NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democracy Dies in Illinois A case study in how progressives entrench themselves in power.

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-dies-in-illinois-democrats-unions-j-b-pritzker-11668462531?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden says last Tuesday was “a good day” for democracy, but he must not be paying attention to what happened in Illinois. Behold a case study in how Democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule.

Democrats held supermajorities in both legislative chambers and a 4-3 majority on the state Supreme Court before the election. But their ex-boss Michael Madigan’s corruption scandal gave Republicans a chance to make gains in the statehouse, compete for Governor, and take control of the state Supreme Court for the first time in more than 50 years.

After deposing Mr. Madigan, Democrats last year did him proud by jamming through new state legislative maps that forced 12 Republican incumbents into six House districts. Democrats held 73 of 118 House seats under Mr. Madigan’s gerrymander. Their new, more extreme gerrymander helped them pick up four to five more seats.

Democrats also redrew state Supreme Court districts for the first time in 60 years. Three Justices are elected exclusively from Cook County, which includes Chicago. This guarantees Democrats three seats. But their majority looked in danger after a Democratic Justice representing central Illinois lost a retention election in November 2020 for the first time in state history.

Unions and Democrats have counted on the Democratic Supreme Court to block pension reforms and a ballot initiative backed by former GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner that would have established an independent redistricting commission. Democratic Justices have prevented citizens from using the ballot process to bypass the Legislature and enact government reforms.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The New York establishment is beating up on AOC. It should be looking in the mirror. New York Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their setbacks in the U.S. House. Max Burns

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/house-election-results-new-york-vote-show-ego-prevailed-party-rcna57328

It will go down as one of the bitter ironies of the 2022 midterm campaign: One of the few states that actually faced a “red wave” of Republican victories was deep-blue New York.

Democrats could have prevailed had their state party — which was busy deflecting progressive criticism of their conduct — marshaled better infrastructure and financial support for swing-district candidates.

To sour matters further, Democratic losses in the Empire State appear to be pivotal in the narrow majority in the House of Representatives that Republicans are likely to have starting next year. The icing on this rotten cake is that New York Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

On a night of many disappointments, the party’s most egregious own goal was the one scored for Republicans by no one less than the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman himself, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney. Maloney, whose DCCC role is to elect as many Democrats to the House as possible, not only presided over the loss of four previously Democratic New York districts, but failed to win his own race after putting his ego above the warnings of party officials and activists.

Maloney isn’t the only one to blame for Democrats’ Big Apple bludgeoning, however. The Democratic legislators who control the statehouse fumbled the ball when they were given the task of drawing up new congressional districts to reflect the results of the 2020 census. Their new congressional maps failed to satisfy the courts that they didn’t violate the state constitution’s bar on partisan gerrymandering, leading to the appointment of a nonpartisan election expert as a special master to draw new maps that cut deeply into Democrats’ previously safe districts. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mayorkas Lies (Again) To Congress. Isn’t That Illegal?

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/17/mayorkas-lies-again-to-congress-isnt-that-illegal/

On Monday, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported that it had “encountered” 230,678 migrants illegally crossing into the country, the highest number ever recorded in October and the third highest in the nation’s history.

On Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assured Congress that the border is secure and that “we are working day in and day out to enhance its security.”
 
The back-to-back events lead to a question: How many times can a Cabinet secretary blatantly lie to Congress before he gets brought up on charges?
 
Federal law, after all, makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” give “materially” false statements to Congress, even if you’re not under oath. The penalty includes fines and up to five years in prison, or up to eight if the lie involves international or domestic terrorism.

Mayorkas is a serial offender who deserves the eight-year beef.

ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDIA Comments turned off

Fake News: What’s with Tucker Carlson, Kanye West, Harley Pasternak and Jew hatred? Diane Bederman

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://dianebederman.com/fake-news-whats-with-tucker-carlson-kanye-west-harley-pasternak-and-jew-hatred/

I have been a fan of Tucker for many years. He often shared a collage of main stream media bites that were exactly the same; as if someone had sent out a news release earlier in the day with “what to say.” He was the go-to-guy for the other side; sharing missing facts. He attacked Fake News.  He ends his broadcast with:

“The show that is the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, smugness, and groupthink.”

And then came his interview with Kanye West, who has 32 million followers. Tucker described him as a “kind of Christian Evangelist.” He asked, “Is Kanye West crazy? You be the judge.” Ok. But you asked me to judge without telling me the interview was edited to make Kanye look good. Carlson says that the media isn’t in the business of ignoring remarkable things. Yet, that is exactly what he did. It has been proven that Tucker committed the sin he always said he fought – the sin of omission in order to promote a narrative. He edited out portions of the interview that portrayed Kanye in a negative way. Tucker Carlson removed all of Kanye’s nasty Jew hating comments and tropes. He also removed responses that shone a dark light on Kanye’s mental state despite the fact that West “has spoken frequently about living with bipolar disorder and experiencing manic episodes. In 2019, he discussed how he experiences these with David Letterman, telling him:

“When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything, everyone. This is my experience, other people have different experiences. Everyone now is an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A breakable alliance? Israeli conference spotlights worrying socio-political trends in US by David Isaac

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/a-breakable-alliance-israeli-conference-spotlights-worrying-socio-political-trends-in-us/

“This conference is a warning conference,” said IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, executive director of INSS. “We expect a reality that within five to 10 years the superpower support that Israel enjoys will be at risk.”

It’s referred to as the “unbreakable alliance,” but a conference in Tel Aviv on Monday painted a more disturbing picture, of a U.S.-Israel relationship headed for trouble.

The conference, titled “Israel-U.S. Relations: Trends and Looking Ahead,” became a call to arms as speakers insisted the matter was now at the level of a national security threat. It was sponsored by The Reut Group, the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning (IEP) and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), and featured politicians, public figures, former IDF officers, analysts and U.S. Jewish leaders.

“This conference is a warning conference,” said IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, executive director of INSS. “We expect a reality that within five to 10 years the superpower support that Israel enjoys will be at risk.”

Warning of a world where the United States no longer vetoes anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, or helps replenish Israeli weapons stockpiles, philanthropist and high-tech entrepreneur Yossie Hollander, who helped organize the conference, said, “The present situation between the government and the elite is still good, but the situation we’re moving toward is catastrophic.”

Among the currents within the United States working against Israel highlighted during the day-long conference were American political polarization, a new generation whose values are at odds with the Jewish state, and the rise of a radical, progressive ideology that has swept through America’s institutions.

.

The conference’s first speaker, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, focused on the political polarization, noting that Democrats and Republicans were increasingly partisan in their thinking, leaving less room for agreement on key issues.

“We must do all that we can to ensure that support for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship does not become yet another divisive partisan issue, like reproductive rights and gun control,” he said.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Tom Friedman – mistaken or disingenuous? Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3AlEbTL

On November 4, 2022, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman, who reflects the worldview of the State Department’s establishment, lamented that “The Israel we knew is gone.”

Should one rely on T.F.’s assessments concerning the Middle East?

*In September 1993, T.F. welcomed Arafat as a peace-seeking statesman.  He established (an immoral) moral equivalence between a role-model of terrorism, Arafat, and a role-model of counterterrorism, Prime Minister Rabin: “Two hands that had written the battle orders for so many young men, two fists that had been raised in anger at one another so many times in the past, locked together for a fleeting moment of reconciliation.”  T.F. was trapped by Arafat’s strategy of dissimulation (“Taqiyya”), highlighting Arafat’s peaceful English talk, ignoring Arafat’s violent Arabic talk, and playing down Arafat’s unprecedented terroristic walk since the 1993 Oslo Accord.

*In July, 2000, T.F. posed the question: “Who is Arafat? Is he Nelson Mandela or Willie Nelson?” A more realistic question would be: “Who is Arafat? Is he Jack the Ripper or the Boston Strangler?”

*T.F.’s pro-Palestinian stance dates back to his active involvement, while at Brandeis University, in the pro-Arafat radical-Left “Middle East Peace Group” and “Breira’” organizations.  It intensified during his role as the Associated Press’ and New York Times’ reporter in Lebanon. There he played down Arafat’s and Mahmoud Abbas’ rape and plunder of Lebanon, and their collaboration with Latin American, European, African and Asian terrorists, while expressing his appreciation of the PLO’s protection of foreign journalists in Beirut (who responded in kind…).   

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

In Letter to Twitter’s Elon Musk 180 NGOs, Civil Rights Groups Call For Adoption of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism by Sharon Wrobel

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/11/16/in-letter-to-twitters-elon-musk-180-ngos-civil-rights-groups-call-for-adoption-of-the-ihra-definition-of-antisemitism/

In a joint effort, a group of 180 NGOs and civil rights groups from around the world have signed a letter calling on Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a tool to help stamp out the persistence of Jew-hatred on the social media platform.

“The world needs an online platform where everyone can participate,” the letter to the billionaire read. “Unfortunately, this is not the case, as Jewish users are subject to unrelenting harassment on Twitter.”

A study published in September by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) found that between 2019 and 2020, over 2 million tweets about Jews and Israel were antisemitic, with one being posted every twenty seconds in 2020.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard University Had Most Campus Antisemitic Incidents Last Year: by Dion J. Pierre

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/11/16/harvard-university-had-the-most-campus-antisemitic-incidents-last-year-report/

Harvard University had the most antisemitic incidents on college campuses during the 2021-2022 academic year, according to a new report investigating previously unexamined ways that anti-Israel activists attack and undermine Jewish identity.

Released on Wednesday by higher education antisemitism monitor AMCHA Initiative, the report, titled “Campus Antisemitism & the Assault on Jewish Identity,” claims that while previous studies have explored whether Jewish students are “safe” on campus, focus must be expanded to look at the ways in which Zionists are becoming increasingly excluded from campus life through classical “tropes of Jewish evil.”

“No other campus identity group is routinely subject to the kinds of well-orchestrated campaigns of identity assault that Zionist and pro-Israel students have had to endure for the last several years across the country,” the report said.  “The threats to Jewish student identity come from their peers, professors, and even school administrators, and reach every corner of campus life — the quad, classrooms, dorm rooms, student newspapers, social media platforms, student government, and more.”

The report cited dozens of antisemitic incidents falling under its categories, including the expulsion of two Jewish women from a support group for sexual assault survivors at SUNY New Paltz, Harvard University’s campus newspaper endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and its claim that “Zionism is Racism,” and a campaign against so-called “S***** Zionist Classes” organized by the University of Chicago’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter.

Often prompted by ideas spread by college faculty, antisemitic incidents were likeliest to occur at colleges with large Jewish student populations and increased 100% to 200% percent after Israel’s 2021 conflict with Hamas. Harvard University had the most, 25, scoring the worst in each category of antisemitism examined by the report.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The FBI has been weaponized against Israel VIDEO Carolyn Glick and Lee Smith

Posted By on November 17th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/the-fbi-has-been-weaponized-against-israel/

On Monday, Israel’s Channel 14 reported that the FBI had informed Israel’s Justice Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces that it had opened a formal criminal probe into the shooting death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in May.

Glick and Smith discuss how the administration coerced the outgoing government into accepting responsibility for her death in a firefight between Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists and IDF forces last spring.

Now, two months later, the administration has loosed the FBI on Israel’s soldiers.

Smith says that the Biden administration has weaponized the FBI against its political foes. According to Smith, the move on Israel is in keeping with the administration’s domestic policy.

The author places the administration’s efforts to realign America towards Iran and away from Israel and Saudi Arabia in the context of its treatment of its political foes. He explains the administration’s cognitive continuum between its political enemies and its foreign policy: allied governments that do not share the progressive worldview are lumped in with Biden’s political foes.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Egyptians: We Do Not Want the Islamists to Return to Power by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on November 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19124/egypt-islamists

The Islamists, in other words, failed in their latest attempt to instigate unrest and violence in Egypt with the hope of returning to power.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and many other Egyptians seem to prefer less democracy and freedom of speech to the return of the Islamists to power.

“The Muslim Brotherhood’s eyes are on [wanting] the authority to control the people who rejected them.” — Moneer Adib, Egyptian counter-terrorism expert, Al-Ain, November 14, 2022.

“They lied to the Egyptians when they said that they were good for Egypt and when they claimed that they had magical solutions to the economic, social and religious problems.” — Ahmed El-Messiri, Egyptian former Muslim Brotherhood member, Al-Ain, November 11, 2022.

Habusha warned that the Islamists’ “desperate attempts” to undermine Egypt and its people are not accepted because the Egyptians said no to the organization 2013.

The collective sigh of relief expressed by Egyptians over the failure of the Islamists to ruin their country and return to power is a refreshing approach in Egypt and other Arab countries. It is good to see that the Egyptians are eager to keep the Muslim Brotherhood away from their lives and centers of power.

It now remains to be seen whether the Palestinians will follow suit and get rid of the Iranian-backed Islamists in the Gaza Strip, where they have destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to hold the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip hostage, offering them terror attack tunnels and weapons instead of schools and hospitals.

It also remains to be seen whether the apologists in the West who continue to search for ways to appease Iran’s mullahs and other Islamists will learn from the Egyptians’ horrific experiences and distance themselves from the terrorists.

Is the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization trying to return to power in Egypt?

Many Egyptians believe that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind calls to Egyptians to hold nationwide protests during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27), which is now in progress at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh. The Islamists, they say, justified their call by arguing that the planned demonstrations were designed to protest human rights violations and bad economic conditions in Egypt.