op ed review 5/1
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
Tuesday was pretty good for Donald Trump. He swept five
states and edged closer to the magic number of 1,237 delegates needed to win
the Republican presidential nomination. His winning numbers were impressive,
ranging from 54 percent of the GOP primary vote in Maryland to 64 percent in
Rhode Island.
Trump will likely wind up winning the most primary votes
of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history.
At his first California rally, Trump honors families of
those killed by illegal aliens.
Rioters rage outside the rally...police car smashed…many
wave Mexican flags
If the election were held today, most polls show Trump
losing to Hillary.
But one Democratic election strategist believes Donald Trump
will beat Hillary Clinton like a “baby seal,” and that working class whites who
haven’t already left the Democratic Party for cultural reasons will do so now
for economic ones.
With varying enthusiasm, GOP elites are accepting Trump as their nominee
Ted Cruz announced on Wednesday in Indiana that should he
receive the nomination, his general election running mate will be former
Hewlett-Packard CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. “….this is unorthodox.”
A senior Republican House lawmaker on Tuesday floated Ted
Cruz as a possible Supreme Court pick to replace Justice Antonin Scalia should
Cruz fail to win the GOP presidential nomination.
But the Republican establishment hates him: Former House speaker Boehner calls Ted Cruz
“Lucifer in the flesh.”
The Obama economy is literally killing people.
Here it comes:
California legislators look to extend Obamacare health coverage to the
state’s estimated 2.6 million illegal immigrant population. If passed and
signed into law, California would be the first state in the nation to request
illegal immigrants be covered through a state exchange.
Believing in only two genders is being investigated as a ‘hate
crime’ at a Catholic college.
A prominent Ku Klux Klan leader says that the group has
raised thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and that the Klan is
officially endorsing the Democratic frontrunner for president—a claim the
Clinton campaign vigorously denies.
More than 500,000 boycott Target over transgender bathroom
policy
Judge Andrew Napolitano predicted that if the Justice
Department shields Hillary Clinton from indictment it will be “catastrophic”
for her candidacy and that President Barack Obama will be confronted with a
crisis similar to one that Richard Nixon faced.
Homeland Security has made some gains in detaining criminal
aliens but still released into the community nearly 20,000 immigrants last year
who’d already been convicted of crimes — including hundreds charges with sexual
assault, kidnapping or homicide — according to figures sent to Congress this
week.
First illegal immigrants were renamed “undocumented”. Now
the Justice Dept. calls young
criminals “justice-involved youth”, to avoid being judgmental.
When so-called "assault weapons" were banned by the Bill Clinton
administration in 1994, the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) supported
it. Now, not even a majority do. The turnaround is nothing short of remarkable.
Nancy Pelosi happily told a press conference that the
Democrats’ goal to make homosexual marriage the law of the land could not be
accomplished “legislatively,” but was achieved through “the courts.”
Hollywood loves to paint itself as America’s capital of
compassion. So why is the hottest script right now all about comedian Will
Ferrell mocking Ronald Reagan’s fatal battle with the ravages of Alzheimer’s
disease?
______________________________________________________________________
COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Dennis Prager 4/29/16
This
month, Stanford University students voted on a campus resolution that would
have their college require a course on Western civilization, as it did until
the 1980s. Stanford students rejected the proposal 1,992 to 347. A columnist at
the Stanford Daily explained why: Teaching Western civilization means
"upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other
oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations." The vote -- and
the column -- encapsulated the left's view: In Europe, Latin America and
America, it loathes Western civilization.
Wherever
there is conflict between the West -- identified as white, capitalist or of
European roots -- and the non-West, the left portrays the West as the villain…...
The left similarly describes any suggestion that anything Western is superior
to anything non-Western. Likewise, it dismisses virtually all Western
achievements, but regards criticism of anything non-Western as racist,
chauvinistic, imperialist, colonialist, xenophobic, etc.
That
is why the left is so protective of Islam. America's left-wing president,
Barack Obama, will not use, and does not seem to allow the government to use,
the words "Islamic terrorism." And, criticism of Islam is labeled
"Islamophobic," thereby morally equating any such criticism with
racism. It is not that the left is sympathetic to Islam, for it has contempt
for all religions. It is that many Muslims loathe the West, and the enemies of my
enemy (the West) must be protected.
That
is why the left loathes Israel. If the left actually cared about human rights,
women's rights, gay rights, or freedom of speech, religion and press, it would
be wildly pro-Israel. But Israel, in the left's view, is white, European and
colonialist, or in other words, Western. And the Palestinians are non-Western.
So,
the Big Question is, why? Why is the left hostile toward Western civilization? After
decades of considering this question, I have concluded the answer is this:
standards.
The
left hates standards -- moral standards, artistic standards, cultural
standards. The West is built on all three, and it has excelled in all three.
Why
does the left hate standards? It hates standards because when there are
standards, there is judgment. And leftists don't want to be judged. Thus,
Michelangelo is no better than any contemporary artist, and Rembrandt is no
greater than any non-Western artist. So, too, street graffiti -- which is
essentially the defacing of public and private property, and thus serves to
undermine civilization -- is "art." Melody-free, harmony-free, atonal
sounds are just as good as Beethoven's music. And Western classical music is no
better than the music of any non-Western civilization. Guatemalan poets are
every bit as worthy of study as Shakespeare.
When
the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Saul Bellow asked an interviewer,
"Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" all
hell broke loose on the cultural left. Bellow had implied that the greatest
writers of fiction were Western. Why such antagonism? Because if some art is
really better than other art, your art may be judged inferior. The narcissism
of left-wing thought does not allow for anyone to be better than you
artistically or in any other way. Therefore, all art and artists must be equal.
In
the moral realm, the same rejection of standards exists. Thus, the left loathed
President Ronald Reagan for labeling the Soviet Union an "evil
empire," because that would mean America was morally superior to the
Soviet Union. And such a judgment was unacceptable. The whole left-wing moral
vocabulary is a rejection of Western moral standards: "tolerance,"
"inclusion," "anti-discrimination" (by definition,
standards discriminate), "non-judgmental," and even "income
inequality," which deems some peoples' work more valuable than others.
Every
civilization had slavery. But only thanks to Judeo-Christian civilization was
slavery abolished there, and eventually elsewhere. Nevertheless, to speak about
any moral superiority of Western or Judeo-Christian civilization is completely
unacceptable, thanks to the left's stranglehold on education and most media.
In
this regard, the protection of Islam by the left is so thorough that one cannot
even say such obvious truths such as that the status of women has been far
superior in the Judeo-Christian West than in the Islamic world. The veil women
wear, for example, is dehumanizing. Yet, in a speech at the annual convention
of the Islamic Society of North America, a rabbi who, at the time, was the
president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that a woman's voluntary choice
to wear a head scarf "deserves our respect."
And
finally, we come to the left's loathing of the religions of Western
civilization -- the Judeo-Christian religions, which have clear standards of
right and wrong. Bible-based religions affirm a morally judging God. For the
left, that is anathema. For the left, the only judging allowed is leftists'
judging of others. No one judges the left -- neither man nor God.
_________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
Hey Venezuela, how’s that socialism working out for you?? Venezuela has introduced a new concept to the
workplace calendar: the five-day weekend. President Nicolás Maduro will
furlough the country´s public employees — who account for a third of the labor
force — for the bulk of the week, so they can sit through rolling power blackouts
at home rather than in the office. “
_________________________________________________________________
GLOBALONEY
A three-year study of fracking undertaken by the University
of Cincinnati will not be released to the public, because it found no damage at
all. This direct contradiction of the goals of many environmentalists groups
had to be suppressed. As the lead researcher said, “I am really sad to say
this, but some of our funders, the groups that had given us funding in the
past, were a little disappointed in our results. They feel that fracking is
scary and so they were hoping this data could to a reason to ban it….”
Leading climate activists are
warning moviegoers to shun the May 2nd nationwide one-day theater screening of
“Climate Hustle,” a new film debunking climate
alarmism and its big government solutions. Bill Nye, who entertains the idea of
throwing climate skeptics in the slammer, warned the
film’s producer that “Climate Hustle’s” content endangers not just the nation,
but also the world:
Weather Channel Founder Slams Bill Nye: Calls him ‘a pretend
scientist in a bow tie’
_________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed
in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks,
according to a high-ranking Homeland Security official.
Europe will 'soon have more Muslims than Christians':
Belgium warns against 'making an enemy of Islam' at Brussels attacks hearing
A Muslim family therapist in Saudi Arabia posted a video in
which he gives advice on “wife beating,” explaining that the “necessary Islamic
conditions for beating must be met,” and shows that husbands must not use a
long wooden rod to beat their wife but instead use a “tooth-cleaning twig” or
handkerchief.
Saudi Arabia isn’t ready to end the world’s only ban on
women driving,
___________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Roger Simon:
Apologies to those who still don´t accept the inevitability of a Donald Trump
candidacy in the Republican Party -- I feel your pain, as a famous
prevaricator/predator once said -- but, disappointing as it may be to Fox and
CNN executives, not to mention the millions or hundreds of thousands of voters
loyal to Messrs. Cruz and Kasich, it´s all over but the shouting and the
backbiting. Cleveland in July may not be Christmas in July, but it´s not going
to be the second coming of the 1992 L.A. riots or the 1968 Chicago convention either.
“I’ve just listened to the Donald’s foreign policy speech.
It was excellent. Informed. Measured. OK, a bit ambitious. But it reflected
more understanding of how the world works and of a strong but reasonable
approach to protecting Americans and American interests in that world than
anyone has heard from Donald to this point. (And I liked the complete
sentences.) Where the hell has this been? This is Jekyll to Donald’s usual
Hyde.”
“10 Signs You´ve Joined the Trump Cult”
__________________________________________________________________
INTERESTING WEBSITES
Human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets
an egg, scientists have shown for the first time, after capturing the
astonishing ‘fireworks’ on film.
R and D convention delegate calculator: