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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Poorly-Timed Visit to the Middle East Is it going to be a lose-lose for America and Israel? Cal Thomas

By on July 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-poorly-timed-visit-middle-east-cal-thomas/

“The Middle East has been relatively quiet in recent years. Biden’s trip is unlikely to enhance stability and more likely to stir things up again. It has the potential of being a lose-lose for America and for Israel, which would be quite an accomplishment.”

In 1988, five years after calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow where he addressed an audience of students from Moscow State University. At the heart of his speech, Reagan promoted the virtues and success of liberty and his vision that tyranny would ultimately be defeated (recall his other forecast made to the British Parliament in 1982 that the Soviet Union would end up “on the ash heap of history”).

Contrast those remarks with the current president and his trip to the Middle East. A headline in the Connecticut Post asks the right question: “Biden once wanted to make Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ – so why is he playing nice with the kingdom’s repressive rulers now?”

Biden will meet with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman (affectionately known as MBS), who has been accused by U.S. intelligence of sending a hit squad to murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Apparently feeling the heat of criticism from people opposed to the trip, Biden felt the need to explain himself in an op-ed for The Washington Post.

In it, Biden makes this ludicrous claim: “The Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago.” He must have forgotten the Abraham Accords, which Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner cobbled together. It normalized relations between Israel and five Arab countries, including Bahrain, the UAE and Morocco, something never before achieved. As usual, Biden gives no credit to Trump.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

From Rule Of Law To The Law Of The Jungle

By on July 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/15/from-rule-of-law-to-the-law-of-the-jungle/

“This country was at one time different, exceptional. But it’s been twisted and spindled and mutilated by the left. Welcome to the jungle, it sure seems like it gets worse here every day.”

Unwilling to take their political and legal losses like the good citizens of a democratic republic and work within the system, Democrats are more and more demanding they get their way through harassment that includes the threat of violence. What has set this country apart since its birth is unraveling.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, the “unflinching repudiation” of Roe v. Wade, set an already fuming political left on fire. And the flame still burns. White hot. 

“The six justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again,” a Harvard law instructor, and democratic socialist, tweeted shortly after the decision was released. “It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public. They are pariahs. Since women don’t have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again.”

So rather than follow the non-violent process for making and clarifying law that was given to us by the Founding Fathers, the left wants to force its political positions and ideology on the country. Please tell us again who the fascists are.

The tweet above is but one of many examples of progressives, leftists, socialists and Democrats pitching dangerous tantrums when things don’t go their way.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Long lines are back at US food banks as inflation hits high Long lines are back at outside food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation increasingly seek handouts to feed their families By Anita Snow and Eugene Garcia

By on July 15th, 2022

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/long-lines-back-us-food-banks-inflation-hits-86817760

PHOENIX — Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families.

With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot.

Inflation in the U.S. is at a 40-year high and gas prices have been surging since April 2020, with the average cost nationwide briefly hitting $5 a gallon in June. Rapidly rising rents and an end to federal COVID-19 relief have also taken a financial toll.

The food banks, which had started to see some relief as people returned to work after pandemic shutdowns, are struggling to meet the latest need even as federal programs provide less food to distribute, grocery store donations wane and cash gifts don’t go nearly as far.

Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work.

“But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

NATIONWIDE INITIATIVE LAUNCHES TO CHALLENGE FAILED LEADERSHIP OF ESTABLISHMENT JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS

By on July 15th, 2022

THE JEWISH LEADERSHIP PROJECT WILL EDUCATE, RECRUIT, AND ORGANIZE ACTIVISTS AND DONORS

http://TheJewishLeadershipProject.org.

WASHINGTON, DC (July 11, 2022) – Today, activists across the United States launched The Jewish Leadership Project (JLP), a grassroots non-profit initiative that will demand that major Jewish organizations—including Federations, the ADL, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs—cease subordinating the safety and welfare of the Jewish-American community to partisan ideology.

 Much of JLP’s analysis of failed Jewish leadership was recently featured in essays published in a dedicated issue of White Rose magazine was co-founded by longtime activists Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, whose influential non-profit projects have ranged from highlighting the hostility faced by Jews on college campuses to exposing the threats Islamists pose in the United States.

For his work in helping to liberate thousands of black slaves from jihadist raiders in Sudan, Coretta Scott King presented Charles Jacobs with Boston’s Freedom Award. In 2007he was named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. Today, Jacobs and Goldwasser realize that efforts to combat external foes cannot prevail given the feckless leadership within Jewish organizations.

“Jewish Americans are under siege,” said JLP co-founder Avi Goldwasser. “Campuses are rife with Jew-hatred. Jews have been attacked on the streets of Boston, Brooklyn and Los Angeles, and murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego, Monsey, and Jersey City. They have been defamed by media outlets such as The New York Times and CNN, and even maligned by members of Congress.” Goldwasser continued, “Many once-venerable Jewish organizations have primarily become front groups for progressive political interests. The significant danger the Jewish community faces today is an indictment of these institutions and their leadership.”

“White supremacists are an immediate, lethal threat to the Jewish-American community, but the growing animus against Jews among black radicals, anti-Zionist leftists, and Islamic extremists constitutes the longer-term peril,” added JLP co-founder Charles Jacobs. “Unfortunately, establishment Jewish organizations are now led by individuals who refuse to recognize the nature of 21st-century Jew-hatred, let alone combat it, and so have abdicated their responsibility to the people they are meant to serve.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli benefits to the US exceed US foreign aid to Israel Yoram Ettinger Video

By on July 15th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3IzbK7q

*The US does not extend foreign aid to Israel. Rather, the US makes an annual investment in Israel, which yields to the American taxpayer an annual R-O-I (Return-On-Investment) of several hundred percent.

*Israel serves as the battle-tested, cost-effective laboratory of the US defense and aerospace industries and the US armed forces.

*Over 200 US high tech giants have established research and development centers in Israel, leveraging Israel’s brainpower.

*The US would have to establish five CIAs in order to procure the intelligence provided by Israel.

*Israel is the largest US aircraft carrier, which does not require American soldiers on board, sparing the US $15bn annually.
 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Biden’s accelerating inflation will lead to Biden’s recession

By on July 15th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3558302-bidens-accelerating-inflation-will-lead-to-bidens-recession/

President Biden was no doubt delighted to be far, far away from home when the latest – disastrous – report on inflation was released. Confronted with news that prices had jumped 9.1 percent from a year ago, worse than expected, Biden issued a statement downplaying the news, saying the report was “out of date” since gasoline prices have dropped 40 cents over the past month. Got that? 40 cents.

The president was echoing a statement that his economic brain trust issued the day before in which Brian Deese and Cecilia Rouse provided “context” for the anticipated inflation read. They wrote that energy and food prices were especially volatile.

Americans may see a different sort of “context.” They might notice that nearly everything is getting more expensive and that despite a softening in some commodities in recent months, inflation accelerated in June.

They may also conclude that Democrats in charge are not helping.

While much of Washington is focused on the Jan. 6 committee hearings, Americans in the rest of the country are focused on how they can afford to feed their families, with food prices 12 percent higher than a year ago.

As Democrat climate zealots push to kill off our oil and gas industry, voters find themselves paying not only 60 percent more for gasoline than they did a year ago, but also 98 percent more for fuel oil.

While liberals debate whether men can get pregnant, families struggle to pay 11 percent more for a new car, 10 percent more for toddler clothes, an additional 13 percent for baby formula, 17 percent more for health insurance, 14 percent extra for auto body repairs, 34 percent more for airline fares, an increased 14 percent on delivery services and 13 percent more for gift wrap. Did Putin raise the price of gift wrap?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Europe’s Palestinian blind spot: Ruthie Blum

By on July 15th, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-712133

Nine European countries declared on Tuesday that they would continue backing the Palestinian NGOs designated by Israel last year as terrorist organizations. In a joint statement, the foreign ministries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden argued that Israel hadn’t provided “substantial information… that would justify reviewing [their] policy” towards the “civil society” groups in question.

Referring to the area in which the said organizations operate as the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) – rather than the PA (Palestinian Authority) – these EU members said that “should evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”

This was after professing to take “accusations of terrorism or links to terrorist groups… with the utmost seriousness.” All well and good, if one’s definition of the deadly phenomenon is open to interpretation.

“A free and strong civil society is indispensable for promoting democratic values and for the two-state solution,” the countries concluded, to give grounds for their continuing to fund the NGOs on Israel’s list of outlaws. This sentence alone is proof of Western Europe’s willful blindness when it comes to all things Palestinian.

In the first place, there is nothing “free” about the PA, which is controlled by corrupt and evil leaders. Secondly, no “democratic values” are promoted by the honchos in Gaza and Ramallah. Nor do the rulers of either push for a “two-state solution.”

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Shocking Escalation of the Disqualification Campaign

By on July 15th, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/article/a-shocking-escalation-of-the-disqualification-campaign?utm_content=%F0%9F%8C%85%20The%20Morning%20Sun

We don’t mind saying that from the start we have been concerned that this is where the push to disqualify Representatives Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others would end.

The latest move in the campaign to disqualify President Trump from holding public office — and block him from running for president in 2024 — features an outrageous demarche from Free Speech for People. That’s the group that, as our A.R. Hoffman has been reporting, is working to use the 14th Amendment’s “disqualification clause” as a sword to cut down Republican candidates from Georgia to Arizona. 

It turns out, as Mr. Hoffman reports in his latest scoop, that Free Speech for People is sending to all 50 secretaries of state a request to sign a declaration that what happened on January 6, 2021, was an insurrection under “all conceivably applicable definitions of the word,” and that Mr. Trump “engaged” with that uprising in “both words and actions.” Then they want the secretaries to sign a declaration. 

It would state that because of the events of January 6, “consequently” Mr. Trump “is disqualified from holding ‘any office’ under the United States — including the presidency. As a result, he is ineligible to appear on the presidential primary ballot.” They even have typed up a signature line for each secretary of state. It leaves a blank on which each can write the state of which he or she is secretary. 

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

They Loved Me in Buchenwald A tribute to Robert Clary, the French American actor who survived the Holocaust to take Hollywood by storm By Peter Theroux

By on July 14th, 2022

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/they-loved-me-buchenwald

A week after Patton’s Third Army liberated Buchenwald, on April 19, 1945, the inmates gave a concert for the soldiers who had freed them. Fourteen Czech, German, Dutch, Belgian, and French musicians made up the band. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles has the fading typed program on exhibit: There were sax, brass, and rhythm sections, and a sole vocalist—a Frenchman, Robert Widerman, who sang “In the Mood,” “A Tisket, A Tasket,” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” He also performed both roles in a Mickey and Minnie Mouse skit of his own creation, which had been a hit with the Nazis and kapos.

“We performed on the stage, in our striped uniforms, exhilarated by our new freedom, and gave the greatest show of our lives which hundreds of GIs and inmates applauded and shouted,” he noted in his memoirs. They closed the set with a “walloping version of ‘Tiger Rag.’”

A few weeks later, back home in Paris, the boyish but indefatigable Widerman, age 19, opened at the legendary Olympia on the Boulevard des Capucines, then one of the many Parisian venues requisitioned for American soldiers’ entertainment. He was the fourth on the bill, in an unenviable slot right after a performing dog act that always thrilled audiences. His first number was “Flat Foot Floogie,” followed by “Daisy Venez Avec Moi.” The audience wasn’t buying it. He was distraught at the perfunctory applause. “I had two more numbers to do, and I was having flop-sweat. I didn’t understand—they loved me in Buchenwald!”

The singer, who had changed his surname to Clary, took gigs all over Paris, working full time, dancing with socialites and prostitutes (“I remember one in particular. She was tall and looked like Joan Crawford … a very good jitterbugger. We had a ball on the dance floor.”) He performed in blackface. He made friends with Charles Aznavour. He relocated to the south of France and worked around the clock.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Russia Gives NATO New Lease on Life by Soeren Kern

By on July 14th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18713/russia-nato

The alliance’s new Strategic Concept, adopted at the NATO Summit in Madrid on June 28-30, focuses on addressing the return of great-power politics, specifically strategic competition with revisionist powers such as Russia and China.

The Strategic Concept affirms collective territorial defense as NATO’s fundamental mission, and effective deterrence as its main objective.

“The Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area…. Its coercive military posture, rhetoric and proven willingness to use force to pursue its political goals undermine the rules-based international order…. In light of its hostile policies and actions, we cannot consider the Russian Federation to be our partner.” — NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

The 2022 Concept also assesses, for the first time, the “challenges” — France and Germany objected to describing China as a “threat” because it was seen as harmful to European economic interests — posed by Communist Party of China.

Finally, the 2022 Concept commits NATO member states to honor previous pledges on defense spending, but there is no enforcement mechanism.

“The February invasion led to promises for even more spending, but many countries remain disappointments. Last month Germany approved a special €100 billion fund to rearm but still won’t commit to meeting the spending pledge every year. Italy said in March it will hit 2% by 2028, and Belgium managed to be even more hapless with a vow to reach the goal by 2035. Will Mr. Biden do anything to push these laggards in Madrid?” — Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2022.

“If NATO fails to translate words into action now, it could be fatal for the Alliance.” — Ed Arnold, Royal United Services Institute, July 1, 2022.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), responding to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, has announced the biggest overhaul of European defense since the end of the Cold War. By pledging more money, more troops and more unity to deter Russia, NATO leaders have reaffirmed NATO as the cornerstone of transatlantic defense.

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