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Academia dies on the Hill By Dennis Weisman

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/12/academia_dies_on_the_hill.html

The Democratic-controlled Congress convened a panel of legal experts on Wednesday to inform the debate on the case for impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.  Opinions will differ as to the value of this testimony insofar as the impeachment debate is concerned, but there can be no real question that this is a microcosm of what is wrong with academia today.  Four academics showed up on the Hill, but only one scholar was present: Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University School of Law.  The other three, Karlan, Feldman, and Gerhardt, were merely Democratic activists masquerading as objective academics.  Unfortunately, what the country observed on Capitol Hill Wednesday is precisely what goes on every day on university campuses across America: liberal academics grooming converts for the cause, all the while claiming to be a voice for true scholarship.

Professor Turley informed the panel that he was not a supporter of Mr. Trump, that, in fact, he had “voted against Mr. Trump.”  His word choice is important because it attests to something far more than the fact that he was not a supporter of Trump; he was against Trump.  And yet, Professor Turley went on to admonish the Congress that just as his personal views of Trump do not inform his views on the merits of impeachment, neither should their personal views regarding Trump inform their votes.

Trump’s call to Ukrainian president Zelensky was not “perfect,” according to Professor Turley, but neither was it impeachable.  To state Professor Turley’s views regarding impeachment succinctly, the standard for what constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” should not be party-specific.  Does anyone really believe that impeachment proceedings would be underway if Mr. Obama had made a similar call to Zelensky?  

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U.S. Jobs Report Breaks Expectations, Unemployment at 50-Year Low By Zachary Evans

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-jobs-report-breaks-expectations-unemployment-at-50-year-low/

The U.S. Labor Department’s jobs report released on Friday showed accelerated hiring and unemployment at a 50-year low.

Employers added 266,000 jobs for the month of November, surging past expected gains and continuing growth from October, which saw 156,000 new hires.

 

The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, the same as in September of this year and matching the lowest rate since 1969, according to the Labor Department’s report.

“It’s a significant surprise because economists were ready to go with the idea that payroll growth was slowing down because the job market had gotten tight,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist for broker-dealer Amherst Pierpont, told Bloomberg. “The whole tenor has changed in terms of job growth. We’re back at steady-as-she-goes at a robust pace.”

November was the first full month after the United Auto Workers union called a 40-day strike at General Motors factories. The end of the strike saw over 41,000 workers added to auto manufacturing jobs.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Newt Gingrich’s Essential Primer On The Challenges Of Communist China Ben Weingarten

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/12/06/newt-gingrichs-essential-primer-on-the-challenges-of-communist-china/

The former speaker of the House’s latest book, ‘Trump Vs. China,’ is an indispensable guide for understanding our greatest foreign policy challenge.

While the media frequently reduces U.S.-China relations under the Trump administration to a so-called “trade war,” the U.S. federal government has, after decades of willful blindness and neglect, embarked on a multifaceted mission to reorient the relationship towards America’s national interest.

This underappreciated, revolutionary effort was borne of an almost intuitive understanding by President Trump, increasingly accepted across the national security and foreign policy establishment, that China itself is engaged in a multifaceted—and malign—struggle to achieve global superpower status, at the cost of our people, and ultimately our freedom.

Seemingly with each passing week, a new story emerges illustrating the magnitude of China’s ambitions, and the litany of issues such ambitions present for the free world. Recently, many recoiled at the ghastlyrevelations of the Uighur concentration camps of Xinjiang, which, on top of the chaotic and bloody scenes from the streets of Hong Kong, have underscored the totalitarian nature of a Communist regime that the rest of the world has effectively been underwriting. If this is how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) treats its own citizens, and those in its orbit, how will it treat the rest of us should it achieve global dominance?

China’s Illicit Efforts

With respect to China’s efforts abroad, consider just a few recent stories in the areas of espionage and foreign influence:

A purported Chinese spy defected to Australia, revealing to authorities remarkable details regarding alleged political and societal influence operations, evincing widespread infiltration of civil society institutions in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Australia. Whether the specific allegations are proven, it is undeniable that China has sought to influence nearby foreign countries, and beyond. (With respect to China’s efforts in Australia in particular, which implicate the entire Anglosphere, see Clive Hamilton’s Silent Invasion).
Northwestern University faced a major backlash from Chinese nationalists over student support for Taiwan, and Columbia University cancelled a panel discussion on “Panopticism with Chinese Characteristics: The Human Rights Violations by the Chinese Communist Party and how they affect the world,” according to organizers “because a Chinese student group threatened to stage a protest outside the venue on campus.”
The U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a reportdemonstrating that “American taxpayer funded research [of upwards of $150 billion per year in the sciences] has contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years…[with] China openly recruit[ing] U.S.-based researchers, scientists, and experts in the public and private sector to provide China with knowledge and intellectual capital in exchange for monetary gain and other benefits…undermin[ing] the integrity of the American research enterprise and endanger[ing] our national security.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden: Elderly residents removed from Stockholm apartments to make room for asylum seekers  By ARTHUR LYONS

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://voiceofeurope.com/2019/12/sweden-elderly-residents-removed-from-stockholm-apartments-to-make-room-for-asylum-seekers/

A total of forty-eight Stockholm flats that housed the elderly before they were kicked out have been reopened to accommodate newly arrived migrants.  

This week, asylum seekers and migrants moved their belongings into Dianagården, a residential building in Stockholm that formerly housed the elderly until they were told they had to leave because the toilets in the building were five centimeters too small to comply with building regulations, Fria Tider reports.

According to the Swedish news outlet, politicians simply used the building code violation as a pretext to remove the elderly so that they could move the immigrants into the building at a later date. 

Although many Swedes were quite upset upon hearing about the news, Andrea Ström of the Moderate Party thinks the allocation of the 48 units to “contribute to integration” is a “very good” thing. 

Since the migrant crisis began in 2015, Sweden has taken in more asylum seekers and migrants per capita than any other country. In addition to facing growing violent crime and sexual assaults, Swedish municipalities are also running out of funds to support the welfare-dependent migrants.

Weeks ago, Voice of Europe reported that eight of ten municipalities in Sweden is set to slash funds for basic public services – including those for the disabled and the elderly – to offset the high cost of taking in large numbers of welfare-dependent migrants.

The situation in Sweden has deteriorated to such an extent that the Danish government has introduced border checks from Sweden to ensure their country’s security.

In October, the former CEO of Scania, a major trucking company in Sweden, warned that the country could be headed towards a civil war due to the social problems that have bubbled up as a result taking in massive numbers of migrants from alien cultures.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Rabbi Aryeh Spero: Pensacola- High Time to Choose American Lives Over Political Correctness

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

PENSACOLA PROVES THAT IT IS HIGH TIME WE CHOOSE AMERICAN LIVES OVER POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND FOOLISH “SENSITIVITY”

Today’s murderous rampage against our soldiers at Naval Air Station Pensacola was perpetrated by a foreign national from one of the Islamic countries in the Middle East. Unfortunately, this is not a surprise; for this has happened repeatedly now on numerous military bases here: Fort Hood; Little Rock, Arkansas; Tennessee; and recruitment centers; and let’s not forget 9/11 itself. The killings come from the same source and ideology.

Certain law enforcement officials, so as not to frighten the public or because they wish to be politically correct, are too often “searching” for the motive behind the terrorism. They may pretend not to know, but the American people and all reasonable and sane people in the West know that it is due an ideology, and ideology against the West, against Christianity, against Israel, and against America…against the infidel.

President Trump was correct in the beginning months of his Administration to place a halt on immigration from those countries that teach, whose religion teaches, a hate and a call to jihad. He sees his job, rightly so, as protecting the American people. We call that concept “America first.” It is basic and common sense…and moral.

There are many liberals who seem to prioritize the sensitivity of the community spawning all this murder as more important than the lives of the American individuals killed in these rampages. Perhaps their children and family are not members of the military bases across the country, nor do they frequently visit.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Adam Schiff’s Attack on the Free Press By David Harsanyi

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/adam-schiff-attack-on-free-press/

Even if John Solomon’s reporting on Ukraine was misleading or destructive, it wouldn’t warrant being unmasked by the government.

Where are all the self-styled champions of the free press now that Adam Schiff has used the surveillance powers of the state to smear not only his political rivals but a journalist?

With the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment report Tuesday came the revelation that Giuliani and his Ukrainian affiliate Lev Parnas, whose metadata Schiff apparently subpoenaed, had exchanged calls with former The Hill columnist John Solomon, ranking Intelligence Republican Devin Nunes, and attorney Jay Sekulow. Even if we allow that the California congressman had genuine national-security concerns when he subpoenaed metadata from AT&T so he could snoop on his political opponents, what possible national-security concerns would justify unmasking them?

This was an impeachment inquiry, not a criminal investigation. If Nunes had conducted himself similarly with Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyers, the D.C. press corps would have exploded into a raging panic. Rest assured, if Schiff had unearthed anything meaningful — and the subpoenas reportedly went out before the impeachment inquiry even began — he would have shared the evidence during the inquiry rather than using it as partisan chum in a post-inquiry report.

None of those unmasked by Schiff were the target of the inquiry, and, as far as we know, none of their conversations he exposed were unlawful. Nor were any of these conversations relevant in making a case for the impeachment of Donald Trump, especially without information beyond the time, dates, and lengths of the phone calls.

Schiff’s decision to unmask a journalist, though, was especially disconcerting. It meets none of law enforcement’s typical standards.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

US job growth roars back in November, with 266,000 added By Megan Henney

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/november-jobs-report-employment-data

U.S. hiring surged in November, as the economy added 266,000 jobs and unemployment returned to a half-century low, a sign the U.S. is powering through a global slowdown.

The payroll number easily topped the estimate of 180,000 from economists surveyed by Refinitiv, who also saw the unemployment rate holding steady from October’s 3.6 percent.

It marks the 110th month of straight gains.

Unemployment ticked down slightly to 3.5 percent as more people were looking for work, matching a 50-year low. The labor force participation rate was little changed at 63.2 percent. Average hourly earnings, meanwhile, rose by 3.1 percent over the past year to $28.29.

Revisions, meanwhile, added 41,000 jobs for the prior two months, bringing the three-month average to 205,000, a 10-month high. (September increased by 13,000 to 193,000, and October jumped by 28,000 to 156,000). Still, job growth on average is slower than it was in 2018: The 2019 monthly average is 180,000 jobs per month, compared with an average gain of 223,000 last year.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Support for Elizabeth Warren drops to lowest since August in White House race: Reuters/Ipsos poll Chris Kahn

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-warren/support-for-elizabeth-warren-drops-to-lowest-since-august-in-white-house-race-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Y92UL

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Support for U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren dropped nationally to its lowest level in four months, and nearly one in three potential Democratic primary voters say they do not know which candidate to pick with the first nominating contests less than two months away, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Science Proves Scams Don’t Die of Exposure Tony Thomas

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/11/ten-years-after-climategate/

It’s the tenth anniversary next week of the 2009 Climategate email dump that exposed top climate scientists’ chicanery and subversion of science – and did so in their own words and out of their own mouths, or keyboards. I’ll list a few emails-of-infamy shortly, but first some background.

For the three years before Climategate, the climate crowd was ascendant with its pseudo-narrative of “settled science”. Al Gore’s error-riddled propaganda movie Inconvenient Truth of 2006 had swept the Western world and its readily-traduced schoolkids. In 2007 Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize. In late 2008 Barack Obama won the White House, proclaiming in his modest way, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

The Climategate emails hit the blogosphere just a month before the Copenhagen summit was scheduled to lock Western countries into Kyoto Mark 2, a legally-binding commitment to renewables from 2012. Climategate destroyed warmists’ moral high ground and reinforced the natural reluctance of most governments to up-end their economies with emission controls. The  Copenhagen circus fell apart, resolving merely to “take note” of the exhortations to action by Obama and like-minded leaders.

The mainstream media strove to ignore and bury the Climategate  revelations. The climate establishment ran half a dozen inquiries with limited briefs and ludicrous lack of rigour, all of which purported to clear the climate scientists of wrong-doing.[1] But even today, ten years after, scientists faithful to their calling and disciplines can only shudder at what Climategate revealed. Those who subverted the scientific method were not fringe players but at the pinnacle. They were doing the archetypal studies “proving” catastrophic human-caused catastrophic warming (CAGW) and shaping the content and messaging in the six-yearly reports of the IPCC.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Sanctuary for Gays: Ignored or Jeered at by West by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on December 6th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15232/gay-palestinians

“Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.” – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to the U.S. Senate, 2011.
Adam and Rami are among scores of Palestinian members of the LTBGQ community who, in the past few decades, have fled their homes to seek shelter in Israel. Yet, their plight is totally ignored not only by human rights organizations, but by but by people who purport to be advocates of gay rights. This is part of a far more malignant story: when Israel looks good, the international community looks away.
Hate for Israel has blinded people to the point where they align themselves with their own executioners.
alQaws pointed out that some Palestinian groups actually celebrated the police threat against the LTBGQ community, “raising (yet again) disturbing questions about the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to human rights.”
Palestinian gays have two choices: hide their sexual preferences and lead double lives in their villages, or flee to Israel and live as normal human beings. Groups such as Queers for Palestine, though, are too busy bashing Israel on college campuses and the streets of San Francisco to take much notice of the sanctuary to which their gay Palestinian friends have chosen to relocate.

Members of the Palestinian LTBGQ community continue to flee to Israel, where, unlike under the Hamas and Palestinian Authority regimes, they are free to lead normal lives.

The gay community in the West, however, has evidently chosen to ignore the plight of their friends living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and under Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Remarkably, rather than reaching out to help the Palestinian LTBGQ members, several gay groups in the West, including in the US, continue to spout hate against Israel, the only country in the Middle East where the LTBGQ community feels safe and secure.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a 2011 speech to the US Senate:

“Israel has always embraced this path [of liberty] in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.”

Groups such as “Queers for Palestine” and “Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism” have long been inciting against Israel, even as Palestinian gays are fleeing persecution and the threat of death under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Both groups, rather than helping gays, noisily advocate financial divestment from Israel, and their members regularly demonstrate at gay pride marches and collaborate with extremist Muslim organizations.

The Western members of the LTBGQ community are eagerly joining forces with the very parties who are persecuting and killing their Palestinian allies — as long as that advances the anti-Israel agenda of those who hate Israel more than they care about gays.