NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump is dividing America’s oligarchs Ending the Democrats’ total domination among the billionaire class would be good for democracy. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on July 20th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/18/trump-is-dividing-americas-oligarchs/

The shot heard around the world may have been aimed at Donald Trump’s head, but it could also put extra cash in his pocket. In the aftermath of last weekend’s assassination attempt, two prominent billionaires – Elon Musk and investor Bill Ackman – announced their support for the former president. Two other formerly Trump-sceptical billionaires, Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, are also reportedly considering joining them.

The importance of these endorsements, as well as others from both Wall Street and Silicon Valley, reflect America’s increasingly oligarch-dominated political system. Traditionally, populist Democrats would have made much more of the announcements. In 2018, Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse claimed Trump was in the ‘back pocket’ of billionaires, but the attack didn’t quite land – not least because Whitehouse himself and his Democratic allies have become major recipients of oligarchic funds. Democrats received far more ‘dark money’ than the GOP in 2020.

Even recently, a spokesman suggested that Joe Biden was sending the message that ‘America is not for sale’. That is despite the fact that in 2020 Biden easily outraised Trump with a major advantage from donors in Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood, just as Hillary Clinton had done in 2016. While some Democrats posture about seeking to reduce oligarchic power, they equally want to ensure that it’s their oligarchs who thrive.

None of this is to say that Trump was previously lacking his own reliable trove of right-wing donors. Investors like Jeff Yass and Timothy Mellon have given tens of millions to his campaigns. Trump donors tend to be rich investors who are in control of their own funds and less beholden to shareholders or a board of directors. In contrast, big corporate elites have, at least until now, favoured the Democrats and Biden. They have done this through contributions not only to Democratic candidates, but also to left-leaning nonprofits.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Donald Trump and Baby Hitler Once you’ve determined that it’s okay to commit a heinous act—all bets are off. By Stephen Soukup

Posted By on July 20th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/07/20/donald-trump-and-baby-hitler/

In November 2015, when he was still the presumed frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, Jeb did an impromptu online Q&A while on his campaign bus. Among the questions he was asked was whether he “would go back in time and kill baby Hitler.” “Hell yeah, I would,” he responded immediately. And he would do so, he said, because “you gotta step up.” His only objection—or at least the only one he voiced in front of the cameras—was the butterfly effect, that is to say, the presumption that such a small change in history would have enormous future ramifications, the science for which he said “we all learned” from those “Michael Fox movies…Back to the Future.”

This answer raises two questions. First, why would Jeb answer that way? This is a guy, remember, who was raised in a very WASP-ish patrician home, was educated at the finest prep schools and one of the best public universities in the country, and converted to Catholicism. If he, of all people, thinks that the answer is an immediate “hell yeah,” then we have to ask ourselves why that is the case.

The second question is: why would anyone ask such a stupid thing anyway? Obviously, time travel is not possible, Back to the Future notwithstanding. So why would it even cross anyone’s mind to question a former governor and presidential candidate about the possibility of doing so? Where do people come up with these things?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Leaders Prefer Murderers and Rapists Over Reforms by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 20th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20793/palestinian-leaders-murderers-rapists

The Biden administration’s plan to “revitalize” the Palestinian Authority (PA) is being interpreted by Palestinian leaders as permission to form an alliance with the murderers and rapists of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas.

Instead of starting a “reform process” within the PA, as the Biden administration has demanded, Abbas and his top officials are still pursuing unity and reconciliation with Hamas, whose members carried out the October 7 atrocities against thousands of Israelis. It is hard to see how such an alliance between the two Palestinian parties would even begin to benefit the Palestinians or advance peace and security in the Middle East.

The Biden administration has so far refrained from demanding that the PA halt its efforts to form a partnership with Hamas, which is designated by the US as a foreign terrorist group.

Such statements show why there is basically no difference between the PA and Hamas. Both organizations believe that murdering Jews helps the Palestinians and advances their objective of preventing Israel and the Arab states from normalizing relations with each other.

The PA is lying when it states that it supports a two-state solution.

The PA has always stated that it prefers a one-state solution: a state of Palestine replacing all of Israel.

The Biden administration’s plan to “revitalize” the Palestinian Authority (PA) is being interpreted by Palestinian leaders as permission to form an alliance with the murderers and rapists of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas.

In November 2023, the Biden administration called for “revitalizing” the PA in the hopes that it would be able to oversee the Gaza Strip once the Israel-Hamas war ends.

US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that the US looks forward to working with the new PA government headed by Mohammed Mustafa, which was established last April, “to deliver on credible reforms.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European Union Is Funding Iranian Aggression by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on July 20th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20791/eu-funding-iranian-aggression

The continued funding of Iran’s regime by the EU is crucial in bolstering Iran’s ability to attack its neighbors and US troops in the region, both directly and through its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — and to accelerate enriching uranium to complete its nuclear weapons program.

The regime’s actions appear part of a broader strategy aimed at ultimately annihilating not only Israel but also oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While the EU loves to portray itself as a front-runner in human rights, often lecturing the world about those values and global security, its actions — all mercenary, all the time — tell a very different story.

The Iranian regime, largely thanks to the backing of a powerful ally, the European Union, has managed to sustain and even increase its revenue streams.

The continued funding of Iran’s regime by the EU is crucial in bolstering Iran’s ability to attack its neighbors and US troops in the region, both directly and through its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — and to accelerate enriching uranium to complete its nuclear weapons program.

Support from the EU has enabled Iran to continue its regional and international militaristic endeavors without the looming threat of financial insolvency.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Road to Climate Atheism John Howard

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/07/the-road-to-climate-atheism/

The Hon. John Howard was Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007

I have customarily invoked the word agnostic to describe someone who is uncertain about whether God exists, and the word atheist to someone who denies any such existence. In contemporary times, as the use of the two descriptions has broadened to more than labels about religious belief, I have embraced that trend.

Thus, on the issue of climate change I have described myself as being an agnostic with growing temptations to becoming an atheist. My walk along the road to atheism has gathered pace. The bullying and dismissive tactics of the climate alarmists have played no small part in this process.

The overwhelming bulk of commentators, scientists and others who assert a special understanding of the subject sweep aside dissent with dismissive descriptions such as “denier”. There is mounting impatience with any who dare to challenge what has clearly become the conventional wisdom. Use of the term “denier” is particularly pernicious. For decades that term has been normally understood to describe someone who asserted that the Holocaust has been either grossly exaggerated or, even worse, never occurred.

Academics and others who dare to question the majority view are brutally told that the science has been settled. A growing number have either lost their jobs, been denied promotion, or been subjected to constant harassment and ridicule. Time-honoured notions such as freedom of inquiry and the need to regularly question seemingly settled assumptions have gone by the board.

Climate change zealotry now manifests itself in growing numbers of demonstrations which interrupt citizens going about their lawful business. We are regularly told that we face an existential crisis. Indeed, just about everything in our society is now at a “crisis” point. In the process, we are rapidly losing a sense of proportion. 

If ever an issue in mankind’s existence required rational analysis and cool heads it is climate change.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Liel Leibovitz Let’s Talk About Political Violence The Biden administration should adopt a strong stance against all political violence—including the anti-Semitic mayhem on college campuses.

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/lets-talk-about-political-violence

“The idea, the idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this, is just unheard of. It’s not appropriate.” Thus said President Biden on Saturday, after a gunman shot former president Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. As political truisms go, this one is up there with “the children are our future,” a statement so obvious that it makes you wonder why anyone would bother. (Though it’s also empirically dubious: It’s “unheard of”?)

But Biden’s insistence that his administration will tolerate no political violence deserves further exploration in a different context, given a statement released last week by his Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines. “In recent weeks,” it read, “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

A lone, disgruntled shooter is one thing; an orchestrated, nationwide campaign of unrest, which was partly paid for and organized by another nation and which has sometimes devolved to violence, is another. And it hardly takes a professional spy to realize what must be done when an enemy country is discovered to have agitated for uprisings on America’s campuses and in our streets: arrests, deportations, sanctions, and other defensive measures must follow.

The Biden administration would be wise to adopt the more assertive stance against political violence set by the president on Saturday. Up to now, that has not been the case. For example, Haines and her colleagues went out of their way to note that, though the Iranians are clearly involved in the anti-Jewish violence that has become a staple of so much of American urban and collegiate life these past eight months, many of those participating in anti-Israeli demonstrations did so of their own accord, with nonviolent intentions, and without any knowledge of Iranian involvement. “I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza,” Haines said in her statement. “This intelligence does not indicate otherwise.”

ISRAEL, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Researchers achieve success in allowing a patient to ‘speak’ using only the power of thought

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-07-success-patient-power-thought.html?sfnsn=mo

A scientific breakthrough by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital) has demonstrated the potential for speech by a silent person using the power of thought only. In an experiment, a silent participant imagined saying one of two syllables. Depth electrodes implanted in his brain transmitted the electrical signals to a computer, which then vocalized the syllables.

The study was led by Dr. Ariel Tankus of Tel Aviv University’s School of Medical and Health Sciences and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), along with Dr. Ido Strauss of Tel Aviv University’s School of Medical and Health Sciences and director of the Functional Neurosurgery Unit at Ichilov Hospital.

The results of this study were published in the journal Neurosurgery. These findings offer hope for enabling people who are completely paralyzed—due to conditions such as ALS, brainstem stroke, or brain injury—to regain the ability to speak voluntarily.

“The patient in the study is an epilepsy patient who was hospitalized in order to undergo resection of the epileptic focus in his brain,” explains Dr. Tankus. “In order to do this, of course, you need to locate the focal point, which is the source of the ‘short’ that sends powerful electrical waves through the brain.

“This situation pertains to a smaller subset of epilepsy patients who do not respond well to medication and require neurosurgical intervention, and an even smaller subset of epilepsy patients whose suspected focus is located deep within the brain, rather than on the surface of the cortex. To identify the exact location, electrodes have to be implanted into deep structures of their brains. They are then hospitalized, awaiting the next seizure.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The crimes of Mohammed Deif Israel is more than justified in targeting this warmongering Hamas leader. Daniel Ben-Ami

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/19/the-crimes-of-mohammed-deif/

There were not one, but two assassination attempts last Saturday. By far the best known was the bid to murder former US president Donald Trump. On the same day, however, Israel tried to kill two Hamas leaders.. It succeeded in killing one, but the fate of the other is less certain.

Thomas Matthew Crooks’s attempt to shoot Trump was a heinous assault on the democratic process. Crooks’s motivation may never be certain, but his action represented an attempt to deny the right of millions of Americans to vote for Trump. In contrast, Israel’s air strike on a compound in Khan Younis in Gaza was a desperate act in an existential war.

The targets were Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama, two senior figures in Hamas, an organisation that has killed many Israelis and that has pledged to destroy the Jewish State completely. As it stands, Salama is almost certainly dead – even Hamas has confirmed it. But the fate of Deif, who has survived several assassination attempts in the past, is still unknown. Hamas maintains he is alive, but has provided no evidence. Deif is (or was) the head of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas. Salama was the head of its Khan Younis brigade.

Anyone relying on the mainstream-media coverage of the attempted assassination would get a grossly one-sided view of what happened. It was widely reported that Israel killed at least 90 people in what was the designated humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis. The implication here is that the vast majority of those killed in the strike were civilians. This impression would have been reinforced by pictures on television, since camera crews in Gaza are not allowed to film Hamas casualties – something that Western media outlets do not often disclose.

The Western media also typically fail to ask the most blindingly obvious questions, such as why were senior Hamas leaders hiding among civilians? And doesn’t that mean they share at least some, if not all, of the responsibility for any civilian deaths? It seems like a textbook example of Hamas using the Gazan people as human shields.

In any case, the Israeli version of events is completely different. Israel says that Hamas’s leaders were surrounded by their associates in a fenced-off area within the villa. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had been watching the compound for weeks, waiting for Deif to turn up. When Israel did eventually launch its strikes, a large number of those killed were, in the Israeli account, Hamas terrorists.

So why has Mohammed Deif become so significant? Why has Israel made so many attempts to assassinate him? From the 1990s onwards, he was responsible for numerous lethal attacks on Israelis, including a wave of suicide bombings. He also played a key role in transforming Hamas from a small-scale terrorist outfit to a paramilitary force with land, sea and air capabilities. That made him one of the main architects of the 7 October pogrom in southern Israel, during which about 1,200 people, mostly Jews, were slaughtered.

Even those who doubt Israel’s account of its assassination attempt cannot question Deif’s murderous intent towards Jews. On 7 October, after declaring the start of ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge’, Deif quoted the Koran in relation to what he called the ‘criminal enemy’ – in other words, Jews. ‘Kill them wherever you may find them’, he said.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Stepped on His Own Speech Share By Rich Lowry

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-stepped-on-his-own-speech/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first

Trump sounded different than we’ve ever heard him before at the outset of his convention speech, compellingly recounting his near-assassination last week. He spoke softly, he sounded humble, he didn’t seem particularly interested in chants from the floor. It created a powerful mood. If he had ended shortly thereafter after hitting a few key themes, it would have been an incredibly effective, memorable performance. Instead, he rambled at length, and stepped on the effect he created at the top with a bunch of rally-like riffs. I wouldn’t exaggerate how much the speech is going to matter one way or another, and perhaps it matters most that the material at the beginning will be what’s replayed. But the candidate would have been better served trusting and sticking to what his speechwriters produced for him.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More Americans apply for jobless benefits as layoffs settle at higher levels U.S. filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week and appear to be settling consistently at a slightly higher though still healthy level

Posted By on July 19th, 2024

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/americans-apply-jobless-benefits-layoffs-settle-higher-levels-112060209

U.S. filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week and appear to be settling consistently at a slightly higher though still healthy level that the Federal Reserve has been aiming for.

Jobless claims for the week ending July 13 rose by 20,000 to 243,000 from 223,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. It’s the eighth straight week claims came in above 220,000. Before that stretch, claims had been below that number in all but three weeks so far in 2024.

Weekly unemployment claims are widely considered as representative of layoffs.

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark borrowing rate 11 times beginning in March of 2022 in an attempt to extinguish the four-decade high inflation that shook the economy after it rebounded from the COVID-19 recession of 2020. The Fed’s intention was to cool off a red-hot labor market and slow wage growth, which it says can fuel inflation.

“The Fed asked to see more evidence of a cooling economy, and for the most part, they’ve gotten it,” said Chris Larkin, managing director of trading and investing at E-Trade. “Add today’s weekly jobless claims to the list of rate-cut-friendly data points.”