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October 2023

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Michael Oren: A War Against the Jews Hatred of Israel cannot be distinguished from hatred of the Jewish people. Incontestably now, anti-Zionism is antisemitism. By Michael Oren

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/this-isnt-a-war-against-israel?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews. When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say, ‘O Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ” —The Hamas Charter

“The conventional war of conquest was to be waged parallel to, and was also to camouflage, the ideological war against the Jews.” —Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–1945

It wasn’t the rallies with “Keep the World Clean” posters and chants of “gas the Jews.” Nor was it the glorification of Hamas paragliders by the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter or, in New York and London, the tearing down of posters with the faces of Israeli children held hostage by Hamas. Not even the off-the-charts uptick in antisemitic incidents in Germany (240 percent), the United States (nearly 400 percent), and London (1,353 percent) convinced me.

It was, rather, one of those realizations that so many generations of Jews before me have experienced. A realization that they, like me, surely tried to push out of their minds until the reality became unmistakeable. 

This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews. 

The insight began with the international media’s coverage of the conflict. Again, it wasn’t the press’s insistence on calling mass murderers “militants” or citing Hamas and its “Health Ministry” as a reliable source. For close to fifty years—as a student activist, a diplomat, a soldier, a government and military spokesman, and above all, as a historian—I’ve grappled with the media’s bias against Israel. I’ve long known that the terrorists are “militants” solely because their victims are Jews, and only in a conflict with Israel are terrorists considered credible. 

Instead, it was the media’s predictable switch from an Israel-empathetic to an Israel-demonizing narrative as the image of Palestinian suffering supplanted that of Israelis beheaded, dismembered, and burnt. It was the gnawing awareness that dead Jews buy us only so much sympathy. 

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ELECTIONS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Democrats are pushing work authorization for migrants — so they can vote By Betsy McCaughey

By on October 27th, 2023

https://nypost.com/2023/10/24/opinion/democrats-are-pushing-work-authorization-for-migrants-so-they-can-vote/

If you think offering migrants luxury hotel rooms, free meals, laundry service, transportation, health care and immigration lawyers is excessive, just wait until they can vote.

Democrats are pushing to give noncitizens the franchise in local elections in New York City, Boston and other municipalities, as well as statewide in Connecticut.

The number of migrants pouring across the southern border has hit a record high, according to data released Saturday.

Illegal crossings soared 21% over the previous month.

On a yearly basis, the figure reached 2.48 million.

Democrats may feign shock and distress. 

Don’t be fooled. 

Dems see these newcomers as their guarantee of a permanent voting majority in local elections. 

Not years from now, after the newcomers become citizens.

Right now.

Mayor Eric Adams’ rhetoric is typical. 

He warns that the overwhelming number of migrants arriving — 16,000 to 17,000 a month — will “destroy the city,” but he’s also leading the legal effort to turn migrants into voters.

Adams and other New York Democrats pushed President Joe Biden to expedite work authorizations for them.

They said it’s about making migrants self-sufficient. Maybe, but Dems have another powerful motive.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Has EV Boom Jumped The Shark?

By on October 27th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/27/has-ev-boom-jumped-the-shark/

Many people have climbed aboard the electric-vehicle bandwagon, lured by promises of pristine air and cheap, easy-to-use electricity that make EVs seem inevitable. But now, after years of spending billions on subsidies and shaming people into buying into our inevitable all-electric future, some are slamming on the brakes — surprisingly, including many of the biggest companies in the industry.

The global companies, recipients of massive subsidies to support fossil-fuel abolition, are backing away from their support.

General Motors, faced with a strike, just abandoned its EV strategy,  while the AutoBlog points out that Mercedes “is finding that customers aren’t as excited about new EVs as it is.”

Elon Musk’s Tesla lost an estimated $28 billion in value after reporting what were called “disastrous third-quarter earnings.” Ford, faced with dramatically slowing sales, just announced it will delay $12 billion in EV investments.

With companies providing far more electric vehicles than consumers want, Toyota’s Chairman Akio Toyoda this week claimed “people are finally seeing (the) reality” of EVs.

There are many reasons for this sudden slump. But a few stick out.

For one, even after all the subsidies, EVs are still pricey, especially at current interest rates, which have nearly doubled from an average of 3.9% at the end of 2021 to around 7.4% today.

Meanwhile, anywhere from a quarter to a third of EV charging stations is out or disabled at any given time. There are an estimated 150,000 gas stations in the U.S., but just 10,000 fast-charging outlets. And even if you find a working charger, it’s expensive: Roadside chargers can be five to 10 times more costly than home chargers.

What happens if you’re in the middle of nowhere and you can’t find a working charger? Sorry, your “car” is no longer a car. It’s now dead metal.

A just-released report from the Texas Public Policy Foundation finds that Americans don’t fully understand the real costs of EVs due to the government’s massive involvement in the market. The numbers are shocking: “The average model year 2021 EV would cost $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without $22 billion in government favors given to EV manufacturers and owners,” the report notes.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When the Justice Department Spied on Congress How officials snooped on staffers investigating Justice’s press leaks and investigations.

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/department-of-justice-congress-spying-jason-foster-empower-oversight-f2d6235e?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Justice Department’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation is the fiasco that keeps on giving, and look no further than this week’s revelations of abuse of power. The latest news is that Justice snooped on the Congressional investigators who dared to conduct oversight of its snooping on the 2016 Trump campaign.

Numerous current and former congressional staffers have learned that Justice subpoenaed their personal phone and email records in 2017, likely under the pretext of a leak investigation. The targets included Republican and Democratic staffers in the Senate and House.

***

They join staffers and Members of the House Intelligence Committee, who over the past two years said they were notified by Google or

Apple

that Justice seized their data. By our count, executive-branch prosecutors have now been caught fishing through the records of more than a dozen employees of the congressional branch. DOJ’s inspector general is probing the matter.

Last week Google notified Jason Foster, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s former chief investigative counsel on the Judiciary Committee, that Justice sought and received Mr. Foster’s personal records. In a subsequent Freedom of Information Act request to Justice, Mr. Foster’s nonprofit, Empower Oversight, lays out the scope of Justice’s search.

The FOIA letter to Justice says Google received a federal subpoena on Sept. 12, 2017, for records related to a Foster family telephone number, as well as other accounts that are redacted but that Empower Oversight believes belonged to other staffers.

“For each of the listed telephone and email accounts, the subpoena compelled Google to release customer or subscriber information, as well as subscribers’ names, addresses, local and long distance telephone connection records, text message logs, records of session times and durations, length of service and types of service utilized for the period from December 1, 2016 to May 1, 2017,” says the letter. DOJ wanted to know Mr. Foster’s sources and methods.

Recall what was going on at that time. The Washington Post in 2017 reported on a wiretapped phone call between incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak—an egregious leak of classified information. The Senate Judiciary Committee sought answers from DOJ about the Flynn probe and the leak.

DOJ provided few answers to Congress, though in an effort to justify its snooping it revealed that it also had a surveillance warrant against former Trump aide Carter Page. Details of that classified Page warrant soon leaked to the press, via stories that sought to bolster the FBI’s narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.

At the time DOJ was essentially run by career officials, after then Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from Trump-Russia questions, while former FBI Director James Comey had been fired that May.

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