Displaying the most recent of 90432 posts written by

Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jerusalem Post Opinion Elections, Super Tuesday and US-Israel relations Ruthie Blum

By on February 28th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Elections-Super-Tuesday-and-US-Israel-relations-619111

The Israeli public could be forced to undergo a fourth round of elections, which nobody wants and many have threatened to boycott.

The day after Israelis go the polls on Monday to elect the next Knesset, the greatest number of Democratic Party primaries will be held across the United States. The proximity of Super Tuesday to the Jewish state’s third attempt in 11 months to determine the makeup of the next government in Jerusalem is coincidental. Their outcomes, however, will have been mutually influenced.

This might seem peculiar, given the two countries’ completely different electoral and political systems, and the fact that the ballots counted in the US on March 3 merely will give a good idea about which Democratic candidate is likely to win the presidential nomination and run against the Republican incumbent, US President Donald Trump, in November.The Israeli election, on the other hand, is a national one, where voters will be opting this time around for one of 29 (!) parties vying for as many of the 120 Knesset seats as they can get.

The head of the largest party – or the one that has the best chance of forming a majority coalition – will be tasked with establishing the government.

For the past 11 years that figure has been Likud head Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Next week, he is likely to be in that position as well. Barring a surprise shift, again he will be unable to garner a 61-seat majority. If this happens, the Israeli public could be forced to undergo a fourth round of elections, which nobody wants and many have threatened to boycott.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jewish Student Says She Left City University of New York Law School After Being Targeted by Antisemitic Harassment for Supporting Israel By Benjamin Kerstein

By on February 28th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/27/jewish-student-says-she-left-city-university-of-new-york-law-school-after-being-targeted-by-antisemitic-harassment-for-supporting-israel/

A Jewish former law student at City University of New York told The Algemeinerthis week about what she described as antisemitic and anti-Zionist harassment she faced due to her pro-Israel activism, which caused her to ultimately leave the school, saying that “no one helped me, no one came to my defense.”

Rafaella Gunz — a journalist focusing on LGBT and feminist issues — was studying at the CUNY School of Law when she became a target of pro-Palestinian groups, particularly Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), as a result of her criticism of their attitudes toward Jews and Israel.

Last month, she published an article in The Jewish Journal, titled “Campus Antisemitism Made Me a Zionist,” that detailed her struggle, saying that her Jewish identity had been strengthened as a consequence.

“This experience compelled me to purchase a small, rose-gold Star of David necklace. … I am no longer ashamed to let the world know I am a Jew,” she wrote.

But Gunz has now decided to leave the school as a result of what she called a campaign of harassment.

“There were reactions to my article, if you look at the comments on there, basically calling me Islamophobic, calling me racist, a liar, just all these horrible things by my classmates, telling people that are supporting me to shut the f**k up, all these types of things,” she told The Algemeiner in an interview.

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

THE LEFT’S HOAX OF PARANOIA Dr. Jack Wheeler

By on February 28th, 2020

https://www.tothepointnews.com/register/

A fundamental law of physics is the Conservation of Energy – that the total amount of energy in a system remains constant;  it’s neither increased nor decreased, but is transferred from one form to another.

Evolution seems to have hard-wired paranoia into the human brain so that something similar may be going on in systems of human societies.  Ever since we’ve been Homo sapiens, even when we were Homo erectus, for two million years if we weren’t paranoid, we were some predator’s dinner.

Getting eaten by a giant cave bear or saber-tooth tiger is an efficient way to remove the non-paranoid from the gene pool.

The genetically hard-wired need to be scared of something means if one fear goes away, we’ll quickly find a replacement.  Even if we have to make it up.

The Left is particularly good at this, since scaring people over some made up “crisis” is a very effective way of gaining control over the gullible – of which there are legion — “Global warming/Climate change/Climate crisis” being the currently classic example.

Yesterday (2/24), Rush Limbaugh exposed the “Coronavirus epidemic” as the latest outbreak of Leftist paranoia-pandering:“Overhyped Coronavirus Weaponized Against Trump.”

“It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks. The Drive-By Media hype of this thing as a pandemic, as the Andromeda strain, as, ‘Oh, my God, if you get it, you’re dead.’ I think the survival rate is 98%. Ninety-eight percent of people who get the coronavirus survive.

 

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, POLITICS Comments turned off

Minneapolis City Council Somali Candidate: “We Going To Take Over” by Tim Brown

By on February 28th, 2020

https://thewashingtonstandard.com/minneapolis-city-council-somali-candidate-we-going-to-take-over/

Minnesota is slowly being transformed and no one is putting a stop to it.  The latest example comes out of Minneapolis where another Somali candidate for the city council has declared, “We going to take over.”

They are here to impose Sharia because that is what political Islam does.

Deplorable Kel reported on Suud Olat, who is a former refugee, just like criminal Rep. Ilhan Omar, from Somalia.

She reported:

Suud Olat, a former refugee from Somalia and candidate for Minneapolis City Council Ward 6, posted on Facebook that Somali’s are “going to take over”. Olat shared a Facebook post about a Somali news platform serving Somali’s across the world, along with the caption: “Mukhtar Dahir SDN – Somali Diaspora News SDN – Somali Diaspora News all the way. We going to take over.”

Olat announced his run for office after the current Minneapolis Ward 6 Council member Abdi Warsame was appointed CEO of Minneapolis Public Housing Authority.

Continue reading →
BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Ilhan Omar?By Kyle Shideler

By on February 27th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/27/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-ilhan-omar/

Ben Weingarten’s new book ‘American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of The Democratic Party,’ makes a compelling argument that Democrats’ sharp leftward turn threatens both American ideals and national security.

There is always a temptation in politics, and indeed in all human life, to reduce people to symbolic representations. Storytelling — or, if you prefer the D.C. swamp lingo, “the narrative” — remains the evolutionarily prescribed way to relay complex information to large groups of people and ensure they retain the core message. Narratives need heroes and villains, someone who will embody within himself the key ideas being transmitted.

Understanding this is important to getting to the heart of Ben Weingarten’s American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Progressive-Islamist Takeover of The Democratic Party. While ostensibly it is a book about Ilhan Omar and her sordid history – allegations of immigration fraud, long-standing ties to anti-American regimes and terror-linked groups, her long train of antisemitic remarks – this is not Weingarten’s real focus.

Weingarten has not really written a book about Omar so much as a book about how it is that a person with Omar’s baggage became a battle standard to which all the left now repairs. They do not defend her in spite of her foibles, but because of them.

Continue reading →
MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY- BERNIE, ISRAEL AND CUBA

By on February 27th, 2020

Bernie Sanders forays into foreign policy display hatred of Israel and admiration and respect for Cuba. He spent some time in a socialist kibbutz in Israel where no doubt they sang “Hava Nagila’ a popular Jewish song.

Could it be that he heard “Havana Gila?” What else could explain his cupidity? rsk

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democrat response to the coronavirus is scarier than the virus By Andrea Widburg

By on February 27th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_democrat_response_to_the_coronavirus_is_scarier_than_the_virus.html

The Democrats claim Trump is mishandling the coronavirus threat and that they’d do better. They’re wrong. Their proposals are redundant, vapid, or dangerous.

During the recent debate, three candidates discussed coronavirus:

Amy Klobuchar urged treatment and quarantine – which is (a) obvious and (b) what Trump is doing. She accused Trump of ignoring the world (he hasn’t) and wants to improve education.

Biden did his inevitable “I already did that response,” referring to Ebola (which, thankfully for America, stayed in Africa).

Bernie Sanders accused Trump of idiocy for predicting the virus would end in April. What Trump said was that influenzas generally go away once winter ends, something that is scientifically correct. Bernie said he would work with WHO (which Trump has done).

In addition to those statements, all three say Trump cannot address coronavirus because he withdrew funds from the CDC and NIH.

On Wednesday, Pelosi issued a formal statement that also says Trump cannot fight the virus because he has shrunk government:

“The American people need a well-coordinated, whole-of-government, fully-funded response to keep them safe from the coronavirus threat.  Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has mounted an opaque and chaotic response to this outbreak. 

“The Trump Administration has left critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant.  The Trump Budget called for slashing almost $700 million from the Centers for Disease Control.  And even now, the Administration continues to devalue Americans’ health security by ransacking funding from other vital public health needs.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Perverse Panic over Plastic The campaign against disposable bags and other products is harming the planet and the public.John Tierney

By on February 27th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/needless-panic-over-disposable-plastic

New York City and other municipalities have banned plastic straws as part of a broader effort against plastic consumer products.

Why do our political leaders want to take away our plastic bags and straws? This question is even more puzzling than a related one that I’ve been studying for decades: Why do they want us to recycle our garbage?

The two obsessions have some common roots, but the moral panic over plastic is especially perverse. The recycling movement had a superficial logic, at least at the outset. Municipal officials expected to save money by recycling trash instead of burying or burning it. Now that recycling has turned out to be ruinously expensive while achieving little or no environmental benefit, some local officials—the pragmatic ones, anyway—are once again sending trash straight to landfills and incinerators.

The plastic panic has never made any sense, and it’s intensifying even as evidence mounts that it’s not only a waste of money but also harmful to the environment, not to mention humans. It’s been a movement in search of a rationale for half a century.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

A Party At War With Its Own Soul

By on February 27th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/27/a-party-at-war-with-its-own-soul/

The Democratic Party is in a state of panic over an unelectable extremist emerging as the possibly unstoppable frontrunner for its presidential nomination. When an institution is in a crisis like this, its leaders get called on to step in and exercise some leadership.

The problem for Democrats is that their official leaders aren’t their real leaders.

“Bernie Sanders cannot beat Trump,” warns 94-year-old longtime party mega-donor and Joe Biden backer Bernard Schwartz, who is appealing to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to come forward and back one of Sanders’ rivals. Worse, Bernie at the top of the ticket could have a reverse coattail effect and hurt Democrat House and Senate candidates. “We are not going to win these critical House races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling them to look at the bright side of the Castro regime,” warned former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg during Tuesday night’s CBS debate.

Few if any have financed the Democratic Party establishment as much as New York City investment firm CEO Schwartz, who has given millions to Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and well over a million dollars to congressional Democrats’ campaigns in the current election cycle. But Pelosi and Schumer can’t risk the embarrassment of backing the wrong horse on the eve of the South Carolina primary and less than a week before Super Tuesday. Biden seems poised for a comeback win in the Palmetto State but Bernie has an impressive lead in the polls in California, and a slim lead in Texas, the two biggest Super Tuesday states, as well as leading in North Carolina and Virginia, and even enjoying a slim lead in the home state of competitor Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts, all also holding their primaries this coming Tuesday.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Jaundiced Take on National Conservatism John Fonte

By on February 27th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/26/a-jaundiced-take-on-national-conservatism/

Serious democratic conservatives in America, Britain, Israel, and Europe should be under no illusions about the contempt directed at them by Anne Applebaum and her bloc of liberal internationalists who claim to be the great arbiters of democracy in the world today.

The National Conservatism Conference first came to public attention in July, when its Washington, D.C., conference was widely covered in the media and generated scores of essays on the effort to combine traditional conservative ideas with the spirit of national sovereignty now sweeping the developed democracies. Now, the National Conservatism Conference held in Rome on February 3-4, titled “God, Honor, Country: President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and the Freedom of Nations,” has attracted similar attention.

Introducing the conference, Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, noted that the “legacy of national freedom and biblical morality” of Reagan, John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher, was “under assault.”

“Sophisticated people in the political, media, and university establishments,” DeMuth said, “have become openly contemptuous of democratic choice.” Since the 1990s, we have witnessed “the consolidation of bureaucratic anti-democratic government in Western Europe” and are “beset by hegemonic progressivism, which seeks to quarantine religious observance, traditional culture, bourgeois social norms and the family itself.”

The Rome conference, like the Washington conference before it, featured several deep and penetrating talks and has prompted equally worthy commentary by independent observers (not all of them uncritical, of course). It has also—as DeMuth predicted—been attacked, sometimes with striking dishonesty, by the progressive Left.

One attack, however, came from journalist Anne Applebaum, the author of several admirable books on the history of the Soviet Union and Communism, who was once friendly to Reagan-Thatcher foreign policy conservatism. Her February 10 essay at The Atlantic, “This is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End,” creates a caricature of national conservatism and seriously misrepresents the substance and spirit of the conference at which I spoke.

Continue reading →