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January 2020

The Grubby Corruption of Our Power Elite Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/25/the-grubby-corruption-of-our-power-elite/

We all owe Peter Schweizer an enormous debt of gratitude for his enormous and effective labors in bringing sunlight to these tenebrous and mephitic climes.

In January 1956, John F. Kennedy published Profiles in Courage, biographical encomia to eight U.S. senators, from John Quincy Adams to Robert Taft, whom Kennedy thought exhibited conspicuous courage in the discharge of their public duties.

I say Kennedy published Profiles in Courage. But the book was written not by JFK but by the loyal Kennedy apparatchik and fixer Ted Sorensen. Sorenson, like so many in the Kennedy circle, was a bit thuggish. He was also an eloquent writer. Remember this famous bit from Kennedy’s inaugural? “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Nicely put, and it was put by Sorensen, merely read by Kennedy.

Anyway, Profiles in Courage was an early installment in that long-running (indeed, still-running) effort to obscure the distasteful reality of JFK with a carefully cultivated image of an eager yet culturally sophisticated patriot (see the index under “Pablo Casals visits the White House”).

Profiles in Courage deserves its place in that vast mythopoeic enterprise the public knows as Camelot. But a much more important book is Peter Schweizer’s Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elites.

Schweizer will be known to many readers of American Greatness. He is unquestionably our most accomplished anatomist of “using public power for personal gain. . . . cronyism, corruption, patronage, and intimidation.” His string of bestsellers includes Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, and Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison.

SOROS, HILLARY AND GLOOM FOR DEMS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/25/queen-elizabeth-beats-hollywood-and-the-stumblebum-sussexes/
Hollywood and the Stumblebum Sussexes Once upon a time, a dolt from Tinseltown imagined she was a match for the queen of England. Ilana Mercer

His wife, a hero of sorts only in the TV series “Suits,” had hightailed it to Canada, leaving Harry Windsor, formerly known as Prince Harry, to deliver a concession speech.
Make no mistake—no matter the moola they rake in, Harry and Meghan Markle have been sorely defeated and deflated.
Earlier in January, the stumblebum Sussexes had smugly announced to the world that they “planned to carve out a progressive new role within this institution.” The unavoidable implication of that sleight-of-hand was that “this institution” (the monarchy) was just not “woke” enough for the couple’s exquisitely honed sensibilities.

www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/01/the-state-of-things-for-dems-gloomy-getting-gloomier.php

THE STATE OF THINGS FOR DEMS: GLOOMY & GETTING GLOOMIER
Steven Hayward, PowerlineBlog.com

It’s still early and things can change fast, but several new polls show Bernie Sanders surging in Iowa and New Hampshire as well as nationally, as Warren continues to stumble, Biden continues to unimpress, and Buttigieg continues to ignore the propeller beanie hat stuck to his head.

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/25/george-soros-89-still-quest-destroy-america/

George Soros, 89, is still on a quest to destroy America
WashingtonTimes.com

George Soros is 89 years old, but by gosh, before he dies, he’s going to see to the internal destruction of America.At least that’s how it seems.

How else can we listen to his words in Davos, Switzerland, track his funding of American political races and pay attention to what he says about President Donald Trump, capitalism, and the leftist causes he backs and the leftist Open Society Foundations he runs, and come to any other conclusion?

www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/why-wont-hillary-clinton-just-go-away

Why won’t Hillary Clinton just go away?
WashingtonExaminer.com – Posted by Staff
Hillary Clinton promised in 2016 that she would make history, and she did.

She lost a winnable election where she enjoyed every conceivable advantage over her opponent, including a roughly 2-to-1 edge in campaign spending. Clinton then went on to become the first failed nominee in modern American history who cannot manage to move on.John McCain returned to the Senate after his loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. John Kerry similarly went back to work in the Senate after the 2004 election and later joined Obama’s administration. Al Gore still complains about losing in 2000 to George W. Bush, but he also found a new calling and made his mark as a (self-appointed) spokesman for the planet. Bob Dole left politics altogether after his defeat in 1996 and went on to star in commercials for Pepsi and Viagra. George H. W. Bush split his time after 1992 between charitable work and his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Walter Mondale returned to his law firm. Jimmy Carter has Habitat for Humanity.

A Muslim “Holocaust remembrance” travesty Andrew Bostom See note please

 
 This detailed and meticulously researched and documented column was posted and then cravenly scrubbed by JNS for fear of appearing “Islamophobic.” Proper journalistic ethics would insist that any opposing opinion also be posted, but instead the powers that be have gone to the dark side ignoring real threats to Jews…..rsk
 https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-muslim-holocaust-remembrance-travesty/

What ordinary, sensible Jews should “Never Forget” is that what passes for Jewish leadership proudly orchestrated the hideous spectacle of the Muslim World League’s Auschwitz pilgrimage.

 Whether one considers the masses of Muslims who have been flowing into Europe as (primarily) economic refugees, proud hijra colonists “quietly” Islamizing the continent, or both, these newly arrived votaries of Islam express an unabashed Islamic Jew-hatred.

Their virulently anti-Jewish attitudes are consistent with the disproportionate, approximately three-fold increased rate of extreme Antisemitism among Western European Muslims, in general, relative to non-Muslims, just reported Nov. 21, 2019 in the latest comprehensive Anti-Defamation League survey findings. Germany’s failed attempt to mollify this new Muslim immigrant animus toward Jews by “sensitivity” visits to Nazi-era concentration camp memorials demonstrates its deep-seated intractability.

The depressing failure to lessen Muslim immigrant Jew-hatred has garnered little attention. Contrast that with the much ballyhooed pilgrimage to Auschwitz by what was characterized as “the most senior Islamic leadership delegation” to visit the location of a Nazi German death camp. This interfaith junket, spearheaded by Saudi “reformist” secretary general of the Muslim World League (MWL), Mohammad bin Abdulkarim al-Issa, and the CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), David Harris, took place four days before the 75th anniversary of the camp’s Jan. 27, 1945 liberation.

Far less widely reported was that al-Issa’s Muslim delegation was on a broader tour to “several sites of injustice,” including Srebrenica, Bosnia. There, during 1995, a tit for tat massacre of Bosnian Muslims—bearing no relationship in either scale, or single-target, monomaniacal hatred to the Nazi Holocaust destruction of European Jewry–took place during a bloody civil war between the region’s Serbs and Muslims. 

Here is the al-Issa/MWL tour’s stated purpose, as described in London-based Arabic daily Asharq al-Awsat:

“The visit of the Islamic delegation confirms the Islamic values and asserts that Muslims condemn every criminal act. The Islamic leaders will visit the sites and affirm that Islam is a religion of mercy and fairness and that it is against all malicious practices, adding that this is not limited to Muslims, but involves everyone. A large number of senior scholars of the MWL participated in various efforts to explain Islamic justice in its related positions, during several visits, meetings, initiatives, and declarations. This was reflected in the positive image of Islam and Muslims against all forms of extremism and radicalization.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweets an unsourced story accusing Jews of child murder By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/rep_rashida_tlaib_retweets_an_unsourced_story_accusing_jews_of_child_murder.html

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who occupies a position at the heart of American politics, blithely retweeted an unsourced, unproven, and untrue claim that Jews living in Beit Hanina kidnapped and executed a seven-year-old boy. This is a  modern version of the medieval blood libel against the Jews.

The anti-Semitic blood libel has a long history, going back to at least the 1st century A.D., when the Jewish historian Josephus rebutted a claim that Antiochus Epiphanes found a Greek man in the temple in Jerusalem being fattened for sacrifice. A thousand years later, a Byzantine document again accused Jews of kidnapping a stranger every seven years to serve as a human sacrifice in the Temple at Jerusalem.

By the 12th century, the blood libel had firmly taken in England hold after Jews were accused of ritually sacrificing William of Norwich, a young boy found stabbed in the woods. After that, until the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, Jews were routinely accused of executing children and using their blood in rituals, especially when making matzo for Passover. The Jews were then slaughtered in pogroms. The libel migrated to Europe with the same deadly consequences for Jews.

The great irony of the blood libel, of course, is that one of the central stories in the Hebrew Bible is the Binding of Isaac, in which God ends human sacrifice. The Ten Commandments, the foundation of Western morality, forbid murder. The Jewish laws governing kosher cooking even forbid using blood when cooking.

Are swing states swinging towards Trump? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/are_swing_states_swinging_towards_trump.html

While the media focus on two power-hungry, low-wattage men — one a stone-cold communist candidate and the other an “I’ll say anything to win” candidate — that’s not the real news. The real news, as two articles illustrate, is in the swing counties around America.

The Wall Street Journal looks at Howard County, Iowa, which swung wildly from Democrat to Republican in 2016. In 2012, Obama won the county by 20%; in 2016, Trump won the county by the same margin. This year, though, voters in Howard County still like Trump and are planning to stick with him:

Recent interviews with dozens of voters here suggest that most of Mr. Trump’s 2016 supporters, including Mr. Wacha [one of 2016’s swing voters], plan to stick with him, even though some said they have grown weary of his personal behavior and trade fights. Among those who previously voted for Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, many said they are reserving judgment until they see who wins the Democratic nomination.

As for Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, now under way in the Senate, most voters said they haven’t followed the case closely and don’t expect it to weigh heavily in their decisions. Several said they view it as just more Washington partisanship.

What such swing voters do in 2020 will have national implications. Before Mr. Trump, Howard County hadn’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. It is one of the 31 counties in Iowa—the most of any state—that backed Mr. Obama twice and then switched to Mr. Trump.

The Left Is One Huge Internet Troll By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-left-is-one-huge-internet-troll/

As conservative writers for online magazines are all too well aware, their leftist adversaries are not interested in serious debate or mannerly conversation. Civility is not the left’s strong suit. Tactics vary along a spectrum of readily predictable talking points, false assertions, vituperation and obscenity, the stock in trade of those who have come to be known as trolls. Who and what is a troll?

Originally, trolls were unsightly folklore creatures dwelling in caves, forests, and, as in the famous folk tale, under bridges. Unlike their doppelgängers in the Disney film, they were not sweet and innocent powder-blue creatures resembling the Smurfs and the Na’vi, but gnarled and revolting specimens of indiscriminate voracity. Distinctly hostile and governed by an appetite for human flesh, they became the source of the contemporary internet troll.

The modern troll is the digital form of the contract killer. He lives in the shadows; is prone to using an alias behind which he hides; has no known street address or postal code; is often paid for his services by some powerful figure whose public presence may be known—say, a bloviating multi-billionaire with a highly dubious personal history who manages to evade the law; has no conscience and is not very intelligent but is as cunning as he is unscrupulous—in short, the internet troll is a coward who “kills” in the dark. He is motivated by envy and resentment and has neither self-respect nor moral fiber. He is devoid of productive talents and lacks the ability to make a success of his life. He is, in the current idiom, a loser.

Or course, not every troll is a hired gun. Some like to devour their prey as self-elected vigilantes who need not bother with the labor of constructing a convincing counter-argument—that, after all, takes real work. But in either case, they are the gremlins of the internet world, sniping away at the legitimate participants in the cultural debate or infesting the Twittersphere, often under the cloak of anonymity and the camouflage of fake accounts. They are not part of the conversation but the dregs of the hermeneutic exchange.

GOOD NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/ 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Fixing the root cause of diabetes. (TY WIN) Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Motti Chevion has developed Zygosid-50, the first treatment to restore near-normal cellular sensitivity to insulin, without side effects. Israel’s Concenter BioPharma is preparing to trial Zygosid-50 and give new hope to Type 2 diabetics.

https://www.israel21c.org/finally-a-pill-that-could-fix-the-root-cause-of-diabetes/

The doctor can see you now. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s RSIP Vision has developed an Artificial Intelligence-based image analysis solution for tissue diagnosis.  It assists doctors in multiple medical imaging fields: e.g. cardiology, pulmonology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, radiology, robotic surgery, microscopy and more.

https://www.rsipvision.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmCI2hBLrok

A clearer future for children. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s NovaSight has developed two products: EyeSwift uses eye-tracking technology to detect multiple vision problems in children (e.g. lazy-eye and squints). CureSight treats lazy-eye using 3D image algorithms and variable focusing, while the child watches entertaining videos.

https://nova-sight.com/about/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5HnxVW_JUo

Discovery prevents preemie lung collapse. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute built a 3D model of the lungs of a premature baby. They discovered that in standard respirators for babies an air jet could cause damage to the infant. They have now recommended reconfiguring the air flow, potentially saving many young lives.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/preemies-breathe-easier-with-israeli-breakthrough/

https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2020/01/innovation-for-infant-assisted-ventilation/

Micro robot is revealed. Israel’s Microbot Medical previously demonstrated a prototype of its self-cleaning shunt for cleaning blockages in the brain (see here). At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Microbot demonstrated LIBERTY – the world’s first fully disposable robotic system for endovascular procedures.

https://microbotmedical.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/microbot-medical-unveil-worlds-first-fully-disposable-robotic   https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/jpm-microbot-medical-unveils-disposable-device-for-remote-catheter-procedures