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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Gallup Reports Americans’ Satisfaction with Race Relations Has Increased 14 Percent Since Trump’s Inauguration By Tobias Hoonhout

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gallup-reports-americans-satisfaction-with-race-relations-has-increased-14-percent-since-trumps-inauguration/

A new Gallup poll released Monday found that Americans have become considerably more optimistic about the state of race relations since Trump took office, with a 14-point increase over just three years.

Satisfaction on “the state of race relations” in the country rose from a mere 22 percent in January 2017, just before Trump took office, to 36 percent in January 2020, just weeks before Trump’s State of the Union address.

Race relations optimism still remains 8 points lower than it was in 2001, and a survey of the population from January 2 to January 15 showed that 58 percent of Americans were still dissatisfied with the state of race relations.

Respondents’ satisfaction with “the position of blacks and other racial minorities in the nation” also rose nine points over three years to 46 percent in 2020, as part of a larger trend which showed that Americans overall satisfaction with the direction of the country was at its highest point since 2005.

Video: 120 Members of Congress Support Hamas-Linked CAIR A nation’s suicide.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/video-120-members-congress-support-hamas-linked-frontpagemagcom/

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses 120 Members of Congress Support Hamas-Linked CAIR, unveiling a nation’s suicide.

Don’t miss it!

Rashida Tlaib, Blood Libels and the Democratic Party Failure of Dem leadership to condemn a foul-mouthed, Jew-hating conspiracy theorist is a telling sign. Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/rashida-tlaib-blood-libels-and-democratic-party-ari-lieberman/

By the time Israeli first responders had pulled eight-year-old Qais Abu Ramila out of the rain-filled cistern in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Haninah this past Friday night, he was showing no signs of life. Israeli paramedics frantically tried to resuscitate the boy, but it was too late. Ramila had accidentally fallen into the cistern and drowned. Israeli efforts to locate Ramila and resuscitate him were nothing short of heroic. To the Israeli paramedics and other first responders who waded in the pond’s cold, murky waters, it mattered not that he was Arab or Jewish. A boy was missing, and his anguished parents needed resolution.

That should have been the end of this sad and tragic affair, but sadly, it was only the beginning. The boy’s family initially claimed that Ramila was kidnapped by “settlers,” an unsubstantiated claim that they quickly retracted. Nevertheless, rumors of a kidnapping whipped an Arab mob into a frenzy. The mob tried to enter an adjacent Jewish neighborhood but was blunted by Israeli security forces.

A faceless and nameless Palestinian troll account going by the name realSeifBitar, then took to Twitter and tweeted that Ramila was “kidnapped by a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers, assaulted and thrown in a water well…” That was a blatant lie and could be characterized as nothing short of a blood libel. The troll account further noted that Israeli security forces tried to impede with rescue efforts; another revolting lie.

It’s one thing for a nameless, faceless troll account to invoke a blood libel in furtherance of nefarious political aims. It’s an entirely different matter however, when those who propagate the blood libel are government officials.

Hanan Ashrawi, a prominent Palestinian official and no stranger to blood libels, retweeted the troll account’s mendacious comments adding, “The heart just shatters.” She later recanted, noting that the report was unverified. But before she did so, her tweet was picked up by democratic congressional lawmaker Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 13th congressional district. Though she later deleted the offensive tweet, she refused to apologize even after Ashrawi retracted.

Trump years bring real hope and change, making America great again By Ethel C. Fenig

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/trump_years_bring_real_hope_and_change_making_america_great_again.html

Although former president Barack H. Obama (D) campaigned and won the presidency twice on a slogan of hope and change, he left his office leaving Americans “frustrated and angry” according to an AP survey analyzed in Fortune, full of “fear and loathing,” deemed Michael Goodwin of the New York Post — both admittedly not Obama fans.  However, even the Obama-friendly Public Broadcasting System (PBS) could only sum up the two Obama terms with “achievements and setbacks.”

That was then; this is now.  Three years into the Donald J. Trump (R) presidency, ABC News, another media outlet hostile to Trump, reports: 

US life expectancy rose in 2018 for 1st time in 4 years: Study

Drug overdose deaths are declining for the first time in decades.

Life expectancy in the U.S. rose in 2018, the first such increase in four years, according to a report the National Center for Health Statistics published on Thursday.

The average American man will live to be 76, and the average woman will live to be 81.

Those gains were driven by declines in 6 of the 10 leading causes of death between 2017 and 2018, and a notable drop in drug overdose deaths.

Overdose deaths, after increasing for decades, fell for the first time in 28 years, from 70,237 in 2017 to 67,367 in 2018, according to the report.

“It’s really the drug overdose deaths that are driving that trend,” said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at NCHS.

Drug overdose deaths, Anderson explained, have a profound impact on average life expectancy because many occur at younger ages than other leading causes of death — cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease.

A Ten Point Action Plan to Stem Attacks Against Jews By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/a_ten_point

The Jewish community is experiencing an explosion of anti-Jewish attacks, both physical and ideological. Jews have been gunned down or stabbed in Pittsburgh, San Diego, Jersey City, and Monsey, and are being pushed, beaten, and cursed on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. The attacks are happening against the community and individuals, in Jewish institutions and on subways, on almost a daily basis.

Though neo-Nazis, leftist anti-Zionists, and Jew haters within the Black and Islamic communities often disagree, they are united in their animus toward Jews. There are today powerful forces arrayed against the Jewish people, not simply from the right but predominantly — and with greater cultural influence –from the political Left.

Thus far, those in major establishment Jewish organizations have been unable or unwilling to stop the daily harassment of Jews on campus and on New York City streets. Many in the Jewish community now rightfully acknowledge that we have a crisis in Jewish organizational leadership. Our major organizations, be it the ADL, the JCRC, or the many Federations, are failing us.

Furthermore, the loyalty and simpatico of these cash-laden organizations with liberal/left ideology renders them unwilling to combat the pernicious negativity against Jews coming from members within certain minority groups. Similarly, they are reluctant to condemn the anti-Jewish rhetoric coming from groups within the Democrat Party.

Crying Wolf on Impeachment The whole affair was a series of major fouls. The best outcome is a speedy acquittal.By Kimberley A. Strassel

https://www.wsj.com/articles/crying-wolf-on-impeachment-11580428689?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump is coming down to one big question: Will Democrats, by crying wolf, drown out the more legitimate Republican cry of foul?

“Foul” has served as the GOP’s most powerful and honest argument from the first days of these impeachment maneuverings. Democrats broke every standard of due process, transparency and fairness in their House investigation, making a mockery of their constitutional duty.

They hid the identity of the original accuser, denying Republicans and the country the ability to judge his motives. They held secret depositions, barring more than three-quarters of House members, as well as the press and the American public. They called 18 witnesses, but blocked the president from calling any in his defense. The White House legal team was excluded from the proceedings—prohibited from cross-examining witnesses, denied the ability to introduce any evidence that spoke to the central question of the president’s focus on Ukrainian corruption.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff secretly obtained and published the communications records of the president’s private attorney, a member of Congress and a reporter. Democrats withdrew their court challenge to compel a key witness, depriving the White House of the ability to defend its executive-privilege claim in court. And the legitimacy of the first portion of the House inquiry—including numerous subpoenas—is in doubt, since it was conducted before the House voted to open it.

Wrapping Up Impeachment House answers to Senate questions show why it’s time to end this trial.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/wrapping-up-impeachment-11580430769?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Senate will acquit President Trump on both House articles of impeachment. That much even Adam Schiff knows. The Senate trial is now all about the election and impeachment precedents, which are two of many good reasons for cleaning up the trial distortions and wrapping up the show this week.

Start with the media claim that defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz said a President can do anything to further his re-election as long he thinks it is in the national interest. This isn’t what he said. The Harvard professor said explicitly that a President can be impeached for criminal acts. He could be impeached for soliciting a financial bribe, for example, or seeking a campaign contribution from a foreign source. He could also be impeached for exceeding his constitutional authority.

Mr. Dershowitz differs from the press in believing that a President cannot be impeached for acts of foreign policy that may be in his personal political interest but aren’t themselves impeachable acts. Presidents conduct foreign policy in what they think is the national interest, but they also hope it will be in their political interest. Presidents typically act from “mixed motives,” as Mr. Dershowitz put it, that are difficult to discern or to separate the high-minded from the self-interested.

It is thus too low a constitutional bar for the House to claim, as it does, that Mr. Trump can be impeached because Democrats think his motives were corrupt. The acts themselves must qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Mr. Trump’s acts don’t qualify—because asking aid recipients to investigate corruption isn’t illegal, and in any case the aid to Ukraine was delivered on time and no investigation of Joe Biden was started. This does not condone Mr. Trump’s request, which was reckless and dumb, but it isn’t an impeachable offense.

Key GOP senator to vote against impeachment witnesses Jon Ward

 Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., announced Thursday night he will vote against calling witnesses to the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, likely ending the last real suspense of the trial and opening the door for a speedy conclusion Friday or Saturday.

“There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter,” Alexander said late Thursday in a statement, after another day-long session in the Senate, the ninth day of the trial overall.

Alexander said the charges against the president – that he inappropriately pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens – had been “proved” by the House managers, and that the president had acted improperly.

Richard Baehr on Impeachment and Politics

There was never any chance that the Senate was going to convict Donald Trump.  In the House, the Democrats could not persuade a single  Republican and lost a few of their own members on the impeachment vote. What chance was there to persuade 20 Republican Senators, even assuming the Democrats could get all of their own 47 Senators to convict (which may not happen)? The entire process from start to finish was theater- designed by the Democrats to weaken Trump before the November election, and force some Republican Senators in competitive races,  to cast difficult votes (Collins, Gardner, Tillis, McSally, Ernst, among others). The case itself was the weakest presidential impeachment case ever considered in Congress.

The Democrats, buoyed by the 2018 midterm results, and two governors elections and the Virginia legislative elections in 2019, were confident that 2020 was going to be their year- win the White House, take control of the Senate, hold the House, and win control of  a bunch of state legislatures so as to manage redistricting after the census results were announced.  It is still over 9 months before the November elections, and anyone who thinks that the results are already baked in, is kidding himself or herself. Even Nate Silver says it is hazardous to predict the Iowa caucus results, which have been heavily polled, and are only 4 days away.  One state legislative race  in Texas was seen as a  possible harbinger of how Texas was changing, a state critical to the fortunes of the GOP, and whether Democratic electoral momentum in the suburbs was continuing.  Democrats spent a bunch of  money on the race,  and had a lot of big name surrogates campaign, and the results were to put it mildly, disappointing . In an open seat race, the GOP candidate won by a much bigger margin than Ted Cruz, who carried the district in 2018, or Trump, who won it in 2016.

https://pjmedia.com/election/bellwether-to-blowout-texas-house-district-gets-redder-to-lead-off-2020-elections/

Nate Silver on Iowa: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-iowa-caucuses-are-in-4-days-almost-anything-could-still-happen/

The Democrats’ dirty secret? They don’t want witnesses Getting John Bolton to testify might only prolong their political misery Charles Lipson

https://spectator.us/democrats-dirty-secret-dont-want-witnesses/

The Senate leaders have stated their positions clearly and constantly. Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democratic minority, is demanding that John Bolton testify.

Mitch McConnell, who leads the Republicans’ narrow majority, responds that the Senate already has enough evidence to vote. If more was needed, the House should have gotten it when it had the chance. Anyway, the House managers have repeatedly boasted they have ‘overwhelming evidence’. The president’s lawyers add that, if any witnesses are called, they want to call some, too.

They want to hear from former Vice President Biden, his son Hunter, the whistleblower whose complaint started the impeachment, and Rep. Schiff and his staff, who apparently worked with the whistleblower. That’s really a threat, meant to deter the Democrats in two ways. A parade of witnesses would prolong the trial. It would introduce new evidence that might damage the House managers’ case and perhaps to Schiff and Biden personally.

Those are the declared positions. What about the political calculations below the surface? Actually, neither side wants witnesses. The Republicans say so openly. The Democrats cannot. It’s not just that they have been clamoring to hear from John Bolton and other Trump aides. It’s not just because their base wants satisfaction. It’s because their best political move now is to blame Trump’s near-certain acquittal on a ‘Republican cover-up’.