ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu still waiting for Biden’s phone call:Ben Caspit

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2021/02/israel-us-iran-joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-anthony-blinken.html

The fact that US President Joe Biden is taking his time in calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the fact that he did not refer to Israel or to the Iranian threat in his first foreign policy speech, deeply worries Jerusalem.

As of this morning, Feb. 5, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to bite his nails as he waits by the phone for a long-anticipated call from the White House. Just as Netanyahu took his time congratulating US President-elect Joe Biden on his election victory over President Donald Trump in November, so now-President Biden is taking his time getting back to him. This would never have happened with Trump. Phoning Netanyahu was at the top of his to-do list when he took office in 2017. Four years later, Netanyahu has been relegated to the sidelines. The cushioned, pampered Trump protege finds himself being punished, sent to stand in the corner.

“This may not be deliberate,” an Israeli diplomatic source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “The Americans are not really focused right now on Netanyahu and his business; they have other things to deal with. Maybe Biden just doesn’t feel like handing Netanyahu an electoral advantage on the eve of Israel’s elections. After all, Biden is fully aware of who he is dealing with and knows how Netanyahu’s office will spin the first phone call between them.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Impeachment Impossibility. By James Sieja

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/02/06/impeachment_impossibility_145193.html

“Ultimately, the Senate can exercise its clear jurisdiction to hear the case, complete with senatorial bloviations, and lawyerly dodges. But, if the outcome is anything other than the status quo ante, meaning Trump remains eligible for the presidency in the future, the Senate will deal a grave blow to not just the Constitution but to every member of We the People who thinks they still have a choice.”

Perhaps they are thinking about the next election or their political legacies, but Democrats and some Republicans intent on impeaching and convicting former President Donald Trump are not reading the Constitution correctly. 

When the Senate trial begins Monday, there will be lots of grandstanding and lawyerly pettifogging, and we will find out if Democrats can convince 17 Republicans that they need to convict the former president. 

Fortunately, I don’t think they’ll succeed. I say fortunately because impeaching Trump would be wrong, constitutionally speaking. 

Forty-five Republicans recently voted that this second Trump impeachment trial is in itself unconstitutional. They are incorrect. 

The bipartisan group of 55 senators who voted to proceed to the trial think that the Senate can apply a sanction after conviction. Constitutionally, they’re wrong, too. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When the White House can’t handle the truth by Byron York

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-when-the-white-house-cant-handle-the-truth

On January 21, President Biden’s first full day in office, White House press secretary Jen Psaki began her briefing with this: “When the president asked me to serve in this role, we talked about the importance of bringing truth and transparency back to the briefing room.” Now, the administration’s position on opening schools shut by COVID lockdowns is testing that pledge.

Psaki’s problem started on Wednesday, when the White House COVID Response Team held a teleconference for the press. Among the group was Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the president’s new choice to head the Centers for Disease Control. A reporter asked Walensky about the CDC’s priorities for vaccination, and in particular whether “the federal government would be working more closely with states to kind of get more vaccinations to teachers in particular so that schools can reopen in the fall.”

Walensky said that a group inside the CDC, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, had created a priority list for those receiving vaccinations. In December, the committee included teachers in what was called the 1b category, meaning they would be among those who should be next in line. But that wasn’t law — it was the CDC’s guidance for states to follow, or not to follow.

“We’ve left that to the states to manage,” Walensky explained, “in terms of recognizing the prioritization of ACIP, but also manage at their own local level.”

And then: “That said, I want to be very clear about schools, which is: Yes, ACIP has put teachers in the 1b category, the category of essential workers. But I also want to be clear that there is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated in order to reopen safely. So while we are implementing the criteria of the Advisory Committee and of the state and local guidances to get vaccination across these eligible communities, I would also say that safe reopening of schools is not — that vaccination of teachers is not a prerequisite for safe reopening of schools.”

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

Needed More Than Double-Masking, A Muzzle for Dr. Anthony Fauci By Judi McLeod

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://canadafreepress.com/article/needed-more-than-double-masking-a-muzzle-fo

Ever-yakking publicity hound Dr. Anthony Fauci—“chief medical advisor to President Biden”—is now saying that it makes common sense that “two masks” are likely  more effective.

We say in this era of Fear Mongering in the Time of Coronavirus, a muzzle is needed for limelight hog Dr. Fauci.

While he’s out there pontificating about the necessity for double masking, school children cut off for nearly a year from the mental stimulation of in-person schooling and their school day peers, are taking their own lives through heartbreakingly tragic suicide.

Surely, enough is enough, Dr. Fauci!

“Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Biden, appeared to support the idea of “double-masking,” or wearing two masks at once, during a Monday appearance on TODAY, telling anchor Savannah Guthrie that it “just makes common sense that it would likely be more effective.” (Breitbart, Jan. 25, 2021)

“A lot of folks are hearing now about double-masking — wearing two masks or try[ing] to get one of those N95 medical-grade masks. Do you believe that’s advisable and makes a difference?” Guthrie asked the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Sydney Williams :Burrowing into Books “A Woman of No Importance,” Sonia Purnel

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

“‘There are endless nightmares of uncertainty,’ explained one. ‘The tensions,the nerve strain and fatigue, the all-demanding alertness of living a lie, these are [the agent’s]to meet, accept and control. They are never really conquered.’”

Quote from a former member of the SOE in war-torn France Sonia Purnell                                                                                             

Besides being a gripping tale of the Resistance in France during the Second World War, this is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman, with an artificial leg, who operated behind enemy lines at a time when being a female in a combat zone was unusual, let alone one who was disabled. “If caught,” Ms. Purnell writes, “women were…subjected to the worst forms of torture the depraved Nazi mind-set could devise.”

Virginia Hall was the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore banker and a social-climbing mother. She was born in 1906 and like her mother was ambitious but directed her ambition “toward a career and exploring the world rather than bagging a feckless husband.” At age twenty, after one year at Radcliffe and one at Barnard, she moved to Paris and enrolled in the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. She spent three years in Europe, becoming fluent in French, German, Spanish and Italian. She came home and joined the State Department as a clerk. In 1931, she returned to Europe, working for State in Poland and Turkey. An accident in the fall of 1933, while on a hunting trip near the Aegean Sea, caused her to shoot herself in her left foot. Fearful of gangrene, doctors in Turkey amputated the leg below the knee.

In the spring of 1934, she was back in Maryland. Two years later, she rejoined the State Department and returned to Europe. With the Continent spinning toward war, she worked in Vienna. “Pigeonholed as a disabled woman of no importance, she resigned from the State Department in March 1939.” In February 1940, she joined the French 9th Artillery Regiment as an ambulance driver. In June 1941, when France was overrun, she returned to London and enlisted in the newly formed SOE (Special Operations Executive). By early September 1941 she was a spy in Lyon, France. She had found her métier.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s Magical Mystery Energy Plans By Gamaliel Isaac

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/bidens_magical_mystery_energy_plans.html

Days after eliminating tens of thousands of jobs by terminating the Keystone Pipeline and halting drilling on Federal Lands, Joe Biden gave a speech in which he said “Today is ‘Climate Day’ at the White House and — which means that today is ‘Jobs Day’ at the White House.’” He explained that he would hire Americans to modernize the infrastructure so that it can withstand the increase in hurricanes resulting from global warming. As is true for all of his climate policies, this is delusional.

Increased hurricanes resulting from global warming? In the 51 years from 1915, 19 major hurricanes hit the Atlantic coast; in the 51 years to 2016, just seven did. In the last 11 years, only two hurricanes greater than category three hit the continental USA — a record low since 1900. From 1915 to 1926, 12 hit.

Biden said his administration would hire people to transform the American electrical sector to produce power without carbon pollution and provide rebates so that Americans would buy electric cars. He said jobs would be created for Americans to build electric charging stations all over the country. He plans to replace with electricity all the energy we get from gas.

Where is all that electricity going to come from? In the same speech, he answered that question. He said: “We’re going to take money and invest it in clean energy jobs in America — millions of jobs in wind, solar, and carbon capture” and “We need solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s 24-Carat Hero Michael Galak

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/02/alexei-navalny-russias-24-carat-hero/

For those of us who had the misfortune to be born in the former USSR, the recent happenings in Russia are as fascinating as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Warsaw  Pact and the regained independence of the USSR’s peripheral republics. Today, watching the TV footage of defiant and mostly young Russians turning out to protest the Putin regime and be arrested in their thousands, one cannot help but feel admiration for their bravery, sympathy for their cause and a deep chill at the thought of what might happen next.

That so many Russians have taken so eagerly to the streets, not only in Moscow but in regional centres across the country, braving bitter cold and a threat of violence by the hated siloviki militarised police, is unprecedented. Their movement’s leader and inspiration, Alexei Navalny, has just been sentenced to three-plus years on the most ridiculous of trumped-up charges. He was denied the help of a lawyer, and his supporters are being similarly treated — arrested in daily tranches for the threat their demands for democracy and reform pose to the regime. Of the matters on Vladimir Putin’s mind, the challenge Mr Navalny represents must right now be foremost. When more than 150,000 protesters fill Moscow’s streets, braving tear gas, water cannons and truncheons, the man who inspires such courage must be taken seriously.

Immediately upon his January 17 return to Russia from a Berlin clinic, where he was recovering after Putin’s henchmen almost succeeded in assassinating him with the Novichok poison, Navalny was dragged before a kangaroo court which ordered him detained him for 30 days pending trial for allegedly violating the parole terms associated with the suspended sentence he received in 2014 after being framed on charges of fraud.  That conviction, assailed by the European Court of Human Rights as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”, saw him denied a lawyer’s presence in court. Nor were members of the foreign and non-state media allowed to observe Putin’s version of ‘justice’ in action. Early in February, Navalny was hauled before one of Putin’s hack judges court, convicted and sentenced. Given that he is in custody, and in the light of the failed attempt on his life, the gravest fears must be held for his survival.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Tyrannical Left’s Sinister Conspiracy to Silence Conservatives By David Limbaugh

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-limbaugh/2021/02/05/the-tyrannical-lefts-sinister-conspiracy-to-silence-conservatives-n1423575

Why does the left want to silence conservatives? Why do rank-and-file Democrats go along with this abomination? Leftists have bad intentions, but how about the Democrats who enable them? I prefer to think they’re being manipulated.

As worried as we should be about the hyper-exploding national debt and our inevitable fiscal catastrophe, I am even more worried about the left’s success in turning America into a police state (ironic, given its simultaneous war on the police).

People still able to summon their rational faculties during this pandemic have to be concerned about this insane, concerted effort to control people’s thoughts and speech. How can those who purport to rage against the fascism of former President Donald Trump, which was an abject Democratic and media myth, promote actual fascism in our culture?

It strains the mind to imagine that fair people can deceive themselves into believing that silencing and canceling people for “offensive” views is consistent with our liberty tradition. Some rationalize that because government is not the moving agency in this censorship, and because the Constitution only restricts state action, not that of private entities, there is no violation of our constitutional principles.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Sex on the (Washed-Out) Brain By David Solway

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/02/05/sex-on-the-washed-out-brain-n1423480

What we are observing in our feminized and “socially correct” culture today is a prurient obsession with sex—in particular, an inverse preoccupation with matters sexual, as if exemplifying the puritanical perversity of condemning that which one secretly desires. It’s as if we are now living in some febrile Na’vi world, our progressivist reformers having embarked on a vendetta against sexual desire and romantic love as felt and practiced by normal men and women. Jakob Burckhardt’s “terrible simplifcateurs” and concupiscent apologists proliferate among us in their myriads.

In Canada, for example, implied consent has not been a defense for sexual assault since the 1999 Supreme Court of Canada case of R v Ewanchuk, when the court unanimously ruled that consent has to be explicit, instead of merely “implied.” That’s a decision that serves to take the fun out of sex, turning it into a kind of mechanical transaction in order to prevent what official society regards as a rape epidemic devastating the country, the culture, the campus, the marital household. The statistics cited are always inflated—on the order of one in four or five women will be raped in their lifetimes—which is intended to buttress an ideological imperative and which every sane person knows is utter nonsense. 

Not to be outdone, according to M&F magazine Dr. Ava Cadell warns that the words ‘no’ and ‘stop’ “have been used frivolously, playfully, and teasingly in the past and are not always taken seriously.” Therefore, women in sexual encounters should inform their partners that they will use code expressions like ‘Code Red’ or other safe words to stop the sexual process in its tracks. Cadell and other “professionals” offer “sexual consent forms” and “consent kits” which can be signed before sex, like a blizzard of pre-nups, or carried in one’s purse like pepper spray. 

MEDIA Comments turned off

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Paints Trump Supporters as Domestic Terrorists; Points Out That Americans Were Droned During GWOT By Debra Heine

Posted By on February 6th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/05/msnbcs-nicolle-wallace-paints-trump-supporters-as-domestic-terrorists-points-out-that-americans-were-droned-during-gwot/

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace on Friday likened President Trump and millions of his supporters to domestic terrorists while fondly reminiscing about the days when American citizens overseas were killed by drone strikes during the global war on terror.

Wallace, who served the Bush White House as Communications Director in 2005 and 2006, made the comments during an MSNBC panel discussion about the impeachment trial of former president Trump.

Wallace described the widely held beliefs that the 2020 election was rigged and that draconian Covid restrictions are unnecessary, as “ideologies” that incite domestic terrorism.

“There is until the end of April a persistent threat of domestic extremism,” Wallace said. “Domestic terrorism carried out in the ideology of and around this belief that the election was fraudulent, that the Covid restrictions are unnecessary—all of those ideologies pushed by Donald Trump.”

Wallace brought up the Bush/Obama era policy of droning suspected terrorists overseas, which she described as “attacking terrorism at its root.”