NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Will The Petty Tyrants Resort To Once They Lose Their Virus Leverage?

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/19/what-will-the-petty-tyrants-resort-to-once-they-lose-their-virus-leverage/

Though the Centers for Disease Control recommends that vaccinated adults remove their masks in most settings, a number of Blue State governors, clearly ignoring the “science” they’ve said they’re so devoted to, have refused to free their citizens. The pandemic has allowed them to sate their authoritarian urges, setting us up for a grim future – unless we fight back.

Refusing to follow the science and keeping mask mandates in place are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Democrats all. No surprise. The Democratic Party is a refuge for closeted, and even open, authoritarians.

Last fall, we said that up until that point it seemed absurd to think the government pandemic orders that were restricting our freedom to move were a dry run for future attempts to use global warming as a pretext to devour liberty. But we reconsidered. We saw “observant and cunning politicians” watching Americans’ sheepish reactions to their lockdowns and mask rules, and came away convinced they were filing away what they learned for a later day.

Of course they’re not going to let a crisis go to waste.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

PIERS MORGAN: I didn’t think Harry could go lower than trashing his grandmother as she mourns Prince Philip, but the spineless self-pitying twerp’s attack on free speech makes HIM look bonkers not the US Constitution Piers Morgan

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9587523/PIERS-MORGAN-Harrys-attack-free-speech-makes-look-bonkers-not-Constitution.html

If the freedom of speech is taken away,’ said America’s first president George Washington, ‘then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.’

His view was shared by Thomas Jefferson, a fellow Founding Father and America’s third president, who declared: ‘Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.’

These two men helped create the initial United States Constitution and subsequent Bill of Rights that included the First Amendment which was specifically designed to protect the very freedoms they were referring to.

That Amendment states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.’

They are arguably the most important words in the entire Constitution and have afforded Americans, and American journalists, the most powerful protection for their rights to freedom of speech and expression of any country in the world.

The First Amendment is one of the things I most admire about the United States, especially coming from a country like Britain where free speech for journalists like me is now heavily regulated.

Prince Harry has just declared the First Amendment to be ‘bonkers.’ His extraordinary outburst came during an interview he conducted with actor Dax Shephard for the ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast, during which he also launched a shameful new attack on his family.

I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it,’ he said, ‘but it is bonkers. I don’t want to start going down the First Amendment route because that’s a huge subject and one which I don’t understand because I’ve only been here a short time, but you can find a loophole in anything. You can capitalize or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said.’

Like so much of the absurd Meghan-inspired psychobabble that spews out of his mouth, none of this makes any sense, and he clearly doesn’t understand what he’s saying either.

BOOKS, MEDIA Comments turned off

New Book From Former NYT Reporter Eviscerates The Bogus Steele Dossier And The Journalists Who Peddled It by Jason Foster

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/18/new-book-from-former-nyt-reporter-eviscerates-the-bogus-steele-dossier-and-the-journalists-who-peddled-it/

Out today, Barry Meier’s book contains a comprehensive, page-turning narrative of the massive media and political dumpster fire that was the Steele dossier.

This article was originally published at Jason Foster’s Substack “Stubborn Things” under the headline “New Book: Private Spies Infected Journalism with Steele Dossier, ‘A Media Clusterf**k of epic proportions.’”

When I first heard that a former New York Times investigative reporter was writing a book about “corporate intelligence firms” like Fusion GPS and Orbis Business Intelligence, I was skeptical. Would this mean serious, in-depth scrutiny of the way Glenn Simpson and Christopher Steele peddled too-good-to-check Trump dossier fantasies to their allies in the media? Unlikely.

After all, Barry Meier began working for The Old Gray Lady when I was still in high school. He has serious skins on the wall as a good old-fashioned investigative journalist, but his paper also allowed itself to become Fusion’s mouthpiece for procedural squabbles with congressional investigators seeking to uncover the truth about the dossier and its claims.

Plus, the scope of the book might mean only a chapter or two on Fusion and Orbis, with a litany of stories about the excesses and abuses of other firms.

I was wrong.

Meier has hammered the third nail in the coffin of the Steele dossier. Nail one was Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s April 2019 Report. Nail two was Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 2019 Report.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The decline and fall of the Associated Press The AP’s building in Gaza collapses after an Israeli air strike. Is the organization’s credibility crumbling too? Charles Lipson

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/decline-fall-associated-press-gaza/

Once, long ago, in a land far away, the best journalists tried to stand aloof from the stories they reported. The idea was simple and powerful. If journalists tried to be neutral and kept their reporting separate from their opinions, analysis, and speculation, then the public would believe them.

Those days are long gone — and the media’s credibility is gone with them. Journalists and media organizations are now smack in the middle of many stories they cover, in part because they want to be. They want to spin them, to set ‘the Narrative’.

Imbued with this new mission, many journalists have become partisan protagonists. They have deliberately blurred the lines between facts, analysis and opinion — and downplayed the traditional role of presenting the facts neutrally and letting readers decide. That’s a dramatic change in journalistic norms and a disturbing one for both the media and the public.

In a few cases, the media cannot avoid becoming directly involved. That happens when reporters are arrested, as they are at some demonstrations. Or when they are prevented from covering stories, as they have been at overcrowded migrant facilities on the US border.

When media organizations are drawn into stories like these, they need to do two hard things simultaneously. First, they need to publicize the harmful restrictions and identify those responsible for them. Second, they need to set aside their justifiable anger and try to cover the news story itself as fairly as possible. In the case of migrant children and families, for instance, we still need to know what is happening on the southern border, as well as who is trying to prevent the story from being covered fully.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class The proposed curriculum framework aims low, abandons the gifted, and preaches ‘social justice.’ By Williamson M. Evers

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-cancel-math-class-11621355858?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.

This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.

The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.

The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Jan. 6 Narrative Commission There’s little chance of a fair-minded inquiry in today’s Washington.

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jan-6-narrative-commission-11621377134?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Democrats are forcing a House vote Wednesday to establish a commission to investigate the events of Jan. 6, despite opposition from Republican leaders. Do not expect this largely partisan vote to yield a bipartisan accounting of the Capitol riot.

An independent commission could be useful if it answered outstanding questions and agreed on a common set of facts about events. The Capitol police and law enforcement haven’t been forthcoming with key details—such as the role the police played in letting rioters enter the building, or the circumstances of the killing of protester Ashli Babbitt, or what they know about who planned what.

Yet the prospects for that are none and slimmer. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been driving this idea, and she has a record of using these commissions for partisan ends. Her goal here is drive her narrative that the riot was a planned attempted coup, and to run on that theme to keep the House in 2022. She tipped her ambitions when she first proposed a commission with seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans.

She has since made concessions to Republicans, who are divided as usual. Last week New York’s John Katko, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, struck a commission deal with Democrats. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy immediately panned the proposal. This is the latest leadership misfire by Mr. McCarthy, which doesn’t bode well if he becomes Speaker in 2023.

The press says Republicans got what they wanted, namely a commission with five members (including the chair) named by Democrats, and five (including a vice chair) by Republicans. The proposal requires agreement between the chair and vice chair—or a vote of a majority of the commission—to issue subpoenas. The commission would be required to issue its report by Dec. 31.

But hidden in the fine print are tools empowering Democrats. The bill gives the chairman unilateral authority to demand information from federal agencies and appoint senior staff. “Thanks to powers invested in the Chairperson alone, the Democratically-appointed members would have significant control over the direction of the investigation” and the ability to stop GOP members from “engaging in mischief,” New York University law professor Ryan Goodman reassured a Washington Post writer.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden, the Democrats and Israel The American left demands an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but on whose terms?

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-the-democrats-and-israel-11621376744?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Since Hamas began its rocket offensive last week, the Biden Administration has wisely refused to dictate the Israeli response. But the U.S. narrative war took a notable turn this week as Congressional Democrats demanded a cease-fire. We hope the President bucks his instinct to follow his party and leads it instead.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have launched more than 3,000 rockets into Israel since last week, Jerusalem says, and Israel has been pummeling those groups in the Gaza strip to stop the attacks. Media and progressive activists blamed the Hamas-initiated war on Israel, as they always do, but the White House did not go along.

That position may not be viable for much longer on Capitol Hill. “Now, after more than a week of hostilities, it has become even more apparent that a cease-fire is necessary,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told Politico, “If Israel doesn’t believe a cease-fire is in their interest, that doesn’t mean we have to accept that judgment. We have enormous persuasive power.”

Rep. Gregory Meeks, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, reportedly floated an arms-sale delay on Monday, but backed off on Tuesday citing assurances from the White House.

With any luck Israel will soon inflict enough damage on Gaza’s terrorist stockpiles and leadership that it can negotiate a genuine cease-fire. Israel wants a swift end to the conflict, not a repeat of its 2014 Operation Protective Edge, which lasted 50 days and involved a Gaza ground incursion.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bookworm Room Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts. (November 11, 2006)

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.bookwormroom.com/2016/11/06/bureaucrats-job-security-dangerous/

THANKS TO ANDREA WIDBURG OF AMERICAN THINKER…..RSK

EXCERPTS:

Here’s some new information for you to consider when it comes to bureaucrats run amok:  Did you know that it was British bureaucrats, determined to keep their jobs at all costs, who sparked Arab nationalism in Palestine, creating the dangerous Middle East that consumes the world today?

This story comes from Pierre van Paassen’s The Forgotten Ally, published in 1943. The book’s primary purpose is to describe the role Jewish Palestinians played in defeating Rommel – a task Britain could never have accomplished but for these Jewish troops. Before he gets to World War II, though, van Paassen tells how the British Mandate in Palestine came into being and how the Arabs, who had once welcomed the thought of Jews making that wasteland a more inhabitable place, came to be the fanatic Islamic nationalists the world now faces. Because van Paassen was a foreign correspondent in the 20s and 30s, the book has the virtue of being the recollections of a contemporaneous witness, who traveled widely in the Middle East, met many of the power players, and was privy to original documents. (He even interviewed both Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem!)

Because of the myriad details van Paassen provides about the creation of the modern Middle East in the years during and immediately after WWI, it’s quite easy for someone like me to get lost in the weeds. (My first draft of this post hit 5,000 words before I was even a quarter of the way through.) I’ll just touch upon a few highlights here.

Between the Roman conquest in 70 AD and Israel’s re-birth in 1948, the territory known as Palestine (or Syria-Palestine) was never a nation. It was not even an independent substate in the vast Ottoman Empire that eventually controlled it. Instead, it was simply the southern most end of Ottoman controlled Syria. During all those centuries, nobody cared about Palestine because it was a desolate, swampy, disease-filled wasteland. Here’s van Paassen’s description of Syria-Palestine in the years before, during, and immediately after WWI:

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

When it comes to Israel, Biden’s actions speak louder than words Andrea Widburg *****

Posted By on May 19th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/when_it_comes_to_israel_bidens_actions_speak_louder_than_words.html

For the first few days after Hamas started raining thousands of rockets on Israel — all of them aimed at civilians — Biden kept silent. Finally, on Wednesday, Biden said “my expectation and hope is that this will be closing down sooner than later but Israel has a right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.” Saying this ought to have been a no-brainer, but it was obviously an effort on Biden’s part.

Biden instantly caught flak from the Squad. Even though, thanks to the influx of Ethiopian Jews, there are more Blacks in Israel than there are in Gaza, Ayanna Presley, a racist one-trick pony, promptly analogized herself to the downtrodden Arabs:

“As a black woman in America, I am no stranger to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). “We have been criminalized for the very way we show up in the world … Palestinians are being told the same thing as black folks in America: There is no acceptable form of resistance.”

The other Squad members were not far behind. Ilhan Omar called Benjamin Netanyahu “a far-right ethno-nationalist.” (I had no idea she knew such big words.) Rashida Tlaib reiterated the tired old trope that Israel, the only truly pluralist nation in the entire Muslim Middle East, has an “apartheid government.” And AOC said that Israeli self-defense had to yield to the Arabs’ “right to survive.”

(Again, I will no longer use the word Palestinians. It is a made-up word about a nonexistent Muslim nation. You can go here to learn why I say that.)

All of this makes it sound as if a surprisingly brave and independent Joe Biden has taken a stand against the openly far leftists and his party. However, as the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Biden’s actions show where his heart lies – and it’s not with Israel.

Even as Hamas is raining rockets on Israeli civilians, Biden announced that he plans to send millions of American taxpayer dollars to the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza:

As the conflict intensifies despite U.S. calls for restraint, the administration notified Congress on Thursday that it will provide $10 million to Palestinian groups in the West Bank and Gaza to support exchange and reconciliation projects with Israelis. The recipients of the aid were not named.

The State Department said Friday that the money is part of more than $100 million that the administration allocated to the Palestinians earlier this year, reversing a near total cutoff in support under former President Donald Trump.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden Runs Back Into His House and Slams the Door When Confronted by Journalist and Huge Digital Billboard By Debra Heine

Posted By on May 18th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/17/hunter-biden-runs-back-into-his-house-and-slams-the-door-when-confronted-by-journalist-and-huge-digital-billboard/

Although he has recently granted several softball interviews to friendly corporate media outlets as part of his tone-deaf rehabilitation book tour, Hunter Biden on Monday had no time for an independent journalist who had just a few simple questions to ask.

Hunter initially came down to answer the door when journalist and filmmaker Phelim McAleer showed up outside of his home in Venice, California, but as soon as he realized that McAleer was not a state-approved journalist, “he ran back inside his home and slammed the door,” according to McAleer’s website Unreported Stories.

To be fair, it’s possible that the giant mobile digital billboard McAleer brought with him spooked the scandal-plagued Biden back into his house.

The digital billboard truck was displayed a number questions that the rest of the media refuse to ask.

• Is his father Joe Biden “The Big Guy” who got a 10% cut from his business dealings as mentioned in emails on his laptop?

• Why was Hunter being paid $80,000 per month on the board of Bursima while he was a self-admitted  crack addict and an alcoholic?

• Did Hunter lie on his federal gun background check when he claimed he was not an unlawful user of drugs?

• Is the signature on the laptop receipt yours?

The digital billboard also highlighted a rare attempt by a media outlet to get answers from the younger Biden.

The Daily Beast apparently contacted Hunter’s Hollywood publicist Annett Wolf for a reaction to McElhinney and McAleer’s efforts, but the flack said her client had no comment.

“There’s nothing to respond to,” Wolf told the Daily Beast.

“Hunter, these allegations against you are very serious,” the billboard blared. “Do you really think they don’t warrant a comment?”