Displaying posts published in

July 2018

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

America Is Not a Nation of Immigrants By Pedro Gonzalez

By on July 8th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/08/america-is-not-a-nation

“America belongs to no one but Americans. It does not belong to the foreign masses of the world and it does not belong to the Left who, having rejected the American way, cannot count themselves among its patriots.”

America is a nation of immigrants. It’s a commonplace among the political class. Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), emergent leaders in the open-borders vanguard of the Democratic Party, never tire of saying so. Both object to the Trump Administration’s hard line on border control and have buttressed their calls for an “immigration reform” that would in effect re-open the floodgates of migrants from south of the border. The reason, they say, is that immigration is the defining characteristic of the nation.

It isn’t.

The “nation of immigrants” trope is relatively new in American history, appearing not until the late 19th century. Its first appearance in print was most likely The Daily State Journal of Alexandria, Virginia, in 1874. In praising a state bill that encouraged European immigration, the editors wrote: “We are a nation of immigrants and immigrants’ children.” In 1938, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said to the Daughters of the American Revolution: “Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.” John F. Kennedy would later use the term as the title of a book, written as part of an Anti-Defamation League series, so it is undoubtedly objective, quality scholarship.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trump to revoke Obama-era guidelines on race in college admissionssions By Yaron Steinbuch

By on July 8th, 2018

https://nypost.com/2018/07/03/trump-to-revoke-obama-era-guidelines-on-race-in-college-admissions/

The Trump administration is set on Tuesday to revoke a series of Obama-era guidelines that encourage considering race in the college admissions process as a means of promoting diversity, according to a report.

Two sources told the Wall Street Journal that the move comes as the Justice Department investigates whether Harvard University illegally holds Asian-Americans to a higher standard in the admissions process.

The guidelines — put in place during the Obama administration in 2011 and 2016 — laid out legal recommendations that Trump officials argue “mislead schools to believe that legal forms of affirmative action are simpler to achieve than the law allows,” the paper reported.

Anurima Bargava, who led civil rights enforcement in schools for the Justice Department during Obama’s presidency, disagreed with that assessment, saying the documents simply offered guidelines to schools looking to continue using affirmative action legally.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Wayne Allyn Root :The Democrat Party is #CLUELESS.

By on July 8th, 2018

https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/wayne

The Democrats probably weren’t beating Donald Trump or the GOP no matter what they did or said — in either November or 2020. The economy is just too good. But they certainly had a chance if they didn’t go completely off the rails.

But then they chose illegal immigration as their headline issue. And as their new star (DNC Chair Tom Perez calls her “the future of the party”), Dems just elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a proud socialist. She was a bartender last year. Now call her “congresswoman.” She believes in open borders, abolishing ICE, sanctuary cities and that illegal aliens “deserve the right of passage” to freely enter the United States. Her words. I’m not joking.

No one could be that dumb and clueless, could they? Yup. See “Democrat” in the dictionary.

I’ll get to that. But first, the good news keeps coming in waves for President Trump.

■ The Trump economy added another 213,000 jobs in June. The U.S. Department of Labor also revised the April and May job figures upward by 37,000.

■ Even better news: Some 601,000 Americans re-entered the workforce in June. The economy is so good and wages rising so fast, everyone on the sidelines wants back in the game.

■ A record 155,576,000 Americans were employed in June, the most in history.

■ Pay growth is up every month this year, with blue-collar wages growing the fastest.

■ Because of Trump’s “Hire American” policy, even disabled Americans are seeing record job growth.

■ The U.S. trade deficit just plunged the most in 10 years. And. U.S. exports rose to an all-time record. Trump is winning “trade wars” for U.S. workers and companies.

■ Because of the Trump tax cuts, more than $300 billion was repatriated to the United States in just the first quarter.

How bad can it get for those poor, clueless, delusional Democrats?

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BOOKS Comments turned off

DEAR AMERICA: WHO IS DRIVING THE BUS BY LINDA GOUDSMIT

By on July 8th, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21361/dear-america-who-driving-the-bus http://goudsmit.pundicity.com
http://lindagoudsmit.com

Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus? is a philosophy book that offers a universal paradigm for understanding the often confounding and contradictory ways in which people behave.

America is currently embroiled in a second civil war that it is unaware of and that threatens our way of life. The civil war in this country is being fought over the same thing all great wars are fought over: power. But in this war, the adversaries are ourselves. Civil War II is not a race war, an economic war, or a war between states. It is a psychological battle between states of mind that will determine who has the power in our society, who is in control.

The human growth process is twofold; it has a physical component and a psychological component. Chronological age is an uncontested biological accomplishment. Psychological growth is another matter entirely. We struggle with the wish to become powerful, independent adults and the longing to remain powerless, dependent children.

Psychological growth is the universal challenge of childhood. Every society in the world needs its children to grow into physical and psychological adulthood in order to continue the cycle of life. Theoretically, if a society were to remain a society of children that society would necessarily collapse and extinguish itself. The psychological growth process is a difficult struggle, but it always involves a choice. It is impossible to become a responsible adult without choosing to relinquish the irresponsibility of childhood.

Until the 1960s American institutions cooperated in common cause to help American children become responsible adults whose individualism and embrace of the meritocracy produced enormous contributions to society that strengthened the country. The family, the church, and the government including educational curricula were uniformly determined that American children grow into responsible productive psychological adulthood. What happened??

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Independence Day for Sgt. Derrick Miller By Diana West

By on July 8th, 2018

was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with the chance of parole for the murder of an Afghan civilian.
I have wonderful Independence Day News to report from Beverly Perlson of Band of Mothers.

Beverly writes in with a July 3, 2018 update on Sgt. Derrick Miller, whose story readers of this website will be all too familiar with:

Sgt Miller’s mother, Renee Myers, received the phone call she’s been waiting for! Derrick called his mother today and let her know he received a letter from the Army that his sentence is reduced to 20 years (from a life sentence!!!) and he is eligible for parole immediately!

A parole packet must be completed and submitted, but for this brave Soldier, there is FINALLY a light at the end of this dark tunnel and there is no doubt, he is going home! I hope and pray very soon.

To all of you wonderful, caring Patriots out there who wrote letters and made calls on Derrick’s behalf, God Bless Everyone Of You, and THANK YOU! YOU all never let Derrick be forgotten. YOU fought for him, as he fought for us! YOUR efforts made a difference in this Soldier’s life!

Again, my deepest gratitude to Congressman Babin and Congressman Gohmert! In the meetings we had with you, you promised to help Derrick and our Soldiers and YOU kept your promise. In my book, you will forever be regarded as the “Soldier’s Congressmen” and I hope your ears are burning, because this military daughter, sister and mother will never stop singing your praises. I will never be able to thank you enough for your compassion and the hope you instilled in Derrick’s parent’s heart that day we met with you. I honestly knew when we left your offices that something good was FINALLY going to happen for Derrick. THANK YOU BOTH! And Congressmen Babin, please thank your lovely wife!

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Revolution Was by Diana West

By on July 8th, 2018

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3758/The-Revolution-Was.aspx

The lovely clenched fist signifying violent revolutionary solidarity with Marxists the world over, is cover art from (a) the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (b) Democratic Socialists of America (c) the Congressional Progressive Caucus d) Sanders for President. Pick one.

Don’t look now but the answer is (c). “The People’s Budget: A Roadmap for the Resistance” is the explicitly collectivist, anti-capitalist budget of the Democratic Party’s largest caucus in Congress: the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). The CPC includes one US senator (Sanders) and 78 House members. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wins in November as expected, this member of the Democratic Socialists of America from Da Bronx by way of Westchester will not only find political comrade-ship in the CPC, she will blend right in.

That’s right. The 28-year-old, single-payer, ICE-breaking, rich-soaking, subsidizing, dictating, free-riding, 21st-century Westchester Marxist — sorry, Democratic Socialist — will not be riding to town to storm the citadel; as Garet Garrett explained so lucidly and so depressingly 80 years ago, The Revolution Was.

I find his opening irresistable:

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom…

There can be no counter-revolution without considering this “lost” lore, without junking our “court history” and taking off the blinders to study and appreciate the extent to which the USA, especially since its Second Revolution under Franklin Roosevelt, has been ever and ever recreated as a socialistic nation. What Left-wing media bristle at today, I think, is Ocasio-Cortez’s definitional frankess as a “Democratic Socialist.” That’s because this may well alarm and motivate moderate citizens, generally lulled by the familiar party labels, to a point of actually noticing Ocasio-Cortez’s successful demagoguery, her forthright anti-capitalism and matching them to the Democratic Party.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

International Community Ignores Genocide of Christians in Nigeria by Raymond Ibrahim

By on July 8th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12645/christians-genocide-nigeria

This brings the death toll of Christians to more than 6,000 since the start of 2018.
“The Islamists of northern Nigeria seem determined to turn Nigeria into an Islamic Sultanate and replace Liberal Democracy with Sharia as the National Ideology. The object of course, is to supplant the Constitution with Sharia as the source of legislation.” — National Christian Elders Forum, a wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria.
The Nigerian government and the international community, however, have from the start done little to address the situation. This lack of participation is not surprising: they cannot even acknowledge its roots, namely, the intolerant ideology of jihad.

In what the Christian Association of Nigeria is calling a “pure genocide,” 238 more Christians were killed and churches desecrated by Muslims last week in the west African nation. This brings the death toll of Christians to more than 6,000 since the start of 2018.

According to a joint statement by the Christian Association, an umbrella group of various Christian denominations, “There is no doubt that the sole purpose of these attacks is aimed at ethnic cleansing, land grabbing and forceful ejection of the Christian natives from their ancestral land and heritage.”

The statement condemned the recent attacks, “where over 200 persons were brutally killed and our churches destroyed without any intervention from security agencies in spite of several distress calls made to them.”

The statement adds that the majority of those 6,000 Christians massacred this year were “mostly children, women and the aged… What is happening in … Nigeria is pure genocide and must be stopped immediately.”

The details of the murder of these thousands, though seldom reported, are often grisly; many were either hacked to death or beheaded with machetes; others were burned alive (including inside locked churches or homes); and women are often sexually assaulted or raped before being slaughtered.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: The Ayatollah’s Promised Paradise by Amir Taheri

By on July 8th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12660/iran-khuzestan-paradise

At the time no one could imagine that the dreams we all had for our beloved Khuzestan would become a nightmare. But it has, thanks to four decades of misrule, incompetence, corruption and sheer brutality by the Khomeinist regime.

When he seized power, Khomeini said in a notorious speech that the Shah had offered Iranians paradise in this world to deprive them of paradise in the next world, boasting that his Islamic Republic will provide both.

Naturally, we don’t know about the next world; but in this world the ayatollah turned a corner of paradise that was Khuzestan into a veritable hell.

In the late 1960s when the concept of “development” and “economic take-off” was all the rage in academic and media circles, many experts insisted that the so-called “developing nations” needed to showcase at least part of their territory as a model for progress and an inspiration for modernization.

Being one of those so-called “developing nations” Iran, under the Shah, chose its southwestern province Khuzestan as that showcase.

The choice wasn’t difficult. For, Khuzestan was a resource-rich province and already dotted with some of the modern infrastructures that other provinces had to wait a decade or more to acquire. Thanks to the oil industry, Khuzestan was the first province to have a modern electricity generating system and piped water in most of its cities, at least 20 years before the capital Tehran did. The province was also the hub of Iran’s sole railway network, the famous Trans-Iranian which connected it to the Caspian Sea via Tehran.

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BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Both Sides Now: A Review of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor By Brian Stewart see note please

By on July 8th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/book-review-letters-to-my-palestinian-neighbor/
“The book is another pacifist delusion. The last big “reconciliation” was Oslo, which in the reviewer’s words “brought forth an unremitting campaign of suicide-murder from the holy warriors of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, leaving thousands of Israelis dead and maimed. The indiscriminate terror unleashed in these “martyrdom operations” came to a halt only with the construction of the security barrier.” And,” Israel cannot leave the West Bank only for it to collapse into chaos, or for Hamas to impose theocratic control there as it did after Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.” rsk

The Palestinian national movement denies Israel’s legitimacy, and Israel in turn denies the Palestinians’ national sovereignty. A new book insists on accommodating both.

Last year during a long excursion in Israel and the Palestinian territories, this innocent abroad paid a visit to a new hotel in Bethlehem that boasts “the worst view in the world.” The “Walled Off Hotel,” opened by the avant-garde British artist Banksy, lies in the shadow — literally and figuratively — of the 26-foot concrete separation barrier that has become one of the defining symbols of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Guests are treated to far more than a room, for Banksy’s project includes a gallery, museum, and bookstore. They combine to form a veritable one-stop shop of unreconstructed Palestinian nationalism born in the heady days of pan-Arabism.

Perusing the shelves of the bookstore, I couldn’t help but notice that they groaned under the weight of chronicles of Israeli savagery and Palestinian woe. Here the “resistance” oeuvre was on full display: works by the likes of Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Ghassan Kanafani, Tariq Ali, and, seldom out of sight in this infamous company, Noam Chomsky. Only The Protocols of the Elders of Zion — the preferred reading material of Hamas, the Palestinian faction ruling Gaza — was missing. A visitor could spend the better part of an afternoon here, as I did, and not brush up against any Palestinian voices dissenting from their state’s rampant corruption and autocracy (or the symbiotic bond between them), much less testifying to any legitimate interests of the so-called Zionist Entity.

The exhibit leaves the impression that the most chauvinistic and militant positions against the Jewish state were the authentic and noble representatives of Palestinian opinion. It was an emotionally jarring and intellectually stultifying affair. As I took my leave, a companion sensing my discomfort pointedly inquired which book I would choose to smuggle into the Banksy bookstore. I can’t remember quite what I answered then — was it Ajami’s The Dream Palace of the Arabs? — but I know what I would say now.

Yossi Klein Halevi is the author of the new book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. In it, he offers a heartfelt “invitation to a conversation” to a Palestinian neighbor whom he doesn’t yet know but must come to befriend. The alternative, in this conflict perpetuated by routine failures of leadership, is to remain mired in a “cycle of denial” whereby each side bitterly denies the legitimacy of the other. Halevi seems convinced that breaking the cycle may ultimately depend on the multiplication of such meager efforts. He therefore proposes to host his nameless Palestinian neighbor “in my spiritual home, in the hope that one day we will be able to welcome each other into our physical homes.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on July 8th, 2018

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Mapping the immune system. Israel’s Technion scientists have built a tool to help treat patients with immune system diseases. “ImmuneXpresso” scans millions of scientific publications to construct a computerized model of the immune system, showing the interactions between immune cells and the human body, across thousands of diseases. https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2018/06/the-immune-system-cracking-open-the-black-box/

Automatic analysis of chest X-rays. (TY Atid-EDI) I’ve reported (see here) on the artificial intelligent (AI) image analysis systems developed by Israel’s Zebra Medical. Now Zebra’s technology extends to chest X-rays with “Textray”, that can identify 40 different common clinical findings. Zebra also raised $30 million of funds.
https://zebramedblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/textray-mining-clinical-reports-to-gain-a-broad-understanding-of-chest-x-rays/

Europe and Canada approve Israeli bone regeneration. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Datum Dental has developed OSSIX Bone – an innovative solution for bone and tissue regeneration for dentistry. It has just received the CE Mark in Europe and Health Canada approval. OSSIX Bone already has FDA clearance.
http://www.ossixdental.com/news-and-events/news/item/79-ce-mark-health-canada-regulatory-approvals-for-ossix-bone-following-fda-clearance https://www.youtube.com/embed/gf3XmCESeHo?rel=0

US approval for knee cartilage repair system. (TY Atid-EDI) Meniscus (knee cartilage) tears are common for athletes, those engaged in daily sport activities, the elderly, and anyone with cartilage problems. Israel’s Arcuro Medical has developed the SuperBall™ meniscus repair system and has just received FDA clearance.
http://trendlines.com/portfolio/arcuro-medical/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/ny3AGHM7uJo?rel=0
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arcuro-medical-receives-fda-regulatory-clearance-300667605.html

Go-ahead for bio-ink. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s CollPlant (see here) is developing a proprietary rhCollagen-based formulations intended for use as bio-ink for the 3D printing of tissues and life savings organs. It has now received grant approval (up to $1.2 million) of additional finance from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA).
https://ir.collplant.com/press-releases/detail/49/collplant-receives-research-and-development-project

Israeli algae antioxidant protects the skin. I’ve reported previously (see here) on AstaPure – Israel-based Algatech’s algae-derived Astaxanthin, produced at Kibbutz Ketura. A new clinical trial in Japan provides evidence of Astaxanthin’s protective role against skin deterioration caused by ultraviolet (UV) light.
https://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Article/2018/06/27/Astaxanthin-the-perfect-summer-supplement-Study-shows-skin-protection-effects http://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/7/817/htm

Advanced security and medical training. Israel’s Advanced Security Training Institute (ASTI) has just completed its latest course, providing 30 US first responders with practical security and medical training. Since 2003, these skills have been passed on to more than 7,000 emergency personnel in the USA.
https://www.jns.org/training-from-the-ground-up-us-first-responders-study-methodology-in-israel/

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