ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum:Tom Friedman’s lies, damned lies and statistics – opinion No, Tom, Biden ought to be told that the Jewish state isn’t “changing its fundamental character.

Posted By on January 20th, 2023

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-729063

In his latest disingenuous profession of concern for the welfare of the Jewish state, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman appealed to President Joe Biden to “stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition from turning Israel into an illiberal bastion of zealotry.”

He began his mock memo by informing Biden that “Israel is on the verge of a historic transformation – from a full-fledged democracy to something less, and from a stabilizing force in the region to a destabilizing one.”

“Israel is on the verge of a historic transformation – from a full-fledged democracy to something less, and from a stabilizing force in the region to a destabilizing one.”

Tom Friedman

Both his plea to the president and depiction of the situation in Israel were amusing. In the first place, Biden is barely capable of stringing together a coherent sentence, let alone taking on a job that’s not in his purview and none of his business. 

Secondly, Friedman has always been critical of Israeli behavior that didn’t involve capitulation to a Palestinian entity bent on destroying the Jewish state. In other words, his breast-beating about the new government in Jerusalem was as old and false as the rest of his tirade. 

Tom Friedman’s breast-beating about the new Israeli government is old and false

One ploy was to dismiss the victory of the Netanyahu camp by claiming that it won by a “sliver” of the votes. He performed this trick by citing data on the ballots cast for parties that didn’t make it into the Knesset. Among these were Balad and Meretz, both on the far Left – the former an openly anti-Zionist Arab faction and the latter a post-Zionist Jewish one.  

Treating the fact that neither passed the electoral threshold as a mere mathematical mishap rather than a reflection of the Left’s failure, he pointed to the “5,000-person anti-government demonstration [that] grew to 80,000 over the weekend” prior to the publication of his January 17 piece. 

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America’s Police Exodus The fallout of ‘defund the police’ is still unfolding. Just ask Brian Lande. Leighton Woodhouse

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/americas-police-exodus?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last year, Brian Lande, an officer in the Richmond, Calif., police department, had to draw his gun to stop two drunk men from clobbering each other to death with metal rods.

In 2015, he threatened deadly force to stop a fight between two more drunk men. One was armed with a hatchet. Another, with a wrench. 

On another occasion, he drew his firearm to arrest a man hopping a backyard fence, fleeing the scene of a burglary.

None of these was remarkable in Richmond, a working-class city just east of San Francisco that’s notorious for its drive-by shootings, break-ins, carjackings, and countless petty crimes.

When I asked Lande if he often had to unholster his gun—a standard-issue Glock 17—he told me he’d done it so many times that “they all bleed into each other.” 

Luckily, he’s never had to pull the trigger.

But things could easily have gone south. If a suspect had made a suspicious move or pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a gun—it happens more than you’d think—he would have had less than a quarter of a second to make the most awful decision of his life: whether to kill another human being. 

“You’re in an incredibly inauspicious situation,” Lande told me. “The chance of making a good faith mistake is high.”

What that means is that if you’re a cop, you’ve got to be confident that if a tragedy occurs—if a life is taken that should not have been taken—your chief, your city council, the powers that be will at least treat you fairly, hear you out, and ensure that justice is served.

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Watchdog: Pentagon Can’t Account for $220 Billion in Equipment By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/18/watchdog-pentagon-cant-account-for-220-billion-in-equipment/

On Tuesday, a watchdog report claimed that the Department of Defense (DOD) has still been unable to account for at least $220 billion worth of equipment that had been given to government contractors.

According to the Daily Caller, the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that auditors first noticed the Pentagon’s failure to keep track of such contractor-loaned equipment back in 2001. The report says that the DOD has not made any improvements to its accountability processes since then, which heightens the possibility of overlooking similar errors in the future.

“This long-standing issue affects the accounting and reporting of GFP and is one of the reasons DOD is unable to produce auditable financial statements,” the GAO report read in part.

The GAO went on to say that when it comes to attempting to identify the causes of such financial deficiencies, the DOD should create an entirely separate plan to address this issue, since “department-wide efforts have not been comprehensive and sufficiently detailed.”

“Without such a strategy, DOD is at an increased risk that its efforts to remediate the [government furnished property] material weakness will continue to be insufficient and that it will continue to miss or push back target remediation dates,” the report continued.

Even more alarming is the likelihood that the given total of $220 billion in unaccounted property may be lower than the actual amount. The GAO noted in its report that there had been past instances of the military admitting that it could not provide an estimate; in 2016, the Army told the GAO that it had an “unknown” number of assets, and that “quantities may be greatly different than the Army’s documented property records reflect.”

Since the DOD had its first audit in 2018, it failed its fifth consecutive audit in November of last year. Of the Pentagon’s roughly $3.5 trillion in assets, contractors were unable to provide expenditures for about 61 percent of the money spent.

“I would not say that we flunked,” said Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord in response to the abysmal report. “The process is important for us to do, and it is making us get better. It is not making us get better as fast as we want.”

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The poisoning of America By Richard C. LaMagna

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/01/the_poisoning_of_america.html

It’s time for a new drug strategy. The Biden Administration’s harm reduction strategy isn’t working. America is in its worst drug abuse crisis in over a century. According to the CDC,  over 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, and almost 950,000 have died since 1999; figures for 2022 show a slight decline in overdose deaths over the previous year. The leading killer is illicit fentanyl — a synthetic opioid so powerful that two milligrams can kill you. Fentanyl and methamphetamine come from Mexico; their chemicals come from China. Drug cartels make fentanyl and add it to heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and counterfeit prescription drugs. The fake drugs look like Xanax, Adderall, and other prescription drugs but are laced with fentanyl. It’s easy to buy drugs on the Internet and social media. Young people buy “Xanax” and die from fentanyl poisoning. Yet, there is no outrage from our leaders.             

New York had the heroin and crack epidemics of the 70s and 80s. The response was more enforcement and treatment, and it worked for a while. But since then, the drug problem has progressively worsened; drug enforcement and treatment are not priorities for our politicians and government leaders. All aspects of the drug problem have been given a low priority since the mid-90s. Our society tolerates illicit drug use and has legalized marijuana use. Drug traffickers exploit modern technology to their advantage, but the U.S. government lags behind. We suffer the consequences of three decades or more of failed and inconsistent strategies coupled with permissive attitudes toward drug use.           

The Biden administration’s drug strategy isn’t working, and there is no urgency to address the problem. In 1989 President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation on TV to tell Americans what their government was doing about the drug problem. He announced the first National Drug Control Strategy, which contained substantial resource increases and a solid commitment to enforcement and treatment. He said, “[drugs are] the greatest threat facing our nation today.” The current administration rarely mentions the drug crisis. One can barely walk the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities without stepping over addicts, discarded syringes, and crack pipes. Violence in our major cities is often driven by drug-gang conflict. Such human misery is unacceptable in the wealthiest country on earth.

What is our current drug strategy for China and Mexico? These countries are not cooperative and cite America’s drug appetite as the problem — they are not wrong. U.S. border enforcement officials are overwhelmed by the flood of undocumented migrants and cannot focus on drugs smuggled over the border.

Here are recommendations to save American lives.

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U.S. Enabling North Korea, So South Korea Wants Nuclear Weapons by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19323/korea-nuclear-weapons

We do not have to wonder if Beijing in fact supports North Korea’s weapons programs. China for decades has allowed the North to use Chinese banks to handle proceeds from criminal activities and activities in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Such designations [enforcing U.S. money-laundering laws] would put these state banks out of business everywhere outside China.

If these banks were to fail, so would China’s state-dominated banking system. The failure of the banking system would undoubtedly mean the end of the Chinese economy and financial system. The end of the Communist Party’s political system could not be far behind.

Whatever the effects of designations, the United States needs to enforce its laws. America did not allow Pablo Escobar to run criminal cash through New York, so why does America allow China to do that for North Korea?

“The money Kim Jong Un obtains by fraud, computer hacking, and ransomware and which he uses to build bombs to threaten us is being laundered through our banks. We’re giving Xi Jinping and Kim de facto immunity to keep right on doing it.” — Joshua Stanton, expert on North Korean sanctions, to Gatestone.

No wonder South Korea’s Yoon is not particularly impressed with America.

South Korea is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. If Seoul were to develop nuclear weapons, it would have to withdraw.

Perhaps South Korea should withdraw. China, also a signatory, has been freely proliferating nuclear weapons technology to dangerous states, such as Pakistan and Iran, in addition to North Korea, and the United States has done little, sometimes nothing. At the same time, Washington repeatedly stopped South Korea and Taiwan from building nukes.

Yoon did the world a favor by exposing the folly of America’s nonproliferation policy. Washington needs to stop being afraid of Beijing and start defending allies such as South Korea — and itself.

South Korea’s president has just told the world that he no longer has confidence in the United States.

“It’s possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol on January 11, at a joint briefing by his country’s defense and foreign ministries. “If that’s the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities.”

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Sheila Jackson Lee Introduces Bill to Criminalize ‘Hate Speech’ When leftists don’t even pretend anymore. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sheila-jackson-lee-introduces-bill-to-criminalize-hate-speech/

Leftists don’t even make much of a pretense anymore; they don’t believe in the freedom of speech, and they mean to deny it to their political opponents. This is by far the most disturbing aspect of their agenda, for without the freedom to dissent, a tyrant can operate without any restraint whatsoever. Without the freedom of speech, there simply is no free society.

The latest example of the Left’s war on dissent comes from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Reparations), who has just introduced a bill in the House, the “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023.” Only vicious racists could possibly object to combating white supremacy, right? Actually, the bill is cleverly framed, but like so many other Congressional initiatives, it’s far more insidious than its name would suggest.

The bill is designed to “prevent and prosecute white supremacy inspired hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime and to amend title 18, United States Code, to expand the scope of hate crimes.” The framers of the bill were thoughtful enough to provide a helpful explanation: “A person engages in a white supremacy inspired hate crime when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Facebook Stifles Ex-Muslims in Norway It’s not just in America that social media clamps down on speech. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-facebook-stifles-ex-muslims-in-norway/

Thanks to Elon Musk, we’re now beginning to see solid evidence of the remarkable degree to which the social-media giants – in collaboration with Democratic politicians, intelligence agencies, and the corporate media –have striven to stifle their ideological opponents. But even the Twitter Files, at least the ones that have been made public so far, don’t satisfactorily convey the worldwide extent of Silicon Valley’s mischief. One of the most egregious cases that have come to my own attention recently is that of Ex-Muslims of Norway (EX-MN), which describes itself on its website as standing “for universal rights and secularism” and for the right of Muslims to criticize their religion and, if they wish, to leave it. The members of EX-MN emphasize their identity as ex-Muslims “because we will not be done with Islam until the Islamic mentality is modernized or Islam is cast onto the rubbish heap of history.”

Founded in 2016 by three writer/journalists – the Turkish-born Cemal Knudsen Yucel, the Iranian-born Lily Bandehy, and the late Iraqi–born Walid al-Kubaisi – EX-MN opposes forced marriage; polygamy; genital mutilation; child hijab; burkas; sexual segregation; taxpayer financing for religious institutions; religious intimidation and threats; and blasphemy laws. And it supports untrammeled freedom of speech. By way of promoting these worthy stances, EX-MN holds seminars, takes part in international conferences and demonstrations, sends its members to speak in schools and at public events, and posts videos on YouTube (most of them in English) about such topics as Koran burning, the concept of “Islamophobia,” pro-hijab Western feminists, and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Recycling Religion By John Stossel

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/01/18/the-recycling-religion-n1662662

For decades, we’ve been told: recycle!

“If we’re not using recycled paper, we’re cutting down more trees!” says Lynn Hoffman, co-president of Eureka Recycling.

Recycling paper (or cardboard) does save trees. Recycling aluminum does save energy. But that’s about it.

The ugly truth is that many “recyclables” sent to recycling plants are never recycled. The worst is plastic.

Even Greenpeace now says, “Plastic recycling is a dead-end street.”  

Hoffman often trucks it to a landfill.

Years ago, science writer John Tierney wrote a New York Times Magazine story, “Recycling Is Garbage.” It set a Times record for hate mail.

But what he wrote was true.

“It’s even more true today,” says Tierney in my new video. “Recycling is an industry that uses increasingly expensive labor to produce materials that are worth less and less.”

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mexico Is Not Really an American Friend By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2023/01/19/mexico-is-not-really-an-american-friend-n1663061

Left-wing Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador recently praised a visiting President Joe Biden: “Just imagine: There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States — 40 million who were born here in Mexico, [or] who are the children of people who were born in Mexico!”

Why wouldn’t Obrador be delighted? Since Biden took office in January 2021, America has allowed some 5-6 million illegal entries across its southern border.

Obrador further congratulated the malleable Biden, whom he apparently sees as a kindred but complacent left-wing spirit: “You are the first president of the United States in a very long time that has not built even one meter of wall.”

Translated that means Mexico is delighted the United States now cares little about the security of its own border, the disappearance of which apparently is wonderful news for Mexico.

Note that Mexico itself facilitates illegal transits across its own southern border — as long as such Central American and other global migrants keep heading northward into the United States.

But when or if they pause, try to stay in Mexico, commit crimes, or expect Mexican social services, then almost immediately Mexico City sends thousands of troops to close its border with Guatemala, deports the illegal crossers, and revives talk of building a border wall of its own.

Biden has demolished America’s southern border. His illegal nullification of U.S. immigration law is music to Obrador’s ears.

But it is a nightmare to Americans who poll overwhelming disapproval of the subversion of their own border security. They are exhausted by the influx of death-dealing drugs. And they are furious over the hundreds of billions of dollars diverted from their own strapped social services to attend to the needs of foreign nationals who have broken their laws.

Even overwhelmed blue sanctuary cities that once boasted of nullifying federal immigration law are now beginning to object to Biden’s complicity in Mexico’s manipulation of the border.

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D.C. City Council Overrides Mayor’s Veto of Criminal Justice ‘Reform’ That Would Lessen Penalties for Violent Crime By Rick Moran

Posted By on January 19th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/01/18/d-c-city-council-overrides-mayors-veto-of-criminal-justice-reform-that-would-lessen-penalties-for-violent-crime-n1662915

Washington, D.C. is in the midst of a violent crime epidemic, but that didn’t stop the all-Democrat city council from overriding Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto to pass a criminal justice reform bill that contains several problematic provisions, including lessening the penalties for violent crimes and allowing people charged with a misdemeanor to demand a trial — a move experts say will cause the D.C. court system to collapse under a tsunami of unnecessary and expensive trials.

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto argued, “allowing the veto to stand would be a significant step back in our work to modernize the criminal code, negating years of work, compromise, and engagement by the council.”

It’s true. The city council has been writing, debating, and massaging this bill for 16 years. But is that any reason to pass a bill if it’s bad?

Bowser’s objections were straightforward. “Anytime there’s a policy that reduces penalties, I think that sends the wrong message. That takes the focus off using guns or possessing guns, and I think that’s the wrong way to go,” Bowser wrote about her decision to veto.

Washington Post:

The bill would, among other things, eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow for jury trials in almost all misdemeanor cases, and reduce the maximum penalties for offenses such as burglaries, carjackings and robberies. Law enforcement leaders had expressed concern that it could burden an already stretched court system and would send the wrong message to residents at a time when the city is struggling with gun violence.