Why Trump Should Win And why the stakes couldn’t be higher. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/why-trump-should-win-bruce-thornton/

Less than three months from election day, Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans keep telling us (and themselves) that President Trump “is in trouble” in his bid for reelection. Trump’s enemies chant poll numbers like incantations, even though that juju failed spectacularly in 2016. They harp on Trump’s media-manufactured “failures” like his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his response to the ongoing riots instigated by Black Lives Matter and its Antifa brown-shirts. And as has been true from the start, the bulk of their criticisms are really about subjective and self-serving standards of “comportment” and “decorum” and “norms”  that reflect the bipartisan “cognitive elite” and big-government functionaries.

But a more sober analysis suggests that the president has a faithful and energized base and a record of accomplishment compared to the Dems’ lunge to the lunatic left. Moreover, the spectacle of civic destruction, increasing violent crime, and nakedly partisan and authoritarian excesses on the part of blue-state governors and mayors will give Trump a decided edge with the bulk of ordinary Americans.

First, Trump’s economic success has been stalled not because of any missteps by his administration, but by a pandemic originating in totalitarian China and worsened by its willful obscuring of the virus’s origins and lethality. Voters with common sense and fairness know that the current recession is not Trump’s fault, and that having rescued the economy once, he can do so again. They also can see that blue-state governors have needlessly exacerbated the economic damage by imposing draconian and arbitrary lockdown orders based not on science, but on their increasingly obvious desire to wound the president politically even if it means immiserating their own citizens.

America’s (Current) Suicide Attempt By Gideon Isaac

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/americas_current_suicide_attempt.html

It’s tempting to look on current events as unprecedented, with divisions as deep as at any time since the Civil War.  An antidote to this ahistorical view is to read (or re-read) historian Paul Johnson’s 1983 Modern Times — especially the chapters titled “American’s Suicide Attempt” and “The Collective Seventies.” Moreover, what we are experiencing now, as a renewed suicide attempt gains traction, can be seen as a direct result of those policies and the misconceptions that produced them.   As Johnson sees it, a good part of the suicide attempt stemmed from the Vietnam War and the attempt by another Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson, to eradicate poverty.  

As historian Johnson sees it, President Johnson believed in the boundless capacity of the American economy to deliver.  While President Kennedy found it difficult to educate congress in his social spending ideas, to honor his memory, in the wake of his assassination in 1963, Johnson was able to pass bills to fund “The Great Society.”

 Johnson writes:

The danger of the kind of welfare state Johnson was creating was that it pushed people out of the productive economy permanently and made them dependents of the state.   Poverty increased when families split up, either by old people living apart or by divorce.   Legislation often promoted these processes.

At Least 100,000 Victims of Modern Slavery Just in UK by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16265/modern-slavery-britain

According to the report, despite the scale of the crimes, prosecutions have barely increased…

“This is a systemic issue that is borne out of poor regulation, poor legislation and exploitation at every level. You have to ask yourself who actually has the power to change this? And that buck stops with government”. — Adam Clarke, deputy mayor of Leicester, Sky News, July 13, 2020.

The protesters of historical slavery could well be wearing clothes produced by the marginalized, victimized modern slaves who have no access to the justice and equality for which the protesters claim to be fighting.

It is telling that both public and private resources, as well as endless media coverage, are being dedicated to the issue of “racist statues” and historical slavery, while the plight of living, suffering modern slaves — an issue that needs tremendous effort to be tackled to even some degree — barely interests anyone.

A new British report, “It Still Happens Here: Fighting UK Slavery in the 2020s”, by The Modern Slavery Policy Unit, a joint initiative led by the anti-slavery charity Justice and Care and The Centre for Social Justice, has estimated that “there could be at least 100,000 victims [of modern slavery] in the UK, with the actual number likely to be even greater”.

According to the report:

“Many thousands of children, women and men of all nationalities and backgrounds — including a growing number of British citizens — continue to be trafficked and exploited for profit by ruthless criminal networks. They are tricked, taken and coerced into sexual slavery, crime, hard labour and domestic servitude. Forced addictions are increasingly used as methods of control”.

IN MEMORY OF HELEN FREEDMAN

I knew and appreciated  Helen Freedman  the co-Executive Director of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) for decades. We spoke recently, and weakened as she was, she never lost that particular fight and determination to support Israel and its legitimate and historic claim to sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. She walked the walk in countless visits and missions to the whole area and especially to Hebron, the first capital of the Jewish people. She was buried there yesterday.

My condolences to Judy Kadish, Helen’s daughter and co-Director of AFSI, to Charlie, to her son, to her wonderful brother and sister-in law. Your great loss is shared by thousands and all present and past members of Americans for A Safe Israel. Her memory is a blessing.

Ruth King

The UAE-Israel Peace Accord: Walk over Talk Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3ame0hg

Israel’s regional posture of deterrence and global high tech prominence have motivated the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to conclude the August 13, 2020 peace accord with Israel.

The same Israeli features have prompted the pro-US Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait, as well as Jordan and Egypt, to dramatically expand their security and commercial cooperation with Israel.

The UAE considers strategic cooperation with Israel, in general, and the peace accord, in particular, a critical added-value to its line of defense (second only to the US) against lethal threats such as Iran’s conventional and terror offensive, persistent Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorism, Turkey’s operational and logistic support of the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s military base (5,000 soldiers) in the pro-Iran Qatar. The UAE, as well as all other pro-US Arab regimes, recognize Israel as the most effective and reliable “life insurance agent” in the region.    

These rogue elements have become regional and global epicenters of Islamic terrorism and drug trafficking in Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, North and Central Africa, South and Central America, with sleeper cells in the US.

Israel’s posture of deterrence and growing cooperation with all pro-US Arab regimes has spared the US the need to deploy more aircraft carriers and ground forces in the Middle East and neighboring regions.

The UAE has become a leader in the Arab battle against global Islamic terrorism (following years of UAE financing Islamic terrorism), targeting 82 Islamic terror organizations, which operate in Germany, Norway, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, the Persian Gulf, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, etc.

Justice Dept. Accuses Yale of Discrimination in Application Process by By Anemona Hartocollis

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/us/yale-discrimination.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20200813&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline&regi_id=2636639&segment_id=36042&user_id=2dfc89bd6c52e6103e5ac62f916a8f0d

The Trump administration said the university discriminated against Asian-American and white applicants. Yale defended its practices and vowed to maintain them.

The Justice Department on Thursday accused Yale University of violating federal civil rights law by discriminating against Asian-American and white applicants, an escalation of the Trump administration’s moves against race-based admissions policies at elite universities.

The charge, coming after a two-year investigation, is the administration’s second confrontation with an Ivy League school; two years ago, it publicly backed Asian-American students who accused Harvard in a lawsuit of systematically discriminating against them.

The department’s finding could have far-reaching consequences for the ongoing legal challenges to affirmative action, which are expected to eventually reach the Supreme Court. Some conservative groups have long opposed affirmative action, a tool born in the civil rights era, and a handful of states have banned such policies at public universities.

“There is no such thing as a nice form of race discrimination,” Eric S. Dreiband, the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, said in a statement announcing the Justice Department’s move against Yale. “Unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs fosters stereotypes, bitterness and division.”

The Justice Department said that Yale had violated Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action by using race not as one of many factors in deciding which applicants to invite to the freshman class, but as a predominant or determining factor in admissions — an effect that was multiplied for competitive applicants.

Sydney Williams Burrowing into Books “A Personal Odyssey” by Thomas Sowell

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“Although marching to your own drummer has its downsides, both personally and professionally, it also made me no stranger to controversy.”  Thomas Sowell 1930 A Personal Odyssey, 2000

This memoir was written twenty years ago, so some will have read it. I had not. Sowell is a man I have long admired for his independent thinking on many issues. Trained as an economist, he writes as well on education and race, and of how politics, protests and policy prescriptions influenced his thinking.

Like Odysseus’ return from Troy, we follow him from birth and young boyhood in rural North Carolina, through his school years in Harlem, and his leaving home at age seventeen. We follow him into the Marine Corps, and we learn of his years in college and graduate school, of marriage and children. We read of his years of teaching, writing and thinking, and, finally to his Ithaca, Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where he researches and writes – a passage through trials to triumph.

He was born in 1930. His father died before he arrived and his mother, who could not afford to feed and care for him, had to give him up to his father’s Aunt Molly. The poverty in which he lived was bleak. His first home: “Like most of the houses in the area, ours had no such frills as electricity, central heating, or hot running water…The toilet was a little shed on the back porch.” At age nine, his family moved to New York City, to a shared apartment in Harlem. In 1944, his intelligence got him admitted to Stuyvesant High School where he first spent time with white children. But he quit before graduation. He worked and went into the Marine Corps: “Never in my life did race mean less than during those two months at Parris Island. The Drill Instructors saw their job as making everybody miserable, and they did so without regard to race, color, creed or national origin.”

The Fiasco of ‘Go Ahead, Break Our Windows’ Policing .By Charles Lipson –

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/13/the_fiasco_of_go_ahead_break_

After looters struck downtown Chicago on Sunday night, officials literally raised the bridges to prevent rioting hordes from roaming so easily. They also blocked road access and stopped public transit. So, we have come to this: a major American city is replicating the strategy of medieval castles: flood the moats and raise the drawbridges. All that is missing are crenelated battlements and Welsh longbowmen.

In Portland, officials aren’t even raising the drawbridges. After more than 70 nights of rioting, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s strategy seems to be, “If you insist on doing this, we might write a strong letter.” He has stopped short of repeating what Monty Python’s French knight told invaders at his castle, “Go away or I will taunt you a second time.” Mayor Wheeler hasn’t taunted them a first time.

Wheeler has plenty of company among Democratic mayors and governors. Months after George Floyd’s death and the rioting and looting that followed, stores remain boarded up, criminals unpunished. Nothing says, “We protest racial injustice” like burning down the corner grocery or smashing windows to grab boxes of expensive Nikes. Instead of condemning the vandalism and jailing those who committed it, many mayors and city councils are trying to mollify their demands, slash police funding, and wait it out. The appeasement approach will fail to mollify the vandals, but it will enrage ordinary citizens, who want their lives back and an end to all this moral hectoring.

As we suffer through this summer of discontent, we can see a split emerging among big-city Democrats. Most, like Portland’s Wheeler, Minneapolis’ Jacob Frey, Seattle’s Jenny Durkan, and New York’s Bill de Blasio, favor drastic concessions to protesters, beginning with sharp reductions in police budgets. Seattle just passed a new budget cutting up to 100 officers, slashing salaries for department leaders, and dismantling the special team that removes homeless encampments, one of the city’s worst problems. Seattle’s police chief, Carmen Best, responded by announcing her retirement. She was the first black woman to head the department. No matter to the city council, which was busy congratulating itself for taking what it called “a first step” toward upending the city’s law enforcement. Still, the vote wasn’t unanimous. One council member was angry because the cuts didn’t go far enough. This isn’t sensible policy; it’s senseless self-parody.

Number of Americans filing for unemployment falls below 1M for first time since pandemic started

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobless-claims-coronavirus-pandemic-august-8

The number of laid-off Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell below 1 million last week for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic started in mid-March.

The latest jobless claims figures from the Labor Department, which cover the week ending August 8, show that 963,000 workers sought aid last week, pushing the total number since the shutdown began to nearly 56 million.

Economists surveyed by Refinitiv expected 1.12 million new claims. Last week’s total was revised up by 5,000 to 1.186 million.

The figure — the lowest since March 21, just as the pandemic brought the economy to a grinding halt — indicates there’s still driving power behind the job market’s recovery, despite fears that a flare-up in COVID-19 cases and a fresh round of business closures would derail its early recovery.

Ilhan Omar Defeats Democratic Primary Challenger The “squad” member from Minnesota will face Republican nominee Lacy Johnson in the general election. By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/12/ilhan-omar-defeats-democratic-primary-challenger/

U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) managed to fend off a well-funded primary challenger in Minnesota’s primary elections Tuesday night, The Hill reports.

In the 5th Congressional District, Omar—who is one of the first Muslims elected to Congress and who has a history of racist statements against whites and Jews—was challenged by Antone Melton-Meaux. Although Melton-Meaux raised more than $3 million to Omar’s $470,000, Omar decisively won the primary with 57 percent of the vote, to Melton-Meaux’s 39 percent.

Omar, like her fellow members of “the squad” of socialist and progressive congresswomen, has been criticized for being too far-left and for her numerous controversial statements, particularly with regards to Israel. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), both of whom are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, also faced primary challengers this year but ultimately emerged victorious.