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January 2021

Iran, China, Promise to be the Biggest Tests of Biden’s Presidency in 2021 by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16905/iran-china-policy-tests

There is eager anticipation among many of Washington’s foes that Mr Biden’s inauguration will result in the new president adopting a less confrontational tone with the outside world than his predecessor.

China’s communist rulers, for example, are hopeful that Mr Biden will engage in the kind of meaningless trade deals so beloved of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. These are the trade deals where Washington agrees to improve trade ties with Beijing on the understanding that China addresses the unfair trading relationship between the two countries, knowing full well that China’s communist rulers have absolutely no intention of fulfilling their end of the bargain.

Before making any move that he may later regret, Mr Biden needs to think long and hard about the likely implications of trying to improve relations with Tehran.

As Iran has demonstrated consistently since signing the 2015 nuclear deal with the Obama administration, Tehran’s primary objective is to become the dominant power in the Middle East — not to live in peaceful coexistence with other nations in the region.

The revelation that Hezbollah has doubled the arsenal of advanced guided missiles it keeps trained on Israel during the course of the past year is a timely reminder that Iran, together with the numerous terrorist proxies it supports throughout the Middle East, promises to present the incoming Biden administration with its most critical foreign policy challenge in 2021.

Marx, Heidegger and the Crocodile by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16933/marx-heidegger-mesbah-yazdi

Because Fardid knew no German, his knowledge of Heidegger was based on scanty reading and misreading of French or Persian translations.

Fardid’s understanding of Heidegger could be summed up in two erroneous beliefs: society’s need for order and the need for an unimpeachable leader to impose that order. He also claimed a visceral hatred of Marxism in all its many different forms

No one was allowed to join the debate and suggest, ever so modestly, that maybe it was time for Iranians to use their own heads and begin thinking themselves.

At a time that the ruling elite in Tehran were busy marking the anniversary of the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Khomeinist movement lost another of its iconic figures: Ayatollah Muhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi.

The 86-year-old cleric who changed his surname from Givehchi (sandal-maker) to Mesbah (Arabic for lamp) was alone among Khomeinist mullahs to have secured the title of “Super Scientist” (Allameh in Arabic) from the establishment. He was marketed as “the greatest living Islamic philosopher” and, as head of the Imam Khomeini Center of Studies, the custodian of Khomeini’s theologico-political heritage.

As Democrat lies compound, the truth will out By Earick Ward

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/as_democrat_lies_compound_the_truth_will_out.html

Have you ever lied, or ever watched someone else lie?  What commonly occurs is a compounding of more lies, designed to cover the original lie and subsequently keep the truth from being discovered.

It is not enough that the left cheated (a lie).  What we are witnessing today is the left flailing about, working tirelessly to conceal its deceit.

If leftists rightfully won the 2020 presidential election, and now the subsequent Georgia Senate runoff, one would think we’d see a measured process for transitioning Joe Biden and Kamala Harris into the presidency and vice presidency.   

What we’re seeing instead is chaos.  A myriad of leftist entities, from pols to Media, Big Tech, Hollywood, and others, are whipped into a frenzy to silence dissent and cut short the president’s term.

There are the 25th Amendment, impeachment, punishment, and threats of punishment of anyone who dares question the legitimacy of the vote, and now mass censorship of the president and American citizens?  Are these necessary when a peaceful transition of power is scheduled to occur in a mere 10 days?  

If you have the truth, pound the truth. If you don’t have the truth, pound the table.

What we are witnessing is a tantrum of spoiled children, pounding the table.

We know they lied.  They know they lied.  We know they know they lied.  The more that they flail about, the more at peace you should feel that our cause is just.

Conceding Defeat to Fraud Is Not Patriotic By Dennis L. Weisman

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/01/conceding_defeat_to_fraud_is_not_patriotic.html

I. Introduction

In the aftermath of the protests that devolved into deadly riots in Washington, D.C. and resulted in the breach of the Capitol building, there is a temptation to stand down and not question any further whether Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States.  That question, which is key to preserving our democracy, must not go unanswered, violence or no violence.  We hear claims that what occurred in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday happens only in third-world countries.  Perhaps the more germane question is whether these types of elections are third-world phenomena and fall well short of the integrity we should demand of our election process and the officials who preside over it.

 I make no claim that the voting irregularities writ large are of a scope that would change the outcome of the presidential election because I honestly do not know.  But this uncertainty, which I believe that many share, and not just supporters of Donald Trump, is a cancer on the Republic because it strikes at the foundation of our democracy.  If we can’t trust the elections, we can’t trust the politicians who come to power as a result of those elections, and without trust there is no democracy and ultimately there is no country.

II. The “Patriotic Myths”

The first myth is that patriotism demands that we now stand down in questioning the results of the presidential election.  In fact, the opposite is true.  There are no circumstances in which outstanding, credible questions regarding the integrity of our elections should go unanswered because without ensuring the integrity of our elections, we can have no enduring fidelity to those politicians who emerge victorious from those elections.

The second myth is that there is ample time to study the election results and procedures after Mr. Biden’s inauguration.  But what if the wrong man occupies the Oval Office, one not duly elected by a fair and impartial vote of the American people?  What are the American people supposed to do after the fact?  What is the constitutional procedure for removing a sitting president from office should it be discovered ex post facto that he was the product of a fraudulent election?  

The third myth is that a true patriot knows when to stand down even if there are voting irregularities.  The necessary implication is that Mr. Trump is not a patriot because he refuses to go away quietly and simply accept defeat, deserved or otherwise.  I do not doubt that Mr. Trump’s ego plays a prominent role in his challenging the election results.  He does not like to lose.  But there is a much larger issue at play.

The ‘Virtue’ of the New Totalitarians Later ages are always surprised by the casual brutality of totalitarian regimes. What they neglect is the unshakeable (though misguided) conviction of virtue that animates the totalitarians. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/09/the-virtue-of-the-new-totalitarians/

What was the most disturbing thing to happen in the last few days? 

Some say it was the horrifying spectacle of the mob besieging and breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. 

That was indeed disturbing, especially the pageant of wanton assaults on property in the seat of our government and, most of all, the images of Ashli Babbitt, the young woman who was shot and killed, apparently by law enforcement. 

There is much we do not know about what happened that afternoon. But I think Tucker Carlson was right about two essential things. 

One, that President Trump bears some responsibility for what happened. He “recklessly encouraged,” as Carlson put it, his distraught supporters. I should note, by the way, that I believe that the president’s supporters are right to be distraught—and not just because their guy lost. That’s the nature of elections. One candidate wins, the other loses. So long as the election is fair, and is seen to be fair, all is well. The loser, and the loser’s supporters, may mutter, but they accept the result and go home. 

But in the 2020 election there were huge and, in my view, determinative irregularities. Had the votes been fairly counted, I believe, Trump would have won. But they weren’t. 

Hence the anger among his supporters. The president should have appreciated their anger and acted accordingly. He ought also to have appreciated that by January 6, the game was over. There was nothing Vice President Mike Pence could have done that would have changed the outcome of the election. When Trump concluded his remarks to the crowd by encouraging them to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and go “to the Capitol,” he was playing with fire. He ought to have discerned as much.

But I believe Carlson is also correct that the president did not intend or foresee the mayhem that followed. As the transcript of his remarks shows, he encouraged the crowd “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” He ought to have known that more could transpire. A huge, fired-up crowd is a mob just waiting to happen. But Carlson was right: this was a “political protest” that “got out of hand,” not an “insurrection” or an act of “domestic terrorism,” as Joe Biden and others we quick to claim. 

Why Trump Will Weather This Nonsense He’ll be back. Dov Fischer

https://spectator.org/trump-will-return/

We have been through this drill before — as with Charlottesville and as when President Trump held a press conference alongside Vladimir Putin overseas and stated that he believed Putin’s questionable asseveration that Russia had not messed with the 2016 American elections. Everyone is smart except Trump.

I view the video, and more than 95 percent of the people who made their ways inside clearly were just drifting and roaming around, walking mostly in single or double file, as in a tour of the Capitol.

In each case, the Mainstream Media whipped up a froth and frenzy. In all of human history, we essentially were told, there never had been such perfidy. We kept hearing, night after day after night after day, the carefully selected clip: “There were fine people on both sides.” So that meant, we were told, that President Trump, grandfather of Orthodox Jewish children, benefactor of Jared Kushner, doting father of Orthodox Jewish Ivanka, a man who commuted the unfair sentence of Shlomo Rubashkin, endorses Nazis. As recently as this very week, the Mainstream Media still are at it, still lying shamelessly that he endorsed Nazis at Charlottesville. While I was watching the nightly Hebrew news out of Israel on Israel’s equivalent of PBS, the Left-oriented public broadcasting station that the Government funds and that the taxpayers hate because all their Mainstream Media likewise are Left-oriented, their Thursday news report included that same precisely edited clip: “There were fine people on both sides.” Not a word about how the President in truth had condemned Nazism and White Nationalists two separate times in the same four-minute conference. That is why the general Israeli population hate their Mainstream Media and love Trump.

There was a similar froth and frenzy during and after that overseas press conference with Putin: James Clapper and John Brennan were all over CNN asserting that the President had perpetrated treason and such. It was worse than Benedict Arnold giving secrets to the British in the days when the Brits were our mortal enemies. (Interesting how time changes realities.) How could the President publicly say, alongside Putin, that he believes Vladimir Putin and not his own director of intelligence? Why didn’t Trump look Putin in the face, in front of world news media, and call him a liar and a crook and a tyrant — and then privately try to negotiate other issues that were on the table? As if any world leader ever would stare another in the face, in front of the world media, and would speak that way, that directly, rather than scold behind closed doors.

Nikki Haley Likens Trump Twitter Ban to Act of Chinese Communist Party By Zachary Stieber

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nikki-haley-likens-trump-twitter-ban-to-act-of-chine

Social media companies banning President Donald Trump is something the Chinese Communist Party would do, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said Friday.

“Silencing people, not to mention the President of the U.S., is what happens in China not our country,” Haley wrote in a tweet.

Twitter announced earlier in the day that it was permanently removing Trump’s account, which had been active since before he took office in 2016. The company claimed his recent tweets were inciting violence.

Trump in response accused Twitter of “banning free speech” and coordinating “with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me—and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.”

Trump said his team has been negotiating with competitors to Twitter and is looking into building their own platform in the near future.

Facebook also banned Trump, at least for the remainder of his term.

Subject: Dershowitz to Newsmax TV: Facebook, Twitter Should Lose 230 Protection After Banning Trump By Charlie McCarthy

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/dershowitz-230-trump-facebook/2021/01/09/

Legal expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax TV on Saturday morning that Facebook and Twitter should lose their exemptions under the Communications Decency Act as a result of banning President Donald Trump.

Section 230 of the act protects social media companies from liability for content their users post.

“Two thirty [230] basically exempts Twitter and other social media from being held responsible for their content and the content others put on because they’re supposed to be just a platform where anything goes on,” Dershowitz told host Carl Higbie on “Saturday Report.”

“But once they become a publisher, once they decide, ‘No, we don’t like this president, we like the other president,’ then they lose their exemption under Section 230, and I think there will be Congressional action to limit Section 230 to actual platforms.”

Both Facebook and Twitter have banned President Trump from posting on their platforms. Twitter did so permanently. Facebook said it’s suspension will last until the president’s term is over.

“Anybody who censors selectively should lose their 230 exemption,” Dershowitz said.

Joe Biden’s Boosters Wrote His Prodigal Son’s Entire Resume By Paul Sperry10/16/20

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/10/16/joe_bidens_boosters_wr

Hunter Biden profited from his father’s political connections long before he struck questionable deals in countries where Joe Biden was undertaking diplomatic missions as vice president. In fact, virtually all the jobs listed on his resume going back to his first position out of college, which paid a six-figure salary, came courtesy of the former six-term senator’s donors, lobbyists and allies, a RealClearInvestigations examination has found.

Hunter Biden: Through a lawyer, he maintained he and his father dutifully avoided “conflicts of interest.”

One document reviewed by RCI reveals that a Biden associate admitted “finding employment” for Hunter Biden specifically as a special favor to his father, then a Senate leader running for president. He secured a $1.2 million gig on Wall Street for his young son, even though it was understood he had no experience in high finance. Many of his generous patrons, in turn, ended up with legislation and policies favorable to their businesses or investments, an RCI review of lobbying records and legislative actions taken by the elder Biden confirms.

That the 50-year-old Hunter has been trading on his Democratic father’s political influence his entire adult life raises legal questions about possible influence-peddling, government watchdogs and former federal investigators say. In addition, the more than two-decades-long pattern of nepotism casts fresh doubt on Joe Biden’s recent statements that he “never discussed” business with his son, and that his activities posed “no conflicts of interest.” 

No fewer than three committees in the Republican-controlled Senate have opened probes into potential Biden family conflicts. Investigators are also poring over Treasury Department records that have flagged suspicious activities involving Hunter’s banking transactions and business deals that may be connected to his father’s political influence. 

U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.

ENOUGH WITH THE OUTRAGE John Hinderaker

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/01/enough-with-the-outrage.php

Like pretty much all conservatives, I have consistently criticized riots and other forms of political violence for many years. That includes yesterday’s Washington, D.C. riot. You can’t say the same about liberals, however. Until yesterday, one might have thought that liberals consider rioting and other forms of political violence to be as American as apple pie.

You could write a book in support of that proposition, but for now let’s cite just a few examples. Do you remember when President Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2017? Leftist Democrats rioted in Washington that day. That riot was arguably worse, more violent and more destructive, than what happened in D.C. yesterday. The liberal rioters destroyed stores, set vehicles on fire and battled with the police. Six police officers were wounded. Here is a video reminder:

I don’t recall a single Democratic office-holder denouncing the Democrats’ Inauguration Day riot, and the Associated Press came perilously close to praising the rioters.

Over the ensuing four years, Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioted countless times, bringing devastation to cities like Portland, Seattle, Kenosha and Minneapolis. Did any Democrats denounce these riots? Not that I remember. Many Democrats endorsed them, or seemed to do so. Kamala Harris, for example, said about the riots in June:

They’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop. This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop. And everyone beware because they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop before Election Day and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And everyone should take note of that. They’re not gonna let up and they should not.