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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What primary season has taught us so far Few reasons for Trump to be cheerful, progressives make progress, and more:Oliver Wiseman

By on June 1st, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/newsletter/what-primary-season-has-taught-us-so-far/

What primary season has taught us so far

It may not feel like it, but we’re only two months into a seven-month-long primary season ahead of this year’s midterms. There are still thirty-seven states in which the voters are yet to have their say on the major parties’ candidates ahead of Election Day. In other words, it’s still early. But with the calendar front-loaded with attention-grabbing showdowns in important states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, it’s not too late to tease out some big-picture takeaways. Here are three:

Few reasons for Trump to be cheerful

The least surprising thing about the Republican primaries so far is the lack of a definitive answer to the question of Donald Trump’s influence in the GOP. But brush past the black-and-white, pro- or anti-Trump dichotomy with which so much coverage oversimplifies the state of the modern Republican Party, and you find more reasons for Trump to be worried about his waning influence than evidence of an unassailable position at the head of the party.

The Georgia gubernatorial primary saw one of the biggest villains in the MAGA pantomime cruise to victory. In fact, Brian Kemp’s demolition of Trump’s preferred alternative, former senator David Perdue, was so total as to lose some of its broader political impact. Foregone conclusions just don’t capture the imagination as much as narrow wins. Trump would point to results elsewhere to demonstrate his power: the endorsement of J.D. Vance in Ohio, who saw a swift surge in the polls after he received the former president’s seal of approval shortly before primary day. One footnote to this sign of Trump’s power: Team Vance was confident of a late surge — and a primary win — with or without Trump’s endorsement. Spin, perhaps, or a hint that there is a bit more to the Ohio story than meets the eye.

Elsewhere, things get less clear-cut but no more reassuring for Trump

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Not Waiting for Nuclear Weapons to Destabilize the Middle East by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on June 1st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18580/iran-destabilizing-iraq

The goal of Iran’s mullahs is to spread their control to as many countries as possible by using their terrorist proxies, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi militia in Yemen.

Iran’s rulers are also seeking to increase their political influence in these countries. They aim to turn Iran into a superpower and major player in the Middle East at a time when US influence in the region appears to be dwindling.

Needless to say, Iran’s mullahs are not only opposed to peace with Israel. They and their proxies have repeatedly stated that their real goal is to eliminate Israel.

Some even warned that Iran’s real intention is to destroy and isolate Iraq….

“Iran, not Israel, is the greatest affliction for Iraq.” — Farouk Yusef, Iraqi author, Al Arab, May 29, 2022.

The Iraqis, Yusef added, would have preferred to see a law criminalizing working for Iran because they do not want to end up like Lebanon, which has been destroyed by Hezbollah.

“The forces affiliated with Iran accuse everyone who refuses to be subordinate to Iran of seeking normalization with Israel.” — Hamid Al-Kifaey, Iraqi journalist, Sky News Arabia, May 15, 2022.

This is how Arab dictatorships regularly seek to discredit the opposition or anyone who speaks out against corruption and bad government: by accusing them of being Israeli or American spies and traitors.

[T]he law may be used to target political opponents who have been protesting against the corruption of the ruling elite in Baghdad. The anti-corruption activists have often been accused by the government of being “agents of Israel.” — Akeel Abbas, Iraqi academic and author, Al Hurra, May 28, 2022.

The law “radically and explicitly violates two of the basic principles stipulated in the Iraqi constitution, which prohibits enacting a law that contradicts the principles of democracy and basic rights and freedoms.” — Akeel Abbas, Sky News Arabia, May 29, 2022.

Additionally, while Russia has been losing thousands of soldiers trying to take over Ukraine, Iran, without so much as swatting a fly, has been quietly filling the void left by Russians abandoning Syria.

Iran is not waiting until it possesses nuclear weapons to proceed with its schemes. Instead, it is spreading its aggression like a deadly virus to other Muslim nations.

Or do the Biden administration and the international community secretly want the destruction of Israel and the Gulf States?

Iran’s mullahs are continuing to meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries, especially Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

This is happening while the US administration and other Western powers continue to delude themselves into thinking that appeasing Iran’s rulers and signing a new nuclear deal with them will bring security and stability to the Middle East and the rest of the world.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

TIM BLAIR ON THE LEFT

By on June 1st, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/05/they-wont-glow-or-seek-to-know/

“The Left’s complexity fetish infects all social and political realms. To test this, mention nuclear power to one of your bolshie friends and brace for a blizzard of convoluted objections that can claim no more than a nodding acquaintance with logic or fact. After that aural ordeal, eyes glazed and verging on narcolepsy, you won’t dare ask when it became official than men can have babies.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The drag-queening of America’s children By Andrea Widburg

By on June 1st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/the_dragqueening_of_americas_children.html

In 2015, drag queens reading in libraries suddenly became a “thing.” While I see these men as grotesque appropriations of womanhood, they were sold as cute, sparkly people who make reading fun. Once the camel’s nose was in the tent, drag queens performing for children started appearing everywhere, not just in libraries where weird parents intentionally bring their children, but at nightclubs and across schools where children are captive audiences. It’s become so endemic that Libs of TikTok has put together a seemingly endless thread of such appearances.

Back in the early 1990s, some men I knew when I worked in San Francisco performed as part of a Drag Queen acapella group. Unlike many of the drag queens parading around today, these guys were actually talented performers, so I enjoyed the first show I attended. By the second show, though, I’d had enough. While some songs were clever parodies of pop culture issues, way too many were obsessed with gay sex (in more detail than most people should ever want to know), fecal matter, and STDs. That’s when I realized that people who define themselves by non-traditional (some might say deviant) sexuality, tend to obsess about that sexuality and, moreover, seem to have stopped developmentally at the “poo-poo is funny” stage of humor (around 3 years old).

Armed with that knowledge, I’ve found very disturbing the number of drag queens swarming children’s reading rooms. Were my kids still small, I wouldn’t want them under the tutelage of someone whose entire identity revolves around his genitals and what he does with them. However, when parents objected, they were schooled as “transphobes” and “homophobes” and, of course, most backed down.

So, the drag queens have continued to dig their way into children’s lives. It’s not just at libraries. The big children’s entertainment media companies are on board. Andrew Levitt, an untalented drag performer but highly talented self-promoter, inveigled his way into Nickelodeon, appearing on the children’s show Blue’s Clues and You and singing about LGBTQ identities in a video aimed at children. And now Disney+ has Levitt urging little children to celebrate gay pride and drag queens with him.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

To no one’s surprise, a D.C. jury acquitted Michael Sussmann By Andrea Widburg

By on June 1st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/to_no_ones_surprise_a_dc_jury_acquitted_michael_sussmann.html

Most savvy court watchers were completely unsurprised yesterday when a jury in the District of Columbia acquitted Michael Sussmann, a Perkins Coie attorney, who was charged with lying to the FBI on Hillary’s behalf in support of the Russia hoax. After all, juries routinely rule against Republicans and for Democrats in the D.C. district, the judge couldn’t have made his partisanship more clear, and the jury had a good helping of hardcore Hillary supporters. In other words, the fix was in the moment the case was filed. What was more newsworthy than a predictable verdict was the way the case showed just how corrupt the FBI and the district court are.

The news about the verdict is simple:

A Washington, D.C., jury acquitted former Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann of lying to the FBI on Tuesday in the first legal test of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

Sussmann was charged with lying to the FBI during a September 2016 meeting with former FBI general counsel James Baker. Sussmann pleaded not guilty to the charges, arguing that he never lied to the FBI, and even if he did, the lie did not impact the FBI’s operations at all. Sussmann decided last week against testifying in his own defense.

The evidence was clear, though, that Sussmann told the FBI’s general counsel he wasn’t representing anyone when he was, in fact, representing Hillary.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Out of Formula By John Stossel

By on June 1st, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2022/06/01/out-of-formula-n1602364

Parents still struggle to find baby formula.

The left and most media (sorry, same thing?) blame “corporate power run amok.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, “There might be a need for indictment!”

They blame Abbott Laboratories, because it shut down a Similac plant. The Food and Drug Administration says unsanitary conditions led to deaths of two infants, but Abbott denies that its formula recall had anything to do with those deaths.

In any case, one factory closure doesn’t normally cause massive shortages.

My new video gives the real reason for the formula shortage.

First: bans on imports. There’s plenty of formula on supermarket shelves in Mexico and Europe. Normally, American companies would just buy that and ship it here.

But they can’t, because of several destructive government policies.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A 2024 Trump-Biden Death Match? Byron York

By on June 1st, 2022

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2022/06/01/a-2024-trumpbiden-death-match-n2608031

For all the speculation that goes on around Donald Trump and the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, it’s possible, even likely, that the more intense battle will be among Democrats. A new poll from Mark Penn, the former Clinton strategist who runs the Harvard-Harris Poll, suggests President Joe Biden’s support among Democrats is significantly weaker than Trump’s support among Republicans. And that could lead to chaos on the Democratic side.

Penn’s question was very simple. To Republicans, he asked, “If the Republican presidential primary for the 2024 election was held today, who would you vote for?” And to Democrats, he asked, “If the Democratic presidential primary for the 2024 election was held today, who would you vote for?”

The results: Forty-one percent of Republicans named Trump, while 12% named Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 7% named former Vice President Mike Pence, and 4% each named former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Ted Cruz. There were a few other names lower down — Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Tim Scott, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — and a fairly large percentage, 28%, who said they were unsure or would choose someone else.

On the Democratic side, the results were 23% for Biden, while 9% named Vice President Kamala Harris, 8% named Sen. Bernie Sanders, 7% support 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton and 5% back Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Another fairly large number of people, 31%, said they were unsure or named someone else.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Appoints Supporter of “Intifada” as “Ambassador” to PLO in Israel Daniel Greenfield

By on June 1st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/05/biden-appoints-supporter-intifada-ambassador-plo-daniel-greenfield/

After a wave of violence that saw repeated murders of Israelis, with guns and axes, among other means, in attacks that involved ISIS, but were praised by Hamas and the PLO’s Palestinian Authority, Biden is rewarding the terrorists.

 The Biden administration has settled on a series of steps aimed at boosting its diplomatic ties to the Palestinians in lieu of reopening the US Consulate in Jerusalem — a move it reluctantly shelved amid Israeli opposition.

The “opposition” consisted of telling Biden that if they gave in, the leftist-Islamist-RINO (right in name only) coalition government would collapse and they’d have to deal with Netanyahu again.

According to two US and Palestinian officials who spoke to The Times of Israel, US President Joe Biden will elevate Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr to the role of special envoy to the Palestinians.

Front Page Magazine had the first deep background on Amr.

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.

Biden has now chosen Amr as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

U. Chicago SJP Condemns Pro-Israel Newsletter as ‘Hate Speech’ Attempting to censor the truth while promoting genocide. Sara Dogan

By on June 1st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/u-chicago-sjp-condemns-pro-israel-newsletter-hate-sara-dogan/

In a brazen and unintentionally ironic letter printed in the Chicago Maroon, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Chicago condemned the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s distribution of a newsletter on campus exposing the terrorist associations of SJP and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and urged university officials to thwart future attempts to distribute alleged “hate speech.”

The University of Chicago was recently named as one of the Top Ten Jew-Hating Colleges and Universities in a report published by the Freedom Center, and there was no shortage of evidence to support their place on that list.

UChicago SJP recently published an art zine titled “Cheers to Intifada,” referring to the violent Palestinian uprisings during which Jewish citizens of Israel were slaughtered because they were Jews. The zine contained violent imagery including a graphic of two lit Molotov cocktails raised in a toast under the heading “Cheers to Intifada.”

The zine was also rife with anti-Semitism including an image of a pig wearing a policeman’s hat with a Jewish star on it. Poems in the publication promoted ancient blood libel tropes against Jews such as one describing a fictional Polish teenager, understood to be Jewish and part of the IDF, who holds Palestinians captive while shooting “perverted bullets shot with animalistic lust yearning to rape bodies.”

The student government at Chicago published a statement promoting the anti-Semitic BDS movement against Israel and used genocidal language calling to “free” Palestine “from the river to the sea,” a call to annihilate the entire state of Israel along with its Jewish citizens.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Clinton’s Plot Came Closer to Succeeding Than January 6 Ever Did There’s only one rule in D.C. the Justice Department consistently enforces—all laws and norms exist to preserve and extend the Democratic Party’s monopoly over key institutions. By Adam Mill

By on June 1st, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/31/clintons-plot-came-closer-to-succeeding-than-january-6-ever-did/

Kevin Clinesmith must feel like an idiot for pleading guilty without a trial after a D.C.-area jury acquitted Clinton co-conspirator Michael Sussman for his role in the plot to frame Donald Trump for colluding with the Russians, supposedly to steal the 2016 election. Sussman’s D.C.-based jury which featured partisan Democrat donors rendered a quick “not-guilty” verdict. While the Left undoubtedly sees the acquittal as another “lawfare” victory against the bad orange man, that victory did not come without cost to its enabling allies. 

First, the acquittal further reinforces the impression of a two-tiered justice system in which the politics and privilege of the accused determine the outcome. As Julie Kelly continues to show, the FBI, which played a central role in the plot to frame Trump, is now viewed by a majority of Republicans and a large minority of Democrats as, “the personal gestapo” of Joe Biden. If the FBI frames its political opponents, as it attempted to do with Trump, then it can’t expect potential witnesses and jurors to cooperate with or trust its agents.

Second, we know a little more about the Russia collusion hoax plot and are therefore better-armed against the next dirty trick. That’s something. Special Counsel John Durham did uncover a few new puzzle pieces to the Russia Collusion Hoax. When you fit in the new information with what we already know, one sees the scope of Hillary Clinton’s astonishingly brazen and undemocratic effort to reverse the 2016 election following Election Day. Unlike the January 6 event, which a politicized FBI and Justice Department pursued with partisan zeal, the Clinton plot came much closer to undoing an election. 

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