WAR IN 2015?

Pat Buchanan is a columnist and has run for President of the US.  He ran for the Republican nomination, and lost, and in 2000 ran on a third party Reform Party ticket.  Al Gore and the Democrats won the popular vote that year, but Republican George W. Bush wan the electoral vote and became President, despite the loss of votes to Buchanan.  I should say that in 2000 I voted for Buchanan.  Here is his New Year's Greeting.
Hugh Murray

Is War in the Cards for 2015?

By Patrick J. Buchanan on December 31, 2014, 6:34 pm

“If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you,” said Calvin Coolidge, whose portrait hung in the Cabinet Room of the Reagan White House.

Among the dispositions shared by the two conservatives was a determination to stay out of other people’s wars.

Peering into 2015, there are wars into which our interventionists are eager to plunge that represent no immediate or grave threat to us.

One is the war the Islamic State group is waging in Syria and Iraq, a menace so great, we are told, it may require U.S. ground troops.

But why? Syria and Iraq are 5,000 miles away. And because of itsbarbarism and incompetence, the Islamic State is losing support in the Sunni lands it now occupies.

The Kurds have halted the group’s advance toward Irbil, Iraq. Shiite militias, no friends of ours, have halted its advance toward Baghdad. The Islamic State is under steady drone and air attack by the U.S. and Arab allies. Iran is providing men and materiel to Damascus and Baghdad in their battle against the group.

Now the Turks and Gulf Arabs, including the Saudis, appear to have awakened to the threat and are weighing in against the Islamic State.

Why not let them do the fighting?

By staying out of the two world wars of the 20th century until the other great powers were fully engaged and horribly bled, America emerged triumphant with the fewest casualties and least damage.

That used to be called statesmanship.

Moreover, compared with Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China, the Islamic State doesn’t even make the “JV,” to use Barack Obama’s term.

Last month, the drums were beating for an attack on North Korea for what Sen. John McCain called a “new form of warfare” and what Sen. Lindsey Graham called “cyberterrorism” aided by China.

In “A Reply to Kim’s Cyberterrorism,” The Wall Street Journal urged a “forceful response” to deter “future attacks.” Swiftly, there followed the crashing of North Korea’s Internet system.

Query: If reports are true that Sony Pictures was hacked by ticked-off ex-employees yet North Korea’s Internet was brought down by a U.S. cyberattack, who is the cyberterrorist now?

Perhaps some of those Iranian technicians in Natanz who watched their centrifuges breaking down and blowing up from the Stuxnet virus have some thoughts on this.

But the most determined push for war in 2015 will come from neocons and interventionists who want a U.S.-Putin confrontation and regime change in Russia. And as Russia has a nuclear arsenal to match our own, this is a matter of real gravity.

Because of U.S.-EU sanctions on Russia for its role in Ukraine and the collapse in the price of oil, Russia’s principal export, the ruble has lost half its value, and the economy faces a contraction of 5 percent in 2015.

Real hardships lie ahead for the Russian people. But it seems they are not blaming Vladimir Putin for their troubles. They are blaming us.

“According to the respected Moscow ‘Levada Center,’ which measures political sentiment in Russian society,” the New York Observerreports, “74 percent of Russians have negative feelings towards the USA. … In the 1990s, 80 percent had positive attitude toward America.

“Currently, 76 percent of Russians hate Obama personally and only a meager 2 percent like him. … These are the maximum peaks of anti-American feelings in Russia in years. … Just last week Visa and MasterCard completely stopped their operations in Crimea, leaving more than 2 million people there without access to their money.”

One Moscow supermarket is using American flags as doormats, andcustomers are wiping their feet on them.

Before going home, Congress voted to levy new sanctions on Russia and authorized U.S. lethal weapons to be sent to Kiev to enable Ukraine to retake Luhansk and Donetsk and perhaps Crimea.

Obama signed the bill.

With Republican hawks taking over all congressional committees dealing with foreign and defense policy, peace and war, in the new year, there will be a competitive clamor that Obama send the guns to Kiev.

And what happens then?

Will Putin abandon the rebels and face the rage of the Russian people for backing down? Will Putin wait for the U.S. anti-tank weapons and ammunition to arrive and be sent to eastern Ukraine?

Or will Putin, a decisive sort, send in the Russian army before the U.S. weapons arrive, hive off a land bridge to Crimea–and maybe more for bartering purposes–and call Obama’s bluff?

In his New Year’s message to the Russian people, Putin hailed the annexation of Crimea as an achievement that will “forever remain a landmark in the national history.”

Doesn’t sound as if he’ll be giving Crimea up any time soon.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” said the wise Yogi Berra. But one prediction seems not too risky.

Either Obama and Putin enter negotiations over Ukraine or the war in Ukraine, with 4,700 dead since April, gets bigger and wider.

FROM SHOUTS TO SHOTS - 2 DEAD COPS

     Recently, in New York's Brooklyn two policemen were assassinated while siting their squad car.
     President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder have fanned the flames, encouraged "peaceful" protests that just happen to result in looting and burning of property, destruction of automobiles, assaults on individuals and police.  Obama and his allies, Occupy Wall Street, the Black Nationalists, and assorted "ist" groups march in cities throughout the land, blocking traffic, causing havoc, and in some cases, they shout: "what do we want?"  "Dead cops!"  "When do we want it?"  "Now!"  A week later, the mob got what it demanded - 2 dead cops.  The mob morphs from shouts to shots.  2 dead cops.
    The mobs, the monsters of the streets are following the marching orders of the lawless leader in the White House, who magically finds reasons to amnesty millions of invaders to the nation; decrees an end to legislation concerning Cuba, changes Obamacare at his whims, and imprisoned an Egyptian Christian filmmaker who resides in California for making a movie mocking Mohammad.
    Police should NOT be assassinated!  And police should not be prosecuted when grand juries find no reason to prosecute them.  But Obama, Holder, and the Left demand prosecutions, convictions, and persecutions of police.  The Democrats are the pro-crime party.  They encourage lawlessness and anarchy.
    The mobs encouraged and created by Obama not only want to curb the police, they want to destroy any effective efforts to prevent crime.  They want to declaw the police, and to persecute them if they dare to defend themselves or property.  Some of these mobs are even more lawless than the President.
   Obama has moved up from community organizer to Community-Mobs-Organizer in Chief!
      Hugh Murray    

RACIAL PROTESTS - DECEMBER 2014

Why should the poor be condemned to live among the lawless?  A good question.  In America today there is one party that tries to reduce crime and punish criminals, and the other, led by our President, excuses crime, encourages looting and arson, and tries to prevent punishment.  The Obama Adm. tried to prevent the release of the convenience store video showing what a bully and thief Michael Brown and his friend were.  The Obama crowd has encouraged protest and crime throughout the nation.  It is sad.  ---Hugh

Citizens Who Want To Live In Safe Neighborhoods–Black People The Media Hate (And Rand Paul Isn’t Wild About)

By Ann Coulter on December 3, 2014, 4:30 pm

Now that the Ferguson grand jury documents have been made public, even MSNBC has had to quietly drop its fantasy of Michael Brown being gunned down like a dog in the street by Officer Darren Wilson. Instead, MSNBC is defending the looters.

On Monday night, MSNBC’s Chris Hayesobjected to anyone referring to the people who “set fires or looted as ‘thugs.'”

His guest, former Seattle chief of policeNorm Stamper, said, “I could not agreemore.” (Stamper did such a bang-up job dealing with the World Trade Organization riots in 1999 that he wasforced to resign–which may explain why he is the left’s favorite police chief.)

Hardworking black people in Ferguson poured their lives into their stores, depended on them to support their families and shopped at them to improve their quality of life. I wonder if they appreciated Hayes’ principled opposition to calling the arsonists “thugs.”

Instead of exquisite sensitivity to the feelings of black thugs, how about considering the feelings of black citizens who want to live insafe neighborhoods?

There’s a reason so many black people supported Officer Wilson’s account and that a black woman walked into a burning convenience store in the middle of the riot to extinguish the fire with gallons of milk.

In “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama,” I told the true stories of dozens of allegedly racist crimes sensationalized by the media. In almost all of them, there wereunheralded black heroes who stood up for law and order against “the community.”

When Exeter student Edmund Perry got himself killed by mugging acop, at least a half-dozen black witnesses supported the cop’s version. While The New York Times was droning on about Perry as “a prized symbol of hope,” Perry’s black neighbors were testifying to the grand jury that his brother admitted they had mugged a cop.

At least three black friends of the Central Park rapists told the police that the defendants had confessed to attacking the jogger. (In what must have been an oversight, those witnesses didn’t make it intoKen Burns’ movie.)

A young black woman, who was in Bernie Goetz’s subway car with her husband and child when Goetz shot four black muggers, told the jury, “Those punks got what they deserved.”

Goetz’s lawyer Barry Slotnick made no effort to keep blacks off the jury. His faith was rewarded: Goetz’s biggest defender on the jury was a black bus driver from Harlem. It is well known by prosecutors that working and married blacks make great jurors.

But we never hear about those black people. Why, that would spoil everything!

There are loads of movies about black criminals–rewritten the way the media were hoping the story would come out, but didn’t. (Movie:“Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story.” Spoiler alert! The tale of a racist white cop who shot an innocent black honor student for no discernible reason.)

How about a movie paying tribute to the African-American eyewitnesses in Ferguson who told the truth to the grand jury?

Who speaks for them?

It’s sure not Sen. Rand Paul.

We need video footage of blacks burning other blacks’ stores down juxtaposed with clips of Sen. Paul saying that the reason “three out of four people in prison are black or brown” may be “because of the color of their skin or their economic status.” Another possibility–I’m just throwing it out there–is that the reason black, brown or white people are in prison is because they’ve committed crimes.

Improving their “economic status” doesn’t seem to help. The two men arrested for trying to buy bombs in Ferguson in order to blow up the Gateway Arch and kill the prosecutor and chief of police were prevented from buying as many bombs as they had hoped because they needed to wait for more money to be transferred onto a girlfriend’s EBT card (Electronic Benefits Card–food stamps).

For claiming the drug laws are racist, Sen. Paul seems to imagine his portrait is being hung in black homes across America, between pictures of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy. “White people do drugs too,” Paul tells admiring white liberals in the media, “but either they don’t get caught or they have better attorneys or they don’t live in poverty.”

If Rand Paul thinks black people are rooting for black crack dealers to go free, he’s even crazier than his old man.

It was African-Americans, exploding in rage at the devastation crack was inflicting on their neighborhoods in the 1980s, who demanded severe penalties for crack cocaine. In a typical news story from 1986, Julius Lee, the black city commissioner in Fort Pierce, Florida, said, “Drugs are terrible things, but these cocaine rocks are the terriblest of the terrible.” Black grocer Eugene Gibson sadly remarked, while sweeping the sidewalk in front of his store, “We’re in a world of trouble here. … It’s these cocaine rocks.”

A few years later, in 1989, black columnist Dorothy Gaiter perfectly expressed the feelings of the (non-crack dealing) black community inThe Miami Herald: “Crack sellers should be locked up and their bounty taken away from them. The jails are crowded with murderers and others who deserve to be there, but the crack seller is a murderer too. He’s a lethal seducer of our young, a destroyer of our neighborhoods. Being poor is no crime and should not result in a sentence to live among the lawless.”

But now Sen. Paul is pushing the idea that the drug laws black people begged for were actually part of a racist plot to lock up African-Americans. It’s like something out of Maxine Waters’ dream journal.

The only people impressed with Rand Paul’s defense of black criminals are the ones who will never be victimized by them.

Vijay Responded:

what about the choke hold death case in NYC.. Was that guy also threatening the life of the cop too?

My reply to Vijay:

Vijay,

   The minority store owners in the neighborhood had complained about people selling "loosers" - untaxed cigarettes in front of their business.  They pay taxes and pay taxes on the heavily taxed cigarettes - I was told they now cost $11 to 13 a pack in NYC, much going for taxes.  The Mayor had ordered a crack down too.  The officer in charge of the op was a Black policewoman, not shown in the video.  The man, trying to eke out a living, but doing it illegally.  He had been arrested over 30 times, and was a convicted felon.  HE REFUSED TO COMPLY WHEN THE POLICE ORDERED HIM TO.  He sought to evade arrest.  Police had to cuff him.  There was no way they might know of his medical problems.  If he could speak, I am told, he could breathe.

    The Left is all for raising taxes, on cigs, sodas, everything.  If the govt would eliminate such taxes, there would be no reason for black marketers to stand in front of stores.

    I recall a visit to NYC in the early 1960s.  Wonderful.  But in time, people took over the sidewalks, placing cloths, selling this and that.  You could hardly walk on the wide sidewalks.  NYC became like a 3rd world mess, herding crowds into narrower and narrower areas so people who paid no taxes could sell this and that, and I suspect, some illegal goods.  All part of the decline.  And walk by mistake on someones' table cloth or blanket, and you might risk your life.

   In the conflict between police and the lawless, I give slack to the police.  They did not aim to kill him; but to arrest him.  He refused.  It is unfortunate that his health problems led to his death, but had he complied with the police, or had he not sold cigs illegally, he would still be alive.

   The Occupy Wall Street crowd has made new signs.  And they have merged with the Black Nats, all harking to the pro-demo speeches of Obama, Holder, and their ally, Sharpton.  I lived in NYC when Sharpton, for a year, headed the hoax surrounding Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused a white official of rape.  Then Sharpton led protests against a store in Harlem owned by Jew.  Eventually, the store was burned, and a person killed.  But Sharpton went on.  Sharpton, who by the way, may owe thousands of dollars in taxes.  But with friends like Obama, I assume he has no worries with the IRS.

   I think Rand Paul is wrong on this.  You cannot have justice when lawless mobs roam the streets defending criminals.

   Would you feel saver if your neighbors were Mike Brown and the man in Staten Island?  Who will keep your neighborhood safe?

   Sorry I go on a rant sometimes.  But I think America is seriously in decline, in part to policies of trying to satisfy the pro-crime elements of society.  No wonder, the IMF just declared America - #1 economy since Pres. Grant in the 1870s, dropped to #2 behind China this week. 

Vijay replies:

I am not assigning the racial motives to what happened in New York. Here is what I see in the video. 

1. There is one officer who has a chokehold on the man and a few others were trying to bring him down. 

2. After the guy goes down he starts to say that he is unable to breathe several times. But the office never releases the chokehold. And at the same time two or three other officers push/ hold him to the ground with their full force to his back. 

When three people are standing on top of you exerting an enormous amount of pressure on your back, it's going to be very easy to exhale but extremely difficult to inhale (hence easy to say you are unable to breathe). 

What was the need for this excessive force after the guy went to the ground and was on his face? Also it is hard for me to imagine that a police officer who is expected to run into these kind of situations wouldn't know the difference between inhaling and exhaling. 

Like I said I am not assigning any racial motives to the incident. I am not hailing the dead man as a martyr. However he did not deserve to die on that day the way he did. For that, I blame the excessive force used by the police were involved in this incident. 

Also after the guy goes unconscious they just stand around and do nothing to revive the guy. Even the EMT personal (cops) didn't do nothing. 

If anyone else had done this it would be called 'murder'. Why are the cops above the law?

Thanks,    Vijay

My reply to Vijay,

    You raise interesting and important points.  When you are dealing with a 200-pound guy who was violating the law, which you wree told to enforce, and he resisted arrest, do you want him on his feet again where he might be a threat to you?  I heard on TV that if one can speak, they can breathe.  Should cops always listen to those they apprehended?  A few years ago in Milwaukee, cops arrested a thin guy and placed him in the patrol car.  He said he could not breathe and died.  It is rare, but it happens.  What happens if cops let the culprits stand, or let them out the car?  Will they simply breathe, or run, or do something to threaten the cop?

   In the end the grand juries get to hear evidence about indicting the police.  If indicted, there is a trial.  In NYC the Mayor is a far Left politician who favors the protest and Obama.  In Missouri, Gov. Nixon is a Democrat who has worked with the Obama Adm.  Yet, in neither case were the police indicted.  The Left condemned the prosecutor in Missouri, saying he was biased because his father was a policeman who had been killed by a Black criminal.  Should victims of Black crime be barred?  Then a large segment of the American population could not partake in important decisions because the main perpetrators of crime in the US are Blacks.

   NYC in the 1950s and 60s was a jewel of a city.  Then with the late 1960s and riots and pro-crime policies of Liberal Republicans and Democrats, the yielding of wide sidewalks to people who sold, or had 3 monty scams, or did this or that, but the public walkway was stolen, and more and more crime occurred.  Under liberal Democrat Mayor Dinkins in the late 1980s the murder rate was at least 2,200 a year.  Finally in the 1990s the city elected Republican Mayor Giuliani, who changed police policies and the murder rate dropped to fewer than 500 a year.  But there were some questionable shootings by the cops, and the Democrats hate the anti-crime policies.  They voted in NYCs new mayor, and voted for Obama.

   There are gray areas, but in the end, I generally support the police.

   Enjoy your trip to Boston.

      Hugh

FERGUSON COP - A HERO!

I have been away, and returned to some computer problems.  But I did post this comment on a recent yahoo story reporting that former Mayor of NYC Giuliani stated that Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson should not have been indicted and the case should not even have gone to the grand jury.             President Obama wants Americans to discuss race and events in Ferguson, Missouri.  Here is my comment, one I am sure that the Obama Administration will not be pleased with.

   The policeman is a hero.  The criminal Brown family, including the mom who attacked relatives for selling Michael Brown t-shirts, the step-dad who urged a mob to arson, and Michael, the druggie, thief, bully, who bragged that his hands were his weapons, and used his 300 pounds to intimidate, finally picked on the wrong man.  Horrible that the pro-crime element now seeks to threaten the policeman.  Why are no efforts made to indict the left-wing terrorists who make such threats?  Now the policeman resigns.  Will he have to move because of the racist threats?  The policeman had done no wrong!  Defending oneself against a 300-pound bully on drugs is not a crime.  Darren Wilson is a hero who just said NO to the bully in the only language the drug-crazed thug could understand.
    3 cheers for Darren Wilson!