Monday roundup

Sorry for the absence. I was an assistant table leader at a jail-ministry weekend called Residents Encounter Christ. To say it was powerful would be to woefully understate the impact. I gained brothers. I saw hearts turn. I saw families begin the process of repair. I may compose a post about it at some point.

It was healthy to leave my devices at home. There is indeed more to life than social media, news aggregates and opinion sites.

But developments continue to transpire, don't they?

Let's have a look at some.

Claudia Rosett at PJ Media offers an on-the-ground look at Sunday's massive protest in Hong Kong.

I could be mistaken about this, but I don't think Beto has come up with a winning campaign theme with "our country was founded on racism and is still racist today."

Summer's here and the time is right for dancing in Baghdad:

Baghdad (AFP) - Hundreds of Iraqi teenagers clapped along exuberantly to techno beats pumping across a makeshift dance hall on Friday night, a scene their capital had not witnessed in decades.

Neon red, yellow and white stage lights helped transform the basketball court in the People's Stadium in central Baghdad into a club for the "Summer Festival", the first celebration of its kind in the city.

The party started at noon with a car show: classic cars, souped-up four-wheelers and motorcycles with proud owners revving their engines.

As the DJ took the stage, boys and girls alike swayed and sang along to Western tunes, alternated with popular Iraqi hits.

Though there were only a few young women among the 1,000 or so revellers, their presence was notable in a country where public spaces remain conservative.

"I love this type of music," said Layan, a 19-year-old woman in a leather black top and full makeup.

"I hear a lot of people say that we're influenced by the West. Fine, there's no difference to me -- the important thing is I don't have to listen to this music at home in secret anymore," she said, pumping her fist into the air.

Just a few years ago, the sound of staccato gunfire or the echo of car bombs was more common in Baghdad than the resounding bass of electronic music.

Iraq has been hit by nearly four decades of conflict, from a devastating war with Iran in the 1980s to the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sectarian warfare followed, then the onslaught of the Islamic State group in 2014, only defeated territorially in late 2017.

Friday's festival was the latest indication that Iraq is entering a phase of relative stability, with blast walls and checkpoints coming down across the capital.

Restaurants are again abuzz with families and coffee shops full of young people watching cover bands late into the night, something that not so long ago was considered too dangerous because of the risk of suicide bombers.

Greg Weiner, writing at Law & Liberty, says that Mary Ann Glendon is exceptionally well-suited to lead Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Commission on Unalienable Rights.

Oh, sheesh. The Business Roundtable now repudiates its former position that the a corporation's primary purpose for existing is to show its owners a return on their investment. It's issued a statement saying that the corporation has a "responsibility" to some wider array of "stakeholders." Ain't that nice?

Suit yourself, exterminators of fetal Americans:

Planned Parenthood will be foregoing as much as $60 million annually from a federal family planning program that will carry new anti-abortion rules. 

"Planned Parenthood is still open. We are continuing to fight this rule in court," said Alexis McGill Johnson, acting president of Planned Parenthood, said in a call with reporters Monday. She said the organization would do everything it could to make sure that clinics could stay open. 

The Trump administration is giving healthcare providers until midnight to comply with a new rule that says organizations that accept federal family planning grants cannot directly provide patients with an abortion referral. Critics of the rule call it a "gag rule" because they say the government is forcing them to keep information from patients.

A group of Chicago Teachers Union members go to Venezuela and go all Walter Duranty.  

Monday roundup

Madison Peace at The Federalist speaks for moi in her essay entitled "Theologian Wayne Grudem is Wrong About Trump Being A Moral Choice," a response to the prominent Christian ethics professor's recent Townhall column.

Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast reports on the nasty Twitter war between Sean Hannity and the WSJ's Bret Stephens - over Squirrel-Hair, of course.

Suicide bomber strikes a hospital in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, killing 63 and injuring over 100. Patients, doctors, various others.

"Most of the victims are lawyers, journalists and common citizens," Abdul says.

Quetta is the capital of the province of Baluchistan, which is home to a number of militant groups, Abdul says. The Quetta Shura, a group of leaders of the Afghan Taliban, is believed to be based in the city.

Baltimore Ravens tight end Benjamin Watson speaks straightforwardly about the racist reason Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood.

When asked by a Colorado journalist about an anti-fracking ballot measure that that state's voters are considering, Squirrel-Hair gave a characteristic response - that is, it was only coherent enough that the only way to interpret it was as his siding with the anti-frack crowd.

Today's addition to the Hillionaire-was-worthless-as-a-Senator file. Will the nation as a whole fall for her empty job-creation rhetoric?

In her presidential bid, Hillary Clinton has made job creation a centerpiece of her platform, casting herself as a pragmatist who would inspire “the biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II.’’

Her argument that she would put more Americans to work has focused on her time in the Senate, when she took on the mission of creating jobs in chronically depressed Upstate New York. As her husband, former president Bill Clinton, put it recently, she became the region’s “de facto economic development officer.”

But nearly eight years after Clinton’s Senate exit, there is little evidence that her economic development programs had a substantial impact on upstate employment. Despite Clinton’s efforts, upstate job growth stagnated overall during her tenure, with manufacturing jobs plunging nearly 25 percent, according to jobs data.

The former first lady was unable to pass the big-ticket legislation she introduced to benefit the upstate economy. She turned to smaller-scale projects, but some of those fell flat after initial glowing headlines, a Washington Post review shows. Many promised jobs never materialized and others migrated to other states as she turned to her first presidential run, said former officials who worked with her in New York.

Clinton’s self-styled role as economic promoter also showcases an operating style that has come to define the political and money-making machine known to some critics of the former first couple as Clinton Inc. Some of her pet economic projects involved loyal campaign contributors, who also supported the Clinton Foundation, The Post review shows.

Clinton’s Senate record — rarely examined in detail this campaign cycle — offers a template for her approach to jobs creation. Her campaign has crafted a detailed jobs plan and cited her Upstate New York work as a blueprint for a Clinton presidency.

Um, yeah, examining that record might be advisable as we enter the last 90 days before deciding between the Alinskyite and Cheeto Jesus.

 

Sunday noon roundup

A look around this world to help grandma's after-church fried-chicken dinner go down more smoothly:

Seems that two people at a workplace (name / type / location of workplace not known) are playing out a microcosm of the general stifling of free speech:

It was only a matter of time, really. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that displaying the Gadsden Flag in the workplace — the yellow flag with the words Don’t Tread on Me below a coiled rattlesnake — may be punishable racial harassment. 

Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post has the story, and the EEOC’s report, which gives the requisite background: 

On January 8, 2014, Complainant filed a formal complaint in which he alleged that the Agency subjected him to discrimination on the basis of race (African American) and in reprisal for prior EEO activity when, starting in the fall of 2013, a coworker (C1) repeatedly wore a cap to work with an insignia of the Gadsden Flag.

In case you’re wondering: That’s it. That’s the extent of the offense. There were no racist statements. No slurs. No threatening looks. A dude wore a cap. “Repeatedly.” But:

“Repeatedly.” But: 

Complainant stated that he found the cap to be racially offensive to African Americans because the flag was designed by Christopher Gadsden, a “slave trader & owner of slaves.” 
Other American slave owners include Benjamin Franklin. Is it racial harassment to wear bifocals? It is by the complainant’s logic.

But it goes further. Yes, it’s likely that Christopher Gadsden had racial opinions that would be noxious, to put it mildly, in 2016. But it’s ridiculous to judge a man born to the 18th century by the prevailing morality of our own. Some context is advisable. Additional context that might be helpful in this particular case: Gadsden was delegate to the Stamp Act Congress; delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses; commander of the 1st South Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army; and called “the Sam Adams of the South.” In other words, he was a man of his age in certain ways; he was also an American patriot. It was with the latter in mind that he designed his namesake flag. As the EEOC concluded: “It is clear that the Gadsden Flag originated in the Revolutionary War in a non-racial context.” 

Ah, but:

Complainant maintains that the Gadsden Flag is a “historical indicator of white resentment against blacks stemming largely from the Tea Party.”

As Hillary Clinton would say: Sigh. There is no evidence that the Tea Party as a movement was motivated by racial animus (even some of the “racist” episodes that critics cited never happened). But there is a strong vein of leftwing historical revisionism that says it was so, presumably because that is easier to accept than the possibility that right-leaning voters circa 2009 had legitimate, defensible discontents. 

Well, tofu and sprouts to you, too:

This report from the BBC is confirmed by first hand accounts from not only the Israeli team, but from the hateful Lebanese team as well. More on the Lebanese reaction in a moment.  Here are the basics from BBC:

Lebanese athletes refused to share a bus with the Israel team to get to Friday’s Rio Olympic Games opening ceremony, members of both teams said.
Lebanon and Israel are officially at war and have no diplomatic relations.
The incident happened as the Lebanon team sat on the bus waiting to head to the Maracana stadium, before demanding the Israeli athletes must not board.

The Israeli team refused to be bullied and they boarded the bus heading for the Kumbaya, world peace ceremonies.

Good on ya, Benjamin:

In a recent interview, Baltimore Ravens tight end Benjamin Watson said that the original idea behind Planned Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger, was to "exterminate blacks."

Discussing pregnancy, faith and abortion with Turning Point Pregnancy Resource Center, Watson, the author of Under Our Skin, a book about race relations in America, was asked how race factors into the abortion issue. He said that "blacks kind of represent a large portion of the abortions, and I do know that honestly the whole idea with Planned Parenthood and [Margaret] Sanger in the past was to exterminate blacks, and it’s kind of ironic that it’s working."

The outspoken Christian athlete lamented that minority voters overwhelmingly support candidates who support Planned Parenthood without considering the reasons behind its founding."We are buying it hook, line, and sinker, like it’s a great thing," he said. "It’s just amazing to me and abortion saddens me period, but it seems to be something that is really pushed on minorities and provided to minorities especially as something that they should do."

How Fatah appeals to the voting base:

In an effort to appeal to Palestinians ahead of hotly contested elections, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas listed one of its main achievements as having “killed 11,000 Israelis.”
The party, Fatah, made the incendiary claim on Tuesday in an Arabic-language post on one of its official Facebook pages.
“For the argumentative … the ignorant … And for those who do not know history,” begins the Facebook post, “The Fatah movement killed 11,000 Israelis.”
Fatah also claimed to have “offered 170,000 martyrs,” and hundreds of its followers, it said, were in “Israeli occupation jails.” By Thursday the post had been shared 30 times and liked 163 times.
The post garnered additional attention after it was translated into English by Palestinian Media Watch, an organization that monitors anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements in the Arab news media. The website noted that it was the second time Fatah had made the inaccurate claim. The first was in August 2014.
 

The climate jackboots say the hurricane drought in no way disproves their claim that the global climate is in trouble.  "Long-term global trends," doncha know.