The Worst Thing (So Far) To Come Out of Donald J. Trump's "America First" Palaver

Faced with "harsh election rhetoric," L.A.-area Latinos are making common cause with L.A.-area Muslims.

The Only Good Thing To Come Out of BDS--The End of a Misguided Moral Equivalence and the "Two State Solution" Narrative

Liel Leibovitch makes an excellent point here (my bolds):

...The great virtue of the BDS position is that it replaces contradictions with clarity: Zionism is occupation, always and forever, plain and simple.

It is worth considering whether the leaders of the BDS movement have stumbled on something profound about the conflict, a premise that people in the West who oppose the elimination of the State of Israel might also want to consider. Maybe it isn’t true that both sides are right. Maybe the easy nostrum that both national movements have justice on their side and that both sides do bad things is a false appeal to complexity of the kind that comforts people who would really rather not deal with hard real-world questions of right versus wrong. Maybe the failure of decades of painstaking but fruitless efforts by the most sophisticated diplomats and map-makers and negotiators on the planet, backed by unending rivers of cash, is telling us something important: that there isn’t room for two full-fledged national movements in the same tiny sliver of land, even if, in a perfect world, it would be better if there was. What if what you see on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is what you get?..

"What if"?

The truth is there's no "what if?"  

There's only an "Is a two state solution impossible/chimerical/delusional/fantastical? You betcha, buster!"

Et Tu, Tory?

Sue-Ann Levy blasts Toronto Mayor John Tory for his pusillanimous response (or non-response, rather) to Black Lives Matter's bullying Pride parade antics:

Tory remained mum when I tried to reach him over two days in June to comment on whether BLM really deserved to get City Hall’s William P. Hubbard Award for (good) Race Relations — one of five yearly Access, Equity and Human Rights awards given to leftist activists. 

He not only refused to respond for a June 24 column but approval of the award was rammed through quietly and quickly at the June 28 executive committee meeting. 

The very day my column appeared, Tory also said nothing when BLM rudely interrupted the unveiling of a police mural in the Gay Village. 

It’s little wonder BLM felt emboldened to do what they did at the parade. 

I think we all need to send our mayor a strong message: Pandering to political correctness is not leadership. Speaking out about those who take advantage of the city’s goodwill, is.

My hunch is that Tory's staying mute because he doesn't want to become a target of BLM abuse.

Today's Dueling Limericks

This one's in the National Post:

Ms. Clinton was caught in a lie
By folks at the old FBI.
But to her relief
The FBI chief
Said charges against her won't fly.      

Here's mine:

The fix was in, you see,
The "fixer" was James Comey.
They will prosecute peons
For eons and eons,
But the Hill'rys get off scott free.

Here's another:

The Comey summation was searing.
We could hardly believe what we're hearing.
But we started to scoff
When we heard she got off
'Cuz corruption is hardly endearing.

Brett Stephens: Terrorism Is Terrorism Whether It Involves Gays In Orlando, Travelers in Turkey--Or a Young Jewish Girl Whose Throat Is Slit in the West Bank

Stephens has no patience (nor do I) for those who claim that terrorism aimed at Israelis, especially at "settlers," is somehow different than terrorist acts committed elsewhere:

It’s depressing to think that the only way the world might understand the truth about terrorism is to have some experience of it. Still, it’s worth stressing that terrorism is not the continuation of politics but the negation of it, and that the murder of a 13-year-old “settler” has no more a rationale than what ISIS did in Orlando, Istanbul and Dhaka. Terrorism can be defeated, but only once that lesson is learned.

I'd like to think that, sooner rather than later, the world will figure that out. At the moment, however, there is next to no indication that that epiphany is anywhere on the horizon. Indeed, current thinking holds that terrorism in Israel is a problem that's solvable--if only the Israelis would buckle down and give the Palestinians what they want; no--what they deserve. The reality that Israel is in the crosshairs of jihadi terrorism because of what it is (i.e. Jewish) and where it is (i.e. on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah, "Al Quds" included) doesn't enter into it.

The Take-Away From Comey: The Powerful On the Left Can Get Away With It (And You Can't)

Roger Kimball nails it to the wall with no wiggle room:

If there was any doubt, James Comey made it abundantly clear today that henceforth -- indeed, for some little while now -- the laws of this country only apply to certain parts of the population. If you are John Deutch, David Petraeus, Sandy Berger, or countless others, the statute regarding Unauthorized Removal and Retention of Classified Documents or Material applies to you. Violate and you are penalized. If you are Hillary Clinton, however, it does not apply to you. It gives new meaning to that old Latin tag: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi: "What is permitted to the Clintons is not permitted to us peons."

And after eight years of Obama and perhaps another eight of the Clintons (shudder!), Americans will have become so thoroughly peonized that they won't even have any awareness of what's been lost.

To paraphrase another Latin saying (and quite unintentionally, Latin seems to be shaping up as the theme of the day): sic transit gloria Americae.

Just in Time for Eid-al-Fitr, the CBC Pushes the "ISIS Is Not Islamic" Narrative

See if this works for you--the idea that ISIS can't possibly be Islamic because it kills Muslims:

Eid al-Fitr, the three-day festival of thanksgiving to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan, is often compared to Christmas. 

It's a time for millions of Muslims around the world to enjoy time with friends and family and share gifts. 

But, in the wake of a devastating attack by ISIS that killed more than 200 people in a busy shopping district in Baghdad on Sunday, many Muslims in Toronto say they have chosen not to celebrate the holiday. 

Hassan Jaber, an Iraqi-born mechanical engineer who lives in Ajax, Ont., told CBC News he was appalled at the timing of the attack, the deadliest seen in Baghdad in years.

"We can't celebrate and be happy and walk around smiling when 230 men and women were killed for no reason," Jaber said. "I'm not celebrating Eid this year, and I know a lot of people that are doing the same thing." 

He said the attack proves that the so-called Islamic State is anti-Islamic. 

"What more proof do you need than them targeting their own during their own blessed month?" Jaber asked...

They target their own because they don't think that their way of practising the faith passes muster.

That doesn't make them anti-Islamic. That makes them sticklers for Islam verbatim ac litteratum.

Today In "Nothing To Do With Islam"

For the first time, security police in Sweden will be allowed to maintain a registry of ISIS sympathizers.

And while at first glance that may seem to contradict hard-and-fast Swedish policy, which does not allow information to be "registered based on political and religious beliefs," every bien pensant knows that ISIS, in the words of Barack H. Obama, "is not Islamic."

In fact, you could say that that's the bien pensant mantra.

Their suicidal, pathologically clueless mantra, that is.

After Reaming Out Hillary Clinton For "Carelessness," FBI Chief James Comey Nixes Any Criminal Charges

Well, it's hardly a shockeroo.

It's not like her name was, say, Petraeus, or anything. 

It is, however, a sign that something is seriously rotten in D.C.

Here are Glenn Reynolds' initial thoughts on the Comey statement:

Although he said that there was extreme "carelessness" in handling classified information, the lack of intent to violate the law precluded prosecution. That's a bit of a surprise given that the Department of Justice is currently prosecuting Petty Officer First Class Kristian Saucier for a similar crime where no intent was involved. This gives rise to suspicions, verging on certainty, that the law is different when your name is Clinton, that laws are for the "little people" and not those in charge. As Kurt Schlichter has recently warned, the sense that there's no such thing as rule of law in today's America is likely to be quite corrosive. If Hillary can do this much damage to America's fabric now, how much worse will things be with her in the White House?

They will be so much worse that both my head and heart ache to contemplate it.

Update: Andrew C. McCarthy writes:

There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was “extremely careless” and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.  

Yet, Director Comey recommended against prosecution of the law violations he clearly found on the ground that there was no intent to harm the United States.  

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require...

McCarthy concludes:

I think highly of Jim Comey personally and professionally, but this makes no sense to me.  

Finally, I was especially unpersuaded by Director Comey’s claim that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case based on the evidence uncovered by the FBI. To my mind, a reasonable prosecutor would ask: Why did Congress criminalize the mishandling of classified information through gross negligence? The answer, obviously, is to prevent harm to national security. So then the reasonable prosecutor asks: Was the statute clearly violated, and if yes, is it likely that Mrs. Clinton’s conduct caused harm to national security? If those two questions are answered in the affirmative, I believe many, if not most, reasonable prosecutors would feel obliged to bring the case.

The whole thing reminds me of how, in order to rule Obamacare constitutional, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts reconceived it to be a "tax".

Update: Consider this--if Condoleezza Rice were the Republican candidate for president, and if, following an intensive investigation, it was revealed that she had engaged in the same sort of "extremely careless" e-mail shenanigans when she was Secretary of State, would the head of the FBI have let her off the hook?

Well, maybe in an alternate universe he would.

In the one we're stuck with, you know she'd have been indicted quicker than you could say "Richard Milhous Nixon."

Joe Warmington's Just Desserts for Pride Parade-Derailing Black Lives Matter (the Parade's "Honoured Group")

This past Sunday, Black Lives Matter hijacked the parade at its height, and in the blistering heat, forcing Pride organizers to agree to a list of BLM demands. Most notably, it called for Pride to blackball Toronto cops from all future parades.

Surveying the madness, the Toronto Sun's Joe Warmington has a suggestion that's second to none (my bolds):

No matter how much they embarrassed Pride and the city — and disparaged police — it seems few appear ready or brave enough to stand up to them. 

Time will tell how Pride will handle this. 

But if they are not prepared to apologize — like Chief Mark Saunders did for the 1981 bathhouse raids — Pride should at least bestow Toronto Police and members of surrounding services with the honoured group status in next year’s parade.

Good one, Joe! And if the cops could get the same "race relations" award that BLM is getting, that would be the cherry on the ice cream sundae.

As Part of Ontario's "Climate Change" Agenda, the Liberal Government Gets Eco-Hysteric David Suzuki to Scare the Crap Out of a Captive Audience of LIttle Kids

I just saw this ad on TV. It may or may not constitute actual child abuse. Either way, it is simply unconscionable:

Watching this heinous video--shame on you, Mr. Suzuki, for making it--one is reminded of how totalitarian regimes of the past, Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China, for example, indoctrinated the young'uns to rat out their elders, including their own parents. If nothing else, this video is an indication of how far the climate enforcers are prepared to go to ensure that the younger generation will be so thoroughly indoctrinated that it can't help but further the crypto-Marxist "save the planet" agenda.