Huffington Post Defends Islam, calls Mohammed the ‘Spirit of Truth’

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The Florida Family Association (FFA) reports on The Huffington Post publishing an article on April 26, 2016 titled Did Jesus Predict Muhammad? A Biblical Portal Between Christianity and Islam.  The article states in part:

The time has come for Christians and Muslims to make peace between our communities.

Our planet simply cannot afford another century of misunderstanding and violence between these two communities.

In an earlier blog on the Huffington Post about the problem of Christian Islamophobia, I argue that Christians have the opportunity to transform the way we see Islam and Muslims by accepting Muhammad as “Spirit of Truth.”

Historically, most Christian theologians—including John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Nicholas of Cusa, and Martin Luther—have seen Muhammad not as a “Spirit of Truth” but as a “Spirit of Error,” a false prophet or heretic. There are many Christians today who respect the Islamic tradition and would never make such an offensive statement about Muhammad.

However, the majority of Christians still maintain a fundamentally Islamophobic position on Muhammad. So I believe that the time has come for peacemaking Christians to contradict this position directly. Changing our view of Muhammad—so that we recognize him as a true prophet rather than discredit him as a false prophet—would effectively inoculate Christians against Islamophobia and would help to establish a new paradigm of cooperative Christian-Muslim relations.

[ …. ]

There is no better candidate than Muhammad, no one in fact that comes even close, in terms of fulfilling Jesus’s promise of the Spirit of Truth who would bring forth a new revelation from God. I do not have space in this article to explore the many Qur’anic verses directly addressed to Christians, but if we were to receive them our religion would be transformed for the better and would come into balance with Judaism and Islam.

Click here to read the full article.

FFA states the Huffington Post article:

  • Erroneously blames alleged Christian Islamophobia for the worldwide conflict between Muslims and infidels.
  • Dangerously perverts the Holy Scriptures of the Bible to falsely elevate Muhammad to a Judaic Christian status.
  • Tragically ignores the millions of Muslims around the world who support the killing of hundreds of thousands of Christians.  The Religionofpeace.com provides a detailed report of Muslims killing Christians.  While Muslims are killing hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world the Huffington Post article has the audacity to write “Our planet simply cannot afford another century of misunderstanding and violence between these two communities.”

FFA asks: WHAT violence do Christians appear to be committing against Muslims suggested by the Huffington Post article?  That would be Islamophobia which is the rational, fact based concern that Islamists use violence and Sharia law to advance their political agenda for Caliphate.

TheReligionofPeace.com reported on May 18, 2016:

Islamic Terrorists Have Carried Out more than 28,386 Deadly Terror Attacks Since 9/11

Jihad Report Last 30 Days
Attacks             179
Killed           1496
Injured           2154
Suicide Blasts     35
Countries            23

Weekly Report May 07, 2016 thru May 13, 2016
Attacks              42
Killed            433
Injured            454
Suicide Blasts    15
Countries              16

FFA notes, “Yet, the Huffington Post article has the audacity to blame Islamophobic Christians for the worldwide conflict between Muslims and Infidels.”

Jihadwatch.org reports the following regarding Islam’s view of Jesus issue:

  • Jesus is not the Son of God, belief in the Trinity is “excess”: “O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your religion or say about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and His word which He directed to Mary and a soul from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers. And do not say, ‘Three’; desist — it is better for you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as Disposer of affairs.” — Qur’an 4:171“It is not befitting to (the majesty of) Allah that He should beget a son. Glory be to Him! when He determines a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.” — Qur’an 19:35
  • Jesus was not crucified: “And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain.” — Qur’an 4:157
  • Those who believe in the divinity of Christ are “disbelievers”: “They have certainly disbelieved who say that Allah is Christ, the son of Mary.” — Qur’an 5:17
  • Christians “forgot a good part” of the divine revelations they received: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.” — Qur’an 5:14
  • Muslims should not take Jews or Christians as friends: “O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.” — Qur’an 5:51
  • Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Son are accursed: “The Jews call Ezra a son of Allah, and the Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah’s curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth! ” — Qur’an 9:30
  • Christians who do not become Muslims “are the most vile of created beings”: “Nor did those who were given the Scripture become divided until after there had come to them clear evidence. And they were not commanded except to worship Allah, sincere to Him in religion, inclining to truth, and to establish prayer and to give zakah. And that is the correct religion. Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the most vile of created beings.” — Qur’an 98:6
  • Jesus’ mission was to proclaim the coming of Muhammad: “And when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, ‘O children of Israel, indeed I am the messenger of Allah to you confirming what came before me of the Torah and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad.’ But when he came to them with clear evidences, they said, ‘This is obvious magic.’” — Qur’an 61:6
  • Muslims must fight against and subjugate Christians: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, even if they are of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” — Qur’an 9:29

Christianity is incompatible with Islam.  The Huffington Post article perverts bible scriptures and hides what the Qur’an states about Christians and Jews.

EDITORS NOTE: To learn more about Islam please visit Fitnaphobia.com. 

Retired DHS Intelligence Officer Blows Whistle on Federal Government’s role in Islamic terror threat

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — One day after a prominent U.S. Muslim leader reacted to the November 2015 Paris attacks with a declaration that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has nothing to do with Islam, President Obama made the same assertion.

Who exactly is the enemy we face, not only in the Middle East but also within our borders? Is it “murderers without a coherent creed” or “nihilistic killers who want to tear things down,” as some described ISIS after 130 people were brutally slain and another 368 injured in a coordinated attack on Western soil that authorities say was organized with help from inside France’s Muslim communities.

After the Paris attacks, Obama, himself, described ISIS as “simply a network of killers who are brutalizing local populations.”

But how much do words and definitions really matter? According to the legendary military strategist Sun Tzu, if “you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one (battle) and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.”

When the Department of Homeland Security was founded in 2003, its stated purpose was “preventing terrorist attacks within the United States and reducing America’s vulnerability to terrorism.” The Bush administration’s definition of the enemy as a tactic, terrorism, rather than a specific movement, proved consequential amid a culture of political correctness. By the time President Obama took office, Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders in the United States were forcing changes to national security policy and even being invited into the highest chambers of influence. A policy known as Countering Violent Extremism emerged, downplaying the threat of supremacist Islam as unrelated to the religion and just one among many violent ideological movements.

When recently retired DHS front-line officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney bravely tried to say something about the people and organizations that threatened the nation, his intelligence information was eliminated, and he was investigated by the very agency assigned to protect the country. The national campaign by the DHS to raise public awareness of terrorism and terrorism-related crime known as If You See Something, Say Something effectively has become If You See Something, Say Nothing.

To be released by WND Books on May 24, 2016, in See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, Haney – a charter member of DHS with previous experience in the Middle East – and co-author Art Moore expose just how deeply the submission, denial and deception run. Haney’s insider, eyewitness account, supported by internal memos and documents, exposes a federal government capitulating to an enemy within and punishing those who reject its narrative.

Haney discloses:

  • How the Bush administration stripped him and other front-line officers of their ability to define the threat;
  • How much the Obama administration knew in advance of the Boston Marathon bombing and how it launched an ongoing cover-up on behalf of a major ally;
  • The administration’s stealth policy to protect Islamic leaders with supremacist beliefs and violent-jihadist ties, allowing them to freely travel between the U.S. and the Middle East;
  • The scope of access to the White House and the classified information the Obama administration gave to members of Muslim Brotherhood front groups;
  • The damning intelligence on Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders invited to sit at the table and help form national-security policy;
  • The “words matter” memo imposing the demands of radical U.S. Muslim leaders on the DHS, including stripping intelligence and official communications of any mention of Islam in association with terrorism;
  • The purging of training material that casts Islam in a negative light;
  • The erasing and altering of vital intelligence on terrorists and terror threats;
  • The fear-based tactics imposed by the Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S. and their accomplices that paralyze officials, members of Congress and any Department of Homeland Security employee who dares to expose or resist their agenda; and

Much more …

In this well-documented, first-person account of his unique service with DHS, Haney shows why it’s imperative that Americans demand that when they see something and say something, the servants under their charge do something to prevent a cunning, relentless enemy from carrying out its stated aim to “destroy Western Civilization from within.”

ABOUT PHILIP B. HANEY

Philip Haney studied Arabic culture and language while working as a scientist in the Middle East before he was hired as a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. After becoming an armed Customs and Border Protection officer, he served several tours of duty at the National Targeting Center near Washington, DC, where he quickly was promoted to its Advanced Targeting Team, an unprecedented accomplishment for an agent on temporary duty assignment. Officer Haney won numerous awards and commendations from his superiors for meticulously compiling information and producing actionable reports that led to the identification of hundreds of terrorists. He has specialized in Islamic theology and the strategy and tactics of the global Islamic movement. He retired honorably in July 2015.

ABOUT ART MOORE

Art Moore is an editor for online news giant WND. He entered the media world as a public relations assistant for the Seattle Mariners and a sports correspondent for Associated Press Radio. Moore served for ten years in Eastern Europe with a Christian organization and earned a master’s degree in communications from Wheaton College. Before joining WND shortly after 9/11, he was an editor for the news service Worldwide Newsroom and senior news writer for Christianity Today magazine.

See Something, Say Nothing will be in bookstores nationwide on May 24, 2016

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Republican Primary Lesson: It’s Not About You!

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The existential threat to America today is not communism but colonization by illegal aliens and Muslim “refugees.” Political correctness subverts our First Amendment rights and shuts down even discussions about the threats to the middle class.

On the day Donald Trump resoundingly won primaries in West Virginia and Nebraska, the same day that Ted Cruz gave one last, desperate call-out to voters by indicating that he would consider reentering the race if Nebraska voters decided he should, a Quinnipiac poll provided yet one more shock to the pundit class.  It showed Trump even with Hillary Clinton in three key states.  He was beating her on leadership abilities, economic issues, and security issues.

Voters also thought that Trump was more “honest and trustworthy” than Clinton.

Trump had a lower rating on “moral standards” probably because of his playboy past.

The question remains: why would people trust someone who has low moral standards?  How did Trump earn this trust?

He certainly did not do it the way Ted Cruz did by speaking in front of a large banner with “TrusTed” on it.  He did not do it by telling his parents’ hard-scrabble stories the way Cruz and Marco Rubio did.  He did not by simply presenting his name with an exclamation point the way “Jeb!” did.  He did not do it with a phony “aw shucks” act like John Kasich’s.

Oddly, the man who is cast by the pundit class as being the supreme narcissist used the old Reagan slogan, “Make America Great Again.”  He tapped into the patriotic desires of Americans suffering two terms of an anti-American Obama presidency.

As voters rejected the other candidates’ appeals, commentators upped the rhetoric and aimed it at Trump’s supporters. The libertarians and millennial conservatives pulled out their thesauruses for new terms of insult.  Erick Erickson alternated between references to Scripture and casting Satanic aspersions on Trump supporters.  National Review’s Kevin Williamson likened them to Hitler supporters, and said their communities “deserved to die.”  The ominous meme about “angry white working class voters” was circulated by pundits who had studiously avoided any parallel categorization of Michelle Obama.

Adopting a new more conciliatory tone, David Brooks acknowledged the “pain” of “declinism” and called for a New Deal-like effort to change the “national story” from the old model of rugged individualism.  He suggested a “new definition of masculinity” for the new economy that rewards “emotional connection and verbal expressiveness.”  (Brooks is detail oriented, as his praise of the creases in then-candidate Obama’s pants showed.)

These commentators who attended elite schools and had connections were initially confident that the champion Princeton debater, praised by his former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz as “off the charts brilliant,” would win out over the buffoon who spoke in sentence fragments.  Cruz’s campaign, as the Washington Post described it, “reflected its candidate: methodical, strategic and data-driven.”  It “deployed a sophisticated data strategy that used psychographic information to appeal to the fears or hopes of potential voters.”

On the day of the do-or-die primary, Cruz decided to talk to a man holding a Trump sign at his event in Marion, Indiana.  With cameras trailing, Cruz walked up to a guy who would probably not react favorably to Brooks’ “new definition of masculinity.”  He was from Ohio, a “pole-climber,” as he put it — someone Brooks, sitting in an office admiring the creases in his own pants, might espy, from a distance repairing the lines.

The effort was clearly intended to present Cruz as patient and charitable towards someone holding minimal “verbal expressiveness.”  Sure enough, in grammatically incorrect phrases, the man said that he supported Trump because of “the wall” and the Second Amendment.  He told him, “You are the problem, politician,” and asked where his Goldman-Sachs jacket was.  Cruz, with evident exasperation, repeated the well-known charges against Trump.  He asked him if he knew that he had argued a Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court.

Clips from the exchange were played on Fox on May 7, with Greg Gutfeld’s facial contortions and comments interspersed to show how impenetrable Trump supporters are to Cruz’s debating points.

While those in the #NeverTrump camp probably found Gutfeld’s mockery funny, others, such as other pole-climbers who are already disgusted with the sneering at their kind, probably did not.

Nor did they miss the announced “deal” with rival John Kasich, or fall for the slogan of used car salesmen and consumer advocates (“trust me”).

Do the candidates not understand that the hard-luck stories about immigrant parents bring only a “so what?” from children of immigrants who did not go Princeton or Harvard?  Do they understand that abstractions about “free enterprise” mean little when your job has been sent abroad?  Do they understand that bantering in Spanish on the debate stage doesn’t win any points if you have to compete for work with Mexicans hanging out at Home Depot?

Do they understand that talk about the Constitution inspires very little confidence if it comes from someone like Marco Rubio, who betrayed his supporters on immigration?  Do they understand that when you say “when I am president,” as Rubio did, that it comes off as presumptuous?  All three of the candidates who blamed Trump’s “rhetoric” for the rioters who closed down the rally in Chicago on March 11 lost credibility—and votes.

Did the Big Brains who kept invoking Ronald Reagan not listen to “the speech” on behalf of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater?  Reagan, calling himself a “former Democrat,” addressed middle-Americans’ concerns, then arising from the existential threat of communism and growth of government: an administration that sought to imprison farmers for improper bookkeeping, that built public housing, and that harassed businessmen.  Reagan told stories, about an Arkansas farmer who lost his 960-acre farm for over-planting his rice allotment.  He related a story about a young woman pregnant with her seventh child seeking a divorce so that she could qualify for Aid to Dependent Children, which provided more money than her husband, a laborer, could earn.

The existential threat today is not communism but colonization by illegal aliens and Muslim “refugees.”  Political correctness subverts our First Amendment rights and shuts down even discussions about the threats to the middle class.

As I described at this site, Trump at his rally on April 10, in Rochester, New York, connected with voters by talking about their concerns, such as the recent closing of SentrySafe, which followed Carrier Air Conditioning’s exit from Indiana to Mexico.

The day after the Indiana primaries, CNN invited a number of #NeverTrump-ers — over-glossed, quick-tongued politicos – who were contemplating a third party.

The #NeverTrump-ers ominously imply that if Trump is the nominee, “it will be a long, hot summer — and fall,” — continuing the idea that any violence will be Trump’s fault.  Erick Erickson, on the morning after the Nebraska win, predicting that the “Schadenfreudenfuhrer” will “beclown” himself over the next two months, advised delegates to the national convention to reject the will of the voters.  Otherwise, “We will see a party fail to unite. It’s [sic] standard bearers will flee.”

These “standard-bearers,” not looking beyond their own reflections, continue in the same self-destructive path.  As they accelerate the insults, they show that they may have “psychographic information,” but not much empathy or common sense.

GOP Puts a Lid on Bathroom Crisis

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The Family Research Council in an email writes:

Conservatives have wanted to eliminate the Department of Education for decades. And Thursday, President Obama gave them the best reason yet. The agency’s outrageous order that public schools ignore the basic biology of their students in the use of bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers may have finally awakened a sleeping giant.

Parents, governors, House and Senate leaders, religious groups, and superintendents are incensed that the White House would threaten to pull funding for children’s education over something as ridiculous and unpopular as gender-free restrooms.

Within hours of firing off this letter to every public school, college, and university in America, the blowback was fast and fierce. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick (R) and Governor Greg Abbott (R) called on states to resist, insisting that the Lone Star State would give up all of its federal funding before letting the administration bully them on an ideology that the American College of Pediatricians calls “child abuse.” Together with Abbott, Patrick called on schools to ignore the DOE and Justice Department’s guidance. “This will be the end of public education, if this prevails,” he warned. ‘People will pull their kids out, homeschooling will explode, and private schools will increase.”

In local schools, administrators like Rodney Cavness didn’t need convincing. “I got news for President Barack Obama,”the Port-Neches-Groves superintendent told a local news outlet: “That letter is going straight to the paper shredder. I have five daughters myself, and I have 2,500 girls in my protection. Their moms and dads expect me to protect them. And that is what I am going to do. Now I don’t want them bullied… but there are accommodations that can be made short of this. He is destroying the very fiber of this country. He is not a leader. He is a failure.”

Fresh off of his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had strong words for the man occupying the office he sought.

“Having spent many years in law enforcement, I’ve handled far too many cases of child molesters, of pedophiles, of people who abused little kids. The threats of predators are serious, and we should not facilitate allowing grown men or boys to be in bathrooms with little girls… I encourage every school superintendent, school board, and parent across this nation to disregard this barely veiled threat from the White House aimed at overturning the utterly reasonable practice of preventing men and boys from entering girls’ restrooms and changing rooms. As a father of young girls, I wouldn’t want my daughters being forced to change in the same room as men and boys. It’s that simple. And parents across this country shouldn’t have to tolerate it either.”

His Texas and Tennessee colleagues, John Cornyn (R) and Lamar Alexander (R), agreed, insisting that the president’s job “is not to intervene in state and local affairs under our constitutional scheme.” “Frankly,” Cornyn went on, “I think his involvement is unwelcome.” From Arkansas to Ground Zero in North Carolina, leaders were irate over the White House’s power grab.

Read more.

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Remind me again, why are Somalis our problem?

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Invasion of Europe news….

I told you just last month that we are admitting 750 Somalis a month to the U.S. right now adding to the well over 100,000 you have been supporting with your tax dollars for decades.

And, here we learn that thousands more are bailing out of Somalia and heading north to Europe. The spring migration has begun!

Map 2016 Europe

But, what is the number one reason for the mass migration of Somalis out of THEIR country? It is due to the corrupt government and lack of jobs (not first a fear of al-Shabaab!).

From Bloomberg:

“Some say it’s because of insecurity, but others rationalize their departure due to rampant unemployment,” the head of Somalia’s immigration and naturalization department, Abdullahi Gafow Mohamud, said in an interview.

That’s the case for Ali Hassan Abdi, who graduated from university two years ago and hasn’t found a job. The 25-year-old says endemic graft — Somalia is ranked joint-bottom with North Korea on Berlin-based Transparency International’s global Corruption Perceptions Index of 168 countries — is “the number-one cause of mass migration.”

So tell us again why we need to be moving the population of Somalia to the American heartland?

See the latest Somali US terror trial, here.

All of our ‘Invasion of Europe’ news is here.

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New Republican Party: The Red, Purple and Parchment Troika

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In my column New Democrat Party: The Red-Green-Rainbow Troika we took a look at the Democratic Party and how President Obama has fundamentally changed it by forming political alliances, creating a Troika. The members of the Red-Green-Rainbow Troika are certainly strange bedfellows but politics makes for strange bedfellows.

Now let’s look at the Republican Party.

Who has fundamentally changed it, why and is it for the better or worse? Who are members of the New Republican Party Troika (NRPT)? These are questions that may help voters understand what happened during the presidential primary of 2016 and what will happen in the lead up to November 8th.

Just like the Democratic Party, the GOP is make up of a Troika. The Republican Troika consists of three major factions:

  1. Conservative Republicans (a.k.a. the reds). These are the Grand Old Party elite (GOPe). They joined the party after the Goldwater years and have gained in power and prestige due to their unwavering party loyalty. They normally vote the Republican ticket.
  2. Republicans In Name Only (a.k.a. the purples or RINOs). These are individuals who joined the Republican party solely to win a political seat or appointment. A perfect example is former Florida Governor, former Republican and now Democrat Charlie Crist. The purples do not hold conservative values, rather they change as does the weather in the Sunshine State. The RINOs will not necessarily vote for the Republican ticket. Some have joined movements to undermine Republican nominees for president dating back to the days of Barry Goldwater.
  3. Constitutional Conservatives (a.k.a. the TEA Party). They embrace the parchment upon which the Constitution and Bill of Rights are written and signed by the Founding Fathers. This group includes Libertarians.

What differentiates these three factions is their commitment to “conservative values”, which are defined differently by each faction.

Arizona Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and presidential candidate in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative” wrote:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

This statement, to many Republicans, defines Conservative values at every level of government. The idea of limited government as envisioned by the Founders and enshrined in the Constitution. States rights are paramount and trump efforts to impose government laws and regulations upon the population.

But not all members of the Troika embrace Goldwater’s statement. For you see there has been no true Conservative leader of the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan. How do we know? The American Enterprise Institute’s  in a column titled A reality check about Republican presidents measured the growth of government (i.e. regulations) over the past fifty years. Murray writes:

…I think it’s useful to remind everyone of the ways in which having a Republican president hasn’t made all that much difference for the last fifty years, with Ronald Reagan as the one exception.

First, here’s the history of the most commonly used measure of growth in the regulatory state, the number of pages in the Federal Code of Regulations.

murray_05132016

We can fairly blame LBJ’s Democratic administration for the initial spike in regulations, and Jimmy Carter’s years saw another steep rise. But using number of pages as the measure understates what happened during the Nixon years, when we got the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, plus much of the legislation that gave regulators the latitude to define terms such as “clean” or “safe” as they saw fit.

After the Carter years, the slope of the trendline was shallowest in the Reagan and Clinton administrations (with the Clinton result concentrated in his second term, when a Republican House imposed a moratorium on some new regulations). The increase during the Obama years remained on the same slope as the one during George W. Bush’s years. And if you’re thinking about the Democrats’ most egregious regulatory excess, Dodd-Frank in 2010, recall that Sarbanes-Oxley passed in 2002, when Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.

I should add that presidents don’t bear a lot of blame for failing to reduce regulation — their power to restrain the activities of the regulatory agencies is limited — but neither has electing a Republican president done any good, with Reagan as a partial exception.

Read more.

With the GOP nominee process ending and Donald Trump as the nominee, what has changed? Who is now the leader of the GOP?

Many would say Trump, as the nominee, will be driving the policy and politics of the Republican Party. However, their are those who write and speculate that their remains an internal discord within the party between one of the three factions. The most likely faction to cause this discord are the purples/RINOs. The other two factions have begun uniting behind Trump.

Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

What are the uncontested absurdities of the Republican Party elite? Here’s a short list:

  1. Fear. Republican elites fear being called out by Democrats, the media and at times by fellow Republicans. The fear is palpable.
  2. Political correctness. Republicans succumb to the pressures of being politically correct (see #1 above).
  3. Compromise. Republicans are prone to compromise their values when it is unnecessary or by dint of constant pressure from the Democrat Troika. Compromise is the art of losing slowly. Something the GOPe is accustomed to.
  4. Elitism. The Republican elite (GOPe) has consistently ignored the voices of primary voters in 2008, 20012 and in 2016.
  5. Old guard career politicians. The old guard is not focused on retaining the core values of the party of Abraham Lincoln, rather it is focused on winning re-election.
  6. Lack of leadership. The GOP has controlled Congress for the past 4 years yet has failed to stop the agenda of the Democrat Troika. The leadership of McConnell/Boehner and now McConnell/Ryan have failed to make headway.
  7. Politics by press release. Republicans have become the party of the press release. They send out press statements that sound good on the surface but seldom become political reality, law or have an impact on public policy or Main Street Americans.
  8. Ignoring the base. The GOPe believe they can win presidential elections with old guard, politically correct, compromising, career politicians.
  9. Going along to get along. The best way to win re-election is to go along with the GOPe and Democrats. Shutting down the government to keep from increasing the national debt or reducing the size of government spending goes against the grain of the GOPe.
  10. The GOPe eats its own. The GOPe in the name of items #1-#9 will attack candidates and elected Republicans. Moderate means purple.

So what’s the solution to all of these Republican absurdities? As Newt Gingrich wrote in an article in The Washington Times on January 8, 2016 titled “Donald Trump”:

You’re sick of politicians, sick of the Democratic Party, Republican Party, and sick of illegal’s. You just want this thing fixed. Trump may not be a saint, but doesn’t have any lobbyist money influencing him, he doesn’t have political correctness restraining him, all you know is that he has been very successful, a good negotiator, he has built a lot of things, and he’s also not a politician, so he’s not a cowardly politician. And he says he’ll fix it. You don’t care if the guy has bad hair. You just want those raccoon’s [rabid, messy, mean politicians] gone. Out of your house!

Donald J. Trump has changed the political paradigm. Will the purples follow or become the thorn in the side of Trump. That is the question.

lincoln quote

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From Proposal to Policy: Fine-Tuning Trump’s Muslim Immigration Ban by Ralph Sidway

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“In light of [the] data, a good argument can be made that the US should allow Muslim immigration—but primarily, and perhaps solely, from Islamic sects and not Sunnis… Let’s adapt Trump’s plan and put a moratorium on Sunni immigration.”

This policy discussion by Islamic historian Timothy Furnish may seem to run counter to the position of those of us who believe a complete moratorium on Muslim immigration “until we can figure out what the heck is going on” is the proper approach, but it is at the very least a serious attempt to undergird Donald Trump’s proposed Muslim immigration ban with factual and functional analysis. Serious discussion leads to serious policy, and serious results. Let’s have this discussion.

“An Islamic Historian’s Response to Donald Trump’s Proposed Muslim Immigration Ban”, by Timothy R. Furnish, History News Network, May 13, 2016:

Donald Trump’s call to temporarily ban Muslim immigration to the US, floated last December, provoked a predictable firestorm of criticism both domestically and abroad, and recently the presumptive Republican nominee for President has moved to moderate his stance.

Many if not most on the Left have not only dismissed his idea out-0f-hand, but condemned it as “racist,” while many on the Right support it. Contra the political extremes of both Left and Right, however, I think Trump has a point, if the plan were fine-tuned. Some Muslims should probably be banned (which almost certainly would be legal), but not all; and to differentiate those categories requires honest research and analysis, not emoting and propaganda.

The starting point for this evaluation is whether adherents of the world’s second-largest faith are more prone to violence than those of other religions.

Far too many liberals, and most Muslims of course, vehemently deny any such connection. But facts are stubborn things.

Of the 59 groups currently on the US State Department foreign terrorist list, 41, or 69%, are Muslim. Every single one of the 82 groups on the United Arab Emirates’ terrorist list is Islamic. (Does that make the UAE “racist” one wonders?) There are 104 groups on the database of the University of Chicago Project on Security & Terrorism (CPOST), which tracks terrorism between 1982 and 2015; at least 80 of the groups therein, or 77%, are Muslim. Twenty-one of the top 25 groups whose members killed people in that same time-frame are Muslim. Also, in that 33-year period, suicide attacks by Muslims far outnumber those Christians, by 300:1. Yes, there was exactly one suicide attack by a Christian in the 33 years that CPOST has tracked the data.

For more historical analysis of this topic, may I suggest my latest book Sects, Lies, and the Caliphate, as well as anything written by Raymond Ibrahim—in particular “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?” and “ ‘Scientific’ Claim: Christian Bible More Bloodthirsty than Quran.”

The historical and empirical evidence is clear for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear: Islam promotes violence against those not in its club (which, yes, often includes those who claim to be Muslims, as well) far more than any other belief system does against non-adherents.

But as the howls of “Islamophobia” begin to rise, let me add that not all branches of Islam are equally culpable for this global problem.

As I argue at length in my aforementioned book (especially pp. 193-209), it is primarily Sunnism—the largest branch, alas—that promotes a literalist reading and application of the Qur’an and the Hadiths (the alleged sayings and practices of Islam’s founder, Muhammad). This means that canonical Islamic endorsement of beheading, stoning, and violent jihad, inter alia, must apply across space and time; they are not subject to, say, allegorical interpretation or chronological consignment to the 7th century AD.

And such Sunni literalism has sunk deep roots: majorities of Muslims in many countries (according to Pew empirical data) support stoning for adultery and execution for “apostasy” (converting from Islam to another religion). This is why I said on a recent TV special that ISIS is indeed Islamic, and why it is so difficult for other Muslims to actually delegitimize it. 

However, wooden and, frankly, brutal Sunni literalism—which holds sway not only in terrorist groups but also in broader movements like Saudi Wahhabism and South Asian Deobandism—it is not the only understanding of Islam.

There are minority sects of Islam which do not take the Qur’an 100% literally and are thereby not yoked to slavish imitation of the texts, with all their problematic repercussions: the Ahmadis of South Asia; the Isma’ilis, the second-largest Shi`a sect; the syncretistic Alawis and Druze of Syria and Lebanon; many Sufi, or Islamic mystical, orders (which are actually not sects so much as, in a sense, charismatic Muslims); and, believe it or not, the Twelvers—the Shi`is of Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon and Azerbaijan—who unlike the Sunnis never abandoned ta`wil, or “(allegorical) interpretation” of the Islamic texts.

All of these groups are, to varying degrees, persecuted by Sunnis in most places for their heterodox—if not downright heretical—views, at least from the Sunni perspective.

Note, I am not saying all sects are peaceful and Sunnis are always vicious. What I am saying is that Sunnis and their theology are far more often the problem, because a literal understanding of Qur’an and Hadiths is the only one allowed therein; sects, even Twelver Shi`is, allow for much more leeway in interpretation.

Consider: only two of the groups on the US State Department list adduced earlier are Twelver Shi`i; ditto for the CPOST terrorist list. There are no examples of Ahmadi, Isma’ili or Alawi terrorists (although Alawis, in the guise of the al-Assad regime, do hold on brutally to power—largely in order to stave off the inevitable religicide that would ensue were they to lose to the Syrian Sunni jihadists). Twelver Shi`i Iran is a state sponsor of mainly Sunni terror, but in order to geopolitically hobble its enemies Saudi Arabia and Israel, not out of Twelver theological imperatives. Sufis can and have been violent in the past and today (they fight Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabab in Somalia), but only one Sufi group—Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshbandi, which works with ISIS—is terrorist today.

In light of this data, a good argument can be made that the US should allow Muslim immigration—but primarily, and perhaps solely, from Islamic sects and not Sunnis.

But the Obama Administration is doing the exact opposite.

Between November 2015 and February 2016, just over 600 Syrian refugees were admitted to this country; 93% were Sunni, while just a handful were sectarians. In April of this year another 451 Syrians were brought in, almost all Sunni. (And not being covered in this article is the criminally-low number of Christians being admitted—under 1%.)

Yes, ISIS persecutes other Sunnis, but far less cruelly, and less frequently, than it does Alawis, Druze, Isma’ilis (or, as noted, Christians and members of the Yazidi faith). If the US really wants to help those being brutalized by ISIS, members of those sects should be preferred—not just for the humanitarian reason that they bear the brunt of Sunni fundamentalist ire, but for the utilitarian, pro-American one that members of such sects will almost certainly not engage in terrorism on American soil….

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Government Shouldn’t Decide Who Uses Which Bathroom by Doug Bandow

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There’s Simply No Single Right Answer.

The North Carolina legislature voted in March to require that people use the bathroom designated for their biological sex. The state was criticized for violating gay and transgender rights. The Obama administration may cut federal education, housing, and transportation aid to North Carolina in response.

Bathroom use has been an issue in other states, including Illinois, Texas, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Dakota. Legislation proposed and passed differs by state on how to define gender — ranging from chromosomes to birth certificate to anatomical sex. Obviously, people can’t change their chromosomes. They can, however, change their gender identity and its associated physical traits, which is where the controversy begins.

The president’s position appears to be that people have a legal right to use the bathroom of their choice, regardless of their gender, however defined. With the club of federal funding, he is attempting to socially engineer America.

This is central planning run riot.

Good people should approach anyone in the midst of gender change with humility and compassion. For most of us, it is unimaginable what would cause someone to desire to shift genders. It is a personal issue of the most profound nature. It shouldn’t be debated and decided in the public square.

And politicians aren’t doing a good job addressing the question. It may not make sense to most people for someone who looks like a guy to use the ladies room, however he sees himself, but neither does it seem right to force someone who looks like a guy to use the ladies room because he was born female. And it certainly makes no sense to let one person or group of people force everyone else to comply with their preference, even when that group is a majority of voters.

Bathroom use shouldn’t be a question for bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, or judges to answer.

Who should use which bathroom? If it’s in your home, you decide. Likewise, a private company or other private organization should set the rules for its building. What does the owner want? What do customers or members prefer? What is the best way to balance competing interests given the community’s dominant moral sense?

Most people in most places probably believe that people should use the bathroom that matches their physical characteristics, whether changed or not. And we know from the current debate that many (if not most) people prefer not to share a bathroom with someone who appears to be of the other sex, irrespective of the gender with which he or she identifies.

However, one can imagine a “progressive” individual, business owner, or group deciding otherwise. And whether that decision reflected special solicitude for vulnerable individuals or a desire to shape public attitudes, it would be no cause for complaint.

There’s simply no single right answer — and no justification for government to intervene in such intimate, private decisions.

What about bathrooms in public facilities, such as a government office, school, airport, or military base? These are all theoretically “owned” by everyone. Everyone has a stake in the issue — and thus a “right” of some sort — but there’s no accepted, overarching principle that determines with whom you must share a bathroom. A local majority may need to rule in such cases, but someone will always be unhappy with the result, especially if the relevant decision-makers are far away, protected from the consequences.

For Washington pols to insist that, say, teenage girls in a small town in downstate Illinois accept as a bathroom mate a child who appears to be a boy is an act of extraordinary chutzpah. The girls’ refusal to do so does not necessarily reflect malevolent discrimination; it may simply be an understandable reaction to basic biology. Politicians have no right to impose their particular agenda.

Of course, differing opinions don’t justify ignoring the interests of those in the midst of gender change, whether it involves surgery or not. Access to a bathroom is critical for almost everything people do — going to school, working outside your home, going shopping, and traveling. Some kind of accommodation should be made. But what kind?

Again, there’s no single solution that fits every public establishment, let alone private entity, across the country. Larger buildings could offer more options, such as separate bathrooms, like family-friendly single facilities. Communities and student bodies differ in attitudes and openness. Even those who are transgender may desire different outcomes in different circumstances.

Most important, all participants need to demonstrate understanding and sensitivity. No one of goodwill wants to add to the distress of someone changing gender. At the same time, those going through the process should not try to use government to impose their preference on schoolmates, neighbors, coworkers, and others. People should look for alternatives and compromises to work it out. Compromise, compassion, private property rights, and decentralized decision-making are enough to resolve this issue.

Politicians already control education, manage health care, provide social services, and underwrite businesses — and now they even decide who should use which bathroom. It’s time to return life’s most important decisions to the people. A good place to start would be keeping government out of our bathrooms.

Doug BandowDoug Bandow

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of a number of books on economics and politics. He writes regularly on military non-interventionism.

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EDITORS NOTE: Congressman Vern Buchanan (FL-District 16) did an email survey of constituents on the issue of transgender bathrooms. Here is the question and responses as of May 16th, 2016:

Do you support the new Obama administration directive requiring all public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice?
  • Strongly support
  23.16%
  • Somewhat support
   8.39%
  • Somewhat oppose
   5.59%
  • Strongly oppose
  62.84%

VIDEO: Hungary’s Prime Minister Delivers Historical Speech To Stop Migration

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Hungarian Prime Minister,Viktor Orban, revealed his thorough grasp of the mass migration of Europe back in September of 2015 when hundreds of thousands of immigrants were pouring into Europe. He stated then,

“Let us not forget, however, that those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims. This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? If we lose sight of this, the idea of Europe could become a minority interest in its own continent.”

His speech from just a month ago however, deserves widespread attention as it rises to the level of Churchill-like content and stark reality at a time in which most world leaders seem to be governing from an emotional level and do not tolerate truth spoken above a whisper.

More truth was spoken from the mouth of the prime minister in the second half of his speech, than Obama has spoken in his tenure as president.

Consider if our circumstances do not drastically change, how soon we too will be in the same predicament. Context to follow or video with subtitles.

FULL TEXT

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

Europe is not free. Because freedom begins with speaking the truth. Today in Europe it is forbidden to speak the truth. Even if it is made of silk, a muzzle is a muzzle. It is forbidden to say that those arriving are not refugees, but that Europe is threatened by migration. It is forbidden to say that tens of millions are ready to set out in our direction. It is forbidden to say that immigration brings crime and terror to our countries. It is forbidden to point out that the masses arriving from other civilizations endanger our way of life, our culture, our customs and our Christian traditions. It is forbidden to point out that those who arrived earlier have have already built up their own new, separate world for themselves, with its own laws and ideals, which is forcing apart the thousand-year-old structure of Europe. It is forbidden to point out that this is not an accidental and unintentional chain of consequences, but a preplanned and orchestrated operation; a mass of people directed towards us. It is forbidden to say that in Brussels they are concocting schemes to transport foreigners here as quickly as possible and to settle them here among us. It is forbidden to point out that the purpose of settling people here is to reshape the religious and cultural landscape of Europe, and to reengineer its ethnic foundations. — thereby eliminating the last barrier to internationalism: the nation-states. It is forbidden to say that Brussels is now stealthily devouring more and more slices of our national sovereignty, and that in Brussels many are now making a plan for a United States of Europe — for which no one has ever given authorisation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today’s enemies of freedom are cut from a different cloth than the royal and imperial rulers of old, or those who ran the Soviet system; they use a different set of tools to force us into submission. Today they do not imprison us, they do not transport us to concentration camps, and they do not send in tanks to occupy countries loyal to freedom. Today the international media’s artillery bombardments, denunciations, threats and blackmail are enough — or rather, have been enough so far. The peoples of Europe are slowly awakening, they are regrouping, and will soon regain ground. Europe’s beams that rest on the suppression of truth are creaking and cracking. The peoples of Europe may have finally understood that their future is at stake: Now not only are their prosperity, cosy lives, jobs at stake, but our very security and the peaceful order of our lives are menaced as well. At last, the peoples of Europe, who have been slumbering in abundance and prosperity, have understood that the principles of life that Europe has been built on are in mortal danger. Europe is the community of Christian, free, and independent nations; equality of men and women; fair competition and solidarity; pride and humility; justice and mercy.

This time the danger is not attacking us the way wars and natural disasters do, suddenly pulling the rug from under our feet. Mass migration is a slow stream of water persistently eroding the shores. It is masquerading as a humanitarian cause, but its true nature is the occupation of territory. And what is gaining territory for them is losing territory for us. Flocks of obsessed human rights defenders feel the overwhelming urge to reprimand us and to make allegations against us. Allegedly we are hostile xenophobes, but the truth is that the history of our nation is also one of inclusion. and the history of intertwining of cultures. Those who have sought to come here as new family members, as allies, or as displaced persons fearing for their lives have been let in to make a new home for themselves. But those who have come here with the intention of changing our country, shaping our nation in their own image, those who have come with violence and against our will, — have always been met with resistance.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At first, they talk about only a few hundred, a thousand or two thousand relocated people. But not a single responsible European leader would dare to swear under oath that this couple of thousand will not eventually increase to tens or hundreds of thousands. If we want to halt this mass migration, first we must curb Brussels. The main danger to Europe’s future does not come from those who want to come here, but from Brussels’ fanatical internationalism. We should not allow Brussels to place itself above the law. We shall not allow it to force upon us the bitter fruit of its cosmopolitan immigration policy. We shall not import to Hungary crime, terrorism, homophobia and synagogue-burning anti-Semitism. There shall be no urban districts beyond the reach of the law, there shall be no mass disorder, No immigrant riots here, and there shall be no gangs hunting down our women and daughters. We shall not allow others to tell us whom we can let into our home and country, whom we will live alongside, and with whom we will share our country. We know how these things go. First we allow them to tell us whom we must take in, then they force us to serve foreigners in our own country. In the end we find ourselves being told to pack up and leave our own land. Therefore we reject the forced resettlement scheme, and we shall tolerate neither blackmail, nor threats.

The time has come to ring the warning bell. The time has come for opposition and resistance. The time has come to gather allies to us. The time has come to raise the flag of proud nations. The time has come to prevent the destruction of Europe, and to save the future of Europe. To this end, regardless of party affiliation, we call on every citizen of Hungary to unite, and we call on every European nation to unite. The leaders and citizens of Europe must no longer live in two separate worlds. We must restore the unity of Europe. We the peoples of Europe cannot be free individually if we are not free together. If we unite our forces, we shall succeed; if we pull in different directions, we shall fail. Together we are strength, disunited we are weakness. Either together, or not at all — today this is the law.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In 1848 it was written in the book of fate that nothing could be done against the Habsburg Empire. If we had then resigned ourselves to that outcome, our fate would have been sealed, and the German sea would have swallowed up the Hungarians. In 1956 it was written in the book of fate that we were to remain an occupied and sovietised country, until patriotism was extinguished in the very last Hungarian. If then we had resigned ourselves to that outcome, our fate would have been sealed, and the Soviet sea would have swallowed up the Hungarians. Today it is written in the book of fate that hidden, faceless world powers will eliminate everything that is unique, autonomous, age-old and national. They will blend cultures, religions and populations, until our many-faceted and proud Europe will finally become bloodless and docile. And if we resign ourselves to this outcome, our fate will be sealed, and we will be swallowed up in the enormous belly of the United States of Europe. The task which awaits the Hungarian people, the nations of Central Europe and the other European nations which have not yet lost all common sense is to defeat, rewrite and transform the fate intended for us. We Hungarians and Poles know how to do this. We have been taught that one can only look danger in the face if one is brave enough. We must therefore drag the ancient virtue of courage out from under the silt of oblivion. First of all we must put steel in our spines, and we must answer clearly, with a voice loud enough to be heard far and wide, the foremost, the single most important question determining our fate: The question upon which the future of Europe stands or falls is this: “Shall we be slaves or men set free — That is the question, answer me!”

Go for it Hungary, go for it Hungarians!”

Please go to: RestoretheUSA.net to download a petition to be hand carried to your Congressman urging them to defund the Refugee Resettlement Program, until proven safe for all Americans.

London’s Muslim mayor pledges to help Hillary beat Trump

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“I think what we’ve shown — and I hope it’s a lesson that Hillary and others in America take on board, hope does ‘trump’ fear, forgive the pun.” How absolutely grand. The hard-Left routinely derides those who are concerned about jihad terrorism for their “fear,” as if being afraid of being murdered by Islamic jihadis were some kind of character defect. Very well. They elected Sadiq Khan, and Hillary Clinton may well be elected also by campaigning against “fear,” and we will all march unafraid into our glorious multicultural future. Including, of course, Islamic jihad terrorists.

Sadiq Khan MP at Westminster, London, Britain - 11 Oct 2012

“Sadiq Khan pledges to help Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump,” by Jon Stone, The Independent, May 12, 2016:

Sadiq Khan has offered to help Hillary Clinton defeat Donald Trump – pledging his successful campaign as a “template” to hers.

Mr Khan, the new Mayor of London, said he had successfully beaten the Conservatives’ “Donald Trump approach” to elections in last weeks’ vote.

“I think what we’ve shown — and I hope it’s a lesson that Hillary and others in American [sic] take on board, hope does ‘trump’ fear, forgive the pun,” he told reporters at the capital’s City Hall, according to the Politico website.

He said he was planning to travel to the US before the end of the year due to the threat of Mr Trump’s proposed policy of banning all Muslims from traveling to the US.

Mr Khan’s election has attracted interest from around the world on account of his election as the first Muslim mayor of a major western capital city.

Mr Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican presidential candidacy, commented on Mr Khan’s election by saying he would make an exception for him to visit the US.

But Mr Khan rejected the offer. “The idea of making an exception for me because I’m the Mayor of London demonstrates how little they understand,” he said.

Like failed Conservative mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, Mr Trump has been accused of running a “racist” campaign by singling out people for travel bans on account of their faith.

Mr Goldsmith was accused of using “dog whistle” tactics to repeatedly draw attention to Mr Khan’s Muslim faith – as well as attempts to link him with Islamic extremists….

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Civil War: America’s Enemies Hiding in Plain Sight

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Russian born American writer and novelist Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other – until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country’s official ideology.”

Janie Johnson posted the above photo of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors on her Twitter page. Janie wrote, “On [the] bottom of the signs is the inscription: revcom.us. To see who printed them, go to: .”

The organization that printed these BLM posters is the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP-USA). The stated strategic approach of the RCP-USA is to:

“Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution…to take up a revolutionary viewpoint and revolutionary values and morals as they join with others to resist this system’s crimes and build up the basis for the ultimate all-out revolutionary struggle to sweep this system away and bring in a whole new way of organizing society, a whole new way of being…to become emancipators of humanity.” [Emphasis RCP-USA]

The RCP-USA signs brought to mind several banners carried by BLM protestors in Ferguson, Missouri.

FergusonPalestine

Robert Spencer in his November 2014 column Islamic supremacist groups connect their jihad to Ferguson riots wrote:

In the photo above (thanks to Kay), Leftist demonstrators relate the strife in Ferguson to the “Palestinian” jihad. And Pamela Geller has a great deal of information on how Islamic jihadists and supremacists, including the Hamas-linked terror organization CAIR, have tried to co-opt the Ferguson riots as part of their own jihad. Most noteworthy is the active presence in Ferguson of “Palestinian” jihad activist Bassem Masri.

The connection between Ferguson and “Palestine” (and the global jihad in general) is clear: both the Islamic supremacists and the Ferguson rioters think that the American system is corrupt and must be brought down.

isis banner ferguson

Islamic State banner carried by Black Lives Matter protestors in Ferguson, Missouri. Photo: CNN

In a November 2014 column Ferguson: The beginning of an American Intifada I wrote:

This spiral of death and destruction scenario is used across the globe to incite riots, mayhem and violence. It is used to recruit those with real or perceived grievances against those in authority. It is being used by the Islamic State to recruit in Ferguson, Missouri.

Ferguson is the beginning of the American intifada in the black community. This same strategy is being used by terrorist organizations like HAMAS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram and al Qaeda. Grab the headlines and make your point via political violence. The problem is the narrative is routinely false, even based upon lies, but by the time the facts are presented it is too late. The damage has already been done.

Lessons learned from Ferguson:

  1. Appeasement of the protesters leads to more violence.
  2. Coalitions of outside organizations including radical homosexual, Muslim and minority groups makes for a deadly mix.
  3. The targets are the law and law enforcement. The demand is for two legal systems, one for minorities and one for whites.
  4. The creation of no-go zones where police and firefighters cannot or will not go due to the threat of violence.
  5. The manipulation of the media in the name of “equality” and “social justice” to create a scenario where a radical agenda may be furthered that denies both.
  6. The use of violence even when blacks, like President Obama, call upon their fellow blacks to be non-violent.
  7. The creation of a atmosphere where law enforcement officers will hesitate to enforce the law or ignore the law in order not to become a target.
  8. Lawlessness with an anarchist’s political objective – to destroy the status quo.

A race war is upon America because some minorities want it more than they want to be Americans.

I fear that these groups will once again come together in Cleveland to disrupt the Republican National Convention and Donald Trump’s nomination. This Red/Green/Rainbow alliance has already showed itself at Trump rallies. The Red/Green/Rainbow alliance is emboldened and becoming more violent.

These protestors want to bring a civil war to America in order to fundamentally transform the country. 

America is a land of laws and requires order. Protest if one wishes but to become violent demands police action and people, organizations and institutions to be held accountable.

We shall see what happens in Cleveland. Stay tuned.

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Why Do We Believe These Pathological Liars? by B.K. Marcus

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How do you feel when someone lies to you?

It probably depends on who is doing the lying. A stranger’s fabrications may not phase you, but dishonesty from a friend or lover can end the relationship. The more you feel the liar is supposed to be “on your side,” the more his or her deceptions feel like betrayal — unless, it turns out, the lies come from a politician you support.

When I shared a link on Facebook to Rick Shenkman’s article “Why Are Trump Voters Not Bothered by His Lies?” someone immediately replied by asking, “Why are Hillary voters not bothered by her lies?” Why, in other words, focus on only one mendacious candidate when lying to voters seems like a prerequisite for running for office?

Shenkman, who is the editor of HistoryNewsNetwork.org and the author ofPolitical Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics, might respond with his claim that Trump “has told more lies than any other leading political figure probably ever has.” But his article is in fact about neither Trump’s astonishing number of fibs nor his supporters’ astonishing tolerance for them; it is about how widespread both such lying and such tolerance are across party lines and throughout the era of mass-media mass democracy.

Shenkman is writing for a left-leaning readership, thus his headline’s righteous indignation toward a right-wing candidate, but most of the examples he gives are of deliberately deceitful Democrats. He starts with candidate Kennedy’s campaign claim that the Soviets had more nuclear missiles than the United States:

He continued to insist that there was a missile gap to the Soviet’s advantage even after he was briefed by General Earl Wheeler that there wasn’t. After the election his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, told the press on background that a study had found there was no missile gap, leading to blaring headlines the next morning.

JFK’s reaction? He ordered his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to tell the media that there had been no study and that there was a gap. The truth was that JFK himself didn’t take his own rhetoric about the missile gap seriously. At cabinet meetings he cracked on numerous occasions, “Who ever believed in the missile gap” anyway?

Four years later, President Johnson “told the American people that the North Vietnamese were guilty of making repeated unprovoked attacks on [US] naval vessels in the Tonkin Gulf.” As with Kennedy, we know that Johnson was being dishonest, not mistaken. “Hell,” LBJ told an aide, “those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.”

Shenkman barely touches on Nixon’s perfidy in Watergate and never mentions Nixon aide John Ehrlichman’s 1994 interview, admitting that the war on drugs was not about crime or health but was rather a politically motivated attack on war protestors and American blacks. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs?” said the president’s former domestic affairs advisor. “Of course we did.”

And while he may have given Ms. Clinton a pass, Shenkman does mention the millions of supporters who refused to believe the allegations against her husband “until prosecutors revealed they possessed [Monica Lewinsky’s] infamous blue dress.”

No one should be shocked by the frequency of politicians’ duplicity, but it is frustrating when a candidate is caught in an undeniable falsehood and his or her supporters never waiver.  Our political culture expects politicians to perjure and prevaricate left and right, but that doesn’t make their deceptions defensible. So where is the outrage?

“Our brains are partisan,” Shenkman writes:

While we are quick to seize on the misstatements of other candidates, we give them a pass when it’s our own. When the social scientist Drew Westen put voters in an MRI machine he discovered that their brains quickly shut off the flow of information contrary to their beliefs about their favorite candidates. The neurons actively involved in the transmission of this information literally went inactive.

It’s not just the political candidates who are lying. So are the voters. “We lie,” Shenkman points out, “about our unwillingness to put up with lies.”

If politicians keep lying and voters keep shrugging it off, isn’t that an indictment of democracy? Aren’t voters supposed to act as a check on the people in power?

In theory, an election is supposed to be more than a popularity contest. Candidates are supposed to represent an approach to policy making, which is in turn supposed to reflect both facts and a theory of cause and effect. What we have instead is a formalized tribalism, us versus them, facts be damned.

Shenkman assures the reader that the liars don’t get away with it forever, but his evidence for that conclusion is questionable. Johnson and Nixon are remembered as liars by both Democrats and Republicans, but the reckoning for Gulf of Tonkin and Watergate are outliers in the steady stream of deception flowing out of DC and the state capitals. Meanwhile, Mssrs Kennedy and Clinton will be remembered more for deceiving their wives than the voters.

Westen’s research on cognitive dissonance and party politics is troubling, but well before there was any hard data on how voters process unwanted facts, the theory of rational ignorance told us why so many facts are so unwanted: to the individual voter, the cost of acquiring the relevant knowledge far outweighs the practical benefits of knowing the truth when casting a ballot.

In contrast, the benefits of supporting a candidate accrue, not from any actual effect on the electoral outcome, but largely from the signaling that it provides the voter: this is the sort of person I am, and these are the sorts of causes I support. Symbolic affiliation isn’t dependent on the truth of any particular facts, so why should we expect inconvenient falsehoods to change anyone’s political alignment?

As I wrote in “Too Dumb for Democracy?” (Freeman, spring 2015), “getting an issue like the minimum wage terribly wrong takes no work and has the immediate payoff of feeling like you’re on the side of the angels. It also solidifies your standing within your own ideological tribe. Bothering to understand supply and demand … offers no practical reward after you pull the lever in the election booth.”

The lies we care the least to uncover are precisely those for which the cost of caring outweighs the benefits of our vigilance. That describes almost anything we may ever be asked to vote on. But when knowing the truth directly matters to the decisions we make every day — the truth about our jobs, our homes, our families and loved ones — the relative benefits of knowing the truth are far greater, and we therefore penalize the liars in our lives. Cognitive dissonance may be a barrier to accepting hard truths, but even cognitive dissonance is price sensitive.

The more decisions we cede to the political process, the less we should expect anyone to protect our interests. Even we don’t bother to do it, because the rules of the game — majority rules — render our efforts ineffectual. Worse than that: we’re not even rewarded for knowing what policies really are or aren’t in our best interest.

The truth can win out, but it’s a lot less likely in an election.

B.K. MarcusB.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is editor of the Freeman.

“Ryan — Endorse Trump on Thursday,” says Professor Victor Williams

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BETHESDA, Md. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Speaker Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin congressional seat is now in play. Washington, D.C. law professor Victor Williams informs on the outcome if he even hedges on his January pledge to endorse Donald Trump.

In response to a direct question from the Today Show’s Matt Lauer, on January 13, asking if the Speaker would support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee, Ryan solemnly pledged:

“Yes, I will. I’ll support whoever our nominee is.”

Ryan deliberately “blindsided” our party’s presumptive nominee with his recent reluctance.

“Paul Davis Ryan can be easily replaced – as the Cleveland Convention ceremonial chair and as Wisconsin’sfirst district congressman,” Williams asserted.

Contrast Paul Ryan’s Reluctance with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s Immediate Endorsement.  Chris Christie is the Model of a Loyal 2016 Republican. 

“Where is Speaker Ryan’s honor?  Does a solemn, public pledge mean nothing?  And what about honoring the millions of Republican voters, in state after state, who chose Trump?

Williams contrasts Paul Ryan’s reluctance with the honorable conduct of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.  As a former competitor, Christie not only immediately endorsed Trump but then actively campaigned for him.

Now Governor Christie has stepped-up to the arduous task of serving as Team Trump’s Transition Chair. “Chris Christie is the model 2016 Republican,” Williams said.

Williams Remains Trump’s Last GOP Competitor to Resolve the New Jersey Cruz Ballot Eligibility Litigation. But Williams is Already Planning a HUGE Trump Endorsement.

Victor Williams is the law professor who launched an anti-Cruz “write-in” campaign for the nomination establishing “competitor candidate standing” to legally challenge the Canadian-born Ted Cruz’s ballot eligibility.

Williams is playing out the resulting litigation (Williams v. Cruz) in a New Jersey appellate court in attempt to bring final resolution to the “natural born Citizen” controversy, and to remind that the Vice-President nominee must also be eligible.

Thus Victor Williams —  an early Trump supporter — will remain a formal, legal  candidate during the litigation’s progress.

Even as Trump’s last GOP competitor, however, Williams is actively planning how best to celebrate his own formal endorsement of the presumptive nominee.

Paul Ryan Should Remember Eric Cantor

Ryan needs a loud wake-up call before Thursday.

On May 7, Williams endorsed the Wisconsin representative’s primary opponent Paul Nehlen.

The law professor has stopped accepting donations for his own presidential campaign, as it winds down, and has instead asked his supporters to contribute to the Nehlen campaign.

William Kristol, the Weekly Standard, and the National Review Could Help Ryan Move Back to Wisconsin.  Anyway, the Busted, Irrelevant Journals Need a New Business Plan: “3 Ideologues and a Truck.”

Professor Williams’ campaign website counsels on the outcome if the Speaker fails to fully and unequivocally endorse Trump during the planned Thursday meeting.

It bears note that Donald Trump won Ryan’s hometown of Janesville.  No surprise as Donald Trump in on track to win the largest total of presidential primary votes in the history of Abraham Lincoln’s Grand Old Party.

ABOUT VICTOR WILLIAMS

Victor Williams is a Washington, D.C. attorney, long-time law professor, and prolific scholar and 2014 founder of www.disruptivejustice.org.

85% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats believe Middle East refugees pose a major threat to U.S.

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cost of illegal immigrants…get this! 40% of Democrats agree!

I love how this is written.  The Reuters reporter says only 40% of Dems have the same fear.  Holy cow, that is a lot of people! Consider also that 74% of plain vanilla Republicans also worry about the resettlement of Middle Eastern refugees into their towns.

I would have guessed the Dems would be a far lower percentage than 40% (so does that mean there might be inroads into the Democratic electorate for Trump?).

Reuters:

Supporters of Donald Trump, the presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee, see refugees arriving from Iraq and Syria as one of the greatest threats to the United States, according to a study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

Eighty-five percent of respondents who said they supported Trump saw the refugees fleeing the Islamic State militant group as a threat, compared with 74 percent of Republicans overall, said the study.

[….]

Only 40 percent of Democrats viewed the refugees from the region as a major threat.

The Dems must be told over and over again that Hillary will continue the Obama push for more and more Syrian and Iraqi refugees to colonize America!

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London’s New Muslim Mayor: Extremist or Opportunist?

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During the election, questions arose about Sadiq Khan’s long history of association with extremists.

Majid Nawaz’s assessment of London’s new Muslim mayor, the newly elected Sadiq Khan, is that he is not an Islamist extremist. He is merely a manipulative politician willing to use guile and duplicity to achieve his electoral aims — not so different from the average politician.

Leading up to the mayoral vote, questions arose about Khan’s association with extremists, which constitutes a long list in the new mayor’s political history.

Consider:

  • In 2001, Khan was the lawyer for the American radical Islamist group Nation of Islam, successfully arguing in front of the UK’s High Court to overturn the ban on its leader, Louis Farrakhan.
  • In 2003, Khan appeared at a conference with Sajeel Abu Ibrahim, a member of the banned al-Muhajiroun group that was founded by hate preacher Omar Bakri Muhammad (now prohibited from entering the UK) and led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary (whose many organizations have been said to have contributed “the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history”). Sajeel also ran a terrorist training camp in Pakistan attended by 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan.
  • In 2004, Khan testified to the House of Commons as head of the Muslim Council of Britain’s legal affairs committee. As council legal head, Khan argued in parliament that the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi “is not the extremist that he is painted as being.” Qaradawi (also banned in the UK for his extremist views) advocates, among other sharia principles, for wife beating and suicide bombings against Israeli citizens. After the murder of an Ahmadi Muslim in Scotland for wishing his Christian customers a peaceful Easter, the council “condemned” the incident by pointing out that Ahmadis are not Muslims.
  • Khan was the defense lawyer for Zacarias Moussaoui, a 9/11 terrorist and confessed member of Al Qaeda.
  • Khan attended events for the extremist group CAGE and wrote a forward for one of their reports. CAGE is a primary supporter of the Islamic State executioner known as “Jihadi John,” who they described as a “beautiful young man.”
  • Khan appeared on panels with Muslim community leader and cleric Suliman Gani, a supporter of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL), no less than nine times.
  • In 2010, Khan shamelessly played the Ahmadi card, flaring up sectarian hatred in his reelection bid to the parliament when faced with stiff competition from Nasser Butt, an Ahmadi who had opposed the war in Iraq unlike Khan who had voted in favor of it.

Defending himself against charges of extremism, Khan points to his record on supporting rights for homosexual and transsexual rights. Since he was first elected to parliament in 2005, that support has been unwavering.

Khan has been an outspoken critic of anti-Semitism. Most recently, he stated he was “embarrassed and sorrowful” about the glaring anti-Semitism that has been spotlighted in his own party.

As the Muslim Public Affairs Committee in the UK (MPAC-UK) derogatorily pointed out in a comment piece on their website posted just two days before the election, “A Vote for Sadiq Khan in the London Mayor Elections is a Vote for Israel.”

Much to MPAC-UK’s chagrin and dismay, Khan is an opponent of the anti-Israel BDS movement. Although he called for sanctions against Israel in 2009, he says he has since changed his mind.

On the last day of his campaign, it was revealed that in an interview Khan gave in 2009 on Iranian television, he referred to Muslims fighting extremism as “Uncle Toms.”  (He has since apologized.)

Still, Majid Nawaz insists that Khan is no extremist. Khan was Nawaz’s lawyer when he was arrested in Egypt for working for the banned Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Nawaz, now a prominent counter extremism campaigner, says he is forever indebted to Khan for visiting him in Egypt’s Mazra Tora prison, “while the world gave up on me.”

Ironically, it was Nawaz’s counter-extremism foundation Quilliam that were targeted by Khan in his “Uncle Tom” remarks.

Nawaz refrained from commenting on Khan and his electoral bid until after the election. In his first piece penned after the election, Nawaz paints a picture of Khan as a realist (read: opportunistic) and consummate politician.

“When push comes to shove, gaining power becomes more important for politicians from all parties, than defending principles,” writes Nawaz. “And sadly, extremists remain among the most powerful organized forces in Britain’s Muslim grassroots.”

Nawaz explains the unfortunate political climate in today’s Britain: “By 2009, extremism had grown so rife among my own British Muslim community that, in a sign of our times, a Muslim government minister for Social Cohesion [Khan] would find it politically expedient to call a group of Muslims, who were not in government, ‘Uncle Toms’ simply for criticizing extremism.”

Yet, Nawaz doesn’t give Khan a free pass, saying, “It did not need to be like this. As a column in the Wall Street Journal recently noted, ‘Other Muslim leaders took a different approach.’

“The struggles that reforming liberal and ex-Muslims face every day, the dehumanization, the delegitimization, the excommunication, the outcasting, the threats, intimidation and the violence makes this inexcusable … Why is it okay for a mayor to have shared panels with all manner of Muslim extremists, while actively distancing himself from, and smearing, counter-extremist Muslims?”

A good question it would behoove the new mayor to answer.

ABOUT MEIRA SVIRSKY

Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org

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