Displaying posts published in

January 2018

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

GOP Won’t Negotiate Immigration Until Shutdown Ends By Rick Moran

By on January 21st, 2018

Republicans just blew up Democratic hopes for using DACA for leverage in shutdown talks. Both House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and White House Legislative Director Marc Short confirmed that there would be no DACA negotiations while the government remained without funding.

Politico:

“I think it’s more difficult to get any agreement on DACA in a shutdown,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy heading into a meeting with GOP leaders Saturday. He was referring to the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, shielding hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation, known as Dreamers.

White House Legislative Director Marc Short, who attended a closed-door meeting of House Republicans, echoed that stance.

“I think the administration’s position is that as soon as they reopen the government, we’ll resume negotiations on DACA,” Short told reporters. “It’s hard to negotiate on that when they’re keeping our border agents unpaid, our troops unpaid, not paying for American services.”

Trump, who canceled a weekend trip to Florida to celebrate his first anniversary in office, spoke with Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday morning, aides said.

House Republicans scoffed at a tentative framework to reopen the government being discussed by a bipartisan group of senators.

Under the proposal — conceived by GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake — Senate Democrats would agree to re-open the government and fund agencies until Feb. 8. In exchange, they would secure a vote on a bipartisan Dreamers bill. While McConnell signaled that he might go along, Senate Democrats also wanted a commitment from Ryan to include the bill in must-pass legislation in the House.

But McConnell would not agree to that demand, senators said, because he cannot bind the House to a Senate deal.

And Ryan insisted that the Senate needed to approve the House bill to fund the government until Feb. 16 as a starting point for any broader agreement.

“We were not party to any negotiations, and our only message to the Senate all day yesterday was pass our bill to keep the government open,” AshLee Strong, Ryan’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The government shut down because Senate Democrats decided to hold the entire federal government and children’s health insurance hostage. It’s pretty straight forward.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Samantha Power Regrets Column: Team Obama still hasn’t learned the lesson of 2016 Share Tweet Email Still from The Final Year Still from The Final Year By: Matthew Continetti

By on January 21st, 2018

“I’ve had a lot of bad ideas in my life,” former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power tells Politico. “Though none as immortalized as that one.”

Wow. It’s a major concession. And what might “that one” be?

Not standing idly by in the White House while Iranians protested a fixed election in 2009, then advocating a nuclear agreement that bankrolled the theocratic regime’s expansionism and militarism and corruption. Not serving as U.S. representative to an international body that took no effectual action to stop the Syrian civil war, in which more than 400,000 people have been killed, civilians gassed, and millions of refugees gone to Jordan, Turkey, and Europe. Not flacking for a president who, out of fear of reprisal, waited until a month after the 2016 election to punish Russia for interfering in American democracy, who spent years trying to coax Vladimir Putin onto the “off ramp” from the illegal annexation of Crimea, did nothing more than scold Russia after learning it had violated the INF treaty, reduced America’s nuclear deterrent at the very moment our adversaries were building up their armaments, denied Ukrainians lethal defensive aid against Russia-backed separatists, and routinely put up obstacles to domestic extraction industries that undercut Russia’s share of the energy market. She’s not talking about any of that.

What Samantha Power regrets is allowing documentarians to record the election-night party she threw, in the words of Susan Glasser, “for all 37 female ambassadors to the U.N. as well as feminist icon Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to celebrate what they all expected to be Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory.”

The cameras “immortalized” Power and company’s colossal self-regard and misjudgment, thus making the film, “The Final Year,” a fitting send-off for the Obama crew. But back to that party: “As a host, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be quite the blowout it was anticipated to be, because I wanted to make sure that people had a chance to interact with Gloria Steinem,” Power tells Glasser. You can see where she’s coming from. Imagine how awkward it would have been for Power if the election were called for Hillary before guests finished the tomato-soup shooters and the delegate from Timor-Leste told Steinem how cool it was to hear her sampled in the video for Jennifer Lopez’s “Ain’t Your Mama.” How would Power’s guests have spent the rest of the evening? Gossiping about Hillary’s pick for secretary of state while dealing hands of “Cards Against Humanity” as “Fight Song” played on a loop? That would have been a letdown. “I wanted to milk the soft power dividend of this moment,” Power goes on, in one of the weirdest and somewhat terrifying mixed metaphors I have ever encountered.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Mattis Takes Global Warming Out Of The National Defense Strategy- A Repudiation of Obama Michael Bastasch

By on January 21st, 2018

The Pentagon released a National Defense Strategy that for the first time in more than a decade does not mention manmade global warming as a security threat.

An 11-page summary of the new National Defense Strategy makes no mention of “global warming” or “climate change,” according to a keyword search by the Huffington Post. The document reflects the Trump administration’s focus on “energy dominance” over climate.

The National Defense Strategy, signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, doesn’t have much to say about energy issues, except that the U.S. would “foster a stable and secure Middle East” and “contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes.”

The Pentagon released the strategy document Friday, and officials were clear that it would make no mention of global warming. The Bush administration added global warming to the defense strategy in 2008, but the issue gained top-tier status during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration released its “America First” security strategy in December, which called for “[u]nleashing these abundant energy resources— coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear” to boost the economy and aid U.S. allies.

That plan de-emphasized policies aimed at fighting manmade global warming, a complete u-turn from national security under the Obama administration.

“Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” reads the National Security Strategy, released in December.

“U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests,” reads the plan. “Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on January 21st, 2018

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

New target for cancer treatments. Researchers at Israel’s Bar Ilan University have discovered a new enzyme called FerT, which exists only in the energy-generating mitochondria of cancer cells. When the enzyme was targeted in lab tests, the malignant cells were unable to produce energy and died.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/on-campus/israeli-scientists-discover-new-enzyme-to-destroy-in-metatastic-cancer-cells/2017/10/24/

US approval for Leukemia treatment. Following a Priority Review, the US FDA has approved Israel TEVA’s Leukemia treatment, TRISENOX® (arsenic trioxidec). Trisenox is to be used in combination with tretinoin for treatment of recently-diagnosed low-risk adults with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL).
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/fda-approves-teva-leukemia-treatment/2018/01/15/

Lymphoma treatment approved. I reported previously (3rd Sep) on the US takeover of Israeli biotech Kite for $12 billion. The US FDA has now approved Kite’s Yescarta treatment for adults with relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma. The treatment uses Israeli-developed CAR-T therapy from the patient’s own T-cells.
http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2017/10/20/israeli-developed-breakthrough-cancer-drug-receives-fda-approval

Stem cell treatment inhibits cancer. I’ve reported previously (18 times) on Israeli biotech Pluristem’s PLX stem cell treatment for many life-threatening conditions. Recent lab trials with modified PLX cells showed significant inhibitory effect on various lines of breast, colorectal, kidney, liver, lung, muscle and skin cancers.
http://www.pluristem.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PLX_Cancer_Publication_final_isa.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18428-1

Successful trials of implant to prevent OAB. (TY Atid-EDI) I reported previously (July 2016) that the minimally invasive RENOVA leg implant from Israel’s BlueWind to treat Overactive Bladder (OAB) had been granted European approval. Recent trials show that device gave over 50% improvement to 71% of participants.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bluewind-medical-announces-the-publication-of-breakthrough-results-for-bluewind-renova-implantable-tibial-nerve-neuromodulator-668016233.html
http://www.bluewindmedical.com/products

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Young Afghans in Sweden by Bruce Bawer

By on January 20th, 2018

The Young in Sweden website describes the group’s members by first begging for pity — explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country’s future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as “Dreamers.”

But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls “demands.”

It was reported that Muhammed Hussaini, an Afghan refugee who had participated in protests by Young in Sweden, had last August tried to murder a Stockholm policeman at one such event.

There exists an organization Sweden that goes by the name “Young in Sweden” (“Ung i Sverige”), which Radio Sweden has described as “one of the most notable protest movements in the country right now.” It is not just any group of young people — its members are from Afghanistan. According to its website, they fled “violence and persecution” in their homeland, only to find that they were “not welcome after all” in Sweden.

The Young in Sweden website describes the group’s members by first begging for pity — explaining how tough it is to be a refugee and how desperately these young people long to make a lasting home in Sweden and contribute to the country’s future. It portrays them, in the American parlance, as “Dreamers.”

But in a way familiar to observers of the Islamic incursion into the West, the plea for sympathy abruptly gives way to something more aggressive. The group issues a series of what it explicitly calls “demands.” First, it demands that Sweden stop returning to Afghanistan those Afghans whose asylum requests have been rejected. Second, it demands a meeting with Mikael Ribbenvik, Secretary General of the Swedish Migration Agency. Third, it demands that politicians pass laws granting amnesty and residence permits to Afghan refugee claimants.

To be sure, Young in Sweden does not just make demands. It holds illegal public protests, which have been marked by acts of vandalism and violence. It also arranges language courses. Swedish language courses for Afghans? No — courses in Persian and Dari for native Swedes. The group’s Facebook page describes these courses as an “integration project,” explaining that as Afghans become part of Swedish society, Swedes need to “take responsibility to be a part of that society as well.” Which is to say that if native-born Swedes wish to be full members of the new Swedish society, they must learn Persian and Dari.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Weaponizing the Shutdown by Mark Steyn

By on January 20th, 2018

So we’re in for another bit of high-stakes shutdown theatre, as evil moustache-twirling Republicans (it’s always Republicans, even when it’s Democrats) strap the lovely damsel of Big Government to the tracks just as the Friday midnight express is rounding the bend. At his press conference today, however, Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that this time round they’d be working to minimize the impact of the shutdown – whereas, last time round, for political reasons, the White House set out to maximize it. Mr Mulvaney called this “weaponizing the shutdown” – which the Obama Administration certainly did, up to the point of seizing and detaining blameless foreigners – which is, oddly, what they now accuse Trump of doing. This 2013 piece is anthologized in my book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available at the SteynOnline bookstore:

If a government shuts down in the forest and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown is, as noted last week, mostly baloney: Eighty-three percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as usual, impervious to whatever restraints the people’s representatives might wish to impose, and the 800,000 soi-disant “non-essential” workers have been assured that, as soon as the government is once again lawfully funded, they will be paid in full for all the days they’ve had at home.

But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged “National Park Service,” a term of art that covers everything from canyons and glaciers to war memorials and historic taverns. The NPS has spent the last two weeks behaving as the paramilitary wing of the DNC, expending more resources in trying to close down open-air, unfenced areas than it would normally do in keeping them open. It began with the war memorials on the National Mall — that’s to say, stone monuments on pieces of grass under blue sky. It’s the equivalent of my New Hampshire town government shutting down and deciding therefore to ring the Civil War statue on the village common with yellow police tape and barricades.

Still, the NPS could at least argue that these monuments were within their jurisdiction — although they shouldn’t be. Not content with that, the NPS shock troops then moved on to insisting that privately run sites such as the Claude Moore Colonial Farm and privately owned sites such as Mount Vernon were also required to shut. When the Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway declined to comply with the government’s order to close (an entirely illegal order, by the way), the “shut down” Park Service sent armed agents and vehicles to blockade the hotel’s driveway.

Even then, the problem with a lot of America’s scenic wonders is that, although they sit on National Park Service land, they’re visible from some distance. So, in South Dakota, having closed Mount Rushmore the NPS storm troopers additionally attempted to close the view of Mount Rushmore — that’s to say a stretch of the highway, where the shoulder widens and you can pull over and admire the stony visages of America’s presidents. Maybe it’s time to blow up Washington, Jefferson & Co. and replace them with a giant, granite sign rising into the heavens bearing the chiseled inscription “DON’T EVEN THINK OF PARKING DOWN THERE.”

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

UCONN Welcomes Anita Hill, Offers Counseling for ‘Even the Thought’ of Ben Shapiro By Jeff Reynolds

By on January 20th, 2018

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Far-left provocateur Anita Hill spoke to a student group at the University of Connecticut. This despite Hill’s participation in the “high-tech lynching” of an African-American nominee for the Supreme Court.

In response to this partisan provocation, college administrators are offering counseling for folks who may be threatened or triggered.

The email reads, in part, “In the meantime, please utilize the many campus resources available to you should you want to talk through your feelings about this issue, including my office, the Cultural Centers, the Dean of Students Office, and CMHS, if necessary.”

UCONN should be lauded for taking proactive steps to ensure that potentially offensive speech is met with responses of maturity and tolerance, especially given the speaker’s history of making uncorroborated and unproven accusations against an African-American man seeking appointment to the highest court in the land.

Except that’s not what happened at all. Anita Hill was feted at UCONN’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Legacy Convocation. According to the UCONN website,

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Living Legacy Convocation featuring Anita Hill
Thurs, Jan 18, 1:00 pm
MLK Living Legacy Convocation

The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Living Legacy Convocation provides the opportunity for the UConn community to acknowledge that, in spite of the passage of time, through actions we are all accountable for making Dr. King’s dream a reality. Through this annual program, it is our goal to showcase a message of humanity, hope, understanding and the need for continuous learning as a community committed to inclusion.

We are proud to welcome Anita Hill as the speaker for this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Living Legacy Convocation to be held on January 18, 2018 at 1 pm in the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.

Please join us for an inspiring afternoon.

Believe it or not, the trigger warning email wasn’t sent to inoculate students against the far-left provocateur.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Scourge of Multiculturalism By David Solway ****

By on January 20th, 2018

Much has been said and written over the years about the blessings conferred by multiculturalism on the countries that have opened their doors to large numbers of immigrants and refugees. Multiculturalism has, apparently, fostered the (unexplained) virtues of “diversity,” repaid a debt incurred by the colonial West to those it has exploited, led to economic productivity, and contributed to the putative boon of an anti-border globalist world in which national animosities and military strife will become a thing of the past.

This was the idea behind the Schengen policy adopted by the European Union, the Diversity Visa Lottery or “chain migration” program in the U.S., and the hospitality to primarily Muslim immigration in my own country of Canada. Every one of these measures has, by any honest report, proven a failure.

The argument made by immigration and refugee enthusiasts, namely that the Western democracies were founded and settled by immigrants and therefore should continue to welcome newcomers, is valid only to a point. In the course of time the original settlers created a national identity, a sense of communal membership in a common world unified by custom and law. It is that identity that should be preserved. But owing to many factors, including a loss of confidence in the rectitude and worthiness of what came to be regarded as a racist and imperialist civilization, reasonably coherent societies have been gradually transformed into a mosaic of ethnicities.

To my dismay, Canada is no exception. Canadian immigration presumably operates on a merit system, but there is little evidence of it in practice. True to Liberalist form, our feckless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on record as affirming that Canada has no identity. “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” Trudeau told The New York Times, proclaiming Canada as “the first post-national state” held together not by a hard-earned tradition but by a shopping list of abstract values — compassion, respect, openness and the like. Trudeau continued: ‘‘Countries with a strong national identity — linguistic, religious or cultural — are finding it a challenge to effectively integrate people from different backgrounds.” This is true if one sees one’s country as a permanent airport terminal or a teeming bazaar, as Trudeau apparently does, viewing Canada as a country defined not by our history or proto-European origins, but by a “pan-cultural heritage.”

As Candice Malcolm, author of Losing True North: Justin Trudeau’s Assault on Canadian Citizenship, writes: “He doesn’t think there is anything special about Canadian history or traditions. Instead, he suggests Canada is nothing but an intellectual construct and a hodgepodge of various people, from various backgrounds, who just happen to live side by side in the territory known as Canada. Trudeau seems embarrassed, even ashamed of, our Western culture and values.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Vowing to ‘rip’ Trump ‘a new one,’ Obama in his ex-presidency devolves into third-world coup-plotting By Monica Showalter

By on January 20th, 2018

Far from content living his golden years on the $400,000 speech and lecture circuit of other former presidents, President Obama has been busy with clawing back his old power. He’s actually covertly plotting to oust his democratically elected successor, President Trump, vowing to his associates to “rip him a new one” in the 2018 midterm elections. Seems he’s not all that interested in watching his younger daughter grow up.

That’s the word from DCWhispers, which reports that Obama’s Kalorama mansion, in the heart of the capital’s toniest district, is the center of significant comings and goings among the Obamatons, who, led by his consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, are busily raising funds for the project as Obama eggs them on.

The Obama Machine has in recent months been raking in tens of millions in preparation for a significant 2018 [m]idterm war effort – primarily through an LLC called Citizen 44, run by Paulette Aniskoff, a longtime Obama staffer who answers directly to Jarrett. Citizen 44’s primary purpose is to keep the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaign machine intact, continue to build up its state-by-state influence, and use it as an election entity that will rival the influence of the DNC itself. In short, any Democrat of importance who hopes to rise in rank will have to kiss the ring of Citizen 44 first.

Want to know who the leader of the resistance is? This is the leader of the resistance.

Knowing how Obama’s campaign organization was run, with its slipshod accounting of foreign cash infusions and phony claims to be running on small-dollar donations, it’s probable that this operation is as shady as all the other ones. In fact, it is all the other ones. DCWhispers reports that it comprises almost entirely Obama’s leftover and not dead campaign apparatus.

It’s a disgusting picture for any ex-presidency.

What we are looking at right now is a third-world coup-plotting effort, done under legal pretenses (just as Hugo Chávez did everything under legal pretenses), to oust a sitting president. It’s unprecedented. When have we ever seen an ex-president acting like this, spending his post-presidency determined to consolidate and continue his rule, if not the conventional way, then the subterranean way? Did Nixon do that? Did LBJ? Did Jimmy Carter? Heck, did either of the George Bushes? Imagine Jerry Ford doing that!

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

So what if the President Trump did use that word? By Marion DS Dreyfus ****

By on January 20th, 2018

Who really isn’t sick to death of people being ungrateful nitpicks who cannot say thank you for all the benisons bestowed by this president, no matter his alleged blue tongue? So what if he said one word you don’t like?

I have been to Haiti, the poorest of all the nations in this hemisphere. I have been to El Salvador, a corrupt, ungovernable country with rampant crime and gangs. I have been to over ten countries in Africa, none of them star performers in the GDP and modern conveniences and mindset sweepstakes.

They are indeed horrible places, where corruption and citizens’ fear are the order of the day, where their alleged governments are rife with unloving, greedy, small-minded, and power-lusting so-called leaders.

These are countries whose human products are not, in the main, people we need here – not because they are this shade or that, but because their average standard of skills, education, integrity, and civic virtue is at tremendous variance from what we have for 241 years essayed to raise and keep elevated.

We are not, in the main, uncharitable. But if your home comfortably seats twenty, if you push the limits of your beds, sofas, carpeting and easy chairs, what happens when an unexpected troupe of fifty more uninvited decide you have a real nice view, and they like your fixin’s?

Ever had a party? The work of the party isn’t so much the prep and the cooking and shopping for comestibles and beverages. The real angst of the party is the clean-up. The guests rarely stick around for the empties and no-ashtray-won’t-stop-their-smoking butts, the wrappers and pizza crusts, or the half-eaten messes on the cake trays.

That’s the U.S. But we aren’t a night-and-day party, though the uninvited “guests” keep slavering after our table, sleeping on the new couch covers, using up the toilet tissue, leaving an unidentifiable restroom aroma, and wolfing down the leftovers you’d hoped to serve your spouse the next day.

But even if the president did drop that one word, a word and a concept, I wager, that 99% of regular folks in this country use, though they will deny it strenuously – we are not born yesterday – he was not stating a “racist” sentiment. He was being factual. These are abysmal states that create citizens who are not prizes we need here.

Ironically, when I professored in the People’s Republic of China, my very best students asked me for letters of recommendation so they could apply to the U.S. for graduate school in their chosen fields. I was delighted to write these letters. The whey-faced PRC government, however, had other ideas. They turned down all applicants: why would China choose to release its foremost scholars and most promising professionals to help the United States?

And why, then, it follows, do we need to import a cadre of the low in terms of skills and smarts, longevity, and overall health to lower our achievement, our life stats, our job numbers? What sane country does that? And don’t give us those anecdotal tales of one Ph.D. subliming his way into nuclear physics or one earnest striver finishing Johns Hopkins with his specialty of forensic anthropology.

Anecdotes are cute. They mean close to nothing in the broader picture of overall excellence. We all know this, even if we’re Democrats and learn to elide common sense whenever at all possible.

But no one is stopping these undaunted invaders from many countries. (OTMs means Other Than Mexicans, a handy capsule reminder that Central and South America are not the sole-source contributors to our festering Hoovervilles of undocumenteds and skill-frees.)

When I taught in China, I had about 1,000 students among the four colleges at which I was privileged to teach. All of them, all my college students, male and female, wanted to come to live here.

Continue reading →