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March 2020

HISTORY Comments turned off

The lost congressman: What happened to Jeremiah Haralson?

By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2020/02/26/jeremiah-haralson-lost-congressman-alabama/2823015001/

The lost congressman

He was a slave at 18.

A state legislator at 24.

A congressman at 28.

And a prisoner at 48.

Jeremiah Haralson lived a remarkable life. Then he vanished.

Jeremiah Haralson listened as the ex-Confederate accused him of forgery. It was Feb. 13, 1877, and Haralson, a congressman from Selma, had testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee about the violence and fraud that cost him his re-election to Congress from Alabama’s Black Belt.

Malcolm Graham, on hand to represent the state Democratic Party, dismissed Haralson’s descriptions of racial terror with a cynical languor. Local Democratic leaders told him no such intimidation occurred, and these cursory denials satisfied the former Confederate congressman.

So Graham tried to make Haralson the criminal. During questioning, Graham asked Haralson about the testimony of another witness who claimed that Haralson had forged an election ticket to get votes in Lowndes County.

“He said there were 163 votes cast for you there, and that there would not have been one if the voters had not been imposed upon by a counterfeit ticket you had circulated there,” Graham said.

Haralson could recite precinct names and vote totals from memory. Lowndes County was not strong for him. That was true. But people there knew Haralson: The son of a prominent Lowndes County planter once held him in bondage.

“I have a few personal friends in the county, you know, old man,” the former slave told the former defender of slavery. “There are a good many there that know me, and they vote for me on personal grounds.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

It’s unsurprising that Ivy League colleges churn out dangerous leftists

By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.bookwormroom.com/2020/02/27/its-unsurprising-that-ivy-league-colleges-churn-out-dangerous-leftists/

“…….

Ivy will also insinuate itself into your doors and windows, your vents, and your shutters. It will climb your walls, destroy your grout, pull down your bricks and siding, tear down your gutters, and generally wreak havoc everywhere it can go. All the while, the leaves continue to have that pretty, decorative ivy look. Even as it’s destroying everything it touches, it manages to look attractive.

In addition, every tendril has a gazillion roots and the vines have a habit of breaking off just as you think you’re about to pull a whole root system out successfully. Thus, no matter how much you manage to destroy above ground, you know you’ve left more vines and roots underground where they are unreachable. This means that it’s virtually impossible ever to rid yourself of ivy. All that you can do is maintain vigilance and attack it when even a single leaf appears anywhere.

It occurred to me today as I was struggling with the ivy destroying my planting beds, trying to tear down my bricks and gutters, strangling my other plants, and resisting my best efforts to track down every root and tendril that there is no difference between ivy and American socialism.

If socialists are confined to urban cocktail parties and a few university faculty lounges, they can be innocuous and even decorative and interesting. However, once you set them free, they destroy everything they touch.

On the surface, they might be grandmotherly figures like Elizabeth Warren (if you like nagging, pushy grandmothers), or perky little boys like Pete Buttigieg, or funny, crazy uncles like Bernie, but underneath they’re putting out tendrils that swamp and destroy everything. They entangle themselves in America’s institutions and eventually destroy them.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Panel at U. Michigan Blames Western Colonialism for Gender Violence Among Immigrants

By on March 1st, 2020

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/02/panel-at-u-michigan-blames-western-colonialism-for-gender-violence-among-immigrants/

“Gender Violence, Immigrant Vulnerability and the State: A Symposium”

Do you ever just sit back and marvel at the left’s ability to come up with things like this?

The College Fix reports:

In the latest example of higher education victimology, a panel at the University of Michigan discussed on Monday how Western colonialism is culpable for gender violence in the immigrant community.

According to The Michigan Daily, UM women’s studies professor Debotri Dhar, organizer of the “Gender Violence, Immigrant Vulnerability and the State: A Symposium” event, claimed that “residual ideals from the colonial era have resulted in immigrants of color being framed as burdens on the state” which contribute to “immigrant vulnerability and gender violence.”

Dhar added that in our current “very politically divisive” atmosphere, the situation surrounding immigrants, “our most vulnerable individuals,” can be overlooked.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Fool and his money: Good riddance, Tom Steyer By Monica Showalter

By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/fool_and_his_money_good_riddance_tom_steyer.html

Well, it’s over.

A couple of years and $250 million later, Tom Steyer’s presidential run has left him exactly where he started in the presidential race, at zero.

The poor wretched monomaniac of greenie virtue now goes the way of Jay Inslee, the qualified, but leftist, governor of Washington state who, like Steyer, was also global warming bore and washed out because of it. You’d think maybe Steyer would have noticed how unimportant this ‘sky is falling’ greenie cause was with voters by that point, but nope, Steyer continued to sell that snake oil to voters, thinking a barrage of television ads would make them catch on. He never had a clue.

Now he has his clue, $250 million dollars later, no delegates, a pathetic third place finish in South Carolina, prompting him to finally cut his losses, and exit the race.

Actually, he probably had some clues, given that he changed his tune to South Carolina’s voters from global warming to ‘racial justice,’ something he claimed “not enough people” cared about but, trust him, he did, in what was an obvious pander for the black vote in South Carolina. Turns out another old white guy, Joe Biden, got there first, succeeding in that machine pol way of his, through endorsements from old-line black politicians such as Rep. James Clyburn — gaffes, exaggerations, and all.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European Appeasement Is Alive and Well By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

By on March 1st, 2020

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/europe-appeasement/

The word “appeasement” evokes dark memories of the Munich 1938 agreement, in which Britain and France made far-reaching concessions to the aggressive German Nazi state in order to avoid violent conflict. The betrayed victim was Czechoslovakia, which was not even invited to the conference at which its fate was to be decided. The outbreak of WWII in 1939 showed, of course, that the agreement was a gross error in judgment. Sadly, the West does not appear to have learned much from Neville Chamberlain’s misguided proclamation of “peace in our time”.

The reality that antisemitism is an integral part of European culture is not the only issue dividing the EU and Israel. There is also the serious problem of chronic and habitual appeasement, though it is not often identified as such.

The quintessential example of Western appeasement in recent years was the 2015 nuclear agreement forged by the Obama administration with the Islamic Republic of Iran (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The four other members of the Security Council plus Germany all signed this flawed agreement alongside the Americans. The pact, which was ostensibly intended to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Tehran’s Islamist regime, allowed it to continue to design and test missiles and develop advanced centrifuges.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before the US Congress to protest the agreement—a highly unusual and undiplomatic act, but justified under the circumstances. Obama was appeasing an aggressive and hostile Iranian regime that made (and continues to make) unceasing threats to destroy the State of Israel.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Is Manhattan About To Get Drowned By The Sea? Francis Menton

By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-2-29-is-manhattan-about-to-get-drowned-by-the-sea

Nothing, and I mean nothing, leads so quickly to the loss of all critical faculties as global warming hysteria.

One key claim in the maelstrom of global warming hype is the assertion that sea level will shortly rise and swamp coastal cities. I would put this claim in the category of total BS. For more detail than you would ever want to know on that subject, go to this link.

But for today’s purposes, assume that there is something to the claim of a big impending sea level rise. I live here in Manhattan, specifically Lower Manhattan (the southern part of the island). If sea level is about to rise and swamp coastal cities, Manhattan looks like ground zero, and Lower Manhattan in particular. We are an island surrounded by estuaries, otherwise known as the sea. Most of the southern half of our island, Lower Manhattan — the half with the high end business districts and pricey residential areas — rises up barely at all above sea level. Lower Manhattan has about 15 or so miles of shoreline, with the sea surrounding us on the East, West and South. The northern half of the island is hilly, and has much higher elevations; but in Lower Manhattan the first few blocks in from the waterfront are around 10 to 20 feet at best above mean high tide. If a big sea level rise is imminent, we are going under.

Belief in anthropogenic global warming and its associated natural disasters like sea level rise is an essential component of Manhattan groupthink. Therefore, it is clear that our politicians must “do something” about the impending calamity. But what? We’re not about to jack up some thousands of buildings by 30 or 50 feet each, even assuming that somebody could figure out how to do that.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The media’s clueless coverage of the Biden candidacy Michael Tracey

By on March 1st, 2020

https://spectator.us/media-clueless-coverage-biden-candidacy/

At the time of writing, Joe Biden is on course for an approximately 30 point victory in South Carolina. Not that he won with 30 percent of the vote; rather, he is beating his nearest competitor (Bernie Sanders) by approximately 30 percentage points. That’s a truly romping win — but ironically, given his many many decades on the political scene, the American elite media has never known quite how to cover the Biden candidacy.

 

First, if you are a consumer of online political news and commentary, you might have noticed the conspicuous lack of virtually any vocal Biden supporters on social media. Online political journalism is dominated by graduates of elite American colleges and universities between the ages of 25 and 45, who constitute the diametric opposite demographic of Biden’s core support base. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people running political magazines, newspapers and websites in the United States have roughly zero Biden supporters in their immediate peer group. So of course this dynamic will lead to analytical failure in assessing Biden’s appeal.

 

Take a look at some of the exit poll findings tonight: Biden won 62 percent of South Carolina voters who never attended college. Yes, many of these people are older black voters. But more significant than race is educational attainment, in this key respect: you will encounter almost nobody working an elite media job who has never interfaced with the higher education system. However, people who have never interfaced with the higher education system comprise a significant portion of Biden’s support base. Hence the flustered and confused reactions to his rousing victory.  

 

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel, Zionism, & Explaining The Bernie Sanders Ilk… by Gerald A. Honigman

By on March 1st, 2020

Before getting into high gear regarding Bernie Sanders & Co., it may be useful to review some previous thoughts for good background information. So, let’s take a look…

Spend some time on many-to-most university campuses these days; read or listen to numerous Jewish commentators and editorialists in the mainstream media dealing with Israel and the Middle East.

With rare exceptions, you’ll be hard pressed finding Jews (let alone others) who have not succumbed to the pressure to adopt one set of standards by which Israel and Zionism is studied and judged, and another entirely different set by which the rest of the Middle East and North Africa—indeed, the rest of the world–is scrutinized. While Zionism is routinely vilified, have you ever heard the word Arabism even mentioned? https://ekurd.net/arabism-zionism-journeys-2019-01-12 Has it come up in any of the Democrat debates to see who gets to confront President Trump in the-fast approaching American election?

Frequently, Jewish organizations (J Street U, Jewish Voice For Peace, and too many others–including even Hillel, at times) are prominent, or at least collaborative, in partaking in the one-sided Israel and Zionism-bashing goings-on of other groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Muslim Students Association, radical Leftists, and “Progressive” Liberals.

While students learn about the ‘evil’ quest of Jews to cast off their millennial victim, scapegoat, and whipping post status, they’ll neither hear nor read anything about the plights of scores of millions of other non-Arab peoples in the region. They won’t find, for example, a local chapter ofStudents for Justice in Kurdistan or for the Kabyle or Amazigh (Berber”) people, whose programs they can attend. And they won’t find a post-Zionist, “Progressive” Hebrew or other professor mentioning anything about them either. Together, just the Kurds and Imazighen alone account for some 75-80 million non-Arab people in a region that Arabs claim to be merely “purely Arab patrimony…the real main cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: ISRAELI DIPLOMATS SHOULD NOT CRITICIZE AMERICAN CANDIDATES!

By on March 1st, 2020

My e-mails overflow with news that Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon has harshly criticized Bernie Sanders calling him a liar and ignorant fool. To be fair Sanders started the volley by calling Israel’s Prime Minister a “racist.” Danon said these things at a public forum that guaranteed media coverage.
Israeli diplomats should not butt into American elections just as American diplomats and legislators should not butt into Israeli elections….rsk

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dir Fauci’s welcome sobriety on corona/COVID-19, which “may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)”

By on March 1st, 2020

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1234166783516585984

THANKS TO DR. ANDREW BOSTOM, M.D.

NIAID Dir Fauci’s welcome sobriety on corona/COVID-19, which “may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)” [published by the ideologically Left, NEJM, no less!] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

The latest threat to global health is the ongoing outbreak of the respiratory disease that was recently given the name Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). Covid-19 was recognized in December 2019.1 It was rapidly shown to be caused by a novel coronavirus that is structurally related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). As in two preceding instances of emergence of coronavirus disease in the past 18 years2 — SARS (2002 and 2003) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (2012 to the present) — the Covid-19 outbreak has posed critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities.

In their Journal article, Li and colleagues3 provide a detailed clinical and epidemiologic description of the first 425 cases reported in the epicenter of the outbreak: the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China. Although this information is critical in informing the appropriate response to this outbreak, as the authors point out, the study faces the limitation associated with reporting in real time the evolution of an emerging pathogen in its earliest stages. Nonetheless, a degree of clarity is emerging from this report. The median age of the patients was 59 years, with higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions (similar to the situation with influenza); 56% of the patients were male. Of note, there were no cases in children younger than 15 years of age. Either children are less likely to become infected, which would have important epidemiologic implications, or their symptoms were so mild that their infection escaped detection, which has implications for the size of the denominator of total community infections.

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