Displaying posts published in

July 2022

Bennett’s bad precedent and the curse of Israel’s small parties Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bennetts-bad-precedent-and-the-curse-of-israels-small-parties/

Ever since the April 9, 2019 Knesset elections, foes of Likud Party chairman Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu—the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history and currently the head of the opposition—have been blaming him for the political quagmire that is sending the public back to the ballot box this fall for the fifth time in three-and-a-half years.

This chorus is made up of various voices inside the halls of parliament and beyond, with protesters and pundits of different stripes uniting around an aversion to a common enemy. The mantra-chanters in question claim that if Netanyahu would only step aside, all of Israel’s coalition crises would vanish, making way for a broad and stable government.

The past year’s “experiment”—with a government created for the sole purpose of “kicking Bibi out of Balfour” (the name of the street in Jerusalem where the official residence of the prime minister is located)—led by Naftali Bennett, whose party garnered just a few seats above the threshold, exemplified that the above assertion was completely false. Astonishingly, however, it is still being repeated ad nauseam, and by the same people.

You know, those who should be eating their hats, rather than parading around like peacocks.
Alas, the looming elections, slated for Nov. 1, have brought us back to square one. But it’s the “anyone but Bibi” crew and not Netanyahu who bear responsibility for the chaos.

Confucius Institutes 2.0: Chinese Government Money Speaks Loudly by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18697/confucius-institutes

A new, detailed, and thorough report by the National Association of Scholars confirms that not a single one of these [Confucius] “institutes” disappeared; they were just re-branded under a “sister university” arrangement with universities in China, given a different name, or moved to a different sponsor school. And the money continues to flow.

Jamie P. Horsley, senior fellow of the Tsai Center and its former executive director, defends the purpose of Confucius Institutes on American campuses. He argues that they are needed to teach students Mandarin, a language increasingly necessary for business success. She has also written articles minimizing the effects of China’s social credit system and supporting its Belt And Road Initiative.

This is exactly what many Americans fear about placing Chinese government funded institutes, whatever they are called, on American campuses. It is what led the US State Department to classify them as diplomatic missions.

Peterson asked the Chinese director [of a Confucius Institute at an American university] how she would respond if a student asked her about Tiananmen Square. The director answered that she “would show a photograph [of it] and point out the beautiful architecture. That’s the most important thing about that square.”

In the book Red Handed, we meet a remarkable young man named Nathan Law, the Chinese-born, Hong Kong-raised leader of a pro-democracy effort called the “Umbrella Movement,” which protested Beijing’s crackdowns on freedom in Hong Kong. His efforts were brutally crushed by the Chinese government and Nathan Law went to prison for eight months. TIME Magazine named him one of “the 100 Most Influential People of 2020.”

Media and Select Committee Continue to Lie About Sicknick The real tragedy behind Officer Brian Sicknick’s story is the way the media and others continue to peddle falsehoods, portray innocent men as murderers, and seek sympathy based on a lie. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/25/media-and-select-committee-continue-to-lie-about-sicknick/

Sandra Garza is something of a fixture at January 6 Select Committee hearings.

Routinely described as the “life partner” of the late Brian Sicknick—even though she admitted the couple had taken a “break” from their 11-year relationship several months before the Capitol protest—Garza nonetheless acts the grieving widow of Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who died on January 7, 2021 after suffering two strokes caused by a blood clot.

She has given numerous interviews since Sicknick’s tragic and untimely death at the age of 42, blaming Donald Trump and Republicans for her ex-boyfriend’s fatal strokes. Garza traveled to Capitol Hill in May 2021 to demand the creation of the special committee to investigate the events of January 6; her public suffering recently caught the attention of Prince William, who sent Garza a letter expressing his condolences. “I was very honored and humbled and in awe that Prince William from England decided to take time out of his busy schedule to write me a letter to honor Brian’s memory and to acknowledge my pain,” Garza told CNN’s Jake Tapper last month.

No doubt Garza remains heartbroken by the sudden and shocking loss of a beloved friend. But that does not mean her falsehoods or egregious politicization of Sicknick’s passing can go unchecked. 

In a way, one can hardly blame Garza when she’s egged on by everyone from Joe Biden and the national news media to members of the January 6 committee, all of whom continue to lie about Sicknick and other law enforcement fatalities allegedly tied to the Capitol protest.

How To Erode the World’s Greatest Military Alienating half the country is not a wise strategy of military recruitment. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/24/how-to-erode-the-worlds-greatest-military/

The U.S. Army has met only 40 percent of its 2022 recruiting goals.  

In fact, all branches of the military are facing historic resistance to their current recruiting efforts. If some solution is not found quickly, the armed forces will radically shrink or be forced to lower standards—or both.  

Such a crisis occurs importunely as an aggressive Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea believe the Biden Administration and the Pentagon have lost traditional U.S. deterrence.  

That pessimistic view abroad unfortunately is now shared by many Americans at home. In 2021, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute conducted its periodic poll of attitudes toward the U.S. military. The result was astonishing. Currently, only 45 percent of Americans polled expressed a great deal of trust in their armed forces. Confidence had dived 25 points since an early 2018 poll. 

Military officials cite both the usual and a new array of challenges in finding suitable young soldiers—drug use, gang affiliation, physical and mental incapacities, and the dislocations arising from the COVID pandemic and vaccination mandates. But they are too quiet about why such supposedly longer-term obstacles suddenly coalesced in 2022—as if their own leadership and policies have had no effect in discouraging tens of thousands of young men and women to join them. 

The Greatest Skedaddle in Modern American History 

A year ago, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley were assuring the country not to worry over Joe Biden’s strange ideas of abruptly pulling out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The radical step was purportedly to coincide with Biden’s planned 20-year celebratory event marking his role in ensuring an iconic end of the war on terror that began on September 11, 2001.  

The Left Should Be Happy with Biden Since when has changing an inept messenger ever changed a disastrous message?By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/20/the-left-should-be-happy-with-biden/

The Left should be ecstatic that Joe Biden has given them everything they wanted. 

The Left likes inflation. It reduces the value of old money by printing lots of new money. Those richer who have it, lose the value of their money; those poorer who don’t have any money, suddenly do. 

When combined with low interest rates, inflation roars even louder. Not since Jimmy Carter has a Democrat been so insistent on inflating the money supply. 

For decades, the Left has amplified former Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s 2008 dream that the government must spike fuel costs up to European levels. That was seen as the best way to force unsophisticated Americans to quit burning gas and transition to renewable energy. Biden took that sermon seriously. 

He canceled federal energy leases. He shut down ANWR. He canceled pipelines and warned the oil industry its days were numbered. Biden has done more than any other Democrat to ensure fossil fuels were unaffordable, forcing America’s supposedly unthinking consumers to drive less or consider ditching their gas-engine cars altogether. 

The hard American Left always wanted unlimited illegal immigration. Biden agreed and destroyed the southern border as we knew it. 

The result is that in less than two years, nearly 3 million illegal aliens have surged into the United States. Nearly all of them arrived unvaccinated, untested, and unaudited at a time of a COVID pandemic. 

Biden worries little that record numbers of Americans are dying from drugs that now pour across the border. Cartels became richer and more powerful than ever under his watch, while child traffickers were freed from worries. 

Media Watcher Touts J6 Committee TV Show as ‘Civics Lesson.’ Hardly. By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/07/25/media-watcher-touts-j6-committee-tv-show-as-civics-lesson-hardly-n1615578

“This is an embarrassing kangaroo court on the same shame scale as the DOJ sending FBI agents to investigate parents going to school board meetings.But civics lesson?What a joke.”

CNN’s Brian Stelter touted the popularity of the January 6 Committee TV show, which ended its “summertime series,” as he called it, with boffo ratings. Considering the hearings were shown on most broadcast networks, that’s hardly a grand feat.

However, one of the more ridiculous observations about this series of one-sided hearings was made by a media “expert” who was a guest on Stelter’s “Reliable Sources” program.

David Zurawik, a former Baltimore Sun media critic turned professor, said the one-sided made-for-TV show “starring” lawmakers awkwardly reading pre-written speeches on teleprompters was a “civics lesson” for young Americans.

Dark Money Groups Are Funding The Left’s Court-Packing Agenda By: Hayden Ludwig

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/25/dark-money-groups-are-funding-the-lefts-court-packing-agenda/

A left-wing dark money group is pushing the Democratic Party to endorse remaking the judicial branch via court packing.

It’s telling that House Democrats unveiled their latest effort to pack the Supreme Court at an event hosted by “dark money.” Hidden donors pushing an unpopular, radical agenda from the shadows is the left’s modus operandi.

Meet Take Back the Court, the “dark money” group that claims credit for “mov[ing] the window on court expansion” from the fringe to the Democratic Party’s mainstream—proof that the activist tail is wagging the Democratic dog.

We’re told by these far-left activists that the Supreme Court’s “extremist majority” is too politicized because it was “stolen” by right-wing boogeymen, who’ve captured the entire appointment and confirmation process with “dark money.” So Take Back the Court plans to put the fix in by adding four new seats for card-carrying “progressives,” scheme enthusiasts believe couldn’t possibly backfire in the future. 

The lead sponsor of their preferred bill, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., believes the current Supreme Court is “at crisis with itself and with our democracy.” Worse, it’s threatening to “usurp the power of the legislative and executive branches.” In a flash, Democrats have rediscovered federalism. Although Johnson’s bill has been gathering dust for a year, Take Back the Court is working to keep it on life support. Yet a closer look at the group itself ought to raise some eyebrows.

Oddities abound. Oddity #1: Take Back the Court is run by Aaron Belkin, a self-described dancer and San Francisco State University professor specializing in “sexuality in the armed forces.”