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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Monday, November 30, 2015

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Syrians are a Terror Threat, Here are the Numbers

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog 1 Comments

Syria is a terror state. It didn’t become that way overnight because of the Arab Spring or the Iraq War.

Its people are not the victims of American foreign policy, Islamic militancy or any of the other fashionable excuses. They supported Islamic terrorism. Millions of them still do.

They are not the Jews fleeing a Nazi Holocaust. They are the Nazis trying to relocate from a bombed out Berlin.

These are the cold hard facts.

ISIS took over parts of Syria because its government willingly allied with it to help its terrorists kill Americans in Iraq. That support for Al Qaeda helped lead to the civil war tearing the country apart.

The Syrians were not helpless, apathetic pawns in this fight. They supported Islamic terrorism.

A 2007 poll showed that 77% of Syrians supported financing Islamic terrorists including Hamas and the Iraqi fighters who evolved into ISIS. Less than 10% of Syrians opposed their terrorism.

Why did Syrians support Islamic terrorism? Because they hated America.

Sixty-three percent wanted to refuse medical and humanitarian assistance from the United States. An equal number didn’t want any American help caring for Iraqi refugees in Syria.

The vast majority of Syrians turned down any form of assistance from the United States because they hated us. They still do. Just because they’re willing to accept it now, doesn’t mean they like us.

If we bring Syrian Muslims to America, we will be importing a population that hates us.

The terrorism poll numbers are still ugly. A poll this summer found that 1 in 5 Syrians supports ISIS.  A third of Syrians support the Al Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. Since Sunnis are 3/4rs of the population and Shiites and Christians aren’t likely to support either group, this really means that Sunni Muslim support for both terror groups is even higher than these numbers make it seem.

And even though Christians and Yazidis are the ones who actually face ISIS genocide, Obama has chosen to take in few Christians and Yazidis. Instead 98.6% of Obama’s Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims.

This is also the population most likely to support ISIS and Al Qaeda.

But these numbers are even worse than they look. Syrian men are more likely to view ISIS positively than women. This isn’t surprising as the Islamic State not only practices sex slavery, but has some ruthless restrictions for women that exceed even those of Saudi Arabia.  (Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, however, mostly closes the gender gap getting equal support from Syrian men and women.)

ISIS, however, gets its highest level of support from young men. This is the Syrian refugee demographic.

In the places where the Syrian refugees come from, support for Al Qaeda groups climbs as high as 70% in Idlib, 66% in Quneitra, 66% in Raqqa, 47% in Derzor, 47% in Hasakeh, 41% in Daraa and 41% in Aleppo.

Seventy percent support for ISIS in Raqqa has been dismissed as the result of fear. But if Syrians in the ISIS capital were just afraid of the Islamic State, why would the Al Nusra Front, which ISIS is fighting, get nearly as high a score from the people in Raqqa? The answer is that their support for Al Qaeda is real.

Apologists will claim that these numbers don’t apply to the Syrian refugees. It’s hard to say how true that is. Only 13% of Syrian refugees will admit to supporting ISIS, though that number still means that of Obama’s first 10,000 refugees, 1,300 will support ISIS. But the poll doesn’t delve into their views of other Al Qaeda groups, such as the Al Nusra Front, which usually gets more Sunni Muslim support.

And there’s no sign that they have learned to reject Islamic terrorism and their hatred for America.

When Syrian refugees were asked to list the greatest threat, 29 percent picked Iran, 22 percent picked Israel and 19 percent picked America. Only 10 percent viewed Islamic terrorism as a great threat.

By way of comparison, twice as many Iraqis see Islamic terrorism as a threat than Syrians do and slightly more Palestinian Arabs view Islamic terrorism as a threat than Syrians do. These are terrible numbers.

Thirty-seven percent of Syrian refugees oppose US airstrikes on ISIS. 33% oppose the objective of destroying ISIS.

And these are the people whom our politicians would have us believe are “fleeing an ISIS Holocaust.”

Seventy-three percent of Syrian refugees view US foreign policy negatively. That’s a higher number than Iraqis. It’s about equal to that of Palestinian Arabs.

They don’t like us. They really don’t like us.

Obama’s first shipment of Syrians will include 1,300 ISIS supporters and most of the rest will hate this country. But unless they’re stupid enough to announce that during their interviews, the multi-layered vetting that Obama and other politicians boast about will be useless.

It only took 2 Muslim refugees to carry out the Boston Marathon massacre. It only took 19 Muslim terrorists to carry out 9/11.

If only 1 percent of those 1,300 Syrian ISIS supporters put their beliefs into practice, they can still kill thousands of Americans.

And that’s a best case scenario. Because it doesn’t account for how many thousands of them support Al Qaeda. It doesn’t account for how many of them back other Islamic terrorist groups such as Hamas that had widespread support in Syria.

While the media has shamelessly attempted to exploit the Holocaust to rally support for Syrian migrants, the majority of Syrians supported Hamas whose mandate is finishing Hitler’s work. The Hamas charter describes a “struggle against the Jews” that culminates in another Holocaust. Bringing Hamas supporters to America will lead to more Muslim Supremacist violence against Jews in this country.

But all of this can be avoided by taking in genuine Syrian refugees.

While Obama insists on taking in fake Syrian refugees, mainly Sunni Muslims from UN camps who support terrorism and are not endangered in Jordan or Turkey, both Sunni countries, he is neglecting the real refugees, Christians and Yazidis, who are stateless and persecuted in the Muslim world.

Instead of taking in fake refugees who hate us, we should be taking in real refugees who need us.

Obama and Paul Ryan have claimed that a “religious test” for refugees is wrong, but religious tests are how we determine whether a refugee is really fleeing persecution or is just an economic migrant.

The Sunni Muslims that Obama is taking in do not face persecution. They are the majority. They are the persecutors. It’s the Yazidis and the Christians who need our help. And these real refugees, unlike the fake Sunni Muslim refugees, are not coming here to kill us. They truly have nowhere else to go.

Syria is a disaster because its rival Muslim religious groups are unable to get along with each other. Bringing them to this country will only spread the violence from their land to ours. Instead of taking in the religious majority that caused this mess through its intolerance, we should take in their victims; the Christians and Yazidis who are being slaughtered and enslaved by ISIS.

During the entire Syrian Civil War, Obama has only taken in 1 Syrian Yazidi and 53 Christians.

It’s time that we had a refugee policy that protected the persecuted, instead of their Muslim persecutors. It’s time that we listened to Syrian Christians in this country who oppose bringing tens of thousands of Syrian Muslims to terrorize their neighborhoods the way that they are already terrorizing Syrian Christians in Germany.

Syrian Muslims are a nation of terrorist supporters. They destroyed their own country. Let’s not let them destroy ours.

It’s time that we kept our nation safe by doing the right thing. Let’s take in the real Christian and Yazidi refugees and let the fake Sunni Muslim refugees and terrorist supporters stay in their own countries.

More on what lies behind the Left/Right divide

By Jon Jay Ray

Among psychologists, the most interesting answer to the above question is that given by John Hibbing.  He might be called the "rockstar" of the debate. He attracts attention because he goes down to the physiological and brain-science level for his evidence and conclusions.  He says that what you believe is a product of what you are.  He does not stress it but "what you are" is genetically determined.  So he is looking for inherited physiological differences between Leftists and conservatives.

And he has made some progress.  He has put people through a number of experimental tasks and found that the reactions he observes to the tasks  do indeed differ as between the two ideological groups.  He describes his findings as showing that "disgust sensitivity" is the key variable.  Conservatives are more easily disgusted.  Most generally, they have a "negativity bias", according to Hibbing.  And last year he put up a big paper summarizing the evidence for his view.  It is "Differences in negativity bias underlie variations in  political ideology"

I have long argued that Left/Right differences are largely inborn so my critique of Hibbing is not to contest his findings but to question the "spin" he puts on them.  You can find a pretty good summary of his experiments here and I think it is easy to see that what Hibbing calls "negativity bias" could just as well be described as caution -- and caution has long been said to be the essence of conservatism.  So Hibbing has confirmed some old wisdom rather than telling us anything new.

Hibbing's big article was published in an open review journal so critiques of it keep multiplying.  One such  critique that I have noted recently was "Not so simple: The multidimensional nature and diverse origins of political ideology" by Stanley Feldman and Leonie Huddy.  They make two points that I think are pretty right:

They say that "negativity bias" is characteristic of neurotics and that all the studies show that conservatives are not particularly neurotic.  I observed that in my research too.  So that is a bit of a stake in the heart for Hibbing.  His "spin" on his results has undone him.  If he had simply described conservatives as cautious, that criticism could not so easily be levelled at him.

Their second point is that there is no single Left-Right dimension.  Economic conservatism and social conservatism are quite different. So Feldman & Huddy conclude that Hibbing's work is pretty useless because he has mixed up two different things.  And it is indeed true that those two types of attitudes are very distinct factorially.  I noted that in one of my papers long ago.

So they are right but I am prepared to defend Hibbing on that one.  Although there are  two  distinctly different types of conservative attitude,  they are not totally different.  As I found, they do correlate, albeit weakly.  And that is why the "big tent" of the GOP succeeds.  The two types of conservative do find some things in common, a respect for the individual, mainly.

And as we see in "Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits", Hibbing uses the Wilson scale in his research, which is primarily a measure of social conservatism. And I have shown elsewhere that social conservatism is the big one for separating people.  Economic conservatism is arguably more important to our future but it doesn't get the blood boiling like social issues do: Abortion, homosexuality, religion, tradition etc.

So Hibbing may not be measuring overall conservatism but he is measuring social conservatism and that is the most central sort of conservatism.  So I would summarize his findings as showing that social conservatives are instinctively more cautious than others.  And I see no problem with that.

Hibbing uses "Negativity" rather than "caution" to describe conservatives because he wants to rubbish conservatives (though he says he does not).  "Negative" sounds a lot sadder than "cautious".  But in so doing he lands himself in trouble.  I have noted the Feldman & Huddy comment on that but there is in fact a bigger vat of boiling oil he falls into:

As is noted here, who are the "negative" people when it comes to global warming?  Warmists are almost entirely Leftists but it is they who are vastly negative about the climate and our future.  They predict imminent catastrophe -- while conservatives are mostly just amused by the scare. Conservatives say in  summary that: "global warming is not a crisis, the likely benefits of man-made global warming exceed the likely costs, and mankind is not the scourge on Earth that liberals make us out to be"

And again, referring to conservatives simply as cautious would not enable that criticism.  Warmists do say that they are the cautious ones but to swallow the arrant nonsense that is global warming would have to be a height of incautiousness.  Conservatives just look at the evidence and see that there is no need for caution in the matter.  Here's a graph of the amount of global warming we have had in the last 18 years  -- none:

So two cheers for Hibbing.  He has drawn attention to the biological basis of ideology but he should stop stretching the implications of his findings in a Leftist direction.  He just makes a fool of himself with that stretch.  He was pretty reasonable -- even humble -- in a 2012 paper.  He should try more of that.

Leftism Has No Moral Foundation

Rebel Media

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is a hyperfeminist, a lesbian activist. She hates patriarchies, especially old white men who tell women what to do.  But see a photo that she herself published, wearing a hijab [in white scarf] and sitting in the women's only section of an Ottawa mosque, like a good little subservient, submissive woman, obedient to sharia law!  

Of course, if sharia law were really in effect, she’d be thrown off the top of an apartment block, or hanged from a crane, which is the usual death sentence for homosexuality under radical Islam.  This isn’t just a case of, anything for a vote. It’s an insight into her mind. She despises our western, Judeo-Christian culture. But she’s an obedient little girl when it comes to the most reactionary patriarchy in the world — radical Islam.

But watch and I'll show you a photo that she herself published, wearing a hijab and sitting in the women's only section of an Ottawa mosque, like a good little subservient, submissive woman, obedient to sharia law!




De-Bolshevization and the March of the Useful Idiots

By Bruce Walker

Nazi Germany and the ideology which inspired it was so evil that when we won the Second World War, "de-Nazification" was the remedy.  The Nazis had murdered millions of innocent people, conspired to begin an aggressive world war that plunged most of mankind into bloodshed and destruction, and preached a gospel of hate and lies and infected millions.  De-Nazification was the right thing to do.

When the Soviet Union imploded twenty-five years ago, there was a compelling case to be made for de-Bolshevization.  Communists had murdered many more innocent people than the Nazis – 100,000,000 is the conservative number French leftists calculated in The Black Book of Communism – the first mass genocide in modern Europe was not the Holocaust but the Holodomor, a term virtually unknown to most Americans.

The Second World War was begun not by Hitler, but by Hitler and Stalin.  Nazi Germany, until June 1941, had no more slavish lackey and no more devoted helper than Soviet Union and no greater "Fifth Column" in the democracies than communists in those nations......What could be worse than those party functionaries who presided over this wretched empire, which had been the loyal ally of Nazism?  How about those fortunate enough to live safely in America, living in relative comfort and ease because of America, serving a foreign monstrosity like Communism while they sneer hatefully and mockingly toward the land that blessed them?  How about some hideous creature like Dalton Trumbo?......Men like Dalton Trumbo and women like Betty Friedan, however, stayed slavishly devoted to this modern-day Beelzebub. .....To Read More....

Hungary shows the world how to secure a nation's border

by Carol Brown

Eastern Europe is leading the way to protect the continent against colonizers from Islamic lands. Hungary is in the forefront, having erected a fence that is patrolled around the clock by Hungarian police and military. There is also support along the border from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Slovakia as these nations partner together to protect themselves. In this video, the mayor of Assothalom (a rural town in Hungary situated along the southern border shared with Serbia) speaks about border security. And he does not mince his words. He acknowledges that all of Europe must be protected and defended or everyone will perish.....To Read More.....

Atlas Shrugs by Pamela Geller

My Take - I keep seeing the words Islamophobia, Xenophobia and racism being used by these leftist excusers of Muslim actions and the current crop of refugees to denigrate the sanity and morality of those opposed to the Islamization of the west and the immigration of more of these people. First, I would like to know why it is that not one Muslim country is taking these people in? 

Secondly, Islamophobia is an oxymoron. A phobia is is a mental disorder caused by an irrational fear of something. Does anyone really think fearing Islamists is irrational?  As for the rest of the Muslims - they may be non-violent, but they support Sharia and those who are violent and the Islamization of the world, that's a center most teaching in the Koran.  Fearing them in general isn't irrational. 

Xenophobia is defined as " an intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries".  These people are feared and disliked because they're barbarians with a moral code that belongs in a sewer.  Fearing and disliking them is not a mental issue - it's a reality issue.  Then we have racism.  Islam isn't a race - it's a political criminal organization masquerading as a religion. 

Let's try and get this once and for all.  Fearing Islam isn't a mental disorder.  It's clear thinking based on history and reality.  And we have to stop listening to these insane leftists who attempt to obfuscate realty with insane rhetoric filled with logical fallacies. They've lost their minds - it's time for the sane to step up and say so. 

Did you ever wonder why a screwball like Trump is so popular?  He has the guts to say what most people in this country are thinking and doesn't care what the world thinks.  Especially the cloistered world of the leftist media, unlike so many politicians.

 Austrian Muslim fighter: “Hamburg and Berlin are our cities!” - It’s not as if they haven’t been telling us, in no uncertain terms, their intentions, goals and objectives. Western leaders’ response is to go after …. the islamophobes. That’s worked out just splendidly, hasn’t it?

Swedish village descends into open warfare as citizens fight back against Muslim invaders - America, take heed (and take notes):  “Community torn apart as arrival of migrants prompts running battles in streets,”....A SMALL Swedish village has descended into open warfare after furious locals clashed with migrants in a chilling warning of the dangers associated with mass migration.

Italy: Headmaster scraps Christmas carol concert following Paris attacks so as not to offend Muslims - Did anyone really believe it was just “Muhammad art exhibits” that upset followers of a savage ideology? Did anyone think it would end with killing Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists or attempting to shoot up our free speech event in Texas?

University of Missouri professor beat teenage relative for not wearing hijab: cops #Mizzou - Where does this fit into the Mizzou race narrative? Will the Huffington Post do a piece on this? Mizzou professor Youssif Z. Omar, 53, was at Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, on Tuesday when he spotted that the girl did not have the traditional Muslim headscarf. Officer Latisha Stroer told the Columbia Tribune in an email that Omar grabbed the girl “very violently by the hair.” He slapped her across the face, and pulled her by the hair down and flight of stairs and into his car.  Where are the riots? Where are the firings? Where are the demands for expunging Islamic texts and teachings of misogyny and supremacism? Youssif Zaghwani Omar, 53, was arrested....

300 riot in the Berlin airport refugee center - This could have been predicted. Walls have been torn down, and refugees knocked over tables and chairs.

TERROR ALERT: Islamic Graffiti Found on Four Budget Airline Plane's Fuel Tanks - This is all a form of warfare — instilling terror and fear. This is a threat. If they could access the fuel tank so easily, why not place a bomb? As jihadis did on the Russian passenger jet that they blew out of the sky.

Dozens of Paris airport workers on terror watch list: report -
The question is, how many airport workers on terror watch lists are working at American airports?.....The security passes of 86,000 workers at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris will be reviewed after it was found that 57 employees with access to airliners were on a terror watch list, according to a report.

Denmark: Syrian refugee breaks into house, tries to rape 8-year-old - Obama wants to bring this here: Denmark: Syrian refugee breaks into house, tries to rape 8-year-old.  A 40 year old male asylum seeker from Syria have been sentenced to nine months in prison after he was convicted of an attempted rape of an 8-year-old girl in December 2014. The then 39-year-old man suddenly stood in the girl's room in the middle of the night. The girl screamed in horror, and it woke her parents who came to her rescue.  After a fight between the offender and the girl's father, the now 40-year-old asylum seeker was arrested by the police.

India: Wife gangraped, husband divorces her through SMS (Short Message Service, This is a mechanism of delivery of short messages over the mobile networks) - In Islamic law, this misogyny is institutional and legal: “According to Sharia Law, a man can divorce his wife if he says 'talaq’ to her three times.” This treatment of women like commodities is a central element of the law and culture that Obama and other Western authorities demand that we respect.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Time to Shut Down the Department of Agriculture

June 24, 2011 by Dan Mitchell

I have a confession to make: I have a hard time making up my mind. At times, I am overcome by indecision. To be more specific, I can’t figure out which department of the federal government should be shut down first.  In the past, I’ve written about the squalid waste and corruption at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and argued that HUD should be shuttered.

But I’ve also written about the grotesque inefficiency and bloat at the Department of Transportation and urged that the building be razed to the ground.
Today, I can’t resist turning my attention to the Department of Agriculture. This is another part of the federal behemoth that specializes in taking money from productive taxpayers and dispensing it to well-connected agri-businesses to maintain a system of subsidies and central planning so Byzantine that it would probably make a North Korean Commissar shake his head with bemusement.

If you want to share my anger, read this column by Victor David Hanson. Here’s an excerpt to get your blood boiling........To Read More.....

Refugee Resettlement: The Trojan Horse!


 
 

Atlas Shrugs by Pamela Geller

Ben Carson Visits Syrian Refugees in Jordan - I predict that this is the nail in the coffin of Carson’s presidential aspirations. A self-inflicted wound he won’t recover from. He played right into the hands of the media. Carson’s ascent was due, in large part, to his outspoken and frank observations on sharia and jihad in America. The migrant issue is a hot button issue, no doubt. One where reality and the media myth completely diverge. Far from a humanitarian crisis, the Muslim invasion of Europe will be its demise. No-go zones are proliferating and people can scarcely leave their homes for fear of their lives.

Sharia in the UK: Girl not allowed extra math classes because she didn’t wear hijab - Authorities are investigating this school, while bringing in thousands more Muslims, who will set up more schools like this (or take over other schools and transform them the way they did this one). Do they really think that other Muslim schools will readily teach British values and not act in the way Park View School officials acted? Are UK authorities really unaware that this mistreatment of female students and banning of representational art and instrumental music is in accord with sharia, and thus they will inevitably have many, many more “Trojan Horse” schools?

My Gazette

The End ofAcademic Elites, By Mike Konrad
The internet has changed everything, so much so that even I, a man who has been online for 19 years, am constantly amazed at the pace of accelerated change. The printing press changed the world in a few decades in the 16th century. The internet is even more revolutionary.  Even more so than the press, the internet has evaporated prior means of didactic instruction. The printing press created change, but only the rich could afford to buy one. For less than $100 today, one can get a domain and start a media empire on the web.

The standing joke about a liberal is…“A liberal is somebody who is so open-minded that he won’t take his own side in a fight.”  And so it is proving. The only problem with Obama being unable to take his own side in a fight is that it is our side as well. And the rest of us are not ready to go gentle – and take our families – into that beheading good night.  What’s going on? Liberalism is the philosophy of giving away that which has been built by its forebears. To liberals, defending themselves, their society, their institutions, their customs, their culture is anathema because that would offend the attacker! And they can’t have that! Not giving offense is liberalism’s highest value.  The people who built and/or are a part of what is being attacked don’t count. Their sacrifice, their achievement in having created what is being attacked make them privileged in the liberal mind and therefore their opinion, their very existence, is invalid…… Liberalism cannot defend itself, or us, because doing so would invalidate, would evaporate, the mirage that is the world that it has constructed for itself. Since liberalism regards all other cultures as superior to its own, if one of those cultures is a ruthless, relentless warrior culture that cares only for victory and dominance, liberalism has no vocabulary, no thought process, no sense of self-preservation with which to arm itself against it. It cannot defend itself against barbarism because it believes that the barbarians are right……To Read More……

Paris was a wake-up call. Will America awaken or slumber into disaster?

A lot of Muslim men rape a lot of non-Muslim women. But no one wants to say it. Silence won’t keep women safe. Quite the opposite.

Here's what historically inaccurate Barack Obama had to say on Thanksgiving about the droves of Muslim refugees he plans to inject into our population.

On Tuesday Nov. 17, a massive hurricane-force windstorm slammed the Inland Northwest, notably northeast Washington and the Idaho panhandle. Hundreds of trees came down. Thousands of branches littered streets and intersections. Roofs flew off or were smashed by falling trees. Three people died. Power poles – not just lines, but poles – snapped like matchwood. Electricity across the two largest cities in the area – Spokane and Coeur d’Alene – as well as most of the outlying region, was down for anywhere from a few hours to 10 days…… Too many people make light of the likely consequences. “We’d go back to the 1800s,” they snort. “Big deal. People lived just fine in the 1800s.”  If you think life in America without electricity will merely revert us to pioneer days, you are dead wrong (not literally, I hope). We wouldn’t regress to the 1800s; we would regress to the 1100s or earlier. Life would become a bitter, brutal struggle for survival, and many millions would die.  Society thrived in the 1800s for five very simple reasons:
1) a non-electric infrastructure already existed;
2) people had the skills, knowledge and tools to make do;
3) our population levels were far lower; 4
) most people lived rurally and raised a significant portion of their own food; and
5) there were relatively few people who didn’t earn their way….. …..

Surviving an imminent ice age, by S. Fred Singer
Solar observers predict a “Little Ice Age (LIA)” to arrive before 2100. While expert economists confirm that a modestly warmer climate benefits both health and human prosperity, a colder climate generally spells more sickness and poses real danger to agricultural yields—with consequent famines and mass starvation. These calamities can be overcome – through adequate and timely preparation of energy supplies, water projects, and croplands. There is some urgency in preparing now for the possibility of such a cold period, similar to the LIA that prevailed off and on during 1400-1800 AD. It is likely then that tropical regions will end up as the major sources of food and be called upon to supply the rest of the world.….warmer climate benefits both health and human prosperity, a colder climate generally spells more sickness and poses real danger to agricultural yields -- with consequent famines and mass starvation……


The Department of Agriculture Is a Welfare Scam

I may have to change my mind. When asked a few years ago to pick which department in Washington most deserved to be eliminated, I chose the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  And HUD unquestionably is a cesspool of waste, so it certainly should be shuttered.  But the more I read about the bizarre handouts and subsidies showered on big agribusiness producers by the Department of Agriculture, the more I think there’s a very compelling argument that it should be at top of my list.

Indeed, these giveaways are so disgusting and corrupt that not only should the department be abolished, but the headquarters should be razed and then the ground should be covered by a foot of salt to make sure nothing ever springs back to life.

That’s a bit of hyperbole, I realize, but you’ll hopefully feel the same way after today. That’s because we’re going to look at a few examples of the bad results caused by government intervention.  To get an idea of the Soviet-style nonsense of American agricultural programs, a Reuters report on the peanut programs reveals how subsidies and intervention are bad news for taxpayers and consumers. Here’s the big picture.....To Read More......

Saturday, November 28, 2015


Turkeys we’re not thankful for

The tasty birds are affordable. Government turkeys enrich crony corporatists, but cost us dearly.
Paul Driessen
To commemorate Thanksgiving – and garner First Family photo ops – presidents often host Rose Garden ceremonies, where they “pardon” a turkey, before sitting down to dine on one of its cousins. In fact, Americans ate close to 50 million of these tasty birds this year. We roasted our family bird in a Big Green Egg, with bourbon and barbecue sauce on and under the skin. Lip-smacking!
Unlike their wild cousins, today’s domesticated turkeys are bred for hefty portions of white and dark meat, atop legs that barely support their bodyweight. You might say they are big, bloated and unsustainable – like too many government programs that should have gotten the axe long ago.
Washington turkeys are fed by crony capitalism, far-left economic and social engineering, smarter-than-thou top-down initiatives, and a belief that Washington should determine winners and losers. They attack unsuspecting taxpayers, consumers and businesses, pilfering billions of dollars that could be spent on things that really matter – including job creation and preservation, terrorism and national security. Only the few are thankful for them.
The Obama Administration has unleashed some hugely destructive turkeys. Some, like ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, required mostly Democrat congressional connivance. But one of the most foul of fowls, the Clean Power Plan, was devised by the White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in league with radical environmental groups, to eradicate coal mining and burning, and ensure that electricity rates would “necessarily skyrocket,” just as President Obama promised in 2009.
The CPP is justified by the absurd claim that eliminating U.S. coal will save the Earth from “runaway” global warming and climate change. But there has been no measurable warming for 19 years – the opposite of what computer models and White House press releases have claimed – and NOAA appears to have been cooking the books on its temperature data, to find manmade warming where there isn’t any.
Moreover, far from being a “pollutant,” carbon dioxide is vital plant food – essential for all life on Earth – and developing countries continue to increase coal-burning to power their growing economies, bring electricity to 1.3 billion people who still don’t have it, and lift billions out of abject poverty. In fact, China alone has been burning 17% more coal per year than previously reported; just that unreported wedge is 70% of what the United States uses in a year, and more than Germany’s annual coal consumption!

Add what India, Africa, Poland, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and other countries plan to use in the next 30 years, and U.S. coal consumption and CO2 emissions are almost undetectable globally. In Asia alone this year, power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with 1,000 more on planning boards.

Of course, none of that is relevant to climate ideologues in and out of the Obama Administration. Nor are the CPP’s adverse impacts on jobs, families, businesses, communities, or people’s health and welfare. But when the states drag the CPP turkey into court, the EPA might stop its strutting. Obama mentor and legal scholar Lawrence Tribe says the CPP likely violates the Constitution, by illegally commandeering state government functions and “treating states more like marionettes, dancing to the tune of the federal puppeteer,” in violation of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves important powers to the states.
Thus far, the rule of law has been merely a minor burr under the Administration’s saddle, as it rides roughshod over Congress, the will of the people, and the overall public interest. Executive orders, influence-peddling, and campaign contributions for subsidies and preferential treatment are standard operating procedure for a president determined to build a legacy – not on Benghazi, ObamaCare and terrorism failures, but on climate change, which he insists is the “greatest threat to future generations.”
Many world leaders have embraced Obama’s vision of looming climatic cataclysms, but are fast regretting their decisions. European Union air quality measures are forcing the closure of numerous older coal-fired power plants. But the supposed replacements, mostly wind and solar, are heavily subsidized, intermittent producers of electricity that is so unreliable and expensive that it kills industries, jobs and people. They are already hastening the demise of Britain’s entire steel industry and 6,000 more UK jobs.
Early this November, well before winter cold set in, the United Kingdom’s National Grid already had to use an emergency order to prevent widespread blackouts. Unexpected power plant shutdowns and a near absence of bird-butchering wind power forced the government to offer up to 40 times normal electricity rates (up to $3765 per kilowatt-hour!) to get factories and other major power consumers to switch off their electricity. The UK is now rolling back many of its “green” energy programs.
In Germany, power companies have been ordered to buy wind, solar and other “green” energy, regardless of the price. Its biggest electric power provider lost €7.8 billion ($8.3 billion) just in the third quarter of 2015. Even worse, Ms. Merkel’s market meddling has created an oversupply of expensive green electricity, when it’s least needed, and German electricity rates are expected to hit record highs next year. By the end of 2016, average European households will have to pay some €540 ($575) more per year for electricity.
By forcing power companies to buy green energy, EU countries also encourage fraud. Companies actually made money by connecting diesel-powered generators to their solar arrays or shining coal- or nuclear-powered arc lights on their solar panels, to generate electricity on cloudy days or in the dead of night.
All this is where the U.S. is heading under Obama dictates, which distort the marketplace to benefit favored industries or groups. The Renewable Fuel Standard requires blending ethanol into motor fuels, which among many other failings creates an ethanol credit trading system that crooks use to steal millions of dollars. No wonder even ultra-green California voters increasingly oppose costly ethanol mandates.
Unfortunately, the RFS, CPP and other Washington turkeys are as hard to kill as Freddy Krueger. Congress lacks the will to chase them down with a hatchet, and the administration feeds them for its own political reasons. Having corn farmer and ethanol producer support during the Iowa caucuses is also a winning political strategy – unprincipled but effective, costly to the majority but beneficial to the few. 
Indeed, every taxpayer and consumer pays for these turkeys, not just those in Iowa or California. A new study shows that the RFS will cost the New England economy some $20 billion between 2005 and 2024, reduce labor income by $7.3 billion, and destroy 7,050 jobs per year.
The CPP and broader War on Coal are hammering Midwest red states far harder than New England and West Coast blue states. By the end of 2023, 600,000 jobs will be lost and average American households will lose $1,200 in income per year, as electricity rates and the cost of goods and services continue to rise.
Obama’s War on Coal is most devastating to families in coal-producing states, where nearly 50,000 coal miners have lost their jobs and incomes – as have tens of thousands in power plants, restaurants, shops and other businesses. Hillary Clinton’s “solution” (and strategy to increase her odds of winning the Democrat presidential nomination) is spending $30 billion in OPM (other people’s money) to “retrain” coal miners and other workers for life in her new utopian-energy economy. Now President Obama is leading an ideological entourage to Paris, to rope the United States into a draconian climate treaty.
Once again, government will get to decide which industries, companies, workers and families win – and which one lose. We just get to pay. Wasting good money on bad projects – and on unaccountable, unelected, overpaid ruling elite bureaucrats – is enough to ruin a Thanksgiving tryptophan-induced nap.
Benjamin Franklin may have preferred the turkey over the eagle as America’s national symbol, because it is “more respectable.” Brave and wily wild turkeys truly are a challenge for experienced hunters.
But wily government turkeys, which preen in public and exist only to feather the nests of bureaucrats and campaign donors, have no redeeming qualities. It’s time to put them on the chopping block.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and coauthor of Cracking Big Green: To save the world from the Save-the-Earth money machine.

The Emasculated Military

Reported by Jim Beers

Emasculated - (e-mas-cu-late, adj.1. to castrate, 2. to deprive of strength or vigor; to weaken; render effeminate.

The following article (The Emasculated Military) was just sent to me by a respected friend, colleague and WWII/Korea Marine Veteran.  He served Gov. Reagan as Director of California Dept. of F&G and Pres. Reagan as Asst. Secretary for Fish & Wildlife and Parks, US Department of the Interior.

Jim

While “emasculated” is a perfectly fine and accurate word to describe the US Military today; I believe there is rather an even broader infection causing the decay OF American society on many fronts as the author details about the US Military.  Therefore I prefer to describe this as a “Feminized” military, not due necessarily or even simply to the pervasive presence of females and government discrimination on behalf of females in all aspects of society, but rather to the overall shift we see in the federal bureaucracy, courts and political life from self-reliance; individual freedoms; protected rights; families; and churches and communities wherein fathers and husbands are present and provide sustenance and protection to their families as countless generations have done before them. 

That we are being “changed” to a mother-like society run by an unlimited and all-powerful government ruling by guile and lawless deceit is a fact.  That this is being done in total disregard of our Constitution that created our government whose charge and authority was and is essentially national defense and protecting our “unalienable rights” is reminiscent of remembering that Hitler was elected and Nero and Caligula were confirmed by the Roman Senate.

A few examples of this national descent into feminized anarchy are:
  • “No one needs a gun”;
  • “criminals need understanding not punishment”
  • “killing animals for any reason is wrong”
  • “vegetarian diets are best for you according to me”;
  • “government should provide us everything it can and we should obey our leaders in all things”;
  • “ranching, hunting, fishing, trapping, forest management for human benefit, livestock grazing, wearing furs and animal ownership of everything from dogs to sheep is all wrong and should be eliminated”;
  • “all animals should be treated as humans”;
  • “private property is wrong, the village (i.e. government), should control all property just like it should raise (i.e. indoctrinate) children”;
  • “children” (i.e. boys) that use their fingers to simulate a gun on playgrounds or that eat their pop-tart into the form of a gun should be treated like Michael Vick, scarred for life and publicly humiliated; just as no children should be allowed to ‘win’ games”;
  • Churches that teach “there is no sin or punishment and if there is a God he will be waiting for us with our golf clubs and golden retriever somewhere in the clouds” (“now go to sleep, child”);
  • “animals (especially large predators) are, like criminals, only dangerous because of how they have been treated and must, again like criminals, be given preferences and avoided by others or their crimes are the fault of their victims”;
  • “catastrophic fires due to overgrown national lands and ‘Wilderness’ that cause billions of dollars of property loss and many deaths only prove that people living or recreating in such areas, like hunters, dog owners and ranchers in wolf ‘country”, do so at their own risk”;
  • Old people losing their property and civil rights and even the lives of their loved ones for contrived “charges” resulting from unwarranted searches by rogue police out of some cheap, violent movie for accusations of “mistreated” or “hoarded” animals experience incarceration and treatment far worse than what drug traffickers and urban thugs (whose crimes affect human life as compared with animals) receive for their incredibly more serious crimes are a heinous scar on the nation;
Lawyers that refuse to defend the above either for fear of hostile animal “‘rights” (???) repercussions or because “there is no money in it” are like all the scientists and veterinarians that avoid and deny the terrible truths about unmanaged wildlife, wildlife disease threats and the dangers to all Americans from large predators like wolves, grizzly bears and cougars (called mountain lions, panthers and other euphemisms) for fear of losing business or the acclaim of their customers.

These lawyers, veterinarians and scientists’ et al are like court-appointed foster parents and “guardians’ that are only in it for the money without even a modicum of concern for the child in their “care”. Like modern politicians and bureaucrats they have forsaken their humanity and moral responsibility.

As Sir Thomas More observed in the play A Man for All Seasons set in 1535 England; while before the English Parliament instructed by the King to find him guilty and execute him: when they brought a “witness” [a lying former servant] to testify how Thomas had spoken treason against the King [something he had never done], Thomas was asked what he had to say about these charges. 

He looked at the exquisitely dressed liar that wore a gold chain and large medallion about his neck and asked quietly if the liar could come closer, whereupon he examined the medallion hanging about his neck.  He asked, again quietly, what this fine medallion signified.  The liar answered with a smile that he had just been appointed Lord High Whatever of Wales.  Again quietly, Sir Thomas asked if the former servant knew the biblical passage that it gained a man nothing if he obtained the whole world but lost his immortal soul?  And then Sir Thomas erupted and bellowed “But for ‘WALES?!’” at which point he explained simply and forthrightly to the Parliament how he was and always would remain “the King’s good servant” but why he would always answer first to God and then to the King. 

Today, more and more Americans answer only to “the King” [i.e. government] and fewer and fewer each day answer to or even give a thought to the common morality we once understood and shared that bound us together to build this nation.

That this feminizing of society from the military to the schools spawns these harridans (i.e. violent women, vicious old hags) with their demands for animal “rights” while justifying harvesting and selling the parts of children they kill in the womb of consenting females is utterly beyond belief. 

What a paradox; that as the nation worships animals, coddles criminality, and “emasculates the military as Islamic Terror once again raises its ugly head with dreams of world conquest: Americans rail against ranching, hunting, trapping, meat, fishing, animal ownership, Constitutional rights, rural communities, families and ruthlessly destroys the elderly while seizing their property using unjust fiats from Rump Judges in league with Rump federal politicians creating Constitution-destroying laws for their own self-interest with a patina of “environmental” and animal “rights” justification.

There is no better display of this insanity than the bizarre blather of our President recently telling the French Prime Minister requesting combat support to destroy Islamic Terrorists after the Paris massacre, that the USA would merely offer our participation in the upcoming “climate change” Conference as a way to show the Islamic murderers that they cannot conquer us!

Whether you believe all this is the result of aggressive women or the result of timid men raised with dolls by smothering teachers, unmarried moms or helicopter parents is your decision.  That we are being feminized throughout society is undeniable.  First however, like Islamic terror, you have to be able to say and describe the problem before you can apply the solution.  American men have been warriors and heroes to their families, churches, communities and their country as the last 245 years attest.  Creating a society that marginalizes men, boys and the historic male role is a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to doom as anyone looking about cannot deny.

Today; too many women, politicians, and non-government organization/lobby groups for everything from “the environment” and “animal welfare” to federal funding of everything, national “non”-defense policies and “race” relations are treating the men of America like alcoholic wife beaters and inferiors instead of the leaders and providers that they are.  Denigrate, berate and “emasculate” the fathers, husbands and boys of America and you create today’s non-existent and broken families and the chaos that increasingly surrounds us as I write.  Unless and until this societal travesty of feminization by government is reversed, America will continue its’ decline into ignominy and infamy even quicker and in far more ways than the following article describes about the state of the US Military, one of many wake-up calls we ignore at our own peril.

Jim Beers

If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others.  Thanks. Jim Beers is a retired US Fish and  Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades. Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting.  You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to:   jimbeers7@comcast.net

Friday, November 27, 2015

Being Thankful for the Left

Posted by Daniel Greenfield@ Sultan Knish Blog

When we celebrate Thanksgiving, after being thankful for family and friends, for health and comfort, for food and shelter; we shouldn't forget to be thankful for the left.

There is no light without darkness and without evil, the good often fails to find their own voice. It is in the presence of slavery that we remember the worth of freedom. Men and nations are forged in war; not only the war of shell and shot, but the war of ideas. War teaches us to fight for what we have. Wars of ideas teach us to stand up for what we believe.

It is because conservatives are basically hopeful and confident that we are also prone to extremes of despair. Too many us were shocked at the decline of our society because of our great confidence in it. The faith that conservatives have in America makes them vulnerable to being crushed by the latest victory of the left. I have seen far too much despair and defeatism, too many comments that suggest there is no hope for America and the only thing left to do is pour a glass of wine and watch the sun go down. But those comments testify to how sheltered Americans are from the struggles against tyranny around the world.

Eight years of Obama is bad, but try sixty-nine years of Communism on for size. That's what generations of Russians had to live through. Ask some of the conservative activists in Europe who have never had any of the freedoms that we still take for granted whether they've given up hope. Ask people from countries where criticism of Islam can mean death, whether they've given up hope.

There are countless tales of courage over the last century of men and women who did not stop fighting, who did not stop teaching their children so that they would not stop resisting. And those stories have not ended. They continue today in Europe, Asia and South America. And those people would envy the conditions under which we fight, where we can protest without being shot or sent to prison, where we can have a shot at winning elections if we try hard enough.

Where we are, compared to 100 percent of the rest of the world, still free.

We face a hard fight, not only for our freedom, but the freedom of the world. The international left has made America its special project. It knows that if it can extinguish the hope of liberty in this land then it will drive the rest of those who hope for freedom across the ocean deeper into despair. And it wants your despair. It wants you to give up so that the rest of the world gives up too and bows under its chains.

And yet this fight is a glorious one. This fight is our birthright. And we should be thankful for the fight.

It would be more pleasant if there were no Obama or Hillary. If Alinsky had never been born and Marx had never been whelped. It would be nice if we lived in a world where red was just a color and the Democratic Party was a rural movement suspicious of the Federal government and dreaming of an agrarian utopia. But then so would never having to work for a living or getting up out of bed.

Life is challenge and we face all kinds of different challenges. We get up early out of bed in the morning and drive to work. We rise in the middle of the night when the baby cries and we go to the hospital when our loved ones need us there. We do dreary things and terrible things that seem so different from the life we imagined as children. And we do them not only because they are duty, but because these challenges, the daily ones and the once in a lifetime ones, make us who we are.

Besides these prosaic challenges, the daily routines and the occasional tragedies, there are uncommon challenges that we face when the foe comes to our gate and demands that we bow and become slaves. This is the challenge that we face as a society, a nation and a people. It demands more of us and it ennobles us. It makes us a great people and a great nation, rather than only another people who seek to live in comfort with no thought for anything else.

Good emerges in response to evil. We need our enemies to remind us of who we are and what we can do when our backs are against the wall. We need evil to remind us of the good that we are capable of. As a whetstone sharpens a sword, so evil sharpens us into a weapon against it. It makes us morally stronger and teaches us the stark truths that we cannot take refuge from evil; we must confront it.

If there were no left, would there be nearly as much patriotism among true Americans as there is now? And if there were no left, how many of us would really contemplate the core principles of freedom and free enterprise? If there were no left, how many of us would ponder what we truly believe and what compromises we are willing and unwilling to make? If there were no left, would we be the same people that we are today?

For those of us who believe in the Bible, the Lord created both darkness and light. And if it were not for the darkness, would the light be nearly as precious to us? Imagine a world without sunrise or sunset, where the sight of rays of light clearing away the darkness would have no meaning? And then remember that things are treasured to the extent that they can be taken away from us.

Would we value freedom as much if we did not have to defend it? Would we hold it as dear if we did not fear that it would be taken away? Would we even be aware of what freedom is and what a free people must be if not for the dark hand of those who wish to strip us of those freedoms?

It is the left's opposition that has added urgency to a hundred issues, from the national debt to the War on Terror to freedom of speech and of religion. It has made us think about those issues, to take them out of the back of our minds and hold them up to the light as a reminder of how important they are and what must be done about them.

The left's corruptions remind us of the need for purification. As it gathers the worst of all around it, we find ourselves called to be better than we are. As the left works to doom our country, and as we suffer defeat after defeat, these defeats only serve to remind us that we must be better, that we must do more, learn more and become more in order to save our country.

War is the great teacher and this is a political war, short on bodies and heavy on minds, it is a war in which casualties are not taken in the chest or the arm, but in the mind, in reason and emotion, and against these weaknesses, we can and will prevail.

As we fight the left, we become stronger, more dedicated and more purposeful. We become the men and women that we were meant to be.

As you sit around your tables, thinking of all that you have gained and lost this year, remember and be thankful for the left, for though the winter ice gives way to the summer sun and bitter defeat gives way to sweet victory, it is defeat and hardship that teaches better than comfort and ease. We can learn more from our defeats than we ever could from our victories. Our defeats teach us endurance and fortitude, they teach us that defeat can be borne and that its sting can be turned into the weapon that unseats the foe. And our foes make us who we are.

Their evil teaches us to find the good within ourselves. Their strength teaches us to find our own strength. And their plots against what we have teach us how many treasures we have, not least of these being the full value of our freedom and our happiness that they wish to take from us.

Their war on America is teaching us to be better Americans. It may not feel that way right now, but we are privileged to have this opportunity and this fight.

We should be thankful for the left, its assaults on us are teaching us how to fight and its plots against our freedom are teaching us how to be free.

 Daniel Greenfield is a New York City based writer and blogger and a Shillman Journalism Fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.