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September 2020

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Mail-Vote Madness in Pennsylvania The swing state is heading toward an election crackup that could draw the entire country into a legal brawl.

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mail-vote-madness-in-pennsylvania-11599865002?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Pennsylvania has already suffered one interminable mail-vote delay in 2020, and a repeat in November could draw the entire country into a legal brawl, while putting the result of the presidential election into serious doubt. How about heading off this too-predictable debacle before it happens?

A week after the June 2 primary, about half the counties in the Keystone State were still tallying ballots. On June 11, Philadelphia alone had 42,255 votes uncounted. President Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by 44,292.

If Mr. Trump and Joe Biden run neck and neck in November, how long might Pennsylvania keep the Electoral College hanging? In the campaign’s closing weeks, arriving mail votes will pile up in local offices, but state law says they can’t be processed until 7 a.m. on Election Day. This wasn’t enough preparation to give timely results when 1.5 million residents voted absentee in June, and it won’t be in November.

Tight deadlines are another problem. Pennsylvanians can request a mail ballot as late as 5 p.m. on Oct. 27. For votes to count, they must arrive at local election offices by 8 p.m. on Nov. 3. That leaves seven days, including a Sunday, for applications to be handled, blank ballots delivered, and votes dropped off or return mailed. The U.S. Postal Service says such a turnaround is unrealistic and creates a high risk of tardiness. America’s first postmaster general, Ben Franklin, would be unhappy to see his Pennsylvania setting up the USPS for failure.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How to Steal an Election – Part II by Chris Farrell

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16491/transition-integrity-project

Through the release of the TIP report, the American Left has established itself and its dishonest storyline as the official narrative of the 2020 presidential election. They have alerted the militant wing of their movement to seize control of the lead-up to election day, to election day itself, and all the way out past inauguration day. This is a campaign unto itself — not an event.

No single statement or particular recommendation is completely outrageous… they support and amplify dubious premises: Leftist protestors are non-violent while Trump supporters are agents provocateurs; Trump will misuse the military and law enforcement to hold on to power; universal mail-in voting poses no risk of fraud; finding new ballots weeks after the election is completely normal; news critical of Biden is misinformation; a Trump victory will be evidence of foreign interference, etc.

Now you understand how the Left intends to disrupt and steal the 2020 presidential election. You understand the psychological warfare techniques being used right now to convince you (wrongly) of being demoralized and weakened. You have been warned. The question for you and others in opposition to the TIP plan is: What are you going to do?

Having established the Left’s documented plan to disrupt the 2020 presidential election, let’s examine further some of the information operations techniques now being deployed against the American public to persuade and influence the election “season” ahead.

The very publication of the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) report and the subsequent news media reporting about it are components of psychological warfare within the broader information warfare campaign aimed at spreading demoralizing rumors to Trump supporters. The goal is to break down and weaken support before, during and after election day. Demoralized and unmotivated supporters do not make their support for their candidate public. They do not campaign in neighborhoods or post yard signs. They do not vote. They do not volunteer at polling places. They become convinced their hopes are a lost, and highly controversial cause. They do not wish to be called a racist, or a hater, or identified with other fringe elements. They stay at home and watch TV.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Leftists Alarmed At Trump Hopes For Mideast Peace By Benny Avni

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/leftist-is-alarmed-at-trump-hopes-for-mideast/91254/

“Angels are rare, if they exist at all, in the Middle East. Yet if Israel can find true peace, even with imperfect regimes, the region would be better off. One side benefit: some Arab leaders begin to realize that, beyond entrepreneurship and high-tech, emulating Israel’s liberal ethos could be useful for them as well.”

No sooner has the Arab-Israel Spring started to blossom than the Leftists are up in arms. Gulf capitals now formalizing relations with Jerusalem are, they complain, ruled by non-democratic bad guys. Exhibit a: Bahrain, where a Sunni minority, backed by Saudi Arabia, rules over restive Shiite population.

Bahrain has just announced that it will join the United Arab Emirates Tuesday at a White House ceremony, where President Trump and his top Mideast aide and son in law, Jared Kushner, are scheduled to host Prime Minister Netanyahu and the U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zaid. In the event, the first peace agreement between (now two) Arab countries and the Jewish state in a quarter century will be sealed with hand shakes.

Mr. Trump hints of more to come. Saudi Arabia, vying for leadership in the region, is the big prize. The U.A.E., and certainly Bahrain, wouldn’t have signed on without its blessing, but, even as it allows for Israeli flights over its skies, Riyadh has yet to join them.

Critics won’t be inaccurate in noting the failures of the Gulf’s emirates, sultanates ,and theocracies involved in this breakthrough. Yet haven’t those same critics for years insisted that “you make peace with enemies”? Don’t they push the line that there can be no true peace before Jerusalem comes to terms with the Palestinian Authority, which similarly fails the paragon-of-democracy, benevolent-ruler test?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is Trump on the Way To Historic Mideast Peace?

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/is-trump-on-the-way-to-a-historic-mideast-peace

President Trump’s announcement today that Bahrain will be the latest Arab country to recognize Israel starts to make it look like we could be on the way to a Mideast Peace. It would be unwise to get ahead of events, but it would also be unwise not to recognize at least the possibility that is coming into view. Predicting this development Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “You could have peace in the Middle East.”

The announcement by the White House today comes in advance of what was already shaping up as a remarkable event for Tuesday, when Mr. Trump is due to host at the White House the signing of the entente between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Prime Minister Netanyahu will be there, as will U.A.E.’s foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Now, the White House says, Bahrain will be there, as well.

We don’t mind saying that we were opposed to Mr. Trump’s pursuit of a Middle East peace. It was nothing personal. We’ve opposed nearly all American efforts to play the so-called “honest broker” in the Middle East. Our preference has been to back Israel and wait for the rest of the region to come around (or not). Pursuing peace by getting between the Jewish state and her enemies does more harm than good.

Yet Mr. Trump has impressed us with his sagacity. We first tipped our hat to it two weeks into his presidency, when we issued an editorial called “Trump’s Iran Strategy.” It had quickly become apparent that he was going to focus, as we put it, “less on the Palestinain predicament and more on winning the war against jihadist Islam.” He was going to side with the Sunni Arabs against Shiite Iran.

In that feud we don’t have a strong view. It did, though, put Israel’s Arab neighbors in the thrall of, in Mr. Trump, an exceptionally strong backer of Israel. Mr. Trump’s redemption of his campaign promise to move our Israel embassy to Jerusalem put the Arabs in a position that they would have to choose. It did so more emphatically than any recent démarche we can think of.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Middle Eastern Wall Crumbles The “Abraham Accord” is a major breakthrough, aided by American leadership and exceptionalism. Shoshana Bryen

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-middle-eastern-wall-crumbles/

Israeli National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat, U.S. President’s senior adviser Jared Kushner and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates Anwar Gargash hold a meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates August 31, 2020. (Photo: UAE Government)

U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy successes in the Middle East consist primarily of opening artificial floodgates and allowing for the passage of political currents already moving. That is not a small thing—Norwegian parliamentarian Christian Tybring-Gjedde agreed, nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize for the Israel-UAE normalization deal dubbed the “Abraham Accord.”

History is not a series of dates (high school students to the contrary). Dates are simply points in a process: July 4, 1776, D-Day and V-E Day, the “Abraham Accord” and the treaties with Egypt and Jordan that preceded it. They are the result of streams of percolating events, allowing for shifting times, tides and armies. A country or a politician or a terrorist can throw up a roadblock. It may forestall movement for a time, but ultimately, perceived national interest and the threats to those interests will undermine a wall that has lost its relevance.

American neutrality was firmly in control in 1939, but the tide turned to helping our British friends and Russian allies in 1940. Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor (another date) America had changed.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

“COVID-19 Has Gone to College – Or Has It?” Sydney Williams

By on September 12th, 2020

A critical component of democracy is education. The perpetuation of our political institutions, as Abraham Lincoln warned in Springfield, Illinois on a January evening in 1838, is not a given. Passion, he warned, can be our enemy. “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.” It is to teach one to reason, to think, to calculate that universities exist. 

In his 1916 book Democracy and Education, the educational reformer John Dewey argued it is education that allows youth to become productive members of society. Franklin Roosevelt said that “the real safeguard to democracy is education.” It is a sentiment that has been expressed by hundreds of politicians and philosophers over the years. Today, in a risk adverse world, schools, colleges and universities weigh needs of students to learn versus fear of COVID-19 and lawsuits that might ensue. Nevertheless, online learning is no substitute for in-person classrooms.

Most would agree that a failure to open schools and colleges is harmful to students. However, there are some administrators and professors (as well as a few students) who are vulnerable, either because of age or comorbidities, so universities should proceed with caution. There are, however, some who want to keep the pandemic alive for political purposes, a view endorsed by mainstream media. A New York Times article last Sunday was headlined: “A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns.” The article, which focused on the University of Iowa, reported there were “about 100 college communities around the country where infections have spiked in recent weeks as students returned for the fall semester” – a self-evident truth, as students did return to campuses. The article did add that “there has been no uptick in deaths in college communities,” but they failed to mention a subsequent decline in instances. For example, in Iowa City, there was a spike on August 27 and 28 (1,467 and 2,632 cases respectively), but, left unmentioned, by September 1 the number was down to 612 and on September 7 at 408, in line with where it had been before students returned to the campus. The headline was provocative and deceptive.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In Worst-Hit Covid State, New York’s Cuomo Called All the Shots By Jimmy Vielkind, Joe Palazzo and Jacob Gershman 

By on September 12th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-covid-new-york-coronavirus-de-blasio-shutdown-timing-11599836994?mod=itp_wsj&mod=&mod=djemITP_h
Governor overrode mayor on shutdown timing, faced criticism for nursing home moves; ‘It’s not your call’

New York City was locking down. Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to say when and how it would happen.

After Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents in a March 17 news conference to prepare to “shelter in place,” Mr. Cuomo dismissed the mayor’s plan in a television interview while his aides blitzed City Hall with calls.

“The phones were ringing off the hook,” recalled Freddi Goldstein, the mayor’s press secretary at the time. “They said, ‘[The mayor] sounds crazy. He’s scaring people. You have to walk it back. It’s not up to you. It’s not your call.’ ”

The federal government largely left the coronavirus response to states. While some governors ceded power to local officials, others centralized it. Mr. Cuomo, more than most state leaders, insisted that nearly every decision come from his office, including when to close office buildings, the size of weddings and the type of air filters required at shopping malls.

Mr. Cuomo and his small team took command of the state Health Department and overrode local governments that wanted to go beyond the state’s social-distancing restrictions. That delayed the shutdown of the nation’s biggest city and slowed the reaction time as the virus spread in nursing homes, contributing to the nation’s highest death toll.

Instead of the abrupt shutdown Mr. de Blasio called for, Mr. Cuomo had his own plan: a gradual closure tailored to avoid panic and encourage public compliance. Millions of people continued to pack commuter trains and subways in the five-day span between Mr. de Blasio’s “shelter in place” comments and Mr. Cuomo’s eventual shutdown order.

By the time “New York on Pause” took effect at 8 p.m. on March 22, about 25,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for Covid-19. The virus soon would push the state’s hospital system to the brink and kill more than 30,000.

State lawmakers are still assessing whom to blame for the thousands of deaths of nursing-home residents. The Justice Department recently said it had requested data on nursing-home deaths and infections from New York and several other states to determine whether an investigation is warranted—an announcement Mr. Cuomo said was politically motivated.

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