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December 2013

Posted by Leslie Eastman on December 19, 2013 28 Comments
The last time I wrote about the Catholic Church, the church had selected its new pope. And, as anticipated, the first pope from Latin America is shaking things up at the Vatican and around the world. However, I was a bit surprised that Pope Francis would so soon be engaged in an economics debate with Rush Limbaugh, triggered by the recently released 84-page "apostolic exhortation" Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel) that "attacked unfettered capitalism as a new tyranny" and seems to be a laundry-list of progressive dream programs. Gateway Pundit has a clip of Limbaugh's original comments and the papal response.
Today Pope Francis responded saying, “The Marxist ideology is wrong.” But, then he went on to attack free-market “trickle-down” economics. (Via Vatican Insider)
Some of the passages in the “Evangelii Gaudium” attracted the criticism of ultraconservatives in the USA. As a Pope, what does it feel like to be called a “Marxist”? “The Marxist ideology is wrong. But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”
Here's the point I want to make:

Posted by David Gerstman on December 18, 2013 1 Comment
Eugene Kontorovich wrote an important essay for Commentary, Israel, Palestine, and Democracy. Here are three critical paragraphs from the middle of the essay:
The Palestinians have developed an independent, self-regulating government that controls their lives as well as their foreign policy. Indeed, they have accumulated all the trappings of independence and have recently been recognized as an independent state by the United Nations. They have diplomatic relations with almost as many nations as Israel does. They have their own security forces, central bank, top-level Internet domain name, and a foreign policy entirely uncontrolled by Israel. The Palestinians govern themselves. To anticipate the inevitable comparison, this is not an Israeli-puppet “Bantustan.” From their educational curriculum to their television content to their terrorist pensions, they implement their own policies by their own lights without any subservience to Israel. They pass their own legislation, such as the measure prohibiting real estate transactions with Jews on pain of death. If Israel truly “ruled over” the Palestinians, all these features of their lives would be quite different. Indeed, the Bantustans never won international recognition because they were puppets. “The State of Palestine” just got a nod from the General Assembly because it is not.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 11 Comments
2014 may come down to which side makes the scarier videos. Chris Cillizza at The Washington Post says This is the ad every Democrat should be scared of in 2014. Aleister says This Is The Ad Every Republican Should Run In 2014. I say the response will be: War On Women! It worked before. Someone actually said this: "They do not want poor women to have joy" and "they want to sacrilize sperm":

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 5 Comments
Brandeis University becomes the second confirmed university to drop its Institutional Membership in the American Studies Association over the anti-Israel academic boycott. Earlier we reported that Penn State Harrisburg would be dropping its membership. The real key will be whether universities also will refuse to allow university funds to be used to subsidize attendance at ASA events, which is how ASA makes most of its revenue. Yair Rosenberg at Tablet Magazine reports:
Brandeis University has become the second institution to withdraw from the American Studies Association, following the organization’s decision to boycott Israel. “We view the recent vote by the membership to affirm an academic boycott of Israel as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster,” Brandeis’s American Studies Department posted on their web site. “We remain committed to the discipline of American Studies but we can no longer support an organization that has rejected two of the core principles of American culture–freedom of association and expression.”
The Brandeis statement reads:

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 18, 2013 7 Comments

The White House is expected to release a task force report of recommended changes to National Security Agency surveillance policies this afternoon, earlier than initially planned. From CNN: An independent assessment of National Security Agency surveillance ordered by President Barack Obama following classified leaks by Edward Snowden...

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 18, 2013 9 Comments
A tourist in Australia was rescued after falling off a pier and into the Port Phillip Bay while she was browsing Facebook on her cell phone. From BBC:
A Taiwanese tourist had to be rescued after accidentally walking off a pier in the Australian city of Melbourne while checking her Facebook page. The woman tumbled from St Kilda's pier into Port Phillip Bay late on Monday night. Police were alerted to the incident by a witness and rescued her in a speedboat after about 20 minutes. The woman, who apologised, was taken to hospital for observation but police said she was fine. Senior Constable Dean Kelly of the water police said officers found her floating metres from the pier.
In an interview posted at The Age, Kelly described that he and the other officers arrived by boat and found the woman floating on her back in the water about 30 meters from the pier. ‘‘She wasn’t splashing around too much. She wasn’t in a panic even though she was in the water for probably 20 minutes,’’ Kelly said. He also indicated how police found out what had distracted the woman.
‘‘She had a mobile phone in one of her hands and when we brought her onboard one of the first things she did was apologise and say sorry,’’ Senior Constable Kelly said.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 16 Comments

I just sent my first e-mail to a University President regarding the academic boycott of Israel by the American Studies Association, and the similar boycott just announced by the small and relatively new Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. I could not find a direct e-mail...

Posted by New Neo on December 18, 2013 25 Comments
Take a look at the wording of this WaPo headline: "Obama Suffers Most From Year of Turmoil, Poll Finds." Accompanying it is this photo: sufferingObama The article goes on to describe the precipitous decline in Obama's standing in approval polls:
His position is all the more striking when compared with his standing a year ago, as he was preparing for his second inauguration after a solid reelection victory. That high note proved fleeting as the president faced a series of setbacks, culminating in the botched rollout of his Affordable Care Act two months ago.
Some may think reporters and editors are simply clumsy or indifferent writers, and sometimes they are. But much of the time they choose their words (and photos) with exquisite and subtle care. They also realize that most people only look at the headlines and photos of most articles, and that those are therefore the most important elements, and that even people who do read the article often read only the first few paragraphs. In thisWaPo article, the headline and photo have been chosen to suggest that Obama is a suffering victim---in fact, the greatest victim---of a series of unfortunate circumstances that have befallen him. He's nearly a martyr. And the text (the excerpt quoted above is the second paragraph in the piece) reinforces that idea by this phrase, "faced a series of setbacks." Passive voice; no actor.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 18, 2013 77 Comments
I have received a surprisingly large number of emails of support from people outraged at the anti-Israel academic boycott passed by the American Studies Association.  Almost all of those emails come from new readers. The question many of them ask is what they can do to help me not only in the challenge to ASA's tax-exempt status, but also to oppose the boycott. Readers can take action themselves by contacting University Presidents and Trustees for those 83 universities who are Institutional Members of the ASA, as well as the head of the university sytem for state institutions. Institutional Membership lends the good name of the university to a boycott that is anti-academic freedom and that subjects visiting Israeli scholars and faculty who hold joint appointments to discrimination on the basis of national origin.  Those memberships also likely reflect that university funds are used to support faculty participation in ASA events, ASA's main source of revenue. I will be writing today to the President of Cornell University, whose Cornell-Technion campus being built in New York City will be subject to the boycott and whose visiting Israeli scholars and joint appointees will be subject to discrimination by ASA on the basis of national origin. I also think it is appropriate to contact Senators, Congressmen, and Governors (for state university systems who maintain an Institutional Membership) since taxpayer money is used to subsidize participation in ASA events. It would be nice to have a single contact list, right? That's where you can help me.

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 17, 2013 13 Comments
We've all likely encountered people who talk on their cell phones in public, or (gasp) done it ourselves at some point.  Admittedly, sometimes it's almost unavoidable at a place like an airport where you might be trying to coordinate the other details of your travel.  But other times, it's probably avoidable. One prankster had a funny lesson for reminding cell-phone talkers that others around them can hear their conversations. "Don't you hate when people talk loudly on their phones in public? Why not have some fun with it and "crash" their calls!" he posted on his YouTube channel alongside the following video. From the LA Times:
Greg Benson, actor and funnyman, has a new prank video climbing the YouTube charts. "Cell Phone Crashing at the Airport" has Benson and his hidden camera (operated by wife Kim Evey) crowding people at an airport as they talk on their phones. Benson, on his MediocreFilms, has crashed cellphone conversations before -- at a park, a soccer game, on the streets of San Francisco. He responds to others' conversations into his own phone. It takes a moment for people to register the pleasant-looking man invading their space.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 16 Comments
As detailed in numerous posts over the past weeks, the American Studies Association has passed an academic boycott of Israeli universities. Although the resolution does not make this distinction, ASA asserts in its explanation that the boycott applies only to the institutions and "not individual scholars, students, or cultural workers who will be able to participate in the ASA conference or give public lectures at campuses, provided they are not expressly serving as representatives or ambassadors of those institutions, or of the Israeli government." The explanation continues that the boycott also applies to "participation in conferences or events officially sponsored by Israeli universities." This would mean the boycott applies to programs and projects jointly sponsored by U.S. and Israeli academic institutions, like the Cornell-Technion campus under construction in New York City, the Brandeis-Middlebury Program at Ben Gurion University, dozens of other programs for terms abroad in Israel run by U.S. universities but hosted at Israeli universities, and many other joint university programs. In the talking points ASA provided to its members on how to address criticism from University Administrators, Deans and Faculty, ASA states that "U.S. scholars are not discouraged under the terms of the boycott from traveling to Israel for academic purposes, provided they are not engaged in a formal partnership with or sponsorship by Israeli academic institutions." Now you can see how pernicious the ASA academic boycott becomes. ASA's boycott requires monitoring of individual Israeli scholars interacting with ASA and having such scholars disavow representation of their institutions.  No scholar from any other nation is required to disavow representation of their institutions.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 16 Comments

Jim Matheson has been the Harry Houdini of modern politics, a Democrat surviving in a heavily Republican Utah district which became even more Republican after the 2010 redistricting. But he still beat Mia Love in 2012. By a few hundred votes. In Utah. With Romney at...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2013 20 Comments

Whether you should like it is a different question, but it will be law soon. Via USA Today, Senate vote clears budget deal for passage this week: The Senate on Tuesday cleared a key procedural hurdle for final passage of a two-year, bipartisan budget deal before the...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 16, 2013 18 Comments
Upworthy is the wildly popular low-information-by-design website which has fine-tuned the ability to turn 2-3 sentence (at most) liberal memes viral.  Often, the meme consists entirely of the title, with some seemingly obvious liberal talking point that is only superficially obvious, but actually cannot withstand scrutiny. Which is why no scrutiny is given in the posts. You may recall my posts: Upworthy has turned a section of its website over the the AFL-CIO, presumably for a hefty payment.  The section is called Workonomics. This post and the video have been around for a while, but just came to my attention, 2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally; See What Happens Next.  There is no text after that, just a note to watch starting at the 1:34 mark. Spoiler Alert:  One monkey gets grapes after giving lab technician a rock, other monkey gets slices of cucumber.  Monkey which gets cucumbers is jealous and throws cucumber at lab technician.  Therefore?

Posted by Mandy Nagy on December 16, 2013 13 Comments

The White House does not appear to be interested at this time in the possibility of an offer of amnesty for former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to comments Monday from a National Security Council spokeswoman. From The Hill: The White House on Monday said there had...

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