Friday, January 13, 2023

Longest Memo Perhaps And Most Meaty. Lots Of Random Personal Commentary. An accumulation Of Items While Away.

Back after glorious cruise and visits with Daniel and Abby's families.  Am sending this and will follow up with one more and then more silence as I pay bills, catch up with a ton of mail.  Have one personal observation rattling round my head that I want to get out. Hope all well with everyone and that it begins to warm. Me

 





For clarification. Generally anything above three +++ has mostly been written by me except posting of articles and anything above longer ++++  is written by others.
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I never knew how the Biden's crossword puzzle would eventually look but I always knew it was a matter of time it would not look well. I never knew the pieces involved so much potential corruption nor did I know about all his houses bought on a Senator's salary. I always believed he was not bright and has been wrong on virtually every important decision since birth. I am not gloating he will eventually be found to be corrupt and subject to impeachment and possibly jail but the question is will his equally corrupt Justice Department and blatant mass media allow the investigations to go to unimpeded completion and what will Americans do to demand this is carried to its conclusion?  

What is critical, Democrats must keep Biden president until the 2024 election s they can nominate the Gov of California and  keep their control of power. This is what could motivate their go slow efforts which I expect has already begun and will intensify. It did not kill Hillary's chance to be president, her lousy campaigning did but it has kept her our of jail where she belongs. 

The double standard of justice and the corrupt mass media which has prevented truth to flow through so Americans can have access to objective, unvarnished news so they can assess facts is why Americans are depressed and angry and consider government their enemy as it truly has been allowed to become..

Why no invasion of Biden's homes comparable to that gumshoes did to Mar-A-Lago? Double standards confidence builder?

Follow the money. I urge fellow GOP'ers  to allow McCarthy to do what he wants and judge him accordingly.

And"

Meanwhile Kim suggests with two you might get egg on your face
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The Special Counsels and Merrick Garland’s Election Department
He’s named investigators for both Biden and Trump. Didn’t he learn anything from 2016?
By Kimberley A. Strassel
 
You’d think the Justice Department would have learned something from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s disastrous decision to insert itself into the 2016 presidential campaign. Think again. Maybe we should start calling it the Election Department.

A frazzled-looking Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed Robert Hur to investigate Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents at the end of the Obama administration. The announcement followed this week’s news that Biden lawyers found classified documents stashed next to his Corvette in his Wilmington, Del., garage. And in another room of the house. And in a closet in his disused private office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington.

The news that additional material was hanging loose in a Biden carport makes the press corps look like chumps. Reporters spent the week laboring to explain that Donald Trump’s classified-document behavior was far worse—in part because he’d kept material in his “private residence,” whereas the Penn Biden docs were in a “locked office.” How does a garage rate on the national-security front? And so much for the argument that Mr. Biden’s Penn documents were a one-off oversight. The former vice president seems to have sprinkled national secrets hither and thither.

What matters more is that the similarities between the two cases proved too much for Mr. Garland to ignore. He set a standard by naming Jack Smith special counsel to investigate the Trump documents, and he’d have looked partisan not to do the same with Mr. Biden. Thus the country finds itself in yet another extraordinary moment—with Justice Department special counsels investigating both the current president and his predecessor, who just happen to be top candidates for the next presidential election.

If this isn’t as shocking as it should be, it’s because it’s become shockingly common. Messrs. Smith and Hur follow Robert Mueller, the special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump over fake Russia-collusion claims. That hoax is being probed by another special counsel, John Durham. All that followed the FBI’s elaborate 2015-16 FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton and a separate elaborate 2016-17 investigation into Mr. Trump. Maybe we should save time and assign a special counsel to dog every presidential aspirant during the campaign, through the Oval Office and unto death.

One of former Attorney General William Barr’s aspirations was to depoliticize the Justice Department, and one of his acts was a 2020 memo putting new guardrails around launching investigations into politically sensitive individuals or entities. No one suggests politicians are above the law. But earlier attorneys general were mindful of the risk that political investigations would appear partisan, and the need for a high bar and great discretion. Mr. Barr’s memo was a reminder of these principles.

Mr. Garland might have followed that example rather than authorize the FBI’s unnecessary and unprecedented August 2022 raid on a Mr. Trump’s home. Over documents. And documents that the Presidential Records Act outlines only minor penalties for mishandling. The department could have continued negotiating with the Trump team or gone to court for an order requiring the proper handling of the material. That would have allowed it to handle the Biden situation in a manner that was similarly low-key but also yielded accountability.

Mr. Garland instead escalated the Trump situation. That again injected the Justice Department in an election cycle, given Mr. Trump soon became a declared candidate for the presidency. Rather than be accused of a double standard, Mr. Garland this week delivered a second injection. Now he holds in his hot legal hands the fate of anotherleading candidate, Mr. Biden.

The power the department now has over the 2024 election is extraordinary. How long will the probes drag on, weighing down the candidates? Will one investigation finish sooner than the other, giving one candidate an advantage? Will one man be exonerated while the other is indicted? How much information will be leaked in each probe, in an attempt at partisan advantage? Will the department end up having altered the future of politics by dissuading Mr. Biden to run?

And does anybody think the Justice Department will come out of this without further blemishing its reputation?

Of course not. Mr. Garland is attempting to insulate the department with his special counsels, to maintain—as he robotically repeated in his announcement—that he is determined to preserve its “independence and accountability.” But nobody in America is going to buy the claim that the attorney general, who answers to Mr. Biden, isn’t deeply involved or that politics isn’t at play. If Mr. Biden is exonerated, half the country will lose its wig. If Mr. Trump is exonerated, the other half will. Likewise if either man is indicted. There is no win here. What a mess.

At some point, a future attorney general will need to summon the backbone to be truly accountable—to make the tough calls himself. That would include what seemingly has become the toughest call of all—to step out of the political fray.
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Kevin McCarthy Confirms He's About To Knock These Liberals Down A Few Notches
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has reportedly stated that he...
READ MORE
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Jonathan is one of the brightest. I have never met him personally but he worked with a variety of friends. I listened to this because of my heightened concern about the way Jordan and it's King has been back peddling and I urge you do as well.

In essence Jordan has swapped places with Egypt, vis a vis Israel.   
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If you missed the webinar, please visit our YouTube channel to view the recording, here.

The Abraham Accords and Jordan's Unsustainable Position with Jonathan Schanzer

Israel's ties with Jordan have deteriorated rapidly since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020. Refusing to engage in the multilateral diplomatic structures now shaping the Middle East, Amman’s rhetoric toward Israel is increasingly antagonistic. Yet Jordan shares many of Israel's security concerns, relies heavily on Israel for water, gas, intelligence and other security assistance, and also on Israel's new-found partners for financial assistance. Is this position sustainable? What needs to change for the dissonance to resolve?
    
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, he is the author of four books on the Middle East, including Gaza Conflict 2021 (2022). He received a BA from Emory University, an MA from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a PhD from King's College London. He was a research fellow at the Middle East Forum in 2002-03.
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America's piñata president off the front pages and media not happy because their boy has taken his place.
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Media UPSET To See Attacks On Trump Lose Steam

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Biden Blamed By MIGRANTS For Border Crisis
President Joe Biden is the mastermind behind the border crisis that Americans are facing today. In El Paso Texas...Read More »

And:

Biden Has SCARY Description Of Border Crisis
While promoting a plan to make it “easier” for foreign nationals to claim asylum in the United States, President Joe...Read More
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What can parents do about insane progressive and dangerous nonsense that is done to keep our nation embroiled and paralyzed?
The mass media is encouraging it because it sells papers and keeps the pot stirred.
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What Can Parents Do about the Sexualization of Children by Schools & Media?

Our school system and culture are allowing predators to sexualize children. Landon Starbuck is a former Hollywood star-turned-advocate who left the industry when she refused to conform. She is now empowering parents to fight back against the dangers of sexualized children’s entertainment and education. She sits with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit to discuss how parents can step up and take action.
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Richard

You’re familiar with the “rules for thee but not for me,” right? 

It seems that Biden had some classified documents hiding…similar to what Trump had.

How much trouble is Biden in? Get the inside story now.

Regards,

Aaron Edwards
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Dear Richard,


While the media is busy talking about Russia, Donald Trump, and Elon Musk, there’s one story that no news station is covering. 

Yet it could have a direct, and catastrophic, impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones. 

Exposed in this shocking new documentary is the truth about the greatest threat facing America in 2023. 

Porter Stansberry

I’m not talking about a market crash, inflation, or a recession… 

This is far more destructive. It could cripple our country, our economy, and potentially end America as we know it. Yet, no one is sounding the alarm. 

Thankfully, there is a way to prepare for this crisis. 

And in this new documentary you will discover everything you need to protect your family, your finances, and your way of life from this looming crisis.   


Sincerely, 

Porter Stansberry
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Finally victory over CAIR.
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Middle East Forum
Nicholas Damask: A College Professor's Victory Over CAIR
by Marilyn Stern
Middle East Forum Webinar

The corresponding video appears under the title "CAIR Almost Canceled My College Class."

Nicholas Damask, a professor of political science at Scottsdale Community College (SCC) and former Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, spoke to a January 6th Middle East Forum Webinar (video) about the Council for American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) failed attempt to silence his free speech rights by lawfare. The following is a summary of his comments:

CAIR, an American Islamist organization with a reputation for waging "lawfare," i.e., filing lawsuits with the aim of abolishing public discourse critical of Islam, targeted Damask and SCC in 2020. In April of that year, Damask, with a quarter century of experience teaching a world politics course at SCC, received a brief email from a Muslim student informing Damask that he was "offended" by the professor's "class content on Islamic terrorism." Although the student never filed a formal complaint, Damask replied that the intent of the class was to explore the "motivation" of the "tens of thousands" of young men, many from privileged backgrounds, who had "flocked" to Syria and Afghanistan to fight for terror groups, mainly ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria].

The student also excerpted quiz questions from the professor's unit on Islamic Terrorism, "without any context," and uploaded them to the Instagram account of a Canadian Muslim with a social media following in the hundreds of thousands. "Overnight," hostile messages started pouring into SCC's Instagram account from global locales, including Malaysia, Pakistan, and the Palestinian territories. Some of the messages threatened SCC with a school shooting or bombing, while others were more personal, going as far as to threaten to "slit [Damask's] throat." Damask took his family and fled the house, only to return when it was sufficiently secured.

The online furor eventually calmed, and the college district's chancellor, supportive of Damask "to this day," investigated the incident and found Damask blameless. In June of 2020, CAIR sued both SCC and Damask, asking the federal court to issue an "injunction ... that would prevent the teaching of Islamic terrorism in my class [and] the entire college district." Because Damask teaches in a public institution, CAIR claimed the class content disapproved of Islam and created "a state-sponsored disfavor of religion, specifically Islam."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations wages lawfare, lawsuits that aim to abolish public discourse critical of Islam.

CAIR sought an "injunction that they wanted a federal court to issue that would prevent the teaching of Islamic terrorism in (Damask's) class or for that matter in any other class in the entire college district." A district attorney explained that CAIR was "trying to create a defamation of Islam exception to the First Amendment." In cases such as these, the principle of "qualified immunity" protects a public employee from being personally sued, unless a court ruled their activities were unconstitutional. The principle was inapplicable in CAIR's case because "the courts have never ... said that certain content is off limits in a college class."

The exception to "qualified immunity" is when a public employee should have been aware that a "reasonable" person would not have engaged in said actions. CAIR claimed that "it should have been common sense" to never insult Islam. CAIR's attorneys cited the 2002 Supreme Court "Hope" case in which a prisoner sued prison guards who had "tied him to a post for seven hours in the Texas sun." The court ruled that common sense should have prevailed, despite no law prohibiting the specific act. The district judge dismissed the claim as well as CAIR's lawsuit against Damask and SCC. Undeterred, in August 2020 CAIR appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Even though it is known for issuing liberal rulings, the Ninth Circuit nonetheless "upheld the dismissal" and issued an opinion that further "chastised" CAIR.

A revealing aspect of CAIR's filing was its accusation that, by including the image of Mohammed in his lecture slides discussing terrorism, Damask "insulted the prophet." Sharia law imposes strict punishments on its adherents who violate its anti-blasphemy laws, and Islamists worldwide seek any opportunity to impose Sharia on non-Muslims and counter free speech protections guaranteed in the West. While "insulting the prophet" has been used as a rallying cry that incites fundamentalist Muslims to violence, a related tactic Islamists employ is using the West's legal system to intimidate and silence critics of Islam by exhausting them with expensive lawsuits.

Damask continues to teach his course, and his experience has motivated him to add to his course content on Islamic terrorism and draw lessons from his ordeal. Grateful for SCC's support, along with the support of the advocacy group FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), Damask considers himself "lucky" that the federal courts upheld his rights. If CAIR's injunctions had been upheld, professors would be unable to discuss 9/11 within the context of Islam. "You could never, ever bring religion into it to try to explain a given phenomenon." While the lawsuit wended its way through the courts, he was contacted by two colleagues who teach a religion and sociology class, respectively. The atmosphere of intimidation of professors who engage in free speech is chilling, as evidenced by his colleagues' admission that they "[excise]" discussions of Islam from their curricula for fear of being sued.

A revealing aspect of CAIR's filing was its accusation that, by including the image of Mohammed in his lecture slides discussing terrorism, Damask "insulted the prophet."

Damask is concerned about the "multicultural indoctrination" occurring throughout society, whether in law schools, law enforcement, the military, churches, medicine, media, or big business, where "mandatory diversity sessions" are "indoctrination sessions." Higher education has fallen prey to the forces of indoctrination that suppress free speech, and kindergartens through twelfth grades are being subverted as well. The multiculturalists have become the gatekeepers for who becomes a faculty member, which dissertation is accepted, and which student passes a course. "Higher ed[ucation] is not a place to go for open debate and discussion. That's not where you have free speech. What you have [is] multicultural indoctrination of young people."

He is further concerned that the source of the pressure on our educational system is from outside groups, "some of whom [are] not even American." These foreign groups receive overseas support to degrade America's public education system so that it "conform[s] to a left-wing multicultural, insane worldview." Damask has advice for others who are facing similar "grievance groups that want to cancel everything that offends them." It makes all the difference that you are not alone and have the support of family and your institution to "stand your ground." Damask owes it to the generations who preceded him "that worked too hard" to ensure that America's guaranteed rights are not lost to groups like CAIR. "I'm not going to give in."

Marilyn Stern is communications coordinator at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics:  Academia, Council on American-Islamic Relations, Free Speech, Government, Legal, Lobby Groups, Media, Middle East politics, Muslims in the United States, Radical Islam, Terrorism
This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

The Middle East Forum, an activist think tank, deals with the Middle East, Islamism, U.S. foreign policy, and related topics, urging bold measures to protect Americans and their allies. Pursuing its goals via intellectual, operational, and philanthropic means, the Forum recurrently has policy ideas adopted by the U.S. government.
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As inflation ebbs will a new bull market begin, has it begun? I personally believe one should not be swayed by the market naysayers at this point.  I remain fairly fully invested and and pray I am correct.

And:

University of Michigan protesters call for ‘Intifada,’ demise of Israel: ‘A call to murder Jews’
By Gabriel Hays, Fox News

Social media users were shocked and outraged over a recent anti-Israel rally put on by pro-Palestinian protestors at the University of Michigan this week.

Clips of the protest depicted marchers, chanting “Intifada, Intifada! Long live the Intifada” a call to violent overthrow of the Jewish state inspired by Palestinian riots and rebellions against Israel in the late 80s, early 90s, and early 2000s.

“There is only one solution!” a female marcher was seen chanting, as the crowd behind her responded, “Intifada! Revolution!

Marchers, seen walking around the Ann Arbor campus screaming into bullhorns and waving Palestinian flags, were also heard chanting the infamous anti-Israel call to arms: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Media reported that the antisemitic rally was held to protest Vice President Kamala Harris’ Thursday visit to the campus, where she gave a speech on climate policy, and student activism. The protestors appeared to be standing against U.S. government support for the state of Israel. 

Another video depicted the marchers outside of campus building in which Harris was giving her speech, saying, “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes.”

The blatant call to overthrow Israel disturbed prominent Twitter users, who were stunned that such sentiment was expressed so freely on a major American college campus. 

Jewish Journal columnist Blake Flayton tweeted, “At the University of Michigan, a call to murder Jews.”

Rep. Jared Moskovitz, R-Fla., spoke to the shocking nature of the rally, tweeting, “Using Hitler’s word ‘solution’ is intentional here. Israel has a right to exist. We will never compromise that. The Jewish people have a right to exist. We will ensure.”

Free Beacon reporter Joe Gabriel Simonson mocked the protesters, tweeting, “Loser activists think this is an intifada.”

The Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro put out a snarky comment about the protest, stating, “It’s because @UMich spends only $18 million annually on DEI.”

Former Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, national security advisor Boris Ryvkin condemned the rally, writing, “Terrifying. Echoes of what happened in Charlottesville, except the violent anti-Semites are cut from a different cloth. I expect major media to give this the saturated, wall-to-wall coverage it gave that event with the WH, Democratic leaders and the Squad members condemning it.”

Mediaite reporter Isaac Schorr remarked, “Not making the best case for your ability to handle your own state, kiddos.”

Popular conservative account AG tweeted, “I don’t think most people truly comprehend the level of hate and hostility for Jewish students in several of the top liberal Universities because the school administrations tend to support/enable this stuff.”

Hollywood producer and The Spectator columnist Daniella Greenbaum Davis empathized with the Jewish students at University of Michigan. She tweeted, “The first and second intifada saw terrorists brutally murder innocent civilians. Can’t even imagine being a Jew on Michigan’s campus right now.”

Author Samuel Rosenfeld tweeted, “Sickening… @UMich.”
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Read This Alert >>>

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I remain distrustful of this Administration and it's various agencies and who run them simply because Democrats want bigger intrusive government and those who want to destroy America, eliminate capitalism and replace it with despotic socialism then comes communism.

So happens the Justice Department withheld their knowledge of these "documents" two months before the mid terms as did the FBI do with respect to Hunter's computer.  These two acts alone are not confidence builders and place me in the opposite direction and reconfirm my concerns regarding veracity.

The investigative part of he FBI has proven to be totally compromised and politicized and untrustworthy.  This has become a proven fact and only a dunce, a biased Democrat and Trump Hater would/can conclude otherwise. The apologists have already begun to push back and refute these factual revelations
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Two Presidents, Two Special Counsels 
The Editorial Board Jan. 12, 2023 6:46 pm ET

“I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Mr. Garland said. “But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel.” He claimed this would make clear the Justice Department’s “commitment to both independence and accountability.” The new special counsel is Robert Hur, who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist before starting a career as a federal prosecutor.

To repeat what we said when Mr. Garland appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate President Trump, including Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago document hoard, the political insulation being sought here is a matter of mere perception. Whatever Mr. Hur finds out about how classified material wound up in Mr. Biden’s garage next to his Corvette, Mr. Garland shoulders the responsibility for the investigation, including deciding how to conclude it.

“My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Mr. Biden said Thursday. Rest easy, America: The First Vette is safe and sound. As for the classified papers from his time as Vice President, locked or not, Mr. Biden’s garage isn’t a secure place where they’re supposed to be kept. Additional classified material, Mr. Biden also said, was recently found in his personal library. Still, he argued: “People know, I take classified documents and classified material seriously.”

Apparently not as seriously as the feds usually do. Last year a former civilian employee of the Pentagon was sentenced to three months in prison for taking classified documents to her hotel room, as well as keeping handwritten notes of meetings that included classified details. That information was categorized as Confidential and Secret. To compare, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump each reportedly held on to documents that were rated as more sensitive than Top Secret.

Prosecutions for mishandling the nation’s secrets aren’t rare, though many of them involve reams of materials or high risk of exposure. Former CIA Director John Deutch was set to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information on a computer at his home. President Clinton pardoned him first.

Although Mr. Trump was inexplicably mulish about handing over his files, on current evidence there’s no good case for putting a President in prison—much less making two Presidents into cellmates—for improperly retaining materials from recent public office. When Mr. Trump was out on a limb by himself, this point was less obvious to some of our media competitors.

Now that Mr. Biden faces a similar inquiry, perhaps they see how ridiculous it is to have the Justice Department investigating both the current and former President who are running against each other for the same office in 2024. Rather than pass the buck to special counsels, Mr. Garland would be wiser to help the country by seeking a better way out.

The Justice Department can clarify the facts, and explain whether each President handled documents recklessly in ways that could have harmed national security. Barring some explosive revelation, however, Mr. Garland can then close both cases, giving voters their say next year when Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden each expect to be on the ballot.
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An ancient spoon stirs American mischief against Israel
The Department of Homeland Security has internalized the Palestinian Arab big lie. It is all utter garbage. Op-ed.
By Melanie Phillips Jan 12, 2023,

(JNS) An ostensibly minor incident a few days ago has provided devastating evidence of the brainwashed malevolence within the Biden administration towards not just Israel but the Jewish people.

In a ceremony at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Bethlehem, the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm delivered to the Palestinian Authority a 2,700-year-old spoon dating from the Assyrian empire.
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Judicial Watch Asks for Discovery Concerning President Biden’s Senate Papers
By Tom Fitton

The University of Delaware seems to be in full cover-up mode for President Biden. Here’s the latest.

Our legal team filed an appeal brief with the Delaware Supreme Court, on behalf of Judicial Watch and the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), asking it to overturn a lower court’s decision blocking the release of the U.S. Senate records of President Joe Biden housed at the University of Delaware.

Biden’s papers include more than 1,850 boxes of archival records from his 36-year Senate career.

In July 2020 we and the DCNF filed a Delaware FOIA lawsuit after the university denied our April 2020 requests for all of Biden’s Senate records and for records about the preservation and any proposed release of the records, including communications with Biden or his representatives (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. University of Delaware, No. N20A-07-001 MMJ (Del. Super.)).

In our appeal brief we ask the court to review a Superior Court opinion issued in October 2022 that found the university had met its burden of performing an adequate search for the requested records. The opinion came after the university had submitted a second affidavit from the university’s FOIA official stating that no state funds had been spent on maintaining the documents.

We argue:
The Opinion should be reversed. The Supplemented Affidavit is nothing more than a document filled with stale hearsay and vague [assertions without proof] which at best shows that the University did not engage in a diligent effort, as required by law, to review Appellants’ Requests. Appellants identified the deficiencies and asked to vet the assertions themselves. The Superior Court, however, simply granted the University “do overs.” Even after multiple attempts, the University has still not carried its burden to prove that the requested records are not subject to FOIA.

Despite two attempts on remand, the University still has not satisfied its burden to create a record from which the Superior Court can determine whether the University performed an adequate search for responsive documents.

We are asking the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s ruling and allow us limited discovery “to include at [a] minimum, a deposition of a representative of the University and production of documents … Alternatively, the Court should remand this case with instructions to order the turnover of the requested documents since the University has had more than adequate opportunity to satisfy its burden.”

The University of Delaware has been sitting on Biden’s Senate records for more than 10 years and is desperate to avoid any scrutiny of its secret deal with Biden to hide these records. The latest revelations about Biden’s handling of ‘classified’ records raise even more questions about what Biden is hiding.

“On day one, the White House said President Biden was committed to bringing ‘transparency and truth back to government.’ Apparently, the University of Delaware didn’t get the memo,” Daily Caller News Foundation Managing Editor Michael Bastasch. “It’s shocking they’ve spent years fighting to keep these records hidden from the American people. Hopefully, the Delaware Supreme Court ends the University’s stonewalling.”

Judicial Watch Sues Pentagon Records About Key Medical Database

The Defense Department seems to have something to hide about a key database that could provide insight on issues related to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Undeterred, we sued the U.S. Department of Defense for records and communications relating to the data contained in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:22-cv-03043)).

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database is a web-based tool designed to provide access to:

[A] subset of data contained within the Defense Medical Surveillance System (DMSS). DMSS contains up-to-date and historical data on diseases and medical events (e.g., hospitalizations, ambulatory visits, reportable diseases, etc.) … The DMED application provides a user-friendly interface to perform queries regarding disease and injury rates and relative burdens of disease in active component populations.

The purpose of DMED is to standardize the epidemiologic methodology used to collect, integrate and analyze active component service member personnel and medical event data…
 
In February 2021, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), sent a letter to Department of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin highlighting reports from three whistleblowers about injuries to servicemen and women potentially related to the COVID-19 vaccines:

Based on data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), Thomas Renz, an attorney who is representing three Department of Defense whistleblowers, reported that these whistleblowers found a significant increase in registered diagnoses on DMED for miscarriages, cancer, and many other medical conditions in 2021 compared to a five-year average from 2016-2020. For example, at the roundtable Renz stated that registered diagnoses for neurological issues increased 10 times from a five-year average of 82,000 to 863,000 in 2021.

We sued after the Office of the Secretary of Defense failed to respond to our February 16, 2022, FOIA request for:

All emails sent to and from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (on his official government/military email accounts or non-government email account, in his own name or using an alias) relating to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, Sen. Ron Johnson, and/or vaccines.
All emails sent to and from Deputy Secretary of Defense Katheen H. Hicks (on her official government/military email accounts or non-government email accounts, in her own name or using an alias) relating to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, Sen. Ron Johnson, and/or vaccines.

All emails sent to and from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley (on his official government/military email accounts or non-government email accounts, in his own name or using an alias) relating to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, Sen. Ron Johnson, and/or vaccines.

All emails sent to and from Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten (on his official government/military email accounts or non-government email accounts, in his own name or using an alias) relating to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, Sen. Ron Johnson, and/or vaccines.

All emails sent to and from Defense Department Public Affairs Officer Major Charlie Dietz (on his official government/military email accounts or non-government email accounts, in his own name or using an alias) relating to the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, DMED, Sen. Ron Johnson, and/or vaccines.

All reports, memoranda, studies, analyses, directive, and electronic communications produced by or sent to and from officials who maintain the Defense Medical Epidemiology Data base relating to the accuracy of or changes to be made to data contained in the Defense Medical Epidemiology Data base.
The data from Defense Medical Epidemiology Database showing “skyrocketing levels of disease among military personnel,” also were publicized through an image shared on Facebook: 
 
Percentage Increase Over the Average of the Last Five Years: Heart attacks 269%, Cancer 300%, Pericarditis 175%, Myocarditis 285%, Pulmonary Embolisms 467%, Cerebral Infarction 393%, Bell’s Palsy 319%, Guillain-Barre 250%, Immunodeficiencies 275%, Menstrual Irregularity 476%, Multiple Sclerosis 487%, Miscarriage 306%, HIV 590%, Chest Pain 1,529%, Labored Breathing 905%, Neurological Issues 1052%.
 
Responding to these concerns, an unnamed Defense Department source told Reuters:
 
The calculations, based on figures from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, are incorrect. Last year’s apparent sharp increases were caused by underreporting for the years 2016-2020. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told Reuters that due to “data corruption,” the platform showed only a “fraction” of the actual medical diagnoses registered in that period.
 
The covid vaccines were until recently mandated by the Pentagon, so the cover-up of information that could reflect on the vaccines’ safety is particularly outrageous.

Judicial Watch Sues for NIH Communications on Fetal Organ Harvesting

On April 16, 2021, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sent out a notice informing the extramural research community (researchers outside NIH from across the United States and in some foreign countries who have been awarded grants through the NIH grant program) that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was reversing the Trump Administration’s limits on fetal tissue research.

The notice stated: “All research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board.” Accordingly, the notice said, “HHS/NIH will not convene another NIH Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board.”

We have already established collusion between the University of Pittsburgh and the NIH over the fetal organ ‘chop shop’ in the University of Pittsburgh paid for with federal tax dollars. The Biden administration turned the spigot back on for taxpayer funding of this barbarism, and we want the details.

So we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the HHS for records of communications of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Office of Extramural Research about the use of human fetal organs (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:22-cv-03051)).

We sued after HHS failed respond to a July 15, 2022, FOIA request to the National Institutes for Health (a component of HHS) for:
All communications concerning human fetal tissue between the Office of Extramural Research and any of the following entities: (1) University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), (2) University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, (3) the National Abortion Federation and (4) any Planned Parenthood entity.

In February 2020, NIH records showed that the agency paid thousands of dollars to a California-based firm to purchase organs from aborted human fetuses to create “humanized mice” for HIV research.

In June 2020, FDA records showed that between 2012 and 2018 the FDA entered into eight contracts worth $96,370 with Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) to acquire “fresh and never frozen” tissue from 1st and 2nd trimester aborted fetuses for use in creating “humanized mice” for ongoing research.

In April 2021, FDA records detailed the agency spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to buy human fetal tissue from California-based Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). The tissue was used in creating “humanized mice” to test “biologic drug products,” and wanted “fresh; shipped on wet ice” fetal organs.

In August 2021, Judicial Watch and the Center for Medical Progress through a separate FOIA lawsuit uncovered HHS documents that revealed nearly $3 million in federal funds were spent on the University of Pittsburgh’s quest to become a “Tissue Hub” for human fetal tissue ranging from 6 to 42 weeks gestation.

In September 2021, we uncovered records and communications from the FDA involving “humanized mice” research with human fetal heads, organs and tissue, including communications and contracts with human fetal tissue provider Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR). Most of the records are communications and related attachments between Perrin Larton, a procurement manager for ABR, and research veterinary medical officer Dr. Kristina Howard of the FDA.

In April 2022, we uncovered records revealing that the Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning in the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Jeremy Berg, contacted then-Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, requesting help to combat, “efforts to undermine important science using fetal tissue.” Additionally, the records included a scientific report containing information about grafting human scalp and other tissues onto mice.


$4.5 Million for Culturally Appropriate Program to Help Asians Quit Smoking

Here’s another corrosive way bureaucrats have decided to spend your hard-earned tax dollars, as reported by our Corruption Chronicles blog.

The U.S. government is dedicating $4.5 million to enhance a “linguistically and culturally appropriate” program to help Asians quit smoking. It is known as the national Asian language quitline and provides cessation counseling, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), and in-language materials for tobacco users who speak Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese (CKV). The cash will flow through a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offshoot called Office on Smoking and Health. With an annual budget of nearly $10 billion, the CDC is the federal agency responsible for protecting public health. It operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and claims to work around the clock to protect America from health, safety, and security threats whether diseases start at home or abroad.

In its grant announcement the agency writes that telephone-based quitlines increase quit rates among individuals who use commercial tobacco and are trying to stop. They are also effective in reaching and supporting diverse and low-income populations, according to the CDC. “Limited capacity to provide linguistically and culturally appropriate quitline services may create barriers that contribute to tobacco-related disparities, especially among various subgroups of Asians that speak Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin), Korean, and Vietnamese languages (CKV),” the agency writes in the recently published Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), adding that less than half of Asians of CKV descent in the United States report speaking English “very well."

That poses a public health challenge, the CDC claims, because limited English proficiency reduces access to evidence-based health services. “Since many CKV speakers in the United States come from countries with very high smoking rates among men (up to 50%), providing culturally and linguistically appropriate care is a step towards equitable and effective care,” according to the agency. The millions of American taxpayer dollars will go to one lucky organization that will “operate and promote a linguistically and culturally appropriate nationwide quitline service for individuals who use commercial tobacco products and who predominantly speak CKV languages,” the CDC reveals. The agency explains that it is more efficient to provide a national Asian language quitline rather than rely on states to provide the services.

It is not clear how the agency came to that conclusion considering that a national government-funded Asian Smokers’ Quitline (ASQ) that has served CKV-speaking populations since 2012 has enrolled just 19,000 callers in more than a decade. That information is embedded deep in the grant announcement which is more than 50 pages and states that the CDC will provide continued support for a national Asian language quitline. With the new multi-million-dollar allocation the agency expects better outcomes such as increased use and reach of evidence-based and culturally appropriate quit support services among CKV-speaking people. That includes counseling, medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and digital technologies. The agency also expects “increased successful cessation at greater than 6 months among CKV-speaking people who use commercial tobacco,” according to the grant document.

Tobacco-related disparities are created by a complex mix of factors including social determinants of health, tobacco industry influence and environmental conditions, the CDC writes. Social determinants of health are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. The disparities can affect populations based on factors such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity, income, and employment status.

In the last few years, the government has spent vast amounts of taxpayer dollars to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services to a variety of groups. Recent examples include $66.5 million to strengthen COVID-19 vaccine confidence among racial and ethnic minority groups by providing culturally appropriate information, education and outreach involving the shots. Uncle Sam also recently spent $125 million to provide illegal immigrant minors, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), with a multitude of services in the private sector including medical care, special housing arrangements for delinquent, pregnant and gang-affiliated teens as well as long-term counseling. The services were guaranteed by the government to be “culturally and linguistically-appropriate to the unique need of each individual.”


Judicial Watch’s Guide to Congressional Investigations

Can we expect any serious investigation of Biden administration wrongdoing now that the Republicans control the House of Representatives? Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, provides a rundown in Investigative Bulletin of the House’s investigative agenda:

The new House of Representatives was sworn in early Saturday morning after Kevin McCarthy was elected Speaker on the fifteenth ballot. The House GOP leadership promises an ambitious agenda of investigations, including a special committee on the weaponization of federal agencies, but history is not reassuring. Will the House probes bring real progress—important new information, defunding of bad actors, sunlight on wrongdoing, indictment referrals, impeachment if warranted—or two years of fruitless bickering over documents and testimony?

At Judicial Watch, we run our own investigations and have been holding government officials, Democrat and Republican, accountable for nearly three decades, but we’ll be closely watching the House probes. Republican staff on the House Judiciary Committee earlier released a “road map” to the new investigative agenda, and over at the Senate, ranking Judiciary Committee member Charles Grassley has been digging deep into FBI corruption, releasing letters outlining serious allegations of wrongdoing. We’ve reviewed all the documents and talked to our sources. Here’s our guide to the new Congressional investigations.

Who Is Jack Smith?

No case is likely to dominate the 2023 headlines more than the investigation of former president Donald Trump by new special counsel Jack Smith. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith, a career federal prosecutor, to lead a probe into Trump’s conduct surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, as well as a separate probe of the storage of presidential documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump has denied wrongdoing in both cases. Notably, any decision to indict rests with the attorney general, not the special counsel.

The Trump affair screams for Congressional oversight—and apparently will get it. Even before the appointment of Smith, the House investigative road map signaled concerns about an “unprecedented raid on a former president’s home” to seize documents. The roadmap noted that Trump had cooperated with government officials seeking documents before the raid; that “the Biden Justice Department has provided limited justification for this unprecedented action;” and that Justice and the FBI “have failed to sufficiently comply” with Congressional requests for documents related to the raid. Congress will want to take a look as well at the belated disclosure of classified documents found at a Joe Biden office in the days before the 2022 midterm elections.

Smith’s unusual career—a path that took him from the office of the Manhattan District Attorney to federal postings in Brooklyn, Washington, Tennessee, and the Hague—is also worth a closer look. From 2010 to 2015, he headed the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section and was at the center of several controversial issues. Among them: the IRS scandal.

In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Smith’s Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Government officials were looking to step up a probe into requests for tax-exemption from organizations with conservative sounding names like “Tea Party” and other “political sounding names,” according to a later report by the Treasury Department’s inspector general. Smith appears to have been a key player in this attempt to silence conservative voices.

According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch, Smith directed the head of the Justice Department’s Election Crimes Branch, Richard Pilger, to meet with the director of the IRS’s Tax-Exempt Organizations division, Lois Lerner. In one email obtained by Judicial Watch, Lerner discusses an idea that the Justice Department could build “false-statement cases” against tax-exempt conservative groups.

Judicial Watch later obtained additional documents detailing a planning meeting between Justice Department, FBI and IRS officials about possible criminal prosecutions. Thanks to Judicial Watch disclosures, House investigators discovered that the IRS improperly turned over confidential tax records of non-profit organizations to the FBI—sparking a public uproar and forcing the return of the records to the IRS. Read more about the case here and here.

Biden Family Corruption
 
The other headline-grabbing case in the House roadmap are allegations of corruption involving President Biden’s son, Hunter, and other family members—possibly even the president himself. The House report puts aside the sensational aspects of the Hunter Biden saga—the crack cocaine use, the heavy drinking and hookers, the controversy over a suddenly surfaced laptop computer, a gun, a seemingly endless parade of incriminating, embarrassing, or outright disgusting personal photographs from the laptop—and focuses on the sober case.

Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act litigators are pressing for additional information about the Secret Service’s handling of the Hunter Biden gun case, Biden business dealings, and possible FBI obstruction of a Senate inquiry into Biden business dealings.

“Mounting evidence from the last two years,” the House roadmap notes, “shows that Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, has received preferential treatment from federal law enforcement, who seem to have turned a blind eye to potential national security threats presented by his business dealings with Chinese, Russian, and other foreign nationals.”

The roadmap notes the September 2020 release of an investigative report by Senator Chuck Grassley. That report noted “potential criminal activity relating to transactions among and between Hunter Biden, his family, and his associates with Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals.” One Hunter Biden business associate charges that Joe Biden was slated for a payoff in 2017. Congress will want to hear from the Biden business partner alleging a payoff of the president and take a close look at the evidence.

The Grassley letters outline an apparent campaign of stonewalling and coverup by the FBI and others in response to Congressional inquiries in the Hunter Biden case. The letters, cited at length in the House roadmap, also note the role of several senior FBI officials and Richard Pilger—the Justice Department Election Crimes Branch chief involved in the earlier IRS scandal—in opening investigations into “the Trump campaign and individuals linked to the 2020 elections.” FBI whistleblowers told Grassley that there was a “double standard” in opening investigations that appeared “to benefit the political aims and objectives of a select few Justice Department and FBI officials.”

Those are serious charges. Congressional investigators will have to steer around numerous roadblocks, including a criminal inquiry into Hunter Biden by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the top federal prosecutor in Delaware. Fox News has reported that Attorney General Garland—Weiss’s boss—has taken a “hands-off approach” to the Hunter Biden case and is “leaving charging decisions up to Weiss,” a Trump appointee. But Congress may want a look at the Garland connection as well.

FBI Corruption: Faking a Rise in Domestic Violent Extremism?

The House roadmap reports that whistleblowers have come forward with claims that “the FBI is manipulating data about domestic violent extremism to support the Biden Administration’s political agenda.” According to the roadmap, the FBI “is pressuring agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism (DVE)” and allegedly “manufacturing DVE cases where they may not otherwise exist and even manipulating its case categorization system to feign a national problem.”

That’s a grave charge. The issue traces back to the events of January 6, 2021, Congressional investigators say. According to the roadmap, whistleblowers have come forward “with information about how the FBI manipulated the manner in which it categorized January 6-related investigations to create a misleading narrative that domestic terrorism is organically surging around the country.”

According to FBI whistleblowers, FBI field offices around the country have been directed by the powerful FBI Washington Field Office to open cases against individuals who were at Capitol on January 6. But no work is actually done in the field, according to the whistleblowers. Rather, the entire January 6 investigation is run from the Washington office.

The upshot? Notes the roadmap: the “FBI’s case categorization creates the illusion that FBI field offices around the country are investigating a groundswell of domestic terrorism cases, giving the impression that [domestic violent extremism, or DVE] is present in jurisdictions across the nation. In reality, however, the cases all stem from the same related investigation concerning the actions at the Capitol on January 6. Such an artificial case categorization scheme allows FBI leadership to misleadingly point to ‘significant’ increases in DVE nationwide.”

FBI Corruption: Targeting School Boards & Parents

In October, as controversy about Covid masking and the influence of hard-left Critical Race Theory in education rippled through school board meetings across the country, Attorney General Garland issued a memorandum directing the Justice Department and FBI to target local school boards and parents. The FBI would address a purported “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school boards.

Following a national outcry about Justice Department overreach, Garland publicly backpedaled, but did not rescind or disavow the memorandum. In fact, the FBI quickly doubled down. The House road map notes that soon after the Garland memorandum, the FBI established “a new ‘threat tag’ created to apply to school board investigations.” The new “EDUOFFICIALS” threat tag, officials directed, was to be applied to all “investigations and assessments of threats specifically against school board administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” according to an email obtained by House investigative staff.

Critics charge that the Justice and the FBI has gone too far, chilling legitimate dissent over issues such as Covid masks and Critical Race Theory. Imagine speaking up at your local school board meeting and getting a visit from the FBI. The roadmap claims that “information from whistleblowers show that the FBI has opened investigations with the EDUOFFICIALS threat tag in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings.”

Big Brother, Big Tech

House leaders are also calling for close looks at the FBI’s relationship with Big Tech powerhouses like Facebook and Twitter. The House roadmap says evidence “shows that the FBI is helping censor conservative viewpoints” on Big Tech platforms. Whistleblower information provided to House investigators “suggests that the FBI and Facebook have a so-called ‘special relationship’ that may threaten constitutional protections and lead to partisan efforts.” Whistleblower allegations suggest that the special FBI relationship includes “Facebook voluntarily sending information that may relate to citizens’ private political speech.”

Elon Musk’s recent “Twitter Files” disclosures have increased pressure for congressional scrutiny of the relationship between government entities and Big Tech. The Twitter disclosures outlined apparent government interference with free speech, suppression of conservative voices, improper banning of then-President Trump from the platform, and censorship of New York Post reporting on the Hunter Biden scandal. Incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told the Wall Street Journal that the Twitter Files showed the “collusion between big government, big tech and big media” was “worse than we thought.” Jordan and incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer are expected to launch hearings exploring the Twitter Files revelations.

The Border Crisis

It’s not in the road map, but the other House investigations worth noting are upcoming probes into the crisis on the southern border. House leaders have said they will support investigations by the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees into border issues, including a possible impeachment inquiry into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The southern border is under tremendous strain. More than two million illegal immigrants were arrested in border crossings in 2022 up to October, a record number—and that’s just the ones that got caught. More than 800 died making the dangerous crossing in the same time period. Mexican drug cartels pound the border in an unceasing drug war. The latest cartel gambit? A plague of fentanyl on both sides of the border.

House investigators want to hear from Mayorkas and other top Homeland Security officials on a wide range of issues, including the unprecedented surge of illegal aliens, the failure of border policing and border security technology, the impact of President Trump’s wall and other Trump-era policies, the influence of drug cartels and drug smuggling, and the entry into the U.S. of violent criminals and terrorists.

We’ll have more on the House investigations in the coming months. And the independent Judicial Watch investigations will continue. Stay tuned.

Until next week,
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If black citizens want to return  to having/enjoying the prospects of prosperity Trump was bringing them then they must, minimally, get serious about educating their progeny, stop having children out of wedlock, killing each other and cut the umbilical chord they have with the Democrat Party.

They became political pawns and traded "welfare" for a sounder family structure, their connection to the church, their work ethic and gave up the prospects of future benefits that capitalism has brought to this blessed land.

Yes, they were impacted by hateful prejudice but our nation also proved capable of change and blacks have every right and reason to love this country, remember and praise those of their race who died and fought for this country and their amazing contributions to our diverse society.

Far too many of their race have taken a different road that led them down the wrong path and they have been told as much by Tom Sowell and now Jason Riley and so many others of their own race. Even the late white Senator from New York, Patrick Moynihan, warned Democrats the "War on Poverty" would back fire and government welfare would destroy the nation the black family and has.  
Not only are our black citizens paying the price of soft prejudice but our entire society is now being infected by the virus of slovenliness, crime, aberrant anti-social behaviour, poor health etc. and it must stop if our republic is to survive.   

Now I know I generalize a great deal and it, perhaps, lessens the impact of my views and what I am writing so take what I write with a grain of salt and also discount my own prejudices.  However, the essence of what I believe and say is indisputable, based on common sense and experience and has proven to be empirically sound.

Those who hated Trump, were threatened by his desire to drain the deepest swamp in the world and made two major mistakes.  They failed to separate his combative and contentious personality from his accomplishments. They also pursued everything they could do to "illegally" impede, cripple, and lay at the feet of his administration their own actions of weaponizing the ugly forces of  political intimidation in which they engaged.

Virtually nothing the Schiffs of the world accused him and his family of has resulted in fulfilling their pernicious goals and now they are at risk of the tail being penned on their own asses.  I am not gleeful, What Democrats have done was dangerous, illegal, harmful to our nation and has caused a serious division among our unison They want to defund police, they want to disregard laws and establish sanctuary cities. They want to open borders and allow the flood of criminals and drugs into our nation. Those illegals allowed in have not been checked for Covid. They has squandered untold sums favoring illegals and disregarded needs of lawful citizens. 

They have changed the method of voting and introduced harvesting ballots which, at the very least, make suspect the veracity of elections and have changed laws, often illegally,  prior to these elections.  They have patronized Unions to the detriment of our children receiving a solid education. Worst of all they have disregarded the sanctity of parental involvement and harmed the emotional psyche of children with garbage sexuality.
And you know the rest.

Yes, members of the opposition party have made their own mistakes but nothing rises to the level of what Democrats have purposely done. 
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Churchillisms 

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Watch Your Mailbox:
I just wanted to let you know: Today I received my 2023 Social Security Stimulus Package.   It contained two tomato seeds, cornbread mix, two discount coupons to KFC, a Biden "Hope & Change" bumper sticker, a prayer rug, and a "Blame it on Trump" front yard poster.  The directions were in Spanish. 
Yours should arrive soon.
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Local Republican groups paralyzed by Patriot group insurgencies
By Salena Zito

WASHINGTON, Pa. —  In the spring of 2004, attorney Sean Logue said he was so inspired by the message of fiscal and social conservatism U.S. Rep. Pat Toomey delivered in his fierce primary campaign against Sen. Arlen Specter that he attended “internet meet-ups” to discuss those principles with like-minded conservatives who supported the Lehigh County Republican.

“Toomey was a firebrand, and he espoused a pure conservative doctrine,” explained Mr. Logue, who was drawn to Mr. Toomey’s pro-life, school choice, anti-spending platform.

While Mr. Toomey lost to Mr. Specter in that primary — very, very, narrowly — the race exposed fractures within the Republican ranks, as the party struggled to define what it meant to be a conservative. Six years later, the Tea Party emerged, and Mr. Logue once again couldn’t wait to vote for Mr. Toomey as the embodiment of that movement.

Today, Mr. Logue is attempting to lead the newest upstart movement in the Republican Party. He considers himself part of the “Patriot Party” and “MAGA movement” — and he recently gained control of the Washington County Republican Party.

As chair, he refuses to say whether the county party will endorse long-time Republican county commissioner and former candidate for state treasurer Diana Irey Vaughan — a staunch conservative in anyone’s measure — in this spring’s primary contests.

As for Mr. Toomey, the upstart who inspired Mr. Logue, the goalposts of what it means to be a conservative have moved passed him. “Had [Toomey] run in the Republican primary last spring, he would not have earned my vote, he’s not conservative enough,” Mr. Logue said in an interview with the Post-Gazette.

Since the 2020 presidential election, the local Republican committees in Allegheny, Washington and Butler counties have all splintered, with many factions believing that Mr. Trump won the election and some demanding MAGA litmus tests for anyone who runs for elected office.

Of the three Republican county chairmanships, only Sam DeMarco in Allegheny still holds his seat.

Dave Ball in Washington County — who was instrumental in flipping his county’s voter registration totals from majority Democrat to majority Republican — declined to seek reelection after six years in leadership roles. “I couldn’t take the infighting anymore,” the former U.S. Steel executive said in an interview.

While it can seem as if every Washington County Republican spends all day on social media posting about RINOs, it’s actually hard to find one who doesn’t credit Mr. Ball and his organizational skills for turning the county red. November 2020 marked the first time this century that the GOP won a majority on the board of commissioners. He’s continuing to work to help Republican candidates, but no longer through the county party.

In Butler County, there are so many factions, and so many feuds, and so many entities who claim to be the “real” county party, it’s hard to figure out exactly what is going on.

The short version is: Last spring, a struggle over control of the county party leadership led to the established county GOP committee suing members of the Butler “Patriots” group, who formed a nonprofit with the same name as the established party.

Then a third faction emerged, which teamed with the second faction to oust the established party leadership. However, those two factions are now at odds with each other.

I discovered a possible fourth faction while driving to Butler: a “Republican Constitutional Conservative Headquarters” storefront in Cooperstown, along Route 8, with a large sign reading “The Impassioned Patriots” and dozens of “Trump Won” flags billowing along the side of the road.

If you’re wondering “Who’s on first?” you are not alone.

Slippery Rock Mayor Jondavid Longo, a Marine Corps veteran who recently left his post as secretary of what had been the established Butler County Republican Party, said he had no idea who that fourth entity was. But he did say the “original” party has a new home.

“We created the ‘United Republicans of Butler County,’ which consists of the longest-enduring and most-active Butler County Republican committee people and volunteers in Butler County,” he said.

Mr. Longo, at 32 the youngest mayor in borough history, had just finished teaching a GED class to prisoners at the county prison when I spoke with him. He said that he and others walked away because of the outside groups who joined the committee, and then initiated round after round of infighting. “So, instead of us getting the good work done that needed to be done during the very important midterm elections that we just went through, the Butler County Republican Committee was entirely disabled and did next to nothing,” he said.

In Allegheny County, Sam DeMarco is the last man standing — but that’s not without several people trying to take him out as part of a faction called “Team Red.” He ultimately won reelection as chairman late last year, but the process was not without massive turbulence. The issues he faced were similar to what the Washington and Butler chairs faced: being branded “too establishment” and, yes, a RINO.

Mr. DeMarco, also a Marine Corps veteran, began his journey in Republican politics as a volunteer for an insurgent conservative organization, which is why he is amused when his critics call him “establishment”: “I was the president of Veterans and Patriots United for six years, a grassroots Tea Party group for the western suburbs,” he explained. “I recognized early on — as early as 2010 — that you can’t just go out and scream and hold up a sign and expect to get your way. If you want to effect change, you have to get involved. And that’s what I did, getting involved in my local party, my state party, and now here running the county party,” he said.

This turbulence from the “patriot” wing of the party peaked ahead of the midterm elections, which saw Republicans lose the governor’s race, the U.S. Senate race, two local congressional races and the majority in the state House in a year that was supposed to be a good one for Republicans.

It doesn’t help that the state GOP is seen as weak and ineffective — in part for failing to endorse in the governor and Senate primaries, but also for failing to advance a comprehensive mail-in ballot program to counter the Democrats’ strengths.

Mike Mikus, a western Pennsylvania Democratic strategist, says his party benefits when GOP activists start demanding litmus tests, not just for candidates but also for volunteers: “While my party has its own problems, when I see this kind of turmoil in places like Washington County, it means there is a space for Democrats to make moves.”

David Urban, an Aliquippa-raised, West Point-trained, D.C.-based Republican strategist, says he’s seen this kind of intraparty turbulence before — when Toomey almost upended Mr. Urban’s then-boss, Arlen Specter, in 2004. After that, Mr. Urban had a front-row seat to a disrupted party when he served as then-candidate Donald J. Trump’s Pennsylvania advisor in 2016, when many Republicans were skeptical whether he was actually a Republican.

“There are always groups in every political party that want to tug and push and tell people how they are not conservative enough, or they are too conservative. There’s never a steady state in politics; it is always complex, always shifting, and it is never easy to navigate it,” Mr. Urban said.

To his point, Mr. DeMarco, Mr. Ball and Mr. Longo all found a way to move with the political tectonic plates — with Mr. DeMarco still on the inside, and Mr. Ball and Mr. Longo finding a way on the outside: All three have robust voter registration and mail-in ballot programs as part of their plans.

Mr. Urban said what’s happening within the local parties here is happening in counties across Pennsylvania and the country, “but you don’t have to have unanimity to have unity; in other words, you can uphold the principles of the party without having everybody singing from the same hymnal all the time.”

Mr. Ball says that is how you avoid the problems that inevitably happen when a party falls into disarray: “When that happens you lose voters trust . . . and elections.”

This is the end of the story however please feel free to click on the link and check out the amazing photos and please share on social media 
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Those in power want to silence the lambs. Without language and discussion there is no freedom. Without freedom there is no reason to live.
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The January 6th “Insurrection” 
By Victor Davis Hanson
Posted by Ruth King

Here is what we do not understand about the January 6th Committee—if it truly was intended to appear as a disinterested investigatory body.

1. Why for the first time in memory did Speaker Pelosi forbid the House Minority Leader’s pro forma nominees to a special House committee? Fairly or not, the result was that the only two Republicans who did serve shared two embarrassing requisites: they would likely be out office, and not by their own volition, in January 2023; and two, they despised Donald Trump and voted for the second Trump impeachment.

So, what were the Democrats afraid of to make them break all precedents with past hearings? Pelosi, in other words, ensured that there would be no cross-examinations of any witnesses, no disagreements about witness lists, no contrasting interviews to the media about the work of the committee, and no diversity in staff interrogatories.

2. Why did not the Committee investigate whether the FBI had numerous agents and informants present on January 6th? Michael Rosenberg, the New York Times assigned reporter to the demonstration, claimed they were ubiquitous. Were they?

3. Why did not the Committee review the circumstances in detail of the deaths of Officer Brian Sicknick and the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. These were the two most high-profile and controversial deaths on January 6th, and Babbitt’s perhaps was the only violent death at the direct hand of a known other?

4. Why did not the Committee investigate and release all the communications between the House leadership and the Capitol police to learn why the Capitol was virtually open and unsecured on a day that everyone knew would be the scene of mass protests there?

5. Why did not the Committee investigate all incendiary speech by major elected officials at iconic Washington buildings, deemed inflammatory and allegedly resulting in violence at a subsequent time? For example, in 2020 then Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer screamed to a large demonstration massed at the doors of the Supreme Court:

I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh—you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

“You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price”? “Hit you”? Did Trump say to supporting demonstrators on January 6th anything like, “Pelosi and Biden, you released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Had he said that, would he now be in jail?

Note that not too long after Schumer’s threats, protestors appeared to swarm the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices, including a would-be assassin.

Why did not the Committee investigate all organized rioting by activist groups that also damaged federal properties, such as in 2020 a federal courthouse that was torched and attempts to storm the White House grounds to endanger a president?

6. Why did not the Committee release all the full transcripts of all those it interrogated, and why not all the arrangements and conditions with witnesses it finalized to make them appear?
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Breaking: Health Department Begins LANGUAGE BAN

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Muslim rigidity is a serious reason why so little forward movement can occur."

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25 Years After Oslo: The Elephant in the Room

T. Belman. What more is there to say. So much for the vaunted Res 242 and its land for peace principle.

By Robert L. Meyer


It is now more than 25 years since the Oslo Accords were signed in October 1993. Yet in the many published opinion pieces and reporting on this anniversary and the failure of the parties to agree on a final two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, nowhere is found any Israeli politician or journalist who has the slightest inkling of the massive effect of Islam in influencing and motivating the Palestinian supposed peacemakers.


Islam is indeed “The Elephant in the Room.”


The Koran, chapter 2, verse 191 states: “Drive them out from where they drove you out.”


Islamic scholars universally have interpreted this verse to mean that once land becomes Islamic, by conquest or otherwise, it stays Islamic forever and that Muslims must drive out any non-Muslim government that takes power in a land once ruled under Islamic law.


Caliph Umar conquered Jerusalem and Palestine in 637 AD, and the Land of Israel remained under Muslim rule (with the exception of the 188-year Crusader Period, 1099 – 1187 AD) until September 1923, when the British Mandate began. To Muslims, Palestine has been “Muslim land” since its conquest by Islam in 637 AD.


Moreover, this position has been corroborated and confirmed (in Arabic) by Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who is Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor on Islam and also the Supreme Shari’ah Judge of the Palestinian Authority (“PA”):


“Mahmoud Al-Habbash emphasized that according to Islamic Shari’ah law, the entire land of Palestine is waqf (i.e., an inalienable religious endowment under Islamic law) and is blessed land, and that it is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”


[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 22, 2014, translation by Palestinian Media Watch (“PMW”)]


See also the statement below from the Palestinian Authority, translated from the original Arabic:


“Anyone who thinks that the nation has sold its Palestine or its Jerusalem is just imagining things. Anyone who thinks that a day will come when the nation will sell one inch or millimeter of the blessed and sanctified land of Palestine is just imagining things. The entire nation says what [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas said: ‘The Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or Christian who will relinquish one inch of Jerusalem has not been born and will never be born.’”


[Official PA TV, April 20, 2018, translation PMW]


The Palestinian Authority’s current Mufti, Muhammad Hussein, has corroborated this same position:


“Palestine, that includes within it Jerusalem, is waqf  land [and] it is forbidden by Shari’ah law to relinquish it or ease the transfer of ownership of it to enemies, because it is part of the Islamic public property. Granting ownership over Islamic territory or part of it to enemies is invalid and constitutes treason.”


[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 13, 2018, translation PMW]


Please note that the Palestinian Authority reflects the same view set out in the Hamas Charter (Article Eleven):


“The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.”


For these reasons, the exchange of Muslim “Land for Peace” with Israel simply is impossible under Islam. Has anyone in Israel ever noticed and considered this point — or are we so ignorant of Islam that it has never been properly considered and evaluated?


The Koran, chapter 2, verse 191 was once mentioned to Shimon Peres in 2015. He replied, “No. You are wrong. We made peace with Egypt. We made peace with Jordan.”


Shimon Peres was right — and wrong.


Prior to signing the Israel/Egypt Peace Treaty of March, 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat held out for — and ultimately received — his stated demand to get back “every square inch” of the Sinai. This occurred notwithstanding Israel’s initial negotiating position for a continuing Israel monitoring presence at Sharm el Sheikh and the western mountains of Sinai and retention of both the Israel-developed Taba and Yamit tourist communities in the Sinai near Eilat.


After the Israel / Egypt peace treaty was signed, Sadat could turn to the Egyptian people and rightfully claim that he had recovered “every square inch” of Egyptian-administered Muslim land.


The Jordanian case is even more interesting and illuminating.


In a two-step exercise starting in June 1988, King Hussein first renounced all Jordanian claims to Judea and Samaria, the wishfully named “West Bank” of Jordan. Six years later, in October 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty.


However, there had been a serious problem: Israel occupied three  areas of Jordanian land since June 1967: The tiny “Peace Island” in the middle of the Jordan River, and two agricultural fields belonging to Israeli settlements in the Arava, south of the Dead Sea.


In Annex 1A and 1B of the Peace Treaty, this matter was resolved: Israel fully recognized Jordanian sovereignty over all this land. Jordan agreed that Israel could continue to “use” the lands in the same manner as previously for a rolling 25-year period unless terminated by Jordan following a one-year notice (which Jordan gave in late October 2018).


After the signing of the peace treaty, King Hussein could turn to the Jordanian people and rightfully claim that he had recovered every square centimeter of Jordanian-administered Muslim land.


As for the land of Israel/Palestine itself located “from the River to the Sea,” the Arab League and Jordan left this to Palestinian President Yassir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole entity to negotiate and resolve with Israel.


What did Yassir Arafat and his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, do?


At the Camp David negotiations in July 2000 between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Yassir Arafat, following Israel’s offer to give up 97% of Judea and Samaria to the Palestinians, Arafat stunned Barak and President Bill Clinton by never making a counteroffer. Why? Because he could not do so: the Koran (chap. 2, verse 191) did not permit it. Allah says that Muslim land can never be given to the kufaar (infidels) under penalty of death. Palestinian recognition of Israeli sovereignty over any part of Palestinian land was impossible, Muslim Palestinians never would have accepted it and Arafat would have been murdered by his own people.


After the Camp David negotiations failed, Yassir Arafat was asked by an Israeli Muslim Arab journalist in Arabic why he walked away from the negotiations. “Because the Israelis would not give us 100%!” he replied. The Koran mandated that Arafat recover all of Palestine starting with the so-called “West Bank.” He was not free to do otherwise.


It was the same story seven years later in the negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held at the Annapolis Conference in November 2007: Ehud Olmert made very generous offers to the Palestinians, delivering 97% of Judea and Samaria to them, “slicing and dicing” Jerusalem horizontally and vertically, creating a land bridge between Gaza and Judea and Samaria and even allowing some Palestinian refugees back into Israel.


However, how did Abbas respond? He also made no counteroffer. Why? Because he could not do so (Koran, chap. 2, verse 191). The Koran prohibited recognizing Israeli sovereignty over any part of Muslim Palestinian land, Muslim Palestinians would never have accepted it, and Abbas also would have been murdered by the Palestinians.


According to the Koran, the Palestinians are commanded to reclaim ALL Palestinian Muslim land “from the River to the Sea,” a holy waqfunder Shariah law. The concept of Israeli-administered Muslim land (i.e. recognizing the sovereignty of the State of Israel over any part of Palestine) is impossible in Islam.


Have you ever noticed how Palestinian claims are always rooted in land-based terms? They speak of the “occupation” of their land, being “driven out” of Palestine by the Israelis in 1948, and recovering all their land “from the River to the Sea.” The Palestinian Authority’s Law No. 1 criminalizes Palestinian sales of land to Jews under penalty of death. Mohammed on his deathbed gave an order to “expel the Jews and the Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and not leave any but Muslims there.” The Hamas riots at the Gaza / Israel border are in commemoration of “Land Day.” Does any of this ring a bell?


In the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians pledged to recognize the State of Israel behind the “Green Line” and to amend the Palestinian Covenant accordingly. They never did. They cannot and will not do so without contravening Allah’s command in the Koran, chap. 2, verse 191.


As you think of the thousands of hours of negotiations by Israel, the USA and other international negotiators in trying to reach a final accord with the Palestinians on a “two state solution” since Oslo, one is reminded of the “mirror principle.”


Israeli, US and other politicians and negotiators keep thinking that they are negotiating with “the man in the mirror,” i.e., someone who thinks as they do in a Western, secular way, without regard to prevailing religious factors.


Some commentators state that the leadership of the Palestinians, starting with Yassir Arafat, is secular. To the extent that this may be true, it does not matter. The Palestinian people certainly are not secular. A survey undertaken by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre published on August 6, 2018 asked Palestinians in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza: “In general, is religion an important part of your life? The response was 96.8% “yes” in the West Bank and 99.2% “yes” in Gaza.


Israeli and American negotiators are not negotiating with “the man in the mirror” like themselves, but with religious Islam believing Palestinians. A little more hard knowledge about Islam, which is “the Elephant in the Room,” would help in understanding the Palestinians as driven by their own seriously held religious and cultural imperatives, which are completely the opposite of those of the Israelis and the Americans.


Source: Jihad Watch –https://www.jihadwatch.org/2019/04/25-years-after-oslo-the-elephant-in-the-room

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It is tragic when a nation, as small as Israel and constantly surrounded by religious zealots always wanting to destroy it and drive it's people into the sea, has so little top leadership save for BIBI.  He is not perfect, he has flaws but he is far from a pygmy:

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Netanyahu: Israel cannot be swept away by ‘inflammatory’ slogans
JNS
The Israeli prime minister defends his government’s judicial reform plan, calls on opposition leaders to stop speaking about civil war and “the destruction of the state.”
And:
 Commentary Magazine: https://www.commentary.org/articles/paul-johnson-3/the-miracle/
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As the mass media begins to suffer from their own bias and thus, pull away from protecting Biden and Democrats in general, I seriously doubt they will, all of a sudden, become objective.  Objectivity is not in their DNA. Their arrogance and misplaced self-esteem and self-importance  drives them. Their obligation to be America's ombudsman  no longer exists or motivates them.

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It’s Gotten So Bad For Biden Even Liberal Journalists Are Telling The Truth About Him (For Now)

By Derek Hunter

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White House Caught in Another Lie As More Classified Documents Surface in Biden's House

By Spencer Brown

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Biden is losing the media, and thus the country

The switch, to aggressive reporting, happened in a blink, and it came crashing about a week ago Op-ed.

By Jack Engelhard

Calamity Joe faces a resentful media

No more are they asking which flavor ice cream he prefers, as they did there at the beginning.

“Mr. President…Mr. President…what do you like best, chocolate or vanilla?”

That’s as far as it got for investigative reporting from America’s docile media. Joe had them at hello.

Now is it goodbye?

Before our eyes we are watching Joe and his presidency unraveling domino by domino as more questions are being asked about his neglect toward classified files …a serious breach.

So serious that it could bring down his presidency…especially so with the Republican House on the hunt.

There is blood in the water…all the way from China.

The switch, to aggressive reporting, happened in a blink, and it came crashing about a week ago when CBS Evening News broke the story about mishandled classified documents.

What were they doing in Joe’s former office…when they should have been turned over to the National Archives?

Joe’s alleged malfeasance is one part of the story. The other part is the media and how they turned to activists after so many years on snooze control.

They turned on him, the thinking goes, because they find him unfit to run again, and are thus preparing America for a fresher face, someone like Pete Buttigieg.

Pete, today’s Transportation Secretary, is equally incompetent, and he is gay, therefore perfectly suited for the highest office, thanks to the Democrats.

Identity politics uber alles.

Better, they reason, a young fool than an old fool…and whatever Joe did to ruin the country, Pete, or perhaps Kamala, can finish the job.

Either way, the media woke up and for the first time found imperfections in good old Joe…actually, the first time they found faults in any Democrat.

The answers coming from Joe’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, were found wanting and misleading, in what used to be called a “credibility gap.”

After CBS came NBC and even ABC, and together they found and exposed Joe as the hoarder of classified documents, stashes of them here, there, and everywhere.

Not so fast, though.

Originally, they tried to play it down. No big deal, they said. Why…only a few pages were found, compared to Trump’s larger haul of forbidden material at Mar a Lago.

Biden good. Trump bad.

Oops. Now they have found 20 such secret materials on Joe’s properties.

To divert attention, The New York Times began running stories meant to prove that the Biden family is not crooked.

Joe, the paper alleged, knew nothing about Hunter’s shady business deals, and for sure Joe never shared, nor got rich, from the proceedings. Never. Never. Never.

Not a chance that China has got its paws all over father and son.

The rest of them, however, continued to assail Joe…an amazing turn of events and a lesson to what happens when you poke the sleeping giant, the media.

You don’t want the media turning on you.

Lyndon Johnson’s presidency came to an end after Walter Cronkite, note, CBS, visited Vietnam and came back to say the war was “wasteful.”

Johnson declined to run for a second term.

Richard Nixon was undone by Watergate. He resigned after being exposed by Woodward and Bernstein and The Washington Post.

Both presidents were caught being dishonest.

Joe can’t give a straight answer…not even on ice cream.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah.” For that and his 1960s epic “The Days of the Bitter End,” contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Email Jack here

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And so it goes:

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Destroying American Democracy – An Inside Job

By Pete Hoekstra, GATESTONE  

Just last week it was revealed that the FBI again withheld pertinent information from the American public, for past two months, until after the November 8, 2022 federal election.

The combination of a politically weaponized Intelligence Community, operating hand-in-hand with organizations that are main gateways for information to millions of Americans, is a serious threat to American democracy and the integrity of our elections.

Let us just briefly look at the steep slope of lying, deceit and corruption that has seeped into the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Having… false information — some of which the FBI actually altered — in the public domain was evidently intended to damage Trump.

Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie…. the information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI had known it was from the start.

For almost two years, the authenticity of the material found on Hunter Biden’s laptop was questioned. Today, its authenticity has been verified; the information is real and damning. As summarized by the New York Post: “Yes that letter from the Dirty 51 had all the classic earmarks of a disinformation operation, all right – one designed to ensure Joe Biden won the presidency. And it was essentially a CIA operation, considering 43 of the 51 signatories were former CIA.”

One final example of the Intelligence Community involving itself in domestic politics comes from the recent release of the Twitter files…. Tweet #17 states, “executives were also clearly liaising with federal enforcement and intelligence agencies about moderation of election-related content.” Finally, the FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million reportedly to “handle requests from the bureau.”

The FBI, DHS and the ODNI had literally had set up shop at Twitter.

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted?

Have those federal government agencies literally weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.?

Has more than one solitary person — former FBI attorney Kevin Clinemith, for altering an email — been held accountable for these egregious abuses of power?

Who authorized the cozy relationship between law enforcement, the intelligence community with twitter?

Who in these government agencies reviewed and approved of the output and decisions coming from these joint efforts?

Who has the records, notes and decisions that emanated from these groups?

It is clear that our law enforcement community needs to be investigated, but most importantly we need to investigate how our Intelligence Community has evolved from having literally a non-existent relationship with speech in America to being inside the room determining what speech is allowed.

There… needs to be a significant investigation by an outside, non-government group to understand how far this massive government overreach into free speech and election manipulation went. Clearly the government has been influencing what we get to see and hear. It needs to stop — now — before our democracy is destroyed.

Can our government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence Community still be trusted? Have those federal agencies weaponized law enforcement and intelligence against political opponents in the U.S.? Today we know that the “Russia hoax” was a lie. The information in the “Steele dossier” was false — and the FBI knew it was from the start.

Over the last few years, there has been much written about the destruction of American democracy. Frequently the threat has been of alleged interference in U.S. elections by Russia, China or other state actors. Government agencies, the name of election integrity, were assigned to identify and disrupt these foreign intrusions. As more and more information is revealed about these agencies, it seems that America’s Intelligence Community participated in these activities domestically, and in a way that poses a grave threat to both election integrity and American democracy.

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Safer in a foreign war zone?

+++

Parts of Chicago, Philadelphia More Dangerous Than Wartime Iraq, Afghanistan: Study

Skyrocketing crime rates are turning mayoral elections in America's biggest cities into referenda on those cities' liberal prosecutorial policies.

By Matthew Rice 

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Ordman's Good News Israel (edited.)

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So Much More! - Israel's Positive Newsletter to 15th Jan 23


There has been so much more happening in Israel recently.  A higher number Israeli startups than ever were on display at CES Las Vegas, which handed out more CES awards to Israeli innovators. There was more European funding for Israeli agricultural technology; and another Israeli satellite was successfully launched. In the health arena, Israeli doctors have again been treating patients in Africa; a further 1000 Europeans and Israelis can walk without pain thanks to Israeli knee implants; and a UAE sheikh was more than happy with the medical treatment he received in an Israeli hospital.

Elsewhere, Israel sent another hundred power generators to Ukraine and even more are on their way; more Israeli women are being encouraged to pursue careers in hi-tech; and $2 billion of extra funds were raised for Israel's zero emissions target.  Finally, additional archaeological discoveries are further evidence of Jewish links to the Land of Israel. I'm sure that's more than enough for this introduction.

Please recommend www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com and forward this email to friends, family and colleagues and especially to any individuals who you think need to know about the good work that Israel does.


In the 15th Jan 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:


ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Medical suit for heart patients. The new Israeli-developed Microclimate Suit is successfully eliminating congestion in heart failure patients at Israel’s Rambam hospital. It evaporates body fluids, alleviating symptoms of heart failure by reducing the level of the stress hormone BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide) by up to 50%.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/breakthrough_heart_failure_treatment.aspx
 
Boosting oxygen levels. Latest on the ART device of Israel’s Inspira Technologies (see here previously) to boost patients’ oxygen levels instantly, reducing the need to induce comas and place them on ventilators. The machine removes low oxygen blood from the body, adds oxygen, removes CO2, and returns it to the patient. 
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/oxygen-boosting-device-provides-immediate-relief-to-patients/
https://inspira-technologies.com/art/
 
1,000 knee implants. Since its first trial in 2019, Israel’s Active Implants (see here previously) has performed nearly 1,000 implants of its NUsurface synthetic meniscus in Israel and Europe. It expects FDA approval to allow launch in the US in 2024.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB8aWsXbGhg
https://www.israel21c.org/new-hope-for-people-who-kneed-a-new-meniscus/

Tooth extracted – from her lung.  When a nine-year-old Israeli girl lost a tooth, she accidentally sucked it into her lung, blocking her airway – a medical and life-threatening emergency. Doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Pediatric Emergency Trauma Unit became “tooth fairies” and used a guided camera to pull the tooth from her lung.
https://www.rambam.org.il/en/rambam_news/saved_life_after_swallowed_tooth_enters_lung.aspx
 
Proven benefits of medical clowns. IsraelActive.com (see here) contains over a dozen articles describing how Israeli medical clowns help hospital patients. Now Tel Aviv University researchers have documented 40 different skills that the clowns deploy to enable patients to overcome crises and move towards healing. 
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/1673469606-not-just-clowning-around-israeli-study-shows-importance-of-medical-clowns  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10497323221139781
 
Eye treatment in Nigeria. Israeli doctors regularly treat eye diseases in Africa (see here and here previously). Sheba Medical Center has now launched a humanitarian mission to Ilorin, Nigeria to treat eye-cancer in children and improve long-term quality optical care, by establishing an intra-arterial chemotherapy center.
https://worldisraelnews.com/world-renown-israeli-hospital-launches-humanitarian-mission-to-nigeria-treating-children-with-eye-cancer/
 
Growing health startups. Nine Israeli startups have been selected for Google for Startups’ first Growth Academy program for startups in the fields of medicine and quality of life. They are Olive Diagnostics, Kai, Emble, Droxi, BoBo Balance, Agado Live, AIVF, X-Trodes, and Ritual Health Technologies.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/pgg54w4uw
 
 
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
 
Encouraging women in STEM. In Dec, Israel’s Technion Institute hosted 700 female high school students from all over Israel at its 8th annual TechWomen event. It featured guest speakers, campus tours and other activities to inspire more young women to pursue academic degrees in science and engineering.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2022/12/8th-techwomen-women-stem/
 
Connecting the unconnected. The non-profit Appleseeds helps 80,000+ Israelis each year develop essential digital literacy skills. It also sponsors Israel’s Net@ movement which gives technical training to disadvantaged Jewish, Christian, Druze, and Muslim youths. Meanwhile Israel’s 44 Ventures funds “forgotten” entrepreneurs.
https://www.israel21c.org/spreading-digital-literacy-to-the-citizens-left-behind/
https://appleseeds.org.il/en/en-home/  https://appleseeds.org.il/en/en-neta/  https://44ventures.com/
 
Global solutions. The Kasser Joint Institute is a partnership of Jewish National Fund-USA, the University of Arizona, and the Arava valley in Israel. It aims to solve global food, water and energy issues through research and student training programs, while highlighting Israeli innovation and supporting development in the Arava.
https://jointinstitute.jnf.org/   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s-GfzMoJqs
https://www.kkl-jnf.org/people-and-environment/community-development/arava/   http://www.aicat-arava.com/
 
UAE Sheikh praises Israeli medical treatment. Sheikh Khalid Qasmi of the United Arab Emirates is the first Arab royal known to have been treated in Israel. He said it was the best medical treatment he had received since his accident and was amazed by the quality of staff, the advanced capabilities, hospitality, and sympathy.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israel-provided-best-medical-treatment-ever-says-senior-royal-figure-from-uae/
 
Turkiye’s new ambassador. Sakir Ozkan Torunlar, Turkey’s new ambassador to Israel, presented his credentials to President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, filling a role that has been empty for more than four years.
Torunlar previously served as Turkey’s consul general in Jerusalem.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/turkeys-envoy-to-israel-presents-credentials-after-four-years-of-suspended-ties/
 
Relations with India. Middle East expert Jonathan Spyer has written an in-depth article explaining the key factors behind the improvement in Israel-India relations in recent years.
https://jiss.org.il/en/spyer-israel-india-relations-in-recent-years/
 
Negev Forum success. Israel, the UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and the US held the inaugural meeting of the Negev Forum in Abu Dhabi (see here previously). Six working groups focused on food security and water technology; clean energy; tourism; health; education and coexistence; and regional security.
https://www.jns.org/us-success-of-this-weeks-negev-forum-meetings-should-entice-amman-ramallah-others-to-join/
 
More electricity generators for Ukraine. Volunteers from Israeli emergency NGO United Hatzalah have distributed some 100 powerful electric generators to schools, orphanages, and medical clinics in Kyiv, Uman, Lviv, and Odesa. Hundreds more are to be supplied in the coming weeks. (Also, see here previously).
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365757
 
 
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
 
Another National Center. Israel’s Technion is again partnering Israel’s Bar-Ilan University (see here previously), this time to build a National Energy Storage research center. Its aim is to develop novel technologies for storing energy in large quantities. Its budget will be some NIS 130 million over 5 years.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2023/01/energy-storage-national-research-institute/
 
New technology at CES 2023. (TY ToI) Of 23 Israeli startups at this year’s CES Las Vegas, these 5 are new. Cardiokol detects heart problems from speech; Eye-Minders tracks eye movements on VR devices; Polyn makes chips for listening devices; Radix manages Android TV sets; SparX Augmented Reality for new homes.
https://www.israel21c.org/over-the-phone-voice-analysis-detects-atrial-fibrillation/  https://www.cardiokol.com/
https://www.eye-minders.com/  https://polyn.ai/  https://www.radix-int.com/  https://www.sparx.ai/
 
Israel steals the show at CES 2023. The Israeli Export Institute’s pavilion was in the middle of the show floor within CES’s startup pavilion, Eureka Park, and it was buzzing! It contained a dozen startups representing a cross-section of Israeli innovations and was probably the busiest of all the booths. The video features Mobileye.
https://www.israel21c.org/23-of-the-israeli-startups-making-a-stir-at-ces-2023/
https://www.israel21c.org/at-ces-israeli-technology-makes-the-biggest-buzz/
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/j57k1dx43 www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCBlR4QFQCA
 
Another Israeli satellite launched. (TY OurCrowd) Israel’s BeetleSat (formerly NSLComm - see here previously) launched its latest small satellite, on the same rocket as another Israeli satellite (see here). BeetleSat said that the satellite will provide important communication services to one of its public sector clients.
https://news.satnews.com/2023/01/03/the-beetlesat-leo-smallsat-gains-orbit-via-the-spacex-transporter-6-launch/   https://beetlesat.com/
 
Another award-winning cybersecurity startup. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s SeeMetrics won a silver 2022 ‘ASTORS’ Homeland Security Award from American Security Today for the Best Security Workforce Management Platform. It follows the gold award won by Israel’s Seraphic (see here previously).
https://seemetrics.co/resources/seemetrics-wins-silver-2022-astors-award-for-best-security-workforce-management-platform
 
Green energy. Technion scientists have discovered another way to obtain energy from plants (see here for a previous method). They created a biological solar cell that generated “green” electricity through photosynthesis, collecting electrons that are naturally transported within plant cells, without affecting the plant’s growth.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/974327
 
Vegan canned tuna. Israel’s Vgarden (see here previously) has now launched vegan tinned tuna, made using pea protein. The product has the same appearance, texture, and flavor as the canned kitchen staple. More fish alternatives are expected to be announced by the end of this year.
https://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/fin-free-tuna-vgarden-turns-tide-on-overfishing-with-alternative-canned-kitchen-staple.html  https://www.vgardenfoods.com/
 
European grant for wax-based crop spray. The European Innovation Council (EIC) has awarded a $1.5 million Pathfinder grant to two scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute. It will help fund the development of their SafeWax anti-pathogen crop treatment, inspired by the wax leaves of broccoli and lotus flowers.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2022/12/learning-from-the-lotus-flower/
 
Assessing fruit quality from a photo. Israel’s Clarifruit uses AI to grade harvested fruit and then match it to a buyers’ requirements. It reduces waste and maximizes a grower’s profit. Clarifruit now has 25 of the biggest global brands as its clients, including Dole, Canada’s Mucci Farms, Zespri (kiwi fruit), and Pink Lady (apples).
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/smartphone-can-tell-quality-of-fruit-and-veg-from-a-photo/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO5ATsK5zzY
 
Over-the-air recharging goes commercial. Israel’s Wi-Charge (see here previously) is apparently the first wireless charging company to receive revenues. It is being used commercially to power smart door locks and electronic advert displays in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Israel and won two innovation awards at CES 2023.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/world-without-wires-charge-your-device-from-ceiling-transmitter/ 
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wi-charge-extends-innovation-and-leadership-in-over-the-air-wireless-charging-with-two-ces-2023-innovation-awards-301680463.html
 
Best sports-tech startup. Israel’s Griiip (see here previously) hit a significant milestone at the OTT SportsPro ceremony in November, winning the prestigious award for 'Best Start-Up Tech Company'.  Griiip’s RAMP Racing Media Platform provides real-time data to motorsport fans, the media, gaming industry, and OEMs.
https://www.griiip.com/post/winning-the-ott-award-best-startup-tech-company-puts-griiip-on-the-global-sports-stage  https://awards.sportspro-ott.com/winners-2022/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvvESEXp_X0
 
 
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
 
NIS 10 billion budget surplus. For the first time in 35 years, Israel achieved a budget surplus in 2022 - of $2.85 billion, mostly financed by a 14% increase in tax revenues. Hopefully, this will help plans to lower Israel’s cost of living. GDP growth in 2022 was 6.3%, one of the highest in the OECD.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-first-time-in-35-years-israel-posts-budget-surplus-driven-by-higher-tax-revenue/
 
Green bonds. Israel has sold $2 billion of 10-year green bonds, to support its goal of a zero-emissions economy by 2050. Israel is the 24th country around the world to sell green bonds, which are geared to fund key environmental objectives. The sale was so popular that it was oversubscribed by six times the amount on offer.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-raises-2-billion-in-its-first-ever-issuance-of-10-year-green-bonds/
 
Israel inside. Brief but interesting analysis of the importance of Israel in the strategy of Intel Corporation. Intel now has 34 Israeli Vice Presidents.  10% of the employees at Intel’s headquarters are Israeli.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/un7gmjw52
 
Learning to do business in the US. The Merage Institute is again training the leaders of Israeli companies to help them improve their marketing in the United States.  https://www.merageinstitute.org/programs/
https://www.merageinstitute.org/merage-programs/hls-cyber-security-2023/
 
Let’s start at the very beginning. Rabbi Nosson Rodin of the Braude College of Engineering in the Galilee organized an event to advise budding entrepreneurs in Israel’s north how to establish a startup. Rabbi Rodin is founder of Project UP-START for young adults who lack a business-oriented background.
https://www.jns.org/how-to-startup-event-appeals-to-israels-underserved-communities/
 
Israel’s most promising startup. Israel’s proteanTecs (see here previously) is Globes' Most Promising Israeli Startup 2022, chosen by leading local and foreign investment firms. proteanTecs' founders also co-founded Mellanox which topped the Globes' ranking in 2005, eventually being acquired by NVIDIA for $6.9 billion.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-1-proteantecs-1001432356
 
Partners to secure autonomous vehicles. (TY OurCrowd) French automotive supplier Valeo is partnering Israel’s C2A Security (see here previously) to  enhance Valeo's cybersecurity offerings on their products in development and in operation. The automotive industry continues to realize the importance of cyber security.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/c2a-security-partners-valeo-enhance-010000459.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il4e6rGNg-c
 
Testing self-driving Daimler trucks. (TY OurCrowd) Torc Robotics, a subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, announced a multi-year strategic collaboration with Israel’s Foretellix (see here previously). Foretellix’s platform will test Torc’s systems to ensure the safe deployment of autonomous Daimler trucks.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/b1sqorfcs
 
7-Eleven opens its first Israeli store. US convenience store mega-chain 7-Eleven (see here previously) opened its first store in Israel with a long line of customers lining up outside the Tel Aviv shop to make their first-ever purchases. Eight more stores are planned to open in 2023, plus 30 more in 2024.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/dozens-flock-to-taste-iconic-slurpee-as-7-eleven-opens-first-store-in-israel/
 
Exits, mergers & acquisitions to 15/1/23: Israel’s TipRanks has acquired US-based The Fly for $15 million;
 
Investment in Israeli startups to 15/1/23: Opsys Tech raised $51.5 millionOttopia raised $14.5 millionHotelmize raised $12 million40Seas raised $11 millionCoho AI raised $8.5 millionNanosono raised $2 million.
 
 
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT`
 
A Virtual Tour of Tel Aviv Graffiti. Eviatar Gover of BE Tel Aviv Tours will give a Zoom tour of the graffiti in the alleyways of Florentine, Tel Aviv. On Weds 25 Jan (7:30pm Israel, 5:30pm UK or 12.30pm Eastern). Register for this ESRA presentation here.  https://esra.org.il/events-listing-view/details/2023-01-25/629-virtual-tour-of-tel-aviv-graffiti-in-with-eviatar-gover.html
 
“An Ethiopian queen in Tel Aviv”. Last week I met Israeli writer Albert Russo who was visiting Netanya.  Albert has written several books including this novel featuring Ziva, a young Ethiopian Israeli who runs a shelter in Tel Aviv for at-risk teenagers. Based on a true story.  See also relevant articles in the 2nd link.
https://www.amazon.com/Tel-Avivs-Ethiopian-Queen-Hamalka/dp/9176379426
https://israelactive.com/?s=tel+aviv+ethiopian  http://www.albertrusso.com/
 
See the desert bloom. We may think of the desert as barren, but from the fall to early spring the Negev turns into an unexpected haven for winter daffodils, irises, squill, cyclamens, anemones and more.
https://www.israel21c.org/when-and-where-to-see-israels-desert-flowers-bloom/
 
Comedy for Koby. The comedians that perform Comedy for Koby raise money for the Koby Mandell Foundation which helps bereaved mothers, fathers, widows, orphans and siblings to rebuild their lives. Their winter tour from Jan 17 to 23 visits Beit Shemesh, Raanana, Jerusalem, Gush Etzion, Modiin and Tel Aviv.
https://www.comedyforkoby.com/
 
IAC Summit. A reminder about the IAC (Israeli American Council)’s 8th Annual Summit in Austin Texas from Jan 19-21.  https://events.bizzabo.com/IACSummit2022/home   https://www.israeliamerican.org/
 
 
THE JEWISH STATE
 
Digging up Jewish history. (TY I24 News) Video of the on-going excavations inside caves in the Judean desert where Jewish rebels fighting the Romans hid during the Bar Kochba revolt 2,000 years ago.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-israelis-make-amazing-discoveries-in-judean-desert-excavations/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dDpvB7haMs
 
Trade evidence of Biblical proportions. Israeli archaeologists have discovered the earliest evidence of silver being used as currency in the Levant, dating back more than 3,600 years. The silver hoard was found in Israel’s Megiddo, Gezer, and Shiloh. (The Torah records Abraham weighing out 400 shekels to buy a burial plot.)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-claims-hoards-of-3600-year-old-cut-silver-pieces-are-first-currency-in-levant/
 
Hard boiled eggs in the sand. (TY TPS & UWI) The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of eight ostrich eggs 4,000+ years old, during an archaeological dig at Nitsana sands, in the southern Negev near the Egyptian border. They were found close to the remains of a fire, indicating they were deliberately collected.
https://www.jns.org/ancient-ostrich-eggs-found-in-israel-shed-light-on-early-humans/
 
It all started here. Professor Reuven Yeshurun of the University of Haifa is giving a Zoom (and live) lecture on Mon 23 Jan (7:30pm Israel, 5:30pm UK or 12.30pm Eastern). The title is “The first settled society in human history” which he describes happened in the Land of Israel 15,000 years ago. Details & registration here.
https://esra.org.il/events-listing-view/details/2023-01-23/645-the-first-settled-society-in-human-history-with-reuven-yeshurun-live-and-via-zoom.html
 
Please get me to the shul on time. Due to the funeral procession of Rabbi Shimon Baadani (z”l), a bride was unable to get to her wedding. So, the head of United Hatzalah in Bnei Brak sent an ambulance, which had just finished its shift safeguarding the funeral, to pick up the bride and take her to the wedding hall.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365763
 
NGO’s 10,000th Christian visitor to Israel. US Christian Zionist NGO Passages (see here previously) has brought its 10,000th college student to visit the Holy Land. This winter, 450 students participated in Passages’ winter program. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365634  
 
Welcoming all-comers. 40 US students went on a 10-day tour of Israel and the United Arab Emirates - the inaugural trip of the Israel on Campus Coalition’s (ICC) Geller International Fellowship. The students were from all backgrounds and attended state colleges, historically black colleges, and Ivy League institutions.
https://www.jns.org/student-leaders-trip-to-israel-and-uae-taps-into-the-magic-of-diversity/  https://israelcc.org/
 
Find your Israeli relatives. Israeli genealogy company MyHeritage has posted 1.7 million Israeli immigration records online, using scanned ship and plane passenger lists stored at the Israel State Archives. The records are from 1919 to around 1979. The data is free for everyone to search (see 3rd link below).
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-immigration-records-dating-back-to-1919-now-accessible-online/
https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/01/myheritage-publishes-exclusive-huge-collection-of-israel-immigration-records/   https://www.myheritage.com/research/collection-11018/israel-immigration-lists

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Living in the Land of Lies.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

Part One  -  January 3, 2023


In reading and listening this holiday week I encountered nothing really other than outright lies.


I was sitting on a farm buffeted before Christmas by near-record cold temperatures and after Christmas by near-record precipitation. Yet almost weekly we receive stories about California’s “permanent drought” of hot/dry weather and an environmental Armageddon that only precivilizational scarcity can avert.


This fated doom means we in California have been outlawing gasoline-powered yard tools and new natural gas ovens and heating systems, and must always suffer fuel prices 30-40 percent above those in the rest of the nation due to special green blends and restrictions on refinery operations and new gas and oil leasing.


So, no matter: all of these recent stories of near-record cold and precipitation, as well as fated new cutbacks are followed by warnings of imminent global warming catastrophes. Apparently, if Californians do not use fossil fuels at all, but, as the largest state importer of electricity in the nation, buy out-of-state electricity (much of it generated by coal or natural gas) then we at least can feel better about ourselves.


But more to the point, before the recent week of intense cold storms, giving ample rain and snowfall, California was already experiencing in most places a 100 percent-plus December precipitation rate. By New Year’s Day, we may well have 100 percent-plus of the season’s entire average annual precipitation. Apparently, the harder the rain falls, the colder the days become, and the more Governor Newsom and the Bay Area “scientific” community insist we need to return to a premodern lifestyle of mass transit transportation, unaffordable gas and diesel, and wind and solar generated, sky-high electricity rates


We are told yet again by President Biden, by Vice President Harris, by their Pravda megaphone, Karine Jean-Pierre, and perhaps by soon-to-be-impeached Alejandro Mayorkas that the border is “secure.” And any who object to 5 million entries since January 2021 prove that it is not a Great Replacement Theory racist.


Yet, living the lie proves otherwise. Here in Central California, I’ve noticed a substantial new surge and influx of illegal aliens. On my avenue, a recent sheriff’s raid surrounded a nearby house, where neighbors long suspected gang chop shops, drug dealing, and other unmentionable trafficking.


The amount of trash on the farm is greater than usual, and the paper/trash is of exclusively Spanish language matter (but, alas, carefully sifted to exclude any address or names on envelopes).


The number of parked cars in the orchard of occupants variously shooting drugs, scouting out copper wire thievery, fornicating, or engaging in illegal shooting (e.g., red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, anything that moves), and those walking cross-country, through the vineyards and orchards, who do not speak English is on the rise as well.


In the papers, there are increasing stories of outraged parents from Oaxaca who are not provided Spanish translators at school board meetings, ironically often overseen by Latino citizen board members who do not speak Spanish fluently. To suggest that if someone comes illegally into the U.S. without the permission of the host, and does not know or quickly learn English, then one should not make costly demands on the citizen population, is proof of racism. Imagine a U.S. expatriate who sneaks across the southern border and does not acquire a resident visa or green card, continues to reside illegally in Mazatlán, and then goes to a city council meeting to demand his Mexican hosts provide for him an interpreter in English—or else!


Occasionally even the Fresno Bee notes that illegal aliens (“undocumented migrants”) have been arriving in Central California. But again, we are told by Californians that the border is secure just as we must return to our pastoral past given the constant doom of permanent scorching heat and unending aridity.


Part Two  - January 4, 2023

I turn on my computer and often receive from two universities all sorts of the latest campus news.


But the news is different than it was pre-Covid/George Floyd riots. The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is now some 32 years old. And it is increasingly flagrantly violated by colleges and universities.


The number of Clery Act fines leveled against higher education has gradually increased, but probably not as much as the violations themselves. The law demands that campuses publish a three-year history of their crime statistics and a daily police log of crimes and descriptions of suspects to warn campus residents of potential dange


But suddenly the descriptions that one receives from universities increasingly are of little practical value and vastly different than pre-2020. That is the old law wars with new wokism which dictates that any suggestion that people of color might be overrepresented in any reported crime statistic is systemic racism.


Thus, in the past when you received an email of an on-campus assault, break-in, robbery, or sexual offense, the campus police log gave a general description of the suspect—sex, race, height, weight, general clothes, and appearance.


But not so much now. Usually, the phrase “full description unavailable” follows, or it is air-brushed into generalities that provide the student nothing of preemptive value.


Many universities, including state colleges such as UC Berkeley, have been fined for violating the statute. They operate apparently on the theory that crime is much higher than one imagines. Thus, its publication is not conducive to admissions, or at least woke formalities on campus. If blacks and Latinos, according to U.S. crime data, are “overrepresented” in the general population as violent crime perpetrators, and if that trend holds true on campus, and if a campus’s new mission is to highlight the multifarious dangers that white “supremacy” and “privilege” hold for people of color, then it apparently is wiser to shut up.


That is, campuses apparently choose to violate the law and pay the fine or violate the law and hope the left-leaning Biden administration concurs with their noncompliance than obey the law and violate the canons of on-campus wokism.


In other words, the potential collateral (and life-threatening) danger to a student who is not told the detailed description of a rapist or thug on campus, and thus cannot make the necessary adjustments, is considered tolerable—at least in comparison to the risk of woke outrage by suggesting that a particular profile appears too frequently in the campus police daily crime suspect report.


Most campus news digests in general are usually a litany of oppressions that highlight the hard work of diversity/equity/inclusion administrators (there are over 15,000 general administrative staffers at Stanford for roughly the 16,000 students enrolled).


The explicit message (that has replaced the old implicit subtext) is again white supremacy and white privilege. But then the national news, well beyond such on-campus Clery Act matters, to the extent it is reported, does not bear out such groupthink and newspeak at all


For example, there is a new national wave of anti-Semitism. But it is increasingly voiced by black cultural billionaires, entertainers, sports figures, and intellectuals like Alice Walker, Kayne West, Whoopi Goldberg, and Kyrie Irving. And there is an “upsurge” in hate crimes against Asian-Americans and Jews. But to the extent one can access FBI crime records, and such crimes are even reported, they consistently show that blacks commit hate crimes at double their numbers in the general population, while whites are “underrepresented” and commit fewer hate crimes than their demographic percentages.


CSU Fresno, where I taught for 20 years, reports that its so-called white population is now 18 percent and Stanford’s is a bit higher at 23 percent of its incoming class. So much for the old “proportional representation” that has now given way to “reparatory” or “compensatory” admissions and hiring. “Disproportionate” action has replaced “affirmative action.”


The constant harangues about oppression and the expensive remedies for it seem somewhat odd given the greater number of oppressed and victimized than the shrinking pool of oppressors and victimizers. How do institutions in which their white student enrollments are only 30 percent of their national demographics—that commit crimes at far less than their demographic percentages in the general population—still find on-campus pale dragons to slay?


(Reader, you may answer with “adjectives”: add “systemic” to racism, or “micro” to aggression to detect the undetectable.


In other words, the more one reads on campus about “white privilege,” the fewer white oppressors one sees.


So, what happens when the white population shrinks on campus to ten percent, which is likely on the horizon when the current expanding pools of DEI administrators take over the presidencies of most universities?


Will then a Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes follow in the fashion of the shotgun, hot-mic racism voiced by progressive Los Angeles Latino city-council members, or the anti-Semitism of an Alice Walker, Whoopi Goldberg, Kayne West, or the late Michael Jackson, and get louder, even as the multifaceted white hatreds of a racist Joy Reid become passé?

If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools.

Plato

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Stacey Abrams is a loser and and a naggingly sore one. Now a Georgia court has declared she owes some big bucks.

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Stacey Abrams Group Ordered To Reimburse Georgia Over Election Lawsuit

A federal judge has ordered Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Action to pay over $200,000 to reimburse the state of Georgia for legal fees related to a false lawsuit that claimed Republican Gov. Brian Kemp cheated his way through the 2018 gubernatorial election.


Fair Fight Action and other plaintiffs lost the four-year suit last September. The group claimed the Peach State infringed on voting rights. The judgment includes compensation of roughly $193,000 for trial costs and $38,000 for exhibit copies utilized during the case.


Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger applauded this decision as he argued that Abrams should receive a stricter punishment.

According to the Georgia attorney general’s office, the suit cost the state about $6 million. However, the court’s ruling does not capture attorney fees for Georgia’s legal defense.


“This is a win for taxpayers and voters who knew all along that Stacey Abrams[’s] voter suppression claims were false, it has never been easier to vote and harder to cheat in the state of Georgia,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “This is a start, but I think Stacey Abrams should pay back the millions of taxpayer dollars the state was forced to spend to disprove her false claims.”


“While the Court’s actions are not the preferred outcome, the conduct of this trial and preceding cases and legislative actions represent a hard-won victory for voters who endured long lines, burdensome date of birth requirements and exact match laws that disproportionately impact Black and Brown voters,” Abrams said in response to the ruling.


Abrams established Fair Fight Action after her loss to Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), asserting that state laws suppressed voting.


Abrams lost the 2018 election but refused to concede, citing voter suppression. She lost the governor’s race by over 50,000 votes in Georgia, after which she then claimed “efforts to undermine” voters’ rights were in motion.


Abrams has continued to challenge the election outcome based on “voter suppression. Abrams claimed the gubernatorial election was “stolen from Georgians” and that the officials made it difficult to register voters and maintain voter rows.

And then:

More sleaze from Hunter

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New low for Hunter Biden: Fighting to prevent daughter with ex-lover from using his last name

Hunter Biden fathered a daughter with ex-lover Lunden Roberts. He is fighting hard to prevent his daughter from taking his last name.

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 I found the McCarthy Hearings disconcerting but most know Democracy and freedom can get messy.  I was not complimentary about them but, perversely, maybe I missed some of the potential benefits.  The naysayers went a bit over board and extreme but by holding McCarthy's feet to the fire they might also have accomplished some future good because they forced him to stiffen his back.  Now he is on record, has walked the line and should he go backwards and melt , like a Rino, he is finished. 

It is high time  liberals, who have ruled the Republican Party, move aside and let the younger Turks have their say.  Many are very bright, seemingly conservative to the core and understand the distinction between what the Founding Father's intended versus what we have turned into and the spread is far too wide.

Those opposed have their own agenda and it is more government, more control by government and less freedom because through all their "moronic" but dangerous demands they remain ready to do anything, to be in the driver's seat.  Again, where this all plays out is anyone's guess.   I can see a period when violence throughout the land becomes commonplace.  Was the defunding of police a prelude to allow this to happen?  I can also see the collapse of the radical's efforts because the overwhelming number of Americans like what we once had,. They do not want ,totalitarianism, communism, socialism or any "ism."  They are willing for America to change while retaining our democracy, our republic and correct where true needs should be addressed but do so in a systematic and common sense way while retaining the core essence of our freedoms and open society.  

What the " she she" Biden crowd want is the opposite and his deep rooted incompetency, mean spiritedness could become so glaring he takes his crowd down after his wrecking bar approach becomes onerous and overly intolerable.  Those Biden placed in government to run matters are incompetent, were selected to check off sexual proclivity, color, race,  multi-life styles, gender and a variety of extremes that do not sit well with normal "Yanks.".  You can push too far and Biden's press secretary, among other weirdos who steal luggage at airports, are a prime example.

For someone who is cynical and pessimistic and when matters get as bad as I believed they would and now are and somewhat more to come and, at least the bubba's and deplorables are becoming truly pissed, I believe it is now time to begin getting hopeful so I am beginning to feel the ground shake underneath my feet.  The Democrats will stonewall, the mass media will continue their inane excuses and that will all boomerang against them.  Various agencies of our government will continue to lie and thwart and that too will just increase the pace and race to the bottom and serve no purpose except to create more discontent. Of course the Justice Department will lead the parade.
Stay tuned.
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Avi publishes another book.
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The Future of Our Species
By Avi Jorisch
At this moment human beings, imperiled by hunger, pollution, and global warming, are at a critical juncture. Many believe that we are closer than we’ve ever been to extinction. But we’re also in an era of abundance – and remarkable wealth – that’s fueling innovation that could enable us to fundamentally change our destiny. The enormous change we will experience in the coming decades will make life on earth unrecognizable.

More than half a century ago, Gordon Moore proposed a theory that would radically change our conception of technology. The power of microchips running our computers, he concluded, will double every two years, while their cost will remain about the same. He predicted the invention of home computers, cellphones, self-driving cars, and smartwatches – all of which would become cheaper over time. “Moore’s law” has since proven to be true.

Ray Kurzweil, a scientist, futurist and director of engineering for Google, took Moore’s law a step further, arguing that exponential growth isn’t a recent phenomenon, but something we’ve experienced for thousands of years. By the 19th century, technological change was occurring at a rate faster than in the previous 900 years combined, and included innovations such as the steam engine, the electric telegraph, and gas lighting. The first few decades of the 20th century saw more technological advancement than the entire previous century – from cars and airplanes to radio transmission.

Kurzweil makes a convincing case that the rate of global technological progress will continue to be exponential. “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century,” he says, “it will be more like 20,000 years of progress.” He predicts the next few decades will see radical technological changes straight from the pages of science fiction.

According to Kurzweil, humans will be able to cure most diseases by the end of this decade. We’ll be able to reverse-engineer the brain and use nanobots to treat debilitating illnesses, including disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. And as a result, our lifespans will increase dramatically.

His predictions about energy have equally far-reaching implications. “In 2030 we will have [total] renewable energy,” Kurzweil says, “and it will be inexpensive.” Solar energy, he maintains, will satisfy the total demand of humankind, likely meaning cleaner air and fewer wars. His most shocking predictions involve virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Kurzweil believes that by 2029, computers will exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to or indistinguishable from that of humans – including the capacity for love, romance, and humor. AI will eventually respond to the personalities and preferences of human users, and we’ll build real human-computer relationships. But this is also the moment when AI will surpass us, as machines gain the ability to conceive of ideas no human has ever thought of.

By the early 2030s, Kurzweil thinks we’ll be able to copy a human brain and reproduce it in electronic format. Humans will no longer need flesh, blood, or bones, and we won’t die in the traditional sense. We’ll just 3D print fresh organs.

Even greater changes will come by 2045, though we can hardly comprehend them, because our brains are wired to believe that the future will evolve linearly and predictably, rather than exponentially. By that year, Kurzweil posits, we’ll have achieved what’s known as singularity, a period when humans will multiply their effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging our brains with artificial intelligence. This is the point at which human civilization experiences unforeseen changes due to uncontrollable and irreversible technological growth – which will fundamentally impact how we learn, work, recreate, and wage war. “This leads to computers having human intelligence, humans putting them inside our brains, connecting them to the cloud, expanding who we are,” says Kurzweil.

That Kurzweil’s rosy predictions sound more like Star Trek: The Next Generation than The Terminator is not lost on futurists like Nick Bostrom, who believe that when singularity arrives, there’s a strong possibility that machines will enslave or destroy human beings. Bostrom envisions an AI that will “annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential.” The Rand Corporation, a US defense think tank, warns that the use of AI in military applications could cause a nuclear war by 2040.

Even Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla, two of the most innovative 21st-century companies, has called artificial intelligence “more dangerous than nukes.” He, too, believes the rate of improvement in AI is exponential, and that it’s “capable of vastly more than people really understand.” As he once tweeted, “competition for AI superiority at a national level [is the] most likely cause of World War III.”

Whether we’re headed toward utopia or dystopia – or something in between – will rest on the decisions humanity makes over the next few years. In the coming decades, what’s next will be dictated by our growing ability to leverage exponential thinking to bring about truly extraordinary innovations that are far beyond our current imagination – technologies that will, if used for good, allow us to make the world a far better place. As Abraham Lincoln said, “the best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Avi Jorisch (www.avijorisch.com) is the author of NEXT: A Brief History of the Future (Gefen Publishing) and a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council
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They just keep coming:
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