Displaying the most recent of 91920 posts written by

Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

EPA Chief Questions Agency’s Right to Regulate Carbon Emissions Scott Pruitt also says in speech that agency to take more cues from states By Christopher M. Matthews and Erin Ailworth

By on March 10th, 2017

The new head of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called into question that agency’s legal right to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, a signature effort by the Obama administration.

In a speech Thursday to a room full of energy executives in Houston for CERAweek by IHS Markit, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said there is a “fundamental question” about whether Congress gave the agency the authority to “deal with the Co2 issue.”

“It’s a question that needs to be asked and answered,” Mr. Pruitt said.
In an interview earlier Thursday, Mr. Pruitt said carbon dioxide emissions weren’t the primary cause of global warming.“I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Mr. Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.
In an interview earlier Thursday, Mr. Pruitt said carbon dioxide emissions weren’t the primary cause of global warming.

There is consensus in the scientific community that carbon dioxide, a bi-product of burning fossil fuels, and other greenhouse gases are a significant driver of climate change. Mr. Pruitt said further analysis and debate on the subject are needed.

Mr. Pruitt’s statements mark a dramatic shift from Obama administration policies, which sought to use agencies like the EPA to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Environmental activists quickly condemned his comments.

“This is like hearing the head of NASA saying the Earth is flat,” said Vera Pardee of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s absolutely terrifying that the man in charge of the EPA denies fundamental facts about climate change.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

GOP Health Plan Advances After Clearing Two House Committees Republican-led panels approve measures to alter the Affordable Care Act, but opposition remains strong By Siobhan Hughes, Stephanie Armour and Kristina Peterson

By on March 10th, 2017

WASHINGTON—Republicans advanced legislation through two House committees on Thursday as part of their goal to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, but signs of discord spread around the capital as conservative lawmakers warned this version of the health-law overhaul won’t pass.

On party-line votes, the committees on Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means approved measures repealing major parts of the 2010 health law, known as Obamacare, with the goal of holding a floor vote later this month.

Conservatives fired warning shots at Republican leaders in an open challenge to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who said Republicans could either line up behind the House bill or renege on their promise to repeal the law.

“It really comes down to a binary choice,” Mr. Ryan said. “This is the chance, and the best and only chance we’re gonna get.”

Conservatives disputed that assessment, going public with concerns that their leaders’ approach would create a new entitlement program centered on refundable tax credits and saying the bill should instead aim at reducing premiums and other costs. The first warning flare of the day was sent up Thursday morning by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who wrote on Twitter that the current House bill wouldn’t pass the Senate.

“To my friends in House: pause, start over. Get it right, don’t get it fast,” Mr. Cotton tweeted. “What matters in long run is better, more affordable health care for Americans, NOT House leaders’ arbitrary legislative calendar.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Suicide bomb blasts hit wedding near Iraq’s Tikrit Suicide bomb explosions target wedding ceremony in a village near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, officials say. see note

By on March 9th, 2017

WHY HAS IRAQ BEEN REMOVED FROM THE TRAVEL BAN? IT IS A HOT BED OF TERRORISM…RSK

At least 26 people have been killed in suicide bomb explosions at a wedding party in a village near the Iraqi city of Tikrit, medical and security sources have told Al Jazeera.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in Hajjaj village, located 20km north of Tikrit.

Security forces cordoned off the area and imposed a wider curfew for fear of more attackers.

A police source told Reuters that two blasts hit the wedding and two more targeted security forces at the scene shortly afterwards. There were ongoing clashes between security forces and fighters in the area, he said.

Iraqi security forces retook Tikrit from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – ISIL, also known as ISIS – in April 2015.

In November, ISIL bomb attacks hit Tikrit, north of the capital, Baghdad, in an apparent diversionary assault as Iraqi forces drove back the armed group’s fighters in their stronghold of Mosul.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“MODERATE” INDONESIA JAILS THREE FOR “BLASPHEMY”

By on March 9th, 2017

JAKARTA (Reuters) – An Indonesian court has jailed three leaders of a group that Islamic clerics had called a deviant religious organization for up to five years for blasphemy, sparking condemnation from human rights groups over the targeting of minorities.

The now disbanded Gafatar hit the headlines after dozens of people, who had been reported missing by relatives, were believed to have joined. Last year, hundreds of members had to be evacuated from their West Kalimantan base after being attacked by residents who opposed their beliefs.

Gafatar was labelled by Indonesia’s Ulema Council a deviant sect and authorities had described its teachings as “dangerous”. People associated with the group say it is a social organization, not religious.

A panel of judges at the East Jakarta court on Tuesday jailed Mahful Muis Tumanurung and Ahmad Mussadeq for five years and Andry Cahya for three years for blasphemy. The men were cleared of treason charges.

A lawyer for the men, Yudhistira, described it as a “malicious prosecution” that had tainted Indonesia’s justice system and said would consider whether to appeal.

Indonesia’s blasphemy laws have come under greater scrutiny since Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Jakarta’s Christian governor, was put on trial for allegedly insulting the Koran. He has denied wrongdoing but his trial has inflamed religious tensions. Almost all blasphemy cases in recent years have ended in conviction.

Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims, the majority of whom adhere to moderate Sunni beliefs, and it recognizes six religions including Hinduism, Catholicism and Buddhism, but minorities, even within Islam, have faced rising intolerance in recent years.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Cultivating a New Generation of Racists on Campus The hate-filed worldview and agendas of the student group MEChA. John Perazzo

By on March 9th, 2017

The Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), or “Chicano Student Movement,” describes itself as an organization that urges young Chicanos (people of Mexican ancestry living in the United States) to use “higher education” and “political involvement” to promote “cultural and historical pride,” “liberation,” and “self-determination” among their people. In practice, MEChA aggressively promotes anti-Americanism and anti-white hatred by relentlessly stoking the fires of racial and ethnic grievance among Latino students.

MEChA’s roots can be traced back to the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s, which emphasized “brown pride” while rejecting “acculturation and assimilation” into the American mainstream. In that milieu, the first National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference, organized by an entity called Crusade for Justice, was held in Denver, Colorado in March 1969. Participants in this conference drafted the basic premises for the “Chicana/Chicano Movement” in a seminal document titled El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (EPEA), which today is required reading for all members of MEChA’s various chapters.

The term “Aztlán” refers to the territory in the Southwestern United States—including California, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, as well as parts of Nevada, Utah, and Colorado—that Mexico ceded to the United States in 1848 via the Treaty of Guadalupe de Hidalgo. But Mexican separatists consider this region to be part of a mythical Aztec homeland that was stolen from its rightful owners. Proceeding from that premise, MEChA rejects the notion that any Chicano can be considered an illegal immigrant. A popular slogan that surfaces at many MEChA rallies is: “We didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.”

Claiming that “Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans,” EPEA stipulates that the “Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán” are a “sovereign” and “indigenous people” who are “not subject to a foreign culture,” and are now “reclaiming the land of our birth (Chicana/Chicano Nation).” It sees the “bronze (Chicana/Chicano) Nation” as “a union of free pueblos” whose “cultural values strengthen our identity as La Familia de La Raza.

Following the tenets of EPEA, MEChA denounces “the brutal gringo invasion of our territories,” and it vows to “struggl[e] against the foreigner ‘gabacho’ [a pejorative term for an English-speaking, non-Hispanic] who exploits our riches and destroys our culture.” MEChA’s exclusionary racial attitudes are summarized in the organization’s slogan: “Por la Raza, todo. Fuera de La Raza, nada.” (“For the race, everything. Outside of the race, nothing.”)

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

SANCTUARY CITIES: EDWARD CLINE

By on March 9th, 2017

A “sanctuary city” is no more than a haven for criminals and illegals. I don’t think we need to flaunt the definition of “criminal.” An illegal, however, is a person living in the U.S. who entered it illegally, and collects government benefits, may or may not hold a job, and may even “vote” because of chiefly democratic election rigging. If he’s found out, he can retreat to a “sanctuary city” where, presumably, the authorities cannot arrest him or detain him for deportation back to the pest hole he came from. He can be a murderer, but the authorities’ hands would be tied. He can commit the most horrendous crime, yet still be “untouchable.”

Coming across the border are countless illegals, many of them dangerous, many of them jihadists posing as Mexicans or South Americans. Aaron Bandler of the Daily Wire, in an undated report, outlines the essentials of a “sanctuary city”:

Sanctuary cities are a blatant violation of federal law. Some on the left have tried to claim that they’re perfectly legal, but this is clearly false.

Sanctuary cities undermine law enforcement. Not only do they refuse to cooperate with federal agents in deporting illegals, sanctuary cities make it more difficult for police officers to do their job.

Sanctuary cities are “akin to roulette.” For example, “Two-thirds of all outstanding felony warrants in the city of Los Angeles involved illegal aliens — as well as 95% of outstanding murder warrants.”

Crime has surged in sanctuary cities. The Daily Wire’s Hank Berrienreported on the following from Louisiana attorney general Jeff Landry:

Landry told the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, that sanctuary city policies “allow illegals to commit crimes, then roam free in our communities.” Landry’s appearance was prompted by the changed status of New Orleans, where city police are now banned from asking an individual’s immigration status.

Using recent statistics from Los Angeles, another sanctuary city, Landry asserted, “Los Angeles saw all crime rise in 2015: violent crime up 19.9 percent, homicides up 10.2 percent, shooting victims up 12.6 percent, rapes up 8.6 percent, robberies up 12.3 percent, and aggravated assault up 27.5 percent … (sanctuary cities) encourage further illegal immigration and promote an underground economy that sabotages the tax base.”

There are an estimated 300 sanctuary cities, counties, and states….

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

If You Want Real Change, Start with Education Stopping the indoctrination of our children is a necessary first step. Bruce Thornton

By on March 9th, 2017

The first eight weeks of Trump’s administration have been filled with executive orders attacking the unconstitutional excesses of the Obama presidency. He’s also pledged to kill the regulatory Hydra, increase defense spending, reform the tax code, and restore America’s prestige. And all these changes and promises have been met with vicious attacks and outlandish charges from the media, and scorched-earth obstructionism from Congressional Dems.

All of which is as entertaining as an MMA blood-fest. But to effect real change, we need to get beneath the telegenic food-fight and transient click-bait, and start dynamiting the foundations of the deep state. And that means going after higher education, the one institution that more than any other shapes the young and indoctrinates them with progressive ideology.

But it’s not enough to go after the ideologically biased professoriate and administrators, or ridicule the pretentious “research” churned out by pseudo-disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. No doubt such critical exposure of the “higher nonsense” is important, for those bad ideas trickle down from the research universities to the state colleges, where most of the K-12 teachers get their teaching credentials. And most of those teachers inflict these political prejudices and false knowledge on the impressionable young, who by the time they reach college will already have been primed for even more pernicious indoctrination.

Take, for example, the silly notion of “microagressions.” This is the preposterous idea that systemic racism, sexism, etc. are so pervasive that people can subconsciously inflict injury on women, homosexuals, “people of color,” and all the other certified victims due special treatment like “safe spaces.” This wacky idea got started back in 2007 with a scientifically dubious paper called “Racial Microagressions in Everyday Life.” An even more influential bad idea, “Islamophobia,” traces its origins to Edward Said’s 1978 Orientalism, a “work of malignant charlatanry,” as Middle East scholar Robert Irwin described it, and one of the most-assigned books in social science and humanities courses. Like bacilli, such ideological prejudices disguised as scholarship have infected curricula from grade school to university, and from there sickened the whole culture. And they replicate themselves through the education industry’s monopoly on training, hiring, and tenuring of teachers.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Death of an Unrepentant Terrorist-Lawyer Convicted of providing material support for terrorism, Lynne Stewart was released early so she could die peacefully at home. Matthew Vadum

By on March 9th, 2017

After a lifetime of radical anti-American activism and passionate legal advocacy for foreign and domestic terrorists, cop-killers, and gangsters, convicted terrorist enabler Lynne Stewart died at her home in Brooklyn – instead of in prison where she was supposed to be.

Her son said Stewart, 77, expired Tuesday from complications related to cancer and a series of strokes. Mourners who run the website of “Democracy Now!” ran a headline describing her as the “People’s Lawyer & [Former] Political Prisoner.” The article called her “[a] former teacher and librarian, [who] was known as a people’s lawyer who represented the poor and revolutionaries.”

That represents only part of the life story of the self-described “radical human rights attorney” and cheerleader for totalitarianism.

This outspoken, persistent, quick-witted woman didn’t look like a zealous subversive. She may have been a bit too extreme for many liberals but they gave her a pass because, after all, her heart was in the right place. To the Left, this Maoist who said she favored “violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions,” was an endearing, grandmotherly figure blessed with a disarming honesty.

“I’m not a pacifist,” she once said. “I have cried many bitter tears. There is death in history, and it’s not all rosebuds and memorial services. Mao, Fidel [Castro], Ho Chi Minh understood this.”

“I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel [Castro] locking up people they see as dangerous,” Stewart told Monthly Review in 2002. “Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.”

This lovable, folksy ball of fluff hailed the Black Lives Matter-inspired killers who gunned down police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge last year as noble freedom fighters.

“They are avengers,” Stewart said. “They spoke for some of us when they did that.”

“They are not brazen, crazed, you know, insane killers,” she said. “They are avenging deaths that are never and have never been avenged since the ’60s and ’70s.”

Stewart likened American conservatives to the theocratic totalitarians of the Islamic world who abuse women, treating them as chattel. “The American Right,” she said, “is certainly anti-woman, anti-inclusiveness, and I certainly oppose that here in my own country for my own sake, for my children’s sake, for the way I want to live.”

She was simply misunderstood.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Democrats Brought a Muslim Child Molester to America Another young victim of the Left’s war against common sense immigration security.Daniel Greenfield

By on March 9th, 2017

When Tanveer Hussain and Abid Khan weren’t allowed into the United States, they blamed President Trump. So did the media outlets that covered the story. The controversial Democrat mayor of Saranac Lake reached out to fellow New York party members Senator Charles Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. They leaned on the local embassy and Hussain and Khan were waved through.

“Still a country that welcomes athletes from across the globe,” Senator Schumer’s statement read. The statement, shared on Hussain’s Facebook page, declared, “So proud of the town of Saranac Lake for their efforts and their open hearts.”

Below it was a photo of Tanveer Hussain surrounded by Saranac Lake Middle School students. The seventh graders had been drafted to write letters to Schumer and Gillibrand on Hussain’s behalf.

“We came in and talked to a small group of kids. I said, ‘This is bothering me. Is it bothering anyone else?’” Amy Jones, their teacher, had insisted.

There’s no way to know if it bothered the children, but it bothered Amy Jones. And before long the children were enlisted in the campaign to bring Hussain to America. The campaign worked. And now here he was. Mayor Clyde Rabideau moderated the session with the children and the accused abuser.

Abid Khan, Hussain’s coach, talked to them about Kashmir. He told them that Kashmir was just like Saranac Lake. “Pack your bags. Next year, you are coming to Kashmir,” he said.

Later Hussain’s brother would explain one difference between Saranac Lake and Kashmir. “In Kashmir, we have a tradition of showing love to children,” he said.

Kashmir’s idea of showing love to children was very different than that of Saranac Lake. Tanveer Hussain would be charged with molesting a 12-year-old girl who was a student at the school.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Fake News and “Alternative Facts” by Bassam Tawil

By on March 9th, 2017

There is no shortage of Palestinian and Arab news websites that publish hoaxes, propaganda, lies and disinformation disguised as real news. This garbage is accepted as factual by many Palestinians and other Arabs.

This is a form of incitement to which the West is deaf, largely because journalists working for Western mainstream media do not wish to understand what is being reported in Arabic, or even in English.

Blood libels against Jews were once thought to be part of the dark past. They are not. What do such stories accomplish? Excuses for the murder of Jews.

Another “new” old blood libel that Palestinians have been spreading against Israel claims that Israelis are flooding Palestinian communities with narcotics in order to spread moral corruption and destroy the health of Palestinians. This lie helps Palestinians avoid responsibility for the smuggling of drugs (by Palestinians) into the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt.

That leaves us with some questions: Where is the international community’s exposure of the lies that fuel the Palestinian murder of Jews? And: Will the international community once again in history fail to speak the truth about the murder of Jews?

One after another, young Palestinians continue to carry out terrorist attacks against Jews. Why? We might start at the beginning: the campaign of incitement, indoctrination and lies that Palestinian media outlets wage against Israel. This campaign has poisoned the hearts and minds of millions of Arabs and Muslims. It ought to be no surprise, then, when the poisoned Palestinian youths grab a weapon and set out to do the death-work they are taught to cherish.

The anti-Israel incitement can even be quite subtle. Those injecting the venom do not always issue a direct call for Palestinians to go out and kill Jews. It is enough, for example, to tell Palestinians that Jews are “defiling with their filthy feet” Islamic holy sites, to drive a Palestinian to go out and stab a Jew.

Continue reading →