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I was having a discussion with my son and he proposed that, among many other reasons, I write memos to reflect the world as I wished it to be and once was. He acknowledged the world has turned upside down and that I wanted , very much, the world to return to "as it once was."
I believe his was a very valid observation.
Anyone in his right mind has to admit the world is "f----- up" and we have lost tranquility, logic, freedoms and a whole host of adjectives we once enjoyed and had in abundance. How did this come to be? There are many reasons. Most importantly, as in any sport, we took our eye of the ball and whiffed. It is the story of the grass greener on the other side. How many times has that been bought as a substitute for what was good because it was not perfect and had some remaining flaws that needed correction?
Second, we allowed a whole host of power driven progressives to undermine our institutions with crazy ideas and theories of how to improve upon what basically worked. They replaced a functioning society with dangerous nonsense because of past wrongs that had already been with "corrected" but were not perfect and found other issues that were in need of addressing.
Their intentions were not honorable because their goal was based on hypocrisy, a desire to control and a thirst for power..
In doing so, they grew government, making it all powerful and citizens subservient. Freedoms were destroyed and crushed. The cost of these transitions were enormous, the benefits mythical and the lower classes were ravaged by inflation and other intentionally imposed miscalculations.
I believe a DeSantis/Kristi Noem and Sec of State Mike Pompeo would make a powerful GOP ticket for 2024.
Yes, my memos reflect solutions which could restore the world to it's former status. There are some hopeful signs the "engine that could" has not run out of steam and a new day of reversal is coming. Time will tell. It always does.
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Dov Get's it because he believes "truth will set you free."
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Brazen Hypocrisy in Our Politics Corrodes the National Soul - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The true “battle for the soul of the nation” requires that those on both the right and the left uphold honesty over corruption.
By Dov Fischer
Whether you are Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, something corrosive is happening around you: the corruption of the national soul.
We live in a society. Humans are not robots, and reasonable minds fairly will differ. When a candidate wins an election with 98 percent of the vote, we know the election has been rigged. That is what happens in Russia and in Iran and in Arab countries, not here. The legitimate differences of opinion that see neither side scoring even 60 percent in most American elections reflect the understandable tendency for random cross sections of people to differ.
As long as we differ honestly, we really are OK as a society. One time this side wins, and one time that side wins, but the show goes on honorably enough. And so does the Republic.
Where we encounter our greatest risk is when corruption and brazen hypocrisy aggregate to supersede right and wrong. This is true for all sides. Adam Schiff is a brazen liar and has been for years. In an honest world, Democrats also would recoil from him, not elevate him. Likewise, across the aisle, George Santos is an embarrassment and, even, a case study for psychologists, and honest Republicans — much as the GOP covets the congressional seat he flipped from years of Democrat control — should pounce on him without regard to political consequences. Honesty should matter.
Instead, our political society is rooted in a soulless determination to win all battles at all costs. Nasty and even vicious campaigning is a core element of democracy. Although people tell pollsters they despise negative campaigning, those sorts of disparaging ads typically decide elections. Through it all, though, nothing is worse for the national soul than the brazen hypocrisy all around us.
Overnight, the Democrats became the party of mass illegal immigration while Republicans suddenly cared about border security. Neither side has been honest.
We attempt to teach our children to be honest and noble, to admit missteps and to learn and grow from past errors. But in politics, the way of life is to “tough it out.” Deny the obvious, even as it stares the liar in the face. So, Alejandro Mayorkas tells Congress that the border is secure. Of course he is lying. No one needs to travel to the border to know that. The data document the anarchy. Film crews document the chaos on nightly news. Now that governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis have gotten wise by transporting illegal immigrants to places like New York City, Martha’s Vineyard, and Washington, D.C., even the hypocrites suddenly will admit the obvious: The border is not secure. It is refreshing to see and hear New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Witch from Chicago complaining suddenly about illegal immigration. It had been a nonissue for them as long as Obama and Biden were at work only trying to turn Texas and Florida blue.
The hypocrisy is everywhere. When Elon Musk bought Twitter and announced a new direction for that corrupted social medium with all its fake bots and phony followers, a fifth column that helped throw the 2020 presidential election by blacking out all reportage about Hunter Biden’s laptop and Biden family corruption, the Washington Post — among others who dominate the left-wing media — bewailed the threat to democracy unfolding as a billionaire gained control over a means of communication. Uh-huh. And who owns that Washington Post itself? Jeff Bezos, a billionaire who controls that means of communication.
For decades, it was the Democrats who condemned mass immigration at our southern border. Their main constituencies — White, ethnically Catholic, male union laborers in the Midwestern Rust Belt and Blacks everywhere else — were being devastated financially by the influx of desperate laborers willing to accept dirt-cheap wages. Meanwhile, the Republican white-shoe upper class promoted mass illegal immigration because cheap labor maximizes profits.
At least everyone was putting his cards on the table.
And then the Democrats found that millions of Illegals, once granted amnesty, along with their subsequent generations born on United States soil, change elections. Conservative states like California were turning blue, and Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia were moving in that direction. Yes, the Illegals still wreaked havoc on the wages of lower-income Blacks, but the Democrats determined through trial and error that they own Blacks in their pockets anyway, no matter how poorly Blacks fare under them. So, overnight, the Democrats became the party of mass illegal immigration while Republicans suddenly cared about border security. Neither side has been honest.
Democrats suddenly care about the human rights of South Americans and Latinos, while Republicans suddenly awoke to national security and drug cartels? Just wait and see what will change if the Hispanic vote continues moving rightward. In 20 years, if Hispanics emerge as a Republican constituency, the Right will be promoting illegal immigration, and the Left will be bemoaning border security and fentanyl. Assuming America still exists as a country.
And what indeed of security? Until Eric Swalwell, the expression of “sleeping with the enemy” merely conjured an idiom. Thanks to him, it now conjures an idiot. Imagine: a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Homeland Security Committee literally devoting intimate bedtime to Fang Fang, a spy for China. Talk about China digging its fangs in. And Dianne Feinstein, another California Democrat, this one on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a spy for China as her chauffeur. Yet these and their party instead denounce their despised Donald Trump as a national-security threat. As proof, they point to classified documents he took from Washington to his private custody. Why, that was so frightening that law-enforcement agents were dispatched to promenade through Mar-a-Lago in an old-fashioned FBI raid while Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to investigate.
And then it turned out that Joe Biden also snatched highly classified documents from Washington. One batch landed in an office in Pennsylvania. Another batch in his garage. Right near his Corvette. And a few years earlier, thousands of documents, including classified emails, ended up on a computer server in Hillary Clinton’s bathroom. No FBI raids on Clinton or Joe.
In an honest world, Hillary would have been prosecuted for spoliation of evidence when her roughly 30,000 emails about yoga and wedding dresses were scrubbed clean from her servers and her hard drives smashed by hammer. But she was not prosecuted. Meanwhile, Roger Stone’s house was raided in the middle of the night, and he was subjected to a CNN-televised handcuffed “perp walk.” And Peter Navarro was chained in handcuffs and leg irons when refusing to honor a subpoena from the Pelosi-Cheney Jan. 6 Committee, a kangaroo court comprised of Democrats and a few token “Never-Trump” Republicans selected by Nancy Pelosi for her star chamber. Democracy? Justice? Or blatant double standards?
And then the Supreme Court. Democrats never were bothered that their left-wing SCOTUS majority dominated American law, often supplanting Congress as an ultra vires legislative branch, for nearly half a century. They fabricated legal rulings based on justices’ personal whims, not rooted in stare decisis and actual legal precedent. And then a conservative majority emerged, and suddenly the rules governing the Supreme Court no longer were just. With a 6–3 conservative tilt, because John Roberts occasionally sides with conservatives, the Democrats suddenly determined that the court needs four more justices, exactly four, increasing its bench to 13. By coincidence, that would give the Left a sudden 7–6 majority. Or, for greater justice, more enterprising “progressives” pushed to pack the court up to 15.
This kind of dishonesty, the brazen hypocrisy, gnaws at the nation’s soul. Children grow up amid public dishonesty all around them, with greater access to the lies than ever before, thanks to social media and cable TV outliers. Indeed, it is for that reason that I not only always have avoided MSNBC, CNN, and foolish time wasters like The View but even have come to recoil from Fox News opinion shows. I have lost my patience and tolerance for hacks on the left muttering their scripted excuses and hacks on the right countering with theirs. So many of them, on all sides, are not debating theses and antitheses to arrive at a synthesized Truth. Rather, they simply are parroting their assigned lines, albeit with a bit more panache than the fool whom Biden named as his press spokesperson. And even with her — Madame Jean-Pierre — who can doubt that she stands there only because she is a Democrat Trifecta: Black, Woman (whatever that means), and Lesbian. Not because she is the best and the brightest, nor even the good and the coherent. Imagine if the Washington press corps grilled that one the way they abused Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
For that matter, what of a Supreme Court nominee so dishonest and phony that, despite (or because of) her supposed Harvard Law School education, she cannot define what a woman is? That is surprising for truth seekers because she is a jurisprudential mediocrity who never would have been nominated — not in a billion years — if she were not female. Surely, someone in Biden’s office for nominating Black women — Jean-Pierre, the new justice, the U.N. ambassador — knows what a woman is. Maybe the definition can be found in one of those documents in Biden’s garage or in the glove compartment of his Corvette.
The great national danger for all of us is that we will learn to coexist copacetically with hypocrisy, that we will come to accept that “Oh well, that’s politics!”
As long as we recoil from the hypocrisy and lies on all sides, hope for our national soul remains. Once we capitulate, we fall.
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Our Political Parties Are Struggling
The Democrats need normality; the Republicans need coherence. They both need to pull themselves out of the 20th century.
ByPeggy Noonan
The Democrats are making a historic mistake. With the fraught issue of abortion devolving to the states and moving, in the next few years, toward local settlement, the national party is free to understand itself, and present itself to the public, in a different way. For half a century Democrats enjoyed the electoral and political benefits of their pro-choice stand—they were for women’s rights, reproductive freedom. But that stand also came with a stigma—it was the party of heartless absolutism, of slippery-slope support for late-term abortion. There could be no gradations, every demand was maximalist. This stopped a lot of people from feeling they could join the party or support it, because support felt like complicity.
Now, in a national sense, the great agitating question is being taken off the board. The Democrats are free to be a normal party again, standing for things that are the normal concerns of parties (economics, war and peace). More voters would feel free to join.
Instead of seeing this they’ve replaced one stigma with another. Since at least 2020 they have aligned with or allowed themselves to be associated with another deeply agitating cultural question, the identity politics-wokeness regime. (It’s amazing we still don’t have an agreed upon word or phrase that fully captures this program.) Michael Lind, in a piece in the Tablet, sees it as composed of three parts, all falsely presented. The “Quota Project” uses anti-racism to pursue “social reconstruction.” The “Androgyny Project” goes beyond civil rights and ignores gay rights to “redefine all male and female human beings as generic, androgynous humanoids whose sex is a matter of subjective self-definition.” The “Green Project” uses climate change as an excuse to “radically restructure the society of the U.S. and other advanced industrial democracies.”
These movements are of, from and driven by the left. The Democrats are the party of the left. Progressive pathologies morph into Democratic ideologies, tagging the party as radical. Why do the Democrats allow this to continue? Why don’t they push back, hard—as a party? Most of their elected officials aren’t really on board with this stuff; many hate it. They know it limits their political prospects. America as it is currently constituted will never accept the regime, never be at peace with it, because Americans see it as a threat to their children and an insult to their sense of reality and fairness.
Arguments over wokeness—in the schools, in legislation, in our public life as a nation—will continue a long time. Democrats are on the wrong side, and making a historic mistake in not publicly and regularly beating back their fringe.
The Republicans—where to start? They’re riven by policy disagreements, some of which stem from philosophical disagreements regarding what conservatism is and must be in the 21st century. Weirdly, since politics is a word business, their Washington leadership can’t find the words to talk about this. They don’t know how to talk about public policy. In the debt-ceiling debate, if that’s the right word, they’re allowing themselves to be tagged as the Axe the Entitlements party, or at least as people who’d secretly like to do it but can’t admit it, but when they’re in power they’ll try.
If they do that they will never win national power, or at least presidential power, again. Which they kind of know. But they do it anyway. Because they haven’t decided if they’re a “limited government” party or a party that accepts, as it should, that the federal government will never be small in our lifetimes, and being mature means seeing that and turning the party’s focus toward the pursuit of more conservative ends, such as . . . helping families? Police the government, don’t spend like nuts, aim for growth, encourage dynamism, think long term.
In any case they should stop saying “limited” government. People think the federal government is already limited, as in slow and stupid. They’d like it to be able and efficient. Maybe lean into a government that doesn’t push us around, demanding more than it’s due. Everybody wants that.
From 30,000 feet it’s obvious that an attendant problem is that the GOP hasn’t been able, on the national level, to present itself as a governing party—a serious political entity into whose steady hands the American people can entrust their government. We saw this on the floor of the House during the vote for Speaker.
Both parties are missing something big. For the Democrats it’s an inability to accept a gift from history and become a normal party again. For the Republicans, it’s an inability to agree on what they stand for in this century, and an inability to talk about the meaning of things.
I want to finish with George Santos. Really, in every way I want us to finish with him. History will notice his little story.
Again: It is a mistake to let him be a member of Congress. Speaker Kevin McCarthy says the people have spoken. He repeated it Tuesday: “The voters have elected him. He’ll have a voice here in Congress,” while investigations play out.
This is deeply stupid.
George Santos was never elected to Congress. No one in New York’s Third Congressional District voted for him.
This is who they voted for: A nice young man, 34-years old, a conservative who’d struggled against the odds—the son of immigrants, born in some want, an ethnic minority whose grandparents fled the Holocaust. He rose to be educated at one of New York’s greatest private schools, to be a star athlete at a great college, earned a masters in business administration, forged on to become an impressive figure in finance, with positions at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He came to own mansions on Long Island. Only in America. But it wasn’t all material success, the guy had a heart: He devoted his private time to animal rescue. And he’d suffered: His mother died on 9/11.
That’s who was elected. That’s who won by 8 points.
But that man didn’t exist.
This is who existed: A guy lately going by George Santos who previously went by aliases, who once worked for what the SEC says became a ponzi scheme, never went to the schools, never worked at the banks, and no one fled the holocaust or died in the Twin Towers. He allegedly shook down smalltime investors in what one target told the Washington Post was like a scene in “Goodfellas.” He was wanted in Brazil for fraud. The animal rescue? An impoverished veteran says Mr. Santos ran off with money he claimed to be raising for the man’s sick dog, who later died. (Mr. Santos denies this.)
He’s not some pathetic, fabulist mook. Did you see the interview this week on One America News Network? Interviewer Caitlin Sinclair noted he seemed angry, not remorseful. “I’ve said I was sorry many times. I’ve behaved as if I’m sorry,” he said. “If you want to compare emotions, people show emotions differently.” He painted himself as an object of sympathy. Of the “abject poverty” he faced as a child in Queens, “People like me aren’t supposed to do big things in life and when we do it disrupts the system.” He’s Meghan Markle now.
He’s a street-wise conman whose latest mark was NY-3. Where, a Newsday/Siena College poll out this week tells us, almost 80% of the voters want him thrown out of Congress.
Congress, show a little respect for his victims. And for yourselves.
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Hunter Biden Claims His Laptop
And asks his dad's government to target his critics.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Hunter Biden did some reckless things, is unhappy people found out, and so is now doing something equally reckless. Oh, and by the way, that laptop really is his.
That's the news out of a batch of letters sent this week by Hunter's attorneys. They are demanding federal and state prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service launch investigations into those involved with distributing the contents of "Mr. Biden's files" from his infamous laptop. The Washington Post amusingly framed this as a Hunter-gets-"aggressive"-with-his-critics story, relegating the real news to the 20th paragraph: "In filing the complaint, however, Biden's lawyers seem to be conceding that some of the data that has been made public is his private information."
Oh? The complaints are in fact an extraordinary admission that Hunter—and his father, President Joe Biden—have misled the country for years. When the New York Post on Oct. 14, 2020 (three weeks before the election) published emails that it said came from a Hunter laptop dropped off at a Delaware repair shop, the information was immediately branded Russian disinformation by the media, a claque of "former intelligence officials" and the Biden campaign. This provided a rationale for social-media companies to shut down the story despite this column's reporting that Hunter's own business partner—Tony Bobulinski—confirmed the authenticity of key documents on the laptop.
This week's letters show that Hunter also knew the laptop's contents were real—yet he continued to mislead. In an April 2021 CBS News interview, Hunter was asked point-blank: "Was that your laptop?" He said he didn't know. Pressed further he said: "There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me."
By floating the Russkie canard, Hunter continued to cast doubt on the information's legitimacy.
Like son, like father. In the run-up to final presidential debate on Oct. 22, 2020, a Biden campaign official declared: "If we see tonight from Donald Trump these attacks on Vice President Biden's family, I think we need to be very, very clear that what he's doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation." When Mr. Trump in that debate did bring up "the laptop from hell," Joe Biden said it was a "bunch of garbage" and cited the "50 former national intelligence folks who said that what . . . he's accusing me of is a Russian plan." Mr. Biden said that more than once. His spokeswoman Jen Psaki again called the laptop story Russian disinformation in late 2021.
There are two possibilities here: Hunter misled the Biden team or his father misled the nation. Either way, it was the current occupant of the White House who fed the country "garbage."
Now Hunter's attorneys have sent letters to the Justice Department and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings asking for criminal probes, including into John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the computer repair shop who gave the laptop to the feds and a copy of its contents to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The letters complain that, "Mr. Mac Isaac's intentional, reckless, and unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden's personal data" to be circulated on the internet. That would be from Hunter's very real laptop. The letters also demand investigations into a half-dozen political figures who accessed the laptop's information. A separate letter requests that the IRS investigate the nonprofit status of Marco Polo, a group that published the laptop's contents.
This is about as ill-considered as every other Hunter move—from trading on his family name to engaging in suspicious art sales. The letters may be his idea of going on offense now that House Republicans are investigating his business dealings; he may imagine it will influence U.S. Attorney David Weiss's ongoing investigation into the same. What it actually does is land—yet again—the Biden White House in an ethically fraught sinkhole. Because this comes down to Hunter asking employees and buddies of his dad to pursue a vendetta on his pampered behalf. Classic.
How's it going to look if, at the demand of the president's son, the Justice Department unleashes the full force of the federal government on the people who exposed Hunter's problematic foreign dealings, including documents that raise questions about Joe Biden's knowledge of those affairs? Or if Ms. Jennings—a self-proclaimed lifelong friend of the Bidens who once worked under Hunter's brother, Beau—snaps to command? Or if the IRS—with all its baggage—moves to strip the status of a conservative nonprofit at Hunter's insistence?
The mainstream media only last year roused itself to acknowledge that the laptop was real. These letters constitute further omelet on the faces of those who spent so long denying. Let's see if the liberal press can now bother to point out the unseemly ethics of the president's progeny demanding that federal and state law enforcement jail his critics. The Big Guy just can't shake his Hunter problem.
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Women take center stage: How Israel’s experience could be key to India’s future
India is poised to become the most populous nation on Earth, surpassing long-time titleholder, China. But with the demographic changes come both major opportunities and challenges.
By Oshrit Birvadker, ISRAEL HAYOM
India’s population keeps increasing by a million every month | File photo: AP
The complex relationship between India and China is not a new matter, with the two countries constantly engaging in competition. Data-wise, China seems to be leading in aspects: territory, defense, budget, navy, and the middle class.
But according to estimates, this coming April India will snatch away from China the title of being the most populated country on Earth. For the first time since the 1950s, a country other than China will hold the title.
China has gone through a significant population shrinkage in recent years, greater even than those experienced by Japan or South Korea. In 2022, China’s population decreased for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that has significant implications for its economy.
It will also lead to a change in the country’s age profile, with the dominant class no longer being working-age citizens, but the elderly. By 2050, the number of Chinese over the age of 65 is expected to double.
In contrast, India’s population has more than tripled in the last several decades since the partition from Pakistan – from 361 million in 1951 to over 1.4 billion today. And the population keeps increasing by a million every month.
More women, fewer men
Given the social practice of favoring men in India, it is an excellent opportunity to observe the place of Indian women in the demographic picture and the changes that have taken place in the country over the past 75 years, especially in the context of female fertility and mortality rates.
Female mortality rates in India are a product of social factors, compared to the biological factors that may explain male mortality rates. Tradition, religion and economic hardship all determine whether a family is capable of raising a daughter, which is oftentimes a financial blow that leads to the choice of not having daughters at all.
As a result, India suffers from a disproportionate ratio of boys to girls, a trend that has only gotten worse in recent years. A 2011 census showed that in the age group of under 6, the ratio of boys to girls was 1,000 to 914, that is one out of every ten female fetuses does not make it to birth, or is let go of straight after birth. And yet, a survey conducted about a year ago by the Indian government showed that for the first time in history, there are more women in India than men.
Usually, female participation in the labor market is an important indicator for understanding demography and the change that has taken place in the status of women, but perhaps in the case of India, we may be dealing with an exception.
In a strange way, in recent years there’s been a decrease in their participation in the workforce, despite of – or precisely due to – India’s economic growth. And this pattern is evident both among women in central and rural areas.
The reason lies in the fact that the expansion of women’s access to education did not undermine societal normal too much but actually allowed them to upgrade within the system. Studies show that women with a secondary education married men who were more educated and had a higher family income, which reduced their incentives to join the workforce.
In fact, a wife not working is considered a sign of high social status, and with the increase in the number of new millionaires and the expansion of the middle class in India, their number is increasing. Ironically, the participation of women in the country’s labor market before independence was actually higher.
India’s economic growth process has also led to several changes in favor of women. The reforms of the 1990s, which opened the Indian economy to the world and led to the expansion of the country’s service sector, led to the improvement of infrastructure that benefited women.
Th opening of phone service centers owned by Western companies accelerated the entry of millions of them into the labor market. The nature of office work and the employee training programs made them attractive among young women and were approved by husbands and parents as well.
And as the round-the-clock shifts required the arrival of female workers at night time, the transportation services – including from remote areas – improved as a result.
The streets too were made safer through lights and infrastructure that were given the slogan “toilets before temples” under Narendra Modi’s election campaign in 2014.
Until recently, in various regions throughout India and even in the big cities, women hardly left their homes after sunset due to the dangers that the darkness of the night brings with it.
Like in Israel
Demography is not destiny and is not part of India’s dharmic law, and what will ultimately decide India’s position in the world and vis-à-vis China will be the courses of action that Delhi decides to take.
To enjoy the demographic dividend, India will have to find productive work for its millions of young people. The growth will put enormous pressure on its resources, economic stability, and society, and the consequences will reach far beyond its borders.
As a country at the forefront of the climate crisis, which already faces extreme weather events 80% of the year, dwindling resources like water could become decisive factors in what India’s future population will look like. As a country that looks at Israel as a model of security, and economic and agricultural success, it would be right to remember that Israel did this with the help of its own women.
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Is it possible Hunter was paid by The Chinese and "Pop" thus, allowed a spy balloon to fly over America? Is it possible China is preparing for a second Pearl Harbour attack on America now that "Sleepy Joe" is president since his "Pot Head' son is in bed with the Chinese? Anything is possible in an upside world where former dictums , like obey laws, is out the window.
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URGENT Poll: Progressives Say The Constitution Is Too 'Controversial' - Do You Agree?+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
| In just a couple days, Joe Biden is expected to LIE to every American citizen and proclaim that the state of our union is “strong.” |
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| That’s why President Trump wants to release a poll of his own showing what Americans believe to be the TRUE state of the union. |
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| Americans will not be fooled by Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech. |
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| No matter how much the fake news spins it, the state of our union has never been weaker. |
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| Our economy is getting ravaged by inflation, our southern border no longer exists, criminals are running wild thanks to Soros-funded District Attorneys, and China is now openly spying on Americans. |
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| President Trump REFUSES to let the Biden White House and their puppets in the media cover up the suffering and hardships faced by the American people. |
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| We will expose the TRUTH about the disastrous Biden-Harris Administration on the night of Joe Biden’s big speech. |
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| But that means we need millions of Americans to take our poll to show that the entire nation is united against the disastrous job done by Biden and Kamala. |
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Team Trump +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |  | Students at the State University of New York are now required to take classes on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice.
| ⇒ Continue Reading +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The truth about UNRWA By Ted Belman
Not all refugees are the same.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), created in 1951, is dedicated to the resettlement of all refugees except the Palestinian refugees, who fall within the purview of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
According to UNCHR, a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her home because of persecution, war or violence and who crosses an international border.
UNRWA, on the other hand, defines a Palestinian refugee as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict, and their descendants.”
Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA does not seek to resettle its refugees, but rather is dedicated to preserving their status as “refugees”. In addition, it includes their descendants which UNCHR doesn’t. Finally, they need not have been “forced to flee”.
In August 2017, Pres Trump challenged UNRWA by rejecting UNRWA’s estimate of over 5 million refugees suggesting that the number was more like 500,000. In effect he was saying that a new definition should be operative. If he was to exclude descendants, there would be less that 20,000 people still living who fled in 1948
On Aug 31, 2018, The State Department announced that the US would make no further contribution to UNRWA. Therefore the pressure will build to find an alternate solution.
In 1920, the British Government’s Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine. By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including Bedouin).
This population growth took place under the Palestine Mandate pursuant to which, Great Britain was responsible to “facilitate Jewish immigration” in line with the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Rather than doing so, she hindered it, while at the same time, she encouraged Arab immigration. She went so far as to prevent Jewish immigration, even during the Holocaust, when it was desperately needed.
The end result was that the Jews in Israel in 1948, were millions fewer in number than would otherwise have been the case and the Arabs were far greater in number than they should have been.
This great injustice to the Jews must be born in mind when crafting the Deal of the Century.
The vast majority of the Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine in 1948 were economic migrants who entered Palestine illegally right up until the War of Independence in 1948.
The vast majority of Arabs who fled Israel or remained West of the Jordan River were illegal migrants and their children.
Joan Peters, after considerable research, made this case in her opus, From Time Immemorial.
Daniel Pipes, in his 1984 review of her book, wrote “In the course of research on this subject, she came across a “seemingly casual” discrepancy between the standard definition of a refugee and the definition used for the Palestinian Arabs. In other cases, a refugee is someone forced to leave a permanent or habitual home. In this case, however, it is someone who had lived in Palestine for just two years before the flight that began in 1948.”
Had the standard definition been used, there would have been few refugees to deal with. Furthermore, by rejecting the standard definition, the Arabs who didn’t flee, who are registered as refugees under UNRWA, now number 2 million west of the Jordan River and 1.3 million in Gaza.
In 1948, though living in Palestine, they considered their home of origin to be Syria, in the main, but including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
Not only were their numbers greatly inflated due to this new definition, but the Arab League prevented their naturalization in the countries they fled to, including their true countries of origin. Furthermore, the Arabs living outside of Israel as defined by the 1949 ceasefire line, yet still within the Mandatory lands, were also prevented from being naturalized. This applies to Jordan also where there are currently 2 million registered Palestinian “refugees”.
Pipes concludes his review by stating “Thus, the “Palestinian problem” lacks firm grounding. Many of those who now consider themselves Palestinian refugees were either immigrants themselves before 1948 or the children of immigrants. This historical fact reduces their claim to the land of Israel; it also reinforces the point that the real problem in the Middle East has little to do with Palestinian-Arab rights.”
It is now 34 years after Pipes wrote his review. Like it or not, these Palestinian Arabs have put down roots making it more problematic to dispossess them. But one thing must be kept in mind. The reason that they consider themselves to be refugees is because they all claim the right of return to Israel as currently delineated. The corollary to this is that they do not claim the right to stay where they are. They can’t have it both ways.
Since Israel will not permit them to return, whether to Israel as it now stands or to Israel when its eastern boundary is extended to the Jordan River, the best option open to them is to relocate them in Jordan. Because Jordan was part of Mandatory Palestine, to which they originally migrated, these people should be considered as internally displaced persons (IDP) who fled their residences but never crossed an international border.
King Abdullah is dead set against this but his days as king are numbered. When Mudar Zahran, the Secretary General of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition, becomes the leader of Jordan in the not too distant future, he will invite all these Palestinians to relocate in Jordan where they will be naturalized along with the 2 million “refugees” already there. In addition, over 75% of Jordan’s population of 9.7 million are Palestinian.
According to Zahran, they will be provided with housing, jobs and social security.
In my article International Law and the State of Israel, I discuss the issue of population transfer and its legitimacy.
“After WWII and the crushing defeat of Germany and its allies, the victors changed borders and moved populations. It was their right.
Der Spiegel reported;
“But the people fleeing the Red Army were unaware that the Allies had already agreed with the Polish government-in-exile to hand over large parts of eastern Germany to Poland and resettle the Germans who were living there.
“All those who didn’t manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied expulsions that were carried out until July 1945. The organized resettlement of Germans and ethnic Germans from Germany’s former eastern areas and the Sudetenland began in January 1946. In all, some 14 million Germans lost their homes.”
“These expulsions were often done in a brutal manner and were carried out as part of a broader program of nation-building pursued by the new communist government between 1945 and 1949. “The centre-piece of this programme was an attempt to achieve the ethnic homogenization of the state, to ensure as close a match as possible between its ethnic and political borders.”
At no time did the allies object to this “ethnic homogenization”.
The flight of the Arabs from the Palestine Mandate and Israel, whether voluntary or forced, must be viewed in this context. It happened at the same time. The hypocrisy of the West is glaring. In post war Europe, they insisted on the ethnic cleansing as the path to stabilization and peace whereas in the case of the “Palestinian refugees”, the UNGA passed Res 194 in Dec 11/48 even before the war was over in which they recommended that the “Refugees” should be permitted to return. Fortunately for Israel, a recommendation has no binding affect and can be ignored.
President Trump, in configuring his Deal of the Century, should embrace the idea of ethnic homogenization as fundamental to establishing peace and assist in the relocation of as many Arabs as possible to Jordan which will be considered the Palestinian State. There can be no objection to him doing so because of Zahran’s intention to provide them with housing, jobs and social security. Besides, no one is suggesting that they should be forcibly expelled. Instead they should be induced to relocate or emigrate of their own free will. It will be for their benefit. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ | Like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, today’s China is a rising power determined to dominate its region and convinced that American strength is waning. It runs the risk of experiencing a similar fate if it attacks Taiwan. Read the Article › +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ordman's Good News Israel, edited. +++
This week's newsletter is packed with life-enhancing creations from the minds of Israeli scientists, entrepreneurs and innovators. Cell therapy to fix genetic diseases; Artificial Intelligence to diagnose diseases from biopsies, from retina scans, and from CT-scans; even smart systems to ensure hospitals are never short of essential supplies.
Scientific breakthroughs include efficient fusion energy, satellite quantum communications, growing vegan super-food indoors; heat-generating polymers; sunglasses that convert to reading glasses; continuous mobile Internet; and intelligent robots to replace unresponsive customer service centers.
Israelis are exploring outer space and returning to educate the next generation of creative minds.
It makes you think, doesn't it?
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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 5th Feb 23 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
Cell therapy to treat disease. (TY UWI) Israel’s Minovia Therapeutics (see here previously) is testing mitochondria augmentation therapy (MAT) on children with rare, untreatable mitochondrial diseases. It has had some success with Pearson’s Disease sufferers. It may eventually also be able to treat age-related diseases.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-cell-therapy-may-be-key-to-curing-disease/
Diagnosing cancer and the mutation causing it. The AI digital biopsy from Israel’s Imagene (see here previously) not only identifies if someone has cancer but also what mutation is responsible for the anomaly. This is something pathologists cannot determine using a microscope. With results in minutes, not weeks.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/ai-cuts-cancer-wait-from-four-weeks-to-two-minutes/
The world’s first “smart inventory” operating room. Israel’s Galilee Medical Center has inaugurated the first operating room to automatically manage medical inventory. The system from Israel’s Autonomi tracks and manages all medical equipment, reduces waste, conducts patient-safety recalls and issues expiration warnings.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-729641 https://www.autonomi.xyz/
Sheba alliance with futuristic Bahraini hospital. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is helping set up the King Hamad American Mission Hospital (KHAMH) in Manama, Bahrain. Specifically, Sheba is helping establish ARC (Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate) medical start-up innovations for doctors to provide advanced care.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/article-729985
AI in Healthcare conference. The Medical AI Roadmap Conference at Israel’s Beilinson Hospital assembled Israel’s leading doctors, academics, scientists and entrepreneurs to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the healthcare industry. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366750
Look into my AIs. Professor Irit Bahar is director of the ophthalmology department at Beilinson Hospital. She described how AI is fundamental to her work. As part of fundus photography (imaging of the retina) AI not only helps detect eye problems but also diagnoses (for example) whether the patient is at risk of diabetes.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/o0hyw7g9q
More benefits of AI. Israel’s Nanox (see here previously) is using data from CT-scans taken for a particular reason, for early detection of other medical issues. A scan for pneumonia can then be further analyzed using AI to discover (for example) osteoporosis. If calcium is discovered in the arteries, it can indicate heart problems.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/9pj3x0bx4
ISRAEL IS INCLUSIVE AND GLOBAL
Israeli women in R&D. Carine-Belle Feder, CTO & Co-Founder at Antidote Health, was so unhappy at being the only woman in the room she started “Baot. It is now the biggest Israeli community of women in R&D - software engineers, data scientists, security researchers and academic researchers.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rjpkoefno
Wise words - “Jews save Arabs. Arabs save Jews”. Israeli Arab Fadi Dekidek has been an MDA paramedic for nearly 20 years. He says, “MDA is in a state of its own for co-existence - it’s an example for the whole world.” "The difference between a culture that glorifies terror and one that works hard to heal is education."
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-730025
The world’s largest employer of autistic people. Captain Udi Heller is autistic and founder of the "Titkadmu" (Move Forward) program at the largest employer of autistic people in the world – the IDF. Captain Heller spoke at the high-tech diversity conference organized by Calcalist, Bank Leumi, Meitar and PowerInDiversity.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/uwsn2mioe https://powerindiversityisrael.com/
Training Haredim for business. One of the companies attending Israel’s “Power in Diversity” conference was PHONE.DO (see here previously). CTO Israel Weinberg explains how his company recruits Haredim who are finishing their studies and trains them for work in IT development or call center operations. (Video in link.)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hjdbytu2o
“Hatikvah” played in Albanian Parliament. A delegation of Zionist activists and Knesset members visited majority Muslim Albania and met with local legislators. Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, was performed at the Albanian parliament in the presence of the Israelis and members of the pro-Israel Beit Yisrael group.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/366853
Chad opens Embassy in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chad President Mehmet Déby have inaugurated the African country's embassy in Israel, five years after the two countries restored diplomatic ties. The majority Muslim country’s embassy is in Ramat Gan – a suburb of Tel Aviv.
https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/diplomacy/1675328825-netanyahu-inaugurates-chad-s-embassy-in-israel
More bullet-proof ambulances for Ukraine. Israel has transferred three more ambulances to Ukrainian rescue services (see here previously). The Israeli “Plasan Re’em” company reinforced the ambulances and equipped them with life-saving medical gear including a defibrillator, oxygen system and more.
https://www.jns.org/israel-transfers-bullet-proof-ambulances-to-ukraine/
“The Jews have arrived!”. Wonderful interview with Colonel Golan Vach, Commander of the IDF’s National Rescue Unit. He describes some of the unit’s international life-saving missions. But most amazing is the response from civilians when Colonal Vach tells them that they have come from Jerusalem.
https://mizrachi.org/hamizrachi/g-d-has-heard-my-prayers-the-jews-have-arrived/
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
The skies are no limit. The 18th Ilan Ramon Space Conference in Tel Aviv attracted space industry leaders from NASA, the German, Italian and Greek space agencies, Portugal, Morocco, and the UAE. Israeli space startups included Ramon.Space, Helios Space and StemRad. The theme was “Earth and Space Becoming One”.
https://www.jns.org/the-skies-the-limit-for-the-booming-space-industry/
Israel-Korea Space Workshop. Is-Ko-Space 2023 (Jan 29 – Feb 3) was the first Israeli-Korean astronomy & space science workshop, and aims to encourage joint projects. It comprised 2 days of presentations and 2 days visiting Israel’s Wise Observatory in Mitzpe Ramon and Weizmann Institute’s Ne’ot Smadar observatory.
https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/iskospace/ https://www.ariel.ac.il/wp/iskospace/program/
Groundbreaking satellite ground station. Tel Aviv University scientists have built one of the most advanced satellite ground stations in the world (see here previously) and the first observatory for secure quantum optical communication with Earth-orbiting satellites. It also features tracking, sensing, and hyperspectral imaging.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tau-establishes-first-satellite-observatory-for-quantum-optical-communication/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atZD3sUypYA
Clean fusion energy. Israel’s NT-Tao is engineering compact and scalable nuclear fusion energy technology. It says its proprietary ultra-fast plasma heating method will enable it to reach 1000 times higher density than other fusion reactors, thereby making its fusion reaction 1 million times more effective. It has just raised $22 million.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hjrhbap3i https://www.nt-tao.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9YpFHCu5nE
Israel to host Ferroelectricity conference. (TY Nevet) For the first time since its 1966 inauguration, the International Meeting on Ferroelectricity (IMF) will be held in Israel. Technion Assistant Professor Yachin Ivry will chair the conference in Tel Aviv (26-30 Mar) with 500 participants expected. (See Wikipedia if necessary)
https://zuckerman-scholars.org/spotlight/yachin-ivry/ https://imf2021.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferroelectricity
Sustainable Proteins. Israel’s Technion Institute is investing $20 million in establishing the Sustainable Protein Research Center (SPRC). It will partner the international non-profit Good Food Institute to accelerate alternative protein innovation. Israel is second only to the USA for investments in sustainable proteins.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/tech-and-start-ups/article-729719
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/byditeehi
An urban farm like no other. Israel’s GreenOnyx (see here previously) has opened an indoor breeding farm to grow and produce its Wanna Greens duckweed-based lentil greens - no agricultural land, autonomous, all-year-round. GreenOnyx markets its fresh, affordable, ready-to-eat, water-based superfood on-line.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/agriculture-4-0-israeli-startup-sets-up-smart-urban-farm-for-fresh-green-superfood/ https://www.greenonyx.ag/news
The future of food. (TY UWI & Israel21c) Hebrew University of Jerusalem Professor Yaakov Nahmias is the founder of Believer Meats (formerly Future Meat Technologies) – see here previously. He explains how his Jerusalem-based startup is Israel’s most advanced developer of cultured meat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR34WqvMVRs
LEDs to trigger heat-generating polymers. Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion University have developed polymers that heat up or change their physical properties (e.g., from flexible to rigid) when exposed to LED light. The practical implications are wide-ranging, including housing in off-grid environments.
https://www.jpost.com/science/article-730084 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-022-01124-7
You are what you see. Israel’s Deep Optics (see here previously) is clearly moving ahead with its adaptive optics technology. A layer of liquid crystal allows standard sunglasses to switch into reading glasses with a swipe along the arm of the frame. The next version will allow switching from reading glasses to distance lenses.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/from-sunglasses-to-reading-glasses-in-one-swipe/ https://www.deepoptics.com/
Customer service – use a robot. Companies are gradually realizing that most customer queries can be answered by a chatbot – an intelligent robot answering service, rather than a human operator. Israel’s CommBox offers both – passing complex queries seamlessly from chatbot to human and then back again.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/human-or-chatbot-can-you-tell-the-difference/ https://www.commbox.io/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7Hej_O_Qc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOi0rLEWW8g
Internet access on trains in Asia-Pacific. Israel’s Gilat Satellite Networks (see here previously) has won a multimillion-dollar contract for the expansion of satellite communications capabilities on trains in Asia-Pacific. Gilat’s ER7000 SATCOM On-The-Move antennas will provide continuous internet access to passengers.
https://www.gilat.com/pressreleases/gilat-awarded-multimillion-dollar-contract-for-satcom-expansion-on-trains-in-asia-pacific/
Immerse yourself in Israeli Innovation. Israel21c has listed 8 top Israeli innovation sites to visit. I personally can recommend Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, Weizmann Institute, Ramat Negev agri R&D, and Vidor Center. The Technion, Ashlam, and Salad Trail look fascinating too.
https://www.israel21c.org/8-israel-innovation-tourist-spots-to-put-on-your-itinerary/
A different degree. The Rothschild-Technion Program for Excellence is an academic study program for a bachelor’s degree, geared to make the most of the students’ curiosity and creativity, and to expand their horizons. The program is designed for students who are capable and interested in learning “differently”.
https://www.edrf.org.il/en/programs/rothschild-technion-program-for-excellence/
https://excellence.technion.ac.il/en/ https://admissions.technion.ac.il/en/the-rothschild-scholars-program/
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Twin boost for Israeli ag-tech. (TY OurCrowd) Amazon Web Services (AWS) recommends farmers use Israel’s CropX (see here previously) to supply food to the world’s population. CropX systems use AWS Cloud computing. Meanwhile, CropX has acquired US-based precision irrigation startup Tule, its 4th acquisition.
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/how-cropx-uses-aws-cloud-computing-for-farming
https://agfundernews.com/cropx-makes-its-fourth-acquisition-with-precision-irrigation-startup-tule
Israeli alliance to transform the spirulina market. Israel’s Simpliigood (see here previously) has partnered Israeli agri-tech multinational Haifa Group (see here previously). Together they will optimize Simpliigood’s spirulina algae production, use Haifa Group’s waste CO2 for spirulina photosynthesis and develop new foods.
https://www.prnewswire.com/il/news-releases/simpliigood-haifa-group-co-pioneer-sustainable-closed-loop-spirulina-production-301734640.html
Business with India is truly motoring. Israel’s EVR Motors has signed its 4th commercial agreement in India. It is now partnering RSB Group to develop electric motors for light commercial vehicles using its breakthrough Trapezoidal Stator RFPM topology. Previous agreements with Badve (see here), Napino, and EKA Mobility.
https://www.business-standard.com/content/press-releases-ani/rsb-transmissions-i-ltd-partners-with-evr-motors-israel-to-electrify-india-s-lcv-market-123011300796_1.html
Japanese alliance for auto security. (TY OurCrowd) Japanese IT service giant NTT has selected Israel’s C2A Security (see here previously) as the first project of its new Global Automotive Security Test Center. The center will test connected cars to secure and protect their systems from cyber-attacks for NTT’s global clients.
https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-729457
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFM81sorY5g
Freightos IPO includes Qatari investment. Israel’s global freight booking and payment platform Freightos has begun trading on Nasdaq after a $500 million IPO. Freightos raised over $80 million in capital through the listing, including $10 million from Qatar Airways. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/hyvyviroi
Global cybersecurity alliance. Israel’s Elron Ventures has unveiled CyberFuture - a cybersecurity alliance of global Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and entrepreneurs. It aims to support new cybersecurity startups, plus earn investment income for the security professionals (including several Israelis) involved.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bkpaycl2o
One in a thousand. When global management consultancy McKinsey acquired Israel’s Iguazio last month (see here previously) they had examined more than 1,000 AI companies worldwide. Iguazio (McKinsey’s first Israeli acquisition) was identified as the best fit to help McKinsey significantly accelerate its AI offering.
https://nocamels.com/2023/01/mckinsey-buys-one-in-1000-israeli-ai-startup/
Exits, mergers & acquisitions to 5/2/23: US giant Dell acquired Israel’s cloud orchestration solutions startup Cloudify for up to $100 million; Israel’s OpenWeb acquired Israeli-founded proprietary audience management platform Jeeng for $100 million; Canada’s Plusgrade acquired Israel’s UpStay and opened Israeli R&D center.
Investment in Israeli startups to 5/2/23: Freightos raised $80 million (IPO); Sentra raised $30 million; NT-Tao raised $22 million; Evigence raised $18 million; BridgeWise raised $13 million; Gem Security raised $11 million; Guardz raised $10 million; Addressable raised $7.5 million; GoodOnes raised $3.5 million.
CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT & SPORT`
February in Israel. February is one of the most beautiful times of the year, as much of the country is covered in gleaming green grass after the rain. Also check out the Eilat Chamber Music Festival (8th-11th), the Sommelier Exhibition (14th-15th) and the Tel Aviv Marathon (24th).
https://www.touristisrael.com/things-to-do-in-israel-in-february/9525/
https://www.touristisrael.com/eilat-chamber-music-festival/4720/
Dogotel. (TY Hazel) Lior is a former IDF canine unit officer and a seasoned dog trainer, who uses his skills to train hundreds of pups in his Tel Aviv “Dogotel” academy. His premises include a playroom with a library and a 'poodle room' spa. He has 100+ students and prospective new entrants have to pass an entrance exam.
https://www.ynetnews.com/environment/article/h1rqjmasj
The rich history of Israeli wines. (TY UWI) Israel’s Shomron has many fine wineries, including Jordan Valley’s Ben Ami, Shiloh’s Amichai Luria, Har Bracha’s Tura Estate, Karnei Shomron’s Gat Shomron, Itamar’s Tom, Elon Moreh’s Kabir, Yitzhar’s Ben Porat, Givat Harel’s Gvaot, and Pesagot. “LeHayim!”
https://www.jns.org/up-and-coming-wines-from-samaria-and-the-jordan-valley/
THE JEWISH STATE
More homes in Jerusalem. 850 new apartments are to be built in the historic Jerusalem neighborhoods of Katamonim, Kiryat HaYovel, and Arnona. Hopefully this (and similar projects) will alleviate some of the demand for accommodation in Israel’s capital – currently home to nearly one million residents.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/jerusalem-moves-forward-with-urban-renewal-plans-in-key-neighborhoods/
Reclaim the Narrative. Hurry to register for these online series of classes provided by partners of the JNF-USA. “Israel Explained: Through the Lens of History”, by Laureen Lipsky, CEO & Founder, Taking Back the Narrative; and “Zionism Today”, by Rabbi Uri Pilichowski of Nefesh B’Nefesh.
https://www.jnf.org/events-landing-pages/conversations-on-zionism
Refugee from Nazis helped create army dog unit. 93-year-old Esther Cohen escaped to mandate Palestine in 1938. She and canine scientist Rudolphina Menzel established Haganah’s canine unit, the forerunner of the modern-day IDF Oketz Unit. The dogs were trained for guard duty, search & rescue, messengers and spying.
https://www.jns.org/a-refugee-from-the-nazis-she-helped-create-the-haganah-and-idf-canine-units/
Prayer for Israel returns from space. At the 11th Israel Space Week, Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe returned to President Herzog the glass cube that he carried to the International Space Station. It was inscribed with the Prayer for the Welfare of State of Israel instituted by Israel’s Chief Rabbi Herzog – The President’s grandfather.
https://www.jns.org/herzog-mankind-must-soar-to-new-heights-to-save-earth-from-terrifying-depths/ +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Has the time come? In my opinion it came over a year ago. +++
Time to Strike Iran's Nuclear Sites?Three events took place recently that have changed my view of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. For years now, I have answered with caution the warmongers and headline-grabbers who have gleefully touted impending Israeli airstrikes on Iran. I have stated, with reason and facts in support, that Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that it has many ways of slowing down Iran’s nuclear weapons programs short of a kinetic military strike. Why take the risk of airstrikes, which all the world will see, when you can slow down the program by other means that in addition are difficult to pin on Israel? For example: for many years, under Mossad director Meir Dagan, Israel carried out targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear weapon scientists, acts that presumably had a deterrent effect on younger scientists joining the programs. Israel collaborated with the United States in inserting computer viruses inside Iran’s uranium-enrichment plants, causing high-speed centrifuges to crash and probably explode, leading to clean-up operations and repairs that set back the program by months and possibly years. 
Israel also carried out the most audacious human intelligence operation in the history of modern espionage by locating Iran’s top secret nuclear archive in a nondescript suburb of Tehran, penetrating the building, breaking multiple bank vaults inside, and spiriting away hundreds of boxes of documents that detailed Iran’s lies to UN nuclear inspectors about its intentions. For well over a year, the Iranians had no clue that they had been penetrated -- until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the documents to the world at the UN General Assembly in New York. But good -- even great -- intelligence operations have their limits. Great intelligence could never have stopped Hitler’s blitzkrieg into Poland. Once he had the tanks and the troops and had trained them in operations, Hitler could only be met with force. Last week, we learned from Director General Raphael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran now has enough 60% enriched uranium to manufacture three or four bombs, should it choose to put that material into the final (and very short) enrichment phase to reach weapons capacity.  For months, unofficial experts, such as former IAEA inspector David Albright, have been warning that Iran was reaching such a threshold. But it’s one thing for a think tank to speculate on official information, with all its gaps. It’s quite another for the source of that information -- in this case, the IAEA director -- to make such a statement in his official capacity.
Grossi’s statement did not fall on deaf ears in Israel. Former Israeli Navy chief Vice Admiral (ret.) Eliezer “Chiney” Marom told an Israeli television network on Jan. 26 that this latest information showed that Iran had become a “threshold” nuclear weapons state. Iran has turned off IAEA surveillance cameras and Israel has limited insight into its nuclear weaponry group, he said. "And when those two will be close one to the other, the moment to jump from threshold to holding nuclear weapons will be very, very short... and therefore I think the time to attack... means in the coming year." Marom made sure his statement was crystal clear. “We have to stop this program and sooner is better than later,” he said. Also last week, the U.S. and Israel conducted their first-ever joint military exercise to test the interoperability of their air-land-sea-and intelligence capabilities, Juniper Oak 2023. While they did not explicitly demonstrate an attack on Iran, watching Israeli and U.S. fighter jets line up in delta formation behind B-52s sent a clear message to the mullahs in Tehran. (The U.S. and Israeli militaries have held Juniper Oak exercises for the past twenty years, but never on this scale and never to test interoperability). I have long been worried what the response of the Biden administration would be to an Israeli strike on Iran. The fact that the two countries carried out military exercises clearly crafted to send a message to Tehran eases those concerns, despite the ongoing love-affair of Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan with the mullahs of Tehran. Does anyone remember the policy debate following President Trump’s decision to take out Iranian terror-master Qassem Suleymani, the diabolical and charismatic head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force? The pundits were wringing their hands, and Cassandras of all sexes were bewailing the impact of Iranian regime counterstrikes. I was asked my opinion of the Iranian regime’s reaction to a (then) hypothetical U.S. strike against Suleymani, and I told my government interlocutors: hit them hard, as hard as you can, and they will do nothing. That was the lesson of Operation Praying Mantis, when in 1988 President Ronald Reagan sank one-third of the Iranian navy and attacked vital Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to Iranian aggression against international shipping. A nuclear-armed Iran is a far greater threat than the terrorist wasp that attacked us in the 1988. The time to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is now. The U.S. needs to lead the charge and ensure that it is effective. With the benefit of first-rate Israeli intelligence and deep-penetration U.S. weapons, together we can knock out Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, possibly for good. Kenneth Timmerman was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize by former Swedish deputy premier Per Ahlmark in 2006 for his work on Iran. His latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, was published by Post Hill Press. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Blinken is either blind, dumb or both. +++
As Israelis Are Murdered in Jerusalem, AFL and Its Clients Demand President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken Stop Enabling Palestinian Terrorism WASHINGTON, D.C. – America First Legal (AFL) proudly represents Congressman Ronny Jackson (TX-13), Stuart and Robbi Force, parents of West Point graduate Taylor Force murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv, and Sarri Singer, the survivor of a suicide bombing on a Jerusalem bus, in their lawsuit against President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken. Filed this past December, this lawsuit demands the U.S. government abide by the Taylor Force Act and cease certain funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which encourages and incentivizes terrorist attacks on Israelis and Americans by paying terrorists and their families for committing acts of terrorism. The need and timeliness of this lawsuit is unfortunately illustrated by the recent heinous actions committed by Palestinian terrorists. In fact, just this past week, Palestinian terrorists have increased their terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis, all with the blessing and celebration of the PA. Last Friday, a 21-year-old Palestinian terrorist shot and killed seven people and wounded at least three others as they exited a synagogue in Jerusalem after prayers in observance of Shabbat. The next morning, a 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist shot and seriously wounded a father and son outside Jerusalem’s Old City. Celebrations for these attacks with fireworks and sweets were memorialized all over the internet, including the mother of Friday night’s murderer herself handing out candy. An official in the Fatah movement, which runs the PA, praised the terrorists, announcing, “We greet and bless these heroic operations in Jerusalem by the heroes of Jerusalem.” While the PA has a long history of committing acts of terrorism, these recent attacks follow a significant increase in terrorist activities with 2022 being the greatest number since 2006. Indeed, for decades, the PA - lavishly funded by the U.S. and other Western governments - has actually paid terrorists to indiscriminately murder and maim people living in or visiting Israel. Among other things, the PA’s “Pay to Slay” program rewards terrorists and their families with cash bounties based on the number and severity of the civilian casualties they inflict. The mother of Friday night’s Palestinian murderer rejoiced at the large cash reward she is slated to receive for her son’s terrorist actions. The Biden Administration is well aware that the PA pays Palestinian terrorists to injure or kill innocent Americans and Israelis in Israel. Yet, in blatant violation of the Taylor Force Act, a federal law that prohibits the government from sending American taxpayer dollars to the PA until it stops supporting terrorism, President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have resumed payments to the PA after the Trump Administration had stopped these payments in compliance with the Taylor Force Act. The impetus of the Taylor Force Act stems from the brutal murder of U.S. Army Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and West Point graduate Taylor Force, who was in Israel while studying for his MBA when he was brutally murdered. The Palestinian Authority initiated payments from its “Martyr’s Fund” as a reward to the terrorist’s family. Thereafter, Congress passed, and President Trump signed the Taylor Force Act. The Act prohibits U.S. economic assistance that directly benefits the Palestinian Authority unless and until the Secretary of State certifies the PA has terminated Pay to Slay, revoked all of its laws, proclamations, and practices paying terrorists and their families, disavowed terrorism, and has taken active steps to stop it. Under President Trump, the U.S. government obeyed the law. President Biden, however, has resumed payments, and the U.S. government has lawlessly transferred hundreds of millions U.S. taxpayer dollars that directly benefit the Palestinian Authority. President Biden and Secretary Blinken are violating the law and facilitating the PA’s violent extremism and virulent, eliminationist antisemitism. AFL is proud to represent these plaintiffs in its lawsuit to stop the Biden Administration from defying federal law. Statement from America First Legal Senior Counselor Reed D. Rubinstein: “Last Sabbath, seven innocent people were murdered at their house of worship by a Palestinian terrorist. In response to this news, tens of thousands of Palestinians took to the streets to hand out candy and “celebrate” the heinous crime, just as they did after 9/11. Violating both the letter and spirit of the Taylor Force Act, the Biden Administration has given over a billion U.S. taxpayer dollars to benefit the Palestinian Authority knowing full well that this money means more terror, more corruption, and more death. As the Palestinians brag about the cash bounties paid for each dead and wounded Israeli, Biden merely winks, and writes them another massive check,” said Reed Rubinstein. Statement from Sarri Singer: “I have no words for the recent wave of attacks this past weekend where innocent Israeli civilians were murdered including a 14-year-old boy attending synagogue services Friday night. There is no doubt the recent foreign aid of US taxpayers' money sent by the Biden administration to the PA or its instrumentalities enables the PA’s ‘Pay for Slay’ program which further incentivizes this current wave of attacks. The blood of innocent civilians is on the hands of every government sending foreign aid which is supposed to be used to assist the Palestinian people but instead goes to indoctrinating young people and encouraging them to carry out terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis like the 13-year-old terrorist who shot at civilians walking home from synagogue on Saturday morning this past weekend,” said Sarri Singer. Statement from Stuart and Robbi Force: “My wife and I continue to be very upset about the murderous actions by Palestinian terrorists in Israel, with the most recent victims being the death of seven innocent people and five injured as they were leaving synagogue this past Friday night in Jerusalem, followed by the attempted murder of a father and son by a 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist the next morning. The Taylor Force Act, named after our son, was passed by Congress and signed by President Trump to stop this Pay to Slay. Yet the Biden Administration has resumed payments to the PA notwithstanding its Pay to Slay program. Until the maiming and murder of innocents stops, there will be no hope for peace. And, until the Biden Administration stops facilitating Palestinian terrorism, the PA has no reason to stop its reprehensible behavior. For the sake of the thousands horrifically impacted now and in the future, Robbi and I call upon President Biden to stop sending fungible taxpayer dollars to the PA that will end up funding terrorism,” said Stuart Force. Statement from U.S. Congressman Ronny Jackson (TX-13): “I am deeply concerned that the Biden administration is signing-off on hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, which are being used to help finance violence against Israel. The recent terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli families are a deeply disturbing example of the devastation caused by Biden’s failed foreign policy. Biden is actively stabbing our greatest ally in the back and Democrats are ecstatic. This lawsuit aims to compel the Biden administration to act in accordance with the laws that are on the books, to stem the flow of funds from the White House to radical Islamic terrorists. Together, we will hold this administration accountable and fight to bring a permanent end to the pay-to-slay program. Let’s be clear: Israel has the right to exist in security, free from violent assault, and the United States should do everything we can to uphold that right and oppose all who threaten it,” said Congressman Jackson. Read the lawsuit here. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Lamentably most Jews are too cowed to act. +++ Ilhan Omar Blames Her Removal From Foreign Affairs Committee On The Jews BabylonBee.com WASHINGTON, D.C. — After being removed from the Foreign Affairs Committee over anti-semitic remarks, Representative Ilhan Omar laid the blame on a secret cabal of Jews working against her. "They say I'm being removed for antisemitism, which is the exact sort of excuse you'd expect from a power-hungry Jewish cabal," cried Ms. Omar. "This is all the Jews' fault." Democrats screamed in fury at the announcement of Ms. Omar's removal, enraged that Republicans refused to give open hatred of the Jewish people a pass. "If she were white, that would be one thing - but she's a Muslim woman of color! They're allowed to hate the Jews!" shouted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, weeping. "This is like January 6 all over again!" Republicans pointed out that Marjorie Taylor-Greene had been similarly kicked off committees for anti-semitic remarks, but Democrats reminded them that Ms. Greene is very white. As a token of compromise, McCarthy offered to allow Ms. Omar to remain on the Foreign Affairs Committee if she would say out loud one nice thing about the Jewish people. Ms. Omar declined, saying the offer sounded like a "Jewish trick". At publishing time, Ms. Omar had reportedly invited Ye to come watch Schindler's List with her for a little pick-me-up. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ ZOA: Israel’s Reasonable Judicial Reform Proposals Are Good for Democracy, the Rule of Law and the Economy By Morton A. Klein and Elizabeth Berney, Esq. The Left has been screaming that the new Israeli government’s judicial reform proposals are “extreme” and “the end of democracy.” However, honest examination reveals that the Israeli Supreme Court has extraordinary, autocratic, unchecked power; and that reform is desperately needed, and will be good for democracy, the rule of law and Israel’s economy. Democracy is rule “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Israeli and U.S. legislatures and executives are democratically elected and answerable to the public.But U.S. and Israeli judicial systems are vastly different, starting with judicial selection. The U.S. public selects judges through its democratically elected representatives: The president nominates new justices; the Senate decides whether to confirm them; and Congress has the power to impeach Justices. By contrast, in Israel, the Supreme Court self-selects and self-ousts its own justices. The Court has the controlling vote and veto on a 9-person “judicial selection committee” that selects new judges. The Knesset has no power to impeach justices. Justices can only be removed by the same “judicial selection committee” controlled by the Israeli Supreme Court, or by a disciplinary court appointed by the Israeli Supreme Court. The Israeli Supreme Court’s “self-selection” and continuing control over the Court’s composition has enabled the Court to seize and maintain enormous, unchecked power. Thus, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested adopting a democratic U.S.-style judicial selection process. ZOA previously made the same sensible suggestion. Promoting democratic judicial selection is surely not an “extreme” position. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Shake Down Artist receives Fleece Prize!!! +++ Al Sharpton, Lionized REVIEW: 'Loudmouth' By Andrew Stiles It probably would be possible to make a good documentary about Al Sharpton, one that offered some nuanced insight into the life of a genuinely bizarre man, the former child preacher from the streets of Brooklyn, mentored by the likes of Jesse Jackson and James Brown, who would go on to become one of the most recognizable and expensively dressed demagogues of his generation. That film would be nothing like Loudmouth, the John Legend-produced Sharpton documentary available now (for purchase, obviously) on iTunes and Amazon Video after a limited run in theaters and a star-studded world premiere at last year's Tribeca Film Festival. Robert De Niro, the Hollywood deadbeat and Democratic activist, reportedly introduced the film by describing its subject as "so soft-spoken and so reasonable." Attendees who knew (or knew of) Sharpton before his 21st century rebrand laughed out loud, but the actor wasn't joking. This dichotomy reveals the extent to which Sharpton has succeeded in transforming himself into a respected member of the cultural establishment. The megaphone-wielding, morbidly obese race hustler marching the streets of New York in garish track suits while being denounced by the NAACP has blossomed into a laid-back, alarmingly emaciated race hustler cruising the streets of New York in the back of a chauffeured SUV en route to his private cigar club wearing immaculately tailored (but still garish) pinstripes, fielding calls from leading Democrats and prepping for his show on MSNBC. Loudmouth attempts to chronicle this evolution using archival clips from his rabble-rousing exploits in the 1980s, when Sharpton honed his talent for appearing on television during moments of racial strife. These clips are interspersed with footage from the summer of racial unrest in 2020 and a running commentary from Sharpton, the only person interviewed for the film. Seated in a massive library, surrounded by leather-bound books and rich mahogany, Sharpton positions himself alongside MLK in the history of the civil rights movement. They were both indicted for tax fraud, he explains. Q.E.D. It is, quite literally, a one-sided account that warrants far more scrutiny than the filmmakers were either willing or permitted to allow. Though we see a few instances of fat Sharpton ranting about "Jews!" and the "Hallacast," his instigating role in the Crown Heights riot (1991), the worst outburst of anti-Semitic violence in modern American history, is never discussed. His deplorable handling of the Tawana Brawley rape hoax (1987) is downplayed as the story of "a young lady who made an accusation" and a passionate young activist who believed she "deserved a day in court." That's one way of putting it. In a display of the wisdom one has come to expect from skinny Sharpton's low-rated television show and numerous guest appearances on Morning Joe, he explains that if the jury in the O.J. Simpson trial could acquit an obvious murderer, the grand jury's conclusion in the Brawley case—that she was not kidnapped and gang raped by a racist police officer and county prosecutor with ties to the Mafia and Irish terrorists—might also be wrong. Only Al Sharpton, a man of immeasurable capacity for self-promotion, could say something so absurd with a straight face. He must have been relatively confident the film would not discuss the successful defamation case against him, the prominent black leaders who denounced his conduct, and the former confidant who told the New York Times that Sharpton and Brawley's attorneys "knew they had no evidence" but were determined to exploit the publicity to become, in Sharpton's words, "the biggest n—s in New York." The film's opening sequence includes a line that could be seen as an attempt to justify this revisionist narrative. "The history of the lion and the hunter would look a lot different if the lion could read and write," Sharpton says. "The reason the hunter always comes off as glorious is he's the one that writes the story." It's not entirely clear if the filmmakers included this line out of sincerity, irony, or a mixture of both. One scene in particular suggests they are not oblivious to Sharpton's contradictory persona. It's June 2, 2020, at the height of the violent unrest following the murder of George Floyd. Sharpton is speaking at a press conference in New York and takes a moment to address the unsavory elements of the mass protests. "If you are one that is a looter, don't act like you are an activist," he says. "Because an activist goes for causes and justice, not for designer shoes." Cut to Sharpton in his chauffeured SUV, a close up on his immaculately pressed pocket square. What happens next is another example of how the legacy Sharpton envisions for himself is at odds with the legacy he has earned. He takes a call from Senator Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and stresses the need for "legislative change" in addition to the performative outrage he once so proudly pioneered. (Remember all the celebrities reading White Fragility and posting black squares on their Instagram accounts?) Schumer responds by boasting about the "really strong" speech he gave denouncing President Donald Trump. This doesn't appear in the film, but several days after that conversation Schumer and his fellow Democratic leaders demonstrated their own knack for appearing on television during moments of racial strife by donning kente cloths and inviting journalists to observe them kneeling in silence on the floor of Emancipation Hall. In October 2020, the Loudmouth film crew followed Sharpton as he celebrated his 65th birthday at a celebrity-packed gala in the New York Public Library. The event was co-chaired by Tanya Lombard, head of Multicultural Engagement and Strategic Alliances at AT&T, graduate of Harvard Business School, member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and self-described "Transformational Change Agent"—an example of how, like Sharpton himself, the so-called racial justice movement has graduated from the streets to the C-Suites. Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, was among the notable figures who took the stage to laud the guest of honor. "I spent my entire career working in media," he says. "I always tell people, 'If you want to understand the media world and how it's changed, you follow the life of Reverend Al Sharpton.'" Viewers who know anything at all about Al Sharpton or the media world will laugh out loud. He wasn't joking. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is what I have been talking and writing about for over a year. Simplistically speaking, my friend and his two MIT PHD associates have raised over 2 billion dollars and are building a plant to prove their laboratory success is viable. Their process heats hydrogen, with special magnets, to the degree of the sun's heat and produce more energy than they use to create power. We are talking about the mid 2030's. I own some shares in ENPHASE. +++
"Future Fuel" will unleash $11 Trillion Wave of Wealth Dear Reader, A brand new type of fuel has just been created that could put Tesla out of business. Forbes, CNN, and Nature Magazine are calling it the "fuel of the future." And this "Future Fuel" is set to unleash an energy revolution that Goldman Sachs estimates will be worth $11.7 trillion. That's 10X bigger than the electric battery market. Don't forget – Tesla has returned 41,405% to shareholders over the last 10 years. But the amount of wealth up for grabs from the "Future Fuel" revolution could put those returns to shame. That's why billionaires like David Shaw and Jeff Yass are pouring hundreds of millions of their own money into this "Future Fuel." And top Tesla executives are fleeing the company en masse in order to take part in the "Future Fuel" revolution. They know what's coming. They know that "Future Fuel" will mint an entire new class of millionaires – maybe even billionaires. And early investors will make an absolute fortune All the details of the "Future Fuel" revolution are right here.
See how you could take part in this historic wave of wealth today. Read More >> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is also something I have been talking and writing about for decades. I warned the eventual rise in debt and the rate of interest on that debt would reach levels that could cause serious financial pain. We are now there. Not only does it cause financial pain but it puts our nation at military risk as China increases it's military competence just as we are squeezed and challenged to meet their's. Interest on our debt now reaches an annual rate of 1/2 trillion and our debt exceeds the nation's GDP. +++
The Hard Reality of a Debt-Ceiling Showdown The Editorial Board The U.S. will reach its $31.4 trillion limit on gross federal debt on Thursday, and Treasury is resorting to special measures that on present revenue trend can delay default into the spring. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has promised his Members he won’t move to raise the limit without spending concessions from President Biden. But Mr. Biden says he won’t negotiate at all over the debt limit. Something or someone has to give because the debt limit has to be raised. The U.S. has already borrowed and spent the money, and debt held by the public is a contract. Nobody sane in Washington wants to be blamed for triggering a default, and the bond market ructions it would cause, which means it almost certainly won’t happen Republicans are right to want to stop the reckless spending trends of the last four years. U.S. debt held by the public is now about 100% of GDP, up from 39.2% as recently as 2008 and 77.6% in 2018. The cost of financing that debt is rising fast along with interest rates, and interest on the debt will take up an increasingly large share of federal revenue. Priorities like national defense will be squeezed. Spendthrifts should pay their debts, but they should also have their credit card pulled, or at least limited, so they can’t keep piling up unpaid bills. This is the sensible principle that most of Washington has abandoned in recent years. It’s good for the country that someone in power wants to rein it in. The problem is that the House GOP faces an imbalance of political forces. Their majority is only five, which will shrink to four if Rep. George Santos is forced to resign. Democrats hold the Senate and the White House. All of Wall Street, bond investors, the credit-rating agencies and the financial world will be warning of debt-limit doom. The press will side as usual with the Democrats. Maintaining GOP unity as the political pressure builds will make the vote for Speaker look easy. Republicans used the debt limit as leverage to negotiate a spending limit on non-entitlement spending in 2011 with Barack Obama. Annual caps and the threat of automatic cuts caused outlays to fall as a share of GDP for several years. But the cost was high because defense and domestic social-welfare spending were both capped. Entitlements were exempt as the two sides agreed to negotiate reforms. But Mr. Obama had no real intention of doing so, and neither does Mr. Biden, whose transparent strategy is to portray the House GOP as MAGA radicals. Military readiness suffered greatly until Republicans began to trade defense increases for social-welfare increases during the late Obama and Trump years. The world is a more dangerous place now, with Russia invading Ukraine, China threatening Taiwan, Iran getting closer to a nuclear weapon, and jihadists far from defeated. A sequester deal like the one in 2011 would be a dangerous gift to U.S. adversaries. One emerging GOP strategy would be to pass a bill that guarantees against default by prioritizing tax revenue for debt repayment. It would also protect Medicare and Social Security payments and some vital federal services. That would leave other domestic accounts and perhaps non-essential defense spending to be unfunded until a debt deal is reached. This beats taking debt default as a hostage, but it still carries political risks as Democrats highlight what isn’t funded. All of which means Republicans will have to pick their spending targets carefully, explain their goals in reasonable terms so they don’t look like they want a default, and then sell this to the public as a united team. The worst result would be for Republicans to talk tough for months, only to splinter in a rout at the end, and be forced to turn the House floor over to Democrats to raise the debt limit with nothing to show for it. Opportunists on the right would then cry “sellout,” even if they had insisted on demands that were unachievable. This is what Democrats expect to happen, which is why they don’t think they need to negotiate. If Republicans want to use the debt limit as leverage, they need a strategy for how this showdown ends, not merely how it begins. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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