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2016

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

No Apologies for Being Jewish In the Days of Awe, we examine our sins, but defending Israel isn’t one of them. By Ruth R. Wisse

By on October 7th, 2016

Know Before Whom You Stand. These words, inscribed above the ark holding the Torah scrolls in many synagogues, assume added significance between Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. During these Days of Awe, Jews of faith take the measure of themselves before the Almighty. The term “penitential prayers” does not begin to convey the range and intensity of the accounting that worshippers give of themselves about every aspect of their lives.

To lay bare one’s deeds before the ultimate Seat of Judgment is very different from the practice of individual introspection or meditation. Here each person stands within the community in a public attestation to dozens of wrongdoings. In the extensive Yom Kippur confessions, worshippers recount sins committed willfully or involuntarily, “by idle talk or by lustful behavior . . . violence or by defaming Thy Name.” All the verbs for transgression are in the first-person plural, we rather than I, making the individual an organic part of the nation. I used to marvel at how young college students, hardly past adolescence, passionately assumed moral responsibility for wrongs they had never committed.

Jews rightly take pride in their culture of self-accountability—before the Ultimate Judge and justly established human authorities. This culture has created and sustained a remarkably resilient people. Lamenting the excesses of the current American electoral cycle, the columnist Ira Stoll imagines how much richer the country’s politics would be if “this spirit of self-examination were exported from the Jewish religion into the rest of American culture.” If democracy requires the patient improvement of life in a community, nothing furthers that goal better than the practice of individual and collective self-scrutiny.

But the millennial-long history of Jewish self-restraint also stands as a warning. It is all very well to focus on overcoming your failings. Yet the search for moral perfection can also render individuals, and nations, prey to those who believe in conquest rather than self-conquest and who join in holding you accountable for their misdeeds. The same confessional posture, praiseworthy when standing before the Perfect Judge, becomes blameworthy when adopted before an enemy that has you before a rigged tribunal.

In the 20th century, some modern European thinkers and political leaders began singling out the Jews for their alleged racial or religious or social culpabilities. Many Jews felt obliged to answer apologetically for these supposed failings, instead of exposing the evil ideology that had chosen them for its target. Jewish Marxists, for example, blamed Jewish capitalists and bourgeoisie, even though defamation was leveled equally at Jewish professionals, artisans, journalists and paupers. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The U.S. and U.N. Have Abandoned Christian Refugees The U.N.’s next secretary-general, António Guterres, says that persecuted Christians shouldn’t be resettled in the West. By Nina Shea

By on October 7th, 2016

Six months ago, Secretary of State John Kerry officially designated Islamic State as “responsible for genocide” against Christians, Yazidis and other vulnerable groups in areas under ISIS control in Syria and Iraq. So why has the Obama administration entrusted the survival of these people—and so much valuable American aid—to a troubled office at the United Nations, which, like its parent organization, has never even acknowledged that the genocide exists?

The State Department says it is helping religious minorities who have fled, along with millions of other displaced Syrians and Iraqis, primarily through the U.N. America has sent over half of $5.6 billion in humanitarian aid earmarked for Syrians since 2012 to the U.N.

Yet the U.N.’s lead agency for aiding refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), marginalizes Christians and others targeted by ISIS for eradication in two critical programs: refugee housing in the region and Syrian refugee-resettlement abroad.

For instance, the Obama administration’s expanded refugee program for Syria depends on refugee referrals from the UNHCR. Yet Syria’s genocide survivors have been consistently underrepresented. State’s database shows that of 12,587 Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, only 68 were Christians and 24 were members of the Yazidi sect. That means 0.5% were Christians, though they have long accounted for 10% of Syria’s population. In 2015, among 1,682 Syrians admitted, there were 30 Christians and no Yazidis.

Asked about these numbers at a Sept. 28 Senate hearing, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Simon Henshaw asserted that only 1% of Syria’s registered refugees are Christians. How to square that with the estimate that half a million Syrian Christians—a quarter of that community—have fled, as Syriac Catholic Patriarch Younan warned in August.

State Department officials variously speculate that Christians don’t want to register for resettlement abroad, or that they are waiting in line behind hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims who left Syria earlier.

Yet there is evidence to suggest that the problem lies within UNHCR. Citing reports from many displaced Christians, a January report on Christian refugees in Lebanon by the Catholic News Service stated: “Exit options seem hopeless as refugees complain that the staff members of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are not following up on their cases after an initial interview.” This failure could be another example of why the U.N. Internal Audit Division’s April 2016/034 report reprimanded the UNHCR for “unsatisfactory” management.

At a December press conference in Washington, D.C., I asked the U.N.’s then-high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, to explain the disproportionately low number of Syrian Christians resettled abroad. The replies—from a man poised to be the U.N’s next secretary-general—were shocking and illuminating.

Mr. Guterres said that generally Syria’s Christians should not be resettled, because they are part of the “DNA of the Middle East.” He added that Lebanon’s Christian president had asked him not to remove Christian refugees. Mr. Guterres thus appeared to be articulating what amounts to a religious-discrimination policy, for political ends.

As for why so few Christians and Yazidis are finding shelter in the UNHCR’s regional refugee camps, members of these groups typically say they aren’t safe. Stephen Rasche, the resettlement official for the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese in Erbil, Iraq, told Congress last month that in Erbil “there are no Christians who will enter the U.N. camps for fear of violence against them.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

White House Coordinated on Clinton Email Issues, New Documents Show Emails obtained by the Republican National Committee find close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015By Byron Tau

By on October 7th, 2016

WASHINGTON—Newly disclosed emails show top Obama administration officials were in close contact with Hillary Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign in early 2015 about the potential fallout from revelations that the former secretary of state used a private email server.

Their discussion included a request from the White House communications director to her counterpart at the State Department to see if it was possible to arrange for Secretary of State John Kerry to avoid questions during media appearances about Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement.

In another instance, a top State Department official assured an attorney for Mrs. Clinton that, contrary to media reports, a department official hadn’t told Congress that Mrs. Clinton erred in using a private email account.

The previously unreported emails were obtained by the Republican National Committee as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records of Mrs. Clinton’s time in office. The RNC provided to The Wall Street Journal only some of the emails, leaving it unclear what was in the remaining documents. The RNC said it released only emails relevant to the communication between the White House and State Department.

Meredith McGehee, chief of policy, programs, and strategy at the nonpartisan advocacy group Issue One and an expert on ethics and campaign finance, said the email exchange would probably raise no legal concerns because federal law permits members of the White House staff to engage in some political activity.

Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement has dogged her campaign for months, with Republicans and other critics saying it shows a carelessness with government secrets and undermines her claim to good judgment. Donald Trump’s campaign posted a statement on his website last month saying the Obama White House knew Mrs. Clinton was using a private email server.

Mrs. Clinton has acknowledged the arrangement was a mistake, but she has rejected the notion that national secrets were placed at risk. Her campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about the new email disclosures.

The emails highlight the revolving door between the State Department, the White House and the Clinton campaign in early 2015 as Mrs. Clinton geared up to run for president. CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

MY SAY: THINK VEEP IT’S IMPORTANT

By on October 6th, 2016

Governor Pence was impressive in the debate. Don’t dismiss the importance of the Vice President. Here is an updated version of a column I wrote in 2012 published by Family Security Matters.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/think-veepits-important

“….An active Vice-President can influence policy, be an effective spokesman for legislation, and if necessary take over the administration and finish an interrupted term. A vice president is also poised to run for election and complete the agenda of a successful predecessor.The Vice President is first in the line of succession to a President who is removed, resigns, becomes incapacitated or dies. The Vice President as designated by our Constitution, is also the President of the Senate and can break tie votes. That can be crucial in a closely divided Congress.

In the past, electors in the Electoral College, were permitted two votes and the candidate who came in second became the Vice President almost automatically but since 1940 the candidate chooses the potential Vice-President.

The only modern Presidential candidate who did not pick a Veep and had Congress do it for him was Adlai Stevenson, a pompous poseur who lost to Dwight Eisenhower whose Vice President was Richard Nixon.

The qualifications for Vice President are exactly like those for President ….an individual must:

Be a natural born U.S. citizen
Be at least 35 years old
Have resided in the U.S. at least 14 years

Although the President is limited to only two terms, a Vice-President has no limit of terms. Thus, Joe Biden can be Vice-President for life as long as a Democrat is President. And Al Gore could do so too. In fact, Al Gore could have become President if Bill Clinton had been removed from office after the impeachment. He would have had almost two full years to cool America.

What a chilling thought.

The office of Vice President has evolved greatly. At one time it was seen as ceremonial and virtually a sinecure. However, the influence and prestige of the office grew markedly in the last century. Perhaps because a seemingly unprepared and unprepossessing figure like Harry Truman became a worthy successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt who was ill for much of his time in office actually had two Vice Presidents before Harry Truman. John Nance Gardner, a governor of Texas was the Veep in the first two terms (1933-41). Gardner did not think much of the office. He is quoted as saying “the office is not a bucket of warm piss.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

From Greek Tragedy to American Therapy The heroism of facing challenges has been replaced by the victimization of enduring microaggressions. By Victor Davis Hanson see note please

By on October 6th, 2016

“To appreciate American heroism, we might read Sophocles’ Antigone or E. B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed — and watch a lot less Sunday football.” I just finished reading “With the Old Breed”…..quite possibly the best book I ever read on heroism in war…..rsk

The Greeks gave us tragedy — the idea that life is never fair. Terrible stuff for no reason tragically falls on good people. Life’s choices are sometimes only between the bad and the far worse.

In the plays of the ancient dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles, heroism and nobility only arise out of tragedies.

The tragic hero refuses to blame the gods for his terrible fate. Instead, a Prometheus, Ajax, or Oedipus prefers to fight against the odds. He thereby establishes a code of honor, even as defeat looms.

In contrast, modern Americans gave the world therapy.

Life must always be fair. If not, something or someone must be blamed. All good people deserve only a good life — or else.

A nation of victims soon becomes collectively paralyzed in fear of offending someone. Pay down the $20 trillion debt? Reform the unsustainable Social Security system? Ask the 47 percent of the population that pays no income tax to at least pay some?

Nope. Victims would allege that such belt-tightening is unfair and impossible — and hurtful to boot. So we do nothing as the rendezvous with financial collapse gets ever closer.

Does anyone think a culture of whiners can really build high-speed rail in California? Even its supporters want the noisy tracks built somewhere away from their homes.

Even animals get in on the new victimhood. To build a reservoir in drought-stricken California means oppressing the valley elderberry longhorn beetle or ignoring the feelings of the foothill yellow-legged frog.

America’s impoverished ancestors at 15 years of age may have rounded Cape Horn on a schooner or ridden bareback over the Rockies.

Not today’s therapeutic college youth. They have been so victimized by racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and other -isms and -phobias that colleges often provide them “safe spaces,” outlaw “microaggressions” and demand “trigger warnings” to avoid the un-nice.

What would our grandfathers think?

As teenagers on D-Day, they found no safe spaces on Omaha Beach. A storm of steel from thousands of SS killers proved more than a “microaggression” at the Battle of the Bulge. Generals did not give their freezing GIs mere “trigger warnings” about a half-million Chinese Red Army soldiers crossing the Yalu River during the Korean War.

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IMMIGRATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary and ‘Undocumented’ Aliens Are illegal aliens really just “immigrants” who lack documentation? Michael Cutler

By on October 6th, 2016

The excuse “my dog ate my homework” supposedly explains why a student failed to bring a homework assignment to class, but it is an excuse that no one believes. It is not limited students who fail to do their homework, but has come to be the cliché excuse for anyone not completing an assignment who provides a lame excuse that everyone knows is a lie.

Politicians, pollsters and pundits who are advocates for open borders and the creation of immigration anarchy seek to minimize the true significance of aliens entering the United States without inspection and, of critical importance in this particularly perilous era, without vetting.

Their strategy to deceive Americans is to employ the equivalent excuse of the dog eating homework by saying that these illegal aliens entered the United States “without documentation,” thus shifting attention from the fact that millions of aliens entered the United States stealthily, without inspection.

This is the strategy of Hillary Clinton and her immigration anarchy accomplices.

The inspections process is conducted at America’s 325 ports of entry located along the northern and southern borders of the United States, at seaports that lie along our nation’s 95,000 miles of coastline and at international airports by the arm of DHS known as CBP (Customs and Border Protection), and is supposed to prevent the entry of aliens who pose a threat to the safety of America and Americans.

When a student fails to turn in an assignment his/her teacher will normally press that errant student about why the homework really was not completed, demonstrating the teacher’s dissatisfaction with the excuse.

Yet the obvious question that is never asked about illegal aliens who enter the United States without inspection who claim to be “undocumented” is, “What really happened to their documents?” Did they ever have a passport or other identity documents? Did they somehow lose them on their way to the United States? Did they destroy them before running our borders because they know that their names on those passports would show up on terror watch lists or on lists of international fugitives?

Before we go any further, it is vital to understand that the documents we are talking about are not library cards or credit cards. These are cards that, under law, are supposed to provide reliable evidence about the true identity of the bearer. This is a matter of national security.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Senate Must Act Now to Stop Obama’s Climate Change Treaty Obama and the UN work together to tie Trump’s hands if he is elected president. Joseph Klein

By on October 6th, 2016

The United States Senate must act urgently to save its treaty approval authority from irreversible damage inflicted by President Obama with the complicity of the United Nations. Congress has already allowed President Obama to get away with putting in force his Iran nuclear deal with no more than a pro forma review. His administration considered it a “political” arrangement, not a treaty. Now the Obama administration has doubled down with the Paris Agreement on climate change, which was negotiated last December and signed by President Obama in April. For domestic consumption, the administration contends that the Paris Agreement on climate change is no more than an “executive agreement,” which does not require Senate concurrence. However, for the purposes of making it legally binding on the United States under international law, the Obama administration has colluded with the United Nations Secretariat to designate the Paris Agreement as a treaty. In fact, in her October 5th press release regarding the latest developments of the agreement, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power referred to the accord as a “treaty” that is on the verge of being enacted. Aside from legally binding requirements to periodically report on each state party’s progress in meeting individual country’s greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments previously submitted in writing to the UN, the Paris Agreement contains provisions that appear to impose additional legally binding financial commitments.

The Paris Agreement on climate change will go into legal effect thirty days after at least 55 countries, whose greenhouse gas emissions represent at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, have presented the legal instruments necessary under their domestic laws to become formal parties. Once the Paris Agreement goes into legal force, a state party can only withdraw upon at least three years notice. With India and the European Union countries added to the United States and China as well as scores of other countries, the thresholds are about to be met – but only if U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are included in calculating the 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions total. In order for the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to be counted, and the U.S. to be bound legally to the Paris Agreement after the thresholds are met, Obama had to find a way around submitting the Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate for approval while still having it deemed a treaty under international law. His scheme was to enlist the help of the United Nations Secretariat, which has placed a universal climate change agreement at the top of its agenda.

With an eye on the upcoming U.S. presidential election and the possibility that Donald Trump, who opposes the climate agreement, would win, the Obama administration and UN officials worked feverishly to accelerate the member state ratification process necessary to allow the Paris Agreement to go into legal effect. Patricia Espinosa, the UN’s climate chief, said it wouldn’t be “feasible” for Trump to change the terms of the Paris Agreement once it did go into effect. So it was a race against the clock.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, POLITICS Comments turned off

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Debating Hillary, Part 3: Energy and Climate Change Didn’t President Obama promise us unlimited prosperity from this new Green economy eight years ago? And four years ago?

By on October 6th, 2016

During the recent presidential debate, Hillary Clinton returned to the same line we’ve been fed for eight years: there’s an economic boom waiting in the Green Economy.

No, there isn’t. In Part 3 of this 6 part series, Bill takes apart Hillary’s energy plans and examines the consequences to the planet.

Transcript below:

CLINTON: Take clean energy. Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century.

And here’s what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That’s a lot of jobs; that’s a lot of new economic activity.

Wait. Didn’t President Obama promise us unlimited prosperity from this new Green economy eight years ago? And four years ago?

In fact, didn’t President Obama take $500 million dollars of taxpayer money – that’s five hundred MILLION dollars of YOUR MONEY, and give it to a solar cell company called Solyndra? And didn’t $500 million of our dollars go poof! after Solyndra then went bankrupt? Your party is so financially stupid that you poured money into a company that went bankrupt AFTER you stole $500 million from the American people to prop it up.

Solyndra went bankrupt because your entire idea is bankrupt. Renewables do not scale up to even 5% of our total energy needs because we need energy at night and on cloudy days and on days with no wind. The giant IVAN-pah solar plant outside of Las Vegas, heavily touted by your party’s President, sucked up another one thousand, five hundred million dollars of taxpayer money, and now we find that it is not able to run without continued subsidies? Why? Because the electricity generated by the giant IVAN-pah solar plant in Nevada costs about $200 / megawatt-hour, compared to $35 / megawatt-hour for clean burning natural gas.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Bill Whittle’s Firewall: Debating Hillary, Part 2: The Financial Crisis Democrats caused the problem, then Democrats took credit for solving it.

By on October 6th, 2016

In Part 2 of this 6 part series, Bill Whittle flips Hillary’s claim that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by tax cuts for the wealthy, and explains who the REAL villains are…

Transcript below:

CLINTON: Well, let’s stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm.

You left out a few things here. Back in 1977, Democrat Jimmy Carter passed the Community Re-Investment Act, designed to put money back into poorer communities. Now in short, the government eventually passed laws FORCING banks to write mortgages to people whose credit and income would not otherwise have qualified them, back in the days of sound risk / reward calculations. When the government essentially guaranteed bad mortgages, they completely changed the incentive structure of banking. Banks no longer cared about making SENSIBLE LOANS to people who could pay them back; since the government was going to pay off even bad loans then the smart play is to write AS MANY MORTGAGES AS POSSIBLE. When Republicans repeatedly pointed out this growing danger in the mid 2000’a, Democrats called them racists who hated the poor.

So. Democrats caused the problem, then Democrats took credit for solving it. Which as near as I can tell is the entire history of the Democratic Party.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama Aids Iranian Nuclear Terror New information exposes old lies about the nuclear deal. Daniel Greenfield

By on October 6th, 2016

Senator Obama opposed naming Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terror group even while it was closely involved in organizing attacks against American soldiers in Iraq. Then, as part of his dirty deal with Iran, he secretly sent a fortune in foreign cash on airplanes linked to the IRGC.

And, as another part of the secret ransom deal with Iran, he lifted UN sanctions on Bank Sepah.

The United States has gone after plenty of banks for aiding terror finance, but Bank Sepah is somewhat unique in that it is a financial institution actually owned and operated by Islamic terrorists.

Bank Sepah is an IRGC bank. The IRGC, despite Obama’s denials, is an Islamic terror group with American blood on its hands. It is to Shiite Islam what ISIS is to Sunni Islam. And even the Democrats know it.

After the Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 19 Americans, President Clinton sent a message to the leader of Iran warning that the United States had evidence of IRGC involvement in the attack.

More recently, Secretary of State John Kerry admitted that the IRGC have been “labeled as terrorists” when discussing how the Shiite terror organization will benefit from Obama’s sanctions relief.

Bank Sepah however had been sanctioned for something bigger than terrorism. The scale of bombings it was involved in could make the Khobar Towers attack seem minor. Sepah had been sanctioned for being “involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities.”

Among other activities, it had helped Iran buy ballistic missile technology from North Korea.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program would only be halfway complete if it gets the bomb. It also needs missiles to be able to strike Israel, Europe and eventually America. That’s where North Korea and Bank Sepah come in. Bank Sepah helps keep Iran’s ballistic missile industry viable. By delisting it, Obama aided Iran’s ballistic missile program just as he had earlier aided its nuclear program.

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