NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Just How Bad Is The BLS At Its Job? Our Findings Will Shock You

Posted By on August 12th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/12/just-how-bad-is-the-bls-at-its-job-the-answer-will-shock-you/

Yesterday, President Donald Trump nominated a high-profile critic of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EJ Antoni, to be its new commissioner, promising on Truth Social that under his leadership “the Numbers released are HONEST and ACCURATE.”

If confirmed, Antoni, currently chief economist at the Heritage Foundation, has his work cut out for him.

Last week, we pointed out glaring mistakes the Bureau of Labor Statistics had made in recent years and asked whether its foul-ups were driven by politics or ineptitude.

The issue came to a head after President Donald Trump fired the head of the BLS in the wake of its massive revisions to the two previous months jobs reports, in which it admitted to overcounting the number of jobs created by more than 250,000. Trump responded by saying the numbers were rigged.

The press, naturally, rushed to defend the bureaucrats, saying that revisions are normal and there’s nothing to get worked up about. The BLS routinely revises its initial monthly jobs estimate – based on a survey of 100,000 employers – over the next two months as more data come in. No biggie.

Is that true? We decided to find out and reviewed the BLS’s monthly jobs data going back to 2009. What we found was deeply troubling.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Whistleblower Ties Clinton Campaign to Fake Russia Hack A whistleblower reveals deeper Clinton campaign ties to the Alfa Bank hoax and Obama-era suppression of evidence, exposing manipulation in the Trump-Russia narrative. By Paul Sperry

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/11/whistleblower-ties-clinton-campaign-to-fake-russia-hack/

A whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that Hillary Clinton’s campaign efforts to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them.

According to the report, a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who investigated alleged Russian attempts to breach state voting systems during the 2016 election suspected the breaches may have been “related to activities” of the computer contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax, who were accused of manipulating Internet traffic data.

In that well-publicized case, a Clinton campaign lawyer worked with federal computer contractors and the FBI to create suspicions that Russia was communicating with Donald Trump through a secret server shared by Alfa Bank of Russia and Trump Tower in Manhattan.

The anonymous whistleblower – who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2020 – told Special Counsel John Durham he stumbled onto “enigmatic” data while leading the investigation of alleged Russian cyber activity for the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. He said that his discovery took place in December 2016 when President Obama ordered the ICA.

After examining state-reported breaches of election networks, the whistleblower said, “It seemed only brief interaction was occurring – in some cases, no unauthorized access, or even attempted access, was detected on ‘victim’ systems.” Though the suspicious activity initially was attributed to Russian actors, further analysis raised doubts.

But when he brought his findings to his boss, ODNI’s national intelligence officer for cyber issues, he was ordered to stop investigating and not include his findings in the final ICA draft.

“After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyber activity for the ICA, I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,” the whistleblower analyst said.

He added that his boss, whose name was blacked out in the whistleblower statement, “directed me to abandon analysis of these events, stating reports of Russia-attributed cyber activity were ‘something else.’”

While the names of the whistleblower and his boss are blacked out in the report, a RealClearInvestigations search of federal records shows Vinh Nguyen was the national intelligence officer for cyber issues at the time. The whistleblower would have been Nguyen’s deputy.

HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Disinformation and the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs In 1945, Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs was grim—but it ended a war that could have cost millions more lives on both sides and unleashed even greater horrors. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/11/disinformation-and-the-dropping-of-the-atomic-bombs/

Disinformation and the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs

Legitimate disagreement about the wisdom of dropping two bombs on Japan to end World War II in 1945 persists even 80 years later, as reflected in discussions this past week.

But recently, there has often been no real effort even to present the facts, much less to consider the lose-lose choices involved in using such destructive weapons. In an age of revisionist history—when Churchill is deemed a “terrorist,” Germany did not really mean to starve millions of Jews and Ukrainians in summer and fall 1941, the British forced Hitler to continue the war, and World War II was not worth the cost—so too are Hiroshima and Nagasaki judged as either war crimes or colossal and unnecessary follies.

For today’s generation, it seems so easy to declare one’s 21st-century moral superiority over our ancestors. So we damn them as war criminals, given that they supposedly dropped the bombs without legitimate cause or reason.

What follows are some of the most common critiques of President Truman’s decision to use two nuclear weapons against wartime Japan, with an explanation of why his decision to use the bombs proved, at the time and in hindsight, the correct one.

1) Why did the Americans not drop a trial bomb in Tokyo Bay to warn the Japanese to surrender or face the real thing?

That choice was considered at length. The liberal-minded Robert Oppenheimer had headed a commission to determine the most effective way to use the two bombs to end the war as quickly as possible.

A third nuclear weapon may or may not have been available within a few weeks after the bombing, but there were no others beyond those three at hand for at least a few months. So in early August, only two bombs, the uranium-fission bomb “Little Boy” and its plutonium counterpart “Fat Man,” were deliverable. The limited number of bombs affected the decision to use two on real targets.

Note that a third atomic bomb would not be exploded (in a test) for about a year after the war. Moreover, the uranium bomb used on Hiroshima had never been tested; the plutonium one had, but in the New Mexico desert on a tower and not loaded on and dropped from a plane.

As a result, no one knew for certain whether an air-dropped bomb would even work, the optimal detonation height, or the extent of the destruction it would cause. On the eve of the first test of the plutonium bomb on July 16 in the New Mexico desert, even scientists could not agree whether the plutonium blast would set the sky afire or might be not much more powerful than a large conventional bomb.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘Starvation’ in Gaza Who’s to blame? by Cal Thomas

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/starvation-in-gaza/

In the Middle East, war is conducted not only with bullets and missiles, but also with pictures. The latest are pictures of allegedly starving children in Gaza distributed by Hamas and its enablers with the intention of blaming Israel for delaying, even denying entry of food trucks into the strip.

Such pictures are gobbled up and distributed to the world without question by media that are always critical of Israel and hardly critical at all of forces that seek to destroy the Jewish state.

Perhaps no nation in history has cared about preserving human life more than modern Israel. It even treats its wounded enemies in Israeli hospitals. It releases hundreds of convicted terrorists in exchange for a handful of captured Israeli soldiers. It distributes leaflets and makes phone calls urging civilians to evacuate areas inhabited by Hamas terrorists before those areas are attacked. What other nation does that?

The New York Post reports “Col. Abdullah Halabi, from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, told reporters last week that around 1,000 truckloads of aid remain undelivered ‘due to a lack of cooperation from the international community and international organizations.’” Predictably, others are blaming Israel, which plays into Hamas’ hands.

The problem for Israel is that it has defeated Hamas, but Hamas won’t surrender. The terrorist organization is the main impediment to getting food to those who need it, but the seeds of today’s disaster began in 2005 when Israel unilaterally disengaged from the Gaza Strip by dismantling all 21 of its remaining settlements. It didn’t take a prophet to predict the vacuum would soon be filled by terrorists eager to use Gaza as a base for attacking Israel.

What followed was this:

– Gazans stupidly elected Hamas as their government. They are now reaping what they sowed.

HISTORY, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

When America Stopped Winning Wars The legacy of Korea. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/when-america-stopped-winning-wars/

The last war the United States actually won was World War II. We’ve fought plenty of wars since then, but they were both not officially wars, that is, they were not officially declared, and we didn’t win them. We didn’t lose them, either. In Vietnam, we abandoned a war that the opposition ended up winning because we gave up. Elsewhere, we have fought for years with no clear goal and no idea even of what winning the war would entail (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The fighting of these inconclusive wars began in 1950, with our incursion into Korea.

As Rating America’s Presidents explains, on August 10, 1945, with the Japanese on the verge of surrender, the U.S. divided Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel, into Soviet and American occupation zones. No one expected this arrangement to continue indefinitely, but the U.S. was entirely unprepared when, on June 25, 1950, the Communists of North Korea invaded the South. The United Nations condemned the invasion and sent troops to Korea to counter the invaders.

Most of the troops were American; General Douglas MacArthur, a World War II hero, commanded them. President Truman, however, did not ask Congress for a declaration of war; this was the first of a huge number of “police actions” that the U.S. military would pursue.

MacArthur achieved great early success, but then the Communist Chinese invaded in November 1950 and threw the UN forces back. MacArthur wanted to attack Chinese bases, which Truman would not allow, as he did not want to escalate the conflict. MacArthur began acting unilaterally until Truman summarily fired him. This was a tremendously unpopular move at the time, as the American people understood MacArthur as trying to win the war and liberate the Communist North, with Truman stymieing him.

Reality was more complicated: the Chinese forces were significantly stronger than the U.S. had anticipated, and Truman worried that getting involved in a direct conflict with them could provoke World War III. This undeclared war went on inconclusively until after Truman was out of the White House.

ANTI-SEMITISM, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Zohran Mamdani SAYS He’s Not Antisemitic, But… His long record says otherwise. Robert Spencer

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/zohran-mamdani-says-hes-not-antisemitic-but/

Zohran Mamdani, the man most likely to be New York City’s next mayor, has said: “Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about. It’s something that we have to tackle. We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country, in this world.”

That doesn’t sound so bad, but there is so much else on Mamdani’s record that calls it into question. He said in 2021 that the Palestinian jihad against Israel made him a socialist: “I sincerely believe in this political project. I sincerely believe in socialism. For me, it was Palestine that brought me into this movement.”

He maintained, on the other hand, that this did not mean that he was in favor of violence against Israelis or Jews in general. When a pro-Palestinian gunman murdered two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington on May 21, 2025, Mamdani wrote the next day: “We owe it to one another to confront hate with the urgency and solidarity it demands, and to ensure our Jewish neighbors can live safely and free of fear. May the memories of both victims be a blessing.”

Once again, it sounded good, but Mamdani has also accepted money from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group with ties to Hamas. Along with money from Soros-linked far-left groups, Mamdani’s New Yorkers for Lower Costs PAC also collected $100,000 from the Unity & Justice Fund, a creation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). In 2007, the Justice Department named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas funding case. When CAIR and other Muslim organizations, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), appealed this designation, Judge Jorge Solis ruled on July 1, 2009 that “the Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (‘IAP’), and with Hamas.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Voters Back Investigation Of Obama White House Role In Russiagate Scandal: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/11/voters-back-investigation-of-obama-white-house-role-in-russiagate-scandal-ii-tipp-poll/

Amid new revelations, spurious Russia collusion charges against President Trump have become both a major scandal and a grand jury investigation. Do voters want top spies in former President Obama’s administration investigated? Yes, the I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

The national online poll was conducted from July 30-Aug. 1, with 1,362 adults taking part. The poll’s margin of error is +/-2.7 percentage points. I&I/TIPP asked a total of five questions about what has been called “the dirtiest political trick in history,” and worse.

The first question asked: “Do you believe the Obama administration deliberately fabricated the Trump–Russia collusion narrative to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency?”

Among all who answered, 38% said “yes,” while 40% said “no,” a statistical toss-up given the margin of error. Meanwhile another 22% said “not sure,” which means they harbor some suspicions that the statement is true, just not enough yet to believe it.

The political affiliation breakdown is enlightening. Among Democrats, 16% answered yes, and an even-larger portion responded “not sure” to the question. So a third of all Democrats believe there’s at least something to the charges. That leaves only 65% of Dems answering no, they didn’t believe the Obama White House made the scandal.

Not a big vote of confidence from Obama’s own party.

Republicans, perhaps predictably, answered 66% yes, to 16% no, and 16% not sure, while independent voters were 27% yes, 40% no, but a sizable 33% not sure.

Among independents, just 27% said yes while 40% said no and a sizable 33% were not sure.\

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hamas’s Plan to Undermine America’s Arab Allies by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 11th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21827/hamas-undermining-america-arab-allies

Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Apparently, the Arab leaders understand the dangers of allowing Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, to drag their countries into war with Israel.

That is why many Arab countries have banned or outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and recently, Jordan. These countries view the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security and political stability.

If the Trump administration wants to promote peace and stability in the Middle East and protect its Arab allies, it must follow suit and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“Al-Hayya’s statement is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide with the aim of discrediting Egypt’s role and disrupting its political and humanitarian efforts to stop the war and alleviate the suffering of [Palestinian] civilians.” — Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridi, Sky News Arabia, July 28, 2025.

The Hamas leader’s goals are “completely in line with the main objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood: toppling the Egyptian regime and turning Egypt into a quagmire of chaos…. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the current economic situation in Egypt could be an opportunity to pressure the Egyptian people by mixing religious sentiments with economic conditions, thereby destabilizing the country’s domestic situation.” — Saeed Okasha, Egyptian expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, almashhad.com, July 28, 2025.

Hamas leaders, who claim they were betrayed by their Arab brothers, now seek to export their group’s own crisis and place the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians on other parties, especially the Arab countries.

They are doing so from their safe villas and luxury hotel suites in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

Were it not for Qatar’s backing, Hamas leaders would not have had the courage to incite unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the Trump administration not only to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but also finally to call out Qatar and its Al-Jazeera TV network for promoting Islamist terror groups that target Israel and America’s Arab allies.

After rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire-and-hostage deal, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Recently, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who together with his family moved from the Gaza Strip to Qatar before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, called on Arabs to “march toward Palestine by land and sea and besiege the [Israeli embassies in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan].”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Washington Post op-ed: Hunger in Gaza is not Israel’s fault Washington Post publishes op-ed stating that “Hamas fights on because it clearly doesn’t care about the suffering of the people of Gaza”.

Posted By on August 10th, 2025

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/413015?utm_source=facebook

A Washington Post op-ed by columnist Marc A. Thiessen, on Tuesday, was titled: “Hunger in Gaza has many authors, but Israel isn’t one of them”. Thiessen noted the 1,829,520 meals that Israel provided to Gazans through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and added that the meals are “enough to feed nearly the entire Gazan population.”

To counter the claims that Israel is deliberately causing starvation in Gaza, the op-ed stated that “Israel is doing something no nation has ever done, or even been expected to do: Feed the population of the aggressor force that attacked it while the war is still going on.”

Thiessen added: “The United States did not feed Germany and Japan while the war was going on; we forced their armies to surrender and then fed their populations.”

He emphasized that “Hamas fights on because it clearly doesn’t care about the suffering of the people of Gaza” and defined the suffering as central to “Hamas’s strategy of survival.”

Thiessen noted that the Hamas strategy seems to be working in terms of coverage by Western media outlets, and the response of governments like France, Canada, Britain, Ireland, Spain and Norway regarding support of the establishment of a Palestinian State.

Thiessen concluded his op-ed: “To lay the blame for this situation at Israel’s feet, rather than on Hamas, requires a stunning level of moral blindness, which apparently is plentiful when it comes to what is happening in Gaza.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on August 10th, 2025

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

Some highlights.

Israeli researchers have discovered how to turbo-charge the immune system.

Israeli scientists have grown a kidney in the lab to 34-week maturity.

Israel won an overall top 10 result at both math & chemistry student Olympiads.

Israelis have harvested grapes from 1,500-year old seeds found in the desert.

The products and services of three Israeli startups have just gone global.

The world’s earliest burial site has been discovered in Israel.

Jewish Sabbath laws have been changed to approve use of bionic limbs.

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Gearing up for Iron Beam. (TY Yanky) Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is preparing to launch Israel’s Iron Beam laser missile defense system, It has established a new administration to manage high-power laser systems projects, led by a woman, known only as Dr Y. – a graduate of Israel’s Technion Institute.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-rafael-gears-up-for-iron-beam-launch-1001510874
 
IDF overhauls Arabic and Islamic training. It looks like some of the lessons of Oct 7 have been learned.
https://www.jns.org/idf-overhauls-arabic-islamic-training-after-oct-7-failures/
 
Bomb shelter culture. Well worth reading this article which highlights some of the positive aspects of sheltering together with neighbors during an Iranian missile alert. It may have been something similar for UK citizens during the bombing of Britain in the WW2 blitz of 1940.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-860107
 
Kerem House. (TY WIN) In the heart of Tel Aviv’s residential areas devastated by Iranian missiles, volunteers from Kerem House bring shattered homes and broken hearts back to life – one act of kindness at a time. Kerem House organizes everything from holiday meals, clean-ups to emergency war support and home restorations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEqcClJ83bg  https://www.keremhouse.org/
 
Empowering bereaved women. (TY Sharon) 500+ Israeli women, all bereaved by acts of terrorism and war, gathered in Jerusalem for the annual Women’s Empowerment Symposium organized by OneFamily. The women shared their personal stories of loss, finding strength in community and learning to navigate their pain.
https://www.israpundit.org/israels-good-news-newsletter-to-3rd-aug-25/
 
Haredi brigade receives berets at Western Wall.  The first regular company of the IDF’s Hasmonean Brigade completed seven months of combat training, culminating in a “Beret March” to the Western Wall. The 50 ultra-Orthodox troops entered the Kotel Plaza blowing shofars and singing songs about the Jewish Temple.
https://www.jns.org/hasmonean-brigades-first-company-completes-basic-training-at-western-wall/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/412832
 
Bakery rehabilitated. Israel’s Tosha Bakery on the Lebanese border was rebuilding when last featured in this newsletter (see here previously). It is hard to believe the transformation now. The serene pastoral atmosphere, trays of home-made croissants and jugs of sugar-sweet freshly squeezed juice from Golan Heights oranges.
https://www.jns.org/returning-home-israeli-pastoral-cafe-near-lebanese-border-reopens-amid-postwar-regional-renewal/
 
Improving media coverage. Six-time Emmy-nominated multimedia journalist Jacki Karsh and her husband Jeff in partnership with Jewish Federation Los Angeles, have launched the Karsh Journalism Fellowship – a first-of-its-kind program focused solely on improving media coverage of antisemitism, Jewish life and Israel.
https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/shocked-by-poor-gaza-war-reporting-l-a-couple-launches-fellowship-to-improve-coverage-on-israel-jewish-life/   https://karshfellowship.org/