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Ruth King

LABOR DEPARTMENT STATISTIC: EPIC DROP IN UNEMPLOYMENT IN 2017

According to the Department of Labor, the number of workers receiving unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in 44 years at the end of 2017. The Thursday report showed that 1.87 million people received unemployment insurance benefits in the last week of December, marking the lowest seasonally-adjusted mark since December of 1973. In most states, benefits are available for up to 26 weeks.

The lower rate of unemployment benefits recipients indicates an improving economy and that fewer people are being subjected to layoffs. In recent months, the total number of unemployment claims came close to the lowest levels in many years. In the first week of 2018, claims rose 11,000 to 261,000, according to the same report.

While economic forecasters had expected employment claims to descend only slightly from the previous week’s level of 250,000, which was the highest since November, they rose to their highest level since September, when the numbers were inflated by hurricane damage to states in the Deep South. The Department of Labor said that damage related to hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are affecting claims in those places.

However, new unemployment claims are still below the level that would suggest a spike in unemployment. Economists suggest that it should be about 300,000.
With the unemployment at the lowest rate since 2000 (4.1 percent), job creation by the economy has been strong, recently. Joblessness could thus decline even further this year. Over the last three months, job gains have averaged 204,000 for each month. While unemployment claims fell during the end of Barack Obama’s tenure in office, they spiked during the financial crisis and reached levels not seen in the mid-2000s. During Trump’s first year in office, unemployment has steadily declined.

Feminists Are Ditching ‘Pussyhats’ Because They’re Racist and Transphobic These objections are ridiculous. By Katherine Timpf

More and more feminists are now ditching those pink, anti-Trump “pussyhats” on the grounds that they’re actually racist and transphobic.

According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, many activists have concerns that the hat “excludes and is offensive to transgender women and gender nonbinary people who don’t have typical female genitalia and to women of color because their genitals are more likely to be brown than pink.”

Honestly? This is so stupid that I don’t even know where to start.

As for the color issue, the Pussyhat Project (yes — that’s a thing) states on its official website that the hats’ pink color has nothing to do with “genitals” — it’s simply that the color pink “is considered a very female color representing caring, compassion, and love.”

In other words: This complaint is ridiculous, and based on an objectively inaccurate assumption. (Of course, to be fair, many social-justice activists would actually consider the claim that pink is “a very female color” to be an equally offensive explanation. For example: A campaign at Syracuse University last year encouraged students to file a report on campus if they were to see any signs that were “color-coded pink for girls and blue for boys,” calling such material “abhorrent and intolerable.” I’m actually kind of shocked that an organization as progressive as the Pussyhat Project didn’t know this.)

As for transphobia? Well, first of all, the website addresses that:

Some people have questioned whether the very name “pussyhats” means our movement is saying only people with vaginas can be feminists. No way! Trans people and intersex people and people with any genital anatomy can be feminists and wear Pussyhats™. Feminists who wear Pussyhats™ fight transmisogyny and support ALL women.

Why Have We Let Actors Become Our Moral Guides? Those in what was once a disreputable profession have come to be worshiped by the public at large. By Jonah Goldberg

There’s a great scene in the wonderful 1982 movie My Favorite Year, which is set in 1954. Peter O’Toole plays a semi-washed-up actor named Alan Swann, famous for swashbuckling roles. For reasons too complicated to explain here, Swann tries to shimmy down the side of a building using a fire hose. He ends up dangling just below a cocktail party on a balcony. Two stockbrokers are chatting when one of them notices Swann swinging below them. “I think Alan Swann is beneath us!” he exclaims.

The second stockbroker replies: “Of course he’s beneath us. He’s an actor.”

It may be hard for some people to get the joke these days, but for most of human history, actors were considered low-class. They were akin to carnies, grifters, hookers, and other riffraff.

In ancient Rome, actors were often slaves. In feudal Japan, Kabuki actors were sometimes available to the theatergoers as prostitutes — a practice not uncommon among theater troupes in the American Wild West. In 17th century England, France, and America, theaters were widely considered dens of iniquity, turpitude, and crapulence. Under Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan dictatorship, the theaters were forced to close to improve moral hygiene. The Puritans of New England did likewise. A ban on theaters in Connecticut imposed in 1800 stayed on the books until 1952.

Partly out of a desire develop a wartime economy, partly out of disdain for the grubbiness of the stage, the first Continental Congress in 1774 proclaimed, “We will, in our several stations, . . . discountenance and discourage every species of extravagance and dissipation, especially all horse-racing, and all kinds of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shews [sic], plays, and other expensive diversions and entertainments.”

Needless to say, times have changed. And I suppose I have to say they’ve changed for the better. But that’s a pretty low bar. I don’t think acting is a dishonorable profession, and I’m steadfastly opposed to banning plays, musicals, movies, and TV shows.

But in our collective effort to correct the social stigmas of the past, can anyone deny that we’ve overshot the mark?

Watch the TV series Inside the Actors Studio sometime. It’s an almost religious spectacle of ecstatic obsequiousness and shameless sycophancy. Host James Lipton acts like some ancient Greek priest given an audience with Zeus, coming up just shy of washing the feet of actors with tears of orgiastic joy. I mean, I like Tom Hanks, too. But I’m not sure starring in Turner & Hooch (one of my favorite movies) bestows oracular moral authority.

US Ambassador to Israel Stands Up to Terrorists Daniel Greenfield

Anyone who follows the news from Israel knows how this usually goes.

Rabbi Raziel Shevach, a 32-year-old father of six, died of his wounds following a shooting attack near Havat Gilad in Samaria this evening. The rabbi leaves behind a wife, 4 daughters and 2 sons, the younger of which is an 8-month-old baby.

Ilana Shevach, mother of Rabbi Raziel Shevach who was murdered in Tuesday’s terrorist attack near Havat Gilad in Samaria, told Channel 20 about her son who left behind a wife and six children.

“Raziel is our oldest son. We have four sons – Raziel, Barel, Matanel and Eldan, and a daughter, Ateret. He was married to Yael, an amazing woman, and they have six children. He was a humble child. From what I heard today at the funeral, I did not believe how much of a righteous man he was,” the mother said.

“My husband was listening to the news on the radio. I’m in mourning, my father died a month ago and we are not watching television these days. He turned on the radio and said, ‘Ilana, there was an attack at Havat Gilad.’ So I told him I was going to call Yael and Raziel. My cell phone was in the kitchen, and then I heard on the news a voice saying, ‘They shot me, shot me in the neck,’ (from Rabbi Shevach’s call to Magen David Adom –ed.) and I recognized his voice.”

That’s the cue for the State Department serving as ambassador to mumble a generic condolence, praise the Palestinian Authority for keeping the peace, and call for all sides to show restraint.

But it’s not business as usual anymore.
David M. Friedman
✔ @USAmbIsrael
An Israeli father of six was killed last night in cold blood by Palestinian terrorists. Hamas praises the killers and PA laws will provide them financial rewards. Look no further to why there is no peace.
Praying for the bereaved Shevach family.

You can see why J Street did everything it could to stop his nomination. But the anti-Israel hate group failed miserably. Though it did manage some entertaining performances from Cory Booker, Al Franken and Brian Schatz.

For the first time, American diplomats are standing up to the terrorists, instead of aiding and abetting him. And they’re challenging the Palestinian Authority/Fatah’s support for the terrorist attacks.

DACA: The Immigration Trojan Horse How the original DREAM act was designed to covered 90% of the illegal alien population in the US. Michael Cutler

Today DACA (Deferred Action-Childhood Arrivals) is a major issue for the Trump administration, with politicians from both parties attempting to persuade President Trump to provide lawful status for the illegal aliens who had been granted temporary lawful status in an ill-conceived and, indeed, illegal program that had been implemented by President Obama, a politically adept manipulator of language and a master of deception.

On December 18th I participated in an interview on Fox News to discuss DACA and the fact that according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) legalizing the estimated population of “Dreamers” would cost an estimated $26 billion.

On January 9th President Trump conducted a bi-partisan White House meeting to consider a compromise that would provide lawful immigration status for the approximately 800,000 illegal aliens who enrolled in DACA. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Trump seeks a “bill of love” from Congress for “Dreamers”

The “deal” would require funding a border wall, ending “chain migration” and perhaps, making E-Verify mandatory. Of course without an adequate number of ICE agents, mandatory E-Verify would be of limited value since unscrupulous employers could simply hire illegal aliens “off the books” and without agents to conduct field investigations these criminally deceptive employment practices would not be discovered.

President Trump’s previous call for hiring an additional 10,000 ICE agents was not mentioned by the participants in the meeting. This is extremely worrisome.

A lack of effective interior enforcement of our immigration laws, has for decades, undermined the integrity of the immigration system. In fact the 9/11 Commission cited the lack of interior enforcement as a key vulnerability that terrorists, and not only the 9/11 hijackers, had exploited to embed themselves in the U.S. in preparation to carrying out deadly attacks.

DACA was a travesty foisted on America and Americans by the Obama administration, from its inception, was a scam based on lies and false suppositions. Legalizing these 800,000 illegal aliens would, in point of fact, legitimize Obama’s illegal action.

Did Obama Tip off Iran to Israeli Plan to Take Out World’s Premier Terrorist? A Kuwaiti paper reveals another monstrous Obama betrayal. Ari Lieberman

We thought the Obama administration could stoop no lower when it was revealed that the administration transferred $1.7 billion in untraceable cash to the Islamic Republic as ransom for the release of four Americans hostages they were holding. We were wrong. In its twilight weeks, the administration gave its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. According to experts familiar with the transaction, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production of at least 10 nuclear bombs.

If you thought that the administration’s betrayal of America’s security could go no further, you were wrong. Last month Politico, not known as a bastion of conservatism, published a bombshell 50-page exposé detailing the Obama administration’s efforts to delay, hinder and ultimately shut down a highly successful DEA operation – codenamed Project Cassandra – aimed at tracking and thwarting Hezbollah drug trafficking, arms trafficking and money laundering schemes. As a result, Hezbollah continued to import drugs into the United States, continued to provide anti-U.S. insurgents with deadly EFPs and continued to launder drug money to the tune of billions.

If you thought that was the end of the story, you were wrong. It seems that with each passing day, another layer of deceit and betrayal committed by the Obama administration is uncovered. The latest Obama scandal involves a reported effort by the administration to thwart an Israeli operation to liquidate Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported that three years ago, Israel was on the verge of liquidating Soleimani near Damascus but the Obama administration tipped off Teheran of Israel’s plans. Soleimani is no ordinary general. He is arguably the world’s premier terrorist and is commander of Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for its overseas mischief-making. Where there is drugs, misery and conflict, it’s a sure bet that Soleimani and his Quds Force are involved.

Germany: Berlin’s Police Problem by Stefan Frank

According to reports, frequent, habitual and sometimes criminal misconduct by Berlin’s police cadets, especially those with a migrant background, is rampant in the Berlin-Spandau police academy.

Recently, an Arab intern, working at a Berlin police precinct, copied confidential data from investigations into a Lebanese organized-crime clan, and sent it to unidentified recipients.

Prior to Anis Amri’s jihadist attack on the Berlin Christmas market, where he murdered 12 people, Berlin’s police had allowed Amri to move around freely, even though they had numerous chances to detain him on charges of terrorism or a range of other serious crimes. Other government agencies requested that the Berlin police put Amri under permanent surveillance and inform them of his whereabouts, but were left unanswered.

One year after the Berlin Christmas market massacre, Germans need to be concerned about the state of their police forces, as well as the politicians who are supposed to be overseeing law enforcement.

Berlin’s local government has come under fire after reports of frequent, habitual and sometimes criminal misconduct by Berlin’s police cadets. According to the reports, such misconduct, especially by those with a migrant background, is rampant in the Berlin-Spandau police academy.

The scandal was revealed when a private WhatsApp voicemail was leaked to the public. The author, a paramedic who had given classes in the academy, complained:

“Today I held a class at the police academy. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The classroom looked like a pigsty. Half of the class [are] Arabs and Turks, rude as hell. Dumb. Could not express themselves. I was about to expel two or three of them because they disturbed the class or were actually sleeping. German colleagues related that some of them had threatened to beat them. … [Some students] speak virtually no German. I am shocked, and afraid of them. The teachers … believe that when they expel them, they will destroy the cars on the street. … These are not our colleagues, this is the enemy among us. I have never before felt such hatred expressed in the classrooms. … They throw punches during class — you cannot imagine that.”

The Islamization of Germany in 2017: Part I January – June 2017 by Soeren Kern

“As a refugee, it is difficult to find a girlfriend.” — Asif M., a 26-year-old asylum seeker from Pakistan, responding to charges that he had raped one woman and attempted to rape five others in Berlin.

Sudanese migrants, many of whom were allowed to enter Germany without having their fingerprints taken, have “created a business model” out of social security fraud. — Police in Lower Saxony.

Only 6,500 refugees of the more than one million who have been allowed into Germany during the past two years are enrolled in work training programs. — Federal Employment Agency.

The German Parliament approved a controversial law to fine social media networks up to €50 million euros ($57 million) if they fail to remove so-called hate speech. Critics said the purpose of the law is to silence criticism of the government’s open-door migration policy.

The Muslim population of Germany surpassed six million in 2017 to become approximately 7.2% of the overall population of 83 million, according to calculations by the Gatestone Institute.

A recent Pew Research Center study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe estimated that Germany’s Muslim population had reached five million by the middle of 2016, but that number is short by at least a million.

Pew, for instance, “decided not to count” the more than one million Muslim asylum seekers who arrived in the country in 2015-2017 because “they are not expected to receive refugee status.” European Union human rights laws, however, prohibit Germany from deporting many, if not most, of the refugees and asylum seekers back to conflict areas. As a result, most migrants who arrived in the country will almost certainly remain there over the long term.

In addition, German authorities have admitted to losing track of potentially hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, many of whom are living on German streets and are believed to be sustaining themselves on a steady diet of drug dealing, pickpocketing, purse snatching and other forms of petty crime.

Islam and Islam-related issues, omnipresent in Germany during 2017, can be categorized into several broad themes:

The social and economic effects of accommodating more than a million mostly Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East;
A rapidly deteriorating security situation marked by a dramatic increase in migrant-related violent crime;
A migrant rape epidemic targeting German women and children;
Islamic extremism and the security implications of German jihadists;
The continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Germany;
The challenge of Muslim integration; and,
The failures of German multiculturalism.

The Movie That Made Moral Idiocy Chic By Bruce S. Thornton

Fifty years ago, the movie that changed the movies premiered. Anybody old enough to remember films before “Bonnie and Clyde” can testify to the jolting power of Arthur Penn’s kinetic blend of bluegrass slapstick, Depression-era nostalgia, and gruesome, stylized violence. But something else was revealed then, something that I, just 14 at the time, was too callow and ignorant to notice behind the movie’s aesthetic sheen—the moral idiocy that has since come to define so much of contemporary American popular culture.

“Bonnie and Clyde” staked a claim to a moral seriousness that supposedly validated the stylistic innovations and elevated the film beyond mere flashy entertainment. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, played with fashion-magazine glamour by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, are “just folks,” as Dunaway says in the movie, salt-of-the-earth Americans driven to crime by the machinations of the evil banks they rob for some justified payback, Texan Robin Hoods admired by the common-man victims of American capitalism. Yet “the Man,” embodied in the sadistic Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, wouldn’t let them be, hunting them down and slaughtering them in the film’s famous bloody climax, just after Bonnie and Clyde had finally found the soft-focus sexual fulfillment long a cliché of Hollywood romantic sentiment.

“Social Bandits” on Screen
The Marxist folk-tale underlying the movie’s otherwise conventional star-crossed-lovers plot was obvious, and as such the cinematic innovations accounted for the film’s popularity with many critics (TheNew York Times’s Bosley Crowther was a noble exception). The movie was, in fact, a popularized version of Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm’s 1959 “social bandit” thesis, a bit of communist agitprop arguing that robbers and thieves were really expressions of the “people’s” legitimate resistance to unjust economic and political structures. This notion helped to glorify and justify the violence against authority that exploded in the 1960s, from the bombing of college labs to the depredations of the Black Panthers, the Oakland street gang that was shrewd enough to exploit the delusions of privileged white kids in order to provide cover for the gang’s crimes.

Peter Smith Home Invasions and the Opened Door

The political class conspired, without any popular say-so, to bring in refugees and migrants, a troublesome percentage of which are unlikely ever to assimilate. Now they compound their first sin with the slander that intolerance of newcomers is the real offence.

It was between mid and end January in 1980. My first child was three months old. It was in the early hours. I was in bed with my wife; my daughter in her crib. I lived in Tokarara, a suburb of Port Moresby. My street was a cul-de-sac, which ended in dense bush. All of the other houses were occupied by Paua New Guinean families. Probably, the father in each household was a senior public servant, as was I in the Department of Finance.

All of the houses were single-standing, quite large fibro cement structures on stilts, with louvered windows. I awoke to a racket next door. I walked to the living area and peered out of a window.

The lights were all on in the house and I could see plainly the family cowering at one end in a bedroom. Six or seven members (I can’t be sure exactly) of a so-called “rascal gang” were milling around inside the house.

One of their number broke off and ran to my house. He had a large-blade panga knife and began hacking through the wall. He was sweating profusely and shaking. The phone lines which ran under the house had been cut. No mobile phones in those days folks.

My wife was now up and I told her to put water on the stove. Throw boiling water on the bastards, I thought. I kid you not, Quasimodo (played by Charles Laughton in the movie) came to mind.

I was looking down through a louvered window, only three feet or so from his face. “Fuck-off, you black bastard!” I shouted forcefully without the least tremor. Miracles happen. He ran way shouting “White bastards!” Evidently, I surmise, the intimidatory power of being white in PNG was not yet gone. The police eventually arrived, long after the rascals had skedaddled. I am not sure how they were alerted to what had happened. The people next door went back to their village, leaving their house vacant.

My spurt of courage — or adrenalin flow, or whatever it was — had evaporated by the time daylight broke through. I was badly shaken. I was certainly not brave enough to spend another night in the house and moved my family into a hotel. I stayed there until the government found us a safer house in a secure compound. And, by the way, I can say that I was personally supported by Mekere Morauta, then secretary of the Department of Finance, later to become prime minister, when some penny-pinchers in the department balked at paying my hotel bills.