ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gloria Steinem: The Patriarchy Caused Climate Change By Forcing Women to Have Kids By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem recently suggested that the “patriarchy” is responsible for climate change, by suppressing abortion and forcing women to have children.

“Listen, what causes climate deprivation is population,” Steinem told Refinery29 in an interview last week. “If we had not been systematically forcing women to have children they don’t want or can’t care for over the 500 years of patriarchy, we wouldn’t have the climate problems that we have. That’s the fundamental cause of climate change.”

Steinem’s comments reveal the classic liberal Malthusian lie — that increasing population will doom humanity. Thomas Malthus warned that population grows faster than the food supply, and that overpopulation will be the worst issue humans face. But human ingenuity launched multiple revolutions in food production, and made the modern world’s record population sustainable.

Even so, liberals cannot accept that the market solved this fundamental problem, and they constantly warn about overpopulation, despite evidence that underpopulation — especially in developed countries, but birth rates are falling even in undeveloped countries — is a bigger threat, as people age with fewer young people to replace them. Birth control and abortion are hailed as the solution to overpopulation, even as birth rates across the world are falling.

There is (or at least should be) a robust debate about whether or not humans are causing catastrophic climate change. Climate prediction models have failed time and time again, and the Democrats’ push to silence climate “denial” suggests that the alarmists are afraid of real challenge and debate. When climatologists are choosing “career suicide” to keep their “scientific integrity,” there’s clearly a problem.

Finally, Steinem’s tenuous claim is the worst justification for abortion imaginable. She essentially defended killing babies on the questionable premise that a smaller population will avoid an undefined impending future catastrophe. Imagine someone defending infanticide on this basis, or forced sterilization. Add a little racism, and voila! There are the arguments of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Menendez: Disclosing Corporate Political Spending Would Help Shareholders By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

“Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance political agendas.”

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said the disclosure of corporate political spending would have “obvious value” for America’s democracy.

“It adds transparency – cleans up campaign finance and it keeps the election process fair and free of super-funded outside influences here in the United States or from elsewhere. But even setting aside the benefits to democracy, the case for disclosure is clear and convincing, purely as a matter of corporate governance and investor protection,” Menendez said on a conference call briefing last week that focused on attempts to require the “largest mutual fund companies” to disclose political spending records.

“This information is material to how shareholders decide where to invest their money and how to vote in corporate elections. As it currently stands, corporations can funnel shareholders’ money to organizations that do not have to disclose their political contributions, and investors have no way of knowing whether executives are spending their money on political causes that may be directly adverse to the shareholders’ interests,” he said. “Corporate insiders should not be able to use investor money as a piggybank to advance their personal political agendas without any oversight from shareholders.”

For the last six years, Menendez said he’s been “pushing” the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin working on a rule to require public companies to disclose all of their political spending to shareholders.

“Some corporations have stridently fought this initiative. They’ve sounded the alarm bell and called upon their allies in Congress to fight common sense disclosure,” he said.

Menendez said new SEC Chairman Jay Clayton has not provided any “assurances” that he would take public support for a disclosure rule seriously. Menendez voted against Clayton’s confirmation.

“He wouldn’t commit to holding an innocuous public roundtable on the issue. He wouldn’t comment on whether he believes this disclosure is material to shareholders and I find that to be entirely inadequate when so many investors, both retail and institutional, are demanding this information,” he said. “Investors can’t rely on the shareholders’ proposal process alone to affect corporate change on this issue.”

Menendez, a member of the Senate Finance and Banking Committees, said the nation needs an SEC that will truly “stand up for investors and corporate governance principles and finally require this disclosure.”

“At the end of the day, those that choose not to support such a disclosure are working to silence the voices of hardworking Americans in favor of amplifying the speech and magnifying the influence of corporations in our politics, and that just simply can’t be the case,” he said.

Menendez said the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision “opened the floodgates” for unlimited, unchecked and “often undisclosed” corporate spending on campaign advertisements, federal and state advocacy efforts and other political communication methods. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Young Lochinvar, asylum seeker : Roger Franklin

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

As university students and recent graduates protest the abhorrent notion of contributing a little more and a little sooner to the cost of their educations, S.L. writes to update fellow Quadrant readers on one of the things the taxpayer dollar is buying. The memo below went out this week to University of Technology Sydney students.

…I’m writing to invite you to contribute to the Empathy Poems, a new project in support of the asylum seeker and refugee crisis that affects Australia and its humanitarian responsibilities, as well as other parts of the world.

The idea is simple: choose a poem that you love — it might be a classic, a childhood favourite, or by a contemporary poet — and rewrite it using the themes of refuge, dispossession, and seeking asylum. That poem and its original (or a link to it) will be included in the Empathy Poems website, to raise awareness and foster understanding amongst readers.

The idea for this project came from Ian Syson’s moving poem ‘Beach Collection’, inspired by Kenneth Slessor’s famous ‘Beach Burial’. You don’t need to be a poet, simply someone who supports this idea. Other poems of inspiration so far have included ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’, Primo Levi’s ‘If This is a Man’, a Shakespeare sonnet, and Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’…..

…. I look forward to hearing from you and reading your poem!

best wishes,
Debra Adelaide

While it is true that the literary height achieved by The Owl and the Pussycat is a daunting prospect to emulate, empathetically or otherwise, let it not be said that supporters of open-border immigration policies are the only folk capable of going from bad to verse.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Indonesia gives men 85 lashes for homosexual acts…and no wedding cake By Ed Straker

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

Two men in Indonesia caught “in the act” were sentenced to 85 lashes by a sharia law court.

Two men accused of having sex with each other were each sentenced on Wednesday to 85 lashes in public, the first case of people being punished for homosexuality in the Indonesian province of Aceh under a strict version of Shariah law. News reports said that vigilantes had caught the two men naked in bed, and that the two had pleaded not to be reported to the Shariah police.

You have to wonder how they were caught. Do the police have roving vans equipped with “gaydar” that picked them up on sensor sweeps? Or did the police have a man “on the inside”?

Homosexuality has been illegal in the highly conservative province since 2014, but this is the first time citizens have been punished for it. The maximum sentence for the crime is 100 lashes, but the court sentenced the men to 85 each after they apologized for their actions.

See, sharia law has plea bargaining, just like American law!

Although the timing of the sentencing appears to be a coincidence, Wednesday is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

What big words! “Transphobia” sounds like fear of vampires or people from Transylvania, and “biphobia” sounds like a fear of bipeds. But missing from the list is Islamophobia. Shouldn’t gays have been fighting that as well? The two whipped men certainly must have been!

According to an annual report on state-sponsored homophobia, compiled by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, homosexuality is effectively a crime in 72 countries.

Intersex? I can’t keep up! This article needs subtitles!

In three – Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – it is codified as a crime punishable by death, though executions are rare. In five other countries – Afghanistan, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – a death penalty for homosexuality is codified under Shariah law, but it has not been put into practice.

It’s ironic that the left is more incensed about the refusal of Christian bakers to bake a cake for two men claiming to marry each other than about the whipping and execution of gays in Islamic countries. I guess the left has more tolerance for some kinds of intolerance.

What we are talking about here is the difference between tolerance and acceptance. No Christian bakers want to see people whipped. They tolerate people who are attracted to members of the same sex. They would be happy to sell cookies to Anderson Cooper or Shepard Smith. But what they don’t want to do is be forced to approve of homosexual behavior, in this case by making a cake. That distinction is what is lost on the left. The left is more outraged by Americans’ lack of approval for homosexual behavior than it is by Islam’s lack of tolerance for those who engage in it. I wonder why.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The President Goes to Israel By Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

It is worth getting out of the weeds of Washington on occasion and looking at the big picture. This is one of those occasions.

President Trump is going to Israel, visiting the one stable, prosperous, multiethnic, multicultural, democratic ally the United States has in a region marked by war, repression, and corruption. When he visits the Western Wall, he will be the first sitting president to do so — Barack Obama came as a candidate, George W. Bush as governor of Texas, George H.W. Bush as vice president, and Bill Clinton both before and after his presidency.

The fact that he will visit during the week of the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem is a potent symbol of American support for Israel’s determination to keep the city open to all religious faiths – and specifically open to Jewish worship. There is no forgetting that only for the past 50 years, only under Israeli control, have Jews been able to study, visit, and pray at Judaism’s holiest sites. During Jordanian occupation of the eastern side of the city, and for the 500 years of Ottoman rule before that, Jews were restricted or banned entirely from their heritage.

The President’s visit to the holiest site in the Jewish world — accessible to Jews for less than his lifetime – is an exclamation point.

The reunification of Jerusalem was, of course, accomplished in the context of the Six-Day War, and the presidential visit comes in that context as well. The war was waged by Arab States unreconciled to Jewish sovereignty in any part of the historic Jewish homeland. Visiting on the eve of the commemoration of Israel’s defense of its place and defense of its rights, Mr. Trump has chosen a time ripe with symbolism to assert America’s longstanding — and newly recovered — shoulder-to-shoulder defense of Israel’s legitimacy and right to sovereign security.

But the visit is not only about symbols; certainly security is never only about symbols.

Mr. Trump was preceded in Israel by Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford. Their visits were aimed at deepening U.S.-Israeli security cooperation and reversing the previous administration’s plan to enhance the role of Iran in the region and decrease American influence. Mr. Trump can be expected to praise the first and find additional ways to work with Israel to constrain Iran’s freedom of action in both missile and nuclear development, and in military activity in Syria, Yemen and the Persian Gulf.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s a Coup! By Shari Goodman

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

During the last eight years, the far left and their cohorts in the Democratic Party were successfully on their way to transforming our Constitutional Republic from a country of laws into a country of men. They arrogantly believed the last election was theirs to be had with Hillary Clinton at the helm to continue Obama’s legacy of “leading from behind.” Their mission is the “transformation of our free market, our sovereignty, and our culture to a Socialist/Communist New World Order. They didn’t count on billionaire Donald Trump, who had never before held office, to throw a wrench into their radical agenda by injecting himself into our body politic, and in return they are waging a relentless coup to have him removed from office.

They have termed this coup “The Resistance” and with the aid of our activist judicial system, educational institutions, Hollywood, the press, and social media; they are leading a full blown war against President Trump on various fronts. With the aid of the propaganda media establishment, akin to the old Soviet Union’s Pravda, they proudly obstruct President Trump’s every move. Their aim is impeachment, but to impeach they need to have grounds; thus, they have concocted a conspiracy theory of Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians without a shred of evidence to support that theory.

Not a day goes by without an accusation by Democrats in search of a crime. When President Trump used an Executive Order to initiate his travel ban from countries known to be hotbeds of Islamic terrorism, the Left used the courts to stop his ban from taking effect. Although President Trump had the statutory authority to execute the ban pursuant to section 1182(f) and 1185 (a) of Title 8, they succeeded in halting the ban by filing their lawsuits in Federal District Court within the far left 9th Circuit (the most overturned court in the country), dominated by Clinton and Obama appointed judges, well known for its judicial activism and disregard of Constitutional principles. Consequently, Muslim refugees who cannot be vetted for lack of documentation continue to stream onto our shores and increase the risk of terror attacks on the mainland.

Currently the left is up in arms over the firing of former FBI Director, James Comey. The ACLU recently announced they will lead an investigation into the firing; yet not a word was heard from the ACLU when Bill Clinton fired FBI Director, William Sessions in 1993. It was only a few months ago when the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid called for Comey’s resignation. Socialist Maxine Waters from the left leaning state of California stated just a few days ago ” I don’t support Trump firing Comey, I would support Hillary Clinton firing Comey.” What we are witnessing is a schizophrenic narrative and a Democratic Party meltdown.

And if that isn’t enough, our college campuses are actively silencing those who support President Trump with physical assaults, threats, and intimidation. Institutions of learning should provide an environment for the free exchange of ideas, but instead, young Conservatives are threatened with poor grades should they express support for President Trump and his conservative agenda. There is no diversity of thought on today’s college campuses. It is fascism and group think that has taken root and those who differ are singled out as outcasts to be ridiculed and shunned at best or physically and verbally assaulted at worst.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sudan’s President to Attend Summit With Trump, Khartoum Officials Say Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other war crimes By Nicholas Bariyo in Kampala, Uganda, and Margherita Stancati in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

Sudanese officials said President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other war crimes, will participate in a summit of Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia that is to be attended by President Donald Trump.

A foreign ministry official in the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Wednesday said Mr. Bashir would attend the Riyadh summit, convened by Saudi Arabia’s King Salman to mark Mr. Trump’s two-day visit to the kingdom, which starts on Saturday and inaugurates his first overseas trip as U.S. president.

The U.S. isn’t a member of the ICC, but in response to reports that Mr. Bashir will attend the summit, the State Department voiced its opposition.

“The United States has made its position with respect to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s travel clear. We oppose invitations, facilitation, or support for travel by any person subject to outstanding ICC arrest warrants, including President Bashir,” a department official said in Washington.

Mr. Bashir’s attendance at the summit could pose a diplomatic challenge for Mr. Trump, whose visit to Saudi Arabia is aimed at reassuring America’s most important ally in the Arab world and sending a conciliatory message to Muslims in Middle East and beyond. After visiting Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump is to travel to Israel, the Vatican and Brussels.

Rabie Abdelaty, a top official in Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, said Mr. Bashir would arrive on Saturday in the Saudi capital, adding that it wasn’t clear whether he would meet Mr. Trump.

“The final program isn’t yet out, and arrangements are still under way, but President Bashir would welcome such a meeting,” Mr. Abdelaty said.

In Saudi Arabia, the status of Mr. Bashir’s attendance at the summit was unclear.

An official said Sudan was among the countries invited to attend the gathering but didn’t say whether Mr. Bashir would represent Khartoum.

So far, Mr. Bashir hasn’t been included on the official list of invited officials. The kingdom began sending invitations to Muslim leaders last week and has been announcing the names of likely attendees in the official Saudi Press Agency.

Mr. Bashir, who has ruled Sudan since 1989, is the first person to be charged by the ICC for the crime of genocide in connection with his government’s efforts from 2003 to 2008 to put down an insurgency in the southwestern region of Darfur.

In addition to three counts of genocide, Mr. Bashir also faces five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israeli Source Seen as Key to Countering Islamic State Threat U.S. officials diverge over extent of damage from Trump’s conversation with Russians By Shane Harris

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

WASHINGTON—The classified information that President Donald Trump shared with Russian officials last week came from an Israeli source described by multiple U.S. officials as the most valuable source of information on external plotting by Islamic State.

These officials, who are privy to intelligence about the terrorist group’s efforts, said the source of information was particularly valuable for tracking Islamic State’s attempts to place explosive devices on commercial airplanes.

However, the officials disagree over how much damage Mr. Trump may have caused to counterterrorism efforts by discussing information gleaned from Israel with the Russians during an Oval Office meeting last week.

One official said now that the Russians are aware of the source, there is greater risk the source could be compromised in some way. That makes it less likely that the intelligence community will trust future information, the official said.

But another official doubted that the Russians would be able to identify the nature of the source based on Mr. Trump’s statements, though Moscow might learn more about where in Syria the intelligence was coming from.

While not the only source of information on the threat to airlines, it was considered the most important, the officials said. Based on cumulative intelligence, the U.S. has barred carry-on laptop computers and other consumer electronic equipment from 10 airports in the Middle East and is considering expanding the ban.

To avoid further damage, the U.S. officials declined to specify whether the source of information is an individual or part of a technological system. But their unanimous agreement on the importance of the source to one of Washington’s top national security objectives—countering international plots by Islamic State—underscores the gravity of the Oval Office conversation and the potential repercussions for Mr. Trump of sharing information that was supposed to be restricted to the U.S. and Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Release the Comey Tapes Why didn’t the former FBI director resign in February?

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

The leak Tuesday of James Comey’s notes of a February conversation with Donald Trump is a classic of the former FBI director’s operating method that puts the Trump Presidency in peril and raises serious ethical questions about Mr. Comey’s behavior. Let’s step back from the immediate furor and examine the legal and political merits.

According to Mr. Comey’s memo to himself, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey in a one-on-one Oval Office meeting to “let this go,” referring to any investigation of former National Security AdviserMichael Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” says the memo, parts of which were read to the New York Times by a Comey associate. “He is a good guy.”

The White House issued a statement denying Mr. Comey’s account of the meeting, adding that “the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn.” Mr. Trump’s many enemies are nonetheless calling this obstruction of justice, and perhaps grounds for impeachment.

***

The first question is how this squares with Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s testimony last week that there has been no attempt to interfere with the FBI’s Russia probe. The Times reports that Mr. Comey spread word among his colleagues of his Trump conversation, and Mr. McCabe is a Comey loyalist. Perhaps a Flynn criminal probe is separate from the Russia-Trump investigation, but it isn’t clear what Mr. Trump knew in February.

The more important issue is why Mr. Comey failed to inform senior Justice officials and resign immediately after the conversation. If he really thought Mr. Trump was attempting to obstruct justice, the director knows he had a legal obligation to report it immediately. He certainly had a moral duty to resign and go public with his reasons.

Yet the Times reports that Mr. Comey merely wrote the notes to himself and informed a few others. One explanation is that perhaps Mr. Comey didn’t view Mr. Trump’s comments as amounting to obstruction.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Former Bush AG On Comey’s 2007 Brush With Scandal: ‘Jim’s Loyalty Was More To Chuck Schumer’ : Sean Davis

Posted By on May 18th, 2017

This isn’t the first time James Comey placed himself at the center of a partisan attempt to oust a top Republican. He did the same thing in 2007.

The revelation by fired former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey’s close friends that he has kept meticulous records detailing President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to improperly influence an ongoing FBI investigation has sent Washington into a tailspin. Did Trump really threaten a sitting FBI director in a private meeting? Did the former FBI director accurately record what happened? Could this be the beginning of the end of Trump?

At the moment, untangling fact from fiction is difficult, given that the event Comey allegedly describes took place only between Comey and the president. With no ability at this time to independently verify either man’s account, we are instead left with a he-said/he-said explanation of events, which means the credibility of the two men involved becomes the prime determinant of one’s view of the situation.

The narrative from the Acela corridor media establishment is that Trump is a known liar and Comey is a honest public servant above reproach, so clearly Comey’s word must be believed, the total absence of any other corroborating evidence notwithstanding. An examination of Comey’s history as the consummate Beltway operator, however, raises questions about whether the towering former U.S. attorney, deputy attorney general, and FBI director is as open and forthright as his allies would have you believe.

In fact, the current episode is not the first time Comey and his associates plotted to oust a sitting Republican official through highly orchestrated political theater and carefully crafted narratives in which Comey is the courageous hero bravely fighting to preserve the rule of law. To understand how Comey came to be FBI director in the first place, and how he operates in the political arena, it is important to review the last scandal in which Comey had a front-row seat: the 2007 U.S. attorney firings and the fight over the 2004 reauthorization of Stellar Wind, a mass National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program designed to mitigate terrorist threats in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The pivotal scene in the Comey-crafted narrative, a drama that made Comey famous and likely paved the road to his 2013 appointment by President Barack Obama to run the FBI, occurred in a Beltway hospital room in early 2004. In Comey’s view, Comey was the last honest man in Washington, the only person standing between a White House that rejected any restraints on its power, and the rule of law protecting Americans from illegal mass surveillance.

A former White House counsel and attorney general with extensive first-hand experience dealing with Comey, however, paints a very different picture of what happened in that hospital room, and disputes numerous key details. In this account, Comey’s actions showcase a duplicitous, secretive schemer whose true loyalties were not to the officials to whom he reported, but to partisan Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). To fully understand and appreciate Jim Comey’s approach to politics, the writings and testimony of Alberto Gonzales, who served as both White House counsel and attorney general during the events in question and is intimately aware of Comey’s history of political maneuvering, is absolutely essential.