Displaying posts published in

August 2018

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Dereliction of Leadership Imperils Military By Mike Berry

By on August 17th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/army-chaplain-disciplined-for-following-rules-threat-to-religious-liberty/

An Army chaplain and his assistant may be disciplined for following his denomination’s rules while accommodating a same-sex couple.

In my 16 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, both on active duty and now in the reserve, I have had the privilege of serving with many fine officers. I know firsthand that the difference between life and death is often a matter of leadership. Whether in combat or in training, strong and decisive leadership inspires confidence, improves morale, and contributes to the ethos of professionalism that has made the U.S. military the finest fighting force in the world.

As director of military affairs for a religious-liberty law firm, I have recently observed a disturbing trend that, if left unchecked, threatens to weaken our military from within. What began as passive-aggressive political correctness has devolved into open hostility to religious liberty in the military. Recent disturbing events within the U.S. Army are a perfect example of both.

An Army investigator under the command of Major General Kurt Sonntag recommended that Army chaplain Scott Squires be found guilty of “dereliction of duty” for rescheduling a marriage retreat that Squires is prohibited from facilitating so that another chaplain could handle it. A same-sex couple had registered for the retreat, and Squires is endorsed by the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board (NAMB), which prohibits its chaplains from conducting marriage-related events for same-sex couples. NAMB’s policy clearly states that “endorsed chaplains will not conduct or attend a wedding ceremony for any same-sex couple, bless such a union or perform counseling in support of such a union . . . nor offer any kind of relationship training or retreat, on or off a military installation.”

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Burma’s Rohingya Muslims Need the Trump Administration’s Help By Nina Shea

By on August 17th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/burmas-rohingya-muslims-need-trump-administrations-help/

President Obama stood idly by as the Burmese government slaughtered the Rohingya. President Trump can and must do better.

Throughout its second term, the Obama administration downplayed mounting evidence that Burma’s Rohingya community was being deliberately eradicated by the country’s military. Genocide was an inconvenient fact for an administration eager to claim a foreign-policy achievement in Burma’s democratic transition. With U.S. help, in 2015–16, Burma had been transformed from a pariah military dictatorship into a democracy headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, an international human-rights icon. But Burma’s deplorable religious-freedom record was hardly a secret.

Since 1999, Burma has been designated a severe and systematic religious persecutor under the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act. Its ethnic Rohingya Muslim and Kachin, Chin, and Karen Christian minorities have been regularly oppressed and subjected to brutal attempts of forcible conversion by its Buddhist majority. Violent conflict between them and a military bent on “Burmanization” has raged on and off since the country’s 1948 independence from Britain.

In 2012, the attacks against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s northern Rakhine state became particularly intense. That year, Genocide Watch issued an emergency alert that these Rohingya were being slaughtered and driven from their homes. On May 20, 2013, noted human-rights advocates Jose Ramos Horta, Muhammad Yunus, and Benedict Rogers wrote of these early warning signs of genocide in the New York Times:

The Rohingyas were recognized until the 1982 Citizenship Law stripped them of their citizenship and rendered them stateless. Since then, they have faced a slow-burning campaign of persecution, which exploded last June and again in October, resulting in the deaths of at least 1,000 and the displacement of at least 130,000. . . . Human Rights Watch has published evidence of mass graves and a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The University of Virginia Goes Nuts Again By George Leef

By on August 17th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/university-of-virginia-marc-short-miller-center/

Big universities are prone to bouts of craziness and one that’s particularly susceptible is the University of Virginia. The campus has been in an uproar one year after the alt-right vs. Antifa riot last summer. The turmoil was triggered by a horrible, provocative move by a center located at the university — it hired someone who worked in the Trump administration!

Charlottesville native and frequent Martin Center contributor John Rosenberg writes about the resulting affray in this essay.

Marc Short, who served as Trump’s legislative director, was recently hired by the Miller Center, which focuses on politics and the presidency. But hiring anyone who ever had anything to do with Trump is now verboten — at least in the minds of woke faculty members.

Said another prof at the Center, “Short’s hiring is an institutional and moral crisis” because “the Trump presidency does not represent American democracy and has upended the political order.”

Rosenberg’s comment on the ranting over Short’s hiring: “The unrecognized irony here, of course, is that there is a name for the intolerance of universities and other institutions refusing to hire anyone defending illiberalism: McCarthyism.”

Two Miller Center faculty members resigned rather than work under the same roof as Short. He’s being treated like a leper just for having been part of the Trump team.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump at 36 percent approval among African-Americans, new poll finds William Cummings,

By on August 17th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/16/trump-approval-rating-african-americans-rasmussen-poll/1013212002/

Even as cable news networks debate reports of the existence of a recording of President Donald Trump using a racial slur, a new poll from Rasmussen Reports says that the president’s approval rating among African-Americans is at 36 percent, nearly double his support at this time last year.

“Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36%,” Rasmussen said in a tweet. “This day last year: 19%.”

That is a staggeringly high number for a man who only won 8 percent of the African-American vote in 2016.

It is even more unexpected given the president’s rocky history on matters related to race, including his current nasty feud with former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who has alleged Trump said “n word” on the set of the reality-TV show “The Apprentice.”

Conservatives celebrated the poll as a sign of trouble for Democrats in upcoming elections.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative campus group Turning Point USA, cited the poll as evidence that Trump “is breaking the Democrat party as we know it.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Never That Great” Andrew Cuomo’s widely panned comments say more about him than about America. Bob McManus

By on August 17th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/html/andrew-cuomo-16114.html

New York governor Andrew Cuomo says that America was “never that great,” and he’s entitled to that view, but it would be interesting to know where the U.S. ranks in his personal list of great nations. And it’s amusing to imagine what the late Mario Cuomo, who so frequently praised America for the singular place that it is—“the greatest nation in the only world we know”—would have to say, especially in private, about his impulsive son’s latest outburst. Cuomo delivered his caustic observation at a bill-signing ceremony cum campaign pep rally on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and it might be a mistake to take it for much beyond what it was: just another rhetorical drive-by shooting aimed at Donald Trump, the bête noire of New York Democratic politics.

But let’s unpack it anyway.

“We’re not going to make America great again,” Cuomo said. “It was never that great. We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged.” Perhaps the governor meant “perfect” when he said “great”—his language skills aren’t profound when he’s in political mode—and that would have the advantage of being true. Humans aspire to perfection, but never achieve it; greatness is a relative goal, reachable but open to mischievous rhetorical abuse.

Perhaps Cuomo was conjuring the spirit of his father’s keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a carefully composed, skillfully delivered attempted takedown of President Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” campaign theme. But this was an infinitely larger stage in a game played for immensely greater stakes, and Mario Cuomo was a masterful public speaker. At best, Andrew Cuomo’s crack was an uninspired knockoff of his father’s singular statement of principle and purpose. Just as Trump is no Reagan, Andrew is no Mario when it comes to political oratory.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Agenda That Dare Not Speak Its Name Column: The Democrats’ plans for 2019—and beyond Dems BY: Matthew Continetti

By on August 17th, 2018

https://freebeacon.com/columns/agenda-dare-not-speak-name/

The Democrats have decided that agendas are overrated. Back in May, the party unveiled its “Better Deal” program, calling for expanded broadband access, an increase in the minimum wage, and paid family and sick leave. Voters didn’t bite. So last month the Democrats came up with “For the People,” which simplifies the platform to infrastructure spending, lowering health care costs, and draining the swamp. Again, crickets.

What to do? Party leadership has declared that it’s every cis-het man for himself. “We trust our candidates to know their districts and the challenges facing their communities better than anyone,” House campaign chair Ben Ray Luján tells the New York Times. Translation: If you are Conor Lamb, run as a gun-friendly champion of the working class. If you are Rashida Tlaib, feel free to announce that you would vote against aid for Israel and to call for bi-nationalism that would end the Jewish State. Texas Democrat Colin Allred, following Hillary Clinton, says everyone should be able to buy into Medicare. Maine Democrat Jared Golden, following Bernie Sanders, says, “We need to move towards a universal health care system, like Medicare-for-all.”

Such diversity of approach troubles the philosopher kings of Forty-First Street. Discarding a “Washington platform,” write Sheryl Stolberg and Nicholas Fandos, is “a risky strategy.” It leaves unanswered the question of what the Democratic Party stands for. It “could raise questions among voters about how Democrats would govern.” Questions to which there are few substantive answers.

The truth, though, is that the Democrats do have an agenda. They just can’t say it aloud. The reason Democrats seek power in 2018 is to obstruct President Trump wholly and without exception, to tie down his administration using the subpoena powers of a dozen committees, and ultimately to lay the groundwork for his impeachment. The Democratic grassroots expects nothing less.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Eco-Groups Push for ‘Vegan Electricity,’ Free from Animal Byproducts By John Ellis

By on August 17th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/eco-groups-push-for-vegan-electricity-free-from-animal-byproducts/

No, you did not accidentally click on The Onion or the Babylon Bee. Yes, vegan electricity is now a thing. Ain’t capitalism grand? I mean, capitalism has solved so many real problems and now it’s solving made-up problems.

Prior to reading the HuffPost article titled “The Dirty Secret in Your Electricity: Animals” I had no idea that animal byproducts are used in the production of electricity. And I had no idea because I had literally never thought about it. Or cared. Still don’t. But some people care. Deeply, in fact.

Before delving into the “solution,” you should probably be made aware of the “problem” So, to that end, you should know:

Most of the electricity in countries like the U.S. and the U.K comes from burning fossil fuels. Renewables such as wind power, as well as nuclear energy, likewise feature in the mix. But energy can also be derived from breaking down animal byproducts, like poultry poop, and even whole animals, into gas that can be burned.

In fact, it gets “worse,” because, “In December, the U.K newspaper The Times reported that British energy firm SSE had sold energy generated at Scotland’s Barkip power station using dead farmed salmon unfit for human consumption.”

To be fair, “A spokesperson for SSE told HuffPost the company was unable to confirm whether diseased salmon had definitely been used to generate electricity because the Barkip station ‘just takes waste to save it going to landfill,’ but said it would be ‘fair to assume it took fish carcasses at one point.'”

Now that you’ve been acquainted with the dastardly “problem” of non-vegan electricity, I’m sure that you’ll be relieved to learn about the “solution.” Thankfully, concerned people are finally taking a stand in the defense of diseased salmon that may or may not be used to power things like the lights in children’s hospitals or homeless shelters or, *gasp* the kennels in humane societies. As animal rights activist Lex Rigby told HuffPost, “Those who chose not to eat fish, whether for ethical or welfare reasons, would be ‘disgusted’ to discover that energy providers had used sick fish to produce energy.”

That concern for sick fish has created the market for vegan electricity.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

When Antifa Chants ‘No America at All’ By Sarah Hoyt

By on August 17th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/when-antifa-chants-no-america-at-all/

Apparently while countering the “Unite the Right” (which is neither) demonstration, the brown shirts of Antifa got a little upset there was no one there to fight them.

According to this article on Powerline, quoting an article in the Washington Post by Petula Drorak who covered the Antifa demonstration:

Masked — in black instead of KKK white — they pinballed around the empty streets of downtown D.C., randomly chanting and searching for a brawl .

“Bust some windows!” (Why?)

“Nazis, go home!” (They did.)

“No border! No wall! No USA at all!” (Huh?)

First, I want to say that if Ms. Drorak’s puzzlement at these slogans isn’t faked – is that possible – it might be time she paid some attention to what is happening in the party she (being a liberal) ostensibly endorses. That last chant is no surprise for those of us who have been awake for the last 15 years or so. The democratic party – whose violent arm the Antifa is – has long since become the Midgard Worm, gnawing at the root of all that allows it and its – generally helpless – supporters to exist.

For those I lost in the last paragraph: the Norsemen, people not known for their sunny outlook on the future, believed that at the root of the “world tree” (i.e the tree that supports our entire reality) there lay a worm, the Midgard Worm, which gnawed at the root and would eventually cause reality as we know it to cease to exist, thereby bringing about Ragnarok (which it turns out is more than just a movie, yes.)

Okay, that’s it, and I promise I won’t be inflicting any more reminders of my misspent – if you don’t think sitting in a corner and reading a lot is misspent, you must be me – youth on you. I also promise that there won’t be a test on Tuesday. (Perhaps next Wednesday, but not Tuesday!)

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea on the Mediterranean David Isaac

By on August 17th, 2018

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/180817

Since March 30, when Hamas launched its first “return march” with thousands storming Israel’s border, Israel’s media pundits have said neither side wants escalation. They had it right. What’s being termed “the small arrangement” looks like a big win for Hamas, whose strategy most resembles that of North Korea.

In 1999, North Korea was in a similar situation to Hamas now. Its economy was in tatters. State rations hadn’t been distributed for five years. Control of its population was slipping. Today, Hamas can’t make payroll or provide basic services and faces staggering unemployment. One of the generally agreed reasons why Hamas whipped its people up in the first place was to distract them from their economic problems.

According to the agreement, which sources say will be signed Friday in Cairo, Hamas will accept a yearlong ceasefire in exchange for a sea lane to Cyprus, extension of its fishing waters, the opening of border crossings on the Israel and Egyptian sides of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian projects and funding from Egypt and Qatar to pay the salaries of its public servants. Qatar will also pay Gaza’s electric bills.

Curiously, despite the nearness of a deal, Khalil al-Haya, Hamas’s deputy head, called on Gazan residents to march en masse to the border. Terrorists continue floating fire bombs into Israel. One was spotted above the skies of Netivot on Thursday. This continued aggression, too, follows North Korean strategy.

The North Korean Model

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Multiculturalism and Diversity FacebookTwitterGoogle+ By Victor Sharpe

By on August 17th, 2018

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/180817

In the marvelous science fiction story, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, the blond haired Eloi who exuded beauty and kindness, but who were frail minded, became victims of cruel and brutal creatures called Morlocks. The story took the time traveler to a place thousands of years into the future.

But back in the second decade of the 21st century, and in the reality that now confronts us, I found myself making a disturbing comparison between the fate of the Eloi with what is happening in Sweden. As the Muslim migration – some would characterize it as an invasion – predictably has turned violent, cruel and brutal rioting is now roiling Swedish cities and towns.

Sweden was the first European country to fully embrace the ‘diversity’ myth, which posits that nation-states are unquestionably improved by a huge influx of non-native cultural aliens. It was also once one of the most peaceful countries in the world, then they welcomed in 600,000 Muslim migrants and the country is getting worse and worse, filled with Muslim violence and intolerance.

Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked such immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

As I have written before, the vogue for ‘multiculturalism’ – along with its pernicious and suicidal handmaiden of ‘political correctness,’ – is effectively a process by which the native culture is supplanted and replaced by a foreign one. It is otherwise known as invasion and conquest and has since spread to other nations, to the manifest detriment of each of them.

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