Monthly Archives: June 2016

Interesting Deposition

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The Blaze is reporting today that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s former IT specialist Bryan Pagliano pled the Fifth Amendment more than 125 times during a 90-minute, closed-door deposition Wednesday with Judicial Watch. Mr. Pagliano does have an immunity agreement with the government.

The article reports:

An unnamed source with the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch told Fox News that, during the deposition, Pagliano read a statement off an index card each time he was asked a question, invoking his right not to incriminate himself.

“It was a sad day for government transparency,” the Judicial Watch official said.

The deposition was part of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking the release of Clinton’s emails.

Pagliano played a role in the set-up and management of the private email server Clinton used to conduct official business while serving as secretary of state.

A transcript of Pagliano’s deposition is expected to be released next week.

There are some serious national security issues surrounding Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Mrs. Clinton did not properly handle classified information and needs to be held to the same standard that any other American would be held to.

 

Why We Need Careful Vetting Of Refugees

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Not all cultures are alike. There are actions and attitudes that are acceptable in Islamic cultures that are simply not acceptable in America–things like marrying a fourteen-year-old girl, female genital mutilation, honor killings, no rights for women, denying freedom of religion, etc. Unless refugees are willing to accept American views on those (and many other) cultural standards, they need to settle elsewhere. There are countries in the Middle East that share their culture. For whatever reason, those countries have not welcomed the refugees from their neighboring countries.

Fox News posted a story today about an incident in a small Idaho town that illustrates the problem of some of the refugee children now in our schools.

The article reports:

An alleged sexual assault on a five-year-old special needs girl has put a small Idaho city at the center of the debate over the Obama administration’s move to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Much of what occurred in the June 2 incident is unclear, clouded by emotion and rumor and sealed from public record due to the suspects’ ages. At a raucous public meeting Monday, dozens of residents of the city of 44,000 voiced their concerns after word had spread that young Syrian refugees had gang-raped a little girl at knifepoint, defiling her in unspeakable ways.

Some of what they had heard was true, some was not and still more remains unconfirmed speculation. But authorities believe something terrible occurred. Two young boys were arrested Friday and remain in custody.

Snopes reports that the story is ‘mostly false,’ but actually confirms some major parts of the story:

Despite the hot-button issue of refugee resettlement, the story has gained little traction with the national media, and Internet fact-check site Snopes.com has labeled the information circulating on the web as “mostly false.” According to Loebs (Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs), the three assailants, ages 7, 10 and 14, are not Syrian, but may be refugees. The girl was not raped, but is believed to have been sexually assaulted, he said.

The article further reports:

Twin Falls Police Chief Craig Kingsbury told reporters the suspects are Iraqi and Sudanese. Loebs said he does not know how long they have been living in the United States.

If you read the Snopes report, the website seems to be concerned about the fact that the attackers were not Syrians. That may be, but they are products of a culture that does not value women and where a women would have to have four witnesses to make a rape charge. They are also from a culture where a woman can be stoned because she has been raped. There have been exaggerations of the attack and misrepresentations of the nationality of the attackers, but the nature of the attack and the culture behind the attack are as reported.

One person interviewed in the story stated:

Twin Falls activists say the case and the lack of information from authorities demonstrates the problem with state and federal programs to resettle refugees in cities and towns.

“We’re worried that these are the kids who will be going to school with our kids,” said Odell. “We want to know what is happening.”

There are a lot of parents who feel this way.

Getting Old In American Just Got Worse

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Generally speaking, American senior citizens get reasonable medical care. Medicare takes care of joint replacements, cataracts, and other senior-related ailments. However, that is about to change.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article discussing changes President Obama is about to make to Medicare. The changes President Obama is suggesting will impact the quality of life that American senior citizens now enjoy.

The article reports:

The president’s Medicare reforms make it harder for seniors to get joint replacements. His new payment rules shortchange doctors, discouraging them from accepting Medicare in the first place. New ER rules clobber seniors with bills for “observation care.” Under ObamaCare, hospitals get bonuses for spending less per senior, despite having higher death rates and infection rates.

Expect the Medicare Trustees’ annual report, due out Wednesday, to ignore these problems.

…The new rules also make seeing Medicare patients a money loser. Annual fee increases for doctors are capped at a fraction of one percent — even though rents and other costs go up every year.

No wonder nine out of 10 solo practitioners admit they’ll avoid Medicare patients — right when 10,000 new baby boomers are joining each day.

Obama’s rules spell trouble for seniors with cancer. Doctors administering chemotherapy are getting a pay cut and being prodded to choose the cheapest drug, regardless of which medication is best for their patient. Dr. Debra Patt warned Congress this’ll hinder access to drugs like the immunotherapy that subdued former President Jimmy Carter’s cancer.

Another Obama rule penalizes hospitals for doing hip and knee replacements on patients likely to need rehab after surgery, causing hospitals to shun older patients with complex conditions. Grandma will have to settle for the painkiller as candidate Obama notoriously suggested.

…Clinton proposes opening Medicare to people in their 50s. That would force seniors to compete with younger patients for resources — like in Britain and Canada, where seniors are labeled “bed blockers,” and certain treatments are reserved for younger patients with more life ahead.

When ObamaCare was first enacted, there were discussions about denying care to senior citizens–we all remember Sarah Palin‘s claim that ‘death panels’ were built into ObamaCare (which actually turned out to be true). My real question in all of this is whether or not the politicians who are going along with these ‘reforms’ are going to have to live under them.

Some Things To Consider When Helping Refugees Flee To America

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Yesterday a website called Truth Revolt posted an article about one of the unintended consequences of opening the doors of America wide to refugees from countries where healthcare and disease are not properly handled. Among other things, the information you are about to read is a glaring example of the fact that some civilizations are more protective and caring toward their average citizens than others.

The article reports:

Some bad news for revelers has hit just in time for their celebrations of World Refugee Day: Thanks to resettlement efforts and an overtaxed health care system, diseases that were near extinction in the United States are now experiencing a resurgence.

According to Breitbart, they are: 

  1. Tuberculosis
  2. Measles
  3. Whooping Cough
  4. Mumps
  5. Scarlet Fever
  6. Bubonic Plague

The article gives the actual details of the problem:

Tuberculosis — After 23 years of steady decline, TB has increased by nearly 2%, reaching over 9,000 cases.

Measles — Though declared eliminated in 2000, there were 667 cases reported from 27 states in 2014. Twenty-four states reported 189 people in 2015. The Center for Disease Control states most people with measles are unvaccinated, which is the status of most arriving refugees. The latest outbreak was epicentered at a mosque in Memphis.

Whooping Cough — In 1976, there were only 1,010 cases reported but now has increased more than 30 times that to nearly 33,000 cases in 2014 — the same time frame as a quadrupling of foreign-born residents coming to the U.S.

Mumps — A vaccine introduced in 1967 caused outbreaks to drop by 99%. Reports of new cases are now cropping up again, especially in close-knit communities.

Scarlet Fever — Attacks mostly the young, between 5 and 15, and the UK has had 12,000 cases over the past year. Millions of refugees have entered Europe, bringing with them this nearly-forgotten disease.

Bubonic Plague — This disease persists in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America, according to the Breitbart report. 16 cases of plague with four deaths have been reported inside our borders in the past year.

In the days of Ellis Island, immigrants were examined before they were allowed to immigrate to America. If they were not healthy, they were sent home. This is impossible with the illegal aliens coming across our southern border, but it is possible with refugees. If the government refuses to protect Americans (one of its primary jobs), it is time to elect a new government. We are at risk or a major epidemic of a disease we have previously wiped out and Americans are not vaccinated against or have immunity to. It is time to screen refugees for health issues as well as for terrorism issues. If we are not able to do both, we should not take them in.

There’s Gun Legislation That Makes Sense And Then There Are People Who Want Political Points

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about the four items related to guns that were voted down in the Senate yesterday. The four items were an overreaction to what happened in Orlando, but the votes and the suggested laws bear looking into.

The article reports:

Senator Chuck Grassley proposed legislation that would have increased funding for the NICS background check system, and would have pressed states to send more records to the FBI on felons and others barred from buying guns. It also revamped language that prohibits some people with mental health problems from buying guns. Grassley’s bill had majority support, 53-47, but wasn’t passed because the Democrats filibustered it.

Senator John Cornyn offered legislation to keep firearms out of the hands of suspected terrorists. His bill would let the government block a sale to a known or suspected terrorist, and prosecutors would then have three days to convince a judge that the would-be buyer was likely a terrorist. This seems like a sensible compromise, and it too had majority support, 53-47, but again the Democrats filibustered and blocked the bill from taking effect.

The Democrats likewise offered two proposals, both of which enjoyed less support. Dianne Feinstein proposed legislation that would bar gun sales to people on any federal terrorism watch list–a list that has included Ted Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, and many random, innocent citizens–without providing any way for people to get themselves taken off the list. I think it is safe to say that this proposal was sheer political grandstanding. It went down to a 47-53 defeat. It is shameful that so many Democrats voted for it.

Chris Murphy’s bill would have required the current, inadequate list of people who can’t buy guns to be applied to even more sales, including sales between friends or relatives. That, too, was defeated 47-53.

Frankly, I am glad to see all of these laws defeated, although the defeat of all of them shows the depth of the political divide currently in America. The first bill listed actually makes sense, but I object to the other three. The problem with Senator John Cornyn’s legislation is that it would set up a nightmare system of paperwork that would quickly be abused. The right political connections and a good lawyer can fairly easily get you removed from the terrorist watch list.

The problem with this entire discussion is that the terrorists are not bound by any laws. Terrorism tends to morph–it can change according to circumstances and can easily do things outside the law–Paris has very strict gun laws–that didn’t stop the terrorists–it just made their attack easier. Criminals don’t pay attention to gun laws–Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws and America and also one of the highest gun murder rates–so does Washington, D.C.

The bottom line here is that we are so politically polarized right now that we cannot even cross party lines to commit common sense. Unless this changes, our country is in serious trouble.

Junior High School Comes To The Democratic Convention

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This is a real story from a real online newspaper. It shows how juvenile American presidential politics have become.

The Washington Free Beacon is reporting the following today:

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) are planning to consume a large amount of beans prior to Hillary Clinton’s address at the convention and then have a “fart-in” during Clinton’s speech, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The protest is being led by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and their leader, Cheri Honkala. They will accept donations of beans which will be eaten while they gather at mock “Hooverviles,” being dubbed as a “Clintonville.”

There is nothing I can add to this story.

What The Mainstream Media Forgot To Tell You This Week

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On Thursday, The Clarion Project posted a list of three other incidents involving terrorism last week that somehow didn’t make the news.

The article reports:

A man from Kosovo pled guilty to providing material support to the Islamic State in a Virginia court on Wednesday. Ardit Ferizi, 20, hacked into a U.S. online retailer and stole the personal information of 1,351 U.S. military personnel and federal officials. He passed the information on to British Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain with the understanding ISIS would carry out attacks against those individuals.

…A Turkish businessman in New York pleaded guilty to selling restricted missile supplies to the Iranian regime in violation of sanctions placed on Iran. Erdal Kuyumcu, 44, the chief executive of Global Metallurgy LLC smuggled 450 kilograms of cobalt-nickel metallic powder to Iran via Turkey. The powder is used in missiles and nuclear technology.

…A man in Texas has been jailed after threatening to kill people who refused to take a copy of the Quran he was handing out. He was found ranting about Allah and wandering around in the town of Denton. He was asked to leave the University of North Texas and reportedly went into a women’s Presbyterian clinic and told the staff to take a copy of the Quran to the chaplain or “die.”

When is our government (and our media) going to admit that we have a terrorism problem?

 

 

Killing Our Own Soldiers With Taxpayer Money

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On June 9, Bloomberg.com posted an article about one unfortunate result of President Obama’s treaty with Iran.

In January, the U.S. Treasury transferred $1.7 billion to Iran’s Central Bank. Last month Iran’s Guardian Council approved an Iranian 2017 budget that instructed Iran’s Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 to the military.

The article reports:

Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spotted the budget item. He told me the development was widely reported in Iran by numerous sources including the state-funded news services. “Article 22 of the budget for 2017 says the Central Bank is required to give the money from the legal settlement of Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary arms sales of up to $1.7 billion to the defense budget,” he said. 

Republicans and some Democrats who opposed Obama’s nuclear deal have argued that the end of some sanctions would help to fund Iran’s military. But at least that was Iran’s money already (albeit frozen in overseas bank accounts). The $1.7 billion that Treasury transferred to Iran in January is different.

A portion of it, $400 million, came from a trust fund comprising money paid by the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S. ally, for arms sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Those sales were cut off in 1979 after revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the American staff hostage for 444 days. The remaining $1.3 billion represents interest on the $400 million principle over more than 36 years.

The article notes that we are already subsidizing defense spending for Egypt and Israel. Essentially we are supplying money for arms to both sides in the Middle East. How does this ever lead to peace? Anyone who understands the Middle East also knows that at least some of this money will be used against U.S. soldiers. Why are we funding the enemy that is killing our soldiers?

The article concludes:

The irony here is that Iran has been pleading poverty in recent months. The country’s supreme leader and foreign minister have publicly complained that Iran’s economy has not seen the benefits expected from the Iran nuclear deal. And yet Iran’s 2017 $19 billion defense budget has increased by 90 percent from 2016, according to Ghasseminejad.

We now know where $1.7 billion of that came from.

Insanity At Its Best

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Real Clear Politics posted the following today:

In an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, Attorney General Loretta Lynch says that on Monday, the FBI will release edited transcripts of the 911 calls made by the Orlando nightclub shooter to the police during his rampage.

“What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda,” Lynch said. “We are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance [to the Islamic State].”

The Washington Post reported last week that the gunman made multiple phone calls while holding hostages: “The gunman who opened fire inside a nightclub here said he carried out the attack because he wanted ‘Americans to stop bombing his country,’ according to a witness who survived the rampage.”

Salon reported that: “Everybody who was in the bathroom who survived could hear him talking to 911, saying the reason why he’s doing this is because he wanted America to stop bombing his country.”

The Washington Post also noted that during his 911 call from the club, the gunman referenced the Boston Marathon bombers and claimed “that he carried out the shooting to prevent bombings, [echoing] a message the younger Boston attacker had scrawled in a note before he was taken into custody by police.”

FBI Director James Comey said at a press conference that the shooter’s past comments about Islamist groups were “inflammatory and contradictory.”

Editing the transcripts does not change the facts. Anyone doing research into this shooting (and the American public) needs to know what this man was about. Putting blinders on does not help anyone. This is political correctness at its worst.

I Don’t Think This Was The Way The Agreement Was Supposed To Work

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Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about a recent statement by Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The article reports:

Behrouz Kamalvandi warned the US and other world powers that Tehran can return its nuclear program to conditions before the July deal much faster than estimated by them.

“Since the beginning, we have foreseen measures for return scenarios and if needed, we are ready to create conditions rapidly that will certainly surprise the other side,” Kamalvandi said on Thursday.

“If we decide to return to the past conditions for the other side’s non-compliance to the nuclear deal, naturally, we can have highly good conditions rapidly using advanced centrifuges,” he added.

Why in the world did we give them all that money if they obviously have no intentions of actually living up to their end of the bargain?

Using The Government To Shut Down For-Profit Colleges

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Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the Obama Administration’s moves to drive for-profit colleges out of business. The first step in this process is to ‘clarify’ a 1965 law.

The article reports:

Last summer the Education Department established a “negotiated rulemaking committee” to clarify an obscure provision in the Higher Education Act of 1965 that authorizes the Secretary to discharge student loans based on “acts or omissions of an institution of higher education.” The committee failed to reach a consensus, so the White House is now rewriting the law wholesale.

The Administration has moved to provide mass debt relief to protect itself from student anger after it drove for-profit Corinthian College out of business. (See “Obama’s Corinthian Kill,” July 26, 2014.) Last year the Education Department set up an ad hoc process to forgive loans for some 85,000 Corinthian borrowers. Taxpayers could be on the hook for up to $3.2 billion. The new rule expands that process and is estimated to cost between $199 million and $4.2 billion annually—though loan-forgiveness expansions have already cost many times more than projections.

The new proposal sets conditions that would have to be met in order to have student loans forgiven. The article lists those conditions:

The new proposal would allow borrowers to discharge loans if a court renders a legal judgment against their college or if their school breached a contract. The department also wants to make borrowers eligible if their college made a “substantial misrepresentation.” This is defined as “any statement that has the likelihood or tendency to mislead under the circumstances” or “omits information” and on which that person “could reasonably be expected to rely, or has reasonably relied, to that person’s detriment.”

This would vastly expand the basis for debt relief since nearly all ads can be defined as misleading under some circumstance. Government bureaucrats would play King Solomon and oversee a tribunal—which means a rubber stamp.

The article concludes:

Naturally, the rule also bars class-action waivers and mandated arbitration in enrollment agreements. While the department claims that class action lawsuits will enable recoveries beyond government debt relief, the main beneficiaries will be plaintiff lawyers.

A fair rule would apply to all colleges, for profit or nonprofit, but public colleges would be exempt from the new financial responsibility rules. Education Secretary John King has said that the department’s goal is to target for-profits like Corinthian. Which more or less sums up the Administration’s campaign against for-profit schools: Shut down as many as possible, and then minimize any student backlash by handing taxpayers the bill for the wasted loans.

Student loans are not a government function. The idea of the government taking over student loans was bad enough, but the eventual cost to the taxpayers is only going to increase.

Telling The Truth While Being Asked Inane Questions

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I don’t know anything about Florida Governor Rick Scott, but I love the way he handled this reporter. Watch the video (posted at YouTube). I don’t know that I could have been so patient::

 

There are a few facts here that are either unintentionally or intentionally misrepresented. First of all, the gunman did not use an AR-15. (Just for the record, even if he had an AR-15, an AR-15 fires one shot every time you pull the trigger–it is NOT an automatic weapon–it is just a scary-looking rifle.) He used a Sig Sauer MCX rifle. Similar, but again, not an automatic weapon. About the idea of taking guns away from people on the terrorist watch list or the no-fly list. Oddly enough, this is a really dangerous idea in relation to the U.S. Constitution. Both these lists (aside from their record of inaccuracy) are done without the person on them being aware of being on the list. The person placed on the list has to go through a lengthy process to get off of the list. This is an assumption of guilt and having to prove innocence. That is against the U.S. Constitution. In America we have the right to face our accusers, and we are considered innocent until proven guilty. Taking guns (or forbidding the purchase of guns) to a group of people who are not charged with any crime and have not been proven guilty is a really bad idea.

Just a note on the no-fly list–at one point Senator Ted Kennedy was delayed when flying home to Massachusetts from Washington, D.C. because somehow he (or someone with the same name) had been placed on the no-fly list. The no-fly list is not a list I have a lot of confidence in.

As A Parent, Is This Something You Support?

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This was posted on YouTube on June 14th:

Further information on this can be found at the Daily Signal.

If I still had children in school, I would wonder why I wasn’t initially told about this program. I would probably also be ready to consider seriously the option of homeschooling my children. There are a lot of homeschool options now that were not there twenty years ago, and I think now might be a really good time to investigate them. There is a website called The Homeschool Resource Roadmap that can help parents with questions about homeschooling gather information.

I am appalled at this. I believe we need to let our children be children and not treat them as social experiments. What we are encouraging in our children is still considered a mental disorder by many social workers. We need to stop this runaway train and get back to teaching kindergartners to build things with blocks and get along with their classmates.

How To Lie With Statistics And Poll Numbers

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I was dismayed this week to hear that Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in the polls. I should have investigated a little further. It’s not that I think Donald Trump is wonderful, I just think that Hillary Clinton is the more dangerous of the two. Anyway, The American Thinker blog posted a article yesterday about the poll. The article investigated where the numbers came from.

The article reports:

However, based on the polling details, the final weighted sample of 976 registered voters is made up of just 28% Republicans and 35% Democrats.

In the unweighted sample of registered voters, the relative percentage by party was 29% Republicans and 35% Democrats.

So, during the weighting process, the poll increased the Democrat-Republican spread from 6% to 7%.  This relative weighting should have been headed in the other direction.

According to nationwide polling data, Republican Party affiliation has averaged 28% for 2016 so far, and it also averaged 28% since the start of May.  This agrees well with the CBS News poll’s composition.

On the other hand, the last time the Democrats were at 35% was early March…of 2013.  Since May of this year, Democratic party affiliation has averaged 29%, just 1% higher than the Republicans, not 7% higher.

By now I should know better than to listen to polls. The article goes on to explain that if the poll had taken an accurate sample, the results would have been a statistical tie. It is becoming obvious that Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy as Secretary State (actually it was Barack Obama’s policy, but he never takes responsibility for anything negative) has made the world a more dangerous place. It will be interesting to see how well the media can spin that and if the average person figures out that she would be a disaster as President.

We Have Forgotten Our Manners

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It is an election season (it has been for about three years now). People have strong feelings–that’s fine, but we need to remember that we all live in the same country. As I have stated previously numerous times, I am not a Trump supporter, but I will vote for him. There are two things that I can honestly say I like about Donald Trump–he has enough money invested in America to want to protect it, and because he is outside of the normal political stream, he may actually be able to clean up the elitism in our political system. Congress (or the Presidency) should not be a way to increase your personal wealth. When you look at the net worth of people entering Congress and their net worth six to eight years later, you wonder what in the world is going on. At any rate, we are in an election season, and we need to be kind to one another. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

WTVR Channel 6 posted a story on Monday about some Trump supporters who stopped at Cook Out in Richmond, Virginia, for a bite to eat on the way home from a Trump rally.

This is the story:

“As soon as we got to the window, someone inside said ‘Hell no! I’m not serving them,'” Riggs (Shannon Riggs) recalled.

After a few minutes of discussion behind the window, their orders were eventually taken.

“Everyone was laughing and giggling,” Riggs said about the uncomfortable situation.

She said at one point, an employee yelled out an order was ready, but when her cousin went to the window to claim the food, she was told, “Oh not for you!”

The girls called the corporate headquarters of Cook Out. The corporation released the following statement:

Cook Out is, and always has been, a politically neutral company. We welcome all customers regardless of political affiliation.
Regarding the refusal of service at our Colonial Heights location, the situation has been resolved and was resolved that night per Cook Out policy.

I hope the employees were severely reprimanded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Statement Regarding Orlando

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Below is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement regarding the shooting in Orlando:

In Orlando, a terrorist walks into a nightclub and murders nearly 50 human beings. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in cold blood.

They did nothing wrong. They were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music with loved ones.

Why did the terrorist murder them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.

He targeted the LGBT community because he believed they were evil.

Now, the murderer wasn’t alone.

Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.

In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.

Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.

This week’s shooting wasn’t merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity and choice.

Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.

This week it was gays in Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris; Travelers in Brussels; Yazidis in Iraq; Community workers in San Bernardino; Christians and journalists in Syria.

All of us are targets.

We believe that all people are created in the image of God.

ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren’t just like them deserve to die.

We will not be terrified into submission.
We will fight back. And we will triumph.

Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them.
Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims.

Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.

I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.

Working together we will defeat them even faster.

We need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity.

Rewriting European History

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I have previously written about the rewriting of Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) (here and here).

To review some quotes about the revised American history from previous articles:

Here is a sampling of what our nation’s brightest high-school students can expect:

  • A relentlessly negative view of American history, which emphasizes every problem and failing of our ancestors while ignoring or minimizing their achievements.
  • Almost total silence about the Founding Fathers, including no mention of Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and Adams, and almost none of the Declaration of Independence.
  • Omission of military history, battles, commanders, and heroes.
  • A biased and inaccurate view of many important facets of American history, including the motivations and actions of 17th-19th-century settlers, American involvement in World War II, and the conduct of and victory in the Cold War.

Now the College Board is preparing to edit European history so that it is no longer recognizable. Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line yesterday about the changes.

The article reports:

The invaluable National Association of Scholars is publishing a 12,000-word critique of the new AP European History (APEH) exam. The report, written by David Randall, is titled The Disappearing Continent.

The article quotes the major findings from the report:

1) APEH presents the history of government rather than of liberty.

2) APEH presents religion throughout as an instrument of power rather than as an autonomous sphere of European history.

3) APEH treats the movement to abolish slavery without mentioning how it was inspired by religious faith, led by saints such as William Wilberforce, and hymned to Amazing Grace.

4) APEH underplays British history throughout, thus minimizing the importance of Britain’s distinctive history in the European tradition as the champion of liberty.

5) APEH minimizes and extenuates the evils of Communism, the brutal destructiveness of Soviet rule, and the aggressiveness of Soviet foreign policy.

6) APEH virtually ignores Europe’s unique development of the architecture of modern knowledge, which made possible almost every modern form of intellectual inquiry.

7) APEH doesn’t argue that European history is important or interesting in itself. APEH never gives a reason why students should study Europe’s history in particular.

In addition, APEH omits key figures ranging from Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill. It seems impossible that Churchill would be airbrushed out of a European History course until one remembers how inconvenient he is for leftists.

In an article posted at the National Review yesterday, Stanley Kurtz provides the answer to the College Board’s rewriting of history:

Once the College Board has finished producing detailed curricula for all of its AP courses, we will have arrived at the endpoint no-one openly admits to wanting: a leftist national curriculum. The only way to block this is by creating a competing educational testing company advised by the best traditionalist scholars and capable of authorizing alternative curricula and textbooks. For those dissatisfied with America’s current direction, there is no better way to begin the task of cultural reconstruction than this.

We need an enterprising entrepreneur to challenge the dominance of the College Board.

Next There Will Be A Dress Code

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The New York Post is reporting today that London Mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a ban on ‘body-shaming‘ ads. The move is praised by gender equality groups (what does that even mean?).

The article reports:

Transport For London , which runs the British capital’s subways, buses, trams and taxi cabs, will work up new policies designed to remove what Khan sees as dangerous images used in everyday ads.

“As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies,” Khan said Monday. “It is high time it came to an end.”

I have a few questions about this. Who decides what is allowed? Do gender equality groups (whatever they are) understand what they are supporting? I don’t particularly appreciate advertising that takes the average man five minutes to notice the product because of the scantily-dressed model selling it, but I don’t want to see these images become illegal.

I have been in London. At one point when visiting, I saw two men dressed in g-strings walking down the street holding hands. Is that going to be addressed? Is there going to be a city dress code? Is London going to have modesty police like Iran?

This is a step down a road that should not be traveled. I wonder if there is a City Council of some sort that should have voted on this.

The Proof Of A Prediction Is Whether Or Not It Comes True

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On Sunday, Gateway Pundit posted an article about global warming predictions made by ABC News in 2009. The predictions stated that because of global warming, by 2015 New York City would be under water.

Further predictions included:

…Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015.

Climate change is read–the climate of earth has been changing since long before man arrived on the planet. Greenland used to grow things, there was global warming in the Middle Ages, and according to some scientists, we are entering a mini ice age. The frightening global warming predictions are being made by people who can’t even tell you whether or not to bring your umbrella to work! None of the computer models that predict global warming have proven to be accurate. We need to do what we can to keep the earth clean; however, we don’t have to cripple the earth’s economy to do it.

 

It’s Time To Elect People Who Have Read The U.S. Constitution

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article quoting a letter written by nineteen California legislators to the state attorney general.

The article reports:

California congressmen wrote a letter to state attorney general Kamala Harris claiming the freedom of speech “is not designed to protect fraud and deceit” of the likes being spread by oil company ExxonMobil about global warming.

Nineteen Democratic lawmakers told Harris her “investigation as to whether ExxonMobil lied about the truth of climate change and misled investors does not constitute an effort to silence speech or scientific research.

“The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it does not protect companies from defrauding the American people or improperly disclosing information to their shareholders,” lawmakers, including California Reps. Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu, wrote to Harris.

So these legislators want the attorney general to decide which speech is protected. Evidently they believe that only some speech is protected by the First Amendment. I think I have heard this story before in Animal Farm where all animals were equal, but some animals were more equal than others.