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July 2019

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dublin’s Anti-Israel Boycott Bill: Bad for Ireland, Worse for the Palestinians, Terrible for Everyone by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14483/ireland-israel-boycott-bill

The chief government figure opposing the bill is Foreign Minister Simon Coveney. Coveney argues that Ireland risks its standing in the European Union because the bill is legally unsound. He is correct. A Brussels-based EU trade official warned the Irish government that “the bill would be in contravention of EU competence on trade matters,” as the EU Commercial Treaty demands uniformity in member-state trade policies.

Irish politicians who passed it would likely be regarded as racist, particularly in view of the German Parliament’s recent resolution to designate BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) as anti-Semitic.
In addition, there could be “potentially huge losses of US tax benefits for US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, if the Bill is passed into law. This could potentially lead to major US companies pulling out of Ireland, and for other companies who were considering relocating, to not do so.”

The bill may also may well hurt Ireland’s effort to secure a position on the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the 2020-2021 vote by regional member-states in the General Assembly. Canada and Norway are competing with Ireland for the two seats allotted to the UNSC’s West Europe/North America region.

[The] legislation… will harm the interests of Palestinians — an estimated 30,000 of whom are employed by Israeli businesses in the West Bank… The Ireland Israel Alliance also accuses the bill’s supporters of hypocrisy, and cites their failure to condemn analogous situations in which Irish firms invest in international companies that do business in other occupied territories around the world.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his governing Fine Gael party oppose a bill that would make it a crime for Irish citizens to import or sell anything produced by Israelis in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Varadkar may wisely be pressuring politicians who voted in favor of the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill to examine the possible negative consequences for Ireland’s national interest if the bill becomes law.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Is Chief Justice Roberts the Jim Comey of the Supreme Court? By Ken Masugi

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/01/is-chief-justice-roberts-the-jim-comey-of-the-supreme-court/

American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp last week called for Chief Justice John Roberts’ impeachment over his vote with four liberal justices to deny the Trump Administration a total victory on whether the Census could include a question on citizenship.

Schlapp, whose wife Mercedes is the Trump White House communications director, goes too far—though he may have tapped into an understandable conservative sentiment. I don’t believe Roberts is quite the Jim Comey of the Supreme Court, yet he seems to be asking for the label. Comey’s troubles surfaced when he tried both to condemn and absolve Hillary Clinton of criminal security breaches. All the while, he self-righteously claimed to cleave to a higher loyalty. But that loyalty seems to have ensnared him in an even more insidious conspiracy, which the Justice Department is now investigating.

For his part—and the comparison with Comey goes only so far—Roberts in trying to depoliticize a case ended up protecting partisanship within the government, that is to say within the bureaucracy. He had done something similar in his 2012 opinion on the Affordable Care Act—finding its mandate a constitutional tax after declaring the law unconstitutional based on the main commerce clause arguments presented. In allegedly taking politics out of his opinion Roberts also removes the Constitution. (To be fair, he also enabled Republicans to gain majorities in Congress that should have repealed the ACA, but those majorities failed to it.)

As President Trump blasted the partisan actions of various judges, the chief justice shot back, claiming there are “not Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” Trump replied, “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.” 

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MEDIA, POLITICS Comments turned off

The Left’s Political Hit Squads Prep for 2020 By Julie Kelly

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/07/01/the-lefts-political-hit-squads-prep-for-2020/

Lots of people are very angry with Bret Stephens.

But the outrage isn’t coming from the Trump supporters whom Stephens, one of the New York Times’ token “conservative” columnists, routinely maligns. The NeverTrump pundit is under heavy fire from the Left for a frank—and fair—assessment of how “ordinary” Americans view the extreme positions staked out by nearly every Democratic presidential candidate during last week’s primary debates.

In his June 28 column, “A Wretched Start for the Democrats,” Stephens blasts Democrats for making “too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country. A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us.”

Stephens questions the mainstream appeal of a party platform that promises free healthcare for illegal immigrants; the elimination of private insurance coverage; student loan forgiveness; and universal child care. But one passage in particular earned him the most scorn: “They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes.”

Now, only to the ears of your average Times subscriber or disciple of the Left is that some kind of heresy, or dog whistle to tiki torch-bearing white supremacists. For the rest of us, it’s obvious that Stephens is referring to the Democratic Party’s almost singular focus on the welfare of illegal immigrants—both currently residing in the United States and now attempting to cross the southern border in record numbers—while ignoring the woes of millions of American citizens.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Straining to Defend Rashida Tlaib at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Why the leftist Jewish media leaped to the defense of a Jew-hater in Congress. Kenneth Levin

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274172/straining-defend-rashida-tlaib-jewish-telegraphic-kenneth-levin

Attacks on Israel that distort the reality of the Jewish state’s past and present in the service of undermining its well-being and its very survival have become ever more widely disseminated in bastions of the Left in America. This is occurring most strikingly in academia, among both students and faculty, but also in prominent mainstream media and even within the Democrat party. At the same time, those Jews who align themselves with the Left often resort to the most contrived of contortions to mitigate the message of such attacks.

A representative example of this phenomenon was recently provided by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)’s editor-in-chief, Andrew Silow-Carroll. The context was his contribution to the storm of comment in response to Rashida Tlaib’s remarks in a May interview on the podcast Skullduggery. Silow-Carroll’s article was entitled, “What did Rashida Tlaib say about the Holocaust? It’s probably not what you think.” What makes the piece particularly noteworthy is that the JTA is a news service whose stories are picked up by Jewish papers around the world and the rhetoric of its articles, not least that of pieces by its editor-in-chief, is shaped to have a desired impact on the service’s Jewish readership. In Silow-Carroll’s gloss on the Tlaib interview – as in many other articles put out by the JTA having to do with Israel and its critics on the Left – the rhetoric is clearly intended to reassure readers that attacks on Israel from the Left, in this case the Democrat Congresswoman’s statements, were not so problematic and that reactions to the contrary are overwrought.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The primal scream of climate change fanatics By Bob Weir

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/the_primal_scream_of_climate_change_fanatics.html

In 1968, Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb, which became a bestseller.  The premise of the book was that worldwide famine was going to destroy humanity.  According to the professor, this frightening scenario was scheduled to happen in the 1970s and 1980s, due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals.  Hmmm…sounds as though he was giving mankind about 12 years before Armageddon would occur.  Whom does that remind you of?  Anyway, his solution was immediate action to limit population growth!  We know how well that worked out!

During the 1970s, we entered a period of academic conjecture on a subject that came to be known as global cooling.  This theory was based on studies that suggested that a buildup of glaciers was occurring and could cause imminent cooling of the Earth’s surface, leading to another Ice Age.  Glaciers are made up of fallen snow that, over many years, compresses into large, thickened ice masses.  Presently, glaciers occupy about 10 percent of the world’s total land area, with most located in polar regions like Antarctica, Greenland, and the Canadian Arctic.  Glaciers are remnants from the last Ice Age, when ice covered nearly 32 percent of the land and 30 percent of the oceans.  At 10 percent, we’re doing well.

As we moved into the 1980s, another climate scare was taking root.  Acid rain gave new meaning to the term “the sky is falling.”  According to the alarmists of that era, there was a form of precipitation that contained an acidic quality with elevated levels of hydrogen ions.  They claimed that the acid rain was having harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and our infrastructure.  Nothing much was said about walking in the rain or drinking rainwater.  After a series of studies and the emergence of a new term called the “ozone hole,” life went on pretty much the same as always.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Healthy Tax Break An expansion of health reimbursement accounts is good news for workers.

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-healthy-tax-break-11562021565

By the left’s account you’d think the Trump Administration’s only ambition on health care is to rip insurance from the poor and sick. So note that a Health and Human Services rule finalized last month represents a dramatic expansion in health-care choices for those who may have limited insurance options.

The Trump Administration finished regulations expanding health reimbursement arrangements, often known as HRAs. The arrangements will allow an employer to give a worker tax-exempt dollars to buy a health-insurance plan in the individual market. Such arrangements have existed in some form since the early 2000s, but the Obama Administration used the Affordable Care Act to limit them.

The practical effect of the new rule is to extend the tax advantage for employer health care to individuals who purchase their own insurance. This would help to rectify an injustice in the tax code, which favors employer insurance. The better route economically would be to nix the employer tax exclusion, but Republicans in 2017 couldn’t even agree to nibble at the tax preference as part of doomed bills repealing and replacing ObamaCare. Alas.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peaceful Hong Kong Demonstrations Escalate as Protesters Storm Legislative Council; 550k Take to Streets By Brian Min

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/peaceful-hong-kong-protests-escalate-as-protesters-storm-legislative-council-550k-take-to-streets/

On July 1, Hong Kong marked the 22nd anniversary of its return to Chinese rule with peaceful protests that partly turned into violent clashes, exposing divisions within the protest movement.

Consistent with the activities of the past months, protesters demanded the permanent withdrawal of a bill that would allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland and the resignation of city leader Carrie Lam.

Around 550,000 Hong Kong protesters marched peacefully on the streets in the afternoon without any scenes of violence or chaos.

From around 4 a.m. until 8 a.m. local time, protesters initially clashed with the police when they attempted to unsuccessfully block Lam from attending the flag-raising ceremony where the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China is celebrated.

At around 9 p.m. local time, hundreds of protesters attacked the Legislative Council building—the headquarters of the unicameral legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, accessing it through an entryway that they had smashed with the help of a metal trolley, poles, and scaffolding.

According to the South China Morning Post, when the protesters initially entered the Legislative Council, the police “were nowhere to be seen.” CNN claims that some Hong Kong police were present “in full riot gear,” but did not take actions.

In addition to smashing touchscreen panels and vandalizing the walls, protesters ripped down and smashed portraits of Legislative Council President Andrew Leung and former President Rita Fan, and dismantled closed-circuit cameras inside the building.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Austin Goes from Harmlessly Weird to Dangerously Stupid by Legalizing Camping on City Streets By Bryan Preston

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/austin-goes-from-harmlessly-weird-to-dangerously-stupid-by-legalizing-camping-on-city-streets/

Austin has long been the weird, liberal capital of Texas. The rest of Texas just sort of shrugs and puts up with it. Austin is quirky. Austin is odd. Austin lives in its own little world. Austin is also home to some of the best live music joints anywhere and you have to work pretty hard to find a bad restaurant in the city, so it’s not without its charms. The joke about Austin is that it’s nice because it’s so close to Texas (its the capital, a deep blue dot surrounded by a vast red sea). Austin is like that oddball cousin we all have. He’s there. He picks his nose and argues with light posts. But he’s nice and basically no threat to anyone, so whaddyagonnado?

Well, Texas’ weird cousin just became a threat to itself and others.

On June 20, the Austin city council passed what has to be one of the dumbest, most nonsensical ordinances since the city’s last idiotic, nonsensical ordinance (they pass a lot of ‘em, bless their hearts).

The city council made it perfectly legal to camp out on the city’s public spaces and sidewalks, under bridges and overpasses and, well, everywhere all over town – except, notably, parks and Austin City Hall.

That’s right. The city council exempted themselves from seeing homeless campouts — let’s call them Adlervilles, after the esteemed Mayor Steve Adler — on their own front porch. Mayor Adler and his cohort deemed city hall camping out of bounds. But you, owner of the local cookie store or overtaxed home, will get to see and step over and around all manner of things right out in your yard 24-7 now. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Goes to Japan, and Japan to Him Tokyo’s whaling and trade policies suggest the durability of the president’s approach. By Walter Russell Mead

By on July 2nd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-goes-to-japan-and-japan-to-him-11562020774

Even before he stunned the world by arranging an impromptu summit with Kim Jong Un, President Trump worked his media magic at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, last week. Whether shaping the world economy through discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping or elevating his daughter Ivanka to senior-diplomat status by bringing her into critical meetings, Mr. Trump and his trademark dazzle-and-spin approach to foreign affairs fascinated, worried and flummoxed diplomats and pundits.

Many hope that such personalized, improvisational and unilateral diplomacy will fade from world politics when Mr. Trump returns to private life. But two developments in Japan suggest the Trumpification of world politics may be here to stay.

First, a small fleet of whalers set out on the first commercial hunt in Japan in 31 years, as Japan’s departure from the International Whaling Commission became effective. The IWC may not be one of the world’s most important multilateral institutions, but its troubles typify the crisis increasingly gripping its peers.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: JUNE 2019-THE MONTH THAT WAS……SEE NOTE PLEASE

By on July 1st, 2019

My friend and e-pal Sydney Williams, has, to my great regret, announced that he will no longer write these monthly columns which so many of us enjoy so much. For more of his good writing and opinions go to:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sydney+williams&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Dear Mary: Letters Home from the 10th Mountain Division (1944–1945) by Williams III, Sydney M. | Jul 19, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The world is complicated. It has always been so. Resources are limited, but man’s mind is limitless. We live on a planet with just over two acres of inhabitable land per inhabitant. But that fact, and the limits implied, speaks to man’s remarkable ability to survive and thrive. But neither surviving nor thriving is easy, nor can we assume we always will. Man is a social animal. He has survived through intuition, and he has thrived through what Adam Smith called the division of labor that increases social and economic dependency. To advance his interests, man created communities, governments, rule of law and markets. Two hundred years ago, no one could have conceived of the social, cultural and technological advances that allow us to live today as we do. No one today can now predict what the world two hundred years hence will be like. Will man blow himself up? Will natural forces cause our extinction? Will warring factions and competing economic systems persist and worsen? Or, will technology and cultural changes continue to improve living standards? Will we live in harmony? No one knows.

 

What we do know is that classically liberal governments and free markets have allowed unprecedented improvement in living standards and extensions of life. Now, free market capitalism, which goes hand-in-hand with democracy, is under attack by progressives who are ignorant of history and who do not understand basic economics. The question, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin from 1776, is can we keep our republican government and the capitalist system we have created, which has served us and the world so well? Or will we make a radical turn toward socialism? We cannot take past successes for granted.

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