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Ruth King

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Far Left Groups Aiming to Elect Another Anti-Israel House Democrat Targeting pro-Israel House Foreign Relations Committee Chair. Joseph Klein

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/far-left-groups-aiming-elect-another-anti-israel-joseph-klein/

Jamaal Bowman is one of these stage-managed candidates who would push the House Democratic caucus even further to the left and add to the hate-Israel bloc. He must be stopped.

The far-left organization Justice Democrats is continuing its campaign to purge certain left of center, pro-Israel Democrats from Congress. In 2018, Justice Democrats endorsed Democratic-Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – all radicals who support the anti-Semitic Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS). One of Justice Democrats’ current targets is long-time Israel-supporter Rep. Eliot Engel, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Justice Democrats has endorsed Jamaal Bowman (pictured above), a middle school principal at the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action in the Bronx, who is mounting a primary challenge against Rep. Engel. There are other primary challengers seeking to unseat Engel, but Bowman is Justice Democrats’ choice.

Rep. Engel is normally a reliable Democrat vote against President Trump’s domestic and foreign policy agendas. He has supported progressive initiatives including the New Green Deal and received top grades for his voting record from a host of leftwing organizations. But that is not good enough for even more extreme leftist groups such as Justice Democrats. Engel is nowhere near as radical as his primary challenger Bowman who, for example, tweeted on April 16, 2020 that “There is systemic oppression and terror and racism that lives in every American institution.” The following day, Bowman tweeted, “I support a $1 trillion investment over 10 years to rebuild public housing into green social housing with net zero carbon emissions.” Bowman called “white male domestic terrorism” the “biggest issue in our country.” He also claimed that “99.9 percent of our immigrant neighbors that come here, come here in peace and come here looking for asylum.” Bowman, whose own school registered well below the New York City-wide average in its students’ scores on the state’s math and reading exams, has attacked public school standardized testing as “a form of modern-day slavery.”

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Tampa Terror Convict’s Coronavirus Makeover News stations shill for Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Hatem Fariz and PIJ mosque. Joe Kaufman

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/tampa-terror-convicts-coronavirus-makeover-joe-kaufman-0/

This month, Tampa, Florida’s local news affiliates headed over to the al-Qassam Mosque, a.k.a. Islamic Community of Tampa (ICT), to get footage of the mosque and its director, Hatem Fariz, distributing food, in what ICT and these networks are claiming is an effort to help the neighborhood during the coronavirus crisis. Yet what these news outlets are ignoring, in the process, is the extensive terrorist history of ICT and Fariz. Any perceived goodwill coming from the two is nothing more than a cynical effort to whitewash their radical past and distract from their extremist present by exploiting the crisis for a ‘feel good’ photo op.

Fox, ABC and CBS were all on hand to take film footage of ICT’s community food distribution project, as titled by the mosque, ‘ICT Relief Program For All.’ The results were news puff pieces making ICT and its director appear as saints. Fox 13’s reporter Mark Wilson began his segment with the following: “We continue to see people all across the Tampa Bay area, who are really stepping up, to see people struggling and help them… We certainly found that today at the Tampa Bay Islamic Center. Fox anchor Kelly Ring ended the segment with, “What a blessing!”

ICT or al-Qassam was the brainchild of then-University of South Florida (USF) professor Sami al-Arian. The mosque was named after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the man who was the inspiration for the founding of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Al-Arian, a co-founder of PIJ, had succeeded in creating a PIJ network throughout the Tampa-area. In April 2006, al-Arian pled guilty to conspiring to provide services to PIJ and later was deported from the US. He now makes his home in Turkey, where he is a professor at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University and the head of the school’s Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA).

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Progressive Governors Indulge Their Inner Despot What really lurks behind their façade of concern for the “people” and the “oppressed.” Bruce Thornton

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/progressive-governors-indulge-their-inner-despot-bruce-thornton/

Poet Sylvia Plath’s slur against women, that they “adore a fascist, the boot in the face, the brute,” is more true about progressives, with one big difference: they want to be the ones wear the boot. Behind their façade of therapeutic concern for the “people” and the “oppressed” lies something that Vladimir Lenin was honest enough to express in 1906: the lust for “power, which is totally unlimited by any laws, totally unrestrained by absolutely any rules, and based directly on force.”

Thankfully, those impulses so far have been checked by our Constitutional order, which was created to inhibit the concentration and excesses of power that threatens citizen freedom. But as we have seen over the last century, at times of crisis the technocratic progressives have chipped away at those Constitutional guardrails and serially encroached on our freedoms. The current virus crisis is the latest opportunity for the Dems to indulge their inner despots.

We’ve all seen the catalogue of overweening unilateral diktats enforced by police power coming down from Democrat governors. Under the guise of enforcing social distancing in order to slow the spread of the disease, governors have quickly violated the Bill of Rights: closing gun stores at the same time they release felons from prison; shutting down church services while leaving liquor stores open; criminalizing the right to peaceful assembly; arbitrarily deeming some economic activities as “essential,” like abortion clinics and pot dispensaries, while proscribing others like buying paint or vegetable seeds. Even our freedom of movement that doesn’t endanger others, such as surfing alone or playing with our children in a deserted park, has been interdicted by overzealous police.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UN shocked, shocked that Iran would execute a 17-year-old By Ethel C. Fenig

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/un_shocked_shocked_that_iran_would_execute_a_17yearold.html

Taking a break from blaming Little Satan (Israel) and Big Satan (USA) from all the world’s problems, now the Wuhan, China coronavirus pandemic, the U.N. did something shocking.  Yes, just when you thought you couldn’t be shocked by the U.N.’s incompetent, bizarre behavior, the U.N. fools you and shocks once again.  What did it do that was so shocking?  The U.N. was shocked, shocked, shocked to learn:

UN experts ‘shocked’ as Iran executes young offender

GENEVA, Switzerland — United Nations rights experts accused Iran of violating international law on Tuesday for executing a prisoner who was just 17 years old when he committed a crime.

Shayan Saeedpour, alleged to have committed murder in August 2015, was hanged on Tuesday, United Nations special rapporteurs Javaid Rehman and Agnes Callamard in a statement. (snip)

“We are shocked that the Iranian authorities have once again defied their international obligations by executing a child offender,” the UN experts said.

“We have repeatedly reminded the Iranian government and judiciary that international human rights law is clear: the application of the death penalty to child offenders is strictly prohibited and its practice is an egregious violation of the right to life.”

What?  The U.N. is shocked to learn that Iran has “once again defied [its] international obligations” and expects the Iranians to obey “international human rights law”?

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Coronavirus and the Laboratories in Wuhan Their researchers travel to caves across China, where they capture live bats to study viruses. Senator Tom Cotton

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-the-laboratories-in-wuhan-11587486996?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

The U.S. government is investigating whether the Covid-19 virus came from a government laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Chinese Communist Party denies the possibility. “There is no way this virus came from us,” claimed Yuan Zhiming over the weekend. Mr. Yuan is a top researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which studies some of the world’s deadliest pathogens. He is also secretary of the lab’s Communist Party committee. He accuses me of “deliberately trying to mislead people” for suggesting his laboratory as a possible origin for the pandemic.

Beijing has claimed that the virus originated in a Wuhan “wet market,” where wild animals were sold. But evidence to counter this theory emerged in January. Chinese researchers reported in the Lancet Jan. 24 that the first known cases had no contact with the market, and Chinese state media acknowledged the finding. There’s no evidence the market sold bats or pangolins, the animals from which the virus is thought to have jumped to humans. And the bat species that carries it isn’t found within 100 miles of Wuhan.

Wuhan has two labs where we know bats and humans interacted. One is the Institute of Virology, eight miles from the wet market; the other is the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, barely 300 yards from the market.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mayor De Blasio Says He Needs Ventilators, While Governor Cuomo Is Giving Them Away to Other States By Matt Margolis

By on April 22nd, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/mayor-de-blasio-says-he-needs-ventilators-while-governor-cuomo-is-giving-them-away-to-other-states/

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is looking to have ventilators built right in New York City in order to build up a reserve and protect the city during future pandemics. “We’ve learned the hard way that we cannot depend on the federal government,” claimed de Blasio said during his daily press briefing. “We’ll purchase what we need and create a stockpile. We New Yorkers will take care of ourselves.”

It was a bizarre announcement, considering that, according to President Trump, the United States is already on track to build as many as 200,000 ventilators in 2020, which is significantly higher than the 30,000 that were built in 2019. So, why is Mayor de Blasio blaming the federal government and claiming he can’t depend on them?

Not only did New York not need the 40,000 ventilators Cuomo requested from Trump, but the amount they had was more than they ultimately needed. Yet, Bill de Blasio, who’s trying to cover up for his own failures to contain the spread of the virus in New York City, is trying to blame the federal government (read: President Trump) for failing to provide enough ventilators and other equipment.

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We made a terrible mistake By Carol Brown

By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/we_made_a_terrible_mistake.html?utm_source=vuukle&utm_medium=newsfeed

We’re told that social distancing is working because we’re flattening the curve.  How do we know that those two things are related?  There isn’t that all-important-for-good-science control group.  For all we know, the result would have been similar if we hadn’t put such draconian measures in place.

In addition, for all our medical experts’ talk of their high standards, they ignored those standards when they embraced the Imperial College model that, according to world-renowned epidemiologist Johan Giesecke, was an internal document that was unpublished and had not been peer-reviewed.  Giesecke had never seen a document of this type garner so much attention as to shape major public policy decisions.

He also described the strict lockdown measures embraced by many countries as non-evidence-based.  (What?!  You mean our experts who uphold the highest of double-blind standards have been shooting in the dark?!)

And speaking of lockdowns, according to some reports, the U.K. hit its peak before it put strict social distancing measures in place (here, here, here at the 6:40 mark).

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bill de Blasio Says Trump ‘Should Kiss His Re-Election Goodbye’ Because of His Coronavirus Response Julio Rosas

By on April 21st, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/juliorosas/2020/04/21/bill-de-blasio-says-trump-should-kiss-his-reelection-goodbye-because-of-his-coronavirus-response-n2567320

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) complained to CNN’s Alysin Camerota on Tuesday about President Trump’s handling of the Wuhan coronavirus and said his poor performance will cost him reelection in November.

“So, I’ve asked President Trump repeatedly not just to help New York City and New York State, but to help all cities and states get back on our feet. We have lost now over $7 billion in revenue. That’s our projection of how much is already gone because of this crisis. That is the money we use to pay police, to pay firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, health care workers. That money ain’t coming back. The only place it can come from is the federal government,” de Blasio explained. “They gave $58 billion to the airline industry to bail them out. How about bailing out America’s cities, America’s states?”

De Blasio said he told Trump that while he understands the need to reopen the country again to kickstart the economy, New York City is going to need massive amounts of help from the federal government to do so.

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The CDC Testing Disaster By David Harsanyi

By on April 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-cdc-is-a-disaster/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The CDC — once the “Communicable Disease Center” before being renamed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — was created to prevent malaria and other dangerous communicable diseases from spreading across the nation. It was not created, you might be surprised to learn, to pester Americans about their salt intake or vaping habits.

The CDC has spent more than a decade spearheading nannyistic efforts to control sodium use, to ban trans fats, and to mislead the public on the dangers of e-cigarettes. Now, it would be one thing if the CDC effectively managed its most vital charge: mitigating the spread of dangerous diseases. But that rarely seems to be the case. Often, it can’t even abide by primum non nocere.

The New York Times reports today that the CDC failed to follow its own protocols when creating coronavirus tests, sending kits out across the country that had been rendered ineffective because they were tainted with the COVID-19 due to sloppiness:

Problems ranged from researchers entering and exiting the coronavirus laboratories without changing their coats, to test ingredients being assembled in the same room where researchers were working on positive coronavirus samples, officials said. Those practices made the tests sent to public health labs unusable because they were contaminated with the coronavirus, and produced some inconclusive results.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

MISUNDERESTIMATING CHINA: DAVID GOLDMAN

By on April 21st, 2020

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/misunderestimating-china/

Toward the end of his new book, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, Matthew Kroenig offers sensible if tentative advice for responding to China’s ambitions for technological leadership:

U.S. government investments in basic science and R&D have been critical in past technological breakthroughs, including nuclear power and the Internet. . . and the United States could do more to invest in the technologies of the future. Democracies are often slow to build consensus for a problem, and that helps them to avoid mistakes. But when a national consensus is achieved, they can mass resources toward a problem just as well as any autocracy. And Washington is beginning to awake to this new Sputnik moment. When it does, it will be well positioned to compete.

During the preceding 200 pages, though, Kroenig does little to elicit a sense of urgency with respect to China’s challenge. Instead, he presents a set-piece argument that autocracies in general and China in particular will inevitably fail to compete against democracies. Prof. Kroenig, who teaches at Georgetown University and directs a strategic studies program at the Atlantic Council, offers a complacent reading of China’s position today—hardly the makings of a Sputnik moment. He seems to be searching for something like the Spanish expression “mañana,” but without a connotation of urgency.

The first half of the book surveys the history of conflicts between democratic and authoritarian regimes with a disconcertingly selective choice of facts. The second half discusses China and, more briefly, Russia as today’s authoritarian challengers. The two parts of the book fit together poorly. The reader has the feeling that the author originally set out to write yet another comparison of democracy and autocracy, and later decided that a Chinese angle would elicit more interest.

Democracy and Autocracy

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