ISRAEL Comments turned off

Demystifying Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge Shoshana Bryen •

Posted By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/authors/shoshana-bryen/

The cornerstone of America’s security commitment to Israel, since the administration of Lyndon Johnson, has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its Qualitative Military Edge (QME). This is “Israel’s ability to counter and defeat credible military threats from any individual state, coalition of states, or non-state actor, while sustaining minimal damages or casualties.” This commitment and the language were written into law in 2008 and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of America’s promise.

So, what happens when the United States agrees to sell the F-35 jet fighter – the most sophisticated plane in our arsenal – to the United Arab Emirates after UAE establishes relations with Israel? Is UAE permanently out of the group of “individual states or coalition of states” that QME refers to? Can other states get out?

Following the announcement, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Israel has no power to prevent U.S. sales of advanced weaponry to the Gulf states. Steinitz, in an interview, explained that if countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia “want it and are willing to pay, no doubt that sooner or later they’ll get” the aircraft and other weapons systems.  

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Woke Universities Lead America to a Primitive State Higher education now stands for mob rule, civic ignorance and contempt for truth and free inquiry. By John M. Ellis

Posted By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-universities-lead-america-to-a-primitive-state-11604359918?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

In this election season it’s almost impossible to find pro-Trump bumper stickers or signs anywhere in my town. The reason is not lack of support but fear of vandalism, or worse: People nationwide have been physically assaulted and even threatened with loss of their livelihoods for no other reason than that they plan to vote as one half of the country does, and political goals are now commonly pursued by violent means. With this our civilization seems to be regressing to a more primitive stage of its development—a time when disputes were settled by force instead of rules, and before the First Amendment guaranteed the right to speak freely on the social and political issues of the day.

That’s bad enough in itself, but worse yet is that this social regression began on college campuses, of all places, before spreading to the national culture. On one-party campuses, radical-left faculty have established a political orthodoxy that student mobs enforce, and the political culture of the nation is poisoned as those students take home with them their professors’ habit of seeing opinions that differ from theirs as an evil not to be tolerated.

The left-wing political orthodoxy is also taking the place of traditional civics. Recent graduates know much less about U.S. government than older Americans do. In 2018 the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation gave a sample of Americans a test based on the exam for U.S. citizenship. Only 19% of people under 45 passed, while 74% of those over 65 did, meaning even elderly people who learned the material more than 40 years ago can summon it from memory better than recent grads. Similar studies have found a regression in knowledge of U.S. history. Today’s universities are presiding over a nationwide reversion to civic illiteracy. That’s a disaster for the country, but it suits campus radicals. A well-informed citizenry would hardly wish to be governed by people whose ideological kin have reduced so many countries to economic and political deserts.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Covid Hospital Lesson Government health care has led to funding caps and too few ICU beds.

Posted By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-covid-hospital-lesson-11604361293?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Europeans are back under lockdown as another virus surge threatens to overwhelm their hospitals, which even before the pandemic were sick and malnourished. This is a side effect of government-run health care and a warning to the U.S.

More than half of the ICU beds in France and two-thirds in Paris are occupied by Covid patients. “At this stage, we know that whatever we do, nearly 9,000 patients will be in intensive care by mid-November, which is almost the entirety of French capacities,” President Emmanuel Macron explained last week as he ordered a second national lockdown.

Hospitals across Europe are close to their limits. The Netherlands is sending some patients to Germany, but Chancellor Angela Merkel warned last week that “if the tempo of infections stays the same, we will reach the capacity of our health-care system within weeks.”

Some U.S. hospitals are also dealing with a Covid surge, and more could be stretched if it continues through the winter. Field hospitals have been set up in Wisconsin and El Paso. But hospitals in hardest-hit regions currently have far more capacity than those in Europe.

Covid patients occupy 27% of ICU beds in South Dakota and 38% are still available. Virus patients take up about 40% of hospital beds in El Paso—still less than in Europe’s hot spots. Other areas of Texas that were slammed harder during the summer now have spare capacity. Covid patients occupy only 4% or so of hospital beds in San Antonio, Houston and Austin.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Vince Bielski:New York’s Move to ‘Culturally Responsive Education’

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/authors/vince_bielski_realclearinvestigations/

Using the hip-hop musical “Hamilton” in class is an example of how American history can be taught in untraditional ways, New York’s schools chancellor suggests.

While New York City considers sweeping changes to selective schools to promote diversity, it’s already revamping the curriculum to cater to the interests of low-income students.

The city is embracing “culturally responsive-sustaining education,” an approach that’s growing in popularity with hopes that it will help close the achievement gap for black and Latino students. Advocates say the current curriculum can turn off these students who can’t, for example, identify with the content of classics like “Moby-Dick.”

The revised curriculum will put students’ culture at the center of it. In other words, give them assignments that draw on their history and experiences and they’ll be inspired to learn. While the approach may make intuitive sense, researchers point out that it hasn’t been rigorously studied to see if it improves outcomes for students.

Speaking at a middle school last year, Chancellor Richard Carranza said using the Broadway musical “Hamilton” in class is an example of how American history can be taught in untraditional ways, according to a media report. “Hamilton” tells the story of the Founding Father using hip-hop and rap.

“If students refuse to read Shakespeare, we say there is something wrong with them,” says Professor David Kirkland, who served on the mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group. “But what if they will read other books, and in the process, learn to read? Let’s move with the student.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Why Are You Killing Christians?’ Trump Asks Nigeria’s President And the Muslim leader responds by blaming “climate change.” Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-are-you-killing-christians-trump-asks-nigerias-raymond-ibrahim/

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute.

“Why are you killing Christians?” US President Donald J. Trump apparently shocked his Nigerian counterpart, Muhammadu Buhari, by asking this question the first time they met in the White House in April 2018. The Nigerian president admitted this, according to a September 8, 2020 report, toward the end of a recent talk with his cabinet members:

[W]hen I was in his office, only myself and himself, with Allah as my witness, he looked at me in the face and said ‘why are you killing Christians?’ I wonder, if you were the person how you would react? I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray my emotion…

He should not have been shocked. Several international observers characterize what Nigerian Christians experience not just as “persecution” but as a “pure genocide.”

Since 2009, “not less than 32,000 Christians have been butchered to death by the country’s main Jihadists,” according to a May 2020 report. Hundreds more have been killed since then. Earlier this year, Christian Solidarity International issued a “Genocide Warning for Christians in Nigeria” in response to the “rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants….”

Under Buhari, who became Nigeria’s president in 2015, the carnage of Christians has only accelerated. According to a March 8, 2020 report, titled, “Nigeria: A Killing Field of Defenseless Christians,”

Available statistics have shown that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christian deaths were recorded in the past 57 months or since June 2015 when the present central [Buhari-led] government of Nigeria came on board. Out of this figure, Jihadist Fulani herdsmen accounted for 7,400 Christian deaths, Boko Haram 4,000 and the ‘Highway Bandits‘ 150-200.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Video: How Will Each Candidate Treat Israel? What tomorrow’s election will mean for the future of U.S.-Israeli relations.

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/how-will-each-candidate-treat-israel-frontpage-editors/

In this must-see interview from Israel National News, Dr. Shmuel Katz, one of the founders of Stand With Us and a leading advocate for Israel, discusses what the outcome of this week’s presidential election will mean for the future of America-Israel relations. Check it out below:

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

MORE HEADLINES

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

Trump, Biden deliver closing arguments to voters ahead of Election Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JQA8-5jO0Q

Hundreds Turn Out for ‘Trump Train’ Parade in West Virginia
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/11/01/hundreds-turn-trump-train-parade-west-virginia/

Trump Supporters Chant ‘USA’ in Face of Antifa in Beverly Hills
https://www.breitbart.com/law-and-order/2020/10/31/trump-supporters-chant-usa-in-face-of-antifa-in-beverly-hills/

Only a Trump Tsunami Can Checkmate a Chinese Tsunami
https://townhall.com/columnists/almason/2020/11/01/only-a-trump-tsunami-can-checkmate-chinese-tsunami-n2579182?
Michigan Crowd for Donald Trump Dwarfs Crowd for Barack Obama and Joe Biden
https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/10/31/michigan-crowd-for-donald-trump-dwarfs-crowd-for-barack-obama-and-joe-biden/
Trump Supporters Greet Kamala Harris During Last-Minute Rally in Palm Beach
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/01/trump-supporters-greet-kamala-harris-during-last-minute-rally-in-palm-beach/

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Donald Trump, Counterrevolutionary Victor Davis Hanson *****

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/01/donald-trump-counterrevolutionary/

Against all the money and clout of America’s revolutionary forces, the counterrevolutionary Trump had only one asset, the proverbial people.

Until Donald Trump’s arrival, the globalist revolution was almost solidified and institutionalized—with the United States increasingly its greatest and most “woke” advocate. We know its bipartisan establishment contours.

China would inherit the world in 20 or 30 years. The self-appointed task of American elites—many of whom had already been enriched and compromised by Chinese partners and joint ventures—was to facilitate this all-in-the-family transition in the manner of the imperial British hand-off of hegemony to the United States in the late 1940s.

Our best and brightest like the Biden family, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Bill Gates, or Mark Zuckerberg would enlighten us about the “real” China, so we yokels would not fall into Neanderthal bitterness as they managed our foreordained decline.

We would usher China into “the world community”—grimacing at, but overlooking the destruction it wrought on the global commercial order and the American interior.

We would politely forget about Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and the Uyghurs. Hollywood would nod as it put out more lucrative comic-book and cartoonish films for the Chinese markets, albeit with mandated lighter-skinned actors.

The NBA would nod twice and trash a democratic United States, while praising genocidal China—becoming richer and more esteemed abroad to make up for becoming boring and poorer at home. The universities would nod three times, and see a crime not in Chinese espionage and security breaches, but in the reporting of them as crimes.

So our revolutionary role would be to play stuffy and snooty Athenian philosophers to the new muscular Roman legions of China.

Given our elites’ superior morality, genius, and sense of self, we would gently chide and cajole our Chinese masters into becoming enlightened world overseers and democrats—all the easier, the richer and more affluent Chinese became. 

For now, Trump has stopped that revolution.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Reflections on Sleepy Joe Exactly how and where will he lead us? Don Feder

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/plea-those-thinking-voting-sleepy-joe-don-feder/

The most important election of our lifetime – perhaps in all U.S. history — is upon us.

Here are some thoughts on the Democrat presidential candidate:

Spent 47 years in office without accomplishing anything noteworthy — who was ever and always a willing tool for the leadership of the Democrat Party.
 
Has become a bobble-head for the socialists who now run his party.
 
Took three months to issue a limp-wristed disavowal of the riots which are rocking our republic.
 
Equates occasional police misconduct with business districts in flames, nightly looting, the murder of cops, and assaults on innocent bystanders.
 
Thinks white supremacists pose a greater threat to America than Antifa, which he says is “an idea” not an organization. With Joe, you never know if he’s simply parroting progressive propaganda or really is that stupid.
 
Wants to demolish the border wall and defund ICE, and once called illegal immigration “a gift” – that keeps on giving for the left.
 
Said 150 million Americans died from “gun violence” since 2007 and 120 million of us died from COVID-19. There goes 80% of the population.
 
Does press availabilities where he takes two questions – from reporters he knows are friendly.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

An Election and America’s Two Choices “We must rise again to take our stand for freedom, as in the olden time.” Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/real-choice-election-bruce-thornton/

When voters go to the polls, they will be choosing not just one man over another. They will be choosing either freedom and self-rule based on the Constitution; or “soft” servitude and tutelage under the technocratic pretensions of a managerial elite.

In other words, the ancient political choice that arose with the creation of citizens rule 2500 years ago––a choice based on whether we believe that ordinary people have the practical wisdom and common sense sufficient for self-government; or instead are incapable of knowing what’s good for themselves and the country, and so their freedom must be subordinated to the greater knowledge of credentialed professionals and “experts.”

Technocrats need power to achieve their aims, and for the last century we have seen that power grow into the federal Leviathan that has spread its regulatory tentacles and oversight into ever greater parts of our lives at the cost of our autonomy. Indeed, in just the past year during the pandemic, under the guise of “following the science” we have seen many states restrict or outright cancel some of our unalienable rights such as assembling, bearing arms, and practicing our faiths.

Indeed, the very structure of the Constitution itself has also come under assault. The brilliant solution to the diverse and clashing interests of the American peoples was the system of checks and balances in which, to paraphrase James Madison, ambition would be set against ambition. The tyranny of the masses would be checked with institutional “filtrations” of their power like the Electoral College, and the tyranny of the elites would be checked by regularly scheduled elections and the voters of the sovereign states, as well as by the Bill of Rights. The political freedom of all would thus be protected and preserved.