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A Shortage Of Gratitude From The Turkey-Cons On Thanksgiving

Posted By on November 27th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/26/a-shortage-of-gratitude-from-the-turkey-cons-on-thanksgiving/

Do you have one or two ungrateful bores in your family who left you with a foul taste in your mouth after the Thanksgiving feast? This week, the two dullest conversationalists at the dinner table picked up and stormed out because they didn’t like the way some of the food was prepared.

Never Trump neocons Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes were lionized by MSNBC and CNN, the two cable channels whose mission it is to destroy conservatism, after announcing their departure from their very occasional Fox News gigs.

Which of them will land at CNN and which at MSNBC? That’s the only question; no one believes those channels won’t be their final destinations, where they will join Biden endorsers Bill Kristol, George Will and other self-styled conservatives who somehow reached the conclusion that venues that give racist riot-monger Al Sharpton and sex fiend Andrew Cuomo’s brother their own shows are more honorable journalistic entities than the home of Laura Ingraham and Brit Hume.

Those who develop and promote the ideas and principles that form the foundation of conservative public policy have always realized that in politics you return home with less than a full loaf. The late, great William F. Buckley, Jr. believed that conservatives should back “the most right, viable candidate who could win.”

But when such a politician attains power, he is bound to disappoint in some ways. George H.W. Bush broke his “Read My Lips: No New Taxes” pledge and appointed David Souter, who ended up being one of the most liberal justices on the Supreme Court (thank you, John Sununu); but conservatives appreciated Bush’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the highest court in the land, his most consequential legacy; and most applauded him for his Gulf War victory.

That president’s son, Bush 43, enraged those seeking to rein in government by adding a whole new edifice to the Medicare entitlement program, currently on a steady course toward insolvency, but that didn’t preclude the right’s gratitude for his tax cuts, his appointment of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, and rallying the nation after 9/11 more compellingly than any other president could have.

Many on the right were frustrated with Donald Trump’s vulgarity, his blustery exaggerations, and would even agree with Goldberg’s description of him as “a thin-skinned narcissist” with “no tolerance for criticism.” Some blame him for assembling the crowds on Jan. 6, from which came the mob of lawbreakers who stormed the Capitol, despite Trump’s admonition for all to remain peaceful.

But they weigh those defects and shortcomings against Trump’s policies and appointments – massive tax and regulatory relief that set the economy booming; three Supreme Court appointments that saved the nation from decades of left-wing judicial activism that would have shredded the Constitution; the rebuilding of our defenses and a whole-of-government awakening to China as a long-term enemy, both militarily and economically; and placing a dream team of principled conservatives like Mike Pompeo, Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, and Bill Barr in the highest-level positions.

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A Plea For Copping After school police are cut back, violence rises. By Larry Sand

Posted By on November 27th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/26/a-plea-for-copping/

In June 2020, the United Teachers of Los Angeles passed a motion to eliminate school police, and replace them with counselors and mental health programs. The union asserted, “Police presence in schools leads to negative outcomes for Black and Brown students, who are arrested and disciplined at higher rates than their peers.” Then, like an obedient puppy, the Los Angeles Unified School District board decided in February of this year to cut 133 or about 40 percent of its school cops in favor of kinder and gentler “climate coaches.” It was also decided that police will no longer patrol campuses, and will only be called upon to respond in-person during emergencies.

Interestingly, George McKenna, the only black L.A.U.S.D. school board member, protested the move. “The school police were never a danger to the students,” he said. “Are you under the assumption that there are no Crips, no Bloods, no gangs out there, and we’re going to do this with social workers?”

It’s worth noting that L.A. isn’t the only city to give cops the boot. Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Pomona did the same. Caroline Lucas, a youth organizer who advocated for the removal of officers at her school, Pomona High, encapsulates the spirit of the day. “For me, it means that leaders can experiment with what transformative activists have been trying to do.”

Well, the school districts have learned, like Dr. Frankenstein, that not all experiments turn out well. Pomona got a wake-up call after a shooting near Pomona High School left a 12-year-old injured by broken glass and debris. Seeing the light, the school board reversed course, and in a unanimous vote brought back the police after a four-month hiatus, stating that student safety is paramount.

Additionally, there has been a rise in violence in Los Angeles schools since the police were cut back. Using data from the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, CBS News reports that between August and October of this year, there were 108 assaults, with 16 students requiring hospitalization. Police sources add that 44 weapons recovered, including five handguns and 32 knives.

On November 18, in school police-free Sacramento, several teachers were injured while trying to quell a student brawl that had broken out. The Sacramento Police Department had to be called in to restore order.

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Critical Race Theory Destroys American Justice Although Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted, none of us is safe, so long as “critical race theory” and other Marxist ideas pollute our law schools, our judges’ minds, and our legal system.  By Christopher Roach

Posted By on November 27th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/26/critical-race-theory-destroys-american-justice-2/

The George Floyd riots, conveniently shut off this past summer, were as much theater as reality. They were designed to associate Donald Trump with police abuses and disorder, while painting Democrats and their notions of “racial justice” as the path forward. 

Ordinary citizens standing up for themselves interfere with this guerilla theater indoctrination; after all, there are a lot more normal people who do not want their towns burned down than there are maniacs willing to do street violence. This is why individuals like Kyle Rittenhouse and citizen self-defense groups are dealt with so harshly by the government and the media. 

Government Did Not Protect Us Last Summer

Consider that there were dozens of fires and beatings and a significant number of killings in Minneapolis, Kenosha, Chicago, Portland, St. Louis, and Seattle in the summer of 2020. Hardly any Antifa and BLM rioters have been brought to justice. Federal authorities have made no significant effort to roll up these groups.

In the cities worst hit by the riots, there appears to be a semi-cooperative relationship between the rioters and prosecutors. In the Rittenhouse trial, prosecutors presented Gaige Grosskreutz as a blameless victim, even though he illegally carried a concealed gun and pointed it at Kyle Rittenhouse after chasing him down. Grosskreutz also escaped responsibility for a subsequent DUI. 

But if Rittenhouse’s presence was provocative and illegal, why was Grosskreutz’s pursuit and brandishing a gun not a more serious crime?

Worse, one of the surprising revelations during the trial was the late production of FBI aerial footage. The high-definition footage had inexplicably disappeared, and the FBI kept news of this all to itself until a media leak. But the infrared, night vision footage remains, supporting Rittenhouse’s narrative and also providing a means to identify the various left-wing criminals who ran amok. Presumably, similar videos were secretly taken during other riots in 2020. 

But, so far as we know, in spite of an impressive surveillance capability, as well as signals intelligence and other resources at its disposal, the FBI has made no significant effort to identify and suppress the leaders, organizers, funders, and foot soldiers of Antifa and BLM responsible for the 2020 riots. 

Instead, we are lately told there is an explosion of “white supremacy” in a country that elected Barack Obama fewer than ten years ago, and that Antifa is only an “ideology,” not a terrorist group. 

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Thanksgiving Day: Another Front in the Leftist War on America Guess who wants to “reconsider” and “reevaluate” America’s day to give gratitude? Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 27th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/thanksgiving-day-another-front-leftist-war-america-bruce-thornton-0/

For going on a century, the international Left has been seeking to discredit and undermine the United States. One front in this war comprises attacks on American history, monuments, and the traditional holidays that recognize and celebrate this country’s exceptional institutions, especially political and economic freedom, and the unalienable rights of individuals.

Having failed serially and ruined every country it has governed, the Left has a deep hatred for the nation and principles that achieved what socialism could only promise. Defending our national traditions, then, is not about time off from work, shopping, overeating, and binging on football, but about our being grateful for our freedom, and the importance of the history of our nation’s beginning.

Given the Left’s long animus, there’s no surprise in a story about several American universities gathering at an event that asks whether Americans should “reconsider” and “reevaluate”  Thanksgiving. According to the event’s advertising,

Starting in 1970, many Americans, led by Indigenous protesters, believed that Thanksgiving should be rededicated as a National Day of Mourning to reflect the centuries-long displacement and persecution of Native Americans. The recent shift from Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day reflects a changing national mood. . . .  “Should Americans reconsider Thanksgiving when wrestling with our country’s complicated past?”

Such thinking reflects leftist revisionist history of the Howard Zinn and 1619 Project ilk, which in fact doesn’t correct the alleged partial and partisan historical record of America’s birth and scrub away its self-justifying myths, but rather simply replaces that history with an even more egregiously mythic one that violates every historiographical canon, especially the requirement that we avoid presentism––judging the past by the ideologically tainted standards of today.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The sleepwalkers in the South China Sea David P. Goldman

Posted By on November 27th, 2021

https://www.weltwoche.ch/amp/2021-47/weltwoche-international/wi-taiwan-die-weltwoche-ausgabe-47-2021.html

Taiwan’s integration into the mainland is a raison d’état for the Chinese regime. The ghosts of 1914 haunt the Pacific.

With just 24 million people, Taiwan is smaller than several Chinese cities. It has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates—much lower than mainland China. Its population under the age of 60 will fall by half during the next 40 years, according to UN projections, and every 100 workers will support 85 pensioners. That is unsustainable. Migration from the mainland is inevitable, and with it the eventual reintegration of Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China—unless the US and China go to war over the island.

Taiwan might be the Sarajevo of the 21st century. In some ways the comparison seems absurd. Serbia’s rapidly population growth directed its land hunger towards neighboring Serbia, while Russia incited Serbia against the Dual Monarchy in its long rivalry with the German cultural sphere. Taiwan by contrast has a dwindling population and a shared culture with the Mainland. A million Taiwanese work in the mainland and Taiwanese companies have invested some $60 billion in mainland industries.

Nonetheless former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has compared the sharpening of US-Chinese rivalry to the months prior to August 1914, and Admiral James Stavridis, the former head of the US Pacific Command, earlier this year published a novel depicting a US-Chinese nuclear exchange after naval battles in which China sinks a US aircraft carrier. The US and China “will likely find themselves in a full-blown, Cold War-like status in the near future…could this lead the two nations to a hot war? Even a nuclear exchange? Unfortunately, the answer is yes,” Stavridis wrote March 9 in Time Magazine.

The danger lies in a deep asymmetry of perceived interests.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Supply Chain and Border Security by Chris Farrell

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17947/supply-chain-border-security

There is another threat to the trucking industry, the supply chain and our national security. It is NOT reported in the mainstream media: Foreign truckers — cleared for expedited commercial crossings between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. — include at least half a dozen drivers who had deep connections to terrorism and drug-smuggling operations. And those are just the ones we know about.

The disturbing details are outlined in a 34-page report, issued by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General with redactions to protect information in the original “law enforcement sensitive” version.

Even when the criminal history of a candidate is available from another U.S. federal law enforcement agency, CBP apparently cannot access it. Instead of rejecting the foreign driver in question out of an abundance of caution, the agency simply rubber-stamps the candidate without additional screening.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says that national supply chain problems are caused by a lack of affordable childcare. While major U.S. ports such as Los Angeles and Baltimore have ships in the harbor waiting to offload cargo, a trucking shortage is delaying offloads and hauling. “Some of those issues,” Buttigieg stated, “may have to do with the availability of truckers, a thousand miles inland. There are a lot of things contributing to this. One of them is childcare, of course, which is why the president’s Build Back Better vision is going to be good for the labor market.”

Over at MSNBC, host Tiffany Cross offered a different analysis of the trucking/supply chain problem. “This is an industry populated by a lot of white men over the age of 55,” she stated. “This group of people overwhelmingly voted for Trump. Some people have talked about aggressive truck drivers cutting them off or not being helpful.”

The trucking shortages in the United States are real. Buttigieg and Cross are entitled to their opinions, of course, but their analyses seem off the mark. There is another threat to the trucking industry, the supply chain and our national security. It is NOT reported in the mainstream media: Foreign truckers — cleared for expedited commercial crossings between Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. — include at least half a dozen drivers who had deep connections to terrorism and drug-smuggling operations.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Chanukah Guide for the Perplexed 2021 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger,

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://bit.ly/3cHZFOl

Jewish national liberation holiday.  Chanukah (evening of November 28 – December 6, 2021) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays, Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles and Shavu’ot/Pentecost, which commemorate the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to liberation in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.   

Historical context  Chanukah is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews.

In 323 BCE, the Greek Empire was split into three independent and rival mini-empires (Greece-Seleucid/Syria-Ptolemaic/Egypt), following the death of Alexander the Great (Alexander III) who held Judaism in high esteem.

In 175 BCE, the Seleucid/Syrian Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes claimed the Land of Israel, and suspected that the Jews were allies of his Ptolemaic/Egyptian enemy.  The Seleucid emperor was known for eccentric behavior, hence his name, Epiphanes, which means “divine manifestation.”  He aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE, he devastated Jerusalem, attempted to massacre the Jewish population, and outlawed the practice of Judaism.

In 166/7 BCE, a Jewish rebellion was led by members of the non-establishment Hasmonean (Maccabee) family – from the rural town of Modi’in, half way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean – headed by Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Eleazar. They fought the Seleucid occupier and established Jewish independence.  The Hasmonean dynasty was replete with external and internal wars and lasted until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great (a proxy of Rome) defeated Antigonus II Mattathias.    

The success of the Maccabees on the battlefield was consistent with the reputation of Jews as superb warriors, who were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Carthage, Rome and other global and regional powers.

When ordered by Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid region to end the Jewish “occupation” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, Gezer and Akron, Shimon the Maccabee responded: “We have not occupied a foreign land…. We have liberated the land of our forefathers from foreign occupation (Book of Maccabees A: 15:33).”

Chanukah and the Land of Israel.  Chanukah highlights the centrality of the Land of Israel in the formation of Jewish history, religion and culture. The mountain ridges of Judea and Southern Samaria (the West Bank) were the platform for the Maccabean military battles: Mitzpah (the burial site of the Prophet Samuel, overlooking Jerusalem), Beth El (the site of the Ark of the Covenant and Judah the Maccabee’s initial headquarters), Beth Horon (Judah’s victory over Seron), Hadashah (Judah’s victory over Nicanor), Beth Zur (Judah’s victory over Lysias), Ma’aleh Levona (Judah’s victory over Apolonius), Adora’yim (a Maccabean fortress), Eleazar (named after Mattityahu’s youngest Maccabee son), Beit Zachariya (Judah’s first defeat), Ba’al Hatzor (where Judah was defeated and killed), Te’qoah, Mikhmash and Gophnah (bases of Shimon and Yonatan), the Judean Desert, etc.

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Hanukkah celebrates victory in struggle to maintain Judaism – opinion Facing existential threats of annihilation led by Iran, other Muslim countries, terrorism and the Islamic movement, we ask the same questions that our ancestors asked: How can we survive? By Moshe Dann

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hanukkah-celebrates-victory-in-struggle-to-maintain-judaism-opinion-686901

At the end of the Second Temple period, Jews struggled against the influence of Hellenism and the cultures and armies of Greece and Rome. They struggled to maintain Judaism and Jewish values and to preserve their independence as a nation-state in Eretz Yisrael – the Land of Israel. Their struggle was not only against external enemies but also internal divisions in a society divided among religious and political factions. They had a Temple, the focus of religious inspiration – at least for many – wise rabbinic authorities, a thriving economy and a powerful army. What happened?

As noted in the ArtScroll book, Chanukah: Its History, Observance, And Significance, “the famous ‘miracle of the lights,’ when a one-day supply of pure olive oil burned for eight days, took place three years after the beginning of the Hasmonean revolt. That is the only miracle that the Talmud (Shabbat 21b) mentions in its brief description of the Hanukkah events. The Al HaNissim liturgy, however, which recounts the festival’s origin and which is inserted into the Hanukkah prayers, tells a different story. There, the eight-day miracle of the oil is not even mentioned. There, the emphasis is on the miracles of the military triumph.”

Rabbi Dr. Shubert Spero, in his book Holocaust and Return to Zion, writes that Hanukkah is “about the condition of basic unity and fraternity of Jewish society during the first century CE. The rabbis were referring to the disintegration of the Jewish people in Judea into a cluster of warring and bickering sects, of which Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and New Christians were only the major ones.

“These religious and political divisions were the background for the unjustified hatred that destroyed the national unity of the Jewish people. There no longer was a common purpose or a felt mutual responsibility to support a national Jewish polity. This was the underlying cause of the disaster.”

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

Diana West on RFK Jr. in Milan: Resist, Resist, Resist, Resist

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://www.conservativehq.org/post/diana-west-on-rfk-jr-in-milan-resist-resist-resist-resist

Our friend Diana West, author of several must-read books, including American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character and The Red Thread, A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, just posted this article alerting us to an astonishing speech Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delivered in Milan, Italy.

We share Ms. West’s column with her kind permission because Kennedy’s remarks have received no coverage in the establishment media and, as she observed, are “unique among national American figures, sizes up the pandemic response for what it is: a coordinated assault on liberal democracy all over the world, which has nothing to do with public health, but which, in the USA, gutted our Bill of Rights and thus robbed us of our constitutionally protected liberties.”

Ms. West’s column begins:

News media have failed to cover any of the above, which is actually solid evidence of the importance of these events. But why do I call Kennedy’s speech historic?

For its scope, wisdom and passion, this address, which I’ve transcribed below, is certainly memorable. Kennedy, unique among national American figures, sizes up the pandemic response for what it is: a coordinated assault on liberal democracy all over the world, which has nothing to do with public health, but which, in the USA, gutted our Bill of Rights and thus robbed us of our constitutionally protected liberties. He easily dispatches with the C19 clot shot by using Pfizer’s own research data, which tell us that for every one life Pfizer claims to have saved with its “vaccine,” four lives were lost to heart attacks. (This data, Kennedy says, is to be found in a table of Pfizer research filed with the FDA.)

But it is Kennedy’s courage in giving this speech that is epic.

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Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in many of the pillars of our civilization. And with good reason. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/24/losing-confidence-in-the-pillars-of-our-civilization/

Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America. 

Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation’s traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies—especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks. 

Not so much anymore. 

For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality. 

In the last five years, the FBI was mostly in the news for the checkered careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok. Add in the criminality of convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. 

The colossal FBI-driven “Russian collusion” hoax was marked by leaking of confidential FBI memos, forged documents, improper surveillance, and serial disinformation. 

Prior heads of the CIA and FBI, as well as the director of national intelligence, have at times either not told the truth under oath or claimed amnesia—without legal repercussions. 

Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan. Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility—much less resigned—for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century. 

Instead, Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity. Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.

Never in U.S. history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi.