Category Archives: Good News

Denmark and The Three Insecurities

Posted on by
7

I remember when Queen Margrethe II talked about the need to re-examine immigration. Sure enough, this is mentioned in her wiki:

In 2016 an interview within the book De dybeste rødder (En: The Deepest Roots) she showed, according to historians at Saxo instituttet, a change in attitude to immigration towards a more restrictive stance. She stated that the Danish people should have more explicitly clarified the rules and values of Danish culture in order to be able to teach them to new arrivals. She further stated that the Danes in general have underestimated the difficulties involved in successful integration of immigrants, exemplified with the rules of a democracy not being clarified to Muslim immigrants and a lack of readiness to enforce those rules. This was received as a change in line with the attitude of the Danish people.

I’d always hoped her autobiography would be translated in English. It turned out to be a futile wish.

“Bolton’s appointment is a brilliant ‘America First’ move”

Posted on by
37

Caroline Glick appears to have a regular gig at Breitbart. Smart of them to feature an outstanding writer.

Here’s part of her essay on John Bolton’s recent appointment [with my emphases —D]:

President Donald Trump’s decision to appoint former UN Ambassador John Bolton to serve as his National Security Advisor is arguably the most significant single step he has taken to date toward implementing his America First foreign policy.

The news hit America’s enemies and competitors — from Pyongyang to Teheran to Moscow to Beijing — like a wall of bricks Thursday night.

Early criticisms on the political right of Bolton’s appointment have centered on two points. First, it is argued that Bolton, who has been involved in U.S. foreign policymaking since the Reagan administration, is a creature of the Washington foreign policy swamp.

While it is true that Bolton is from Washington – or Baltimore, to be precise – and although it is true that he held senior foreign policy positions in both Bush administrations, he has always been a thorn in the side of the establishment rather than a member of that establishment.

For the better part of three decades, Bolton has bravely held positions that fly in the face of the establishment’s innate preference for appeasement. He was a vocal critic, for example, of then-President Bill Clinton’s disastrous nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

The 1994 “Agreed Framework” that Clinton concluded with Pyongyang was touted as a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis with North Korea. In exchange for shuttering – but not destroying — its nuclear installations, North Korea received light water reactors from the U.S. and massive economic relief. As Bolton warned it would, North Korea pocketed the concessions and gifts and continued to develop its nuclear weapons. In other words, far from preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, the Agreed Framework preserved the North Korean nuclear program and enabled the regime to develop it effectively with U.S. assistance.

For his warnings, Bolton has been reviled as a “warmonger” and a “superhawk” by the foreign policy elite, which has gone out of its way to undercut him.

President George W. Bush appointed Bolton to serve as UN ambassador in 2005 in a recess appointment. Three moderate Republicans on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, Lincoln Chafee (RI), Chuck Hagel (ND), and George Voinovich (OH), signaled that they would oppose Bolton’s confirmation, blocking it.

At the time, rumors surfaced that then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had quietly undercut Bolton’s confirmation in private conversations with senators. Those rumors were denied, and Rice publicly supported Bolton’s confirmation. But in 2016, Rice, along with her mentor, former secretary of state James Baker, and her deputy and successor as National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, openly opposed President Trump’s intention to appoint Bolton Deputy Secretary of State. At the same time, all three lobbied Trump to appoint outgoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Bolton was a vocal opponent of Rice’s nuclear diplomacy with North Korea, undertaken after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. He also opposed Rice’s pursuit of diplomatic ties with Iran through negotiations in Iraq. In both cases, as events showed, Bolton’s criticisms were all in place.

Rice’s nuclear diplomacy with North Korea emboldened the regime and enabled its continued testing of nuclear weapons and development of ballistic missiles.

Continue reading →

Michigan Is 26th State to Criminalize Female Genital Mutilation

Posted on by

Here’s a court video of a case that took place before the law was passed several days ago.

From the page of Michigan Governor Snyder

Individuals convicted of performing female genital mutilation now face stronger criminal penalties under legislation signed today by Gov. Rick Snyder.

“Those who commit these horrendous crimes should be held accountable for their actions, and these bills stiffen the penalties for offenders while providing additional support to victims,” Snyder said. “This legislation is an important step toward eliminating this despicable practice in Michigan while empowering victims to find healing and justice.”

The bill package amends various public acts to prohibit and prosecute those who perform female genital mutilation. Specifically, the bills prohibit performing genital mutilation, create criminal penalties for offenders, provide sanctions against health care licensees, require increased public education surrounding the topic and extend criminal and civil statutes of limitations.

House Bills 4636-4637, sponsored by state Reps. Michele Hoitenga and Diana Farrington, respectively, Senate Bill 337, sponsored by state Sen. Margaret O’Brien, SB 368, sponsored by state Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, SB 338, sponsored by state Sen. Rick Jones, SB 369, sponsored by state Sen. Judy Emmons, HB 4638, sponsored by state Rep. Daire Rendon, HB 4639, sponsored by state Rep. Klint Kesto, HBs 4641-4642, sponsored by state Reps. Stephanie Chang and Pam Faris, respectively, HB 4661, sponsored by state Rep. Beth Griffin, and HB 4690, sponsored by state Rep. Bronna Kahle are now Public Acts 68-79 of 2017.

Snyder also signed two additional bills:

[…]

Senate Bill 410, sponsored by state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, allows for a health professional’s license or registration to be permanently revoked if the individual is convicted of female genital mutilation. It is now Public Act 81 of 2017.

For more information on this and other legislation, visit [the Michigan Legislature page.

Will they have to go abroad now to get these done? Let’s hope some visas get revoked.

Further details from this news story:

Continue reading →

The Crucial Role of Men

Posted on by

Another Right Angle video from Bill Whittle, this one called “Men Like These”.

I hope you are fortunate to know such men – I often see them in our comment section but they will go nameless should I inadvertently leave one out…but you guys don’t need my acknowledgment: you know who you are, even if you’ve never had to do something like this. Or don’t have to do it anymore.

Think of it as an early Fourth of July video, in honor of honorable men.

An Australian Jewel

Posted on by

Our Australian donors this quarter were generous. It’s hard to grasp how really far away y’all are, and how strange it is that the Anglosphere stretches so far. There is something special in the Oz character, brash and friendly. When I see Prince Harry, I think he ought to carve out a monarchy in Oz. Much more fitting than the rest of ’em.

I came across this street musician a few months ago: everyone ought to be as full of life, melody and happiness as he.

A thank you back to Oz for the quarterly:

A New Source for News of All Kinds

Posted on by

Drudge may be jumping the shark as the deliverer of conservative news. Many of his links lead to The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of whom are equally infamous, along with the rest of the American jornolism cabal for pushing scurrilous anonymous leaks. Drudge may well be losing his juice, but who wouldn’t after all the savagery he’s experienced?

Somewhere today I picked up this new outlet, called improbably, Whatfinger. Your guess is as good as mine. I presume the finger depends on the country.

I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it soon. A very busy page and it has a good feature: it only reloads when you do so. Meanwhile, perhaps when Drudge starts using conservative news sources, I’ll be a regular reader again. Slimes and WaPo and CNNNNN don’t make it as serious venues for people who think.

I’m subscribed to Black Pigeon’s channel, but I hadn’t seen this video until I found it at WF. It covers a great deal of international news in fourteen minutes. And we learn BP is a Canadian! Way to go, you maple syrups sippers.

[A disclaimer: I was conceived in Moose Jaw and often wish my parents had stayed in Toronto instead of moving to Florida. I would be a much nicer person, I’m sure. Canadians are essentially nice, being as the natives are often descended from the Loyalist DNA who left for the north when the American Revolution got serious.]

The Phenomenon of Peter Thiel’s Political Alignment

Posted on by

One of our commenters, DeriKuk, left a link to a clip of Peter Thiel’s speech to the National Press Club. To say the applause was lukewarm is putting it politely. Those inside-the-bubble people in Washington didn’t like, still don’t like, his firm support of Trump. Given his credentials as a gay Silicon Valley billionaire, coming out for Trump was a much bigger deal than his public outing as a gay man. Thus on several levels, Mr. Thiel is the ultimate outlier when it comes to Trump supporters.

The speech was given a week or so before the election. Listening to him speak in this clip, you’d think Trump had already been elected. Remember back then when all the ‘smart’ money was on Hillary?

Obviously, not all of the smart money was put on Hillary. Among other surprises, this endorsement by Mr Thiel was/is a biggie. He’s now a Trump advisor, which is extremely fortunate since Trump makes no bones about his techno-illiteracy. It’s a skill he needs in his staff, though. The ethos of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is rarefied. While Trump is obviously quite smart, he’s a bricks-and-mortar kind of guy. Too bad; Trump possesses a rapid learning curve for things that draw his attention. Being less a technophobe would widen his horizons.

Meanwhile Thiel has moved from being a cool gay Silicon Valley billionaire to being a demonized billionaire in the Trump camp. He probably doesn’t lose any sleep over the ignorance of those who impugn his motives and intelligence for coming out in favor of Trump. Some of the weirder parts of the West Coast bubble have suggested that Thiel’s “gay tag” be removed since he’s a traitor. The rigid herd mentality on the left is something to behold.

Thiel, like Trump, is fairly agnostic when it comes to politics. He appears to be mostly a politically conservative libertarian; they can be difficult to pigeonhole. The left/right, red/blue alignments have been overturned with this American election.
Continue reading →

Thanks for Mercies Past Received

Posted on by

This post is a confluence between Thanksgiving Day and the wrap-up of our Autumn Fundraiser.

The red bench in the photo above has now been dusted with snow — an adumbration of things to come, since our next fundraiser will be Winter 2017, sometime in the frigid days after the beginning of the new year.

We have a lot to be thankful for at the moment. Perhaps the single biggest cause for gratitude is that we won’t have eight years of President Hillary (or more likely, a year or so of the Empress, followed by ten years of Kommie Kaine) to look forward to. I also thank the Lord for the soon-to-be-realized opportunity to use the phrase “former President Obama”. What a pleasure that will be! It was a long eight years, but we made it.

And our just-completed bleg gives us ample additional reason to be thankful: despite the fact that Dymphna’s travails kept us from doing a fresh post every day, donors showed up with heartening regularity. It seems that the compact format of this fundraiser didn’t inhibit donations all that much, if at all.

So thank you all for showing up. And thank you also for contributing to the comments — that was another unexpected side effect of the unitary fundraiser: a far larger response than usual in the comments.

Below is the final list of places from which donations came (giving me the opportunity to show off my new software for breaking out Australian states and Canadian provinces).

Update Nov. 25 1:30pm: Alaska just sent in a gift, thereby adding another state to the list:

Stateside: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming

Near Abroad: Mexico

Far Abroad: Croatia, Germany, India, Israel, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Slovenia, Sweden, Thailand, and the UK

Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan

Australia: Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Western Australia

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The most apt description of the kind of fundraising we do here came up in the comments on a different post, a translated op-ed from Switzerland about the recent American presidential election. The comment in question was a response to another commenter named scherado, who had been addressing the author of the op-ed, Markus Somm:

Mr Somm, I appreciate your perspective.

I, the non-journalist, perceive that government by the people — parliamentary, constitutional, representative republic, and so on— can NOT function properly WITHOUT a proper press. You have stated very well the illness.

Will someone suggest the remedy, any remedy?

Our Israeli correspondent MC weighed in with a reply:

Continue reading →

“A Disaster Averted”

Posted on by

A lot of people are crying in their beer over the results of the American election. Our friend, Srdja Trifkovic, wrote on November 9th in Chronicles that it was “a disaster averted”. I couldn’t agree more. And those three words sum up why so many “Shy Trump Voters” turned out to upset the Clinton applecart.

Here’s part of his essay, with the important points bulleted for emphasis:

Last night’s divine surprise is important more for the many bad things that will not happen than for the good ones that may happen. That Donald Trump won in spite of his many blunders, and in spite of the mainstream media machine acting as an integral part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, indicates the magnitude of the elite-class debacle. Many disasters will be averted now.

  • The appointment of one, two, or even three Ruth Bader Sotomayor clones will not happen.
  • There will be no mass amnesty for the illegals.
  • The Clinton crime syndicate will no longer be able to operate with impunity, and its principals may face justice. […]
  • There will be no second-generation Clinton dynasts.
  • There will be no more mass pardons of hardened criminals.
  • There will be no more bowing before Saudi royal kleptocrats, and
  • no White House Iftar dinners with halal menus.
  • There will be no mass influx of Syrian “refugees.”
  • There will be no more “progressive projects” to erode the remnants of the Republic.
  • There will be no more trashing of white working Americans.
  • There will be no Humas in the Oval Office, no Nulands in the Cabinet and no Foundation donors in the anteroom.
  • Most importantly, there will be no meaningless wars in pursuit of hegemony for its own sake.

[What point do you consider most important in that list? I’m finding it difficult to pick a favorite, though the Supreme Court sends shivers through my very soul. America would have died. – D]

Srdja continues:

If Trump does remain staunch in his stated intent to reject the services of neocon “experts,” who are certain to start sending him their blood-soaked resumes, America will have a chance to become great again at home by acting as a satiated power abroad—like Rome under the Five Good Emperors, 19th century Britain, or the German Kaiserreich under Bismarck. That would mean that the United States would finally cease to be the major cause of instability and tension in today’s world, as it has been for the past quarter-century.

There will be no games of chicken with Russia, no U.S.-declared and enforced “no-fly zone” in Syria—to which Hillary was fully committed, in spite of the obvious risk of causing a nuclear war—and no covert help for any jihadists (aka “moderate rebels”) anywhere.

There will be no escalation with Beijing over some shoals in the South China Sea, no reckless attempts to make frozen post-Soviet conflicts hot again, and no interventions to force Bosnia’s unification and thus complete “the unfinished business in the Balkans” (Hillary Clinton at her Senate confirmation hearing, February 2009).

Continue reading →

Good News for a Change

Posted on by

I’m not posting all of this news item, but I’ll guarantee you’ll want to follow the link. It’s good news for a change. Let’s take a moment off from looking at the harsh reality we see all the time. Instead, let’s have us some genuine social justice without a SJW in sight.

[That specious term is a redundancy since all of it – justice and injustice – is surely “social” in nature. That’s why the easily offended had to come up with a phrase signifying their exquisitely special ability to self-generate hurt feelings. Fragile flowers need delicate handling if they’re to make it through life without puddling the floor at the sight of a Bully.]

Enjoy the story:

Standing before Judge Lou Olivera was a retired Special Forces Green Beret sergeant who was in Cumberland County veterans court on April 12 for violating probation.

“Every two weeks we go to veterans court, and my urinalysis test had come back positive,” Joe Serna, 41, says. “I denied it at first.”

But Serna later came clean and told the judge he had been dishonest with the court.

Olivera sentenced Serna to a night in lockup and told him to report back to court the next day for incarceration.

Olivera had hoped to have Serna serve his time in a holding cell at the Fayetteville Police Department, but Chief Harold Medlock told the judge the cell is now used for storage.

“But I’m friends with the chief of police in Lumberton and called him, and he said he would call the Sheriff’s Office and they were willing to do it,” Medlock says.

Serna reported for his punishment, where he was met by the judge.

“When Joe first came to turn himself in, he was trembling,” says Olivera, a veteran, too, who served in the Gulf War. “I decided that I’d spend the night serving with him.”

And down Interstate 95 south, the judge drove this nervous veteran.

“Where are we going, judge?” Serna asked.

“We’re going to turn ourselves in,” Olivera said.

“He said he was going to stay with me,” Serna said. “I couldn’t process a judge being my cellmate.

“They take me to the cell, and I’m sitting on my bunk. And, then, in walks the judge.

[…]

This is from the Fayetteville (North Carolina) local paper.

Be sure to read through to the end. Get yourself some feel-good endorphins…
Continue reading →