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September 2020

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Georgia voters will elect two US senators in 2020-

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/elections/georgia-senate-races-who-are-candidates/85-c87e3566-b56e-449e-aac6-fe5a4740f626

The regular election for US Senate features incumbent Republican senator, David Perdue, going up against Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. Perdue is at the conclusion of his first term as senator and is considered a close ally of President Donald Trump.

The other US Senate seat for the state will also be up for grabs in a special election.

Georgia’s former senior US senator, Johnny Isakson (R), retired at the end of 2019, well before the end of his term, to focus on his health. Businesswoman Kelly Loeffler (R)was appointed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to serve, until voters could participate in a special election to serve until the conclusion of Isakson’s term in 2022.

Loeffler is a co-owner of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. Loeffler’s political stance in relation to the Black Lives Matter movement has caused friction not only with players for her team, but with the league as a whole. “”I adamantly oppose the Black Lives Matter political movement,” Loeffler said, in part. “I believe it is totally misaligned with the values and goals of the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream, where we support tolerance and inclusion.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

JON OSSOFF (D-GEORGIA) FOR SENATE NOT!

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/georgia-senate-candidate-jon-ossoff-quietly-discloses-financial-ties-to-pro-ccp-hong-kong-media-company/

Georgia Senate Candidate Jon Ossoff Quietly Discloses Financial Ties to Pro-CCP Hong Kong Media Company By Tobias Hoonhout

Georgia Senate candidate Jon Ossoff has been compensated by a Hong Kong media conglomerate whose owner has spoken out against pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, according to his most recent financial disclosure.

Ossoff, whose role as CEO of a London-based producer of investigative documentaries has drawn scrutiny over the years, reported in an amended financial statement that he has received at least $5,000 from PCCW Media Limited over the last two years — a detail that has previously gone unreported. Ossoff did not disclose his ties to PCCW in his initial financial report, which he filed in May.

PCCW, the largest telecom agency in Hong Kong, is run by Chairman Richard Li, son of Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing. Li also serves as a councilor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. But for years, Li has spoken out against Hong Kong independence and the pro-democracy protests that have rocked the island as the Chinese Communist Party has consolidated control.

Ossoff’s campaign did not respond when asked to explain the details of his business relationship with PCCW and whether he condemns Li’s stance opposition to the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. But a National Review analysis of Ossoff’s public comments shows that the candidate has been silent on the situation in Hong Kong.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Leftist Hostility Makes University Of Chicago’s Intellectual Diversity Pledge A Joke By Evita Duffy

By on September 18th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/16/leftist-hostility-makes-university-of-chicagos-intellectual-diversity-pledge-a-joke/

The University of Chicago administration and department heads violate the Chicago Principles by using their powerful positions to impose their far-left political beliefs.

A July statement by the University of Chicago English Department faculty announced “For the 2020-2021 graduate admissions cycle, the University of Chicago English Department is accepting only applicants interested in working in and with Black studies.”

The English Department’s move to block other areas of intellectual exploration was picked up this week by major news outlets, creating a lot of negative press for the university. While many were shocked by the English Department’s statement, as a third-year student at the University of Chicago, I was not.

Ironically, the University of Chicago prides itself on what they call the “Chicago Principles,” a mission statement claiming a commitment to protecting free speech and encouraging open debate. The publication of the Chicago Principles garnered the university a lot of media attention, kudos from parents concerned with leftist orthodoxy, and set the University of Chicago apart from other elite universities in its efforts to create an environment of political and ideological tolerance on campus. The principles have even been adopted by other schools. 

Unfortunately, in practice, the University of Chicago is hardly a bastion of free speech and political tolerance. It socially and academically rewards groupthink. This summer university departments and administration officials have imposed their politics on the campus community, further emboldening a left-wing mob of students who routinely bully conservatives into silence. 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Totalitarian Tendencies of the Woke By Karl Zinsmeister

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/18/the_totalitarian_tendencies_of_the_woke.html

One of the best-selling books in America right now, Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” calls for some astonishingly autocratic policies. It would establish a federal Department of Anti-racism with veto power over any local, state, or federal policies considered racially inequitable by its bureaucrats. (No one in the agency would be appointed by or accountable to the president or Congress.) It would also “investigate private racist policies” and “monitor public officials for expressions of racist ideas … empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” 

This proposal to tear up both the checks and balances on executive fiat in Washington and the protections for individual rights embedded in our Constitution is one indicator among many that woke activists have fallen headlong for authoritarianism.

Their very language of group conflict and oppression is of course taken directly from Marxism. And there is a harsh intemperance and lack of proportionality in the behavior of today’s social-justice warriors. They say white supremacism is universal in America, not an aberration. Their favored graffiti spray tag is “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards). They want to defund and shut down police departments, not fix them. They call for lawmakers to “abolish ICE” and fling our southern border wide open. There is a growing fanaticism in which gray arguments and toleration for opposing points of view disappear.

If politics is the methodical organization of resentments, identity politics runs on the methodical organization of rage. Rage is an awful fuel for the gradual give-and-take needed to produce social progress in a non-authoritarian democracy. Alas, the Americans under age 30 who are manning the barricades of identity socialism loathe messy give-and-take. They prefer, as columnist Bari Weiss has noted, to squash resisters. Revolution rather than reform is increasingly the goal.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

No, Jewish Behavior Does Not ‘Enable’ Palestinian Rejectionism by Moshe Phillips

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/09/18/no-jewish-behavior-does-not-enable-palestinian-rejectionism/

Algemeiner editor-in-chief Dovid Efune said this week that Jewish critics of the Israel-UAE/Bahrain agreement were “enabling” Palestinian Arab extremists. I respectfully disagree.

Mr. Efune was asked by an interviewer about left-wing Jews who have criticized the agreement. He replied that such criticism is “enabling Palestinian rejectionism,” “encouraging the Palestinians to take that position,” and “keeping this ongoing conflict alive for as long as possible.”

I have no sympathy for left-wing Jewish supporters of the Palestinian Arab cause. In fact, I have been one of their most vocal critics in the pages of The Algemeiner and elsewhere for many years. But they are not guilty of this charge. The dictionary’s definition of “enable” is “to make able,” “to make possible,” and “to give ability to.” No, Jewish behavior does not “enable” Palestinian rejectionism.

Palestinian Arab rejection of Israel is rooted in extremist Islam, militant Arab nationalism, and antisemitism. It long predated the rise of Peace Now or J Street. From Grand Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini to Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Arabs have waged an unrelenting war against the Jewish People for more than a century. They didn’t need Peter Beinart or J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami to “enable” them.

Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace are harmful to Israel and the Jewish people. But their criticism of the UAE/Bahrain agreement is not what is “keeping this ongoing conflict alive,” to use Mr. Efune’s phrase. What’s keeping it alive is Palestinian Arab bigotry against Jews and Israel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peace Matters and So Does the United States Shoshana Bryen

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Journalist Drew Holden kept a list of politicians and mainstream media outlets that have been denigrating, downplaying and outright mocking President Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East. From Samantha Power to John Kerry to Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer to Rep. Mark Pocan; from Reuters to CNN to The New Yorker to Foreign Policy to the Guardian to…well, you get the point.

Mostly, it is a litany of how much more dangerous the region has become for a variety of Trump’s moves, and how the U.S. is doomed to failure. Following the Israel-United Arab Emirates and Israel-Bahrain peace agreements, witnessed by the United States, criticism has largely been centered around the idea that it really isn’t a big deal. They’re little countries. They don’t matter. They would have done it without Trump. The U.S. doesn’t need the oil, so who cares?

Wait. Wait. What was that about oil?

Who doesn’t need oil?

It is true that with President Trump’s support of fracking, the U.S. no longer relies on the import of oil from the Persian Gulf. But our allies—in particular, our Asian allies—do. And China certainly does.

And herein lies the almost entirely unremarked upon the importance of regional peace, freedom of navigation, the United States and the connection between Middle East policy and China policy—a connection that appears to have escaped left-leaning punditry.

The Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening oil shipping from the Persian Gulf by the other oil-producing states, which are predominantly Sunni. The United States Navy guarantees freedom of navigation in the Gulf, and we have bases in Oman, Qatar (odd, but true), Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain with which to do it. There are those in the U.S. who say, “We don’t import Persian Gulf oil, so why should we pay for the security that allows the Arabs to profit?” “Why do we provide security for ships going to China?” China, which is in the process of building a much bigger navy and has established a Middle Eastern base in Djibouti on the Red Sea near the U.S. base there, could conceivably take over that responsibility.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

“Political Realignment and the 2020 Election” Sydney Williams

By on September 18th, 2020

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

There are roughly 250 million Americans of voting age, of which about 62%, or 155 million, actually vote.

Gallop, as of May 2020, showed 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% as Republicans and 40% as Independents. Despite the growth in unaffiliated voters. the numbers lend credence to Nixon’s observation, quoted above, that both parties are “big tent” parties. It explains why neither Party has been extremist in governing…yet. 

But will that happy situation continue? There is reason for concern. There has been an inexorable trend toward big government. Ninety years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded the role of government and he attempted to pack the Supreme Court. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society further inflated government’s role, increasing dependency on “benevolent” government. George W. Bush introduced the concept of “compassionate” conservativism, a euphemism for a more dominant part to be played by government. Barack Obama, with his call for universal health care and his vision expressed in “The life of Julia” of cradle-to-grave government, wanted government yet more powerful. In 1930, government expenditures accounted for 11.1% of GDP. By 1960, that number was 15.1% and today spending by government approaches 40% of GDP – levels last seen during World War II.

Today’s Democrats, a Party once comprised of urbanites, private sector union members and leaders, immigrants, the poor and Dixiecrat segregationists, now encompasses suburban and coastal elites, Wall Street titans, tech company CEOs, globalists, academicians, government bureaucrats, public sector union leaders, the media and those in the entertainment businesses. Republicans, once the Party of fiscal conservatives, country club types, suburbanites, big business, religious conservatives and Wall Street, have become the Party of small business owners, the military, social and religious conservatives, “deplorables” (a catch-all phrase for working men and women throughout the nation, including those who believe in God, honor, duty, family and country), and a small number, like me, who put common sense above ideology.

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Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world Jonathan S. Tobin

By on September 18th, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/09/17/canceling-beethoven-is-the-latest-woke-madness-for-the-classical-music-world/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Think some things are so beloved and essential to Western civilization they can’t be canceled? Think again.

If there’s anything we should have learned from months of “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter street protests, statue toppling and online mobs seeking to silence anyone who dissents against leftist narratives about “racism,” it’s that no one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Beethoven’s work is not only at the core of the standard repertory of classical music; some of his most popular works have also become part of popular culture, their melodies recognizable even to those who’ve never heard an orchestral concert.

For the last 200 years, Beethoven’s compositions have also been symbols of the struggle for freedom against tyranny. The “Ode to Joy” from the conclusion to his Ninth Symphony remains the definitive anthem of universal brotherhood. It is no coincidence that the opening notes of his Fifth Symphony — whose rhythmic pattern duplicates the Morse Code notation for the letter “V” as in “V for Victory” — were used by the BBC for broadcasts to occupied Europe during the Second World War.

But to woke critics, Beethoven’s music has taken on a new, darker meaning. To musicologist Nate Sloan and songwriter Charlie Harding, stars of the “Switched on Pop” podcast produced in association with the New York Philharmonic, the Fifth Symphony is a stand-in for everything they don’t like about classical music and Western culture. As far as they’re concerned, it’s time to cancel Ludwig.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Why Is Biden So Frightened by a Drug Test? Drug screening is a routine practice among employers, including the federal government. by David Catron

By on September 18th, 2020

https://spectator.org/biden-drug-test/

The federal government mandates that millions of Americans submit to drug screenings to qualify for certain types of positions. This includes members of the military and other employees of the Department of Defense. Yet 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — a man who wants the voters to elect him Commander in Chief — called President Trump a fool on Monday for suggesting that they both submit to just a such a test before their first debate. Biden has responded equally defensively to requests that he produce a recent cognitive acuity test. This will inevitably cause voters to wonder what he’s hiding.

At least one Times columnist quite literally opined that he would prefer a cognitively impaired President Biden to the hated President Trump. 

The Democrats and the corporate media scoff at Trump’s drug test challenge as if it isn’t to be taken seriously. They dismiss it as if the president is merely trolling Biden. In reality, however, he is asking a serious question to which the voters deserve a serious answer. In the unlikely event that Biden somehow wins in November, he will have access to the nation’s nuclear launch codes. Does anyone reading this believe this is a good idea after witnessing his incoherent maunderings and erratic behavior? The most recent medical report we have on him was released last year, and it omits any serious assessment of his mental or emotional capacity to handle the office he seeks.

The president of the United States wields a level of power equaling the wildest fantasies of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor, including a Praetorian Guard. In addition to commanding the most powerful military force on the planet, he will preside over the largest and most sophisticated state police apparatus in human history. He will have the alarming power to order drone strikes on anyone anywhere on the planet. Yet the media won’t discuss whether Biden’s age has affected his physical and mental fitness to serve. They weren’t always so reticent, as the New York Times clearly demonstrated after the 1984 Reagan–Mondale debate in Louisville, Kentucky:

The President seemed to lose his way in Louisville, got his figures mixed up, and didn’t seem to be mentally alert in dealing with Mr. Mondale’s arguments. This is being attributed by some to his advancing years.… What Louisville did was not to expose his age, which everybody knew, but to expose his mind, which the voters didn’t know. This is what has been covered up in the last four years by his amiable personality, and his superb reading of speeches from invisible mirrors, written and contrived by the best public-relations team ever to enter the White House.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Covid Puts the ‘I’ in the High Holy Days Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur aren’t the same without communal prayer. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

By on September 18th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-puts-the-i-in-the-high-holy-days-11600383609?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Lord Sacks was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, 1991-2013.

This year the Jewish High Holy Days will be like no other. Usually the synagogue is packed on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, with a buzz of noise that is not all prayer. The haunting call of the shofar, or ram’s horn, summons Jews to judgment. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we are on trial—giving an account of our lives, confessing our sins endlessly, going through every letter of the alphabet, including not a few offenses many of us wouldn’t have had the time, energy or inclination to commit. It is powerful, purgative, and ultimately purifying. We need this annual reset of our lives.

The sense of closeness and intimacy that comes with the crowd makes these days what they are: “The glory of the king is in the multitude of people.” Yet that won’t be present this year. Almost everywhere, prayers won’t be like that at all. Some synagogues’ doors will remain closed. Others will have social distancing, face masks, restrictions on communal singing, and other necessary precautions that restrict the number of people present and their proximity to one another. For a community-minded faith like Judaism, this almost feels like an amputation. The services are bound to feel hollow and lacking in atmosphere. This isn’t how the Days of Awe are supposed to be.

In this respect, Judaism has much in common with other faiths. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and others have had to cancel or restrict public prayer when believers needed it most. All religious leaders have struggled to provide the comfort of faith, the uplift of prayer and the solace of sacred space. Yet Judaism, like other faiths, has proved creative in finding alternative ways to create moments of inspiration.

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