This past week’s big and still developing story is the sharp escalation of confrontation on the Korean peninsula. But Russia, which has made itself a key actor to many current global dramas, from the French elections to the civil war in Libya, is not a part of it.

Given that Russia borders North Korea—the distance from the Punggye-ri nuclear test site to Vladivostok is shorter than to Pyongyang—this abstention is rather surprising.

Perhaps most upsetting for the Kremlin is that the main format for managing the North Korean crisis was established at the recent meeting in Mar-a-Lago between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping – and Beijing has shown no inclination to discuss these matters with its “strategic partner” Moscow (Republic.ru, April 21).

Putin has not seen Xi since last November and has not spoken with him on the phone for months; neither Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev nor Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu have had any recent contacts with their Chinese counterparts.

The fact is, Putin is being left out in the cold by Washington, Beijing, and most everyone else.  Ever since Trump took his pants down in Syria, he doesn’t seem so important anymore.

“The Idol of the Elite”

If you want to know the likely result of France’s presidential election runoff 10 days from now (May 7), just look at how the markets responded. The euro and the French markets both jumped dramatically.

And this has nothing to do with the underlying strength of the sclerotic, unionized, statist, overtaxed, unproductive French economy or, indeed, with the future of the doomed euro.

It was simply a case of the status quo breathing a sigh of relief that it was going to be business as usual, after all: Emmanuel Macron, the de facto Establishment candidate is now pretty much a shoo-in for the French presidency; his rival, Marine Le Pen doesn’t stand a prayer – of that the Establishment will make sure.

That is, Emmanuel Macron is going to win this presidency because it was decided long ago by France’s Establishment that he was the least-worst option of the candidates available.

The fact that he is a hollow man – a slippery, snake-oil-salesman with a winning smile and nice suits – who will do almost nothing seriously to address France’s massive social and economic problems is a help, not a hindrance.

Emmanuel Macron, you see, is the left-leaning French Establishment’s Manchurian Candidate – the French Obama.  The parallels will astound you.

A Face of Evil - Jumana Fakhruddin Nagarwala

Livonia, Michigan is known as Little Palestine. The Detroit suburb is famous for its anti-Israel meetings. You could go hear Mustafa Barghouthi, Omar Barghouti and Ali Abunimah without taking a long drive. It’s also known for its shady doctors. Dr. Murtaza Hussain was busted for letting unlicensed employees diagnose patients and write prescriptions. Dr. Waseem Alam and Dr. Hatem Ataya pleaded guilty in the nation’s largest Medicare fraud case totaling $712 million in false billings centering on Shahid Tahir, Muhammad Tariq and Manavar Javed’s Livonia medical firms.

But what was going on at one Livonia clinic was far worse than the theft of millions. Anyone passing by at the right time could hear the screams of little girls. We think of horrors like Female Genital Mutilation as a terrible thing that happens over “there.”  Now, as American towns and cities are reshaped by Moslem migration, “there” is now right here. The terrible practice has come to America.

The Great Barrier Reef is dead. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker, kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and gone to join the bleedin’ choir invisible. It is an Ex Great Barrier Reef.

Well, at least it is if you believe the left-wing media such as the Guardian or the New York Times, which claims that the reef is at “terminal stage” because of damage allegedly caused by “climate change.”

Lots of eco loons have been rending their garments and throwing their (recyclable, organic, gluten-free) toys out of the pram in horror at this hideous disaster.

But it’s OK.  The Great Barrier Reef isn’t in the remotest danger.  Here’s why.

The biggest loser from last week’s cruise-missile strikes on a Syrian air base wasn’t “President” Bashar al-Assad. It was Vladimir Putin.

The Syrian leader was punished, but Russia’s new czar was humiliated.

Even with an hour’s warning of the attacks, Putin’s military in Syria did nothing to defend its ally. For all of the Russian bluster in recent years, Putin couldn’t stop our strikes.

His military lacked the means to do so. And any attempt to interfere with our operation would only have revealed the inferior quality of Russian armaments — including their much-ballyhooed air defense systems.

This is vitally important, because Putin used his military leap into Syria to show that Russia was a reliable ally at a time when US policy was timid, incompetent and flighty under President Barack Obama. Russia looked strong. We didn’t.

But the wave of cruise missiles unleashed on Syria called Putin’s bluff. And Russia didn’t dare to lift a finger.

It gets better.

Obama is a coward.  He is very careful to launch dirty attacks without getting any on his hands. The insults are anonymously sourced. The retaliation comes out of the bowels of the bureaucracy. And he only finds out about it from the media. That allows him to retain what he cares about most: his popularity.

After Trump won, Obama put on his best imitation of decency while his people went on preparing to undermine Trump at every turn by smearing him, wiretapping him and doing everything possible, legally and illegally, to bring him down.

It was the same phony act that he had pulled for eight years, bemoaning the lack of bipartisanship while ruling unilaterally as a dictator, destroying the Constitution while hectoring us about our values, denouncing racism while organizing race riots, complaining about the echo chamber while constructing one and lecturing us on civility while smearing anyone who disagreed.

Trump’s killer instinct lies in understanding that hypocrisy conceals weakness. That is what powered him through the primaries and then through an election. His instinct is to grapple directly with a target. That is also the source of his popularity.

We risk gradually having an offence of blasphemy imposed on the west

"It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism. It is a perversion of a great faith.”

This is what the prime minister said in parliament after the attack on Westminster Bridge that killed three tourists and a policeman. While I completely accept that the sins of extremists should never be visited on the vast majority of moderate believers, I am increasingly uneasy about how we handle the connection between religion and extremism. The ideology to which Khalid Masood was converted in prison may indeed be a perversion of Islam, but it is a version of it. We should not shy away from saying so.

After Nice, Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation wrote that saying such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam (as some do) is as dangerous as stating that it has everything to do with Islam.

On March 25, 1957, six European countries signed the Treaty of Rome, which eventually became the European Union.

As people celebrate the Treaty’s 60th anniversary and the longest period in European history without a major war, there is no doubt that it has been hugely successful in that particular objective.

Yet, the celebrations have been subdued to say the least, as Great Britain has now officially asked to leave the Union and doubts as to its very survival abound. What happened?

The original ideas of the founders of the European idea, people like Konrad Adenauer, Alcide De Gasperi and Robert Shumann, who believed in individual freedom and competition, were gradually replaced by an administrative state run by the unelected bureaucrats of the European Commission that is progressively less democratic.

This is what has caused a popular revulsion about the European project among its citizens and not populists like Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders and Victor Orban.

Here are just some of the problems that must be urgently solved if the EU is to have a life-span much beyond age 60.

Tawang Monastery, Arnunachal Pradesh, India

His Holiness Dalai Lama’s visit today (4/06) to  Tawang, in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, has created great consternation in China. In a veiled threat, the Chinese foreign ministry has warned India not to facilitate the Tibetan spiritual leader’s visit to Tawang, saying the visit may severely impact India-China relations.

Tawang is the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world – for although the Potala in Tibet is larger, it is no longer a monastery having been converted into a tourist attraction by the Chinese Communists.  Tawang is also the monastery to which the Dalai Lama fled in his escape route from Chinese Occupied Tibet in 1959:

Ever since His Holiness and his tens of thousands of disciples escaped Chinese oppression by fleeing to India in 1959, China has been closely monitoring his movements in India and abroad.

China views him as a “splittist” (or separatist) who has consistently refused to accept Chinese control over Tibet. In reality, the Dalai Lama has accepted Tibet is a part of China, but has only demanded autonomy for Tibet, a predominately Buddhist region with a distinct language, ethnic group, and culture.

So why are the Beijing Communists coming unglued now over his visit to this almost inaccessible monastery?

For the past eight years, the Obama administration did everything in its power to empower Iran.  That included enabling Russia to became the leading member and the protector of the Iranian regime and its nuclear program.

This has created President Trump’s most urgent foreign policy challenge.  To face it, he has three basic options – the best of which is to cut a deal with Russia to ditch Iran.

The problem is that since Trump’s election, the Democrats, their allied media outlets and powerful forces in the US intelligence community have been beset by a Russia hysteria unseen since the Red scares in the 1950s. 

That Obama bent over backward to cater to Putin’s interests for eight years has been pushed down the memory hole, while the Clinton Foundation making hundreds of millions with corrupt Russian allies of Putin is ignored. 

How will Trump overcome this to make his greatest deal?

The Terrorists of Pasdaran

Iran is once again capturing headlines following more provocative ballistic missile tests in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf in recent weeks.

At the core of these tests, which violate the UN Security Council resolution, stands Tehran regime’s elite force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or Pasdaran.

The IRGC was and is an instrumental tool for the clerical regime to preserve its survival and maintain power at home for the last 38 years by domestic repression complemented with sponsoring terrorism and fundamentalism under the banner of exporting “the Islamic Revolution” abroad.  This elite force reports directly to the Supreme Leader.

In a new book, Iran: The Rise of the Revolutionary Guards’ Financial Empire, published earlier this month (March), the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), documents a major corporate and money grab by  the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the IRGC.  Thus the book’s subtitle:  How the Supreme Leader and the IRGC Rob the People to Fund International Terror.

It maps the vast business holdings and wealth amassed by the IRGC and the Supreme Leader.  It’s time to take that terrorist-sponsoring wealth away from them.

Reagan and Hayek at the White House

It is possible to go through an entire education to PhD level in the very best schools and universities in either the American or British system without any of your teachers or professors breathing the words “Friedrich Hayek”. This is a pity.

Hayek died 25 years ago last week (March 23) at the age of 93, yet his ideas are very relevant to the 21st century. He was the person who saw most clearly that knowledge is held in the cloud, not the head, that human intelligence is a collective phenomenon.

What Hayek argued is that human collaboration is necessary for society to work; that the great feature of the market is that it enables us to work for each other, not just for ourselves; and that authoritarian, top-down rule is not the source of order or progress, but a hindrance.

This explains why free market capitalism is pro-humanity, and why opposition to it is anti-humanity.

This is about What We Know and.. What We Don't Want To Know.

Let’s start by looking at what Wikileaks revealed about the CIA in their recent “Vault 7” document dump, which you can find here.

I am taking these leaks as real. Whether you like Julian Assange and his team or not, they have a stellar record of presenting the truth.

The ruling gangs in DC and allied media look very, very bad in comparison. I believe Wikileaks far more than I do politicians and news-readers, and I think that's the only rational choice.

Also, please bear in mind that new batches of CIA leaks may appear at any time. According to Assange, the recent batch was less than 1% of what they have. Perhaps the remaining documents will be very mundane, but I rather doubt it.

With that said, there are five big revelations I think you should see:

Last week, the Dutch elections of March 15 were billed around Europe and beyond as a battle royal between the forces of populist evil, as represented by Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV), and virtually everybody else in the motley crew of Dutch electoral politics.

The victory of prime minister’s Mark Rutte’s VVD party (which lost 20% of its seats) over Wilders’s PVV (which added 25%), was greeted rapturously as a monumental defeat for populism and a great triumph for Europe across the political spectrum. In fact, it was nothing of the kind.

If its coverage showed anything, it was that the European press, much like the American mainstream press, has become a one-trick pony that is good at demonstrating political bias, but rather useless in helping one understand where Europe is going.

For these elections did have some profound implications for the future not only of the Netherlands, but all of Europe, that were nearly completely missed in the tons of ink spilled on partisan post-mortems. Most profoundly: an openly Islamist party made it into a European parliament on its very first try.  This is a paradigm change documenting the growth of political Islam in Europe.

The recent (3/03) attack on a BBC television crew in Hunan province, China, reveals once again the Communist Party of China’s brazen thuggery and out-of-control bullying.

To physically attack a major foreign media crew, smashing their equipment, and then to force them to sign a confession is the most public example of what has been apparent for several years: Xi Jinping’s regime behaves more like gangsters than government.

Yet just as the assault on the BBC helps highlight China’s aggressively repressive behavior toward anyone, Chinese or foreigner, deemed to dissent or threaten the regime’s interests, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

If government-backed thugs can behave that way toward the international media, imagine how much worse it is for Chinese people?

Since he became president, Xi has presided over a dramatic deterioration in human rights over the past four years:

Was former secretary of labor and assistant attorney general Tom Perez’s victory over Cong. Keith Ellison in the race to serve as the new chairman of the Democrat National Committee a victory of centrist Democrats over radical anti-Semitic leftists in the party?

That is how the mainstream media is portraying Perez’s victory.  But how is that possible when Perez appointed the former Nation of Islam spokesman to serve as deputy DNC chairman as soon as his own victory was announced?

Perez is ready to cooperate with Ellison because the two men have the same ideological worldview and the same vision for the Democrat Party. As Mother Jones explained, “There’s truly not much ideological distance between the two.”

Far from being a victory for the centrist forces in the party, Perez’s win marks the solidification of the Far Left’s control over the party of Harry Truman.

Scientists at the Roslin Institute, near Edinburgh, said last week that they had edited the genomes of pigs, rendering them immune to a dangerous virus. The announcement is extraordinary precisely because it sounds almost routine these days.

Gene editing is already starting to save the lives of human cancer patients and generate healthier crops. Yet the battle to ensure it gains favor with public opinion must be urgently addressed. The usual suspects are already trying to blacken its name.

With the new gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9, the Roslin scientists sliced out a short section from this gene in the fertilized egg of a pig. They then grew pigs from these eggs that turned out healthy and entirely normal in every way, including the functioning of the gene, but which denied the virus entry to the cell.

Cue an outbreak of horror about the risks of (cliché alert) designer babies. One newspaper has been blathering about “Frankenstein pigs.”  But a similar technique is already being used to treat leukemia in children: are they Frankenstein kids?

What will be the public reaction to the release of gene-edited animals or plants? Bring it on and cure us, or how dare you try to poison us? We have been here before, twice.

And the Oscar for Best Picture is…

HA HA HA. Let’s be honest, the greatest Oscars fiasco in history couldn’t have happened to a bunch of smugger, more deserving people.

All night on Sunday (02/26), the theme of the Academy Awards had been one of truth and facts.  Forgive me if I laugh again?

For truth and facts have never been Hollywood’s strong point. Time and again, movies abuse and bastardize historical events to suit its slathering need to drive box office cash.  I don’t object to that practice, because frankly, I just want to be entertained when I go to the movies.

But I do object when Hollywood pretends to stand for “The Truth.”  Just as I object when the New York Times pretends to be an impartial newspaper.  It’s not.

The Times is the media version of the Academy and its membership: an elite, preening organization stuffed full of liberals that absolutely loathe all things Republican, and especially loathe Donald Trump.

I do not write these words lightly, and there is not an ounce of mockery or, God forbid, hatred in my heart when I say that Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner is a man wearing a dress. I am simply speaking the plain and obvious truth, as politically incorrect as that truth might be right now.

But with transgender issues dominating the news these days, and in light of Tucker Carlson’s epic takedown of Democratic leader Zac Petkanas on national TV last week (02/23) specifically discussing gender-related questions, it appears that now is as good a time as ever to state some things clearly.

So then, to avoid all ambiguity:

*No, you do not get to choose your gender;

*No, gender is not determined by the level of your personal enlightenment (as Petkanas alleged);

*No, your gender does not change simply because you announce that it has changed;

*No, it is not good science to allow people to change their sexual identity on their birth certificates. In fact, there is nothing scientific about that at all.

This being said, my goal is neither to belittle nor disparage.  As loudly and clearly as I can, I proclaim God’s love for all of you who identify as transgender, reminding each one that Jesus died for you just as He died for me and that God has a good and godly purpose for each of your lives.

Refugee Terrorist Abdullatif Ali Aldosary

There are more Iraqis living in the United States than there are in some major cities in Iraq. 156,000 Iraqi refugees have entered this country in just the last decade. 30,000 of those have ended up in California. 71% of Iraqi refugees are receiving cash assistance. 82% are on Medicaid and 87% are on food stamps. Compare those atrocious numbers to only 17% of Cubans on cash assistance and 16% on Medicaid.

Notable Iraqi refugees include “Bowling Green terrorists”  Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi.

Waad Alwan & Mohanad Hammadi

Alwan and Hammadi were thoroughly vetted before they were resettled in Nevada and Kentucky. The only omission in their thorough vetting was an unfortunate failure to note that the refugees were terrorists who had spent years trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Below are many more examples.  Do we need more of this?

"In a free state, tongues too should be free,” wrote Erasmus 501 years ago.  That said, the law has always rightly forbidden incitement to violence.

Yet the Speaker of the British House of Commons, John Bercow, plans to prevent President Trump from addressing Parliament – based on no claim whatever that he might incite violence.  Similar to the bans on controversial speakers that are routine at universities in Britain and America today.

They are about the giving and taking of offence. An example is Julie Bindel, a radical feminist, banned from speaking at Sheffield University because she was not “LGBT friendly.”

The habit of curbing free speech is being imported into Britain from America, where universities have become increasingly intolerant of anything that departs from a narrow orthodoxy. A howling mob surrounded the Yale professor Nicholas Christakis in 2015 after his wife Erika had expressed little sympathy with those who wanted Halloween costumes outlawed.

What is causing this intolerance? Why are so many students so keen to outlaw rather than answer opinions they disagree with?

We’re on the verge of a new energy revolution. Except it’s the exact opposite of the one the “experts” at places like BP (British Petroleum),  the International Energy Agency and the Fake News Media are predicting.

For years we’ve been assured by politicians, energy industry specialists and green advocates that renewables such as wind and solar are getting more and more cost-competitive while dirty fossil fuels are so discredited and wrong and evil we’ll soon have to leave them in the ground.

But to believe this you’d have to believe in a world where Donald Trump and Brexit hadn’t happened; where taxpayers were still prepared to bankroll, ad infinitum, the expensive, inefficient, environmentally-damaging produce of favored crony-capitalists; where no one had access on the internet to articles showing how the whole climate change industry is such a scam.

That world doesn’t exist.  Here’s the one that does.

Where’s the box for Democrats in Congress?

Last year (March 22, 2016), eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their Muslim staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson (D-IN), Luis Guiterez (D-IL), Jim Himes (D-CT), Terri Sewell (D-AL), Jackie Speier (D-CA), Mike Quigley (D-IL), Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Patrick Murphy (D-FL). All the signatories were Democrats.

Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.  Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access.  They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro (D-TX). Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

[Note by Jack Wheeler:  57 years ago in Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater proclaimed the conservative political dream:

Barry Goldwater

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution.”

What you are about to read explains the legal mechanism already in place by which this can be easily done.  What Kim Strassel has written will blow you away with what is possible under a Trump Presidency guiding a GOP Congress.  Barry Goldwater was the original American conservative hero.  Somewhere, he is smiling right now.]

Last week (01/25), Todd Gaziano stepped into a meeting on Capitol Hill of free-market attorneys, think tankers and Republican congressional staff to unveil a big idea. By the time he stepped out, he had reset Washington’s regulatory battle lines.

Actually, more than reset.  This is a true game-changer.

Syed Rizwan Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik

Lone wolf terrorism is the biggest trend in Islamic terrorism. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism, it requires no cells stretching across countries the way that 9/11 did. The perpetrators don’t even need to enter the country under false pretenses the way that the World Trade Center bombers did.

Classic counterterrorism is directed at organizations. It’s inadequate for stopping individual Muslim terrorists like Omar Mateen who was able to murder 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando or closely related duos like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston or the Farook-Malik husband and wife team who carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack which took the lives of 14 people.

The reason is simple. Unlike classic Islamic terrorism which required organization and infrastructure, the new brand of Islamic terror only needs one thing… Muslims.

Muslim immigration makes Muslim terrorism worse.  Once we understand this inconvenient truth, then everything else naturally flows from it.

Long-simmering social tensions in Mexico are threatening to boil over as failing neoliberal reforms to the country’s formerly nationalized gas sector are compounded by open corruption, stagnant standards of living, and rampant inflation.

The U.S. media has remained mostly mute on the situation in Mexico, even as the unfolding civil unrest has closed the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, California, for the last four weekends in a row.

Ongoing “gasolinazo” protests in Mexico over a 20 percent rise in gas prices have led to over 400 arrests, 250 looted stores, and six deaths. Roads are being blockaded, borders closed, and government buildings are being sacked. Protests have remained relatively peaceful overall, except for several isolated violent acts, which activists have blamed on government infiltrators.

The few mainstream news reports that have covered the situation blame rising gas prices but fail to examine several other factors that are pushing Mexico to the brink of revolution.

"Democrats lost because they did not know how to talk about race," Aimee Allison told the DNC candidates forum on race.

Aimee Allison is a professional “race talker.” She’s a senior VP at PowerPAC+ which is dedicated to tapping into the “political power of the multiracial majority.”

On Monday (01/23), PowerPAC’s Democracy in Color hosted the DNC Chair Candidates Forum 2017. The qualifications to be the leader of the Democrat National Committee were obvious. It was their job to pander to the “new majority” of non-whites. 

White voters make up 71% of the electorate. Hillary won little more than a third of this “old majority.” 

“I’m a white woman, I don’t get it,” candidate Sally Boynton Brown shrilled. Her job, she declared, was to “shut other white people down” until they admit their “privilege.”  Note the black lady behind her smiling and nodding when she says it:

Has anyone actually worked out yet what that Women’s March over the weekend (01/21) was all about?

According to Madonna it had something to do with blowing up the White House.

According to Michael Moore (not a woman) it was about stopping Betsy De Vos (a woman: how does this work, exactly?) from becoming Secretary of Education.

According to Hamas-supporting, hijab-wearing co-organizer Linda Sarsour, it had something to do with that famous supporter of women’s rights, Islam.

According to Hermione Granger it was a lovely excuse to fly over from England with her Mum, to feel humble and try on some new bright red lipstick.

According to at least one of the girls in the photo above, it’s about “good scince”. Yay! Go, good scince!

America’s Nobody-in-Chief is finally going away, his last spasm of rhetorical onanism completely overshadowed by Donald Trump neatly turning the tables on the media purveyors of that pathetically fake “dossier.”

No one is listening to him. No one cares. While the helpless mainstream media frets over its irrelevance, Obama is left urging his minions to throw little tantrums out in the Deep State, trying to do just a little more damage to this country before he is finally exiled to comfortable obscurity. But payback is a Pelosi.

Soon Trump’s pen and phone are going to be wielded. All that last-minute regulatory nonsense is getting overturned. America will be a beacon of freedom to Cubans once again. The Western land thefts will be undone. We’ll drill, baby, drill. It’s going to be awesome, as will the tsunami of liberal tears.

And there’s nothing you haters can do about it. Nothing. Here’s why…

UC Davis protest against a conservative speaker (01/13)

Hammers, broken windows and fights. That’s what a safe space for free speech looks like at UC Davis. 

Safe spaces are places where everyone who isn’t a safe space fascist feels unsafe. The more safe spaces a campus has, the less freedom of speech the students and faculty dare to enjoy.  

UC Davis has a great many safe spaces. 

The University of California institution has safe spaces for illegal aliens (the Undocumented Student Center) and for asexuals (the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Resource Center) which hosted a “Tampon Tea Party.”

It has segregated safe space housing in Campbell Hall for black students and the Women's Resources and Research Center will provide safe spaces and “Mind Spa Services” for anyone offended by Christian views on abortion.

But all the safe spaces were about making life unsafe for everyone who wasn’t a left-wing fascist.

Last night (01/18), 40 hours before Donald Trump’s swearing-in as president of the United States, Taiwan’s “Representative” in the U.S. (i.e., de facto Ambassador) laid out what Taiwan wants from the relationship – and it does not include being offered up as a “bargaining chip” in the United States’ relationship with China.

Speaking at a dinner celebrating 80 years of diplomacy at Twin Oaks, the Washington, D.C. estate owned by Taiwan’s government, Representative Stanley Kao praised the current state of U.S.-Taiwan relations.

The relationship has “never been better in recent memory,” he said, even if engagement is “quiet and low-key” at times. Taiwan hopes to continue that momentum under the new Trump administration – with a caveat. The relationship “should be based on its merit and not used … as some kind of bargaining chip,” Kao said, to applause from the audience.

Kao’s comment touches on a concern that Trump may view Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China, as a bargaining chip in the larger U.S.-China relationship.

It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states.

That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.

What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.  Here’s the story.

Human beings can be remarkably dense. The practice of bloodletting, as a medical treatment, persisted despite centuries of abundant evidence that it did more harm than good.

The practice of communism, or political bloodletting as it should perhaps be known, whose centenary in the Bolshevik revolution is reached this year, likewise needs no more tests. It does more harm than good every time. Nationalized, planned, one-party rule benefits nobody, let alone the poor.

The diseases that Marxism-Leninism was intended to treat, poverty and inequality, were ancient scourges just beginning to fade, even in Russia. Higher living standards were starting to reach ordinary people, rather than just the feudal elite, for the first time.

Along came Karl Marx with essentially the opposite suggestion.  The progressive left rather suddenly fell in love with the idea of expanding, rather than limiting, state power.  Here’s a quick history of Marxist horrors from Lenin to Obama.