POLITICS Comments turned off

Don’t Buy the Myth of the ‘Moderate’ Democrat Bob Maistros

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/03/dont-buy-the-myth-of-the-moderate-democrat/

Watching a passel of Democrats in the Motor City struggle to differentiate themselves recalled my move years ago from politics to New York PR.

I was a bit confused about nomenclature in my new profession and turned to a grizzled veteran. What, I asked him, is the difference among public relations, marketing communications, advertising and the then-hot new concept of strategic communications?

“Not a (expletive deleted) thing,” he grunted. “It’s all selling soap.”

Putting aside the theatrics of Biden Bashfest II Wednesday, the faux showdowns on the first night opened a new going-forward narrative of differences among the “moderates” and “progressives.” The Wall Street Journal opined on “the sharpest ideological differences in decades.”

Don’t buy it.

Every Democrat on the stage was selling the same thing: Bigger Government. 

Let’s zero in on key domestic issues covered in the three-hour midsummer night’s nightmare, shall we?

Health care was supposedly a differentiator, with alleged middle-of-the-roaders fixing to pour cold water on Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’ $32 trillion Medicare for All dream.

Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney managed to squeeze in his money line — “real solutions, not impossible promises” — on four separate occasions, and called Medicare for All “extreme.” But he also shoehorned in the phrase “universal” in conjunction with health care four times, proposing “a universal health care system to give everyone basic health care for free.” That’s telling ‘em, congressman.

BOOKS Comments turned off

“The Pioneers” by David McCullough- A Review by Sydney Williams

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

History allows us to marvel at our own time with renewed perspectives. For example, how rich and easy our lives are – despite a freshman Congresswoman telling a Newsweek interviewer that “an entire generation [millennials] came of age and never saw American prosperity” – compared to the hardships experienced by early pioneers, like those along the Ohio River.

David McCullough, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, in his new book, follows several families, including those of Manasseh Cutler and his two sons, Ephraim and Jervis, along with Joseph Barker and Samuel Hildreth, from the founding of the Ohio Company in 1784, through the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, to 1863, when the Territory had become five states and all the founders were dead.

In 1783, as a condition for signing the Treaty of Paris, John Adams insisted that Britain cede rights to what was called the Northwest Territory, an area west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River and south of British Canada. It consisted of 265,878 square miles – an area larger than France, an area from which five states would eventually be carved: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837) and Wisconsin (1848). In 1800, the U.S. Census recorded a population of 51,000 in the Territory. By 1860, those five states had a population of seven million.

The land they first settled in 1788, where the Muskingum River meets the Ohio, became the town of Marietta. It was named after the French Queen, Marie Antoinette. Marietta was settled by forty-eight pioneers led by General Rufus Putnam, a Revolutionary War veteran and friend of George Washington. It is in the southeastern part of what is now Ohio, bordering on Virginia (now West Virginia). The passage of the Northwest Ordinance gave ownership of the land to the U.S. government which, via the Ohio Company, sold land to pioneers, including Revolutionary War veterans – men, as Joseph Barker later wrote, who “had been disciplined to obey, and learned the advantage of subordination to law and good behavior in promoting the prosperity of themselves and the rest of mankind.” Traits needed by those who would venture west included, Mr. McCullough writes: “fortitude, perseverance, patience, resolution and good sense.”

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

With autocrats on defensive, US has opportunity BY Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/456055-with-autocrats-on-defensive-us-has-opportunity

Moscow detains nearly 1,400 protesters after a bloody crackdown and returns its most prominent opposition figure to jail after what he suspects was a state-ordered poisoning that put him in the hospital. Beijing hints that it will send its army to quell protests against Hong Kong’s China-backed government.

For all their outward self-confidence, the governments of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping seem unusually unnerved by recent protests, perhaps reflecting unstated concerns that the protests could threaten both regimes.

That’s unlikely, but those governments would be wise to take nothing for granted. After all, no one knows what will trigger an uprising that’s large enough to topple a government, or a series of them. No one could have predicted the Soviet crack-up of three decades ago or the “Arab Spring” of more recent years, however much the populations in both places were itching for change.

Moreover, autocracies face new challenges to maintaining power. Modern communications – computers, mobile phones, social media – make it harder for autocracies to prevent their constituents from securing information from the outside and, in turn, comparing their plight with their brethren in freer and more democratic societies.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Steve Frank: J Streeters duped on alternative tour of Israel

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/j-streeters-duped-on-alternative-tour-of-israel/

Nonprofit advocacy group J Street has recently been campaigning against Birthright Israel, an educational program that sponsors free 10-day heritage trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. Over 600,000 young adults have participated in the program since its founding in 1999.

J Street charges that Birthright trips lack Palestinians voices, fail to incorporate the Palestinian narrative and neglect to visit Palestinian sites in the West Bank. As an alternative to the traditional Birthright tour, J Street recently sponsored a trip to Israel for 28 participants who visited Palestinian sites in the West Bank and heard from spokesmen for the Palestinian cause.

According to The New York Times, “In the West Bank settlement of Har Gilo,” the J Streeters “received a harsh history lesson from a veteran opponent of the occupation. Then they toured an impoverished, water-starved Palestinian village that Israeli settlers want to demolish, and visited the city of Hebron, where repeated outbreaks of violence have turned an entire Palestinian business district into a ghost town.”

The J Street trip and the Times article about it were highly criticized in a pointed piece in Commentary magazine. The Commentary review noted that there was not a word in either the trip or the Times article “on the murderous Palestinian anti-Semitic violence that necessitates Israel’s policing of such places [as Hebron] to begin with,” “no mention of the kleptocratic Palestinian leadership that’s consigned generations of Palestinians to certain ruin” and “no mention of the fact that the Palestinians have, again and again—and again—refused to make peace with Israel when it was offered.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Latest UN Horror Show: Christian Refugees Ignored by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14631/un-christian-refugees

Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement to other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program.
The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years due to the growing refugee backlog….. “The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014,” according to the report.
“Since January, the process has become even slower and more difficult. The UNHCR has not even granted newcomers refugee status since. They just give them an appointment date, then they cancel the date and give them a new one. So we all keep waiting.” — Lorance Yousuf Kazqeea, a Christian originally from Baghdad, has been an asylum seeker in Jordan with his wife and two children since September 2017; to Gatestone Institute.
“You can contact the local UNHCR office in your country and demand answers – why Iraqi Christians have been waiting for resettlement for years and why the West continuously rejects them.” — Juliana Taimoorazy, founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, which has been active in Jordan since 2015; to Gatestone Institute.

Since the 2014 invasion and genocide by the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, at least 16,000 Assyrian Christians from Iraq have become refugees in Jordan. Most are still suffering economically and psychologically there, under extremely difficult circumstances.

These Assyrian Christians are in Jordan on a temporary basis with plans to emigrate to a third country. However, as they have not been given official work permits by the Jordanian government, they largely rely on their savings, remittances sent by relatives abroad or aid from charity organizations and churches. Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement in other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Flogging a Dead Donkey Is Futile by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14649/iran-flog-dead-donkey

The Europeans pretend to be working on a magic potion that shall have the dead donkey up and running in no time. For their part, Tehran’s Khomeinist leaders insist that the donkey is alive and well but continue to pull off its legs one by one. The Russians and the Chinese serenade the dead donkey every now and then but are clearly not interested in whether it is dead or alive.

Trump may have done everyone a service by exposing the fraudulent nature of the JCPOA and seeking a fresh round of negotiations to address the totality of issues that have kept relations between Iran and the outside world in a state of crisis for the past four decades. The wisest course in the interest of all concerned is to bury the dead donkey and clear the deck for new initiatives on a solid legal basis.

The failure of the G7 summit to come up with a united and constructive stance on the “Iran problem” would encourage the mullahs to pursue policies that have done so much harm to Iran, indeed to the whole Middle East, in the past four decades.

Of all the futile things one could imagine, beating a dead donkey in the hope of forcing it to move on is the proverbial example. Right now, we are witnessing an example of that in the diplomatic gesticulations designed to maintain the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” on a life-support machine.

The Europeans pretend to be working on a magic potion that shall have the dead donkey up and running in no time. For their part, Tehran’s Khomeinist leaders insist that the donkey is alive and well but continue to pull off its legs one by one. The Russians and the Chinese serenade the dead donkey every now and then but are clearly not interested in whether it is dead or alive.

In theory, the “deal”, also known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was the fruit of collective efforts by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany on one side and Iran’s Khomeinist establishment on the other. However, in reality, it was a diabolical elixir that President Barack Obama concocted by using every dubious ingredient he could get hold of.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Another ungrateful migrant creates a new ‘narrative’ for ingratitude By Monica Showalter

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/another_ungrateful_migrant_creates_a_new_narrative_for_ingratitude.html

Rep. Ilhan Omar was just an opening act. Now, another ungrateful migrant has come out of the woodwork to tell us how awful we are and how ingratitude for being allowed to come here is the rightful state for migrants.

Calcutta-born Suketu Mehta, a bitter revanchist who would have been ripped to shreds as a fourth-rate, fourth world ‘intellectual’ by V.S. Naipaul (too bad he’s not alive) puts forth the argument in the Washington Post that immigration is a reparation. His piece is titled ‘I am an uppity immigrant. Don’t expect me to be grateful.” Based on what he says, it’s clear he views migration to the U.S. as an entitlement solely because America is so very, very bad — and as a lagniappe, because he’s so very, very good. He writes:

I’ve been told to “go back” ever since 1977, when I enrolled in an extravagantly racist all-boys Catholic school in Queens, N.Y. — birthplace of President Trump, who recently became the biggest, loudest mouthpiece for this line of rhetoric when he tweeted that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The idea is: White Americans get to decide who is allowed to come in and what rules we are to follow. If you come here, don’t complain. Be grateful we took you in. “Go back” is a line that’s intended to put immigrants in our place — or rather, to remind us that our place in this country is contingent, that we are beholden to those who came here earlier.

To this I say: No, we are not. I take my place in America — an imperfect place — and I make it my own; there’s a Constitution that protects my right to do so. I will not genuflect at the white American altar. I will not bow and scrape before my supposed benefactors. I understand the soul of this nation just as well, if not better, than they do: a country that stole the futures of the people who are now arriving at its borders, a cacophonous country, an exceptional country, but one that seems determined to continually sabotage its journey towards a more perfect union. Nobody powerful ever gave the powerless anything just because they asked politely, and immigrants don’t come hat-in-hand. I am an uppity immigrant. I am entitled to be here. Deal with it.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The appalling, misguided mindset of the NeverTrumpers By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/the_appalling_misguided_mindset_of_the_nevertrumpers.html

The ever-disappointing, Trump-hating  Bret Stephens has disappointed his former fans again.  He hates the President but admits the Democrat party is off the rails.  Indeed, it is.   In his most recent column, he mis-states Trump’s tweet re: the “send them back” controversy.  Trump merely suggested they go back – – to Somalia, Detroit, the Bronx and Boston, fix things then tell him how to fix the nation.  It was not a racist tweet in any sense of the word any more than his stating the truth about Baltimore was racist.  Skin color never enters Trump’s mind, actions, or accomplishments.  He is a colorblind person.  

He was right about the anti-Americanism of the lamentable “squad” and he is right about the obvious deterioration of Democrat-run cities that have been unaddressed for decades because to speak the truth aloud is instantly deemed racist.  That is how our politics have been for decades, and it escalated over the eight years of the Obama race-baiting years.   Obama set race relations back and he did it on purpose.  It was all by design, meant to promote a surge of identity politics — and it worked.

Stephens is like many people today who think their hatred of Trump is validated because of what they think they know about his character and his past.  They feel self-righteous for objecting to his every move because he was, at various times of his life, a womanizer and a savvy businessman.  What has that to do with how he has run his administration?  Absolutely nothing.  Had our media been as disrespectful of many previous presidents as they are of Trump, the young of those years would have been equally outraged.  Woodrow Wilson, whom Rahm Emmanuel just praised as a heroic progressive the other day, was an avowed racist.  LBJ was as well.  Emmanuel touted the Great Society as a success, but it was an abject failure.  Its “War on Poverty” was a disaster of catastrophic proportions; it destroyed black families in particular. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on August 4th, 2019

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Re-igniting cells to kill cancer. Ben Gurion University scientists have discovered a protein in the membrane of cancer cells that helps the cancer to grow by disabling the immune system’s white blood cells. They have also identified a potential antibody antidote and have secured a startup and funding to develop and commercialize it.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-researchers-discover-how-to-disable-Natural-Killer-cancer-cells-597159
 
MRIs detect molecular changes in the brain. Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists have transformed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect microscopic changes in the biological makeup of brain tissue. Doctors can now get an early warning if a patient is developing a disease such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-imaging-technique-could-help-doctors-predict-Alzheimers-cancer-597134  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/266682
 
Analyzing brain cells for Alzheimer’s.  Israel’s Quantified Biology uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to analyze images of those cells in the brain responsible for electrical communication between neurons. The startup helps researchers into Alzheimer’s treatments by identifying their effect on these key cells.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3766658,00.html
 
A gene to protect against the Zika virus. I reported previously (see here) on Israeli work to eradicate the deadly Zika virus. Now Tel Aviv University scientists have identified the gene IFI6, which combats the Zika virus by protecting cells from infection and preventing cell death. It can lead to a new anti-viral therapy.
https://www.israel21c.org/israelis-identify-genes-that-protect-cells-from-zika-virus/
 
Detecting undiagnosed head injuries. More than 50 million people worldwide suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI) ever year. CT and MRI scans often fail to detect mild concussions. Israeli neurobiologist Dr. Adrian Harel has founded Medicortex Finland which detects TBI cell damage in a biomarker in saliva and urine.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-founded-company-aims-to-rapidly-detect-undiagnosed-head-injuries-597096
 
Hello Heart.  Israeli-founded Hello Heart is a Smartphone app that helps users lower their blood pressure and reduce the risk of cardiovascular death, strokes and coronary heart disease. It provides tools to self-manage hypertension by encouraging behavior change in companies’ employees. FDA approved and HIPAA compliant.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3767452,00.html  https://helloheart.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCNjuwnA8NI
 
Novel diet for children with Crohn’s disease. Israeli and Canadian researchers have developed a diet that in a 12-week put 75% of children with Crohn’s disease into remission.  The diet comprised eggs, chicken, potatoes, apples, and mashed bananas and initially excluded wheat, dairy, fish, rice, and other fruits and vegetables.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/gastroenterology/inflammatoryboweldisease/80308 
https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(19)36714-9/fulltext?
 
Live long and prosper. (TY Roc) Israel’s National Plan on Aging includes increased budgets for R&D for healthy longevity; health education and increased awareness about aging-related diseases; better public systems for early detection and prevention of aging-related diseases. See also report “Longevity in Israel”.
http://longevityalliance.org/?q=enhancing-research-development-and-education-healthy-longevity-included-israel-national-masterplan https://www.israel21c.org/israel-fast-becoming-world-hub-of-aging-industry/
https://aginganalytics.com/longevity-in-israel/
 
Saving babies in Ghana. (TY Arlene) Israel has upgraded neo-natal facilities in the Kumasi South and Suntreso hospitals in Ashanti, Ghana. Israeli medical personnel from Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center also trained staff at those hospitals. Doctors there estimate that some 700 babies have been saved as a direct result.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/30/israeli-experts-upgrade-neo-natal-units-in-ghana-saving-700-babies/
https://yen.com.gh/131224-israel-upgrades-neonatal-units-kumasi-south-suntreso-hospitals-photos.html
 
Enhancing emergency services in Mexico. Many Mexicans lose their lives each year because emergency calls from mobile phones do not accurately pinpoint the caller’s location. Israel’s Carbyne, is to provide Google’s ELS (Emergency Location Service) in real time. For previous newsletter articles on Carbyne,.see here.
https://www.israel21c.org/google-and-israels-carbyne-improve-911-service-in-mexico/
 
 

HISTORY Comments turned off

VIDEO: ANDREW BOSTOM “THE RISING SCOURGE OF ISLAMIC ANTISEMITISM

Posted By on August 3rd, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4786&v=I_JRTxw0DFY

Dr. Andrew Bostom gave a presentation for the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Tuesday, July 30, 2019, entitled, “The Rising Scourge of Islamic Antisemitism”. Dr. Bostom summarized extensive, and unprecedented Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey data revealing the current disproportionate 2.0 to 4.5-fold excess of extreme Antisemitism amongst Muslims vs. all other religious groups, or those professing no religion, globally, and regionally, including within the United States.

He also demonstrated what animates this Muslim Antisemitism: the 1300 year-old living legacy of theological Islamic Jew-hatred, rooted in Islam’s core texts—the Koran itself, the traditions of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, and the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad. These texts, in turn, have begotten three inter-related canonical Islamic doctrines which continue to be espoused by Islam’s most authoritative religious teaching institutions, Sunni, and Shiite, alike: jihad war to subjugate Jews, and other non-Muslims; the application of Islamic Law, Sharia, which seeks to humiliate Jews and non-Muslims who survive their conquest, but do not convert to Islam; and Islam’s theology of virulent Jew-hatred which targets Jews, relentlessly, for their alleged intrinsic evil, manifested as stubborn, even hateful rejection of Islam, and conspiratorial efforts to undermine the Muslim prophet Muhammad, and his mission to propagate the Muslim creed, from Islam’s inception, till now.

The presentation, notably, also includes an exposure, and thorough debunking, of the popular, late modern Western Islamic studies doyen, Bernard Lewis, whose platitudinous bowdlerization of doctrinal and historical truths, continues to negate the Islam underpinning Muslim Jew-hatred, with tragic consequences.

Finally, the mea culpa-based teachings and implementation of Vatican II/Nostre Aetate, launched in 1965, which sought to expunge Christianity’s Antisemitic theology, were summarized as a template for challenging institutional Islam—indeed demanding—that it initiate a similar effort to eliminate Islam’s own virulent theological Jew-hatred.