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September 2022

We’re ‘Better Off’ Under Biden? Who Is Obama Kidding?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/12/were-better-off-under-biden-who-is-obama-kidding/

When he wasn’t admiring his White House portrait, Barack Obama managed to say a nice thing about President Joe Biden. He must have been joking, though, because what he said defies reality.

“Joe, it is now America’s good fortune to have you as president,” Obama said. “The country is better off than when you took office. We should all be deeply grateful for that.”

Our “good fortune”? Let’s review just how much “better off” we all are thanks to Biden and his fellow Democrats.

COVID deaths: When Biden took office on the promise that he had a plan that would end COVID, the official death count was 424,318. Today it is over 1.044 million. In other words, there have been nearly 620,000 COVID deaths on Biden’s watch. And that’s despite all the interventions Biden claimed would end the pandemic. Are the families of those 620,000 people better off?

Inflation: Despite the recent decline in pump prices, gasoline costs 91% more than it did on January 2021, according to the Consumer Price Index. Food prices are up 14%. Overall prices have climbed 13% in the time Biden has been president. To put that last number in perspective, the overall increase in the CPI during President Donald Trump’s entire four years in office was just 7%.

Real earnings: How about workers, are they better off? While wages have climbed, they haven’t nearly kept pace with Bidenflation. As a result, workers have seen their real wages decline by 5%, which works out to an effective average pay cut of $2,726 a year. Does that, in Obama’s mind, make them better off?

The unlearned lessons of 9/11 A short memory may be helpful as a coping mechanism, but it is deadly in matters of foreign policy. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-unlearned-lessons-of-9-11/ (September 11, 2022 / JNS) Sunday marks the twenty-first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The magnitude of the audacious assault on key symbols of American greatness and power—the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia—was so extreme that it was likened to an apocalypse. Footage of […]

That Day, Yet Again Twenty-one years later, how many Americans still don’t know our enemy? by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/that-day-yet-again/ When the U.S. entered World War II, the director Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life) left Hollywood and, at the age of 44, enlisted in the Army, where General George C. Marshall put him to work making pictures for the war effort. The films, several of which were released under the umbrella title Why […]

On September 11, Kamala Harris Likens Trump Supporters to the 9/11 Terrorists By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/09/11/on-september-11-kamala-harris-likens-trump-supporters-to-the-9-11-terrorists-n1628541 Old Joe Biden said it during his ominous black-and-red speech on September 1: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” On Sunday, the twenty-first anniversary of the September 11, 2001, jihad terror attacks that killed nearly three thousand people, Chuck Todd on Meet the […]

Yokel Wokeism Personnel is policy, especially at the university level, so stakeholders of an institution must learn to recognize the warning signs of wokeness. By Andrew Cuff

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/10/yokel-wokeism/

On April 8, a Hillsdale College professor named David Azerrad gave a spirited lecture at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, advancing arguments conservatives have heard many times before. In his talk, Azerrad attacked practices such as affirmative action, disparate-impact law, and other privileges that have been accorded to non-white Americans as supposed recompense for past racist injustices.

Azerrad used some provocative rhetoric, including the phrase “black privilege” (a play on the ubiquitous “white privilege”), a reference to America’s “semi-official racial hierarchy,” and observed that Vice President Kamala Harris’ skin color was one reason she was chosen as Joe Biden’s running mate. He ended with an exhortation that no American should find controversial: “We either develop the stomach for color-blindness, treating everybody equally under the law, not discriminating . . . or we decide to tear down our civilization in this mad quest to achieve equal racial outcomes.”

The talk was part of a conference at St. Vincent’s Center for Political and Economic Thought, a conservative institute for research and education that has hosted many contentious speakers and debates in decades past. It was slotted as the 2022 installment of CPET’s Culture and Policy series, titled “Politics, Policy, and Panic: Governing in Times of Crisis.” The conference featured a number of high-profile speakers, including health-policy expert Scott Atlas and Brownstone Institute founder Jeffrey Tucker, who attacked politicians’ use of the COVID-19 pandemic to unjustly seize and centralize power. As a Latrobe resident and adjunct professor at St. Vincent, I attended the conference and had lunch with Azerrad just before he spoke.

The aftermath of the talk was far more momentous than the talk itself, which generated a heated question-and-answer session but not the usual chants, disruptive behavior, or physical violence that are now commonplace on American campuses. Graduating senior Joseph LaForest informed me, “Many more St. Vincent students supported Dr. Azerrad’s talk than the media has reported. Groupthink is not something that characterizes me or my peers.” Azerrad confirmed this as well: he stayed at St. Vincent for a couple days after his talk and numerous students and faculty came up to greet and thank him.

The university administration, on the other hand, lost its mind.

The Biden Administration Is Engaged in a Massive Censorship Campaign By Kenin M. Spivak

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/09/biden-administration-engaged-in-a-massive-censorship-campaign/

In a federal lawsuit, discovery reveals a multi-agency effort to censor and suppress voices that disagree with administration policies.

The bedrock of American democracy, the First Amendment, prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging the freedom of speech.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly applied this prohibition to executive actions, as well.

The Biden administration’s campaign to censor, demonetize, and suppress dissenting voices on social media is much broader than previously known, as demonstrated by an amended complaint filed last month in federal district court in the case of Missouri v. Biden. The complaint, by the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general along with the New Civil Liberties Alliance on behalf of leading health-care professionals, provides strong evidence of the administration’s vigorous campaign to coerce and collude with social-media companies in suppressing and deplatforming criticism of the administration as well as views with which it disagrees on subjects such as Covid, elections, the Hunter Biden laptop, and climate change, among others.

The evidence shows that at least 80 senior officials have participated in a concerted federal enterprise involving at least eleven federal agencies, including the White House, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Office of the Surgeon General, Census Bureau, and FBI. The manifestly unconstitutional public–private partnership between the administration and Big Tech disregards Chief Justice Warren Burger’s warning that it is “axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

Responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and emails produced in discovery show that White House, DHS, and HHS officials flagged specific content and examples of content for censorship, including factually accurate dissenting views, under the guise of suppressing “domestic terrorism.”

The Forgetting of 9/11 Alexander Riley

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-forgetting-of-9-11/ How did this coordinated mass murder become so irrelevant? I have written a lot about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 over the years, including a book on United Flight 93, which went down a few hours from my home in central Pennsylvania. In much of that work, I argued for the importance […]

Biden declares war on half the country The malignant and divisive spirit of his speech will not soon be quelled Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/biden-declares-war-on-half-the-country/

Joe Biden’s speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall on Thursday was one of the most remarkable in living memory. By “remarkable,” I hasten to add that I do not mean “good.” On the contrary, it was a breathtaking act of what the psychoanalysts call “projection,” blaming others for the bad things you do yourself.

The speech itself was a malignant act of demagoguery that will have colonels and generalissimos everywhere catching their breath with envy. The neo-totalitarian stage set, replete with red lighting effects and military personal flanking the shouting, gesticulating Biden, was right out of central casting. Next time, perhaps Biden will wear epaulettes along with his signature aviators.

The speech was billed as a reflection on the “soul of the nation.” Remember, Biden was sold to the country as Mr. Normality, as someone who would bind up the nations’s wounds after four years of the bad, horrible, no good, unacceptable, supremely divisive Donald Trump.

It hasn’t worked out that way, notwithstanding Trump’s occasional zingers and rhetorical molotov cocktails that have kept the fires of outrage burning. In this respect, Biden’s speech typified the new Democratic dispensation, according to which the world is divided sharply in two. The good guys are those who espouse the Democratic agenda. The bad guys are anyone who dissents.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

 

Here in Israel, the approaching Jewish New Year also heralds in a new era. More Israeli medical innovations to end the misery of Cancer and Coronavirus; and others that regenerate cells and sharpen the mind. An Israeli advisor to the new UN President and more major advances in Israel’s relations with Muslim countries. Israeli tech navigated the first autonomous ship and a new Israeli super-food could feed the world. Israeli business successes in space, at sea, and on the road. Israeli firsts in badminton and wrestling. The first orthodox Jew to lead the modern Israeli army; and new discoveries of Biblical-era treasures in excavations under Jerusalem.  Michael Ordman

And to those who herald the anti-Semitic diatribes of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction Movement, here is the real B.D.S from Israel:

 

BOLD,DECISIVE, SCIENCE to bring hope and succor to the entire world…..rsk

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Starving brain tumors. (TY UWI & TPS) Tel Aviv University scientists have discovered that brain cells called astrocytes, which normally support brain function, are highjacked by tumors to block the immune system and feed the tumors. The scientists eliminated the astrocytes in the lab, and within days the brain tumors died.
https://en-lifesci.tau.ac.il/news/2022/braint_breakrheough  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPqUfA4pccU
 
Proteins in the lungs can fight cancer. Scientists from Israel’s Technion Institute and Sheba Medical Center have discovered that proteins in lung fluid, known as HLA peptides, store information that can detect types of lung cancer. The HLA molecules contain antigens that can stimulate the immune system to destroy tumors.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/lung-fluid-may-provide-basis-for-cancer-treating-vaccines-israeli-research/
https://jitc.bmj.com/content/10/5/e003733
 
Two antibodies kill nearly all coronavirus strains. Tel Aviv University researchers have identified two antibodies, TAU-1109 and TAU-2310, from recovered coronavirus patients that are 95% effective in neutralizing Covid-19 variants. When concentrated, they can be the basis for a one-time booster for all.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/coronavirus/1662546747-new-israeli-research-could-make-covid-vaccines-unnecessary   https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03739-5
 
“My Cholesterol”. Israel’s Hello Heart (see here previously) has launched a new cholesterol management feature. ‘My Cholesterol’ allows users to easily track and understand their cholesterol levels, and provides personalized recommendations, to encourage positive lifestyle changes to improve health.
https://www.helloheart.com/press/hello-heart-announces-a-groundbreaking-feature-for-managing-cholesterol
 
Regenerating gums. Israel’s BioChange has developed CellFoam™ technology – a bio-adhesive 3D foam structure that forms a scaffold to stimulate repair of damaged cells. BioChange’s first product is ReGum™ – a regenerative implant, for the treatment of periodontitis in animals. A human version is also in development.
https://biochange.life/regum-a-regenerative-implant-for-gum-tissue-repair/
 
Stay sharp. A solution that delays cognitive decline and reduces the risk for dementia can have a huge benefit to society. Israel’s CogniShape sends users three scientifically based 5-minute brain-exercises each day to strengthen the mind and sharpen memory. Thousands of US users are signed up (for free) including this editor.
https://www.cognishape.com/  https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1q0dzayo
 
Ukrainian refugees become EMTs. Israeli NGO United Hatzalah in Jerusalem has trained 10 members of the Breslev community from Uman Ukraine, to be Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs). The new graduates hope to return to Uman and use their acquired skills in the region.
https://www.jns.org/10-ukrainian-refugees-train-with-united-hatzalah-to-become-emts/
 
18-year-old saves sister’s life. 18-year-old Moriah had just completed a first-aid course with emergency NGO United Hatzalah, when she saw her 6-year-old sister Miriam choking on a candy. Moriah remembered the Heimlich maneuver. Within a few seconds the candy came out and Miriam started breathing once again.
https://israelrescue.org/blog/i-saved-my-sisters-life-thanks-to-a-first-aid-course-i-took-with-the-ten-kavod-project/
 
 

DANIEL GREENFIELD: IT’S 9/13

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Daniel+Greenfield+

As another 9/11 anniversary arrives, we are not in 9/10, a world before the fall of the towers, nor 9/12, the world that was born in the aftermath of the attacks, rather we are in 9/13.

In 9/13, the attacks of September 11 are not considered especially significant. 

In 9/13, years have passed without significant Islamic terrorist attacks taking place on American soil. In past surveys, concern about Islamic terrorism ranks in the low single digits behind everything else.

In 9/13, culture wars, COVID, pronouns and other concerns have vastly eclipsed not only the barbaric mass murder of thousands, but the recognition that we are at war. And that war is far from over.

In 9/13, the people who once specialized in talking about the threat of Islam have increasingly moved on. And it’s hard to blame them. No one really wants to hear it anymore. It’s yesterday’s news.

In 9/13, Mehmet Oz is the GOP Senate candidate, and he’s not the only one, Saudi Arabia is our ally again and the vast majority of Americans polled don’t think that there’s anything wrong with Islam.

America’s Islamic population is growing. The open border doesn’t just bring in drug dealers and gang members, but massive numbers of people from the Muslim world. The Afghan airlift and visas will probably end up importing at least a quarter of a million as family reunification kicks in. Our national demographics are being transformed with the same eventual outcome as Europe.

But it’s 9/13. When I write articles about Islam, they perform worse than anything else. And I don’t have the same raw feeling toward the day that I used to. The ash used to haunt my nightmares. I snuck past the law enforcement and military presence downtown to make it to the site, the twisted mess of what was left, because I needed to know up close that what I had seen was real. But it’s not the same.

I hope it is for you. But I don’t think it is for most of us.

Back then, afterward, I wondered how it was possible to move on and to forget. I was still young then and I concluded that the answer had to be time. With time, pain dulls, what seems fresh grows stale. Such things were abstractions then. I hadn’t lived through phases of history or seen generations change. 

That’s no longer true. I’ve seen how people can change. How they can go mad. And how they can forget.

9/13 is all about forgetting.

9/13 means we’ve done it. We fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s time to move on now. Maybe take a day to remember the people who died in the towers, in a field, bow our heads and go on with what really matters today.

What’s the alternative? Fighting a forever war?

After WWI, most people were done with world wars. But world wars weren’t done with them. That’s a poor analogy because the Jihad isn’t some nationalistic European grudge match. It’s a thousand-year assault on the rest of the world that will not stop just because we’ve decided to move on. 

Early on WW2, wags joked that it was the Bore War because nothing seemed to be happening on the western front. The jokes made sense at the time. But they stopped being funny really fast. 

We’re in the Bore War now. But thousand-year-old wars don’t remain boring.

Americans recalibrate quickly. We believe that the world is always changing. TikTok, machine learning, quiet quitting, this week’s trend. The past is… past. We quickly forgot about the airline hijackings once they became yesterday’s news. We’re more than ready to forget Islamic terrorism all over again.

But Islam does not forget. 

Reality is what exists even when you stop paying attention to it. Ideology and opinion don’t matter. Marxist ideologies claim to know the future and believe it will be dramatically different from the past. But the only reliable way to predict history, as Patrick Henry told a bunch of men long since dead, is with the lamp of experience. The best way to know the future is to know the past.

And sometimes that may even mean living in the past.

Living in the nanosecond has not served our sanity, our reality or our culture very well. But it means that we are always leaving things behind. History keeps vanishing in the rearview mirror. The outrage of the moment fills our minds. And then the next and the one after that. And all the others to come.

September 11 is not just a day. It was a wake- up call. And many of us woke up. But it’s easier to wake up then it is to stay awake. And yet the war we’re in isn’t going anywhere. It’s only getting worse.

Islamists and Islamic terrorists accomplished their main purposes which were to drag America into political and military engagements with them, ones that they were bound to win through sheer staying power, while they infiltrated our political system and spurred massive immigration into our country. 

Islamic terrorism became a partisan issue. And then it ceased to be even that. Democrats have embraced Islam and Republicans, as usual, are tagging along for the ride. Even the conservative landscape is dotted with apologists, truthers, conspiracists and other sympathizers. Meanwhile we’re losing. 

The demographic conditions are coming into place for a next wave of Islamic terrorism which will depend not on internationally coordinated attacks, but domestic terror cells following up on the ‘lone wolves’ like the Boston Marathon bomber and the Pulse nightclub shooter.

Every few weeks another Islamic terror plot is broken up. I wrote about them sometimes. Sometimes someone even reads the article.

It’s 9/13 after all.

Before 9/11, I had a sense of a dimly understood future rushing toward us. I still have that sense now. 

Islamic terrorism is not the only thing that matters. It’s not the only thing that will determine our survival. But it is one of those things. And it’s the one that we’ve forgotten.