P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

California Dem Chair Who Called Kavanaugh, “Lying Predator”, Investigated for Sexual Misconduct Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272057/california-dem-chair-who-called-kavanaugh-lying-daniel-greenfield

The media keeps screaming that Republicans have a “problem” with women. But it’s women who have a problem with Democrats. This is the latest example of a national trend in politics and media.

The California Democratic Party has launched an investigation into unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct against Chairman Eric Bauman involving party staff members.

In a statement released Saturday evening, Bauman confirmed an investigation was underway but did not address the allegations against him. He said that independent counsel has been hired to investigate the matter.

“I look forward to putting these allegations behind us and moving forward as unified Democrats,” Bauman said in the statement.

Democrats unified behind sexual harassment. Meanwhile here’s Bauman’s statement on Kavanaugh.

The Republican Party has no shame and no soul. Todays vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh is nothing less than an assault on every woman in America. It shows the Republican Party is utterly devoid of humanity and decency…

The United States Senate has disgraced itself today. Its up to the millions of Americans who are feeling righteous anger including the millions of survivors of sexual violence who have been violated all over again today to rise up and defeat every single Republican who betrayed our Country by voting to confirm this lying predator to the Supreme Court…

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu: Still Israel’s Preferred Leader Why none of the other party leaders are fit to be prime minister. Joseph Puder

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272038/netanyahu-still-israels-preferred-leader-joseph-puder

At the Likud party meeting on Monday (November 19, 2018), Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu declared, “We have an entire year until the elections.” He made the statement a day after he called on his coalition partner not to dissolve the government. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the “Israel Our Home” party, originally a party of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, resigned last week as Defense Minister, and pulled his party out of the coalition government. He was hoping to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud (party) led government. The pretext for his decision was Netanyahu’s reluctance to engage the Israel Defense Forces in another Gaza war, and his decision to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas. Lieberman denounced the move as “surrender to terror.” Lieberman’s thinking was that his resignation will prompt other coalition partners to leave as well, and thus new elections will be called, since the Netanyahu government would not have the necessary 61 votes to govern. He failed. Now he will sit on the Opposition benches next to Ayman Odeh, of the United Arab List. Lieberman learned two lessons. One, the country and seated Knesset Members are not eager for new elections to take place, and two, Netanyahu is not led by his coalition partners, but rather the opposite.

Naftali Bennett, leader of the “Jewish Home” party and coalition partner was also in a heated disagreement with PM Netanyahu over the response to the massive rocket attacks from Gaza. Like Lieberman, Bennett also sought more aggressive action against Hamas and its terrorist partners in the Gaza Strip. Bennett used Lieberman’s departure as Defense Minister to petition for this job, the second most powerful post in the Israeli government. Bennett’s eight seats in the 120 Knesset seats (Israeli Parliament), three more than Lieberman’s party, posed a veiled threat to Netanyahu. The “Jewish Home” party departure from the coalition would have brought the government down, and new elections would become a certainty. Netanyahu however, decided not give in. He was aided by Jewish Home party constituents, who pressured Bennett to stay put. They simply figured that Bennett’s quest for the Defense portfolio was not worth risking an early election result that might harm the party, and diminish its representation in the Knesset.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who sought early elections at one point, has changed his mind and is determined to go on with his narrow coalition government of 61 seats until its official term expires next year. Polls have consistently predicted that the Likud would end up increasing its representation in the Knesset. And Netanyahu predicted in August of this year that the Likud might possibly garner “35 (mandates), 40 is the goal.” Netanyahu has held the office of Prime Minister for 12 years, and if he manages, as it appears, to hold on until next year, he could surpass Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion, as the longest serving prime minister.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Anybody hearing about just how far left the caravan organizers are? By Monica Showalter

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

The US government must publicly acknowledge a) its role in Honduran Coup in 2009, b) that the Honduran government is a US supported dictatorship, and c) recognize the political and social crises throughout Central America as caused by US foreign policy.

This is nutbag, far-left stuff. That’s not about moms and kids, that’s about the political demands of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. And as you read further in their “demands,” you can read that they also want American officials prosecuted. This is the caravan agenda as it throws hapless women and children in front of the cameras, leaves Tijuana a humanitarian agenda area, and leaves Mexico with the prospect of a completely shut border. As they say: By any means necessarily, and those migrants are their pawns. Now is the scenario clearer?

And are there any questions as to why the caravan migrants are overwhelmingly military-aged unemployed young men, as this Univision screengrab from Mexicali unintentionally shows? (That reporter look uncomfortable).

Meanwhile, pictures from Univision (Spanish only) do expose who the caravan organizers are. The camera shots show that the organizers themselves are far-left activists, quite possibly what remain of the gang-like Chavista shock troops of Latin America who destroyed Venezuela. Smug, smarmy and robotic, they speak a disciplined Marxist party line devoid of individualism. They’re obviously experienced community organizers, which gives you an approximate look at how Chavez destroyed Venezuela. It was guys like these who produced that. And given the caravan thugcraft already seen, look at them how at odds it all is with their peaceable and humanitarian claims.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Skip the Children’s Instagram Pageant Kids need to know their parents are paying close attention to them, not playing to an audience. By Jennifer L. Taitz

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/skip-the-childrens-instagram-pageant-1543175539

‘How many likes did I get?” When I overheard a friend’s 8-year-old daughter ask how her back-to-school portrait had performed on her mother’s Instagram, my heart fell. No child should grow up believing life is a continuous popularity contest judged on social media.

I have two toddlers myself and people ask why I don’t post their photos. I’ll admit it’s tempting: Who doesn’t get a dopamine rush from a burst of likes or heart emojis? It’s not surprising that the average mom checks Instagram six times a day, according to the platform’s data. Yet I wonder how parents can navigate sharing while relaying the message that life is about more than presenting the perfect image. In weighing the costs and benefits of social media in my life, I realized that signing up for Instagram would only tempt me to be more superficial.

I also worry about the example I’m setting. Since social-media use is associated with disordered eating and body-image issues, do I want my daughter and son to see me documenting my life and then imitate that behavior? When studies link social-media use with depression and anxiety in young adults, and the average teenager spends nine hours a day in front of a screen, it’s worth considering the impact being visibly tethered to our phones may be having on our kids.

In my mind, healthy living requires participating in the moment in a meaningful way. That’s not easy to do while staging and posting photos, then tracking responses. Robin Berman, one of my favorite psychiatrists and author of “Permission to Parent,” prescribes looking at your children with “hearts in your eyes”: truly seeing who they are with warmth. But it’s difficult to appreciate a child’s inner world from the vantage point of an iPhone camera.

Your social-media feed may be full of kids bearing toothy smiles, but will these children be grinning when they reflect back on their meticulously documented childhoods? Since my toddlers have no idea I’ll be broadcasting a photo I’ve taken of them, it doesn’t seem fair for me to do so. If I were a teenager today, I think I’d be furious if my parents had spent my early years urging me to pose for anyone scrolling.

As a psychologist who teaches people how to regulate their emotions, I can imagine the young girl I overheard sitting on my therapy couch a decade from now, describing how her well-meaning mother chronicled her every move for a distant audience rather than paying close attention to her.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Favourite – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

http://politicalmavens.com/

There’s a grand guignol atmosphere in “The Favourite,” with 18th century men coiffed in long sheep-like wigs, made up to look like drag queens and Queen Anne herself looking more like a madwoman than a regal character. Though the story of the queen and Sarah and Abigail, the two women who service her in every sense of the word, is loosely based on historical fact, the language is full of contemporary curse words which seem anachronistic. Surprisingly, they turn out to have been in use during that century – especially the two four letter words with a “u” as the only vowel; this is significant because it lends credibility to some of the sexual behavior you might have thought was not in vogue at that time. Certainly there is no historical record to support the movie’s contentions.

Everything about The Favourite is over the top – the incredible paneled palace, the background music which occasionally rises to the foreground, the oversized ambitions of Sarah and Abigail, well-played by Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone and the complicated, convoluted character of Anne herself in a tour-de-force performance by Olivia Colman. She is sickly and dependent yet willful and demanding; at times a fool and then surprisingly capable of rising to the exigencies of her rank. She remains a deeply unhappy woman who mourns her miscarriages and stillbirths and the early death of her child. She is supremely eccentric and prone to childish tantrums such as summarily dismissing her various ministers so she can return to her bed. Though she is the fulcrum around whom the plot revolves, the main subjects of interest are the two women who are distant cousins, each vying for Anne’s attention and rewards.

Lady Sarah Churchill is a commanding presence who, as the queen’s main lady in waiting, has taken over most of the decision making for the country. She is clever, informed and the wife of the Duke of Marlborough who was leading the British troops in a war against the French. Historically, Sarah is credited with having been the most powerful woman in France in her day. After noticing that Abigail has been demoted to being a scullery maid, Sarah rescues her, bringing her upstairs where the work is more pleasant and where she subtly manages to insinuate herself into the queen’s affections and bedchamber.

How this happens is told in graphic scenes involving nudity, sex, politics, violence, treachery, romance, disillusionment and some surprises. At a certain point, the movie begins to feel like a pile-on that actually makes you lose interest because there’s just too much to digest. The soundtrack, effective at first in foretelling an ominous development, eventually turns into a headache-producing disturbance. But the movie will make you run to the internet to learn more about this unusual triangle of women – no mean accomplishment for director Yorgos Lanthimos.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Airbnb’s Anti-Israel Hypocrisy The tech company will operate anywhere and serve anyone—except Jews in the West Bank.

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnbs-anti-israel-hypocrisy-1543175767

Two very different organizations took action last week against Jews owning property in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority sentenced two Palestinians to 15 years hard labor for selling land to Jews. And Airbnb, the tech behemoth and online marketplace for lodging, announced it would no longer serve Jewish communities in the West Bank. The two actions differ in brutality but are based on the same idea: Jews should have no home in the West Bank.

Under Airbnb’s policy, an American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred meters away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn’t trigger Airbnb’s delisting policy.

Airbnb admits the West Bank is the site of complicated “historical disputes.” Until 1948, the West Bank was part of the League of Nations’ 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, created to become a “national home” for the Jewish people. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution suggesting the territory be divided into Arab and Jewish states, an idea the Arabs immediately shot down. Indeed, when the mandate ended and Israel declared independence in 1948, all its Arab neighbors invaded immediately. Jordan occupied the West Bank and massacred or expelled every Jew in the area, took their homes and destroyed their synagogues. Israel only regained the West Bank after Jordan foolishly attacked again in 1967. Many Jews then returned, including to lands Jews had purchased before Israeli independence.

Since then, the dispute has narrowed. Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leadership in 1993, leaving all settlements—the new and returning Jewish communities—under complete Israeli control. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994. To be sure, the Palestinians still demand the removal of Jews from the entire West Bank. But Airbnb’s policy applies only to the Israeli—primarily Jewish—communities in the disputed territories.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A quick refresher course to remind us of previous global warming/cooling scares By Jack Hellner ****

Posted By on November 25th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/a_quick_refresher_course_to_remind_us_of_previous_global_warmingcooling_scares.html

In light of the new, much-hyped “official” report on global warming that is being pushed by almost all the media and the record cold that is occurring now in many parts of the U.S., it would be helpful if some enterprising journalist actually reported how often the people have been scared by previous warnings of global warming or cooling.

An article in Wattsupwiththat.com from 2014 encapsulates the multiple intentional scares from 1895 on. Throughout the entire 120 year period fossil fuel use was growing exponentially, population growth was exploding, and CO2 concentration was increasing. The fact that temperatures both rose and fell during this period shows that there is no correlation between temperature, fossil fuels, CO2 and the human population. Storm activity, floods, droughts, and sea levels have also fluctuated throughout billions of years.

There are a huge number of bullet points in this article. I have left in some to highlight the difference in scare tactics at various points in time by the media who seem to just repeat whatever they are told and don’t care how far off previous predictions have been:
A brief history of climate panic and crisis… both warming and cooling

For at least 120 years, climate “scientists” have been claiming that the climate was going to kill us…but they have kept switching whether it was a coming ice age, or global warming.

(A timeline of claims follows, updated to 2014)

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘The Enemy of the People’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on November 25th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/trump-media-criticism-enemy-of-the-people-charge/

Criticism of the media by a president is not necessarily a bad thing

Depending on your perspective, one of President Trump’s real talents, or one of his most baleful traits, is his knack for the zinger label, pinned on a political or institutional foe. “Crooked Hillary,” “Lyin’ Ted,” “The Swamp” — the labels often stick . . . and sting.

In commentary about the media that is sometimes withering and sometimes unhinged, the president uses the term “the enemy of the people.” The epithet has gotten under the skin of many journalists. Some of them worry aloud about being targeted for retribution, a concern that is overwrought as applied to Trump partisans generally, but that cannot be dismissed out of hand — Cesar Sayoc’s attempted pipe-bomb rampage against Trump critics, like James Hodgkinson’s gunfire spree against Republican congressmen, reminds us that no one has the market cornered on evil and dementia.

But who exactly is “the enemy of the people”? Trump maintains that he is not referring to the entire press, only to “fake news” coverage by mainstream-media outlets. Is such line-drawing appropriate? Even if the public at large may validly make such distinctions, should they be drawn by a president of the United States, or does that specter imperil constitutional free-press protections?

The Pretense of Objectivity
Before Trump zapped our politics with his lightning rod, it was a commonplace in conservative circles to complain about that most pernicious practice of the political press: the pretense of objectivity. No, we did not begrudge the New York Times and Washington Post their editorial pages, nor resent opinion pieces and programs clearly advertised as such. Our objection was to patently biased news coverage that was presented as if it were dispassionate, just-the-facts-ma’am reporting. The bias is seen and unseen, but pervasive. It is found in the reporting itself. It is intimated in the description of sources (e.g., conservatives always described as “conservative”; left-wing sources — the ACLU, SPLC, CAIR, etc. — described as civil-rights groups with no partisan agenda). Most important, it is concealed in editorial decisions about what gets covered and what does not, camouflaged by the thread that gets emphasis and the “lede” that gets buried.

To people who follow the news closely, it is patently obvious that the mainstream media — specifically, the news divisions of the broadcast networks and many major national newspapers, magazines, and websites — tote water for the Democratic party and progressive causes in general. Again, they are perfectly within their rights to do this. The problem is: They pretend they are not doing it. And it is a profound problem. By reporting this way, the media inculcate in the public the assumption that there is no other side of the story. The Left’s Weltanschauung is not presented merely as a worldview; it is portrayed as objective, inarguable fact, and any other way of looking at things is subversive, cynical, or psychotic.

Because this situation is so corruptive, conservatives and other fair-minded commentators have complained about it for decades. It is why National Review has been “standing athwart history” since 1955.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Zombie Statistics The terrifying power of useful bad data. Katherine Mangu-Ward see note please

Posted By on November 25th, 2018

https://reason.com/archives/2018/11/02/zombie-statistics

Linda Goudsmit responds to this very powerful column: “Zombie statistics are used in the marketing campaigns that sell leftist policies to unsuspecting Americans including global warming, gun control, open borders, population shifting, and the “safety” of opioids to doctors. Corrupt and falsified data in “scientific” studies used to support political science is a threat to freedom everywhere. Zombie statistics are used because society still naively believes in the credibility and integrity of the studies. They have not understood the malevolence and purposefulness of zombie statistics.” (http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21767/the-problem-with-capitalism)

“You’re about to be untricked,” boasted the opening line of a groundbreaking 1981 Reason investigation about high-profile chemical leaks in upstate New York. In the early ’80s, Love Canal had already become synonymous with corporate willingness to destroy the environment and human health in the name of profit. But careful reporting revealed the anti-corporate narrative was wrong; the primary malefactor wasn’t the greedy businessmen at Hooker Chemical but the Niagara Falls Board of Education, which developed a plot of land despite many warnings from Hooker about the presence of dangerous chemicals. Unfortunately, Reason’s story did little to change the anti-market tenor of the environmental reforms that followed.

That’s because when a narrative is powerful and useful to highly motivated activists, it can be fiendishly difficult to roll it back. Zombie statistics, in particular, are tough to defeat. These undead tidbits can sustain incredible blows and yet continue to crawl forward, like the plodding, inexorable zombies in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead—a film that debuted in 1968, the same year as Reason. These raggedy facts terrorize the debates over important issues for years after they have been definitively debunked.

At a time when #MeToo and Title IX are dominating the headlines, for instance, it can seem like sexual assault is everywhere. But one of the central statistics responsible for that perception rests on an astonishingly weak foundation. You’ve probably heard this shocking figure: One in five women has been sexually assaulted while in college.

One of the sources of support for that number is a 2002 study by David Lisak, who concluded that what had previously been referred to as “date rape” was actually the result of repeated infractions by serial campus predators. Lisak urged administrators to view every accusation “as an opportunity to identify a serial rapist,” a way of thinking that in turn validates harsh treatment for accused students and justifies funding a massive bureaucracy for adjudication. The Obama White House cited Lisak in memoranda, anti-rape activists promoted his work in movies and books, and university administrators invited him to give lectures and sit on panels.

But as Davidson College administrator Linda M. LeFauve explained in our pages three years ago, Lisak’s study was based on survey data cobbled together from his students’ dissertations and masters’ theses. The central data set drew from interviews with just 76 nontraditional, nonresidential students whose offenses “may or may not have happened on or near a college campus, may or may not have been perpetrated on other students, and may have happened at any time in the survey respondents’ adult lives.” Despite all these problems, the figure is still widely used and widely believed.

HISTORY Comments turned off

YORAM ETTINGER: THE LEGACY OF CHANUKAH IN THE UNITED STATES

Posted By on November 25th, 2018

https://bit.ly/2SbCQ9B

The legacy of Chanukah – the centrality of liberty and morality, freedom of religion and defiance of immense odds – has played a major role in shaping the American ethos and state of mind from the Early Pilgrims, through the Founding Fathers’ War of Independence and their composition/ratification the US Constitution until today.

The Chanukah holiday sheds light on Judeo-Christian values, which have imbued the United States since the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620, including the unique and positive attitude, by most Americans, toward the Jewish State.

On October 16, 2018, the US Postal Services issued the annual Chanukah stamp, portraying a Menorah, which is a nine-branched candelabrum lit during the eight-day holiday of Chanukah, commemorating the 167 BCE rebellion of the very few, conviction-driven Jewish Maccabees against the most powerful and oppressive Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanies.

On December 8, 2017, President Trump stated, during a candle-lighting at the White House: “The miracle of Chanukah is the miracle of Israel…. The descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have endured unthinkable persecution and oppression, but no force has ever crushed [their] spirit and no evil has ever extinguished [their] faith….”

On December 14, 2016, President Obama held a candle-lighting at the White House, stating: “We take heart from the Maccabees’ struggle against tyranny, even in our darkest moments, a stubborn flame of hope flickers and miracles are possible…. George Washington was said to have been stirred by the lights of Chanukah after seeing a soldier with a Menorah in the snows of Valley Forge….”