The Big Dog—Bill Clinton—Gets Fixed

"It was a ‘subdued’ former president who turned out for Hillary in New Hampshire this week."

WSJ

. . . "Only a few weeks back, Mr. Clinton was thought to be Hillary Clinton’s “secret weapon.” Well, he has just made his first two appearances of the 2016 campaign—and the Associated Press describes him as “subdued,” while the New York Times says he “seemed to be on a tight leash.”

"Not to mention how adrift he looked when a reporter asked him about Donald Trump’s slams about his treatment of women.

"It’s not the first time the Big Dog has been fixed. Back during Mrs. Clinton’s first run for the Democratic nomination, her husband was stung by accusations of racism after he seemed to diminish Barack Obama’s landslide victory in the 2008 South Carolina primary by pointing out that Jesse Jackson had won that primary before. Mr. Clinton would later complain the Obama team had “played the race card” on him." . . .

. . . "Mr. Trump has been at it ever since. “I hope Bill Clinton starts talking about women’s issues so that voters can see what a hypocrite he is and how Hillary abused those women,” he tweeted on Saturday.
"Yet even before Mr. Trump picked up on it, the contradictions between Mrs. Clinton’s feminism and her behavior were being challenged." . . .

 

Why Hillary Can’t Shake Bill’s Affairs  . . . "First, what won’t matter. Monica Lewinsky won’t matter. Gennifer Flowers won’t matter. These were consensual relationships. Whatever else people might think of Bill’s judgment, most folks quite rightly consider these affairs to be his (and the women’s) private business. Either could decide to make trouble if they wanted to, I guess, especially Lewinsky, but I have trouble seeing how big trouble could really be made.

"But what about Jones and Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick? They claim not that they had consensual relations with Bill, but that he did unwanted things to them. Jones said he exposed himself to her and propositioned her in 1991. Willey charged he groped her in the White House in 1993. And Broaddrick alleged that he raped her in 1978." . . .

Why Trump may be winning the war on ‘political correctness’

Karen Tumulty and Jenna Johnson

"Cathy Cuthbertson once worked at what might be thought of as a command post of political correctness — the campus of a prestigious liberal arts college in Ohio.

“ 'You know, I couldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas.’ And when we wrote things, we couldn’t even say ‘he’ or ‘she,’ because we had transgender. People of color. I mean, we had to watch every word that came out of our mouth, because we were afraid of offending someone, but nobody’s afraid of offending me,” the former administrator said.

"All of which helps explain why the 63-year-old grandmother showed up at a recent Donald Trump rally in Hilton Head Island, S.C., where she moved when she retired a year ago.

"The Republican front-runner is “saying what a lot of Americans are thinking but are afraid to say because they don’t think that it’s politically correct,” she said. “But we’re tired of just standing back and letting everyone else dictate what we’re supposed to think and do.' ” . . .

In Rat-Infested New York, Only Chick-fil-A Gets Shut Down For Health Code Violations Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/010416-788052-in-rat-infested-new-york-only-chick-fil-a-gets-shut-down-for-health-code-violations.htm#ixzz3wKuzGKFw Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook

Investors  . . . "Last year, 77 out of 154, or about half, of New York's restaurants were rat-infested — and that's on the ritzy Upper East Side, where a meal can run into hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

"Residents take great pride in filming YouTubes of New York's restaurants through their windows at night, cameras on as the vermin scurry around.

"There are even interactive rat maps showing where Manhattan's vermin roam.

"So it's more than a little passing strange that the city targeted the city's only Chick-fil-A for health code violations just months after it opened its doors.

"Chick-fil-A was subject to all sorts of city-government opprobrium last year after its Christian owner noted his opposition to gay marriage. A boycott was called, and consumers refused to boycott it — including the consumers near gay West Hollywood, as IBD noted here .

"City officials from Boston to Chicago and definitely New York condemned Chick-fil-A as "hate chicken.' " . . .

Government-imposed minimum wages: A world that cultivates every person’s inner Veruca Salt

After seven years of Obama and the Democrats, this is how things look in this country

Bookworm Room  "A month ago, my Facebook feed (which reflects the fact that many of my friends are Progressives) was suddenly overrun by a series of posters, all pointing out that minimum wage work is insufficient to support the cost of a two bedroom apartment.  It’s unlikely that the new minimum wage laws that went into effect on January 1, 2016, in 14 states will change these charts:

"Also, in a charming irony, that problem is worse in most blue states compared to most red ones, as you’ll see if you compare the two charts below:"

. . . "The traditional American system, whereby a person or a family, unfettered by government diktats, and aided by hard work, talent, and often strong family ties, leaves poverty behind, is what a Leftist of my acquaintance disdainfully calls “incrementalism.” Incrementalism, I was given to understand, has to make way for the Veruca Salt doctrine mandating that everyone gets it all now."

White House refuses to explain delay in Iran sanctions

Washington Examiner

"A White House spokesman on Monday declined to say why the Obama administration changed course and decided to delay sanctioning Iran for its illegal ballistic missile tests, but also rejected the idea that the sanctions were delayed because of pressure from Tehran.

" 'Ultimately we will impose those financial penalties, we'll impose those sanctions, at a time and place of our choosing, when our experts believe that they will have maximum impact," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday. "And those decisions are not subject to negotiation by the Iranians — or anybody else for that matter."

"The administration was expected to levy new sanctions on companies and individuals involved in Tehran's ballistic-missile program on Wednesday but then on Thursday did an about-face." . . .

The Sum of All Fears

Cal Thomas

"President Obama and members of his administration assure us we have nothing to fear when it comes to terrorism. Whether you accept this, or not -- and opinion polls show a majority do not -- there is another fear that in large part is behind the phenomenon known as Donald Trump. It is the fear we are in danger of losing America.

"Speaking as a member of a group that will in this century become a minority in America -- that would be white people -- I don't fear minority status. I fear that those who will soon make up the majority will not embrace the values and traditions that have built and sustained America through wars, economic downturns and other challenges to our way of life.

"Yes, yes, I know about slavery and discrimination, but the principles laid down by the Founders, which allowed America's flaws to be addressed and corrected by their posterity, seem to be disappearing.

"Many Americans are angry that politicians of both parties seem to have placed their careers ahead of their responsibility to take care of the nation. As Ronald Reagan said, we are just one generation away from losing it all. That's because democracy and equal rights are not the norm in the world. They must be fought for and maintained if we wish to pass them on to our descendants." . . .

Remembering 2015

Thomas Sowell

"How shall we remember 2015? Or shall we try to forget it?

"It is always hard to know when a turning point has been reached, and usually it is long afterwards before we recognize it. However, if 2015 has been a turning point, it may well have marked a turn in a downward direction for America and for Western civilization.

"This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran -- the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism -- from getting a nuclear bomb. Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.

"It will not matter if we have more nuclear bombs than they have, if they are willing to die and we are not. That can determine who surrenders. And ISIS and other terrorists have given us grisly demonstrations of what surrender would mean.

"Putting aside, for the moment, the fateful question whether 2015 is a turning point, what do we see when we look back instead of looking forward? What characterizes the year that is now ending?" . . .

Blowhards Beware: Megyn Kelly Will Slay You Now

Vanity Fair  “ 'If it’s fair to question Mrs. Clinton for failures leading up to [Benghazi],” she says, looking into the camera at her 2.7 million viewers, “why is it unfair to question Jeb about his brother’s failures leading up to September 11, 2001,” as Donald Trump had just done. She turns the question to Jeb, speaking via satellite video hookup. “Is it a double standard?”

“ 'Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” replies Bush.

"She points out that Jeb’s in fifth place in the polls, and she wants to know, “What would it take to make you get out [of the race]?” Bush, looking as if he were wearing a scratchy, too tight suit, replies that he’s going nowhere." . . .

Space: The visionaries take over

Charles Krauthammer

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 21.

. . . "[Elon] Musk predicts that the reusable rocket will reduce the cost of accessing space a hundredfold. This depends, of course, on whether the wear and tear and stresses of the launch make the refurbishing prohibitively expensive. Assuming it’s not, and assuming Musk is even 10 percent right, reusability revolutionizes the economics of spaceflight.

"Which both democratizes and commercializes it. Which means space travel has now slipped the surly bonds of government — presidents, Congress, NASA bureaucracies. Its future will now be driven far more by a competitive marketplace with its multiplicity of independent actors, including deeply motivated, financially savvy and visionary entrepreneurs." . . .

Blocks of Pluto's water-ice crust appear jammed together in the informally named al-Idrisi mountains in this high-resolution image from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.

“First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”

Legal Insurrection
"A phrase I read for the first time today, but which explains how the fates of Jews and Christians are intertwined."

"I’m surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today.

"Though I’m certainly familiar with the concept, it’s one we’ve explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivous (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews.

"I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer’s Tweet linking to his Facebook post:

Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East." . . .

 "Then I read through (skimmed parts) of Lewis’ Commentary article, The Return of Islam (Jan. 1, 1976), which is quite long.

"The central thesis of the article is that the West completely misunderstands the nature of the conflict, seeking to put it in the types of “left” and “right” disputes that dominate Western politics:"

The article referred to is posted next to this one in the Tunnel Wall:  "The Return of Islam"; prescience from forty years ago

"The Return of Islam"; prescience from forty years ago

BERNARD LEWIS / JAN. 1, 1976

Chris de Burgh Crusader live in Glasgow

"From the beginning, Christians played a leading role among the exponents, ideologists, and leaders of secular nationalism. As members of non-Muslim communities in a Muslim state, they occupied a position of stable, privileged, but nevertheless unmistakable inferiority, and in an age of change even the rights which that status gave them were endangered. In a state in which the basis of identity was not religion and community but language and culture, they could claim the full membership and equality which was denied to them under the old dispensation. As Christians, they were more open to Western ideas, and identified themselves more readily in national terms. The superior education to which they had access enabled them to play a leading part in both intellectual and commercial life. Christians, especially Lebanese Christians, had a disproportionately important role in the foundation and development of the newspaper and magazine press in Egypt and in other Arab countries, and Christian names figure very prominently among the outstanding novelists, poets, and publicists in the earlier stages of modern Arabic literature. Even in the nationalist movements, many of the leaders and spokesmen were members of Christian minorities. This prominence in cultural and political life was paralleled by a rapid advance of the Christian minorities in material wealth."

A quick run-down of Donald Trump's positions

Ed Straker  "ConservativeReview.com, which is edited by conservative talk show host Mark Levin, has emerged as a great ranking service for politicians. Recently the site ranked the positions of Donald Trump based on his public comments. Since everyone knows that Trump has spent most of his adult life as a liberal but has since recanted nearly all of his former positions, I am going to give him the benefit of the doubt and exclude any quotations over one year old. Everything you read below has come from Trump's own plush lips in the past twelve months:" . . .  Read more.

"Except for immigration, foreign policy, and energy, all of Trump's contemporary positions are more identifiable with liberal positions, which is not surprising, considering he has spent most of his life as a liberal Democrat.  Now, if you're a conservative and immigration is your number-one issue, you can still justify a vote for Donald Trump.  But Ted Cruz is almost as good – promising to build a wall, oppose amnesty, and enforce the law –  and he's much better on just about every other issue."