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August 2020

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Democrats Wish Upon a Star Welcome to the Happy Land of pathetic progressive make-believe.Don Feder

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/democrats-wish-upon-star-don-feder/

Last week, the Democrat Party had its national convention at the summit of the Big Rock Candy Mountain in the Happy Land of Make Believe – a place of magic and wonder where reality is shaped by whim and whatever you wish is true, just because you wish it. Joe Biden is now the Mayor. Kamala Harris provides hair-sniffing morale.

Democrats have been accused of lying. But to be guilty of that, you have to be able to distinguish between lies and the truth.

For the Democrat Party, reality is like the lyrics from “Pinocchio” — ”anything your heart desires will come to you.” As Slow Joe once said, his party chooses truth (that which confirms its ideology) over facts (that which contradicts it).

Here are a few of the truths Democrats cling to:

There is no rioting in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Denver, etc. just “peaceful protests” the President is trying to suppress with his “stormtroopers,” as Nancy Pelosi would have it.

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How Do We Save People from the Tyranny of Lockdown? The specific things we can all do. Katie Hopkins

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/how-do-we-save-people-tyranny-lockdown-katie-hopkins/

Prager U is looking at the impact of lockdown on our mental health and asking, “Was it worth it?”

In the last 30 days, around 40% of people have reported mental or behavioral health issues, 30% anxiety or depression, 26% trauma and stress and 10.7% have considered suicide.

You need to say it twice to stop yourself reading it like a shopping list. During lockdowns, one in ten people have considered suicide in the last 30 days. Look around you. One in ten.

We also know that statistically these figures will be an under-representation. People do not willingly share this kind of information about their darkest thoughts in hopeless moments. Suicide is a private thing, perhaps the most solitary act of all. Right up until what remains of you is found.

4 in 5 U.S. workers live paycheck-to-paycheck. What do you say to a father who no longer has an income to pay the rent? Or a mother made redundant in March with no money to buy food? For many of us work is about much more than satisfying bills, or a providing a home. There is dignity in work, and indignity in the losing of it. This is not unique to lower income homes.

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Trump Admin May Label China’s Treatment of Uighurs a ‘Genocide’: Report By Zachary Evans

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-admin-may-label-chinas-treatment-of-uighurs-a-genocide-report/

The Trump administration is considering whether to formally label China’s treatment of Uighurs a “genocide,” Politico reported on Tuesday.

A genocide designation by the U.S. government could have political and legal consequences for the country. If the genocide label is approved, it could pressure the U.S. to intervene in some form to counteract the genocide, though not necessarily through military means. The designation would also be sure to further inflame tensions between the U.S. and China that have soared during the coronavirus pandemic.

The National Security Council, State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security are still weighing whether to use the term, Trump administration officials told Politico. The administration could designate China’s treatment of Uighurs as “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing” if there is not enough support for a formal designation of “genocide.”

A spokesman for the Joe Biden presidential campaign said Biden supports the “genocide” designation, which could influence President Trump’s final decision on the matter.

China has imprisoned over one million Uighurs and other Muslims from the province of Xinjiang in reeducation camps aimed to stamp out detainees’ Islamic faith and indoctrinate them in communist party ideology. White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien has referred to the facilities as “concentration camps,” and reports of torture, rape, and other abuses have emerged from the camps.

 

China is also implementing a campaign of forced sterilizations and abortions on Uighur women.

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California Apocalypto By Victor Davis Hanson

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/california-apocalypto/#slide-1

Power outages, fires, water shortages, rising taxes, crumbling and congested highways, dismal schools, lawlessness … I t is now August in California.

So we can expect the following from our postmodern state government. There are the now-normal raging wildfires in the coastal and Sierra foothills. And they will be greeted as if they are not characteristic threats of 500 years of settled history, but leveraged as proof of global warming as well as the state’s abject inability to put them out.

When the inept state can’t extinguish them as it has in the past, it suggests that it’s more “natural” to let them burn. Jerry Brown’s team told us that the drought’s toll — millions of dead trees and tens of millions of acres of parched grass and calcified shrubs on hillsides — provided a natural source of food and shelter for bugs and birds and thus need not be grazed or thinned or harvested. And so the wages of drought could be in a sense good for an “ecosystem” that otherwise proved to be green napalm for the people of foothill communities.

We can expect power outages, because we don’t believe in releasing clean heat to make energy. Note that we do not mind people heating up in their 108-degree apartments without power. The planet is always more important than the non-privileged people who inhabit it.

For some reason, solar panels don’t create much power when the state is engulfed in dust, haze, and smoke.

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RNC presented uplift; Dems delivered only addiction to victimhood By Patricia McCarthy

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/rnc_presented_uplift_dems_delivered_only_addiction_to_victimhood.html

As the Democrats continue to ignore or defend the violence being so cleverly orchestrated and funded by Marxist groups intent upon destroying the United States as founded, the speakers at the RNC convention presented something more edifying.

They told their personal stories of what they had suffered under the Obama/Biden administration and how President Trump has done the work that has helped them directly.  

On the second night, the lobster fisherman, the steel-stamping company owner, the dairy farmer, the young Nick Sandmann whom the left attempted to “cancel” were among them. 

The second night of the convention did not disappoint; it was as uplifting and inspiring as the first night.  

It was also a night of blunt truth-telling.  Pam Bondi laid out the facts of the Biden family’s corruption.  

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Five COVID-19 Charts Democrats Can’t Let You Know About

By on August 26th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/26/four-covid-19-charts-democrats-cant-let-you-know-about/

If the Democratic National Convention made anything clear, it is that Democrats are entirely invested in making the coronavirus pandemic look worse than it is in the United States.

Almost every speaker decried the response and blamed President Donald Trump for the scale of the disease in the country.

In his acceptance speech, Joe Biden said “Just judge this president on the facts. Five million Americans infected by COVID-19. More than 170,000 Americans have died. By far the worst performance of any nation on Earth.” Later he said, “We lead the world in confirmed cases. We lead the world in deaths.”

Fact checkers somehow missed Biden’s flagrant abuse of statistics. NPR’s “fact check” of Biden’s speech said only that, if anything, Biden undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths.

But the number of infections and deaths is meaningless out of context. What matters is how many have died per capita, how many who’ve been infected have succumbed to the disease and where the trends are right now.

When you do that, the picture looks far less bleak.

The U.S. is far from the worst in the world in terms of the death rate per million population. The U.S. ranks 10th for per capita deaths worldwide, and notably better than the United Kingdom with its socialist health care scheme, and Sweden, which adopted a much more laissez-faire approach to the pandemic than the U.S.

On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done. In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita. (Note also that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita.)

When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison. Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Lebanon Must End its Poisonous Political Relationship with Hezbollah by Con Coughlin

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16411/lebanon-relationship-hezbollah

Speaking shortly after the verdict was announced, Bahaa Hariri, the eldest son of the murdered prime minister, told me that the conclusion of the trial should result in Hezbollah’s complete exclusion from Lebanese politics.

Mr Hariri’s campaign for Lebanon to end the interference of Iran and Hezbollah in the country’s political system will certainly be helped by the damning material that emerged from the trial about the organisation’s links with Syria and Iran.

The man convicted of Mr Hariri’s murder, therefore, is no ordinary Hezbollah commander, but someone who operates at the organisation’s highest levels, a fact that should help enormously in Lebanon’s coming battle to rid itself of the malign influence that Hezbollah and its Iranian paymasters have exercised over the country’s fortunes.

The conviction of a senior Hezbollah terrorist for assassinating Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has provided the hard-pressed Lebanese people with incontrovertible proof of the malign influence Iran exerts over their political system.

Following an investigation that has lasted for more than a decade and cost a staggering $1 billion, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the UN-sponsored body responsible for trying four Hezbollah suspects accused of murdering Mr Hariri in a car bomb attack in Beirut in 2005, has finally passed its judgement.

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Israel’s “Settlers” Are Beneficiaries of the Israel-UAE Accord Fortunately, they do not know it.

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16382/israel-uae-accord-settlements

Fortunately, the settlers are behaving vociferously as if they were the biggest losers: this behavior is exactly what the UAE needs in order to sell the accord with Israel in the Arab world.

Opposition to the settlement project comes down to two alleged reasons: first, that the project was illegal under international law; second, that it is an obstacle to peace. Now note that the agreement between Israel and the UAE has refuted the second reason. Then, finally, ask: Which of the two reasons was more important?

The major persistent objection to the settlements is not niceties of international law but the claim that they are an obstacle to peace. Take that claim away and the settlers can look forward to a prosperous future, albeit without the fulfillment of the wilder dreams of some.

Widespread surprise greeted the publication of the “Joint Statement of the United States, the State of Israel, and the United Arab Emirates,” announcing “the full normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”

Delegations from the two countries “will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit.” Israel, for its part, “will suspend declaring sovereignty over areas outlined in the President’s Vision for Peace and focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Republicans hit it out of the park again on night two at the convention By Andrea Widburg

By on August 26th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/republicans_hit_it_out_of_the_park_again_on_night_two_at_the_convention.html

In terms of setting and format, the second night of the Republican convention was the same as the first: People spoke in the magnificent Andrew Carnegie auditorium, in venues associated with American history, at the White House, and in a recording studio. Everything was polished without being phony. These were real Americans talking about matters that are deeply important to them. And as on the first night, the convention made clear that this is a party that welcomes and will support minorities.

The theme for the night was Opportunity. Some speakers spoke about the way America was a land of opportunity. Others spoke about the way that Donald Trump restored opportunity in America by giving help where it was needed (Trump isn’t giving money to crony entities such as Solyndra) and by paring back the onerous regulations that were making it increasingly impossible for small businesses – the ones that can’t afford millions in political donations — to function.

As the evening unfolded, we didn’t hear from victims. We heard from Americans who, given the opportunity, will take care of themselves, their families, and their communities. They were a cross-section of Americans: a Navajo leader, a dairy farmer, a lobsterman, a police officer, a reformed felon, an ophthalmologist who performs free cataract surgeries in impoverished countries (and who just happens to be Sen. Rand Paul), a small business owner, a former Planned Parenthood worker, and so many more.

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5 Things to Know About Night 2 of the Republican National Convention By Tyler O’Neil,

By on August 26th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/08/25/5-things-to-know-about-night-2-of-the-republican-national-convention-n843977

The Republican National Convention (RNC) highlighted the promise of America, the threat of the radical Left, and the achievements of President Donald Trump. The convention delivered an action-packed evening with some powerful surprises.

Without further ado, here are five things to know about Night 2.

1. The naturalization ceremony

Due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions have been partly remote. For the Democratic version, the remote convention mostly made the proceedings more of a snoozefest, a Gaslighting America Telethon. Yet the RNC and President Donald Trump approached it as an opportunity.

On Night 1, Trump held a historic panel with former hostages freed by the Trump administration. On Night 2, he did something similarly impressive — he hosted a naturalization ceremony in the middle of a party convention.

This might seem an odd choice. A naturalization ceremony is a celebration of America — not a political party. Yet Democrats and the left-leaning media have smeared America by pushing ideas like The New York Times‘s “1619 Project,” which claims that slavery — not the Declaration of Independence — was the true founding of America.

Naturalization ceremonies are not partisan, or at least they should not be partisan. Yet Democrats have made them partisan, while slamming Trump as an anti-immigrant president (for implementing the same policies Barack Obama did). By hosting a naturalization ceremony, Trump gave the lie to the Left’s attack that he is anti-immigrant.

“Today America rejoices as we welcome five absolutely incredible new members into our great American family,” Trump declared. “Congratulations, good going. You followed the rules, you obeyed the laws, you learned your history, embraced our values, and proved yourselves to be men and women of the highest integrity.”

“It’s an honor for me to be your president,” Trump said.

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