Archive for 2016

ASIA TIMES: China will respond with vengeance in the South China Sea — but may use the US presidential election as media cover.

…there is a good chance it [the Chinese reaction] would get much less coverage when the world is following the every tweet, speech and controversy over the race for the White House. So for China, that might just be the best time to pounce, when the world’s collective gaze is simply somewhere else.

We must also consider this: with a change of power looming in America and uncertainty over who will win as well as additional uncertainty over what their positions will be when it comes to Asia, Beijing might gamble now is the time to move. It might also feel it could get away with a little more drama now against an Obama administration that wants to leave its time in office not embroiled in a crisis in Asia..

I’ll translate: Obama is weak.

THIS ISN’T ACTUALLY A “LOOPHOLE” IN THE OUTER SPACE TREATY. It’s just what it says, and what it does.

FORMER JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: Military leaders do not belong at political conventions. “The military is not a political prize. Politicians should take the advice of senior military leaders but keep them off the stage. The American people should not wonder where their military leaders draw the line between military advice and political preference. And our nation’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines should not wonder about the political leanings and motivations of their leaders.”

BYRON YORK ON DONALD TRUMP AND KHIZR KHAN: Cindy Sheehan Redux?

With a few obvious differences, the uproar bears some resemblance to a white-hot controversy more than a decade ago involving Cindy Sheehan, a California woman whose son Casey was killed in 2004 while serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq.

Sheehan became a media sensation when she attacked President George W. Bush over the war. Opponents of the war immediately took up her cause in their protests, and Sheehan became, for a while, ubiquitous in media reports of opposition to Bush and the war.

Some Republican Bush supporters (including Coulter) stirred outrage with foolish attacks on Sheehan, although in those pre-Twitter days there were fewer opportunities for a single comment to go viral. . . .

One last thing. Cindy Sheehan’s son, Casey, and Humayan Khan died just 65 days apart in Iraq in 2004. The next year, when Sheehan became an idol of the antiwar cause in an increasingly bitter debate over Iraq, Democrats expressed great admiration for her.

Now, with Democrats having nominated a candidate who voted to authorize the Iraq war (only later to oppose it), against a Republican who regularly calls the war a disaster and says he opposed it from the beginning, another Gold Star parent, Khizr Khan, has become a cause — but in an entirely different context.

I wonder what they’ll flip on next?

WHY ARE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGNS SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Bernie Sanders’ Own Black Press Secretary Was Profiled and Stereotyped By His Staff, Event Hosts.

There were multiple instances. There were places where I literally I couldn’t get in. I would go to the door, the staff entrance, and people would say, “This is staff only.” I’d have to explain to them that I was staff, and they would question me. I would have to say, “I’m the national press secretary. Did you watch me on the news the other day?” It was consistently happening. There was one week where it happened the entire week.

My breaking point was a time when I had let the event staff know I was having trouble getting in places and asked them if they could just really make an extra effort for this particular day, because it had been a long week. Like, “Could you please just let folks know that I’m coming and that I’m black?” You don’t think you’d have to say those things, but I said, “Let them know there’s going to be a black girl that’s going to come to the front and please let her in.”

So I got past the first few checkpoints, but then I pulled into a parking spot and a gentleman came running up to my car, banging on my window, yelling all kinds of profanity and expletives, telling me to get the F out of here, this is for staff, and that I didn’t belong back here. I broke down in the car. I cracked my window down and I said, “I’m the national press secretary!” I was just crying. Eventually someone came down and let me in.

I wonder if this ever happens to Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump’s black press secretary?

JOHN RINGO: Nine Hours To Change The World.

I’ve been feeling physically so weak and my lungs have been so bad sometimes I have to stop and catch my breath after a flight of stairs. This from a former paratrooper who used to run four miles before breakfast. It’s a combination of smoking, lung scarring from childhood pneumonia and that Chattanooga has one of the highest pollen counts in the world. Literally. The only place worse is a rain forest in Southern China. That problem? Gone. I’m breathing better than I’ve breathed in years. I feel twenty years younger. I take hills like a mountain goat.

Depression? What depression. I just had the time of my life.

I spent nine hours walking more than I’ve walked since I was posted to Multi-National Forces in Sinai. Days when an 18k patrol followed by a hump up a 3,000-foot-high mountain carrying a hundred pounds of gear and ammo was a fun game. Days I missed. I chatted with a young guy who’s joining the Marines, spent quite some time hanging out with a young couple who were starting their own construction company, chatted with young (including four-year-old types and up) and old (guy older than me who was interested in the game as a way to get more exercise), rich and poor, white and black and every other color of the rainbow.

All of us hunting the elusive, imaginary, Pokémon.

Pokémon is the ultimate leveler.

As somebody was saying on Twitter, Pokémon Go did more to get kids outside and moving in one day than Michelle Obama’s government programs have done in 8 years.

DEMOCRATS ARE ENGAGING IN MORE PROJECTION THAN A MULTIPLEX:

Shot:

Ann Lewis served as communications director for President Bill Clinton and was a senior adviser for Hillary’s 2000 senate run and 2008 presidential bid…Lewis described Republican nominee Donald Trump as a “a candidate who deliberately and consciously tries to divide.”

“We know from recent history that when you live in a society where the forces of division looks for scapegoats, Jews are next in line,” Lewis added. “Don’t kid ourselves. Wherever they start, if that is the way people amass power, they will start looking for Jews*.”

“Key Clinton Ally Implies Trump White House Would ‘Start Looking For Jews,’” the Daily Caller Thursday.

Chaser:

Among the delectable tidbits [in Wikileaks] on which Republicans are feasting are these: one male DNC staffer wrote another male staffer saying “I love you” and added “no homo.” Another DNC email referred to Latino voters as “taco bowl outreach.” Now ousted DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz is exposed as a liar for falsely claiming she was not working behind the scenes to defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders and secure the Democratic nomination for Hillary Clinton.

DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall violated what is for Democrats a sacred doctrine of church-state separation when he wrote in an email to DNC CEO Amy Dacey about Sanders’ religious beliefs: “Ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”

Dacey replied, “AMEN.”

—Cal Thomas, “DNC Outed,” yesterday.

*Starting with his own daughter and her husband?

Related: Do anti-Israel Emails From Hillary’s Inner Circle Show Her True Colors?

(Classical allusion in headline.)

TOM MAGUIRE: If you are not nervous about the impending Presidential election I envy and applaud you.

Oh, brother. Florida 2000 becomes Florida/Ohio/Pennsylvania 2016? With a 4-4 Supreme Court unable to swing the result to Hillary? And who among us honestly believes that Obama, Lynch and the establishment Republicans running the FBI could investigate an election-tampering scheme and conclude that Hillary was the beneficiary and Trump won the election? Well, never ask a rhetorical question – I am confident that Democrats and establishment Republicans would insist that their investigation was fair and balanced, but in a close election, the half of the voters that went for Trump won’t buy it.

Of course, if Russian manipulation secretly swings the election to Hillary this will get as much attention from the DoJ as Lois Lerner of the IRS. And whoever wins, the hint of Russian meddling makes it possible that the losers will not accept the legitimacy of the “winner”, leaving our next leader in charge of an even-more divided country.

Our leaders and institutions have lost their credibility and the Russians may be inclined to exploit that. Yike.

I raised some related concerns, and proposed a solution, here.

And note that if the Supreme Court is involved, it will only be 4-4 if Ruth Bader Ginsburg declines to recuse herself in light of her Trump remarks. I had some thoughts on that, too. The real risk of cyber-interference isn’t even swinging an election one way or another — it’s fomenting chaos. And that only requires doing enough damage to inspire doubts.