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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden: A Diminished Trojan Horse With an Army of Marxist Transformers Inside By Mark Ellis,

By on August 20th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/mark-ellis/2020/08/20/a-diminished-trojan-horse-with-an-army-of-marxist-transformers-inside-n816315

Some conservative pundits and strategists have opined that it may not be prudent for President Trump and the Republicans to make too big a deal about Joe Biden’s cognitive challenges. If pro-Trump opposition goes all in on terms like dementia, senility, or, as President Trump defines Biden’s mental condition, “not all there,” they risk setting the expectation bar so low that all Biden has to do is stay afloat during the presidential debates and at whatever politically organic (not wholly-orchestrated) campaign appearances he might make.

The case was made that if Trump and his surrogates condition voters to expect a doddering, rambling, and often incoherent candidate, Biden can beat the expectation game by simply mouthing pre-approved answers to most conceivable questions and sticking to the script.

On the eve of his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, it is generally understood on both sides of the aisle that the “Biden’s okay, he’s just being Joe” narrative is kaput.  Everybody knows that, sadly, the former VP is not quite hitting on all cylinders. What we have here is a rickety old Trojan Horse the left hopes to wheel back through the gates of governance.

What to do with that?

Biden was not even able to successfully get through wife Jill’s remarks on night two of the convention. What should have been a poignant moment for the Dem ticket served only as another reminder about Mr. Biden’s seeming inability to deliver off-the-cuff the most patent campaign fluff.

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

Sen. Hawley Questions ‘White Privilege’ Training at US Nuclear Lab By Petr Svab

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/gop-senator-questions-white-privilege-trainings-at-fed-funded-nuclear-lab_3468911.html

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is seeking an explanation as to why the United States’ leading nuclear safety laboratory spent taxpayer dollars to lecture its staff about “white privilege.”

In an Aug. 13 letter (pdf) to the Department of Energy (DOE), the largest funder of the lab, Hawley called for “a comprehensive review of its procedures and practices to ensure that taxpayers are no longer required to fund such divisive and ineffective trainings.”

Hawley was referring to a series of training sessions that Sandia National Laboratories paid for at a Santa Fe, New Mexico, resort, where Sandia’s white male executives were sent last year to learn about their “white privilege” and the supposed harmfulness of their “white male culture.”

Leaked materials from the sessions were published earlier this month by Christopher Rufo, head of the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the Discovery Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank.

“Employees must expose the ‘roots of white male culture,’ which consists of ‘rugged individualism,’ ‘a can-do attitude,’ ‘hard work,’ and ‘striving towards success’—which sound good, but are in fact ‘devastating’ to women and POCs [people of color],” he said, citing the materials in an Aug. 12 tweet.

“Taxpayers funded this? At a resort?” Hawley responded on Twitter on the day of sending his letter.

Sandia, which is responsible for the safety of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, is run by Honeywell, but is wholly government-funded. It has received more than $3.7 billion in federal dollars this year, Hawley said.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

 Our OpenTheBooks Oversight Report — Use-It-Or-Lose-It Spending Spree, How Federal Agencies Spent $91 Billion In September 2019.

By on August 20th, 2020

Our 40-page report details how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars went out the door in the last 30-days of the 2019 fiscal year.
Inside our oversight report, you’ll find:

$457 million spent on furniture (even though, today, 75-percent of the federal workforce is telecommuting and not in the office)
$456 million spent on public relations (PR), despite the 5,000 PR officers employed within government agencies
$50 million on seafood, like $40 million on catfish and mahi mahi and $4.6 million on lobster and crab
$3.7 million on games, toys, and musical instruments including pianos, flutes, and French horns

You’ll also find spending on guns and ammunition at the following agencies: Education, Veterans Affairs, and Human & Human Services. 

OpenTheBooks auditors even found $100,000 spent on desserts, like donuts ($43,000), cake mix ($36,000) and pecan pie ($10,000). 

All of the details can be found in our report here.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin Critic Alexei Navalny Hospitalized in Suspected Poisoning By Zachary Evans

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/putin-critic-alexei-navalny-hospitalized-in-suspected-poisoning/

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin, was hospitalized in critical condition after a suspected poisoning on Thursday morning.

Navalny was on a flight to the Siberian city of Tomsk when he fell ill, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was brought to intensive care. The hospital has so far refused to share medical details with Navalny’s personal physician, although doctors did say the opposition figure was on artificial ventilation.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea; it was the only thing he drank all morning,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter. “Now he is unconscious.”

Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy head doctor at the First Emergency Medical Hospital in Omsk, told journalists that he could not say whether Navalny’s life was in danger.

“Poisoning is being looked at as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his condition,” Kalinichenko said.

Navalny has vocally criticized Putin for years, and is able to reach millions of followers through his YouTube channel. In July, Navalny led a series of protests against proposed constitutional amendments that would allow Putin to remain in power until 2036.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

MOSHE DANN: UNDERSTANDING THE UAE DEAL

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/understanding-israels-deal-with-the-uae-639256

Diplomatic recognition of Israel, is a clear statement in support of Israel’s right to exist, and its right to pursue policies to protect itself, and, by extension, the entire region.
Seen through the lens of the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict, and especially the threat (to Sunni Arabs) of Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, the move by moderate Sunni Arab states to reconcile with Israel is inevitable and wise. It is motivated by fear of Iran. In this context, therefore, hatred toward Israel and support for the Palestinian cause (eliminating Israel) are relatively minor concerns. The reason for recognizing and establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel is existential, not emotional – and it has global consequences.

Former US president Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, including sending planeloads of cash to Iran, and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s promise to renew this policy of appeasement empowers Iran and directly threatens Sunni Arab states. President Donald Trump’s reelection, therefore, is essential to protect them from Iranian aggression. In addition, Russian and Chinese support for Iran is seen by Sunni Arab states as a threat to their existence.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Goodbye — Sort of — to Germany? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/american-troop-drawdown-germany/

Why should America anchor Germany’s defense? It cuts deals with Russia, has never met its NATO commitment, and is the most anti-American nation in Europe. 

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.

A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations, such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious. She claims that the redeployments will “weaken the [NATO] alliance.” German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S. bases.

Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised. Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.

Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. As NATO’s largest, wealthiest, and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of alliance.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Portland businesses fleeing downtown offices over nightly BLM riots Lee Brown

By on August 20th, 2020

https://nypost.com/2020/08/19/portland-businesses-fleeing-downtown-ov

Large companies are fleeing offices in downtown Portland — because nightly Black Lives Matter riots are making the heart of the Oregon city a no-go area, according to a report.

“Businesses are leaving,” Andrew Hoan, president and CEO of the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), told KATU.

“The financial consequences to the downtown corridor are a running calculation that is almost impossible to wrap your mind around,” he said — with one company already saying the riots have cost $20 million in damage and lost business.

“You have blocks and blocks of plywood. You have graffiti. You have an accumulation of damages that are unrepaired, an ongoing perception that coming downtown is not a safe place,” Hoan said.

“We need to start to turn the corner now, so that this sort of irreparable damage does not last,” the business leader said.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Book of the Week: ‘Reclaiming Common Sense’

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.realclearbooks.com/book_of_the_week/2020/08/19/book_of_the_week_reclaiming_common_sense_574721.html

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this RealClearBooks series, we highlight recent nonfiction books from across the political spectrum. This week’s book is Robert Curry’s ‘Reclaiming Common Sense’, published by Encounter Books.

In America today, right is wrong, men are women, 2+2=5, and the truth as we all understood it is over. What happened? In his philosophic survival guide for our postmodern age, Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World, Robert Curry describes a war on reality that spilled from the academy into all corners of American life and scrambled our rational mind in the process.

Though BLM, gender, and environmental activists often dominate our post-truth headlines, the left’s war on common sense is not merely intended to advance noisy progressive pet schemes. In fact, Curry reveals, subverting the truth as we know it is central to a far a more insidious plot to erode and eliminate the very conditions that make our Constitution work. For, as Curry writes, a war on reason is a war on the mind itself, and with it our capacities to think clearly and govern ourselves.

In a series of thoughtful vignettes, Curry urges Americans to preserve our fragile republic by restoring the common-sense realism that informed our Founders and grounded our nation as a shared project. These wise passages are essential reading for those who see and feel America drifting into a surreal state. In fact, as Reclaiming Common Sense underscores, those perceptive powers are the very thing that unite us and make our experiment in self-rule possible. Don’t let them go.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In Dark and Divisive Speech, Obama Seeks to Turn Back Clock on America Andrew Stiles

By on August 20th, 2020

https://freebeacon.com/parody/in-dark-and-divisive-speech-obama-seeks-to-turn-back-clock-on-america/

To the delight of professional journalists, former President Barack Obama gave a jaw-dropping speech at the Democratic convention on Wednesday. Its dark and divisive tone signaled an attempt to drag America backwards by electing the man who served for eight years as his vice president.

Obama’s speech was the rhetorical equivalent of a culture war Hiroshima blast. It offered some token words of praise for Joe Biden, whom he repeatedly urged not to run, but was infused with the desperate rantings of a man who needs to be praised. “He made me a better president,” Obama said, effortlessly hogging the spotlight as usual.

Obama assailed the convictions of Donald Trump supporters, suggesting they “don’t believe” in American principles. He cast the stakes of the upcoming election in stark terms, inviting Americans to fear their neighbors, described only as a nefarious “they” secretly plotting to destroy the country from within.

“They are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter,” Obama said while making threatening hand gestures at an oversized U.S. Constitution—an ominous backdrop for a speech teeming with vengeful rage. “That’s how they win.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

AD Jerusalem Post Opinion Who’s afraid of a fourth round of elections? – opinion Cries of ‘Bibi must go’ couldn’t me more ironic, with most Israels having no desire to return to the ballot box for the fourth time in under two years. By Ruthie Blum

By on August 20th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/whos-afraid-of-a-fourth-round-of-elections-opinion-639375

Israel’s High Court of Justice on Wednesday rejected a petition by residents of Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood – the location of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official Balfour Street residence – that the continuous mass protests in the area be limited or halted completely.

According to the dozens of petitioners, the demonstrations not only have been causing a severe disruption to their daily lives – with the deafening din disturbing their sleep – but pose a health risk. After all, participants at these events, many without face-coverings, or who wear their masks around their necks, gather in the thousands, making it impossible for them to adhere to coronavirus social-distancing regulations.

Justices Uzi Vogelman, Yael Wilner and Alex Stein ruled that due to the special status of the Prime Minister’s Residence, the rights of political protesters must be given priority over those of neighborhood denizens. The judges also opined that a reasonable balance between the rights of the demonstrators and residents has been achieved through the presence of police, who have been entrusted with enforcing COVID-19 mandates.

So far, however, enforcing the law at these events has been difficult, leading to clashes between police and demonstrators, with the former using water cannons as one method to disperse oversized crowds.

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