John Wayne Does Not Smile

"Yes, I apologize," [Bernie Sanders] said when asked whether Clinton was owed an apology. "Not only do I apologize, I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the kind of campaign that we run. If I find anybody else involved in this, they will be fired."

You buy into Clinton, you're buying four years of this. It'll be nothing but corruption hiding behind corruption, with the decent told they need to apologize for coming anywhere near it. I've said a lot against Trump, who deserves it, but Clinton is the worst candidate in the race.

Crazy TEA Party Types...

Jazz Shaw remembers.

I seem to recognize this argument from somewhere, but where was it? Oh, that’s right… it was me. I was making the same case in 2012 after watching the wreckage of a handful of totally winnable races two years earlier which slipped away. But a few years of observing the antics of Congress after we supposedly took control of both chambers has cured me of much of that.

At some point, if you're going to play, you're going to have to play.

'Today You Did A Great Jihad -- You Took The Train in the Rain'

A moment in a meditation on the fracturing of Europe.

[Legion of Honour recipient Khalil] Merroun leaned forward in his chair. Terrorism is ‘‘not jihad,’’ he said. The jihad of one’s self is about personal betterment and seeking greater understanding.

‘‘Today, you did a great jihad by coming to see me,’’ he said. ‘‘You called yesterday, you took the Metro, it was raining and you came here for a noble cause, to inform people. And I also made an effort, a jihad: I listened to you, I welcomed you and tried to transmit a message to better inform people, to try and dispel misconceptions and spread our true message, thousands of kilometers away, in the United States.’’

Merroun didn’t discount the venom directed at Muslims or refugees — this explained his security detail — but he thought the sour public mood was rooted in broader frustrations, like the lack of jobs. ‘‘So far, things have managed to remain relatively stable,’’ he said.

Our interview finished up shortly after 2 o’clock. I took the train back into Paris with a colleague. That night, less than eight hours later, three teams of suicide bombers and other heavily armed radical Islamists attacked Paris, killing 130 people.

What?

French to be the world's most commonly-spoken language by 2050, thanks to growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

I wouldn't have guessed French was due for such a rebirth.

A Heroic Youth

In Knoxville, TN, a young football player gave his life to protect teenage girls from a gang-related shooting. He is remembered as befits a youth who dies nobly.

Ha-Ha-Ha! Good Joke, Oberlin!

At least, I assume this must be intended as a joke. You should have tried the Army's grits, before you complain about the college not getting your food 'culturally accurate.'

Even funnier is the demand that the college pay them to protest it, and above minimum wage!

The Pot Calls The Linen Tablecloth Black

In a shift of strategy hours before the third Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton’s campaign went for Bernie Sanders’ jugular, accusing his team of stealing valuable campaign data, misrepresenting what happened and inflicting “damage here that cannot be undone.”... And Clinton’s team was angry that Sanders tried to fundraise off the incident by acting like he was a victim of the Democratic National Committee. “Stop politicizing and work to ensure that what took place is remedied,” Mook said, even dropping that Sanders campaign may have broken the law.

Heaven knows how much it scandalizes Clinton to ponder a breach of the law.

UPDATE: DNC violated its own laws in punishing Sanders campaign.

Who Voted for Omnibus

Presidential candidates in the Senate were mostly smart enough to vote against this monster, with the exception of Rubio who contrived to be absent. Both of my Senators sadly were in the 'yea' column, which is predictable. Anything the Chamber of Commerce wants, these guys are there to provide.

Fire Wasserman Schultz

A petition on MoveOn.org has garnered over forty thousand signatures. Feel free to add yours.

Looks like Sanders has won for the moment. Still, removing a corrupt tool like DWS is worth doing on its own merits.

No, really

Please Don't Bomb Anywhere Without Some Reason

Thirty percent of Republicans responding to a recent poll approved of bombing a fictional country from the movie Aladdin.

Conceivably Possibly P=NP

...and that's a big deal.

Maryam Rajavi on Iran and ISIS

I have tremendous respect for this woman and her organization, which is headquartered in Paris because they would be put to death at home. Maryam Rajavi is the head of the National Council of Resistance - Iran, and keeps the focus on Iran's brutal human rights abuses and anti-democratic quality.

Here she advances a theory that I haven't heard before to explain why ISIS and Iran have such similar views on the execution of law. It's a little surprising that they should -- the Sunni/Shi'a split was more than a thousand years ago, and their schools of law have developed along different lines since then, with the Sunni schools 'closing' the law to reform after the 10th century, and the Shi'a schools remaining 'open' to new interpretations. They are different enough that in Afghanistan, whose constitution says that nothing shall counter sha'riah law, the Shi'a Muslims had to have constitutional provisions protecting their right to practices that Sunni schools of sha'riah do not permit.

Her suggestion is that the reason that ISIS's brutality looks so much like Iran's brutality is that Iran is the real model for ISIS:

Ever since Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in 1979, Tehran championed itself as a successful model, which fundamentalists could follow in order to gain stature, power, and sovereign legitimacy. This presents a tantalizing message to Sunni extremists like the Islamic State– why can they not create their own “Islamic” State when Shiite fundamentalists have already done so?

While the conceptual origins of this extremist ideology took shape in the early years of Islam, it only turned into a formidable global force when fundamentalism gripped Iran in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution.

The regime that replaced the Shah—who was also detestable and undemocratic—began exporting Islamic fundamentalism on an unprecedented scale almost overnight. High-profile hostage-takings, bombings, suicide attacks, and assassinations became the norm as the mullahs in Tehran began building their own version of a theocratic state.

In these early stages, Shiite terrorist factions, including militias in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and others were directly formed by the Iranian regime. Without such state sponsorship from Tehran, their clout and influence would have quickly evaporated and they would have vanished. The vicious ideology and proliferative model grew increasingly lethal as its proponents gained access to veritable troves of military, diplomatic, political, and propaganda resources within the sovereign state borders of Iran.

So began the first modern-day “caliphate”—years before al-Qaida’s first attack burned in Yemen, and a full three decades prior to the rise of the Islamic State.

Many assume that Sunni fundamentalism is a unique phenomenon, entirely separate from the dogmas espoused by the Shiite mullahs in Tehran, but the differences are ancillary. In fact, Sunni fundamentalists have found tremendous strength under the political and spiritual umbrella of the Iranian theocracy. Both share the same ideological building blocks: the establishment of a religious state, which implements Sharia by force.

There is considerable evidence that the regime in Tehran has armed and financed Sunni extremists at various times and locations. Not only is Iran a long-standing sponsor of Hamas, but also as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said recently, “ISIS was created by Assad releasing 1,500 prisoners from jail, and Maliki releasing 1,000 people in Iraq who were put together as a force of terror.” Tehran is the known puppet-master of both.

Medieval Christmas Traditions

Renaissance-era, also. From Medievalists.net.

DNC Moves to Sabotage Sanders Campaign

In addition to scheduling the Democratic debate on the Saturday night before Christmas during the exact same time as NFL football, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has used a minor scandal to cripple Sanders' access to voter data. It looks like some lower-level staffers managed to exploit a bug in the DNC's software to look at Clinton's own data, but the Sanders campaign both fired the chief staffer involved and itself reported the violation to the DNC. Meanwhile, as the Sanders' campaign points out, its data was just as available -- and there's no way to know that Clinton's campaign didn't look at their stuff too. In fact, as a betting man, I'd wager heavily that Clinton's campaign absolutely exploited the regular flaws in this software and simply hasn't reported itself for cheating.

All the stops are out on the Clinton Express, though. The DNC is wholly in the tank for her.

Parallels in France

The American Interest considers the National Front:

[T]he National Front represents a deeper challenge for a French right, which now occupies an awkward centrist position.... The possibility of alliance is taboo for Republican leaders, who fear that the mere mention of it would break down the last barrier for voters; even mentioning the possibility publicly has led to the expulsion of party members (including an MP). But if alliance is out, what are the other options? Confronting the FN head on? Co-opt its message to attract its voters (thus running the risk of letting the FN shape the conversation)? Much as U.S. Republicans with Donald Trump, French strategists are at loss.

The National Front is somewhat like UKIP in Britain. Both are nationalist parties in the old sense. They're proud of who they are, and they want to protect their nation and advance its interests, but more than that: they both want to protect their nation's character. They are proud of being French, or they are proud of being English. They want a country that takes that character seriously, protecting or restoring it as necessary.

Their focus on protecting or restoring this national character is what opens them to charges of racism or of xenophobia, but what is going on is less xenophobia than oikophilia, that is, love of home and the things of one's own. Love of home is such a deep, natural part of human beings that of course it is difficult to strategize against. Europe hoped it would be able to transfer the love of home to itself considered broadly, as France had earlier managed to become the emotional center of love-of-home for Gascons as well as Parisians. Great Britain once managed to become the emotional center of home-love for Englishmen as well as many Welshmen or Scots.

What's going on instead is that Europe's demands upon France, or Britain's on England, have begun to work against the interests of home too much for the collective to be thought of as the real home of the heart. In that way, the Scottish National Party is like these parties too in spite of its very different agenda. Because its leftist agenda is more acceptable to the media, it isn't demonized the way that UKIP and the FN are, and because of that it swept the Scottish elections recently. People are willing to associate with it without fear of being called racists or xenophobes.

That fear doesn't last forever, though, and the more because the charge isn't fully fair. There are racists and xenophobes among these nationalists, but there are also among the centralizing parties. The charge is that UKIP or FN are driven by hate, though, whereas racism is accidental when you find it in the Labour party.

In truth, that charge is 180 degrees off of reality. They are driven by love. It is an intense love of home, and the things associated with home, that is driving all these movements. To say that love is hate is not just slander. It becomes an incapacity to see things clearly. Sun Tzu warns that you can never be sure of defeating an enemy you don't understand.

A Price in Blood

I haven't said anything about the Defense Department's decision to open all jobs to women because, as Ranger Up's Nick Palmisciano says, our opinions no longer matter. This is no longer a political question. The decision has been made, and we're going to pay the price in blood for it however high it happens to be. The best thing to do is to support those who have to undertake this mission as well as we can.

Still, we should probably warn young people considering a military career that it just got more dangerous -- especially if they are women.

Army women not only suffer more injuries than men during combat training, but the active-duty female soldiers also are stricken with significantly higher rates of mental health disorders.

The statistics come from a study conducted by the Army surgeon general last summer in conjunction with a bevy of analyses and experiments to judge women’s suitability for direct ground combat roles. It found, for example, that female soldiers suffer depression at more than double the rate of men and that one of the triggers is exposure to combat....

“This is a major scandal in the making,” Mrs. Donnelly said. “Here you have United States Army, with its own medical study pointing to the injury rates at least double compared to men. This is a consistent finding across the board. And they are proceeding anyway. And there is no indication that young women considering military service will be informed of the additional risk they will face over and above what men do. Once you sign up, they are going to be assigned to jobs beyond their strength anywhere the Army wants to send you.”

That it is dangerous isn't a reason not to do it -- the honor comes in large part from the danger. Best of luck.

Two More Problems With the No-Fly List

Problem one: it's almost completely useless for any other purpose, according to Homeland Security. There are only like fifty guys on it who would be affected.

That's not a huge problem, though, because if the President gets the authority he wants, he'll just add everyone's name to it. Hope you didn't like flying very much.

Problem two: If you're a gentle, Santa-like veterinarian from Tennessee whose name is on there wrongfully, the process for clearing your name is both murky and ineffective.

Hackett has never been arrested and never traveled to the Middle East or other centers of terrorist activity, but he found out more than a decade ago he's on the federal watch list because he shares the same name as notorious Irish Republican Army terrorist Patrick Joseph Hackett, who was jailed in the 1970s for planting bombs in Britain.

The difference should be easy to spot. The terrorist is missing an arm and a leg — blown off when a bomb exploded prematurely — while the Knoxville veterinarian has all his limbs intact.

"I don't know how I got on the list, and I don't know how to get off the list," Hackett said.

Since learning he was on the list, Hackett has been denied boarding on planes and even spent time in a foreign jail.

That's not a problem either, though, since protecting your rights and liberty was the old purpose of the American government. The new purpose is progress!

Shame on "Liberals" Who Rationalize Terror

StandPoint magazine, out of the UK, writes:

John Kerry’s liberalism, and the liberalism of millions like him, ignores Chesterton’s warning not to be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

...

Perhaps I am being too kind to Kerry.

It's always a possibility.

The Death of the Arab Spring

What went wrong?

Imagine a Battle of Lexington leading to a War of Independence that went horribly, horribly wrong. That wouldn't be hard if you could conceive of a leadership that decided to "lead from behind". Sohrab Ahmari, writing in the Wall Street Journal, says that when the old order collapsed an Islamism waiting in the wings came out to fill the vacuum left by a distant Barack Obama. "Good Guys" who were without guns found themselves abandoned by Western governments to bloodthirsty Mustache Petes in the cynical belief that it was easier to make a deal with political Islam or dictators than build a region on new democratic principles.

This was for some reason regarded as smart.

Another perspective comes to a similar conclusion:

The Arab Spring, to the extent that the term is not now entirely a misnomer, was understood in its early days as a reiteration of the Prague Spring of 1968. That flowering of Soviet-era constitutional and democratic reform ended up crushed by Kremlin-directed Warsaw Pact tanks, troops and intrigues after a few months. It has taken only a little while longer for the hopes of most of the long-oppressed Arab masses to be broken between the grindstones of authoritarian police-state reaction and Islamist counter-revolutionary terror....

It was perhaps the Arab democrats’ greatest misfortune that their big moment came at a time when it was Obama holding the title that used to be called “the leader of the free world.” Obama’s strategic response to all the revolutionary tumult across the region has been distinguished by colossal hubris, capitulation to the expansionist Khomeinist regime in Tehran, hollow threats and a strange disregard for the growing sense of hopelessness that has descended across the political spectrum in Israel, traditionally the key American ally in the region.