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September 2020

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“The Emperor’s New Clothes – Decline of Western Civilization?” Sydney Williams

By on September 4th, 2020

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The story of the emperor’s new clothes is applicable to our times. Two swindlers, posing as weavers, appealed to the emperor’s vanity, a man fond of new clothes. They convinced him and his courtiers that only those fit for high office or brilliant of mind would be able to see the bright colors and patterns that would comprise his new outfit. For everybody else, they would be invisible. The weavers then wove air on the looms they had set up. Once finished, they had the emperor and his councilors approve what they had done. Not wanting to be seen as stupid or unfit, they all admired what they could not see. The emperor then paraded through town, while the weavers scurried away. It took a young child without pretension to alert the town folk that the emperor was naked. The people at first hushed the child, but as the truth was whispered throughout the crowd, people saw – the emperor was naked.

For the past several months, the tale has been spun that America is systemically racist and built on a foundation of slavery, that social justice must be pursued regardless of societal costs, that capitalism created privilege for white males and inequality for minorities and women, and that brutal police oppress people of color. It is a tale that says white males need be indoctrinated with critical race theory, a view that race is not biologically grounded but socially constructed by white people at the expense of people of color.

This mythical tale originated in elite universities – ironically, where endowments are the fruit of capitalism – whose wealth allowed professors and administrators to criticize the hand that feeds them. It has been abetted by a media, a vomitorium more interested in promoting ideology than in discovering truth. It is an orthodoxy that combines ignorance and shame and is intolerant of all who do not adhere to its “wokeness.” A recent survey conducted by Heterodox Academy and quoted by John McWhorter in the September issue of The Atlantic, found that “more than half of respondents considered expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory.”

This orthodoxy instructs youth to condemn Western Civilization, the culture that has done more than any other to free people from the yoke of tyranny, lift them from poverty and extend lives. Many of these professors and journalists promote Marxism, which promises a transcendent life of sunny days and blue skies, a place where equality reigns, but which in reality is state-sponsored dictatorship and which was instrumental in the formation of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Supporters of Socialism point to Nordic countries, failing to note their capitalistic ways and ignoring the dreary lives of Cubans, Venezuelans and the 90% of Chinese who are not members of the Communist Party.

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BOOKS, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Case for Trump There’s little wrong with President Trump that more Trump couldn’t solve. by Michael Anton

By on September 4th, 2020

https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-case-for-trump/

This essay is adapted from Michael Anton’s forthcoming book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return (Regnery Publishing).

Americans who want to remain citizens of a united country that at least makes some desultory attempt to protect them and further their interests have no choice but to stay the course. As the saying goes, the only way out is through.

I know that some readers will lament that the Trump Administration has been a disappointment. “Where’s our wall?” I’d like to have seen more progress by now, too. “Why wasn’t he tougher during the riots and their aftermath?” I don’t know.

But it does seem clear that a few of the things we thought all along are actually true. The presidency is hard enough to manage with decades of experience in politics and a series of elective offices under your belt. It’s that much harder when a president assumes the office not merely from the outside, but politically speaking, from out of nowhere.

It’s harder still without a party. Yes, President Trump enjoys the overwhelming loyalty of Republican voters—but his hold on Republican donors, and especially officials, is much more tenuous. He ran against them and won—and most of them will never forgive him. They play nice to his face and undermine him behind his back. That’s before we even get to the ones in open rebellion. No president—Democrat or Republican—has ever come to power facing organized efforts by his own party’s middle management to tally lists of people declaring on the record that under no circumstances will they work for the incoming administration. It’s been hard, to say the least, to staff up when a good chunk of the party is dead-set against their leader, and nearly all the rest spent their careers furthering policies diametrically opposed to those he ran—and won—on.

And that’s just President Trump’s ostensible own side. Then factor in all his open enemies from the other party, and virtually every other power center in our society, plus the steadfast opposition of the so-called “deep state”—i.e., the very federal bureaucrats whom he was elected to oversee and direct. Viewed from this angle, one may fairly wonder how it’s been possible for him to accomplish anything at all.

More fundamentally: where do you think the country would be without him? Even if you’re disappointed with less than 200 miles of wall, remember that leading Democrats not only insist that every single new inch is a moral atrocity, they want to tear down sections that already exist.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Here’s How We Know The Atlantic’s Hit Piece on Trump Is Pure Fiction By Matt Margolis

By on September 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/09/04/heres-how-we-know-the-atlantics-hit-piece-on-trump-is-pure-fiction-n890999

A report published Thursday by The Atlantic cited anonymous sources claiming that President Donald Trump didn’t want to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018 because the troops there who died in battle were “losers” and “suckers. The media has largely reported on this story as though it were true or at least likely to be true.

“The Atlantic Magazine is dying, like most magazines, so they make up a fake story in order to gain some relevance,” Trump tweeted on Friday. “Story already refuted, but this is what we are up against. Just like the Fake Dossier. You fight and fight, and then people realize it was a total fraud!”

Even CNN’s Brian Stelter seemed to acknowledge that the claims of anonymous sources aren’t as convincing.

“But it is also incumbent on the sources, on the people that are talking to [Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey] Goldberg, on the people that are talking to other outlets — the president’s denying it explicitly, so it’s put up or shut up time,” Stelter said. “Why aren’t these people coming forward and putting their names to these quotes?”

Perhaps because it’s a lot easier to lie when your name and reputation aren’t on the line. But there are at least five witnesses who have gone on the record disputing the allegations made in The Atlantic.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, called The Atlantic story B.S. on Twitter, “I was actually there and one of the people [who were] part of the discussion – this never happened. I have sat in the room when our President called family members after their sons were killed in action and it was heart-wrenching,” she said. “These were some of the moments I witnessed the President show his heart and demonstrate how much he respects the selfless and courageous men and women of our military. I am disgusted by this false attack.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Wrong-Way Biden by Kyle Smith “The policy choice in the presidential election is clear” *****

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/09/21/wrong-way-biden/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

“Alas, Abraham Lincoln is not on the ballot this year. Two flawed men present themselves for our inspection. Biden may promise “hope and light and love,” but that is merely the accepted euphemism for greatly expanded federal powers to reshape everything from the energy sector to girls’ locker rooms. The distractions of personality foibles, Twitter wars, and misadventures in assertions of truth aside, the crux of this election is that we are confronted as usual with one party that says, “Let’s get to work reshaping everything in the United States” and another party that says, “Let’s not.””

Joe Biden is a proud retail politician, a man who believes the personal touch is how elected officials cement a connection with us. So I’ll share my personal story about how he cemented a connection with me, back when I and a few hundred thousand other troops were preparing for war, and Joe wafted in to warn us we were all to get our collective ass kicked.

In January of 1991, I was a second lieutenant in the 178th Personnel Service Company, an administrative appendix to the buffed body of the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. My troops and I had landed in the Gulf town of Dhahran a week before Christmas and gradually made our way inland by long, grim, nearly silent convoys — creeping, 20-mph slogs across the one two-lane highway, then off the road and across the sands to set up camp.

In mid January, after maybe twelve hours of deliberate, dusty driving, I climbed out of a deuce-and-a-half and stretched my limbs as the soldiers began unloading, somewhere beneath the triangle where Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia meet. A radio was playing in someone’s truck. Radio options were limited in this landscape; occasionally you could find the signal for the Armed Forces Network, if there was a large enough base nearby, but sometimes you couldn’t. AFN, Stars and Stripes, and occasional copies of a surprisingly good English-language broadsheet called “Arab News” were our sole media diet apart from whatever magazines we subscribed to, which would arrive weeks late in the mail. All three of our main sources were, of course, pro-U.S., which was fine by me. I had no idea what we were in for. I wanted only the most optimistic spin on things.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Dead heat: Trump erases Biden’s 8-point lead in Pennsylvania as black voters abandon Democrat by Paul Bedard

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/dead-heat-trump-erases-bidens-8-point-lead-in-pennsylvania-as-black-voters-abandon-democrat

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who calls himself “a kid from Scranton,” has lost his wide lead over President Trump in his native Pennsylvania, where the 2020 presidential race is a dead heat.

The latest Rasmussen Reports poll showed that both are tied at 46%.

And, significantly, said the poll analysis, among the 82% of voters who said that they are “certain” how they will vote, Trump holds a 51%-49% advantage.

Rasmussen is the second poll in two days to show the race in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state, has become a tie. The Monmouth University Poll said Wednesday that Biden had a lead of 1 to 3 points.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Payrolls increase by nearly 1.4 million as the unemployment rate tumbles by Jeff Cox

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/04/jobs-report-august-2020-.html

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.37 million in August vs. Dow Jones estimates of 1.32 million.
The unemployment dropped to 8.4% from 10.2% in July and well below expectations of 9.8%.
Government hiring led the way, with gains also coming in retail and education and health services.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.37 million in August and the unemployment rate tumbled to 8.4% as the U.S. economy continued to climb its way out of the pandemic downturn.

The unemployment rate was by far the lowest since the coronavirus shutdown in March, according to Labor Department figures released Friday. An alternative measure that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons also fell, down to 14.2% from 16.5% in July and 22.8% at the peak in April.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting growth of 1.32 million and the jobless rate to decline to 9.8% from 10.2% in July.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Long before Trump, bipartisan group of elder statesmen flagged mail ballot fraud risks Forgotten 2005 report warned a small amount of fraud could swing close elections, urged voter ID requirements. John Solomon

By on September 4th, 2020

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/long-trump-bipartisan-group-elder-statesmen-flagged-mail-ballot-fraud

In recent months, the debate over mail-in balloting has evolved into a battle between Team Trump’s worries about fraud and the claims of Democrats and their news media allies that such concerns are an unwarranted effort at disenfranchising voters.

It wasn’t always this way.

Fifteen years ago this very month, a bipartisan panel of American statesmen and stateswomen — from ex-President Jimmy Carter and ex-Senate leader Tom Daschle on the left to former Secretary of State James Baker and former House Minority Leader Bob Michel on the right — studied the future of U.S. elections and issued strong words of caution that the expansion of mail-in voting that began a few years earlier in Oregon posed real fraud risks, especially in close elections.

“To improve ballot integrity, we propose that federal, state, and local prosecutors issue public reports on their investigations of election fraud, and we recommend federal legislation to deter or prosecute systemic efforts to deceive or intimidate voters,” the Commission on Federal Election Reform urged in 2005. “States should not discourage legal voter registration or get-out-the-vote activities, but they need to do more to prevent voter registration and absentee ballot fraud.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Restore our lives using medical science, data and common sense By Scott W. Atlas

By on September 4th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/514948-restore-our-lives-using-medical-science-data-and-common-sense

Americans are anxious to get back to work and to send their children to school. The science backs them up. We have learned a lot over the past months, and we are putting that knowledge to use. We are capitalizing on the advanced capabilities that we have developed, as we redouble our efforts to protect vulnerable populations and deliver new and effective treatments in record time.

Here’s what we now know: 

We know who is at risk. Only 0.2 percent of U.S. deaths have been people younger than 25, and 80 percent have been in people over 65; the average fatality age is 78. A JAMA Pediatrics study of North American pediatric hospitals flatly stated that “our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.”

We may see more cases as social interactions pick up, because this is a contagious disease. However, the overwhelming majority of cases are now occurring in younger, low-risk people — decades younger, on average, than seen in the spring. And the vast majority of these people deal with the infection without consequence; many don’t even know they have it.

While we saw more cases in July and August, we are not seeing the explosion of deaths we saw early on. An analysis of CDC data shows that the case fatality rate has declined by approximately 85 percent from its peak. 

That is partly because we are much better now at protecting our most vulnerable, including our senior citizens. States have learned from those that experienced outbreaks before them, and they have implemented thoughtful policies as a result.

We are doing much better with treating hospitalized patients. Lengths-of-stay are one-third the rate in April; the fatality rate in hospitals is one-half of that in April. Fewer patients need ICUs if hospitalized, and fewer need ventilators when in ICUs.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blind eye to incitement Why abuses of power are ignored or encouraged Melanie Phillips

By on September 4th, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/blind-eye-to-incitement?token=eyJ1c2VyX

Why do so many well-meaning people committed to ending abuses of power ignore the evidence of who is actually committing these abuses and blame their victims instead?

An official investigation funded by Britain and the European Union into textbooks used in Palestinian schools has descended into farce.

In April 2018, finally responding to concerns about anti-Israel incitement in Palestinian-Arab schools, the United Kingdom pushed the EU to commission a report on Palestinian textbooks from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany.

In April last year, the Institute published as a preliminary what it called its “Inception Report.” This, it said, developed a framework for “an academically rigorous review” of “how peace, tolerance and an understanding of the other are incorporated into Palestinian textbooks.”

This report, however, was itself riddled with so many mistakes that the European Union ditched it. Bafflingly, however, the EU has continued to use the Georg Eckert Institute to finish the project.

Its final report is due out next month. But it has now produced an interim report, which the EU is choosing to keep secret.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Trump Was Right, The Woke Mob Is Coming For The Washington Monument

By on September 4th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/04/trump-was-right-the-mob-is-coming-for-the-washington-monument/

Remember a few years ago, when the left scoffed at President Donald Trump for suggesting that mobs tearing down Confederate statues wouldn’t stop there?

“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself: ‘Where does it stop?’”

NPR even did a “fact check” to prove Trump was nuts for saying that. Others blasted the president for comparing the nation’s founders to slave-loving traitors, suggesting that it was another example of Trump’s racism.

Well, a working group appointed by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser released a report this week that called for removing or relocating (or “contextualizing”) the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial because Washington and Jefferson have been deemed “persons of concern.”

The DC FACES report says the two founders fall into a broader group of historical figures who’ve now been found guilty of “participation in slavery, systemic racism, mistreatment of, or actions that suppressed equality for, persons of color, women and LGBTQ communities.”

The report also calls for toppling statues and scrubbing the names of Ben Franklin, George Mason, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Scott Key, and many others from D.C. buildings and parks. (The complete list of undesirables is below.)

In their place, the report says, should be names that “include more women, people of color and LGBTQ Washingtonians.”

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