In his Aug. 20 speech accepting the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Joe Biden repeated his central charge against Donald Trump: that the president of the United States said that neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists are “very fine people.”
“Remember the violent clash that ensued between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it?” Biden said, referring to the repulsive and tragic events in Charlottesville three summers ago.
“Remember what the president said? There were quote, ‘very fine people on both sides.’ It was a wake-up call for us as a country. And for me, a call to action. At that moment, I knew I’d have to run.”
Biden’s announcement <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbOU2fTg6cI">video</a> in April 2019 focused on the “very fine people” charge, and he brought it up in his first event with running mate Kamala Harris on Aug. 12. And maybe he has mentioned it publicly many more times than I’m aware of during his campaign.
Trump’s awful comment is, according to Joe Biden, the reason he is running for the presidency.
But it’s complete, absolute, unreserved bullsh*t.
And not the type of harmless bullsh*t that politicians say to get elected.
Biden’s “very fine people” charge is a dangerous, divisive, and deliberate tool of propaganda and misinformation.
But but but Donald Trump lies all the time!
 So let’s make room in our head for these two thoughts: Donald Trump tells lies, and Joe Biden’s campaign is based on a huge lie.
The. Lie. That Donald Trump called the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people.”
He didn’t. Explicitly didn’t. In fact, he clearly and undeniably condemned them.
If you’re certain that I’m wrong, if you know that you watched a video where Donald Trump said the torch-carrying racist a**holes in Charlottesville have some “very fine people,” I promise that you are incorrect.
Read the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662">transcript</a> of Trump’s press conference after Charlottesville. You will see that what he said is not what Joe Biden says he said.
Trump said, “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.” Fifty seconds later (I watched an unedited <a href="https://youtu.be/JmaZR8E12bs?t=65">video</a>) he says, “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally, but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.”
This is obviously more nuanced than Biden’s characterization. It’s the opposite.
According to Trump’s comments, it’s fair to say that in his understanding there was one group that opposed taking down Confederate statues and one group that supported it. Both groups had some “very fine people” and some very bad people (neo-Nazis and violent Antifa members).
Perhaps Trump’s understanding of who was at the rally and how it played out was mistaken, but that’s not what Biden is basing his run for the presidency on. The motive for his campaign is to beat the “very fine people on both sides” guy.
So why do I care?
I don’t vote for presidential tickets anymore, so I feel less invested politically than I have in previous elections. But Biden’s lie especially bothers me because it makes Americans hate each other.
Millions of people believe the lie that people who vote for Trump – a lot of people – want a president who condones Nazis. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination or a suspension of logic to see why that belief creates hatred, or how it leads to violence.
Joe Biden said in his acceptance speech, “Let us begin – you and I together, one nation, under God – united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.”
Unity and love. That’s Biden’s pitch. But the big Charlottesville lie makes unity and love impossible.
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Joe Biden

SICHEL: The Big Charlottesville Lie

2020 Election

Donald Trump

Is the United States, at any level of government, trying to get daily life for Americans back to normal as quickly as possible? Because it doesn’t look like it.
Canada, Germany, France, and Britain – comparable, advanced Western nations who were also caught unprepared – have broadly reopened and new daily cases and new daily deaths are trending down.
In the U.S., concern over rising cases* is leading to reinstituting lockdowns (California), rolling back re-openings (Texas), and generally slowing down the crawl towards normalcy.
Our public health more closely resembles Brazil and Mexico than Canada or England, which, sorry Brazil and Mexico, is a red flag.
What’s the big deal, you may be asking. The more cases we have, the closer we are to herd immunity.
But I think aiming for herd immunity is likely the wrong way to think about our current problem. You can read more about that <a href="https://twitter.com/thejaredsichel/status/1283555647858946050?s=20">here</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/tatereeves/status/1282783825219682304">here</a>.
The status quo, though, is also unacceptable. I’ve been severely critical of the lockdowns from the beginning (see <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-how-much-damage-are-the-lockdowns-causing">here</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-either-we-wait-for-a-vaccine-or-we-turn-the-lights-on-now">here</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sichel-before-you-have-an-opinion-on-coronavirus-ask-yourself-these-questions">here</a>). There is no economic or social predictability right now. Open up with tons of restrictions, more infections, lock down again, wait, wait, wait, open up again. And on and on. It’s Groundhog Day governance, and it gets harder and harder to maintain because we become fatigued and resigned.
When lockdowns end, cases rise dramatically – even with social distancing and masks – until there’s another lockdown. It buys time, but not much else.
What if we had a plan that allowed society to be mostly or even entirely normal, that kept new daily case counts very low, that got easier and easier to maintain over time, and would, at worst, require occasional moderate restrictions, but nothing like what we’ve experienced since March?
The <a href="https://medium.com/@yochananrivkin/we-are-failing-at-covid-19-but-we-can-easily-succeed-321814f8bd18">idea</a> I’m going to throw out there is not mine. It’s from a smart friend, and I can’t un-see it.
The only science-y concept you need to know to understand this plan is Rt. That measures how transmissible the virus is in any given area. Rt can go up or down, depending on many factors, one of which is social distancing. When Rt is above 1, the virus spreads quickly. When it’s below 1, it dies quickly.
To illustrate how close we could be to getting rid of COVID-19 in California, and in every state really: if California reduces Rt from its current estimate 1.05 to 0.50, and keeps it around 0.50, the virus could be completely gone by Labor Day. That math also works for Florida and Texas.
That’s less of a reduction in transmissibility than California had from March to April during its first lockdown. So it’s doable.
But for this to work, California, and every state, needs to be able to prevent the virus from spreading again when restrictions are eased.
How?
A voluntary, cash-incentive program that encourages everyone who was recently in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 to get tested right away, and to voluntarily self-quarantine until they receive a negative test result. This would need to include an abundance of test kits and enough lab infrastructure and techs so that results can be processed and communicated quickly, ideally within 24 hours.
The federal government would need to underwrite this – billions of dollars for the cash incentives, for the testing infrastructure, and for a huge public messaging campaign. Billions of dollars is nothing when the economic cost of shutting down every few weeks is trillions of dollars.
And this wouldn’t be a band aid, like Congress’s $2 trillion CARES Act. It could be a solution.
Here’s how one version of this could work: Let’s say I saw a friend yesterday. Today, he tells me that two nights ago he was at a bar, and the bar just posted on Instagram that one of its patrons two nights ago tested positive for COVID-19. My friend says he tested positive, and that he was paid $30 to test, and will be paid $30 for each day he quarantines until a test result comes back negative, and another $10 if I get a test.
I get a test, get paid $30, stay home the next day to wait for results, another $30, test comes back positive, I’m home for two weeks, making $30 a day, and another $10 for every possibly infected contact of mine who gets tested.
How would a local government know if someone who tested positive is self-quarantining? Each city or state could devise its own plan. Maybe set up comfortable quarantine hotels where people could voluntarily live for a couple weeks. Give people the option of downloading an app. Or just trust people to do the right thing.
Would some people scam the system? Of course. The CARES Act will likely pay out billions of dollars in fraudulent claims. There’s always fraud.
But Americans are eager for life to return to normal. Most people who test positive would self-quarantine. Most people would not scam the system. And as positive tests trend down, there would be fewer opportunities for fraud, anyways. Also, this idea doesn’t require 100% compliance to work. As long as enough infected people test early and quarantine early, the virus could quickly die out.
There would need to be tons of PSAs, all over TV, podcasts, internet. Everywhere. Runny nose? Get tested, stay home for a day or two, let your close contacts know, we’ll pay you. We’ll pay them. Something like that.
If enough people who should test and self-quarantine do so early, and if you could sufficiently reduce Rt – maybe with no restrictions, maybe with modest restrictions – maybe the virus goes away and stays away, if you don’t let up.
You don’t have to cut off every infection, not even close. You just have to cut off enough to keep Rt low. And every infection you prevent through voluntary testing, contact-tracing, and self-quarantine – voluntary inconveniences that make you money –  is one less infection you need to cut off through masks, social distancing, and lockdowns – forced restrictions that harm society. And as cases get lower and lower, maintaining this type of program gets easier and easier.
But right now, there are lots of reasons to not get tested even if you probably should. Los Angeles promises free tests to anyone who wants. I know someone who was tested two weeks ago and still has not received the result. And that was after having to wait three days to even schedule a test that was a 30-minute drive away and took two hours to complete.
Meanwhile <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/quarantine.html">CDC guidelines</a> advise anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19 to self-quarantine for 14 days, even if they test negative.
Yes, <a href="https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-1495#s1-M201495">false negatives</a> are definitely a thing. So on an individual level, the prudent thing to do, especially if you’re in close contact with someone who’s at-risk, may be to self-quarantine even if you test negative.
But at a societal level, in the real-world, if you want tons of people who should get tested to get tested quickly, make it easy and give them money.
None of this involves coercion or Chinese-style tracer phone apps. It is entirely voluntary, and thus American.
If something like this idea worked in Los Angeles (or anywhere), we could maybe have Dodgers games, concerts, and no masks in 7 or 8 weeks.
And if we kept the system going, the government could spot a possible outbreak before it got too late. Maybe close down large gatherings for a week or two, and then open back up. Nothing nearly as destructive as what has happened since March, and what will continue to happen unless we pivot or get lucky.
Could something like this idea be the quickest path to a full re-opening? Maybe. And it doesn’t violate our basic liberties. The same can’t be said for the diktats issued since March by so many power-drunk and clueless governors and mayors.
What we’re doing now is not working. We have to try something new. As California locks down again, and as more states move in that direction, there’s an opportunity to do something useful with this bought time, there’s an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that daily case counts could be very low within a few weeks – there could be an opportunity to set up a program that would minimize the likelihood of a third lockdown.
And the White House and federal government need to step up. States and cities don’t have the resources to build something like this.
Our leaders owe us a credible plan that could make America look like America again. If they don’t offer one soon, it may not.
***
In the U.S., for the past two weeks, every day there have been between 40,000 and 60,000 new confirmed cases, which, because we catch probably somewhere between 1 out of 3 and 1 out of 5 infections, translates to something like 120,000 – 180,000 infections daily (using the 1 out of 3 ratio). This is far lower than the likely peaks in March and April, which were probably something like 400,000 new infections every day. But still not great.
Disclaimer: Every number referenced in this article except for current and past confirmed cases and deaths is based on current best estimates, and thus subject to change.
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Re-opening Continues Across Densely Populated New York And New Jersey Areas

SICHEL: We Need To Solve COVID. Here’s An American Idea.

Coronavirus

COVID-19

Economy

Coronavirus newspaper headline montage

How Much Damage Have The Covid Lockdowns Caused? Their Impact On Poverty, Hunger & Health

Vaccine

SICHEL: Either We Wait For A Vaccine, Or We Turn The Lights On Now

Most Americans fall into one of three groups when it comes to the surreal coronavirus event we are experiencing.
The first group believes we need to lock nearly everything down except essentials and wait it out until we’ve “bent the curve.”
The second group believes the virus is not the threat public officials have made it out to be, and that we should more or less go about our normal lives as we do during every flu season.
The third group, myself included, believes that the virus poses a serious threat: to at-risk Americans and possibly to the capacity of our intensive care system. But I think that our current response poses a major threat to our way of life, and to millions of Americans’ economic lives, in ways not considered by most people who feel, for now, economically secure.
I believe that the first group should not just consider the cost of under-reacting, but also the cost of over-reacting. I fear that America has decided to enter uncharted territory – instantly and fundamentally transforming the daily economic lives of tens of millions of people is a high-risk experiment – without first asking basic questions or considering likely costs.
“Better safe than sorry” is not a plan. It is not even true when “safe” is more damaging than “sorry.”
I also believe the cost of under-reacting could be high. Italy’s medical system has apparently been overwhelmed. Would the same happen here if we did not react strongly and swiftly enough? Maybe, and we should take reasonable precautions against that possibility, like social distancing and abundant washing of hands.
Not even public health experts agree with one another, as we’ve seen different countries, from South Korea to Denmark to the United Kingdom all take varying approaches. Further, public health experts, in this context, are knowledgeable about how a virus can impact a population, but they have nothing to say about how an economic recession or depression brought on by our response to the virus could impact a population. It is the job of elected government officials to weigh all the costs and benefits – both health and economic – of all possible actions.
Here are some questions that I hope everyone, particularly elected officials, are asking:
1. To those who support cities shutting down businesses or even ordering residents to shelter in place, as San Francisco has done, do you acknowledge just how much pain this will create in many people’s lives? At what point of economic pain would you say we are going too far? You agree there is a point at which the government is going too far to save one life, or even a thousand lives.
After all, you don’t think all speed limits should be 10 MPH, except for emergency vehicles.
Where is that point for you in this situation? How bad will the economy – and thus people’s lives – have to get?
2. As I understand it, the worst-case scenario, at least in the West, is something like what Italy is experiencing: too many elderly people getting the virus in a compact period of time, stretching the medical system past its breaking point. In the U.S., then, why isn’t the top priority to specifically protect older Americans? Why isn’t the loudest message from government officials for seniors to self-quarantine, as it appears to be in the United Kingdom? Wouldn’t a measure like this better address the “bend the curve” challenge than telling the entire population to stay inside, thus shutting down the economy?
3. Is there a plan? If there is, what is it? How and when will we know if the plan is working? If the plan is to manage COVID-19’s spread in order to protect the medical system, how will shutting down cities for a few weeks or months meaningfully help? What will happen when life returns towards normalcy? Won’t the virus return with a vengeance when life begins to return to normal? Then, won’t we be in the same position we are now, only poorer and thus less equipped to handle a medical crisis?
4. I know you are not allowed to use the word “flu” in this discussion, but: The H1N1 swine flu broke out in the United States in spring 2009. By the end of that pandemic, about a year later, the CDC says the swine flu “caused 60.8 million illnesses, 273,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths in the U.S.” Those numbers marked the end of that pandemic. We are still at the beginning of COVID-19, so the numbers are not apples to apples. But in the beginning of H1N1, did we react nearly as severely as we are reacting now to COVID-19? Why not? I suspect one reason is because we have seen Italy’s medical system become overwhelmed by COVID-19. If that is the main reason, is shutting down our economy the right way to try to avoid that situation? Why is our reaction to COVID-19, seven weeks since the first U.S. case, so disproportionately severe compared to our reaction to the swine flu seven weeks in? Or is it not disproportionate? It’s a fair question.
***
Perhaps the most uncomfortable truth about this is that we have to accept that COVID-19 is now a part of our life, that many or most of us will get it at some point, that it will kill some of us, as every disease does, that the only way to avoid it would be to shut down our economy, and that we are not willing to pay that price.  At least, I hope we are not.
When we begin to re-normalize life, whenever that inevitable day comes, people will die as a result.
Yes, that is tragic.
Also, remember, before COVID-19, we went to restaurants, concerts, and ballgames knowing that leaving our houses meant we faced a higher risk of death from disease, car accidents, and crime.
Until we know how dangerous COVID-19 is, until we can safely say that it is another one of many diseases that will come and go every year with fairly predictable results, we – especially seniors and people who are at-risk – must be vigilant.
But there is a fine line between vigilance and whatever you call what we are doing now, the costs of which I predict we will regret.

Store Closed

SICHEL: Before You Have An Opinion On Coronavirus, Ask Yourself These Questions

Why Do Christians Love Israel? What I Learned.

Bible

Catholic Church

Christianity

Democratic Party

Israel

Jerusalem

Jesus Christ

Jews

Judaism

There may be no such thing as a new idea, to paraphrase Mark Twain, but there are new insights into old ideas. 
Enter Dennis Prager&#8217;s, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rational-Bible-Exodus-Dennis-Prager/dp/1621577724" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Rational Bible: Exodus</a>, the inaugural work of what will be his five volumes of commentary on the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.
While Genesis precedes Exodus, Prager began with the second book because, as he notes in his introduction, &#8220;Exodus contains the Ten Commandments, the most important moral code in world history.&#8221;
And if the Torah wants its readers to know one thing, it is that &#8220;God&#8217;s essence is goodness.&#8221; More than anything He wants from us moral behavior. Prager cites Exodus 33:18, when Moses asks God to &#8220;let me behold Your Presence.&#8221; God responds, &#8220;I will make all My goodness pass before you.&#8221;
&#8220;That God chooses to define Himself as good constitutes one of the most important statements in the entire Bible,&#8221; Prager writes, adding an idea that may not sit well among many believers and non-believers alike. &#8220;God does not say, &#8216;I will make my love pass before you.&#8217; In fact, the expression, &#8216;God is love,&#8217; is not to be found in the Hebrew Bible.&#8221; 
Most fans know Prager through his five-minute PragerU videos, his nationally-syndicated radio show, his appearances on CNN and Fox News, and his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Serious-Problem-Nature-Repair/dp/0060987359/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1529001751&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=happiness+is+a+serious+problem+by+dennis+prager" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Happiness Is a Serious Problem</a>. (Full disclosure: I worked for Dennis as a writer for PragerU, and before that as an intern for his radio show in college. I&#8217;m grateful to count him as a friend and teacher.)
Before Prager became a household name, he was known around Los Angeles for Religion on the Line, a popular radio show where he invited on clergy of different faiths to discuss the Big Questions for three hours on Saturday evenings and five hours on Sunday evenings. He also ran the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, American Jewish University&#8217;s educational retreat outside Los Angeles.
But Prager&#8217;s fundamental ability to understand and explain the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, comes from his childhood. Growing up in Brooklyn, Prager was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family and studied full-time in a yeshiva (a Jewish seminary for boys) until college. He&#8217;s fluent in Biblical Hebrew, an invaluable asset in unlocking profound Torah wisdoms that one can only find by reading it in its original language.
An example: the Sixth Commandment, &#8220;You shall not murder,&#8221; is widely mistranslated as &#8220;You shall not kill&#8221; &#8212; which, if accurate, would directly contradict the Torah&#8217;s command, in the very same section, to execute murderers. It would also mean that God, who killed every firstborn son in Egypt, drowned the Egyptian army, and directly intervened in battle for the Jews on multiple occasions, violated his own commands. 
&#8220;Hebrew, like English,&#8221; Prager explains, &#8220;has two words for taking a life: harog (&#8216;kill&#8217;) and ratzach (&#8216;murder&#8217;). The Sixth Commandment uses ratzach.&#8221;
Americans have been so influenced by the Bible historically that even the political left, which tends to not appeal to the Bible&#8217;s moral authority, will sometimes use a mistranslation if it advances an agenda. Thus one can find people at anti-capital punishment rallies holding &#8220;Thou shalt not kill&#8221; signs.
Prager&#8217;s agenda in writing this commentary is, he says, for &#8220;as many people as possible to take the Torah seriously, to entertain the possibility it is God-given, or, at the very least, to understand why so many rational people do.&#8221; 
Over the years I&#8217;ve heard Dennis say publicly that if one had to summarize the mission of his life&#8217;s work, it is to explain to as many people as possible that the goodness and the greatness of America and the West flows from its foundational embrace of Biblical thought and its belief in ethical monotheism &#8212; the belief that there is one God whose primary desire is for people to treat each other morally. 
America&#8217;s, and especially Europe&#8217;s, increasing secularization, then, will diminish what has made the West exceptionally free, prosperous, and decent. 
&#8220;The lack of wisdom&#8212;certainly in America and the rest of the West&#8212;is directly related to the decline in biblical literacy,&#8221; Prager writes. &#8220;In the American past, virtually every home, no matter how poor, owned a Bible. It was the primary vehicle by which parents passed wisdom on to their children.&#8221;
This wisdom, which most people take for granted, was in fact introduced to the world by the Torah three millennia ago. Its moral assertions were &#8220;revolutionary and transformative&#8221; at the time. As Prager notes, &#8220;It is revolutionary in its removal of all sexuality from God and from religion; in its removal of all sexuality from the family (in contrast to Egypt, where Egyptian royalty preferred and practiced incest); in its demand to love one&#8217;s neighbor as oneself; in demanding repeatedly that we love and safeguard the stranger who resides among us; and in forbidding the rape of women during wartime.&#8221;
The irony of secular humanism is that it asserts that human rights are universal and valid without God, even though universal human rights are a Biblical invention. After all, if humans aren&#8217;t created in God&#8217;s image and thus fundamentally equal, and if God doesn&#8217;t command us to treat each other well, the call to universal human rights has no more logical validity than &#8220;might makes right.&#8221;
A central implication of The Rational Bible is this: It&#8217;s the Bible&#8217;s world. We&#8217;re just living in it.
While Prager&#8217;s intended audience may be Biblical skeptics &#8212; and for them I couldn&#8217;t more highly recommend The Rational Bible &#8212; believers will find ideas they&#8217;ve never seen; ideas original to Prager and drawn from some of Prager&#8217;s influences, including Biblical scholars Nahum Sarna, Everett Fox, and Jewish philosophical giants like Maimonides.
On Exodus 1:8: &#8220;A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph,&#8221; Prager notes, &#8220;Given that Joseph&#8217;s role in Egyptian history was so profound, the words &#8216;who did not know Joseph&#8217; are extraordinary.&#8221;
Pharaoh forgot that Joseph&#8217;s foresight and ingenuity saved Egypt from famine and starvation. Pharaoh was ungrateful because he was forgetful. 
Citing writer Bruce Feller, Prager writes: &#8220;Moses&#8217;s goal is to build a counter-Egypt . . . to construct a society that offers an alternative to ignorance and unknowingness. He must devise a community that remembers.&#8221;
Memory has been a central theme of Jewish practice since Sinai. On Passover and in daily prayers Jews remember that God took them out of Egypt; on Rosh Hashanah Jews remember that God created the world; on Shavuot Jews remember that God gave them the Torah.
On Exodus 1:17: &#8220;The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live,&#8221; Prager writes: &#8220;Fear of God is a liberating emotion, freeing one from a disabling fear of evil, powerful people. This needs to be emphasized because many people see fear of God as onerous rather than liberating.&#8221;
What most draws people to Prager, in my view, is that he simplifies the complex. In an age where Smart People like college professors get tenure for complicating the simple, this is no small thing. 
I&#8217;ve found that many commentaries on the Torah, while excellent if you&#8217;re looking for an intense, deep dive exploration of an idea, too often skip past its simplest and in some ways most profound messages. The ones that laid the groundwork for the world we live in.
The Torah stigmatizes slavery &#8212; a pre-Biblical universal norm &#8212; but does not ban it outright. Detractors of the Bible see this as a gotcha!, but miss the point: they have the luxury of being born into a culture that takes it for granted that slavery is evil only because the Torah condemned it over 3,300 years ago.
&#8220;In general, though not always, the moral precedes the legal,&#8221; Prager writes. &#8220;First you teach people what is right and wrong, then they eventually put the teaching into law.&#8221;
Readers of The Rational Bible will also notice that Prager addresses sections from the Torah that, to be honest, can make the eyes glaze over. The sacrifices, the construction of the Tabernacle, and other ritual items that are easy to dismiss as odd or even objectionable.
But, he adds, &#8220;It is essential to remember the Torah, while eternal in its values, first had to be intelligible and create a moral revolution in the late Bronze Age.&#8221;
On sacrifices, Prager, citing Sarna, writes that sacrificing Egypt&#8217;s gods is &#8220;analogous to people in totalitarian states gathering to publicly smash statues of the dictator.&#8221;
On the detailed instructions of building the tabernacle, Prager writes, citing Rabbi Saul Berman, &#8220;By listing the precise specifications for the Tabernacle in a document accessible to every person, the officials couldn&#8217;t later claim more material was required than was recorded.&#8221;
On the placing of the Ten Commandments in the ark, the holiest part of the Tabernacle, Prager observes, &#8220;It is a physical representation of a major Torah teaching: the holy protects the ethical.&#8221; A truth reflected in the <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">well-documented</a> deterioration of the Conservative and Reform denominations of Judaism, which, unlike Orthodox Judaism, de-emphasize Jewish ritual law.
And then there are the ideas found in The Rational Bible that are simply beautiful, and tragic. Why, Prager asks, are Moses&#8217; sons paid scant attention to by the Torah? Far less attention than Aaron&#8217;s sons, Nadab and Abihu?
Prager believes the Torah is commenting on the price of being the child of a great man, one of which is that, to quote Rabbi Harold Kushner, &#8220;It takes so much of a man&#8217;s [the father&#8217;s] time and energy to be a great man&#8212;great in some ways but not in all&#8212;that he has too little time left to be a father.&#8221;
The Rational Bible is a standout addition to the Bible commentary market, which, one would think, has plumbed the depths.
Prager&#8217;s exploration of the Bible&#8217;s surface shows that we have no idea how deep God&#8217;s word goes.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Rational Bible’, by Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Egypt

United States

Marco Rubio, James Comey, the White House Correspondents&#8217; Association.
These are but a few of the people and institutions who, in trying to discredit Donald Trump, have managed only to disgrace themselves. 
It&#8217;s one of the most striking phenomena of the Trump era: not only do attacks on him not stick, they rebound on the attacker. 
Call it the <a href="http://politicaldictionary.com/words/teflon-coated-presidency/">Teflon</a> boomerang presidency.
Donald Trump has &#8220;small hands,&#8221; Rubio quipped at a February 2016 rally. &#8220;And you know what they say about men with small hands.&#8221; 
Two weeks later Rubio conceded defeat, and exited the race.
Trump&#8217;s face is &#8220;slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles,&#8221; wrote Comey, who was the previous head of the FBI, in his tell-all high school memoir.
&#8220;Donald Trump is contagious,&#8221; The Washington Post&#8217;s Karen Tumulty correctly observed. &#8220;He turns everyone he touches into Donald Trump. Now he has done it to James B. Comey.&#8221;
&#8220;Like a porn star says when about to have sex with Trump: let&#8217;s get this over with,&#8221; said comedian Michelle Wolf as she opened her performance at the White House Correspondents&#8217; dinner on April 28.
Two days later, a news headline in The New York Times read, &#8220;Did Michelle Wolf Kill the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner?&#8221;
So, how has Donald Trump managed to withstand relentless attacks from the most accomplished and capable Democrats, Republicans, journalists, comedians &#8212; everyone?
There&#8217;s likely more than one answer.
With Rubio, the senator disgraced himself in the purest sense of the word. Here was a polite, well-spoken, honorable senator, who decided to speak like a rude, crass, boorish reality TV star. In dissing Trump, Rubio violated the public image of himself that he himself had constructed. 
Trump has no such problem because the image he has crafted is one of a rude, crass, boorish reality TV star. It&#8217;s what we expect, so we&#8217;re not surprised, or even particularly unsettled when he acts in character.
Anti-Trump news coverage at outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, has, I believe, also had a Rubio effect. These mainstream outlets have long told Americans that they are objective, neutral, and just interested in the facts &#8212; character claims that they&#8217;ve violated in their undeniable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/09/12/study-91-percent-of-recent-network-trump-coverage-has-been-negative/">zeal</a> to discredit the president.
Comey, like Rubio, violated the public image of himself that he built over decades. A G-Man with integrity of the highest order cannot imitate Donald Trump and still have integrity. Pick one.
But what about the cases of Steve Bannon, Jeff Flake, and the NFL? None of them, in their showdowns with Trump, lost because of a dissonance between their actions and their carefully constructed public image. 
Before Bannon told &#8220;journalist&#8221; Michael Wolff, &#8220;They&#8217;re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,&#8221; the public already saw him as a calculating, even conniving, political operative.
And yet, we&#8217;ve barely heard from Bannon since. One reason, particular to Bannon, is that his notoriety was directly related to having Trump&#8217;s ear. No ear, no PR. Also, Bannon drew first blood. This gave Trump, in the public&#8217;s mind, full rights to hit back. And hit back he did.
Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/03/politics/trump-statement-steve-bannon/index.html">counter-attack</a> was devastating, savage, and final. He is a schoolyard brawler, and he knows how to cripple his opponents, how to strike where it hurts most.
Which is what he did to the NFL. Trump picked a fight with one of the richest and most beloved institutions in America, and he <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2018/05/23/nfl-national-anthem-policy-kneeling-protest/637050002/">won</a> because he dictated the terms: the American flag, something most Americans and most NFL fans care about even more than football.
It was a winning issue.
Finally, there&#8217;s the Jeff Flake strategy. There may be no more vocal Republican critic of the president in Congress. But his outspokenness is his weakness, and that of so many of the Defenders Of Democracy&#8482; crew &#8212; Democrats and #NeverTrump conservatives alike. 
They just sound so . . . breathless, even whiny. 
&#8220;It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies,&#8221; Flake said on the Senate floor in January, referring to Trump tweeting that the &#8220;FAKE NEWS&#8221; New York Times, NBC, ABC, CNN, and CBS are &#8220;the enemy of the American people.&#8221;
Flake&#8217;s hyperbolic speech ended with a hymn from Mormon missionary John Jacques:
<blockquote>
Then say, what is truth? &#8216;Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o&#8217;er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth&#8217;s fountains burst.
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal&#8230; unchanged&#8230; evermore.
</blockquote>
Eye-roll. With enemies like this, Trump doesn&#8217;t need allies.
So, if fighting dirty backfired on Rubio and the press, if <a href="https://resistancehole.clickhole.com/">waxing philosophical</a> makes the public ignore the #Resistance and #NeverTrump, if the president preemptively strikes vulnerable targets and, when attacked first, has the public&#8217;s green light to counterstrike, who can win a cage fight against Donald Trump?
Donald Trump.
He is his only consistently successful opponent. 
His crass <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/trump-attacks-mccain-i-like-people-who-werent-captured-120317">joke</a> about John McCain during the campaign, his <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-keeps-up-attacks-on-judge-gonzalo-curiel-1464911442">saying</a> Judge Gonzalo Curiel&#8217;s &#8220;Mexican heritage&#8221; presented a conflict, his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/us/politics/donald-trump-khizr-khan-wife-ghazala.html">criticism</a> of Khizr Khan. These hurt Trump.
Americans like a fighter. But they don&#8217;t like a bully. And Trump looks like one when he picks the wrong target or punches too hard, or both.
The president&#8217;s opponents would do well to follow the advice Corey Lewandowski gave to Republicans: 
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Let-Trump-Be-Inside-Presidency/dp/1546083308">Let Trump be Trump</a>. 
It&#8217;s how he keeps winning. If his story ends as a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/04/30/donald-trump-tragic-hero/">tragic hero&#8217;s</a> would, it&#8217;s also how he&#8217;ll lose.

SICHEL: Can Anyone Other Than Donald Trump Defeat Donald Trump?

Corey Lewandowski

Fake News

Fox News

James Comey

Jeff Flake

The Department of Veteran Affairs isn&#8217;t just in need of more doctors, nurses, and medical personnel. Someone over there needs to call an exterminator &#8212; right now.
The best example of U.K.-style, government-run healthcare on this side of the pond has humiliated itself again, as CBS Los Angeles investigative reporter David Goldstein <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/05/01/va-hospital-flies-surgeries/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">revealed</a> Tuesday. Goldstein reported that the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center has cancelled or postponed dozens of surgeries due to a fly infestation. That&#8217;s right: a fly infestation in a hospital.
From November 2016 to this February, operating rooms were closed for 22 days, which led to 83 cancelled or delayed surgeries.
Goldstein&#8217;s secret cameras inside the hospital showed that what may look like green decorative lights in the halls and operating rooms are actually fly traps. He said there are more than 200 such fly traps throughout the facility.
Brian Brown, curator of entomology at the LA Museum of Natural History, said the Phorid flies &#8220;are attracted to open wounds for the fluids that they need to sustain themselves and also to keep from drying out.
&#8220;They could also lay eggs on the open wounds,&#8221; Brown said.
Dr. Christian Head, a head and neck surgeon at the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center, told Goldstein that some of the veterans whose surgeries have been cancelled &#8220;may have been waiting four, five weeks, or sometimes longer.&#8221;
&#8220;This is a continuation of delayed care for veterans,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t believe there&#8217;s any hospital in this country that would find it acceptable to have flies on a routine basis.&#8221;
Well, there&#8217;s at least one.

The VA Hospital In L.A. Has Cancelled 83 Surgeries Due To A Fly Infestation In Operating Rooms

Department of Veterans Affairs

Health Care

Veterans

Veterans Affairs (VA)

Philadelphia was home to two of the past week&#8217;s biggest stories, two utterly contrasting events that illustrate how America is at once reactionary and hysterical even as ordinary Americans remain stirringly brave.
First, at a Starbucks last Thursday, police <a href="https://twitter.com/missydepino/status/984539713016094721">arrested</a> two black men who were occupying a table but &#8212; the store manager told a 911 operator &#8212; hadn&#8217;t made a purchase. The men <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/29621/two-black-men-arrested-philly-starbucks-break-james-barrett">said</a> they were waiting for a friend to discuss a potential real estate deal. That part of their story appears to add up, and it&#8217;s possible that, even if the men were technically trespassing according to that store&#8217;s policy, the manager overreacted by calling 911. 
And yet, businesses have the right to enforce reasonable rules, particularly when non-paying customers may be taking a table where paying customers would sit. Plus, the men themselves said on Good Morning America that they refused to make a purchase even when the manager said they need to buy something or leave. So, it&#8217;s not as simple a situation as Twitter makes it out to be.
Not surprisingly, the video of the arrest went viral, and #BoycottStarbucks trended.
The company&#8217;s executive team then flew from Seattle to Philadelphia for a damage-control tour.
CEO Kevin Johnson said that he has &#8220;no doubt&#8221; that the store manager who called 911 did so because the two men are black. On Tuesday he announced that on May 29 Starbucks would close all of its 8,000 nationwide company-owned locations and subject 175,000 employees to &#8220;racial-bias education,&#8221; a euphemism for &#8220;sensitivity training,&#8221; a euphemism for &#8220;how to not say or do anything that may get us sued.&#8221;
Executive Chairman Howard Schultz said that &#8220;what occurred was reprehensible at every single level.&#8221; He <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c-af13iE06JDKO9jaDvW6z83srLq_i8gSm1K1aNNCUM/edit">told</a> CBS News&#8217; Gayle King, &#8220;I was sick to my stomach,&#8221; adding that &#8220;the level of unconscious bias that exists in America&#8221; is &#8220;systemic.&#8221;
And, to ensure that no one misses how woke he is, Schultz acknowledged guilt for an incident he played no part in and that we still don&#8217;t fully understand (still no statement from the manager &#8212; who&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/29557/philadelphia-starbucks-customer-supposedly-racist-ben-shapiro">apparently a progressive</a> &#8212; and no surveillance footage).
&#8220;I personally am responsible,&#8221; a grovelling Schultz confessed pathetically. 
Of course, not responsible enough to leave the company, as the manager has done, &#8220;pending an investigation by Starbucks,&#8221; a spokesperson <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/starbucks-arrests-ceo-apology-philadelphia-protests-kevin-johnson-20180416.html">told</a> The Philadelphia Inquirer.
On the same day as Schultz&#8217;s and Johnson&#8217;s mea culpa, 32,500 feet in the skies above Pennsylvania, not far from the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce, a story about the other America &#8212; the courageous, steady, and grounded America &#8212; was about to unfold.
Southwest Flight 1380 was about 40 minutes into its four-hour flight from La Guardia to Dallas-Love. New Yorkers and Texans and Americans from all over were doing what people on airplanes do &#8212; napping, reading, watching movies, looking at the sky, the clouds, and the miniature-looking homes and roads and rivers below.
But as flight attendants walked down the aisle taking drink orders, everything went wrong. A blast came from the plane&#8217;s left wing. An engine had exploded. 
The plane lurched downward. Smoke poured through the ventilation system. Passengers scrambled to put oxygen masks on themselves and their children.
Flying shrapnel blew out the window next to passenger Jennifer Riordan, a wife, a mother of two, and an executive at Wells Fargo in Albuquerque. 
Riordan was sucked partially out of the window before passengers Andrew Needum, a firefighter from Celina, Texas, and Tim McGinty, a ranch hand from Brandon, Texas who was wearing his cowboy hat on the flight, rushed from their seats to help pull her back in. 
They laid her across a row of seats as Peggy Phillips, a retired nurse from Dallas, performed CPR on Riordan to try to keep her alive. It was too late. The blunt trauma she had suffered from the shrapnel was too devastating for anyone to survive.
But there were still 143 passengers and five crew members on Flight 1380 whose lives remained in the balance. The blown-out window could have sucked out nearby passengers. The blown-out engine put the entire aircraft in danger. 
For the next 20 minutes, as the cabin was a tornado-like scene of debris, every passenger prepared for what they thought may be their final moments. Prayers to God, frantic texts to loved ones, a <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/04/18/southwest-airlines-passenger-paid-wifi-facebook-live-crash/527387002/">Facebook Live</a>.
In an attempt to seal the window, a man positioned his body in front of it, subjecting his back to &#8220;<a href="https://www.ctpost.com/technology/businessinsider/article/southwest-airlines-pilot-arrest-TSA-gun-6413122.php">severe pressure</a>.&#8221; His clothes became <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/southwest-airlines/2018/04/17/plane-dropped-sky-frantic-passengers-tried-send-final-messages-loved-ones">covered in blood</a>.
Meanwhile, in the cockpit, the pilot, Tammie Jo Shults, calmly informed traffic control that her plane&#8217;s engine blew out and that she&#8217;d be making an emergency landing.
To listen to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkVTdvcghHc">audio</a> of her conversation is to hear what &#8220;nerves of steel&#8221; &#8212; as one passenger described Shults &#8212; sounds like. Vital information clearly communicated. No wasted words. Professionalism epitomized.
Shults: &#8220;Southwest 1380 has an engine fire. Descending.&#8221;
Air traffic control: &#8220;Southwest 1380 &#8212; you&#8217;re descending right now?&#8221;
Shults: &#8220;Yes sir, we&#8217;re single-engine descending, have a fire in number one.&#8221;
Air traffic control: &#8220;Southwest 1380, okay, where would you like to go to? Which airport?
Shults: &#8220;Give us a vector for your closest. Philadelphia.&#8221;
Shults, a former F/A-18 Hornet pilot for the Navy&#8217;s Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron, was the first woman to fly F-18s. A religious Christian, she has said that captaining planes gives her &#8220;the opportunity to witness for Christ on almost every flight.&#8221; 
In high school, Shults said she was turned away from an aviation career fair because she was a girl. The Air Force would not let her take an entrance test for the same reason. The Navy, though, was willing to consider her.
On Tuesday, as Shults guided her plane to within visual range of Philadelphia International Airport, she confirmed with air traffic control if there would be medical personnel on hand to treat injured passengers.
As The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/us/southwest-plane-engine-failure.html">reported</a>:
<blockquote>
About two minutes before they landed, Matt Tranchin&#8217;s phone got reception, so he called his wife and told her they were about to hit the ground. He figured they had a 50-50 chance of surviving.
Over the intercom, the crew sternly told passengers to put their heads down and brace themselves. Ms. Sears held onto her friend in the seat next to her and wondered, &#8220;Will it stop? Will it crash? Will it explode?&#8221;
It landed.
</blockquote>
Relieved passengers joyously applauded, texting and calling their family to let them know they were fine.
&#8220;Thank you, we are going to stop right here by the fire trucks,&#8221; Shults told air traffic control. &#8220;Thank you, guys, for the help.&#8221; 
She then stepped out of the cockpit, walking through the cabin to hug grateful passengers.
A few hours later, she <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2018/04/18/texas-pilot-tammie-jo-shults-landed-southwest-plane-lauded-calm-courage">texted</a> a pilot friend of hers, &#8220;God is good.&#8221;
It&#8217;s hard to not marvel at how superficially similar yet substantially dissimilar the Starbucks and Southwest stories are. 
Philadelphia and Philadelphia. Tuesday and Tuesday. Schultz and Shults. 
But two pictures tell the actual story. 
One, of a Black Lives Matter activist at the Philadelphia Starbucks <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/news/philadelphia-starbucks-protest-photo-meme-twitter-black-men-arrest-20180417.html">sticking a bullhorn</a> in a stoic-looking barista&#8217;s face. The other, of Tammie Jo Shults <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/us/southwest-plane-engine-failure.html">holding the hand</a> of one of her passengers, Pastor Timothy Bourman, as his face exudes gratitude. I think this photo is closer to the real America, the one that news cameras only capture in times of true crisis.
The men who lead Starbucks, Kevin Johnson and Howard Schultz, hurt us as a nation this week. They abetted Hysteria, Inc. They threw us into another breathless frenzy. Not one Starbucks should be closing on May 29.
What a waste of energy it all is.
In the meantime, I&#8217;m looking forward to the movie about Southwest Flight 1380 and the grace and coolness of Tammie Jo Shults. 
She deserves it.
And we need it.

In Philadelphia, Two Americas

Black Lives Matter

NAACP

Philadelphia

Race

Southwest Airlines

Starbucks

I was a student for 18.5 consecutive years. There was an extra one early on, between kindergarten and first grade. I was told it&#8217;s because I was special. The half year at the end was because I wanted a masters degree. Also, I didn&#8217;t sufficiently fear debt. As I said, special.
Over the past five-and-a-half years, fully out of the academic fog, I&#8217;ve managed to unlearn some patently false clichés that are articles of faith among too many teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors. And by&#8221; too many,&#8221; I mean &#8220;not zero.&#8221;
These platitudes range from misleading to outright harmful, and they all &#8212; at least all the ones from elementary school &#8212; have their roots in the self-esteem movement, a racket that tells you to be proud of yourself because, well, you&#8217;re you!
I&#8217;d like to wage a war on these clichés, and save our children from the plague of stupid. Help me out. If I missed any other gems, let me know.
1. &#8220;There&#8217;s no such thing as a stupid question.&#8221;
This is the stupid answer to the stupid question of, &#8220;Are there stupid questions?&#8221; 
There are many. In fact, the pool of all possible questions includes far more stupid ones than smart ones. 
Maybe I should give teachers who say this a break. After all, there are some children whose inclination may be to think before they speak, to go over a question in their head before they take the class&#8217;s time with it. To first try to answer it themselves, because, after all, who wants to be known as the kid who asked in what year did Nicolas Cage write the Declaration of Independence? 
I guess we should be teaching those children that they&#8217;ll get farther in life by blurting out whatever question pops into their undeveloped brains. And while they&#8217;re at it, they should share with the world more than just their questions. If there are no stupid questions, after all, there are also no dumb thoughts or opinions.
2. &#8220;You can be anything you set your mind to.&#8221;
You just can&#8217;t. Most people have the potential to do only a few things well, at most. That potential is talent. You&#8217;re born with it.
Many people, but probably not most, can actually do one or two things really well. That&#8217;s skill, and it&#8217;s talent plus experience. It&#8217;s when ability meets time and repetition. 
Developing nothing into a skill takes naiveté. It doesn&#8217;t happen. I learned that the hard way in college when I spent well over a hundred hours (real-life hours, not credit hours) pursuing a geology major, and bashing my head against igneous rocks in frustration, before my mineralogy professor told me a very mean thing: maybe it&#8217;s not for you.
I was actually sort of taken aback. That&#8217;s how deep the &#8220;You can be anything you set your mind to&#8221; rubbish was lodged in my head. I later realized that the guy did me a big favor. He saved me time and energy by telling me nicely to get out.
That&#8217;s the world I want to live in. One where adults don&#8217;t lie to kids and tell them they can be great at things they&#8217;re not even average at.
3. &#8220;I don&#8217;t care who started it.&#8221;
Tell that to Poland in 1939.
Who started it is often the only thing. 
Who started it? The bully who turns the peaceful status quo into war. The brat who hits a kid at the playground and then cries to teacher when that kid hits back.
By all means, children who are bullied: hit back. Don&#8217;t run to teacher. Don&#8217;t try to appease. Hit back. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCTGuyKqXlE">Twice as hard</a>. It&#8217;s the only language bullies understand.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t care who started it&#8221; are the words of unwitting accomplices. It&#8217;s a childish, amoral phrase that bullies love to hear come out of the mouths of adults.
4. &#8220;Do your best.&#8221;
But what if your best isn&#8217;t very good? What if your best could be better? What if what you think of as &#8220;your best&#8221; is no more than a paper ceiling that would crumple if you tried to do better than &#8220;your best&#8221;?
On its face, &#8220;Do your best&#8221; can sound motivational: Always give it your all. Don&#8217;t leave anything out there on the field.
But it also sounds like a hand-wrapped excuse for not achieving a goal: If you give it everything you have, then it&#8217;s not your fault when things don&#8217;t turn out right.
If your kid&#8217;s room looks like a bombed-out toy factory even after he &#8220;cleaned&#8221; it, he may say he did his best, but that is impossible. Or &#8212; maybe that is his best, but it would get better if he tried to make his room look clean instead of trying to do his &#8220;best&#8221; to make his room look clean.
If a student shows up late to second period for the hundredth time, she may say she&#8217;s doing her best, but that is impossible. Maybe it&#8217;s hard for her to prioritize timeliness over whatever is keeping her late, but that&#8217;s a choice. Maybe being on time requires her doing better than her best.
Growth, by definition, is what happens when you do better than your best. 
5. &#8220;Be yourself.&#8221;
Well, unless you repeatedly find yourself in detention or time out. Because in those cases, &#8220;yourself&#8221; is obviously not what you should be, as evidenced by your being in detention or time-out, possibly by taking to heart what some adult told you about being &#8220;yourself.&#8221;
This is sometimes good advice when the intended audience is an adult, but to a child&#8217;s ears, &#8220;Be yourself&#8221; can have an awfully similar impact as &#8220;Do your best.&#8221;
&#8220;Be yourself&#8221; says to a child that they are great just the way they are, and they should feel good about themselves even if they routinely act in an unsatisfactory way.
In addition, &#8220;Be yourself&#8221; and &#8220;Do your best&#8221; diminish in children&#8217;s lives the role of role models &#8212; people who children aspire to imitate because they are better than they. People who inspire in children the idea that they can be a better version of themselves, which is different than &#8220;Be yourself.&#8221;
&#8220;Be yourself&#8221; can be sound advice when it comes to some adult social situations, like dating for marriage.
Assuming you&#8217;re a well-adjusted and decent human being without too many strange idiosyncrasies, you really do want a spouse who loves you for you, and who, at most, wants you to improve (who wouldn&#8217;t?), not to transform. 
But save for the small percentage of children who are mature beyond their years, &#8220;Be yourself&#8221; is stupid speak for &#8220;remain a child.&#8221;
6. &#8220;There are no wrong answers.&#8221;
This is unambiguously preposterous.
It&#8217;s even more obviously false than &#8220;There&#8217;s no such thing as a stupid question.&#8221; 
It&#8217;s measurable and objective, which means &#8220;There are no wrong answers&#8221; isn&#8217;t even a little true. There are definitely at least some wrong answers.
Just to give one example, &#8220;What is two plus two?&#8221; provides an infinite array of wrong answers. Or, &#8220;Who&#8217;s more easily offended than the gender nonconforming Queer Musicology major who runs your local university&#8217;s club chapter of Feminists For Environmental Justice?&#8221; So many wrong answers. 
In some contexts, &#8220;There are no wrong answers&#8221; may be appropriate. Like, &#8220;What&#8217;s your favorite breakfast food?&#8221; Or &#8220;Which Amy Schumer Netflix special will you not be watching this weekend?&#8221; Sometimes, there really are no wrong answers.
But usually &#8212; as in, any situation in which there actually are wrong answers &#8212; &#8220;There is no wrong answers&#8221; is a bad thing to tell children who need to understand that there is a definite reality that exists outside of themselves. A reality that does not change based on the answer they give. A reality with right and wrong answers.
7. &#8220;It&#8217;s who you are on the inside that counts.&#8221;
It&#8217;s really not. 
What counts &#8212; if &#8220;counts&#8221; is a synonym for &#8220;is important&#8221; &#8212; are actions and words. What counts is what&#8217;s on the outside, how you treat others, whether you behave with honor and integrity.
What&#8217;s on the inside isn&#8217;t irrelevant. Inner peace, happiness, and intentions are all important things. But they don&#8217;t &#8220;count&#8221; the way your impact on other people does. If we&#8217;re talking about the moral bank account, heaven and hell, and the whole eternal judgment thing, your actions are what go on the scoreboard.
You may be familiar with the idea that we shouldn&#8217;t judge people, only actions. Or how about this: you and what you do are two different things. I don&#8217;t think they are. I think you are what you do.
Adults should be in the business of helping children become grown-ups. But &#8220;It&#8217;s what&#8217;s on the inside that counts&#8221; is a childish idea. Much of successful adulting requires impulse control. It requires understanding that what you want to do is less important than what you should do or need to do. It means acting in accordance with what is good, not with that makes you feel good.
Children and immature adults have trouble with this concept. Because, after all, &#8220;It&#8217;s what&#8217;s on the inside that counts.&#8221;
8. &#8220;If you don&#8217;t have anything nice to say, don&#8217;t say anything at all.&#8221;
I want to say horrible, horrible things about the professional sensitivity trainer who came up with this doozy. It&#8217;s dumb wrapped in stupid multiplied by moronic.
Taken literally, it means, &#8220;The only things you say should be nice things.&#8221; That&#8217;s impossible, as it would mean even politely neutral requests like, &#8220;Would you please pass the salad?&#8221; would not be nice enough to utter aloud. 
Taken as the purveyor likely intended, it&#8217;s wildly impractical. There are many things that need saying that not only don&#8217;t sound nice, but sound harsh or even mean.
Things like, &#8220;Jonny, maybe you&#8217;d have more friends if you stopped picking your nose at the lunch table.&#8221;
Or, &#8220;If you heat up fish in the office microwave one more time, we&#8217;re going to have to let you go.&#8221;
And finally, &#8220;Maybe you wouldn&#8217;t be single if you stopped taking your dates to Taco Bell and offering to split the bill.&#8221;
9. &#8220;It&#8217;s who you know.&#8221;
This career advice entered my field of hearing in high school or college. It struck me then as obviously true &#8212; professional advancement definitely is impacted by the people who you know and, more importantly, who know you. But it&#8217;s also simplistic, imprecise, and inaccurately categorical.
It is not just who you know. You need to have ability and competence. And you need to be reliable. Otherwise the people who you know won&#8217;t do much for you.
It&#8217;s also not the &#8220;knowing&#8221; that matters. It&#8217;s the actual relationships. The pursuit of &#8220;knowing&#8221; people, of building the Rolodex, produces business card swapping, a useless activity unless you follow up, make phone calls, get coffee, talk regularly; you know, develop relationships.
It&#8217;s not about who you know. It&#8217;s about who knows you, and likes you.
10. &#8220;That&#8217;s a first-world problem.&#8221;
This was a not uncommon phrase on my college campus. Because after all, nearly every college-related problem is definitionally a first-world problem. 
Sometimes, &#8220;That&#8217;s a first-world problem&#8221; is meant in jest, in which case I&#8217;m all for it if it gets a laugh. 
But other times, &#8220;That&#8217;s a first-world problem&#8221; is another way of saying, &#8220;Stop complaining, there are starving kids in Africa.&#8221; 
My objection is that if those starving kids moved to the United States and became Americans, pretty soon they&#8217;d also have first-world problems. After some time, those first-world problems may even bug them as much as they bug me.
&#8220;First-world problems&#8221; are the problems that humans face when the problems endemic to impoverished countries are absent. In other words, &#8220;first-world problems&#8221; are just problems. 
If the tire on my car blows out, is that not a problem because, hey, I should be grateful to even have a car? I am grateful to have a car, but the flat tire is still a problem. And because I also have food and a roof over my head, the flat tire may be the biggest problem I face until I need to change the filter on my water cooler in a few weeks.
Westerners should be grateful that many of our problems are &#8220;first-world problems,&#8221; but deriding those problems feels, on some level, like an expression of contempt for the society that produces &#8220;first-world problems.&#8221;
That contempt should be reserved for the people who whine that Starbucks put too little soy milk in the tall, half-caff, soy latte at 120 degrees. That&#8217;s not a first-world problem. It&#8217;s just not a problem. And the barista didn&#8217;t make a mistake. She just doesn&#8217;t like you.

‘There’s No Such Thing As A Stupid Question’, And Nine Other Dumb Things I Learned In School

Children

In the midst of the NFL&#8217;s Anthem-kneeling controversy last October, ESPN The Magazine <a href="http://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/21170410/gaffes-tv-ratings-concerns-dominated-nfl-players-forged-anthem-peace-league-meetings">reported</a> that Houston Texans owner Bob McNair said during a league-wide owners meeting, &#8220;We can&#8217;t have the inmates running the prison.&#8221;
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZZdB5hqbTw">Condemnation</a> was swift. Most Texans players kneeled during the subsequent game&#8217;s National Anthem in protest of McNair, two players left practice, and then-Texan Duane Brown sharply criticized McNair in public.
McNair likely was thinking of the well-known idiom, &#8220;the inmates are running the asylum&#8221; &#8212; which means that the people least capable of running the organization are running the organization. It has nothing to do with race, but, nonetheless, substituting &#8220;prison&#8221; for &#8220;asylum,&#8221; even in a private meeting, was a mistake that was bound to be misconstrued &#8212; and it was, quite wildly and breathlessly.
McNair issued a public apology &#8220;to anyone who was offended,&#8221; clarifying that he &#8220;never meant to offend anyone&#8221; and &#8220;was not referring to our players.&#8221;
&#8220;I regret that I used that expression,&#8221; McNair said at the time. &#8220;I used a figure of speech that was never intended to be taken literally. I would never characterize our players or our league that way.&#8221;
Now, it turns out that what McNair most regrets is issuing an apology in the first place.
&#8220;The main thing I regret is apologizing,&#8221; McNair told The Wall Street Journal in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/texans-owner-bob-mcnair-recalculates-his-apology-for-inmates-remark-1522941584">story</a> published Friday. &#8220;I really didn&#8217;t have anything to apologize for.&#8221;
He said the &#8220;inmates&#8221; he was referring to in the October meeting were league executives who had too much control over key business decisions.
&#8220;We were talking about a number of things, but we were also washing our dirty linen, which you do internally. You don&#8217;t do that publicly. That&#8217;s what I was addressing: The relationship of owners and the league office,&#8221; McNair said.
Asked about players who kneel for the National Anthem, McNair said that players who don&#8217;t want to stand should remain in the locker room.
&#8220;If they&#8217;re going to be out there, we need to respect the anthem and our flag,&#8221; he said, intimating that the league should revise its policy to make it mandatory for players on the field to stand for the National Anthem. &#8220;As employers, we set conditions for all of our employees.&#8221;

SORRY, NOT SORRY: ‘The Main Thing I Regret Is Apologizing,’ Says Pro-Anthem Houston Texans Owner Bob McNair About His ‘Inmates Running The Prison’ Comment

Colin Kaepernick

Houston

Patriotism

Thirty-six percent of college students are going hungry. 
That&#8217;s the message of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/04/03/the-hidden-crisis-on-college-campuses-36-percent-of-students-dont-have-enough-to-eat/?utm_term=.2d9b53c7107f" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">story</a> in yesterday&#8217;s Washington Post that&#8217;s making the rounds. If it&#8217;s anything like the &#8220;1 in 5 college girls are sexually assaulted&#8221; fiction that <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/joe-biden-speaks-bluntly-about-rape-college-campus-n751956" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Joe Biden</a> popularized in 2015, this faux-statistic may soon become <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/us/a-third-of-college-women-experience-unwanted-sexual-contact-study-finds.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">conventional wisdom</a>, too.
The &#8220;<a href="http://wihopelab.com/publications/Wisconsin-HOPE-Lab-Still-Hungry-and-Homeless.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Still Hungry and Homeless In College</a>&#8221; report, authored by researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, says that 36% of college students it surveyed are experiencing &#8220;food insecurity.&#8221;
This report, like the <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/In-Making-Campuses-Safe-for/127766" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">infamous</a> Justice Department sexual assault <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">survey</a> from 2007 &#8212; and like <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ccsvsftr.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">other</a> <a href="https://www.aau.edu/sites/default/files/AAU-Files/Key-Issues/Campus-Safety/AAU-Campus-Climate-Survey-FINAL-10-20-17.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">similar surveys</a>, is fatally flawed: its methodology and scope <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/14/campus-rape-uva-crisis-rolling-stone-politics-column/20397277/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">precludes</a> its data from being nationally representative, or even scientifically representative of the handful of institutions being surveyed.
The report itself notes that &#8220;obtaining the necessary data to create an &#8220;institutionally-or-nationally-representative sample was not possible,&#8221; and that the results &#8220;may not be generalizable on either the institutional or national levels.&#8221;
And yet the authors don&#8217;t hesitate to propose policy measures of a national scope; policies that would include tens of millions or hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of taxpayer funds.
Predictably, the Post&#8217;s reporter, Caitlyn Dewey, merely concedes that &#8220;measuring college hunger and homelessness is difficult,&#8221; but that the report&#8217;s lead author, Temple professor Sarah Goldrick-Rab, thinks her report understates the 36% figure; and that &#8220;several education policy analysts not involved with the survey said they believe this is the best national estimate.&#8221;
Perhaps, but there are no good national estimates of hunger and homelessness among college students, because, as the report admits, there&#8217;s no simple way to measure the data in a nationally-representative fashion.
Take, for example, how Goldrick-Rab&#8217;s team collected data: by asking 66 two-year and four-year colleges and universities to invite nearly 600,000 students to complete an e-survey. Of the 600,000 students emailed, 43,000 students, 7.3%, participated. 
Because the study was unscientific by design, one doesn&#8217;t need a graduate degree in statistics to know that the institutions selected and the students who participated may or may not provide any generalizable data about the nature of hunger among college students.
Furthermore, none of these responses, none of the data, is verifiable. I&#8217;m inclined to assume that most of the e-surveys were filled out honestly, but an actual scientific study wouldn&#8217;t require the reader to invest that type of faith in basic human decency.
Also, the terms and definitions with which the report measures hunger are questionable. First, &#8220;hunger&#8221; in no way means starvation. It doesn&#8217;t even necessarily mean &#8220;hungry.&#8221; It hasn&#8217;t for a long time, ever since &#8220;food insecurity&#8221; entered the cultural lexicon &#8212; a deceptive term the report defines as &#8220;the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in a socially acceptable manner.&#8221;
Certainly, there are a small percentage of Americans who are not starving but who, for economic reasons, are eating less food than they should, or more unhealthy food than they should. But there are very, very few truly hungry people in the United States, or in any Western, liberal, capitalist democracy.
In the U.S. Department of Agriculture&#8217;s 2009 <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44776/7024_err108_1_.pdf?v=41056">report</a> on hunger in America, 98.5% of adults said their children were never hungry at any point that year due to lack of money. And 95.4% of adults said they themselves were never hungry that year due to lack of money.
Mind you, this was during the recession. 
&#8220;Food insecurity,&#8221; though, means a number of things, some of which, like in Temple&#8217;s and HOPE&#8217;s report, include not being able to afford &#8220;balanced&#8221; meals, and being &#8220;worried whether my food would run out before I got money to buy more.&#8221; 
These are both not good things. But they don&#8217;t constitute hunger. And to suggest they do, as both the report and The Washington Post does, ranges between disingenuous and intentionally misleading.
It&#8217;s difficult to believe that, while a very small percentage of Americans were hungry at any point during the recession, today, in the midst of the strongest U.S. economy in a generation, 36% of college students &#8220;don&#8217;t have enough to eat,&#8221; as The Washington Post headline claims.
In regard to hunger generally in America, it seems somewhat paradoxical that low-income Americans simultaneously suffer from an obesity crisis and a hunger crisis &#8212; opposite results stemming from the same cause, poverty. I suppose it&#8217;s possible, but it seems more likely that activists with a cause are simply attacking from different angles.
Academic reports like &#8220;Still Hungry and Homeless in College&#8221; that are authored by organizations and professors with agendas aren&#8217;t new, or even troublesome. 
The phrase &#8220;lies, damned lies, and statistics&#8221; was, after all, coined in the 19th century.
The trouble is that media outlets like The Washington Post tell us that 36% of college students don&#8217;t have enough to eat &#8212; a damned lie.

The Washington Post Reports That 36% Of College Students Don’t Have Enough Food To Eat. That’s A Lie.

Hunger

Leftism

Liberalism

Progressivism

Washington Post

I&#8217;ve been going to the movies frequently of late. More times since January than in the preceding five years, I think. Thanks to MoviePass, I can now go to films that I&#8217;d be willing to pay, say, $7 to see, but not $17. 
I love movie theaters &#8212; the chairs, the screen, the sound, the darkness. It&#8217;s designed as a distraction-free setting in which you can experience the film as the director intended. 
When it all goes right, it&#8217;s a moment to relish. You leave feeling refreshed. Maybe, on occasion, even changed. 
But more and more, I&#8217;ve found, it has become harder and harder to get the movie theater experience at movie theaters.
And it&#8217;s because of the one variable aside from the film itself: the people. The one or two people who treat movie theaters like it&#8217;s their living room. They&#8217;ve graciously invited you into their home to watch a movie, so they&#8217;ll do as they damn well please. 
Talk, text, tap their feet, kick the back of the seat in front them, &#8220;whisper&#8221; when there&#8217;s no dialogue on screen &#8212; as if the actors&#8217; lines are the only important thing in a film.
I estimate that a member of this degenerate 1% has appeared at nearly half the movies I&#8217;ve gone to in the past year. I&#8217;m surprised when I go to the movies and there isn&#8217;t a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">barbarian</a>, an adult who&#8217;s mucking it up for the 99%.
Not to sound sentimental, but it feels like it&#8217;s gotten worse over time. Ten or fifteen years ago, I recall the norm being that not one, single, grown human would dare disturb the people around them. Sure, there were exceptions, and yes, maybe a guy would continue his conversation as the previews spilled into the intro credits, but then someone would shush him and he&#8217;d slink down in shame.
Not anymore.
Last fall, at a theater in not the best part of Los Angeles, I saw The Foreigner, a fun action thriller with Pierce Brosnan and Jackie Chan. It was an early evening screening during the week, so attendance was sparse.
But not sparse enough. 
About ten rows below me was a young couple with two or three young kids. The kids were acting like little kids, so my quarrel is not with them. It&#8217;s with the adults, who were also acting like little kids. 
Who brings young children to a R-rated movie with plenty of violence and cursing? These parents were hurting not only their kids, but everyone in the theater. They made us suffer a G-rated audience in a R-rated movie.
The man was also talking to his significant other and the kids at near full-volume for much of the film, even after I shushed him. He also felt the need to exclaim his approval whenever Jackie Chan did things that Jackie Chan does in Jackie Chan movies, which was many times.
A few months later I saw <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/27778/hostiles-great-unknown-film-2017-jared-sichel" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hostiles</a>, an excellent Western starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike. I went to a Sunday evening showing at a fancy theater in Santa Monica. One with those thick reclining seats.
Behind me was a middle-aged couple, possibly married. For the first 30 minutes of the film, the man would regularly &#8220;whisper&#8221; loudly to his wife; but only, mind you, when there was no dialogue in the film. Unfortunately for me and anyone else within earshot, this mindless bumpkin was ruining the beautiful film score and the dramatic tension that the absence of dialogue serves to heighten.
Finally, at the same exact moment, I and a woman two seats over simultaneously turned around and told this idiot to shut his trap. It was a thing of beauty. 
He of course didn&#8217;t look embarrassed, because if he had any shame in the first place he never would&#8217;ve put himself in a situation in which other people might shame him.
But his wife looked mortified. She told him &#8212; too nicely in my opinion &#8212; to not talk. But why did she let him blabber for 30 minutes? Isn&#8217;t she embarrassed to be seen with him? Why is she even dating or married to him? Repeated rejection by women is one of the most effective socializers of anti-social men. Which means this guy is screwed.
Last weekend I saw Death Wish, a vigilante action film starring Bruce Willis. A few seats to my left were a middle-aged couple who would not infrequently talk to each other in Spanish. I think it was related to the movie, but it&#8217;s not like the plot of Death Wish is exactly Inception. Nothing in the film really needs explanation. It&#8217;s a visceral revenge-thriller that hangs, quite well, on its action scenes. 
When I shushed the couple and gave them the &#8220;We&#8217;re watching a movie here&#8221; hand motion, the woman looked at me as if I had pulled a chewed piece of gum off the bottom of my shoe and popped it in my mouth. Which is exactly how a narcissist like her would react. &#8220;How dare you?!&#8221;
She gave me dirty looks for the rest of the movie, and at one point she started tapping her feet so loudly that I&#8217;m convinced it was to provoke a reaction. Instead, I held onto my anger for four days until I was ready to write this piece. 
If my anecdotal experience in movie theaters is representative, I think there are a few possible explanations.
America&#8217;s narcissism &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Narcissism-Epidemic-Living-Age-Entitlement/dp/1416575995">epidemic</a>&#8221; is an obvious one. More and more people are increasingly obsessed with themselves, which means they&#8217;re less and less aware of how their actions impact others. And some people who are aware just don&#8217;t care.
Another is that fewer and fewer moviegoers have the bare minimum amount of courage needed to tell someone to quiet down. I&#8217;m no hero for wanting to enjoy the movie I&#8217;ve committed two hours of my evening too. What kind of society is it when a slim minority can ruin it for the majority only because everyone is too afraid to engage in two mildly uncomfortable seconds of confrontation?
A third is that we are so used to the inmates running the asylum that we&#8217;ve dumbed down our expectations and have conditioned ourselves to be less bothered by disruptive behavior.
A fourth and most depressing explanation is that MoviePass is doing to the theaters what cheap airline tickets have done to the airlines &#8212; opened them to everyone, including people whose poor social tact previously made it difficult for them to hold down a job long enough so that they could earn enough money to regularly fly or go to the theaters.
These movie theater monsters aren&#8217;t going anywhere. Theater staff will never remove them except in extreme cases. It&#8217;s sad that they even need to play the &#8220;Don&#8217;t Talk Or Text&#8221; announcement before the movie starts. 
It&#8217;s on us decent human beings to grow a pair and bring back a useful little tool that helps a society civilize its barbarians: shame.

Dear People Who Won’t Shut Up In Movie Theaters: You’re The Worst.

The parents of a 16-year-old Iraqi girl, Maarib Al Hishmawi, were arrested Friday for allegedly beating, choking, and burning their daughter after she refused to agree to a forced marriage. 
This happened not in Baghdad or Mosul or Basra, but in San Antonio, Texas.
The Bexar County Sheriff&#8217;s Office reported that Abdulah Fahmi Kala Al Hishmawi, 34, and Hamdiyah Sabah Al Hishmawai, 33, beat their daughter with broomsticks, threw hot oil on her, and choked her &#8220;<a href="https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/BCSO-Runaway-local-teen-was-abused-with-hot-oil-12777938.php">almost to the point of unconsciousness</a>&#8221; when she resisted the marriage, which apparently would have paid the parents $20,000.
Sheriff Javier Salazar said that, beginning in 2017, Maarib&#8217;s parents were engaged in marriage talks with an adult man from another city. 
The beatings continued for as long as Maarib refused her parents&#8217; demand. In order to stop the violence, she <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/25/a-teen-said-no-to-an-arranged-marriage-investigators-say-her-parents-threw-hot-oil-on-her/?utm_term=.37e6a7f61317">reportedly</a> told her parents she would marry the man.
But in January, as the marriage date neared, Maarib ran away and was cared for by an anonymous organization. She, along with her five younger siblings, is now in the custody of child protective services.
Sheriff Javier Salazar said that the Hishmawi parents are being charged with at least one felony count of continuous family violence. He added that the would-have-been-groom will also likely be charged, and that the FBI may add their own charges.
The San Antonio Express-News reported that as the parents were being led away in handcuffs, the father &#8220;could be heard shouting to media, blaming the daughter for the situation.&#8221;
The Hishmawis have reportedly been in the U.S. for two years on a visa. 
As usual, most media reports called this an &#8220;arranged&#8221; marriage, even though it had never been arranged with the to-be bride. 
Women&#8217;s March leader Linda Sarsour could not be reached for comment.

Muslim Parents Arrested In Texas For Beating, Burning, Choking Their 16-Year-Old Daughter After She Refused A Forced Marriage

Islam

Linda Sarsour

Media

Muslims

San Antonio

Sexual Abuse

Texas

Cardi B for president?
On Instagram Thursday night, the rapper and celebrity, whose name is Belcalis Almanzar, yelled about something that many Americans wonder every tax season:
&#8220;Uncle Sam, I want to know what you&#8217;re f***ing doing with my motherf***ing money!&#8221; demanded Almanzar, who has over 20 million Instagram followers.
Almanzar&#8217;s Insta-rant has over 4.5 million plays and 35,000 comments, many of them positive. 
&#8220;So you know the government is taking 40 percent of my taxes,&#8221; Almanzar said. &#8220;I want to know what you&#8217;re doing with my f***ing tax money, because I&#8217;m from New York and the streets is always dirty, we was voted the dirtiest city in America.&#8221;
Almanzar&#8217;s federal income taxes alone are just under 40 percent. Adding New York&#8217;s <a href="https://smartasset.com/taxes/new-york-tax-calculator#9Hzaeut2gQ">state and city taxes</a> brings it to well north of that.
She&#8217;s correct that New York was recently named the dirtiest city in America. Using litter and pest data, the BusyBee cleaning service <a href="https://www.bbcleaningservice.com/images/dirtiest-cities-united-states.jpg">ranked</a> New York tops in the country, ahead of Los Angeles.
There&#8217;s no indication that Cardi B is interested in politics, but if she decides to run for office, she has a ready-made campaign slogan from this video:
&#8220;What is y&#8217;all n****** doing with my f***ng money?&#8221;
Or&#8230;not.
Read the full transcript here and watch the video below: 
<blockquote>
Aight, so you know the government is taking 40 percent of my taxes, and Uncle Sam, I want to know what you&#8217;re doing with my f****** tax money, because you know what I&#8217;m sayin&#8217;, like, when you donate, like, when you donate to a kid from a foreign country, they give you updates of what they doing with your donation. 
I want to know what you&#8217;re doing with my f****** tax money, because I&#8217;m from New York and the streets is always dirty, we was voted the dirtiest city in America. 
What is y&#8217;all doing? 
There&#8217;s still rats on the damn trains. I know y&#8217;all not spending it in no damn prison, because y&#8217;all be giving n***** like two underwears, one jumpsuit, for like five months, so what is y&#8217;all n****** doing with my f****** money? What is y&#8217;all doing with my f****** money? I want to know! I want receipts! I want everything! I want to know what y&#8217;all n****** doing with my f****** money! What is y&#8217;all n****** doing with my f****** money? Uncle Sam I want to know what you&#8217;re f****** doing with my motherf****** money.
</blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BgpdxsABrUn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">I want to fucking know WHAT YA DOING WITH MY FUCKING MONEY !!!!!</a>
A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/iamcardib/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Cardi B Official IG</a> (@iamcardib) on Mar 22, 2018 at 6:52pm PDT
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WATCH: Celebrity Rapper Cardi B’s Epic Instagram Rant Against Income Taxes

New York

New York City

Taxes

How many homicides are committed annually in the United States by illegal aliens, people who are unlawfully present? 
Nobody knows.
How many rapes are committed annually by people who are unlawfully present?
Nobody knows.
How many assaults, burglaries, and car thefts are committed annually by people who are unlawfully present? 
Nobody knows. 
Nobody knows because few, if any, state governments track the immigration or citizenship status of inmates in state and local detention facilities.
Which means that an unknown number of illegal immigrants are committing an unknown number of crimes on American soil. 
And thus voters, lawmakers, and law enforcement agencies like the FBI and ICE, have no actual idea how many crimes are committed by people who shouldn&#8217;t be here in the first place.
The dearth of data is particularly notable given that the issue of illegal immigration has been center stage since the rise of Donald Trump. He infamously said in his June 2015 kickoff <a href="http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/">speech</a> that Mexico is not &#8220;sending their best&#8221; to the United States.
&#8220;They&#8217;re sending people that have lots of problems,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;They&#8217;re bringing crime.&#8221;
But not one member of Trump&#8217;s White House or executive branch can say how many people or how much crime. 
Even the best studies available of people known as &#8220;criminal aliens&#8221; are, at best, educated guesstimates derived from various databases across federal, state, and local records. A criminal alien is defined as an immigrant, whether legal or illegal, incarcerated in a federal, state, or local prison or jail. 
That&#8217;s particularly striking given how much data about how many less important things the government meticulously tracks. Endangered gnatcatchers, exercising mudskipper fish, the gambling habits of monkeys. The government has data on all those things. 
The number of homicides committed by Mexican nationals illegally in the United States in 2016? Not so much.
&#8220;You can find out from the federal government how many Finnish prisoners in Minnesota jails have herring for lunch, but you can&#8217;t find out how many illegal aliens are in jail,&#8221; quipped Peter Kirsanow, an attorney and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR).
Years ago, Kirsanow said, he asked the USCCR to investigate the impact of illegal immigration on black unemployment and wage levels. He said he found &#8220;that a lot of the conventional wisdom was flat-out false.&#8221;
&#8220;There would be figures that were thrown out with respect to the effect of illegal immigration on employment levels, wage levels and even crime rates,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Having seen that that kind of calculation or that kind of statement as applied to the employment sector was inaccurate, I was curious as to whether or not it was accurate as it related to matters of crime.&#8221;
It was not. 
Kirsanow ran into the same problem that anyone trying to find criminal alien data runs into: it&#8217;s not there. 
&#8220;It&#8217;s just a gaping hole in our databases,&#8221; Kirsanow said. &#8220;We get data from all kinds of sources about all manners of things, but this one big ticket item is not tracked.&#8221;
Even the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional agency, struggled to find reliable data in their <a href="https://www.gao.gov/assets/320/316959.pdf">study</a> from 2011 &#8212; their most recent &#8212; on criminal alien statistics.
But what they did find is not encouraging.
Deriving data from a Department of Homeland Security program called the <a href="https://www.bja.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?Program_ID=86">State Criminal Alien Assistance Program</a> (SCAAP), the GAO found that, in fiscal year 2009 (July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009), there were at least 296,000 unlawfully present inmates in state and local detention in the United States &#8212; and almost certainly many more.
SCAAP provides federal taxpayer funds to states and localities for incarcerating &#8220;undocumented criminal aliens&#8221; who have at least one felony or two misdemeanor violations of state or local law. It&#8217;s a sort of national reimbursement program for the costs that state and county governments (even ones with &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; laws) incur due to illegal immigration. 
The GAO study of SCAAP&#8217;s data revealed that in FY 2009, 70% of SCAAP criminal aliens were born in Mexico.
In the five states that GAO studied closely &#8212; California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Arizona &#8212; there were at least 5,400 illegal aliens imprisoned for homicide-related offenses.
In California &#8212; which led the nation with 27,000 SCAAP incarcerations &#8212; 60% of incarcerations were for drugs, assault, sex offenses, and homicide, in that order. 
In New York, which had 5,000 SCAAP incarcerations, 27% were for homicide, 23% for drugs, 12% for robbery, and 11% for sex offenses.
In Texas, which had 10,000 SCAAP incarcerations, 20% were for drugs, 18% for sex offenses, and 12% for assault. 
Although the GAO study allows Americans, as Kirsanow said, to &#8220;get a sense&#8221; of criminal alien data, the data is from nearly a decade ago, and because it&#8217;s indirect, it&#8217;s imprecise &#8212; derived from something else, in this case federal reimbursements.
Ron Martinelli, a forensic criminologist and retired San Jose detective, believes that reducing the amount of crime committed by illegal aliens first requires knowing how many illegal aliens are committing how many crimes. 
&#8220;We need to know who&#8217;s committing crimes. We need to have the analytics,&#8221; Martinelli said. &#8220;We let no one know. We don&#8217;t let our citizens know, we don&#8217;t let our politicians know what law enforcement knows, and that is: we have a certain segment of this population that is illegal that is committing violent crimes.&#8221;
Gathering the data, knowing precisely how big that segment of the population is, would not be particularly difficult, according to Kirsanow.
&#8220;It&#8217;s not complex,&#8221; Kirsanow said. &#8220;One way of doing it is everybody who is incarcerated, there&#8217;s a box that&#8217;s checked for them. Do they have a passport? What is their visa status? Do they have any kind of documentation that certifies whether they are lawfully present in the United States? That&#8217;s not a heavy lift.&#8221;
Could the federal government mandate this for state and local detention centers?
Yes, Kirsanow said, either legislatively or by executive carrot and stick: the Department of Justice could add a reporting requirement as a condition of receiving certain funds. The FBI could then include the data in its annual &#8220;<a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-publications">Crime in the United States</a>&#8221; report, which includes a wealth of statistics on &#8220;violent and property crime offenses&#8221; throughout the nation.
In fact, on January 25, Trump signed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united-states/">Executive Order 13768: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States</a>. Among other things, it directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice &#8220;to collect relevant data and provide quarterly reports on &#8230; the immigration status of all convicted aliens incarcerated in state prisons and local detention centers throughout the United States.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/departments-justice-and-homeland-security-release-data-incarcerated-aliens-94-percent-all">most recent report</a>, from the end of 2017, includes data on the 58,766 <a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp">inmates in federal custody</a> who are &#8220;known or suspected&#8221; aliens. Of that group, 35,334 people are known to be unlawfully present.
The government continues to investigate the &#8220;alienage&#8221; of the remaining 21,209 inmates, but the vast majority are likely also unlawfully present. This is a reasonable assumption given that 92% of confirmed aliens in Federal Bureau of Prisons custody are known illegals and 97% of confirmed aliens in U.S. Marshals Service custody are known illegals.
The report doesn&#8217;t even mention what is perhaps the most striking point about unlawfully present criminal aliens in federal custody: they comprise at least one-fifth of the federal inmate population, and in all likelihood closer to one-third.
The report notes that &#8220;state and local facilities do not routinely provide DHS or DOJ with comprehensive information about their inmates and detainees&#8221; &#8212; a glaring gap given that &#8220;state and local facilities account for approximately 90% of the total U.S. incarcerated population.&#8221;
With over 2 million state and county prison and jail inmates (according to 2015 <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=kfa">data</a>), there are almost certainly more illegal immigrants in detention centers than the 296,000 figure identified by the 2009 SCAAP data. Perhaps hundreds of thousands more.
The report notes that the &#8220;DHS and DOJ are working to develop a reliable methodology for estimating the status of state and local incarcerated populations.&#8221;
A Department of Justice spokesman told The Daily Wire that the next quarterly report &#8220;will have additional information pursuant to that section,&#8221; and that the Department of Justice &#8220;continues to work with state and local agencies&#8221; to determine the immigration status of unlawfully present inmates.
But absent a reporting requirement placed upon states and localities, it&#8217;s unlikely that the Trump administration or the American people will know much more than they do now about the nature of illegal immigrant crime in the United States.
This all begs the question: why? Why is there no direct data of criminality among illegal immigrants? It would not be difficult to collect and there is clear national interest in knowing, say, how many homicides are committed every year by people who, by law, should not be in the United States.
The most likely, if not cynical, answer, is obvious: lawmakers who do not oppose illegal immigration &#8220;do not want American citizens to know the nature and the amount and the significance of crimes that are being committed by illegal aliens,&#8221; Martinelli said.
Or as Kirsanow put it, &#8220;There were political imperatives at work that made it better to not know what the crime rates were.&#8221;

How Many Illegal Immigrants Have Committed Violent Felonies? That’s One Statistic Our Government Doesn’t Track.

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This has been one doggone awful week for United Airlines. 
On Monday, a French bulldog died in an overhead bin on a United flight after a flight attendant told its owners to put it there.
The next day, passenger Kara Swindle went to collect her family&#8217;s German Shepherd, Irgo, at a United cargo facility in Kansas City. Her family, she said, was completing their move from Oregon to Wichita.
But Irgo wasn&#8217;t there. 
Irgo was in Japan.
Because United accidentally put him on a flight to Tokyo. 
In the pup&#8217;s place was a Great Dane that United was supposed to have sent to Japan.
Swindle said that she didn&#8217;t find out until 2:30 a.m. where Irgo was. That&#8217;s when his flight landed in Japan.
&#8220;This has just all been a whirlwind,&#8221; Swindle told <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/14/us/united-flight-dog-mix-up/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CNN</a>.
She added that Irgo hadn&#8217;t eaten or drank anything for the duration of the 16-plus hours flight, and that he missed three days worth of medication for an ear infection. Presumably the medication won&#8217;t be available until he gets home.
United released a statement apologizing for the mix-up, explaining that it occurred when the two dogs were being placed on connecting flights in Denver.
&#8220;We have notified our customers that their pets have arrived safely and will arrange to return the pets to them as soon as possible. We apologize for this mistake and are following up with the vendor kennel where they were kept overnight to understand what happened,&#8221; United&#8217;s statement read in part. 
On Thursday, United was set to fly Irgo on a private charter from Tokyo to Wichita. Maybe this dog will have its day, after all.

NOT AGAIN! United Airlines Mistakenly Flies Kansas-Bound German Shepherd to Japan

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Saudi Arabia&#8217;s heir to the throne has some fighting words for Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader: If you get a nuclear bomb, so will we. 
Oh, and you&#8217;re Hitler.
In an <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman-iran-nuclear-bomb-saudi-arabia/">interview</a> with &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; set to air Sunday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, said Iran&#8217;s Ayatollah Ali Khameini &#8220;wants to create his own project in the Middle East, very much like Hitler.&#8221;
&#8220;Many countries around the world and in Europe did not realize how dangerous Hitler was until what happened, happened. I don&#8217;t want to see the same events happening in the Middle East,&#8221; Mohammed told Norah O&#8217;Donnell.
Asked whether Saudi Arabia needs nuclear weapons to counter Iran, Mohammed said that if Iran develops a nuclear bomb, Saudi Arabia will &#8220;without a doubt &#8230; follow suit as soon as possible.&#8221; 
Iran&#8217;s pursuit of nuclear weapons has been, at best, <a href="http://jewishjournal.com/cover_story/175921/">delayed</a> for 10 to 15 years by a 2015 nuclear agreement that President Obama said &#8220;permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.&#8221;
President Trump has repeatedly bashed the deal and indicated that he may unilaterally withdraw the United States from it.
&#8220;The deal allows Iran to continue developing certain elements of its nuclear program. And importantly, in just a few years, as key restrictions disappear, Iran can sprint towards a rapid nuclear weapons breakout,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/13/557622096/transcript-trump-s-remarks-on-iran-nuclear-deal">said</a> in October. &#8220;What is the purpose of a deal that, at best, only delays Iran&#8217;s nuclear capability for a short period of time?&#8221;
On Tuesday, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and nominated CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him. Tillerson departed from Trump&#8217;s line on Iran, arguing that Iran was complying with the letter of the deal, but not with its spirit.
But Pompeo has long been a hawk on Iran, calling it &#8220;a thuggish police state&#8221; and a &#8220;despotic theocracy.&#8221;
&#8220;They&#8217;re the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East,&#8221; he said in October.

Saudi Crown Prince To Iran’s Supreme Leader: If You Get Nukes, So Will We. Oh, And You’re Hitler.

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Time is up for &#8220;Clock Boy&#8221; Ahmed Mohamed and his father Mohamed&#8217;s desperate, attention-seeking, discrimination lawsuit against the city of Irving, Texas, and its school district.
On Tuesday, United States District Judge Sam Lindsay <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/irving/2018/03/14/clockboy-ahmed-mohamed-lawsuit-irving-isd-city-dismissed" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">dismissed</a> the Mohameds&#8217; lawsuit &#8220;with prejudice,&#8221; meaning the case is over and done with.
Not 10 months ago, in May 2017, Judge Lindsay dismissed a similar discrimination suit by the family. 
He ruled that no Irving city or school official &#8220;intentionally discriminated against A.M. based on his race or religion&#8221; when, in September 2015, officials questioned and arrested Ahmed for bringing to school what looked like a bomb.
But at the time of that ruling the judge left the door open to the Mohameds amending and refiling their lawsuit, which they did a few days later.
On September 14, 2015, Ahmed, then 14, brought a reassembled digital clock to school to show his teachers.
But the clock looked more like a bomb. So his teacher, acting as any responsible teacher would when confronted with something that looks like a bomb, confiscated it and reported the incident to the school&#8217;s principal, who decided the potential of a threat was plausible enough to call the police. 
When police came to the school, they questioned Ahmed and were able to determine that the device was not a bomb. But they arrested him under the suspicion that it may have been a &#8220;hoax bomb,&#8221; and brought him to the police station so as to be able to further clarify the boy&#8217;s intentions. 
Police later released Ahmed to his parents, and did not charge him, determining that he had no malicious intent.
Ahmed became an overnight cause célèbre among progressives, who pointed to the school&#8217;s reaction to Ahmed&#8217;s clock that looked like a bomb as an example of racism and Islamophobia. 
President Obama <a href="https://twitter.com/potus44/status/644193755814342656?lang=en">tweeted</a>, &#8220;Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House?&#8221; Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, Google, and Twitter also extended their support.
Four days after the incident, Ahmed&#8217;s father said his son would be withdrawing from the school. The next month the family moved to Qatar, where Ahmed reportedly received an education scholarship from the Qatar Foundation.
In November 2015, Ahmed&#8217;s family threatened Irving and the school district with a lawsuit if they did not pay the laughable sum of $15 million &#8212; plus offer a public apology. Irving refused.
The following year the Mohameds filed multiple lawsuits. One was the discrimination against Irving and the school district, which called for unspecified damages. 
Judge Lindsay <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/irving/2017/05/19/judge-dismisses-clock-boy-ahmed-mohameds-suit-irving-isd">dismissed</a> it, explaining that Principal Daniel Cummings was &#8220;responsible for the safety of students and others on campus&#8221; and made a reasonable decision given the limited information he had available, and the perceived risk of the device actually being a bomb.
The other lawsuit was a defamation suit against several media outlets and commentators, including Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck. That was quickly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/13100/implosion-clock-boy-lawsuit-against-shapiro-ben-shapiro">thrown out</a> as well, with legal fees and court costs awarded to the defendants.
Yesterday&#8217;s one-paragraph dismissal by Judge Lindsay brings Clock Boy&#8217;s record in court to 0-3. 
<div> </div>

GO AWAY: Federal Judge Again Dismisses ‘Clock Boy’ Ahmed Mohamed’s Cuckoo Discrimination Lawsuit.

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Saudi Crown Prince To Iran’s Supreme Leader: If You Get Nukes, So Will We. Oh, And You’re Hitler.

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