Unconventional

President Trump’s approach to international and domestic relations is certainly unconventional ... sometimes bordering on the bizarre. As such he has attracted mucho criticism and scorn. I myself have often scratched my head at his offbeat antics with Kim, Xi and Putin. But, on the other hand, the conventional behavior of our other presidents has not produced bragable results ... in fact, things kept getting more mired and confused.

Enter stage right our orange-haired pussy grabber whose laser-like focus seems always on results ... no matter how much manure his own countrymen heap on him. If he loses a round, he is not fazed. He keeps pushing toward the same goalposts that we all want: denuclearizing bad actors, fair trade, disentanglement of US troops overseas, border security, being respected by the world’s superpowers, stronger military, less political correctness, a booming economy, the return of manufacturing to the US, etc.

Liberal pundits grouse that Trump has no policy agendas ... well, read the previous sentence to see how myopic they really are. It is very clear to me and many Americans what Trump is trying to do ... and likely will get done if given half a chance. Call it the Trump Doctrine.

Yes, the never-Trumpers and, often his own personality, get in his way of these ends. But, to his great credit, he holds to these noble goals ... as opposed to the cockamamie agendas on the conventional Left. Being unconventional but right is much better than conventional but wrong.

Headlines

These headlines have all been found on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

Trump's sluggish hiring could hamper terror battle

Arab countries accuse Qatar of supporting terrorism, cut diplomatic ties

Senate Republicans fear a 'train Wreck' in September

London attacker featured in [2016]  British documentary about the jihadis next door

Mind-blowing stupid: MSNBC host wonders if London police 'overreacted' to terrorist attack

Democrats ask Hillary Clinton to step out of the spotlight

Trump seeks to privatize nation's air traffic control system

Putin denies having compromising information on Trump

Trump urges end to political correctness

Report: New York public school teachers on Long Island earn $161,000 on average

Metropolitan police arrest 12 including 7 women in London Bridge attack

Putin accuses America of meddling in elections around the world

The Alpha of the Omega

The University of Virginia (UVA) has just suspended fraternities (usually titled with Greek letters) until the beginning of the Spring semester ... see: Breitbart Article for details. (Ironically, UVA was the birthplace of many fraternities.) And, at a faculty meeting at Dartmouth College recently, the vote was 116 to 13 to abolish the Greek system at this Ivy League school ... see: Inside Higher Ed Story. Is this the beginning of the end of the fraternity and sorority systems around the United States?

Reading the tea leaves, one would have to guess that this is the case. Tradition after tradition has fallen at Dartmouth as a genuflection to political correctness. Once Seniors there smoked clay pipes one last time before they ventured into the "wide, wide world" and then broke them on the stump of the Lone Pine as a symbol of their leaving their callow college days behind them. Then some general in the PC police decided that these pipes were "Indian peace pipes" and had to go. So they went. Tradition after tradition has met the dust bin there in much the same way during the last few decades ... all driven by similar misguided motivations ... not to be replaced by any warm-hearted and meaningful surrogates.

What is left? Insipid self-inspection and hyphenated curricula that have created an Inquisition-like frenzy at many colleges which, in turn, now paves the way for remanding fraternities and sororities "to the secular arm." (In Medieval Spain this was an euphemism for being executed.) So we soon will likely have one more legacy of college life that is to be recycled into an empty memory.

On Another Planet

This country, nay this world needs to be grounded in reality … else we earthlings begin to do lots of stupid things. The leader of the free world is assumed to be the President of the United States, Barack Obama, and, when he avers silliness, he unnerves the rest of us. On his way back from his recent Asian confabs he duplicated one of his more naive pronouncement … that Islam represents a religion of peace … see: Breitbart Story.

Yes, I hope that this looniness is an attempt to convince those few Muslims who don’t want a worldwide caliphate (where we all must convert to Islam or be beheaded) that they are benign beings. But, if Muslims have read the Quran (aka, Koran) like they are supposed to, they are likely prone to unnerving violence. Here are a few quotes from The Religion of Peace edited by Glen Roberts 

The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.  Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.  Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter. 

 The strangest and most untrue thing that can be said about Islam is that it is a Religion of Peace.  If every standard by which the West is judged and condemned (slavery, imperialism, intolerance, misogyny, sexual repression, warfare...) were applied equally to Islam, the verdict would be devastating.  Islam never gives up what it conquers, be it religion, culture, language or life.  Neither does it make apologies or any real effort at moral progress.  It is the least open to dialogue and the most self-absorbed.  It is convinced of its own perfection, yet brutally shuns self-examination and represses criticism.

This is what makes the Quran's verses of violence so dangerous.  They are given the weight of divine command.  While Muslim terrorists take them as literally as anything else in their holy book, and understand that Islam is incomplete without Jihad, moderates offer little to contradict them - outside of opinion.  Indeed, what do they have?  Speaking of peace and love may win over the ignorant, but when every twelfth verse of Islam's holiest book either speaks to Allah's hatred for non-Muslims or calls for their death, forced conversion, or subjugation, it's little wonder that sympathy for terrorism runs as deeply as it does in the broader community - even if most Muslims personally prefer not to interpret their religion in this way.

Although scholars like Ibn Khaldun, one of Islam's most respected philosophers, understood that "the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force", many other Muslims are either unaware or willfully ignorant of the Quran's near absence of verses that preach universal non-violence.  Their understanding of Islam comes from what they are taught by others.  In the West, it is typical for believers to think that their religion must be like Christianity - preaching the New Testament virtues of peace, love, and tolerance - because Muslims are taught that Islam is supposed to be superior in every way.  They are somewhat surprised and embarrassed to learn that the evidence of the Quran and the bloody history of Islam are very much in contradiction to this.

 and …

For their part, Western liberals would do well not to sacrifice critical thinking to the god of political correctness, or look for reasons to bring other religion down to the level of Islam merely to avoid the existential truth that this it is both different and dangerous.

Our president certainly is an archetypal Western liberal … living on another planet where political correctness is worshiped to a fault.

Nation's Health vs. Wave Election

Clearly this nation is slowly slipping into a possible health-care crisis. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) seems to be botching its job on a daily basis. An emigre from Liberia has come down with Ebola shortly after entering the United States in Dallas. Apparently he had been let go from his job at FedEx and quickly decided to pursue his destiny in the United States ... visiting "immigrant" relatives in Texas. Whether he ever planned to return to Liberia will never be revealed, but my guess is clearly no. Unfortunately  before he left Liberia he helped carry a pregnant woman by one leg who was dying of Ebola ... and, in the process, contracted the disease. And now he has, because of a inattentive emergency room worker, possibly passed this dreaded disease on to untold Texans of all ages and stripes.

The issue that I would like to address here is why do we now face this possible health-care crisis? If this disease ... which our fearless leader vehemently said was not a threat within our shores ... does indeed cause much misery and even death in our country, then I believe that it will be because there have been numerous failings on the part of our government. What are they?

1) We, unlike Great Britain and France, have not stopped all flights into the U.S from the hotbeds of this Ebola outbreak in West Africa. One can speculate about the reasons for this lapse, but I believe that political correctness ... and our president's roots ... are at the head of this list.

2) The Center for Disease Control has clearly dropped the ball in this skirmish. Why have they not issued and enforced strict guidelines for dealing with possible cases of Ebola? Due diligence by them might have prevented the emergency room lapse that was the nexus of of current problems. I also believe that CDC is showing management problems like many other of Obama's fiefdoms ... the IRS, the Justice Department, the Bureau of Veteran's Affairs, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security.

One more management lapse for Obama is clearly too many at this time in the election cycle. For example, the CDC also had allowed a three-times convicted felon to be used as a security guard when the president visited there in September. Yes the Secret Service was primarily at fault, but doesn't the CDC also due background checks?

3) The Obama administration is attempting to use immigration reform as a wedge issue in the upcoming November elections. The fact that our porous borders may be causing a national health emergency (or emergencies since there are other health problems manifesting themselves due to this summer's influx of thousands of unscreened illegal immigrants from Central America) can not help to embellish the story that the Obama administration is attempting to peddle. Any voter with a modicum of sense will see that our government may be putting our nation at risk for its own political gain.

I sincerely hope that the CDC is right and that it has its arms around this current Ebola problem. But, if it doesn't ... watch out for the wave!

Afterword: George Will apparently has many of these same thoughts ... see: Fox News Story. And, it seems, so does the Diplomad blog ... see: The Diplomad.

Beam Me Up Scottie

This year the Commonwealth Games are being held in Scotland. As part of the opening ceremony cute little Scottie dogs were used to lead each country's athletic contingent into the arena. Oops! Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim country, has taken umbrage at this symbolism ... for Muslims consider dogs to be unclean and are not supposed to be touched (except when they are being slaughtered for dinner?) For details read: UK Telegraph Story.

Political correctness has progressed to the point were the taboos of every possible faction in the world must be kowtowed to ... if just one member thereof expresses offense. How about this complaint? I am offended by people who are offended by the celebration of Christmas. Does this mean that they must now bend to my will as I am supposed to bend to theirs? That'll be the day ...

Hollywood Navel Gazing

It seems that President Obama is spending more and more time among his friends in Hollywood … and they, in turn, seek out his company to justify their importance … see: Variety Story. I think that Rush Limbaugh once wrote that Washington, DC is Hollywood for ugly people. So it stands to reason that these two centers of power and influence like to sit in one big drug- and alcohol-enhanced circle gazing at their navels.

In this frenzy of self-congratulations, Obama reinforces their cockamamie ideas and they empty their wallets and purses for his political war chest … all very very cozy and incestuous. Hollywood believes that it is the paragon of tolerance and diversity while doing its level best to ostracize any poor schlub who doesn’t follow its political orthodoxy (hello Mel Gibson) … echoing the black lists of the 1940’s and 1950’s … only from the obverse side. In fact, Hollywood is so wrapped up in the current political correctness that it most often chooses to ignore opportunities to make money from movies that would appeal to a broader conservative audience … all very strange and illogical.

President Obama’s rhetoric castigates the one-percenters as he preaches to a tent-full of this very demographic … the one percent of the one-percenters. Do these court favorites then get to feel freed of this stigma because their President laughs and jokes with them?  I think so. And does the President get his jollies hobnobbing with all these botoxed bimbos and bozos? Clearly.

These days I find it next to impossible to find any movie of merit coming out of all this Hollywood navel gazing. But then that’s just me.

Language Police

Andy Warhol’s famous “everyone gets 15 minutes of fame” observation apparently was quite prophetic.  Current examples of those seeking such transient notoriety are sexting, goofy YouTube videos, Facebook, reddit posts, or even those ego maniacs who feel that their blog postings are golden prose.  But there is another type of grandstander who seeks headlines by bowdlerizing our everyday communications … the language police if you will.  The latest Warhol-type is a woman in Cranston, RI who has a child suffering from dwarfism.  She went berserk when she saw the word “midget” on a pickle jar and coerced the pickle company into changing their labeling … see: CBS News Story.

There are many other examples of such linguist political correctness -- Native American, visually impaired, African American, Happy Holiday, firefighter, vertically challenged, freedom fries, etc. … see: Political Correctness and, for a more extensive treatment, see: Language Police

Perhaps the Cains pickle company might have changed their pickle-jar packaging to read “Kosher Dill Little People”?

Political Correctness Gone Ape

The Obama administration has reclassified the Ft. Hood massacre as "workplace violence" ... see: Ft. Hood Reclassification.  Yes, and then Treblinka and Auschwitz were just "retraining centers."