ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Hurricane Florence is not climate change or global warming. It’s just the weather.Roy W. Spencer

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/14/hurricane-florence-climate-change-global-warming-weather-greenhouse-flood-column/1289272002/
It’s likely due to natural weather patterns, not climate change as some have already said.

Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, predicted damage from potentially catastrophic flooding from the storm was already being blamed on global warming.

Writing for NBC News, Kristina Dahl contended, “With each new storm, we are forced to question whether this is our new, climate change-fueled reality, and to ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the toll from supercharged storms.”

The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location. This is what happened with Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year.

But like most claims regarding global warming, the real effect is small, probably temporary, and most likely due to natural weather patterns. Any changes in hurricanes over 70 years, even if real, can easily be part of natural cycles — or incomplete data. Coastal lake sediments along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline from 1,000 to 2,000 years ago suggest more frequent and intense hurricanes than occur today. Why? No one knows.
Unusual things happen in nature sometimes

The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 experienced a Category 3 or 4 storm, with up to a 20-foot storm surge. While such a storm does not happen in New England anymore, it happened again there in 1675, with elderly eyewitnesses comparing it to the 1635 storm.

POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Pick Socialist Compulsive Liar Accused of Anti-Semitism and Keith Hernandez Affair Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271326/new-york-voters-pick-socialist-compulsive-liar-daniel-greenfield

Cheer up, socialists.

Sure Cynthia Nixon, Zephyr Teachout, Jumaaaaanee Williams and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili all badly flamed out in New York Dem primaries, but Julia Salazar won.

The Christian Jewish Colombian immigrant from Miami, who may or may not have graduated from Columbia, but has a huge trust fund and hates Jews, will go on to the New York State Senate.

The fake woman of color/trust fund baby fighting gentrification by appealing to gentrifiers roundly won the gentrifier vote against a man of color and will go on to the State Senate. And there’s no doubt that a compulsive liar who in her short life already managed to be accused of stealing wine during an affair with Keith Hernandez and to accuse a Netanyahu aide of sexual assault, will do the DSA proud.

Can a joint Cherokee/Colombian ticket with Elizabeth Warren be far behind?

I for one can’t wait until Julia Salazar has an affair with Governor Andrew Cuomo, gets accused of stealing wine by his wife, and then comes out as a Buddhist member of ISIS and joins the Nazi Party.

Forward comrades, you have nothing to lose but your minds. And the last of your credibility.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hurricanes, Death Tolls, and Trump By Julie Kelly

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/13/hurricanes

It’s Hurricane Katrina all over again.

Since the election of climate denier Donald Trump, the politicization of major hurricanes—along with a torrent of hysterical news coverage and blame-laying—is back en vogue. During last year’s unusually active hurricane season, the media, Democratic politicians and scientific activists claimed the devastating storms were Trump’s fault even though he had been president for less than a year; some suggested voters in the red states that helped elect Trump deserved to have their property destroyed or even to be killed. (The Washington Post editorial board already this week has blamed Trump for Hurricane Florence, currently churning in the Atlantic Ocean, headed for the Carolinas)

George W. Bush never politically recovered from the fallout of Katrina in 2005; the Left and NeverTrump are now following that successful playbook against the current Republican president.

That’s why the media and political class continue to rehash Hurricane Maria, which ravaged the island of Puerto Rico just over a year ago. They want this to be Trump’s Katrina. Amid the release of a scientifically questionable report last month that significantly raised the number of deaths attributable to Maria, Trump is again on the defensive about his culpability in the tragedy. In two tweets Thursday morning, Trump rejected the study’s estimate that 2,975 people died because of Maria-related causes, and that Democrats were using the dubious report to “in order to make me look as bad as possible.”

He’s right.

It’s been their strategy since Hurricane Maria started forming in the Atlantic last summer. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz spent days blasting the president in front of any news camera she could find after the Category 4 storm made landfall on September 20, 2017 as her poverty-stricken constituents struggled to recover. Cruz accused the president of an act of “genocide” for not responding quicker to Maria as supplies such as bottled water sat unused and undistributed in storage areas. Political pundits insisted Trump’s (allegedly) inadequate action was because he’s a bigot. (Cruz is now being condemned for politicizing the tragedy and is under investigation by the FBI for corruption.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barack Obama’s return just reminds us how he fueled the distrust that led to Donald Trump James Bovard,

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/13/barack-obama-fueled-government-distrust-elected-donald-trump-column/1260175002/
Who cares if Obama belatedly cheers for transparency and accountability? He should admit that he made the government more dangerous at home and abroad.

Former president Barack Obama is back. He kicked off a series of campaign appearances last week with a blistering attack on the Trump administration and said the Republican Party had “embraced a rising absolutism.” President Donald Trump deserves plenty of harsh criticism, but Obama’s indictment is akin to the kid who killed his parents and then sought mercy from the judge because he was an orphan.

Obama declared that“the biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism.” He also called for “a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government.” But his eight years as president fueled the distrust of Washingtonthat Obama now condemns.

How can Obama blame Americans for being cynical after repeating dozens of times his false promise that “If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor,” despite the dozens of mandates in Obamacare? How can he blame Americans for being cynical after his 2015 assertion that “it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book”? How can he castigate cynics after he campaigned in 2008 on a peace platform and then proceeded to bomb seven nations? How can he complain about distrust after he flip-flopped on illegal surveillance and unleashed the National Security Administration to target anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff”?
Obama created the problems he lists

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Grim Cost of the “Oslo War” by Guy Millière

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12999/oslo-war

Twenty-five years after Oslo, the balance sheet is more like what in 2003 the historian Efraim Karsh called the start of the “Oslo war”. In this war, he wrote, Israel had conceded from the beginning a major victory to its worst enemies by giving them a respectability they did not deserve, and thus placed itself in a losing position from which it never fully recovered.

“Contrary to Rabin’s slogan, one does not ‘make [peace] with very unsavory enemies’ but rather with former very unsavory enemies. That is, enemies that have been defeated… Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted its will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.” — Daniel Pipes, Commentary, January 2017.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.” — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen , interview in Trouw, March, 1977.

September 13, 1993. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the lawn of the White House. They have just officially signed the document that was supposed to start Peace: the Oslo Accord. The cogs of this machine began their work.

Overnight, Yasser Arafat was no longer the leader of a defeated terrorist organization. He had suddenly become the President of a quasi-state; his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been transformed into the “Palestinian Authority”.

Terror attacks against Israelis attacks during this “peace” grew even more bloody and more profuse, and soon were being perpetrated at a frantic pace. Some deliberately targeted children and youths, such as the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre and the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing. Arafat condemned none of them.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

State Department Warns John Kerry Not to ‘Compromise’ Iran Strategy By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-warns-john-kerry-against-talks-with-iran/

The State Department on Thursday warned former Secretary of State John Kerry against holding diplomatic talks with Iran behind the current administration’s back, possibly compromising the government’s Iran strategy.

“It’s unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we’re trying to make in this administration,” the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I don’t have personal knowledge of those meetings, but if that is happening, again, I would find it very inappropriate,” the senior State Department official said.

Kerry has admitted to meeting “three or four times” with his counterpart Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after leaving his position as secretary of state. The two were key players in negotiating former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration scrapped in May.

“Every secretary of state, former secretary of state, continues to meet with foreign leaders,” Kerry told Fox News on Wednesday. “We don’t negotiate. We’re not involved in interfering with policy, but we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies, obviously.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Sentence Cynthia Nixon to Lifetime of Minor Roles on Sitcoms Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271325/new-york-voters-sentence-cynthia-nixon-lifetime-daniel-greenfield

New York voters cast their ballots yesterday and the wisdom of the crowd determined that the best lifetime role for Cynthia Nixon involved not the governor’s mansion, but a few decades of minor roles on sitcoms lightly referencing her Sex and the City years.

Despite Nixon’s promise to fix the subways (without knowing how) or immediately implement socialist medicine while figuring out how to pay for it later, New York voters wisely determined that the socialist candidate’s talents should be best used for minor indie movie roles and voiceovers.

While Nixon had promised to make New York the contact point for UFOs and to round up all the Zionists while curing all known diseases with healing crystals, New York voters thought that she should focus on doing funny voices for cartoons and other things that has been actresses with plenty of contacts in the industry can continue to do.

Despite Nixon’s contention that as the 22nd incarnation of the Dalai Lama, only she was qualified to reform New York’s budget by putting all the illegal aliens on the state payroll, New York voters thought that her talents should be best utilized surprising tourists who spot her crossing the street on the Upper West Side, and then wonder if she’s that woman from Suddenly Susan who tried to behead Trump.

But either way, New Yorkers won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

CAIR in the Classroom A Hamas-linked group partners with public schools. Cinnamon Stillwell

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271311/cair-classroom-cinnamon-stillwell

Reprinted from Algemeiner.com.

In 1993, Ibrahim Hooper, director of strategic communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” Twenty-five years later, CAIR could be making headway on that goal, through its relationships with US public school districts in at least three states.

CAIR — an Islamist group and United Arab Emirates-designated terrorist organizationthat bills itself as a defender of civil rights — has achieved special concessions for Muslim students and launched the inappropriate insertion of religion into publicly-funded education. Meanwhile, pushback from parents and outside organizations is building.

Seattle Public Schools’ partnership with CAIR’s Washington chapter is the latest incident to cause controversy, but the relationship dates back to at least 2011, when CAIR-WA sent the district a letter proposing accommodations for Muslim students and classroom lessons on Islam. Then as now, CAIR-WA claimed to be fighting “anti-Muslim bullying.” To that end, in 2012 and 2013 the organization contacted the school district to complain about “Islamophobia” among teachers.

That approach eventually paid off. In a Ramadan crowd-funding campaign in May of this year, the CAIR-WA chapter outlined its plan “to provide educational training for teachers and staff on things like Ramadan, Eid, and how educators can support Muslim students in the classroom.” Accordingly, that same month, CAIR-WA ran a “professional development session” in a Seattle high school that “addressed providing identity-safe spaces in schools for Muslim families” and “how to support students during Ramadan.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trump Administration Reopens Rutgers Anti-Semitism Case Campus hate groups have just been put on notice. Joseph Klein

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271321/trump-administration-reopens-rutgers-anti-semitism-joseph-klein

The Trump administration has decided to reopen a case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, previously closed by the Obama administration in 2014, alleging that the university had allowed Jewish students to be subjected to a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act. The issue, ignored by the Obama administration, was whether the students were discriminated against based on their actual or perceived Jewish ancestry or ethnicity. Kenneth L. Marcus, the new assistant secretary of education for civil rights, decided that the case deserved another look. As the New York Times reported, Mr. Marcus’s decision “put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.” The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights will be examining not only the past case it has reopened. It will also examine whether a hostile environment for Jewish students continues to exist at Rutgers.

According to the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which filed the original complaint on July 20, 2011, the allegations included claims of physical threats and anti-Semitic comments posted on Facebook against at least one Jewish student, and discrimination against Jewish and pro-Israel students. The discrimination charge involved an anti-Israel event entitled “Never Again for Anyone,” sponsored by an anti-Israel student group called “Belief Awareness Knowledge and Action (BAKA),” where an admission fee was allegedly imposed and selectively enforced against Jewish and pro-Israel students.

In reopening the case, Assistant Secretary Marcus focused on the anti-Israel event held on January 29, 2011. He concluded that the Obama administration had erred in dismissing the case because it disregarded evidence that the admission fee allegedly imposed on Jewish students seeking to attend the event was discriminatory, based on ethnicity. The Obama administration also disregarded evidence that Rutgers had failed to respond appropriately to student complaints regarding the pricing policy. The evidence of discrimination, as reported by Algemeiner, included an e-mail purportedly from a BAKA student volunteer at the anti-Israel event stating that there was a need to start charging an admission fee because “150 Zionists just showed up,” although “if someone looks like a supporter, they can get in for free.” Assistant Secretary Marcus noted that singling out “150 Zionists” for an admission fee “could have been based at least partially on a visual assessment, as opposed to individually polling all 150 such unexpected arrivals as to their views on the policies of the state of Israel.” The selection of whom to charge, he said, “could have been rooted in a perception of Jewish ancestry or ethnic characteristics common to the group.” He added that it is “important to determine whether the conduct related to Israel was motivated by anti-Semitism” and to “determine whether terms such as ‘Zionist’ are actually code for ‘Jewish.’”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

GOP Gives Up On Repealing Obamacare They claim to have more important things to do. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271322/gop-gives-repealing-obamacare-matthew-vadum

Republican lawmakers have made it clear they have no intention of repealing Obamacare in the current Congress.

Republicans in the nation’s top lawmaking body have never really wanted to get rid of Obamacare. They would prefer to present the program, which David Horowitz correctly describes as “the greatest assault on individual freedom and individual choice in our lifetimes,” as a villain and whip up sentiment against it and run against it every election. They view Obamacare as good for the business of politics. They may chip away at it from time to time or tinker with it at the margins, but make no mistake: these creatures of Washington want to keep it in place. This is the Republicans’ dirty secret.

Republicans have been promising to rip Obamacare out root and branch ever since it was enacted. They ramped up their rhetoric after the allegedly conservative-dominated Supreme Court declared the blatantly unconstitutional Obamacare law constitutional in the incoherent NFIB v. Sebelius ruling of 2012. Americans responded to this government takeover of a huge chunk of the economy by electing GOP-controlled congresses in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016, and by electing Donald Trump as president.

Unintimidated by the Left and sneering hack journalists, Trump began the push to bury the misnamed Affordable Care Act and as a result the individual mandate will die at the end of this year. But the bulk of the statute and related rules such as the economically suicidal pre-existing medical conditions mandate remain in place, complete with federal insurance-purchasing subsidies for people who don’t need the help, as well as the sclerotic administrative apparatus, and the odious rule that prevents health insurers from competing across state lines.