GOOD. BECAUSE IT WASN’T SINCERE. Jewish Leader Does Not Accept New York Times Apology for Anti-Semitic Cartoon.
Archive for 2019
May 1, 2019
NEWSPEAK: Blurring the line between legal and illegal immigration.
Lately, the mother of all terminology battles has been fought over descriptions of the millions of persons who are in the United States illegally. Should they be described as “illegal immigrants”? “Undocumented workers”? “Unauthorized immigrants”? Some say the appropriate term is “illegal aliens”, arguing that we tilt the discussion when we identify those who have evaded the law as “immigrants” because an immigrant, under the law, is someone who has been admitted for residence in the United States.
Both sides understand that the terms of the debate are a matter of linguistic framing. By influencing public attitudes, they can shape policy outcomes.
What most concerns me is the effort to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration. It has gained momentum as many Democrats and other liberals have categorically rejected any policy that President Trump has adopted regarding the enforcement of immigration laws. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf gave forceful expression to this sentiment when she said, “We in Oakland have a community that welcomes and honors all people, no matter where they came from — no matter how they got here.”
The latest item involving language and framing that has caught my eye appears in an article about California senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Published in the May issue of The Atlantic, it is titled “Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot”.
What jumped out at me was writer Elizabeth Weil’s summary of Harris’s platform. She wrote that the platform included “a path to citizenship for immigrants”. Weil did not see fit to mention that she was referring to a proposal to benefit those who have violated immigration law. By not reporting that salient fact, Weil did the work of the immigration activists who have long sought to blur the line between legal and illegal immigration.
Yet another Democratic operative with a byline.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College presidents say public doesn’t understand how affordable college is.
PUTTING THE DEMOCRAT IN “DEMOCRATIC” SOCIALISM: Maduro apologist and Dem Rep. Ro Khanna blames Mike Pence for ‘inciting violence’ in Venezuela.
Who’s he going to blame when the crops don’t come in?
WELL, THAT’S PARTLY BECAUSE MOST “HUMAN RIGHTS” GROUPS AREN’T ACTUALLY ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS: Advocacy Groups’ Leftward ‘Mission Creep’ Is Creeping Up on Free Speech.
AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Concerned with Media Coverage of Report Summary. “Well, Bob, of course Barr’s letter didn’t ‘fully capture’ the report, it was just a summary of the ultimate findings. Does Mueller need to be reminded that this report didn’t need to see the light of day, the statute only requires the special counsel turn a report over to the attorney general. The AG didn’t have to release it at all, Barr could have announced the report brought ‘no charges on collusion/conspiracy and no charges on obstruction’ and be done with it. So why Mueller is concerned about the ‘full context’ suggests he has another motive that his report wasn’t playing as planned.”
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Late Night Lies Are No Laughing Matter. “Stephen Colbert lied to attack President Trump this week. Again. It’s the new normal for late night ‘comedians’.”
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Huge ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid to buzz by Earth: The asteroid will fly closer than some orbiting spacecraft. “The 1,100-foot-wide asteroid will be visible to the naked eye. NASA says it will look like a moving star-like point of light. It will be visible in the night sky over the southern hemisphere, moving east to west over Australia. As it zooms by the Earth, it will pass over the United States between 6 p.m, and 7 p.m. EDT. . . . While Apophis is not expected to hit Earth, scientists are meeting this week at the Planetary Defense Conference to discuss a hypothetical scenario of how to deflect an approaching asteroid within the next eight years.”
Related: Combating the Asteroid Threat.
MY CONGRESSMAN TIM BURCHETT’S SOCIAL MEDIA GAME IS STRONG.
THEN PERHAPS YOU SHOULD SEE A PSYCHIATRIST: “I don’t feel safe as a Muslim student knowing that someone like this is on our campus.”
JACOB SULLUM: Colorado’s New ‘Red Flag’ Law Illustrates the Pitfalls of Disarming People Based on Their Future Behavior.
Colorado’s Deputy Zackari Parrish III Violence Prevention Act, which takes effect next year, is named for a 29-year-old Douglas County sheriff’s deputy who was killed in 2017 by a 36-year-old veteran with a history of psychological problems. The law allows a long list of people, including law enforcement officers, current or former household members, and people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, to seek a temporary “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO) against someone they believe “poses a significant risk of causing personal risk to self or others in the near future.” The standard of proof at this stage, when the “respondent” does not have an opportunity to respond, is a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning he is more likely than not to pose a significant risk.
Depending on what counts as a “significant risk,” the probability that the subject of a temporary order actually would have used a gun to hurt himself or someone else may be quite low. If 10 percent is significant, for example, that probability might be around 5 percent (51 percent times 10 percent). So even if judges are weighing the evidence with such precision, they will be taking away the Second Amendment rights of people who almost certainly would not have committed suicide or murder.
In practice, judges will be inclined to err on the side of what they take to be caution. When the only evidence comes from someone who believes the respondent poses a threat, judges will rarely, if ever, decline to issue a temporary ERPO. The possible downside of rejecting a petition—the death of the respondent or someone else—will weigh heavily on the judge’s mind, while the temporary deprivation of the subject’s constitutional rights will seem trivial by comparison.
It used to be possible to expose a Leftist’s hypocrisy by suggesting similar limits, restrictions, infringements, licensing, training, etc., for people to exercise their First Amendment rights. But now that it’s “Free speech for me but not for thee,” even that tool is gone.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: If Democratic men really want a woman president, why not drop out?
Asked at the “She the People” forum in Houston whether he will choose a woman to share his ticket, Cory Booker said, “I will have a woman running mate. To me, it’s really clear that we do that.”
Of course, at an event called “She the People,” it would be hard to resist the siren song of pandering. But it wasn’t the first time Booker had made the pledge. He previously said Democrats would “make history” and declared, “There will be a woman on the ticket. I don’t know if it’s in the vice president’s position or in the president’s position.”
Booker isn’t alone. Pete Buttigieg told Ellen DeGeneres he would consider a female VP because it’s important “to have gender diversity and gender balance.”
Even the lower-tier candidates are getting in on the sweet woman-pandering action. Eric Swalwell, previously mostly known for threatening to use nuclear weapons on gun owners, tweeted “SPOILER ALERT: I’m a white man. I know where I can’t speak to someone else’s experience.” He pledged to “pass the mic” and “ask a woman to serve as VP.”
Spoiler alert: Playing the male savior to women is lame.
True, but all that virtue isn’t going to signal itself, Karol.
DAPHNE PATAI: A Fantasy For The Sexes.
In contemporary America, women and men still act out ancient roles. From the point of view of the men, the society is a matriarchy: Women have physically less demanding jobs — with the sole exception of childbirth, by now a rare event in the average woman’s life. Women sustain far fewer injuries on the job, are not required to go to war, take better care of their health, and for these reasons and many others enjoy a lifespan significantly longer than that of men.
In this society, men use their physical strength, when necessary, on women’s behalf. Women claim to be equal partners when that suits them and claim to be entitled to special consideration when that suits them. They insist on autonomy in maintaining or aborting pregnancies, but at the same time, they determine the fathers’ duties-and rights, if any. Women claim child support. They can either demand or impede fathers’ continuing involvement with their offspring, as the women see fit. The result is that women have advantages over men in child custody suits, just as they have learned to use charges of child sexual abuse and domestic violence.
Though dozens of studies show that women, by their own account, initiate violence against their domestic partners as often as (if not more often than) men, and cause as much injury when weapons are involved, somehow the social mythologies of this country keep that fact from gaining broad public attention, let alone credence.
But worst of all, in terms of the interactions of daily life, are women’s emotional demands on men. At home, men routinely sit through harangues that demonstrate women’s greater verbal skills and emotional agility. Men, inarticulate, try to figure out what is required of them in a given situation. Not by accident, verbal therapies in this society archetypically began with men listening and women speaking. Even as little boys, males learn to be in awe of girls’ verbal fluency. The feeling of ineptness, of being no match for females at the verbal and emotional level, is the common inheritance of all but a few exceptional males.
The matriarchy here described, structured to protect women’s interests as against men’s (and, ironically, having conned men into defending such a set up) puts a premium on women’s special social and emotional skills. Everywhere, women engage men and one another in personal conversation, offering and receiving disclosures, demanding commiseration, giving advice, spreading censure. Men, trained to keep to their workhorse style, are uncomfortably cornered by women, in the workplace, and at home, demanding that they speak from the heart. When asked “How are you?” women give a detailed and precise accounting. In offices, they spend valuable time discussing personal matters.
Studies are done on the economic costs of smoking and poor health, but not of the costs of women’s work habits.
Read the whole thing.
IMAGINE HOW MUCH MORE WE COULD MISS IT IF SHE’D ONLY GO AWAY: Hillary Misses Her Presidency More Than Voters Do.
MORE BAD NEWS FROM BALTIMORE: Marilyn Mosby’s Mess. “When you send the cops into a particular neighborhood, to target the people who live in that neighborhood, it’s a little disingenuous to complain that the cops did as directed.”