a) Northern snow and cold do effect the battery and sitting in a freezing car is no fun.
b) Are there issues for police responding to northern cold temperatures as well?
Congress has seldom landed a plane without crashing. I suspect Powell's Fed will do no better, maybe worse, as they seek to curb inflation while avoiding a recession, or a more severe collapse.
The energy price surge could have been avoided but Biden neither understands human behaviour nor it's impact on shaping economics. He is a creature of government having never left the false warmth of the cocoon.
Dangerous Points of divergence:
6 issues stoking tensions between the US and Israel
The Biden and Bennett administrations have conflicting interests regarding Iran, settlements, the Jerusalem consulate, Israeli spyware and China.
“Behind closed doors” is a phrase that crops up a lot in conversation with senior US and Israeli officials these days. That’s the place both sides want to settle disagreements.
So far, that strategy has worked to repair the structure of the diplomatic relationship between US Democrats and the Israeli government, frayed by years of open and sometimes heated contentiousness.
Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu in particular repeatedly clashed in public. But despite their ideological differences on paper, President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have projected a convivial and united front.
“Biden, I think it’s visceral with him, given his historic commitment to Israel, and also not wanting a repeat of the Obama years,” said David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank with ties to both the US and Israeli governments. “And with Bennett and Lapid, they don’t want to repeat the Netanyahu years.”
Still, an array of issues have begun to swirl over the past several months that threaten the current calm.
Bennett has allowed for the construction of thousands of new settler homes. Biden is pushing to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem, formerly the principal venue for US-Palestinian relations. Last month the United States sanctioned two Israeli spyware companies.
Then there is the ongoing strife over Iran’s nuclear program, a point of contention that those who analyze the US-Israel relationship say could eventually blow the doors wide open.
“The Iran issue is where the two parties don’t control the developments,” Makovsky said. “And that’s where Israel is concerned.”
Here are the issues that could drive a wedge between the two countries.
IRAN
This week talks on what conditions the United States wants to see before reentering the Iran deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, resume in Vienna. The JCPOA swaps sanctions relief for Iran rolling back its nuclear program.
Former President Donald Trump, with Netanyahu’s encouragement, exited the deal in 2018, reimposing suspended sanctions and adding hundreds of new ones. Iran retaliated, suspending some of its compliance with the deal.
Biden campaigned on reentering the deal brokered in 2015, when he was vice president, seeing it as the best means of stopping a nuclear weapon. Bennett and Lapid are skeptical but have said they are willing to wait and see if Biden negotiates better terms with Iran.
Israeli officials have said they believe Iran is weeks away from nuclear weapons capability; the country is enriching uranium to 60% purity, perilously close to the 90% needed for weaponization. This week, Axios reported, Israel warned the United States that Iran is on the verge of 90% enrichment.
Makovsky said what Iran does this week could set off any number of calculations from the United States and Israel that could lead to open confrontation between the allies.
“I think the US-Israel relationship will be tested in terms of how each side responds to this uncertainty,” Makovsky said.
SETTLEMENTS
The call that Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz took Oct. 26 was the first of its kind in almost five years: There was a US secretary of state on the line, livid about the announcement that week that Israel had greenlighted more than 3,000 new units in the West Bank. Some were located in “E1,” the corridor that separates the Maaleh Adumim settlement from Jerusalem, and which Palestinians say is critical to the existence of a viable Palestinian state — the Biden administration’s favored outcome to the decades-long conflict.
An anonymous Israeli aide described the call by saying “The US gave us a yellow card,” Axios reported. In soccer, a yellow card is a strong warning over conduct handed from a referee to a player; two yellow cards in one game equals an ejection.
In other words, Blinken’s dressing down was just a warning, not a signal of a new status quo in US-Israel relations.
PALESTINIAN NGOS
Last month, Gantz designated six leading Palestinian human rights organizations operating in the West Bank as terrorist groups. The designation would allow Israel’s government to shut the groups down, although it’s not yet clear if the government has taken those steps.
Gantz argued that the NGOs are affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated by the State Department as a terrorist group. But the international condemnation of the move was swift.
The Biden administration also said it was caught off-guard by the designation. Anonymous Israeli officials countered that the United States was forewarned and that intelligence about the groups had been shared. European officials have said the intelligence they have seen is not persuasive.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, has signaled that the Biden administration remains less than convinced by whatever intelligence Israel was proferring. She has made a point of expressing support for Palestinian NGOs.
“This week, I had the chance to meet with civil society leaders in Ramallah,” Thomas-Greenfield said on Twitter on Nov. 20 after a visit to Israel and the West Bank. “I was inspired by their work to advance democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity for the Palestinian people. We support Palestinian NGOs’ role monitoring human rights abuses wherever they occur.”
On Tuesday, Thomas-Greenfield told the United Nations Security Council that settler attacks created a “serious security situation” for Palestinians and said she had raised it with Israeli officials.
The National quoted her as saying she had heard of “Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians, ransacking homes and destroying property in the West Bank” and that “this is an issue that I discussed extensively with Israeli counterparts.”
THE JERUSALEM CONSULATE
Biden campaigned on reopening the US consulate in Jerusalem, which was the site of US-Palestinian relations until Trump closed it in 2019. Both Bennett and Lapid, Israel’s more centrist foreign minister who is slated to rotate into the prime minister role in 2023, have said that can’t happen.
The Biden administration says it is determined to make good on the pledge, which the president sees as key to reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks toward a two-state outcome.
Lapid has sought to persuade his counterpart Antony Blinken that forcing the issue could endanger the Bennett-Lapid government.
That’s because there’s no way the consulate could reopen without explicit Israeli approval, and giving that approval would put the Bennett government in the position of acknowledging a Palestinian claim to the city — the third rail in Israeli politics.
The old consulate predated Israel’s existence, which meant that until Trump closed it, there was no need to seek Israel’s approval for its ongoing function. That’s no longer the case, according to Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace think tank, who from 1992-1994 was a US diplomat at the consulate.
“A diplomatic mission operates as, literally, an island of foreign sovereignty within the territory of the host country, staffed by foreign diplomats who (for the most part) enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the host government,” Friedman wrote last month in her weekly roundup of congressional action related to the Middle East. “No nation can simply rent/buy a property in a foreign country and declare it, unilaterally, under their own country’s sovereignty. The host country must consent to giving up its sovereignty to a foreign nation.”
Israeli officials say that they are seeking a way out that would save face for both sides, perhaps by opening a consulate in an area of the West Bank not seen as Jerusalem.
SPYWARE
The Biden administration this month sanctioned two Israeli spyware companies, NSO group and Candira, saying that repressive governments are using the tools to “threaten the rules-based international order.” Apple sued NSO for selling its cell phone hacking spyware to governments that used it to spy on activists and journalists.
Israel’s Defense Ministry must approve exports of Israeli security technology, and Biden officials have made clear they want answers. Nevertheless, the Biden administration says no actions against Israel’s government are forthcoming.
“We look forward to further discussions with the government of Israel about ensuring that these companies’ products are not used to target human rights defenders, journalists and others who shouldn’t be targeted,” said Ned Price, a State Department spokesman.
CHINA
One issue that has simmered over from the Trump to the Biden administrations: Israel’s increasing trade with China.
Like Trump, Biden is wary of what he sees as China’s increased belligerency and is set on confronting the country. As of now, he is considering a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Olympics in Beijing.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations made it clear to Israel that it was expected as an ally to roll back its ties with China, especially in areas of infrastructure that risk exposing US technology.
But Israel has yet to alter its course. In October, Israel refused to sign a UN statement condemning China’s treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority group in China that has been forced into “re-education camps,” which some have likened to concentration camps.
China was perhaps the most sensitive issue at a meeting between Lapid and Blinken in October.
“The importance of China to Israel’s economy is very substantial, and we have to find a way to discuss this subject in a way that does not harm Israel’s interests,” an official close to Lapid said at the time.
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The Left are never Right but they are always destructive and why do they not engage in comparable rampages during a flu epidemic?
A Brief Guide To Leftist Destruction
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.
This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left’s war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: “Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?”
Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn’t build anything (other than government).
In support of that observation, here is a list of many of the things the Left ruins and often destroys.
No. 1: Art.
The Left long ago conquered the art world. Consequently, since the 20th century, most modern art has been ugly, meaningless and nihilistic – the opposite of what Western art had always been.
No. 2: Music.
What the Left did to the eyes in art, it did to the ears in music. As a part-time conductor, I can say with some knowledge that since the invention of atonal music (an oxymoron if there ever was one), most contemporary classical music is also ugly, meaningless and uninspiring. The people who like such music are almost all music critics and, of course, music professors. Most lovers of classical music never listen to the stuff.
No. 3: Journalism.
Journalists were once highly respected. Unless a piece was listed as “opinion,” people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist’s ability, as truthful a report as possible: “just the facts.” Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth. The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other “news” outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union: to transmit the party line.
No. 4: Colleges and universities.
The Left has destroyed universities as places of learning devoted to seeking truth and therefore welcoming, even cultivating, diverse opinions. Virtually every left-wing idea was born at a university.
No. 5: High schools and elementary schools.
Most schools in America – private as much as public – teach children that America is systemically racist and that they are not born male or female, but at a later age will choose whether to be one or the other – or neither. And increasingly, American educational institutions deny objective truth exists, even in mathematics.
No. 6: Happiness.
You can meet happy and unhappy liberals and happy and unhappy conservatives, but you are unlikely to ever meet a happy leftist. The only question is whether the unhappy gravitate to leftism or whether leftism makes people unhappy. Both are probably true.
No. 7: The family.
People on the Left increasingly choose not to get married and not to have children – in other words, not to make families. And their welfare policies serve to disincentivize the creation of families.
No. 8: Women.
The rates of depression among young people, especially young women, are higher than ever recorded in American history. One reason is that for half a century, women have been told, as one famous feminist saw put it, “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” But the fact is that the vast majority of (heterosexual) women need a man to be fulfilled, just as the vast majority of (heterosexual) men need a woman to be fulfilled.
No. 9: Childhood.
One reason young people on the Left don’t want children is that the Left doesn’t particularly like children. The teachers unions’ adamant refusal to open schools for over a year has opened many Americans’ eyes to this fact. So has the war on children’s innocence – like prematurely talking to them about sex and having schools introduce them to drag queens from the age of five.
No. 10: Black life.
Like the Democratic Party historically, the left is racist. And it is so in precisely the way the word was always used – the Left believes in black inferiority. That is why leftists advocate lowering standards for blacks. That is why they advocate policies that always result in more blacks dying at the hands of other blacks. That is why they believe the state must take care of blacks more than any other group. That is why left-wing policies, from the Great Society to today, have destroyed so much of black life, especially its family life – and they don’t care.
No. 11: Black-white relations.
According to polls and according to just about every American who remembers life from about a decade ago, black-white relations were far superior with each other then and both groups were optimistic about relations other continuing to improve. The Left shattered that with its anti-white, “America is systemically racist” propaganda shouted from almost every major media and relentlessly pushed in almost every school and big business. The Left knows that when blacks and whites feel good about one another, the Left loses its appeal and loses elections.
No. 12: The military.
As the military gets more and more woke – recall the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying before Congress about the need to teach the military about white racism – soldier morale declines.
No. 13: Late-night television.
Americans who remember the titans of late-night comedy – Johnny Carson and Jay Leno – remember how their sole aim was to bring some smiles and laughter to Americans before they went to sleep. Few people had any inkling of the political views of either host. That is now history. The Left has destroyed late night comedy. It now consists of little more than angry rants against conservatives.
No. 14: Superman.
Superman was an iconic American hero. Thanks to the Left, he is no more. About a decade ago, Superman stood in front of the United Nations to announce he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a “citizen of the world.” And the Left has now changed his motto from “Truth, Justice, and the American way” to “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow.”
No. 15: Free speech.
Never before has freedom of speech been threatened as it is today. As has been true since the communist revolution in Russia, everywhere the Left has gained power – from Russia in 1917 to the university and social media today – it has suppressed free speech. There is no exception.
No. 16: Sports.
Until last year, sports was a great American unifier. It was one place Americans could go and, leaving politics behind, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican could root for the same team. No longer. The Left has ruined it by radically politicizing baseball, football and basketball.
The great American tragedy is just about every liberal knows the above is true, but nearly everyone will still vote for the Left.
AND:
Looters raid San Jose jewelry store as California smash-and-grab wave continues
By Jesse O’Neill
A gang of masked goons smashed up and robbed a San Jose jewelry store Thursday afternoon, the latest smash-and-grab raid to hit a business in California.
Four suspects entered the Quick Service Jewelry Design in the Eastridge Mall and used hammers to bash display cases before fleeing with jewels, according to police.
The thieves eluded authorities, and the incident did not cause any injuries, cops said.
Two weeks ago, a flash mob raided a San Francisco-area Nordstrom, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars of goods. Days later, up to 40 thieves stormed into a Louis Vuitton store across from San Francisco’s Union Square.
In recent weeks Los Angeles-area looters swiped $25,000 in high-end goods after attacking a security guard with bear spray, and went on a rampage at a department store.
Other similar large-scale thefts have occurred in Chicago as well.
Units are currently investigating a smash and grab robbery that occurred at the “Quick Service Jewelry Design” store located within the Eastridge mall.
4 masked suspects entered the business and smashed display cases with hammers. Several items were taken.
The incidents are believed to be part of a network that recruits young people to steal items to be sold for profit online.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki asserted Thursday that the COVID-19 pandemic was “a root cause” of the crimes.
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