Saturday, December 24, 2016
Obama's last Christmas a season of disappointment | Washington Examiner
Sunday marks President Obama's
last Christmas while in office. Though he'll spend it in Hawaii rather
than at the White House, it must be a bittersweet Yuletide.
Obama's handiwork is being returned to the store like unwanted
Christmas presents. He is set to be succeeded by a Republican — and not
just any Republican, but Donald Trump, a man the outgoing president described as an insult to his legacy. Trump for a while didn't accept Obama's United States citizenship, much less his policies.
Republicans will also control both houses of Congress, giving
the party unified control of the federal government's elected branches
for the first time in a decade.
Obama's last Christmas a season of disappointment | Washington Examiner
Kwanzaa Creator: Deranged Felon Who Tortured Naked Women | The Daily Caller
It’s Christmastime, America, and you know what that means: It’s the
season when public schools across the fruited plain are teeming with
lessons about Kwanzaa and a handful of other holidays which aren’t
Christmas.
As a public service, then, The Daily Caller is here to tell you the
true — and truly bizarre — history of the violent, deranged and radical
black nationalist who concocted the completely artificial holiday of
Kwanzaa in 1966.
YouTube screenshot/The Real Black Atheist Library, Shutterstock/Gal Amar
at California State University, Long Beach. His real name is Ronald
Everett. He was born in rural Maryland, the fourteenth child of a
sharecropping Baptist minister.
Karenga was convicted in 1971 for brutally torturing two naked women.
The women were members of Karenga’s ultra-radical, paramilitary, black
nationalist cult called the US Organization, according to a May 1971 Los
Angeles Times story dug up by FrontPage Magazine.
“Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African
queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and
beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes,”
the LA Times article reports.
Kwanzaa Creator: Deranged Felon Who Tortured Naked Women | The Daily Caller
Defeated Democrats' new attack line: The Electoral College is racist | Washington Examiner
Democrats still mourning the outcome of last month's election
have added a new step to their grieving process: leveling charges of
racism against those who support the constitutional method of electing
the president.
In keeping with the process stipulated in the 12th Amendment,
538 electors representing all 50 states gathered on Monday to cast their
ballots for the 45th president. The result – that Donald Trump
will officially enter the Oval Office on Jan. 20 – was affirmed by the
Electoral College, an institution the Left is now casting as racist and
anti-Democratic.
Mere hours after Trump topped the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted:
"Hello rest of the world! My fellow Americans are asleep right now so I
thought we could talk and maybe explain what happened yesterday."
Defeated Democrats' new attack line: The Electoral College is racist | Washington Examiner
Everyone should be treated with respect — unless you’re a Republican | New York Post
’Tis the season to spread joy and cheer — unless you’re a liberal still bitter about the election.
Thursday, Ivanka Trump and her family were accosted by Dan Goldstein,
a lawyer from Brooklyn, who yelled at her that her father, who has yet
to take office, was “ruining the country.” It wasn’t a spontaneous
outburst. Goldstein’s husband had tweeted from the JetBlue terminal at
JFK Airport that Goldstein was “chasing” Ivanka and her family to
“harass” them.
“Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private,” Goldstein
reportedly shouted when he saw them on the plane and allegedly engaged
with her children as well. Goldstein and his husband were removed from the plane, with Goldstein complaining that he was merely “expressing his opinion.”
The last few years, we’ve seen the creation of safe spaces, though
they’re usually for protecting fragile leftists from disagreeable
thoughts and arguments. Lunatic men badgering women on planes in front
of their kids apparently is fair play — if that mother is related to a
Republican you don’t like.
The irony, of course, is that Ivanka Trump is someone liberals should
be thankful to have in the incoming president’s inner circle. She’s
certainly no partisan right-winger, and in fact has thus far during the
transition been taking point on issues like climate change (she even met
with Al Gore) and paid family leave. Why the rage at her?
Thursday, Ivanka Trump and her family were accosted by Dan Goldstein,
a lawyer from Brooklyn, who yelled at her that her father, who has yet
to take office, was “ruining the country.” It wasn’t a spontaneous
outburst. Goldstein’s husband had tweeted from the JetBlue terminal at
JFK Airport that Goldstein was “chasing” Ivanka and her family to
“harass” them.
“Why is she on our flight? She should be flying private,” Goldstein
reportedly shouted when he saw them on the plane and allegedly engaged
with her children as well. Goldstein and his husband were removed from the plane, with Goldstein complaining that he was merely “expressing his opinion.”
The last few years, we’ve seen the creation of safe spaces, though
they’re usually for protecting fragile leftists from disagreeable
thoughts and arguments. Lunatic men badgering women on planes in front
of their kids apparently is fair play — if that mother is related to a
Republican you don’t like.
The irony, of course, is that Ivanka Trump is someone liberals should
be thankful to have in the incoming president’s inner circle. She’s
certainly no partisan right-winger, and in fact has thus far during the
transition been taking point on issues like climate change (she even met
with Al Gore) and paid family leave. Why the rage at her?
Everyone should be treated with respect — unless you’re a Republican | New York Post
Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared
Earth’s new climate will affect much more than the energy sector. Abdussamatov leaves us with a dire warning.
“The world must start preparing for the new Little Ice Age right
now. Politicians and business leaders must make full economic
calculations of the impact of the new Little Ice Age on everything —
industry, agriculture, living conditions, development. The most
reasonable way to fight against the new Little Ice Age is a complex of
special steps aimed at support of economic growth and energy-saving
production to adapt mankind to the forthcoming period of deep cooling.”
An overheated planet has never been a threat, say climate
skeptics, not today, not ever in human history. An underheated planet,
in contrast, is a threat humans have repeatedly faced over the last
millennium, and now we’re due again.
“The upcoming climate change will be the most important challenge
and a priority issue for the world and define the main events in
politics, the economy, and the most important areas of the whole of
humanity in the coming decades,” Abdussamatov concludes. It’s time we
took the threat of climate change — of the real climate change —
seriously.
Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared
“The world must start preparing for the new Little Ice Age right
now. Politicians and business leaders must make full economic
calculations of the impact of the new Little Ice Age on everything —
industry, agriculture, living conditions, development. The most
reasonable way to fight against the new Little Ice Age is a complex of
special steps aimed at support of economic growth and energy-saving
production to adapt mankind to the forthcoming period of deep cooling.”
An overheated planet has never been a threat, say climate
skeptics, not today, not ever in human history. An underheated planet,
in contrast, is a threat humans have repeatedly faced over the last
millennium, and now we’re due again.
“The upcoming climate change will be the most important challenge
and a priority issue for the world and define the main events in
politics, the economy, and the most important areas of the whole of
humanity in the coming decades,” Abdussamatov concludes. It’s time we
took the threat of climate change — of the real climate change —
seriously.
Lawrence Solomon: Proof that a new ice age has already started is stronger than ever, and we couldn’t be less prepared
UN's Israel Settlements Resolution: Barack Obama’s Betrayal of Israel | National Review
It is Islamist-leftist dogma that Israel’s millennia of attachment to
its homeland count for nothing.
Adding a final shameful chapter to a foreign-policy record that already
runneth over with them, Barack Obama on Friday abandoned America’s
commitment to Israel’s security, and to the vindication of democracy
over sharia-supremacist aggression. In an act of cowardly venom, the
president had the United States abstain from — and thereby effectively
enact — a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemns
Israeli settlement activity.
At least, that’s what the resolution ostensibly does. The reality is
much more than that. The resolution undertakes to render our ally
indefensible.
It was a black day in modern American diplomatic history, a flurry of
sinister wheeling and dealing while the nation — exhausted by the
election, anticipating a weekend of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration —
was looking the other way.
To his great credit, Donald Trump was not. The president-elect asserted
himself on Israel’s behalf, backing up his campaign promise that
“America First” meant restoration of America’s reputation as a
dependable friend and an enemy not to be trifled with. Under the
pressure he generated, Egypt backed down, withdrawing its sponsorship of
the resolution.
But such is the disdain in which Israel is openly held after eight Obama
years of empowering Islamists that four other countries — Malaysia,
Venezuela, Senegal, and, of all places, New Zealand — revived the
resolution, knowing they had the State Department’s backing. With the
U.S. abstention, it was easily approved.
It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over
settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade, Rashid
Khalidi — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote.
At the root of the settlements controversy is the fiction that the
territory at issue is “occupied Palestinian” land. In point of stubborn
fact, no matter how tirelessly the vaunted “international community”
evokes the scurrilous image of occupation, the territory is righteously
disputed.
UN's Israel Settlements Resolution: Barack Obama’s Betrayal of Israel | National Review
its homeland count for nothing.
Adding a final shameful chapter to a foreign-policy record that already
runneth over with them, Barack Obama on Friday abandoned America’s
commitment to Israel’s security, and to the vindication of democracy
over sharia-supremacist aggression. In an act of cowardly venom, the
president had the United States abstain from — and thereby effectively
enact — a United Nations Security Council resolution that condemns
Israeli settlement activity.
At least, that’s what the resolution ostensibly does. The reality is
much more than that. The resolution undertakes to render our ally
indefensible.
It was a black day in modern American diplomatic history, a flurry of
sinister wheeling and dealing while the nation — exhausted by the
election, anticipating a weekend of Christmas and Hanukkah celebration —
was looking the other way.
To his great credit, Donald Trump was not. The president-elect asserted
himself on Israel’s behalf, backing up his campaign promise that
“America First” meant restoration of America’s reputation as a
dependable friend and an enemy not to be trifled with. Under the
pressure he generated, Egypt backed down, withdrawing its sponsorship of
the resolution.
But such is the disdain in which Israel is openly held after eight Obama
years of empowering Islamists that four other countries — Malaysia,
Venezuela, Senegal, and, of all places, New Zealand — revived the
resolution, knowing they had the State Department’s backing. With the
U.S. abstention, it was easily approved.
It is a disgraceful legacy of Barack Obama that his obsession over
settlements and antipathy toward Israeli prime minister Benjamin
Netanyahu — traits he shares with his old radical comrade, Rashid
Khalidi — have made the already dim prospects for peace far more remote.
At the root of the settlements controversy is the fiction that the
territory at issue is “occupied Palestinian” land. In point of stubborn
fact, no matter how tirelessly the vaunted “international community”
evokes the scurrilous image of occupation, the territory is righteously
disputed.
The Return of Street Corner Conservatism
AP
Richard Nixon was plotting his 1968 presidential campaign when he
received a letter from a high school English teacher in Pennsylvania.
The correspondent, a young man named William F. Gavin, wasn’t certain
Nixon would run. But he sure wanted him to. “You can win,” Gavin wrote.
“Nothing can happen to you, politically speaking, that is worse than
what has happened to you.”
Gavin cited Ortega y Gasset to explain why Nixon was uniquely suited
to lead during the violence and uncertainty of the late 1960s. “You
are,” he went on, “the only political figure with the vision to see
things the way they are and not as Leftist and Rightist kooks would have
them.”
The forceful and eloquent style of Gavin’s prose impressed top Nixon
aide Patrick J. Buchanan. Gavin soon joined the nascent campaign,
beginning a career writing speeches for the thirty-seventh president,
for Senator Jim Buckley of New York, for Ronald Reagan, and for
congressman Bob Michel, as well as composing novels, nonfiction books,
and journalism. Gavin understood well the political realignment that
brought city- and suburban-dwelling white working class ethnics—Irish,
Italians, Greeks, Pols, and Slavs—rather tentatively into the Republican
camp. “The Nixon aide who understood the Catholic opportunity best,”
Buchanan wrote later, “was Bill Gavin, who had grown up Catholic and
conservative, his views and values shaped by family, faith, and
friends.”
I have been thinking about Gavin lately because his life and thought
so perfectly capture the conservatism of Donald Trump. When you read
Gavin, you begin to understand that the idea of Trump as a conservative
is not oxymoronic. Trump is a conservative—of a particular type
that is rare in intellectual circles. His conservatism is ignored or
dismissed or opposed because, while it often reaches the same
conclusions as more prevalent versions of conservatism, its impulses,
emphases, and forms are different from those of traditionalism,
anti-Communism, classical liberalism, Leo Strauss conservatism in its
East and West Coast varieties, the neoconservatism of Irving Kristol as
well as the neoconservatism of William Kristol, religious conservatism,
paleo-conservatism, compassionate conservatism, constitutional
conservatism, and all the other shaggy inhabitants of the conservative
zoo.
The Return of Street Corner Conservatism
Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum - WSJ
The decision by the United States to abstain from a United Nations
Security Council resolution condemning Israel over its settlements on
the West Bank is one of the most significant, defining moments of the Obama Presidency.
It
defines this President’s extraordinary ability to transform matters of
public policy into personal pique at adversaries. And it defines the
reality of the international left’s implacable opposition to the Israeli
state.
Earlier in the week, Egypt withdrew the Security Council resolution under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President-elect Donald Trump also intervened, speaking with Egypt’s government and, via Twitter, urging Mr. Obama to block the resolution, as have past U.S. Administrations and Mr. Obama himself in 2011.
As
was widely reported Friday after the U.N. vote, the White House decided
to abstain—thereby allowing the pro-Palestinian resolution to pass—in
retaliation against the intervention by Messrs. Netanyahu and Trump.
Mr.
Obama’s animus toward Prime Minister Netanyahu is well known.
Apparently Mr. Obama took it as an affront that the President-elect
would express an opinion about this week’s U.N. resolution.
It
is important, though, to see this U.S. abstention as more significant
than merely Mr. Obama’s petulance. What it reveals clearly is the Obama
Administration’s animus against the state of Israel itself. No longer
needing Jewish votes, Mr. Obama was free, finally, to punish the Jewish
state in a way no previous President has done.
No effort to
rescind the resolution, which calls the settlements a violation of
“international law,” will succeed because of Russia’s and China’s
vetoes.
Instead, the resolution will live on as Barack Obama’s
cat’s paw, offering support in every European capital, international
institution and U.S. university campus to bully Israel with the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Obama’s Anti-Israel Tantrum - WSJ
Meritocracy’s losers: No degree, no respect — Joanne Jacobs
Educational elitism marks the modern U.S. economy, writes Victor Tan Chen in The Atlantic.College-educated winners scorn working-class Americans as “as lazy,
untalented, uneducated, and unsophisticated.” A Virginia Commonwealth
sociology professor, he’s the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy.
Our culture is an extreme meritocracy, writes Chen. We believe anyone can “make it” in America. It follows that those who don’t succeed deserve their low status.
“The well-educated and well-off who live in or near big cities tend
to endorse the notion, explicitly or implicitly, that education
determines a person’s value,” writes Chen.
More so than in other rich nations, like Germany andFor his book, Chen interviewed laid-off auto workers, all former
Japan, which have prioritized vocational training to a greater degree, a
college degree has become the true mark of individual success in
America . . .
union members, who shared the view that the educated deserved to live
better than the uneducated. Yet, “two-thirds of Americans age 25 and over do not have a bachelor’s degree,” he writes.
The labor market has become more polarized, as highly paid jobs for workers with middling levels of education and skill dwindle away. And as many have argued, advances in artificial intelligence threaten a net loss of employment (even for the well-educated) in the not-so-far-off future.A new government report warns automation will increase demand for high-level technical skills — and decrease demand for routine skills.
Fordham’s Mike Petrilli calls this the great “coming apart.” Educational attainment (or the lack of it) is “the new dividing line.”
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