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Ruth King

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Can’t Hide Their Israel Problem By Philip Klein

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/democrats-cant-hide-their-israel-problem/#slide-1

Stripping funding for Iron Dome only makes sense if the goal is to help Hamas become more efficient at killing civilians.

F or the past decade or so, top Democrats have been desperately trying to downplay the increasing size and influence of the anti-Israel wing of the party. But it keeps getting harder to hide what’s happening. This week provided yet another stark reminder when a group of progressives banded together to force House speaker Nancy Pelosi to rip $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system out of a spending bill meant to avert a government shutdown. It’s hard to overstate what a radical turn this is for the party.

Iron Dome has been an enormously successful shield that has allowed Israel to protect its people by shooting down rockets that Palestinian terrorist groups indiscriminately fire at civilians. By limiting Israeli casualties, the system also protects Palestinian civilians. That is, were the rocket attacks more deadly, Israel would have no choice but to launch a more aggressive military campaign — and likely a ground invasion in Gaza — which would mean the loss of more lives on both sides.

But the life-saving system comes at a cost. Each time Israel intercepts a rocket, it is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $80,000. When Palestinians pursue a saturation-bombing strategy and fire thousands of rockets all over Israel, as they did in May, the price tag of defending civilians can quickly add up, so the system requires constant funding.

There is of course a principled stand one could take against foreign aid in general, or against sending more money overseas at a time when the U.S. is facing historic debt. But progressives are not making any sort of consistent argument against foreign aid and have zero concern for the national debt. If current plans being pushed by progressives pass, then Democrats will have authorized $6 trillion in new spending within the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency. That’s 6,000 times $1 billion.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Media Test Positive For Corrupt COVID Coverage

By on September 24th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/09/24/media-test-positive-for-corrupt-covid-coverage/

Policymakers and public health officials need to be held accountable for their miserable pandemic failures. So should the media, which have no interest in objective news, and are following an agenda that is both repulsive and poisonous

Among of the media’s favorite stories of the last 18 months are the deaths of the unvaccinated and those who expressed skepticism about the lethality of the Wuhan coronavirus. A recent example is the death of a 40-year-old California woman, who, according to the British Daily Mail, “regularly posted anti-vax, anti-mask content, proclaiming herself a ‘free thinker’ who ‘questions everything.’ ” The mother of four – who also considered herself “unmuzzled” – “had been battling COVID-19 and resulting pneumonia ahead of her passing.”

Tragic as her death was, it would not have been covered by the media had she been vaccinated and cheerfully compliant with lockdown and mask rules. But in the twisted minds of most of today’s journalists, it’s a story that has to be told to boost their vanity. They are our moral superiors.

The glee with which the story is reported is not overt. But like so many others, it was told in a way to lead readers to classify the victim as a backward, anti-science conservative who might even be a Republican and a Trump supporter. It’s part of the left’s agenda to marginalize such people.

Thankfully, there are exceptions to the cruelty. Journalist Zaid Jilani recently told the media to stop shaming those who aren’t perfectly lined up with the left’s pandemic demands and succumb to their coronavirus infections.

“Maybe they were skeptical of vaccines, or masks or something like that, and maybe they got COVID, and they died,” Jilani told Hill.TV. “That’s usually a very sad circumstance, but it’s turned into sort of a celebration, like ‘ha we got the other side!’ ”

“It’s an odd way to think of a virus,” he added.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Scapegoats at the Texas Border The Biden White House blames border agents who are overwhelmed.

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/scapegoats-at-the-texas-border-joe-biden-administration-alejandro-mayorkas-11632433558?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

At last the Biden Administration is furious about tumult on the southern border. Not about the surge of migrants, mind you. The White House is using a single episode to scapegoat law enforcement and deflect criticism from its immigration failure.

The flare-up came Monday, when Reuters published footage of mounted Border Patrol agents facing down about 200 Haitian migrants near Del Rio, Texas. The article, and several that followed, mistook the officers’ reins for whips and claimed they’d been wielded against migrants. Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib denounced what she called “human rights abuses.”

It was a classic rush to judgment in the age of viral images. Yet the Biden Administration joined the pile-on against its own officers. By Tuesday Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas launched an investigation and took the officers off duty. White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the actions “brutal and inappropriate” and said President Biden was “horrified.”

Perhaps investigators will conclude that the border agents used excessive force. But the Administration looks fixed on a foregone conclusion. “We are addressing this with tremendous speed and tremendous force,” Mr. Mayorkas said Wednesday. His promise that “it will be completed in days not weeks” should prompt skepticism about fairness.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

$3.5 Trillion Is a Phony Number Budget tricks disguise the true cost of Biden’s vast entitlement plans.

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/3-5-trillion-is-a-phony-number-democrats-spending-bill-entitlements-joe-biden-11632425260?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats are grasping for ways to finance their cradle-to-grave welfare state, with the left demanding what they claim is $3.5 trillion over 10 years. The truth is that even that gargantuan number hides the real cost of their plans.

The bills moving through committees are full of delayed starts, phony phase-outs, and cost shifting to states designed to fit $3.5 trillion into a 10-year budget window that can pass with a mere 51 Senate votes. Even if the bill shrinks to $2 trillion or less, the real costs will be far greater. Behold one of the greatest fiscal cons in history.

• Start with the child allowance, which is among the bill’s most expensive provisions. Extending the $3,000 to $3,600 per-child payments for a decade would cost roughly $1.1 trillion. That’s as much as all of the income tax increases on individuals passed by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Democrats have hidden the real cost by extending the allowance only through 2025. Even if Republicans gain control of Congress and the White House in 2024, Democrats and their media allies will bludgeon them to extend the payments, which will cost another $110 billion each year. The GOP will be accused of raising taxes on middle-class families.

• Democrats are using a different time shift to disguise the cost of their Medicare expansion. New vision and hearing benefits would kick in over the next two years and cost about $20 billion a year. But Democrats are delaying the phase-in of the much more expensive dental benefit to 2028. This “saves” $420 billion over 10 years, but the costs explode after that.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden emails boast ties to White House and China By Emily Crane

By on September 24th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/09/23/hunter-biden-emails-boast-ties-to-white-house-and-china/

Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted his access to his father, “State, Treasury,” his relationship with then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson, as well as his ties to the “highest level” in China, as they weighed whether to work with him on a potential Libya deal in 2015, newly uncovered emails show. 

The two emails — published by Insider on Thursday — date back to 2015, when Joe Biden was vice president, and reference getting Hunter’s help on a deal regarding billions in Libyan assets frozen by the Obama administration.

The emails are unrelated to Hunter’s infamous laptop.

In the first email, dated Jan. 28, 2015, Democratic donor Sam Jauhari repeatedly referred to Hunter as “#2 son” — an apparent reference to Joe Biden’s VP role at the time — and noted that Hunter had requested a $2 million retainer.  The business contact listed a string of positives to working with Hunter, including his business relationship with Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz and Hunter’s apparent self-proclaimed high-level access in China.

According to new emails, Hunter Biden’s business contacts touted the political access Biden had to the president and several other offices within the White House.Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

“Per phone conversation I met with #2 son. He wants $2 per year retainer +++ success fees. He wants to hire his own people – it can be close circle of people for confidentiality. His dad is deciding to run or not,” the email said.

Biden’s access to Chris Heinz, stepson of ex-secretary of state John Kerry, was a major plus to his business partners.

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

True Privilege CVS launches a program that forces hourly employees to discuss their “privilege.” Christopher F. Rufo

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/inside-cvs-health-corporations-racial-reeducation-program

Last year, CVS Health Corporation—the largest pharmacy chain in the United States—paid then-CEO Larry Merlo almost 618 times the median company wage, while simultaneously launching a mandatory “antiracist” training program for hourly employees to deconstruct their “privilege.”

I have received whistleblower documents from inside CVS that reveal the company’s extensive race-reeducation program, which is built on the core tenets of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “white privilege,” and “unconscious bias.”

As a keynote for the initiative, Merlo—who has since retired—hosted a conversation with Boston University professor Ibram Kendi, who told 25,000 CVS employees that “to be born in [the United States] is to literally have racist ideas rain on our head consistently and constantly.” Kendi argued that Americans are “walking through society completely soaked in racist ideas,” including children as young as two to three years old. “Our kids are basically functioning on racist ideas, choosing who to play with based on the kid’s skin color,” Kendi said. The solution, in part, is to “diagnose” employees as “racist” in order to help them become “antiracist” and “stop hurting somebody else.”

A series of related training modules instructed employees to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, then rank themselves according to their “privilege.” The exercise is grounded in the theory of intersectionality, which holds that individuals can be reduced to a network of overlapping identities that determine their position on the social hierarchy, with privileged groups occupying the “oppressor” role and unprivileged groups in the “oppressed” role. The training asked CVS employees to circle their identities—including race, gender, sexuality, and religion—and then reflect on their “privilege” during the discussion. Examples of privilege, according to a checklist, included “celebrat[ing] Christmas,” “hav[ing] a name that is easy to pronounce,” “feel[ing] safe in your neighborhood at night,” and “feel[ing] confident in my leadership style.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump By Paul Sperry

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/23/biden_security_adviser_sullivan_tied_to_16_

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.

Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. After a months-long investigation, the FBI found no merit to the rumor.

The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.

The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.

To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well as university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”

The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Back on Their Heels, As Biden’s Polling Plunges and Manchin Presses for His ‘Strategic Pause’ By Lawrence Kudlow

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.nysun.com/national/democrats-are-back-on-the-heels-as-bidens-polling/91669/

With President Biden’s polls once again plunging and wide gaps in the Democratic Party over spending and taxing along with some serious grassroots opposition from groups like the save America coalition, I really do believe the Democrats are on the run. They’re back on their heels. They can’t get their story straight.

Again this evening I express my support for Senator Joe Manchin’s “strategic pause” to carry over big budget deals until the spring of 2022. Our motives might be a bit different, but our goals right now are similar. If the Democratic budget resolution doesn’t get through reconciliation until then — which admittingly is an improbable longshot — then the whole thing will die.

I do believe public Democratic weakness after the Biden meetings and the nonsensical press conference with Senator Schumer and Speaker Pelosi have a lot to do with the huge stock market rally today.

While insiders tell me that President Biden told democratic leaders to come up with their own topline on spending and, I presume taxes, at this point that project looks impossible with Mr. Manchin at between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, the Bernie Sanders budget scored at $3.5 trillion, and the actual gimmick-free budget scored at about $5.5 trillion.

That’s some spread.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Iron Dome woes, and Yair Lapid in la-la land By Ruthie Blum   

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/iron-dome-woes-and-yair-lapid-in-la-la-land-opinion-680176
Israel should be deeply concerned by the victory that was achieved on Tuesday by the progressive wing of the US House of Representatives. Rather than making excuses for the removal of a $1 billion provision for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system from a major funding bill, Jerusalem would do well to grasp the significance of the goings-on behind the scenes in Washington.

Unfortunately, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s response indicates that the new Israeli government is still clinging to a dangerous fantasy with two related prongs. One is that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to blame for the “rift” created between the Democratic Party and the Jewish state. The other is that the administration of President Joe Biden is just as pro-Israel, if not more, than its predecessor, headed by Donald Trump.

The irony is inescapable.

In the first place, if anything proves that Bibi isn’t to blame for the radicalization of the American Left and its increasingly open hostility to Israel, it’s the move against the Iron Dome. The maneuver was clearly spearheaded by the so-called Squad, made up of core members Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, and joined by Jamaa Bowman and Cori Bush.

Thus far, these paragons of progressive virtue have been mum about their role in the Iron Dome issue, but they have been clear from the outset about their agenda in general and their attitude toward Israel in particular. Nor have they hidden their view of Biden as a puppet put in place initially to oust Trump, and then to sit back and not get in their way. This week, they showed that they meant business.

Secondly, Biden’s supposedly stellar record on Israel is irrelevant. He thinks that a Palestinian state is crucial for Mideast peace, and continues to push for a return to the nuclear deal with Iran.

That the anti-Netanyahu crowd in Israel was buoyed by the US president’s meeting with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the White House last month is equally beside the point. The little get-together was briefly postponed due to the slaughter of 13 US servicemen and dozens of Afghans in Kabul – thanks to Biden’s hasty retreat and the Taliban’s immediate takeover.

With that debacle in the background, his pledge of “unwavering commitment to Israel’s security,” including “full support [for] replenishing Israel’s Iron Dome system,” rang as hollow as his vow to “ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon.”
What really reverberated, however, was the caveat that “we’re putting diplomacy first and seeing where that takes us.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dr. Scott Atlas on Vaccine Mandates for Children, Natural Immunity, and Florida’s COVID-19 Surge

By on September 24th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/dr-scott-atlas-on-vaccine-mandates-for-children-natural-immunity-and-floridas-covid-19-surge_4013490.html

“To me, it’s unconscionable that a society uses its children as shields for adults. Children do not have a significant risk from this illness… Are we [as] a society, a civilization … going to inject our children with an experimental drug that they don’t have a significant benefit from, to shield ourselves?”
—Dr. Scott Atlas

In this episode, we sit down with public health policy expert Dr. Scott Atlas to discuss the ethics of vaccinating children, especially given that data has shown children do not significantly spread the virus compared to adults.

We also discuss the underlying reasons behind the recent COVID-19 surge in Florida as well as the efficacy of natural immunity.

Dr. Atlas is the author of “A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America,” which is set to be released on Nov. 23.

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