EDUCATION Comments turned off

NO DIPLOMA? NO PROBLEM

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

FROM https://spectator.org By Scott McKay
Last week, Fox Business had an article about the increasing trend whereby major companies are no longer demanding college degrees for jobs which used to require them.

No diploma? No problem.

More and more companies are scrapping college degree requirements for jobs. They’re not saying you shouldn’t seek higher education, but not having a degree won’t be a barrier for you to work in certain jobs at their companies.

Some of the 15 big companies saying “no bachelor’s degree is fine” include Google, Nordstrom, Bank of America, Ernst & Young, IBM and Apple.

The changes are coming as job seekers, as well as high school graduates, consider whether college is worth the skyrocketing cost.

You’re going to hear more and more about this. It’s partially explained by the fact we’re in a serious labor shortage now, but not completely.

A significant piece to this trend is that colleges simply don’t prepare kids for employment the way they did 20 or 30 years ago. Talk to business owners, and they will pull their hair out over how often their straight-out-of-college new hires are completely lost when it comes to the culture of the workplace — the demands they make, the things they can’t handle, the inability to just shut up and do what they’re assigned, and so forth.

So more and more companies are going to attack that problem by identifying bright kids out of high school they can train, and then molding them to be the employees they want while paying them much less in initial salary than they’re currently paying to college graduates.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Politics and History An Affront to Justice Scott McKay

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://spectator.org/an-affront-to-justice/
The pathetic attacks on Brett Kavanaugh forever stain the Democrat Party.

On Thursday, word circulated that Senate Democrats — and in particular Sen. Dianne Feinstein — sent a “secret letter” to the FBI which contained an undisclosed allegation by an undisclosed person regarding an undisclosed offense supposedly committed by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

When Kavanaugh was in high school, apparently.

“This matter has been referred to the FBI for investigation,” Sen. Dick Durbin told BuzzFeed News when asked about the letter on Thursday.

In a statement later Thursday, Feinstein confirmed that she had referred the letter to “federal investigative authorities.”

“I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court,” Feinstein said. “That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”

The gist of this allegation appears to be that when Brett Kavanaugh was 17, he and a friend supposedly tried to trap a girl his age in a room at a party in an effort to initiate sexual contact of some kind. But so far as we can tell nothing sexual actually happened.

If this is all they have on Brett Kavanaugh, it’s time for the Democrats to admit they’re beaten on this nomination.

What an embarrassment to a major political party that 11th-hour surprises involving behavior as a high school student that was never brought to the attention of the police, and for which the statute of limitations would certainly have run even in the event a crime was committed, are where we are.

And for Dianne Feinstein to be trafficking in this, after surviving — thanks to the atrocious refusal of the legacy media to report it — a major scandal involving her employment of an aide who was a Chinese spy as a staffer for some 20 years is nothing short of shameful.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Hurricane Florence is not climate change or global warming. It’s just the weather.Roy W. Spencer

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/14/hurricane-florence-climate-change-global-warming-weather-greenhouse-flood-column/1289272002/
It’s likely due to natural weather patterns, not climate change as some have already said.

Even before Hurricane Florence made landfall somewhere near the border of North and South Carolina, predicted damage from potentially catastrophic flooding from the storm was already being blamed on global warming.

Writing for NBC News, Kristina Dahl contended, “With each new storm, we are forced to question whether this is our new, climate change-fueled reality, and to ask ourselves what we can do to minimize the toll from supercharged storms.”

The theory is that tropical cyclones have slowed down in their speed by about 10 percent over the past 70 years due to a retreat of the jet stream farther north, depriving storms of steering currents and making them stall and keep raining in one location. This is what happened with Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year.

But like most claims regarding global warming, the real effect is small, probably temporary, and most likely due to natural weather patterns. Any changes in hurricanes over 70 years, even if real, can easily be part of natural cycles — or incomplete data. Coastal lake sediments along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline from 1,000 to 2,000 years ago suggest more frequent and intense hurricanes than occur today. Why? No one knows.
Unusual things happen in nature sometimes

The Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 experienced a Category 3 or 4 storm, with up to a 20-foot storm surge. While such a storm does not happen in New England anymore, it happened again there in 1675, with elderly eyewitnesses comparing it to the 1635 storm.

POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Pick Socialist Compulsive Liar Accused of Anti-Semitism and Keith Hernandez Affair Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271326/new-york-voters-pick-socialist-compulsive-liar-daniel-greenfield

Cheer up, socialists.

Sure Cynthia Nixon, Zephyr Teachout, Jumaaaaanee Williams and Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili all badly flamed out in New York Dem primaries, but Julia Salazar won.

The Christian Jewish Colombian immigrant from Miami, who may or may not have graduated from Columbia, but has a huge trust fund and hates Jews, will go on to the New York State Senate.

The fake woman of color/trust fund baby fighting gentrification by appealing to gentrifiers roundly won the gentrifier vote against a man of color and will go on to the State Senate. And there’s no doubt that a compulsive liar who in her short life already managed to be accused of stealing wine during an affair with Keith Hernandez and to accuse a Netanyahu aide of sexual assault, will do the DSA proud.

Can a joint Cherokee/Colombian ticket with Elizabeth Warren be far behind?

I for one can’t wait until Julia Salazar has an affair with Governor Andrew Cuomo, gets accused of stealing wine by his wife, and then comes out as a Buddhist member of ISIS and joins the Nazi Party.

Forward comrades, you have nothing to lose but your minds. And the last of your credibility.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hurricanes, Death Tolls, and Trump By Julie Kelly

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/13/hurricanes

It’s Hurricane Katrina all over again.

Since the election of climate denier Donald Trump, the politicization of major hurricanes—along with a torrent of hysterical news coverage and blame-laying—is back en vogue. During last year’s unusually active hurricane season, the media, Democratic politicians and scientific activists claimed the devastating storms were Trump’s fault even though he had been president for less than a year; some suggested voters in the red states that helped elect Trump deserved to have their property destroyed or even to be killed. (The Washington Post editorial board already this week has blamed Trump for Hurricane Florence, currently churning in the Atlantic Ocean, headed for the Carolinas)

George W. Bush never politically recovered from the fallout of Katrina in 2005; the Left and NeverTrump are now following that successful playbook against the current Republican president.

That’s why the media and political class continue to rehash Hurricane Maria, which ravaged the island of Puerto Rico just over a year ago. They want this to be Trump’s Katrina. Amid the release of a scientifically questionable report last month that significantly raised the number of deaths attributable to Maria, Trump is again on the defensive about his culpability in the tragedy. In two tweets Thursday morning, Trump rejected the study’s estimate that 2,975 people died because of Maria-related causes, and that Democrats were using the dubious report to “in order to make me look as bad as possible.”

He’s right.

It’s been their strategy since Hurricane Maria started forming in the Atlantic last summer. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz spent days blasting the president in front of any news camera she could find after the Category 4 storm made landfall on September 20, 2017 as her poverty-stricken constituents struggled to recover. Cruz accused the president of an act of “genocide” for not responding quicker to Maria as supplies such as bottled water sat unused and undistributed in storage areas. Political pundits insisted Trump’s (allegedly) inadequate action was because he’s a bigot. (Cruz is now being condemned for politicizing the tragedy and is under investigation by the FBI for corruption.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barack Obama’s return just reminds us how he fueled the distrust that led to Donald Trump James Bovard,

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/09/13/barack-obama-fueled-government-distrust-elected-donald-trump-column/1260175002/
Who cares if Obama belatedly cheers for transparency and accountability? He should admit that he made the government more dangerous at home and abroad.

Former president Barack Obama is back. He kicked off a series of campaign appearances last week with a blistering attack on the Trump administration and said the Republican Party had “embraced a rising absolutism.” President Donald Trump deserves plenty of harsh criticism, but Obama’s indictment is akin to the kid who killed his parents and then sought mercy from the judge because he was an orphan.

Obama declared that“the biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism.” He also called for “a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government.” But his eight years as president fueled the distrust of Washingtonthat Obama now condemns.

How can Obama blame Americans for being cynical after repeating dozens of times his false promise that “If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor,” despite the dozens of mandates in Obamacare? How can he blame Americans for being cynical after his 2015 assertion that “it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book”? How can he castigate cynics after he campaigned in 2008 on a peace platform and then proceeded to bomb seven nations? How can he complain about distrust after he flip-flopped on illegal surveillance and unleashed the National Security Administration to target anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff”?
Obama created the problems he lists

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Grim Cost of the “Oslo War” by Guy Millière

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12999/oslo-war

Twenty-five years after Oslo, the balance sheet is more like what in 2003 the historian Efraim Karsh called the start of the “Oslo war”. In this war, he wrote, Israel had conceded from the beginning a major victory to its worst enemies by giving them a respectability they did not deserve, and thus placed itself in a losing position from which it never fully recovered.

“Contrary to Rabin’s slogan, one does not ‘make [peace] with very unsavory enemies’ but rather with former very unsavory enemies. That is, enemies that have been defeated… Wars end, the historical record shows, not through goodwill but through defeat. He who does not win loses. Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted its will to fight. Conversely, so long as both combatants still hope to achieve their war objectives, fighting either goes on or it potentially will resume.” — Daniel Pipes, Commentary, January 2017.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.” — PLO leader Zuheir Mohsen , interview in Trouw, March, 1977.

September 13, 1993. Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands on the lawn of the White House. They have just officially signed the document that was supposed to start Peace: the Oslo Accord. The cogs of this machine began their work.

Overnight, Yasser Arafat was no longer the leader of a defeated terrorist organization. He had suddenly become the President of a quasi-state; his Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been transformed into the “Palestinian Authority”.

Terror attacks against Israelis attacks during this “peace” grew even more bloody and more profuse, and soon were being perpetrated at a frantic pace. Some deliberately targeted children and youths, such as the Dolphinarium discotheque massacre and the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing. Arafat condemned none of them.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

State Department Warns John Kerry Not to ‘Compromise’ Iran Strategy By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-department-warns-john-kerry-against-talks-with-iran/

The State Department on Thursday warned former Secretary of State John Kerry against holding diplomatic talks with Iran behind the current administration’s back, possibly compromising the government’s Iran strategy.

“It’s unfortunate if people from a past administration would try to compromise the progress we’re trying to make in this administration,” the assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs, Manisha Singh told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“I don’t have personal knowledge of those meetings, but if that is happening, again, I would find it very inappropriate,” the senior State Department official said.

Kerry has admitted to meeting “three or four times” with his counterpart Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after leaving his position as secretary of state. The two were key players in negotiating former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration scrapped in May.

“Every secretary of state, former secretary of state, continues to meet with foreign leaders,” Kerry told Fox News on Wednesday. “We don’t negotiate. We’re not involved in interfering with policy, but we certainly have reasonable discussions about nuclear weapons, the world, China, different policies, obviously.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

New York Voters Sentence Cynthia Nixon to Lifetime of Minor Roles on Sitcoms Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271325/new-york-voters-sentence-cynthia-nixon-lifetime-daniel-greenfield

New York voters cast their ballots yesterday and the wisdom of the crowd determined that the best lifetime role for Cynthia Nixon involved not the governor’s mansion, but a few decades of minor roles on sitcoms lightly referencing her Sex and the City years.

Despite Nixon’s promise to fix the subways (without knowing how) or immediately implement socialist medicine while figuring out how to pay for it later, New York voters wisely determined that the socialist candidate’s talents should be best used for minor indie movie roles and voiceovers.

While Nixon had promised to make New York the contact point for UFOs and to round up all the Zionists while curing all known diseases with healing crystals, New York voters thought that she should focus on doing funny voices for cartoons and other things that has been actresses with plenty of contacts in the industry can continue to do.

Despite Nixon’s contention that as the 22nd incarnation of the Dalai Lama, only she was qualified to reform New York’s budget by putting all the illegal aliens on the state payroll, New York voters thought that her talents should be best utilized surprising tourists who spot her crossing the street on the Upper West Side, and then wonder if she’s that woman from Suddenly Susan who tried to behead Trump.

But either way, New Yorkers won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

CAIR in the Classroom A Hamas-linked group partners with public schools. Cinnamon Stillwell

Posted By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271311/cair-classroom-cinnamon-stillwell

Reprinted from Algemeiner.com.

In 1993, Ibrahim Hooper, director of strategic communications for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that, “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.” Twenty-five years later, CAIR could be making headway on that goal, through its relationships with US public school districts in at least three states.

CAIR — an Islamist group and United Arab Emirates-designated terrorist organizationthat bills itself as a defender of civil rights — has achieved special concessions for Muslim students and launched the inappropriate insertion of religion into publicly-funded education. Meanwhile, pushback from parents and outside organizations is building.

Seattle Public Schools’ partnership with CAIR’s Washington chapter is the latest incident to cause controversy, but the relationship dates back to at least 2011, when CAIR-WA sent the district a letter proposing accommodations for Muslim students and classroom lessons on Islam. Then as now, CAIR-WA claimed to be fighting “anti-Muslim bullying.” To that end, in 2012 and 2013 the organization contacted the school district to complain about “Islamophobia” among teachers.

That approach eventually paid off. In a Ramadan crowd-funding campaign in May of this year, the CAIR-WA chapter outlined its plan “to provide educational training for teachers and staff on things like Ramadan, Eid, and how educators can support Muslim students in the classroom.” Accordingly, that same month, CAIR-WA ran a “professional development session” in a Seattle high school that “addressed providing identity-safe spaces in schools for Muslim families” and “how to support students during Ramadan.”