Displaying posts categorized under

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Kenneth Levin: Jews betraying Jews

https://www.jns.org/opinion/jews-betraying-jews/

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, in its Trump as Nazi ad, covers up the truth about who is battling anti-Semitism and who is abetting it.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America recently released a television ad comparing Trump and his administration to the Nazi regime. The ad was criticized by some Jewish organizations, such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the American Jewish Committee, with critics repeating the long-held Jewish insistence that facile comparisons to Nazi Germany demean the suffering of victims of the Holocaust and trivialize the unprecedented nature of the industrialized mass murder that claimed their lives. Yet others, who should know better, such as historian Deborah Lipstadt, and former Anti-Defamation League head and Holocaust survivor Abe Foxman, defended the advertisement. Lipstadt suggested that it was fine because it was comparing the present administration not to the Nazi regime’s extermination campaign, but to its anti-Semitic policies and practices early in its ascension to power.

The most troubling aspect of the ad, to any fair-minded observer, has nothing to do with which particular Nazi policies it invoked, but with the lie at the heart of its analogy and the dangers of that lie. The producers of the ad seek to cast it as an effort to protect American Jews in the face of troubling developments in U.S. society. But the ad fails to address the particulars of such developments and seeks to divert attention away from their primary source. It’s not designed to protect Jews from increasing abuse, but rather to protect the Democratic Party from criticism for its role in fostering that abuse.

Portland Rioters Topple Statues of Roosevelt and Lincoln, Smash Windows at Oregon Historical Society By Jeff Reynolds

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/jeff-reynolds/2020/10/12/portland-rioters-topple-statues-of-roosevelt-and-lincoln-smash-windows-at-oregon-historical-society-n1022591

On Sunday night, rioters in Portland, Ore., toppled statues of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and caused thousands of dollars’ worth of damage at the Oregon Historical Society. Declaring a day of action, the “indigenous wing” of antifa threatened violence to anyone caught live-streaming or recording video of their actions leading into Columbus Day.

After toppling the statues, rioters smashed windows at the Oregon Historical Society, an expansive museum on the South Park Blocks near Portland State University.The east side of the Oregon Historical Society building faces SW Broadway Street, a heavily traveled thoroughfare through downtown Portland. That side of the building has a large, multistory mural depicting events from Oregon’s history. Rioters defaced the mural by pelting it with paintball guns.

Rioters then moved on to cause serious damage to several businesses in downtown Portland.

Why Cancer is Called a Silent Killer by Linda Goudsmit

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24638/why-cancer-is-called-a-silent-killer

  http://goudsmit.pundicity.com

http://lindagoudsmit.com

Cancer has been called a silent killer because it kills its victims gradually without causing serious or alarming symptoms in the early stages. Cancer is not the only silent killer disease. High blood pressure, diabetes, coronary artery disease, even osteoporosis are considered silent killers because their early warning signs are disguised and diffuse, subtle symptoms that are often ignored until it is too late. So, programs of early detection have been instituted to oppose silent killers.

What about the body politic?

Wikipedia explains, “The modern understanding of the concept means a body politic comprises all the people in a particular country considered as a single group forming what we know as a nation.”

What are the silent killers of nations? What are the often ignored subtle and diffuse symptoms?

Silent killers attack the infrastructure of the body and its essential organs. So it is in politics. The U.S. Constitution is the infrastructure of the United States of America. Its central organs are the separated powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The silent killers attack them all.

Our Founding Fathers created the first government in world history based on individual freedom. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, was a completely revolutionary concept of government because it completely rejected the binary structure of rulers and ruled. Monarchical England went to war against American independence and its founding philosophy. What happened?

America prevailed, grew and prospered because Americans, from the very beginning, were incentivized to work hard. They reaped what they sowed and developed a robust middle class enriched with private property. The middle class and private property distinguished American governance from every other society in the world. The middle class and its upward mobility made America great in the first place, and explains why the enemies of America target the middle class.

Senator Whitehouse’s Opening Salvo at Barrett Hearing: Dems’ Obamacare Diatribe By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/senator-whitehouses-opening-salvo-at-barrett-hearing-dems-obamacare-diatribe/

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) is among the most insufferable hacks on Capitol Hill. It was he, recall, who suggested that energy companies should be sued under the federal racketeering laws for purportedly being “deniers” of climate change. He was also the laboring oar among a handful of Senate Democrats on an unhinged court amicus brief in a recent Supreme Court Second Amendment case, extortionately threatening that the Court could be “restructured” — translation: subjected to ruinous partisan court packing — if the justices continued what the senator portrayed as its Trump-era conservative drift.

So it comes as no surprise that Whitehouse’s opening statement in the confirmation hearing on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court was an absurd attack along lines I have previously described: Republicans are supposedly desperate to get Barrett on the Court so she can be the deciding vote to invalidate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in toto, including its guarantee of coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Whitehouse’s diatribe was aimed less at Judge Barrett than at Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas.), a supporter of the district judge in Texas (a Bush-43 appointee), whose ruling is at the center of the case now before the Supreme Court.

There is no chance that the justices are going to invalidate the ACA. I doubt a single one would vote to do that. I repeat what I wrote about this nonsense two weeks ago:

The notion that Judge Barrett, or for that matter the other Trump appointees to the Supreme Court, are on the warpath against the Affordable Care Act is laughable. The ACA issue is being contorted into a convenient political talking point in the stretch-run of a presidential campaign because President Trump, foolishly and reportedly against the advice of Attorney General Barr, has supported a weak legal challenge to the law. The case is California v. Texas, and the justices are scheduled to hear arguments about it on November 10.

No, Judge Barrett Did Not Criticize the Affordable Care Act By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-judge-barrett-did-not-criticize-the-affordable-care-act/?utm_source=

Democrats are continuing their disingenuous strategy of framing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as President Trump’s stealth weapon, being rushed onto the Supreme Court by Republicans in order to kill Obamacare in a case the Court is scheduled to hear arguments in on November 10 (see my earlier post). In this vein, Senator Chris Coons (D., Del.) posits that Barrett has publicly criticized the Affordable Care Act. 

This is false.

As a judge, Barrett has not ruled on Obamacare. As a scholar, she has taken the firm position that a judge’s important but modest role is to say what the law is, not to formulate public policy. The best prediction of her position on legislation, therefore, is that its policy direction is for Congress to decide; the judge’s narrow role is to ensure that enacted law complies with constitutional requirements, regardless of its political or ideological bent. That, for what it’s worth is why I’ve predicted (see the earlier post) that neither Judge Barrett nor any of the eight justices currently sitting on the Court (including its four conservatives, two appointed by President Trump) would vote to invalidate Obamacare.

Senator Coons is apparently referring to an article – actually, a book review, “Countering the Majoritarian Difficulty” – that Judge Barrett, as a Notre Dame Law School professor, wrote for a scholarly publication of the University of Minnesota Law School in 2017. The article was not specifically about Obamacare. Instead, it arose out of a roundtable discussion in which several academics discussed Our Republican Constitution, an excellent, provocative book by Randy Barnett, a superb law professor at Georgetown.

The End of Columbus Day is the End of America-Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/end-columbus-day-end-america-daniel-greenfield/

I originally wrote this in 2010, when the issue wasn’t even on the radar for conservatives. A decade later, the culture war has arrived with a vengeance.  And here’s a version of that original article from 2014.

Columbus may have outfoxed the Spanish court and his rivals, but he is falling victim to the court of political correctness. The explorer who discovered America has become controversial because the very idea of America has become controversial.

Columbus Day parades are met with protests and some have been minimized or eliminated.

In Seattle, Columbus Day became Indigenous People’s Day, which sounds like a Marxist terrorist group’s holiday.

While no American state has followed Venezuela’s lead in renaming it Día de la Resistencia Indígena, or Day of Indigenous Resistance, which actually is a Marxist terrorist group’s holiday, the whole notion of celebrating the discovery of America has come to be seen as somehow shameful and worst of all, politically incorrect

Anti-Columbus Day protests are mounted by La Raza, whose members, despite their indigenous posturing, are actually mostly descended from Spanish colonists, but who know that most American liberals are too confused to rationally frame an objection to a protest by any minority group.

Nancy Pelosi’s obsession by Byron York

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/nancy-pelosis-obsession

On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation to create what would be called the “Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office.” The bill, written by one of Pelosi’s fellow Democrats, Rep. Jamie Raskin, would provide for the implementation of the 25th Amendment to remove a president deemed too incapacitated to carry out his or her responsibilities.

Pelosi, of course, led the Democratic effort to impeach and remove President Trump 11 months ago. For his part, Raskin has wanted to remove Trump from the get-go. He introduced a 25th Amendment bill in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency. He also took part in a Democratic effort on Jan. 6, 2017, before Trump was sworn in, to block the certification of votes for Trump in the Electoral College. On Dec. 6, 2017, Raskin joined 57 other House Democrats to vote to impeach Trump on the basis of the president’s statements about Colin Kaepernick and the NFL, among other things. Raskin was one of the original impeachers and, of course, enthusiastically supported impeachment when Pelosi took it up in 2019.

Now, Pelosi and Raskin claim their new 25th Amendment bill has nothing, nothing at all, to do with Trump. “This is not about President Trump,” Pelosi said at a news conference Friday. “He will face the judgment of the voters, but he shows the need for us to create a process for future presidents.”

Pelosi conceded that the bill, if it were to become law, would apply to the president who will be elected next month. That could, of course, be Trump. It could also be Democrat Joe Biden. But it seems doubtful that Pelosi and Raskin, Democrats who have pursued Trump relentlessly, would have taken the time, 24 days before the election, to introduce this bill if they felt absolutely, positively, 100% sure that Trump would not be reelected. So perhaps it would be wise to apply the famous “it’s not about the money” aphorism to Friday’s news conference: When someone says it’s not about Trump — it’s about Trump.

In Defense of Columbus Day By Kevin A.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/in_defense_of_columbus_day.html

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas and changed the course of world history forever.  In honor of this historic event, Columbus Day is observed in the United States, Latin America, Spain, and Italy.  In more recent years, however, there’s been increasing opposition to Columbus Day in favor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.  According to the left’s narrative, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World marked the beginning of one of the largest genocides in human history.  But was it really?

It’s true that many American Indians died after the Europeans discovered the Americas.  However, the vast majority of the native population, some 75 to 95 percent, were killed by Old World diseases to which they had no immunity.  While no less a tragedy, it does not constitute a genocide.  A genocide requires a calculated, deliberate intent to exterminate a whole group of people.  The Europeans were unaware that the natives didn’t have immunity to Old World diseases, let alone how infectious diseases even worked.  Germ theory was not fully developed and accepted until the latter half of the nineteenth century.  It should also be noted that in the United States, at least, there was never a government policy for extermination.  On the contrary, you don’t set up reservations and inoculate the people you are trying to exterminate.

Are COVID Case Surges More Fake News? By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/are_covid_case_surges_more_fake_news.html

Thousands of diagnoses and not many dying.

COVID cases are on the rise, or so we are told daily by a hysterical media. Newspaper headlines scream panic as this recent USAToday article proclaimed, “COVID-19 cases rising in 39 states – 9 months into the pandemic: We are overwhelmed.”

It’s the American people that are overwhelmed. Nine months into masks and lockdowns, with a presidential election just weeks away, facing a daily barrage of doom and gloom from the media. Are cases really on the rise or are these simply positive tests?

The above article, one of many warns, “A startling nine states setting ominous, seven-day records for infections.” 39 states reported more cases in the last week than they had in the week before.

What exactly is a “case”? The USAToday article doesn’t say. Neither do other articles or cable news doctors and other “experts.” Is a “case” simply a positive test?

The CDC answers this question with a “case definition.” A case is not just a positive test. Instead what is needed is, “Presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.” Notice the AND, meaning not simply a positive test.

Yet what the media trumpets as “surging cases” are only positive tests. There is no discussion of whether or not any of the individuals with positive tests are showing symptoms or are actually sick with the Chinese flu. Or if they are contagious and needing to be quarantined.

Opinion: AOC is an anti-Semite – it’s time to say it David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-aoc-is-an-anti-semite-its-time-to-say-it/

Last week’s revelation puts the nail in the coffin of Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Semitism.

The Democrats’ new guard bodes ill for Jews and Israel.

The latest slight was reported last week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has rebuffed meetings with local New York Jewish groups. At least one has been trying to arrange a sit-down with her for the last two years.

Neither the Jewish Community Relations Council, which represents 50 local Jewish groups, nor the New York Board of Rabbis has managed to pin down the freshman congresswoman.

There’s little doubt it’s because both are pro-Israel.

There’s nothing extremist about these two groups, in case there’s an AOC supporter out there looking for excuses. There’s plenty extremist about AOC, though.

As a member of The Squad, the four congresswomen of the apocalypse, AOC has largely dodged the anti-Semitic label so justifiably slapped onto two of its other members – Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). We can’t imagine why. The evidence keeps piling up.

Most recently, Ocasio-Cortez dropped out of a memorial for late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In late July, she praised the support of at least 10 anti-Semitic groups for a congressional letter she spearheaded calling for conditioning aid to Israel on its abandonment of its sovereignty plan in parts of Judea and Samaria.