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January 2020

Little Women Goes to War “Woke” critics express outrage that men stay away from a movie with little to offer them. Kay S. Hymowitz

https://www.city-journal.org/little-women

You might think that when a film you love is nominated for an Oscar for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best actress, and best supporting actress it would be a time for champagne, but in the case of Little Women, it’s been sour grapes all around.  The film received six nominations in total, but its many avid admirers were still furious: Greta Gerwig, the film’s director, was not nominated for best director, proof that misogyny reigns in Hollywood.

Even before it opened, the film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel had taken on heavy sociological and political significance.  Amy Pascal, the movie’s producer, had tweeted that men were not attending screenings of the Greta Gerwig–directed movie due to “unconscious bias” against women. Another Hollywood feminist VIP, Melissa Silverstein, jumped in: “I think it’s total, fully conscious sexism and shameful. The female story is just as universal as the male story.” The media were off and running: “Little Women has a Little Man problem,” Vanity Fair announced. “Men Are Dismissing Little Women: What a Surprise,” was the snarky title of a New York Times column.

Actually, the reasons that men (and a fair number of women like myself) don’t share in the widespread euphoria over the film couldn’t be more mundane. For one thing, the movie is based on a children’s book—to be precise, a book for girls. Thomas Niles, Alcott’s editor at Roberts Brothers, asked her to write a “girls’ book.” And that’s exactly what she set out to do. She wasn’t keen on the idea, but she needed the money. “I plod away, though I don’t enjoy this kind of thing,” she complained in her diary in the spring of 1868. “Never liked girls; never knew many besides my sisters.” When Niles reported to Alcott that his niece had found the early pages enthralling, Alcott, who remained unenthusiastic about the project, conceded: “As it is for them, they are the best critics.” No surprise, then, that grown men aren’t crowding theaters to see the latest movie version of a nineteenth-century girls’ book.

John Bolton’s Testimony Would Not Be The Smoking Gun Democrats Need By David Marcus

https://thefederalist.com/2020/01/14/john-boltons-testimony-would-not-be-the-smoking-gun-democrats-need/

You have to give credit to congressional Democrats for one thing: They are an extremely hopeful bunch. After years of Russia investigations aimed at toppling Donald Trump, they came away with what Grandmother would have called “bupkis.” But, not daunted, they quickly latched onto a whistleblower report about a phone call with Ukraine, and launched an up tempo effort, one last-ditch attempt to take the president down.

The result of this exertion did include a vote to impeach Trump, but did not attract a single GOP vote. This is also almost certain to the result in the senate trial as well. But wait! Now former National Security Adviser John Bolton has agreed to testify if called, and the Democrats are racing toward Lucy again, confident this time she won’t move the football.

The excitement from Democrats comes from the fact that Bolton in the past few months has sent a few mysterious tweets and said through lawyers that he does have information that did not come up in impeachment. Bolton may well have new information, but the idea that he is going walk into the Senate chamber if subpoenaed with a smoking gun is pure wish casting.

The crux of the dispute between Democrats and Republicans over the Trump administration’s action to delay funding to Ukraine is not over whether it happened, but whether the president was acting within his authority. It is almost inconceivable that Bolton could provide any evidence that would change that basic dynamic.

Taiwan’s Presidential Election Highlights the Failure of China’s Aggressive Foreign Meddling By Helen Raleigh See note please

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/china-taiwan-relations-tsai-ing-wen-reelection-highlights-failure-china-foreign-meddling/

Finally! After the betrayal of Nixon/Kissinger/ Carter by recognizing Communist China’s “One China” policy Taiwan is breaking free and gaining the approval of America…..rsk

President Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide reelection victory is a huge blow to Beijing’s ambitions.

On Saturday, Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive party (DPP), won re-election in a landslide victory that dealt a decisive blow to Beijing’s aggressive efforts to dictate Taiwanese politics.

The first thing to note about Tsai’s victory is that it had a lot to do with the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong. At the beginning of 2019, Tsai had an approval rating in the low 20s. The pro-reunification Nationalist Party (KMT) had won 2018’s local elections, handing the DPP a huge defeat on the strength of voters’ economic concerns. Many Taiwanese weren’t pleased with an economy slowed by Beijing’s coercive measures. China’s autocratic head of state, Xi Jinping, sees Tsai’s pro-independence political stand as the ultimate threat to his aim of reunification with Taiwan and had decided to use China’s economic power to teach her a lesson. Beijing had issued a travel ban in 2018 forbidding mainland tourists from traveling to the island. Since tourism is one of the biggest industries in Taiwan, the ban was projected to result in 700,000 fewer mainland tourists in just six months, costing Taiwan a staggering $900.5 million. Voters backed the KMT later the same year, and Tsai was forced to resign from her position as DPP chair. With a dangerously low approval rating and no political momentum to speak of, Tsai looked to be as good as dead politically this time last year.

How Communist Ideology Infiltrated America’s Security Agencies & Fueled Spygate—Diana West VIDEO

How Communist Ideology Infiltrated America’s Security Agencies & Fueled Spygate—Diana West

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=41&v=xZhDlf7sOaE&feature=emb_logo

Third Republican Senator Endorses War Powers Resolution, Leaving Dems Just Shy of Majority By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/third-republican-senator-endorses-war-powers-resolution-leaving-dems-just-shy-of-majority/

Senator Todd Young (R., Ind.) announced on Tuesday that he would support a resolution to curb President Trump’s power to make war on Iran without Congressional authorization.

Young is the third Republican Senator to support the resolution, which was authored by Senator Tim Kaine (D., Va.). Democrats will need four Republicans to vote for the resolution in order to gain the majority required to pass it.

Kaine tweaked the original resolution to make it more palatable for Republicans, eliminating a section that Republicans and some Democrats deemed too critical of President Trump.

“I will be supporting, shall we call it, Kaine 2.0., the newer Kaine language, should I have an opportunity to vote on it,” Young said in comments reported by The Hill.

Senators Rand Paul (R., Ky.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) have both previously expressed support for the War Powers resolution. Paul and Lee confirmed their support after a classified briefing on the U.S. airstrike that killed senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

The New Post-Trump Constitution By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/new-post-trump-consti
The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability …

T he Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office.

What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era.

1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a “resistance.” Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration.

2) Impeachment is now a casual affair. It requires no report of illegal or unethical behavior by a special counsel or special prosecutor. It will not be bipartisan but solely the action of the opposition party in the House when it is in the majority.

Public support will not matter. Much less will it be needed. Impeachment will be applied equally to a first- or second-term presidency. And it will become useful in a reelection year to help drive down an incumbent’s popularity.

Israel’s education minister gets taught a lesson Rafi Peretz should spend more time on Israel’s academic record and school curricula, and less time poking around in the business of family choices.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israels-education-minister-gets-taught-a-lesson/

Israeli Education Minister Rafi Peretz, an Orthodox rabbi and head of the right-wing Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party, indicated this week—for the second time since being appointed last June to the interim post—how poorly suited he is for his job.

Peretz caused an uproar in July, a mere few weeks into his temporary tenure, when he said in a televised interview that he had experience in conducting successful gay conversion therapy.

In a move illustrating his inability to learn a lesson, Peretz put his foot in his mouth again over the past weekend, telling the Hebrew daily Yediot Achronot that marriage between a man and a woman is the definition of a “normative family.”

When asked what he would do if one of his own kids came out of the closet, he basically replied that he’s lucky not to have to worry about such a scenario. “Thank God,” he said, “my children were raised in a natural and healthy way … and are building their homes on Jewish values.”

Oy.

Trump administration starts returning migrants DEEP INTO MEXICO to combat border crisis Adam Shaw, 

www.foxnews.com/politics/us-mexican-migrants-mexico-border-crisis

Trump administration starts returning migrants DEEP INTO MEXICO to combat border crisis
Adam Shaw, FoxNews.com

The Trump administration has started returning Mexican migrants deep into the country’s interior as part of an expanding effort to deter illegal immigration and combat the ongoing crisis at the border.

The Department of Homeland Security started running flights from Tucson, Ariz., to Guadalajara in December. Officials say the migrants being returned are all Mexican nationals from non-border Mexican states who typically have either recently illegally entered the U.S., or who had gone through the court system but were ruled to be deportable by an immigration judge.

The plan marks a departure from past practice of releasing migrants at the border. The idea would be to make it harder for repeat offenders to try and cross the border again if they are returned hundreds of miles away. Officials say returning people closer to their hometowns is better for them as well, and allows them to receive services from the Mexican government.

DHS says it plans to run two flights a week starting at the end of January and expects to return about 250 migrants a week. Officials say the move has been requested by the Mexican government, with which the U.S. has been working for months to stem the border crisis — which peaked in May but still concerns officials.

Hillary Clinton Vindicated On Corruption Charges?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/01/14/hillary-clinton-vindicated-on-corruption-charges-hardly/

 Hardly
I&I Editorial Board

Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had wound down a Hillary Clinton-related inquiry after finding “nothing of consequence.” That set off a series of Hosannas from the allegedly non-partisan press, which seems to notice quid pro quos only when they involve a Republican.

A quick review of the flagrantly corrupt dealings of the Clinton Foundation is in order.

When Hillary took the job of secretary of state under President Barack Obama, she promised that the foundation wouldn’t accept foreign donations. It took in money from at least seven foreign governments.

Documents showed that 85 of the 154 private interests who met with Clinton at the State Department had donated money to the foundation.

Emails unearthed by Judicial Watch showed that Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin – who worked for both the State Department and the foundation –  gave “special expedited access to the secretary of state” for those who gave $25,000 to $10 million.

Peter Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” exposed other unsavory entanglements between the foundation, government policy, and the Clintons’ pocketbooks.

As the late great columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, the foundation was “a massive family enterprise disguised as a charity” that was intended to help restore the Clintons to power.

“A Look Back to the Past Decade” Sydney Willams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

In his 1961 work, A Study of History (a study of the rise and fall of twenty-three civilizations), Arnold Toynbee concluded that civilizations die from suicide, not by murder, brought on by a decline in the moral fiber of society. When a New York Times reporter compared the killing of Qassim Soleimani to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Left never blinked, despite the implied insult to the Reverend King, his family and followers. When the West fails to defend the genocide of Christians in Africa, but are supplicant to Muslims who murder them, does that reflect a moral stance or a fear of retaliation? “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage,” spoke Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the Harvard commencement in 1978. The decline in moral courage has worsened over the past forty-two years. We in the West are more prosperous than ever before, yet we are filled with discontent: If we are black, we are victims; if we are white, we are supremacists; if we are Jews, we are subject to anti-Semitism; if we are Asian, we suffer from reverse discrimination. Unemployment, including minority unemployment, is the lowest in fifty years, and 2019 year-over-year wage growth was the highest for low-wage earners. Yet few of us seem happy with who we are. Perhaps because family has been subordinated to the village and the state?

There were, during the past decade, trends that might be a cause of this despair. While none began in the Twenty-teens, they accelerated over the past ten years. All stem from a desire for power, a sense of political correctness and identity politics coated in hypocrisy, and a belief we should apologize for the success we have had, individually and collectively. We were told we didn’t build the business we built. We tear down statues that represent our history. Hashtags rule and victimization reigns. In colleges and universities, the humanities have been attacked as representing only dead white males who promoted exclusivity. We are told to be inclusive, but not when it comes to political opinions. Where, for example, is the diversity of ideas promoted by a racially and sexually diverse slate of Democrat candidates for President?

Four trends come to mind: The increasing estrangement between bureaucratic global institutions like the United Nations and the European Union and the nation states that compose them; the aging of populations, especially in Western nations and Japan; the decline of participation in organized religion, and the curtailment of free speech. The consequence has been disillusionment and partisanship, fueled by supercilious entertainers and journalists whose readership and viewership are in decline.