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2016

The 19th Amendment and the 2016 Election Dr. Robin McFee

“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana

One of my favorite quotations – it underscores why we endure many of the unnecessary political follies of contemporary society. We as a society don’t know a lot about our history, and/or don’t see the significance of trying to remedy that.

Here is a good “history” example – what is the significance of August 26th, 1920?

Clearly anyone knowing the answer likely indicates an individual who understands something about the Constitution, how the division of labor between the states and federal government come together concerning amendments, and perhaps a bit about our history as a society.

Sadly most people I have asked about the 19th Amendment, if they have any clue at all about the purpose of an Amendment in terms of the Constitution, think it was the law that overturned Prohibition, granting college students the right to play beer pong on campus.

History is poorly taught in the US, as multiple studies by various groups have revealed in the last 10 years. The Nation’s Report Card (1) 2014 study on 8th grader knowledge of US history, geography and civics revealed 29% of the students possessed below basic knowledge in US History. Only 18% were proficient. Let me repeat that….only 18% of 8th graders in the study were proficient about the history of their own country. This isn’t quantum physics talking about the building blocks of the universe, but US history is the building block of our foundation as good citizens. Geography and Civics did somewhat better, but not by much. The increase from 2010 wasn’t inspiring either. In addition, when history is taught, not surprisingly it is increasingly revisionist, and leaning more towards indoctrination than education.

After reading the study results, I became convinced Watter’s World was real, and that is a scary place. The folks he interviews get to vote. OMGosh maybe the Framers were right to be afraid, very afraid of the masses, especially the uneducated. Moreover, Dickens, not missing a beat warned Scrooge about the danger of ignorance.

Against this backdrop, sometimes I am surprised books about history, and great historic figures continue to make the NY Times bestseller list – examples include Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, Hamilton, The Bully Pulpit, Killing Lincoln, George Washington’s Secret Six, The Quartet, and others.

However, before we take comfort that book sales translate to a knowledgeable public, prepared to spend judiciously and wisely the most precious resource at our disposal – the vote, walk with me through a quick civics experience.

Stop letting political correctness interfere with the anti-Zika fight Betsy McCaughey

Health officials are bowing to political correctness instead of taking obvious steps to protect New York residents from the Zika virus.

New York has more Zika cases – 579 so far – than any other state. Officials warn pregnant women and their sexual partners not to travel to Zika-infested regions, because the virus causes horrific birth defects. But babies aren’t the only ones in danger. New research suggests adults may also suffer permanent brain damage after being bitten by a mosquito carrying Zika.

That’s reason enough to avoid travel to and from the Dominican Republic, the source of more than half the cases, or Puerto Rico, which is also Zika-infested.

So can New Yorkers feel safe by staying home and avoiding sex with a partner who’s been to a Zika-troubled region? For the moment, yes – but that could change with a single mosquito bite. The danger is that a tiger mosquito – local to the New York area – bites one infected person and then spreads the virus by biting other people.

That hasn’t happened yet, as far as we know. But more people coming to New York infected with Zika increase the risk local tiger mosquitoes will bite them and begin spreading the infection.

Epidemiologists say that risk is “considerable,” meaning 50-50. So why aren’t city health officials trying to slow the pace of Zika-infected arrivals?

Political correctness. “It won’t serve New Yorkers well if we create the impression that Zika is a Dominican problem or a Puerto Rico problem or a Guyana problem,” says Health Commissioner Mary Bassett.

Oh really? The goal should be to keep it from becoming a New York City problem.

Just to be clear, race and ethnicity have nothing to do with it. It’s geography. American citizens who travel to Zika hot spots as tourists put us in as much danger on their return as immigrants bringing it in. About 5 percent of those entering the United States who get tested for Zika test positive.

Car Bomb Kills 8 Police Officers in Turkish Border Town of Cizre Explosion hit a checkpoint 50 meters from a police station

Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in southeast Turkey with an explosives-laden truck on Friday, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 70 other people, the state-run news agency and Turkish officials said.

The attack struck the checkpoint some 50 meters from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkey’s Health Minister Recep Akdag didn’t confirm the death toll, but said 70 people were injured, four seriously.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which was the latest in a string of bombings that have targeted police or military vehicles and installations. Authorities have blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, for previous attacks.

Television footage showed black smoke rising from the mangled truck. The three-story police station was gutted from the powerful explosion.

The Health Ministry said it had sent 12 ambulances and two helicopters to the site.

Violence between the PKK and the security forces resumed last year, after a fragile two-year peace process between the government and the militant group collapsed. Hundreds of security force members have been killed since.

Turkey has also seen a rise of deadly attacks that have been blamed on Islamic State militants, including a suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in southeast Turkey last week that killed 54 people and an attack on Istanbul’s main airport in June, which killed 44.

Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Australian Study Finds Lifelike ‘Baby Think it Over’ dolls appear to encourage teen pregnancy rather than discouraging it (HUH? NUTS?)

CANBERRA, Australia—A weekend spent mothering a robot baby to mirror the “real experience” of parenting is meant to discourage teenage girls from getting pregnant. But so-called Baby Think it Over dolls don’t cut teen pregnancy rates and in fact increase the risk, Australian research has found.

In a study published in The Lancet medical journal Friday, researchers found teenage girls who used the lifelike computerized dolls as part of a pregnancy-prevention program were more likely to become pregnant compared with girls receiving a less high-tech sex education.

“The program was supposed to put students off and then they would take extra steps not to get pregnant,” said study author Sally Brinkman, of the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia. “Unfortunately, and surprisingly for us, the intervention we can say definitely didn’t work and it actually seemed to increase the pregnancy rates. It just didn’t really work in putting the students off.”

The robo-babies, known properly as infant simulators, were developed 20 years ago by former NASA engineer Rick Jurmain, who with his wife founded U.S.-based manufacturer Realityworks. The company didn’t immediately respond to emailed inquiries from The Wall Street Journal.

Costing several hundred dollars, they have become a key part of pregnancy prevention programs in schools, churches and community groups in 89 nations, mimicking six-week-old infant behavior including crying when hungry or needing changing, or gurgling when rocked and burped. CONTINUE AT SITE

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE MR. KRISTOF: MARILYN PENN

At a prestigious Eastern college, non-Hispanic students wearing sombreros at a tequila party are chastised by the administration and punished for their insensitivity and “cultural appropriation.” Same story for a non-black person sporting dreadlocks at another campus, and we all know the narrative of Yale’s concern for its minority sensibilities during Halloween of 2015. So it’s with some amused shock that I read Nicholas Kristof’s article in Thursday’s Times titled “Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl.” Kristof wrote this piece without a trace of irony, notwithstanding the fact that had Anne been in Syria in 1941, she would have been persecuted by a Syria controlled by the Vichy French who were as intent on persecuting Jews as the compliant Dutch were. In addition to Syria, the vicious Vichy-ites controlled Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and their denial of rights to Jews and their internment in camps were imposed in all these jurisdictions. Henri Dentz, The Vichy High Commissioner, was planning to open concentration camps when the British and Free French occupied Syria in 1944. Had Anne Frank survived the war, the independent Syrian government would have prohibited her from immigrating to Palestine and continued to persecute her until her family, like other Syrian Jews, fled without their earthly belongings.

There are crucial differences between Anne’s plight and that of Syrian civilians today. Nazi Germany was determined to imprison and exterminate all Jews throughout Europe – it was a staggeringly successful war against the Jews. Syrian refugees are what is commonly referred to as collateral damage in a raging internecine clash between different sects of Islam. There are numerous refugee camps already in existence in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq and if Kristof were truly concerned as a humanitarian, his complaint would be against those wealthy Arab countries that refuse to allow their brethren entrance even though they share a language and culture that would make this transition less traumatic. The truth is that not all “Syrian refugees” are Syrian nor are they all fleeing war. Many other people within that pool are seeking to immigrate for economic reasons and no one knows how many intend to further their ideological commitment to jihad against the west. We have witnessed the acceleration of terrorist tragedies throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and our own country and cannot be called paranoid or xenophobic after the mounting toll of murdered victims is splashed across the pages of Kristof’s newspaper every day.

Covering up the $1.3 billion payoff to Iran By Seth Lipsky

Call it judgment day. It looks like the Obama administration may yet face some kind of reckoning — in Congress, at least — over its payoff of a long-simmering claim to the Iranian regime.

That’s because to do so, the administration tapped a little-known account at the Treasury Department called the Judgment Fund. It is a special account used to pay out claims against the US government.

The details of how the administration did this, however, are being treated like a state secret. The State Department spokesman has clammed up tighter than a conch in a mudslide.

The topic erupted at the State Department’s daily briefing on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was after Claudia Rosett reported in the New York Sun that the administration made 13 transfers of $99,999,999.99 each.

Those payments add up to 13 cents shy of $1.3 billion. They were made Jan. 19, two days after President Obama announced he’d cut a deal with the mullahs for $1.7 billion to avoid an adverse judgment at a court in The Hague.

We know, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, that $400 million of that was made in foreign currency, loaded on wooden pallets and delivered in a special cargo plane and functioned as a ransom payment to the mullahs, who had been holding a group of Americans hostage.

The remaining $1.3 billion only started to come into focus when Rosett discovered the 13 transfers totaling $1.3 billion on a Treasury Department website related to the judgment fund.

She sees no other explanation than that the payments, which went from Treasury on behalf of the State Department, were to cover the Iran settlement.

Jordan’s Election Poses a Test for Muslim Brotherhood’s Change Islamists adopt more moderate posture after group’s disastrous experience in power in Egypt By Yaroslav Trofimov see note please

Oh now we have “reform” terrorists seeking to overthrow King Abdullah and his pretty wife. If she has to give up her designer duds and wear a Niqab, she’ll move to Hungary…..and the Mossad just can’t keep protecting the kinglet…..rsk

AMMAN, Jordan—In the campaign for parliamentary elections next month, the political wing of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood replaced its traditional slogan, “Islam is the Solution,” with a more inclusive “Reform.” And to underscore its more moderate posture, the Islamic Action Front also fielded several Christians and women on its coalition’s slate of candidates.

One of the oldest and most potent political forces in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood has been on the defensive following the 2013 coup against a Brotherhood administration in Egypt that unleashed a regional crackdown on political Islam.

The Sept. 20 elections in Jordan—a monarchy where most major decisions are taken by the royal court—aren’t likely to alter the country’s domestic or foreign policies. But they offer a rare test of strength for political Islam in the region as well as a measure of what lessons, if any, the Brotherhood has learned from its disastrous experience in power in Egypt.

The head of the IAF’s elections committee, Zaki Bani Irsheid, was released from Jordanian prison earlier this year after serving most of his 18-month sentence for criticizing the United Arab Emirates, one of the region’s most strident enemies of the Brotherhood.

“Political Islam is one of the most important components of Arab society and it cannot be eliminated,” he said in an interview. “But the Islamic movement has undergone a deep review of its ideas and discourse, and the experiment of these elections is a manifestation of this change.” CONTINUE AT SITE

The Beast-Radosh Continuum: Diana West

Earlier this week, the Daily Beast published a piece by serial liar, disinformation artist, mixer-upper and Hillary-Clinton-supporter Ron Radosh. (I will resist noting that they deserve each other, but they do.) It is called: “Steve Bannon, Trump’s Top Guy, Told Me He Was a `Leninist,’ Who `Wants to Destroy the State.”

According to the laws of punctuation, the quotation marks around `Leninist’ and `Wants to Destroy the State’ indicate that these words are actual quotations, but the whole “conversation” smells of a rat.

Why? For starters, Radosh — and for brevity’s sake, I’ll leave it at that for now.

But there’s more.

Radosh writes: ”I met Steve Bannon at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse in early 2014.” He goes on to peg the date to the week of a February 19, 2014 column and essay by Thomas Sowell.

That sure caught my attention. I happen to know that Radosh met Steve Bannon at a book party at that same Capitol Hill townhouse, which doubles as Breitbart’s Washington “embassy,” on November 12, 2013. I know this because Steve Bannon told me so shortly afterward. That November book party was for David Horowitz, then launching the first of a miraculously endless series of books featuring every word Horowitz ever wrote, possibly on the theory that if posterity measures by the inch, he’s immortal.

Hillary Clinton Dismisses Conflict of Interest Concerns Over Foundation, State Department By Laura Meckler

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton dismissed questions about conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and her work as secretary of state, saying she made decisions based on the merits.

“My work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday evening. “I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right, to keep Americans safe and protect U.S. interests abroad.”

In recent days, she has been under fire for meeting with foundation donors during her time in office, with Republican Donald Trump accusing her of creating a pay-to-play culture.

The foundation said last week it would not accept contributions from foreign or corporate donors if she is elected president. Asked why that set-up was acceptable when she headed the State Department, but not if she is president, Mrs. Clinton said, “Obviously if I am president there will be some unique circumstances and that’s why the foundation has laid out additional, unprecedented steps.”

She also dismissed a report from the Associated Press that found a large share of the meetings she had with non-governmental, non-foreign officials were with foundation donors.

“There’s a lot of smoke and there’s no fire,” she said. She said the AP analysis excluded nearly 2,000 meetings with world leaders and others with government officials. The private citizens she did meet with, Mrs. Clinton said, included leading figures such as the late Elie Wiesel and philanthropist Melinda Gates. She said it’s “absurd” to think that those meetings were “somehow due to connections with the foundation instead of their status as highly respected global leaders.”

“These are people I was proud to meet with, who any secretary of state would have been proud to meet with and hear about their work and their insight,” she said.

On a separate controversy, Mrs. Clinton declined to discuss a New York Times report that she told the FBI that she had been advised by former Secretary of State Colin Powell to use a personal email account. Mr. Powell replied that she was already using private email when he told her about his practices.

She said she appreciated Mr. Powell’s help but would not “litigate in public” their private conversations. CONTINUE AT SITE

The U.S. Department of Clinton The latest emails show that State and the foundation were one seamless entity. By Kimberley A. Strassel

This is the week that the steady drip, drip, drip of details about Hillary Clinton’s server turned into a waterfall. This is the week that we finally learned why Mrs. Clinton used a private communications setup, and what it hid. This is the week, in short, that we found out that the infamous server was designed to hide that Mrs. Clinton for three years served as the U.S. Secretary of the Clinton Foundation.

In March this column argued that while Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information was important, it missed the bigger point. The Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets—that was incidental. She set up the server to keep secret the details of the Clintons’ private life—a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation.

Had Secretary Clinton kept the foundation at arm’s length while in office—as obvious ethical standards would have dictated—there would never have been any need for a private server, or even private email. The vast majority of her electronic communications would have related to her job at the State Department, with maybe that occasional yoga schedule. And those Freedom of Information Act officers would have had little difficulty—when later going through a state.gov email—screening out the clearly “personal” before making her records public. This is how it works for everybody else.

Mrs. Clinton’s problem—as we now know from this week’s release of emails from Huma Abedin’s private Clinton-server account—was that there was no divide between public and private. Mrs. Clinton’s State Department and her family foundation were one seamless entity—employing the same people, comparing schedules, mixing foundation donors with State supplicants. This is why she maintained a secret server, and why she deleted 15,000 emails that should have been turned over to the government.

Most of the focus on this week’s Abedin emails has centered on the disturbing examples of Clinton Foundation executive Doug Band negotiating State favors for foundation donors. But equally instructive in the 725 pages released by Judicial Watch is the frequency and banality of most of the email interaction. Mr. Band asks if Hillary’s doing this conference, or having that meeting, and when she’s going to Brazil. Ms. Abedin responds that she’s working on it, or will get this or that answer. These aren’t the emails of mere casual acquaintances; they don’t even bother with salutations or signoffs. These are the emails of two people engaged in the same purpose—serving the State-Clinton Foundation nexus.

The other undernoted but important revelation is that the media has been looking in the wrong place. The focus is on Mrs. Clinton’s missing emails, and no doubt those 15,000 FBI-recovered texts contain nuggets. Then again, Mrs. Clinton was a busy woman, and most of the details of her daily State/foundation life would have been handled by trusted aides. This is why they, too, had private email. Top marks to Judicial Watch for pursuing Ms. Abedin’s file from the start. A new urgency needs to go into seeing similar emails of former Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.