NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Phase-Four Flop The latest proposals have everything but a growth agenda.

Posted By on July 24th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-phase-four-flop-11595547924?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

As Washington debates how many more trillions of dollars to borrow and spend, we are in a familiar political spot. Democrats want to spend as much as they can on everything, while Republicans have no idea what they want. Guess how this is likely to turn out?

Democrats are united behind the $3 trillion Heroes Act that passed the House in May. This is on top of the nearly $3 trillion that Congress has already passed. Much of the latter hasn’t even been spent so far. But we are told Congress must double that amount or the economy will fall off a cliff on Aug. 1 when extra federal jobless benefits expire.

Yet the economy is recovering, albeit from a deep second quarter hole. The rapid jobs rebound of May and June has slowed as the virus swept through the South and West, and partial business shutdowns have resumed. But the economic free fall of the spring is over. The Federal Reserve’s financial backstops have reduced what some feared would be a surge of bankruptcies. All signs are that if the virus can be better contained, the economy can continue to recover through the end of the year.

In any case there’s almost nothing in the “phase four” proposals that would spur faster growth. The Senate GOP’s draft proposals contain Covid-specific liability protection for businesses that reopen. That would help, assuming it isn’t watered down in negotiations with Democrats. More money for testing and health care is arguably pro-growth if it helps Americans feel more secure in returning to work and school.

POLITICS Comments turned off

A Put-Up Job: The FBI, CIA, Mueller, and Schiff Investigate Trump-Russia Collusion: Charles Lipson

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/put-job

With so many big stories breaking, it’s hard to get attention even for important news about the FBI’s and CIA’s misdeeds. Still, the wrongdoing at James Comey’s FBI and John Brennan’s CIA was serious, as the news this week amply demonstrates.

On July 17,  we learned that the FBI knew, just as Trump’s presidency was beginning, that there was no evidence his campaign had colluded with Russia. That’s the significance of a memo written by FBI agent Peter Strzok in mid-February 2017 and just released.

The news matters for three reasons. First, almost all the public investigation and damaging narrative about “Trump-Russia collusion” came after investigators knew how little supporting evidence there was.

Second, the more we learn about the ensuing investigations, the more they look like concerted abuses of government authority. We give law-enforcement and intelligence agencies tremendous power so they can protect us; when they abuse that power, they need to be held accountable and reined in. That seldom happens to anyone in Washington’s sprawling bureaucracies. The Swamp protects its own within its gurgling ecosystem of power, profit, regulation, and rent-seeking. Just ask Lois Lerner.

Third, when the FBI, Department of Justice, and intelligence agencies act in biased, partisan, and illicit ways, they cut to the very heart of our constitutional democracy, damage our institutions, and undermine trust in them. That is exactly what happened in 2016 and afterward. Public trust was undermined by these prolonged investigations and the narrative about them. It will be undermined further as we learn how the investigators themselves likely pursued partisan goals, ignored crucial evidence, and broke laws to do it. (The counter-charge, already being made, is that exposing these violations is itself partisan.)

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

ROSEMARY BECCHI (R) FOR CONGRESS- NEW JERSEY DISTRICT 10

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://becchiforcongress.com/the-importance-of-the-united-states-israeli-alliance/
https://becchiforcongress.com/news/

https://becchiforcongress.com/news/
The Importance of the United States-Israeli Alliance: By Rosemary Becchi

I believe there is no alliance more important than that between the United States and Israel. It is a mutually beneficial alliance that allows both countries to advance the cause of freedom and security. Our countries are committed to the rule of law, human rights and freedom.

To preserve this relationship, the United States must aggressively confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and replace the Iranian nuclear deal (JCPOA) with an agreement that will completely block Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons, and ensuring that Iran can no longer spread terrorism around the world and to terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, that support and regularly attack Israel.

The United States must make clear that it stands with Israel by providing military assistance, insisting on the same commitment to the peace process from Palestinian leaders that Israel’s leaders have shown, and strengthening economic and political relations between the two countries.

I also believe that we must fight the troubling rise of anti-Semitism and the rise of the BDS movement around the world and here in the United States. I support President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a campaign promise past presidents made for decades, but which previous administrations failed to deliver.

Israel is a crucial ally, and support for Israel should be an issue that unites Americans across party lines. Unfortunately some in Washington, fueled by reckless rhetoric, are trying to make America’s relationship with Israel a divisive issue. And support for Israel, including in the US Congress, has never been in a more precarious position as it under attack on several fronts.

As a strong supporter of Israel, I will work across party lines to develop relationships with my colleagues built around our shared commitment to Israel and our shared values of democracy, freedom and diversity. I will also strongly advocate as a member of Congress against anti- Semitism that should have no place in Congress, our country or the world. And finally, I will support as a member of Congress the United States’ continued support of Israel both financially, diplomatically and militarily.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jewish apathy, Jewish privilege and antisemitism Whatever one feels about the danger that assimilation poses to Jewish continuity, juxtaposing it with mass murder is immoral.

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/jewish-apathy-jewish-privilege-and-antisemitism-636135

At a meeting on Monday of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, participants bemoaned the condition of world Jewry. The discussion centered on the implementation of a plan – approved earlier this month by the Israeli government – to protect Jewish communities abroad from extinction.

“We are swimming against the current,” said Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director-General Dvir Kahana, claiming that 80% of Jews outside of Israel “live comfortably” and feel no connection to their Judaism.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevitch concurred that “large segments of our nation are moving away from their Jewish identity and from Israel,” warning, “We have to wake up before it’s too late.”

Aside from the fact that the discussion itself is as old as the hills, and that the plan involves education and outreach – not exactly an innovative concept – it comes on the heels of reports that the COVID-19 pandemic is spurring many Jews to consider immigrating to Israel. Some are even in the actual process of doing so, though it means entering quarantine for two weeks upon arrival in the Holy Land.

So the pandemic may be doing more to encourage aliyah than any educational program requiring multi-millions in taxpayer shekels. And the last thing that Israelis have on their minds at this moment is funding greater competition in the work force. Indeed, the economic pressure felt by those who have lost their jobs, and by small business-owners whose enterprises are in jeopardy as a result of coronavirus closures, is not conducive to a sense of Jewish unity.

Israelis are human, after all. Not that they’re acting like it these days, mind you, engaging in violent riots more reminiscent of tantrums than expressions of political malaise. Such mob behavior is something to which American Jews have grown accustomed of late. Yet only those who wish to escape the cancel-culture chaos would consider Israel a welcome alternative.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Central European ‘Kulturkampf’ Nicholas T. Parsons

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/07-08/the-central-european-kulturkampf/

It is my good fortune that I currently live on the Buda side of the Danube in Pasarét, a name that supposedly combines the Serbian word paša and the Hungarian rét (meadow). The nomenclature Pasarét was actually “invented” in 1847 when many names of city regions were Magyarised. The folk etymology suggests a reference to Abdurrahmán Abdi Arnaut, the last pasha of Buda, who died in the reconquest of the city by the Habsburg armies in 1686. It is (in retrospect only, of course) rather a romantic notion that the rotund Turkish pasha would have taken his summer ease here in the former royal hunting grounds, no doubt enjoying the twelve delicious varieties of Hungarian pear so rhapsodically described by the seventeenth-century Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi. Some four hundred years later, the pasha’s meadow has become a pleasant and elegant residential district of the capital.

It has been a lovely spring here and lockdown has enabled one to enjoy Pasarét’s leafy avenues lined with what Yeats called the “great blossomer” (flowering chestnut), ash, sycamore, black poplars shedding their white pollen, sprays of white hawthorn and the acacia that produces Hungary’s wonderfully aromatic honey. The adjacent gardens of pre-First World War villas have been a riot of colour provided by wisteria, Japanese cherry, elderflower, blushing almond trees and magnolia. The birds are back and our family of red squirrels has been emboldened to resume death-defying circus runs along the telephone wires. With few exceptions May has been idyllically warm and sunny, often with a refreshing light breeze, but the streets have been surrealistically empty of humankind.

However, like Coleridge, I have been imprisoned in my lime-tree bower. Not, of course, because Hungary is the all-but-prison Left-liberals would have us believe, but due to the coronavirus lockdown. The country is beginning to emerge from the outbreak—at the time of writing (late May) there have been over 3600 cases and more than 473 deaths. The fatality rate (12.9 per cent) looks high, but there has been little testing, so it is reasonable to assume that the number of infections is actually very much higher. About 50 per cent of deaths have been persons over eighty years of age, almost all with “underlying health problems” (a medical euphemism for the assumption that many would have died rather soon in the natural course of events). Neighbouring Austria, a country with a similar population but four times the reported cases, currently has a fatality rate of only 3.9 per cent. Independent monitors have nevertheless accepted the Hungarian Health Minister’s statement that overall the country is in the bottom third sector in terms of coronavirus impact. This relatively good outcome (Poland seems to be another case in point) is insufficient to attract media attention, which has instead focused with venom on the decision passed through Parliament to allow the government emergency powers to act by decree.

MEDIA Comments turned off

New FBI Notes Re-Debunk Major NYT Story, Highlight Media Collusion To Produce Russia Hoax By Mollie Hemingway

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/23/new-fbi-notes-re-debunk-major-nyt-story-highlight-media-collusion-to-produce-russia-hoax/

The FBI official who ran the investigation into whether the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election privately admitted in newly released notes that a major New York Times article was riddled with lies, falsehoods, and “misleading and inaccurate” information. The February 2017 story was penned by three reporters who would win Pulitzers for their reporting on Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia.

The FBI’s public posture and leaks at the time supported the now-discredited conspiracy theory that led to the formation of a special counsel probe to investigate the Trump campaign and undermine his administration.

“We have not seen evidence of any individuals affiliated with the Trump team in contact with [Russian Intelligence Officials]. . . . We are unaware of ANY Trump advisors engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials,” former FBI counterespionage official Peter Strzok wrote of the Feb. 14, 2017 New York Times story “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” That story, which was based on the unsubstantiated claims of four anonymous intelligence officials, was echoed by a similarly sourced CNN story published a day later and headlined “Trump aides were in constant touch with senior Russian officials during campaign.”

Strzok’s notes are the latest factual debunking of these stories, which were previously shown to be false with the release of Robert Mueller’s special counsel report finding no evidence whatsoever in support of the Hillary Clinton campaign assertion that Trump affiliates colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. A report from the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on just one aspect of the investigation into Russia collusion — FBI spying on Trump campaign affiliates — also debunked these news reports.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hong Kong Is The New East Germany By Sumantra Maitra

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/23/hong-kong-is-the-new-east-germany/

Accepting three million Hong Kongers should not pose a huge burden to the five core Anglosphere countries. Right now, they need all the help they can get.

In a fierce but very typically British exchange, BBC editor Andrew Marr grilled the nonchalant Chinese ambassador to Britain, revealing amateur drone videos showing chained people boarding a train flanked on both sides by black-armored troops. In a time when Department of Homeland Security agents are decried by the U.S. speaker of the House as stormtroopers for defending federal properties, videos from China show what a genuine totalitarian system looks like.

A full city full of people is staring down the threat of Chinese force. Three weeks after Beijing imposed a new draconian national security law on Hong Kong, China has established a “national security education” base in the neighboring mainland city of Shenzhen to “re-educate” Hong Kong students who are deemed insufficiently patriotic. As the London Times reported:

The centre is charged with helping pupils from Hong Kong and from Macau to ‘enhance their constitutional and national awareness through education,’ according to Xinhua, the official news agency. Du Ling, a senior party official in Shenzhen, said the base would ‘plant seeds of national identity and patriotic spirit in the hearts of more Hong Kong and Macau youth.’

Beijing also touted teen-aged party apparatchiks who were quoted saying why this facility was important because “youth years are formative,” and Hong Kong youths need “correct theoretical guidance.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

It Looks Like the Czech Republic Might Get a Second Amendment By David Harsanyi

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-looks-like-the-czech-republic-might-get-a-second-amendment/

Well, sort of.

Following the Velvet Revolution, the newly formed Czech Republic passed a law legalizing the purchase of a firearm for citizens without criminal records. Although the former Czechoslovakia had a rich history of firearm production, under fascism and Communism personal ownership was largely forbidden.

Once the Czechs joined the European Union in 2004, the nation was bound to the EU’s stringent rules governing gun ownership. After the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in 2015, the first inclination of the EU was to make it even more difficult for citizens to defend themselves. The resulting European Firearms Directive placed new constraints — including an effective ban on most semi-automatic rifles — on member states, which were all expected to comply by 2019.

The only country to challenge the edict was the Czech Republic. And last year, it lost a case before the European Court of Justice. But ever since the European Firearms Directive passed, conservatives have been attempting to add the right to bear arms as one of the “fundamental human rights and freedoms.” It now looks like it may happen.

A few years ago, the amendment passed through the lower house of the Czech parliament but was stopped in the upper house. The proposed language read as so: “The right to defend one’s own life or the life of another person with a weapon is guaranteed under the conditions laid down by law.”

Since then, the center-right Civic Democratic Party has won a majority in the Czech Senate. And this week, the Czech government unexpectedly announced it would endorse the plan to add the language. The amendment now needs a 60 percent supermajority in both chambers to become — somewhat appropriately — only the second amendment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Systemic Racism Trap By Linda Chavez

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/23/the_systemic_racism_trap_143779.html

Is America a deeply racist society, whose very institutions perpetuate the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow? Unfortunately, to answer “No” — even a qualified “No” — is becoming harder by the day. Since the horrific killing of George Floyd, millions have taken to the streets to protest not just police violence but to insist that systemic racism infects everything, everywhere in the lives of African Americans and others of color.

If blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately more likely than whites to be shot by police, live in poverty, have higher unemployment rates, or die from COVID-19, racism must play a primary role — or so the narrative widely repeated on the streets and in the media goes. To suggest that these statistical snapshots of complicated problems do not lend themselves to easy conclusions is heresy. Already, some academics have been ostracized and others persuaded to withdraw legitimate research that provided a more nuanced analysis of police violence. To even question whether systemic racism and white privilege are pervasive today risks being mistaken for a racist or deemed hopelessly ignorant. But the story of race in America is both more difficult and complex and attempts to eradicate all disparities are likely to lead to bad fixes that end up doing real harm.

I have spent a professional lifetime studying the effects of race-based preferences in college admissions programs. Most colleges — large and small, public and private, undergraduate and post-graduate — admit black and Hispanic students with, on average, lower standardized test scores and high school grades than white and Asian students who are admitted. My Center for Equal Opportunity found that among Virginia’s public universities, for example, the most competitive schools in the state, namely University of Virginia and William and Mary, admitted black students with SAT scores that were, on average, 180 and 190 points lower, respectively, than whites, and 240 points lower than Asians admitted.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Today’s Revolutionaries Aren’t Like Their ’60s Predecessors By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 23rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/todays-progressive-revolutionaries-more-dangerous-than-1960s-predecessors/

In the 1960s and early ’70s, the U.S. was convulsed by massive protests calling for radical changes in the country’s attitudes on race, class, gender and sexual orientation. The Vietnam War and widespread college deferments were likely the fuel that ignited prior peaceful civil disobedience.

Sometimes the demonstrations became violent, as with the Watts riots of 1965 and the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Terrorists from the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground) bombed dozens of government buildings.

The ’60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies, communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music and high divorce rates to the war on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action and race/gender/ethnic college curricula.

The enemies of the ’60s counterculture were the “establishment” — politicians, corporations, the military and the “square” generation” in general. Leftists targeted their parents, who had grown up in the Great Depression. That generation had won World War II and returned to create a booming postwar economy. After growing up with economic and military hardship, they sought a return to comfortable conformity in the 1950s.

A half-century after the earlier revolution, today’s cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more dangerous.

Government and debt have grown. Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer federal programs. The “Great Society” inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state. Divorce rates soared. The nuclear family waned. Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed.