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« on: June 02, 2017, 02:38:13 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 5-31-2017
From The Federalist Patriot
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Mid-Day Digest
May 31, 2017
IN TODAY’S EDITION
The glaciers are melting, the glaciers are melting! But why?
Another scalp claimed by the academic PC police.
What does food stamp reform look like, and how can we accomplish it?
Daily Features: Top Headlines, Cartoons, Columnists and Short Cuts.
THE FOUNDATION
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” —John Adams (1770)
TOP RIGHT HOOKS
Climate Alarmism Minus Perspective Equals Fake News1
Like any policy discussion, the field of science can be easily distorted and misconstrued when it lacks proper perspective and insight. The New York Times performed this masterfully in a recent climate piece, “Mapping 50 Years of Melting Ice in Glacier National Park2.” The article’s objective was to tug at Americans' heartstrings by highlighting the supposedly exceptional amount of ice melt occurring in northern Montana, where glaciers “shrank by more than a third between 1966 and 2015, according to new data from the United States Geological Survey and Portland State University in Oregon.”
To help readers understand how their carbon footprint is disposing America of its ice age relics, the Times publishes myriad images to visually (and emotionally) document the receding glaciers. The article then stipulates, “Glacier National Park’s eponymous ice formations have been around for more than 7,000 years, and have survived warmer and cooler periods. But they have been shrinking rapidly since the late 1800s, when North America emerged from the ‘Little Ice Age,’ a period of regionally colder, snowier weather that lasted for roughly 400 years. (At its founding in 1910, the park had at least 150 glaciers, most of which are now gone.) After the end of the Little Ice Age, glaciers across the Western United States, Canada and Europe lost ice as temperatures rebounded. But scientists have attributed more recent melting to human-caused global warming.”
By what objective temperature measurements? Well, the Times doesn’t say, and nefariously so. As Robert Tracinski observes, this form of climate deception has become a pattern3 at the Times. He writes, “There is no science without numbers. Science can’t get by on qualitative descriptions. If you say the average global temperature in 2016 was ‘higher’ than in 2015, that’s not science. It could be a lot higher or a little higher. It could be a number that is enormous, or it could be a number that is literally insignificant. (And if they don’t tell you the number, guess which of those it is likely to be.)”
The Times knows such disclaimers could jeopardize its message, which is the real motivation for its refusing to publish temperature minutiae. Why else would it neglect to report that regional temperatures around Glacier National Park have actually been flat for more than a century? Global warming is real — few dispute that. But if temperatures aren’t rising in tandem around GNP, there has to be more to the story for why glaciers are receding at an ostensibly faster rate because of human activity. None of this matters, however, because, as Tracinski opines, the Times is predisposed to believe that “nothing can be attributed to mere natural causes any more. It all has to be because of global warming.”
In January, The Wall Street Journal wisely editorialized4 that “nuances are important, because phrases such as ‘hottest year ever’ are waved around as a pretext for political action that usually involves giving more control over the economy to governments.” Sadly, the Times continues to borrow from the same playbook. After Donald Trump’s election in November, Times officials promised to “rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.” In truth, they’re sticking to the same statist agenda5.
PC Culture Reigns at Duke6
The intolerance of free speech on America’s college and university campuses has seemingly reached epidemic levels. And the heart of the problem lies not with those fervent social justice warrior (SJW) students, but within academia itself. A telling example comes out Duke Divinity School, where a professor was forced out for essentially daring to speak his mind.
The issue that sparked the professor’s ouster began with a faculty-wide email sent by Anathea Portier-Young, a professor of Old Testament studies with expertise in “constructions of identity, gender, and ethnicity, and traditions of violence and nonviolence.” Portier-Young’s email invited the faculty to participate in the “Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training,” which states: “Racism is a fierce, ever-present, challenging force, one which has structured the thinking, behavior and actions of individuals and institutions since the beginning of U.S. history.” Clearly, there’s a leftist SJW agenda behind this training.
Professor Paul Griffiths chose to respond to this public email by sending his own faculty-wide email in which he encouraged his colleagues not to go to the training. “There’ll be bromides, clichés and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty,” he predicted, and the ideas taught would contain “illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies.” He concluded that the “definitively anti-intellectual … (re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history.” He then dared to suggest that the school’s faculty would benefit more by focusing their time and energy to rededicating themselves to their scholarly pursuits.
Griffith’s email triggered a response from the dean, Elaine Heath, in which she said that she was looking forward to attending the training and issued a warning against “the use of mass emails to express racism, sexism and other forms of bigotry.” Then, after these emails were exchanged, a disciplinary procedure was initiated against Griffith for “unprofessional conduct” due to a complaint filed by Professor Portier-Young accusing him of “harassment” owing to his email counteroffer.
It wasn’t long before Griffith tendered his resignation. He sent the faculty one last letter in which he pointedly asserted, “Tolerance for intellectual pain is less than it was. So is tolerance for argument.” Once heralded as the nation’s greatest bastions of free speech and tolerance, America’s campuses have become little more than oblasts of leftist indoctrination.
Top Headlines7
Anticipated news: Trump is pulling U.S. out of Paris climate deal. (Axios8.)
More than 5,500 illegals registered to vote in Virginia in last decade; 1,852 actually cast ballots. (The Washington Times9)
49 shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend — and that’s a sign of progress. (USA Today10)
CNN’s Kathy Griffin poses with picture of a beheaded President Trump. (The Washington Free Beacon11)
What gap? Female CEO’s earn more than male chief executives. (The Wall Street Journal12)
Finally: HHS proposes rule change to end contraception mandate. (Hot Air13)
Kabul blast: Massive explosion rips through rush-hour traffic in diplomatic area, 80 dead, 350 injured. (Fox News14)
Iranian-backed forces amassing near U.S. training base in Syria. (The Washington Times15)
U.S. successfully intercepts ICBM in historic test. (ABC News16)
Hump day humor: Breathing classified as microaggression. (The Babylon Bee17)
Policy: Ten Thousand Commandments 2017. (Competitive Enterprise Institute18.)
Policy: How America can get its fiscal house in order. (The Heritage Foundation19)
For more, visit Patriot Headline Report20. |
