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January 2023

A Disaster For Every Month: The Worst Scandals, Abuses, And Embarrassments Of Joe Biden’s Second Year In Office By: Elle Purnell

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/20/a-disaster-for-every-month-the-worst-scandals-abuses-and-embarrassments-of-joe-bidens-second-year-in-office/

At the end of last year’s roundup, I expressed hope that 2022 would see fewer Biden disasters. Unfortunately for the country, year No. 2 was just as grim.

he first year of Joe Biden’s presidency prolifically delivered examples of corruption and incompetence, and his second year in office — which drew to a close on Thursday — has been no different.

Last year, The Federalist collected “A Scandal For Every Month: The Biggest Botches, Failures, And Mess-Ups Of Joe Biden’s First 12 Months In Office.” At the end of that piece, I expressed hope that 2022 would see fewer disasters flow from the White House. Unfortunately for the country, the roundup from year No. 2 is just as grim.

January: Biden Compared Filibuster Defenders to Historical Racists

Last year’s list concluded with a bonus item for January 2022: Biden comparing his agenda’s critics — which include Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Confederate leader Jefferson Davis.

In a Jan. 11 speech urging the U.S. Senate to ditch filibuster rules in order to pass his radical and unconstitutional federalization of election laws, Biden asked, “Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

February: Incompetent Response to Russia-Ukraine War

Before, during, and since Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in February, the Biden administration’s response has been marked by incompetence. Biden waived sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline before the war in 2021, crippled American energy production, and turned to Russian ally Venezuela for oil after the conflict erupted. In January 2022, right before Russia’s invasion, Biden signaled a green light to Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to a question about potential plans to impose sanctions on Russia with the comments, “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion [into Ukraine],” and “My guess is [Putin] will move in. He has to do something.”

“Are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?” a reporter asked. Biden’s answer: “That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?”

A month into the Russia-Ukraine war, Biden recklessly called for regime change in Russia, before reversing course and insisting he did no such thing. By November 2022, the United States had shipped out a whopping $68 billion in aid to Ukraine, with Biden requesting another $37.7 billion to put total aid in the 12-figure range.

March: Hunter Biden Corruption Scandal Resurfaces as NYT Admits Laptop’s Legitimacy

Kenneth Roth, Crybaby of the Western World The anti-Semite hiding behind being a Jew has had his way long enough. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kenneth-roth-crybaby-of-the-western-world/

Kenneth Roth retired last year as the head of Human Rights Watch, where he had been paid the colossal sum of $600,000 a year. He was looking forward to being a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, figuring that someone of such earth-shaking eminence in the NGO world would have no trouble getting a fellowship. By the waters of the Charles he would sit down and write, forsooth, a book about his exploits as a defender of human rights. He had already been awarded a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania for the coming year, but clearly, he preferred the cachet of the Kennedy School, and Penn would have to wait. Then something unexpected happened. His application for a fellowship was turned down by the Kennedy School. Roth was furious. How dare any institution turn down Kenneth Roth, one of the world’s foremost defenders of human rights, for anything? He wrote a self-pitying piece in The Guardian, claiming that a cabal of supporters of Israel, “rich donors” to the Kennedy School, must have pressured the school’s Dean, Douglas Elmendorf, to turn down his application because of what Roth demurely, and inaccurately, calls his “criticism of Israel.” He had not the slightest proof of this, but that has never stopped Kenneth Roth. He is still, along with his claque of admirers, hoping to pressure Dean Elmendorf into reconsidering. I don’t think it will work.

Jonathan Tobin has a complete account of the contretemps here: “Harvard Didn’t Cancel Kenneth Roth; it Decided Not to Honor an Antisemite,” by Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS.org, January 13, 2023:

Cancel culture in academia is a serious problem. There is no sector of American society in which dissent is so routinely crushed, or where free speech is most endangered, as the country’s leading institutions of higher learning. So, the story that someone was supposedly denied a fellowship at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government because of his political beliefs seems to fit into a familiar pattern of shunning and silencing those who don’t adhere to the orthodoxies worshipped by the elites.

Paul Johnson’s America “No other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.” by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paul-johnsons-america/

“What is America? It is not a race but a cohesion of all the races of the world. It will soon be a nation of 300 million, 10 per cent of whom were not even born there. Its creation from Europe, Africa and Asia is a continuing process, as countless immigrants arrive each year and are quietly absorbed and prosper. Moreover, these citizens, whose parents, grandparents or ancestors came from all over the world, are given the chance to participate in democracy at all levels, which exists nowhere else on earth. More than 600,000 offices in the US are elected. The entire public ethos of America is fashioned to finding out what the voters want and constructing policy on their wishes. America is successful precisely because it is a working multiracial democracy. To be anti-American, therefore, is to be anti-humanity. For no other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.”

That is from “To hate America is to hate humanity,” an April 6, 2002 Spectator piece by historian Paul Johnson, who recently passed away at the age of 94. Five years earlier, Johnson published A History of the American People, a magisterial account that speaks to conditions at the time of the great author’s passing.

It’s hard to find any author, left or right, who devotes more attention to the issue of slavery, at the time of the American founding and leading up to the Civil War. In an 1855 election in Kansas, Johnson writes:

“Missourians crossed the border in thousands and swamped the polls. At all events the slavers swept the polls, expelled from the legislature the few anti-slavers who were elected, adopted a drastic slave-code, and made it a capital offense to help a slave escape or aid a fugitive. They even made orally questioning the legality of slavery a felony.” (emphasis added)

The demand for thought control and censorship derives from the people who kept human beings in subjugation and opposed all efforts to free them. This early version of the totalitarian mentality finds a counterpart in America under the Biden Junta.

All-Time Record Number of Illegal Alien Border Crossings in December By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2023/01/22/all-time-record-number-of-illegal-alien-border-crossings-in-december-n1663879

The Border Patrol stopped 251,487 illegal aliens trying to cross the border in December — an all-time record number for any month since records have been kept and 40% above the 179,253 illegals captured at the border in December 2021.

This is the tenth month in a row that has seen more than 200,000 people trying to cross the border.

The “gotaways” — illegal border crossers who evaded efforts to capture them — have also been increasing as the border patrol spends more and more time processing asylum seekers. This means that not only do illegals get away, but so do drug runners who are bringing record amounts of fentanyl and cocaine into the country.

Cubans and Nicaraguans made up the lion’s share of illegals trying to cross.

It Looks Like Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal Is About To Explode By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/01/22/it-looks-like-bidens-classified-documents-scandal-is-about-to-explode-n1663975

Joe Biden takes classified documents very seriously, so he says, but even after the search for classified documents has allegedly ended a couple of times now, it’s not yet over.

In the wake of more documents being discovered at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., the Department of Justice is now considering expanding its search for classified documents Biden may have absconded with, according to a report from CBS News.

“Justice Department officials are also considering the possibility of conducting other consensual searches at locations linked to Mr. Biden, said the source familiar with the investigation,” the report says.

So far, somewhere between 25 and 30 classified documents, some of which are marked top secret, have been discovered in Biden’s possession—either at his home in Wilmington or at his private office at the Penn Biden Center.

The decision to search more places for documents is a troubling development for Joe Biden and the White House team, who have clearly been caught off-guard by a scandal they had hoped to keep under wraps before it was leaked to the media a couple of weeks ago.

Joe Biden’s ‘Souvenirs’

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/23/joe-bidens-souvenirs/

The Clinton’s were accused of stealing silverware on their way out, but that’s minor league compared to what Joe Biden might have done.

President Joe Biden of course adopted a sanctimonious stance when it was reported that classified documents were found at Donald Trump’s Florida estate. “Totally irresponsible,” said the man who has been keeping classified documents going back to his years in the Senate.

As infuriating as his comment was, Biden might be guilty of more than hypocrisy.

Biden has left a growing trail of classified documents behind him, including papers from his Senate “service” as well as his terms as vice president. They’ve been turned up at Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington – the “think tank” where Biden kept an office and which helped the University of Pennsylvania rake in ​​$30 million from Chinese interests – and the president’s Delaware residence. The more Justice Department agents look, the more they find. Despite his Gertrude Stein protest, there is a there there.

So, is Biden a kleptomaniac (the American people deserve to know if their president is a crook)? Were the documents misplaced by careless staffers? If so, why didn’t Biden choose more trustworthy aides, administration hands who knew which documents were hot and needed to be stored in a secure space?

Or, is it possible that Biden been covering the tracks of his decades of corruption?

Genocide in Nigeria, Armenia and Syria: The Persecution of Christians, December 2022 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19338/genocide-nigeria-armenia-syria

“These military attacks by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime are part of a wider Turkish policy of annihilation of the Kurdish and Assyrian [Christian] people in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including bombing, shelling, abduction, torture, and extrajudicial killings. The attacks are part of Turkey’s genocidal policies towards Kurds, Christians, and Ezidis.” — Genocide Watch, December 7, 2022, Turkey.

“As scholars who study the process of genocide, we believe that the actions of the Azerbaijani government constitute a risk of genocide for the Armenians of the region. We urge international agencies and governments to ensure the free access of people and goods to Nagorno-Karabakh.” — genocideprevention.am, December 13, 2022, Azerbaijan.

“Let it be put on record that in the hundreds of attacks [on Christians] that have…killed thousands since 2014, we have not seen anyone arrested and brought to book over these heinous crimes against humanity. Instead, it is southern Kaduna traditional leaders, clergy and human right activists that do get arrested and put in prison over trumped-up allegations of ‘incitement.'” — Luka Biniyat, spokesman for the Southern Kaduna People’s Union, Morning Star News, December 23, 2022, Nigeria.

On Dec. 17, a high-level Muslim official promulgated a new law saying that Christians could not celebrate Christmas without first obtaining a governmental permit. — Morning Star News, December 23, 2022, Indonesia.

Until 2017, when a new government came to power, churches had few problems. Since then, the authorities have capriciously shut down 20 churches, so that only 11 now remain open in the entire nation, with ongoing threats that they too might be shut down. — mnonline.org, December 1, 2022, Algeria.

“The persecution of Egypt’s Christian Copts is the longest ongoing persecution in the history of mankind, from 642, to today, 2022. Through all this time, maybe 70 years under British occupation were peaceful and good—the ‘golden era’ for Copts in all this duration…. I know of no group that has been persecuted for nearly 1400 years—with still no light at the end of the tunnel.” — Magdi Khalil, author who specializes in the situation of minorities in the Middle East, copticsolidarity.org, December 12, 2022, Egypt.

“After converting to Christianity… five days later, I started receiving threatening messages on my phone of risking being killed for leaving Islam. Please pray for us, for God to heal us quickly to enable us look for where to go.” — Abdu Muyinga, Morning Star News, December 18, 2022, Uganda.

The following are among the murders and abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of December 2022:

A Nation of Victims is Doomed to Fail Daniel Greenfield

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/?utm_source=

America has become a nation of ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’. Everyone is getting over a ‘trauma’ or ‘processing’. They demand special privileges because of the suffering of their ancestors. They trot out studies which prove that they are somehow disadvantaged. They gorge on self-help books and deploy therapy terminology to accuse everyone else of mistreating them.

Our society has turned into a cross between a Marxist academic conference and therapy session where Marxist terminology like “systemic racism” and therapy talk like “gaslighting narcissist” form key parts of the grammar of perpetual victimhood.

Politics has been reduced to victimhood advocacy and we are worse off for it.

Victims are not good people. Postmodern influencer culture conflates ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’, but they are two very different things. Survivors are people who pick themselves up and go on. Victims give up and spend the rest of their lives doing nothing except blaming everyone else.

After the slaves were freed, some made long journeys to major cities, others built families and worked hard to provide for them. They perserved despite lynchings and racism. Over 150 years later, some of their descendants claim that nothing can be expected from them because they’re suffering from Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome even though the only place they’ve seen slavery is on television. That’s the difference between survivors and victims.

After the Holocaust, Jewish people who had seen their entire families killed in front of them remarried, had children and started their lives again. Often they didn’t even talk about what they had experienced until decades had passed. Others helped build a nation out of the desert sands. Now some of their great-grandchildren claim they’re so fragile they need safe spaces.

The same is true of all Americans. We are all the descendants of survivors. Our grandparents and great-grandparents fought in wars, persisted through economic turmoil and didn’t give up. Whatever happened to them, they didn’t see themselves as the victims. They were strong, not because they postured on social media, but because they got up whenever they were knocked down. They had their grievances and resentments, but they didn’t build their lives around them.

Ukraine: Waiting for the Stinger Moment by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19337/ukraine-waiting-for-the-stinger-moment

[W]hen Putin’s invasion of Ukraine came, most analysts still saw war as a short hymn to victory not a long symphony of death in four movements.

Heading for its second year, the Ukraine war seems set to become a long symphony of death rather than short hymn to victory.

No war is won or lost until one side admits defeat or one side totally destroys the other side. Hitler could not admit defeat, a possibility that was urged on him even until 1944, because that would have meant the end of his Reich.

I think that the Biden administration as its principal European allies, Germany and France, lack the vision, or the courage, to provide Ukraine with the hardware needed to threaten Russia’s sense of immunity. Writing fat checks, offering a limited range of recycled weapons, and diplomatic gesticulations such as setting up a tribunal against Putin and his associates, won’t shorten this symphony of death.

The war in Afghanistan was shortened when President Ronald Reagan’s administration supplied the anti-Soviet insurgency with Stinger missiles that ended the Red Army’s control of the skies with helicopter gunships and troop carriers.

The Stinger moment that could shorten this war has not yet arrived.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, many analysts expected a quick catharsis in line with the prevailing view of war as a short hymn to military power.

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

 www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

 

Simply put-there is no other country like Israel. Libeled, defamed and scorned by national and international media and academics who use Israel as a fig leaf to hide their blatant antisemitism, Israel thrives as a beacon of democracy with outsize contributions to the health and welfare of billions of citizens on every continent of the globe.  Michel Ordman summarizes it best. rsk

Spectacular!  There is no other word to describe some of the latest incredible Israeli innovations in this week’s newsletter.

Four exciting cancer treatment developments; a life-changing portable dialysis machine; a wearable to relieve chronic pain; a device to take your vital signs from 5 feet away; and another to diagnose ADHD from eye movements.

How else would you describe the appointment of an Israeli Arab as Israel’s youngest Professor; or as Israel’s ambassador to Muslim Azerbaijan? Or Israel hosting a cyber conference at the United Nations?

Then we have Israeli technology for machines to recognize smells; and to see in the dark, or to drive autonomously; or clean windows on skyscrapers. And don’t miss four exciting Israeli agricultural developments to help feed a hungry world. There has been a quantum leap in Israeli computer technology; and a massive increase in the number of new Israeli startups.  Michael Ordman

 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Preventing cancer from spreading. (TY Ron M) Researchers from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have developed a peptide (small protein) that prevents the triggering of metastasis – secondary cancer. In the laboratory, it had 90% success on solid cancers and could be used in combination with other therapies.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366206   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388-022-02481-w
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-say-substance-prevents-cancers-spread-in-mice-with-90-success/  
 
Heat treatment for terminal cancer patients. (TY WIN & I24 News) Very positive video featuring the groundbreaking cancer treatment of Israel’s New Phase (see here previously). 12 patients at Israel’s Beilinson (Rabin) Medical Center in Petah Tikva are undergoing Phase 1 human safety and tolerance trials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKz1_u4yreU
 
Promising cancer treatments. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Purple Biotech has two promising treatments for solid tumors in clinical (human) trials. CM24 has completed Phase 1 and is in Phase 2 for Pancreatic cancer. NT219 is in Phase 1/2 in the USA. Purple is also partnering Mor, the technology transfer subsidiary of Israel’s Clalit.
https://purple-biotech.com/pipeline/cm24/  https://purple-biotech.com/pipeline/nt219/
 
Electrical fields extend cancer patients’ survival. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Novocure (see here previously) announced that using its TTFields (Tumor Treating electrical Fields) technology in combination with other therapies, improved overall patient survival compared to standard therapies alone. 
https://www.novocure.com/novocure-announces-pivotal-lunar-study-in-non-small-cell-lung-cancer-met-primary-overall-survival-endpoint/
 
US approval for portable dialysis. (TY Atid-EDI) Israelis liberDI has received clearance from the US FDA for its Digital Dialysis Clinic. The 3kg device allows patients to perform a 90 min dialysis at home or at work, by themselves, monitored by their physician using the advanced telemedicine capabilities of the system.
https://www.liberdi.com/liberdi-receives-fda-regulatory-clearance/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyJKNNP-h8g (5 years ago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWYgBp39hM (4 years ago)
 
Device to treat chronic pain. A detailed article about Israel’s Healables (see here previously). The wearable AI device is undergoing clinical trials at Israel’s Wolfson Medical Center. Interesting background on the CEO of Healables – a Lubavitcher Chasid whose motivation was his own brain tumor and the pain after its removal.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/beating-chronic-pain-with-ai-powered-vibrating-sleeves/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQDaXys3Y84
 
Contactless vital signs monitor. Two articles about the biosensors of Israel’s Neteera (see here previously). They uniquely use safe, very high-frequency radar to penetrate clothing but not skin, programmed specially to monitor human vital signs. No cameras, no wearables, accurate up to 5 feet away. US FDA approved in 2022.
https://www.israel21c.org/vital-sign-monitors-that-dont-touch-your-body/
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-722105
 
Nutrition not steroids. (TY TPS) A 15-year study by researchers at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center showed that children suffering from Crohn’s disease and treated with nutrition had a lower chance of needing surgery in the first two years of the disease than those treated with steroids. There were many other benefits.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-study-finds-nutrition-beats-steroids-for-treating-this-disease/
 
Genetic cause of Williams Syndrome. Tel Aviv and Hebrew University researchers have discovered an abnormal genetic process responsible for the brain disorder known as Williams Syndrome. A molecule known as a ‘methyl group’ disrupts healthy gene production. The findings could lead to future treatments.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/researchers-discover-cause-of-rare-brain-disorder/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01921-z
 
Diagnosing ADHD with the eyes. Back in 2014 (see here), Tel Aviv University, Sheba Medical Center and Haifa University scientists diagnosed ADHD using the Test of Variables of Attention – tracking a patient’s involuntary eye movements. Now Israeli startup MindTension is using the Moro reflex test in the same way.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/simple-six-minute-blink-test-that-diagnoses-adhd/
https://www.mindtension.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4QuFIKaoBs
 
Mental health therapy center. The Jerusalem Therapy Center for mental health has been inaugurated. The JTC will benefit patients suffering from a variety of mental health issues such as depression, trauma, and certain addictions. It will be staffed by senior clinicians, plus post graduate Yeshiva University therapists.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366176
 
UK, Irish & French Olim can donate blood. Israel’s ban on immigrants from the UK, Ireland and France donating blood has been lifted after 24 years.  The epidemic of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) in cattle in those countries raised the possibility of causing variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365939
 
EMT TV. Israeli emergency volunteer organization United Hatzalah has begun a new video series UHTV. In its inaugural video, United Hatzalah volunteer EMT and Ambassador Rachel Holzer spoke to students at Israel’s Reichman University to see what the next generation knows about CPR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc1EzRAOqmU