Fascism on campus illustrated: You have free speech as long as they agree with it otherwise it's off to the gulag

‘They are like a mob’: Outspoken anti-PC prof on leave. You’ll love the school’s reported reason.

Dave Urbanski  

Image source: YouTube 

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A non-tenured New York University professor is on paid leave from the prestigious college following his criticism of politically correct culture in academia, including safe spaces and trigger warnings.

But Michael Rectenwald — an assistant liberal studies professor whose previously anonymous Twitter handle is Deplorable NYU Prof — told Washington Square News the school repeatedly confirmed that his views have nothing to do with his leave, which is for the semester.

More from Washington Square News:

Rectenwald said that the LS department called him into its office last Wednesday to speak about his mental health after a colleague reported concerns about his mental state. Rectenwald knows the person who filed the report and thinks they did it for the sake of saving him from being attacked by the NYU community for his differing viewpoints.

“I asked many times, ‘Are you sure that you’re not just trying to push me off into the sidelines because of my remarks?’ and they said no,” Rectenwald told the paper regarding his meeting with the dean. “Many times they said no, no, no. So the interesting thing will be whether in fact this has any impact on my promotion, which was due to be announced fairly soon — my file is apparently complete, so my file is waiting on a determination by the dean.”

Rectenwald told the Washington Square News he’ll now look into next steps.

“I’m going to think this through to get a handle of what’s going on — I may have to get representation for the possibility that my promotion will be foiled somehow,” Rectenwald told the News. “And my return might be jeopardized somehow, so I’ll probably have to get representation. Getting a job outside of NYU would be very difficult.”

The paper noted in an earlier interview with Rectenwald that he created his undercover Twitter account to “express his exasperation with the politically correct culture while shielding himself from social justice warriors — or SJWs, as he un-fondly calls them.”

A seemingly atypical move for a professor who identifies as a communist, the Washington Square News reported, but then again, Rectenwald doesn’t soft-pedal his perspectives.

“My contention is that the trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hotline reporting is not politically correct. It is insane,” he told the paper. “This stuff is producing a culture of hypervigilance, self-surveillance and panopticism.”

While his leave of absence wasn’t mandatory, the News — citing Rectenwald — characterized it as “heavily offered” by the school.

Amid the controversy, members of the school’s Liberal Studies Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Working Group wrote a letter to the editor at WSN criticizing Rectenwald.

It ends with these sentences:

We fully support Professor Rectenwald’s right to speak his mind and we welcome civil discourse on the issues that concern him. But as long as he airs his views with so little appeal to evidence and civility, we must find him guilty of illogic and incivility in a community that predicates its work in great part on rational thought and the civil exchange of ideas. The cause of Professor Rectenwald’s guilt is certainly not, in our view, his identity as a cis, white, straight male. The cause of his guilt is the content and structure of his thinking.

Rectenwald told the News the letter was “extremely unfair, mistaken and denunciatory.”

Liberal studies senior Asha Kuziwa told the paper she helped write the letter and was assured that “Professor Rectenwald’s leave has nothing to do with the letter. … Our intentions with the letter were to challenge Professor Rectenwald’s flawed rhetoric.”

NYU spokesman Matt Nagel said in a statement to the outlet that the timing of Rectenwald’s leave is unrelated to his Twitter account or viewpoints: “We look forward to his return.”

Nagel also told the paper these types of leaves are granted at the request of employees.

Rectenwald noted to the News that since news of his leave came to light, he received support from other faculty members — albeit privately. Still, he added that it’s unsettling to be targeted in relation to his opinions.

“All I did was express a view that was slightly different from theirs,” Rectenwald told the paper. “It just proves that everything else that I said was true — that they are like a mob or a witch hunt or a witch trial, and that they just shut down all views that aren’t sanctioned by them.”

This woman was famous for working with the Democrats/Obama to use language to disguise their real goals. What else do you expect from someone who has no moral compass.

Furious op-ed writer defends Clinton, reveals ‘the only reason the whole email flap has legs’

Dave Urbanski  5 hours

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) 

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Robin Lakoff — professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley — is angry.

“I am mad because I am scared,” she wrote Monday in a Time magazine op-ed. “And if you are a woman, you should be, too. Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us.”

In the wake of the rapidly growing controversy over the FBI’s investigation of more emails from her private server when she was secretary of state, Lakoff declared what single factor she believes is at the root of it all.

“The only reason the whole email flap has legs is because the candidate is female,” she wrote. “Can you imagine this happening to a man? Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female), and emailgate is just a reminder to us all that she has no business doing what she’s doing and must be punished, for the sake of all decent women everywhere. There is so much of that going around.”

More from Lakoff’s op-ed:

The people are demanding Clinton act like moral exemplars, thundering from the pulpit like Jonathan Edwards or Cotton Mather. But Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and their many conservative friends are not remotely Clinton’s moral superiors. They are simply bullies, using gender discrimination to give a veneer of plausibility to their accusations.

FBI Chief James Comey has shown himself to be another bully of the same kind. He has repeatedly talked down to Clinton, admonishing her as a bad parent would a 5-year-old. He has accused her of “poor judgment” and called her use of a private email server “extremely careless.” If Comey’s a Boy Scout, here’s one old lady who will never let him help her across the street.

If the candidate were male, there would be no scolding and no “scandal.” Those very ideas would be absurd. Men have a nearly absolute right to freedom of speech. In theory, so do women, but that, as the creationists like to say, is only a theory.

She went on to say that the issue is “about public communication by a woman in general,” sarcastically adding that we know Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and other GOP power brokers aren’t waging a war on women because “they have said so. And they’re men, so they must be telling the truth.”

For emphasis Lakoff shared how readers can tell genders apart — “men are truthful; women are liars. Now you know.”

To conclude, she wrote that Clinton never should have apologized for the email scandal:

Clinton has repeatedly apologized, but apparently not enough for her accusers. In fact, her apologies were her only mistake. By apologizing she acknowledged guilt. But that’s what women are supposed to do (because women are always guilty of something). Several members of her own staff sent emails grumbling that she was a recalcitrant apologizer. But her instinct was right: apologizing has only made her weaker. Her opponent never apologizes, not really. So accusations slide off his back like water off a duck’s.

Imagine the emails the Trump campaign must be exchanging … Now those would be legitimately interesting!

People who should not be walking among us...

Cops nab ex-con wanted for brutally slugging grandmother

By Gabrielle Fonrouge

October 31, 2016 | 6:12pm

Modal Trigger

Richard "Kwasi" Springer and Eve Gentillon Photo: NYPD

The ex-con wanted for cold-cocking a 69-year-old grandmother has been arrested after evading police for nearly two weeks, authorities said Monday.

Richard “Kwasi” Springer, 29, was taken down at 11:30 a.m. by the regional fugitive task force near his last known address on 109th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, police said.

His victim, Eve Gentillon, the church-going grandmother of two who has been on a ventilator since the heartless attack, is still in a medically induced coma at Jamaica Hospital.

Her daughter told The Post last week that things will never be the same for her and that her only sign of progress was a brief opening of her eyes.

Springer’s associates were hiding him from cops by moving him to different addresses, sources said.

He had been wanted since the Oct. 15 violent altercation at a Queens deli on Sutphin Boulevard.

Police said he got into a fight with a cashier at Sutphin King Deli when he tried to pay $1 for a $3.50 can of Bud Light Lime Straw-Ber-Rita.

He was captured on surveillance video scuffling with the shop owner before going outside and punching Gentillon so hard, she smacked her head on the concrete and was knocked out cold, authorities said.

Springer, a career criminal, has only been out of prison since March after serving nearly three years for robbery.

"We are losing control of the streets' Merkel's Germany descends into lawlessness" Irrational compassion breeds chaos. A preview if Hillary is elected

So, tell me again how all cultures are equal?

'We are losing control of the streets' Merkel's Germany descends into lawlessness

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing catastrophe over her failed migrant policy, according to a new report. 

By SIOBHAN MCFADYEN

PUBLISHED: 00:00, Tue, Nov 1, 2016 | UPDATED: 00:06, Tue, Nov 1, 2016

During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. 

And the country has been hit by a spate of horrendous violent crime including rapes, sexual and physical assaults, stabbings, home invasions, robberies, burglaries and drug trafficking.

Adding to the country's woes is the fact that thousands of people have gone missing after travelling to the country on invitation from the country's leader.

Germany took in more than 1.1million migrants in the past year and parts of the country are crippled with a lack of infrastructure.

GETTY

Angela Merkel is facing tough criticism in Germany 

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  Syrian migrant accused of rape claims he didn’t know it was illegal

It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences 

Police Officer Tania Kambouri

Now the true reality is hitting home ahead of next year's elections as the far right surges in the polls threatening to topple the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Mrs Merkel.

According to a report by the international policy council the Gatestone Institute, local police in many parts of the country admit that they are stretched to the limit.

The report states: "The rape of a ten-year-old girl in Leipzig, the largest city in Saxony, has drawn renewed attention to the spiralling levels of violent crime perpetrated by migrants in cities and towns across Germany.

GETTY

Refugees and asylum seekers stand near the 'grain market' in Bautzen, eastern Germany

"During the first six months of 2016, migrants committed 142,500 crimes, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. This is equivalent to 780 crimes committed by migrants every day, an increase of nearly 40 per cent over 2015. The data includes only those crimes in which a suspect has been caught.

"Thousands of migrants who entered the country as 'asylum seekers' or 'refugees' have gone missing. They are, presumably, economic migrants who entered Germany on false pretences.

"Many are thought to be engaging in robbery and criminal violence."

According to Freddi Lohse of the German Police Union in Hamburg, many migrant offenders view the leniency of the German justice system as a green light to continue delinquent behaviour, says the report. 

GETTY

Migrants have been staging protests in Germany 

He said: "They are used to tougher consequences in their home countries.

"They have no respect for us."

Meanwhile a female police officer has admitted that officers are under attack and that the courts are a "joke."

In a new book, Tania Kambouri, a German police officer, said: "For weeks, months and years I have noticed that Muslims, mostly young men, do not have even a minimum level of respect for the police. 

"When we are out patrolling the streets, we are verbally abused by young Muslims. 

GETTY

A mass sex attack caused panic in Cologne last New Year 

"There is the body language, and insults like 's*** cop' when passing by. 

"If we make a traffic stop, the aggression increases ever further, this is overwhelmingly the case with migrants.

"It cannot be that offenders continue to fill the police files, hurt us physically, insult us, whatever, and there are no consequences. 

"Many cases are closed or offenders are released on probation or whatever. 

"Yes, what is happening in the courts today is a joke." 

Horrific axe attack on German train

Tue, July 19, 2016

Three passengers have been seriously injured after a teenage refugee ran amok on a busy commuter train with an axe and a knife.

   

PLAY SLIDESHOW

EPA

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Blood stains are seen on the regional train on which a man allegedly wielding an axe attacked passengers in Wuerzburg

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Migrants queue up at the Germany Austrian border 

Migrants committed 208,344 crimes in 2015, according to a confidential police report leaked to Bild. 

This figure represents an 80 per cent increase since 2014 and is equivalent to 570 crimes committed by migrants every day, or 23 crimes each hour, in 2015 alone.

The report added: "The growing sense of lawlessness is substantiated by an October 24 YouGov poll which found that 68 per cent of Germans believe that security in the country has deteriorated during the past several years. 

"Nearly 70 per cent of respondents said they fear for their lives and property in German train stations and subways, while 63 per cent feel unsafe at large public events."

How the Obamacare premium increases will effect everyone including those with employer based coverage. The left is always willing to sacrifice a segment of the population to further ideology.

And it will affect your life far more than the emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

Among the most frequently repeated talking points promulgated by the White House and its media allies about Obamacare’s latest premium spikes is that they only affect the “small” number of people who buy coverage on the individual market, leaving those with employer-based coverage unscathed. The New York Times dutifully parrots the party line, “These increases really matter only for those who buy their own insurance.” This is just another in the long list of lies the law’s apologists have told to save the President’s “signature domestic achievement.” In reality, this premium spike will adversely affect the lives of 177 million Americans.

But before we get to the people with job-based coverage, let’s take a look at the actual Americans the Times so lightly dismisses as insignificant. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 21.8 million individuals “purchased or are covered as a dependent by non-group insurance.” In other words, these gigantic premium spikes “really matter only” to a number of people equivalent to the combined populations of these 16 states — Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

One can certainly see why neither the Obama administration nor the media would worry about such a paltry number of people. Besides, Secretary of Health & Human Services Sylvia Burwell assures us that “85 percent of Americans impacted by the increases will be eligible for subsidies.” The problem with that rosy figure is that it fails to include people who buy coverage outside Obamacare’s “marketplaces.” If an individual’s income exceeds 400 percent of federal poverty guidelines, he doesn’t qualify for a subsidy. Thus, millions of Americans ignore the exchanges, meaning that Secretary Burwell’s subsidy claim is fiction.

A more plausible estimate is that about half of the people who buy individual coverage will receive subsidies. But these subsidies don’t fall from Heaven like so much manna. They are paid by the taxpayers. In other words, all those Americans with employer-based health insurance who are being told by the Obama administration and the “news” media that the impending premium spike won’t affect them will actually have to foot the bill. A portion of their federal tax payments will be used to pay the subsidies. And it’s not small change. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the subsidies will total $672 billion over the next 10 years.

For the 156 million Americans with employer-based health coverage, this comes on top of increases in their own out-of pocket health expenses that can be directly attributed to the “Affordable Care Act.” Most lost their pre-Obamacare insurance plans, despite the President’s assurances, because their coverage didn’t include the minimum essential benefits mandated by the law. Their insurers attempt to keep premiums as low as possible, but can only do so by increasing plan deductibles. These workers are thus paying more for their own health care while their taxes subsidize skyrocketing premiums on plans sold through the exchanges.

Predictably, Obamacare’s apologists studiously ignore such inconvenient realities, while frantically revising history concerning the purpose and effects of “reform.” Some legacy media outlets were so desperate to explain away the blindingly obvious that they exhumed some of the law’s original architects to refute the facts. The editors of the Washington Post, for example, trotted out Ezekiel “I want to die at 75” Emanuel. The good doctor dutifully advised the Post’s readers to hark back to the deplorable conditions that prevailed during the Bush years. I’m not kidding. Eight years after Barack Obama was elected President, Emanuel writes:

While health-care costs and premiums are rising — the recent announcement notwithstanding — they are rising much more slowly than they did during the George W. Bush administration.… For instance, from 2001 to 2005, per-person health-care spending rose an average of more than 7 percent per year … Conversely, from 2011 to 2015, per-person costs rose an average of just 3.4 percent per year.

Emanuel employs two profoundly disingenuous rhetorical tricks here. First, he shamelessly cherry picks his data, including two years from the Bush era that he knew to be atypical and would skew the averages upward for that period. Second, he compares them to a trend during the Obama years that could not have been caused by the Rube Goldberg “reform” scheme he helped design. The genuine history of “per-person health care spending,” as this CMS report will confirm, is that a long-term decline began in 2003 and continued through 2013. Not coincidentally, this trend ended in 2014, with Obamacare’s incompetent rollout.

As to the plight of those with employer-based coverage, Emanuel uses another gambit much beloved of Obamacare apologists, comparing its performance to an unknowable alternate reality: “Premiums for employment-based coverage will be 10 to 15 percent lower in 2025 than they would have been without the ACA.” This BS may sell inside the Beltway, but among the people who must live with the pig’s breakfast Emanuel and his accomplices made of reform, no one’s buying. Obamacare is harming individuals who buy coverage through its crumbling exchanges as well as those covered via their jobs. It’s long past time to stop the madness.

Hillary’s Two Official Favors To Morocco Resulted In $28 Million For Clinton Foundation. This is why Hillary needed a private server. To hide corruption. Remember Obama communicated with Hillary through this private server so he is implicated.

- The Daily Caller - http://dailycaller.com -

Hillary’s Two Official Favors To Morocco Resulted In $28 Million For Clinton Foundation

Posted By Richard Pollock On 12:21 AM 10/31/2016 

Hillary Clinton did two huge favors for Morocco during her tenure as secretary of state while the Clinton Foundation accepted up to $28 million in donations from the country’s ruler, King Mohammed VI, according to new information obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson tried to shut down the Florida-based Mosaic Company in 2011, operator of America’s largest phosphate mining facility.

Jackson’s close ties and loyalty to the Clintons were revealed when she joined the Clinton Foundation’s board of directors in 2013, just months after she left the EPA. Jackson is also close to John Podesta, Clinton’s national campaign chairman.

Morocco’s state-owned phosphate company, OCP, would ostensibly have benefited from Jackson’s move to shut down Mosaic. Mohammed donated up to $15 million to the Clinton Foundation through OCP.

Clinton also relaxed U.S. foreign aid restrictions on Morocco, thus allowing U.S. funds to be used in the territory of Western Sahara where OCP operates phosphate mining operations. The aid restrictions stemmed from Morocco’s illegal occupation of the territory since 1974.

[dcquiz] Morocco is repeatedly condemned for seizing the territory and for unilaterally extracting the country’s valuable minerals, impoverishing what’s left of the local Sahrawi Arabs.

No nation recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara and the United Nation’s Security Council legal office and the International Court of Justice both demand that Muhammed withdraw his claim over the territory and end illegal extraction of minerals.

An email WikiLeaks made public last week illustrated how Clinton, while acting as secretary of state, negotiated an additional $12 million donation to the Clinton Foundation from Muhammed in return for holding the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. Another $1 million payment came from OCP to cover the expenses of the CGI meeting. (RELATED: Hillary Got $12 Million for Clinton Charity As Quid Pro Quo For Morocco Meeting)

The regulatory assault against the U.S. phosphate industry began in earnest when Jackson launched a barrage of intimidating regulatory initiatives against Mosaic. Environmental concerns about phosphates date from 1979 but the EPA did little to address concerns related to phosphate mining until Jackson’s 2011 moves.

The regulatory assault on the U.S. phosphate industry encompassed several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS aircraft flew at low altitudes over Mosaic’s central Florida operations in search of environmental problems. The EPA also threatened large Superfund penalties, which could have bankrupted Mosaic.

Phosphates are essential ingredients in fertilizers used in American farming. Closing or reducing Mosaic’s output would have cost tens of thousands of American jobs and injured the country’s agricultural productivity.

It also would leave the U.S. dependent upon foreign phosphate producers, but particularly Morocco’s OCP. The only other countries that mine phosphates are Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

Rep. Dennis Ross, a Republican congressman who represents the Florida district where Mosaic operates, told TheDCNF he now sees why the EPA went after Mosaic.

“The tactics makes perfect sense as to why the EPA, under Lisa Jackson’s tutelage, targeted Mosaic’s phosphate operations in my district. I was never given any answers when I questioned Lisa Jackson about the EPA’s deliberate actions against Mosaic,” Ross told TheDCNF.

“Now I know why. An environmental concern never existed. This targeting was all done as a payback to Morocco for donating millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation,” Ross said.

An uproar from Florida regulators push-back from the state’s congressional delegation and the agency’s tenuous legal position all forced the EPA to end its threats against Mosaic.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who is vice-chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and a vocal critic of the Clinton Foundation, agreed with Ross, saying “these facts seem to reveal the possibility of more pay-to-play activities at the Clinton Foundation.”

“It would be especially troubling if the Clinton Foundation was working with the EPA to suppress the American phosphate industry in favor of Morocco. The EPA and Clinton Foundation should be forthcoming about their dealings with the Moroccan government and the American phosphate industry.”

Clinton’s 2012 support of a rider on the U.S. foreign aid bill permitting foreign aid to be sent to the Western Sahara arguably legitimized Moroccan occupation of territory and depopulated the Sahrawi Arabs. Native Moroccans were sent into the country by the government to extract the minerals.

The rider approved by Clinton said that U.S. foreign aid funds “may be used in regions and territories administered by Morocco,” meaning, the Western Sahara. The Western Sahara is classified a “Non-Self-Governing Territory” under international law.

“Previously, United States excluded Western Sahara from bilateral assistance to avoid seeming to endorse Moroccan control,” said Eugene Kontororvich, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law, in a legal review of occupied territories around the world.

Hans Corell, the U.N. Security Council’s Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs, said in January 2002 that “if further exploration and exploitation activities were to proceed in disregard of the interests and wishes of the people of Western Sahara, they would be in violation of the international law principles applicable to mineral resource activities in Non-Self-Governing Territories.”

A Dec. 10, 2015 report by the International Court of Justice ruled that “the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Morocco over Western Sahara is not recognized by the European Union or its Member States, or more generally by the UN, and the absence of any international mandate capable of justifying Moroccan presence on that territory.”

But none of that mattered to former President Bill Clinton, who said nothing about the world’s condemnation of Morocco’s exploitation of the area for its phosphate industry, while speaking at the Clinton Foundation’s 2015 Marrakech CGI conference. Instead, he praised it.

“The Moroccans who are here will tell you that in the last several years, they have become the Saudi Arabia of phosphates, and what they have done with it, to diversify their economy and to make it part of a comprehensive strategy instead of another example of resource curse, is very impressive indeed,” Clinton said.

“Hillary Clinton sold her soul when they accepted that money,” reported Politico the day after the Marrakech CGI conference.

Mediaite Catches CNN Falsely Claiming Trump Told Audience to Vote Multiple Times [UPDATED]. CNN is so corrupt it should lose its FCC license.

Mediaite Catches CNN Falsely Claiming Trump Told Audience to Vote Multiple Times

By Curtis Houck | October 31, 2016 |

On Sunday night, Justin Baragona at Mediaite caught CNN red-handed nine days before the election in the highly unprofessional act of fabricating claims that Donald Trump told a Colorado rally that they should vote repeatedly on Election Day. 

With time ticking away and the original story retweeted from @CNNPolitics over 900 times, Mediaite successfully shamed them into only a measly correction and deleting the original tweet with the false headline over two hours later.

Baragona explained that CNN originally told readers on its website that Trump had been “encourag[ing] voting more than once if necessary” and a further illustration of him “not letting up on his claims that the election could be rigged against him.”

Here’s what CNN claimed Trump stated in the original CNN Politics story: “If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot, in some places they do that four or five times, so by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.”

As Baragona quickly revealed, here’s what Trump actually said (as he also provided a video from the rally in question): 

If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot. They’ll give you a new ballot, and you can go out and make sure it get’s in. Now in some places, they do that four or five times, but we don’t do that. So by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.

Needless to say, CNN had some explaining to do and upon being caught, they changed the story to read the following: 

“They’ll give you a ballot, a new ballot. They’ll void your old ballot, they will give you a new ballot. And you can go out and make sure it gets in,” Trump said.

Registered voters in Colorado automatically receive a ballot in the mail, but can request a new ballot or vote in person if they have not yet mailed in a completed ballot.

“In some places they probably do that four or five times. We don’t do that. But that’s great,” Trump said Sunday, appearing to hint at the possibility of voter fraud in Colorado, a rare prospect Trump has continued to hammer on the stump.

Initially, the article by Jeremy Diamond, Ashley Killough, and Caroline Kenny was updated and the headline changed to read “Trump stokes skepticism of Colorado voting system” with no acknowledgment of the error until around 9:00 p.m. Eastern when the title was altered. 

CNN finally added a correction at 9:36 p.m. Eastern that ruled “[t]his story and headline have been corrected to accurately reflect Donald Trump’s statement about mail-in balloting in Colorado.”

Ironically, CNN senior media correspondent and Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter offered an admirable and timely essay on the dangers of sharing articles from fake news sites (no matter how legitimate they appear) but as of this writing, he had yet to offer a single tweet about or reacting to his network’s egregious error.

---

HuffPo: Muhammad Was ‘History’s First Feminist’. More proof liberalism is a mental disorder marked by fantastical thinking and lies. I guess they also love Jews and homosexuality?

HuffPo: Muhammad Was ‘History’s First Feminist’

Getty

by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.31 Oct 2016

In an astonishing feat of mental legerdemain, the Huffington Post has made the claim that the prophet Muhammad—who married 13 wives and taught that women have an intellect inferior to men’s—was actually an active promotor of women’s rights, the world’s “first feminist.”

Of all the founders of the great religions, argues Banafsheh Sayyad in the Post, “Muhammad was easily the most radical and empowering in his treatment of women. Arguably he was history’s first feminist.”

Sayyad writes that the prophet Muhammad would be “appalled” by how current Islamic radicals are treating women, which “is certainly not consistent with anything we know about what Muhammad taught or how he treated women.”

Yet Muhammad married a six-year-old girl named Aisha when he was in his fifties. According to the authoritative Sahih Bukhari, the consummation of their marriage occurred three years later. “The Prophet wrote the marriage contract with her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.”

The Qur’an also permits Muslims to have sex with their female captives and slaves, a disposition regularly exploited by fighters of the Islamic State. The Qur’an praises those men who abstain from sex “except from their wives or what their right hands possess (captives), for then they are not to be blamed.”

Undaunted, Ms. Sayyad contends that Muhammad was “fundamentally different” from the founders of Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism and Christianity, because he “explicitly taught the radical equality of women and men” and took “numerous concrete measures” to improve the status of women during his own lifetime.

In point of fact, Muhammad taught that in the absence of a male witness, two women had to be brought to testify. The witness of a woman is equal to half of that of a man, he taught, “because of the deficiency of her mind.”

He also taught that women make up the majority of the damned in Hell because of their “lack of common sense” and their “failings in religion.”

Sayyad claims that Muhammad was “sensitized to the plight of women” because he was born poor, orphaned at a very early age, and illiterate. There is little historical evidence, however, that poor, orphaned, illiterate men tend to be especially respectful of women. In fact, in many cases the contrary would seem to hold true.

To his credit, Muhammad did apparently abolish female infanticide in Arabia, which was undoubtedly a good thing. Nonetheless, this hardly establishes him as a champion of women’s rights.

Ms. Sayyad says that it “is time for Islam to liberate women fully and do so upon the example of Muhammad and the authority of the Quran.”

If that’s the kind of liberation Muslim women are looking for, heaven help them.

Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter