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Ruth King

Mapping Los Angeles’ Homeless Encampment Challenge – Nearly 100,000 Cases Reported Since 2019 Adam Andrzejewski Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/09/30/mapping-los-angeles-homeless-encampment-challenge–nearly-100000-cases-reported-since-2019/#6d635e794dee

Los Angeles represents the glitz and glamour of the California lifestyle. It’s a tourist mecca that boasted 50 million visitors in 2019 – an all-time high.

The greater Los Angeles area can also claim Muscle Beach in Venice; the Hollywood movie studios; the rich and famous in Beverly Hills; and a previously booming economy that trailed only New York City and Tokyo.

But the city itself is in trouble, and tourists should be advised to avoid some neighborhoods and streets entirely.

Today, Los Angeles hosts an estimated homeless population of nearly 40,000 people (the entire states of Texas and Florida have between 25,000 and 28,000 respectively). Affluent sections of the city have become dangerous with open-air drug use, human feces, medieval diseases, and, sadly, homeless encampments.

Since 2019, there have been at least 94,430 reported complaints of homeless encampments in public spaces –an average of 4,500 per month.

First elected in 2013, Mayor Eric Garcetti promised to clean things up. However, conditions are the same or worse. Last year, the number of encampment complaints spiked to 55,569. The same pace has continued in 2020 with 35,241 instances already reported through August.

THE FESTIVAL OF SUKKOT- OCTOBER 2-7 EXPLAINED BY YORAM ETTINGER

Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) Guide for the Perplexed, 2020
 https://bit.ly/3n2dZVR  

1. Jewish national liberation is the 3rd Jewish pilgrimage holiday (following Passover and Shavou’ot – Pentecost), which has been celebrated for the last 3,300 years. Sukkot commemorates the Exodus, the 40 years of wandering in the Sinai Desert, the construction of the Holy Tabernacle and the victories along the way into the Land of Israel. It reaffirms faith in G-D, gratitude for the harvest and the Ingathering of Jews in their Homeland, and the highlighting of reality-based optimism.

2. Commemorating the Exodus. Sukkot (in Hebrew) is named after the first stop during the 40-year-Exodus from Egypt, the town of Sukkota (סוכותה), as documented in Exodus 13:20-22 and Numbers 33:3-5.  It commemorates the gradual transition from slavery in Egypt and nomadic life in the desert to liberty in the Land of Israel; from oblivion to deliverance; and from the spiritual state-of-mind during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the mundane of the rest of the year.

3. The Hebrew meaning of Sukkot. The Hebrew root of Sukkot ()stands for the key characteristics of the relationship between the Jewish people, the Jewish Homeland and faith in God. The Hebrew word Sukkah () means wholeness and totality (), the shelter of the tabernacle (), to anoint (), divine curtain/shelter() and attentiveness ().

4. The 7-day-holiday. The 7 days of Sukkot are dedicated to the 7 Ushpizin (monumental leaders/guests), who represent positive human and, particularly, leadership qualities in their pursuit of ground-breaking initiatives: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David, who were endowed with faith, humility, magnanimity, compassion, reality-based optimism, tenacity in face of dramatic odds, courage, peace-through-strength, principle-driven leadership.   

A Victory over Terrorists Raises a Question over Election Reporting by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16561/leila-khaled-terrorists-internet

An interesting legal question or two popped-up… right at the intersection of free speech and technology. Corporate standards for content and how Internet platforms engage in editorial decisions over content material (they supposedly are not responsible for) is increasingly becoming a point of contention.

Policing content and platform liability get more complicated with every passing day. The social media tech giants pretend they are not really responsible, unless they want to be — or they do not like your politics — or they are frightened of being prosecuted and fined for supporting terrorism.

Corporate America, and especially the Internet tech giants, do not see it that way. Consider the multi-billion-dollar Internet pornography industry that exploits and denigrates human beings through exploitation, child abuse and trafficking.

What happens when the giants decide that an election outcome must be decided in one way, and that anyone reporting or asking questions about a different outcome, a different way, must be banned and suppressed?

We have good news: Terrorists were stopped from exploiting the Internet and a state university event to propound their violence-inspiring, hate-filled rhetoric. Ten days ago, several online news and social media fora sounded the alarm over San Francisco State University (SFSU) hosting the terrorist Leila Khaled on September 23, 2020 via an Internet-based open classroom event. The occasion was described as “a historic roundtable conversation with Palestinian feminist, militant, and leader Leila Khaled, followed by Q&A discussion with students, activists, and scholars.”

Billed as “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled,” the event featured at least three other terrorists from the Weather Underground, Black Panthers and an advisor to Hamas. Today, the good news with which we are following up is that Khaled and the other terrorists did not win.

While Khaled is not a specially designated terrorist, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is a designated organization — and Khaled is a member of the terrorist organization’s politburo. Because the online event was an Internet open classroom, there were no specific issues related to her physical admissibility to the U.S. Khaled has spoken in Europe several times (including at an EU conference in Brussels in 2017) but the same year, was denied entry to Italy.

Iran’s Other Threat to Civilization by Peter Vincent Pry and Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16524/iran-emp-nuclear-attack

The US and its allies need to do everything possible never again to be caught in a state of unpreparedness.

The Congressional EMP Commission estimates that, given U.S. current unpreparedness, within one year of an EMP attack that causes a nationwide blackout… up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could perish from starvation, disease and societal collapse. An EMP attack, therefore, would confer upon Iran an “assured destruction” capability against the United States.

The Congressionally created EMP Commission assesses that North Korea already has super-EMP nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them…. Iran may also already — or soon — have the capability to deliver an EMP attack.

“By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian Parliament had previously warned [the U.S.] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans.” — Iran’s state-controlled Afkar News.

The formal end of the UN arms embargo — at the end of September 2020 — could provide Iran with even more missile and nuclear technology possibly from Russia or China.

“Iran should be regarded by national security decision makers as a nuclear missile state capable of posing an existential threat to the United States and its allies… The fact of Iran’s ICBM capability and their proximity to nuclear weapons necessitates that Iran be regarded as a nuclear missile state — right now.” — William R. Graham, Henry F. Cooper, Fritz Ermarth and Peter Vincent Pry, Newsmax, February 1, 2015.

The Islamic Republic of Iran may soon have the capability, if it does not already, of carrying out electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks against its enemies. Such an attack involves exploding a nuclear warhead some 30-400 miles above the United States, for instance, and unleashing a downward electronic pulse that can destroy the (currently unprotected) infrastructure. That would include such as critical electronic systems in virtually all civilian systems: food manufacturing and supply chains, automobiles, airplanes, trains, elevators, communications and the US electric grid — actually, just about everything on which a modern country relies.

Secret Report: How CIA’s Brennan Overruled Dissenting Analysts Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary By Paul Sperry

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/30/secret-report-how-cias-brennan-overruled-dissenting-analysts-who-concluded-russia-favored-hillary/

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited the report that was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016.

Former CIA Director John Brennan personally edited a crucial section of the intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and assigned a political ally to take a lead role in writing it after career analysts disputed Brennan’s take that Russian leader Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump clinch the White House, according to two senior U.S. intelligence officials who have seen classified materials detailing Brennan’s role in drafting the document.

The explosive conclusion Brennan inserted into the report was used to help justify continuing the Trump-Russia “collusion” investigation, which had been launched by the FBI in 2016. It was picked up after the election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in the end found no proof that Trump or his campaign conspired with Moscow.

The Obama administration publicly released a declassified version of the report — known as the “Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent Elections (ICA)” — just two weeks before Trump took office, casting a cloud of suspicion over his presidency. Democrats and national media have cited the report to suggest Russia influenced the 2016 outcome and warn that Putin is likely meddling again to reelect Trump.

‘Shut up,’ ‘clown,’ ‘fool,’ ‘liar’ — the vile debate spewings of Joe Biden By Monica Showalter

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

Joe Biden was in some kind of foul, putrid mode at the debate last night.Many people have cited memorable lines from the contentious political slugfest, but the lines that stand out are the grotesquely disrespectful ad hominem insults Biden directed at the president of the United States.

The Rev.com transcript shows tons of them:”He’s a fool on this.””Everybody knows he’s a liar.””Will you shut up, man?””Keep yapping, man.””He’s the racist.””He’s Putin’s puppy.””He never keeps his word.”

“Well, it’s hard to get any word in with this clown.””You’re the worst president America has ever had.”

What kind of argument for ‘civility’ and ‘decency’ and ‘dignity,’ — all words Biden uses ad nauseam, is that? Some kind of bottom has dropped out. Some of these insults were so disgusting they actually made viewers feel sorry for President Trump, which is frankly a feat.

Stripping Jews of their Self-Defense is What the U Illinois at Champagne-Urbana Divestment Vote is About The dark side of the BDS intersectionality agenda. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/stripping-jews-their-self-defense-what-u-illinois-richard-l-cravatts/

Led by the virulent anti-Israel, often anti-Semitic group Students for Justice in Palestine, the student government at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently passed a resolution calling on the university to oppose anti-black racism and also to divest from Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Company, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar Inc. and Elbit Systems Ltd., firms, the activists allege, that are “involved in human-rights violations and violations of international law, including the confiscation and destruction of Palestinian lands, criminalization of immigrants and communities of color, and other human rights violations,” offenses that would “make UIUC complicit in these crimes.”

Although this was the third time in four years the toxic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has appeared on this campus, this permutation included, predictably, language on anti-black racism and police brutality. In fact, the anti-Israel portion of the resolution was furtively obscured by the language of racial equity, defunding law enforcement, and emptying prisons—even the absurd idea to defund the University’s own police department.

Conflating the alleged oppression of the Palestinians by the IDF with the oppression and racist treatment blacks in the United States purportedly experience at the hands of police officers, the resolution garnered support from those currently energized by the Black Lives Matter movement as well as those anti-Israel campus activists who promiscuously malign, slander, and libel the Jewish state.

The Top Ten America-Hating Professors “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo and cop-hater Joshua Clover made the list. Sara Dogan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/top-ten-america-hating-professors-sara-dogan/

#1: Nicholas De Genova, University of Houston

#2: Joshua Clover, University of California-Davis

#3. Seif Da’na, University of Wisconsin-Parkside

#4: Angela Davis, University of California-Santa Cruz

#5: Robin DiAngelo, University of Washington-Seattle

#6. Ibram X. Kendi, Boston University

#7: Christine Fair, Georgetown University

#8: Cornel West, Princeton University

#9. James M. Thomas, University of Mississippi

#10. Russell Rickford, Cornell University

The ivory tower has long been a refuge for those who hate our country. For decades past, students have been forced to endure scholarly lectures on the evils of American hegemony, imperialist dominance, Western civilization and festering racism. But never before in our history has the very concept of our nation—founded on our inalienable rights to life, liberty and property, equality before the law, freedom of speech, press and association, and control of individual destiny—been so trampled by the institutions that exist to educate our next generation.

Two October Surprises The Democrats Can’t Do Anything About

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/01/two-october-surprises-the-democrats-cant-do-anything-about/

Joe Biden wants the public to think the country is falling apart under President Donald Trump. COVID-19 is running rampant. The economy is in shambles. It’s all Trump’s fault.

“They’ve done nothing to help small businesses. Nothing. They’re closing,” Joe Biden said in the presidential debate on Tuesday. “He ought to get on the job and take care of the needs of the American people,” he said, referring to Trump.

But Biden will have to confront two major economic reports that both will provide very good news about the economic recovery from the pandemic shutdowns, which has been growing faster than economists had projected.

Both will come as surprises to a public that has been fed a steady diet of Democratic doom-and-gloom talking points.

On Friday, the Labor Department will release its September jobs report. The consensus among economists is that the economy created 850,000 jobs and that unemployment will drop to 8.2% from August’s 8.4%.

If that forecast holds up, it will mean the economy has created 11.5 million jobs in just five months – regaining more than half of the jobs lost during the shutdown.

Given that the jobs numbers have consistently come in better than economist projects, it won’t be surprising if unemployment falls below 8.2%.

Let’s compare. During the last recession, the economy shed had 8.7 million jobs when the job market bottomed out in February 2010 (even though the recession ended in June 2009).

Joe Biden’s ObamaCare Tax Avoidance In 2019 he and his wife legally dodged payroll levies on $228,703 in income. By Chris Jacobs

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-obamacare-tax-avoidance-11601488381?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Joe Biden slammed President Trump at Tuesday’s debate for both his tax policies and his personal tax management: “The tax code that put him in a position that he pays less tax than on the money a schoolteacher makes,” Mr. Biden said, “is because of him.” The reference was to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Mr. Trump signed in 2017.

The challenger also vigorously defended the Affordable Care Act, promising to “expand ObamaCare” and faulting Mr. Trump for supporting a legal challenge to it. “ObamaCare is personal to me,” Mr. Biden declares in a campaign ad.

Yet Mr. Biden has taken advantage of the tax code to avoid paying the taxes that fund ObamaCare. I reported in August that in 2017 and 2018 Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, characterized large amounts of book and speaking income as corporate profits rather than taxable wages, allowing them to circumvent Medicare and ObamaCare payroll taxes, of 2.9% and 0.9% respectively, on that income. The Bidens released their 2019 tax return before the debate, and again they use this dodge.