Me with number three daughter.
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https://www.facebook.com/
AC
And
https://www.city-journal.org/
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Meanwhile, Abby (number 4 daughter) not always one to let her parents know of her doings on time.
Tonight at 6pm, tune into WFLA Orlando (540 am and 102.5 fm) for my radio debut in a great segment on Drivetime With Holly! We'll be discussing the current real estate market in the Orlando, Floridaarea.Thank you again Holly Salmons for getting me out of my comfort zone, I appreciate it more than you know. If anyone has any real estate oriented questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. My team would LOVE to help you with any and all of your real estate needs! Or I can always provide my DJ services at your next event since I now have radio experience to add to my resume! LOL
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Today I happened to be driving in my car and caught the President's 'red meat speech' to a group supporting America's Traditional Values. As I drove and listened to what he was saying several things came to mind.
First, his speech was a good one in that he touched virtually every base when it came to what separates and makes America a different nation. He talked about the foundation of the family, that parents, not bureaucrats, know best how to raise a family, that a God based society is healthier because it relies on values that respect human rights which our Founding Fathers constitutionalized. He talked about deregulation and attributed it to our improved spirit, the rise in the market and lowering of unemployment. He talked about the need for tax relief and referred to the beginning of the roll back of Obamacare.
He gave the audience a head's up regarding de-certifying the Iran Deal and many more references to things his administration has done and will be doing.
Second, I began to think about the fact that Trump is not a gifted speaker and his many quirky ways and, even his persona, provide ammunition to the anti-Trump crowd. Consequently, whatever he says and how he says it is diminished and/or undercut thus, reducing its impact and effect. By cutting him down to size, the anti-Trumpers are able to create, in the mind of any listener, Trump is a buffoon. Certainly his Tweeting, which is limited to 145 words, under-serves his purpose because he is unable to flesh out a full thought and I refer to his recent Tweet regarding Puerto Rico.
Most of what Trump campaigned on, and is trying to implement, are views I basically support. That said, there is no doubt, with help from the mass media, the Anti-Trump crowd, the continued resistance from Democrats and his own issues with the Republican Party go a long way towards placing roadblocks causing those who are trying to be objective to miss the message.
Meanwhile, if one focuses on his accomplishments he is moving the ball forward as everyone against him is mis-focused. Perhaps Trump is really a marketing genius and master magician who has you watching his right hand while he is picking Democrat and mass media pockets with his left.
I wrote this before reading Kim's op ed which I am posting and sent her an e mail that we seem to be on the same page. (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++WOW! (See 2 below.)AC
Harvey Weinstein is Jewish, if only in name, and, therefore, his actions reflect on all Jews. He may have serious mental problems/issues but he could have sought help and chose not to do so. Shame on him for shaming me.
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About time.
The U.N has not lived up to its lofty promise. Many of its agencies have been corrupted and taken over by anti-Democratic nations and our continued support/funding of them is a moral travesty and demonstrates utter contempt for tax payers. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Amazing how a, once professedly liberal organization, has lost all of its MOJO and moral footings. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) Scalias All the Way Down
While the press goes wild over tweets, Trump is remaking the federal judiciary.
By Kimberley StrasselAsk most Republicans to identify Donald Trump’s biggest triumph to date, and the answer comes quick: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. That’s the cramped view.
The media remains so caught up with the president’s tweets that it has missed Mr. Trump’s project to transform the rest of the federal judiciary. The president is stocking the courts with a class of brilliant young textualists bearing little relation to even their Reagan or Bush predecessors. Mr. Trump’s nastygrams to Bob Corker will be a distant memory next week. Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett’s influence on the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could still be going strong 40 years from now.
Mr. Trump has now nominated nearly 60 judges, filling more vacancies than Barack Obama did in his entire first year. There are another 160 court openings, allowing Mr. Trump to flip or further consolidate conservative majorities on the circuit courts that have the final say on 99% of federal legal disputes.
This project is the work of Mr. Trump, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Every new president cares about the judiciary, but no administration in memory has approached appointments with more purpose than this team.
Mr. Trump makes the decisions, though he’s taking cues from Mr. McGahn and his team. The Bushies preferred a committee approach: Dozens of advisers hunted for the least controversial nominee with the smallest paper trail. That helped get picks past a Senate filibuster, but it led to bland choices, or to ideological surprises like retired Justice David Souter.
Harry Reid’s 2013 decision to blow up the filibuster for judicial nominees has freed the Trump White House from having to worry about a Democratic veto during confirmation. Mr. McGahn’s team (loaded with former Clarence Thomas clerks) has carte blanche to work with outside groups like the Federalist Society to tap the most conservative judges.
Mr. McGahn has long been obsessed with constitutional law and the risks of an all-powerful administrative state. His crew isn’t subjecting candidates to 1980s-style litmus tests on issues like abortion. Instead the focus is on promoting jurists who understand the unique challenges of our big-government times. Can the prospective nominee read a statute? Does he or she defer to the government’s view of its own authority? The result has been a band of young rock stars and Scalia-style textualists like Ms. Barrett, Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett and Minnesota Supreme Court Associate Justice David Stras.
Senate Republicans have so far blown their major agenda items, but they’ve remained unified on judges. They agreed to kill the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court nominees so as to confirm Justice Gorsuch; have confirmed six other judicial nominees; and stand ready to greenlight dozens more. This is a big shift from divisions the party had over the Bush 41 and Bush 43 nominees.
Because Mr. Trump’s picks have largely spent their careers focused on administrative law and constitutional questions, few have gotten bogged down by controversial cultural rulings. They do have paper trails, but mostly on serious and technical issues. This helps reassure Republicans even as it deprives Democrats of the fodder they’d need to stage dramatic opposition.
Conservatives praised Mr. McConnell last year for refusing to consider Judge Merrick Garland, whom Mr. Obama had nominated to the Supreme Court. Less well known is the sheer number of federal judgeships Mr. McConnell sat on as the Obama administration wound down. Mr. Trump took office with 107 lower-court vacancies, more than any of the past five presidents save Bill Clinton. The GOP challenge now is to break Democratic obstruction and get those posts filled.
Former Trump aide Steve Bannon is vowing to primary at least six GOP senators next year, saying he will support only candidates who refuse to back Mr. McConnell for another stint as leader. But Mr. Bannon’s claim that Mr. McConnell represents the “swamp” is lazy scapegoating. Yes, health-care reform failed—thanks to three showboating Republican senators. And yes, the House gets more done. But only the Senate is in the long-term personnel business.
The Trump judicial reset was never guaranteed. Mr. McConnell just happens to have a steely passion for remaking the judiciary. Previous majority leaders Trent Lott (best friends with trial lawyers) and Bill Frist (nice, nice) would never have gotten Justice Gorsuch confirmed. Those guys were the “establishment.”
Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Jodi Ernst, Deb Fischer, Dan Sullivan, Cory Gardner, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton —this is the new generation of Republican senators. They were all elected in recent cycles. They are reformers, far removed from the earmarking, logrolling, crony, backroom days of washed-out Republicans who inspired the tea party.
The country has moved, as has Congress. The proof is in the extraordinary class of judicial nominees now coming through. Mr. Trump will keep baiting the media with shiny objects. In the background, government is being redone.
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The Courage of Cowards
Special Report
Nobody displays it more vividly than the Hollywood pantheon.
Approximately 15 years ago, I had a really sweet and cushy job. The job was easy. The hours very reasonable. The pay comfortable six figures. And, for people who did not know what the work environment was like, the job actually was quite prestigious. People begged me to help them get interviews there, to meet the power behind the throne, even just for phone access — just, please, the phone number.
The problem was that I had to get out of there. The environment of the workplace was amazingly hostile to women. I actually saw women there crying. Those among them who knew that I also am a rabbi spoke with me privately, women of varied backgrounds and faiths, asking me to do something. I did what I could. I pressed as far as I could press. And then, six months into a job that I had anticipated I would cherish for years, I decided that, since I was having no impact on the corporate culture, I just had to get the hell out of there.
I did. I left that job. I just walked out. On the way out, I counseled and advised one more time, and I encouraged others to keep my phone number and, meanwhile, to consider getting out, too. Some did. Some didn’t.
Five years later, I found myself employed in a significant role within a very different kind of corporate structure where, it came to my attention, one of the Board members, a singularly powerful figure in the body, had been harassing women. Two separate women came to me privately, each separate from the other, each telling me her respective account — and their accounts were verifiable. I went home and said to my wife: “I think I am in another one of these spots. If I report to the rest of the Board what I now know, there is no doubt in my mind that they will have no choice but to demand the guy’s immediate removal from all Board influence, and they never will be able to let him on that Board again. But I also have no doubt that, once that dust settles, they will come after me for blowing the whistle. So I have to make a decision.”
My wonderful wife looked at me with eyes that essentially said: “So what’s the question? You know what you have to do.”
And she was right. There was no question. I am no feminist — au contraire — but this was not about the politics of vagina hats and burning bras. This was a matter of human decency and the spiritual holiness that exists in every person. I knew what I had to do.
I blew the whistle internally. The Board appointed an internal committee to investigate independently. The committee came back affirming my report. The harasser’s role as an influential Board powerhouse ended. He never returned to that Board, and he was demoted and sanctioned severely beyond that.
Soon after, predictably, his friends’ backlash against me hit hard from within. I ended up leaving that place of employment.
Best thing that ever happened to me.
I have returned to thinking about those days amid the current Harvey Weinstein scandal. And my mind is struck — not by Weinstein but by the extraordinary cowardice that permeates and oozes through every pore of the slime that we call Hollywood. The revelation that Weinstein is a pig is no surprise. Just look at his donations to Democrats, to liberals, to feminists up-and-down the left. It is like listening to Bill Clinton preaching about treating women respectfully or Hillary Clinton, after getting a child rapist off the hook and giggling about it, rebounding to preach about how she deserves to run the country because she is a woman.
What hits home the sharpest amid this Harvey Weinstein scandal is the duality between the leftist feminist, on the one hand, publicly attacking Donald Trump — or George Bush (either) or Ronald Reagan or any decent conservative voice or judge or lawmaker — and, on the other hand, standing up to a true pig like Harvey Weinstein, albeit a liberal pig whose grease funds liberals and Democrats, first and foremost among them the Clintons.
There was Ashley Judd, less than a year ago, at a “Women’s March.” It was a “Women’s March” that barred and disenfranchised the whole huge swath of American women who do not share the radicals’ leftist agenda. Speaking to those attending, Ashley Judd ripped into President Donald Trump. She became profoundly obscene, reciting a “poem” that bore fantasized intimations of perversion and incest. Oh how brave she was — “speaking truth to power” — by regaling a leftist crowd, whining men and women and whatever pronouns now are persondated (not “mandated”) in California — with a hateful radicalized leftist attack on the Republican President.
That is not “courageous.” That is not “brave.” There is no downside for a Hollywood figure to attack conservatives, Republicans, Christians, the Catholic Church, or Orthodox Jews before one of their hooting echo audiences. Those audiences lap it up. They love it. They reward such attacks with adulation and iconization. It is the “courage” of late-night talk hosts lambasting the President or the Republicans to their self-selecting echo chambers of leftists, while knowing full well that the conservatives and the Republicans are not in the Stephen Colbert audience or viewing on television when they instead can be watching Fox News or reruns of Last Man Standing or Quick Pitch on MLB or the cooking or other food channel or a movie on Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu or reading a book or even going to sleep at 11:30 p.m. because, as many conservatives do, those people have to get up in the morning the next day to go to work for a living.
There is no courage in attacking the President or the conservative justices of the United States Supreme Court or Republicans in Congress at Academy Awards night or Emmy night or Tony Awards night or Grammy night. There is no courage in mocking the traditionalists on Saturday Night Live. When a person arises amid an echo chamber of same-minded Eloi in a time machine that is stuck in an Obama era that has passed, and sneeringly feeds the clods who get their news from Comedy Central their liberal mantras, he or she simply is feeding fish to clapping seals. That is not courage. That is pandering.
Instead, courage is when an Ashley Judd is pawed by a Harvey Weinstein who has power over her career — and she decides that, whatever may be the price to be paid, she will stop this pig here and now by blowing the whistle. And that is the kind of courage that a coward like Ashley Judd lacks. Courage is not when Meryl Streep at a Hollywood Awards ceremony mocks President Trump’s perceived approach to women, based on the brash person he was decades earlier, while she extols Roman Polanski as an artist who has suffered far too long, even as she calls Harvey Weinstein “God.” Rather, courage is when the same Meryl Streep wins the confidence of women in her field who can go to her, as women came to me in my less famous role, to tell their horrific reports of sexual assault and violation, knowing that she will leverage her voice in Hollywood to extirpate the pig from the public arena. And the coward Meryl Streep does not have that courage — not unless it is printed out for her in dummy cards for her to read emotively into a camera.
In all these cases — the phony cowards like the Ashley Judds, the Meryl Streeps, the Hillary Clintons whose political races and foundations have been greased by pigs like Harvey Weinstein whose identification with Bill Clinton is all-too-comprehensible — the cowardice is overwhelming. Shivering, sniveling, gutless cowards who actually have been positioned for years and years to take down this pig. Had they done so, they could have spared dozens more women the shame and trauma of subsequent Weinstein assaults and outrages. But they were too cowardly to endanger their stations in Hollywood. Dared not speak out against a mogul, a “God.” Shivered, kept silent, perhaps endured silent nightmares and cold sweats. But nary a word. Because, while safely “speaking truth to power” from safe distances, they never would risk their own tuxedoes and glittering dinner gowns, their jewels and diamonds, and their access to invitations to the next Hollywood gala. Too dangerous. Too risky. Better to tweet a dismembered bloody head depicting the duly, lawfully, and democratically elected President of the United States.
And then at the Awards ceremonies and the “Women’s marches” they congratulate themselves for their courage to wear vagina hats and obscene tee-shirts, to recite filthy “poems” and to speak of blowing up the White House.
That is not “speaking truth to power.” It is the courage of cowards. And it is the sniveling, shriveling, shivering cowardice that even the Wizard of Oz could not heal.
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3) U.S. Leaving Unesco, Capping a Stormy History
State Department says decision wasn’t made lightly, cites ‘continuing anti-Israel bias’
By
UNITED NATIONS—The U.S. will withdraw from Unesco, the United Nations culture and heritage organization, officials said Thursday, a move that could further strain relations between the Trump administration and the U.N.
The State Department said the U.S. decision to leave Unesco “was not taken lightly” and reflects American concerns over the need for overhauls in the organization, as well as its “continuing anti-Israel bias.” The withdrawal will take effect at the end of next year.
The U.S. exit is the latest development in a long and tense relationship between Washington and the Paris-based body, which promotes international cooperation in areas of education, science, culture and communication.
Washington withdrew from Unesco in 1980 because it said the organization had become politicized. It rejoined in 2003, but since 2011 has withheld funds to Unesco amounting to nearly $550 million because of its decision to confer membership on the Palestinian territories.
In a statement on his official Twitter account Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country too was preparing to exit Unesco, “in parallel with the United States.”
Unesco has denied that it is biased against Israel.
Since arriving at the U.N. earlier this year, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley has voiced criticism over what she has called a bias against Israel, both in the Security Council and at various U.N. agencies. She has signaled the U.S. also is reviewing its commitment to the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, citing concerns stemming from issues related to Israel, Iran and Venezuela and has warned that the U.S. would withdraw from the Council without changes.
In July, Unesco designated the Old City of Hebron and Tomb of the Patriarchs as Palestinian heritage sites despite diplomatic efforts by Israel and political pressure from the U.S. to derail the designation.
Overdue
The U.S. has withheld nearly $550 million in funds to Unesco since 2011 because of its decision to confer membership on the Palestinian territories.
Notes: Data as of Oct. 5; Amounts due in € are reported using the constant rate of $1 = €0.869
Source: Unesco
Ms. Haley said in a statement Thursday that those designations had negatively affected the U.S. re-evaluation of its commitment to Unesco. “The United States will continue to evaluate all agencies within the United Nations system through the same lens,” Ms. Haley said.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said: “Today is a new day at the U.N., where there is price to pay for discrimination against Israel.”
The State Department said it wasn’t planning to completely disengage from Unesco and would maintain its connection with the organization as a nonmember, observer state. The statement said this would allow the U.S. to share its views and experiences on a range of issues from education to protection of World Heritage sites.
U.N. officials including Secretary-General António Guterres said they regretted the Trump administration’s withdrawal and said the U.S. had been a crucial and historic partner in helping Unesco improve education for the poor and protect culture and historical sites across the globe.
The director general of Unesco, Irina Bokova, expressed “profound regret” at the U.S. decision, calling it a loss for the U.N. family. Ms. Bokova in a statement listed a series of ties and cooperative efforts between the U.S. and Unesco, noting the Statue of Liberty is among protected World Heritage sites designated by the organization.
She said Unesco would continue to work “for the values we share, for the objectives we hold in common, to strengthen a more effective multilateral order and a more peaceful, more just world.”
France’s ambassador to the U.N., François Delattre, said that Unesco promoted and protected common ideals and values that were part of “America’s DNA.”
“Now more than ever, as these values are contested and as we need an America that stay committed to world affairs,” Mr. Delattre told reporters.
Since Mr. Trump took office, diplomats and U.N. officials have been concerned over U.S. disengagement from the world body and its pursuit of a more “America first” agenda in its diplomacy, rather than multilateralism. In his debut speech at the General Assembly in September, Mr. Trump praised the U.N.’s potential but said the organization needs widespread reforms to be effective.
The U.S. withdrawal from Unesco continues a pattern of Washington reviewing and suspending international commitments and partnerships. The U.S. withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the Paris climate agreement, and Mr. Trump on Friday is expected to decline to certify Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement.
“It will be harder for the U.S. to shape the manner in which Unesco engages with Israel with working from the outside rather than the inside,” said Courtney B. Smith, Senior Associate Dean of the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University.
3a) America Out of Unesco
The U.S. shouldn’t finance the anti-Israel U.N. agency.
By The Editorial Board
The Trump Administration isn’t known for public-relations savvy, and Thursday’s surprise that the U.S. is withdrawing from the United Nations’s main cultural agency is a case in point. The decision was still the right one.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. will leave the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, on Dec. 31 and become a non-member observer. She cited “concerns with mounting arrears,” “the need for fundamental reform” and “continuing anti-Israel bias.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “courageous and ethical” on Twitter and said his country will also quit.
For decades Unesco has been a political agency masquerading as a cultural institution. The Soviets ran its education programs and its anti-American bent continues. Unesco’s current chief, Irina Bokova, is a Bulgarian with a Communist past who ran for U.N. Secretary-General with the backing of Vladimir Putin.
In 2011 Ms. Bokova let the Palestinian Authority join Unesco as a member state, triggering a U.S. law that prevents U.S. funding for any U.N. body that accepts a Palestinian state. Unesco claims the U.S. now owes about $550 million in missed payments.
In July Unesco declared Israel’s Tomb of the Patriarchs and other areas as Palestinian heritage sites, an act of political incitement. As U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley explained Thursday, the agency has engaged “in a long line of foolish actions, which includes keeping Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on a UNESCO human rights committee even after his murderous crackdown on peaceful protestors.”
Ms. Haley also wants to reform U.N. peacekeeping and has warned the U.S. may withdraw from the Human Rights Council absent reform. The Unesco withdrawal is a good first step.
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4) Fake News From the SPLC
A church fire started by a congregant isn’t an example of ‘hate.’
By
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The incident was just a harbinger of what has become a national outbreak of hate, as white supremacists celebrate Donald Trump’s victory,” the Southern Poverty Law Center proclaimed in a November 2016 report titled “Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election.”
As the SPLC described the incident: “Just a week before the November 8th election, attackers set a church in Greenville, Mississippi, on fire. The historically black church was targeted in what authorities believe was an act of voter intimidation, its walls spray-painted with the phrase ‘Vote Trump.’ ”
But the SPLC’s “harbinger” turned out to be fake news. Three weeks after the center issued its report, police arrested a member of the vandalized church, Andrew McClinton, and charged him with arson. According to the Washington County Circuit Clerk’s office in Greenville, Mr. McClinton has been indicted and is awaiting a trial date. The state fire marshal told the Associated Press in December he did not believe the crime was “politically motivated.”
Although the December 2016 arrest was widely reported at the time, the SPLC did not update or correct its report until I called it to their attention this week. What’s more, it was still promoting the false story on Twitter as recently as Sept. 25. And at press time it has yet to update two earlier pieces on the incident, one reporting it the day after it occurred and the other calling on the governor to “condemn . . . race-based violence.”
The SPLC has recently come under fire for its tendency to focus on “hate” only when it comes from what the SPLC sees as the political right, and for false characterizations, such as its designation of the Family Research Council as a “hate group” or libertarian social scientist Charles Murray as a “white nationalist.”
But even journalists who criticize the SPLC for these smears have praised its tracking of real hate groups and reporting of hate incidents. The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel told me in March that he appreciates the SPLC’s tracking and profiling of extremist groups and uses the center’s website as a reference to gauge the prevalence or impact of extremist groups he runs across when researching stories.
Will the SPLC’s sloppiness—at best—in continuing to mischaracterize the Greenville incident as a hate crime lead journalists to reconsider? Mr. Weigel didn’t respond to an email request for a follow-up interview. But his newspaper hosts the “Ten Days After” report on its website, noting—under its “Democracy Dies in Darkness” banner—that “the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 867 bias-related incidents in the ten days after the election of Donald Trump.” Despite the Post’s own reporting of Mr. McClinton’s arrest, the report is presented in its original form, with no correction.
The Post is only one of scores of websites, including many news organizations, that have referenced the “Ten Days After” report in the months since it was published. The report was even cited in congressional testimony in May, long after Mr. McClinton’s arrest. Several books published in 2017 cite the report as a source. None of the references I reviewed note that the “hate incident” story has fallen apart.
I emailed the SPLC Thursday with a series of questions about the false report. Wendy Via, the center’s communications chief, responded: “I’m still not able to answer all of your questions going forward but wanted to thank you for bringing the need for a report update to our attention.”
Ms. Via added: “As you write about the SPLC, I urge you to also use the opportunity to shed light on the prevalence of hate incidents in our nation.” She also acknowledged that the SPLC’s reports “are anecdotal.”
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