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In an article titled “The Lincoln Model: How Trump Can Shut Down the Democrat Plantation,” which must be considered the most insightful – or the boldest – of the year so far, Dinesh D’Souza links Lincoln and Trump.  Who knew? 

First, D’Souza has to allay the fears of conservatives who yearn for the days of gentlemanly politics during the Reagan administration.  This yearning is not realistic today and will get us nowhere, because “we are where we are.”  It is time to fight.  Yes, Reagan fought the left, but the Democrats were saner back then, seen by Tip O’Neill, who was willing to work with Reagan.

I came of age in the Reagan area, and I too prefer a more civil political climate.  But that is not the America we live in now.  Reagan’s policies and style were perfectly calibrated to deal with the specific problems and specific political environment of the late 1970s.  Today, however, a good deal of Reaganism is obsolete.  Not only has stagflation disappeared and the Soviet Union collapsed but Reagan himself would be a fish out of water in the dark, roiled currents of today.

But Lincoln wouldn’t.  His political environment was even more roiled than the one we have now.  And Lincoln would have seen that, in this environment, an environment made by a gangster clan of Democrats like Obama and Hillary, you don’t get very far with Reagan’s gentlemanly style.  In short, Trump is the man of the hour, not Reagan.  Trump has the chance to do what Reagan never even dreamed about, taking a page from Lincoln and smashing the Democratic plantation.

When President Trump first announced his candidacy, I yearned for him to leave.  It was a publicity stunt.  However, the outcome on the election day and, most importantly, his policies outcomes proved me wrong (to date).  I misjudged the times we are living in now – with gangsta Democrats.  They are the one who have “roiled” American politics, and by comparison, the GOP were the only gentlemen and gentlewomen left.  Too polite, too courteous, however.  Admirable qualities, but still they must fight – fight while smiling and saying, “Thank you,” and “God bless you,” as they debate and rip the Democrat’s head off.

For D’Souza, where Lincoln and Trump align is on two issues: tariffs and immigration.  Lincoln favored protecting a young America’s interest as this nation launched out into the oceans.  Trump does, too, and recently scored a victory for our side when Europe blinked.  As for immigration, D’Souza has to say Lincoln favored freeing the slaves at the start of the Civil War and only gradually favored extending civil rights to them.  From this fact – or his interpretation of this belief about Lincoln – he concludes that Lincoln would have been a strong proponent of limiting immigration.  That is a leap – but is it a leap too far?

The most striking paragraph is this one, in which he mentions the Stockholm syndrome among conservative intellectuals.

For too long conservatives and Republicans have allowed big lies to take over the culture and, in some cases, their minds.  This progressive cultural hegemony has polluted our education system and our media with fake narratives and fake history.  It has also created a kind of Stockholm syndrome among conservative intellectuals.  ”In our hearts we know we’re wrong.”  But we’re not wrong.  We’ve been lied to.  It’s time for us to stop apologizing – we have nothing to apologize for – and go on the offensive.  Truth is our deadliest weapon, if we will deploy it.

When I was putting myself through graduate school, I wrestled with conservatism and liberalism.  I never left conservative philosophy, but I may have been suffering from a minor case of Stockholm syndrome.  ”In my heart I know I’m wrong about conservatism.”  Or “In my heart conservatism makes the most sense of the world.”  Mental tennis match.  Progressive cultural hegemony polluted my mind, up to a point.  I returned to conservatism long ago.

To key off what D’Souza wrote, I was wrong about Trump – or I let his deficient personality and rhetorical skills blind me to what conservatism really needed: a fighter.  I caught a glimpse of it when he climbed a fence and stomped through sage brush to get to an arena, because the howling left had blocked his limo during the campaign.  But I dismissed this gesture.  Maybe Reagan would have done it, because he did walk on to a University of California campus when protesters were there.  But they kept silent and made a path for him.  Would he have stomped through the brush?  Tough to say.  But one gets the impression that Lincoln would have – since he had lived a hardscrabble life.

To sum up, one area where Lincoln and Trump are definitely aligned is that they are both fighters.  Lincoln was willing to sacrifice thousands and thousands of lives to preserve the Union.  Thankfully, Trump does not have to wage a military civil war, but he is preserving the Union in small ways and big ways: SCOTUS nominees, tax cuts, reining in the bureaucracy, being tough on Russia (he really is), and negotiating with a man-child named Kim.

D’Souza capitalized on this similarity, too.

James Arlandson’s website is Live as Free People, where he has posted A Glimpse at God’s Creation on Mars and Grace to You.

In an article titled “The Lincoln Model: How Trump Can Shut Down the Democrat Plantation,” which must be considered the most insightful – or the boldest – of the year so far, Dinesh D’Souza links Lincoln and Trump.  Who knew? 

First, D’Souza has to allay the fears of conservatives who yearn for the days of gentlemanly politics during the Reagan administration.  This yearning is not realistic today and will get us nowhere, because “we are where we are.”  It is time to fight.  Yes, Reagan fought the left, but the Democrats were saner back then, seen by Tip O’Neill, who was willing to work with Reagan.

I came of age in the Reagan area, and I too prefer a more civil political climate.  But that is not the America we live in now.  Reagan’s policies and style were perfectly calibrated to deal with the specific problems and specific political environment of the late 1970s.  Today, however, a good deal of Reaganism is obsolete.  Not only has stagflation disappeared and the Soviet Union collapsed but Reagan himself would be a fish out of water in the dark, roiled currents of today.

But Lincoln wouldn’t.  His political environment was even more roiled than the one we have now.  And Lincoln would have seen that, in this environment, an environment made by a gangster clan of Democrats like Obama and Hillary, you don’t get very far with Reagan’s gentlemanly style.  In short, Trump is the man of the hour, not Reagan.  Trump has the chance to do what Reagan never even dreamed about, taking a page from Lincoln and smashing the Democratic plantation.

When President Trump first announced his candidacy, I yearned for him to leave.  It was a publicity stunt.  However, the outcome on the election day and, most importantly, his policies outcomes proved me wrong (to date).  I misjudged the times we are living in now – with gangsta Democrats.  They are the one who have “roiled” American politics, and by comparison, the GOP were the only gentlemen and gentlewomen left.  Too polite, too courteous, however.  Admirable qualities, but still they must fight – fight while smiling and saying, “Thank you,” and “God bless you,” as they debate and rip the Democrat’s head off.

For D’Souza, where Lincoln and Trump align is on two issues: tariffs and immigration.  Lincoln favored protecting a young America’s interest as this nation launched out into the oceans.  Trump does, too, and recently scored a victory for our side when Europe blinked.  As for immigration, D’Souza has to say Lincoln favored freeing the slaves at the start of the Civil War and only gradually favored extending civil rights to them.  From this fact – or his interpretation of this belief about Lincoln – he concludes that Lincoln would have been a strong proponent of limiting immigration.  That is a leap – but is it a leap too far?

The most striking paragraph is this one, in which he mentions the Stockholm syndrome among conservative intellectuals.

For too long conservatives and Republicans have allowed big lies to take over the culture and, in some cases, their minds.  This progressive cultural hegemony has polluted our education system and our media with fake narratives and fake history.  It has also created a kind of Stockholm syndrome among conservative intellectuals.  ”In our hearts we know we’re wrong.”  But we’re not wrong.  We’ve been lied to.  It’s time for us to stop apologizing – we have nothing to apologize for – and go on the offensive.  Truth is our deadliest weapon, if we will deploy it.

When I was putting myself through graduate school, I wrestled with conservatism and liberalism.  I never left conservative philosophy, but I may have been suffering from a minor case of Stockholm syndrome.  ”In my heart I know I’m wrong about conservatism.”  Or “In my heart conservatism makes the most sense of the world.”  Mental tennis match.  Progressive cultural hegemony polluted my mind, up to a point.  I returned to conservatism long ago.

To key off what D’Souza wrote, I was wrong about Trump – or I let his deficient personality and rhetorical skills blind me to what conservatism really needed: a fighter.  I caught a glimpse of it when he climbed a fence and stomped through sage brush to get to an arena, because the howling left had blocked his limo during the campaign.  But I dismissed this gesture.  Maybe Reagan would have done it, because he did walk on to a University of California campus when protesters were there.  But they kept silent and made a path for him.  Would he have stomped through the brush?  Tough to say.  But one gets the impression that Lincoln would have – since he had lived a hardscrabble life.

To sum up, one area where Lincoln and Trump are definitely aligned is that they are both fighters.  Lincoln was willing to sacrifice thousands and thousands of lives to preserve the Union.  Thankfully, Trump does not have to wage a military civil war, but he is preserving the Union in small ways and big ways: SCOTUS nominees, tax cuts, reining in the bureaucracy, being tough on Russia (he really is), and negotiating with a man-child named Kim.

D’Souza capitalized on this similarity, too.

James Arlandson’s website is Live as Free People, where he has posted A Glimpse at God’s Creation on Mars and Grace to You.

A few decades ago, Scott McKenzie sang one of the classic hippie anthems, “San Francisco,” back in 1967. It was sung during the heyday of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Flower power was the rage. Peace, love, and understanding were the mantras of the day, in response to the Viet Nam War and the oppression of The Man.

McKenzie sang, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Back then, the flowers were for decoration, to match the tie-dyed clothing and sandals.

Flash forward fifty years, and residents of San Francisco may need to wear flowers, not only in their hair, but also covering their entire bodies. Not for decoration, however, but to mask the odor of a new feature of the streets of San Francisco.

Excrement.

And it’s been making the national news, a veritable emblem of what the city has become. The newly inaugurated San Francisco mayor is London Breed, who, as an aside, has a perfect 1960s name. Interviewed after her inauguration, the Daily Caller noted that she observed that the streets of her city “are flooded with the excrement of the homeless.”

In other words, San Francisco has become Poop City.

Apparently this is not a new problem. The famous chronicler of the city, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, occasionally would use the phrase in his daily screeds during the 1980s and 1990s, but it’s far worse now. As the Daily Caller had the new mayor noting: “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.” And not just poop. Added to the mix is a “dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces.”

Lovely. In 1967, “If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.” Now you will meet a garbage dump mixed with a cesspool.

San Francisco has about 7,500 homeless individuals and is spending $280 million on homeless services for them. Some simple math reveals that the city could give each homeless resident just over $37,000 per year, a figure well above the minimum wage in most other places, and call it a day.

If you take out the salaries of all the bureaucrats administering these “homeless services,” there would likely be more than $100,000 available for each homeless person. But you know that won’t happen in a Democrat-run city, an administrative state, like San Francisco.

How can the city discourage the homeless from using the sidewalks as their toilets? In their minds, spend more money. The mayor assured her fellow progressives: “Harsher penalties for offenders are not on the table.” Instead the typical liberal solution, as the mayor promised, came to: “I work hard to make sure your programs are funded.” I wonder if we’ll see toilet paper dispensers popping up on the sidewalks?

This situation might seem to be a cross between funny and absurd, but it has economic consequences far beyond the necessary clean-up. Who might not be going to San Francisco because of the city’s pungent new attractions?

Start with conventions? San Francisco has always been a popular convention destination due to its fairly pleasant weather, its tourist attractions, its world-class restaurants, and of course, the cable cars. But in its current state, the bloom is off the San Francisco rose.

A major medical association recently cancelled its annual meeting which would have brought 15,000 attendees and $40 million to the San Francisco economy, according to the SF Chronicle. This, after many years of coming to the city. Think of that. A group of doctors, quite familiar with feces, needles, and the downtrodden, have said “enough.”

These are things doctors can see in the medical ward and prefer to avoid when away from work, often with family, at a medical conference. It’s likely that other trade groups and industries will stay away from San Francisco as well.

Can you blame them? How many U.S. cities provide visitors with a public defecation map to help tourists steer clear of piles of poop littering the city’s sidewalks? Or which other city can boast of the 20-pound bag of poop found a few weeks ago on a city sidewalk?

How did things get this bad for the city that Tony Bennett left his heart in? When Tony recorded that song in the 1950s, San Francisco had a Republican mayor. Their last Republican mayor, George Christopher, left office in 1964, when the Beatles arrived in America. Since then, it’s been a hard day’s night for San Francisco, with nearly sixty years’ worth of Democrats running the show.

At a national level, San Francisco is represented by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Kamala Harris, all of whom are hard-core liberals. I am quite confident that there are no piles of poop on the sidewalks in front of their homes.

San Francisco is just another of many U.S. cities run by Democrats, and into the ground. Even liberal film maker Michael Moore observed about his home city in Michigan: “Flint has voted for Dems for 84 straight yrs. What did it get us?”

San Francisco is left with virtue-signaling in the name of compassion, tolerance and all the other liberal claptrap in a bid to try to hide third world conditions on city streets. Aside from visitors choosing to go anywhere but San Francisco, what about the residents living in such conditions?

Warm summer temperatures and open sewers become a microbiology laboratory. Toss in a bunch of undernourished and unhealthy homeless persons, sharing hypodermic needles, and pestilence follows. Such a shame for a once-magnificent city.

Rather than cleaning up its mess, San Francisco has just this week banned plastic straws. Poop and hypodermic syringes littering the sidewalks is just fine, but watch out for those nasty little plastic straws.

Once upon a time Scott McKenzie’s words rang true, “For those who come to San Francisco, summertime will be a love-in there.” Now it’s simply America’s version of a s***hole.

Brian C. Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.

A few decades ago, Scott McKenzie sang one of the classic hippie anthems, “San Francisco,” back in 1967. It was sung during the heyday of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Flower power was the rage. Peace, love, and understanding were the mantras of the day, in response to the Viet Nam War and the oppression of The Man.

McKenzie sang, “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Back then, the flowers were for decoration, to match the tie-dyed clothing and sandals.

Flash forward fifty years, and residents of San Francisco may need to wear flowers, not only in their hair, but also covering their entire bodies. Not for decoration, however, but to mask the odor of a new feature of the streets of San Francisco.

Excrement.

And it’s been making the national news, a veritable emblem of what the city has become. The newly inaugurated San Francisco mayor is London Breed, who, as an aside, has a perfect 1960s name. Interviewed after her inauguration, the Daily Caller noted that she observed that the streets of her city “are flooded with the excrement of the homeless.”

In other words, San Francisco has become Poop City.

Apparently this is not a new problem. The famous chronicler of the city, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, occasionally would use the phrase in his daily screeds during the 1980s and 1990s, but it’s far worse now. As the Daily Caller had the new mayor noting: “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.” And not just poop. Added to the mix is a “dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces.”

Lovely. In 1967, “If you’re going to San Francisco, you’re gonna meet some gentle people there.” Now you will meet a garbage dump mixed with a cesspool.

San Francisco has about 7,500 homeless individuals and is spending $280 million on homeless services for them. Some simple math reveals that the city could give each homeless resident just over $37,000 per year, a figure well above the minimum wage in most other places, and call it a day.

If you take out the salaries of all the bureaucrats administering these “homeless services,” there would likely be more than $100,000 available for each homeless person. But you know that won’t happen in a Democrat-run city, an administrative state, like San Francisco.

How can the city discourage the homeless from using the sidewalks as their toilets? In their minds, spend more money. The mayor assured her fellow progressives: “Harsher penalties for offenders are not on the table.” Instead the typical liberal solution, as the mayor promised, came to: “I work hard to make sure your programs are funded.” I wonder if we’ll see toilet paper dispensers popping up on the sidewalks?

This situation might seem to be a cross between funny and absurd, but it has economic consequences far beyond the necessary clean-up. Who might not be going to San Francisco because of the city’s pungent new attractions?

Start with conventions? San Francisco has always been a popular convention destination due to its fairly pleasant weather, its tourist attractions, its world-class restaurants, and of course, the cable cars. But in its current state, the bloom is off the San Francisco rose.

A major medical association recently cancelled its annual meeting which would have brought 15,000 attendees and $40 million to the San Francisco economy, according to the SF Chronicle. This, after many years of coming to the city. Think of that. A group of doctors, quite familiar with feces, needles, and the downtrodden, have said “enough.”

These are things doctors can see in the medical ward and prefer to avoid when away from work, often with family, at a medical conference. It’s likely that other trade groups and industries will stay away from San Francisco as well.

Can you blame them? How many U.S. cities provide visitors with a public defecation map to help tourists steer clear of piles of poop littering the city’s sidewalks? Or which other city can boast of the 20-pound bag of poop found a few weeks ago on a city sidewalk?

How did things get this bad for the city that Tony Bennett left his heart in? When Tony recorded that song in the 1950s, San Francisco had a Republican mayor. Their last Republican mayor, George Christopher, left office in 1964, when the Beatles arrived in America. Since then, it’s been a hard day’s night for San Francisco, with nearly sixty years’ worth of Democrats running the show.

At a national level, San Francisco is represented by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Kamala Harris, all of whom are hard-core liberals. I am quite confident that there are no piles of poop on the sidewalks in front of their homes.

San Francisco is just another of many U.S. cities run by Democrats, and into the ground. Even liberal film maker Michael Moore observed about his home city in Michigan: “Flint has voted for Dems for 84 straight yrs. What did it get us?”

San Francisco is left with virtue-signaling in the name of compassion, tolerance and all the other liberal claptrap in a bid to try to hide third world conditions on city streets. Aside from visitors choosing to go anywhere but San Francisco, what about the residents living in such conditions?

Warm summer temperatures and open sewers become a microbiology laboratory. Toss in a bunch of undernourished and unhealthy homeless persons, sharing hypodermic needles, and pestilence follows. Such a shame for a once-magnificent city.

Rather than cleaning up its mess, San Francisco has just this week banned plastic straws. Poop and hypodermic syringes littering the sidewalks is just fine, but watch out for those nasty little plastic straws.

Once upon a time Scott McKenzie’s words rang true, “For those who come to San Francisco, summertime will be a love-in there.” Now it’s simply America’s version of a s***hole.

Brian C. Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.

Few nations have felt the sting of Islamism as acutely as Sudan. When the Second Sudanese Civil War started in 1983 (just 11 years removed from the First Sudanese Civil War), the east African nation was already one of the more despairing corners on God’s green earth.

Yet, the regime in Khartoum felt that what its citizens really needed — instead of economic development or jobs or anything of that ilk — was the imposition of Shariah law. And when the mostly-Christian south didn’t resign themselves to the legally codified strictures of the Quran and Hadith, among other non-religious issues of exploitation that were deeply unpopular in that region of the world, the government decided to embark on a conflict that lasted over 20 years and resulted in the highest death count of any war since World War II.

The war ended in 2005 and South Sudan later became its own nation, although one still suffering from war-induced privations. In other words, given all this, one would think any government would be somewhat sensitive to religious extremism in the region, either emanating from officialdom or an extra-governmental source.

Alas, not so much — at least where the Obama administration is concerned.

“The Middle East Forum has discovered that the Obama administration approved a grant of $200,000 of taxpayer money to an al-Qaeda affiliate in Sudan — a decade after the U.S. Treasury designated it as a terrorist-financing organization,” Sam Westrop of the Middle East Forum wrote in a piece for National Review this week. “More stunningly, government officials specifically authorized the release of at least $115,000 of this grant even after learning that it was a designated terror organization.”

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The funds in question were distributed by an interlocutor to the Islamic Relief Agency or ISRA — a Khartoum-based organization also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency that had links to Osama bin Laden and Maktab al-Khidamat.

Maktab al-Khidamat was an Afghani fundraising organization that was the progenitor of al-Qaida. ISRA had raised more than $5 million for Maktab al-Khidamat by 2000, in addition to helping “to secure safe harbor for” bin Laden when things went awry.

In October 2004, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated ISRA a terrorist finance group, meaning (obviously) it shouldn’t be receiving any aid from any American, much less their government. However, a July 2014 award of $723,405 to evangelical group World Vision Inc. to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state” included $200,000 for ISRA.

When the U.S. Agency for International Development had been alerted to the fact that ISRA was probably on the terror list by World Vision, they started an assessment of the situation and warned the group to “suspend all activities with ISRA.” However, World Vision was apparently unhappy with this, saying that the assessment was taking too much time and that ISRA “had performed excellent work” for the evangelical group and that the assessment was “putting contractual relationships in limbo for such a long period is putting a significant strain” with their relationship with officialdom in Khartoum, since ISRA also has close contacts with the Sudanese government.

“World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior ‘doesn’t make sense,’” Westrop writes. “USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: ‘If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.’”

By January 2015, the Treasury Department’s OFAC had ruled that ISRA was indeed a terrorist organization, meaning World Vision would have to cut ties with them. Instead of realizing they were in bed with an organization that had helped create al-Qaida and backing away, World Vision wrote to Obama administration USAID official Jeremy Konyndyk, imploring him for a new contract to pay ISRA for “monies owed for work performed” and said that “their whole program will be jeopardized.”

There’s a lot of machinations behind the scenes here, but here’s the condensed version: the Obama administration eventually approved a new contract for ISRA after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State,” which World Vision said came as a “great relief as ISRA had become restive and had threatened legal action, which would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.”

In other words, the Obama administration acted on behalf of an organization which in turn was willing to act on behalf of an organization with close ties to al-Qaida and the mephitic Sudanese regime.

The Obama administration has a long and storied history of ignoring extremism, from the Islamic State group to Afghanistan to Africa, where groups like Boko Haram barely made the administration’s radar. Now, we discover that the administration was giving money to a group that actively fundraised for al-Qaida in a country that’s already been devastated by Islamism.

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Nineteen months on, we’re still dealing with that ugly legacy — and so, unfortunately, is the rest of the world.

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