KIM DAVIS

Wow.  An article advocating burning the Christian, Kim Davis, because of her stand on homosexual marriage.  Michael Brendan Dougherty, This Week. "Burn Kim Davis."

Any normal punishment rewards her with the comfort of solidarity from right-wing Christians, or her own sense of moral self-approval. Therefore the only way to avoid granting her such "martyrdom" is to actually martyr her. That's the really perverse thing about Christians who make a spectacle like this. The only way the state can really punish them is to inform them that their suffering is meaningless and proving that God doesn't exist by sending them to the darkness of oblivion in torment. Justice Kennedy has issued his theological bull; let Kentucky officials in defiance of it be put on a pyre.

When the smoke settles there will be no GoFundMe campaign, save perhaps for a small carbon offset.

Brian Beutler.  The New Republic.  "Throw Kentucky Clerk Kim in Jail.  She must be severely punished for denying marriage licenses to gay couples."

There are surely other religious clerks in the South and elsewhere who’d love to get away with discriminating against gays and lesbians, in defiance of the country's highest court. The only way to assure this doesn’t happen is to jail Kim Davis until she agrees to issue the licenses, resigns, or is removed from office.

ANGELA DAVIS

Memories.  UCLA glorifies the memory of Angela Davis, an American communist from the 1960s and 1970s!  It brought back memories of her being hosted in Prague by Communist Czechoslovakia in the early seventies.  A friend told me how astounded a Czech limo driver was at her naivete about how wonderful things were in Communist Czechoslovakia when the average person was struggling to make it under Communism. Most Czechs living under Communism preferred what America had under Capitalism.  She never experienced their lives, but only saw what the elite wanted her to see and experience.

For those who can’t identify her, the photo depicts Angela Davis, the notorious former Communist Party USA leader who, beginning in the ’60s, molded together black nationalism with Marxism-Leninism. She created a heady brew for recruiting new cadre into the CP and the original Black Panther Party of Huey Newton.

Some optimist! Davis believed in the triumph of Communism.

For her loyalty to the Soviet Union and its foreign policies, in 1972 she was awarded a Lenin Centenary Medal in the Soviet Union, after which she spoke to thousands at an outdoor rally in Moscow. Next, speaking at a factory in Kirov, Davis praised the workers for not using “products of labor [to fuel] the irrational drive for capitalist profits as it is used in our country.”

LIBERAL BIAS IN ACADEMIA

Peer review can be manipulated to show a study proving something or an author has done great research.

How reliable is academic research? Not very, it seems, after noting that the Journal of Vibration and Control, a reputable academic publication, had to retract 60 different papers over the summer.

But it’s not just the clubbiness of academia that is to blame. There is such ideological uniformity in the ivory tower that no one ever questions the important assumptions behind anyone else’s research.

SEXUAL PURITANISM ON THE LEFT

Margaret Wente points out an interesting irony about the Secular Left's concerns about sexual violence on university campuses.  They are sounding a lot like the religious right, only they do not support their "rules" with religious or biblical truths.  There is something to be said about the biblical truths that speak to the way men and women should conduct themselves.

Sixty years ago, sexual behaviour among the young caused deep alarm among the puritanical religious right. Today, it causes deep alarm among the puritanical progressive left. Like their forebears, they are doing their best to restrict and regulate it.

This weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that makes universities redefine consensual sex. From now on, students must effectively obtain the “affirmative consent” of their partners, which must be “ongoing” every step of the way. Those accused of violating the consent rule will be judged on the preponderance of the evidence. Perpetrators face suspension or expulsion, and universities face heavy penalties for failure to enforce.

Obviously the Left is not supporting marital fidelity, but there is a recognition that the counter-culture values promoted by secularism have not created a more loving, caring society.

CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT

There sure are a lot of Socialists and Communists involved when you look at the pictures.  The irony is that the Communists in the old Soviet Union did more to harm the environment than any capitalist country or corporation ever did.

CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS

Megan McArdle discusses the liberals as the new authoritarians.

Jonathan Haidt, one of my favorite social scientists, studies morality by presenting people with scenarios and asking whether what happened was wrong. Conservatives and liberals give strikingly different answers, with extreme liberals claiming to place virtually no value at all on things like group loyalty or sexual purity.

Jeremy Frimer, the author of the piece, noticed that socialists seemed unable to tolerate even mild questioning of Che Guevara’s eminently questionable legacy. Frimer is a researcher at the University of Winnipeg, and he decided to investigate. What he found is that liberals are actually very comfortable with authority and obedience -- as long as the authorities are liberals (“should you obey an environmentalist?”). And that conservatives then became much less willing to go along with “the man in charge.”

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY

From the Atlantic Monthly.  The author's view of the importance of history is confined by his philosophical and political biases.  And his understanding of World War I is rather limited.  I read this and wondered why would anyone want to study history after reading this.

CHANGES IN COLLEGE BOARD AMERICAN HISTORY AP TEST

From National Review:  "How the College Board Politicized U.S. History."

The College Board, the private company that produces the SAT test and the various Advanced Placement (AP) exams, has kicked off a national controversy by issuing a new and unprecedentedly detailed “Framework” for its AP U.S. History exam. This Framework will effectively force American high schools to teach U.S. history from a leftist perspective. The College Board disclaims political intent, insisting that the new Framework provides a “balanced” guide that merely helps to streamline the AP U.S. History course while enhancing teacher flexibility. Not only the Framework itself, but the history of its development suggests that a balanced presentation of the American story was not the College Board’s goal.

The origins of the new AP U.S. History framework are closely tied to a movement of left-leaning historians that aims to “internationalize” the teaching of American history. The goal is to “end American history as we have known it” by substituting a more “transnational” narrative for the traditional account.

This movement’s goals are clearly political, and include the promotion of an American foreign policy that eschews the unilateral use of force. The movement to “internationalize” the U.S. History curriculum also seeks to produce a generation of Americans more amendable to working through the United Nations and various left-leaning “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) on issues like the environment and nuclear proliferation. A willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution is likewise encouraged.

The College Board formed a close alliance with this movement to internationalize the teaching of American history just prior to initiating its redesign of the AP U.S. History exam. Key figures in that alliance are now in charge of the AP U.S. History redesign process, including the committee charged with writing the new AP U.S. History exam. The new AP U.S. History Framework clearly shows the imprint of the movement to de-nationalize American history. Before I trace the rise of this movement and its ties to the College Board, let’s have a closer look at its goals.

The article goes on to discuss the political views of the writers of the curriculum who are clearly leftists.  

HAMAS THREATENS REPORTERS

Michael Totten discusses how reporters were controlled in Gaza by Hamas.  Israel mistakes will be made public because the international press has more freedom to report there.

The Foreign Press Association is protesting “in the strongest terms the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month."

IMPEACHMENT

The Democrat congresswoman who co-sponsored a bill to impeach George W. Bush now says, "we never tried to impeach Bush."  A lie or a very short memory?  I would hope for a higher level of representative in Washington, but this is probably typical.

LEAKED DEMOCRAT PLANS

Every candidate has a campaign plan, but these are seldom known in there entirety.  A Democrat candidate running for the U.S. Senate in Georgia, Michelle Nunn, has had her plan leaked and it is not pretty.  It would be interesting to know who leaked it and is there some kind of internal power struggle going on.

Anyway, her entire blueprint for faux authenticity has been published, and it contains all of the usual and contrived political maneuvering that voters find so disgusting. The plan involves trying to create a fake, gun-toting, rural-friendly image for the wannabe Georgian senator supplied by a Democratic PR firm based in San Francisco, and exposes her positions on issues as basic as her commitment to Israel as contrived to drive her fundraising efforts.

The issue of Democrat candidates hiding their real positions is raised in the column.

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN THE UKRAINE

Yahoo News.  Russians are pushing Ukrainians out of leadership roles in Eastern Ukraine uprising.  And the Russian taking over, Vladimir Anttufeyev, sounds like a person left over from Stalinist times.

He earned a fearsome reputation when he served in Transdniestria, which split from Moldova in 1990, as the head of security operations for 20 years.

Dismissed in 2012 when his ally was replaced as leader of the tiny sliver of land, he barricaded himself for three days in his study and refused to leave.

The EU first blacklisted Antyufeyev over his role in Transdniestria in 2004. Though it later suspended that decision, it has now blacklisted him again over Ukraine, imposing assets freezes and a travel ban on him.

One person who had been questioned by Antyufeyev in Transdniestria on suspicion of spying for Moldova said he was a tenacious interrogator. Speaking on condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal, the person said Antyufeyev was "a professional", capable of being sociable and polite, always rigidly following the chosen line. With a smile on his face, Antyufeyev would exert moral pressure, the person said.

And Slate has published an interesting article calling an ageing liberal Soviet specialist, Stephen Cohen, a pal of Putin for defending Russian actions in the Ukraine.  Cohen has published an article in the leftist Nation supporting Putin.  Cohen seems to ignore Russian atrocities.

In a downright surreal passage, Cohen argues that Putin has shown “remarkable restraint” so far but faces mounting public pressure due to “vivid accounts” in the Russian state-run media of Kiev’s barbarities against ethnic Russians. Can he really be unaware that the hysteria is being whipped up by lurid fictions, such as therecent TV1 story about a 3-year-old boy crucified in Slovyansk’s main square in front of a large crowd and his own mother? Does Cohen not know that Russian disinformation and fakery, including old footage from Dagestan or Syria passed off as evidence of horrors in Ukraine, has been extensively documented? Is he unaware that top Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself, have publicly repeated allegations of war crimes that were quickly exposed as false, such as white phosphorus use by Ukrainian troops or a slaughter of the wounded in a hospital? But Cohen manages to take the surrealism a notch higher, earnestly citing the unnamed “dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television” (that’s Vitaly Tretyakov, inter alia a 9/11 “truther”) who thinks the Kremlin may be colluding with the West to hush up the extent of carnage in Ukraine.

LEFT FANTASIES ABOUT ASSASSINATING BUSH

Michelle Malkin lists the various scenarios by leftists regarding the assassination of George W. Bush.  Most people forget the venom the Left spewed out about the president.

THE LEFT TAKES OVER THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

From Politico.  The article is written by a Democrat strategist.  I would expect the Democrats to field a well-funded, very left-wing candidate in 2016.

These progressive forces are coalescing around a populist-inspired desire to combat income inequality and rein in large financial institutions, as well as an interest in focusing on priorities at home rather than abroad. It’s difficult, in this environment, to imagine a viable Democratic presidential candidate who isn’t willing to take clear positions on issues like increasing the minimum wage, securing comprehensive immigration reform, supporting women’s health and their reproductive rights, addressing climate change and eliminating or at least curtailing fracking.

The left’s rise is aided by the fact that it is more organized than ever before. Following George W. Bush’s defeat of John Kerry in 2004, a coalition of progressives from politics, philanthropy and business came together to build a long-term infrastructure—independent of the Democratic Party—to advance their progressive agenda and beat back the influence of the right wing. The Democracy Alliance was officially launched in 2005 as a forum where partners who shared core progressive values could coordinate their resources more efficiently to advance their common goals. Politico estimates that the Democracy Alliance plans to spend $374 million this election cycle.

MORALITY AND SOCIALISM

From the Economist.  The more people are exposed to socialism the more unethical they become!  The case of East Germans vs. West Germans.

CONSERVATIVES LEARN FROM RADICAL LEFT

An interesting thesis--the 1960s have returned:  many conservatives and the Tea Party have learned from the tactics used by Saul Alinsky and Occupy Wall Street to let their voices be heard.

In 2012, the conservative site Townhall.com ran an essay arguing that conservatives should see Saul Alinsky's famous how-to guide Rules for Radicals not as a reason to mock their opponents, but as a useful guide for their own protest. Listing Alinsky's 13 rules for shifting the balance of power between the Haves and Have-Nots (which Alinsky framed in economic terms), the site's John Hawkins suggested that conservatives "learn from what he wrote and give the Left a taste of its own medicine."

If this is true, expect more confrontations between Left and Right.

DID SADDAM HUSSEIN HAVE WMD?

With ISIS closing in on Baghdad news reports stated that ISIS forces were closing in on an Iraqi WMD facility. Obviously this raises many concerns about how terrorists would use these weapons.   But we have been told for years by the media and liberals that Saddam did not have WMD, which obviously undermines Bush's reason for invading Iraq in 2003.  Liberals and the media have argued that Bush lied, destroying the neo-con rationale for the invasion.

But now we hear that there was a WMD facility of some kind so did Saddam have WMD or not?  Obviously he used something to kill Kurds.  A Frontline PBS (liberal) report indicated that Saddam did have some kind of WMD program which was more than just a plan or a few buildings.

CNN has an interesting timeline which indicates that in 2002 Iraq submitted a 12,000 page (!) report on its WMD programs.  And in January 2003 some WMD warheads are discovered, but they are largely empty (but could presumably be filled with agents).  In February Secretary of State Collin Powell gave his speech to the UN saying that Iraq lied to UN inspectors.  By March the US has invaded.  CIA director George Tennant said, regarding Iraqi WMD, that it was a “slam dunk.”

Hot Air (conservative) argued in 2010 that WikiLeaks proves the US found WMD in Iraq.  But the Guardian (liberal) in 2004 stated that UN and US inspectors found no credible program.

In 2012 Time  (liberal) reported on the CIA’s confession that it was “bamboozled” when it reported Saddam had WMD.

Commentary (conservative) argues that the weapons ISIS finds will not be usable, but reflects on how the weapons could have been used if Iraq had not been invaded.

What does all of this mean?  It would appear that Saddam Hussein did not have a massive delivery capability for WMD, but he did have something and may have been working on building more.  Whether Bush should have invaded can still be debated, but the media myth that there was no WMD is not supported by the evidence.  However, it would not appear to be a massive buildup of WMD that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

7/12/14 UPDATE.  From Wired:  "WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq -- With Surprising Results."

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

CENSORSHIP PRESSURES FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

Zaid Jilani, a liberal and Obama supporter, describes how the White House controlled what a liberal organization reported.  Reporters were not free to disagree with administration policy.


One of the controversial topics that was very constrained in our writing at ThinkProgress in 2009 was Afghanistan. CAP had decided not to protest Obama’s surge, so most our writing on the topic was simply neutral — we weren’t supposed to take a strong stand. Given that I had just moved up from Georgia, and the American South has a much higher proportion of its population in the Armed Forces, I felt particularly strong that we should oppose the continuation of the war. The people who ran CAP didn’t really agree.


Later. . .


Soon afterwards all of us ThinkProgress national security bloggers were called into a meeting with CAP senior staff and basically berated for opposing the Afghan war and creating daylight between us and Obama. It confused me a lot because on the one hand, CAP was advertising to donors that it opposed the Afghan war — in our “Progressive Party,” the annual fundraising party we do with both Big Name Progressive Donors and corporate lobbyists (in the same room!) we even advertised that we wanted to end the war in Afghanistan.

THE LEFT & THE MEDIA

The case for the Liberal attempt to control the media.


Cronkite even used to close his broadcasts by intoning, “and that’s the way it is, today” followed by that day’s date. They insisted that they were just giving us news and that they were impartial, and they did sound dispassionate, but reality was otherwise. By choosing what was news, what they prioritized, the tone they used and whom to interview, the old set of journalists were able to bias the news. Comment, context and background in the transmission of news massage the message. It wasn’t just news we were getting. When Cronkite turned against the Vietnam War the gig was up, and LBJ knew it, saying famously, “If I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost the nation.” The nation really did pay attention to what Uncle Walter said.

THE PERSONALITY CULT OF CHE GUEVERA

What Michael Totten observed in Cuba regarding the glorifcation of Che Guervara in Cuba. . .and how at least one American is brain dead regarding the horrible atrocities committed by Che in the name of his communist revolution.  There are more posters of him in Cuba than of Fidel and Raul Castro!

“Just as Jacobin Paris had Louis Antoine de Saint-Just,” wrote French historian Pascal Fontaine, “revolutionary Havana had Che Guevara, a Latin American version of Nechaev, the nineteenth century nihilist terrorist who inspired Dostoevsky’s The Devils. As Guevara wrote to a friend in 1957, ‘My ideological training means that I am one of those people who believe that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.’…He was a great admirer of the Cultural Revolution [in China]. According to Regis Debray, ‘It was he and not Fidel who in 1960 invented Cuba’s first corrective work camp,’ or what the Americans would call a slave labor camp and the Russians called the gulag.”