Making Sense of Self-Esteem

It is common to hear about 'white supremacy" these days.

The narrative surrounding "white supremacy" is that the White race believes they are superior to other races and use this belief system to marginalize and minimize others.

We are told that "white supremacy" is responsible for other races believing they are inferior and unable to reach their full human potential.

We have often heard that a lot to the problems in the African-American community are the result of low self-esteem that makes them feel inferior. It has often been said that low self-esteem among Blacks is the root cause of problems ranging from academic underachievement to crime in the African-American community

All of this can be traced back over 160 years ago to the subjugation of Blacks during slavery.

When the movie Black Panther first appeared in theaters in 2018 it was hailed as being a film that celebrated Blacks as rulers, inventors and creators. It gave agency to the idea of greatness and self-realization for African Americans instead of the Black suffering and pain that so often was part of Hollywood storylines.

An article in the New York Times magazine when the movie came out included this exchange of three young African American men consistent with the 'white supremacy" narrative.

In a video posted to Twitter in December, which has since gone viral, three young men are seen fawning over the “Black Panther” poster at a movie theater. One jokingly embraces the poster while another asks, rhetorically: “This is what white people get to feel all the time?” There is laughter before someone says, as though delivering the punch line to the most painful joke ever told: “I would love this country, too.”

 

If all of this is true, you would expect that Whites would have the highest self-esteem of any racial group in the United States and that African Americans would have the lowest self-esteem.

After all, the narrative says that Whites are reigning supreme and holding everyone else down in America.

It all makes sense until you see this.

Blacks have the highest levels of self-esteem of any racial group in America according to this survey data by You Gov.com.

Whites have the lowest.

Source: https://twitter.com/monitoringbias/status/1636769874708922368/photo/1
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/3jsg5eennk/YouGov_Personality_Study_2021.pdf

Scientific research papers have also found that Blacks have the highest levels of narcissism of any racial group in the United States.

This is the an abstract from a study in the Journal of Research in Personality on "Racial Differences in narcissistic tendencies".

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656611000912

What is also interesting is that self-esteem scores among adolescents in the United States is highest among African-American teenagers and lowest among Asian Americans.

The chart below is from a published study found in the National Library of Medicine titled "Adolescent Self-Esteem: Differences by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age"

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263756/

From the abstract of the study.Large-scale representative surveys of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students in the United States show high self-esteem scores for all groups. African-American students score highest, Whites score slightly higher than Hispanics, and Asian Americans score lowest. Males score slightly higher than females. Multivariate controls for grades and college plans actually heighten these race/ethnic/gender differences. 

More perplexing is that Asian American students, who seem to have a reason to have the highest self-esteem based on their academic performance, have the lowest self-esteem.

African Americans teens have high self-esteem despite low academic performance.

Credit: The Wall Street Journal

 

If the purpose of promoting the narrative of "white supremacy" has been to create "white guilt" it appears to have been a success.

There might also be something in all of this that suggests that the mindset that one confronts life with is important.

Being told you are unique, you are a victim and deserve special treatment might not be setting someone up for success in life.

Is it a coincidence that parents of Asian heritage have a different mindset involving parenting than other American parents? 

I have written a couple of times in the past about "Tiger Moms" and their parenting style here and here. Amy Chua wrote an essay in The Wall Street Journal a number of years ago "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior". Notice what she says about the subject of self-esteem.

Western parents are too concerned about their children's self esteem.  Chinese are not. Asians assume strength in their children, not fragility.  Therefore, they push hard on them and hold them accountable for results.

Chinese parents believe their children owe them something.  Many Americans seem to believe that since they were responsible for bringing the child into the world that they owe the child in some way.

Asians believe they know what is best for their children and override their children's own preferences and desires. Chinese parents understand that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.

Perhaps the ideas that took hold 30 years ago that we needed to make everyone feel good about themselves was based on a bad assumption?

Perhaps we should not have been handing out trophies to everyone in the league and telling everyone to celebrate their unique identity?

Could it be that those who are a product of a culture where you are just one of BILLIONS have a better understanding of what it takes to stand out in a crowd? 

They understand that not everyone is special. You become special through your hard work and your results.

Self-esteem is important but it means nothing if it is not based in reality.

You must also always look at everything with a humble mind and spirit. Chances are high that you don't know as much as you think you do. 

You are also likely to not be as special as your mother (assuming you did not have a Tiger Mom) told you were.

The following lesson was written down for us many, many years ago.

It endures more than ever today.

When pride comes, then comes disgrace,

but with humility comes wisdom.

                              -Proverbs 11:2

Poor Palestine

We hear a lot about the poor plight of Palestine.

However, there has likely not been a population of people in the world who have received more humanitarian aid but done less with it to advance humanity than Palestine.

Let's put that statement in some historical context.

After World War II, the United States developed an initiative called the Marshall Plan to provide economic support to help rebuild the European economies that had been devastated in the war. The funds were used to rebuild war-torn regions, modernize industry and make Europe prosperous again. 

$13.3 billion was provided to the Europeans by the United States over fours years beginning in 1948. That would be around $173 billion in today's dollars. 

18 European countries received the economic aid which was roughly divided on a per-capita basis but larger aid amounts were provided to the major economic powers of Western Europe (UK, France, West Germany) because it was believed that their revival was most crucial to the overall recovery of Europe.

At the time of the Marshall Plan, the populations of the European countries that received the aid was approximately 143.5 million.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, aid to Palestinians totaled over $40 billion between 1994 and 2020. Taking account of aid in the last three years and inflating the total amount to current dollars would equal about $50 billion. 

This aid has flowed in from European and Arab countries in addition to Japan and the United States. One source puts the amount of aid from the United States to Palestine at over $5.2 billion since 1994. This aid was provided for a population that was about 2 million that lives in Gaza..

If you look at the money we have given the Palestinians since the mid-1990's, and compare it to the Marshall Plan, you really have to wonder where all the money went? 

Did we get anything to advance the lives of Palestinians?

It seems that most of the money went for the tools of terrorism and to enrich the leadership of Hamas and the PLO

On a per capita basis, adjusted for inflation, Palestine has received 20 times more aid than the Europeans did to rebuild war-torn Western Europe under the Marshall Plan after World War II.

 

The Palestinians have received 20 times the money that was provided to rebuild Europe after World War II in per capita terms and the complaint is that Israel has been standing in the way of the progress of the Palestinian people?

Of course, despite all of this aid over the years, the average Palestinian continue to live in a state of poverty. New roads weren't built. Utilities are lacking. Economic infrastructure is non-existent. Much of the money seemingly was funneled to the tools of terror, to enrich the Hamas leadership and to teach the next generation of Palestinians to hate Israel and the Jews for their plight of poverty.

Timon Dias of the Gatestone Institute wrote an excellent article about all of this back in 2014  that provides some additional context on that question.

Dias quotes from a 2003 book by German sociologist Gunnar Heinshohn on a fundamental problem is the West's aid to Palestine through the United Nations Relief Fund for Palestine. (UNRWA).

Let me remind you that this was written 20 years ago.

Despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA's budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in its own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza's untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war-by-proxy against the Jews of Israel.

If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.

If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza -- as in Algeria -- would…be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society.

We are in 2023 and absolutely nothing was done. 20 years of following the same failed policies and 20 years of growing more and more people who have been taught to hate Israel, Jews and the countries who have been funding all of this while Palestine's leaders built terror tunnels and enriched themselves.

To give you an idea of what it taught in those schools in Palestine that are funded by UNRWA take a look at this short video of interviews with Palestinian children.

Link to video.

This is what the United Nations is paying for and a lot of it has been with U.S. dollars?

I could not say it better than Dias did a decade ago..

If the entire Palestinian Authority leadership lives off an international welfare check that arrives only because the conflict still exists, there isn't much incentive for ending the conflict.

How much have those Hamas leaders siphoned off while their people live in poverty and they teach people to hate Israel? 

The New York Post editorial board put some facts out there last week to consider. 

The top three leaders of Hamas have $11 billion in combined net worth and don't even bother to live in Palestine.

Terror masters Ismail Haniyeh, Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Meshal live lives of luxury in Doha, Qatar, with an estimated combined net worth of some $11 billion. 

Call it “Lifestyles of the Rich and Hamas” — and proof positive that the whole “oppressed” and “exploited” thing isn’t exactly what the “Free Palestine” ralliers think it is.

Poor Palestine...the Palestinian people that is.

This and That---November 13, 2023 Edition

A few random observations, charts and factoids to provide some context on what is going on in the world.

Follow the Money?

A common refrain we often hear today is about "poor Palestine".

This person asked an interesting question on X as to who is funding all of the pro-Palestine/Hamas protests in the United States and elsewhere.

Protests like we are seeing also do not occur organically without some organizational muscle behind the scenes.

One potential clue.

Politics Really Is Peyton Place

My younger readers are probably not familiar with "Peyton Place".  It was a 1960's prime time tv soap opera that had the usual soap plot lines of sex, infidelity, scandal and family frictions.

Does life imitate art or is it the other way around?

This was an interesting factoid I was not aware of until recognizing it this week.

Melania Trump is actually younger than Kimberly Guilfoyle (Donald Trump, Jr.'s fiancée.

In other words, Trump, Jr. is engaged to a women that is older than his stepmother. She is also nine years older than Trump, Jr. 

Melania is 24 years younger than Trump, Sr.

Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom. She was married to Newsom from 2001-2006 when Newsom was Mayor of San Francisco.

Gavin Newsom. Age 58
Credit: Getty Images

They divorced in 2006 the same year it was disclosed that Newsom had an affair with his Appointments Secretary Ruby Rippey-Tourk. What makes it even more interesting is that his paramour was the wife of his close friend, campaign manager and deputy chief of staff Alex Tourk.

Gavin really lived up to Peyton Place standards.

He is involved in a "Me Too" sexual relationship with an employee and betrays his close friend at the same time. What a guy!

That brings us to two other players in the Peyton Place plot line.

Donald Trump, Jr.,  is the fiancée of Guilfoyle who is also the ex-wife of Gavin Newsom and the son of the 45th President of the United States and Hunter Biden who is the son of the 46th President.

Trump, Jr. divorced his wife and the mother of his five children in 2018 after 13 years of marriage. 

Hunter was divorced from his wife and the mother of three of his children in 2017 after 24 years of marriage..

Biden began a relationship with the widow of his deceased brother Beau in 2016 which continued until 2019.

Hunter has another child with a stripper who worked at a DC gentlemen's club who was born in 2018. Biden denied paternity but a DNA test that was completed as part of the lawsuit proved the child was Biden's.

Biden is currently married to a South African woman he married in May, 2019 within one week of meeting her. He has another child with her.

Bring back Peyton Place. We don't need any of the writers who were striking. The plot lines are already written.

English spoken?

Interesting to see that a greater percentage of the population in Barbados and Singapore speak fluent English than does the population in the United States.

Having visited about half of the countries on this list (including Italy, Greece and Turkey last month) this looks about right from my experience.

China Falling?

Joe Biden is meeting China's President Xi in San Francisco this week.

I am not sure about the full agenda but if I were Xi I don't know if I would be interested in any tips about implementing Bidenomics in China.

Xi has enough problems with his economy right now.

There are not many looking to invest in China these days.

Dating World Is Tough Out There For Guys

I hear a lot of young women these days complain that there are very few decent guys who ask them out.

A few clues as to why that may be the case.

What is left besides a $200 restaurant or a Taylor Swift concert (as long as it does not require a long drive)?

How about a Palestine/Hamas or BLM solidarity protest?

It seems there is an oversupply of young women in that demographic.

Credit: https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1721678599768379802/photo/1

It seems that some women also have a some pretty high standards on who they will date.

I was a little confused by the last item on the list.

Can a guy be a feminist?

If so, it seems to be the best way to keep you in the dating game with college-educated women.

Of course, considering where we are on so many college campuses perhaps these women are talking about other women?

In any event it seems like you have double the chances of getting a date with a college-educated woman as  a feminist as compared with being a Republican.

Credit: https://nypost.com/2023/07/20/ivy-league-lgbtq-numbers-soar-harvard-numbers-triple/

Thousands of years of human existence and it is only now that we are discovering all of this?

Equally amazing is that it is centered primarily in the elite universities in the United States.

Our future leaders?

Why should anyone be concerned?

Post Roe Politics

The passage of the constitutional amendment on abortion in my home state of Ohio on Tuesday has many pundits weighing in on its meaning and impacts on politics going forward.

Some on the right have even suggested that they wished that the Supreme Court would have never overturned Roe v.Wade turning the abortion issue back to the states.

I am not of that opinion.

Roe v. Wade was bad law and it should have never been decided by the Supreme Court.  

Much of the emotion around abortion was avoidable. Abortion became the contentious issue it became because 50 years ago nine people on the Supreme Court totally bypassed the constitutional process that the Founders designed to resolve difficult questions through the consensus of the people.

When abortion was made "legal" nationally only four states allowed it. After Roe v.Wade was decided 46 states had to immediately amend their laws to conform with the decision. There was nothing close to a national consensus. It immediately became a divisive and contentious issue.

The key issue with abortion is the core question of balancing rights.

Where do you draw the line between balancing the right to life of an unborn child with the rights of a mother to choose whether she wants to carry and care for that child that was conceived in her body? Which right is to be given precedence? The right of a woman to choose or the right of the baby to live?

If we had let the constitutional process play out as our Founders intended our system of governance to work, I believe that a balance similar to what is in place in most of the rest of the world (a limit of abortion within the first 20 weeks) would have been adopted legislatively in most states across the country.

This might have even led to a U.S. constitutional amendment that would have explicitly drawn the line on where any rights of the mother ended and the rights of the unborn child began.

Instead, we were left with a divisive and contentious issue that devolved with extremes on each side of the issue. One extreme is that abortions should be legal at any point up to and including birth and the other  arguing that abortions should be outlawed even in cases involving incest, rape or the health of the mother. 

Neither view is anywhere close to how the rest of the world views this issue or where the consensus of opinion is for most Americans. Their views are more nuanced and influenced by the complex and difficult moral issue it presents.

In fact, most people would be surprised to find out that the United States is one of only seven countries out of 198 nations worldwide that permits abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

People tend to believe that Europe is far more liberal than the United States but that does not extend to the issue of abortion. Denmark restricts abortions to the first 12 weeks. Russia 12 weeks. France 14 weeks. Sweden 18 weeks.I have written before on some of the facts about abortion that are seldom publicized.

The data in the U.S. indicates that less than half of one percent of abortions are performed due to rape, incest or where the life of the mother is at risk. How does it make any sense for Republicans to reject these as reasons for an abortion since they are so rare to begin with?

The data also indicates that 92% of all abortion are performed by the end of the first trimester (13 weeks).Why are Democrats so determined to argue that abortions must be available to women throughout the entire pregnancy to the detriment of the unborn child when it so rare anyway?

These are both extreme positions in looking at the data and facts.

I understand the argument of people sticking to their individual principles and values.

However, politics and the laws that govern us are derived from a collective consensus and compromise taking account of diverse opinions and views of what is right and wrong. Problems are not solved unless there is a willingness to compromise to reach consensus.

You can see from polling over the years that the American people are clearly divided over the issue nationally. There is nothing close to a national consensus.

In fact, those who identify as pro-life have grown substantially over the last 25 years as the Gallup survey shows below. 33% identified as pro-life in 1995. It was 47% in 2021 when the most recent Gallup survey was done. The percentage who consider themselves pro-choice has declined from 56% to 49%.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

It is also true that a substantial majority believe that abortion should be totally illegal (19%) or should only be allowed under certain circumstances (48%)--67% total. Only 32% agree that it should be legal under any circumstances which essentially became the national standard in the aftermath of Roe.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

In my opinion the Ohio vote was a reaction to what a majority of voters considered an overly restrictive law that passed through the Republican legislature and was signed by Governor Mike Dewine (R-OH) that would have banned any abortions after six weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest.

It is another example that proves that politicians who attempt to legislate to the extremes of any issue are not likely to prevail with the public for long.

I would have expected a similar reaction from voters if Democrats had been in control and passed a law legalizing abortion up through nine months. In that case, I am very confident that Republicans could have gotten abortion rights curtailed though a similar ballot issue favoring the rights of the unborn child.

My personal view is one of giving the full measure of respect for the life of an unborn child.

However, I also understand that it is next to impossible to roll back what some believe to be their "choice" after it has been the "law of the land" for 50 years.

I also understand that to settle an issue requires compromise with those that may not share the same views and values that I have.

If I was a Republican legislator my first goal would be to see to it that partial birth and late-term abortions were clearly and unequivocally made illegal.

I would work to limit abortions to no further than the first trimester which is where Roe v. Wade had initially ruled that there was no state regulatory interest. Thereafter, the Roe decision ruled that the state could reasonably regulate abortions. In addition, if 92% of current abortion are in this period the argument that this limit is a major intrusion of the rights of a women compared to the unborn child is very weak. 

Where an abortion was being considered I would make it a requirement that the mother would have to view an ultrasound of the unborn child (paid for by the state) prior to the procedure so as to be fully informed on what she was doing.

I would also require that every woman seeking an abortion be required to be given information and alternatives regarding adoption for her child.

In my view, this is the position Republicans should be taking going forward.

Propose legislation within these parameters and dare Democrats to vote against it.

Call their bluff.

Are they really willing to declare they will not vote for an abortion law that has reasonable restrictions?

Is their position they have to have unlimited abortion rights or nothing?

If so, it becomes clear they are not really concerned about protecting a woman's right to choose.

The vast majority of the views of American voters are within the parameters I outlined above.

Most do not want abortion to be free of restrictions.

Clearly most also do not want abortion to effectively be outlawed.

I don't see the post-Roe v. Wade reaction by voters to be the big negative to Republicans that many see over the long run.

What we are seeing is the natural order of the issue developing and the formation of public consensus on where the proper balance is between the rights of an unborn child and a woman's choice.

Yes, it is messy right now. I predicted this would be result last year when it leaked that Roe v. Wade was going to be reversed and the abortion issue would be decided state by state.

Will it be a little messy for awhile if Roe is overturned and the states have to decide where they draw the line?

I expect so but I also expect that most states will end up with something that matches the views of the majority of voters in their states. If not, their representatives will have short careers in politics. That is the way it is supposed to work.

I would also expect the U.S. policies would also be much more in conformance with how the rest of the civilized world looks at the issue.

Abortions will be allowed but it will be restricted in most states,

It will most commonly be limited to the first 13-20 weeks.

Some states might limit it as early as when a heartbeat is first detected (Six weeks) but this will be a minority.

States like California, New York and Colorado might have almost no restrictions up until birth.

The benefit in the end is that the abortion issue will ultimately be decided by public opinion rather than nine justices.

This is how it is supposed to work.

When this plays out fully we will reach a point where abortion will no longer be the contentious and divisive political issue it has been.

This is a point we would have undoubtedly reached decades ago if the Supreme Court had not interceded in an issue that it had no business being involved with.

The issue will fade into the background just as it is in Europe and the rest of the world.

This will largely benefit Republicans in the long term as Democrats will no longer to be able to fundraise and use as a wedge issue with women voters.

The best way to get there is for Republicans to recognize the reality of where we are today and calibrate as required.

As I stated in my blog post before Roe was reversed, politicians who pass laws that don't have broad support of the voters, have short careers in politics.

One only has to look at the history of Prohibition in the United States to understand the truth of that statement.

I wrote about that subject in these pages back in 2015.

In 1920 the 18th amendment of the U.S. Constitution took effect banning the manufacture, sale, transportation or importation of intoxicating liquors in the United States.

It took 2/3 of each House of Congress and 3/4 of all state legislatures to pass that amendment.

That level of consensus by politicians on any issue today is impossible to fathom.

However, only 13 years later the 18th Amendment was repealed (the 21st Amendment) with a like number of politicians taking the exact opposite position on intoxicating liquors.

Such is the power of the people.

If you are a politician, ignore it at your own peril.

Only The Young?

Taylor Swift seems to be all the rage today.

She has been raking in hundreds of millions of dollars with her The Eras tour.

When Taylor is not touring she is dating Kansas City Chiefs TE Travis Kelce.

Taylor wrote a song back in 2018 that she released as a single in 2020 titled, "Only The Young".

The song and lyrics are in the video below.

Click here if the video does not play in your browser.

The message of the song is that "Only The Young" can save us.

Swift is a Democrat and she told Variety that she wrote the song because of frustrations with what was going on in the country in the 2018 period. Donald Trump was President and several of her preferred Democrats had just been defeated in bids for Congress and the Senate in Tennessee.

It was hard to see so many people feel like they had canvassed and done everything and tried so hard. I saw a lot of young people's hopes dashed. And I found that to be particularly tragic, because young people are the people who feel the worst effects of gun violence, and student loans and trying to figure out how to start their lives and how to pay their bills, and climate change, and are we going to war – all these horrific situations that we find ourselves facing right now.  ---Taylor Swift to Variety

Swift later allowed the song to be licensed and used by the Biden/Harris campaign in 2020 free of any cost. 

That itself was a somewhat curious choice.

"Only The Young" being used to promote Joe Biden?

Let's compare the data on a few issues that Taylor Swift was concerned about when she wrote the song in late 2018 to what has transpired since.

Gun violence is up from about 15,000 deaths to 20,000 deaths per year.

Credit: https://www.thetrace.org/2022/12/gun-violence-deaths-statistics-america/

Young people are struggling more than ever to start their lives and how to pay their bills.

Rents have soared.

Source: https://www.redfin.com/news/redfin-rental-report-july-2023/

Consumer prices have done the same and although wages are up the increases have not been enough to offset the higher prices.

The result has been real wages have been falling.

Real wage growth has been negative for most of the last three years under Biden.

This has hurt young people just starting out the most.

Credit: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/feb/nominal-wage-growth-individual-level-2022

This is reflected in the New York Times/Siena poll that I wrote about in my last blog post which showed that the youngest voter group (ages 18-29) is the most dissatisfied with the economy under Biden. 

Taylor was also concerned we were going to war with Trump.

It didn't happen. In fact, major strides for peace were moving forward with Russia, North Korea and the Middle East in particular. 

However, what do we now have in Ukraine and Israel? We also are finding out that North Korea is helping arm Russia in the war with Ukraine.

When considering all of this keep in mind that the youngest voters (ages 18-24) voted for Biden over Trump 65%-31% in 2020. Biden would not have been elected but for that huge margin with young voters. They may now be finding out that everything was not quite as bad as they thought it was.

Taylor might want to think again about licensing that song to Biden and the Democrats in 2024.

As I have written before, there is a lot to be said for both the oldsters Biden and Trump stepping aside in 2024.

As of right now that doesn't look like it is going to occur.

However, I am still steadfast in my belief there is only a 1% chance that both will be on the general election ballot next year.

As far as turning over the country to the young, that looks rather ill-advised right now.

There is a lot to be said about infusing the energy and ideas of the young to the body politic.

For example, consider the ages of those who were instrumental in the founding of our nation on July 4, 1776.

James Monroe, 18

Gilbert Stuart, 20

Aaron Burr, 20

Alexander Hamilton, 21

Betsy Ross, 24

James Madison, 25

Thomas Jefferson, 33

John Adams, 40

Paul Revere, 41

George Washington, 44

Unfortunately, the younger generation of today does not seem to have been tested in adversity and had anywhere close to the life experiences of those young patriots of yesteryear to prepare them to lead us where we need to go.

It is also troubling to see the ignorance of history that many younger people have.

The same young people who have taken to the streets about so-called "genocide" by Israel against Palestine are not aware that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.

One in ten actually believe the Jews caused the Holocaust.

 

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/16/holocaust-us-adults-study?CMP=share_btn_tw

 

Is it a surprise then that pro-Palestine hashtag views outnumber pro-Israel hashtag views by 27 to 1 over the last 30 days on TikTok in the United States among the age 18-24 age group?

#FreePalestine       446.6 million views

#StandwithIsrael      16.5 million views

Credit: 1720124520311464108

We need to rely on "Only The Young'?

I wish we could because that is the only way forward in the end.

However, if this is the way forward the end is near for them and everyone else.

As for Taylor Swift?

She is worth $1.1 billion but she apparently believes it has been downright horrible living in the United States.

So she wrote a song about turning it over to the young to fix it?

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/oct/27/is-taylor-swift-billionaire-net-worth-eras-tour

Only in America.

Betting Big on Biden?

A New York Times/Siena poll released yesterday shows how deep the problems are for Joe Biden, and by extension, the Democrat party.

The top line of the poll shows Trump and Biden tied at 43%-43%. Trump lost the popular vote by 4.4 points in 2020.

However, when you look deeper at the numbers in the battleground states, and the erosion in Biden's support with minority and young voters, you see that "good old Joe" has big problems.

In five of the six key battleground states Trump is up on Biden from 4 to 10 points.

It is particularly interesting in comparing the poll margins to actual 2020 election results.

Trump is up 10 points in Nevada.  Trump lost by 3 points in 2020.

Trump is +6 points in Georgia. Trump lost by 0.3% in 2020.

Trump is +5 in Arizona. He lost Arizona by 0.4% last time.

Trump is +5 in Michigan. He lost by 3 points in 2020.

Trump is +4 in Pennsylvania. He lost the Keystone State by 1.2% in 2020.

Trump is down 2 points in Wisconsin. He trailed Biden by 0.6% there in 2020.

In looking at the vote margins in 2020 in these swing states it is also a reminder of how incredibly close the election was three years ago.

Trump lost Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin by just thousands of votes out of millions cast.

If Trump had won those three states it would have resulted in an electoral vote tie which would have meant the Presidential vote would have been decided by the House of Representatives. Trump would have likely prevailed in that vote as Republicans controlled 25 state delegations, Democrats 23 and two were tied. (each state would have one vote in the Presidential tie-breaker pursuant to the Constitution).

There is also no doubt in my mind if a true investigation was ever done of the votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin (and Pennsylvania and Michigan) that Trump would have won in 2020.

The fact that unsolicited ballots were mailed to every registered voter in those states  (in almost all cases in contravention of state law) and little to no signature verification on the mail-in ballots were done practically guaranteed a fraudulent election.

I warned in August, 2020 that the use of mail-in ballots in the 2020 election were "Magnets for Fraud".

Our voting systems are not set up to handle volumes of ballots that are mailed in. All the systems (voting machines, poll workers etc) have been established for in-person voting where collecting and counting the votes is done with automated machines and identities can be checked (where voter ID is permitted) by poll workers. Even if voter ID is not required in a state, in-person voting requires a real person to show up in person at the polls which limits attempts at voter harvesting and other fraudulent acts.

Moving to mail-in ballots when the entire voting system and infrastructure is geared to in-person voting is an invitation to fraud,

To insure the integrity of the election it would be necessary to have scores of people opening the mail, tabulating results and verifying signatures and voter id's against the registration rolls. It would be many times more laborious than the current system and require more time.

Of course, the familiar refrain is that no fraud was ever found.

However, was anyone in power eager to investigate and find it?

Democrats in office had no interest in investigating.

Neither did Republicans in states like Georgia and Arizona.

Any investigation finding fraud would have been an indictment of these officeholders and their oversight of the election.

Likewise, no members of the judiciary were interested in inserting themselves in a federal election and potentially changing the result.

How do I know something was amiss?

You don't have to construct any fancy conspiracy theories or make arguments about election meddling from Russia or China.

All you have to do is look at the voting patterns in previous Presidential election years compared to 2020.

According to US Census Bureau records, 92% of all registered voters cast ballots in the 2020 Presidential election.

The average of registered voters who cast ballot in the previous eight Presidential elections years (1988-2016) was only 83%.

92% of registered voters cast ballots in 2020? Compared to 83% over the previous eight elections? 

That is impossible to believe principally because most voter registration rolls are rarely kept up to date. That means there are thousands of people registered to vote who have died, moved out of state, married and changed their name and registered under another name showing as registrations on the voter rolls which are not valid. 

For example, my son who was registered at our home when he was in college was still showing up on the Ohio voter rolls more than a decade after he moved and registered to vote in another state. He had never been removed. It would have been easy for me to file a mail-in ballots in his name if I had been sent a mail-in ballot.

There has never been an election in U.S. history that I am aware of in which 90%+ of the registered voters turned out to vote. 

Previous studies have shown that one out of every eight voter registrations on a state's rolls were typically inaccurate or invalid.  If that is generally true, an 88% turnout of actual votes to registrations would be the maximum that could be achieved without some type of fraud or illegal activity,

In 2018, when California cleaned up its voter rolls, it removed a staggering 5 million "registered voters" from its rolls. There were 18.3 million registered voters in California in 2016. That means that two years later almost 30% of voter registrations were found to be illegal or inactive.

Unfortunately, when you mail out unsolicited ballots to nursing homes, apartment buildings and  dormitories there is a high likelihood those "registered voters" are not living there any more. What happens to the ballots? An activist could easily be tasked to pick them up and deliver to a group to fill the ballots out. 

If the mail-in ballots get returned to the post office as undeliverable what happens to them? It is all too easy for a post office employee to take them and deliver them to the same group filling illegal ballots out.

Is all of that more likely to occur in the big urban areas that are heavily Democratic? It would be a shock if it did not occur especially when you consider that the United Postal Workers Union routinely donates 85%-90% of their political contributions to Democrats each election cycle.

Getting these ballots filled out and counted with no signature verification, no id and no human being having to show up at a polling place makes election voter fraud all too easy.

For example, compare the mail-in ballots that were cast in Georgia and Pennsylvania between 2016 and 2020.

There were over 6 times as many mail-in ballots in Georgia and almost 10 times as many in Pennsylvania in 2020 as there were in 2016..

Yes, mail-in ballots made it easier to vote. It would explain part of the increase in voters in 2020.

It also made it much easier to cheat.

All signs point to the fact that these types of illegal ballot activities were being done in all of the disputed swing states in 2020.

There is no doubt in my mind that this type of fraud cost Donald Trump the election in 2020.

Can we believe the New York Time/Siena poll right now?

Is Trump really in this position in the swing states vs. Biden considering all of the baggage that he is carrying and the legal troubles he is being challenged with?

The internals in the poll look disastrous for Biden.

2/3rd's of registered voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

70% of voters agree with the statement that Biden "is just too old to be an effective President".

Biden has lost the large support he had among 18-29 year old voters and is essentially tied with Trump with this demographic. This seems largely based on the fact that voters in this age group say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy by an astounding 28 points.

Voters overall prefer Trump over Biden on the economy by 22 points, on immigration by 12 points, on national security by 12 points and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 11 points.

Biden only leads 71%-22% with Black voters when Democrats usually can count on 90% support with this group.

Biden is only registering support with 50% of the Hispanic vote.

49% of all all registered voters in the swing states say there's "almost no chance" they will support Biden.

I predicted over two years ago that irrespective of the baggage that Trump was carrying, his prospects would look better and better for 2024 if an implosion of the country occurred with Biden/Harris.

Trump has many critics but hard times have a way of focusing people on what is most important. Trump's personality is the most cited reason why many did not like him. When people are in trouble they are less concerned with personality and more concerned about performance. A deteriorating situation in the country will make Trump a lot more attractive to more people than you can imagine. 

This appears to be exactly what is behind these poll results.

In that same blog post I argued that Trump's brand could be permanently damaged if the Democrats or Department of Justice could show evidence of wrongdoing by Trump that went beyond what might be perceived as a mere political witch hunt.

Democrats have long claimed that Trump is a crook or has been involved in nefarious activities. However, we have heard this for five years and they have not been able to turn up anything on the man.

Trump has been in business for over 50 years with a high public profile for at least the last 40 years. If the current indictments they have against him are the best they can do it just shows the desperate measures they are taking to keep him from office again. I believe that the voters sense this as well. This is why it seems Trump's support has increased with every legal attack on the man.

I predicted all of this was coming. 

There is little question that the Democrats are going to turn over every rock and throw everything they can at Trump and his family the next few years.  They clearly live in fear of the man. They may get something that sticks and get people to believe that it is more than political retribution. If they do, Trump will not be viable in 2024 as his political brand will be permanently damaged. Once you lose trust you don't get it back.

Up to this point they have not been able to damage the Trump brand. It all looks like nothing more than political retribution. That may change when evidence is presented at any upcoming trials but Trump will also have his day in court. The ultimate judgment on Trump's culpability in any crimes may actually come on Election Day a year from now. If he wins with all of this hanging over his head isn't it hard to say that a jury of his peers has not acquitted him?

In the meantime, this polling indicates that Biden and the Democrats are in deep, deep trouble.

It is beyond me how the Democrat establishment and elites can allow Biden to head the ticket next year if his numbers stay like this.

It would not surprise me at all to see Biden announce he is not running for re-election within the next 30 days.

Why do I say that?

Many states have filing deadlines coming up soon for a candidate to be on the Democrat primary ballots early next year.

As you can see from this chart, most state candidate filing deadlines are between now and early January.

Source: https://news.ballotpedia.org/2023/10/26/38-states-and-d-c-have-confirmed-the-candidate-filing-deadlines-for-their-2024-statewide-and-presidential-primary-elections/

In order to allow other candidates into the race and be on the primary ballot, Biden would have to step aside soon.

If Biden pulls out after the primaries, I assume it would be left to the Democrat Convention delegates to make the party nomination choice. The Biden delegates would be released to make the choice. This would largely involve party insiders and leave Democrat voters removed from picking their candidate.

If Biden pulls out after gaining the nomination I believe it would then fall to the small Democrat National Committee (about 450 members) to make the selection of his replacement. This would be the real party elites.

Either of the latter choices would effectively remove the grassroots Democrat voters from the process of choosing their nominee.

That very well might be the preference of the Democrat establishment anyway. To see either of these scenarios play out would also not surprise me in the slightest.

Of course, if Biden is not on the ticket I believe it becomes much more difficult for Trump to win.

Trump vs. Biden is an easier choice for most voters to make. They simply compare how they and the country were doing under each.

You can see that readily in the NYT/Siena poll results.

When voters were asked whether Biden's or Trump's policies helped or hurt them these were the poll results.

53% say Biden's policies hurt them personally.

51% say Trump's policies helped them personally.

Trump vs. another Democrat makes it much more difficult for the Republicans.

It is no longer a clear and definitive choice in which voters have personal experience.

That is the main reason I favor DeSantis over Trump in 2024.

You can still get a strong, conservative agenda without the drama, distractions and disruptions that come with Trump.

It is a lower risk bet to make if you are a Republican voter.

However, there is no bigger bet that will be made in 2024 than if the Democrats go all in on Joe Biden based on the polling numbers we are seeing right now.

Do they really want to bet big with Biden?

Israel, Islam and the Bible

There are only 15 million Jews in the entire world.

Almost half of them live in Israel on a tiny strip of earth that for much of history nobody cared much about.

There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

I continue to find it astounding how it is that 1.8 billion Muslims (and a great number of non-Muslims) cannot get along with a mere 15 million Jews on our big, beautiful, diverse planet?

Why is that?

What is also further befuddling is how a group of people (Palestinians) that almost no one ever heard anything about until the last few generations can cause so much disruption and noise about a small strip of land on the northern coast of Africa?

Compare that to the history of Israel, the Jewish people and the meaning that this land has in the birth of Christianity and the central role that the geography of this area has in stories throughout the entire Bible.

For example, consider this map that details the twelve tribes of Israel dating to 1300 B.C.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tribes_of_Israel#/media/File:12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map.svg

This map is based on the Book of Joshua (Chapters 13-19 in the Bible).

Some Middle Eastern scholars dispute the historical accuracy of this map. It is true that the Bible indicates that not all of these areas were under the total control of these tribes. There were continual battles and wars for control of these areas over the years.

However, balance this history against the fact that the religion of Islam did not even surface until 610 AD when the prophet Muhammad had his first revelation.

That is almost 2000 years AFTER the  lineage of these tribes of Israel are referred to in the Bible.

What is really at play here?

You cannot understand why Israel matters in geopolitical terms alone.

In geopolitical terms, the Palestinians are not happy with the British for their control of the Middle East after World I, or the United Nations for its resolution establishing the Israel state after World War II, or the United States for its support of Israel over the years.

It might explain some of why Islamists have the obsession they do in eliminating Israel, the Jews and Zionists. 

However, it is only in a spiritual realm that any of the conflict makes sense. After all, Palestine has been offered its own state at least five times over the years including by Great Britain, the United Nations, and even the United States and Israel, in brokered peace negotiations.

The Palestinians have rejected the opportunity to have its own state every time it was offered.

Why? Because they refuse to consider coexisting with Israel.

Why is it so important to Hamas and extreme Islam to remove Israel from the map?

Bat Ye'or wrote a book that was published a decade ago that attempts to explain all of this titled, "Europe, Globalization and the Coming Universal Caliphate".

I learned about Ye'or's book from an article I read by Diane West in 2011.

Ye'Or was a young Jewish woman who was forced by Islamists to leave her native Egypt and a Jewish community that had existed for 2,600 years before it came to end.

Her scholarly and literary work during her career has been focused on the treatment of non-Muslims in countries under Islamic rule and on the nature and impact of that Islamic rule. 

She makes an interesting argument in her book about why Islam has the obsession it has with Israel.

Why Israel? Ye'or asks. 

Why is it that a little sliver of land in which just 7.1  million Jewish people live is so alarming when balanced against 1.8 billion Muslims in the world?

She argues that Israel is so threateningto Muslim nations because Israel possesses the Bible.

Who would not be surprised by the relentless determination of Arab and Muslim countries to appropriate a tiny piece of land in which no town, village, or hamlet is mentioned in the Koran or in the biographies of Muhammad, who spent his whole life in Arabia? Given the immense territories conquered and Islamized over thirteen centuries of expansion and war, marked like all wars by genocide, large-scale massacre, expropriation, enslavement and deportation of the vanquished, why would Muslim countries keep plotting to destroy Israel?

Ye'or concludes that it is because Israel and the Bible puts the entire foundation of Islam at risk.

"What Israel possesses is the Bible; the book that Muhammad claims was the unaltered version of the Koran uncreated and consubstantial with Allah, before Jews and Christians falsified it. The history of the Hebrews, according to the Koran, is the history of the Muslims before Muhammad. The Prophet maintained that the biblical characters are Muslim prophets, and that the Bible--both First and Second Testaments--is simply a falsification of the story of these biblical prophets who, in the Koran, were Muslim and preached Islam. They appear in the Koran, like Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus, with Arabized names. But they are flimsy, disembodied figures floating in fragments of undefined space-time, and featured in homilies."

What is the crime of Israel and its people according to the Islamists?

The crime of the people of Israel is the creation of a compilation of books written over a period of centuries recounting the vagaries of their history, faith, legislation and aspirations---completed more than a thousand years before the Koran was written and excoriated by Muslim orthodoxy as a falsification of the Koran.

How do Christians also figure into all of this?

As for Christians, Islam teaches that they have gone astray by placing themselves in the lineage of the Hebrew Bible, because their real origin is with Islam, with Isa, the Muslim Jesus mentioned in the Koran and the Sunna. Christians who betray Isa by rejecting his Koranic message, inventing the concept of the Trinity, are as diabolical as the Jews.

By destroying Israel and eliminating the Jewish people, Islam could thus eliminate the Bible and bring Christianity back to its Islamic origin. The destruction of Christianity's sustaining Jewish roots will facilitate its Islamization.

These  observations about Israel, Islam and the Bible are profound and disturbing.

If accurate, Ye'or's views on all of this underscore the depths of the spiritual battle that underlies everything that is transpiring around us. 

It should cause everyone to ask if what we are witnessing right now all over the world is really just about Israel and the Palestinian people.

Or are we in the midst of a much larger war of which the battlefield is not just a tiny strip of land called Gaza or the West Bank of the Jordan river?

This war is most likely about YOUR WORLD.

It ultimately could determine who is going to control it and who is going to control you.

For that reason, everyone needs to pay very close attention to what is going on and make sure your friends and neighbors are educated on it as well.

Make sure they know the facts and not be taken in by falsehoods and fantasies.

In other words, make sure they are not like the people in the video below.

This is a video of various people who eagerly state they will sign a petition supporting Hamas and Palestine until they are read a "terms and conditions" sheet that details the mission, methods and objectives of Hamas. 

https://twitter.com/jacklanger/status/1719881217598730388

Trick or Treat Teaching Moment-2023

Halloween 2023 is over but I hope my readers used last night as a teaching moment for their children and grandchildren.

One lesson that I hope most learned last night is that those who were willing to ring more doorbells and keep going even when they started getting tired ended up with a bigger bag of candy.

Those who put in extra effort get larger rewards and they deserve what they earned.

That was especially true last night in our neighborhood in Cincinnati as my grandchildren were out with temperatures in the high 30's, strong winds and snow coming down.

It is the first time in my lifetime that I have seen snow on Halloween.

It must be climate change.

The following blog post is one that I originally wrote in 2011. It turned out to one of the most popular posts I wrote that year.

I thought I would republish it (updated with recent numbers) for my newer readers as well as showing how much the U.S. financial condition has deteriorated over the last decade.

Trick or Treat Teaching Moment

(originally published October 29, 2012 and slightly revised with 2023 data)

Halloween is here and why should we waste such a great teaching moment for younger Americans?

Our schools all too often fill our children's heads with liberal, progressive mush.  It occurs to me that we could teach them a few lessons about economics, capitalism and freedom using Snickers, Starbursts and Swizzlers.

How about a lesson on taxation?  When the children bring home their candy haul on Halloween night and spread it out on the family room floor, take 40% of it away before they get their hands on it.  They need to understand the burden of taxation.  They need to see first hand that when they work hard they also have a "partner" that wants to share in everything they work for-GOVERNMENT.  You need to explain to your child that their "partner" is always hungry.  It has an insatiable appetite for taxes  (and spending).

Pre-Tax Candy Haul  

                

After-Tax Candy Haul

How about a lesson on the redistribution of wealth?  One of your children doggedly rings doorbells on two additional streets after your other child calls it quits because they are tired and cold.  As a result, they have 40 more pieces of candy in their bag when they get home.  When you see that they have more goodies, immediately tell them that it is not fair that they have more than their sibling.  They will invariably protest and say that they earned it by doing more than their sister.  You then tell them that they could never eat all of that candy by themselves anyway and they are just being selfish. What is really unfair is keeping more than their fair share.

For good measure you can also point out that they did not build the sidewalk they walked on, nor the streetlights they walked under or the houses they rang the doorbells at to get the candy.

How about a lesson on regulation that would make Mayor Bloomberg proud?  If your children happen to get one of those large Snickers bars instead of the little bite size ones prohibit them from eating it.  It is not healthy to take in all of those calories at one time so ban the large size and mandate that they limit themselves to small sizes.

Eating the smaller size is also good for the climate.

King Size- Banned

Regular Size- Limited Availability

Enjoy the Fun Size!

On second thought, just let the children enjoy Halloween and their treats.  Forget the lessons and the teaching moments.

The sad truth is that the trick is really going to be on them when they realize that they are responsible for $16 trillion $34 trillion of federal debt.

The debt being taken on is far outstripping the growth in the economy and the ultimate ability to pay the interest on that debt.

                                                   2009                           2012                    2023             Chg since '12                  

Federal Debt                        $10.6 trillion              $15.9 trillion         $33.7 trillion       +17.8 trillion

Gross Domestic Product      $13.9 trillion             $15.6 trillion         $27.1 trillion        +11.5 trillion 

The scariest chart I have seen this year is the one shown below.

Projected future interest payments on the federal debt based on current trends.

$2 trillion in annual interest payments on the federal debt just six years from now?

The federal government is only projected to collect $2.2 trillion in individual and corporate income taxes  in 2023.

Where we are heading looks like everyone is going to be on a bite size diet.

Enjoy the Halloween candy.  A little chocolate makes everything better!