BOOKS Comments turned off

EDWARD CLINE: THE RED THREAD BY DIANA WEST

Posted By on March 19th, 2019

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-red-thread.html

There is more blatant corruption, sniveling conspiracy, and underhanded intrigue revealed in Diana West’s new book, The Red Thread, than in the Kevin Spacey version of The House of Cards, which ran on Netflix from 2013 to 2018. The actors behind the attempted coup against Donald Trump, however, are bland, nondescript nonentities and mediocrities — James Comey, John Brennan, Christopher Steele, Nellie and Bruce Ohr, Reinhold Niebuhr (Who!?!!), the Kramer brothers, Bill Browder and his family, and a passel of others, none of them engaging actors, able to credibly project the immorality and villainy of their characters.

None of them is a Frank or Claire Underwood, though their insatiable hunger for power and control is not fictional and their appetite for power nearly cost this country the 2016 election. And the one character in the series I detested the most in House of Cards was Doug Stamper, Frank’s loyal assistant, “researcher,” gofer, arranger, blackmailer, and Mafia-like enforcer.
They don’t exude or broadcast evil or show any tell-tale signs of duplicity, malice, or a drooling unquenchable appetite for power or a penchant for lying and deceit. They’re about as average-looking as anyone you’d have to wait in line behind at a Wal-Mart check-out. We’re not dealing here with Jack-and-the Beanstock monsters, nor with Leviathans or Behemoths. But rather with a swarm of human termites.

The full title of West’s book is The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy. Red Threads could be said to be an overture to West’s other knock-em-flat title, American Betrayal (reviewed by me twice (https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2013/06/our-enemy-inside-gates.html
https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2017/04/our-enemy-inside-gates-revisited.html), is a much longer work that details the rise of Communist influence in the U.S. in the 1930s and during the FDR years.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Beto’s Apology Tour The identity left is carving him up like a Texas steak before he gets to Donald Trump.

Posted By on March 19th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/betos-apology-tour-11552951261
Beto O’Rourke’s presidential campaign is off to a gangbusters financial start, raising $6 million in just 24 hours, more than even Bernie Sanders. As for Mr. O’Rourke’s reputation as a strong leader—on that presidential characteristic he needs work.

The former Texas Congressman’s first few days as a candidate have been one long apology tour. At several stops he used a stock campaign line that his wife, Amy, raised their three children, “sometimes with my help.” He meant it to be a self-deprecating joke and a note of gratitude to his wife, but in today’s identity-politics hothouse he was quickly denounced for his male privilege.

“Not only will I not say that again,” Mr. O’Rourke soon responded in Iowa, “but I’ll be more thoughtful going forward in the way that I talk about our marriage.”

Then there was his record as a teenage hacker when he stole long-distance phone service and downloaded “cracked” or pirated software—this according to a lengthy Reuters report published on Friday. Evidently the former Congressman has known the report was coming for months (he spoke on the record to the reporter). That he still chose to run for President suggests he’s confident the story won’t kill his chances.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Trans ballet dancer Nora Monsecour on Girl: ‘There was always a fascination with what was between my legs’ Eleanor Halls

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/trans-ballet-dancer-nora-monsecour-girl-always-fascination-legs/

When Nora Monsecour was 15 and training as a transgender ballerina in Belgium, she decided to join the womens’ pointe class. But her school wouldn’t let her.

Monsecour was transitioning. Having taken puberty blockers at the age of 11, she was halfway through her female hormone replacements, with her sights set on gender reassignment surgery.

And yet, her school principal told Monsecour that she was “going through a phase”. Worse still, the principal blamed Monsecour’s mother, saying she was giving her daughter medication because she’d always wanted a daughter over a son.

Later that year, in 2009, Monsecour left the school. Her story made headlines, prompting aspiring Flemish film director Lukas Dhont, who was only 18, to send her a Facebook message. He wanted to make a documentary about Monsecour’s life. She said no.

A few years later, Dhont asked again, and this time Monsecour reconsidered. If the film was a fictionalised account of her life, rather than a documentary, she would do it. The result was Girl, out now in cinemas, starring 27-year-old breakout actor Victor Polster, a student at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp, as 15-year-old transgender ballerina Lara.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

KIA ORA GAZA-AN ANTI-ISRAEL GROUP IN NEW ZEALAND BY DAPHNE ANSON

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2019/03/kia-ora-gaza-z-word.html

Kia Ora Gaza Mission is an anti-Israel group in New Zealand led, for want of a better word, by veteran leftwing activist Roger Fowler, an Auckland resident and ‘Freedom Flotilla’ alumnus.

Last year, Dr David Cumin, director of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, reportedly criticised Mr Fowler thus:

‘In April an article about Roger Fowler sought volunteers to violate international law by joining a “flotilla… to break the siege and blockade of Gaza”.

The article failed to mention the United Nations report authored by Sir Geoffrey Palmer that determined the Israeli and Egyptian blockades on Gaza are a “legitimate security measure” due to security threats Israel faces from Gaza and recommended “All humanitarian missions… should do so through established procedures and the designated land crossings”.

Aid is easily distributed to Gaza — there are thousands of truckloads of goods that move from Israel to Gaza each week. Yet a “veteran human rights campaigner” is actively encouraging the exact activity Palmer recommended against.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since just after Israel unilaterally withdrew and forcibly removed all Jews in 2005.

Hamas executes homosexuals and political dissidents, doesn’t allow a free press, and misuses aid for terror.

Yet in a Māori TV interview, Mr Fowler compared Israel — where women and minorities have equal rights and political representation, there is a free press, and world-leading innovation — to Islamic State. He has not condemned Hamas.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Poll: 50 Percent Say Mueller Investigation Is ‘Witch Hunt’ By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-50-percent-say-mueller-investigation-is-witch-hunt/

50 percent of adults surveyed in an astonishing new USA Today/Suffolk University poll say that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” and believe that President Trump has been the target of more investigative scrutiny than other presidents because of his politics.

The poll shows that trust in the president has increased as well. A majority of 52 percent still say they have little or no trust in Trump’s insistence that his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign season, but that number is down from 59 percent in December.
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Support for impeachment has faltered as well, with 62 percent saying the House should not impeach Trump compared to just 28 percent who want the lower chamber to seriously consider doing so. Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi came out against the idea last week, telling the Washington Post, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Manchin Opposes Dem. Bill Prohibiting Transgender Discrimination By Jack Crowe see note please

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/manchin-opposes-dem-bill-prohibiting-transgender-discrimination/

I don’t really get the hoopla about genderalization, but I do admire Joe Manchin who broke with the herd to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh which ensured his nomination….rsk

Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.V.) announced Monday that he will not support the recently introduced Equality Act as it is currently written, breaking from the rest of his caucus in arguing that the legislation, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, will be too difficult to implement.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday re-introduced the bill, which was first introduced in 1974 and would prohibit employers, landlords, school administrators, and others from discriminating against transgender and homosexual Americans. In a statement, Manchin said that he would be open to supporting the bill with some unspecified changes, but could not support it as it stands now.

“I strongly support equality for all people and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” the statement read. “No one should be afraid of losing their job or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation. After speaking with local education officials in West Virginia, I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools. I will continue working with the sponsors of the bill to build broad bipartisan support and find a viable path forward for these critical protections so that I can vote in support of this bill.”

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Radical Feminist Debunks Transgenderism — Listen Here By Madeleine Kearns

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sheila-jeffreys-radical-feminist-debunks-transgenderism/

Sheila Jeffreys, an English radical feminist and author, has spent more than forty years fighting for women and girls’ sex-based rights. In 2014 she wrote a book Gender Hurts which controversially rejects the politics of transgenderism. Last week she was in New York with the Women’s Human Rights Campaign helping to launch the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based rights. Here is a quote from an interview she gave with National Review. You can listen to the full audio of the interview below.

If you look at WPATH [World Psychological Association of Transgender Health] for instance, which is putting out a lot of the ideas and theories about transgenderism, purporting to be a medical organization, you need to look at who the funders are. And of course, it’s drug companies. It’s all the major drug companies. All the major names you’d expect to be there. Because the situation with children is that it’s very, very profitable for drug companies. If the children come in at quite young ages then the drug companies are able to delay puberty with drugs like Lupron… it’s off label. It is not approved for these purposes.

Jeffreys’s insights on transgender politics are fascinating, especially on medical harms for children. Listen here.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Lacking crowds to protest Tucker Carlson, the left compensates by dressing up as bananas ???By Monica Showalter

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/lacking_crowds_to_protest_tucker_carlson_the_left_compensates_by_dressing_up_as_bananas.html

Fox News top host Tucker Carlson has been under fire by far leftists and their media allies for a string of dredged up comments made to some shock-jock dating from before his days at Fox, with big calls for protests and advertiser boycotts. Leading the charge has been the world’s premier slime machine, Media Matters, described in all its glory by Sharyl Attkisson in her book, The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.

The Soros-bankrolled outfit has made a cacophony about Carlson, amplifying its calls for boycotts and for Fox ending the show through the bullhorns of Carlson’s less successful media rivals.

But something interesting is going on. An initial protest called by Media Matters at Fox News headquarters five days ago drew…”dozens” of protesters. Columbia Journalism Review has an embarrassingly adoring report here.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Va. Public School Indoctrinates 5-Year-Olds About Transgenderism Without Telling Parents Parents were not informed by their public school that their kindergarteners would be read a factually false transgender picture book by a cross-dressing male LGBT activist who calls himself ‘Sarah.’By Casey Chalk

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/18/va-public-school-indoctrinates-5-year-olds-transgenderism-without-telling-parents/

In Arlington County, Virginia, not even kindergarteners are exempt from pro-transgender messaging. So reports The Washington Post, which, earlier this month, featured an article about Ashlawn Elementary School, which honored National “Read Across America Day” by hosting a transgender spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The spokesperson read a story about a transgender child for a room full of kindergarten children.

Prominent media outlets claimed parents were notified beforehand and allowed opt their children out of the event. But those outlets got the story wrong. The letter, written solely in English despite the school’s sizable non-English-fluent population, nowhere mentions “opting out.”
Media, District Lie About Pro-Transgender Event

“Dozens of kindergarten students” sat cross-legged in openly homosexual teacher Jaim Foster’s classroom at Ashlawn Elementary School on February 28 while HRC representative and ‘“transgender rights advocate” Sarah McBride read them a picture book about a transgender girl. The book was “I Am Jazz” by Jazz Jennings, who talked about being a transgender teen on a TLC show.

Also in attendance was Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association (NEA), an organization that welcomed LGBT groups to serve as official sponsors of this year’s national reading event.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The FBI Shouldn’t Be Prosecuting College Fraud, It Should Be Rooting Out Its Own Corruption The FBI throwing the book at a bunch of the country’s rich and famous has the added benefit to being a surefire distraction from the ethical hole the FBI has dug itself. By William F. Marshall

Posted By on March 18th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/18/fbi-shouldnt-prosecuting-college-fraud-rooting-corruption/

As we watch the FBI investigate and help bring criminal charges against scores of wealthy individuals for fraud because they paid some middleman to alter their kids’ college entrance exams or bribe college officials to claim their kids were recruited athletes, I can only think: What chutzpah!

The FBI may have committed the grossest fraud in the history of our country by trying to throw a presidential election through a fraudulent counterintelligence investigation of “Trump-Russia collusion,” using the massive legal and technological authorities at their disposal. And we’re supposed to get worked up by The Greatest College Admissions Fraud Scandal of All Time.

Now, let me be clear (to channel my inner Barack Obama). I am not condoning the payment of enormous sums of money by some rich, pompous parents so some guy can pay some obviously ethically challenged university employees to lie about those parents’ kids having athletic talent so they can be admitted to overpriced, overrated colleges. Or paying a guy to have some minions alter answers on college entrance exams.

Ethically, that is clearly wrong. But should it be criminal? I highly doubt it. Very wealthy parents routinely donate huge sums of money to colleges to fund an endowed chair or to construct a new building, often with the expectation that it will improve the chances of their academically mediocre children being admitted to that university. That’s what the alleged scammer-in-chief in this tale, Rick Singer, called the “back door” to admission to elite universities.