ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Jews, Christians Are Our Enemy by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16335/palestinians-jews-christians

The prospect of Jews praying inside a synagogue in an Arab country seems to worry Palestinian Muslim figures more than the killing and wounding of thousands of Muslims and Christians in last week’s huge explosion at the port of the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Against this Palestinian hostility toward Jews, Christians, and peace with Israel, it is important that a new group called The Arab Council for Regional Integration, launched in London last year, is seeking to build a spirit of partnership that knows no borders between Jews and Arabs.

Such groups offer hope to those seeking peace and coexistence between Jews, Christians, and Arabs, and represent a counterforce to Muslim extremists who have nothing to offer their people but misery and bloodshed.

By rejecting the medical aid from the UAE — aimed at helping to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic — the Palestinians have scored another own-goal in demonstrating the depth of their ingratitude toward those who wish to assist their people. By coming out against interfaith tolerance and the building of a synagogue in an Arab country, the Palestinians are again proving that the conflict with Israel is not about borders or checkpoints, but about the very right of Jews, Christians or Israel to exist.

For the past few years, Palestinians have been waging a campaign to stop Jews from visiting Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, a place sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and other Palestinian groups continue to portray the visits as “violent incursions by extremist Jewish settlers,” even though many of the visitors are not extremists and do not live in settlements.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Faculty Demand a Racism Star Chamber at Princeton Another major university falls prey to the tyranny of group self-righteousness. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/faculty-demand-racism-star-chamber-princeton-richard-l-cravatts/

The death of a black man under the knee of a brutal policeman in Minneapolis sent shock waves of racial guilt throughout America, where protestors, led principally by Black Lives Matter, took to the streets to malign America’s troubled history with race and reignite the conversation about how to atone and pay for the country’s original sin of slavery and racial oppression. Not surprisingly, that same paroxysm of indignation immediately appeared on university campuses, which for decades had already been obsessing about and condemning what they perceive to be structural racism, a lack of sufficient inclusion and diversity, and both subtle and overt instances of racism that triggered minority students and supposedly hindered their attaining equity.   

Even though a university campus is the least likely place where students or faculty confront actual racism, from the moment they step foot on campus, students are tutored on how, even at some of the most elite educational institutions in the world, they are oppressed, intimidated by bigotry, hindered by systematic and structural racism, and even subject to unconscious, invisible, and latent racism. As if to confirm that universities remain petri dishes of racism, virtually every university has set up fiefdoms of administrative offices of inclusion, diversity, and equity dedicated solely to ferreting out any incidence of racism, bigotry, or bias and helping minority students to see themselves as perpetual victims of both real and imagined racism.

Leading the way in this relentless pursuit for this ever-present racism, Princeton’s Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity leads a bloated and costly fiefdom of oppression which includes a Senior Associate Director for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, an Assistant Director for Equity Compliance, an Equity and Diversity Specialist, a Director for Institutional Equity and EEO, an Equity and Diversity Specialist, not to mention three University Investigators mandated, one would assume, to ferret out bigotry and oppression.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Woke Supremacy Evan Sayet’s new book explains it all for you. Mark Tapson

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/woke-supremacy-mark-tapson/

If you are familiar with the wit and wisdom of conservative philosopher and comedian Evan Sayet from his first book, KinderGarden Of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks, or his lecture to the Heritage Foundation on the same topic – the most-viewed lecture in Heritage history, which the late Andrew Breitbart called “one of the five most important conservative speeches ever given” – or his illustrated faux children’s tale about climate change, Apocali Now, or his standup performances, then you know what an incisive and entertaining perspective Sayet brings to our national political conversation.

Now Sayet has authored a brand new, must-read book about the current political landscape: The Woke Supremacy: An Anti-Socialist Manifesto, available now. FrontPage Mag is proud to publish the following exclusive excerpt. Check it out below, and get your copy of Evan Sayet’s The Woke Supremacy:

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Trump Confronts Chinese Regime’s Technological Invasion Chinese apps used to spy on and hack Americans. Joseph Klein

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/trump-confronts-chinese-regimes-technological-joseph-klein/

The Chinese communist empire has weaponized social media, telecommunications and cloud computing to expand the reach of its infiltration and surveillance capabilities way beyond its borders. Americans’ personal data and intellectual property are prime targets for the regime’s malign activities, which have gone on for decades without any blowbacks of consequence. In fact, globalists have encouraged the integration of China into the world economy, falling prey to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu’s stratagem that “All warfare is based on deception.”  But the time has finally arrived for China to pay the piper, thanks to President Trump.   

The Trump administration is seeking to quarantine Chinese-owned apps and China’s digital infrastructure under its “Clean Network” program, announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on August 5th.

“The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” Secretary Pompeo said in his press statement. This represents a sharp ramp-up of the technology cold war between the United States and the communist regime.

The Clean Networks program includes the removal of “untrusted” Chinese-owned apps from U.S. mobile app stores like those run by Apple and Google. The Trump administration has previously targeted China’s ByteDance-owned TikTok’s United States operations, which the administration wants to either eliminate or require their complete sale (including the transfer of all relevant software code) to a U.S. company such as Microsoft.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Francis Menton: Chicago-Circling the Drain

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5

My first blog post on the subject of Chicago was way back in 2012. In that post, I placed Chicago in the special category of American cities that I called the “basket cases” — places with declining populations, astoundingly high rates of violent crime, in every case mostly black on black, and, of course, uninterrupted rule by leftist Democrats for generations. I had this to say about Chicago:

You may ask, is Chicago really basket case? . . . The downtown is in good shape, with new condos and office towers; the near north side is upscale and attractive.  But the population has gone from a peak of 3,620,962 in the 1950 census to just 2,695,598 in 2010.  [And if instead of staying downtown you take] the Green Line el south from the loop to the end of the line, . . . you will observe huge deteriorated public housing projects surrounded by vast vacant areas and abandoned private buildings.

The violent crime rate also clearly qualifies Chicago for the label of basket case. Murders hit a peak of 756 in 2016 (about 28 per hundred thousand people, compared to a rate for the U.S. as a whole of about 5 per 100,000). After a few years of modest declines, murders are on track to equal or top the 756 this year, with 440 through July. In fact, July 2020 just set a new record for most murders in a month, with 105.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Black Lives Matter terrorized families at the Chicago Ronald McDonald House By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/black_lives_matter_terrorized_families_at_the_chicago_ronald_mcdonald_house.html

Your daily reminder that mobs have neither morals nor conscience – and that the recent mobs are the Democrats’ domestic terrorism arm.

One of the appalling stories to emerge from the Black Lives Matter mob’s rampage in Chicago on Sunday night was the fact that looters attacked the Ronald McDonald House. Any American who’s watched television in the last 45 years knows about the Ronald McDonald House charity.

The charity, established in 1974, maintains houses near hospitals so that families with hospitalized children have a free, safe, and supportive place to stay. Often, children stay there as well when they have outpatient procedures. In Chicago on Sunday night, however, the Ronald McDonald House was no longer safe; it was terrifying.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

OMINOUS RUMBLINGS FROM THE RESISTANCE FEVER SWAMPS Byron York

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

http://click1.trkwashingtonexaminer.com/ViewMessage.do;jsessionid=C2CFC83D3551B665CB69EEDB61F85

Remember last week’s newsletter about the Transition Integrity Project? It’s the group of anti-Trump former government officials, political operatives, and journalists who held a war games exercise to look at various scenarios for the 2020 election.

Most news reports focused on the group’s assertion that President Trump would not leave office if he lost the vote, although in fact both of the group’s scenarios in which Joe Biden won ended with the defeated Trump leaving the White House and Biden taking office on inauguration day, January 20, 2021.

What most news reports did not tell you was that there was one scenario in which there was a clear victor and the loser refused to accept the results of the election. That was when Trump, as in 2016, lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College. In that scenario — an indisputable Trump victory by the process set out in the Constitution — Democrats and Biden refused to accept the result. They made wild demands in exchange for conceding, like statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, and breaking up California to add new Democratic senators. A standoff ensued. In the end, according to the Transition Integrity Project scenario, inauguration day arrived with the situation “unresolved.” The group’s report said: “It was unclear what the military would do in this situation.” Remember — this was a scenario in which President Trump clearly won re-election and Democrats refused to accept the results.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Nuclear to Replace Wind and Solar By Norman Rogers

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/nuclear_to_replace_wind_and_solar.html

If you still believe in the global warming hysteria movement, you should face reality and dump wind and solar for nuclear.

In the words of James Hansen, the scientist most responsible for promoting global warming, wind and solar are “grotesque” solutions for reducing CO2 emissions. Michael Shellenberger, a prominent activist, has the same opinion. Hansen and Shellenberger, as well as many other global warming activists, have come to the conclusion that nuclear energy is the only viable method of reducing CO2 emissions from the generation of electricity. Nuclear reactors don’t emit CO2. Coal and natural gas do.  Hydroelectric electricity does not emit CO2 either, but opportunities for expansion are limited. In the United States most of the good sites have already been developed.

Wind and solar are grotesque because there are many problems. Promoters of wind and solar simply lie about the problems. Reducing emissions of CO2 by one metric tonne, 1000 kilograms or 2204 pounds, is called a carbon offset. Carbon offsets are bought and sold, usually for less than $10 each.  If you build wind or solar plants to displace electricity from natural gas or coal plants, you will generate carbon offsets. Each carbon offset generated will cost about $60 if electricity from a coal plant is displaced. If electricity from a natural gas plant is displaced the cost per carbon offset will be about $160.  Wind and solar are expensive methods of generating carbon offsets.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris Lies Repeatedly in First Speech as Biden’s Running Mate By Kyle Smith

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-lies-repeatedly-in-first-press-conference-as-bidens-running-mate/

In her first speech since Joe Biden selected her as his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris told multiple lies. To wit:

“The president’s mismanagement of the pandemic has plunged us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Harris said.

False. The pandemic and its associated lockdowns, not the president, are responsible for the economic contraction. Donald Trump is not the president of the euro zone, which suffered through an even more dire economic contraction in the second quarter: minus 40.3 percent, on an annualized basis, as against minus 32.9 percent in the US. The U.K. suffered a contraction of 59.8 percent, also on an annualized basis. Donald Trump is not the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The U.S. economy did slightly better than Germany’s in the second quarter. And it’s questionable to compare the current crisis to the Great Depression, which was not only deep but lasted more than a decade. The U.S. added 1.8 million jobs in July and Goldman Sachs predicts 25 percent (annualized) GDP growth in the current third quarter, which would mark an end to the U.S. recession after two quarters. 

“Just look where [Trump and Mike Pence] have gotten us. . . . Millions of kids who cannot go back to school,” Harris said.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’s Relentless Pursuit of Power By David Harsanyi

Posted By on August 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/kamala-harris-relentless-pursuit-of-power/

There is no power Harris has held that she hasn’t abused.

T he New York Times contends that Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick Kamala Harris is a “pragmatic moderate,” which is either the usual misleading bias or a sign that the Overton Window is about to fall off the edge of the political spectrum. To judge Harris by her own words and deeds is to be confronted by a candidate who is more antagonistic towards the Constitution than perhaps any to appear on a presidential ticket in modern times — and maybe ever.

The fact that Harris will say and do anything for power is evident in her very acceptance of Biden’s offer. It’s going to be fascinating to watch Harris explain why she is running with man who only months ago she strongly insinuated was a racist. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me,” Harris explained, as she hit Biden on his history of working with segregationists to oppose busing laws in the 1970s.

It will be even more fascinating to hear the moral calculus Harris employs to rationalize running with a rapist. This isn’t George Bush and Ronald Reagan making up after tussling on “voodoo economics.” Concerning allegations of sexual misconduct against Joe Biden, Harris once said, “I believe them, and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it.” One of the women Harris was referring to was Tara Reade, whom accused Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she worked as an aide for the then Delaware senator. “I believe them” doesn’t lend it itself to much interpretation.