Links - 26th December 2019 (2)

I've lost control of my life - an entomologist rates ant emojis - "Samsung: This ant has an unexplained, double-jointed thorax, and no evidence of a waist. Her four-footed pose suggests that she a centaur rather than an ant. Centaur ants would be cool. I’m not sure what was intended here. 2/10.
emojidex: This ant… makes me sad. All of her legs are broken. The MS Paint art style and gradient abuse convey distress. She has a duck beak. Despite this, her expression suggests perseverance and determined cheerfulness. I want this ant to have a better life. I am rooting for her. 3/10
Mozilla: This is a termite. -10/10"

LEVY: Federally funded guide tells Muslims how to vote - "A federally funded Canadian Muslim Voting Guide — released three days before the Oct. 21 election — gives Conservative leader Andrew Scheer a series of failing grades for apparently associating with far-right, Islamophobic figures, opposing the M-103 motion and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and for proposing immigration policies that “compromise asylum seekers.”The highly partisan, anti-Zionist guide — produced by the Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project out of Wilfrid Laurier University — contends that newly re-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been the “target of Islamophobic hate campaigns” and gives him a free pass for his black face antics because of his public stance against Islamophobia... Conservative senator Linda Frum said as disturbing as it is to see academics using Jew-hatred as a “useful metric” on how to assess a political party, what is worse is that the Liberal government paid for this “hateful propaganda.“This is a clear violation of parliamentary ethics, election law, not to mention simple decency,” she said Friday.B’nai Brith Canada CEO Michael Mostyn called it “totally unacceptable” that government funds were used to promote an anti-Semitic movement in Canada.“It is (also) deeply troubling that taxpayer dollars were used to subsidize a document ‘guiding’ Canadians on whom to support in an election,” he said.Late Friday, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) issued a statement saying SSHRC has launched an investigation into what appears to be “an unapproved use of funds” allocated for a different purpose."

Three Women Have Been Charged for Running an Elderly Fight Club at Nursing Home - "Three women have been charged with running a fight club for patients with dementia inside of Danby House, a nursing home located in North Carolina.Police arrested Taneshia Deshawn Jordan, Tonacia Yvonne Tyson, McKey on counts of assaulting an individual with a disability.According to reports, a staff member filmed as two women with dementia fought each other in one of their rooms

WaPo blasted for dubbing ISIS leader ‘austere religious scholar’ in head-scratching headline - "The Washington Post’s bizarre editorial decision to describe terror chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar” in an obituary headline has brought a storm of criticism upon the newspaper. As authorities offered confirmation that US forces had killed the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) leader in a raid on a safe house in northwestern Syria on Saturday night, the paper rolled out on obit marking the death of the barbarous jihadist by describing him as the “austere religious scholar at the helm of the Islamic State.” The Post acknowledged that the Iraqi led the terror group with “shocking brutality” but focused much of its obituary on his academic endeavors... Strangely, the first version of the story described al-Baghdadi as “Islamic State’s terrorist-in-chief,” only for it to later be changed to “austere religious scholar”. Perhaps the paper’s editors didn’t want to offend their IS readers?... Many others contrasted the Jeff Bezos owned newspapers' treatment of the US president with its delicate description of the violent terrorist leader.“The Washington Post writes harsher about our President than they do the leader of ISIS who cuts people’s heads off and murders innocents,” Charlie Kirk, the prominent conservative commentator, said. The backlash was so great that it appears to have prompted another headline switcheroo, as the piece now describes al-Baghdadi as an "extremist leader.""
Anything to minimise Trump's accomplishments. When Osama got assassinated, their headline was "Osama bin Laden killed: Leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda was 54."

CNN and Jake Tapper Cut Away from Trump's Baghdadi Presser - Say Honoring US Troops a "Lesser Matter" (VIDEO) - "During the press briefing on this historic event CNN and Jake Tapper cut away saying honoring US military men and women was a lesser matter."

Face facts, America, Donald Trump is a success. Let's count the ways. - "White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently tweeted, “Which is the more underreported story of @POTUS year one? Defeat of ISIS. Booming Trump economy”... According to the Media Research Center, coverage of Trump on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts in September, October and November was more than 90% negative... 93-year-old former president Jimmy Carter said, “I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about.”... Ross Douthat, writing in The Times, called the ISIS defeat “a case where the media is not adequately reporting an important success because it does not fit into the narrative of Trumpian disaster in which our journalistic entities are all invested.”... Consumer confidence: In October, consumer confidence rose to the highest level in 17 years, according to the New York-based Conference Board."

Democratic debate: Going home to the heart of Ohio's Trump country - "Many of my family, friends, former teachers, coaches, classmates and church congregates — and all their friends — in this county of 30,000 people are Trump supporters, and I didn't want to put them out there, by name, for the trolls to feast on.I love my hometown and its people too much.These folks already get made fun of enough for being from Appalachia. They're good, respectful people who are focused on taking care of their families. They want to be left alone. They don't care about stupid Twitter wars, and I don't want to be responsible for thrusting them into the vicious rhetorical crossfire between leftist activists and Trump sycophants... a lot of folks didn't want to talk about Trump. They didn't want to put themselves out there for fear of being verbally bludgeoned on Facebook and Twitter, or in the grocery store or even at church.And those who did want to talk, well, they seemed to speak for those who wanted to remain silent: They're tired of certain cable news networks and the leftist political class stereotyping them as a bunch of toothless, racist, backwoods rubes. "I don't want to talk about it because you can't have an opinion unless it's their opinion," an African-American Trump supporter said about the left. "Either you believe the way they believe, or you're a racist or a homophobe. The reason I'm working is because of what Trump's done. I just want to put my hard hat on and go to work every day." The man, who added he's a registered Democrat, talked to Enquirer photographer Albert Cesare and me for nearly an hour on his front porch on a hot evening. He said a lady at his church had given him grief for supporting "racist" Trump, but the man said he has seen no hard evidence that's true... The truth is, these aren't a bunch of Bible-thumping hillbillies. I spoke with nearly 20 Trump supporters. Most of them didn't want to be quoted, but every single one of them said the No. 1 thing they like about Trump is he's focused on jobs. Nothing about Russia or building walls or locking anyone up.I know it's hard for the out-of-touch political class obsessed with hating Trump and all his supporters to fathom this, but there aren't stereotypes on every street corner and dirt road here... Ironically, I often see more leftover Obama bumper stickers during my 15-minute commute to The Enquirer than I saw Trump signs back home... there's not this widespread obsession with Trump — and never has been — in the areas where he dominated at the polls. It might be hard for some to grasp this, but don't believe everything you read in the alt-reality world of social media.Every person I talked to about Trump, generally said:He was the lesser of two evils — and still is.I like what he's doing on the economy.I wish he'd stop tweeting.Sounds like the same thing Trump supporters in Greater Cincinnati — and everywhere else in Ohio — say... Gallia County's unemployment rate is 5.6%, the lowest it has been since 1979"

Democrats' racism message may swing my vote to President Trump - "I am not a President Trump supporter. But if the alternative to him in next year’s election is open borders and the Green New Deal, I may become a Trump voter... they’ve trafficked in hysteria and hyperbole, particularly in their response to the El Paso, Texas, shooting. Democrats fell over themselves to implicate the president’s rhetoric and policies. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pronounced Trump “directly responsible” for the massacre because of his rhetoric. Imagine. Having never met the gunman, the freshman congresswoman looked into his heart and determined that he wouldn’t have killed if not for Trump. Is it any wonder the president’s defenders reacted? Not that they had to look far for material: Thirteen hours after the Texas shooting, a self-described anti-borders leftist and Elizabeth Warren supporter killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio.You can guess how many Democrats acknowledged apparent parallels between their own ideas, some of which was echoed by the Dayton shooter, and the ideas they blamed for 22 deaths in El Paso. Its current trajectory gives the Democratic Party two problems in 2020. First, the agenda: a spending spree like no country has ever attempted, supposedly financed by a handful of wealthy taxpayers. What could go wrong?Second, the message to voters. Progressives have long denounced America as hopelessly retrograde and racist. Naturally, they’re talking about everyone except themselves... The contempt descended into incoherence even before the shootings. Candidate Andrew Yang matter-of-factly predicts the disappearance of millions of low-skill jobs. Yet he and his party argue for essentially allowing millions of low-skill workers to enter the country without consequences. If you work in an industry likely to absorb some of that labor, you might wonder if this is how the Democrats plan to revive their brand as champion of the little guy. Are you the little guy they have in mind, or have you slipped a bit on their list? Today’s party seems to answer: You only ask because you don’t like brown skin... No one deliberately votes to be despised."

Moody's: Trump on his way to an easy 2020 win if economy holds up - "President Donald Trump looks likely to cruise to reelection next year under three different economic models Moody’s Analytics employed to gauge the 2020 race.Barring anything unusual happening, the president’s Electoral College victory could easily surpass his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, which came by a 304-227 count.Moody’s based its projections on how consumers feel about their own financial situation, the gains the stock market has achieved during Trump’s tenure and the prospects for unemployment, which has fallen to a 50-year low... The Moody’s models have been backtested to 1980 and were correct each time — except in 2016, when they ndicated Clinton would get a narrow victory."

Trump’s Middle-Class Economic Progress - WSJ - "President Trump’s critics can’t deny that the economy is doing well, so instead they insist all the benefits have gone to the rich and large corporations. “America’s middle class is under attack,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren asserted in her presidential campaign announcement last December.The latest data from the Census Bureau monthly surveys tell a different story. Real median household income—the amount earned by those in the very middle—hit $65,084 (in 2019 dollars) for the 12 months ending in July. That’s the highest level ever and a gain of $4,144, or 6.8%, since Mr. Trump took office. By comparison, during 7½ years under President Obama—starting from the end of the recession in June 2009 through January 2017—the median household income rose by only about $1,000... Mr. Obama inherited a financial mess, but the median income continued its decline during almost all of his first term and rose only slowly in his second term—the weakest recovery from a recession since the 1930s. “We never saw a recovery where incomes took such a long time to recover the lost ground,” says Sentier founder Gordon Green."
Thanks, Obama!

Renato Mariotti: Trump Tax Doc Discrepancies Don't Prove Fraud - "Former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti agreed there was some smoke here, but agreed that the story in itself didn’t prove fraud. He cited his experience prosecuting such cases... if lawyers or ‘legal experts’ tell you that these discrepancies in and of themselves prove bank fraud or tax charges, they are misleading you. They are troubling and merit investigation, but significantly more is needed"

House Rules: Seven ordered to pay compensation to contestant - "A former contestant who was portrayed as a “villain” on reality reno show House Rules has won a workers’ compensation case against Channel 7 for “psychological” injury.The landmark ruling by the NSW Workers Compensation Commission found Nicole Prince was legally an employee of Seven, despite her contract with the network explicitly stating there was no employment relationship... the decision is likely to have far-reaching ramifications for reality TV shows filmed in Australia, with broadcasters and production companies open to similar workers compensation claims, and potentially liable for superannuation and payroll tax... Mr Burge ordered Seven to pay compensation to Ms Prince, who has been referred to a medical specialist to determine the level of permanent impairment arising from the injury."
No more reality TV in Australia?

Abba admit outrageous outfits were worn to avoid tax - "The glittering hotpants, sequined jumpsuits and platform heels that Abba wore at the peak of their fame were designed not just for the four band members to stand out – but also for tax efficiency, according to claims over the weekend.Reflecting on the group's sartorial record in a new book, Björn Ulvaeus said: "In my honest opinion we looked like nuts in those years. Nobody can have been as badly dressed on stage as we were."And the reason for their bold fashion choices lay not just in the pop glamour of the late 70s and early 80s, but also in the Swedish tax code.According to Abba: The Official Photo Book, published to mark 40 years since they won Eurovision with Waterloo, the band's style was influenced in part by laws that allowed the cost of outfits to be deducted against tax – so long as the costumes were so outrageous they could not possibly be worn on the street."

Muslim girls, 9, wear white for a Sydney hijab ceremony - "Muslim girls in Sydney are dressed in white from head to toe as part of a hijab ceremony to signify the age when they must cover up their bodies, with an Islamic imam slamming it as a step toward Sharia law. Australia's most senior Shia cleric Sheikh Kamal Mousselmani presided over the ceremony where 24 girls walked on stage to show their maturity.'The hijab is compulsory for the girls when they become nine according to our religion'.. The girls were dressed in white, the same shade as a wedding dress, however Sheikh Mousselmani denied the ceremony was about preparing girls for marriage, despite Islamic law saying girls reach maturity at the age of eight... Adelaide Shia leader Imam Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi said Islam classified eight as the adult age for girls and was worried by the ceremony's symbolism.'I confirm that according to Islamic jurisprudence, a Muslim girl reaches the stage of maturity at eight to nine years of age'"