NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anyone Notice That The Trump Recovery Is Doing Much Better Than Expected?

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/22/anyone-notice-that-the-trump-recovery-is-doing-much-better-than-expected/

A news report out on Monday said that 83% of companies in the S&P 500 beat expectations for earnings in the second quarter of the year, the first time that’s happened in more than a decade.

That’s been a common refrain over the past several months, as the economic recovery from the COVID-19 shutdowns has repeatedly outperformed what the “experts” expected. Here’s a sampling of headlines:

“US economy added 1.8m jobs in July, beating expectations”
“Jobs Numbers in July Beat Expectations for Third Straight Month”
“Corporate Earnings Beat Analysts’ Lowered Expectations”
“US consumer sentiment hit a 6-month high in September, beating economist forecasts”
“U.S. new home sales beat expectations in July”

In some cases, the difference between what economists were predicting at the start of the pandemic and what’s actually occurred is stark.

Take the forecasts for unemployment.

In March, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis projected the unemployment rate would top 32%.

That same month, Goldman Sachs said the unemployment rate will peak at around 15% later in the year.

A May survey of economists by FiveThirtyEight.com found that the median forecast for the May unemployment rate was 20%.

Even White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett predicted April’s unemployment rate would be 16-17%.

What actually happened?

The unemployment rate peaked in April at 14.7%, then dropped to 13.3% in May.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The One and Only Enduring Palestinian Vision Dreaming of the destruction of the Jewish state. Joseph Puder

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/absence-palestinian-leadership-vision-joseph-puder/

James Zogby of the Zogby Research Service (ZRS) is not known to be a friend of Israel. In fact, he serves as an effective spokesperson for the Palestinians. An Arab-Palestinian himself, Zogby has been a harsh critic of Israel. Yet, in an opinion piece in Cairo’s Ahramonline (the online version of Egypt’s major outlet Al-Ahram, September 7, 2020) Zogby expressed disappointment with the Palestinian leadership lack of vision.  He expressed it in his piece titled Absent But Needed: A Palestinian Vision.

Zogby pointed out that, “what had gone wrong with the Palestinian cause then (and now) is “visionless leadership.” He elaborated, that they (the leadership) “Lost their spark and their way after repeated costly setbacks: Black September in Jordan, their use of horrific acts of terror against innocents, their expulsion from Beirut in 1982, and their foolish embrace of Saddam in 1990.” The latter actions were decisions Yasser Arafat took in provoking an Israeli response to repeated terror attacks by Palestinians commanded by Arafat, including the attempted assassination of Shlomo Argov, Israel’s ambassador to London, which led to the First Lebanon War.

It was Arafat’s decision in 1990 to support Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, brutal invasion of Kuwait. As a result of Arafat’s action, the Kuwaiti government expelled half a million Palestinians who lived in the oil rich sheikdom. What Zogby failed to mention was the fact that Arafat once again provoked the Second intifada which killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians and brought destruction and economic ruin to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat, who gave Hamas a ‘green light,’ to execute suicide bombing against Israeli civilian targets was in total violation of the Oslo Accords. He hoped that it would weaken and demoralize Israel, then Israel would fall apart once the Palestinians launched a full-scale armed struggle.

Zogby suggested that more recently, the vehement reaction in Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority leadership to the Israel-United Arab Emirates peace deal, “By focusing their wrath on the recent UAE-Israel accord, the Palestinian leaders missed the mark. The UAE’s move to normalize in order to stop annexation is not the cause of Palestinian woes; it is a symptom of the state of affairs that has for too long plagued the noble cause of justice for the long-oppressed Palestinian people.” Clearly, the Palestinians have once again missed an opportunity to be part of a positive development brought about by the Trump administration’s “Peace of the Century” deal. It might not have satisfied all of the Palestinian aspirations, including the disappearance of the Jewish state, but it would have given the Palestinian people an economic stake that would have improved their lives, and that of their children.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Trump Changed the World By defying conventional wisdom on the Middle East and China, he reshaped both political parties. Matthew Continetti

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/how-trump-changed-world-matthew-continetti/

On Sept. 16 the editorial board of the New York Times did the impossible. It said something nice about President Trump. “The normalization of relations between Israel and two Arab states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, is, on the face of it, a good and beneficial development,” the editors wrote. They even went so far as to say that the “Trump administration deserves credit for brokering it.” I had to read that sentence twice to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Perhaps the world really is ending.

Or perhaps the Times cannot avoid the reality that the “Abraham Accords” between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain are a historic achievement. It is the first advance toward peace in the Middle East since Israel signed a treaty with Jordan in 1994. By exposing the intransigence and corruption of the Palestinian authorities, and thereby removing them from the diplomatic equation, the Trump administration reestablished the “peace process” as a negotiation between states. And because the states in the region face a common foe—Iran—they have every incentive to band together. This is textbook realpolitik. The world is better off for it.

Just as remarkable as the deal itself is the bipartisan applause that greeted it in the United States. No one needs reminding that domestic politics is polarized and paranoid. Each party is convinced that the other one will extinguish democracy at the first opportunity. The past three presidencies have been jarringly discontinuous in style, temperament, and policy. But the same Democrats who sometimes appear eager to remove Donald Trump from office by any means necessary treated this foreign policy accomplishment with equanimity and acquiescence. “It is good to see others in the Middle East recognizing Israel and even welcoming it as a partner,” Biden said in a statement, adding that “a Biden-Harris administration will build on these steps.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told Jewish Insider that the agreement is “a very positive thing.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada: New Conservative Party Leader Being Coerced by Islamic Groups Courting a hope of the Muslim vote. Christine Douglass-Williams

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/canada-courting-hope-muslim-votenew-conservative-christine-douglass-williams/

The official opposition to Islamo-pandering Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government is the Conservative Party of Canada, which has a new leader, Erin O’Toole. He’s already being pressured by two questionable Muslim lobby groups: the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the National Council of Canadian Muslims (formerly CAIR-CAN, with historic ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations–an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism funding case in American history, the Holy Land Foundation Trial)  

Sharaf Sharafeldin, Executive Director of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), threatened O’Toole that he will lose the Muslim vote if he does not kowtow to their demands. Sharafeldin stated:

Muslims who share conservative values—ranging from fiscal responsibility to compassionate social policy—voted Liberal for the first time. Stephen Harper introduced Canada to “fear and smear” politics, while simultaneously threatening religious freedoms, particularly of Canadian Muslims. The 2019 election was equally concerning, with Andrew Scheer allowing candidates who had expressed anti-Muslim views to run.

This is untrue. If anything, Andrew Scheer shut down reasonable discourse regarding jihad violence in order to appease agenda-driven Muslims, but evidently he didn’t do enough. For example, Scheer made headlines when he threw the Tory MP Michael Cooper out of a Commons committee hearing involving “online hate” after Cooper’s confrontation with a Muslim witness who had become provocative.

Also, THIS VIDEO surfaced, featuring Andrew Scheer cornered, intimidated and pandering to an Israel-hating imam who sanctions wife-beating.

Sharafeldin also spreads propaganda about Stephen Harper, who as Prime Minister, was very much committed to human rights and equality of rights for all, as opposed to special treatment for one group over another. Harper also demonstrated a commitment to religious freedom when he installed Canada’s Office of Religious Freedoms in the Foreign Affairs Department — in recognition of persecuted minorities everywhere. The Trudeau Liberals shut down this office almost immediately after Trudeau was elected in 2015. Harper’s problem as far as the MAC is concerned was that he was not an Islamo-panderer, prone to being bullied.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Minneapolis’ Guilty Whites Think BLM Lawn Signs Will Save Them When the Mob Comes They couldn’t be more wrong. Katie Hopkins

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/minneapolis-guilty-whites-think-blm-lawn-signs-katie-hopkins/

It’s a strange time to be staying in Downtown Minneapolis.

This apartment block on 5th and 7th is all but empty. There are long corridors of fresh paint and new-smelling carpets and a reception area with fancy furniture and free coffee all set to welcome people, except the people never came.

If I lacked purpose, I could go for days without seeing a soul, and even chance meetings near elevators or stairwells make people scurry away like frightened rats.

No one comes here anymore.

As I walked back from NoGo Minneapolis yesterday, a man rose from his little group of thieves to follow me as I passed, putting a scarf across his face as he approached to take whatever I had. He was different from other men in other cities who have done the same, and knew in a heartbeat my reactions mattered in this moment, if I was to walk away unharmed. This man had nothing to lose.

The streets are eerily empty too. Its like the day after some kind of apocalypse where shocked survivors venture out to find water, only to quickly scurry away, hugging the outline of buildings in the shadows with their faces down to the curb.

Minneapolis is lost.

Lost people want to believe in something, anything. They need to in order to endure another day.

Some think they can find it in the bottom of a bottle — their sadness never quenched. Many here put their faith in drugs; the stained pants and vomit splashes on the t-shirt of the man who passes me when I go to find food makes me less sure I want any after all.

These lost souls explain George Floyd too. Not just his death from fentanyl and drug abuse, but the cult-like worship of his name after he died. The half-dead lifted him up to give themselves something to believe in. Abandoned by all others, they raised up George Floyd and prayed to him instead. At least he was somehow one of them, failing right alongside them in this festering sewer of a place.

I walked to 38th and Chicago to spend time at the streets his disciples have turned into the “State of George Floyd.” Barricaded for two blocks in either direction, filled with the stuff of protest and vigil, these streets have become a kind of church to these people — albeit in the open air and carpeted with asphalt and stickiness. The pews are made from old sofas, peppered with holes from a thousand cigarettes, marooned in a place where gas used to pump and incomes were made.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Amateur Jared Kushner vs. Pro John Kerry By Eugene Veklerov

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/amateur_jared_kushner_vs_pro_john_kerry.html

Donald Trump has outsourced his Middle East policy to his son-in-law Jared Kushner. At best, it would be a waste of time, as Kushner had no experience in foreign policy. At worst, he will use this opportunity to line his own pockets.

That was one of the many lines of attacks waged by the mainstream media on President Trump. Why is amateur Kushner in the White House at all, they asked indignantly? Then something unexpected happened: 

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced peace deals with Israel. This good news for the world was bad news for the media. The news was reported, well, kind of, but no one acknowledged that miserable failure of the media’s gloomy predictions.

Here is how John Kerry, a seasoned professional, lectured his audience in a professorial tone of voice in 2016:

“There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world,” Kerry began at a speaking engagement. “I want to make that very clear with all of you. I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, ‘Well, the Arab world is in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we’ll deal with the Palestinians.’ No. No, no, and no.”

He continued, “I can tell you that, reaffirmed within the last week because I’ve talked to the leaders of the Arab community, there will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”

Apparently, Kushner did not receive Kerry’s memo, and borrowing from “Star Trek,” he boldly went where no man has gone before. Those who “have not gone there before” included other experienced Secretaries of State, such as Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. It took amateur Kushner to succeed and that was a bitter pill for CNN and the Washington Post to swallow.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard is back, positioning herself as last sane Democrat By Monica Showalter

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/tulsi_gabbard_is_back_positioning_herself_as_last_sane_democrat.html

Tulsi Gabbard is back, looking splendid as ever.

And she’s got a cause any sane voter interested in free and fair elections can support, sponsoring a bipartisan bill targeting the odious practice of ballot-harvesting.  The Hawaii representative’s bill, co-sponsored with Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, calls for a withholding of federal funds for states that refuse to ban the practice, where sleazy political operatives target vulnerable voters in their homes and “helpfully” collect their ballots for them, doing what they need to do with make sure the vote goes in the direction of their party with the broken chain of custody before turning the ballots in.  It’s a fount of potential voter fraud. 

It’s a striking move, because Democrats are all in favor of the practice, given that wherever it is practiced legally, it has benefited them.

In 2018, ballot-harvesting mysteriously flipped historically red Orange County, California entirely blue, days after the election, as ballot-harvesters kept “finding” ballots and turning them in, until they got the result they wanted.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Facebook Promotes Holocaust Denial by Judith Bergman

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16444/facebook-holocaust-denial

Researchers say that as they viewed Holocaust-denying pages and posts on Facebook, the social media site’s algorithm promoted even more Holocaust denial content to them….

Facebook takes down such posts only in countries such as Germany, France and Poland where Holocaust denial is illegal.

As the Institute for Strategic Dialogue out in its report, however, Holocaust denial is not about people getting history “wrong”: “This speech seeks not only to minimise the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, but to mitigate criticism of Nazism, and justify ongoing attacks against the Jewish people. Due to the intimate intersection between Holocaust denial and hate targeting Jews, such content should be regarded as inherently anti-Semitic”.

Given Facebook’s public commitment to fighting “hate speech” on its site, Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge international guidelines on anti-Semitic hate speech by reducing Holocaust denial to a mere instance of “getting things wrong” — while using its algorithms to promote Holocaust denial — is clearly unacceptable.

Holocaust survivors have now launched an online campaign, #NoDenyingIt, calling on Facebook to remove Holocaust denying material from its website. “How can somebody really doubt it?” asked Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor. “Where are the six million people? There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing.”

Facebook has been promoting Holocaust denial on its platform, according to a recent report by The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), “Hosting the ‘Holohoax’: A Snapshot of Holocaust Denial Across Social Media”.

“Holocaust denial has long been one of the most insidious conspiracy theories targeting Jewish communities, with its extremist proponents drawn from across the ideological spectrum, from extreme right-wing to hard left to Islamist”, the report states. “Research has shown that digital platforms have only served to amplify and mainstream this warped strain of thinking in recent years”.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Warning: China Retains Algorithm, Loves Oracle’s TikTok Deal by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16537/tiktok-china-algorithm

“The more reporting I do on this the more it is a sleazy back room deal that protects no one and advantages Trump supporters and, inexplicably, the Chinese government.” — Kara Swisher, America tech journalist and guru, Twitter, September 20, 2020.

“ByteDance in driver seat, algorithm in Chinese hands.” — Eunice Yoon, CNBC’s Beijing Bureau Chief, Twitter, September 21, 2020.

“The TikTok team retains stewardship over the app.” — Shen Yi, professor, Fudan University, China Daily, September 21, 2020.

As Senator Marco Rubio told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on the 20th of this month, control of the source code is critical… Beijing, not surprisingly, seems determined to keep all of TikTok’s secret sauce.

What’s not [for China] to like? Beijing-based ByteDance gets a lot of cash — the app will carry a valuation that could be as high as $60 billion — and the Communist Party will be able to continue to use TikTok for malign purposes.

The only acceptable arrangement, however, is to completely sever China from TikTok’s U.S. operations — or ban the app entirely.

ByteDance Ltd., the privately owned Chinese technology company, will soon sell minority ownership stakes in the TikTok app to American companies Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc.

Oracle will become the “secure cloud technology provider” for a new U.S. company, TikTok Global, which will own most of the app’s worldwide operations.

The proposed arrangement, however, does little to address the most important U.S. national security concern with the wildly popular video-sharing platform.

Using his emergency powers, President Trump on August 6 prohibited, after the expiration of a 45-day period, Americans from any transaction with ByteDance or any of its subsidiaries. As a practical matter, the order contemplated the closure of the TikTok app if it was not sold to an American company. The order has been extended.

POLITICS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Appeasing China Won’t Cool the Earth A President Biden would face pressure from climate hawks to go easy on Beijing. by Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on September 22nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appeasing-china-wont-cool-the-earth-11600709060?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

As policy makers in Beijing weigh their options in the event of a Biden victory, one of the subjects that will most engage their attention is climate change. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that he will put the goal of slowing climate change at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Washington would rejoin the Paris Climate Accords and urge all countries to enact measures to keep Earth’s temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, as the Democratic Party platform states.

China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Does this mean a Biden administration would add another dimension to U.S.-China tensions? Beijing likely hopes it’ll ease them.

For Chinese officials, the goal would be to get the Biden administration to negotiate with itself—the climate hawks persuading the incoming president to squelch the China hawks to save the planet. Beijing is the key to climate change, climate warriors will say, and America can’t persuade China to help cool the Earth by harassing it on trade, imposing sanctions against its companies, arming Taiwan, and encouraging its neighbors to form alliances against Beijing.

This is an approach China can work with. Beijing wants to fight climate change, its diplomats will whisper to U.S. climate hawks, but Chinese hard-liners need to be convinced. Help us to help you: If America demonstrates a spirit of compromise and cooperation on issues important to the hard-liners, well, who can say? We might even give up our coal plants. Someday.