October 31, 2016 Law & Order Luke Ford No sacred cows.

Law & Order

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

* I don’t watch television, but my mom loves all of the L&O shows. She says realistic portrayal is boring; she doesn’t want to watch another ’48 Hours’.

* Typical black crime couldn’t hold a viewer’s attention for a whole hour once a week for 22-24 weeks. There’s a reason why L&O is on broadcast prime time over the air TV and the much more true to life The First 48 is on a low rated cable network. Who wants to watch all the time TV shows about Jamal murdering N’Deshawntavious over shoes or kool aid recipes? Only white on white crime plausibly generates the complicated plot twists and nuances that are necessary to attract and retain the kind of audience that networks and Madison Avenue want for 8 PM on a weeknight.

* L&O has a multitude of “ripped from the headlines” episodes where the real-life non-white perp was changed to white in the episode.

* The worst feature of the L&O series is their predictable exculpatory and worshipful portrayals of blacks, Latinos, Orientals, and Moslems as squeaky-clean admirable victims of White treachery and crime. Finding them offensively out of synch with reality and monotonously Narrative-preachy, I stopped watching those shows years ago.

* Prior to the mid-sixties, unless you lived near a majority black neighbourhood; blacks were unimportant. Black crime then as now was mostly intra-racial. Benign neglect was the order of the day and was codified into the power relationship for several years. What was worse was that many black families were moving out of poverty and thanks to unions and the post world war II economic boom they were becoming both middle class and familial as in two parents and kids that had a future.
Worse in this sense means that they were less and less reliant on handouts and the dole and welfare … less dependent on urban dem politicians. The improvements in the life of America’s blacks could not be allowed to continue and LBJ and Teddy among others saw to it that those improvements would be and were rolled back. I suppose it is a variety of irony that black families were winning the war on poverty up until the time the government determined that black poverty was better for the democrat party than black independence.

* If you had no idea about the racial breakdown of the population of NYC and their respective crime rates and got your data points for Dick Wolf shows, you would think Manhattan was subject to a daily crime wave of murderous white people, and nonethnic Wonderbread types at that. While they often film exteriors outside the Centre Street Manhattan Criminal Court building, appears they have so far failed to venture inside. In fairness there isn’t much cinematic possibility for black and Latino guys shooting each other over drug spots in and around housing projects or corners in Washington Heights. Heck, most Dominicans in the Heights barely speak English.

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White Nationalist’s Pro-Trump Robocall: Evan McMullin Is Gay

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Gideon Resnick writes:

Prominent white nationalist William Johnson, an ardent supporter of Donald Trump’s campaign who was previously listed as a California delegate for the Republican National Convention, has paid for a new robocall targeting #NeverTrump independent candidate Evan McMullin in Utah.
According to an email from Johnson, he has scheduled the new robocall to begin going out to Utah voters on Monday evening.
“Hello, My name is William Johnson,” the audio recording begins. “I am a farmer and a white nationalist. I make this call against Evan McMullin and in support of Donald Trump.
“Evan McMullin is an open borders, amnesty supporter.
“Evan has two mommies. His mother is a lesbian, married to another woman. Evan is okay with that. Indeed Evan supports the Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.
“Evan is over 40 years old and is not married and doesn’t even have a girlfriend. I believe Evan is a closet homosexual.
“Don’t vote for Evan McMullin. Vote for Donald Trump. He will respect all women and be a president we can all be proud of.”

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Ari Shavit Is the Least Interesting Part of the Ari Shavit Scandal

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

From the Forward:

To be clear, Shavit is not accused of rape. When I say “rape culture,” I’m referring to the way our culture, based on patriarchal values, objectifies women, disregards their rights and normalizes and legitimizes sexual violence against them. When women do speak out against violence, rape culture encourages society to blame them. This dynamic has less to do with sex and more to do with power. Some powerful men are so sure of their importance that they assume any woman would want nothing more than to be their sex object. If she doesn’t, no problem — the men are entitled to take her anyway. As Donald Trump said in the now-infamous “Access Hollywood” video, if you’re famous and powerful, you can do just about anything. Both men and women can be victims of rape culture, which exists pretty much everywhere in the Western world, including in the American Jewish community and, yes, here in Israel…

Davidi Perl, a settlement leader, resigned from public life in October following reports that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars to a woman so that she wouldn’t go public with her charges of sexual assault. He refused to admit guilt, however. Former employees of Knesset Member Oren Hazan have accused him of rubbing himself against them, grabbing them and exposing himself. Hazan says he is being “unfairly used as a punching bag.”

In April, a high-level appointment of Brigadier General Ofek Buchris, an up-and-coming military man who holds a citation for bravery, was cancelled following a female subordinate’s multiple allegations of rape and sexual harassment.

In February, well-regarded actor Moshe Ivgy, 62, was suspended from his position in the Haifa repertoire theater after six women who formerly worked with Ivgy said that he had sexually harassed them.

In December 2015, interior minister Silvan Shalom stepped down from decades of public life after 11 women came forward with accusations of sexual assault.

In November 2015, Jewish Home Knesset member Yinon Magal resigned after several women accused him of sexual harassment. There has also been a long string of sexual harassment scandals in the highest echelons of the Israel Police Force, leading to resignations and suspensions.

And then there’s former president Moshe Katzav, convicted on December 30, 2010, of two counts of rape and other sexual offenses committed against female workers during his term as president and when he served as tourism minister. Katzav waged a nasty PR war against his accusers and stubbornly refused to resign before criminal proceedings; he is slated for release in 2018.

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Forward: ‘Holocaust-Denying Academic Organized List of Trump Endorsers’

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

There are only two honorable forms of argument — to challenge facts or logic. Name-calling is not an honorable form of argument.

Not to mention that this article presents no evidence for its claim that Boyd Cathey denies the Holocaust.

Does Boyd Cathey deny that any Jews were murdered in WWII? Of course not. He denies that the murder of Jews in WWII was the most significant event in human history. Was does the slaughter of Jews in WWII get the special name “Holocaust” or “Shoah”? Don’t gentiles get special names too for their mass deaths?

The Forward writes:

In an effort to counter claims that his list of supporter is short on intellectuals, Donald Trump, scholars supporting his run for presidency are collecting signatures on a statement endorsing the Republican candidate.
According to a Daily Caller report from Friday, more than 50 scholars have joined the statement, saying that, “supporters of the Trump agenda are by no means limited to the badly educated and ill-informed.”
But among the organizers of the scholars list is one name that stands out: Dr. Boyd Cathey, who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center was “involved in several extremist movements, including ‘radical traditionalist Catholicism,’ Holocaust denial and the neo-Confederate movement.”
Cathey, a North Carolina archivist, is associated with the anti-Semitic group known as the “Institute for Historical Review.” He sat on the advisory committee of the institute’s Journal for Historical Review, which is described by SPLC as “the world’s leading Holocaust denial organization.”
Cathey’s main focus is net-confederate revisionism, but has made anti-Semitic statements throughout the years. He argued that anything he might say “dealing with Wagner, Judaism and Germany, whether reasonable or not, would probably get me exiled even deeper into the realms of the prejudiced unwashed,” before recommending reading the anti-Semitic writings of Kevin MacDonald.
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to question regarding Cathey’s endorsement.
The scholars behind the letter are seem cognizant of their unique position in their professional circles, which have, by and large, rejected Trump. “We are fully aware that signing this statement will not bring the signatory the same professional rewards as speaking at a conference on why Trump is a ‘fascist’ or on why he reminds one of the late German Fuhrer,” wrote Cathey, and fellow organizers Dr. Paul Gottfried and Dr. Walter Block. “Expressing support for the Republican presidential candidate undoubtedly requires more courage, particularly for someone in the academic profession.”

Paul Gottfried is Jewish and certainly no Holocaust-denier.

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BOOM! Dem Pollster Says Election Could be Like 1980 a 40 State Trump Landslide

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

REPORT: According to former Jimmy Carter pollster Pat Caddell, Hillary Clinton is hemorrhaging support as a result of the FBI announcement and we could see a repeat of the 1980 election when anti-establishment candidate Ronald Reagan won in a landslide.

Caddell drew comparisons to the 1980 presidential race, which was close right up until the final days before the electorate abandoned Carter and rallied around the anti-establishment candidate, leading to Reagan taking victory in a landslide.

Caddell noted that Carter’s entire campaign had been built around portraying Reagan as unqualified and “dangerous,” in a similar vein to how Clinton has demonized Trump. Caddell explained that the polling between Reagan and Carter was close up until the final weekend when “the dam broke” and Reagan shot ahead by ten points.

Stating that he had been looking at the data regarding unfavorability ratings for both Clinton and Trump, Caddell noted that since Friday, large numbers of voters had been structurally “moving against the status quo – the incumbent who is essentially Hillary Clinton.”

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The Rise Of The Alt-Right

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Scott McConnell writes for The American Conservative:

Twenty-one years ago I was assigned by Commentary to write about Jared Taylor—today known as one of the eminences of the “alt-right.” Taylor had written a grim book on American race relations, Paved With Good Intentions, which had been published by a mainstream house and was widely, if critically, reviewed. Though unusually skeptical about the prospect of blacks and whites living together harmoniously in the United States, it stopped well short of any systematically racist argument. The book had several fans among New Yorkers I knew prominent in journalism and city politics.

When I referred to it in passing in a New York Post column, we quickly received a fax from Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League stating that Taylor was far more extremist than I had let on. Curious to explore further, I queried Commentary—where I then did most of my non-newspaper writing—and they were interested.

I interviewed Taylor, read back issues of his monthly newsletter, American Renaissance (AR), and drafted a piece. AR was devoted primarily to demonstrating that in American history racism was as accepted as apple pie and that this was by no means a bad thing. It contained large doses of the evolutionary and biological racial thought fairly commonplace amongst American elites in the ’20s and ’30s. A central contention was that the United States could not thrive as an increasingly multiracial and multicultural country and that American whites were facing a kind of cultural dispossession.

I summarized this, quoting liberally, and concluded that the endgame vision of the AR crowd was potentially horrific, leading to national dissolution or civil war, while adding that continued mass immigration really would put the common culture of America under grave stress. If immigration rates went down, Taylor and AR would remain fringe players. If they rose, white racial anxieties would bubble to the surface, and Taylor might one day have his moment.

The piece was never published: Neal Kozodoy, Commentary’s editor, told me I had indulged Taylor too much and asked for a shorter, tighter rewrite. By then my brief summer vacation had ended, other tasks intervened, and I eventually lost interest.

Jared Taylor’s moment has not arrived, but clearly he has edged into the national conversation. He has been pictured and quoted in an anti-Trump attack ad produced by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, he has been a guest on Diane Rehm’s show on NPR, and his core ideas have been broadcast—and excoriated—in magazines and websites great and small. He is now touted as one of the intellectual leaders of the alt-right, a diffuse movement of uncertain significance, but one deemed sufficiently important by the Clinton campaign for Hillary to devote a large portion of an August campaign speech to it. Donald Trump—who has almost surely never read a single article by an alt-right figure—is claimed by Clinton and other liberals to be under its influence and propagating its doctrines.

The truth is quite different: parts of the alt-right have raised their own visibility by attaching themselves to Trump. At the same time, Trump and his unanticipated success in winning the Republican nomination are symptoms of the same political and civilizational crisis that makes alt-rightish themes—at least in a more or less bowdlerized and soft-core form—compelling to a growing number of people.

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Sam Glaser Down Under: Fourteen Days Performing in Australia in Fourteen Minutes

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Published on Oct 31, 2016: Sam’s recent artist-in-residence program in Sydney Australia reached tens of thousands of fans in a very busy few weeks. He worked with several day schools, led two Shabbatons, visited retreat centers, taught and performed at Limmud and was a featured conductor at the annual Australia Jewish Choral Festival. Thankfully a talented two-camera crew was on hand to document the events and the footage was expertly edited by Reuven Fauman, founder of Truly Moving Stories. Yes, Sam would LOVE to come to your community and do the same thing! Operators are standing by at samglaser.com.

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Men in Massachusetts should simply not show up to defend restraining orders, divorces, and other family law matters?

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Comments: * Google “Phil Greenspun divorce” for some amusing stories about the economics rewards of divorce. Basically marrying and divorcing an investment banker or a surgeon is a lot better life than becoming a banker or surgeon.

* Greenspun is obsessed with the idea that all a woman needs to do is sleep with 2 or 3 rich orthodontists and she will make more money than if she had gotten the degree herself.

Philip Greenspun writes:

One intriguing idea that I learned at the hearing was that in some cases men might be better off not showing up to court when a case is being decided under the family law and domestic violence system. U.S. Census data from March 2014 show that, when there is enough income for a child to yield a cashflow, men in Massachusetts lose custody lawsuits roughly 97 percent of the time. Typically the man is therefore spending $100,000 to $1 million in legal fees in order to have a shot at being one of the 3 percent. But is the guy actually digging his own grave by showing up?

[In theory the law, unlike in some European and Islamic jurisdictions, is gender-neutral. And, as discussed below, the citizens who came to the hearing included a woman who lost custody of her children due to her higher-income, harder-working status. In practice, however, attorneys say that men cannot prevail on a domestic violence complaint against a woman.]

“I was advised by my lawyer not to show up to defend against a restraining order,” said one father, “because if the man doesn’t show up he can be restrained for only 7 days but if he does show up the order can last for a year.” One take-away from the hearing was that when when the children were potentially profitable, motivated female plaintiffs would eagerly seek, and typically win, restraining orders to keep children from seeing their fathers.

[“The Domestic Violence Parallel Track” explains why this is typically a powerful tool for plaintiffs nationwide, but in Massachusetts a restraining order has a specific cash value. Given a $250,000-per-year defendant, for example, obtaining ordinary “winner parent” status and 2/3 time with the child yields $40,000 per year in tax-free cash via the child support guidelines plus, typically, an order that the defendant pay 100% of the child’s actual expenses (e.g., day care, uninsured medical/dental). If a plaintiff can get the defendant entirely excluded from the child’s life, judges are explicitly encouraged to award additional child support (due to the fact that father is not providing free babysitting 1/3 time). Having 100% “custody” may simply mean dumping the child into commercial care, such as day care or with nannies, and the loser parent will pay for those on top of the enhanced child support.]

[Of course, this advice would not be good in a state that offers fathers a realistic chance at obtaining 50/50 parenting time schedule, e.g., Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Maine, Pennsylvania ]

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Trump Took Lead Before FBI Announcement

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Dick Morris writes:

History will undoubtedly say that the Comey announcement that the FBI is reopening its investigation into Hillary’s emails that turned the 2016 race around and brought Hillary down. But that’s a false narrative. And to grasp what is happening, we must put it aside and concentrate on the real reasons Trump began to overtook Hillary in the week leading up to Comey’s announcement on Friday, October 28th.
Polling suggests that Trump’s gains predate Comey’s announcement. Most dramatic was the heavily Democratic biased ABC poll that began the week giving Hillary a 12 point lead and ended the week with Mrs. Clinton clinging to a one point margin. Most ABC interviews were conducted well before Comey spoke.
So what happened?
• Trump’s negative ads began to hit in swing states. Until this week, Hillary’s attacks on Donald had been dominating the airwaves for months. But, during the past ten days or so, his negative ads — devastatingly effective — began to make their impact felt.
• ObamaCare premiums increases began to hit. While the full impact of the price hikes won’t be felt until after November 1st — in time for the election — the early notices that they would go up by an average of 25% with many even higher, had a big impact on the race. And Trump moved adroitly to exploit the increases in his speeches.
• Before the Comey bombshell, the drip-drip-drip of WikiLeaks emails had been taking a daily toll on Hillary’s vote share. The coup de grace was the memo from Doug Band that was written in response to Chelsea’s accusation that she had not done enough for her father. Stung by the first daughter’s charges, Band ticks off the deals that led to a $60 million personal profit for Bill Clinton, a list that vindicates the direst of the pay-for-play accusations.
• Hillary’s illness prevented her from campaigning more vigorously and her campaign staff, obtuse as ever, failed to give her new issues and material to use on hitting Donald. Once they ran out of abused women to complain about Trump, they had nothing to say.

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South Florida’s plan for traffic: ‘We’re going to make them suffer’

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Luke Ford

Sun Sentinel: Faced with ever-increasing traffic jams, South Florida’s public officials have come up with a plan: Make it worse.

Instead of fixing the problem, government officials are deliberately adding to it in hopes we’ll all walk, ride the bus or take the train.

“Until you make it so painful that people want to come out of their cars, they’re not going to come out of their cars,” Anne Castro, chair of the Broward County Planning Council, said during a meeting last year. “We’re going to make them suffer first, and then we’re going to figure out ways to move them after that because they’re going to scream at us to help them move.”

A Sun-Sentinel analysis of South Florida’s roads and development plans reveals how planners are creating neighborhoods in urban areas where gridlock is the norm.

• Cities are approving high-density housing at a rapid pace, bringing thousands more vehicles into urban areas.

• The state Legislature has fostered the problem by allowing cities to approve development without regard for the effect on traffic.

• Some cities are deliberately reducing the number of lanes on major roads to make room for bike lanes and wider sidewalks, while cramming more cars into a smaller space.

The growing congestion in part led Broward and Palm Beach counties to ask voters to approve a penny sales tax increase in the November election. A portion of the tax would be dedicated to mass transit and other ways of getting around.

It’s a gamble. Will people ride bicycles or walk to work in South Florida’s heat, rain and lightning storms? Or ride buses that often run late and make for long, inconvenient rides?

“It’s a big experiment,” said Robert Poole, a Plantation resident and an engineer with the Reason Foundation, a public policy research group in Washington, D.C. “We won’t know for another 10 years if it’s going to work.

“If it doesn’t work, we’re going to have some big white elephants on our hands — and even worse congestion.”

Forecast: More gridlock ahead

What South Florida planners want is to create bustling urban neighborhoods, with apartments, condos, offices, restaurants and shops.

If they succeed, it will be “so busy it’s not pleasant to drive here,” said Nick Uhren, executive director of the Palm Beach Metropolitan Planning Organization. And planners say that’s a good thing, he said.

“A robust, healthy downtown is a sign of a healthy, vibrant economic community,” he explained. “[Cities] don’t want to say no to development because of traffic congestion.”

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