NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fake History and a Profile in Courage How a brave scholar’s intellectual integrity shined a light on the degradation of critical thought in America. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fake-history-and-a-profile-in-courage/

A culture-war squall occurred recently over a Netflix series about Cleopatra, who is played by a black actress. The biggest protest came not from ancient historians calling out fake history, but from Egypt, where a lawyer filed a complaint with the public prosecutor alleging that the casting promotes “the Afrocentric thinking . . . which includes slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.”

It seems that Egyptians, rightfully proud of their ancient civilization and its Greco-Roman history, don’t appreciate “cultural appropriation” and “stolen legacies”––crimes that “woke” identity-politicians and activists are so quick to caterwaul about––any more than the “woke” Stasi do. I guess like free speech, for the “woke” it’s “cultural appropriation” for me, but not for thee.

Behold the “woke” egregious double standards, and the fake history like the “1619 Project” that has corrupted academic history for political power and financial gain. A similar offense was committed against Israeli actress Gal Gadot a few years ago, when the Wonder Woman star was cast as Cleopatra. Her offense? Being “bland” and “too pretty,” and especially “white.” One “journalist” despicably Tweeted, “shame on you, Gal Gadot. Your country steals Arab land & you’re stealing their movie roles”––two lies in one smear.

So, an Israeli can’t portray a descendent of Macedonian Greeks, who were typically fairer than southern Greeks, because a historically challenged “journalist” thinks Cleopatra was an Arab? Christian, Greek, and Roman Egypt didn’t become an Arab nation until 645 A.D. with the Muslim conquest and subsequent occupation of Egypt, which continues to this day.

Usually I wouldn’t bother with such patent ignorance, but it reminds me of an early example of “cancel culture” and fake history: the vicious public assaults on Wellesley College classicist Mary Lefkowitz for challenging and exposing the historical distortions and racialist politicization wrought by Afrocentrism.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Bruce Bawer’s ‘The Victims’ Revolution’ Buy it. Read it. Share it. Act on it. by Danusha V. Goska

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bruce-bawers-the-victims-revolution/

EXCERPT:

Book-length works have tackled the decline of American education. A standout is James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose’s 2020 bestseller, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody.

The single best book I’ve read so far on this topic is Bruce Bawer’s The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Birth of Woke Ideology. The book was first published in 2012; it’s been rereleased because it is desperately needed right now. My review in brief: buy this book, read it, share it, and act on it.

Revolution is the product of a highly intelligent mind, a dogged researcher, and a passionate soul who cares deeply about the future and wants to do what he can to affect that future in a positive way. Bawer is an award-winning writer. His prose is easy to read and quote-worthy. While Lindsay and Pluckrose emphasize theories, rendering their book a cold and dry read, Bawer emphasizes people. You meet real students in his book, the students whose minds are reduced to mush by Woke education. The polish of Bawer’s prose and the flesh-and-blood humanity of his approach do not in any way lessen the books’ intellectual rigor. As I read, I deeply admired Bawer’s scholarly research. He is clearly fascinated by his topic and he pursued Woke education not just in the dusty pages of dead French perverts, but also in young people’s minds and hearts, and in consideration of America’s future.

Bawer is systematic, passionate, and wide-ranging, an awesome combo. He introduces the reader to big names of foundational theorists, and also to almost comical student writing from Woke courses. He reviews historical events, and then brings the reader up to date with visits to classrooms and conferences. Reading this book hurt. I cried. But I’m really glad I read it, and I want others to read it as well.

Bawer devotes chapters to Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Queer Studies, Chicano Studies, and a chapter that addresses several other “studies” including Fat Studies and Disability Studies. Readers must understand that Bawer’s evisceration of these departments is by no means an expression of hostility to blacks, women, homosexuals, Mexicans, fat or handicapped people. Bawer is himself gay, and he has written significant works in support of equal rights for homosexuals.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

2026 and All That A Clinton family crony and a Soros scholar aim to make California a lot more China-friendly than it already is. By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/30/2026-and-all-that/

Joe Biden is running in 2024 and Gavin Newsom will not challenge the 80-year-old Delaware Democrat. Newsom is also termed out as California’s governor, and Lt. Governor Eleni Kounalakis has announced a run for the post in 2026. 

“I will fight fiercely to build a future where everyone—regardless of race, class, or immigration status—has the same opportunity that my family and I had,” Kounalakis proclaimed on social media. Sounds good, but as she revealed last year, California’s white lieutenant governor has a problem with black Supreme Court justices. 

“Who is Clarence Thomas? Is he my Saudi Arabian father who’s going to tell me what I can and cannot do with my body, with my life?” That was Kounalakis after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 takedown of Roe v. Wade. She added: “Be prepared to live in defiance of these six people who think that they have the right to tell you what you can do with their [sic] bodies.” 

As Californians might note, of the six justices voting in the majority, Kounalakis named only Thomas, the sole African American on the High Court, and compared only him a “Saudi Arabian father.” People of all nations, faiths and races might wonder what California’s lieutenant governor is all about. 

Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of real-estate tycoon Angelo Tsakopoulos. According to Greek USA Reporter, Angelo is a “top political donor to the Clintons as well as the Democratic Party,” whose “donations to former President Bill Clinton were rewarded with a night in the prestigious Lincoln Bedroom.” In 2013, Tsakopoulos “confirmed that Hillary Clinton will seek the Democratic nomination in the next Presidential election.”

Angelo’s daughter Eleni, a protégé of Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer, raised more than $1 million for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that money found its reward. On January 7, 2010, Clinton, as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, swore in Kounalakis as U.S. ambassador to Hungary. She served until 2013, and, like Hillary, she forms a two-for-one package with her husband.

According to the lieutenant governor’s website, Dr. Markos Kounalakis is “an award-winning, nationally syndicated foreign affairs columnist, author, and scholar.” A political scientist, “Markos is currently a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Markos earned his Ph.D. from Central European University.” That’s the outfit founded by billionaire George Soros in 1991.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Crazy Contours of the Crazier 2024 Election For the Left, having virtually no president at all certainly has its advantages. With no one in charge, everyone is in charge. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/30/the-crazy-contours-of-the-crazier-2024-election/

We start with the likely American landscape over the next two years.

Joe Biden has no choice but to focus on a purely negative message. So we already know his talking points for the next 18 months: “ultra MAGA” demons, “semi-fascist” insurrectionists, Trump!, Trump!, Trump!, and more Trump!, murdering fellow Americans by putting limits on partial-birth and early abortions, “censorship” as banning critical race theory indoctrination and grooming books, inciting racial tribalism, along with the corollary old boilerplate triad of isms—“fascism, sexism, and racism!”

There will be no Democratic primary debates, even if support for Robert Kennedy, Jr. surges to 25-30 percent of the Democratic electorate. The latter is banking on his name, his gut instinct there are still some JFK-like Democrats and Independents in hiding, the decline of Joe Biden, and the pushback against all things woke.

Biden is failing at a geometric rate of enfeeblement and would likely not be able to rest up, medicate, and prep full-time to salvage the debates as he did as a candidate in the attenuated debate series of 2020. His handlers do not wish to tempt fate a third time and hope that if it comes to a Trump-Biden race that they can goad Trump into offering an excuse to curtail or cancel the debates entirely.

Why Stick with Biden?

So why does the Left stick with Biden, given his high negative ratings, the red-flag example of an enfeebled Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and a disabled Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.,), and his daily lapses of cognition, his inability to read off a teleprompter, his slurring of words to the point of incomprehensibility, his peculiar short-step, hands-out gait, and the indiscreet flashing of his paint-by-numbers, bold-letter prompt cards?

Does the Left not grasp that Biden is one additional bad fall on the steps of Air Force One from full disability, one sparkle-in-his-eye fixation on a young preteen girl in the audience that earns his eerie quips, blowing into the hair, and 20-seconds-too-long hug away from scandal? One complete freeze, in which he loses cognition and the ability to identify those in his immediate vicinity, away from total befuddlement?

Do they not appreciate that Biden is one crooked tax-document dump, one Hunter new-old email release, one burned and flipped former crony whistleblower away from special counsel/impeachment territory?

Do they not understand that the subtext of the current toxic inclusion of Hunter Biden on Air Force One, the shakedown pay for his nose-brush paintings, his new move into the White House, and his cue-card presence at the side of his bewildered dad are all a sort of implied familial blackmail by a prodigal son who believes he got dirty and decadent enriching the Biden clan–his father especially—and yet was never appreciated for his skullduggery?

We are watching a cornered Hunter reclaiming his due as first son. He seeks exemption from the walls-are-closing in law, and wishes to remind the Bidens at any moment he can take them all down with him. Keep your friends close, your family closer.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Election Integrity’s Biggest Threat: Big Tech Why Republicans Cannot Win; Monitor Tech Manipulations, Make Findings Public by Robert Epstein

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19608/election-threat-big-tech

[T]ech companies… can flip elections any and all ways they please without anyone knowing.

When you monitor, you can catch them in their shenanigans, and you can get them to back down. We got Google to back down by exposing some of the manipulations that they were engaging in in the presidential election.

You may not have heard the term “ephemeral experiences” before…. These are very brief experiences that we all have online every day. They are things like newsfeeds, search results, search suggestions, sequences of YouTube videos. None of that is recorded anywhere. It affects us, as Google executives know full well.

It just appears, we click, and it disappears. It is stored nowhere, it leaves no paper trail for authorities to trace. It can be used to manipulate, and it is being used to manipulate very deliberately and strategically, especially at Google. I think some of the other companies as well have been catching on, especially Facebook.

[A]s of 2015, you could shift so many votes that way that we calculated that upwards of 25 percent of the national elections in the world – the outcomes of those elections – were being determined by Google’s search engine.

[These manipulations] are shifting people’s opinions week by week. [They] are shifting people out of the undecided group into the other groups. People are making up their minds, but because of the bias in search results, anything that they search on, anything political at all, is leading them to web pages that make one candidate look better than the other….

You play that forward for six months. When you get to the election, you have an enormous gap. You have created a gap of more than 100,000 people between the votes we shift into Democrats and the votes we shift to Republicans – with no one knowing and with no paper trail. That is roughly how this works.

[I]n 2016, my team and I developed the first-ever system for doing to the tech companies what they do to us…. [W]e are monitoring what they are showing real people on those screens.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Jerusalem rally was a reminder that democracy didn’t lose; the left did Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-jerusalem-rally-was-a-reminder-that-democracy-didnt-lose-the-left-did/

 Those of us who were among the hundreds of thousands of participants in the right-wing rally in Jerusalem on Thursday evening weren’t surprised when the “resistance” bloc pulled a two-fer: downplaying the significance of and attendance at the event, on the one hand; and treating the happening as evidence that Israeli democracy is in danger of annihilation at the hands of fanatics, on the other.

Nor did we imagine that coverage from most media outlets would be accurate, let alone fair, since they’ve been acting all along like a branch of the protest movement. Instead, we drew encouragement from the throngs of fellow members of the national camp who turned up to bolster the government and urge it not to be bullied into backtracking on its mandate.

Both were necessary under the circumstances, with the Orwellian doublespeak of the opposition having become so blatant that it’s putting regular propaganda to shame. Indeed, the projection on the part of the protest instigators isn’t merely jaw-dropping (calling the government, rather than those trying to topple it, a “coup,” for instance); it’s actually been successful at sowing self-doubt in coalition circles.

Ahead of the opening of the Knesset’s summer session on Sunday, then, it was particularly crucial for lawmakers to be reminded of the populace that isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid—those still expecting and demanding judicial reform, with or without a broad consensus. It was also important to highlight that compromise on this or any other issue isn’t on the agenda of the forces spearheading the weekly demonstrations.

The points were made amid much good cheer and lots of applause for the speakers. Justice Minister Yariv Levin was given an especially warm welcome, in addition to cautionary chants of “Don’t be afraid!”

The message was that he shouldn’t cave on the judicial-reform process that the government had put on hold. This was done to allow for negotiations to bring about an agreement and prevent civil war.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Getting the Candidate We Deserve Time to redesign the GOP presidential nominating process.by Jeffrey H. Anderson

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/getting-the-candidate-we-deserve/

In his 1888 essay, “Why Great Men are Not Chosen Presidents,” Britain’s James Bryce wrote that “the ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity.” Yet by the time of Bryce’s writing, less than one score removed from Abraham Lincoln’s day, America had already produced eight presidents who Bryce said were “statesmen in the European sense” or who “belong to the history of the world.” If Bryce could see the dearth of presidents over the past half-century fitting either of those descriptions, he might recalibrate his assessment of earlier voters’ expectations.

In recent voters’ defense, however, they can hardly help pulling the lever (or licking the stamp) for mediocrity when our current presidential selection process serves up little else. It’s hardly surprising, moreover, that this process was designed (to the extent it was designed at all) by the left wing of the Democratic Party. Republicans then adopted it without much debate. Nor should it be surprising that this ill-advised system hurts Republicans more than Democrats.

The current process is an outgrowth of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The New Left was frustrated because, though Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy and New York Senator Robert Kennedy battled closely in the primaries, Lyndon Johnson’s vice president Hubert Humphrey sat out those contests yet walked away with the nomination. He was the last nominee of either party to win the honor without entering a single presidential primary. Those dissatisfied with Humphrey’s independence or moderation successfully pushed for a post-election review of party rules led by Senator George McGovern and Representative Donald Fraser. The McGovern-Fraser Commission sought to replace the old process for selecting presidential nominees, in which Democratic party leaders would decide on a nominee at the convention. Primary elections, previously regarded as non-binding recommendations to the convention from the electorate, became the deciding factor in choosing candidates. To the delight of party radicals and the dismay of party regulars, the first great success of the new rules was the nomination of McGovern in 1972, who went on to win one state and the District of Columbia. Republicans, not wishing to be seen as insufficiently “democratic,” had already obligingly decided to follow suit.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Vivek Ramaswamy Schools Chuck Todd on the Evils of Transitioning Children By Matt Margolis

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/30/vivek-ramaswamy-schools-chuck-todd-on-the-evils-of-transitioning-children-n1691640

Democrats have a history of claiming to be the party of science. To them, their positions are objectively supported by scientific evidence, be they about abortion, the COVID-19 vaccines, or climate change. Yet, the “science” that they claim backs up their positions is not exactly true. The most recent example of this is the radical left’s endorsement of transgender ideology.

On NBC’s Meet the Press when moderator Chuck Todd engaged in a debate with GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on this issue, particularly when it comes to children, Ramaswamy argued that it is reasonable to prohibit genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers for minors. Chuck Todd disagreed, offering some ginormous whoppers to support his position.

“But below the age of 18, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that we won’t allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers,” Ramaswamy said.

“You’re calling it that, but how do you know it’s that? Again, how do you know? Are you confident that you know that gender is as binary as you’re describing it? Are you confident?”

For what it’s worth, Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude with an A.B. in biology and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Chuck Todd, however, attend George Washington University and majored in political science but didn’t earn a degree.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Hot, Hot, Hot: Global Warming Models are Running Hotter than Reality

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/01/hot-hot-hot/

The sky warriors hold the climate models that have been predicting global doom to be sacrosanct. But as we have reported many times in the past, they’re flawed. A new research paper confirms our warnings. It would be helpful if the brand name media would make note of it. We won’t be holding our own hot air, though.

A January report from Berkeley Earth – self-described as a “non-profit research organization” that “has been preparing independent analyses of global mean temperature changes since 2013″ – starts out as anyone would expect: with a frightful declaration “that 2022 was nominally the fifth warmest year on Earth since 1850.” Which of course means nothing.

It goes on to say “​​the last eight years have included all eight of the warmest years observed in the instrumental record,” another string of words that sound ominous but aren’t. 

What is important, however, is buried near the bottom of the report.

Since 1980, Earth’s temperature trend “has changed little.” The researchers reckon that global temperatures have increased 0.19 degrees Celsius per decade over that period. The data was pulled from 50,498 weather stations combined with sea-surface temperature data.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the predictions that have been made by the climate models. Their forecasts indicate that ​​temperatures should be increasing at the rate of about 0.28–0.29 degrees Celsius per decade. That’s about 50% higher than the increases Berkeley Earth found.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Don’t Count Ron DeSantis Out If he wants to win, he has to ease up on the culture war and start appealing to moderate primary voters. By Mark Penn

Posted By on May 1st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-count-ron-desantis-out-trump-2024-gop-primary-moderates-culture-war-34be9a75?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Can Ron DeSantis beat Donald Trump? In the game of presidential politics, well-known front-runners often falter and up-and-comers often win—Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton, and Jimmy Carter came from nowhere to beat establishment figures such as Rep. Mo Udall and Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson. When Mr. Trump was the challenger, he polished off Jeb Bush, the Florida governor who once led the pack.

The DeSantis ship is clearly listing and must right itself. I wouldn’t normally give advice to a Republican candidate, but someone has to stop Donald Trump from regaining the presidency, and I wouldn’t count on President Biden to do it given his low job-approval rating and widespread doubts about his fitness. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average. A Trump-Biden rematch is a risky proposition, and with the Democrats consolidated around Mr. Biden, the only way to avoid it is through the Republican primary.

To get back in the game, Mr. DeSantis has to put cultural issues to the side and run on character, competence and common sense. He has the strong character of a family man who cares for his wife, a cancer survivor; the energetic competence of an accomplished governor; and the common sense to campaign on such issues as a balanced budget, a workable immigration system, crime policies that target criminals and improve policing, and programs that reduce the size of government. The major issues facing the country ,according to Mr. DeSantis’s supporters in the latest Harvard/CAPS Harris poll, are inflation (36%), immigration (29%), and the economy and jobs (28%). Eighty-one percent of all voters back a plan to balance the budget, including majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents. This could be the cornerstone of a smart economic plan.

Challenger presidential campaigns always have at least one near-death experience, so a dip isn’t unusual. Mr. DeSantis has been swinging for social conservatives, which has alienated centrist and liberal voters while failing to take any voters from Mr. Trump. Conservative Republicans have, in the face of Mr. Trump’s indictment, rallied behind the former president. How long this supports lasts or how it might hold up in the event of other indictments isn’t clear, but Mr. Trump definitely has gained strength in recent weeks.