Displaying posts published in

August 2020

Biden Didn’t Give An Acceptance Speech: He Gave A Farewell Address Mychal Massie

https://mychal-massie.com/biden-didnt-give-an-acceptance-speech-he-gave-a-farewell-address/

I don’t believe Joe Biden gave an acceptance speech at the Democrat convention. I believe he gave his farewell address.

It’s beyond rational for Democrats and their media lapdogs to pretend Biden’s fit to be president if he actually had all of his marbles. But he doesn’t and therefore he isn’t; and it’s darned well time this charade ends.

Biden is an Erebusic bifurcation staged as a prolusion for the person who will eventually replace him. For those who struggle with simple English, I’m saying Democrats for reasons known only to them never intended for Biden to be more than a puppet until they install the person they really want.

The Democrat party is a lot of things and everyone those things are bad, but I cannot believe they’re foolish enough to actually think Biden is fit for office, much less fit to be president. How dishonest does one have to be to pretend that a man who doesn’t know what room of the house he is in from hour to hour and who cannot distinguish his wife from his sister, and who creepily sniffs women’s hair in public.

Biden’s use of the phrase: “C’mon man” is identifiable with senile old men found most often residing in monitored care facilities, where their ability to come and go is restricted.

Clinesmith Guilty Plea: Using a ‘Digraph’ to Conceal a Massive Deception of the Court By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/clinesmith-guilty-plea-using-a-digraph-to-conceal-a-massive-deception-of-the-court/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=featured-writers&utm_term=first

He twisted the meaning of a CIA term to define Carter Page as an unwitting CIA source rather than what he was: a CIA informant willingly providing info for use against Russians.

Author’s Note: This is the second of a three-part series (see Part 1).

Kevin Clinesmith’s lies and document doctoring, which resulted in his guilty plea to a felony false-statement charge last week, were prompted by what turned out to be the worst-case scenario, for both him and the FBI.

To recap, we are focusing on June 2017, when the FBI was preparing to submit an application for a fourth 90-day warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The “SSA,” a supervisory special agent at FBI headquarters whom we met in Part 1, was to be the affiant on that application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Not assigned to Crossfire Hurricane until December 2016, the SSA had not been involved in the investigation when the bureau opened it five months earlier. He was personally unaware that, months before the first Page FISA warrant was sought in October 2016, the CIA had informed the FBI about Page’s years of work as a CIA informant, authorized by the agency for “operational contact” with Russians. Though the SSA was not on the investigative team, he had been the headquarters official assigned to swear to the truth of the renewal warrant applications in January and April 2017. He thus knew that the bureau heavily relied on Page’s prior years of contact with Russians in portraying Page to the FISC as a clandestine agent of Moscow, at the center of a suspected Trump-Russia espionage conspiracy.

The SSA became alarmed when Page, while vehemently denying that he was a spy for Russia, publicly claimed that he’d been a U.S. government intelligence source against Russia. The SSA realized that if Page was telling the truth, it would “seriously impact the predication of our entire investigation.”

That was not the half of it. When the SSA asked Kevin Clinesmith, the bureau’s point man for contact with the CIA, to check on Page’s claims, Clinesmith faced the worst-case scenario, not only because Page was telling the truth, but because the FBI had every reason to know — before it began seeking surveillance warrants from the FISC eight months earlier — that Page had indeed been a CIA informant. Moreover, Clinesmith, a lawyer in the FBI branch that reviewed FISA applications, had been involved from the start.

“America First” Pays Off in the Middle East by David Goldman

https://lawliberty.org/america-first-pays-off-in-the-middle-east/

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (“MbZ”) of the United Arab Emirates, the “most powerful Arab ruler” according to the New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick, is also the Arab world’s most sagacious political leader. With the UAE’s current account surplus of $109 billion in 2019 (vs. Saudi Arabia’s $47 billion), he wields enormous economic heft. MbZ has mentored Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 20 years his junior, since the Saudi leader’s youth. His agreement to normalize relations with the State of Israel, almost certainly the first of several Arab states to make such agreements, vitiates the Islamist agendas of Iran and Turkey and improves the prospects for a long-term solution to the Syrian civil war.

Both President Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden took credit for the agreement. The US president and his team worked for this agreement behind the scenes for years, and Trump announced it jointly with Binyamin Netanyahu and MbZ. In fact, Biden had more to do with motivating the agreement than he would like to admit. The prospect of a Democratic presidency spurred MbZ to lock in an agreement with Israel, in case Washington were to shift back to Obama’s accommodative stance toward Iran.

More than his personal diplomacy, Trump’s “America First” policies deserve credit for the agreement, the administration’s clearest achievement in foreign policy. By eschewing American military intervention in the region, Trump pushed the regional players to rise to the occasion. The mortal leap was more difficult for Prince Zayed, and will be for the Saudis and others who follow his lead, because Sunni radicalism remains a formidable force in the region—with funding and encouragement from Qatar and Turkey. The fact that energy-self-sufficient America no longer needs to play policeman in the Persian Gulf, and has wearied of sacrificing blood and treasure in regional wars, compels the Gulf states to act responsibly as a matter of self-preservation. As long as the Gulf States remained de facto US protectorates, they could claim that the “Arab Street” stood in the way of relations with Israel. Now that they have to take responsibility for their own defense, they look to Israel for help.

“Voting” by Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com/

“Our American heritage is threatened as much by our own indifference,as it is by the most unscrupulous office or the most powerful foreign threat. The future of this Republic is in the hands of the American voter.”

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

                                                                                                                              

The ability to vote is a privilege, as well as a responsibility. It should not be denied any eligible individual, nor should it be granted to any non-citizen. Voters should learn all they can about candidates and their policies. To paraphrase Sy Syms’ ads from the 1980s, democracy depends on an educated electorate. “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all,” said John F. Kennedy.

Many of us live in one-party states. A consequence is that if one is registered with the “out” party, there is a tendency to feel one’s vote will not matter, for example a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in San Francisco or New York City. Trends in voter registration suggest dissatisfaction with both parties. Twenty years ago, 30% of all voters were registered as Independents (up from 20% in 1960), today that number is 40%, according to a Gallup Poll conducted in May 2020. Nevertheless, not voting should never be one’s decision. “Nobody will ever deprive the American people the right to vote,” said Franklin D. Roosevelt, “except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” And we should vote based on knowledge and reason, not inanity and emotion. Voting should be convenient and simple and should protect against fraud.

The presence of COVID-19 has many skeptical of being anyplace where crowds gather, including polling stations. One proposed alternative is to send ballots to every registered voter. There are about 153 million registered voters in the U.S. There are approximately 140,000 polling stations. Tracking legal voters is not easy. Every year, approximately 14% of the population – roughly 21 million voters – moves; another 1.5 million die and a similar number attain voting age. Keeping accurate records is a formidable task, which is why, historically, people have gone to their local polling stations to vote. Three states – Colorado, Oregon and Washington – have instituted a system to vote by mail, and their experience lends credibility to the viability of the process, but all three have been doing so for several years, ten years in the case of Colorado and twenty years for Oregon. Nevertheless, to take the process national will not be easy. “But running a vote-by-mail election is surprisingly complicated, and there’s a lot of room for things to go wrong. Validating and counting a deluge of posted ballots in an open and accountable way presents a major challenge, one that only half a dozen states are fully prepared for,” so ran an article in the August 9th edition of The Oregonian. In close elections, unintentional errors are viewed with mistrust.

Ten Ways Binge-Buying Bureaucrats Spent $91 Billion In A Year-End 2019 Shopping Spree Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/08/25/ten-ways-binge-buying-bureaucrats-spent-91-billion-in-a-year-end-2019-shopping-spree/#74915f754c45

Christmas comes in September, not December, for federal contractors.

In the final month of the fiscal year, federal agencies scramble to spend the leftovers in their annual budgets. They worry that spending less than Congress appropriated this year will mean a thinner budget next year.

So, rather than admit the department could run efficiently on fewer taxpayer dollars, federal agencies embark on a shopping spree. This is the “use it or lose it” spending phenomenon – and it happens every year on the taxpayer dime.

Our OpenTheBooks oversight report – The Use-It-Or-Lose-It Spending Spree, How The Feds Spent $91 Billion In September 2019 detailed 642,567 transactions – or about 21,418 expenditures per day.

In the final nine days of the year, federal agencies signed $51 billion in contracts, which exceeded the spending in each of the trailing eleven months. In the final two days, agencies authorized a whopping $23.8 billion.

In February 2020, President Donald Trump committed to ending the bureaucratic binge-buying in his budget to Congress FY2021. So, we reached out to the budget hawks at the Office of Management And Budget (OMB) for comment.

PROMOTED

OMB Director Russ Vought responded: “The practice of use it or lose it spending has cost American taxpayers an untold amount of money. It’s a practice that needs to stop and OMB will continue our efforts to end this wasteful spending.”

Ruthie Blum:Gang rape at the Red Sea Hotel While there is national consensus in Israel about the evils of sexual abuse, there is little agreement on the root causes of the problem.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/gang-rape-at-the-red-sea-hotel/

In a sign of societal health, Israelis expressed unified horror at the news of a gang rape that took place earlier this month in the southern resort town of Eilat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and President Reuven Rivlin were joined by members of Knesset across the political spectrum in condemning the assault on a 16-year-old girl from Ashkelon and in denouncing sexual violence in general.

Demonstrators around the country have been taking to the streets to convey their solidarity with the victim and rail against the legal system for not doing enough to curb the phenomenon. Chanting slogans, such as, “We believe you!” and “I’m not your toy” (the title of Israel’s winning Eurovision Song Contest entry in 2018, performed by Netta Barzilai), protesters are demanding that the government allocate more money to programs aimed at combating violence against women. They are also calling for better medical and psychological care for sexual-abuse victims.

Every media outlet continues to follow and update the story of the girl, who allegedly was raped by multiple men (for what police describe as “many long hours”) at the Red Sea Hotel.

So far, more than 11 suspects have been arrested, among them two in their late 20s and the rest under the age of 18. According to police statements, testimony provided by a female friend who traveled to Eilat with the victim was corroborated by evidence found on the scene. Though law-enforcement officials have yet to release precise details of the event, the outline that has emerged is stomach-turning.

Andrew Cuomo’s Book Deal and Why the Worst Rise to the Top in Politics Positions of power in big-government systems inevitably attract a society’s worst and most immoral individuals. Brad Polumbo

https://fee.org/articles/andrew-cuomo-s-book-deal-and-why-the-worst-rise-to-the-top-in-politics/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FEE-Freeman+%28Foundation+for+Economic+Education+-+Latest+Articles%29

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the state of New York especially hard. Almost 33,000 New Yorkers have died from the virus, more total deaths than any other state in the country. And New York ranks as the second-worst state for deaths when adjusted for population. The Empire State alone accounts for one in five coronavirus deaths in the US despite having only around six percent of the nation’s population.

Why did New York fare so poorly?

Well, the coronavirus is far more lethal for older people. How well a state has mitigated the death count closely corresponds with how well they protected elderly, vulnerable populations. In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo mandated that nursing homes accept patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 even if it means exposing their residents to the virus.

Yes, you read that right.

It shouldn’t come as a shock, then, that at least 6,600 of the state’s deaths happened in nursing homes. And this is almost certainly an undercount, as the Associated Press says it could be more like 11,000 when you adjust for the odd way in which New York defined its deaths. (The AP described New York’s death toll as “cloaked in secrecy” and even Democratic state legislators have accused the state of trying to cover up the number of nursing home deaths).

Of course this is what would happen if you force institutions housing the elderly to accept carriers of a virus that is highly lethal for older people. Other states such as Florida did the opposite. By barring COVID-19 positive patients from nursing homes, they escaped thousands of deaths.

Worse, Cuomo has refused to allow an independent investigation into his handling of the nursing home debacle despite bipartisan calls for oversight.

From start to finish, Cuomo botched the COVID-19 response woefully. National Review’s Kyle Smith summarized the governor’s mistakes “breathtakingly bad moves” that “in retrospect amounted to catastrophe.”

EDWARD ALEXANDER- A CHAMPION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE (1936-2020) BY DAVID ISAAC

https://worldisraelnews.com/edward-alexander-a-champion-of-the-jewish-people-1936-2020/

Edward Alexander should have been a household name in the Jewish community. Perhaps the community was too busy celebrating the very people he was defending them against, the likes of Thomas Friedman, Michael Lerner, Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Peter Beinart, and many others.

Alexander was a professor of English literature who wrote on the great Victorians, notably John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin. About 40 years ago, he shifted gears to largely write on Jewish issues. His style sharpened by studying literature’s greats, he entered the lists an eloquent champion of Israel against its detractors. His writing was  arresting: “The birth of Israel just a few years after the destruction of European Jewry was one of the greatest affirmations of life ever made by a martyred people.”

In an essay praising historian and thinker Yoram Hazony’s The Jewish State for analyzing the maladies of Israel’s intellectuals, Alexander writes that in Hazony Israel has perhaps found its latter-day Jeremiah, “but given the widespread tone-deafness of the country’s enlightened classes to their Jewish heritage, perhaps what is needed at the moment is an Israeli Jonathan Swift.” Alexander himself is the closest the Jews have come to their own Swift with his erudition, wit and scathing shafts against the moral hypocrites and self-haters.

For Alexander was fierce as well as erudite and eloquent. His erudition and masterful style was on display in works like The Holocaust and the War of Ideas and The Resonance of Dust. But he also impaled the sacred cows of the literary and political establishment. In The Jewish Wars he unmasked Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Tutu, “whose speeches against apartheid” writes Alexander in 1990 “return obsessively to gross, licentious equations between the South African system and Jewish practices, biblical and modern.”

Making Marx Proud: Today’s Campus Lunacy By Lawrence W. Reed

https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/making-marx-proud-todays-campus-lunacy/

Earlier this summer, a survey posted on Twitter posed this question: “If you were dropped 2,000 years back in time with nothing but the knowledge you have now, what would you do?”

A man named Timothy Snediker replied as follows: “Easy. I would find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth. Theologically speaking, it would be really important to get him before his calling and ministry begins, so that gives me roughly a decade to make it to Palestine, locate the man and make my move.”

Shocking, isn’t it? It should be to any decent person, regardless of faith. You’re wondering, “Who is this Snediker guy? A prison inmate? A mental patient? A Satan worshiper?”

He’s actually a teaching assistant at the University of California-Santa Barbara, pursuing his doctorate in religious studies. If he had suggested the murder of Mohammed or Martin Luther King, you can bet he would be looking for work and none of us would care if he never found any. But he is ensconced at progressive UC-Santa Barbara, where a socialist religion teacher can advocate killing the most perfect man who ever lived and likely still land tenure.

It would not surprise me if some of this character’s students will soon be burning down businesses and police precincts, claiming simultaneously that certain lives matter, but not all. Ideas have consequences.

“Get On With Your Lives!” – Oxford Professor Says “People Have Become Overly Frightened” Of COVID-19

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/get-your-lives-oxford-professor-says-people-have-become-overly-frightened-covid-19

Even though BoJo’s system of localized COVID-19 measures seems to be working, the unrelenting hysteria peddled by the British press has left millions of Britons traumatized.

Now, Carl Heneghan, a professor of Evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, is calling for the government to intervene and “proactively reassure” his young students that the coronavirus won’t kill them if they contract it.

He said exaggerated fears of the virus have led to “people going about their daily lives misunderstanding and overestimating their risk,” something with which many Americans can probably empathize.

And as parts of north Manchester remain on ‘partial lockdown’, the professor said introducing local lockdowns could do more harm than good by forcing people into their homes, potentially infecting other vulnerable people who live with them, especially as the temperature drops.

Professor Heneghan’s work has led to a lowering of the official death toll after he revealed COVID-19 deaths were being counted even if someone had subsequently died of other causes.

As we learn more about the virus, the pandemic could end up no worse than a bad flu season, the professor said, with a touch of hyperbole.