The Worst Republican Senator

Let that sink in a minute. The person who played a role in re-establishing diplomatic relations with the North Vietnamese regime that tortured him for seven years refused to shake the hand of a fellow American citizen—a presidential appointee!—who merely dared to disagree with McCain on substantive grounds.

Donkey Hotey

Power Line  "There really ought to be a statute of limitations on how long John McCain can play the tortured war hero card. His war hero status was exhausted with me a decade ago over a single instance.

"Brad Smith, who as chairman of the Federal Election Commission and law professor dared to criticize the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law on constitutional grounds (later vindicated in several Supreme Court cases culminating in the glorious Citizens Uniteddecision), came before a Senate committee one day to testify about campaign finance laws. He had recently had surgery, and had to appear in a wheelchair.

"Smith wheeled himself up to McCain, whom he had never met, to introduce himself. He put out his hand, and McCain started to put out his hand as politicians naturally do, but then stopped when he heard Smith announce his name. McCain pulled his hand back and said: “I know who you are. I’m not going to shake your hand!” (This episode never got any press. I know several first-hand witnesses to this appalling, churlish behavior. Repulsive.)

"Let that sink in a minute. The person who played a role in re-establishing diplomatic relations with the North Vietnamese regime that tortured him for seven years refused to shake the hand of a fellow American citizen—a presidential appointee!—who merely dared to disagree with McCain on substantive grounds."
. . . 

Tennessee Church Shooter Suspect Identified As 25-Year-Old From Sudan

Daily Caller  "Nashville Police have identified the suspect of a mass shooting at a church Sunday morning as 25-year-old Emanuel Kidega Samson.

"Samson is being charged with murder and multiple counts of attempted murder in the attack that killed one and left at least seven other people injured at the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, a town just south of Nashville, Tenn.

 . . .

"Nashville Police Department spokesman said the shooter entered the church after 11 am CST wearing a neoprene ski mask. One woman was shot in the parking lot before the shooter entered the church and opened fire on about 42 people still inside.

"One church member, 22-year-old Caleb Engle, confronted the shooter before being pistol whipped in the face. Engle then went to his car to retrieve a gun, which he has under a concealed carry license.

"Engle returned the church to confront the gunman again. The gunman shot himself in the face when the man returned, possibly on accident.

“ 'He’s the hero here,” Nashville police chief Steve Anderson said. “He’s the person who stopped this madness in its tracks.' ”

West Point Grad Alejandro Villanueva Only Steeler to Come Out for National Anthem

Mediaite  "Earlier today, it was reported that the all of the Pittsburgh Steelers players would remain in the locker room while the national anthem played prior to the start of their away game with the Chicago Bears. Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin explained that the team wouldn’t participate because he didn’t want to force players to choose whether or not to take part in a protest.

"While the Star Spangled Banner played ahead of the contest today, all of the players did indeed stay in the locker room — except for one. Afghanistan veteran, former Army Ranger, and West Point graduate Alejandro Villanueva stood at the tunnel entrance while the song was played, standing with his hand on his heart. While the rest of the players remained inside, Tomlin was seen on the sideline.

"After the anthem was done, the rest of the team came running out of the tunnel, to a chorus of boos from the Chicago crowd.

"NFL players were expected to engage in widespread demonstrations during the national anthem after President Donald Trump attacked athletes who kneeled during the anthem as a way of protesting racial injustice."

Discussing Race

American Thinker

"Slavery found its way to the Western hemisphere because agriculture needed labor and the supply was insufficient. Slaves were for sale in West Africa and farmers bought them. Europeans did not enslave Africans. They bought slaves -- human beings who had been enslaved by Arabs, and by other Africans." A rather fine point, eh?

 . . . "One last comment on race. There were black slave owners in the South. If a free black had a farm too big to work with his family, he would purchase a slave.  Slavery was not strictly a black/white matter. The Jim Crow laws were. Those laws were the result of hardening political attitudes during Reconstruction.  We don’t need to be doing anything to harden those attitudes again.

"And a final political statement. Is it in anyone’s political interest to keep the racial cauldron bubbling? If one seeks political advantage by convincing people that they are victims, would it ever be to that person’s advantage to lift the “victims” out of their victimhood?" . . .

Perhaps the children of the rioters who beat Reginald Denny nearly to death during the Rodney King riots should be made to pay reparations to Mr. Denny's descendants, if any? TD

NFL may lose bigly with social justice antics  . . . "Trump is forcing already unpopular NFL commissioner Roger Goodell into zone defense, whining about Trump's "divisive comments."

"Divisive?  Really?  Most Americans already disapprove of the NFL's posturing and preening.  Instead, the NFL is doubling down on its losing formula, hastening its self-destruction.

"The media, the left, and #NeverTrumps are predictably and perpetually outraged.  Here is Trump the rube, once again venturing into something he knows nothing about.  Is that so?  They likely don't remember that Donald Trump owned a USFL football team, the New Jersey Generals, for a few years in the 1980s.  Did anyone else running for president in 2016 own a professional football team?  Hillary Clinton's only professional football experience was pushing the Washington Redskins to change their name." . . .

"New England Patriots Owner Supports Unpatriotic National Anthem Protests"  . . . Signs that President Donald Trump really struck a nerve with his epic condemnation of NFL players protesting the national anthem are continuing to manifest themselves within the league’s ownership class.

"Following a day of scorn, Trump upped the ante with yet another Tweet on Sunday morning imploring fans to stay away from the games until the NFL does something about the growing anti-Americanism that has become so pervasive, that Commissioner Roger Goodell put his seal of approval on it during a chaotic day." . . .

Just when liberal media was gearing up to destroy football over all the brain damage, Trump calls for a boycott of football over the National Anthem protests.
. . . "So, watch the liberal media endeavor to save football from bad old President Trump. He's a racist. This is his racism once again, stirring up the stupid people who voted for him." . . .
"Let the brain damage continue. We've got a culture war to fight."

First pro baseball player kneels during anthem

Washington Times

Maxwell is kidding himself if he doesn't believe that kneeling for the national anthem is not disrespectful. His act means that we can expect all sports will see the anthem protest become a fact of life. It will continue until the league gives in and banishes the playing of the anthem altogether.

Rick Moran  "Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first Major League Baseball player to kneel during the national anthem.

"After Donald Trump called NFL players who kneel during the anthem "Sons of bitches," this was inevitable. The reaction to Trump's call to fire or suspend NFL players who kneel from players and league officials was to be expected - harsh criticism that Trump was trying to prevent their right of free expression and that his call for owners to deal with kneeling players was racist.

"It's clear now that the battle lines have been drawn for all pro sports. Expect more baseball players to follow Maxwell's example today." . . .
. . . 

"Is this unbalanced, hysterically exaggerated rant the reason Maxwell took a knee? And if it isn't, why emulate it? Why not come up with another way to protest what Trump said rather than associate his protest with these false and malignant words?

"Black people are not "oppressed" in America. That is a loaded word not connected to reality. In fact, it is an insult to truly oppressed people everywhere. If you claim to be "oppressed" in the US, you are praised and feted from one end of the country to another by left wing media and liberal groups. If you claim to be "oppressed" in North Korea, for instance, you are likely to be taken out immediately and shot. Or in Myanmar, if you are a Rohingya minority, if you claim to be "oppressed" you're mother and sisters are likely to be raped and you end up in prison. That's what true "oppression" is and anyone in the United States who claims the status of being "oppressed" is a gross exaggeration of reality and minimizes the suffering and courage of those who seek freedom from that oppression around the world."

More NFL stars kneel in defiance of Trump as he says they should be FIRED and urges fans to BOYCOTT league in feud with athletes

UK Daily Mail

"Scores of NFL players have started kneeling during the national anthem in defiance of President Donald Trump just hours after he urged fans to boycott the league in his growing feud with athletes.

"Players from both the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars took a knee ahead of their game at Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday.

"Those who didn't kneel linked arms in a show of solidarity as the national anthem rang out through the stadium.

"No players were kneeling during the playing of God Save The Queen - the British national anthem.  

"Trump had earlier called for fans to boycott the NFL if players didn't stop 'disrespecting' the US by kneeling during the national anthem. 

A Donald Trump Speech, a Barack Obama Foreign Policy

Interesting - as this comes from the Trump-critical National Review. Plus the author once briefly considered, along with Bill Kristol, his own candidacy for president, running against Trump.

David French at NR

"There was much to like in Trump’s remarks to the U.N. But, especially in his case, actions speak louder than words."

"I think I just watched a speech by a fictional president, a scene from some populist revival of The West Wing starring Donald Trump in the Martin Sheen role. In this episode, our hero went to the United Nations and finally gave those globalist technocrats a piece of the American mind. He called out our enemies. He delivered the kind of blunt talk that the U.N. never hears: a lesson on patriotism, a rejection of world government, and the best line about socialism ever spoken to a full gathering of the world’s foremost intergovernmental organization. 
"By the time Trump was finished, I half-expected to hear swelling music, followed by a focus group of “real Americans” yelling and pumping their fists. This was just what the United Nations needed to hear. This was just what our enemies needed to hear. Be afraid “Rocket Man.” Be very afraid. 

"Then, I flipped off the television and went back to real life, where the actual president of the United States is pursuing a foreign policy very, very much like the “globalist” presidents who came before him." . . . More here

Worry about Kim Jong-un, Not Trump

Jonathan S. Tobin.

On this issue, his actions have been more effective than those of past presidents.

"So far, the assumption that Trump is bungling or exacerbating the crisis with North Korea isn’t justified.

" Ever since he came down the escalator at Trump Tower that fateful day in June 2015, President Trump’s critics have worried that his anger-management and impulse-control issues would be exposed in an international crisis. Everything we’ve learned about him tells us that he is temperamentally unsuited to diplomacy or putting forward the image of quiet strength and confidence that is synonymous with traditional ideas about good leadership. In other words, he is exactly the type of person you wouldn’t want in control of the nuclear codes, or leading the meeting when an American response to a foreign provocation is required. 

"Yet now that such a crisis has arrived in the form of North Korea’s nuclear escalation, the most interesting thing about the U.S. response is that President Trump has not proved to be the liability that his critics assumed he would be. As with everything else he does, Trump has not behaved the way any of his predecessors or election rivals would have done. He has tweeted and boasted and at times has demonstrated that his command of the issues is far from complete. 

"Nonetheless, the criticism that has rained down on him for this is off the mark. UP NEXT Country-specific restrictions will replace travel ban ." . . .Read more.

What If South Korea Acted Like North Korea?

Victor Davis Hanson   "Think of the Korean Peninsula turned upside down.

Imagine if there were a South Korean dictatorship that had been in power, as a client of the United States since 1953.

"Imagine also that contemporary South Korea was not the rich, democratic home of Kia and Samsung. Instead, envision it as an unfree, pre-industrialized and impoverished failed state, much like North Korea.

"Further envision that the U.S. had delivered financial aid and military assistance to this outlaw regime, which led to Seoul’s possessing several nuclear weapons and a fleet of long-range missiles.

"Next, picture this rogue South Korean dictatorship serially threatening to incinerate its neighbor, North Korea — and imagine that North Korea was ruled not by the Kim dynasty but by a benign government without nuclear weapons.

"Also assume that the South Korean dictatorship would periodically promise to wipe out Chinese cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. The implicit message to the Chinese would be that the impoverished South Koreans were so crazy that they didn’t care whether they, too, went up in smoke — as long a dozen of their nuclear-tipped missiles could blow up Chinese cities and paralyze the second-largest economy in the world. Assume that these South Korean threats had been going on without consequences for over a decade.

"Finally, in such a fantasy scenario, what if the United States falsely claimed ignorance of much of its South Korean client’s nuclear capability and threats? 

"America instead would plead that it regretted the growing tension and the reckless reactions of China to the nuclear threats against it. Washington would lecture China that the crisis was due in part to its support for its North Korean ally.

For effect, the United States would occasionally issue declarations of regret and concern over the situation — even as it warned China not to do anything to provoke America’s provocateur ally.

"In such a fantasy, American security experts and military planners would gleefully factor a roguish nuclear South Korea into U.S. deterrent strategy. The Pentagon would privately collude with the South Korean dictatorship to keep the Chinese occupied and rattled, while the U.S. upped shipments of military weaponry to Seoul and overlooked its thermonuclear upgrades." . . .

  READ MORE:
    Understanding the North Korean Threat
    Trump is Doing a Fine Job Handling North Korea
    Kim Jong-Un’s Bodyguards

Global Warming: Who Are The Deniers Now?

Investor's Business Daily  "Climate Change: Global warming is "settled science," we hear all the time. Those who reject that idea are "deniers." But as new evidence trickles out from peer-reviewed science studies, the legs beneath the climate change hypothesis — that the earth was doing just fine until carbon-dioxide spewing human beings came along — is increasingly wobbly.

"A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience purports to support action by global governments to reduce carbon dioxide output in order to lower potential global warming over the next 100 years or so. But what it really does is undercut virtually every modern argument for taking radical action against warming.

"Why? The study admits that the 12 major university and government models that have been used to predict climate warming are faulty.

" 'We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models," said Myles Allen, professor of geosystem science at Oxford and one of the authors of the study. "We haven't seen that in the observations."

"And, of course, he's quite right. As we've noted here numerous times, the much-feared "global warming" trend seems to have halted somewhere around 1998. We know this is true because satellite temperature readings — the most accurate temperature gauge since it takes in the entire atmosphere, not just parts of it — show there's been virtually no change." . . .

Young Democrats Caught Red-Handed Inciting Anti-Police Riots In St. Louis

Noisy Room

"I wish I could say I was shocked by this, but sadly I’m not. It turns out that the St. Louis Young Democrats are collaborating with Black Lives Matter to instigate protests and riots in the city. At approximately noon yesterday, the Young Democrats tweeted that the next “protest” in response to the not-guilty verdict in the Jason Stockley trial was planned for Wednesday evening. They told rioters where and when to show up. They hashtagged it #blacklivesmatter on the tweet.

"Of course, both groups are claiming that they are calling for peaceful protests. Funny how it never works out that way though. Black Lives Matter is a domestic terror group and they aren’t very concerned with staying peaceful. They are much better known for smashing storefronts, setting cars on fire, spraying chemicals, throwing rocks and projectiles at police and beating people up. We’ve had six nights of violence in St. Louis. A dozen police officers have been injured and thousands of dollars of damage has been committed against local businesses. Now, we find out that the Young Democrats are in the thick of it, which isn’t surprising since they are communists." . . .

Obama’s Watergate

Rather than correct the record, egged-face journalists embark upon a face-saving effort. But the media whitewash stands as neither the only nor the most relevant cover up.

The American Spectator  "Vladimir Putin did not hack the election. Barack Obama did.

"Donald Trump said earlier this year that the Obama Administration wiretapped his campaign. “Like I’d want to hear more from that fool?” President Obama scoffed.

"But CNN reported on Monday, “US investigators wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election…. The government snooping continued into early this year, including a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Donald Trump.”

"The network labeled their story an exclusive. But, in fact, Breitbart, radio host Mark Levin, the realDonaldTrump Twitter account, and numerous other sources reported the wiretapping more than six months ago.

"In the wake of the belated bombshell, other voices at CNN hung on, precariously but unabashedly, to the dated narrative.

"In a story updated subsequent to CNN confirming the Obama administration’s surveillance on Manafort and noting his residence in Trump Tower, CNN reporter Manu Raju continued to characterize the president’s accusation affirmed by his network as Trump’s “unsubstantiated claim that Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the election to spy on him.” In March, Raju’s reporting consistently cast doubt on the president’s wiretapping charge." . . .