This is a few years old (hat tip: Instapundit) and was written about a statement of Obama’s. But it applies quite nicely to Bernie’s praise of the Cuban literacy program under Castro as well:
But there’s nothing “extraordinary” about the Cuban educational system. Children are taught by poorly-paid teachers in dilapidated schools. Cuba has made less educational progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years. According to UNESCO, Cuba had about the same literacy rate as Costa Rica and Chile in 1950 (close to 80%). And it has almost the same literacy rate as they do today (close to 100%). Meanwhile, Latin American countries that were largely illiterate in 1950 — like Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic — are largely literate today, closing much of the gap with Cuba. El Salvador had a less than 40% literacy rate in 1950, but has an 88% literacy rate today. Brazil and Peru had a less than 50% literacy rate in 1950, but today, Peru has a 94.5% literacy rate, and Brazil a 92.6% literacy rate. The Dominican Republic’s rate rose from a little over 40% to 91.8%. While Cuba made substantial progress in reducing illiteracy in Castro’s first years in power, its educational system has stagnated since, even as much of Latin America improved. Educational attainment is particularly lackluster among Afro-Cubans, judging from a recent New York Times story.
Please read the whole thing.
But Bernie (and Obama before him) counts on people just nodding and saying, “Gee, he’s got a point.” And he counts on the MSM backing him up if he ends up becoming the Democratic nominee. What else can they do?
A lot of people who emigrated here from Cuba know better (or whose parents did). One of those long-ago emigrants – and current US citizen and author – tells her story here:
See, despite your claims, senator, that it was Castro who started a literacy program in Cuba, a common and often-repeated lie, the girl’s [“the girl” is the author, Fabiola Santiago] mother worked in a literacy program in the countryside after graduation from a teacher’s college in the early 1950s.
Teachers had to do so to earn their spot in a city classroom…
Yes, by the time she leaves Cuba in 1969, this girl knows that the Cuban education system is dogmatic and abusive to innocent children who are ostracized for their parents’ beliefs.
Her parents’ heart-wrenching decision to leave it all behind and start a new life in Miami, saves her from worse. After their 12th birthdays, her friends have to enroll in la escuela al campo. They have to leave their home and their parents to live in barracks in the countryside and work in agricultural fields.
More at the link.
Sanders isn’t stupid. He may be “sincere,” but he’s either lying through his teeth or he doesn’t want to look at the truth. He’s been that way his whole life, and it’s only in the last few years that it seems to really really be paying off for him. Finally, starting in 2016 and continuing through now, the voting public contains enough people schooled in leftist propaganda but innocent of any personal experience of living in a leftist regime to make him a very real contender for the highest office in the land.
One reason I don’t mind answering the phone is that I can almost always tell what’s a robocall, and avoid those. They ordinarily have an area code that matches mine (their designers are clever that way) and yet the number corresponds to no one on my cell phone’s list of contacts. They makes it very simple, because I put everyone – my insurance agent, my doctors, my dentist, the car repair place – on my contact list. So anyone I want to talk to will be on it, and all the other phone calls I can ignore.
If I do end up ignoring something important, I can count on the person to leave a message. Robocalls sometimes do, but most of the time they don’t.
But for the other calls, especially the ones from people I know and love, I prefer listening to the sound of a voice. Most of my friends and loved ones don’t live nearby. Many live very far away. I see them very seldom, and the distance is painful for me. So although I try not to be a pest, and call and call and call, I much prefer talking to texting or email although I’ll do texting or email in a pinch (or if they prefer it).
You can tell so much more from a human voice! Unless a person is a great actor – and I mean a great actor – you can perceive mood and even health. The entire interaction is so much warmer. It’s almost like a visit with that person, which a text never is.
I’m always surprised at people who say they don’t like to talk on the phone, either to receive calls or to make them. I know such people exist, and I even think I know some reasons why they don’t like it, or at least why they say they don’t like it. They don’t have time and talking on the phone takes time. They consider a phone call some sort of intrusion or invasion. Some people are just naturally shy. Some people don’t like to talk to someone they can’t see. Some people prefer to keep others at an emotional distance, and the distance of texting serves them well.
There are very few people in my life about whom I feel that need to be distant. Of course, I don’t always feel like talking at the very moment friends or loved ones might call. But I often will drop what I’m doing to talk. And if not, I’m usually happy to call them back and have a real (and a long) conversation. Fortunately, most of them will still pick up their own phones when they ring.
This article discusses the fact that very few people answer their phones anymore.
Well, I’m one of the few who do, I guess. That’s one of many things that seem to mark me as a dinosaur.
I don’t always answer it, of course. I know which numbers tend to be spam calls or robocalls and I ignore them, usually blocking the number as well. The latter doesn’t have too much effect because the groups who make these calls have access to an arsenal of numbers, but I think it helps a bit. I probably only get one or two such calls a day, if that, which apparently is a rather low number compared to what’s typical.
But with caller ID, I almost always will answer a call identified as from a person I know, and the vast majority of my calls are just that. I usually turn my phone off when I’m at restaurant or in the theater, or visiting a live person. Sometimes I don’t answer if I’m watching something at home that’s especially compelling. Sometimes I’m tired. Sometimes I’m very busy. But most of the time I’m happy to hear from a friend and happy to talk.
Of course, not all that many people call me, so it’s not that much of a distraction.
I’ve learned not to call someone of the younger generation, though, unless it’s something urgent. Or, if I’m going to call, I am fully prepared to just leave a message that the person (yeah, usually my son) should call back when he gets a chance. It can be days before that happens.
I realize that texting tends to get a quicker reply. But I find texting not only time-consuming (my fingers aren’t that fast) but so much less satisfying than the easy give-and-take of hearing a voice and perceiving tone. I’ve long been hyper-sensitive to tone. I can often tell if a person is tired, or blue, or double-tasking while speaking to me, or lying down, just from the person’s tone of voice. If I ask, I discover that I’m usually correct.
The ring of a phone used to signal the promise of something wonderful. It still does – at least, to me. At least for now.
[NOTE: I find it interesting that Melania’s outfit somewhat matches Modi’s. No accident, I’m sure. She chooses her garb very very carefully, especially in her appearances abroad.]
Berniephobia is gripping many Democrats. But hey, it’s been gripping me, too. It’s been gripping me for several weeks now, even before it got to its present fever pitch. And I don’t believe it’s plateaued yet.
I think it’s always dangerous to wish for the Democrats to nominate their most radical candidates because we might think they are almost certain to be defeated. I don’t see Sanders as certain to be defeated at all, although I think his support should be at about 2%. But it is much much greater than that. Of course, Sanders is not the only one whose policies are dangerous. But he seems to be the most charismatic, and although I fail to understand that appeal, it is undeniably present.
Sanders was almost nominated in 2016, when the field wasn’t nearly as split and his opponent was supposedly highly qualified as well as experienced and brilliant, in contrast to the miserable group of candidates he’s competing against today. If that doesn’t put the fear in you, I don’t know what would. I’ve certainly got it, and so does this group of people.
Mark Levin has joined them:
My fellow conservatives, there’s nothing to celebrate about Sanders’ victory and possible if not likely nomination.https://t.co/XEYWMnWKwm
As far as I can see, Levin hasn’t explained why he wrote that. But I think I know. Not only is it possible that Bernie could win the general election, but his likely selection as nominee for a major US party supported by roughly half the population is an alarming sign that not only have people succumbed to MSM/Democratic anti-Trump propaganda, but that the Gramscian march has been remarkably effective. Both things are profoundly troubling.
It’s hubris to think that you know what’s going to happen in a Trump vs. Sanders matchup next Election Day. Yes, all signs are pointing to a Trump victory. I get that. But that was the exact reason so many Democrats wanted Trump nominated in 2016 – because he was a surefire loss for the Republicans and all signs pointed to a Clinton victory. How’d that turn out for them? “Pass the popcorn,” indeed.
In that same post I wrote on February 3, I noted that a good friend of mine who had heretofore been a moderate Democrat is now a big Bernie fan. I still haven’t found out why – although I still plan to ask her about it, she’s been mega-busy – but hearing her say that gave me a new perspective into the Bernie phenomenon. If this person can support Bernie, a lot of non-leftists could. And to me, that spells trouble.
After all, we’ve had over three years of relentless anti-Trump propaganda and it has to have had an effect. A lot of people, and not just leftists, hate his guts and literally want him dead They would vote for the proverbial yellow dog rather than Trump – or vote for a Socialist like Bernie to stop him.
I sincerely hope not. But I’m not getting out my popcorn popper.
They never expected to be put in the position of having to vote for an actual bona fide Socialist to avoid re-electing Trump.
But NeverTrumpers should have expected it. The writing’s been on the wall for quite a while that the far left is exactly where the Democratic Party has been heading. And yet the NeverTrumpers didn’t seem to see it, or if they saw it they really didn’t believe it.
Now almost all of them are panicked at the consequences of their throwing their lot in with those very same Democrats. Something about Trump the person seems to have utterly destroyed their reasoning power. And there’s nowhere for them to hide, because this has all played out very publicly. They’re boxed in.
You lie down with dogs, you get up with Socialist fleas.
…I seem to be at a stage in my life where I find almost everything equally fascinating and equally urgent.
I can relate – up to a point.
Like Ammo Grrrll, I’m also at that stage in life I could call early old age if I’m being honest, and somewhere in middle age if I’m not. Like her, I’ve noticed a creeping increase in impatience about certain things that I suddenly find not just fascinating but fascinating right this minute. And the things I find to be that way are also increasing in number and scope.
For me, this mostly involves reading. Sometimes it involves writing. And sometimes it involves phone calls or visits.
Or watching any of the YouTube videos in the series “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.” Not only do I find them irresistibly compelling, but I always cry when the person (or people) is rescued. I’m thinking of starting a 12-step program for others likewise addicted.
But all of this goes along with procrastination. A lot of things seem both fascinating and urgent, but paying my bills or doing my taxes never seem to be among them, although they get pretty darn urgent as deadlines approach, when I begin to attack them with a flurry of long-delayed energy. My daily exercise is another thing I usually perform, but sometimes quite late in the game – meaning that I tend to know the exact time of sunset every day and plan accordingly. Emails can pile up, too, as can laundry.
And don’t ask me about my vacuuming habits.
Is this a function of being older and feeling the pressure of time? I find, for example, that I’m more impatient about books. If the first ten or twenty pages of a novel don’t grab me, that book gets shut forever. For non-fiction, I often get the gist of it in fifty or a hundred pages and skip the rest. When I was younger I used to plow through anyway, although sometimes so quickly that I probably didn’t absorb everything. Now I lack the patience to go on reading if I think I’m not gaining much from it.
But poetry – ah, poetry suits me very well.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter–and the Bird is on the Wing.
Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
This is a Canadian story, but it’s often the case that the US follows close on Canada’s heels with PC legal rulings. So here’s what it’s about:
For the past 11 months, Robert Hoogland, a father in Surrey, British Columbia, has been forced to watch as his 14 year-old daughter was “destroyed and sterilized” by court-ordered testosterone injections. After losing his legal appeal to stop the process in January, Rob (previously anonymized as “Clark” or “CD”) is making a desperate attempt to bring his case into the courts of public opinion, even though it breaks a court order demanding his silence about the case.
“I had a perfectly healthy child a year ago, and that perfectly healthy child has been altered and destroyed for absolutely no good reason,” Rob said in an exclusive interview. “She can never go back to being a girl in the healthy body that she should have had. She’s going to forever have a lower voice. She’ll forever have to shave because of facial hair. She won’t be able to have children…”
Rob felt that at the age of 14—when the courts judged his daughter competent to take testosterone without parental consent—she simply did not have the foresight necessary to understand such consequences. Over the course of the past year, Rob has heard his daughter’s voice deepen and crack and watched her begin to grow facial hair.
“Sometimes I just want to scream so that other parents and people will… jump in, understand what’s going on,” Rob said. “There’s a child—and not only mine, but in my case, my child out there having her life ruined,” and yet, Rob felt, “people don’t [even] know.”
The evidence is that the vast majority of children who identify as transgender change their minds later if left alone medically and allowed to mature. Many end up identifying as gay. But in adolescence, they think a solution is to change sexes.
There are plenty of articles that discuss these facts, but I’ll quote just one:
“Desistance,” in this context, means the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older. All else being equal, this research suggests that the most likely outcome for a child with gender dysphoria is that they will grow up to be cisgender and gay or bisexual. Researchers don’t know why that is, but it appears that in some kids, nascent homo- or bisexuality manifests itself as gender dysphoria. In others, gender dysphoria can arise as a result of some sort of trauma or other unresolved psychological issue, and goes away either with time or counseling. And in still others, of course, it is a sign that the child will identify as transgender for their whole adult life. While the actual percentages vary from study to study, overall, it appears that about 80 percent of kids with gender dysphoria end up feeling okay, in the long run, with the bodies they were born into….
The Amsterdam study reported on 127 adolescents, 79 of them boys, and found that 80 of those adolescents, or about two-thirds, had desisted — that is, now identified as cisgender — at the time of followup. Singh, meanwhile, found that of the 139 former GIC patients she got in touch with, all of them natal males (that is, born with a penis), 122, or 88 percent, had desisted.
And when you combine these two studies with the other, admittedly earlier and smaller ones Cantor lists, all of which find the same thing, the case grows even stronger. While the numbers vary from study to study, as you would expect to between research conducted at different times in different places, the basic storyline is always the same: If a kid has gender dysphoria, the most likely outcome is that he or she will grow up to be a cisgender, gay or bisexual adult.
But the push these days is nevertheless to treat children medically. There are two general ways this is done, both of which reduce the percentage that ever go back. One is through the use of puberty-blocking hormones and the other is to administer hormones of the opposite sex. Often this is done in succession, in that order. Hoogland’s daughter has been given the latter, and he is correct about the irreversibility of the effects, particularly for women who can never undo the change in voice, which is profound and disconcerting if that person ever de-transitions.
The following example will give you a very good idea of what I’m talking about. The person in the hat was born a woman and then took male hormones as a teen but has since stopped taking them and detransitioned back to a female identity, whereas the interviewer with the long dark hair is a person born male who is happy with having transitioned to female:
Just to set a baseline here: I am all for protecting the rights of trans people not to be discriminated against in the classic sense of discrimination. But not for medically treating children. Minors are not equipped to make these decisions. And I am not for allowing men identifying as women to compete in women’s sports, nor am I for schools to allow boys who identify as girls to use girls’ bathrooms or locker rooms.
I also have noticed that social media strongly promotes transgenderism for teens in particular. There are an enormous number of YouTube videos in which people post, with visuals, about their transitions, and commenters tell them how great they look. It goes far beyond not bullying or hating; transition has become a popular thing and a way to get a lot of positive attention. Reddit is another venue for this.
And many school systems seem to be actively educating even very young children about transgenderism in a way that almost seems to be advocacy for the practice, as well (see this).
But back to the medical aspects of treating children. Hoogland is correct on the sterility risks of hormones and even at times of puberty-blocking drugs. To understand the following quote from research on how such treatment may affect fertility you have to understand the language. “Transgender men” are people who were born as female and who transition to a male appearance and identity. “Transgender women” are people born as male who transition to a female appearance and identity, although in social terms it’s a no-no to point out this history. And the surgery is no longer called gender transition surgery. It is now called “gender-affirming surgery,” in an attempt to mask the history of the person and preserve the now-required idea that the person has always been the sex he or she is trying to become and that the treatment and/or surgery is merely underlining that original identity:
Transgender individuals who undergo gender-affirming medical or surgical therapies are at risk for infertility. Suppression of puberty with gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist analogs (GnRHa) [puberty-delaying drugs] in the pediatric transgender patient can pause the maturation of germ cells, and thus, affect fertility potential. Testosterone therapy in transgender men can suppress ovulation and alter ovarian histology, while estrogen therapy in transgender women can lead to impaired spermatogenesis and testicular atrophy. The effect of hormone therapy on fertility is potentially reversible, but the extent is unclear. Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) that includes hysterectomy and oophorectomy in transmen or orchiectomy in transwomen results in permanent sterility. It is recommended that clinicians counsel transgender patients on fertility preservation (FP) options prior to initiation of gender-affirming therapy. Transmen can choose to undergo cryopreservation of oocytes or embryos, which requires hormonal stimulation for egg retrieval. Uterus preservation allows transmen to gestate if desired. For transwomen, the option for FP is cryopreservation of sperm either through masturbation or testicular sperm extraction.
Much more at the link.
Just a few short years ago, medical treatment of trans people was limited to adults. Now it’s not only allowed for children, but pushed for them (and enforced by courts), as are books and discussions in the school system at the earliest and most formative ages. All of this appears to have increased the incidence of the phenomenon immensely among impressionable children, and among teenagers (especially girls) who are unhappy at the physical changes of puberty and their roles as women. In them, there appears to be a marked “social contagion” effect. Trans identity is particularly rampant among teens who would otherwise have identified as gay, and many gay groups are against the treatment of children, for obvious reasons.
[NOTE: One of the arguments sometimes used is that many of these children are depressed and/or suicidal. Then treat that, not their bodies. It is complex and difficult, but suicide and/or mental health issues are all too common even after medical treatment, by the way. See this as well as this.]
Iran and Turkey have been dealing with some adversity lately:
Israel’s two most formidable adversaries – Iran and Turkey – both came up short in their quests for regional domination, and Israel is reaping the rewards of their losses.
Two weeks ago, Netanyahu held a previously unannounced meeting in Uganda with Sudanese President Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. Instant commentaries presented the meeting as a salutary side product of the Trump plan. But the truth is much more significant…
Until last April, Sudan was ruled for thirty years by Omar al-Bashir. Bashir, an Islamist, was a major sponsor of global terrorism…
In December 2018, disgusted by rampant corruption and human rights abuses, the Sudanese people rose up against their leaders. For five months, massive anti-government protests were held throughout the country. Responding to public pressure, last April the Sudanese military overthrew al-Bashir.
The units that overthrew al-Bashir were supported by the Gulf states, Egypt, the U.S. and according to some reports, Israel. The new regime, which is pledged to transition to some form of democracy within two years, is supported by these governments.
Al-Bashir for his part was supported by Iran, Qatar and Turkey. His removal, then was a huge blow to all three. For the Iranian regime, his removal from power by forces allied with Iran’s bitter enemies was arguably a greater loss that the loss of terror master Qassem Soleimani and his lieutenants last month at the hands of a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. The loss of Sudan calls into question Iran’s continued ability to maintain its regional campaigns.
There’s much much more at the link, including an analysis of what’s been happening in Turkey.
All of this progress can be reversed, depending on the outcome of the pending elections in Israel and the US.
No one’s pretending that Sudan is some sort of great place to be right now. But in geopolitical terms, it’s a marked improvement.
Longtime Republican politico K.T. McFarland said in a radio interview Wednesday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team pressured her for “20, 30, 40 hours of hell” to either cop a plea or implicate other Trump associates in crimes, even though she didn’t think she or they did anything wrong.
McFarland, who served a four-month stint under Trump’s short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn, was ensnared in Mueller’s dragnet after leaving the administration in May 2017…
“When the Mueller people came knocking at my door, they started quizzing me on stuff that I didn’t have access to and didn’t remember 100 percent accurately, and it allowed them to say, ‘well you must be lying then,’” McFarland told WMAL hosts Vince Coglianese and Mary Walter.
Walter asked McFarland why she wasn’t in the same position as Flynn, who ended up pleading guilty to a crime he didn’t commit (after Mueller threatened to bring criminal charges against his son). She replied: “because I didn’t break.”…
McFarland…said she’d had “a really hard time of it” and almost broke herself.
“At one point, I turned to my lawyer and said, ‘just tell me what they want me to say and I’ll say it!’” she recalled.
McFarland told the hosts that she just wanted the ordeal—which cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees—to be over with.
“My husband, God bless him, said ‘you can’t do that. Even if we go bankrupt,” she continued. So McFarland decided to stand her ground…
“This tool, which we had given the intelligence community—which is a good thing for them to have if they’re tracking down mass murderers and terrorists—they were using it for political purposes to go after political enemies,” McFarland lamented.
