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Ruth King

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Invitations to Voter Fraud in 2020 California is Exhibit A – while key battleground states are also at risk. Joseph Klein

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/invitations-voter-fraud-2020-joseph-klein/

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter identification law, the Court observed that “flagrant examples” of voter fraud “have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.” As the National Commission on Federal Election Reform stated in its 2005 bipartisan report, the problem “is not the magnitude of voter fraud. In close or disputed elections, and there are many, a small amount of fraud could make the margin of difference.” The report noted that “[I]nvalid voter files, which contain ineligible, duplicate, fictional, or deceased voters, are an invitation to fraud.”

California, the nation’s leading sanctuary state for illegal aliens, has opened the door to unprecedented opportunities for such voter fraud – and that’s even before California’s use of universal mail-in voting that the state is putting into place this year for the general election. While California is virtually certain not to be a close contest between President Trump and Joe Biden, California’s broken voting system illustrates what can go wrong across the country where the margins of votes between the candidates may be very slim indeed.

A Facebook post in November 2018 stated that 449,000 Californians turned down jury duty claiming they were not citizens. The post went on to say that these non-citizens were on the voter registration list, reasoning that prospective jurors are often culled from voter registration lists.

Left leaning commentators have questioned the accuracy of this post, claiming that Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records are the primary source for the state to identify prospective jurors. Registrars of voter data are used as a secondary source, they argue. Such criticisms miss the forest for the trees when it comes to California and other states where DMV and voter registration databases are electronically linked. Voter registration data are transferred from DMVs to state voter registration systems. Even if DMV records are the primary source for these states to identify prospective jurors, it doesn’t matter because there is a significant overlap with the voter registration data systems. The DMV driver licensing process is used to generate automatic registration data that feed the voter registration data systems.

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EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

USC Professor Placed on Leave after Black Students Complained His Pronunciation of a Chinese Word Affected Their Mental Health By Brittany Bernstein

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usc-professor-placed-on-leave-after-black-students-complained-his-pronunciation-of-a-chinese-word-affected-their-mental-health/

The University of Southern California has placed a communications professor on leave after a group of black MBA candidates threatened to drop his class rather than “endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities” following the instructor’s use, while teaching, of a Chinese word that sounds like a racial slur.

Greg Patton, a professor at the university’s Marshall School of Business, was giving a lecture about the use of “filler words” in speech during a recent online class when he used the word in question, saying, “If you have a lot of ‘ums and errs,’ this is culturally specific, so based on your native language. Like in China, the common word is ‘that, that, that.’ So in China it might be ‘nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge.’”

In an August 21 email to university administration obtained by National Review, students accused the professor of pronouncing the word like the N-word “approximately five times” during the lesson in each of his three communication classes and said he “offended all of the Black members of our Class.”

The students, who identified themselves as “Black MBA Candidates c/o 2022” wrote that they had reached out to Chinese classmates as they were “appalled” by what they had heard. 

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Merkel’s Nord Stream 2 Hypocrisy By Jimmy Quinn

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/merkels-nord-stream-2-hypocrisy/

German chancellor Angela Merkel’s support of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline is coming to a head following her statement yesterday that the poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was “attempted murder.” The proper response here would be to end the project, which doubles the capacity of another pipeline that brings natural gas from Russia to Europe. It seems that in the near term, Merkel’s not going to budge, despite resistance from key figures within her own party.

What’s the problem with Nord Stream 2? For one, it would increase European energy dependence on Moscow. It would also circumvent Ukraine, contributing to the country’s strategic encirclement by Russia. This is why Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States have vocally opposed the project, and it’s why the United States has implemented an aggressive sanctions regime that targets any entities involved in laying the pipeline, which is about 94 percent complete. The U.S. sanctions have over the past several months, however, prevented its completion.

Merkel has consistently defended Nord Stream 2, which is led by Gazprom — a Russian state-owned energy company — and has been promoted by former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who now serves as chair of the project. At best, Merkel and its other supporters, many of whom come from the left-wing SPD, can claim that Russia and the rest of Europe are interdependent, and that Moscow would only harm itself by using the pipeline for its political ends. Prior to Navalny’s poisoning this was an incredibly generous reading of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s intentions, and it’s now even more difficult to make that case.

The main question here is how large a role political considerations should play a role in the project. Merkel has said in recent days that Navalny’s poisoning should not be linked to the issue of Nord Stream 2. That argument, though, is inconsistent with what she said during a press conference with former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in 2018:

In our view, the Nord Stream 2 project is not possible without clarity of how Ukraine’s transit role will continue. From this you can already see that this is not just an economic project, but that, of course, political factors must also be taken into account.

Of course, by political factors, she was at the time referring to Ukraine’s fears of encirclement. But was she sincere about that? After all, Merkel does not seem to have truly meant what she said here — in no sense have the country’s concerns been addressed since then. Just a couple of months ago, the Ukrainian government endorsed the U.S.’s Nord Stream 2 sanctions.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

How Not to Fight Terrorism By Sam Westrop

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/fighting-terrorism-focus-on-extremists-radicalizing-next-generation/

Many efforts to prevent terrorism focus on terrorists who have already embraced violence, and not on the extremists who engender this violence and are busy radicalizing the next generation.

Despite media attention currently being focused firmly elsewhere, it is desperately important to remember that multiple terrorist attacks by both Islamist and far-right fanatics have killed and injured numerous Americans over the last year, and there is certainly no shortage of other terrorist plots in the works. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that in March the Trump administration quietly brought back the Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, three years after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) effectively shut it down.

While an enormous amount of national media outrage accompanied the initial closure of CVE, no media outlet seems to have noticed that it has now been re-established, except for two Qatari regime-linked publications, the Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera. Both outlets argue that the new program, named Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, or TVTP, is identical to the CVE program it has replaced. They are right. The only difference is a shiny new name. And as with its predecessor, it is deeply flawed.

Trump’s TVTP, Obama’s CVE, and countless other programs countering extremism across the globe all operate on a long series of faulty premises. They operate without data or metrics for success. And they carefully avoid facts that are patently uncomfortable.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Democrats’ Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election By David Harsanyi

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/democrats-dangerous-delegitimization-election/

Too many voters don’t believe November’s election will be legitimate — before it has even been conducted.

A recent deep dive in the Washington Post’s Outlook section, “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” exploring various potential outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, found that in “every scenario except a Biden landslide, our simulation ended catastrophically.” According to the Post, any other outcome is destined to spark “violence” and a “constitutional crisis.”

Or, in other words, nice country you got there . . .

Every assumption in the article, written by Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, is awash in the conspiratorial paranoia that’s infected the modern Democratic Party. It’s a world where Trump officials — played, quite implausibly, by Joe Biden partisans Michael Steele and Bill Kristol — are “ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate” but the genteel statesmen of Team Biden “struggled to get out of reaction mode.” It is a place where Republicans aren’t only reflexively seditious and autocratic, but a “highly politicized” Supreme Court tries to steal the election.

In their “war game” scenarios, however, it’s the Democrats who refuse to accept the will of courts to adhere to the constitutionally prescribed system rather than hysteria, and it’s the Democrats who wishcast the wholly imaginary “popular vote” into existence.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Real Palestinian Tragedy by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16456/palestinian-tragedy

Unlike their leaders, however, the Palestinians living in Syria and Iraq do not appear to be worried about the Israel-UAE accord. These Palestinians have more existential concerns — such as providing shelter for their children and safe drinking water for their families. They are disturbed about the homes they have lost, and they are in a state of anguish about fate of their missing sons.

The Palestinian families complained that the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organizations, including the United Nations, have refused to assist them in their search for their beloved ones.

Palestinian writer Nabil Al-Sahli said that the 4,000 Palestinians who remain in Iraq are facing an “ongoing tragedy.” He said that according to some studies, at least 20,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Iraq to 40 countries around the world because of the “massacres” committed against them by sectarian militias.

By extreme contrast [to Syria and Iraq], the UAE and other Gulf states have long opened their doors to Palestinians and provided them with jobs and high living standards. Puzzlingly, Palestinian leaders have plenty of time to castigate the UAE, but no time at all to comment on the systematic abuse and killing of Palestinians in Syria and Iraq. For the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the true tragedy is when an Arab expresses willingness to make peace with Israel.

Palestinian leaders are so committed to condemning the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its normalization agreement with Israel that they have no time left to notice the horrific suffering of their people in some Arab countries, particularly Syria and Iraq. Specifically, these leaders seem unperturbed that in some in Arab countries, Palestinians are mysteriously disappearing.

Unlike their leaders, however, Palestinians living in Syria and Iraq do not appear to be worried about the Israel-UAE accord. These Palestinians have more existential concerns — such as providing shelter for their children and safe drinking water for their families. They are disturbed about the homes they have lost, and they are in a state of anguish about fate of their missing sons.

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HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

V-J Day, 75 Years Later By Arthur L. Herman

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/remembering-v-j-day-75-years-later/

‘T oday the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.”

Those were Douglas MacArthur’s words following the signing of Japan’s unconditional surrender on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 75 years ago. That signing ceremony ended the last phase of World War II, the bloodiest war in history. As MacArthur indicated, it also opened a new era in the relationship between the United States and Asia, in which the once-defeated Japan has come to play a pivotal part.

After being America’s mortal enemy, Japan has become the U.S.’s closest and oldest ally in Asia. This is a tribute not only to generations of leadership in both countries, but also to the hopes that MacArthur set in motion on that day.

On the one hand, the ceremony of V-J Day was a magnificent display of American power. On board the USS Missouri were representatives of an international coalition to defeat imperial Japan that included the Soviet Union as well as Great Britain and its Dominions, and China.

Tokyo Bay itself was filled with American warships as far as the eye could see. When the surrender ceremony was completed, MacArthur staged an overflight of more than 1,500 Navy warplanes and 400 B-29s, the super bomber that had dropped the most destructive weapon ever devised, the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to hasten Japan’s unconditional surrender.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Chamber of Errors The business lobby abandons free-market principles to back 23 freshman Democrats. By Kimberley Strassel

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chamber-of-errors-11599174564?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

To err is Washington, and even the most seasoned Beltway players can be forgiven the occasional strategic mistake. But deliberately ignoring history, evidence and principle by engaging in an act that undermines one’s reason for existence is another matter. Meet the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The nation’s premier business lobby this week finalized its decision to help re-elect 23 House Democratic freshmen. Most of those endorsed spent their first term reliably voting to end U.S. business as we know it. Of the chamber’s new favorite politicians, 20 have voted to abolish right-to-work states; 18 said yes to a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage; and 14 supported the House’s $3 trillion blowout, styled the Heroes Act—among other votes designed to crush the life out of free markets. This from an organization whose tag line reads “Standing Up for American Enterprise.” These days it’s more like “prostrating ourselves for crumbs.”

The old tag line was more befitting of chamber CEO Tom Donohue, the feisty Irishman who as recently as 2008 led the chamber in a full frontal effort to deny Barack Obama a filibuster-proof Senate majority. Today’s chamber reflects the growing influence of Suzanne Clark, who replaced Mr. Donohue as president in 2019, and chief policy officer Neil Bradley. In their choice between defending free enterprise and making nice on the cocktail circuit, the drinks are winning.

The endorsements are best viewed as the chamber leadership’s bow to both political correctness and dubious strategy.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy Hunting for asymptomatic cases encourages pointless shutdowns. Protect the vulnerable instead.By Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-against-covid-tests-for-the-young-and-healthy-11599151722?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School. Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Should people who aren’t sick be tested for Covid-19? In August the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention revised its guidance to suggest focusing on the elderly and patients with symptoms. One may be excused for thinking that more testing is always better, but that isn’t true. Anyone can be infected with the virus, but there is a thousandfold difference in the risk of death between the young and the old. Testing strategy should reflect that.

There is little purpose in using tests to check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school. When children are infected, most are asymptomatic, and the mortality risk is lower than for the flu. While adult-to-adult and adult-to-child transmission is common, child-to-adult transmission isn’t. Children thus pose minimal risk to their teachers. If a child has a cough, a runny nose or other respiratory symptoms, he should stay home. You don’t need a test for that.

What would routine Covid-19 testing of children accomplish? A child with no symptoms who tests positive would be sent home and deprived of an education. Enough asymptomatic cases would lead to school closures. Yet the public-health consensus is that classroom learning is important, and closures are highly detrimental. That’s especially true for working-class children, whose parents can’t afford tutors or learning “pods,” but must instead make difficult choices between supervising their children’s education and paying the bills.

Sweden was the only major Western country that kept schools open for kids 15 and younger throughout the pandemic, with no masks or mass testing. How did it turn out? Zero Covid-19 deaths among 1.8 million children attending day care or school. Teachers didn’t have an excess infection risk compared with the average of other professions.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Kobe Bryant fan and the concept of ‘kavanah’ – opinion-Ruthie Blum

By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/a-kobe-bryant-fan-and-the-concept-of-kavanah-opinion-641036

Shame on Israelis for elevating American hysteria to a higher plane than Jewish wisdom and, more importantly, common sense.The Jewish concept of kavanah – intention – refers to a worshiper’s sincerity during prayers and the fulfilling of commandments. Though scholars disagree on the extent to which certain rituals are meaningless without the necessary purity of heart and mind, the idea that a person’s intentions are often as relevant as his actions is pretty universal.

Even courts of law examine intent – such as “malice aforethought” – when determining a defendant’s guilt or innocence.

One exception among many at the moment – thanks to the cancel-culture climate in the US – concerns the use of “blackface,” dark makeup applied to white skin for theatrical or costume-party purposes. In the mid-19th century, minstrel shows popularized this custom, and by the early 20th century, it became its own art form. Al Jolson, the “king of blackface performers,” is the name most associated with the practice.

Today, any blackface is considered racist and therefore taboo, regardless of the kavanah of those accused of having violated it, even in the distant past – no matter what its aim. In a McCarthy-like sweep of self-censorship, Hollywood and Broadway not only have been removing all vestiges of blackface, but have been engaged in a kind of ongoing breast-beating far more intense than any Yom Kippur service.

David O. Selznick’s 1939 film, based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind, and Disney’s 1946 partly animated musical movie, Song of the South, are examples of blockbusters that portray blacks in a cringe-worthy stereotypical fashion – something that is understandably offensive to African-Americans. Blackface, too, is and always has been an atrocious form of comedy.

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