NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Interview on Unherd: On State Department Censorship and Blacklisting Gabe Kaminsky and I speak with Emily Jashinsky of Unherd about the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department entity engaged in censorship and financial blacklisting Matt Taibbi

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/interview-on-unherd-on-state-department

Last Friday, Josh Christenson at the New York Post published “State Department tried to discredit reporters, Republican pol over conservative ‘blacklist.’” The article described an internal memo showing the State Department strategizing public relations responses to the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky, me, and Republican congressman Jim Banks.

The memo criticizes Banks in an extremely devious way. The Indiana Republican last February was quoted by Gabe in the Examiner saying the Biden administration appeared to be “knee deep” in efforts to “crack down” on speech.

The State Department memo listed the Banks quote among its list of criticisms to answer. However, the agency didn’t quote the Examiner. It claimed to be quoting the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti, giving the impression that Banks offered his criticism of Biden in Russian state media:

The State Department memo

But Banks never spoke to RIA-Novosti, or any Russian agency. His quotes only appear in wholesale Russian translations (read: thefts) of Gabe’s Examiner article. The State Department and its counter-messaging arm, the Global Engagement Center, wanted so badly to create the impression Banks acted in service of Russian propaganda that they forgot to use the original Banks quote, instead re-translating the Russian version back to English. This resulted in the quote being reproduced incorrectly, ironic given GEC’s ostensible mission.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamalism Will Destroy America By Tom Klingenstein

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/kamalism-will-destroy-america/

My purpose here is to establish that we are in a war, and explain how we must fight. Because fighting effectively depends heavily on President Trump, my remarks also constitute the case for Trump, a case that has nothing to do with his policies but everything to do with his character and personality. These fit the crisis we face.

In May of 1940, conquering German armies were only separated from Britain by the English Channel. Britain had 350,000 men trapped in Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe controlled the air.  America, despite Churchill’s urgent pleas, would not provide desperately needed military assistance. This was Britain’s darkest hour.

Fortunately, the British dug deep into their national grit and almost overnight conjured up a largely civilian armada, which rescued their men at Dunkirk.  Britain would have fallen without the resolve of its people. America may not have been far behind. Today, a deadly enemy besieges America. But unlike 1940 Britain, America has not yet grasped the magnitude of its danger. Our home is under attack. 

‘Home’ was the theme of the recent Republican convention. This theme was nicely encapsulated by the 98 year-old marine and D-Day veteran who said, “America is our home.” But largely missing at the convention was mention of the mortal danger that today threatens our home. Our American home is what our enemy wants to destroy. Our home is what we must fight for.

Unfortunately, our enemy does not yet even have a name. We need one. For the moment let’s call the enemy “Kamalism.” Trump is a great namer — maybe he will come up with a better one. You can’t defeat an enemy if you can’t name it. 

The 2020 riots showed Kamalism in action. The regime’s paramilitary operation, BLM and Antifa among others, sparked the fire that lit the riots; the regime’s intellectuals justified them; corporations and foundations funded them; the media covered them over; politicians fanned the flames; and the regime’s justice apparatus, including Kamala herself, freed law breakers. Even the military got into the act, denying Trump needed resources.

ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Why is Kamala Harris keeping voters in the dark on her energy agenda?

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/4888721-kamala-harris-energy-policy

Almost nothing could be more important to the future of American workers than access to affordable energy. This is why Vice President Kamala Harris needs to come clean about her energy policy. 

Kowtowing to the climate zealots currently running unchecked in the Biden-Harris White House will lead to soaring electricity costs and clobber our country’s ability to compete in the industries of the future such as artificial intelligence.  

Harris has reversed herself on a number of issues, but none as critical as her stance on energy and on fracking.  

While in 2019 she promised to ban fracking, today her campaign says she’s changed her mind. She hasn’t explained why she flip-flopped. She doesn’t need to; we know she needs to win the Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to win the election, and fracking is a large source of employment and revenues in the Keystone State. Therefore, Harris is playing nice and not threatening to put some 400,000 workers out of the job.  

Conservatives don’t believe Harris. Apparently, neither do progressives. Green New Deal enthusiast Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), recently said, “On climate, on abortion, on racial, LGBTQ issues, we are absolutely in agreement on her agenda.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that in walking back many of her progressive positions, Harris was just “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.” 

In her debate with Donald Trump, Harris touted the record oil production that has occurred during the Biden-Harris administration. And it is true: output recently reached a new high of 13.2 million barrels per day, finally topping the 13 million per day peak recorded when Trump was president. That achievement, however, comes in spite of her and her boss’s efforts, not because of them. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Retired Border Patrol chief: ‘Each time we asked for help in dealing with a new issue, it fell on deaf ears’ By Monica Showalter

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/retired_border_patrol_chief_each_time_we_asked_for_help_in_dealing_with_a_new_issue_it_fell_on_deaf_ears.html

Just how lawless has the Harris-Biden administration been on the border? A recently retired Border Patrol chief from the San Diego corridor described it in detail in a House hearing, which is explosive

According to The Center Square:

Retired San Diego Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said he was instructed by the Biden administration to not publicize arrests of illegal border crossers identified as “Significant Interest Aliens” with ties to terrorism.

Heitke testified before a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday about how Biden-Harris “open border policies have undermined our safety and security.”

“We had an exponential increase in Significant Interest Aliens … with significant ties to terrorism,” illegally entering in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection San Diego Sector, he said.

Prior to the Biden-Harris administration, the sector averaged 10 to 15 SIAs per year. “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, way over 100 SIAs in 2023 and more than that this year,” he said.

“These are only the ones we caught,” meaning the number likely is higher because of the volume of gotaways, those who illegally cross the border and are not apprehended.

“At the time, I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIA’s or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public that there was no threat at the border.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Great Walz of China: An Innocent Abroad Or…? It is imperative for Americans to get answers as to how much of a role communist China played—and may continue to play—in building up “The Great Walz of China.”By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/21/the-great-walz-of-china-an-innocent-abroad-or/

If you blinked, you might have missed it—which is just what the collusion media and the left wanted.

Earlier this month, the Empire State had a spy scandal. The alleged perpetrator Linda Sun is a now-former aide to both New York Governors Andrew Cuomo and his successor Kathy Hochul. She was arrested and indicted for being an unregistered agent for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Also arrested was her husband, Christopher Hu.

Ms. Sun is alleged to have used her government position to advance the interests of communist China by deepening ties between the regime and the New York state government; and revising official statements to portray the PRC in a more favorable light. On his part, Mr. Hu is alleged to have used his PRC-based to abet the “transfer of millions of dollars in kickbacks for personal gain.”

As Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, observed in the Daily Signal:

Hochul reportedly terminated Sun and alerted law enforcement immediately after learning of her misconduct but a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] agent should never have gained access to New York’s Executive Chamber in the first place… And the problem isn’t unique to New York. Most state governments are likely unaware of how aggressively Beijing targets them… This is partly because Beijing sees state and local governments as potential backdoors into a U.S. political system that is harder to infiltrate directly.

Indeed, they are not unique to the Empire State; and the means the PRC utilizes to acquire “assets” who will knowingly and/or unwittingly promote their interests are time-tested, in every sense of the term. Per Mr. Cunningham: “Beijing’s agents seek to cultivate assets at all levels, and they start targeting people early in their careers when they have little reason to suspect they are on a foreign adversary’s radar.”

Why would the collusion media desperately want to shove the New York-PRC spy scandal down the memory hole? Isn’t this the same media that in league with the Democrats and the administrative state spent years spreading the abject Russia-gate lie that Donald Trump “colluded” with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli mother exposes Arab incitement, criminality authorities miss Arabs in Judea and Samaria take pride in Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7, often uploading videos from the slaughter, says activist Ayelet Lash. David Isaac

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.jns.org/israeli-mother-exposes-arab-incitement-criminality-authorities-miss/

Ayelet Lash foresaw disaster even before Oct. 7. A mother of five whose day job is teaching high school students with special needs, she moonlights as an online activist.

She’s demonstrated a knack for the role, earning several appearances on Israeli media and unwanted attention from the Israeli police.

In the last four years, police have interrogated Lash three times at the behest of the State Attorney’s Office.

She thinks the investigations were fishing expeditions in the hope of charging her with racism and incitement. Lash says the police went through countless posts of hers and challenged her on absurd items. One was a photoshopped picture of a rabbit wearing a keffiyeh. She says the fact that all the investigations were dropped shows that they could turn up nothing.

She is currently under investigation by Israel’s Civil Service Commission.

Post-Oct. 7, she started looking at the social media of her Arab neighbors in Judea and Samaria where she lives. She uncovered a cesspool of terrorist and criminal activity carried on under the noses of Israeli security forces.

Lash uncovered thieving, incitement and terrorist training with relative ease, raising the question: Where are the Israeli army, police and intelligence services?

Lash recently spoke with JNS.

Q: Do you believe there will be another Oct. 7 attack, only this time from Judea and Samaria?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

To The EU: Time To Stand Against Iran’s Regime, Terror Groups, Nukes by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on September 21st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20948/eu-iran-regime

Moreover, maintaining… economic ties grants legitimacy to the regime, signaling that the European Union is willing to overlook Iran’s role in supporting aggression against Ukraine.

To stanch this, the EU urgently needs to stop its economic dealings with Iran.

Along with cutting economic ties, the EU would also do well to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and close all Iranian embassies in Europe. The IRGC is the primary force behind Iran’s military support for Russia. Isolating it would be a crucial step in weakening Tehran’s capacity to destabilize the entire Middle East.

It [the EU] really has become a principal enabler of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The longer the EU allows the Islamist regime of Iran to operate with no repercussions, the more it strengthens both Iran’s and Russia’s war machines. For the wellbeing of the EU, the Middle East and the Free World, the EU severing its ties with Iran cannot take place soon enough.

It is hardly a secret that without the Iranian regime’s financial, military, and operational backing, its affiliated terror groups — such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis as well as its own militias, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — would not have been able to launch the kind of large-scale attacks against Israel that have upended the broader region. Iran’s support not only provides these groups with financial resources but also with crucial intelligence and military training. Without this support, the military capacity of these groups would be significantly diminished, and the extent of the chaos in the region far less severe.

Iran’s reach extends, of course, far beyond its proxies and militias. Some national governments, notably Russia, have relied on Iran’s support to sustain their military campaigns. Iran’s backing of Russia’s war against Ukraine, for example, only prolonged and intensified it.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Egypt Prefers Palestinian Terrorists On Its Border by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on September 20th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20949/why-egypt-prefers-palestinian-terrorists-on-its

“Before el-Sissi, but also during his tenure, cars, motorcycles, clothes, drugs, medicines, alcoholic beverages, and weapons were smuggled through the Philadelphi Corridor over the years, lots of weapons: improved RPG-29 rockets that killed our soldiers in the Iron Swords War, hidden rocket parts, machine guns, mines, and more.” — Nadav Shragai, Israeli author and journalist, Israel Hayom, July 10, 2024.

“[E]ven those who trust President el-Sissi now cannot guarantee that a new [former Egyptian President] Mohammed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood won’t rise to power in the future, as we saw happen in 2012 presidential elections in Egypt. Israel must, therefore, remain in Philadelphi [gateway between Egypt and Gaza]…. Foreign monitoring forces have failed in Lebanon over the years, and they also failed at the Rafah crossing from which European Union monitors fled in 2007.” — Nadav Shragai, Israel Hayom, July 10, 2024.

“Even today the city of Rafah [near the border with Egypt] is full of smugglers who bribe the Egyptian police and run a business sector with a turnover in the billions. The smuggling still continues during wartime, as war materiel and other goods flow from Sinai into Gaza every day. And there is fear that such smuggling is, or will be, accompanied by smuggling in the other direction. Senior Hamas figures are likely to try to escape into Egyptian territory, with hostages, and from there to Iran.” — Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi, March 4, 2024.

“Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory through Egypt… Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, but those trying to get their names on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large ‘coordination fees’ by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services…. a network of brokers, based in Cairo, helping Palestinians leave Gaza has operated around the Rafah border for years…. The Guardian has spoken to a number of people who have been told they would have to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 each to leave the strip, with some launching crowdfunding campaigns to raise the money. Others were told they could leave sooner if they paid more.” — The Guardian, January 8, 2024.

“A company owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is making around $2m a day from Palestinians fleeing Israel’s war on Gaza… Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, a firm owned by Sinai tribal leader and business tycoon Ibrahim al-Organi, has been charging Palestinians crossing from Gaza’s Rafah to Egypt at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 for children under 16. It has a monopoly on providing transfer services at the Rafah crossing….” — Middle East Eye, May 1, 2024.

Anyone who believes that the Egyptians would act differently if and when Israel withdraws from the border area must be living on another planet. If the IDF leaves, Hamas will swiftly return to the border, and the Egyptians will continue looking the other way.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Leor Sapir, Mungeri Lal HHS Has Misled on Gender Medicine The Department of Health and Human Services’ documented failures to hold gender medicine to scientific standards have happened under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Posted By on September 20th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/hhs-has-misled-on-gender-medicine

In 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) accepted a formal request to initiate a national coverage analysis for “gender-reassignment surgery.” When making these coverage determinations, CMS is legally obligated to evaluate relevant clinical evidence and answer the question: Is the evidence sufficient to conclude that the application of the item or service under study will improve health outcomes for Medicare patients? In June 2016, CMS released its 109-page analysis, which it made open for public comment. The agency published its final decision memo two months later. The differences between the two documents were revealing—and disturbing.

At first sight, the summaries of both memos seemed similar. Each mentioned that the CMS was not issuing a national coverage determination on “gender-reassignment surgery” for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria. Such determinations, the CMS said, would continue to be made by local contractors on a case-by-case basis. On closer examination, however, the final document included substantial changes. These were not corrections. They amounted to a systematic effort to scrub any reference to the evidence of the harms associated with these surgeries.

The agency’s shifting analysis of gender surgery is glaring enough. But it is just one of several examples, between 2016 and the present day, of how key figures and agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have misled the American public about the evidence for “gender-affirming care.”

Start with the tale of two memos. To conduct a proper analysis of the clinical evidence, CMS identified a large number of publications related to “gender-reassignment surgery.” As CMS explained:

Studies with robust study designs and larger, defined patient populations assessed with objective endpoints or validated test instruments were given greater weight than small, pilot studies. Reduced consideration was given to studies that were underpowered for the assessment of differences or changes known to be clinically important. Studies with fewer than 30 patients were reviewed and delineated, but excluded from the major analytic framework. Oral presentations, unpublished white papers, and case reports were excluded. Publications in languages other than English were excluded.

Thirty-three publications, ranging from 1979 to 2015, were eventually identified and included.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

James Burnham A Supremely Bad Idea The proposed “ethics code” for the justices is a misguided solution to a nonexistent problem.

Posted By on September 20th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ethics-proposal-would-undermine-the-supreme-court

Wielding “ethics” violations against one’s political foes is a Washington tradition. When it comes to ethics and the Supreme Court, observers should not be deceived. Current attacks on the justices’ ethics are bad-faith political barbs intended to undermine the Court—not expressions of genuine concern over actual transgressions. And the policy reforms being suggested to solve this nonexistent problem would do enormous damage to our most important legal institution while producing few, if any, countervailing benefits.

The latest proposal, which Justice Elena Kagan herself has championed, is to create an “enforceable” code for the justices. Details are sparse, but the basic idea is to empower lower court judges—whose work the Supreme Court reviews—to police the justices’ alleged ethical violations. Apparently, the chief justice would decide which lower court judges to endow with this extraordinary authority. Precisely what investigatory and enforcement tools those judges would wield remains unstated.

This proposal has several fundamental problems. For starters, it would give a future chief justice extraordinary power over his or her colleagues—power that some future, malevolent chief justice could easily abuse. By selecting the lower court judges who stand in judgment of the justices, the chief justice could put a thumb on the scale of those determinations. Gaining an upper hand on an intractable colleague would be as easy as stacking the ethics panel with that colleague’s antagonists. We can certainly hope no judge would abuse such authority. But to borrow from the old adage—if judges were angels, no ethics panel would be necessary.

And consider this dynamic in the context of a problem facing the Court right now: leaks of confidential information. Last weekend, the New York Times printed an exposé on the most recent Supreme Court term, replete with details of internal memos, the justices’ deliberations, and more. We have no idea who leaked this sensitive information to the Times—and particularly whether any justice was involved—but the leaks appear designed to undermine Chief Justice John Roberts and cast an unflattering light on the Court’s majority in certain important decisions. The judiciary’s ethical canons flatly prohibit politically motivated leaks of confidential judicial deliberations. Canon 4(D)(5) states: “A judge should not disclose or use nonpublic information acquired in a judicial capacity for any purpose unrelated to the judge’s official duties.” Presumably, a campaign to influence the chief justice and his colleagues by leaking “nonpublic information” to the New York Times would meet that description.