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Left Brain, Right Brain, No Brain Tim Blair

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/left-brain-right-brain-no-brain/

By their own estimation, so-called progressives are kind, caring and awash with empathy for all mankind. Meanjin scribbler Patrick Marlborough must have missed that memo, given his aren’t-I-smart slagging of the late Bill Leak.

It was famously said of the British and Americans, most likely by George Bernard Shaw, that they are divided by a common language.

To a lesser extent, possibly because we don’t have Britain’s regional accent distinctions, the same is true of Americans and Australians. When an American friend dropped by a few years ago, for example, he was utterly puzzled by frequent references in the press of people claiming to be “chuffed”.

One morning he found about three such references in the one newspaper. “What the hell does this word mean?” he asked, so I invited him to figure it out by considering the context.

He studied each sentence with scholarly concentration: “I was completely chuffed”, “I am absolutely chuffed”, and so on. Finally, my friend delivered his definition verdict.

“It means ‘drunk’,” he said.

Well, no. But it did for the rest of his trip.

The right and left sides of politics have lately arrived at a similar language gulf. Or maybe it isn’t so lately. Back in 2001, newly-elected US president George W. Bush vetoed a last-minute regulation on maximum arsenic particulate levels in water supplies that had been signed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

This move caused outrage among leftists, who raged that Bush’s veto exposed the nation’s children to risk of horrible death and furthermore proved that Republicans care not at all for innocent, water-craving families.

There was a logical flaw to those arguments, and they were quickly identified by Minnesota columnist James Lileks. “For all these accusations to work, you have to believe that Republicans want poisoned water,” he wrote. “You have to believe they drink different water than everyone else.”

“And, of course, they do,” Lileks continued, warming to this absurdity. “Doubt it? Switch parties. Join the GOP, and see what happens: cheerful clean-cut uniformed men show up the next day, and take you off the city water lines. They’ll connect you to the special Republican water system that crosses the nation, supplying pure clean perfect water to GOP households.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump written by Lester Berg

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/18/confessions-of-a-soulless

I became friends with Jamie when I was 13, a few years after my family fled the Soviet Union and settled in what was then one of the most diverse neighborhoods of south Brooklyn. When we first met, Jamie (not his real name) told me that he was a genius—that his Catholic school teachers said so after he wrote a poem about vaginas and read it aloud in front of the whole class. He told me he wanted to be “an author.” In the 1990s, our street was a spontaneous symphony of the working poor, a place where kids bonded by trading ethnic insults in a dozen languages. I had mastered this crude local vernacular. Jamie’s ability to step outside of our street language, speak freely and dream about something larger was transfixing.

Unlike Jamie, I churned through the city’s public schools without attracting much notice. My teachers did not seek genius. In high school, they were too busy keeping us from killing each other. I learned nothing and barely graduated. After Jamie went off to a university in Manhattan, we lost touch. I attended a local public college and came out with degrees in Business and Philosophy, graduating shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The business major was a concession to my immigrant parents. But Wall Street was in ruins. And philosophy obviously wasn’t much help. I worked a string of odd jobs, ultimately landing a writing gig for a consumer magazine that paid less than what I’d earned parking cars.

In 2009, I joined Facebook and looked up Jamie online. He had graduated from a prestigious Master of Fine Arts program in fiction. He also was awarded a coveted fellowship that came with a brief mention in one of the country’s finest literary magazines. He was married, and had a toddler son. Though surprised at first, he seemed happy to hear from me.

I was eager to catch up. We hadn’t spoken or seen each other in more than a decade. But the conversation invariably steered itself toward our young new president, Barack Obama. I’d voted for him and felt a swell of emotion when he spoke at his 2008 inauguration. Like Jamie, Obama was bi-racial, raised by his white mother, with a penchant for rhetorical flight.

Jamie and I would speak on the phone, discussing how refreshing it was to finally have a man of eloquence and grace in the White House. We railed against obstructionist Republicans who undermined Obama—like Joe Wilson, who shouted “you lie!” during the 2009 State of the Union address. We were living in momentous times. At last, the nation had elected its first black president, and Jamie and I were friends again.

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American Universities’ China Problem written by Robert Precht

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/23/american-universities-

According to a report released last month by a group of distinguished China scholars, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses vague threats to induce US professors and students to avoid topics that might offend Chinese government sensitivities—research or discussions on Tibet, Taiwan, Xinjiang, human rights, and Chinese politics, for example. It denies visas to scholars who criticize the regime, uses Chinese students in the US to inform on one another, and punishes universities for hosting controversial speakers. After a university hosted the Dalai Lama, Beijing retaliated by banning Chinese students and scholars with funding from the Chinese government from attending the university. When the institutions we entrust to pursue the truth start avoiding the truth—particularly academic research that few of us can do on our own—we all suffer.

The importance of universities’ truth-seeking role cannot be overstated. Medical researchers produce data on effective and ineffective therapies. Economists measure the impacts of different policy options. Sociologists study how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. Political scientists analyze governments. The integrity of American universities has rarely been questioned because it was assumed scholars enjoy academic freedom.

In contrast, Chinese scholars inhabit a very different world. When I worked in Beijing 10 years ago, I frequently met scholars who had to be careful about what they said. In 2010, I co-hosted a program with a well-respected professor at Peking University—China’s finest. He became agitated and angry when one of the speakers just mentioned the name of a critic of the regime, Liu Xiaobo. The professor feared he would be demoted or have his salary cut. The incident gave me renewed gratitude for the freedom on US campuses.

Ten years later, fear of offending the Communist regime has spread to American campuses Some of the blame belongs with China, but much of it belongs with the US universities themselves. By becoming ever more reliant on Chinese money they have placed themselves in a profound conflict of interest: adhere to academic freedom or please Beijing. Economic reliance on China has increased vastly in the last decade. Universities recruited Chinese students in record numbers. Enrollments soared by 400 percent. Chinese pay tuition worth an estimated $12 billion per year, according to the US Department of Commerce.

BOOKS, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Daniel J. Flynn Characters in Search of An Exit A gritty new novel dramatizes the human toll of America’s longest war.

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/war-in-afghanistan

And the Whole Mountain Burned, by Ray McPadden (Center Street, 288 pp., $26)

And the Whole Mountain Burned—a novel about our war in Afghanistan—tracks the adventures of Sergeant Nick Burch, Private Danny Shane, and their platoon on its hunt for “the Egyptian,” an antagonist as elusive as Moby Dick. In their quest, Burch and Shane encounter a soul-buying soldier, a local witch whose magic packs a powerful bite, and pagan cultists devoted to an orange rabbit. The characters speak in jargon (“mailbird,” “every swinging dick,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”) that marks one as part of the military for readers and as, at least when indulged in to overuse, one trying to fit in to the point of caricature for those in uniform. Ultimately, they come across as Americans thrust into an alien environment.

The characters speak in often-profane military jargon—“mailbird,” “drop your cocks and grab your socks”—reflecting the real-life experience of the author, who served in the infantry from 2005 through 2010.

Afghanistan’s native folkways, weather, and terrain strike the novel’s American characters as dreary and inhospitable. “Jesus, this place is a drag,” Private Shane explains. “I wish we could fight in a place where the natives weren’t so uptight. We should start a war in Brazil.” Shane, the proud beau of a stripper girlfriend, fights a long way from home.

Imagining Afghani culture as American civilization in embryo is a dangerous illusion. An officer’s notion that the Americans would defeat the enemy by imposing our model of civilization seems as quixotic as the hunt for the Egyptian. The Afghans devote themselves to their civilization, the Americans to theirs—and never the twain shall meet.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NEWS FROM THE NORTH: EDWARD CLINE

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

Europe is being destroyed by uncontrolled migration. There are refugees, fake refugees, economic migrants and terrorists, and no one can identify who is who.

Most are not looking to integrate into their host countries. They are colonists. Their aim is to overwhelm Western societies. Hundreds of sharia courts function in every major European city and there are numerous no-go zones, where infidels are forced out and police will not enter.

Jews are not safe in Europe and are leaving in record numbers, particularly from France, England, Norway and Sweden, where authorities cannot or will not protect them.

We must all be compassionate and ease the suffering of genuine refugees, but Canada would be foolish to follow Europe’s example.

U.S. Rightly Rejects UN Global Compact on Refugees

The United States has nothing to apologize for in standing up for its national sovereignty and opposing global compacts that do not serve the interests of the American people. As the Heritage Foundation concluded in urging the United States not to sign on to the Global Compact on Refugees, “Too often, even non-binding, voluntary compacts serve as gateways to binding commitments and vehicles for politically motivated criticism.” Moreover, if the leadership of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees continues to slam U.S. refugee policies and to press for international funding for Iran, the Trump administration should firmly object and cut back substantially on what the U.S. contributes annually to this UN bureaucracy.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/u.s.-rightly-rejects-un-global-compact-on-refugees

BREAKING: “The people’s win” Belgian Prime Minister resigns over UN Migration Pact

Migrant criminality rising in countries where the number of migrants has also risen has given way to votes such as Brexit and the rise of populist politicians. The career ending UN Migration Compact has seen millions across the globe signing their names to petition after petition in at least half the member states demanding their governments not sign it.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/breaking-the-peoples-win-belgian-prime-minister-resigns-over-un-migration-pact/

Why You Should Be a Nationalist

It’s undeniable: Around the world, nationalism is on the march, and the media and reigning political elites would have you believe this is a dangerous disaster in the making. So, why is Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism, unafraid?

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The Betrayal of America: Who Do You Trust? by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21910/the-betrayal-of-america-who-do-you-trust http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/http://lindagoudsmit.com

“Who do you trust?” is the foundational question in human relationships. Social relationships, family relationships, business relationships, romantic relationships, intimate friendships, professional relationships, political relationships – human relationships rely on trust. The existence of trust or the absence of trust defines human relatedness.

Parents tell their children when they are very young, “Whatever you do don’t lie to me.” Why? Because trust is the foundation of love.

Cheating is a catastrophic betrayal in adult love relationships. Why? Because successful relationships require trust.

So it is in politics. The existence of trust or the absence of trust defines human relatedness in both the private and public sectors.

Our representative government is founded on the principles of trust. We vote for candidates who we believe will keep their promises. Politics in the United States is currently experiencing seismic trust issues. Over the years it has become painfully obvious that politicians make deceitful promises on the campaign trail to get themselves elected. Then came Donald J. Trump, the political outsider who actually meant what he said when he promised to make America great again by putting America first. What happened?

President Trump has been stymied in his America first efforts since he took office by Democrats AND Republicans. Why? What would create a bilateral effort to stop a duly elected President from keeping his promises to strengthen America? If you want to know the motive look at the result.

President Trump’s America first policies are designed to benefit American workers, American families, legal American citizens, the American economy, the American military, and American businesses on Main Street. President Trump’s policies are unapologetically preferential and protective of American national interests. So, why would any American politician reject America first policies?

The motive for the stupefying, well-organized, multi-faceted, well-funded domestic and international campaign to destroy President Trump is GLOBALISM – a synonym for one world government. Globalists need a weakened America to impose supranational one world government. What?

Let me be clear. Globalism does not mean global trade. Global trade is the legitimate international commerce between sovereign countries. Globalism is the internationalized political infrastructure of the new world order under the auspices of the corrupt United Nations.

Globalists are the existential enemy of American sovereignty, independence, and they are desperately trying to destroy America first President Donald Trump and every one of his America first initiatives. Globalism is at war with Americanism.

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Wall is Trump’s ‘Read My Lips’ Moment By Roger Kimball

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/22/the-wall-is-trumps

A major reason that George H. W. Bush was elected in 1988 was his pledge, dramatically enunciated at the Republican National Convention in August of that year, not to raise taxes. Congress will push me to raise taxes, said Bush, and I’ll say “no”; they’ll push again, and I’ll say “no”; and they’ll push again and I’ll say to them “read my lips: no new taxes.”

It was a nice performance. The “read my lips” wheeze is of course the most famous bit. I’m sure it was scripted, as was the amusing play on “resort.” My opponent says he’ll only raise taxes as a last resort, said Bush, “but when a politician talks like that you know that’s one resort he’ll be checking in to.” Throw that speechwriter a bone!

A pledge not to raise taxes is something that is easy to check up on. You look at the weekly pay packet and count the drachmas. If there are fewer now than before, you can bet your local IRS agent that the hand of government is reaching a little deeper into your pocket than before.

The Democrats understood this. And although Dems, as a class, enjoy spending other people’s money, the more the merrier, they don’t necessarily want to be seen as the ones who are pilfering the pelf. They’d take all of your money if they could get away with it, but they wouldn’t want to be blamed for that government-sponsored larceny. Much better, from a reelection perspective, to contrive to shift the blame on to the Republicans.

Given that ambition, George H. W. Bush’s promise was an irresistible challenge. “Read my lips,” he said. OK. We read you loud and clear. And if we can browbeat you into capitulating, even as a “last resort,” to our demand that you raise taxes, then we’ll have you by the short and curlies. We’ll play that video where you made the promise on an endless loop on the lead up to the 1992 election and crush you.

And so it came to pass. It wasn’t fair. Bush didn’t want to raise taxes. The Democrats strong-armed him into it. Then they turned around and said he had broken his promise. Not nice, not nice at all. But it was just business as usual in the world of politics, especially Democratic politics.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Weak Attack on William Barr’s Nomination to Be Attorney General By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/william-barr-attorney-general-nomination/

A response to Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner

University of Chicago law professors Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner have penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which they argue that William P. Barr is disqualified to serve as President Trump’s attorney general. Their rationale is that the advisory memorandum Barr wrote to Justice Department officials this past June, arguing against the validity of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction theory, raises questions about his objectivity and fitness.

Coming from such estimable scholars, the Hemel-Posner column is surprisingly vapid. In fact, it is so unconvincing, I can only conclude that it is the start of a two-part strategy: Set the table by staking out an aggressive but untenable position that Barr — an eminently qualified former attorney general — is not suitable to be AG; then, Democrats can appear oh so reasonable in ultimately arguing that Barr must at least recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller investigation. The latter would be a meritless contention, though one we are certain to hear.

Hemel and Posner concede that Barr explicitly disclaimed knowledge about many of the facts of Mueller’s investigation. Moreover, far from attacking the legitimacy of Mueller’s overall investigation, or claiming that a prosecutor may not validly investigate the president for obstruction, Barr asserts that a president may indeed be cited for obstruction by “sabotaging a proceeding’s truth-seeking function.”

Barr’s quarrel, the professors correctly state, is with what press reports indicate is an expansive construction of Section 1512(c) of the federal penal code. As I explained in a National Review column earlier this week, Barr contends that application of the obstruction statute is limited to innately wrongful acts of evidence and witness tampering; it cannot be stretched to cover prerogatives of the presidency (e.g., issuing pardons, dismissing subordinate officials, exercising prosecutorial discretion by weighing in on the merits of an investigation) that a prosecutor believes may have been improperly motivated. Otherwise, not only would the chief executive potentially be divested of his constitutional authority; the administration of justice would be damaged because this theory would apply to all executive officials — including, for example, prosecutors making strategic decisions in litigation, or making personnel and management decisions.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The $500-million climate carnival concludes By Viv Forbes

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/12/the_500million_climate_carnival_concludes.html

COP 24 just concluded in Poland. Nearly 23,000 climate saviors attended this 24th annual climate carnival.

Every year, plane-loads of concerned busybodies fly to some interesting new location to spend tax dollars on a well stocked 12-day holiday. They concoct plans to ration and tax the energy used by real workers, farmers, and families back home.

Few delegates arrived by bicycle or solar-powered plane – a fleet of at least 100 commercial, private, and charter aircraft brought them at a cost estimated at U.S. $57M. When the costs of hotels, ground transport, food, entertainment, air-conditioning, and office services are added, the bill is likely to top $500M.

Australian taxpayers supported 46 junketeers. Now these Chicken Littles are back home spreading climate scare stories and lecturing locals not to overspend on Christmas presents.

There is a bright side: all that carbon dioxide emitted by planes, cars, buses, heaters, stoves, beer, champagne, and Poland’s coal-fired power stations will help global plant growth.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

New Revelation: Previous US Administration Facilitated Christian Genocide in Nigeria by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on December 23rd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13447/obama-christian-genocide-nigeria

“On March 23, 2015, President Obama himself took the unusual step of releasing a video message directly to Nigerians all but telling them how to vote. In that video, Obama urged Nigerians to open the ‘next chapter’ by their votes.” — Goodluck Jonathan, former president of Nigeria, in his new book, My Transition Hours.

“Christianity is on the brink of extinction in Nigeria.” — Bosun Emmanuel, the secretary of the National Christian Elders Forum, June 23, 2018.

“Hundreds of indigenous Numan Christians in Adamawa state were attacked and killed by jihadist Fulani herdsmen. When they tried to defend themselves the Buhari govt. sent in the Airforce to bomb hundreds of them and protect the Fulani aggressors.” — Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigerian lawyer, author and former Minister of Aviation, Daily Post, December 6, 2017.

In March 2014, after the United States Institute for Peace invited the governors of Nigeria’s northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister.

In a bombshell revelation, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former president (2010-2015), has accused the Obama administration of meddling with his nation’s politics in order to replace him with its current president, Muhammadu Buhari — whom many blame for facilitating the persecution of Christians. In his new book, My Transition Hours, Jonathan writes:

“On March 23, 2015, President Obama himself took the unusual step of releasing a video message directly to Nigerians all but telling them how to vote… In that video, Obama urged Nigerians to open the ‘next chapter’ by their votes. Those who understood subliminal language deciphered that he was prodding the electorate to vote for the [Muslim-led] opposition to form a new government.”

A 2011 ABC News report provides context:

The current wave of [Muslim] riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was intolerable, was unsurprising. Northerners [Muslims] felt they were entitled to the presidency for the declared winner, President Jonathan, [who] assumed leadership after the Muslim president, Umaru Yar’Adua died in office last year and radical groups in the north [Boko Haram] had seen his [Jonathan’s] ascent as a temporary matter to be corrected at this year’s election. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.