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With American friends like these By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on October 7th, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-719065   

US House Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California) took to Twitter on Monday to “urge Israeli political leaders from all sides of the political spectrum to ostracize extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose outrageous views run contrary to Israel’s core principles of a democratic and Jewish state.”

These “extremists,” he added, “undermine Israel’s interests and the US-Israel relationship, which I and my colleagues have worked to strengthen.”

Sherman was the second “pro-Israel Democrat” to issue a warning against Otzma Yehudit leader MK Ben-Gvir. According to a report earlier this week in Axios, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez said something similar last month in a private meeting with opposition leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

“The senator told Netanyahu he needed to realize [that] the composition of …[a] coalition with the likes of Ben-Gvir] could seriously erode bipartisan support in Washington, which has been a pillar of the bilateral relationship between the US and Israel,” a source cited by the outlet revealed.

As No. 2 on the Religious Zionist Party list, which most polls are predicting will garner some 12-13 mandates in the November 1 Knesset election, Ben-Gvir is guaranteed to retain his seat in Israel’s parliament. More significantly, he could end up with a ministerial portfolio in the next government if Netanyahu is able to form a coalition.

With friends like these, the Jewish state doesn’t need the rest of the increasingly left-wing Democratic Party’s actual enemies. Leaving aside the chutzpah of American politicians basically demanding that Israel cancel an Israeli counterpart whose views they don’t share, the idea that the elevation of a certain candidate could and would damage the country’s ties with America is as outrageous as it is disingenuous.

Menendez’s moaning that it “could seriously erode bipartisan support in Washington” is particularly laughable. As Israel’s failed outgoing government illustrates, ideological schisms do not allow for the crossing of aisles without one side utterly capitulating to the other on matters of import.

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Turns Out Biden’s Empowering of OPEC Was a Really Bad Idea By David Harsany

Posted By on October 7th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/10/07/turns_out_bidens_empowering_of_opec_was_a_really_bad_ide

If the average price of a gallon of gas falls by a penny, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain will take to Twitter and credit the Biden administration. In the last few months, due to lower demand and other factors, consumers have experienced a reprieve from historic highs. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre points out this is “the fastest decline in gas prices in over a decade,” which is like bragging about losing a couple of pounds after packing on 20.

Officials haven’t had much to say lately. That trend is likely to continue. Today, the OPEC+ cartel announced it’s going to cut production by 2 million barrels a day. This, even after the Biden administration engaged in a “full-scale pressure campaign,” according to CNN, to dissuade our alleged allies in the Middle East to change their minds.

As a presidential candidate, Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state. Soon after the election, like all his predecessors, Biden traveled to the kingdom to kiss the ring. And still, he gets nothing. The oft-repeated claim that Biden is a savvy, highly respected foreign policy operator has been relentlessly debunked by reality.

Biden wagered that he could placate his left wing, curbing fossil fuel production while also holding prices in check by pressuring the Saudis and emptying the U.S. strategic reserve, now at a 40-year low. It was a bad bet.

Biden can’t control prices, but he could have mitigated the problem consumers now face had he not disincentivized domestic fossil fuel production and refinery capacity. Remember that on Biden’s first day at work, he revoked permits to build the Keystone XL, a 1,179-mile pipeline that was going to carry approximately 800,000 barrels of oil a day into the United States that was slated to be completed in a few months. Seems like the kind of infrastructure that might be quite helpful.

Days later, Biden signed a batch of executive orders halting any new oil and natural gas leases on all public lands. The administration has issued fewer oil leases than any president since the Second World War.

It’s unsurprising, considering the stated policy goal of his party has been to create fossil-fuel scarcity by “transitioning” — subsidizing, mandating and diverting capital — to unreliable and expensive “clean energy” projects. Democrats’ promises and rhetoric are also baked into the price. Even if Biden loosened regulations today, why would nefarious profit-hungry shareholders of the oil industry plow billions into long-term projects when Democrats promise to destroy their business in the not very distant future?

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Biden Administration’s Nuke Deal: Ensuring Russian and Iranian Terrorist Hegemony Over the Whole Arab World by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18962/iranian-terrorist-hegemony

US President Joe Biden and his administration have, it appears, decided to sacrifice not only the brave people of Iran now risking their lives in a bid for decent governance, but also the Arabs. This betrayal of longtime allies is taking place, it seems, to appease Russia, ever eager to keep the price of oil at a premium, and its new close ally, Iran.

Russia has been the chief negotiator for the US in the “Iranian nuclear deal” talks; the Americans are not even allowed in the room.

By dropping the two demands [curbing Iranian-backed terrorism in the region and its ballistic missile program] “Biden has practically decided to acquiesce in Iran and its entire terrorist expansion project in the Arab region…. This is a dangerous development. The issue is not whether the agreement is signed or not…. The matter is not limited to these concessions made by Biden; there is something more dangerous than this: Biden has completely abandoned the Arabs, allies and non-allies alike.” — Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of the Gulf’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej newspaper, August 20, 2022.

“The collapse of this [expansionist] project means the collapse of the regime, similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union.” — Lebanese journalist Kheirallah Kheirallah.

“In Iraq, Iran refuses to admit that it is rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people, who expressed this in the last legislative elections. Iran refuses to acknowledge the defeat of its supporters in these elections. We see it currently seeking to overturn the results of those elections, starting with disrupting the formation of a new government and political life in the entire country.” — Kheirallah Kheirallah, Lebanese journalist, Annahar, August 17, 2022.

“A return to the nuclear deal will enhance Iran’s capabilities because it allows it to interact with the outside world, export oil and gas, and develop sectors of the Iranian economy instead of being under severe and comprehensive punishments…. [Iran] is trying to exploit the current international conditions to develop its military capabilities, nuclear and conventional, and its ballistic missiles, for the sake of regional hegemony.” — Hamid Al-Kaifaey, Iraqi author, Sky News Arabia, August 14, 2022.

The Arabs’ biggest fear is that this policy will embolden the mullahs to proceed with their plan to “export our revolution” and expand their control over the whole Arab world.

US President Joe Biden and his administration have, it appears, decided to sacrifice not only the brave people of Iran now risking their lives in a bid for decent governance, but also the Arabs. This betrayal of longtime allies is taking place, it seems, to appease Russia, ever eager to keep the price of oil at a premium, and its new close ally, Iran.

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An Epidemic of Cognitive Impairment? Why is the supposed party of youth dominated by such frail and forgetful elderly? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/05/an-epidemic-of-cognitive-impairment/

Joe Biden, the nominal head of the Democratic Party, is 79. But he increasingly acts and sounds 89.  

Recently, Biden has pivoted repeatedly on stage with his arm outstretched to shake the hand—of someone not there.  

On one recent occasion Biden called out for Representative Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) who passed away in a car crash in early August. He was insistent, shouting to the crowd, “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie? I think she wasn’t going to be here—to help make this a reality.” 

Biden’s fantasy was the reality that Rep. Walorski is no longer with us. 

Biden slurs his words. He truncates sentences. He speaks in a muddled voice that often makes comprehension impossible. When questioned, he grows irate, growls, and stutters. 

Biden’s messaging is even more confused than his medium. On any given day, Biden may impetuously announce that U.S. soldiers will defend the soil of Taiwan, or that the “killer” Vladimir Putin, unhinged head of nuclear Russia, must be removed from office promptly.  

If Biden doesn’t like a question, he may deride the reporter as a “stupid son of a bitch.” He habitually lies about everything from COVID-19 vaccinations being unavailable until his presidency to the nature of his son’s military service.  

Biden confuses Iran with Ukraine. He calls a senior African American assistant “my boy.” 

For much of the Trump presidency, leftist opponents sought to remove Trump by the 25th Amendment. A Yale psychiatrist diagnosed Trump in absentia and declared him deserving of a straitjacket forced intervention. Partisan charges grew so intense that Trump voluntarily took—and aced—the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.  

Strangely, the same Left arm-chair psychiatrists offer no such worries about Biden’s clear mental decline.  

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KRD News: An Important Warning – Equality does not equal Equity

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://mailchi.mp/daf4220cc1e0/krd-news-an-important-warning-equality-does-not-equal-equity?e=9365a7c638

Tal Fortgang / Commentary Magazine / June 2022

Two days before the 2020 election, then–vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris shared a short video on social media endorsing the radical but increasingly commonplace idea of “equity.” Narrating over an animated depiction of two people climbing a mountain, Harris explained why “equality,” long accepted as our highest aspiration for race relations in America, is not good enough. “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount,’” she says over an image of a white person starting at ground level while a black person climbs out from a ditch. “The problem with that: Not everyone is starting out from the same place.” Equality does not remedy past injustices but perpetuates them. Equity, by contrast, “means we all end up at the same place.” In the video, the black person joins the white person at the top of the mountain as “Biden-Harris 2020” descends from the heavens.

Harris’s flippant suggestion that in an ideal society “we all end up at the same place” was a clear signal to progressives just before the election: The next Democratic administration was prepared to adopt the new lingo and substantive goals of the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. Just a few decades after a critical mass of Americans accepted the civil-rights movement’s argument for equality—based in equal treatment rather than equal outcomes—they have been told that their efforts have been for naught. Equality of opportunity is now considered insufficient at best, a nefarious way to perpetuate existing disparities at worst. Equity, similar-sounding enough to ride equality’s coattails, admits that progressives want what conservatives have long been reassured they do not: radical equality of outcomes, as defined by progressives, of course. And the Biden-Harris campaign considered the idea popular enough to release a video endorsing it 48 hours before Americans would head to the polls.

They were probably on solid footing to think so, at least regarding young progressives. The distinction between equality and equity is a staple of social-justice education, ubiquitous in preschools and graduate schools alike. One well-known graphic (promoted by institutions ranging from American University to Paper Pinecone, a directory for preschools) has been particularly influential. It features three individuals of varying heights at a baseball game, trying to watch from beyond the outfield fence. At first, each of the three are standing on identically sized boxes, so the tallest one can see the game easily, the middle one can just barely see it, and the shortest can’t see anything. This, we are told, is “equality.” Everyone is on a level playing field, which disproportionately privileges the already advantaged and fails to help the disadvantaged.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DeSantis is History’s Greatest Monster for Some Reason Will the campaign of lies work? by Kurt Schlichter

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/desantis-is-historys-greatest-monster-for-some-reason/

The quiet, firm competence of Governor Ron DeSantis in the face of Hurricane Ian is proving a real problem for Democrats, Never Trumpers, and other garbage people. He’s good at what he does, unlike them, and people see how he differs from the Establishment despite the blizzard of lies and silly charges designed to tear down the best governor in America. Why DeSantis is a monster who hates gay people because he banned grooming and he caused global warming by not making you turn in your Tahoe for a Schwinn and he dragged innocent illegal aliens from their idyllic sidewalk shantytowns in El Paso to the nightmarish hellscape of Martha’s Vineyard. It’s enough to cause literal shaking! Sure, Donald Trump was Hitler, but DeSantis is both disciplined and (unlike Trump) sees that institutions like the regime media are worthless and must be destroyed, so he is Super Hitler on Steroids times a zillion.

Certainly, the comparison with the half-wits in the White House in the wake of the Cat 4 storm has been less than flattering to the Establishment windbags. President Cornholio has contributed nothing to the relief efforts besides more video of him wandering away, but in his defense, he’s been distracted running his fool mouth and risking nuclear war. And Kamala has been at it as well. The Florida administration had to correct the Veep’s insistence that hurricane relief would be targeted at people of color and presumably non-binary two-spirit otherkin. Diversity may be our strength, goes the cliché, but there’s no diversity in the Biden Administration – they are all idiots.

What they cannot tolerate is how DeSantis shames them for actually doing his job well. Oh, how they were praying for him to fail. The more destruction the better, and the suffering of Florida’s people be damned if the left can try to score points off of Heavy D based on Ian’s wrath. But DeSantis refuses to play the George Bush role of gentleman simpleton and to be a punching bag for people without the upper-body strength to toss a haymaker. DeSantis is out there constantly, answering questions, issuing guidance, and giving info. DeSantis oversaw the planning and execution of the response to the hurricane with clarity and efficiency shocking in this world of posers and ruling class charlatans who have never accomplished anything other than taking on ever-higher positions from which they can achieve even greater failures.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Anniversary of the Great Barrington Declaration and the Covidians A declaration that was hated, suppressed and misrepresented by the media hivemind and the tech giants. by Armando Simón

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-anniversary-of-the-great-barrington-declaration-and-the-covidians/

The Great Barrington Declaration was created on October 4, 2020 by Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya, and initially signed by dozens of scientists, at a time when the media and the leftist politicians were constantly assuring us that if we did not all obey them, conform, submit to them, and believe them regarding covid and treatment against it, we would all die. The doctors were hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a libertarian think tank. The declaration was benign and relatively innocuous.

Yet, the declaration was suppressed and misrepresented by the media hivemind and the tech giants (“Conservatives Pull Google Into Their Plan to Let People Die”). By that time, a totalitarian mentality had set in—solidified in fact—prevalent primarily in persons who were politically left of center, which mindset explains the censorship and the hysterical attacks against both the creators of the Great Barrington Declaration and the arguments therein. Many doctors, unfortunately, have been infected with this totalitarian virus for which there is no cure in sight.

The originators of GBD were immediately attacked for their heresy, said attacks resorting primarily to ad hominem, such as their being arrogant for giving a medical opinion since they were doctors, and equating them with climate deniers, flat earthers, Q-Anon and Creationists.

Others implied that the signatories wanted people to die, while some parroted the mandatory “racism” mantra (“Perhaps the declaration’s most important omission is its failure to meaningfully acknowledge the disproportionate burden of this disease on persons of color” “These scientists want more young, healthy people infected by the coronavirus”).

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Berkeley, Free Speech and Banning Jews Welcome to the space where Jews are no longer welcome. by Cal Thomas

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/berkeley-free-speech-and-banning-jews/

The University of California, Berkeley is known for many things, some good and some very bad, even outrageous.

In 1964, a ban on campus political and religious activities launched what was called the free speech and academic freedom movement that quickly spread to other campuses. To many of an older generation, it quickly got out of hand. During his run for governor in 1966, Ronald Reagan promised to “clean up the mess at Berkeley,” and end what had evolved from free speech, to strikes related to the draft, civil rights, discrimination and women’s liberation.

Whatever one’s view of the unrest at the time – liberals loved it and conservatives like Reagan vowed to stop it – what is happening now at Berkeley ought to shame especially those who believe in free speech and oppose discrimination.

Nine law student groups at the law school have managed to amend the university’s bylaws to ban any speakers who support Israel or Zionism.

These are not groups that “represent only a small percentage of the student population,” according to the Jewish Journal. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus.

Berkeley Law’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he would be banned under this standard, as would 90 percent of his Jewish students.

Writing in the Jewish Journal, Kenneth L. Marcus, a former assistant U.S. secretary of Education for Civil Rights and an alumnus of U-C Berkeley Law School, notes: ” Berkeley law students are not the first to exclude Zionists. At the State University of New York at New Paltz, activists drove two sexual assault victims out of a survivor group for being Zionists. At the University of Southern California, they drove Jewish student government vice president Rose Ritch out of office, threatening to ‘impeach [her] … At Tufts, they tried to oust student judiciary committee member Max Price from the student government judiciary committee because of his support for Israel.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s DOJ Threatening Pro-Life Protesters w/11 Years in Jail for Civil Disobedience Biden also knocked down jail time for two leftist lawyers to 18-24 months by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bidens-doj-threatening-pro-life-protesters-w-11-years-in-jail-for-civil-disobedience/

By way of some context, the Biden regime knocked down its jail time request for two leftist lawyers who torched a police car with a Molotov cocktail during the Black Lives Matter race riots to 18-24 months even though there was no reason to do so.

But as part of its Jihad against pro-life protesters, the Biden regime is using the FACE Act to target pro-life protesters for actions that are technically illegal, but fall well within civil disobedience norms and don’t involve torching anything. And seeking 11 years in prison.

In early March of 2021, a group of individuals committed to saving the lives of preborn children visited the Carafem abortion facility in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, as part of a “rescue” — an event meant to reach women seeking abortion, to persuade them to choose life for their preborn children instead. Today, October 5, 2022, that event of more than a year ago culminated in a visit from the FBI to at least one of the activist’s homes. Other individuals, who either participated or were merely present at the facility that day, were ordered to report to their local authorities to be charged under the federal FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances) Act along with charges of conspiracy.

The event in March 2021 was reportedly peaceful, with participants lining the inside hallway of a shared general medical office building which, in one area, houses the Carafem abortion facility. The rescuers who were gathered that day prayed and sang, and the event was nonviolent. Some recorded the events on video. Several participants were arrested by local police that day and were later released after posting bail for misdemeanor trespass charges.

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Exploiting the ‘Dizziness of Freedom’ The whole purpose of the Constitution. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on October 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/exploiting-the-dizziness-of-freedom/

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an “independent” agency funded, staffed, and appointed by a federal agency, has recommended that all adults 64 years and younger be screened for anxiety. The task force has already recommended screening for children and teens from 8 to 18.

As Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal,  “The ultimate pandemic is now life itself.” And the consequences of such a dubious policy is to further expand the power of the regulatory state at the price of our freedom.

Our inability to accept the “slings and arrows” not just of “outrageous fortune,” as Hamlet put it, but of everyday slights, worries, disappointments, and fears that necessarily follow from being imperfect humans in an imperfect world, has dangerous implications beyond weakening our characters. As nearly three years of the pandemic have shown, chronic anxiety creates a rationale for the technocratic nanny-state to expand its reach into our private and social lives, threatening our freedom and unalienable rights.

This recommendation by credentialed “experts” exposes several of the bad ideas that characterize the modern West. One of the worst is hubris of technocracy, the idea that a permanent nature of human beings and the tragic dimensions of human existence can be eliminated and utopia made real. Destructive passions and impulses that account for much of human misery require only technological or allegedly scientific intervention by “technicians of the soul,” as Stalin put it, to create “heaven on earth,” the perennial promise of Marxism and its various iterations like progressivism.

Such optimistic assumptions about human perfectibility have been going on for two centuries, despite the copious evidence against such presumptions––the persistence of massive state violence throughout the “Age of Enlightenment,” the industrialized carnage of both world wars, the grotesque evils of genocides and gulags, the brutality and indiscriminate destruction the Russians are currently inflicting on Ukraine, and the daily murder and mayhem, some of it sheer sadism, we can see in the streets of Democrat-controlled cities and on YouTube.