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Good Riddance to Mehdi Hasan By Becket Adams

Posted By on January 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/good-riddance-to-mehdi-hasan/

The MSNBC host’s fact-challenged invective won’t be missed.

MSNBC has bid farewell to yet another anchor whose penchant for insipid demagoguery far outstrips any actual talent.

Mehdi Hasan, who slanders conservatives nearly as much as he slanders “Zionists” (wink, wink), announced last week his intention to quit MSNBC. The news came not long after the network axed his weekend show that nobody watched.

“With this show going away,” Hasan told those who happened to tune in that evening, “I’ve decided that it’s time for me to look for a new challenge.”

Attracting viewers seemed plenty enough of a challenge, but okay.

MSNBC last November announced a weekend reshuffling, citing as chief among its reasons the looming 2024 presidential election. And among those to get the cut was none other than the British-born Al Jazeera English and Intercept alumnus. In response to the news, a member of the House of Representatives famous for her antisemitic remarks demanded that the network reverse its decision, suggesting that Hasan’s loss of his show, which launched in 2021, was somehow an affront to “free expression.”

“Mehdi is one of the most brilliant and most prominent Muslim journalists in the U.S.,” said Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar. “It is deeply troubling that MSNBC is canceling his show amid a rampant rise of anti-Muslim bigotry and suppression of Muslim voices. Anyone who cares about free expression should be concerned.”

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Pro-Palestinian Protesters Clash with Riot Police as They Breach White House Gate By Caroline Downey

Posted By on January 14th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-protesters-clash-with-riot-police-as-they-breach-white-house-gate/

A pro-Palestinian protest in Washington, D.C., got unruly on Saturday night as activists nearly breached an exterior White House gate and clashed with riot police.

Protesters rushed against the reinforced gate, an extra security measure installed in front of the primary White House gate, causing it to shake while some tried to scale the structure. Police and presumably some secret service agents waited on the other side to deter the demonstrators.

“Break it down!!,” one protester bellowed amid the cacophony.

“You support the murdering of children!,” another protester screamed.

Some protesters flew large Palestinian flags and wore keffiyahs.

Objects, such as bottles, are seen being thrown over the fence in footage of the incident. Some staff members and members of the press were evacuated from parts of the White House as the chaos unfolded Saturday night, Fox News reported.

“During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage,” the U.S. Secret Service told Fox News in a statement. “The issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams.”

“As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” the statement added. “The Secret Service made no arrests associated with the march and there was no property damage to the White House or adjacent buildings.”

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith, who oversees Washington, D.C., police, rebuked protest activity that devolved into lawlessness in a statement to Fox News.

“The right to peacefully protest is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and the Metropolitan Police Department has long supported those who visit our city to demonstrate safely,” she told the outlet. “However, violence, destructive behavior, and criminal activities are not tolerated.”

Protesters in front of the White House Saturday Night also chanted, “Yemen, Yemen make us proud / Turn another ship around,” after the U.S. deployed strikes on a radar site controlled by Houthi militants.

The strike consisted of warship-and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, U.S. officials said. The U.S. action came in response to a series of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, which the Houthis boasted had resulted in multiple casualties in addition to trade disruption, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. Navy on Friday cautioned American vessels to avoid areas around Yemen in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for a period following the initial airstrikes.

“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” President Biden said in statement. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Taiwan Voters Just Cut China’s Xi Jinping Down to Size by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on January 14th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20302/taiwan-voters-just-cut-china-xi-jinping-down-to

The Taiwanese, especially after seeing how Beijing suffocated Hong Kong in the past four years, do not want to be ruled by the Chinese regime.

Xi Jinping at the moment must be fuming. In his 2024 New Year’s message, he signaled he is soon going to annex Taiwan. “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the Chinese leader declared in a paragraph that appears to list what will happen this year.

The people of the small island of Taiwan are not afraid of large China. They are an inspiration to free people everywhere.

The results are in. Taiwan’s voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks.

Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency on Saturday in a three-way race with 40.1% of the vote. Hsiao Bi-khim, recently Taipei’s representative in Washington, was elected vice president.

New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih, of the opposition Kuomintang received 33.5%, and Ko Wen-je of the new Taiwan People’s Party came in third with 26.5%.

The election was historic. For the first time since 1996, when the island republic held its first democratic presidential election, a party has won a third straight presidential term.

Previously, the DPP, as the governing party is known, and the Kuomintang or KMT, traded the presidency every eight years.

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HOUSE OVERSIGHT INVESTIGATING EPA FOR $16 MILLION IN LEGAL FEES SPENT SETTLING ENVIRONMENTAL LAWSUITS

Posted By on January 14th, 2024

https://mailchi.mp/0ab0ee1d67c6/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-59895?e=0c8ccf8e98

Biden administration supercharging controversial “sue and settle” practice to expand environmental rules-and-regs.  

The first full week of the year is in the books, and we’re already off to an action packed start!

Congressional leaders are once again acting on key information uncovered by our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
 
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has opened an investigation into the EPA’s controversial “sue and settle” tactic that involves outside groups – frequently environmentalists – suing the agency to expand its work. 
 
The EPA is settling these lawsuits behind closed doors and reimbursing millions of legal fees to the environmentalists. 
 
The Biden practice was first highlighted last July in our EPA Oversight Report, and we shared our findings with the Washington Examiner, all cited by the committee in its initial letter to the EPA.

Critics say “sue and settle” creates an end-run around Congress, state governments, and private businesses affected by the new, often costly, rules. 

Worse, there’s concern that ideological bureaucrats are happy for outside organizations to sue for a regulation they already favor creating, effectively inviting the litigation and then paying the plaintiff’s legal fees.

Those fees have cost us, the taxpayers, over $16 MILLION since 2013!

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Washington Post Reprints Depraved Claim that Israel Steals Palestinian Organs by Sean Durns

Posted By on January 14th, 2024

https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/01/10/washington-post-reprints-depraved-claim-that-israel-steals-palestinian-organs/

Antisemitism is skyrocketing. And one of the largest newspapers in the United States is helping fuel the fire.

The Washington Post prides itself on “courageous journalism” and speaking “truth to power,” but a recent report promoted an age-old antisemitic canard. The Dec. 26, 2023, dispatch, “The World Wants a Respite for Gaza. Israel Vows to Keep on Fighting,” regurgitatedthe claim that Jews steal organs of non-Jews.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has documented, such “blood libels and conspiracy theories have played a tragic role in Jewish history” and are responsible for inciting anti-Jewish violence. And now you can find them printed in the pages of The Washington Post.

“Palestinian officials,” the Post wrote, “said Tuesday that Israel had returned the bodies of 80 people it had held during the Gaza War via the Karem Shalom border crossing. The Hamas-run government media office said Israel had not identified the bodies or said where they had been taken from. They had been ‘mutilated,’ the media office said in a statement, and there were ‘clear’ indications that organs had been ‘stolen’ from the corpses.”

“The claims,” the Post added, “could not be independently verified.”

As CAMERA has pointed out, this isn’t the first time that the Post has reprinted claims by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group that calls for a genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel. Indeed, the newspaper has made a habit of repeating casualty claims provided by the terrorist group, despite overwhelming evidence of their unreliability.

ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Patients, Not Medical Students, Are a Vulnerable Population By Sheldon Rubenfeld

Posted By on January 13th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/01/patients-not-medical-students-are-a-vulnerable-population/

Baylor College of Medicine’s cancellation of a lecture on antisemitism in medicine is just one sign of the troubling consequences of DEI.

Two months after Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, Baylor College of Medicine canceled a lecture scheduled many months before on “Antisemitism in Medicine,” to be given by me and another physician who has received many antisemitic threats, some of which led to police protection. Last year, my long-running course at Baylor on medicine and the Holocaust was canceled. It has become increasingly evident that medical schools, medical-licensing bodies, and medical organizations are reluctant to acknowledge, let alone confront, the fact that their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies breed antisemitism in medicine.

For the past 20 years of my nearly 50-year affiliation with Baylor, I offered an elective course, Healing by Killing: Medicine during the Third Reich, to first-year medical students. The course describes Hitler’s adoption of the German medical profession’s eugenic racist ideology and the central and indispensable role of physicians in designing and implementing the Holocaust. It also includes many disquieting photos and film clips from Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps. Judging by essays submitted in earlier years, the students took to heart the lessons about the potential for physician abuse of patients.

In April last year, I gave the fifth of the course’s nine lectures, “Why the Jews?” The first half of the lecture outlines the history of antisemitism; the second half is about countertransference, a common psychological phenomenon that occurs when a physician allows his or her feelings to influence a patient’s treatment. I asked the students to identify personal biases that could interfere with good patient care, such as biases against patients with a particular diagnosis, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political party affiliation, religion, educational level, personal features such as tattoos, and so on, and gave as an example my experience as a young doctor with a suicidal Palestinian graduate student, an example I had used many times before.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

If it weren’t for merit … By Eric Utter

Posted By on January 13th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/if_it_wasnt_for_merit_.html

”Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.”—P.J. O’Rourke

And we’ve all seen how that has worked out.

For all of us. Around the world.

If it weren’t for merit, we wouldn’t have the music of Beethoven and Bach, or, for that matter, Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones.

If it weren’t for merit, participating in or watching sports would be an exercise in…watching people exercise. An exercise in futility.

If it weren’t for merit, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, we would not have any of the great works of art……or any of the life-changing inventions of the 20th century. Electricity, the light bulb, indoor plumbing and flush toilets. Radio, television, the internet, smartphones.

Were it not for merit, we may still be having our teeth pulled while chomping on a towel after imbibing several ounces of whiskey. Were it not for merit, our bridges and skyscrapers wouldn’t stand, our trains would derail, our planes fall from the sky.

If not for merit, there would be no light… and no hope.

The emphasis on DEI and equity over competence, merit, and excellence is an existential danger to society.

That is not hyperbole.

In summation, the respect for merit is vital to the human condition. Worshipping sloth — or even mediocrity — and valuing equity above all would be the death knell of civilization.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We Are in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on January 13th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/we_are_in_an_abusive_relationship_with_our_government.html

California is now covering the costs of genital-mutilating surgeries for illegal aliens.  Leftism’s slippery slope invariably leads to depraved absurdity.  Consider how Governor (receding) Hairdo and the Pyrite State’s other communist saboteurs have greased the shifting ground under Californians’ feet:

(1) There is no illegal immigration crisis.

(2) There may be a crisis, but California taxpayers won’t be paying for it.

(3) Taxpayers may have to foot the bill for the illegal immigration crisis, but California will do nothing to incentivize illegal immigration.

(4) After further review, these aliens aren’t “illegal,” but rather “undocumented.”

(5) Health care is a human right.

(6) California must provide “undocumented” aliens healthcare.

(7) Mutilating the genitals to make them look like the opposite sex is health care.

(8) California taxpayers must pay for “undocumented” aliens’ genital surgery.

(9) Californians who object to paying for undocumented aliens’ genital surgery may be guilty of “hate” crimes and will be prosecuted.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Why punish the people who illegally enter the United States when you can punish the people who do not want to subsidize immigration crimes while canceling their votes with the votes of those here illegally?  Why should “health care” stop with free genital mutilation for the whole planet?  Why not label spacious split-level homes with at least one electric vehicle in each garage “health care” as well?  Why shouldn’t California taxpayers be on the hook for each new illegal alien’s  “green energy” lifestyle?  The absurdity will never end.

As Sundance frequently reminds readers over at The Conservative Treehouse, “We are in an abusive relationship with our government.”  And in California, where the Marxist globalists rule with absolute power, the government never gets tired of slapping American citizens around and telling them it’s for their own good.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Intel Officials: Hezbollah Could Strike in U.S. By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on January 13th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/12/intel-officials-hezbollah-could-strike-in-u-s/

On Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials warned that the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah could launch attacks against Americans abroad, or even carry out an attack against the homeland directly.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the four anonymous officials voiced their concerns to Politico, with one saying that “Hezbollah could draw on the capability they have … to put people [in] places to do something. It is something to be worried about.”

Hezbollah, the officials noted, has more capabilities than any other terror group in the region, including a vast international network. The ongoing tensions in Israel after the October 7th terrorist attacks by the Islamic terror group Hamas have led to broader chaos throughout the Middle East.

Hezbollah is one of the groups that has been clashing with Israeli forces since October 7th. On Tuesday, Hezbollah struck an Israeli base with drones, to which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded by killing three Hezbollah members in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah tried to justify its attacks by claiming they were in retaliation for the killing of a Hamas leader in Beirut last week.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate in December that the threat of a foreign terrorist organization attacking the U.S. has increased since October 7th, saying that he sees “blinking lights everywhere I turn.”

Other escalations throughout the Middle East include the Yemeni Houthis repeatedly attacking ships in the Red Sea, disrupting a major maritime shipping lane, as well as militants in Iraq and Syria repeatedly attempting to attack American troops in both countries over 100 times. There was an explosion in Iran during a ceremony honoring the late Qasam Soleimani, killing roughly 100 people, for which the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took credit.

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Taiwan’s ruling party candidate wins presidential election Beijing says Lai Ching-te’s failure to secure majority shows DPP ‘does not represent majority public opinion’Kathrin Hille

Posted By on January 13th, 2024

https://www.ft.com/content/bc1b9521-8381-4fb8-aebd-80846a18085d?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party won an unprecedented third term in office on Saturday as voters defied China’s warnings against electing presidential candidate Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing called a dangerous separatist. With more than 90 per cent of votes counted, Lai had won 40 per cent, according to the Central Election Commission. Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang, the largest opposition party, had 33.5 per cent of the vote and Ko Wen-je from the smaller Taiwan People’s party had attracted 26.5 per cent.

Although the DPP lost its parliamentary majority and Lai’s vote was more than 17 percentage points lower than President Tsai Ing-wen’s when she was re-elected in 2020, the party won a higher share of votes for its nationwide list of legislators-at-large than expected. It is the first time since Taiwan began holding free and direct presidential elections in 1996 that any party has held power beyond two four-year terms.

In a reference to Lai’s failure to win an absolute majority and his party’s loss of its majority in parliament, China said the result “shows that the DPP does not represent majority public opinion on the island”. The Taiwan Affairs Office, the Chinese government department implementing Taiwan policy, said: “We will work with relevant political parties, groups and people from all walks of life in Taiwan to promote cross-Strait exchanges and co-operation, deepen cross-Strait integrated development and jointly promote China culture, promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and promote the great cause of the reunification of the motherland.”