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January 2023

Reining in Government Spending? Let’s get real. by Larry Elder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/reining-in-government-spending-lets-get-real/

Behind the refusal of the House Republican Party’s so-called freedom caucus to vote for Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is the caucus’s skepticism that he will actually “rein in government spending.” I’ve never quite understood why all Republicans do not belong to the Freedom Caucus. If the Republican Party supports low taxes, light regulations and strong national security, why is a Freedom Caucus even necessary?

Here’s the problem. In 1900, government at all three levels — local, state and federal — taxed Americans at about 9% of their earnings. Now, it is over 32%. As former President Ronald Reagan said: “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

The federal budget devotes about half of its spending to the so-called entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. Next is income security, which includes general retirement and disability insurance; federal employee retirement, disability and military retirement; unemployment compensation; housing assistance; nutrition assistance; foster care; Supplemental Security Income; and the earned income and child tax credits. They are followed, in decreasing order, by national security and interest on the debt. Combined, these programs consume almost all federal spending — courtesy of dollars collected from taxpayers or through borrowing that ultimately must be paid back by taxpayers or through printing. This leaves a small percentage of the federal budget for so-called discretionary spending.

As to the “entitlement” portion, even Democrats over the years called the spending “unsustainable.”

Biden Wants It Both Ways On COVID — But Either Way, Taxpayers Get Screwed

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/17/biden-wants-it-both-ways-on-covid-but-either-way-taxpayers-get-screwed/

Last week, the Biden administration once again extended the COVID public health emergency, the 12th time it’s been extended in the past three years. Just weeks before, however, team Biden told the Supreme Court that there is no COVID emergency, and there hasn’t been one since last April.

Why the two diametrically opposed positions? Simple. Extending the public health emergency declaration lets Joe Biden keep millions of recipients on Medicaid and continue his student loan bailout. Claiming that COVID isn’t an emergency will open the floodgates to illegal immigrants.

Notice the connective tissue? It’s about expanding government dependency – for health care, for college aid, or for illegals getting on welfare. Who loses? You. And anyone else who pays taxes.

On Jan. 11, Biden Health and Human Service Secretary Xavier Becerra announced that “as a result of the continued consequences of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic,” he was renewing the public health emergency declaration because “a public health emergency exists and has existed since Jan. 27, 2020, nationwide.”

This isn’t about public health. It’s about government welfare.

As the Mercatus Center’s Liam Sigaud and Markus Bjoerkheim explained recently, one of the many COVID relief bills rushed through Congress “substantially increased the proportion of Medicaid costs that the federal government covers and barred states that receive the funding from checking enrollees’ eligibility or removing the ineligible from Medicaid rolls.”

TikTok Must be Banned in US and Free World by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19295/tiktok-ban-us

Chinese law requires all Chinese companies to turn over information to the Communist Party upon request — and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, reportedly employs more than 130 Party members to ensure compliance, among other matters.

“Its algorithm is at once simple and sinister. Download the app on your smartphone and you have given China access to all your data… And history shows they use that data for nefarious purposes.” — Adonis Hoffman, The Hill, October 18, 2022.

“First, the app can track cellphone users’ locations and collect internet-browsing data — even when users are visiting unrelated websites… That TikTok, and by extension the CCP, has the ability to survey every keystroke teenagers enter on their phones is disturbing… it could also be used to subtly indoctrinate American citizens. TikTok has already censored references to politically sensitive topics, including the treatment of workers in Xinjiang, China, and the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square.” — Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mike Gallagher, The Washington Post, November 10, 2022.

“It’s almost like [the Chinese] recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world…. If you’re under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos,” said Harris, adding that children in China were limited to only 40 minutes a day on the app…. There’s a survey of pre-teens in the U.S. and China asking, ‘what is the most aspirational career that you want to have?’ and in the U.S., the No. 1 was a social media influencer, and in China, the No. 1 was astronaut. You allow those two societies to play out for a few generations and I can tell you what your world is going to look like.” — Tristan Harris, former Google employee, 60 Minutes, November 24, 2022.

In December, it was revealed that ByteDance had used the app to surveil several journalists to track down the journalists’ sources.

The United States recently banned TikTok from all federal government devices over growing security concerns. That is a good start.

Why Israelis Voted for Right-Wing Parties by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19321/israel-right-wing-parties

The main reason behind the rise to power of the far-right parties in the recent general election in Israel is that many Israelis believe that Israel has no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. This, in addition to the growing sense of dismay among Israelis as a result of Palestinian violence and terrorism, which saw a significant upsurge in 2022.

The widespread belief in Israel that the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, are not partners for peace is not baseless. Moreover, the dismay is justified.

Instead of welcoming the Israeli move [complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, while asking nothing in return] the Palestinians responded with more terrorism against Israel. “The Israelis totally withdrew because they were being shot at?” went Palestinian thinking; “Great! Let’s keep shooting at them!”

The Oslo Accords (Article XV) state that the Palestinians are supposed to “take all measures necessary in order to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities.” Instead, Palestinian cities such as Nablus and Jenin, which are fully controlled by Abbas’s security forces, have in the past year against become hubs for terrorism.

In the past year, Abbas has demonstrated to the Israeli public that the Palestinians are determined to pursue the war against Israel on two fronts: on the ground, through terrorism, and in the international arena, through the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice and other international forums.

Both the Palestinian terrorism and the diplomatic warfare constitute a violation of the commitments made by the Palestinians in the “peace process.”

In a September 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat stated that “all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations,” rather than unilateral actions.

When Israelis see Abbas paying the families of terrorists who murder or wound Jews, why should it be a surprise that many Israelis vote for “hardline” candidates? And when Israelis see Abbas and his associates inciting violence against them or vilifying Israel and prosecuting its leaders as “war criminals” at international tribunals, why should anyone be astonished that many Israelis are going to vote for a government they hope will protect them?

If the Palestinians want to regain the confidence of the Israeli public, they might start by demonstrating that they are serious about making peace with Israel. They could stop violating the agreements they signed and begin acting like peace partners, not war partners. They could cease their incessant unilateral measures and efforts to delegitimize Israel in the international arena.

The main reason behind the rise to power of the far-right parties in the recent general election in Israel is that many Israelis believe that Israel has no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. This, in addition to the growing sense of dismay among Israelis as a result of Palestinian violence and terrorism, which saw a significant upsurge in 2022.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

Israel goes global:

Las Vegas: the highest number of Israeli startups and innovations.

Europe: European funding for Israeli agricultural technology; and another Israeli satellite was successfully launched. 1000 Europeans and Israelis can walk without pain thanks to Israeli knee implants. Israel sent another hundred power generators to Ukraine and even more are on their way.

Africa: Israeli doctors have again been treating patients throughout Africa. Eye treatment and chemotherapy in Nigeria.

United Arab Emirates: Sheikh Khalid Qasmi of the United Arab Emirates is the first Arab royal known to have been treated in Israel. He said it was the best medical treatment he had received since his accident and was amazed by the quality of staff, the advanced capabilities, hospitality, and sympathy.

Israel, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and the US held the inaugural meeting of the Negev Forum in Abu Dhabi Six working groups focused on food security and water technology; clean energy; tourism; health; education and coexistence; and regional security.

All the foregoing and much, much more are brought to our attention by Michael Ordman.

B.D.S. ?  BRAINY-DEVELOPING-SOLUTIONS…RSK

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Medical suit for heart patients. The new Israeli-developed Microclimate Suit is successfully eliminating congestion in heart failure patients at Israel’s Rambam hospital. It evaporates body fluids, alleviating symptoms of heart failure by reducing the level of the stress hormone BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide) by up to 50%.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/breakthrough_heart_failure_treatment.aspx
 
Boosting oxygen levels. Latest on the ART device of Israel’s Inspira Technologies (see here previously) to boost patients’ oxygen levels instantly, reducing the need to induce comas and place them on ventilators. The machine removes low oxygen blood from the body, adds oxygen, removes CO2, and returns it to the patient. 
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/oxygen-boosting-device-provides-immediate-relief-to-patients/
https://inspira-technologies.com/art/
 
1,000 knee implants. Since its first trial in 2019, Israel’s Active Implants (see here previously) has performed nearly 1,000 implants of its NUsurface synthetic meniscus in Israel and Europe. It expects FDA approval to allow launch in the US in 2024.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB8aWsXbGhg
https://www.israel21c.org/new-hope-for-people-who-kneed-a-new-meniscus/
 
The wheel of fortune. Three years ago, one of a group of Israeli cyclists died when he had a heart attack, miles from the nearest hospital. Since then, the group carries a portable defibrillator on all trips. It recently saved the life of another member of the group, who suffered cardiac arrest in the Negev desert.
https://afmda.org/news/cycling-group-defibrillator/
 
Tooth extracted – from her lung.  When a nine-year-old Israeli girl lost a tooth, she accidentally sucked it into her lung, blocking her airway – a medical and life-threatening emergency. Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Pediatric Emergency Trauma Unit became “tooth fairies” and used a guided camera to pull the tooth from her lung.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/saved_life_after_swallowed_tooth_enters_lung.aspx
 
Proven benefits of medical clowns. IsraelActive.com (see here) contains over a dozen articles describing how Israeli medical clowns help hospital patients. Now Tel Aviv University researchers have documented 40 different skills that the clowns deploy to enable patients to overcome crises and move towards healing. 
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/1673469606-not-just-clowning-around-israeli-study-shows-importance-of-medical-clowns  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10497323221139781
 
Eye treatment in Nigeria. Israeli doctors regularly treat eye diseases in Africa (see here and here previously). Sheba Medical Center has now launched a humanitarian mission to Ilorin, Nigeria to treat eye-cancer in children and improve long-term quality optical care, by establishing an intra-arterial chemotherapy center.
https://worldisraelnews.com/world-renown-israeli-hospital-launches-humanitarian-mission-to-nigeria-treating-children-with-eye-cancer/
 
Growing health startups. Nine Israeli startups have been selected for Google for Startups’ first Growth Academy program for startups in the fields of medicine and quality of life. They are Olive Diagnostics, Kai, Emble, Droxi, BoBo Balance, Agado Live, AIVF, X-Trodes, and Ritual Health Technologies.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/pgg54w4uw
 

The Question That Khamenei Faces by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19319/khamenei-question

The visit to Pyongyang was Khamenei’s the Road to Damascus moment. The lesson he learned was simple: Let others idolize you and, if things turn badly, blame those who idolize you. And, if you are in a position of weakness, just appear as a nobody or play village idiot until the tide turns in your favor.

[W]hen Khamenei was forced to enter center stage last week, it was clear that his usual tactics hadn’t worked.

Worse still, most of the key figures in the regime’s support-base within the clergy, the military-security apparatus, and the Islamic academic and cultural elite seemed to be either hedging their bets or expressing some sympathy for the protesters.

[T]he strongest probability today is that the Khomeinist system could be heading for the cabinet of curiosities.

These are tough days for the “Supreme Guide” of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For the first time in more than three decades, he seems unable to do a Houdini number by getting out of a tight spot that events and his own mistakes have placed him in.

For more than three decades, whenever his rule was seriously challenged, his tactic was to go into purdah for a while letting things sort themselves out or, if action were needed, let others to do the dirty work. And when it became clear that things weren’t going to sort themselves out, he adopted the tactic he called “heroic flexibility,” a political version of the Parson’s position in reverse.

Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19315/destroying-american-democracy

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Having… false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie…. the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.

For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files…. Tweet #17 states, “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.” Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.”

The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

There… needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop — now — before our democracy is destroyed.

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

Little Joe’s Corvette Joe Biden’s usefulness may be coming to an end. Could he possibly run for reelection in 2024, let alone win it? By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/14/little-joes-corvette/

What if it had been a VW Bug? Or a Kia? I mean, what if Joe Biden’s garage, in addition to housing classified documents, was sporting something other and less sexy than his snazzy 1967 Corvette? What then? 

Joe himself seems to have set great store by his classic car. It’s the thing he mentions most frequently and most passionately when asked about the cardboard boxes stacked behind it, some of which contained secret U.S. government provender dating from his time as Barack Obama’s vice president. “It’s not like the documents were just strewn about,” Joe protested (I paraphrase to save the White House occupant embarrassment). “My Corvette is in there. The garage door has a lock on it.”

Well, OK, then. 

Nothing to see here, what? Time to move on? (I thought about using a period there, but I think we can all agree that a question mark with a twist of valley-girl upspeak pleading is more appropriate.)

It’s been amusing to absorb the commentary on this latest Top-Secret-Special-Compartmentalized-Nuclear-Coded-Eyes-Only fiasco. “Some of our country’s most sensitive 411,” blah, blah, blah. It was CBS News that first broke the story of Joe and his adventures with classified docs that he shouldn’t have had in his possession. Just last week the world discovered that the Washington office of the “Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement” [!], a Chinese-funded “dark-money nightmare,” had a cache of secret stuff. Then we learned about the garage sale, no Corvettes included, wheeze. And then, just a few days ago, the world woke up to, wouldn’t you know it, yet more classified docs stashed away somewhere among Joe’s collection of aviators in his Delaware home. As I write, Biden’s lawyers (nota bene, not the FBI) have found five more pages of classified material in the library at Biden’s home. Who knows where else he has the forbidden docs stashed?

When the SWAT teams of the FBI swooped down on Mar-a-Lago in August, packing plenty of heat, regulation shades, and those nifty jackets with “FBI” in super big letters just to let everyone know how important they are, they did find some secret stuff in folders marked “Classified.” They also found more that 1,600 newspaper clippings filed away there, not to mention various passports belonging to the Trump family (a flight risk, Virginia?) and who-knows-what in Melania’s lingerie drawer. 

Opinions vary about the seriousness of Trump’s tort. I have to say that I thought the whole thing was faintly absurd, not to say malodorously politicized. Experts disagree about this, but I am with those who point out that, as president, Trump could declassify anything he wanted to. He says he did. Others disagree. 

Shady Jewelry Jews in the Current TV Season By Rabbi Elliot B. Gertel

For some reason, two Law and Order franchise series and two police series, one fledgling and one long-running, are obsessing on Jews and jewelry. Their Jewish personages were all far from gems in character, if not outright murderers or enablers of murder, advancing anti-Semitic tropes that have been much in the news in recent weeks.

An episode of Law and Order-related FBI: Most Wanted (10-4-22) began with kipah (skull cap) and zizit (fringes)-donning diamond dealer Jared Horovitz (Zachary Fineman) hurriedly handing a rap artist’s blue diamond mouth-piece to an armored car driver, concerned, he says, about keeping it safe over the Sabbath. The driver is robbed and killed as he leaves the store.

This “religious” Jew is depicted as keeping no written records, upping insurance policies and avoiding taxes and mysteriously manipulating funds to afford a suburban home and city quarters to romance a stripper. The latter will describe him as “that super gross diamond dealer,” whom a Cartel sex-trafficker has “put” her “up to” (monitor?).  He says that he is “separated,” and “an open book.” 

Curiously, however, in this episode written by Wendy West, no clear connection is made between the diamond dealer and the robbery-murder. He is trotted out early, briefly (and gratuitously?) as a side show. But why? Does he fulfill some TV quota for requisite representation of seedy Orthodox Jews?

The pilot episode (11-16-22) of new CBS series, East New York, featured a developer named Adam Lustig (Scott Cohen), “the major developer in East New York.” Written by series producers William Finkelstein and Mike Flynn, the hour lost no time exposing Lustig’s false denial of knowing Nikolai Dushkin (Miro Barnyashev), a site foreman on one of his projects.  Are we supposed to wonder whether Lustig is an arrogant American-born Jew and Dushkin a murderous Russian Jewish immigrant?  In a choppy, jumbled, loosely-written plot, Dushkin tries to kill Lustig over a loan financed by blue diamond smuggling (of course) involving the exploitation of a young African mine worker. Lustig’s closest thing to a moral defense is the mantra, “Nothing my lawyer can’t handle.” 

Miss Universe Is the Weirdest Thing You’ll See All Week Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/culture/megan-fox/2023/01/14/miss-universe-is-the-weirdest-thing-youll-see-all-week-n1661884

None of us actually watch the Miss Universe pageant, do we? I don’t. But I opened Twitter this morning, and the videos that greeted me had me scratching my head wondering: what is this bizarre display of weirdness and why is it part of a beauty contest? Is it a prank? A hoax? A troll? A joke?

But it’s real!

The Miss Universe pageant–which proclaims to find the most beautiful woman every year in the entire universe, but only has contestants from planet Earth (disappointing)–has incorporated some kind of “dress like your country took a hit of acid and hired RuPaul to make your outfit” event. Maybe it’s because it’s being held in New Orleans. Is it “dress like a parade float”? I don’t know.

What even is this?