Republicans Do Have a Plan. That's What Scares Democrats

From David Harsanyi, at the Federalist:

In which I unload both barrels at the Trump & Republican "plan" to replace Obamacare. Here's why: people will die. https://t.co/dqvh6zemd7 pic.twitter.com/fvuMomuxxH

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) January 5, 2017

"This is a life & death issue..people will die if the #ACA is dismantled" -- CA @RepSpeier to @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/mKCzZiaTPz

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

At SF press conference, CA @RepSpeier vows to "fight w all our might" against GOP and Trump efforts to repeal #ACA

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

"We seem to forget how the insurance companies would manipulate the system to deny coverage- and that all ended w the #ACA" -- @RepSpeier

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

"#MakeAmericaSickAgain is what the PEOTUS and the GOP Congress intend to do" -- @RepBarbaraLee pic.twitter.com/KgyO1SIRIC

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

Dem Leader @NancyPelosi in SF says #ACA fight is "about respecting the dignity" of Americans -- and saving money pic.twitter.com/KOejE5rNet

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

.@NancyPelosi to GOP: "Do they want to go from affordable care to chaos? We just won't let them do that. We just won't let them do that."

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) January 7, 2017

So #MakeAmericaSickAgain is the slogan Democrats cooked up to oppose Republican health-care reform efforts. That’s because, as you may recall, before 2010 America’s streets were strewn with the bodies of the neglected and dead.

Since Democrats are focusing their campaign on the myth that Obamacare is working for most Americans, it’s imperative they create the impression no viable alternative exists. After all, it’s been nearly a week since the new congressional session started, and Republicans still haven’t produced a comprehensive plan to replace a massive federal health-care law.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof leaves a blank paragraph in his column to illustrate what a Republican “plan” to replace Obamacare will look like, before indulging in the customary “people will die!” scaremongering. (Kristof’s newspaper, by the way, featured a piece headlined “Republicans’ 4-step plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act” the same day his column ran.)

Now, if by “plan,” Kristof is using the contemporary Left’s definition, meaning a expensive, constricting federal regulatory scheme that forces Americans to participate through a series of mandates, then one hopes Republicans never have a “plan.” If the word “plan” still means “a proposal for doing or achieving something,” the GOP have many.

Although there may not be space in either of Kristof’s truth barrels to mention this proposal put forward by the speaker of the House, or the numerous other conservative plans that have been floated, they do exist even if he doesn’t approve. Figuring out a way to turn them into legislation that can pass both houses and meet the approval of a new populist president (who, by the way, isn’t even in office yet) will probably take more than a couple of weeks.

You can have plans. And they can change. I know this because Democrats had many big plans in 2008 but they did not have a finished bill ready to go on day one. This, even though they’d been talking, campaigning, and promising to reform the health-care system for decades. When running for president, Barack Obama (supposedly) opposed the idea of an individual mandate — the device on which Obamacare’s rickety viability hinges — yet it was only later part of the plan. While he was changing his mind, the Senate Finance Committee held 31 meetings to develop Obamacare specifics.

Democrats also had to drop the “public” option and rejigger their abortion coverage to make the bill politically palatable for the moderates in their own party — not the GOP. Even after this the Democrats, who passed the basic structure of Obamacare without having to worry about any Republican opposition, were only later forced to use reconciliation to make it acceptable for the House.

Perhaps Republicans are embracing a newfound competence by avoiding those political pitfalls. Perhaps they’re looking for consensus on timelines and specifics that will make it more feasible. Most likely, it’s going to be messy again. It’s not unprecedented.

Of course politicians grapple with the reality of power. Democrats have grappled with the failure of their policy promises for six years. Krugman, like everyone else perpetuating the myth that there are no replacement plans, act as if coverage can only exist through fake state-run exchanges or welfare.

Don’t worry, though; today’s “they have no plan!” is tomorrow’s “that plan is extremist!”

It is worth reiterating that the replacement plan doesn’t have to be conceptually or functionally similar to Obamacare, no matter how often the Paul Krugmans of the world demand it. The comprehensiveness and rigidity of Obamacare are things to avoid. So replacement plans can be passed piecemeal...

More.

Fascism vs. Right-Wing Populism

Sheri Berman is an excellent political scientist. I like her work a lot. But in two recent pieces on the surge in populism she can't resolve some key inconsistencies in her writing. The main thing is (1) she wants to argue Donald Trump (and right-wing populists in Europe) are not fascist, but (2) this same surging "right-wing [populist] extremism," in Berman's terminology, is still a threat to democracy.

I don't think you can have it both ways. For Berman, if the structural variables that were present in the Interwar period in Europe --- countries in physical ruin after WWI, extreme economic crisis, including the Great Depression, the breakdown of traditional hierarchy, especially aristocracy, absent the consolidation of democratic regimes --- were present today, we'd see the return of fascism.

She doesn't say in so many words, though. She only goes so far as to say that Trump and European "right-wing extremists" threaten current democratic norms and should be challenged, lest they threaten the democratic order.

See for example, Berman's piece from the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, "Populism Is Not Fascism," and especially the conclusion:

The best way to ensure that the [Marine] Le Pens and Trumps of the world go down in history as also-rans rather than as real threats is to make democratic institutions, parties, and politicians more responsive to the needs of all citizens. In the United States, for example, rising inequality, stagnating wages, deteriorating communities, congressional gridlock, and the flow of big money to campaigns have played a bigger role in fueling support for Trump than his purported charisma or the supposed authoritarian leanings of his supporters. Tackling those problems would no doubt help prevent the rise of the next Trump.

History also shows that conservatives should be particularly wary of embracing right-wing populists. Mainstream Republicans who make bogus claims about voter fraud, rigged elections, and the questionable patriotism and nationality of President Barack Obama in order to appeal to the extremist fringes are playing an extremely dangerous game, since such rhetoric fans citizens’ fear and distrust of their politicians and institutions, thus undermining their faith in democracy itself. And just like their interwar counter­parts, these conservatives are also likely enhancing the appeal of politicians who have little loyalty to the conservatives’ own policies, constituencies, or institutions.

Right-wing populism—indeed, populism of any kind—is a symptom of democracy in trouble; fascism and other revolutionary movements are the consequence of democracy in crisis. But if governments do not do more to address the many social and economic problems the United States and Europe currently face, if mainstream politicians and parties don’t do a better job reaching out to all citizens, and if conservatives continue to fan fear and turn a blind eye to extremism, then the West could quickly find itself moving from the former to the latter.

Actually, democracy is not in trouble.

Donald Trump is not an "also-ran" but the president-elect who will take office as the 45th president of the U.S. on January 20th.

Berman's problem, I would argue, is that she sees populist rejection of left-wing policies as threats to democracy. They are not.

Her other piece, which specifies the nature of fascism much better than at Foreign Affairs, is at Vox, "Donald Trump isn’t a fascist."

The always excellent Sheri Berman: Trump is a right-wing populist, not a fascist. https://t.co/CyQgOcBQcH

— Daniel Nexon (@dhnexon) January 3, 2017

It's good, but like I said, Berman fails to persuasively explain why so called "extreme" right-wing populist movements threaten democracy.

These movements, at least in the U.S., don't even threaten democratic norms, and her examples (like Trump's rejection of intelligence findings on Russian hacking) aren't in fact cases of deviations from such norms. And of course, the same things that Berman claims right-wing populist are doing, like rejecting election results, are exactly what Democrats and leftists have done since the election. So, why aren't far-left movements, socialism, neo-communism, and anti-neo-liberalism, in fact threats to democracy? The reason is that leftists have double-standards, and for them threats to democratic norms are only seen when populists reject leftist policies.

Until Berman and others can offer an even-handed argument for fascism vs. right-wing populism (or left-wing populism, for that matter), their commentary and research will be rejected as nothing more than partisan hackery.

Heh. I'm Cheering 'Professor Watchlist'

Having been on the receiving end of leftist campaigns to have me fired from my teaching job for having conservative views, I can only laugh at the progressive shock to the creation of the new website, "Professor Watchlist."

My view is that as long as left-wing professors treat all their students fairly, then they should be able to spew whatever they want. (But of course they don't treat conservatives fairly.) That, and they have academic freedom too. Of course the humanities and social sciences have been plagued by the radical takeover since at least the 1960s, and even earlier if you consider the German invasion of "critical theorists" at American universities after World War Two. So the problem merits some consideration as to remedies.

I mean seriously, it's like a plague.

I expect the best way to fight back is to simply to expose the left's hated and malevolence. There'll be enough cases of corruption and ideological harassment that left-wing professors will start losing their jobs. Leave it to local districts, and their voting constituents, to do the job. Just make sure that obscene campus ideological indoctrination and politicization is brought to public light and held accountable. It's not like there'll be a shortage of cases.

Here's the list.

I haven't actually skimmed it over yet, although I'm pleased as punch to see that Erik "Homosexual Lumberjack" Loomis has been recognized, and he's not too happy about it, hilariously.

See the idiot's essay at the Nation, "Trumpism Poses the Most Dire Threat to Academic Freedom in Recent Memory":

Thanks to the principle of academic freedom, professors have unusual space in American society to challenge the powerful without fear of retribution. For this reason the right has always resented professors, and for decades it has targeted them as subversives. The election of Donald Trump and the rise to power of the extremist ideologues surrounding him, like Steve Bannon and Rudolph Giuliani, make this a frightening moment for those academics who see fighting for a more just world as part of their job.

In 2012, I found myself the target of a hate campaign after saying a few intemperate things about the National Rifle Association and American gun culture in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. I was upset not only because of the horrors of the event itself—a shocking one for many Americans—but because in 1998 my high-school Spanish teacher in Springfield, Oregon, had been murdered by her son before shooting up his own high school. How many people had to die before anything was changed? Noting on Twitter that I would like to hold NRA leadership accountable for its promotion of high-powered firearms, I said that I wanted to see “Wayne LaPierre’s head on a stick.” This was obviously a metaphor, but thanks to a right-wing website called Campus Reform, which “monitors” leftists on college campuses, demagogues such as Michelle Malkin started a campaign to have me fired. Hundreds of phone calls and e-mails poured into the university. Luckily, I work on a unionized campus and nothing came of the campaign.

While people still joke about this incident with me, I barely gave it another thought until two weeks ago when a young conservative activist backed by the extremist right-wing organization Turning Points USA created the Professor Watchlist. Listing 195 professors believed to be hostile to the group’s agenda of unregulated capitalism, white-supremacist politics, and opposition to women’s reproductive freedom, it is a rough draft of a possible Trump-era blacklist. I was placed on the Watchlist because of my attacks on the NRA four years ago. Professors across the nation found themselves suddenly targeted by well-connected conservative activists in a nation where increasingly radical Republicans have suddenly captured each branch of government. No one knows what will come of it, but the shock has ricocheted through the halls of campuses all across the country.

So far, the reaction has mostly been an awesome display of solidarity from my students and my colleagues, both at my university and around the nation. Hundreds of professors have reported themselves to the Professor Watchlist, asking to be included, with faculty at the University of Notre Dame even writing a public letter to that effect. This is wonderful. But what happens after Inauguration Day? Will free speech be respected by the Trump administration? Will the right be emboldened to launch increasingly harsh attacks against professors? If there are sustained pressure campaigns against radical academics, will administrations be able to resist giving in?

Still more.

And fuck "radical academics," the bleedin' idiot losers.

Breitbart Looks to Expand Globally

Breitbart is reviled by leftists, obviously for getting the job done. Professor Melissa Zimdars, of Merrimack College in Massachusetts, even included Breitbart on her "scholarly" list of "fake" news sites. Actually, most "fake" news I read is on the left. For progs like Professor Zimdars, "fake" news is real conservative leaning news they don't like.

In any case, the folks at the Breitbart shop are looking for growth opportunities.

At LAT, "Breitbart News, fiery conservative outlet buoyed by Trump victory, aims to go global":

It all began a little more than 10 years ago in a basement in Westwood: a small army of young employees in T-shirts and shorts huddled over their laptops, determined to launch a news site that would shake up the world of conservative media.

At first, the site started by Andrew Breitbart was a simple news aggregation service. But in a few short years it evolved into an idiosyncratic voice combining original reporting, incendiary commentary and outright trolling, in keeping with the rambunctious spirit of its founder, who died in 2012.

As its popularity grew, many condemned its rhetoric as extremist, xenophobic, sexist and a platform for hate speech — accusations its leaders have denied. Others laughed it off as a journalistic lightweight catering to a far-right fringe known as the alt-right.

No one’s laughing anymore. As Donald Trump prepares to take office as president, the Breitbart News Network stands poised to become one of the most influential conservative media companies in the country. Stephen K. Bannon, the site’s controversial executive chairman, was a key figure in Trump’s campaign and has been named chief White House strategist.

For Breitbart, this could mean a direct line to the West Wing, a level of media access unprecedented in modern times, according to experts. While some believe this will turn the outlet into an extension of the Trump administration, leaders at Breitbart see it as an opportunity that will allow them to compete not only with conservative rivals like Fox News, but the entire media firmament, which it sees as dishonest about its left-leaning bias...

More.

Asra Nomani: Why I Supported Donald Trump (VIDEO)

This woman is awesome. Brave and awesome.

At the Washington Post, "I’m a Muslim, a woman and an immigrant. I voted for Trump":

A lot is being said now about the “silent secret Trump supporters.”

This is my confession — and explanation: I — a 51-year-old, a Muslim, an immigrant woman “of color” — am one of those silent voters for Donald Trump. And I’m not a “bigot,” “racist,” “chauvinist” or “white supremacist,” as Trump voters are being called, nor part of some “whitelash.”

In the winter of 2008, as a lifelong liberal and proud daughter of West Virginia, a state born on the correct side of history on slavery, I moved to historically conservative Virginia only because the state had helped elect Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States.

But, then, for much of this past year, I have kept my electoral preference secret: I was leaning toward Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Tuesday evening, just minutes before the polls closed at Forestville Elementary School in mostly Democratic Fairfax County, I slipped between the cardboard partitions in the polling booth, a pen balanced carefully between my fingers, to mark my ballot for president, coloring in the circle beside the names of Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence.

After Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede, making him America’s president-elect, a friend on Twitter wrote a message of apology to the world, saying there are millions of Americans who don’t share Trump’s “hatred/division/ignorance.” She ended: “Ashamed of millions that do.”

That would presumably include me — but it doesn’t, and that is where the dismissal of voter concerns about Clinton led to her defeat. I most certainly reject the trifecta of “hatred/division/ignorance.” I support the Democratic Party’s position on abortion, same-sex marriage and climate change.

But I am a single mother who can’t afford health insurance under Obamacare. The president’s mortgage-loan modification program, “HOPE NOW,” didn’t help me. Tuesday, I drove into Virginia from my hometown of Morgantown, W.Va., where I see rural America and ordinary Americans, like me, still struggling to make ends meet, after eight years of the Obama administration.

Finally, as a liberal Muslim who has experienced, first-hand, Islamic extremism in this world, I have been opposed to the decision by President Obama and the Democratic Party to tap dance around the “Islam” in Islamic State. Of course, Trump’s rhetoric has been far more than indelicate and folks can have policy differences with his recommendations, but, to me, it has been exaggerated and demonized by the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, their media channels, such as Al Jazeera, and their proxies in the West, in a convenient distraction from the issue that most worries me as a human being on this earth: extremist Islam of the kind that has spilled blood from the hallways of the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai to the dance floor of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

In mid-June, after the tragic shooting at Pulse, Trump tweeted out a message, delivered in his typical subtle style: “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

Around then, on CNN’s “New Day,” Democratic candidate Clinton seemed to do the Obama dance, saying, “From my perspective, it matters what we do more than what we say. And it mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said we — whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I’m happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”

By mid-October, it was one Aug. 17, 2014, email from the WikiLeaks treasure trove of Clinton emails that poisoned the well for me. In it, Clinton told aide John Podesta: “We need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL,” the politically correct name for the Islamic State, “and other radical Sunni groups in the region.”

The revelations of multimillion-dollar donations to the Clinton Foundation from Qatar and Saudi Arabia killed my support for Clinton...

More.

Donald Trump and the End of American Exceptionalism

Blah, blah, blah.

Here's yet another leftist screed warning about the dangers of Donald Trump and Trumpism. These screeds have been polluting the web with an increasing frequency this last few weeks. That's how frightened the political class has become.

From Jelani Cobb, at the New Yorker:

In the sixteen months since he declared his candidacy, Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign has elicited comparisons to those of George Wallace and Barry Goldwater, to the hallucinatory paranoia of Joseph McCarthy, to the fascist preoccupations of Charles Lindbergh, and to lesser lights of American demagoguery like Father Coughlin and the Know-Nothings of the nineteenth century.

The unifying theme among these figures, beyond their disdain for democracy, was their common residence in the loser’s aisle of American history. McCarthy’s conspiratorial manipulation of the public eventually earned him the enmity of both Republicans and Democrats and a vote in the Senate to censure him. Wallace carried just five states and garnered thirteen per cent of the popular vote. Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson by sixteen million popular votes, winning just fifty-two Electoral College votes to Johnson’s four hundred and eighty-six. Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 classic “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” charted the lunatic genealogy of fringe movements dating back to the early years of the Republic, but the more sanguine assessment of that lineage is that few of these movements—anti-Catholicism, anti-Freemasonry, or Know-Nothingism, for instance—managed to sustain themselves in the long term or to fully inhabit the political mainstream.

Goldwater is heralded as the father of modern conservatism, but he could occupy that niche only because successive generations of his heirs refined and streamlined his message, buffing away the elements that the public saw as extremist. The modern Republican Party staked its claim on conservatism, not on Goldwaterism.

All this points to yet another reason why Trump represents a unique danger in American politics. Trumpism does not seek simply to make a point and pass on its genes to more politically palatable heirs, nor is it readily apparent why he would need to settle for this. When George Will announced his departure from the G.O.P., last summer, he offered a modified version of Ronald Reagan’s quote about leaving the Democrats—“I didn’t leave the Party; the Party left me.” But a kind of converse narrative applies to Trump; he didn’t join the Republican Party so much as its most febrile elements joined him. Trump is partly a product of forces that the G.O.P. created by pandering to a base whose dilated pupils the Party mistook for gullibility, not abject, irrational fear that would send those voters scurrying to the nearest authoritarian savior they could find. The error was in thinking that this populace, mainlining Glenn Beck and Alex Jones theories and pondering how the Minutemen would have fought Sharia law, could be controlled. (For evidence to the contrary, the Party needed look no further than the premature political demise of Eric Cantor.) The old adage warns that one should beware of puppets that begin pulling their own strings.

In this light, Trump represents a kind of return to the old-time religion, a fundamentalism that rejects the effete nature of dog-whistle politics the way the religious right defined itself by rejecting the watery tenets of liberal Christianity. Implicit within dog-whistling is enough respect for democratic norms and those outside one’s base to speak to that base in terms that the mass populace can’t readily decipher. Here, plausible deniability is at least a recognition that there are people with interests different from one’s own and that their influence, if not their interests or humanity, warrants a certain degree of respect. Trump is doing the opposite of this. He is an exhorter in a midsummer tent revival: direct, literal, and speaking at a decibel that makes it impossible to misunderstand his intentions. The end result of Trump’s evangelism is that a xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, serially mendacious narcissist is poised to pull in somewhere north of fifty million votes in the midst of the most bitterly contentious election in modern American history. The easy analysis holds that Trump’s jihad against decency has wrecked the Republican Party, but the damage is far more extensive than this...

The main problem here is its incompleteness. Cobb completely omits the Democrat Party from any responsibility for the rise of Trumpism. But as anyone with half a brain knows, the radicalization of the Democrats since at least the Iraq war has unleashed ideological forces that just now seem to have spun out of control, mainly because Trump is unfiltered (in his professed disdain for political correctness, and so forth). Also, Cobb forgets that the culture itself has changed since the the days of both Goldwater and Reagan. Social media has only accelerated a coarsening of American life that's seeped into politics like a cancer. Trumpism won't go away because Obamism isn't going away. Polls show that partisans on both sides have increased in strength and there's precious little incentive to cooperate with the opponent. Fractured, polarized politics lets out the worst. If Cobb were honest he'd at least concede that forces across the ideological spectrum are responsible for where we are today, and his failure ---- along with those of his political class ---- will ensure that these same forces of a long shelf life.

But keep reading.

And see also, "Social Media Enables Prejudice to Slip Back Into the Mainstream."

Social Media Enables Prejudice to Slip Back Into the Mainstream

Blah, blah, blah.

Everybody's prejudiced about something. It's human nature.

I mean, Hillary Clinton slammed Bernie Sanders' supporters as a "basket of losers," and I don't see leftists getting all uptight about that.

See? Prejudices.

But check Edward Luce, at FT, "The age of vitriol: Edward Luce on US politics and social media":

Age of vitriol. I talk to co-founder of alt-right, @RichardBSpencer & his antidotes - @juliaioffe and @LibyaLiberty https://t.co/3hJS28wGSS

— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) November 4, 2016

I was first alerted to Richard B Spencer by a horrific Twitter post. The tweet in question showed the ubiquitous photo of a Syrian boy, face covered in blood and dust, with the tagline: “Hey, let’s start WWIII for this f***king kid!” Like most people who saw it, I was offended. That, of course, was the point. Unlike many of his peers, Spencer tweets under his real name. He then revels in the outrage.

Provocation is the goal of the so-called alt-right — the amorphous world of rightwing extremist groups that have thrived in the age of Donald Trump. Memes, such as the one of the Syrian boy, are their weapon. Notoriety is their oxygen. The past year or two have been a field day. “No matter what happens, I will be profoundly grateful to Trump for the rest of my life,” says Spencer.

After what seems like the worst-tempered US election ever, America will at last make its decision on Tuesday. History may look back on 2016 as the year when the US finally chose a woman to lead it, or when the postwar US-global order started to break up. Others will remember it as the election when a rank outsider — a reality-TV star, no less — stormed the citadel and changed the way the game was played.

For my part, having lived in America on and off since the end of the past century, this is the year when democracy’s sense of restraint seemed to vanish. The glue of mutual respect that is so vital to any free society came unstuck. People no longer bother trying to persuade each other. They simply shove their views — or the mere fact of their identity — in your face. Or else they just insult you. The more retweets the better.

For all its pluses, social media has drowned politics in vitriol. New technology has opened up a galaxy of thought once confined to libraries, but it has also enabled ancient prejudices to seep back into the mainstream — anti-Semitism, for example, and hatred of women. In the past few months, the Twitter hashtags #whitegenocide (the view that whites are endangered by multiculturalism) and #repealthe19th (the US constitution’s 19th amendment gave women the right to vote) have trended heavily.

Obnoxiousness has infected all sides of the spectrum but the right has learnt how to play the game better. Partly because it is rebelling against political correctness, it works with fewer boundaries, or none at all. The level of trust between electors and elected has been falling for years. In 2016 the electorate has begun to turn viciously on itself. Is this a blip or a permanent shift? The future of free society may depend on the answer. Democracy cannot prosper for long in a swamp of mutual dislike...

Dramatic much Mr. Luce?

There's more to life than social media. My solution to ugliness and rancor is the be nice. I say hello to everyone, especially at my school. I catch my students off guard when I remember their names and say hello to them outside on the walkways. They really like that, although most don't tell you because they're shy and often don't have many social skills, partially because they spend so much time staring down at an electronic screen.

A solution of course is to get people to interact with each, and to double-down and decency and respect. It's as simple as holding a door for someone, or letting someone pass in front of you (without cutting them off, which is something that happens to me a lot, and that's before social media came along; society's been coarsening for some time).

More at the link.

The Democrat Echo Chamber

I've long attacked Glenn Greenwald as a fanatical Israel-hating leftist, but as you know, he's intriguing, and I've often admired his against-the-grain take on politics.

I know, I know. He's a traitor as well, but still. A broken clock's right twice a day.

In any case, at the Intercept, "In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots":

DONALD TRUMP, FOR reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable, and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fearmongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him?

But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. — more so than ever — and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow...

Keep reading.

Belgium Launches Terror Investigation as Islamic State Claims Machete Attack

Following-up from Saturday, "Machete Suspect Screams 'Allahu Akbar' in Latest Belgian Jihad Attack (VIDEO)."

At WSJ, "Belgium Launches Terror Probe as ISIS Claims Machete Attack":

BRUSSELS — Belgian authorities have opened a terrorism probe following a weekend machete attack on two police officers in the city of Charleroi, the latest assault in what has become a relentless summer-long barrage.

The assailant, who was fatally shot during the attack, was identified Sunday by the authorities as a 33-year-old Algerian man who had been living in Belgium illegally since 2012.

Authorities didn’t disclose any indications of accomplices or large-scale planning behind Saturday’s attack, which left one of the officers with serious injuries to her face and neck. The assailant wasn’t carrying explosives or any other weapon, and while he was known to authorities because of his illegal status in the country, he wasn’t known to have any terror links, federal authorities said. They released his initials, K.B., but not his name.

Islamic State’s news agency Amaq claimed the attack was carried out by one of the group’s “soldiers” in response to strikes by the U.S.-led coalition fighting against it in Iraq and Syria.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said federal prosecutors had opened a probe into “attempted terrorist murders,” assigning an investigative judge specialized in terrorism cases.

“The terrorist track is the possibility which is under analysis at this point,” Mr. Michel said, adding that at this early stage it was important to be “extremely prudent” in drawing any conclusions.

The slashing was the most recent in a string of attacks claimed by the Sunni Muslim extremist group that have left scores dead, in what Mr. Michel described as a “new reality” in Europe.

In addition to orchestrating large-scale attacks, directed at least in part from abroad, Islamic State has also encouraged sympathizers to carry out lone-wolf attacks targeting civilians, which authorities have acknowledged are much harder to prevent. In some cases, authorities haven’t been able to corroborate claims of responsibility by the group.

Some of the more recent attacks linked to Islamic State in Europe have been carried out away from the more heavily guarded capitals—including the July 14 attack in Nice, in southern France; the July 24 suicide bombing in Ansbach, Germany, and the July 26 killing of a French priest in Normandy...

More.

Belgium's national elections are scheduled for 2019. Still a ways off, and thus plenty of time for Islamic invaders to launch further rounds of jihad attacks.

Brussels is the capital of European jihad. It's out of control.

One of the Normandy Jihadists Tried to Go to Syria

More on the slaughter of of the innocent French priest.

At WSJ, "French Say One of Priest’s Killers Had Tried to Go to Syria":

The two attackers were killed by police upon exiting the church. Prosecutors said one of them was Adel Kermiche, a young man who was under court order to wear an electronic bracelet after trying to travel to Syria.

Kermiche, a 19-year-old who was born and raised in France, was detained in Turkey in 2015 while trying to reach Islamic State’s stronghold in northern Syria, French authorities said. He was ordered to wear the bracelet in March after French prosecutors placed him under investigation on preliminary terrorism charges.

Henria Bayouki, 19, a friend who attended summer camp with Kermiche, said she spoke to his family, who confirmed he was one of the attackers.

The knife-wielding men, one of whom was carrying fake explosives, entered the 16th-century stone church in this Normandy town and took five hostages, including Rev. Jacques Hamel, the parish’s 85-year-old auxiliary priest.

A nun who fled the scene told French TV she saw the attackers force Father Hamel to kneel before cutting his throat. The attackers recorded the attack and “did a sort of sermon around the altar in Arabic,” she said.

Another person knifed in the church was in stable condition, a prosecutor said.

Police surrounded the church and shot and killed the two men as they exited the building, the spokesman said.

Islamic State said via its media arm, the Amaq news agency, that the attack was carried out by two of its “soldiers” without providing evidence of any direct links to the attackers.

French President François Hollande said the attackers had sworn allegiance to the extremist group.

“We are faced with a group that has declared war on us,” Mr. Hollande said after rushing to the scene.

The gruesome nature of the attack—and the fact that it was carried out in a Catholic church in a predominantly Catholic country—provoked outrage across France, fueling calls for a broader crackdown on Muslim radicals.

“A new low has been reached,” said Marine Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigration National Front party. “The heart of our nation’s cultural identity has been intentionally struck.”

Authorities were also grappling with the possibility of another breakdown in France’s security apparatus as they investigated Kermiche’s involvement in this latest attack...

My prediction is that things do not get better. We will see more jihad terror in France.

And also, Marine Le Pen will make the runoff in the French presidential election next year. I'd like to say she'll be elected, but even that remains an unknown. Leftists would do anything to sabotage a so-called "far-right nationalist" from coming to power.

Sadly, it's a true nationalist that France needs as its savoir, far-right or not.

Islamic State Claims Responsibility as Homicide Bombers Slaughter at Least 80 in Kabul (VIDEO)

It's every day now.

It's catastrophic slaughter on a daily basis.

At WSJ, "Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 80 in Kabul":

KABUL—Three suicide bombers killed at least 80 people and wounded more than 230 others at a protest in Kabul on Saturday, according to the Afghan health ministry, where thousands had gathered to demonstrate against plans to reroute a new power line.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on a “gathering of Shiites,” the group’s affiliated Amaq news agency reported, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity.

It is the first attack claimed by the Sunni extremist group in the Afghan capital. Islamic State emerged as foreign forces were withdrawing from Afghanistan in 2014 and has established a stronghold in the eastern part of the country.

An Afghan intelligence agency official said the attack was carried out by three suicide bombers dispatched from Islamic State’s eastern stronghold in the Achin district. “There were three bombers and they were all armed with suicide vests. Probably they all detonated their explosives at once,” the official said...

More.

Islamic State Claims Responsibility for #Nice Jihad Terror Attack (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Attack in Nice":

Islamic State on Saturday claimed responsibility for the deadly truck attack in the French city of Nice, saying the assault was a response to calls by the extremist group to target those nations allied against it.

Despite the assertion of responsibility, the nature and scope of the Sunni Muslim extremist group’s involvement in Thursday’s attack, which killed 84 people and wounded scores more, was unclear.

French authorities said Saturday they had found no evidence of ties between terror groups and the man who carried out the assault in Nice, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a 31-year-old Tunisian man living in the city. Prosecutors also said they had little doubt the militant group had, at the very least, inspired the attack.

In its statement Saturday quoting an unidentified security source and carried by its affiliated Amaq news agency, the Sunni Muslim extremist group said, the Bastille Day attack “was carried out by one of the soldiers of the Islamic State, and the operation was done in response to calls to target nations of coalition states that are fighting the Islamic State.”

The statement was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist activity.

France is one of 66 participants in the U.S.-led military coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to the U.S. State Department. U.S. President Barack Obama announced the formation of the coalition in September 2014.

On the internet and social media, supporters of Islamic State cheered the truck attack by Lahouaiej Bouhlel, but as in some previous claims of responsibility by the militant group, no clear link to the group has been established.

U.S. and European officials were running checks on financial, social media and internet communication networks to try to determine whether Lahouaiej Bouhlel had accomplices or received foreign support...

Keep reading.

'No Free Speech for Fascists!' — Leftist Extremists Launched Violent Attack at Sacramento Rally (VIDEO)

I don't shock easily, but the beginning of the video, when the black bloc anarchist, armed with a wooden club, smashes a protester in the side of the head, is mind-boggling.

Some of these activists from the Traditional Workers Party appeared indeed to be Nazis, as I found out after trolling around on Twitter yesterday. The only thing is, it was the leftists who started the violent attacks. Frankly, they set out to violently confront the so-called "white nationalists" and shut them down. So who's the extremist? Who's the real fascist?

Here's the event announcement from BAMN (By Any Means Necessary), "NO “FREE SPEECH” FOR FASCISTS! Mass, militant demonstration shuts down Sacramento Neo-Nazi rally!":

Insane video. Crowd sees any signs of "Nazis" and they run&attack. A lot of people bleeding/getting maced. @ABC10 pic.twitter.com/PoFhILfZ95

— Frances Wang (@ABC10Frances) June 26, 2016

PROTEST THE NAZIS/KKK IN SACRAMENTO!

No Racist Organizing in California!

No “Free Speech” for Fascists!

• SMASH FASCISM! NO PLATFORM FOR ORGANIZING RACIST VIOLENCE, MURDER, AND GENOCIDE!
• No Racist Demagogy! No Anti-Muslim Bigotry! No National Chauvinism, Fear Mongering, or Immigrant Scapegoating!
• Latina/o, Black, Native American, Arab, Asian, and White, Immigrants With and Without Papers, We are ALL Californians!
• Open the Borders! Full Citizenship Rights for All Undocumented Immigrants, Refugees, and Asylum-Seekers Now!
• Build the New Independent, Integrated, Mass Militant Youth-Led Civil Rights and Immigrant Rights Movement!

Also, from Lee Stranahan, at Breitbart, "Officer: Left-Wing Extremists Started Sacramento Riot."

And get this, at the Sacramento Bee, "Activist Yvette Felarca says anti-fascist rally at the Capitol will prevent more violenceJun 26, 2016" (VIDEO):

Yvette Felarca, from the activist group By Any Means Necessary in Oakland, says their violent reaction to a white supremacist rally at the California Capitol Sunday will help prevent violence against immigrant communities by dissuading other supremacist groups from holding events.

The leftist MSM was lapping up the propaganda from this pig Felarca. Watch, at CNN, "Bloody protester: We took Nazis on."

Also, from Ed Driscoll at Instapundit, "VIDEO: THE INSANE SACRAMENTO NEO-NAZI/ANTI-FASCIST MELEE."

Donald Trump Assassination Attempt: Man Arrested Trying to Kill Trump at Las Vegas Rally (VIDEO)

Now, would this be getting more mainstream media coverage if some "right-wing extremist" tried to steal a policeman's gun at one of Hillary's events?

I think you know the answer.

But see the Las Vegas Sun, "Secret Service: Man at Las Vegas rally said he wanted to kill Donald Trump."

And at the Washington Examiner, via Memeorandum, "19-year-old man tried to kill Trump at Las Vegas rally, officials say."

Jihad Denial Kills…Again

From John Schindler, at the Observer, "America just suffered our worst terrorist attack since 9/11. We need to start talking honestly about the enemy that keeps butchering Americans":

How many more Americans have to die before we can have a "national conversation" about radical Islam & jihadism?https://t.co/JDZP9Ja0nB

— John Schindler (@20committee) June 12, 2016

Tonight we burn illusions. A terrorist attack on a popular gay club in Orlando, Florida in the middle of the night ended before the dawn with the violent deaths of at least 50 innocents and the maiming of 53 more. This was the bloodiest terrorist attack on America since 9/11. The Pulse nightclub, something of an icon in Florida LGBT circles, was transformed into a charnel house.

The United States had been lucky, having avoided truly mass casualty terrorist incidents since that awful day 15 years ago, through a combination of luck, inept enemies, and excellent intelligence work. But the Orlando horror demonstrates that attacks on soft targets in public places can cause huge numbers of casualties, here as well as in Europe, like last November’s assaults on Paris that killed 130 people, 89 of them at the Bataclan theater, where a hostage situation resulted in a bloodbath. Something similar has just happened in Florida.

While the Paris attacks were the work of nine terrorists, plus several others providing logistical support, so far only one killer has been identified in the Orlando atrocity. While there are reports of other shooters, these remain unconfirmed, and the sole terrorist definitely involved was Omar Mateen, born in this country in 1986 to immigrant parents from Afghanistan. He was killed by police at the end of the nightmare he inflicted on Orlando.

So far, his story is shaping up as the now-customary list of jihadist clichés. The 29-year-old went from a relatively normal American life towards extremism, winding up on the radar of the FBI more than once for his aggressive beliefs. A brief marriage failed, in part because he frequently beat his wife, she claims, asserting that Mateen “was not a stable person.” A trauma like divorce leading to an embrace of jihadism is as common as can be in extremist circles.

The killer’s family has claimed that their son’s terrible act had “nothing to do with religion” – again, following the script we have come to expect whenever a young person, usually male, brutally murders strangers in the name of Islam. While Omar Mateen’s father claims to be utterly mystified by his son’s actions, that assertion should be examined closely, since Seddique Mateen has publicly praised the Taliban in his home country – the very people the American military has been fighting since late 2001. In a truly bizarre twist, Mateen Senior claims to be the real president of Afghanistan. His statement that his son was triggered by seeing two men kissing in public seems unlikely to endear the family to the American public....

Within hours of the massacre, progressives and jihad apologists were insisting that the Orlando attack was “really” about guns – and certainly not about Islamism or jihadism. The Pulse massacre was about guns the way that the 9/11 attacks were “really” about box cutters and the 2013 Boston bombing was “really” about pressure cookers. There are millions of guns in Florida (the state has issued 1.3 million concealed carry permits alone) plus plenty of people who are not overly fond of gays. Why, then, was Omar Mateen the one who assaulted a gay club and shot dozens of innocent people?

Based on his statement on the atrocity, President Obama won’t be asking that question anytime soon. Although Mr. Obama demurred from some of his customary evasions, actually calling the attack an “act of terrorism,” he quickly defaulted to his usual talking points whenever radical Muslims butcher Americans: “hate” and “guns” were cited frequently by the president, while words such as “Islamism” and “jihad” were notable by their absence. Mr. Obama’s denial of the obvious, perfected during his two terms in the White House, appears unshakeable.

These evasions are met with derision by counterterrorism professionals, who deduced Mr. Obama’s agenda back in 2009 when he dismissed the Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.” Spies and cops have gotten used to this president’s persistent inability to call the enemy what he actually is, even though that enemy constantly calls himself such things. “What was he gonna call Orlando,” asked an old FBI friend just hours after the Pulse attack: “gayplace violence?”

It’s not difficult to determine what’s really going on here. Just two months before this attack, an Orlando mosque hosted an Islamic theologian known for pronouncing homosexuals as deserving of death. “Death is the sentence” they merit as an act of “compassion,” the imam stated. While his invitation got some coverage in Orlando media, one wonders what the mainstream media would have to say if a white preacher in Charleston had pronounced blacks as deserving the death sentence only two months before Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans in a church...

Still more.

'Extremist With a Death Wish' — Citizens for Constitutional Freedom Throw David Fry Under the Bus

At the Facebook page for the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom.

I don't see the post buried there, but you can read the screencap, via Twitter:



And here's what looks like is a more recent thread, "A CALL TO DAVID FRY TO STAND DOWN IMMEDIATELY":

I am calling on David Fry, once again, to LEAVE THE MALHEUR WILDERNESS REFUGE. David is one of five holdouts at the refuge. He was not a part of the original group to go to the refuge. He had no part in the great amount of social, legal and political work that Ammon and other people did in the years prior to the takeover of the refuge. David is a Johnny-come-lately who was a media disaster from the start due to his wild public rants.

I remember when I first read some mentions of David in the media shortly after he went out to the refuge. Initially, I thought that he may have just been a naive young man who said some dumb things off the cuff in social media and was being slammed for it by left-leading media outlets. I opened a dialogue with David to find out if the reports about him were true. If he was being inappropriately maligned in the media, I wanted to be able to defend him. But if he was truly an extremist who had infiltrated the ranks at the refuge, I wanted to see him removed from the compound for the sake of the good people of the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom (CCF). So I began an investigation.

David is in his late 20s. He believes in some very good foundational principles regarding issues of morality and freedom. However, David's worldview takes those principles and runs to the fringes. I don't believe that he is altogether mentally stable. He seems to have no sense of social propriety and sees every issue as either black or white with no layers of gray in the middle. Following my investigation, I spoke with David and told him that I felt that, even if his intent was good, his methods of communication were too extreme and would be damaging to the reputation of Ammon and the others at the refuge who did not share his extremist ideologies. I was in no position to tell him to leave the refuge, but I advised him that if I were in charge I would ask him to leave. I also recommended that if he was going to stay on at the refuge, at the very least - for the sake of the reputation of the others - he needed to stop making public statements on social media that were provocative. I recommended that if he wouldn't delete his previous inflammatory messages, to at least change their status from public to restricted.

David chose not to take any of my advice or counsel. Having worked for decades as a political strategist with a keen awareness of the psychology and propensities of the individuals I've worked with, I foresaw David as becoming a serious threat to Ammon's work and to the CCF as a whole. I sent numerous warnings to individuals I knew out at the refuge to ask them to boot David from the group. David later related to me that they had given him a firm warning that if he caused any more trouble that he would be asked to leave. But then more pressing matters began to rapidly accelerate over the next week and the issue of David Fry fell by the wayside.

Today, Ammon and other CCF leaders are in prison. LaVoy Finicum has been murdered. The militia has fled. And, to my shock and disgust, David Fry has become the self-appointed leader of a 5 person band of holdouts who are continuing to defy the FBI. They are armed and, at least as of this writing, they are determined to stay - come hell or high water. Up until yesterday, David Fry was simply a foolish young person with some socially inappropriate views. Today, David is putting the lives of other people at risk, as well as his own.

If any of the other members of David's party can see my words - PLEASE, abandon David and leave. He has become unhinged and seems to have a death wish. Yesterday he was screaming on video that the world was going to get to watch him get killed on live TV. Last night he sent out a Livestream of him and a few others smoking dope together. He is bringing shame upon the CCF and NO GOOD can come from following him.

David, if you continue to wield weapons and defy the federal authorities, they are going to kill you. For the love of God, lay down your arms and come out.

Jake Morphonios

Check for more at the Facebook page.

Bob Dole, World War II Veteran, Former U.S. Senator, and 1996 GOP Presidential Nominee, Warns of 'Cataclysmic' Losses with Ted Cruz

Dole says Donald Trump would do better.

Needless to say, it's been a rough week so far for Senator Cruz.

At the New York Times, "Bob Dole Warns of 'Cataclysmic' Losses With Ted Cruz, and Says Donald Trump Would Do Better":

Bob Dole, the former Kansas senator and 1996 Republican presidential nominee, has never been fond of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. But in an interview Wednesday, Mr. Dole said that the party would suffer “cataclysmic” and “wholesale losses” if Mr. Cruz were the nominee, and that Donald J. Trump would fare better.

“I question his allegiance to the party,” Mr. Dole said of Mr. Cruz. “I don’t know how often you’ve heard him say the word ‘Republican’ — not very often.” Instead, Mr. Cruz uses the word “conservative,” Mr. Dole said, before offering up a different word for Mr. Cruz: “extremist.”

“I don’t know how he’s going to deal with Congress,” he said. “Nobody likes him.”

But Mr. Dole, 92, said he thought Mr. Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”

The remarks by Mr. Dole reflect wider unease with Mr. Cruz among members of the Republican establishment, but few leading members of the party have been as candid and cutting.

“If he’s the nominee, we’re going to have wholesale losses in Congress and state offices and governors and legislatures,” said Mr. Dole, who served in the House and Senate for 35 years and won the Iowa caucuses twice. He described Mr. Cruz as having falsely “convinced the Iowa voters that he’s kind of a mainstream conservative.”

The only person who could stop Mr. Cruz from capturing the nomination? “I think it’s Trump,” Mr. Dole said, adding that Mr. Trump was “gaining a little.”

He said he had met Mr. Trump only once, 30 years ago. “But he has toned down his rhetoric,” he added. As for Mr. Cruz, he said: “There’ll be wholesale losses if he’s the nominee. Our party is not that far right.”

Mr. Dole repeatedly said he was strongly supporting Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, although he acknowledged that Mr. Bush has had trouble gaining traction...

Dole's about as establishment as you can get. It's a sign, among others, that the GOPe is coalescing around the Donald.

More at Memerorandum.

Edward Archer, Philadelphia Jihad Shooter, Traveled to Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Following-up from yesterday, "GRAPHIC: Video Captures Moment Jihadist Opened Fire on Philadelphia Police Officer in Name of Islam."

At the Wall Street Journal, "Suspect in Philadelphia Police Shooting Had Visited Egypt and Saudi Arabia":

The man arrested for allegedly shooting a Philadelphia police officer three times in a late-night ambush traveled to Saudi Arabia in late 2011 and to Egypt in 2012, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Investigators are still trying to determine if the 30-year-old man, Edward Archer, had any connections to foreign terror suspects and whether his overseas travel is of any significance to the investigation of policeman’s shooting, the person added.

The Philadelphia Police Department is leading the investigation, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The person familiar with the situation said Mr. Archer traveled to Saudi Arabia for a couple of weeks in October-November of 2011. The following year, he spent several months in Egypt. It wasn’t immediately clear why he traveled to those countries.

Police officials on Friday said Mr. Archer told detectives he was inspired by the Islamic State extremist group. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, however, had said that day that he didn’t know if the suspect had any connection to the group or acted alone.

Meanwhile, prosecutors on Saturday said Mr. Archer was charged with attempted murder. He is being held without bail, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said. A preliminary hearing is set for Jan. 25, according to online court records.

In addition to the attempted murder count, Mr. Archer also faces charges of aggravated assault, aggravated assault on a police officer and several gun-related offenses...

Keep reading.

Treasons of the Democrats

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

The Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky once described Stalinism as “the perfect theory for glueing up the brain.” What he meant to dramatize was the fact that a regime as monstrous as Stalin’s, which murdered 40 million people and enslaved many times more, was nonetheless able to persuade progressives and “social justice” advocates all over the world to act as its supporters and defenders. These enlightened enablers of Stalin’s crimes included leading intellectuals of the day, even Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and the arts like Frederic Joliot-Curie and Andre Gide. Brilliant as they were, they were blind to the realities of the Stalinist regime and therefore of the virtues of the societies they lived in.

What glued up their brains was the belief that a brave new world of social justice – a world governed by progressive principles - existed in embryo in Soviet Russia, and had to be defended by any means necessary. As a result of this illusion, they put their talents and prestige at the service of the totalitarian enemies of democracy, acting, in Trotsky’s words, as “frontier guards” for the Stalinist empire. They continued their efforts even after the Soviets conquered Eastern Europe, acquired nuclear weapons and initiated a “cold war” with the West. To the progressives seduced by Stalinism, democratic America represented a greater evil than the barbaric police states of the Soviet bloc. Even half a century later a progressive culture still refers to the formative phase of the Cold War as years of a “Red Scare” – as though the fifth column of American progressives whose loyalties were to the Soviet enemy, whose members included Soviet spies, was not a matter of serious concern, and as though a nuclear-armed, rapacious Soviet empire did not pose a credible threat.

How were these delusions of otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people possible? How were otherwise informed individuals able to deny the obvious and support the most brutal and oppressive dictatorship in history? How did they come to view a relatively humane, decent, democratic society like the United States as evil, while regarding the barbarous communist regime as its victim? The answer lies in the identification of Marxism with the promise of social justice and the institution of progressive values, which will take place in a magical socialist future. Defense of the progressive idea trumped recognition of the reactionary fact.

Once the Stalin regime was identified with the imaginary progressive future, everything followed – its status as a persecuted victim, and its adversary’s role as a reactionary force standing in the way of the noble aspiration. Every fault of the Stalin regime, every crime it committed if not denied by progressives was attributed to the nefarious actions of its enemies, most glaringly the United States. Once a promise of redemption is juxtaposed to an imperfect real world actor, all of these responses become virtually inevitable. Hence the glueing of the brain.

The Soviet Union is gone, and history has moved on. But the Stalinist dynamic endures as the heritage of a post-Communist left, which remains wedded to fantasies of an impossibly beautiful future that bring it into collision with the flawed American present. This left is now the dominant force in the Democratic Party. Its extreme disconnect from real world realities is encapsulated in its support for the transparently racist movement called Black Lives Matter, which attacks law enforcement and defends street predators, excusing their crimes with the alibi that “white supremacists” create the circumstances that make them commit criminal acts. This extremist movement has the “strong support” of the entire spectrum of the “progressive” left (including 46% of the Democratic Party, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll).

Black Lives Matter is a movement built on the fiction that police have declared an open season on innocent blacks. According to progressive fictions, police are the agents of a “white supremacist society” – a claim alone that should make one wary of the sanity of those who advance it. Facts belie the very basis of the claim that there is open hunting season on African Americans. African American males, accounting for 6% of the population are responsible for more than 40% of violent crimes. But a Washington Post report on all 980 police shootings of 2015 reveals that only 4% of fatal police shootings involved white officers and black victims, while in three-quarters of the incidents, cops were either under attack themselves or defending civilians,” in other words,” as Michael Walsh observed in the NY Post, they were “doing their jobs.”

One such job done by Officer Darren Wilson in the suburb city of Ferguson, Missouri, became the launching point for the Black Lives Matter movement and its malicious claim that innocent blacks were being wantonly gunned down by racist police...

Still more.

GRAPHIC: Islamic State Propaganda Video Shows Murder of 5 Alleged British Spies (VIDEO)

It's another slick extermination production from ISIS.

The clip is embedded at Breaking 911, "GRAPHIC: New Video Shows ISIS Executing 5 “British Spies”."

Pamela Geller has the report, via Telegraph UK, "WATCH VIDEO: Islamic State threatens UK, shows murder of five “British spies”:

Intelligence agencies were hunting a new ‘Jihadi John’ after an Islamic extremist with a British accent murdered five men accused of spying for the UK.

In a video released on social media the masked gunman warned David Cameron that the West could never win in the war against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil), while mocking the impact of RAF airstrikes.

In a further chilling twist, a young boy aged around four, and appearing to speak with a British accent, also appeared on screen, threatening to kill non-Muslims.

The victims were all shot in the head at point blank range after the well-spoken British sounding terrorist delivered his propaganda rant.

The sickening ten and a half minute video had echoes of those posted by the Isil terrorist dubbed Jihadi John, who was responsible for a string of murders including the beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning.

Jihadi John, who was later identified as 27-year-old Mohamed Emwazi from London, was killed in a US drone strike last November.

MI5 agents were urgently working to establish the identity of the new terrorist, amid concern that the video might signal the start of a new Isil propaganda campaign, which comes in the wake of the Britain’s decision to join coalition airstrikes against Isil targets in Syria.

A source in the Foreign Office said the propaganda video had likely been released to “divert attention away from Isil’s recent military failures in Iraq and its inability to look after the citizens in the areas it controls”.

As well as speaking with a London sounding accent, the terrorist made reference to the soldiers working being paid the minimum wage, further betraying his UK roots.

The video began with apparent confessions from the five Arabic men who were wearing orange prisoner style jumpsuits.

One of the men claimed to have passed information to the West about prominent Isil figures who were subsequently targeted by the coalition, including the group’s deputy leader Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, who was killed in a US drone strike last August.

Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant governor for territories held by the organization in IraqAbu Muslim al-Turkmani was killed by coalition forces last August

The video then cut to a desert landscape where the victims were shown kneeling before five gunmen clad in camouflage clothing and black Isil masks.

More.