Archive for 2019
January 9, 2019
BIG BUSINESS SMILES: New York City’s Minimum Wage Increase Is Crushing Small Businesses.
THE INSTA-WIFE ON PSYCHOLOGY: Activists, Not Healers: Why I Despise What My Profession Has Become.
EPIC TAKEDOWN BY RABBI DANIEL GORDIS OF THE JEWISH PROGRESSIVE LEFT’S PRETENSIONS: The American ‘Zionist’ Assault on Israel. Excerpt:
Jonathan Weisman (the author of a very interesting recent book on American anti-Semitism), quotes Rabbi Daniel Zemel of Washington, DC…. Weisman writes that on Yom Kippur, “Rabbi Zemel implored his congregation to act before it is too late, to save Israel from itself.”
A Reform Congregation in DC should save Israel before it is too late? Does no one see the hubris (and the humor, frankly) in such a suggestion? Who are these people who are being urged to save Israel? Can they read the op-ed page of a Hebrew newspaper? Since they cannot, and since the vast majority of the Hebrew press is not translated into English, why do they imagine that they know what’s best for Israel without being exposed to what millions of Israelis think, without access to Israeli discourse on the subject? (Not speaking Hebrew is no crime, of course, but should it not engender at least some humility when it comes to speaking about Israel?) American progressives imagine that they have what to teach liberal, secular Israelis because they are… more intelligent than Israelis? Better educated? More moral? More deeply committed to Israel’s decency?
How well do these people know the country they’re being asked to save? What can they say about the ideological worlds represented by readers of Haaretz and Makor Rishon and what animates the worldviews of each? Can they name five Jewish communities along the Gaza border and speak about how they’re different? How those communities see the conflict? They cannot, of course, and as very few have spoken at length to people trying to raise their families in Sderot or Sha’ar HaNegev, they have no real idea what life is like there.
… one can, and should, at least acknowledge that Beinart and Zemel both care about Israel and believe that what they are doing is best for Israel.
That, though, cannot be said for more extremist elements in the American progressive community, where positions that are ostensibly meant to make Israel “better” are clearly just camouflage for a desire to do Israel harm. No group embodies this better than IfNotNow, which, as a recent New York Magazine article noted, had participants say Kaddish for Palestinians who were killed by Israeli soldiers along the Gaza border. “‘We do not organize Kaddish prayers for ‘Arab terrorists’ or ‘Hamas members.’ We say Kaddish and mourn the unconscionable Israeli violence on Palestinian protesters,” one of INN’s leaders said to New York Magazine.
Many of the young people who are involved in or leaders of INN are bright and sophisticated, the graduates of America’s finest colleges [? America’s finest colleges are among the most parochial institutions in the country–DB]. So it is rather astonishing that they did not apply any of the critical thinking skills that got them into college and then through it to bear on this issue. If the killing of Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border (which is unquestionably sad) is so obviously “unconscionable Israeli violence,” why did the Israeli political left not protest? Why were even Meretz and Labor mostly silent after many Gazans were killed at the border? Do American Jewish progressives ever ask themselves what they know that Israelis do not?
Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: How “sophisticated” are the likes of IfNotNow activists? Their level of “sophistication” stretches little further than the (obviously bogus) notion that Israeli Jews are white, Palestinian Arabs are “people of color,” and the latter therefore win the intersectional sweepstakes and require unquestioned devotion. Beyond that, it’s leftist dogma all the way down.
PRIVACY: LA Sues Weather Channel For Illegally Selling Private Data Of Mobile App Users.
“For years, TWC has deceptively used its Weather Channel App to amass its users’ private, personal geolocation data — tracking minute details about its users’ locations throughout the day and night, all the while leading users to believe that their data will only be used to provide them with ‘personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts,’” the complaint reads.
The data serves no weather-related purpose, but was only collected in order to allow TWC to turn a profit, the complaint reads. The data was sold to at least 12 third party websites over the past 19 months.
The Weather Channel app has about 45 million users, according to the complaint.
TWC intentionally obscures this information” in a 10,000-word privacy policy “because it recognizes that many users would not permit the Weather Channel App to track their geolocation if they knew the true uses of that data,” the complaint goes on to say.
The lawsuit is seeking an injunction prohibiting TWC from continuing to collect and sell the data, along with civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation.
“Free” weather apps have proven to be notorious abusers of personal data.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Students hate Trump’s immigration, border wall quotes, don’t realize they’re from Dems (Video).
HONEYPOT: Natalia Veselnitskaya Charged in Federal Court with Obstruction of Justice. “Related to her work for Prevezon, a Russian holding company.”
HE COMMITTED THE CARDINAL SIN OF MAKING ACADEMIA LOOK BAD: Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Others Urge Portland State Not to Punish Peter Boghossian for ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax. “It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that if the rules forbid it, it’s the rules, not the researchers, that have gone wrong.”
YOU MAY NOT CARE ABOUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG CARES ABOUT YOU: Petition launched to remove law professor for “discriminatory” comments.
A petition to remove Emeritus Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy John Finnis from teaching has attracted three hundred and fifty signatures in five days. Finnis has been accused of having “a long record of extremely discriminatory views against many groups of disadvantaged people”, including the LGBTQ community. Finnis co-teaches a series of seminars for postgraduate students who choose to take the jurisprudence and political theory course in the BCL or M.Jur degree. . . .
Professor Finnis told The Oxford Student that “The petition travesties my position, and my testimony in American constitutional litigation. Anyone who consults the Law Faculty website and follows the links in the petition can see the petition’s many errors. I stand by all these writings. There is not a ‘phobic’ sentence in them. The 1994 essay promotes a classical and strictly philosophical moral critique of all non-marital sex acts and has been republished many times, most recently by Oxford University Press in the third volume of my Collected Essays.”
The petition calls for Finnis to be removed from teaching on the grounds that “university is a place to focus on education, not to be forced to campaign against or to be taught by professors who have promoted hatred towards students that they teach.”
“A place to focus on education.” If it were that, the authorities would require every student who signed the petition to submit a 3000 word essay on the Areopagitica before being allowed to return to class.
January 8, 2019
NOW OUT FROM W.E.B. GRIFFIN: The Enemy Of My Enemy.
CULTURE: Many Parents Are Happier Than Non-Parents — But Not in the U.S.
One of my colleagues, who has a bunch of kids, said that when he and his wife were first married they asked a lot of older couples what they liked and didn’t like after years of marriage. Nearly all of them said their biggest regret was not having more kids.
Related: The Parent Trap.
FROM JULES CRITTENDEN & KIMBERLY ATKINS: Trump: Border ‘crisis of the heart and soul.’ Video at the link, in case you missed it.
Plus, what kind of wine pairs with Presidential addresses? What else?
I’m just going to have one glass.
SO I THINK I JUST FIGURED OUT WHY SO MANY FACEBOOK FRIENDS ARE SAYING THAT, POST-HOLIDAYS, THEY’RE LIMITING THEMSELVES TO one glass of wine per night.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Late last month, we mentioned Manny’s coffee shop in San Francisco. As the Daily Wire noted back then:
You can be gay, intern in the Obama White House, work on Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, and serve as the Silicon Valley fundraising director for the Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, but if you also happen to be Jewish and support the existence of Israel, hard leftists want you gone, as 29-year-old Manny Yekutiel found out the hard way when he opened a café/bookstore in San Francisco’s Mission District.
* * * * * * * *
But on Wednesday, protesters associated with the Lucy Parsons Project, a self-described “radical black queer direction action group,” joined other groups to yell Yekutiel was a “Zionist gentrifer,” and “Zionists out of the Mission!”
A Website called Mission: Local, adds a chilling new detail this week:
And, surely enough, a handful of protesters began showing up, weekly, shouting through bullhorns and waving placards. Someone painted a Star of David on Manny’s exterior along with the words “Fuck Zionism.” A window was broken.
If you believe in nationalizing socialism, painting stars of Davids on Jewish shop owners’ buildings and smashing their glass at night into a fine crystalline state, it’s definitely time to ask yourself, “Are we the baddies?” You are.
https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This should be prosecuted as a criminal conspiracy against civil rights, because that’s what it is.
KELLYANNE CONWAY GIVES CNN’S ACOSTA A WELL-DESERVED SMACKDOWN (Video).
As with Helen Thomas before him, Acosta basically exists for dunking practice by GOP administrations.
OPEN THREAD: Let ‘er rip.
When I posted this earlier, a reader commented: “Donald Trump should televise this Bill Clinton speech from 1995 and then simply state ‘I’m Donald Trump and I approve this message.'”
UPDATE: Sen. Schumer and Rep. Pelosi respond that we don’t need a wall, because their massive psi powers can keep the border secure. Shown here just before they brain-waved a mile-high energy field along the Rio Grande.
More seriously, if you put these back to back, Trump talked about protecting Americans, Pelosi and Schumer talked about protecting government employees. Their focus on ending the shutdown suggests that it’s hurting them.
WEIRDLY, ALL OF THESE ARE DISPROPORTIONATELY MALE: The most dangerous jobs in the US include electricians, firefighters and police officers.
WE’RE LIVEBLOGGING THE POTUS ADDRESS AT THE PJM LIVE BLOG: Well, some — one — of us might be drunkblogging it.
SHE WOUND UP WITH SWOLLEN EYELIDS: Woman given erectile dysfunction cream for dry eye in prescription mixup.
WOW: Cancer Deaths Decline 27% over 25 Years.
Deaths from cancer dropped 27% over a quarter century, resulting in an estimated 2.6 million fewer cancer deaths during that period, according to a new report from researchers at the American Cancer Society.
For most of the 20th century, overall cancer deaths rose, driven mainly by men dying from lung cancer, researchers noted. But since the peak in 1991, the death rate has steadily dropped 1.5% a year through 2016, primarily because of long-running efforts to reduce smoking as well as advances in detection and treatment of cancer at earlier stages, when prognosis for recovery is generally better. . . .
Men had a 34% total decline in cancer mortality, compared with 24% for women, largely tracking lower trends in smoking. Lung-cancer incidence is declining twice as fast among men as women, which in part reflects that women historically took up smoking in large numbers later and were slower to quit.
Increasing obesity, however, may slow progress here.
SHOULD THE PRESIDENT HAVE A “PLATFORM” ON NATIONAL TV? Here’s my interview on global news network I24. Short answer: yes.