AOC’s Attack on Yang’s Meaningless Israel Statement Shows Her Role: Protect Dem Leaders Real power over U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza rests with Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Blinken — not Yang. But AOC’s function is to shield them from leftist anger.Glenn Greenwald see note please

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/aocs-attack-on-yangs-meaningless?token=eyJ1

Greenwald always so astute on the media and politics reverts to his historic anti-Israel bashing here….vicious and wrong and boring….Too bad…..rsk

There are three interrelated political factions that wield actual power to change blind U.S. support for Israel: the U.S. Congress, the Democratic Party, and the Biden Administration. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who claims to oppose this U.S. posture toward Israel, has significant influence in and responsibility for each: she is a member of Congress, one of the party’s most popular elected officials, and was a vocal supporter of the Biden campaign in the general election and is now a key surrogate for his administration.

As Israeli bombs fall on Gaza yet again as part of a conflict triggered by further incursions by Israeli settlers into occupied East Jerusalem, those key power centers remain steadfast in their support for Israel. The Biden State Department has issued one statement after the next so supportive of Israel that its spokesman, Ned Price, was petrified to utter a word that might be construed as empathy for Palestinian suffering — even refusing to condemn the killing of Palestinian children when asked explicitly if he does. After a two-minute opening statement on Sunday in which he announced that “the U.S. condemns in the strongest terms the barrage of rocket attacks fired into Israel” and heralded “Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself, its people and its territory,” Price took questions from reporters in which he appeared on the verge of some sort of seizure each time he was pressed to say what he thought about violence by Israel against Palestinians:

The Thin Veneer of American Civilization By Victor Davis Hanson (August 11, 2020)

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

In a flash, it’s been blown away, revealing the barbarism beneath. The seeds of destruction were planted long ago.

Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.

The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.

At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation’s aneurysm. That is, after the “recovery,” it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them.

In the old days of 2019, tolerant Americans more or less accepted that finely crafted statues of sometimes less than inspiring and formerly illustrious (to some) heroes were part of our history. For example, integral to California’s rich historical culture were its missions, acknowledged by Father Serra’s numerous eponymous streets and statues. No one in his right mind believed that renaming a mall named Serra at Stanford University would help mitigate the weekend murder rate in Chicago or the endemic poverty of illegal aliens in my own neighborhood.

The same allowance for imperfection by present standards was made for Robert E. Lee, a capable though not brilliant strategist, and by the standards of his time and space considered a good man who fought for a terrible cause. His name and likeliness were reminders to Americans of the tragedy of the Civil War that saw 700,000 Americans die in the struggle to end slavery. Focusing on inner-city gun violence or abortion or integrating the public schools with the scions of the white upper class might do far more for racial relations than toppling more bronze horses and riders. But that is the point: Focus on the irrelevant misdemeanor as therapy for ignoring the existential felony.

The collapse of Israel’s dream palace of normalcy – And how Israel can still achieve a great victory  David Wurmser

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/the-collapse-of-israels-dream-palace-of-normalcy-and-how-israel-can-still-achieve-a-great-victory/

Every intelligence officer in the United States at one point in his formal training learns about the great Israeli intelligence failure in the 1973 war.  The lesson was clear, and the same one identified by Roberta Wohlstetter about the great failure of surprise in Pearl Harbor in 1941: a set of ideas, or “conception” can so thoroughly dominate elites and the professional strategic and intelligence communities that it overpowers the increasing pace of evidence and information suggesting an approaching tectonic change.  Israel has just been shaken because it suffered in recent days the second great, indeed catastrophic, “failure of conception,” with dramatic human and strategic consequences.  And it will face a grave national challenge going forward beyond the horrific affairs of massive missile barrages from Gaza because its entire understanding of its situation and the defense concepts that flow from it have collapsed.

And yet, Israel also faces a great opportunity.  A proper response could deliver Israel a tremendous victory, perhaps one its greatest, and leave Israel more strengthened and valued in the long run as an appealing potential ally for others struggling to survive in a dangerous region.

The Dream Palace of Illusions

With respect to Iran’s nuclear program and attempts to establish Iran’s power in Syria, Israel has embraced the original strategy of preemption which served it so well in its first years, to deny an avowed genocidal enemy the means to execute its ambition. And yet, other than Iran, for the last several decades, Israel turned in response to its other enemies from preemption to deterrence, and a “quiet for quiet” formula.  It turned to relying on American support rather than enjoying freedom of action to shape their environment into a less dangerous form. It watched massive stockpiling of missiles in Gaza and in Lebanon, but believed its overwhelming force, and the willingness to use it, guaranteed the success of its reliance on deterrence. Israel believed it could absorb constant attacks on border communities as a below-the-threshold simmering that can be tolerated, much to the chagrin of the people living in those communities.  And Israel believed it could pay blood money to a desperate Hamas via the Qataris to keep them quiet.

Opinion: The end of Jewish-Arab coexistence?By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-the-end-of-jewish-arab-coexistence/

Jews cower in their homes as Arabs set fire to synagogues and comb the streets for Jewish victims. Failing that, they attempt to break into Jewish homes. They burn cars and whatever else they can lay their hands on.

These events, more reminiscent of the Pale of Settlement, are taking place now, for the last two days, in Israel proper, in the city of Lod, a half hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.

More than one eyewitness has called it a pogrom. The city’s mayor compared it to Kristallnacht.

What makes it different, indeed intolerable, is that it’s taking place in the Jewish State, established to end such horrors.

Lod is a mixed city. Its Jewish population has been shouting for help as they remain trapped in their own homes as Arabs run riot. The government has quite rightly been criticized for its tepid response. Only about 30 rioters have been arrested. Finally, on Tuesday evening, the government ordered 16 Border Police companies to the city and declared a state of emergency.

As pathetic as has been the government and police response, it’s Lod’s Arabs who deserve the most censure. They are Israeli Arabs. They have grown up in Israel, not on the other side of some imaginary line, not in the so-called ‘occupied territories.’ Israel makes enormous effort to help its Arab citizens feel a part of the country, despite propaganda to the contrary. In short, there is no excuse for the savagery of this ungrateful minority.

Joan Swirsky: The Pathology of Liberalism *****

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-pathology-of-liberalism 

Bottom line, the entire world is now witnessing a regime of fixated Liberal-Leftist-Progressive children trying to run the most powerful country on earth, when what they really need is psychotropic medication, behavioral therapy, and a Congress with enough backbone to banish Voter Fraud forever!

From the inception of psychology about 140 years ago, medical conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissism, Tourette’s syndrome, even stuttering, were thought to be psychological in origin––and with enough therapy, enough blaming inadequate parenting, enough talk, enough delving into “feelings,” the sufferer could be treated successfully or even cured.

We now know––thanks to tools like PET scans and pharmaceutical advances––that these conditions are largely biological in nature, more receptive to medications, augmented with behavioral-therapy techniques, than to any of the other “therapies” that were utilized so ineffectually on multimillions of people over the past many decades.

These scans, in fact, have revealed the specific areas of the brain that show increased activity during anger,  revenge, anxiety, addiction, eating disorders, stuttering, pathological lying, cheating, manipulation, obsessive-compulsive behavior, depressive disorders, even cravings for chocolate!

NATURE OR NURTURE?

How do we know these conditions are for the most part biological? Because in addition to the fact that medications have treated them successfully––for example, Haldol for psychoses, Lithium for bipolar disorder, Lexapro for depression, Xanax for anxiety, et al––they have identical symptoms––albeit some more severe than others––in people raised in luxury high-rises in Buenos Aires, slums in Los Angeles, kibbutzim in Israel, huts in rain forests, and penthouses in Manhattan.

Pompeo: Biden signaled to Hamas that he values Israel less Former US Secretary of State places blame on current US President for current round of Hamas-Israel violence.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306076

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed the Biden Administration for the ongoing Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket fire on Israel.

“Biden delayed his call with Israeli leadership and restarted funding to the Palestinian Authority through the UN — both signal to Hamas & terrorists in the West Bank that America places less value on our relationship with Israel. It matters who leads,” the former secretary of state tweeted Wednesday,

Pompeo’s statement comes as over 1,050 rockets have been launched at Israel since Monday.

Six Israelis have been killed in the rocket attacks so far.

The Biden Administration has come under fire for drawing a moral equivalence between Hamas’ attacks on Israel’s efforts to defend itself. Yester, State Department Spokesman Ned Price stated that “Israel has the right to defend itself and to respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security just as Israelis do.”

“We call on all sides to exercise restraint and calm,” Price said, lamenting the loss of life on both sides and the hundreds of Arab rioters who were injured in clashes with Israeli police in Jerusalem prior to the rocket attacks,” Price said.

Ben Shapiro: Biden Sets Everything on Fire If the conflagration we’ve seen thus far is any indicator, Biden won’t leave a lot standing when he’s done.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/79815-biden-sets-everything-on-fire-2021-05-12?mailing_id=5833&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5833&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body

Joe Biden is the luckiest man to ever assume the presidency.

He succeeded an unpopular figure. He was inaugurated just two weeks after the dramatic storming of the U.S. Capitol by extremist Donald Trump supporters seeking to stop the certification of the 2020 election, which was also the beginning of the year after widespread race riots. He inherited COVID-19 vaccines and a vaccine rollout plan, and could rightly expect to ride the tsunami of natural economic recovery that was predicted for the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic; he inherited a series of historic Middle Eastern peace deals.

In other words, President Biden had it easy. All he had to do was nothing. He could expect a new era of good feelings emerging from a tumultuous time. He could expect a booming economy, a more peaceful Middle East, a solution to the pandemic. All he had to do was calm the waters.

This, after all, was what Americans voted for: not a transformational figure or a figure of radical change but a stodgy, supposedly empathetic grandfather figure who could barely be bothered to leave his basement for the entirety of the presidential campaign. Normalcy could be restored by installing a nearly inanimate object as president.

Instead, Biden has served as a facade for the most radical administration in modern American history. And America is already paying the price.

In his first few months in office, Biden rammed through a $1.9 trillion spending package that completely rewrote the bargain between individuals and the state, shifting the incentive structure for people to go back to work. He simultaneously proposed another $4 trillion in spending — to go along with the annual $4 trillion budget. The result: skyrocketing inflation in commodities, along with dramatic labor shortages resulting in an April shortfall of three-quarters of a million new jobs.

Let’s demand a recount…of COVID deaths. By Thomas T. Siler, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/lets_demand_a_recountof_covid_deaths.html

How deadly is the SARS-COV-2 virus? Part of the equation depends on accurately determining just who has died from COVID-19 infection. It turns out that, thanks to changes the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) made to its rules, along with Congressional incentives, America’s COVID-19 counts are almost certainly inaccurate.

America counts COVID-19 deaths differently from other countries. According to Dr. Deborah Birx, speaking at the start of the pandemic, “if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.”

However, we must acknowledge that there is a difference between dying from COVID-19 and dying with COVID-19. This is a familiar uncertainty for doctors during the winter flu season.

In most states, 40-60% of the people dying of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are elderly persons with multiple medical problems who live in nursing homes. A portion of this same cohort dies every year from the seasonal influenza virus. When that happens, did the flu kill them or their cancer, heart failure, strokes, or liver problems? Doctors use their best judgment to fill out the death certificate correctly, but they do not categorize all of them as “flu” deaths.

According to the CDC, only 6% of those who died with the COVID-19 infection had no other pre-existing health conditions. The other 94% had an average of four medical conditions already affecting their health.

This does not mean that only 6% of these deaths resulted from COVID-19. But it also does not mean that 100% of the deaths among people with other medical conditions should be counted as death from COVID-19 either. If we counted each death that tested positive for flu or had symptoms of flu as an “influenza death,” we would also have hundreds of thousands of flu deaths each year.

When it comes to the flu, though, we don’t tally either the 6% or the 100%. The real answer is in the middle. Applying that same logic to COVID-19 means that conservatively 25-50% of the deaths labeled from COVID-19 more likely died with COVID-19.

The Left’s War on Procreation “Vogue” calls childbearing “environmental vandalism.” Gates and Biden agree. Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/lefts-war-procreation-don-feder/

Last week, the left’s war on procreation was headline news.

In the April 29th British edition of Vogue, Nell Frizzell wrote a pean to population control: “Is Having a Child Pure Environmental Terrorism?” – a shameless piece of virtue signaling.

Frizzell confessed that when she was pregnant, she “worried feverishly about the strain on the Earth’s resources that another Western child would add.”

The author went on to agonize about the amount of electricity her child would use in his lifetime, the food he would consume and what it would take to grow it – and how the future consumer would add to air pollution, global warming and depleted resources.

It was painful to read and depressing to contemplate – that someone so indoctrinated in the cult of Carbon Footprints can display their ignorance in the mass media.

Then there was the news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, America’s Woke power couple, are getting a divorce. Unfortunately, the work of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will continue. With $43.3 billion in assets (larger than the economies of most countries) the Foundation is dedicated to making the world a more barren place.

Its target isn’t Western children but kids in Africa, which, in a way, makes sense. Africa is the only continent with above-replacement fertility.  In conjunction with the United Nations Population Fund, the Gates Foundation sponsored a series of international conferences pushing population control, including abortion.

At one in Addis Ababa in 2013, there was, according to UNFPA, “a focus on universal access to reproductive health (code for abortion and government-sponsored contraception), especially for young people and other vulnerable groups.”

Bill’s interest in young people was reflected in his friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein, already convicted of soliciting sex from minors when the two first met in 2011.

Calling on ‘Moderate’ Democrats When blaming Trump no longer does the job. David Limbaugh

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/calling-moderate-democrats-david-limbaugh/

Everyone knows President Joe Biden ran as a moderate and is governing as a leftist radical, yet we see little evidence of Democrats, including the liberal media, breaking ranks from him. Why?

I’ve previously written about the lack of Democrats’ dissent from their party’s undeniable extremism and have always been met with the response that they don’t dissent because there are no longer any moderate Democrats. Yet when I talk to my Democratic friends, they vehemently deny that they personally are extremists. Are they, or might they just as well be?

Rank-and-file Democrats can no longer blame their rank partisanship and extremism on Donald Trump, who is no longer president. It’s past time for them — and never-Trump Republicans, for that matter — to answer for Biden’s disastrous policies.

Let’s look at Biden’s border debacle as one of many flagrant examples of raging Democratic and media hypocrisy, for they’re giving Biden a complete pass and even defending him on the very policies for which they berated Trump.

Biden wholly owns this border train wreck, though he disingenuously continues to blame Trump. Trump’s border policies were working. We had seen major progress in sealing the border; fewer migrants were entering the United States, and cartels were being stymied. But Democrats, wedded to their open-borders agenda and their faux compassion for illegal immigrants, castigated Trump as a racist and particularly zeroed in on his allegedly inhumane treatment of children. Now the cartels are flourishing, and our borders are being overrun. And we know all the hyperventilating over the children had nothing to do with any genuine concern for them but with demonizing and defeating Trump — and cynically promoting Democrats’ policies to flood the borders with future Democratic voters.

We know this because the Biden administration is doing nothing to address this growing and dangerously out-of-control border situation. This crisis is a direct result of Biden’s virtual invitation to migrants to come on up, his promises of amnesty and welfare for illegals, and his emasculation of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Purely for appearances’ sake, as we now know, Biden put Vice President Kamala Harris in charge of this crisis, and she has done nothing except cackle when asked about her progress.