P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Government Makes a Pizzeria Take Down a Mural of Pizza By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on March 21st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/pizzeria-mural-city-government-regulations-sign-code/

But a mural of something else (burgers, cars, unicorns … ) would be just fine.

The government of Arlington, Va., just forced a local pizza restaurant to paint over a mural of pizza that was outside of it — because the mural was of pizza and not something else.

So, you might ask: What could possibly be the problem with an artistic depiction of pizza? After all, I myself saw a lot of cartoon pizza in episodes of Ninja Turtles as a child, and I can confidently say I have suffered absolutely no damage — emotionally or physically — because of it.

Well, according to an article in Reason, the pizza place (called “Goody’s”) was forced to paint over the mural because of the county’s sign code, which prohibits any business from having a mural outside that depicts what’s sold inside. So, basically, the pizza place could have had a mural of pretty much anything else (aside from, like, violence and/or pornography, probably), and it would have been just fine. Here’s the thing, though: Why the hell would the pizza place have a mural of something other than pizza, if the goal of the mural was to get people to buy more pizza? Not to mention the obvious fact that there is literally no discernable reason that a business shouldn’t be able to advertise its legal, family-friendly products using a mural if it chooses to do so. After all, I did a little research, and I was able to find exactly zero examples of anyone being killed (or even injured!) by a painting of dough, sauce, and cheese.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Vanity Fair What the college-admissions scandal tells us about America’s broken meritocracy Kay S. Hymowitz

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/college-admissions-scandal-meritocracy

If, like me, you’re an avid observer of human affairs at their most vain and status-crazed, you have been studying the College Cheating Scandal, or what investigators called Operation Varsity Blues, with all the intensity of a rabbinical scholar poring over Leviticus. Each reading yields delicious new details of greed, ambition, hypocrisy, and decadence. “Ah! Vanitas, Vanitatum!” as the author of the classic nineteenth-century novel Vanity Fair sighed. But eventually the mordant fun gives way to the recognition that what we have here is evidence of a serious sickness in the American meritocracy.

The story is well known by now, but before it disappears into the overflowing landfill of tawdry contemporary Americana, some of its more obscure gems deserve a farewell salute. Let’s begin with the master of ceremonies, William “Rick” Singer, owner of a Newport Beach, California college-consulting company. Singer bribed college coaches and staged mockups of his clients’ slacker children at athletic events, sometimes photoshopping their faces onto a picture of actual soccer players or rowers, or, weirdly, pole-vaulters. A 36-year-old Harvard grad, Mark Riddell, could take a standardized test and get an agreed-upon, specific score with the precision of an expert archer. Singer hired him to take or to correct tests for clients whose preliminary scores would put them on the reject pile: Riddell is now Cooperating Witness #2. My favorite bit of chicanery was Singer’s money-laundering operation. To hide the eye-catching sums that he was earning for his ploys—and to give his clients the extra perk of a (legal) tax deduction for their (illegal) contributions—Singer set up the Key Worldwide Foundation, which he advertised as “provid[ing] guidance, encouragement and opportunity to disadvantaged students around the world.” The IRS estimates that Singer earned $25 million for his good works.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Results of Study of Trans Teens Unchanged after Activists Force Review By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/transgender-teen-study-results-unchanged-activists-forced-review/

A Brown University professor’s study of a “social contagion” effect among transgender teenagers was republished with its results section unchanged Tuesday following an unprecedented post-publication review prompted by a wave of backlash from transgender activists and researchers sympathetic to their cause.

Dr. Lisa Littman’s paper, “Parent Reports of Adolescents and Young Adults Perceived to Show Signs of a Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria,” explores a little-understood phenomenon in which a statistically abnormal number of teens, mostly girls, belonging to the same established friend group claim they are transgender within a short period of time.

The study, which relied on findings from a 90-question survey completed by 256 parents of transgender youths, immediately drew the ire of trans activists when it was published in August 2018, because its findings suggested that rising rates of gender dysphoria among teens may be the result of socialization, rather than inherent biological factors.

Brown University removed a press release announcing the study’s publication after the academic journal PLOS ONE conceded to activists’ demand that it take the highly unusual step of ordering a post-publication review. But following that review, the paper was republished with an unchanged results section and a few additions included to provide “additional context.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

It’s Time to KISS by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22477/it-time-to-kiss

The familiar acronym KISS, “keep it simple stupid,” began as a design principle noted by the U.S. Navy in the 1960s according to Wikipedia. “The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complicated; therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity should be avoided.

The current maelstrom created by Fox News suspending Judge Jeanine Pirro over a question she posed concerning the symbolism of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s hijab can best be understood using the KISS principle.

Mohammed, the 7th century prophet and founder of Islam, believed himself to be the messenger of the one and only god Allah. Mohammed believed that all people should honor Allah and only Allah. This was and continues to be the foundational premise of Islamic expansionism and its desire to establish a worldwide caliphate to make the whole world Muslim – including the United States. Islam is a replacement theology.

Islam has been at war with competing ideologies since the time of Mohammed but war is expensive. The Islamic movement’s fortunes waxed and waned over the centuries until oil was discovered in commercial quantities in Saudi Arabia in 1938. A seismic shift in geopolitical power took place and the oil rich Muslim nations were able to pursue their expansionist dreams of an Islamic caliphate once again.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump’s State Department Drops “Occupied Territory” Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/03/20/trumps-state-department-drops-occupied-territory/

There is a difference between an “honest broker” and a “neutral arbiter.” In advance of the rollout of its Middle East peace plan, the Trump administration has taken a series of steps to ensure its role as the honest broker. The U.S. is not “neutral” between our ally, Israel, and the Palestinians who seek to replace it. But it won’t be easy to change presumptions that are deeply embedded in the process.

The State Department’s annual survey of human rights released this month referred to the Golan Heights simply as “Israeli-controlled territory,” ending its tradition of referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as “occupied territory.”

To the community of Washington professionals wedded to the “peace process,” that was an outrage! “Poof,” said one prominent commentator. “With a word change, Israel no longer occupies territory, they now control it. The strategic objective of this administration is to change U.S. policy on refugees; Jerusalem; territory. And they’re doing it.”

But the State Department is correct. The West Bank and Gaza are the remains of the British Mandate — in legal limbo since the Jordanians occupied it in 1948. The Golan Heights were captured after a Syrian attack in 1967 and a second Syrian attack in 1973.

For more than 25 years, the on-again-off-again “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians has been predicated on unlikely theories about “peace” and erroneous assumptions about both Palestinians, Israelis, and American foreign policy.

First, the process assumed Israel’s security problems are related to the non-state status of Palestinians — hence the name “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” And the proposed remedy was “the two-state solution,” an independent state for the Palestinians. More precisely, however, it is the “Arab-Israeli conflict” or the “Arab wars against Israel.” Arab states went to war in 1948 to erase Israel; they failed.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Ignoring Socialism’s Countless Corpses By Mackubin Owens

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20190319/my-turn-mackubin-thomas-owens-ignoring-socialisms-countless-corpses

An old joke goes like this: Q. What did socialists use before candles? A. Electricity.

I’m sure the people of Venezuela aren’t laughing. But as the people of this once-prosperous country scrounge for food in trash bags and go without electricity and running water, some in our own country seriously sing the praises of socialism. Allegedly well-educated individuals remain on the socialism bandwagon even as Venezuela circles the drain.

What accounts for this phenomenon? Why is socialism so popular with young people? Why did they rally to Bernie Sanders in 2016?

Why do they lionize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Party’s shiny new thing? AOC, as the press has dubbed her, graduated cum laude from Boston University with a degree in economics and international relations. I taught for a while at Boston University in the 1990s and got to know the late John Silber, BU’s president, who turned the school into an excellent institution. He must be spinning in his grave.

How could someone graduate from a well-respected university and be as ignorant of basic economics as this woman?

To answer this question, it is useful to look to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, who in the early 20th century stressed the importance of “cultural hegemony” as the means of establishing the conditions for a Marxist revolution.

EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Engendered Ignorance on the March Paul Collits

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/03/engendered-ignorance-on-the-march/

“Those same ideologues who stand in front of classrooms and the bureaucrats who write what students will be taught, have effectively and with deadly intent prevented a generation of students from developing the capacity even to ask good questions. This is the unavoidable conclusion from the sad events of the last few days, on the streets of our cities and towns. It would make Orwell shake his head in disbelief.”

In what sort of a society is it even thinkable that school students could be seen, on mass, marching through the streets protesting that governments are not doing enough to … change the climate? That the education system of which they were a part could sanction this? That many of society’s “leaders” could egg them on? And that they would be rewarded with headlines, only to be denied front page billing as a result of the murderous carnage in New Zealand? This bizarre scenario has played out across the country these past days.

A number of issues have been canvassed in response to the kiddies’ climate marches: the role of adult-led activist organisations in encouraging and organising the marches, the apparent acquiescence of schools and principals, the debauching of school curricula, the role of teachers in peddling ideology while pretending it is science, and the sheer nonsense that is climate alarmism. These are all valid topics and, in their own ways, alarming markers of educational decline.

POLITICS Comments turned off

In Defense of the Electoral College

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/electoral-college-states-role-political-diversity/

Senator Elizabeth Warren has joined a growing chorus within the Democratic party in calling for the abolition of the Electoral College. Speaking at a forum in Mississippi on Monday night, Warren said that she hoped to ensure that “every vote matters” and proposed that “the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College.”Warren’s lofty rhetoric notwithstanding, a large portion of the Democratic party’s present animosity toward the Electoral College is rooted in rank partisanship. Since they watched their supposed “blue wall” evaporate in the small hours of the 2016 presidential election, many Democrats have felt sufficient anger with the system to seek to remake it. This habit has by no means been limited to the Electoral College. Indeed, no sooner has the Democratic party lost control of an institution that it had assumed it would retain in perpetuity than that institution has been denounced as retrograde and unfair. In the past year alone, this impulse has led to calls for the abolition or reinvention of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and more.

Insofar as there does exist a serious argument against the Electoral College, it is increasingly indistinguishable from the broader argument against the role that the states play within the American constitutional order, and thus from the argument against federalism itself. President Reagan liked to remind Americans that, far from serving as regional administrative areas of the nation-state, the states are the essential building blocks of America’s political, legal, and civic life.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Gender Pronouns Now a Police Matter in the UK By Jim Treacher

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/gender-pronouns-now-a-police-matter-in-the-uk/

Thank goodness they’ve solved all the other crimes in Britain.

I realize I’m just another dumb white cishet male and therefore the source of all the problems in the world, but I am utterly baffled by the growing insistence that gender pronouns are a matter of opinion.

Back in the old days, when “science” wasn’t just a word you threw at a political opponent to make him shut up about the weather, you had boys and girls. Men and women. He and she, him and her, his and hers. Easy to remember, and backed up by an ancient system of arcane witchcraft called “biology.” Sure, you had people who weren’t so easily categorized, like Prince and Rosie O’Donnell, but they were the exception. Most people were at peace with the fate dictated by their chromosomes. It was all good, man.

In 2019, now that we’ve apparently run out of absolutely anything else to worry about, more and more men and women are insisting they’re neither men nor women. They’re “nonbinary.” And if you address them by the same pronouns you used as recently as a year ago? They’ll call the cops.*

Now we’re supposed to use “they” as a gender pronoun. Not “he” or “she,” but “they.” As in: “There goes Dale, they work in my office. I’m their colleague. Pretty nice individual, once you get to know them.” Imagine being so confused about yourself that you insist on being identified as a plural.

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The religious violence they don’t report: Srjda Trifkovic

Posted By on March 20th, 2019

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-religious-violence-they-dont-report/

In his latest interview for Serbia’s top-rated Pink TV morning program (Tuesday, March 19) Srdja Trifkovic analyzes Western media coverage of last Friday’s mass shooting in Christchurch. [You can watch the video here.]

ST: What is truly striking about Western reactions to the shootings in New Zealand is, first of all, the level of self-hatred, of civilizational and racial self-loathing. So much self-recrimination over an isolated act by a single deranged person defies belief. On the other hand, whenever some Islamists carry out an attack on non-Muslims—which happens on average once a week, most recently in the Dutch city of Utrecht yesterday [March 18, killing three persons on a tram]—three features are invariably present in Western media reports.

First, the attacker is probably insane. This was initially claimed about the Tunisian who killed 86 French people with a truck in Nice on Bastille Day 2016; they claimed exactly the same about Major Nidal Hasan who murdered 13 soldiers [at Ft. Hood] in the United States; and so on.
Second, if the attacker screams “Allahu akbar!” the commentariat nevertheless will wonder what could have possibly motivated him to carry out the attack. We need to look for the “true causes”: Islamic fundamentalism per se cannot be the reason since Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, so there must be some dissonance here. Aha, it’s probably all our fault, because we have not provided sufficient employment opportunities, sufficient level of integration, so the poor attacker was feeling marginalized and discriminated against.