Thursday, April 27, 2017



Democrats to Pro-Lifers: You Are Unwanted and May Be Discarded

Bernie Sanders and new DNC Chair Tom Perez have been taking their "unity tour" on the road lately, and only underscoring the fact that the mindset of progressive activists these days allows Democrats to unify their party only by driving out dissenters. You might think Sanders - who is so far left he still only tenuously embraces the Democratic Party label - is, of all people, immune from criticism to his left, but he violated one of the Left's most sacred cows by campaigning in Nebraska for Heath Mello, a candidate for Mayor of Omaha who has voted for a number of modest abortion restrictions as a state legislator. How modest? Mello earned a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood in 2015, but Daily Kos withdrew its endorsement of Mello for this heresy:

Prior to Wednesday, Daily Kos was unaware that Heath Mello, a Democrat who is running against the incumbent Republican mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, had supported legislation in the Nebraska state Senate eight years ago that would require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound.However, as soon as we learned this information, we withdrew our endorsement, because this legislation clearly runs contrary to Daily Kos' deepest values, including our support for women's reproductive rights and our staunch opposition to laws that in any way impede women's access to reproductive health care.according to a contemporaneous Associated Press report from 2009, the bill Mello co-sponsored "requires the physician performing the abortion to tell a woman an ultrasound is available, but it doesn't require the ultrasound to be performed." If a woman does elect to undergo an ultrasound, the images from the ultrasound must be displayed simultaneously. Mello called the measure a "positive first step to reducing the number of abortions in Nebraska."


    That's right: Mello pledges fealty today to the "pro-choice" cause, but eight years ago, he voted to inform women that they could get an ultrasound; fear of even that modest bit of scientific information is enough to get endorsements pulled in today's Democratic Party. Given that Perez is chairman of the party, defeated an opponent even more closely tied to the Left for his job, and is thought (despite his own very hard-left record) to represent the more "moderate" wing of the party by virtue of his ties to big donors, you'd think it would be his job to suggest that maybe a party that's too purist for Bernie Sanders should be a more welcoming place for Democrats trying to win elections in places like Nebraska.

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez became the first head of the party to demand ideological purity on abortion rights, promising Friday to support only Democratic candidates who back a woman's right to choose. "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health," Perez said in a statement. "That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state." "At a time when women's rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country," he added, "we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.".
   
        Perez initially defended the DNC's acceptance of an anti-abortion Democrat. "Our job at the DNC is to help Democrats who have garnered support from voters in their community cross the finish line and win ? from school board to Senate," Perez said..But Perez changed course Friday and delivered a big victory to the reproductive rights movement, saying that he "fundamentally disagree[s] with Heath Mello's personal beliefs about women's reproductive health" and that "every candidate who runs as a Democrat should do the same, because every woman should be able to make her own health choices. Period."


    Dick Durbin underlined that people who consider themselves pro-lifers can be welcome in the Democratic Party only "as long as they are prepared to back the law, Roe versus Wade, prepared to back women's rights as we've defined them under the law." And that doesn't just mean allowing abortion to remain legal, as Mello's case illustrates: it means no limitations, however modest, on abortion - not even efforts to inform women of their choices and the nature of the life growing within them. In fact, Democratic orthodoxy now extends far from "pro-choice" to treating abortion as something the government should subsidize and thus encourage more of: the Democratic Party platform in 2016 called for repealing the Hyde Amendment (which restricts federal funds from being used for abortions), a position backed by supposed moderate, Catholic Tim Kaine in the fall campaign. Democrats routinely threaten to shut down the government if Planned Parenthood (the largest abortion provider in America, performing over 300,000 abortions annually) is not subsidized with federal funds. Democrats have pushed for legislation to repeal a Trump executive order banning federal funds from being used for abortions overseas. In every way, the Democratic Party today stands unified not only against legal restrictions on abortion, but for government subsidies of abortion. The fiction that anyone can vote Democrat today without embracing abortion as an affirmative good is falling to tatters.

    And yet, many people who vote Democrat or are open to voting Democrat don't agree with the party's stance. A 2016 Pew poll found 28% of Democrats, 37% of independents, and 41% of those who identify as moderate or liberal (including 14% of liberals) believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. Demographically, the poll found that 41% of women, 40% of African-Americans, 43% of black protestants, and 50% of Hispanics want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases. And that's not even including the people who want it to be legal but subject to regulations and not taxpayer-funded. A 2015 Public Religion Research Institute poll found the same answer among 54% of Hispanic Millennials (the same poll found that over 70% of African-American and Hispanic respondents consider themselves "pro-life," even many who also embrace the "pro-choice" label - a finding suggestive of a significant population of moderates on the issue). Other polls of Millennials found a sizeable pro-life contingent.

    Abortion polling is at least as subject to wild fluctuations and variability by question phrasing as any other issue polling, but the overwhelming mass of polling data shows that there is a non-trivial number of Democratic voters and potential voters who do not want the party to be a lockstep "abortions for all" party. That's particularly the case outside the coastal enclaves where the party is already strong (the thirteen states where Hillary Clinton won a majority, the seventeen states where they hold a majority of the House seats). The chairman of the party just told those voters they are unwanted and disposable.
       
SOURCE               





The 'Failure to Launch' Generation

Millennials are having a tough time growing up in the real world, as some pretty staggering statistics reveal

They are the generation that got trophies, win or lose, just for showing up. The one constantly reminded by their “helicopter” parents how “special” they were, even as those parents bent over backwards to shield them from anything and everything that posed a threat to their “self-esteem.” And now for far too many Millennials, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost — literally. “There are now more young people living with their parents than in any other arrangement,” reveals a new study by the Census Bureau.

“Young” is a pliable word. The study covers adults from ages 18 — through 34. And it further notes that “almost 9 in 10 young people who were living in their parents' home a year ago are still living there today, making it the most stable living arrangement.”

The stability of arrested development is more like it.

The numbers represent a paradigm shift from four decades ago. In 1975, 31.9 million Americans in the 18-to-34 age bracket were married and lived with their spouse, 14.7 million lived with their parents, 6.1 million lived in another arrangement that included relatives or unrelated roommates, 3.1 million lived alone, and 0.7 million cohabited with an unmarried partner, according to Census Bureau data.

In 2016, only 19.9 million were married and lived with a spouse, 22.9 million lived with their parents, 5.6 million lived in another arrangement, 5.9 million lived alone, and 9.2 million cohabited with an unmarried partner.

The Bureau was somewhat flexible with its definitions. For example, adults living in college dormitories were counted as living with their parents. On the other hand, married couples were defined as spouses even if they were still living in the home of one of their parents.

Why the sea change? “More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder,” the study states. “In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men (incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars).” The study seemingly ties this change to education. “There are now more young women than young men with a college degree,” it states, “whereas in 1975 educational attainment among young men outpaced that of women.”

Geographical location apparently plays a part as well. The study notes that states with the lowest percentage of Millennials living at home are those where “local labor and housing markets shape the ability of young people to find good jobs and affordable housing, which in turn affects whether and when they form their own households.”

No doubt these are mitigating — and measurable — factors. Yet they don’t explain why, despite being the beneficiaries of a living arrangement that relieves them of life’s most pressing responsibilities, 25% of Millennials living with their parents neither work nor go to school.

Perhaps the primary rationale for legalizing millions of illegals, as in they “do the jobs Americans refuse to do,” rings true with this generation. As columnist J.T. O'Donnell reveals, many Millennials are virtually unemployable. Bosses have no interest in being the surrogate parents Millennials expect them to be, nor do they appreciate their “anti-work” attitude. Employers also reject the notion that a job must be a fun place to go that includes “nice work spaces, amenities like gym memberships, healthy meals on-site, in-house parties, etc. … used in an effort to attract and maintain Millennial workers,” she writes.

Furthermore, two Pew Center reports that indicate much of the Millennial Generation’s lack of self-sufficiency has far more to do with attitude than economics. One reveals that as the economy improved, more Millennials were living with their parents. The other reveals Millennials feel much closer to their parents than previous generations. “Thus the real reason more young adults are living at home is because everyone feels more emotionally comfortable with the arrangement,” columnist Jake Novak explains. “It’s not about economic hardship, it’s about doing what’s easier and more familiar for as long as possible.”

Unsurprisingly, this de facto vacation from life has also taken a toll on the institution of marriage. In 1980, more than two-thirds of Baby Boomers were married. Today more than 50% of 24-35-year-olds remain single. And that’s despite the fact less than half the Boomers started college, while two-thirds of Millennials did.

To be fair, student debt undoubtedly keeps many Millennials from gaining their independence, as a staggering $1.4 trillion in outstanding loans indicates. Yet because student loans are ultimately backed by the taxpayer in the event of a default — absent any liabilities for colleges themselves — tuition costs can be raised without restraint.

Ironically — or is that ignorantly — Millennials support the principles that hang this albatross around their necks. A 2016 YouGov survey reveals 43% of them had a favorable view of socialism, while less than a third had a favorable view of capitalism, making Millennials the only American generation that prefers more government control over their lives. Yet they apparently fail to see that government control of the student loan business, courtesy of ObamaCare, has been the primary driver of skyrocketing tuition costs — and the debt they’ve amassed paying for them.

Perhaps the real reason Millennials prefer more government is because they see it as a surrogate parent, allowing them to one move seamlessly from one cradle to another.

Such thinking goes a long way toward explaining why a whopping 79% of them support “free” college.

Second only to living at home, college campuses are the next best arena where Millennials can cultivate the emotional and intellectual insulation they crave. It is in the hallowed halls of academia where today’s spoiled brats become tomorrow’s fascists, after immersing themselves in a marinade of micro-aggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, and social justice, enabled by cowardly, and/or equally radicalized, administrations and faculties. Nothing exemplifies Millennials' seemingly interminable adolescence more than their desire to censor anything that conflicts with their carefully cultivated worldview. Censorship best described by columnist Heather Mac Donald as “maudlin pleas for self-preservation.”

This obsession with self-preservation has a price. “Millennials want to have their cake, eat all of it, try to get out of paying for it and then indulge in an orgy of self-loathing about the calories they’ve put on as a result of eating dessert they’ve ultimately failed to enjoy,” writes Millennial columnist Sasha Gardner, who further bemoans a generation that refuses to grow up.

It is a refusal underscored by the reality that far too many Millennials have a monumental, wholly unwarranted, the “world owes me a living” sense of self-entitlement. And if they don’t get what they want? It’s because they’re held back by a world full of phobias, bigotry, cultural appropriation, white privilege, sexual harassment, income inequality and a host of other “outrages” best described by Mac Donald as a collective embrace of the “ideology of victimhood.”

If there’s an attitude better suited to paving a path back to the ultimate “safe space” the parental household represents, one is hard-pressed to imagine what it is.

SOURCE





Rights of innocents should trump political correctness

As is almost always the case, signs of trouble preceded the latest shooting in Paris, which left one police officer dead and two bystanders wounded before police killed the gunman, later identified as French national Karim Cheurfi, a known criminal with a long, violent record. The Islamic State group claimed to be behind the attack. According to police, a note praising IS fell out of Cheurfi’s pocket when he fell.
Cheurfi was of Algerian descent, born in a Paris suburb. The Washington Post reported he had a criminal record and was known to authorities. His rap sheet included four arrests and convictions since 2003. He had spent nearly 14 years in prison for crimes that included burglary, theft and attempted murder.

When Cheurfi attempted to buy weapons French authorities took notice, especially when he made statements about wishing to kill police officers. After he traveled to Algeria earlier this year, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Cheurfi was interviewed, but a judge refused to revoke his probation. It makes one question not only France’s probation laws, but the types of background checks in place that ought to have prevented Cheurfi from legally acquiring any firearm – if he bought it legally – much less the Kalashnikov rifle he allegedly used.

French and other European politicians immediately expressed concern over what effect the shooting and the terrorist attacks that preceded it might have on France’s choice of a new president. Rightist candidates immediately tried to exploit the issue, but it has been a subject on the minds of French voters, particularly in Paris, where a major enclave of immigrants from Muslim countries continue to be seen by many as a threat to the French way of life.

Cheurfi should have been back in jail for parole violations. Given his record, his statements and the trip to Algeria, enough red flags were raised to warrant action.

A side note. While Algeria has not been a main source of terrorism in the world, the human rights agency Algeria Watch has noted: “Although Algerian nationals were not among the suicide bombers of 11 September 2001, they have featured prominently in subsequent investigations into al-Qaida activities in North America and Europe. In the UK, where an Algerian community has grown as a largely unknown minority in recent years, several dozen Algerians have been arrested since mid-2001 in localities as widely spread as Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, London and Manchester. Arrests in London in January 2003 uncovered a cell producing ricin, while in Manchester, one of the Algerian detainees, 27-year-old Kamel Bourgass, was responsible for killing a police officer – the first victim in the UK’s post-11 September anti-terrorist campaign.”

In the United States and other countries in the West, most often someone has to actually break the law before they can be arrested. Given the tactics of terrorists, it might be worth discussing whether to invoke a doctrine of pre-emption, which is sometimes employed when an enemy nation appears to be an imminent threat. If that is an option to prevent death and destruction from countries, why can’t we impose something similar for people who have violent criminal records and who openly state, as Cheurfi did, that he intends to kill police?

Western reluctance to adopt such a practice shows there is one force more powerful than the uniformed police. It is the “PC police.” These are people who care more about how they feel than for the innocent people gunned down in our streets.

Don’t innocents have the right to be protected from fanatics who so often claim to be doing God’s work? With ongoing investigations by the Department of Homeland Security into radical terrorists in every state, it’s long past time to get them before they get any more of us.

SOURCE






Australia: Muslim broadcaster savaged for disrespecting war veterans

ABC presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied has been savaged on social media after suggesting Australians should spare a thought for those on Manus Island and in Syria instead of the Anzacs.

The host of the ABC 24's Australia Wide program fell afoul of Facebook users today when she posted "Lest We Forget (Manus.Nauru. Syria. Palestine)".

She was forced to delete the post after receiving a barrage of comments from irate social users. "It was brought to my attention that my last post was disrespectful, and for that, I apologise unreservedly," she wrote in a follow up post.

While the 26-year-old author may have hoped her apology would be taken for what it was, Abdel-Magied found herself the target of venomous, racist abuse.  "You disgusting piece of low life. Disrespecting our country's veterans. You aren't Australian. Go to hell," one incensed Facebook user wrote.  "Too late now you best leave you are hated in this country, your ISIS brothers will take really good care of you," another wrote.

While another wrote: "You are utter filth. I hope you get sacked for your disgraceful ignorance and insolence. Pig!"

Ms Abdel-Magied is not shy of controversy; in February this year she was engaged in a screaming row with Senator Jacqui Lambie on Q&A. The verbal stoush was triggered by a debate on US President Donald Trump's proposed Muslim ban.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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