Maggie's Farm

There’s a new journalism prize, The Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity. PJ Media and The New Criterion will award the Prize annually “for what our readers consider the most egregious example of dishonest reporting for the fiscal year.” The initial judges include Peter Collier, Roger Kimball, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, and Roger L. Simon. Roger Simon writes, “Since this is a new prize the committee also solicits your suggestions on how we should carry on our work and any other suggestions regarding the Walter Duranty Prize.”

There’s certainly enough expertise on the panel to reach such a choice. I suggest the following criteria:

1.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be reporting on a foreign country. Walter Duranty’s infamous whitewashing of the starvation and death of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-3 will be hard to exceed, but there are enough terrible instances of widespread state brutality today that journalists who espouse the state line or distort the facts should be the priority.

2.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be to a bureau chief for a major news agency, newspaper, or other prominent media, as Walter Duranty was the longtime bureau chief in Moscow for the New York Times. This ties the responsibility directly to the owners of the venue.

3.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be the recipient of an award for journalism, as Walter Duranty was of the Pulitzer Prize for his. This ties the responsibility to the journalism profession.

4.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should have a matching prize, called the Gareth Jones Prize, to show the contrast to honest reporting. Gareth Jones did report the starvation and deaths of Ukrainians. (For a comparison, “A Tale of Two Journalists:Walter Duranty, Gareth Jones, and the Pulitzer Prize.”)

One of the most active organizations of Jews and Christians in support of Israel is Stand With Us, who sent me this email to forward to friends. Below are facts about the misrepresentations in Sunday night's 60 Minutes program about "Christians in the Holy Land." CBS ignores the favorable conditions for Christians within Israel and ignores the persecution and oppression of Christians and other minorities throughout the Moslem countries of the Middle East. So far, CBS is also ignoring the tens of thousands of protests it has received. So, you may want to express your views to the management of CBS and 60 Minutes, to wake them to the error of their ways.

 
On Sunday, April 22, CBS` "60 Minutes" ran a shockingly biased episode, "Christians of the Holy Land" by Bob Simon. Even the always diplomatic Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the show a "hatchet job" on Israel.  You can watch the program here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57417408/Christians-of-the-holy-land/?tag=strip.

(Photos tear at emotions. I purposely do not include any images in this post as emotions are far from enough to convey the individual stories or the brutalities.)

At sundown today begins the annual observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. There are many museums, plaques, books that let today’s visitors get a glimpse of the horrors and the heroes of that time. As one passes through and on, what is often missed is the individual stories, the lost hopes and potentials, the personal exertions, the evils that were so common among men and women of many nationalities. The Nazis could not have killed so many without the work of those in conquered countries, some coerced, some bribed, some for their own salvation, many because of rife anti-Semitism. The Yad Veshem museum and memorials, including to Righteous Gentiles, outside Jerusalem, is a major repository of these individual stories. Visit the website.

The Holocaust needs to be remembered and restudied in every generation just because of its scale, and because of what it says about the thin veneer that separates now from then and now from recurrence. (It is not by coincidence that the week after Yom Hashoah is the celebration of Israel's Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut.)

Below is a piece I wrote in 2006 that includes first-person accounts of what happened in a village near where much of my family perished.

In a voluntary poll, unscientific, by my hometown's Encinitas Patch, only 18% said "no" to whether "Is stay-at-home parenting as difficult as a job outside of the home?"

Encinitas political party registration is about evenly split among Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Obamaganda fails across party lines.

If Patch in your locality has a similar poll, please add the results in Comments.

Last Friday, the editor of a southern California publication asked me whether I wanted to do a piece about the “settlement”  between the US Justice Department and University of California San Diego regarding the handling of racial harassment on campus. I told him that I wasn’t privy to the inside details, so didn’t want to analyze the settlement.

What I do know is that it grew out of incidents on campus in 2010 that caused an uproar of indignation, mostly justifiable. A fraternity held a Compton Cookout that relied on disparaging racial stereotypes of Blacks. A noose was found in a library. (As it later was revealed, a minority student admitted to placing the noose, not considering the implications.)UCSD quickly set up an office on Harassment and Discrimination to hear and judge complaints regarding any campus minority. UCSD took constructive action to uphold laws, alleviate fears and confront facts.

Added: Inside Higher Ed reports: "A professor’s use of a class website at the University of California at Los Angeles to promote a boycott of Israel has led to a protest and a subsequent finding by the university that his actions were inappropriate...Academic freedom experts said that professors are not free to use class websites to promote political agendas. “If the link posted is strictly of a political nature, and is unrelated to the course content, then it is not protected by academic freedom,” said Greg Scholtz, AAUP’s director of academic freedom, tenure and governance."

At the University of California’s sister public college system, California State University, however, the opposite is taking place. The illegal use of college webservers to promulgate anti-Israel propaganda, to promote boycotts of Israel, create an harassing atmosphere on campuses toward Jewish students and others supportive of Israel, and senior administrators who have ignored these transgressions and themself broken the law, has not been addressed nor remedied by the Chancellor of the Cal State system, Charles Reed. The outrageous and illegal activities by some faculty and administration members continue.

I won’t belabor you with all the details here. Just read the latest letter: "Abuses of academic freedom at CSU need your attention", below, from leaders of AMCHA, an organization to protect Jewish students from illegal harassment, written to Chancellor Reed, Cal State college presidents, and the state officials elected to protect the rights of all Californians. The issues have previously been brought to their attention, including by me (Cal State’s Chutzpah, in City Journal). The issue is already moving to the courts. We await the US Justice Department to intervene, or to as so often in this administration exhibit a proclivity to only become involved on behalf of one minority.

Maggie's Farm most lovely flower, Marianne, sends us this photo taken April 1, 2012 near Ennis, Texas. The Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) is the state flower of Texas. This part of the description is appropriate to Texas: "Bluebonnets cannot tolerate poorly drained, clay based soils." Roots cannot grow freely when constricted or drowned with limited ability to breath.

The real threat that the Ann Romney's of the world represent to the statist Left is yet another of the many insightful posts by a mom in Marin whose blog Bookworm Room is a must add to your daily web surfing. She and I have become friends over the years sharing our parenting experiences, she and I -- a work at home Dad -- considering how to best raise our young children for a positive life and constructive role in society. An excerpt from her post today:

For the last many years, I have been the single most important influence on my children.  Yes, they go to school (public school, yet); and yes, they both have thriving social lives; and yes, I’ve been unable to insulate them from a Leftist pop culture that is hostile to traditional norms and to conservatives generally, but I’m still the most important person.  Of all the influences in their lives, I am the one who is most present, most consistent, and most trusted.  I’m sure they’ll pull away as they get older, and they may even rebel, but I’ll still be that little voice in their brain, imparting facts, values, and analyses.

I am the counterweight to the state.  Therefore, I am dangerous.  I am subversive simply by existing.  My love for my children is a dominant force that works its way into their psyches and that trumps the state-run schools and the state complicit media world.  Some mothers, of course, are entirely in sync with schools and media.  They happily reinforce the statist message.  But those of us who don’t are a powerful anti-statist force and we must be challenged.

The Left’s problem with Ann Romney transcends her husband’s wealth, her (and his) Republican identification, and her decision to work for her children, rather than for a paying employer.  The Left’s problem with Ann Romney is that she represents the triumph of the individual.  No wonder they hate her so much.

The campaign by leftist pressure groups for companies to cease their contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may backfire on those feckless companies that have succumbed. So far, that includes Kraft Foods, Intuit, Wendy’s, Arby’s, McDonalds, Walgreens, Pepsi and Coca Cola.

ALEC has over 2000 members who are state legislators, out of the 7282 State legislators across the US, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. ALEC members cooperate on developing model legislation for their states that is pro-growth, pro-jobs, lower taxes. ALEC, also, exchanges model legislation among its members based on the work of a particular state. This has included legislation for Voter ID and for Stand Your Ground self-defense, two bete noires of the left.

ALEC has over 300 companies who contribute up to $25,000 each for the opportunity to engage in conversation with state legislators about issues that affect their business. The few who have turned tail may well find themselves with a weakened hand as state legislatures consider issues. Well, if they don’t support free enterprise, they will be less free.

ALEC issued a “statement today in response to the coordinated and well-funded intimidation campaign against corporate members of the organization…We are not and will not be defined by ideological special interests who would like to eliminate discourse that leads to economic vitality, jobs and fiscal stability for the states.”

The intimidation campaign is made up of the usual Soros and similar organizations on the activist left, as Michelle Malkin outlines. She recommends boycotting their products. Consumer boycotts of companies with such wide distribution seldom amount to much. What will really hit these companies is the legislation that affects them. Go left, Go to someone else, like the leftist groups you respond to that want to raise your taxes and reduce your freedoms to operate profitably, over 25% of state legislators may well say.

I grew up in my working class neighborhood with friends of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Although there were stereotypes and jokes that, in retrospect, are embarrassing, we all talked openly and understood each other. That bred mutual respect and defense of each’s rights to fair treatment based on merit, whether socially, in school, jobs or sports. We carried that into our adult lives and actions.

Inside Higher Ed, respectfully liberal, published the results of a study of college students’ attitude toward the question, "How important to you personally is helping to promote racial understanding?" To the researchers’ surprise, it became less important as the students went from freshmen to seniors, and that finding held across races. The conclusion as to Backwards on Racial Understanding:

"These findings cast doubt on research and conventional wisdom that argues for the liberalizing effects of higher education on racial attitudes. Instead, it suggests that, for some students, negative experiences with diversity may dampen the relatively progressive racial views they hold when entering college," write the authors in their conclusion.

 

Look at the right side of the linked page for some job listings for “diversity” positions at colleges. Multiply. Such positions are the fastest growing category of jobs at campuses.

Preaching “multiculturalism” but not practicing it due to allowing and encouraging narrow campus “victimology” groups’ vituperance aimed at other groups and their shouting down or criminalizing contrary ideas may stifle but, at the same time creates resentment and dislike. The actual experience for many students is the noted reduction in commitment to promoting racial understanding.

The study does indicate that having friends of different races and ideas does increase mutual understanding and engagement in promoting racial understanding. That is often referred to as civil discussion. That is increasingly difficult to accomplish on campuses where division and extremist challenges are common and defended by “diversity” ideology that promotes division and protects extremism.

My old friend Bob Turner served in Vietnam in various capacities. He then went on to law school and teaches national security law at the University of Virginia, having also headed up that section for the American Bar Association. Want to be impressed? Read his bio at the link of his name above. Below, he writes about the last days of South Vietnam and what brought them about. This is slightly edited from another piece he recently wrote.

Congress did not totally cut off assistance to South Vietnam in 1975; but as a scholar who has been studying and writing about Vietnam for more than forty-five years (who was the last congressional staff member to leave Vietnam during the April 1975 final evacuation), I can assure you that the U.S. Congress was the most decisive factor in the Communist conquest of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975.

To keep things in context, it is important to note that in the post-war era, Hanoi has repeatedly admitted that its leaders made a decision on May 19, 1959, to open the Ho Chi Minh trail and send tens of thousands of soldiers and countless tons of equipment and supplies south to "liberate" South Vietnam by armed force. That was more than 5 years before the U.S. decided to send combat units to Vietnam, and our purpose was precisely the purpose for which we sent troops into South Korea in 1950 -- to uphold the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter and oppose the expansion of Communism by force.

Viet Cong defectors used to laugh and express shock at how successful their campaign to portray the "National Liberation Front" to the west as something other than a classic Leninist "front" organization had been. (Hanoi actually published an English-language translation of the proceedings of the Third Party Congress in 1960, including the resolution it approved calling for "our people" in south Vietnam to set up a front under Party leadership three months before the NLF was allegedly formed by non-Communist resistance leaders in Ben Tre.) American "scholars" who fell for this ruse should be ashamed of themselves.

We went downtown to the Fremont Street Experience. I won't show you the tacky details. Nor will I show you the insides of most of the hotels. Overdone. The street reproduction efforts at the New York, New York, Paris, Venetian are worth a brief stroll. The crowds were too large in front of the Mirage for its Volcano show and in front of Treasure Island for its Pirate show (worth seeing) for me to get any decent photos.

Caeser's Palace has grown and grown since its opening as the first over the top class hotel on the new Strip, as the classic hotels one-by-one were torn down for bigger ones. Here's two shots of inside Caesers. The Atlantis show sunk.

I thought the Bellagio the most tastefully decorated hotel in Las Vegas. -- An imp called Gavin liked it, too.

Before going on to the better sides of the Strip, across Las Vegas Blvd. from the Monte Carlo is a 4-story M&M store, filled with kitch, at high price tags. These cylindars are full of different varieties of M&Ms @ $10/lb. Free samples? Yes, just two M&Ms per person!

There were so many grossly obese persons walking the Strip, the boys started calling them M&M people.

I first went to Las Vegas in 1954. Somewhere in my garage are the black-and-white photos I took with my Kodak Brownie. We stayed at the TravelLodge on the Strip, where the Imperial Palace now stands. The Strip ended a short way south from there. Most hotels had a Western theme. Downtown, there was only the Golden Nugget and Fitzgeralds, now the Fremont Experience of lights and tacky. After 5PM, men wore suits or sport jackets, women wore cocktail dresses. Dinner and a show, with top headliners, was $10. All-you-can-eat Prime Rib was $1.99. Gorgeous women in skimpy outfits served free drinks to gamblers. Pit bosses gave free decks of used cards to kids. When my poor family in Detroit migrated to LA in the 1930s, my trusting great-uncle Sam was suckered out of a week's wages, a few dollars, for a tiny parcel of desert land. In the mid-'60s, he got twenty-thousand dollars for it, equal then to two-years of middle-class salary, where the Luxor now stands. For twenty-years I stayed at the Desert Inn, until it was the last of traditional, classy Las Vegas, and haven't returned for 17-years.

Now? Don't ask. OK, I'll tell you anyway. The hotels are humongous and glitzy and expensive. Almost everyone is in jeans and shorts and T-shirts. Has-been shows cost a small fortune. Buffets are $15-$30. There are half as many cocktail waitresses and, really, most are 40-70 years old. One moved so slow, we looked around for her walker. (The pretty young things are off-Strip, like at the Rio.) Used decks of cards have to be bought for $5 or more. Corporate Las Vegas squeezes every penny of costs and dollars out of tourists. Fortunately, always being with my pesky, wandering boys, and my eagle-eyed wife, probably saved several thousand dollars, as I never escaped to the tables. 

Early morning and late afternoon is the best time to see and appreciate the desert, as the angles of the sun make colors clearer and shadows more dramatic. This morning we went just west of Las Vegas to Red Rock Canyon. The greater Las Vegas basin once was under an inland ocean, so you can see the strata of sediments on the exposed sides of the hills. Unfortunately, I have an old camera, making the distinctions less clear than from the new fangled digitals, but look closely anyway.

Along the road, we met a friendly burro. I told the boys that is what burritos are made from, and they believed me, for a while anyway.

While Bird Dog searches for eggs on his lawn today, here’s a few he may miss:

New NYT bureau chief in Israel lays another egg

While I was away last week searching for golden eggs in Las Vegas, my piece about the California Association of Scholars report on the left-leaning eggheads laid by the University of California was widely linked.

Muslim Brotherhood brings eggs to D.C. while rights in Egypt fall with a splat -- Egg-rolling self-enrichment good source of wealth for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leader; Obama backs the rotten egg – Sharia soufflé on Egypt’s menu -- Sharia wrong-side up eggs also on UCLA menu -- Inbreeding bad eggs

California plays hide the tax egg

Mosques mushroom, like eggs in Italian barnyards

Exploding eggs in Iran

Campus pro-Palestinians only believe in throwing eggs

Green jobs lays an egg

Tom Friedman’s clueless scrambled eggs

Palestinian Authority egg is not hatched says International Criminal Court

Gay flag in Afghanistan: More egg on face than Koran flambé?

Even politically liberal Jews dislike Obama’s Israel egg recipes

Vietnamese authoritarian eggs lag behind free-range Asian eggs

Let them throw eggs, says Obama to military – Obama says same to Israel’s missile defense, throw eggs

Eisenhower was a good egg

Rotten egg Germany coulda won WWII!

Tibetans fry selves for freedom

Another credit agency says US economy is cracked

Egg bearers and the election

Chavez can suck eggs

President Obama seeks eggs...on the golf course, of course

About an hour's scenic drive north of Hoover Dam along Lake Mead is the Valley of Fire. In the early morning or late afternoon, the sun really brings out the rock's colorations. There's fascinating rock formations formed by thousands, millions, of years of winds. Like this one: looks like a face.

Or this one, an arch. Weaker sandstone is eroded away, and eventually so will the crest of the arch be and fall.

The family and I spent the past week in Las Vegas. Most visitors don't get far from the Strip, but if they did they'd see some knockout scenery.

Before leaving, Gavin blew away the track at his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.

On the drive to Las Vegas, we stopped in a great '50s diner, Penny's in Barstow, then went over to the Railroad Museum showing some of the trains from Barstow's rail hub history.

On the way back to the highway, we stopped for this memorial to the New York Fire Department heroes who perished in 9-11.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 also began on Passover.

"Central to the Pesach seder is the recounting of the ten plagues.  As moderns educated in natural science, the story strikes us as childish, as primitive, as mythological.  Yet we may be missing the point of these extraordinary events if we understand it as an ancient superstition.  Instead the miracle is a symbol of the spontaneity in history, a faith in the changeability of oppressive regimes.  What appears as a historical necessity, a small people subject to a great empire, is revealed as an illusion.  God's miraculous intervention in Egypt presents history as an open-textured drama.  There is an unpredictable Power present in the universe, the God of surprise.

 

"Belief in miracle is the basis of the "hope model" of Judaism.  Exodus becomes a call to revolutionary hope regardless of the conditions of history.  Out of this memory of redemption, they can defy the given conditions.  The act of protest against their environment can occur because the Jews possess a memory of the impossible that became possible.  The order that people observe in the cosmos and in history, is not irreversible.  Tomorrow will not necessarily be like today."

"In every generation one is obligated to see oneself as one who personally went out from Egypt.  Just as it says, 'You shall tell your child on that very day, It's because of this that God did for me when I went out from Egypt.' "  (Exodus 13:8)

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The huge investment by students, parents and taxpayers made in colleges to provide a foundation of knowledge and critical thought has already or is in process of sinking into the hole of politicized instruction that is one-sided indoctrination. The California Association of Scholars details this in a just published 87-page report, A Crisis Of Competence:The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.

The specifics describe the University of California but, also, uses broader principles and statistics that apply nationally. The report to the Regents of the University of California cites its own policies that are being ignored by passive or activist administrators, allowing or furthering a lack of academic standards, yes also of academic freedom, that is digging a deeper hole under our society and prosperity.

In recent years, study after study has found that a college education no longer does what it should do and once did. Whether these studies look directly at the capabilities of graduates, or instead at what employers find their capabilities to be, the result is the same: far too many college graduates have not learned to write effectively, they can not read and comprehend any reasonably complex book, they have not learned to reason, and their basic knowledge of the history and institutions of the society in which they live is lamentably poor….

Is it possible that the University of California is an exception to these national trends? Unfortunately, we can be certain that it is not. First, these national studies all include California, and none of them note any fundamental differences across states. Second, local studies of these issues always confirm the findings of the national studies….

Students are being asked to pay considerably more and get considerably less. We are now seeing much increased concern with student debt and rising tuition costs. As this concern about cost joins with the growing concern about quality, the University must soon face a major crisis of public confidence….

The findings of these studies match all too well the specific complaints that are now commonly heard about the manifestations of a politicized higher education: that requirements for coursework in American history and institutions have been dropped, that writing courses often stress writing far less than tendentious political topics; that prescribed books are frequently no more than journalistic presentations of a simple political message instead of the more complex writings appropriate to an academic context; and that faculty teach what to think rather than how to think: that is, they demand correct attitudes and beliefs of students more than they require independent reading and thought.

This report is concerned with the corruption of the University of California by activist politics, a condition which, as we shall show, sharply lowers the quality of academic teaching, analysis, and research, and results in exactly the troubling deficiencies that are being found in the studies to which we have referred. We shall show that this is an inevitable consequence of any substantial influence of radical politics in academia, because its characteristic interests and modes of thought are the very antithesis of those that should prevail in academic life.

I can certainly understand when anyone spends more time or energy on defending his or her own ethnic group or race or affinity group from unfairness. I do, regarding Jews and Israel, and Marines.

But, at the same time, if one does so even when evidence points another way, ignores the rights or rightful claims of others, even adversaries, it – at least – indicates a narrowness of perspective and inadequate interest in justice for all, which reduces credibility. It clearly spills over into racism when attacks or defense use racial or ethnic stereotypes, jumps to conclusions based on race or ethnicity, especially in the absence of facts or connection. When one tolerates such, even defends such, even encourages such, then one is choosing to affiliate with racists and is properly grouped with them. I think that is where President Obama falls. By dint of his repeated one-sided and unsupported words and gestures, and his inadequate attention to the facts or rights of others, President Obama is a racist. By dint of his high public position and influence, those repeated words and gestures make him a hatemonger, as well.

Earl Scruggs died yesterday. Coming from NYC, I was raised on folk music but was ignorant of country music, its variations, and links to folk music until I was in the service. I soon found a new group of friends, as so many millions of others did, when I listened and learned. Earl Scruggs was at the top of my list, and as you can see in this video of he and some of his friends, Earl Scruggs was at the top of everyone who mattered's list. No one can match Scrugg's 3-finger pickin'. RIP, Earl, your music and influence continues.