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links

Townhall: America, Meet Your Political Process

Ah, the Most Interesting Election Year just became more interesting yet. Click on over to Townhall, then come back here for a little R & R (Research and References).

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Today

9/11

September 11 marks several dates in the history of the clash between the West and the Islamic East:

• In 1526, the Ottoman army occupied Buda after the crushing Hungarian defeat in the Battle of Mohács.

• In 1565, Ottoman forces retreated from Malta, ending the Great Siege of Malta.

• In 1609, an expulsion order announced against the Moriscos of Valencia began the expulsion of all Spain’s Moors.

• In 2001, Muslim jihadists associated with Al Qaida hijacked two airliners flying out of Boston, Massachusetts, one out of Newark, N.J., and another out of Washington’s Dulles airport, and comandeered two of those jets into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon near the nation’s capital. The fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania — making this flight, United 93, the only one of the terrorist attacks that day prevented from achieving its target, the agency of the prevention being the united efforts of civilians on the flight.

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video

Video: To Go Boldly

Well, this is something completely different:

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Today

Rin Tin Tin

September 10, 1918, is the estimated date of birth for Rin Tin Tin, one of a litter of shell-shocked puppies found by an American serviceman in a bombed-out kennel in Lorraine, less than two months before the end of World War I. The dog went on to become the lead actor in a number of very popular films, and one of the great celebrities of his age.

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Thought

Proverbs 26: 11

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Serving the Voters

Who will choose the next president of these United States?

Voters? A private non-profit organization? The media? The Electoral College? The U.S. House of Representatives?

Russian hackers?

No joke, that last. Beyond the suspected Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, the FBI warned last week that hackers, likely Russian, had broken into the online election systems of Arizona and Illinois.

Earlier this week, and months ago, I floated the possibility that Libertarian Gary Johnson could win New Mexico, where he served two terms as governor. Currently polling at 25 percent, a New Mexico win might prevent any candidate from obtaining an electoral majority, throwing the election into the House of Representatives.

Not likely. But possible. After all, by the Constitution, what actually determines who will be president is the Electoral College. Its elected electors vote in December. And, as attorneys David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman remind us in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, those electors can vote their conscience.

But first, voters must decide. Vote their consciences, based on good information not predigested by the press and the insider class.*

Which means people need to hear from each candidate who can be elected president. The partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has no right to narrow our choices by holding a closed debate.

A series of polls before voters have even evaluated their choices ought not pre-determine the election.

Tell the Commission on Presidential Debates (202-872-1020) to open the debates to all viable candidates.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*The media made a mountain out of Gov. Johnson’s gaffe yesterday morning, not knowing immediately what MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle was asking concerning “Aleppo.” Johnson seemed to think it an acronym for some government agency, instead of a besieged Syrian metropolis. But consider it a sign the media is paying attention. Meanwhile, Green Party nominee Jill Stein became the first candidate charged with a crime — vandalism — for spray painting “I approve this message” on a bulldozer used to build a pipeline.


Printable PDF

debates, presidential, Gary Johnson, phone number, Commission on Presidential Debates, illustration

 

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Today

Leo Tolstoy

On September 9, 1828, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born. Known best as Leo Tolstoy, he became the celebrated author of the novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace, as well as the novellas and short stories entitled “Family Happiness,” “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” and “The Kreutzer Sonata.” His political and religious ideas heavily influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tolstoy died in 1910.

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Thought

David Stockman

[T]he only consistent way forward for America at this late stage of the game is a return to free markets, fiscal rectitude, sound money, constitutional liberty, non-intervention abroad, minimalist government at home and decentralized political rule. Unfortunately, that is not about to happen anytime soon — even if by some miracle Donald Trump is elected President. But . . . the tide is turning against the failed Wall Street/Washington bipartisan consensus. I call this insurrection the ‘revolt of the rubes’ in Flyover America.

This uprising against the rule of the financial and political elites has counterparts abroad among those who voted for Brexit in the UK, against Merkel in the recent German elections in her home state, and among the growing tide of anti-Brussels sentiment reflected in polls throughout the EC.

Needless to say, the political upheaval now underway is largely an inchoate reaction to the policy failures and arrogant pretensions of the establishment rulers. Like Donald Trump himself, it does not reflect a coherent programmatic alternative.

But my contention is that liberation from our current ruinous policy regime has to start somewhere — and that’s why the Trump candidacy is so important. He represents a raw insurgency of attack, derision, impertinence, and repudiation.

If that leads to throwing out the beltway careerists, pettifoggers, hypocrites, ideologues, racketeers, power seekers and snobs who have brought about the current ruin then at least the decks will be cleared.


David Stockman, “It Won’t Be Long Now — The End Game of Central Banking Is Nigh,” 2016/09/08. Image: detail of his forthcoming book.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

Give or Take a Million

“Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party has been beaten into third place by an anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party in elections in a north-eastern German state,” a BBC story headlines in bold type.

Indeed, Chancellor Merkel’s own constituency is abandoning her. Why? She invited in over 1.1 million refugees (and migrating pseudo-refugees) following the collapse of Syria.

This mass migration resulted in serious problems, including an apparent skyrocketing in rapes by migrants (old and new), most if not all Muslim men.

Which a “populist, Eurosceptic party” called Alternative for Germany (the AfD) has capitalized on, as has the more radical National Democratic Party. An AfD spokesman told the BBC, recently, “It’s very difficult to integrate Muslims.”

But how hard is it, really, for Muslims to assimilate? In Europe, and even England, it seems a disaster. In America, these United States, it has been much better.

Why?

American Muslims generally work. If you are employed, you have less time to plot terrorism, or otherwise raise a ruckus. And, moreover, less reason: you have hope.

Vertrag macht frei.* Truly.

Europe’s “more generous”-than-America’s state aid system is therefore problematic.

But it gets worse. The European Union’s movers and shakers welcomed migrants to increase the population of the young — recognizing that African and Asian Muslims procreate at much higher rates than do European whites. Why is this desirable?

To shore up an unstable system, for all social security systems depend upon population growth.

Immigration is right now popularly seen as a peril. But it is Germany’s and others’ welfare states that make it a peril, and that spurred the immigration initially.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A play on a more alarming (and misleading, to say the least) Third Reich motto. One assimilates by contract, not state aid. (And certainly not by state aid’s extreme opposite, forced “arbeit,” or work.)


Printable PDF

Muslim, immigrants, assimilation, welfare state, U.S., Illustration

 

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Today

Statute of Kalisz

On September 8, 1264, Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland, promulgated the Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din jurisdiction over Jewish matters.

On the same date in 1883, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final “golden spike” completing the Northern Pacific Railway in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana.