ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Is No Friend of Israel by Con Coughlin

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18584/biden-is-no-friend-of-israel

The real crime, one that represents a serious breach of the long-standing intelligence-sharing arrangements between the US and Israel, is that one of President Joe Biden’s senior officials has been willing to betray the trust of such a close ally.

At a time when tensions are already running high between Iran and the West over the stalled nuclear talks, there are quite justifiable concerns in Israel that the leak will prompt Iran to exact revenge by attacking Israeli targets, even if it later transpires that Israel was not responsible for the assassination.

The timing of the leak also indicates an underlying willingness on the part of the Biden administration to undermine Israel when, in public, the White House is seeking to portray itself as an ally of Israel, as indicated by its recent seeming decision not to remove the IRGC from the US list of designated terrorist organisations.

As for motivation, it is unclear if the leak was deliberate, to harm Israel, or from not fully appreciating the jeopardy it could potentially cause Israel, an act which would reflect the Biden administration’s profound lack of understanding as to what is at stake with the entire Iran issue.

Nothing better illustrates the Biden administration’s deep-seated antipathy towards the State of Israel than the leaking of highly classified material about the alleged role Israeli intelligence played in the assassination of a top-ranking Iranian terrorist.

For decades, Israel and the US have enjoyed a unique intelligence-sharing relationship whereby the two countries share the most sensitive material on their respective intelligence, security and military operations.

But the deep-seated bond of trust that forms the bedrock of this vital relationship has been seriously compromised as a result of the Biden administration’s egregious decision to leak details of Israel’s alleged involvement in the killing of Colonel Sayad Khodayee, a senior commander in the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Justice Department Fail: The Flynn Unmasking Classified information was leaked to the media by several Obama intelligence officials. But no one will be punished.  By Julie Kelly

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/02/another-justice-department-fail-the-flynn-unmasking/

Barack Obama’s crusade to destroy Lt. General Michael Flynn began months before Election Day in 2016. Flynn resigned as Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency director in 2014 amid clashes with his boss at the time, James Clapper, over the administration’s approach to the war on terror. In early 2016, Flynn, who had become an outspoken critic of Obama’s foreign policy, joined the Trump presidential campaign; a few months later, Obama’s FBI opened a counterintelligence probe into Flynn and three other campaign associates.

After Trump won, Team Obama accelerated its targeting of Flynn. Obama warned Trump during an Oval Office meeting shortly after Election Day not to hire Flynn, advice Trump promptly rejected. So, Obama set out to make Trump pay for his defiance.

The alleged details of discussions between Flynn, slated to serve as Trump’s national security advisor, and the Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions against the Kremlin for “interfering” in the presidential election were leaked to the Washington Post a week before Trump’s inauguration.

Columnist David Ignatius first planted the idea that Flynn might have broken federal law by talking about sanctions in numerous phone calls. 

“According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking,” Ignatius wrote on January 12, 2017.  “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

New election integrity fears: Georgia county ballot machines off by thousands when hand counted The first place candidate dropped to third place after the hand count By Madeleine Hubbard

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/new-election-integrity-fears-georgia-county-ballot-machines-thousands

The Democratic primary for a Georgia county has been called into question after a hand count revealed the voting machines were off by thousands of ballots.

Marshall Orson, a Democratic DeKalb County school board member running for the county commission, asked the local elections board on Thursday to not certify the results as scheduled on Friday due to “numerous issues” with the race.

Orson asked for an “independent review” and a formal recount of the election in his letter to the board, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

“There is no rational basis for believing that there are not continuing issues with the results and the results should not be certified with the continuing existence of multiple substantive issues and concerns,” Orson wrote. “Doing so would pose a substantial risk not only to the confidence the public will have in the overall election results from this race but could extend to the entire primary as well as the general election.”

The initial Democratic primary results showed Orson winning for commission District 2 with Lauren Alexander in second place and Michelle Long Spears in third. This would have put Orson against Alexander in a runoff election.

However, Spears noticed that the results showed she received zero votes at most election precincts. 

The secretary of state’s office admitted late last month to making several programing mistakes in the ballot equipment that affected the final tally. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yes, Biden Deserves Blame For Inflation By: David Harsanyi

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/01/yes-biden-deserves-the-blame-for-inflation/

From top to bottom, the Biden administration botched the inflation problem.

“So, while it’s true that inflation is a complex, multifaceted problem that isn’t entirely any person’s or administration’s or event’s fault, it is fair to say that the Biden administration, from top to bottom, was as wrong as an administration could be on the issue. They ignored it. They weren’t prepared. They exacerbated it. At the very least, Biden deserves a lot more credit for inflation than he does economic growth. If you’re going to take credit for the latter, you deserve blame for the former.”

Joe Biden has written an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal detailing his plan to fight inflation.

Well, perhaps the word “detailing” is too generous. The preponderance of the column features Biden taking credit for economic growth that can be attributed to the reopening of an economy that was shuttered by the governing class during Covid. Biden, of course, not only championed those closings, but was critical of Republican governors who opened their states before he deemed it appropriate.

But with midterms approaching, there’s been a concerted effort underway to exonerate the president, and thus Democrats, of any culpability for rising prices. Biden sycophant “Morning Joe,” for example, contends that anyone who blames the president for more than a “passing impact” on inflation is a “lying hack or an ignorant rube.” One wonders if that group includes former Obama adviser Steve Rattner, who argues that inflation has been driven by government putting “too much money in people’s pockets?” Or Obama’s one-time Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers, who had been warning for more than a year that cash infusions would exacerbate inflation? Or Jeff Bezos, who correctly pointed out that the “administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy?”

Even if we were to concede that there is no good way to quantify exactly how much recent spending helped propel inflation — which is outpacing other Western nations — it’s clear that the Biden administration completely mismanaged what should have been a slam-dunk recovery.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

BU Professor Reveals This Week’s New Thing That’s Racist $58,000 to attend Boston University. And this is what you get. Robert Spencer

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bu-professor-reveals-weeks-new-thing-thats-racist-robert-spencer/

It costs $58,000 a year to attend Boston University, but don’t think that for all that money you’re going to get anything resembling, say, an education. No, Boston University today, like most other American colleges and universities, is dedicated to turning out thoroughly indoctrinated Leftists who will serve as reliable cadres in the fundamental transformation of American society that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden have promised us. That’s why BU employs someone such as Saida Grundy as an assistant professor: a racist apologist for rioting is just the kind of professor the universities want these days. Having one on staff is a big source of prestige.

This is clear from the fact that Grundy’s racist, pro-rioting remarks weren’t just statements she made as an individual, which BU tactfully ignored or even disavowed. Come on, man! This is 2022! On Wednesday, BU proudly tweeted video of Grundy speaking about the George Floyd riots, and saying:

If we’re gonna talk about George Floyd and really understand it, then we need to understand community reactions to it, and we often hear politicians, we hear civic leaders, from inside black communities and from outside of them as well. We hear President Biden say, “You know, I understand your frustrations but don’t destroy property.” Well, when you say that to black people who historically have been property, one of our greatest weapons against injustice was the looting of ourselves as property from the system of slavery. And what we see in communities is they’re reacting to the very racism of what we call property, right? So that’s why I think it’s very important for, you know, people who see reactions in communities to not judge and to not make assumptions about what is good and not good reactions. And not actually re-victimize communities by saying there’s an acceptable and a not acceptable way to react. Listen to them, and then we can say what these communities need.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Open Season on the Jews of France Yet another French Jew is murdered in an anti-Semitic hate crime. Ari Lieberman

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/its-open-season-jews-france-ari-lieberman/

In what has become a disturbing, and all too familiar occurrence in France, another elderly French Jew has been murdered in an unprovoked attack motivated by antisemitism. On May 21, an 89-year-old Lyon resident named René Hadjaj was defenestrated from the 17th floor of the apartment complex where he resided. The perpetrator has been identified as a 51-year-old male of Algerian origin named Rachid Kheniche. Hadjaj was said to have been wearing a kippah at the time of the assault.

French police were quick to dismiss the attack as a dispute between neighbors unrelated to antisemitism. However, watchdog groups quickly alerted French law enforcement authorities to Kheniche’s social media postings where he engaged in antisemitic rants. After viewing the postings, the French prosecutor’s office requested that judges presiding over the case include an antisemitic motive charge as an aggravating circumstance in killing of Hadjaj.

Hadjaj’s murder is eerily similar to the horrific April 2017 murder of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old French-Jewish retired doctor, who was severely beaten and thrown from her apartment to her death. In that case, the killer was a 27-year-old drug dealer and user named Kobili Traore. Halimi, who lived in the same apartment complex as Traore had previously expressed fear of her future killer after enduring his repeated antisemitic threats. During his assault against Halimi, Traore yelled Allahu-Akbar (God is Great) a common Islamist refrain. After killing her, Traore reportedly said that he had just killed The Shaytan, an Islamic reference to Satan.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Immigrant Population Is Growing Rapidly By Mark Krikorian

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-immigrant-population-is-growing-rapidly/

The total foreign-born population reached a record 47 million in April, according to a new report by my colleagues Steven Camarota and Karen Ziegler.

While that’s the largest number ever recorded, and the total number of immigrants is important in itself, the simple fact of a record number is maybe the least interesting finding of the report; after all, a growing population of any kind sets a new record every year.

But the pace of that growth is remarkable. The report, based on the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey, noted that the 47 million number is half-again more than in 2000. Going back further, the total size of the foreign-born population has doubled since 1990, tripled since 1980, and quintupled since 1970. (The total U.S. population has grown only by about half since 1970.)

What’s more, the growth is accelerating. This total number of foreign-born (people living here who weren’t U.S. citizens at birth — legal and illegal, naturalized citizen, green-card, H-1B, whatever) has grown by 2 million just since Joe Biden was inaugurated in January of last year. And two-thirds of that increase under Biden are illegal aliens (1.35 million), which should be no surprise considering the ongoing dissolution of the border. (The Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics both state that illegal immigrants are included in their survey data, though some do get missed.)

In addition to the size of the foreign-born population, the percentage also matters. The foreign-born now account for one in seven U.S. residents (14.3 percent) — the highest percentage since 1910.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ilya Shapiro’s Reinstatement Is a Win for the Political Power of Free Speech, But a Loss for the Value of Academic Freedom By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ilya-shapiros-reinstatement-is-a-win-for-the-political-power-of-free-speech-but-a-loss-for-the-value-of-academic-freedom/

There are two ways to look at Georgetown University Law Center’s decision to reinstate Ilya Shapiro after a five-month investigation into a tweet. On the upside, Shapiro was not fired, and he will begin teaching at the law school, a visible symbol of vindication over cancel culture. That is a win for the good guys in terms of raw power: Georgetown clearly signaled, in its statement (reprinted in full below), that the dean would have preferred to fire him — whether due to the dean’s own animus or terror of his woke students — but did not feel at liberty to do so given the extensive publicity and the forces rallying to Shapiro’s defense. Thus, he was grudgingly retained with some excuses about technicalities (his tweet preceded his start date) and allowed to return — only after students are off campus for the summer. The cowardly timing suggests that the dean is hoping the whole thing goes away by the fall.

That’s progress! The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is justly crowing at the win. The cry-bullies and rage-mobbers failed because they were resisted. They prefer to work in the darkness, and they fear the light.

The bad news: This was a win for outside pressure, not for internal reform. The law school’s statement validating the mob’s whining contains obvious warnings that political statements disliked by left-leaning students or administrators will be a firing offense. There is not a shred of acknowledgement that academic freedom is actually valued by the law school. The process — 122 days in limbo — was punishment in itself. The message here is clear: Stay in line, or you will go through the same thing — and if you’re not as prominent and respected as Ilya Shapiro, and supported with as much vigor by enough friends of free speech, you may not survive as he did.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Different Outcomes, Not Different Treatment Most studies of alleged discrimination in medical care document racial disparities in clinical results, not biased treatment. Stanley Goldfarb

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/political-distortion-of-medical-research

The political distortion of medical research has a sordid history, but it’s unfortunately not just a thing of the past. Today, a popular narrative has taken hold that a racist medical establishment is the reason that blacks have shorter life expectancies, worse clinical outcomes for many diseases, and even excess maternal and infant mortality. The claim is unsupported by evidence, however, and believing it won’t do anything to improve black patients’ health.

Search for the terms “racism” and “medicine” in the National Library of Medicine database, and thousands of scientific publications appear. Journalists and a growing number of doctors regard this as proof of medical discrimination. But most of these studies do not prove any causality; they merely document disparities in clinical outcomes and medical services for black Americans. Nonetheless, they increasingly serve to justify such discriminatory practices as preferentially reserving scarce Covid-19 therapies for blacks.

A rush to find racism typifies most of the many thousands of opinion pieces, original investigations, and review articles on the topic of clinical outcomes for black patients. That literature supports a media that has eagerly adopted the narrative of racism embedded in American health care. The result undermines the trust in medical care needed for successful patient- physician relationships and diverts scarce resources in combating a nonexistent factor in poor health outcomes.

The rules for conducting robust scientific research require scientists to try to disprove their own theories. One can never absolutely prove a hypothesis correct; one can only show that experiments fail to disprove it. The investigator should begin by doubting the hypothesis and do his best to disprove it with carefully designed experiments. Unfortunately, too many studies on medical racism are carried out by investigators who, following the prevailing political trend, set out to confirm their ideas of a racist health-care system. A biased experiment can easily lead to a desired outcome, and emphasizing some results while ignoring others can lead to a faulty conclusion.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How The White House Fumbled The Inflation Football And Lost The Game

Posted By on June 3rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/03/how-the-biden-administration-fumbled-the-inflation-football-and-lost-the-game/
Wasn’t it not even a year ago we were told that inflation would, in fact, be a “good” thing? That it was “transitory”? Not a serious threat. Now we’re finding that the media, Wall Street economists, Fed officials, but most of all, the Biden administration, were all wrong. Does anyone pay a price for gross incompetence anymore?

Last year, headlines were filled with inflation cheerleaders. We searched the term “inflation is good” and got back 508 million hits.

What’s troubling about this expert consensus is that inflation, now at a 40-year-high, isn’t good for anyone.

It skews business and personal decisions, wrecks family budgets, makes millions of low-income families even poorer, destroys personal thrift and wealth, undermines faith in the economy, distorts financial markets, and discourages investment and innovation.

And, eventually, it destroys real economic growth, undermining the very underpinnings of our prosperity and standard of living. We’re on the way to that now.

Which brings us to our main point: The failure of our “experts,” “elites” and elected officials to attack the root causes of inflation, namely runaway government spending and the Fed’s relentless money printing, based on bogus Modern Monetary Theory, that makes the spending possible.

No one in the Biden administration wants to step forward and accept responsibility for the inflation mess. That’s why it looked almost brave as one person finally stepped forward this week to admit there was a miscalculation.

“I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this week, after he asked about her calling inflation a “small risk” just last year.

Good start. But in the next breath, she fobbed off blame on a host of other factors:

“As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand, but we recognize that now,” she said.

Excuse us, but the causes of our inflation problem were evident even back in 2021.

The administration was repeatedly warned, as we noted, by some of its own party (hello, Larry Summers) about the inflationary impact of $1.9 trillion in added COVID spending, along with the still-alive proposal to spend another $5 trillion on the foolish pork-barrel “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan.

And Yellen knew about the record surge in the money supply in 2021, a clear indication that our economy was headed for soaring inflation. The Fed helped the government print $14.5 trillion in new money from April 2020 to June of 2021, the biggest money supply surge in the nation’s history. It didn’t boost output that much. Inflation was inevitable.

As Fed chief from 2014 to 2018, Yellen must know that latter point. Too bad she comes from the Keynesian school of economics, which denies such self-evident economic truths.

She, as do so many others, seems to have forgotten or ignored the clear lessons of the 1970s, when soaring spending (a 269% real increase in government spending during the decade), and out-of-control money printing to pay our monthly oil bill from the Mideast, set off scary levels of inflation that peaked at close to 15% in 1980.

We’re in a similar place now. Only, our president doesn’t seem to get it.

This week, he basically admitted he didn’t fully understand the baby formula shortage, which has sent prices for formula spiraling as much as 300% in some markets. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility – the Abbott (Laboratories Inc.) facility,” President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday.

Except, it was his administration that shut the plant in February due to safety concerns, leading to a formula shortage. And Biden was fully apprised of it in a meeting with manufacturers three months ago.

“We knew from the very beginning this would be a very serious event,” said Robert Cleveland, senior vice president for North American operations of the Reckitt Co., as reported by RealClearPolitics.

And contrary to the idea that inflation’s “good,” news in recent days shows just how wrong that is:

Baby-formula inflation is hitting low-income families hardest.
This week, the USDA warned Americans that eggs, a nutritional staple in many households, may soon cost $1 each.
Meanwhile, a new study by The Center Square says that a quarter of all Americans intend to put off their retirement because of inflation.

“Nearly 60% of those surveyed said that inflation has adversely affected their personal finances, of which about one in four said that they have felt a major impact,” according to the Center Square. “As a result of inflation, 36% of Americans have reduced their savings and 21% have reduced their retirement savings. A quarter of Americans will need to delay their retirement.”

Biden has privately raged at aides about inflation, but only to blame others for the catastrophe caused by his own policies. It’s a disaster that could cost his party control of Congress and him the presidential election in 2024, if he runs again.

As our friend Stephen Moore noted, “In this administration, it’s always someone else’s fault. Inflation is now the No. 1 concern of voters, so the White House first blamed COVID. Then Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Then Vladimir Putin. Then meatpackers and the poultry industry, Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies.”

A report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said that inflation cost the average family $3,200 last year. Newer estimates say inflation could cost families as much as $5,200 this year, according to Bloomberg. That’s quite a cut in a family’s standard of living, especially since wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.

All this was foreseeable by our media and our elected leaders. Those who told us inflation would be a “good thing” were wrong as hell. So were those who told us it would be transitory. Don’t worry, none will be fired.

Worst of all, the White House has once again shown why it is now one of the least popular administrations in modern history: It is incapable of acting in the public interest, and responds only to one side of the political spectrum. But political arrogance has a cost, and we’ll likely see that result in this year’s midterm elections.