Joe Biden keeps snubbing Netanyahu – here’s why: Lawrence Haas

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4074635-joe-biden-keeps-snubbing-netanyahu-heres-why/

President Joe Biden’s state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who is cracking down on opposition leaders, journalists and minorities, points up the compromises presidents make as they balance America’s security needs with its desire to promote freedom and democracy around the world.

Biden seeks closer U.S. ties with India, which recently became the world’s most populous country, as a counterweight to an expansionist China, which is challenging U.S. power and influence in the Pacific and beyond.

It’s an old story. Since World War II, presidents have met with many of the world’s leading autocrats when they thought U.S. security exigencies outweighed human rights concerns. FDR and Truman met with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to help win the war and design the post-war world; Nixon met with Chinese leader Mao Zedong to nourish a Sino-American partnership to offset Soviet power; Carter met with Iran’s Shah and Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd to maintain key regional ties; and Reagan met with Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe as part of his overarching Cold War strategy.

Along with Modi, Biden has met with (among others) China’s increasingly authoritarian leader Xi Jinping, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s human rights-abusing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

All of which raises a question: Why won’t Biden meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?

What is there to be said about Jill Biden? By Patricia McCarthy

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/what_is_there_to_be_said_about_jill_biden.html

What is the ultimate verdict on a woman like not-a-real-doctor Jill Biden? She has for at least four years now, with help from the malevolent left, been a willing party to the installation of her brain-addled husband into the Oval Office.  As his infirmities become more and more obvious to the global public, Jill and her accomplices in crime continue to pretend that Joe is sentient, capable of being the President of the United States, when everyone knows he is not. He is done; gone. And yet his handlers continue to use and abuse him as if he is some ventriloquist huckster’s puppet.  The man is an embarrassment on the world stage. 

Jill is primarily responsible for this crime against the American people.  She alone could have put a stop to what has befallen America since he was inaugurated.

We all know by now that the American left embraces cultural Marxism, the ideology that is meant to destroy the nuclear family, erase any sense of morality and all traditional Judeo-Christian values from the minds of the American people.  The Democrats will sign on to any scheme, no matter how absurd, if it furthers their agenda.  

They signed on to Biden when it seemed like Bernie Sanders might become the Democrat nominee in 2020.  They couldn’t have that!  Bernie would be too blatant a socialist candidate.  So, with help from James Clyburn, Biden it was; the most hapless, moronic and corrupt man to hold office for fifty years in Congress.  His reward for being exactly that, moronic and corrupt, was to fail upward, to be illegitimately installed as President.  And now, as a result of massive election theft, the ordination of the most incompetent, the most corrupt member of Congress, the man owned by China, Ukraine and perhaps even Romania, is our President.  He is the man that withdrew from Afghanistan in the most catastrophic pro-China manner possible, the man who on day one of his presidency opened our southern border to all comers, the man who has purposefully increased the ease with which the drug and sex trafficking cartels can operate within and without America with impunity. 

The Drudgery and Danger of a Meritless Society What other possible criterion would you suggest in place of merit? by Jeff Davidson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-drudgery-and-danger-of-a-meritless-society/

EXCERPT

Singled Out for Merit

Today, if you attend a Little League awards banquet, the champions are given awards along with all others. Everybody receives an award for participation, much like what occurs in the larger society. Merit counts for little because the mentality today is simply participating, which means that you are worthy.

To hand out participation trophies is a sham; however, the same sham that’s taking place in many aspects of our culture. The Leftists among us are seeking to quash merit-based testing everywhere. Out with Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs), they’re racist. They’re sexist. They’re transphobic. Out with the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Out with writing an essay to get into college. Out with letter grades.

So it goes into too many aspects of society.

Ah, but you and I don’t want to live in a meritless basic society. I guarantee that you don’t want to be operated on by a brain surgeon who went to a medical school where grades were not important. You don’t want to fly in a plane with pilots who have not proven both in testing and in flight simulation that they are fully capable.

You don’t want to drive over a bridge constructed by an engineer who went to a school where testing was deemed to be worthless or racist, or biased. We’ve come too far in human civilization to resort to a time when anybody could pick up a scalpel and perform surgery or where anyone could construct a bridge because in the early days, perhaps, almost anyone had to.

Credentials matter. Academic performance matters. Competence matters. Demonstrating one’s intellectual capabilities is among the vital signs that you’re being served by a professional.

‘Missing’ Biden corruption case witness Dr. Gal Luft details allegations against president’s family in extraordinary video By Miranda Devine

https://nypost.com/2023/07/05/missing-biden-corruption-case-witness-dr-gal-luft-details-allegations-against-presidents-family-in-extraordinary-video/

The “missing witness” from the Biden corruption investigation, Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft, has laid out his bribery allegations against the president’s family in an extraordinary video filmed in an undisclosed location while on the run. 

In the 14-minute recording, obtained exclusively by The Post, the fugitive former Israeli army officer claims he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying to the House Oversight Committee that the Biden family received payments from individuals with alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence, and that they had an FBI mole who shared classified information with their benefactors from the China-controlled energy company CEFC. 

The self-proclaimed fall guy says he provided the incriminating evidence to six officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice in a secret meeting in Brussels in March 2019 — but alleges that it was covered up. 

“I, who volunteered to inform the US government about a potential security breach and about compromising information about a man vying to be the next president, am now being hunted by the very same people who I informed — and may have to live on the run for the rest of my life on the run . . .” 

“I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I have no political motive or agenda . . . I did it out of deep concern that if the Bidens were to come to power, the country would be facing the same traumatic Russia collusion scandal — only this time with China. Sadly, because of the DOJ’s coverup, this is exactly what happened . . .” 

Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft laid out his bribery allegations against President Biden’s family in an extraordinary video filmed in an undisclosed location while on the run.Luft claims he was arrested in Cyprus to stop him from testifying to the House Oversight Committee that the Biden family received payments from individuals with alleged ties to Chinese military intelligence.AP

Masked teens mugging moms, nannies in crime-ridden San Francisco: reports By Allie Griffin

https://nypost.com/2023/07/04/san-francisco-moms-nannies-robbed-by-masked-teens-in-violent-spree/

San Francisco mothers, including a pregnant woman, and nannies are being targeted in violent, broad-daylight robberies at the hands of masked minors in the crime-ridden city.

Police have connected a group of teenagers to at least 11 such attacks last week in Noe Valley and nearby areas, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The young suspects, wearing ski masks, allegedly pushed, and punched the female victims in order to steal their smartphones before escaping in a stolen runaway car, cops said.

One juvenile male suspect has since been arrested in connection to the string of robberies and police are searching for his alleged co-conspirators, the local paper reported.

The brazen crime in the affluent sections of the city has left residents on high alert.

The teens appeared to spare no mercy in the attacks, having victimized a pregnant woman and a person with a stroller in two cases, Noe Valley Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told the Chronicle.

One mother who asked to be identified by her initials CW for fear of retaliation, told the newspaper she was on her way to pick up her daughter from daycare last Monday when she was attacked.

She said she was pushing an empty stroller when a person in a gray ski mask hopped out of a car and knocked her to the sidewalk as he snatched her phone.

“I was shoved to the ground aggressively,” she said, adding that San Francisco police seemed reluctant to offer help.

A daycare worker who only provided her first name Laura told the publication that she too was violently robbed of her phone the same day while waiting for the train.

Say, Looks Like That Supply-Side Stuff Works After All

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/06/say-looks-like-that-supply-side-stuff-works-after-all/

Bidenomonics has been, and will continue to be, a disaster. This is what happens when lawmakers manipulate economies. No one should ever expect a different outcome when politicians enact ideas that they believe are so brilliant that they will overcome the laws of economics. The way out of this mess is to make a policy U-turn to both unleash the economy and expand precious liberty.

President Joe Biden last week bragged that his economic policies — straight from the Democrats blueprint that says “borrow, tax, spend, regulate, then do it all again” — are working. But as we’ve noted, Bidenomics has been a wreck, a flop that is taking us into a recession.

Not only did Biden openly boast as our sclerosis grows worse, he also, as Democrats always do, took a jab at “trickle-down economics,” claiming it has “failed the middle class … failed America … blew up the deficit” and “increased inequity.”

He probably would have blamed the Canadian wildfires on “trickle-down economics” had he thought about it. But there’s not much thinking going on in his head — and in fact there never has been, with his ungovernable mouth leading the way throughout his career as an elected grifter.

We don’t see Biden or any other Democrat ever coming around to supply-side economic policies, the correct terminology for what they sneeringly call “trickle-down economics,” which asserts that lower taxes and less regulatory meddling fuel economic growth. Yet they are exactly what our economy — any economy – needs, now and forever.

Movie Review: ‘Sound of Freedom’ Shines a Light on the Issue of Human Trafficking By Lincoln Brown

https://pjmedia.com/culture/lincolnbrown/2023/07/05/sound-of-freedom-shines-a-light-on-the-issue-of-human-trafficking-n1708313

Yesterday, my wife and I did two things. One was to attend a neighbor’s Fourth of July barbecue — something I have not done in about thirty years. The second was to take in a showing of Sound of Freedom. Having been on a human trafficking awareness mission trip to Cambodia, the issue is near and dear to our hearts. We have met the people whose lives were nearly destroyed by trafficking. We have heard their stories and have seen just how devastating this issue truly is.

The victims ran the gamut from five years old to late teens and early twenties. These women and children sustain emotional and psychological damage, and physical injuries from years of abuse. As I have written before, there was one child who had been poisoned. This was done to disable her so that she could beg on the streets. She lived out her short life in a wheelchair, unable to speak or walk.

Sound of Freedom tells a compelling story. It blends action with a message, departing from the glib characterization of “thriller” to produce some moving, thoughtful, unsettling, and frightening moments. Jim Caviezel does a fine turn as Tim Ballard. My wife and I met Ballard for all of three minutes at an event years ago, and Cavielzel does not look like him. But Ballard is only part of the story, as odd as that may sound.

The character of Vampiro/Batman, a former cartel member who is expiating past sins by rescuing children from the sex trade, is one of the most interesting characters in the story. He is a booze-swilling, foul-mouthed, cigar-smoking, tough guy who is fighting the good fight. Actually, he has most of the good lines, and you find yourself rooting for him almost from the moment he is introduced.

The sheer evil of an ex-beauty queen based on former Miss Cartagena, Kelly Johana Suarez, who lures children into slavery, is nothing short of chilling. The traffickers and cartel members in the film are not given “redemptive moments.” That is because there are times when evil must be recognized for what it is and not given a pass for one reason or another.

‘Just Stop Oil’ Won’t Stop Its Vandalism Wimbledon and Van Gogh aren’t political. Will the left ever say so?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/just-stop-oil-wimbledon-barclays-climate-protest-3dbfd921?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The activist group Just Stop Oil claimed credit Wednesday for disruptions at the Wimbledon tennis tournament, after two protesters ran into a match and began “throwing environmentally friendly orange confetti glitter and jigsaw pieces,” according to a statement the outfit posted on Twitter. This is the same crew that last year tossed tomato soup on a Vincent van Gogh painting.

Just Stop Oil’s complaint on Twitter is that Wimbledon made a sponsorship deal with Barclays, which the group said has “given £30 billion to oil and gas companies” over the past two years. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the world will need oil for decades. Natural gas has been a boon for emissions reductions in the U.S., since it has led to fewer power plants burning coal.

The tennis racketeers were arrested, as they should have been. This is a bad mode of protest, and it’s probably counterproductive to the climate cause. Green groups sometimes block highways at rush hour. What is this supposed to accomplish, other than make commuters furious? Disrupting a tennis match and tossing soup at a painting are examples of protest as theater.

Climate as a cause has become the province of too many fanatics willing to break the law. Will their progressive allies bother to call them out? This kind of nonsense on the left too often gets dismissed as some quirky souls who go too far because they care so much. If antiabortion activists were regularly blocking traffic or defacing art, there’d be no end to the handwringing in the press about extreme tactics on the right.

Climate activists who have a quasi-religious viewpoint aren’t interested in listening to facts, but here’s a line from a March article in NPR, a news source they might trust: “China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years.” Maybe they should try going to Beijing and splashing soup around Tiananmen Square. See how that goes.

Justice Jackson’s Incredible Statistic Her dissent from the ruling on affirmative action makes an obviously implausible claim. By Ted Frank

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-jacksons-incredible-statistic-black-newborns-doctors-math-flaw-mortality-4115ff62?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Even Supreme Court justices are known to be gullible. In a dissent from last week’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson enumerated purported benefits of “diversity” in education. “It saves lives,” she asserts. “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.”

A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.

How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake? A footnote cites a friend-of-the-court brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which makes the same claim in almost identical language. It, in turn, refers to a 2020 study whose lead author is Brad Greenwood, a professor at the George Mason University School of Business.

The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians).

Lacking Unity, Can America Survive Our Growing Differences? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/05/lacking-unity-can-america-survive-our-growing-differences-ii-tipp-poll/

How are Americans feeling these days? Certainly not united. Our nation appears to be indivisible in name only. Even more surprising, a significant number of people have even begun to wonder if the United States of America as we know it will even exist in the future, data from the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Starting with the Unity Index, the proprietary I&I/TIPP gauge of national harmony, we ask people each month if they feel our common bond remains. They are then given five possible responses: “very united,” “somewhat united,” “somewhat divided,” “very divided” or “unsure.”

For June’s national online I&I/TIPP poll of 1,358 adults, taken from May 31-June 2, just 24% of respondents declared that they felt the U.S. was “united.” Among that group, only 9% said the U.S. was “very united,” while 15% called it “somewhat united.”

But by nearly 3-to-1, 74% of respondents called America “divided.” Of those, 42% said it was “very divided,” while 32% termed it “somewhat divided.”