Victor Davis Hanson: "You Gotta Lie" "Oh, What a tangled progressive web we weave"

No one wishes to discuss candidly that universities are no longer free bastions of inquiry but are descending into would-be boot camps to train progressive shock troops.

National Review  "The entire menu of race, class, and gender identity politics, lead-from-behind foreign policy, political correctness, and radical environmentalism so far have not won over most Americans. 

"Proof of that fact are the serial reliance of their supporters on deception, and the erosion of language on campus and in politics and the media. The progressive movement requires both deceit and euphemism to mask its apparently unpopular agenda. 

"What the Benghazi scandal, the Bowe Bergdahl swap, and the Iran Deal all had in common was their reliance on ruse. If the White House and its allies had told the whole truth about all these incidents, Americans probably would have widely rejected the ideological premises that framed them." . . .  Read more.

Trump's Red Line

Victoria Taft

Cartoon: First 100 days

NetRightDaily

America’s ‘Smug-Liberal Problem’; It’s hard to win converts with mockery.

Yes, there is a smug-liberal problem in America, one that smart liberals recognize. Stephens is right. You don’t win converts with mockery. You can sometimes win grudging compliance, but you mainly make enemies — especially when your mockery reveals your own ignorance and inconsistency. But as we know, the smug liberal doesn’t care. They want to make enemies. After all, how do they measure their own virtue? When the Right rages, they rejoice. The unbelievers deserve their pain.

National Review  "The only people who can’t recognize that our nation has a “smug liberal” problem are smug liberals. Case in point, smug liberal (and television comedienne) Samantha Bee. On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Bee to react to a pre-election Ross Douthat column that called out Bee and other late-night comics in part for creating a comedy world of “hectoring monologues,” full of comedians who are “less comics than propagandists — liberal ‘explanatory journalists’ with laugh lines.”

"We’re all familiar with the style. It features the generous use of selective clips from Fox News, copious amounts of mockery, and a quick Wikipedia- and Google-search level of factual understanding. The basic theme is always the same: Look at how corrupt, evil, and stupid our opponents are, look how obviously correct we are, and laugh at my marvelous and clever explanatory talent. It’s like sitting through an especially ignorant and heavy-handed Ivy League lecture, complete with the sycophantic crowd lapping up every word.

"Bee, the host of TBS’s Full Frontal, of course, couldn’t see the problem and not only told Tapper that she didn’t think there was a smug-liberal problem, she also howlingly added that in her own show, “We always err on the side of comedy.” . . .
Read more

Stephen Colbert under fire for outrageous Trump-Putin gay sex ‘joke’ — Video
Stephen Colbert to Trump: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.” http://thebea.st/2oZYnD2 .    Read more.

"Sad, isn’t it? Still, it tells us everything we need to know about the left.  Imagine the outrage if someone said this about Barack Obama on broadcast television…"

China, the Norks, and THAAD

Rich Terrell

What Is THAAD, What Does It Do, and Why Is China Mad About It?
. . . "So, from the Chinese perspective, a THAAD deployment could shift the strategic stability needle ever so slightly away from its status quo equilibrium and advantage the United States, giving Washington better early warning and tracking of Chinese ICBMs. That, in itself, doesn’t seem like a serious impingement on China’s security or its nuclear deterrent. What’s interesting is reading China’s worries about a THAAD and AN/TPY-2 deployment on the Korean peninsula together with murmurs that Beijing is growing increasingly interested in a launch-on-warning nuclear posture. Does a THAAD deployment affect the credibility of China’s second-strike capabilities by giving the United States a greater early warning edge? Perhaps, but, as Lyon notes above, the difference would be marginal given the AN/TPY-2s already in Japan." . . .

North Korea 'deliberately detonated missile during failed weekend test because it was heading for RUSSIA'

The North is technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, and regularly threatens to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea.

Satellite images have revealed how North Korea is preparing to trial [launch] its arsenal of submarine rockets amid fears of an impending nuclear test

. . . "Pictures of the Nampo Naval shipyard on the country's west coast show dictator Kim Jong-un has 'imported' a new barge so his navy can carry out underwater test missile launches.

"The 68ft barge is identical to another seen at the Sinpo South shipyard on the east coast which has been involved in up to six test launches since 2014."

. . . 

"According to 38North, which monitors North Korea, there has been no sign that the barge was constructed on the west coast, suggesting it may have been acquired from abroad.

"The design is similar to a Russian submersible test stand barge, but it is not clear which country it was imported from.

"They are often used to test missile tubes and launch systems before they are installed in submarines." . . .

Remember the crowds protesting when Obama banned immigrants?

Ruthfully Yours  "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 order temporarily 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." . . .

. . . "Perhaps if a large crowd greeted Syed Rizwan Farook as he brought his mail-order bride, Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani national raised in Saudi Arabia, into America breezing through Chicago’s O’Hare airport over two years ago, they could have convinced them to love the USA instead of plotting to slaughter innocent Americans.

"This twisted, evil Muslim (yes, a coincidence I know) couple bonded over their hatred of America, its people and their freedoms, and their religions, going on to gun down many in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.

"If Malik had already radicalized years ago, how did she get the go-ahead to immigrate to the United States in 2014?" . . .

The former dry bones of Jews are alive and thriving. Happy Independence Day, Israel!

Ethel C. Fenig  "Today is Israel's Independence Day. Daniel Greenfield so eloquently explains, starting with Yechezkel (Ezekiel)'s comparison of the Jewish people to a scattered skeleton of dry bones in a barren valley:

And He said unto me: 'Son of man, can these bones live?' And I answered: 'O Lord GOD, Thou knowest.

Then He said unto me: 'Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off.

Therefore prophesy, and say unto them: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, O My people; and I will bring you into the land of Israel.

"And so it happened.  Seventy-two years after Europe, under the leadership of Germany, thought it had finally solved its "Jewish problem" by slaughtering over six million Jews along with untold millions of others, 50 years after the Muslim countries sought to do the same to the Jews in Israel, Israel is celebrating its 69th anniversary as a free and independent Jewish country in this modern era.  It wasn't easy then, and maintaining it now, in the face of enemies still fanatically devoted to destroying it, has met setbacks.  But the country continues to joyously thrive with an ever increasing population:" . . .

. . . Iconic photo of Israeli paratroopers entering the Western Wall for the first time. In the 1967 six-day war.