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The latest Durham indictment is a big one By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/the_latest_durham_indictment_is_a_big_one.html

The Democrats’ nefarious Russia hoax, which sucked time, life, and political capital out of the Trump presidency, is really getting exposed. With the arrest of Igor Danchenko and the release of the indictment behind the arrest, we’re finally getting a chance to see that the Russia hoax was a fraud from beginning to end and that it reached the highest echelons of Hillary Clinton’s circles.

The Russia hoax, which the Dems unleashed in 2016 and that exploded on the scene with the “pee-pee tape” allegations when Buzzfeed published the Steele Dossier shortly before Trump’s inauguration, dominated much of Trump’s presidency. Trump’s supporters knew it was untrue but it was extremely difficult to unravel the details to prove the lie (although Dan Bongino’s daily podcast did a superb job).

Even getting a primer on the lies didn’t help identify the real culprits. We knew that the FBI, the Department of Justice, the State Department, and various specific individuals in the government were involved, especially because it gave them the means to spy on everyone close to Trump, but there was no single culprit behind it. This inchoate mass of accusations and wrongdoers meant that, even as Trump took extraordinary steps to improve America’s national security, national sovereignty, and the economy, the Democrats relentlessly smeared him as a traitor, beholden to Putin.

Even after Mueller reluctantly conceded that Trump had not, in fact, colluded with Russia, the Democrats kept up the attack. Only recently, I forget where, some MSNBC talking ahead again accused Trump of colluding with Russia. John Durham’s investigation, meanwhile, was so slow many of us (me included) decided it was as much a hoax as the Russia story. It certainly didn’t help Trump’s reelection efforts.

However, on Wednesday, the feds arrested Igor Danchenko and on Thursday, the indictment against him went public. Techno Fog has a good summary of the indictment.

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The Intentional Destabilization of America By Philip Carl Salzman

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/11/04/the-intentional-destabilization-of-america-n1529909

The attacks on America are not accidental nor the result of ignorance and stupidity. No, the attacks are intentional and strategic. The goal is the transformation of America, which would be made possible by the destruction of America’s core institutions. This intention is stated explicitly by President Biden, who said in August 2021 that his “Build Back Better” bill would transform America. “Today, the House of Representatives has taken a significant step toward making a historic investment that’s going to transform America.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill as “transformative and cause for celebration.” In these remarks, Biden and Pelosi were repeating President Obama’s central promise in 2008 that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), member of the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives, explains why America must be transformed: “As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality,” Omar, a Democrat, said. “So, we cannot stop at [the] criminal justice system. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”

What would we say if a foreign country, for example, Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea, carried out the following actions:

Invaded through the American southern border with two million troops.
Stopped fuel production, ending American self-sufficiency, returning America to dependence on Middle Eastern and other countries that hate America, while facilitating Russian fuel domination in Europe.
Burnt and destroyed the downtown commercial sections of almost all American cities.
Defunded and disbanded the police, while releasing criminals from prison and refusing to incarcerate any criminals, leading to a major spike in violent crime. Then, if that were not sufficient, contrary to science, fire large numbers of unvaccinated police, firefighters, emergency medical workers, and hospital workers with natural immunity, the very people who were celebrated as heroes throughout 2020, but are now regarded as criminals.
Granted illegal aliens $450,000 each of taxpayer money for their suffering in not have been received by an honor guard upon their illegal entry.
Flooded the American economy with vast amounts of counterfeit money printed without anything behind it, leading to galloping inflation, a type of regressive tax punishing the poor and middle class. Then use the fake money to pay people to stay home and out of the workforce, leading to the greatest labor crisis in American history.
Claimed that the foundational documents of America, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are null and void, due to, you know, slavery. These are replaced by a regime in which male and white citizens are to be punished for, you know, slavery, and replaced by females and minorities of color (except for Asian Americans, who have disgraced themselves by being too successful).
Required schools to teach that white children are evil oppressors and children of color are forever victims, and likewise, that male children are brutal and toxic, and females are victims. But, schools will teach that there is a way out for toxic males and female victims by transitioning to trans females and trans males, which the schools facilitate secretly, without informing any parents.
Declared that children now belong to the government, and parents have no say in their education. Any parents who speak up about their children’s education are “domestic terrorists” and must be persecuted and suppressed by School Boards, the Department of “Justice,” and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Threatened the Supreme Court with either endorsing far-left agendas, or being canceled by court-packing with far-left justices. Declared the Court is no longer co-equal, but subservient to Congress and the Executive branches.
Abandoned American citizens, residents, and allies in giving up American’s strategic position in Afghanistan.

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Epic Fail: L.A. Ports Are More Clogged Now Than Before Biden’s Supply Chain ‘Fix’

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/05/epic-fail-l-a-ports-are-more-clogged-now-than-before-bidens-supply-chain-fix/

President Joe Biden says he’s been addressing supply chain problems “since Day One,” but that’s consisted mainly of appointing task forces and holding summits. His latest bold “action” was to beg G-20 leaders to “help address global supply chain issues.”

The one concrete step Biden has taken was, he said, to get the Los Angeles ports to stay open 24/7, which he announced on Oct. 13. Biden said this has the “potential to be a gamechanger.” A White House fact sheet declared that it “will speed up shipments of goods throughout the country.”

Except, that’s not what’s happened.

In fact, things have gotten worse at those ports, not better, since Biden’s “game changer.”

On Oct. 10, three days before the president’s announcement, there were 60 container ships waiting offshore to get into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and 27 were at berths unloading or loading cargo, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.

This Tuesday, there were 77 container ships waiting, while 25 were berthed.

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The Demoralization of the American Teacher Shane Trotter Shane Trotter

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://quillette.com/2021/11/03/the-demoralization-of-the-american-teacher/

Ten years ago, I showed up for my first day as a high school teacher. I had landed a job in the best school of what is often called a “destination district.” Still, I knew I was facing an uphill battle. Warnings abounded of an American public school system in decline. But I was undeterred. I had that youthful sense that education needed change and I was just the one to change it.

Throughout that first year I worked incessantly—creating lessons, grading, and making myself available to students an hour before school each day. I ran around the room joking with students, telling stories, creating relevant analogies, and turning pop-culture songs into lesson reviews that I’d sing for the class.

My students looked forward to my energy and I enjoyed their sense of humor. Still, I couldn’t have predicted how unprepared my students would be. They had never taken notes. They were shocked that my test reviews weren’t a list of the questions on the test. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t allow 20 minutes of review before the test, or why a history exam would have sections requiring written responses. In fact, many would just skip the entire short answer and essay sections, despite being given these topics in advance. Those who did respond often wrote single words or incoherent run-ons.

I’d spend entire classes explaining what I wanted to see in the short answer responses. We’d practice writing the “who, what, where, when, and why this concept is important.” But little changed. After their years of schooling in which writing never extended beyond filling in a blank, my expectations were analogous to asking high schoolers to solve algebraic equations when they had not yet learned to multiply and divide. They were capable, but it was going to take a lot of effort to fill in the gaps. Which raises the question, why would a student be willing to put in that much work?

I was fighting the overwhelming tide of a system intent upon handing over diplomas. Over half of my students would have failed if I gave them the grade they earned. But the unwritten, yet well-communicated, rule was that teachers should never fail a student if it could be helped. The onus was on the teacher to hound students for late assignments and find a way to bump them to a C.

As much as I wanted to fight every battle, I eventually caved to the exhaustion of a demanding Texas high school coaching schedule (which seemed to be the job I was really hired for). I compromised more times than I would have ever thought possible. I eliminated homework, allowed test retakes, gave fill-in-the-blank notes, graded essays at a 5th grade level, gave test reviews that were basically the test, and intentionally made tests easy. When there were still too many students failing at the end of a grading period, I went above and beyond to manufacture easy routes to a passing grade so that only a handful of incomprehensibly effort-averse students failed.

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Manchin and Sinema: Cassandras of the Senate The two moderate Democrats saw Tuesday’s crisis coming By Stephen L. Miller

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-manchin-kyrsten-sinema-cassandras-senate/

Tuesday was a very bad night for the Democratic Party. They lost the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates, almost lost the New Jersey governorship, and lost several local school board seats in crucial electoral states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado.

Blue states that kept schools closed or mostly shuttered for the duration of the pandemic now play host to legions of angry, fed-up parents. Nationally, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are crashing harder than Hunter Biden after a stint at the Chateau Marmont, and his domestic agenda is stalled in Congress, thanks to two Democratic senators who clearly saw the writing on the wall and the red wave coming: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

“I’ve been saying this for many, many months, people have concerns, people are concerned,” Manchin told reporters on Wednesday. “You can read so much into all of that last night. I think it should be a call to all of us have to be more attentive to the people back home.”

After Biden surveyed the wreckage in Virginia, he urged his party to hit the gas pedal on passing the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills, suggesting that perhaps the failure to pass the acts affected the outcome of the Virginia governor’s race. This is a typical trick, one he learned from his old boss: if people don’t like the agenda, it must be because there isn’t enough of it.

But Manchin and Sinema are in the right here. They have navigated the negotiations patiently and deftly, perhaps aware of what happened to their party the last time an enormous unpopular package was rammed through Congress by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Obamacare was passed in 2010, but four years later the Democrats were still paying the price for its unpopularity. The 2014 midterm swing was the largest transfer of congressional power since World War Two. 2022 looks to not only be a repeat, but worse, even at local levels where the core of the Democratic Party power structure is in danger: teachers’ unions.

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Let’s hear it for Winsome Sears Virginia’s new lieutenant governor is the first woman of color and naturalized citizen ever elected statewide John Fund

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/hear-winsome-sears-virginia-lieutentant-governor/

Of all the improbable outcomes in this week’s elections, a couple struck me as worthy of a Hollywood movie script. Ed Durr, the truck driver who toppled the New Jersey State Senate president after spending just $153 was one.

But an even more inspirational, and almost as implausible, script could be fashioned from the story of Winsome Earle Sears, a 57-year-old Virginia mother of three, who by being elected Virginia’s lieutenant governor became the first female minority and naturalized citizen ever elected statewide. CNN and MSNBC ignored her memorable Election Night victory statement, but Fox didn’t:

Her “Winsome vs Goliath” story will no doubt now make her a fixture on the lecture circuit. Devoutly religious, an aimless Sears was born in Jamaica and grew up in the Bronx. When she was 18 her Jamaican grandmother died and she took it as a sign she had to make something of herself. She joined the Marines, became an electrician and diesel mechanic, and learned that “you don’t get respect there unless you dig your own ditch.”

After three years she left with many commendations and then married a Marine first lieutenant, moving back with him to his home town of Norfolk, Virginia. She began raising three children. After a job in banking, she had another sign that she should help others, and she became director of the Hope Center, a Salvation Army homeless shelter for mothers and their children. After two years, she left to become a graduate student at Regent University. Then in 2001, Republicans had no candidate to run in a redrawn 58 percent black House district in Norfolk that was represented by Delegate William P. Robison, an incumbent who had served 20 years in office.

Robinson, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, was flush with cash from special interests. Two months before the election, his campaign had $34,000 in the bank; she had $77. Then Robinson, a Harvard-educated criminal-defense lawyer, was found in contempt of court for missing a criminal hearing and sentenced to five days in jail. He served one day and was freed pending appeal. He also faced contempt-of-court hearings in at least two other cases.

Sears walked much of her district to meet voters, by all accounts more than living up to her first name.

But her views quickly came under attack. She says she lost the endorsement of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot when she told them she was “a Christian first and a Republican second.” Then the campaign turned ugly, with threats and intimidation. “Because I was a Republican, I was told I wasn’t black enough,” says the richly dark-skinned Sears. Phone calls featuring the sound of military boots would be made to her home late at night. She says that Michael F. Muhammad, head of the New Black Panthers Party, cursed and threatened her.

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COP26: A climate carnival to remember and ridicule  By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/cop26-a-climate-carnival-to-remember-and-ridicule-opinion-684033

Had participants in the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow this week not taken themselves so seriously, the global happening would have made for great comedy. It’s always amusing watching the “woke” trip themselves up without even realizing it, after all.

A perfect example was the refusal of the guards at the Scottish Event Campus to allow Energy Minister Karin Elharrar to enter the premises. This was not, however, because the government official suffering from muscular dystrophy did not have the proper proof of COVID-19 vaccination – a requirement for all the delegates to the convention.

No, the most relevant politician to the topic at hand, aside from Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg, was safe on that score.

The reason for her inability to grace the place with her presence was, well, her disability. Somehow, with all the pining about the destruction of the planet and preparation for the summit, nobody among the enlightened crowd in kilt-land had thought to arrange for wheelchair accessibility.

In fairness, it’s hard for people who concern themselves with the plight of mankind – and fate of the world’s grandchildren – to take individual human beings into account. This makes sense. Huge goals, and the trillions of dollars pledged for their future realization, are a lot easier to contemplate than small, far less costly ones that need immediate and inconvenient attention.

When he learned of Elharrar’s predicament, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett complained, and rightly so. He went as far as to threaten not to attend the following day’s sessions if the matter was not rectified. When it was, he personally accompanied her to meetings. One of these was with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who made a point of personally apologizing to Elharrar.

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Joel Zinberg, M.D. Mandating Trouble Mayor de Blasio’s needlessly inflexible requirement that city workers be vaccinated will endanger New York.

Posted By on November 5th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/the-dangers-of-nyc-vaccine-mandate?wallit_nosession=1

Thanks to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for city workers, New York faces the prospect of slower ambulance- and fire-response times, fewer cops on the street to battle rising crime rates, and accumulations of uncollected trash. It didn’t have to be this way.

The mandate, imposed two weeks ago, excludes the alternative option of undergoing regular Covid-19 testing, putting unvaccinated city workers without religious or medical exemptions on unpaid leave as of November 1. A last-minute surge in vaccinations brought the rate for city employees up to 90 percent, but significant numbers of the essential workers remain unvaccinated. As of November 1, vaccination rates were 84 percent for the police, 82 percent for the Department of Sanitation, and 80 percent for the Fire Department (which includes 75 percent of firefighters and 87 percent of EMTs).

Nine thousand city workers, including as many as 2,500 NYPD employees and 1,000 firefighters, are now on unpaid leave. Another 12,000 city workers, including 1,000 FDNY members and 6,500 NYPD officers, have applied for religious or medical exemptions. If, as expected, most of these exemptions are denied, thousands more essential workers could end up on leave.

Workable alternatives exist to this assault on essential services.

Applicants for exemptions to the vaccine mandate will be permitted to work and be tested weekly while their requests are being processed. If it is safe for exemption-seekers to continue working with weekly tests, then why not offer this same accommodation to any worker who continues to refuse vaccination? This is the same alternative provided for in President Biden’s proposed OSHA vaccine mandate.

Another option would be to exempt from the mandate anyone who can provide proof of natural immunity, resulting from prior Covid-19 infection and recovery. Prior infection with SARS-CoV-2 can be readily documented with a previous positive PCR test or antigen test, a positive antibody test, or a T-cell test.

By May 31, 2020, during the first of several Covid-19 waves in the city, 40.7 percent of EMS responders and 34.5 percent of firefighters had already been on medical leave for suspected or confirmed Covid-19. Now, more than a year and a half later, even higher numbers of essential workers have likely been infected.

The CDC has long suggested that previously infected people get vaccinated to strengthen their immunity. This would amount to a booster, in the same way that fully vaccinated people can improve their immunity with an additional shot. But the relevant question is: Does natural immunity without vaccination protect as well as full vaccination without booster?

Experts generally say that natural infection almost always causes better immunity than vaccines. While the evidence is mixed, it seems clear that both natural and vaccine-provided Covid-19 immunity provide effective protection.

A new CDC review shows that infection with SARS-CoV-2 and vaccination each result in a low risk of subsequent infection for six months or more. This finding holds true for both the Delta and pre-Delta variants. In addition, both prior infection and vaccination confer high levels of protection against symptomatic Covid-19 illness.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian Authority Campaign Against Palestinian NGOs by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on November 4th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17913/the-palestinian-authority-campaign-against

The six Palestinian NGOs were classified by Israel as terrorist organizations because of their affiliation with the PLO’s Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by both the United States and the European Union.

The PFLP, which has carried out many attacks against Israelis, including civilians, is one of 11 groups that form the PLO, headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Each group receives monthly allocations of up to $70,000 from the PLO’s unofficial finance ministry.

Yet while Israel has come under attack for its move against the six NGOs, there is almost no mention that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which joined the bandwagon of anti-Israel criticism, has also been targeting Palestinian NGOs for quite some time.

[T]he PA has been targeting hundreds of Palestinian NGOs… as part of an effort to control them and take their funds. Unlike Israel, the PA is not targeting the NGOs because of their affiliation with terrorism. Many of the NGOs have been critical of the PA leadership: that is why Abbas wants to silence them.

Al-Haq, one of the six organizations labeled by Israel as a terrorist organization… pointed out that this was not the first time the PA leadership had targeted Palestinian NGOs.

When Al-Haq complained about the PA decree targeting Palestinian NGOs, the mainstream media in the West, as well as several human rights organizations self-righteously chose to look the other way…. The international community did not demand clarifications from the PA leadership about his “assault” on Palestinian NGOs.

Palestinian legal expert Majed al-Arouri…. said that more than 20,000 Palestinian employees would lose their jobs as a result of the restrictions imposed by the PA on the work of Palestinian NGOs and charitable organizations.

As far as many in the international community are concerned, it is fine if Abbas takes punitive measures against the PFLP, but it is outrageous if Israel does it.

Those who are ignoring Abbas’s crackdown on the Palestinian NGOs are depriving the Palestinians of democracy and freedom of speech.

The international community’s obsession with Israel… proves that it is more interested in condemning and delegitimizing Israel than improving the status of human rights and democracy under the PA.

Israel’s recent decision to designate six Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as terrorist organizations sparked a wave of protests and condemnations from many parties around the world, including human rights groups and political activists. Israel is being accused of cracking down on Palestinian civil society organizations not because of their affiliation with a terrorist group, but because of their political activities, which are often not that different.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” Sydney Williams

Posted By on November 4th, 2021

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The moral of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf is that false cries for help mean real calls for help will be ignored. A climate apocalypse has been forecast for years, sometimes by the well-intentioned but naïve looking to do good, but often by the cynical seeking political or personal advantage.

Two years ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, recognizing that global temperatures are indeed rising, compiled a list of dire climate predictions that did not happen. Here is a sample: In 1969, the Nobel winning German scientist, Paul Ehrlich predicted that everybody would “disappear in a cloud of blue steam.” In 1974 Time Magazine warned that “space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” The New York Times in 1978 reported that an “international team of specialists” feared the world would experience a never-ending “cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere.” Over the next ten years, Cassandras changed their forecasts from cooling to warming: An Associated Press headline from 1989 read, quoting UN officials: “Rising seas could obliterate nations.” And who could forget Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he predicted that Artic ice would be gone in seven years. Today, doomsayers blame every forest fire, drought and hurricane on anthropological-caused climate change.

I am not a climate change denier. In fact, I know of no one who is. The term is used by climate disciples to belittle heretics who dare question the dogma that man alone is at fault for a warming planet. They are ruthless in their treatment of those skeptical of their professed causes of a changing climate. In National Geographic’s film Before the Flood, Bjørn Lomborg is listed as one of the ten most prominent “climate deniers.” Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and, in my opinion, the most reasonable voice on the subject. He begins every interview by repeating that he believes the Earth is warming. His sin is that he uses empirical evidence, logic and common sense to demonstrate that claimed apocalyptic consequences are more hyperbole than factual, which he explains in his 2020 book False Alarm. Fostering panic over climate change gets Progressives elected, sells books and movies and abets corporate welfare for renewable sources of energy. But for the rest of us, it does more harm than good.