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July 2018

MEDIA Comments turned off

“Words and Phrases – Fake or Twisted?” Sydney Williams

By on July 9th, 2018

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“But no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention,Because this invention expressed their hates and fears so perfectly.” James Baldwin Notes of a Native Son 1955

“The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions.” Thomas Sowell The Vision of the Anointed: Self Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy 1995

As the two rubrics show, the concept of “fake” or “twisted” news is not new. The media has long been used for purposes of disinformation, propaganda and deceit. Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf tells a story of deception gone wrong. The Federalist Papers was written to persuade the undecided to support the Constitution. Lenin argued that capitalists bought up newspapers to control what was printed. Hitler employed Joseph Goebbels as his minister for propaganda. Using words to coax and prod others is the province of politicians, columnists, bloggers and essayists, including yours truly. What is distressing today is that editorializing has seeped into the news room, so that news is comingled with opinions. That does not mean we should be a nation of cynics, but skepticism is healthy. For whom or for what is the writer or speaker an advocate?

One example: The front-page, top right-hand column of the July 2, 2018 New York Times was headlined, “Curbs on Unions Likely to Starve Activist Groups.” The article by Noam Scheiber, in reference to Janus v. AFSCME, read: “The Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory union fees for government workers was not only a blow to unions…” Why did Mr. Scheiber use the word “for”? The fees are not for workers; they are paid by workers. They are for union leaders, certainly not for workers who disagree as to how money is spent. The editors of The New York Time are scrupulous in words they choose; the use of “for” had to have been deliberate. One subtle example of editorializing on the front page.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How Trump Plans to Change the World He rejects the postwar order on the ground that it puts the U.S. at a disadvantage. Walter Russell Mead

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-plans-to-change-the-world-1531177521

Eighteen months into Donald Trump’s presidency, the nature of his foreign policy continues to elude most observers. The problem is not, as some admirers claim, that he is playing an elaborate strategic game that his critics can’t grasp. Nor is it, as some detractors believe, that Mr. Trump is simply a creature of impulse with no fixed views. The president’s approach to foreign policy may well fail—indeed, there is a case it deserves to. But a Trump doctrine exists, and neither friends nor foes can afford to remain blind to it.

Mr. Trump is hard to understand not because he is deep but because he is different. American presidents since the 1940s have primarily sought to conserve the post-World War II order. Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is a revisionist who wants to alter the terms of the world system in America’s favor. From the president’s perspective, America’s superior military strength and its large trade deficit provide important advantages in international politics. Mr. Trump wants to boost America’s military edge while using military and economic tools to persuade other powers to accept his revisions to the world system.

Mr. Trump respects China as a serious long-term rival but believes that its economy depends more on Sino-American trade than the U.S. economy does. This is partly because China is much poorer than the U.S. on a per capita basis. Further, Mr. Trump believes that America’s bilateral trade deficit means that the current arrangement heavily favors China, and that China would be less able to withstand a disruption to that relationship.

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EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Education, Paul Collits Dumb, Dumber and Growing More So

By on July 9th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/07/dumb-dumber-growing/

We school more but educate less, and our institutions, experts and policy makers are decidedly not helping matters — least of all in demanding even more public money to underwrite and expand a failing educational establishment whose return on investment continues shockingly to decline.

A study in 2013 claimed that Western IQs had fallen 14 points over the previous century. More recent research, involving a Norwegian sampling, also captured media attention with its observation of a decline in that country’s IQ amongst those born since 1975.

The Norwegian study listed various potential explanations for the decline, including “social spillovers from immigration”. Oh dear, best not go there. As the great Charles Murray learned to his peril after daring to observe the relationship between the distribution of IQ, race and ethnicity, to merely touch on that topic is enough to see the tumbril rolled out and pyre lit.

But there was another element of the Norwegian study that’s safe — well, relatively safe — to mention, and here I reference “education”, which raises all sorts of fresh questions. For one, the findings challenge the myth that education levels rise inexorably from generation to generation as more people receive a greater quantum of schooling. It also raises uncomfortable questions about how we now learn and the value we get from the money we pour into our schools.

Aren’t we meant to be the most educated generation ever – especially our current young people, the millennials, aka Gen Y? We hear endlessly this meme, which surely is being confused with the most “schooled” generation ever. Now this claim is certainly true. We live in an age of “lifelong learning”, as we often hear. This is surely one of the most pernicious marketing campaigns ever rolled out — perpetrated mostly by self-interested institutions of higher education and their useful idiot pals in politics and government.

We also live, or so we are are assured, in an age of technology-enabled education, with formal learning commencing at much younger (pre-school) ages. Surely these are good things, having more tools at students’ disposal and extended time to master them? The push in this direction has been substantial and unrelenting. On top of starting earlier, we also insist on formal schooling to a higher age for a much higher proportion of the population, with many laments for those poor souls who fail to matriculate. It is, apparently, a terrible to master a trade when one might be working toward a degree in womyns’ studies, gay cinema or advanced aboriginality.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

What Does the Democratic Party Stand For? By Christopher Roach

By on July 9th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/09/what-does-the-democratic-party

Once upon a time, there were two patriotic parties in America. If you don’t believe me, watch the Nixon-Kennedy debates. There you will see the hawkish Kennedy complaining that President Eisenhower was weak on defense, having allowed a “bomber gap” to materialize on his watch. Overall, John F. Kennedy’s and Richard Nixon’s views were fairly similar, and their narrow differences reflected the intrinsic unity of a nation made up of people with common values and common struggles.

The toxic politics of the last few years suggests we’re living in two different Americas. Democratic activists have harassed the successful female lieutenants of the Trump Administration, including Sarah Sanders and Kirstjen Nielsen. While these antics are likely to offend those in the apolitical middle, as well as further radicalize Republicans, they have been the cause of raucous cheering among some Democrats such as Maxine Waters.

In recent weeks, we saw a coordinated media hit campaign exploiting the kids at the border. Trump short-circuited the “reunite families” propaganda campaign with an executive order, so the new Democratic Party mainstream view quickly evolved into “Abolish ICE.” In other words, the Democrats have read the tea leaves of the last election and concluded, “Americans want weaker borders and more immigration.”

Finally, in a blow to the old-line establishment, it turns out the Democrats of Queens actually took seriously their own B.S. rhetoric that they need a “party that looks like America,” and promptly booted a senior white congressman in favor of an upstart former bartender (and proud socialist Bernie activist), Alexandria Ocasio Castro.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Save the SAT Writing Test It’s a much better measure than application essays.

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/save-the-sat-writing-test-1531074658

Princeton and Stanford last week became the latest schools to drop the SAT essay requirement. The College Board made the section optional in 2016. Skeptics will applaud this essay’s demise as a return to a test that measures real aptitude. But the essay, introduced in 2005, turned out to be useful. Ditching it is another plan by colleges to make all standards of admissions subjective and easily rigged.

The writing test began in 2005 in order “to improve the validity of the test for predicting college success,” according to the College Board. A pilot program found that “scores on the new SAT writing section were slightly better than high school grades in predicting first-year college grades.”

There were problems with the exam. One MIT professor found students were rewarded for sheer length. Another criticism was that it wasn’t graded on accuracy. Students could make factual errors, or make things up.

In 2014 the College Board revised the essay test, asking students to read a passage and then answer a question with a persuasive argument using evidence from the text. Test-takers, their parents and guidance counselors criticized this new approach as well. There was too little time. It stressed students out. It raised the cost of preparation and of the test itself.

Princeton cited cost as its reason for eliminating the exam. But taking the essay part of the test adds only $14 to the registration fee, and poor kids can get waivers.

It is true that 25 minutes is not much time to write an essay, but one can discern a few things about a student’s command of grammar, vocabulary and logic from three paragraphs. True, grading a writing test is more subjective than scoring a multiple-choice test. But writing is a real skill, and colleges should measure it.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK Parliament: Little Interest in Grooming Gangs by Andrew Jones

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12662/britain-parliament-grooming-gangs

The approach the British authorities have taken in response to this national disaster appears largely based on countering secondary issues — most notably, individuals that protest the grooming, including at one point the arrest of parents attempting to rescue their daughter from her abusers.

There also seems to be a tacit alliance with much of the media to silence public discourse and, when all else fails, outright suppression.

In response to Britain’s ongoing sexual grooming scandal, a group of 20 MPs signed an open letter to recently appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, urging coordinated action.

As the UK Parliament has 650 MPs, the 20 signatories constitute a mere 3% willing to support the protection of children subjected to gang-rape, trafficking and torture, and at times murder. Such a paltry number of politicians willing to speak out against child sexual slavery seems yet more evidence of the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s political elite and how low the country appears to have sunk.

Britain’s media elite have ignored the letter. Reporting has been limited to the local press in Oxford and Rochdale — areas afflicted by grooming — as well as a few alternative media outlets such as Breitbart London, and indirect reference on Sky News.

A key signatory of the letter, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, whose constituency was made infamous by grooming, was forced from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party front bench in 2017 for speaking openly about the prevalence of “British Pakistani men” in this type of child sexual exploitation. Given that Sajid Javid, then Communities Secretary, spoke in support of Champion, it is perhaps intentional that this letter was addressed to him in his new role as Britain’s first Muslim Home Secretary.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The United Nations’ Patently Ridiculous Report on American Poverty By Nikki Haley

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/united-nations-report-on-american-poverty-distorts-and-misrepresents/

It is unnecessary, politically biased, factually wrong, and a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Last month, the United Nations released a report about poverty in America. A single researcher spent two weeks in our country, visiting four states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. His report was harshly critical, condemning America for “punish[ing] those who are not in employment,” among other farcical notions.

Everyone knows there is poverty in America. Thousands of public officials at the federal, state, and local levels of government attempt to address poverty, as they should. Thousands more nonprofit, charitable, and religious organizations honorably dedicate themselves to fighting poverty in our country.

As governor of South Carolina, I saw firsthand the struggles of poor communities that often lack the economic and educational opportunities enjoyed elsewhere in America. And we did something about it. During my administration, we brought record-breaking numbers of new jobs to South Carolina, spanning each one of our state’s 46 counties; moved thousands of citizens from welfare to work; and made unprecedented investments into the education of students in economically challenged parts of our state. The fight against poverty is a complicated, multi-dimensional battle, but it is one that has the attention of Americans at all levels.

It certainly has the attention of the Trump administration. Its economic policies have helped bring unemployment down to the lowest level in decades. Its tax-reform law included a landmark measure to direct billions in new capital into distressed communities in every state.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In Germany, the ‘Immigration’ Worm Has Turned By Michael Walsh

By on July 9th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/in-germany-the-immigration-worm-has-turned/

I’m in Berlin at the moment, staying not far from Checkpoint Charlie, through which I passed many times during the Cold War, and not far from the spot where, sledgehammer in hand, I did my small bit to dismantle the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. So much has changed in the nearly 30 years since that memorable moment: McDonald’s and KFC have franchises on either side of the intersection of the Friedrichstrasse and the Zimmerstrasse, where the Wall briefly opened to allow a narrow passage from the American sector’s principal checkpoint across a short block flanked on both sides by the Todesstreifen of barbed-wire and machine-gun free-fire fields. On the western side — actually the southern side, by the compass — the fearsome Wall was gaily painted with graffiti; on the other, it was a blank slate of gray concrete, fully reflective of the Stalinist Leftist orthodoxy of the only captive nation that even remotely tried to make a go of the Marxist economic, social, and moral lie.

Now, three decades after the Wall came down, I’m back in East Berlin talking to old and new German friends — most of them Ossis, or East Germans — about the current state of Germany’s overriding social and political issue: the influx of more than one million cultural aliens, mostly from the Muslim ummah and thus by faith and profession profoundly opposed to Western Judeo-Christian civilization. And their answer is… not good for the Merkel administration. CONTINUE AT SITE

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Dick Durbin is making an ass of himself By Monica Showalter

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/dick_durbin_is_making_an_ass_of_himself.html

Can Dick Durbin stifle himself for a bit? The vaunted senator from Illinois is saying one absurd thing after another, putting the jackass back big into the Democratic Party label.

Seriously, get a load of this first one from the senior senator from Illinois:

A top Democrat in the Senate said his vulnerable colleagues from red states “understand” that fighting to stop President Trump’s Supreme Court pick is more important than getting re-elected in 2018.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., was pressed on this “dilemma” that Democrats face as the 2018 midterms approach during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Staying united to stop the Supreme Court pick could cost you red state senators. Not fighting it as hard might allow the red state senators to get re-elected and get Democrats in control of the Senate. That’s your dilemma,” host Chuck Todd posited on Sunday.

President Trump hasn’t even named his pick for the newly vacant Supreme Court seat, and already Durbin is telling his fellow Democrats (not himself, of course) to fall on their swords by obstructing the nomination, no matter who it might be, and forget about their own careers. Do it for the cause. Take one for the team. Because many Democratic senators have found themselves in a quandary over this upcoming nomination – they are running for re-election in red states and know that obstructing the nomination as Democrats won’t go over well with voters. Many are thinking of jumping ship to stay in office. So in Durbin’s view, it’s better “a lost seat for thee, but not for me.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

UN’s Human Rights Council reeks of hypocrisy; US was right to leave: by Lawrence Haas

By on July 9th, 2018

https://www.sacbee.com/news/news-services/article214350249.html
The Human Rights Council’s recent vote to investigate Israel for its response to “protests” on its Gaza border highlights everything that’s wrong with this hypocritical body, and why the United States was right to leave it.

First, the vote reflects the council’s longstanding obsession with Israel, which has far more to do with its status as the world’s only Jewish state than with any serious council concerns about the world’s biggest human rights problems.

The United Nations created the council in 2006 to replace its Human Rights Commission, which by then had become an object of derision due to its anti-Israel bias.

In 2002, professor and dogged U.N. watcher Anne Bayefsky reported that over the previous 30 years, the commission spent 15 percent of its time on Israel and made it the subject of a third of its country-specific resolutions.

The commission’s successor, however, has only proved worse. The council has made Israel its only permanent agenda item, which means that it discusses the Jewish state at each of its three meetings a year but it doesn’t necessarily discuss such true humanitarian horrors as North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, nor such regular human rights abusers as China, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Cuba.

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