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Palestinian Authority Antisemitism: Overview of 2015 by Itamar Marcus

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

Since the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established, and continuing throughout 2015, it has systematically used Antisemitism to indoctrinate young and old to hate Israelis and Jews. The PA has actively promoted religious hatred by demonizing Judaism and Jews, spreading libels that present Jews as endangering Palestinians, Arabs, and all humanity.

The PA presents Jews as possessing inherently evil traits. Jews are said to be treacherous, corrupt, allied with the devil, as well as descendants of apes and pigs. In 2015, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Islam and head of PA Shari’ah courts taught on PA TV that Jews throughout history have represented “falsehood… evil… the devils and their supporters… the satans and their supporters.” Accordingly, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a conflict of “Allah’s project vs. Satan’s project.”

The official PA daily published an op-ed saying Jews “are thirsty for blood to please their god (against the gentiles), and crave pockets full of money.” These Jewish “attributes” and traditions are presented as the unchangeable nature of Jews. These messages come from the top of the Palestinian Authority.

In 2015, children were broadcast on official PA TV reciting poems with strong Antisemitic content. Young kids had learned by heart that Jews are “most evil among creations,” “barbaric monkeys” and “Satan with a tail.”

According to the PA, the Jews’ evil nature and corruption caused the nations of the world to take defensive measures. The PA regularly claims that Jews were forced out of Europe in the past because of the threat that their “evil nature” posed to Europeans. These Jewish “traits” and “ways of behavior” constitute a danger, not only to all Muslims and Arabs but to all of humanity. As taught in a religious lesson on official PA TV: “Humanity will never live in comfort as long as the Jews are causing devastating corruption throughout the land… If a fish in the sea fights with another fish, I am sure the Jews are behind it.”

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How (and Why) Palestinian Leaders Scare the World by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

Abbas has perfected the art of financial extortion. Every Monday and Thursday, as it were, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president has threatened to resign and/or dissolve the PA. This tactic has a twofold aim: cold hard European and American cash, and a gaze directed away from the PA’s turmoil.

The PA wants the following response from the international community: “Oh my God, we must do something to salvage the peace process. We need to put even more pressure on these Israelis before matters get out of hand.”

Abbas wants the world’s eyes on Israel — and Israel alone. That way, the fierce behind-the-scenes battle for succession that has been raging among the top brass of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank will stay far from the limelight.

The PA seeks a solution imposed upon Israel by the international community. Why negotiate when Western powers are prepared to do everything to see Israel brought to its knees?

What do you do when your home has become hell?

If you are Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, you divert attention from the mess as fast as possible.

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Peter Smith Polls Apart from Reality

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

That we are beset by halfwits is no less self-evident than the spectacle of reporters genuflecting before the alleged wisdom of the latest climate scientist to snaffle a career-boosting grant or three. These days, if the mob cheers, that’s good government
Donning a sweater and switching on a heater in Sydney in January? And twice! ‘If this ain’t the start of global cooling I don’t know what it is,’ I said to myself during the recent rains. Alas it is warm as I write. Back, presumably, to global warming and to dire warnings of our approaching demise.

But hold on, there is a problem. Human beings have pain-forgetting and immunological genes wrought by natural selection. Dire warnings have a short lifespan unless continually reinforced and augmented by even more dire warnings. Temperature records must be broken, and frequently.

This is why 2014, based on land and ocean measures, was described as the hottest year on record a year ago when it wasn’t? This is also why 2015 will likely be described as the hottest year on record when it also wasn’t?

The more accurate satellite (lower troposphere) temperature records — RSS and UAH — show that 2015 was the third-hottest year since satellite measurement began in 1979. It was hotter on average in 2010 and hotter still in 1998. This will get no airplay. Inconvenient facts must be suppressed lest they quieten alarm.

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GOP Debate Wrap-Up: No Clear Winner, But A Couple of Losers By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

Tonight’s Republican presidential debate finally moved the needle on…kidding, I don’t think any voters were swayed to switch candidates, and I’m not sure there were any performances to close the deal with undecided voters. As I said on Twitter, there wasn’t a clear winner, and anyone who says there was came to that conclusion before the debate.

Donald Trump was somewhat more subdued for much of the debate, and actually seems like he wants the job as much as the attention now. His “I’m leading in the polls” mantra didn’t get the raucous applause that it usually does but, all in all, he’s the front-runner and all he had to do was not screw up, and he didn’t .

Marco Rubio was…animated. It seemed as if he was determined to make sure Trump never, ever had an opportunity to call him “low energy”. He began crafting a workable narrative for why he’s evolved on illegal immigration but his finest moment came when he refused to back down from the idea that President Obama’s real gun agenda ends with confiscation saying, “I am convinced that if this president could confiscate every gun in this country, he would.”

Ted Cruz rambled a little too long sometimes (Lawyers!) but kicked off the night with a couple of jabs at the media, thanking Maria Bartriromo for passing along a “hit piece from the New York Times” regarding his campaign loan in 2012 and telling Neal Cavuto that he was glad to be focusing on the important issues when asked about Trump’s birther fetish. Cruz and Trump are the only two candidates who consistently call out the media for their nonsense and they both happen to be leading in the polls.

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CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM FOR CHRISTIE

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

My friend DPS sent me the following appraisal of the tough guy from New Jersey by Andrew McCarthy in 2011

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/273865/christies-crazies-andrew-c-mccarthy
Christie’s ‘Crazies’Sharia is not a figment of our imagination.

This “sharia-law business is crap . . . and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies!” So blustered Chris Christie. Bluster is the New Jersey governor’s default mode. It has certainly served him well. When directed at surly advocates of New Jersey’s teachers’ unions — who, after all, deserve it — bluster can apparently make a conservative heartthrob out of a pol whose bite is bipartisan moderate, however titillating his bark may be.

The style is so effective that Christie seems to be trying it out on everyone. A few weeks back, a local reporter had the audacity to ask His Honor whether he believes in creationism or evolution — a question that seemed more pertinent than impertinent in light of the controversy over whether the former ought to be taught in the schools that the governor’s 9 million constituents subsidize to the tune of $11 billion annually. Yet his answer was to growl, “That’s none of your business.”

“None of your business,” has moved to the front of the Christie repertoire. So discovered a citizen who recently had the temerity to ask her governor why he does not send his children to the public schools whose bloated budgets he is trying to pare. It was a pretty tame question, one customarily asked of politicians who crow about the alleged greatness of our public-education system while opting out of it when it comes to their own kids.

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The Missing Man in the Big GOP Debate By Roger L Simon

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

It was a fun Republican debate Thursday night, definitely the most spirited, with some of the best interchanges since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but, sadly, the candidates must have missed the new memo about who their adversary is supposed to be, giving the whole event a decidedly retro feel.

Listen guys (and gals — this would definitely include Carly, who was, no surprise, the star of the undercard), you were running against the wrong Democratic candidate tonight.

You’re not going to be running against Hillary. Our Lady of Chappaqua has 150, count ’em, 150 FBI agents looking into her doings. What single person in our history has had anything close to that? Maybe Al Capone, but he wasn’t a politician. You think they’re not going to come up with something? For all we know, she’s already plea-bargaining her pardon. If you don’t believe me, check out DC Whispers’ “Bill & Hillary Clinton Fear the End – Go Into Survival Mode.”

No, no Hillary. You’re going to be running against Bernie (or Joe Biden or Jerry Brown or Fauxcahontas, but most probably Bernie, because he’s done all the spade work and his supporters are going to be mighty angry if the Democratic Party fat cats cut him out).

And here’s the bad news — Bernie is a much more dangerous opponent. Most of the GOP candidates have been thinking — oh, well, he’ll be much easier to beat than Hillary. He’s a socialist, for crissakes. Didn’t Margaret Thatcher put an end to that silliness decades ago?

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Hillary’s long goodbye By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

I must be an awful human being, because I am reveling in the déjà vu Hillary Clinton must be experiencing, as her presidential campaign appears to be heading toward collapse. And this time, the humiliation – and peril – is far greater than anything 2008 dealt her. To state the obvious, her longstanding preference for pantsuits is one thing, but the orange jumpsuits of a federal penitentiary are quite something else.

I realize I am getting way ahead of myself here, that predictions are always risky – especially about the future, as Yogi Berra reminded us. We don’t yet know if there will be a criminal referral from the FBI, though the D.C. rumor mill is operating at full steam, averring that 50 more FBI special agents have been added to the case, making the total team well into triple digits. That the FBI would devote that level of resources to the case suggests that they are tying up any possible loose ends, to have an airtight cases presented to Loretta Lynch. (More on this later.)

Potential legal peril aside for the moment, the humiliations she faces are daunting for a woman of her arrogance. Her husband’s penchant for illicit sex with women far younger and more attractive is once again being thrown in her face, and this time the trusty old injured wife gambit not only doesn’t work, but is being used against her, painting her as an enabler of a sexual abuser.

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Guilty for Obeying the Feds J&J is punished in state court for following federal labeling rules.

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

Can a drug company be held liable for following the directions of federal regulators on warning labels? Johnson & Johnson did exactly that, only to be slapped with a $63 million jury verdict in Massachusetts for inadequate warnings. The Supreme Court is being asked to hear J&J’s appeal in a case with major implications for uniform national business regulation.

In 2003 Richard Reckis treated his seven-year-old daughter Samantha with over-the-counter Children’s Motrin for a fever. Samantha developed a rare and advanced case of Stevens-Johnson syndrome called toxic epidermal necrolysis which caused skin blistering, as well as lung, liver and vision damage. Her parents sued Johnson & Johnson in state court for failing to alert buyers to the potential side effects, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the jury verdict.

The legal problem is that the federal Food and Drug Administration had rejected the specific labelling enhancement that lawyers for the Reckis family say should have been applied. In 2005 what’s known as a Citizen Petition to the FDA suggested that Motrin should include language on “serious skin reactions” and “potentially life-threatening diseases” and specify the names of some of the conditions.

The FDA agreed on the need for improved warnings about skin reactions, but it said it would not be helpful to include a mention of “life-threatening” conditions or the names of the conditions, which most people were unfamiliar with. Instead, the agency said, “a description of symptoms” was more appropriate for the over-the-counter medication. J&J would have been defying federal regulatory guidelines if it had included the warning that the Reckis lawsuit claims should have been on the bottle.

The legal doctrine at issue is federal pre-emption, and in 2009 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Wyeth v. Levine) that some state court lawsuits against drug companies over warning labels are pre-empted by federal law if the FDA has made its opinion on labelling clear. While some cases might require guessing about FDA directions, in this case the FDA was asked to consider a specific warning and rejected it.

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A Cancer ‘Moonshot’ Needs Big Data Analyzing vast genetic and clinical data from hospitals and doctors would lead to revolutionary advances. By Tom Coburn

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

Dr. Coburn is a physician and former Republican senator from Oklahoma. He serves as an adviser to Project FDA at the Manhattan Institute.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama called for America to become “the country that cures cancer once and for all.” As a three-time cancer survivor (metastatic colon, metastatic melanoma and metastatic prostate), I can tell you that this “moonshot,” as Vice President Joe Biden first called it, is a bold goal—but one within our grasp.

Last week’s report from the American Cancer Society shows that cancer mortality is down more than 20% over the past 20 years. Many patients are living longer thanks to better treatments and earlier detection. Science is tipping the odds of survival in favor of patients.
Ironically, we’re handicapping ourselves in the war on cancer, in part because of a web of privacy regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA makes it difficult for researchers to tap into large caches of clinical and genomic data shared across multiple institutions or firms, and then share their findings more broadly.

The law allows some research uses, but only if the uses (and informed patient consent) are specified in advance. As one analyst put it, “because obtaining [consent] from huge numbers of people or [institutional review board] waivers ranges from the impracticable to the impossible, important research has gone undone and important findings unshared.”

Harnessing that information—“big data”—would allow us to personalize prevention and treatment based on the genetic characteristics of a patient’s tumor, family history and personal preferences, while minimizing unwanted side effects. But today cancers are often fought “off the grid.” Patients whose cancers resist standard treatment, or whose tumors reappear years later, are medical puzzles. Their doctors cobble together treatments through intuition, experience and case studies scattered in the medical literature.

The clinical trials that pharmaceutical companies rely on for FDA approval and drug labeling capture too little of the information patients and physicians need. The trials only enroll 3% of cancer patients and can take years and tens of millions of dollars to finish. Many trials never enroll enough patients to get off the ground.

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Obama’s Terror Sangfroid The threat isn’t ‘existential,’ unless you’re at Starbucks.

Posted By on January 15th, 2016

President Obama took pains in his State of the Union speech Tuesday to warn Americans not to exaggerate the threat from terrorists. “As we focus on destroying ISIL,” he said, using an alternative acronym for Islamic State (ISIS), “over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”

On Monday ISIS murdered 51 people in suicide attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. On Tuesday an ISIS suicide bomber in Istanbul killed 10 German and one Peruvian tourists. On Thursday two people were killed and 23 injured by an ISIS suicide bomber near a Starbucks coffee shop in Jakarta.

This bloody spate follows last month’s murder of 14 office workers in San Bernardino by an ISIS husband-and-wife team, November’s Paris massacre by ISIS of 130 people, the killing a day earlier of some 43 people in Beirut, and October’s downing by ISIS of a Russian jetliner over Egypt, in which 224 civilians perished. Last June’s attack at a Tunisian beach resort, in which 38 mainly British tourists were murdered, is already beginning to feel like a distant memory.