FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Joe Biden Gets Tested in Iraq The world is watching how he responds to an attack on U.S. forces.

Posted By on February 17th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-gets-tested-in-iraq-11613497028?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Joe Biden has said his Presidency won’t be a third Obama term, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to prove it. The latest comes after a rocket attack against the U.S.-led coalition in Erbil, Iraq.

“Initial reports indicate that the attacks killed one civilian contractor and injured several members of the Coalition, including one American service member and several American contractors,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday. He added that he had told the leader of Kurdistan’s regional government that Washington would help “to investigate and hold accountable those responsible.” America’s adversaries will be watching, especially in Tehran.

An investigation is under way, but it’s hard to believe a Shiite militia allied with Iran isn’t behind the attack. The group Awliya Al Dam, or Guardians of Blood, has claimed responsibility. U.S. and Iraqi officials say smaller organizations like this have been linked to better known Iranian proxies such as Kataib Hezbollah. SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups’ online activity, reports that Awliya Al Dam has vowed more violence after the latest incident.

Iranian proxies launched several rocket attacks on U.S. and allied forces in 2019 and 2020. Their goal is to drive out the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops that assist the Iraqi military, provide intelligence against a return of Islamic State, and limit malign Iranian influence in the country. Retaliatory strikes won’t put a complete stop to such aggression, but the right retaliation can degrade the militias’ abilities. Inaction could invite more brazen attacks.

Before Donald Trump ordered the retaliatory attack on Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, many warned such a response would lead to a full-scale war. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tweeted that Mr. Trump “can’t do anything.” Mr. Biden doesn’t need to escalate to Mr. Trump’s level, but it’s worth reminding Tehran that he isn’t Barack Obama —and the U.S. can do something.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Turley: One of Raskin’s Claims About Trump Was ‘Breathtaking’ and ‘Chilling’ Cortney O’Brien

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2021/02/16/turley-one-of-raskins-claims-about-trump-was-breathtaking-and-chilling-n2584741

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley followed last week’s impeachment trial against former President Trump very closely. Turley was the only witness called by Republicans to participate in the first trial against Trump in 2019, when the president faced charges after discussing the Bidens and corruption on a phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. At the time, Turley explained that “impeachment has to be based on proof, not presumptions.”

Turley found several more glaring holes in the Democrats’ arguments last week as they tried to convict him on inciting an insurrection. One argument in particular Turley found to be “breathtaking” and “chilling” – when lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin (MD) suggested that Trump was guilty because he refused to show up and testify. 

“If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021,” Rep. Raskin wrote to Trump, essentially arguing that the former president needed to testify or his silence equals guilt.

On his blog, Turley explained that Raskin was misleading senators because Trump’s decision is not unprecedented:

“Presidents have historically not testified at impeachment trials.  One reason is that, until now, only sitting presidents have been impeached and presidents balked at the prospect of being examined as head of the Executive Branch by the Legislative Branch. Moreover, it was likely viewed as undignified and frankly too risky.  Indeed, most defense attorneys routinely discourage their clients from testifying in actual criminal cases because the risks outweigh any benefits. Finally, Trump is arguing that this trial is unconstitutional and thus he would be even less likely to depart from tradition and appear as a witness.”

Turley said that Raskin’s statement “conflicts with one of the most precious and revered principles in American law that a refusal to testify should not be used against an accused party.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

As Border Crisis Worsens, White House Announces New Asylum Processing Program Katie Pavlich

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/02/16/white-house-announces-new-asylum-processing-program-n2584823

The Biden administration announced a new asylum processing program Tuesday as the illegal immigration crisis on the U.S. southern border continues to get worse. 

Starting February 19, the United States will begin to process eligible individuals in the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP) program to pursue their asylum cases in the US, working closely with the Government of Mexico, as well as international and non-governmental organizations. Individuals should not take any action at this time and should remain where they are to await further instructions. We will soon announce a virtual registration process that will be accessible from any location,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Deputy National Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall released in a joint statement. “Once registered, eligible individuals will be provided additional information about where and when to present themselves.  Individuals should not approach the border until instructed to do so.”

 Two weeks ago, President Biden gutted a series of Trump Administration policies that cut down on asylum fraud.

“We caution people seeking to immigrate to the United States that our borders are not open, and that this is just the first phase in the administration’s work to reopen access to an orderly asylum process. This new process applies to individuals who were returned to Mexico under the MPP program and have cases pending before the Executive Office for Immigration Review,” the statement continues. “Individuals outside of the United States who were not returned to Mexico under MPP or who do not have active immigration court cases will not be considered for participation in this first phase of this program and should await further instructions. If you seek entry into the US and do not have an active MPP case, you will be immediately expelled and will not be permitted to remain in the United States.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Suicide Of The Humanities-Rod Dreher

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/suicide-of-the-humanities-dan-el-padilla-peralta-classics/

This NYT profile of Dan-el Padilla Peralta, a radical Princeton Classics scholar, epitomizes what is wrong with the academic humanities in this radical era, and how dangerous the radicalization is to all of us.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta is a black Dominican Classics scholar at Princeton. He is also the leading figure in a move to tear down the field of Classics, which is the study of Ancient Greece and Rome. He came to this country as a small child when his mother required medical treatment in New York for complications related to the impending birth of his younger brother. After the brother was born, the family decided to stay in the US illegally. Eventually the father went back to the Dominican Republic; the mother and the children remained in the US, trying to regularize their immigration status.

As a nine-year-old boy living in a Chinatown homeless shelter, Padilla started reading about history. A child’s textbook about the Classical world lit a fire in his mind. An older New Yorker saw the child reading a big book about Napoleon Bonaparte, and decided to help him get a good education. Padilla went to an excellent school in New York, on scholarship, and excelled. Then:

Years passed before Padilla started to question the way the textbook had presented the classical world to him. He was accepted on a full scholarship to Princeton, where he was often the only Black person in his Latin and Greek courses. “The hardest thing for me as I was making my way into the discipline as a college student was appreciating how lonely I might be,” Padilla told me. In his sophomore year, when it came time to select a major, the most forceful resistance to his choice came from his close friends, many of whom were also immigrants or the children of immigrants. They asked Padilla questions he felt unprepared to answer. What are you doing with this blanquito stuff? How is this going to help us? Padilla argued that he and others shouldn’t shun certain pursuits just because the world said they weren’t for Black and brown people. There was a special joy and vindication in upending their expectations, but he found he wasn’t completely satisfied by his own arguments. The question of classics’ utility was not a trivial one. How could he take his education in Latin and Greek and make it into something liberatory? “That became the most urgent question that guided me through my undergraduate years and beyond,” Padilla said.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Life in DeSantis’s Florida: Time Travel to America Biden and Democrat governors’ approach couldn’t be more different than the one this Republican governor has taken. George Parry

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://spectator.org/desantis-florida-covid/

At the end of January I watched a video message from the commissioners of the suburban Philadelphia county where my wife and I reside. According to them, it may take Pennsylvania up to a year to administer COVID vaccinations to all persons over the age of 65. We oldsters (my wife and I are 76) were told to register with the county and prepare for a long wait.

This information decided the issue of whether or not we should take up residence in Florida for the remaining winter months. Not only would the weather be more congenial, according to our Florida friends, but our chances of receiving the COVID vaccine in a timely manner also would increase exponentially.

And, in fact, within 11 days of our arrival in Florida, we received our first jabs of the Moderna vaccine and will receive our second doses in mid-March. We are now among the 2,355,792 persons who have been vaccinated in Florida as of February 13, 2021.

The comparison between Florida’s efficient handling of COVID vaccinations, under the leadership of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and that of Pennsylvania, under Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf, could not be more telling. And the favorable comparisons don’t end there.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Study finds CDC inflated COVID numbers by 1,600% Concludes health authorities violated federal law By Art Moore

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://www.wnd.com/2021/02/study-finds-cdc-inflated-covid-numbers-1600/

A peer-reviewed study contends the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention violated federal law by inflating Coronavirus fatality numbers.

The figures were inflated by at least 1,600%, according to the Public Health Initiative of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, which published the study, titled “COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Retrospective.”

The study asserts that the CDC willfully violated multiple federal laws, including the Information Quality Act, Paperwork Reduction Act and Administrative Procedures Act, reported the National File.

In January, as WND reported, the World Health Organization admitted the “gold-standard” PCR tests used to determine whether or not a person is infected with COVID-19 are not reliable on the first try and a second test might be needed.

That fact, the National File notes, corresponds with the CDC’s “quiet admission that it blended viral and antibody test results for its case numbers and that people can test positive on an antibody test if they have antibodies from a family of viruses that cause the common cold.”

Among the notable findings in the study is the conclusion that the CDC “illegally enacted new rules for data collection and reporting exclusively for COVID-19 that resulted in a 1,600% inflation of current COVID-19 fatality totals,” the watchdog group All Concerned Citizens said in a statement provided to National File.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

When abundance breeds contempt By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/when-abundance-breeds-contempt/

 In a recent phone call, a friend complained about the pressure that the Israeli government, media and much of the public have been applying to citizens who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
As someone who felt that she had been virtually “bullied” into getting inoculated, she was protesting in particular the latest carrot-and-stick element of the campaign to rid the country of coronavirus: a proposal to grant certain privileges to those possessing the Health Ministry double-dose certificate.

Among the epidemiological benefits being discussed—aside from the existing exemption from quarantine after exposure to infection—are unhindered entrance into malls, theaters, stadiums and other venues when they reopen.

“Why does it matter whether everyone complies?” she asked, pointing to the warning by officialdom that even after full vaccination, the virus can still strike and be spread. As a result, we’ve been told, mask-wearing and social distancing will continue to be required for a long time.

She clearly hadn’t heard the more encouraging research revealing a serious drop in viral load after a single shot—indicating not only a less severe reaction to infection, but a lower chance of transmitting the virus to others. Nevertheless, she is not alone in her resentment on behalf of the anti-coronavirus-vaxxers.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Lee Smith Nails It, The Elites “Want Us To Know” They Hold all Power and Control

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2021/02/15/lee-smith-nails-it-the-elites-want-us-to-know-they-hold-all-power-and-control/

Adam Townsend had a great podcast interview with journalist Lee Smith last week, and for the first time Smith eloquently hit on something CTH has discussed for several years.

The “elites” writ large are so open in their current proclamations of being beyond reach, because they want us to know their power removes them from any accountability.

Often we see people ask ‘why are they so openly admitting to their wrongdoing’?  Within the answer I have written frequently ‘they simply do not care’…

It is not a sense of boundless hypocrisy that drives them to showcase their disconnect, the disconnect is purposefully part of the ideological advancement of their goal.  FIRST, the segment, WATCH informative 5 minute interview HERE.  

The question “do the elites care if we know” is accurately answered by “they want people to know.”  The outlook that elites are hypocritical is the wrong nuance to what is visible. Their openness about their untouchable constructs is part of their purpose.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

NOBEL “MOSTLY PEACEFUL” PRIZE?  by David Almasi

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

https://nationalcenter.org/project21/2021/02/04/nobel-mostly-peaceful-prize/

A socialist member of the Norwegian parliament has nominated Black Lives Matter (BLM) for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. If the Marxist movement that caused so much bedlam in America’s cities over the past several months ends up beating out fellow known nominees such as Stacey Abrams, President Donald Trump and former Trump advisor Jared Kushner for what’s becoming an increasingly dubious honor, perhaps it should be renamed the Nobel “Mostly Peaceful” Prize.

Project 21 Co-Chairman Stacy Washington panned the prize process, saying it “doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

During a panel discussion on the Newsmax program “Wake Up America,” host Rob Finnerty asked Stacy about the BLM nomination. (The discussion starts about four minutes into the video segment below, which also addresses the populist rebuke of Wall Street hedge funds.)

To make her point, Stacy noted that – despite reservations after the fact – the Nobel Committee won’t take back the prize it gave to President Barack Obama in 2009 for “not do[ing] much.” And what Obama did do as his presidency progressed has additionally earned him the titles “warmonger” and “drone king” as well as criticism directly from her – an Air Force veteran – for the “multiple deployments [that] harm our troops” that had “no strategic goal.”

Calling BLM “a group that raised an army… last year to burn America down to the tune of over $2 billion,” Stacy added:

The Nobel Peace Prize used to be something we’d look [for]. We’d wait for the list to come out. We’d see the people who were nominated. We’d look up what they’ve done…

Now it’s just another accolade for a leftist or leftist organization or movement.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: ON TULSI GABBARD

Posted By on February 16th, 2021

I often ask if there is a single Democrat in Congress with integrity and independence. There was. Tulsi Gabbard retired from the House District-2 in Hawaii.

She is an Iraq War veteran and the first Hindu elected to Congress. She is a liberal who continually ruffles “progressive” feathers.   She’s met with Donald Trump, and she would not march in the anti-Trump women’s rally.   Her views on foreign policy, immigration, and gun laws run contra current progressive cant. She opposed the first impeachment and is against open borders.

In September 2020 she warned:

“We’re getting closer and closer to Election Day now, and it is critical to remember that the strength of our democracy lies in the integrity of our elections, that every one of us has to have faith that our vote will count. But right now, there are still many states in our country that allow for something called ballot harvesting. This is a system that allows for third parties to collect and deliver ballots for other people, potentially large numbers of people.Unfortunately, ballot harvesting has allowed for fraud and abuse to occur by those who could tamper with or discard ballots to try to sway an election.” (https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/09/29/tulsi-gabbard-raises-)

Her recent words: January 27, 2021 :

“The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let’s be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs, and oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally-protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance, are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol.”( https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/01/26/gabbard-sounds-the-alarm-leftists-are-plotting-kgb-style-surveillance-of-conservatives-n1411860)

Senator Mazie Hirono, whose pulse is higher than her I.Q. was re-elected in 2018 but maybe Gabbard could run against Hawaii’s “progressive” Democrat Brian Schatz in 2 years.