Archive for the ‘Always look at the bright side of Trump’ Category

Saw a tweet by old friend Erick Erickson that jumped out at me

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Nothing is more inconvenient for leftists on television that a person who critiques Donald Trump regularly but still intends to vote for him.


A close second are regular attacks on jews in NY by Blacks who do not support Donald Trump in any way shape or form

The fact that black people are responsible for this “dramatic increase” cannot be denied, but as Ace of Spades points out, the media keep trying to blame Trump for these crimes committed in Democrat-controlled cities by people who certainly don’t seem like MAGA-hat types.

Consider this “argument” by Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast:

“New York is reeling from a wave of anti-Semitic attacks, and speaking as a Jewish parent who lives in Brooklyn, I can tell you that it’s terrifying.
It is also confusing. The vast majority of anti-Semitic attacks in this country are carried out by right-wing white supremacists. But most of the recent New York-area attacks have been carried out by people of color expressing very different grievances, or none at all. So is this the same phenomenon, or a different one? Hate, yes, but what kind of hate?
The answer is not simple. The recent street violence and acts of terror are based, in part, on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories similar to those on the Right. And yet, it is dangerous and misleading to see this as the same phenomenon, because the social contexts, the dynamics of race, and the relationships to power are all quite different. . . .

See? Michaelson is a liberal, and therefore “the dynamics of race” must be considered, as if a machete-wielding black psycho in New York deserves sympathy in a way that, say, Dylan Roof does not. In fact, he claims, “it is dangerous and misleading” not to employ a double standard:

Perhaps the left will shortly argue that these attackers while black opponents of Donald Trump define themselves as White Supremacists? That argument is a lot more convenient that dealing the with reality on the ground.


A while back I wrote about the anti-anti’s who tended to side against America’s enemies because they hated the anti-communists more than they hated communists. Victor Davis Hanson has found an inconvenient version of this meme just in time for election 2020:

Many who voted for Trump were quite aware that Trump’s rhetoric often bothered them. They now weigh that discomfort against his achievements and the shrill Democratic alternative — and find the latter far scarier. Few on the left ever contemplate the effect on the general public of the 24/7, 360-degree pure hatred of Trump on network and cable news, public TV and radio, and late-night TV talk shows, as well as print media. The silent disdain many people have for the progressive media nexus is especially potent when the haters so often fit a stereotypical profile in the public mind: counterfeit elite as defined by education, zip codes, careers, or supposed cultural influence; smug in their parrot-like group-speak and accustomed to deference.

This paradox was brought home to me not long ago when I asked an unlikely Trump minority supporter why in the world he would vote against his family’s and community’s political heritage. He answered at once, with simply, “I hate the people who hate him.”

Translated, I think that means we often are missing a cultural element to Trump Agonistes, exacerbated by the latest toxic impeachment episode.

That’s got to be very inconvenient for the left come November.


Speaking of inconvenient facts for the media there are few things more inconvenient to the media’s narrative than this one.

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13 hours vs 13 minutes, talk about an inconvenient number.


Finally one of the problems with making predictions and decisions about the future based on iffy data is that when they don’t come true you might be left with some inconvenient signs:

The centerpiece of the visitor center at St. Mary near the east boundary is a large three-dimensional diorama showing lights going out as the glaciers disappear. Visitors press a button to see the diorama lit up like a Christmas tree in 1850, then showing fewer and fewer lights until the diorama goes completely dark. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020.

But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s ‘gone by 2020’ engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.”

As Rush Limbaugh taught Al Gore with his Goremageddon clock you don’t make predictions about the future within a time span when they can be proven false because it might turn out to be a tad inconvenient.

UPDATE: This twitter exchange has to go to the top

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I don’t think they’ve gotten over the shock of an American leader actually fighting back.

Oh and let’s also quote the Elder of Ziyon who knows the region better than me:

First of all, the so-called experts have been wrong every single time they predicted a major response from things Trump decided to do. The “experts” simply aren’t.

My guess is that Iran will instruct Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad to shoot rockets into Israel, even though there is no evidence that Israel had anything to do with this (excellent intel, by the way.) This is a face-saving routine and Iran still clings to the idea that escalating things with Israel will get the Muslim world on their side. That isn’t true anymore, but this might be Iran’s thinking. (Israel closed the ski resort in Mount Hermon anticipating this very scenario.)

Not only Soleimani was killed – also Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias  Popular Mobilization Forces, and reportedly  Naeem Qasm, Hezbollah’s #2 in Lebanon. You have to think that the remaining leaders of Iranian forces and proxy forces are very frightened of being killed themselves. If they escalate, that is a death sentence. I don’t think they are that brave…I cannot see the Revolutionary Guards’ morale remaining high with the loss of their powerful leader and their countrymen, probably, celebrating.

I do expect a response – Iran is still an honor/shame society and some action, now that the US admitted its role, is deemed necessary. But I think it will be a limited response. Perhaps cyberattacks, perhaps  rockets to Israel as I mentioned, perhaps some directed attacks at US troops in Iraq or a 1983 Beirut-style attack against US military installations in Europe.

Today, lots of very dangerous people are very scared. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah is going deeper underground than he already was. Maybe even Kim Jong-Un.

The US of World War 2 is back and God have mercy on our enemies because apparently Donald Trump won’t


Twitter is ablaze with activity with President Trump taking out Soleimani & friends yesterday. Here are several things that come to mind at once:

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You might think that you’d have the Mullah’s on the air issuing threats and I’m sure they will do so, as soon as they can relocate to safe secure bunkers out of the reach of drones.

The Iranian leadership has been given notice that from this point on , if there is an attack on a US embassy, none of them are safe.


It took almost no time for the usual suspects to get organized. Max Blumenthal & company announced their protests at once on twitter, I replied with a question

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The left has never seen a killer of US troops that they didn’t like.


In one respect the confusion this has created in Iran is understandable, for decades we have allowed them to kill Americans and strike at our interests with impunity even when we had armies to the east west and south of them.

The concept that the US might actually decide to strike back when attacked is the one thing that they never in their lives expected.

Of course up until the Carter years the idea that one could attack a US embassy with impunity would have been laughed at and as recent as 1970 such retaliation by a US president against a terrorist would not have caused Americans to bat an eyelash.

Of course that was before the left started to get control in the schools


The real problem for Iran is the unrest that is currently going on in their country. The leaders needs to be visable and proactive to keep it from boiling over into a successful revolution but at the same time if they are visible any attempt to kill Americans by Iran will mean a drone will be on them in a moment.

This is likely the best chance we will have to end almost a half century of Iranian terror. That’s the upside. Unfortunately there is no way to know what will replace it, that’s the downside.


The biggest question mark will be our NATO allies currently holding huge populations of pro-terrorist arabs. I suspect most of Europe will do all they can to not choose sides because they are not prepared to deal with the blowback. However if any European nation was looking for an excuse to finally take action to secure their identities, this will be the time. I expect strong support from Poland, Hungary and former Eastern block states. I expect silence or condemnation from Germany & France and the Pope, England is the wild card here.


Politically this is a bad situation for all non-squad members of the left and media. This guy was responsible for the death of thousands of Americans and Iraqis and for terror all over the world so they aren’t likely to condemn his death too loudly if at all, on the other hand they want to make sure that any consequences for this action for ill fall on Trump.

Expect them to start playing the “wag the dog” card pretending that it’s all about impeachment rather than attacks on our embassy.

To some this will be their best chance to energize their base and to defeat Trump. Ironically if the Mullah’s and their allies want to return the US to our former state of impotence without risking their regimes their best shot will be to put all their efforts into helping the Democrats rather than retaliatory strikes. The question is, given their “face” culture do they dare do so?


In the end I have no idea what is going to happen and neither does anyone else, but if I had to bet money on one event over the next 11 months that will come of it I’d bet on a serious Iranian sponsored attempt to assassinate President Trump, most likely via a suicide mission I hope the White House and secret service are prepared for this.


Update 2: Well this didn’t take long, this

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and this

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shows how lucky we were not to have twitter in December of 1941.


Meanwhile here are some assessment from the same world:

Stacy McCain:

I’m hesitant to predict what comes next. Thursday night, while I was trying to watch the Gator Bowl, “World War 3” was trending on Twitter, and yes, the worst-case scenario is Armageddon. We can’t pretend that the risk of all-out war is non-existent. However, the question is not Iran’s intent — they hate America and want us all dead — but rather Iran’s capacity to turn their intentions into action. We shall see.

Tom Rogan Washington Examiner:

This will also cause short-term strife for U.S. political interests in Iraq. Soleimani and Muhandis represented a powerful bloc of Iranian-aligned interests. But a bloc that was under growing pressure. They’ll now seek to unify erstwhile competitors such as Muqtada al Sadr into punishing America for what has occurred.

Ultimately, however, the U.S. holds the cards here.

If it is willing to tolerate some U.S. casualties, the Trump administration can effectively out-escalate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s regime and force it into backing down. But while lives have likely been saved by Soleimani’s departure, the near-term future won’t be pretty.

Taking out the trash rarely is.

Paula Boylard PJ Media

 This could get ugly very quickly. In fact, the State Department is already warning Americans to stay away from the U.S. Embassy in Iraq and urging U.S. citizens to leave the country immediately. Americans at home and abroad may very well be at increased risk of a terrorist attack in the coming days and months (and years!).  Let’s hope and pray Trump and the Pentagon have a plan to deal with the aftershocks from Suleimani’s death.

Update 3: POTUS

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I put before you life and death, choose wisely.

Glenn Reynolds hit the nail on the head here:

lurking behind all of this is a new reality that the Iranians may not have fully absorbed: Thanks to fracking, the United States doesn’t have to keep the straits of Hormuz open anymore. We only have to be able to keep them closed.

Bingo!

Update: Key words from the Iranian statement:

Khamenei said Iran will honor Soleimani with three days of mourning and announced that the late general’s deputy, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, will replace him as Quds Force commander. The terrorist cell’s objectives “will be unchanged from the time of his predecessor,” Khamenei said in a statement reported by Reuters.

In other words the Iranians policy will now be to try to kill Americans, as opposed to their previous policy of trying to kill Americans.

I’m shocked SHOCKED!

A bit over forty years ago our embassy in Iran was seized and our citizens held for nearly two years as hostages with impunity while Jimmy Carter was president.

Eight years ago our embassy in Benghazi was attacked and Americans were killed with impunity while Barack Obama was president.

A few days ago Iranian terrorists attacked our embassy in Iraq and ran away once Donald Trump sent in marines and gunship. They thought that like during the Carter & Obama years they would pay no price.

They were wrong.

Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials officials said Friday that Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has been killed in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport.

The officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

the Washington post isn’t happy that a killer of Americans is dead

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Perhaps we can tell them they made a Youtube video that insulted Islam.

It’s possible, perhaps even probable that the Iranians commanders in Iraq will try to retaliate, but now those commanders know if they do to make sure their life insurance policies are paid in full because the risk will not just belong to the fanatical foot soldiers.

Eight years ago, just before an election our embassy was attacked in Benghazi and i wrote the following post on the subject:

Picture that night for a moment, In the end attackers lost 30-60% of their force but for the sake of argument let’s say only 25% of that was in the first wave. You’re attacking the compound, you’ve been attacking for hours and seen people fall all around you. You’ve been beaten back once and don’t actually know how many men are inside, what do you think would have happened if they heard the sound of a single helicopter gunship? A single plane? a single drone dropping a bomb on the force already bloodied at a rate that would cause most Western countries to declare the mission a disaster?

They would have run.

Instead there was no Helicopter gunship, there was no relieving force, there wasn’t even a single remote control bomb in those seven hours after all there is a fundraiser in Vegas to worry about.

The actions of the Obama administration in general and the President and Secretary of State Clinton in particular were a national disgrace, but fully in keeping with the philosophy that American interests in general and Americans lives in particular are not worth fighting for.

Fast forward seven plus years. Suddenly the Iranians are hitting our compound in Iraq. The media is in a frenzy ready to call this Trump’s Benghazi, celebs who support them are practically giddy with excitement at the prospect of embarrassment to President Trump in an election year

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But while the media was looking for a Benghazi sequel, the Iranians were looking for a different sequel, they were looking for a Rhineland sequel.

You don’t know about the Rhineland business in 1936? Well in March of 1936 the Germans under a fellow by the name of Adolph Hitler moved their army into the Rhineland in direct opposition to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, it was an aggressive move, a provocative move and a move that was completely dependent on the French not reacting, as one German officer put it:

“I can tell you that for five days and five nights not one of us closed an eye. We knew that if the French marched, we were done. We had no fortifications, and no army to match the French. If the French had even mobilized, we should have been compelled to retire.”

In fact one officer went so far as to suggest that if the French had intervened there in March of 1936 Hitler would have fallen.

By an odd coincidence the Iranians are having trouble at home and things are a tad shaky The Iranians could sure use a win and according to the international press, America is under the control of an incompetent leader who is in danger of being forced from office, so what better time to push the envelope against a paper power run by an incompetent leader unwilling or unable to fight back.

Alas for the Iranians the source of the reports of Donald Trump’s weakness and incompetence are a unreliable and unfortunately for them along with celebs like Ms. Midler and the media whose reports they rely on President Trump isn’t Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton:

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and those choppers didn’t come alone, they came with US Marines:

Do you know what happens when you send Apache Helicopters and US Marines to an embassy that Iranians are attacking? One guess:

All members of paramilitary groups and their supporters who have been protesting against US air strikes in Iraq have withdrawn from the perimeter of the US Embassy in Baghdad on Wednesday, the Iraqi military said.”All protesters have withdrawn, tents dismantled, and other forms of demonstrating that accompanied these protests have ended and the Iraqi security forces have completely secured the embassy perimeter,” it said in a statement.

Or as it was put

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And the president weighed in personally:

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So instead the Iranians have run, their leaders, like Kim in North Korea are making threats and dismissing the president but actions speak louder than words and right now they know that they aren’t dealing with the pretend version of a president that the MSM has painted for them.

Trump took action and the Iranians are running and the ambassador remains unharmed and the US remains ready to protect our own.

For Iran that’s a disaster, and for the media and Democrats it’s a disaster too.

I’m old enough to remember when wouldn’t be able to say that about the press or Democrats.