Mark Waldeland sent the following article regarding President Trump’s withdrawal from Barack Obama’s dictating the “Iran Deal”
from LOUDER WITH CROWDER, by John Porter:
THE TRUTH ABOUT PULLING OUT OF IRAN DEAL
The Iran deal has always been terrible. Today is a reminder that if you live by the Presidency, you die by the Presidency. We ought to be clear about this: Donald Trump isn’t ripping up a treaty; he’s walking away from Barack Obama’s personal pledge. Two and a half years ago, President Obama made a bad deal with Iran without support from Congress, and today President Trump is pulling out of President Obama’s personal commitment, and he doesn’t need Congress’s support to do so. American foreign policy makes lasting progress when it is led by the President, approved by Congress, and presented honestly to the American people.
“In 2006, at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Pope Benedict XVI gave a historic speech on faith and reason that included reflections on Islamic ideology. Quoting a medieval scholar who condemned conversion by force, or jihad, Benedict characterized Allah as transcendental and above rationality. The quote called Muhammad’s new ideas “things only evil and inhuman.”
Not surprisingly, the pope received death threats afterward and was called the “pig servant of the cross” and other derogatory epithets. Muslims protested in the streets worldwide and demanded an apology. Five churches were firebombed in the West Bank and Gaza, an Italian nun was shot dead in Somalia, a priest was beheaded in Iraq, and two Christians were stabbed and killed in Baghdad. Many feared that even more violence would erupt. Following the carnage and intense pressure, Pope Benedict yielded to the Islamists and capitulated.
Since that time, the Vatican’s agenda has been to reach an accommodation with Islam, to resist any condemnation of jihadist ideology, to promote the “progressive enculturation of Islam in Europe,” and to “engage in interreligious dialogue.” The pope went so far in his apologia as to meet with Muslim diplomats and ambassadors, including Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (M.B.). This occurred despite widespread persecution and attacks against Christians in Muslim countries by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated terrorist groups, and at a time in which Christianity is being extirpated from the region.
One year after Pope Benedict’s address, in what appeared to be a gesture of reconciliation, a group of Muslim scholars and clerics invited Christians to come together to endorse the document, “A Common Word Between Us and You,” an open letter to Christian leaders emphasizing similarities between the two faiths. Initially, 300 Christian leaders across the world approved “Common Word” and received the document with enthusiasm.
A response prepared by the Yale Center for Faith and Culture extended “our own Christian hand in return so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love G‑d and our neighbors.” The Christian letter of response apologized for the past – the Crusades (in reality an effort to regain conquered Christian land) and the present-day “excesses” of the “war on terror.” It also identified Muhammad as a prophet and went on to ask forgiveness for sinning against the worldwide Muslim community. The letter continued with a validation of the common ground between the two faiths cited by “A Common Word Between Us and You,” specifically “love of G‑d” and “love of neighbor” and agreed these similarities to “be the basis of all interfaith dialogue between us” for the sake of peace in this world and “our eternal souls.”
In their book, The Common Word: The Undermining of the Church, Sam Solomon, a Muslim apostate, devout Christian, and scholar of Islam, and Elias Al Maqdisi, an expert on Islamic teachings, expose the true meaning and spirit of “Common Word.” They contend that the message is “accept Islam or face the consequences,” rather than a paean of “unity” or the “oneness” of G‑d. Noteworthy is that the document lacked any apology for Islamic invasions and conquests or invitations to build churches in Islamic lands.
The authors point out that, despite the seeming message of peace in the document, sharia law mandates that Muslims are not allowed to enter into peace agreements with non-Muslims or forgo their obligation to perform jihad. They also state that whereas Judaism and Christianity teach, “love of one’s neighbor as one’s self,” Islam teaches followers to have enmity toward Jews and Christians as set forth in the Islamic doctrine of Al Wala Wa al Baraa, or Loyalty and Enmity. Mainstream Islam advocates the separation of Muslims from non-Muslims, who are viewed as “unclean.” Quran 58:22 states that devout Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims “even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin.”
Further quotations from the Quran cited by the authors include Quran 60:4, which proclaims, “Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us – until you believe in Allah alone.” In fact, the first sura or chapter of the Quran, Al Fatiha or “Opening,” recited at each prayer time for a total of 17 times daily, is a call to follow the “straight path” of Islam and not to follow the path “of those who have evoked Allah’s anger,” or the Jews, and those who have gone “astray,” or the Christians.
As for the “loyalty” part of Al Wala Wa al Baraa, Muslims are obligated to befriend and aid fellow believers, the authors note. Therefore, “love” is doctrinally permitted only toward fellow Muslims. Also problematic is the doctrine of taqiyya, which requires Muslims to lie to and deceive infidels, implying that hostility is ever present despite the pretense of “coming together.” Central to Islamic ideology is that the Quran is the last of the holy books to be revealed and abrogates everything that came before it, as proclaimed in the Shahada or the Muslim prayer of affirmation: “There is no G‑d but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.”
Solomon and Maqdisi sum up the “Common Word” as part and parcel of the “civilizational jihad” and an expedient attempt to make Islam look peaceful with elements in common with Christianity.
With the appointment of Pope Francis in 2013, the Church intensified its portrayal of Islam as “a religion of peace” as well as its dissembling about the motivating ideology of jihad terrorism. An Islamist leader even thanked Francis for defending Islam against accusations of violence. The pope has warned that limits exist to freedom of expression and, in blatant denial of Muslim terrorism, claims instead that all religions have their violent individuals. Rather than serving as a defender of Christianity, he has enabled and abetted the persecution of Christians.
Disturbingly, some top evangelical Christian leaders in America have spurred the encroachment of Islam and thereby failed to warn their congregants about the threat they face from Islamic ideology. One example, Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, which averages 20,000 weekly attendees, spoke at the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America Annual Convention in 2009 alongside unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center attack Siraj Wahhaj, Hezb’allah supporter Maher Hathout, and violent jihad advocate Esam Omeish. Warren, a major promoter of interfaith unity, proclaimed, “We need to work together.” In addition to legitimating a Muslim Brotherhood entity by his presence, he was a signatory to “‘A Common Word’ Christian Response,” supporting the contention that Muslims and Christian serve the same G‑d. Warren later issued a denial: “Christians have a fundamentally different view of G‑d than Muslims. We worship Jesus as G‑d. Muslims don’t. Our G‑d is Jesus, not Allah.”
Pastor Bob Roberts of Northwood Church in Texas, another mega-church, has hosted an interfaith forum, the Global Faith Forum, where Muslim Brotherhood operatives have been invited to speak. Roberts has been associated with Mohamed Magid, the imam of the sharia-supremacist ADAMS mosque and former president of the Islamic Society of North America, found to be associated with Hamas in a federal trial in 2008. Additionally, he has collaborated with Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah, an anti-Israel cleric who openly states on his website that Christians are going to hell and authorized the killing of Americans in Iraq with a fatwa issued in 2004.
Earlier this year, 400 faith leaders met in Washington at the National Prayer Breakfast to forge ties between Muslims and Christians in which M.B. operative Mohamed Magid and Bin Bayyah participated. It is unconscionable that this convocation was not perceived as it actually was: a threat to national security by those who wish to destroy Western civilization and force sharia submission.
Whether wittingly or unwittingly, these Christian leaders are complicit in the drive to mainstream Islam worldwide. They are placing Christians, already imperiled throughout the world, at great risk by reaching out to practitioners of an extremist ideology that seeks to convert or annihilate anyone who refuses to accept its supremacy. As Solomon and Al Maqdisi point out in their book, Christians are being deceived about the true intent of Muslims who hold enmity and no love at all toward anyone not a fellow Muslim.”
Lock Him Up: Manhattan D.A. Opens Criminal Investigation Of Schneiderman
by Allahpundit at HotAir:
I just want to kick in a post about Schneiderman before this story fades, practically faster than I can blog about it. News cycles in the Trump era now move so briskly that the attorney general of New York, who’s been coordinating with Bob Mueller to potentially prosecute the president and his cronies on state Russiagate offenses, can be exposed as an abusive monster, resign from office in disgrace, and become old-ish news literally overnight.
Better get those takes in now before we’re all onto the Iran deal and whatever the new Stormygate drama ends up being.
Danny Frost, a spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said in a statement late Monday that prosecutors would look into the claims.
It’s an unusual twist: Schneiderman’s office had been tasked with investigating the Manhattan District Attorney’s office over its handling of a 2015 sex assault probe involving Harvey Weinstein that resulted in no criminal charges.
NYPD officials said they had not received any complaints, but would investigate thoroughly should anyone come forward.
How long should this investigation take, realistically? They need to interview Michelle Manning Barish and Tanya Selvaratnam (plus, ideally, the two anonymous women who spoke to the New Yorker), look at the medical records from when the two sought treatment after being smacked around, and speak to the friends — one of whom is Salman Rushdie — who claim they were told at the time that the abuse was occurring. If everything seems credible after some basic due diligence, like establishing Schneiderman’s whereabouts on dates when the abuse occurred, that’s probable cause. It shouldn’t take months, especially if this case is made a priority.
Normally the D.A. might weigh the likelihood of conviction at trial and decide not to charge if he thinks he’s apt to lose, even if probable cause for an arrest exists, but not so much in this case. Schneiderman, after all, is accused not just of grievous physical abuse but grievous abuse of power. The most chilling line in last night’s New Yorker story wasn’t the details of him choking and slapping the women, as bad as that was. It was him allegedly once telling Barish, “I am the law.” Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Cy Vance has a heavy political incentive to show the public that he’s at least *trying* to hold this degenerate to the same rules everyone else has to play by. If the jury lets him go, that’s on them.
And in case you missed this passage in the New Yorker piece, the rules that Schneiderman and everyone else have to play by were, in this case, actually written by him. In addition to standard criminal prohibitions against assault, New York State has a special law that specifically prohibits strangulation because it happens so often in relationships where the abuse eventually leads to death. This guy, who was allegedly choking his partners in bed, was somehow woke enough to make choking a separate offense in the name of punishing violent men before they end up killing the women they’re with:
Not only did Schneiderman’s bill make life-threatening strangulation a grave crime; it also criminalized less serious cases involving “an intent to impede breathing” as misdemeanors punishable by up to a year in prison. “I’m just sorry it took us so long in New York State to do this,” Schneiderman declared at the time. “I think this will save a lot of lives.”
Jennifer Friedman, a legal expert on domestic violence, says that she cannot square Schneiderman’s public and private behavior. Anyone knowledgeable about intimate-partner violence, she says, knows that choking is “a known lethality indicator.” She adds, “I cannot fathom that someone who drafted the legislation on strangulation is unfamiliar with such concepts.” She also says, “A slap is not just a slap—it reverberates through the rest of the relationship, making her afraid of setting him off.” She adds, “People aren’t usually prosecuted for it, but, in the state of New York, slapping is assault when it results in pain or physical injury.”
Two lingering questions here. One: Why didn’t Schneiderman resign much, much sooner? Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer didn’t write this story overnight. Presumably they contacted Schneiderman himself for comment awhile ago. Even if they didn’t, friends of his would have gotten wind that something career-threatening was in the works. Why didn’t he quit preemptively, to do what little he could to short-circuit public interest in the scandal? It would have been a major scandal regardless but dropping this story on the sitting AG of New York State and having him resign in shorter order than it would take you to watch “Gone With the Wind” was an avoidable scenario. Does he really think he’s being smeared here and was prepared to fight the allegations?
Or was he so arrogant and self-deluded that he thought he might convince his party to let him keep his job? In hindsight, you’re left wondering if Schneiderman’s loud-and-proud woke #Resistance shtick, from targeting Trump to writing domestic abuse laws, was partly a matter of him banking political goodwill *knowing* that this might come out someday and he’d need liberals to circle the wagons for him. Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton made themselves politically indispensable to the left and survived, after all. Schneiderman had some reason to think he might too:
After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal business, and that she’d better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that she had taken this as a threat.
If Schneiderman’s career had started a mere 10 or even five years early, he might still be in line to become governor now.
Two: How thorny will the statutes of limitations prove for Cy Vance in prosecuting Schneiderman? In New York the state gets five years to prosecute a felony but only two years to prosecute a misdemeanor. If Barish and Selvaratnam are telling the truth, Schneiderman’s guilty of at least third-degree strangulation (i.e. “Criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation”) and assault. Problem is, those are misdemeanors, and since Barish stopped seeing Schneiderman on New Year’s Day 2015, that means he would be off the hook for what he did to her. (Selvaratnam dated him until last fall.) On the other hand, second-degree strangulation and assault are each felonies; he could be prosecuted for what he did to Barish in that case. Second-degree strangulation requires “stupor, loss of consciousness for any period of time, or any other physical injury or impairment” in the victim. Second-degree assault requires “serious physical injury.” I don’t remember Barish or Selvaratnam claiming injury from choking in the New Yorker piece but they both needed medical care from the slapping. Would that qualify as “serious physical injury”? Let’s hope so, for Vance’s purposes.
America’s political experts got it wrong in 2016 — not because they took too few polls, but because they made the false assumption that American elections are immune to societal change.
They are, in large part, still getting things wrong, not only by failing to understand a new group of voters who put President Donald Trump in the White House but also by ignoring why they voted the way they did.
When explaining the Trump voter, the media usually offers portraits of isolated, uneducated, working-class rubes who are driven by anger, race and nationalism. To the experts and those who didn’t support Trump, it’s hard for them to see it any other way.
And while the media obsesses over the future demise of the president, they aren’t pausing to consider the strength and durability of the coalition that swept him into office.
They aren’t asking why people in the Rust Belt counties who voted for former President Barack Obama twice suddenly switched to Trump.
But they should. Because Trump was not the cause of this movement, he was the result of it. In order to fully appreciate his rise to the White House, you need focus on the people who put him there.
On the back roads and side streets of places like Erie, Pa., and Kenosha, Wis., emerge blue-collar optimists, evangelical pragmatists and suburban vacillators who turned the dials just enough to shock the body politic, leading to an emerging populist-conservative alliance that wrecked the old partisan framework.
Far from a fluke, the 2016 election was a product of the tectonic plate-grinding of our society — a backlash against globalism, secularism and coastal elitism. An August 2017 survey of 2,000 self-reporting Trump voters in the Rust Belt, commissioned by me and my co-author, revealed their motivations, priorities and decision making, and reinforced what we had found in our interviews.
In “The Great Revolt,” out Tuesday, we pinpoint and describe several archetypes of the new Trump voter, many of whom broke ranks to back him. Those hoping to predict what comes next in American life should study them — because the ballot box likely won’t be their last venue for change.
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
JEFFERSON, Ohio — When you walk into the Legally Sweet Bakery on Chestnut Street you can barely see Bonnie Smith standing behind the display cases filled with sugar cookies, tea cakes, cream wafers, brownies and mini tarts.
But don’t let her diminutive size fool you. At 63, Smith is a powerhouse. After working her way up from a cook’s job to the role of deputy sheriff at the Ashtabula County Sheriff Department, she is now in her second career as a small business owner.
Modal TriggerOhio baker Bonnie Smith was fed up with the economy, and she’s just one of many stories in “The Great Revolt,” about the voter swing toward Donald Trump.
It is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, and she has already been up 8 ½ hours baking delicacies to fill her cozy shop.
For years, Smith’s politics reflected her community. She was raised a Democrat, her parents were Democrats, her husband was a Democrat, she worked for the Democrats. She even voted for Bernie Sanders in the presidential primary in March 2016.
And then, suddenly, “I woke up one morning and said ‘I had had enough.’”
Smith says her dissatisfaction grew as she looked around her community. The main-street business district where her bakery is located was sprinkled with closed storefronts. The opioid crisis had ravaged the area, and every news story was about job cuts instead of job creation.
“I am kind of that voter that was hiding in plain sight that no one saw coming. I was right here all along. I’ve seen the job losses here, the rising crime, the mess and heroin problem, society essentially losing hope. Something just gave in within me,” she said.
To her surprise, her husband echoed her sentiments. They both voted for Trump.
Smith’s journey to that point was not an evolution, it was a revelation. And many others in Ashtabula County, Ohio, experienced the same eureka moment: The exact county that gave Barack Obama a 55 percent majority of its vote twice, swung a remarkable 31 points to give Trump a victory over Clinton by a margin of 57 percent to 38 percent.
ERIE, Pa. — Dave Millet bears a striking a resemblance to Kenny Rogers as he stands outside the Ugly Tuna Tavern on Peninsula Drive in this northeastern Pennsylvania industrial town.
It’s a resemblance he’s taken advantage of for the past 30 years as an impersonator at local bars and casinos in the region. “It’s fun and it’s extra income. Here, let me show you,” he says as he stands up to sing:
“You got to know when to hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.”
A group of young people cheer him on as they walk inside the tavern.
Millet (inset) hasn’t had an easy life. He’s been up, he’s been down, he’s been up again only to be struck down by illness. Now he’s back up again.
Never once has he ever given up.
“You can’t give up. You reinvent yourself, you make bank, you find a way. I’ve lost plenty of jobs and I’ve earned plenty of jobs. You just keep climbing back up,” he says.
Unconventional candidates attract voters for unconventional reasons, and the way Americans pick presidential candidates can be as emotional as any consumer behavior.
One group uniquely attracted to Donald Trump, regardless of their politics, was voters that experienced setbacks in life and saw the same kind of vulnerability and recovery in Trump they had experienced themselves.
For this group, which I’ve named the Rough Rebounders, Trump’s appeal was inextricable from his foibles, be it bankruptcies or family ruptures or tragic mistakes.
In his underdog status, they found a candidate with whom they identified. Trump’s constant positioning of his candidacy as counter to the Republican party’s desires, and even his unvarnished struggle with factual accuracy on the campaign trail, affirmed him as the candidate of last chances and won him a legion of loyalists among Americans facing their own second, or even last, chance in life.
“Yes, I’d absolutely vote for Donald Trump again,” Millet, 68, says. “But here again, like Reagan, I’m gonna keep his feet to the fire. Long as he’s trying, as long as he makes sure he has our back, well then he has my support.”
CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
Modal TriggerMom Julie Bayles, with family, voted primarily for the advancement of Christian liberty.
BRISTOL, Wis. — Julie Bayles did not decide she would vote for Donald Trump until she walked into the voting booth on Nov. 8, 2016.
The 44-year-old mother of seven took issue with Trump’s coarse language and boorish behavior on the campaign trail and found both incompatible with the commands of her own Christian faith.
“It was the hardest decision I think I’ve had to make as an adult in any voting process,” Bayles says.
“It was so difficult. And I think the reason it was so difficult is because I don’t take it lightly. This is important. This is our country. This is my seven children’s future.”
Bayles’ evolution to Trump voter demonstrates how the president exceeded expectations with evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics.
How did a thrice-married, Playmate-courting, areligious New York billionaire become the leader of an evangelical political crusade? He punched back. And he offered a transaction: In exchange for Christian conservatives’ support, he vowed to defeat the enemies of religious liberty. Ultimately, they saw him as a warrior for religious freedom.
Bayles and her husband Donnie — along with two of their adult children — could easily have stayed home on Election Day when faced with their two choices. Instead, they were part of a political tipping point in Wisconsin, a state in which 22 percent of the adult population is affiliated with an evangelical protestant church and 71 percent overall identify as Christian.
The alliance between the billionaire and the believers, however transactional, has persisted well into Trump’s presidency.
“Funny, all of that anxiety, all of that praying,” Bayles says, “and it turns out I like him now much more than I did when I voted for him.”
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Ed Harry is sitting in the booth at the back end of D’s Diner in Plains Township, Luzerne County. Up front, the place is filled with customers at a chrome lunch counter as waitresses busily fill coffee cups, take orders and greet regulars with a familiar, “The usual?”
For most of his life Harry (inset) has done two things: voted Democrat and lead union workers.
A Vietnam War veteran, he became a Democrat as a teenager and found his calling in the unions when he took a job as a custodian in a state mental institution.
Harry helped campaign to turn public sector facilities into union facilities. “Turns out I was good at persuasion,” he deadpans.
He swiftly moved up the ranks, becoming a contract negotiator. When he retired after 25 years, he was president of the Wilkes-Barre Labor Council.
But, he says, when the establishment Democrats stopped caring about his people, he stopped caring about them.
Many working-class voters like Harry, 71, have been portrayed as anxious, frustrated, angry and desperate.
But my survey revealed a more complicated picture. The archetypal red-blooded, blue-collared Trump voter has worked an hourly-wage or physical-labor job after the age of 21 and experienced a job loss personally or in their immediate family in the last seven years. But a full 84 percent were actually optimistic about their future career path or financial situation, regardless of how they felt about their community’s prospects as a whole.
This inherent optimism is a key nuance missed by most analysts. It’s a sentiment that perfectly matched Trump’s positive, forward-looking slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
Harry felt that optimism.
“My party, the party that was supposed to be the party of the working guy, the guy I stood up for and worked for all of my career, was no longer part of this new ascending Democratic coalition. Blue-collar America essentially had the door shut in its face,” Harry says.
KENOSHA, Wis. — Amy Maurer is a very striking woman, her blond hair cut short in the kind of dramatic fashion you’d see in the pages of Vogue or on a Paris runway.
Sitting in the conference room of TG3 Electronics, Chief Financial Officer Maurer (inset) is both in command and at ease, surrounded by the keyboards her company manufactures.
Maurer, 43, is the married, educated, suburban mom whom experts missed in the 2016 election — and still don’t get today. As a gun owner and strong defender of the Second Amendment, she based her vote entirely on the Supreme Court vacancy and who would fill it.
The Clinton campaign tried hard to win over voters like Maurer with ads highlighting Trump’s most misogynistic remarks, casting him as an unhinged troglodyte no self-respecting woman could support.
“They believed, I think, that the social pressure from either friends or professional peers would be too much. That we would cave because of his behavior. Well, they misunderstood where the emphasis of our vote was. They thought, ‘Feminist, right? Successful, kids in the home, married, college-educated . . . Oh, they cannot vote for Trump, they just cannot.’” She smiles broadly. “They were wrong.”
Women were the group most likely to bail on Trump after it was revealed — one month before the election — that he had crudely boasted of sexual exploits on the “Access Hollywood” tape.
Which is why the issue of gun ownership among women was critical. According to my survey, female Rust Belt Trump voters under the age of 45 are the demographic most likely to agree with the idea that every American has a fundamental right to self-defense.
“Got a couple in my office,” Maurer says of her firearms. “It’s smart, it’s empowering, it reminds me I am in charge of taking care of myself and my family at all times. I actually conceal carry because where I work, well, it’s a dangerous area.
“One of the things I think Democrats did not understand about women and guns is that empowerment that a gun gives you.”
MN Prager Discussion Group 
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