Displaying posts published in

March 2018

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

No ‘Fun in Playa del Carmen’ these days By Silvio Canto, Jr.

By on March 12th, 2018

Many years ago, Elvis made a movie Fun in Acapulco. As they say, the movie didn’t have much of a plot but Ursula Andress is worth whatever it costs to watch it online.

We can safely said that no one is making a movie about fun in Playa del Carmen these days.

As you probably know, there is a lot of talk about “el muro” — the border wall — down in Mexico. Sadly, the political class should be talking about the chaos in the country and how this is impacting their economy.

This week we read that the U.S. closed a consulate office indefinitely. This is from news reports:

“The State Department abruptly closed the U.S. consulate in the popular tourist destination of Playa del Carmen late Wednesday evening and ordered U.S. government employees to stay out of the area.

They warn other Americans either in the region or thinking of traveling to it about a “real crime threat” from local drug cartels…”

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Florida legislature bans ‘free speech zones’ on state campuses By Rick Moran

By on March 12th, 2018

A bit of good news out of Florida where the legislature passed an education reform bill that includes a provision that would outlaw campus “free speech zones.”

Liberals have used these misnamed “free speech zones” to marginalize people and ideas they didn’t agree with. Florida becomes the first state to ban them.

Campus Reform:

Joe Cohn, legislative policy director for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) told Campus Reform that the elimination of free speech zones will benefit students.

“Students shouldn’t have their free speech rights quarantined into misleadingly labeled free speech zones and unfortunately public institutions in Florida are doing just that,” he said.

Burnett also observed that the “Cause of Action” would allow students to sue the public institution in a state court if their First Amendment rights are violated, noting that this would be cheaper to litigate as opposed to a federal court.

“The Florida affiliate (of the ACLU) is somewhat of an outlier here in the position that they are taking, and in this particular instance, we think they’re wrong and we look forward to working with them on issues of common ground in the future,” he said, claiming that the Florida ACLU deviates in this respect from the other ACLU chapters across the country.

In a statement to Campus Reform, Generation Opportunity (GO-FL), a nonpartisan organization committed to more freedom and a bright future for all young Americans, said that the ending of free speech zones will help students confront challenging ideas.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Elizabeth Warren refuses DNA test to prove Native Ameriican heritage By Marisa Schultz

By on March 12th, 2018

WASHINGTON – Sen. Elizabeth Warren batted down calls for her to take a DNA test to prove her Native American heritage in an interview that aired Sunday.

“I know who I am. And never used it for anything. Never got any benefit from it anywhere,” Warren said of her ancestry on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The Massachusetts Democrat has been under increased pressure to provide evidence of ​her ​Native American roots, with President Trump repeatedly mocking her as “Pocahontas” as recently as Saturday.

An editorial this month in Massachusetts’s Berkshire Eagle urged Warren to buy a DNA test for $99 to resolve the issue once and for all.

“All the senator needs to do is spit into a tube, wait a few weeks and get her answer,” the paper said.

Asked whether she’d take an ancestry test, Warren said she wants to hold onto the folklore of her parents’ love story.

“My mother and daddy were born and raised in Oklahoma,” Warren said. “My daddy first saw my mother when they were both teenagers. He fell in love with this tall, quiet girl who played the piano. Head over heels. But his family was bitterly opposed to their relationship because she was part Native American. They eventually eloped.”

She said her parents survived the Great Depression and other hardships as they raised her and her three brothers.

“That’s the story that my brothers and I all learned from our mom and our dad, from our grandparents,” Warren said. “It’s a part of me and nobody’s going to take that part of me away.”

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Stormy Daniels and Ted Kennedy John Hinderaker

By on March 12th, 2018

The Democrats are trying to make something out of Donald Trump’s alleged dalliance, twelve years ago, with porn performer Stormy Daniels. I wrote about it here. Frankly, I don’t think anyone cares.

But the story is interesting because it raises questions about what, in our era, constitutes a scandal. Trump’s long-ago romps with Daniels–assuming the stories are true–don’t qualify. There is one person, of course, who has a right to be outraged and probably is, but Melania doesn’t work for the Washington Post or the New York Times, and what she makes of the story is none of our business.

Worst case, Trump paid Stormy Daniels. But he didn’t kill her. That distinguishes him from the Liberal Lion of the Senate. If you want a scandal, and a cover-up that succeeded to a remarkable degree, look no further than Chappaquiddick. The Democratic Party conspired to cover up Ted Kennedy’s crime–manslaughter, in a particularly vile form–to preserve his political viability, at the cost of an innocent young woman’s life.

To this day, most people have no idea what the Chappaquiddick scandal was all about. That is how successful the Democrats’ cover-up has been. Most Americans assume that Kennedy was guilty of drunk driving and negligently causing the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. But the truth is much worse.

Several books have told the real story, but the movie Chappaquiddick may finally blow the lid off the Democrats’ cover-up. Based on the trailers, it apparently will tell the truth: that Ted Kennedy, after driving off a bridge into Poucha Pond, escaped from his car but made no attempt to save Miss Kopechne. That Kopechne didn’t drown, but eventually suffocated for lack of oxygen as she waited for Kennedy to rescue her. That Kopechne could have been saved if Kennedy had simply called the local rescue squad. That Kennedy was such a self-centered coward that he left Kopechne to die, concerned only for his own political future. That instead of calling for help, he walked back to the house where his party was still in progress. That when he arrived, he tried to convince his cousin Joe Gargan to say that he had been driving the car. That he never did call the police to report the accident, but rather spent the night trying to concoct an alibi. That the Democrats fixed the legal process so that Kennedy would pay no meaningful penalty for the death he callously caused. That Kennedy pretended to have been injured in the accident in order to excuse his cowardice, and wore a neck brace to Kopechne’s funeral to further that lie.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rex Murphy: The contemptible concept of ‘white privilege’ is just ugly, angry racism

By on March 12th, 2018

Maxime Bernier is right: Identity politics dissolves community, reduces a country to subsets of clans, and obscures the diversity of individual lives

There is much to choose from this week, including the infantile wailing and moronic ignorance of social-justice hooligans driven crazy mad (Pavlovian response) by Jordan Peterson giving a lecture, by invitation, at Queen’s University. (Three cheers for Queen’s president and the law faculty for inviting Dr. Peterson.)

Then there is Justin Trudeau inviting the fanatically anti-Alberta-oil Bill Nye to Ottawa for a public chat on science, the highlight of which was the signal revelation of the centrality of breastfeeding to the scientific method — delivered by our PM. When baby wails and the milk flows, can Planck’s constant be far behind?

As well: Jaspal Atwal, failed Sikh assassin, holding what he ludicrously called a press conference. The only takeaway: his lawyer is scarier, though not necessarily more competent.

More fertile than them all however was the brisk, chippy, and entitled Twitter blast levelled by Liberal MP and person of colour, Celina Caesar-Chavannes (Whitby, Ont.), at Conservative MP Maxime Bernier (Beauce, Que.).

Bernier had criticized an earlier tweet by Ahmed Hussen in which the Immigration Minister said the federal budget was historic for “racialized Canadians.”

Bernier said he deplored that tweet’s “awful jargon,” the pitch to “racialized” Canadians, and put out a plea for “colour blindness,” character over skin colour. His critics, Bernier said, implied (he was) a racist because “I want to live in a society where everyone is treated equally and not defined by their race.”

The parliamentary pigeons were duly agitated. Instanter, Caesar-Chavannes fired off her Twitter blast:

“… please tell this highly privileged man that the ultimate goal of fighting discrimination is equity & justice and not, as he states … to create a colour-blind society.”

That wasn’t going to boil the kettle, so there followed another, more imperious swipe: “@MaximeBernier … colour blindness as a defence actually contributes to racism. Please check your privilege and be quiet.”

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Doomsday Climate Scenarios Are a Joke One study says world GDP will drop 20% by 2100, but Iceland and Mongolia will be rich beyond imagining. Oren Cass

By on March 12th, 2018

Debates over climate change are filled with dire estimates of its cost. This many trillions of dollars of damage, that large a share of gross domestic product destroyed, so-and-so many lives lost, etc. Where do such figures come from? Mostly from laughably bad economics.

This has nothing to do with the soundness of climate science. The games begin when economists get their hands on scientific projections and try to translate temperatures into human impacts. They conduct statistical analyses of the effects that small year-to-year temperature variations have on things like mortality and economic growth, and try to extrapolate to the effect of very large, slow shifts in underlying climate. This creates absurd estimates that ignore human society’s capacity for adaptation. This is the latest iteration of the same mistake environmental catastrophists seem insistent on making in every generation.

The best illustration lies deep in a 2015 paper published in Nature by professors from Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. They found that warm countries tended to experience lower economic growth in abnormally warm years, while cold countries experienced higher growth in such years. Applying that relationship to a much warmer world of the future, they concluded that unmitigated climate change would likely reduce global GDP by more than 20% from what it otherwise would reach by century’s end.

That is roughly an order of magnitude higher than prior estimates, and it has received widespread media attention. But it is as preposterous as it is stunning.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cures Welcome at FDA The agency opens its thinking on Alzheimer’s to innovative methods.

By on March 12th, 2018

Few conditions are as wrenching as the destruction of memory known as Alzheimer’s, and few diseases have so eluded drug companies and researchers looking for a cure. So it’s welcome news that the Food and Drug Administration is inviting more innovation, and more broadly revamping the agency’s review process.

FDA recently updated its scientific thinking on early Alzheimer’s, along with other neurological conditions, and this matters because such draft guidance informs industry and academic efforts. One reality of Alzheimer’s is that the disease may “progress invisibly for years,” as Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in the announcement, and by the time clinical symptoms arrive a patient may have lost significant function.

One important change is that FDA says it’s open to considering a novel drug for early stages that can affect cognition, or measures of a person’s thinking or memory. FDA previously said a drug had to deliver on two endpoints: cognition and function, and the latter involves an ability to perform tasks. FDA’s guidance also includes a discussion on biomarkers, which are measurable substances that offer clues to the presence or progress of a disease.

Continue reading →