Displaying posts published in

August 2019

Economic Reality Matters More Than Spin . By Scott Rasmussen

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/22/economic_reality_matters_more_than_spin_141069.html

Just over a week ago, market signals and several analysts suggested that the odds were increasing for a recession in 2020.

Given that 73% of voters consider the economy a very important voting issue, it’s no surprise that the new economic assessment quickly generated an intense political debate. President Donald Trump and chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow both made public statements about the strength of the economy.

The political dynamics are pretty straightforward. If the country enters a recession prior to the next election, Trump is unlikely to get reelected, and congressional Democrats could have another big year. On the other hand, if the economy grows stronger and people believe their own personal finances are getting better, the president is a favorite for reelection, and the GOP could have a good year.

So, where do we stand?

The latest Job Creators Network/ScottRasmussen.com Weekly Pulse survey shows that the barrage of news coverage about a possible recession did at least temporarily dent economic confidence. Immediately prior to all the recession chatter, 56% of American adults rated the economy as good or excellent.

Tlaib’s Palestinian village is thriving, but she is in denial Akiva Bigman

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/tlaibs-palestinian-village-is-thriving-but-she-is-in-denial/

Even the World Bank said in 2014 that Tlaib’s village is one of the richest in the Palestinian Authority. But she insists things are terrible there.

What is it really like to live in the Palestinian village Beit-Ur al-Fauqa, where Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s grandmother and other family members live? Are conditions there as bad as she has claimed?

If you look at the Facebook profiles of people who actually live there, you will discover that things are actually not bad at all.

Achiam Tlaib, for example, drives a brand new BMW. On his Facebook account, you can see that his family lives in a very comfortable three-story building.

Raja Tlaib shared on his Facebook account pictures of himself posing next to his new Mercedes, wearing an expensive suit. He also has pictures showing him working out in a gym that has the latest equipment.

Mawaid Tlaib uploaded pictures of his vacations in Italy and other places, and Anas Tlaib has a very expensive Mercedes.

Samach Tlaib drives a BMW and Niaf Tlaib drives a Corvette convertible and uploaded pictures posing next to his new home under construction, also with three stories.

Many of them also have pictures showing them visiting places inside the Green Line (pre-1967 Israel): Jaffa, Acre, Tel Aviv and so on. So perhaps all those checkpoints that supposedly make Palestinian life so miserable are just a myth?

In fact, even the World Bank said in 2014 that the village is one of the richest in the region. The poverty rate in the village stood at 7.4 % in 2014, compared to the overall rate of 21% in the Palestinian Authority.

Only a handful of villages have a lower poverty rate in the PA and employment in the village is also among the lowest in the PA. But perhaps the most important statistic is this: The rate of social mobility in Beit-Ur al-Fauqa is among the highest in the PA.

According to a 2017 PA report on the quality of life of Palestinians, the village has 230 households.

The report says that 215 structures are considered private residences and four of them are actually single-family homes, attesting to their wealth.

More than 115 of the households are in apartments that have 5 bedrooms or more, and 65 of the households have four bedrooms.

And of course, all the structures are privately owned. According to the report, almost every home has satellite TV, and most have LCD screens in their living rooms. Almost everyone in the village has access to the internet and a mobile phone. Half of the families own a car.

Is everything perfect? No, and the security situation in Judea and Samaria obviously has its drawbacks. The checkpoints placed by the Israel Defense Forces to prevent terrorist attacks mean that the population’s potential is not fully tapped.

But if this is what occupation looks like, perhaps Tlaib and her radical friends got it all wrong?

Iran’s Mullahs: Loving the Democrats’ Presidential Debates by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14727/iran-democrat-presidential-debates

“As long as Iran has money, we will have money….” — Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Lebanese paramilitary party; CNSnews.com.

“Iran Executed 110 In Six Months, Including Minors” — Radio Farda, July 5, 2019.

It is not hard to track Iran’s aggression and quest for regional dominance in the Middle East.

What should come as a surprise, is that the Democratic presidential candidates have apparently not learned a thing from the damage their nuclear deal inflicted — in Iran, in the region and even as far as Venezuela — under the leadership of their former president.

The ruling mullahs of Iran, whose undue influence and bullying in the region have been significantly restrained by America in times past, have, as expected, been championing hate and dissent against Washington. They have been monitoring events in the United States with keen attention; a vivid example is the massive interest the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign is receiving from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mullahs seem to enjoy a cordial relationship with the Democratic Party — why not? The former administration of President Barack Obama was most generous and sympathetic to their cause: being able to create a nuclear-weapons capability.

As of now, nine or ten out of twenty candidates of the Democratic Party have been qualified to participate in the third round of presidential debate and Iran has been closely monitoring the situation examining the willingness and determination of each of the candidates to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as Iran nuclear deal.

The Widespread Desecration of Christian Graves by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14728/desecration-christian-graves

While the persecution of a Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances — conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, and so on — attacks on inanimate symbols would seem to reflect a hatred for Christianity and its followers that needs no “reason” and seemingly gains nothing.

From one end of the Middle Eastern world to the other — and in Arab, African and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West — this sort of hate has become a regular occurrence, seemingly “normalized.”

Although so-called “mainstream media” reported some of the desecrations — probably mostly because the Islamic State had already publicized them — they rarely report that “everyday” extremists also engage in this macabre practice.

Sadly, despite the Western establishment’s insistence that religiously-inspired terror is a product of anything and everything but teachings, doctrines and text, the widespread appearance of people desecrating Christian graves and their crosses speaks of something else.

Although the persecution by members of some religions of live human beings, such as Jews and Christians, is certainly more monstrous, attacks on inanimate religious symbols possibly give an even clearer indication of a deadly hate borne for the “other.”

Consider, for instance, extremists desecrating and destroying Christian cemeteries and their crosses. While the act itself is largely “symbolic” — in that no living person gets hurt — it is also reflective of a committed hatred that transcends, say, responding to a physical threat. While the persecution of a Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances — conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, and so on — attacks on inanimate symbols would seem to reflect a hatred for Christianity and its followers that needs no “reason” and seemingly gains nothing.

From one end of the Middle Eastern world to the other — and in Arab, African and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West — this sort of hate has become a regular occurrence, seemingly “normalized.” A brief list follows, ordered by desecrations committed by formal terrorists, such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and similar organizations; informal terrorists, such as religious mobs; and theocratic governments.

Enabling China’s Mass Surveillance System How an American organization is helping a communist tyranny control its people. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274668/enabling-chinas-mass-surveillance-system-mark-tapson

In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, introduced the idea of the Panopticon, a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. Each cell is flooded with light, which creates an environment in which prisoners are under constant watch. Even if no guard is on duty, a prisoner will always feel as if they are being watched. Bentham described it as “[a] new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” The Panopticon is the optimal prison; it enables an unprecedented level of surveillance.

When we discuss the concept of surveillance, one country automatically springs to mind.

China’s transition from what Rebecca MacKinnon calls a “networked authoritarianism” to what is now a form of networked totalitarianism is almost complete. The difference is not merely semantic. As John Naughton writes, “An authoritarian regime is relatively limited in its objectives: there may be elections, but they are generally carefully managed; individual freedoms are subordinate to the state; there is no constitutional accountability and no rule of law in any meaningful sense.”

In contrast, according to Naughton, totalitarianism “prohibits opposition parties, restricts opposition to the state and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.” The historian Robert Conquest put it best when he argued that a totalitarian state recognizes no limits to its authority.  Proponents of totalitarianism have no respect for privacy. In a totalitarian state, privacy is but an illusion.

Who’s Funding Illegal Palestinian Settlements in Area C: Part 1 Confronting the history. Edwin Black

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274664/whos-funding-illegal-palestinian-settlements-area-edwin-black

“Area C,” which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, is making news these days. This time, the hot button issue is illegal Palestinian settlements sprouting across the region, shredding the last vestige of the Oslo Accords, which, for a generation, propelled the “two-state solution.”

Most observers of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are accustomed to hearing talk of “illegal Jewish settlements” on slivers of land comprising one to two percent of the West Bank, mostly near the green line of Israel proper. But, attention now focuses on an explosion of thousands of illegal Palestinian constructions: village clusters, agricultural tracts, water networks, roads, and general infrastructure crisscrossing Area C of the West Bank. All of this violates the 1993 and1995 Oslo Accords, which specify full Israeli administrative control in Area C. Under the international agreement, only the Israeli Civil Administration can authorize new construction in the zone—for Israeli and Arab alike. However, continuous waves of recent Palestinian settlements are being established without permits—often without even bothering to apply. One senior official of the Israeli security apparatus called it “the wild west.” 

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups, such as Regavim, in the past half-decade, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight, often heralded by tall announcement placards and proud press releases.

Germans Under Siege Police stats reveal Germans overwhelmingly victims of migrant crimes. Stephen Brown

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274676/germans-under-siege-stephen-brown

“…civilization is precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
-Will Durant, historian

It is a situation that the left-leaning German media averts its eyes from because it disrupts the multicultural idyll it promotes: that Germans are, overwhelmingly, the victims of migrant crime.

But leftist journalists’ looking away does not prevent German police from putting the real face on this terrible situation.

“Germans were more often the victim of a crime committed by a migrant than the other way around,” stated Germany’s Federal Crime Office in a publication titled “Criminality in the Context of Migration.”

And crime statistics provided by the German national newspaper, Die Welt, unfortunately, bear this out. The Federal Crime Office stated that in 2018 230 Germans fell victim to the crimes of murder and manslaughter, committed by a least one migrant suspect, while 33 asylum seekers were killed by German suspects.

Minorities Don’t Believe Trump Is a Racist Adam Mill

amgreatness.com/2019/08/21/minorities-dont-believe-trump-is-a-racist/

Led by the queen bee New York Times, where the woke clichés are endless, the hive of drone-level leftists in the media and the Democratic Party are easily pivoting from the Russian collusion hoax to the next one: “white supremacism!”

As normal people try to evaluate this latest round of charges, it’s worth remembering one critical and universal characteristic shared by genuine white supremacists: They proudly proclaim their beliefs; they aren’t shy about them.

A political enemy should never be deemed a reliable authority about whether his opponent subscribes to noxious bigotry. One can hardly claim that Elizabeth Warren (to give just one example) is speaking from personal knowledge when she assigns the president the “white supremacist” label. Warren has a bad track record as an honest broker of race issues. She famously and unsuccessfully sought to enlist Native American outrage over Trump nicknaming her “Pocahontas,” as he jeered at her false claims of Cherokee ancestry.

It doesn’t matter that the president repeatedly has condemned political violence and racism. The Left and the media repeatedly twist and distort his words into vile racial epithets. Consider the common mischaracterization of his remarks at Charlottesville where the media is relentless in insisting that the “very fine” people Trump acknowledged there were the Neo-Nazis, people he explicitly condemned. The whole  “very fine people” hoax has been debunked thoroughly.

Recall, too, that Trump allegedly told members of Congress to “go back to where they came from.” In truth, he merely (and sarcastically) told them to share their supposed good policy ideas with the governments of their countries of origin—not that they should leave the U.S. permanently. He specifically added that they should “come back and show us how it is done.”

How is it possible that an alleged white supremacist president could draw “record support” from African Americans?

MY SAY: BDS- BOYCOTT, DIVEST AND SANCTIONS AGAINST AMERICA?

We hear a great deal about the BDS movement whose malevolent goal is delegitimizing Israel.

Here in our own United States, there is an equally malevolent and growing movement to delegitimize our most valued institutions, our history, our monuments, our language, our laws, our legislature, our freedoms of speech and thought and assembly, our national culture, and our sovereignty.

Institutions and individuals are sanctioned and boycotted for perceived offenses against gender and race. Our grammar is altered to erase gender. Our immigration laws and national security are challenged by demanding open borders and offering sanctuary to those who break the laws. History is rewritten to paint America as a racist society instead of a beacon of democracy.

These attacks and libels used to germinate in academia and mainstream liberal media, but now they are prevalent in entertainment, social media and politics as well. As columns on education demonstrate, they even appear in early childhood education.

The late Jeanne Kirkpatrick lamented the “blame America first” crowd and the Presidency of Ronald Reagan seemed to quell the impulse to bash and libel our nation. However, behind the scenes “community organizers” were plotting the revival of the radical left which is back with a vengeance. In their effort to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump, even legislators and candidates now openly slander and libel our nation. Rsk.

The Inconvenient Truth About Public Charge Provisions of Immigration Laws Once again the Left resorts to lawfare. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274691/inconvenient-truth-about-

There are two broad categories of lies that could be referred to as crimes of commission and crimes of omission.

The crime of commission is when facts are blatantly misrepresented, while the crime of omission involves leaving out relevant information, for example, when statements are taken out of context or relevant information is left out of the report.

These tactics have become commonplace and routine particularly when the mainstream media reports on the Trump administration and also when it reports on issues pertaining to immigration.

When the Trump administration promulgates policies that impact immigration, synergy kicks in and the truth is likely nowhere to be found.

Over a century ago a popular expression, the streets are paved with gold, drew immigrants to the United States who were determined to strike it rich in America.  When they got here they found that the streets were paved, not with gold, but with cobblestones that came from the cargo holds of ships that used those cobblestones as ballast.