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Ruth King

Get Ready for the NeverTrump Follies on Steroids If you think 2016-23 was bad, this year the Democrats are desperate for many reasons. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/get-ready-for-the-nevertrump-follies-on-steroids/

This election year marks the eighth anniversary of unhinged NeverTrump invective, and Trump Derangement Syndrome swamp-fevers. Just as mothers in England during the Napoleonic Wars frightened their wayward children with threats of “Boney” coming to get them, the Dems are revving up Trump’s “threats to our democracy,” “autocratic” ambitions, and schemes to take away our freedom and unalienable rights. Arguments ad Hitlerum soon will be flying fast and thick, and the slavish corporate media have loaded up on “big lies” and sharpened their poison pens.

If you think 2016-23 was bad, this year the Democrats are desperate for many reasons: their catatonic candidate, his son Hunter’s white-trash sleazy vices and international grifting, multiple policy failures at home and abroad, and underwater polls numbers––for 76% of voters Biden is “too old to effectively serve another term.” All these problems will abet the Democrats’ patent lies, suborning of federal agencies and courts, fake horror stories about the January 6 “insurrection,” and shameless projections of their own autocratic inclinations and lust for power onto their political opponents.

This last Dem bad habit is particularly mendacious and dripping with hypocrisy. In last week’s January 6 anniversary speech at Valley Forge, Biden read, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” But Donald Trump is “willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power.”

What better example of the brazen shamelessness that Adolf Hitler said typifies the “big lie”? The “grossly impudent lie” and “colossal untruths” are so preposterous that listeners “would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” We all know which faction censors speech, shouts down speakers, punishes dissidents with personal and professional “cancellation” and smears, and keeps an index librorum prohibitorum cataloguing which thoughts, ideas, persons, and words cannot be written or spoken.

Corruption Charges (Still) Loom As Major Barrier To Biden Reelection In 2024: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/17/corruption-charges-still-loom-as-major-barrier-to-biden-reelection-in-2024-ii-tipp-poll/

Much of the discussion over whether President Joe Biden will drop out of the 2024 presidential race centers on his increasingly obvious age-related issues. But a potentially more serious problem awaits Biden, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests: Strong evidence that he illegally profited from public office while vice president under former President Barack Obama.

At 81 years of age and with painful difficulties handling his official duties, Biden’s waning mental acuity has become a serious issue. But while age and a record low approval rating are major impediments to Biden’s reelection, the pile of evidence amassed in Congress’ investigation into Biden’s and son Hunter’s legally questionable business dealings could prove lethal to his presidency.

I&I/TIPP posed the following question to U.S. voters in August of 2023: “A congressional
committee claims it has strong evidence that President Biden and his family took millions of
dollars in bribes from foreign nations. If those claims turn out to be true, President Biden
should:”

Voters were given a choice of possible answers: “Resign immediately,” “Be impeached and
removed from office,” “Be allowed to finish his term in office, but not run again,” “Run again in
2024, regardless of the findings,” and “Not sure.”

A strong majority of 67% in our poll suggested that President Joe Biden should either be
impeached (43%) or resign immediately (24%) if the charges prove true. Just 15% said Biden
should “Be allowed to finish his term in office, but not run again,” and another 8% said “Run
again in 2024, regardless of the findings.” One in six (17%) weren’t sure.

The most recent I&I/TIPP national online poll was taken from Jan. 3-5 included 1,401 adults,
with a +/-2.6 percentage-point margin of error.

Vote of confidence in Israel’s economy in the face of war- Yoram Ettinger

http://bit.ly/3HFNQb3

*Irrespective of Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, Intel, the semiconductor giant, confirmed a $25 billion investment in Israel, leveraging Israel’s brain power, which has enhanced Intel’s competitiveness in the global market.  Over the last 50 years, Intel has invested over $50 billion in Israel, establishing 4 research and development centers, despite the potential for wars and actual wars and terrorism. Intel will expand its Israeli chip factory, in order to diversify its manufacturing potential amid a chip arms race (New York Times, December 27, 2023).

*Challenged by a unique environment – top heavy on terrorism and war, but low on natural resources and rainfall – Israel has bolstered its do-or-die state of mind, with defiance of odds, risk-taking, frontier, pioneering, optimism, patriotism, can-do and out-of-the-box mentality. This has yielded a robust flow of game-changing commercial, defense and dual-use technologies.

*Israel entered the current wars with positive economic indicators, such as debt-to-GDP ratio in the low ‘60% (compared with 123% in the US) and an all-time high foreign exchange reserves of $200 billion.

*Intel’s $25 billion investment in Israel is driven by the Israel’s unique competitive edge, as detailed in the following October 23, 2023 report by the St. Louis-based Stifel Investment Bank ($390BN asset management):

“We believe that there are several key factors supporting the resilience of the Israeli market in the face of conflict, and the confidence of large multinational companies making large acquisitions in Israel, including during wars.

“Some of those key factors include:

Threats to Democracy-Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

On January 6, 2024 near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, President Biden opened his 2024 election campaign: “Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time. It is what the 2024 election is all about.” Politico, the left-leaning digital newspaper, reported last month that comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler had become routine for the Biden campaign. Dean Karayanis, in the January 5th edition of The York Sun, wrote: “When an incumbent president swings that brickbat, though, it raises the stakes to a dangerous level.” And Perry Bacon of The Washington Post, who believes the issue is legitimate, wrote in a recent column that such a focus “sidelines other important issues,” that a “general election is in many ways a national conversation between citizens.” But it also trivializes the horrors inflicted by Hitler and the Nazi regime. And remember, Hitler’s Nazis controlled the press and the universities. Trump and the Republicans do not.

Let me state at the outset, if Donald Trump were to be elected next November, which I hope he is not, our democracy would not be at risk. In the January issue of The Spectator, Roger Kimball wrote: “At the center of the totalitarian impulse is the belief that ultimate freedom belongs only to the state.” Trump is a bloviating blowhard, but he would not destroy democracy, even if that were his desire which I don’t believe it is. What would happen is that the mechanics of government would slow, and possibly grind to halt. Even before Trump took office in January 2017, the false Russian collusion hoax had been concocted by the Clinton campaign, which hampered his administration. Millions of dollars were spent on the Mueller investigation that unearthed no collusion, except that between the Clinton campaign and the F.B.I. Two impeachments were attempted; both failed for lack of evidence. Attempts by the Trump Administration to clean up the intelligence communities were stymied. Recall Senator Chuck Schumer’s prescient comments to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on January 3, 2017, when he insisted that Trump was really dumb for attacking the intelligence agencies: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” The unarmed rag-tag gang of men and women who entered the capital on January 6 slowed but did not stop the wheels of government. What Biden and his Progressive buddies have done, in reverting to the campaign slogan that democracy is at risk, is to lift a page from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who said that if a lie is repeated often enough, people will believe it.

Islam Overtaking Europe? by Drieu Godefridi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20301/islam-overtaking-europe

What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”) of Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR’s extreme interpretation of “open borders” hinders the development of a workable asylum policy.

Immigration is not a natural disaster that befalls Europe, like a plague of locusts or a drought. The migration chaos we are experiencing in Europe is purely a human catastrophe, caused by dreamy policies and faceless judges who are accountable to no one.

[F]urther mass influxes of migrants, such as many countries are experiencing, can be stopped the day after tomorrow by neutralizing the ECHR — simply by opting out of it.

To think now that Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp will inevitably become Islamic is to promise victory in advance. It is defeatist thinking, which Winston Churchill, in his six-volume series, The Second World War, described as more threatening than all the Nazi divisions put together.

A moratorium on immigration might be a good place to start.

In New York, as in the Belgian parliament, you can meet more and more people who are convinced that the Islamization of Brussels — and London and other capitals, they often add — is now inevitable and only a matter of time.

The growth of the Muslim population in Brussels has been both enormous and meteoric. Over the past 50 years, the number of Muslims has grown steadily, and given the erasure of Europe’s borders, thanks to the 1985 Schengen Agreement, there seems to be no end in sight.

Pro-Palestinian Protesters Target Manhattan Cancer Hospital By Haley Strack

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-protesters-target-manhattan-cancer-hospital/

Pro-Palestinian protesters holding signs that read “Healthcare Workers for Free Palestine” hurled insults at Manhattan’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Monday.

Within Our Lives Palestine organized Monday’s “Flood Manhattan for Gaza MLK Day march for healthcare.” Hundreds of people marched past the cancer center, which is also a pediatric hospital, as part of the protest.

“In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ we stand with the Palestinian people amid a grave healthcare crisis amidst the genocide in Gaza,” Within Our Lives said on Instagram.

Videos of the march show children inside Sloan Kettering watching from windows as protesters scream “shame” at them.

“Make sure they hear you; they’re in the windows,” a female organizer of the protest said.

With signs that read “Honor the martyrs of Palestine” and “NYC city workers for Palestine,” the group also marched past the United Nations, the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Starbucks (“Starbucks, you can’t hide; you make drinks for human genocide”), and McDonald’s (“McDonald’s, you can’t hide; you make meals for genocide”).

“What about refusing to acknowledge an attack on Palestinian people, and especially the healthcare system, shows any form of compassion or respect for health?” one speaker said during the protest.

“Shame, shame, shame,” protesters shouted in turn.

John McMillian Crime and History Academic historians avoid talking frankly about the twentieth century’s urban crime wave—and the one going on now.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/crime-and-history

In Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe’s shimmering portrait of 1980s New York, Sherman McCoy’s father offers his son the following advice: if you want to live in the city, “you’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate” yourself from crime and disorder. “The cynicism and smugness of the idea struck Sherman as very au courant,” Wolfe writes. “If you could go breezing down the FDR Drive in a taxi, then why file into the trenches of the urban wars?”

Academics are hardly less self-interested than Wall Street bond traders like the fictional McCoy. Indeed, scholars who hope to thrive in the American historical profession should “insulate, insulate, insulate” themselves from unfashionable topics—especially the crime crisis that plagued American cities in the last third of the twentieth century. If you can earn honors and accolades by condemning the carceral state and “warrior policing,” why venture into the vexing subjects of predatory crime or the crime-control strategies of the police?

Problem is, from the 1960s to the 1990s, urban crime was among the most significant domestic issues in the United States. It was an urgent matter of national concern, contributing to the changing complexion of our cities and to a political realignment that shapes our politics today. Yet scholars of recent U.S. history tend to downplay crime, either by minimizing its significance or by overzealously criticizing cops and the courts.

The reason for this is obvious, though rarely expressed. Left-wing intellectuals do not want us thinking too much about urban crime. When crime throws American cities into disarray—as has happened before and in some places is happening now—it is a bad look for the Left.  

Start with Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, one of the most influential scholarly books of the twenty-first century. Mass incarceration, Alexander writes, “is a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racial control,” designed perpetually to harm people of color—a “racial caste system.” Yet Alexander’s book should be infamous for its well-documented flaws. She defines “mass incarceration” as broadly as possible to make the problem seem worse than it is—she considers those on probation or parole, or awaiting sentencing, to be “incarcerated.” She doesn’t point out that in the early 1960s, violent crime began rising sharply along with nonviolent drug crimes. She doesn’t acknowledge that nonwhites drove the three-decade crime climb, or that urban African Americans are more likely to be victimized by crime, which is why many blacks supported the punitive crime measures she decries.

How to End the Suffering of the Palestinians by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20315/palestinian-suffering

Palestinians in Lebanon are “prevented from employment in 39 professions such as medicine, law and engineering… are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work…” — United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees, updated September 2020.

Arab citizens of Israel…. can own, buy and sell property, can vote and run in national and local elections, have equal access to free public healthcare, education and other services…. Many Arab Israelis serve in senior positions in hospitals, universities and colleges, courts, the civil service, and even in the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces.

Neither Syria nor Lebanon grants citizenship to the Palestinians living there…

[W]hat is happening inside the Syrian detention centers against the Palestinians is “a war crime by all standards.” – Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, alquds.co.uk, November 29, 2023.

By ignoring the profound suffering of the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, these self-proclaimed “pro-Palestinian” activists and groups are once again proving that their goal is not to help Palestinians, but only to make Israel into a pariah state.

If these activists and groups want to end the suffering of the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the Arab countries end their discriminatory and repressive measures against their Palestinian brethren. The activists and groups should also be raising the plight of the Palestinians at every available international platform instead of blaming Israel.

The real anti-Palestinians are not the Israelis at all, but the same old racist Jew-haters and antisemites who cannot be bothered to learn the truth when it comes to the actual human rights abuse of Palestinians: it is delivered from the hands of Arabs.

As the world’s attention is focused on the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, including South Africa’s false “genocide” charges against Israel at the International Court of Justice, in Syria Palestinians are worried about a new government law that considers them “foreigners.”

By labeling the Palestinians as “foreigners,” the Syrian government is seeking to deprive them of the ability to purchase real estate. Like the majority of the Syrians, most of the Palestinians are Arab Muslims.

Illinois citizens group files formal complaint with state Board of Elections By Jack Gleason

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/illinois_citizens_group_files_formal_complaint_with_state_board_of_elections.html

A couple from Illinois, Jodie and Ken Zitko, have formed a group of concerned citizens who have been analyzing the Illinois state voter database.  They have found serious irregularities, detailed in a formal complaint filed with Bernadette Matthews, director of the Illinois State Board of Elections on December 21.

Here are some of their findings after almost 2,000 hours of analysis.  

There were over 300,000 votes from the 2020 election missing or deleted from the Illinois voter data prior to the conclusion of the federal retention period of 22 months.  
Over a four-year period, Illinois population decreased by 150,000, while the voter roll increased by 650,000.  
Over 2.5 million people had votes cast prior to their registration dates.  
More than 230,000 registrations show seemingly Illegal or illogical registration dates.  
There are more than 4 million apparent registration violations out of 8.9 million registrations.

This couple is not your ordinary pair of election sleuths.  Ken has been an MSSQL Data Analyst, DBA, and architect for 28 years, working with Fortune 50 companies, and Jodie has been working with “People Data” and analytics since the mid-’90s in large enterprise environments.  She’s a “subject matter expert” in integrated workplace management systems.  

They were able to view a copy of the Illinois State Board of Elections voter roll while working for a candidate for the U.S. Senate.  The couple also did an informal study of Illinois voting history, which began when they decided to check their own records.  They were shocked to find that their history showed votes cast in three midterm elections when they had never voted in a midterm election.  Ken did vote in the 2008 presidential election, but there was no indication of a vote.  

A 43% Drop in White Recruits Caused the Army’s ‘Recruitment Crisis’ The real military recruitment crisis is DEI discrimination against white people. January 16, 2024 by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-43-drop-in-white-recruits-caused-the-armys-recruitment-crisis/

The military recruitment crisis that has crippled our defense capabilities has been talked to death by generals, politicians and pundits who have blamed everything from rising minimum wages to obesity to Gen Z culture for the problem. They have raised enlistment bonuses to unprecedented levels, spent fortunes on ad campaigns that feature lesbian weddings and doubled down on DEI as the answer to the crisis. And yet the crisis has grown worse.

That’s because recruitment was a self-inflicted problem caused by a woke racist military.

Between 2018 and 2023, white Army recruits, once the mainstay, fell from a bare majority of 56% to a minority at 44%.

This was not an unintended effect, but policy.

“We are an Army that wants to look like America,” Maj. Gen. Kevin Vereen, the first black head of Army Recruiting Command, had proclaimed.

Gen. Gary Brito, the first black head of Army Training and Doctrine Command under whose purview recruiting falls, and the former deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, had boasted of Army “listening sessions” on racism, diversity and inclusion in order to maximize diversity.

Military brass had been tasked with creating a military that “looked more like America” and as a result the number of white Army recruits declined year by year and fell 43% from 44,042 in 2018 to 25,070 in 2023.

Black, Hispanic and other minority recruits became a majority, but there weren’t any more of them than there had been before. Minorities were joining the Army at the same rate as they had before, but with fewer white recruits they had become a majority by default.