Displaying posts published in

August 2020

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Joe Biden offers platitudes, not policies His speech struck some chords but left several silences Charles Lipson

By on August 21st, 2020

https://spectator.us/joe-biden-platitudes-policies-democratic-national-convention/

Joe Biden’s speech was effective in many ways and sure to please his supporters. But anyone who expected him to say something substantive about his policies left empty-handed. He did little more than spin gauzy pictures of a rosy future.

First, the good news for Biden supporters. He looked strong, never stumbled, and delivered the speech with remarkable empathy, energy, and modulated tones. His performance showed no traces of the confusion he has shown occasionally or the cognitive decline he has been charged with. He was at his best.

Biden also made the best of his strongest quality: he’s a likable guy, whose tragedies have made him deeply sympathetic to others facing their own difficulties. He’s not faking that, and it shows. He’s proud of his working-class roots and proud he has fostered a close, loving family as father and grandfather. The lead-up to his speech captured that well with pictures of his parents and video of his family today.

Biden’s admirable personal qualities shone through, allowing him to bond with voters in ways Hillary Clinton never could. They also reinforced a central message of his campaign: I’m a guy like most of you; I’m on your side and will work hard for you; I don’t think of myself as superior; together, we can have a brighter future.

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Scholarly Debate is Dead Cause of death: Twitter mobs.by John Eastman

By on August 21st, 2020

https://americanmind.org/essays/scholarly-debate-is-dead/

A little opinion article I published in Newsweek last week raising questions about Senator Kamala Harris’s eligibility for the office of Vice President has created quite a firestorm of controversy. For nearly 20 years—based on extensive scholarly research and long before Senator Harris was tapped to be former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate—I have been questioning whether the current generally-accepted view of the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause is correct. I have published numerous articles about the subject, both scholarly and popular, asking whether it is right to interpret the amendment as meaning that anyone born on U.S. soil is automatically a citizen no matter the circumstances. I have testified about the matter several times before Congress and state legislative bodies, in a wide range of contexts.

I first raised the issue publicly in a brief that former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and I submitted to the Supreme Court back in 2003 in the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Hamdi was an unlawful combatant in the Taliban who was treated as a citizen because he had been born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana while his father was in the United States on a temporary work visa.

I addressed similar or in some cases identical questions about citizenship in general, and natural-born citizenship in particular (and hence, about eligibility for the offices of president and vice-president) when Senator John McCain was a nominee for President, when Governor Mitt Romney was a nominee for President, when Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were candidates for President, and when Governor Nikki Haley’s name was floated as a possible nominee for Vice President.

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Iran and the Israel-UAE Deal By Dr. Doron Itzchakov

By on August 21st, 2020

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-israel-uae-deal/

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates presents the Iranian regime with dilemmas on both the foreign and the domestic front. The regime fears the emergence of a new international alliance that will have greater power to contain its hegemonic regional aspirations, and there is a new urgency to the need to prove to the Iranian people that the government’s imperialist foreign policy works to their benefit.

The condemnations in the Iranian media of the nascent Israel-UAE peace agreement are hardly surprising. The regime’s leadership is covering its embarrassment and apprehension with a stream of defamation and threats. Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bakr Qalibaf called the agreement “despicable and a betrayal of human and Islamic values,” while President Rouhani warned the UAE leaders “not to open their gates” to Israel. (An interesting exception to this pattern was the statement of former MP Ali Motahari, who tweeted, “Apart from the betrayal of UAE rulers, the blame was also on us for scaring the Arabs and pushing them into Israeli arms”.)

Israel’s rapprochement with the Gulf state is raising concerns in Tehran for a number of reasons. First, the regime fears that an alliance comprising Israel, the Gulf States, and other countries, supported by Washington and Riyadh, would be a serious roadblock in the path of Iran’s goal of regional hegemony. A multinational system of that kind would strengthen its constituent members not only on the security level but also on the economic, commercial, and cultural levels—a worrisome prospect for Tehran.

The prospect of such an alliance is particularly troubling to the regime at a time when its regional status is declining. Recent events in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have negatively affected Tehran’s ability to promote its “axis of resistance” in the region. Its status in Iraq has been weakening since the October 2019 uprisings, a pattern that gathered new momentum after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. The deep crisis now engulfing Lebanon and the Hague’s conviction of a Hezbollah member for the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri do not contribute to Iran’s prestige. On top of all this, Israeli air strikes in Syria are severely hampering the regime’s attempts to turn the country into a front line against Israel.

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Jimmy Lai, a Man for All Seasons When a billionaire becomes a dissident, the takeover of Hong Kong is complete. By William McGurn

By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jimmy-lai-a-man-for-all-seasons-11597705349?mod=opinion_major_pos9

Taped on the wall by my desk is a photo of Jimmy Lai in handcuffs. It was taken a week ago, the day 200 Hong Kong police raided his Apple Daily newspaper and arrested him. It is my most treasured photo of Jimmy, who also happens to be my godson, having been baptized in 1997 just before the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. The point is that though the handcuffs were intended to humiliate him, every man, woman and child in Hong Kong saw them for what they were: a badge of honor.

Soon Jimmy will go to trial on charges from sedition to colluding with foreign powers. It’s utter rot, of course. If he finds himself facing prison, it is only because Communist China, for all its size and power, fears any Chinese who insists on speaking the truth.

In this way Jimmy might be thought of as Hong Kong’s Thomas More, the difference being that while King Henry VIII wanted More to speak up, Beijing wants Jimmy to shut up. In the more than two decades since Hong Kong was handed back to China, most Hong Kong elites have cut their consciences to accommodate their new overlords. Which leaves Jimmy Lai and his printing press as Hong Kong’s single most important counter to official propaganda.

If Jimmy’s message resonates, it is in good part because his story is Hong Kong’s story. He arrived from mainland China on his own, a stowaway in the bottom of a fishing boat. In a city built by Chinese refugees, he raised himself from a scruffy teenager to the founder of a highly popular clothing chain, and then proprietor of Hong Kong’s highly popular Next magazine and Apple Daily newspaper.

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UN Supports ‘World’s Worst State Sponsor of Terrorism,’ Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16374/un-iran-terrorism

Europe’s leaders also did not support extending the arms embargo. They have been arguing that they want to preserve the nuclear deal. What deal? The deal that Iran never signed? The deal that Iran has been violating anyway?

The European powers have also ignored a recent plea by Iran’s neighbors to extend the arms embargo, as well as a recent statement made by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who raised serious concerns about possible clandestine and undeclared nuclear sites in Iran.

The six-country Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — submitted a plea to the UN Security Council to extend the Iranian arms embargo. The letter accurately stated that “Iran has not ceased or desisted from armed interventions in neighboring countries, directly and through organizations and movements armed and trained by Iran. As such, it is inappropriate to lift the restrictions on conventional weapons’ movement to and from Iran until it abandons its destabilizing activities in the region and ceases to provide weapons to terrorist and sectarian organizations.”

The UN’s decisions to allow “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” freely to have an unlimited supply chain of conventional weapons may sadly go down in history as one of the most dangerous acts against stability and world peace.

One would think that one of the most dangerous things possible would be to allow what the US Department of State calls “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” Iran, freely to buy, sell, import and export advanced weapons. Yet, this is exactly what the United Nations just decided to do. The UN Security Council voted on August 14 to permit the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire.

Even the ruling mullahs do not seem to believe that they received such a great reward. “I don’t remember [in the past] the US preparing a resolution for months to strike a blow at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it garners only one vote [the Dominican Republic],” said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This, he added, was a humiliation and blow to the US. Iranian politicians and media outlets are also celebrating. As the headline of the Iranian newspaper Etemad read in Persian (Farsi): “US is Defeated in Home Game: Attempts in New York to Convince the UNSC Member States Fail”.

Iran, thanks to the previous US administration, is crying victory. Among the many concessions that the Obama-Biden administration gave the ruling mullahs of Iran was setting a date when Iran’s arms embargo would be lifted. President Obama agreed to add a provision in the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed – for the arms embargo’s disappearance.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democratic Party is Unwell The only cure for what ails the Democrats is for voters to turn them out of office so they get the nice long rehab they need. By Julie Kelly

By on August 21st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/20/the-democratic-party-is-unwell/

A healthy political party—just like a healthy individual—has certain traits and habits that nourish overall wellness. A diversity of interests, a sense of humor, a curious mind, a measured temperament, and an occasional endorphin-release from physical activity are just a few things that contribute to the fitness of a human being. The same kind of characteristics should be found on a collective scale in a thriving, muscular, and stable political party.

None of those qualities, however, can be detected in the present-day Democratic Party. 

For all the squawking about Donald Trump’s alleged unfitness for office and insistence that the Republican Party is populated with zombie-like Trump cultists, in reality it is the Democratic Party that needs an extended stay at a detox facility to cleanse its sickly mind and body.

The party’s ailments have been on full display this week. Look no further than the freakish music video that closed out the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Billy Porter, a gay black Broadway star, and geriatric Steven Stills of Crosby, Stills, and Nash teamed up to remake Stills’ 1966 classic, “For What It’s Worth.”

The video was a performative display of the party’s schizophrenia: A white ’60s counterculture icon and a Dracula-costumed POC LGBTQ activist offering an inharmonious version of a Vietnam-era tune as the official anthem for the candidacy of a feeble establishment codger and his unaccomplished cackling sidekick quickly shredding their faux moderate façade in fealty to the party’s lunatic fringe of America-hating nihilists.

Days of (More) Rage

Somebody call a doctor.

The Democratic Party is not well. Joe Biden is neither mentally nor physically healthy enough to run the country, yet the party remains in denial. Biden’s conduct should raise all sorts of red flags but party stalwarts are hellbent on dragging him across the finish line in November in an almost cruel act of selfishness.

While Democrats willfully ignore Biden’s fragility, the party is fixated on every move, utterance, and tweet from Donald Trump in a way that any mental health professional would diagnose as obsessive.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Mail Voter Fraud, Which Doesn’t Exist, Forces New Election Daniel Greenfield

By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/08/mail-voter-fraud-which-doesnt-exist-forces-new-daniel-greenfield/

“Trump Keeps touting New Jersey fraud case to attack mail voting. Local leaders say he’s not telling the whole story.” Washington Post

In slightly more recent news…

A judge has ruled that a new election will be held in November for a disputed City Council seat, just weeks after the race’s apparent winner and a sitting councilman were charged with voter fraud.

Alex Mendez had won a special election on May 12 to fill the seat, but claims of voter fraud were soon raised. An investigation was then launched after the U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement arm told the state Attorney General’s Office about hundreds of mail-in ballots located in a mailbox in Paterson, along with more found in nearby Haledon.

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Joe Biden’s Orwellian Rewrite of History The willingness to distort the past is one of the Left’s most important weapons for instituting tyranny. Bruce Thornton

By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/joe-bidens-orwellian-rewrite-history-bruce-thornton/

In an apocryphal story about Christopher Columbus, the great explorer was insulted at a banquet by a man who said that discovering America was no big deal, since if Columbus hadn’t done it, somebody else would have. Columbus said nothing, but asked for an egg. He then challenged the banqueteers to make the egg stand on end. After several fruitless efforts, Columbus tapped the small end of the egg on the table, flattening it so it would stand up. His point was obvious: after the difficult deed is done, everybody knows how to do it.

This tale came to mind last week when Joe Biden tried to claim some credit for Trump’s brokering of a groundbreaking deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that normalizes relations between the two countries. Biden’s effort didn’t impress anyone beyond the NeverTrump diehards and their stenographers in the mainstream media. But it is another example of how the history of the Obama years is being rewritten to lend some glamor and excitement to a party with no policy ideas other than failed socialist magical thinking.

More important, that willingness to distort the past is one of the left’s most important weapons for instituting tyranny.

Biden’s statement was so specious one might attribute it to his obvious cognitive decline. “I personally,” Biden said, “spent time with leaders of both Israel and UAE during our administration building the case for cooperation and broader engagement and the benefits it could deliver to both nations.” But every vice-president “personally” spends time superficially discussing all sorts of issues with foreign leaders. Most of these are photo-ops that generate banal statements like “cooperation and broader engagement” that are forgotten by the next news cycle.

A significant, meaningful discussion, on the other hand, leads to significant action and results. For example, take Biden’s colloquy with the president of Ukraine. In March of 2016, as Biden later boasted, the Veep threatened Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko that the U.S. would not honor $1 billion in loan guarantees unless the prosecutor looking into Burisma Holdings, suspected of corruption, was fired. As Biden gleefully related later about threatening Poroshenko, “‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”

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A Fake DNC Convention Ends With Real Nastiness The democracy is fake, but the hate is real. Daniel Greenfield

By on August 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/fake-dnc-convention-ends-real-nastiness-daniel-greenfield/

On the last night of the imaginary DNC convention taking place inside an editing room, the Democrats decided that the best way to win over independent voters was to bring in the least talented member of the Seinfeld cast to make jokes about Mike Pence’s name.

Why? It distracts from Joe Biden doesn’t it.

The joke here is positively Seinfeldian. Julia Louis Dreyfuss plays shallow, self-involved, and petty characters because she’s shallow, petty, and self-involved. The Democrats attack Trump as an unserious reality show host who confuses social media with leadership, and then debut a failed convention dominated by celebrities and badly written jokes aimed at social media.

“I’m proud to be a nasty, nasty woman,” Julia Louis Dreyfuss gloated.

It’s not just her own aspiration, but that of the party that invited her. The Democrats want to play at being serious, principled folks bringing the country together, but they’re proud to be nasty.

“I will draw on the best of us, not the worst of us,” Joe Biden claimed, accepting his nomination after a convention filled with conspiracy theories about mailboxes, smears, and cheap shots.

That promise is coming from a politician who spent his career insulting voters, calling them fat and stupid, whose family is notorious for profiting from his political office, who palled around with segregationists and sexual predators, but whom three nights of celebrities and fellow hacks from across the political swamp spectrum now insist is really a kind, decent, and loveable man.

Biden’s transformation after 47 years of nastiness is just as convincing as that of his party.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

5 Things to Know About Night 4 of the Democratic National Convention By Tyler O’Neil

By on August 21st, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/21/5-things-to-know-about-night-4-of-the-democratic-national-convention-n818980

Whew! That was torture. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) finally concluded on Thursday. We at PJ Media subjected ourselves to this Gaslighting America Telethon so you wouldn’t have to. Check out our liveblogs from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and follow our coverage tomorrow.

Without further ado, here’s a recap of the fourth and final night.

1. Was Joe Biden’s speech racist?

Democratic nominee Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech at the end of the night, and his speech focused on the theme of choosing “light” over “darkness.” According to the logic of woke cancel culture, that theme seems rather suspect. Here’s a selection of quotes:

The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.

Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness. …

For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege. …

May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.

Biden even said, “Light is more powerful than dark.”

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