Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose Taking Syrian Refugees Into the U.S.

A Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll released Monday found that just 36 percent of Americans overall said they were in favor of “accepting Syrian refugees into the United States.”

The responses reflect a partisan split, with 56 percent of Democrats and 18 percent of Republicans in favor of accepting Syrian refugees.

Support for accepting Syrian refugees has fallen overall from 42 percent in the 2014 poll. Democrat support has risen slightly from 55 to 56 percent since 2014 while Republican support has fallen from 27 to 18 percent.

The 2016 poll also asked Americans about U.S. military actions in Syria.

Overall those surveyed favored a limited amount of action. Seventy-two percent overall were in favor of conducting airstrikes against violent Islamic extremist groups and 57 percent favored sending Special Operations Forces into Syria to fight Islamic State terrorists.

Just 42 percent overall supported sending combat troops into Syria.

The 2016 Chicago Council Survey based its poll results on a national sample of 2,061 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The poll was conducted June 10-27.

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Milwaukee Sheriff Clarke on Riots: ‘This Thing Has Been Hijacked for a Political End’

According to Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, the riots over the weekend in Milwaukee in protest of the fatal shooting of a black man by police have “been hijacked for a political end; it’s a political construct now”

“We get our authority from the consent of the governed, if something’s bothering them we should have discussions about it. But this thing has been hijacked for a political end; it’s a political construct now. I mentioned it two years ago if you want to go back and look at some of the tapes. I said this was a political construct this whole war on police- that in fact a war on police, mirrored what had gone on in the 1960’s,” Clarke said during a press conference on Sunday.

“There’s a lot of misunderstanding I think in terms of what causes these situations. The police use of force serves as an igniter, there’s no doubt, but to an already volatile situation a volatile mix of urban pathologies – failed urban policy that exacerbates inescapable poverty, failing public schools, inadequate parenting, father-absent homes – we all know when fathers are not around to shape the behavior of young boys they often times grow up to be unmanageable misfits that the police have to deal with in an aggressive fashion,” Clarke said.

“Pathologies like, lifestyle choices – questionable lifestyle choices, gang involvement, drug and alcohol abuse, as well as massive unemployment – those are the ingredients those are the things that cause resentment, anger and frustration to boil beneath the surface then all of a sudden a police situation comes along and that’s why I said it’s an igniter, but it’s an igniter to an already festering situation.”

Clarke later added, that failing to punish criminals leads to a repeat of criminal behavior.

“Just about everybody in this room has heard me over the last five years minimum-talking about the role of the criminal justice system. The prosecutor’s office, the sentencing practices in this area of Milwaukee County and – I don’t know I guess people didn’t think it played a big role – but we’re seeing it now. Not just last night but we’re seeing it time and time again - when some individual goes out and does something heinous, we look and they have a long, lengthy criminal history that nobody applied any sanctions to – or any meaningful sanctions let’s put it that way. Maybe some sanctions – a slap on the wrist – but that’s not meaningful.

As I look, the individual that lost his life- 13 arrests. Some serious stuff. Recklessly endangering safety, that’s a felony first degree. Felony – dismissed -  I don’t know why, I don’t have the reason but somebody- it isn’t going to be me- if you all have an interest you’ll go back and start peeling back the layers to find out what happened.”

“You punish unwanted behavior you’ll see less of it. If you do nothing about unwanted behavior you’re going to see a repeat of more of it,” Clarke said.

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Beginning of the End: The ‘Un’Affordable Care Act Continues to Unravel

Obamacare banner hangs torn on the side of a building. (AP Photo)
Health plan companies left and right are seriously questioning their involvement in Obamacare or dropping out altogether. And these are heavy hitters—UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna and some Blue Cross Blue Shield companies. Cooperatives established under the law are collapsing as well. Just seven of the 23 remain.

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom (CCHF, www.cchfreedom.org) points to these occurrences as the beginning of the end—the unraveling of the Affordable Care Act. President Obama’s legacy act is in deep trouble.

These departures are the “tremors” before the earthquake, the total implosion of Obamacare. Now it’s time to repeal the law and head back to health freedom.

Insurance companies will issue double-digit premium increases this fall, on or around Nov. 1, when Obamacare enrollment begins again. And of special note—premium increases and open enrollment will come just a week before the election.

The impending expiration of two of the federal “3R” subsidy programs that were instituted to shield health plans from the high cost of adding uninsured people with pre-existing conditions—reinsurance and risk corridors—is one reason premiums will skyrocket. Some politicians want to establish a national government insurance company—the public option—and some insurers suggest Congress create permanent federal subsidies to keep them in the game, but isn’t it time we go back to the affordability of freedom and free markets?

This is where CCHF’s new initiative, The Wedge of Health Freedom (www.JointheWedge.com), comes in.

The Wedge restores affordability and patient-centered care and is a new way of doing health care that puts patients and doctors in control and makes affordable pricing available to the insured, the uninsured and the subsidized.

Wedge-like practices are already operating nationwide but many Americans don’t know about them. So CCHF is branding this affordable option as The Wedge of Health Freedom to draw the public’s attention to the patient-centered, freedom-embracing slice of American health care that is mostly invisible to the public today. We aim to make The Wedge visible, protect it and grow it. The Wedge, focused on the delivery of care, will let patients and doctors come together in an affordable, confidential relationship that benefits both of them.

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Perhaps the Ancients Weren’t So Dumb: A Flood of Evidence Is Embarrassing the ‘Experts’

Were the ancients dummies? If so, why does archaeology keep confirming what they wrote? I’ll tell you why a healthy dose of humility can help us understand the past.

In his conversion story, “Surprised by Joy,” C. S. Lewis explains how his close friend, Owen Barfield, demolished his “chronological snobbery.” Lewis defined chronological snobbery as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate of our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that count discredited.”

In Lewis’s time, much of academia was already convinced that every past generation formed a staircase of progress, leading (of course) to enlightened modernity. And since Lewis’s death, many intellectuals have only become more convinced of their own perch at the pinnacle of history. These days, we barely even notice the snobbery.

But it’s time to notice, especially in archaeology. An article last week in The New York Times describes new evidence for the Chinese great flood, an event which ancient records say coincided with the rise of China’s first imperial dynasty. For many years, Western academics have considered this flood a myth—on par with Noah’s Flood in Genesis which, unsurprisingly, they also dismiss as fiction.

But several new dig sites have unearthed inscriptions that refer to just such a flood along the Yellow River, almost 4,000 years ago. And a team of geologists led by Qinglog Wu of Peking University in Beijing says they’ve found evidence in the rocks of a natural dam that trapped several cubic miles of water. When the dam collapsed, it sent a deluge downriver large enough to wipe out a civilization—just as the Chinese legends suggest.

Western experts were less than enthused at the news. The Times quotes several prominent archaeologists who scoff at the discoveries as attempts to read too much into Chinese myths. Dr. Paul Goldin of the University of Pennsylvania derides what he sees as a “fixation” among Chinese archaeologists with “[proving] that all the ancient texts and legends have some fundamental truth … It shouldn’t be every archaeologist’s first instinct,” he says, “to see if their findings are matched in the historical sources.”

Come again? Shouldn’t archaeologists want to know if what they’re digging up has significance in known history? Sadly for many in the West, the answer is a resounding “not really.” This dismissal of ancient writings—including the Bible—is rooted in chronological snobbery. The ancients, experts today assume, were just too dumb or superstitious to get their own histories right.

This attitude has not only blinded us to potential discoveries, it’s made it very embarrassing for archaeologists when the ancients do turn out to be correct. I think, for example, of the recent discovery of Goliath’s hometown, Gath. Or what about the unearthing of evidence for the biblical King Hezekiah, the likely discovery of the palace where Pilate tried Jesus, or the compelling evidence that “the house of David,” contrary to decades of secular scholarship, was founded by a real, historical man after God’s own heart?

All of these discoveries came as shocks to archaeologists and historians who doubted that such figures, places, or people ever existed. But again and again, our belief that the ancients were better at making myths than they were at recording history has handicapped archaeology, and left a lot of smart folks scraping egg off their faces.

Now, I’m not suggesting every legend is a history textbook, or even that Scripture renders archaeology superfluous. What I’m suggesting is that we set aside our chronological snobbery and stop dismissing the ancients out-of-hand.

They were not dummies. And we who dig up the remains of their civilizations aren’t always as clever as we like to believe.

SOURCE

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A libertarian gun-hater??

Libertarians normally view the right to bear arms as an important liberty.  How come then the current Libertarian Presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, threw straight into the trash a historic pistol that was given to him?  A libertarian vote is normally a wasted vote but that is doubly true this time.  Story here

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There is no evidence that Aristotle actually said this but the American Left seems to be trying all-out to prove it right anyway



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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

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