Wednesday, November 16, 2016



How to deal with sexual harassment

The woman writing below seems unaware that males have always perceived some females as more attractive than others. And she seems equally unaware that they share their perceptions in various ways. And the females concerned will usually become aware in one way or another of how they are rated.  That is all wrong according to the writer below.

It is true that many males are crude in conveying what they think but social skills too will always vary.  But to see poorly-conveyed judgments as "harassment" is to legislate against nature.  It is an attempt to suppress natural behavior.

Lessons at school in male/female communication might help everyone but to get upset by clumsy comments is simply maladaptive.  It will help no-one.  It should simply be seen as a reason to appreciate more polite approaches.

And unattractive women probably need to be apprised of what they are.  There have always been great delusions among women about how desirable they are and that has been accentuated by Left-influenced educational principles which dictate that everyone should have prizes. 

I remember years ago sitting in a cafe and listening to a conversation between two young women waitresses.  One of them declared that she was waiting for "her millionaire".  She was loud, short, fat, pimply, with short bleach-blonde hair.  She was unusually unattractive.  Yet she thought that she might be able to snare a millionaire!  More realistic messages about her appearance might have helped her.  If she lost weight, grew her hair and learned some speaking skills she would certainly have got closer to her goal.  Truth is always the best in the long run, even if it upsets temporarily.

Women have always coped with crude approaches.  What makes it difficult for them is people like the writer below who tell them to be upset and bothered by it



A RECENT STUDY by the American Association of University Women found that 58 percent of students in seventh through 12th grades have experienced some form of sexual harassment. When I mentioned this statistic to my freshman college students, they responded with a nonchalant, “Oh yeah, it happens all the time in high school.”

Recently, news broke that Harvard University’s men’s soccer team created a “scouting report,” rating physical attributes of members of the incoming freshman women’s soccer team. Now the Harvard men’s cross country team is being investigated for something similar.

But such conduct sometimes starts much earlier. A mother called me recently after finding out that the boys in her daughter’s 7th grade class had been posting inappropriate comments on Snapchat about the girls and rating their “hotness.”

It’s a cruel twist of fate that just as teens are dealing with the perils of puberty — growth spurts, breast development, acne, changing body shape, and self-consciousness — their appearance brings so much unwanted attention. For every girl who gets labeled a “10” by the boys, others are publicly deemed a “2.” Meanwhile, they are all being objectified.

One of the major tasks of adolescence is to develop an identity. An important question teens must ask themselves in this process is: What do I value about myself, and how will I use this understanding to move forward as an adult? Embarrassment, humiliation, and low self-esteem — all byproducts of sexual harassment — can have long-lasting effects on feelings of competence and confidence that can last a lifetime.

SOURCE





Majority of Trump Voters Were Impacted by ‘Religious Liberty’ and ‘Unborn Human Life’ Concerns

A majority of those who voted for President-elect Donald Trump said that the Republican Party platform’s strong positions on the unborn and religious liberty impacted their vote, according to a Friday poll by WPA Opinion Research that was commission by Family Research Council (FRC).

The survey asked, “As you may know, the Republican party platform includes strong positions on unborn human life and religious liberty. How did this impact your presidential vote?”

A majority - 51 percent - of total registered voters surveyed said these issues in the Republican platform impacted their presidential vote, and 59 percent of Trump voters said that this impacted their presidential vote, compared to 48 percent of Clinton voters.

The 2016 Republican Party Platform stated that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed” and added that the party opposes using “public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare.”

The platform also says that “to protect religious liberty we will ensure that faith-based institutions, especially those that are vital parts of underserved neighborhoods, do not face discrimination by government.”

“The Republican Party's platform positions on unborn human life and religious liberty was the bridge between Donald Trump and Christian conservatives,” FRC President Tony Perkins, who served as a platform delegate from Louisiana, said in response to the poll’s findings.

“It was the party platform that brokered the deal between Trump and Christian conservatives -- a deal that was sealed in the final debate when Trump vividly described a partial-birth abortion and pledged to appoint pro-life justices,” he concluded. “The Republican Party platform played a key role in bringing Christian conservatives and Trump together."

The survey also found that two-thirds (66 percent) of surveyed voters overall agreed that “government should leave people free to follow their beliefs about marriage between one man and one woman as they live their daily lives at work and in the way they run their businesses.”

“The study was conducted of n=1,046 registered voters from a randomized sample of 800,000 registered voters nationwide,” WPA said of their methodology. “Data was collected the day after the election (November 9, 2016).”

SOURCE





The Electoral College Preserves Inclusion

We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic

In yet another demonstration of their “respect” for the nation’s laws and our Constitution, many leftists are calling for the elimination of the Electoral College following the election of Donald Trump. “The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th century idea called the Electoral College,” insists filmmaker Michael Moore. Like so many of his fellow travelers, Moore demonstrates a profound ignorance of a constitutional mechanism the Founding Fathers put in place to limit the power of what millions of Americans just voted against: an all-powerful federal government that has routinely ignored them.

There is a reason this country is called the United States of America. It’s because we are not a direct democracy, but a constitutional republic consisting of 50 separate entities plus the District of Columbia, operating under a federal umbrella. And while the Founders recognized the need for the extra layer of government, they were also extremely wary of politicians who would see it as an opportunity to eviscerate states' rights. The Electoral College was the vehicle they used to preserve those rights and simultaneously maintain democratic legitimacy.

The process operates as follows. Sometime before the federal election, each party chooses a slate of potential Electors. On Election Day — which, sadly, has become election month in many cases — voters in each state select their respective state Electors by voting for a presidential candidate. There are limits on who can be appointed to the position of Elector. According to Article II Section one of the Constitution, members of Congress or people holding a United States office cannot be appointed as Electors, and Electors can’t pick two presidential candidates from their own state. The number of Electoral College members equals the number of people in Congress plus three additional electors from the District of Columbia — 538.

According to current federal law they are required to convene on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to cast their ballots. This year it’s Dec. 19, and only those who represent their state’s winning candidate in 48 of 50 states (Maine and Nebraska apportion votes by congressional district) will meet at their state capitals and cast their votes. Each state then sends its official vote certificates to the vice president acting in his capacity as president of the Senate, state officials, the federal court with jurisdiction over each state’s capital area, and the federal archivist. Those certificates are then due in Washington by Dec. 28. Congress convenes on Jan. 6, 2017, for the official Electoral College count.

There are no constitutional provisions or federal statutes that require Electors to abide the popular vote in some of their respective states. Thus it is unsurprising that ordinary leftists and their celebrity allies are circulating petitions urging the Electors to “go rogue” and ignore the wishes of their states' voters. Moreover, a group called FaithlessNow is targeting 160 Electors in 15 states Trump won that don’t require a commitment to the winning candidate. In 25 states and the District of Columbia, Electors are bound by state law or pledges to cast their vote for a specific candidate. The penalties for failing to do so range from being replaced and/or paying a fine, to a fourth degree felony in New Mexico.

Thankfully, the odds of reaching a critical mass of so-called “faithless Electors” is exceedingly slim. As the New York Times reveals, more than 99% of Electors have voted as pledged throughout the course of the nation’s history, and the last faithless Elector was an anonymous Minnesota Democrat who cast his 2004 vote for VP candidate John Edwards instead of presidential candidate John Kerry.

This year a couple of GOP electors, Texas firefighter Chris Suprun and Georgia businessman Baoky Vu, threatened to defy state voters. Suprun has rescinded his threat, and Vu was convinced to resign and be replaced by state party officials. Moreover, since Republicans control Congress, it is virtually certain they would vote to void such progressive-instigated machinations were they to occur.

Hence, some Americans — campus crybabies accommodated by canceled classes and exams, “disaster” counseling and other infantile coping mechanisms including Play-Doh, coloring books and therapy dogs; rent-a-mob thugs whose idea of democracy consists of violent protests, brutally beating up Trump supporters and inundating Twitter with Trump assassination threats; and those who wish to secede from the union — will be forced to deal with unpleasant reality.

That goes double for a Leftmedia yet to discover that their overt bias during the campaign is very likely to result in Trump being able to talk right past them directly to the American public. And because they’ve already denigrated Trump and his supporters in every way possible, from calling him a misogynist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, a racist, a bigot and a xenophobe, to enabling those comparing him to Hitler, Stalin and Satan, future attacks will ring increasingly hollower. In fact, by completely squandering the trust of the American public, the Leftmedia may have just accomplished the unthinkable: enabling their own irrelevancy.

It’s worth remembering that many of the same Americans now calling for the Electoral College’s elimination were confident of a Clinton victory precisely because they believed a blue state Electoral College-inspired “firewall” was impossible for Trump to overcome. Now that he has, they will continue their efforts, led by a group called the National Popular Vote, to further erode states' rights and require Electors to vote for the candidate who wins the national vote. NPV’s efforts have been well-received, mostly by Democrat-controlled legislatures. Ten states and the District of Columbia representing a total of 165 Electoral votes have signed on. If they reach the 270 total required to elect a president, they will have effectively circumvented the Constitution to get their way. What else is new for leftists?

If it were up to those in favor of eliminating the Electoral College, Clinton would be heading for the Oval Office. Yet far more important, she would be doing so based on a huge vote advantage in only three states: New York, California and Illinois. Moreover, the votes in those states were undoubtedly driven by a big edge in four cities: New York City, Los Angeles San Francisco and Chicago.

Now let’s remember why Trump is president-elect: Millions of Americans rejected a cadre of arrogant and condescending elitists in government, media and academia united by their utter contempt for the “bitter clingers” who populate “flyover country.” And yet, rather than come to grips with that rejection, the elitists and their followers would rather institutionalize their contempt, and effectively turn national elections into referendums controlled by a handful of populous locations. It is precisely the effort to prevent that from happening that gave rise to the Electoral College.

In other words, the Founding Fathers recognized that direct democracy is “two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” The wolves lost in 2016. And just like Clinton, it’s time they accepted it.

SOURCE

Note that Hillary got a majority of the votes COUNTED.  Not all votes were counted.  Postal votes, votes from the military overseas and other votes coming in late were not counted if the winner already had a clear majority.  And late votes tend to be two thirds in favour of the GOP.  So if all votes were counted Trump would probably have had an overall majority






Christmas carol ban is out of tune with Australian society

Victoria’s public schools are the frontline in the war on Christmas.

In an extraordinary decision of the Andrews government, Education Minister James Merlino issued a diktat to state government schools that has the effect of banning Christmas carols.

You may need to read that sentence one more time.

In an attempt to secularise public schools, a directive was issued last month to the principal of every Victorian public school. These new rules restrict the way in which teachers, parents and volunteers talk about religious ideas in our state schools. The most shocking aspect of the rules is that the teaching and singing of traditional Christmas carols will now be banished from the classroom.

“Praise music”, defined as “any type of music that glorifies God or a particular religious figure or deity” will be banned from music classes beginning in January. This is the last year parents will be allowed to volunteer their lunchtimes to teach kids Christmas carols for the end-of-year concert.

Most children aren’t even aware there’s a religious dimension to Christmas carols. It’s Christmas, and singing carols is just what people do. Silent Night has taken on its own significance beyond anything that may be characterised by some government bureaucrat as “praise music”. Christmas carols now form a unique genre of music, and removing them from schools has the same effect banning any other genre of music would have; it ignores an important part of the complex tapestry of musical history.

In fact, the motivation behind a ban on Christmas carols today is remarkably similar to that which parents and teachers of children growing up in the 1950s and 60s shared in relation to rock ’n’ roll. Sixty years ago, older generations worried Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry would lead a generation to juvenile delinquency. Today, the concern is that Christmas carols may lead to alarming ideas about religion and the meaning of Christmas. Christmas carols are the new subversive influence on youth that parents and teachers should be concerned about — a nonsense idea ironically given life by the fact the elite are attempting to ban them.

Of course, the government hasn’t banned all Christmas carols, just those that refer to God. So while drab, contemporary Christmas songs such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer will be spared, the traditional carols — those that drip with a rich Christmas spirit — such as Once in Royal David’s City, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and O Come, All Ye Faithful are verboten in Victorian public schools.

But it’s far bigger than all that. This is a cultural turning point. The Victorian government isn’t just banning Christmas carols; this is an attempt to strip away the meaning of Christmas. It’s an overt attack on one of the most significant events in the Christian calendar.

The decision goes to the heart of good education. Christmas, and all the ceremony and custom associated with it, has been a significant religious and cultural ritual for 1700 years. A ban on these traditions is a denial of our history. Suppressing aspects of the Christmas celebration denies a cultural heritage that has formed the basis of Western civilisation and that underpins our understanding of life and liberty.

A well-rounded education should include lessons on Christianity and its contribution to who we are today. We can’t expect the next generation to defend the values of Western civilisation if they don’t know what they are.

The inflammatory decision of the Andrews government to ban Christmas carols in Victoria’s public schools must be reversed immediately. Former Victorian attorney-general Robert Clark is to be congratulated for taking a stand on the issue. In parliament Clark called on the government to “withdraw this appalling edict and make clear that students at government schools are entitled to learn, sing and enjoy Christmas carols as they have for generations”. In the meantime, and while I’m still able to say it — merry Christmas!

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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