NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Never Trump is Still Waiting for the Apocalypse One of these days, just you wait. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

“Republicans of all stripes must be made to acknowledge and accept that Trumpism is an experiment that failed,” Noah Rothman wrote in Commentary.

It was October 2016 and Rothman was declaring the terms on which Never Trumpers would accept the surrender of Republicans after Trump’s defeat. Some “examples must be made”, but after some political purges, the GOP could be reunited around “free trade” and “an internationalist foreign policy”.

But instead of losing, Trump won. The disasters that Rothman was predicting, the loss of Congress and the White House, never came about. And the scorned prophets of Never Trump, instead of apologizing or being offered terms for rejoining the GOP, continued forecasting disaster and doom for the heretics.

Like Democrats, Never Trumpers were still stuck on an election that Trump wasn’t supposed to win. Democrats had predicted a Hillary victory and Never Trumpers predicted a Republican disaster. Both Democrats and Never Trumpers want to reverse the results of the election. The Democrats invent vast conspiracies and the Never Trumpers predict disasters that will never happen.

Never Trumpers are obsessed with proving to Republicans that electing Trump was a disastrous mistake.

So everything is a disaster. Trump is infuriating Europeans alienating Muslims, abandoning NATO and destroying the planet. The sky is always falling. The apocalypse is just around the corner. And when it finally arrives, Rothman and the rest of the gang can lay out their terms for reunifying the GOP around illegal alien amnesty, destructive trade practices and open borders for terrorist refugees.

Even after the election, President Trump still can’t win.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

UW-Madison class explores ‘harms and forms of injustice associated with capitalism’ Kate Hardiman

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

‘Exploitation, domination and irrationality’https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/33448/

A class at University of Wisconsin-Madison studies how capitalism “generates harms” and “is irrational in ways that hurt nearly everyone,” according to a copy of the syllabus recently obtained through a public records act request by the MacIver Institute.

Berkeley-born and educated sociologist Dr. Erik Olin Wright, who teaches the graduate student course called “Class, State, and Ideology: An Introduction to Social Science in the Marxist Tradition,” goes on to instruct students on how to challenge capitalism.

Capitalism is an oppressive system, according to the syllabus, and “should therefore be criticized from the point of view of the interests it harms — especially the interests of the working class, but also other social categories whose interests are harmed.”

The course explores the “full range of harms and forms of injustice associated with capitalism. These critiques can be broadly grouped under three rubrics: exploitation, domination, and irrationality,” it states.

Mere critique is not the end goal of this course, however, but societal and institutional transformation. Its purpose, according to the nearly 80-page syllabus, is to teach Marxism as an “emancipatory social science,” that is to “fulfill the goal of generating critical social scientific knowledge relevant to the task of challenging systems of oppression.”

“Ultimately the point of Marxist social science is to generate theoretical knowledge relevant to the practical task of transforming the world in ways that increase the possibility of human emancipation,” the syllabus reads.

Though the end goal of “human emancipation” is not specifically delineated, Dr. Wright assigns his own work, Envisioning Real Utopias, for this section of the course. He also plans an end of term retreat weekend in Upham Woods featuring academic sessions on “Real Utopias,” complete with a gourmet potluck.

A 2012 bio on Wright by the American Sociology Association states that “real utopias,” according to the scholar, include “participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the production cooperatives of Mondragon, Spain; and even the collective self-organization of Wikipedia.”

As for the syllabus, nowhere does it offer the opposing view that capitalism is beneficial.

Though there is a section titled “American Exceptionalism,” the syllabus does not use this term in its traditionally positive sense, but rather subverts it, arguing that “the U.S. working class is unique, or ‘exceptional,’ in never having even formed durable electoral vehicles of its own to wage policy struggles in the state.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Science fights back against the global warming fraud By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

It has taken far too long, but the self-correcting mechanisms of science finally are contradicting the global warming fraud. Despite billions of dollars of grants for those who support the so-called “consensus” (itself, a lie), and the fear of retaliation, scholars interested in the truth are publishing a wave of scientific papers contradicting the orthodoxy.

Best of all: President Trump’s EPA chief has signaled that he sees that questioning of scientific hypotheses (and all scientific knowledge ultimately is a hypothesis, awaiting a possible correction based on new information) is legitimate.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt reignited a long simmering debate over a method of scientific inquiry that could upset the supposed “consensus” on man-made global warming.

In an interview with Breitbart’s Joel Pollak on Monday, Pruitt said he supported a “red team-blue team” set up to test climate science. Pruitt was inspired by an op-ed by theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, but others have been pushing this idea as well.

The team that will question the orthodoxy is seeing a wave of evidence come its way.

Kenneth Richards writes:

Just in the last few weeks alone, another 20 scientific papers were identified which link solar variations to climate changes, which means 58 papers have already been published in 2017.

Since solar activity does vary, it kind of makes more intuitive sense that this might affect climate more than the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Occam’s Razor favors this explanation. Check out this graph that Richards highlights:

MEDIA Comments turned off

The New Media Should Drive the News Cycle By James Lewis

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

I believe that the New Media deserve major credit for deconstructing the Old Media narrative. Right after James Comey’s much-hyped congressional testimony, several New Media sites picked up the real news – namely, that Comey had actually outed himself as a top leaker in the Deep Government by sending his own written memo, typed on government time, on a government computer, to attack the president of the United States, with no proof of illegal or unethical behavior at all.

That should have been the lead story for the New Media. We had the Comey leaker story, and we told the story, but it was reactive; it took the false narrative of Trump’s supposed obstruction of justice as the point of departure. That seems to validate the false accusation against Trump and only pointed out its falsehoods.

The Old Media don’t play defense. They play offense, and let the truth be damned. The New Media are winning the battle for American minds, but they have not yet learned to actively drive the news cycle.

As a result, Trump’s magnificent spectacle in Saudi Arabia, which turned the Saudis, along with 50 national Muslim leaders, along with Egypt, Israel and the United States, against Iranian aggression and Iran’s proxy state, Qatar, went more or less unnoticed. Today, the Gulf Council alliance, backed by the United States, is starting to choke Arab commerce with Qatar, and if that campaign succeeds, the Qataris will have to back down.

On top of all that, for the first time since 9/11, we have pinpointed a major source of funding and direction for horrific massacres in the West – namely, Qatar. This is a clear move against the Iranian terror sponsors as well, therefore this is a strategic move against the Shi’ite half of jihad.

The Saudis have to do much, much more. But Trump (aided by Mattis and Jared Kushner) has started a major turning point in the jihad war. The huge MOAB weapon against ISIS in Afghanistan is part of the strategic turnaround.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

After Paris: A Green Disaster in the Making in Germany By Alex Alexiev

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

What Trump repeatedly promised to do during the election campaign has been done, and America is no longer part of the Paris Agreement. Predictably, the mainstream media here and across the Atlantic have again gone totally unhinged with prophesies of doom for America, the imminent demise of the Trump administration, and the inevitable rise of Germany and Chancellor Merkel as the new leader of the free world.

This may indeed be a watershed event, but not at all as the left here and there imagines it. Contrary to the fervent desires of the leftist elites, it will result not in the political collapse of Trump’s America, but in the exposure of the incredible hypocrisy and ultimate weakness of the socialistic environmental schemes characterizing today’s “European project.” When it’s all said and done, either Europe will come back to its senses in close alliance with America, or it will not have much of a future.

Some may object to calling today’s E.U. a socialist scheme, pointing out that its leading member, Germany, has been led for 12 years by an allegedly conservative Christian Democrat government. It is a fact, however, that under Merkel, the CDU has moved so far left as to be virtually indistinguishable on most policy issues from its social-democratic coalition partners. As for the Paris Agreement itself, after a decent interval to allow for the requisite elites’ huffing and puffing while denying the inevitable, it will be quietly abandoned, much as the Kyoto Protocol was after the U.S. refused to be part of it.

Of vastly greater political significance are the inevitable shocks the E.U. faces after Paris as the huge penalties for poor policy choices made come due in the near future – and none more so than in the new putative leader of the free world, Germany. For largely unnoticed and unreported in the U.S., with one notable exception, Germany under Merkel has made catastrophic mistakes that require urgent and costly repairs. One stands out as particularly daunting: the wholesale effort to switch Germany to renewable energy, known as the energy transition, or Energiewende.

The Energiewende, in short, represented an effort to put into practice the principles behind the Paris Agreement and switch Germany’s electric system to renewable energy. It was introduced as early as 1991 in the belief that renewable energy could easily replace the hated fossil fuels if properly subsidized via a feed-in tariff and written into law as a Renewable Energy Act (EEG) in 2000. By offering subsidies of up to seven times the market price for electricity paid by the consumer, guaranteeing it for 20 years, and offering all manner of additional benefits, the government caused a renewable building frenzy in a country that is neither sunny nor particularly windy. And to the extent that there is wind, it is in the north, far from the industrial centers in the south that need the energy. To add insult to injury, in 2011, Merkel ordered the closing down of the nuclear industry that produced 30% of the country’s clean and cheap energy on the absurd assumption that Germany could suffer an earthquake and tsunami like what happened at Fukushima.

Thus, the renewable energy took off spectacularly, and the international green claque promptly declared Germany the paragon of environmental virtue and an example to be followed by all. But much of it turned out to be fake news, as documented in a new and devastating critique of the Energiewende by one of the founders of the German green movement and a pioneer of the renewable energy business, Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt, who calls it “A Disaster in the Making.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

ISIS burns 19 Yazidi women to death in Mosul for rejecting sex slavery

Posted By on June 12th, 2017

ISIS terrorists have publicly executed 19 Yazidi women by burning them alive in Mosul, Iraq, local activists report.

The women were burned to death in iron cages because they refused to have sex with ISIS terrorists, the Kurdish ARA News agency reported.

“They were punished for refusing to have sex with ISIS militants,” Abdullah al-Malla, a local media activist, told the agency.

An eyewitness in Mosul told ARA News: “The 19 girls were burned to death, while hundreds of people were watching.”

“Nobody could do anything to save them from the brutal punishment.”

Thousands of Yazidi women were taken captive when ISIS terrorists seized control of Sinjar, in north western Iraq, in August 2014.

The terror group has been attempting to eliminate the Yazidi people as part of its ethnic cleansing efforts.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Navy MQ-4C Triton – High Altitude Maritime Autonomous Drone — Will Deliver Later This Year :Scout Warrior

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

The Navy is Preparing the MQ-4C Triton Maritime Drone for Service in the Pacific Theater; the drone is now being configured with collision avoidance technology and advanced maritime sensors enabling it to zero in on enemy ships at sea.

The Navy and Northrop Grumman are updating software and sensors on a new high-tech, autonomous maritime drone designed to identify and zero in on enemy ship targets at sea, service and industry officials said.

The Navy’s Triton autonomous drone, called the MQ-4C, is now receiving a “3.1 software” integration as part of a technical plan for the aircraft to be operational by 2018. The first Tritons are slated to deliver sometime later this year, developers said.
“3.1 software gets you to the point where you can use the sensors in an operational environment,” Tom Twomey, senior manager business development, Triton, Northrop Grumman, told Scout Warrior in an interview.

The sensor package being designed for the aircraft includes what the Navy calls a multi-function array sensor, or MFAS.

The Triton’s electronics include an electro-optical/infrared sensor, a 360-degree active electronically scanned array radar and inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), among other things, Navy developers have said. The sensors create a common operational maritime picture including images, data and full-motion video. An electronic support measure is also able to detect maritime signals.

Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, sends an electromagnetic signal forward and then analyzes the return signal to paint a picture or “rendering” of the terrain below. SAR is primarily used for land missions, whereas ISAR is especially engineered to zero in on targets in a maritime environment.

“Inverse synthetic aperture radar is a mode that allows you to stop on one particular target and get an ID on that. It gives you a picture of a ship showing the superstructure in order to see if, for example, it is a tanker or warship. It can pick steel out of the water,” Twomey said.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Feinstein Calls for Probe of Loretta Lynch Handling of Email Investigation By Rick Moran

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2017/06/11/feinstein-calls-for-probe-of-loretta-lynch-handling-of-email-investigation/

The ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has called for an investigation into former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s actions in connection with the federal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Senator Diane Feinstein was reacting to comments made by former FBI Director James Comey during testimony on Capitol Hill that Lynch asked him to downplay the Clinton investigation.

MEDIA Comments turned off

More Video of CNN’s Staged Muslim ‘Anti-Terror Protest’ By Rick Moran

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

This would be amusing if the subject matter weren’t so serious.

CNN was caught on video last week literally staging an anti-terror protest by a group of Muslim women.

The crew tightly packs the approximately two dozen protesters together with signs facing the camera, while Anderson monologues about the “beautiful” anti-terror protest.

CNN International responded to the claims that they staged the protest, writing, “This is nonsense. Police let demonstrators through the cordon to show their signs. CNN along with other media simply filmed them doing so.”

Oh, really? Here’s a YouTube video showing what was going on prior to the Twitter video:

Youtube video taken by Claire Jordan shows her milling around the scene and “protest” prior to CNN lining up the protesters for their on-air shot.

There is a group of people in the area, both Muslim and non-Muslim, and some of them can be seen handing out bouquets of flowers and posters.

Jordan, narrating the video, observes, “you see more press than anyone else.

Jordan then crosses the street and shows the Muslim women who were featured on the CNN broadcast. They are located on the opposite side of the street and “they’re taking selfies, none of them have got flowers.”

“I was there just before,” she explains, “and you see, again, this is the group of women and the little boy–they’re just getting their posters now.”

The Muslim women then gather their posters and cross the street to set up for the CNN shot that was used in the broadcast.

“Nonsense,” eh? They “simply filmed” this “authentic” display of anti-terrorism sentiment by a small group of Muslim women? (We had bigger protests against “meatless Fridays” at my high school back in the day.)

Question: Where did the flowers come from? Who made up the signs? Are we to believe that a group of random Muslim women spontaneously showed up and wanted to express their sentiments against terrorism?

I am not saying that these women are expressing a false belief. I have no doubt they — and millions of Muslims around the world — are opposed to terrorism.

But a prominent media outlet staging a protest to play to politically correct notions of what we “should” think about Muslim attitudes toward terrorists and terrorism — and then issuing a lying denial of their part in broadcasting fake news — is absolutely outrageous. Why not just come clean and state the obvious — that protests make good TV and choreographing a demonstration makes sense from a profit-and-loss perspective?

CNN could claim that the sentiment expressed at the demonstration was real and that they just helped get the message out a little bit. But no matter how authentic the feelings, the fact that CNN inserted themselves into the scene to heighten the dramatic effect is inexcusable.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Corruption and Collusion: Obama, Comey, and the Press By Andrew Klavan

Posted By on June 11th, 2017

It now seems clear that Barack Obama was a corrupt machine politician in the worst Chicago mold. He used the IRS to silence his enemies, and the Justice Department to protect his friends. His two major “achievements” — a health care law that doesn’t work and a deal that increased the power and prestige of the terrorist state of Iran — were built on lies to the public and manipulation of the press. And that’s according to his own allies! Only the leftist bias and racial pathology of the media kept his administration from being destroyed by scandal, as it surely would have been had he been a white Republican.

I don’t mention this to bring up old grudges, but for what it says about the current moment and the week just passed. Here’s some of what we recently learned:

Former FBI Director James Comey’s Senate testimony concerning former Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s corruption confirmed our worst suspicions about the Obama DOJ. In an apparent attempt to help Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Lynch told Comey to refer to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s abuse of classified material as “a matter” rather than an investigation. And, as we already knew but Comey confirmed, Lynch’s secret tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton so underscored Comey’s sense of her crookedness that the self-serving drama queen Comey actually went around her to publicly declare Hillary guilty-but-not-guilty.

“It won’t get much attention, but that was pretty damning,” said CNN’s John King of Comey’s testimony about Lynch. You can translate “it won’t get much attention” into “we won’t give it much attention.”

But all that was nothing compared to the brutal, nearly 300-page report released last week by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a report absolutely blasting the previous Obama AG, Eric Holder. The report details how Holder and the Obama administration labored to cover up the details of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal — a scandal which, unlike the non-collusion-with-Russia non-scandal, was implicated in the murder of an American law officer. Even the mom of the slain officer couldn’t get the truth out of Holder and his cronies. The report says Holder considered the officer’s family a “nuisance” because they were trying to get him to tell them how exactly the lawman died at the hands of gangsters who were wielding guns Obama’s DOJ had allowed them to buy. CONTINUE AT SITE