Displaying posts published in

November 2018

Jim Acosta: the Don Quixote of fake news I have at times wondered whether Jim Acosta pays the president a retainer for making him such a recognizable figure Roger Kimball

https://spectator.us/jim-acosta-don-quixote-fake-news/

Let’s face it, reality show star Jim Acosta could get a cover charge for his rendition of the Man of La Mancha. There he is, press conference after press conference, crooning his ‘unheard melodies’:

‘To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go.’

Don Quixote tilted at windmills and was ridiculous but lovable.

Jim Acosta accosts his ‘unbeatable foe,’ Donald Trump and is ridiculous but disgusting.

Think back to his performance in August before the President’s Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. Acosta kept badgering her to assure the scribes in the White House press pool that the President did not think the were ‘enemies of the people.’ Sanders refused to let him fulfill that impossible dream, which sent the CNN reporter into one of his signature windmill-tilting frenzies. ‘For the sake of this room, the people that are in this room, this democracy, this country,’ he said with characteristic understatement and politesse, ‘the president of the United States should not refer to us as the enemy of the people.’

Thanks for the lesson in civility, Jim. It was almost as pertinent as his invocation of ‘Nazis’ in response to the President’s observation that there were ‘some very fine people on both sides’ at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville a couple of years ago.

Nazis, eh? Someone should tell Jim Acosta about Godwin’s law and the perils of reductio ad Hitleram.

Blacklisting Patrick Henry and American History By James Patrick Riley

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/11/blacklisting-patrick

My days as an American historian may be numbered.

For the better part of 40 years, my extended family has featured American “living history” on our 760-acre apple farm in Oak Glen, California. When my wife and I built our Georgian inspired home on the farm in 1994, we originally hoped to offer 18th century dinner theater, but two mothers of fifth grade students approached us, asking for a field trip on the American Revolution.

I didn’t think it would work at first. As a child, our field trips were to museums and bakeries and theme parks. Allowing children to witness a mock battle? Allowing 11 year olds to pretend they were soldiers? I loved the idea of showing kids redcoats and minutemen, but I wondered if California elementary teachers would approve.

I could not have been more wrong. Within five years, we were seeing 50,000 students a year, and in the last 17 years, more than 1.2 million students, parents, and teachers visited programs on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the California Gold Rush.

Our program has no contemporary agenda and for decades it has been loved by all sorts of Americans, who are left, right, and center on the political spectrum. I’ve had great conversations with parents who were federal judges, Hollywood producers, fashion designers, actors and other farmers like me. I once had a pleasant dinner conversation with Bradley Whitford, (“West Wing,” “Saving Mr. Banks”). I wonder, had he known my politics, if the conversation might have taken an arch turn, because I’m pro-life, a lifetime NRA member, and a property rights advocate, but Brad and I kept it very human and convivial. I think, over the years, quite a few of my guests may have known something about my politics, because I’ve always been willing to speak my mind online, but if they ever did have trouble with my views, it always felt like a very Henry Fonda/Jimmy Stewart relationship. I love my customers, and most of them love me, my family, and staff.

Enter ubiquitous social media and a crusading socialist “blue wave” activist—who took the trouble to urge several public schools to blacklist our programs. For my thinking that the Reverend Louis Farrakhan is a bit more dangerous than some mythological (and certainly minuscule) “White Nationalism,” I was called a “racist.” For thinking Stormy Daniels was wildly over the top assaulting an undercover police officer, I was called a “misogynist.” For being bewildered by a sudden multiplicity of gender identities, I was called a “homophobe.” Suddenly, in these polarized times, Riley’s Farm is no longer considered a “safe space” for children by timid, progressive school administrators.

The Lonely Mob By Kevin D. Williamson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/antifa-lonely-mobs-fight-fantasy-nazis/

Feel blue? Lack purpose? Life a little dull? Get a lift by fighting some fantasy Nazis.

Just before the election, an Andrew Gillum intern named Shelby Shoup was arrested and charged with battery after assaulting some college Republicans on the campus of Florida State University. It was rather less exciting than that sounds: She went on a rant about “Nazis” and “fascism” — Gillum’s Republican opponent, Ron DeSantis, finished up at Harvard Law and then joined the U.S. military and helped to fight actual Jew-hating totalitarian thugs in Iraq, in case anybody cares about the facts — before dousing the Republicans with chocolate milk.

There isn’t much of enduring interest in that story: Feckless and hysterical young Caitlyns have been going all rage-monkey from coast to coast for a good bit now, and one might get a feel for the level of maturity at play here by meditating on the fact that a grown-ass woman of legal voting age was walking around drinking chocolate milk. Caitlyns gotta Caitlyn, I suppose.

Of course Shoup should be convicted on a misdemeanor battery charge, this being a fairly open-and-shut case supported by video evidence. Her actions are also a serious violation of the university’s code of student conduct, which could entail punishment up to and including expulsion. Kicking her out of the university would be excessive, I think, and she’s obviously in need of further and better education. I’d suggest having her write a 40-page essay on the works of Russell Kirk or F. A. Hayek, or maybe Ludwig von Mises on the actual Nazis and totalitarianism.

Spilt milk, indeed.

This sort of behavior should be understood as being on a spectrum.

Fire Brenda Snipes !!!

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/fire-brenda-snipes-florida-broward-county-election-supervisor/

Brenda Snipes, the supervisor of elections in Florida’s Broward County, does not deserve to be within a thousand miles of any election office anywhere in these United States. She should be fired at the earliest possible opportunity.

Snipes has held her position since 2003, in which year her predecessor, Miriam Oliphant, was suspended for “grave neglect, mismanagement and incompetence” and, quite literally, marched out of her office. Alas, Snipes has proven no better at fulfilling her duties than was Oliphant. On Friday, a court in Broward County found that Snipes was guilty of violating both Florida’s public-records laws and the state’s constitution by failing to provide mandatory updates to the public, and it ordered the immediate release of the missing information. As that ruling was coming down, Snipes’s office was laying out more lawsuit bait. According to the Miami Herald, an election worker found bags of “uncounted early ballots” in the Broward County office — ballots whose provenance could not be established. Snipes, meanwhile, was busy mixing together rejected provisional ballots and accepted provisional ballots, processing them all together. She justified her decision to add these provisional ballots to the official tally on the grounds that it would be better to include some illegal votes than to nix the legal ones with which, by her own incompetence, they had been blended.

Such behavior is by no means out of character. This year alone, Snipes has been reprimanded by the courts twice: once, in May, for illegally destroying ballots during the 2016 Democratic primary, in violation of both state and federal law; and again, in August, for illegally opening mail-in ballots in secret. How long, we wonder, does it take to establish a pattern?

Academic anti-Semitism Encounters Setbacks By Kenneth H. Ryesky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/academic_antisemitism_encounters_setbacks.html

University of Michigan professor John Cheney-Lippold unabashedly reneged upon his agreement to write a recommendation letter for his student Abigail Ingber solely because the program to which Ms. Ingber sought admission is under the aegis of an Israeli academic institution. This, in turn, has evoked various controversies in academic circles.

Even if motivated by politics, bias, or hatred, a professor’s decision to write or to not write a letter of recommendation for a student needs to be the sole and unquestioned prerogative of the professor; else recommendation letters would have no value or meaning. There must, however, be ethical behavior on the part of the professor.

Cheney-Lippold has a surfeit of ethical issues which extend beyond the fact that his reneging was admittedly timed to follow his receipt of his tenure letter from the university, beyond the fact that a few weeks prior to his tenure grant he presented a paper at a conference cosponsored in no small part by an Israeli academic institution, and irrespective of whether academic boycotts of any sort are or are not ethical.

First and foremost, Cheney-Lippold misrepresented his personal participation in the BDS academic boycott of Israeli institutions as the policy of his department, and when called out on that misrepresentation (which ran contrary to official University statements issued and publicized in 2013 and in 2017) lamely explained that his initial e-mail to Ingber

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

This week’s newsletter features many articles where Israelis have developed solutions for major world problems, from AIDS and cancer to agricultural infestation and drought.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

AIDS / cancer treatment success & goes into production. (TY Hazel) Following successful human trials, Israel’s Zion Medical is to build a biotechnology plant to manufacture its “Gammora” AIDS / cancer treatment. Gammora (see here) eliminates HIV virus-infected cells – not the virus – preventing development of resistance.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zion-medical-announces-results-of-first-human-clinical-trial-of-hiv-drug-gammora-offering-potential-cure-300741569.html
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-10/24/c_137553489.htm http://zionmedical.com/?page_id=2603
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GZJw0yqZ9Qc?rel=0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvWN9gJ5ZQs

New molecule kills brain cancer cells. Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have developed a molecule to treat glioblastoma, a very aggressive type of brain cancer. The molecule blocks the ability of the MKNK2 gene to produce Mnk2b – a cancer-causing protein but increases the levels of Mnk2a – an inhibitor protein.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-10/31/c_137572222.htm

Destroys tumors in weeks. I reported previously (9th Sep) on Israel’s Alpha Tau’s radiation emitters starting trials in the USA. Trials have also been launched at two centers in Rome, Italy. But I should have mentioned that 70% of patients in earlier Israeli and Italian studies saw their tumors disappear in just a few weeks.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181107005024/en/Alpha-Tau-Medical-Launches-New-Clinical-Trials

Seeing early Alzheimer’s, before symptoms appear. I’ve reported previously (see here) that Israeli researchers at Sheba hospital have linked Alzheimer’s disease with loss of retina function. They have now found that in those with a family history of Alzheimer’s, the inner layer of the retina is thinner than usual.
https://www.aao.org/newsroom/news-releases/detail/evidence-eye-scan-may-detect-early-alzheimers

Shape-shifting pills for better targeted treatments. 3D-printing is relevant even in the medical industry. Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have engineered capsules from a hydrogel that can change shape upon various conditions. E.g. to release medication only in the intestines, or to expand to fill the stomach.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/hebrew-u-team-develops-shape-shifting-3d-printed-pills-for-better-targeted-drugs/

Major partnership to prevent diabetes. (TY OurCrowd) I reported previously (Apr 2016) on Israel’s Sweetch and its system for detecting pre-diabetics. Sweetch is partnering with US-based WellSpan Health, providing its 15,000 employees with “the tool we have been looking for to augment our wellness assessment program”.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ai-mobile-health-app-sweetch-partners-with-wellspan-health-to-help-fight-diabetes-300741126.html http://nocamels.com/2018/11/diabetes-israel-sweetch-health/

Breathtaking technology. I reported previously (see here) on Israeli innovations that can detect illness by analyzing someone’s voice. Israeli startup HealthyMize (see here) has just won $75 million in the Henry Ford Health System’s “Increasing Patient and Caregiver Engagement to Reduce Readmission” Challenge.
https://www.israel21c.org/healthymize-wins-75k-award-from-henry-ford-health-system/
https://www.israel21c.org/smartphone-app-listens-to-your-voice-for-lung-disease/
http://www.healthymize.com/ https://www.youtube.com/embed/oq7fu95EKiw?rel=0

More about finding cancer treatment trials. I reported recently (21st Oct) on Israel’s TrailJectory which helps match cancer patients with clinical trials appropriate to their condition. I believe the subject to be so important that I’m publishing another recent article about this innovative startup. It could save someone’s life.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3749045,00.html

Why Israelis live longer. If the previous medical articles haven’t given you the answer, this article might. Then click the link (here) to see the youtube or (here)Facebook video “Nas Daily meets United Hatzalah”.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/heres-why-despite-it-all-israelis-live-longer/

Just a day in the lives of Hadassah medics. When 7-year-old Elisha Alush collapsed in the Judean desert, paramedics rushed him to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. They realized he had been stung, but by what? They guessed a scorpion and the antidote worked. Had it been a Black Widow spider, it may have been too late.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/254275

A Bloodbath for Christians, No Response from Egypt by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13282/egypt-christians-bloodbath

Seven pilgrims were shot to death, “just because they were Christian,” said Pope Francis after the attack.

“The pilgrims were killed in such a savage and sadistic way, as if they were enemy combatants, when they were just simple Christians come to get a blessing from a monastery.” — Coptic Bishop Anba Makarios of Minya, Egypt.

“The minimum response expected from president El-Sisi is to dismiss the head of State Security and the governor of Minya, as a clear sign of holding officials accountable. Furthermore, given the government’s continued failure to protect the Copts, Coptic Solidarity vigorously calls for an independent inquiry by the UN to evaluate the Copts’ situation and to recommend necessary measures to alleviate their increasingly perilous situation…” — Coptic Solidarity, Washington, DC.

On November 2, heavily armed Islamic terrorists ambushed and massacred Christians returning home after visiting the ancient St. Samuel Monastery in Minya, Egypt.

Seven pilgrims — including a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy — were shot to death. More than 20 were left injured with bullet wounds or shards of broken glass from the buses’ windows. “I pray for the victims, pilgrims killed just because they were Christian,” said Pope Francis after the attack.

Pictures posted on social media reveal “bodies soaked in blood and distorted faces of men and women.” In one video posted, a man can be heard crying, “The gunshot got you in the head, my boy!” and repeating, “What a loss!”

After the first and largest bus had passed the ambush point, the terrorists emerged in black 4x4s and opened fire with automatic weapons on the second bus; six pilgrims were injured, including a small child. Fortunately, the bus driver managed to escape and speed away, at which point the terrorists fired on the third and smallest bus as it approached. After the driver was killed, they surrounded the stalled minibus and opened fire on all sides. The bus carried 20 people — 14 adults and six children — all from one extended family who had visited the monastery to baptize two of the children.

The terrorists first opened the hatchback and looked to see who was still alive. They then shot all the men in the head and all the women and children in the ankles or legs.

One of the female survivors who was shot in the legs recalls, in a video, only that an explosion of gunfire suddenly opened on all sides of their bus; by the time she could register what was happening, she saw pieces of her brother-in-law’s brain splattered on her lap.

Another woman, after realizing that her husband and daughter had been killed, begged the jihadis to kill her, too. They said, “No, you stay and suffer over your husband and daughter.” Then they shot her in the ankles so she could not move away.

In a separate report, another survivor said the terrorists told her, “We will kill the men and children and leave you to live the rest of your lives in misery.”

Virtually all of the survivors have “had a nervous breakdown of what they have seen and they are in the hospital.”

Coptic Bishop Anba Makarios of Minya confirmed that “The pilgrims were killed in such a savage and sadistic way, as if they were enemy combatants, when they were just simple Christians come to get a blessing from a monastery.”

Reactions among Egypt’s Christians echoed those from earlier incidents. “Oh God, these children were students in my school!” wept one local teacher. “I can’t imagine they are dead now!”

The day after the attack, the Egyptian government created more questions than answers. It announced that it had killed 19 terrorists believed to be complicit in the November 2 attack. As one report noted:

“With the suspects now dead, it is impossible to confirm whether they were indeed involved in Friday’s attack. Fear continues to permeate the Christian community in Egypt.”

Another report stated that government photos of the purported slain terrorists “appear staged in a manner which mirrors past examples of Egyptian security forces executing suspected terrorists.”

The attack was a virtual duplicate of another that occurred on May 26, 2017. Islamist gunmen ambushed buses full of Christians returning from the same monastery. Twenty-eight Christians — ten of whom were children, including two girls, aged two and four — were massacred. According to accounts based on eyewitness testimonies, the terrorists had ordered the passengers to exit the bus in groups:

“… as each pilgrim came off the bus they were asked to renounce their Christian faith and profess belief in Islam, but all of them — even the children — refused. Each was killed in cold blood with a gunshot to the head or the throat.”

Discussing the recent massacre with Bishop Makarios, a television interviewer said, “this is a duplicate of the same event and same place that happened a year and five months ago — how can this be? What does it mean?” Makarios replied, “Honestly, those best positioned to answer this question are the state authorities…. I add my voice to yours and ask the same questions.”

“That the same attack occurred in the same place only means that, despite all the talk, protecting Egypt’s Christian minority is not on the government’s agenda,” Magdi Khalil, Egyptian political analyst and editor of the Egyptian weekly Watani International, told Gatestone by phone.

Despite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s many conciliatory and brotherly words to the nation’s Christian minorities, they have suffered more under his rule than any Egyptian leader of the modern era, partially because ISIS arose during his term. In December 2017, a gunman killed 10 worshippers inside a church in Helwan. One year earlier, 29 Christians were killed during twin attacks on churches. On Palm Sunday in April 2017, a suicide bombing of two churches killed nearly 50 people and injured more than a hundred.

Coptic Solidarity, a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to the human rights of Egypt’s Christians, condemned the Novemnber 2 attack in a press release:

“Coptic Solidarity reiterates the message published after the May 2017 attack, that the Egyptian government has failed to protect its Coptic minority. Coptic Solidarity strongly maintains that this violence is not perpetrated by foreign terrorists as the Egyptian government would like the world to believe, but is homegrown, one created by a culture of hate and impunity within Egypt.

“Consequently, Coptic Solidarity holds the Egyptian government fully responsible and calls for a transparent investigation of these attacks, and to institute serious measures to prevent future attacks. The minimum response expected from president El-Sisi is to dismiss the head of State Security and the governor of Minya, as a clear sign of holding officials accountable. Furthermore, given the government’s continued failure to protect the Copts, Coptic Solidarity vigorously calls for an independent inquiry by the UN to evaluate the Copts’ situation and to recommend necessary measures to alleviate their increasingly perilous situation and to avoid repetition of the tragic situation of Christians in Iraq and Syria.”

Letter shows a fearful Einstein long before Nazis’ rise “Here are brewing economically and politically dark times,” the acclaimed physicist wrote his beloved sister, Maja, in 1922 from his hiding place in northern Germany •

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/11/09/letter-shows-a-fearful-einstein-long-before-nazis-rise/

Letter will be auctioned next week in Jerusalem at opening asking price of $12,000.

More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country’s future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter.

His longtime friend and fellow Jew, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, had just been assassinated by extremists and police had warned the acclaimed physicist that his life could be in danger too.

So Einstein fled Berlin and went into hiding in northern Germany. It was during this hiatus that he penned a handwritten letter to his beloved younger sister, Maja, warning of the dangers of growing nationalism and anti-Semitism years before the Nazis ultimately rose to power, forcing Einstein to flee his native Germany for good.

“Out here, nobody knows where I am, and I’m believed to be missing,” he wrote in August 1922. “Here are brewing economically and politically dark times, so I’m happy to be able to get away from everything.”

The previously unknown letter, brought forward by an anonymous collector, is set to go on auction next week in Jerusalem with an opening asking price of $12,000.

As the most influential scientist of the 20th century, Einstein’s life and writings have been thoroughly researched. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, of which Einstein was a founder, houses the world’s largest collection of Einstein material. Together with the California Institute of Technology it runs the Einstein Papers Project. Individual auctions of his personal letters have brought in substantial sums in recent years.

The 1922 letter shows he was concerned about Germany’s future a full year before the Nazis even attempted their first coup – the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch to seize power in Bavaria.

“This letter reveals to us the thoughts that were running through Einstein’s mind and heart at a very preliminary stage of Nazi terror,” said Meron Eren, co-owner of the Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem, which obtained the letter and offered The Associated Press a glimpse before the public sale. “The relationship between Albert and Maja was very special and close, which adds another dimension to Einstein the man and greater authenticity to his writings.”

The Word That Can’t Be Questioned by Mark Steyn

https://www.steynonline.com/8807/the-word-that-cant-be-questioned

EXCERPT

“The more diverse you get, the more stupid you get,” Steyn said. “The more authoritarian you get . . . the more you need people to police diversity and to police cultural sensitivities. And eventually you end up as a totally moronic society.

“Diversity”, as I’ve said for the entirety of this millennium, is morally neutral. You can have half-a-dozen nice middle-aged middle-class NPR-listening ladies, and they’re not in the least bit diverse. So you add Sudan’s leading clitoridectomist. Now you’re more diverse, but not necessarily the better for it.

Do that for long enough, and you wind up irredeemably stupid. A Mark Steyn Club commenter appended this response to yesterday’s Clubland Q&A on the anniversary of 9/11:

This, from Breitbart London and dated 9/11/18, pretty much sums up where the West is at since 9/11: ‘Austria has rejected the asylum claim of an Afghan national who claims to be fleeing persecution for being homosexual after not being able to find any gay pornography on his mobile phone.’ It sounds like the Babylon Bee, but isn’t.

Just so. When historians are poring through the rubble of our civilization, that one sentence will pretty much cover the entirety of the situation in 2018. In fact, denying asylum claims on the grounds of insufficient gay porn on applicants’ telephones may be the best shot Trump has at getting any meaningful immigration policy past the average District Court judge. Although maybe he should add trans porn, too.

Incidentally, for a Pushtun goatherd or whatever he is, the Afghan guy isn’t the least bit stupid: He’s smart enough to know that claiming to be LGBTQWERTY gets you into the express check-in, so why not give gay taqiyyah (tagayyah?) a whirl?

Yet there is also a tragic, suicidal and sacrificial quality to our diversity stupidity:

‘We took him in as if he were a son,’ the girl’s father said, according to the Bild tabloid newspaper. He has lost his only daughter. She was stabbed and killed by her former boyfriend, an unaccompanied refugee from Afghanistan.

ACT FOR CANADA- A WELCOME INITIATIVE

https://www.actforcanada.ca/about/
Who we are

We are patriotic citizens who love our country and our Canadian way of life. We are concerned citizens who have dedicated ourselves to speaking out about the clear and present dangers emerging from those who do not embrace Canada’s values along with the threat of homegrown terrorism. We wish to rouse our fellow Canadians to action, bringing pressure to bear on our government to do more to protect and preserve our long-held Canadian values, our hard-won freedoms and a legal system that maintains one law and one law only for all citizens.
Securing Our Borders

Stopping terrorism means stopping terrorists before they reach Canada. In most cases, that means stopping them at the border. Despite clear Parliamentary mandates, the vast majority of the southern border remains unsecured.

Our current Liberal government is actively promoting the invasion of our country of illegal immigrants through border crossings in Manitoba and Quebec. A porous, uncontrolled border is an open invitation for some of those who wish to harm Canadians to enter our country unnoticed, potentially bringing the tools to wreak unimaginable havoc with them.

ACT! For Canada is committed to seeing the border secured to ensure that those who emigrate do so in search of a better way of life. This means embracing Canada’s democratic values; learning at least one of our two official languages; seeking employment; respecting the Judeo-Christian values upon which this country was founded; and understanding that in Canada there is an established Canadian legal and justice system. This system is not compatible with foreign systems such as Islamic Sharia law and justice.