Displaying posts published in

November 2022

Former DOD Contract Translator Arrested for Alleged Ties to ISIS The ongoing threat of Jihad. by Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/former-dod-contract-translator-arrested-for-alleged-ties-to-isis/

A former Department of Defense (DOD) contract interpreter, Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi has been arrested for allegedly having lied about his connection to ISIS in his application for a security clearance in conjunction with his employment by the DOD.

The arrest of this defendant is of great significance however, while information about this case has been published in several news reports but, incredibly, has not been reported by the Justice Department or any other federal agency.

Mohammadi is being prosecuted by the federal government and is alleged to have worked to assist ISIS, the group behind the bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 American soldiers and grievously wounded many others.

Additionally, the news reports neglected to provide important insight into just how the alleged actions of the defendant may have done significant harm to U.S. national security or ask what should be obvious questions about the way that Mohammadi is being charged.

I will address these issues shortly, but first, let’s begin by reviewing information about this case that Rolling Stone’s article about the arrest provided in its October 18, 2022 report under the title:

CAUGHT

Feds Charge Pentagon Contractor With Lying About Ties to ISIS

Mohammad Rafi Mohammadi worked for the U.S. in Afghanistan. He was also allegedly helping the terrorist group behind a bombing that killed 13 American troops.

Palestinians Vote For Terrorists, Then Claim Israelis Are ‘Extremists’ by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19087/palestinians-vote-terrorists

The Palestinians, who keep complaining about the rise of the right-wing parties in Israeli elections, are the ones who brought the terrorist Hamas group to power.

In 2006, a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the elimination of Israel.

The Palestinians who voted for a jihadist terror group would therefore seem to have little justification to complain about the outcome of any Israeli election.

The statements that Palestinian leaders and officials are making in response to the latest elections are identical to those they issued after previous rounds of voting in Israel.

After Israel’s 2020 election, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum… urged Palestinians to step up the “resistance” against Israel to thwart then US President Donald J. Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East, titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, any elected government in Israel that does not submit to 100% of their demands is a bad and dangerous government.

The second camp, represented by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and several other armed groups, is seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state. This camp does not believe in Israel’s right to exist….

The Palestinians… continue to engage in fear-mongering after each Israeli election in efforts to intimidate the Israeli public into complying with their demands. They also have used this tactic for three decades to frighten the international community into pressuring Israel to make dangerous territorial concessions.

The Palestinian claim that there is no partner for peace in Israel is totally false. In fact, the opposite is true…. The sad fact is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

The next time the Palestinians wring their hands about Israeli elections, the international community might remind them that it is Palestinian terrorism that drives the Israeli ballot-box results.

The Palestinians also need to be reminded that it is their own leaders, and not those of Israel, who reject peace.

Rather than bemoaning the Israeli election results, Palestinian leaders should be granting their own people even a part of what the Israelis wish for them in the Abraham Accords: equal justice under the law, freedom to speak and publish without fear of retribution, freedom to become prosperous, and freedom to live lives that have opportunity apart from the cottage industry of terrorism — lives free from their own leaders’ corrupt, unending suppression.

Even before the final results of the latest Israeli general elections were announced, Palestinian leaders and officials were quoted as expressing deep concern and fear that the outcome of the vote would lead to increased tensions and violence between the Palestinians and Israel.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh was quoted as saying that the results of the election “confirms” that the Palestinians have no partner in Israel for peace.”

The Pathetic Democratic Pantheon Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their radical ideology that was finally enacted and wrecked the country. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/06/the-pathetic-democratic-pantheon/

Over the last few months the four icons of the Democratic Party—Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi—have hit the campaign trail. 

They’ve weighed in on everything from “right-wing violence” and “election denialists” to the now tired “un-American” semi-fascist MAGA voter—and had nothing much to say about inflation, the border, crime, energy, or the Afghanistan debacle. In this, they remind us just how impoverished and calcified is this left-wing pantheon. 

So why should we take anything they say seriously, given their own records—and especially given their mastery of projecting their own shortcomings upon others as some sort of private exculpation or preemptive political strategy?

Still Hopin’ and Changin’? 

Barack Obama this past week has assumed the role of surrogate president. He is storming the country, while Joe Biden mopes at home or visits shrinking blue enclaves so he can claim post facto, “At least I was out there stumping.” 

Over the last six years, we have become accustomed to Obama’s periodic getaways from one of his three estates. It is always the same. From time to time, he reenters politics to remind us that he did not just cash in on his presidency to become a multi-millionaire. Instead, he is still the Chicago “community activist” of his youth. And so, Obama will not be overshadowed by the Biden crew that is enacting all the crazy things he as president had warned were a bit much even for him. 

At the funeral of the late John Lewis, Obama turned his eulogy into a political rant. He weighed in on the “racist” filibuster, the “Jim Crow relic” that he desperately sought in vain to use to stop the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito. 

At campaign stops, he deplores “divisions” that he, more than any modern figure, helped create. The entire left-wing vocabulary of disparagement for the white lower-working classes (e.g., deplorables, dregs, chumps, irredeemables, etc.) got its start with Obama’s putdown of Pennsylvania voters who rejected him in the 2008 primaries as “clingers.” 

In interviews, Obama suddenly now blasts harsh rhetoric—this from the wannabe tough guy who stole the “The Untouchables” line about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well before crazy Maxine Waters’ calls to arms, Obama advised his supporters “get in their faces.”

Still, on the campaign trail, Obama appears not so much animated as stale. It is as if he has been suddenly stirred from a long coma that commenced in 2008. It’s the same old, same old—sleeves rolled up. He still resorts to the scripted outbursts of mock anger. And the nerdy prep school graduate still amateurishly modulates his patois—now policy wonk, now breaking into the Southern African-American pastor accent when an audience needs more preachy authenticity. 

He still tries to rev up his crowds with the familiar attacks: Republican demons will cut Social Security, the MAGA semi-fascists are captives of Donald Trump (as if the Democrats have not ceded their souls to woke hysterics), the Republican fanatics will all but kill women by denying abortions, and extremists unlike himself are dividing the country. 

On and on, Obama shouts about social justice. And then he wraps up and must decide to which of his mansions he will fly home (via private jet)—Kalorama, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyde Park, or soon the Waimanalo estate.

Obama offers no solutions much less hints at his own culpability in his sermons. There is nothing about the open border he helped birth. Nothing about Biden’s failed energy policies now bankrupting the middle class that were simply a reification of his energy secretary Steven Chu’s perverse wishes for European-priced gas (“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”). 

There is nothing about Obama’s old boasts about shutting down coal plants and skyrocketing electricity (“Under my plan . . . electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”). 

A Voter’s Primer: The Seven Health Policy Habits of Insanely Progressive People By C.J. Baker, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/a_voters_primer_the_seven_health_policy_habits_of_insanely_progressive_people.html

What is the most painful lesson the COVID-19 saga has taught the American people?  Perhaps it was how, over the past two and a half years, we have been force-fed an extended taste of the dystopian version of “health care” that the Democrat Party and the Washington nomenklatura (but I repeat myself) seek to permanently impose on us.

We’ve lived through it now, so we can’t say we weren’t warned.  However, many people are still dazed and confused, others remain terrified, and some just want to forget that the whole nightmare ever happened and return to their old pre-pandemic lives.

Things may have calmed down, but don’t kid yourself: the good old days have not returned.  It’s vital that we never forget what they did to our children, our livelihoods, and our civil rights, how they ruined countless lives in the name of “keeping us safe.”  And they’re not done.  They’re just warming up.  And now they seek amnesty for their abuses of power, even as they continue to persecute courageous dissidents like Dr. Peter McCollough, even as they push booster after booster, even to tiny children?  No way.

In the interest of jostling the collective memory before this election, your humble correspondent asks: what are the medical implications of Democrat party governance?

Presenting the Seven Health Policy Habits of Insanely Progressive People:

1. Martial law as “public health.”  Remember how “two weeks to flatten the curve” became two years to flatten your will to live?  Get ready for draconian, indefinitely extended lockdown measures whenever a “public health emergency” is declared — for example, before major elections.

2. Mandatory jab policies gone wild.  This isn’t just your father’s measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, folks.  We’re talking about warp-speed-produced, novel-technology shots with zero long-term data.  You think they’re stopping with SARS CoV-2? Have you noticed how much they’re talking up RSV?  There’s a lot of money to be made.  You think you’ll have a choice, right?  After all, they’re all about “my body, my choice,” right?  Well, think back to about a year ago.  Did the shots do what they claimed they would?  Did they apologize after vilifying and persecuting the skeptics?  If the Dems keep power, the questions return: do you want to earn a living?  You will comply.  Do you want freedom of movement?  Comply.  Do you want your kids to go to school?  Comply.

3. Censor and destroy all dissenting physicians, scientists, and health care workers.  Remember NIH chief Francis “Over the Rainbow” Collins’s call for a “quick and devastating published takedown” of the so-called “fringe” scientists (From Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford!) who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration?  Fast-forward to the fascistic current attempts to strip Dr. Peter McCollough of his board certification.  Welcome to a world of compromised, careerist medical mediocrities beating down pre-eminent minds who refuse to keep silent, like Orwell’s boot stomping on a face forever and ever.

4. Support and grow the Government-Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex.  One really should read The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to get the full picture.  The huge problem of regulatory capture, the intertwining of U.S. government medical agencies with the military (especially with regard to vaccine development), and the absolutely massive amounts of money involved are truly head-spinning.  Only the terminally naïve or willfully blind could believe that Fauci et al. care one whit about the individual citizen’s well-being.

5. Predatory medical and social policies against children.  Shuttering schools for two years at a time.  Masking young children and toddlers.  Still — to this day — pressing for mandated COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren.  Population-wide psychological trauma as well as developmental and educational delay, all resulting from their cruel, excessive, and utterly unnecessary policies.  Any apologies?  New York Democrat governor Kathy Hochul still “reserves the right” to bring back masks.  Still not convinced?  Need I mention Drag Queen Story Hour?  Or abortion on demand as a secular sacrament?  Why do Democrats hate children so?

6. The woke Lysenkoism of academic medicine.  The November 1, 2022 issue of the once-pre-eminent Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), published one week before the midterm elections, was almost completely devoted to attacking the Dobbs Supreme Court decision.  Curiously, it contained only two original research articles — neither one about abortion.  However, interspersed with the full-page Big Pharma advertisements, the issue had no fewer than nine opinion pieces, all pro-abortion and anti-Dobbs.  No contrasting views permitted.  Journals that used to print original research and promote debate of controversial issues now print propaganda better suited to a Planned Parenthood brochure.  And medical schools’ curricula are no better.

7. Complete government control of all aspects of medicine.  Forget about the old bugbear of “socialized medicine.”  With Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, federal medicine, and NIH influence over academic medical centers, American medicine is already socialized.  However, during COVID-19, we saw government manufacture and enforce complete consent to its health care policy at a level never seen before.  This was accomplished by thorough capture of hospital systems and local health officials with a crude but effective carrot-and-stick approach.  Do exactly what we say, and we pay you off handsomely down the road (with taxpayer dollars).  Don’t do what we say, and we shut you down.  For good.

To those uncertain about the relative merits of communism versus capitalism, I often say: “Be honest with yourself.  Which Korea would you rather live in: North or South?”  To anyone unsure how to vote in this upcoming election, I now ask, “Be honest with yourself.  What type of America would you rather live in for the rest of your life — one like COVID-era Florida or one like COVID-era New York?”

Neither American political party is perfect — far from it.  But one party never wants things to go back the way they were before COVID-19.  Never.

Vote wisely, America.

FBI Hides Laptops of the Dead The bureau blocks information from the laptop computers of DNC murder victim Seth Rich and DHS whistleblower Philip Haney. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fbi-hides-laptops-of-the-dead/

The FBI is defying a court order to hand over information from the laptop of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July of 2016. As The Epoch Times reports, the bureau wants the court to reverse the 53-page ruling of federal judge Amos Mazzant, an Obama appointee. If the court declines, the FBI wants to delay release of the data for 66 years.

That would put the release in 2088, when FBI boss Christopher Wray would be 121 years old, so the 66-year figure is code for “never.” As journalist Jim Hoft explains, “people with nothing to hide don’t try to hide nothing,” so the people have a right to wonder what is going on.

Seth Rich was a digital campaigner with the Democratic National Committee. On July 10, 2016, the  27-year-old was gunned down in Washington DC. Police called it a street robbery gone wrong, but the shooters did not take Rich’s wallet, watch or phone. Weeks after the murder, as the BBC reported, “Wikileaks published 20,000 emails obtained from Democratic National Committee computers via an anonymous source.”

Some observers thought the source might be Seth Rich. Many of the emails dealt with the escapades of Hillary Clinton and showed up on social media. For Democrats it was all part of Trump’s collusion with Russia, and establishment media charged that outlets such as Fox were peddling another conspiracy theory.

Others thought the Russia collusion story could be a dodge to distract attention of the murder of Rich. The FBI showed no interest in the basic questions of  motive, means, and opportunity but quickly latched on to Rich’s laptop. Four years later in 2020, the bureau admitted possession of the computer.

The New Puritans The Woke Left wants to put all of us on trial. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-new-puritans/

When was the last time you watched MSNBC or CNN – or any of the broadcast networks? I am not suggesting that one should do this often; but like taking cod’s liver oil or boiled spinach, watching the opposition is an essential ingredient to building character.

Because no matter which of the smug Woke left hosts you happen upon, they are all preaching the same sermon, over and over, so often in fact you would think they would tire of it: we are the virtuous ones, the vigils of Democracy. We are the ones who command history, art, culture. We are America. And them? They are the enemies of democracy.

This is what we have come to. We are no longer a nation divided, but two separate and distinct nations, each with its own culture, its own history, its heroes and villains, its own aspirations, its fears. Even its own language. (Here is Joy Reid telling us that Republicans “taught people the word ‘inflation.’”)

Some have suggested we are witnessing a repeat of the 1960s. But the drug-laden counter-culture of the Strawberry Statement and Abbe Hoffman and the Chicago Seven was quite distinct from today in significant ways. The sixties were about an awakening – an awakening of the mind and a liberation of the body from the shackles of generations of predominantly Anglo-Saxon Puritanism.

Today’s Woke Left are the new Puritans. They do not seek to liberate our minds from habit, or challenge us to innovation, but to enslave us in new doctrines far more rigid than anything earlier generations of Americans could conceive, from redefining biological sex to re-engineering freedom itself.

Biden is gaslighting Americans about his failed presidency By Augustus Howard

https://nypost.com/2022/11/05/biden-is-gaslighting-americans-about-his-failed-presidency/

“In 2022, the notion of “voting for the person, not the party” is a luxury voters can no longer afford. A vote to send a Democrat to Congress, or to send a Democrat to a governor’s mansion or, for that matter, to state houses and state courts, is almost surely a vote for this president and his agenda.”

The Biden Administration will be known to history for many things: an open border and its deadly consequences, the abandonment of Afghanistan, weakness that led to catastrophe in Europe, skyrocketing inflation, and the use of federal law enforcement to target political opponents.

The catalog of infamy goes on.

Above all, though, this administration may be remembered for its duplicity — its continual, shameless “gaslighting” of the American people. Biden, his team, and his sycophantic media supporters repeatedly tell us that “all is well” where it manifestly is not. No matter how bad things become in the nation, no matter how many people suffer, reality has no purchase on the ideological bubble of this White House.

That is why, in these midterm elections, the American people must deliver to Joe Biden an unequivocal message: that they refuse to be gaslit, that they are not buying what he is selling.

Biden and his staff spin not simply to be optimistic. They do so to cover up the often deadly consequences of their policy decisions.

This is certainly the case as regards Biden’s open border. The president’s reversal of Trump-era border enforcement, and his effective encouragement of illegal border crossings, has led to widespread human suffering. Migrants have been dying in record numbers as they make their journeys, often under the control of coyotes and human smugglers. Americans are dying, too, as toxic fentanyl pours into the nation.

What do Biden and his aides have to say about all this?

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted that the Biden border disaster was not a “crisis,” but rather a “challenge.” Vice President Kamala Harris has gone further, stating that “the border is secure.”

Conservatives Hit Back After Trump Takes Pre-Election Shot at DeSantis by Scott Morefield

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2022/11/06/conservatives-hit-back-after-trump-takes-pre-election-shot-at-desantis-n2615540

Conservatives on Twitter hit back at Donald Trump after the former president took a shot at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a Saturday night pre-election speech in Pennsylvania.

“”There it is, Trump at 71 percent, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%,” Trump told the crowd while reading approval numbers of various Republicans.”

If he should choose to run – and that’s a big “if” – DeSantis is widely considered to be the best shot at upending another Trump run for the GOP nomination. Not only were his Covid policies spot on and ahead of the curve, but the Florida governor has also been by far the most effective Republican politician when it comes to getting out there and battling leftist positions and implementing conservative policies in his state. And he’s done so without taking any shots at Trump, the person he and everyone else understands played a key role in getting him where he is today.

For Trump, however, this unprovoked jab at conservatism’s most effective fighter is evidence for many that, despite the many good things he has done for the country, this has been all about him the whole time.

Especially when it did nothing but provide ammunition to the left, particularly in Florida.

Trump’s swipe brought plenty of criticism from conservatives on Twitter:

Constitutional defamation: Democrats, not democracy, are in danger this election by Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3721139-constitutional-defamation-democrats-not-democracy-are-in-danger-this-election/

Historian Michael Beschloss’s warning on MSNBC — speculating that “our children will be arrested and conceivably killed” if Republicans win control of Congress — summed up the final pitch by President Biden and fellow Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.

Apparently, it is not gas prices, the economy or crime that once again are the top polling issues for voters. Instead, it is democracy or death, gas or grandchildren — you choose.

Biden returned to this theme in what White House chief of staff Ron Klain called his “final warning” to voters. The president ominously cautioned voters who might be thinking of voting for Republicans that, “make no mistake, democracy is on the ballot for all of us.” In other words, be afraid, be very afraid.

Biden was widely criticized for an earlier Philadelphia speech that denounced political opponents as fascists plotting to overthrow democracy. Yet he and others have returned to that theme as Democrats appear to be losing ground even in traditional blue states. Among others, Hillary Clinton warned that the GOP is trying to “steal” the election and that “they’re going after democracy.“

The president’s attacks do not appear to be gaining much traction, with polls showing that most people view him as inciting political unrest. Nevertheless, on almost every network and cable news program, the mantra seems unrelenting: If the GOP prevails in the midterms, democracy could be lost.

Whereas the media once pushed a false Russia collusion claim in the 2016 election, this time it is pushing a claim that the GOP itself represents the threat to our liberties and very lives.

Doctor, Fix Thyself Peter J. Pitts

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/07/doctor-fix-thyself/

We owe a lot to America’s physicians, the brave men, and women on the front lines of the war against COVID-19. Yet rather than supporting American doctors, flawed public policy will soon reduce Medicare’s physician fee schedule, compounding and magnifying the increased pandemic pressures and economic challenges that physicians have been facing over the past two-and-a-half years.

Current federal policies call for a 4.42% cut in Medicare physician fee schedule payments, effective Jan. 1, 2023. Such drastic cuts for our nation’s physicians will force many small to mid-size practices out of business — particularly those in rural communities — placing an increased, and deeply unfair, financial strain on the ones that remain. The result is entirely predictable, a weakened health care system that endangers the lives of vulnerable patients. Proposed reductions to Medicare’s physician payments will undermine the economic viability of practicing medicine in towns and cities nationwide, and further broaden the health care equity gap for both rural America and lower income communities of color.

These fast-approaching ill-considered cuts magnify the insidious instability of Medicare’s arcane and antiquated physician payment system For quite some time the growing discrepancy between the cost of running a medical practice and the actual payments physicians receive from Uncle Sam through Medicare has become more and more unreasonable and unjustifiable, considering the various administrative red tape and financial burdens of participating in the program. This situation is driving provider consolidation that limits patient choice not just in access to physicians, but in the type of care those remaining physicians can provide.