Displaying posts published in

March 2020

California Is a Cruel Medieval State The Golden State has become a cruel and unusual place because callousness and narcissism were redefined as caring and compassion. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/08/california-is-a-cruel-medieval-state/

One way of understanding California is simply to invert traditional morality. What for centuries would be considered selfish, callous, and greedy is now recalibrated as caring, empathetic, and generous. The current ethos of evaluating someone by his or her superficial appearance—gender or race—has returned to the premodern values of 19th-century California when race and gender calibrated careers. We don’t pay medieval priests for indulgences of our past and ongoing sin, but we do tweet out displays of our goodness as the penance price of acting amoral.

A paradox ensues that Californians both have a high, indeed smug, view of themselves and yet do a lot of damage to their fellow human beings. Their haughtiness is based largely on the reality that Silicon Valley, sandwiched between Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, became the birthplace of the global computer, internet, social media, and a high-tech revolution. For progressives who deprecate the capitalist lifestyle, having a lot of money still allows one to say one thing and live out the opposite.

The state’s multi-trillion-dollar companies have hired tens of thousands of seven-figure, mid-level executives and computer experts who assume that life in the California coastal corridor is a birthright paradise.

The resulting tax revenue bonanza to the state allows one-party-rule to rid California of the old bothersome Reagan-Deukmejian-Wilson working- and middle-classes by embracing not-in-my-backyard zoning, identity politics, anal-retentive regulations, steep tax rates, utopian green agendas, open borders, and decriminalization of things that used to be felony offenses.

Indeed, the bigger and wealthier California became, the more the rich sought to privatize their lives and to give up on public services, the more the middle classes left the state, the more the poor from Mexico and Latin America crossed the southern border illegally, the more its schools deteriorated, and the more its infrastructure ossified and became decrepit, from century-old power transmission towers to pot-holed and jammed highways.

The Virus and the Economy Widespread quarantines and shutdowns of industries have human costs, too. Steve Malanga

https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-and-the-economy

The spread of the coronavirus has led to fears of a worldwide economic slowdown. China, where the virus first leaped into the human population, has quarantined large sections of the country, virtually shutting down economic activity. In South Korea, several companies—including the automaker Hyundai—closed facilities when workers there tested positive for the virus. The Italian government, meantime, has shuttered schools and universities and banned public attendance at sporting events—including the nation’s popular soccer league—for 30 days. Such responses, likely to spread to other countries as the virus itself travels, have led to estimates that containment efforts could cut worldwide economic growth in half this year. Whether that prediction proves accurate, or whether the toll proves even worse, may depend on how the economic impact of the virus plays out in the United States, the world’s largest and most consequential economy.

The U.S. has already taken several basic steps to stem the spread of the virus, including suspending flights from China and quarantining those returning from areas of the world where the infection is most intense. But as the virus spreads, officials contemplate stricter measures. These include banning public gatherings such as concerts, movies, and sports events; advising businesses to keep workers home; or even shutting down firms where the virus is detected.

It might be easy to justify such draconian measures based on the toll that the coronavirus can take on society. But what’s also worth contemplating is the human toll that a potentially sharp decline in economic activity would exact. While the simplest way to measure an economy may be in dollars and cents, economic activity also produces well-being. A decline in the economy sparks deterioration in public welfare. Those are human costs that must be measured against the inevitable cost of the virus itself. Extended school closures, for example, place a burden on employed parents, who must miss long periods of work; on households living paycheck-to-paycheck; and on the self-employed.

Global Warming Alarmists: Not Only Wrong But Vicious J. Frank Bullitt

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/03/09/global-warming-alarmists-not-only-wrong-but-vicious/

Christiana Figueres, at one time the United Nations’ climate director, says the coronavirus might be good for the climate “because there is less trade, there’s less travel, there’s less commerce.” She didn’t say it, but given her past statements, it’s not hard to imagine she’d be OK with any global or Western crisis that hurt the economy.

After all, Figueres is the woman, the former executive secretary of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, who admitted some years ago that the “fight” against global warming was a cover to crush capitalism.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” Figueres, considered “the world’s most important environmentalist,” said in 2015.

Those comments are similar to those of Rajendra Pachauri, a former chairman of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who said he was “not going to rest easy until” he had “articulated in every possible forum the need to bring about major structural changes in economic growth and development. That’s the real issue. Climate change is just a part of it.”

For these world “leaders” to militantly crusade against the only economic system — the free market — that has lifted hundreds of millions out of “grinding” poverty is beyond cruel.

Video: High School Teacher Reprimanded for Insulting Islam on Facebook Sharia is here.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/video-high-school-teacher-reprimanded-insulting-frontpagemagcom/

Subscribe to the Glazov Gang‘s YouTube Channel and follow us on Twitter: @JamieGlazov.

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses High School Teacher Reprimanded for Insulting Islam on Facebook, unveiling how Sharia is here.

Don’t miss it!

SecState Pompeo Confronts UN Secretary General Guterres on UN Blacklist A solid and legitimate move by the Trump administration. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/secstate-pompeo-confronts-un-secretary-general-joseph-klein/

Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo met on March 6th with United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres at UN headquarters in New York. Secretary Pompeo took the opportunity to condemn the UN’s highly biased pro-Palestinian decision to release its blacklist of companies doing business with Israeli firms operating in disputed areas of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which includes several U.S. companies.

According to the State Department’s readout of the meeting, Secretary Pompeo “reiterated his outrage at the decision by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to publish a database of companies operating in Israeli-controlled territories.” The U.S. statement added that Secretary Pompeo “made clear that the United States will continue to engage UN officials and member states on this matter, will not tolerate the reckless mistreatment of U.S. companies, and will respond to actions harmful to our business community.”

As usual, the UN Secretary General tried to paper over significant objections to the UN’s moral failures with diplomatic niceties. His office’s readout of the same meeting made no mention of the blacklist controversy. “The Secretary-General expressed appreciation for the continued engagement of the United States in the United Nation,” the UN statement said. It ticked off as topics of discussion “a range of situations around the world, including Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the Sahel and the questions related to the implementation of the host country agreement.” The reference to the host country agreement implementation may have alluded to a dispute over the denial or delay of visas issued by the U.S. to UN diplomats from certain countries, principally Russia and Iran, seeking to attend UN meetings in New York. However, the statement completely sidestepped the substance of the issue. Nothing was even hinted regarding any other differences between the United States and the United Nations.

Elizabeth Warren Lost Because Women are Sexist Only 1 in 4 women voted for Warren. The other 3 out of 4 must be sexist. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/elizabeth-warren-lost-because-women-are-sexist-daniel-greenfield/

Senator Elizabeth Warren née Herring only lost the Democrat primaries because of sexism.

Hillary Clinton blamed Warren’s setbacks on “unconscious bias” and “gendered language”. If only the media had referred to Warren as “him” or “xer” while being unconscious, it might be the nominee.

“Sexism Sank Elizabeth Warren,” bleats The Nation. “Gender is at the core of this,” Salon insists.

There’s no such thing as gender when it comes to castrating 7-year-old boys, or in weightlifting competitions, but is a serious problem for the political ambitions of millionaire 70-year-old professors.

Vox even falsely claims that “women are feeling so defeated after Elizabeth Warren’s loss”.

If women are feeling so defeated by Warren’s primary faceplant, why didn’t they vote for her?

In her home state of Massachusetts, 34% of women voted for Joe Biden, 36% for Bernie Sand

The Stigma of Coronavirus? The leader of the World Health Organisation says it’s more dangerous than the virus itself.Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/stigma-corona-virus-katie-hopkins/

Following its latest media briefing, the World Health Organization (WHO) might want to think about changing its name to the Woke Health Organization.

In the face of a possible global pandemic of Coronavirus (so called COVID-19), the head of WHO says the most urgent priority is how we talk about the virus so as not to cause offense.

He is worried about the social impact of Coronavirus and the stigmatizing effect of words. He claims the stigma is more dangerous than the virus itself and he has made every effort to underline this point by repeating it… twice.

Stigma is the most dangerous enemy we face. Stigma is the most dangerous enemy we face.

You know, even with the duplication I am not really getting his point. An unknown killer virus with no known cure that turned a Princess cruise ship into a floating plague hotel and has killed 100 Italians in a week sounds just a bit more dangerous than words right now.

The Director General of WHO is a gentleman named Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which I think is short for Utter Madman. Rallying around his own rhetoric, he is leading the fight for unity in the media and online, retweeting a tweet from Twitter that says: “Take care of each other.”

Democrat Voter Fraud in Minnesota What most people would call voter fraud is actually legal in Minnesota elections. Bruce Hendry

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/democrat-voter-fraud-minnesota-bruce-hendry/

Editors’ note: Below is Part 4 of a new essay written by Bruce Hendry: Democrats, Progressives and Socialists. Stay tuned for the ensuing chapters. [See links to previous chapters below this article].

9. Democrat Voter Fraud in Minnesota.

Voter Fraud in Minnesota, and one can presume elsewhere, is practiced almost entirely by Democrats, who have waged a relentless campaign to block any attempt to block ineligible voters from voting, or eligible voters from voting more than once as “voter suppression.”

It’s actually technically incorrect to say that there is large voter fraud in Minnesota, because what you and I would consider voter fraud is in fact legal in Minnesota. The Democrats euphemistic phrase for voter fraud is “ineligible voting” but the manipulation of the voting system is still fraudulent and so it’s still voter fraud. Most voters of either party are totally unaware of what’s going on.

Voter fraud In Minnesota is practiced almost entirely by Democrats through a two-part process. First, they construct election laws that are designed to tolerate ineligible voting and, second, they don’t enforce even the weak constraints in those statutes. Most voters of either party are totally unaware of what’s going on.

Here is how it works.

Self-certification. In Minnesota, you are supposed to be prohibited from voting if you (1) have a court order stating that you are incompetent to vote, (2) are not a citizen, (3) are a felon on parole or probation, or (4) live outside the precinct.

On International Women’s Day, whining Westerners and mad Muslims By Andrea Widburg

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

While many Western women were bashing men and complaining on International Women’s Day, women were not faring so well in Muslim countries

International Women’s Day is an old communist holiday that got picked up in the West. It’s become a profoundly ironic holiday as well. In the West, where women have greater freedoms than at any other time in human history, many women “celebrate” the occasion by either moaning about their victimhood, bashing men, or flashing their breasts. Meanwhile, in the Muslim world, where no day is a “women’s day,” those women who try to take a stand are brutally attacked by the mob or by their own government – yet leftist women seem unconcerned by the way in which Islamic countries treat women.

Wikipedia has an excellent précis explaining the communist roots behind International Women’s Day (hyperlinks and footnotes omitted):

After the Socialist Party of America organized a Women’s Day in New York City on February 28, 1909, German delegates Clara Zetkin, Käte Duncker and others proposed at the 1910 International Socialist Woman’s Conference that “a special Women’s Day” be organized annually. After women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia in 1917, March 8 became a national holiday there. The day was then predominantly celebrated by the socialist movement and communist countries until it was adopted by the feminist movement in about 1967. The United Nations began celebrating the day in 1977.

Now that we’re stuck with the holiday, too many Western women use it as an annual occasion to whine about their non-existent oppression, to attack men, or to objectify themselves by baring their breasts.

Monday Schadenfreude: Plame flames By Charles Sullivan

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

Whoever wins the Democrat primary on June 2 for New Mexico’s third congressional district will be an overwhelming favorite to win the general election in November. It is very unlikely that Valerie Plame will be that person. She probably will not even make the Democrat ballot.

Valerie Plame and her then husband, Joe Wilson, loudly decamped from Washington, D.C. and moved to New Mexico’s version of Marin County, California: Santa Fe in 2007. They remained there quietly until 2019 when Ms. Plame announced that she was running for Congress as a Democrat in northern New Mexico. In September her campaign produced a catchy video that received national attention. The WaPo was less enthusiastic giving the ad three Pinocchios.

The only major controversy of her campaign has  involved a tweet that she made in 2017, long before she announced her run for Congress, linking to an article entitled America’s Jews are Driving America’s Wars. She apologized numerous times for the tweet and announced in January of this year that she was joining a temple in Santa Fe. Several days after the announcement a congregant of the temple said that Ms. Plame was not a member, as she had claimed.