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How Bad Is Antisemitism In Europe? Surveys Suggest It’s Rampant By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/06/how-bad-is-antisemitism-in-europe-surveys-suggest-its-rampant

Hesitating to dub strangers antisemites is wise, especially based on limited information. But the blatant bigotry on parade in Europe underscores that open antisemitism has come roaring back.

The Belgian city of Aalst celebrated this year’s Carnival with grotesque displays of overt antisemitism. Revelers mocked the Wailing Wall, with some dressed as ants in Hasidic hats and others as Nazis. That theme continued in Campo de Criptana, Spain, where Carnival participants dressed up as Nazis and concentration camp prisoners, flanked by chimneys.

The blatant bigotry on parade underscored that open antisemitism has come roaring back. What’s less certain is how many people are fueling that resurgence. Pew Research and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) surveys have approached that question, but it’s easier to ask than to answer.

Calculating that number requires not only a good definition of antisemitism (like International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition) but also a clear understanding of why we’re even asking. Do we want to know where Jews can most comfortably live as visible Jews, most easily assimilate, or simply live in safety, free of physical attacks?

European Attitudes About Jews Are Changing For Worse

POLITICS Comments turned off

Can Andrew Yang Really Become Mayor Of Gotham? Andrew Yang is considering a run for mayor of New York City and it’s not just a pipe dream. By David Marcus

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/06/can-andrew-yang-really-become-mayor-of-gotham/

“One thing, though anecdotal, that should make Yang feel good about a potential run for Hizzonership is that I’ve spoken to both Democrats and Republicans here who welcome the idea. That’s a very good sign. We will see soon what he chooses to do. But this not a laughable idea. And frankly, after Bill de Blasio, America’s largest city, and the best one in the world, could do a lot worse.”

To understand mayoral politics in New York City, you have to think about two basic facts. First, the city is five to one Democrat to Republican. Two, Since 1992 non-Democrats have been mayor for 20 years: Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, and a Democrat, Bill de Blasio for only 7. Today’s Democratic Party in the Big Apple is no Tammany Hall; the city’s voters are willing to vote for outsiders.

The news is now swirling that former presidential candidate and famed Asian good at math Andrew Yang is considering a run at Gracey Mansion (that’s where the mayor lives). Right off the bat, it’s one of these wonderfully provocative political ideas to consider. But in practice what would it look like?

The first question is whether Yang would run in the Democratic primary or launch an Independent bid. Let’s assume he does the former. This is a heavy lift. He has no substantial contacts in the local party, and would only have until November 2021 to develop them. There are also rumors that Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., of impeachment fame is weighing his own candidacy for mayor.

One way to ingratiate yourself to a political party, in fact the best way to do so is to give the party tons of cash. On Friday Yang announced the launch of his new non-profit “Move Humanity Forward.” The organization will support candidates in favor of Universal Basic Income (UBI), a fancy way of say a thousand smackers a month for everyone.

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U.S. Added 273,000 Jobs in February Before Coronavirus Spread Widely The monthly employment report left unanswered questions about the potential economic impact of the outbreak.

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/business/economy/jobs-report.html?emc=edit_

For the second month in a row, the economy churned out a blockbuster number of jobs, the government reported Friday, an impressive performance in an era of slow-and-steady employment growth.

With the coronavirus outbreak shaking economic confidence, the solid showing in February may not be a harbinger of continued strength.

Still, the report from the Department of Labor offered a refreshing breath of positive economic news. Employers expanded payrolls by 273,000 jobs in February, while revisions to data from previous months added 85,000 more jobs to the tally. The jobless rate ticked down to 3.5 percent.

“It’s certainly a relief that we had a strong tailwind,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton. “Service, leisure and hospitality, these are all very vulnerable. The good news is that these workers had some cushion ahead of time. It helps blunt the blow.”

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Democrat Lawmakers defeated consideration of the anti BDS bill by a tally of 219-194.

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://worldisraelnews.com/us-house-democrats-block-anti-bds-bill/?utm_source=M

Lawmakers defeated consideration of the bill by a tally of 219-194.

By JNS

Democrats blocked a bill on Wednesday in the U.S. House of Representatives that would have prohibited U.S. support for the anti-Israel BDS movement.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, introduced by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), would have expanded the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 to include prohibiting U.S. support for foreign boycotts of Israel from groups including the European Union and the U.N. Human Rights Council.

“We cannot be quiet when it comes to combating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel mentalities,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) on the House floor. “We need to work together in Congress and pass common-sense legislation on this issue. H.R. 5595 does just that.”

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Showdown Brews As U.N. Court Targets U.S. GIs By Benny Avni

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/showdown-building-as-un-court-targets-us-gis/91042/

An international prosecutor, Fatou Bensuda, was advised Thursday by a panel at Hague that she should go ahead and investigate alleged war crimes committed by Americans in Afghanistan. It’s a shocking development.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the International Criminal Court panel’s ruling “a truly breathtaking action by an unaccountable political institution masquerading as a legal body.” It is, but what to do?

In a little noticed address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee last week, Senator Ted Cruz urged an American push at the United Nations Security Council to ban ICC investigations against Israelis, Americans, or citizens of any other non-member of the Hague-based court.

According to the Rome Statute, which governs the ICC — a global trial venue for war crimes and crimes against humanity — it has no jurisdiction over countries that have not joined its 123 member states. So non-members like America, Israel, China, Russia, and India are off limit. Or are they?

When the court started functioning in 2002, I made a bet with a friend, an avid universal jurisdiction supporter, that despite non-membership, Americans and Israelis would early on end up in the dock. I lost that bet, but only because I thought such ICC prosecutions would be launched right off the bat.

In the early days, the court went after alleged war criminals in places like Darfur, Congo, Burundi, and the Central African Republic. A few years ago, however, several African countries contended there’s a racist pattern against their continent and threatened to renounce their ICC membership. Political pressures grew on Ms. Bensouda, the Gambian-born ICC prosecutor, to land more visible non-African fish.

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Why Is It Bad to Threaten Supreme Court Justices? Threatening judges is a challenge not only to judicial independence, but to America’s constitutional order. Charles Lipson

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.mercatus.org/bridge/commentary/why-it-bad-threaten-supreme-court-justices

The bipartisan shredding of America’s established constitutional norms continues apace. The latest culprit is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, he issued a chilling, direct threat to two sitting justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. He deserves broad condemnation. He received it only from Republicans. Save for some prominent lawyers, Democrats remained silent.

Schumer told a cheering crowd, “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price!” The crowd was rallying for abortion rights as the Supreme Court heard a case on that issue. The minority leader was there to support them, a perfectly legitimate political act. What’s illegitimate is his call to arms, his over-the-top threats. Schumer concluded by saying the two justices “won’t know what hit them” if they decide the wrong way.

Could a US politician’s behavior get much worse? Actually, it could. Schumer doubled down when he was rebuked. It took him a full day, some tongue-lashing on the Senate floor, and doubtless some phone calls behind the scenes for him to admit he was wrong.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Primary Results Indicate Republicans Could Flip 6 California Districts

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/republicans-poised-to-flip-6-california-districts-primary-results-indicate_3261593.html?ref=brief_News&utm_source=Epoch+Times+

Republicans could flip six congressional seats in California in November, based on primary results. Four additional seats are enough to make GOP candidates competitive.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t seem to have an easy path open to even one seat currently held by a Republican.

California as a whole leans left, with Democrats holding 45 of the 53 congressional districts (two are vacant). The March 3 primary results, however, suggest the GOP may heal its losses from the 2018 midterms, where Democrats flipped seven seats.

The state holds “jungle primaries,” which means both Democrats and Republicans show up on the same ballot, and the two candidates with the most votes face each other in the general election.

Voters who didn’t get their primary pick could still be generally expected to go for the winning candidate of their party. Thus, by adding up the votes for all Democrats and all Republicans on the ballot, one can get a rough idea of how many voters may show up for the candidate of each party in the general election.

In addition, there was only one statewide measure on the ballot this time—one for bonds to fund public school facilities (voted down). That means Democrats may have had a stronger motivation to show up, since they were deciding on their presidential candidate, while the Republican presidential primary was a largely symbolic exercise of confirming President Donald Trump as the nominee of choice. Trump received 92.5 percent of the vote.

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Conan: Political Pilgrim of Our Time Romancing tyranny and terror. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/conan-political-pilgrim-our-time-bruce-bawer/

It all started with Jon Stewart, whose sixteen-year hosting stint on the Daily Show (1999-2015) marked a sea change from the Johnny Carson era, when late-night entertainment was pretty much free of drastic political slant (at least on the part of the hosts). Stewart’s show, sold as a comic take on the news, was in reality a nightly dose of blatant left-wing propaganda – and was, alarmingly, many young people’s main source of news. Taped interviews with conservatives and libertarians were routinely edited to make them look stupid. Alas, Stewart’s show, not Carson’s, became the template for every one of the current late-night talk shows on American broadcast TV.

One talk-show host who likes to think that he’s different from the rest of the herd is Conan O’Brien. In a recent Oxford Union appearance, he faulted other talk shows for being “all about politics” and for constantly attacking Trump, and declared that he, by contrast, tries to do “silly” and “crazy” comedy that won’t date after a day or two. Well, that sounded refreshing, so I decided to catch up on Conan’s work, which I hadn’t checked out in years. From the Oxford Union gig – which demonstrated that, twenty-seven years into his career as a talk-show host, Conan is still big with young people – I learned that in addition to his nightly TBS show and tons of show clips on YouTube, he has a podcast, plus Conan without Borders, a Netflix series (originally aired in prime time on TBS) on which he travels to various countries around the world.

Admittedly, Conan’s YouTube channel proved to contain some genuinely amusing bits – for example, take-offs on Northern Ireland’s first same-sex marriage and on the Scandinavian “hygge” craze. But the political bias is unmistakable. In a monologue posted on February 28, Conan mocked the fact that Mike Pence had been put in charge of combating the Coronavirus. When Conan does spoof Democrats, it’s for innocuous stuff, such as the presidential candidates talking on top of one another at the February 25 Charleston debate. A recent bit about Bernie Sanders zinged him not for his radical policy positions (au contraire) but because he’s a “grumpy old white guy.”

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Schumer, the Supreme Court, and the Mob By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/schumer-the-supreme-court-and-the-mob/The senator treats the Court like a political body — which it is.

Should Chuck Schumer be censured? Of course he should, in the sense that the rule of law, were it actually our cynosure, would cry out for it.

On Wednesday morning, the Democrats’ Senate minority leader stirred up the mob outside the Supreme Court, unabashedly threatening Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” Schumer inveighed. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Inside, the justices were then hearing argument on what ought to be a straightforward abortion case (i.e., one in which the “right” invented in Roe v. Wade is not up for consideration). When called on his menacing remarks, rather than apologize, Schumer brazenly lied about what he had done. This morning, he was still lying — a tepid apology, offered under pressure while insisting that “in no way was I making a threat.”

In a rule-of-law society, that should rate censure. Case closed.

Except it’s not closed, because we are not a rule-of-law society. We just pretend to be. In a rule-of-law society, a mob would not gather on the steps of the courthouse in the first place.

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Trump Admin. Reverses Obama-Era Regulation Blocking Coronavirus Testing Liz Shield

Posted By on March 6th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/05/morning-greatness-trump-admin-reverses-obama-era-regulation-blocking-coronavirus-testing/

The House passed an $8.3B measure for emergency funding to combat coronavirus and now it will go to the Senate. Meanwhile, we have some more cruise ship trouble.

Two shiploads of passengers may have been exposed. State and federal officials are scurrying to contact 2,500-plus passengers who disembarked Feb. 21 from the San Francisco-Mexico cruise at the same time as the man who died, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday.

California is also keeping Grand Princess passengers on the current San Francisco-Hawaii trip in the Pacific Ocean indefinitely until state and federal officials can assess how many passengers and crew have coronavirus or have been exposed.

Twenty-one people on the Grand Princess are showing signs of possible infection.

The Trump Administration has rolled back an Obama FDA rule that required “state-run laboratories to only run medical tests pre-approved by the F.D.A.”

“The Obama administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we’re doing, and we undid that decision a few days ago so that the testing can take place at a much more accurate and rapid fashion,” Trump stated. “That was a decision we disagreed with. I don’t think we would have made it, but for some reason it was made. But we’ve undone that decision.”

Keep calm, wash your hands and don’t panic. People are freaking out that they can’t get tested for the virus, but does it matter if you aren’t showing life threatening symptoms in this time of crisis? If you go to the ER, and you aren’t sick you will be when you leave because that is where the sick people are. If you do have the virus but aren’t dangerously sick, they are going to send you home to self-quarantine, you won’t be admitted because hospitals are saving space for really sick people like the elderly and immuno-compromised.