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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

PLO Diplomat Named Fisher Family Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School Harvard could not have picked a worse choice. Ari Lieberman

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/provocative-plo-diplomat-saeb-erekat-named-fisher-ari-lieberman/

The Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs announced last week that Saeb Erekat will serve as a Fisher Family Fellow for the upcoming 2020-21 academic year. Erekat is a Palestinian diplomat, who’s held various senior posts within the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority. As a Fisher Family Fellow, Erekat will mentor students and give virtual seminars, and will presumably impart his knowledge and expertise on the state of Palestinian affairs and its international relations, including those it maintains with Israel.

Harvard could not have picked a worse choice. Erekat has a long record of mendaciousness and historical revisionism, and can best be characterized as an unrepentant congenital liar. He’s also an outspoken apologist for Palestinian terrorism and has dabbled in conspiracy theories laced with anti-Semitic overtones.

In April 2002, the Israel Defense Forces launched a counter insurgency campaign to rout Palestinian terrorist forces from the densely populated West Bank city of Jenin. Terrorists affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade had transformed the city into a terror hub. Jenin was macabrely referred to as the suicide capital of the West Bank due to the many suicide bombers who had domiciled there.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘We Hope They Die!’ Black Lives Matter mob blocks emergency room for L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies gunned down Saturday night. Lloyd Billingsley

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/we-hope-they-die-lloyd-billingsley/

On Saturday night, two Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies stationed their patrol car near the Willowbrook Metro station in Compton. At approximately 7 p.m., a masked gunman appeared to walk past the vehicle then turned and fired multiple shots, hitting both deputies.

Fox News Los Angeles reporter Bill Melugin obtain video of the shooting and confirmed a “100 percent ambush. A man slowly creeps up to the vehicle like he’s stalking it, fires shots through the window.” The Sheriff’s department posted the video and Sheriff Alex Villanueva held a press conference wearing a bullet-proof vest.

The ambushed deputies were a 24-year-old male and a mother of 31, both recent additions to the department.  “I want everyone to have a prayer for them for their recovery at this time,” the sheriff told reporters. “This was a cowardly act,” Villanueva said, and “words have consequences,” a reference to anti-police rhetoric now raging in Los Angeles and across the country.

As Villanueva wrapped up, a mob confronted sheriff’s deputies, with one member shouting “It’s a celebration! It’s a celebration!” Others taunted deputies and took videos with their phones. As this played out, the ambush victims encountered other conflict at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood.

A Black Lives Matter mob assembled outside the hospital chanting “Death to police!” The mob blocked entrance to the hospital emergency room, where family members of the wounded officers were present. “I hope they fucking die,” one man yelled, with another adding “Y’all gonna die one by one. This ain’t gonna stop.”

As police struggled to disperse the mob, a woman ignored commands to stay back and interfered with an arrest. Unidentified in some reports, she turned out to be Jodie Huang a reporter for KPCC radio. Huang attended the sheriff’s press conference and did not identify herself as a reporter on arriving at the hospital.

KPCC is part of Southern California Public Radio, which proclaims, “as an organization we condemn systemic racism — and racism of any kind — and remain committed to reflecting the diverse communities we serve. With that in mind, we say the statement “Black Lives Matter” reinforces our commitment.”

In July, Huang tweeted, “Black Lives Matter is a spiritual movement,” and authored a report on a BLM action at the Federal Building in Los Angeles, in solidarity with rioters in Portland.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R) FOR CONGRESS- NEW YORK DISTRICT 11

By on September 14th, 2020

https://nicolemalliotakis.com/

READ ABOUT NICOLE AND HER IMPRESSIVE ENDORSEMENTS

In the State Assembly, Nicole has worked to find commonsense solutions to the issues that matter most on Staten Island and in Southern Brooklyn. She’s been a reliable voice defending her constituents against the regressive policies advanced in both Albany and City Hall!

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

President Trump is acting as if Nevada is up for grabs By Andrea Widburg

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/president_trump_is_acting_as_if_nevada_is_up_for_grabs.html

In the last three presidential elections, Nevada has been a solidly Democrat state. Even now, polling shows Biden slightly ahead in Nevada. President Trump, though, thinks Nevada is up for grabs. He blew through Nevada over the weekend, like an energetic tornado, holding a rally in tiny Minden, Nevada, near both Lake Tahoe and Reno, and in Henderson, near Las Vegas.

The following polling chart for Nevada, from Real Clear Politics, shows that Nevada is technically a Biden state. It’s noteworthy, though, that Biden’s lead has dropped by 50% between January and September. Additionally, Biden’s lead in the latest poll is within the 5.3 margin of error:

With Biden’s lead tiny to nonexistent, it’s no wonder that Trump thought Nevada was worth a visit. On Saturday night, after only 24 hours warning, he showed up in tiny Minden, Nevada, which is strategically located near Lake Tahoe (which straddles the California-Nevada border) and Reno, Nevada. Trump had originally planned to speak at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport, but Governor Steve Sisolak’s directives against large indoor gatherings (something that hasn’t applied to casinos) blocked that plan.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trouble Brewing in Central America The region has issues that the Trump administration can’t afford to ignore. By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trouble-brewing-in-central-america-11600028832?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

President Trump made a deal with Central American governments and Mexico to end the 2018-19 migration crisis by requiring asylum seekers from Central America to register in a transit country before seeking U.S. entry.

Since then, the administration has taken a “problem solved” attitude toward Central America. In fact there are still plenty of regional worries that Mr. Trump ought to take seriously.

Exhibit A is El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has been widely praised as a good friend of the U.S. but may not be so hot after all.

The 39-year-old Mr. Bukele was raised, politically speaking, by the left-wing FMLN party, formed by Salvadoran guerrillas after the civil war. He was elected FMLN mayor of the city of Nuevo Cuscatlán in 2012 and FMLN mayor of the capital, San Salvador, in 2015. But he ran for president in 2019 on a third-party ticket, defeating both traditional parties: the FMLN and the center-right Arena party. Today he heads the New Ideas party.

Mr. Bukele claims he no longer holds the ideological beliefs of the FMLN of his youth. But he has retained the instincts that made him a young star in the party.

In his first year in office he has shown himself to be an ambitious populist with an authoritarian streak. In February he stunned the nation when he marched into the Salvadoran Congress with armed soldiers and sat in the speaker’s chair in an effort to intimidate lawmakers who were not rubber-stamping his proposals.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Chinese Communist Party’s Dangerous Bid for the U.N. Human Rights Council By Jimmy Quinn

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/the-chinese-communist-partys-dangerous-bid-for-the-u-n-human-rights-council/

T he Chinese party-state is engaged in a years-long campaign to wipe out ethnic minority identities within its borders, to do away with the vestiges of democratic governance in Hong Kong, and otherwise to silence dissenting voices. But that would barely register if you followed these developments through the proceedings of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which convenes on Monday to begin a new session.

The council’s 47 members are granted two-year terms in annual elections, the next of which will take place in October. China, which has served four of these terms since the body’s creation in 2006, isn’t currently a member but will be a candidate this time around. It doesn’t take a human-rights lawyer to see the problem with Chinese membership of the body.

Each time the country seeks a seat, there’s a futile — but honorable — attempt by human-rights defenders to point out Beijing’s egregious record on these issues. The latest of these attempts came this past week, in the form of a letter signed by over 300 non-governmental organizations: “China has targeted human rights defenders abroad, suppressed academic freedom in countries around the world, and engaged in internet censorship and digital surveillance,” they wrote.

International pressure has mounted as the human-rights situation in China deteriorates. The Hong Kong crackdown brought one wave of criticism, as did new evidence of a population-control campaign in Xinjiang. The situation has become so dire that in June, dozens of U.N. human-rights experts called for an unprecedented special meeting of the council to discuss the human-rights abuses of the Chinese Communist Party. This is an improvement over the silence that once reigned, but don’t count on that meeting to even take place.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why Trump Is Winning Over Hispanics By Rich Lowry

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/why-trump-is-winning-over-hispanics/

EXCERPT

Florida senator Rick Scott has an advanced degree in winning Hispanic voters as a Republican.

It has buoyed him in all his races, most recently his victory in his 2018 Senate race after serving two terms as governor, so he seems a logical person to ask about President Donald Trump’s eye-popping improvement among Hispanics in Florida.A Marist/NBC poll last week had Trump narrowly ahead of Biden among Hispanics in Florida, and the president is leading handily among Cuban Americans.

Scott’s bottom line: “What I did, as governor, is I showed up, and Trump’s doing the same thing.”…..

Pence rolled out “Latinos for Trump” in Miami in June of last year, although the group hadn’t really stopped its outreach since the 2016 campaign. It’s made millions of voter contacts. Meanwhile, according to Politico, Trump has been outspending Biden in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale media market, much of it in the form of Spanish-language ads.

The Trump team considers the Democrats culturally tone-deaf, whether it’s the attempted boycott of Goya, a staple of Cuban-American households; the push to use the ridiculous term “Latinx”; or the emphasis on the word “progressive,” which echoes the self-description of Latin America’s Communist regimes.

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BOOKS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Journalism or partisanship? The media’s mistakes of 2016 continue in 2020 By Sharyl Attkisson,

By on September 14th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/516036-journalism-or-partisanship-the-medias-mistakes-of-2016-continue-in-2020

If there were any doubt left after 2016 as to what too much of the mainstream news media in America has become, it most certainly has been erased in 2020. Too often, many in my industry have revealed themselves as little more than propaganda tools for dueling political sides, no longer reporting the way journalists once did. We compete for the latest anonymous “scoop,” scandalous rumor or unsupported accusation. We pounce on the supposed “bombshell” du jour and hype it on the news, accompanied by endless round robins with political operatives. Many of us don’t even bother to find and report on stories that powerful people and interests aren’t pushing.

To do this, too many of us have abandoned basic tenets of journalism. We ignore the suspicious timing of the handout “leaks” or scandals — as if nobody notices. We fail to explore or disclose sources’ motivations or conflicts of interest — as if nobody wonders about them. We don’t even pretend to assess the true news value of the “bombshell.” We’re simply happy to be of service to the propagandists; we invite them to use us, and our superiors reward us with admiration. Many of our peers either repeat the reporting, seek to confirm it using equally dubious methods or discredit it. Rarely do we step back and consider that the whole drama is being orchestrated by political puppet masters who count their successes by the number of news stories they generate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘We Hope They Die’ Protesters cheer a shooting ambush of sheriff’s deputies in L.A.

By on September 14th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/we-hope-they-die-11600031160?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

No one other than the shooter is responsible for the gunfire ambush Saturday of two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies as they sat in their patrol car. But the same can’t be said for the protesters who blocked the entrance to the hospital where the two are being treated, and chanted “we hope they die.” The latter is a cultural poison nurtured by the left-wing anti-police movement sweeping the country.

The two deputies were “ambushed by a gunman in a cowardly fashion” in the Compton neighborhood, said Sheriff Alex Villaneuva at a press conference. The deputies hadn’t been identified by name as we write this, but press reports say one is a 31-year-old mother and the other a 24-year-old man. Both have been with the department a little more than a year.

Police haven’t identified a suspect, but the randomness of the ambush suggests someone looking for any available police target. We’ve seen this before when anti-police fever is hot. A gunman shot and killed two officers in their car in New York in 2014 following the death of black suspects being arrested in Ferguson, Mo., and New York.

The protests are worse this year following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the anti-police violence is more widespread. An officer was stabbed in the neck in Flatbush in New York City in an ambush in June. The officer survived.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden and the Democrats Would Have Bungled the Coronavirus Response By Kyle Smith

By on September 13th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/coronavirus-pandemic-joe-biden-democrats-would-have-bungled-response/

With help from the media, they are shamelessly obscuring their own disastrously misguided instincts.

C riticism of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus for the most part centers not on policy but on style: The president made many ill-considered and inaccurate remarks, and he tried to happy-talk his way through the situation. His habit of going off message, which appears to be incurable, gives his opponents a steady stream of ammunition with which to attack him. As for the happy talk, there was an awful lot of that going around.

As David Harsanyi points out, on the day Trump tweeted that the virus is “very much under control,” Nancy Pelosi was urging her constituents to visit Chinatown in San Francisco. That was February 24. On March 5, Bill de Blasio was urging New Yorkers to “get out on the town despite coronavirus.” As late as March 19, Andrew Cuomo was still playing Kevin Bacon in Animal House — “Remain calm, all is well!” he cried, as he got flattened. Cuomo told us “the fear and panic is, if anything, worse than the virus,” though it turned out that the virus was actually quite a bit worse, and a little more fear and panic earlier in the year would have been useful in limiting its spread.

Trump’s inclination to play down the virus was widely shared, and I see no reason to think a President Obama or Biden would not also have struck an optimistic tone, albeit without the hyperbole that characterizes everything Trump says. I think Obama would have very calmly and suavely reassured us that he had things under control and that everything would be okay. That’s what leaders do, isn’t it? As a general rule, “Don’t panic” is a wise message, just not in this special case.

By mid-March, it was too late. The map of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the U.S. overlays neatly onto a map of the New York City area’s mass-transit routes. Should this be laid at Trump’s feet? Was Trump supposed to shut down the trains? Did he even have the authority to do that? Can Cuomo and de Blasio really look Trump in the eye and say, “I respect you so much that I obviously would have complied if you had only suggested we shut down the trains”?

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