Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

A Tale of Two Visions: Clinton and Trump After Orlando

I broke my long-standing rule about not watching or listening to speeches by progressive politicians. If a ProgPol, e.g. Obama, gives a major speech, my practice is to find the text and read it. That way I don't have to put up with ProgPol mannerisms. Well, I broke my rule, and listened to Hillary Clinton's June 13 speech on terror. You can go HERE and read it, so I am not going to spend a great amount of time dissecting it in gruesome detail. I also watched Donald Trump's June 13 speech on terror; you can go HERE  and read that one. Again, I won't go over that speech in great detail, but just want to give my thoughts on how they went over. In both cases we note digressions in delivery from the written text, but minor ones. 

OK, let's start with the showman aspects of the speeches before we get to the more important stuff. The Clinton campaign has slick production values, e.g., flags placed perfectly. Clinton has worked on her delivery and it shows. She seems learning to keep her irritating screeches under control, and has developed a smooth, well-paced even mellifluous delivery. She reads a teleprompter well. She still has irritating mannerisms, such as nodding slowly, smug expression frozen on her face, after saying something she considers incredibly clever. As somebody who during his career wrote or gave hundreds of speeches, I can appreciate her mastery of the standard boiler-plate American political speech. She delivers empty platitudes well.

Trump is completely different. The production values are poor, even sloppy. He slouches at the podium, the background is nondescript, flags poorly placed, and still--in my view--he talks a little too much about himself. He might, I say, might, want to work a bit on all that if he becomes president--seems to work for him as a candidate, so I won't give any advice there.

OK, OK, enough of that stuff, what about the substance? Who won?

Folks, if I might use that irritating word, I am probably biased, but I thought Trump killed it. He owned the subject. While Hillary went for the smooth-running snobby Beverly Hills Cadillac limo approach, The Donald went all blue-collar Detroit 1966 Oldsmobile 442 on her. Sure, at times, he was a bit sloppy on the cornering, and his gear shifting was a tad rough, but on the straightaways his roaring 400 cubic inch engine left Hillary way behind, sucking in the acrid blue smoke of burning rubber.

Hillary prattled on about the wages of hate, to wit, "A madman filled with hate, with guns in his hands and just a horrible sense of vengeance and vindictiveness in his heart, apparently consumed by rage against LGBT Americans." When she tried to sound tough, she fell flat, her speech crippled by the tenets of political correctness,
In the Middle East, ISIS is attempting a genocide of religious and ethnic minorities, they are slaughtering Muslims who refuse to accept their medieval ways, they are beheading civilians, including executing LGBT people, they are murdering Americans and Europeans, enslaving, torturing, and raping women and girls.
Notice, she couldn't bring herself to mention the word "Christians"? And on she went,
Inflammatory, anti-Muslim rhetoric – and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans, as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country – hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. So does saying that we have to start special surveillance on our fellow Americans because of their religion. 
It’s no coincidence that hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques have tripled after Paris and San Bernardino.
Oh, please. Hate crimes against American Muslims . . . right.

The Donald, on the other hand, went for the bear's throat. I said I wouldn't go over it in much detail, but he has an eloquent passage which I must quote at length,
This is a very dark moment in America’s history. 
A radical Islamic terrorist targeted the nightclub not only because he wanted to kill Americans, but in order to execute gay and lesbian citizens because of their sexual orientation. 
It is a strike at the heart and soul of who we are as a nation. 
It is an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want and express their identity. 
It is an attack on the right of every single American to live in peace and safety in their own country. 
We need to respond to this attack on America as one united people – with force, purpose and determination. 
But the current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and think and act clearly. 
If we don’t get tough, and we don’t get smart – and fast – we’re not going to have a country anymore -- there will be nothing left. 
The killer, whose name I will not use, or ever say, was born to Afghan parents who immigrated to the United States. His father published support for the Afghan Taliban, a regime which murders those who don’t share its radical views. The father even said he was running for President of that country. 
The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here. That is a fact, and it’s a fact we need to talk about. 
We have a dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country, and it does not permit us to protect our citizens. 
We have an incompetent administration, and if I am not elected President, that will not change over the next four years -- but it must change, and it must change now. 
With fifty people dead, and dozens more wounded, we cannot afford to talk around the issue anymore -- we have to address it head on. 
I called for a ban after San Bernardino, and was met with great scorn and anger but now, many are saying I was right to do so -- and although the pause is temporary, we must find out what is going on. The ban will be lifted when we as a nation are in a position to properly and perfectly screen those people coming into our country. 
The immigration laws of the United States give the President the power to suspend entry into the country of any class of persons that the President deems detrimental to the interests or security of the United States, as he deems appropriate.
And there you have it, folks. Trump nailed it.

I heard some commentators, including conservatives, criticize Trump for using the actions of an American-born slug to advocate for tough immigration laws. Those critics don't understand what the average American does. Islam is an alien concept and incompatible with Western democracy. We cannot vet people coming from Muslim countries with any reasonable sense of accuracy. It, furthermore, is clear, as we have seen here as well as in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium, and the UK, that native-born Muslims have no problem going full jihadi on the rest of us.

As I have written before, Islam is a creed for the aggrieved. It teaches resentment and vengeance for slights real and often imagined. The non-Islamic world is to blame for everything that is evil and keeping back the Muslims of the world.

Rough and raw Trump is right; smooth and slick Clinton is woefully wrong.

More important, however, as I noted before,  there is no need to listen to Clinton's words. Whenever she says something, the simple response, is "Yeah, yeah, but what did YOU do when YOU had the power?"


29 comments:

  1. A propitious moment for Trump, and anyone who who wants an end to the destruction wrought by the progressives and their agenda.

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  2. "Rough and raw Trump is right", not only right, his delivery is one we Americans understand.

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  3. I am absolutely certain who I want taking the call at 3am on behalf of the world and it not HRC

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  4. Clinton appealing for "unity" after the last 8 years of deliberate disunity is hard to take. We are not united and we are not going to be united, not for a very long time. I appreciate Trump's "rough and raw". We Americans face two enemies- Leftism, and Islam.

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    Replies
    1. Leftism is the hard one, and must be dealt with first.

      - reader #1482

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  5. I am writing from Germany and I assure you that after this very tough and accurate speech the election of Donald Trump as next president is largely certain.

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  6. Shrillary is a criminal, just not convicted.

    Trump could be what we need.

    #hillarynever

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  7. I've just finished listening to him on youtube. I thought he spoke very well, in moderate, intelligent terms; probably heartfelt terms.

    The policy he is advocating is just an exemplification of the old maxim that if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

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  8. Perhaps we'll have to resort to expulsion, as the early U.S. did to British Loyalists.

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    Replies
    1. Did we expel? Or did they just up and leave? I never delved into that, and now, it appears, I must.

      Delete
    2. Did we expel? Or did they just up and leave? I never delved into that, and now, it appears, I must.

      Delete
  9. I'm not sure if Hellery said this phrase here ... but both she and Obummer are now using the focus-group tested phrase "weapons of war". Somehow, I doubt if the AR-xx has ever been used in battle

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  10. I'm really at a loss for why the GOP is so steadfastly running away from Trump. I know he's not a conservative in several areas, and I know he's baited the media numerous times with edgy questions and answers. But who does the GOP think it's marketing itself to? Democrats? Liberals? There is no solidly conservative running in this campaign with a chance to win the white house, so the onus is on the GOP to embrace the best (or least worst, if you will) candidate left standing.

    I don't think GOP reps need to agree with Trump on everything, but they need to agree that he's better than Hillary, or they might as well just go home. They need to do this *now*, not 'after the convention', and not 'before the general election', or it gives up valuable marketing opportunities for the conservative effort itself.

    - reader #1482

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    1. That is an important observation. Why is the GOPe criticizing Trump rather than explaining what is correct about Trump's statements?

      There is only one answer. The GOPe (GOP establishment) is a loose collection of individual politicians who are marketing themselves as an opposition party, but in fact are a division of the UniParty. They expect to be reelected as mild Progressives rather than take and explain actual conservative positions and votes.

      The GOPe says enough to send emails to supporters, but arranges to be ineffective in practice. There are no GOPe education efforts to inform the public between elections, and it is too late to do this during elections. They then claim that they have to be DemLight in order to keep their seats, which is true as far as it goes. The failure happens between elections during periods of no outreach.

      The Dems/Progs are always pushing their agenda and false statistics. When did we last hear any important Republican talk about the important defensive use of guns, reported as more than 2 million per year? I never have.

      The GOPe is dead to me. They are a shield party, not an opposition party.

      Delete
  11. This evening at our house we kicked around the problem of what to do to reduce or eliminate the jihadi threat here at home in the U.S. We concluded that Trump is asking for four actions, each of them constitutional and in accordance with current law:
    - Respect the 2nd amendment so that citizens can defend themselves
    - Prosecute the accessories to jihadi murders, the friends and family members who know what's up and don't report it
    - Properly vet immigrants
    - Defeat ISIS.

    If we did these four things the problem would be reduced, if not immediately solved.

    The Obama administration, on the other hand, is flouting the law on immigration, and the Constitution on the 2nd amendment, and is only pretending to fight ISIS. And it is overstepping and going overboard on NSA surveillance of law-abiding citizens. They either do too little or too much, and do not respect the law and the Constitution.

    Obama today implied that Trump is in some way threatening Muslims who are American citizens and the press is picking that up to mislead the public. The fact is that Trump has never taken a position to infringe the rights of U.S. citizens of any religion.

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    1. P.S. (Same commenter as above!) The response of the progs, much of the commentariat, and the various RINOs to the Orlando shooting and the Trump speech is beyond disappointing. We need to be discussing gun control? Really? And Trump somehow said something wrong in his strong and common sense speech? It looks like it's going to take a great deal of citizen involvement to push this boulder up the hill through November 8 and get Trump elected. NeverHillary.

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    2. "Properly vet immigrants" is a pipe-dream. Just consider the sort of countries your enemies come from, for heaven's sake.

      Or just consider that the Orlando terrorist had been vetted by the FBI and by his employer.

      "Vetting" is a panacea.

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    3. Don't worry Trump on twitter has already caved on the 2nd Amendment.

      Delete
  12. Dunno how I missed this when it was first posted, but... brilliant:
    http://www.faisalalmutar.com/2015/11/16/i-am-a-jihadist-and-i-am-tired-of-not-being-given-credit/

    - reader #1482

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  13. Diplomad, your observation also applies to Progressives. Possibly that is why they feel a kinship with Islam.

    Substituted: Progressivism is a creed for the aggrieved. It teaches resentment and vengeance for slights real and often imagined. The non-Progressive world of free markets and individual rights is to blame for everything that is evil and for keeping back the peoples of the world.

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    Replies
    1. Spot on. Those are our enemies. Middle Class tyranny is an obstacle to "progressives".

      Delete
  14. The political science industry is starting to reconsider Trump.
    http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/06/14/possible_errors_in_exit_polls_suggest_more_election_surprises_ahead_130875.html

    "Primary turnout proved a harbinger of the heavy turnout favorable to Democrats in November 2008. It's not clear whether it will this November, or whether the exit polls are wrong. But both are signs that Trump's chances might -- might -- be better than current polling suggests."

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  15. Heads Up Lewis.

    RonaldB (who may comment here periodically?) commented on GatesofVienna (GoV) that he got some security tickles when trying to access The DiploMad.

    You can read my response http://gatesofvienna.net/2016/06/trump-addresses-what-obama-cannot/#comment-451104

    RonaldB is a Counter Jihad warrior and excellent intellect, thus I have no concerns regarding his motives. The Irishman.

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    1. I think folks are using the wrong domain name. The Diplomad's URL is: thediplomad.com people were likely using diplomad.com which likely is the source of the nefarious content they are getting virus/trojan warnings about.

      host diplomad.com
      diplomad.com has address 208.91.197.111
      ^^^^^
      This IP is located at a dodgy looking small provider in British Virgin Islands.


      host thediplomad.com
      thediplomad.com has address 72.167.232.14
      ^^^^^^
      This is the real deal Diplomad.

      Delete
    2. Wow! I did not know any of this. Many thanks to you both

      Delete
  16. I noticed one interesting thing about Trump: He said "Gay and Lesbians citizens", who are human, instead of LGBT People, who are bureaucratic categories. In my opinion, using an acronym to describe people dehumanizes them. Trump gave them humanity.

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  17. Question for Mr. Mad... did you leave state before Kerry took over?
    Was it possible that things got *worse* after going from Hillary to Kerry? If so, was it just continuing the process? Because I just can't imagine Kerry making anything 'better' in terms of foreign policy. Is he more active? He seems to be. But he just seems horrifically incompetent at the job. Like he has never read the slightest in histories of the people with whom he's dealing.

    - reader #1482

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  18. Uncle Kepha's take on Omar Mateen:

    He patronized that filthy place--
    A suicidal ghazi.
    There he often showed his face
    To engage in bacha bazi.

    ReplyDelete