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July 2023

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A stirring speech to Congress from Israel’s president By Ethel C. Fenig

By on July 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/a_stirring_speech_to_congress_from_israels_president.html

According to the Jewish calendar, yesterday was the first day of the Jewish month of Av, beginning a period of intense mourning as Jews remember and commemorate multiple tragedies in different eras that befell the Jewish people over 2,500 years ago over a period of three weeks, including several wars with enemies culminating in the destruction of both temples on the same day, years apart, nine days later.

And so it was especially significant that yesterday, speaking eloquently to a joint session of Congress attended by most of the senators and representatives, Israeli president Yitzhak (Isaac) Herzog honored the occasion

to celebrate 75 years of Israeli independence with our greatest partner and friend, the United States of America. … The people of Israel are grateful to no end for the ancient promise fulfilled and for the friendship we have formed.

(By the way, not to be confused with Israel’s elected prime minister, Binyamin [Benjamin] Netanyahu.  Under Israel’s parliamentary system of government, the president is a non-partisan, unifying figure on issues both in his country and abroad.  Also, nine “progressive” Democrat House members, plus Sen. Bernie Sanders [I-Vt.], progressively once again closed their minds by their deliberate non-attendance.)

Thanking both the Republicans, led by speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R), and Vice President Kamala Harris (D) for U.S. support, Herzog noted the mutual cooperation and resulting mutual benefits for the two countries: “When the United States is strong, Israel is stronger.  And when Israel is strong, the United States is more secure.”  So “it is time to design the next stage of our evolving friendship and our growing partnership together.”  “Thank you, dear members of Congress, for your support of Israel throughout history, and at this critical moment in time.”

An important element of this partnership presently is combating Iran, whose potential for nuclear terror is not confined to Israel.

Let there be no doubt: Iran does not strive to attain nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Iran is building nuclear capabilities that pose a threat to the stability of the Middle East and beyond. Every country or region controlled or infiltrated by Iran has experienced utter havoc.

Allowing Iran to become a nuclear threshold state — whether by omission or by diplomatic commission — is unacceptable. 

Plus so much more.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Thank you, Florida, for Fighting Indoctrination By Teresa R. Manning

By on July 20th, 2023

Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, Vice-President of the Virginia Association of Scholars, and a former law professor at Scalia Law School, George Mason University. 

Last month, two conservative groups made court filings to oppose Florida’s anti-woke law: The Academic Freedom Alliance (“AFA”) joined the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) challenging the statute’s constitutionality.

The Florida law bans promotion of divisive concepts, based on race or sex, in the educational setting. Its language is similar to President Trump’s Executive Order 13950 which applied to the federal workforce but was withdrawn when Biden took office.

Challengers claim that the Florida law chills the free speech rights of professors and therefore violates both the First Amendment and what is called “academic freedom,” a term that is variously defined but here refers to the right of professors to teach as they see fit.

The law is actually a laudable and constitutionally sound measure to rein in the political radicalism and race-baiting that are so rampant in American schools and especially in universities. Most have heard of anti-American teaching materials such as the New York Times 1619 Project, which says that America is inherently racist, or the concepts of “white privilege,” which teach that Americans of European descent (“whites”) are “oppressors,” and even “race shaming” where teachers separate students by race, calling some groups “permanent oppressors” and others “permanently oppressed,” recently exposed and denounced by Moms in Duvall County, Florida.

The legal arguments against Florida’s law are misguided and lack merit. In fact, those committed to Martin Luther King Jr.’s principle – that we be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character – should be thanking Florida officials for this legislation, not suing them.

One irony here is that the law actually forbids attempts at thought control, notwithstanding press reports to the contrary. Obviously, fighting thought control is a good thing. The law therefore secures greater freedom of inquiry and expression, not less.

For example, the law’s first provision reads in relevant part:

Subjecting any individual …. to required activity that … compels such individual to believe any of the following [racist] concepts constitutes discrimination based on race ….

The law therefore forbids compelling individuals to believe or parrot something. What’s objectionable here?

The law then gives examples of bigoted, divisive concepts that cannot be imposed. The list includes: 1) that one race is superior to another; 2) that individuals of one race, by virtue of that race, suffer from “unconscious bias;” 3) that one’s moral character is determined by race; and 4) that individuals can be held responsible, or punished, for actions committed in the past by other members of their race.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Biden Family Caricatures By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 20th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/20/the-biden-family-caricatures/

The Biden first family seems determined to confirm every stereotype of their antisocial behavior—to the point of dysfunctionality.

During the 2020 campaign at least eight women alleged that then presidential candidate Joe Biden in the past had serially and improperly touched, kissed or grabbed them.

One, Tara Reade alleged she was sexually assaulted by Biden, who denied the charge.

Yet Biden himself finally was forced to apologize for some of his behavior. Or as he said at the time, “I get it.”

He claimed that he would no longer improperly invade the “private space” of women and had meant no harm.

But Biden’s obnoxious conduct extended well beyond the eight accusers.

Women as diverse as former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Biden’s own daughter-in-law Kathleen Buhle, have both alleged in their memoirs that Biden made them feel uncomfortable through his intrusive touching and embraces.

On several occasions, Biden developed a strange tic of becoming too physical with young girls. He habitually attempted to hug them while blowing in their hair.

His daughter Ashley wrote in her diary that she feared her past adolescent showers with her father had been inappropriate. Even as president, Biden has weirdly called out young girls in his audiences to note their attractiveness.

On one occasion, the president interrupted his speech to address a female acquaintance—enlightening the crowd that, “We go back a long way. She was 12 and I was 30, but anyway…”

As a result, Biden has likely been warned repeatedly to forgo intimate references to young women.

He has no doubt also been advised by his handlers to stop all close, supposedly innocent contact with young girls and children—if for no other reason than to prevent his political opponents from charging that Joe is “creepy,” “perverse,” or “sick.”

And yet like some addict, Biden cannot stop—regardless of the eerie image he projects around the world.

Last week, the president jumped the proverbial shark by embracing a young child in a crowd while on the tarmac of the Helsinki, Finland airport.

In his strangest act yet, Biden kept moving his mouth near the face of the young girl. He was apparently trying to nibble the youngster, almost in turkey-gobbling fashion.

She recoiled.

No matter—Biden continued at her shoulder.

Again, she flinched.

Biden then reverted to form, and sought with a second try to smell her hair and nestle closer.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

How The Washington Post Covered Jenin A ghastly competition with the NYT on who can be more unfair to Israel. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on July 20th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-the-washington-post-covered-jenin/

The Washington Post has been in a sort of ghastly competition with The New York Times as to which paper can be more unfair in its coverage of Israel. On the latest reporting on Israel’s fighting terrorists in Jenin, The Washington Post appears to be, by a hair, the winner. More on its performance can be found here: “Washington Post Erases Palestinian Terrorists & Strips the Context from Israel’s Jenin Operation,” by Simon Plosker, HonestReporting, July 7, 2023:

The Washington Post’s “What is happening in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, and why now?” only ensures readers don’t know what’s happening or why Israel launched its recent military operation in Jenin.

According to journalists Niha Masih and Miriam Berger: “The military incursion on July 3 and 4 into the Jenin camp left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead and hundreds of residents injured, displaced thousands more, and destroyed roads and infrastructure throughout the urban slum.”

Who were these 12 Palestinians? The Post fails to mention that all of them were combatants. Despite the IDF’s statement to that effect and Palestinian terror organizations claiming all of the 12, this relevant information does not appear in what is meant to be a backgrounder.

Both the IDF and the Palestinians of Hamas and the PIJ agree that all 12 Palestinians who were killed in Jenin belonged to terror groups. Why did Masih and Berger fail to mention this important fact? Surely it explains – justifies—the IDF’s successful attempt to “neutralize” all twelve. As for the number of Palestinians wounded, there were not “hundreds,” as Masih and Berger so carelessly claim, but rather, fewer than 150.

As for the “destroyed roads and infrastructure,” the article fails to note that the destruction resulted from the IDF having to use heavy bulldozers to unearth the roadside bombs and other ordinances planted by Palestinian terrorists, who deliberately turned civilian areas into military infrastructure, such as a vast weapons storage facility dug under a mosque.

The Washington Post reporters failed to explain that the Palestinian terror groups had sowed many of the roads in Jenin camp with IEDs, which made it seem that the IDF, in an act of inexplicable and wanton destruction, simply dug up the roads with bulldozers to make travel inside the Jenin camp hellish for drivers.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Fauci’s ‘Unlawful Tenure’ Becerra’s failure to reappoint Fauci in 2021 means “every action he took is potentially invalid.” by Lloyd Billingsley

By on July 20th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/faucis-unlawful-tenure/

Xavier Becerra, Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary, failed to reappoint 14 National Institutes of Health directors, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), charges a July 7 letter from the House Energy and. Commerce Committee. The failure could have “grave implications” for the actions of Dr. Fauci during his “unlawful tenure.”

According to Section 2033 of the 21st Century Cures Act, titled “Increasing Accountability at the National Institutes of Health,” Fauci’s five-year term expired on December 21, 2021. Fauci continued as NIAID boss until retirement on December 31, 2022 and, “if Dr. Fauci was never reappointed, every action he took is potentially invalid.” (emphasis added)

During that time, Fauci served as Biden’s chief medical adviser and “regularly attended high-level meetings” with policy makers “including the National Security Council and the intelligence committee.” Fauci “awarded a new grant to EcoHealth Alliance” despite unanswered concerns about possible double billing of USAID and NIH for the same research.

Fauci also failed “to produce laboratory notebooks and other records from the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” the Chinese lab Fauci funded to perform gain-of-function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. That Fauci “exercised and amassed all of this authority and influence without being duly reappointed. . .  demonstrates how ineffective HHS is a managing its component agencies and how little accountability currently exists.”

According to the committee, the failure to reappoint Fauci and the 13 others “jeopardizes the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone.” All told, the losses are far more extensive, and Dr. Fauci was kept in a position he never should have had in the first place.

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HISTORY, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Discovery of Insulin: A Story of Monstrous Egos and Toxic Rivalries Meet the feuding scientists who battled for credit over the discovery of insulin.

By on July 20th, 2023

ttps://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-discovery-of-insulin-a-story-of-monstrous-egos-and-toxic-rivalries?utm_source=pocket-newtab

When Frederick Banting’s phone rang one morning in October 1923, it was the call that every scientist must dream of receiving. On the other end of the line, an excited friend asked Banting if he had seen the morning newspapers. When Banting said no, his friend broke the news himself. Banting had just been awarded the Nobel prize for his discovery of insulin.

 Frederick Banting on the cover of TIME magazine on August 27, 1923. Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo 

Banting told his friend to “go to hell” and slammed the receiver down. Then he went out and bought the morning paper. Sure enough, there in the headlines he saw in black and white that his worst fears had come true: he had indeed been awarded the Nobel – but so too had his boss, John Macleod, professor of physiology at the University of Toronto.

This is a tale of monstrous egos, toxic career rivalries and injustices. But of course, there is another character in this drama: diabetes itself.

According to a 2021 World Health Organization report, about 9 million people with type 1 diabetes are alive today thanks to insulin. I’m one of them, and it was my own shock diagnosis with this condition, just over ten years ago, that first led me to investigate the discovery of insulin – the drug that I would be injecting several times a day for the rest of my life.

‘The Pissing Evil’

Diabetes derives its name from the ancient Greek word for “to flow” – a reference to one of its most common symptoms and for which the 17th-century English doctor Thomas Willis (1625-75) gave it the far more memorable name of “the pissing evil”. But frequent trips to the toilet were the least of a patient’s worries.

Before the discovery of insulin, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes meant certain death. Unable to metabolise sugar from carbohydrates in their diet, patients became weak and emaciated until, due to the production of toxic compounds known as ketones, they slipped into a coma and died. Even at the start of the 20th century, there was little that could be done for patients with this condition, other than to put them on a starvation diet that might at best delay the inevitable.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

English: A Discipline in Search of a Purpose Conor Ross

By on July 20th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/english-a-discipline-in-search-of-a-purpose/

Only in the world of English teaching could you leave an industry conference feeling more confused about the purpose of your discipline than when you arrived. This conference was held in February by VATE (the Victorian Association of Teaching English) bringing secondary English teachers and department leaders from across Victoria to Deakin University. The dark cloud hanging over the industry, in the form of a national teacher shortage, did not dissuade the typical good-natured banter and cheerful complaining between the mutually fatigued.

Teachers became students as the day was divided into several sessions broken by recess and lunch. Those from the independent schools made comparisons between who had done a better job of gaming their median study score the previous year through tactical enrolments and expulsions, while those from state schools looked over in envy before turning to each other with tall tales of wrangling delinquents and plucking gems from the great unwashed masses. Scattered throughout the room were a few fearful whispers of ChatGPT. As a teacher two years into his career, I was here to learn how to better teach English—but what is teaching English?

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

FDA’s Approval Of A New Alzheimer’s Drug Is A Real But Very Modest Advance Henry I. Miller

By on July 20th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/20/fdas-approval-of-a-new-alzheimers-drug-is-a-real-but-very-modest-advance/

The Food and Drug Administration on July 6 granted full approval to the first therapy for Alzheimer’s that slows the cognitive decline associated with the disease. That “first” is good news, because it validates a therapeutic approach that has long been in doubt, but more important, it benefits patients afflicted with a terrible disease. 

The approval is hardly a breakthrough, however: The benefits of the drug, Leqembi (lecanemab) are meager; it does not restore lost function; it is expensive and administered intravenously every two weeks; and there are occasionally severe side effects. Nevertheless, my neurologist friends tell me that they’re being inundated with inquiries about Leqembi from Alzheimer’s patients and their families.

Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that afflicts more than 6.5 million Americans. It slowly destroys memory and cognitive skills and eventually, the ability to perform even simple tasks. Although the specific causes of Alzheimer’s are not fully understood, it is characterized by changes in the brain, including the formation of various abnormal structures that result in loss of neurons and their connections. 

The FDA had previously granted Leqembi accelerated approval based on a “surrogate endpoint” short of demonstrated clinical benefit, based on its ability to reduce amyloid plaques, or clumps, in the brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. As a postmarketing condition of the accelerated approval, the drug manufacturer, Eisai, was required to conduct a clinical trial to confirm the anticipated clinical benefit of Leqembi.  Safety and efficacy were evaluated in a Phase 3 multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial that included 1,795 patients.

That confirmatory trial, which was reported earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that in patients in the early stages of the disease, the drug slowed cognitive and functional decline modestly – perhaps by about five months – over 18 months compared with placebo.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Still More Evidence That Bidenomics Is ‘Working’

By on July 20th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/20/still-more-evidence-that-bidenomics-is-working/

Thirteen days after President Joe Biden told the nation that “Bidenomics is working,” the Congressional Budget Office released a report showing just how well it’s working – bankrupting the country far faster than anyone expected.

The report looks at spending and revenues for the first nine months of this fiscal year, which started in October. What it reveals is remarkable, both because it shows how reckless the Biden administration has been with spending and how it’s sapped the economy of strength.

The topline number is that the federal deficit so far this fiscal year has already topped $1.4 trillion, which is $875 billion higher than the same months last year and bigger than the deficit for all of fiscal year 2022.

The CBO finds that overall spending this year is running 10% higher than last year. At the same time, revenues are down 11% compared with last year, which defies claims by the administration that the economy is strong.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Hunter Biden Whistleblowers The IRS agents are under oath in public. Will Attorney General Merrick Garland respond?

By on July 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-whistleblowers-hunter-biden-joseph-ziegler-gary-shapley-merrick-garland-david-weiss-e052e714?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

With each day it’s getting harder to believe Attorney General Merrick Garland’s insistence that there was no interference in the Hunter Biden case. A month ago President Biden’s son was given a deal on tax and gun charges that probably means no prison time. Now comes Wednesday’s testimony by two IRS whistleblowers, who say their attempt to investigate Hunter faced unprecedented meddling.

The two IRS agents are Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. Two months back, each had spoken behind closed doors to the House Ways and Means Committee, but Wednesday was their first in the spotlight and the first time that Mr. Ziegler’s name was released.

They say the Justice Department interfered in their investigation, for example, by tipping off Hunter’s legal team to a planned search and preventing questions related to Joe Biden. They also said the IRS team didn’t have access to Hunter’s laptop and or the FD-1023 document in which an FBI informant alleged that Joe and Hunter each accepted a $5 million bribe from Ukrainian energy giant Burisma.

Some Democrats, such as Maryland’s Jamie Raskin, tried to dismiss this all as normal disagreement between investigators and prosecutors. But Mr. Shapley testified that Justice’s “handling of the Hunter Biden tax investigation was very different from any other case in my 14 years at the IRS.”

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