NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FACT CHECK: Pete Buttigieg Is a ‘Capable and Competent’ Leader Verdict: There is no evidence to support this claim by Andrew Stiles and Thaleigha Rampersad

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/fact-check-pete-buttigieg-is-a-capable-and-competent-leader/

Claim: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, sometimes referred to as Alfred E. Neuman, is a “capable and competent” leader who can stand up to former president Donald Trump.

Who said it: The Lincoln Project, sometimes referred to as the Lincoln Pervert Project. “Until capable and competent leaders stand up to Trump, he will continue to deflect,” the controversial super PAC wrote in a tweet that linked to an article about Buttigieg blaming Trump for the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Context: The Lincoln Project is comprised of Democratic activists and extremely online “former Republicans” who enjoy grifting almost as much as they enjoy acting like boorish man-children. They will support any politician who appeals to their donors—rich liberals driven insane by Trump—and Buttigieg is one of the most beloved Democrats among this particular demographic.

Analysis: We couldn’t find any evidence to support the claim that Buttigieg is a “capable and competent” leader, just as we couldn’t find any evidence to support claims that the transportation secretary is a “star of Biden’s cabinet.” There has been a multitude of transportation-related scandals on his watch, and he has handled each one of them with the political deftness of a humanoid McKinsey consultant who learns Norwegian in his spare time.

This should not come as a surprise. Riding a bicycle and wanting to be president after serving eight years as mayor of South Bend, the fourth-largest city in Indiana, do not make someone qualified to run the U.S. Department of Transportation

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Voters Want A Trump-DeSantis Primary Battle In 2024: I&I/TIPP Terry Jones

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/27/voters-want-a-trump-desantis-primary-battle-in-2024-ii-tipp/

If you’re wondering who Republican voters want to see square off in next year’s presidential primaries, it’s probably no big secret. As the latest polling data from I&I/TIPP show, a solid majority of registered GOP voters and independents who lean Republican, or Republican primary voters, say they want to see former President Donald Trump and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis duke it out on the primary trail.

In the latest poll, taken of 1,155 registered voters from Feb. 1-3, 397 were identified as GOP primary voters. They were asked to respond to the following statement: “I would like to see a primary contest between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.” They were given a choice to “agree strongly,” “agree somewhat,” “disagree somewhat,” “disagree strongly,” and “not sure.”

The margin of error for the sub-sample is +/-5 percentage points.

The answer that came back: an emphatic “yes.” By 61% to 23%, voters said they’d like to see DeSantis and Trump joust in the campaign, with 26% saying they agree “strongly” while 35% saying they agree “somewhat” strongly.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Words Matter––so Do Accurate Posting Dates! by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/26780/words-matter-so-do-accurate-posting-dates

goudsmit.pundicity.com  lindagoudsmit.com 

Since the 2020 election a great deal has been written about information, disinformation, and misinformation. Very little attention is being paid to the newest threat in the information wars––omission of the year in online posting dates. We live in the 21st-century age of digitized, computerized information technology. In the beginning, articles posted online followed established journalistic practices, and journalism’s classic 5W + H formula. Articles answered six questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Today, online journalism is eliminating the When. I began asking the question, Why? 

For print journalism, the When has two components––the dateline and the actual events described in the article. The dateline refers to when the story was filed or written, not necessarily the dates of events described in the article. Datelines followed the month/day/year date convention, and appeared on the first line of an article before the text. 

In online reporting, especially blogs and websites, the dateline often refers to the posting date. In the summer of 2022, I began noticing the year was MISSING in the dateline. Sometimes the date was presented as an equally useless and ridiculous “3 hours ago” or “3 days ago.” At first I assumed it was a typo, but soon realized there was a change to the default date convention. As a writer, researcher, and political analyst, the change was so egregious, I assumed the new date conventions had to be a form over content esthetic decision, made by the same foolish designers who decided hard-to-read gray font was superior to easy-to-read black font! I was wrong.

I lodged my first complaint directly with WordPress, on June 4, 2022. WordPress is a free and open-source content management system used by 42.8% of the top 10 million websites as of October 2021. The message read:

I am a researcher, author, and political analyst. It is absolutely maddening that articles are being published with a date that does not include the YEAR. Every event happens in its historical context. “3 hours ago” or “3 days ago” or “3 months ago” is meaningless without the year. Equally meaningless is “April 10” if the article has been saved and used for reference two years after publication. Information is rendered useless without an accurate posting/publishing date that MUST include the YEAR. Please address this extremely exasperating error on all the platforms you service – the problem is becoming ubiquitous.  

WordPress.com is the hosted version of WordPress. Its customer support “Happiness Engineers“ answered:

Hi there,

Your support request has been submitted to our team of Happiness Engineers. Rest assured that your email arrived safely and our support team will be in touch as soon as we can.

If you have any new details, or happen to find the answer yourself in the mean time, just reply to this email directly to keep us updated. Additionally, you might want to check out our daily webinars – https://wordpress.com/webinars – and our support documentation – https://wordpress.com/support.

Thank you for your patience and we’ll be in touch soon!

– The WordPress.com Support Team

This email is a service from Automattic.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe and Jill Went Up the Hill By David Solway

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/02/25/joe-and-jill-went-up-the-hill-n1673867

“Ultimately, this is the Biden trademark: a corrupt and geriatric incompetent in the White House, and a vain First Lady devoid of intellectual substance who passes herself off as a scholar. Everything about such people is meretricious, or in popular parlance, “fake.” Such is current American leadership in both politics and education, a tale of broken crowns and failed policies hurtling down the historical gradient.”

Joe and Jill went up the hill, and who knows when they’ll come tumbling down. The nation may careen well before they do. Much has already been said about the devastating policies and tenure of Joe Biden. Simply put, he is unarguably the worst president the U.S. has ever suffered, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama notwithstanding. Here I will focus on the other half of the Biden tandem, a woman of scholarly pretensions without foundation, the ineffable Dr. Jill.

The adulation Jill Biden has received for so flimsy a dubious accomplishment as a paper doctorate in a derelict field like Education Studies is utterly misplaced, whether it is the mentally impregnable Whoopi Goldberg thinking that Jill Biden was a medical doctor and should be considered for Surgeon General or a sports announcer for an NFL game, as Megyn Kelly notes, ingratiatingly remarking that “Dr. Jill Biden” was in attendance. I watched that game between the Eagles and the 49ers and nearly turned off the set when the fawning announcer asserted his bona fides.

The title of Dr. linked to Jill Biden certainly seems inappropriate. Recently, my wife Janice Fiamengo posted a Substack article critical of the First Lady’s doctoral thesis from the University of Delaware, Student Retention in the Community College: Meeting Students’ Needs, a document running to a risible 80 pages, not counting reference pages and appendices. Additionally, the Literature Review does not identify disagreements and contrary viewpoints in the education literature, as is standard practice, nor does her Methodology section indicate the limits of her analytical procedure, also standard practice. These, as well as thin citation, inadequate research, and generally poor writing, as Wall Street Journal film critic Kyle Smith has shown, are crucial problems.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu’s Judicial Reform Doesn’t Go Far Enough Israel should establish rules of standing and recognize the distinction between policy and law. By Michael B. Mukasey

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/netanyahus-judicial-reform-doesnt-go-far-enough-reasonableness-attorney-general-standing-knesset-policy-supreme-court-2d3d1664?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Judges and attorneys general throughout the world—I’ve served in both capacities in the U.S.—wield substantial authority. In any sound legal system, such authority is subject to clear, objective limits. That seemingly unexceptional principle might help clarify the debate roiling Israel over the country’s Supreme Court justices and attorney general, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposals to change that authority and the method of selecting justices.

Unlike the U.S., Israel doesn’t have a constitution to constrain court rulings. It doesn’t require that a party bringing a case have standing—a direct and personal stake in the outcome of the dispute. In Israel, anyone may file a case on any issue, which raises the ante in the current debate. Nor do Israeli courts recognize the distinction between legal issues—resolved in the U.S. by courts—and policy issues, including military tactics and cabinet appointments, which in the U.S. are left to the political branches.

Moreover, Israel’s Supreme Court has taken on the authority to base its decisions on whatever it determines is “reasonable.” The court has applied even that tenuous standard inconsistently. In 1999, when Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters in Jerusalem, the court held that the step was unreasonable because parliamentary elections were only months away. But five days before the 2022 parliamentary elections, the court sustained the power of Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s government to enter into an agreement yielding portions of what were claimed to be Israel’s territorial waters to Lebanon.

The Supreme Court’s authority often is exercised in tandem with that of Israel’s attorney general, who serves a six-year term and isn’t part of the elected government. Since 2000, the attorney general’s role as legal adviser to the government has expanded into legal authority over the government. Israel’s courts treat any directive by the attorney general as legally binding on the government. Initially by attorney general directive in 2002, and later by order of the government in 2009, the attorney general has the authority to control the legal advisers within each ministry and government office. In addition, the attorney general may appear in court to argue against the government’s position and can ban the government from seeking private counsel to defend its policies. In such cases, the government’s own lawyer in effect denies it representation.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Three Years Late, the Lancet Recognizes Natural Immunity The public-health clerisy rediscovers a principle of immunology it derided throughout the pandemic.

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/three-years-late-the-lancet-recognizes-natural-immunity-great-barrington-declaration-tech-censor-antibodies-mandates-b3ba912c?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Lancet medical journal this month published a review of 65 studies that concluded prior infection with Covid—i.e., natural immunity—is at least as protective as two doses of mRNA vaccines. The most surprising news was that the study made the mainstream press.

“Immunity acquired from a Covid infection is as protective as vaccination against severe illness and death, study finds,” NBC reported on Feb. 16. The study found that prior infection offered 78.6% protection against reinfection from the original Wuhan, Alpha or Delta variants at 40 weeks, which slipped to 36.1% against Omicron. Protection against severe illness remained around 90% across all variants after 40 weeks. These results exceed what other studies have found for two and even three mRNA doses.

This comes after nearly three years of public-health officials’ dismissing the same hypothesis. But now that experts at the University of Washington have confirmed it in a leading—and left-leaning—journal, it’s fit to print.

The Lancet study’s vindication of natural immunity fits a pandemic pattern: The public-health clerisy rejects an argument that ostensibly threatens its authority; eventually it’s forced to soften its position in the face of incontrovertible evidence; and yet not once does it acknowledge its opponents were right.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

S.O.S for the U.S. Electric Grid PJM Interconnection sounds the latest alarm that fossil-fuel plants are shutting down without adequate replacement power. The political class yawns.

Posted By on February 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/s-o-s-for-the-u-s-electric-grid-pjm-interconnection-blackout-supply-renewables-subsidy-report-fossil-fuel-4cbdd56e?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The warnings keep coming that the force-fed energy transition to renewable fuels is destabilizing the U.S. electric grid, but is anyone in government paying attention? Another S.O.S. came Friday in an ominous report from PJM Interconnection, one of the nation’s largest grid operators.

The PJM report forecasts power supply and demand through 2030 across the 13 eastern states in its territory covering 65 million people. Its top-line conclusion: Fossil-fuel power plants are retiring much faster than renewable sources are getting developed, which could lead to energy “imbalances.” That’s a delicate way of saying that you can expect shortages and blackouts.

PJM typically generates a surplus of power owing to its large fossil-fuel fleet, which it exports to neighboring grids in the Midwest and Northeast. When wind power plunged in the Midwest and central states late last week, PJM helped fill the gap between supply and demand and kept the lights on.

That’s why it’s especially worrisome that PJM is predicting a large decline in its power reserves as coal and natural-gas plants retire. The report forecasts that 40,000 megawatts (MW) of power generation—enough to light up 30 million households—are at risk of retiring by 2030, representing about 21% of PJM’s current generation capacity.

Most projected power-plant retirements are “policy-driven,” the report says. For example, the steep costs of complying with Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including a proposed “good neighbor rule” that is expected to be finalized next month, will force about 10,500 MW of fossil-fuel generation to shut down.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on February 26th, 2023

The international media is obsessed with anti-Israel bias. Headlines explode with air-brushed and inaccurate accounts of protests against the government occurring daily. What they often fail to mention is that the government was elected in a scrupulous untainted election; that the protesters are not dispersed or harassed; or that in the background, as Michael Ordman catalogs, Israel’s state of the art scientific, medical, institutions work 24/7 bringing hope to the entire world as well as entertainment, and social institutions and cuisine, and music, and freedom to all its diverse citizens.

BDS for sure: Israel is Beautiful, Democratic, Sensational ….  rsk

 

 

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Sniffing out cancer. Israel’s SpotitEarly (see here previously) has just reported a 93% success rate in its study using a combination of dogs, sensors, and AI software to detect and identify breast, lung, colon, and prostate cancer. And another Israeli startup Early Labs reported similar results using trained rats to detect lung cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/dogs-93-percent-success-rate-at-sniffing-out-cancer/  
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lab-teaches-rats-to-detect-lung-cancer-with-93-accuracy-by-sniffing-urine/  https://earlylabs.io/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlOnSdKPAxU
 
Preventing kidney failure. Israel is the first country in the world to ban treatments with glyoxylic acid, a common ingredient in hair-straightening products. Scientists at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center showed that the chemical is absorbed by the skin, often causing pain, vomiting and acute kidney injury.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/some-hair-straightening-products-can-cause-kidney-failure-israeli-study-finds/  
 
Better than antibiotics. Israel’s Mileutis (see here previously) is “bullish” about its Imilac peptide alternative to antibiotics in dairy cows. Imilac boosts the immune system to fight infections and doesn’t increase antibiotic resistance. The cows also produce more milk. Mileutis says the same technology could even protect humans.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/antibiotic-alternative-today-cows-tomorrow-humans/   https://mileutis.com/
 
Microclimate suit manufacturer revealed. (TY UWI) Israel’s Rambam Medical Center has been testing a microclimate suit that evaporates fluids to help heart failure patients (see here previously). The manufacturer – Israel’s AquaPass Medical – states that patients no longer need daily diuretics or periodic six-hour infusions.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-microclimate-suit-rids-heart-patients-of-fluid-buildup/ 
https://aquapass-medical.com/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuiB0BdgNOM
 
Field hospital treats hundreds. (TY Hazel) Israeli medics treated around 470 injured victims of the Turkish earthquakes at their field hospital outside the Turkish city of Kahramanmaraş. They included 150 children and several Syrian refugees. The teams also performed ten surgical and orthopedic operations.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-treating-hundreds-idf-medical-delegation-to-quake-hit-turkey-back-in-israel/
 
Thousands of AR surgical procedures. Israel’s Beyeonics (see here previously) is now rolling out its 3D Byeonics One Augmented Reality (AR) surgical headset across Europe. It has already been used for 2,000 surgeries in the US including recent endothelial keratoplasty, to remove abnormal matter from the cornea.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-cockpit-to-cataract-ops-israeli-flight-headsets-adapted-approved-for-surgery/  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36508107/
 
AI to increase cancer awareness. The Israel Cancer Association has used Artificial Intelligence in a new campaign to highlight the importance of early cancer diagnosis. Videos show people asking AI to show them as a grandparent, or at their child’s wedding, but the future will only become reality if the person avoids cancer.
https://nocamels.com/2023/02/ai-art-increases-awareness-of-early-cancer-diagnosis/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDl052gSEp4
 
The most memorable moment at OurCrowd Summit. My highlight at the OurCrowd Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem last week was 10-year-old Itai, saved thanks to Surgical Theater’s Augmented Reality system. Itai ran on stage to greet Surgical Theater’s CEO, Alon Zuckerman – Itai’s father.  Please watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JuC8_LMmyc

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Crosses “Red Line” Advancing Russia’s War Effort by Judith Bergman

Posted By on February 26th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19435/china-advancing-russia-war

It has been known for quite a while that China has been undercutting Western sanctions against Russia…. and in their own national currencies. When, however, it recently became known that China has been secretly providing military aid to Russa, the move seemed to take the Biden administration by surprise.

China has already supplied significant military aid in the form of dual-use products that can have both civil and military use, including semiconductors used in a wide variety of weapons including fighter jets, helicopters, drones, and guided missiles.

US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield was even more explicit: If China provided lethal military aid to Russia, she said, it would cross a “red line.”

It is highly questionable at this stage whether the Chinese will pay any heed to Blinken’s or Thomas-Greenfield’s warnings: In March of 2022, the Biden administration delivered similarly worded threats to China — that helping Russia evade sanctions would lead to “consequences.” Russia did exactly that; a year later, “consequences” have yet to be seen.

These revelations are not only an embarrassment for the Biden administration — which should have known and acted upon them long ago — but also serve as yet another black hole in the ability of the United States to deter adversaries.

It shows, sadly, that the words and threats of the US carry zero weight internationally, and that America’s most aggressive adversaries are able successfully to collaborate behind its back.

It has been known for quite a while that China has been undercutting Western sanctions against Russia through trade and Chinese purchases of long-term energy supplies.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘Incitement in eastern Jerusalem schools produces child terrorists’ Arab children in the eastern part of the city are “marinated in incitement,” says NGO chairman. BY DAVID ISAAC

Posted By on February 26th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/incitement-in-eastern-jerusalem-schools-produces-child-terrorists/

February saw three terror attacks by Palestinian youths, two of whom were 13 years old and one of whom was 14. All were from eastern Jerusalem. The attacks have refocused attention on anti-Israel incitement in Arab schools, including in the capital.

“Arab children in east Jerusalem are marinated in incitement,” said Maor Tzemach, chairman of Lech Yerushalayim, an NGO that focuses on Jerusalem-related issues.

Of roughly 110,000 Arab students in eastern Jerusalem, 85 percent use the Palestinian Authority curriculum, according to Tzemach.

“The Palestinian Authority, which is frankly the enemy of Israel, pushes the Palestinian narrative,” he said. “Israel tries to fight this through a type of censorship, but it’s not succeeding within the schools.”

A new report by Tzemach’s group calls the P.A. study materials the “foundational layer” of incitement. While noting the difficulty in uncovering the incitement taking place behind school doors, the report nevertheless presents specific examples.

One involves a graduation ceremony in June 2021 at a high school in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa, at which students and parents chanted enthusiastically: “With spirit, with blood, we will redeem Al-Aqsa”—a religious rallying cry often associated with terrorism. Students also participated in a dance featuring PLO flags. Noteworthy is the fact that this particular high school was within the Israeli school system.

Terrorist supporters like Muhammad Alian are invited to visit the schools as honored guests. Alian, the father of a terrorist who carried out a 2015 attack that killed three and wounded over a dozen others, himself reportedly has close ties to Hamas. Another honored guest was Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, former grand mufti of Jerusalem, whom the report describes as “the main inciter in Jerusalem in recent decades.”