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September 2020

Jeffrey Goldberg’s Socialist Newspaper

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/jeffrey-goldbergs-socialist-newspaper/91252/

History, we see, is up to her old tricks. This time she was summoned by Paul Sperry of the New York Post, who put out on Labor Day a tweet with a note saying: “BACKGROUND: The author of ‘The Atlantic’s’ discredited hit piece on Trump was raised by socialist parents who sent him to socialist camps in the Catskills. Jeffrey Goldberg … later worked for a socialist weekly newspaper in New York.”

This scoop, by one of the Post’s star scribes, was forwarded by a press reporter of the Times, Marc Tracy, to another of the Gray Lady’s scribes, Ben Smith, with the subject line: “you should forward to Lipsky.” Mr. Smith did so, adding his own comment, which, including the salutation, read in full “!!”. We took the slammers to mean that Mr. Smith was enjoying the ironies of the situation.

For Mr. Sperry is right that Mr. Goldberg worked for the Forward in New York. So, for that matter, did Mr. Smith. The paper is the English-language weekly successor to the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward that was founded in 1897 by socialists. We, meaning our editor, were, in 1990, the founding editor of its English paper. We edited it for a decade. Our headstone may yet say we hired both Smith and Goldberg.

It happens, though, that we are several kiloparsecs to the right of the socialists. We had come to the Forward from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, where we were hired because we happily hewed, as we still do, to the principles of free minds and free markets. Then again, too, we’d long admired the Forward, which guided millions of Yiddish-speaking immigrants over the cultural bridge to America.

New Documentary Exposes the Biden Family’s Shady Financial Relationship With Red China By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/09/new-documentary-exposes-biden-familys-shady-financial-relationship-with-red-china/

An explosive new documentary tells the hidden story of the secret financial relationship between Joe Biden’s family and the Chinese government, exposing their business deals, financial transactions, and secret agreements.

The documentary, called “Riding the Dragon: Uncovering the Bidens’ Chinese Secrets,” purports to show how the Bidens’ politically-wrought business dealings even served the strategic interests of the Chinese military while Joe Biden was Vice President of the United States.

The film was produced by Lightspeed Pictures in association with BlazeTV, and is narrated by New York Times bestselling author and president of the Government Accountability Institute, Peter Schweizer.

“This is the remarkable and largely hidden story of the secret financial relationship between the Biden family and the Chinese government,” Schweizer explains in the film.

His investigation reportedly relied on corporate records, financial documents, legal briefings, and court papers.

“It’s the story about the second most powerful man in the world at the time, and how his family was striking deals with America’s chief rival on the global stage,” Schweizer said.

Greek-Turkish Rivalry Again Near the Boiling Point Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/2020/09/10/greek-turkish-rivalry-again-near-the-boiling-point-n913668

Almost daily, Greek and Turkish aircraft and ships fight mock battles over disputed oil and gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean.

Since the loss of much of the Christian Balkans to the Ottomans in the 15th century, Greece and what would later become modern Turkey have been rivals, outright enemies, and often at war.

Mutual NATO membership and shared Cold War fears of Soviet Russia did not stop the two from almost going to war after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Still, the current escalation seems weird. Most territorial claims and disputes over borders were settled almost a century ago, and the two countries have had mass population exchanges.

Why, then, does the divide still run so deep?

Turkey is a Muslim country and was once the Ottoman Empire that ruled much of the Islamic world. Greece is still surrounded by Muslim countries.

Turks are quick to remind everyone that from the late 15th century to the early 19th century, most of Greece and the Aegean Islands belonged to the Ottoman Empire.

The Left’s Reaction to Woodward’s Coronavirus Scoop Is Revisionist History By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-lefts-reaction-to-woodwards-coronavirus-scoop-is-revisionist-history/

EXCERPTS:

“It’s also fair to point out that there’s no evidence that those who want to attain power would have been — or would be — any better prepared. And the idea that we could have stopped this in February or March is risible.”

Unlike Cuomo, though, the Trump administration took all kinds of action relatively early. It’s fine to criticize Trump’s response, but I have yet to hear how Democrats could have contained coronavirus, much saved less saved the economy while doing so.

Yet we’ve now gone from “Trump said something stupid” to hysterical partisan accusations such as “Trump will likely shoulder the blame for at least 100,000 American deaths” and “200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed.”

Even ABC News wonders if the disease “might have been contained” had Trump said something different in February. This is unadulterated revisionism.

The day Trump tweeted that coronavirus was “very much under control in the USA,” Nancy Pelosi was imploring people to visit Chinatown in San Francisco. This was weeks after the House had already been briefed on the coronavirus by the CDC.

Can you imagine the nation’s reaction had Trump — or Pelosi — demanded that states shut down their entire economies over five infections and zero known deaths in February?

‘Broken Values’: US-Israel expert documents how the Democrat party abandoned basic American truths By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/broken-values-us-israel-expert-documents-how-the-democrat-party-abandoned-basic-american-truths/

Author Gideon Israel has examined the Democratic platform to pinpoint when and how the party’s values changed so drastically.

It’s not a simple matter to quantify changes in values over time in a political party. Yet Gideon Israel has done just that in his excellent new book, Broken Values: How the Democratic Party Betrays its Followers and America.

His brainstorm: Analyzing the party platform and how it has evolved over the years.

In the U.S., few pay much attention to a party’s platform. If it’s thought of at all, it’s as a document to be dusted off every four years for election season. Israel convincingly shows, in fact, that the document is an important barometer of change, one in which the party invests much effort.

As he notes, the Democratic National Committee, when formulating its 2008 platform, said “more than 1,600 ‘listening sessions’ took place in communities across the country, with nearly 30,000 Americans participating in the crafting of the platform.”

In the case of the Democratic party, Israel documents how the party has abandoned basic American values, adopting a dark view of America, a country built on stolen lands and mired in systemic racism.

Israel heads the Jerusalem-Washington center, a group that develops initiatives to help strengthen ties between Israel and the U.S. He recently spoke with World Israel News.

Wake Up America, and Smell the Anti-Semitism:By Eve Barlow

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/smell-the-anti-semitism-america

Americans of all races and political outlooks revile and attack Jews with unprecedented glee, while American Jews would rather talk about anything else

I don’t think of Delaware as a center of anti-Semitic hate. But on the night of Aug. 26, the University of Delaware’s Chabad house was burned to the ground, causing an estimated $75,000 worth of damage. According to the state fire marshal, the fire was intentionally set. While the university’s president acknowledged that the site was “an active part of UD’s religious, faith, and spiritual diversity” the fire marshal’s office found no indication that this was a hate crime. Gov. John Carney called the crime “upsetting.”

Only three years earlier, in 2017, Gov. Carney was showing his solidarity and support while visiting the Siegel Jewish Community Center and its Albert Einstein Academy primary school in Wilmington after the JCC received five bomb threats in the space of two months. In February of this year, the same JCC reported that it’s still receiving bomb threats. Delaware’s Jewish community is pushing for an expansion of the state’s hate crime laws.

The pathway from experiencing casual hatred to receiving bomb threats to living communal life under siege to suffering defaced and burned down buildings is all too wearyingly familiar for Jews in Delaware, as well as in the traditional urban centers of American Jewish life. Horrifying footage from Brooklyn on August 29 showed two Haredi men being rammed by a car—an incident that seems no more politically determinable than the regular anti-Semitic chanting or vandalizing of Jewish property at Black Lives Matter marches, or white supremacist bomb threats.

Two weekends ago, a sign reading “The Jews Want a Race War” appeared over the I-405 freeway in Los Angeles. It was dangled by a man named Jon Minadeo Jr. One sign turned into two, with the adjacent sign reading “Honk if you know.” According to witnesses many cars honked. The sign was eventually removed.

The following day, Minadeo was filmed outside the Chabad in Marina del Rey, exercising his free speech rights against America’s Jews once more as part of a tour he dubbed “Name the Nose.” “These Jewish terrorists are the people behind 9/11,” he shouted on the steps. The white van he drove was graffitied with slogans that offer some of his conspiracy theories: “The Jews are spawns of Satan,” “Trump is owned by Jews,” “Jews run Hollywood.” His group, the Goyim Defense League, posted anti-Semitic flyers last year in San Francisco and run a YouTube-style site called Goyim TV.

Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination is futile – opinion The Nobel Peace Prize may garner nearly a million bucks for its laureates with liberal appeal, but it’s not worth the medal it’s engraved on. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/trumps-nobel-peace-prize-nomination-is-futile-opinion-641851

The announcement that US President Donald Trump was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize provided much headline fodder this week, but was it really that dramatic? The answer is no.

For starters, this isn’t the first time that Trump has been nominated for the coveted award that grants laureates nine million Swedish kronor ($935,366). A bit more than two years ago, a group of 18 members of Congress – Rep. Luke Messer (R-Indiana) and 17 other House lawmakers – including Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), Diane Black (R-Tennessee) and Steve King (R-Iowa) – nominated him for having worked “tirelessly to apply maximum pressure to North Korea to end its illicit weapons programs and bring peace to the region.”

In their letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee on May 2, 2018, the congresspeople stated that Trump “successfully united the international community, including China, to impose one of the most successful international sanctions regimes in history.”

They further argued that the sanctions “decimated the North Korean economy and have been largely credited for bringing North Korea to the negotiating table. Although North Korea has evaded demands from the international community to cease its aggression for decades, President Trump’s peace through strength policies are working and bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula.”

Therefore, they concluded, “We can think of no one more deserving of the committee’s recognition in 2019 than President Trump for his tireless work to bring peace to our world.”

The withdrawal agreement debacle The choice now cannot be between disaster or dishonour Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-withdrawal-agreement-debacle?token=

After announcing that the British government was introducing legislation to override parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement that it concluded with the EU last year, Boris Johnson told the Commons yesterday that this would provide

a legal safety net to protect our country against extreme or irrational interpretations of the protocol that could lead to a border down the Irish sea in a way that I believe, and I think Members around the House believe, would be prejudicial to the interests of the Good Friday agreement and prejudicial to the interests of peace in our country. 

In response to the objection that the Prime Minister had signed this agreement containing the wording of this protocol, his spokesman said the agreement was “not like any other treaty”. This was because it was sealed 

at pace in the most challenging possible political circumstances to deliver on a clear political decision by the British people and with the clear overriding purpose of protecting the special circumstances of Northern Ireland. It contains ambiguities and in key areas there is a lack of clarity. It was written on the assumption that subsequent agreements to clarify these aspects could be reached between us and the EU on the detail.

The previous day, when the storm over this broke, Boris Johnson was reported as being about to tell EU leaders that the Brexit divorce deal was “contradictory”. 

Clinically Deranged Adam Schiff Mounts His Dead Russia Horse Again Stephen Cruiser, 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-kruiser/2020/09/10/clinically-deranged-adam-schiff-mounts-his-dead-russia-horse-again-n914615

As has been pointed out by many of us recently, the Democrats really aren’t behaving as if their presidential candidate had a substantial lead in the polls.

Yes, the polls have been tightening, but the Dems have been in a sort of flop-sweat panic mode since the Republican National Convention ended. There is, of course, the fact that every public appearance by der Bidengaffer since then has been hovering in the neighborhood of “unmitigated disaster.”

The Democrats do seem to be trying to get to their October surprises early this year. That reeks of desperation.

Speaking of reeking, California’s little impeachment pitbull Adam Schiff is back. Guess what, kids? He’s got another whistleblower!

Fox News:

The House Intelligence Committee received a whistleblower complaint claiming Trump administration officials at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security suppressed intelligence reports related to Russian election interference, Democratic Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Wednesday.

In a statement, Schiff said former Intelligence and Analysis Acting Under Secretary Brian Murphy filed the whistleblower reprisal complaint on Tuesday with the DHS Office of Inspector General.

“We’ve received a whistleblower complaint alleging DHS suppressed intel reports on Russian election interference, altered intel to match false Trump claims and made false statements to Congress,” Schiff, D-Calif., tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “This puts our national security at risk.”

Oh.

The Value of Political Markets The betting odds are useful, but they could be better Charles Lipson

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/value-political-markets

As the election draws nearer, political junkies pay closer attention to poll numbers. But they are well aware of the difficulties and gaps in those numbers. It’s gotten harder to reach truly random samples of voters and harder to be sure they are giving their true opinions since some opinions risk a torrent of graffiti and social ostracism.

Even if a survey generates a valid random sample and gets voters’ honest opinions, a national poll won’t predict results in the Electoral College, which is expected to hinge on six to eight swing states. Those states need to be polled intensively and the results presented for each individually. Finally, once the raw data is collected, pollsters must make educated guesses about which subgroups will actually show up and vote. These assorted guesses and varied polling methods are why so many observers rely on Real Clear Politics polling averages, compiled from several highly regarded sources.

Besides these averages, political analysts now pay close attention to “political betting markets.” The odds in early September show a tight race—making Democrat Joe Biden a favorite to win the presidential race, but only by a few points.