Sometimes The Hypocrisy Still Amazes Me

I'm used to the incredible hypocrisy of many of the international leftist organizations, but there are still times when they do something that amazes me.  One such move came from Amnesty International.  That organization has called upon the government of Israel to protect Palestinians in Hebron from attacks by Israeli settlers.  According to Amnesty, those attacks have escalated in recent weeks.  That certainly sounds reasonable.  But here are the actual facts:

1.  The city of Hebron has a population of about 200,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews.  It is these 500 Jews that Amnesty International calls "settlers".

2.  The Jews in Hebron live in a small neighborhood.  They basically do not mix much with the Arab residents in order to avoid attacks.

3.  In recent weeks, there have been attacks in Hebron by Palestinians who have stabbed one or another of the Jews.  The police or security guards have shot the attackers.

So according to Amnesty International, these 500 Jews (who include many small children and elderly people) are terrorizing the two hundred thousand Palestinians.  Amnesty International does not call upon the Palestinians to stop the knife attacks on Jews.  Nope, AI wants the Israelis to stop the "settler" attacks on the poor Palestinians.

The whole thing is a joke.  Amnesty International should be seen for what it truly is, an international organ of leftist propaganda.

Amnesty International, however, is not alone in its hypocrisy.  Another purveyor of this bilge is the French news agency AFP.  Today, it ran an article about the funeral for five Palestinians who were killed by Israeli forces "in a wave of recent clashes".  That sounds terrible.  Of course, what AFP omits from the story is that the five people being buried were each shot dead by security forces while each was in the process of attacking a random Israeli during a terrorist attack.  These people took knives and attacked innocent people on the street.  In the midst of the stabbing attacks, they were shot dead by police or other security forces.  That's not "a wave of recent clashes"; it is a "series of knife attacks by these dead terrorists."  AFP ought to be ashamed of its conduct, but it surely is not.

 

 

Trump's Plans for the VA

Donald Trump spoke this afternoon about his plans for veterans' health care.  He proposes having the VA hospitals compete with regular hospitals in providing care.  He would also let veterans go to any doctor who takes medicare to get treatment rather than forcing them to visit a VA hospital.  There's more to Trump's plans, but let's stop here for a moment.

For the last few years, we have heard how veterans have been waiting for many months to get care.  Many have actually died while awaiting treatment by the VA.  Instead of fixing the problem, the VA just created phony records that made it look like there was prompt treatment for the vets when there was not.  Over the last two years, president Obama has done nothing to speed up providing treatment to the vets.  Indeed, Obama has made no proposals to Congress for changes that might improve the VA system.  Instead, all we have heard from Obamaland is a call for an investigation of VA officials which investigation has not produced anything yet.  It is Obama's typical reaction to the discovery of a big failure by his administration.  He never admits the problem and he certainly never fixes the problem.  Instead, we get no change but Obama calls for an investigation that either never ends or finds nothing wrong.

Trump's plan is some simple common sense ideas to help these men and women who have given so much for all of us.  There are other Republicans with plans for the VA as well.  It's time to get a president who actually wants to accomplish something that will help people.

 

The Race To Racism

The culprit who allegedly set a series of fires at black churches around St. Louis has been caught.  The fires had resulted in a number of investigations by local, state and even federal authorities looking to prevent further hate crimes of this sort.  Still, there's one problem with the outcome for the authorities and others.  The man arrested is African American.  So much for racism as a basis for the crimes.  Maybe the guy was trying to indicate that there was racism where there wasn't any.  Maybe he can get a show on MSNBC.

 

So Was It ISIS?

A Russian commercial airliner crashed in the Sinai peninsula of Egypt this morning.  Nearly 250 people were killed in the crash.  ISIS is now claiming that it shot down the plane which had been heading from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh to St. Petersburg.  The Egyptian and Russian authorities say that the plane was having some sort of failure and was making an emergency landing.

Which of these stories is correct?  Did ISIS just kill all those Russian civilians?  The authorities say that the plane was too high (30,000 feet) to be brought down by ISIS.  Last year, though, a Malaysian plane flying even higher over Ukraine was brought down by the Russians themselves during the fighting in Ukraine.  Who knows what sort of weapons the ISIS forces in the Sinai have?

The sad truth is that we will probably never know for sure what happened.  The Russians could tell us anything, but there is no reason to believe them.  They still don't admit that the shot down the Malaysian plane.  The Egyptian government has more credibility, but even they have a strong interest in minimizing the threat from ISIS in their country.  ISIS, of course, will do or say anything, so that group has zero credibility.

No matter what, though, there are hundreds of dead Russians.  It is a tragedy.  If ISIS has the capability of bringing down a plane like this, however, it is a global disaster.

 

Another Incredible Mistake by Obama in the Middle East

Almost lost in the news that president Obama has broken his oft-repeated promise not to have American ground forces in Syria, there is a small part of that announcement which ought not be overlook.  One of the new actions by the USA is going to be providing more aid to opponents of ISIS in Jordan and Lebanon.  Think about that for a moment.  In Jordan, America can aid the government of King Abdullah which has been heavily involved in the fight against ISIS since that group burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive and then distributing a video of that great "triumph".  The Jordanians have also taken in more than a million Syrian refugees and need help.  In Lebanon, however, the only people fighting ISIS are all part of Hezbollah.  That's HEZBOLLAH!!!  Is the USA now going to provide assistance to the terrorists at Hezbollah as they supposedly fight ISIS?  The reality in Syria is that Hezbollah normally fights with Assad against the Sunni rebels like the Free Syrian Army that the USA supports.  Has Obama decided that he will now not only send troops to help the Free Syrian Army but also send arms and cash to those who are trying to kill the Free Syrian Army (and our troops)?  What moron came up with that plan? 

 

Now Comes Another One With the Same Talking Points

Earlier, I wrote about Ezra Klein and his wholly dishonest discussion of the GOP debate.  Klein announced that the questions were about substance and policy and to Republicans, that seemed like an attack.  Of course, the questions were just attacks without substance or policy (like asking Trump is he is running a "comic book" campaign.)  Now, I see that another card-carrying lefty, John Cassidy, writing in The New Yorker, has a column about the debate explaining why GOP candidates "don't do substance."  Cassidy complains that no one spoke at the debate about the Trans Pacific Partnership or certain other facets of the economy.  For that, Cassidy blames the candidates rather than the snarky personal questions asked by the moderators.  When senator Rubio gets asked "why don't you wait your turn" before running for president, a responsive answer is not going to involve trade policy, interest rates or the federal deficit.  The question is about his age even though he is not the youngest GOP candidate.  (By the way, can you imagine at the next Democrat debate the result were a moderator to ask Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders "Hasn't your time come AND GONE?")

Clearly, Klein and Cassidy are using the same talking points.  It reminded me of the Journolist.  A few years back, it was uncovered that Klein was among a group of so-called journalists who actually had a hidden website where they exchanged the planned story line for the day.  These liberals (and they were all liberals) were coordinating their stories in many different media outlets, so that the same pro-Obama talking points would appear across the media.  It was dishonest.  It was disgusting.  It was the antithesis of free speech.  It was the creation of pro-Obama propaganda by the very people who are supposedly fairly and honestly reporting the news.  Does this latest coordinated effort by Klein and Cassidy mean that the libs have recreated the journolist? 

 

Ezra Klein Rolls Out the Lies at Vox

I doubt that too many of you know who Ezra Klein is.  Klein used to be a frequent guest on MSNBC and wrote for the Washington Post blog.  When the WaPo refused to back Klein in his own website, he left and founded Vox, another of those far left sites that supposedly reports and comments on the news.  After the GOP debate the other night on CNBC was such a disaster for the liberal media, Klein decided to go in full defense mode.  The problem for Klein, however, is that there was no honest way to defend the conduct of the CNBC moderators.  As a result, Klein just decided to lie.

Here is the essence of Klein's response to the debate:

Cruz's attack on the moderators was smart politics — but it was almost precisely backwards. The questions in the CNBC debate, though relentlessly tough, were easily the most substantive of the debates so far. And the problem for Republicans is that substantive questions about their policy proposals end up sounding like hostile attacks — but that's because the policy proposals are ridiculous, not because the questions are actually unfair.

So there is Klein's big point.  The questions were tough but SUBSTANTIVE and that made them sound hostile.  Because Klein's position is so clearly dishonest and just plain wrong, I went back and got the questions that the moderators had asked prior to Ted Cruz's comments.  Here they are:

1.  What's you biggest weakness?

2.  Is this a comic book version of a presidential campaign?

3.  That is, you had some very strong words to say yesterday about what’s happening in your party and what you’re hearing from the two gentlemen we’ve just heard from. Would you repeat it?

4.  Why not slow down, get a few more things done first or least finish what you start?

 

5.  Ben Bernanke, who was appointed Fed chairman by your brother, recently wrote a book in which he said he no longer considers himself a Republican because the Republican Party has given in to know- nothingism. Is that why you’re having a difficult time in this race?

 

These are the exact words used by the moderators, taken from the transcript of the debate.  Klein says that these are questions about "policy proposals".  They're not.  Questions 2 and 4 are just personal attacks on Trump and Rubio.  Question 5 is an attack on the GOP but not about policy.  Question 3 is actually a request for Kasich to repeat a personal attack on two other candidates.  And Question 1, that's just asking "what's wrong with you?"  No fair or honest person could ever describe these questions as about policy proposals.

 

The dishonest attack from Klein is yet another illustration of something that Marco Rubio said at the debate:  the media is, for the most part, the SuperPAC of Hillary Clinton.  America needs to remember this.