POLITICS Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard Disagrees With Other Democrats on Impeachment By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/tulsi-gabbard-disagrees-with-other-democrats-on-impeachment/

Although her fellow Democrats over in the House of Representatives are finally yielding to the fringe mob on the subject of impeaching President Trump, Sen. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) isn’t on board with the idea.

The Hill:

Rep.  Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) said in a new interview that she opposes an effort by dozens of House Democrats for an impeachment inquiry into the president, saying it would cause further divisions within the U.S.

In an interview on “Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren,” the 2020 candidate for president took a firm stance against impeachment, putting her at odds with other Democratic candidates for president including Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“I don’t [support impeachment,]” Gabbard said. “You know, I think it’s important for us to think about what is in the best interest of the country and the American people, and continuing to pursue impeachment is something that I think will only further to tear our country apart.”

Gabbard has been one of the more sensible Democratic presidential candidates thus far so, naturally, she’s not getting much traction and didn’t qualify for the next debate.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, POLITICS Comments turned off

Grandiose, Coercive, and Expensive Democratic presidential candidates’ all-encompassing climate-change plans would remake American life—without even solving the problem they want to solve. James B. Meigs

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/democratic-presidential-candidates-climate-change-plans

Watching the Democratic presidential candidates on CNN’s seven-hour town hall on climate change was like attending the shot-put competition at a track meet. It wasn’t even a debate because the candidates agreed on most major points. Any sense of competition came in seeing which would offer the most grandiose plans. One after another, each candidate strained to hurl the biggest, most expensive wad of policy proposals as far as humanly possible.

Senator Bernie Sanders set the bar high. “We are proposing the largest, most comprehensive program ever presented by any candidate in the history of the United States,” he declared. Other candidates didn’t want to come up short, offering plans to transform radically fundamental elements of American life—not just energy, but farming, housing, transportation, and more. No detail was too small. Yes, Senator Kamala Harris admitted, it will be necessary to ban plastic drinking straws to avert climate change.

There were quibbles over some particulars, but, as the New York Times noted, “One thing is certain: All of the candidates want to spend money, and lots of it.” Former Vice President Joe Biden’s plan alone clocks in at a relatively modest $1.7 trillion over 10 years. Senator Cory Booker, meantime, wants to spend $3 trillion. Harris ups the ante to $10 trillion, but Sanders prevails in the spending contest with a $16 trillion plan.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Under Assault: New York’s Private and Parochial Schools Will the Regents and education bureaucrats succeed in forcing nonpublic schools to conform to unprecedented state control? Peter Murphy

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/new-york-substantially-equivalent-provision

Last April, in a downtown Albany courthouse, three sets of lawyers for private kindergarten through grade 12 schools found themselves defending, before a state trial-court judge, private and religious schools’ right to operate. One might think that Americans’ right to educate their children in private schools was settled long ago—in 1925, when the Supreme Court, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, struck down an Oregon statute that required parents to enroll their children in public schools. But the lawyers in Albany, representing Jewish, Catholic, and nonsectarian independent schools, were challenging sweeping new Education Department edicts that would effectively force private schools to perform as de facto public schools. The Education Department is redefining an 1894 state law requiring that private schools offer “substantially equivalent” instruction to students as that provided in public schools—henceforth imposing on private schools the curriculum, scheduling, lesson plans, hiring standards, and reporting requirements that public schools must follow.

Even more alarmingly, the department’s new mandate would require local school district boards of education to oversee and inspect most private and parochial schools within their respective district boundaries, using undefined “objective criteria” to determine compliance with the redefined substantially equivalent standard. Lack of compliance could mean closure. Public school districts, then, would become the arbiters of whether their competitors—private and religious schools—can remain open, a blatant conflict of interest.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Dr. Andrew Bostom Interviewed By Frank Gaffney: “Institutional Islam & The Global Pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism”” on YouTube

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://youtu.be/VzpaMf3pZGU

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Robert Mueller helped Saudi Arabia cover up its role in 9/11 attacks: By Paul Sperry

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/09/07/robert-mueller-helped-saudi-arabia-cover-up-its-role-in-9-11-attacks-suit/

After a lengthy investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller charged Russia made “multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election” and said the incursion “deserves the attention of every American.”

But former FBI investigators say their old boss didn’t feel the same concern when they uncovered multiple, systemic efforts by the Saudi government to assist the hijackers in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks — a far more consequential, to say nothing of deadly, foreign influence operation on America.

As the head of the FBI at the time, they say Mueller was not nearly as interested in investigating that espionage conspiracy, which also involved foreign intelligence officers. Far from it, the record shows he covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh — and may have even misled Congress about what he knew.

9/11 victims agree. “He was the master when it came to covering up the kingdom’s role in 9/11,” said survivor Sharon Premoli, who was pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center 18 years ago.

“In October of 2001, Mueller shut down the government’s investigation after only three weeks, and then took part in the Bush [administration’s] campaign to block, obfuscate and generally stop anything about Saudi Arabia from being released,” added Premoli, now a plaintiff in the 9/11 lawsuit against Saudi Arabia.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Add Rent Control To The List Of Progressive Policies That Are Sure To Increase Income Inequality

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-9-7-add-rent-control-to-the-list-of-progressive-policies-that-increase-income-inequality

The list of progressive policy proposals supposedly designed to increase fairness and justice in the world just keeps getting longer and longer. Medicare for all. Free college. Higher minimum wages. Every kind of “climate justice” prescription. Reparations for slavery. And here’s one that seemed to have faded away in disgrace decades ago, but now is making a revival: rent control. Rent control is currently getting expanded and strengthened in numerous progressive jurisdictions, from New York to California, with new proposals now on the table in places like Minnesota and Illinois.

A recurring topic in this blog has been the extent to which progressive policies reduce — or instead, actually increase — income inequality. You will not be surprised to hear that there is a very close relationship between jurisdictions with more progressive and redistributive policies and higher income inequality. In an article I wrote in the City Journal in 2015 I pointed out the close relationship:

[In 2014] Bloomberg Rankings published a national study on income inequality, using U.S. Census Bureau income data to rank each of the 435 congressional districts by economists’ standard measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient. The study found high levels of income inequality in areas of the country known for their political progressivism. Topping the inequality list was New York’s tenth congressional district, which covers the West Side of Manhattan and Wall Street—including City Hall. Of the top 25 spots, 23 went to Democratic districts—and not just any Democratic districts. The five congressional districts covering some part of Manhattan earned the first, sixth, ninth, 13th, and 20th positions. Congressional districts in solidly liberal Chicago, Cambridge, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Berkeley placed in the Top 25. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district ranked 14th on the list . . . .

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Christians Massacred, Media Look the Other Way by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14827/christians-massacred-media-ignore

“In the same week as the awful attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand… more than two hundred Christians were killed in Nigeria. There was hardly any mention of the latter in the news. There were no marches for martyred Christians, no tolling of church bells ordered by governments, no ‘Je suis Charlie’ t-shirts… no public outrage at all.” — Fr. Benedict Kiely, Crisis Magazine, September 4, 2019

NASA’s satellites observed the Amazon fires, prompting world leaders to pledge to protect the rainforest. But the burning, chopping and murder of Christians is not tracked by satellites and their suffering is not seen on our televisions and newspapers. Actually, it seems in the West as if the persecution of Christians does not even exist.

The Vatican and Pope Francis have a choice: to shed light on these persecuted Christians or be accused of willful blindness…. The Vatican should dedicate the next synod to them.

“In the Amazon rainforest, which is of vital importance for the planet, a deep crisis has been triggered by prolonged human intervention, in which a ‘culture of waste’ (LS 16) and an extractivist mentality prevail”, the Vatican stated.

“The Amazon is a region with rich biodiversity; it is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious; it is a mirror of all humanity which, in defense of life, requires structural and personal changes by all human beings, by nations, and by the Church.”

That is why a Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region has been scheduled to meet in Rome from October 6 to 27. In an interview with Italian paper La Stampa, Pope Francis said that one of the biggest challenges to the Amazon region is the “threat to the life of the populations and territory which derives from the economic and political interests of the dominant sectors of society.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Moscow Divided Between Two Proverbs by Amir Taheri

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14828/moscow-divided

Putin has also succeeded in establishing Russia as the key player in war-torn Syria by marginalizing not only Iran but also Turkey and the United States. Putin adulators are especially proud of his success in playing the Iran card against the United States while squeezing the Tehran mullahs for unprecedented concessions.

The impression one gets in Moscow these days is that reality may have started to bite at the edges of the hubris nurtured by Putin’s opportunistic tactics and the weakness of the Western, especially European, response.

Well-to-do Russians, the backbone of Putin’s system, are sore about the fact that they are no longer treated as welcome friends in the Western world, to which they think they belong. The less privileged Russians are equally unwilling to find their nation grouped together with a number of “Third World” countries such as Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

In Russia, August is often regarded as the uncertain season closing the short summer and opening the path to the long duet of autumn and winter. It was, therefore, no surprise in a recent visit to Moscow to see that sense of uncertainty reflected in the political mood of the Russian elites.

To be sure, the uncertainty one notices is still in filigree. Officials and intellectuals supporting the current government are still full of self-confidence, not to say bombast, defending President Vladimir Putin’s “strongman” politics. Nevertheless, conversations regarding the political situation in Russia soon reveal three sources of uncertainty, perhaps even anxiety.

The first is an as yet tentative concern that though Putin’s current presidential term has some four more years to conclude, it is not at all certain that the current ruling elite could find someone of similar stature to carry the torch. In other words, Putinism may end as other “isms” formed around a charismatic leader, something like Gaullism, Peronism or even Titoism.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/ 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

“Last resort” myeloma treatment approved. The US FDA has granted accelerated approval to XPOVIO for the treatment of resistant or relapsed multiple myeloma. XPOVIO (Selinexor) was developed by Karyopharm Therapeutics, established by Israel’s Dr. Sharon Shacham,.and based in Newton MA. 

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-made-innovative-cancer-treatment-gets-FDA-stamp-of-approval-600505  https://investors.karyopharm.com/news-releases/news-release-details/karyopharm-announces-fda-approval-xpoviotm-selinexor-treatment  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1NW1Tq57YU

Tech to rehabilitate at home. Israel’s WizeCare offers physiotherapists and clinicians an app that enables them to guide their patients during their at-home rehabilitation exercises. It has partnered with the Cleveland Clinic for their staff to provide personalized videos for patients and monitor compliance.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3769531,00.html 

Super prawn controls disease afflicting 220 million. I reported previously (Aug 2016) that Ben Gurion University scientists were cultivating all-male prawns to eradicate schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, with Israeli startup Enzoomic, they have produced all-female prawns – much better at controlling the disease.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/super_shrimp.aspx  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xOBl3TPNdk

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47509-6

Donated ambulances attended 75,000 calls. As reported previously (see here), retired UK surgeon Norman Rosenbaum, 84, has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for Magen David Adom. His 12 MDA ambulances have attended some 75,064 calls over the years. Its crews have helped 997 women to give birth.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/mda-ambulances-donated-by-retired-surgeon-attended-over-75000-calls/

IDF soldiers have saved 2,000 lives. The Ezer Mizion Bone Marrow Registry has just reached an amazing milestone: 2,000 IDF soldiers have donated their stem cells to save 2,000 patients around the world. They not only protect citizens of the State of Israel, but also globally, those whose lives depend on a stem cell transplant.

http://www.ezermizion.org/blog/because-of-you-65/

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lies the Left Tells About Guns For starters, the “assault weapons” ban of 1994 had no meaningful effect on the homicide rate. Rachel Bovard

Posted By on September 8th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/07/lies-the-left-tells-about-guns/

Congress reconvenes this week after a summer fraught with multiple mass shootings. Reportedly, legislation implementing tighter gun control is on the table, with rumored support by some in the White House. The rhetoric surrounding guns continues to escalate.

Here’s the thing about guns. The Constitution—that handy little document—guarantees our rights to them, and that guarantee is a profound reflection of the nature and character of our freedoms. As Ben Domenech of The Federalist wrote recently, “the right to bear arms is not about hunting.” Rather:

It is a natural right of the deepest significance to the relationship between the citizen and the state. It is in the Constitution because the men who defeated the greatest empire in the world wanted us to be able to defend our freedom.

The simple fact that we have a right to own guns doesn’t mean individuals must own them, use them, or even like them. But what it does mean is that people advocating further regulation of firearms at least should have a baseline understanding of how firearms actually work, as well as the current statutory environment that regulates their purchase, handling, and use.

Unfortunately, the current rhetoric coming from Democrats betrays a deep misunderstanding about all of those things.

Here are some of the worst offenses.