James Damore Vs. Google

November 25th, 2017

Via Prager University comes ex-Google engineer James Damore explaining how when he used science and logic in an internal memo to explain that not all differences in hiring patterns between men and women was the result of sexism. When the internal memo was leaked, Google fired him for his heresy.

230+ Killed in Attack on Sufi Mosque in Egypt

November 24th, 2017

Another deadly mosque attack, this one in northern Sinai in Egypt:

Militants have launched a bomb and gun attack on a mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai province, killing 235 people, state media say.

Witnesses say the al-Rawda mosque in the town of Bir al-Abed, near al-Arish, was targeted during Friday prayers.

It is the deadliest attack of its kind since an Islamist insurgency in the peninsula was stepped up in 2013.

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has held emergency talks with security officials to decide how to respond.

Local police said gunmen arrived in four off-road vehicles and bombed the packed mosque before opening fire on worshippers, the Associated Press reported.

Pictures from the scene show rows of bloodied victims inside the mosque. At least 100 people were wounded, reports say.

“They were shooting at people as they left the mosque,” a local resident who had relatives there told Reuters news agency. “They were shooting at the ambulances too.”

No group has yet claimed responsibility for what is one of the deadliest militant attacks in modern Egyptian history.
Who was targeted?

Locals are quoted as saying that followers of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, regularly gathered at the mosque.

Sufis are among the least likely of Muslims to take up terrorism. The Islamic State certainly targets them as heretics, but the Muslim Brotherhood is not too keen on them either, so both are natural suspects as being behind the bombing.

LinkSwarm for November 24. 2017

November 24th, 2017

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy a short LinkSwarm for a short week!

  • “Unsealed court documents reveal that the firm behind the salacious 34-page Trump-Russia Dossier, Fusion GPS, was paid $523,000 by a Russian businessman convicted of tax fraud and money laundering, whose lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was a key figure in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower arranged by Fusion GPS associate Rob Goldstone.”
  • Fusion GPS, the DNC and Hillary Clinton sampaign-funded organization behind the fake Trump dossier, has been paying journalists.
  • In this week’s MSM scumbag sexual harasser sweepstakes, both CBS and PBS fire Charlie Rose after sexual harassment accusations from eight different women.
  • And three more accusers just came forward.
  • You know the Arab-Egyptian Peace Treaty signed after the Camp David Accords in 1979? Jimmy Carter did his best to derail it.

    Carter wanted his Geneva talks. He didn’t care that the peace process already begun by Sadat and Begin might lead to peace, Carter wanted his plan or nothing. You see Carter’s vision of a Geneva conference would be run by the U.S. and the USSR, and Israel would be facing the terrorist PLO, and Israel’s neighbors including, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Jordan. It would not be a negotiation because when one considers that the Arab countries were Soviet satellites, and the Carter administration’s ideological orientation was anti-Israel it seemed to ensure the conference would be all the participants vs. the Jewish State.

    Thankfully Carter couldn’t stop the approaching peace train. Within days Israeli journalists were allowed into Cairo, breaking a symbolic barrier, and from there the peace process quickly gained momentum.

  • Kevin Williamson examines more of the left’s Manson worship.
  • How congress runs its illegal sexual harassment slush fund out of the public eye.
  • Washington Post reporter Janell Ross helped secret Democratic donor conference “craft liberal economic message without notifying superiors.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Cop killer captured. Update: Authorities have now released the name of the slain officer, which was Damon Allen.
  • “California State Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra (D-Pacoima) announced Tuesday that he will resign next year after six women accused him of making unwanted sexual advances.”
  • Want to download Skype in China? Tough.
  • Brooklyn College doesn’t want police using campus bathrooms.” Because snowflakes must make painfully clear that the people who keep them safe are beneath them…
  • Can a Ketogeneic (low-carb) diet cure diabetes? Evidence suggests a firm maybe.
  • Environmental activist convicted. “A Montana jury found Leonard Higgins of Portland, Oregon, guilty of criminal mischief and trespassing. Higgins could face up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine on the felony criminal mischief charge.” (Hat tip: Steve Malloy’s Twitter feed.)
  • Florida Woman Pro Tip: If you’re going to rob a bank, it’s best to rob one you didn’t formerly work at.
  • Larry Correia spells out exactly what writers “owe” their fans on unfinished series installments: namely “Jack” and “Squat.”
  • As A Male Feminist, I Really Think I’d Absolutely Crush It If I Ever Had To Publicly Apologize For Sexual Misconduct.” Heh: “I’d use the word ‘apologize’ and say ‘I’m sorry.’ I’d check off all the boxes that feminist Twitter looks for in an airtight apology, and I’d continue expressing remorse in the ensuing weeks to wow the world with the magnitude of my self-reproach.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Rama?
  • Comparing the House and Senate Tax Plans

    November 23rd, 2017

    If the turkey hasn’t already put you into a stupefied coma, then perhaps this detailed breakdown of the differences between the House and Senate tax bills should do the trick!

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    A Quick and Easy Method to Ensure Peace and Harmony At Your Family’s Thanksgiving Dinner

    November 23rd, 2017

    The holidays can be a confusing time for some people. Especially if you’re “woke” and you’ve spend years reading articles about how you should annoy your relatives with your inane opinions about ObamaCare, global warming or Donald Trump. As an alternative to assure peace and harmony at your family Thanksgiving dinner, I offer you this alternative piece of advice:

    Shut your pie hole!

    Yes. Your pie hole. The orifice into which you shovel food. Shut it!

    To elaborate:

  • Things that go in your pie hole today: Turkey, gravy, rolls, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pie.
  • Things that come out of your pie hole today: “Please.” “Thank you.” “Great dinner!”
  • Things that do not come out of your pie hole today: “Woke.” “Patriarchy.” “White privilege.” “Heteronormative.” “Trump.”
  • If you follow this one handy tip, you can make Thanksgiving more enjoyable for everyone!

    Happy Thanksgiving!

    Democratic Rep. John Conyers: Two Sexual Harassment Charges…And Counting

    November 22nd, 2017

    The first sexual harassment charge about Michigan Democrat John Conyers came out November 20:

    Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”

    Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sex acts, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.

    Conyers confirmed he made the settlement in a statement Tuesday afternoon, hours after this story was published, but said that he “vehemently denied” the claims of sexual harassment at the time and continues to do so.

    This is the rare Buzzfeed piece that’s actually worth reading, and includes a detailed explanation of the torturous process those accusing congressmen of sexual harassment have to undergo to have their allegations addressed. After going through a lengthy bureaucratic wringer, they have the choice of taking the taxpayer-funded settlement and shutting up due to a confidentiality agreement, or taking their chances in a federal court.

    One of Conyers’ former employees was offered a settlement, in exchange for her silence, that would be paid out of Conyers’ taxpayer-funded office budget. His office would “rehire” the woman as a “temporary employee” despite her being directed not to come into the office or do any actual work, according to the document. The complainant would receive a total payment of $27,111.75 over the three months, after which point she would be removed from the payroll, according to the document.

    And when Conyers wasn’t pressuring his staffers to satisfy his sexual desires, he was instructing them to procure women for him on the taxpayer’s dime:

    n her complaint, the former employee said Conyers repeatedly asked her for sexual favors and often asked her to join him in a hotel room. On one occasion, she alleges that Conyers asked her to work out of his room for the evening, but when she arrived the congressman started talking about his sexual desires. She alleged he then told her she needed to “touch it,” in reference to his penis, or find him a woman who would meet his sexual demands.

    She alleged Conyers made her work nights, evenings, and holidays to keep him company.

    In another incident, the former employee alleged the congressman insisted she stay in his room while they traveled together for a fundraising event. When she told him that she would not stay with him, she alleged he told her to “just cuddle up with me and caress me before you go.”

    “Rep. Conyers strongly postulated that the performing of personal service or favors would be looked upon favorably and lead to salary increases or promotions,” the former employee said in the documents.

    Three other staff members provided affidavits submitted to the Office Of Compliance that outlined a pattern of behavior from Conyers that included touching the woman in a sexual manner and growing angry when she brought her husband around.

    One affidavit from a former female employee states that she was tasked with flying in women for the congressman. “One of my duties while working for Rep. Conyers was to keep a list of women that I assumed he was having affairs with and call them at his request and, if necessary, have them flown in using Congressional resources,” said her affidavit. (A second staffer alleged in an interview that Conyers used taxpayer resources to fly women to him.)

    So not just sexual harassment, but fraudulent use of taxpayer money.

    Now a second accuser has come forward:

    Another former staff member to Michigan Rep. John Conyers alleged that she endured persistent sexual harassment by the congressman, according to court documents.

    A former scheduler in the Conyers’ office attempted to file a sealed lawsuit against him this February in the US District Court for the District of Columbia that alleges she suffered unwanted touching by the Democrat “repeatedly and daily.” She abandoned the lawsuit the next month, after the court denied her motion to seal the complaint.

    The woman was not involved in the 2015 sexual harassment and wrongful dismissal complaint that Conyers settled in 2015, which was revealed Monday by BuzzFeed News, and is now under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.

    The lawsuit centered on behavior that took place later, from 2015 to 2016, but involves similar allegations. The woman said that shortly after she started to work for Conyers he began to make sexual advances in the form of inappropriate comments and touching.

    “These behaviors and actions were so common and pervasive that they created a hostile work environment,” she alleged.

    If true, either the sexual harassment or the fraud charges alone are enough that Conyers should be removed from office. And Democrats are already looking for a way to pressure Conyers out before the 2018 elections.

    Merkel Unable to Form German Government

    November 21st, 2017

    Obviously Angela Merkel and the Christian Democratic Union emerged weakened from German elections in September. But now she’s unable to even form a coalition government:

    Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would prefer a new election to ruling with a minority after talks on forming a three-way coalition failed overnight, but Germany’s president told parties they owed it to voters to try to form a government.

    The major obstacle to a three-way deal was immigration, according to Merkel, who was forced into negotiations after bleeding support in the Sept. 24 election to the far right in a backlash at her 2015 decision to let in over 1 million migrants.

    The failure of exploratory coalition talks involving her conservative bloc, the liberal pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens raises the prospect of a new election and casts doubt about her future after 12 years in power.

    Merkel, 63, said she was sceptical about ruling in a minority government, telling ARD television: “My point of view is that new elections would be the better path.” Her plans did not include being chancellor in a minority government, she said after meeting President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

    Steinmeier said Germany was facing the worst governing crisis in the 68-year history of its post-World War Two democracy and pressed all parties in parliament “to serve our country” and try to form a government.

    His remarks appeared aimed at the FDP and the Social Democrats (SPD), who on Monday ruled out renewing their “grand coalition” with the conservatives.

    “Inside our country, but also outside, in particular in our European neighbourhood, there would be concern and a lack of understanding if politicians in the biggest and economically strongest country (in Europe) did not live up to their responsibilities,” read a statement from Steinmeier, a former foreign minister who has been thrust centre-stage after taking on the usually largely ceremonial head of state role in March.

    Steinmeier’s intervention suggests he regards a new election – desired by half of Germany’s voters according to a poll – as a last resort. The SPD has so far stuck to a pledge after heavy losses in the September election not to go back into a Merkel-led broad coalition of centre-left and centre-right.

    Merkel urged the SPD to reconsider. “I would hope that they consider very intensively if they should take on the responsibility” of governing, she told broadcaster ZDF, adding she saw no reason to resign and her conservative bloc would enter any new election more unified than before.

    Snip.

    The main parties fear another election so soon would let the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party add to the 13 percent of votes it secured in September, when it entered parliament for the first time. Polls suggest a repeat election would return a similarly fragmented parliament.

    As usual in European press reports, “far-right” has now become a synonym for “anti-illegal immigration” and/or “Euroskeptic.”

    It’s telling that even though the sticking point in Markel’s desired coalition was the CDU limiting immigration more than the Greens wanted (which is to say any), Merkel prefers new elections to considering a coalition government with the AfD.

    There are even mutterings that fresh losses in a new round of elections could prod the CDU into finally dumping Merkel as leader.

    Charles Manson Dead at 83

    November 20th, 2017

    Burn in Hell, Charlie.

    The man who helped mastermind the murders of:

  • Sharon Tate
  • Tate’s unborn child
  • Leno LaBianca
  • Rosemary LaBianca
  • Gary Hinman
  • Donald Shea
  • Jay Sebring
  • Voytek Frykowski
  • Abigail Folger
  • Steven Parent
  • died of natural causes at age 83. “Sentenced to death for the crime, Manson escaped execution when the state Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional at the time.” Manson got to live because five liberal justices struck down the death penalty in all cases in Furman vs. Georgia in 1972.

    Edited to add: Among a notable strata of California’s hard left, Charles Manson was still admired even after being convicted of multiple murders.

    At their infamous Flint, Michigan, War Party at the end of 1969, the Weathermen hoisted a “Charles Manson Power” banner and spelled out pregnant victim Sharon Tate’s name in bullets. Trust-fund revolutionaries Diana Oughton and Kathy Boudin, the former obliterated by a bomb she hoped to explode at a soldier’s dance and the latter convicted of murder in the 1980s, idolized the Manson Family so much that they nicknamed their Weatherman cadre “The Fork” in homage to the eating utensil shoved into deceased victim Leno LaBianca’s stomach by Patricia Krenwinkel.

    The charismatic Bernardine Dohrn, later a friend of Barack and Michelle Obama, feverishly told Weatherman followers: “Dig it: first they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach. Wild!”

    When I asked Weatherman Mark Rudd why his otherwise intelligent friends paid homage to Manson, he told me: “We wanted to be bad.”

    Like Dohrn, Rolling Stone later went on to enjoy mainstream respectability despite publishing bizarre views on one of the twentieth century’s most notorious serial killers. Whereas Manson looked every bit the madman on the cover of Life, he appeared as a visionary on the front page of Rolling Stone. Therein, the magazine depicted Manson’s refusal to offer an insanity plea as a principled stand and characterized his criticism of the legal system as “obviously accurate in many ways.” In calling him Charlie, a first-name-basis intimacy later reserved for Madonna, Prince, Bruce, and other singing celebrities, the magazine actively sought to humanize the man who dehumanized so many.

    Other underground newspapers went further. The Los Angeles-based Tuesday’s Child proclaimed, “Manson: Man of the Year” on one cover and depicted Manson as Jesus Christ dying on the cross under the tag “Hippie” on another. The Los Angeles Free Press ran a weekly column penned by Manson. The Other, playing off controversial remarks made by the president, headlined an issue “Manson Declares Nixon Guilty.” Upon the release of an album of Manson’s music, several underground newspapers provided advertising for it gratis.

    Nearly a half century after the murders, the Manson Family still strikes as surreal. So, too, does the contemporaneous admiration of the murderer from radical journalists and leaders.

    A sampling of the Los Angeles Free Press‘s Mansonphilia can be found here.

    Middle East News Roundup for 11/19/17

    November 19th, 2017

    Want to know what’s happening in the Middle East and why?

    Ha! Good luck with that.

    But this roundup will should at least elevate you to a slightly higher level of informed incomprehension.

  • Syrian Army takes Abu Kammal again.

    The Syrian army and its allies took complete control over Albu Kamal, Islamic State’s last significant town in Syria, a military news service run by Hezbollah said on Sunday.

    The army had declared victory over Islamic State in Albu Kamal earlier this month but the jihadists then staged a counter-attack using sleeper cells hidden in the town.

  • What’s going on in Lebanon? Even Michael Totten doesn’t seem to know.
  • Saudi Arabia and its allies are meeting in Cairo to talk about what to do about Iran, Lebanon and Hezbollah. “The emergency Arab foreign ministers meeting was convened at the request of Saudi Arabia with support from the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait to discuss means of confronting Iranian intervention, Egypt’s state news agency MENA said.”
  • “The Trump administration said Friday it will shut down the Palestinian Liberation Office (PLO) in Washington, D.C., unless the Palestinians get serious about peace talks with Israel.”
  • Iraqi Kurds are backing down off their demands for independence.
  • No link, but suddenly the entire Washington MSM seems to be wringing their hands about the Saudi blockage of Yemen in precisely the way they weren’t when Iran was destabilizing the country with a proxy war the last three years.
  • Confused? You probably will be, even after this week’s episode of Soap

    News Flash For Clueless Millennials: Communism Sucks

    November 18th, 2017

    Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, so here’s a timely reminder: “Hey Millennials: Communism Sucks, I Lived It.” It’s a buffet of Living Under Communism Greatest Hits

    Unreliable electricity

    Do you millennials enjoy having electricity on demand to charge your devices? Then you would hate Action “O.” Action “O” stood for “Oszczednosc,” which translates to “Savings.” Poland’s communist government would notoriously turn off electricity to various areas of the city to “save” energy.

    They had an interesting system which they described as “customer oriented”: they would turn the electricity off for one minute and turn it back on for five minutes as a warning that a shutoff was coming. You had exactly five minutes to find your matches and candles, because after that electricity would shut off for several hours.

    If that wasn’t bad enough, we suffered under a shortage of matches.

    Snip.

    Decades-long waits for apartments

    If millennials want to live under communism, they need to accept being stuck living with their parents. Rentals are simply not available.

    When I turned eighteen, I went to the government-run housing association with a full down payment deposit for a new apartment. The association explained the process: they would take my deposit now and add my name to the list. Once an apartment became available they would let me know, but until then I had to live with my parents. I asked: “How long will this take?” The answer: between 10 to 15 years!

    This was the last straw. I took back my money and decided I would leave Poland in search of freedom from communist or socialist ideology.

    Snip.

    Empty grocery stores, corruption, and black markets

    Communist rationing created a culture of black markets and a nation comfortable with lawbreaking. This fostered countrywide corruption. There was a famous saying about purchasing food “spod lady,” meaning “from under the counter.” Most of the time, grocery stores were completely empty. But if you paid extra, you could probably get something that the lady from behind the counter “stashed” away and sold for a profit.

    Communism remains popular only among those who have never experienced it.

    See also:

  • Debunking the “No True Communism” Fallacy
  • Victims of Communism Day
  • Dear Undergraduates: Communism Doesn’t Work in the Real World
  • How Many People Did Communism Kill?