Sunday, March 05, 2017


"Privilege" again

A major obsession on the Left at the moment -- particularly in the universities --  is "white privilege"  It is alleged that  just being born white gives you privileges not available to others.  And whites are supposed to feel shamed and humbled about that and -- ideally -- give all their money to non-whites.  It is part of the general and quite deranged  attack on mainstream people that caused many Americans to become totally disgusted with the Obama/Clinton Left.  They were ready to vote for ANYBODY who would stop the rot.  So Donald Trump got the job, despite his hair and many other faults.

I pointed out recently that the "white privilege" concept is racist -- very similar to Hitler's  thinking about Jews.  In both cases we see hostility to people purely on the basis of their race.

So let me relate a true story about a privileged person I know.  L. is an elderly Jewish man who recently had a bad turn.  An ambulance was called to take him to hospital. When they were loading him on board, they asked him which hospital he wanted to go to. Brisbane has some big centrally located government hospitals plus a lot of excellent private hospitals scattered about. L. said to take him to WXY, a highly regarded private hospital with about 500 beds. 

But after about 15 minutes the ambulance had still not driven off.  The ambulancemen said that it was a very busy time with a lot of hospitals "on bypass" (full up) -- and WXY was one of those on bypass.  So the ambulancemen had been ringing around to find a hospital with an available bed.  L. said not to bother with that.  Just ring hospital WXY and tell them whom you have got on board.  The ambulancemen did that and L. was promptly whisked to his preferred hospital.  He was taken in where others were not.

So was that Jewish privilege?  Many people would leap to that conclusion.  And Jews are often generous donors to all sorts of charitable causes. So that could have been it.  It might have reflected gratitude to a donor.  But that was not it at all.

Even though he is in his '80s and has had a stroke, L. has that restless energy we so often see in Ashkenazi (Western) Jews.  After his stroke he could have just stayed at home all day and watched TV.  He likes watching football on TV so that would have had some appeal. 

But that was just alien to him.  He wanted to be active and to contribute something to others.  So he became a hospital visitor.  With his own recent experience of stroke he felt sympathy for people lying in bed all day waiting to get better.  So, by arrangement with the WXY hospital, he would spend days just walking around the wards and looking for people who felt like a chat.  He is himself a cheery, flexible, positive person who is a good listener so he brightened the days of many.

So you see why everybody at the WXY hospital knew him, appreciated him and leapt to help him when he needed it.  The "privilege" he had is the privilege of being a good man.  He EARNED his privilege.  He is just a good natured conservative man who likes to contribute to the society in which he lives.

And so it is with most privilege.  What you do to earn privilege can vary greatly. You can even inherit it. But privilege is not random and is not assigned just by something as incidental as the color of your skin.  There are many trailer park denizens -- poor people -- who just get by from week to week even though they are white.  Where is their privilege?  It doesn't exist because they have done nothing to earn it.  Just being white earns you nothing -- JR




 
Black Democrat makes sexual ‘joke’ about Kellyanne Conway

Feminist protests?  Crickets

Rep. Cedric Richmond spoke yesterday at the Washington Press Club Foundation dinner. His attempt at a comedy routine wound up being an example of what not to do. Few of his remarks were funny but he really face-planted when he brought up Kellyanne Conway “and the picture on the sofa.”

“I really just want to know what was going on there,” Richmond said to Sen. Tim Scott. He continued, “You know I won’t tell anybody and you can just explain to me that circumstance because she really looked kind of familiar in that position.”

Richmond was referring to Couchgate. That’s the outrageous outrage progressives briefly occupied themselves with between flare-ups of Russia fever.

It’s clear this was intended to be part of a comedy routine. But as Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations” and Rep. Richmond is way beyond his limitations trying to do a stand-up routine. He could have resolved that very easily with a heartfelt apology to Conway. Instead, he made up an explanation that doesn’t pass the smell test. From the Washington Post:

On Thursday, Richmond insisted that there was no such intention behind his remarks. “Since some people have interpreted my joke to mean something that it didn’t I think it is important to clarify what I meant, ” he said in a statement. “Where I grew up saying that someone is looking or acting ‘familiar’ simply means that they are behaving too comfortably.”

The technical term for that explanation is bulls**t.

Let’s face it, if a Republican congressman had cracked this “joke” about the most powerful Democratic woman in Washington, it would have launched 1,000 feminist memes. Few would have cared it was supposed to be funny, only that a GOP male had turned an accomplished woman into a sex object. If that same GOP representative had then offered a lame excuse instead of an apology the left would be off to the races.

Put another way, if this incident isn’t grounds for a lecture on intersectionality and the glass ceiling then please spare me the next time some GOP backbencher says something equally dumb. The moral posturing from the feminist left really doesn’t deserve much attention until it stops being so selective with its outrage.

For her part, Conway told the Daily Caller, “I notice he did not apologize, he tried to clarify.” She also agreed the gaffe would get more attention if she were liberal and “pro-abortion.”

SOURCE





Spanish Catholic Group Promotes Biologically-Determined Gender, Gets Banned

Madrid authorities banned a bus carrying advertising promoting the biological determination of gender from appearing in public until its operators remove the “discriminatory ads,” Spain’s El País reported on Thursday.

Conservative Catholic group Hazte Oír (Make Yourself Heard) placed an ad on the bus that reads: “Boys have penises, girls have vulvas. Don’t let them fool you. If you’re born a man, you’re a man. If you’re a woman, you will continue to be so.”

Hazte Oír’s efforts appear to be in response to a pro-transgender advertising campaign by a Basque advocacy group with a transgender focus, Chrysallis Euskal Herria. It featured the slogan: “There are girls with penises and boys with vulvas,” and a drawing of nude children fitting that description.

An anonymous donor from New York funded the pro-transgender campaign with a 28,000 euro ($29,000) donation in exchange for assurances of anonymity, El País reported.

While the pro-transgender campaign did not encounter legal difficulties, city police impounded the Hazte Oír vehicle on Tuesday, acting on orders from Madrid City Hall.

Authorities determined that the ad’s message violated the “dignity” of people with “different” sexual orientations.

“There is a risk of perpetuating the perpetration of the [hate] crime, and of disturbing the peace, and of creating a sense of insecurity or fear among people, because of their identity or sexual orientation, specifically among minors who could be affected by the message,” a Madrid prosecutor wrote in his brief.

The regional government of Catalonia plans to take up the issue with state prosecutors, as they believe the advertisement campaign constitutes a possible hate crime against transgender people.

Freedom of expression “has a limit that is set by the law,” regional Madrid premier Cristina Cifuentes said.

Spanish politicians also expressed outrage, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.

Javier Maroto, a homosexual lawmaker for the conservative Popular Party, declared the project a “disgraceful campaign of hate.”

“Those from HazteOír may have penises and vaginas, but they clearly don’t have a brain, nor do they have a heart,” charged Pablo Iglesias, leader of the far-left Podemos party.

Hazte Oír, which has previously campaigned against abortion and in favor of traditional gender roles and heterosexuality, argued in a statement that the government “must exercise power democratically, not through political violence.”

“They should respect, just like we do, those who do not think the same as they do.”

SOURCE





The Need for Trump's Executive Order on Immigration

President Donald Trump recently announced that he will be issuing another executive order temporarily pausing travel of refugees and/or aliens from seven dangerous countries to the United States.

His first order on this subject stalled in Federal courts after hundreds of State Department careerists objected to the original order. His new action may once again displease the State Department careerists, federal judges and others opposed to his policy, but it may save lives in the American homeland.

During the first week of his presidency, President Trump ordered a temporary pause in refugee and alien travel to the United States from seven of the most dangerous radical Islamic terror-practicing, terror-infested, civil-war-ridden, and/or failed Muslim-majority states on earth (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen). A prime purpose of the order was for the new administration to evaluate whether current U.S. visa screening procedures for travelers from those countries were adequate enough to prevent foreign terrorists entering the United States disguised as innocent refugees or aliens.

The president's action seems reasonable to many Americans, the extent of approval/disapproval varying according to polls. One of his presidential campaign promises was to install an "extreme vetting" protocol for refugees and/or aliens from dangerous countries, in the wake of murderous radical Islamic-driven terrorist attacks in the U.S. at places like Ft. Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Orlando and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, about 900 of approximately 24,000 State Department diplomats, Foreign Service officers and civil servants (whose Dissent Channel policy disagreement with the president on this matter was improperly released to media outlets in violation of the governing Foreign Affairs Manual) objected to the president's order. The objection came even though the State Department is the lead foreign affairs agency in implementing such presidential policies and its personnel serves on the diplomatic front lines overseas screening visa applications.

They claimed the order would, among other things, sour relations with the seven affected countries; inflame anti-American sentiments; and hurt those seeking to visit the United States for humanitarian reasons. Moreover, the four Federal judges in Washington and the 9th Circuit who stalled President Trump's original order ruled, among other things, that it was unconstitutionally focused on Muslim-majority countries without placing the overall global Muslim population in context or addressing the governing statute giving the president the authority to act.

Americans - including the State Department dissenters, federal judges and others opposed to the president's action - should consider the following as they evaluate the merits of the revised order which reportedly will also apply to refugees and aliens from the same seven countries:

    The U.S. Constitution's Article 2 gives the President the authority to conduct the nation's foreign affairs. And the Immigration and Naturalization Act, Section 212 F8 USC 82 F gives the President the broad authority to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States when the president deems it in the national interest.

    According to Pew Research, there are 50 Muslim-majority nations, with the global Muslim population estimated at 1.6 billion. The presidential executive order applies to only seven Muslim-majority nations with a collective population of about 220 million.

    The U.S. State Department's congressionally-mandated annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" identifies the governments that sponsor and support international terrorist activities and/or have significant terror groups and activity occurring within their nation's boundaries. All seven countries listed in the president's order are listed in this report and threaten U.S. citizens and national security. To achieve their political ends terrorists have used genocide, beheadings, crucifixions, drownings, burnings, hangings, shootings, roof-top tossings and home-made bombs - against innocent civilians in war zones and urban areas.

    There are ongoing sectarian civil wars between Shia and Sunni Muslims, tribal wars, and/or genocide occurring in 6 of 7 countries (Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen). The State Department lists the other nation, Iran - where chants of `Death to America' are routinely heard - as the world's leading exporter of terrorism.

    The U.S. State Department does not have open U.S. embassies or consulates in five of the seven countries (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen). Without onsite U.S. representation, it is extremely difficult to have normal relations with host governments (if they even exist) or to properly and thoroughly scrutinize visa applications of citizens of those countries wanting to visit the United States. And in the cases where it does have representation (Iraq and Sudan), ongoing conflicts make it very difficult as well.

The actions of unelected officials - like the State Department careerists and federal judges who may have violated their own regulations or ignored the governing law or serious conditions in the seven countries affected by the presidential order - may be doing a great disservice to the American people by opposing this presidential action, and they will have blood on their hands if a terrorist, or terrorists, from any of these countries is granted entry and strikes the American homeland while courts adjudicate the president's order.

The most important job of an elected U.S. President is to keep the American people safe.  And it seems from the circumstances listed above that President Trump has the clear constitutional and statutory authority, responsibility and legitimate reasons to temporarily suspend travel from these seven dangerous nations until current visa vetting procedures are properly evaluated to better ensure that terrorists are not among those refugees and aliens cleared for entrance into the United States.  To do anything less would possibly endanger American lives

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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