Displaying posts published in

2016

Sorority Cancels Kentucky Derby–Themed Party over Concerns of ‘Racism’ By Katherine Timpf —

The Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority at Dartmouth College has canceled its annual Kentucky Derby–themed party after people complained that the theme was racist.

The invite-only party will now be Woodstock-themed instead.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, the Kentucky Derby theme had created controversy on campus last year — even causing some students to protest outside of it on the grounds that it was apparently a racist and elitist theme.

Sorority vice president Nikol Oydanich told the school’s official newspaper, the Dartmouth, that these protesters had convinced the sorority members to change the theme.

“[It is] related to pre-war southern culture,” she said. “Derby was a party that had the power to upset a lot of our classmates.”

Trump’s Border Wall Plan Is Ridiculous on Its Face By Andrew C. McCarthy

P. T. Barnum did not actually say, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The maxim endures nevertheless, and if ever anything showed why, it is the chimerical immigration plan Donald Trump has managed to turn into a front-running presidential bid. On Tuesday, Trump shared that plan’s centerpiece with the Washington Post: his strategy to force Mexico to pony up the $5 to $10 billion he insists will be enough to build 1,000 miles of towering, impregnable wall.

The squeeze-thy-neighbor gambit hits the Trump trifecta: it is at once vain, authoritarian, and asinine.

After ten months, The Donald’s stand-up routine has descended into self-parody: As the Myrmidons sing along, Trump first brays that he “will build the wall” (which, incidentally, would have no bearing on visa overstays, who account for nearly half of the illegal-alien population). Then, he vows to get Mexico to foot the bill, as if there were honor in extorting a poor but reasonably amicable neighbor into paying the vital border-security costs of a profligate superpower in whose budget $10 billion barely qualifies as a rounding error. (Compare, e.g., Trump’s promise to do nothing about unsustainable entitlements that are bankrupting the economy.)

Yet, absent from most of his speeches to the ardent faithful — and from his campaign’s position paper, with which he seems unacquainted — is the vow he reserves for more progressive audiences and media interviews: He will readmit most of the 11 million illegal aliens (as he puts it, “the good ones”) with legal status after he wastes considerably more than $10 billion to chase down and deport them.

RELATED: Donald Trump and the Return of Right-wing Statism

That is, while portraying himself as the scourge of illegal immigration, Trump is actually proposing amnesty of the “touch-back” variety occasionally championed by open-borders advocates. In Trump’s plan, deportation is not a security measure; it’s a laundering scheme.

Mind you: That position paper of his laments “the influx of foreign workers [from illegal immigration],” which “holds down salaries, keeps unemployment high, and makes it difficult for poor and working class Americans — including immigrants themselves and their children — to earn a middle class wage.” Which sentiment is hard to square with an amnesty plan that, by Trump’s own reasoning, will hold down salaries, keep unemployment high, and make it difficult for poor and working-class Americans to earn a middle-class wage.

Sweden: Teacher fired for being Jewish Pamela Geller

In Muslim Malmo, Sweden, a teacher was fired for being a Jew. Pretty much just that simple. Just like that. Fired.

Sweden is a a cautionary tale and the best example of the disastrous outcome of large -scale Muslim immigration. Sweden is now a de facto Islamic country, with the attendant Islamic Jew-hatred, creed apartheid, misogyny and religious violence.

Färdiga!

Swedish-Jewish Activist ‘Not Surprised’ Israeli Teacher in Malmö Told to Seek Employment Far From School Children ‘Who Hate Jews’ By Algemeiner, April 5, 2016 (thanks to Chai):

A Swedish-Jewish intellectual said she was “not the least bit surprised” to learn of a report in the Israeli press on Tuesday about a teacher in Malmö who was fired for being a Jew.

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein told The Algemeiner that the only thing “baffling” about the incident recounted in the report is how “out-in-the-open” it was.

Hernroth-Rothstein, well-known in Sweden for her pro-Israel activism and both personal and public battles against antisemitism in Europe, was responding to a story that appeared in the Hebrew news site nrg about “A,” a decades’-long Israeli ex-pat who claimed she was let go from her position on the grounds that she would be hated by both Swedish and Arab children.

According to nrg, “A” posted on Facebook a description of her experience with the principal of the school where she had only begun working in February.

“Listen, ‘A,’ you know that I’m on your side,” she recounted her employer saying to her. “And it’s really unpleasant for me to say this to you, but I think that problems are liable to arise here as a result of your origins.”

Sweden: A Beggar on Every Corner by Ingrid Carlqvist

For the last few years, Sweden has been overwhelmed with Roma beggars from Romania and Bulgaria. Recently, the government estimated that there are now around 4,000 in Sweden (population 9.5 million).

“We do not fool anyone. We just benefit from the opportunity.” — Bulgarian beggar in Sweden who said he “owned” five street corners.

“If the begging is profitable, they stay miserable…. [Giving money] improves the acute situation. At the same time, it contributes to making the bigger issue permanent — the misery…. It will not help the Roma, but it gives you a chance to feel like a good person. … The basic concept of racism is precisely that we as westerners and Swedes are far superior (smarter) and that the Roma are inferior (dumber). If this… is not racist then I do not know what is. … One could add that the image is inverted among Roma. They consider themselves superior and smart, while the gadjo (non-gypsies) are stupid, naïve and gullible.” — Karl-Olov Arnstberg, Swedish ethnologist

“It is our very strong recommendation not to give money to beggars. It turns the panhandling into an occupation… To give [money] encourages a life with no future; moving from country to country does not solve their problems.” — Florin Ivanovici, director of the Life and Light Foundation, Bucharest, Romania.

Nobody knows exactly how many of them there are, but for the last few years Sweden has been overwhelmed with Roma beggars from Romania and Bulgaria. In 2014, the newspaper Sydsvenskan reported that an estimated 600 Roma beggars lived in the country; a few months ago, the government-appointed “National Coordinator for Vulnerable EU Citizens,” Martin Valfridsson, found that there are now around 4,000.

You see beggars sitting outside virtually every store, not just in the big cities, but also in small rural villages. In the far north of Sweden, at gas stations in the middle of nowhere, patrons are greeted by beggars saying “Hello, hello!” while holding out their paper cups.

Homeland Security Boss: Fear of Muslims is Just Like Fear of Communism April 8, 2016 Daniel Greenfield

Is this really the argument he wants to make?

The US domestic security chief on Wednesday compared current anti-Muslim sentiment to the anti-communist “Red Scare” of the 1940s and ’50s, suggesting that divisive statements by Republican presidential candidates are to blame.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who is black, noted that his grandfather was forced to testify in front of the House of Representatives in 1949.

“He had to, in the height of the Red Scare, to deny he was a member of the communist party, and went on to give an impassioned statement about how American negroes are patriotic,” Johnson said at a conference in Washington about countering violent extremism.

Those who don’t know history “are bound to repeat it,” Johnson added.

True.

Middle School Students Forced to Fill Out ‘Privilege’ Form By Liz Sheld

Students in a Tampa middle school were instructed to fill out a form designed to measure how much privilege they have.

The children were given a form in their Spanish class at Monroe Middle School by teacher Yoselis Ramos titled “How much privilege do you have?”

The different categories included, “Race”, “Skin Color”, “Religion”, “Sex”, “Gender”, Sexual Orientation”, and “Disability.”

Parents were not happy about the assignment.

Regina Stiles has a daughter who revealed she had ADHD on the “privilege” form.

“She has ADHD and apparently the teacher said there are some kids in this class that have ADHD, and ADHD is a mental illness, and that’s why she circled that. To me ADHD is not a mental disability. It’s something she has,” said Stiles.

MonroePrivilegeForm

Other questions on the survey broached controversial subjects for middle-schoolers. Children were asked to identify if they were “Cisgender,” “Transgender” or “GenderQueer.”

“She’s 12. Some of these things should be taught at home,” said Stiles.

Stiles along with other angry parents approached the school principal, who began an investigation. It turns out the “privilege” form was not part of any official curricula or authorized by the principal.

“This is not a district form, this is a teacher-generated form and it was without principal consent and at the district level we do not collect that information,” said Hillsborough County School Spokesperson Tanya Arja. She also pointed out that students were not required to turn in the form.

According to Arja, the teacher said the goal was to teach the students about inequality through literature they had been reading.

A New ISIS Affiliate Promises New Fronts ‘Against the Enemies of Allah’ By Bridget Johnson

A new ISIS affiliate has been formed in the Horn of Africa — vowing to differ from Al-Shabaab by not keeping operations within the “prison” of al-Qaeda.

Jahba East Africa, without specifying, promises that their fighters will be ready to sow terror on new fronts.

And as Al-Shabaab has drawn recruits from America, that could potentially affect our home front.

There had been dissension with Somalia’s Al-Shabaab for some time about whether to remain allied to al-Qaeda or to follow the lead of Boko Haram and pledge allegiance to ISIS.

Just the act of crossing over to ISIS would mean expanding the group’s reach beyond Shabaab’s fairly tight focus of establishing strict Sharia rule in Somalia. The government and allied African forces have pushed Shabaab’s control out of the cities and into rural areas.

It’s not the only place on the map where ISIS is trying to flip al-Qaeda chapters — there are pitched battles in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, whether physical brawls or wars of words, between the terror outlets. ISIS wins over recruits who like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s message of expanding the caliphate ASAP by any means possible.

The Jahba East Africa statement begins by pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi, recognizing him as “the rightful Khalifa [caliph] of all Muslims.”

“We pledge our obedience to him in times of ease and hardship, and Allah is witness to our pledge.”

New Yorkers Know Better By Patricia McCarthy (???!!!)see note please

Oh if that were only true…maybe some New Yorkers…those that elected Chris Gibson, Elise Stefanik, Peter King, Lee Zeldin, (9 out of 27 Representatives are Republican)but how about those who have reelected Rangel, de Blasio, Cuomo and so many representatives who run on a fusion ticket with Working Families Party a far left group……?rsk

The polls say that Donald Trump is set to sweep New York with more votes than in any previous primary of this election cycle. How on earth is this possible? It must be a mistake. New Yorkers know this man well, better than the residents of any other state, better than those of us who do not watch reality television shows. They see him around town in all the best places. They have seen him on the covers of the tabloids all the time. They know better than the rest of us that he is a self-promoting double-dealer, a three-times married man who revels in demeaning women, especially if they cross him or he is ready to move on to the next one. They know that he has exactly No knowledge of the Constitution, foreign policy, the military, education, terrorism, law-making, law-breaking, etc. He is a man of great wealth who does, and has always done, what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, and to whom he wants. He suffers no consequences when he does these things badly, unlawfully, or cruelly. His money has, for his entire life, set him apart from the lives of most Americans. He has gold-plated toilets when millions of citizens worry about how to repair their own necessary appliances they consider luxuries.

How can New Yorkers who so enthusiastically support his candidacy for the presidency put aside his obvious narcissism and megalomania? He viciously attacks his opponents unjustly, and with unnecessary personal venom. Not one of his opponents has been spared. He likened Dr. Ben Carson to a pedophile, over and over again, then pretended to defend him against Ted Cruz when it was CNN that reported Carson’s departure from Iowa. He called Marco Rubio all manner of sordid, childish names. He eviscerated Jeb Bush at every opportunity. He insulted Carly Fiorina’s appearance, as he has countless other women. And what he says about Cruz only reveals who he fears the most. For good reason. Cruz has actually read the Constitution, and he remembers it. He knows it by heart.

New Yorkers, especially those in Manhattan, are smart people; they have to be to live there, to afford to live there. They have the best of everything: theatre, music, food, living spaces, close access to airports and faraway places and the money to travel. Do they, in their heart of hearts, really think Donald Trump has the right stuff to be the President of the United States? They cannot possibly think that. They know better.

Obama’s Willing Executioners in the Media By Victor Sharpe and Robert Vincent

Some of the most disturbing aspects of the times in which we are living include the utter corruption of the mass print and broadcast media and the lack of awareness of this fact by a large portion of the public.

It seems that most Americans operate on the assumption that the media is making a good-faith, if imperfect, effort at objectively informing its audience. That so few are genuinely aware of the outrageous manipulation of public opinion now taking place is the single greatest threat to the republic, to the extent that we can even say that our republic still exists. A glaring example of this would be the treatment of Nixon 42 years ago over Watergate compared with the treatment of Obama today over any one of several far worse scandals.

It was recently reported in the WSJ that Obama used the NSA to spy on Congress during the deliberations related to the Iran nuclear deal. It was reported on at one time, but this story has now disappeared completely from media coverage. Consider the implications.

In the former case, Nixon apparently directed or sat by and knowingly let his immediate subordinates direct a third-rate burglary of the campaign headquarters of an election opponent. In the latter case, Obama authorized one of the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering organizations in the world to spy on American legislators, en masse, in pursuit of the most important – and egregiously flawed – international agreement impacting American national security and world stability – namely, with the chief sponsor of international terrorism: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is a thousand times worse than Watergate! Where is the media? Where are today’s equivalents of Woodward and Bernstein? The media doesn’t focus on this outrage at all, so to the overwhelming majority of the public, it is as though this never even happened. And this is only one of several comparable scandals we could name.

Another case of the selective focus of our mass media took place in 2009. Barack Hussein Obama said publicly that the U.S. is “not a Christian nation” and that America is “one of the world’s foremost Muslim countries.”

These statements amount to utter lunacy in a country in which at least 70% self-identify as Christians, where Christian holidays are official national holidays, and where Muslims number, at most, three to four million out of a population of over 330 million. This provoked not even a whimper of incredulity by the mass media. Then, in 2012, during an unintentional “open mic” moment, we overheard Obama making assurances to Russian president Medvedev that once he was able to get past the election, he would have “more flexibility.”

Here we have a sitting U.S. president apparently ready to make some huge concession to America’s most important major power rival on the world stage, a concession so drastic that it apparently couldn’t even be revealed until after the election. And the media did not hound him over this.

The Case for a Really Open GOP Convention The man who defeated Wisconsin prosecutors now says party delegates have the right to choose any nominee they want, and they should use it. By Kimberley A. Strassel

As the odds rise of a contested Republican presidential convention, Donald Trump’s and Ted Cruz’s camps are insisting that one of them must be the nominee. The Trump argument is that even if he falls short of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination, denying it to him at the convention would amount to antidemocratic theft. Mr. Cruz appears to think that finishing second means finishing first if the guy who beat him can’t win on the initial convention ballot.

Eric O’Keefe is here to say: whoa. The veteran Republican grass-roots activist sees a contested convention as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the delegates of a private political party to assert their power. The results of the GOP primaries are hardly representative of the party’s will, Mr. O’Keefe says, because state parties have been wrecked by domineering state legislatures. Why should Republicans bow down, for instance, to the results of state-mandated open primaries that allow liberal and independent voters to bum-rush what is supposed to be a private poll?

“There’s nothing that special or even good about the government-run primary process,” Mr. O’Keefe says. Relishing the opportunity for Republican delegates to stand up for themselves, he is gearing up a campaign to educate and encourage them to exercise their prerogatives at the convention and to ignore specious insistence that they follow some imaginary obligations.

“The delegates have been going to conventions for years and treating them like Super Bowl parties because there was nothing else to do,” he says. “But this year they have the opportunity to practice a great national tradition, to exercise their legal, historical right to defeat a man who opposes most of what they believe in, and instead nominate a candidate who represents them.”

As you might suspect, the “man” Mr. O’Keefe referred to is Donald Trump.

“I hate bullies, and of late I’ve come to hate them more,” Mr. O’Keefe says. “Trump means institutionalized bullying. Tyranny grows from ambitious people grabbing whatever levers of power are available.” CONTINUE AT SITE