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Thomas Friedman Equates Trump and Netanyahu With Putin and Xi A peculiar display of moral equivalence. October 6, 2023 by Joseph Klein

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/thomas-friedman-equates-trump-and-netanyahu-with-putin-and-xi/

New York Times foreign policy columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an opinion piece published by the New York Times on October 4th, entitled “How Four Leaders Are Turning the World Upside Down.” The four leaders whom Mr. Friedman lumped together in a disgusting display of moral equivalence were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He accused them all of having “created massive disruptions inside and outside their countries based on pure self-interest, rather than the interests of their people.”

Thomas Friedman’s condemnations of Putin and Xi were spot on, but he went off the rails completely by including Netanyahu and Trump on his list and claiming that Donald Trump “is the most dangerous of the four.” Friedman left out altogether North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un who has ramped up North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile testing and launches. And he skipped over Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose regime is arming Russia in Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and is providing military and financial support to Islamist terrorists.

Mr. Friedman has written several columns that have taken Prime Minister Netanyahu to task, mostly because of what he absurdly has labeled “a judicial coup led by Netanyahu.” The so-called “judicial coup” was legislation approved by Israel’s duly elected Knesset to rein in the runaway power of unelected Israeli Supreme Court judges. The judges have taken it upon themselves to invalidate laws passed by the Knesset because the judges believed the laws were not “reasonable.”

Israel’s judiciary arrogated to itself the power to override legislation and government executive actions based on the judges’ subjective judgments that not all the related aspects of the policy issues involved were adequately considered and accorded their proper weight. The judges went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials exceeded their authority as defined in Israel’s Basic Laws or arbitrarily committed an outrageous act that was grossly unjust. And they went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials unduly infringed on a person’s fundamental human rights to dignity and liberty as spelled out in the Basic Laws. Instead of serving as an independent check to ensure that these limits on legislative and executive powers were not exceeded, the Israeli Supreme Court judges have turned themselves into an unelected super-legislative branch.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Many Voices of Tehran – in Washington, DC And they are forming policy in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-many-voices-of-tehran-in-washington-dc/

Important reporting by Iran International TV and former Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, has contributed substantial new facts to a long-brewing controversy over Iranian-regime agents of influence in the United States.

These agents were deeply engaged in negotiating the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, aka the JCPOA, and more recently, in the Biden administration effort to revive the deal as an “understanding” that would not be submitted to a hostile Congress.

John Kerry made three separate last minute concessions to the Iranian regime in 2015 after he thought he had a deal. And the regime just happened to know that Kerry would cave on each one, so they pressed for more.

It was obvious to many of us who followed the negotiations as they were taking place that the nuclear deal could have been “written in Tehran,” as I pointed out in a column that appeared the day the deal was finalized.

Now it would appear, from the newly-released emails, that “written in Tehran” was not hyperbole. It was the literal truth.

And I was not the only one to smell a rat at the time. Former IAEA nuclear inspector David Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security and tracks the Iranian nuclear program, recalled the lobbying of the pro-regime agents as well in a recent tweet.

“People often forget that during these negotiations, many of these folks were actively opposing US positions and pushing for Iranian ones. They all shifted to zealous supporters after the deal was finalized, but I remember very well what several were doing during the negotiations to try weaken US positions and our need at my Institute to fend them off privately and publicly, sometimes in informal coordination with US negotiators.

For years, pro-freedom Iranians have excoriated the role of Swedish-Iranian Trita Parsi and his National Iranian American Council, NIAC, calling them the “Iran Lobby” in Washington, DC.

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KAMALA HARRIS- A VEEP LIKE NO OTHER

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/watch-kamala-home-buying-climate-anxiety/

Vice President Kamala Harris said young people aren’t buying homes because of “climate anxiety,” not mentioning the sky-high interest rates under her boss, President Joe Biden.

“Young leaders” suffer from “climate anxiety,” which is “their fear about … whether they should have children, whether they should ever think about buying a home for fear that it might be wiped out because of extreme weather occurrences,” Harris said in a Wednesday interview with an Allentown, Pa., news station.

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The Specter of Permanent Democrat Rule By Allan J. Feifer

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/the_specter_of_permanent_democrat_rule.html

What would be the most unAmerican goal today’s so-called Democrat party is pursuing?It is permanent one-party rule.That’s what the New Democrat party is doing by and through its political actions.

Democrats have a long and uncomfortable history of demagoguery, rewriting history when needed and playing fast and loose with the truth.  Today, I will reach back into the history bucket to wash off some of that blackface for which Democrats are famous!

“A split in the Democratic-Republican Party in the mid-1820s gave rise to two factions, i.e., the National Republicans (or Anti-Jacksonians) and the Democrats.  Their most glaring differences lay in their beliefs to which the government should be involved in people’s daily lives.  Democrats tend to favor active government intervention, while Republicans favor a more “hands-off” policy called self-determination.”

We had two parties with but a single, significant difference between them.  Both parties agreed on various economic and societal issues but were split over the extent of government intrusion into people’s lives. 

The Great Depression allowed the Democrat party to shift to newly popular socialism, actually Marxism, as a reaction to President Hoover’s failure to address human suffering adequately.   

Enter President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was victorious by a landslide in 1932 and promised an end to the suffering.  With a mandate from the voters, Roosevelt accomplished three things over his twelve years in office:

He gave hope to the masses
He radically changed our system of government
He can be credited as a central figure in winning the Second World War

It is not generally understood that Roosevelt did not end the Depression but, in actuality, extended it.  Roosevelt’s policies saved lives and did much good, but he did so at the expense of entrepreneurship, innovation, and independence.  Roosevelt was virtually at war with American industrialists until a year before Pearl Harbor commenced a healing process, allowing the U.S. to prepare for war visible just over the horizon.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

China pouring money into ‘unprecedented resources’ in disinformation, surveillance tactics, report “Russia has returned the favor by promoting PRC propaganda related to Taiwan and other PRC interests,” the report states.By Charlotte Hazard

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://justthenews.com/world/asia/china-pouring-money-unprecedented-resources-disinformation-surveillance-tactics-report

China’s government is investing in “unprecedented resources” in disinformation, surveillance and censorship tactics to influence the worldview of the country, according to a State Department report.

“As the [People’s Republic of China] has grown more confident in its power, it appears to have calculated that it can more aggressively pursue its interests via information manipulation,” the report reads. 

CBS reports that China’s state media has used some of these tactics to spew “anti-NATO” and pro-Kremlin propaganda after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The communist-run country faces international criticism for such issues as its record on human rights, unfair international trade practices, spying on other countries and not condemning Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“Russia has returned the favor by promoting PRC propaganda related to Taiwan and other PRC interests,” the report  continues. 

A specific example in the report compiled by the department’s Global Engagement Center showed that Beijing “heavily amplified” its own military messaging it took to protest then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year to Taiwan, as the island nation tries to break from China rule and align itself more with Western nations. 

“You can see a breathtaking ambition to have information dominance in certain parts of the world, crucial parts of the world,” GEC coordinator James Rubin said in a briefing on Thursday. “That’s the threat that affects our national security that affects the national security of other parties.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Green Energy Subsidy Lie

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/06/the-green-energy-subsidy-lie/

Environmentalists have long complained about oil and gas industry subsidies. But we don’t hear from them regarding the subsidies paid out for politically favored renewable energy programs, even though the supposedly green sources are dining sumptuously on taxpayers’ dollars. In fact, renewables are more heavily subsidized than the fossil fuels, and it would be difficult if not impossible for them to exist without the support.

From 2016 to 2022, “energy-specific subsidies and support” totaled $183.3 billion, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report. While “wind and solar power account for about 21% of domestic electricity production,” they nevertheless took in “a staggering $83.8 billion in subsidies, by far the largest share compared to any other category,” says Fox News.

The EIA says that over that period, “nearly half (46%) of federal energy subsidies were associated with renewable energy,” with “federal support for renewable energy of all types” more than doubling, from $7.4 billion in fiscal 2016 to $15.6 billion in fiscal 2022.

Meanwhile, “natural gas and petroleum-related tax expenditures” – which are not direct government spending nor tax loopholes – were $2.1 billion in fiscal 2022.

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The Culture War Is Coming for Your Car As the green left’s hostility to the automobile grows, voters notice their own values are at stake. By Joseph C. Sternberg

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-culture-war-is-coming-for-your-car-climate-electric-vehicle-britain-5a4cc7aa?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Forget race. Forget sex. Forget immigration. The mother of all culture wars is breaking out, and its subject is the car.

The automobile has long been a policy flashpoint, with the paramount issue being where it should be able to roam. This was the heart of the brutal urban-planning battles of the mid-20th century, which were fought over the need for and placement of new highways.

Yet it’s hard to describe those earlier policy fights as a culture war. Liberal urban activists such as Jane Jacobs—who famously fought off Robert Moses’ plan to build a highway interchange over Washington Square Park in New York City—didn’t hate cars or the people who drove them. In her magisterial “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” Jacobs repeatedly observed that resorting to the personal car was an entirely rational response to the failures of government urban planners to encourage smarter development.

Such humane common sense seems quaint in the context of today’s car wars. For a growing portion of the left, the automobile has become a moral ill in its own right rather than the symptomatic inconvenience of Jacobs’s telling. Partly this has to do with pollution, which was barely emerging as an issue when Jacobs was at her peak in the early 1960s but has also improved dramatically since. Much more so it has to do with carbon emissions—which are distinct from the smoggy pollution of the 20th century, despite constant efforts to conflate the two.

When I say “carbon emissions,” note that I mean it in a general sense. The problem with the personal car isn’t its direct climate impact. Road transport, including trucking, accounts for 12% of global carbon emissions. Electric vehicles aren’t an obvious means of reducing overall emissions, especially once you factor in their dirty supply chains and the coal-fired power that often charges them.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Trump’s the Republican To Solve the Crisis in the House, Which Would Bolster His Chances in 2024

Posted By on October 6th, 2023

https://www.nysun.com/article/trumps-the-republican-to-solve-the-crisis-in-the-house-which-would-bolster-his-chances-in-2024

It is time for President Trump to exert his authority as putative head of the Republican Party. He needs to step in and resolve the mess created by Congressman Matt Gaetz and his seven cohorts in the House of Representatives. 

How can he do that? By making sure that the selection of the next House speaker is done quickly and with minimal drama. Get Mr. Gaetz and his allies to support the most electable candidate, whether it is Congressman Jim Jordan or Congressman Steve Scalise or whomever else party leaders and Mr. Trump choose.

It’s time to tell the bomb-throwers, all Trump admirers, to stand down. Because it is widely believed that Mr. Gaetz’s drive to topple Speaker McCarthy stemmed from personal animus rather than any ideological high ground, that should not be impossible. The eight whose votes bounced Mr. McCarthy have no favored candidate, they have no plan. They just wanted him out.

Why would the 45th president wade into this particular swamp? Because nobody has more to lose politically from the ejection of Mr. McCarthy. When voters — even those of us who admire his policies — think of Mr. Trump’s presidency, they think of chaos, and the recent turmoil in the House furthers that narrative.

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David Randall The Implicit-Bias House of Cards DEI trainings don’t work because one of the concepts on which they are based is junk science.

Posted By on October 5th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-implicit-bias-house-of-cards

In the Wall Street Journal, Mahzarin Banaji and Frank Dobbin recently published “Why DEI Training Doesn’t Work—and How to Fix It,” a defense of implicit-bias research in the guise of a critique of current corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings. Banaji is one of the two inventors of the concept of implicit bias, and of the related implicit association test (IAT). She and Dobbin hope to acknowledge the flaws of DEI trainings while preserving implicit-bias research—and the associated program of political activism. The authors lament that DEI trainings elicit shame in their subjects, and that they are largely being used to bolster workforce-management policies against possible litigation. Their problem with DEI trainings is not that they are discriminatory, but that they do not strike the right tone:

Reminding managers that they can use these tools to suss out problems and nip them in the bud helps them to feel capable of managing biases and microaggressions. When managers use these skills, they retain women and people of color for long enough to come up for promotion. . . . training isn’t designed to blame people for their moral failings. Instead, it’s galvanizing them to support organizational change by arming them with knowledge.

The problems with DEI trainings are not in their tone, however, but in their substance. The implicit-bias theory (also called unconscious-bias theory) on which these trainings are based has no scientific basis, as years of examinations have consistently demonstrated. Lee Jussim puts it politely in his “12 Reasons to Be Skeptical of Common Claims About Implicit Bias,” but the Open Science Foundation’s archive of Articles Critical of the IAT and Implicit Bias renders a harsher verdict. In 2011, Etienne LeBel and Sampo Paunonen reviewed evidence that measures of implicit bias possess low reliability. In other words, when you test for implicit bias multiple times, you rarely get the same result. Their conclusion was that some part of “implicit bias” is really “random measurement error.” In 2017, Heather Mac Donald’s intensive examination of the theory and its empirical basis (or lack thereof) concluded that the “implicit-bias crusade is agenda-driven social science.” And Bertram Gawronski’s 2019 review of the scholarly literature on implicit-bias research also concludes that there’s no proof that people aren’t self-aware enough to know what’s causing their supposedly “implicit” or “unconscious” biases; and that you can’t prove that there’s any relationship between how people do on the test and how they behave in the real world.

As far back as 2009, Hart Blanton and colleagues reexamined research data on implicit bias. They found that 70 percent of whites who supposedly displayed implicit bias against blacks actually discriminated in favor of blacks.

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Our Establishment’s Alternate Realities After mid-terms, Biden resumed his attack on once bad, then good, and now bad again fossil fuels—at least until ’24 By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 5th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/05/our-establishments-alternate-realities/

One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies. A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions.

Something like that is happening in the United States. Eight million illegal immigrants have entered the United States by the deliberate erasure of the southern border.

Apparently, the Biden administration sees some unstated advantage in destroying U.S. immigration law and welcoming in would-be new constituents.

Yet, the more the millions arrive, the more Joe Biden and his Homeland Security director Alejandro Mayorkas flat out lie that “the border is secure.”

They both live in a world of make-believe, passed off to the American people as reality.

And the more the Americans are lied to that the border is secure, the more they poll—currently 77 percent—that it is not.

Biden apparently has reversed course and begun using the former pejorative “Bidenomics” as a term of pride.

He now praises this three-year effort to borrow $6-7 trillion, and spike interest rates threefold to 7% on home mortgages—even as prices on essentials like food and fuel have spiked 25-30% since he entered office.

The more that Biden brags about what he did to the economy, the more people poll—over 60%—dissatisfaction with his alternate reality of “Bidenomics.”

Do we remember the humiliation in August 2021 in Afghanistan?

The more Gen. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Joe Biden assured that the American military presence was stable, the more swiftly it crumbled and descended into the worst mass flight of an American army since Vietnam.