NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Forget You, ’22! By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/12/forget_you_22.html

Doesn’t it seem as if the ignoble nobles running our country into the ground are working overtime to dump extra loads of misery before the year ends?  Now that they’ve plunged the country into an energy and heating crisis by tilting at “climate change” windmills, coal was too valuable to waste on these scrooges’ Christmas stockings.  Let them survive on frozen wind turbines and snowdrift-covered solar panels!

While I have done my best to celebrate the Christmas season and ignore the commie curmudgeons bah-humbug-ing all around, it has felt as if government-worshiping Krampus creatures have been let loose (or are they trans-Krampus, demon-worshiping leftists wearing antlers and spreading Marxist hate?).  Consider the parade of horribles unleashed during just the last few weeks:

Congress passed a two-trillion-dollar spending monstrosity that looks like little more than a long list of bribes and IOUs come due.  The same Uniparty Republicans that could never find spare change for President Trump’s border wall have seen fit to fund every leftist fever pitch imaginable.  Scrutinizing the 4,155 pages of omnibus filth and its 3,213 Democrat earmarks, writer Deroy Murdock bluntly concludes that “Mitch McConnell transformed the Senate GOP into a wishing well for Democrats.”

Handicapping incoming House Republicans’ budgetary powers for the next year, the exercise in printing and burning U.S. dollars (and exacerbating inflation) protects the borders of foreign countries all over the world, while going out of its way to make sure America’s are left wide open.  Manchurian McConnell defends sending another forty-five billion dollars to Ukraine as “morally right,” while Americans from coast to coast are struggling to survive unchecked inflation, unaffordable food and fuel prices, crumbling infrastructure (actual bridges and roads, not the “reparations” and “climate change” hooey leftists now define as “infrastructure”), unguarded borders, the further impoverishment of once-prosperous blue-collar towns, an emotionally-crippling rise in suicides and fentanyl-related overdoses, COVID-1984-initiated wealth destruction, and the prospect of a looming monster recession (which we entered months ago but must not acknowledge — silence, citizen!).

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Former University President Gets $1.6M Parting Gift By Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

 https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/12/26/former_university_president_gets_16m_parting_gift_871735.html

The former president of Colorado State University collected a payout of almost $1.6 million. The university won’t say why she left before the end of her planned tenure.

Joyce McConnell’s annual salary was $550,000 per year. In the June separation agreement between McConnell and CSU Board of Governors, she was paid $1,572,725 as a result of ending her contract early. McConnell signed a five-year agreement in 2019, keeping her employed as president through 2024, The Coloradoan reported.

Neither McConnell nor officials at the public university will say why she left. Colorado state taxpayers have a right to know why she was paid the equivalent of three years of salary.

She was the university’s first female president, having come from West Virginia University where she served as provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Amy Parsons, a former senior administrator at Colorado State University at Fort Collins, is her most likely replacement, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Twitter Files Thread: The Spies Who Loved Twitter From FBI to DNI the DNI to “OGA,” the full thread on Twitter and its intelligence partners Matt Taibbi

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/twitter-files-thread-the-spies-who

After weeks of “Twitter Files” reports, the FBI issued a statement Wednesday.

It didn’t refute allegations. Instead, it decried “conspiracy theorists” publishing “misinformation,” whose “sole aim” is to “discredit the agency.”

3.    They must think us unambitious, if our “sole aim” is to discredit the FBI. After all, a whole range of government agencies discredit themselves in the #TwitterFiles. Why stop with one?

4.    The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.

5.    The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state government.

6.    Thousands upon thousands of official “reports” flowed through the FITF and the FBI’s San Francisco field office.

7. On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming NGO-sponsored conference:

8.    OGA, or “Other Government Organization,” is often a euphemism for CIA, and according to multiple former intelligence officials and contractors.

9. Chuckles one: “They use it to seem mysterious to outsiders.”

10. “Other Government Agency (the place where I worked for 27 years),” says retired CIA officer Ray McGovern.

11. It was an open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s “former employer.”

The first Twitter executive abandons all pretense to stealth and emails that the employee “used to work for the CIA, so that is Elvis’s question.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Surprise! Rasmussen Says Voters Want a Secure Border By Lincoln Brown

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2022/12/27/surprise-rasmussen-says-voters-want-a-secure-border-n1656638

A recent Rasmussen poll of 1,200 registered voters showed that a majority of those surveyed favor legal immigration. But the same number of people disagree, and many also support an increased presence of law enforcement and the military at the nation’s borders.

According to a piece in Just the News, 74% agree that legal immigration is a positive thing, while the same percentage of respondents said that illegal immigration is a negative one. The article said that 61% of those polled believe that Title 42 should be used to keep illegals out of the U.S. to limit the spread of COVID-19. One in five of those polled believed that the border is secure, while most said it is not, by a difference of 21% to 54% Most respondents (52%) said that Democrats are not serious about the issue.

On the other hand, 43% said that Republicans were trying to solve the problem. Seventy-three percent agreed that problems like national security issues, drugs, and human trafficking are attributable to illegals who evade capture by CBP officers. Seventy-five of those who responded said that the cartels deserve the designation of terrorist organizations.

Notably, the poll asserted that around 75,000 people enter the U.S. every month and avoid apprehension. There was no attribution for that statement, but with that in mind, 68% of respondents said that it was time to deploy law enforcement and military personnel to the border.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Keeps Immigration Rule Title 42 in Place Indefinitely

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/12/27/breaking-supreme-court-keeps-immigration-rule-title-42-in-place-indefinitely-n1656723

The Supreme Court stayed a trial judge’s ruling that would have ended Title 42 and has, for the time being, allowed the rule to remain in place. The court issued an unsigned 5-4 opinion that was a victory for the 19 states that had sued the federal government to keep Title 42 in place.

Title 42 is a 1940s-era rule that limits immigration and asylum seekers during a national health crisis. It was originally put in place by Donald Trump in March 2020 and severely restricted the number of people seeking asylum by expelling all but a fraction of those who showed up at the border.

Joe Biden eased the restrictions, but about 65% of all asylum seekers who showed up at the border were still expelled.

The stay says nothing about the lawsuit by GOP states seeking to keep Title 42 in place.

New York Times:

The court said that it would hear arguments in the case in February and that the stay would remain in place until it issued its ruling. The justices said they would only address the question of whether the 19 mainly Republican-led states that had sought the stay could pursue their challenge to the measure.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel: A Country That Chooses Resilience Over Trauma Finding a balance between a vibrant life and a deadly fight for survival. by Christine Williams ******

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-a-country-that-chooses-resilience-over-trauma/

Editors’ note: Frontpage Associate Editor Christine Douglass-Williams recently had the honor of attending the Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem hosted by the Israel Government Press Office. Below, she shares her experience and analyzes the ongoing challenges facing the Jewish State.

With the goal of strengthening ties between Christians around the world and the State of Israel, the 2022 Christian Media Summit (CMS) convened in Jerusalem from Dec. 11-14 for dialogue and to experience Israel firsthand. Following my last attendance in 2019, I wrote at WND “Israel: World leader in tech, diversity, human development.” Israel’s culture of life and progress radiates, despite its coexistence with deadly enemies, its fight for survival and an effective propaganda war against it that propagates anti-Semitism. It is a country united by an inviolable collective determination that transcends partisanship, a determination that characterized this year’s summit.

The summit launched with a Gala Event featuring a warm welcome by Nitzan Chen, director of the Israel Government Press Office (who openly acknowledges that Jesus was a Jew) and speeches that included Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, who captured the essence of Christian-Jewish relations today: “We are living in the golden age of Jewish-Christian relations with some serious flaws and challenges. … We have never had a relationship with the Christian world as good as the one we have now.”

One disappointment drew some local media attention: the absence of a scheduled welcome by Benjamin Netanyahu, a favorite among evangelicals. Sentiments were split amid whisperings, yet an understanding prevailed that Netanyahu was under extreme pressure to form a coalition, and quickly. Yair Lapid could have greeted us, as could have Naftali Bennett or Isaac Herzog, but Israel’s government was in a crisis moment – in the face of global realignments to boot. Netanyahu’s absence, though felt, was hardly viewed by most attendees as a mortal sin given the political climate.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our Bipartisan Apache Dance Why did so many Republicans hand the Democrats such a victory? by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-bipartisan-apache-dance/

In early 20th century Paris, violent street gangs called Apaches became a popular cultural fad. Apache shirts and argot showed up in cabaret entertainment, fashion, and movies. Most famous was the Apache Dance, a pas de deux mashup of seduction and feigned violence in which the man slapped his paramour around and she pummeled him until the couple reconciled. The audience all knew that when they left the stage, they were heading for the same bed.

The recently passed omnibus budget bill that capped 2022 is a good reminder of the essential unity of our political guild, one obscured by the theater of “divisive partisanship” frequently decried by pundits. This current bill triples-down on the earlier near-trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act, and the near-third of a billion CHIPS Act that subsidizes the semiconductor industry–– “an embarrassing stew of accountability-free corporate welfare and government spending,” as the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel reported on July 28. Republicans–17 Senators and 24 House members–voted for the bill.

Now comes the $1.85 trillion omnibus spending bill crammed with pork, aka once-banned “earmarks,” for Senators’ home states and House members’ districts. Additionally, the bill contains policies Democrats couldn’t pass through the “regular order” process of committee hearings, debates, amendments, and votes on individual bills. Republicans again, 18 Senators and nine House members, voted for the bill, with 226 House members voting by proxy. Rather than chagrin for facilitating this subversion of Congress’s Article 1 powers, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he was “pretty proud” of achieving Republican “priorities” with yet another spending binge of money we don’t have.

How can a Republican who professes to be a conservative and champion of the Constitution be “proud” of  “woke” Leftist policies and “priorities” like “family planning/reproductive health including in areas where population growth threatens biodiversity or endangered species”? We all know that “family planning” and “reproductive health” are euphemisms for abortion. So taxpayers are going to be fleeced for $575 billion to sacrifice more human beings on the altar of “biodiversity.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

New Age Idols (No, Not Taylor Swift) Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/28/new-age-idols-no-not-taylor-swift/

First in a series.

From ancient times, the worship of people or objects other than a Supreme Being was viewed as apostasy, most vividly depicted in the Old Testament by the Golden Calf in Exodus. While idolatry is instigated primarily to control obedient followers, religion has typically had its roots in the notion of deliverance from suffering, salvation, a code of righteous conduct, and a sense of comfort. However, fervent religious belief has also entrenched powerful overlords and been responsible for the persecution and death of millions in the name of holy righteousness. Idolatry and activist religion thus have a great deal in common.

Call it whatever you like, but the United States today is in the grip of several manifestations of a kind of idol worship. This article is the first of a series examining these modern golden calves. We ascribe this disturbing development to educational institutions abandoning a focus on critical thinking and instead nurturing a “clergy” who preach reverence to their conceptual idols. This produces students who lack adequate reasoning skills and instead parrot supposedly enlightened narratives fed to them, much to society’s detriment by crowding out beneficial debate.

The first and most pervasive example of today’s transition from reason to idolatry is the Church of Climate Change. Not only is the U.S. in thrall to this, but most of the West has also genuflected. The cause even has its own Joan of Arc in unhappy, deluded Greta Thunberg. At this point, the theology is centered on the belief that climate change is such an existential near-term threat to humanity that no attempts at mitigation should be off limits, regardless of their futility or collateral damage.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli ‘liberals’ aren’t doing the LGBTQ flag—or democracy—proud By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israeli-liberals-arent-doing-the-lgbtq-flag-or-democracy-proud/

In a Army Radio interview on Monday, MK Yorai Lahav Hertzanu—an openly gay member of outgoing caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party—warned that the coalition deals currently being finalized could be deadly for the LGBTQ community. He was referring, in particular, to a Religious Zionist Party (RZP)-proposed amendment to existing anti-discrimination laws. The updated version would enable private businesses not to provide services that contradict their faith.

“I really think it will end in murder,” he said, dubbing the issue in question “incitement” by “irresponsible elected officials … Words will not be the end of it; words have power.”
Funny he should have mentioned that, given the incessant, ugly, anti-Orthodox vitriol his camp has been spewing, not to mention calls for civil insurrection against the not-yet-instated government. But then, Lahav Hertzanu is among the many disgruntled losers of the Nov. 1 Knesset election who distort the language of their nemeses, while displaying bald-faced hypocrisy in the process.

Let’s start with the first half of the double whammy. The latest brouhaha erupted when RZP MKs Orit Strock and Simcha Rothman defended the need to legislate the right of establishments to operate in accordance with their religious beliefs. Strock said that this should apply to doctors, if and when alternative physicians are available to take their place. Rothman gave hotels as an example.

Predictably, the response from the soon-to-be opposition has been to accuse Prime Minister-designate Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu of caving to his “homophobic” and “racist” partners. Petitions and letters rejecting the move, assumed by detractors to be targeting LGTBs—have popped up all over, from the ivory towers of academia and high-tech to the halls of hospitals.

The outrage, like that expressed by the “anybody but Bibi” crowd over the haredi parties’ demand for the right to hold gender-segregated events, wasn’t spontaneous, however. On the contrary, it’s been cultivated and nurtured over time to combust on command.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s New Government Isn’t What You’ve Heard Contrary to U.S. media reports, we seek to bring the Jewish state closer to the American model. By Bezalel Smotrich

Posted By on December 28th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-new-government-isnt-what-youve-heard-free-market-religious-exercise-democracy-judicial-reform-eu-11672172820?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The U.S. media has vilified me and the traditionalist bloc to which I belong since our success in Israel’s November elections. They say I am a right-wing extremist and that our bloc will usher in a “halachic state” in which Jewish law governs. In reality, we seek to strengthen every citizen’s freedoms and the country’s democratic institutions, bringing Israel more closely in line with the liberal American model.

Israel is a Jewish and democratic state and will remain so. After five elections in less than five years and suffering the rule of a weak and fractious coalition dependent on a radical Islamist party’s backing for a year and a half, the country has finally formed a popular and stable government. Our bloc will strengthen Israel in the face of radical Islam and its terror proxies, open the country up economically, and usher in growth and prosperity for the benefit of all citizens.

As finance minister, I will pursue a broad free-market policy. This includes removing the government price controls and import restrictions that have limited competition and kept consumer prices high, as well as regulatory reforms and a loosening of bureaucratic control over small businesses. Inspired by U.S. right-to-work laws, we will pursue similar measures to reduce union control in Israel’s labor force.

On matters of religion and state, the new government will never seek to impose anything on a citizen that goes against his or her beliefs. We wish only to increase the freedom of religious people to participate in the public sphere in accordance with their faith, without coercion on secular people. For example, arranging for a minuscule number of sex-separated beaches, as we propose, scarcely limits the choices of the majority of Israelis who prefer mixed beaches. It simply offers an option to others. We also will work to guarantee that religious believers aren’t punished by the government for standing by their beliefs. This is no different from the rights the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed in its Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Contrary to some American reporting, we seek to protect all citizens from coercion that would violate their conscience—nothing more.