ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Being Pro-Palestinian Actually Means Being Anti-Israel By Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/being_propalestinian_actually_means_being_antiisrael.html

Writing in 2009 about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the insightful Palestinian/Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh observed that, “What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation,’” he wrote, “as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”

And that is what those who observe the campus activism against Israel have never fully understood: that being pro-Palestinian, by definition, means being anti-Israel.

It does not involve urging the Palestinian leadership to come to terms with Israel about long unsettled negotiation points about borders, Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and other key issues. Is has never involved advising Palestinians to abandon terror, or so-called “resistance,” as a tactic for advancing political ambitions.

Those helping to promote Palestinian self-determination have not been firm in suggesting that Palestinian leaders and other officials end incitement, stop the indoctrination of children in textbooks and lesson plans that demonize Israel and Jews and teach children to look at the Jewish state as an abomination, an illegal regime, a perverse example of the malignancy of Jews who steal land, commit genocide, and oppress an innocent indigenous people.

The Palestinians have never been told by their supporters that it morally repugnant and diplomatically lethal to engage in a “pay to slay” program through which terrorists and their families were financially rewarded with $183 million in 2017, for example, garnered from foreign aid heaped on the Palestinians, purportedly for humanitarian aid.

In debating the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, social justice activists, of course, demonstrate their hypocrisy by endlessly dwelling on the many evils of Israel without bothering to examine or measure the Palestinians’ own central role in contributing to the many pathologies endemic to their civil society and institutions. Like many Western elites do when choosing sides, social justice warriors infantilize the Palestinian victim and assume he has no agency to ameliorate his own conditions.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Why ‘West Side Story’ Flopped On Opening Weekend By Kyle Smith

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-west-side-story-flopped-on-opening-weekend/

I assume Steven Spielberg’s $100 million remake of West Side Story isn’t being advertised quite as heavily in your neighborhood, but on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I live, you can scarcely take a breath without being hit with advertising for the movie. 20th Century Studios/Disney treated this as an event movie, it had the weekend all to itself, it had considerable critical acclaim/hype and some of the target demographic (the theater community, extending out to everyone who ever performed in the show in high school) was intensely interested.

Unfortunately, the movie also suffers from having no stars (sorry, Ansel Elgort, but you make Timothée Chalamet look like Marlon Brando) and it’s based on a property that may be beloved by people over 50 but is, I suspect, totally unknown to those under 40.  People over 50 don’t go to the movies. The single comment I most often hear from people when I tell them I’m a film critic is, “Oh, I haven’t been to the movies in years.” TV is where it’s at these days. West Side Story is on track to gross $10.2 million in North America on its opening weekend — less than the $11.5 million earned by In the Heights in June, even though In the Heights is a little-known property and it debuted on HBO Max the same day. Certainly, the public sense that the pandemic was over in June provided a boost and the reverse is true six months later.

West Side Story is, despite the terrific songs and attempts to update it, still an extremely dated property — corny, maudlin, contrived, phony. I saw it in a huge theater full of enthusiastic fans, and even there reaction was muted. It just isn’t that great. Word of mouth is not going to help this movie earn out.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Durham’s Case on Clinton-Tied Lawyer Michael Sussmann Collapsing? By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/is-durhams-case-on-clinton-tied-lawyer-michael-sussmann-collapsing/

To put it mildly, this is going to be a very tough case for Durham.

D efense counsel for Michael Sussmann, the former Perkins-Coie lawyer indicted by Russiagate special counsel John Durham for lying to the FBI, now claim that information they have received in pretrial discovery substantially undermines the prosecution’s case.

In the one-count indictment, filed in mid September, Durham alleges that Sussmann misleadingly concealed the identities of his clients when he brought the FBI information that then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was secretly communicating with the Kremlin.

According to the indictment, Sussmann told the bureau’s then-general counsel, James Baker, that he was not representing any client. This is now said to have been false because Sussmann was representing both the campaign of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, and a cyber expert who was hoping to land a top tech job in the anticipated Clinton administration. At the meeting, Sussmann told Baker that Alfa Bank, a major Russian financial institution, was the conduit for Trump-Kremlin communications, with its servers transmitting messages to and from a server at Trump Tower in Manhattan. The FBI looked into the Alfa Bank allegation and ultimately rejected it.

According to the New York Times, Sussmann’s attorneys claim that prior statements by Baker indicate that he knew Sussmann was representing clients. At a minimum, he has said different things at different times. The critical September 19, 2016, meeting between Baker and Sussmann was short – less than 20 minutes in all – and they were the only two people in the room. The false-statement charge thus hinges on Baker’s memory; because it appears faulty, Sussmann’s lawyers contend that the prosecution will not be able to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Where John Durham’s Investigation Is Heading By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/11/where-john-durhams-investigation-is-heading/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=second

Reading the tea leaves, it appears the special counsel’s end game is something other than a sweeping indictment.

L ast week’s indictment of Igor Danchenko has the commentariat buzzing. If special counsel John Durham has cracked the core of the Russiagate case, if he has established that the Steele dossier on which the FBI substantially based its spy warrants was fraudulent, does that mean he is nearing a sweeping conspiracy indictment? Will there be criminal charges that target the real 2016 collusion — not between the Trump campaign and Russia, but between the Clinton campaign and U.S. officials who abused government investigative powers for political purposes?

Almost certainly not.

All signs are that Durham will end his investigation with a narrative report. It has looked that way for a long time. There are reasons why then-attorney general Bill Barr appointed then-Connecticut U.S. attorney Durham as a special counsel shortly before the Trump administration ended.

Unlike ordinary federal prosecutors, who either file charges or close investigations without comment, special counsels are required by regulation to write a report for the attorney general. As we saw with special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in 2019, there is typically great outside pressure on the AG to make such reports public (though doing so is not required). Barr obviously knew enough about Durham’s investigation to grasp that there was unlikely to be a grand, overarching criminal-conspiracy case; there had, however, been rampant malfeasance and abuse of power that might never come to light absent a comprehensive investigative report.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Economic World War By Tom Cotton

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/chinas-economic-world-war/

The nation’s admission 20 years ago into the WTO was a grave mistake. Congress can begin to rectify this error by immediately terminating Beijing’s special trade status.

T wenty years ago today, China joined the World Trade Organization with the promise of greater peace and prosperity for all mankind. As he championed this historic mistake, then–president Bill Clinton patronizingly said, “It is ironic, I think, that so many Americans are concerned about the impact on the world of a strong China in the 21st century.” We are now witnessing how right those Americans were.

Over the past two decades, the government of China has weaponized its nearly $17 trillion economy to wage an unrelenting economic world war that has brought pain to virtually every continent and ruin to countless communities across the globe.

Since 2001, China’s economy has grown nearly 1,200 percent, transforming from a third-rate backwater into the second-largest economy, largest exporter, and dominant industrial power in the world. The PRC today makes one-quarter of the world’s automobiles, a third of all merchant ships, 40 percent of mobile phones, 70 percent of televisions, and 96 percent of shipping containers.

More worrisome, China has gained a stranglehold over the production of many essential materials and is acquiring a dominant position in key technology areas. China manufactures more than half of the world’s steel, produces two-thirds of the active ingredients in our generic drugs, and processes 85 percent of rare-earth elements. China is also making strides in the fields of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, possesses 200 of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, and produces 70 percent of the world’s drones.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Exporting Oil or Revolution? by Amir Taheri

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18025/iran-exporting-revolution

This may be an exaggeration, but the Kayhan editorial says that without the “Resistance Front” there would be no Iran and, of course, no Iraq, no Syria, no Lebanon, and no Yemen. Control of the four Arab countries is vital for protecting the Islamic Revolution.

In that context, Tehran has been pumping cash and weapons into regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua and, until recently, Zimbabwe. It has also been in alliance with anti-war groups in Europe and North America while funding numerous non-Muslim politicians and celebrities across the Middle East.

Non-Shiite Palestinian outfits such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also been on the payroll of the “Resistance Front” for decades.

[W]e now know that the “Supreme Guide” is ready to take bread away from Iranians so that he can continue fattening Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah and scores of other “for sale” personalities across the world.

To be able to do that, Khamenei is counting on US President Joe Biden to ease some of the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump.

Zarif estimated that Tehran needed a minimum of $60 billion a year to pay its military and security personnel, keep the “Resistance Front” afloat and continue “exporting” revolution.

Khamenei demands that the P5+1 deposit $3 billion a month in a German bank and another $1 billion monthly in a French bank from Iran’s frozen assets, while allowing the Islamic Republic to increase oil exports to 2.5 million barrels a day.

His [Khamenei’s] recipe is simple: Live from one day to another but, even if you can’t export oil, make sure that you can continue exporting revolution. The Khomeinist system can survive without exporting oil, but can’t do so if it stops exporting revolution.

“The greatest achievement of Imam Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution!”

This is how the daily Kayhan in Tehran, believed to reflect the views of “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei, describes what it labels a “Resistance Front” led by Iran.

The paper’s editorial does not say why it needs to raise the controversial issue at this time. One possible reason may be a behind-the-scenes debate about the need for reviewing a policy that has cost Iran billions of dollars over the past decades.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Adam Andrzejewski-California Is The Only State To Hide Its Spending — Nearly $300 Billion A Year

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/12/07/california-is-the-only-state-to-hide-its-spending/?sh=706e7d5f72b7

In 2018, California resident Steven Childs wanted to know how much the state paid to a single vendor over a five-year period. Instead of the data, California Controller Betty Yee sent him an invoice for $1,250.

Childs asked more questions and the Controller’s chief counsel, Rick Chivaro, admitted the state held electronic records and “warrant records” akin to “maintaining a checking account online.”

Today, in a Sacramento superior court, the controller denies having a checkbook and claims the warrant register doesn’t contain vendor information. The Golden State is the only state in the nation not to produce state spending under open records laws.

Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com is battling the controller in this case over our freedom of information request for the entire line-by-line state vendor checkbook. When the controller rejected our request, we sued.

Yee is claiming her office “couldn’t locate” a single payment. No, that’s not fake news, or a comedy punch line. California’s top financial officer actually argued this in court recently, despite admitting she paid 50 million individual bills last year.

Furthermore, the controller now claims that transparency itself is an “undue burden.” She swears it’s necessary to take 72,000 work hours to go through each of the 50 million payments by hand.  

Here are some of the arguments Yee is making to stonewall our request: 

“In order to produce checkbook level data as requested … staff would need to manually review the estimated 50 million transactions …” (Emphasis added.) 
“The public interest served by not disclosing the requested records and data clearly outweighs the public interest in disclosure. As such, the [State Controller’s Office] is relieved of any obligation to produce the requested records.” (Emphasis added.)  

Do we have a representative republic if the representatives get to hide all transactions from the people—and claim that it’s for their own good? 

Controller Yee acts like she has something to hide. Here are just a couple items we learned during discovery about how taxpayer dollars are spent by the controller:

1. Using paper and string. An estimated 200,000 bills — submitted only on paper — were paid during the fiscal year. Incredibly, the justification for each payment contains even more paper — between 15-20 pages and is bound and physically tied together with string. It takes 7-10 minutes to deconstruct, copy, and reconstruct each file.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: SENATOR ROBERT DOLE’S ACCEPTANCE SPEECH AT THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION ON AUGUST 15, 1996

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/san.diego/transcripts/0815/dole.fdch.shtml

When the late Senator Bob Dole accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1996, he delivered a most eloquent speech touching on every issue that engages us today. Take the time to read it all at the site. Rest in peace Senator Dole. rsk

When the late Senator Bob Dole accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on August 15, 1996, he delivered a most eloquent speech which rings true today. Take the time to read it all at the site. Rest in peace Senator Dole.    rsk

EXCERPTS

And who am I that stands before you tonight?

I was born in Russell, Kansas, a small town in the middle of the prairie surrounded by wheat and oil wells.

And the first thing you learn on the prairie is the relative size of a man compared to the lay of the land. And under the immense sky where I was born and raised, a man is very small, and if he thinks otherwise, he is wrong.

Let me be the bridge to an America than only the unknowing call myth. Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith and confidence in action.

And to those who say it was never so, that America’s not been better, I say you’re wrong. And I know because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember.

And our nation, though wounded and scathed, has outlasted revolutions, civil war, world war, racial oppression and economic catastrophe. We have fought and prevailed on almost every continent. And in almost every sea.

We have even lost. But we have lasted, and we have always come through.

And what enabled us to accomplish this has little to do with the values of the present. After decades of assault upon what made America great, upon supposedly obsolete values, what have we reaped? What have we created? What do we have?

I am here to say to America, do not abandon the great traditions that stretch to the dawn of our history. Do not topple the pillars of those beliefs — God, family, honor, duty, country — that have brought us through time, and time, and time, and time again.

The war(WW) was fought just a generation after America’s greatest and most intense period of immigration. And yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American.

And when I think how we learned this lesson I wonder how we could have unlearned it. Is the principle of unity, so hard-fought and at the cost of so many lives, having been contested again and again in our history, and at such a terrible price, to be casually abandoned to the urge to divide?

And so tonight I call on every American to rise above all that may divide us, and to defend the unity of the nation for the honor of generations past, and the sake of those to come.

And when I look back on my life, I see less and less of myself and more and more a history of this civilization that we have made that is called America.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF OUR APOCALYPSE: SOROS, XI, GATES, AND BIDEN Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on December 12th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/the_four_horsemen_of_our_apocalypse_george_soros_xi_jinping_bill_gates_and_joe_biden.html

The New Testament’s Book of Revelation has long puzzled and inspired biblical scholars as to the meaning of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Most agree that they represent four catastrophes that will befall humanity during the “end times.”

The White Horse’s rider carries a bow and wears a crown.  He is generally thought to symbolize conquest.  Fast-forward to today, and consider the work of George Soros.  For decades, he has spent millions of his billions on his quest to destroy the United States and other nations.  He recruits and funds Antifa and BLM, supplies their riot gear and weapons, pays for their transportation and accommodations where necessary.  He funds the political campaigns of pro-criminal anti-victim district attorneys like Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and Kim Gardner in St. Louis.

Crime is skyrocketing in each city where a Soros-funded D.A. holds office.  These anti-American radicals engender violence and chaos and renounce law and order.  They have defunded the police.  Along with the rest of the left and the founders of BLM, Soros is committed to undermining all traditional American values and to promoting anything in opposition to those values.  Like the rider of the White Horse, he has succeeded wildly over the past twenty years. 

The Red Horse is, appropriately, the general secretary of China, Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party.  Aside from his horrific crimes against humanity, Xi began co-opting the Biden family when Joe was V.P.  The Biden family is inextricably linked with the CCP; China has the goods on the Bidens that could expose their greed and grift for all to see.  The Red Horse is said to represent war, bloodshed, murder, and revolution.  How many millions has Xi pumped into our universities, media, entertainment, sports, and mainstream press to see his preferred narratives spread throughout the land?  Incalculable. 

Bill Gates and his acolytes like Anthony Fauci could very well be riders of the Black Horse.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation by Ruth R. Wisse

Posted By on December 11th, 2021

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ruth+wisse+free+as+a+jew&i=stripbooks&crid=O8VCFZWTB0HF&sprefix=ruth+Wisse%2Caps%2C149&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_10

“Ruth Wisse’s intellectual autobiography is a lasting work of profound moral force and scathing political discernment…. Its illuminations are likely to be as urgent one hundred years hence as they are now.” —Cynthia Ozick

A Jewish child born into the worst of times in Europe grows up during the best of times in North America—only to recognize that it could be moving back in the opposite direction.

First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide—but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered.