NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Double Religious Jeopardy Colorado targets the Christian baker who won at the Supreme Court.

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/double-religious-jeopardy-1534460961

Maybe it’s baked into the cake of modern American progressivism. What else could drive Colorado to go after the same Christian baker less than a month after losing a similar case against him at the Supreme Court?

In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the commission violated Jack Phillips’ free-exercise rights when it sought to punish him for refusing on religious grounds to bake a custom cake for a gay couple’s wedding. That decision was handed down June 4 after six years in which Mr. Phillips was dragged through the courts.

On June 28 the state found probable cause that Mr. Phillips had unlawfully discriminated in another case—by refusing to bake a custom cake (blue on the outside, pink on the inside) to celebrate the transgender transition of Autumn Scardina from a man to a woman. The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Mr. Phillips in his first case, is now suing Colorado’s Governor, attorney general, Civil Rights Division and Civil Rights Commission for what it says is Colorado’s “continuing persecution” of its client.

POLITICS Comments turned off

‘Queer Eye’ Star Warns Democrats Are ‘Done For’ If They Go Too Far Left Jonathan Van Ness angered liberals on Twitter by urging the Democrat Party to push moderate candidates in the midterm elections. By Juliana Knot

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/16/queer-eye-star-warns-democrats-are-done-for-if-they-go-too-far-left/

“Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness angered liberals Wednesday in a tweet urging the Democrat Party not to go “too left.”

According to Van Ness, Democrats need to push moderate candidates in the 2018 midterms that will win over undecided voters, or the party is “done for.”

“Luckily a lot to extreme right people won yesterday, meaning that if we can come up w center left candidates we can take back the house & senate, not to mention many state legislatures,” he tweeted. “It is so important for the left to not go too left or we are done for.”

The popular Netflix show features five gay men who help other men reform themselves by changing their habits. The series has a 93 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been called “earnest and endearing.” For his part, Van Ness focuses on self-care — teaching men how to take care of their hair and skin.

Some of Van Ness’s followers pushed back on his tweet, saying that going centrist with presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2018 resulted in Donald Trump winning the presidency. Van Ness responded by saying that “demanding all or nothing” is what elected Trump.

Shortly afterwards, Van Ness posted a video explaining his positions. He opens saying, “[The Left and the Right] are really being played by people in newsrooms who are just writing things for headlines.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Notable & Quotable: Swedish Car Fire ‘It seems very coordinated, almost like a military operation. Eighty cars—what is that all about?’ asked Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-swedish-car-fire-1534374103

Paul Dallison and Stephen Brown reporting Aug. 14 in Politico Europe:

Cars were set alight across Sweden overnight in what police believe was a coordinated attack orchestrated on social media. . . .

“I am really surprised. My question for these people is ‘what the hell are you up to?’ ” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said.

“You’re ruining things for yourselves, for your parents, for the whole community, for the neighbors and most of Swedish society is dead against this,” he told Swedish national radio’s news show Ekot.

“It seems very coordinated, almost like a military operation. Eighty cars—what is that all about?” asked Löfven.

Appeared in the August 16, 2018, print edition as ‘Notable & Quotable.’

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Sir Ben Kingsley: Another Holocaust Is ‘Going to Come from a Very Surprising Place’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/sir-ben-kingsley-another-holocaust-is-going-to-come-from-a-very-surprising-place/

WASHINGTON – Sir Ben Kingsley, the Academy Award-winning actor who stars in the new film Operation Finale, told PJM that another Holocaust will come from a “very surprising place.”

Kingsley, who won an Oscar for Gandhi, plays Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, in Operation Finale, which tells the story of Nazi hunters finding and capturing Eichmann in 1960.

Kingsley recently warned that downplaying the humanity of Holocaust victims puts the world at risk of genocide happening again.

“If we dismiss them in a sort of capsule, an aberration of history, saying ‘well, they weren’t really human, so they don’t count,’ then we’re really letting history off the hook and we are in grave danger of allowing it to happen again,” Kingsley said during a recent interview.

PJM asked Kingsley why he is concerned about another Holocaust.

“I’ll tell you who told me it might happen – that it probably could happen again: that’s Simon Wiesenthal and Elie Wiesel, have both said that openly and publicly. So it is not for me to voice that concern. What do I know?” Kingsley said at the Washington premiere of Operation Finale on Wednesday evening at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“I’m just an actor but they are the voice of the Holocaust, and if those men are saying that then we better sit up and listen. And I’m not saying it’s going to come from Europe. I’m not saying it’s going to come from any part of the world that we think it’s going to come from. It’s not. It’s going to come from a very surprising place,” he added.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dave Pellowe The Real Fascists

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/real-fascists/

When leftists brand conservatives as ‘Nazis’ they strip away all meaning, just as they have succeeded in doing with ‘marriage’ and ‘racist’. When words are twisted to mean anything, what they convey is nothing but the speaker’s presumed right to silence and assault all who disagree.

The West has a plague of homegrown terrorists. True, their body count does not match that of Islamic extremists, but the ferocity of their attacks is of a kind. I’m talking about Antifa, an umbrella term for a loose collection of groups and individuals who process to be “anti fascist”. Oh, the irony!

The only problem with their self-given label (as with so many leftist self-given labels) is that they are the opposite. Antifa embody just about everything defining a fascist. The dictionary defines fascism as promoting nation and often race above individuals, standing for a centralised, autocratic government, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. Antifa aren’t strictly nationalistic, but rather socialistic, promoting the collective above individual liberty.

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Justin Campbell Suffer the Little Children

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/suffer-little-children/

The Left conquered and colonised our universities long ago, but the long march didn’t stop there. In kindergartens across the country, while taxpayers and parents pay through the nose, kids not much more than tots are getting a full grounding in the politically correct gospel.

Last week, while organising an event on Eventbrite, I stumbled across an event organised by Inclusion Support Queensland (a recent newsletter can be read here), a key architect of Australia’s childcare industry’s National Quality Framework and Standards. Targeted at early childhood teachers and titled ‘National Quality Standard: Inclusion in Practice’, the event promised to ‘explore how inclusion underpins the National Quality Standard.’

The term “inclusion” is problematic in the context of the childcare industry’s National Quality Standards, since it refers to both disability access and cultural inclusion. While there’s a general expectation that the industry complies with anti-discrimination law in ensuring accessibility and inclusiveness of all children regardless of their cultural background or disabilities, the “inclusion” imperative can become a multi-headed hydra, used to impose narrower and more ideologically driven cultural inclusion policies that many parents may find problematic.

With the reforms to the Federal government’s childcare subsidy I was already researching the childcare industry. I was curious why an industry so heavily subsidised by the taxpayer still costs parents so much of their after tax income. How could an industry that’s notorious for the low pay of its workers receive so much public money and yet deliver such an expensive service? The money certainly isn’t being spent on the workers. Early this year childcare workers represented by the industry’s trade union United Voice walked off the job protesting the low pay in the industry.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Andrew Cuomo and American Exceptionalism The country that never stopped being great. James Freeman

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/andrew-cuomo-and-american-exceptionalism-1534451407

A potential contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President appears to have just disqualified himself. If he hasn’t, it suggests that the U.S. educational system is in worse shape than many Americans realize.

Politico reports:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted Donald Trump during a bill-signing ceremony on Wednesday, twisting the president’s signature slogan as he made a point about the need for greater women’s equality.

“We’re not going to make America great again — it was never that great,” said Cuomo, a Democrat seeking a third term. “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged. We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women — 51 percent of our population — is gone and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed.”

Mr. Cuomo’s press secretary Dani Lever attempts to clarify in a press release:

The Governor believes America is great and that her full greatness will be fully realized when every man, woman, and child has full equality. America has not yet reached its maximum potential.

As Ms. Lever elaborates, her message seems to sound more and more like her boss’ original statement:

When the President speaks about making America great again – going back in time – he ignores the pain so many endured and that we suffered from slavery, discrimination, segregation, sexism and marginalized women’s contributions.

The New York Times for its part notes the irony in Mr. Cuomo’s attack on the President’s signature campaign slogan:

In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo, who is facing a primary challenge from his Democratic rival, Cynthia Nixon, explained that he saw Mr. Trump’s slogan as backward looking.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Protecting Taiwan From Chinese Aggression By Brandon J. Weichert

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/16/protecting-taiwan-from-chinese

The Chinese want to regain Taiwan as much as Abraham Lincoln desired to keep the southern states in the Union. Since the day that Taiwan became home of Chiang Kai-shek and his displaced Chinese Nationalist forces, the United States has vowed to uphold Taiwan’s place as an independent country. China views Taiwan as a breakaway province. The United States sees Taiwan as a democracy besieged by a larger, bullying neighbor. Taiwan simply wants to be free and sovereign.

A Complex Relationship: China, Taiwan, and the United States
For its part, the United States strives to maintain a posture of strategic ambiguity. At first, the United States unequivocally stood behind Taiwan as a counterweight to Red China in the Cold War. During the Nixon Administration, however, U.S. policy toward China fundamentally changed. Nixon went to Mao and the two leaders opened up their countries to each other.

Later, as part of the Carter Administration’s diplomatic efforts with China, the United States no longer recognized its long-time ally of Taiwan as the legitimate government of China.Until then, Washington had only recognized Taiwan’s government as the government of China. But under Carter, Washington conceded the “one China, two systems” model that there is only one Chinese government—and that government is in Beijing, not Taipei.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller v. Manafort: Is It about Gates — or a Mountain of Documents? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/paul-manafort-trial-mueller-team-focuses-on-documents/The prosecution wants the jury to focus on Manafort’s document trail.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the star witness in this case is the documents.” That is the theme prosecutor Greg Andres hammered home in his summation at Paul Manafort’s bank- and tax-fraud trial in an Alexandria, Va., federal court.

It is a theme that much of the media coverage has glossed over, though it is unlikely to have been overlooked by the jury of six men and six women that sat through the case presented by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

So will jurors stay focused on the documents — the financial records that prove tens of millions of dollars in income that Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, stashed in overseas accounts, failing to report the accounts or the income to the IRS?

The defense, of course, has a strategy to help the jury overlook the documents. The strategy even has a name: Rick Gates. The idea is to portray Mueller’s case as rising or falling on Manafort’s longtime business partner and accomplice.

Gates was the trial’s most prominent witness, and he is a scoundrel. Indeed, the only fraud that has been proved so far is Gates’s prodigious embezzlement from Manafort — during the time prosecutors allege that they were both cheating the government. According to the defense, embezzlement just scratches the surface of Gates’s loathsomeness, which also includes extramarital flings and other betrayals. Gates, then, is the star witness, according to Richard Westling, the lawyer who summed up on Manafort’s behalf. If the jury sees him as a fallen star, he just might take the prosecution’s case down with him.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Trump and Media Group-Think By Carl M. Cannon

Posted By on August 16th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/08/16/trump_and_media_group-think.html

oday is the day that some 300 U.S. newspapers heeded the Boston Globe’s call for an organized demonstration against President Trump. The protest consists of editorials and columns denouncing the president for his frequent characterizations that the “fake media” is the “enemy of the American people.”

The problems with this scheme — one is tempted to use the word “collusion” — are so manifest it’s almost too easy to point them out. The most obvious is that it plays directly into the president’s hands, making the press look overtly partisan, while underscoring Trump’s basic point, which is that the media hates him so much we don’t follow our normal rules of behavior. When is the last time the Fourth Estate ran what amounts to a coordinated campaign?

A second concern is what we might call the Calvin Coolidge problem. When informed in 1933 that the famously taciturn former president had died, famed wit Dorothy Parker quipped, “How can they tell?” My point is that if 300 newspaper opinion writers decide to kick Donald Trump in the fanny, how are their readers expected to distinguish this day from any other?

My own objection to this organized effort can be found in the words to a Bruce Springsteen song, and a Howard Fast vignette from 70 summers ago, at a 1948 political convention in Philadelphia.

Many journalists of my generation venerate Bruce Springsteen. We love his music, parse his lyrics while contemplating our lives, and, truth be told, identify with his progressive politics. As is the case with all great art, however, his best songs have a universal application to the human condition, and such messages don’t always fit neatly into the paradigms of partisan politics.