A rather neat trick: further the planned-energy-decline cause and guilt-trip white people with one protest

If you have an array of Facebook friends that is at all ideologically diverse, you may have seen some posts about the Dakota pipeline.

Ronald J. Kozar at The American Thinker brings clarity to what is going on:

On September 17th, the DC Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals halted construction of the Dakota Pipeline following two weeks of protests by Sioux tribes complaining that the pipeline encroached on their lands, joined by myriads of the usual suspects mobilized by means of social media.

Is it possible to turn a spade of dirt anywhere west of the Mississippi without being told you’re desecrating land sacred to Indians?

Is there any land that is not sacred to Indians? Think about the words sacred and desecrate, words that carry a scent of religion, of holiness at risk. Do these Indians really believe in the animist spirits that make every wasteland holy? We palefaces barely blink at paving our forebears' graveyards to build a new Costco. So why should we go full Iron-Eyes-Cody over a desert with Indian bones buried in some corner of it?

But let's put those questions aside. The pipeline hoopla isn't really about Indians. It's really about a certain species of social-media user whose sympathetic clickings turned this story into front-page news.

It's a ragtag group of aging hippies, wine-and-cheese ladies in Volvos, and earnest collegians still smarting from the defeat of Bernie Sanders, still sad over Cecil the Big Fluffy Lion. Someone among them saw an obscure report about Indians and a pipeline and said, hey, now there is an issue for us. Out went the call to arms. To most people, the twitterings that followed were just an annoying distraction. But to President Obama, a tsunami of Facebook posts from the tattoo-and-piercing set is an order from God. Obama heard, and he obeyed. 

The faith that the pipeline's builders reposed in courts, rules, and due process is quaint, even touching, in its civics-class naivete. The builders patiently navigated the labyrinth of procedures specified by our laws, obediently sought permits from all the necessary agencies, met their every demand, plotted the pipeline's route adjacent to existing, established lines, repeatedly consulted the affected tribes, kissed the rings of tribal elders whenever those elders bothered showing up, changed the route 140 times to accommodate tribal whims, installed every safety feature anyone could think of, and, when all this still wasn't enough, got a green light from a judge, appointed by Obama, who weighed the tribes' objections and found them wanting. The builder followed all the rules and, if rules mean anything, earned the right to build the pipeline.

But following rules is so 20th century! Today, that's not the way we roll. Due process, they tell us now, is just a game for suckers. Every poli-sci prof assures us that every agency is corrupt, every legislator on the take. And everyone knows that courts aren't as good as getting at the truth as enraged, internet-driven wikis are. Trayvon and Michael Brown proved that. Right?

So forget votes, laws, and judicial decisions. In our groovy new wikiocracy, what matters is what agitates the people who click on online petitions. And the most avid clickers are sophomores who've been fed environmentalist dogma since before they could toddle. All they care about is that it's a pipeline for oil, that oil is bad, and that stopping it is a swell opportunity to do the civil disobedience stuff they've always read about, a great chance, in the phrase drilled into their heads nonstop, to "make a difference." And, dude, it's been scientifically proven that an increase of one ten-thousandth part of CO2 in the air means the end of the world, so we've just got to stop the pipeline. See?

While the rising generation of Peter Pans fill Facebook with their freakings-out over the awfulness and carbon-ness and whiteness of it all, we grownups have a country to run. It's a country with lots of fridges, cars, and furnaces that all need energy. 

An excellent case study in Alinsky's Rule Number 12: Pick the target, freeze it and personalize it. Mean, square, pinch-faced old heterosexual white guys trampling on Gaia and the ancestors of the continent's only legitimate inhabitants, in the name of making a profit.

Tailor-made for the postmodern post-Americans for whom narratives foisted on them by pop culture are mother's milk:

Mass entertainment culture is now a place where we're sure it's especially possible to engage in politics in a way that truly matters. Increasingly, it's pop stars or celebrities or pro athletes who strike us as having a voice and agency, and the resources to withstand the felt risks of exercising that voice and agency, that we obscure peons lack, even in large numbers. Our traditional political prospects as everyday citizens have left us feeling dispirited, disgusted, and betrayed. Not only do we increasingly feel in our gut like popular entertainment is the last public turf that's actually "ours" — it's also the last place where the superstars still seem to represent who we are.

Because stars, while they may not have taken the time to become experts at anything besides acting or singing, so visibly care about all manner of societal developments.

And so social-media cruisers have their radars attuned to causes the alignment with which allows them to feel good and congratulate themselves on the righteousness of their intentions.

And thus does the notion of tradeoffs and opportunity costs disappear from the post-American consciousness.

Then there's Team BleachBit's orientation toward Israel

 . . . and it's not just Max Blumenthal. Not by a long shot:

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, writing in the Observer*, says that having examined Hillary Clinton’s emails, he is “hard-pressed to find a single note that is sympathetic toward the Jewish state from any of the people she trusted.” He reminds us that Sid Blumenthal, one of Hillary’s most trusted advisers, sent Clinton dozens of anti-Israel articles written by Sid’s rabidly anti-Israel son Max. Hillary responded favorably to them. 

But, says Boteach, “the stream of anti-Israel advice received by Ms. Clinton was much more comprehensive” than just the Blumenthal missives, and “emails between Ms. Clinton and other advisrrs. . .are equally appalling.” According to Boteach, “the negative, poisonous approach Ms. Clinton established demonstrates that a huge segment of her close advisers and confidants were attacking Israel, condemning Prime Minister Netanyahu, and strategizing how to force Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria at all costs.”

Consider long-time Clintonite Sandy Berger:

[In] September 2010 [Berger] sent Ms. Clinton ideas on how to pressure Israel to make concessions for peace. Mr. Berger acknowledged “how fragile Abbas’ political position [is],” and how “Palestinians are in disarray” and that “[f]ailure is a real possibility.” Mr. Berger was well aware, and informed Ms. Clinton, of the very real possibility that Israel would be placing its national security at grave risk in a deal that would very likely fail and lead to a Hamas takeover. But Mr. Berger felt the risks to Israeli lives were worth it. He advised making Mr. Netanyahu feel “uneasy about incurring our displeasure.”. . .

Astoundingly, Mr. Berger seemed to accuse the Jews in America of racism toward Obama. “At a political level, the past year has clearly demonstrated the degree to which the U.S. has been hamstrung by its low ratings in Israel and among important segments of the domestic Jewish constituency,” he writes. “Domestically, he faces a reservoir of skepticism on this issue which reflects many factors, including inexcusable prejudice.”

Now consider Anne Marie Slaughter, Clinton’s director of policy planning from 2009 to 2011:

She wrote Ms. Clinton in September 2010, devising a scheme to encourage wealthy philanthropists to pledge millions to the Palestinians (which no doubt would have been embezzled by Abbas and his cronies, as were other funds). Ms. Slaughter writes, “This may be a crazy idea… Suppose we launched a ‘Pledge for Palestine’ campaign… Such a campaign among billionaires/multimillionaires around the world would reflect a strong vote of confidence in the building of a Palestinian state.”

She adds, “There would also be a certain shaming effect re Israelis, who would be building settlements in the face of a pledge for peace.”

Here’s how Clinton responded to this call for aiding “Palestine” and “shaming Israelis”:  “I am very interested-pls flesh out. Thx.”

Then there is Thomas Pickering, he of the infamous review board that cleared Clinton of culpability regarding Benghazi without even interviewing her:

Pickering wrote Ms. Clinton on December 18, 2011, suggesting a secret plan to stir up major Palestinian protests in an attempt to force the Israeli government into peace negotiations. He stated that the protests “must be all and only women. Why? On the Palestinian side the male culture is to use force.”

Mr. Pickering’s goal was to ignite protests that would engulf the West Bank, “just like Tahrir Square.” He adds that the Palestinian “leadership has shied away from this idea because they can’t control it,” and they are “afraid of being replaced.”. . .

The idea was as dangerous for the Palestinians as it was for Israel. As Mr. Pickering admits, widespread protests could overthrow Abbas’ government, and if Palestinian men joined in, widespread violence would inevitably break out. 

It would obviously be impossible to prevent men from participating in these demonstrations, yet Mr. Pickering felt this extreme risk was worth taking, even if it meant the replacement of Abbas with another Hamas-styled government—even if it meant violence breaking out across the West Bank, leading to a third intifada and the murder of countless Jews. He emphasized the need to hide all U.S. involvement in this plot. Ms. Clinton forwarded the email to Monica Hanley and asked her to “pls print.”

Clandestinely stirring up potentially violent protests in an attempt to force Israel to go against its best interests? Advice like this was par for the course when it came to Ms. Clinton’s advisers.

These emails make it clear that, as Boteach says, key Clinton advisers were looking for ways, including manifestly irresponsible ones, to coerce Israel into making dangerous concessions to the Palestinians in exchange (from all that appears) for nothing.

These folks wouldn’t have sent such ideas to Clinton if they didn’t understand that she was looking for ways to accomplish the same goal.

Just sayin'.

Russian bombing of the Syrian aid convoy: visible to all, but a back-channel message to the Most Equal Comrade

Tom Rogan at NRO on Putin's strategic reasoning:

n Monday, Russian forces bombed a humanitarian convoy in Syria. They destroyed 18 aid trucks and killed 20 civilians. But to understand why the Russians did so, you should first search “Putin pen” on YouTube. Watch the final 45 seconds and you’ll see two central tenets of Putin’s personality: first, his hard-edged sense of humor; second, his cultivation of varying images of himself. Putin wants some to view him as a tough-headed realist. He wants others to see him as a servant of the common man. And most important, he wants his adversaries to believe he is a leader who cannot be deterred from his destiny. 

That cultivation of his image is exactly why Putin bombed this convoy. The Russians are denying that their aircraft were operating above Aleppo during the strike, but they know the U.S. government quickly figured out that they were responsible. After all, every time the Russians or Syrians launch jets, U.S. radar and intelligence assets carefully monitor them, warning U.S. forces of any deliberate Russian or Syrian air strike. The monitoring also provided valuable intelligence on where Russian military attention is focused. Regardless, Putin knows the U.S. employs these capabilities and that we would have been focused on Russia’s heavy air coverage of Aleppo. And that leads to the key takeaway: Putin just doesn’t care that he’s been caught. On the contrary, his strategy is actually served by his lack of concern.

The main message from Putin is that Assad is going to stay in power in Syria:

In destroying the humanitarian convoy, Putin has simply reinforced his longstanding message to the West. In many ways, it is pitch-perfect. An aid convoy is not off-limits, Putin is telling President Obama — which means that we should expect worse to come. In other words, unless the United States accepts keeping Bashar al-Assad in power, Putin will continue to burn Syria. And Assad — totally undeterred by the pathetic weakness of U.S. deterrent power — revels in this longstanding slaughter strategy. Russia might hint that this attack is retaliation for the accidental U.S. bombing of Syrian soldiers, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was pure Putin: deliberate and brutal application of force in the service of a long-term strategy. 

Russia is publicly denying responsibility. We shall see if post-America will work to see that the world knows the truth. Don't hold your breath.

Filling the vacuum in a post-American world

About those "constraints" that, according to the Most Equal Comrade, the world's powerful nations need to be willing to accept . . . Russia and China say, "We're going to take a pass on those":

Large-scale war games in the South China Sea by Chinese and Russian naval forces included practice for taking over islands in the disputed waters and appear part of efforts by both states to counter the U.S. pivot to Asia.

The exercises began Sept. 13 and concluded Monday. Dubbed Joint Sea-2016, the Chinese and Russian naval maneuvers involved the use of both warships, aircraft and marines in practice combat operations – a clear sign Beijing continues gearing up for a future military conflict with the United States over China’s expansive maritime territorial claims.

It was the largest joint exercises since the two navies began holding the war games and the first in the contested South China Sea. Chinese military officials described the war games as “a strategic measure” aimed at increasing military and especially naval cooperation.

State-run Chinese and Russian news reports provided a glimpse into some of the operations that took place in three phases, the largest of which involved naval live fire drills, and anti-submarine warfare and air defense maneuvers. Details of the island-seizure practice were omitted in state-controlled media reports from both countries.
A total of 13 warships took part, including guided-missile destroyers, frigates, landing ships, supply ships and significantly – two submarines. The two Chinese submarines were not identified by type but were used in anti-submarine exercises.

Aircraft included 11 Chinese fixed-wing warplanes and eight helicopters. A total of 160 Chinese marines also participated.

Russia dispatched three warships, two supply vessels, two helicopters and 96 marines, along with armored amphibious tanks.

The war games took place not far from the disputed Paracels claimed by China, Vietnam and others.

So this is what becomes of the international waters of the South China Sea when post-America  opts out of its leadership role.

The Most Equal Comrade uses final UN address to once again diss the country he rules over

True to form, the MEC uses a podium in front of a global audience to once again point up what he sees as post-America's shortcomings:

1. In America, there's too much money in politics.
2. There's also too much "entrenched partisanship."
3. Too few Americans are civically engaged.
4. A "patchwork of laws" in America set out to make it hard for Americans to vote.
5. Considering our founding ideals, America has made “our share of mistakes over these last 25 years.” 
6. The only way the world will become more secure is for powerful nations like America to “accept constraints.”
7. For believing that all countries must adhere to certain "international norms," many Americans criticize Obama.
8. Too many in Washington believe all of the problems in the world can be solved by Washington.
9. As president, he's helped "curb" America’s “excesses of capitalism.”
10. America has “undermined unions,” which has destroyed manufacturing jobs. 
11. In calling for greater respect and tolerance, Obama also likened racial discrimination in the U.S. to ethnic discrimination in Burundi and and religious discrimination in Burma. 

The Great Leveling Project - the Most Equal Comrade's overarching life mission. Making sure no one thinks of the United States of America as a worthy and needed moral, economic and military leader.

Worst president ever. Worse than Carter, Jackson or Buchanan. At least each of them had some kind of love of America, however peculiar.

A travesty from a purist standpoint, but apparently quite tasty

LITD readers may know that I host a Saturday-morning food-focused talk show on a local radio station in the small city where I live. I have a lineup of regular segments -  a recipe of the week, an herb of the week, Food History Corner - and sometimes I have guests.

When so motivated, I do get on a soapbox about issues at the intersection of food and culture. In fact, I believe it was on the very first show, twenty years ago, that I read what at the time was a recently published essay from the print edition of Newsweek's back-of-the-book "My Turn" column. The essay was called "Whose Food Is It Anyway?" and decried the hybridization of items from various cuisines. Think Korean tacos. Or reuben egg rolls.

Or Hawaiian pizza.

In fact, pizza has continued to be an emblem of our culture's tendency to take everything over the top.

So it was with particular interest that I came across Allahpundit's  Hot Air piece on grilled-cheese-stuffed crust pizza that Pizza Hut is offering. He says that, within the context of a fearlessly jumbled foodstuff completely unmoored from any roots in the medieval pies of Naples, it's quite a taste treat.

But for sheer candor about the immediate pleasures of meaningless consumption (with none of the crude millennial touches one finds at sites like Foodbeast), check out the concluding paragraph:

. . . granted, a proper grilled cheese would be made with American cheese and actually grilled, but we burned the pizza authenticity bridge the moment we started screwing around with stuffed crusts years ago. Complaining about the authenticity of stunt pizza is like going to the Olive Garden and complaining that the chef isn’t actually Italian. You’re missing the point. You’re not there for authentic Italian, you’re there to find out whether they really will keep refreshing your breadstick basket after you’ve cleared it eight times. The question any Frankenfood connoisseur must ask himself is only this: Is this dish truly worthy of a little extra closure to my aorta? The answer in this case is obvious.

Yes, there's a touch of capitulation in his viewpoint, but it forces us to look at the degree to which we may concur.

I think I'll be discussing this on Stirring Something Up this coming weekend.

Why jihad will continue to eat us alive

Some of the more pathetic reactions to this weekend's jihadist attacks:

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton:

That word, "tolerance," may not mean what Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton thinks it does. The Democrat responded over the weekend to a stabbing attack which left nine people injured at a mall in St. Cloud. From WCCO:

Authorities say the suspect, who has yet to be identified, attacked several shoppers at the Crossroads Center mall on Saturday night. Police say he mentioned Allah and asked at least one victim if they were Muslim.

“If true that [the stabbings] were motivated by religious bigotry, I condemn them even more strongly,” the governor said in a press release Sunday.

Dayton attempts to group this attack with other forms of "religious bigotry." To his mind, this stabbing proves no different than any harassment which Somali Muslims have suffered at the hands of Minnesota natives. Muslim students have occasionally been bullied at school. These people were stabbed. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

The governor is asking the Minnesota community to embrace tolerance.

“I ask everyone in the St. Cloud area and throughout Minnesota to rise above this atrocity and act to make religious and racial tolerance one of the ways in which Minnesotans again lead our country,” Dayton said.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest says that "in some ways this is actually just a war of narratives" and so post-Americans need to quite linking terrorism and Islam.

NYC mayor Bill DeBlasio demonstrated why he makes the big bucks when he concluded that the attack in his city was "an intentional act."

And how about that Chris Hayes of MSNBC? Tweets that we were "very very lucky that the attackers tried to use explosives rather than guns."

This argument comes closer to convincing me than any so far, but still comes up ever-so-short

Georgetown political theory professor Joshua Mitchell sure puts forth a compelling case for Squirrel-Hair as an overall positive historical figure. Before I get into my problems with it, let's give him the floor and you'll see what I mean:

if he had been just a one-off, surely the Republican Party would have been able to contain him, even co-opt him for its own purposes. After all, doesn’t the party decide? The Republican Party is not a one, however, it is a many. William F. Buckley Jr. and others invented the cultural conservatism portion of the party in the 1950s, with the turn to the traditionalism of Edmund Burke; the other big portion of the party adheres to the free-market conservatism of Friedrich Hayek. The third leg of the Republican Party stool, added during the Reagan years, includes evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics of the sort who were still unsure of the implications of Vatican II. To Burke and Hayek, then, add the names John Calvin and Aristotle/Thomas Aquinas. Anyone who really reads these figures knows that the tension between them is palpable. For a time, the three GOP factions were able to form an alliance against Communism abroad and against Progressivism at home. But after the Cold War ended, Communism withered and the culture wars were lost, there has been very little to keep the partnership together. And if it hadn’t been Trump, sooner or later someone else was going to come along and reveal the Republican Party’s inner fault lines. Trump alone might have been the catalyst, but the different factions of the GOP who quickly split over him were more than happy to oblige.

There is another reason why the Republican Party could not contain Trump, a perhaps deeper reason. Michael Oakeshott, an under-read political thinker in the mid-20th century, remarked in his exquisite essay, “Rationalism in Politics,” that one of the more pathological notions of our age is that political life can be understood in terms of “principles” that must be applied to circumstances. Politics-as-engineering, if you will. Republicans themselves succumbed to this notion, and members of the rank and file have noticed. Republicans stood for “the principles of the constitution,” for “the principles of the free market,” etc. The problem with standing for principles is that it allows you to remain unsullied by the political fray, to stand back and wait until yet another presidential election cycle when “our principles” can perhaps be applied. And if we lose, it’s OK, because we still have “our principles.” What Trump has been able to seize upon is growing dissatisfaction with this endless deferral, the sociological arrangement for which looks like comfortable Inside-the-Beltway Republicans defending “principles” and rank-and-file Republicans far from Washington-Babylon watching in horror and disgust.

Any number of commentators (and prominent Republican Party members) have said that Trump is an anti-ideas candidate. If we are serious about understanding our political moment, we have to be very clear about what this can mean. It can mean Trump’s administration will involve the-politics-of-will, so to speak; that the only thing that will matter in government will be what Trump demands. Or, it can mean that Trump is not a candidate who believes in “principles” at all. This is probably the more accurate usage. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he is unprincipled; it means rather that he doesn’t believe that yet another policy paper based on conservative “principles” is going to save either America or the Republican Party. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville was clear that the spirit of democracy is not made possible by great ideas (and certainly not by policy papers), but rather by practical, hands-on experience with self-governance. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s mystical musings in his essay, “Experience,” corroborate this. American democracy will not be rejuvenated by yet another policy paper from the Inside-the-Beltway gang. What I am not saying here is that Trump has the wisdom of an Oakeshott, a Tocqueville or an Emerson. What I am saying is that Trump is that quintessentially American figure, hated by intellectuals on both sides of the aisle and on the other side of the Atlantic, who doesn’t start with a “plan,” but rather gets himself in the thick of things and then moves outward to a workable idea—not a “principled” one—that can address the problem at hand, but which goes no further. That’s what American businessmen and women do. (And, if popular culture is a reliable guide to America, it is what Han Solo always does in Star Wars movies.) We would do well not to forget that the only school of philosophy developed in America has been Pragmatism. This second meaning of being an anti-ideas candidate is consonant with it.

If, as some have said, Trump’s only idea is, “I can solve it,” then we are in real trouble. The difficulty, of course, is that in this new, Trumpean moment when politics is unabashed rhetoric, it is very difficult to discern the direction a Trump administration will take us. Will he be the tyrant some fear, or the pragmatist that is needed?

It’s not unreasonable to think the latter. This is because, against the backdrop of post-1989 ideas, the Trump campaign does indeed have a nascent coherence. “Globalization” and “identity politics” are a remarkable configuration of ideas, which have sustained America, and much of the rest of the world, since 1989. With a historical eye—dating back to the formal acceptance of the state-system with the treaty of Westphalia in 1648—we see what is so remarkable about this configuration: It presumes that sovereignty rests not with the state, but with supra-national organizations—NAFTA, WTO, the U.N., the EU, the IMF, etc.—and with subnational sovereign sites that we name with the term “identity.” So inscribed in our post-1989 vernacular is the idea of “identity” that we can scarcely imagine ourselves without reference to our racial, gender, ethnic, national, religious and/or tribal “identity.” Once, we aspired to be citizens who abided by the rule of law prescribed within a territory; now we have sovereign “identities,” and wander aimlessly in a world without borders, with our gadgets in hand to distract us, and our polemics in mind to repudiate the disbelievers.

Actually, we've seen aspects of this case argued before. Roger L. Simon at PJ Media has been putting forth the Trump-is-a-man-of-action-and-that-appeals-to-the-go-getterism-intrinsic-to-the-American-character argument for the better part of a year. A number of people - some savory, some not (think the despicable Laura Ingraham) - have focused on the undeniably real global elite and its erosion of the concept of the nation-state. Of course, the seething antipathy toward political correctness and identity politics that excites Trump fans (and perhaps most notably his black fans, such as Sheriff Clarke, Lloyd Marcus, Herman Cain, and Dr. Carson) has been front and center in his rise.

But, damn it, I've just about had my fill of this denigration of principles that have informed the conservative movement for over 60 years, whether such denigration is presented with attempted subtlety and objectivity, as it is here and in the monologues of Rush Limbaugh, or with flecks of spittle, as it is in the rantings of the aforementioned Ingraham or the all-caps exhortations of the comment threads around the Internet.

And, as Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, foremost among those principles is the cultivation of character and its evidence in a public figure's demeanor.

Every one of the "objective analysts," outright apologists, and slavish devotees has to look squarely, and publicly address, Trump's narcissism, as evidenced by the way he put on a show of reluctance about deciding to run because his "businesses were doing so fantastically," his pettiness as evidenced by his constant Twitter wars, his shallow understanding of matters of the spirit, as evidenced by the what he had to say about Easter when asked this spring, or his inherent hedonism, as evidenced by his  remark about Jeffrey Epstein, or his remark about how everything's okay "as long as you have a beautiful piece of ass beside you."

How have we fallen so far that those of obviously impeccable erudition are willing to overlook the matters enumerated in the previous paragraph?

No, Mitchell gets about a 93, but if 100 is the score necessary to get me to say I will definitely vote for Squirrel-Hair, he has come up short.

For the Clinton machine, it's all about the gravy

After the travel expenses and the glitz, it seems there's not much left over for do-gooder-ism:

The Clinton Foundation spent less than 6 percent of its budget on charitable grants in 2014, according to documents the organization filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2015.

During the 2014 tax year, the tax-exempt foundation spent a total of $91.2 million, but less than $5.2 million of that money, or 5.7 percent, was granted to charitable organizations, the group’s tax filings show. The Clinton Foundation raised nearly $178 million in 2014. The organization’s charitable grants also declined significantly when compared to its donations in 2013. Compared to its 2013 charitable grants of $8.8 million, the Clinton Foundation’s grants in 2014 declined by more than 40 percent, even as its revenue over the same period increased by 20 percent. According to the tax filings, the Clinton Foundation is currently sitting on $354 million in assets, including $125 million in cash or cash equivalents and $108 million in property or equipment.

The tax records, which were filed with the IRS in November of 2015, show that the Clinton Foundation spent far more on overhead expenses like travel ($7.9 million) than it did on charitable grants in 2014. The group also spent more on rent and office supplies (a total of $6.6 million) than it did on charitable grants. The Clinton Foundation’s IRS forms show that even its depreciation expense ($5.3 million) — an accounting classification that takes into account the wear and tear of an organization’s assets — exceeded the tax-exempt organization’s charitable grant outlays.

Have this at the ready when you encounter anyone from the dwindling band of dyed-in-the-wool Madame BleachBit devotees this fall.

Now the campus jackboots want to regulate your facial muscles

Seriously.

What you express with your face is now the purview of the jackboots. Clark University had already served noticed to its cattle-masses students that asking a black guy if he plays basketball or asking an Asian person to help with math homework was not okay.

Now it's a face that registers surprise:

But Clark has entered new territory by expanding the category of forbidden aggressions to include thought crimes: “Showing surprise when a ‘feminine’ woman says she is a lesbian” is, according to Clark, an aggressive act.

And, of course, the jackboots will be in charge of defining the terms "feminine" and "surprise."

Of course, all this poison is based on the infantile notion that one has a right to not encounter particular reactions to what one does or proclaims about oneself. In other words, you should never be in a position where you might take offense at something someone says about you -- or even expresses with his or her freakin' face.

Because your feelings reign supreme.

Just ask Sally Kohn, who in a debate about this subject at the University of Missouri, asserted this explicitly, trotting out the "privilege" card - proclaiming that non-white demographic groups are too delicate to hear arguments based on reason:

Speech that seems harmless to middle or upper-class whites, she said, could be deeply threatening to poor and non-white communities. If somebody claims to feel certain speech is unsafe, Kohn said, they should be believed.

“Feelings are valid,” she said, according to Stroup. “I’m never going to argue with people’s feelings.” 

Yeah, you are, Sally. I'll bet you a dollar to a doughnut you're on board with the Clark U. prohibition against registering surprise with your face

The glaringly implicit proviso in the military-aid package for Israel

Yes, it looks like the Most Equal Comrade swallowed hard and looked past his personal animosity toward Benjamin Netanyahu, but there's more to the picture:

. . . before we applaud the Obama administration for helping to strengthen Israeli security, we must first look at the president’s key caveat. 

“It is because of this same commitment to Israel and its long-term security that we will also continue to press for a two-state solution to the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian conflict, despite the deeply troubling trends on the ground that undermine this goal,” Mr. Obama said. “As I have emphasized previously, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.”

While National Security Advisor Susan Rice insists the aid deal is separate from the issue of a two-state solution, others consider Obama’s statement a not-so-subtle message. Aaron David Miller, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Obama’s remarks prove he needs to “justify” the White House’s assistance to Israel. 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict stretches back years and has been one of the many sources of contention between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The other disagreement, of course, is the nuclear deal, which Netanyahu warned would pave Iran’s path to a nuclear deal. He even made his case directly to Congress last year. Obama ignored him and now the administration is admitting the deal may indeed have boosted Iran’s confidence in harassing the U.S.

Materially, it's a good thing for one of post-America's five best allies. (Who are the other four? What a great parlor game! I'll get it started: the UK, Japan, Australia, Poland. Other contenders: Canada, South Korea, Italy, Taiwan.) But the West-Hater pressure to legitimize the Palestinian Authority is clearly still there.

To say that Squirrel-Hair is no conservative is to utter an understatement of vast proportions

It will be interesting to see if Rush calls this one a "political home run."

I'd like to bring two pieces on S-H's proposal to expand Medicaid to your attention.

Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner:

Appearing on "The Dr. Oz Show," Trump said that if Obamacare were repealed, there would be a "fairly large" percentage of people who would still fall through the cracks and couldn't afford private health insurance. For those people, he said, "We have to go and we have to help them through the Medicaid system."

That's the same Medicaid system that was created as part of President Johnson's "Great Society," that was expanded by Obamacare, that has been crippling state and federal budgets, and that has been failing patients with limited choices of doctors and poor medical outcomes.

Of all government healthcare programs (save the Veterans Health Administration), Medicaid comes the closest to a single-payer, or socialized, system.

Again, Trump tried to touch up his statement with free-market rhetoric about instilling more competition by getting rid of state-based insurance monopolies. "Every state has a line wrapped around it," he said.

It's true that before Obamacare came about, a number of free-market proposals called for removing the restrictions on insurance carriers selling policies across state lines.

The purpose of this was to get around the onerous local benefit mandates (such as requiring that every plan in a state covered acupuncture) that could make insurance cost double in one state what it cost in neighboring states.
But the actual plan Trump released includes an important caveat — that insurers could offer plans in any state, "as long as the plan purchased complies with state requirements."

In other words, all plans would still have to meet local mandates, thus defeating the whole purpose of a proposal to get rid of state barriers — and giving no reason to believe he'd actually be ushering in more competition or driving down prices. 

Klein then puts this move in the context of the broader picture: S-H's enthusiasm for the minimum wage, his hands-off position regarding any serious reform of Social Security and Medicare, and his Most-Equal-Comrade-esque preoccupation with the infrastructure.

Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire points out that Medicaid is already huge and economically teetering:

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans opposed expanding Medicaid. As of 2013, Medicaid already covered nearly 60 million Americans and cost the feds $265 billion and the states another $192 billion. As Chris Jacobs of Conservative Review has written, “Both Medicaid’s size—currently 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, and growing—and its structure present fiscal difficulties.” Some studies show that Medicaid patients have worse outcomes than people without insurance altogether, Jacobs writes.

Shapiro further points out that S-H is overtly moving left because he knows his "conservative" shills will make excuses for him.

Bots, behold what you have wrought.

The hollow soul of the Freedom-Hater party

Kimberley Strassel at the WSJ on the latest hacked Democrat emails and the cronyism and rank cynicism they make plain:

The latest hack of the DNC—courtesy of WikiLeaks via Guccifer 2.0—shows that Mrs. Clinton wasn’t alone in steering favors to big donors. Among the documents leaked is one that lists the party’s largest fundraisers/donors as of 2008. Of the top 57 cash cows 18 ended up with ambassadorships. The largest fundraiser listed, Matthew Barzun, who drummed up $3.5 million for Mr. Obama’s first campaign, was named ambassador to Sweden and then ambassador to the United Kingdom. The second-largest, Julius Genachowski, was named the head of the Federal Communications Commission. The third largest, Frank Sanchez, was named undersecretary of commerce. 

Keep in mind what an earlier leak revealed: a May 18, 2016, email from an outside lawyer to DNC staffers in which the attorney suggests a call to “go over our process for handling donations from donors who have given us pay to play letters.” Add this to what the Clinton and Abedin emails have shown to be a massive pay-to-play operation at the Clinton Foundation, in which megadonors like the crown prince of Bahrain got special access to the secretary of state. 

And there are also all those Clinton speeches, for which they were paid millions. News comes this week that despite the Clintons’ promises to distance themselves from their foundation, they will first be holding what sounds like one last fire sale on future presidential access: a belated birthday bash for Bill Clinton, with a glitzy party at the Rainbow Room in Manhattan. A donation of $250,000 gets you listed as “chair” of the party, while “co-chair” costs $100,000. Foundation officials are refusing to say who has donated, or how much.

So which political party is all about money, influence and special access? The Republican Party held a true, democratic primary. Seventeen candidates battled it out, and the voters choose a nominee that much of the party establishment disliked. 

Leaked emails show that the Democratic Party hierarchy retreated to a backroom to anoint Hillary Clinton and then exercised its considerable power to subvert the primary process and kill off the Bernie Sanders campaign. In one email, Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall suggested sliming Mr. Sanders on religion: “Can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.” How’s that for deplorable?

Perhaps most revealing are Mr. Powell’s emails, which show, undisguised, how Clinton supporters think. Specifically, the emails demonstrate that this crowd recognizes the Clintons as a menace—and yet they are willing to excuse away anything. “I would rather not have to vote for her,” Mr. Powell wrote to a friend. “A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still [sleeping with] bimbos at home.” 

Unpack that. Mr. Powell is saying that Hillary is old; that she is a scandal factory; that she will cut any corner to win and do anything for a buck; that she won’t help the country; and that her husband remains a liability. And yet other emails suggest Mr. Powell nonetheless was (is?) debating giving her a boost with a well-timed endorsement in the fall. 

This is the modern Democratic Party. The more it has struggled to sell its ideas to the public, the more it has turned to rigging the system to its political benefit. Don’t take Republicans’ word for it. Just read the emails.

Post-America, take a long, unflinching look at what this is.

The failure of yet another of Secretary Global-Test's "agreements"

The latest accord attempting to calm the situation is Syria is not going well:

US President Barack Obama will huddle with top national security aides -- including his secretaries of state and defense -- Friday, amid deep unease over a tenuous Syria ceasefire deal.

Barely a week since the United States and Russia agreed to halt bombing and let humanitarian aid into Aleppo, shaky implementation looks set to dominate a meeting ostensibly about countering the Islamic State group.

The deal has somewhat quieted the bombs over Syria's second city, but aid convoys have not been allowed to reach the roughly 250,000 civilians besieged by government forces.

Washington and Moscow are already trading blame over who is responsible.

"Right now, the trucks that could bring them lifesaving assistance are idling on the wrong side of the border," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday.

"That's the direct responsibility of the Assad regime and their benefactors in Moscow."

A Russian military spokesman earlier slammed the United States for what he called "rhetorical fog" intended "to hide the fact that it is not fulfilling its part of the obligations."

Only the Syrian army is observing the ceasefire, he said, pointing the finger at US-backed rebel groups.

Since US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed the deal with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov after marathon talks in Geneva, Obama has increasingly been forced to referee disputes within his own administration about the agreement.

Some within the Pentagon have expressed deep skepticism that Russia will live up to its side of the bargain and believe Kerry is being led down an alley.

Russia, critics say, has repeatedly used talks to blunt criticism of its support of Assad, sow doubt among US allies on the ground and buy time for Syrian forces to improve their position.

The post-American State Department is utterly worthless.

Former Benghazi station chief: hell, yeah, Madame BleachBit is a liar and criminal

In both Congressional testimony and remarks on Fox News, he makes clear that the Freedom-Haters'  candidate for dictator of post-America president is telling a big falsehood about the jihadist attack on 9/11/12:

Hicks, a 25-year Foreign Service Office and former chief of station in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack, gave riveting and damning testimony before Congress on Hillary’s lies and criminal negligence in the matter. The last man to speak to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, he has exposed the video lie, documented how he told Hillary’s State Department what was happening in real time that fateful night, and how her State Department ignored warnings from Stevens and others about the gathering terrorist storm and the woeful lack of security.

Now retired, private citizen Hicks goes farther, telling Fox News that Hillary Clinton broke laws while condemning four Americans to death at the hands of terrorists:

Just as the Constitution makes national security the President’s highest priority, U.S. law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement policies and programs "to provide for the security… of all United States personnel on official duty abroad.”
This includes not only the State Department employees, but also the CIA officers in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Benghazi record is clear: Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S. government personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.
The Benghazi Committee’s report graphically illustrates the magnitude of her failure. It states that during August 2012, the State Department reduced the number of U.S. security personnel assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli from 34 (1.5 security officers per diplomat) to 6 (1 security officer per 4.5 diplomats), despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation in both Tripoli and Benghazi. Thus, according to the Report, “there were no surplus security agents” to travel to Benghazi with Amb. Stevens “without leaving the Embassy in Tripoli at severe risk.”
Had Ambassador Stevens’ July 2012 request for 13 additional American security personnel (either military or State Department) been approved rather than rejected by Clinton appointee Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy, they would have traveled to Benghazi with the ambassador, and the Sept. 11 attack might have been thwarted.

Hicks also addressed the claim by Hillary that security at Benghazi was not her responsibility and that she had delegated that task to “experts”:

U.S. law also requires the secretary of state to ensure that all U.S. government personnel assigned to a diplomatic post abroad be located at one site. If not, the secretary -- and only the secretary -- with the concurrence of the agency head whose personnel will be located at a different location, must issue a waiver. The law, which states specifically that the waiver decision cannot be delegated, was passed after the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, when deficient security was blamed for that debacle under Bill Clinton's presidency.
When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept. 11, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility. Initially, she said that she never read any of the reporting on security conditions or any of the requests for additional security, claiming that “she delegated security to the professionals.” More recently, she stated that “[I]t was not my ball to carry.” But the law says otherwise. Sound familiar?

It was Hillary’s responsibility to guarantee the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad, a responsibility that cannot be delegated. She failed miserably on both counts and has lied about it ever since. Hillary Clinton that night knew that the video in question had nothing to do with Benghazi. Gregory Hicks told the truth before Congress and was rewarded with a demotion:

We have the testimony of Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya and a foreign service officer for 22 years. He was demoted to desk officer for telling the truth that those in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack from the "get-go," that there was no "protest" or mention of one from anyone on the ground, and that the infamous YouTube video was "a non-event" in Libya

Yet that is what she told the Benghazi parents on the tarmac. Hillary and her State Department has warning, including from Ambassador Stevens himself, that Benghazi was an insecure trap in the face of a growing terrorist threat.

It was widely known prior to 9/11/12 that the Libyan city of Benghazi was a city in which a jihadist attack was waiting to happen. The post-American Secretary of State at the time had some other kind of other weird priorities besides keeping those at the diplomatic and CIA compounds safe.

You knew Squirrel-Hair would waste no time going all protectionist on Ford

Yeah, a 35 percent tariff. That will bring down the price of the car and keep Ford jobs in post-America:

Today Ford announced that it is moving all of it’s small car production to Mexico and Trump doesn’t like it one bit.

Here’s the announcement by Ford:

DETROIT FREE PRESS – Ford plans to eventually shift all North American small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico, CEO Mark Fields told investors Tuesday, even though the company’s production investments in Mexico have become a lightning rod for controversy in the presidential election.

“Over the next two to three years, we will have migrated all of our small-car production to Mexico and out of the United States,” Fields said at a daylong investor conference in Dearborn.

Squirrel-Hair "can't believe their brazenness."

Why the hell do you think they are doing it, you economic genius?

I know Trump has said this before, but the fact that he’s declaring it again on the day Ford announces they are moving small car production to Mexico is troubling. He just doesn’t get it.
Companies move jobs to other countries because doing business here is too expensive. What he should be saying is that he will work hard to make America more competitive with other countries so that companies like Ford can move their operations back.
But no, just like an angry dictator, Trump wants to punish them for doing something he doesn’t agree with.

---

UPDATE: Trump just called Ford a ‘disgrace’ for making the move and said it’s also disgraceful that politicians allow companies like Ford to get away with it! 

Memo to Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow: You're wasting your time trying to advise this clown.