Socialists will probably always be uglier than Tories, research finds
Socialists will probably always be uglier than Tories, research finds
Federal prosecutors have decided not to retry Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J
Federal prosecutors have decided not to retry Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., whose bribery case ended in a mistrial in November. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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Coast Guard rape conviction overturned after court’s scathing attack on women-packed jury
Coast Guard rape conviction overturned after court’s scathing attack on women-packed jury
The good news is that the system finally worked.... the bad news is that it's six years later, and this poor guy has been through total hell. I wonder who's going to pay him for the time lost, the legal costs, the suffering he's endured. Personally I wish he could sue all those officers and collect enough from them to mess up their finances for life. This is PC craziness at its worst, with the very people who are supposed to work for justice betraying their oaths. --Del
Hillary’s ‘Sure’ Victory Explains Most Everything
Hillary’s ‘Sure’ Victory Explains Most Everything
http://www.nationalreview.com/
http://www.nationalreview.com/
What the New York Times Gets Wrong about Conscience
What the New York Times Gets Wrong about Conscience
Excerpt: Civic ignorance is the enemy of liberty. In the midst of American debates over religion, speech, and conscience, we’re constantly treated to arguments that fundamentally misunderstand the relationship between the Constitution, statutes, and individual decisions. Censors elevate lesser values, denigrate the Bill of Rights, and ignore the role of individual choice in achieving the outcomes they desire. Let me make this concrete. This week the New York Times fed this civic ignorance when it editorialized against the Trump administration’s proposed rule laying out a new approach to enforcing federal statutes that protect health-care workers’ rights of conscience. These statutes — which every president is obligated to enforce — protect health-care workers from being forced to assist or participate in abortions, sterilization, or assisted suicide. They are grounded in the First Amendment provisions that guarantee religious liberty and freedom of speech.
Crash
The NTSB is holding a news conference scheduled for 5:30 p.m ET on the Amtrak train crash in Crozet, Va., that killed one person outside the train. Passengers included members of Congress on their way to a Republican retreat in West Virginia.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Leftists Now Believe the New York Times Is a “White Supremacist,” “Nazi” Paper
Leftists Now Believe the New York Times Is a “White Supremacist,” “Nazi” Paper
Excerpt: On Saturday, Ross Douthat published a column for the New York Times arguing that White House Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller should be included in negotiations about immigration policy because he represents the opinions of tens of millions of Americans. Somewhat predictably, the Times’s liberal readership was none too pleased by the idea that proponents of increased restrictions on legal immigration would be given a seat at the table alongside proponents of amnesty, and many took to Twitter to express their displeasure. Some more unhinged commenters labeled the Times a “white supremacist paper,” while others were content with simply suggesting that Douthat is a racist.
Monday, January 29, 2018
Koch World Faces Year Two of the Trump Era — and the 2018 Midterms
Koch World Faces Year Two of the Trump Era — and the 2018 Midterms
McCabe Removed
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was ‘removed’ from his post as the bureau’s second-in-command, Fox News has learned
The Koch Brothers’ Rorschach Test
The Koch Brothers’ Rorschach Test
Excerpt: Saturday afternoon at the Koch winter meeting, I was watching a panel of leaders from community-building and social-capital-building nonprofits: the Cara Program in Chicago, which helps workplace skills; Phoenix Multisport, a Boston-based peer-to-peer recovery organization for young addicts; Rising Tide Capital, which helps low-income individuals start businesses in Jersey City, New Jersey; and Chrysalis, which helps low-income and homeless individuals in Los Angeles prepare for, find, and retain employment. The Koch network doesn’t single-handedly keep these organizations going, but their financial and operational assistance is considerable. Stand Together, part of the Koch network of organizations, provided Rising Tide $350,000 last year; the group’s annual budget is $5 million. It struck me that the reaction to the Koch brothers is a pretty good example of how politics has gotten worse over the past two decades. (Alternatively, if you believe American politics has been getting worse for a long time, that worsening accelerated in just the past decade or so.) To hear Harry Reid and a lot of Democrats tell it, they’re “the shadowy Koch brothers.” David Axelrod called them “contract killers.” Liberal columnist Mark Morford once compared them to a combination of “a ruthless drug kingpin, a mafia crime lord, the willful blindness of the NRA, the combined CEOs of Monsanto, Exxon, and RJ Reynolds and a couple scared old wolverines with God complex and a penchant for contaminating the world.” A documentary labeled them “the one percent at its very worst.” The very worst? They donate more to charity that most of us will ever earn in our entire lives. David Koch and his charitable foundation have pledged or contributed “more than $1.2 billion to cancer research, medical centers, educational institutions, arts and cultural institutions, and to assist public policy organizations.” The Charles Koch Foundation donates tens of millions of dollars to colleges and universities each year; in 2014, it gave $25 million to the United Negro College Fund.
Wanted: A U.S. Strategic Response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Wanted: A U.S. Strategic Response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Excerpt: China is engaging in a nearly trillion dollar play for the future of Afro-Eurasia—called the Belt and Road Initiative—and has so far caught the United States flat-footed. Unless the United States works with key allies and partners to craft a forward-leaning response, it risks replicating the strategic failure that occurred in the South China Sea. The result could be a China-centric economic and security order extending across Eurasia and along the Indian Ocean rim. Observing Beijing’s approach to the South China Sea in late 2013, American leaders experienced a failure of imagination. They did not anticipate the ambitious scope of China’s land reclamation. At over 3,200 acres, China has reclaimed an area equivalent to more than 20 percent of the island of Manhattan. Additionally, American leaders did not envision the cascading military and diplomatic consequences of a slow-moving U.S. response, which gave China the opportunity to project power more than five hundred miles from its mainland and undermine U.S. credibility by demonstrating to the region that China could unilaterally change the facts on the ground without paying a significant price.
China’s Control of the Panama Canal Revisited.
China’s Control of the Panama Canal Revisited.
Excerpt: China’s increasing influence in the Western Hemisphere has been of growing interest to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. In fact, on June 11, 2008, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere held a hearing entitled “The New Challenge: China in the Western Hemisphere.”[i] In the hearing, experts on Latin America pointed out that total trade between China and the Latin American and Caribbean region skyrocketed from $8.2 billion to $102 billion in less than ten years. Furthermore, those testifying mentioned that Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to several Latin American countries in 2004 underscored China’s increased presence in the hemisphere. During his visit, Hu stated that China would invest $100 billion in the region over the next decade. Over the past years, several Latin American countries that had no diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China have now established them. For instance, in 2007, Costa Rica aborted its ties with Taiwan and established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, primarily for economic and financial reasons.[i] However, the most important indicator of China’s growing influence is its control over the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. China has been operating these ports since 2000 and their influence inside Panama has grown as indicated by a bill submitted last year to the legislature that mandates teaching Mandarin in all Panamanian public schools.[ii] Currently the Panama Ports Company,[i] a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.,[ii] has exclusive and extensive rights to control both ends of the Panama Canal. Hutchison Whampoa is a Chinese company owned by Hong Kong billionaire, Li Ka-Shing, who has strong ties with Beijing. Considering Li’s close ties with the Chinese government, it is highly plausible that Hutchison Whampoa has the potential to act as Beijing’s political agent and that their possession of the ports at either end of the Panama Canal constitutes a serious U.S. national security issue.
German children’s television channel features migrant teens learning how to remove a girl’s bra
German children’s television channel features migrant teens learning how to remove a girl’s bra
Excerpt: What could possibly go wrong? The Qur’an teaches that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take “captives of the right hand,” 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to bring down over themselves of their outer garments. That is more suitable that they will be known and not be abused. And ever is Allah Forgiving and Merciful.” (33:59) The implication there is that if women do not cover themselves adequately with their outer garments, they may be abused, and that such abuse would be justified.
It's Not "Against Trump" to Demand Debate of Actual Facts
It's Not "Against Trump" to Demand Debate of Actual Facts
Excerpt: Winning the argument used to mean something different for conservatives. "The Art of the Deal" is not about winning arguments, it's about convincing people to ignore facts in order to get them to pay you more, to do less, than they really wanted. It's based on the idea that winners write epitaphs and history is the product of many winners over time. Conservative thought, based on classical liberalism and debate, deals with facts, policies, evidence, and truth. Trump's contribution to the death of debate, carrying conservatives directly into the sights of liberalism's big guns, is really his worst legacy. If you have a few minutes, read T.A. Frank's piece in the Washington Post about the "Golden Age of Conservative Magazines." Reading it, I was nostalgically transported to August 2015, when many conservatives believed that the laws of politics would carry Trump's blowhard campaign where gravity inevitably lands. But it didn't because their entire argument was premised on actual debate and rhetoric (the classical kind) remaining meaningful.
Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems?
Are We Free to Discuss America’s Real Problems? By Amy Wax, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Excerpt: There is a lot of abstract talk these days on American college campuses about free speech and the values of free inquiry, with plenty of lip service being paid to expansive notions of free expression and the marketplace of ideas. What I’ve learned through my recent experience of writing a controversial op-ed is that most of this talk is not worth much. It is only when people are confronted with speech they don’t like that we see whether these abstractions are real to them. The op-ed, which I co-authored with Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego Law School, appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 9 under the title, “Paying the Price for the Breakdown of the Country’s Bourgeois Culture.” It began by listing some of the ills afflicting American society: "Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries."
Trump's AHP Rule Makes Health Care Affordable Again
Trump's AHP Rule Makes Health Care Affordable Again
Excerpt: Earlier this month, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that could dramatically expand access to affordable health insurance. The rule would empower small businesses and self-employed individuals to band together to purchase coverage through "association health plans" or AHPs. They are exempt from many of Obamacare's mandates, which have been responsible for premiums soaring. As a result, these plans could provide small businesses who previously didn't offer health insurance an affordable means of doing so. The Department of Labor rule corrects an inequity inherent to Obamacare. The health law imposed costly mandates on small-group and individual policies. But large-group plans are exempt from many of these regulations.
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Funding Sesame Street
Could anything but cruelty motivate the President's defunding of PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities?
Excerpt: Why does a rich guy like Big Bird need public money? Sesame Street, the flagship of PBS, generates over $118 million in annual revenue. The CEO draws a salary of around $600k a year, and the other top executives in the company are earning around $400k. And those aren’t the highest paid people in the company either - the head writer and muppet performer earned $2.2 million. These guys don’t need a dime from the public treasury. In fact, across all of PBS’s lineup, only 15% of their total budget comes from the government. The rest - about $2.9 billion in total - comes from their own revenue generating activities. Funding PBS is corporate welfare. Aren’t you guys on the left supposed to be against that?
Trump repeats the folly of protectionism
Steve Chapman: Trump repeats the folly of protectionism
Excerpt: The president, whose ignorance of economics is bottomless, has the idea that punishment of foreign producers is the key to our prosperity. His conviction is that when you protect an industry, you cause it to grow, reaping a bounty that will enrich the entire economy. It’s an old superstition that has been debunked in the real world over and over. A nation does not make itself richer by shutting out goods its people want. High tariffs fleece the broad public to benefit a small class of favored people. (Free Trade has been a conservative and Republican principle for decades. Read Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics." `Bob)
Are liberals guilty of trying to divide society based on identity groups?
Are liberals guilty of trying to divide society based on identity groups?
Met faces backlash over failure to prosecute ‘horrific’ honor killings, forced marriages
Met faces backlash over failure to prosecute ‘horrific’ honor killings, forced marriages
Court Records: Mall of America Stabbing Suspect Pleads Guilty, Calls it Act of Jihad
Court Records: Mall of America Stabbing Suspect Pleads Guilty, Calls it Act of Jihad
American Muslim in 1989 discusses long term goal of "making all of America Muslim"
American Muslim in 1989 discusses long term goal of "making all of America Muslim"
Richie Rich Nancy Pelosi Worked To Avoiding Paying Property Taxes
Richie Rich Nancy Pelosi Worked To Avoiding Paying Property Taxes
Excerpt: Let’s face it. Hating to pay taxes is an American tradition. That sort of hatred is what started the American Revolution, and what drives millions of Americans to vote for “conservative” politicians time after time. Getting tax breaks is akin to Manna from Heaven. And that’s fine…unless you made a name for yourself railing at the “rich” to pay more in taxes and then you get caught trying to lower your own burden. That’s the mousetrap House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the richest woman in Congress, finds herself in. (But let's face it, why would anyone expect anything else from Nancy? Remember, she's the super duper anti-gun activist.... who got herself a carry permit. Hypocrisy is SOP for her. --Del)
The Forgotten South Vietnamese Airborne
The Forgotten South Vietnamese Airborne
Excerpt: Four months into my tour with the airborne we were involved in a giant, bloody battle supporting American Marine units north of Dong Ha, near the coast in the northern part of South Vietnam. Two of our battalions were inserted by helicopter into the Demilitarized Zone to check a significant force of North Vietnam-ese moving south. It turned into three days of intense and bloody combat. My senior adviser was killed. Our incredibly courageous noncommissioned officer, Master Sgt. Rudy Ortiz, was riddled from head to foot. He asked me to load his M-16 and put it on his chest so that he could "die fighting" with the rest of us (luckily, he survived). We took hundreds of casualties and came very close to being overrun. But the South Vietnamese paratroopers fought tenacious-ly. At the critical moment, with supporting air and naval fire, we counterattacked. The executive officer of my Vietnamese battal-ion walked upright through heavy automatic weapon fire to my foxhole. "Lieutenant," he told me, "it is time to die now." It gives me chills to remember his words. In combat, the South Vietnamese refused to leave their own dead or wounded troopers on the field or abandon a weapon. In another battle one of my West Point classmates, Tommy Kerns, a huge Army football player, was badly wounded and stuck in a narrow trench as his airborne battalion tried to break contact with a large North Vietnamese force. The Vietnamese paratroopers with him, all much smaller than Tommy, couldn’t haul him out of the trench. Rather than withdraw and leave him, they held their ground and won a violent engagement over his giant wounded body. He survived because of their courage. (Here's one of the very rare times the NYTimes printed something even remotely positive about the war. And it's about both the elite ARVN soldiers and the Americans who went to fight alongside them. Bless them all. And let them not be forgotten. (Gee, I wonder how Burns and Novick missed this story?) --Del)
Saturday, January 27, 2018
Pants Alarm to ward off migrant rapes
Germany Introduces Women’s Pants with Safety Alarms to Thwart Off Migrant Sex Attacks. But Will This Be Offensive?
Excerpt: Germany, country of 82 mil, imported from 800,000 to over one mil migrants and; unvetted “refugees” in 2015. Angela Merkil welcomed close over 280,000 migrants in 2016. In Jul 2017 Merkel shut down the idea of creating upper limits on refugees entering Germy. Migrant sex attacks and violence soared in Germany since Merkel implemented grand scheme to flood country with 3rd world migrants. Now there’s hope for German women! Safety pants with a loud alarm being for sale.
Germany: Three Muslim migrants sexually assault mother with toddler in stroller
Germany: Three Muslim migrants sexually assault mother with toddler in stroller
Excerpt: Are we diverse enough yet? “They had a dark complexion and spoke in a foreign language.” That’s the only clue that TAG24 gives as to the identity of the perpetrators, and it is enough for those who know how to read the tea leaves of the establishment media, but it does leave the unfortunate impression that opposition to the Muslim migrant influx is a racial issue. While there is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve one’s cultural identity and not become a minority in one’s own country, one would think that even the most globalist, socialist, Leftist internationalist would oppose the mass arrival of people who believe that Infidel women can be lawfully taken for sexual use (cf. its allowance for a man to take “captives of the right hand,” 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30). The Qur’an says: “O Prophet, tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to bring down over themselves of their outer garments. That is more suitable that they will be known and not be abused. And ever is Allah Forgiving and Merciful.” (33:59) The implication there is that if women do not cover themselves adequately with their outer garments, they may be abused, and that such abuse would be justified.
Afghanistan
The death toll in Saturday's devastating suicide car bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, has risen to at least 95 people.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Safe in Germany?
Interview with a German journalist: “Like many other women in Germany, I no longer feel safe.”
Are we diverse enough yet? -RS
Poor them
Amid funding cut fears, PA purchases $50 million private jet for Abbas — report
Excerpt: Even as the Palestinian Authority faces major funding cuts from the US, it has purchased a new luxurious $50 million private jet to be used by President Mahmoud Abbas, Hadashot news reported Wednesday.
Dan Quayle Was Right
Old, but worth remembering: Dan Quayle Was Right
Excerpt: According to a growing body of social-scientific evidence, children in families disrupted by divorce and out-of-wedlock birth do worse than children in intact families on several measures of well-being. Children in single-parent families are six times as likely to be poor. They are also likely to stay poor longer. Twenty-two percent of children in one-parent families will experience poverty during childhood for seven years or more, as compared with only two percent of children in two parent families. A 1988 survey by the National Center for Health Statistics found that children in single-parent families are two to three times as likely as children in two-parent families to have emotional and behavioral problems. They are also more likely to drop out of high school, to get pregnant as teenagers, to abuse drugs, and to be in trouble with the law. Compared with children in intact families, children from disrupted families are at a much higher risk for physical or sexual abuse.
SAUDI’S BEAUTY SHOW CAMELS BANNED FOR BOTOX
SAUDI’S BEAUTY SHOW CAMELS BANNED FOR BOTOX
Cheating everywhere. ~Bob
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Cold Snap Brings Snowfall to the Sahara Desert – for the second winter in a row
Cold Snap Brings Snowfall to the Sahara Desert – for the second winter in a row
But even with this happening two years in a row, THEY will tell you when global warming is not a problem. --GS
VA Bureaucrat Ralph Tillman Will Spend Eight Years in Federal Prison
VA Bureaucrat Ralph Tillman Will Spend Eight Years in Federal Prison
Excerpt: VA bureaucrat Ralph Tillman, himself a Veteran, took more than a quarter-million-dollars in bribes and hush money as his partner-in-crime, Richard Scott, defrauded the VA out of more than $11 million while Los Angeles remained our nation’s capital for homeless Veterans. Tillman also lied to federal agents investigating this case. (This story will make you furious and happy at the same time. Happy because at long, long, ridiculously long length, a total crook has been brought to justice and is going away for a while (but not long enough). Furious because the story of what when on at this facility, the use of VA police and the courts to harass old veterans for displaying the US flag (I kid you not!), for so incredibly long, will make you wonder why nobody showed up with an M-16 to clean out the top offices of the place. Let's hope this story will continue to go on and things will go under such a laser light at that VA that it will change a lot for the better. --Del)
Fossil shows modern humans left Africa earlier than thought
Fossil shows modern humans left Africa earlier than thought
Excerpt: Previously, the oldest fossils of modern humans found outside of Africa were somewhere from 90,000 to 120,000 years old, also in Israel. So given the range in both those estimates, the jawbone might be about 50,000 to 100,000 years older. The jaw was found in 2002 in the collapsed Misliya cave on the western slope of Mount Carmel. Researchers spent the last decade-and-a-half looking for more remains and other fossils before publishing their study. They say the jaw belonged to a young adult of unknown gender. The Science paper suggests modern humans could have left Africa 220,000 years ago, with some of the authors saying maybe it was even earlier. That's in part because the cave also contained about 60,000 flint tools, mostly blades and sharp points, some of which are 250,000 years old, said study co-author Mina Weinstein-Evron. "Now we have to write another story," Weinstein-Evron said. "People were moving all the time."(...) “The tool supply in the cave and other evidence were so complete it basically showed "industry" by the early modern humans, she said. "This guy or woman would have been very busy," she said. "He didn't have enough time do this. He couldn't have made all of it. He must have had some friends." [Ron P.: Anyone who knows me will tell you I’ve often thought–and said so in print–that human beings are much older than is currently believed. Think about how long it must’ve taken to learn to smelt copper, tin, lead, and other metals known in antiquity long before there was any means of writing it down. Think about how many years of carefully observing the skies it must’ve taken to know the inner planets’ periods well enough to have developed horoscopes and to change the year from “new moon to new moon” to a 12 month system. The ancient Egyptians claimed to have had written records for 100,000 years when Caesar burned the Library at Alexandria; even if those years were only one month long, that still means 8,500 12-month years of observations. Later in this article, it points out that some early human works in Europe have been tentatively dated to 490,000 BC. That’s a LONG time ago. Link may not be live.]
The White House Thursday released an immigration plan that would offer a path to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million of the so-called "Dreamers,"
The White House Thursday released an immigration plan that would offer a path to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million of the so-called "Dreamers," along with a $25 billion investment in border security -- including for President Trump's long-promised wall.
FBI Messages Found
Text messages from a critical five-month period between Trump-bashing FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who both served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, have been located, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has told Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
Facebook let a terror suspect, 31, 'post ISIS videos glorifying executions and violence just because he repeatedly asked the site to reactivate his page', court hears
Open House Seats
Psst! Those Open Seat House Races Don’t Look Bad for the Republicans After All! By Jim geraght
Excerpt: But when you go through those open seat House districts one by one, something becomes very clear: About two-thirds of them are very heavily GOP districts. I can give you a statistic like “25 out of the 34 districts are ones where Trump won by 10 points or more,” but it’s better to go through all of my one-paragraph summaries and get a sense of just how red some of these places are: The eastern half of Idaho. Muncie, Indiana. The suburbs of Jackson, Mississippi. Republicans have held New Mexico’s Second District every cycle except one since 1980. Republicans have held Ohio’s 16th district every cycle except one since 1973. The last time a Democrat represented Pennsylvania’s ninth district, Franklin Roosevelt was president. The last time a Democrat represented Tennessee’s second district was 1855.
Warren
Fauxcohantas causing headache for liberals.
Excerpt: Conservatives have been making this an issue for years. We point out the hypocrisy of a clearly white woman claiming minority status and liberals who berate college students for dressing as Mulan or Pocohantas for Halloween letting her slide. It clearly hasn't hurt her in the liberal community until now. But that may change. The Boston Globe has a front page story today outlining the actual Native American tribes that take issue with Senator Warren. Apparently, you can't just claim Cherokee status. There's a process involved and a registry kept. "She’s not part of the Cherokee community,” said Chad Smith, who was the principal chief of the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation from 1999 to 2011. “She hasn’t reached out. She hasn’t come here and participated much.” "Her false claims back up some of the worst stereotypes of Indians, which is that we no longer exist and we’re not seen as a contemporary or vibrant community,” said Rebecca Nagle, a Cherokee advocate who, on Nov. 30, penned the scathing rebuke of Warren on ThinkProgress. Nagle’s op-ed was entitled: “I am a Cherokee woman. Elizabeth Warren is not.’’
Larry Nassar
The big takeaway from the Larry Nassar case that everyone missed.
Excerpt: Anyone see a pattern here? Anyone see what's missing from this case? NOBODY EVER CALLED THE POLICE. For all these years, Nassar treated this country's elite gymnasts. Parents and victims would complain to USA Gymnastics, coaches, university officials, gym staff, etc. Not one of these people is a law enforcement official. None of them are trained in dealing with complaints of sexual abuse. A lot of them had a vested interest in covering it up.