NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Of Course Public Offices Are for Sale By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

http://Only a national government as universally corrupt as ours could feign ignorance about the Biden Crime Family’s sordid history.

Joe Biden’s corruption is outdone only by the mainstream media’s commitment to hide it from the public.  Why propagandists posing as journalists would feel the need to continue covering for China Joe and his quid-pro-quo mafia family is a mystery (although reporters are so addicted to censoring truth and spreading disinformation that they probably don’t know how to behave differently).  To be sure, the public has known about the Biden Crime Family’s notorious racketeering activities for decades.  

When a lifetime politician supposedly living on a “public servant’s” salary becomes filthy rich, no thinking person has difficulty understanding that corruption is somehow involved.  In Joe’s case, the corruption is remarkable, perhaps, because it has always been so brazen.  He has not simply become wealthy by using insider knowledge from closed-door committee hearings to effect profitable trades on the stock market (the standard form of corruption endemic in D.C.); instead, he sends family members all over the world to collect checks from foreign companies and hostile countries in return for his continued patronage within the halls of the federal government.  

No doubt many venal American politicians play the same shady game (after all, there sure are a lot of Congress-critters who enter office destitute and exit office as millionaires), but the Biden Crime Family’s particular brand of in-your-face extortion really takes the cake.  When his crackhead son Hunter is awarded a lucrative seat on a corporate board in Ukraine or receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party, it is not because he is an expert in paying for sex, drugs, and other shameful degradations.  It is because he has been taught how to collect bribes from foreign foes in return for his father’s promises to look out for their interests.

The mainstream media spent years trying to pretend that every Trump-owned property was really a front for enriching his family from secret special interests.  The partisan press were dead wrong, as always, but that did not stop them from pushing a narrative that President Trump (who took no salary for his service) was somehow using his office for personal financial gain.  In contrast, the evidence that Biden has used his various offices for pecuniary benefit is overwhelming.  In emails, witness testimony, and bank account histories, the Biden Crime Family’s business of extracting and laundering bribes is easy for any ordinary American to see.  Faced with such blinding corruption, however, the “expert” class now hilariously claims to see nothing.

In the press-titutes’ defense, though, they are lobbying Democrats pretty hard right now for more kickbacks from the government’s money-printing gravy train to keep their “profession” financially afloat.  It is quite difficult to bite the hand that feeds you.  It is even more difficult to excoriate a politician as a corrupt pig when you are feeding from the same trough.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Tony Badran: Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N.

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-back-doors-israel

Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan
In a move from the Obama playbook, the U.S. is advancing a stealth agenda in the Middle East at the expense of its allies.

Sometimes, U.S. foreign policy is what you see on the news. Increasingly, however, changes in policy are hidden from view because they are unpalatable to many Americans. The growing divide between the policies that America claims to be pursuing and the policies that it’s implementing on the ground poses a growing threat to America’s global standing, as well as to its democracy, which is supposed to exert oversight of foreign policy through Congress. In order to maintain key alliances, allies must believe that American commitments will endure regardless of changes in administration. In order for American commitments to be worth the paper they are written on, allies must believe that America has their backs.

Nowhere is the split between formal U.S. policy and the stealth agendas being implemented by U.S. policymakers more glaring and toxic than in the Middle East. This is true because the core of U.S. Middle East policy is the de facto alliance with Iran promoted by the Obama administration and enshrined in the JCPOA. Obama’s revisionist approach to Iran has in essence left the U.S. with two Mideast policies—one enshrined in our alliances and understandings with historic U.S. allies, and the other centered on dumping our commitments to our allies in order to appease Iran. Only one of these is truly U.S. regional policy, of course—the policy that seeks to establish Iran as the center of a new Middle East. As a result, American commitments now serve to gaslight our allies into going along by encouraging them to imagine that, sooner or later, things will go back to normal.

The focus of the split in U.S. policy and of gaslighting our allies is the Lebanese pseudo state run by Hezbollah, the terror army controlled by Iran. By dealing with “Lebanon,” the U.S. can help forward the objectives of its Iranian partner without ever dealing directly with Iran—and thereby can continue gaslighting its allies to the extent that they would prefer to believe that the U.S. is still their partner.

The latest act in the Biden administration’s Middle Eastern Kabuki theater is the use of Lebanon to rescind America’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. No formal announcement of this major policy shift was made, of course. Instead, it was buried in the fine print of the U.N. Security Council’s reauthorization of UNIFIL, the force that ostensibly secures Lebanon’s border with Israel. In a reprise of Barack Obama’s passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 in the final days of his second term, Team Obama-Biden on Aug. 31 again used the route of the Security Council to abandon a formal American commitment and implement a new policy with extreme repercussions for Israel’s security.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Abraham Accords Three Years On Israeli-Arab normalization remains a fount of hope for a troubled region. by Ed Husain

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/abraham-accords-three-years-206809

This week marks the painful remembrance of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, the week also shares the anniversary of the most powerful intellectual and diplomatic rebuke to the Al Qaeda worldview. Osama bin Laden attacked America for its role in the Middle East and desperately tried to whip up hatred between Westerners, Jews, Muslims, and Arabs. His death in 2011 did not end his message, but the Abraham Accords signed on September 15, 2020, have changed the lives of millions. And it has the potential, if America builds on existing achievements, to positively alter the Middle East and the wider world.

First, I am writing these lines as I shuttle between Jerusalem and Arab capitals. The Accords helped establish direct flights between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, some above Saudi airspace. In the airport lounges of Dubai, I watch ordinary Iranians and Israelis, supposedly sworn enemies, talking about their families and businesses. Trade volumes are increasing annually between Arab nations and Israel from $590 million in 2019 to $3.4 billion last year and will burgeon significantly. With 200 weekly flights between Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, more than a million Israelis have visited the United Arab Emirates. Air traffic has increased between Israel and Morocco, Jordan, and Turkey. 

Second, since 1947, Israelis have lived behind an iron curtain with little contact with their Arab and Muslim neighbors. Most Israelis, only encountering Palestinians at checkpoints, viewed Arabs with suspicion. Now, as one Israeli general explained to me, “We Israelis are wearing new glasses and seeing Arabs and Muslims as partners in peace.” In the security of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Israelis visit mosques and malls, beaches and golf courses, kosher restaurants, and even a synagogue beside churches and mosques. In Jerusalem, Israelis are stabbed and dare not enter Gaza. In the Arabian Gulf,  Israelis and Arabs dance at weddings, invest in businesses, and change school curricula to educate for a better future. As the Accords declare: “We seek tolerance and respect for every person in order to make this world a place where all can enjoy a life of dignity and hope, no matter their race, faith or ethnicity.” Change takes time and leadership. What the Accords have started must continue and, in the long run, will increase the popularity of peace in Arab countries. Persuading 350 million Arabs will be a more complex challenge than 10 million Israelis, but the work has begun and requires American and regional support. 

Third, where the UAE has led, Saudi Arabia will likely follow, and now there is a serious and sustained negotiation led by the United States to make peace between Mecca and Jerusalem, Islam and Judaism, Israel and Saudi Arabia. That such a diplomatic and civilizational breakthrough is even on the negotiation table is a significant advance from the days when Osama bin Laden wrongly claimed to represent Saudi interests.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Maher, joined by Barrymore, crosses picket line, says ‘Time to bring people back to work’ “This is bigger than me,” Barrymore said about the strike and her resuming her show.

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

https://justthenews.com/tv/maher-joined-barrymore-crosses-picket-line-says-time-bring-people-back-work

Bill Maher had the perfect Plan B for the ongoing Hollywood strikes.

The host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” joined the podcasting revolution earlier this year as a creative side hustle. So when the May 2 writers’ strike shut down every late-night talk show save Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” Maher kept on talking via his “Club Random” podcast.

Now, Maher is ready to resume his “Real Time” duties even though the strike is far from over. Drew Barrymore is doing the same on her eponymous talk show. 

Will these industry veterans pay a price for their actions?

For Maher, getting back to work made sense, and he shared why on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“It has been five months, and it is time to bring people back to work,” he wrote. “The writers have important issues that I sympathize with, and hope they are addressed to their satisfaction, but they are not the only people with issues, problems, and concerns. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton acquitted on all 16 articles of impeachment Zach Despart

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/09/16/ken-paxton-acquitted-impeachment-texas-attorney-general/

The Texas Senate on Saturday acquitted Attorney General Ken Paxton of 16 articles of impeachment alleging corruption and bribery, his most artful escape in a career spent courting controversy and skirting consequences of scandal.

No article received more than 14 of the required 21 votes to convict. Only two of 19 Republican Senators, Bob Nichols of Jacksonville and Kelly Hancock of North Richland Hills, voted in favor of convicting for any article — a stark contrast to the more than 70% of House Republicans who impeached the attorney general in May.

Paxton, who attended just two days of the trial and was not present to witness his exoneration, was characteristically defiant.

“The sham impeachment coordinated by the Biden Administration with liberal House Speaker Dade Phelan and his kangaroo court has cost taxpayers millions of dollars, disrupted the work of the Office of Attorney General and left a dark and permanent stain on the Texas House,” Paxton said in a statement. “The weaponization of the impeachment process to settle political differences is not only wrong, it is immoral and corrupt.”

The dramatic votes capped a two-week trial where a parade of witnesses, including former senior officials under Paxton, testified that the attorney general had repeatedly abused his office by helping his friend, struggling Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, investigate and harass his enemies, delay foreclosure sales of his properties and obtain confidential records on the police investigating him. In return, House impeachment managers said Paul paid to renovate Paxton’s Austin home and helped him carry out ­and cover up an extramarital affair with a former Senate aide.

In the end, senators were unpersuaded.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Democrats’ Latest Break With “The Science” By David Lewis Schaefer

Posted By on September 17th, 2023

https://amac.us/newsline/society/democrats-latest-break-with-the-science/

Last week, the Biden administration announced what the New York Times called its “most aggressive move yet to protect federal land from oil and gas exploration,” not only banning drilling in 13 million acres of what the Times termed “pristine” wilderness in Alaska, but also canceling the remaining drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) issued by the Trump administration.

While “young environmentalists,” according to the Times, were still “angered” by Biden’s decision in March to allow the $8 billion Willow project to proceed, calling it a betrayal of the president’s campaign promise of “no new drilling, period” on federal lands and waters, the administration has stressed that its ban on other projects along with the lease cancellation will substantially “reduce the carbon emissions that result from burning oil and gas that are driving climate change.”

The legality of the administration’s cancellation of previous leases will undoubtedly be challenged in court. Beyond that fact, its anti-drilling policy ignores a vast array of problems resulting from the war on fossil fuels: rapidly rising energy costs, large subsidies to manufacturers of electric cars that few consumers want, increasing America’s reliance on oil imports from unreliable suppliers with despotic regimes like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, bans on fracking that leave oil-rich areas like western New York suffering from widespread unemployment, and so on.

Biden’s climate change rhetoric also ignores the continuing debate around claims that burning fossil fuels is causing a dangerous rise in world temperatures. (See, for instance, the distinguished climate scientist and former Obama energy department official Steven Koonin’s 2021 book Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, as well as several books by the head of the Copenhagen Consensus Bjorn Lomborg.) It also disregards the infinitesimal contribution that drilling in Alaska would make to world CO2 emissions – particularly in contrast with China, which keeps constructing many new (“dirty”) coal-burning power plants each year, even while pledging to start reducing its emissions “in the future.”

All this calls into question the boast made by Democrats, beginning with the first Obama administration, that they, unlike Republicans, believe in following “the science,” not just on climate change, but a whole host of other issues.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Administration’s Dangerous, Failed, Disastrous Iran Policy by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on September 16th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19971/biden-failed-iran-policy

[T]he US, instead of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is bribing the mullahs not to go to 90% enrichment [the level needed for a nuclear bomb], at least on the Biden administration’s watch, especially ahead of the November 2024 US presidential election.

Meanwhile, Iran laughably keeps claiming that it is not even seeking a nuclear bomb.

After that, the Biden administration looked the other way during the Islamic Republic’s malign actions in the region, such as smuggling weapons, and shipping oil to Syria and Hezbollah in direct violation of US sanctions, at the same time that Iran was busy increasing its influence in America’s backyard.

Thanks to the Biden administration, Iran’s oil exports have also started booming and have now surged more than two million barrels a day, the most since 2018 , and they are selling it at levels close to the pre-sanctions era, to countries such as China, which desperately needs it – while the Biden administration suspended new oil and gas leases on US public lands and waters.

The Biden administration also looked away when the Iranian regime killed more than 300 people, including 40 children, in the recent protests.

As if these appeasements were not enough, the Biden Administration recently reached a deal with the Iranian regime behind closed doors on August 10, in which the United States agreed to pay $6 billion dollars and release a handful of Iranian nationals who are serving prison sentences in the US, in exchange for the release of five Iranian-Americans imprisoned in Iran — more than a billion dollars per person — with still more payments apparently on the way.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Dr. Robert Redfield Comes Clean on Government Censorship “We, the people, must hold an overreaching government accountable for violating our most sacred rights” By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on September 16th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/15/dr-robert-redfield-comes-clean-on-government-censorship/

“My position was just tell the American public the truth. There are side effects to vaccines. Tell them the truth and don’t try to package it.”

That was Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control during the administration of Donald Trump. Dr. Redfield recently went on record that the government health bureaucracy tried to quash discussion about the ineffectiveness of Covid vaccines.

“There was such an attempt to not let anybody get any hint that maybe vaccines weren’t foolproof, which, of course, we now know they have significant limitations,” said Redfield, who co-founded the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology and served as the Chief of Infectious Diseases and Vice Chair of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

“I think we should have really confidence and not be afraid to debate the issues that we think are in the public’s interest and just tell the public the truth,” said the former CDC director. This wasn’t the first time Dr. Redfield had been at odds with the government health establishment.

“I’m of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped,” Redfield told CNN in 2021. “Other people don’t believe that. That’s fine. Science will eventually figure it out.” After these statements, as Vanity Fair reported, “death threats flooded his inbox,” some from prominent scientists.

“I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis,” Redfield explained. “I expected it from politicians. I didn’t expect it from science.” The people might expect the FBI to investigate death threats against a public official, but reports of any such investigation are hard to find.

In 2021, Joe Biden said he would ask the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.” The Delaware Democrat ignored a key reality about the pandemic.

The CDC deploys the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a medical CIA, to prevent epidemics from arriving on American soil. The intrepid EIS officers failed to stop the Covid virus from arriving stateside, and their failure, like the death threats against Redfield, has not been subjected to an investigation. In early 2020, EIS veteran Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the sister of Rod Rosenstein, delivered a series of press briefings that faithfully echoed China’s talking points.

Biden medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for nearly 40 years. Dr. Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. The WIV, in turn, received shipments of deadly pathogens courtesy of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, the Chinese national who headed the special pathogens unit at Canada’s National Microbiology Lab.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Democrats may dump Joe Biden, but they still own his extreme policies

Posted By on September 16th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4206299-democrats-may-dump-joe-biden-but-they-still-own-his-extreme-policies/

Democrats are about to fire President Biden. Are Republicans ready?

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius ignited a political firestorm recently by veering off script and writing that Joe Biden should retire — a rare chink in the media bulwark protecting the president. In a follow-up interview, the “Morning Joe” crew echoed concerns about Biden’s age. Others will surely follow; polls showing that Biden might lose to Donald Trump and other GOP 2024 candidates have finally brought Democrats to their senses.   

Republicans need to prepare for the very real possibility that Joe Biden is forced out of the 2024 race. What does that mean? It means that it’s time the GOP stop obsessing about Joe Biden’s age, and focus on his disastrous policies instead.

If Biden bows out, all the scrutiny of the president’s incoherence, his stiff gait, his moments of confusion and all the other signs of decline will no longer matter. None of that will be helpful in fending off a run by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The president’s problem isn’t that he’s 80 years old, though that’s what liberals like Ignatius would like us to think. Even as he called for the president to step aside, Ignatius took pains to laud Joe Biden as a “successful and effective president.” 

Most of the country disagrees with Ignatius’s assessment — for good reason. Biden’s policies have hurt average Americans; under this president, the country has become poorer and less safe, while children have lost ground academically. He has richly earned the lowest approval ratings since Jimmy Carter. How does that constitute a successful presidency?

Gearing up for next year’s elections, Republicans should call out Biden’s inability to secure our borders, and his party’s complicity. They must focus on his mulish war on our oil industry, the explosion in the federal deficit and out-of-control spending, his administration’s damaging allegiance to teachers’ unions, the corruption that has rippled through our law enforcement agencies and the perversion of our justice system.  

Republicans must expose the damage done by these policies and remind voters that Democrats across the land have been in lockstep with Biden, endorsing his failed approaches.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Get woke, go broke: Now even Ibram X. Kendi’s foundation is getting layoffs By Monica Showalter

Posted By on September 16th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/09/get_woke_go_broke_now_even_ibram_x_kendis_foundation_is_getting_layoffs.html

Wokesterism is all over, yet as corporation after corporation has learned the hard way, stoking racial or other grievance-group resentment doesn’t actually add value, and in fact is a very good way to go broke.

Therefore, money is drying up for corporations that embrace it, and the cash they dole out to downstream institutions, such as universities, think tanks, activist groups, and big white-shoe foundations. The Bud Light fiasco pretty well shows what happens to those who dive in to embrace woke.

It’s not just scandal-plagued groups like Black Lives Matter, which has done little but riot in cities (hitting black-owned businesses hard) and feather its leaderships’ nests, that has suddenly seen both a drop in public support and incoming funds.

 Now it’s the fancy stuff, the university think tanks, such as Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, led by Ibram X. Kendi, which is seeing big layoffs.