POLITICS Comments turned off

It’s Been One Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week For The Democratic Party We witnessed five catastrophes worsen for Democrats, all in the course of one week. By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/14/its-been-one-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-week-for-the-democratic-party/

It has been one tough week for the left.

Impeachment for political theatre was squashed, the Never Trump Lincoln Project further imploded when it was reported its leaders knew about the sexual harassment allegations against co-founder John Weaver, and the petition to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom D-Calif. reached 1.5 million signatures to likely trigger a special election.

The Donald Trump Charlottesville rhetoric lie was debunked again, and now, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y. is facing bipartisan flack from lawmakers after a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) request showed as many as 9,000 COVID-19 infected patients were sent to nursing homes under his directive, resulting in one of the nation’s worst COVID scenarios.

Trump Gets Acquitted Again

On Saturday, former President Donald Trump was acquitted in impeachment proceedings for the second time in two years, 57-43 in the Senate. It was the outcome anyone practical knew was coming for weeks—and one that only adds fuel to the left’s endless and compulsive disdain for the 45th president.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

T.S.ELIOT AND THE JEWS:DAVID GOLDMAN

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/03/t-s-eliot-and-the-jews

There recur in the work of ­T. S. Eliot two obsessions that make one cringe: his Jew-­hatred and his contempt for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The first is sometimes excused as a reflection of ambient prejudice, the second as critical crankiness. In fact, these obsessions have a common source. The characteristically Jewish contribution to Western literature is the tragicomedy, which reached one of its peaks in Hamlet. Just as he disliked the Jews in general, Eliot rejected what might be termed the Jewish sensibility in culture.

None of this would concern us if Eliot were not the author of some important poems and even more important lines. There is no question about Eliot’s rank among the leading English-language poets of the past century, nor about his critical acumen. The issue is the end to which he directed his ability.

If the canonical definition of anti-Semitism is hating the Jews more than is absolutely necessary, the word surely applies to Eliot. One finds the stray smirk about Jews in the verse of ­Belloc and Chesterton, but Eliot, as Anthony ­Julius observed, makes Jew-hatred into art. No other poet employed so great a talent to elicit as much loathing as Eliot did in the “Bleistein” poems. First published in 1920 and reprinted in all subsequent editions of Eliot’s poetry through 1963, “Burbank with a ­Baedeker: Bleistein with a cigar” depicts a “­Chicago Semite Viennese” tourist on the Rialto Bridge in Venice, a nod to Shylock. He is less than a rat: “A lustreless protrusive eye / Stares from the protozoic slime. . . . The rats are underneath the piles. / The jew is underneath the lot.” Eliot revisited ­Bleistein in his masterwork, The Waste Land. The passage was dropped from the initial printings on the advice of Ezra Pound, who thought it too inflammatory, but it appeared posthumously in the annotated edition:

Full fathom five your Bleistein lies
Under the flatfish and the squids.
Graves’ Disease in a dead jew’s eyes!
When the crabs have eat the lids
Lower than the wharf rats dive
          Though he suffer a sea-change
          Still expensive rich and strange.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Israeli flag pelted with eggs at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-flag-pelted-with-eggs-at-university-of-illinois-urban

“We are not the type of people to be scared. We’re not the type of people that would be silenced. We’re not the type of people to back down from what we believe in,” says student Jeremy Zelner.

An Israeli flag draped over the apartment balcony of a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Jewish student was pelted with 10 to 20 eggs on Monday.

Jeremy Zelner told the local news station WCIA that he was at his apartment complex working on a paper at around 1:00 a.m. when he heard something hitting the window. He went outside and saw his flag covered with egg.

“But by that time, the egging stopped, and I looked outside and nobody was there,” he said. “So, it was a pretty relatively quick thing, but there was probably like 10, 15, 20 eggs that were just all over the balcony.”

Zelner contacted Champaign police and university officials. Police said they are still gathering information before beginning an initial investigation, according to WCIA.

The Israeli flag will remain on display, assured Zelner.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu’s 1st crisis with Biden? US demands Israel open skies or El Al will be banned By Batya Jerenberg

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/

If the government refuses, Israeli planes will not be allowed to land in the United States.

The U.S. administration has issued an ultimatum to Israel to open its skies to American flights this week or see El Al banned from landing in the U.S., Channel 12 News reported Saturday night.

According to the report, officials in the Biden administration sent a message saying, “Why do you need a crisis with the new administration? Allow our planes to fly to Israel.”

Fearing the import of new, deadlier mutations of the Covid-19 virus, the government shut down Ben Gurion airport on Jan. 26 to all foreign airlines. El Al won a tender last Monday to bring home some of the thousands of Israelis stuck in the U.S. on so-called emergency flights.

Delta and American Airlines made runs into Israel during previous months of the pandemic and are looking to recoup some of their massive losses from last year’s major international travel ban. Along with other foreign airlines, they are now being allowed only to bring in cargo, not passengers.

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

A second justified impeachment outcome Michael Goodwin

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/02/13/a-second-justified-impeachment-outcome-goodwin/

And so the verdict is . . . Hallelujah. It’s over. 

The acquittal of former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial is a fitting outcome to a case that should not have happened. Never before has a former president been impeached and put on trial, and it should never happen again. 

This was a show trial, an attempt by Democrats to humiliate Trump after his election defeat and force Republicans to side with him or against him. While the president’s speech before the Capitol riot was at times too angry and bitter, there was nothing in it that could reasonably be seen as intending to incite an insurrection, as the single House article charged. 

In fact, the case was in many ways the mirror image of the partisan putsch that Dem leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer engineered over the Ukraine piffle almost exactly a year ago. 

In the long history of our republic, there have been only four presidential impeachments, and two of them came courtesy of Pelosi and Schumer in the last two years. That’s making history in all the wrong ways. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Return of ISIS is a Challenge Biden Must Not Ignore by Con Coughlin

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17023/isis-return-biden

A recent United Nations Security Council report concluded that ISIS currently controls more than 10,000 fighters organized in small cells in Syria and Iraq.

To date most of the administration’s policy announcements have been aimed at reducing tensions with Iran, such as freezing arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and easing restrictions on the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

By concentrating the new administration’s foreign policy resources on reviving the Iran deal and restoring relations with the Palestinian leadership, however, Mr Biden risks overlooking the extremely significant threat posed by the fanatical supporters of ISIS which, if left unchecked, could once again wreak havoc across the Middle East.

As the Biden administration prepares to implement its new policy on the Middle East, it is vital that its preoccupation with reviving the Iran deal does not result in the White House overlooking the considerable threat the Islamist fanatics of ISIS continue to pose to global security.

Since taking office, the main priorities of President Joe Biden’s newly-appointed foreign policy team, so far as the Middle East is concerned, have been to consider the prospects of reopening negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, and to establish a dialogue with Palestinian leaders, who spent the past three years boycotting former President Donald Trump over his decision to relocate the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Confess Your Crime in Writing”: The Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17056/persecution-of-christians-january

“Everything is affected… Your work, income, social status, identity, mental health, satisfaction with yourself, your life, your place in society, your independence…. And as a woman it’s even harder to remain patient and endure, in a society so opposed to women and femininity, though crying out for them both.” — Iranian Christian convert Fatemeh (Mary) Mohammadi, articleeighteen.com, January 21, 2021; Iran.

“The killing of Abida and Sajida in such a merciless way is not an isolated case, but the killing, rape and forced conversion of Christian girls have become an everyday matter and the government has denied this and therefore is doing nothing to stop the ongoing persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, such cases happen very often in the country, and nobody pays any attention – even the national media – as Christians are considered inferior and their lives worthless.” — Nasir Sayeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement in the UK, January 11, 2021; Pakistan.

Sweden: Twice in four days, an 800-year-old church in Stockholm was firebombed….. Attacks against churches have become a familiar sight in Sweden. Last year alone, a number of churches… were subjected to various types of attacks and vandalism, including those in Gottsunda, Uppsala and Rosengård, Malmö.”

Muslim terrorism has been on the rise in the Philippines, the population of which is 86% Christian. — The Christian Post, January 2021; The Philippines.

Pakistan: On Jan. 5, a Muslim man severely beat his Christian employee because he had taken leave to attend a Christmas Day prayer service. Even though Ansar Masih had compensated for the missed day of work by working on the following Sunday, his manager was abusive. “When I argued with him, he called four other staffers to teach me a lesson….” — International Christian Concern, January 10, 2021.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of January, 2021:

Attacks on Apostates and Evangelists

Uganda: A Muslim man beat his 13-weeks-pregnant wife, causing her to miscarry, after he learned that she had converted to Christianity. On Jan. 13, Mansitula Buliro, the 45-year-old woman in question and mother of seven, was preparing for Muslim evening prayers with her husband when she began to have Christian visions. On the following day she secretly visited a Christian neighbor, prayed with her, and put her faith in Christ. Right before she left, a Muslim man knocked on the Christian neighbor’s door and said, “Mansitula, I thought you were a Muslim—how come I heard prayers mentioning the name of Issa [Jesus]?” When Mansitula returned home, her husband informed her that he had been told that she had become Christian. “I kept quiet,” Mansitula later explained in an interview:

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Ghosts that Haunt President Biden by Amir Taheri

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17059/ghosts-that-haunt-president-biden

The slogan “diplomacy is back” is equally meaningless…. Diplomacy is a method of pursuing the goals of a policy. So if those goals are wrong and unjust, pursuing them through diplomacy would be a way of paving the road to hell.

The key question is whether Biden regards China as an enemy or just a competitor that breaks some rules.

On Yemen, Biden forgets that the war started during Obama’s presidency with full US support and endorsement by the United Nations, with the aim of restoring that country’s legitimate government. Biden does not make it clear whether or not he still subscribes to that aim, or if he does, what he intends to do about it.

Burma is a tale of how cynical jackboots sold the Obama-Biden team a bill of goods to gain time for a brutal comeback.

Even before Joe Biden was sworn in as President, speculation was rife regarding the direction that US foreign policy might take under his command. Some observers speculated that he would simply return to the path traced and tested by his former boss, President Barack Obama.

Others, reminding us that as a lifelong foreign policy wonk, Biden wouldn’t be satisfied with doing an Obama, that is to say dodging issues, leading from behind, and, as Hillary Clinton once observed, making a speech each time there was a crisis.

BOOKS, KRD NEWS Comments turned off

The Doublethinkers By Natan Sharansky With Gil Troy *****

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://mailchi.mp/af49bac99832/krd-news-natan-sharansky-the-doublethinkers?e=93

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/natan-sharansky-doublethink?fbclid=IwAR3pb4Fso52-ea1gnwGHIaOOPcb0qMPdAOoiP_PxbpnWzzpWP6mYWhz6z-g

In assessing my own liberation, I recall a conformity that feels terrifyingly familiar today.
Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society.

My father, a journalist named Boris Shcharansky, was born in 1904 in Odessa, the cultural and economic center of the Pale of Settlement, where the Russian empire stuck most Jews. He studied in the Jewish Commercial Gymnasium, because most other gymnasiums accepted very few Jews, if any. By the time he was 16, he had already lived through the Czarist Regime with its anti-Semitic restrictions, the “February” Socialist Revolution, the “October” Bolshevik Revolution, and the years of civil war when power in Odessa seesawed back and forth from faction to faction, as hunger, pogroms, and destruction decimated the population.

When the Soviets finally emerged from the chaos, therefore, my father was hopeful. The Communists promised that a new life of full equality was dawning, without Pales of Settlement, without education restrictions, and, most important, with equal opportunities for all. Who wouldn’t want that? One of my father’s brothers discovered Zionism and went off to Palestine. But my father was excited about building a world of social justice and equality closer to his home.

From the time he was a kid, my bookish father loved making up stories. Lucky for him, Odessa was emerging as a center for a new cultural medium—cinema. As silent Charlie Chaplin-type movies started evolving into more scripted sketches, my father put his storytelling talents to work. Imagine his thrill when, as a twenty-something, he saw millions watch a script that he had written come to life.

Of course, to succeed in his career as a screenwriter, he had to follow certain rules. His scripts, like every other work of art, had to follow the script of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, seeing the world through the lens of class struggle and class exploitation. As Karl Marx argued, and the Bolsheviks now decreed, “the history of all hitherto-existing societies is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yes, Acquittal Is Vindication The pandemonium at the Capitol was not the cause but merely the pretext for the unprecedented second impeachment by the U.S. Congress of a single individual. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 14th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/13/yes-acquittal-is-vindication/

A little before 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump in the long-running “Impeach Donald Trump!” show brought to you by leaky Democrats and their public-relations consortium, the corporate leftist media and Big Tech. The vote was 57 to 43, largely along party lines, wholly along ideological lines. That is, the seven Republicans who broke ranks and joined the Democrats to convict President Trump are Republicans in name only. You will want to remember who they are: 

Richard Burr from North Carolina
Bill Cassidy from Louisiana 
Susan Collins from Maine 
Lisa Murkowski from Alaska 
Mitt Romney from Utah 
Ben Sasse from Nebraska 
Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania

Some of these “Elevated Conservatives”™—Burr and Toomey, for example—have announced that they will not be running again. Here’s a prediction: none will be elected again, but that is a good thing.

Well, I think it is a good thing. But then I think that an acquittal is a vindication. I know that there are some intermittently conservative organs that disagree. They believe, or at least they say, that Trump’s acquittal does not mean he was vindicated. The proposition that Donald Trump is in the wrong is an analytic truth for them. Like the proposition “all bachelors are unmarried,” they regard it as a necessary truth. It is something inarguable. 

It is worth noting, however, that these are the same organs that couldn’t stop berating Trump—the most pro-life, pro-Israel, pro-prosperity, pro-middle class, and pro-American president in decades (maybe ever)—while he was president. And they are also the same organs that, come tomorrow, will be wringing their hands over Joe Biden’s pro-abortion, pro-China, pro-totalitarian attacks on American freedom and prosperity. They prefer whining to wielding power, I suspect, and actually seem to believe that an incompetent mannequin-like Mitt Romney is somehow more preferable as president than someone like Donald Trump. 

And poor Peggy Noonan must be really unhappy. The other day, she wrote one of her signature hand-wringing columns for the Wall Street Journal informing her readers that she did not see “how Republican senators could hear and fairly judge the accumulated evidence and vote to acquit the former president.” Those who would vote to acquit, she intoned, “are voting for a lie.” She wanted the “stiffest possible” penalties, including “banning Mr. Trump from future office.”

That touches on one of the two main reasons that the Democratic machine wheeled out their impeachment wheeze yet again. They are terrified of the voters—all those embryonic “domestic terrorists” Joe Biden’s Stasi is tracking—who, ignoring the wisdom of their betters, might actually get together and vote someone else like Donald Trump—if not the Bad Orange Man himself—into office again. That mustn’t happen. 

Convicting Trump was never in the cards, even given the wobbly, thumos-starved