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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, POLITICS Comments turned off

Global Warming Alarmism Deflated By The Dem Debate

By on October 17th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/17/global

As we noted Wednesday, this week’s Democratic presidential debate was unconstitutional, all about radicalizing American society. But there was one positive development. Screeching about global warming was limited.

While a large slice of America sees this as a feature, the Democrats’ allies in the press thought it was a bug.

“CNN slammed for asking about Ellen, but not climate change, at Democratic debate,” howled USA Today.

“Ellen DeGeneres’ friendship with former President George W. Bush made it onto the agenda but climate change and immigration did not,” moaned Newsweek.

“Democrats have spent more than 90 minutes so far talking about health care — about twice as much time as they’ve spent discussing either foreign policy or climate change,” said Vox.

Even the candidates themselves groused.

“Three hours and no questions tonight about climate, housing, or immigration,” tweeted former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who believes “climate change is an existential threat.” 

Sen. Kamala Harris, apparently looking over Castro’s shoulder as he tittered on Twitter — or maybe it was the other way around — tweeted “Three hours. Not one question about the climate crisis.”

“An entire debate without a single question on climate change — the existential issue facing not just our country, but our entire planet,” Tom Steyer, the billionaire who made a good portion of his fortune investing in coal and other fossil fuels, grumbled in an overheated tweet.

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BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

The South Bronx School That Outscores the Suburbs A new book profiles the rigors and achievements of New York City’s Success Academy. Ray Domanico

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/harlem-success-academy-charter-school

How the Other Half Learns, by Robert Pondiscio (Avery, 384 pp., $27)

Robert Pondiscio’s new book, How the Other Half Learns, chronicles what he observed in the year he spent in Success Academy Bronx I Charter School. Success Academy is New York City and State’s largest and fastest-growing charter school network and also, by far, the most successful—earning it and its founder Eva Moskowitz the disdain of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a teachers’ union partisan. Pondiscio addresses the criticisms—some fair, some not—that Success has received, while offering a vivid picture of daily interactions among administrators, teachers, students, and parents, showing the culture of the school in action.

Two things struck me in reading his account: first, Success Academy’s design and methods are pragmatic and firmly grounded in the here and now; second, Success Academy requires a tremendous amount of work from all associated with it—staff, students, and parents. The school’s detailed design is tailored to the needs of its students, and teachers and administrators are expected to implement it thoroughly. This attention to planning sets Success apart from other schools—much more so than its admissions policies, which have been the subject of intense controversy.

Despite its reputation for rigor, Success is not trying to recreate a mythical golden age of Victorian-style instruction. Supporters and critics of the network might be surprised to learn that its pedagogical orientation is broadly progressive. Founder Eva Moskowitz describes her schools as “Catholic school on the outside, Bank Street on the inside.” Pondiscio notes that the school sometimes fails to live up to all the ideals of “Bank Street”—a stand-in for progressive education—but that its math instruction is “easily the most ‘constructivist’ aspect of its curriculum; at least at the elementary level.” In math, Success reaches seemingly impossible levels of achievement on the state’s annual exam. Progressive or not, though, the school is certainly defined by hard work, from the two weeks of staff preparation prior to the first day of school through the last day before summer break. No one—administrator, teacher, student, or parent—gets off the hook for student outcomes.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald:Gigabytes of Virtue-Signaling Eager to win praise from homeless advocates, guilt-ridden tech CEOs pony up with donations—and disparage capitalism.

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/homelessness-tech-industry

Tech mogul Marc Benioff has been winning media accolades for his declaration that “capitalism, as we know it, is dead.” The billionaire founder and CEO of Salesforce, a cloud-based customer-relations company, has launched an advertising blitz promoting his new book, Trailblazer, which calls for a “more fair, equal and sustainable capitalism,” as Benioff put it in a New York Times op-ed on Monday. This “new capitalism” would not “just take from society but truly give back and have a positive impact,” Benioff maintains.

Benioff’s belief that providing products to willing consumers “takes” from society is apparently shared by the 181 CEOs of the Business Roundtable, who rejected the traditional principle of corporate shareholder responsibility this August in favor of “stakeholder responsibility.” Benioff suggests that the Securities and Exchange Commission (or, as he put it in his Times op-ed, the Security and Exchange Commission) start requiring corporations to document how their actions affect this amorphous and infinitely expandable set of “stakeholders.”

Fortunately for anyone seeking to evaluate what the new capitalism might entail, Benioff has provided a concrete example of a CEO solving “social challenges”—the challenge in this case being San Francisco’s festering homeless problem. Salesforce is headquartered in San Francisco and is the city’s biggest employer. In 2018, Benioff, in conjunction with San Francisco’s most fearsome advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness, put a new tax on the local ballot to double the taxpayer dollars already going to the city’s main homelessness agency. Proposition C would impose an extra 0.5 percent gross-receipts sales tax on companies with more than $50 million in annual revenue, raising an estimated $250 million to $300 million, all of which would be funneled into the homelessness-industrial complex.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Robert Spencer:Loyola Marymount University: It’s “Islamophobic” to be “Counter-Jihad” If you don’t like the prospect of getting blown up by a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar,” you’re a hateful bigot.

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/loyola-marymount-university-its-islamophobic-be-robert-spencer/

The Los Angeles Loyolan tells us that it is Loyola Marymount University’s “award-winning, student-run news organization,” and it is not surprising that it would have won awards from the people who give out awards these days, because like all campus papers, it is a reliable guide to how deeply the far-Left indoctrination that most professors are conducting is taking root in their unwitting students. One of those students is the Assistant Opinion Editor for the Los Angeles Loyolan, a young man (I know that because he helpfully informs us that his pronouns are “He/Him/His”) named Cristobal Spielmann, who is, like all well-informed, duly woke students today, horrified at the prospect that someone would be so “racist” as to oppose jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women and others.

Inside Higher Ed may weep bitter crocodile tears over my noting the ominous assumptions behind Spielmann’s words, as the young fellow is only a child, but he is a child putting his views out in the public forum, and consequently must deal with public dissent from his views – at least until he and his fellow fascists secure power.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Is America Becoming Sinicized? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 17th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/is-america-becoming-sinicized/

“All these reasons and more explain why there wasn’t a single major Western politician who warned the world of a frightening, Chinese-dominated future — one in which the West turned into China rather than China into the West. The single figure who finally issued such a warning, brash Donald Trump — without prior military or political experience — was as loudly and publicly damned as he was privately and quietly admired for doing so.”

A little over 40 years ago, Chinese Communist strongman and reformer Deng Xiaoping began 15 years of sweeping economic reforms. They were designed to end the disastrous, even murderous planned economy of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.

The results of Deng’s revolution astonished the world. In four decades, China went from a backward basket case to the second-largest economy on the planet. It lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese into the global middle class.

Deng’s revolution came at a cost of terrible environmental damage, the rampant destruction of local communities and continued political repression. A more efficient economy empowered dictatorship.

Abroad, China systematically violated every tenet of international trade and commerce. It stole copyrights and patents. It ran up huge trade surpluses. It dumped products at below the cost of production to hook international customers. It threatened critics with boycotts, divestments and expulsions. It manipulated its currency. It demanded technology transfers from companies doing business in China. It created a vast espionage network in Western countries to steal technology. And it increasingly bullied and threatened its Asian neighbors.

Such criminality abroad and such repression at home was contextualized and mostly excused by Western nations.

U.S. foreign policy toward China seemed to be based on the belief that the more China modernized and the more affluent its citizens became, the more inevitable Chinese political freedom would be.

Supposedly a free-market China would drop its communist past to become a Westernized democracy such as Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. Once China fully joined the family of successful, law-abiding nations, it would empower Western freedoms and help create a stable international order.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Rural Voters’ Pride and the Left’s Prejudice Progressives say the poor go ‘against their interests’ but don’t mind when the rich favor high taxes. By Crispin Sartwell

By on October 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-voters-pride-and-the-lefts-prejudice-11571263966

They’re at it again, trying to find the reasons rural Americans “vote against their own interests”—in this case why people out here still support President Trump (though folks I know are wavering). The question was classically formulated by Thomas Frank in his 2004 book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” But it’s an application of a basic human thought process.

I tell you my views. You disagree with me. I believe my opinion is the one every rational person would come to in an objective assessment of the facts. It’s irrational to disagree with me, especially because I went to a good college and you didn’t, and especially because you are working against your own interests as people like me define them. So what needs explaining is how you could be so irrational.

Sheer genetic redneck boneheadedness is a possibility. If I am feeling generous toward you, I’ll conclude that it isn’t your fault. You are being manipulated by malevolent forces—the surviving Koch brother, Fox News, the Russians, Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed. Those are the targets I was aiming at in the first place—after all, who needs to grapple seriously with the views of ignorant, manipulated rubes? After I figure out how to fix Fox News, I can work on fixing you so that you vote according to your interests, as I enumerate them.

What’s missing from this analysis? Social-justice leftists understand the interests of nonrich people in purely material terms. A poor person who isn’t a strong advocate of food stamps or public housing is regarded as plainly irrational. There’s no accounting for intangible qualities such as self-respect, which a particular person or subculture might value highly. By contrast, progressives don’t regard it as irrational when a wealthy person favors high taxes or other policies that would hurt his bottom line. This account of what is and what isn’t in people’s interests, and who is and who isn’t rational, conveniently always militates toward the future to which progressives are already committed.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

NANCY PELOSI: “THERE WILL BE NO VOTE ON IMPEACHMENT”…BY LIZ SHIELD

By on October 16th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/16/morning-greatness-pelosi-says-there-will-be-no-impeachment-inquiry-vote/

THERE WILL BE NO VOTE

When I watch Pelosi’s highly-choreographed press conferences, I get the feeling she’s trying to convince herself of her righteousness just as much as she is trying to get the public to buy in to the Democrats’ plan.

“There’s no requirement that we have a vote, and so at this time we will not be having a vote,” Pelosi said. “We’re not here to call bluffs — we’re here to find the truth, to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not a game for us. This is deadly serious.”

How serious? As serious as the reasons the Democrats needed to impeach Trump after the sensational Mueller Report was released? What happened to those reasons because we were told those were DEADLY serious too.

There will be no vote, not because of any principles, but because Pelosi doesn’t want to put her vulnerable members on the record and she may not have the votes. Why hold a vote that could threaten her majority when there’s no downside and she will not be held accountable with negative media coverage for breaking from the norms and traditions of impeachment. (Why is Trump so dangerous for “breaking norms” but Pelosi’s norm-breaking is glossed right over?) Her clown Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) will continue to leak strategic information to the media to help damage the president and ignore the fact that, despite chest thumping about the seriousness of manufactured charges, this is entirely hidden from the public . There is no downside for the Democrats to hold a secret, hidden tribunal to impeach the elected President of the United States. It’s that simple and that’s why it is happening.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rep. Mark Meadows demands Adam Schiff call whistleblower to testify By Charles Creitz

By on October 16th, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mark-meadows-calls-for-adam-schiff-whistleblower-testify

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., must call the initial Trump-Ukraine whistleblower to testify, according to Rep. Mark Meadows.

“Obviously, tonight, Nancy Pelosi decided to not put a resolution on the floor which would hopefully start the process of it being fair,” Meadows claimed Tuesday on “Hannity.”

“Jim [Jordan] and I have been now in over 40 hours of deposition and what we’re finding is that Adam Schiff only wants to have witnesses who will give the response that he hopes they will give — and even at that it’s a swing and a miss.”

Pointing to reporting earlier this month that the whistleblower allegedly had contact with Schiff’s staff prior to filing his complaint, Meadows said that individual must answer for those claims.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Top Diplomat Testified That Obama Admin, Not International Community, Orchestrated Ukraine Prosecutor’s Firing Sean Davis

By on October 16th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/16/top-diplomat-testified-that-obama-admin-not-international-community-orchestrated-ukraine-prosecutors-firing/

The Obama administration, not the international community, orchestrated the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating a company connected to Joe Biden’s son, a top diplomat testified to Congress yesterday.
October 16, 2019 By Sean Davis

A top U.S. diplomat and expert on Ukraine testified to Congress yesterday that the Obama administration — with former Vice President Joe Biden as its point man — orchestrated the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company connected to the Biden family, sources familiar with the testimony told The Federalist.

The testimony of George Kent, a State Department official who works on the agency’s Ukraine portfolio, directly contradicts claims that the Obama administration was merely following the lead of the so-called international community in demanding the firing of Viktor Shokin, a controversial Ukrainian prosecutor who was reportedly investigating Burisma, a global energy company long suspected of corruption and money laundering. In 2014, Burisma paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, tens of thousands of dollars to sit on its board despite the younger Biden’s complete lack of expertise or professional experience running a multi-national oil and gas concern.

Kent told lawmakers on Tuesday that the Obama administration spearheaded the efforts to have Shokin removed from his position as the top federal prosecutor in Ukraine. Kent said the international community — namely the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western nations within the European Union — were deferential to U.S. directives on the matter. At a 2018 event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, Joe Biden — who was tasked by then-President Barack Obama to lead the U.S. government’s efforts in Ukraine — bragged about threatening to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the Ukrainian government refused to fire Shokin.

“I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars,” Biden said. “I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Volker Testimony Destroys Narrative Of Diplomatic Turmoil Following Ukraine Phone Call Mollie Hemingway

By on October 16th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/16/volker-testimony-destroys-narrative-of-diplomatic-turmoil-following-ukraine-phone-call/

Former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker told lawmakers under oath that he was never asked to do anything wrong by any member of the administration, including President Trump.

The United States’ former envoy to Ukraine told congressional investigators neither country’s officials were concerned about anything in the July 25 phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until a campaign of leaks alleging abuse of power began surfacing in late August. Far from the media-fed narrative of officials being physically shaken by the call, Kurt Volker told lawmakers no one had expressed any concern to him about it, or about later allegations that requests for Ukraine’s help in corruption investigations was improper.

While Volker was tasked with managing the relationship between the Trump administration and the new government in Ukraine, he only heard that the Biden family had been mentioned in the phone call when anti-Trump bureaucrats began leaking classified details of the phone conversation to media outlets in late August.

Volker testified October 3 for nearly 10 hours behind closed doors after resigning his unpaid post as the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine. Democratic lawmakers leaked portions of his testimony and text messages to paint a misleading narrative that he had confirmed an alleged quid pro quo of military aid for investigation of Ukrainian corruption.

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