The Science is Clear: Antibiotic Use In Livestock Feed Must Stop

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Josh Bloom @ The American Council on Science and Health

. David Shlaes, my former colleague at Wyeth, is one of the world’s premier experts in antibiotic research and development. Dr. Shlaes is also an advisor at the American Council on Science and Health. He and I have co-written a piece titled “Stop Giving Antibiotics to Cows, Pigs, and Chickens Now,” that was just published in STAT- a science and health site that is a partner of the Boston Globe. This issue is both timely and critical.

As antibiotic resistance continues to rear its ugly head across the globe, scientists and public health officials are finally beginning to agree about the use of low dose antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock feed: It needs to stop immediately. Any lingering doubts about the contribution of this practice to the proliferation of bacterial resistance was put to bed by recent, troubling reports about the appearance of a new gene in both pigs and humans in China.

The mrc-1 gene is responsible for generating resistance to the polymyxin class of antibiotics, which although in imperfect in many ways, is currently the last line of defense against infections that fail to respond to other antibiotics. One such infection is carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which has a mortality rate of about 50 percent in hospitalized patients who become infected.
The nightmare scenario—the emergence of CRE strains that have also acquired polymyxin resistance— has already begun. Although it is mostly confined to China, these “unkillable” strains are being found in other areas.

It is no coincidence that this new resistance mechanism arose in China, or that it was found in pigs, since polymyxin antibiotics are routinely used as growth promoters in pigs that country. Yet, according to the FDA, this suicidal practice is not confined to China. It is also going on in the US. Before we start lecturing the Chinese about their livestock practices, we had better get our own under control.
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 7:58 AM No comments: Links to this post Rebel and Designated Driver: Ted Cruz and A Time for Truth

By Fritz Pettyjohn A Ted Cruz as “Too Conservative to Win” and the Goldwater Talking Point

Erick Erickson

The media typically begins any Presidential campaign with comparisons to Harry Truman. The Reagan re-election in 1984 had the comparison. The Bush re-election in 1992 had the comparison. The Clinton re-election in 1996 had the comparison. Humorously, the off year election of 2002 used the Truman comparison too, as did 2004.  The media does this not only because a lot of them are lazy and not only because a lot of them talk with each other at beltway soirees where they infect each other with their various often contrived narratives and talking points, but also because they really do want to help put the election in some historic context.......

In 1980, while the media rushed to the Goldwater talking point and considered Reagan too “far-right” to beat Jimmy Carter, the nation found itself in an economic mess and on the losing side of several national security matters. It was very hard to characterize Reagan as too far right for a country craving new policies to get it out of its economic mess, out of gas lines, and to get our hostages out of Iran. Voters wanted a change from Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s campaign eventually had to drop the “he’s too radical” approach and instead do what Ted Cruz’s opponents are presently doing to him in a one-two punch of “he’s the second coming of that loser Goldwater” — claiming Reagan (and now Cruz) actually accomplished nothing. They tried to destroy the idea of California as a paradise, which in 1980 was a place millions were flocking to in search of work. In fact, in that advertisement one of the lines was “[Reagan] said he cut spending, but he never really did.”.....To Read More....
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:38 AM No comments: Links to this post Thought For The Day! When the Takers Make More than the Makers

Gene Van Son

When I was a lad way back in the 60s my father gave me some career planning advice -- “If you want to make money go to work in the private sector, but if you want job security go to work in the public sector. The public sector doesn’t pay as well as the private sector but the benefits are good and you’ll never have to worry about getting laid off.”   My father’s advice made sense. Government employees are ‘public servants’ and servants are not supposed to make more than their employers. But that was then and this is now. The times have changed.     With 2.7 million-plus workers (excluding non-civilian military) the federal government is the largest employer in the U.S. But now it seems that federal employees are also the best paid workers in the U.S. And when benefits are added in, the total compensation for federal employees dwarfs private sector pay ....Is it any wonder why Democrats and even some not so conservative members of the GOP are so fond of Big Government?  ..........To Read More......
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:21 AM No comments: Links to this post Contraries: Dec. 30, 2015, Closing Out the Year

Posted December 30, 2015, by Mary Grabar @ Dissident Prof

We close out the year with more protests and demands than ever, as our intellectuals engage in more and more "conversations" about race. The protests spilled over to restaurants and shopping venues, even as Americans celebrated Christmas.  The incubators are the schools and college campuses, where students are taught about injustices invisible to the common man.  Textbooks offering lessons for deep classroom discussion include the sociology textbook, Color Lines and Racial Angles, published by Norton.  It includes such thought-provoking gems as "Asian American Exceptionalism and 'Stereotype Promise,'" "The Fascination and Frustration with Native American Mascots," "White Trash: The Social Origins of a Stigmatype," and "Thinking about Trayvon [Martin, of course]: Privileged Responses and Media Discourse."

Another gem from the once esteemed textbook publisher is Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, with offerings from professors in various fields, such as biology, history, anthropology, sociology...and education, with a contribution by Bill Ayers' choice for Obama's Secretary of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond.  The Obama education transition team leader and developer of one of the two national Common Core tests offers her thoughts on education in an essay titled, "Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement."

At the K-12 level, materials for sensitizing students to oppression abound.  There is  (Re)Teaching Trayvon: Education for Racial Justice.  Curriculum materials on "teaching the ongoing murders of black men" are also readily available at Rethinking Schools.The George Soros-funded Teaching for Change also has some incendiary curriculum materials for the tykes.

White Privilege: All these materials are intended to instill an understanding of "white privilege," which arose as more obvious methods such as slurs and discrimination disappeared.  White privilege is a kind of unconscious superiority that must be reviewed constantly--replacing the Puritan scouring for sin.  To gain an understanding, students can read "Beyond the Big, Bad Racist: Shared Meanings of White Identity and Supremacy" in their Color Lines textbook.

The common wisdom in academe is that all white people are racist because they have white privilege.  An exponent of this theory, George Yancy, was recently hired by Emory University to teach philosophy.  His letter to "White America" appeared on Christmas Eve in the New York Times. Following in the footsteps of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a MacArthur Genius Grant winner and National Book Award winner for his stream-of-consciousness racial complaint in the style of James Baldwin, Yancy invoked James Baldwin.

"Dear White America," wrote Yancy, as he set out to berate her,

Yancy, here, managed to combine demand and insult.  No doubt, millions of white masochistic Americans did just that: they tried very, very, very hard to listen, with love (as difficult as it is for them to grasp the concept).

This man who occupies an office once occupied by a real philosopher, continued,

Now, the Dissident Prof has taken some classes in philosophy, but never has she heard a professor declare himself a "child of" any historical figure, much less of such a disparate triad as Socrates, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde.  Furthermore, they told their students that philosophy is the love of wisdom and that according to Socrates, the beginning of wisdom comes with the admission of ignorance.

Professor Yancy, however, declares that he speaks the truth, or at least a truth that does not hold back, has no doubt.

Lest anyone get the impression that Professor Yancy feels himself in any way superior to White America, or to anyone else, he confesses his own sin of sexism, or male privilege.  But then again that must mean he is superior because he confessed his privilege.  So unless you, White America, confess the privilege that Professor Yancy says you enjoy (because he knows), you are guilty. Richard WrightI will not claim to be a child of Richard Wright, just someone who, in spite of her white privilege, read and taught (at Emory) his autobiographical account of a show trial put on by the American Communists in the 1930s.  Wright got entangled with them in his efforts to break into writing.  The poor soul who is the target, his friend Ross, is NOT a privileged white American, but a black American, one of many targeted and exploited by the communists.

Wright is asked to come to the trial so that he might "learn what happened to 'enemies of the working class.'"  The following day, a Sunday, Ross is confronted by his accusers.  Over the course of three hours, the accusers describe "Fascism's aggression in Germany, Italy, and Japan," "the role of the Soviet Union as the world's lone workers' state," and the "suffering and handicaps" of the Negro population on Chicago's South Side and the relation to "world struggle." The direct charges against Ross are made, with dates, conversations, and scenes.

Then it is time for Ross to defend himself:

He stood trembling; he tried to talk and his words would not come.  The hall was as still as death.  Guilt was written in every pore of his black skin.  His hands shook.  He held on to the edge of the table to keep on his feet. . . .
"Comrades," he said in a low, charged voice.  "I'm guilty of all the charges, all of them."

In a similar manner, those of us benefiting from "privilege," must confess as we are blamed for such things as the "school to prison pipeline" and the deplorable conditions on the South Side of Chicago.  Those who wish to be in the good graces of those like Professor Yancy must confess these over and over and over. Fortunately, there are still a few legitimate philosophy professors around, such as Jack Kerwick, one of the contributors to the Dissident Prof collection, Exiled.  Kerwick, who keeps a very busy schedule teaching, also is a frequent contributor to such sites as Townhall and American Thinker.  Those who have enjoyed his application of logic to the issues of the day can now enjoy his razor sharp analyses in a new collection, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front, where he tackles such topics as Immigration, Academia, Religion, and Race.  As a matter of fact, I think George Yancy should read it.  I cannot think of anyone who would benefit more.

A couple reminders: The deadline for public comment on the U.S. Dept. of Education's "family engagement" plan is Jan.4.  The deadline for 2015 charitable contributions is Dec. 31.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year! The Republican For People Who Hate Republicans

Last night in California, John Kasich worked very hard to steal Jeb Bush’s donors. The only donors he could possible steal after his performance are the suckers looking to be taken advantage of by swindlers. Kasich is running a Jon Huntsman campaign, complete with Jon Huntsman’s team. It is a race that tries to portray him as the grown up, sophisticated person in the room.

This is the “MSNBC deal waiting to happen” John Kasich who comforts the media circle of jerks and mega-donors of America that there are Republicans who, when they wear Jesus on their sleeve, do so in favor of bigger government. To get there, Kasich has hired John Weaver, a blast from the past, who, like Kasich, has rejected not just the conservative wing of the GOP, but all parts of the GOP not in favor of more expansive, debt riddled government and liberal social politics.

John Weaver made a name for himself in New Hampshire in 2000, helping John McCain beat George W. Bush in that primary. After McCain ultimately lost, Weaver took his football and went home, or at least left the GOP. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution quoted him in 2002, “I don’t think it surprised one person in McCain-land,” he said. “I think they thought I was a Democrat all along.”.......To Read More..... Bill Clinton’s Best Friend Supports John Kasich

John Kasich has routinely attacked Donald Trump for being a Democrat pretending to be a Republican, but it is John Kasich who is being bailed out by Bill Clinton’s best friend.  Now, keep in mind that the odds are Ron Burkle does not actually support Kasich. The Democrats are just so confident that they have a permanent political majority, they want to divide the moderates in the GOP.  The Democrats are hoping for a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump.   Keeping Kasich viable and in the race continues to drag out consolidation among the establishment/moderate wing of the GOP. Kasich, Bush, and Christie are doing everything they can to attack Marco Rubio and stop him. Kasich getting a cash infusion will keep those attacks going.  It is worth noting though that Kasich’s team is glad to take money from a Democrat. As it should. Kasich’s whole campaign is infested with people who hate the Republican Party.   This appeared here Barack Obama Used the Government to Spy on Congress

First, is George W. Bush had done this there’d be Democrats and Republicans demanding he be impeached. Of course, Bush would have never done this. President Obama unleashed the NSA to spy on Israel and congress in an attempt to block the Israeli government from undermining the Iranian deal. It really is amazing how much.......Like Jimmy Carter before him, but with even more reckless abandon, President Obama has time and time again shown himself to positively loath Israel. But Carter never spied on Congress. ....To Read More... Why Progressives Make Bad Journalists

By James Ostrowski

I wrote Progressivism: A Primer to explain certain anomalies in the behavior of progressives that I had noticed over a number of years.  For example, I found that progressives were rarely amenable to rational persuasion.  Facts, logic and even experience rarely changed their minds.  You couldn’t really argue with a progressive.  You would argue; they would fight.  They would get angry, insult and change the subject.  They never stopped proposing new government programs, spending and laws, though they appeared to lack a grand vision of what they were trying to accomplish.
To explain all this and more, I propounded an eight-part definition of progressivism.  Thus, “progressivism is:.......That being the case, progressivism can be seen as a self-imposed mental disability in which the progressive filters out of his perception and cognition any facts that disturb or disrupt the therapeutic function of his political mindset and, at the same time, highlights or exaggerates any facts that would appear to buttress the notion that government action can solve any particular problem......Thus, we can conclude that progressives generally make bad journalists. The great casualty of progressive journalism is, of course, the truth.  Since progressives utterly dominate the media and journalism, it is no surprise that the vast majority of Americans remain ignorant of the true cause of America’s continuing decline, progressivism itself.......To Read More.... How the wealthy shape US tax policy

America's wealthiest people have managed to reshape US tax policy in ways that save their families millions or even billions of dollars a year, using a group of lobbyists, lawyers and anti-tax advocates known as the "income defense industry." The country's 400 wealthiest people paid 27% of their income in taxes under President Bill Clinton, but only 17% under President Barack Obama, IRS data show........ ....To Read More..... The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: American Presidents

By Thomas DiLorenzo @RobertBluey/December 29, 2015/ 29 comments Freedom Force Pamela Geller named Woman of the Year 'If Obama wants to go to war against the American people, I say, bring it on'

Backing down is not in Pamela Geller’s lexicon.  In May 2015, Geller hosted an art exhibit and drawing contest featuring images of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Her aim was to stand up for free speech by showing that Muslims could not intimidate non-Muslim Americans into following Shariah blasphemy laws, which prohibit any depictions of Muhammad.  Two gunmen showed up at the Garland, Texas, event and started shooting, injuring a security officer before being killed by police.  Frightened into silence? Not Geller. To Read More... Prof to all white Americans: Admit your 'racist poison'

Douglas Ernst About | Email | Archive

A college professor has taken to the New York Times to implore “white America” to go to “war” with itself over its alleged racism.    Professor George Yancy of Emory University published “Dear White America” as a “gift” for white people. His challenge: “White America, are you prepared to be at war with yourself, your white identity, your white power, your white privilege?”  Yancy, a black professor, told Times readers Dec. 24 that, just as he considers himself sexist, all white people should admit to possessing latent racism.  “I can see your anger. I can see that this letter is being misunderstood. This letter is not asking you to feel bad about yourself, to wallow in guilt. That is too easy. I’m asking for you to tarry, to linger, with the ways in which you perpetuate a racist society, the ways in which you are racist,” said Yancy......Read more at

My Take - The first question we should be asking is: How did this lunatic ever get a teaching job at any university?  The second question we should be asking is: Is he representative of American academia.  The answer is Yes to the latter and that explains how he got his job.
Let's start with definition, for without definition clarity is impossible.
First of all the words racism and prejudice are the two most misused words used in America.  The word racist means hating someone simply because they belong to a different race.  The word prejudice means to "pre" judge.  So the question we should be asking is are whites pre-judging blacks and hate them because their black or are whites evaluating them by their actions and saying - I don't like that?
If evaluating black society by the way they act we have to conclude they've been found wanting.  Violence, illegitimacy and bad attitudes permeate black society.  Why would anyone think that was acceptable?  Why would anyone want to associate with people who act in that manner?  Black mobs rampaging through shopping malls, black kids "playing" the knockout game attacking helpless whites - especially if they're alone, old, female and outnumbered.  Not liking that is hardly prejudice or racism!  However refusing to recognize and defend that kind of activity is!  They're telling the world blacks are incapable of living civilized lives, while condeming those who are recipients of that kind of violence as racists.  Perhaps they should try and remember Antonio Santiago.  You do remember him don't you?
We keep hearing how blacks are treated differently regarding employment, and the government constantly puts out figures to make that claim.  However, when will the government put the whole picture on the wall?   When will the government put out a study - based on race - showing how many work days are missed each year, how many days employees come to work late, leave early, cause trouble on the job, productivity, theft on the job, disciplinary write-ups, sexual harassment and violence on the job.   Do the study, and after that I'm willing to let the card fall where they may.
Ok....now let's see a show of hands of how many people think the government or academia will undertake such a task.? It won't happen - and why?  Because black activists and academia are racists and the government is filled with them!
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 7:07 AM No comments: Links to this post How white liberals use black kids

Advice for parents of African-American college-bound students

Walter Williams About | Email | Archive

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ran headlong into the leftist meat grinder by questioning whether college admission of blacks with academic achievement levels significantly lower than the rest of the student body is beneficial to blacks. His question came up during oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas, wherein the court will rule whether the use of race in college admission decisions violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” to all citizens.  Justice Scalia’s questions generated news headlines such as “Justice Scalia suggests blacks belong at ‘slower’ colleges,” “Scalia questions place of some black students in elite colleges” and “Scalia and the misguided ‘mismatch’ theory.” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said, “It is deeply disturbing to hear a Supreme Court justice endorse racist ideas from the bench of the nation’s highest court.”........I have been asked: If elite colleges do not create lower admission standards, how are they going to have enough black students? My response is: That’s their problem. Black people cannot afford to have our youngsters turned into failures in order to support the agendas of diversity race hustlers and to lessen the guilt of white liberals.....To Read More....

My Take - As you read this article you will see the left playing the game the play best - redefine the issue in terms to redirect everyone's attention from reality to suit themselves....especially in some emotional way attacking us by using our own values against us.   But it's never the right story, it's never the right issue, and it's always destructive to humanity.  In short - they fill the void with lies of commission, lies of omission and logical fallacies.

We must learn to see past the emotion since that merely clouds reality.  Leftist policies has been so destructive to American blacks they're now a society in crisis facing skyrocketing rates of violence and illegitimacy.  Any society existing in that fashion is doomed, and no amount of government handouts - or shall I call it what it is - bribes - can fix it.  That is a society headed for doom, and they will take a large part of America with it.  If you took American blacks and placed them on a world economic chart ten years ago as an independent nation they would have been the fourth richest nation on Earth.  Where else could that have occurred?  And this is the country they hate!
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:26 AM No comments: Links to this post Terrorism in Israel – and America

The Beltway sniper offers lessons on Israel’s continuing struggles with Palestinians
Paul Driessen and Glenn Taubman
When we planned our recent trip to Israel with 50 other Northern Virginians, we didn’t expect that it would coincide with the latest spasm of Palestinian violence against Israelis. We didn’t anticipate that this new war would be more insidious than past “intifadas,” with almost daily violence coming out of nowhere, with no warning, rhyme or reason.
No one is exempt. Old people have been stabbed and brutalized on city streets; so have young mothers with toddlers, rabbis in study halls, students in cars, people praying. Soldiers have been attacked at checkpoints. Children have been forced to watch their parents murdered in front of them. People waiting for buses have been rammed by cars and split open by meat cleavers.
A rocket hit Sderot, where a menorah atop a yeshivah was crafted from rockets that had previously rained down on this beautiful city, and where a colorful playground caterpillar doubles as a bomb shelter during frequent attacks. The Iron Dome defense system took out another flying bomb over Ashkelon.
Our group never wavered in its countrywide visit, but we were always looking around warily for signs of trouble. In some places an armed security guard accompanied us.
A suburban Jerusalem shopkeeper told us he and his six-year-old twins experience constant rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at their house. He asked plaintively, “How do I explain that to my children?” Many nearby neighborhoods endure similar threats.
We thought back to October 2002, when the Beltway sniper and his young accomplice paralyzed the DC region for weeks, sowing fear and keeping people from pumping gas, buying groceries, holding soccer practices, or venturing from their homes. We ponder what happened in Paris and Mali, Chattanooga and San Bernardino, Boston and Fort Hood, Belgium and other countries.
Americans might try to imagine 50 or 100 copycats doing the same thing for weeks, months or years on end, and exhorting others to join them. Would they send their kids to school or engage in normal activities under such terrorism? Might they want the National Guard deployed? How would they respond if snipers return, or Paris and San Bernardino become more commonplace?
While many of these attacks occur in what the news media likes to call “Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory,” many have actually occurred in pre-1967 Israel, including downtown Jerusalem and Tel Aviv suburbs like Netanya and Ra’anana. As tourists, we saw firsthand how such random attacks sow fear, changes in daily life and calls for retaliation.
Markets had fewer people, restaurants were less crowded, businesses suffered. Mothers refused to send their children to school for almost a week, until more troops patrolled the streets. Life in cities gradually began returning to “normal” as our trip ended, but the stabbings and shootings continue.
News stories and anti-Israel activists often say more Palestinians than Israelis have died in these attacks – and repeat the vicious canard that “alleged perpetrators” have been “victims” of “extra-judicial summary executions.” In reality, the assailants were shot and killed while attempting to murder as many Israelis as possible; they were killed in the act by Israelis who are increasingly arming themselves for protection.
Israelis recognize that police and soldiers cannot be everywhere, and too often arrive only in time to count bodies and prevent additional murders. Self-protection under these circumstances is a citizen’s duty, and those attacking Israelis do so knowing the response is likely to be swift and uncompromising.
In fact, the response by Israelis exactly reflects Washington, DC Chief of Police Cathy Lanier’s recent advice: Citizens should do more than run or hide. They should “take the gunman down, take the gunman out. It’s the best option for saving lives before the police can get there.”
What do the Palestinian Arabs gain from their murderous mayhem, inspired by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, the Arab media and many imams? Absolutely nothing, because the vicious attacks destroy any notion within Israel that it has a true partner for peace.
They destroy any hope or belief that West Bank and Gaza Strip Arabs will ever govern themselves peaceably, in close proximity to Israel’s major cities, sole international airport and neighborhoods teeming with children – even if their “two-state solution,” settlement removal and other demands are met.
The media, United Nations, State Department and boycott-divestment groups frequently claim the Palestinian side merely wants a state of its own next to Israel. However, the blatant refusal of attackers and their supporters to accept even pre-1967 Israel – or even depict Israel on maps – shows they are intent on keeping this 90-year war boiling for their own nationalistic or religious supremacy purposes.
Abba Eban famously said “the Arabs never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” for peace. They seem determined to continue that dismal record, and many want Israel obliterated.
With our own eyes, we saw that Israel is a place of marvelous vitality, creativity and diversity: amazing food, archaeology, culture, science (cell phone apps, desalination plants, miracle cancer treatments and much more), agriculture, beaches, secularism and profound spirituality. Its racial and ethnic tolerance, its human rights record – while not perfect – are worlds better than anything found in its neighboring countries, where ethnic and religious minorities are routinely repressed, tortured and massacred.
Under horribly adverse conditions, dating back decades before its founding almost 68 years ago, Israelis have built a thriving and energetic society, a marvel on the ruins of their ancient past and recent Jewish history. They are not going anywhere, nor should they be expected to – anymore than the English should leave England or Americans the United States.
Indeed, Israel has integrated some 600,000 Jews who were driven penniless from Arab lands after its 1948 independence, plus millions of other Jews and non-Jews from around the world over later decades. Its Christian population has risen from 34,000 in 1949 to 170,000 today. As they built new lives in their adopted land, Israel prospered with them.
By contrast, virtually no Arab countries have accepted or integrated any Palestinian Arabs, many of whom still claim “refugee” status generations after this long war began. They treat refugees from the current Iraq-Syria conflagration the same way, while driving out or murdering non-Muslims. How many Syrians are in Saudi Arabia or Qatar today, instead of Germany or France?
Israel’s Jews live the Jewish people’s dream of a sovereign state reborn in its ancient homeland, and they are there to stay, along with Circassian, Christian, Druze, B’hai, Arab and other Israelis we met. In sad parallel, the Palestinian Arabs have built a society based on death, perpetual grievance, medieval attitudes and beliefs, and murder-suicides they mistakenly call martyrdom.
The sooner they sheath their knives, step out of the Middle Ages, and accept the fact that their Jewish neighbors will be in Israel for another 3,000 years, the sooner they too will have a chance to thrive in a country of their own. The first genuine steps would be a wonderful way to begin 2016.
Paul Driessen is a policy analyst and Glenn Taubman is an attorney in Northern Virginia. They have made many trips to Israel and studied Jewish, Israeli and Holocaust history for years.
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:05 AM No comments: Links to this post It's Political Posturing - or - The Weather Outside is Balmy

Brought to you by Benny Peiser's Global Warming Policy Forum Is the West Disintegrating?

A Commentary by Pat Buchanan Tuesday, December 29, 2015

On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and banknotes entered into circulation, my column, "Say Goodbye to the Mother Continent," contained this pessimistic prognosis:  This European superstate will not endure, but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism. For when the hard times come, patriots will recapture control of their national destinies from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.

The column described what was already happening.  "Europe is dying. There is not a single nation in all of Europe with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive, except Muslim Albania. In 17 European nations, there are already more burials than births, more coffins than cradles.

Between 2000 and 2050, Asia, Africa and Latin America will add 3 billion to 4 billion people -- 30 to 40 new Mexicos! -- as Europe loses the equal of the entire population of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Germany. " .....To Read More.... Remembering 2015

A Commentary By Thomas Sowell

This was the year when we essentially let the world know that we were giving up any effort to try to stop Iran -- the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism -- from getting a nuclear bomb. Surely it does not take much imagination to foresee what lies at the end of that road.  It will not matter if we have more nuclear bombs than they have, if they are willing to die and we are not. That can determine who surrenders. And ISIS and other terrorists have given us grisly demonstrations of what surrender would mean........If there is anything that is bipartisan in Washington, it is lying. The most recent budget deal showed that Congressional Republicans lied wholesale when they said that they would defund Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and other pet projects of the Democrats......To Read More..... The 15 biggest scandals of 2015

By Sarah Westwood

In a year marked by private email shenanigans and undercover videos, political scandals that might have shocked the public any other time seemed relatively tame. But public figures from all levels were up to no good in 2015, wasting taxpayer money and trying to cover their tracks at every turn.  While this timeline of scandals doesn't begin to cover all the political bad behavior that transpired in Washington this year, it does provide a window into what some leaders will do when they think no one is watching......To Read More.....
Posted by Rich Kozlovich at 6:04 AM No comments: Links to this post Trump directs fire at Christie after newspaper's endorsement

By Sean Langille

With nearly six weeks to go until the New Hampshire primary, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a new target in the first primary state. During a Monday rally Trump sharpened his attacks on New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie.......[noting] how he was surprised the paper endorsed Christie, saying the first time he met with its publisher Joseph McQuaid, the newspaper man stated how much he hated that Christie had embraced President Obama in the wake of Hurricane Sandy..........he extensively attacked Christie's record as governor and the financial standing of New Jersey. He attacked the governor over the state's crediting rating, stating it has been downgraded nine times and that New Jersey ranks last in economic development. "I have property in New Jersey. It's a disaster. The property taxes are through the roof," complained Trump......"They say we're going to hell and our governor is up in New Hampshire every single day holding town halls. He should really be doing it in New Jersey in all fairness.".....To Read More.... Ted Cruz plans action on multiple fronts in first day as president

By Paul Bedard

Surging Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz described what would be the most aggressive first day in office ever for a new president, starting with the elimination of "every single illegal and unconstitutional" executive action taken by President Obama. The Texas senator also said that he would rip up Obama's controversial deal with Iran, open an investigation into Planned Parenthood's "abortion practice," and shift the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem....."The left, and the media (who are in cahoots), try to convince us that nothing can change. They want us to give up. But strong presidential leadership, backed by the American people, can usher in dramatic change," wrote Cruz......To Read More... The Formlessness of Progressivism

By Yonathan Amselem

Progressives are often good people with good intentions. However, modern Progressivism has evolved into something so shapeless and amorphous as to amount to little more than a belief in “things that sound nice.” Mainstream Progressives have done an abysmal job of outlining precisely, in their view, the proper role of government and what (if any) limiting principle(s) apply to the state as a whole.

Everything Is Now a Taxpayer-Funded “Right"  - Problems with today’s leftism begin with the ideology’s conception of “rights.”......Progressivism.... has so warped the entire nature of rights as to turn almost any desired good or service into a right.

A Plea for More Precise Language  -  .....“Equality,” “social justice,” “appropriation,” “racism,” “climate justice,” “micro-aggressions,” and many other terms referencing broad, nebulous concepts are now battle cries for stuff.

The Only Principle Is Faith in the Power of the State.....To Read More.....
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