Who Lost Turkey? (Revisited) :: SteynOnline

Who Lost Turkey? (Revisited) :: SteynOnline:
"As they used to say way back when in the long Ottoman twilight, the Turk is the sick man of Europe. 
Following this weekend's Caliph-for-Life referendum, the Turk is sicker than ever. 
But he's no longer of Europe, and instead is exiting for a destination dark and catastrophic for almost all his neighbors.

Sultan Erdoğan - who, a mere 15 years ago, was banned from holding political office - has now succeeded in dismantling almost every defining element of the Kemalist republic. 
What replaces it will be a crude strongman state in service of Islamic imperialism. 
I have read a lot of commentary this morning, starting with Douglas Murray's "Turkish Democracy Has Just Died" and moving on to Yavuz Baydar's "The End Of Turkey As We Know It" via Alex Alexiev's "Who Lost Turkey?" 
And several readers have been kind enough to inquire where's my own "Who Lost Turkey?" piece. 
Well, the truth is I published it exactly ten years ago, to the day of Erdoğan's referendum. From the April 16th 2007 edition of National Review, "De-Boning Turkey":

The modern secular Muslim state – a country that gave women the vote before Britain did and was Israel's best friend in an otherwise hostile region – certainly, that Turkey seems to be being de-boned by the hour: it now has an Islamist government whose Prime Minister has canceled trade deals with Israel, denounced the Iraqi elections, and frosted out the US Ambassador because he was Jewish; a new edition of Mein Kampf is prominently displayed at the airport bookstore. In other words, the Zionist Entity's best pal is starting to look like just another cookie-cutter death-to-the-Great-Satan stan-of-the-month.

Important read.
Read it all! 

Tax Day Justice: DOJ Investigation of Lois Lerner Called for by Ways and Means Chairman

Tax Day Justice: DOJ Investigation of Lois Lerner Called for by Ways and Means Chairman:

"The chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to review evidence that Lois Lerner “broke the law to target Americans for their political beliefs.” The request comes after the DOJ refused, under the Obama Administration’s leadership, to investigate allegations of wrongdoing by the former IRS Exempt Organizations Division director."

Harvard Research: Minimum Wage Hikes Put Non-Elite Restaurants Out of Business - Breitbart

Harvard Research: Minimum Wage Hikes Put Non-Elite Restaurants Out of Business - Breitbart
"A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School concluded that minimum wage laws increase the likelihood that non-elite restaurants will go out of business.
The study, which was conducted by the husband-and-wife team of Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca, looked at data on “tens of thousands of restaurants in the San Francisco area.”
They concluded that lower-rated restaurants are disproportionately more likely than four or five-star restaurants to go out of business as a result of minimum wage laws.
The evidence suggests that higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants. However, lower quality restaurants, which are already closer to the margin of exit, are disproportionately impacted by increases to the minimum wage..."

Blog: Since when did people start going to college to get stupid?

Blog: Since when did people start going to college to get stupid?:
"...Real life these days is stranger than fiction.
Even Orwell could not have imagined how far we have surpassed all he imagined in 1984 – especially on college campuses.
Higher education in America has been utterly destroyed by the left since the tenured radicals of the 1960s took control of it.
Now our campuses are virtually totalitarian in nature.  
Stanford just admitted an applicant who is not black but who wrote "Black Lives Matter" a hundred times on his application.  
Forget all the serious students who took the application question – "What matters to you and why?" – seriously.  
They are toast, cast upon the funeral pyre of diversity and freedom of thought in favor of the anti-merit (racist), pro-ethnic diversity but anti-diversity of thought mindset of college admissions officials.
Wellesley has demeaned itself by printing a fascist screed by a student who writes poorly and has not a clue about what our Constitution says or means.  
She is opposed to freedom of speech.
...The bottom line? 
There is a cancer spreading on our university campuses.  
Anyone who has had sons or daughters in college over the past eight years knows how catastrophically universities have lurched to the radical left.
Do not let your kids go to college unless it is Hillsdale or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  
Keep them home; give them great books to read; let them work at any job that comes their way and watch Prager University videos.  
They will be more informed, better citizens, better people, and better parents for skipping college at this moment in time.
Perhaps, if Carl Weathers can ask the question "since when did people start going to college to get stupid?" on a prime-time television program, the leftist grip on higher education and all things cultural will soon begin to loosen."

Lunch video-----USS Gerald R Ford The First New Aircraft Carrier Design In 40 Years

Noon-toon

Report: AG Jeff Sessions Enacts Comprehensive Reform at Justice Department - Breitbart

Report: AG Jeff Sessions Enacts Comprehensive Reform at Justice Department - Breitbart:


"U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is establishing the administration’s pro-American policies throughout former President Barack Obama’s justice department, according to TheHill.com.
In just two months as the nation’s top cop, Sessions has moved quickly to overhaul the policies and priorities set by the Obama administration…"

Underestimating their foe-----The Hard Way – Da Tech Guy Blog

The Hard Way – Da Tech Guy Blog:
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.  –Leon Trotsky, allegedly

Noble sentiment.

Look, the Hard Right has no desire to fight in the streets. No sane person wants to live in a society where there [are] constant, realistic expectations of ongoing bloodshed. That is why we advocate the removal of undesirables. We do not want to kill anyone. We want them to simply go away. Go home. Go back where you came from. Just leave us alone. In fact, if there is an overarching theme to the Hard Right position, it is that we just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit.

Unfortunately, the left has horribly misread the situation. Rather than realize the superiority of our position, they have chosen to bring the fight to us. They have mistaken our forbearance to this point for weakness. That is dead wrong. It is not that we are not capable. It is that we do not want open conflict. But if we are forced into a corner, all hell is going to break loose, and the left is not going to like the result.

It is each person’s legal right, in this country, to assemble peaceably. This is true for both right and left. But if the other side is going to incite violence, I can categorically state that the Hard Right is more than able to finish the fight.

I pray the left realizes this before it is too late. If their past performance is any indication, however, they are going to have to learn this the hard way.

Read on!

The fearmonger's next catastrophe!-----By 2020 Two-Thirds Of Wild Animals Will Have Been Wiped Out Over A 50 Year Period As Mass Die-Offs Accelerate All Over The Planet

By 2020 Two-Thirds Of Wild Animals Will Have Been Wiped Out Over A 50 Year Period As Mass Die-Offs Accelerate All Over The Planet:
"It has been called “the long extinction”.  
Our planet is in the process of dying, and as you will see below, this process of death and destruction appears to be accelerating.  
According to a report that was put out by the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London, the number of wild animals around the globe appears to be decreasing at a rate of about 2 percent a year.  
2 percent may not sound like a lot to you, but over 10 years that would mean that 20 percent of all wild animals in the world would be gone.  
And according to that same report, it is being projected that the total loss of wildlife during the 50 year period from 1970 to 2020 will be a staggering 67 percent…

The number of wild animals living on Earth is set to fall by two-thirds by 2020, according to a new report, part of a mass extinction that is destroying the natural world upon which humanity depends.

The analysis, the most comprehensive to date, indicates that animal populations plummeted by 58% between 1970 and 2012, with losses on track to reach 67% by 2020. Researchers from WWF and the Zoological Society of London compiled the report from scientific data and found that the destruction of wild habitats, hunting and pollution were to blame.

In other words, we are watching a global slow-motion extinction event which will ultimately claim hundreds, if not thousands, of species.

And as I mentioned above, this slow-motion extinction event appears to be accelerating..."

Reality Bites: The Democrats Didn't even win a Moral Victory in Georgia | National Review

Reality Bites: The Democrats Didn't even win a Moral Victory in Georgia | National Review:
"I don’t want to sound like the Baghdad Bob of the 2018 election cycle, but the special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district was yet another reminder that despite the mainstream media’s relentless narrative attempting to turn the early days of the Trump administration into a story of GOP rout, reality has stubbornly refused to cooperate with them.
Don’t get me wrong—the GOP is absolutely facing headwinds in 2018.
And there’s a lot of political ground left to cover in November.
I’d certainly rather be in a position of winning districts by increasing margins rather than decreasing ones.
Could the GOP lose the House?—Absolutely.
But, as I wrote in my recent analysis of the 2018 election cycle, the Senate is not going to go Democratic in this political environment—or even anything close to it.
GA-06 is according to both the Cook PVI and 538.com the most Democratic-leaning seat in GA held by a Republican. 
...Regardless of what happens in the June runoff, Democrats are not going to bottle that same level of energy and attention and put it in 435 districts in November.
They needed a victory and they didn’t get it.
And at the end of the day, they didn’t even get that close, finishing with 48.1% of the vote.
...As I wrote in my piece on 2018, the Georgia special election was a must-win for the Democrats if they wanted to show they had real political momentum on their side and a clear path to retake the House majority.
They didn’t get there tonight.
The reports of the electoral death of the GOP continue to be greatly exaggerated."

California arrests fewer people, frees criminals – here’s what happened to crime – TheBlaze

California arrests fewer people, frees criminals – here’s what happened to crime – TheBlaze:

"But crime in California is on the rise, despite the promise of liberal law enforcement policies to decrease the “cycle” of crime. A report from the Public Policy Institute of California for 2015 shows that violent crime rose by 8.4%, property crime was up by 6.6%, both violent crime and property crime increased in a majority of counties. They note, however, that over the longterm, crime is at historical lows."

Retired Air Force captain says attack on Extortion 17 could have been prevented | Circa News - Learn. Think. Do.

Retired Air Force captain says attack on Extortion 17 could have been prevented | Circa News - Learn. Think. Do.:
"A retired Air Force captain says the Pentagon lied to families about what caused the Extortion 17 tragedy.
A decorated retired Air Force officer who witnessed one of the most deadly attacks on Navy SEALs in U.S. history is breaking her silence, saying the government covered up evidence detailing that the 2011 downing of a Chinook helicopter gunship that killed 38 fighters in Afghanistan could have been prevented had it not been for restrictions to the military's rules of engagement that were changed under the Obama administration.
The mission
August 6, 2011: Retired Air Force Capt. Joni Marquez and her crew were working the dark morning hours aboard an AC-130 gunship after being summoned to a mission she describes “as almost like a 9-1-1 type of a situation.”
The gunship was ordered to fly close-in air support above Afghanistan’s dangerous Tangi Valley, in Wardak Province, assisting troops with the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment who were being fired on by eight heavily armed Taliban insurgents.
The Rangers had called in for assault helicopters to engage the enemy hiding among the rocky valley. The air weapons team fired on the Taliban fighters, but not all of the insurgents were killed as originally believed.
“I had the sensor operators immediately shift to the eight insurgents the helicopters had taken out,” Marquez told Circa, in her first interview about the incident. “Two were still alive.”
Marquez was the fire control officer aboard the AC-130 gunship, making sure that the sensors and weapons were aligned and allowing the crew hone in on targets.
Permission denied
That night it didn’t matter, because the gunship was not given permission to fire. “We had seen two of them (insurgents) moving, crawling away from the area, as to not really make a whole lot of scene,” she recalled.
Monitoring the scene from above, she relayed the scene to the ground force commander. “You have two enemy forces that are still alive,” she said. “Permission to engage.”
They were denied.
Marquez told Circa the ground commander's decision to not allow her crew to engage the two enemy fighters sealed the fate of those involved in Extortion 17.
38 dead
There was little left to do for Marquez and her team but simply track the two enemy insurgents with the surveillance equipment. She watched as the two moved tactically through the open field, making their way to a village where they began to rally more fighters.
Meanwhile, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, with the call sign Extortion 17, was called into the hours-long firefight.
U.S. Central Command’s official investigation concluded that a rocket-launched grenade from a Taliban fighter hit the Chinook and sent the helicopter into a downward spin. The crash killed all 38, including thirty Americans and eight Afghans. Seventeen of the U.S. servicemen were Navy SEALs. Months before, SEALs were made famous for the killing of Osama bin Laden.
If we would've been allowed to engage that night, we would've taken out those two men immediately.
—Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez
Deaths prevented?
Read on and be angry!

AM Fruitcake

History for April 19

History for April 19 - On-This-Day.com
David Ricardo 1772 - Economist, author, Ole Evinrude 1877, Eliot Ness 1903
 



Hugh O'Brian 1930 - Actor ("The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp"), Jayne Mansfield (Vera Jane Palmer) 1932 - Actress ("It Takes a Thief"), Al Unser, Jr. 1962


1775 - The American Revolution began as fighting broke out at Lexington, MA.


1897 - The first annual Boston Marathon was held. It was the first of its type in the U.S.


1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule began. The Jews were able to fight off the Germans for 28 days.


1951 - General Douglas MacArthur gave his "Old Soldiers" speech before the U.S. Congress after being relieved by U.S. President Truman. In the address General MacArthur said that "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."


1982 - NASA named Sally Ride to be first woman astronaut.


1989 - A gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa. 47 sailors were killed.


1993 - The Branch-Davidian’s compound in Waco, TX, burned to the ground. It was the end of a 51-day standoff between the cult and U.S. federal agents. 86 people were killed including 17 children. Nine of the Branch Davidians escaped the fire.


1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, was destroyed by a bomb. It was the worst bombing on U.S. territory. 168 people were killed including 19 children, and 500 were injured. Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing on June 2, 1997.

BREAKING: AP Edits Fresno Killer to Erase Islam Reference, Implicate God

BREAKING: AP Edits Fresno Killer to Erase Islam Reference, Implicate God:

"The Associated Press may want to reconsider the publication of their stylebook if they’re choosing to fake translate words in order to score political points. Which is what they just did on a huge story, where the words matter a great deal.

For comparison, here is how a local ABC affiliate reported on the story:"

Berkeley vandals call for beheading of College Republicans

Berkeley vandals call for beheading of College Republicans:

"Ever since The University of New Haven “disinvited” me from speaking on FORENSICS, because of #BlackLivesMatter, I’ve been paying particularly close attention to the terrible state of higher education.  It is so corrupted by radical leftism, it would be funny if these weren’t very serious issues.
Take for example, the way the College Republicans have been treated at Berkeley.  Fliers and stickers advocating for the beheading and lynching of the members of their group have appeared all over campus.  "

Daily Wire

Daily Wire:

"wondering why our national media has pretty much dropped the whole Trump-Is-A-Russian-Manchurian-Candidate thing, it is because the naked truth about the Obama administration's chilling spying -- something the media has covered up for months -- is finally coming to light. Last week, both The Washington Post and The New York Times quietly reported that the Obama administration had "wiretapped" (their word, not mine) a Trump staffer."

The way we were-----The Seekers - I'll Never Find Another You STEREO 1965

The way we were-----Beatles/Stones/Kinks/Animals & more! -- Live Full Concert 1965

LITTLE HITLERS: Students Demand Administrators ‘Take Action’ Against Conservative Journalists. …

Instapundit » Blog Archive » LITTLE HITLERS: Students Demand Administrators ‘Take Action’ Against Conservative Journalists. …:
"LITTLE HITLERS: Students Demand Administrators ‘Take Action’ Against Conservative Journalists. 
“In an open letter to outgoing Pomona College President David Oxtoby, a group of students from the Claremont Colleges assail the president for affirming Pomona’s commitment to free speech and demand that all five colleges ‘take action’ against the conservative journalists on the staff of the Claremont Independent.”

"If they do, I”m organizing a campaign to strip the Colleges of their accreditation, and I’m writing Betsy DeVos to ask that the Department of Education make them ineligable for federal student aid. Others are welcome to join me in this effort."-Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 7:19 am

U.S. Marines Pilots Talk About The Fear Factor In Their Very First Landing On A Moving U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier - American Military News

U.S. Marines Pilots Talk About The Fear Factor In Their Very First Landing On A Moving U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier - American Military News:

"Landing a jet in simulators during training is one thing; doing all the calculations and estimations necessary to land a fixed wing military aircraft on a moving U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is a best of its own; it is a very different matter when it is time to go live.

Landing a fixed wing military aircraft on a moving U.S. Navy aircraft carrier is one of the most difficult things to do. 
Think about “the miracle” that it is to conduct a landing on a huge runway, think about passengers clapping every time it happens. 
Now imagine doing the same difficult task on a moving aircraft carrier with a runway 3/4 smaller than those on regular airports. 
Terrifying? 
Undoubtedly. 
Even for the some of the most brave behind the controls of an aircraft. 
Here some of them share how does that very first time feels. 
They call it the “fear factor”. 
I couldn’t agree more."

John Kelly: DUI Could Spark Deportation For Illegal Aliens | The Daily Caller

John Kelly: DUI Could Spark Deportation For Illegal Aliens | The Daily Caller:

"Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly confirmed Sunday that federal immigration authorities won’t shy away from arresting illegal immigrants who would have been ignored under the Obama administration.

New categories of criminal aliens will be targeted for deportation, not just those who’ve committed headline-grabbing crimes like rape and murder, Kelly said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”"

How to Structure a Deal With North Korea | Scott Adams' Blog

How to Structure a Deal With North Korea | Scott Adams' Blog:
"One of the most useful things I learned in business school was that you can usually make a deal whenever the parties involved don’t want full control of the same limited resources. 
That’s why a peace deal in Israel is impossible – because both sides want the same land. But that’s a rare situation (fortunately).
The more normal situation is the one we see with North Korea and the United States.
The United States doesn’t want the same limited resource that North Korea wants.
And China has their own interests.
That kind of situation almost always means you can reach a deal if you look hard enough.
At the moment, we have about 75% of what we need for a nuclear deal with North Korea. 
Both the United States and China are putting unprecedented economic and military pressure on North Korea, and that means North Korea will start to get flexible.
But without the remaining 25% of what is needed for a deal, no breakthrough is possible.
North Korea is unlikely to agree to anything that makes it seem as if it caved to pressure from the United States.
You have to solve for that to get a deal.
That is the missing 25%.
So let me tell you how to do that..."
This could happen.
Read on!

Lunatics and thugs everywhere!-----McDonalds Should Not Bring Back Szechuan: 'Low-Key Racist' | The Daily Caller

McDonalds Should Not Bring Back Szechuan: 'Low-Key Racist' | The Daily Caller
McDonalds Mulan crossover sauce is racist
McDonalds Should Not Bring Back Szechuan Sauce Because It’s ‘Low-Key Racist’
McDonald’s bringing back its famed Szechuan dipping sauce “would be a mistake” because reducing an entire country’s cuisine into one flavor is “problematic” and “disrespectful,” according to a writer for Inverse.com.
...When Mulan, and the McDonald’s dipping sauce, came out in 1998, “critics were less aware … of how the film collapsed millennia of complex Chinese history and culture into a flat, oversimplified pastiche,” Tayag writes..."