Sydney Williams: Who’s in Charge?

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

My parents had a book of cartoons titled, Who’s in Charge Here? Written in 1943, it is a compilation of cartoons by George Price (1901-1995) who had started drawing for The New Yorker in 1929 and continued doing so into his 80s. While Herblock’s cartoon was aimed at President Carter, the message could be directed at today’s White House. As last Saturday’s lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it: “…all Presidents stumble in speech. But Mr. Biden’s frequent public confusion about the major issues of the day is a reason for the growing public concern.” If Mr. Biden is mentally unfit, who is in charge?

Mr. Biden’s incoherence and mental lapses should concern us. Roger Kimball, the American art critic and conservative social commentator recently posed a rhetorical question: “Is it more worrisome that Joe Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge?” The White House website states that the power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States. Including members of the armed forces, the Branch employs more than four million Americans, more than any private company, and a number that exceeds the population of the United States when George Washington became our first President. (In total, according to the Brookings Institute, the federal government employs nine million.) The White House website reads: “The President is both head of state and head of government of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.” It is arguably the most powerful position in the world. The American people deserve to know who is in charge. 

It does not appear to be Joe Biden whose political reputation extends back over fifty years. During last year’s campaign, he ran as the moderate alternative to Senator’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He promised, like his predecessor Warren Harding 100 years earlier, a return to “normalcy.” However, his support of Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral pronouns, and his recent proposals for a “Green New Deal,” universal basic income, a wealth tax and a five trillion-dollar budget satisfy the most radical Progressives in Congress. They remind us of Barack Obama’s pledge in late October 2008 in Columbia, Missouri, shortly before his election: “…we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” While Mr. Obama later walked back those comments, they preordained Mr. Biden’s intent to “transform” our culture, schools and economy.

Jewish academics promote ‘binationalism’ in place of Israel: Moshe Phillips

https://www.jns.org/opinion/jewish-academics-promote-binationalism-in-place-of-israel/

The annual convention of the Association for Jewish Studies on Dec. 19 will feature “Binationalism Revisited‒Palestinian, Zionist and Jewish-American Perspectives.” A snapshot of panelists speaks volumes.

The premier association of Jewish-studies scholars is planning to provide a platform in December for radical professors to promote “binationalism” to replace Israel.

Binationalism has a long and ugly history in the Jewish world. When Palestinian Arabs slaughtered 69 Jews in Hebron in 1929, Hebrew University chancellor Judah Leon Magnes responded that Jews should give up the dream of a Jewish state and instead agree to a “binational” Arab-Jewish state of Palestine.

According to the Magnes plan, Jews would never be a majority in their own homeland. Immigration would depend on the consent of Palestinian Arab pogromists like the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Of course, like all Jewish “peace” proposals over the years, Arab leaders unanimously rejected the Magnes scheme. The idea of even a small number of Jews being admitted to the Land of Israel was unthinkable to them.

But the fact that there was no Arab partner didn’t stop Magnes and his tiny band of followers from continuing to advocate binationalism. Even after the rise of Hitler, when the lives of millions of European Jews depended on finding a haven, Magnes continued pushing a plan which, in practice, would have left most Jews trapped in Europe.

The term “tone deaf” does not even begin to describe a man who was so utterly out of touch with the needs of his people that he was ready to deny most of them shelter in their most desperate hour.

That’s why binationalism vanished in disgrace from the Jewish public conversation decades ago. At the time, it would have been a disaster for the Jewish people. Today, it would mean the dissolution of Israel.

Is America’s visa-waiver carrot a stick in disguise? Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-americas-visa-waiver-carrot-a-stick-in-disguise-opinion-683395

The statement on Tuesday by US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka that Israel is among four countries being considered for inclusion in the US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs visa-waiver program has led more than a few would-be travelers to say they will believe it when they see it.

Whether the other three – Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania – are equally weary of having that particular privilege dangled in front of them every few years is unclear. One thing is certain, though: Israelis of all socioeconomic backgrounds are afflicted with wanderlust and take every opportunity to flit around the globe, whether or not they can afford to do so.

This tendency has always been a source of curiosity on the part of foreigners, many of whom rarely or never venture beyond their own shores. Americans are often shocked to encounter Israelis who have crossed the US, coast to coast, returning with photoshoots from every national landmark, from the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas to Disneyworld.

The desperation to fly somewhere – anywhere – has been especially noteworthy during the pandemic, when air travel is such a nuisance. Deciphering the coronavirus regulations for exiting and reentering alone would seem to be a sufficient deterrent. Yet it has not been one.

On the contrary, Israelis of all stripes are pouncing on plane tickets for low-cost stints in an Airbnb or luxurious vacationing at five-star hotels in every location imaginable.
Claustrophobia could have something to do with it. Living in a state that can be traversed by car from North to South in six hours, and east to west in less than two, might have that effect. Coupled with the closures and quarantines that came with the onset of COVID-19, the sense of being cooped up became magnified.

President Biden Cannot be Allowed to Divide Jerusalem and Take it from The Jews :Rabbi Aryeh Spero

October 28, 2021  —  Conference of Jewish Affairs spokesman, Rabbi Aryeh Spero, issued the following statement today:

“All friends of Israel and historic truth should be horrified by the recent betrayal of Israel by the Biden administration insisting on creating an American consulate for Palestinian Arabs in the city of Jerusalem.  Inasmuch as the United States already has its embassy in Jerusalem, the formation of a special American consulate indicates that the Biden administration plans to make Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian Arab state.  

“It is unheard of for a foreign country to designate the capital of a particular nation as a future capital of another country. It is also the height of audacity to disrespectfully communicate to an existing country that an outside force plans to usurp its capital and hand it over to an aggressor. The Biden administration has gone beyond any norm of respect and civility by insisting that the Palestinian Arabs have an official consulate in both East and West Jerusalem.

Rabbi Spero stated, “The Biden administration’s insistence on this scheme displays a handwriting on the wall that it has already determined the outcome of negotiations before they have been negotiated, to wit, that there will be a Palestinian Arab state with Jerusalem as its capital and, God forbid, the expulsion of the Jewish State from the Old City of Jerusalem. 

Irrationality and the Covid vaccine Loss of balance over the pandemic crosses continents and political divisions Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/irrationality-and-the-covid-vaccine?token=e

In my Times (£) column this week, I wrote about the dangerous irrationality of those  implacably opposed to the Covid-19 vaccine.

I wrote that while some concerns about the Covid vaccine were understandable — due to the acceleration of the normal testing regimen, or concerns about civil liberties if vaccination is made a condition of someone’s job or entry into a venue — there had been a significant loss of rationality and any sense of proportion. 

You can go online and find people with scientific qualifications saying in terms that the state is actually trying to poison people with the Covid vaccine. But there’s no evidence whatever for this fantastic and paranoid claim. Many who assume that a doctoral or professorial handle confers intellectual authority tend automatically to believe such claims. Under serious and informed scrutiny, however, they fall apart.

Vaccination always involves a balance of harms. But all the available and reputable evidence indicates that the harms resulting from this vaccine are rare and vastly outweighed by its benefits.

It’s claimed, for example, that tens of thousands are suffering serious vaccine side effects. But this is based on statistics showing merely the number of those who subsequently died of other ailments; it doesn’t prove cause and effect. It’s claimed the vaccine may affect women’s fertility; there’s no evidence for that. And so on and on. 

Yet anti-vaxers in Britain have even been abusing and intimidating children at their school gates over taking the vaccine. Such an unhinged set of fears is coming from both ends of the political spectrum. 

Elements on the right have latched onto every single government response to the pandemic to claim a world-wide conspiracy to enslave and poison people, involving globalists, paedophiles, the “deep state,” Jewish financiers — and Bill Gates working with all of the above to control the world through microchips. 

However, vaccine hostility has long roots in liberal “back to nature” movements too which for decades have used homeopathy, eaten only organic food and shunned all vaccinations for their children. The belief that “Big Pharma” drug companies were evil was previously a left-wing mantra. And now, as reported in the Observer, vaccine hostility is associated with the “wellness” industry and alternative lifestyles including ayurvedic healing, meditation and something called “conspirituality”. This turns out to be the intersection of yoga, juice cleanses, New Age thinking and online theories about secret groups controlling the universe.

Parents Finally Catch On: Will Not Be Threatened by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17893/parents-catch-on

Now, in America, self-described “progressives” of any number of different stripes continue to aggressively label and attack as criminals and domestic terrorists any person or group dissenting from their radical agenda. Therefore, the NSBA and others of their ilk have few qualms about calling parents exercising their right to confront smug educrats at public hearings “domestic terrorists.” What is truly alarming is that these opponents of the First Amendment appear to have backing from the Biden White House.

Using the FBI to police local school board meetings is a disturbing example of federal overreach. It would also be nothing new for the FBI. It is very easy to imagine what the Justice Department’s “additional efforts” could include — as we have already seen — surveillance, subpoenas, infiltration, questioning, intimidation, entrapment, enlisting informants, rifling through emails and financial records, the full panoply of investigative methods usually reserved for organized crime mobsters or genuine threats to national security.

The White House may soon regret going down the road of diverting the FBI from more important law enforcement issues to harass parents. Sagging White House approval ratings; an explosive national murder rate; the highest inflation rate in 10 years, the highest gas prices in seven years; and 4.3 million Americans leaving the workforce this past August — not to mention the Chinese Communist Party’s hypersonic missiles and exponentiating global “lily pads” from which to project military power — may help focus the Biden administration on other issues besides school board meetings.

Inserting federal law enforcement into local school matters further makes the case for systematic reforms of the politicized FBI and the Justice Department. The next Congress should closely investigate how this program was implemented and which parents were subjected to FBI harassment, and should expose the links between policymakers and education pressure groups.

House Republicans are lecturing Attorney General Merrick Garland on the rights of parents over the education of their children: “Parents have an undisputed right to direct the upbringing and education of their children, especially as school boards attempt to install controversial curricula,” the 19 Republicans wrote. “Local law enforcement—and not the FBI—are the appropriate authorities to address any local threats or violence.” The October 25 letter was on the letterhead of the House Committee on the Judiciary and had no Democrat signatures.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley went a step further and asked for Garland to resign.

The Role of Iran’s Palestinian Mercenaries by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17840/iran-palestinian-mercenaries

Hamas and PIJ, it seems, want to continue receiving funds and weapons from Iran, but they do not want to be seen by Arabs and Muslims as mercenaries serving Iran’s interests in the Middle East.

Hamas and PIJ want the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs and Muslims to believe that their only goal is to “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” — a euphemism for driving the Jews out of Israel and replacing it with an Islamist state.

That is most likely why both Palestinian terror groups were quick to issue statements denying that their main goal is to defend Iran and serve its interests in the Middle East.

“Take your armies and go with them back to Iran, where you can fight your battles away from the peoples you occupy to achieve your agendas,” said Sami Gemayel, head of the Lebanese Kataeb Party. He also criticized the failure of Lebanese leaders to respond to the admission that Hezbollah was created to serve Iran, and not Lebanon: “Are you ready now to face the truth?”

The Iranian commander’s [Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid’s] statements coincide with the Biden administration’s delusional commitment to the fiction that the US will somehow convince Iran to abandon its plans to acquire nuclear weapons.

While the Biden administration is talking about “diplomacy” as the best way to rein in Iran’s nuclear program, the mullahs are preparing for war and advancing their scheme to annihilate Israel and, with the help of their six “armies,” occupy still more Arab countries.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) are embarrassed: Iran just admitted that both of those terrorist groups serve as mercenaries for the mullahs in Tehran.

For Hamas and PIJ, the admission is yet another sign that the truth can be painful and inconvenient, especially when it comes from a major ally such as Iran.

The Kids Most Definitely Are Not All Right The latest NAEP scores indicate a very troubled education system, and eliminating standardized tests certainly won’t solve the problem. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/27/the-kids-most-definitely-are-not-all-right/

On the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), or “nation’s report card,” test scores in both reading and math declined for 13-year-old students, the first drop registered in 50 years. The test showed that the decline was concentrated among the lowest performing students. Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, who has been working with these data for 28 years, was shocked to see the decline. “I had to ask the question again of my staff. Are you sure?’ I asked them to go back and check,” she said.

It’s important to note that this test was given in early 2020, right before the pandemic-related shutdowns in the spring. At that point, then Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos granted a blanket, one-year “accountability waiver.” But in February 2021, with the Biden Administration in place, new Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he’d “require states to administer the federally mandated tests in the spring, with an asterisk: They had the option of giving shorter, remote, or delayed versions.”

Bad idea. Per researcher Dan Goldhaber, “Using different versions of tests makes the results less comparable across different years and school districts.” And shorter tests produce less “actionable” information about individual student achievement in the short term. Nevertheless, the trend to disparage, eviscerate and ultimately do away with standardized tests is all the rage these days.

It’s also happening on the college level. Brandon McCoy, education policy expert at the Manhattan Institute, reports that the standardized test “has slowly lost its pride of place in college admissions over the past decade. By 2019, the number of schools going test-optional had risen to 1,050. The pandemic has catalyzed this trend, with at least 1,400 colleges in 2021 making the move to test-optional. College systems around the country are now permanently eliminating the requirement for the SAT and ACT; the University of California system is doing away with the tests altogether.”

The Ignoble Lie By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/27/the-ignoble-lie/

“Noble lies” are rarely spun for anyone’s interests other than those of the liars themselves.

In a controversial passage in Plato’s Republic, Socrates introduced the idea of the “noble lie” (“gennaios pseudos”).
A majestic fiction, he says, could sometimes serve society by persuading uninformed citizens of something good for them.

Ever since, many prevaricators have used the excuse that they lied for the common good.

Take Dr. Anthony Fauci, our point man on the COVID-19 epidemic.

Fauci misled the country about mask-wearing during the pandemic by claiming they were of little use. But he argued that he lied so the public would not make a run on masks, deplete the supply, and thus rob medical professionals of protective equipment.

Fauci also told “noble” lies about the likely percentage of the public needing to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. He kept raising the bar — from 60 percent to 70 percent to 75 percent to 80 percent, to 85 percent.

Apparently, Fauci feared a lower figure, even if accurate, might lull people into complacency about getting inoculated.

Fauci also lied about his own role in routing U.S. aid money to subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Wuhan virology lab — the likely birthplace of COVID-19.

Either Fauci was hiding his own culpability, or he believed the American people might not be able to fully accept that some of their own health officials were promoting the sort of research that was partially responsible for more than 700,000 American deaths.

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas has serially lied about the number of undocumented immigrants who have crossed into the United States. He falsely claimed mounted agents were whipping migrants. He fibbed about the purported lack of federal data of apprehensions, detentions, and deportations. His assertion that the border is secure was a joke.

Apparently, Mayorkas believes the public would go ballistic or his own administration would be roundly despised, if he told the bitter truth about the border: by intent, the Biden administration has apparently deliberately left it wide open.

And it will likely allow 2 million undocumented immigrants into the country in the current fiscal year.

Related: Of Course: Fauci Revises the Definition of ‘Fully Vaccinated’

Lots of other unelected federal officials lied over the past five years by claiming or implying that harming the Trump administration was in the public interest.

Former FBI directors Andrew McCabe and James Comey likely misled the nation. McCabe admittedly lied that he did not leak FBI information to the media.

James Comey lied under oath on multiple occasions in congressional cross-examinations and claimed he did not know or could not remember basic facts about his own role in promoting the Russian collusion hoax.

Apparently, Comey and McCabe believed that by being less than truthful, they might better emasculate Donald Trump. And that result would be beneficial to America.

Our former intelligence leaders may have been the most brazen liars. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress about the NSA surveillance program, though he denied it.

When caught in the untruth, Clapper reverted to the noble lie that he gave the least untruthful answer, apparently on the pretense that he did not wish to damage the reputation of an important intelligence agency.

‘You Should Resign in Disgrace, Judge’: Tom Cotton Rips Attorney General Garland By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/10/27/you-should-resign-in-disgrace-judge-tom-cotton-rips-attorney-general-garland-runs-afoul-of-a-dissident-n1527492

Attorney General Merrick Garland generally enjoys the protection of the sycophantic Leftist media that works night and day to conceal the galloping disaster that is the Biden administration. Garland himself appears to harbor a taste for forcibly suppressing opposition voices, as became clear yet again when he set his FBI onto the trail not of jihad terrorists, or migrant criminals, or any other group that the Left would like to pretend doesn’t exist, but of disgruntled parents protesting at school board meetings against the implementation of the race-hate propaganda known as critical race theory in public schools. As Stacey Lennox noted, this “can only be described as a tactic to suppress dissent.” On Wednesday, however, Garland had an unusual experience: He ran into a dissenter. It wasn’t pretty.

The dissident in question was none other than Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who was clearly angry that Garland followed the National School Boards Association (which has since backtracked) in portraying parents as domestic terrorists simply for registering their outrage over the divisive Leftist propaganda being forced on children in public schools. Garland, however, insisted that the FBI was only concerned about threats of violence, not about simple dissent. Referring to the directive he sent to agents, he told Cotton: “Nothing in this memorandum or any memorandum is about parents expressing disagreements with their school boards. The memorandum makes clear that parents are entitled to have vigorous debates.”

However, Megan Fox recently did a deep dive into the supposed “threats” that school board members had supposedly received and that justified FBI intervention, and came up empty. Fox concluded: “There isn’t one legitimate threat on the NSBA’s list or a situation that wasn’t handled easily by the police. What the NSBA wants to do is crack down on free speech and, stupidly, they attached to their letter every example of parents speaking freely and demanding that the FBI stop it.”