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Ruthie Blum: Israel is Not Going it Alone

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Israels-not-going-it-alone-after-all-613699

What a difference a new decade makes. The first to admit it might be IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, who just over two weeks ago expressed disappointment with Washington’s Mideast activities, or lack thereof.

In his first major speech on Israel’s military preparedness and future challenges, Kochavi – who assumed his role exactly a year ago – issued a veiled criticism of US President Donald Trump, particularly in relation to Iran.Reiterating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mantra about the real and present danger posed by Tehran’s fierce pursuit of nuclear warheads and ongoing development of long-range precision missiles with the ability to reach Israel, Kochavi said, “It would be better if we weren’t the only ones responding militarily” to the concrete threat.

In fairness to Israel’s top man-in-uniform, there were signs suggesting that Jerusalem would have to go it alone in any actual confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

In the first place, the IDF has been fighting solo for years against Iranian proxy groups such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, with the former directly commanded and controlled by the mullahs in Tehran, and the latter receiving moral and financial support from the same source.

Secondly, in October Trump announced that he was pulling US troops out of northern Syria. It was a move that not only concerned many of his supporters at home and abroad, but promptly ushered in a Turkish invasion of the area, which included the mass murder of America’s Kurdish allies.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Change Advocacy: Application Of Science, Or Religious Cult? Francis Menton

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-1-7-climate-change-advocacy-application-of-science-or-religious-cult

Each day you listen to unceasing climate change advocacy, always claiming the mantle of “science.” But you can’t help noticing the steady drumbeat of the standard narratives used by religious cults. The end of days is nigh. You have grievously sinned. Your sin is taking you down the road to damnation. Yet salvation is at hand. But only if you and all humanity immediately repent and follow the gospel of your new climate change priests. If not, the apocalypse of judgment day shall soon be upon you.

Of course these narratives pervade the rhetoric of the fanatics seeking to be messianic leaders of the climate movement, from the Greta Thunbergs to the Al Gores. But over in the more sober organs of elite thought leadership, surely the climate advocacy must be based on actual science. Right?

If you are struggling with that question, perhaps you should take a look at some of the recent coverage of the wildfires in Australia that has appeared in our elite media. Today I will pick on a couple of my usual suspects, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both of those have featured multiple pieces over the past several days the gist of which is that Australia’s wildfires are the punishment for its grievous sins of failure to follow the true climate change gospel.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

British Parliament Passes Brexit Bill Allowing Jan. 31 Date for Withdrawal from E.U. By Zachary Evans

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-parliament-passes-brexit-bill-allowing-jan-31-date-for-withdrawal-from-e-u/

The U.K. House of Commons on Thursday passed a law allowing the country to separate from the European Union by January 31.

In a vote of 330-231, elected lawmakers approved the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which determines the parameters of Britain’s separation.  The bill will make its way to the unelected House of Lords, which cannot overturn the legislation but can delay its passage into law.

“I have no doubt that their lordships will have heard the resounding message from the British people on the 12th of December,” commented Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay. On that day Brits voted an overwhelming conservative majority into Parliament, handing the opposition Labour Party its worst defeat in decades.

The election and the bill’s passage were resounding victories for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has repeatedly pledged to “get Brexit done.” The U.K. voted in 2016 to leave the E.U., however Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May was unable to pass legislation authorizing the separation.

If the U.K. withdraws on January 31 as expected, the country will then have to renegotiate its trading relationship with the 28-member E.U. bloc.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder By David Harsanyi

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/pelosis-impeachment-blunder/

Her leverage play turns out to have been an embarrassing mistake.

We are in the midst of an imaginary impeachment standoff between House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. “Both have drawn firm lines in the sand. Someone’s got to give,” one reporter recently declared.

There is, of course, nothing to “give.” Pelosi has no standing to dictate the terms of a Senate trial; no constitutional right or political leverage. Why she has put herself in a position that will ultimately end, one way or another, with her surrendering to McConnell is perplexing.

A new piece in Time magazine does shed some light on the thought process behind Pelosi’s decision to refuse to hand over articles of impeachment to a Senate whose majority doesn’t want them. One of the most interesting nuggets in the piece isn’t that Pelosi — portrayed as courageous risk-taker — had gotten the bright idea from CNN; it’s that she specifically got it from noted felon John Dean, Nixon’s former White House lawyer. Now, Dean is often portrayed as a patriotic, whistleblowing impeachment expert — which is true insofar as he planned the Watergate coverup, and then informed on everyone whom he conspired with after they were caught. His real expertise is cashing in on criminality for the past 50 years (I wrote about Dean’s slimy past here).

Surely Pelosi, blessed with preternatural political instincts, wouldn’t rely on Dean’s advice? Surely Pelosi wasn’t browbeaten into doing this by podcast bros and talking heads on America’s least popular major cable-news network?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tom Cotton on Anti-Semitism by John Podhoretz

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/tom-cotton-on-anti-semitism/?utm_medium=push_notificaions&utm_source=onesignal&utm_campaign=automated

On January 9, Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech on the floor of the United States Senate about the shocking rise of anti-Semitic crimes in and around New York City. Everyone should read it. Here it is:

This holiday season, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism cast a shadow over New York City during Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. The New York Police Department recorded at least nine separate attacks against Jews—more than one attack for each day of Hanukkah. New attacks are reported seemingly on a daily basis.

In Crown Heights, site of the deadly anti-Semitic riots incited by Al Sharpton in 1991, a group of men beat up an Orthodox Jew and attacked another with a chair.

In Williamsburg, another group terrorized an elderly Jewish man on the street. “Jew, Hitler burned you,” one of the criminals reportedly said. “I’ll shoot you.”

And just outside the city, in Rockland County, a man with a machete stormed a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home and injured five worshippers, leaving two in critical condition. The family of one victim, Josef Neumann, says he may never wake up from his coma.

These heinous attacks are part of a growing storm of anti-Semitism that has made Jewish Americans fearful to worship and walk the streets in their own communities. They come in the wake of the deadly rampage at a kosher market in Jersey City that left four innocent people dead, including a police detective. And of course, they come in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in our nation’s history: the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist.

According to the FBI, our country suffered a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes between 2014 and 2018. According to the New York Police Department, the city suffered a 26 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year alone. That increase is alarming enough. So is the fact that most hate crimes reported in New York are crimes against Jews. And while some of the increase is due to better reporting, much of it is not. Jewish Americans bear witness to this harsh reality.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academia’s Leftism becomes more aggressive and more stupid By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

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

Conservatives have long been concerned about the stranglehold Leftists have had on academia in North America.  Recent news from academia should give them more reason than usual to be worried about what’s happen to students trapped in these institutions.

The most recent outrage — and it is outrageous — came on Tuesday from the University of Calgary, in Canada.  Professor Ted McCoy, the coordinator of the Law and Society Program in the university’s sociology department, sent out a tweet clarifying rumors about his classroom polices: “I heard it rumoured students will fail my class if they cite Jordan Peterson and I’d like to clarify that this is absolutely correct,” he tweeted.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

New York’s Jewish Elite Bails Out By Ilya Feoktistov and Charles Jacobs

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/the_jewish_elite_bails_out.html

Attacks on New York Jews continue unabated in the New Year. A Jewish teen was threatened with a knife by a mob on New Year’s Eve, and a Jewish man was attacked by two women on the street on New Year’s Day. Many of the attacks are simply not reported out of fear.

No wonder — unless the attack causes serious injuries, most of the suspects have been released without bail and are walking the same neighborhoods as their victims, unlikely to serve any time or even make their court appearances. One of the attackers, who allegedly slapped three Orthodox Jewish women while yelling, “F— you, Jews,” was released and rearrested three more times for new assaults. She was unrepentant, telling the cops: “Yes, I slapped them. I cursed them out. I said ‘F-U, Jews.’” A Jewish man who was beaten with a chair by a mob on December 24 told the New York Post that he felt there was no use reporting the beating, “given new bail reform legislation that bars judges from detaining suspects in assaults that don’t result in injury — even in the case of hate crimes.”

Thanks to the new bail law, Jews are now being beaten in the streets with impunity. The law eliminates bail and requires pre-trial release for those charged with many violent and heinous crimes, such as second-degree manslaughter, aggravated vehicular homicide, criminal possession of a gun, and dozens of other serious charges.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ilhan Omar’s antics now include claiming she can’t hear war talk because of PTSD By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

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

President Trump’s decision to kill the terrorist Qassem Soleimani reveals how alienated Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is from America.  Normally, a young woman who was welcomed into this country as a refugee and then ascended to one of the highest offices in the land might show some gratitude for its stand against the same kind of fanaticism that drove her out of her homeland.  Not Omar, though.  She has nothing but disdain.

Omar’s latest anti-American behavior occurred during a press conference on Wednesday, when Omar and Rashida Tlaib were seen laughing and joking as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) somberly discussed American casualties in the Iraq War.  It was disconcerting to watch Lee state, “We left four thousand plus, maybe even forty four hundred dead, and over sixty thousand who came back injured in some form, and the war never ended” while Omar giggled, then turned to Tlaib, and shared a joke with her:

When it was Omar’s turn at the microphone during the same press conference, she asserted that her responses to President Trump’s strike against Soleimani had triggered her PTSD:

I feel ill a little bit because of everything that is taking place. And I think every time I about … I hear of conversations around war, I find myself being stricken with PTSD. And I find peace knowing that I serve with great activists for peace and people who have shown courage against war.

MEDIA Comments turned off

NYT Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman Claims Hackers Downloaded Child Porn Onto His Computer By Megan Fox

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nyt-nobel-laureate-paul-krugman-claims-hackers-downloaded-child-porn-onto-his-computer/

Paul Krugman, economist at The New York Times, tweeted (and then deleted) a very strange story on Wednesday claiming that someone had hacked his IP address and was using it to download child porn.

“Well, I’m on the phone with my computer security service and as I understand it, someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography. I might just be a random target but this might be an attempt to Qanon me.” He continued, “It’s an ugly world out there.”

Twitter users were quick to point out that that’s not how IP addresses work and if anything was downloaded on his computer it would have been done by him. Hardly anyone believes him. One Twitter user pointed out Microsoft’s answer to users’ concerns: “IP addresses cannot be compromised. It’s just a number that identifies your system on the [typically local] network so that other computers can send responses to its requests…a PC itself can be compromised by malware or other more direct attacks, but this has nothing to do with the IP address itself.”

However, it is possible that the Nobel Prize-winning Boomer really is that bad at technology that he fell for a scam. Tech journalist Mikael Thalen uncovered a Better Business Bureau report that appears to describe the exact phishing attempt Krugman described. Reports the BBB:

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump announces overhaul of landmark environmental and climate rules By Maegan Vazquez, Betsy Klein, Veronica Stracqualursi and Dan Berman, CNN

Posted By on January 9th, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/09/politics/trump-proposal-national-environmental-policy-act/index.html

The Trump administration plans to rewrite decades-old regulations to make it easier to build major infrastructure such as pipelines, which would have the effect of relaxing government efforts to fight the climate crisis.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday morning the changes to National Environmental Policy Act rules, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of projects such as the construction of mines, highways, water infrastructure and gas pipelines.
Trump and administration officials said the changes are necessary to speed up approval for needed infrastructure projects.
“These endless delays waste money, keep projects from breaking ground and deny jobs to our nation’s incredible workers. From day one, my administration has made fixing this regulatory nightmare a top priority,” Trump said at the White House.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler said NEPA rules are a “Frankenstein of a regulatory regime” and “welfare project” for trial attorneys.
The proposal would set time limits on environmental assessments and changes what impacts must be considered, two significant moves that could make it easier to approve projects.
Agencies will no longer have to consider “cumulative” effects of new infrastructure under the new rule, which courts have interpreted as a mandate to study effects of emitting more greenhouse gas emissions, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which reported the proposals earlier Thursday. That includes the impacts of climate change, including rising sea levels.