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Biden’s Stale Rerun Of That ’70s Inflation Show

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/13/bidens-stale-rerun-of-that-70s-inflation-show/

Among the young, hip, Woke crowd, faux-nostalgia for the fabulous 1970s is all the rage these days. Well, if it’s the ’70s they want, it’s the ’70s they’ll get. And good and hard, as the saying goes. Seen inflation lately?

April consumer price inflation surged 4.2% over the last 12 months, four times higher than expected. Core inflation, which strips out volatile prices for food and energy, posted its biggest monthly increase since 1981, for a gain of 3% over the last year and the biggest annual increase since 1996.

OK, our inflation is bad, but we’re not quite at 1970s levels yet. During that nasty decade the consumer price index averaged 7.25% annual growth.

Because of inflation, the ’70s are nothing to wax nostalgic about. Energy shortages, blocks-long lines at gas stations, soaring prices for homes, groceries, cars, and restaurant meals and everything in between made the decade a miserable one.

Surging prices decimated the stock market by cutting the real value of corporate earnings and capital gains, and pushed market-based interest rates for even credit-worthy borrowers to over 20%. Gold and other commodities prices soared as investors dumped financial assets in favor of hard, tangible goods. Real investment grinded to a halt. Unemployment rose along with prices, an ugly double-whammy.

Even worse, the ’70s were the decade that the big post World War II gains made by average workers came to a sudden and devastating halt.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Rashida Tlaib Falsely Charges ‘Settlers’ With Setting Fire to ‘Palestinian’ Land Once again Tlaib stokes the fires of Jew-hatred. T Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/rashida-tlaib-falsely-charges-settlers-setting-hugh-fitzgerald/

Rashida Tlaib (D-West Bank) has gone on a rampage again. She’s accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes” – so far so predictable, but now she’s added a new charge – that Israel has deliberately been setting fires to Palestinian land. A report on her latest outburst is here: “Top US Jewish Group Calls for Rashida Tlaib to Remove ‘Falsehood’ About Israelis Setting Fire to Palestinian Fields,” Algemeiner, May 6, 2021

A leading US Jewish group called on Congressman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) to remove a tweet that accused Israel of “apartheid” and “stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands” as she shared an account of Israelis setting fires to Palestinian fields that was retracted by the Israeli NGO that originated it.

“.@RashidaTlaib, you shared a falsehood about Israeli Jews setting fire to Palestinian fields. This ugly claim has been retracted. You’re a member of Congress. Take down your tweet. Or is it okay to perpetuate untruths when they fit your policy agenda?” the American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweeted Thursday.

On Wednesday, Tlaib retweeted an article about fires near the Palestinian village of Burin, drawing from a Palestinian media sources and a May 4 tweet by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem, which shared a photo of the flames and blamed Israeli “settlers.”

“Stealing Palestinian homes and burning their lands. The actions of an apartheid state. We cannot stand by and watch this happen,” Tlaib wrote, tagging the account of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Billions of US taxpayers dollars support Netanyahu’s government and this racist violence. We must condemn this swiftly.”

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden’s Handlers Get the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict They Wanted Once again, the Dems embolden – and enable – evil.

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bidens-handlers-get-israelipalestinian-conflict-robert-spencer/

On his new Save America website, former President Trump stated the obvious that the elites wish us to overlook: “When I was in office we were known as the Peace Presidency, because Israel’s adversaries knew that the United States stood strongly with Israel and there would be swift retribution if Israel was attacked. Under Biden, the world is getting more violent and more unstable because Biden’s weakness and lack of support for Israel is leading to new attacks on our allies.”

Weakness and lack of support for Israel, and open support for the Palestinian jihad. The Washington Free Beacon reported last March that “the Biden administration privately confirmed to Congress last week that the Palestinian Authority has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists but said the finding won’t impact its plans to restart funding.”

And it didn’t. Biden’s handlers gave $235 million to the Palestinians in April. So now you can see your taxpayer dollars at work, funding the bloody Palestinian jihad against Israel, thanks to Biden’s handlers. Meanwhile, in an example of a frequent leftist tactic, the complete inversion of reality, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) tweeted: “American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations. Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed. Statements aren’t working @SecBlinken. Enough is enough.” American taxpayer money is indeed being used to commit human rights violations, but not in the way Tlaib has in mind.

The kind of people that Tlaib and her colleagues in the American left are fronting for are epitomized by Hamas Political Bureau Member and former Minister of the Interior Fathi Hammad. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Hammad said on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV Friday: “People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels. With those five shekels, you will humiliate the Jewish state.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Blinken’s Non-Containment Policy Regarding China by Peter Schweizer

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17348/china-containment-policy

“Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and defend it.” — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 60 Minutes interview, May 2, 2021.

For American diplomacy, this is a significant admission that America no longer wants to lead the world, but instead gracefully back away as the world’s reigning superpower.

The Chinese communists in Beijing, however, are not known for either subtlety or nuance in how they handle their affairs in their own backyard. Where China is concerned, words and statements matter. Weakness displayed is weakness exploited.

To win the Cold War in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s genius was to go further than simple containment. Reagan believed a simple containment policy would always leave you on defense. He compared it to getting possession of the football and punting on first down.

So the leaders of the free world should not only be speaking – and acting – in opposition to China’s human rights abuses and expansionist, aggressive movements internationally. They should be attacking the worst, most vicious exponent of Leninism – the Chinese Communist Party – as the cause of the human rights problems and global instability that we see in the world.

It is by design and for keeps.

In various recent interviews, President Joe Biden and his top diplomat have tried to say they want China to follow “the rules” while it pushes past the United States as the dominant power in the world. That is the only way to see the signals they are sending to the Beijing regime.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Norah O’Donnell of CBS News’ 60 Minutes last week that the goal of the Biden administration was not to “contain” China, but to protect a “rules-based order” in international relations:

“Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and defend it.”

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Move the “Genocide Olympics” Out of China by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17334/china-genocide-olympics

The letter’s signatories remind the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee of their charter commitments and international obligations pertaining to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for Genocide.

“At least one million of these victims are incarcerated in scores of concentration camps, some replete with crematoria, where they are being brainwashed, raped, forcibly aborted and sterilized, tortured, organ-harvested and forced to perform slave labor. Is that acceptable to the U.S. Olympic Committee? Would your organization want to be associated with, let alone be seen as condoning, such barbaric behavior?” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games” signed by at least 115 human rights and faith organizations.

“[T]he PRC has given no indication that it will abandon the genocidal oppression of Uyghurs and others, let alone dismantle the massive infrastructure used for this purpose. Rather, the CCP will no doubt exploit the ‘Genocide Games’ as proof that the world is indifferent to, if not actually implicitly endorsing, its crimes against humanity.” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games.”

“Then there is the matter of the Chinese Communist Party’s involuntary extraction of vital organs. Eminent international human rights experts have found that forced organ harvesting is taking place in the PRC on an industrial scale. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of China’s own people, ethnic and religious minorities and prisoners of conscience have been murdered to profit the CCP. Is the U.S. Olympic Committee willing to associate with the perpetrators of these crimes?” — From the letter “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games.”

More than three million deaths worldwide have been caused by Communist China for failing to disclose, and even outright lying about, the human-to-human transmissibility of the Wuhan virus. Virtually every country has been victimized by what can only be regarded as Communist China’s mass murder. So why should nearly 200 countries reward China with the economic bonanza and implicit legitimacy that hosting the 2022 winter Olympics would confer?

All the countries crushed both by deaths caused by Communist China’s conscious export of its virus and the economic devastation that followed need to make sure that instead of being enriched and celebrated, Communist China should be held to account — at the very least by being invoiced for the damage it caused and removed from hosting the Olympic games.

Human rights and faith groups — such as the Committee on the Present Danger: China’s Captive Nations Coalition, Women’s Rights without Frontiers, and Save the Persecuted Christians — have requested in an open letter to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) that the 2022 Winter Olympics be moved out of China because of its genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang and severe oppression of its other citizens. The letter’s 108 signatories remind the USOPC and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of their charter commitments and international obligations pertaining to the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for Genocide. The letter entitled “Stop the 2022 Genocide Games” said, in part:

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Miscalculations Have Led to a New War Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2021/05/12/palestinian-miscalculations-have

Things tend to run together in the Middle East. Right now, Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinian elections, the Hamas-Fatah civil war, the Abraham Accords, U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Iran sanctions, Jerusalem Day, the Meron tragedy, Israel’s electoral issues and American money and diplomacy are all tangled.

If you aren’t willing to untangle them, it’s probably a good idea not to say much, whether you are the Biden administration, a member of Congress or just a journalist attuned to press releases that suit your vision.

Sheikh Jarrah is not the issue, and the underlying land is not “Palestinian.” It was purchased by Jews from Ottoman authorities in the 19th century and was taken from its owners when Jordan illegally occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948. The Jordanian government’s “Custodian of Enemy Property” took possession, and the Jewish owners reclaimed it by title after 1967. The current lawsuits are between “the owners holding Israeli title and trespassers, squatters and overstaying tenants whose residency began between 20 and 70 years ago.” A final hearing has been postponed because of the violence, but in any event, the Israeli government is not involved and is not expelling Palestinians from “their property.”

So, why now?

Enter the Biden administration. Unable to openly “diss” the Trump administration’s key policy changes or the Abraham Accords, the State Department needed a Palestinian-oriented success to turn Israel’s regional positives into negatives. This was not necessarily intended to result in the horrific violence that it did in fact engender, but was rather intended to lessen Israel’s value as an ally for the U.S. and the Gulf States while Biden simultaneously pursued diplomacy with Iran.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A look back at the first disastrous ‘two-state solution’ Victor Sharpe

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/210512

“It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.”

In the 11th hour and 59th minute of his last term in the White House, Barack Hussein Obama struck his knife deep into the heart of the embattled Jewish state.

With the appalling anti-Israel passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, engineered by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry on December 23, 2016, the blame for the Israel-Palestinian conflict was falsely imparted upon the easy target: Israel and the so-called “settlements.”

There were no “settlements” before the June, 1967 Six-Day War, when the Jewish state survived yet another Arab war of genocide launched against it and freed the embattled nation from the existing 1947 nine to fifteen mile-wide armistice lines, which Israel’s earlier minister of foreign affairs, Abba Eban, appropriately called the Auschwitz lines. These were the lines that existed after the fledgling Israeli forces in 1948 had pushed back the invading Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Lebanese armies.

It is not from 1947 or 1967 that the relentless aggression against Israel by the Arab and Muslim world and the so-called Palestinians began. To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the ending of the 400 year old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Bad Optics of Fighting for Your Life When it comes to Israel, memes have replaced morality. Bari Weiss

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-bad-optics-of-fighting-for-your?token=eyJ1c2Vy

I am weeping.

It appears that standing up for the right of innocent people to protect themselves from a genocidal terrorist organization has become extremely risky to one’s “brand.” And so lies have replaced truth. Memes have replaced morality. Hashtags have replaced history.

I’m speaking, of course, about Israel. 

In the past 48 hours, according to the Israel Defense Forces, more than 1,500 rockets have rained down on Israeli cities. Those rockets are being launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and by Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since Israel unilaterally withdrew from it and forcibly evacuated every last Jewish resident from  the territory in 2005.

Israelis have gotten used to living life in a kind of perpetual war. On Tuesday, Nellie was on a call with a journalist in Tel Aviv who abruptly hung up because the sirens started wailing. A friend sent a photo of his mother crouched in a bomb shelter. All ok, he said. Friends across the country told me about huddling with their crying children in safe rooms. It’s fine, they insisted.

But living like this is not fine:

Israel Under Fire @israelunderfire
Moments of horror in Israel. A rocket hits directly an Israeli bus. #IsraelUnderFire #IsraelUnderAttack

May 11th 2021

15 Retweets21 Likes

It will never be fine to have children killed by terrorists whose explicit aim is to kill them:

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120 Retired US Military Officers Warn of Conflict Between Marxism, ‘Constitutional Freedom’

Posted By on May 13th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/120-retired-generals-military-officers-sign-letter-warning-of-conflict-between

BY JACK PHILLIPS

More than 120 retired U.S. generals and admirals signed an open letter warning that the United States is embroiled in an existential fight and urged “all citizens” to get involved in local and state politics.

“We are in a fight for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776. The conflict is between supporters of Socialism and Marxism vs. supporters of Constitutional freedom and liberty,” states the letter (pdf), which was signed by 124 former military leaders, released by “Flag Officers 4 America.”

The letter also posited that opposition to proposed bills and laws that would strengthen election initiatives has troublesome implications.

“Election integrity demands insuring there is one legal vote cast and counted per citizen. Legal votes are identified by State Legislature’s approved controls using government IDs, verified signatures, etc. Today, many are calling such commonsense controls ‘racist’ in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections,” the letter states.

According to the Flag Officers 4 America website, it’s a group of former military leaders who “pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies,” whether “domestic” or “foreign.”

Of note, signatories of the letter include retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc—a Senate candidate in New Hampshire, retired Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, and retired Vice Adm. John Poindexter—who was the deputy national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

“China is the greatest external threat to America. Establishing cooperative relations with the Chinese Communist Party emboldens them to continue progress toward world domination, militarily, economically, politically, and technologically. We must impose more sanctions and restrictions to impede their world domination goal and protect America’s interests,” the letter says.

Other threats they listed include the United States reentering the Iran nuclear deal, illegal immigration, and the stoppage of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. President Joe Biden issued an order halting the pipeline project early in his presidency.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No, a four-year-old girl is not ‘really’ a boy Adults need to stop inflicting trans ideology on small children. Joe Bartoch

Posted By on May 12th, 2021

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/11/no-a-four-year-old-girl-is-not-really

Stormy is a four-year-old female child whose parents believe she is a transgender boy. They believe this because Stormy has expressed the belief that she has a masculine gender identity. The media loves a sensational trans story (guilty), and, as the parents of what might be Britain’s youngest ‘trans’ tot, Stormy’s mum and dad duly received their 15 minutes on the sofa of This Morning this week.

Daytime television isn’t known for intellectual rigour, but it would have been fair to expect a little journalistic curiosity. Instead, head gently titled, Holly Willoughby oozed sympathy, stating with surprising confidence: ‘As a society we tend to want to put people into a girl or a boy box that just fits with what we know. It makes sense, it makes us feel comfortable, but that’s not reality.’

In saying this, not only did Willoughby demonstrate an alarming level of credulity — she also entirely missed the obvious point. Stormy could be a little girl living outside of the ‘girl’ box. She could have short hair, wear trousers and like firefighters, while still being female. Instead, Stormy’s parents have opted to put their female child in the box marked ‘boy’, because it seems it is still considered shameful to have a child who does not conform. There is nothing progressive about this. It is informed by what was once known as sexism.

The idea of trans children ought to make any right-thinking person wince. Only a decade ago, someone who sought to change his or her sex was referred to as a ‘transexual’, and someone who wore clothes associated with the opposite sex was referred to as a ‘transvestite’. Stripped of the sexual connotations, the words ‘trans’ and ‘transgender’ emerged. This happened at around the same time as the medical profession began treating children with gender dysphoria as if it were their bodies, not their minds, that needed fixing. The rebranding of what used to be regarded as an adult psycho-sexual disorder has created a new concept – the ‘transgender child’.