Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Remember Corporal Louis LeBeau of Hogan's Heroes?


Summing up his Holocaust experiences: "The whole experience was a complete nightmare, the way they treated us, what we had to do to survive. We were less than animals. Sometimes I dream about those days. I wake up in a sweat terrified for fear I'm about to be sent away to a concentration camp. But I don't hold a grudge because that's a great waste of time. Yes, there's something dark in the human soul. For the most part human beings are not very nice. That's why when you find those who are, you cherish them." Robert Clary, above, right,

Actor, author, survivor: the resilience of Robert Clary


. . . "A tattoo on his left arm left him marked as prisoner A5714. Clary was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Upon his liberation from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, Clary learned that 12 other members of his immediate family, including his parents, had been sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and did not survive the Holocaust. Three of his siblings had not been deported and instead survived the Nazi occupation of France.
"Clary reflects on how he survived the Holocaust, revealing that he sang to SS soldiers at Buchenwald every week with an accordionist. He believes that singing and entertaining along with his youth and good health allowed him to make it through the ordeal. Clary also notes that due to his age he did not fully understand the severity of the concentration camps.
"His experiences during the Holocaust and the loss of his loved ones affected him deeply. What especially troubles him is that he feels that he and others in his situation were not viewed as human beings by the Nazis, and that they were usually treated as even less than animals. Upon arriving at the Buchenwald camp, Clary and his fellow prisoners had to spend the first night in a shower room. They were terrified that they would actually be gassed to death since Nazi SS officers often used fake showerheads in concentration camp gassing chambers. Clary did not receive food for his first eight days at the camp, and he and other prisoners slept on top of one another only to wake up next to the corpses of those who did not make it through the night."

NEW RULES? TRUMP’S EPIC STRUGGLE WITH THE LEFT

Political Cartoons by Bob Gorrell

PowerLineBlog  "It is evident that the left, with the active cooperation of the news media, wishes to drive Trump from office. Nothing will sate the left or get them to calm down into a recognizably responsible opposition force.

"And why shouldn’t the left think this can succeed? It has worked before. They bagged two presidents in succession back in the 1960s and 1970s—Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. “In a sense,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote of Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run again in 1968, “he was the first American President to be toppled by a mob. No matter that it was a mob of college professors, millionaires, flower children, and Radcliffe girls.” The night Johnson announced his decision, leftists took to the streets to sing “We have overcome.”
"Now the leftist mob is larger and even more ferocious. The risk for Trump is that, like Nixon, he will commit some dreadful blunder that, as Nixon put it himself later, hands the left a sword that they can run right through him." . . .
 ". . .from the very end of FDR’s speech:
The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
"Sounds just like Trump doesn’t it? No wonder the left is freaking out. He’s using the playbook they wrote, but adding a new chapter of his own in all caps and boldface type. Sad! for the left."

Justice Gorsuch ...Updated


A Supreme Successor to Justice Scalia  . . . "In his grief over the death of a justice he deeply admired and emulated, Judge Gorsuch could hardly have imagined the series of events that would lead to his being selected today to fill the Scalia vacancy. And while he has rightly recognized that no one could ever replace Justice Scalia, there are strong reasons to expect Justice Gorsuch to be an eminently worthy successor to the great justice. 

"Gorsuch is a brilliant jurist and dedicated originalist and textualist. He thinks through issues deeply. He writes with clarity, force, and verve. And his many talents promise to give him an outsized influence on future generations of lawyers." . . .

Neil Gorsuch: A Worthy Heir to Scalia  . . . "That Judge Gorsuch’s judicial philosophy is similar to Justice Scalia’s is evident from a tribute the former gave after the latter’s death. In that tribute, Gorsuch summarized and endorsed Scalia’s method of legal interpretation:" . . .

5 Things You Should Know About Supreme Court Nominee Neil Gorsuch  "On Tuesday, President Donald Trump nominated appellate judge Neil Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court. Trump fulfilled his pledge to select a nominee "in the mold of Antonin Scalia," for Gorsuch seems cut from exactly the same cloth.

"Like Scalia, Gorsuch is both a texualist and an originalist — he interprets legal provisions as their words were originally understood, and not according to doctrines like the "Living Constitution." This is important, and points to how he will rule on pivotal cases if confirmed by the Senate." . . .

Will Trump's Supreme Court battle go nuclear?  . . . "The president has acknowledged that he expects McConnell to overturn the filibuster for a Supreme Court nominee if the Democrats continue to be "obstructionists," while Senator McConnell for his part has said he does not plan to kill the filibuster but has also said he is "going to get this nominee confirmed.' " . . .
Given that McConnell paved the way for a Trump nominee by successfully blocking Obama's attempt to replace Antonin Scalia after Scalia's death last February, McConnell gets some credit as a master Senate tactician and thus the benefit of the doubt in this case.
UPDATES, with much thanks to Lucianne:
Former Sotomayor law clerk, and a Kagan attorney praise Gorsuch
. . . "As Gorsuch was nominated by President Trump, his nomination earned high marks from multiple people who clerked for Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals before working for justices President Obama selected to serve on the Supreme Court."

From Law Nuze: Here’s Why It Would Be Very Stupid for Dems to Block Neil Gorsuch
. . . "But as fun as it would be to watch Democrats tantrum their way into blocking Judge Neil Gorsuch‘s Supreme Court nomination, it’s a bad idea and would follow in the Republicans dangerous precedent." . . .

NY Times: Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch   It is accompanied by a counterpoint on why liberals should oppose Gorsuch.

The selective will of spontaneous rioters


Muslims Occupy Dallas Airport Baggage Claim  "I'd like for TSA to explain why it's okay for Muslims to take over a baggage claim area in a major American airport -- while the rest of us are getting manhandled and groped for having a bottle of water in our carry-on luggage." . . . 

Former President Obama Supports National Temper Tantrums
. . . "These next four years are going to be so.freaking.long if we have to hear from Mr. “get to the back of the bus” every time a few ill-informed protesters whip out their posterboard and markers."

Remember the crowds protesting when Obama banned immigrants?
"Crowds, crowds, crowds!  Or, in some cases, are they a mob of useful idiots?  As Ed Lasky noted, the hysterical reaction of the anti-Trump crowd, erroneously called civil and human rights defenders, to President Trump (R)'s executive ordertemporarily banning visitors and immigrants from a few Muslim-majority terrorist countries (not a ban on Muslims) is hypocritical.  (The Women's March and the airport mobbers all look alike – all sound and fury, signifying nothing but moral narcissism.)
"Below is a photo from the massive crowds in Chicago protesting former (thank goodness!) President Barack Hussein Obama (D)'s 2011 order banning Iraqi refugees for six months.

"Or maybe this is the large, angry crowd reacting to Obama's decision in the final weeks of his administration banning desperate Cubans fleeing failing Communist Cuba from entering the U.S. without a visa." . . .

Why Johnny Is Only “Personally Opposed” to Abortion

Reasoning: . . . "Presently, I support the legality of abortion not because I am Libertarian but because I am libertine. I am sexually active and unwilling to take responsibility for my own conduct. I hope that if I impregnate a woman who knows I am personally pro-life she will just slip away and take care of the problem without me knowing about it."         

Mike Adams
Why Johnny Is Only “Personally Opposed” to Abortion

"Last week, a pro-life reader from Pennsylvania wrote to me in frustration. As a young man, he is finding that many of his peers are young libertarian males who say they are “personally opposed” to abortion but nonetheless “pro choice” as a matter of public policy. My frustrated pro-life reader wanted to know how best to engage the contradiction between being personally pro life and politically pro choice. The answer, as usual, lies in learning how to ask the right questions in order to probe the inconsistency. When dealing with this particular contradiction, five questions are usually in order:

"1. As a preliminary matter, you have to ask the personally pro-life pro choicer (hereafter: pro-life/PC), “Why are you personally opposed to abortion?' ” . . .