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Irish realities Christopher Montgomery

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7214/full

Books tell you very little about things that happened to you but a lot about the people who write them. It’s not a very original thought: I first heard something like it as a teenager watching Sir Geoffrey Howe on Newsnight after the first televised dramatisation of Mrs Thatcher’s fall. “Ah,” the great man sighed, “so that’s how it was, you think, when you see how it was in a room you weren’t in. But then you see yourself and realise, no, it wasn’t like that at all.” Journalists are rarely in written-about rooms, but, poor social eunuchs, are cursed forever to write about them. And by some distance the most baleful consequence of Brexit has been all the books about it.

The fleetest of these was Brexit Revolt, written by staff at this magazine. It being the first Brexit book launch party, I went: it was also the last I could bear. The late Helen Szamuley, a Brexiteer schismatic of the finest sort, came up to me and said, “Oh, you were a director of Vote Leave.” Eye-narrowing pause. “You didn’t deserve to win.” Only one sorrowful lot suffer more from Brexit having won than other Brexiteers and that’s the Most Oppressed People Ever. And no book is more lamentable than Brexit And Ireland (Penguin, £9.99) by RTE’s Europe Editor, Tony Connelly.

Imagining a banshee keening in your ear, forever, is an improvement on the experience of reading this dreary, repetitive book. But it, and its Northern Ireland-born author, illustrate our great problem with Ireland: our ignorance of its self-pity. It’s impossible for all but the most determined Briton to comprehend the passive-aggressive neurotic skulking to our west. But if forced to finish this book, you will benefit from yet another of Brexit’s miraculous boons and see quite how odd the Irish view of reality is.

For example, did you know that during the referendum Ireland’s European Commissioner, by his campaigning in the UK, “made a real contribution [to Remain]. He might even have swung quite a number of votes”? Since you struggle to name our own Commissioner a nagging doubt troubles you about this eccentric claim. But there’s more. Phil Hogan, for it was he who swung the votes, was not the only Irish official to campaign in our referendum: their ambassador and six ministers did likewise. Who am I to say whether this was happily counter-productive in addition to being markedly unwise, but the fact is that they did it.

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Woodward and the Mystery of Trump How does a chaotic White House get so much done? By James Freeman

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woodward-and-the-mystery-of-trump-1536098699Bob Woodward is preparing to release the latest book describing a chaotic Trump White House led by an unhinged ignoramus. Also in the news today, the manufacturing revival promised by the alleged ignoramus is in full swing.

As is his custom, Mr. Woodward includes in his new book a great deal of material from anonymous sources. The result, according to his colleagues at the Washington Post, is a “a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency.” The Post reports:

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

According to the book, the most senior of the President’s aides thinks the President is out of his mind:

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

This afternoon, the White House released a statement from General Kelly that referenced a similar report from NBC in May:

The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true. As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: “I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS. I’m committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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Democratic Activist Ousts Incumbent Massachusetts Congressman in Primary Ayanna Pressley, who beat incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano, instantly joins the ranks of new party stars in 2018 By Reid J. Epstein

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-activist-ousts-incumbent-massachusetts-congressman-in-primary-1536111132?mod=hp_lead_pos4

In the latest upset among Democrats, Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councilor who ran as a progressive activist, beat 10-term Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano on Tuesday in a Massachusetts House primary.

Ms. Pressley becomes the second Democrat to defeat an incumbent House member in a 2018 primary. She rode energy from the party’s resistance to President Trump to topple Mr. Capuano, who Federal Election Commission records show raised about twice as much money as she did.

Ms. Pressley’s victory instantly thrusts her into the ranks of the new Democratic stars of 2018, alongside New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only other Democrat to oust an incumbent member of Congress this year, and Andrew Gillum, who last week won an upset victory to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida.
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Her Too An ivory-tower “victim” is exposed as a predator. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271241/her-too-bruce-bawer

Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Les Moonves, Al Franken: the list of high-profile persons who’ve been accused of using their professional power to sexually exploit others continues to grow. One of the most recent additions to the roster is a woman – a lesbian, in fact – whose name may mean nothing to you but who, like Weinstein in Hollywood and Franken on Capitol Hill, has long wielded considerable power within her own professional community. Her name is Avital Ronell, and she’s a 66-year-old “superstar” professor at New York University, where she’s a member of both the Germanic Languages and Literature Department and the Comparative Literature Department, and at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, where she’s on the philosophical faculty.

Ronell’s accuser, a young gay man named Nimrod Reitman, alleges that back in 2012, when he was one of Ronell’s grad students, she sexually assaulted him at her pied à terre in Paris, proceeded to flood his in-box with scores of romantic e-mails, and then, some time later, moved into his Manhattan apartment (and bed) when Hurricane Sandy cut off the electricity to her NYU apartment. When, after his graduation, he finally began resisting her aggressive moves – he says he was too worried about professional retaliation to do so earlier – she allegedly tried to sabotage his career.

A protégée of the late Jacques Derrida, Ronell practices what is known, broadly, as postmodern theory, churning out prose – at once playful, pretentious, and deliberately obscure – that’s meant to be a shot across the bow of the rational post-Enlightenment West. Half a century or so ago, professors in English departments taught literature. Philosophy professors taught the history of philosophy. Their present-day successors, such as Ronell, whom you can put in any and all humanities and social-sciences departments, because they’re all working pretty much the same scam, view themselves as doing something infinitely more consequential than passing on the great ideas of Western civilization.

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The South Africa Question Is the country going the way of Zimbabwe? Walter Williams

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271243/south-africa-question-walter-williams

South Africa has been thrown into the news because of President Donald Trump’s recent tweet that he instructed his secretary of state to “closely study” alleged land seizures from white farmers in South Africa.

Earlier this year, a land confiscation motion was brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema, and it passed South Africa’s Parliament by a 241-83 vote. Malema has had a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016, he told his supporters he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people — at least for now” (https://tinyurl.com/y7mfmhco). The land-grabbing sentiment is also expressed by Lindsay Maasdorp, national spokesman for Black First Land First, a group that condones land seizures in South Africa. He says, “We are going to take back the land, and we’ll do it by any means necessary.” The land confiscation policy was a key factor in the platform of the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

I have visited South Africa several times, in 1979, 1980 and 1992. My three-month 1980 visit included lectures at nearly all South African universities. The 1992 return visit, two years after apartheid ended and two years before democratic elections, included lectures on my book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.” During each visit, my counsel to South Africans, particularly black South Africans, was that the major task before them was not only ridding the nation of apartheid but deciding what was going to replace it.

That’s an important question. William Hutt, the late University of Cape Town economist who was an anti-apartheid voice within the academic community, wrote in his 1964 book, titled “The Economics of the Colour Bar,” that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices or oppression “can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races.” In 2001, Andrew Kenny wrote an article titled “Black People Aren’t Animals — But That’s How Liberals Treat Them.” Kenny asked whether South Africa is doomed to follow the rest of Africa into oblivion. Kenny gave a “no” answer to his question, but he was not very optimistic because of the pattern seen elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. He argued that ordinary Africans were better off under colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and genocide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and other countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways, including being hacked to death, boiled in oil, set on fire and dismembered. Kenny said that if as many elephants, zebras and lions were as ruthlessly slaughtered, the world’s leftists would be in a tizzy (https://tinyurl.com/ybj4u9fj).

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Nike’s new romance with an America-hating racist. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271240/nike-social-justice-slave-labor-shoe-hates-america-daniel-greenfield

It’s a bad time for bad sneakers.

Nike sales have seen their slowest growth in seven years. It was the worst performing Dow stock of 2016. Americans don’t seem to want badly made overpriced shoes put together by slave labor.

The failing company tried to turn around its poor sales by doubling down on its abrasive lefty politics. Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense was supposed to stand for reclaiming American market share, instead of directly offending consumers. But if Nike can’t sell its shoddy athletic wear, it can offend Americans.

Last winter, Nike unveiled the “Pro Hijab”. Now it decided to make Colin Kaepernick, the racist black nationalist who began the trend of protesting the national anthem, into the face of its Just Do It campaign. Nike’s new contract with its America-hating racist will rush out Kaepernick shoes and jerseys. No word on whether Kaepernick’s socks showing police officers as pigs will also be part of the package.

Nike will pay Kaepernick millions every year with a deal that looks like those of “top-end” NFL players. Actually being a top-end player or having the talent to be one is surplus to social justice requirements.

The huge payday for Kaepernick clashes with Just Do It’s new tagline, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Making millions of dollars for hating America without having to ever get out there and play is the opposite of “sacrificing everything.” It’s getting paid for doing nothing.

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The Kitchen Sink and John McCain By Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the-kitchen

Accurately, the Washington Post summed up the climax of the extravaganza that the ruling class staged on the occasion of Senator John McCain’s death: “the generals, senators, former presidents and other world leaders who filled the pews burst into applause.” Daughter Meghan, sleek, privileged, plus-sized alumna of ABC’s celebrity talk show “The View,” had just delivered the exordium: “We mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”

For an audience headlined by Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for the countless who had felt the sting of the American people’s rejection in the previous decade’s elections, this was no subtle dog-whistle. They rose to a trumpet sounding “charge!” against the class enemy, and Donald Trump only incidentally. Essentially, the enemy is whomever might think that our rulers are anything other than the very definition of greatness and goodness.

In short, the McCain funeral had nothing to do with the deceased. If it had, the organizers would not have made a point of excluding Sarah Palin, who had given the inept McCain his only chance of winning the presidency in 2008, and had remained personally loyal to him despite political differences. But the whole point of the exercise was to stand together, throwing dirt on such as Sarah Palin, extra ecclesia, nulla salus. Those who respectability must stand with us against them. By the same token, the week-long commentary praised McCain chiefly by imputing all manner of evil to Donald Trump and inferring that McCain represented the opposite.

This had the additional convenience of sidestepping John McCain’s seamy reality.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Peak Oil: A Lesson in False Prophecy By S. Fred Singer

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/peak_oil__a_lesson_in_false_prophecy.html

As recently as 10 years ago, we were told that the world was running out of oil soon. Horrors! Then, directional drilling and fracking opened up the prolific resource of “tight” oil shale. New production records are being set daily; the U.S. now leads the world in oil reserves, ahead even of Saudi Arabia.

Hubbert’s Peak

Geophysicist and noted pioneer of ground water flow in aquifers Dr. M. King Hubbert was being celebrated as a prophet. He had predicted that U.S. oil production would peak around 1970 – and it did! Of course, the price of oil was then only around $2 a barrel; it is now around $75, and will surely go higher.

The National Petroleum Council [NPC], made up of the leaders of the oil industry and other experts, told us, in 1970 as I recall, that if oil prices ever reached $3 a barrel, the vast resource of the Colorado kerogen would become commercial. Some oil companies actually mined some kerogen and retorted it to extract the locked-up but uneconomic oil. The world oil price is now around $75 a barrel — and sure to rise further.

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Guatemala’s President Defends Democracy Against the U.N. He booted the Commission Against Impunity, which has jailed innocents while promoting socialism. Mary Anastasia O’Grady

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guatemalas-president-defends-democracy-against-the-u-n-1536098714

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced Friday that the agreement his country has with the United Nations Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala won’t be renewed. The commission—known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG—has one year to tie up its work and, by Sept. 3, 2019, leave the country.

Mr. Morales sent a letter to the U.N. secretary-general advising him of the decision. In a press conference Mr. Morales said that CICIG should immediately begin transferring its responsibilities to “corresponding [Guatemalan] entities,” mainly the attorney general.

On Monday CICIG’s top prosecutor, Colombian Iván Velásquez, flew to Washington, though he didn’t reveal why and has no public events scheduled. His spokesman said the trip had been planned for a while. It wouldn’t be the first time the prosecutor went north on a secret mission.

The U.S. Congress pays a substantial part of CICIG’s budget, but Mr. Velásquez has refused to answer questions at congressional hearings or in any public forum. Instead he meets behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, where he can control the narrative in front of an audience—both left and right—that is unfamiliar with or doesn’t care about CICIG’s transgressions against innocent Guatemalans. He also seems to have State Department sympathizers.

Mr. Morales’s detractors charge that he fired Mr. Velásquez to protect himself. CICIG has been investigating the president and alleges that he was the beneficiary of illegal campaign financing. He denies wrongdoing and enjoys immunity as long as he holds office. Mr. Velásquez has been working to lift that immunity.

Mr. Velásquez might successfully defend his commission if the standoff with the president were the only disputed issue. But under his leadership there is strong evidence that CICIG routinely flouts the rule of law and tramples civil liberties in violation of the Guatemalan constitution. His methods can’t be supported by a republic that pledges allegiance to transparency and human rights. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The Kavanaugh Histrionics Senate Democrats turn the hearing into a presidential campaign.

Posted By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-kavanaugh-histrionics-1536103645

Expectations were low for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and Senate Democrats on Tuesday wasted no time meeting them. We can’t tell if they’re going through the histrionic motions or if they might actually try to block a confirmation vote.

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley couldn’t finish his first sentence before California Democrat Kamala Harris interrupted to demand a hearing delay. Democrats continued to speak over the Chairman even after they were ruled out of order to the jeers of protestors who had to be removed from the hearing room. Democrats interrupted 44 times in the first hour, part of what NBC reported as a “plotted, coordinated strategy” organized by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over the weekend.

The main charge is that Mr. Grassley is “denying” crucial documents to “hide” Judge Kavanaugh’s record. The Senators are ignoring the 307 opinions he has written, and the 17,000 pages of material he provided in response to the committee’s questionnaire—the most extensive ever demanded of a nominee. The Senators have already received more than half a million pages about his time as a lawyer and judge—more documents than were provided for the past five Supreme Court nominees combined.

Democrats haven’t found a killer issue in all of this, so they are demanding documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s time as a staff secretary in the Bush White House. The documents would reveal little about Judge Kavanaugh’s legal thinking, since as staff secretary his job was to vet and monitor what President Bush saw each day.