interministériel, "Atlas des Zones urbaines sensibles (Zus)."

And see the Christian Broadcasting Network report from almost a year ago, "Native French Under Attack in Muslim Areas":

PARIS -- Violent crime can happen anywhere and to anyone and for many reasons, but in Muslim-controlled parts of France, it has become especially dangerous to be white.

Surveillance camera video shows white French being beaten up by predominantly Muslim immigrant gangs in the Metro and on the street.

Islamic immigrants consider it their territory and whites enter at their own risk. The French call them "sensitive urban zones" -- no-go zones where the police don't enter or don't enforce the law.

Some call them little Muslim caliphates inside the borders of France.

"And it's like that because these parts of the country are in the hands of drug traffickers, gangs and imams [Islamic leaders]," French commentator Guy Milliere explained.

A French report says almost 1 in 5 French have been victims of racist insults or worse. A few cases have even gone to trial.

"Some of those who launch racist attacks on whites use Islam as the reason they do it. They may not even speak Arabic, but they still use Islam as a 'flag,'" Tarik Yildiz, a French sociologist, said.

Yildiz, author of the book, Anti-White Racism, is not native French but is the son of Turkish immigrants.

"My book is viewed as politically incorrect and breaks a taboo: the idea that immigrants could oppress whites," Yildez said.

And still more, from Soren Kern, at the Gatestone Institute, "European 'No-Go' Zones: Fact or Fiction? Part 1: France."

But of course none of this will suffice for the radical, terror-enabling leftists now demonizing Fox News for speaking the truth to the no-go zones. It turns out French television mocked Fox, and now the Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo says she will sue the network for defamation. See Politico, "City of Paris to sue Fox News," and CNN, via Memeorandum, "Paris mayor: We intend to sue Fox News."

Where you stand on this depends on where you sit ideologically. Leftists don't believe in hard factual reality. Anything that exposes their socialist shibboleths has to be destroyed, and hence Fox News is demonized and the reality of violent hardscrabble Muslim enclaves must be flushed in a postmodern avalanche of lies. Robert Spencer comments, "Paris Mayor says she will sue Fox News over No-Go Zones coverage":

Anne Hidalgo sounds here very much like the Islamic supremacists who regularly barbecue cars on Paris streets: Paris has been insulted. Its honor has been impugned. Therefore she wants to take Fox News to court. That would be a very interesting lawsuit: in its defense, Fox could call David Ignatius, who wrote in the New York Times in April 2002: “Arab gangs regularly vandalize synagogues here, the North African suburbs have become no-go zones at night, and the French continue to shrug their shoulders.” Fox could also call Newsweek, which reported in November 2005 that “according to research conducted by the government’s domestic intelligence network, the Renseignements Generaux, French police would not venture without major reinforcements into some 150 ‘no-go zones’ around the country–and that was before the recent wave of riots began on Oct. 27.” The New Republic could also testify in support of Fox, as it wrote just last week: “The word banlieue (‘suburb’) now connotes a no-go zone of high-rise slums, drug-fueled crime, failing schools and poor, largely Muslim immigrants and their angry offspring.”

But now the mainstream media, and Anne Hidalgo, have decided that Fox made up the whole idea of No-Go Zones in France, and Fox is going to have to take the fall. That Fox already took the fall, with its ill-considered apology, makes this legal threat even more absurd. But if the suit does go forward, Fox should request a change of venue — to a banlieue, and invite Mayor Hidalgo to take a walk through it with hair uncovered, at night.

More.

Islamic State Demands $200 Million Ransom for Japanese Hostages

Holly Williams reports, for CBS This Morning:

Watching the World Fall Apart

From David Solway, at Pajamas Media:

In her valediction to a decade and a half of syndicated journalism, Diana West expresses her disappointment that there has been little or no progress over the years in advancing the debate about Islam and the specter of national decline. In some respects, the situation has deteriorated dramatically. “Indeed, now the U.S. faces the world without a defended border, with increasingly cheapened citizenship and no lawful immigration policy.” The same is true to varying degrees of other western nations as well. Her summation hits home for many of us: “It is hard to watch the world falling apart.”

The name of the game today is denial of the undeniable all across the spectrum of the major issues that afflict us. Denial that temperatures have been stable for the last eighteen years and that the diminution of sunspot activity heralds an age of global cooling rather than warming, as John Casey, president of the Space and Science Research Corporation, has decisively established in his recently published Dark Winter. Denial that Israel is the only democratic, morally legitimate state in the Middle East and that the Palestinian narrative of historical and cadastral residence is demonstrably false. Denial that Islam is a totalitarian entity and a religion of war that has set its sights on the ruination of western societies; and denial of the fact that Judeo-Hellenic-Christian civilization, for all its flaws, marks the high point of human political, social, cultural and scientific development.

Those who hold to such canting and spurious convictions and attitudes are the real “deniers” among us. And a people that lives in a collective state of denial of the obvious, or of what with a little study and dispassionate research would soon become obvious, is a people without a sustainable future. As SF writer Philip K. Dick said, in a speech aptly titled “How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart in Two Days,” later published in his masterful I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Similarly, writes beleaguered Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is currently being prosecuted once again for telling unpleasant truths about unrestricted Muslim immigration into the Netherlands and across many European countries, “Festering political problems do not go away simply because they are kept in a dark corner.” In a sane society, the messenger who brings irrefutable truths — judgments buttressed by solid evidence and logical reasoning — would not be shot or shot down, mocked or slandered. Such bearers of crucial tidings would be attended to and honoured. But we clearly do not live in a compos mentis society. Indeed, even those who have grasped the essential issues at stake increasingly believe that telling the truth is a tactical blunder and merely alienates the constituency they wish to persuade. And yet all they manage to accomplish is to weaken the strength of their argument, lose once-committed followers, and bring their own integrity and courage into question.

I used to think that only a monstrous catastrophe could save us, could provoke people to think again and to see the world as it really is, and could convince us to rise at last to our own defense — I mean something really enormous, that would make 9/11 look like a mere skirmish. Now I’m not so sure. We would probably find some way of temporizing, of refusing to examine or even recognize the causes of our misfortune, evincing, as Flemming Rose aphoristically put it in The Tyranny of Silence, “the infamous ability of humans to adapt.”

And how they — we — do adapt to the absurd, the false and the shameful in every walk of political and cultural life, of whatever magnitude! When the multi-billion dollar swindle that is “global warming” devastates the economy and temperatures begin to decline, leading to reduced crop growth and a crisis of hunger in various parts of the world, people will still insist that “the science is settled.” As it becomes increasingly evident that the media constitute a tribe of liars and fabricators operating as a fifth column, people will continue to read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Salon and the Huffington Post, and get their news from the BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, forming their opinions therefrom. Although it is by now indisputable that our elite universities have become latrines of left-wing dogma, anti-Zionist propaganda and a subversive pedagogy, we continue to subsidize their existence via donations and attendance rather than seek and support responsible academic alternatives. The more that questions arise regarding President Obama’s still-sealed academic records and mysterious documentary discrepancies, the more people will say “nothing to see here” and move on. As a Palestinian enclave without a legal government and no viable historical claim to the territory it covets resorts to anti-Semitic indoctrination of its denizens and unleashes episodes of outright terrorism, governments around the world will persist, in plain violation of international law, in recognizing it as a state. As Iran marches toward a nuclear bomb and perfects ballistic technology, western governments will declare that it is a rational actor supplementing its electrical grid. Should one of our cities be rendered uninhabitable for 60 years following a dirty bomb strike or half its population succumb to water poisoning, Islam would still emerge as the religion of peace and federal officers would be stationed around mosques to prevent a “backlash.” All such reactions are practically foreordained — until reality forecloses on its mortgage and a subprime debacle of existential proportions ensues, when it may be too late to reclaim what we have sacrificed to fear, lassitude and craven imbecility.

Keep reading.

Solway concludes with the the most hilarious joke, heh.