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GOP fears blowback as avowed Nazi and Holocaust denier runs for Chicago congressional seat

Natasha Korecki
Politico
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 17:57 UTC
Arthur Jones
© Marcus DiPaola/Chicago Sun-Times via AP
Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats.
Illinois Republicans botched four opportunities to stop an avowed Nazi from representing their party in a Chicago-area congressional district. Now they're paying the price.

Arthur Jones, a Holocaust denier who will appear on the November ballot as the GOP candidate against Democratic Rep. Dan Lipinski, has become campaign fodder for Democrats as they seek to defeat Gov. Bruce Rauner. And some Republicans even fear the taint from Jones' extremist views poses a threat to the party up and down the ticket.

"First, it's morally wrong and I think it's really harmful to the party. The guy's a complete nutcase. He's a Nazi," said conservative GOP state Rep. David McSweeney. "This is an absolute political disaster."

McSweeney's comments come just days after the filing deadline passed for qualifying a third-party candidate for the general election - which could have provided a safe harbor for Illinois Republican votes. Prior to that, the party had also failed to recruit a candidate to challenge Jones in the primary election, failed to knock him off the primary ballot and wasn't able to field a write-in candidate against him in the primary.

Running a third-party candidate against Jones in November was among the options left to Illinois Republicans after Jones clinched the GOP nomination by running unopposed. But the deadline came and went this week and that didn't happen either.

Comment: No doubt the DNC will find this congressional race useful in their efforts to counter the growing disaffection for the Democratic Party:

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Hiliter

Poll: Americans believe US borders more porous than other countries, majority say immigration has worsened life in America

Penny Starr
Breitbart
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Mexico border wall
© AP / Gregory Bull
President Donald Trump campaigned and likely won the presidency on his promise to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S, and a new Rasmussen poll shows that a majority of Americans think our border is more porous than in other countries.

"Despite President Trump's efforts to toughen border enforcement, voters still think it's easier for illegal immigrants to get into the United States and stay here than in much of the rest of the world," Rasmussen said about its findings.

The telephone and online survey found just 22 percent of likely voters think it is harder to get into the United States illegally than in other countries, while 39 percent said it is easier. Twenty-six percent said getting into a country illegally is about the same around the globe.

To see the questions asked, click here.

Breitbart News reported in March that a Quinnipiac poll revealed Republican voters still think immigration is the most important issue in November's midterm elections, along with the economy.

Comment:

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2 + 2 = 4

Liberals declare war on 'Little House' because they despise how it portrays Christianity and family life

Jonathon van Maren
Lifesite News
Tue, 03 Jul 2018 21:03 UTC
Little House on the Prairie
Every year, thousands upon thousands of people arrive in De Smet, South Dakota in minivans filled with sweaty and excited children. They are here to see a small, nondescript white frame house with a sign in front of it that explains why everyone is here: Ingalls Home & Museum: The House that Pa Built in 1887. My brother and I spent an afternoon exploring there in 2011, driving out to the ancient graveyard on the edge of town where a shiny new sign points the way to the Ingalls grave sites. The little town was full of people, there to pay pilgrimage to America's most beloved pioneer family, who had in so many ways come to symbolize for so many all that was good and true about the United States itself.

But of course, in the America of 2018, we can celebrate the vilest forms of entertainment and hand out Oscars for perverse and sex-soaked storytelling that makes a mockery of everything America once was, but Laura Ingalls Wilder is simply too offensive. This week, the Association for Library Services decided to strip her name from a prestigious award for authors of children's literature (a genre which Wilder can be given significant credit for developing.) Her crime? Insufficiently predicting the complexities of 21st century race relations, and thus writing things perceived as insensitive to Native Americans and blacks-although Wilder herself rebuked racism and assured her critics that none was intended in her books, and her stories portray these characters very positively.

Comment:

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Stop

Iowa supreme court strikes down law that would require waiting period before abortion

Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart
Sat, 30 Jun 2018 16:05 UTC
abortion protest
The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a law that would require a three-day waiting period prior to obtaining an abortion in the state.

On Friday, the state Supreme Court reversed the decision of the district court and ruled the waiting period restriction violated the Iowa Constitution and that "autonomy and dominion over one's body go to the very heart of what it means to be free."

The court ruled, 5-2, in a challenge brought by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland (PPH), that the 72-hour waiting period could force women to incur increased costs for abortions or cause women to go beyond the legal limit for abortion.


"At stake in this case is the right to shape, for oneself, without unwarranted governmental intrusion, one's own identity, destiny, and place in the world," the majority wrote. "Nothing could be more fundamental to the notion of liberty."
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2 + 2 = 4

How large families destroy identity politics and identitarianism

Jonathon Van Maren
The Bridgehead
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 11:43 UTC
large family painting
About a year ago, I wrote a personal essay explaining why my having come from a large family was such an effective deterrent to many of the current identitarian ideologies that have arisen from our poisoned politics of late. In short, I never needed to "find my tribe" or "discover my identity," because I already had my tribe-well over a hundred cousins, and a couple of dozen aunts and uncles-and my identity was rooted in my family experience. The Van Maren side of my family has a habit of analyzing one another and then discussing which of our characteristics came from which grandparent, so there was never any doubt as to where, exactly, you came from.

I also got to know all four of my grandparents-three of whom are still alive today-and hear the sobering stories of what it was like to live under Nazi occupation. As I wrote then, the sorts of ugly resurrected ideologies that cropped up in Charlottesville last summer have no appeal when someone you love can still remember the bloodshed that accompanied them the last time around. At their root, these collectivist ideologies function the same way that gang membership does: They offer an opportunity to belong, as long as you are willing to do or go along with violence on behalf of your new tribe.

Comment:

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Info

Sheldon Richman: Why Palestine Matters

Sheldon Richman
Information Clearing House
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 15:54 UTC
Gaza checkpoint
© Ariel Schalit/Associated Press
Why does Palestine matter? It's a question I ask myself nearly every day. Another way to put it is, "Is the devotion of major attention to the plight of the Palestinians an obsession worthy of suspicion or an appropriate response to a grave historic and continuing injustice?

No one will be surprised when I reply that major attention is an appropriate response. Palestine matters and should matter. I will try to explain why.

First, perhaps most basically, the sheer cruelty - the scope of the violation of human, i.e., natural individual, rights - of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians warrants the concern of all who favor freedom and other (classical) liberal values: justice, social cooperation, free exchange, and peace.

Let's start with the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, says front and center on its website: "Israel's regime of occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations." No one who sheds the blinders of the Official Narrative can help but feel pain over the institutional barriers to normal life, not to mention the literal destruction of life, that are regular features of Israel's rule in the West Bank (with nearly 3 million Palestinians), East Jerusalem (over 300,000), and Gaza Strip (nearly 2 million). It is no exaggeration to describe the system as an instance of apartheid, which is the word used by Israeli human-rights organizations and former government officials. (Then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin used the word in a warning as far back is 1976. So did Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, when he was out of office after the 1967 war.)
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Violin

Harvey Weinstein could face life imprisonment from new federal predatory charge indictment by Manhattan Grand Jury

Dominic Patton
Deadline Hollywood
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 16:25 UTC
harvey weinstein

The new criminal sex act charge could result in an additional decade in prison for the Oscar winning Weinstein if found guilty.
Already facing rape and criminal sex act charges and a potential 25-years behind bars, Harvey Weinstein today was hit with even heavier legal weight from the Manhattan D.A. - that could see him in jail for life.

"A Manhattan Grand Jury has now indicted Harvey Weinstein on some of the most serious sexual offenses that exist under New York's Penal Law," said District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. today. "This indictment is the result of the extraordinary courage exhibited by the survivors who have come forward. Our investigation continues. If you are a survivor of the predatory abuse with which Mr. Weinstein is charged, there is still time to pursue justice. Please call us at 212-335-9373."

Today's announcement marks an additional count of Criminal Sexual Act in the First Degree for a forcible sexual act against a third woman that allegedly occurred in 2006. Joining the two women identified in the previous indictment in late May, the new indictment also includes two counts of Predatory Sexual Assault.

The class A-11 felony predatory charge looms with a potential life or at least 10-25 years in prison for the disgraced producer.

Comment: See also: Manhattan grand jury indicts Harvey Weinstein on rape and sex crime charges

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Quenelle

French politician says the unsayable: Our country is being religiously colonised by migrants

Abdelhamid Kaddour
Voice of Europe
Sun, 24 Jun 2018 15:48 UTC
Muslims in France
© YouTube screen grab
Muslims in France
Imagine Donald Trump in a debate with extreme leftist Bill Maher and his left-leaning guests. What a surreal show that would have been! Something similar recently happened on one of the most watched TV shows in France.

"France is being religiously colonised by migrants," said Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a major French political figure. His comment made headlines just a few hours later after its airing. Immediately, extremist pro-immigration members of the press accused him of racism.

Comment: The political divide between the elite and the people is becoming ever wider.

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Doberman

Sweden's war prepper manual slammed for not including pets in a state of an emergency


RT
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 14:36 UTC
Cat and man
© Getty Images / Nina Pearman
A Swedish animal protection group voiced unease over a government-issued civil defense manual which advised on everything - from fake news to bombing alarms - except one thing: what to do with your pet should a crisis occur.

Some Swedes may have got jitters after the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has delivered a comprehensive crisis preparation manual to almost every household, but the country's Animal Protection Society angrily slammed the release, saying it was incomplete and even dangerous.

"You failed to take pets into account, which is important. There are studies in the United States indicating that people have refused to evacuate because of their pets, simply because they didn't know what to do with them," Johan Beck-Friis, Secretary General of the group and an official with the Swedish Veterinary Association, has said, according to SVT media outlet. "So this can be a danger," he added.

The MSB rejected criticism, citing common sense considerations. Had the agency included detailed instructions on every possible topic, the booklet would not fit in 19 pages.

Comment: See also: Ridiculous! Sweden distributes 4.7 million leaflets on 'how to prepare for war with Russia'

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Question

What ever happened to the panic over Peak Oil?

Michael Lynch
Forbes
Fri, 29 Jun 2018 14:29 UTC
oil platform fire Nigeria
© Pius Utomi Ekpei/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A gas flare burns at the Batan flow station operated by Chevron under a joint-venture arrangement with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for the onshore and offshore assets in the Niger Delta region on March 26, 2018.
A decade ago, the media was filled with stories about peak oil, numerous books were published on the subject (such as Half Gone and $20 a Gallon!), and even the Simpsons mentioned it in an episode about doomsday preppers. Now, the topic is largely forgotten and the flavor of the month is peak oil demand. Anyone concerned about the quality of research that works its way into the public debate should be curious about how so many were so wrong for so long. (Buy my book for the full story.)

First and foremost, realize that in the 1970s, numerous analysts and institutions made similar arguments, arguing that geological scarcity was responsible for higher prices, not the two disruptions of production in 1973 and 1979. Indeed, in the months before oil prices collapsed in 1986, the consensus was that prices were too low and had to rise to make upstream investment profitable, despite the fact that OPEC production was collapsing (down from 30 mb/d in 1980 to 15 in 1985). You would think that this would make people more skeptical about claims that geological scarcity was responsible when the shutdown of Venezuelan production and the second Gulf War cut off Iraqi supplies sent prices higher starting in 2003.

Comment: Another factor is that researchers may be mistaken about how oil reserves are formed. A few scientists have put forth a credible 'abiotic oil' theory, that oil reserves naturally renew themselves through chemical interactions deep in the Earth's mantle. Not 'dead dinosaurs' at all.

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