Displaying posts published in

January 2020

Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweets an unsourced story accusing Jews of child murder By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/rep_rashida_tlaib_retweets_an_unsourced_story_accusing_jews_of_child_murder.html

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who occupies a position at the heart of American politics, blithely retweeted an unsourced, unproven, and untrue claim that Jews living in Beit Hanina kidnapped and executed a seven-year-old boy. This is a  modern version of the medieval blood libel against the Jews.

The anti-Semitic blood libel has a long history, going back to at least the 1st century A.D., when the Jewish historian Josephus rebutted a claim that Antiochus Epiphanes found a Greek man in the temple in Jerusalem being fattened for sacrifice. A thousand years later, a Byzantine document again accused Jews of kidnapping a stranger every seven years to serve as a human sacrifice in the Temple at Jerusalem.

By the 12th century, the blood libel had firmly taken in England hold after Jews were accused of ritually sacrificing William of Norwich, a young boy found stabbed in the woods. After that, until the Jews were expelled from England in 1290, Jews were routinely accused of executing children and using their blood in rituals, especially when making matzo for Passover. The Jews were then slaughtered in pogroms. The libel migrated to Europe with the same deadly consequences for Jews.

The great irony of the blood libel, of course, is that one of the central stories in the Hebrew Bible is the Binding of Isaac, in which God ends human sacrifice. The Ten Commandments, the foundation of Western morality, forbid murder. The Jewish laws governing kosher cooking even forbid using blood when cooking.

Are swing states swinging towards Trump? By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/are_swing_states_swinging_towards_trump.html

While the media focus on two power-hungry, low-wattage men — one a stone-cold communist candidate and the other an “I’ll say anything to win” candidate — that’s not the real news. The real news, as two articles illustrate, is in the swing counties around America.

The Wall Street Journal looks at Howard County, Iowa, which swung wildly from Democrat to Republican in 2016. In 2012, Obama won the county by 20%; in 2016, Trump won the county by the same margin. This year, though, voters in Howard County still like Trump and are planning to stick with him:

Recent interviews with dozens of voters here suggest that most of Mr. Trump’s 2016 supporters, including Mr. Wacha [one of 2016’s swing voters], plan to stick with him, even though some said they have grown weary of his personal behavior and trade fights. Among those who previously voted for Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, many said they are reserving judgment until they see who wins the Democratic nomination.

As for Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, now under way in the Senate, most voters said they haven’t followed the case closely and don’t expect it to weigh heavily in their decisions. Several said they view it as just more Washington partisanship.

What such swing voters do in 2020 will have national implications. Before Mr. Trump, Howard County hadn’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. It is one of the 31 counties in Iowa—the most of any state—that backed Mr. Obama twice and then switched to Mr. Trump.

The Left Is One Huge Internet Troll By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-left-is-one-huge-internet-troll/

As conservative writers for online magazines are all too well aware, their leftist adversaries are not interested in serious debate or mannerly conversation. Civility is not the left’s strong suit. Tactics vary along a spectrum of readily predictable talking points, false assertions, vituperation and obscenity, the stock in trade of those who have come to be known as trolls. Who and what is a troll?

Originally, trolls were unsightly folklore creatures dwelling in caves, forests, and, as in the famous folk tale, under bridges. Unlike their doppelgängers in the Disney film, they were not sweet and innocent powder-blue creatures resembling the Smurfs and the Na’vi, but gnarled and revolting specimens of indiscriminate voracity. Distinctly hostile and governed by an appetite for human flesh, they became the source of the contemporary internet troll.

The modern troll is the digital form of the contract killer. He lives in the shadows; is prone to using an alias behind which he hides; has no known street address or postal code; is often paid for his services by some powerful figure whose public presence may be known—say, a bloviating multi-billionaire with a highly dubious personal history who manages to evade the law; has no conscience and is not very intelligent but is as cunning as he is unscrupulous—in short, the internet troll is a coward who “kills” in the dark. He is motivated by envy and resentment and has neither self-respect nor moral fiber. He is devoid of productive talents and lacks the ability to make a success of his life. He is, in the current idiom, a loser.

Or course, not every troll is a hired gun. Some like to devour their prey as self-elected vigilantes who need not bother with the labor of constructing a convincing counter-argument—that, after all, takes real work. But in either case, they are the gremlins of the internet world, sniping away at the legitimate participants in the cultural debate or infesting the Twittersphere, often under the cloak of anonymity and the camouflage of fake accounts. They are not part of the conversation but the dregs of the hermeneutic exchange.

GOOD NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

http://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/ 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Fixing the root cause of diabetes. (TY WIN) Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Motti Chevion has developed Zygosid-50, the first treatment to restore near-normal cellular sensitivity to insulin, without side effects. Israel’s Concenter BioPharma is preparing to trial Zygosid-50 and give new hope to Type 2 diabetics.

https://www.israel21c.org/finally-a-pill-that-could-fix-the-root-cause-of-diabetes/

The doctor can see you now. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s RSIP Vision has developed an Artificial Intelligence-based image analysis solution for tissue diagnosis.  It assists doctors in multiple medical imaging fields: e.g. cardiology, pulmonology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, radiology, robotic surgery, microscopy and more.

https://www.rsipvision.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmCI2hBLrok

A clearer future for children. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s NovaSight has developed two products: EyeSwift uses eye-tracking technology to detect multiple vision problems in children (e.g. lazy-eye and squints). CureSight treats lazy-eye using 3D image algorithms and variable focusing, while the child watches entertaining videos.

https://nova-sight.com/about/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5HnxVW_JUo

Discovery prevents preemie lung collapse. Scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute built a 3D model of the lungs of a premature baby. They discovered that in standard respirators for babies an air jet could cause damage to the infant. They have now recommended reconfiguring the air flow, potentially saving many young lives.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/preemies-breathe-easier-with-israeli-breakthrough/

https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2020/01/innovation-for-infant-assisted-ventilation/

Micro robot is revealed. Israel’s Microbot Medical previously demonstrated a prototype of its self-cleaning shunt for cleaning blockages in the brain (see here). At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, Microbot demonstrated LIBERTY – the world’s first fully disposable robotic system for endovascular procedures.

https://microbotmedical.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/microbot-medical-unveil-worlds-first-fully-disposable-robotic   https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/jpm-microbot-medical-unveils-disposable-device-for-remote-catheter-procedures

Impeachment Ratings Not Strong, Dropping Each Day People just do not care. by Mary Chastain

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/01/tds-fatigue-continues-impeachment-ratings-not-strong-dropping-each-day/

The actual impeachment trial has lower ratings and each day loses more viewers.

Joe Concha

✔ @JoeConchaTV

Context:
20.5M watched the Kavanaugh hearings
19.5M watched Comey testify before the Sen. Intel Cmte
16M watched Michael Cohen testify Oversight Cmte
13.1M watched Day 1 of the House impeachment hearings
11M watched Day 1 of the Senate trial on Tuesdayhttps://thehill.com/homenews/media/479683-89-million-watched-first-day-of-opening-arguments-in-trump-impeachment-trial …

New EU Report on Integration Misses the Point by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15376/eu-integration-report

It is worth noticing that the European Commission places the responsibility for integration of third-country nationals exclusively on the shoulders of EU member states.

The most conspicuous aspect of the report is how it insists that integration of people who have come mainly from the Middle East and Africa is merely an issue of ensuring that the rights that they are entitled to under EU and national laws be fulfilled and everyone will live happily ever after. It takes a lot of denial of the facts to reach such a conclusion….

First, the report appears to operate on the premise that EU countries have unlimited resources at their disposal with which to care for third country nationals. It completely ignores, for example, that countries such as Sweden, as a result of the high number of migrants that they have taken in, are now experiencing financial hardships that make it difficult even properly to take care of their own nationals.

Second, the report completely disregards how poorly the project of multiculturalism in Europe, including the integration of people from the Middle East and Africa, has fared until now.

The Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey… conducted 9,000 telephone interviews in Germany, France, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Sweden. The respondents were Turkish and Moroccan immigrants. Two thirds of the Muslims interviewed said that religious rules were more important to them than the laws of the country in which they lived.

The EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights instead has chosen to ignore reality. The question is why.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights recently published a report in which it warned Europe against creating a “lost generation” of migrants aged 16-24, who had arrived in Europe between 2015 and 2018. The report focuses particularly on the experiences of those young people who arrived in 2015-16 and looks specifically at the five EU member states with the most asylum applicants: Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden. The report also includes Greece, as it is a first EU member state of arrival.

Donald Trump’s America: A vast improvement By Amil Imani

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/donald_trumps_america_a_vast_improvement.html

“We are making America stronger, prouder, and greater than ever before.”

—President Donald J. Trump

No president in the history of the United States has achieved as much in his first three years in his first term in office as has President Donald Trump.  Meanwhile, no president in the history of America has been subjected to such incessant vile and unjustified attacks as has President Trump.  Why?  Because he believes in American exceptionalism, not globalism.

“Make America Great Again.”  Just a slogan, the people of failure shout back.  The Obama/Biden team had failed us for eight years in every aspect of our lives. To the leftists, failure is not only normal; it is expected.

The list of failures for the previous administration is so long and glaring that I hardly need to repeat all of them here.  Under the previous administration, once well paid manufacturing jobs had disappeared and were relocated to other countries.  President Trump managed to reverse this trend and brought back many manufacturing jobs.  Before President Trump at the helm, huge swaths of this nation from northern New York to the great states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and many others, previously vibrant manufacturing regions, looked like ghost towns, but now they have come back, and people are optimistic about the future of this country.

During a PBS town hall, Obama referenced Trump’s promise to bring back jobs to the United States when talking about manufacturing.

The tape of Trump seeking to dismiss Amb. Yovanovitch is a nothing burger By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/the_tape_of_trump_seeking_to_dismiss_amb_yovanovitch_is_a_nothing_burger.html

Democrats are excited that a tape has emerged in which Trump can be heard saying that he wants to have Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch fired, for they see it as more impeachment fodder. The tape, however, as is the case with so many things that excite Democrats, is actually nothing special.

It’s not clear how someone recorded a tape of a private dinner party on April 30, 2018, at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. That itself ought to be a scandal. It’s also not clear how ABC got a copy of the tape, another scandal.

Among the attendees were Trump, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman. Trump has disclaimed knowing Parnas, describing him as a groupie. Assuming that Trump is speaking the truth about Parnas (who now accuses Trump of all sorts of heinous behavior), he means that he was aware of Parnas, but that Parnas was such a meaningless, peripheral individual he made no impression on a man who routinely sees, speaks with, and even dines with thousands of people a year.

At the dinner, Trump apparently learned for the first time that Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama holdover, had been bad-mouthing him to the Ukrainians:

Parnas appears to say: “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the Clinton administration,” Parnas can be heard telling Trump. “She’s basically walking around telling everybody ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.” (Yovanovitch actually had served in the State Department since the Reagan administration.)

A British feminist says men who dislike “woke” women are destroying the world By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/a_british_feminist_says_men_who_dislike_woke_women_are_destroying_the_world.html

British actor Laurence Fox became a target when he refused to accept allegations about overarching white racism and toxic masculinity in Britain. He recently earned additional ire from the left when he announced in a Sunday Times article that he does not “date woke women.”

Woke woman Vicky Spratt was outraged. In an article at Refinery29 entitled “The Dangerous Rise Of Men Who Won’t Date “Woke” Women,”* she wrote,

Laurence Fox – who you perhaps only knew as Billie Piper’s ex-husband because you’ve never seen Lewis (what?) – does not date “woke” women who he believes are being taught that they are “victims”, irrespective of whether they are right or not.

[snip]

Not wanting to date “woke” women, far from being laughable, is actually one of the more insidious aspects of it. Spend an afternoon on any major dating app and you’ll come across (generally white) men saying openly sexist and misogynistic things. They might say “no psychos” or that they “fucking hate big eyebrows” in their bios. And, by and large, they also tend to hold extremely right-wing views and see themselves as victims of liberal thinking.

To Spratt, men who won’t date “woke” women are far-right wackos who like Jordan Peterson even though he denies white privilege and urges millennials to stop being social justice warriors. Worse, aside from the “incels” (heterosexual men who have given up on women), Spratt says that evil anti-woke-woman men are becoming right-wing!

Righteous Anger vs. Politics as Usual By Shoshana Bryen

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/righteous_anger_vs_politics_as_usual.html

There is anger and then there is righteous anger. Peter Finch yelling out the window, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

From Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon, where parts of a whole are coming undone, to Hong Kong to Puerto Rico to France and Venezuela, people are mad as hell.

Consider Lebanon. Independent in 1943, but occupied by Syria from 1975-2005, and brought into Iran’s orbit through the creation of Hezb’allah in the early 1980s, the same constellation of politicians have held power since the end of the civil war in 1990. Americans appear to worry most about the security implications of Hezb’allah, a U.S.-designated terror organization with its own army and a drug/weapons/money racket in South America, pulling strings in Beirut. And worry, too, about the U.S. armed and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), working alongside and sometimes in cooperation with Hezb’allah. Hassan Nasrallah calls the LAF “a partner.”

But how did Lebanon come to this point and why are people angry now?

Multiethnic and multicultural, Lebanese politics are sliced into sectarian segments; you are Druze or Shiite or Maronite Christian. The government has no national commitments, only confessional ones, which makes it easy to set one group against another, leaving the best-armed and richest on top, i.e., Hezb’allah. That is also a recipe for corruption — take care of your own and the devil take the rest, also the devil is the rest.  Lebanon ranks 147th out of 183 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Index. There are 6-7 million Lebanese (numbers vary widely because so many live abroad). Government debt is $89.5 billion and interest payments consumed 48 percent of domestic government revenues in 2016. The debt-to-GDP ratio is 151% with an annual growth rate of negative 0.2 percent for 2019. The Lebanese pound has lost more than 60 percent of its value in recent weeks on the black market.