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Ruth King

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

Trump Was Right, The Woke Mob Is Coming For The Washington Monument

By on September 4th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/04/trump-was-right-the-mob-is-coming-for-the-washington-monument/

Remember a few years ago, when the left scoffed at President Donald Trump for suggesting that mobs tearing down Confederate statues wouldn’t stop there?

“This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is George Washington next week, and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You really do have to ask yourself: ‘Where does it stop?’”

NPR even did a “fact check” to prove Trump was nuts for saying that. Others blasted the president for comparing the nation’s founders to slave-loving traitors, suggesting that it was another example of Trump’s racism.

Well, a working group appointed by Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser released a report this week that called for removing or relocating (or “contextualizing”) the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial because Washington and Jefferson have been deemed “persons of concern.”

The DC FACES report says the two founders fall into a broader group of historical figures who’ve now been found guilty of “participation in slavery, systemic racism, mistreatment of, or actions that suppressed equality for, persons of color, women and LGBTQ communities.”

The report also calls for toppling statues and scrubbing the names of Ben Franklin, George Mason, Andrew Jackson, Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Scott Key, and many others from D.C. buildings and parks. (The complete list of undesirables is below.)

In their place, the report says, should be names that “include more women, people of color and LGBTQ Washingtonians.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Small Crowds, Little Enthusiasm for Joe Biden During ‘Desperation Trip’ to Kenosha By Debra Heine

By on September 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/03/small-crowds-little-enthusiasm-for-joe-biden-during-desperation-trip-to-kenosha/

There was no crowd of supporters to greet Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the airport when he arrived in the battleground state of Wisconsin, Thursday, and as of 1:00 p.m., no crowd (other than his MSM supporters) had formed on the streets or in front of the Kenosha church where he was expected at 2:00 p.m. to hold a community event.

The former vice president and his wife Jill Biden arrived at a Milwaukee airport about 11:40 a.m. to little fanfare. The Bidens met privately with relatives of Jacob Blake, the accused rapist who was shot in the back by Kenosha police while he was resisting arrest. The shooting occurred on August 23, as police were attempting to arrest him for violating a restraining order stemming from the alleged sexual assault. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We Have Had Enough Lockdown Julie Kelly

By on September 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/03/we-have-had-enough-lockdown/

Take off the masks and remove the “social distancing” circles from the floors. Open the schools, liberate college campuses, fill the restaurants and the gyms and the churches and the salons. Enough.

If 2020 wasn’t twisted enough, the current political imbroglio centers around a verboten visit to a California boutique for a routine blow-out. Americans are lining up either behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who claims she was “set up” to visit the San Francisco salon, or the salon’s owner, a woman struggling to keep her business alive amid cruel and unscientific edicts issued by her governor months ago.

The incident is the latest in a series of “rules for thee but not for me” gut punches from the ruling class; whether it’s mask-free trips to the park or crowded funerals for anointed heroes or casual meals munched indoors, the government-ordered shutdowns apply to everyone except the sadists running government who order said shutdowns.

But here’s the rub: No one should be talking about Pelosi’s coif controversy because it should not even be a story. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Erica Kious should never have been forced to close her business, fire her stylists, and sneak in customers like some 1940s underground operation hiding from the nation’s modern-day face covering and social distancing Gestapo. Pelosi should be able to get her hair done whenever and wherever she pleases without concocting a preposterous excuse that she was framed for fluffy follicles.

Almost a half a year ago, Americans were asked to suspend their personal freedoms, business pursuits, and schooling for 15 days to “flatten the curve” of rising cases of the novel coronavirus. Americans, fearful of the unknown and willing to do what they imagined was the right thing to protect themselves and their family, acquiesced.

That was 172 days ago. What has happened since will be studied and debated for decades with one likely conclusion: Global lockdowns, particularly in the United States, were one of the costliest man-made disasters of all time. The decision was rooted in unscientific hocus pocus that resulted in economic, educational, mental, physical, and emotional catastrophes on a scale that can never be fully quantified—not to mention the way stay-at-home orders fueled racial and civil unrest across America months before a national election.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

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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