Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Thursday, February 13, 2025
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 555)
Opinion

Image taken from "Bernie Bros" video that explains the term and examines whether it is accurate.

Image taken from “Bernie Bros” video that explains the term and examines whether it is accurate.

“The Bernie Bros are out in full force harassing female reporters,” according to a recent headline on The Washington Post’s website.

Why did the author conclude that the “Bernie Bros” were acting badly? Several respected female journalists had written that they’d been subjected to vulgar and threatening emails, phone messages and tweets — purportedly from Bernie Sanders supporters displeased with their reportage.

Many in the Sanders camp took offense at this characterization, and with reason. The more astute among them concede that some members of their club are prone to misbehavior. But the world of social media is rife with intrigue. And the manipulation of reality grows especially thick wherever participants can hide their true identities.

Professionally conducted polls are often flawed, but they at least try to scientifically gauge opinion “out there.” Trying to draw a bigger picture on the basis of incoming opinion is hazardous. The problem with online perceptions is that five jerks can seem to make a trend.

Today’s French phrase is “agent provocateur.” An agent provocateur is one who commits a rash act with the intention of falsely implicating another.

There’s no better place to practice this dark art than on anonymous social media. Many, perhaps most, read a tweet and assume that the feelings expressed are real. That includes tweets from unidentifiable sources and, still more pernicious, from sources using fake identities made to look real.

So, some harassers may not have been “Bernie Bros” at all. They may have been trolls seeking to sow discord among Democrats. (A troll is someone who posts offensive or divisive comments online.) They could have been teens in an Oslo basement smoking pot and doing mischief. They could have been anyone seeking to discredit the Sanders phenomenon.

And some attach to popular political hashtags to flog their businesses. The Post was able to identify one of the offending “Bernie Bros” as a wannabe comedian in Berlin.

The most skilled inciters, meanwhile, know that getting under people’s skin distracts them from the important question: “What creep really wrote this?”

The professional media have no excuse for getting taken. If they don’t know the source of a statement, they should pay it no mind.

One of the earliest and best pieces of advice for navigating social media is: “Do not feed the trolls.” That means do not respond in a hurt or angry manner. For heaven’s sake, don’t debate them. The major nuisances can be blocked.

Responsible voices treating anonymous posts as representative of larger opinion end up feeding trolls a 10-course dinner. They magnify a gang of miscreants into a “cause celebre” (French again), and the attention paid only draws in more lowlifes.

Look, people using social media, high-school kids included, put themselves at risk of being targeted online. The sensitive should avoid sites that tolerate masked ghouls. There’s a reason Twitter has trouble keeping users while Facebook, which requires “friends” to identify themselves, is growing rapidly.

Some journalists cushion their tales of online nastiness as a form of reporting, a mere telling of what’s happening “out there.” But even if they’re mocking the louts in the process, that’s still giving them prime time. And seeing as one person can work 100 Twitter handles (assuming he or she has a unique email address to go with each), it’s really not wise to portray anonymously written stuff as representative of anything.

Those in the public eye would do best to dismiss their online attackers as dogs barking in the night. If they sense a genuine threat, they should call the police. Otherwise, ignore the trolls. The howling will eventually stop.

[brid video=”41563″ player=”2077″ title=”What Are “Bernie Bros””]

"The Bernie Bros are out in full

Opinion

The scene after the Orlando terror attack on Sunday June 12, 2016.

The scene after the Orlando terror attack on Sunday June 12, 2016.

However great the shock of the massacre in Orlando, it is only a matter of time before we start hearing again the fact-free dogma that “diversity is our strength.”

If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, “diversity” should be a prime candidate.

Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word “Balkanization” remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?

Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

“When in Rome do as the Romans do” was once a common saying. Today, after generations in the West have been indoctrinated with the rhetoric of multiculturalism, the borders of Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic have been thrown open to people who think it is their prerogative to come as refugees and tell the Romans what to do — and to assault those who don’t knuckle under to foreign religious standards.

The recent wave of refugees flooding into Europe include Muslim men who have been haranguing European women on the streets for not dressing modestly enough, not to mention their sexual molestation of those women.

Smug elites in Europe, like their counterparts in America, are not nearly as concerned about such things as they are about preventing “Islamophobia.” Legal restrictions on free speech in some European countries make it a crime to sound the alarm about the dangers to the culture and to the people.

In the lofty circles of those who see themselves as citizens of the world, it is considered unworthy, if not hateful, to insist on living according to your own Western values or to resist importing people who increase your chances of being killed.

But if you don’t have the instinct for self-preservation, it will not matter much in the long run whatever else you may have.

America’s great good fortune in the past has been that Americans have been able to unite as Americans against every enemy, despite our own internal differences and struggles. Black and white, Jew and Gentile, have fought and died for this country in every war.

It has not been our diversity, but our ability to overcome the problems inherent in diversity, and to act together as Americans, that has been our strength.

In both World War I and World War II, the top commander of American troops who went into combat against the German army was of German ancestry — Pershing and Eisenhower, respectively. So too was General Carl Spaatz, whose bombers reduced German cities to rubble. Whatever their backgrounds, they were Americans when the chips were down.

Today, that sense of American unity is being undermined by the reckless polarization of group identity politics. That affects not only how Americans see themselves, but how others in our midst see America.

Some people demand American citizenship, as if it is an entitlement, while burning the American flag and waving the flag of Mexico. And the apostles of “diversity” and “multiculturalism” watch in silence. That includes the President of the United States.

Probably most people in most groups are decent. But if 85 percent of the people in Group A present no serious problems and 95 percent of the people in Group B present no serious problems, that means you can expect three times as many serious problems when you admit immigrants from Group A.

Unfortunately, there is remarkably little interest in the relevant facts about crime rates, disease rates, welfare dependency or educational deficiencies among immigrants from specific countries. Most debates about immigration policies are contests in rhetoric, with hard facts being ignored as if they didn’t exist.

Tragically, the massacre in Orlando seems unlikely to change that. Too many people have too much invested in their own particular position to change, especially in an election year.
[mybooktable book=”wealth-poverty-and-politics-an-international-perspective” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

However great the shock of the massacre

Video

[brid video=”41549″ player=”2077″ title=”FULL DONALD TRUMP RALLY VIDEO IN MANCHESTER NEW HAMPSHIRE (6132016)”]

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump speaks at Saint Anselm College Monday, June 13, 2016, in Manchester, N.H., in the aftermath of the Orlando terror attack.

Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked presumptive Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton in his speech for being weak on terror, immigration and refusing to use the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” He also pointed out what is referred to in Marxism as an “internal conflict” within the leftist political coalition.

“She can’t have it both ways,” he said about Clinton. “She can’t claim to be supportive of these communities while trying to increase the number of people coming in who want to oppress them.”

“Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community,” he asked. “Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words?”

“Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country—they enslave women, and murder gays,” he said. “I don’t want them in our country.”

“Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as long as she continues to support immigration policies that bring Islamic extremists to our country who suppress women, gays and anyone who doesn’t share their views.”

Donald Trump speaks at Saint Anselm College

Politics

Hillary-Clinton-Cleveland-Industrial-Center AP

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at the Cleveland Industrial Innovation Center, Monday, June 13, 2016, in Cleveland. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)The Associated Press

Hillary Clinton on Monday called for a sweeping gun ban on assault rifles in response to the Islamic terror attack in Orlando this weekend that left at least 50 dead. Speaking at Team Wendy on Monday afternoon, a factory in Cleveland that makes headgear to protect American troops, she said demonizing Muslims for the actions of a few would only benefit Islamists.

“I believe weapons of war have no place on our streets,” Mrs. Clinton said. Though she drew implicit contrasts with Trump, she never mentioned him by name, saying “Today is not a day for politics.”

The former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic nominee also said massacres carried out by Islamic terrorists in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif, resulted in hate crimes against American Muslims. In fact, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, anti-semitic crime in the U.S. far outweighs anti-Muslim crime and the trends continue in this direction.

She sought to use measured language and downplay the terrorist’s status.

“We face a twisted ideology that inspires so called lone wolves,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Omar Mateen, 29, the Muslim U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents, opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing at least 53 people. The FBI admitted he “was on the radar before” and was twice a person of interest in terror-related investigations, once in 2013 and again 2014.

Mrs. Clinton said her anti-terror efforts would focus on identifying “lone wolf” terrorists, or Islamists who are radicalized but not connected to a broader network or acting out plans hatched by or on behalf of a terror group. President Obama also said Monday that the Orlando attacker appeared to fall into that category.

However, the Islamic State on Sunday took responsibility for the attack. Further, several lawmakers including Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., as well as intelligence officials have publicly stated Mateen had a connection to organizations and other jihadists.

Hillary Clinton called for a sweeping gun

Video

[brid video=”41546″ player=”2077″ title=”Imam Preaching in Orlando Mosque “Death is the Sentence” for Gays”]

Imam Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who preached at an Orlando, Florida mosque just two months ago, said “death is the sentence” for gays and Muslims should “get rid of them now.”

Omar Mateen, 29, a Muslim U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents, opened fire at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, which left at least 53 dead and another 53 injured.

Imam Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who preached at an

World

Greek-Prime-Minister-Alexis-Tspiras

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks with the media after a meeting of eurozone heads of state at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, July 13, 2015. A summit of eurozone leaders reached a tentative agreement with Greece on Monday for a bailout program that includes “serious reforms” and aid, removing an immediate threat that Greece could collapse financially and leave the euro. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Changing demographics is one of the most powerful arguments for genuine entitlement reform. When programs such as Social Security and Medicare (and equivalent systems in other nations) were first created, there were lots of young people and comparatively few old people.

And so long as a “population pyramid” was the norm, reasonably sized welfare states were sustainable (though still not desirable because of the impact on labor supply, savings rates, tax policy, etc).

In most parts of the world, however,demographic profiles have changed. Because of longer life expectancy and falling birth rates, population pyramids are turning into population cylinders.

This is one of the reasons why there is a fiscal crisis in Southern European nations such as Greece. And there’s little reason for optimismsince the budgetary outlook will get worse in those countries as their versions of baby-boom generations move into full retirement.

But while Southern Europe already has been hit, and while the long-run challenge in Northern European nations such as France has received a lot of attention, there’s been inadequate focus on the problem in Eastern Europe.

The fact that there’s a major problem surprises some people. After all, isn’t the welfare state smaller in these countries? Haven’t many of them adopted pro-growth reforms such as the flat tax? Isn’t Eastern Europe a success story considering that the region was enslaved by communism for many decades?

To some degree, the answer to those questions is yes. But there are two big challenges for the region.

First, while the fiscal burden of government may not be as high in some Eastern European countries as it is elsewhere on the continent (damning with faint praise), those nations tend to rank lower for other factors that determine overall economic freedom, such as regulation and the rule of law.

Looking at the most-recent edition of Economic Freedom of the World, there are nine Western European nations among the top 30 countries: Switzerland (#4), Ireland (#8), United Kingdom (#10), Finland (#19), Denmark (#22), Luxembourg (#27), Norway (#27), Germany (#29), and the Netherlands (#30).

For Eastern Europe, by contrast, the only representatives are Romania (#17), Lithuania (#19), and Estonia (#22).

Second, Eastern Europe has a giant demographic challenge.

Here’s what was recently reported by the Financial Times.

Eastern Europe’s population is shrinking like no other regional population in modern history. …a population drop throughout a whole region and over decades has never been observed in the world since the 1950s with the exception of…Eastern Europe over the last 25 consecutive years.

Here’s the chart that accompanied the article. It shows the population change over five-year periods, starting in 1955. Eastern Europe (circled in the lower right) is suffering a population hemorrhage.

By the way, it’s not like the trend is about to change.

If you look at global fertility data, these nations all rank near the bottom. And they also suffer from brain drain since a very smart person, even from fast-growing, low-tax Estonia, generally can enjoy more after-tax income by moving to an already-rich nation such as Switzerland or the United Kingdom.

So what’s the moral of the story? What lessons can be learned?

There are actually three answers, only two of which are practical.

  • First, Eastern European nations can somehow boost birthrates. But nobody knows how to coerce or bribe people to have more children.
  • Second, Eastern European nations can engage in more reform to improve overall economic liberty and thus boost growth rates.
  • Third, Eastern European nations can copy Hong Kong and Singapore (both very near the bottom for fertility) by setting up private retirement systems.

The second option obviously is good, and presumably would reduce – and perhaps ultimately reverse – the brain drain.

But the third option is the one that’s absolutely required.

The good news is that there’s been some movement in that direction. But the bad news is that reform has taken place only in some nations, and usually only partial privatization, and in some cases (like Poland and Hungary) the reforms have been reversed.

And even if full pension reform is adopted, there’s still the harder-to-solve issue of government-run healthcare.

Eastern Europe has a very grim future.

P.S. I’m a great fan of the reforms that have been adopted in some of the nations in Eastern Europe, but none of them are small-government jurisdictions. Yes, the welfare state in Eastern European countries is generally smaller than in Western European nations, but it’s worth noting that every Eastern European nation in the OECD (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) has a larger burden of government spending than the United States.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Changing demographics is one of the most

Opinion

On Saturday night, Omar Mateen was a loner and a loser. Sunday, he was immortal, by his standards, a hero. Mateen had ended his life in a blaze of gunfire and glory. Now everybody knew his name.

He had been embraced by ISIS. His face was on every TV screen. His 911 call to Orlando police identifying with the Islamic State and the Tsarnaev brothers of the Boston Marathon massacre was being heard across America.

He was being called the most successful Islamist terrorist since 9/11. A hater of homosexuals, Mateen had, all alone, massacred more than four dozen patrons at a gay Florida nightclub, wounded 53, and driven deeper the wedges breaking up America. When it was learned that he used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, America’s gun wars were reignited.

And make no mistake. There are out there in society some few looking at what Mateen did, and how he left this world, not in revulsion and disgust but admiration and awe.

Omar Mateen will not lack for emulators. While we see him as a sick and crazed mass murderer, some will see him, as he surely saw himself, as a warrior for Islam and Muslim martyr who earned paradise.

Yet, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seemed either unable to recognize the roots of Mateen’s malice, or they were inhibited from identifying those roots by the commands of political correctness.

The president called this “an act of hate,” but declined to name the source of the hatred or motive for the massacre.

Where did Omar Mateen learn to hate not just homosexuality but the homosexuals themselves? Where did he come to believe that they deserved to die and he had a right to kill them?

Where might he have gotten such ideas? Who teaches this?

Well, not only do the Taliban and ISIS hurl homosexuals off buildings and stone them to death but 10 nations — Mauritania, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Yemen and Pakistan — impose the death penalty for homosexual acts.

Peoples of these nations approve, for such laws find sanction in the holy book, the Quran. Sharia teaches that homosexuality is a vile form of fornication, punishable by death.

Clinton declared that we must redouble our efforts to work with “our allies and partners” to go after international terror groups.

Did she have in mind the Saudis and Gulf Arabs?

For they have on their books laws calling for beheading the same sort of people Mateen shot to death at the Pulse club in Orlando, and for the same reason — what it is they do.

A co-worker said Mateen had an abiding rage over the behavior of American women. Where did Mateen get that idea?

After San Bernardino, where an ISIS-adoring Pakistani woman and her husband perpetrated a massacre, Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, until they could be better vetted, and we “can figure out what the hell is going on,”

This was regarded as quintessentially un-American.

But “refugees” from the Syrian war have been found abetting Islamist atrocities in Paris. Terror cells containing “refugees” from Syria’s civil war have been discovered in Angela Merkel’s Germany.

We are learning that second-generation Muslims like Mateen seem susceptible to Islamist imams preaching terror against the West to advance the restoration of the caliphate.

Does this not suggest a pause, and a long hard look before we continue with a policy of warmly welcoming all refugees fleeing the half-dozen wars roiling the Islamic world?

After World War II, we vetted German and East European migrants to ensure they were not fleeing Nazis or Soviet saboteurs or spies.

No one seemed to regard that as outrageous.

Devout Muslims believe there is “no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet.” Logically then, Muslim nations reject a “First Amendment” in their own societies that would protect a right of Christians to convert Muslims, or any “freedom of speech” that permits the mockery of Muhammad.

The iconoclasts at Charlie Hebdo learned that the penalty for blasphemy against Islam or insulting the prophet can be severe.

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat.”

So wrote Kipling. Islam, not only in its extremist forms but in its pure form, is incompatible with modern Western democracy.

And the conflict appears irreconcilable.

The policy that should result from this reality is that while we fight side-by-side to annihilate our common enemies, ISIS and al-Qaida, the West should give up the idea of democratization and secularization of the Islamic world.

And those who believe Islam is the one true faith, to which all of mankind must eventually submit, should be told that they are welcome as visitors — but not as immigrants. For that would ensure endless conflict.

The more Islamic the West becomes, the less it remains the West.

We are learning the hard way that

Video

[brid video=”41414″ player=”2077″ title=”Dr. Sebastian Gorka”]

Jun. 12, 2016 – 3:10 – “Defeating Jihad” author and terrorism expert Dr. Sebastian Gorka said we need to stop political correctness and calling terrorist attacks hate crimes. Omar Mateen, 29, the Muslim U.S. citizen born to Afghan parents, “was on the radar before” he opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing at least 53 people. A senior law enforcement source told People’s Pundit Daily that Mateen was twice a person of interest in terror-related investigations, once in 2013 and again 2014.

The FBI publicly confirmed this report at a press conference in Orlando a little after 3:05 p.m. EST.

ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack Sunday afternoon through its Amaq news agency, but it is not yet clear whether the shooting was actually directed by the terror organization or inspired by it.

Jun. 12, 2016 - "Defeating Jihad" author

Video

[brid video=”41410″ player=”2077″ title=”FULL Paul Manafort INTERVIEW ON ABC “THIS WEEK” WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (6122016)”]

During an interview on ABC This Week, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and chief strategist Paul Manafort ripped Mitt Romney for his comments at a conference in Utah. Gov. Romney, the failed 2012 GOP nominee and vocal critic of the presumptive nominee in 2016, said his heart was breaking watching Trump lead the party.

Manafort said Romney was a “loser” and the other “malcontents” in the Republican Party are “sitting in their cocoon away from the reality of the world.”

When asked about Meg Whitman, the former head of eBay and failed gubernatorial candidate in Calforia, comparing Donald Trump to Mussolini and Hitler at the same conference, Mr. Manafort called them “sore losers.”

“Well, I think they’re sitting in their cocoon, you know, away from the reality of the world. I mean, Donald Trump is none of those things. And this is sore losers,” he told Clinton ally turned-journalist George Stephanopoulos. “You know, Romney wanted to run, chose not to. He’s now attacking this past weekend all the other Republican who ran for president as well saying they should have done a better job. Well, if he feels that way he should have run. He was a coward.”

During an interview on ABC This Week,

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe