53percenter's Blog

The horrific crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shortly after takeoff from Tehran last week, killing all 176 passengers, is an inexplicable loss whose heaviness is barely eased by the fact that it has aroused the Iranian people to take to the streets against their government.

Unlike some of our Democrat politicians, who rushed to blame President Donald Trump, the Iranian people understand clearly that the regime bears sole responsibility for shooting down the plane.

Democrats are struggling to explain the rest of what happened last week — how a president whom they despise, whom they hold in contempt, whom many will not even name — managed to start and win a war with Iran without really fighting it. The airstrike that took out Iranian General Qasem Soleimani restored American deterrence, and emboldened Iranian dissidents.

A friend suggested to me that Trump had “turned a corner,” even earning the grudging respect of his most vociferous critics.

The friend, a prominent member of the Jewish community, suggested further that what was also important about the Iran strike was that unlike the movement of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the strike against Iran was an attack for America’s sake alone.

It was not perceived — except by the usual conspiracy theory nuts — as something Trump had done for Israel, or to satisfy a domestic Jewish constituency. The two events — Jerusalem and Baghdad — were independent.

I told him that I agreed with him — up until the last point. The embassy and the Soleimani strike were connected by a common thread.

In both cases, the president had trusted his own instincts, ignoring the advice of experts and the threats from enemies. Diplomatically in the former case, militarily in the latter, Trump had been audacious in pursuing his foreign policy agenda, and saw that the perceived dangers had failed to appear.

Courage begets courage, success begets success.

I was present at the opening of the Jerusalem embassy, and witness to an odd coincidence. The ceremony was held outdoors, beneath a shady canopy with several gaps between sheets of canvas. As I wrote at the time:

Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan took the stage — and as he did so, a ray of light, filtered through the canopy above, struck the seal of the embassy on the podium.

Likewise, when White House advisor — and presidential daughter — Ivanka Trump officially unveiled the seal of the embassy above its entrance, a ray of light struck the Jerusalem stone.

It was a breathtaking moment — one that has stayed with me.

In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the embassy, and leaving the Iran deal, the U.S. was acting to further its own sovereign interests, not just helping Israel. And there were bound to be rewards more broadly — not politically, but in terms of the geopolitical fortunes of the U.S in the region.

Genesis 12:3 says: “I shall bless those who bless you.” That verse was cited often by Christian leaders in defense of the president’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem, something every president since Clinton had promised to do, but never done.

Trump did it, and went on to win apparent victory in the confrontation with Iran over Soleimani, without any loss of American life.

Are we sure the two events are unconnected?

Moreover, think of how many millions of Americans were praying Tuesday evening, when news of the first missile attacks by Iran against bases housing U.S. troops first broke. The result called to mind the many Biblical episodes, especially in the Book of Kings, when enemy armies simply melted away, once confronted.

It is impossible for the human mind to interpret every news event as Divine will. The victims of Flight 752, and their friends and families, simply need our prayers.

But keep praying: it seems to be working.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain doesn’t do much business at the polls these days. After all, up until getting demolished by voters in December, the Labour Party’s Jeremy Corbyn was socialist enough for anyone who cared about these sorts of things, and a whole lot more electable.

However, what the Socialist Party lacks in support at the ballot box it makes up for in memes. While its webpage is a mess of 2012-ish proportions, its Twitter account is full of political cartoons and other images you can share with your comrades.

Take, for instance, this very scientific diagram showing exactly how you’re being exploited by the system, wage-slave:

Those preoccupied with how much tax the government takes from their income, should be focusing on how much unpaid wealth they create gets taken by their employers. Capitalists will always want workers’ taxes cut because higher income taxes pressure employers to pay higher wages. pic.twitter.com/Lrfu2olSml

— The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) January 6, 2020

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Color me changed. I’m just going to step away for a second so I can donate to Bernie’s campaign.

It’s not just wage slavery that the Socialist Party is against, of course. It’s also against the capitalist health care system. Thanks to the running dogs of the free market, you’re being kept from the utopia of socialist medicine. Thank God for that, I say, but the socialists have a different take — one which they unwisely decided to put into meme form.

“Capitalism’s admirers really don’t like its failure to provide decent health care for all being exposed, nor how this would be a basic human right in the class-free state-free money-free future socialist society,” the Thursday post read.

“Capitalism’s admirers really wouldn’t like you to share this meme.”

Actually, they rather would, although for reasons that may not be entirely apparent at first glance:

Capitalism’s admirers really don’t like its failure to provide decent health care for all being exposed, nor how this would be a basic human right in the class-free state-free money-free future socialist society. Capitalism’s admirers really wouldn’t like you to share this meme. pic.twitter.com/X0Ec6IwrXM

— The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) January 9, 2020

The provenance of those pictures would immediately prove tricky for the Socialist Party.

First, the long line — or queue, as the Britishers might say — doesn’t come from a “capitalist” hospital. It’s from the Sunbury Health Centre in Surrey, United Kingdom, courtesy of Britain’s own state-run National Health Service.

The problem with the center is the incentive system in the NHS, as the 2014 U.K. Daily Mail article where the picture in question originated explains:

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“The fact remains that more patients equals more money — for GPs [physicians]. As its patient roll has increased, so has the NHS money flowing in to the surgery, which, like other practices, is paid £73.56 [$96.10] per patient a year,” the Daily Mail reported

“Or, to put it another way, 6,000 patients means £441,360 [$576,614], for Sunbury, but 19,000 patients means £1,397,640 [$1,825,946]. Nor is this the full extent of the financial incentives for GPs

“Under the latest GP contracts, they are also paid £7.64 [$9.98] for vaccinations such as flu and MMR jabs and £55 [$71.85] for every patient diagnosed with dementia; GPs qualify for the payment if they diagnose the patients themselves (with no checks as to whether their assessment is right), or if they update their records when their patients receive diagnosis in hospital.”

So, about that picture in the party’s tweet of what “socialist” medicine looks like? You probably guessed it’s from a capitalist hospital — in this case, St. Luke’s University Hospital in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

In a report on St. Luke’s, the newsletter of the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation identifies the modernistic equipment pictured as a Discovery IGS 730 Hybrid OR, a mobile operating theater that “gives physicians flexibility during even the most complex procedures, which means having complete access to the patient while helping maintain sterility in the OR environment, and allows the doctor to move the unit completely out of the way during surgery.”

You never get anywhere in the political sphere by apologizing for accidentally telling the truth, which the Socialist Party of Great Britain realized. Their explanation for the meme: the NHS isn’t really socialism, and capitalism now will be socialism when it’s implemented.

“Some people want an apology for this. [laughing emoji] ‘It isn’t true’ they say,” the party’s account tweeted on Saturday.

“YES IT IS. We know the queue is in Britain. Guess what: BRITAIN HAS CAPITALISM! The NHS is dependent on capitalism for its state funding. And as socialism is yet to exist, the other photo is merely representative.”

Some people want an apology for this 😂. “It isn’t true” they say. YES IT IS. We know the queue is in Britain. Guess what: BRITAIN HAS CAPITALISM! The NHS is dependent on capitalism for its state funding. And as socialism is yet to exist, the other photo is merely representative. pic.twitter.com/BLvl51Bx7d

— The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) January 11, 2020

Except the NHS is … oh, why bother with the facts? They didn’t.

The sad thing is that, even in spite of the blue checkmark, you can’t actually be sure this isn’t a parody account.

This is a satire account, right?

I mean… Even socialists can’t be this stupid. https://t.co/1pBdjafh55

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 10, 2020

After all, what to say about tweets like this?

Are you about to tell us “Socialism was tried in Russia” or “Look at Venezuela” etc? It has NEVER EXISTED! It comes AFTER global capitalism! pic.twitter.com/Rr1Ra0ugbE

— The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) November 16, 2016

On balance, the fact that the Socialist Party of Great Britain hasn’t challenged the page and had it taken down for impersonation should probably be a sign that this, sadly, is actually how daft socialists really are.

However, the British socialists are still canny enough to have £1.3 million in property and cash reserves despite only having 300 members, according to a BBC report from 2015, even though the party wants to abolish private property and money.

“We live in a capitalist society and you need money to survive in a capitalist society,” spokesman Adam Buick said at the time.

“We are not a charity, we are not giving it away to the poor, we are using it to propagate the case for socialism.”

Considering the relative success of party’s efforts on social media, perhaps it’s time to consider that whole “giving it away to the poor” thing.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

If you remember The Wizard of Oz you will recall that Toto, Dorothy’s dog, pulled back the curtain, revealing that the wizard was just a little guy working a panel of sound and light gimmicks to fool people into thinking he was more omnipotent than he really was. In the same way, the President’s killing of Qassem Soleimani and the aftermath reveals the four-decades-long treatment of Iranian terrorism and Israel by the foreign-policy establishment – our presidents from Jimmy Carter up to now – and Congress was based on myths.

The brilliant Caroline Glick makes the case.

For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel.

Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic.

She begins by reviewing the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the “students” weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the US would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn’t want to do that.

So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of “students” in central Tehran to free the hostages. 

Hoping that Iran would be satisfied, they left Khomeini alone.

Khomeini and his “Death to America” shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, “plausibly deniable” doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies.

Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani along with Muhandis destroyed the Carter administration’s Iran narrative.

By killing Soleimani, Trump made clear that the blank check for aggression the previous six presidents gave Tehran is now canceled. From now on, the regime will be held responsible for its actions. From now on US policy towards Iran will be based on reality and not on escapism.

The second false narrative that has formed the basis of US Middle East policy since Carter is that Israel and the so-called “occupation” are responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East. [snip]

Just as Reagan turned a blind eye to Iran’s responsibility for the terror attacks its proxies carried out against the United States — including the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in November 1983 — so he substantively accepted Carter’s anti-Israel narrative which blamed Israel for the absence of Middle East peace. 

The Bush administrations and the Clinton administration followed along with the delusional Carter policies that blamed Israel for the troubles in the region,

Obama, of course, went full circle. [snip]

The fact that the Carter narrative was self-evidently ridiculous and destabilizing made no impression on these successive administrations. PLO aggression and refusal to either disavow terrorism or accept Israel’s right to exist in any borders were brushed aside as irrelevant and unwelcome information.

Israel’s profound concessions for peace were pocketed, poo-pooed and forgotten. [snip]

In Pompeo’s words, “It is important that we speak the truth when the facts lead us to it. And that’s what we’ve done.”

She explains why the Trump refusal to join in the delusions has so upset the foreign policy establishment — “an unforgivable transgression” in her words. He’s rejected their “collective wisdom” with reality-based policies which might, unlike theirs, actually work. Their legacy is in the ash heap. “All their protestations, all their fancy resumes and titles as former officials will lose their allure and market value.”

I urge you to read her entire article. It’s detailed and compelling.

My online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” agrees with me that Glick has nailed it, including her explanation of the venom directed against the president and his followers:

It’s that he doesn’t indulge their idiotic fantasy world of political delusions. He picks up his jacks and walks over to his own yard and plays on HIS playground not theirs. And their choices are either stomp their feet while he sails past them or go play and get beat cuz they’re no longer on their home field. All these hundred years of inevitable progdom are suddenly threatened, just as they were about to succeed, by this funny talking, funny haired creep they only pretended to like cuz he was loaded.

And what they’re really terrified of is what if the right should realize if Trump can do it anyone can? Yes, Trump is brilliant at what he does and yes, he’s a one-off who won’t be replaced. But we’re fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening if we think his success can’t continue after he’s off the stage. 

The actual problem that the left sees more clearly than the right is Trump’s complex idiosyncrasies and style conceal a simple truth; declare the left’s shibboleths so much bullshit masquerading as fairy dust and their mystique and, more importantly, they’re political advantage goes poof! Trump shows that the Republicans have CHOSEN to play on the Dems tilted field for 100 years and have always had only to walk off of it to end the prog advantage. Of course it has happened for so long most of the GOPe like spoiled brats refuse to do the right thing and act like grown-ups. But the curtain has been pulled back and might not be put back in place and hence all the screaming.

Trump isn’t Mussolini or Hitler. Neither is he Abe Lincoln or Daniel come to judgment. Donald Trump is Toto. 

This week’s actions by the president also put paid to the foreign policy dimwits who falsely claim that the president lacks any strategy for dealing with the Middle East. (What they mean is he isn’t buying into their lunacy.) Conrad Black explained how wrong they are in advancing this claim.

He details the moves so far and notes that, among the new pieces on the board is that we have achieved energy independence – indeed, we are now a net energy exporter, an important first step in permitting us to defend our interests in that area without being firemen constantly on call to intervene there. He concludes:

Iran can bluster and threaten all it wishes, but even its deluded theocracy must now realize that the free lunch of appeasement in Washington is over. It should now be clear to everyone that the United States could not interpose itself with 400 of its special forces between the Turkish army and the PKK Kurdish militia.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia can make it clear that the Palestinians can have an autonomous state if they end their violence and accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, along the lines of the 2001 Taba discussions with a narrower West Bank and deeper Gaza Strip for Palestine and a connection between them.

Syria and Iraq should ultimately be regrouped in a loose confederation of largely autonomous zones, including Kurdistan. The inner stability and integrity from outsiders of this arrangement could be sponsored by Turkey, Russia, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a respectable regime in Iran when one emerges.

It is generally in this direction that the administration is going, and it is a sensible path. The Democrats are going to lose badly by championing Mr. Obama’s green light for Iran to have nuclear weapons just six years from now, with its $150 billion signing bonus to promote terrorism and kill Americans. It was a terrible agreement and should be unmourned.

As the week ended, the President by Executive Order ordered further economic sanctions on Iran, which is already reeling from the imposition of the original sanctions and dealing with widespread internal unrest with the people beset by the use of their money to advance jihadist actions throughout the area. 

By week’s end Iran admitted it had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in its airspace. I cannot say with certainty why they shot it down, though incompetence seems a not unlikely possibility. Though it could well have been an effort to keep the mullahs from bowing to U.S. pressure to sue for peace and straighten up. As to why they admitted guilt — well, there was ample intelligence of what they’d done. And as Tom Maguire notes: 

I am intrigued by Iran’s admission of responsibility for the airliner shoot-down. Apparently they may have set back Operation National Unity, their attempt to provoke a foreign crisis to distract from domestic woes:

In Iran, a debate over how much blame the government bears threatened to destroy the national solidarity that followed the country’s conflict with the United States. Many Iranians said that their anger over the lack of accountability at the highest levels of government had quickly returned.

However, they were in a bit of a box. Another Iranian goal is to present themselves to the international community as the more credible and responsible negotiating partner vis a vis Trump. Shooting down airliners is not helpful but pretending they weren’t at fault would have been worse.

There’s no shortage of rotten apples at the bottom of the cart that the president just overturned.

If you remember The Wizard of Oz you will recall that Toto, Dorothy’s dog, pulled back the curtain, revealing that the wizard was just a little guy working a panel of sound and light gimmicks to fool people into thinking he was more omnipotent than he really was. In the same way, the President’s killing of Qassem Soleimani and the aftermath reveals the four-decades-long treatment of Iranian terrorism and Israel by the foreign-policy establishment – our presidents from Jimmy Carter up to now – and Congress was based on myths.

The brilliant Caroline Glick makes the case.

For the past 40-odd years, two narratives have guided American Middle East policy. Both were invented by the Carter administration. One relates to Iran. One relates to Israel.

Both narratives reject reality as the basis for foreign policy decision-making in favor of delusion. Over the past two months, President Donald Trump has rejected and disavowed them both. His opponents are apoplectic.

She begins by reviewing the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

If President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the “students” weren’t students, but soldiers of Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Khomeini, the US would be compelled to fight back. And Carter and his advisers didn’t want to do that.

So rather than admit the truth, Carter accepted the absurd fiction spun by the regime that Khomeini was an innocent bystander who, try as he might, couldn’t get a bunch of “students” in central Tehran to free the hostages. 

Hoping that Iran would be satisfied, they left Khomeini alone.

Khomeini and his “Death to America” shouting followers got the message. They understood that Washington had given them a green light to attack Americans in moderate and, as Smith put it, “plausibly deniable” doses. it. For the next 40 years, Iran maintained its aggression against America. And from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, every president since Carter accepted and kept faith with Carter’s decision not to hold the Iranian regime responsible for the acts of aggression and war it carried out against America through proxies.

Trump’s decision to kill Soleimani along with Muhandis destroyed the Carter administration’s Iran narrative.

By killing Soleimani, Trump made clear that the blank check for aggression the previous six presidents gave Tehran is now canceled. From now on, the regime will be held responsible for its actions. From now on US policy towards Iran will be based on reality and not on escapism.

The second false narrative that has formed the basis of US Middle East policy since Carter is that Israel and the so-called “occupation” are responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East. [snip]

Just as Reagan turned a blind eye to Iran’s responsibility for the terror attacks its proxies carried out against the United States — including the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, and the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in November 1983 — so he substantively accepted Carter’s anti-Israel narrative which blamed Israel for the absence of Middle East peace. 

The Bush administrations and the Clinton administration followed along with the delusional Carter policies that blamed Israel for the troubles in the region,

Obama, of course, went full circle. [snip]

The fact that the Carter narrative was self-evidently ridiculous and destabilizing made no impression on these successive administrations. PLO aggression and refusal to either disavow terrorism or accept Israel’s right to exist in any borders were brushed aside as irrelevant and unwelcome information.

Israel’s profound concessions for peace were pocketed, poo-pooed and forgotten. [snip]

In Pompeo’s words, “It is important that we speak the truth when the facts lead us to it. And that’s what we’ve done.”

She explains why the Trump refusal to join in the delusions has so upset the foreign policy establishment — “an unforgivable transgression” in her words. He’s rejected their “collective wisdom” with reality-based policies which might, unlike theirs, actually work. Their legacy is in the ash heap. “All their protestations, all their fancy resumes and titles as former officials will lose their allure and market value.”

I urge you to read her entire article. It’s detailed and compelling.

My online friend “The Infamous Ignatz” agrees with me that Glick has nailed it, including her explanation of the venom directed against the president and his followers:

It’s that he doesn’t indulge their idiotic fantasy world of political delusions. He picks up his jacks and walks over to his own yard and plays on HIS playground not theirs. And their choices are either stomp their feet while he sails past them or go play and get beat cuz they’re no longer on their home field. All these hundred years of inevitable progdom are suddenly threatened, just as they were about to succeed, by this funny talking, funny haired creep they only pretended to like cuz he was loaded.

And what they’re really terrified of is what if the right should realize if Trump can do it anyone can? Yes, Trump is brilliant at what he does and yes, he’s a one-off who won’t be replaced. But we’re fundamentally misunderstanding what is happening if we think his success can’t continue after he’s off the stage. 

The actual problem that the left sees more clearly than the right is Trump’s complex idiosyncrasies and style conceal a simple truth; declare the left’s shibboleths so much bullshit masquerading as fairy dust and their mystique and, more importantly, they’re political advantage goes poof! Trump shows that the Republicans have CHOSEN to play on the Dems tilted field for 100 years and have always had only to walk off of it to end the prog advantage. Of course it has happened for so long most of the GOPe like spoiled brats refuse to do the right thing and act like grown-ups. But the curtain has been pulled back and might not be put back in place and hence all the screaming.

Trump isn’t Mussolini or Hitler. Neither is he Abe Lincoln or Daniel come to judgment. Donald Trump is Toto. 

This week’s actions by the president also put paid to the foreign policy dimwits who falsely claim that the president lacks any strategy for dealing with the Middle East. (What they mean is he isn’t buying into their lunacy.) Conrad Black explained how wrong they are in advancing this claim.

He details the moves so far and notes that, among the new pieces on the board is that we have achieved energy independence – indeed, we are now a net energy exporter, an important first step in permitting us to defend our interests in that area without being firemen constantly on call to intervene there. He concludes:

Iran can bluster and threaten all it wishes, but even its deluded theocracy must now realize that the free lunch of appeasement in Washington is over. It should now be clear to everyone that the United States could not interpose itself with 400 of its special forces between the Turkish army and the PKK Kurdish militia.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia can make it clear that the Palestinians can have an autonomous state if they end their violence and accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, along the lines of the 2001 Taba discussions with a narrower West Bank and deeper Gaza Strip for Palestine and a connection between them.

Syria and Iraq should ultimately be regrouped in a loose confederation of largely autonomous zones, including Kurdistan. The inner stability and integrity from outsiders of this arrangement could be sponsored by Turkey, Russia, the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and a respectable regime in Iran when one emerges.

It is generally in this direction that the administration is going, and it is a sensible path. The Democrats are going to lose badly by championing Mr. Obama’s green light for Iran to have nuclear weapons just six years from now, with its $150 billion signing bonus to promote terrorism and kill Americans. It was a terrible agreement and should be unmourned.

As the week ended, the President by Executive Order ordered further economic sanctions on Iran, which is already reeling from the imposition of the original sanctions and dealing with widespread internal unrest with the people beset by the use of their money to advance jihadist actions throughout the area. 

By week’s end Iran admitted it had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane in its airspace. I cannot say with certainty why they shot it down, though incompetence seems a not unlikely possibility. Though it could well have been an effort to keep the mullahs from bowing to U.S. pressure to sue for peace and straighten up. As to why they admitted guilt — well, there was ample intelligence of what they’d done. And as Tom Maguire notes: 

I am intrigued by Iran’s admission of responsibility for the airliner shoot-down. Apparently they may have set back Operation National Unity, their attempt to provoke a foreign crisis to distract from domestic woes:

In Iran, a debate over how much blame the government bears threatened to destroy the national solidarity that followed the country’s conflict with the United States. Many Iranians said that their anger over the lack of accountability at the highest levels of government had quickly returned.

However, they were in a bit of a box. Another Iranian goal is to present themselves to the international community as the more credible and responsible negotiating partner vis a vis Trump. Shooting down airliners is not helpful but pretending they weren’t at fault would have been worse.

There’s no shortage of rotten apples at the bottom of the cart that the president just overturned.