P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Silencing The Song of the South By Gamaliel Isaac

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/silencing_emthe_song_of_the_southem.html

Splash Mountain was a thrilling log flume ride for children in Disney’s Magic Kingdom.  Children were taken on an exciting ride past animatronic characters singing classic songs from the 1946 Disney movie The Song of the South.  Alas, our woke culture is not happy with Splash Mountain or Song of the South.  Over twenty thousand people signed a petition asking that the characters of Splash Mountain be changed to those of The Princess and the Frog, a 2009 film featuring Disney’s first African-American princess.  Disney caved in.  Long before the petition Disney decided not to release Song of the South in any home video format in the United States and after streaming technology came along Disney decided not to stream the movie. 

Fortunately, Disney released the movie in other countries.  When I read about how racist Song of the South was, a skeptical light bulb went off in my head and I ordered a DVD to see if it was really so bad.  My children loved the movie and I enjoyed it too.  The last thing that movie is, is racist.  So why did Disney cave in to demands to prevent Americans from seeing it?

Song of the South is a musical based on stories that originated in Africa.  So censoring Song of the South censored stories by black people.  The stories were compiled by Joel Chandler Harris who grew up on a plantation and heard them from a slave called Uncle Bob Capers.  In 1880, Harris published his first book, Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. In the book, he preserved the dialect of Uncle Bob Capers.  The book was an instant success, and Harris went on to publish another ten books of stories from Uncle Remus.  Walt Disney grew up reading those stories and one of his ambitions was to bring them to the silver screen.  His idea was to have both animated characters and people together in the same movie.  Walt Disney in his effort to be faithful to the stories kept the dialect of Uncle Remus although he simplified it somewhat so that it would be more understandable to general audiences. 

POLITICS Comments turned off

Will Biden’s War on the Suburbs Become a Campaign Issue? By Stanley Kurtz

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/will-bidens-war-on-the-suburbs-become-a-campaign-issue/?utm_

In remarks Tuesday in the White House Rose Garden, President Trump promised to reverse what is arguably the most radical action of the Obama-Biden administration: promulgation of the rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). Trump went beyond his tweet of a couple of weeks ago, when he said he “may” end the rule. Now he says he will in fact “take out” AFFH. This will need to be by amendment or modification, since the Obama-Biden AFFH is actually a wild over-reading of the phrase “affirmatively further” in current law.

The president said that coming from New York, he’d been following the Westchester County controversy for years. As I explain in Spreading the Wealth, the Obama administration ran a test of what would someday become his AFFH rule in suburban Westchester County, New York. The Obama administration effectively stripped Westchester County of its zoning power, forced it to spend tens of millions of dollars on high-density low-income housing, then ordered it to “affirmatively advertise” that housing to non-residents. In effect, the federal government took over Westchester and forced it to suspend its own laws and spend its tax money on non-residents. All this occurred without evidence, or even allegation, of housing discrimination. Westchester was actually one of the most diverse counties in New York at the time. Such demographic “imbalances” as existed there were a function of economics, not discrimination.

After the Obama-Biden administration intervened, Westchester’s local government flipped from Democratic to Republican. Rob Astorino was elected county executive and fought the Obama administration for years, although his hands were largely tied by a legal agreement signed by the previous Democratic county executive. (Astorino is now running for state senate, by the way, in a hotly contested race.) That gives you a sense of how powerful AFFH can be as a political issue. AFFH flipped the county that Bill and Hillary Clinton call home from blue to red. The question is whether President Trump will make AFFH and Biden’s anti-suburban plans an issue in the presidential election. The answer, I think, is “probably.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Peak Jacobinism? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/peak-jacobinism/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Even the woke eventually fear the guillotine. T he Jacobin Left is just now beginning to get edgy.

A few of its appeasers and abettors are becoming embarrassed by some of the outright racists and nihilists of BLM and the Maoists of Antifa — and their wannabe hangers-on who troll the Internet hoping to scalp some minor celebrity.

The woke rich too are worried over talk about substantial wealth, capital-gains, and income taxes, even though they have the resources to navigate around the legislation from their wink-and-nod brethren. Soon, even Hunter Biden and the Clintons could be checking in with their legal teams to see how much it will cost them to get around the Squad’s new tax plan.

The lines are thinning a bit for the guillotine. And the guillotiners are starting to panic as they glimpse faces of a restless mob always starved for something to top last night’s torching. Finally, even looters and arsonists get tired of doing the same old, same old each night. They get bored with the puerile bullhorn chants, the on-spec spray-paint defacement, and the petite fascists among them who hog the megaphones. For the lazy and bored, statue toppling — all of those ropes, those icky pry bars, those heavy sledgehammers, and so much pulling — becomes hard work, especially as the police, camera crews, and fisticuffs thin out on the ground. And the easy bronze and stone prey are now mostly rubble. Now it’s either the big, tough stuff like Mount Rushmore or the crazy targets like Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

There are only so many ways for adult-adolescents to chant monotonously “Eat the Rich! Kill the Pigs! Black Lives Matter!” blah, blah, blah. And there are only so many Road Warrior Antifa ensembles of black hoodies, black masks, black pants, and black padding — before it all it ends up like just another shrill teachers’-union meeting in the school cafeteria or a prolonged adolescent Halloween prankster show.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Funds The Lincoln Project? Exactly Whom You Expect By David Harsanyi

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/who-funds-the-lincoln-project-exactly-whom-you-expect/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth

If The Lincoln Project was exclusively campaigning against Donald Trump, one might be tempted to believe it wasn’t merely an arm of the Democratic Party. If one of its co-founders, John Weaver, hadn’t been registered as a foreign agent lobbying for a Russia-owned nuclear-energy company against U.S. sanctions not long ago, one might accept that the group believed the conspiracy theories it spreads. If the group wasn’t working against the moderate Republicans senators for the sin of supporting originalist Supreme Court justices, who will transcend the Trump presidency and help preserve the traditional constitutional order, one might believe that its mission was to preserve the system. If you target moderates like Susan Collins and Cory Gardner — politicians who not only parted with Trump on issues but have quite un-Trumpian dispositions — you’re not working against Trumpism, you’re working against the GOP.

The media can keep calling you “Republicans,” but if you support Democrats, take Democratic Party positions, make voting for Democrats all the way down the ticket a binary choice and moral imperative, and then take most of your money from big Democratic Party donors, you’re a Democrat. That’s fine. You should embrace it.

I’m not really a fan of making a big deal over a group’s funding. Your arguments should stand on their own. I don’t care who pays you. But if you advertise your cause as something it’s not, you’re a fraud. And the biggest funders of The Lincoln Project aren’t distraught Republicans but long-time Democratic Party operatives.

By far the biggest donor has been Stephen Mandel, who gave The Lincoln Project — which, as far as I can tell, produces cheap b-roll-laden ads and takes nearly 90 percent of its budget in “operating expenditures” — a million dollars. His company Lone Pine Capital, it seems, has given the Democratic Party Senate committee $497,000 this year, $248,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign committee, and a bunch of money to other left-wing candidates. During the 2018 cycle, Lone Pine Capital doled out $5,893,300 to Democrats. It gave $1,333,333 to Planned Parenthood.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Politics of Hydroxychloroquine Trump touted it, so Biden denounces it. The FDA has suspended a permit for its use. Let doctors decide. By Allysia Finley

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-politics-of-hydroxychloroquine-11594831408?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Hubert Humphrey began his career as a pharmacist before going into politics. Today’s politicians sometimes seem to have the opposite aspiration. President Trump “pushes dangerous, disproven drugs,” Joe Biden declares in his “Plan to Beat Covid-19.” “Our country is now stuck with a massive stockpile of hydroxychloroquine, a drug Trump repeatedly hailed.”

Neither man has any expertise in pharmacology, and Mr. Trump did get out over his skis in promoting the malaria treatment, also known as HCQ, for the novel coronavirus. But since every Trump action prompts a reaction, his political and media opponents launched a campaign to discredit the drug. This politicized environment has produced dubious science and erratic policy.

The Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization on March 28, allowing hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients outside clinical trials using HCQ donated by manufacturers to the national stockpile. But on June 15 the agency rescinded the authorization. “In light of ongoing serious cardiac adverse events and other potential serious side effects,” the FDA announced, “the known and potential benefits of . . . hydroxychloroquine no longer outweigh the known and potential risks for the authorized use.”

But the scientific basis for the revocation now appears faulty. Most studies didn’t adjust results for confounding variables such as disease severity, drug dosage or when patients started treatment. Two new peer-reviewed studies find that HCQ can significantly reduce mortality in hospitalized patients. With hospital beds filling up across the American South and West and a limited supply of Gilead Sciences ’ antiviral remdesivir, the FDA should reinstate its emergency-use authorization for HCQ.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

How Is the Left of the ’60s Different From the Left of Today? Rachel del Guidice

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/15/how-is-the-left-of-the-60s-different-from-

How do the radical movements of today—Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and others—compare with their counterparts of the 1960s, such as the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground?

What would the leftists of the ’60s say about the rioting that followed the death of George Floyd, the toppling of disfavored statues, and efforts today to “defund the police”?

Lee Edwards, the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies, joins the podcast to discuss the similarities and differences of the left of then and now.

Rachel del Guidice: I’m joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Dr. Lee Edwards. He’s a distinguished fellow in conservative thought at the Heritage Foundations B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies. Dr. Edwards, it’s great to have you on with us at The Daily Signal Podcast.

Lee Edwards: Love to be with you, Rachel. Thanks for asking me.

Del Guidice: Well, thank you so much for being with us and for taking the time. To start off our conversation, in what ways would you say the left has changed their strategy and the tenants of belief from the ’60s to today?

Edwards: Well, back in the 1960s, which I happen to know sort of fairly well, I lived through it, they were semi-organized through something called the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. They were the youth group of the socialists. And they wanted to bring about a new world, a new America, in which there would be no more capitalism and which there would be socialism. They were not pro-communist or pro-Soviet, but they definitely were socialists.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Amil Imani: Judea and Samaria Should Return to Their Rightful Owner December 28, 2018

Posted By on July 16th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/judea_and_samaria_should_return_to_their_rightful_owner.html

When we dig into history books, we can hardly find people or countries that have gone out of existence for as long as 2,000 years and then reappeared and been reborn.  Thus, it is indeed accurate to say that the rebirth of Israel, this beautiful ancient culture, people, and land, is truly a miracle from God.

I believe that the time has come to unite all Israel.  Historically and biblically, both Judea and Samaria undeniably have been part of the heritage of the Jewish people.  They belonged to Israel 2,000 years ago, and they belong to Israel now.  Arabs have absolutely no historic ties to Judea and Samaria.  Historic ties are the basis of assertions to a geographic area.

Annexation of these two historical Jewish lands will stipulate a strong and well defined standing for West Bank Arabs.  Israeli equal justice under the law will apply to all people.  All terrorists’ infrastructures will be eradicated.  The residents of those regions will be subjected to Israeli rules and regulation and will be dealt with in the same fashion that all countries deal with domestic insurgent, treachery, and lawless organizations.

“The Jewish people didn’t wake up one day saying ‘Jews are connected to the Land of Israel.’  The whole story, the history and the destiny of the Jewish people, is geared toward the idea that we were there and we are coming back.”

Let us clarify this now and forever: historically and otherwise, there has never been a Palestinian state, nor a political body that is owned by Palestinians.  According to the advancement of international agreements from 1917 until 1947, the land of Israel was renamed Palestine by the Romans in the 2nd century.  It was later divided into three states: Jordan, a Jewish state, and an Arab state.  While the Jews swallowed this excruciating deal, shrinking the size of their ancestral land by over 75%, the Arabs snubbed and rejected it altogether.  As a result, the Arabs launched an invasion against the newly established State of Israel in 1948.  Jordan managed to occupy the area of Judea and Samaria and illegitimately annexed it.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Despicable Behavior of Today’s Academicians Walter E. Williams

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/15/despicable-behavior-of-todays-academic-intellectuals/

The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans.

The study found: “The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were.”

For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.

The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that contained the expressions “when your first name becomes ‘n—-r,’ your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are).”

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

Referring to white civil rights activists, King wrote, “They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as ‘dirty n—-r-lovers.’”

Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to “Gone with the Wind.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Literally Thousands of Doctors and Scientists Have Come Out Against Fauci’s Lockdowns Including a Nobel Prize-Winning Biophysicist. The Media Just Doesn’t Want You to Know Michael Thau

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/07/13/many-medical-experts-were-again

As RedState’s very own Sister Toldjah reported earlier today, the doubts President Trump recently expressed about the wisdom of Dr. Fauci’s advice on COVID-19 have elicited a chorus of smug accusation from the usual suspects that he’s “ignoring the experts.”

Sister Toldjah pointed out that it’s hard to know what their complaint even means given how often Fauci and other media-anointed authorities have done total 180s.

But, even putting aside how their advice seems to change with the political winds, the idea that there’s some scientific consensus in favor of the extreme measures inflicted on us in response to COVID-19 couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though you don’t hear their perspectives on CNN, countless scientists and doctors have tried to warn us not only that COVID-19 isn’t nearly as deadly as we’ve been led to believe; they’re also certain that the real threat to public health we’re facing is from the lockdowns.

For example, though the establishment media has somehow failed to make it widely known, in May over 600 physicians from “all specialties and from all states” signed a public letter to President Trump  describing, not COVID-19, but the lockdowns as a “mass casualty incident.” Since the letter first appeared, the number of doctors signing on has grown into the thousands. Their letter warns:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dr. Scott Atlas Slams “Hysteria” Over Reopening Schools: “I Feel Like I’m Living In A Kafka Novel” Posted By Ian Schwartz

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/07/14/dr_scott_atlas_slams_hysteria_over_reopening_schools_i_feel_like_im_living_in_a_kafka_novel.html

Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former chief of neurology at Stanford University Medical Center appeared on Martha MacCallum’s FOX News show to discuss the “hysteria” of opening schools in the fall despite the coronavirus pandemic.

MACCALLUM: The latest political divide appears to be going back to school with Democrats mostly urging caution and Republicans mostly, starting with the president, saying that kids need to get back into the classroom or risk a learning loss that maybe irreparable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Going back to school presents the biggest risk for the spread of the coronavirus. They ignore science and they ignore governance in order to make this happen. If there are CDC guidelines, they should be requirements.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford University Hoover Institution and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center. Doctor, welcome back to the program. Good to have you.

SCOTT ATLAS, PROFESSOR AND CHIEF OF NEURORADIOLOGY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Thanks, Martha.

MACCALLUM: She says, Nancy Pelosi says that this is the biggest risk to the spread of the virus if the kids go back in September.

ATLAS: I think we have a different scale because that’s just completely wrong and contrary to all the science. And when I say, when I say all the science, I’m talking about signs all over the world not just in the United States but Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Asia.