ISRAEL Comments turned off

Gideon Sa’ar and another referendum on Netanyahu Ruthie Blum

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/gideon-saar-and-another-referendum-on-netanyahu

All of the details surrounding the campaign, which will be shifting regularly during the coming weeks, are secondary to the big picture that’s gotten lost in the fray.
After the Knesset voted last week to dissolve itself and set a date for what will amount to the fourth election in less than two years, the political echelon went into a customary flurry of behind-the-scenes activity. Most of the bustle has been focused on unseating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yesh Atid-Telem MK Moshe Ya’alon was the first to declare his intention to establish his own list to run in the next election. In an interview with Channel 12 last Friday, he said that former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot was likely to join his party – as number two, of course. Eisenkot promptly denied it.

Then came MK Gideon Sa’ar’s dramatic announcement on Tuesday that he was quitting Likud to establish his own party. Reminding the public about his unsuccessful attempt a year ago to replace Netanyahu as head of Likud, he went on the say that everything disastrous that has happened in the country since then underscores just how necessary it was for him to have tried.

Sa’ar further stated that it was a painful decision for him to leave Likud, of which he has been a loyal member throughout his career. However, he said, the character of the party he once loved so dearly “dramatically changed” and strayed far from its origins.

“The movement became a tool serving the personal interests of its leader, including those relating to his criminal trial,” said Sa’ar, who formally resigned from the party and the Knesset on Wednesday morning. “Replacing Netanyahu is the order of the hour.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Book Review: “From Left to Right” — The Story of Holocaust Historian Lucy S. Dawidowicz By Helen Epstein

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://artsfuse.org/217348/book-review-from-left-to-right-the-story-of-holocaust-historian-lucy-s-dawidowicz/

This biography of Lucy S. Dawidowicz performs the invaluable function of gathering relevant documents and drafting a narrative that rescues a fascinating historian from oblivion. But it does not add much to the history of the New York intellectuals.

From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History by Nancy Sinkoff. Wayne State University Press, 538 pp., $34.99.

There were several reasons I wanted to read a biography of historian and public intellectual Lucy S. Dawidowicz (1915-1990). First, From Left to Right is yet another piece of the extensive feminist project of writing overlooked women back into history. Set mainly in 20th-century Manhattan among the New York Jews who then dominated its intellectual life, From Left to Right foregrounds a wren against a background of peacocks such as Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Clement Greenberg, Meyer Schapiro, Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz — all male, with the notable exceptions of the formidable Hannah Arendt and Diana Trilling.

I was also interested in many particular facets of Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s life. As a girl, Lucy Schildkret was a graduate, like Cynthia Ozick and Hortense Calisher (and later Elena Kagan and Avril Haines), of Hunter College High School — the only American public school for intellectually gifted girls. After school, she pursued a Yiddish-language education at the secular nonpolitically-affiliated Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute. She graduated from Hunter College in 1936 and began a Master’s program in English literature at Columbia University, but dropped out after two weeks. She eventually obtained a Master’s in history but not a PhD.

Like many other intellectually gifted women of her generation, Dawidowicz would spend far too many years — the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s — working out of public view as a secretary, translator, or researcher for men whose publications rarely acknowledged her in print. Finally, in 1967, at the age of 52, she published her own book, a massive anthology of primary sources titled The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, and was hired to teach at Yeshiva University’s all-female Stern College, where she created one of the first courses in what is now called Holocaust Studies.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Essence Of Progressivism Is Refusal To Deal With RealityFrancis Menton

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c

Reality is harsh. Let’s face it, our world is imperfect, often even deadly. Not only that, it’s always going to be imperfect. So let’s get to work on enjoying our brief lives as best we can amidst the imperfection, while striving for such incremental improvements to the world as are within our modest capabilities.

If you think that way, you definitely are not “woke.” To be a woke progressive the first requirement is that you must refuse to acknowledge the real world as it exists. You must pretend that the world is something else, something immediately transformable into a fantasy of perfection through coercive collective action. You also must firmly close your eyes to any facts or evidence that might contradict such progressive fantasy, and indeed you must demand that any such facts or evidence be suppressed and never mentioned.

Among numerous illustrations of this point, perhaps the most striking is the current hysteria sometimes going by the name “anti-racism.” Here, the official progressive fantasy is that any under-representation of blacks (or other minority group of your choice) at designated heights of society can only be the result of “systemic racism.” Therefore all must commit to the coerced program of “anti-racism,” whereupon, I presume, perfection will promptly be achieved.

Over the past several months, you cannot have missed the parade of major societal institutions — large corporations, banks, law firms, universities, and so on — caught with insufficient numbers of minorities in their ranks and pledging to rectify the situation immediately if not sooner.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

100 House Republicans sign brief backing Texas lawsuit challenging election results By Juliegrace Brufke and Scott Wong

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/529717-100-house-republicans-sign-brief-backing-texas-suit-challenging-election

More than 100 House Republicans on Thursday signed onto an amicus brief in support of the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning the election results in four swing states — Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that handed Democrat Joe Biden the White House.

“This brief presents [our] concern as Members of Congress, shared by untold millions of their constituents, that the unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome and the integrity of the American system of elections,” states the brief from GOP lawmakers.

Outgoing Republican Study Committee Chairman Mike Johnson (R-La.) — one of President Trump’s closest allies in the House, having served on his impeachment defense team — helped lead the effort to garner support from his GOP colleagues on the brief. 

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), another top Trump ally, was not among the signatories.

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

HUGE: After 4 Years of Stonewalling Corrupt FBI Finally Admits They’re Holding Seth Rich’s Laptop By Larry Johnson

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/huge-4-years-stonewalling-corrupt-fbi-finally-admits-holding-seth-richs-laptop/?utm_source=

A stunning development on the legal front that directly impacts the so-called conspiracy theory that the death of Seth Rich was something more than routine street crime. The FBI now admits it has Seth Rich’s laptop. This information has just been posted on Lawflog.com courtesy of Ty Clevenger.

According to an email posted at Lawflog.com and sent to attorney Ty Clevenger, the attorney for the FBI now admits that the:

FBI has completed the initial search identifying approximately 50 cross-reference serials, with attachments totaling over 20,000 pages, in which Seth Rich is mentioned.  FBI has also located leads that indicate additional potential records that require further searching. . . . FBI is also currently working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed. As you can imagine, there are thousands of files of many types. The goal right now is to describe, generally, the types of files/personal information contained in this computer.

After more than four years of repeated denials from the FBI that they had searched their files and had no information on Seth Rich, we now know that was a blatant lie. It was David Hardy, a FBI Senior official, who put that denial in writing in September 2017. Hardy was the Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section (“RIDS”), Information Management Division (“IMD”),1 Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), in Winchester, Virginia. He stated under oath that the FBI had no records on Seth Rich:

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Hunter Becomes the Hunted Roger Kimball

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://spectator.us/hunter-biden-tax-investigation/?

Grifter, Sr. and Grifter, Jr.

Are the chickens coming home for Hunter Biden? It certainly seems so, though experts differ on the critical question of whether they are coming home to roost or roast. Wednesday’s news, splashed via an official communiqué from his father’s transition operation, that Hunter is being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for possible tax fraud makes me want to bet for ‘roast’ not ‘roost’.

Here’s Hunter’s statement from Wednesday, in full:

‘I learned yesterday for the first time that the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware advised my legal counsel, also yesterday, that they are investigating my tax affairs. I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.’

When you stop chuckling, get a load the codicil from the ‘Biden-Harris Transition’ (‘transition’ to what is not specified). ‘President-elect Biden is deeply proud of his son, who has fought through difficult challenges, including the vicious personal attacks of recent months, only to emerge stronger.’

How do you spell ‘non-sequitur’?

Please note that either Hunter or his father (or, to be more accurate, the people who write their copy) thought that ‘tax affairs’ sounded nicer than, say, ‘tax fraud’. But a truly fastidious person, canvassing Hunter’s randy romantic life — sleeping with his brother’s widow, for example — might lead them to choose a different word.

But nearly everyone who has reported on the investigation has cut to the chase and used ‘fraud’ so I followed suit, even though the echo of ‘voter fraud’, much on the nation’s mind at the moment, is inescapable.

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden news embarrasses media defenders by Byron York

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-hunter-biden-news-embarrasses-media-defenders

Late Wednesday afternoon, Hunter Biden announced that he is under investigation by the U.S. Attorney in Delaware. “They are investigating my tax affairs,” Biden wrote, adding that he is confident a “professional and objective” investigation will clear him. For his part, Biden’s father, President-elect Joe Biden, released a statement through his transition office decrying the “vicious personal attacks” on his son in recent years.

Several hours later, Politico reported that the investigation “has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates,” to include “potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties.” The New York Times reported that the money laundering part “failed to gain traction after FBI agents were unable to gather enough evidence for a prosecution.”

The investigation apparently began in 2018 and remained a secret until this week. Besides raising questions about Hunter Biden’s conduct — it’s not surprising that taxes are an issue for a person who has gotten large sums of foreign money under suspicious circumstances — it also raises questions about the politics and media coverage of the president-elect’s son.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Texas to the Rescue? Douglas Andrews

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://patriotpost.us/articles/76332-texas-to-the-rescue-2020-12-09

The Lone Star State’s attorney general has filed a different kind of election suit with the Supreme Court.

If President Donald Trump isn’t jetting off to Mar-a-Lago on January 20, he may well have Ken Paxton to thank for it. Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, filed a pleading with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a way that’s attracted the attention of some pretty astute legal minds.

Essentially, Texas is arguing that the electoral processes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were unconstitutional, and that the results in those states should be negated. And because this is a lawsuit between states, the Supreme Court has original and exclusive jurisdiction.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker calls it a “Hail Mary,” but anyone who follows football knows that a successful Hail Mary isn’t nearly as far-fetched as, say, an incoherent and utterly uninspiring presidential candidate getting millions more population-adjusted votes than the most appealing and charismatic candidate in modern history.

As Hinderaker writes, “The Texas motion and supporting brief are well-drafted and make a plausible case — importantly, one that, if accepted, does not require extensive fact-finding into alleged voter fraud. Reduced to its essentials, the motion alleges 1) that under the Constitution’s Electors Clause, state legislatures have plenary authority over appointment of each state’s electors; 2) that in each of the defendant states, non-legislative actors (e.g., the Secretary of State) unconstitutionally changed the rules governing this year’s election without legislative approval or ratification; 3) that these changes favored some voters over others, in violation of the [Constitution’s] Equal Protection Clause; and 4) in each state, the number of ballots that were counted pursuant to unconstitutional changes in election procedures exceeds the margin of Joe Biden’s alleged victory.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

NYT Op-Ed Writer: Why Did So Many Americans Vote for Donald Trump Again? Matt Vespa Matt Vespa

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/12/09/nyt-oped-writer-why-did-so-many-americans-vote-for-donald-trump-again-n2581308

Democrats may be glad that Joe Biden appears to be on the cusp of officially clinching the presidency, but there’s a bit of confusion as well. Folks, the Trump campaign and its allies have yet to secure a decisive court win to continue their fight in exposing the mountain of voter fraud allegations. It’s a high bar concerning proving such fraud was so rampant and systemic that ballots should be tossed. It’s not in the cards right now. So, as Joe Biden picks his nominees for cabinet positions, hordes of liberals are celebrating, but there are some who know this really wasn’t the win they were looking for; they wanted a blue wave to crush Trumpism. Instead, Trumpism is here to stay. Donald Trump secured the most votes for re-election for an incumbent president in American history. Democrats weren’t able to retake key state legislatures which means the GOP still controls the lion’s share of mapping those congressional districts. Democrats lost seats in the House; it will be their smallest majority since the New Deal. And if things go well in the Georgia runoffs and the GOP retains the Senate, not much is going to happen for the Biden presidency.

I didn’t want this. I wanted Trump to crush Biden and perhaps if he just let the former VP hang himself with his own words in the first debate, things could have been different. Yet, a New York Times op-ed wonders why so many people voted for Trump. Here were the reasons he offered, while also giving a slight warning to the progressive left towards the end (via NYT):

Democrats, struggling to make sense of it all, are locked in yet another round of mutual recrimination: They were either too progressive for swing voters — too socialist or aggressive with ambitious policies like the Green New Deal — or not progressive enough to inspire potential Democratic voters to show up or cross over.

HOMELAND SECURITY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chinese Military Bases in The Caribbean? by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on December 10th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16813/china-military-caribbean

China also seems to have a military agenda in the Caribbean region… Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe already is on record expressing China’s willingness to deepen military cooperation with Caribbean countries.

Of more concern to US security interests is the ongoing seaport expansion project in the already commercially important port at Kingston, Jamaica, as well as the port at Freeport, Bahamas, China’s possible new base of operations 90 miles off the US coast.

China is clearly not a government that honors its agreements…. The US can ill afford any Chinese drive to place under threat any Western Hemisphere country, much less the United States.

China’s Communist Party (CCP) seems to be implementing a multidimensional strategy in the Caribbean, reaping economic, political and potentially military gains a few miles offshore the United States. China’s ultimate objective of its Caribbean strategy may well be to confront the US, not only with its presence near the mainland US, but also with a situation analogous to America’s military presence in the region of the South China Sea. There, China created new islands in the sea, pledged not to militarize them, then went and militarized them.

It is important to remember that China also promised Hong Kong autonomy until 2047, then, in 2020, jumped the gun by 27 years. “Hong Kong will be another communist-run city under China’s strict control,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared in July. China is clearly not a government that honors its agreements.