Second-Degree Bern

By Mark Steyn

http://www.steynonline.com/

February 2, 2016

Thank God that's over. You don't have to be an Amtrak conductor to want to punch the next guy who says, "There are three tickets out of Iowa." In the end, Ted Cruz won eight delegates and Donald Trump seven. Which doesn't sound so bad for Trump. Except that Marco Rubio also won seven delegates. Had the caucus been held 24 hours later, Rubementum might have pushed Trump to third place.

There's no point pretending it wasn't a setback for the billionaire party-crasher. Who knows why it happened? Perhaps he should have taken his own advice and shot a guy on Fifth Avenue: That's gotta be worth a couple of points in Polk County. For over six months, each supposedly fatal misstep - from McCain to Muslims - only made him stronger. Now the first actual votes of this interminable process have made him weaker. For a candidate running on the platform that he's a winner and the other guys are losers, the aura of invincibility depended on the perception of invincibility. So it's not helpful to let five thousand hayseeds shuck Trump Tower like a corncob. Doing without consultants, doing without ads, doing without Fox News, doing without National Review, doing without debates ...great, great, love it. But doing without voters is a trickier proposition. This week the Trump campaign sent my 15-year-old kid, who lives in New Hampshire, a reminder to make sure he caucuses in Iowa.

Rubio did the usual caucus-night thing. He came third so he hailed himself as the most stunning victor since Wellington at Waterloo and then segued into the stump-speech bollocks about being the son of a bartender and promising a new American century. Ted Cruz followed with a victory speech that lasted most of the new American century. It was the kind of ruthless Canadian triumphalism older Americans haven't seen since the War of 1812, which, like Cruz's speech, went on into the following year. If he wins again next Tuesday, let's hope he cuts to the chase and burns down the White House.

Still it's a fact that both Cruz and Rubio outperformed the polls; Trump underperformed. In New Hampshire he has a bigger poll lead to underperform against ...but a week is a long time in a small state. By comparison with Rubio and Cruz, he gave the most human speech of the night: instead of doing the customary loser shtick of claiming that your surprise 9th place finish showed all those naysayers who said you'd never break the critical two per cent barrier and then shoving in random bits of stump-speech pabulum, Trump was secure enough to appear genuinely deflated, and offer only a line that no professional speechwriter would allow to pass his lips: He said he might buy a farm in Iowa. The question now is whether in Iowa Trump has bought the farm, or whether he can be - here it comes, ta-da! - the comeback kid next Tuesday in Concord. He has a 20-point lead in New Hampshire, but, if the post-Iowa perception is that Cruz is now the "conservative" choice and Rubio the "moderate" one, 20 points can bleed awfully fast.

It was a bad night for John Kasich. He's currently second-placed in New Hampshire, on which he's put all his chips - as his fellow moderates Jeb! and Christie have likewise done. The assumption by three of the four-man mod squad was that the Granite State would determine who'd get to be the "mainstream" standard-bearer. But Rubio decided to jump the gun and settle the moderate question a state early - and who dares wins, as the SAS say. The Cuban heel got almost four times as many votes as Bush, Kasich and Christie combined. Indeed, even the Carson campaign in its death throes outpolled Bush, Kasich and Christie combined, plus Fiorina and then some. Jeb may still have some piles of donor cash he hasn't yet thrown off the top of Mount Washington, but most of these other guys will be gone by next Wednesday.

In broader outsider/insider terms, it was a grim tally for the GOP "establishment". Rubio, Bush, Kasich and Christie got a combined 30 per cent of the vote. Cruz, Trump and Carson got 61 per cent. And the rest - Paul, Fiorina, Huckabee, Santorum - incline in varying degrees more to the outsider side of the track.

~On the Democrat side, I was rooting for Bernie, and have been for seven months:

He would be the oldest man ever elected president and 83 years old at the end of two terms - which we won't have to worry about because the entire country will have slid off the cliff long before then. But he's enthusing the base, and any base wants to be enthused. 

Hillary, by contrast, is in trouble not because she's a sleazy, corrupt, cronyist, money-laundering, Saud-kissing liar. Democrats have a strong stomach and boundless tolerance for all of that and wouldn't care were it not for the fact that she's a dud and a bore. A "Hillary rally" is a contradiction in terms: the thin, vetted crowd leave more demoralized and depressed than when they went in. To vote for Bernie is to be part of a romance, as it was with Obama. To vote for Hillary is to validate the Clintons' indestructible sense of their own indispensability - and nothing else. Hillary is a wooden charmless stiff who supposedly has enough money to be carefully managed across the finish line. But that requires Democratic electors to agree to be managed, too, and the Sanders surge is a strong sign that, while they're relaxed about voting for an unprincipled arrogant phony marinated in ever more malodorous and toxic corruption, they draw the line at such a tedious and charisma-free specimen thereof.

All of that was fully in evidence at last night's rally. The only personable Clinton stood behind Hillary looking like an emaciated wraith of the Slick Willie of yore. Decades of interns appear to have literally sucked all the life out of him, leaving only (one presumes from friend Epstein's Lolita Express flight records) his distinguishing characteristics with any flicker of vitality. Judging from her brief but disastrous intervention in New Hampshire the other week, young Chelsea appears to have inherited her mother's warmth and personal touch. That left Hillary barking across the midnight hour like a malign Speak-Your-Weight Machine with a jammed quarter.

As I wrote way back in early July:

So Bernie is a real danger to her. He will be nimbler, more fun and more human in the debates. And he enthuses the young in a way Hillary doesn't. He could win Iowa, and I know he could win New Hampshire, too... If Mrs Clinton's two down by South Carolina, Berniephobes will be begging any alternative (starting with Crazy Joe) to jump in the race.

Bernie was close, but, as Bill would say, no cigar. Hillary won by 24 delegates to 21 - and six of her delegates she got on a coin toss. Seriously. Nevertheless, given the demographic difficulties he faces in South Carolina and beyond, Sanders needed to inflict actual defeat on Hillary. He needed headlines saying: "BERNIE WINS!" And he didn't get that. She certainly felt the Bern, but it wasn't a third-degree Bern.

Insurgent-wise, the Bern took the high road and the Donald took the low road. And, unlike Trump, Sanders outperformed the polls. If he does that in New Hampshire, he'll utterly humiliate Hillary. And who knows what happens then?

~A lot of the commentary on the Trump phenomenon in the days before Iowa reiterated points I was making way back when, a month after he entered the race. See here and here:

The retort that Trump is not a "real" Republican or a "real" conservative would of course be a devastating criticism had "real" Republicans and "real" conservatives" in Washington managed actually to "conserve" anything during their time in office. Fiscal prudence? Constrained welfare? Private health care? Religious liberty? There's no point to a purity test for a party that folds more reliably than the White House valet. As I've said, for the Republican establishment the issue is Trump; for a large part of the base the issue is the Republican establishment.

So I have generally regarded Trump's presence in this race as a good thing. And I believe (for reasons I'll expand on later this week) that he would do better against Hillary than most other GOP candidates.

However, if I may rise on a point of personal privilege (as the parliamentarians say): As readers might have discerned, I wasn't happy about his approving Tweet appearing to take sides against me in the Michael E Mann "global warming" case (scroll down). I was even less happy by the blizzard of mail that followed from Trump supporters saying, well, we understand you're bugged about the particulars of your obscure law suit, but in the macro picture this guy is gonna save the country so quit yer bellyachin'. Actually, when this suit comes to trial, it will not only be a major landmark in terms of court-enforced climate-change compliance, but also the most consequential free-speech case in America in 50 years. So it's not about me personally: in that useful American expression, I don't need this in my life right now - and like the Conqueror of Iowa, I'm a subject of Her Canadian Majesty and can be well beyond the reach of the US courts in nothing flat. But it has a lot to do with the First Amendment, and things that ought to be of value to every American. And, having rebuked Senators Whitehouse and Markey in my testimony to the US Senate for their totalitarian approach to vigorous debate and the spirit of inquiry, I would be disturbed by any presidential candidate who appeared to be siding with the opponents of free speech.

I have been out of the country, and came back yesterday a few hours before the Iowa caucus. In the week I was gone, Donald Trump was invited to correct the impression his Tweet gave that he supported global-warming fanatics over free speech. I regret that he chose not to do so.

~Tomorrow I'll be back on the radio with Toronto's Number One morning man, John Oakley, live on AM640 at 8.30am Eastern. If you are in the vicinity of the receiving apparatus, I do hope you'll dial us up.

San Francisco icon Joe Montana knows what lies ahead in Super Bowl 50

Jarrett Bell, USA TODAY Sports

http://www.usatoday.com/

February 1, 2016

SAN FRANCISCO — Joe Montana laughed, flashing back to the pressures of Super Bowl week.

“Once everybody gets into town, you think you’re squared away,” Montana told USA TODAY Sports on Sunday, pondering family and friends that come for the show.

“But then it’s, ‘I don’t like my seat.’ Or ‘I don’t like the hotel.’ And ‘I want to go to that party.’

“Jennifer was a lifesaver,” the living legend added, referring to his wife.

With the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers arriving Sunday to ignite a week of hype, glory and anticipation leading to a milestone Super Bowl 50, there may be no better person on the face of the earth to put it all in perspective than the Bay Area icon also known as Joe Cool.

“It’s really another game,” he said. “The challenge is not to let the hype of the game affect the way you play. That’s a hard thing to do. There will be a point in the game where you have to draw on that.”

USA TODAY

How Joe Namath set the stage for Cam Newton

This is a great week for nostalgia. Montana guided the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl titles, was named the game’s MVP a record three times and was voted by a panel of experts as quarterback for the NFL’s Golden Anniversary Super Bowl team.

Asked how the experience of playing in Super Bowl helped him, Montana quipped, “I learned not to get on the last bus.”

Before the Niners won their first Super Bowl at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., on a frigid day in 1982, Montana was on a bus that was stuck in traffic to accommodate the motorcade for then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.

“Other than that, once you feel the excitement of winning a Super Bowl, it’s like being a kid in a candy store,” Montana said. “Once you get some candy, you want some more.”

Montana thinks that analogy is part of what drives Peyton Manning, still trudging along at 39 in a quest to win his second crown. The Old School vs. New School dynamic pitting Manning and Cam Newton, the presumptive NFL MVP, is not lost on Montana.

USA TODAY

10 surprising facts about Panthers, Broncos ahead of Super Bowl 50

“The game is exciting enough for both of them,” Montana said. “The difference is, people may say Cam is hungrier, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to win it. Peyton knows. Once you give him his candy, and he’s tasted it, you know what you’ve been missing.”

Montana figures the game will hinge on whether the Broncos’ No. 1-ranked defense can contain Newton, the sparkplug who ignites the NFL’s highest-scoring team.

Take it from Joe Cool — as prolific as offenses can be, defense still wins championships.

“People took our defense for granted,” Montana, who never threw a Super Bowl interception, said. “But that’s the real question for Denver’s defense: Can they stop Carolina from starting fast and set the pace of the game? Because I don’t think they can beat them in a shootout.”

In Super Bowl XXIV, the 49ers trounced the Broncos 55-10. With Montana and Jerry Rice going off, they overshadowed the job the defense did in dismantling John Elwayand crew.

“Same thing about the ’84 team,” Montana said, referring to the outfit that beat the Dan Marino-led Miami Dolphins 38-16 in Super Bowl XIX. “Everybody talked about our offense. Nobody talked about our defense. Ronnie (Lott, Golden Team safety andHall of Famer) to this day will tell you that was the best defense he ever played on.”

Montana has been a part of even more Super Bowl weeks over the years as a dignitary. On Sunday, he’ll be at Levi’s Stadium as the Golden Team is honored.

“If it’s raining, I’m leaving at halftime,” Montana declared. “You can never get to watch the game anyway. Even if you’re in a box, people are talking when I’d rather watch the game. That’s why I like to be at home, watching the Super Bowl with the kids.”

Of course, this one is a bit different.

“My only regret is that I’m not playing,” he says.

Montana is stoked that the big game is back on his home turf — 31 years after he outdueled Marino at Stanford Stadium, the last case when a team played a Super Bowl in its home market.

USA TODAY

Super Bowl 50 matchups: Panthers TE Greg Olsen vs. Broncos safeties

On Saturday, Jennifer (who will spend the week co-hosting a daily Super Bowl show for a local TV station) and Joe were on hand for the opening of “Super Bowl City” — the blocks in San Francisco dedicated to NFL-themed activities and entertainment — and had a blast. After dinner, they went back for the fireworks show.

“This is great for the city,” Montana said. “What better place could you have this particular game in? You might say New York City, but they’ve probably got two feet of snow. Or they did.”

After all of these years since he played on the big stage, one thing hasn’t changed: People still ask Montana for Super Bowl tickets.

“I tell them, ‘I don’t have access to tickets,’ Montana said. “They say, ‘Well, you should.’

“It doesn’t matter. Because even if you do, you don’t get a dollar discount. It’s the NFL.”

(Editor's note: A previous version of this story claimed the 49ers were the only team to play a Super Bowl in their home market. The Los Angeles Rams played Super Bowl XIV in Pasadena, Calif.'s, Rose Bowl.)

***

Follow NFL columnist Jarrett Bell on Twitter @JarrettBell

To 'Reaffirm the Importance of Religious Freedom,' Obama to Visit US Mosque With Extremist Ties

Leah Barkoukis | Jan 31, 2016

http://townhall.com/

U.S. President Barack Obama (right) and First Lady Michelle Obama are led on a tour by Grand Imam Yaqub at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Nov. 10, 2010. Obama plans to visit a Baltimore mosque Wednesday.PHOTO: PHOTO BY JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The White House announced on Saturday that President Obama will be visiting a Baltimore mosque on Wednesday—the first time he’s done so in the U.S.  The intended purpose, according to the White House, is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans make to our nation and reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

“The president will hold a roundtable with community members and deliver remarks, where he will reiterate the importance of staying true to our core values — welcoming our fellow Americans, speaking out against bigotry, rejecting indifference, and protecting our nation’s tradition of religious freedom,” a White House aide said.

But the choice of visiting the Islamic Society of Baltimore is raising eyebrows, given the mosque’s history of extremist ties.

The ISB is part of a network of mosques controlled by the Islamic Society of North America, “a Muslim civil rights group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror case. Several executives with that organization were convicted of sending money to aid the terrorist group Hamas,”The Daily Caller reports.

Furthermore, Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, who served as the mosque’s imam on two separate occasions for a total of 15 years, was a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan during the 1970s. He also went on to co-found the Muslim American Society in Falls Church, Virginia, which is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. His shady history does not end there, however.

While in Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as a regional director for the Islamic American Relief Agency. That group’s parent organization is the Islamic African Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department saysprovided funds to Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

After leaving Baltimore, el-Sheikh served as imam at the infamous Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. That mosque has a lengthy roster of known terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. Its imam during much of the 1990s was Mohammed al-Hanooti. He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people.

Of all the mosques in the Washington area, this is the one chosen by the Obama administration to be the first the president visits in the states?

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said the choice is “insulting” to American Muslims.

“It’s disgraceful that this is the mosque he’s picked to be the first to visit,”Jasser said on “Fox and Friends” Sunday. “This mosque is very concerning … Historically, they are basically a radical, extreme mosque and not representative of the modern Muslims in America.”

Claws Bared as ‘Cats’ Plans a Return to Broadway

By 

JOE QUEENAN

http://www.wsj.com/

January 29, 2016

“Cats,” the legendary Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that ran for 18 years on Broadway,is returning to the Great White Way in July. For some of us, this is like hearing that smallpox is making a comeback.

In case you’ve forgotten, the musical features a bunch of creatures with names like Rumpleteazer and Grizabella, sporting leotards and whiskers, who jump around on stage to no great purpose for about 2½ hours. The show, loosely based on the work of T.S. Eliot, has something to do with reincarnation. Many who see it will wish to come back in their next life on a planet that has no musicals.

In the 1980s, every night on my way home from work, I would walk past the Winter Garden Theater, where “Cats” was playing now and forever. I knew that sophisticated theatergoers viewed “Cats” with contempt, but I was curious to find out if it was really as bad as people said. So one day I bought a ticket.

“Cats” was bad. It was the worst thing I ever saw, and still is. And I saw the 1971 St. Joseph’s College “Star Trek”-inspired production of “Julius Caesar.” I saw Deepak Chopra golf. I saw Columbia University students try to play football. None of them approached “Cats” for macabre schlockiness. “Cats” was pretentious and moronic and excruciating. It only had one decent song, the treacly “Memories,” which makes “Yesterday” sound like death metal.

I subsequently wrote a book about spending an entire year trying to find something worse than “Cats.” I never did. I saw “Lord of the Dance” at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, went all the way to Branson, Mo., to hear Tony Orlando and to sit through the Osmonds on Ice. I saw every Steve Guttenberg film and ate at the Olive Garden and spent a weekend in Cleveland and read every single Robert James Waller book. If something was appalling beyond belief, I gave it a rip. But nothing could go toe-to-toe with “Cats.” Only John Tesh at Carnegie Hall came close. Tesh—described, correctly, as the devil in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”—gave it the old college try. But in the end, Andrew Lloyd Webber smoked him.

“Cats,” like Attila the Hun and Carly Simon, eventually went away. For a while it stayed away. But the popularity of ingenious, thought-provoking, trailblazing shows like “Hamilton” and “The Book of Mormon” beguiled the public into letting down its guard, confident that our long pop-cultural nightmare was over for good.

The return of “Cats” is devastating for those of us who finished grade school. It’s like finding out that the bubonic plague is coming back for round two. It’s like finding out that Mickey Rourke and Kathy Griffin are slated to appear in “The King and I.” It’s like finding out that Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban and Michael Bolton will be appearing inAndre Rieu’s production of “Rigoletto,” set on Long Island, with additional music provided by Billy Joel and Yanni.

Am I saying that “Cats” is the single cheesiest thing mankind has ever produced? I am. Nothing is as dumb, as annoying, as interminable as “Cats.”

What does its return say about mankind? It says that the price of eternal freedom from “Jesus Christ Superstar” is eternal vigilance against “Evita.” It says that those who cannot remember “Starlight Express” are condemned to a repeat performance of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” And it says that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.

Ted Cruz’s American restoration

Ted Cruz has proven that he alone has the courage and the competence to lead an American restoration.

By Caroline Glick

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/

January 26, 2016

Republican 2016 US presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz . (photo credit:REUTERS)


Under President Barack Obama, the United States has been fundamentally transformed. From the land of the free and the home of the brave, seven years into the Obama presidency, America acts like the land of the overregulated and the home of the risk averse.

In the Middle East, the new America is treacherous, and pathetic. It is despised by its allies and scorned by its enemies.

Consider the state of America’s relations with Saudi Arabia.

Following US Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Vienna last week, where together with his European sidekicks he met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Zarif and announced the end of the international sanctions against Iran, the top US diplomat traveled to Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of the trip was to demonstrate America’s continued commitment to its chief ally in the Persian Gulf.

It was a bluff and no one fell for it.

The deal Obama and Kerry concluded with Iran sells Saudi Arabia and the rest of the US’s allies in the Middle East down the river. Quite simply, you cannot be pro-Iranian and pro-Israel or pro-Arab Gulf states at the same time.

The Saudis know it. They have given up on America.

Kerry’s only major media appearance in the kingdom was at the US embassy. Speaking before an audience of people whose paychecks he signs, Kerry insisted emptily, “We have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had, and nothing has changed because we worked to eliminate a nuclear weapon with a country in the region.”

It is a sign of America’s reduced status that no one bothered to question Kerry’s ridiculous pronouncement. Seven years into Obama’s fundamental transformation of America, no one cares what the Americans say.

America’s spurned allies are making their peace with its global self-destruction. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t praying that America will come to its senses. Unfortunately, history cannot wait forever. Time is running out.

Incremental change simply will not do. The world is changing too quickly and dangerously for a hesitant successor or one that fails to recognize that the entirety of Obama’s foreign policy must be rejected from the outset.

And no, although it is impossible to know what tomorrow will bring, the safe bet is that the US can’t afford to elect the wrong leader in November. 2020 will in all likelihood be too late.

And so, a week before the first votes are cast in the 2016 presidential election, who among the candidates has the courage and the competence to enact a counterrevolution in American foreign policy?

Who has the courage and the competence to restore America’s greatness at home and abroad, restoring its stature not only as the land of the free and the home of the brave, but as the most trustworthy ally and feared enemy throughout the world?

Seeing as both former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Vermont’s socialist senator Bernie Sanders have endorsed Obama’s foreign policy, the Democrats are not the answer.

This leaves us with the Republicans. According to Real Clear Politics, 64 percent of Americans believe that their country is going in the wrong direction. An angry electorate historically goes with the party that has been out of power. So the Republicans have every reason to believe that they can win in November.

But which candidate is up to the task? Although the field of candidates remains large, the polls indicate that the race today has become a contest between businessman Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Florida Senator Marco Rubio remains the choice of the Republican elite, despite his low polling, and so must also be considered.

On the face of it, both Trump and Cruz answer the yearning of voters for an American restoration. Both channel the anger Republican primary voters feel toward their congressional leadership and party elite which voters believe refuses to fight for them. Both highlight their outsider status.

Trump’s anti-establishment bonafides are based on the fact that he has never held elected office. True, Trump admits that as a businessman he played politicians and politics to maximize his profits, and so benefited from the worst aspects of the American political system.

But, Trump insists, with some credibility, since he is self-funding his campaign, as president he will be able to act against the wishes of the donor class to whom presidential candidates are generally beholden, due to their dependence on political contributions.

Cruz is a much different person. Cruz is, to borrow Margaret Thatcher’s term, a conviction politician. He isn’t in politics to make a deal. He is in politics to make a difference.

By all accounts, Cruz is one of the most gifted living litigators. If Cruz had wanted a successful career outside of politics, he would have had his pick of top firms and corporations beating a path to his door.

In other words, if he had wanted to make billions and be a deal maker like Trump, the road was open before him.

Cruz opted out of a lucrative career in the private sector because he believed that it was more important for him to serve his country. Over his four years in the Senate, Cruz has worked tirelessly to block Obama’s domestic and foreign policy agenda. He has been Israel’s most outspoken ally. He has been the most outspoken critic of Obama’s nuclear and financial capitulation to Iran and his betrayal of America’s Sunni allies.

Cruz has used all the power of his office as senator to fight the Obama administration’s radical policies. But that is not all he has done. Cruz has worked with grassroots organizations in Texas and throughout the country to empower the public to stand up for its rights.

One of the strangest lines of attack against Cruz has been the claim that he is an opportunist. Cruz, it is argued, doesn’t actually believe in the causes he fights for. He’s just doing it to get donations, or media exposure, or votes.

But this is preposterous. Most of the things that Cruz has done for Israel for instance, have brought him no advantage. Cruz did more than any other Republican to force the administration to end its ban on US flights to Israel during Operation Protective Edge. The same is true of his leading role in galvanizing opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

No large Jewish donors have rallied to Cruz’s side as a result of his tireless efforts to defend Israel and the US alliance with the Jewish state. Conservative Jewish commentators have lined up behind Senator Marco Rubio, who has taken the lead far less often than Cruz in defending Israel.

Even worse, unlike Cruz, Rubio has supported some of Obama’s worst policies in the Middle East. These include Obama’s decision to support the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and instigate the overthrow of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. These policies, which Rubio and his conservative Jewish supporters backed, rival Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran in terms of their disastrous impact on pro-American governments, including Israel, on global security and on US national security.

In perhaps one of the strangest developments of the Republican race, not only have conservative Jewish commentators lined up behind Rubio, they have directed inordinate ferocity and hatred toward Cruz, whom they oppose more than they oppose Trump.

Trump, for his part, has advocated Middle East policies that are barely comprehensible and wracked with inconsistency and surprising hostility toward Israel.

On the one hand, Trump continuously insists that as president he will be the greatest thing that ever happened to Israel.

But on the second hand, a month ago, he told Jewish Republicans that he won’t recognize that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and blamed Israel for the absence of peace with the Palestinians.

But on the third hand, a week ago, he told an evangelical Christian reporter that he backs moving the US embassy to Jerusalem “one hundred percent.”

Got that?

And that brings us back to the key question of whether America wants to be great again, trusted by its allies, feared by its enemies, and safe at home. Because if so, voters need to ask not who channels their rage the best, but who has the courage and the competence to roll back Obama’s policies. How can Rubio, who supported some of Obama’s most devastating policies, or Trump who has no coherent policies, be expected to do what needs to be done?

Through Ted Cruz’s willingness to match his words with his deeds, and do what he believes even when doing so bring him no benefit, and through his clear recognition that American foreign policy must rest on the simple rule of being good to your allies and bad to your enemies, Ted Cruz has proven that he alone has the courage and the competence to lead an American restoration.

GERMANY'S "RAPEFUGEE" CRISIS

YouTube plea for protection from 16-year-old German girl reveals the widespread nightmare of migrant sexual violence.

Stephen Brown

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

January 29, 2016

Thousands March in Germany to Protest Muslim Sexual Assaults

“Why should we children have to grow up in such fear?”

That is the very reasonable question 16-year-old German teenager Bibi Wilhailm asks, in her 20-minute YouTube video, garnering her some much-needed recognition in cyberspace. Her video had first appeared on Facebook, but was taken down for reasons that still remain unclear.

But Wilhailm doesn’t seem to care too much for fame. In her first ever YouTube appearance, she says she only wants her old life back. It is a life that she describes as “toll” (fantastic), before Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed one million, mostly male and Muslim, refugees into Germany last fall. Since then, Wilhailm says, “life has become very unsafe on the streets for young women like me and my friends.”

“This is the truth. We are no longer allowed to walk outside,” said Wilhailm. “We are no longer allowed to wear our clothes. We are no longer allowed to live the German life. This is the sad truth.”

Wilhaim’s fears are neither unfounded nor exaggerated. A security official as prominent as the police chief of Vienna, Gerhard Purstl, confirmed Wilhailm's claim when he warned women not to venture out at night alone and to “avoid suspicious-looking areas.” Purstl’s warning came after several sex attacks in Austria by migrants.

If anyone possessed any doubts about Muslim migrant attitudes toward the ‘infidel’ women of their host countries, these doubts should have been painfully and publicly dispelled last New Year’s Eve at Cologne’s central train station. A thousand of the new arrivals, mostly young Arab men, gathered there that evening and, like packs of hyenas, molested hundreds of women, raping several.

“We are so scared,” said Wilhailm, expressing the fear young women are now forced to face. “We don’t want to be scared to go to the grocery store alone after sunset.”

Since the Muslim migrants’ appearance in Germany, Wilhailm says, “life has been hell. These men often commit verbal and physical acts of sexual violence against women out alone.” She says she herself has had a couple of bad experiences.

“But one day, a terrible thing happened at the supermarket,” Wilhailm said. “I ran all the way home. I was so frightened for my life. There’s no other way to describe it.”

Another time, men she called “Muslims” told her and her friend they were “sluts” for wearing t-shirts. Addressing Muslim men of this ilk in her video, Wilhailm responded:

“You have no right to attack us because we are wearing t-shirts. You also have no right to rape.”

Unfortunately, for Germany’s young women, there are too many new migrants who believe that they do.

Earlier this month, police in Dortmund reported that a migrant approached a girl on the street, offering her money for sex. He explained his behavior to her as German girls are “just there for sex.”

An article by Soeren Kern, published in the Gatestone Institute last September, before Merkel’s great refugee wave, bears this out. Kern provides a list of rapes committed by migrants in Germany. It makes for disturbing and heartbreaking reading. “Growing numbers of German women in towns and cities across the country are being raped by asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and the Middle East,” writes Kern. “Many of the crimes are being downplayed by German authorities and the national media, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.”

There are also additional reasons why police, media and politicians cover up or obfuscate migrant rapes and crimes. One is that they do not want to give those originally opposed to this migrant invasion the opportunity to say: “I told you so.”

Another, and perhaps the most alarming one, is that European elites believe they are justified in censuring migrant sex attacks, since revealing their shocking details only increases support for hated populist and conservative parties. Regarded as ideological enemies and racist, these parties are gaining strength with every act of migrant sexual violence against women and children.

In other words, the mental and physical health and safety of Germany’s young women, just like those in Sweden these past years, are being heartlessly sacrificed on the altar of politically correct expediency. At the same time, those supporting multiculturalism are portraying, with some success, the people who opposed this mass migration as lacking compassion. Angela Merkel, for example, said such people have “coldness, even hatred” in their hearts.

Stockholm’s police chief, Peter Agren, is an example of those in positions of power willing to sacrifice young women for political correctness. He recently conceded he had covered up the sexual molestation of dozens of young women by a Muslim gang at a music festival last summer so as not to strengthen the position of his country’s populist conservative party.

“This is a sore point. Sometimes we dare not tell how it is because we think it plays into the hands of the Sweden Democrats,” said Agren.

After reading about cover-ups like this, one is left wondering who the barbarians are: the Muslim rapists or Europe’s ruling class? Also, with Agren’s politically correct outlook, it is no wonder Sweden has one of the highest rape ratesin the world. Only a couple of African countries rank higher.

Cover-ups of migrant sex crimes began, literally, as soon as the first “refugees” arrived. At a ‘welcoming party’ for one batch of arrivals, in Bonn last November 7, almost two months before the horrific events at Cologne’s train station, female guests were sexually molested by the “100 to 150 asylum-seeking men there.”

“I’d only been there a few minutes, and I got the first hand on my breast,” one woman later said. 

A police spokesman added: “The music had to be constantly stopped so that the message could be given out in Arabic to stop men harassing female guests.”

Police were also angry that they were not notified about the crimes committed at the ‘welcoming party.’ Some believe this knowledge may have helped them prevent the New Years’ Eve sexual assaults.

According to one report, an integration official admitted she knew about the sex assaults at the party and didn’t contact police. She also said she ‘cannot remember’ whether she advised women who were attacked to do so. This official said the event’s student organizers also knew about the sexual molestation “but did not want to make a fuss” and had “learned from the situation.”

But these students, obviously, didn’t learn lessons in moral and civic responsibility towards others in society, especially towards women. By not reporting the sex attacks to police and allowing these men to go unpunished, they were setting up other women for victimization. It is very possible that some of these men were among the New Year’s Eve molesters.

But building the multicultural ‘Utopia’ is so important to such people that, if women's and children's well-being has to be sacrificed on the altar leftist ideals to achieve it, then so be it. What the students put on their website about the sex attacks after the incident says it all:  “…instead of just adversely pointing fingers at those who misbehave, we believe it’s as important for everyone in our civil society to tackle these differences in the daily integration.”

One wonders whether the integration official and students would have acted so complacently if anti-immigration PEGIDA members had perpetrated the sexual assaulting. As it was, police only discovered what had occurred at the welcoming event only when a victim approached them after the New Year’s Eve sex attacks.

The current rape crisis in Germany was, of course, completely predictable. Strong and frightening indicators of what was to follow the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men into Germany were already present on Cairo’s Tahrir Square during political protests in 2011 and 2013 -- and witnessed by the whole world. At that time,dozens of women and a few female journalists were surrounded, sexually molested and even raped, including CNN’s Lara Logan and a Dutch journalist. The unfortunate Dutch woman was so severely injured she had to undergo an operation. Since this is how these Muslim men behave in their own countries, why would they not be expected to do the same elsewhere, especially in a country full of infidel women?

Closer to home, Sweden has for years already served as an example of migrant sexual violence.   

In her video, Wilhailm accuses Merkel of having “killed Germany.”

“I do not think you know what you have done," said Wilhailm. "You do not see how our lives have changed. Open your eyes! Is this normal? Should I, a 16-year-old who is almost 17 be scared to walk outside my house? No, it is not normal.”

Insightful for one so young, Wilhailm also realizes that the state no longer can, nor perhaps has the will, to protect its young women and children. As a result, she makes a desperate plea for Germany’s men to protect them, asking them to go out and patrol the streets:

“Men, please help your women. Please help your children. I am so scared. My friends have the same fears. We are shocked that this has happened. I hope this video has convinced you, and that these terrible events can stop.”

For Wilhaim’s sake, and for millions more like her, one can only hope Germany’s men will firmly respond.