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April 2021

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Hollywood Choked by Wokeness By Janet Levy

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/hollywood_choked_by_wokeness.html

At the 78th Golden Globe Awards ceremony in 2020, host Ricky Gervais savagely roasted Hollywood’s woke hypocrisy.  The British actor-comedian said this was the last time he would be hosting the show, so he would fire away with some nothing-to-lose sarcasm.  He joked about Felicity Huffman — who got a 14-day jail term plus a fine and community service for bribing an SAT proctor to boost her daughter’s scores — designing the license plate of the limo that ferried him to the gala; about sex offenders Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein; and about Hollywood’s protracted, politicized acceptance speeches.  The reactions of many in the audience — including actor Tom Hanks’s priceless display of restrained apoplexy and discomfiture — were later meme-ified across the internet.

But what was really important was that Gervais drove home points about Hollywood’s sham wokeness, a sickening obsession that threatens to deep-six entertainment.  Apple, Amazon, Disney — he spared none: “Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China.  Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable.  Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service, you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?”  And he punctured many an inflated ego, saying, “So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use your platform to make a political speech.  You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.  You know nothing about the real world.”

Indeed.  Ruled by the messages of leftists and social justice warriors, whose beliefs have long informed the culture of political correctness, Hollywood — like the community of political insiders designated “the swamp” — is out of touch with the American public and with reality.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Soccer moms might turn on Biden if they learn he’s attacking their homes By Andrea Widburg

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/soccer_moms_might_turn_on_biden_if_they_learn_hes_attacking_their_homes.html

Stanley Kurtz noted that part of Biden’s alleged “infrastructure” bill continues the left’s war on the suburbs. Even though affluent suburbs are increasingly filled with Democrat voters (college grads who passed through the propaganda mill), the administration wants to make them more densely urban because that ensures reliable Dem voting. However, if Republicans can get the word out about this feature in the bill, they might get an unexpected ally: Soccer moms.

First, let me share some of Kurtz’s analysis with you, although I urge you to read the whole thing:

How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.

The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.

The practical effect of ending single-family zoning means that you just bought a lovely 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home for your growing family, on a quiet street with large lots, each boasting a big garden. It’s the perfect place to play. However, when your neighbors move out, a developer buys his property, razes it, and builds a Section H multifamily unit on it. When this happens a few more times, you just overpaid for a large home on a busy street, complete with Section H housing – and the drugs and crime that inevitably follow when Section H comes to your neighborhood.

What Biden’s handlers might not realize is that suburban moms, the ones who worked hard and delayed childbearing so that they could raise their children in a safe, healthy environment, don’t like plans to turn their green retreats into copies of the same busy cities they left. And it’s not just Republican suburban moms who don’t like this idea; it’s Democrat suburban moms too.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Backward Masking Biden On the “Big Guy’s” watch, China’s influence will “grow and expand.” Lloyd Billingsley

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/backward-masking-biden-lloyd-billingsley/

“China has an overall goal, and I don’t criticize them for the goal, but they have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch because the United States are going to continue to grow and expand.”

That was Joe Biden in his March 25 press conference. The squad of compliant reporters failed to ask about gains China had already made on Biden’s watch, which began in 2012. That year, as The Atlantic reported, “Biden Gets China,” a move orchestrated by Thomas Donilon, once described by James Mann in Foreign Policy as “Obama’s Gray Man” and seldom mentioned in the press.

Donilon advised Biden in his 1988 run for the presidency and presided over a meltdown at the Federal National Mortgage Association. That prompted Robert Scheer of the Nation to brand Donilon a “top hustler” and wonder why President Obama would tap him for National Security Advisor.

On Biden’s watch as vice president, China ramped up internal repressions and became more aggressive, modernizing their military and creating island bases that put key American allies and interests at risk. In 2019, on the anniversary, of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Joe Biden called for “recommitting to the universal struggle for human dignity” but offered no direct criticism of China’s Communist regime. During the 2020 campaign, Bidcen described the regime as “not bad folks, folks.” With the PRC, that was Biden’s essential message from the start.

Sen. Joe Biden voted against strong sanctions on Communist China as a response to the Tiananmen massacre. In 1998, the United States again proposed sanctions on the PRC, including visa restrictions, and Biden was part of a group of ten senators opposed to the measures. In 2001, Sen. Biden, then head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, supported China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. As he explained, “the United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules.” That theme emerged in Biden’s White House press conference.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Claim Under International Law to the ‘Occupied Territories’ A short course for the Biden administration. Hugh Fitzgerald

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/israels-claim-under-international-law-occupied-hugh-fitzgerald/

The Biden Administration seems to think that the way to bring peace between Israelis and Palestinians is to push Israel back within what it describes as the “1967 lines,” which is a more acceptable way of saying “the 1949 armistice lines.” Those lines were not recognized borders; they merely reflected where the respective armies, of Israel and its Arab enemies, when the shooting stopped n 1949.

Let’s give the misinformed Biden Administration the necessary Short Course it clearly needs about Israel’s claim under international law to the West Bank, about the misnomer “occupied territories, ” and about the Palestinian Arabs and a “two-state solution.”

There are two sources for Israel’s claim to the West Bank. The first, and the most important, is the Mandate for Palestine, set up by the League of Nations in 1922, for the sole purpose of creating the Jewish National Home that in time, sympathetically nurtured by the holder of the Mandate, Great Britain, would become the Jewish state. The Arabs were well-provided for, too, by the League of Nations. They were given several mandates – for Iraq, for Syria, and Lebanon. Furthermore, all of Palestine east of the Jordan River “out to the desert,” which had originally been intended for inclusion in the Palestine Mandate, was closed to Jewish immigration by the British, and given to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah to rule over, as the Emirate of Transjordan. And as we know, the Arabs now have twenty-two independent states, far more than any other people, while the Jews have exactly one, a tiny sliver so small that it can scarcely be discerned on a world map.

The Mandate for Palestine – see the Preamble and Articles 4 and 6 — was meant to create “the national home for the Jewish people” by “encouraging Jewish immigration” and “close settlement by Jews on the land.” That was its only purpose: not “two states” but one. The Arabs were already well provided for, by the mandates, and would be even more provided for outside the mandates system. At present, the Arabs have twenty-two independent states, far more than any other people, while the Jews have exactly one, a tiny sliver so small that it can scarcely be discerned on a world map.

The Mandates system of the League of Nations was never thought to “flagrantly violate international law.” It became part and parcel of international law. It did not cease to be relevant, either, when the League dissolved, to be replaced by the United Nations. Article 80 of the U.N. Charter – known as “the Jewish people’s article” – committed the U.N. to bring to a successful conclusion any mandates that still remained.

The Mandate for Palestine is the indispensable document for comprehending the history of modern Israel, yet is too rarely discussed, even by many of Israel’s well-wishers, who may not comprehend its significance. Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan et al must take it upon themselves to study that document. And then they should look at the Mandate maps, that clearly show the territory included in the Mandate.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Cares if a Nation of Islam Racist Killed a White Cop? Social media and the Democrats are suddenly struck colorblind. John Perazzo

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/who-cares-if-nation-islam-racist-killed-white-cop-john-perazzo/

Last Friday, a 25-year-old Nation of Islam supporter named Noah Green rammed his car into a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol, killing police officer William Evans and injuring another officer in the process, before Green himself was shot and killed by a cop at the scene. In stark contrast to the countless lamentations – by media outlets and elected Democrats – that the people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6 were an undifferentiated pack of “racists” and “white supremacists,” Democrats and their leftwing allies have been remarkably uninterested in the element of race vis-à-vis Mr. Green and the white policeman he killed on Friday. Senator Chuck Schumer, for one, soberly claimed, without reference to race, to be “heartbroken for the family and loved ones” of the fallen officer. President Biden offered his “heartfelt condolences” to Evans’ family. And Nancy Pelosi called Evans “a martyr for our democracy” — a far cry from her July 2020 statement comparing federal anti-riot police in Portland to Nazi “storm troopers.”

Why the sudden, uncharacteristic reluctance to jump to stupid, uninformed conclusions about the motivations of a criminal perpetrator?The colossal hypocrites who run social media platforms have been similarly averse to wading into racial waters in their dealings with Noah Green. Consider Facebook, whose militant censors and “fact-checkers” have been so keenly on the lookout for messages conveying even the baresttrace of support for “hate,” “misinformation,” or “conspiracy theories” promulgated by white conservatives. For some mysterious reason, those same censors were apparently asleep-at-the-wheel when Mr. Green, as recently as March 17, used his Facebook page to express his deep admiration for former Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Neither did the censors object when Green again used Facebook on March 21 to describe Louis Farrakhan, who has been the Nation of Islam’s principal leader for more than 40 years, as “the man who can carry us through the dark hour.” Nor did the censors balk when Green recently stated on Facebook that “my faith is centered on the belief of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Admin Revives Funding to Anti-Semitic U.N. Agency By Jimmy Quinn

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-admin-revives-funding-to-anti-semitic-u-n-agency/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

The United States, Antony Blinken announced this afternoon, will “restart U.S. economic, development, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people.”

In addition to reviving direct U.S. funding to a variety of projects in Gaza and the West Bank, this will also include $150 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a specialized organization that aids Palestinian refugees. The Trump administration had suspended funding to UNRWA in 2018, calling the agency “irredeemably flawed.” And it remains so today.

First, it’s worth recalling the true purpose behind UNRWA’s creation. Consider that of all the millions of people displaced around the world, only Palestinian refugees have their own, distinct U.N. agency. Refugees from every single other country on the planet instead seek assistance from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

In addition to that, although the agency purports to represent over 5 million refugees who it claims may one day return to Israel, most of them don’t actually qualify as refugees according to the U.N.’s criteria. Most have never even stepped foot in the country, since they were born well after the 1948 conflict. According to a recently released U.S. government assessment, the number of true refugees, applying the standard criteria, ends up at around 200,000, and perhaps even less than that.

So why stand up this separate organization? The very existence of the program, and the widespread support that it consistently receives at the U.N. General Assembly, stands as yet another example of the U.N.’s pervasive, institutional bias against Israel. After the U.N. Human Rights Council, which disproportionately singles out the country in its every session, UNRWA is the single most obvious example of this discrimination, which is designed to make Israel into a pariah state on the international stage.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Will Spiraling Border Crisis Destroy Biden’s Presidency?

By on April 8th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/08/will-spiraling-border-crisis-destroy-bidens-presidency/

It’s not three months into a four-year term, but Joe Biden’s presidency is already heading for the rocks. Surging waves of immigrants have overwhelmed the U.S.’ southern border. With public anger growing, Biden now has been forced to tacitly recognize President Donald Trump’s border success.

Just this week, Biden let it be known he’s considering restarting Trump’s border wall construction — just to “fill in” parts of it, his administration says. Right.

In fact, it’s desperation because the Biden-Democrat open border policy has been an epic disaster, one that could result in huge Democratic losses in 2022 and a lame-duck presidency for Biden.

An AP-NORC poll shows 56% of those queried disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration and 55% disapprove of his border security policies. Significantly, this is a glaring weak spot in Biden’s otherwise solid support from independents, who disapprove of his policies cited above by 62% and 67%, respectively.

Americans have been shocked by images such as this touching video on Wednesday of a lone crying boy left behind by his group to wander the Mexican desert near the border. That’s Biden’s policy in a nutshell.

And, sadly, it’s entirely predictable.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

When Will Liberals Reclaim Free Speech? My fellow liberals in academia have abandoned ‘the great moral renovator of society and government.’By Jonathan Zimmerman

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-will-liberals-reclaim-free-speech-11617813301?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Mr. Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-author, with cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, of “Free Speech and Why You Should Give a Damn.”

‘Professor, why are you so conservative about free speech?” Several students have asked me versions of this question recently, which speaks volumes about universities right now. I’m a liberal and a Democrat: I’m pro-choice, pro-ObamaCare and vehemently anti-Trump. But I’m also a strong supporter of free speech, which marks me as a right-winger on campus.

That’s because my fellow liberals have largely abandoned free speech to conservatives. Turn on Fox News, and you’ll see “cancel culture” decried in bright lights. But in the liberal press—and most of all in the liberal academy—free speech has become a rhetorical third rail. Sure, we’ll invoke it when Republican state lawmakers try to ban critical race theory. But in our own house, free speech is seen increasingly as a tool of repression rather than liberation.

Here’s how the argument usually goes: White people love free speech, because it lets them say any hateful thing they want. But the real burden of it falls on racial minorities, who are forced to absorb constant slights and slurs against their very existence. That’s why we need to police racist speech: to protect its victims.

The problem is that people will inevitably differ about which speech qualifies as racist. The term has become our own scarlet letter, an all-purpose way to prohibit ideas you dislike. So we need to defend the free-speech rights of everyone, even avowed racists. The best response to hateful speech is to raise your own voice against it, not to ban it.

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DAVID'S SLINGSHOT DPS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Just Decades After the Holocaust, the Woke Mob Targets Jews and America y Gil Troy

By on April 8th, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/04/07/just-decades-after-the-holocaust-the-woke-mob-targets-jews-and-america/

Commemorating Yom HaShoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day — in New York always felt vaguely foreign, even un-American, to me. Heavily-accented, emotionally-scarred Europeans would describe the dark days in that dark continent, forgetting that we were different. We American Jews lived in the land of light, the center of the New World — the Free World.

The Nazi evil happened over there, in that swamp of hyper-nationalist poisons that produced two world wars — then unfairly blamed the chaos on the Jews. As a second-generation American Jewish kid, I instinctively identified with the victors not the victims, the super-powered GI Joes magnanimously distributing cigarettes and chocolate, not the broken, emaciated concentration camp Jews desperately grabbing the goodies.

How lucky we were to feel that — and how fleeting that feeling was. This Yom HaShoah, I am thinking about how many of my fellow Americans have spent the last few years Europeanizing America, making the land of the free and the home of the brave look like the land of the fanatic and the home of the bully, where the left and right can agree on little — except that the Jews are somehow at fault and inherently flawed.

One of this moment’s greatest Jewish tragedies is that while our enemies put their differences aside to target us, most Jews can’t put our differences aside to defend ourselves.

In a sick way, hating Nazis on Yom HaShoah is easy. The Holocaust was Jew-hatred at its crudest: it was blatant and bloody. Condemning this genocidal expression of fascism — and all its Neo-Nazi heirs today — keeps most American Jews in their comfort zone. Liberals’ generalized hatred of the right reinforces their self-defensive hatred of right-wing antisemitism.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Legacy Media Corruption Is At The Heart Of Our National Conflict The Georgia example is instructive in illustrating exactly how much of our conflict is downstream of the broken media. By Emily Jashinsky

By on April 7th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/07/legacy-media-corruption-is-at-the-heart-of-our-national-conflict/

The media’s false reporting about new election legislation in Georgia whipped up a controversy that left millions of people grossly misinformed, frightened voters, mired major corporations in high-stakes public relations frenzies, distracted the political discourse, and furthered the country’s divisions. In short, it’s a perfect example of how the media is fueling our national conflict.

In this case, the media uncritically regurgitated Georgia Democrats’ partisan hyperbole, treating a narrative the party strategically crafted to defeat the legislation as fact and turning it into a long and false national news cycle. That news cycle left the public with an impression that the legislation was objectively racist.

That impression scared and motivated the public, leading employees to pressure executives into action. Worse, the false coverage led millions of people to believe that a major political party representing half the country was seeking to reinstate Jim Crow.

The coverage from our country’s major publications was so bad that after a few days, even liberals like Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips and Will Saletan of Slate began pushing back. Those responsible for the bad coverage, which is the bulk of the legacy press, appear to be facing no consequences.

Over at RealClearPolitics, Carl Cannon wrote a poignant column on the offensive absurdity of invoking Jim Crow in this context.

“When Donald Trump likened his being impeached to a lynching, living relatives of Willie Edwards and Emmett Till called this comparison ‘ignorant’ and ‘insensitive’ and ‘offensive.’ They were right,” Cannon wrote. “But now Biden is invoking racist history, and doing it to score partisan political points. Millions of Americans who voted for him hoped they were done having to listen to such blasphemy from the White House.”

Sadly, the media parroted that partisan spin, legitimizing the Democratic Party’s narrative by presenting it under the banner of journalistic neutrality. For a clearer glimpse at the consequences, read this New York Times report on the internal frenzy at corporations like Delta and Coca-Cola, which spent days fumbling to respond under pressure from the media, activists, and staff.

That pressure stemmed entirely from misinformation peddled by the legacy media. Without the media’s legitimization of a partisan narrative, concerned employees wouldn’t have been reaching out, the external pressures of a PR threat would have been negligible, and the corporations could have focused on the business of taking us on spring break and making our mixers.

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