NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Amtrak Joe Couldn’t Be Bothered To Visit A Train Wreck but when Donald Trump Went, the White House ……

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/24/amtrak-joe-couldnt-be-bothered-to-visit-a-train-wreck/

A freight train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, three weeks ago. Residents were ordered to evacuate and the cargo of toxic chemicals from five tanker cars was eventually released and set on fire. So far, Joe Biden hasn’t visited the scene, as is tradition for presidents when large-scale disasters strike. Instead, Biden officials have blamed Donald Trump, who hasn’t been president in more than two years, for the wreck. But even some media outlets are admitting it wasn’t his fault.

Official word from the White House accuses “congressional Republicans and former Trump administration officials” for selling out “to rail industry lobbyists when they dismantled the Obama-Biden rail safety protections as well as EPA powers to rapidly contain spills.” The administration believes Trump, who beat Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is utterly useless) to the site, and GOP lawmakers, owe “East Palestine an apology.” 

“Congressional Republicans laid the groundwork for the Trump administration to tear up requirements for more effective train brakes,” Andrew Bates, a deputy White House press secretary, ranted on Wednesday, “and last year most House Republicans wanted to defund our ability to protect drinking water.”

That last point must really eat at the White House. Bates issued the statement on the same day Trump showed up with 13 pallets of bottled water, nine of which he donated (and delivered by two moving companies based in Red States), for the East Palestine residents who are understandably fearful of their water supply. Seems the former president was doing the work of the federal agency that has “emergency management” in its name but had not arrived in the city until this past weekend.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Summer School Can Remedy Pandemic Learning Loss A philanthropist-funded program in New York showed that students got back on track quickly. By Michael R. Bloomberg

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/summer-school-can-remedy-pandemic-brain-drain-covid-closures-students-charter-public-philanthropy-bloomberg-af4b2278?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The crisis in American public education caused by the pandemic has settled into a dangerous new phase: resignation. The disastrous effects of remote instruction are still with us. Students continue to lag behind where they should be—sometimes by multiple grade levels—and little is being done to help them. The good news is that we know how to overcome learning loss.

Last year, when it became clear that a nationwide expansion of summer school would not be happening, I led a group of philanthropists in creating Summer Boost in New York City. The program focused on math and English and was open to struggling K-8 students in the city’s public charter schools, most of which did not have the resources to run robust summer school programs.

We didn’t know if the program would succeed. But letting struggling students languish was out of the question. The U.S. can’t move on from the pandemic until we address student learning loss.

The response from students and schools was resoundingly positive. More than 16,000 students from 224 schools participated. At the end of the summer, we tested students to assess their progress, and the results were encouraging.

The percentage of students who met grade-level standards in math nearly doubled—and in English, it more than doubled. The share of students scoring below the most basic levels of proficiency fell by nearly half. By the end of the summer session, many students had caught up and were back on track for success. But in much of the country, students didn’t spend any of their summer vacations in classrooms.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Transgender Hormones Increase Heart Attacks and Strokes, but the Left Still Pushes Them on Kids By Kevin Downey Jr.

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/02/23/trans-meds-increase-heart-attacks-and-strokes-sevenfold-but-the-left-still-pushes-them-on-kids-n1673171

What happens when men hoover up estrogen and women scarf testosterone? Aww, you know!

Specialists at Pennsylvania’s Mercy Catholic Medical Center are reporting that transgendered people taking hormones face serious risks of heart attack, stroke, and myocarditis.

The study compared transgender people who do and do not take hormones, hormone blockers, or any other medication associated with those looking to “change their gender.”

Those transgendered people — many of them teens — who take the drugs are facing a handful of bad news, including:

They are seven times more likely to have a stroke.
They are six times more likely to have a myocardial infarction.
They have a five-times higher risk of pulmonary embolism, which blocks the arteries in the lungs.

“It’s all about risks and benefits,” Dr. Ibrahim Ahmed, lead author of the study, reported. “Starting transitioning is a big part of a person’s life and helping them feel more themselves, but hormone replacement therapy also has a lot of side effects.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Earthquake Unveils Turkey’s Many Ugly Faces by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19406/turkey-earthquake-ugly-faces

The worst disaster in modern Turkey’s history, the earthquake killed, as of February 15, more than 35,000 people and injured 100,000. The death toll will likely reach 40,000 or more. According to one estimate, the quake will result in $84 billion in economic losses to Turkey, more than 10% of gross domestic product.

It was not the quake that killed tens of thousands, but politics and suicidal profit-maximization behavior on individual level.

[I]n the aftermath of the 1999 quake, Erdoğan said: “What broke here is not the fault line … It is [the state’s] sense of shame. This is [the result of] poor building planning and stealing from construction materials.” Now that he is in power, Erdoğan explains that the loss of life in this month’s earthquake was (God’s) fate.

As part of his election campaign in 2018, Erdoğan granted “amnesty” to 7.4 million applications for unregulated buildings in return for fees, of which his government collected more than $13 billion.

More than 10,000 buildings were destroyed in the latest earthquake.

With the amnesty, contractors were allowed to skip crucial safety regulations, increasing their profits but putting residents at risk. Few buyers and tenants could guess that those permits would be their death certificates.

One of the buildings that collapsed in Hatay, one of the worst-hit provinces, was a government hospital. In 2012, experts wrote a report that the building was not earthquake-resistant. The authorities did not mind. Ironically, a bridge in the same region, built 18 centuries ago during the Roman Empire, survived unscathed.

An Israeli relief team from United Hatzalah, after having rescued 19 people under the rubble, was forced to cut short their work in Turkey and leave the country “in the face of growing security threat to the team.” Yeni Akit claimed that “the Israeli team consisting of intelligence agents disguised as relief workers left Turkey in the face of threats and local people’s cries of ‘go home.'”

At 4:17 am on February 6, an earthquake of 7.8-magnitude hit 10 provinces in Turkey’s east, which account for a sixth of the country’s total population. The worst disaster in modern Turkey’s history, the earthquake killed, as of February 15, more than 35,000 people and injured 100,000. The death toll will likely reach 40,000 or more. According to one estimate, the quake will result in $84 billion in economic losses to Turkey, more than 10% of gross domestic product.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rehabilitating a War Criminal like Assad is Not an Option by Con Coughlin

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19429/rehabilitating-war-criminal-assad

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s offer to ease border restrictions to allow aid agencies better access to areas of northern Syria that were devastated by the recent earthquake is nothing more than a calculated ploy to have the punitive sanctions regime against Damascus eased.

The same pattern of double-dealing is now evident with the Assad regime’s blatant attempt to exploit the humanitarian disaster caused by the earthquake on the Turkey-Syrian border for its own ends.

Instead of easing sanctions against Assad, the Biden administration should be supporting efforts to establish an international war crimes tribunal that will ensure Assad and his henchmen stand trial for their despicable crimes.

Nor is Syria the only rogue Middle Eastern state seeking to exploit the earthquake.

Reports have also emerged that Iran, Syria’s main regional ally, is similarly seeking to take advantage of the humanitarian disaster to expand its military presence in Syria, a policy that is designed to intensify its efforts to threaten neighbouring Israel.

It is reported that Iran is using the earthquake to smuggle convoys of weapons disguised as humanitarian aid for earthquake victims in Syria.

The Biden Administration should not be encouraging them in their duplicity.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s offer to ease border restrictions to allow aid agencies better access to areas of northern Syria that were devastated by the recent earthquake is nothing more than a calculated ploy to have the punitive sanctions regime against Damascus eased.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Declaration of Independence is being used as a protest prop By RUTHIE BLUM

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-732582

Explaining his party’s decision to exit from the Knesset plenum on Monday and boycott the proceedings surrounding the first reading of two initial bills relating to judicial overhaul, Yisrael Beytenu chairman MK Avigdor Liberman tweeted: “The very vote, even a ‘nay’ vote, is legitimizing a series of laws that contradict the Declaration of Independence, and since [they do], I call on President [Isaac] Herzog not to sign them.”

Israel’s Declaration of Independence was also highlighted during anti-government rallies the preceding Saturday night. A huge replica of the document was spread out, like a massive carpet, on a street in Tel Aviv.

Elsewhere in the White City, protesters marched around holding a similarly massive one above ground. Others carried long banners with a quote from the Declaration, in Hebrew and English, reading, “The State of Israel will be founded on freedom, justice and peace.”

Two days earlier, Yom Kippur War veterans invoked the document, as well. The now-aging retired IDF soldiers placed a blown-up copy of it on the side of a tank that they stole from a memorial site in the Golan Heights to use as a prop in the protests and signed their names to it. Meanwhile, a separate armored vehicle from the existential 1973 battle was nicked from the area and bore the sign in block-capital English letters: “Defending Israel’s Declaration of Independence.”

It’s no accident that many of the streamers and posters waved in the ongoing demonstrations – held, ostensibly, to decry the ruling coalition’s judicial-reform moves, but actually staged in reaction to the rise of a “full, full, right-wing government” in Jerusalem – are in English. For one thing, foreign NGOs are paying for them, with help from the US State Department. For another, they’re much more photogenic when written in a language that CNN and the BBC can broadcast internationally without subtitles.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Biden needs to answer these 3 questions about Ukraine

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/3870017-biden-needs-to-answer-these-3-questions-about-ukraine/

In his recent surprise trip to Kyiv, President Biden took pains to note that assistance to Ukraine has been “bipartisan.” That is true, but it is also true that some Republicans are beginning to question what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called the “blank check” that Biden seems to be offering the war-torn nation.

Republicans and others debating the open spigot of U.S. aid are not pro-Russia or anti-Ukraine, they simply want some answers as the U.S. ships an unprecedented amount of money and arms to the beleaguered country. Last year Congress approved $113 billion in munitions and aid for Ukraine, an amount greater than budgeted for the U.S. Department of Education or the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine that.

Polls show U.S. enthusiasm for helping Ukraine is waning. In a recent survey, 48 percent of U.S. adults approved sending weapons to Ukraine; a year ago, 60 percent were in favor.  

Biden is to blame for this sliding support. On his trip the president spoke about the war to the people of Poland and to those in Kyiv. But when was the last time he spoke to Americans? When did he last hold a press conference about our strategy in Ukraine, perhaps joining with our military leaders? True, he touched on the war in his State of the Union speech but expended a mere 224 words on the conflict in a 9,000-word address. He spent more time denouncing baggage fees than explaining what U.S. ambitions were in Ukraine.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Eye-opener: South African activist abandons BDS movement after trip to Israel

Posted By on February 24th, 2023

https://worldisraelnews.com/eye-opener-south-african-activist-abandons-bds-movement-after-trip-to-israel/?

South African university student Klaas Mokgomole couldn’t find a blacks-only restroom at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

By David Karsh, TPS

Desperate to find a restroom after a nearly nine-hour flight from Johannesburg, South African university student Klaas Mokgomole grabbed his carry-on and hurried off the plane.

Urgently searching out a gate agent at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport and praying that the man understood English, Mokgomole asked, sincerely, “Can you please show me to the blacks-only restroom?”

The agent’s eyes widened in disbelief. He told Mokgomole in no uncertain terms that he never heard of such a thing and pointed him to a nearby bathroom.

That’s when it was Mokgomole’s turn to be confused.

Mokgomole — then a South African university student and outspoken youth leader of the anti-Israel, Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement — stood in the busy airport restroom dumbfounded as Jews and Arabs went in and out. They would have been oblivious to the transformation taking place as they stepped around him on that day in July 2015.

Recalling that seminal moment, Mokgomole explained to the Tazpit Press Service during a recent visit to Jerusalem, “I was taught very emphatically, racism in Israel runs so deep, that the Jews do not even share their toilets with blacks or Arabs.”

“To see within the first few moments after landing in Israel that this clearly is not the case marked a turning point for me,” he told TPS.

His curiosity sparked, Mokgomole began what would become a transformational journey from virulent anti-Israel activist to passionate peacemaker and bridge-builder between Israel and the rest of the world.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Passes Law to Strip Terrorists of Citizenship Meanwhile Biden continues to finance the Palestinian Authority’s Pay-For-Slay terror scheme. by Vijeta Uniyal

Posted By on February 23rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-passes-law-to-strip-terrorists-of-citizenship/

The Israeli parliament on Wednesday passed a law to strip terrorists of their citizenship for receiving financial rewards from the Palestinian Authority.

The new legislation, which received 94 votes in a 120-member Knesset, also gives the Israeli government the power to deport terrorists to the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank, as well as bar their reentry into Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government presented the bill after Israeli Arabs gave a “hero’s welcome” to a terrorist who was released after serving a 40-year prison sentence for kidnapping and murdering an Israeli soldier in 1983. Karim Younis, an unrepentant terrorist, “was greeted by family, friends and supporters chanting and carrying him through the streets on their shoulders,” the Jerusalem Post reported January 5.

The Arab Knesset members were enraged at the new legislation. They slammed the law for being “racist” towards convicted terrorists who happen to hold Israeli citizenship. “The decision, which could potentially affect hundreds of Palestinian citizens and residents of Israel, was condemned as racist by Arab lawmakers as well as Palestinian officials,” the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented.

“Knesset passes law to strip terrorists who receive PA stipends of Israeli citizenship,” by Carrie Keller-Lynn, The Times of Israel, February 15, 2023:

The Knesset approved a law on Wednesday to strip convicted terrorists with Israeli nationality of their citizenship — provided they receive funding from the Palestinian Authority or an associated organization.

The law, an amendment to Israel’s 1952 Citizenship Law, applies to both Israeli citizens and permanent residents incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime, and enables the interior minister to revoke their status after a hearing.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Grand Juror Goes on Bizarre Media Blitz, Says Multiple Indictments Recommended By Debra Heine

Posted By on February 23rd, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/22/trump-grand-juror-goes-on-bizarre-media-blitz-says-multiple-indictments-recommended/

Before any indictments have been handed down, the foreman of the grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia, is making the rounds in the media to discuss what was decided.

A special grand jury has recommended multiple indictments, according to the jury’s foreman, Emily Kohrs, 30, who appeared on CNN and MSNBC on Tuesday to talk about the case. Kohrs, an apparent Wicca enthusiast, has also spoken with The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Can you imagine doing this for eight months and not coming out with a whole list” of recommended indictments, Kohrs told CNN. “It’s not a short list. It’s not.” The grand jury, according to Kohrs focused on Trump’s infamous phone call with Secretary Raffensperger.

“There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about—I don’t think you will be shocked,” she said.

When asked specifically whether the jurors had recommended indicting Trump, Kohrs said, “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science,” adding “it is not going to be some giant plot twist. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”

Kohrs said she couldn’t remember exactly how many indictments the special grand jury had recommended, but indicated that it would be more than twelve.

Asked by CNN’s Kate Bolduan whether the number of people was “more than a dozen,” Kohrs replied: “I believe so. That’s probably a good assumption.”

Portions of the grand jury’s final report, released last week, made it clear that the grand jury believed perjury charges were warranted for some witnesses. The foreperson’s identity was first revealed by The Associated Press. And earlier on Tuesday, Kohrs told The New York Times that the grand jury recommended multiple indictments, though she didn’t provide names.