The Passover and Jewish endurance

Jewish continuity is completely amazing.  There were many great and notable civilizations in the ancient world -- Mitanni, Hittites Sumerians etc -- that have completely vanished -- mostly with very little record of their presence other than what archaeologists have been able to dig up. Their descendants are presumably around somewhere but anything that made them a distinctive group has vanished.

There is just one of those ancient people that survives today, following the same religion and customs, speaking the same language and living in the same homeland.  And they have even brought their history books with them:  The Bible.  How remarkable is all that!  Many Jews see it as clear proof that they really are God's special people and that only his protection can possibly explain their unique survival. That sounds like a pretty good argument


IN MARCH 1946, David Ben Gurion appeared before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, a panel convened to study conditions in Palestine, which was then still under British rule. The committee is little-remembered today; its recommendations became moot with the UN partition resolution the following year. But Ben Gurion's heartfelt testimony making the case for Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland remains worth reading.

In one memorable passage, the man who would two years later become Israel's first prime minister addressed the astonishing longevity of the Jews' love affair with Zion.

"More than 300 years ago a ship by the name of the Mayflower left Plymouth for the New World," Ben Gurion told the committee. "It was a great event in American and English history. I wonder how many Englishmen or how many Americans know exactly the date when that ship left Plymouth, how many people were on the ship, and what was the kind of bread that people ate when they left Plymouth."

Few Americans, of course, know any of those minutiae. But countless Jews, Ben Gurion went on, know the details of a far older journey.

"More than 3,300 years ago the Jews left Egypt. It was more than 3,000 years ago, yet every Jew in the world knows exactly the date when we left. It was on the 15th of Nisan. The bread they ate was matzos. [To this day] Jews throughout the world on the 15th of Nisan eat the same matzos — in America, in Russia — and tell the story of the exile from Egypt. [They] tell what happened, all the sufferings that happened to the Jews since they went into exile. They finish [their retelling with] these two sentences: 'This year we are slaves; next year we will be free. This year we are here; next year we will be in Zion, the land of Israel.'"

The 15th of Nisan returned this weekend, and once again Jews the world over sat down to the Passover Seder. Again they ate matzos, the bread of affliction eaten by the Hebrews in Egypt. Again they tasted bitter herbs, a reminder of how Egypt embittered the lives of the Jewish slaves. Again they read the text of the Haggadah (literally, the "telling") — the age-old text that recounts the story of the Exodus and explains the customs of the Seder.

The Hebrews were a clan of herdsmen when they first arrived in Egypt. By the time they left, they had been forged into a body politic. The Exodus marked the emergence in history of the Jews as a nation, so Passover is the national independence day of the Jewish people.

Nations have special ways of commemorating their independence. The French mark Bastille Day with a great military parade. Mexicans recreate "El Grito," the famous "Shout for Independence" of 1810. Indians celebrate their country's birth with kite-flying festivals and a flag-raising over the Red Fort in Delhi. And the United States marks the Fourth of July with "Pomp and Parade . . . Bonfires and Illuminations" — much as John Adams recommended in 1776.

The Jews? They relive their ancestors' liberation from enslavement. No fireworks. No flags. For more than three millennia, Jews have paused each spring to steep in the history of their distant forefathers and to relate the tale to their children. In so doing, they have renewed and preserved Jewish identity — and have managed, unlike every other people of antiquity, to outlast the sands of time.

The Seder is the most widely observed ceremony in Jewish life. Though the Haggadah is long and the rituals archaic, though pre-Seder preparations can be exhausting, an estimated 70 percent of American Jews attend a Seder every year. On Passover, decrees the Talmud, Jews must regard themselves as if they personally were liberated from Egypt. How? Through the elaborate reenactment and recitations of the Seder — above all, through answering children's questions.

That priority comes from the Bible itself — from the epic hour just before the Israelites went free.

"And when, in times to come, your child asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him. . ."

The story is told in the book of Exodus: Moses gathers the people and tells them that liberation is imminent. The years of brutality and bondage are over. At that moment of elation and excitement, with the Jews hanging on his every word, what does Moses say?

"He might have spoken about freedom, or the promised destination," writes Jonathan Sacks, Great Britain's former chief rabbi. "He might have chosen to speak about the arduous journey that lay ahead, what Nelson Mandela called 'the long road to freedom.' Any of these would have been the great speech of a great leader."

But Moses doesn't focus on the moment. He speaks instead of the future and of sons and daughters yet to be born. He stresses the importance of memory, and of keeping it alive through education: "And when your children ask you, 'What do you mean by this rite?' you shall say. . . . And you shall explain to your child on that day, 'It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.' . . . And when, in time to come, your child asks you, 'What does this mean?' you shall say to him. . ."

Passover is replete with messages, but in the long sweep of Jewish history, this is the most essential: Liberation is not enough. Liberty must be sustained, and only education can sustain it. The Jews' passion for memory — for handing on their story to their children and grandchildren — is the secret of Jewish longevity. That passion is renewed at the Seder each year, amid matzos and bitter herbs, with children's questions and parents' answers.

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Isn't gun control wonderful?

In London guns are completely banned -- so guess who's got them?

A 17-year-old girl who was shot dead in London on Monday evening is understood to be Tanesha Melbourne.

Friends and family spoke of their grief after news broke that the school student had been killed.

She was with friends in Chalgrove Road, Tottenham, north London, when she was murdered shortly before 9.30pm on Monday. On the same evening a 16-year-old boy was shot in Walthamstow, north-east London, and is now in a critical condition.

A woman who knew the murdered girl said the victim was "just chilling with her friends" when she was shot from a car for "no reason at all". "The car just pulled up and just started shooting," said the 21-year-old, who did not want to be named. She said she heard the gunshots "like fireworks" from her house.

The teenager was described by those who knew her as a "lovely girl who minds her own business", a "kind beautiful young soul" and an "innocent kid". Her cousin tweeted: "Rest in perfect peace my cousin Tanesha."  A friend wrote: "Omggggggggg , not Tanesha Lord ! I literally watched this girl grow"

Members of the local community spoke of their shock at the death, tweeting that they were "lost for words" at the "senseless death".

Tottenham-raised rapper Wretch32, whose real name is Jermaine Scott Sinclair, tweeted: "Wish I knew what to say about what's happening in my ends. North London we're better then this man smh R.I.P to the young angel who lost her life last night. love & prayers to the family. I'm honestly lost for words."

Scotland Yard said officers were called to reports of a shooting in Chalgrove Road, Tottenham, at 9.35pm on Monday. "Officers attended along with the London Ambulance Service (LAS) and a 17-year-old girl was found at the scene with a gunshot wound.

"Despite the best efforts of the LAS, she was pronounced dead at the scene at 10.43pm.  "Her next of kin are aware and a crime scene is in place. No arrests have been made at this stage."

The witness in Tottenham said: "Her friend came banging on my door so I came out quickly. I even tried to save her - had to, had to." She said the gunshot wound, below the victim's breast, was not immediately visible and it looked like she was "having a fit".

"I put her on her side and I was just rubbing her back, saying 'everything's going to be OK'. I just can't believe it - so young. It's ridiculous now." The woman said the victim was not responding, but added: "I could see she was looking at me."

She told how the girl's mother arrived before paramedics, adding: "She was screaming. She didn't know what to do."

In the second incident on Monday, a 16-year-old boy was found with gunshot injuries in Walthamstow. Police and London Ambulance Service said they were called to reports of gun fire in Markhouse Road at about 10pm. The boy remains in a critical condition at a hospital in east London, according to police.

A second teenage boy was also being treated for stab wounds. Police said he had suffered life-changing injuries but they were not life threatening.

Stella Creasy, the local Labour MP,  tweeted: "Walthamstow - can confirm tonight we have had another serious incident involving shooting and stabbing.  "Appreciate this is very distressing- I will share more information as and when have it from official sources as only want to share what is confirmed."

The incidents come amid concerns over rising violent crime in the capital. On Sunday a 20-year-old man became the 31st victim of knife crime in London so far this year.

SOURCE

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Brent Bozell: No 'Facts First' with Stormy Daniels

The left's brazen double standard on the Stormy Daniels story is apparent to everyone. Suddenly, claims of sexual activity with the president before he became president are relevant. In the years of President Bill Clinton, his critics were told to "grow up about sex" because "libido and leadership are linked." The public was lectured about Clinton's accusers being liars who were seeking fame and money, "trash for cash."

Meet porn star Stormy Daniels. First, she was paid $15,000 by a sister publication of In Touch magazine in 2011 to claim that she had sex with Donald Trump (the story wasn't published). Then, she was paid $130,000 in October 2016 to shut up and not claim to have had sex with Donald Trump. History turned to farce when Daniels appeared on "60 Minutes" to break her nondisclosure agreement and shamelessly claimed: "I have no reason to lie. You know, I'm not getting paid to be here."

The 2016 payment to Daniels is an obvious news story. (Any conservative claiming he wouldn't have demanded coverage of a Clinton crony paying off a porn star right before an election would be a liar.) But all this money also creates problems for her credibility. She is currently cashing in with strip-club gigs, and CBS cashed in with boffo ratings. CBS may not have paid for this interview, but both sides walked away with a payoff.

Before Trump was president, Daniels could demand six figures in return for her silence. After his election, she realized she could make fortunes more breaking that silence.

Liberals think the double standard here is that socially conservative people voted for Trump and now don't care about his sleazy treatment of his wives and children. They somehow missed that many socially conservative people voted for other candidates in the primaries because of his questionable behavior but ultimately supported him rather than accept the alternative — hers.

But put aside the conservative morality for a second. The media's current lamentation that we live in a "post-truth" world while they operate by the "Facts First" motto did not match the Daniels interview. These same networks refused to publish or air interviews for months when it was Clinton accusers Paula Jones or Juanita Broaddrick; they demanded claims be investigated and confirmed.

The "news" in this interview was the porn star's claim of being threatened in a parking lot in 2011. Did CBS investigate this until it was confirmed? No. Does she offer any proof? No. Can she even prove that this alleged bully allegedly worked for Trump? No. So why is it on television?

Our media also now claim to be solid members of the #MeToo movement, but everyone alive in the Clinton era knows they didn't care about allegations of sexual harassment, or even rape , lodged against Bill Clinton.

Then we learned they didn't care about allegations of sexual harassment and assault when lodged against their own people in TV news.

It's shameless for "60 Minutes" to devote 26 minutes of airtime to a claim of consensual sex with (and alleged threats by) Donald Trump when it hasn't spared a minute since former CBS star Charlie Rose was exposed in November to discuss what he allegedly did to his female employees. And Rose did interviews on "60 Minutes" for years.

Staunch Trump-backing women appeared on CNN after the big Daniels interview to say this story is "all part of a media plot to bring down Donald Trump." That is an incontestable fact. For most journalists, political victory for liberals comes first. Facts do not.

SOURCE

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Betrayed by politicians

What Ben Shapiro says about politicians below is pretty right.  But he has a very strange gap in his understanding of it.  He does not seem to know WHY politicians break their promises,  They don't break them because they are crooks (though some may be).  They break them because they have to.  The recent omnibus spending bill is a good case in point.  Really conservative Senators such as Rand Paul threatened to vote against it unless it contained certain measures that were close to their hearts -- but measures which were generally a low priority for others.  So nothing would have got through on GOP votes alone

So the GOP leadership, abetted by Mr Trump, had to put in provisions that would attract some Democrat votes.  And they did.  So the conservative purists by their obstinacy handed the Democrats a significant win.  Instead of getting more of what they wanted they got less.

And it was all old hat to Trump.  He has been doing "deals" like that for most of his life:  I give you something and you give me something. It's called compromise and it is one of the distinctive talents of British-origin people.  Most of the world doesn't understand compromise at all.  They only understand winning and they will keep fighting until they do win.  But both sides can't win so one side will be destroyed, which is usually disastrous.  In countries with a tradition of compromise, on the other hand, domestic peace and calm is normal.

So in the Ommnibus bill various Democrat objectives were financed but Trump got a big dollop of money for defence and other objectives.  He may even find ways of using that money to build the wall.  So what you got was typical of compromise.  The weaker side got a few small wins and the stronger side got bigger wins.  But nobody got all their wishes.

So that is why politicians betray us.  They live in a world where different people have all sorts of different wishes.  And finding a way through that to deliver ANYTHING to their voters is a major achievement.  They can only do their best.  You do have to consider the other guy.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution of the United States, they feared the possibility of partisanship overtaking rights-based government. To that end, they crafted a system of checks and balances designed to pit interest against interest, promoting gridlock over radical change. The founders saw legislators, presidents and judges as ambitious in their pursuit of power.

They could not have foreseen our politicians.

Our politicians aren't so much ambitious for power as they are afraid of accountability. And so, we have a new sort of gridlock on Capitol Hill: Politicians campaign in cuttingly partisan fashion and then proceed to avoid solving just the sorts of issues on which they campaigned.

Last week, for example, Republicans passed a massive $1.3 trillion omnibus funding package to avert a government shutdown. It included full funding for Planned Parenthood and the regional Gateway rail project, but not full funding for the border wall. Republicans had spent years decrying deficits, criticizing funding for Planned Parenthood and ripping useless stimulus spending; they'd spent years clamoring for a border wall. When push came to shove, they did nothing.

Meanwhile, Democrats tore into the Republican budget for failing to ensure the permanent residence of so-called DREAMers, immigrants living in the United States illegally who were brought to the country as children. Then they rallied in Washington, D.C., along with gun control-minded students from Parkland, Florida, calling for more regulations on the Second Amendment. When Democrats held control of Congress and the presidency from 2009 to 2011, however, they promulgated no new gun legislation and passed no protection for DREAMers. Instead, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive action during his re-election cycle after saying repeatedly that he could not legally do so, and he complained incessantly about guns.

So, what should this tell us?

It should tell us that we, the voters, are suckers.

Our politicians use hot-button political issues in order to gin up the base and get us out to vote. They talk about how they'll end funding for Planned Parenthood and cut back spending on the right; they talk about how they'll end gun violence and protect DREAMers on the left. Then, once in power, they instead focus on broadly popular legislation instead of passing the legislation they've promised. They campaign for their base, but they govern for the center.

So, what are the real differences between the parties? The Republican Party is in favor of tax cuts and defense spending; the Democratic Party is in favor of increased regulation and social spending. All the other discussion points are designed merely to drive passion.

Practically speaking, this means gridlock on the issues about which Americans care most. Don't expect Republicans to stop funding Planned Parenthood anytime soon. And don't expect Democrats to start pushing serious gun control. They keep those issues alive deliberately to inflame excitement during election campaigns. Then, once in power, those issues go back into the freezer, to emerge and be defrosted when the time is right.

It's a convenient ploy. It means that partisan voters will never buck their party — after all, if the other side gets into power, they'll really go nuts. And, hey, maybe this time , our party bosses won't lie to us.
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But they will. And we'll swallow it. And the government will grow. But at least we'll have the comfort slamming one another over issues that will never get solved.

SOURCE

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British PM's "Russia" narrative falls apart

The accusations hurled at Russia are very poorly founded.  Are the sanctions based on a rush to judgment that is entirely wrong?  There are varieties of Novichok gases and it is not only Russia that uses them.  Israel is another.  And this version may be a very amateur version of the stuff.  It hasn't killed anyone yet.  Was it an attempt to set Russia up? Russia would have used the real stuff

Update: "UK scientists have been unable to prove Russia made the nerve agent A-234 (also known as "Novichok") which was used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury."

Yulia Skripal has risen from her death bed and looks like she will make a full recovery from the “deadly nerve gas attack.”

Sarcasm aside, I am delighted that she is on the mend just as I was with DS Nick Bailey's speedy recovery. However, I do now wonder how Boris and "Saint Theresa" are going to spin this and fit it in to their, "it was the Russians wot done it" narrative?

We were told by the Sun newspaper amongst others that, "Novichok is one of the deadliest nerve agents ever created and reported to be five times more potent than the notorious VX gas.

The victim's heart and diaphragm are unable to function properly after coming into contact with the substance — leading to respiratory and cardiac arrest.

Those affected usually die from total heart failure or suffocation as copious fluid secretions fill their lungs."

Meanwhile, Mrs May has gone on a walking holiday in Wales with her husband. She will need the time to think! Last year she did the same and came back to London and called a snap election after repeatedly saying she would not do so. Will she come back this time and offer either an explanation or even an apology to Russia?

This whole saga has played out like a very poor version of the Board game Cluedo. Was it the Reverend Green in the conservatory with a piece of lead piping?

No, it was Putin with gas on a pizza. No it was gas in the car's air conditioning. Or was it in Yulia's suitcase? Finally, we are told it was on the door handle!

It has taken them three weeks to make this discovery? It's hardly Inspector Morse is it? More like The Keystone Cops.

Meanwhile, Boris Johnson has already acted as the prosecutor, judge and jury and stated it was, "the Kremlin wot done it."

Theresa May has then waded in with her size 9 kitten heels and given the Russians a virtual kick in without producing any real evidence either to the British public or the Kremlin.

Please remind me, why is she refusing to allow the Russians to examine the nerve gas?

Are we really meant to believe that, just like in a poor children's cartoon, where the crooks wear stripy jumpers and carry a bag with "SWAG" written on it.  Two Russians have come to the UK, effectively with a bag of gas with instead of the word "SWAG" on it there are the words, "NOVICHOK MADE IN MOSCOW".  Far-fetched I know but so is Theresa Mays and the MSM's narrative.

However, all joking aside, the real danger in this whole episode is the way that Theresa May is now using this "mystery" to both paint Russia as our enemy and to clamp down on free speech.

On Wednesday, to little fanfare in the MSM press and broadcast outlets, she published the Security Capability Review. This document examines the threats to the UK's security.

Theresa wrote the foreword to the document in which she talks about the Manchester and Westminster terrorist attacks and then in almost the same breath and sentence she includes the attack in Salisbury.

I'm sorry, but putting the Salisbury incident on the same level as the Manchester Arena attack that killed 22 people, mainly children, and Westminster is not only ludicrous but also deeply insulting, not only to the victims and their families but to the whole country.

Unfortunately, she doesn't stop there as she then lists who the threats to the UK are.

She starts with Islamic State and no one would argue with that. Next, she names North Korea which is understandable but I would say after Trump's intervention their threat is on the wane. Then she states that the other threat is Russia!

This assertion seems to be based on the Salisbury attack, in which at the moment no one has died and in fact two are on the road to recovery?

She seems to also rely on an article in the Telegraph which reported that Russia put out more than 20 stories "trying to confuse the picture and the charge sheet" over the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia in Salisbury.

Another view of the Telegraph's report, could of course be that Russia was merely trying to offer a counter narrative to the one the UK Government was peddling.

Are alternative views no longer tolerated in the UK? Now with the wheel falling off the Government's propaganda wagon, with the recovery of Yulia and the Policemen, those counter narratives don't seem so stupid, do they?

However, the Telegraph's assertion plays directly into the other narrative the Government are playing that Russia is the epicentre of all fake news.

Theresa now wants to counter this "propaganda and fake news" by telling every department of State to put security at the top of their agendas.

She is also going to use the BBC to "spread our values" around the world.

The BBC?! The Biased Broadcasting Corporation?!  Do they really mirror the views of most British citizens?

I am afraid on this point I have to agree with the veteran left wing journalist and documentary maker, John Pilger who says in an interview on RT that, "the BBC is the most refined propaganda service in the world."

In this new strategy which has been titled The Fusion Doctrine, UK Intelligence services are instructed to swamp, divert, counter and even close down any sites, trolls or posts that are peddling "misinformation."

This is a very scary prospect as who are these people that will decide what is and what is not acceptable? Will it stop just with sites based in Russia? Of course not!

How free will you and I be to express our cynicism over events like Salisbury in the future?

Just remind me are we living in 2018 or 1984?

SOURCE

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Gun Ban Finally Makes a Difference in Crime — London Murder Rate Overtakes NYC

Progressive gun control advocates here in America will often point to the gun ban imposed in the United Kingdom as an excellent example of how significantly restricting the right of citizens to lawfully possess most firearms will lead to a safe and violence-free Utopia of sorts.

Common sense dictates that such an assertion is patently false, but now there are factual numbers coming out of the city of London cited by Fox News disprove the ludicrous assumption that banning guns makes citizens safer.

In the month of February, the city of London officially surpassed the city of New York in terms of its murder rate for the first time in modern history.

Furthermore, while the murder rate in NYC has declined by nearly 90 percent in the past 30 years, murder and other violent crimes are on the rise in London.

The shocking story of historical significance was first reported by The U.K. Sunday Times, which noted that London suffered 15 murders in the month of February while New York City had 14.

Though not yet “official,” it appears the trend continued through March, as London experienced 22 murders in comparison to only 21 murders in NYC during the same period.

Given that these two cities have similarly-sized diverse populations, that means people are being murdered at a higher rate in London as opposed to NYC, despite the English city’s strict gun control laws.

In fact, it is those strict gun control laws which have led to a sharp rise in knife crime across the U.K., and especially in London, where murders have increased by a stunning 38 percent in the past four years.

All told, London still has fewer murders (46) than NYC (55) so far this year and had fewer murders last year, as well. However, what used to be a massive gap between the murder rate of the two cities going back to the year 1800 — it fluctuated from about half to 1/20 — has closed significantly, and if the surge in knife crime continues unabated, could vanish altogether.

The U.K. Daily Mail, which ran through a litany of recent murder victims, pointed out that no less than 12 people have been fatally stabbed or shot to death in just the past 19 days in London, proving once again that violent criminals don’t obey gun bans and will still obtain firearms, or simply resort to other weapons such as knives

SOURCE

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Group of interns "racist"?



The latest intake of interns to the White house looks like it includes 90 whites and one black.  Is that racist? Unlikely. Trump makes a point of having blacks around.  So how come the "imbalance"?  Pretty obvious.  Whether formally stated or not, an essential qualification for acceptance would be registered GOP identity for either the intern or his/her parents.  And how many registered GOP voters would be young blacks? And of that tiny number how many have an outstanding record of educational success?  I think the answer lies before us.

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The Pope is right

I follow the report below with some comments

Scalfari says to the Pope, "Your Holiness, in our previous meeting you told me that our species will disappear in a certain moment and that God, still out of his creative force, will create new species. You have never spoken to me about the souls who died in sin and will go to hell to suffer it for eternity. You have however spoken to me of good souls, admitted to the contemplation of God. But what about bad souls? Where are they punished?"

Pope Francis says,  "They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear. There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls."

SOURCE

Francis is a Jesuit, which means he is a man of some scholarship.  And it appears that he knows his Bible.  What he says is exactly what I say as a result of my Bible studies. And what the Bible says is not all obscure or hard to find.  It's actually all in the best known of Bible passages, John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life".  We see there that the alternative to salvation is to perish, to cease to exist, not flitting off to a place of torture.

And what about another well-known scripture: 'Enter ye in at the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat'. How narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life; and few there are that find it (Matthew 7:13,14 Douay).  Again we see that sin leads to destruction, not hell.

But what about texts that do seem to support hellfire?  One is a metaphorical prophecy in Matthew 25. It is metaphorical because a spirit being would not actually be sitting on a throne. An excerpt:

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world ... Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal"

At the end of the passage, Jesus clarifies the metaphor.  He summarizes himself as saying that "these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal".  The "life eternal" is clear enough but what is the "everlasting punishment"?

Is it literally the "everlasting fire" into which the "goats" are cast?  If so, it certainly does sound like a clear formulation of a hellfire doctrine. But we have to look at the summary Jesus gave to check that. The word translated as "punishment" is in Greek "kolasin" and it simply means "cutting off". It is the word a Greek gardener might use to describe the pruning of a tree. So it would be a superior translation to say that the goats would be cut off and thrown away like the unwanted branch of a tree

So, when properly translated, we see that Christ was, as usual, offering the alternatives of life and death, not heaven and hell -- exactly as he does in John 3:16. The sheep get eternal life and the goats get eternal death.

A Vatican announcement has appeared which denies that the Pope said what he did but I guess they had to.  It was not an ex cathedra pronouncement by Francis but it did go against traditional Catholic teaching. It seems that Francis was expressing his own personal views -- which are much more in tune with both modern thinking and scripture

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Is the "terrorist Right" just a creation of Obama's FBI?

We now know how "bent" the FBI was under Comey

In 2015, Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security released an intelligence assessment on alleged right-wing terrorism.

Said CNN about the report, “Some federal and local law-enforcement groups view the domestic terror threat from sovereign citizen groups as equal to – and in some cases greater than – the threat from foreign Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, that garner more public attention.”

When President Trump shifted the DHS focus away from domestic terror, the media were quick to turn to the professional race-baiters at the Southern Poverty Law Center for an instant denunciation.

“It’s a disgrace that Trump is cutting out Countering Violent Extremism funds for white supremacists and neo-Nazis,” said a SPLC spokesperson. “We know that the domestic terror threat from them is as great as it from Islamic radicals. It’s a very serious situation.”

For the SPLC, the trial that began this past week in Wichita for three Kansans accused of planning to blow up a Garden City apartment complex would seem to be vindication.

Time magazine led its story on the alleged plot with the standard media boilerplate.

“The plot to bomb an apartment complex housing Somali immigrants in western Kansas was just the beginning of a plan by three militia members to ‘exterminate cockroaches,’ a prosecutor told jurors Thursday.”

In the Time version of the story, the hero is a reluctant would-be terrorist named Dan Day. “Dan Day knew the plan would go forward and innocent people would die,” reports Time.

According to prosecutor Risa Berkower, Day “struggled with what to do, prayed about what to do. And then he contacted the FBI, and later agreed to wear a wire.”

An in-depth article by Jessica Pressler in New York Magazine points to a more troubling inspiration for the plot.

To please her New York audience, Pressler begins with a few de rigueur snipes at President Donald Trump. She then veers into the unexpected.

In her conversations with one of the accused, a troubled soul named Patrick Stein, Pressler sheds some useful light on the way too many of these plots unfold.

As Pressler tells it, Stein only became aware of Day’s role during his arraignment at a Wichita courthouse.

“He’s the one who fed us all the information, showed us how bad they were, doing this and that and the other,” he told Pressler. “He was working for the feds the entire time. It was all a setup.”

Pressler backs up Stein’s account. “This time, Stein’s paranoid fantasy had turned out to be at least partially true,” she writes.

Day was, in fact, a paid informant for the FBI. He apparently had been reporting on Stein since Stein introduced him to the two other conspirators, Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright, at a gun show in February 2016.

Among the things that roused Stein’s ire were ISIS recruitment fliers reportedly found in a local public library. According to Stein, it was Day who told him he saw the fliers there.

Stein lived in Liberal, Kansas. Day lived in Garden City. Again according to Stein, it was Day who turned his attention to the heavily Somali apartment complex in Garden City that also housed an impromptu mosque.

“If we don’t do it, who’s gonna do it?” Day reportedly told Stein of blowing up the building.

Unquestionably, it was Day who introduced the crew to the “Bad Motherf—–,” or BMF as he came to be known. The BMF could provide the weapons and the expertise the men lacked.

Stein admitted to limited experience in building bombs. On their own, writes Pressler, the three conspirators “mostly succeeded in burning the hair off [Curtis Allen’s] finger.”

The BMF said he could solve that problem. All Stein, who owned a farm, had to do was deliver six 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate, and the BMF could build a small-scale version of the bomb Tim McVeigh used in Oklahoma City.

The plot might have matured had Allen not beaten up his girlfriend, and had she not reported the beating and Allen’s growing weapons stash to the Liberal Police.

Upon learning of Allen’s exposure in Liberal, the feds arranged the delivery of ammonium nitrate to the conspirators and arrested the conspirators promptly after the handoff.

The BMF, it turned out, was an undercover FBI agent. The weapons he provided to the men had been shipped from Quantico, Virginia.

Stein, writes Pressler, had “become the thing he feared most: a casualty of the Obama administration, specifically, its attempt to aggressively infiltrate right-wing militias the same way that Islamic groups had been targeted after 9/11.”

Ed Robinson, the court-appointed public defender, agreed that Stein had a point “about the feds overdoing it.”

Said Robinson, “I think it’s unfortunate that, if the FBI thought these gentlemen were so dangerous, why would they let this investigation go on for 10 months, with people they think are possibly murderers, with all these guns, all this ammunition?”

A week before this story broke, I had lunch with an old friend, Laird Wilcox, America’s leading authority on extremist groups.

The Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas is home to the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements.

Wilcox believes that many of the would-be terrorist groups on the right, if not most, are propped up by FBI informants and undercover agents. The Garden City plot would seem to be a case in point.

As the plot reveals, it is hard to tell whether the FBI’s agent provocateurs are more dangerous than the losers they encourage.

SOURCE 

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John Bolton's Enemies
   
Among the several ways to judge a person’s fitness for office are the enemies he has made.

In the case of John Bolton, President Trump’s choice to become national security adviser, those who oppose his appointment — liberals, neocons and some Republicans all with differing worldviews and questionable foreign policy experience — appear to say more about his qualifications than those who support him.

A New York Times editorial said that at least Bolton speaks his mind, though it also said it didn’t like what was on it. The Times and its ideological sister publication, The Washington Post, have spilled considerable amounts of ink in negative stories, editorials and columns in their attempts to undermine and discredit Bolton. Why?

I think one of the reasons these newspapers, the foreign policy establishment and certain enemies (and allies) of America oppose Bolton is because he is a clear thinker. He is not an appeaser. He believes nations and terrorists who publicly proclaim their desire to destroy America should be taken seriously and that credible planning should be done to make sure it that destruction doesn’t happen. Peace through strength has worked before and Bolton believes it can work again. Strength is what deters bullies, not trying to “understand” their hostility toward America, as Hillary Clinton once recommended.

The weak always fear the strong because, among other things, it exposes their weakness. John Bolton exposes the weakness of America’s foreign policy under several presidents. Enemies cannot and must not be appeased or coddled. Enemies must be defeated or, at a minimum, deterred from making war against America and our interests. History shows the results of appeasement, and they are never good for free people or those struggling to gain freedom under totalitarian regimes.

Writing about Bolton’s appointment, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick rightly stated: “For the better part of three decades, Bolton has bravely held positions that fly in the face of the establishment’s innate preference for appeasement. He was a vocal critic, for example, of then-President Bill Clinton’s disastrous nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.” Bolton was also a critic of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Some of his predictions and policy recommendations turned out to be right.

Here are some pithy Bolton-isms that are clear-eyed and have the advantage of being right. About diplomatic dealings with Iran, Bolton has said: “When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence.”

On the strategy known as negotiation, Bolton is quoted as saying, “Negotiation is not a policy. It’s a technique. It’s something you use when it’s to your advantage, and something that you don’t use when it’s not to your advantage.”

There is also this about the United Nations to which he was once the U.S. ambassador: “There’s no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But then Bolton is equal opportunity when it comes to dysfunctional bureaucracies: “You could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we’d all probably be better for it, too.”

The media love to attach labels to Bolton, among them “hawkish,” “dangerous” and “hard-line.” Given the kind of threats we face from enemies who better fit those adjectives, John Bolton seems an ideal pick to advise the president on national security issues he knows a great deal about.

SOURCE 

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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UK's search of Russian plane violates international law – Aeroflot, lawmakers

Mrs May must have lost her marbles.  This is a blatant violation of international law. And Russia can easily retaliate against British planes  -- by detaining them, for instance

The inspection of a Russian plane, which was carried out by UK authorities in the absence of the crew and without any justification, violates international legal norms, Aeroflot airline and top Russian lawmakers said.

Aeroflot confirmed to RT that UK police and customs services performed a search aboard its Airbus A321 aircraft after it landed in the British capital on Thursday. The carrier expressed “bewilderment” that there was no reason or justification provided for the search. Moreover, UK authorities forced the crew out of the plane and isolated the captain in the cabin.

“Such actions by the UK representatives contradict the international practice of performing such inspections,” Aeroflot pointed out, adding that it is ready to cooperate with Britain if it justifies and explains its actions.

The chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Transport Committee, Vitaly Yefimov, also called the actions of British authorities “illegal” and said they violated international regulations.

“The board of the airplane is the territory of Russia, just like its embassy,” Yefimov told Tass. “It is a precedent… It’s the first time on my memory when the authorities go in and inspected an aircraft with no justification. They have no right to do it.”

An inspection of a plane can only be carried out in agreement with the crew, the MP stressed, adding that he’s waiting for official explanations from the British.

Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, who is the First Deputy Chairman of the Federal Council’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, told RIA-Novosti that the actions taken by British authorities were “another provocation." Due to the current tensions between London and Moscow over the Skripal case, “it’s worth recommending our citizens to refrain from visiting the UK," Dzhabarov said.

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma's Committee for Security, Anatoly Vyborny, blasted the search of the Russian plane as “legal nihilism” and a “flagrant violation of the norms of international law” on the part of Britain.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, earlier said that the search of the Aeroflot Airbus A321 was yet another anti-Russian provocation by the UK. The reckless act might have been an attempt by London to somehow save its reputation, which was heavily damaged by the Skripal case, Zakharova said.

In early March, former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury with what the UK called a Soviet-designed nerve agent. London accused Moscow of being behind the attack, despite carrying out no proper investigation and refusing to provide samples of the chemical to Russia.

SOURCE.  More details here

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Trump Lauds Creation of 3 Million Jobs

During a speech in Richfield, Ohio, President Donald Trump said his administration has delivered on its promises, created 3 million jobs and eliminated job-killing regulations.

“We’re keeping our promises, and the results are in: 3 million new jobs since Election Day - 3 million. And if I would have said that to you during the campaign, where we had tremendous support in this great state, state of Ohio, if I would have said, 3 million jobs, they would have said-- the fake news -- he’s exaggerating,” he said.

“Unemployment claims are their lowest level in 45 years - 45 years. African-American unemployment has reached the lowest level ever recorded. Remember? Remember I said, ‘what do you have to lose?’ What do you have to lose? And I’m so happy about that,” Trump said.

“Hispanic-American unemployment rate has also reached the lowest levels ever recorded, and wages are rising at the fastest level ever in a decade. Finally - 19 years, 21 years. People were making, last year were making less money than they made 20 years ago. Now wages are rising, because more jobs are happening,” the president said.

He said because of his administration’s efforts to protect and grow American jobs, plants and factories are “pouring back into the country.” He mentioned Apple’s $350 billion investment in the economy through capital expenditures in the U.S. over the next five years.

Apple made the announcement in January, saying it would also be creating 20,000 new jobs in addition to its existing 84,000 jobs in the U.S.

“Apple, already the largest US taxpayer, anticipates repatriation tax payments of approximately $38 billion as required by recent changes to the tax law. A payment of that size would likely be the largest of its kind ever made,” the company said on its website.

“They can’t come back fast enough, even if you look, Apple gonna invest $350 billion. When I heard $350 billion, I said you must mean $350 million. That’s still a big plant, but they’re going to be investing $350 billion. So many others coming back with massive amounts of money. They all want to be back in the USA,” Trump said.

“A lot of them left. They’re coming back. We’ve eliminated a record number of job killing regulations. That’s one of the reasons they’re coming back. And we’re not finished yet.” he said.

“In some cases, you have statutory limitations where you have to go 30 days and wait, and then you have to go 90 days and wait, and then you have to go 15 days and wait and then you go 90 days again, and then you know what happens? We killed the regulation, and it’s a thing of beauty,” Trump said.

“And we have filled out every form, every legal application, and still actually have a long way to go on regulation, and we’re gonna have regulations. You need regulations for safety and the environment, but not where you couldn’t do anything, you couldn’t move. So I think that’s been a big, big success, and a reason for our success,” he added.

SOURCE 

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The strange world the Left have created

Whites in general and white males in particular are under attack in our society.  We are told by the left that they have too much influence, too much money and that they distort our culture.  Ironically these same charges were made against the Jews in Socialist Germany during the nineteen thirties.

Mueller marches on.  Next he will be indicting Snuffy Smith who parked cars for Trump campaign staffers.  The charges will be overdue library books from 2012 and leaving a toilet seat up in 2010 and then lying about it to an FBI agent in 2018.

The lesson from the Mueller investigation is never talk to the FBI.  Do not give them the time of day.  If you do and you are one minute off they will charge you with lying to them and you will have to mortgage your house to pay legal fees for your defense.

Back during the days of the Red Menace when the left was defending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg plus Alger Hiss, those of us who believed the Soviet Union was a threat were labeled right wing extremists who saw Russians under every bed.  Liberals now sound more extreme than any member of the John Birch Society ever did.  They see Russians under every napkin.

When Susan Rice sent herself a memo memorializing a meeting she had with Obama where he told to do things, “by the book,” she forgot to mention that the book he was referring to was Marxist Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.

The nation is justifiably upset of the senseless deaths of seventeen high school students in Florida.  In the meantime 2500 children are murdered every day in the country’s abortion slaughter houses and the nation goes ho-hum.

There was a time when broadcasters would not run advertisements for Preparation H because they felt it was too personal a product.  Now you have five years olds asking their mothers, “Mommy what is erectile dysfunction?”

When the film, Gone With The Wind, was first exhibited the audience would gasp when Clark Gable said, “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.”  This was because they had never hear anyone swear in a movie before.  An indication of the coarsening of our culture.

Stormy Daniels, an aging floozy who had sex with strangers on video if the price was right is challenging the moral integrity of our President.  The reaction of the MSM and the Never Trumpers is, “This paragon must be listened to.”

The left has always been good at astro-turfing so it is no surprise that they were able to turn out thousands of snot nosed kids to tell us they were too emotionally immature and unstable to buy a gun but were just the people to set gun policy.

The same group of teens attacking Second Amendment rights are the ones who often wear tee shirts sympathetic to and bearing the image of psychopathic serial killer Che Guevara.

The MSM lives by a simple rule, Democrats good, Republican and Trump bad.  The Democrats live in a world in which they can do no wrong which is causing them to live in a false world.  They have been led to believe that, “We are going to take your guns and raise your taxes,” is a winning platform.  The Republicans and Trump on the other hand can do whatever they wish knowing that they will be denounced regardless.

SOURCE 

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Despite Court Ruling, There's No Certain Science Linking Coffee to Cancer

More California craziness -- the acrilamide obsession again.  If coffee is bad for you, all Americans should be dead

Attention, coffee drinkers: A judge in California has ruled that coffee companies in the Golden State must label each cup of joe with a cancer warning label.

But what sparked this decision, and more importantly, does drinking coffee increase the risk of developing cancer?

In short, roasted coffee beans contain a known carcinogen, a chemical called acrylamide. But it's unclear whether acrylamide levels in coffee are high enough to pose a health risk to humans

Acrylamide occurs in overly cooked or roasted starchy foods, including coffee beans, french fries, potato chips, breakfast cereals and toast. It's also found in cigarette smoke. The carcinogenic chemical is concerning enough that last year, the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency asked people to "Go for Gold" rather than a charred color when eating starchy foods that could be burned, Live Science reported.

This U.K. campaign was based on evidence showing that consuming acrylamide can cause mutations and damage in DNA, which can increase cancer risk, according to studies in rodents. However, these studies exposed the rodents to levels of acrylamide that were between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods, the American Cancer Society reported.

The results from these animal studies prompted the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, to label acrylamide as a "probable carcinogen" in 1994, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology at the American Cancer Society, told Live Science previously.

However, the IARC does not list coffee as a possible carcinogen.

Even so, the jury is still out on whether the levels of acrylamide in coffee can increase cancer risk in humans. While an increased cancer risk is shown in some studies, others don't find any at all, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These disparate results may occur because it's challenging to quantify how much acrylamide people consume. Moreover, rodents and humans absorb and metabolize acrylamide at different rates, the NCI reported.

According to the new ruling, made by Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle, coffee companies with 10 or more employees must now put warning labels on coffee, cautioning customers that drinking coffee could pose a cancer risk, according to The Washington Post.

The case was based, in part, on the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, which the plaintiffs said also applies to coffee. During the trial, the defendants were unable to show that coffee doesn't cause one or more cases of cancer for every 100,000 people, prompting the judge to say the risk hadn't been properly evaluated, according to The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, countless other studies show that drinking coffee may actually be beneficial. For example, drinking coffee is linked to a decreased risk of liver cancer, endometrial cancer, colon cancer and one type of skin cancer, Live Science previously reported. Downing the beverage is also linked to living a longer life.

SOURCE

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Small hiatus

I have been battling quite a few health problems lately but have managed to keep up my usual blogging tempo throughout.  I am feeling a bit worn down however so will take a short break over the Easter period. May you prosper in the wisdom of your risen Lord.

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Congress succeeds in gutting Obama HUD racial and income zoning rule in omnibus

This is a lifesaver.  This thoroughly evil regulation was designed to destroy white flight by dropping minorities into the middle of white neighborhoods -- meaning there would be no escape from black crime.  Every household would have to become a fortress

One good thing that came out of the omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Donald Trump is that it defunds a key aspect of the Obama era Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulation, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.

This was the rule enacted in 2015 that allowed HUD to order more than 1,200 cities and counties that accepted any part of $3 billion of annual community development block grants to rezone neighborhoods along income and racial criteria.

This was always a vast overreach, where the federal government could come in and tell communities what must be built and where. Now, it’s over.

Under Division L, Title II of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Section 234, it states, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to direct a grantee to undertake specific changes to existing zoning laws as part of carrying out the final rule entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’ … or the notice entitled ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment Tool’ …”

This provision utterly guts the HUD regulation, which had already been delayed by HUD Secretary Ben Carson earlier this year until 2020.

Now, with the backing of Congress, Carson needs to go the extra mile and either rescind this regulation completely, or revise it to comply with the new law.

Congress has spoken on this issue under its Article I power of the purse, and is now saying that the Fair Housing Act, community development block grants and this regulation can no longer be used to direct communities to undertake any changes to zoning.

Believe it or not, this is a game changer.

Without Congress acting, simply rescinding this regulation would have been far riskier for Carson and Trump.

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association v. State Farm Mutual that rescinding any regulation issued an agency is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis “for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency does not act in the first instance.”

The outcome was that it is much more difficult to rescind an existing regulation than it is to either modify it or never have issued it in the first place, leaving every single regulatory rescission subject to judicial review.

Ultimately, the rescinding agency has to argue not only that rescinding the regulation in question is rational based on the statutory scheme, but prove that enacting it was irrational to begin with.

Carson and Trump will now have no problems on that count if they choose to rescind or roll back most of the HUD zoning regulation. The regulation, which absolutely affects zoning, no longer rationally rests within the statutory scheme. It’s now illegal to spend money on implementing it as it was written.

Now nobody can argue that the Fair Housing Act implicitly requires such changes be made to zoning laws. Thanks to U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), the representative who first pushed to defund this regulation, Congress has changed the terms of the game.

Realistically, that will remain true so long as Congress keeps carrying forward the defund language in every single omnibus spending bill going forward. Republicans will have to fight to defund this provision every year so long as the regulation remains in place.

Should Democrats win the midterm elections in November, they might seek to strip this language out of next year’s HUD appropriations bill. To avert this possibility, Carson must begin the regulatory rescission process immediately. There is not a moment to lose.

While there were many problems with the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, one thing the Republican-led Congress got absolutely right was defunding Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing from being used to force communities to make changes to local zoning law.

Congress has done its job. Now it is up to the Trump administration with Carson in the lead to rescind this regulation with the window of opportunity Congress has given, so that no administration ever again attempts to take over local governments across the country.

SOURCE

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Trump's Tariffs Having the Desired Effect

I prophesied that Trump would replace his tariffs with quotas.  It's started to happen

"Wow," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tweeted on Tuesday morning. "I guess the moves made by @realDonaldTrump on trade did not trigger the apocalypse after all.

Rubio referenced a Washington Post report that says South Korea has agreed to further open its auto market to U.S. manufacturers, and it has accepted an annual export quota on steel.

The limit on South Korean steel exports is set at 70 percent of average sales over the past three years, and that amount would be exempt from tariffs.

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration may announce the revised U.S.-South Korea (KORUS) trade deal on Tuesday:

According to the NYT:

The finalization of a trade agreement with South Korea would hand Mr. Trump a victory in his “America First” approach to trade, in which he has threatened to take tough trade action unless other countries agree to concessions, including a reduction in the gap between what they export to the United States and what America exports to their shores. The blanket steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the White House earlier this month are the most recent example of that blunt approach, with the White House using exemptions and revisions as a carrot to avoid the tariff stick.

The South Korean government announced the deal on Monday.

President Trump tweeted on Monday: "Trade talks going on with numerous countries that, for many years, have not treated the United States fairly. In the end, all will be happy!"

SOURCE

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Liberal Dershowitz on Special Counsel: 'I've Seen No Evidence' That Trump Committed Crimes

Commenting on President Donald Trump's tweets about alleged Russia-Trump campaign collusion, famed attorney and constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz said "the president is 100% right," a special counsel never should have been appointed, and added that he has "seen no evidence to suggest that crimes have been committed by the president."

“First of all, the president is 100% right," said the liberal Dershowitz on the March 20 edition of Fox & Friends.  "There never should have been the appointment of a special counsel here. There was no probable cause at that point to believe that crimes had been committed."

"I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that crimes have been committed by the president," he said.

Dershowitz, who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, continued, "As I said from day one, there should have been a simple investigative commission, non-partisan, appointed by Congress, with subpoena power to look into the role of Russia in trying to influence American elections and to try to do something about preventing it in the future – instead of starting out with finger-pointing and trying to criminalize political differences behind the closed doors of a grand jury."

"That’s gotten us nowhere," he said. "The president is absolutely right: this investigation never should have begun."

"And the question is now, how does he deal with it?" said the long-time criminal defense attorney.

"I think what he’s doing is playing good cop, bad cop," said Dershowitz. "He has some of his lawyers cooperating with Mueller, and some of his lawyers attacking Mueller because he wants to be ready to attack in the event there are any recommendations that are negative to the president."

Alan Dershowitz, a reular commentator on CNN and Fox News, is the former Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

As an appellate lawyer, he won 13 of the 15 murder cases he handled. Some of his more famous clients include Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Claus von Bulow and O.J. Simpson. Dershowitz is the author or co-author of 33 books.

SOURCE

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Trump, Adultery, Morality

Dennis Prager says some wise things below but what he omits to say is that complete sexual faithfulness is a rarity these days so people who have themselves "wandered" are unikely to condemn Trump for it
 
Some years ago, I wrote a column about adultery and politicians. In light of the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal interviews concerning their alleged (and probable) affairs with President Donald Trump, it is time to revisit the subject.

I do not agree with those — right or left, religious or secular — who contend that adultery invalidates a political or social leader. It may invalidate a pastor, priest or rabbi — because a major part of their vocation is to be a moral/religious model, and because clergy do not make war, sign national budgets, appoint judges, run foreign policy or serve as commanders in chief. In other words, unlike your clergyman or clergywoman, almost everything a president does as president affects hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of non-Americans. If a president is also a moral model, that is a wonderful bonus. But that is not part of a president’s job description.

But even anti-Trump conservatives still assert character matters a great deal in a president and other political leaders. There are two problems with that argument.

The most obvious is that adultery is frequently an inaccurate measure of a person’s character. Indeed, many otherwise great men have been unfaithful to their spouse. And while it is always a sin — the Sixth Commandment doesn’t come with an asterisk — there are gradations of sin.

Let me give an example of when adultery would be a lower-grade sin: when it is committed by men or women who have taken care of their Alzheimer’s-afflicted spouse for many years and the afflicted spouse no longer even recognizes them. Of course, the healthy spouse could find love with someone else without committing adultery — by divorcing their demented spouse. But few people would be so heartless as to recommend that avenue. At the other end of the sin spectrum would be flaunting one’s adultery, thereby publicly humiliating one’s spouse.

The second problem with the adultery-matters-in-a-political-leader argument is that the policies of a political leader matter much more — morally — than that individual’s sexual sins, or even character. It is truly foolish to argue otherwise. Would we rather have as president a person with racist views who otherwise had an exemplary personal character or a believer in racial equality who committed adultery?

I have considerably more moral contempt for the media’s and the Left’s obsession with Stormy Daniels than I do for Donald Trump for his alleged night of sinful sex with her. That “60 Minutes” correspondent Anderson Cooper and many in our country found it acceptable to ask a woman, “Did he use a condom?” on national TV is a far graver reflection of America’s moral malaise than a man having a one-night affair 12 years ago.

It should be clear that this whole preoccupation with Trump’s past sex life has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with humiliating Trump — and, thereby, hopefully weakening the Trump presidency — the raison d'etre of the media since he was elected. Here’s one proof: The media rightly celebrate, as we all do, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the moral greats of the 20th century despite reports of his having committed adultery on numerous occasions.

Likewise, the media and the Left idolized Sen. Ted Kennedy, regularly referring to him as the “Lion of the Senate.” Yet Kennedy was notorious for his lechery — far more so than Trump. Typical Ted Kennedy behavior, as described in New York magazine, was when he and then-fellow Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd “participated in the famous ‘waitress sandwich’ at La Brasserie in 1985, while their dates were in the bathroom.”

John F. Kennedy remains the most revered of Democratic presidents in the modern era. Yet we now know he routinely had affairs in the White House in his wife’s absence and had the Secret Service provide him advance notice of her return.

And, by the way, if sexual infidelity invalidates the character and, therefore, the worthiness of a politician, why doesn’t it invalidate the character and worthiness of an editor at The New York Times or The Washington Post? Why aren’t their sex lives investigated? They have, after all, more influence than almost any politician.

So, dear anti-Trump conservatives, please tone down the moral horror at Donald Trump’s character and the suggestions that it overshadows the good he has done and continues to do for America and the world.

The fact is it is none of my business and none of my concern whether a politician ever had an extramarital affair. To cite just one of many examples, a president’s attitude toward the genocide-advocating Islamic tyrants in Tehran is incomparably more morally significant. That is just one of many reasons — on moral grounds alone — I far prefer the current president to the faithful-to-his-wife previous president.

SOURCE

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Trump pushes and others move

The results he is getting exceed anybody's expectations.  This is the second time Kim has expressed a willingness to denuclearize

After two days of speculation, China announced on Wednesday that Kim had visited Beijing and met Xi during what the official Xinhua news agency called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday.

The trip was Kim's first known journey abroad since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.

Xinhua cited Kim as telling Xi that the situation on the Korean peninsula is starting to improve because North Korea has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.

"It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearisation on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il-sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong-il," Kim said, according to Xinhua.

SOURCE

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Trump's presure on China pays off

The tariffs he announced were just the opening shot on negotiations for a deal.  With Trump in charge, the USA is making all the moves instead of being pushed around by others. There is no certainty what the final deal will be but better access to the Chinese market for American cars is a good bet.  Since America is China's biggest customer, Trump holds all the cards

Last week, China threatened a massive trade war after Donald Trump imposed $50 billion in tariffs on their exports. This week, Beijing’s top economic official has begun to do his best Monty Hall impersonation, according to the Wall Street Journal. After a notably mild first response, China has quietly begun to offer better access to its markets to the US:

China and the U.S. have quietly started negotiating to improve U.S. access to Chinese markets, after a week filled with harsh words from both sides over Washington’s threat to use tariffs to address trade imbalances, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The talks, which cover wide areas including financial services and manufacturing, are being led by Liu He, China’s economic czar in Beijing, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington.

In a letter Messrs. Mnuchin and Lighthizer sent to Mr. Liu late last week, the Trump administration set out specific requests that include a reduction of Chinese tariffs on U.S. automobiles, more Chinese purchases of U.S. semiconductors and greater access to China’s financial sector by American companies, the people said. Mr. Mnuchin is weighing a trip to Beijing to pursue the negotiations, one of these people said.

Rather than go big, the WSJ’s Lingling Wei and Bob Davis point out, China imposed only a nominal set of tariffs after Trump’s announcement. They only impacted $3 billion in imports, less than 10% of the scope of the US tariffs announced by Trump. Those moves signaled an openness to talks, at least in the short run, to resolve any outstanding issues.

That, of course, plays right into Trump’s strategy of casting himself as a master dealmaker, a point which does not seem to bother China. How much can we expect out of a renegotiation, though? China certainly won’t give the farm away over $50 billion in tariffs, but then again, perhaps Trump doesn’t need a dramatically better deal. Even an incremental improvement would be a major win for his aggressive tactics, especially since his predecessors seemed mainly content to complain about China without taking any significant action.

Perhaps we can see a hint of this in South Korea, where negotiators claim they have reached a deal in principle on a renegotiated free-trade agreement:

The United States and South Korea have agreed to settle their differences on trade. The South Korean government said Monday that the two countries had struck a deal on a new version of the free trade agreement that has linked the two economies for the past six years.

South Korea has also secured a partial exemption from President Donald Trump’s new steel tariffs.

While South Korea is politically much closer to the US than China is, their trade practices had also given rise to many complaints. Trump targeted this trading relationship for his aggressive strategy, too, pointing out the annual $23 billion trade deficit with Seoul and their reluctance to open their markets to imports. But how much will we have won from the deal? Automakers will get to sell more cars, but the numbers may not dramatically rise in the near term:

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Retired Army Colonel Calls Out Gun-Grabbers — If You Say We’ve Got Blood on Our Hands Then It’s Safe To Say…

On a weekend where protests sparked by the Parkland school shooting crowded out almost every other media story, there was plenty of heated rhetoric going around on social media about the role guns should play in our society. Not all of it was new, and not all of it was wise.

In the midst of the pitched rhetoric, however, one retired Army colonel managed to call out the anti-gun rights side in a perfect way, particularly when he was told that he had blood on his hands.

In a Twitter confrontation, Kurt Schlichter, now a senior contributor at Townhall.com, said that if liberals are willing to lie about individual NRA members “having blood on (their) hands” to score rhetorical points, its likely they’re willing to lie about a lot of other things too — including not wanting to take your guns.

The social media confrontation began when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt — one of the few luminaries on the right to publicly attend Saturday’s March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. — highlighted a bipartisan bill that he thought Schlichter (who has expressed a lack of trust in the motives of the left, on this and other issues) might be able to support.

Schlichter — who has previously noted that liberal anger hasn’t been directed against the NRA but against originalist conservatives — responded with his issue regarding working with the left on gun control issues.

"You know, when these little bastards tell me I have blood on my hands, especially after how I've served this country and its citizens, they can go to hell."

If liberals are lying about you now when they say you have blood on your hands, it's a fair bet they are lying when they say they don't intend to disarm you, and also when they say that after they disarm you they don't intend to oppress you

Now, whether the Toomey/Coons act is a good idea is rather inconsequential here. What counts is the rhetoric — and the fact that it proves conservatives cannot trust the left on gun control.

In an aptly-titled column called “They Don’t Hate the NRA. They Hate You” for Townhall.com earlier this month, Schlichter outlined why the vitriol being spewed by the left on guns makes cooperation impossible.

“They hate you,” Schlichter concluded. “And you need to act accordingly.”

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Citigroup restricts gun sales by business customers

The company said Thursday that it will bar companies that it does business with from selling guns to people under the age of 21 and require customers to undergo background checks for all firearm purchases.

Citigroup (C) also banned its clients from selling high-capacity magazines and bump stocks, a gun accessory that was used by the shooter that murdered more than 50 people in Las Vegas in October.

The news was reported earlier by The New York Times and confirmed by the company.

The rules will apply to Citigroup clients "across the firm, including to small business, commercial and institutional clients, as well as credit card partners, whether co-brand or private label."

The new policy will not prevent Citi cardholders from using their credit cards to buy firearms or ammunition.

The bank says it has "few relationships with companies that manufacture firearms."

Citigroup also said it's prepared to lose business if its clients don't comply.

"We know our clients also care about these issues and we have begun to engage with them in the hope that they will adopt these best practices over the coming months," the bank said in a blog post. "If they opt not to, we will respect their decision and work with them to transition their business away from Citi."

After a mass shooting at a Florida high school last month that left 17 people dead, corporations have taken unprecedented steps to address calls for tighter gun control as federal lawmakers have been unable or unwilling to enact legislation.

Citigroup is the first major bank to announce a new formal policy since the Florida massacre.

Bank of America (BAC) and investment giant BlackRock (BLK) both committed to speaking with gun makers about their policies.

Walmart (WMT) and Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS) said last month they would raise the minimum age for firearm purchases to 21.

Companies including Delta Air Lines (DAL), United Airlines (UAL), Hertz (HTZ), Enterprise (ETOLF) and MetLife have ended partnerships with the National Rifle Association.

Citigroup's executive vice president, Edward Skyler, said in a blog post Thursday that the decision was "not centered on an ideological mission to rid the world of firearms," but about implementing "common-sense measures that would help prevent firearms from getting into the wrong hands."

"For too many years, in too many places, our country has seen acts of gun violence that have resulted in heartbreaking losses," Skyler wrote. "As a society, we all know that something needs to change. And as a company, we feel we must do our part."

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This Conservative Millennial Explains Why Trump’s Policies Are Better for Black Americans

Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens spoke to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey about why conservative policies are better for the African-American community. Owens appeared at the White House’s Generation Next forum for millennials Thursday. An edited transcript of her Daily Signal interview is below.

Rob Bluey: How did you become a conservative?

Candace Owens: I think for most people, watching Donald Trump run in 2016, something had to wake up inside of you. This is a man who was celebrated by the media. They could not get enough of Trump. You’re listening to rap and hip-hop music, they glorified him. Everyone wanted to end up at Mar-a-Lago. They said they were acting like Trump.

And then the second he won, he became a racist instantly. In that moment, I understood that racism was being used as a theme and a mechanism to control black Americans, and that the black community needed new leaders to sort of see them through that complete lie.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>

Bluey: You’ve made the case that Trump and his policies are better for the black community. Why is that?

Owens: Of course, our conservative policies are better for a black community. If you think of everything that we’ve gone through historically, it is because of Democratic policies that we are worse off today than we were 60 years ago.

For sure, no one would be foolish enough to say that America is a more racist country today than it was 60 years ago. So what happened? LBJ happened, the Great Society happened. Government dependency happened, welfare happened. All of this happened and came from the Democratic Party.

Bluey: When you’re talking to young people at Turning Point USA, what is your message to them?

Owens: My message to them is just that the time is now. President Trump represents the first opportunity for black Americans to get off of, what I refer to as, the ideological slave ship, to step outside of this line—this myth and this illusion—and to understand that we’ve had our power essentially stripped from us.

We continue to allow that by being afraid of racism, which is no longer an actual threat in this society for black Americans.

Bluey: You’re somebody who isn’t afraid to engage on Twitter or in the media. What gives you that courage to stand firm on these principles?

Owens: Honestly, I was born aggressive. I think I came out shouting orders at everyone.

I’ve been really strong-minded from the time I was a little girl, and I hate being told what to think. So propaganda just doesn’t really work on me. I’m not afraid. It takes fearlessness.

You can’t be afraid to be referred to as a “coon” or an “Uncle Tom,” which, by the way, Uncle Tom, for people that actually read the book, was the hero of the novel. That term does not work.

It’s going to take people with some courage to step up and say, “You can call me whatever you want, this movement is happening. You can get on board or you can watch it.”

Bluey: We’re approaching in the next couple of weeks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. How did MLK influence your life?

Owens: The most important thing to understand is that what he wanted was a society where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. Everything that the Democrats are advocating for is for us to only be judged by the color of our skin, by our sex, me as a black woman, they want me to constantly remember that.

You are black, you are a woman, and you cannot exist outside of that. So we need to understand that in many ways, we’ve gone backward from the themes that he was teaching when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

His dream is being realized, but it’s not being realized by the Democratic Party right now.

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Leftism is turning into tribalism

A funny thing happened on the way to the intersectional future. The proverbial knapsack was unpacked in the Women’s March and inside wasn’t just racial tribalism, but racial and religious supremacism.

Why do Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March like Farrakhan and his hate group?

The Nation of Islam preaches that black people are the master race. It doesn’t just hate white people, Jews and a whole bunch of other folks. It hates them out of a conviction in its own superiority. According to its teachings, “the Blackman is the original man” and lighter skinned people were “devils” created by an evil mad scientist to rule over black people until they are destroyed by UFOs.

It even teaches that monkeys are descended from white people.

Progressive media essays defending Obama, Rep. Keith Ellison,  Rep. Danny Davis, Mallory and other black leaders for their Farrakhan links have urged concerned liberals to look at the positive aspects of the Nation of Islam, its love for black people, not the negative, its hatred for white people.

But it is the “positive” that is the problem.

Intersectionality promises to package tribal identity politics into a utopia of social justice. But the essence of tribalism is the superiority of your people and the inferiority of all other groups. Tribalism doesn’t have to be violent, hostile or hateful. Most peoples are tribal after all. But when you combine the most radical identity politics elements, as the left does, then bigoted supremacism is certain.

The clown car of identity politics runs smoothest when it has a common enemy: white people. Coalitions like the Women’s March assemble an array of groups who are united by their hatred of Trump, white people, Israel and root beer. And it works as long as no one lifts up the hood and looks at the engine.

Black nationalism is racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic. The Nation of Islam isn’t an exception. From Jeremiah Wright, “Italians… looked down their garlic noses”, to Eldridge Cleaver, “rape was an insurrectionary act” to Amiri Baraka, the ugliest possible supremacist bigotry is its natural state.

"We are all beautiful (except white people, they are full of, and made of s___)," Amiri Baraka wrote. "The fag's death they gave us on a cross... they give us to worship a dead jew and not ourselves."

“I got the extermination blues, jew-boys. I got the Hitler syndrome figured... So come for the rent, jewboys,” the Guggenheim fellowship, PEN and American Book Award winner, and former Poet Laureate of New Jersey ranted.

Baraka was one of the country’s most celebrated black nationalist poets and he was a former member of the Nation of Islam. Baraka’s Black Mass circulated the NOI’s racist creation myth.

It was the NOI’s conviction of black superiority and white inferiority that attracted Baraka and so many other black nationalists. The NOI is one of a variety of black supremacist religious groups, from the similarly exotic Moorish and Black Hebrew churches, to NOI splinter groups such as Five-Percent Nation and black nationalist churches like the one attended by the Obamas and presided over by Jeremiah Wright. But religious black supremacism is only a component of a larger cultural movement that lies at the heart of black nationalism and mingles historical conspiracy theories with racial supremacism.

The comingling of black nationalism with intersectional politics has produced a new generation (often of second-generation radicals) that dresses up its racism not only in the lyricism of the old black nationalism of Wright and Baraka, but in the obtuse academic jargon of intersectionality.

That’s where Tamika Mallory and Ta-Nehisi Coates come from. But political word salads and poetry only conceal what you choose not to pay attention to. And that’s why we’re talking about Louis Farrakhan.

The mass of progressive media articles, essays and explainers deployed to protect the Women’s March can be summed up as, “Stop paying attention.” And what we’re not supposed to be paying attention to is the slow death of liberalism and its substitution by the intolerant tribal extremism of identity politics.

It’s why the echo chamber of progressive media has turned against the New York Times editorial page where too many articles questioning identity politics and political censorship have appeared. Bari Weiss and Quinn Norton, articulate young women, are the most immediate targets, but the larger target is James Bennet, the page’s gatekeeper, who is unwisely giving liberals a glimpse of where they’re headed.

The remaining liberals still wandering the open plains of a dying ecosystem don’t understand that they are becoming extinct. When they endorse vocal identity politics movements, it is because they believe that addressing the grievances of their extremists is a necessary step to a tolerant colorblind society.

They haven’t grasped that a tolerant multiracial society is the last thing supremacists of any race want.

And the left tells them what they want to hear, that the strident tone of the activists is a momentary phenomenon triggered by their fury at injustice and oppression. Once we’re all intersectionalized and truthfully reconciled, the pain underlying the appeal of a Farrakhan or a Wright will dissipate.

It’s a lie. And they know it’s a lie.

Intersectionality is a lie. Like the Nation of Islam, it’s not just a lie in its negative hateful aspects, but in its promise of a utopia once the “white devils” and their “white privilege” are out of the way.

Groups of identity politics extremists and their white cishet lefty allies can only be briefly united by the negative, not the positive. The “call-out culture” meant to spread social justice through the movement isn’t just a form of political terror; it fails to reach the innate bigotry of each identity politics group.

The meltdown of the Women’s March shows why intersectionality was always a Potemkin Village.

Identity politics movements can’t fight bigotry, because they are naturally bigoted. Instead of actually rejecting bigotry, they project it on a convenient target like Trump, and then pretend that by destroying him, they can cleanse society. The more targets they destroy, the more they need to find to maintain an alliance whose only true unifying principle is a mutual denial of each other’s supremacist bigotries. And so the battle against racism becomes a war against microaggressions and structural white supremacy.

The whole thing is a ticking time bomb. And it keeps going off every few years. When it blows up, lefty activists rush out, as they are doing now, to plead, wheedle and warn that the real enemy is “white supremacy” and everyone needs to stop paying attention to the racist or sexist views of their own allies.

These “rainbow coalitions” of racist radicals don’t fight bigotry; they mobilize bigots for racial wars.

Tamika Mallory praising Farrakhan isn’t shocking. It would be more shocking if she didn’t. It’s hard to find major black figures in politics and the entertainment industry who don’t hang out with him.

Both Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, the first two serious black presidential candidates, did. The Congressional Black Caucus hosted him. London Mayor Sadiq Khan acted as his lawyer. The list of black entertainers is all but endless. Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube (both members), Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Spike Lee, Arsenio Hall, Common, Kanye West, Mos Def, Young Jeezy and Erykah Badu to name a few.

Not every individual who meets up with Farrakhan necessarily shares all his bigoted views, but many find his tribal affirmation of black superiority appealing and they value that more than they do any kind of tolerant society. That’s what Tamika Mallory, in her own awkward way, was trying to tell us.

Black nationalism is a tribal cause. It will always put its people first. The same is true of the rest of the hodgepodge of political identity groups that form up the intersectional chorus. No amount of calling out will change that. That’s why the calling out is mostly directed at safe targets, preferably white.

There is no larger unity at the end of the rainbow. Only smoother versions of Farrakhan. Barack instead of Baraka. Rants about “white devils” and “satanic Jews” filtered through academic jargon.

A movement of bigotries can only divide us. And that’s all identity politics has to offer America. Instead of equal rights in a united nation, we will be members of quarreling tribes. And those tribes, like Farrakhan’s fans, will be incapable of seeing members of other tribes as having the same worth they do.

And people who don’t believe that the “other” has the same worth, won’t grant him the same rights.

The left claims that it’s fighting for equality. What it’s actually fighting for is a tribal society where the notion of equal rights for all is as alien as it is in Iraq, Rwanda and Afghanistan, where democracy means tribal bloc votes and where the despotism of majority rule invariably ends in terror and death.

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The Los Angeles Soviet wants to turn LA into a magnet for all the homeless people in America

The Los Angeles City Council Friday is considering a motion that would enact a plan to provide housing for every transient in the city, as it continues to grapple with a housing shortage which has spiked rents and sent thousands of people into homelessness.

The motion, introduced last month by Councilmen Mike Bonin and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, says there is little evidence that anything is being done to create or improve shelters for the homeless in the city and that a true sense of emergency is needed to deal with the problem.

The 2017 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count found that 57,794 people are living on the streets of L.A. County, a 23 percent jump from the year before. Within the city of L.A., that number is more than 34,100.

The city has explored multiple options for dealing with its growing homeless population. In February, the council unanimously approved putting about 60 homeless people in trailers on a downtown lot at Arcadia and Alameda streets. The trailers, which contain bathrooms, showers and beds, are expected to cost about $2 million to build and another $1 million to operate.

However, the plan has received pushback from nearby restaurant owners, who say the high concentration of transients in the area has already hurt their business, and the trailers could make it worse.

Mayor Eric Garcetti defended it earlier this month.

“It’s not a choice of bringing homeless people to your neighborhood or not: they’re there,” Garcetti said. “You want to keep them off the street or bring them home. So from Boyle Heights, to downtown, to the Westside, to San Fernando Valley, we’re finding those allies and we’re pushing. And as mayor, I won’t accept no.”

Another proposal would convert hotels into permanent housing.

In November 2016, L.A. voters passed Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion bond measure to fund permanent housing for the homeless, but the units will take years to approve and build.

In March 2017, L.A. County voters adopted Measure H, a quarter-cent Los Angeles County sales tax to fund anti-homelessness programs. It is meant to generate $355 million annually for 10 years to fund a variety of programs to combat homelessness.

The motion being considered Friday seeks a number of actions from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority and from some city departments. With city assistance, the authority would be asked to provide several comprehensive reports within 14 days, including the framework for an Emergency Response Homeless Plan, outlining what steps and what funds would be required to provide an alternative to homeless encampments for 100 percent of the homeless population by the end of the year.

Peter Lynn, executive director of LAHSA, noted that since the passage of Measure H, they have seen an increase from 10 percent to 50 percent in the number of people who enter temporary shelters in the county and are transitioned into permanent supportive housing.

The homelessness crisis has plagued the entire Southland. In February, hundreds of homeless people were removed from a two-mile stretch of the Santa Ana riverbed, prompting a lawsuit from homeless advocates.

The transients who were cleared out were given motel vouchers as part of a deal worked out in federal court. But those vouchers are expiring, and Orange County and city officials have been scrambling to come up with a permanent housing solution for them.

Proposals to move the homeless to temporary locations in Laguna Niguel, Huntington Beach and Irvine have been met with large protests from local residents.

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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 THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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