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Ruth King

ELECTIONS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Upside-Down Gubernatorial Election in Illinois By Bobby Miller

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/upside-down-gubernatorial-election-in-illinois/

One Midwestern state’s gubernatorial race is starting to look like Bizarro World.

During the past few decades in politics, we’ve come to expect Republicans to be more pro-Israel, and often more philosemitic, than their Democratic counterparts. Yet Darren Bailey, the incendiary Republican nominee for governor in Illinois, seems intent on breaking with this.

Last weekend, Bailey met with representatives of the Palestinian community and indicated that he dislikes the state’s first-of-its-kind 2015 law that punishes those who boycott Israel in the manner favored by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Opposing anti-BDS legislation as a matter of policy or on constitutional grounds is a legitimate position to hold. While I would contend that anti-BDS statutes are by and large constitutional and don’t run afoul of First Amendment speech protections, there is further reason to worry. Bailey made his comments about anti-BDS legislation from a lectern in front of a map of the Levant in which the entirety of Israel’s borders has been erased, with Palestine in their stead.

Moreover, Bailey’s remarks come on the heels of another scandal in which it emerged that he once claimed the Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to abortion. Everyone, especially pro-lifers, should be appalled by this sort of hyperbolic rhetoric. As Illinois house Republican leader Jim Durkin put it, “the Holocaust was one of the worst atrocities in the history of humankind, and any comments that minimize it have no place in our political discourse.” Also noteworthy: Bailey’s sole congressional endorsement is Mary Miller, the ignominious Illinois congresswoman who claimed Adolf Hitler “was right on one thing”: that “he who has the youth has the future.” (She later apologized for the reference.) 

Even if one attributes these decisions and comments to poor judgment rather than malicious antisemitism, they highlight that Bailey is not the best candidate Republicans could have put forth to unseat an atrocious governor, J. B. Pritzker, in deep-blue Illinois, especially considering the incumbent’s genuine, albeit limited, pro-Israel track record. 

Bailey’s candidacy is yet another example of a Trump endorsee to which the former president was drawn because of fealty to him rather than general-election viability. Democrats’ incredibly cynical intervention in the Republican primary likely helped Bailey, but 45’s endorsement did more than anything else to put him over the edge. Trump’s prioritization of himself over the interests of the GOP has been a constant theme this primary season, a trend that dates back to the early days of his candidacy. His self-serving primary picks only underscore Republicans’ deal with the devil. If the Party of Lincoln wants to win in places like the Land of Lincoln again, it must dispense with the Donald as its de facto leader.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Terrorists Peace Means Killing More Jews by Bassam Tawil *****

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18901/mahmoud-abbas-palestinian-terrorists
One thing is for sure. Abbas will not tell his audience at the UN that members of his ruling Fatah faction are running wild in the West Bank, where they are carrying out terrorist attacks against Palestinian activists and Palestinian journalists as well as Israelis on an almost daily basis.

Abu Jildeh and al-Nabulsi are among several Fatah terrorists killed or apprehended in recent weeks. These terrorists belong to the Palestinian faction that is often described by Westerners as a “moderate” group. The commander of these terrorists is none other than Mahmoud Abbas, who, in addition to his role as Palestinian Authority president, is also chairman of Fatah.

Abbas’s terrorists, carrying various types of guns and explosive devices, are roaming the streets of the two cities and openly declaring their support for terrorism.

The terrorists are mostly associated with Fatah’s armed group, Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Another Fatah-affiliated group that recently emerged on the streets of Nablus calls itself the Lion’s Den.

The Fatah terrorists have carried out several attacks against both Palestinians and Israelis over the past few months. Many of the terrorists are also known to cooperate with the Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Islamist terror groups.

The Aqsa Martyrs Brigades even boasted of the terrorist attacks in a statement. The group also vowed to continue the terror attacks.

Abbas and the Fatah leadership continue to glorify the terrorists. Abbas, in addition, has refused to rein in or disarm the terrorists.

So far as Abbas and other Palestinian leaders are concerned, Palestinian lawyers, journalists and activists who seek freedom, as well as Jews. should just lie back and accept the daily terrorist attacks against them. Abbas cries “terrorism” only if Israel kills or captures a terrorist.

This is the same Abbas who will appear at the UN General Assembly soon to again play the role of victim and accuse Israel of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” Since he came to power in 2005, Abbas has made it a habit to lie to the UN and other international parties.

Meanwhile, Abbas knows full well that his incitement against Israel has been so effective, that if he ever did make peace with Israel, his own people would execute him for being a traitor.

Abbas, of course, will not mention the Fatah terrorists during his upcoming speech at the UN. He will also not talk about the rampant corruption in his government and the failure of the Palestinian security forces to carry out their duty to enforce law and order and prevent terrorism.

The UN member states should prepare themselves for another Abbas list of lies and libels, assigning blame to everyone but himself for the ongoing bloodshed. It would be helpful if one of the member states’ representatives interrupted Abbas’s litany to inquire about the role of his loyalists in terrorism and how it is that he continues to praise terrorists while claiming that the Palestinians supposedly seek peace.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: SEPTEMBER 2, 1945 THE END OF WORLD WAR 11

By on September 15th, 2022

Lost in the flurry of September news was the fact that World War 2 ended with the unconditional surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945. The war in Europe had ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8th, 1945.

One no longer hears the term “unconditional surrender.” Instead we get, cease-fire, truce, and armistice.

The Korean War (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953), where 40,000 American soldiers died and over 100,000 were injured, ended with an armistice leaving the Korean Peninsula as divided as it had been since the end of World War 2 at the 38th parallel with the North ruled by the successive Kim family tyrants.

Germany and Japan became democracies and allies. Is there a lesson in that?

What are General Douglas MacArthur’s famous quotes?

1.“It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.”

2,“In war there is no substitute for victory.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Commentary on Mistakes of Gorbachev to Make Sure the Chinese Communist Party Endures by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18899/communist-china-gorbachev

Social commentary by Chinese Communist Party organs continue to urge members to be vigilant against the West’s strategy of “peaceful evolution,” meaning the eventual adoption by the Party of reforms that might sap it of its revolutionary aggressive stance against liberal democracies.

Under Xi’s tutelage, the CCP strengthened its role in the life of the ordinary Chinese citizen. President Xi galvanized CCP bureaucrats to accelerate a mass migration of China’s rural peasantry to urbanized environments. Consequently, tens of millions of Chinese were forced to learn new skills in manufacturing jobs. This transformation helped lift many out of abject poverty, thereby expanding China’s middle class as well as the domestic market for Chinese goods. The urbanization process also helped the CCP to better control China’s huge population by concentrating people in cities.

The USSR had failed to improve the quality of life of the Soviet citizenry. CCP leaders possibly reasoned that, because of this failure, Soviet citizens began to challenge Communist rule…. As openness became the norm, people in the USSR quickly saw that citizens in Western countries had freer and more comfortable lives.

Instead of imitating Gorbachev’s “Glasnost” (political openness) China constructed the “Great Firewall” which filters all traffic on the Chinese Internet. Chinese authorities also ban the citizenry access to Facebook and Wikipedia.

China conducts its diplomatic relations even with foreign countries strictly on a transactional business basis. The CCP did not seek to export its revolution violently, as did Iran. Beijing also refused to allow its few allies, such as Pakistan, to drain its national resources. That was another self-inflicted burden that Moscow shouldered: its burden of bankrupt colonies in Eastern Europe.

China, instead, is offering its own model of governance — a one-party system, tight control, a controlled economy, social stability rather than individual freedoms, internet control, and “to protect the dominant role of the CPC” — to the world as a viable alternative to the American system…. China remains resolute in its campaigns against any movement that might possess the energy to compete with the CCP, whether the Falun Gong movement or Christianity.

China’s leaders apparently still worry, otherwise they would not be investing such enormous resources in domestic espionage and repressing their own people.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commentators reacting to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev blamed the former Soviet leader for the demise of the Soviet Union. Hu Xijin, former editor of the CCP’s Global Times, wrote that Gorbachev garnered praise in the West “by selling out the interests of his homeland.” Xiang Ligang, a hardline journalist on international relations, claimed that Gorbachev was responsible for the war in Ukraine and unspecified disasters to follow. State controlled academia echoed similar themes. Beijing-based Renmin University Political Science Professor Shi Yinhong said: “The Chinese Communist Party is very critical of [Gorbachev], believing that he betrayed the Soviet Union.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.S. Cities: Worse Murder Rates than Ukraine’s Civilian Death Rate What has the Democrat leadership of these U.S. cities done to make the situation better? by Michael A. Letts

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/u-s-cities-worse-murder-rates-than-ukraines-civilian-death-rate/

You might have thought that when you hear a newscaster or reporter call a major U.S. city a “war zone” because of the high crime and murders occurring there that it was just an exaggeration. It turns out that it isn’t.

“Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine’s recorded civilian death rate from Russia’s invasion,” according to Just The News.

Think about that. Cities that get touted as examples of successful progressive places to live have more people dying, relatively, than a nation at war. Cities that held “most peaceful protests” are less safe than a nation at war.

Now ask yourself this: If we are so upset with what is happening in Ukraine, why aren’t we even more upset with what is happening in our own country?

The website compiled information from the United Nations Human Rights Office, U.S. Census Bureau, and other sources to calculate the murder rates between the Ukraine and U.S. cities.

In Ukraine, 5,401 civilians have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s attack began in February (this is actually believed to be an underestimate). With a population of about 41,167,300, this makes Ukraine’s civilian death rate 13.12 per 100,000 people using official statistics from the United Nations, according to Just The News.

Sadly, there are American cities where this would be an improvement. Baltimore’s homicide rate is 37.3 so far this year or 215 deaths. If the city had the Ukraine’s war-time death rate, the city would have had only 76 murders.

St. Louis’s murder rate is 38.2 per 100,000 so far in 2022. Chicago’s is 14.8 per 100,000.

“Using pre-pandemic data, 52 U.S. cities had worse homicide rates than Ukraine’s civilian death rate. However, crime in the United States has skyrocketed since then, meaning that there may be more cities that qualify as deadlier than Ukraine under assault by Russian forces,” Just The News reported.

How scary is that?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ukraine with a Whimper or a Bang? Putin deserves what he’s getting, but that moral and strategic victory is still a very different story from America sliding into a nuclear confrontation with a desperate autocrat. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 15th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukraine-with-a-whimper-or-a-bang/

Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop. 

Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority Russian-speaking borderlands. 

That deadlock was eventually going to be resolved by relative morale, manpower, and supply.

Would the high-tech weaponry and money of the United States and Europe allow heroic Ukrainian forces to be better equipped than a larger Russian force—drawing on an economy 10 times greater and a population nearly four times larger than Ukraine’s?

After the latest sudden Ukrainian territorial gains and embarrassing Russian retreats, we now know the answer. 

Russia may be bigger and richer than Ukraine, but it is not up to the combined resources of the United States, along with the nations of NATO and the European Union. 

Most are now in a de facto proxy war with an increasingly overwhelmed Russia. And so far, a circumspect China has not stepped in to try to remedy the Russian dilemma. 

So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war? 

A heady Ukraine believes it now has the wherewithal to clear out the entire occupied Donbass and turn southward to free Crimea. To complete that agenda of rolling back all Russian aggression since 2014, it may step up hitting strategic targets across the Russia border and on the Black Sea.

Again, what will a nuclear Russia—run by an ailing, desperate autocrat—do when a far smaller Ukraine finally and deservedly humiliates her before a global audience?

Will Putin cut off all European energy supplies to force a European end to supplying Ukraine? 

Russia has all but done that. But so far Putin has gained little strategic advantage on the battlefield, despite current European fears of an impending bitter winter.

Will Putin go fully medieval on Ukraine, like the carnage in Chechnya when he leveled Grozny in 2000? 

But a European Ukraine is vast compared to tiny Chechnya. And the Chechens even without allies still withstood a decade of savage Russian brutality.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Daniel Greenfield :Harvard’s Sanctuary for Failed Leftists No matter how badly you fail, Harvard will take you.

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/harvards-sanctuary-for-failed-leftists/

What’s the best way to get to Harvard?

Don’t study and don’t know anything. Just have the right politics. Just ask former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who washed out of the presidential primaries, abandoned a gubernatorial bid after polling at 12%, and then dropped out of a congressional primary after polling next to last at 5%. At least that was better than the 0% that he polled during his presidential campaign.

Where could the most hated politician in New York go? To Massachusetts. Bill de Blasio has become the 2022 visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.

What can Bill de Blasio teach Harvard students besides how to have your wife lose $850 million and get away with it? According to De Blasio, he’ll use his time at Harvard-Kennedy’s Institute of Politics to “to help inspire our nation’s next generation of leaders.” If his track record holds up, half of them will be inspired to move to Florida and the other half to stage a massive race riot.

At Harvard’s Institute of Politics, De Blasio will serve alongside other “prominent elected officials” like Secretary Natalie Tennant, one of the beneficiaries of Soros’; Secretary of State Project, who, despite claiming to oppose Obama while being endorsed by Michelle Obama, lost a Senate race by 62% to 34%. But 34% is still better than DeBlasio’s 5%.

Also on deck at Kennedy Street is former Prime Minister Stefan Löfven of Sweden, a leftist hack, who boasted, “my Europe doesn’t build walls” before folding and agreeing to some border security as the Muslim mass migration mobs swarmed out of control. His deputy famously burst into tears on camera as she announced that Sweden couldn’t take any more illegal migrants.

Neither cared about Sweden, but about their jobs.

Löfven met with terrorists, announced that he would recognize the Islamic terrorist entity inside Israel, and claimed that Muslim terrorists stabbing Jews doesn’t count as terrorism.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

COVID Fascism Fizzles Out in New Zealand By Jack Cashill

By on September 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/covid_fascism_fizzles_out_in_new_zealand.html

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (she/her) held such promise. In the spring of 2020, the then 39-year-old New Zealand prime minister emerged on the world stage as the COVID drama’s anti-Trump.

Ardern was calm, we were told, where Trump was capricious, compassionate where Trump was callous, and disciplined where Trump was improvisational. She was, in short, the modern major general of the emerging fascist new world order, and the media swooned.

The New York Times headlined an April 2020 op-ed, “In a Crisis, True Leaders Stand Out: Swift action, compassion and trust in science mark the most effective responses to the coronavirus.”

When the “liberal” Ardern promised “the most significant restrictions on New Zealanders’ movements in modern history,” the Times praised her for her “swift and decisive action.”

The Atlantic outgushed the Times. “Since March, New Zealand has been unique in staking out a national goal of not just flattening the curve of coronavirus cases,” wrote Uri Friedman, “but eliminating the virus altogether. And it is on track to do it.”

Ardern was common sense personified. “She justified severe policies with practical examples,” Friedman continued. “People needed to stay local, because what if they drove off to some remote destination and their car broke down?” OMG!

Added Friedman, “She said she knows as a parent that it’s really hard to avoid playgrounds, but the virus can live on surfaces for 72 hours.” Right… science.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

New EPA Regulations are Bureaucratic Overreach at Their Worst

By on September 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/15/new-epa-regulations-are-bureaucratic-overreach-at-their-worst/

The use of “chemicals” always sounds bad, especially if they have unpronounceable laboratory names. Nobody really wants chemicals in their food, water, house, clothing, or landfills. But what is a chemical? Look it up and you’ll find that any substance consisting of matter is a chemical, including every liquid, solid, and gas. That means any pure substance or any mixture, natural or manmade. The only things that are not chemicals are those not made up of matter: things like light, heat, sound, or ideas.  

When someone calls for eliminating chemicals, therefore, it is vital to define very precisely what they seek to ban. Even manmade chemicals include practically everything in our consumer world, so specifics are essential. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is ratcheting up its two-year plan to ban the manufacture, use, and disposal of PFAS, short for perfluoroalkyl substances and polyfluoroalkyl substances. Those sound horrible. Most people probably wouldn’t want to be even near anything sounding like that, so banning them sounds right. But what exactly are they?

Beginning with everyday products coated with Teflon, PFAS are a broad range of compounds that prevent sticking and that repel moisture. That includes most plastics, nonstick cookware, water-resistant clothing, and products that resist grease, water, and oil, such as pizza boxes, tents, sleeping bags, and even dental floss. But that’s not all. PFAS are also in photographs, computers, printers, cell phones, cars, air conditioners, laundry detergent, shampoo, lotion, soap, makeup, carpets, prescription bottles, glass and windows, and hundreds of medical devices, from implants and catheters to surgical mesh and sterile containers. These chemicals are central to the function of fire extinguishers and firefighting foam (which airports are required by law to use) and are important components of windmills and solar panels. PFAS are everywhere.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

ATTENTION CONSERVATIVES! THEY’RE COMING FOR YOUR PODCASTS

By on September 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/15/attention-conservatives-theyre-coming-for-your-podcasts-next/

So many on the increasingly fascistic left are eager to censor talk they don’t like.

Conservatives have found a way to communicate that is free from Big Tech censors. But how long will it last?

Over the weekend, the liberal Brookings Institution released what it calls “a tool to monitor political broadcasts” on increasingly popular podcasts. Why? To combat “misinformation.”

Brookings treats the growth of podcasts the way Count Floyd would describe one of his movies on the classic Monster Chiller Horror Theater sketch on SCTV. “Ooh, that’s scary, kids, scary!”

Podcasts, it warns, “played a central role in disseminating election fraud narratives in the lead up to January 6.” Scary, kids!

Podcasts “also offered a prime avenue for the spread of pandemic-related misinformation.” Very scary, kids!

What’s really got the left scared is that nobody is controlling what gets said on podcasts. Valerie Wirtschafter at Brookings laments that “despite the real-world harms caused by this misinformation and the medium’s growing reach and influence,” podcasters “can say whatever you want.”

“The nature of the RSS feed, which is open-sourced and accessible by design, represents a significant hurdle for content moderation. Although Apple can remove the RSS feed from its platform, some smaller platforms allow any content on an RSS feed to be played through their services, making it easy for listeners to access a removed podcast elsewhere.”

The horror!

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