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Ruth King

ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Lake Erie and the ‘Science of Climate Change’ President Trump was right: “I don’t think the science knows.” Jack Cashill

By on October 9th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/lake-erie-and-science-climate-change-frontpagemagcom/

Among the more insidious questions “moderator” Chris Wallace asked President Trump during the first debate was the one that dealt with climate change.

As he did on several occasions, Wallace set Trump up to deny what the people in America’s newsrooms just knew to be true, and he did so with a heart-wrenching build-up. “The forest fires in the West are raging now,” said Wallace. “They have burned millions of acres. They have displaced hundreds of thousands of people. When state officials there blamed the fires on climate change, Mr. President, you said, ‘I don’t think the science knows.’”

Given that the debate was in Cleveland, Wallace might have asked a more locally relevant question: “Up and down Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes, sea walls are crumbling and homes are collapsing into the lakes. For at least a dozen years, Mr. President, climate scientists predicted continually lower lake water levels, and now they are at record highs.”

Here is how Wallace actually concluded his question: “What do you believe about the science of climate change, and what will you do in the next four years to confront it?” If those of us with lakefront property were able to answer, we might have said: “From our perspective, the science of climate change seems no more  ‘settled’ than that of embryonic stem cell research or eugenics. We’ve been confronting its miscalculations for years.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Turning the Tables on Democrats’ Russia Hoax Director of National Intelligence declassifies startling info about Obama, Hillary and Brennan. Lloyd Billingsley

By on October 9th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/turns-tables-democrats-russia-hoax-lloyd-billingsley/

Gina Haspel joined the CIA in 1985 and rose through the ranks to deputy director. In 2018, President Trump picked Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo as CIA director. In a hearing, Sen. Angus King asked Haspel if she agreed with a 2016 intelligence report finding that the Russians interfered in the presidential campaign. 

“Senator, I do,” Haspel said. The CIA veteran did not elaborate, but a month before the 2020 election the manner of the interference has at last been revealed in declassifications from director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe.

In July of 2016, U.S. intelligence had learned, a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton proposed that she smear candidate Donald Trump by claiming interference by Russian security services. The notes of CIA boss John Brennan show that he briefed President Obama on the information.

The declassifications also show that in September of 2016, U.S. intelligence learned that Hillary Clinton approve “a plan concerning U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections.” Intelligence officials referred that information to FBI director James Comey and FBI deputy assistant director of counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

The FBI pair ignored Hillary Clinton’s violations of intelligence laws and instead launched operation Midyear Exam against candidate Trump and Crossfire Hurricane against President Trump. During both operations, the Democrat-media axis demanded that legislators listen to the intelligence community. In 2020, that has all changed. 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Former Catholic Dances With the Torah For Jews, the people of the book, sacred text is more than law; it is our friend.By Meir Soloveichik

By on October 9th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-former-catholic-dances-with-the-torah-11602198181?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

“The night of Simchat Torah is usually one of the most raucous of the Jewish year. Jubilant songs are sung, and dancing suffuses the sanctuary as the Torah scroll is passed from Jew to Jew.”

Stephen Dubner, a co-author of “Freakonomics,” is the son of Jewish parents who converted to Catholicism and raised him in their newfound faith. Mr. Dubner’s 1998 memoir, “Turbulent Souls,” recounts his later return to Judaism. His turning point came when his then-girlfriend suggested that he visit a synagogue. Mr. Dubner did so reluctantly, and on arriving instantly regretted the decision, surprised by “how little it felt like Church,” and feeling “like an intruder, perhaps an imposter.”

Then the Torah came out of the ark. Suddenly, Mr. Dubner writes, “The air itself seemed to grow lighter, easier to breathe.” As all in attendance hurried over to kiss the scroll bearing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, he did likewise. “A resonance, a gratefulness, a relief, blistered its way inside me: It is the book they are venerating here.” Mr. Dubner today has a Jewish family. His son, Solomon, is named for Mr. Dubner’s father, who went by Paul. His rediscovery of his roots began with a synagogue experience: “The way a Jew greeted the Torah, as though it contained everything he would ever need, everything that had ever been known or could ever be known.”

The Torah scroll is the most sacred object of Jewish life and the centerpiece of its Sabbath service. Every week it is escorted from the dark. A portion is read aloud in the synagogue, and the scroll is reverently returned to its place. On the next Sabbath, we pick up the text where we left off; and this weekend, on a holiday known as Simchat Torah, or “The Joy of the Torah,” we achieve the annual completion of the scroll.

What Jews celebrate on this day is not only that the Torah is completed, but that we can begin it again. While Christians often call their reading of scripture “Bible study,” Jewish parlance refers to “learning Torah.” It’s not a review, but a constant search for new insights. “One cannot compare,” the Talmudic rabbis reflected, “one who has learned one-hundred times to one who has done so for the one-hundred and first.” The biblical books contain everything we could ever know.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The End of the Age of Insurgency A wave of insurgent Islamism arrived in the West 20 years ago—and disappeared just as quickly. By Jonathan Spyer

By on October 9th, 2020

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/02/the-end-of-the-age-of-insurgency/

This week marks 20 years since the outbreak of the Second Intifada. The years that followed witnessed bus and café bombings perpetrated by organizations wrapped in the banners of insurgent political Islam, most importantly Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Their tactics—including suicide bombings and the deliberate targeting of civilians—were borrowed from an earlier generation of Islamists, the Shiite jihadis of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.

The history of the past 20 years marks the rise of the revolutionary political idea of insurgent political Islam—but also its sudden decline. For a distinct period, bottom-up Islamism was the most vital political ideology in the Middle East, capturing the energy that was once invested in pan-Arab nationalism in an earlier era. Islamism’s ongoing eclipse is no less stark than the similar decline of its predecessor ideology.

The Second Intifada was the first eruption of political Islam in its insurgent form against a Western democracy (Sunni Islamism had already risen against and been defeated by the Syrian and Algerian regimes in the 1980s and ‘90s, respectively.) It felt unfamiliar at first, but would quickly become a harbinger. One year later, as Israel was still in the middle of its assault of suicide bombings, al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers in New York. That attack—together with subsequent ones in Madrid, London, and Paris—ushered in a global focus on the issue of insurgent political Islam.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

A New York Times Columnist Wish-Casts Foreign Intervention into U.S. Elections By David Harsanyi

By on October 8th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/new-york-times-columnist-wish-casts-foreign-intervention-in-u-s-elections/

Among the countries he’d invite to interfere in our elections: Pakistan, Somalia, and Venezuela.

Peter Beinart, the newly minted contributing New York Times columnist, recently argued in an op-ed at the paper that Israel should be dissolved, its inhabitants thrown to the mercy of terror organizations such as Hamas and the PLO. Apparently, he has something comparable in mind for the United States.

Calling on the past examples of racist authoritarian Woodrow Wilson, the unapologetic Communist Paul Robeson, Malcom X, Black Panthers, and others, Beinart contends that Democrats might have to summon the U.N. Human Rights Council, a world body teeming with dictators and theocrats, to intervene in what he imagines is America’s “chronic racist disenfranchisement.” Alas, this is the kind of feverish wish-casting that passes for intellectual discourse these days.Here is a sampling of nations Beinart believes should be tasked with overseeing the impartiality of American elections (in no particular order of nefariousness): Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eritrea, Somalia, Bangladesh, Philippines, Angola, the Congo, Ukraine, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Qatar, and Pakistan.

Russia and China, incidentally, will be added as new members of the U.N. Human Rights Council for the next term, just in time to arbitrate the American election. Or, in other words, Beinart argues that we have a moral obligation to ask the Russians to interfere in the American election — and not through some puerile Facebook ads but as empowered observers here at the bequest of the Democratic Party’s leadership.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

California’s Illogical Reparations Bill By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 8th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/californias-illogical-reparations-bill/

Newsom and lawmakers virtue-signal while failing utterly to address the state’s current crises.

California’s state legislature just passed, and Governor Gavin Newsom signed, Assembly Bill 3121 to explore providing reparations to California’s African-American population — 155 years after the abolition of slavery.

Apparently, when California’s one-party government cannot find solutions to current existential crises, it turns to divisive issues that have little to do with the safety and well-being of its 40 million citizens.California has the highest gas taxes in the nation, even as its ossified state highways remain clogged and dangerous. Why, then, does Sacramento kept pouring billions of dollars into the now-calcified high-speed-rail project?

When fires raged, killed dozens, polluted the air for months, consumed thousands of structures, and scorched 4 million acres of forest, the governor reacted by thundering about global warming. But Newsom was mostly mute about state and federal green policies that discouraged the removal of millions of dead and drought-stricken trees, which provided the kindling for the infernos.

When gasoline, sales, and income taxes rose, and yet state schools became even worse, infrastructure remained decrepit, and deficits grew, California demanded that federal COVID-19 money bail out its own financial mismanagement.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Declassifies Information on Russia Investigations, but It May Be Too Late By Fred Fleitz

By on October 8th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/trump-declassifies-information-on-russia-investigations-but-it-may-be-too-late/

The American people needed to know the truth about efforts by the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration to sabotage the president’s campaign sooner.

President Trump made a stunning announcement this week when he ordered the declassification of all documents related to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Trump’s decision was heavily influenced by a recent letter from Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing that Russian intelligence believed in July 2016 that Clinton had personally authorized a scheme to smear the Republican nominee for colluding with Russia to distract from the scandal that had arisen over her private email server. Ratcliffe reported that this knowledge came from then-CIA director John Brennan’s notes, and that although it may have been Russian disinformation, it was taken seriously enough at the time that President Obama was briefed on it and it was referred to the FBI for an investigation.

In light of the Ratcliffe letter, Trump said “Enough!” He is fed up with years of delays and in getting the truth out on the Russia collusion hoax. The letter, which included crucial details on the hoax that have been kept from the American people since 2017, was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Specifically, the president’s decision is a rebuke of former DNI Dan Coats and current CIA director Gina Haspel. Coats turned a blind eye toward the hoax and at times even seemed to promote it. He also, like Haspel, repeatedly blocked the release of information to Congress related to it. A House Intelligence Committee source has told me that Haspel is currently blocking the release and declassification of a House Intelligence Committee report that found Brennan personally blocked the inclusion of intelligence from a January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment which stated that Russia wanted Clinton to win the 2016 presidential election.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Not treason, not a crime — but definitely a gross abuse of power By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 8th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/520153-not-treason-not-a-crime-but-definit

President Trump did himself no favors with Wednesday’s ALL-CAPS tweet about how the latest disclosures from Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe implicate President Obama, Vice President Biden and Hillary Clinton in a “TREASONOUS PLOT.” 

Ratcliffe has declassified and released handwritten notes by former CIA director John Brennan (undated, but probably from late July 2016) and a memo from the CIA to the FBI (dated Sept. 7, 2016). These documents corroborate Ratcliffe’s revelation, in a Sept. 29 letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, to wit: In late July 2016, Russian intelligence assessed that Mrs. Clinton approved her campaign advisers’ proposal to blame Moscow’s hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails on a conspiracy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Put aside Ratcliffe’s acknowledgement that, although U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian intelligence assessment is authentic, they cannot say with confidence that it is true. There is, after all, abundant evidence that the Clinton campaign blamed Trump for the Russian hacking of DNC emails that were published on the eve of the 2016 Democratic national convention. The Clinton campaign would not have done that unless the candidate authorized it.

That said, what is the crime?

Don’t get me wrong. I have argued for years that the real “collusion” in the 2016 presidential campaign was not between Trump and Russia — it was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration, which put its intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus in the service, first, of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and, ultimately, of the Democratic Party’s resistance to Trump’s presidency. This arrangement centered on a false political narrative that Trump and his campaign were complicit in Russia’s suspected hacking of Democrats’ emails.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The UN’s Human Rights Council Grows More Odious Lawrence J. Haas

By on October 8th, 2020

https://www.newsweek.com/uns-human-rights-council-grows-more-odious-opinion-1537222

With freedom and democracy in retreat now for more than a decade around the world, the United Nations General Assembly is poised to take a step in coming days that, if anything, will make the problem worse.

In a vote scheduled for Tuesday, the General Assembly is expected to fill 15 openings on the UN’s 47-member Human Rights Council by approving new three-year terms for such leading human rights abusers as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Cuba—most of which will be returning members. Joining them will be such problematic countries as Bolivia, Cote d’Ivoire, Nepal, Malawi and Senegal. Rounding out the new 15 will be the only two countries that, while surely not perfect, unhesitatingly deserve membership—Britain and France.

“Electing these dictatorships as UN judges on human rights,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, “is like making a gang of arsonists into the fire brigade.”

To be clear, the new autocratic members will not be tarnishing an otherwise-effective, well-functioning body. Instead, they will be joining what is already an institution that does little to improve human rights around the world, choosing instead to focus overwhelming attention on Israel. Consequently, most of the new members will likely just take a bad situation and make it worse.

Created in 2006, the Human Rights Council has merely picked up where its justifiably maligned predecessor, the Human Rights Commission, left off. It has made Israel its only permanent agenda item, meaning that it discusses the Jewish state at each of its three meetings a year. It has focused its investigations and resolutions overwhelmingly on Israel while ignoring far more egregious problems elsewhere. And it has created a “blacklist” of companies that do business with companies in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

7 Quick Takeaways On The 2020 Vice Presidential Debate Mollie Hemingway

By on October 8th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/08/7-quick-takeaways-on-the-2020-vice-presidential-debate/
The vice presidential debate between Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Vice President Mike Pence was more traditional and less raucous than last week’s debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. That debate was a three-way interruption fest marked by Biden losing track of his thoughts and Trump clumsily returning to slights that had occurred 25 minutes earlier.

This debate was less exciting, a reminder of what politics was like before Trump came onto the scene. Still, it had its moments that bolstered each campaign’s strongest arguments. For Pence, that meant a frequent recursion to first principles and first-term successes. For Harris, that meant a focus on coronavirus and negative descriptions of the Republican Party and its president.

Here are a few quick takeaways on how it went down.

1. Pence’s Superpower Is Debating

Mike Pence, a former congressman and talk radio host, started off strong and just kept getting stronger. He clearly came prepared for the debate. He had a ready recall of facts and figures to bolster his points. He nailed the questions he wanted to answer and deflected on the questions he preferred not to answer.

While he let several zingers fly, he stayed calm and steady, pushing back at what he perceived as unduly false statements but without the constant interruptions of the Trump-Biden debate. He spoke slowly and left few cards on the table unplayed. He was nice, firm, decent, and likable.

Pence’s weakest points were when he was on defense about the global pandemic gripping the country. However, he came into the debate prepared to lay out how a Trump-Pence vision for America is better than the one put forth by Biden and Harris and he accomplished that consistently throughout the debate.

He made a strong case for Trump’s foreign policy being effective and Biden’s being decades of failure. He had Kamala Harris on the ropes about whether she and Biden would raise taxes on Americans on their first day in office. He effectively showed the country her refusal to openly support court-packing, a position she previously supported.

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