Aleppo and American decline

"In Aleppo, the damage is done, the city destroyed, the inhabitants ethnically cleansed. For us, there is no post-facto option. If we are to regain the honor lost in Aleppo, it will have to be on a very different battlefield."

Charles Krauthammer  "The fall of Aleppo just weeks before Barack Obama leaves office is a fitting stamp on his Middle East policy of retreat and withdrawal. The pitiable pictures from the devastated city showed the true cost of Obama's abdication. For which he seems to have few regrets, however. In his end-of-year news conference, Obama defended U.S. inaction with his familiar false choice: it was either stand aside or order a massive Iraq-style ground invasion.
     
"This is a transparent fiction designed to stifle debate. Five years ago, the popular uprising was ascendant. What kept a rough equilibrium was regime control of the skies. At that point, the U.S., at little risk and cost, could have declared Syria a no-fly zone, much as it did Iraqi Kurdistan for a dozen years after the Gulf War of 1991.
     
"The U.S. could easily have destroyed the regime's planes and helicopters on the ground and so cratered its airfields as to make them unusable. That would have altered the strategic equation for the rest of the war. 
     
"And would have deterred the Russians from injecting their own air force - they would have had to challenge ours for air superiority. Facing no U.S. deterrent, Russia stepped in and decisively altered the balance, pounding the rebels in Aleppo to oblivion. The Russians were particularly adept at hitting hospitals and other civilian targets, leaving the rebels with the choice between annihilation and surrender.
     
"They surrendered.
     
"Obama has never appreciated that the role of a superpower in a local conflict is not necessarily to intervene on the ground, but to deter a rival global power from stepping in and altering the course of the war. That's what we did during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Moscow threatened to send troops to support Egypt and President Nixon countered by raising America's nuclear alert status to Defcon 3. Russia stood down. " . . .

   

What Would It Take for Progressives to Reject Black Lives Matter?

National Review  "If Black Lives Matter were conservative, it would already be one of the most discredited and despised movements in American history. Can you imagine the elite Left’s reaction to a conservative movement built on a founding lie that has incited riots, inspired shootings of police, and correlated with an astounding and deadly increase in violent crime in America’s major cities?

"It’s the latter point that will leave the most enduring legacy. Today the Wall Street Journal reported that sixteen of the top twenty cities in the United States have endured year-to-date increases in homicide, with Chicago’s murder rate reaching levels “not seen since the violent drug wars of the 1990s.” And this increase comes after 2015’s troubling increase in murders. Together, the 2015 and 2016 crime spikes have left hundreds of black men dead in the streets, with women and even children victimized by stray bullets." . . .

California Senator Kamala Harris will certainly not reject BLM or any other leftist cause. Fight, fight, fight for them all.

The Trump Nail in the Media Coffin

"Mainstream news sources exposed their own long-held biases through their extended meltdown over Trump."

comicallyincorrect

Victor Davis Hanson  "President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field many questions from New York/Washington journalists. 

"What we know as “the media” never imagined a Trump victory. It has become unhinged at the reality of a Trump presidency.

"No wonder the fading establishment media is now distrusted by a majority of the public, according to Gallup — and becoming irrelevant even among progressives.

"Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal. But they at least hid their inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback. 

"When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory."

CNN Fans More Hatred of Cops, in Touting Flawed Study

Pundits ignore the real reason for the racial disparity in deaths by police shooting.

National Review   "CNN is making a desperate pitch to further enflame the ideological war on cops while it still has a sympathetic ear in the White House. The CNN website is promoting a laughably incomplete study of police use of fatal force under the headline “Black men nearly 3 times as likely to die from police use of force, study says.” Utterly ignored in the study and in CNN’s write-up is any mention of violent-crime rates, which vary enormously by race and which predict officer use of force. Absent such a crime benchmark, analysis of police actions using population data alone, as this latest study has done, is worse than useless; wielded as a bludgeon in the current anti-cop crusade, it is dangerously irresponsible." . . .

This finding, CNN tells us, is “disturbing.” CNN is apparently not “disturbed” at the fact that blacks die of homicide at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. Who is killing them? Not the police, and not whites, but other blacks. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at 10 times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined.

Hat tip to John Curnutt; Madras, Oregon

Democrats and the election aftermath (Updating through the day)

The contributors at American Thinker had much to say.

The next three by Thomas Lifson:  Evidence emerging that Dems’ disparagement of Trump victory is backfiring

A Pew Research survey Wednesday showed a whopping 97 percent of all voters would cast the exact same vote they did on Election Day, including 99 percent of Trump voters and 96 percent of Clinton voters. As with the recount that saw Clinton lose votes and the Electoral College vote that saw her lose electors, only 1 percent of Trump voters regret their vote, while 4 percent of Clinton voters do.

 Poor Obama! Self-pity marks his final weeks in office  . . . "I must also point out that if one searches for vilification of an incoming president, the level of hatred, misinformation, distortion and outright character assassination directed at President-Elect Trump dwarfs anything Obama was ever on  the receiving  end of.

"I remember when late night comedians complained that Obama was so perfect that there was no humor to be found in his presidency. I remember when the vast number of photos published with him having a halo become a joke, and when he was pronounced a semi-divine “lightworker” and an “enlightened being.” . . .

Politico obtains hacked emails from Clinton campaign post-election . . ."There is still no proof offered to the public, and no willingness of the intelligence community to testify under oath before Congress.  And there are assertions that an insider was the source of the Podesta leaks, a disgruntled Sanders supporter at the DNC. This theory is treated as unworthy of any attention at all.

"So, did Politico get this information from the Russians?

"Of course not. It was an inside job, complete with the call logs and text messages. Leaks have been the currency of mainstream media journalism.  They are good when Republicans look bad and sinister when Democrats are at risk."

It’s Babylon for the Democrats  . . . "Hyperbole? We will see on inauguration day. Expect massive throngs of furious and desperate goons to attempt to trample the podium, as they do even now on college campuses, whenever any conservative speaker attempts to exercise his First Amendment rights. Inauguration day will see the mother of all protests -- spell that ‘riots’ -- as Trump’s hand reaches forth toward the Bible to affirm the oath of office.

"In the first hundred days after that, expect the Democrat minority in Congress to skillfully execute every conceivable maneuver to thwart the will of the electors, to scheme and plot without pause, to poison every act of the legislature, and to frustrate every action of the president. They will claw, scratch, kick, bite, and scream like rabid beasts, knowing that their time is short." . . .  

Celine Dion and KISS are the latest musicians to pass on playing at Donald Trump's inauguration  "Wynn also unsuccessfully attempted to recruit Garth Brooks, who formerly inked a residency contract with Wynn, to play at the event, sources told the outlet.

"Others to reject offers to take the stage at the internationally-broadcast event include famed opera singer Andrea Bocelli and rock legend Elton John."

Electoral college 'rebels' who wanted to stop Trump WERE in touch with Clinton campaign (and now movement's leader is facing prosecution)

Artist Sees His Work Behind Ivanka Trump; Demands She Take It Down  "Earlier, I gave my opinion about a man who verbally attacked Ivanka in public on a commercial flight, and now we see artists who notice their paintings with the future First Daughter, wanting her to remove their work because they don’t want to be associated with the Trumps."

An opposition strategy for January confirmation hearings strategy is emerging: To expose Trump's campaign platform as a 'scam.'
. . . Lawmakers know they’re unlikely, at best, to stop any of Trump’s Cabinet picks from being installed. But they still see major opportunity in the confirmation hearings. The goal, according to lawmakers and aides: to depict Trump’s chosen inner circle of billionaires and conservative hard-liners as directly at odds with the working-class Americans he vowed to help." . . .

WATCH: Is President Obama Setting Up Obstacles For Donald Trump?  Video

SCROOGED: Parents Furious after School Boots Tiny Tim

Todd Starnes  "The fifth graders at Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania have been performing “A Christmas Carol” for decades. But this year that tradition came to an abrupt end.

"Parents told local reporters the play was canceled because two parents complained about a line in the Charles Dickens holiday classic.

"The unnamed parents took offense at the words uttered by Tiny Tim, “God bless us, everyone, television station WHTM reported.

"“I was very surprised because it’s going on for decades and it’s a tradition at the school that everyone looks forward to,” resident Jane Burkhart told the television station.

"Like many in this deeply religious community, she was saddened by the cancelation(sp).

“ 'One little line shouldn’t ruin it for every kid,” Burkhart said. “Charles Dickens is a class author, not a religious author.”

"Principal Tom Kramer addressed the controversy in a message posted on the elementary school’s website. You can read the entire message by clicking here.

“We understand that some parents are upset that the play was cancelled, but we have heard from families on both ends of the spectrum, including those who expressed appreciation that the play, as it had traditionally been prepared and delivered, was cancelled,” he wrote." 

"Kramer went on to reject reports that their decision was based on one or two families." . . .

I've seen high school plays where the sexual content was offensive to me, but if anyone complained about that it had no effect whatever. TD

Navy Restores Rating Titles After Public Backlash

"Petition against 'modernized' rating system gathered over 100,000 signatures"

Washington Free Beacon  . . . " The White House responded in November, standing by the Navy’s decision to eliminate the ratings titles and describing the outrage as “friction” typically caused by cultural changes. 

"The new system resulted from a January order by outgoing Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to make the job titles in the Marine Corps and Navy gender neutral, after the Pentagon opened up all combat roles to women. 

“It’s to quit segregating women. We do it by uniforms; women wear different uniforms. Can you imagine if we ask another group to wear a different kind of uniform?” Mabus told ) an audience at the National Press Club in October, downplaying the decision to scrap the ratings titles. 

“Ratings names change all the time, all the time. When I was in, 45 years ago, the people that were in my division were radiomen and signalmen. We don’t have any of those anymore. Those ratings have changed. Corpsmen, our medics, that rating came in after World War II,” Mabus said. “We change these things all the time, and I thought that it was important to be gender neutral.”

"Mabus has routinely been criticized on social media for prioritizing what some view as an extremely politicized agenda at the expense of the Navy’s combat power. He will soon be replaced by President ­elect Donald Trump’s choice for Navy secretary, who has not yet been announced. "

Yeo-person?

THE REAL ANTI-HANUKKAH FUNDAMENTALISTS

"President-elect Trump is not anti-Semitic nor are members of his team. On the contrary. They are pro-religion, pro-Judaism, and pro-Israel. I could not say the same about Obama's team."

Phyllis Chesler  "Judaism, National Council of Jewish Women, American Jewish Committee, Hadassah, and Jewish Federations of North America), unbelievably, refused to celebrate Hanukkah at the party given at the Trump Hotel in D.C. hosted by the Conference of Presidents o Major Jewish Organizations and the Ajerbaijan Embassy. J Street refused to come as well.

"The party, timed early enough so that people could also attend President Obama's last Hanukkah party at the White House, was attended by  the American Sephardi Foundation,the Zionist Organization of America and many other Jewish-American groups and leading figures.


"This is madness. This extreme refusal to accept reality is also malevolently childish. Clearly, these Jewish-American groups' religious affiliation is not with Judaism or with Israel but with a secular and anti-Zionist Democratic Party and with ultra-left liberalism. This is their religion and, unfortunately, they are fundamentalists.


"While I share the fear about how Trump's victory may embolden those who oppose women's reproductive freedom, I also think that as Jews, Americans, and Westerners, we must give the Trump Administration a chance.


"President-elect Trump is not anti-Semitic nor are members of his team. On the contrary. They are pro-religion, pro-Judaism, and pro-Israel. I could not say the same about Obama's team." . . .

The Fake Hijab Hate Crimes Witch Hunt

Sultan Knish  "They struck at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Two white males ran out of a car, tore off her hijab, hit her and stole her wallet. One of these mysterious muggers was wearing a Trump hat.

"It was only hours after the election and the media eagerly jumped on the story. But the 18-year-old Middle Eastern student had made it all up and police charged her with filing a false report.

"The president of the Muslim Students Association claimed that the attack had rattled the campus. The ACLU was “outraged” and was as eager as the “victim” to connect the attack to Trump. 

"It was even more outraged that the imaginary attackers had, “shouted slurs and wore Donald Trump clothing.”

"It was only hours after the election and the media eagerly jumped on the story. But the 18-year-old Middle Eastern student had made it all up and police charged her with filing a false report.

"A month later they stuck again. Yasmin Seweid, an 18-year-old Baruch College student in New York City, claimed that “three white racists” tried to tear off her hijab, shouted Trump’s name, along with, "Look it's a fucking terrorist", "go back to your country" and "take that rag off your head".

"“The president-elect just promotes this stuff and is very anti-Muslim, very Islamophobic, and he’s just condoning it,” she whined. CAIR got into the game. A hate crimes investigation was launched.

"And the NYPD found that she had made it all up. Yasmin now faces charges for her deception. But her lies potentially endangered the “brown-eyed and brown-haired” man whom police had begun to suspect. A man who might have been arrested and charged for a crime that never happened. What caused two 18-year-old Muslim women 1,400 miles apart to invent the same very specific attack?" . . .