Displaying posts published in

April 2024

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Here’s Why Nobody Believes Biden On The Economy Anymore

By on April 9th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/09/heres-why-nobody-believes-biden-on-the-economy-anymore/

Friday’s jobs report has everyone excited. Everyone, that is, who is pulling for Joe Biden to win reelection. Outside that blinkered lot, the pain of Bidenomics is still very real.

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback,” he said. “Three years ago, I inherited an economy on the brink” – a lie we’ve repeatedly exposed – “With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office” – another lie; as we noted last week, the economy has created only 5 million net new jobs under Biden, which is less than the number of jobs created during President Donald Trump’s first three years in office.

Biden goes on: “That’s 15 million more people who have the dignity and respect that comes with a paycheck.”

But wait. Even if that 15 million number was legitimate, does it mean that 15 million people got jobs?

Turns out, it doesn’t not by a long shot.

In a series of posts on X, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni explains what these numbers really mean. The picture is far from rosy.

Antoni dug into the jobs data and discovered that all the new jobs created in March were part-time. The number of full-time jobs actually declined a little. This trend has been going on for a while, which is why the average number of hours worked each week has been trending down for three years.

Why the surge in part-time employment?

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

CHAPTER 13: Fomenting Race Wars Begins in Kindergarten Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is [forthcoming release May 2024] by Linda Goudsmit

By on April 9th, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27686/chapter-13-fomenting-race-wars-begins-in

goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

National sovereignty is to a country what individual sovereignty is to a human being. In The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage,[i] I describe the globalist strategy of using reformulated Marxism in American schools in order to replace American individualism with collectivism. The goal is to persuade the individual to stop being an individual:

The Left had a new marketing, lobbying, and advertising strategy that targeted first American universities and then K–12. American education was chosen as the vulnerable soft target for revolution—no bullets required. The long-term strategy was that two generations of leftist educational indoctrination would transform America from a capitalist constitutional republic into the socialist state required for internationalized one-world government.

The radical leftists on campus in the ’60s did not go quietly into the night after Woodstock. They graduated and became the teachers, professors, textbook writers, psychologists, sociologists, politicians, doctors, lawyers, and decision makers in charge of public education, including curriculum content, that reflected their anti-American bias and globalist views. Gradually the individualism and critical-thinking skills that had created the vibrant, independent, upwardly mobile middle class and supported the American dream were deliberately dumbed down to encourage dependence, collectivism, groupthink, and a victim mentality.

In a sweeping effort that eventually transformed public education, collectivism was repackaged, marketed, lobbied, advertised, and sold to an unsuspecting American public. The former pro-American curricula that proudly promoted individualism, meritocracy, capitalism, and the middle class was replaced. The revised curricula teach American students to be anti-American, self-loathing, dependent, fragile collectivists, unapologetically preaching global citizenship in a New World Order. (The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage, pp. 123–124)

Collectivism is the core of John Dewey’s infamous progressive education, discussed in Chapter 8. Progressivist instructional methods focus on group work and group projects, and promote the experience-centered focus of the progressive philosophy. Progressivism defines itself as a contrast to Perennialism. Perennialism,[ii] the foundation of American education established in Colonial America, emphasizes objective reality, universal truths, and an educational curriculum that cultivates students’ individual intellectual skills with the “three R’s”—reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

The only deal on Hamas’s table is defeat of the Jewish state By Ruthie Blum

By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/the-only-deal-on-hamass-table-is-defeat-of-the-jewish-state/

In a monologue on Friday during Israeli Channel 12’s current-affairs program “Ofira and Levinson,” the mother of one of the remaining 133 hostages in Gaza called on Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you are running out of time,” said Einav Zangauker, whose 24-year-old son was abducted on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists. “You’re not returning Matan; you’re not accepting the hostage-release deal that’s on the table. Go home.”

Zangauker has been expressing this sentiment with increasing frequency. And it’s hard not to shudder sympathetically at what she and the rest of the devastated families have been going through for the past six months.

But where do they get the idea that there’s a “deal on the table” being prevented by Netanyahu? And what do they imagine would happen if he were to “step aside”?

Do they actually believe that a different leader or government in Jerusalem would spur Hamas to soften its stance? Can’t they see that every crack in Israel’s societal armor serves to stiffen the terrorists’ intransigence?

A review of recent history is in order here.

Israel, headed by Netanyahu, agreed in November to a pause in the war and the release from Israeli jails of three Palestinian terrorists per hostage held in Gaza. The exchange, brokered by Qatar and Egypt, took place over the course of a week. It would have continued if Hamas hadn’t violated the deal by refusing to provide a list of the remaining women and children in captivity and blitzing Israel with renewed rocket barrages.

In response, the Israel Defense Forces resumed fighting on Dec. 1. Less than three weeks later, Netanyahu offered another weeklong pause in the fighting and additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, in exchange for 40 hostages, including all the women, children and elderly men in urgent need of medical treatment.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Should Compete in Women’s Sports? Charles Lipson

By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/08/who_should_compete_in_womens_sports_150762.html

“What is a woman?” “Can a man get pregnant?” Questions like those are frequently raised at Senate hearings for progressive nominees to the federal bench or Cabinet positions. Republicans pose them for a reason. They know the witnesses will fumble the answers.

Some try to wriggle out with circumlocutions, offering only convoluted mumbling. That works brilliantly for French academic articles but not so well for U.S. Senate hearings. Other witnesses, mostly judicial nominees, claim they cannot answer because the questions might come before them in future cases. They breathe a sigh of relief since their real motto is “Loose lips sink ships.”

Often, Republicans discover the witnesses have already proclaimed their views in opinion pieces, social media posts, or academic articles when they were appealing to like-minded audiences on the left. When the audience is more skeptical, however, they are less eager to repeat those answers or to defend them.

Progressive witnesses may not have answers, but ordinary voters certainly do. They tell pollsters that men cannot get pregnant. Shocking, I know. They think it is ludicrous to place tampons in men’s bathrooms, which some universities and elite high schools do now.

The question of “who is a woman?” is more vexed. The reason is that common sense and cultural tradition point in one direction (“he was born a male and that’s what he is”) but those are opposed by another tradition: our respect for human autonomy. The Western values of human autonomy and deference for individual choices mean we normally acknowledge an adult’s self-identification. (Here is a hard question, though. If my autonomy is to be respected on issues of self-identification, why can’t I simply identify myself as an African American or Native American, even if there is no DNA evidence of that identity? Why shouldn’t that be my choice, just like gender? Yet self-identification as a racial minority without that bloodline is fiercely condemned as a malicious fraud. Just ask Elizabeth Warren, Rachel Dolezal, or Ward Churchill.)

These issues are far from settled politically. If an adult male identifies as a woman, many people say, “So be it. Live and let live.” Others are more dubious. Still others reject it outright.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times vs. RealClearPolitics THE 1735 PROJECT, PART 5 Carl Cannon

By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/04/the_new_york_times_vs_realclearpolitics_150733.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Ten days after the 2020 election, Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of RealClearPolitics, received an email from a New York Times reporter who covers the media. The reporter, Jeremy W. Peters, advised Bevan that his newspaper was working on a story about RCP and asked for responses to various questions and accusations. Four days later, Peters’ critique was published under the headline “A Popular Political Site Made a Sharp Right Turn. What Steered It.”

The sleight-of-hand was right there in the headline. The New York Times simply declared that RCP “made a sharp right turn,” and suggested it will document how this happened.

The Times’ story asserted that during the period of counting absentee and late-arriving mail-in ballots, RCP took three days longer than other news organizations to call Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. It noted disapprovingly that we aggregated stories from other news outlets quoting Trump supporters who questioned the election results. It suggested that the RCP Poll Averages were manipulated to be favorable to Donald Trump. Peters focused on RCP staff layoffs in September 2017, and claimed we’d hired partisan Republicans to replace them. He reported that the RealClear Foundation, a nonprofit that supports our journalism, receives contributions from conservative donors. He also called into question a RealClear Investigations exposé naming the whistleblower whose complaints led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Jeremy Peters declined to be interviewed for this rebuttal, though he was courteous about it. Nor did he reach out to me in 2020, beyond contacting Tom Bevan. It didn’t hurt my pride, but I’m the most experienced newsman at RCP; I oversee our original content, I direct our reporters, and I have written more words for RealClear than anyone else.

Nor was there any bad blood between me and the “paper of record.” In the 1980s, the Times credited my groundbreaking coverage of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. In the 1990s, Howell Raines tried to hire me. Three books I’ve co-authored have been positively reviewed by the Times. When I covered the White House for National Journal, the Times’ book editor asked me to review a book about Dick Cheney. I have had friends at that newspaper. Although I’m not famous, I’m not unknown in Washington journalism. What I’m best known for is being relentlessly nonpartisan. If someone is writing about bias at my organization, calling me would have been the obvious place to start.

I shouldn’t have waited three years to respond to the Times but will do so now.

‘Rightward Turn’ and Post-Election Coverage

The thrust of the Nov. 17, 2020, Times article was that RCP had “taken a rightward, aggressively pro-Trump turn over the last four years.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is The Great Illusion In Ruins? The long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on April 8th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/08/is-the-great-illusion-in-ruins/

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.

But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?

The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.

But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign—in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.

Who was running things?

The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Silky Hand of Qatar Targets Jordan by Bassam Tawil

By on April 8th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20551/jordan-hamas-muslim-brotherhood

The Jordanian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, of seeking to destabilize security inside the kingdom.

Behind both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, of course, is the terrorist-sponsoring emirate, Qatar, and its propagandizing television bullhorn, Al-Jazeera.

Jordan’s leaders are doing exactly what many other Arab regimes and heads of state have long been doing: radicalizing their people and inciting them to violence against Israel as a means of distracting them from problems at home.

The Arab leaders want their people to be busy hating Israel. Otherwise, the people might demand democracy, transparency and accountability from the corrupt Arab rulers.

Their Jordanian majesties apparently seem to have forgotten that if Israel were not protecting them, their own Palestinian population would have overthrown them or assassinated them long ago, as they did to the king’s grandfather, King Abdullah I.

[Queen Rania] has also apparently forgotten is that it is Hamas that is using its own citizens as human shields and stealing and hoarding the humanitarian aid in the hope that the blame will be assigned to Israel – as it all too often unfortunately is.

“It is no longer a secret that there are two parties that have interests in creating tension in the region and moving to a new front: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. They share the same agenda: destabilizing the Arab states. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, we have seen that the Hamas leadership is trying to mobilize the Jordanian street and is trying to drag the Jordanians into the war by any means.” — Munif Al-Harbi, Saudi political analyst, aawsat.com, April 1, 2024.

If Jordan’s King Abdullah and his wife want to avoid chaos in their kingdom, and a rather unpleasant outcome for themselves, they would do well to stop playing into the hands of the radical Islamists by inciting the Jordanian people to violence against Israel.

However, behind the incitement to violence that is empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas — and destabilizing the area — lies the silky hand of Qatar.

Jordan’s leaders are doing exactly what many other Arab regimes and heads of state have long been doing: radicalizing their people and inciting them to violence against Israel as a means of distracting them from problems at home.

The Jordanian authorities have accused the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot, Hamas, of seeking to destabilize security inside the kingdom. The accusation came in the aftermath of recent demonstrations in the capital Amman and other parts of Jordan in support of Hamas and in condemnation of Israel. The demonstrators are demanding that Jordan shut down the Israeli embassy and cut all ties with Israel.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on April 7th, 2024

I learned a new word this week. It is “blatherskite”. It is a word of contempt, originating in the 17th century, describing a person who prattles empty talk and nonsense. It is a perfect description of the finger pointing of so called journalists who vent bias and libel and disinformation when reporting on Israel’s present war.

The best antidote to the blatherskites is Michael Ordman’s weekly postings about the real and amazing Israel and its contributions even during wartime. rsk

 

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

 

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR
 
After 6 surgeries IDF soldier’s eyesight is restored. (TY WIN) IDF soldier Dor lost his eyesight in the war in Gaza. But thanks to Israeli medical technology and six eye surgeries, he can now see again. “I am born again” he says in Hebrew at the end of the video. Many tears were shed at his final eye test.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-israeli-doctors-restore-eyesight-to-wounded-idf-soldier/amp/
 
Wounded IDF soldier holds newborn daughter. Omer was seriously injured in the Gaza war, when an explosive device was detonated. He was evacuated to hospital, to be treated and rehabilitated just as his wife gave birth to their firstborn daughter. Their private victory gave Omer strength to recover and return to his unit.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387797
 
You don’t need to be a spokesperson to speak up for Israel. Eylon Levy has been an excellent spokesperson for Israel since Oct 7.  He has now established a Civilian Public Diplomacy initiative called “the New Israeli Discourse”. It includes his State of the Nation podcast.  https://www.stateofanationpodcast.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEyo4XWc-8  (About his initiative)
https://www.jgive.com/new/en/usd/donation-targets/124800/about (to support him)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-stunning-rise-curious-suspension-and-insistent-return-of-israels-star-spokesman/   
 
The Diaspora donates. Israel’s Diaspora Ministry reports that world Jewry has donated NIS 5 billion to Israel since Oct 7. Also, some 60,000 volunteers came to Israel.  https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-794568
 
Supporting and investing in Israel. Since Oct 7, Israel Bonds has raised more than $1.5 billion worldwide. This article explains why this is so important, why it’s a win-win activity, and how you can be a part of it.
https://www.jns.org/forever-changed-after-a-trip-to-israel/
 
70% of Gaza periphery residents return home. Nearly six months after Oct 7, most evacuees from the Gaza periphery have made the decision to return to their homes. The towns located between 4 and 7 km from the Strip (including the city of Sderot) have seen the return of 75% of residents.
https://www.jns.org/70-of-gaza-periphery-residents-return-home/
 
 
ISRAEL’S  MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Stem cell injections benefit MS sufferers. (TY Nevet) A study of 23 progressive multiple sclerosis patients at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem highlighted significant beneficial effects of repeated stem cell injections. They improved neurological function, cognition, and quality of life with no adverse effects.
https://www.hadassah.org/story/research-at-hadassah-shows-promising-results-for-patients-with-progressive-ms
 
Possible therapy for bone cancer. (TY Nevet) Researchers at Tel Aviv University have discovered in the laboratory that two existing medicines can be used to enhance treatments against bone cancer. It is important as bone cancer is often the result of metastasis (spreading) in breast cancer patients.
https://tps.co.il/articles/cocktail-of-repurposed-drugs-offers-hope-to-breast-cancer-patients/
https://aacrjournals.org/cancerdiscovery/article-abstract/doi/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-23-0762/734997/
 
3rd clinical trial for gastro leakage sensor. The xBar sensor from Israel’s Exero Medical (see here previously) is about to begin a Phase 3 pivotal clinical trial in the USA and Israel. The device aims to immediately detect post-operative leakage following gastro surgery, which is fatal in 40% of affected cases.
https://nocamels.com/2024/04/life-saving-sensor-monitors-dangerous-fallout-of-stomach-surgery/
 
Live greener, live longer.  What seems to be an obvious statement has been proved in a study by Tel Aviv University researchers. They examined over 3,000 heart bypass patients and found that patients who live in a “greener” environment are at a lower risk of mortality than those who live in a “non-green” environment.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-794536
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/heart-patients-live-longer-in-a-greener-environment-tau-study-finds/
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/abstract/2024/01000/residential_greenness_and_long_term_mortality.6.aspx
 
Video game app to combat chronic pain. The pain-relieving video games from Israel’s TrainPain (see here previously) are now available to download on iPhone and Android phones. You also need to order (fees required) the haptic pod and cables. Available in the US only.
https://nocamels.com/2024/03/new-video-game-aims-to-train-the-mind-to-stop-sensing-chronic-pain/
https://www.trainpain.com/
 
Using AI to find cures for diseases. (TY Nevet) An interesting article explaining how Israel’s CytoReason (see here previously) is using AI and big data from the medical companies themselves to help reduce the cost and time required to bring a new remedy to market. 
https://nocamels.com/2024/02/using-ai-made-models-to-find-cures-for-disease/
 
400 French doctors & dentists seeking to make Aliyah. The first European MedEx event took place in Paris, gathering more than 400 doctors and dentists from France and Belgium. At MedEx, potential immigrant medics can convert licenses and engage directly with representatives from Israeli healthcare institutions.
https://www.jns.org/more-than-400-doctors-and-dentists-attend-aliyah-fair-in-paris/
 
Global Change-maker. (TY Nevet) The prestigious Nature magazine named Israeli Tal Patalon, outgoing head of the KSM research and innovation center of Maccabi Healthcare Services, as one of the world’s change-makers in medical research. Her team’s COVID-19 research changed vaccination policies in the United States.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00754-w 
https://www.ksminnovation.com/member/dr-tal-patalon/
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-784798

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rwanda – Thirty Years after the Genocide, April 7, 1994 by Alain Destexhe

By on April 7th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20549/rwanda-30-years-after-genocide

Many of them had taken refuge in the local church, and others in a plot of land opposite the communal house, where there were several thousand frightened people, thinking that the authorities were going to protect them. Instead, the authorities conveniently decided to kill them on the spot. The soldiers and police, armed with rifles and grenades, and the militiamen with machetes and spiked clubs, surrounded the refugees and began firing into the crowd, throwing grenades and machetes.

What is certain is that he killed every day for a month… and that he never ran out of ammunition. How did he feel? “At first it was fear,” he tells us, “but then the fear disappeared, there was no joy either, it became a habit to kill. It was a job ordered by the authorities and we did our duty.” He took orders and obeyed, like Adolf Eichmann and the other Nazi executioners of the Final Solution.

Brainwashing

In 1994, Jean-Claude, a Hutu policeman later turned “Tutsi hunter,” was 26 years old and one of 14 police officers in the commune of Nyamata, an hour outside Kigali, one of the areas worst affected by the genocide.

Four years earlier, the Rwandan Patriotic Front had attacked Rwanda from Uganda. The movement was made up of mainly Tutsis, living in exile since 1959, whom the Rwandan regime had not wanted to let return to the country.

In 1990, after that attack, Jean-Claude and his colleagues, on the orders of the authorities, began harassing the Tutsis in the commune, arresting them for no reason and beating them up. In 1992, dozens were killed and their homes burnt down…. Until 1994, during meetings, the authorities had kept repeating that the Tutsis were “snakes” and “cockroaches,” and that the Rwandan Patriotic Front would, according to their truncated vision of history, “bring back serfdom” (of the Hutus by the Tutsis), a powerful theme in the imagination of the regime.

The Rwandans were fed the message that the Tutsis, all the Tutsis, who had been second-class citizens since 1959, were allies of the exiled group that had attacked them. When Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on the evening of April 6, the authorities were quick to spread an accusatory discourse: “Here is the proof that what we told you was true, they killed our President.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran and Israel: Is the Denial Game Over? by Amir Taheri

By on April 7th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20548/iran-israel-denial-game

Soleimani would do everything to avoid a direct clash with either Israel or the US forces in the region.

If he [“Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] does nothing, he could anger his core supporters. If he orders attacks on Israeli and/or Jewish targets, he won’t be able to cite plausible deniability. And that, as the Iranian state TV analyst suggests, could give Israel an excuse for attacks on big targets in Tehran itself.

“Will this time be different?” This is the question that haunts Tehran political circles as more body bags are flown in from Damascus.

The body bags contain the mortal remains of 13 Iranian diplomatic and military officers, including two senior commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), General Muhammad-Reza Zahedi (alias Abu Mahdi) and Gen. Muhammad-Hadi Haj-Rahimi, killed in an Israeli airstrike on what was presented as an Iranian consular building in the Syrian capital.

To be sure, this is not the first time that Israelis have taken out IRGC officers, and Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Pakistani, and Afghan mercenaries in Syria.

The take-out operation started in 2015 and reached a peak in 2020. The last time an Iranian official organ provided figures was in 2018, when the Foundation for Martyrs and Self-Sacrificers put Iran’s losses at around 5,000. The figures didn’t show how many were Iranian officers or foreign mercenaries.

In the first three years of this deadly cycle, Tehran used the transfer of body bags from Damascus as a propaganda ploy and organized mass rallies on the burial day of its “heroes of Islam.” Later, when Tehran’s losses grew the propaganda aspect was forgotten, the “heroes of Islam” were quietly buried in their native hometowns and villages.

Over time, partly thanks to the influence of late Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Tehran decided to swallow the bitter pill and brag about “taking revenge,” but not retaliate.

Continue reading →