Merry Christmas
The Front Page Cover
The Events of the Week -- Featuring:
The 'Diversity' Fraud
by Thomas Sowell
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Can the Democrat Party Recover? Let's Hope Not
James Shott: Having blown the 2016 "sure thing" coronation of liar-Hillary Clinton, and having magnificently failed to realize how badly they had alienated the people who live between the two coastal liberal strongholds, not noticing their growing displeasure and desire for change, we are left to wonder if the Democrats can return to Earth in time to rebuild their party and find candidates to head the party ticket in 2020. It would be better for America if the party died, to be replaced by a party that actually cared about constitutional governance and our great nation. But let's deal with what's there.
In their desperate blame game over what happened, Democrats have blamed James Comey and the FBI, Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders, WikiLeaks, racism, sexism, fake news, Russia, and voters. Everyone and everything is to blame except the DNC itself and its horrible candidate.
After the election there were demonstrations by liar-Clinton supporters that turned into riots, crying sessions and a search for safe spaces. Then came the panicked reports that Russian hacking impacted the election, which led to efforts to undermine the Electoral College by persuading Republican electors to not vote for Trump, as their voters have instructed them. There were instances of intimidation and death threats against some electors.
But no evidence has been advanced to prove that the Russians actually changed votes or affected the results of the election. Besides, all the Russians really did was hack Democrat emails that were then released by WikiLeaks, which exposed the lies, deceit, corruption and collusion of the liar-Clinton campaign, the DNC and the media to the public. Since their dirty little secrets were exposed to the world, naturally the Democrats had to try to get the electors to overturn the results of the election.
Of course, Democrats, shall we say, disagree with this analysis. But the fact remains that they are so badly flummoxed and disoriented that we have every reason to wonder if they can recover in time for their party to function well enough to field competent candidates for the next presidential election.
Okay, we expect them to field candidates — just not competent or satisfactory ones.
Assuming the DNC is able to establish lucidity — a big assumption — who are the potential candidates? Eight years of liar-nObama has decimated the Democrat bench of up-and-comers. Which means only a few fossils remain.
Odds are that if liar-Clinton is still alive and well, she will put herself out there again, despite her weak performance in 2008 and her substantial defeat this year. There are alternatives, of course, but some are even older than liar-Hillary.
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto cites a poll by Public Policy Polling showing that "Joe loose lips-Biden leads the way for Democrats with 31 percent to 24 percent for Bernie Sanders, and 16 percent for Elizabeth dinky-Warren." As if to underscore the depths of confusion among Democrats, however, Taranto goes on to say that they also expressed preference for younger candidates: "57 percent of Democrats say they want their candidate to be under the age of 60, and 77 percent say they want their candidate to be under the age of 70. Only 8 percent actually want a candidate who's in their [sic] 70s."
He points out that by the time of the 2020 election the favored potential candidates will be north of 70: loose lips-Biden will be 77, Sanders will be 79, and dinky-Warren, the baby of the group, will be 71. Based upon the ages of the favored Democrats, Taranto jokingly termed the DNC the "Great-Grand Old Party."
James Hohmann, national political correspondent for The Washington Post, suggests that, since VP candidate Sen. Tim Kaine has seemingly declined to seek the presidency in 2020, the door is open for other recognizable faces to enter the fray. Those faces include New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and New York's Kirsten Gillibrand, who took over liar-Clinton's Senate seat when she became secretary of state.
In addition to the aforementioned possibilities, opinion writer Chris Cillizza names some other lesser-known potential candidates. California's Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, is the first African-American woman elected to the Senate since Carol Moseley-Braun in 1992. Cillizza points out that she also represents the largest and most-Democrat state in the country, and that her "law-and-order-background" as AG will help her.
With first a business background, then serving as a mayor and now Colorado's governor, John Hickenlooper would have broad appeal, Cillizza believes. One negative is Hickenlooper's somewhat moderate political position, which may not appeal to the current hard-left state of the Democrat Party.
Having demonstrated an ability to work across the aisle to achieve things for veterans and child adoption, Cillizza believes Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has a positive profile for national office. Her state isn't exactly a fundraising hotbed for national politics, but her ambitious demeanor may be attractive to Democrats.
Cillizza also argues that while current First Lady Michelle liar-nObama has never run for office or expressed interest in doing so, she has excellent name recognition and "star power," and she would go into a race for the nomination as a beloved figure.
So, after loose lips-Biden, Sanders, dinky-Warren, Booker and liar-nObama, the other possibilities have the name recognition hurdle to clear. Watching who says and does what during Trump's first couple of years will help clarify the DNC's dilemma.
Of course, if none of the above finds favor with Democrats, Kanye West has already thrown his hat into the ring, and Martin Sheen of the recent effort to persuade electors to not vote for Trump is available. He's never been a president, but he did play one on TV.
In any case, as 2016 comes to a close, Democrats are in dire straits. Such situations rarely remain permanent in politics, but those of us who fight for Liberty can make the most of our moment. ~The Patriot Post
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Team liar-nObama dumps oppo research
truckload on Keith Ellison’s head
by William A. Jacobson
{legalinsurrection.com} ~ Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison was fast out of the gate for Chair of the Democratic National Committee, amassing quick endorsements from Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth dinky-Warren, Bernie Sanders and the AFL-CIO... But Ellison was barely at the first turn when he stumbled badly in what Ellison and his supporters called a “smear campaign” against him. Ellison’s past decade-long support for Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, his suggestion of dual loyalty from American Jews when speaking at a fundraiser for Muslim leaders, and his cozy relationship with some of the worst pro-BDS, anti-Israel groups, has disrupted what seemed like a clear trajectory to DNC Chair. And then liar-nObama/loose lips-Biden sent signals they were encouraging Labor Secretary Tom Perez to seek the position. I suggested at the time that Keith Ellison DNC bid circling Farrakhan drain as Perez set to announce...
The Disloyal Opposition
by TOM MCCAFFREY
by TOM MCCAFFREY
" {familysecuritymatters.org} ~ Former Red Sox star pitcher Kurt Schilling posted the following on Facebook this past April: "A man is a man no matter what they call themselves. I don't care what they are, who they sleep with, men's room was designed for the pe*is, women's not so much... Now you need laws telling us differently? Pathetic." He followed this with a re-post of an item by someone else that showed an image of a man dressed as a woman, accompanied by the following: "Let him in! To the restroom with your daughter or else you're a narrow-minded, judgmental, unloving, racist bigot who needs to die!!!" Mr. Schilling was fired as a sports commentator by ESPN for the posting. I first heard of Mr. Schilling's remarks while listening to ESPN on my car radio. I was struck by the moral certitude of the announcer, who said he would not dignify Schilling's comments by repeating them. I wondered how he had arrived at such a high degree of certainty that anyone who chooses not to reorder his life to accommodate the men who think they are women must be morally depraved....
Europe's Compassionate Hatred of Israel
by Bat Ye'or
by Bat Ye'or
During WW II, the alliance of Pétain and Hitler with the Mufti of
Jerusalem sought the extermination of the Jewish people
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Today we are witnessing the coming of the worldwide caliphate. This expression means that the Muslim view of history is currently prevailing in international institutions... We see it with the Jerusalem Declaration of UNESCO, this palace of revisionism. The Jerusalem Declaration seeks to Islamize, with the help of many governments in Europe and other Christian countries, the ancient history of the people of Israel.The Venice Declaration of 1980, issued by the European Community, which tried to force Israel to survive in an indefensible territory, already prescribed its disappearance and replacement with a people that had never even manifested itself before 1969 -- and all with the assistance of the Soviet Union and especially France. The Islamization of Jerusalem and the delegitimization of the State of Israel were already set out in the Venice Declaration, which to this date the European Union has continued to view as valid... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9613/europe-hatred-israel
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'The US should veto this anti-Israel resolution'
'The US should veto this anti-Israel resolution'
by Nitzan Keidar
{israelnationalnews.com} ~ When Egypt submitted its proposal to the UN Security Council Wednesday evening condemning Israel for building in Judea and Samaria, eyebrows were not raised in Jerusalem... The Israeli delegation to the UN has long prepared for such a proposal and estimates that it has a good chance of passing, due to the fact that a majority of the Security Council is hostile towards Israel. However, the final approval of the proposal, which will be tabled for vote at 10 PM Israel time on Thursday, is dependent on whether the US uses its veto power. It is, as yet, unclear how the Americans will act in this case since their ambassador to the UN has not received a directive from President liar-nObama concerning this issue, as liar-nObama is presently on vacation... http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/222114
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System that produced German
terror thrives in U.S.
by Leo Hohmann
{wnd.com} ~ What appears from the outside to be a bungling of basic law-enforcement operations in Germany – allowing a known illegal alien with a criminal and terrorist past to move about freely in German society for more than a year – may not be a bungling at all... Rather, it’s part of a coordinated strategy also being used by open-borders globalists in the liar-nObama administration, says a retired Homeland Security officer. Philip Haney, co-author of the whistleblower book “See Something Say Nothing,” explains how a Muslim migrant was able to stay in the country long enough to plan an attack that killed 12 and injured nearly 50 at a Berlin Christmas market Monday. This, despite being under surveillance by the German government for months...
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The 'Diversity' Fraud
by Thomas Sowell
{townhall.com} ~ Nothing so epitomizes the politically correct gullibility of our times as the magic word "diversity." The wonders of diversity are proclaimed from the media, extolled in the academy and confirmed in the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States. But have you ever seen one speck of hard evidence to support the lofty claims?
Although diversity has become one of the leading buzzwords of our time, it has a history that goes back several generations. In the early twentieth century, the principle of geographic diversity was used to conceal bias against Jews in the admission of students to Harvard and other leading academic institutions.
Because the Jewish population was concentrated in New York and other east coast communities at that time, quota limits on how many Jewish students would be admitted were concealed by saying that Harvard wanted a diverse student body, consisting of students from around the country.
Therefore some highly qualified Jewish applicants could be passed over, in favor of less qualified applicants from the midwest or other regions of the country.
My own first encounter with the idea of geographic diversity occurred more than half a century ago, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, and worked as a photographer for the university news office, in order to help pay the bills.
The instructions I was given were to concentrate on taking photos of students from other parts of the country, rather than from the east coast, from which Harvard already received more than enough applicants. The idea was to encourage applications from places that would produce a geographically diverse student body.
It struck me as an odd idea at the time, but I was being paid to take pictures, not make university policy. Moreover, I had no idea how such a policy had originated and, by the 1950s, it might have been continued from inertia, for all I know. Meanwhile, I could enjoy seeing publicity photos I took appearing in newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere beyond the east coast.
Fast forward to today. It is common, at colleges and universities across the country, for the test scores of Asian American students who have been admitted to a given college to be higher than the test scores of whites or of blacks or Hispanics.
That may not seem strange, since that is true of test scores in general. But, at any given institution, applying the same standards to all, the test scores of students at a particular institution would tend to be similar. More Asian Americans would be admitted to higher ranked colleges and universities, however, if the same standards were applied to all.
In short, something very much like the quota limits that were applied to Jews in the past are now being applied to Asian Americans -- and, once again, are being justified by diversity.
But what justifies diversity? Nothing but unsupported assertions, repeated endlessly, piously and loudly.
Today, as in the past, diversity is essentially a fancy word for group quotas. It is one of a number of wholly subjective criteria -- such as "leadership" -- used to admit students to colleges and universities according to their group membership, rather than according to their individual qualifications.
This is not something new. Nor is it something confined to the United States. Very similar patterns were found more than a decade ago, when doing research for my book "Affirmative Action Around the World."
In India, the courts' attempts to rein in some academic quotas were met by a proliferation of new, and wholly subjective, admissions criteria. Individuals from groups that were not as qualified by objective criteria were simply ranked higher on subjective criteria and admitted.
In the United States, the Supreme Court itself has long been part of such game-playing when it comes to affirmative action. Back in 1978, an opinion by Justice Lewis F. Powell banned racial quotas with one hand and created "diversity" as a criterion with the other. In other words, colleges were told in effect that they can have racial quotas, but they just can't call them racial quotas.
According to the Constitution, "We the People" are supposed to decide what laws and policies we live under. But not if we can be so easily fooled by courts using slippery words like "diversity."
Although diversity has become one of the leading buzzwords of our time, it has a history that goes back several generations. In the early twentieth century, the principle of geographic diversity was used to conceal bias against Jews in the admission of students to Harvard and other leading academic institutions.
Because the Jewish population was concentrated in New York and other east coast communities at that time, quota limits on how many Jewish students would be admitted were concealed by saying that Harvard wanted a diverse student body, consisting of students from around the country.
Therefore some highly qualified Jewish applicants could be passed over, in favor of less qualified applicants from the midwest or other regions of the country.
My own first encounter with the idea of geographic diversity occurred more than half a century ago, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, and worked as a photographer for the university news office, in order to help pay the bills.
The instructions I was given were to concentrate on taking photos of students from other parts of the country, rather than from the east coast, from which Harvard already received more than enough applicants. The idea was to encourage applications from places that would produce a geographically diverse student body.
It struck me as an odd idea at the time, but I was being paid to take pictures, not make university policy. Moreover, I had no idea how such a policy had originated and, by the 1950s, it might have been continued from inertia, for all I know. Meanwhile, I could enjoy seeing publicity photos I took appearing in newspapers in Chicago and elsewhere beyond the east coast.
Fast forward to today. It is common, at colleges and universities across the country, for the test scores of Asian American students who have been admitted to a given college to be higher than the test scores of whites or of blacks or Hispanics.
That may not seem strange, since that is true of test scores in general. But, at any given institution, applying the same standards to all, the test scores of students at a particular institution would tend to be similar. More Asian Americans would be admitted to higher ranked colleges and universities, however, if the same standards were applied to all.
In short, something very much like the quota limits that were applied to Jews in the past are now being applied to Asian Americans -- and, once again, are being justified by diversity.
But what justifies diversity? Nothing but unsupported assertions, repeated endlessly, piously and loudly.
Today, as in the past, diversity is essentially a fancy word for group quotas. It is one of a number of wholly subjective criteria -- such as "leadership" -- used to admit students to colleges and universities according to their group membership, rather than according to their individual qualifications.
This is not something new. Nor is it something confined to the United States. Very similar patterns were found more than a decade ago, when doing research for my book "Affirmative Action Around the World."
In India, the courts' attempts to rein in some academic quotas were met by a proliferation of new, and wholly subjective, admissions criteria. Individuals from groups that were not as qualified by objective criteria were simply ranked higher on subjective criteria and admitted.
In the United States, the Supreme Court itself has long been part of such game-playing when it comes to affirmative action. Back in 1978, an opinion by Justice Lewis F. Powell banned racial quotas with one hand and created "diversity" as a criterion with the other. In other words, colleges were told in effect that they can have racial quotas, but they just can't call them racial quotas.
According to the Constitution, "We the People" are supposed to decide what laws and policies we live under. But not if we can be so easily fooled by courts using slippery words like "diversity."
