RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/something-to-think-about/

The Jewish Policy Center doesn’t/can’t/doesn’t want to tell people what to do. We do, however, write about both foreign and domestic policy to encourage people to think about what to do – and our members are quite clear about what they think. We posted an article about the possibility of Chinese mayhem near, but not directly against, Taiwan. We thought it was useful for determining how to think about China, the U.S. defense budget, and American policy in the Pacific. A member very pointedly said we were foolishly missing a “historic moment” by writing about China. OK. So, I went back to our library and with the help of some outside sources put together a list of things to think about at this “historic moment.” It is not – nor is it meant to be – exhaustive.

We currently have the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower that has not engaged us in a foreign war or new foreign peacekeeping. The Abraham Accords were done without the promise of American money or U.S. troops as “monitors.” (Remember President Clinton offering to put American soldiers in Syria to monitor an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights? How would that have worked when Syria and Iran decimated the country and dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians with Russian help?) This has allowed the U.S. to focus on broad defense of the global commons, not being involved in other people’s civil or border wars. (Hence the determination to leave Afghanistan.) Except for the appropriate punishment of Syria for using those chemicals, and the destruction of the territorial base of the ISIS caliphate.

The focus of Middle East peacemaking changed from requiring Israel to pay the Palestinians in the currency of statehood (“risks for peace”) to a request that the Arab States consider the economic and security needs of their own people in deciding whether and how to approach the State of Israel. The result is the Abraham Accords, broadly accepted by countries that have not signed; a new compact with Jordan; and feelers from other countries. The United States abandoned the untenable position of “neutral party” between Israel, which is our democratic ally, and the Palestinian Authority, which is not. The U.S. has moved to a position of honest broker, which is vastly more appropriate. U.S.-Israel security cooperation, grounded in our commonality, continues through the pandemic.

https://nypost.com/2020/10/25/hospitals-gave-gov-andrew-cuomo-a-campaign-

Don’t let ’em scare you to death

Get ready for the mother of all scare campaigns from Democrats and their media allies the next two weeks. They’ll tell you the coronavirus is on the rampage and it’s all President Trump’s fault.

But, before we fall for the fearmongering of Joe Biden’s “dark winter,” it’s worth noting that the CDC says flu numbers are down 95 percent. Have masks stopped it, or are flu symptoms being conflated with COVID-19?

Secondly, the University of Washington model used to forecast impending doom has been getting it drastically wrong since March. Finally, the mortality rate for COVID-19 patients is plummeting as better treatments appear. One study of 5,000 patients in the NYU Langone Health system, to be published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, finds death rates between March and August dropped 18 percentage points, even for the elderly.

Be not afraid. Be sensible.

Media’s Burisma myth

Among the most stubborn myths around the Burisma scandal is that Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not investigating the corrupt energy company at the time Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid unless he was fired.

The Washington Post repeated the false claim last week.

But contemporaneous news sources from Ukraine show that Shokin was aggressively pursuing Burisma in 2016, while it was paying the then-vice president’s wayward son, Hunter Biden, more than $80,000 a month to sit on its board.

On Feb. 4, 2016, Interfax-Ukraine reported that Prosecutor-General Shokin had seized property belonging to Hunter’s boss, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, including four large houses, two plots of land and “a Rolls-Royce Phantom car.” The National Radio Co. of Ukraine reported the same.

Eight days later, Joe Biden phoned Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko.

Four days after the call, Shokin was fired, although it took another month for the Ukrainian parliament to ratify his ousting.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-25-biden-corruption-the-avala

As we get closer to the election, it’s beginning to appear that the corruption of Joe Biden via his son Hunter knows no bounds. You may have thought that my post just two days ago contained enough to sink any possible presidential candidacy; but there is plenty of new information in just the two days since. Most of the new information concerns efforts of the Chinese government and CCP to compromise the Bidens through influence investments.

Meanwhile, the media continue to make laughingstocks of themselves with their futile efforts at suppression of the story.

Here are a few examples of newly revealed instances of Biden corruption:

Peter Schweizer has been at the forefront of many of the revelations. In a piece at Breitbart on October 23, he has come up with yet another non-anonymous source, a former Hunter Biden business partner named Bevan Cooney, now serving time in prison for a separate scam. Cooney has turned over to Schweizer a trove of some thousands of emails and texts. Among the transactions brought to light by the new emails is a September 2015 acquisition of a strategically-sensitive Michigan manufacturer by Hunter Biden’s private equity fund, with the investment money coming from Chinese government/CCP entities. The transaction required U.S. government approval. Yes, Joe Biden was Vice President at the time. Schweizer:

In September 2015, the Obama-Biden administration approved the sale of a strategically sensitive Michigan manufacturer, Henniges Automotive, to a firm connected to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and a Chinese military contractor that was on an American watch list because of its close ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Hunter Biden’s equity fund, backed by the Communist Chinese government, and the Chinese contractor, Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC), needed special approval for the deal from the Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) because Henniges produced technology with potential military use.

Go to the link to see emails of Hunter’s colleagues congratulating each other on getting the deal through.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/could-justice-barrett-and-the-court-surprise-us/91316/

The Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett as a justice of the Supreme Court reminds us of President Trump’s decision to move our embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The opponents, in their predictions of war and mayhem and riots on the Arab street, were almost Schumerian. In the event, though, what happened was the opposite. Mr. Trump’s sticking by his Jerusalem promise has ushered in a new burst of peace making.

Could that be what follows from his, and Senator McConnell’s, success in delivering the conservative majority he promised for the court? It would be imprudent to discount entirely the possibility that it will end in tears. It could also be imprudent, though, to rule out a more optimistic outcome — in which a conservative majority on the court enables us now to resolve some of the feuds that have festered for years.

It’s not just the Affordable Care Act, on which the Democrats directed so much of their fury over the course of Justice Barrett’s confirmation hearing. It’s not just the question of abortion, on which much of the country is still bitterly divided, though Roe is nearing 50 years. Nor the battle over the Second Amendment, which has divided our states. It is suddenly possible to imagine the court breaking all sorts of stalemates.