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October 2022

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Arab ‘anti-state’ parties present ongoing challenge for Israel David Isaac

By on October 31st, 2022

https://www.jns.org/arab-anti-state-parties-present-ongoing-challenge-for-israel/

Those who think increased budgets for the sector will change things “don’t understand the reality,” Professor Dan Schueftan told JNS.

Arabs citizens today comprise 21 percent of Israel’s population, a significant minority. While their financial situation has dramatically improved over the last 50-plus years, the parties they send to the Knesset are largely “anti-state” in that they reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

The problem comes to the fore every election cycle. The Central Elections Committee has attempted to disqualify one or another Arab party in every campaign since 2003. In late September, it disqualified the Balad Party over its anti-Israel platform. The Supreme Court overturned the ban on Oct. 9.

Dan Schueftan, head of the International Graduate Program in National Security Studies at the University of Haifa and the author of a Hebrew-language book about Arab Israelis, a culmination of 11 years’ research, told JNS that when it comes to Arab party platforms, “Some are more blunt, but in the final analysis the distinction is not major.”

Nearly all the Arab leaders, with the notable exception of Mansour Abbas, identify with terrorists, Schueftan said, referring to the Ra’am Party leader who last year for the first time in Israel’s history brought an independent Arab party into a governing coalition. But at summer camps of Hadash, a communist party, children are taught to idolize “a 13-year-old Arab Palestinian who took a knife, and together with his cousin went into a Jewish neighborhood to kill Jews and stabbed and chased Jewish children. This guy is their hero.”

Hadash represents the most educated and modern segment of Arab Israeli society, Schueftan said. That it embraces terrorists demonstrates “the crux of the problem, a dissonance between what the individual Arab knows and wants to do, and what the collective of the Arabs must do, because there is something profoundly wrong with Arab political culture.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Karen Lehrman Bloch -Wellesley College News Demands Ethnic Cleansing of Jews and Destruction of Israel.

By on October 31st, 2022

https://whiterosemagazine.com/

What surreal anti-Semitic act occurred on campus this week? It’s hard to keep up. Amidst the brouhaha over several UC Berkeley student groups’ ban on “Zionist speakers,” a former CAIR staffer being asked to investigate anti-Semitism at CUNY and Brooklyn College scheduling “implicit bias training” on Yom Kippur, many may have missed that on Sept. 28, the editorial board of the Wellesley College newspaper The Wellesley News called for the “liberation of Palestine.”

In other words, Wellesley College, a supposed beacon of liberalism, called for Israel’s destruction. The editorial, of course, doesn’t actually use the word “destruction,” but anyone even vaguely familiar with Palestinian propaganda knows “liberation” means the ethnic cleansing of Israel’s Jews.

With this editorial, Wellesley finally beat out Harvard in the anti-Semitic Olympics. The Harvard Crimson, after all, at least confined itself to “only” endorsing BDS in an April 29 editorial.

What was Wellesley’s response to its campus paper’s call for ethnic cleansing? An official statement said, “The Wellesley News is a student newspaper—an organization that is editorially independent from Wellesley College. Its editorials reflect the views of the newspaper’s editorial board; they do not reflect the views of Wellesley College.” Considering how ferociously American universities usually react to hate speech, this is a decidedly underwhelming rejoinder.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

An Energy Education for Democrats Biden’s climate policies have raised prices, and he’s mad as hell about it.

By on October 31st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-energy-education-for-democrats-oil-majors-profit-drilling-fossil-fuel-gas-permitting-inflation-midterms-biden-11667155465?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

If Democrats lose next week’s election, one reason will be soaring energy prices. The lesson that an electoral defeat should drive home is that this is the result of their own policies.

Consider President Biden’s outrage Friday over last week’s robust earnings reports for oil and gas companies. Six of the largest “made $70 billion in profit in one quarter,” he said at a fundraiser. These “excess profits are going back to their shareholders and their executives instead of going to lower prices at the pump.” The President who has done everything in his power to limit U.S. oil investment is now furious that he succeeded.

Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to believe oil companies should be allowed to make a profit or even cover marginal costs. “We need to keep making progress by having energy companies bring down the cost of a gallon of gas to reflect what they pay for a barrel of oil,” he said. Anything more is “excess” profit.

Keep in mind that oil majors’ current profits follow steep losses in the pandemic. As oil prices plunged amid lockdowns, companies and OPEC nations pared investment and shut in wells. Demand for oil then bounced back much quicker than supply, which has driven up prices—and profits. That’s Econ 101.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Can Midterm Election ‘Red Wave’ Heal Divided America? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on October 31st, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/31/can-midterm-election-red-wave-heal-divided-america-ii-tipp-poll/

Americans remain deeply gloomy about the state of the nation’s unity, new data from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll show. The big question that looms is will the electorate’s sense that the U.S. has become more fragmented have a major impact on the outcome of the midterm election?

Each month, I&I/TIPP asks voters “In general, would you say the United States is”, followed by five possible responses: “Very united,” “Somewhat united,” “Somewhat divided,” “Very divided,” and “Not sure.” From these data we get a monthly reading, plus create an index that allows us to make comparisons over the lifetime of the index.

For October’s poll, the results showed a nation deeply concerned about the lack of unity of their fellow citizens, suggesting a growing political, cultural and ideological fragmentation among the electorate.

Just 28% said the nation was “united,” with only 13% saying “very united” and 15% saying “somewhat united.” That compares with 69%, or more than two to one, calling the nation “divided.” That includes 28% saying we’re “somewhat divided” and 41% saying we’re “very divided. Only 3% said they were not sure.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Congress Must Increase its Support for Ukraine, Not Cut and Run by Con Coughlin

By on October 31st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19057/congress-support-ukraine

[R]educing American support for Kyiv — as some American politicians are suggesting — will not only constitute an unconscionable betrayal of the Ukrainian cause. It will encourage Putin, and allies such as Iran, to conduct further acts of territorial aggression.

[I]t is, perhaps, inevitable that a degree of conflict fatigue has set in among some politicians. But with Ukraine still managing to inflict significant defeats against its Russian adversary, the Ukrainians require more support, not less, if they are to succeed in their goal of achieving a conclusive victory and liberating their country from Russian occupation.

Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, caused controversy earlier this month when he said that Republicans would not be prepared to write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win control of the House at next month’s midterm elections.

McCarthy’s words provoked a fierce response….

Ukrainian officials also expressed “shock” at his comments as only a few weeks ago, during a visit to Washington, they had received an assurance from McCarthy that “bipartisan support of Ukraine in its war with Russia will remain a top priority even if they win in the elections”, said David Arakhamia, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy’s party in parliament.

The prospect of a new “axis of evil” being formed between two rogue states such as Russia and Iran is certainly a prospect that should encourage Western leaders to harden their support for Ukraine, not back away from it.

Any attempt by the US and its allies to appease the Kremlin over its unprovoked aggression towards Ukraine will simply encourage Moscow and Tehran in the belief that the Western powers lack the courage and resolve to resist their attempts to spread their malign influence across the globe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin might be suffering a humiliating military defeat in Ukraine, but reducing American support for Kyiv — as some American politicians are suggesting — will not only constitute an unconscionable betrayal of the Ukrainian cause. It will encourage Putin, and allies such as Iran, to conduct further acts of territorial aggression.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pelosi & Kavanaugh Murder Plots Show Media Double Standard The same news media that mischaracterized psychosis as fanaticism in the alleged plot to kill Pelosi also downplayed the assassination plot against Kavanaugh by an abortion rights fanatic. Michael Shellenberger

By on October 31st, 2022

https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/pelosi-and-kavanaugh-murder-plots

David DePape, the suspect in an alleged assassination attempt against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, wrote a series of right-wing blog posts in recent weeks. “Many of the posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people,” notes The Washington Post. “In one post, written on Oct. 19, the author urged former President Donald J. Trump to choose Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as his vice-presidential candidate in 2024,” reports The New York Times. “In another,” wrote The Los Angeles Times, “he called ‘equity’ a leftist dog whistle ‘for the systematic oppression of white people’ and ‘diversity’ a ‘dog whistle for the genocide of the white race.’”

But the blog posts confirm my original reporting yesterday that DePape has been, for at least a decade, in the grip of a psychosis caused by mental illness and/or drug use. The Washington Post, to its credit, reports in the first paragraph that DePape’s blog was filled with “delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird” and that, as each post loaded, “a reader briefly glimpses an image of a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn costume.” The New York Times acknowledged that, “mixed in with those posts were others about religion, the occult and images of fairies that the user said he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging system,” albeit not until the 22nd paragraph.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

NO POSTING TODAY OCTOBER 30

By on October 30th, 2022

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

America, World War III, and Space-Based Missile Defense America needs an immediate, robust program for space-based missile and hypersonic weapons defense before our enemies exploit our weakness. By Brandon J. Weichert

By on October 29th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/28/america-world-war-iii-and-space-based-missile-defense/

The United States is staring down the barrel of another world war. Like previous world wars, the coming conflict will be fought using weapons and tactics with which we are currently unfamiliar—and it will require strategic thinking unlike the kind that dominated the previous century’s conflicts. 

Nuclear weapons, used with great effect in World War II to end that terrible conflict, will likely be used to initiate the next. The likeliest use of these terrible weapons will be by Russia in their unjust war against Ukraine. But, even if Ukraine is not where the atomic devastation occurs, China is very near the point of initiating an invasion against democratic Taiwan. And the mad mullahs of Iran appear on the brink of nuclear weapons breakout—as does the North Korean tinpot dictator, Kim Jong-un. 

It is a question of “when” rather than “if” the nuclear genie is loosed from its bottle.

Nuclear weapons have been with us for decades. We have perfected the murderous science behind these ghastly weapons to the point that great powers, like the United States, Russia, and China, all possess the ability to visit nuclear Armageddon upon each other (and the world). Despite having lived through the harrowing days of the Cold War, the United States never seriously invested in a reliable defense against nuclear weapons. In fact, most American leaders scorned the very concept of building reliable defenses against nuclear weapons as “destabilizing.”

After squandering precious time to develop a viable defense against nuclear weapons, Washington should immediately redirect as many resources as possible to the creation and deployment of space-based defenses as well as other ballistic missile defense systems. 

During the Cold War, the bureaucracy resisted Ronald Reagan’s calls for space-based missile defense on the grounds that the technology to create such a revolutionary system was not yet available (none other than legendary Hungarian-American Dr. Edward Teller, father of the neutron bomb, disagreed with the skeptics). Plus, the naysayers complained, deploying a defensive system into orbit to render nuclear arms obsolete would precipitate the very sort of nuclear attack the defensive system was designed to protect against. 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Election integrity storm brewing in PA: Over 250k ballots sent to voters with unverified By Natalia Mittelstadt

By on October 29th, 2022

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/brewing-election-integrity-storm-pa-over-250k-ballots-sent-voters
More than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to Pennsylvania voters without their identities being verified, according to state data collected by election integrity group Verity Vote.

On Tuesday, 15 Pennsylvania state legislators sent a letter to acting Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Leigh Chapman regarding unverified ballots sent to voters. As of Thursday, state data show that more than 250,000 ballots have been mailed to voters without verifying their identification.

The legislators noted that during a state House of Representatives committee meeting in September, Deputy Secretary for Elections and Commissions Jonathan Marks testified that there is no identification requirement for voter registration in the state but that it is required for mail-in ballots.

Marks was asked by state Rep. Francis Ryan about “the large number of requests submitted to the Social Security Administration Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system.” Marks explained that the HAVV systems were being used to verify Social Security numbers for mail ballot applications.

However, the deputy secretary added that if someone submits an invalid Pennsylvania Department of Transportation ID number or if the last four digits of their Social Security number cannot be verified for a mail ballot application, then the counties must still send the ballot to the voter without the ID verification. Marks also said that “the ballot doesn’t count unless the voter provides a valid form of ID.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Fate of the Nation Rests on Fixing Public K-12 The current system cannot continue. By John Conlin

By on October 29th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/28/the-fate-of-the-nation-rests-on-fixing-public-k-12/

The latest Nation’s Report Card is out and, once again, it shows the appalling state of government-run education in America.

There will be much hand wringing over the devastating impact of foolish COVID-19 policies on student learning. Don’t believe the B.S. It wasn’t COVID that caused these unprecedented declines, it was the public policy response to COVID that drove this destruction.

The cries that “we must do something!” will soon fill the airwaves—with “doing something” generally meaning writing bigger and bigger checks to the public K-12 educational leviathan. They will do this, despite the fact that no correlation between public K-12 spending and student achievement has ever been found.

But it’s clear to anyone who cares to look that public K-12 education has been doing a lousy job for decades. It’s not really a secret. Every single president since at least John Kennedy has had some plan to improve this country’s K-12 public education system. That’s over 60 years and the problem not only persists, it’s gotten worse.

We’ve had “blue ribbon” panels and loads of smart people telling us what must be done for over half a century.

In 1983, “A Nation at Risk” exposed the failures of the public education system. It was supposed to be a wake-up call:

Our society and its educational institutions seem to have lost sight of the basic purposes of schooling, and of the high expectations and disciplined effort needed to attain them . . . If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament . . . Each generation of Americans has outstripped its parents in education, in literacy, and in economic attainment. For the first time in the history of our country, the educational skills of one generation will not surpass, will not equal, will not even approach, those of their parents.

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