VIDEO: Is Climate Change Dangerous?

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John Casey, author and former NASA rocket scientist, has taught me three facts about the climate:

  1. The climate changes.
  2. The changes are cyclical.
  3. There is nothing mankind can do to change these natural cycles.

As John notes the only thing that mankind can do is prepare for these changes using good science and the best climate prediction tools to warn us of the coming changes.

In the below video by David Dilley, a former NOAA Meteorologist and current CEO and senior research scientist – Global Weather Oscillations, Inc., gives a presentation on Mind Your Own Business TV with Debi Davis.

Mr. Dilley provides the viewer a full picture and understanding of climate change cycles and carbon dioxide cycles.

Mr. Dilley combines his own research with peer reviewed research from other scientists and applies it to what is happening today, and to the likely dangerous climate change that will occur between the years 2019 to 2050.

EDITORS NOTE: To learn more please visit David Dilley’s website at: www.GlobalWeatherCycles.com

The Senate Must Sue Obama to Block the Iran Nuclear Treaty by Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D. and Lee S. Bender, Esq.

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When we published “How Best to Overturn the Iran Nuclear Pact” in the August 2015 New English Review, we reviewed several options. One proposal suggested by Dr. Robert B. Skalorff entailed direct litigation by Congress before the Supreme Court under provisions of the US Constitution seeking a ruling  treating   the Iran nuclear pact as a  treaty requiring  advise and consent of the Senate . We  wrote:

That proposal entailed independent Congressional litigation on demonstrable Constitutional legal grounds regarding executive overreach. If the Senate was granted standing on direct appeal, based on the B. Altman SCOTUS ruling, it might result in a predisposed SCOTUS rendering a positive ruling thus quashing the Iran nuclear pact. Further, the ruling might unfetter the hands of any successor to President Obama on inauguration day in 2017 to undertake remedial actions. Such actions might reduce the current existential threats to both the US and Israel.

In furtherance of that original proposal we are publishing  the following article by Dr. Robert A. Sklaroff and Lee S. Bender, Esq. which expands upon the original concept noting support from  Constitutional law experts and applicable case citations.

The Senate Must Sue Obama to Block the Iran TREATY

By Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D. and Lee S. Bender, Esq.

When Congress returns from recess after Labor Day, one of the most pressing issues on the agenda is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known commonly as “the Iran deal.” Much has been discovered since the Corker-Cardin-Menendez bill was enacted, including the White House’s and State Department’s deceit which influenced the Senate to abandon its constitutionally-provided role regarding treaties.

Now it might take a lawsuit spearheaded by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to reverse not only the damage to the Constitution but also potential damage to America and our allies as a result of the provisions of the Iran nuclear-deal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has overwhelming justification to sue President Obama over the JCPOA which constitutes a treaty and thereby must be ratified by a 2/3-vote of those present prior to implementation.

Such a suit could ultimately prompt the Supreme Court to disclaim Obama’s portrayal of this document as an Executive Agreement. It could also sustain the overwhelming will of the American people–according to polling data—to trash this “legacy” effort, for reasons that have been exhaustively detailed.

Blocking implementation of the Iran nuclear-deal would thereby necessitate the legislative branch triggering a confrontation between the judicial and the executive branches.

Two essays {authored by RBS} published in The Hill explored the legalities of this initiative, focused on its “treaty” [July 29] and “rule-of-law” [August 25] components.

In the interim [USA Today, August 5], Professor Alan Dershowitz recognized that a Supreme Court opinion challenged the President’s power to enter into long-term deals with foreign powers without the consent of Congress. He cannot avoid Congressional oversight by simply declaring an important deal with foreign powers to be an executive agreement rather than a treaty [Gibbons v. Ogden]:  “[G]eneral and permanent commercial regulations with foreign powers must be made by treaty, but…the particular and temporary regulations of commerce may be made by an agreement of a state with another, or with a foreign power, by the consent of Congress.”

Two other authors, legal-authority Andrew C. McCarthy [National Review Online, July 17] and accomplished-author Caroline B. Glick [Jerusalem Post, July 21] also claimed the deal is a treaty, but none of these columnists proposed a remedy that would force a clash with this out-of-control Obama Administration. Jerry Gordon has detailed, comprehensively, “How Best to Overturn the Iran Nuclear Pact” [New English Review, August 2015].

The drip-drip-drip of news about details of the deal as well as “secret” side arrangements that has emerged this summer congeals into two major rationales for such litigation, addressing both specifics and lack of transparency. Specifically, multiple side-deals between Iran and the IAEA satirize the concept of “anytime, anywhere surveillance” but, perhaps more important, Obama and his cabinet-members “inexplicably” failed to reveal this information to Congress as secrets.  Moreover, the Administration also misled Congress and the American public about the nature of the deal and the resulting preservation of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and right to continue advanced research that will provide it with a bomb when the pact expires in a mere decade to 15 years.

The “legislative intent” of the Corker-Cardin Bill (Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015) was focused exclusively on Iran’s nuclear program, contrasting with the final pact the Administration concluded that was expanded to allow lifting of conventional-weapon sanctions. Iran sought—and was granted—this specific concession at the very end of the negotiations.  This was outside what the Administration had originally advised Congress about the parameters of this deal, focused on nuclear-weapons capability and not conventional weapons (or ICBMs). Thus, the final version of the Iran nuclear-deal encompassed issues, such as weaponization, that the Administration did not disclose to Congress before it debated and passed the Corker-Cardin Bill.

(Other facets of the negotiation were also misrepresented by the Obama Administration prior to when Kerry inked the deal. For example, although release of American prisoners was not ultimately achieved, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on  January 21, 2015 that the Administration’s negotiators “continue to insist” that Americans held in detention be released.)

This pattern of deception started before the Corker-Cardin Bill was passed in May. It was even maintained by Iran when the Tasmin News agency reported [June 15] “Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Ali Shamkhani reiterated that negotiations between Tehran and six major world powers solely focus on nuclear topics, dismissing any talk of military subjects in the talks.” And, reflecting the persistence of the deception,  it was manifest one week prior to when the deal was signed [July 14] during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing via testimony from Defense Secretary Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dempsey that the arms embargo, pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1929, was not to be lifted [July 7].

Thus, overall, absent the ability to review all relevant data, the Senate (1)—cannot render an informed judgment, consistent with its “advise/consent” role, and (2)—cannot be viewed to be facing a 60-day deadline, for the Corker-Cardin Bill mandates that this “clock” start “ticking” only after the database has been completed.

Refusal to provide copies of side-agreements to Congress continues unabated, as per testimony on August 5 by chief-negotiator Wendy Sherman and IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano. We now know why normally-sedate Senator Corker exploded (“We cannot get him to even confirm that we will have physical access inside of Parchin”) because such inspections have been serially outsourced by Obama to the IAEA and then, we learned more recently, by the IAEA to Iran.

The “toughest inspections-regime in history” forces America (and the world) to allow Iran to provide proof that Iran is not making nukes in Iran.

Perhaps more ominous is the dismissive posture adopted by Secretary of State Kerry [July 28] when confronted by Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. The innocent hypothetical was unambiguous:  Would he “follow the law” governing existing congressional sanctions if Congress voted to override a veto? The elitist reply challenged rule-of-law:  “I can’t begin to answer that at this point without consulting with the President and determining what the circumstances are.”

Could BHO go rogue?

The ability of the Supreme Court to exercise “judicial review” is rooted in the Supremacy Clause, was affirmed in 1803 [Marbury v. Madison], and has never been tested again to this day.

But, because the Supreme Court does not command any enforcement-military, the remedy for potential lawlessness is unclear. Indeed, this concern would extend to any nullification effort by the President related to the prospect that the Supreme Court would declare the Iran-Nuclear Deal to be a “treaty” rather than the “executive agreement” the President has potentially improperly considered it to be, to skirt congressional oversight and approval.

These concerns were predicted [May 7] and corroborated [July 23] in essays that presage the current crisis [by RBS, both published in The American Thinker]. They were confirmed in an e-mail exchange by noted constitutional scholar, Dr. John C. Eastman [the Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University and Founding Director of The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence]: “First, because only a ‘treaty’ is the Supreme law of the land, a mere executive agreement could not overturn statutorily-imposed sanctions.” Eastman continued in an e-mail, “And neither, in my view, could a change in the constitutionally-mandated default rule for adopting a treaty.  Second, if that is true, then members of the Senate who, collectively, had the votes to prevent ratification of a treaty would have standing to challenge the process that negated their vote.  That’s the Coleman v. Miller case on all fours.” This 1939 landmark decision ensured that Congress was empowered to specify a deadline by which an external entity was to affirm proposed legislation, such as a Constitutional amendment.

The Ottoman-Islamic defeat at the “Gates of Vienna” in 1683 is on the verge of being reversed by Obama/Kerry and their P5+1 partners, again in Vienna; the irony is that the West is validating Iranian-Islamic supremacism. It seems only the U.S. Senate can rescue (Judeo-Christian) Western Civilization from the Administration’s collaboration and perfidy.

The Senate must definitively impose a limit to the President’s executive lawlessness before a constitutional crisis erupts. Resolution by the courts may be the most effective way to check and to balance the scales that Obama has usurped.

Robert B. Sklaroff, M.D. is a physician-activist and may be contacted at rsklaroff@gmail.com.  Lee S. Bender, Esquire, is an attorney, activist and co-author of the book, “Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-Z.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Iranian national arrested in Hancock County, Mississippi accused of tackling deputy, making terroristic threats

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Research Findings a Blow to Anti-gun Academics

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For decades, anti-gun academics have attacked firearms and firearm owners by conducting “research” that purportedly offers insight into the psyche of gun owners. The dubious findings of these psychology studies typically portray gun owners in a negative light, and are frequently published in uncritical academic journals, and then touted by gun control activists and the mainstream media as legitimate science. However, as a study published this week in the journal Science reveals, the entire field of psychology research warrants severe skepticism; and consequently the field’s frivolous attacks on gun ownership.

Perhaps the most famous item on this topic that has long been heralded by gun control activists is Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage’s, already largely debunked, “Weapons as Aggression-Eliciting Stimuli,” published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1967. This research popularized the notion of a “weapons effect,” where supposedly the mere presence of a firearm elicits aggression in an individual.

More recently, in 2012, researchers James R. Brockmole and Jessica K. Witt’s article “Action Alters Object Identification: Wielding a Gun Increases The Bias to See Guns,” was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. This paper contended that when individuals are armed with a gun, they are more likely to perceive others as being armed. Gun control advocates were quick to seize on the findings to promote the idea that gun owners are paranoid and prone to react with outsize responses to potential threats.

Some recent psychology studies have attacked gun owners more personally. A 2013 item published in PLS One titled, “Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions,” tried to link gun ownership to racism. The researchers concluded “Symbolic racism was related to having a gun in the home and opposition to gun control policies in US whites.” Anti-gun publications, such as the New York Daily News, Huffington Post, and Salon.com were all-too-willing to parrot the findings.

The study recently published in Science is the result of a four-year effort to improve the accuracy of psychological science. A team of 270 scientists led by University of Virginia Professor Brian Nosek attempted to replicate 98 studies published in some of psychology’s most prestigious journals by conducting 100 attempts at replication. In the end, according to a Science article accompanying the study, “only 39% [of the studies] could be replicated unambiguously.”

In the same article, University of Missouri Psychologist and Editor at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (which published the Berkowitz and LePage study) Lynne Cooper, was quoted as saying of the findings, “Their data are sobering and present a clear challenge to the field.” She went on to note that the journal is working on reforms that will push “authors, editors, and reviewers… to reexamine and recalibrate basic notions about what constitutes good scholarship.”

The scale of the problem could be even greater than the recent study reveals. In an article on the team’s findings, the journal Nature noted, “John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University in California, says that the true replication-failure rate could exceed 80%, even higher than Nosek’s study suggests.

Further, psychology isn’t the only field to suffer these problems. In reporting on this matter, the New York Times noted, “The report appears at a time when the number of retractions of published papers is rising sharply in a wide variety of disciplines. Scientists have pointed to a hypercompetitive culture across science that favors novel, sexy results and provides little incentive for researchers to replicate the findings of others, or for journals to publish studies that fail to find a splashy result.” For better, or worse, results involving guns might accurately be described as “sexy,” and the editors of the nation’s major newspapers appear willing to splash any gun control supporting findings all over their publications.

These findings and the accompanying comments by those in scientific research community encourage a healthy dose of skepticism when examining studies; regardless of how prestigious the journal, or the schools the authors hail from. The problems outlined in this study, along with pre-existing knowledge of the political bias in some portions of academia, should embolden gun rights supporters to further confront the findings of anti-gun studies, while hopefully also causing those who report on these topics to question research findings more critically.

White House, Media Mislead on Crime Trends, Ignore Evidence that Could Save More Lives

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Tragedy strikes – and the White House immediately shifts into exploitation mode, trying to use raw emotion to push “solutions” that don’t fit the facts. From Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review comes a timely reminder, however, that despite well-publicized crimes, the nation as a whole is getting safer and less violent.

As Mr. Cooke notes, the U.S. firearm homicide rate peaked in 1993 and has fallen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, he adds correctly, gun control has been rolled back and the number of firearms in private hands has increased dramatically. Yet 88% of the public were unaware of favorable crime trends in a May 7, 2013, Pew Research Center Poll. Mr. Cooke attributes this knowledge gap, in part, to the increasing prevalence of “round-the-clock news” and more powerful forms of social media.

It’s a sad commentary that more news and more communication may have somehow led to greater ignorance on important matters of public policy. Your NRA, for its part, has been doing its level best to keep the record straight, including with the reports mentioned here and here.

Yet it’s no accident on gun control advocates’ part that they mislead the public on the true state of affairs. As we’ve mentioned before, a PR firm hired to produce a gun control messaging guide advises, “Always focus on emotional and value-driven arguments about gun violence, not the political food fight in Washington or wonky statistics.” It also counsels advocates to act quickly after a highly-publicized event, while emotions are at their highest. As for the facts, gun control advocates are told, “Don’t wait for them.” Instead, “The clearest course is to advance our core message about preventing gun violence independent of facts that may shift on us over time.”

Once again, sadly, we see that advice in action. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, for example, was using Wednesday’s televised murders in Roanoke to call for universal background checks, even before the suspect had been apprehended and before news emerged that the perpetrator had, in fact, passed a background check to buy the gun he used.

Evil and violence are terrible things, and Americans understandably react with horror and sadness when confronted by them. Yet denying reality and exploiting emotions do not solve problems. Ensuring that peaceable, responsible people have the means to defend themselves is why NRA remains resolute in its mission to defend and protect the Second Amendment.

Rather than promoting “solutions” that offer false promises, like “universal” background checks, policy makers should study what’s working redouble their efforts on those fronts. Dismissing the crime deterring benefits of firearm ownership is neither smart nor compassionate. Empowering good people to defend themselves against violence is, and this defining principle will continue to drive everything that NRA does.

The Top 10 Myths about Homosexuality

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Peter Sprigg, after doing extensive background research on homosexuality, published his findings in a pamphlet titled, “The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality.” The following is a list of these myths promoted by homosexual groups. To read the full background on  each myth please click here to download a free copy of Sprigg’s findings.

Here are the top 10 myths:

Myth No. 1: People are born gay.

Fact: The research does not show that anyone is “born gay,” and suggests instead that homosexuality results from a complex mix of developmental factors.

Myth No. 2: Sexual orientation can never change.

Fact: Thousands of men and women have testified to experiencing a change in their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. Research confirms that such change does occur—sometimes spontaneously, and sometimes as a result of therapeutic interventions.

Myth No. 3: Efforts to change someone’s sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual are harmful and unethical.

Fact: There is no scientific evidence that change efforts create greater harm than the homosexual lifestyle itself. The real ethical violation is when clients are denied the opportunity to set their own goals
for therapy.

Myth No. 4: Ten percent of the population is gay.

Fact: Less than three percent of American adults identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.

Myth No. 5: Homosexuals do not experience a higher level of psychological disorders than heterosexuals.

Fact: Homosexuals experience considerably higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse than heterosexuals. A detailed review of the research has shown that “no other group of comparable size in society experiences such intense and widespread pathology.”

Myth No. 6: Homosexual conduct is not harmful to one’s physical health.

Fact: Both because of high-risk behavior patterns, such as sexual promiscuity, and because of the harm to the body from specific sexual acts, homosexuals are at greater risk than heterosexuals for sexually transmitted diseases and other forms of illness and injury.

Myth No. 7: Children raised by homosexuals are no different from children raised by heterosexuals, nor do they suffer harm.

Fact: An overwhelming body of social science research shows that children do best when raised by their own biological mother and father who are committed to one another in a lifelong marriage. Research specifically on children of homosexuals has major methodological problems, but does show specific differences.

Myth No. 8: Homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.

Fact: The percentage of child sexual abuse cases in which men molest boys is many times higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual, and most men who molest boys self-identify as homosexual or bisexual.

Myth No. 9: Homosexuals are seriously disadvantaged by discrimination.

Fact: Research shows that homosexuals actually have significantly higher levels of educational attainment than the general public, while the findings on homosexual incomes are, at worst, mixed.

Myth No. 10: Homosexual relationships are just the same as heterosexual ones, except for the gender of the partners.

Fact: Homosexuals are less likely to enter into a committed relationship, less likely to be sexually faithful to a partner, even if they have one, and are less likely to remain committed for a lifetime, than are heterosexuals. They also experience higher rates of domestic violence than heterosexual married couples.

RELATED ARTICLES:

It’s Not Hypocritical to Oppose Gay Marriage and Let Infertile Couples Marry. Here’s Why.

Islamic State executes nine more gay men

Merkel has gone mad!

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Invasion of Europe news…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that any Syrian who gets to Germany can apply for asylum there.  Of course this is going to be great news for Italy and Greece in particular which are now bearing the greatest burden in the invasion by mostly Middle Easterners and Africans.

Gee, Germany might someday be called the New Syria!

This brief article at Time magazine reminds us that the present EU rule on asylum is that those who claim to be persecuted must apply for asylum in the first country they reach on the continent.  They are not permitted to “asylum shop” for a better country, but of course they already are and that is what the pile-up is at Calais.   Those migrants don’t want to apply to stay in France they want to get to the UK where they see they have better prospects for social services.

Merkel is reportedly getting love letters from Syrians.  I fear that Obama will get jealous and want some for himself, love that is.  So watch for it—-65,000 Syrians by the end of his term in office?  See Obama praising Merkel, here.

Here is Time:

The new rule comes as Germany is witnessing a surge in attacks on refugee shelters.

In a move that will affect tens of thousands, Germany will now allow Syrian refugees to stay and apply for asylum instead of deporting them back to their country of arrival.

The Washington Post reports the country has decided to suspend a European Union rule, called the the Dublin Regulation, which says refugees are supposed to stay in the first European country of arrival until their asylum claims are processed. This rule places an unequal burden on Southern European countries like Greece and Italy, which are amongst the easiest to reach by boat from across the Mediterranean. Both Italy and Greece have faced unprecedented levels of migrant inflow this past year.

Under the new policy, even if the refugees first arrive in Greece or Italy but travel northwards to Germany, they will not be deported back to their first country of contact.

Can you hear the sound of marching feet toward the German border?  Italy and Greece will likely soon be sending busloads northward!

Our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here.

Related update:  The Irish government apparently has some good sense and Merkel doesn’t like it!

UPDATE: Mama Merkel makes a mess as Germany closes its borders

RELATED ARTICLES:

German highway banner: “Your children will pray to Allah or die!”

Learn more about refugee resettlement in your state

General Secretary for Danish Refugee Help: “We face an Armageddon scenario”

Eastern European leaders say “NO” to Muslim mass migration/colonization

‘Germany loves refugees’ say demonstrators…..

RELATED VIDEO: On the Muslim migration (hijra) to the United States.

Hamas-linked CAIR demands apology from Scott Walker for “enabling ISIS”

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The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, is in full outrage mode at Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker, trying to intimidate him into speaking less accurately about the nature of the jihad threat. It’s their usual tactic: charging anyone who dares to note the Islamic character of Islamic terrorism with “hatred” and “bigotry.” Usually this works, in our cowed and confused culture, and Hamas-linked CAIR seems to have won at least a partial victory over Walker — we’ll know for sure who won when we see if he ever uses the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” again.

Aside from Hamas-linked CAIR, that is a stupid phrase anyway. Is there “moderate Islamic terrorism”? If not, then why use the word “radical” at all? Because even Walker, for all his courage in standing up to the forces of politically correct authoritarianism in other contexts, can’t bring himself to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism” straight, without a modifier — he knows the firestorm that would ensue, and so draws back. Now he will probably draw back even farther. And yes, I am well aware that however watery and weaselly the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” may be, Walker has already distinguished himself as more forthright, honest and courageous than most of his rivals just by using it. Most of them won’t even go that far toward the truth about the jihad threat.

More below. “Muslim advocate: Scott Walker is ‘enabling ISIS’ with ‘radical Islam’ rhetoric,” by Jesse Opoien, The Capital Times, August 29, 2015:

A representative for America’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization said Gov. Scott Walker is “enabling ISIS” by allowing the terrorist group to co-opt the Islamic religion.

“With this, Scott Walker is actually enabling ISIS by characterizing their acts as being Islamic terrorism,” said Robert McCaw, government affairs manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “He is taking a peaceful religion of 1.6 billion people and misappropriating it to ISIS, allowing them to wrap themselves in the religion’s name and stake a claim to it.”

Here again we see the familiar sleight-of-hand. Hamas-linked CAIR would have us believe that Scott Walker is responsible for allowing the Islamic State “to wrap themselves in the religion’s name and stake a claim to it,” as if no one ever associated ISIS with Islam until Walker started talking about “radical Islamic terrorism.” In reality, people associate the Islamic State with Islam because the Islamic State associates itself with Islam, and nothing Scott Walker says or doesn’t say is going to change that. No young Muslim is going to decide to join the Islamic State because a non-Muslim politician referred to jihadis as “Islamic extremists,” thereby validating them as Islamic. No Muslim looks to non-Muslim authorities to validate what is or isn’t Islamic and who is or isn’t a Muslim. Hamas-linked CAIR’s real objective here is obvious: to intimidate Walker (and everyone else) into never speaking of Islamic terrorists as Muslims. Why? So that American Muslim advocacy groups such as Hamas-linked CAIR will not be called to account for not doing anything to stop jihadist recruitment in mosques in the U.S., and instead opposing counter-terror programs all over the country — after all, those terrorists aren’t Muslims, so the true, peaceful Muslims can’t be expected to do anything about them.

McCaw was referring to Walker’s first foreign policy address as a presidential candidate, delivered on Friday at The Citadel military college in South Carolina, during which he referenced Islamic extremists or radical Islamic terrorism 11 times.

As a presidential candidate, there are plenty of things Walker has pledged to do differently than President Barack Obama. Chief among them is to use the words, “radical Islamic terrorism.”

The Wisconsin governor isn’t the only Republican presidential contender to highlight this difference. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal have also made frequent calls for a commander-in-chief who will declare the problem with forces like ISIS to be radical Islamic terrorism.

Obama has generally refrained from attaching a religious affiliation to terrorist groups like ISIS or Al Qaeda, referring to them as “violent extremists” and “terrorists.”

Addressing a group of foreign ministers in February at the State Department, the president made clear that it’s an intentional choice. He said those groups are “desperate for legitimacy” and should not be granted it.

“All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam, because that is a falsehood that embraces the terrorist narrative,” he said.

“All of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam” — great. Where are the Muslim refutations of the Islamic State’s understanding of Islam? (There are some, but they’re mostly just exercises in detour and deception). Where are the programs in mosques and Islamic schools in the U.S. to teach young Muslims why they should reject the Islamic State’s view of Islam? There aren’t any. Now, why is that?

The president added that the U.S. is “not at war with Islam, we are at war with those who have perverted Islam.”

Walker’s tone was significantly different in his hawkish foreign policy address, which called for the U.S. to stop being “passive spectators while the world descends into chaos.”

The governor pledged to secure U.S. borders “at any cost,” fight terrorists abroad leaving “all options” on the table, restore the U.S. alliance with Israel and strengthen the defense budget.

He called for increased investment in counterterrorism and surveillance programs, implementing a no-fly zone over Syria, imposing harsh sanctions against Iran and restoring a strong alliance with Israel. He promised once again to terminate the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal on “day one” in the White House.

All of this was tied to an overarching theme of the need to “defeat radical Islamic terrorism.”

“The policy of a Walker administration will be to confront radical Islamic terrorism using the full range of statecraft options. We must give our intelligence professionals the legal and constitutional tools they need to keep us safe,” Walker said.

Jenni Dye, research director for the liberal group One Wisconsin Now, suggested Walker’s message was driven by the conservative Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, whose president and CEO Michael Grebe is Walker’s presidential campaign chairman. Grebe also served as chairman for Walker’s two gubernatorial bids and his recall campaign.

The Bradley Foundation was deemed one of the “top eight funders of Islamophobia” based on IRS filings from 2001-2012 in a report by the liberal Center for American Progress. Recipients of Bradley funds noted in the report include the Middle East Forum, David Horowitz Freedom Center and Center for Security Policy.

“The virulent Islamophobia promoted and funded by the Bradley Foundation, run by Scott Walker’s campaign chair, is filling the void that is his foreign policy experience,” Dye said. “Even their millions can’t paper over the fact this guy is dangerously unprepared. His simplistic saber rattling reveals an ignorance of history and a shockingly cavalier attitude about sending the brave men and women of our armed forces into harm’s way.”…

While retailing all this far-Left propaganda, “journalist” Jesse Opoien doesn’t bother to inform his readers that Hamas-linked CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Its California chapter distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI; a Florida chapter distributed pamphlets advising the same thing. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Detroit: Iraqi Christian refugees from Muslim persecution protest proposed mosque

UNC’s “Literature of 9/11” course indoctrinates students to love jihad terror, hate America

Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps

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“If we know the location of these camps, and the president wants to destroy ISIS, why are the camps still functioning?” Excellent question. And no answer was forthcoming. Why not? Is it because there could be no possible explanation for this that makes sense in terms of American national security and that of the free world?

“Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps,” by Bill Gertz, Washington Free Beacon, August 28, 2015:

The Pentagon has not conducted airstrikes against an estimated 60 Islamic State (IS) training camps that are supplying thousands of fighters each month to the terror group, according to defense and intelligence officials.

The camps are spread throughout Islamic State-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria and are off limits in the U.S.-led international bombing campaign because of concerns about collateral damage, said officials familiar with planning and execution of the yearlong bombing campaign.

Additionally, the IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) camps have been so successful that Islamic State leaders are considering expanding the camps to Libya and Yemen. Both states have become largely ungoverned areas in recent years.

The failure to target the training camps with U.S. and allied airstrikes is raising questions among some defense and intelligence officials about the commitment of President Obama and his senior aides to the current anti-IS strategy of degrading and ultimately destroying the terror group.

“If we know the location of these camps, and the president wants to destroy ISIS, why are the camps still functioning?” one official critical of the policy asked.

The camps are regarded by U.S. intelligence analysts as a key element in the terror group’s successes in holding and taking new territory. The main benefit of the training camps is that they are providing a continuous supply of new fighters.

An additional worry of intelligence analysts is that some of the foreign fighters being trained in the camps will eventually return to their home countries in Europe and North America to carry out terror attacks.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the failure to bomb the terror camps and referred questions to the Pentagon.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Roger M. Cabiness declined to say why no training camps have been bombed. “I am not going to be able to go into detail about our targeting process,” he said.

Cabiness said the U.S.-led coalition has “hit ISIL [an alternative abbreviation for the Islamic State] with more than 6,000 airstrikes.”

“The coalition has also taken out thousands of fighting positions, tanks, vehicles, bomb factories, and training camps,” he said. “We have also stuck their leadership, including most recently on Aug. 18 when a U.S. military airstrike removed Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz, the second in command of the terrorist group, from the battlefield.”

Efforts also are being taken to disrupt IS finances and “make it more difficult for the group to attract new foreign fighters,” Cabiness said in an email.

A Central Command spokesman also declined to provide details of what he said were “operational engagements” against IS training camps.

“Once a target is identified as performing a hostile act, or is part of an obvious hostile force, a training camp for example, we prosecute that target in accordance with the coalition rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict,” the spokesman said.

According to the defense and intelligence officials, one reason the training camps have been off limits is that political leaders in the White House and Pentagon fear hitting them will cause collateral damage. Some of the camps are located near civilian facilities and there are concerns that casualties will inspire more jihadists to join the group.

However, military officials have argued that unless the training camps are knocked out, IS will continue to gain ground and recruit and train more fighters for its operations.

Disclosure that the IS training camps are effectively off limits to the bombing campaign comes as intelligence officials in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of the conflict, have alleged that senior U.S. officials skewed intelligence reports indicating the U.S. strategy against IS is not working or has been less effective than officials have claimed in public.

The Islamic State controls large parts of Syria and Iraq and has attracted tens of thousands of jihadists in both countries and from abroad. The exact number of fighters is not known but intelligence estimates have indicated the numbers have increased over the past year.

The military campaign, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, appears to be floundering despite a yearlong campaign of airstrikes and military training programs aimed to bolstering Iraqi military forces.

A review of Central Command reports on airstrikes since last year reveals that no attacks were carried out against training camps.

Targets instead included Islamic State vehicles, buildings, tactical units, arms caches, fighting positions, snipers, excavators, mortar and machine gun positions, bunkers, and bomb factories.

The risk-averse nature of the airstrike campaign was highlighted last month by Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, chief of staff for what the military calls Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

“The coalition continues to use air power responsibly,” Weidley said July 1. “Highly precise deliveries, detailed weaponeering, in-depth target development, collateral damage mitigation, and maximized effects on Daesh, are characteristics of coalition airstrike operation in Iraq and Syria.”

Daesh is another name for the Islamic State.

“The coalition targeting process minimizes collateral damage and maximizes precise effects on Daesh,” Weidley said earlier. “Air crews are making smart decisions and applying tactical patience every day.”

Other coalition spokesman have indicated that targeting has been limited to reaction strikes against operational groups of IS fighters. “When Daesh terrorists expose themselves and their equipment, we will strike them,” Col. Wayne Marotto said May 27.

The military website Long War Journal published a map showing 52 IS training camps and noted that some may no longer be operating because of the U.S.-led bombing campaign.

IS-training-camps

Islamic State training camps in Iraq and Syria. Source: Long War Journal.

According the map, among the locations in Iraq and Syria where IS is operating training camps are Mosul, Raqqah, Nenewa, Kobane, Aleppo, Fallujah, and Baiji.

The group MEMRI obtained a video of an IS training camp in Nenewa Province, Iraq, dated Oct. 1, 2014.

The video shows a desert outpost with tan tents and around 100 fighters who take part in hand-to-hand combat exercises, weapons training, and religious indoctrination….

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UNC Chapel Hill’s “Literature of 9/11” course teaches students to embrace jihad, hate America

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As the incomparable Daniel Greenfield puts it, #OnlyTerroristLivesMatter.” Neel Ahuja is identified in this College Fix article as “an associate professor of English, comparative literature, and geography at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.” However, UNC’s website lists him more specifically as “associate professor of postcolonial studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UNC.” “Postcolonial studies”: that’s as likely to present a positive or even fair view of the United States of America as the Department of “Queer Theory” is to present a course entitled The Wisdom of Pat Robertson.

“According to Ahuja’s Blinkness rating page – which is similar to Rate My Professors but specific to Chapel Hill – he seems to be popular with his students, and received generally positive reviews. However, several students also warned not to disagree with Ahuja, especially in a graded assignment.” Of course. UNC, like virtually all major universities today, is not a center of higher learning, but a center of far-Left indoctrination, and woe unto you if you dare get out of step. UNC is a particularly ugly and virulent center of this indoctrination, employing the likes of Carl Ernst, who has won an award from the genocidally antisemitic Islamic Republic of Iran for his work on whitewashing Islamic jihad, and Omid Safi, the desperately dishonest Islamic supremacist who has since moved on to even greener dawah opportunities at nearby Duke. In any case, I’m sure that UNC’s embarrassment at having me as an alumnus is outstripped only by my disgust at having gone there. But nowhere else would the situation have been significantly different.

Of the dismal and one-sided offerings in this propaganda session masquerading as a college class, the only one I have read is The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Speaking of regrets, I was sorry I had wasted my time. The book was an extended exercise in grievance-mongering, intending to show how U.S. policies were driving thoughtful, reasonable people to become jihad terrorists. Despite the word “fundamentalist” in the title, there was little in the book about Islamic texts and teachings, and what effect they could have upon a devout believer. No, it was all the fault of the big bad U.S.

Neither Neel Ahuja nor UNC is some egregious anomaly. This is what most all college and university students are learning today, all over the country. How will that work out in twenty or thirty years, unless there is some massive change? With a country voluntarily surrendered to and subjugated by its enemies — delivered over to them by leaders who didn’t think there was, in America and Judeo-Christian civilization, anything worth defending.

“UNC’s ‘Literature of 9/11’ course sympathizes with terrorists, paints U.S. as imperialistic,” by Alec Dent, The College Fix, August 28, 2015 (thanks to Elizabeth):

An English class offered at UNC Chapel Hill this fall called “Literature of 9/11” explores the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks from the perspective of radical Islamists and those who view America as an imperialist nation.

The reading assignments for the class, which includes poems, memoirs and graphic novels, present terrorists in a sympathetic light and American political leaders as greedy, war hungry and corrupt, according to a review by The College Fix.

The readings mostly focus on justifying the actions of terrorists – painting them as fighting against an American regime, or mistaken idealists, or good people just trying to do what they deem right. None of the readings assigned in the freshman seminar present the Sept. 11 attacks from the perspective of those who died or from American families who lost loved ones.

“ENGL 72: Literature of 9/11” is taught by Neel Ahuja, an associate professor of English, comparative literature, and geography at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill….

As for “Literature of 9/11,” its online description states it aims to “explore representations of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath in literature and popular culture.”To that end, the class covers a wide variety of readings, according to a list detailed by the campus bookstore’s website.

In the Shadow of No Towers by Speigelman

Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak by Falkoff

Reluctant Fundamentalist by Hamid

Sand Opera by Metres

Sirens of Baghdad (Trans Cullen) by Khadra

Stuff Happens by Hare

In the Shadow of No Towers is a collection of 9/11 comics by celebrated graphic artist Art Speigelman, who witnessed the attacks from his home in lower Manhattan. None of his family died in the attack, but Speigelman told Democracy Now he felt anger at how the incident was turned into a patriotic rallying cry, and his Towers work is an extension of those emotions.

The horrors his family survived that morning “were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda,” according to the book’s Amazon description.

Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak is a collection of poems penned by Guantanamo detainees; The Reluctant Fundamentalist is the fictional tale of a successful Pakistani in America who gradually comes to believe America is imperialistic and evil; Sand Opera is a collection of poems on torture, race and war; The Sirens of Baghdad is a thriller depicting a good man turning into a terrorist; and Stuff Happens – taking a line from Donald Rumsfeld – is an anti-war, anti-government, anti-military play that mixes fact with fiction in its dramatic interpretation of the decision to invade Iraq.

According to the course’s online description, “following an introduction to the concept of terrorism and to the production of knowledge about political violence in the fields of law, politics, religious studies, and terrorism studies, we will explore a diverse array of themes related to the 9/11 attacks and the ‘war on terror’ as depicted in memoirs, poetry, novels, public art, graphic novels, film, and music: explanations of the causes and consequences of political violence; the role of religion in public culture and state institutions; national security discourse; mourning, trauma, and public memorials; depictions of the US military in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; and the perspectives of detainees and minority communities on the attacks and their aftermath.”

According to Ahuja’s Blinkness rating page – which is similar to Rate My Professors but specific to Chapel Hill – he seems to be popular with his students, and received generally positive reviews. However, several students also warned not to disagree with Ahuja, especially in a graded assignment.

An online database of professor salaries maintained by the News & Observer states Ahuja’s annual salary is $72,100.

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Neel Ahuja.

Members of #FukYoFlag movement call for the lynching of white people and cops

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Sunshine. Source: Twitter

Days before the execution of a Texas police officer by a black man a Texas blog radio show aired “calling for the lynching of white people and cops.” Below is a tape of the show Sunshine’s F***ing Opinion Radio Show hosted by a black anarchist called Sunshine.

Sunshine on her Twitter account “LOLatWhiteFear” describes herself as “The noncompliant negro female formerly known as founder of  campaign. 1 of the organizers of .”

Here is the excerpt from Sunshine’s show – WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE:

SNAPSHOT-Twitter-Radio-Call-Invite

Sunshine Tweet calling for racial anarchy.

Lana Shadwick from Breitbart reports:

One of the #F**YoFlag movement supporters allegedly told a veteran who infiltrated their publicly posted conference call, “We are going to rape and gut your pregnant wife, and your f***ing piece of sh*t unborn creature will be hung from a tree.”

Breitbart Texas previously encountered Sunshine at a Sandra Bland protest at the Waller County Jail in Texas, where she said all white people should be killed. She told journalists and photographers, “You see this nappy-ass hair on my head? … That means I am one of those more militant Negroes.” She said she was at the protest because “these redneck mother-f**kers murdered Sandra Bland because she had nappy hair like me.”

#FYF911 black radicals say they will be holding the “imperial powers” that are actually responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th accountable on that day, asreported by Breitbart Texas. There are several websites and Twitter handles for the movement.

“Palmetto Star” describes himself as one of the head organizers. He said in a YouTube video that supporters will be burning their symbols of “the illusion of their superiority,” their “false white supremacy,” like the American flag, the British flag, police uniforms, and Ku Klux Klan hoods.

Read more.

Days after this broadcast a Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy was shot execution style by a black man at a gas station while reportedly in full uniform. The deputy was filling up his patrol car.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a black woman named Nocturnus Libertus a member of the FukYoFlag movement. Source: Twitter

Miami: Muslim gets 15 years for conspiring to support jihad mass murderers

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Al-Shabaab was behind the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi several years ago. “Kenyan sentenced to 15 years in prison in US terror case,” by Curt Anderson, Associated Press, August 28, 2015 (thanks to Lookmann):

MIAMI (AP) — A Kenyan man described by U.S. prosecutors as a fundraiser and recruiter for terrorist groups in Africa and the Middle East was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro imposed the maximum possible sentence on 27-year-old Mohamed Said. He pleaded guilty in May to charges of conspiring to support to Africa’s violent al-Shabaab organization and al-Qaida affiliates in Syria and elsewhere.

Said’s attorney, Silvia Pinera-Vazquez, had sought a more lenient eight-year sentence because Said never plotted directly against the U.S. and was solely supporting what she described as foreign “insurgents.”

“There is simply no evidence of direct intent to harm the United States,” she said.

Oh, well, then it’s OK? Not quite:

But Ungaro said terrorist groups he supported have an avowed intent to attack the U.S. and its interests overseas.

“It’s not reasonable to say that his conduct did not touch the United States. It did,” Ungaro said.

Said and co-defendant Gufran Mohammed were arrested in 2013 in Saudi Arabia in a case that evolved from undercover FBI monitoring of Internet chat rooms frequented by Islamic extremists. Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from India, is already serving a 15-year prison sentence after pleading guilty.

Said, from Mombasa, Kenya, had never been to the U.S. before his arrest. It was his use of the Internet and communications with undercover FBI operatives and Mohammed — who lived in the Los Angeles area — that enabled the U.S. to charge him with federal terrorism support crimes.

Of the two, Said played the more critical role because of his connections to the leadership of the terrorist groups and knowledge of their inner workings, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Ricardo Del Toro. The prosecutor noted that al-Shabaab’s most notorious attack was the 2013 assault on a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that left 67 people dead.

“He was an insider in al-Shabaab,” Del Toro said. “The goal of these organizations is to murder civilians.”…

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Minnesota: Muslim terror suspect gets driver’s license, wants to drive school buses

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What could possibly go wrong, you greasy Islamophobe? “Terrorism Suspect Gets Driving License: Can Now Drive Large Trucks, Wants To Drive School Buses Next!,” by Jelani James, HNGN, August 28, 2015:

A terrorism suspect whose name appears on the “No Fly” list has been allegedly given a Class-A commercial driver’s license, which would allow him to drive semi-trucks that he can fill with whatever seemingly legal item he chooses.

Amir Meshal had been attempting to get his Class A license from a South St. Paul Truck Driving School in Minnesota. The $4,000 tuition was paid for through the state workforce program.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety confirmed he earned his license on Aug. 8 after the road test, according to the Canada Free Press.

The Department of Homeland Security has regarded this man as a terrorist threat and has the evidence to back it up, according to Cain TV.

In May 2014, Meshal was allegedly removed from a Bloomington, Minn., mosque after he was suspected of radicalizing younger people who would later travel to Syria. According to a police report, leaders at the mosque said, “We have concerns about Meshal interacting with our youth.”

Meshal was asked to leave a mosque in Eden Prairie, Minn., for similar reasons.

Dating further back, in 2007 Meshal was arrested in Kenya by the FBI after he was believed to have attended a terror training camp in Somalia.

Meshal and the American Civil Liberties Union recently sued the U.S. government for detaining him for three months after he was arrested in Kenya. According to the lawsuit, the FBI had tried to convince him to become an informant.

The two also sued TSA and Homeland Security to have Meshal removed from the “No Fly” list, reported Fox Minnesota affiliate Fox 9. However, Homeland Security responded in a letter saying, “[Meshal] may be a threat to civil aviation or national security,” adding, “It has been determined that you [Amir Meshal] are an individual who represents a threat of engaging in or conducting a violent act of terrorism and who is operationally capable of doing so.”

As if this story didn’t raise enough red flags, a spokesman from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety also revealed that Meshal also wants to drive school buses!…

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Online Petition Demands Local Approval for Mulsim Refugee Resettlement

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refugee resettlement of isA petition is circulating at GoPetition that asks you to tell elected officials at all levels of government that decisions, to “plant” third worlders in your towns and cities, rest with the local citizens and the local elected government and not with edicts from Washington.

The petition is here.  And, if you would like to join the national grassroots effort to protect your communities from colonization, go here.

To my knowledge, this is the first time anything like this is being organized on the national level!

Here is a portion of the description of the problem from GoPetition:

The federal Refugee Resettlement (RR) program is operated today by the Global Left, the UN, Islam, and religious frauds. The goal is to Change America by Changing its People.

As a result, we are drowning in refugees who are destroying our Constitutional freedoms, overburdening our welfare system and posing a genuine national security threat.

Will you as an American citizen stand up and fight this national suicide via LEGAL IMMIGRATION?

By signing this petition, you are telling your Governor, Congress and state representatives:

  • I will not tolerate giving my tax dollars to secretly “planted”, unvetted refugees that would otherwise go to aid poor families in my community.
  • I demand you do your job by representing the Will of The People rather than the Resettlement industry that may be funding your campaigns.

Continue here.  If you feel more comfortable, you can be anonymous, but please sign it!

Go here to see who has already signed.  And, check out the very cool interactive map that will hopefully be filled in by thousands of you signing the petition.

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The Counterfeit Courage of ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner by Alec Rooney

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At one point in Laura Hillenbrand’s World War II book Unbroken, the top turret gunner of a B-24 bomber over the Pacific stays doggedly at his post and keeps on firing, trying to ward off an attacking Japanese fighter plane. Eventually he succeeds.

Staying focused on saving the lives of one’s comrades under such terrifying conditions is admirable enough.  Stanley Pillsbury did it after one of his feet had been practically blown off by a cannon shell from the enemy aircraft. When they got his boot off after the engagement, his foot was shredded. His big toe stayed inside the boot.

Yet he kept fighting, to save his comrades as well as himself. Imagine doing that while you are bleeding and in indescribable pain – or perhaps mercifully numb with terror – thousands of feet over a shark-filled Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from anything

WW II B-24 Liberator

familiar, in a metal machine that could fly into thousands of pieces at any moment. The book goes on to describe the men’s capture and two years of misery as prisoners of the Japanese empire.

It is a well-told story, only one of thousands of such tales arising from the Second World War, other wars, times of brutal hardship and deprivation, feats of sacrifice, endurance and brilliance — times when human courage enabled others to survive death and seemingly do the impossible.

Courage. Such a vital word. Yet like other words – gay, hero, tolerance, marriage, hate, even he and she – its meaning is falling victim to the tyranny of current media culture.

Early in July the former track and field star Bruce Jenner, who had a lot of expensive plastic surgery and hormone therapy and who now wants to be called Caitlyn and be treated as a female, accepted something called the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. 

The award is given by a sports television network to some notable figure, usually an athlete, for behavior that “transcends sports.” It is named for a great tennis player who unfortunately contracted HIV from a blood transfusion, and died from it.

Courageous?

One wonders if the award would have been named for him if he had died of cancer, rather than of a disease so closely linked to homosexuals, but that’s beside (if related to) the point. Let’s look at Jenner’s act of courage.

Jenner’s act of courage was to get the surgery, act like a woman, and get people to call him she and her.

Nor did he perform this heroic act in the comfortable safety of anonymity – you know, the world you and I live in every day. He did this while carrying all the added burdens and responsibilities of being a celebrity, a state of painful oppression that lesser people (like us) can never truly understand.

Yes, the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

How did we go from courage meaning mental resilience in the face of death and terror, for the good of one’s fellow human beings, to it meaning getting everyone to play along with my personal fantasies?

There’s a difference there, between those two things.

And who got the Arthur Ashe Courage Award the previous year? Why, it was Michael Sam, the first gay guy to be drafted by the National Football League. Sam has since left the sport to focus on his mental health, although he got some consolation prizes: He was congratulated by President Barack Obama and got to be on Dancing with the Stars (not sure which one of those needed to go first).

Fortunately, the real world continues to provide real examples of real courage, not springing from fantasies, celebrity, or the media’s wishful thinking.

Heroism in France

In August three regular American guys, two of them military, were riding on a train in France when a Moroccan malcontent pulled out a rifle to start shooting people. Perhaps the malcontent was merely living out his own personal fantasy – some in the media probably had to ponder this – but the Americans weren’t about to indulge him. They rushed and tackled him and beat him unconscious, in spite of the fact that he had a loaded gun that could fire about ten bullets per second at 2,300 feet per second, and most likely saved the lives of many passengers.

A Brit and a Frenchman also helped in the takedown. Allies once again!

Courage.

The French train crew locked themselves into safe compartments when the trouble started, according to witnesses.

Not courage.

Don’t let the meaning of this vital word change. Don’t let it be expanded to include the frivolous, the freakish and the fake. The time will always come again when we need it, and the rare quality it describes, by the trainload.

ABOUT ALEC ROONEY

Alec Rooney serves as communications director for the Christian Action Network. He is a longtime journalist, with experience as a writer and editor at five daily newspapers over 25 years. An award-winning print copy editor and copy desk chief, he also works as a freelance academic book editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and holds an M.A. in English from the University of Kentucky.

Oh, How the Mighty Megyn Has Fallen

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Most people, including me, know that Megyn Kelly is not only gorgeous, but also smart, sassy, incisive in her interviews, and also genuinely funny. But the interview she conducted Wednesday night, August 26,  with Jorge Ramos was disgraceful––the kind of toadying and biased interrogation that should be Exhibit #1 in journalism schools across the country about how not to be a legitimate journalist.

Ramos is a reporter for Univision, the company being sued by presidential candidate Donald Trump after they terminated their contractual relationship (including television broadcast obligations) with the Trump-backed Miss Universe Organization. The official charges include breach of contract and defamation, with the plaintiffs seeking more than $500-million in damages. Univision took its punitive action after Mr. Trump said that Mexican immigrants, including criminals and rapists, were teeming over our southern border––in other words, for exercising his constitutional right to free speech.

The Kelly interview was about Mr. Trump’s ousting Ramos from a press conference the previous evening, after the candidate pointed to an audience member who had a question to ask. Instead, Ramos stood up and preempted that question, not with a question of his own, but with a virtual filibuster of grievances. And what did Ramos have the chutzpah to whine to Megyn Kelly about? That his free speech was being curtailed! Now that is rich!

Kelly had no doubt watched the film of exactly what had taken place. But not a peep out of her to give her audience the context of what had actually transpired. She also knew that Trump initially responded to Ramos’s outburst by saying repeatedly, “you weren’t called on, sit down.” Peepless.

Kelly also knew that Trump’s personal aide came out to the lobby to invite Ramos back into the auditorium. Not a peep. And she knew that the two men then engaged in a lengthy back and forth, apparently to the satisfaction of both of them. Still no peep.

Did Kelly’s viewing audience learn of any of these mitigating circumstances? Again, not a single peep from Kelly, who allowed––indeed encouraged––Ramos to go on and on in the victim role he so clearly basks in.

Did Kelly ask Ramos if it were true that his daughter works for Hillary Clinton? Would that not have been highly relevant? Not a peep!

Megyn’s interview was as dishonest as it gets in the world of what should be legitimate journalism (although in today’s America, “legitimate journalism” may be the ultimate oxymoron!). While Ramos portrayed himself as the victim of big bad Donald Trump, and himself as the virtuous believer in Free Speech and the right to be heard, Megyn put on her most sincere listening face, but failed to challenge any of Ramos’s lies.

KELLY FITS NEATLY INTO THE PACK

The pack, that is, of other TV personalities who forgot but were then reminded that they were simply employees. Both Paula Zahn and Alisyn Camerota were Fox News Network news readers, commentators, hosts, co-hosts, anchors, whatever––both delivering their commentary with a distinctly conservative flavor.

When they moved to CNN, however (Zahn in 2001; Camerota in 2014), their commentary magically became unmistakably liberal.

But it wasn’t magic at all. Both women worked for the big business of American media, with bosses who issue directives and, in essence, tell them what to say––not the exact phrasing, but certainly the slant. That’s how business works…the boss calls the shots and the employees either comply or get booted.

And if you think that the bosses have the final say, think again. The major outlets––both print and electronic––take a lot of their marching orders from the White House. That’s right, and while the government-controlled press/TV/radio didn’t begin with Mr. Obama, his regime has certainly taken it to unprecedented heights. As just one example, have we heard about one single civilian casualty in the thousand of drone strikes Mr. Obama has ordered over the past almost-seven years in the Middle East? Even one? I rest my case.

DINOSAURS

But I digress. For decades, the media have prided themselves on having the greatest influence on who gets elected and who doesn’t, particularly in the big contests for president (of which there is only one) and senators (of which there are only 100). They also like to pick their favorite spokespeople, even if those selections are completely unrepresentative of public sentiment.

Karl Rove of Fox is a perfect example. A big kahuna in the President George W. Bush years and a virtual encyclopedia of electoral minutiae, Rove likes his politicians rather tame and manipulable, and that is why he appears to call the shots for Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, who faithfully echoes Rove’s white bread sentiments.

Clearly, Rove and his Democrat counterparts–recycled dinosaurs, all––are kept on because of the pricey contracts they’ve signed. It is certainly not that they shed any light! And then along comes Donald Trump and all they can do is hurl snooty insults and wage bets against the obvious frontrunner.

Yes, that Donald Trump, the guy who tells it like it is, never fails to remind you that he knows how to negotiate and strike deals and make America great again, the guy who has learned through thousands of negotiations how to “read” people (and the language they use) with unerring accuracy.

Even before he “read” Megyn Kelly, he came out of the candidate’s box with an insult to Sen. John McCain and a virtual manifesto against illegal immigration. And how did the media––both conservative and liberal––react? With reflexive horror, well-practiced political correctness, tsk-tsk raised eyebrows, and uniform condemnation.

WE THE PEOPLE

And how did the public react––that would be me and you and all the other ignorant rubes who the media elites believe can’t hold a candle to own their immense wisdom and knowledge?

We-the-People not only gave Mr. Trump huge poll ratings, but also heaved a huge sigh of gratitude. At last, they seemed to say, a guy who speaks to our concerns and doesn’t give a damn about the political correctness that violates our First Amendment rights every minute of every day, a guy who not only wants to protect our southern border, but also do away with every aspect of the horrors we’ve experienced over the past several years, including:

  • The diminishment of our military (and the shabby treatment of our veterans)
  • The horrific socialized medicine nightmare of Obamacare
  • The ghastly dumb-down-our-kids education fiasco known as Common Core
  • The crushing national debt
  • The Mt. Everest heights of unemployment
  • The infiltration of the America-loathing and anti-Semitic Muslim Brotherhood into the highest reaches of our government (including State, Homeland Security, the Pentagon, Health and Human Services, and the White House itself!)
  • On and on…

We know that not a single Democrat candidate for president is speaking out on these America-destroying issues? All you hear from them is victim, victim, victim, more money, more money, more money. Nothing with the Democrats has changed in over 70 years––and nothing has succeeded!

But the Trump promise to do away with or change or fix our problems is ringing true to the American public. Why? Because he’s proved it again and again in his own business life, surmounting losses and turning them into profits, and in his personal life, weathering disappointments in his marriages––and yet his two former wives are his biggest fans, and his children are model citizens!

Yes, there is an embarrassment of riches on the Republican side, and at least four or five candidates are impressively articulate in stating their plans for a better America. But none of them has the business experience and toughness and aggressiveness (which we need right now) of Mr. Trump.

The same Mr. Trump who perceived, quite accurately, I think, that Megyn Kelly was more than provocative in the first debate, indeed in a “gotcha” mode to entrap, embarrass, and diminish him. To the entire country’s surprise, Trump fought back, accusing Kelly of being, in essence, unprofessional and of gratuitously baiting him.

The next day…poll numbers boomed for Mr. Trump!

However, Mr. Trump went a step further. He went directly to Megyn’s boss, Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group, and according to the candidate’s own report, it was a productive meeting in which Ailes promised that Fox would “be fair” to him Mr. Trump. All good. And then––coincidence?––Megyn announced she was leaving for a two-week vacation.

But when she came back, Mr. Trump tweeted that Megyn was not on her game, and apparently both Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox (and The New York Post, among numerous other holdings), and Roger Ailes, decided that they would summon all their power and influence to take Trump down. Clearly, they’ve dispatched General Megyn Kelly to the front lines.

On Wednesday, the news was preoccupied by the tragic death of two young media people from Virginia who were murdered while on air. But throughout the day there was a steady drumbeat of anti-Trump commentary and innuendo on Fox.

If things continue on the same trajectory for Mr. Trump, I suspect he may end up thanking Fox for kicking his polls numbers into the stratosphere!