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Ruth King

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MARILYN BARNEWALL REVIEWS LINDA GOUDSMIT’S BOOK “DEAR AMERICA: WHO’S DRIVING THE BUS”

By on May 20th, 2018

One of the best books I’ve read this past year is “Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus?” by Linda Goudsmit (Contrapoint Publishing). I would recommend it to anyone who wants to understand school shootings, millions of abortions, fatherless homes, the Deep State, today’s social chaos, and just about any other new millennium societal problem. I wish I had read the book before I married… certainly before I had children. It would be great input for a first-time voter, too.

As Goudsmit explains it, the “Bus” is you. It’s me. It’s the narcissistic amoral teenager who killed 10 and injured 10 people in Santa Fe, Texas last week; it is the narcissistic amoral teenager who has been charged with 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the February 14 shootings in Parkland, FL. Donald Trump, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and all familiar political names have a “Bus.” Each of the treasonous Deep State participants who think they know better than the people what’s good for America has a “Bus.” It is who is carried on each of our busses that make the Never Trumpers think they have the right to undo the results of a democratically-elected President and try to force him by crook and hook to leave office – a coup of which any third world dictator would approve. The “Bus” is each individual liberal who thinks decisions are best made with emotions rather than logical facts and truth — and the “Bus” is each conservative who disagrees.

Goudsmit explains that each of us carries within us the personal hurts and emotional traumas suffered at various times of our lives – mostly from childhood. These personalities, buried so deeply within each of us that they are often totally unknown to us, are passengers on our individual busses. We are unaware that these personalities live within us. When life circumstances create a mirror-like threat that shouts “danger” to one of these trauma-induced personalities from childhood, they often try to take control of the way in which we respond to the perceived threat. If our adult identity chooses to let the emotionally traumatized childhood personality dictate our response to the perceived threat, a child is driving our bus.

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Burning Tires in Gaza, Flaming Newsprint Worldwide Nidra Poller *****

By on May 20th, 2018

It was all so predictable: Billowing clouds of dense black smoke in Gaza, satisfaction in technicolor at the inauguration of the American embassy in Jerusalem. With varying degrees of sarcasm, on a familiar scale from naïve humanism to virulent Jew hatred, commentators commented on the contrasted images. Forcibly to the detriment of Israel. The Jews dance while Gaza burns and bleeds. Bloodbath in Gaza, broad grins in Jerusalem. Indecent! Provocation! And they deliberately chose this highly sensitive date—confluence of the Nakba and the first day of Ramadan—to dangle the red meat of their triumph in front of starving Gazans.

I don’t waste my time analyzing this discourse detail by detail. I did it in September 2000 [Al Dura: Long Range Ballistic Myth, Troubled Dawn of the 21st Century] and have followed the consequences over the years and to date. And I dare believe that my work, and that of other fearless thinkers, has not been in vain. If the adversaries pursue the same strategy and the unthinking commentators respond with the same half-truths and wholesale lies, the results on the ground are no longer in their favor. And that’s what counts.

There is another way to read those iconic images. The Gazan March of Return appears in all its nullity. Hate-filled individuals choke on their own smoke, blinded by their own stupidity, reveling in their self-imposed immobility. The very image of the slingshot-wielding shabab with his head wrapped in a keffieh is lost in the black smoke of burning tires. In civilized societies tires are made for vehicles that transport people, goods, and livestock. The invention of the wheel stands as a turning point in human history. The retrograde March of Return turns that potential for movement into volcanic self-destruction. And Israel doesn’t have the right to bask in the light of its accomplishments?

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Outside the Defensible Perimeter By Karin McQuillan

By on May 20th, 2018

Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. Three types of people live in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens.

If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.

It is not even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country. Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going through the circular motions of catch and release.

They have high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border, they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.

We are the deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other. Disposable.

The reason I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’ stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families, strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary. They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals across, because they have seen it happen.

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Blind to Reality By Marilyn Penn

By on May 20th, 2018

Comedian Tig Notaro, interviewed in the NYTimes, had this to say about the possiblity of disgraced men of influence returning to their various jobs: “If a janitor was so great at cleaning the building but also tended to masturbate in front of people, would the people at that building be like, “yes, he masturbated, but I’ve never seen anyone clean so thoroughly, and I was just wondering when he’s going to get his job back, he so good at it.” No it would be “that’s not acceptable.” It’s fame and power that people are blinded by.” (NYT 5/19)

Exactly so Tig, but you have it backwards. In fact, there were no janitors who were outed by the women of MeToo or TimesUp and there’s a simple reason for that. Women were looking for the men who had the fame , power or money – the important thing Tig omitted from her list. In fact, women who hung around these men, sometimes for years, were not blinded by their desire for a piece of one or all of these commodities – they were willfully motivated to preserve their proximity no matter what . We are talking mostly about professional women in publishing, movies, t.v. entertainment – not battered wives with a handful of kids and no marketable skills. The two women who claimed that Eric Schneiderman beat them, choked them, degraded them and made perverse sexual demands, voluntarily kept coming back to the Attorney-General, unwilling to let go of whatever gratification they derived from being in his aura. The women who sat and watched Louis C.K masturbate were voluntarily in his apartment, not out on the sidewalk as passers-by. The young men who purportedly succumbed to James Levine were in his orbit hoping to further their careers as were most of the accusers of Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, James Levine etc.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

NO POSTINGS UNTIL MONDAY MAY 21, 2018

By on May 17th, 2018

OUT OF TOWN

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MEDIA Comments turned off

MY SAY: HEADLINES AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

By on May 16th, 2018

1.I Helped Start the Gaza Protests. I Don’t Regret It. by Ahmed Abu Ratima, New York Times

2. A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem Michelle Goldberg, New York Times

3. Trump’s Failure in Jerusalem New York Times

4. A Hope ‘Each Bullet Was Justified’: Israelis Reflect on Gaza Deaths A day after their soldiers killed 60 mostly unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis were defiant, defensive or blasé. By ISABEL KERSHNER and DAVID M. HALBFINGER

5.Amid Debate and Violence, Trump Delivers Embassy Victory to Christian Base By ELIZABETH DIAS

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Sweden in Free Fall by Judith Bergman

By on May 16th, 2018

If it is considered ‘objectionable’ in the West to talk about the factual consequences of migration, in Sweden it is now viewed as a crime.

The kind of ‘integration’ that the mosque in Växjö is reportedly spreading to the local Muslim inhabitants is that Muslims are urged not to participate in the Christmas celebration of “kuffars” [a derogatory term for ‘disbelievers’], and Jews are, of course, mentioned as the enemies of Allah. The mosque’s school uses Saudi Arabian school curricula, and encourages women not to dress in ‘Western clothes’.

“Silence has become an established norm in certain groups of inhabitants” in these areas…. there is pressure from relatives and religious communities, not to contact authorities, but to use the local alternative systems, such as the mosque, instead. Sometimes, the local criminal gangs even tell the residents to call them, instead of the police, to minimize the presence of police in the area. — BRÅ, the Swedish Crime Prevention Council

It increasingly appears that it will be Sweden that integrates into Islamic culture.

In 2017, a Swedish police report, “Utsatta områden 2017”, (“Vulnerable Areas 2017”, commonly known as “no-go zones” or lawless areas) showed that there are 61 such areas in Sweden. They encompass 200 criminal networks, consisting of an estimated 5,000 criminals. Twenty-three of those areas were especially critical: children as young as 10 had been involved in serious crimes there, including ones involving weapons and drugs. Most of the inhabitants were non-Western, mainly Muslim, immigrants.

A new report “The Relationship with the Judiciary in Socially Vulnerable Areas” from BRÅ (Brottsförebyggande Rådet), the Swedish Crime Prevention Council, shows that more than half of the inhabitants of these areas — around 500,000 people — think that criminals affect people in the areas by scaring people from appearing as witnesses, from calling the police, from moving freely, and from intervening when witnessing vandalism. Residents fear repercussions from the local criminals, not only against themselves but also against family members.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

NBC News swings, hits self by Scott Johnson

By on May 16th, 2018

What is it with NBC News? If you thought they’d hit rock bottom, you may have to revisit the question with a look at national reporter Heidi Przybyla’s piece on the Gatestone Institute last month: “John Bolton presided over anti-Muslim think tank.”

This is an old-fashioned hit piece. The headline reveals the true object of the hit. John Bolton drives the left absolutely nuts. He has their number and he can call them out with great skill. This they cannot abide. Bolton was the target of Pryzbyla’s piece; Gatestone was just the club that she took to hand.

Nina Rosenwald is the founder and president of Gatestone. At the invitation of Lawrence Kadish, John and I spoke to a group including Nina in New York in 2005. She is a formidable force in her own right and one of the nicest people with whom I have had the good fortune to cross paths as a result of my work for Power Line. Meeting her was a great kick.

Since its founding, Nina has made Gatestone a go-to source of news and analysis from reporters and knowledgeable observers such as Khaled Abu Toameh, Bruce Bawer, Soeren Kern, Douglas Murray, Richard Kemp, Guy Milliere, Alan Dershowitz, and many others. We feature their work almost every day in our Picks here. It is great stuff.

Today, to take just one example, Gatestone has posted Richard Kemp’s “Smoke & mirrors: Six weeks of violence on the Gaza border.” It is more informative than the sum total of everything else NBC News has on offer today.

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Letitia Chai’s Barren Ivy League Education By Dennis Prager

By on May 16th, 2018

The most remarkable thing about the title of this column is that not one reader will think it’s a joke. That, my friends, is further proof of the low esteem in which most Americans hold our universities.

The Left has rendered our universities, in the description of Harvard professor Steven Pinker, laughingstocks.

As reported in the Cornell Daily Sun and then around the world, this is what actually happened last week at Cornell University, one of our “Ivy League” universities: Senior Letitia Chai presented a trial run of her scholar senior thesis wearing a blue button-down shirt and cutoff jean shorts. Her professor, Rebekah Maggor, asked her, “is that really what you would wear?”

The professor went on to say that Chai’s shorts were “too short”—that as a speaker she was making a “statement” with her clothes. As reported in the newspaper, “The class does not have a formalized dress code, but asks students to ‘dress appropriately for the persona (they) will present.’”

Offended and hurt by the professor’s suggestion, Chai decided that she would present her thesis in even less clothing. She appeared before her fellow students in her shirt and shorts and then removed them. As she stripped down to a bra and panties, she explained: “I am more than Asian. I am more than a woman. I am more than Letitia Chai. I am a human being, and I ask you to take this leap of faith, to take this next step—or rather, this next strip—in our movement and to join me in revealing to each other and to seeing each other for who we truly are: members of the human race. . . . We are so triumphant, but most importantly, we are equals.”

Twenty-eight of the 44 audience members followed suit, stripping down.

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Mueller Year One: The Real Heroes in Journalism By Julie Kelly

By on May 16th, 2018

The American media are broken.

Part one of a two-part series.

After eight years of feeding the Obama cult of personality—swooning over his suave personal traits, covering for mistakes and misconduct, applying little if any scrutiny to his policies or performance—the news media suddenly developed a keen interest in presidential accountability and integrity on November 9, 2016.

Since the day Donald Trump won the election over their strenuous objections, the media have been out to get the man they deem unworthy of the presidency. They have teamed up with the Left of and the NeverTrump Right to campaign for his removal from office. (Victor Davis Hanson recently documented #TheResistance’s full list of tactics.) Trump’s family, aides, and cabinet members have been harassed and reviled in despicable ways.

Reporters eagerly transcribe salacious stories pitched by unnamed sources to incite an already inflamed body politic. Events are twisted in grotesque ways to fuel the anti-Trump hysteria. (Look no further than this week’s reporting on the Hamas-led “protest” during the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.)

At the same time, the American media arrogantly portray themselves as martyrs—even heroes—for acting as bulwarks against a purportedly devious, inept and cruel administration. The self-puffery on display at last month’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner sounded like war veterans commending each other for bravery on the battlefield, although veterans are far more modest than your average cable news anchor or political pundit.

But it took the self-assured comfort that comes from getting too comfortable with such puffery to draw the media out, unwittingly perhaps, at that very event. For it was at the White House Correspondents dinner that they acknowledged their sycophancy to #TheResistance, their gullibility in being snookered by Obama loyalists, their flat-on-their-back willingness to be used by anti-Trump pimps.

CNN won an award for its January 2017 report about President-elect Trump being briefed on the bogus Steele dossier. While we now know the story was improperly leaked by former Director of National Intelligence (and virulent Trump foe) James Clapper to shotgun the Trump-Russia collusion plotline days before the inauguration—and the celebrated CNN reporters did little more than regurgitate talking points spoon-fed to them by political operatives (one is known to have close ties to Fusion GPS)—the network was applauded for its “depth of reporting.”

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