FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Only Dangerous Thing About Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit is Her Boss’s Cowardice China picked a fight over Pelosi to test Biden. And he failed. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/only-dangerous-thing-about-pelosis-taiwan-visit-daniel-greenfield/

If you believe the Biden administration and its media allies, members of congress visiting Taiwan is a shocking and unprecedented event. Except that Senator Tammy Duckworth visited Taiwan in May. Senator Richard Burr,  Robert Menendez, Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse and Robert Portman came in April. Along with Rep. Ronny Jackson 

Senator Dan Sullivan and Chris Coons flew over last summer. In the fall, Rep. Nancy Mace, Sarah Jacobs, Mark Takano, Elissa Slotkin and Colin Allred saw the sights.

Thanks in part to the Taiwan Travel Act, which passed with no opposition and was signed by President Trump in 2018, Taiwan is Grand Central Station for congressional delegations.

Pelosi is higher-ranking only in that she’s the outgoing lame duck leader of a vanishing majority.

China was not threatened by Pelosi’s visit. It chose to exploit it as an opportunity to intimidate the Biden administration and blackmail its weak enemies. And whatever else happens, it succeeded in exposing once again how worthless Biden’s tough talk about Taiwan is.

“Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan?” Biden had been asked at a press conference with the Japanese prime minister.

“Yes,” he assured. “That’s the commitment we made.”

“We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if, in fact, anyone were to invade or take action against our Nato allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with Taiwan,” Biden had promised.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Corruption of the World Health Organization (WHO) By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/the_corruption_of_the_world_health_organization_who_.html

Abir Ballan, author of the June 2022 piece titled “The WHO Review and Why it Matters to You? has documented the corruption by WHO/global leaders and governments concerning Covid treatment.

In essence, Ballan’s findings are a call to action to “reassess the WHO’s candidacy as an authoritative global public health organization” and the necessary actions needed to “safeguard” people’s “health sovereignty.”

With the unending mismanagement of Covid treatment and the WHO’s influence on so many countries, it is a critical call to action.

Ballan ponders the following:

·Did the World Health Organization follow public health principles when recommending the global Covid-19 response?
Was the WHO-recommended response to Covid-19 in line with the WHO’s own constitution and its own pandemic preparedness plans?
Was the WHO guided by science or by private corporate interests?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The IRS Is About to Go Beast Mode The Schumer-Manchin bill has $45.6 billion to audit the middle class.

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-irs-is-about-to-go-beast-mode-chuck-schumer-joe-manchin-audit-taxes-middle-class-joe-biden-11659477320?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Progressives want Joe Biden to unleash what they call “beast mode” executive power, and the Schumer-Manchin tax bill supplies the cash to turn the Internal Revenue Service into Wolverine.

The pact between Sen. Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer includes $80 billion in new funding for the tax man. Democrats claim this “investment” will yield more than $200 billion in revenue. That estimate is highly speculative, but if it’s anywhere close to right IRS auditors will soon be coming after tens of millions of Americans.

The $80 billion is more than six times the current annual IRS budget of $12.6 billion. The money will be ladled out over nine years and comes with few strings attached. The main Democratic command is for the tax agency to bring the hammer down on taxpayers.

The bill earmarks $45.6 billion for “enforcement,” including “litigation,” “criminal investigations,” “investigative technology,” “digital asset monitoring” and a new fleet of tax-collector cars. The result will be far more audits, civil suits and criminal referrals.

The main targets will by necessity be the middle- and upper-middle class because that’s where the money is. The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official tax scorekeeper, says that from 78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year. Only 4% to 9% would come from those making more than $500,000.

The IRS knows the super-wealthy employ lawyers and accountants who make litigation time-consuming and risky. It also knows that Democrats would howl if the agency pursues fraud in the earned-income tax credit program, despite what the IRS has estimated are $18 billion in improper payments each year.

A particular audit target will be “pass throughs” including Subchapter S businesses that file under the individual tax code. Democrats failed to raise the top individual tax rate, so unleashing IRS auditors is Plan B.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Emergency? What A Crock, Part 2

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/03/climate-emergency-what-a-crock-part-2/

Just last week, congressional Democrats were urging President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency because some Americans were enduring a patch of hot weather. Though more than a bit meshuga, they couldn’t match the fever of Bill Weir. The CNN chief climate correspondent said, also last week, that “the fate of life on earth is at stake” because Washington isn’t doing more to cool the planet.

Yet again, pieces of a puzzle a pre-schooler could put together in a couple of minutes are missing.

One of those lost pieces is the surface temperature record that the climate alarmists tell us is evidence that man is overheating Earth. They treat the record as if it’s irrefutable fact. But it’s not quite that. The reality is the temperature record has “been substantially corrupted,” according to a new study.

“Approximately 96% of U.S. temperature stations fail to meet what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) considers to be ‘acceptable,’ uncorrupted placement,” says former broadcast meteorologist Anthony Watts in a Heartland Institute study. “These findings strongly undermine the legitimacy and the magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends.”

On his own site, Watts calls the study a followup the the “widespread corruption and heat biases found at NOAA stations in 2009.” 

Previously, Watts found that “many climate monitoring stations were located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, located on blistering-hot rooftops, or placed near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat.”

Somehow the “heat-bias distortion problem,” he adds, “is even worse now.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Response to George Soros Gratuitous Op-Ed in the WSJ by Paul Schnee *****

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

RE:Why I Support Reform Prosecutors Justice or safety? It’s a false choice. They reinforce each other.By George Soros(https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-support-reform-prosecutors-law-enforces-jail-prison-crime-rate-justice-police-funding-11659277441)

Dear Sirs,

The article by George Soros is as inaccurate as it is self-congratulatory. The only thing missing apart from any caring reference to the victims of the crime wave he has financed is the implied belief that we should be grateful to him for his incessant, tinkering, blood-drenched, philanthropy and his ubiquitous subversion of law & order in America. He thinks he deserves a “Thank You” card.

Mr. Soros has never allowed his spirit to roam beyond his own self-interest, just ask the Bank of England. He lives safely sheltered and heavily protected from the ravages and destruction of the policies he constantly seeks to impose on others. A good deal of hypocrisy is required to turn his suppurating, self-justifying, hand-washing article into a plausible argument for criminal justice reform but hypocrisy is something Mr. Soros has in abundance. 

 

“Americans need a more thoughtful discussion about our response to crime”, he tells us. Very well then, here it is: 

 

We want it stopped. We want more police officers better paid, better equipped and well-trained with stronger immunity from criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits. We want vicious thugs, with criminal records so long they wouldn’t fit onto the side of a bus, kept in jail until trial. We want the 45,000 gang members in L.A. County, count them, off the streets and if it takes the temporary suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act to do it we don’t mind. We want the politicians and officials who have allowed this plague on our streets prosecuted and sent to the same prisons as the gang members. We want violent underage criminals tried as adults. We want drug dealers, not drug users, executed. It works well in Singapore.

 

Mr. Soros intones that, “We need to acknowledged that black people in the U.S. are five times likely to be sent to jail as white people.” That would be unjust if they were committing the same crime but it implies that the police are out deliberately hunting down black people, trumping up charges and sending them off to jail because of their color. It’s preposterous. 

 

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Are Learning That Hating Trump Is Not The Same As Governing Jeff M. Lewis

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/democrats_are_learning_that_hating_trump_is_not_the_same_as_governing_.html

From the time Donald and Melania Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy for President of the United States, there has been little other than a torrent of hate directed at him, his family, and all who support him. We have endured the past several years being required to account for how we could support such a man.

For me, it was simple. My support for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 (clearly explained to family and friends) came down to the three pillars of American exceptionalism and success: the Constitution, national security, and the economy.

We need not look very far to see just how horribly elected Democrats have done on all three.

Donald J. Trump and the MAGA movement remain a threat to the Democrats, and it’s their fault. They have governed over the past 14 years against the prevailing will of the people, by hook or by crook. They have fully employed every branch of government and every government agency against the American people at every opportunity. Their cancerous quest for power knows no bounds.

On the Constitution, those who have been paying attention can clearly see that America has a two-tiered justice system. If one supports Democrats and their pet causes, there will be little accountability, and there will be no mention of one’s bad behavior in the press. However, if one is seen as a political opponent of the Democrat party, it’s off to the gulag. Conservatives and MAGA supporters know well the plight of the January 6 detainees: cruel and unusual solitary confinement, lack of due process and representation, and ruinous consequences for exercising their constitutional rights.

Furthermore, no American who supports the Constitution and has taken an oath to support and defend it can, at the same time, be in favor of “packing the court.” This will forever alter American jurisprudence in a way that will deny citizens their right to redress their grievances against the government. To do this would forever prevent any opposition from arguing the unconstitutionality of any law the legislative branch passed. The courts would be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the legislature and the executive branch, and no longer an independent check on their powers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Strategic Nuclear Deception By Craig Karpel (Feb 2009)

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/blog/craig-karpel/2009/02/22/irans-strategic-nuclear-deception-n17618

Iran’s satellite launch earlier this month should have been a wake-up call. Instead, the West has reached over and hit the snooze button.

Swift, vigorous measures need to be taken to deal with the new reality that Iranians, who could possess a nuclear weapon by the end of next year, have demonstrated that their Safir 2 rocket, which was used as the launch vehicle, is able to deliver a warhead to southern Europe.

The New York Times reported:

The Iranian rocket had two stages, Mr. [Charles] Vick said. If it were carrying a small warhead, he said, the Iranian missile could fire the weapon about 2,500 kilometers, or slightly more than 1,550 miles. The rocket could send a weapon to targets in Israel, but experts said that Iran had already possessed that capability.

That falls short of the range of an intercontinental ballistic missile, Mr. Vick said. For Iran to achieve that technical step, he added, it would have to develop a more powerful basic rocket or more upper stages — two goals that weapons experts think it is pursuing.

Dr. [Charles] Ferguson of the Council on Foreign Relations said that Iran’s technical advance, if translated into a military missile, might put a warhead within range of southern Europe, including Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

Heritage Foundation senior fellow and former deputy assistant secretary of defense Peter Brookes’ reaction to the launch: “In theory, if you can launch a ballistic missile that can place a satellite into Earth orbit, you have the scientific wherewithal to hit a target anywhere on Earth with a warhead.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Love him or hate him, Trump is right about crime

Posted By on August 3rd, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/3584709-love-him-or-hate-him-trump-is-right-about-crime/

Love him or hate him, there is no denying that Donald Trump has extraordinary political instincts. For a billionaire real estate developer to win the Oval Office on a campaign of helping out working-class Americans, and to single-handedly realign our two great political parties in the process, was nothing short of astonishing.

Which is why, despite his multiple missteps, Republicans should pay attention to Trump.

When he ran his first-ever political campaign in 2016, Trump focused on the border and on China. Calling out the rising flood of people entering the country illegally and Beijing’s monstrous theft of America’s intellectual property got the attention of voters. “Build the wall!” became a chant heard across the country.

Today, Trump has a different focus. Addressing the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, D.C., recently, he talked about public safety, concluding that “our country is now a cesspool of crime.”

As we approach the November elections, that is what Republican candidates should talk about as well.

Why? Because, according to a recent survey, 81 percent of registered voters say crime is a major problem in the U.S., and 79 percent say crime and personal safety is one of their top concerns.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Lebanon’s Leaders ‘Out of Touch with Reality’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 2nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18766/lebanon-leaders-reality

The Lebanese authorities are accusing Bishop al-Hajj of treason for bringing money to the poor and the sick, at a time when Iran is delivering — through Hezbollah — money and weapons to be used in the next war against Israel.

The money and the weapons that the Iranians are sending to Lebanon are designed to strengthen the mullahs’ control over the country. Iran, incidentally, is already occupying three other Arab countries: Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

“In our days, a bishop is being arrested and interrogated as if he was a foreign agent, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is received with full honor.” — Joseph Abu Fadel, Lebanese political analyst, Twitter, July 19, 2022.

[T]he Lebanese people are being forced to seek aid from their families and relatives in Israel “because of the failure of the Lebanese states at all levels.” — Alain Dargham, reporter for MTV Lebanon News, Twitter, July 21, 2022.

The Christians who fled to Israel did so out of fear for their lives and the lives of their families. They ran away from the terrorism and intimidation of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

If the Christian families living in Israel are able to send money and medicine to their relatives in Lebanon, it shows that those who moved to Israel are doing much better than the Christians they left behind in Lebanon.

Bishop al-Hajj is not a traitor. He is a hero to his community and the rest of the Lebanese people.

Iran and Hezbollah are afraid that such aid would open the eyes of the Lebanese people and make them realize that Israel is not their enemy. God forbid, they may even see that life in Israel is not so bad after all — and that their Israeli neighbors are prepared to help them.

The leaders of Lebanon, who have to report to their masters in Tehran, are evidently seeking to keep their people living in misery and poverty. The leaders are worried that if the people lead good and comfortable lives, they will stop thinking about violence and jihad (holy war) against Israel because they would have a lot to lose. The leaders also want their people to continue living in misery and poverty so that they can shift the blame for it to Israel.

For the past few years, the failed state of Lebanon has been experiencing one of its worst economic, political and social crises in recent history due to years of political strife and economic downfall. Yet instead of focusing their efforts on finding ways to end the crisis, the Lebanese authorities and leaders are spending their time intimidating those who seek to alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Here I Am; Send Me’: Teens Stand Against Jew Haters by Richard Kemp

Posted By on August 2nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18768/here-i-am

As every commander knows, you do not train a soldier to fight when he is in the middle of a battle, you do it before he gets anywhere near the combat zone.

Victimhood culture, too often the corrosive first resort of those who face injustice or feel wronged, is not in Club Z’s creed. Students are taught that an individual’s character is defined not by what obstacles are thrown in their path but by how they have overcome those obstacles and turned them to advantage.

Club Z teens are not aggrieved victims but active and proud defenders. They know that weakness incites while strength deters, that keeping quiet about antisemitism, meeting the bullies half way or compromising with calumnies does not protect them, does not make the problem go away and does not diminish the diatribe against them.

Courage cannot be taught but it can be fortified, and that is fundamentally what Club Z does. It is what empowers these teens to say, as the finest soldiers say when there’s a perilous task to be done: “Here I am; send me”.

The Hebrew expression “hineni” means “here I am”, most famously used by the great Biblical defender of Israel, Isaiah, who responded to a heavenly call to duty with the words: “Here I am; send me”. Hineni encapsulates the spirit of Club Z (for Zionism), a network of Jewish American teens that are standing up for their people and their Zionist identity against the scourge of antisemitism that is on the rise across the US, with the latest FBI figures showing Jews — 2.4% of the population — were the target of nearly 60% of religious hate crimes in 2020.

Jew hate is at its most virulent on campus. A complaint filed last week against City University of New York includes a recorded 150+ incidents of antisemitism on their premises since 2015, more than 60 directly targeting Jewish students with the intent to harm them.