U of Toronto professor attacks political correctness, says campus Marxists are no different than Nazis

Marxists are the same as Nazis and political correctness has run amok on university campuses to the point where free speech is virtually nonexistent.

Also discussed is the incoherence and stupidity of radical leftist activists.

I think University of Toronto Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson is my new hero.




h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Iraqi Kurds Hold Memorial for Fmr. Israeli President Peres, Who Recognized Kurdish Democracy

Here are some pictures of 3 hour memorial service in memory of #Peres organised by #Kurds in Duhok. pic.twitter.com/PVvqDAsTSO

— Julie Lenarz (@MsJulieLenarz) September 28, 2016

Iraqi Kurds held a memorial service for former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Wednesday, hours after the veteran statesman passed away at the age of 93, according tovarious Kurdish news sources.

Kurds in the Duhok region, which is north of Mosul in Iraq, reportedly held a half hour service in honor of Peres, who in June 2014 advised President Barack Obama to recognize the reality of Kurdish separation from the rest of Iraq.

“The Kurds have, de facto, created their own state, which is democratic. One of the signs of a democracy is the granting of equality to women,” Peres said while briefing reporters on the meeting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed Peres’ sentiment shortly afterwards, saying that Jerusalem must “support the Kurds’ aspiration for independence.”

Bayar Zawitayi, a Kurdish activist who spoke to the media, said that the memorial service was meant to express condolences to Peres’ family and gratitude for his friendship...

India Says It Hit Pakistan Terror Camps After Attack on Army

#IndianArmy conducted surgical strikes y'day, to foil infiltration attempts; resulting in significant casualties to terrorists: DGMO @adgpi pic.twitter.com/mkv6FmdhMY

— PIB India (@PIB_India) September 29, 2016

India said it attacked terrorist camps just across the border in Pakistan, the biggest military escalation since a standoff 17 years ago, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi retaliated for a deadly strike against Indian soldiers earlier this month.

Domestic pressure had been building on Modi to take a tough stand over rising violence in the disputed region of Kashmir, including through non-military measures such as reviewing a 1960 water-sharing treaty. The main opposition Congress Party supports the government’s actions against terrorism, leader Sonia Gandhi said in a statement. 

Heavy casualties were inflicted in surgical strikes late Wednesday on militants assembled to infiltrate India, Director General of Military Operations Ranbir Singh said in a briefing in New Delhi. The operations have ended and no more are planned, he said, without elaborating...

Hillary Clinton is the Trevor Noah to Obama's Jon Stewart

When Donald Trump became a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, not all, but most people thought his candidacy was a publicity stunt and that he would probably drop out within a couple of months.

Obviously, most people were wrong.

Trump is a bombastic egotist and was one of the least qualified of the Republican contenders.

That didn't matter. He was able to cleverly tap into enough discontent with the establishment to become the Republican presidential nominee.

Last night, I put on The Daily Show in the background while I was doing other things, half paying attention to it. I haven't watched more than a consecutive minute or two of that program in months. It had grown tedious and unfunny for years since Jon Stewart finally stepped away from hosting it. His replacement, Trevor Noah, is even less funny than Stewart at his lowest ebb. Perpetual crankiness and snark may be the norm for college undergraduate millennials, but it gets boring fast when coming from the host of something that purports to be a comedy show. It's no surprise that the show's ratings have been taking a nose dive.

Why am I bringing up The Daily Show? Because for the dozen minutes or so I had it on last night, every single second was devoted to bashing Trump and try to imply all his supporters are idiots. Noah and an allegedly comedic faux 'correspondent' smirked at their own lame efforts at humor, falling completely flat while apparently convinced of their own cleverness. Even the laugh track seemed to have a hard time sounding enthused about them.

It was smug, and condescending towards at least half the potential viewing public. While offering nothing particularly clever or original, it assumed agreement on the part of its audience while trying to coast on its brand rather than trying to earn an audience through merit. The new Daily Show is the perfect metaphor for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Donald Trump is the least qualified and probably the worst-informed presidential candidate a major party has ever offered. And he's still going to beat Hillary.

In Clinton, the Democrats have chosen a tiresome and tired-sounding hack who embodies the least appealing characteristics of everything that big politics represents. She's the Trevor Noah to Obama's Jon Stewart. Just as the public was growing jaded with Stewart prior to his exit, and he was replaced with someone even less talented, so the Democratic party is replacing a President with whom many Americans grew to cynical with Mrs Clinton, whom they find thoroughly distasteful.

In this election more than any other, voters will be going to the polls not to mark a ballot for the candidate they want to see as president, but to cast a vote to prevent someone they find to be deplorable from sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. However in this, there is also a big difference.

Far fewer than half of those who indicated they support Hillary Clinton have said they are very enthusiastic about casting a vote for her. But on Donald Trump's side well more than half of his supporters are keen to vote for him. Trump has more than a double digit lead in that aspect of voter support. Just as Trevor Noah's incarnation of The Daily Show has written off Trump supporters, Clinton's conceit has made it almost impossible to grow her base by gaining potential coverts, alienating them as "deplorables" and "irredeemable." So which side is more likely to turn out in greater numbers on November 8?

The answer to that could very easily translate into a Trump presidency.

Takeaways From Last Night's Presidential Debate

A surreal moment from last night's Presidential debate was the point when Hillary Clinton started giving a lecture about how she would improve America's cyber security. The same Hillary Clinton whose cavalier mishandling of classified information would have landed anyone who isn't named Clinton in jail. It was like getting a lesson in how to slim down and look sexy from Lena Dunham.

The bar was unusually low for both candidates' path to success, but for Trump, it was a hurdle that a Chihuahua could leap. All the real estate developer needed to do was to demonstrate that he wasn't insane and could behave reasonably. To accomplish that, he showed uncharacteristic restraint, disappointing the expectations of those who wanted fireworks, but for the most part, it was pulled off successfully.

Hillary's bar was something most people could manage, but for her, is something she's never been able to surmount for the last quarter-century of her public life. She had to convince people she is likable and not a pathological lair. Her smug smile and reminders about her email scandal, and her testimony to Congress after her lies about the Bengazi massacre, did nothing to convince anyone that the Hillary Clinton Americans saw last night isn't the same Hillary Clinton they've seen since Bill Clinton first ran for the presidency.

Everything Hillary said had a subliminal boomerang effect that made it come back and hurt her if anyone bothered to think about it. She criticized Trump for, while as a private citizen, expressing equivocal support for the Iraq War that she voted in favor of when she was a serving US Senator. She criticized Trump's insults of women while she was an enabler to a husband who is subject to rape accusations that are beginning to rival in numbers those of Bill Cosby.  Anyone who watched the Republican primary debates and heard what he said about his male rivals knows that Trump can at least lay claim to being an equal opportunity insulter.

With regard to insults, though Trump has a reputation as being rude and bombastic, it was Clinton who threw vicious insults at Trump, calling him a racist and sexist. Clinton claimed that Trump's 'birther' questioning of President Obama's birthplace was racist. That only makes Clinton look more dishonest, unless she's suggesting that Trump's almost identical challenge of his Republican primary rival Ted Cruz means he's racist against Canadians. And as Trump reminded viewers, it was Hillary Clinton's campaign that started much of the 'birther' controversy by sending out a picture of Obama in traditional Muslim garb and questioning his 'American roots' during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Clinton, on the other hand, will pander to every special interest laying claim to victimhood. Or she will during the election campaign. Once it's over, were she to win, she'd forget them the same way that Democrats have forgotten dilapidated Chicago neighborhoods they represent that are beset with gun violence despite being subject to some of the strictest gun control laws in the US.

Trump made some missteps during the debate, such as when he took the bait to respond in excessive detail when Clinton suggested his net worth was less than he claimed. But on the whole Trump was the more human, the more genuine, and the more commanding of the two.

Partisans on both sides are claiming victory, but what's interesting to note is that partisans on both sides are also complaining about how their candidate lost. For the most part, the consensus is that Trump and Clinton essentially tied, or if one outperformed the other, it was by a slim margin.

However this was the first of three debates, and that bodes badly for Hillary Clinton. In twenty five years of public life, she has shown little in the way of a learning curve. Trump's ability to change through the Republican primaries, the presidential campaign, and now the first debate shows that he has a strong ability to adapt when necessary.  Trump is also a showman, and in show business, you know that you need to open well, but what's most important is to end the act with a strong closing scene.

With two debates to come, Trump is more likely than Clinton to provide the big debate finish that will end the political career of his opponent.

James Taranto: Mrs. Clinton can’t believe she’s losing to this guy

If we were on Donald Trump’s debate-prep team, we would advise the GOP nominee to watch two new videos of his opponent, if for no other reason than to boost his confidence. The first is Hillary Clinton’s video-conference address to a labor union; the second, her appearance as a guest on “Between Two Ferns,” Zach Galifianakis’s FunnyOrDie.com interview show.

You might have read about Wednesday’s address to the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which was meeting in Las Vegas. From Orlando, Fla., as the Washington Post reports, Mrs. Clinton, after having “ticked off her pro-union positions,” said: “Having said all this, ‘Why aren’t I 50 points ahead?’ you might ask?”

It immediately made us think of the most famous line perhaps in the history of presidential debates, and certainly in the history of satirical ones: “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy.” That was Jon Lovitz on “Saturday Night Live” as Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988, responding to the clichéd rambling of Dana Carvey as Vice President George Bush. (Note to our millennial readers: In the olden days, “Saturday Night Live” was funny.)...

Ditka trashes Kaepernick (and that Obama guy too...)

...“I have no respect for Colin Kaepernick. He probably has no respect for me, that’s his choice. My choice is that I like this country, I respect our flag, and I don’t see all the atrocities going on in this country that people say are going on.

“I see opportunities if people want to look for opportunity. Now if they don’t want to look for them, then you can find problems with anything, but this is the land of opportunity because you can be anything you want to be if you work. Now if you don’t work, that’s a different problem.”

The 76-year-old Ditka, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988, is one of two people in NFL history to win a league title as a player, an assistant coach and a head coach. He graduated from local hero to Chicago icon during an 11-year coaching stint with the Bears that included the team’s only Super Bowl win during the 1985 season, then retired permanently after a failed comeback with the New Orleans Saints in 1999.

A well-known conservative, Ditka publicly flirted with running against Democratic candidate Barack Obama, then a state senator, for the open seat in the US Senate vacated by Illinois senator Peter Fitzgerald in 2004. No one then could have imagined how the election would ultimately propel Obama to the presidency in four years’ time.

“Biggest mistake I’ve ever made,” he told the Dickinson Press in 2013. “Not that I would have won, but I probably would have and he wouldn’t be in the White House.”

In March, Ditka called Obama “the worst president we’ve ever had”...

Who are the real fascists? College students who openly support Trump censored, threatened, bullied by professors and leftist students

More than a dozen incidents at college campuses across the nation in recent months illustrate how open support for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is a sure invitation to be bullied, censored or attacked.

Left-leaning students and professors alike are working to shut down pro-Trump events and messages they deem unacceptable through a combination of fear, threats, ridicule, police intimidation and physical and verbal attacks.

Claiming “hate speech” or “racism,” they use the system of victimization established on campuses to claim righteous indignation and quash free speech and freedom of expression — and all during the crucial months leading up to the presidential election...

Rex Murphy: Justin Trudeau’s UN address was a meaningless speech to a worthless body

 ...it was our dewy-fresh prime minister’s turn to address this esteemed body and, either out of vanity or innocence, he didn’t turn down the invitation. As to the substance of his effusion, one would need an intellectual Geiger counter to find any. The speech was described by the National Post’s John Ivison as “thin as soup made from the carcass of a starving pigeon.” And that’s being generous.

The address easily could have been passed off as a high-school valedictorian speech: it was trite, without being testy, and full of false equivalencies. It bore the now-ineluctable stamp of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s compulsion to hymn, yet again, the all-ranging virtues of diversity.
This word “diversity” has something of a clamp on Trudeau’s brain. He seems to think that merely to pronounce it out loud is to add to the sum of human insight, that its four flat syllables compress all the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount, Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address and the best of Norman Vincent Peale into one handy little word. Yet fluffing a pillow in front of the UN delegates would have had more of an impact.

It’s a pity that, even in that forlorn venue, Trudeau was unwilling to let go of that rhetorical Linus blanket and say a few things about what is really going on in the world. He could have offered some meaningful analysis on the situation in Syria. He could have uttered some truths to those who rarely hear them. Instead, it was the usual mush about “modest Canada” and how we’re back and ready to help.
It really is time to stop bragging about how modest we are, as one cannot honestly brag about being modest...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's UN General Assembly Address

What If Evolution Bred Reality Out Of Us?

...evolution couldn't care less if you perceive objective reality. It only wants you to have sex successfully. As a consequence, your apprehension of the world is tuned to whatever allows that to happen. Thus, your perceptions at the root level have nothing to do with some fundamental physics upon which the fundamental nature of objective independent reality is constructed.

Hoffman then builds something even more radical out of his broken link between objective reality and evolution. He calls it conscious realism, and it's based on the premise that "circuits of conscious agents" are what end up defining experienced reality. While there clearly is a world separate from us, Hoffman says, evolution does not give us access to that. Instead, he claims, it's our interactions as conscious agents that give shape to the reality we experience. "I can take separate observers," he told Quanta Magazine, "put them together and create new observers, and keep doing this ad infinitum. It's conscious agents all the way down."

This is a pretty head-spinning stuff. Our perceived reality has nothing to do with the world in and of itself? That's the kind of thing that's bound to piss off a whole lot of people in a whole lot of fields...

A great Saturday Afternoon Movie - The Getaway

Starring Steve McQueen, Ali McGraw and Al Lettieri. Directed by Sam Peckinpah

Sanders leaders on campus turning their backs on Clinton campaign

         WASHINGTON - 

Ben Packer notices the difference on his New Hampshire campus. Seven weeks from the election, the Dartmouth senior sees few Hillary Clinton signs hanging from dorm room windows and only the occasional Clinton bumper sticker plastered on a laptop.

A year ago, Packer was helping to lead a Bernie Sanders group at Dartmouth, part of a cadre of campus liberals who dedicated their time and effort to get a socialist senator elected on the Democratic ticket.

Now activists such Packer may well vote for Clinton in November. But they are not doing door-to-door and other campaign work for her as they did for him, taking their organizational strength elsewhere even as Clinton pleads for support on college campuses...

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article103315202.html#storylink=cpy

Safe Space Freaks Hijack Meeting at Kansas University

"Radical protestors at Kansas University (KU) hijacked a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) meeting, unleashing a virulent tirade against the conservative students, providing a glimpse into the crazy arguments of the far Left."



Full video of meeting HERE

What kind of “basket” does Hillary have in mind?

Our first reaction to Hillary Clinton’s phrase “basket of deplorables” was similar to that of Glenn Reynolds, who observes that it is “an awful line” because it is “memorable without being evocative.” We thought of a picnic basket and found it difficult to imagine one big enough to hold a single person, much less the tens of millions Mrs. Clinton had in mind.

When we read the phrase in context, however, our amusement at the goofy phrase turned to horror. This may be the worst thing any American politician has said in recent memory...

This is Hillary-arious! Clinton's attempt to humanize herself on Zack Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns blows up in her face

It starts out with Galifianikis pretending to be the Grim Reaper creeping up on Hillary and it goes downhill for her the rest of the way.

But Galifianakis is fucking hilarious!

"Why aren't I fifty points ahead!?!" Hillary shrieks - How to Know an Election is Over

In the 2D world in which most people live, Clinton and Trump are polling about evenly, and either one could win. The 2D world is all about facts and policies and common sense. In other words – all the stuff we think we care about but really don’t.

In the 3D world of persuasion, however, the election is already over. There is still some mystery about how large the margin will be, but Trump is already the President of the United States unless something big happens in the next few weeks. How do I know that?

Listen to this clip in which Clinton asks why she isn’t leading by 50 points. Ignore the content of what she says, because no one cares about content. Just feel it.

And see the future...

Internet Supervillain Milo Doesn't Care That You Hate Him

...When Yiannopoulos arrives on campus, there’s a potential for all hell to break loose. Many appearances are canceled because of student petitions. At others, protesters amass outside the auditorium. Women smear red paint on themselves. Attendees sound air horns to block out his voice.

In May, at DePaul University, activists stormed the stage where Yiannopoulos was being interviewed and snatched the microphone, threatening to punch him in the face while security stood idly by.

Once, he says, a man leaped from the audience, shouting “Go take a bath with a toaster!”

“That was really good. I was like, solid nine,” Yiannopoulos says.

A professional mischief maker and provocateur, he loves a grand entrance. Wherever Yiannopoulos goes, the Loki from London swoops in with rapid-fire talking points delivered in a playfulness so foreign—and intoxicating—to most journalists and Americans that they are left standing in the rubble, dumbfounded.

At universities across the country he has paraded into hissing crowds of students accompanied by a mariachi band and wearing a poncho while shaking maracas. He once ascended to the stage on a throne hoisted above the shoulders of a dozen young white men in Make America Great Again hats to chants of “USA! USA!” He sometimes dresses in a policeman stripper uniform.

At one event, claiming he feared for his safety from feminist activists, he hired as his bodyguard a porn star rumored to have the largest penis in the industry,,.

"Independent Jewish Voices" working to help a regime that promises a genocide of Jews

If the degenerate group of anti-Israel extremists who call themselves Independent Jewish Voices had been around during Hitler's reign in Germany, it's entirely plausible they would have been shoving Jews into the gas chambers and all the while saying, "Nazis can't be anti-Semitic, they're letting us work with them!"

That organization of Munchausen Jews, whose sole identifiable purpose in proclaiming religious affiliation is to give cover to anti-Israel fanaticism, is proud of its cooperation with representatives of a regime which promises a genocide of Israel's Jewish population. Iran also is the primary sponsor of Hezbollah, whose declared goal is to kill all Jews worldwide.

Iran has again threatened to commit a genocide in Israel, promising this week to "turn Tel Aviv and Haifa to dust." It is that same Iran which representatives of Independent Jewish Voices regularly help out, like the kapos that cooperated with concentration camp killers.

Routinely appearing at pro-Iran al Quds Day rallies calling for Israel's destruction, Independent Jewish Voices' only real moral difference with kapos is that the latter are on a higher moral plane. Those who worked with the Nazis did so to survive, while Independent Jewish Voices slither along with the murderous aspirations of Iran to try to get attention for themselves as "activists."

The group's derangement is hardly a surprise, considering not only its activities, but the fact that it was founded by a 9/11 conspiracy nutcase. But what is particularly disgraceful is that biased, irresponsible mainstream media venues like the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation often give them a public platform as representatives of an 'alternative' Jewish perspective. It would be just as reasonable to present Paul Bernardo as an alternative voice about sexual assault issues.

The Left can destroy the "alt-right" but won't - because it would require them to stop being vapid hypocrites

Milo Yiannopoulos:

"...If you’re on the Left, and you’re looking out at the alt-right with horror, and want to destroy it, guess what? You probably can.

Here’s the bad news: your current tactics aren’t working, and are in fact having the opposite of their intended effect. Name-calling, public shaming, and tearing your hair out over Pepe the Frog is simply ineffective and is enlarging the ranks of the troll army every day you continue to do it.

Here’s the good news: there are a few simple things you can do to nuke the movement.

I’m happy to tell you what they are, because I know you’re not going to do any of them.

But I want to you to listen, because I want you to understand how your actions created this phenomenon.

The first thing you have to do is stop being hypocrites.

Double standards are everywhere in coverage of the alt-right. Whenever confronted with a left wing or minority- radical movement, The establishment will wring its hand about addressing the “root causes.” But they accuse anyone who does the same for the alt-right as necessarily endorsing the worsts of its proponents.

Just look at the media’s coverage of Black Lives Matter, and how it gives a pass to horrifying behaviour, behaviour that goes far beyond what the alt-right does on Twitter. Oh, someone with an anime avatar tweeted a racial caricature at you? That’s nice — Black Lives Matter has killed police officers.

And they’re still being championed by the mainstream press. Is it any wonder that people sympathize with the alt-right, when they’re at the losing end of such a blatant double standard?

And again you push older people to the alt-right. Who do you think stopped giving millions of dollars to Mizzou following their Black Lives Matter protests? Here is a hint — it wasn’t jobless gender studies majors, or young engineers whose job was replaced by an H-1B visa holder, it was established donors ranging in age from 40-65..."

The Democrats are in full-blown election panic. Clinton supporters want to call off presidential debates

The Democrats are worried that Trump will do to Hillary what he did to his Republican rivals during the primaries:

Let’s call the whole thing off.

Not the election, although if we only had a magic reset button we could pretend this sorry spectacle never happened and start all over.

No, we mean the presidential debates — which, if the present format and moderators remain as they are, threaten an effect on democracy more like Leopold and Loeb than Lincoln and Douglas...

'Social Justice' Wankers Declare Battle On Colleague For Exposing Their ‘Research’

A popular Twitter account that highlighted ridiculous academic papers from the social sciences and humanities — some taxpayer-funded — was abruptly deleted recently apparently because critics threatened to expose the name of the anonymous tweeter, who feared career-ending retaliation from campus colleagues.

The threats against @Real_PeerReview are telling about the state of soft academia. The tweeter’s primary activity was simply publishing links to abstracts and highlighting one or two sentences from their summaries. If the scholars believed their work had value, they would presumably appreciate wide distribution.

The account gained 10,000 followers in only four months by highlighting “research” papers based on low levels of academic rigor. Some were “autoethnographic,” meaning the author simply recounted how they felt when experiencing something. Other papers had tiny sample sizes with authors speaking only to a few friends — hardly a representative sample.

Low academic standards seemed to be especially accepted in the fields of “critical race theory” and feminism, making it prime fodder for tweeting, while prompting “social justice warrior” types to target the tweeter...

Real Peer review is up and you can follow tweets from that account here:  @RealPeerReview

You know things are really bad for Hillary Clinton when even the Huffington Post has given up on her

...no one who lost the battle will want to admit it was Hillary Clinton’s fault. It will have had nothing to do with, say, “transparency” or calling bearded villagers “deplorables” or the Iraq War vote or the simple fact that middle-of-the-road Clintonism ran out of gas as a public philosophy.

No, other individuals, groups and forces will have to be blamed. In fact, they already are, pre-emptively. If Trump wins, we’re all going to be too busy moving to Canada to read the postmortems (or write them)...

Matthew Lau: Harper used to stand for economic freedom just like Maxime Bernier…until he got elected

Maxime Bernier’s bid to lead the federal Conservative party is, from all appearances, a quest to tear down Big Government. He promised to end corporate subsidies. He signed a pledge to balance the budget within two years. He wants to deregulate the telecommunications industry, privatize Canada Post, and end supply management. Earlier this month he declared that “the maple syrup cartel must also be abolished.”

His campaign stands in stark contrast to those Conservatives who mistakenly insist that federal economic policy during the Harper decade could be labelled as free market. One example is Tory MP Pierre Poilievre, who described Stephen Harper in a recent Ottawa Citizen op-ed as a “steely-eyed, hard-nose Conservative economist whose stated purpose was ‘more freedom through less government.’”

The problem is that this “stated purpose” was never accomplished. Even before the recession began, the federal government under Harper was spending more and more. In 2005–06, federal program spending (which is a more relevant statistic than total federal spending since it excludes debt interest payments) was 12.6 per cent of GDP. It increased to 12.8 per cent in 2006–07, and reached a high of 15.8 per cent in 2009–10 before falling back down to 12.9 per cent in 2014–15.

In other words, federal program spending as a percentage of GDP was higher every year ...

Drinking wine demonstrably can add many years to your life

A bear

Family members say a Saskatchewan man is lucky to be walking away with only claw marks on his arm and a sore back after encountering a bear in a remote area near La Ronge, Sask., Friday morning.

At around 4 a.m. CST, Jack Ballantyne, 44, was out drinking near La Ronge, about 380 kilometres north of Saskatoon.

Ballantyne's younger sister, Rose, said her brother had lost some of his hearing and he didn't hear the bear approaching.

"All he remembers is that the bear took a swipe at him, hit him and he went flying," Rose Ballantyne said.

She said once her brother realized the threat, he used a wine bottle to fend of the bear...

h/t Nick P

Trump is doing everything right

...Trump's surge to the lead in several national polls plus a clear softening of his image in the media seems almost impossible to fathom, even for his most ardent supporters.

Trump's numbers in the Real Clear Politics list of all polls have surged so strongly that Hillary Clinton's overall lead in the average of all those polls is down to just 1.1 percent. But he's jumped into a six-point lead in the daily LA Times/USC poll, he's ahead by one in the Fox News poll, by two in the CNN/ORC poll, and has a two-point lead also in the Rasmussen Reports survey. Just 16 days ago, Trump was trailing in almost all those polls and was behind by a whopping 10 points in that Fox poll just over a month ago.

When it comes to battleground states, Trump has a five-point lead in two separate polls in the crucial state of Ohio, where every poll had him behind there just one month ago. New polls show him leading in Colorado and within just three points in Michigan, two states considered prohibitively safe for Clinton just two weeks ago.

When Trump's campaign pulled the trigger on its latest shake-up, replacing Campaign Manager Paul Manafort with the team of Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon, it looked like a "Hail Mary" move. But in the weeks since, Trump has gone more mainstream and "acceptable" with trips to visit Mexico, an appearance in flood-ravaged Louisiana, and now an economic policy speech in New York that was a great improvement on his Mitt Romney impersonation at the Detroit Economic Club earlier this summer.

And the pièce de résistance happened Thursday night on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." Trump not only cracked jokes and seemed self-deprecatingly likeable, he even (gasp!) let Fallon mess with his hair! ...

Saturday Afternoon Movie: Naked

I'm not usually a fan of Mike Leigh's movies, which I generally find pretentious and dull, but David Thewlis puts in an extraordinary performance in this:

Ringo was the secret ingredient and other revelations from Ron Howard’s Beatles movie

Are there any surprises left when it comes to the Beatles? Their music and history has been so thoroughly mined that superfans would argue no, and they may very well be right. But Ron Howard’s lively new documentary “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” offers a few moments that might interest more casual enthusiasts. Here’s a look at a few of the revelations.

Don’t knock Ringo. He was the secret ingredient.

Ringo doesn’t always get the same respect that John, Paul and George do. But as Paul McCartney tells it, when the drummer replaced Pete Best in 1962, it felt a little like love at first sight.

“I still remember that moment, the first time Ringo played with us,” McCartney says during an interview in the movie. “He kicks in, and it was an oh-my-God moment. … I remember looking, and we’re all looking at each other like, ‘Yeah! This is it.’ ”

“Whew,” Sir Paul added. “I’m getting very emotional.”...

A Media Quandary: Trump's "birther" movement must be racist because Trump is racist against...Canadians???

Moments ago, Donald Trump acknowledged that Barack Obama was born in the United States. You all know that’s a big deal because Trump was the leader of the so-called “birther” movement, which critics called racist.

But watch the festival of cognitive dissonance that happens today among Trump’s critics and the media. They need to explain why the birther thing was racist. What exactly is the reasoning for that connection?

Jake Tapper says the connection between the birther movement and racism is so obvious that you would have to be “naive” to think it wasn’t about race, given that Obama is black. And also given that the “birther” idea had no credible evidence.

But how does that explain why Trump said Ted Cruz was Canadian? Is it because Trump is also racist against Canadians?

That’s the problem the media will have to wrestle with today. And Trump has turned all of them into idiots because there is no real answer to the Ted Cruz analogy...

See also: Saying "Build the Wall" with Mexico can't be racist anymore, because Mexicans want to build a wall to keep out illegal immigrants. 

Idiot 'Social Justice' Fascists Have Meltdown At Calgary's Mount Royal University Over Trump Hat

The imbecile woman in the tank top and her moronic supporter are ridiculous, but they're also beyond ridiculous. They're actual fascists who think they have the right to police what other people are allowed to express. 

Concern over “safe spaces” at a Calgary university boiled over into a confrontation this week between two students, one of whom was wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.

The incident — in which a female student at Mount Royal University insists that a male remove the hat commonly worn by Donald Trump supporters — came to light Thursday after a video emerged online.

In it the woman (later identified as Zoe Slusar, the former vice-president of student life at MRU) approaches a man asking him to take the hat off, arguing the slogan stands for hate language. The man refuses, insisting that he is in a public place and has the right to freedom of expression. He rejects the suggestion that it’s a hateful message.

The video ends shortly after another student, apparently a friend of the hat wearer, snatches the hat away...

More HERE 

The good news is that science has found a way to completely eliminate sexism...

The bad news is that it's by completely eliminating the biological need for women. 

Hey! Don't blame me! I'm not a scientist. I'm going to miss women when they're all gone (except for Lena Dunham) .

On the plus side, however, this will result in an end to having to hear about misogyny and 'The Patriarchy' ad infinitum.  It also solves the burqa controversy.

Interestingly, this development is coinciding with another scientific advance. Just as science is finding a way to make women redundant, it's coming up with a synthetic replacement for them with the perfection of realistic sex robots. 

Sooner or later, science solves everything:

Motherless babies created from skin cells could be on the horizon after scientists discovered a method of creating offspring without the need for a female egg.

The landmark experiment on mice by the University of Bath rewrites 200 years of biology teaching and could pave the way for a baby to be born from the DNA of two men.

It was always thought that only a female egg could prompt the changes in a sperm required to make a baby, because an egg forms from a special kind of cell division in which just half the number of chromosomes are carried over.

Sperm cells form in the same way, so that when a sperm and egg meet they form a full genetic quota, with half of the DNA coming from the mother and half from the father.

Scientists have shown embryos could be created from cells that carry all their chromosomes, which means that, in theory, any cell in the human body could be fertilized by a sperm...

The "Black Lives Matter" movement has wreaked havoc on urban African-American communities

From The Wall Street Journal:

The streets are gone,” Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago police union, told me last month. The night before, Aug. 14, a Chicago police officer’s son had been killed in a shooting while sitting on his family’s porch, one of 92 people killed in Chicago during the worst month for homicides in the Windy City since July 1993. The August victims who survived included 10-year-old Tavon Tanner, shot while playing in front of his house (the bullet ripped through Tavon’s pancreas, intestines, kidney and spleen); an 8-year-old girl shot in the arm while crossing the street; and two 6-year-old girls.

On Sept. 6, a 71-year-old man was accosted by a teen on a bike while watering his lawn. The robber demanded the man’s wallet and when he refused shot him in the abdomen, then grabbed his wallet before pedaling away.

By Sept. 8, nearly 3,000 people had been shot in Chicago in 2016, an average of one shooting victim every two hours. Five hundred and sixteen people had been murdered. Gun homicides and non-fatal shootings were up 47% over the same period of 2015, which had seen a significant rise in crime over 2014.

“There is no way out of this shooting spree,” Mr. Angelo said. His despair is understandable, because Chicago is the country’s most-glaring example of what I have called the “Ferguson effect.” Chicago officers have cut back drastically on proactive policing under the onslaught of criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement and its political and media enablers...

Hillary Clinton Is Getting Surprisingly Little Extra Lift From Blacks and Hispanics

From The New York Times:

...Yes, demographic shifts will continue to slowly help Democrats. But Mrs. Clinton isn’t getting the same leaps in support and turnout among nonwhite voters that let Mr. Obama grow the Democratic coalition as much as he did.

On average, Mrs. Clinton leads among Hispanic voters by almost the exact same amount that Mr. Obama did in pre-election polls in 2012.

This is lost in many articles that cherry-pick the most shockingly pro-Clinton results. The results that don’t show her doing so well — like a Pew poll showing her leading by 50 to 26 — are dismissed, even though the same pollsters four years ago showed Mr. Obama faring about as well as he ultimately did.

Another reason Mrs. Clinton’s relative weakness among nonwhite voters has been overlooked is that analysts and journalists have tended to focus on how Mr. Trump is doing worse than Mr. Romney (Mr. Trump has only 15 percent support among Hispanics compared with Mr. Romney's 27 percent in the exit polls). But they leave out that Mrs. Clinton, by the same measure, is doing worse than Mr. Obama to the same extent.

A final problem is that a handful of polls specifically targeting Latino voters tend to show Mrs. Clinton ahead by a larger margin than other surveys do. These pollsters argue that they’re a more accurate reflection of the Latino electorate. Whether this is true is beside the point: The methodology employed by these surveys has always yielded stronger results for Democrats than other surveys, including the exit polls.

As a result, comparing these polls with the exit polls tends to show Democrats gaining when, in fact, they may not be at all...

See Also:  Trump Has 5-Point Lead in Bloomberg Poll of Battleground Ohio

GARY BYRNE:I Protected Hillary Clinton In The Secret Service - Here's Why Her 'Fainting' Video Really Scares Me

...after the medical episode, she went to her daughter’s apartment and not to an Emergency Room. Secret Service procedure for each detail dictates that everyone knows which hospital to go to depending on the event - heart failure, gunshot, you name it. It is very revealing that, whatever is wrong with her, she is being treated by her own private medical specialists in secret and, judging by the ballet-like reaction by her detail, they have dealt with this before.

Her detail knew that there was something very wrong with her and they were prepared...

African-Canadian cop becomes victim of racist tirade by Toronto City worker

More HERE

Canada's Foreign Minister meets with group that endorses terrorism against Israel

@MinCanadaFA   Why did you meet with a group that endorses terrorism?  https://t.co/lTBe6qSv4J#CDNpoli pic.twitter.com/8DNU2BiGnk

— Richard Klagsbrun (@KlagsbrunTO) September 14, 2016

Yesterday, Canada's Foreign Minister Stephane Dion met with representatives of a group  that endorses terrorism against Israel.  The organization that calls itself Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East was a sponsor of a talk in 2012 by an Eva Bartlett, at which she proclaimed the right of Hamas to launch missile attacks and other forms of violence against Israel's civilian population. "All resistance is legitimate" is a rallying cry often repeated by Bartlett, a frequent speaker at anti-Semitic al Quds Day rallies.

The deceptively named Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East is currently promoting a campaign of illegal vandalism, trying to get its supporters to place stickers on Israeli products in retail stores in order to boycott the Jewish State.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that the group which Dion met with is an effort to destroy Israel. It inherently anti-Semitic in that Jews are the only people whom that group seeks to deny national self-determination. Among the movement's goals is the so-called "right of return" of millions of descendants of Palestinians to Israel proper, which would eradicate Israel as a Jewish State.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs owes Canadians an explanation as to why he gave special status to a hate group that has participated in an effort to validate the murder of innocent civilians.

Barbara Kay: Teach the truth about Islamophobia

...the controversial Islamic Social Services Association (ISSA) and NCCM/CAIR.CAN managed to strike up a collaboration with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and attract funding from the Red Cross to produce a guide for Canadian teachers — Helping Students Deal with Trauma Related to Geopolitical Violence and Islamophobia.

This guide is troubling in many ways.

First, obviously, there’s the collaboration itself, which lends credibility and respectability to NCCM/CAIR.CAN and ISSA from two prestigious but allegedly neutral bodies, the CHRC and the Red Cross. The CHRC’s involvement is especially awkward as a federal government organ closely linked to a quasi-judicial tribunal (the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal).

For the CHRC has now endorsed a document that declares, “The core values and central tenants (sic) of Islam are immutable and the best counter-narrative to the terrorist ideology of hate.” Many Canadians might argue that the best “counter-narrative” to terrorism is the Sermon on the Mount, rational atheism or any number of other things; the point is, CHRC should not be advocating for any particular belief system.

Then there is the apparent CHRC and Red Cross failure of due diligence. Two years ago, NCCM/CAIR.CAN and ISSA collaborated with the RCMP in the creation of the counter-radicalization handbook, United Against Terrorism. Likely embarrassed by the controversy over the handbook’s recommending of hardline clerics for consultation (and its curious emphasis on Muslims’ right not to co-operate with law enforcement), the RCMP withdrew its support (although the RCMP name and logo continues to appear on the handbook).

Furthermore, some specialists say NCCM/CAIR.CAN strategically aims to silence its critics through “libel lawfare” — a pattern of lawsuits intended to chill free speech against the group and its brand of Islam.

For example, the organization — which denies wrongdoing — is suing former prime minister Stephen Harper’s communications director, Jason MacDonald, for libel for publicly implying NCCM/CAIR.CAN has ties to Hamas. In a defeat for NCCM/CAIR.CAN, a Superior Court judge agreed to MacDonald’s demand for more documentation about NCCM/CAIR.CAN’s background and connections. If produced, the documentation could well prove damning, so NCCM/CAIR.CAN may decide to drop the suit (as it abruptly did in a previous libel case)...

Science explains why you SHOULD be afraid of those fucking creepy clowns

...As to why people might fear clowns, Radford suggested that the heavy, mask-like makeup could cause unease because it obscures a clown's true expressions.

"There's something inherently menacing about a masked stranger," Radford said.

Clowns also have qualities that can appear suspiciously otherworldly, Radford told Live Science. They can cram 20 of their friends into a tiny car. They can unfurl endless scarves or squirt water from floral boutonnieres. So it's no wonder that children, or even adults, in a clown's audience might be inclined to connect the figures to the supernatural.

And for some people, the unpredictability of clowns makes them frightening, said Kristin Kunkle, a clinical psychologist at the Columbia University Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders.

"They pull things out of their sleeves. They blow up balloons and then pop them," Kunkle said. "They do things that bring on a rush of emotion that some people might be excited about and some people might find overwhelming."

It probably hasn't helped that in recent decades, a number of horror movies and TV shows have prominently featured gleefully diabolical clowns, such as the costumed alien invaders in "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" (1988), Pennywise from "It" (1990), Killjoy from the ongoing "Killjoy" film series (launched in 2000), and Captain Spaulding from "House of 1000 Corpses" (2003) and "The Devil's Rejects" (2005).

Batman's villainous nemesis the Joker is another murderous example of a man whose clown makeup and maniacal grin accompany heinous crimes and evil deeds...

No one gives a shit about your stinkin' facts

From Wired:

DONALD TRUMP DID not oppose the war in Iraq. That’s a fact, established by the cadre of professionals who have taken up the task of determining what’s true. They are the fact-checkers, and their ranks are growing.

Over the last decade, and since the last election especially, weighing the veracity of politicians’ statements has become one of journalism’s hottest cottage industries. Social media lets journalists and ordinary citizens call out politicians’ lies in real time. Accuracy activists have more ways than ever to shine a veracious light on the scourge of misinformation. At the same time, digital platforms provide more efficient vectors than ever for falsehoods to spread. It’s the fact-checkers’ paradox: even as they gain new powers to hold politicians accountable, lies are more persistent than ever.

Fact-checkers must also contend with an irony that would demoralize less tenacious truth-squadders. When presented with facts that contradict their worldview, the most informed partisans may be the ones least likely to change their minds. The facts, it turns out, don’t just reflect the world as it is. People pick and choose among them to define who they are...

Dolphins recorded having a conversation 'just like two people' for first time

Two dolphins have been recorded having a conversation for the first time after scientists developed an underwater microphone which could distinguish the animals' different "voices".

Researchers have known for decades that the mammals had an advanced form of communication, using distinctive clicks and whistles to show they are excited, happy, stressed or separated  from the group.

But scientists have now shown that dolphins alter the volume and frequency of pulsed clicks to form individual "words" which they string together into sentences in much the same way that humans speak.

Researchers at the Karadag Nature Reserve, in Feodosia, Russia, recorded two Black Sea bottlenose dolphins, called Yasha and Yana, talking to each other in a pool. They found that each dolphin would listen to a sentence of pulses without interruption, before replying...

If Trump Wins, 'The U.S. Economy Would Take Off in a Big Way'

Financial markets are starting to "wake up" to the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency in the wake of Hillary Clinton's recent health concerns and tightening polls, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch Head of Global Rates and Currencies Research David Woo. He says investors are still underestimating the real estate mogul's chances of ascending to the highest office in the land, and what a seismic change this could be for markets and the world's largest economy.

While the outsider candidate poses a risk to one of 2016's hot investment strategies, he could prove to be a massive boost for the greenback and U.S. economy.

"The U.S. economy would take off in a big way" if Trump were elected and Republicans control both legislative houses next year, said Woo, thanks to the fiscal stimulus that Trump would enact. Trump has pledged to spend at least twice as much as the Democratic nominee on infrastructure and also enact a massive tax cut, two measures that would entail a renewed issuance of Treasuries...

Hillary Clinton makes her greatest contribution to America's economy - spurs "Depolorables" lines of merchandise

Just days after Hillary Clinton said she regretted calling half of Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables,” some of those supporters are embracing the title -- while enterprising web retailers seize the moment by quickly churning out a line of "deplorables" merchandise...

Justin Trudeau praises diversity at mosque with terrorism connections

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited a gender-segregated mosque Monday morning whose imam is a member of a group considered a terrorist organization abroad.

Samy Metwally, the lead imam at theOttawa Muslim Association, is a “a member of the International Union for Muslim Scholars (IUMS)”, according to the mosque’s website. In 2014 the United Arab Emirates placed the group on its list of designated terrorist organizations.

“IUMS was founded by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading ideologue and a notorious figure who, among other accomplishments, was for many years banned from entering France and endorsed the murder of Israelis,” Daniel Pipes, an author and Islamic studies scholar who has taught at Harvard and University of Chicago, explained via e-mail...

See also:  Trudeau salutes the “sisters upstairs” at gender segregated mosque