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July 2019

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Status Report On New York’s Quest For “Climate Leadership” Francis Menton

By on July 8th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-7-6-7669n2g879mcy2hwtzxadnscm8

An important focus of this blog is on trying to find the true “climate leader” among all the world’s political jurisdictions. After all, somebody needs to get out front to save us from the climate crisis. But who? Germany? They adopted the Energiewende policy in 2010, and have since thrown hundreds of billions of dollars at transitioning to “renewable” energy. Result: windmills everywhere, consumer electricity bills triple the U.S. average per kWh, and emissions essentially flat since the 2010 start of the program. China? They were awarded the mantle of “climate leadership” by the New York Times back in March 2017, shortly before Pravda figured out that China had hundreds of gigawatts of coal power plants under construction in their own country, and many hundreds of more gigawatts of such plants under construction in other countries around the world. The talk of energy transition was all a charade.

So now it’s time for some real progressives to show how it’s done. As reported here on June 19, New York ‘s legislature has now passed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The goals of the Act are to get 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030, followed by reduction of all carbon emissions — not just from the electricity sector — by 85% below 1990 levels by 2050. Admittedly, this new Act has just been passed. But we’ve been talking about transitioning to renewable energy for many years. Surely we should be setting the example for the world by now. Let’s take a look at where we are, and what the plans are from here.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Unalienable Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy The Founders’ principles can help revitalize liberal democracy world-wide. By Michael R. Pompeo

By on July 8th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/unalienable-rights-and-u-s-foreign-policy-11562526448

America’s Founders defined unalienable rights as including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” They designed the Constitution to protect individual dignity and freedom. A moral foreign policy should be grounded in this conception of human rights.

Yet after the Cold War ended, many human-rights advocates turned their energy to new categories of rights. These rights often sound noble and just. But when politicians and bureaucrats create new rights, they blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by governments. Unalienable rights are by nature universal. Not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right. Loose talk of “rights” unmoors us from the principles of liberal democracy.

That’s why I’m launching a Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department, chaired by Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon and populated with scholars, legal experts and activists. The commission’s mission isn’t to discover new principles but to ground our discussion of human rights in America’s founding principles.

The commission is an advisory body and won’t opine on policy. My hope is that its work will generate a serious debate about human rights that extends across party lines and national borders, similar to the debate sparked by the human-rights panel Eleanor Roosevelt convened in 1947. The Commission on Unalienable Rights will study the document that resulted from that effort, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, along with our founding documents and other important works.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

An Education Horror Show A case study in public school failure and lack of accountability.

By on July 8th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-education-horror-show-11562532467

The National Education Association held its annual convention this past weekend, and the Democratic presidential candidates made their pilgrimage to promise the teachers union more money—and even more money. One word we didn’t hear on stage was “Providence,” as in the Rhode Island capital city whose public schools were recently exposed as a horror show of government and union neglect.

Peeling lead paint, brown water, leaking sewage pipes, broken asbestos tiles, rodents, frigid and chaotic classrooms, and student failure were all documented in a 93-page review by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. The review was conducted in May at the request of the Rhode Island education commissioner, and it deserves attention nationwide as an example of government failure.

“Very little visible student learning was going on in the majority of classrooms and schools we visited—most especially in the middle and high schools,” the report says. “Our review teams encountered many teachers and students who do not feel safe in school. There is widespread agreement that bullying, demeaning, and even physical violence are occurring within the school walls at very high levels.”

No surprise, then, that only 5% of Providence eighth graders on average scored proficient in math in the 2015 through 2017 school years. That compares to 21.3% in Newark, N.J., where students have similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Low-income students in Worcester, Mass., not far away, were twice as proficient as those in Providence.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Tit-For-Tat Needs To Go The Way Of The Dodo Bird… by Gerald A. Honigman 

By on July 8th, 2019

http://q4j-middle-east.com

Israel is still playing the pathetic, losing game of tit-for-tat.

Five more young Israelis recently became statistics of Arab terror as they were rammed by a vehicle a bit north of Jerusalem.

The Arab hero, who escaped, will likely be rewarded handsomely by Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderates.” Such folks and their families typically receive thousands of dollars from Israel’s “peace partners” for such deeds. They get streets, buildings, and other sites named for them too.

Besides hunting down the actual assailant, Israel must hold accountable those who encourage and abet such actions by their policies–like educating their children from kindergarten on up in schools, camps, plays, rallies, books, radio and television programs, mosques, etc.–to slaughter Jews.

Abbas’s Fatah and Palestinian Arab Authority have prized possessions that need to be turned into rubble when such heroism is perpetrated.

The alleged good cops are no better than the Hamas/Islamic Jihad bad cops. They simply play the current system to milk the dumb and/or collaborative dhimmis in the West to amass the same fortunes their late Egyptian ghoul leader, Arafat and his cronies, did while other Arabs were deliberately kept wanting to display to the rest of the world.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

PBS:Rise of anti-Semitism elevates fears in France

By on July 8th, 2019

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/rise-of-anti-semitism-elevates-fears-in-france

France has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel and the U.S., with 500,000 Jewish people living there. And with several high-profile, anti-Semitic incidents in recent years, along with statistics showing a significant rise in anti-Semitic attacks, there are growing concerns among the Jewish community. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay and videographer Joan Martelli report.Hari Sreenivasan:

An “increasing sense of emergency.” That’s how the president of the European Jewish congress recently described the concern over growing anti-Semitism in Europe. That includes France, where an increase in anti-Semitic attacks has raised the alarm. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from Paris.

Christopher Livesay:

Every Saturday for the past eight months thousands of people have donned yellow road-safety vests and marched on the streets of Paris and other cities in France. The so-called Yellow Vest protests. What began as and remains a mostly economic campaign against high fuel taxes has evolved into a more wide-ranging anti-establishment protest — sometimes violent — targeting policemen, journalists, the wealthy, the French president. But what’s shocked many here in France is that they’ve also at times targeted jews.

The yellow vest movement is a largely leaderless one that’s given a platform to people of all kinds of ideologies.Yet some people say it’s that same openness that’s allowed antisemitism to rear its ugly head.

Last February police had to step in to protect prominent philosopher Alain Finkielkraut after he was bombarded with insults and anti-Jewish taunts. And some protesters have been spotted calling French President Macron a “whore of the Jews” and their “puppet.”

Nonna Mayer:

The yellow vest is a very heterogeneous movement but it favors the expression of antisemitism because of its populist and anti-elite tones.

Christopher Livesay:

Research Professor Nonna Mayer says the yellow vest movement, while not anti-semitic itself, has accicentally revealed a subset of the movement that is. And statistics who anti-semitic incidents are on the rise, up 74% from last year.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of Leftism: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 37 by Linda Goudsmit

By on July 7th, 2019

 http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22900/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-leftism-killing-america

   http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

War makes strange bedfellows, and the current Leftist/Islamist alliance against America-first President Donald Trump is worth examining.

Islamic sharia law with its misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, pedophilia, female genital mutilation, and wife beating is diametrically opposed to leftist Democrats’ proclaimed principles of women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, children’s rights, and anti-bullying. How can Leftists partner with Islamists whose norms are diametrically opposed to their own stated principles?

The answer is that Leftists are staggeringly hypocritical when it comes to their principles. Leftist metrics of inclusion are myopic – they only consider what a person thinks and ignore what a person does. The left embraces every color, every sexual orientation, every religion, every deviant behavior as long as its members THINK alike. Leftist anti-American anti-Trump group think is completely intolerant of any individual divergence of thought.

The demand for conformity among Leftists is no different from any religious orthodoxy. Orthodoxy requires conformity for membership in the group. Leftist tenets of political correctness, moral relativity, and historical revisionism are incontrovertible.

Islamic tenets of misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism, pedophilia, female genital mutilation, and wife beating are ignored as long as these sharia-compliant Muslims are anti-American anti-Trumpers. Any anti-American anti-Trump Islamist is welcomed into the Leftist tribe because they are all warriors in the Culture War against America. America-first President Donald Trump is the existential enemy of the Culture War and the target of the Leftist/Islamist alliance.

Islamists unapologetically tell the world their goal is world domination and the establishment of a supremacist Islamist caliphate ruled by sharia law. There is nothing humanitarian about Islamists or their condescending attitude that insists they are doing the West a favor by freeing us from our freedoms, and settling America by imposing their savage medieval sharia law. Islamists do not recognize the authority of the United States Constitution.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE CUSTODIANS OF DEMOCRACY

By on July 7th, 2019

In 1969 my husband and I bought a pre-revolutionary house. While a kitchen and plumbing and electricity were obviously added, the original structure, inside and out were intact.  After one really harsh Connecticut winter when I contemplated certain restorations and changes, my late husband, the finest and most thoughtful person told me. “We must be cautious about changes…. we are not only owners…. we are custodians of a bit of history.”

His words echo when we celebrate patriotism and legacy in America. We are the custodians of the democracy crafted by our extraordinary founders. Some changes are always necessary and flaws must be fixed by discussion and legislation, but the basic tenets of our freedom and the right to vote and the laws that provide homeland security must always be guarded and protected, and they are being vigorously challenged.

The right to dissent is both a privilege and an obligation of our custody of democracy. But, there is no right to threaten and beat journalists; there is no right to censor those with whom we disagree; there is no right to assume power and challenge the legitimacy of an election by violence and libel;  there is no right to threaten national security by demanding open borders and giving sanctuary to those who break the law.

My rather gloomy mood was lifted by the President’s speech and military displays on July 4th,  when I saw thousands upon thousands of Americans who braved the blistering heat waving our flag and cheering for America and our defense forces.

They are the custodians of democracy. May patriotism always prevail….rsk

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Angry About Border Conditions? Blame Congress By Rachel Bovard

By on July 7th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/06/angry-about-border-conditions-blame-congress/

The woke social media over the Fourth of July was something to behold. On America’s birthday, posts were full Trump-baby angst, references to illegal militias, treasonous criminality, and concentration camps, and carefully styled photos of summer desserts that spelled out “close the camps” on top of seasonal fruit.

Because you know what you do if you think child migrants are actually being tortured by your government and dying in concentration camps? You channel all your first-world, virtue signaling rage into the creation of artsy and seasonally appropriate desserts that are just perfect for that People photoshoot.

But the misplaced rage was not limited to social media. In the annals of Wokes versus People Living in Reality, this week was one for the books. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the avatar of lefty rage-emotes everywhere, visited the border and had a complete meltdown.

Ocasio-Cortez told reporters she “was not safe from the officers,” and that migrants were forced to drink out of toilets while being subject to “psychological warfare.”

“This has been horrifying so far,” she tweeted. “It is hard to understate the enormity of the problem. We’re talking systemic cruelty w/ a dehumanizing culture that treats them like animals.”

If what she’s saying is true—members of Congress being threatened for asking questions, migrants housed in World War II-style detention camps with only toilet water to drink, “mass atrocities” being perpetuated by the government—then we are indeed in a crisis.

But none of this is true. None of the migrants housed on the border are being held against their will. While Ocasio-Cortez provided no photos of the toilets from which she claims migrants are forced to drink, those familiar with border detention facilities suggest she is referring to this type of drinking facility which is connected to a toilet—but does not dispense actual toilet water from the faucet, as she claims. And, as former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson pointed out this week, the practice of holding migrants in “cages” after detention started under President Obama.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Tommy Robinson, embattled hero By Caroline Rausch

By on July 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/tommy_robinson_embattled_hero.html

The hero Tommy Robinson has been reconvicted of contempt of court, after his previous conviction was overturned and he was released from prison, but the door was left open for the attorney general to relitigate if he so chose.  He duly did, leading to Robinson’s trial at the Old Bailey on July 5.

Robinson’s lawyer, Richard Furlong, said Robinson was being convicted for what he is, not for what he did.  What he did, that so offended the elite, was stand up for the victims of child abuse.  What kind of a sick society defends child rapists and persecutes someone who wants justice for cruelly raped little English girls?

According to Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch, 4 July 2019), there were approximately 6,850 victims of organized child sexual exploitation in the U.K. in 2015.  That’s at least 18 girls a day in just one year.  For exposing this ghastly crime, Robinson was imprisoned for 2.5 months in solitary confinement, not held in his rightful category, but moved to a Category C prison with the highest number of Muslim inmates, subjected to mental torture and constant threats and abuse, and had all his rights denied “in the interest of public safety.”  Now this fate looms again, and the government wants to once again put him in harm’s way, in the hope that some Muslim inmate will dispatch this troublemaker.

What about being judged by one’s peers? There were only two judges and no jury at Tommy’s trial at the Old Bailey.  One was Rt. Hon. Dame Victoria Sharp, DBE, president of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales, the other Justice Warby, two executioners acting on behalf of the establishment.  It’s time for British citizens to tear down the Old Bailey as French citizens tore down the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Socialism – Its Adherents and the Enduring Lies By Alexander G. Markovsky

By on July 7th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/socialism__its_adherents_and_the_enduring_lies.html

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and socialism.

The leader of the White opposition, the distinguished admiral Alexander Kolchak, was defeated on the battlefield, betrayed by the Allies and captured by the Bolsheviks.

During the interrogation, the Bolsheviks, astounded by their own victory, were trying to understand how they could defeat the well-supplied regular army, led by experienced military commanders.

“Admiral, why didn’t you promise land to peasants? You could have won this war,” the interrogators asked (Russia was an agrarian country and the ownership of land was one of the most compelling issues of the revolution). “I would not promise what I could not deliver” was the admiral’s response.   

The interrogators just smiled. They did promise the land and won.

Bolsheviks who had a propensity for fancy names called it “monopoly on the revolutionary truth.” In other words, the truth in the “decaying” world of capitalism does not mean what it does in the world of “triumphant” socialism. In practical terms, when Bolsheviks promised democracy, freedom, liberty, and inexorable “land to the peasants,” “bread to the hungry,” “peace to the people,” those zealous Bolshevik slogans sounded great but the Russian people found soon enough that “land to the peasants” meant forced collectivization; “bread to the hungry” – man-made famine; and “peace to the people” — civil war.

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