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The Democrats’ Dangerous Delegitimization of the Election By David Harsanyi

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/democrats-dangerous-delegitimization-election/

Too many voters don’t believe November’s election will be legitimate — before it has even been conducted.

A recent deep dive in the Washington Post’s Outlook section, “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” exploring various potential outcomes of the 2020 presidential election, found that in “every scenario except a Biden landslide, our simulation ended catastrophically.” According to the Post, any other outcome is destined to spark “violence” and a “constitutional crisis.”

Or, in other words, nice country you got there . . .

Every assumption in the article, written by Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor and co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, is awash in the conspiratorial paranoia that’s infected the modern Democratic Party. It’s a world where Trump officials — played, quite implausibly, by Joe Biden partisans Michael Steele and Bill Kristol — are “ruthless and unconstrained right out of the gate” but the genteel statesmen of Team Biden “struggled to get out of reaction mode.” It is a place where Republicans aren’t only reflexively seditious and autocratic, but a “highly politicized” Supreme Court tries to steal the election.

In their “war game” scenarios, however, it’s the Democrats who refuse to accept the will of courts to adhere to the constitutionally prescribed system rather than hysteria, and it’s the Democrats who wishcast the wholly imaginary “popular vote” into existence.

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The Real Palestinian Tragedy by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16456/palestinian-tragedy

Unlike their leaders, however, the Palestinians living in Syria and Iraq do not appear to be worried about the Israel-UAE accord. These Palestinians have more existential concerns — such as providing shelter for their children and safe drinking water for their families. They are disturbed about the homes they have lost, and they are in a state of anguish about fate of their missing sons.

The Palestinian families complained that the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organizations, including the United Nations, have refused to assist them in their search for their beloved ones.

Palestinian writer Nabil Al-Sahli said that the 4,000 Palestinians who remain in Iraq are facing an “ongoing tragedy.” He said that according to some studies, at least 20,000 Palestinians have been displaced from Iraq to 40 countries around the world because of the “massacres” committed against them by sectarian militias.

By extreme contrast [to Syria and Iraq], the UAE and other Gulf states have long opened their doors to Palestinians and provided them with jobs and high living standards. Puzzlingly, Palestinian leaders have plenty of time to castigate the UAE, but no time at all to comment on the systematic abuse and killing of Palestinians in Syria and Iraq. For the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, the true tragedy is when an Arab expresses willingness to make peace with Israel.

Palestinian leaders are so committed to condemning the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for its normalization agreement with Israel that they have no time left to notice the horrific suffering of their people in some Arab countries, particularly Syria and Iraq. Specifically, these leaders seem unperturbed that in some in Arab countries, Palestinians are mysteriously disappearing.

Unlike their leaders, however, Palestinians living in Syria and Iraq do not appear to be worried about the Israel-UAE accord. These Palestinians have more existential concerns — such as providing shelter for their children and safe drinking water for their families. They are disturbed about the homes they have lost, and they are in a state of anguish about fate of their missing sons.

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

V-J Day, 75 Years Later By Arthur L. Herman

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/remembering-v-j-day-75-years-later/

‘T oday the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.”

Those were Douglas MacArthur’s words following the signing of Japan’s unconditional surrender on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 75 years ago. That signing ceremony ended the last phase of World War II, the bloodiest war in history. As MacArthur indicated, it also opened a new era in the relationship between the United States and Asia, in which the once-defeated Japan has come to play a pivotal part.

After being America’s mortal enemy, Japan has become the U.S.’s closest and oldest ally in Asia. This is a tribute not only to generations of leadership in both countries, but also to the hopes that MacArthur set in motion on that day.

On the one hand, the ceremony of V-J Day was a magnificent display of American power. On board the USS Missouri were representatives of an international coalition to defeat imperial Japan that included the Soviet Union as well as Great Britain and its Dominions, and China.

Tokyo Bay itself was filled with American warships as far as the eye could see. When the surrender ceremony was completed, MacArthur staged an overflight of more than 1,500 Navy warplanes and 400 B-29s, the super bomber that had dropped the most destructive weapon ever devised, the atomic bomb, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to hasten Japan’s unconditional surrender.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Chamber of Errors The business lobby abandons free-market principles to back 23 freshman Democrats. By Kimberley Strassel

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chamber-of-errors-11599174564?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

To err is Washington, and even the most seasoned Beltway players can be forgiven the occasional strategic mistake. But deliberately ignoring history, evidence and principle by engaging in an act that undermines one’s reason for existence is another matter. Meet the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The nation’s premier business lobby this week finalized its decision to help re-elect 23 House Democratic freshmen. Most of those endorsed spent their first term reliably voting to end U.S. business as we know it. Of the chamber’s new favorite politicians, 20 have voted to abolish right-to-work states; 18 said yes to a $15-an-hour federal minimum wage; and 14 supported the House’s $3 trillion blowout, styled the Heroes Act—among other votes designed to crush the life out of free markets. This from an organization whose tag line reads “Standing Up for American Enterprise.” These days it’s more like “prostrating ourselves for crumbs.”

The old tag line was more befitting of chamber CEO Tom Donohue, the feisty Irishman who as recently as 2008 led the chamber in a full frontal effort to deny Barack Obama a filibuster-proof Senate majority. Today’s chamber reflects the growing influence of Suzanne Clark, who replaced Mr. Donohue as president in 2019, and chief policy officer Neil Bradley. In their choice between defending free enterprise and making nice on the cocktail circuit, the drinks are winning.

The endorsements are best viewed as the chamber leadership’s bow to both political correctness and dubious strategy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy Hunting for asymptomatic cases encourages pointless shutdowns. Protect the vulnerable instead.By Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-case-against-covid-tests-for-the-young-and-healthy-11599151722?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School. Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician, is a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Should people who aren’t sick be tested for Covid-19? In August the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention revised its guidance to suggest focusing on the elderly and patients with symptoms. One may be excused for thinking that more testing is always better, but that isn’t true. Anyone can be infected with the virus, but there is a thousandfold difference in the risk of death between the young and the old. Testing strategy should reflect that.

There is little purpose in using tests to check asymptomatic children to see if it is safe for them to come to school. When children are infected, most are asymptomatic, and the mortality risk is lower than for the flu. While adult-to-adult and adult-to-child transmission is common, child-to-adult transmission isn’t. Children thus pose minimal risk to their teachers. If a child has a cough, a runny nose or other respiratory symptoms, he should stay home. You don’t need a test for that.

What would routine Covid-19 testing of children accomplish? A child with no symptoms who tests positive would be sent home and deprived of an education. Enough asymptomatic cases would lead to school closures. Yet the public-health consensus is that classroom learning is important, and closures are highly detrimental. That’s especially true for working-class children, whose parents can’t afford tutors or learning “pods,” but must instead make difficult choices between supervising their children’s education and paying the bills.

Sweden was the only major Western country that kept schools open for kids 15 and younger throughout the pandemic, with no masks or mass testing. How did it turn out? Zero Covid-19 deaths among 1.8 million children attending day care or school. Teachers didn’t have an excess infection risk compared with the average of other professions.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Kobe Bryant fan and the concept of ‘kavanah’ – opinion-Ruthie Blum

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/a-kobe-bryant-fan-and-the-concept-of-kavanah-opinion-641036

Shame on Israelis for elevating American hysteria to a higher plane than Jewish wisdom and, more importantly, common sense.The Jewish concept of kavanah – intention – refers to a worshiper’s sincerity during prayers and the fulfilling of commandments. Though scholars disagree on the extent to which certain rituals are meaningless without the necessary purity of heart and mind, the idea that a person’s intentions are often as relevant as his actions is pretty universal.

Even courts of law examine intent – such as “malice aforethought” – when determining a defendant’s guilt or innocence.

One exception among many at the moment – thanks to the cancel-culture climate in the US – concerns the use of “blackface,” dark makeup applied to white skin for theatrical or costume-party purposes. In the mid-19th century, minstrel shows popularized this custom, and by the early 20th century, it became its own art form. Al Jolson, the “king of blackface performers,” is the name most associated with the practice.

Today, any blackface is considered racist and therefore taboo, regardless of the kavanah of those accused of having violated it, even in the distant past – no matter what its aim. In a McCarthy-like sweep of self-censorship, Hollywood and Broadway not only have been removing all vestiges of blackface, but have been engaged in a kind of ongoing breast-beating far more intense than any Yom Kippur service.

David O. Selznick’s 1939 film, based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone with the Wind, and Disney’s 1946 partly animated musical movie, Song of the South, are examples of blockbusters that portray blacks in a cringe-worthy stereotypical fashion – something that is understandably offensive to African-Americans. Blackface, too, is and always has been an atrocious form of comedy.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A New Middle East of Arab-Israeli Rapport? Not So Fast By P. David Hornik

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/09/03/a-new-middle-east-of-arab-israeli-rapport-not-so-fast-n881184

In a “major boon for Israeli air travel,” The Times of Israel reports, “Saudi Arabia [has] announced that it will henceforth allow flights from ‘all countries’ to cross over its airspace on flights to or from the United Arab Emirates.”

Israeli leaders “understood this to mean,” TOI goes on, “that Israeli flights can head to and from the Far East via Saudi Arabia and UAE, drastically reducing travel time.”

In other words, it’s assumed that “all countries” includes Israel, whose planes — until this week — had never been allowed to traverse Saudi airspace. Enthusiasm doesn’t appear to have been dampened by the fact that the Saudis couldn’t somehow eke out the word “Israel” in their announcement.

It didn’t seem to dent the enthusiasm of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the announcement a “huge breakthrough”:

“For years, I have been working to open the skies between Israel and the East. It was spectacular news two-and-a-half years ago when Air India received approval [from the Saudis] to fly directly to Israel,” he said in a filmed statement, standing near a huge map.

“Now there is another tremendous breakthrough: Israeli planes and those from all countries will be able to fly directly from Israel to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and back. Flights will be cheaper and shorter, and it will lead to robust tourism and develop our economy.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Prof. Biden Claims ‘a Black Man Invented the Light Bulb, Not a White Guy Named Edison.’ By Matt Margolis

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/09/03/prof-biden-claims-a-black-man-invented-the-light-bulb-not-a-white-guy-named-edison-n886912

Joe Biden, who claims he wants to fact-check Donald Trump in real time during the presidential debates, told a real whopper on Thursday during his visit to Kenosha.

“People fear that’s, which, that which is different. We gotta, for example, why in God’s name don’t we teach history in history classes? A black man invented the light bulb, not a white guy named Edison.”

Fact check: False.

Make no mistake about it, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Joe Biden presumably was referring to Lewis H. Latimer, a former slave who worked as a researcher under Edison, who, three years after Edison patented the incandescent light bulb, patented a more efficient way of manufacturing carbon filaments, which were used in Edison’s bulb design. Fake internet rumors have been circulating for some time now suggesting that Latimer is the actual inventor of the light bulb and even the telephone.

Apparently, fake internet rumors are where Joe Biden gets his history lessons.

MEDIA Comments turned off

My run-in with the New York Times ‘This is where we now are. A reporter is in fear of being canceled if he doesn’t cancel someone else’ Andrew Sullivan

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://spectator.us/andrew-sullivan-run-new-york-times/

” A reporter is in fear of being canceled if he doesn’t cancel someone else. This is America returning to its roots. As in Salem.”

It’s never a good sign when you’re watching a scene of street terror in yet another gut-churning YouTube video and you find yourself thinking: ‘Hang on a minute, that’s around the corner from my apartment!’ But there’s a now infamous video from last week where a mob of enraged millennials with their fists pumped in the air surrounded a lone young woman sitting outside a Washington restaurant where I often eat. Like a scene from the Cultural Revolution, the crowd demanded she shout certain slogans and raise her clenched fist in solidarity — or be damned as a racist. Most of her fellow diners took the path of least resistance. She wouldn’t. The chants grew louder: ‘White silence is violence!’ They started screaming in her face. She wouldn’t cave. Wokeness, in case you hadn’t noticed, has entered a more intense phase. Not so long ago, you were canceled for something you did or said or wrote. Now you’re canceled just for saying absolutely nothing at all.

I had a much milder experience of this during the past week when the New York Times decided to run a profile of me. The hook was that I was forced to leave New York magazine last month because, according to the NYT, I had not publicly recanted editing an issue of the New Republic published…in 1994. The issue was a symposium on The Bell Curve, a book by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein that explored the connection between IQ, class, social mobility and race. My crime was to arrange a symposium around an extract, with 13 often stinging critiques published alongside it. The fact I had not recanted that decision did not, mind you, prevent TIME, the Atlantic, Newsweek, the NYT and New York magazine from publishing me in the following years. But suddenly, a decision I made a quarter of a century ago required my being canceled. The NYT reporter generously gave me a chance to apologize and recant, and when I replied that I thought the role of genetics in intelligence among different human populations was still an open question, he had his headline: ‘I won’t stop reading Andrew Sullivan, but I can’t defend him.’ In other words, the media reporter in America’s paper of record said he could not defend a writer because I refused to say something I don’t believe. He said this while arguing that I was ‘one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades’. To be fair to him, he would have had no future at the NYT if he had not called me an indefensible racist. His silence on that would have been as unacceptable to his woke bosses as my refusal to recant. But this is where we now are. A reporter is in fear of being canceled if he doesn’t cancel someone else. This is America returning to its roots. As in Salem.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Antifa Effect? Yes, the Rioting Is Starting to Impact the House Races Matt Vespa

Posted By on September 4th, 2020

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2020/09/03/why-yes-the-rioting-is-starting

Is Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and the violent far-left actually giving a massive in-kind contribution to Republicans this election cycle? Maybe. The non-stop rioting in the cities, especially along the Left Coast and now in Kenosha, Wisconsin is starting to show up in the polling. It’s the reason why Joe Biden had to come out of his bunker after the Republican National Convention; the event mentioned the rioting. It’s why CNN’s Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, who endorsed the violence, said it was now time to settle down because…it was hurting Democrats. 

Donald Trump is now leading with Independents by ten points, Black and Hispanic voters support for Trump spiked after the GOP convention, and the national race is tightening up. Trump is tied with Biden in Michigan—and enthusiasm for Trump with his base is sky-high. Joe Biden is not fairing so well with Democrats on that front. They know he sucks. 

While two months ago, the retaking the house might have seemed like a stretch, but if these lefty clowns keep burning buildings, assaulting cops, and forcing Democratic mayors to flee their residences, then it could be within reach. Patrick Murray commented on Monmouth’s polling of the House races and found that in the six most competitive contests this cycle, the generic Republican is ahead by 10 points [emphasis mine]: 

The Monmouth University Poll also posed a generic ballot test for the U.S. House of Representatives election, which shows 48% of registered voters currently supporting the Democratic candidate in their district and 45% backing the Republican. This result stood at a similar 49% to 45% in Monmouth’s July poll. Applying likely voter models to the current sample, high turnout puts the statewide vote choice at 48% Democrat and 46% Republican while low turnout has it at 48% Democrat and 47% Republican.