Displaying posts published in

September 2017

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Making chemotherapy more effective. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered why chemotherapy sometimes doesn’t work. Bacteria inside pancreatic tumors metabolize gemcitabine – a common chemo treatment – to make the tumor resistant. After applying antibiotics, the chemo begins to work again.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/how-bacteria-hinder-chemotherapy

Stem cell treatments for Asia. Israeli biotech Pluristem has been awarded two new patents in Hong Kong for two products – mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of skeletal muscle damage or injury, and adherent cells to treat Critical Limb Ischemia and connective tissue regeneration.
https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2017/09/13/1120229/0/en/Pluristem-Strengthens-Its-Position-in-Asia-Awarded-Two-New-Patents-in-Hong-Kong-for-Critical-Limb-Ischemia-and-Muscle-Regeneration.html

Turning Sound and Touch into Sight. (TY Nevet) I reported previously (in 2012) about Dr. Amir Amedi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is developing innovative sensory substitution devices and technologies to help the blind and visually impaired. Here is a video about his work.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/r1Wgj6tmY18?rel=0
https://www.afhu.org/sensorysubstitution/#.WbpkBtFx3IU

Rehabilitating soccer players. (TY Hazel) Spanish soccer club Real Sociedad is using BalanceTutor from Israel’s MediTouch to help its teams improve balance and dexterity, especially after an injury. The 4D treadmill uses unexpected perambulation (jolting to the side etc.) to deliberately disrupt the player’s balance.
https://www.israel21c.org/real-sociedad-using-israeli-4d-treadmill-to-rehab-players/
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mf12lSfHciM?rel=0

Hear this. Udi Doron, CEO of Israel’s Medton, came on ILTV News to describe his innovative hearing aids. The devices are imported from Oticon Denmark and then adapted and fitted in Israel. They scan the environment to reduce the level of noise. They also connect via smartphone to the Internet of Things.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/wSJgNaHC20I?rel=0 http://www.medton.co.il/sitefiles/1/9634/79515.asp

Free eye surgery for Kenyans. (TY Hazel) I reported previously (three times) on doctors from Israeli charity Eye From Zion performing free eye surgery around the world. They have just returned from Kenya where they treated 723 patients, from infants to senior citizens, removing cataracts and correcting astigmatism.
https://www.israel21c.org/eye-from-zion-treats-723-in-kenya-sets-up-new-eye-clinic/

Helping families of cancer patients. Rivi Kossover of Israeli cancer charity Ezer Mizion arranges transportation for patients, volunteers to make family meals, respite for teenage carers and a tutor for a failing student. And still manages to fit in her own domestic activities.
http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/cancer-support-being-on-the-giving-end/

A virtual safari for bed-ridden kids. Israel’s Ramat Gan Safari has placed cameras in the monkey enclosures and live-streams video to bed-ridden children at Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer. The innovation helps kids deal with the stress of their illness and is to be expanded to video more animals and include more hospitals.
http://virtualjerusalem.com/jewish_news.php?Itemid=26837
https://www.youtube.com/embed/-yYQjcWDBDY?rel=0

Medical treatment for Russian Olympic skater. Russia’s Yulia Lipnitskaya was only 15-years-old when won a team gold medal at the 2014 Olympic games, skating to the theme “Schindler’s List”. She developed chronic anorexia shortly afterwards and retired from skating. In January, she came to Israel for treatment.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/russian-olympic-skating-champion-was-treated-for-anorexia-in-israel/

WHO board appoints an Israeli. The World Health Organization (WHO) has finally rewarded Israel for its vital contributions to the WHO (see here) and global medicine. For the first time in 21 years it has appointed to its Executive an Israeli – Professor Itamar Grotto, the Israeli Health Ministry’s Associate Director-General.
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/First-Israeli-named-to-WHO-executive-committee-in-21-years-505117

State Department Waging “Open War” on White House by Soeren Kern

“It’s not clear to me why the Secretary of State wishes to at once usurp the powers of the Congress and then to derail his boss’s rapprochement with the Israeli government.” — Foreign policy operative, quoted in the Washington Free Beacon.

Since he was sworn in as Secretary of State on February 1, Rex Tillerson and his advisors at the State Department have made a number of statements and policy decisions that contradict President Trump’s key campaign promises on foreign policy, especially regarding Israel and Iran.

“Tillerson was supposed to clean house, but he left half of them in place and he hid the other half in powerful positions all over the building. These are career staffers committed to preventing Trump from reversing what they created.” — Veteran foreign policy analyst, quoted in the Free Beacon.

The U.S. State Department has backed away from a demand that Israel return $75 million in military aid which was allocated to it by the U.S. Congress.

The repayment demand, championed by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, was described as an underhanded attempt by the State Department to derail a campaign pledge by U.S. President Donald J. Trump to improve relations with the Jewish state.

The dispute is the just the latest example of what appears to be a growing power struggle between the State Department and the White House over the future direction of American foreign policy.

The controversy goes back to the Obama administration’s September 2016 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel, which pledged $38 billion in military assistance to Jerusalem over the next decade. The MOU expressly prohibits Israel from requesting additional financial aid from Congress.

Congressional leaders, who said the MOU violates the constitutional right of lawmakers to allocate U.S. aid, awarded Israel an additional $75 million in assistance in the final appropriations bill for fiscal year 2017.

Tillerson had argued that Israel should return the $75 million in order to stay within the limits established by the Obama administration. The effort provoked a strong reaction from Congress, which apparently prompted Tillerson to back down.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) “strongly warned the State Department that such action would be unwise and invite unwanted conflict with Israel,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) added:

“As Iran works to surround Israel on every border, and Hezbollah and Hamas rearm, we must work to strengthen our alliance with Israel, not strain it. Congress has the right to allocate money as it deems necessary, and security assistance to Israel is a top priority. Congress is ready to ensure Israel receives the assistance it needs to defend its citizens.”

A veteran congressional advisor told the Free Beacon:

“This is a transparent attempt by career staffers in the State Department to f*ck with the Israelis and derail the efforts of Congressional Republicans and President Trump to rebuild the US-Israel relationship. There’s no reason to push for the Israelis to return the money, unless you’re trying to drive a wedge between Israel and Congress, which is exactly what this is. It won’t work.”

Another foreign policy operative said: “It’s not clear to me why the Secretary of State wishes to at once usurp the powers of the Congress and then to derail his boss’s rapprochement with the Israeli government.”

CNN grills black Trump supporter at rally, gets an earful By Thomas Lifson

I am reasonably certain that nobody forces on-air talent at CNN to swear an oath of loyalty to the anti-Trump narrative. Why bother? In the universe of “television journalists,” divergence from the approved prejudices is so rare outside of certain hours on Fox that it would be wholly unnecessary.

One element of that dogma is that blacks must be anti-Trump. They are not expected to utilize their own judgment. So, when a reporter encountered Diante Johnson, founder and CEO of the Black Conservative Federation, at the pro-Trump “Mother of all Rallies,” he may not have been expecting as articulate a response as he got. The two minutes of video embedded below will repay your investment of time handsomely.

Let’s face it: Black conservatives are some the bravest and smartest people active in politics today. They drive the left nuts, causing cognitive dissonance due to their refusal to adhere to racist narrative that insists all blacks must think alike.

Diante Johnson

Their day will come.

She’s Had Her Close Up—We’ve Had Enough By Julie Kelly

If the nation weren’t already in a foul political mood, it would still be a special kind of hell to have to suffer through the Bitter Betty Book Tour. But the two things combined together is just so 2017.

If you haven’t noticed, Hillary Clinton is making the rounds to promote her political alibi, What Happened. After watching some of her interviews, it seems apparent that Hillary’s book’s title is giving voice to the question that haunts the old gal day and night (except in her head it probably sounds more like “WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED?!”). How did one of the best “on-paper” candidates with nearly $1 billion behind her effort still manage to lose the presidency to Donald Trump?

In a lengthy interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, Clinton reprised her role of victim, martyr, and hero. This is the same Hillary Clinton we have watched for 25 years. Whether it was her failed health care plan, her husband’s infidelity and subsequent impeachment, her 2008 primary loss to Barack Obama, her unforgivable handling of the Benghazi terror attacks or her basement email server, Hillary is the best finger-pointer in a business filled with shysters who have Ph.D.s in Finger-Pointing from Low Politics U.

During the 40-minute pity party, Hillary tried to explain why she is on Cooper’s therapy couch instead of in the Oval Office. She identifies at least a dozen culprits in her Blame Game. The answer to her book’s central question (primal scream?) seems to amount to this:

After Bernie Sanders failed to unify the party—although it was clear in March that I would be the nominee—the Russians went online pretending to be Americans and make up bad stories about me, then they bought Facebook ads at the same time Wikileaks made John Podesta’s risotto-making emails public to cover-up Trump’s p*ssy comments and Jim Comey released his letter that swayed suburban Republican women to vote against me, but all Republicans were undergoing “heavy rationalization” because they wanted tax cuts and a Supreme Court nominee and whatnot, but then again some people didn’t vote which makes me mad and there was rampant voter suppression, endemic sexism and misogyny, and the idiot media. But the worst is the Electoral College amirite? Because it is an anachronism designed for another time . . . and oh, yeah, did I mention Russia?

Clinton pats herself on the back for braving Trump’s inauguration, humblebragging about how she attended out of a sense of duty to our country: “Look, I am afflicted with the responsibility gene. I did the right thing. I knew I had to go. I went to the lunch afterwards, I did everything you’re supposed to do.” She Went to Lunch should be the new, She Persisted.

Clinton bashes Trump’s inauguration speech as “divisive” and a “cry from the white nationalist gut” while again reminding anyone who has been living off the grid since November 8 that Trump did not win the most votes: “He didn’t win the popular vote, he squeaked through in the Electoral College. He had a chance to really fill the role [as president] and it didn’t happen that day.”

Aside from excuse-making and finger-pointing, that signature Clintonesque pathos is Hillary’s most unappealing characteristic. While she cloaks her agenda in the ruse of trying to help future female candidates navigate the bumpy road of electoral politics, this is clearly all about her. Her brand is bitterness, not empowerment. She complains to Cooper that she wants to explore what happened in the election because “I hope nobody ever faces what I faced.”

What is that, exactly? A rigged primary election designed to hand her the nomination? A powerful political structure—three decades in the making—that mostly capitalized on her husband’s name? An obsequious and dishonest national media committed to her victory? (Despite what she says about Trump’s news coverage, take a look at every major newspaper endorsement leading up to Election Day.) Hundreds of millions in easy campaign donations, not to mention immense personal wealth?

Future candidates can only dream of having her good fortune.

Why Legal Avenues to Mideast Peace Are Misguided By Peter Berkowitz

TEL AVIV — Over the summer, Trump administration officials Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority to renew efforts to resolve the conflict over the West Bank—as the international community and the Israeli left refer to the land Israel seized in fending off Jordan’s attack in the Six Day War. In dealing with this vexing challenge, the Trump team should reject the contention increasingly pressed by progressives in and out of Israel—and backed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, which, in December 2016, the Obama administration regrettably declined to veto—that legal considerations settle the matter.

Fifty years since Israel’s astonishing victory in the Six Day War over Syria and Egypt as well as Jordan, more than 400,000 Israelis live in the territories the Israeli right prefers to call by the Biblical names Judea and Samaria. While the Palestinian Authority governs most aspects of the daily lives of the vast majority of the approximately 3 million West Bank Palestinians, Israel continues to exercise effective military control over the territories.

The left cogently argues that ruling over a Palestinian population against its will threatens Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state. The right plausibly maintains that withdrawing from the heart of biblical Israel exposes Israel to unacceptable security risks. It adds that uprooting Israeli settlements betrays the Jewish people’s ancient heritage and the Zionist aspiration to rebuild the Jews’ ancestral homeland.

Notwithstanding the weighty political arguments on both sides, many intellectuals in Israel and abroad believe that legal considerations should decide the controversy. Several Israeli professors debated the issue this summer in Haaretz—a newspaper something like the New York Times of Israel. Conducted mostly in Hebrew, the debate exhibits the richness—and the vehemence—of public discourse here. It also illuminates the dangerous propensity of liberal democracies, against which Tocqueville warned 180 years ago, to transform political questions into legal ones.

The “juridification of politics”—to borrow a term from the French thinker Alexandre Kojève—erodes citizens’ civic habits by depriving them of the opportunity to resolve political controversies through democratic give-and-take. It also distorts those controversies, which are inextricably bound up with conflicting interests and perceptions, contingent events, and prudential judgments. To subject them to legal reasoning that purports to yield rational, objective, and necessary judgments is to pretend that one right answer is available for disputes that can only be managed through compromise and mutual accommodation.

In early July, Hebrew University professor of law emerita Ruth Gavison, an Israel Prize winner and eminent center-left voice, expressed sympathy for “the spirit of the occupation’s opponents, Jews and Arabs, who have despaired of the chance to change the situation through politics and are therefore trying to turn the question of the occupation into a legal one (with the justification that the occupation is illegal and must end immediately) or one of human rights (with the justification that the Palestinians have the right not to live under occupation, so Israel must end it immediately).”

She also forcefully warned against it. A legal resolution to the controversy, Gavison argued, “does not advance the end of the occupation but actually deepens the deadlock.” That’s because the resort to legal reasoning obscures “the crucial political, social, cultural and religious processes in Israeli and Palestinian society” and “weakens, on both sides, the fortitude needed for painful concessions based on an agreement between the people and their leaders on what’s the best outcome under the present circumstances.”

In addition, the translation of the conflict into the language of law and human rights perverts the claims of both. “From the perspective of international law, the Palestinians have no ‘right’ to end the occupation—which was the result of a defensive war—and Israel has no obligation to end it without a peace agreement,” Gavison maintains. “This isn’t just an interpretation of the legal situation. It’s the necessary conclusion from the UN efforts to create incentives against the unjustified use of force.”

The critics responded sharply. Mordechai Kremnitzer, deputy president of the Israel Democracy Institute, accused Gavison of putting forward a proposal “to ignore the legal and moral aspects” of the occupation. Yigal Elam, a professor of the history of Zionism and the state of Israel, compared her insistence that the dispute between Israeli and Palestinians was fundamentally a political one to the mindset of German judges who upheld the Nazis’ Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sex with Germans.

Diversity Can Spell Trouble by Victor Davis Hanson

America is experiencing a diversity and inclusion conundrum—which, in historical terms, has not necessarily been a good thing. Communities are tearing themselves apart over the statues of long-dead Confederate generals. Controversy rages over which slogan—“Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”—is truly racist. Antifa street thugs clash with white supremacists in a major American city. Americans argue over whether the USC equine mascot “Traveler” is racist, given the resemblance of the horse’s name to Robert E. Lee’s mount “Traveller.” Amid all this turmoil, we forget that diversity was always considered a liability in the history of nations—not an asset.

Ancient Greece’s numerous enemies eventually overran the 1,500 city-states because the Greeks were never able to sublimate their parochial, tribal, and ethnic differences to unify under a common Hellenism. The Balkans were always a lethal powder keg due to the region’s vastly different religions and ethnicities where East and West traditionally collided—from Roman and Byzantine times through the Ottoman imperial period to the bloody twentieth century. Such diversity often caused destructive conflicts of ethnic and religious hatred. Europe for centuries did not celebrate the religiously diverse mosaic of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, but instead tore itself apart in a half-millennium of killing and warring that continued into the late twentieth century in places like Northern Ireland.

In multiracial, multiethnic, and multi-religious societies—such as contemporary India or the Middle East—violence is the rule in the absence of unity. Even the common banner of a brutal communism could not force all the diverse religions and races of the Soviet Union to get along. Japan, meanwhile, does not admit many immigrants, while Germany has welcomed over a million, mostly young Muslim men from the war-torn Middle East. The result is that Japan is in many ways more stable than Germany, which is reeling over terrorist violence and the need for assimilation and integration of diverse newcomers with little desire to become fully German.

History offers only a few success stories when it comes to diversity. Rome, for one, managed to weld together millions of quite different Mediterranean, European, and African tribes and peoples through the shared ideas of Roman citizenship (civis Romanus sum) and equality under the law. That reality endured for some 500 years. The original Founders of the Roman Republic were a few hundred thousand Latin-speaking Italians; but the inheritors of their vision of Roman Republican law and constitutionalism were a diverse group of millions of people all over the Mediterranean.

History’s other positive example is the United States, which has proven one of the only truly diverse societies in history to remain fairly stable and unified—at least so far. Although the Founders are now caricatured as oppressive European white men, they were not tribal brutes. The natural evolution of their unique belief that all men are created equal is today’s diverse society, where different people have managed, until recently, to live together in relatively harmony and equality under the law.

Chelsea Manning: What Was Harvard Thinking?Jacob Heilbrunn

The Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School announced on Wednesday that it was inviting Chelsea E. Manning–who disseminated almost 750,000 secret American government cables and documents about Iraq to Wikileaks and spent seven years in prison before her sentence was commuted by President Obama–to become a visiting fellow. Then, on Friday, it rescinded the invitation. The school’s dean, Douglas W. Elmendorf, issued a broadly worded statement. He indicated that, on the one hand, he continued to believe the invitation was appropriate but, on the other, that “in retrospect” he had gotten the balance between controversial actions and “public service” wrong, and that the title visiting fellow, even if used for a only a day to give a talk, was ultimately inappropriate in the case of Manning.

The immediate trigger for the outcry over Manning’s appointment stemmed from the decision of Michael J. Morrell, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to write a letter to Elmendorf complaining about Manning. In it, Morrell submitted his resignation from the Kennedy School, where he has been a nonresident senior fellow since 2013, and asserted that inviting Manning “honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information.” Next Mike Pompeo, the director of the CIA, backed out of a Harvard forum, pointing to Morrell’s protest. “WikiLeaks,” Pompeo said, “is an enemy of America.” Given Morrell’s own serial attacks on Donald Trump, during the 2016 presidential election campaign, as, among other things, an “unwitting dupe” of the Kremlin, Pompeo’s move testifies to the bond of loyalty that exists among current and former CIA officials, not to mention the deep anger aroused by leaking, which is, at bottom, a treasonous act. If all American government communications are going to be subject to constant exposure at the whim of an individual who arrogates the right to themselves to deem what is appropriate and inappropriate, then foreign policy would essentially grind to a halt.

In a sense, however, Pompeo’s refusal to visit may be backfiring. His withdrawal from visiting Harvard to deliver a talk is being inflated into an entire campaign by the deep state to stifle dissent. Writing in the Nation, for example, John Nichols attacked Pompeo: “Manning blew the whistle on what would come to be understood as military and diplomatic scandals because she felt Americans had a right to know what was being done in their name but without their informed consent. Mike Pompeo, a secretive and conflicted politician, has no such instinct; he serves wealth and power without questioning whether the dictates of the privileged are right or honorable.” Manning herself alleged on twitter, “this is what a military/police/intel state looks like — the @cia determines what is and is not taught at @harvard.” The course that events have taken is allowing Manning to present herself as a victim all over again. It’s a shrewd maneuver, one that will surely lead to a spate of media appearances that will dwarf anything Harvard could ever offer.

For all the huffing and puffing about the CIA, however, the real problem is something else. It isn’t that the CIA is somehow setting the course curriculum at Harvard. It’s that Morrell himself has no real standing to criticize Manning. His own government record is checkered enough to render his judgments suspect.

Hamas Agrees to Conditions for Reconciliation With Fatah Party Hamas endorses general elections; arrangement marks a significant step forward for Palestinian national movement By Abu Bakr Bashir in Gaza City and Rory Jones in Tel Aviv see note please

A fraternity of terrorists. And Hamas, which has a genocidal charter is now called a “militant” group. Yup, just like calling Dahmer the serial killer cannibal a “culinary innovator.”….rsk

Militant group Hamas said it agreed to conditions demanded by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for reconciliation with his Fatah party, a move aimed at mending a decadelong rift between the two dominant Palestinian factions.

Hamas, which rules the impoverished Gaza Strip, said Sunday it would endorse national elections in the West Bank and Gaza, and allow the Palestinian Authority to administer the strip. Mr. Abbas, whose government helps fund Gaza’s economy, has for months financially pressured the group to cede control.

Reconciliation would mark a significant step forward for the Palestinian national movement, which has been at a stalemate since 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza after an armed conflict. But such a rapprochement is likely to face significant obstacles.

Mr. Abbas and Hamas’s leadership have repeatedly spoken about a national government in the Palestinian territories comprised of both factions, but have failed to implement such an agreement. Hamas made no mention in its statement of handing over security of the strip to the Authority, a key demand by Mr. Abbas’s government in mending the rift.

Hamas’s new leadership in recent weeks has said it is eager to work with Iran, which vows Israel’s destruction, and restore ties with Palestinian politician Mohammed Dahlan, a former ally-turned-enemy of Mr. Abbas that is backed by the United Arab Emirates and lives in Abu Dhabi. Mr. Abbas is unlikely to want to work with either of those parties.

A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Sunday’s announcement.

U.S. President Donald Trump has earmarked Israeli-Palestinian peace as a key foreign policy goal, but won’t negotiate directly with Hamas over the fate of Gaza. The group is considered a terrorist organization by both the U.S. and Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE

Frustration With Republicans Drove Donald Trump to Deal With Democrats Shift raises prospect of future collaborations; Nancy Pelosi says White House and GOP ‘don’t have the votes’By Peter Nicholas, Rebecca Ballhaus and Siobhan Hughes

Months of mounting frustration with the lack of progress in the Republican-led Congress drove President Donald Trump to cut legislative deals with top Democrats, according to White House officials, raising the prospect of future collaborations on subjects from immigration to a tax overhaul to spending bills.

In the past week, Mr. Trump has held two private sessions at the White House in which the Democratic congressional leaders walked away with either a deal or a path to one—largely on their own terms. Mr. Trump’s fellow Republicans were stunned by the shift from the president—whose chief interest is in jump-starting the stalled legislative agenda, say White House officials.

In one recent White House session, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi was listening to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin beseech congressional leaders to raise the debt ceiling to steady U.S. markets, and the California Democrat grew impatient.

“Wall Street is one thing. You’re used to that world,” Mrs. Pelosi told Mr. Trump and Mr. Mnuchin. “Here the vote is the currency of the realm. It’s all about having the votes.”

In an interview Friday, Mrs. Pelosi said of the White House and Republican leaders: “They don’t have the votes.” She added: “Here we are in the minority…and we’re dealing from strength because they don’t have the votes.”

Mr. Trump has made clear that he is willing to use those Democratic votes to get legislation passed after splits in Republican ranks stymied his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act, White House officials said.

In meetings, he has been apt to criticize legislative leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), for taking a summer recess with so much unfinished business, and to complain of betrayals by GOP lawmakers whose votes he thought were locked in, White House aides said.

One senior White House official described an Oval Office meeting in which Mr. Trump said to him: “What’s wrong with you Republicans?” The official said of Mr. Trump: “Every time I’m in there, he’s like, ‘The Senate can’t get anything done. Why isn’t Mitch working? Why did they go home?’ ”

Mr. Trump now is courting Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Mrs. Pelosi to see if he can propel tax, budget and immigration plans before Congress turns its attention to the 2018 midterm elections.

It’s unclear whether these new partnerships will endure. He once called Mr. Schumer a “clown” and Mrs. Pelosi “incompetent.” Still, “his No. 1 priority is to get the best deal: China, North Korea, Iran, Congress, Republican, Democrat—he’s about deals,” said Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary. “That’s it.”

Immigration has divided the Republican and Democratic parties a lot more than it has united them. That equation was scrambled this week when President Trump had dinner with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and emerged with the outlines of a deal on Dreamers. The WSJ’s Gerald F. Seib breaks down the odds of bipartisanship on immigration.

MY SAY: HYPOCRITICAL HIGH DUDGEON

This is what President Trump said and repeated about Charlottesville:

“I think especially in light of the advent of Antifa, if you look at what’s going on there. You have some pretty bad dudes on the other side, also, and essentially that’s what I said. Now, because of what’s happened since then with Antifa, you look at, you know, really, what’s happened since Charlottesville, a lot of people have actually written, ‘Gee, Trump might have a point.’ I said, ‘You have some very bad people on the other side, also,’ which is true.”

And given Antifa’s openly stated boast that violence and disruption are part of their agenda, the president is right.

Nonetheless, that statement evoked some self righteous hyperventilation:

Exhibit A:

https://pjmedia.com/video/trump-reiterates-charlottesville-moral-equivalency-argument/

Trump Reiterates His Charlottesville Moral Equivalency Argument By Nathan Lichtman

“In addition to the problems of yet again refusing to call out a genocidal bunch of racists, he used language about Antifa being “the other side.” So, basically, he’s admitting that the neo-Nazis are on his side. “The other side” implies that they are the ones counter to your side. This is certainly as close as he has come to admitting that the racist alt-righters are supporters of his, are in his base. They aren’t the other side to him, Antifa is.

IT IS BEYOND TIME for any true conservative, any true Republican, and really any true American, to condemn Trump’s moral equivalency nonsense. You can say Antifa is bad without drawing equivalence between them and people who want to wipe Jews and minorities off the face of the planet.”

Fall off your high horse Mr, Lichtman! The neo- Nazis are a despicable racist group with zero influence in America. The “other side” are foot soldiers in a war being waged against our national culture and institutions and police.

And, Mr. Lichtman, those that want to wipe Jews and other minorities off the face of the earth are the mullahs of Iran and their terrorist offshoots throughout the globe. rsk