Joel B. Pollak - Page 292

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal’s online edition promoted a June 2014 op-ed by Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, which argues that transgender identity is a mental illness akin to bulimia and should not be treated with surgery, which can cause more harm than good. Though the article did not appear in the paper’s print edition, its promotion on the website coincides with the debate over former Olympian Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner.

The California State Senate voted on party lines Monday to raise the minimum wage to $13 per hour by 2017–a 44% increase from where it stands today, at $9 per hour. Just two years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that increased the minimum from $8 per hour in 2013 to $10 per hour by 2016. The new bill, introduced by State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) as a measure to reduce poverty and inequality, would amount to a staggering and unprecedented 62.5% increase in four years.

With one month left for talks, news has emerged that the P5+1–six powers negotiating with Iran (Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the U.S.)–have reached a deal on “snap-back” Iran sanctions–i.e. sanctions that would be removed as part of a nuclear deal but which would automatically be restored if Iran broke the agreement, due June 30. Reuters suggested that all that remained was for Iran to agree, and a major obstacle would be gone. Yet the snap-back “deal” has three fatal flaws.

The New York Times has published an op-ed by Palestinian soccer player Iyad Abu Gharqoud, demanding that FIFA kick Israel out of international soccer. The Times allows Gharquod to play the role of the aggrieved victim but ignores the fact that his

A new text message is going “viral”–in a bad way. The character string, composed of a mix of English, Arabic and other characters, causes Apple iPhones to crash.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has arrested a suspect, Dawud Abdulwali, 56, on arson charges connected with the massive downtown fire last December that consumed the Da Vinci apartment complex. The Los Angeles Times reports that Abdulwali was arrested Tuesday morning during a traffic stop, and after a lengthy investigation.

President Barack Obama once dismissed ISIS (or “ISIL”) as a “junior varsity” outfit. As the terrorist organization has grown in size, wealth, and power, Obama’s allies on the left have moved from dismissing ISIS outright to blaming Republicans for its rise, arguing that it would never have emerged if President George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq. (Democrats’ support for the war is conveniently omitted.) Now, Sen. Rand Paul has joined the left in blaming GOP ‘hawks’ for the rise of ISIS.

Covered California, the Golden State’s exchange for Obamacare, has announced that it will cap the price of prescription drugs for the 2.2 million Californians who have bought individual insurance plans.

There is no commitment to America’s fighting men and women that President Barack Obama has not broken. When he ran for office in 2008, he promised to leave a residual force in Iraq to secure that country against external meddling and internal collapse. When he took office, President George W. Bush handed over a relatively stable and secure Iraq, thanks to the “surge” Obama opposed, and thanks to the sacrifices made by thousands of Americans, killed and wounded in battle.

When President Barack Obama spoke to Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. on Friday, he invented a story about his past fascination with, and support for, the State of Israel.

A Field poll released Friday shows that potential presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) polls higher among Democrats than any Republican polls among likely GOP voters in California–albeit within a wide margin of error. Warren only polls at 13% among Democrats, far

While the women of Palmyra await their fate–which, in other ISIS-held regions, has included child sex slavery and worse–the young women of San Diego, California bared their breasts to protest unequal treatment of the male and female nipple.

The international diplomatic and military crisis sparked by Iran’s decision to send an “aid” vessel directly to Yemen–along with an escort of warships–rather than to the international coordinating point in Djibouti was the latest escalation in Iran’s attempt to assert its new dominance as a regional power. Notably, Iran’s tactics mirror those used by Palestinian activists, backed by Turkey, in the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, when an Islamist “aid” ship challenged the Israeli navy off Gaza.

California’s powerful unions lost a key special election this week in an all-Democrat race for State Senate in the East Bay that pitted a reformist candidate, Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer, against a reliable Big Labor vote, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla. The race took place on what was nominally Republican turf, after State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier resigned. Heavy spending by independent groups on both sides–and the state’s new “jungle” primary–helped Glazer win 55%-45%.

The media have finally extracted from Hillary Clinton the question they have pressing her Republican rivals to answer for several weeks now: knowing what we now know about Iraq–that it did not have the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) it was thought to have–should we still have invaded Iraq? The answer journalists wish to hear is “no,” because it is a way of excusing President Barack Obama for the predictable (and predicted) mess that transpired when he withdrew from Iraq.

The University of California has produced some of the most blatant cases of campus antisemitism in recent months, with Jewish students singled out for their faith–often by anti-Israel activists. That prompted 57 rabbis and 107 members of the UC faculty to write to the administration Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports, to ask that it adopt the State Department definition of antisemitism, which includes demonizing Israel, delegitimizing Israel, or holding double standards for Israel.

California Gov. Jerry Brown is to sign a “landmark climate change agreement” in Sacramento Tuesday, his office announced Monday. The surprise move comes just days after potential Democratic presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered a stirring address to the California Democrats Convention.

A report by Daniel J. McGraw in this weekend’s Politico brings rigorous data analysis–i.e. “quick back-of-the-napkin math”–to bear on the GOP’s demographic “problem”: namely, that Republican voters tend to be old, so more of them are dying. (If you are a Democrat, this is not a problem, as death has historically posed no real impediment to voting.) Yet the real demographic problem in 2016 is not the age of Republican voters: rather, it is the age of the Democratic candidates.

CORONADO — When Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called California’s drought “man-made” earlier this year, blaming mismanagement by the state’s liberal politicians, Democrats mocked her. The Washington Post’s fact-checker even gave her two “Pinocchios” for the claim. However, on Sunday the New York Times appeared to agree that the drought is man-made, at least in its impacts–and blamed former Gov. Pat Brown, father of current Gov. Jerry Brown.

A leading Democrat is in trouble after mocking Native Americans at the California Democrats’ Convention on Saturday, whose keynote speaker was left-wing U.S. Senate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who claims dubious Native American roots.

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) has formally announced that she will run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by a retiring Barbara Boxer (D-CA) in 2016. She will challenge California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who was the first to declare her candidacy earlier this year, and had already begun raising millions of dollars in the hopes of clearing the field of rivals.

To put it in Democrats’ favorite terms: how many people will die needlessly because Democrats in California refused to spend the money to make our roads safe?

President Barack Obama has defended the impending nuclear deal with Iran by promising Americans that there will be automatic “snap-back” provisions to restore sanctions automatically if Iran cheats on its obligations: “If Iran violates the deal, sanctions can be snapped back into place,” he said in April. On Wednesday, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told Bloomberg News that there would be no such provisions: “There can be no automaticity, none whatsoever,” he said.

Following the Obama administration’s craven presentation of America’s–largely imaginary–human rights shortcomings to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) Monday, the member states took their turns to add to the criticism. In many cases, the countries piling on were dictatorships that murder and persecute their own citizens with absolute impunity.

The National Security Council (NSC) is meant to serve as “the President’s principal forum for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet officials. Increasingly, it is a repository for radicals whose ideas are too extreme for public scrutiny, and who would never pass congressional muster. The latest case is the NSC’s hosting last month of a Palestinian-American teenager, Tariq Khdeir, who was beaten by Israeli police in 2014.

I believe in free trade. I think the evidence is compelling that the free flow of goods and services makes Americans better off and is a fundamental national interest. It also reduces global poverty and increases the potential for liberty worldwide. The costs to jobs in some industries can be partly addressed by job growth in others. So I am on board, in theory, for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other deals, including with the EU. But I don’t think Obama has earned the trust for “fast-track.”

The Obama administration has, once again, complained to the United Nations about alleged American human rights violations–and boasted about liberal policies like Obamacare as the solution. The State Department report, released Monday as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the UN Human Rights Council, reads less like an accounting of human rights issues and more like the platform of the Democratic Party–and invites the world to judge America harshly.

The New York Times has published an extensive article documenting the fear felt by many Jewish students on American college campuses because of the large, well-funded, and aggressive anti-Israel movement.

In an official statement, Starbucks has announced that it will stop bottling water in drought-stricken California and will move production–and jobs–to Pennsylvania to produce the Ethos brand of water that it sells in thousands of coffee shops.

By now, it is beyond cliché to point out the many ways in which President Barack Obama abandons his former positions when they become politically inconvenient. His reversal on free trade, however, stands out because it is the one reversal that faces significant opposition from within his own party, and specifically from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Recently Obama said that “Elizabeth is a politician just like everybody else.” That would, presumably, include Obama himself.

Arriving naked at a final exam is one of the most common nightmares for students, according to Psychology Today. At the University of California San Diego, however, the naked final exam is a requirement for a class in the visual arts

On the most basic level, Israel seems to have the formula of statecraft right, prioritizing national security and economic growth above all else.

JERUSALEM, Israel — Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon told legal scholars at a conference on the laws of war that terrorists who failed to destroy Israel were resorting to new methods, which included “using our law against us.”

JERUSALEM, Israel — Former Israeli soldiers blasted a new report by a radical left-wing group called “Breaking the Silence” that alleges the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) maintained a policy of “indiscriminate fire” during last summer’s Gaza war.

JERUSALEM, Israel — “Only in Israel can you win an election and lose it the next day,” intoned the announced on Israel’s Army Radio on Tuesday morning, over audio of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s victory speech from the elections in March. On Monday, Netanyahu’s fragile coalition-building effort suffered a dangerous setback with the sudden departure of Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, which leaves Netanyahu with a slim and unstable 61-59 majority in the Knesset.

JERUSALEM, Israel — The future of tech investing is housed–barely–in a stone spice warehouse on the Hebron Road in Jerusalem. There are, I am told, bullet holes in the walls, from the days when the building faced the boundary with Jordan. On the day I visit, it sounds like a war zone–a battle of drills and hammers, fire alarms and telephones, as the company expands into neighboring space. Only two years old, OurCrowd is revolutionizing startup funding–and growing rapidly.