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Ruth King

Andrew Cuomo Made $225,000 and Is Top-Paid Governor Ever By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/04/26/andrew_cuomo_made_225000_and_is_top-paid_governor_ever_774227.html

With a $225,000 salary, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the country’s highest paid governor.

That’s as he collects $4 million for writing a book during the Covid-19 pandemic about his graceful leadership during the pandemic — allegedly with the help of his staff, possibly violating labor laws against using public resources for personal gain.

And it’s as he is fighting sexual harassment allegations and scandal from misleading the public about how many people died from Covid in nursing homes.

But the $225,000 is not even his top pay.

In 2018, The New York State Commission on Legislative, Judicial, & Executive Compensation gave the legislature and the governor pay raises.

At the time, state lawmakers made $79,500 and Cuomo made $179,000.

Cuomo’s salary was increased to $200,000 in 2019, $225,000 in 2020 and $250,000 in 2021. But in November 2020, he deferred his latest raise, keeping his salary at $225,000, still the highest in the nation.

When awarding the raises for lawmakers, the commission in 2018 stipulated that the raise would limit outside income to no more than 15 percent of their legislative salary.

John Kerry, Enemy of Israel By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/john-kerry-enemy-of-israel/

Let’s pause to reflect on how monumentally stunning it is that the former U.S. secretary of state allegedly tattled on Israel to Iran.

W e know now that former secretary of state John Kerry isn’t merely a critic of Israel; he is an adversary. In leaked audiotapes obtained by the U.K.-based Iran International, as reported by the New York Times, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told a supporter that the former secretary of state had informed him about “at least” 200 covert Israeli actions against Iranian interests in Syria. Zarif listened to this information in “astonishment.”

It’s predictable, perhaps, that the Times glides over this remarkable exchange in a single-sentence paragraph that is submerged near the bottom of the piece. (I guess it’s better than the Washington Post, which doesn’t even mention the interaction.)

A high-ranking American official feels comfortable sharing this information with an autocratic adversary — a government that’s murdered hundreds of Americans, regularly kidnapped them, interfered with our elections, and propped up a regime that gasses its people — about the covert actions of a long-time American ally. What else did he tell Zarif? The Times doesn’t say.

The New UN Ambassador’s Misguided Shot at America By Lawrence J. Haas

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/new-un-ambassador%E2%80%99s-misguided-shot-america-183555

More than once of late, the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has declared that America’s “original sin” of slavery “weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.”

The problem isn’t just that Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a career diplomat who served as President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, is wrong about the nation’s founding.

Nor is the problem just that she stated her views not only before the United Nations General Assembly but also before the National Action Network of the Rev. Al Sharpton – who, over the years, has used inflammatory anti-Jewish rhetoric, promoted black teenager Tawana Brawley’s fabricated story that she was raped by white men, was sued successfully for defamation, and has not always paid his taxes.

The greater problem is that in promoting her views, Thomas-Greenfield seems oblivious to the broader challenges that America faces on the world stage at this precarious moment for freedom and democracy.

No, America is not perfect, and yes, America has struggled mightily with race from its earliest days. Slavery was central to the southern economy through two-thirds of the nineteenth century; a civil war that ended slavery was followed by the legalized bigotry of Jim Crow; the civil rights movement triggered a violent white backlash; and racism remains deeply embedded in the hearts of all-too-many Americans.

Temple University Speaker Calls For Israel To Be Replaced Moshe Phillips

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/335878/temple-university-speaker-calls-for-i

Last week, the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History and Congregation Rodeph Sholom of Philadelphia invited Joyce Ajlouny to share her hate of Israel. During the April 20 event, titled “The Weaponization of Discourse: Where is the Line Between Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitism on Campus?”, Ajlouny asserted that she favors “a secular, democratic state” — which, in plain English, means the elimination of Israel.

Why did the Feinstein Center and a prominent synagogue give Ajlouny a platform, knowing that she was almost certainly going to engage in such anti-Israel libels, since she has been saying the same things for decades? Ajlouny is, after all, executive director of the American Friends Service Committee (the foreign policy arm of the Quakers), which has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

In the event, Ajlouny began by accusing Israel of being “created on a false premise of a land without people, through ethnic cleansing, massacres, and forcing over 700,000 Palestinian to flee.” She said Israel governs through “an apartheid system.” She declared, unequivocally, “I am an anti-Zionist.”

Professor Kenneth Stern of Bard College, the event’s other panelist, responded by calling her rant “incredibly moving” then emphasized that Arabs and Israelis “need coexistence.” Ajlouny replied, “I would like to have coexistence in one secular democratic state, but that is a subject for another discussion.”

Ajlouny, who has lived most of her life in Ramallah and has been a public advocate for the Palestinian Arab cause for decades, knows full well that the term “one secular democratic state” is the longstanding PLO motto for eliminating Israel and replacing it with “Palestine.”

The Blame Israel First Policy

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-blame-israel-first-policy/91484/

Must Israel hold its fire against Iran in order to make it easier for President Biden to rejoin a nuclear deal that the Jewish state opposes? That is the question that is coming into focus in the wake of the explosion at the Natanz nuclear site and of what the Times is calling “shadowy naval skirmishes” in Mideast seas. Mr. Biden seems to think Israel is obligated to stand down while he pursues his appeasement of the ayatollahs.

That question also confronts an Israeli security delegation that is due in Washington today to air its objections to an entente with Iran, with whom we’re in what are called “indirect talks” at Vienna. On Friday the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked whether the delegation — led by the director of Israel’s legendary Mossad — is likely to change the administration’s position. “No,” she answered.

The idea that Israel must stand down amounts, in our view, to a kind of political supersessionism. Mr. Biden seems to believe that his diplomatic ambitions in respect of Iran ought to trump — forgive the expression — Israel’s interests. “Israel’s relentless attacks on Iran may endanger Biden’s diplomacy” is the headline over an editorial in the Washington Post earlier this month. Scant hint that the danger might come from Iran.

The Post does acknowledge that Mr. Biden “doesn’t have much room to pressure” Prime Minister Netanyahu for restraint. It reckons, though, that Mr. Biden “should persist with his diplomatic strategy — and hope that the Iranian regime chooses to make a distinction between Israel and the United States.” It is a blunt call to put daylight between America and one of its closest allies. Call the policy “blame Israel first.”

Inside the growing underground network of parents fighting ‘anti-racism’ in NYC schools By Dana Kennedy

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/how-parents-are-fighting-critical-race-theory-in-nyc-schools/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

Until last summer, Harvey Goldman had no idea that his 9-year-old daughter was learning about George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter as well as her own “white privilege” at the $43,000-per-year Heschel School in Manhattan.

Now he’s part of an underground network of parents in NYC and around the country, many of whom are left-leaning, fighting what they believe is the undue focus on race by schools as part of the new “woke” culture.

Many are reluctant to identify themselves publicly for fear of being labeled racist. But more are coming forward after Andrew Gutmann, the father of a 12-year-old girl at Manhattan’s posh Brearley School, wrote a scathing screed to administrators about their “anti-racism” obsession and went public in The Post last week.

Goldman, a businessman, was shocked by the amount of negative and inappropriate “anti-racist” dogma he said was being aimed at his fourth-grader and her classmates. But when he reached out to the school with his concerns, administrators were “arrogant and dismissive,” he told The Post.

Then he sent the school a letter.

“First and foremost, neither I, nor my child, have ‘white privilege,’ nor do we need to apologize for it,” Goldman wrote last September. “Suggesting I do is insulting. Suggesting to my 9-year-old child she does is child abuse, not education.”

In response, the school suggested Goldman take his daughter out of the school, he said. So he did. The family moved to Florida where his daughter is enrolled in a public school that he vetted beforehand to make sure critical race theory (CRT) was not part of the curriculum.

Heschel administrators did not respond to messages from The Post.

Obama administration scientist says climate ‘emergency’ is based on fallacy By Dr. Steven E. Koonin

https://nypost.com/2021/04/24/obama-admin-scientist-says-climate-emergency-is-based-on-fallacy/

‘The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it? 

Humans have broken the earth’s climate. Temperatures are rising, sea level is surging, ice is disappearing, and heat waves, storms, droughts, floods, and wildfires are an ever-worsening scourge on the world. Greenhouse gas emissions are causing all of this. And unless they’re eliminated promptly by radical changes to society and its energy systems, “The Science” says Earth is doomed. 

Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie “The Princess Bride” — “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.” 

For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile. 

These are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recent published research or assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN: 

 Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century. 
Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago. 
The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record. 

Why haven’t you heard these facts before? 

Who’ll Condemn the Atrocities on Biden’s Watch? By Ira Stoll

http://Who’ll Condemn the Atrocities on Biden’s Watch? By IRA STOLL, Special to the Sun | April 26, 2021 https://www.nysun.com/foreign/wholl-condemn-the-atrocities-on-bidens-watch/91486/

President Biden is being showered with congratulations for his statement recognizing the Armenian genocide. It’s bitterly ironic, because human rights abuses on similar scale unfolded while Mr. Biden was vice president and remain under way.

“Beginning on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination,” Mr. Biden said. “Let us renew our shared resolve to prevent future atrocities from occurring anywhere in the world.”

Said the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, “our hearts are full of joy that President Biden has taken the historic step.” The Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer, tweeted, “This is a step I have long pushed for presidents to take: President Biden is our first president to formally recognize the Armenian genocide.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, “Calling this atrocity what it was — genocide — is long overdue because we must recognize the horrors of the past if we hope to avoid repeating them in the future.”

What use were Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Warren & Co. between 2011 and today, when the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, backed by Iran and Russia, killed half a million Syrians and created 11 million refugees? “Syria Used Chemical Weapons 3 Times in One Week, Watchdog Says,” was the headline the New York Times put over an article that ran inside the newspaper.

How many times in a week would Syria have to use chemical weapons for the story to make it onto the front page, or for Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, and Warren & Co. to support American action decisive enough to bring the use, which has been ongoing for years now, to an end?

NO POSTING APRIL 26, 2021

BACK ON APRIL 27, 2021

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Another week and another dazzling catalog of Israel’s contributions to every single aspect of a better life. Now, thanks to the genius of the Abraham Accords conceived and implemented by former President Donald Trump, formerly hostile nations are openly benefiting from, and contributing to peaceful and productive research and development exchanges with Israel. Thanks to Michael Ordman for detailing all this good news.  rsk

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Vaccination good news. 5 million Israelis have now received two Covid vaccinations – 80% of the adult population. And a new study shows that vaccinations have saved some 6,000 Israeli lives. Finally, Israel’s Beilinson hospital has discharged all its 257 mothers, infected while pregnant, now with their healthy babies.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-reports-no-new-daily-covid-deaths-for-first-time-in-10-months/
https://www.israel21c.org/israel-may-have-achieved-herd-immunity-against-covid-19/
https://www.jns.org/covid-vaccine-saved-6000-israelis-lives/
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304842
 
More openings. New Israeli Covid-19 cases have dropped to under 200 a day, allowing the re-opening of all schools, bars, restaurants and indoor gatherings. Israelis no longer need wear masks outdoors in the open air. And UK Minister Michael Gove arrived to explore opening a “green corridor” between the UK and Israel.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/very-strange-very-nice-israelis-shed-masks-outdoors-after-vaccine-victory/
https://www.jns.org/in-light-of-low-covid-19-rates-israeli-schools-resume-full-activity/
 
Israel was a perfect vaccination model. It was the diversity of Israel’s citizens that clinched the Start-up Nation as Pfizer’s preferred choice for the first rollout of its vaccine. Israel’s population includes immigrants from over 100 different countries. Any rare vaccine side effects would soon show up in Israel’s ethnic mix.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304735
 
The origin of cytokine storms. Researchers at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have identified the molecular mechanisms responsible for the deadly cytokine storms in Covid-19 patients. The source are long non-coding RNA molecules (lncRNAs) which in the past were thought part of “junk” DNA – having no function!
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304826
 
Probiotic yoghurt molecules treat Covid. Researchers at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University have identified new candidate treatments for Covid and inflammatory bowel disease based on molecules isolated from fermented probiotic yogurt. These have anti-inflammatory properties that can heal cytokine storms caused by Covid-19.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israelis-discover-this-common-food-could-help-beat-corona/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/using-yogurt-molecules-israeli-lab-cures-mice-of-covid-style-inflammation/
 
Reprogramming the immune system to fight cancer. (TY Nevet) Scientists at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and Hadassah-University Medical Center, have developed a treatment for multiple myeloma. The patient’s T-cells are combined with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) molecule. In Phase 1 human trials at Hadassah.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/groundbreaking-made-in-israel-treatment-may-offer-cure-for-blood-cancer-664422
 
Early detection of skin cancer. Scientists at Tel Aviv University have developed new optical technology that will enable an immediate, non-invasive diagnosis of melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Special optical fibers can distinguish between benign and malignant lesions on the skin, potentially saving many patients’ lives.
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/rJhXOTKI00  
https://aapm.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mp.14471
 
Complex surgery saves Gaza boy. (TY UWI) Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam hospital performed three almost simultaneous operations to save Madchat Tapash – a 7-year-old boy from Gaza. They reconstructed his bladder, transferred a kidney donated by his mother and connected it all together in an 11-hour operation.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/complex-surgery-at-rambam-hospital-saves-life-of-7-year-old-gaza-boy/
 
Medics save Arab toddler after heart stopped. A two-year-old Arab boy with chronic heart problems, fell unconscious at his home in Deir el-Asad, northern Israel. Four EMTs (Muslims and Jews) from Israel’s United Hatzalah managed to get his pulse back and transported him and his mother to Haifa’s Rambam hospital.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/304253