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Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden’s Government Funds Anti-Semitism by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

By on August 10th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12814/sweden-antisemitism

The municipality of Malmö uses taxpayers’ money to support “Group 194,” an organization that posts anti-Semitic images on its Facebook page — such as a defamatory cartoon portraying a Jew drinking blood and eating a child.

In Sweden, imported Middle Eastern anti-Semitism is funded by taxpayer money, so when scandals occur, they are often addressed by the same people who have participated in spreading its message.

No effective actions are currently being taken against the spread of anti-Semitism in Sweden.

Just as European anti-Semitism was defeated by rejecting and condemning the ideology after World War II and isolating its proponents, so must Sweden’s “new” anti-Semitism be defeated by isolating its advocates and marginalizing all organizations spreading its ideas. This means that all direct and indirect government funding of these organizations has to end. As long as this does not happen, Jews in Sweden will continue living in fear and insecurity.

As major Swedish cities such as Malmö have become known as places where Jews are threatened, anti-Semitism in Sweden has attracted international attention. Does Sweden, however, really deserve this bad reputation or is there some misunderstanding?

In December 2017, when US President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, demonstrations broke out in Malmö. Protesters, often people with an Arab background, shouted, “We want our freedom back and we’re going to shoot the Jews”, and a chapel at the Jewish cemetery was attacked with firebombs. In Gothenburg, the city’s synagogue was also attacked with firebombs.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Will Jim Jordan Bring Trump-Style Attitude to Speakership? By Julie Kelly

By on August 10th, 2018

During a campaign rally in suburban Columbus last Saturday, President Trump invited Rep. Jim Jordan to the stage. “How great is he?” Trump asked the crowd about the Ohio native. The packed school auditorium soon filled with chants, “Speaker of the House! Speaker of the House!”

Trump continued: “What a brave, tough cookie. I don’t want to wrestle him, he’s tough. I think he’s like 128 and one,” Trump said, referring to Jordan’s championship high school wrestling career. But the president—not a stickler for accuracy—was off by a bit. Jordan wrestling record was 150-1.

Jordan took the stage, got a bear hug from the president, and ticked off a long list of Trump’s achievements in office. “Think about this, in 18 months, regulations reduced, taxes lowered, Gorsuch on the court, the economy growing at a record rate, unemployment at its lowest rate in 20 years, Kavanaugh’s on deck on the court, we’re out of that crazy Iran deal, the embassy has gone to Jerusalem, and the hostages have been returned from North Korea.”

Will this mutual admiration society between the president and the congressman help boost Jordan’s chances to become the next speaker of the House?

In a letter to his Republican colleagues last month, Jordan announced he will run to replace outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan if Republicans maintain control of the House after the midterm elections. Jordan will face off against Ryan’s preferred successor, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and possibly Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).

The feisty six-term congressman from central Ohio won’t go down without a fight. (His district is adjacent to the district where Republican Troy Balderson narrowly won a special election on Tuesday.) Similar to the president, Jordan is not afraid to speak bluntly or to offend the self-righteous sensibilities of the ruling class. Not only is the 54-year-old father of four a former state wrestling champion and college coach, he goes bare-knuckles against some of the most powerful interests in Washington.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

They Won’t Sink Zinke Environmentalists will find the interior secretary a harder target than Pruitt.By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on August 10th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-wont-sink-zinke-1533855298

To serve in the Trump administration is to deserve hazard pay, and lately that’s especially true of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

The green-industrial complex claimed Scott Pruitt’s scalp last month, ginning up a storm of ethics allegations that forced his resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now it has shifted focus to Mr. Zinke. But it’s hitting walls. Mr. Zinke isn’t giving his detractors easy opportunities. He has aides who know and follow the rules, and backing in the White House and in Congress.

Not that the incoming is pleasant. Few movements are better funded and coordinated or more messianic than the environmental left. They despise a Trump team that is correcting decades of backward energy and environmental schemes and are working furiously to bring down the reformers. Unlike green groups of 20 years ago, which focused on policy, today’s effort is focused almost entirely on personal destruction.

Mr. Zinke’s antagonists include the usual big-dollar organizations, like the Natural Resources Defense Council, many of which are now staffed or run by former Obama officials; self-described watchdog groups like the Western Values Project, that are closely tied to major environmental and labor groups; and congressional allies such as Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, who call daily for investigations. The coalition produces an assembly line of allegations, which the mainstream media dutifully pass along.
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Their problem is that they can’t find any real stink with Mr. Zinke. Mr. Pruitt was hit with an array of allegations, many nonsensical, but what tipped the scale against him were those in which he seemed to be using his position for gain or wasting taxpayer dollars. The critics have tried desperately to do the same to Mr. Zinke, with no luck.

One claim was that he secretly arranged a Puerto Rico contract for an energy firm from Whitefish, Mont., his hometown. The Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General tells me it never opened an investigation, and even Democrats have dropped it in embarrassment.

Mr. Zinke’s foes more recently claimed he has misused his office to promote a land development in Whitefish. But the story involves a foundation from which Mr. Zinke resigned upon becoming secretary, and a project that has been on the table for ages.

The groups have also tried to go after him on spending, including three chartered flights. But the inspector general found Mr. Zinke had followed “relevant law, policy, rules and regulations.” It also found all the trips were “reasonable,” save one—and Mr. Zinke’s staff wasn’t to blame since it received prior approval from ethics officials for every flight. Then there has been the attempt to claim he violated the Hatch Act by attending political events while out on official duties. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (a permanent government body that monitors federal personnel issues) in May said Mr. Zinke had done everything legally. Every “scandal” is of this type; lots of smoke, but never any fire. CONTINUE AT SITE

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The West’s Defeat – By Its Own Hand How Jihadist ideology is gaining power through the back door — and with our blessing. Anne Marie Waters

By on August 10th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270983/wests-defeat-its-own-hand-anne-marie-waters

Last week I read a shocking statistic. It is not a surprising statistic, but a shocking one nonetheless. Figures now reveal that a staggering 40% of people under age five in Germany come from a migrant background. That is to say, almost half of young children in Germany are not ethnically German.

Some would argue that this doesn’t matter a great deal, people are people, and Germany will still be Germany. But even if we try to persuade ourselves that this is the case, deep down we all know it is not. Germany was German because of the German people. Now, in a couple of generations, it will be something else: the place formerly known as Germany. This will particularly be the case if, as I suspect is likely to be the case, many (if not most) of those under fives come from an Islamic background. That will change the face of Germany forever. Indeed it is already doing so.

In my book, Beyond Terror – Islam’s Slow Erosion of Western Democracy – I argue that it is immigration from Muslim societies that will defeat Western civilization. Terrorism will not. The West will not lose a military war against the Islamists, it only needs to lose the demographic war, and the culture war, and that has already been lost.

The UK, for example, has for decades seen massive immigration from the Muslim world, and this has changed the country beyond recognition. Female genital mutilation is now so widespread in the UK that specialist (taxpayer-funded) clinics have been established across the country to deal with the medical aftermath of this crime. There are eight such clinics in London alone, and a new one opened last year in Wales (attended by a Labour politician, who tweeted how pleased she was to have an FGM clinic in her area). While we build shiny new clini

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Antifa, the Real Fascists The assault on Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens is just the beginning. Matthew Vadum

By on August 10th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270986/antifa-real-fascists-matthew-vadum

Foul-mouthed Antifa demonstrators went on a rampage August 6 as they assaulted two high-profile conservative activists at a downtown Philadelphia restaurant for being conservatives and supporters of President Trump.

The attack came the day after Antifa smashed the windows at a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office in Berkeley, Calif., during a leftist counter-protest of a “No to Marxism” rally. Twenty people were arrested. “Besides the damage to the Marine Corps post, Berkeley police also said ‘an extremist element among a large group’ damaged 21 city vehicles, setting one on fire, and slashed their tires,” Fox News reported.

The incident in Pennsylvania’s biggest city also came after the leftist mayor of Portland, Ore., Ted Wheeler (D), allowed anarchy to break out in his city, instead of cracking down on Antifa troublemaking. For 38 days Wheeler, who is also police commissioner, allowed hundreds of his Antifa allies to unlawfully occupy public property at an Occupy ICE protest site that eventually became a biohazard. “I do not want the @PortlandPolice to be engaged or sucked into a conflict, particularly from a federal agency that I believe is on the wrong track,” he tweeted. “If [ICE is] looking for a bailout from this mayor, they are looking in the wrong place.”

The attack in Philadelphia and other recent violent actions by Antifa are yet another reminder that the totalitarianism-loving domestic terrorists of Antifa, who call themselves anti-fascist activists, are the real fascists in today’s America because, among other things, they use violent tactics pioneered by the real-live fascist storm-troopers of Weimar Germany, the Sturmabteilung (SA). These Antifa goons opposed the Nazis but eagerly copied their tactics, using their fists to shut down political opponents and break up meetings and rallies. Some Antifa today even dress like Nazis, wearing black and red, the anarchist colors which traditionally have also been used by Nazis.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Tax Wisdom The economics profession starts to give him his due. James Freeman

By on August 9th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-tax-wisdom-1533850010

Imagine how high the U.S. economy can soar if President Trump resolves the arguments he started with America’s trading partners. Already the conventional wisdom on the tax law he signed in December is moving in his direction. Whereas prior to the law critics suggested it would provide a modest temporary boost, there’s now an emerging consensus that the law may pull so much investment into the United States that it could impoverish governments across the globe.

Nothing says establishment consensus like the International Monetary Fund. The Journal reports on the findings of a new IMF working paper forecasting the results of the suddenly more competitive United States:

Companies will be more likely to put profits and real investment in the U.S. than they were before the U.S. lowered its corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, according to the paper. That will leave fewer corporate profits for other countries to tax.

This obviously suggests that foreign governments will be collecting less revenue from U.S. firms. Is Mr. Trump really going to drain swamps all around the planet? While that may be rather an appealing thought, the good news is that even voracious governments will be more likely to see the benefits of maintaining a competitive tax system. This will allow them to keep businesses in their jurisdictions, still generating government revenue.

The Journal notes that “other countries are likely to chase the U.S. by lowering their corporate tax rates, too, creating the potential for what critics have called a race to the bottom.”

For a long time the U.S. refused to join this race. The IMF paper notes that prior to the new law, the U.S. corporate income tax rate was the highest in the OECD “with no significant change over 30 years.” The IMF economists add: “Compounded by investor-level taxation of dividends and capital gains, high tax rates discouraged equity investment in the corporate sector while creating a marginal subsidy for debt finance.”

Now we’re competing in a race that can have many winners. Just ask Ireland and the countries of Scandinavia, which enjoy low tax rates on corporate income. And there can be many more winners as pro-growth policies catch on. The Journal notes, “When one country cuts tax rates, usually other countries follow,” said Alexander Klemm, deputy division chief of the IMF’s tax policy division and one of the paper’s authors.”

America is no longer a follower. Separately the Journal reports that economists are now raising their expectations for the U.S.:

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ Is The Book About Racism That America Needs Sowell’s calm and calculated look at racial disparity in America is a stunning work of brevity and reason. David Marcus

By on August 9th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/08/09/thomas-sowells-discrimination-disparities-book-racism-america-needs/

Sometimes the slim volumes are the most deadly. Such is the case with Thomas Sowell’s “Discrimination and Disparities,” which in fewer than 200 pages lays bare the grave faults and assumptions of people on both sides of the political divide about outcomes for racial groups. In a long, storied career, Sowell has been a beacon of reason and evidence-based thinking. In this book, he makes the fruits of his labors accessible to almost anyone. Anyone who wishes to think, speak, or write on race in America would be remiss in not reading it.

Sowell takes aim at two typical explanations for differences in the success of racial groups. One, most associated with the Left, is that discrimination by racial groups in power is the primary force creating bad outcomes for the groups out of power. The other, most associated with the Right, is that racial groups have inherent abilities or disabilities based on factors such as IQ distribution that lead to unequal outcomes.

Not only does Sowell argue that neither of these explanations is sufficient, he also effectively shows that the truth does not lie in some simple combination of the two. In fact, the issue is vastly more complicated than merely finding which balance between these two competing ideas best tells us the truth about why outcomes are what they are.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Islamic Extremist Trained Children to Commit School Shootings at New Mexico Compound By Jack Crowe

By on August 9th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/islamic-extremist-trained-children-to-commit-school-shootings/

An Islamic extremist was training as many as eleven children to commit school shootings at a dilapidated compound in New Mexico, according to court documents filed by government prosecutors Wednesday.

Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, the son of a suspected co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, was training the children to use assault rifles before his compound was raided by authorities on Friday, CBS News reports.

“He poses a great danger to the children found on the property as well as a threat to the community as a whole due to the presence of firearms and his intent to use these firearms in a violent and illegal manner,” prosecutor Timothy Hasson wrote in justifying his request that Wahhaj be held with out bail ahead of his trial. A judge complied with the request, though prosecutors did not mention the school shooting plot in court; that information was provided in court filings by one of the victimized children’s foster mothers.

The adults present at the compound were “considered extremist of the Muslim belief,” according to Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe.

Wahhaj’s public defender disputed the school shooting claim, arguing it was based on little information.

39-year-old Wahhaj is additionally accused of kidnapping his 4-year-old son from his mother in Georgia. Authorities are still unaware whether unidentified human remains found on Wahhaj’s property may be the missing boy.

In his arrest warrant, authorities allege Wahhaj told the boy’s mother he intended to perform an exorcism on the boy and never returned after asking to take him to a park.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academia Doesn’t Get to Define ‘Racism’ for the Rest of Us By Robert VerBruggen

By on August 9th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/racism-debate-sarah-jeong-academia-cannot-define-words/

The latest controversy stems from a deep confusion about how language works.

A “descriptivist” is someone who studies how language is used. A “prescriptivist” is someone who tells other people how to use language correctly. And while these are often framed as opposing camps, they need not be: A thoughtful descriptivist realizes that strongly established usage patterns should generally be treated as rules by someone who wants to communicate effectively; a thoughtful prescriptivist realizes that the rules emerge from constantly evolving usage patterns.

There’s a certain strain of prescriptivism, though, that merely seeks to impose rules on other people’s language, often on nothing more than one’s own say-so. Overwhelmingly, these folks are harmless-if-annoying self-appointed “sticklers” who insist, for example, that you must not split infinitives or start sentences with conjunctions. But ill-founded prescriptivism also rears its head with political terms, and we’ve been seeing a bit of that lately from the woke left.

Some academics who study racial matters use the word “racism” to mean not “dislike of people on the basis of race,” which is how most people use it, but rather something like “prejudice plus power” or what is more clearly called “institutional” or “systemic” racism — meaning, conveniently, that members of minority groups by definition cannot be racist. And as Scott Alexander noted at Slate Star Codex back in 2014, parts of the Left are no longer willing to admit that this is a departure from standard usage by saying something along the lines of, “I suppose a group of black people chasing a white kid down the street waving knives and yelling ‘KILL WHITEY’ qualifies by most people’s definition, but I prefer to idiosyncratically define it my own way, so just remember that when you’re reading stuff I write.”

Many simply point to academic definitions, as though academia had the power to redefine words for the rest of society; that, of course, is not how language works.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Betsy DeVos’s Loan-Forgiveness Rule Gets Slimed by the College Cartel By Frederick M. Hess & Cody Christensen

By on August 9th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/betsy-devoss-loan-forgiveness-rule-slimed-by-college-cartel/

The new standard is clearly better for colleges, taxpayers, and students who are willing to repay their debts.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has issued new guidelines on federal student-loan forgiveness in an attempt to more sensibly balance the rights of borrowers and taxpayers. Predictably, the higher-education cartel and its media allies were aghast. The New York Times headlined its story “DeVos Proposes to Curtail Debt Relief for Defrauded Students.” Other headlines included “Betsy DeVos’ Message to Students: You Have the Right to Be Ripped Off” and “Betsy DeVos’ New Proposal Aligns Her With For-Profit Colleges Over Debt-Saddled Students.” The Center for Responsible Lending’s Ashley Harrington huffed that the proposal was “a roadmap for institutions seeking to abuse students.”

What made this so bizarre, even by the standards of the mud-slinging higher-education debate, is that it’s unclear whether all students seeking loan forgiveness have actually been defrauded. Indeed, the impetus for DeVos’s action was the likelihood that the previous rules, put forward under President Obama, were going to put taxpayers on the hook for billions to bail out students who hadn’t been victimized.

Certainly, one can quibble about the particulars of the new rule — including an unfortunate and arbitrary provision stipulating that only borrowers who enter into default can apply for borrower defense. But to allege, for example, that DeVos is curtailing “Debt Relief for Defrauded Students” is to beg the key question.

The new guidance concerns a provision of the federal student-loan program known as “Borrower Defense to Repayment.” This is a mechanism for forgiving the loans of students who attend colleges that engage in fraud, such as by misrepresenting program information or future employment and earnings. So far, so good.

The problem is that the Obama administration, as part of its larger crusade against for-profit colleges, issued guidance that created an astonishingly far-reaching definition of fraud — opening the floodgates for across-the-board loan discharges, at taxpayer expense, if “public interest” minions could show merely that colleges made modest, inadvertent mistakes in marketing or advertisements.

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