Thursday, August 29, 2019

Pulitzer's "1619 Project" Sponsorship Brings Back Yellow Journalism



The Pulitzer Center's co-sponsorship of "The 1619 Project" marks a dismaying return of the family name to Yellow Journalism and the worst sort of political propaganda designed to agitate the American public through sensationalism, demagoguery, and lies.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/pulitzer-1619-project-sponsorship-brings-back-yellow-journalism-newt-gingrich-1619-project-yel-1567026396

Saturday, August 24, 2019

I'm in a new Agustin Blazquez YouTube video...

About President Trump and American Jews. Watch here:



UPDATE: Just received this comment from our Producer-Director, Agustin Blazquez: "As of 8-26-19 this video received an "R" age-restriction by YouTube.  In order to see it, you have to log on to YouTube with your login and password.  YouTube gave no specific reason for the restriction.  In light of the questioning of social media companies, I have to wonder if there is something in this video that they don't want you to see.  Agustin Blazquez"

Monday, August 19, 2019

In Japan, Anyone Can Have A Finger On The Button...

"Pushing the button" in Japan doesn't bring about nuclear armageddon, rather a smiling server who appears like a genii from the Arabian Nights but Japanese...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/in-japan-anyone-can-have-a-finger-on-the-button-japan-restaurants-the-button-1566152982


Monday, August 05, 2019

Very Glad President Trump Said This Today...

"Third, we must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement.  Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun."

From Remarks by President Trump on the Mass Shootings in Texas and Ohio, 
Issued on: 



https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-mass-shootings-texas-ohio/

To Stop Mass Shootings, Read The Califano Report


The August 2000 Califano "Report of the United States Postal Service Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace" is a good example of Washington actually working in a bipartisan manner to solve a serious problem with practical solutions.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/to-stop-mass-shootings-read-the-califano-report-joseph-califano-e-fuller-torre-1564958768

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Rats! President Trump Exposes Baltimore's Collapse


Bernie criticized capitalism in Baltimore; Obama criticized racism. Trump criticized Baltimore's elected officials for conditions in their city. Why is that wrong?

Read the whole thing at The Latest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/rats-president-trump-exposes-baltimore-collapse-donald-trump-elijah-cummings-b-1564431157

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Boris Johnson and the Apotheosis of New York


The family history of incoming British Prime Minister Boris Johnson illustrates Israel Zangwill's message in "The Melting Pot," his play about New York of the 1900s: "America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians – into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American."

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/boris-johnson-apotheosis-new-york-boris-johnson-donald-trump-new-1563993377

Thursday, July 18, 2019

Pelosi's Choice


Speaker Nancy Pelosi's choice to side with her radical freshman against President Trump reveals that she was not forced to condemn him, because he offered an opportunity for "triangulation" which could have provided her with Republican support in Congress to marginalize the extremists.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/pelosi-choice-trump-pelosi-tweets-1563390787

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

THE DESPICABLE FOUR VS. THE USA...

Dethroning Nancy Pelosi?
By Agustin Blazquez
© 2019 ABIP

The Democrat Party began abandoning our foundations in favor of a foreign ideology contrary to the US Constitution in the 1960s, and for that reason is in big trouble today.

As Barack Hussein Obama campaigned for 2008 elections, he obviously felt it was safe to reveal his plan for a “fundamental transformation“ of our nation.  But, he didn't answer the question: What would it  transform into?

Now the answer to that question is more than evident, as we watch the shameless transformation of the Democrat Party after the 2016 Presidential elections. 

The radical, socialist Left is very much in charge, perhaps without the full knowledge of the American public.

“The ends justifies the means” is their norm, with no limits.  

However, people who escaped from socialist and communist systems know the crimes that they perpetrate once the Left takes power. 

So expect anything from these fanatic radicals that are causing havoc now.  They are taking over the USA, to the detriment of the people.

Americans in 2018 elected these despicable four characters, who now are acting with more power than the Constitution contemplated giving to House freshmen.  

They have overcome the Speaker of the House. What else could Nancy Pelosi do after they implied she was a racist? Side with President Trump, who defended her?

So how can other Democrats--who may still view themselves as “moderates”--face this hijacking of the party?

So far, the rest have been silent, if not going along with these four jumping jacks.

After his confrontation with these four despicable radicals, President Trump told them to go home. 

They replied with much-repeated accusations of “racism” repeated to death since the Obama Administration.

I personally think that these four out-of-line characters should step down and they should be sent to Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Vietnam.  

Not for vacations.  

But to see how citizens of those countries live, in order to experience the same hardships and misery of the unfortunate residents of socialist hellholes.

This would be so they might personally experience what socialised health care really means... as well as other socialist programs that those four despicable want to impose on the American people.  

I hope in doing so they might finally come to appreciate the freedoms they are currently able to enjoy in the U.S.A. 

Agustin Blazquez was born in Cardenas, Cuba. He left Cuba on July 18, 1965, and lived in Montreal, Paris and Madrid before arriving in the U.S. as a political refugee in 1967. He produced and directed THE TRUMP EFFECT: Deprogramming the American Mind (2017). Click here for his  YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/jaums.

Friday, July 12, 2019

US State Department Promotes Trump-Hater on Facebook


The US Embassy in Tashkent's decision to promote World Cup champion Megan Rapinoe's personal views, rather than her athletic achievement, is an offensive political attack on the Trump Administration.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/us-state-department-promotes-trump-hater-facebook-women-amp-039-s-world-cup-mega-1562952418

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

In Honor of the July 11, 2019 White House Social Media Summit...

Here's a blast from the past--an account of a 2002 conference at the National Press Club about the future of Weblogs, that I published in The Idler, my predecessor to this blog, still available thanks to The Wayback Machine at Archive.org:


(www.the-idler.com)
"Read All About It In The Idler"
15 July 2002


Inside the Blogosphere: The Weblog Phenomenon
By Laurence Jarvik



Pyra LabsBlogger Website

It was rewarding to google 'bloggers accounts of The Idler's June 28th panel at the National Press Club: "Inside the Blogosphere: The Weblog Phenomenon."

While it was naturally disappointing that Glenn Reynolds and James Lileks cancelled due to thunderstorms, airlines, and scratched flights, it was gratifying that they wrote about their experience in their blogs, because that is the Blogosphere in action -- self-referential, self-reflexive, self-analytical, self-correcting, universal, instaneous, decentralized, emotional, rational, and available for continuous updating, response, and review. It shows the strength of the Blogosphere as a network of responses.

In the words of William Quick's January, 2002 posting on DailyPundit:

"I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves. .."

The idea was pretty simple: Bring some prominent 'bloggers to Washington to meet the press face-to-face, in a way that would cut through a lot of the hype around blogging. After reading a New York Times story in which technically oriented 'bloggers denounced politically outspoken newcomers like Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, (one that Reynolds had linked to) we thought it would be useful for Washington, DC based journalists to have first-hand exposure to the people behind the blogs.

So, the first invitation was to Reynolds, perhaps the best-known 'blogger since September 11th, and the internet's biggest phenomenon, at least for the chattering classes, since the emergence of Matt Drudge or Jim Romenesko. He agreed to fly to Washington for the day, and we planned the panel around him.

To complement Reynolds, we picked some blogs linked on his site: James Lileks , Mickey Kaus and James Taranto were invited.

We asked James Taranto, of "Best of the Web" on the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com for one reason: it was a link of his site that first led us to discover Instapundit.

Through a link on Instapundit, we found John Hiler's MicroContentNews.com. He had been writing at length on the history of the blogging,. He agreed to attend, and were grateful that there would be a tech person on the panel to answer any questions of a computer programming nature. (Ironically, it turned out that James Taranto of "Best of the Web," whom we had thought of as a New York intellectual, was in fact an Arizonan who had studied computer programming.)

We had hoped the panel would go beyond politics, taking the discussion to a higher level. It seemed to us that blogging was a very significant cultural phenomenon, perhaps as significant as the development of printing. By making the web easy to use as a mechanism to distribute print, by cutting the cost of production and distribution to essentially zero, blogging fundamentally would alter the relationship among writers, readers, and yes, the middlemen and women who were traditionally the printers, publishers, and editors.

Initially, blogs were for technical people, or for diaries and personal expression, but they rapidly grew into a serious phenomeon, filling in the gaps left by an established media unwilling or perhaps unable to deal with situations that did not fit into their corporate and/or ideological "deep structures."
Yet despite their independence on one level, on another, the blogs were epiphenomena. They depended on the mainstream media, at least for some of their content. After all, Glenn Reynolds and other bloggers operate at a "meta" level, where articles and essays are discussed, examined, refuted, and sometimes mocked.

So we also invited Doug Mclennan of Artsjournal.comDennis Loy Johnson of Mobylives.com, and Alice Goldfarb Marquis, a contributor to The Idler. They were not only involved in web publications, but were cultural critics as well, who could put the weblog in a cultural context that had been missing from a great deal of the journalistic coverage.

Although some bloggers complained that there was not enough political talk (a strange complaint, as audience members were free to raise political issues during the hour-and-a-half of spirited discussion following the presentations), we were delighted that the discussion went way beyond politics -- and that there was a lot of debate about the meaning of weblogs in a larger context, looking at a bigger picture.

For example, when we saw James Lilek's account of his airport troubles, right before the event, it seemed that if nothing else, his invitation had resulted in documentation of early 21st-Century American travel, an artifact sure to of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and perhaps even archaeologists of the not-too-distant future. Likewise, when Glenn Reynolds posted his flight cancellation notice it was disappointing, while simultaneously evidence of the utility of Blogosphere. For as a result, we had a new term: "Lileks-ed."

The 'bloggers who  attend could not fail to note their disappointment at Reynolds and Lileks' non-appearances in their coverage. It was almost as if Madonna and Britney had failed to show, such was the sighing... And yet the room remained full after the announcment was made. There were 40 seats, and some were standing. For 3 hours. At the end, several wanted to stay, though we had to leave the room.

Of the some 40 people in the John Peter Zenger Room of the National Press Club, at least a dozen had signed in as 'bloggers. How many bloggers were there who had not signed in, one does not know.

And in their own accounts, responses read as far away as Brazil, there was a lot to think about. On Journalismo Digital, Elisabete Barbosa wrote that she had seen panelist John Hiler's story in Microcontent News.  Arnold Kling's essay at TechCentralStation was cited on Romenesko's MediaNews. (Kling had another article about the event on Corante's website, John Hiler's publisher.) And in best Blogosphere fashion, 'bloggers linked to one another on blogs such as TleevesCombustible Boy (with photos)Tres Producers, WOIFMi330Geistbear, and Rosenblog.
Interestingly, what we considered a sympathetic discussion of 'blogging from Alice Marquis clearly upset the 'bloggers the most, as one can see from their published accounts. Perhaps it was her attack on "boosterism."

Yet, contra some of the offended bloggers, she made  excellent analytical points,  not simply bon mots about "link-stained wretches" and "bloggorhea."

Marquis most telling comparison was to the revolution wrought by Marcel Duchamp, who turned the art-world on its head through his display of "readymades." Just as photography forever changed painting, so did Duchamp's challenge to the artistic powers-that-be. Although discussion of Duchamp's urinal appeared to be taken as an insult by some in the audience, Marquis' comparison was actually a compliment to the medium.

Weblogs are to newspapers, radio, and television stations as the salon de refuses was to the French Academy; or Duchamp to the previous generation of painters in New York, before the Armory show. The blogs are part of a revolutionary moment in American culture. Democratic, heartfelt, and fun.
Likewise, while some 'bloggers carp that Doug McLennan and Dennis Loy Johnson are not true 'bloggers (yet if their sites are not 'blogs in at least one dimension -- logs on the web, with commentary -- what are they?), the speakers had a keen understanding of what 'blogs are and what they have the potential to become.

McLennan pointed out that Weblogs have what establishment media no longer have, the passion, point-of-view, and personal sensibility that generate true engagement with the public.  "Who wants to read passionless stories?" he asked, noting that the best bloggers could be seen in the same light as great columnists. He suggested that 'blogging rips away the "veil of objectivity" surrounding much establishment media, that weblogs reveal there are more than two sides to any story, that there are multiple sides, and multiple perspectives, making the world a much more interesting place, where the blogger makes personal sense of information. He also pointed out that a lot of stuff on the web was B.S.

And while Johnson disagreed about the objectivity issue, saying he tries to be objective in his work, he came up with perhaps the best line of the day, when during the question and answer session he recalled the advice of an ex-hippie: "Don't burn out, man. Pace yourself."  That is the issue facing all 'bloggers, how to keep going, day in and day out, with a flood of thoughts, feelings, inspirations, and expression. Johnson's advice: take a break.

John Hiler's commentary on the "dark side of blogging" was insightful as well.  The dangers of "pouring gasoline on the ego" that comes from instantaneous publication to a worldwide audience, the need to consider blogging a form of addiction, were thought-provoking.

And of course, last but certainly not least, James Taranto made an important point just by his presence. He gets paid for doing a weblog! By a big company! And it gets readers for the company! Not only that he helps other weblogs -- like Instapundit -- when he directs his thousands of regular readers to their sites.  His computer programmer to paid 'blogger story was inspirational, to say the least. Not to mention his contribution to the debate over the future of newspapers. Taranto noted that TV didn't kill of radio, and radio didn't kill off newspapers. So, weblogs won't kill off newspapers either (you can't read a weblog on the toilet, he noted with dry wit). But in comparing weblogs to radio and television, Taranto seizes on precisely the point made by Marquis (also perceived as a critic by the 'bloggers in the crowd): This is a new medium, with new potential. For blogs are a new form of moveable type, and the internet the most dramatic development since Gutenberg.

Moveable type, in the words of former New Yorker critic Mimi Kramer, "...only much more moveable."

Sunday, July 07, 2019

President Trump's July 4th Victory Through Air Power

White House Photo by Andrea Hanks
President Trump secured victory over opponents of his Independence Day parade by turning to the skies, substituting an Air Parade for tanks parading through Washington streets, in a moving tribute to the US Military and American Independence.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/president-trump-july-4th-victory-through-air-power-donald-trump-us-military-indep-1562499581

Monday, July 01, 2019

When is a Journalist Not a "Journalist?" When Antifa Attacks.


Journalistic reactions-- or lack thereof-- to Antifa's brutal attack on Andy Ngo in Portland have cast a stain on the reputation of the New York Times.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/q-when-journalist-not-journalist-a-when-antifa-attacks-antifa-journalism-new-york-tim-1561995420

Monday, June 24, 2019

Hiroshima & Nagasaki's Lesson for the G-20 Summit


The lesson to the G-20 in Osaka could not be clearer. Nuclear weapons are good for more than deterrence. They can win wars, end aggression, and remake once-belligerent societies into peaceful, prosperous, and cooperative members of the family of nations.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/hiroshima-nagasaki-lesson-g-20-summit-hiroshima-nagasaki-iran-1561386685

Saturday, June 22, 2019

President Trump's Iran Bombing Cancellation Was Reaganesque


President Trump has set the stage for restoration of the Weinberger Doctrine, after both Bush and Obama administrations applied crackpot theories to their use of military force, such as "winning hearts and minds" or "leading from behind."

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/president-trump-iran-bombing-cancellation-was-reaganesque-reagan-weinberger-doctrine-bei-1561149907

Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Glenn Harlan Reynolds v Social Media


In his new Insta-Book SOCIAL MEDIA UPHEAVAL, University of Tennessee law professor, internet entrepreneur, webmaster, blogger, author, and pundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds has come forward to suggest a needed path to escape our current imprisonment in the Social Media Matrix.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/glenn-harlan-reynolds-social-media-matrix-facebook-twitter-1560884295

Monday, June 17, 2019

A Visit to Tokyo's Sempo Museum


If you ever happen to find yourself in downtown Tokyo, try to drop by the Sempo Museum for a few moments to pay tribute to the modest and courageous Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler during the second World War.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/a-visit-tokyo-sempo-museum-holocaust-refugees-japan-1560796650

David Horowitz's Reflections on Mortality and Faith



The book "Mortality and Faith" isn't really about politics; rather it is an almost Proustian stream-of-consciousness meditation on age and the meaning of life...


Saturday, June 15, 2019

Peter Miller: An American Printmaker in Japan


On a recent trip to Japan, I met Peter Miller, a master printmaker living and working in Kamakura, Japan, who shares his enchantment with people through black-and-white prints which blend Japanese aesthetics with American sensibility. 

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/peter-miller-an-american-printmaker-japan-japan-ansel-adams-hokusai-1560531104

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Teresa May's Resignation: Good Riddance to Old Rubbish!


If you want to know what America might have looked like had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election, it probably would have looked a lot like Teresa May's Britain...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/teresa-may-resignation-good-riddance-old-rubbish-teresa-may-donald-trump-christ-1558715336

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Bill Donohue's "Common Sense Catholicism" Challenges Politically Correct Dogma


In under 300 lively pages, Catholic League President Bill Donahue protests today's PC Establishment with the same vigor Luther's ninety-five theses did the Catholic hierarchy of his day. These theses take the form of six chapters, an introduction, and a conclusion--all devoted to direct confrontation with the corrosive ideology of Political Correctness that dominates American society.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/bill-donohue-common-sense-catholicism-challenges-politically-correct-dogma-political-correctness-feminism-1558115628

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Moscow Meeting May Break Venezuelan, North Korean & Ukrainian Stalemates

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (l) greeting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (r) in Finland in July.
Two years of anti-Russia hysteria may have led to the realization that a deal with Vladimir Putin may be necessary for President Trump to settle conflicts in Venezuela, North Korea and Ukraine.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/moscow-meeting-may-break-venezuelan-north-korean-ukrainian-stalemates-putin-trump-venezuela-1557606660

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Investigate Links Between Neo-Nazis & Islamic Terrorists Following Poway Chabad Shooting


The horrific attempted massacre at Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover, April 27th, raises questions about possible links between Neo-Nazi and Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism that must be investigated by the Trump Administration.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/investigate-links-between-neo-nazis-islamic-fundamentalists-after-poway-chabad-shooting-terrorism-anti-semitism-neo-na-1556805911

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Blood of American Sri Lanka Easter Bombing Victims Cries Out for Vengeance

Dieter Kowalski
Kieran Shafritz de Zoysa








Amelie & Daniel Linsey






ISIS's Easter terrorist atrocity in Sri Lanka reveals the failure of America's "Global War on Terrorism," declared after 9/11/2001. Instead of toothless State Department "condemnations," the US government must order swift and terrible punitive expeditions -- like President Reagan's 1986 Libyan bombing campaign or President Clinton's attack on Yugoslavia.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/blood-american-sri-lanka-easter-bombing-victims-cries-out-vengeance-islamic-terrorism-sri-lanka-is-1556306849

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

The Burning of Notre Dame

 

As lightning illuminates a darkened landscape, the burning of Notre Dame exposes not a "Clash of Civilizations" but an existential struggle with what French philosophe Bernard Henry-Levi calls Islamo-Leftism, an "anti-American religion" opposed to the existence of Western Civilization itself.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-burning-notre-dame-paris-civilization-notre-dame--1555533817

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Who is Daniel Greenfield?


The Blogger known as "Sultan Knish" may be the most influential pundit writing about the Trump Administration today...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/who-daniel-greenfield-sultan-knish-donald-trump-davi-1554753788

Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Attorney James R. Benson: Prosecute Congressman Adam Schiff for Obstruction of Justice



A Colorado attorney wants Congressman Schiff indicted because he believes: "If Schiff is telling the truth about his having concrete evidence supporting Trump collusion, then he is guilty of obstruction of justice for failing to make the Mueller investigation aware of it." But others doubt a successful prosecution is possible...

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/attorney-james-r-benson-prosecute-congressman-adam-schiff-obstruction-justice-adam-schiff-mueller-investigat-1554157460

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

President Trump's America First Foreign Policy Is "Moral Realism"

Dr. Michael Bender, a political analyst and Marshall Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, believes critics of President Trump's "America First" foreign policy fundamentally misconstrue his approach to international relations, which is based upon principles of "Moral Realism."

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/president-trump-america-first-foreign-policy-is-moral-realism-donald-trump-moral-realism-for-1553626557

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Trump v. Ocasio-Cortez: Reform or Revolution?

 

With his executive order on Free Speech, President Trump established himself as a true reformer, while his Democratic opponents have embraced revolution. Therefore, America faces a stark choice between reform or revolution in the 2020 elections.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/trump-ocasio-cortes-reform-revolution-donald-trump-alexandria-ocasio-1553285076

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Barbarians Inside the Gates

Pages from Leonardo Da Vinci's "Codex Leicester"
Yesterday, by accident of chance or fate, I found myself seated next to a lawyer for The Hammer Museum on a transcontinental flight from LAX to Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. 
As a chatty person, I thought an attempt at conversation might pass the time, so discovering my seat mate was in the museum business, I shared some pet obsessions about over-restoration, forgery, looting, de-accessioning, and the sacrifice of great art for contemporary garbage by museums such as the now-suicided Corcoran Gallery of Art.
As The Hammer Museum is operated by UCLA, and I had an MFA from UCLA, and was still involved in the arts, I looked forward to an interesting discussion with an art world insider that could perhaps shed some light on what was going on. I shared my admiration for the Getty Museum and Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, and the fact that I'd published a novel about the art world, Alice Goldfarb Marquis' murder mystery set at the Museum of Modern Art, Brushstroke!
But more I talked, the quieter my seat mate got, until she said that she had work to do, put on her headset, and never spoke again for the duration of the flight.
I thought the reaction a bit strange. Someone I know said I was probably just an annoying gabby seat mate, the person didn't want to talk, and not to read anything into the reaction.
But something about her silence set me to thinking, and so I looked up The Hammer Museum on Wikipedia, once I got home.
What I discovered didn't exactly shock me, but it explained the silent treatment. The attorney apparently represented an institution which was doing the kind of stuff that I had been complaining about.

Most interestingly, The Hammer Museum had auctioned off Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicester in 1994 for some 30 million dollars--although it had been Armand Hammer's favorite item (he renamed it the "Codex Hammer") and among the most valuable and important works in the collection.


Bill Gates bought the Codex and used it for a Microsoft screensaver, among other things. It still tours around different museums today, drawing crowds
.

Who better represents the greatness of Western Civ than a universal genius like Da Vinci? 


Curiously, that same year UCLA entered into a 99-year agreement to manage The Hammer Museum. 

I wondered, why would any educational or cultural institutions want to get rid of a material relic of the greatest genius in history, especially when it could inspire students, faculty and members of the public--and symbolize a connection between arts and sciences that might inspire future generations?


Money could certainly be a reason, but then a thought occurred...


Leonardo Da Vinci was obviously a Dead White Man. Could another reason have been "Social Justice?" 



After all, universities in recent years have seemed obsessed with denigrating genius, part of a continuing assault on Western Civilization


So, I took a look at The Hammer Museum website today, and found that while they seem to have not yet sold off their Rembrandts or Impressionists, they have indeed added quite a bit of ghastly contemporary art...and programs on "Social Justice."


The homepage even featured a special section (scroll down) decorated with an ugly picture:



Discussing Social Justice 
Public programs and exhibitions at the Hammer that have engaged art and ideas on issues of social justice.
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Jiří Kolář's "Forms of Visual Poetry" Shows What's Past Is Prologue...

 

Contemplation of Jiří Kolář's original and compelling collages and poetry -- on display at the American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC until March 17th -- captures the destructive impact of political commissars upon artistic expression under totalitarianism of many stripes.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/jiri-kolar-forms-visual-poetry-shows-what-past-is-prologue-jiri-kolar-dissident-art-polit-1552426185

Monday, March 04, 2019

President Trump Comes Out Swinging for Free Speech at CPAC


President Trump took a strong public stand on behalf of free speech on campus in his March 2nd speech to the Conservative Political Action Coalition, making it an issue for the upcoming 2020 elections.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/president-trump-comes-out-swinging-free-speech-cpac-free-speech-hayden-williams-uc-1551652016

Monday, February 25, 2019

Robert Knight's 10-Step Program for Evangelical Christians


 

Robert Knight's A NATION WORTH FIGHTING FOR: 10 STEPS TO RESTORE FREEDOM is a political manifesto calling upon Evangelical Christians to "go on offense against the darkness, not cower in our church buildings, hoping it will go away..."

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/robert-knight-10-step-program-evangelical-christians-christian-evangelicals-2020-el-1550875469

Sunday, February 17, 2019

Mike Cernovich's HOAXED: A Defense of Freedom of Speech


I admired Mike Cernovich for his stand for freedom of speech with Milo and Pam Geller at UC Berkeley in September 2017 (an event Ann Coulter declined to attend). He stood up for freedom of speech then, and he has stood up for freedom of speech once again in this film. HOAXED deserves to be seen by every American who cares about the First Amendment, without regard to political orientation.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/mike-cernovich-hoaxed-a-defense-freedom-speech-donald-trump-covington-catholi-1550345691


Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Chairman Cole's Confession




ART FROM THE SWAMP: How Washington Bureaucrats Squander Millions on Awful Art (NY: Encounter Books, 2018)

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/chairman-cole-confession-national-endowment-for-the-art-1549926859

Thursday, February 07, 2019

Conductor-in-Chief


President Trump's recent State of the Union address demonstrated his uncanny ability to conduct members of Congress like a well-tuned orchestra to deliver a message of unity and hope for the future, on behalf of his crusade for American civilization's motto: "E Pluribus Unum."

Read the whole thing on TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/conductor-chief-donald-trump-state-of-the-unio-1549555268

Monday, February 04, 2019

Memo to the President: Take a “Listening Tour” of Federal Agencies


Following the end of the government shutdown, President Trump needs to take a "Listening Tour" of federal agencies to remind government employees he's in charge while giving them a chance to vent face-to-face. It would signal a change of tone in leadership, while disarming the "Resistance" and encouraging good government.

Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/memo-president-take-listening-tour-federal-agencies-donald-trump-civil-service-goo-1548882842