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Ruth King

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Georgia State Lawmaker Proposes Making Gender Transition Surgery For Minors A Felony By Matt Margolis

By on October 31st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/georgia-state-lawmaker-proposes-making-gender-transition-surgery-for-minors-a-felony/

Republican State Representative Ginny Ehrhart from Georgia wants to make it a felony for doctors to perform gender transition procedures on minors, including mastectomy, vasectomy, castration and other forms of genital mutilation, and ban the prescription of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormone therapy.

State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, said the legislation aims to protect children from having irreversible procedures done when they are young. Current law requires a parent to consent to surgery or for a minor to be prescribed medication.

While the bill is still being drafted, Ehrhart said Georgia medical providers who perform surgeries or administer or prescribe medications that assist minors with gender transition could be charged with a felony. The legislation would not affect doctors working with adults who seek to undergo gender transition.

“We’re talking about children that can’t get a tattoo or smoke a cigar or a cigarette in the state of Georgia but can be castrated and get sterilized,” she said.

While this seems like common sense to most people, Jeff Graham, the executive director of Georgia Equality, an LGBT rights group in the state, blasted the proposed legislation. “This legislation would criminalize decisions that are made carefully within families in consultation with medical professionals and mental health professionals. Supporting children in recognizing their gender identity is not only humane, it saves lives and strengthens families.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: WHAT HAS BECOME OF US?

By on October 31st, 2019

swtotd.blogspot.com

“Have we lost our minds?” Andrew Cuomo (1957-)Governor, New York

While Governor Cuomo’s exclamation was in response to the increasing number of assaults by the mentally deranged in New York City, it is one that has applicability across our political landscape, not just for the unhinged way Leftist politicians treat truants and criminals in our cities, but in most all ways political. Have we all gone bonkers? I wince at President Trump’s coarseness and grimace as he Tweets as fast as a Shetland Pony sheds its winter coat. Then I listen to anti-Trumpers and their lemming-like hatred that betrays an emotional response rather than a reasoned reaction. Seen as a threat to the comfortably established elite, the majority of Democrats wanted to impeach Mr. Trump on November 9, 2016. And I wonder: What ever happened to e Pluribus Unum?

Phrases and words: Identity politics; victimization; equality; wokeness. Identity politics is segregation by a different and more politically correct name. Real victims are ignored, while perpetrators are mollycoddled as deserving of special care for having been “victims” of society governed by old, white men. Equality has morphed into homogenization, deflating the individual to an inflated collective. The cream in our public schools can no longer find its way to the top. Wokeness is a Tesla-like vehicle for social justice warriors.

Politicians, abetted by a media that has foregone any semblance of investigative independence, to become a propaganda arm of the Party they prefer. They have given new meanings to those phrases and words mentioned above. The consequence has been a shock to the Judeo-Christian culture in which most of us were raised, when Albert Einstein once wrote, and we all believed, that “only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

Here we are now, three years after the fact, yet a refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election persists. Civil discourse is a thing of the past. We have intelligence agencies that colluded against a Presidential candidate. Public schools, especially those in inner cities who keep a watchful (and jaundiced) eye on equality, teach to the lowest common denominator, which means that those who have been identified as “gifted and talented” cannot be separated, so taught differently and thus given a chance to disengage from the claws of mediocrity that entrap them. In many of these same cities, the homeless – some mentally sick, others addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and a few simply down on their luck – ply our parks and streets. Instead of offering the dignity of a job and asking proper behavior in return for food and shelter, we provide them free needles and let them soil streets, sidewalks and parks. In our desire to explain away criminal acts and civil misbehavior as a consequence of victimization, we ignore the plight of real victims. Men and women are tried in the press, without benefit of due process. The “broken windows” policy of policing, first described in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling and based on the theory that if man lives in a neighborhood where property and people are respected crime rates will decline. It worked in New York City in the ‘90s and early 2000s but has been abandoned because of accusations that minorities were unfairly targeted. To paraphrase Dr. Seuss: “How did we get so stupid so soon?”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Domestic energy producers, the Middle East and Israel Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger and Fred Zeidman

By on October 31st, 2019

https://bit.ly/2N228qY

The growing sophistication of domestic oil and natural gas production has enhanced the US national security. It has transformed the leader of the free world from a major importer of crude oil to the world’s top producer of both crude oil (surpassing Saudi Arabia) and natural gas (ahead of Russia), and expected to be the globe’s largest exporter in five years.        

The dramatic reduction of US dependency on the importation of oil takes place at a time when the supply of oil from the Persian Gulf is increasingly precarious.  It is threatened by Iran’s Ayatollahs, as well as by additional rogue elements in the inherently violent, intolerant, fragmented, unpredictable, shifty, non-democratic and unstable Middle East. An area which is strategically located between Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.   

The Middle East – and especially Iran’s Ayatollahs – has become a most proliferating epicenter of global Islamic terrorism, drug trafficking and the development of ballistic and nuclear capabilities, producing ripple effects throughout the globe. For instance, the expanding presence of the Ayatollahs and Hezbollah terrorists in the South American platforms of anti-US Islamic terrorism and drug trafficking: the trilateral border of Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay and the trilateral border of Chile-Peru-Bolivia. The aim of the Ayatollahs is to employ these platforms – and their intensified presence in Venezuela and Mexico – as a venue to surge toward the US.        

Iran’s Ayatollahs are not driven by the eagerness to improve trade balance, employment, standard of living and education. They are driven by the conviction that they are divinely ordained to dominate the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and the entire globe. They indoctrinate their youth that the world is divided into the abode of Islam and the abode of the infidel, which will eventually submit itself or be vanquished through Jihad (holy war).   

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Despite terror ties, SJP ‘antisemitic force’ active at Harvard, Columbia ‘Would university administrators permit the KKK to have a national conference on campus?’ BY Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Antisemitism/SJP-has-ties-to-terror-is-antisemitic-force-on-campus-report-606415

BAD, BAD, BAD – Harvard, Columbia, Stony Brook, Georgetown, Brandeis, Penn State, Rutgers, Temple, University of Illinois, University of Minnesota, University of Chicago, University of Washington, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Florida State, University of North Carolina, University of Georgia, University of Florida, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Texas at Austin and numerous universities in Canada.DPS

The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is an “antisemitic force on campus,” according to a new 96-page report about the organization. 

The document, published by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in advance of NSJP’s annual conference being held November 1-3, tracks the history of the organization and highlights how NSJP “promotes antisemitic rhetoric” and is “associated [with] violence and terror, ideologically and politically.”  
The study, titled “National Students for Justice in Palestine and the Promotion of Hate and Antisemitism on the University Campus: The Threat to Academic Freedom,” is authored by Charles Asher Small, David Patterson and Glen Feder.

“For centuries, the most violent antisemitic attacks on Jews, including expulsions and pogroms, were rationalized by a need to bring justice to other groups,” said ISGAP chairman Natan Sharansky. “Today, the new antisemitism is brought to the world of academia under the pretext of justice for Palestinians.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Are Palestinian Leaders Afraid Of? by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15093/palestinian-leaders-silence-critics

Hamas justified the arrest of Qatoush by accusing him of “leaking security details.” It is not clear how a complaint about economic hardship has turned into a security-related case. In the eyes of Hamas, however, it seems that any Palestinian who dares to complain about the bad economy in the Gaza Strip is a “traitor” and a “security threat.”

From all accounts, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas are neck-and-neck in their competition to crush freedom of expression and crack down on the media.

“It is certain that the Arab Spring will arrive, sooner or later, to Palestine… The [ruling] Palestinian elite is mostly corrupt and tyrannical. With the exception of a few, the [Palestinian] elite is corrupt and incompetent — or both.” — Hani al-Masri, a prominent Palestinian political analyst, samanews.ps, October 22, 2019.

Criticism is fine, of course — if it is directed at the Palestinians’ arch-enemy, Israel. Otherwise, Palestinian journalists had best keep their criticism to themselves — lest the PA and Hamas decide to leave them in critical condition.

Facing growing discontent from their people, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have resumed their crackdown on Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In the past few weeks, several journalists were arrested by PA and Hamas security forces.

The arrests are seen by Palestinian journalists as part of the PA and Hamas programs to silence their critics and deter reporters from disclosing anything that reflects badly on Palestinian leaders. Any form of criticism, particularly from Palestinian journalists, has long been anathema to the PA and Hamas.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Pronoun Police Are Out to Destroy Children By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/the_pronoun_police_are_out_to_destroy_children.html

In the olden days, students would learn that avoiding shifts in person is critical in producing clear and cogent writing.

Not anymore.

Instead, October 16, 2019 marked International Pronouns Day, because “asking someone their [sic] lived pronouns and using them affirms that person’s gender identity and is a major way of respect.  Being referred to by the wrong pronouns especially affects transgender and gender nonconformng individuals.”

O Brave New World.

In order to promote the cause of pronoun use, one needs to accept the premise that it is  patently incorrect to think of biological sexual identity as comprising a boy or a girl.

Rid yourself of this view, because according to the purveyors of pronoun plurality, “we also live in a culture that uses ‘gender’ and ‘sex’ interchangeably.  However, these two aspects that contribute [to] one’s sexuality and identity are actually two separate entities.  As we come to understand how different people understand the various facets that make up how we think about gender, we come to realize that there are many ways to look at these aspects of identity.  One way to simplify the many components of gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and biological sex is by using the Genderbread Person model, created and illustrated [b]y Sam Killerman, author of itspronouncedmetrosexual.com and LGBT advocate.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Georgetown Welcomes Back Prof Who Doxxed Men, Called for ‘Deaths’ of GOP Senators By Toni Airaksinen

By on October 31st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/georgetown-welcomes-back-prof-who-doxxed-men-called-for-deaths-of-gop-senators/

The professor who called for the “miserable deaths” of GOP Senators and who doxxed those who sent her hate-mail will return to Georgetown University to teach two classes this semester.

Christine Fair — an Associate Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown — first came to national attention when she called for the “miserable deaths” of GOP Senators in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh trial last September.

Not long after, PJ Media discovered that Fair was running her own doxing blog (now-defunct for violating Twitter’s community guidelines), where dozens of posts published the names, addresses, phone numbers, and workplaces of men who disagreed with her.

“I do research for a living,” wrote Fair in one doxxing post. “Locating [these men’s] residences… their wives, employers, etc… is a mental sport for me,” she added.

PJ Media reviewed hundreds of posts on Fair’s doxxing blog and identified at least 11 accounts of full-blown doxxing, during which full names, addresses, aliases, and even family members’ phone numbers were made public.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is California Becoming Premodern? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 31st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/is-california-becoming-premodern/

More than 2 million Californians were recently left without power after the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric — which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year — preemptively shut down transmission lines in fear that they might spark fires during periods of high autumn winds.

Consumers blame the state for not cleaning up dead trees and brush, along with the utility companies for not updating their ossified equipment. The power companies in turn fault the state for so over-regulating utilities that they had no resources to modernize their grids.

Californians know that having tens of thousands of homeless in their major cities is untenable. In some places, municipal sidewalks have become open sewers of garbage, used needles, rodents and infectious diseases. Yet no one dares question progressive orthodoxy by enforcing drug and vagrancy laws, moving the homeless out of cities to suburban or rural facilities, or increasing the number of mental hospitals.

Taxpayers in California, whose basket of sales, gasoline and income taxes is the highest in the nation, quietly seethe while immobile on antiquated freeways that are crowded, dangerous and under nonstop makeshift repair.

Gas prices of $4 to $5 a gallon — the result of high taxes, hyper-regulation and green mandates — add insult to the injury of stalled commuters. Gas tax increases ostensibly intended to fund freeway expansion and repair continue to be diverted to the state’s failing high-speed rail project.

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HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The “Most Colossal Crime of All Ages” A new U.S. resolution acknowledging the Armenian Genocide has Turkey outraged. Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/most-colossal-crime-all-ages-raymond-ibrahim/

An ugly truth of history has just been acknowledged.  On October 29, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (405 to 11) in favor of Resolution 296, which acknowledges the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks during WW1.  (Unsurprisingly, Ilhan Omar was among the very few to abstain; her disingenuous logic will be addressed later.)

In order to become official policy, however, the resolution needs to be approved by both houses of Congress, and then signed by the president.  The Senate is currently not scheduled to vote on the measure.

It is at any rate a step in the right direction.  According to the book Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,

At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000….  Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Indeed, Turkey is currently outraged at this resolution; its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called it “worthless” and the “biggest insult” to the Turkish people. 

Such willful denial borders the surreal considering how well documented the Armenian genocide is.  As the International Association of Genocide Scholars says, “the Armenian Genocide is not controversial, but rather is denied only by the Turkish government and its apologists.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

America’s Schools Flunk Despite more spending, test scores fall and the achievement gap grows.

By on October 31st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-schools-flunk-11572475768

The highest-achieving students are doing better and the lowest are doing worse than a decade ago. That’s one depressing revelation from the latest Nation’s Report Card that details how America’s union-run public schools are flunking.

The results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is administered to students around the country every two years, were published on Wednesday. There isn’t much to cheer. Only 35% of fourth graders rated proficient in reading, which is about the same as in 2009. Worse, students have backslid in reading over the last two years.

While median math and reading scores have stayed about the same over the last decade, achievement gaps are increasing. Since 2009 scores for the lowest 10% of students fell by about as much as they improved for the top 10%. The 90th percentile of eighth graders in math scored about four points higher while the bottom tenth scored five points lower.

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