Conservative Musings

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Sunday, March 20, 2016

Once Again Obama Is Duped By Our Opponents

Tom Cotton: Cuba Detains Famous Dissident on Eve of Obama's Visit

cuban hu

By Todd Beamon | Saturday, 19 Mar 2016 06:39 PM

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Sen. Tom Cotton ripped Cuban President Raul Castro Saturday on news reports that his regime had detained longtime human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez just before President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the island on Sunday.

"President Obama’s opening to Cuba has yielded little besides continued affronts, crackdowns, and oppression," the Arkansas Republican said. "Now, on the eve of the president’s misguided trip to Cuba, the Castro regime arrested Elizardo Sanchez, a leading and peaceful human-rights activist with whom President Obama was scheduled to meet during his trip.

"It's hard to imagine a more blatant, provocative, in-your-face humiliation of the United States," Cotton said.

Sanchez, 71, was detained and later released in Havana Saturday after returning from Miami with his wife, The Los Angeles Times reports. A former philosophy professor, he is president of the dissident group, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Was Attacking Romney A Mistake? Time Will Tell. Did It Open Up An Opportunity For Cruz

Cruz Flies to Romney's Defense in Spat With Trump Over Mormonism

Saturday, 19 Mar 2016 05:19 PM

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Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, campaigning in Utah, called Donald Trump's attacks on Mitt Romney Mormon affiliation "sad" and "disgraceful.''

"It was sad yesterday to see Donald Trump stand up in Utah and call into question Mitt Romney's faith," the Texas senator told reporters on Saturday after a rally in Draper ahead of the state's Republican nominating contest on March 22.

"That has no place in politics; that is wrong. It's disgraceful to call into question the faith of another, and that is an attack that I think doesn't belong in Utah and it doesn't belong in politics," Cruz said.

Trump jabbed at Romney late on Friday at Salt Lake City’s Infinity Event Center, less than two miles from the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the city's Temple Square.

"I have many friends that live in Salt Lake," the Republican front-runner told the crowd. "By the way, Mitt Romney is not one of them."

"Are you sure he’s a Mormon?" Trump asked the crowd. "Are we sure?"

The swipe came hours after the former Massachusetts governor declared he would vote for Cruz in the Utah contest, and urged other Republicans to follow suit. "I will vote for Senator Cruz and I encourage others to do so as well, so that we can have an open convention and nominate a Republican," Romney wrote on Facebook on Friday afternoon.

Cruz is waging an uphill battle to wrest control of the Republican nomination contest following a string of Trump victories in states Cruz had counted on winning. He welcomed the support from Romney, who won 73 percent of the vote in Utah against Barack Obama in 2012.

"In my book, when someone says I’m voting for you and encourages everyone else to vote for you, that’s pretty darn good and I’ll take that and take that happily,'' Cruz said of Romney's backing.

On Saturday Cruz rallied in front of about 1,000 people in a small community outside of Salt Lake City. Also on hand were media personality Glenn Beck and Carly Fiorina, the HP chief executive who departed the Republican race last month, plus Utah Senator Mike Lee, appearing before his home-state crowd while running for re-election.

Beck spoke to the crowd of his Mormon faith, and several speakers mentioned the need for a "Philadelphia Moment," a reference to the tenuous first days of the republic when the founding fathers rallied in the city to save the nation in its infancy.

Romney and Trump have been feuding since March 3, when Romney made a passionate call for Republicans to oppose the former "Apprentice" host by voting for any of his opponents. Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, also stumped for Ohio Governor John Kasich, in recent days, and backed him in robocalls to voters in a bid to block Trump’s ascent.

Questioning Romney’s religion carried echoes of Trump suggesting that Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother, is ineligible for the White House. In February, Trump said on Twitter that he may sue Cruz “for not being a natural born citizen.” The real estate magnate also challenged Barack Obama’s citizenship in 2011, fueling the “birther” movement against the U.S. president.

At Friday’s rally Trump belittled Romney’s losing 2012 run. "Did he choke? Did this guy choke? He’s a choke artist," Trump said. "He choked. He choked. It was so bad. He should have beaten Obama."

Trump has two remaining foes in a field winnowed down from over a dozen: Cruz, who trails Trump by 265 delegates, and Kasich, who won his home state on Tuesday but only has 143 delegates so far.

Latest News Update

Trump has 678 delegates. If he doesn’t gather at least 1,237 by the Republican convention in Cleveland in July, it would be possible for delegates to hand the nomination to someone else through a series of votes.

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Using the same logic, Senator Lindsey Graham also backed Cruz this week after spending much of the campaign criticizing him. “Cruz is not my first pick by any choice, but I don’t see how John Kasich can mount the opposition that Ted Cruz can to stop Donald Trump,” he said, according to The Post and Courier.

Graham, who backed former Florida Governor Jeb Bush after ending his own presidential bid in December, announced the endorsement after Senator Marco Rubio dropped out of the race on March 15 following a second-place showing in Florida, his home state.

Romney is seeking to deny Trump the nomination, saying he was "repulsed" by the "racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity and, most recently, threats and violence" associated with the real estate magnate’s candidacy. The move most immediately impacts the campaign of Kasich, who enjoyed Romney’s support as primary day approached in Ohio.

"I like Governor John Kasich," Romney wrote. "But a vote for Governor Kasich in future contests makes it extremely likely that Trumpism would prevail."Spoiler Effect

Romney’s suggestion that Kasich is a spoiler has been a common refrain for establishment Republicans. Bush’s team said that he would have performed better in South Carolina, where he ultimately dropped out of the race after a fourth-place finish, had Kasich folded his campaign after the New Hampshire primary. Kasich finished second in that northeast contest behind Trump, with almost 16 percent of the vote. Rubio’s supporters believe Kasich cost them a needed victory in Virginia, where the Floridian finished less than 3 points behind Trump and Kasich had over 9 percent of the vote.

“There are only two people who actually have a viable path to the nomination,” Jason Johnson, Cruz’s chief strategist, told reporters, according to the New York Times. “There’s one spoiler in the race: John Kasich.”

The response from the Kasich campaign was testy. "The fact is the establishment has gotten it wrong this entire primary and it is unfortunate to see that Mitt Romney is getting bad political advice," said John Weaver, the Kasich campaign's chief strategist. "John Kasich is best positioned to stop Donald Trump in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Pacific coast states."

Kasich campaigned almost exclusively in New Hampshire at the start of the campaign season and, after the second-place finish there, staked his candidacy on Ohio. He promised to quit the race if he lost, and, based on a victory there on March 15, maintains that he'll be the next president.Kasich's Path

But even Ohio Senator Rob Portman and former Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, both Kasich supporters, struggled in interviews with Bloomberg this week to say where the Ohio governor could win next.

"There are a bunch of states coming up that he should do well in," Portman said in an interview March 15 on Bloomberg Politics’ "With All Due Respect." "Pennsylvania is certainly one... He’s also looking east, at some of those states and some of the states in the Midwest."

A Harper poll of Republicans in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary on April 26, showed Kasich trailing Trump by 26 points on March 2. A Marquette poll taken in February in Wisconsin, a winner-take-all state that votes on April 5, showed Kasich trailing Trump by 22 points. And an Emerson poll of New York, which holds its primary on April 19, showed 64 percent of Republicans backing Trump. Kasich was at 1 percent.

On Friday, Kasich's campaign pointed to four fundraisers and donors who have backed his campaign since the Ohio primary to show he is gaining momentum: longtime Republican fundraiser Bobbie Kilberg of Virginia, who previously backed Rubio; Rick Caruso, founder of real-estate developer Caruso Affiliated Holdings in Los Angeles; Richard Roeder, and Robert Addison Day.

Kasich has also added campaign staff in several states.

"Of the people left in the race, he’s got the experience,’’ Caruso said of Kasich by phone. "We've got critical problems in the country, and John's best equipped to handle them.''

Breaking News at Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/ALLSTATES-ALLTOP-ALLWWCUR-AMERICAME/2016/03/19/id/719932/#ixzz43Sjg7AaX

Could Utah Be Trump's Waterloo?

Poll: Cruz Has 42-Point Lead Over Trump in Utah

Saturday, 19 Mar 2016 09:35 PM

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Sen. Ted Cruz has an enormous 42-point lead over Donald Trump in Utah in a new poll just released Saturday.

If that lead holds, the Utah GOP caucuses could award him all of the state's delegates, according to The Hill.

The Y2 Analytics survey gives Cruz 53 percent of the vote followed by Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 29 percent and Donald Trump trailing at 11 percent.

Europe Is Adrift From The Moorings

THE DEATH OF EUROPE

Exclusive: Theodore Roosevelt Malloch explains results of rejecting transcendent truths

Published: 2 days ago

image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2016/01/trmalloch_avatar.jpg

THEODORE ROOSEVELT MALLOCH

I readily admit to being a Eurocentric Europhile.

Please bear with me as I detail some personal history to establish the background for why I make this statement.

My family roots are in Scotland, Holland and Germany, and my entire education, faith and upbringing, while quintessentially American, are deeply rooted in the European experience. My faith is founded in the Protestant Reformation that shook Europe 500 years ago.
I spent nine formative summers teaching and touring throughout all of Europe while I was in graduate school and as a young professor.
I still recall with wild enthusiasm my first trip to Europe in 1972 at age 19. I studied and took degrees and have lectured at European universities. I was a Deutches Austauschendienst at Kiel Universitat and was made an honorary member of the Christian Democratic Party of the Netherlands as early as 1979.
I was president of the four ancient Scottish universities trusts in the United States. I wrote a doctoral dissertation largely about European ideas – in politics, philosophy and economics.
I lived four years in Geneva, Switzerland, in an ambassadorial post in the U.N. in the late ’80s until 1992 when European history shifted and the Cold War ended. I had a front-row seat as deputy executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe. I was an executive board member of the World Economic Forum, which started as the European Management Forum for CEOs.
I was actually present at the Berlin Wall just days after it came down. My friends in Eastern Europe, the radical economists, all became leading figures – ministers, central bankers and prime ministers in their respective countries after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I was an adviser to the Polish government during its shock therapy and privatization. I speak several European languages, regularly read European books, magazines and newspapers and have been a firm supporter of the so-called Atlantic Alliance my entire life.

To steal a line from President Kennedy, “Ich bin ein Europaisch.”

So, it is with a deep sense of disappointment and true sadness that I have to say what I am about to say.

Adrift without a soul

Europe’s churches are empty. Mass on Sundays, in any Gothic cathedral, is virtually unattended, except for a handful of tourists, vacant. The actual celebration of Mass is typically conducted in a side chapel, fit for the dozen or so worshipers who show up for service.

Europe is adrift without a soul and evolving rapidly away from its moorings.

In his book,” The Cube and the Cathedral,” George Weigel described a European culture that has become not only increasingly secular but in many cases downright hostile to Christianity.

The cathedral in his title is Notre Dame, now overshadowed in cultural importance by the Arc de la Defense, the ultra modernist “cube” that dominates an office complex outside Paris.

“European man has convinced himself that in order to be modern and free, he must be radically secular,” Weigel writes. “That conviction and its public consequences are at the root of Europe’s contemporary crisis of civilizational morale.”

Recall the rancorous debate over whether or not “Christianity” should be explicitly acknowledged when drafting the European Union’s constitutional treaty.

By the time the draft constitution was completed, a grudging reference to “the cultural, religious, and humanist inheritance of Europe” had been shoehorned into the preamble’s first clause. This was about as much religion as Europe could stomach in a constitution that runs some 70,000 words.

Practicing Christianity in Europe today enjoys a status not dissimilar to closet status reserved for smoking marijuana or engaging in unorthodox sexual activities decades ago. Few Europeans will mind if you do so in private, but please have the courtesy to keep the matter private.

Today Christianity in the EU is considered at best a retrograde and largely atavistic practice barely tolerated in a self-described “progressive” society devoted to obtaining the good material life, including long holidays, short work hours and generous government benefits.

Dare we ask what is the deeper source of European antipathy to religion?

The problem goes all the way back to the 14th century, when scholastics like William of Ockham argued for “nominalism.” According to their philosophy, universals – concepts such as “justice” or “freedom” and qualities such as “good” – do not exist in the abstract but are merely words that denote instances of what they describe. A current of thought was set into motion, Weigel among others believes, that pulled European man away from transcendent truths. One casualty was any fixed idea of human nature.

If there is no such thing as human nature, then there are no universal moral principles that can be read from human nature. If there are no universal moral truth, then religion, positing them, is merely a form of oppression or myth, one from which Europe’s elites see themselves as now liberated. And they look down on their American and Third World cousins who continue to believe in such irrational flights of fancy.

I think the critics are on firm ground when they analyze Europe’s present condition, with its low birth rates, heavy government debts, Muslim immigration worries and tendency to carp from the sidelines when the fate of nations is at stake. Like Weigel, one could sketch the worst-case scenario – the “bitter end” – for a Europe that is religiously bereft, demographically moribund and morally without a compass: “The muezzin summons the faithful to prayer from the central loggia of St. Peter’s in Rome, while Notre-Dame has been transformed into Hagia Sophia on the Seine – a great Christian church become an Islamic museum.”

One need not find this scenario altogether plausible to feel persuaded by more measured arguments about Europe’s atheistic humanism. Without a religious dimension, a commitment to human freedom is likely to be attenuated, too weak to make sacrifices in its name. Europe’s political elites especially, but its citizens as well, believe in freedom and democracy, of course, but they are reluctant to put the “good life” on hold and put lives on the line when freedom is in need of a champion – in the Balkans, the Sudan, Darfur or in Iraq cum Syria.

The good of human freedom, by European lights, must be weighed against the risk and cost of actually fighting for it. It is no longer transcendent, absolute. In such a world, governed by a narrow utilitarian calculus, sacrifice is rare, churches go unattended and over time the spiritual capital that brought forth all that we know as the West is at risk of being lost.

Europe is a society adrift, untied from the source of its greatness – the very cultural foundation that provided the values making Europe great is disintegrating, leaving Europe (and soon the entire West) on sinking sand. More specifically, as the past is erased, re-written, or ignored, the rich Judeo-Christian history of Europe is being left behind. And at what cost?

As I ponder this thesis, I am reminded of Orwell’s quote, “We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” It is obvious, “culture determines civilization.” Without its distinctly Christian history, Europe would not be what it is. Unfortunately, we may now have more accurately to write, “… Europe would not have been what it was.”

America is now alone in defending freedom and upholding the tradition of faith and reason.

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