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February 2016

MY SAY: THE AGE OF POLITICS

Today, a respected columnist referred to Clinton as a “crone” and Sanders as a “museum piece.”

A crone is defined as “an old woman who is thin and ugly.” And a “museum piece” is usually a fossil.

I would not vote for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, however, criticizing their age in those terms is a cheap shot. Maybe it cuts close to my bone, but being superannuated is not what I dislike about them. There is enough to tarnish them in policies, biographies, agenda, morality, etc. without stooping to nasty allusions to their age.

Student Op-Ed: Trying to Give a Classmate a Ride Is Rape Culture Apparently, looking for somewhere to park to go to class is a sexual activity. By Katherine Timpf

According to a student at California State Polytechnic University–Pomona, trying to give a classmate a ride to their car so you can get their parking spot is rape culture.

In an op-ed for the Poly Post, the school’s official newspaper, Editor-in-Chief Adrian Danganan admits that commuting to the campus “has never been more difficult” because “parking is becoming increasingly sparse.”

She explains that “students are struggling to find suitable methods ” to find a spot to park to attend class, and that some have resorted to offering departing classmates rides in order to take their spots when they leave.

But this method, according to Danganan, is far from “suitable.”

Now, she starts off by explaining that it’s generally a bad idea to get into a stranger’s car — which is a totally fair argument. She quickly goes from reasonable to ridiculous, however, when she writes that “pressuring a pedestrian to enter a vehicle only encourages idiosyncrasies that attribute [sic] to rape culture.”

(Yikes! I guess these students would be better off missing class entirely. They might fail out of school, but at least they wouldn’t be contributing to a culture of sexual assault!)

Now, Danagan does concede that “this seems radical and outlandish,” but explains that she’s actually totally right because “trying to ease someone or even guilt him or her in to [sic] doing so is almost like sweet-talking to get what is desired.”

Student’s Conservative Op-Ed Draws Stabbing Threat By Katherine Timpf

A student at the University of California–Santa Barbara had to deal with someone threatening to stab him because he dared to write an op-ed with a conservative point of view.

Jason Garshfield wrote a piece in the Daily Nexus, the school’s official newspaper, criticizing the Department of Feminist Studies.

Basically, Garshfield’s piece argued that the department violated the the University of California Regents Policy 3201, which forbids using the classroom “for political indoctrination.” He explained that he himself once took a course in the department, and that it promoted ideas such as gender as a social construct and the “recognition of male privilege,” and that the lessons were taught as fact without giving students the opportunity to contest or debate them.

“How can an academic department which is explicitly named after a political movement possibly claim to be ‘aloof from politics?’” Garshfield asked. “Imagine how you would feel if there was a Department of Objectivist Studies at UCSB. The department was dedicated to promoting Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. All of the professors were Objectivists, and students in the department were taught heavy doses of Objectivism without being exposed to a single dissenting opinion. Would you consider such a department to be ‘an instrument for the advance of partisan interest?’ You probably would.”

Bitten by the Unresponsive, Irresponsible FDA Regulators are blocking innovative approaches to protecting us from Zika and other viruses. By Henry I. Miller & Drew L. Kershen

The mosquito species Aedes aegypti transmits viral diseases, including Zika, dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, and yellow fever, between human hosts. For most of these viral diseases, there are no vaccines and no effective medicines. So until recently, public-health officials have had to use old, low-tech approaches to controlling the mosquito vector and reducing the incidence of infections: pesticide sprays, public education about exposure (DEET, mosquito nets, and clothing that covers as much skin as possible), and control of breeding areas (water in flower pots, tires, drains, etc.).

Oxitec, a British subsidiary of the American company Intrexon, has created a new way to control Aedes aegypti. Male mosquitoes are bred in the laboratory with a specific genetic mutation that, in the absence of a certain chemical, causes their offspring to die before reaching maturity. Male mosquitoes do not bite, so their release presents no health risk, and, because their progeny die, the genetically engineered mosquitoes do not persist in the environment. Releasing the males over a period of several months causes a marked reduction in the mosquito population.

In field tests conducted in Brazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia, and Panama, Oxitec has shown that the release of these genetically engineered male mosquitoes has consistently reduced wild populations by more than 80 percent, and the most recent field trials show greater than 90 percent reduction. In 2014, on the basis of these field trials, Brazil’s regulatory authority approved the commercial release of these mosquitoes. Brazil approved Oxitec’s approach because the traditional approaches to mosquito control were failing to protect the country’s inhabitants from A. aegypti–borne viral diseases. The apparent association of Zika-virus infection with microcephaly in babies born to infected mothers has only added to the urgency.

The EPA’s Troubled Waters It claims jurisdiction over drainage ditches, farmland, and even backyards. By Leigh Thompson

Clarity!” has been the battle cry of the EPA over the last year as it put the final touches on its expansive and overreaching definition of “waters of the United States” (or “WOTUS”). And yet, a week after the final rule was published, the only clarity the EPA has provided is its intent to snatch up every piece of land that can channel, pool, or absorb water and include it within its newly minted jurisdiction.

The effects of this rule are both far-reaching and disastrous. Tributaries make up only one aspect of this unconstitutional overhaul of the Clean Water Act, but they provide useful insight into the impractical mind of the EPA.

The amended definition of a “tributary” will expand the EPA’s dominion to ephemeral flows — or, as an ordinary person might know them, dry lands where water sometimes flows after heavy rains — as well as many common drainage ditches. If a tributary contributes any flow at all, regardless of frequency or volume, to a downstream water, it is now within the EPA’s purview.

Practically, this means that the average drainage ditch, the channels between rows of planted crops, and the land beneath the crudely formed streams from the torrential rains that carried away portions of central Texas over the last several weeks are now all subject to federal jurisdiction if water from them can be carried downstream at any point. To build one’s home, to plant crops as a means of livelihood, to erect a fence or build a road, the average person will now need to seek a permit from the Corps of Engineers.

The EPA’s Lawless Land Grab Obama’s power-mad agency claims jurisdiction over land and water use almost everywhere in the United States. By Rupert Darwall

In his final book, economist Mancur Olson wrote of the profound and crucial connection between representative government and the property and contract rights important for economic progress. Olson quoted James Madison: “Just as a man may be said to have a right to his property, so he has a property in his rights.” The rule of law is therefore essential for the preservation of constitutional government and for economic growth. In no country have the economic fruits of the rule of law been more plentiful than the United States.

Today there is no greater threat to the rule of law and the right to the peaceful enjoyment of property than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the course of prosecuting its ostensible mission to clean the air and the water. Under the guise of the Clean Air Act, the agency’s Clean Power Plan will take control of America’s electrical-power infrastructure.

Yet Congress did not envisage that the 1970 legislation would be used to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. To get around the inconveniently precise wording Congress provided in the statute, EPA resorted to rewriting the provision of the Clean Air Act that didn’t fit with its regulatory plans — a gambit that has had ups and downs in the Supreme Court, which will soon address the legality of the Clean Power Plan. Until Monday, the timetable was well advanced, with states being required to submit compliance plans this summer. Then, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision agreed to freeze its implementation, showing that the plan’s opponents have a reasonable prospect of persuading the courts to throw out the plan.

In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy By Victor Davis Hanson

The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015.

While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor-force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent. More than 90 million able-bodied adults are either not currently in the labor force or have stopped looking for work altogether.

Average household incomes have been mostly stagnant in recent years relative to the rate of inflation. The Dow Jones industrial average fell by 2.2 percent in 2015 and has continued to plummet this year. Most people’s retirement portfolios have been losing money.

Such economic sluggishness, more than seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, was not supposed to happen, given all the traditional economic stimuli.

When times are tough, politicians sometimes call for a reduction in energy taxes to help lower gas prices and bring down household heating and cooling costs. Such cutting usually puts more disposable income into the pockets of families.

Yet, largely because of Persian Gulf oil politics and private-sector fracking and horizontal drilling, U.S. gas prices have already plunged to a national average of less than $1.80. That is a huge drop from the average 2014 price of about $3.34 a gallon — and it should provide an enormous economic stimulus.

Hillary Fights to Keep Wall Street Speeches Secret The Occupy Wall Street populist is terrified of being outed as a 1-percenter Wall Street elitist. Matthew Vadum

The campaign of class-warrior Hillary Clinton is pushing the panic button over the prospective release of secret transcripts of high-dollar speeches she made to Goldman Sachs that threaten to portray her as a two-faced un-progressive Wall Street elitist who is out of touch with the common people.

The Democrats’ leading avatar of avarice depicts herself as the candidate of Occupy Wall Street, a fearless champion of the downtrodden, but the transcripts of three speeches for which Goldman paid her an astonishing $675,000 threaten to torpedo the false, focus group-friendly image she has cultivated.

In the speeches to her fellow one-percenters, she reportedly comes across as unduly cozy with the financial titans that her angry left-wing base blames for most of America’s (and the world’s) problems today. In the current political environment publication of the transcripts could be as damaging to her run as Republican Mitt Romney’s ruinous “47 percent” speech was to his 2012 campaign.

One speech attendee reportedly said Clinton “sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director” than a politician. This phrase could easily end up in her Democratic opponent’s TV ads as the race shifts to the March 1 vote in critical South Carolina.

First Islamic State Celebrates Anniversary And it isn’t the one you think. Kenneth R. Timmerman

The first Islamic State since World War II celebrates its anniversary this week. And it isn’t the one you might think.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is the late-comer to the world of Islamic-inspired murder and mayhem. The regime that invented the genre will celebrate its 37th anniversary on Feb. 11. It’s official name: the Islamic Republic of Iran.

You can’t really call a regime a Republic when it has a Supreme Leader whose wishes trump every single elected official, institution, and law in the country.

So let’s call the Iranian regime by the title it has earned: the Islamic State of Iran.

Everything that you see ISIS doing in Iraq, Syria and now Libya, the Islamic State of Iran has been doing for 37 years to its own people.

Chopping off hands in application of the Sharia law punishment for thievery? The Islamic State of Iran began that practice at the outset of the Revolution in 1979. Same goes for gouging out eyes, ripping out tongues, and dismemberment using jeeps attached to the arms and legs of the condemned person.

Stoning women for allegations of adultery? Check. Just watch the Stoning of Soraya M if you would like to get a feel for the gristly details.

The Islamic State of Iran leaders and their apologists would have you believe that women in Iran are more “free” than in neighboring countries, such as Saudi Arabia. In Iran, after all, they go to co-ed universities, work, and drive cars.

Our Good Islam/Bad Islam Strategy Islamic terrorism is just what we call Islam when it’s killing us. Daniel Greenfield

Our only hope of defeating Islamic terrorism is Islam. That’s our whole counterterrorism strategy.

But Islamic terrorism is not a separate component of Islam that can be cut off from it. Not only is it not un-Islamic, but it expresses Islamic religious imperatives. Muslim religious leaders have occasionally issued fatwas against terrorism, but terrorism for Muslim clerics, like sex for Bill Clinton, is a matter of definition. The tactics of terrorism, including suicide bombing and the murder of civilians, have been approved by fatwas from many of the same Islamic religious leaders that our establishment deems moderate. And the objective of terrorism, the subjugation of non-Muslims, has been the most fundamental Islamic imperative for the expansionistic religion since the days of Mohammed.

Our strategy, in Europe and America, under Bush and under Obama, has been to artificially subdivide a Good Islam from a Bad Islam and to declare that Bad Islam is not really Islam. Bad Islam, as Obama claims, “hijacked” a peaceful religion. Secretary of State Kerry calls Bad Islam’s followers, “apostates”. ISIS speaks for no religion. It has no religion. Which means the Islamic State must be a bunch of atheists.

Our diplomats and politicians don’t verbally acknowledge the existence of a Bad Islam. Even its name is one of those names that must not be named. There is only Good Islam. Bad Islam doesn’t even exist.