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THE NEW YEAR BEGINS JUST AS IT FINISHED.OUR BORDERS ARE A SIEVE, OUR STREETS ARE FLOODED WITH DRUGS AND THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE BRAVE IS A THING OF THE PAST.
FINALLY, NO ONE IN AMERICA WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE. IT IS FAR MORE PROFITABLE TO ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT TO SUBSIDIZE OUR EVERY 'DESIRE' WHICH HAS NOW BECOME AN ENTITLEMENT. JOBS ARE PLENTIFUL BUT NOT WORKERS.
Where the Netanyahu government differs from its predecessor - INN
MEANWHILE, THE OPPOSITION PARTY IS IN DISSARAY AND IS PREPARED TO INVESTIGATE THE GENESIS OF ALL OF THE ABOVE AND THE PROSPECT THAT ANYONE CARES IS QUESTIONABLE BECAUSE THE IMPACT OF A SOUR ECONOMY UNDERCUTS THE FOCUSED ATTTENTION OF MOST CITIZENS WHO ARE BEING HURT BY INFLATION.
EVEN MY GENERALLY UPBEAT WIFE BELIEVES NO ONE CARES ANY LONGER AND THEIR ATTITUDE IS ONE OF "SO WHAT, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE."
THE STOCK MARKET IS CONFUSED AND HELD HOSTAGE BY A POTENTIAL RECESSION BECAUSE THE FED COULD OVERSTAY RAISING INTEREST RATES AND UNDERCUT THE ECONOMY WHICH HAS BEEN DISRUPTED BY POOR GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND AN OVER REACTION TO COVID.
IF THE ABOVE IS NOT ENOUGH, I CAN THROW IN THE FACT THAT RUSSIA IS AT WAR WITH IT'S NEIGHBOR, N KOREA CONTINUES AS AN IRRITANT, CHINA IS PREPARING TO DOMINATE THE WORLD COMMERCIALLYAND MILTARILY AND IRAN IS AN INFERNO OF CITIZEN REBELLIOUSNESS.
ANOTHER "DOWNER" BONUS IS A PIPSQUEAK NAMED SAM BANKMAN-FRIED WHO JUST BLEW BILLIONS OF INVESTOR MONEY ON QUESTIONABLE POLITICAL CONTRIBUTIONS AND HIGH LIVING FRAUDULENT ACTIVITIES.
AS FOR YOURS TRULY, THE PERENIAL PESSIMIST, I AM ACTUALLY UPBEAT BECAUSE IT PROBABLY CANNOT GET MUCH WORSE, THE MARKET IS BEARISH AND SMART INVESTORS GENERALLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES WHEN THE ATMOSPHERE IS MOST GLUM AND UNCERTAIN.
EVEN IN THE WORST OF MARKETS, CERTAIN SEGMENTS OFFER OPPORTUNITIES. MY CURRENT PREFERENCES ARE SMALL CAP STOCKS WITH SOLID EARNINGS AND FREE CASH FLOWSAND STOCKS THAT ARE ENERGY AND HEALTHCARE RELATED. I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF WE ENDURE A MILD RECESSION, PERHAPS ANOTHER LEG DOWN YET, A SOLID RALLY BEFORE JANUARY IS BEHIND US.
BUT THEN WHAT DO I KNOW AND TIME ALWAYS TELLS.
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House Republicans Plan a Committee on Censors and Snoops
Tentatively called the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, it would look into abuses by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies.
BY Kimberley A. Strassel
It takes a fair amount of malfeasance to land a new congressional committee. Congratulations to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department and other government censors and snoops.
Sources tell me that House Republicans plan to set up a panel under the House Judiciary Committee, tentatively called the “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.” Such a panel was among the demands of some GOP holdouts to Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker. The Republican leader has publicly expressed his support for the subcommittee’s creation, which hinges on the rebels’ willingness to join the rest of their conference and back him in next Tuesday’s vote.
The committee’s title is a recognition that the recent revelations about government meddling in speech and politics go beyond the FBI. There’s plenty yet to discover about the bureau’s sordid Russia-collusion hoax, its duping of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and its efforts to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story. And a recent batch of Twitter files from journalist Matt Taibbi includes documents showing a shocking intimacy between the FBI and Twitter as they policed online speech.
But files have also shown the FBI was facilitating censorship requests from other parts of government. Add to this other disturbing government moves to use its power to silence or track citizens, whether it be Attorney General Merrick Garland’s directive to the FBI and U.S. attorneys to probe parents (after the National School Board Association suggested they might be domestic terrorists) or the Department of Homeland Security’s plans to create a Disinformation Governance Board.
The subcommittee’s proposed charter is a recognition that Congress hasn’t kept pace with government’s potential to abuse new technology or to get creative with existing laws. I’m told the panel—in addition to shining a light on past and continuing misbehavior—will take a look at how agencies work with each other and with the private sector to collect information on Americans. It’ll evaluate what powers Congress has given the executive branch; whether that was a good idea; and whether agency actions conform with the Constitution, laws enacted by Congress, and ethical standards.
The panel’s designation as a subcommittee is designed to allow Republicans to make changes if necessary. Stand-alone select committees lack the power to legislate. A new subcommittee would begin with both the resources of the Judiciary Committee and the ability to work with other committees of jurisdiction on any reforms.
The biggest merit of a committee remains transparency—and accountability—and good for Republicans for seeking to provide it. The Twitter files are an immense public service, cracking open entire categories of bad behavior. Yet the individual threads have a piecemeal feel and require the public to trust claims based on unnamed employees or unpublished documents. A new committee can use subpoenas and testimony to flesh out these story lines.
Likewise it can illuminate the FBI misdeeds exposed by special counsel John Durham and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Both have done stellar work but faced limitations. Mr. Horowitz was constrained by the discrete topic of his probe—FBI abuse of the FISA court. Mr. Durham was hemmed in by his decision to indict targets for lying to the feds—which required him too often to paint the FBI as dupes. Congress now has dozens of lines for fuller inquiry.
The risk of the committee is that—like the 1975 Church Committee, which some in the GOP are unwisely citing as a model—it results in overreach. Republicans are increasingly debating “structural” FBI change—and that deserves a look. But the FBI mess is fundamentally a political failure. Don’t tell James Comey, but the bureau reports to the Justice Department, which in the Obama years did nothing to rein Mr. Comey in. Rod Rosenstein, Donald Trump’s deputy attorney general, dodged clean-up by farming out the collusion hoax to special counsel Robert Mueller, who avoided addressing the FBI’s culpability. Clearly spelling out these abdications of duty could go a long way to avoiding a repeat.
Memories are short, but Republicans might recall that the Church Committee did far more harm than good. It exposed a few dumb Central Intelligence Agency plots, but at the cost of allowing the left to attack and undermine the U.S. intelligence mission in ways that weakened our capabilities. The committee’s ill-considered recommendations also landed us with the FISA court, which dilutes accountability by serving as an FBI rubber stamp. Today’s risk is that a right-left coalition teams up to gut necessary counterintelligence tools, to reorient agency missions willy-nilly, or to layer poorly conceived “checks” on the FISA court or FBI that don’t stop abuses but dilute accountability further.
The nation needs a GOP Congress to get to the bottom of government abuse, but it also needs lawmakers who take that duty on soberly, with an eye to more than headlines. Here’s hoping.
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The democratic will of the voters produced a historic government
Not only does Netanyahu’s government aspire to bring Israel four years of much-needed electoral stability, it will also focus on fixing critical components of Israel’s political system and careful liberal-traditional balance, to ensure the Jewish state is not once again thrown into chaos by destabilizing progressive forces
By Alex Traiman, ISRAEL HAYOM
Israel inducted a historic right-wing government Thursday, led by three-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s return to power and the formation of a strong right-wing government is a tremendous achievement for a nation that has increasingly turned towards the right-wing values of strong security and protecting the Jewish character of the state.
The 64-member Likud-led coalition, joined by Netanyahu’s loyal right-wing and religious allies, puts to bed years of electoral instability wrought by politicians who attempted to will Israel’s longest-serving prime minister out of power. Ultimately it was the voters themselves who tired of prosecutorial and political tricks aimed at removing Netanyahu from office.
In November, the Israeli voters spoke out in resounding fashion, with over 70% voter participation during a fifth consecutive election, to send the destabilizing forces a powerful message: that Israel is overwhelmingly a proud, right-wing, nationalist country.
The series of five elections had brought the Israeli electoral system to a breaking point. Ending the political standoff proved to be a battle of wills.
The will of a desperate opposition about to be relegated to the backbenches of political irrelevance: definitely not. The will of Israeli media who have colluded for the last several years with Israel’s political left: not a chance. The will of a heavily politicized prosecution and judiciary, hell-bent on removing Netanyahu if the voters wouldn’t: not even close.
The installation of Israel’s right-wing government is not the will of Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir or any other member of Israel’s expanded political realms. Rather, it is the will of the voters and democracy at its best. It is the will of a voting public that has had its right-wing leadership pulled out from under it for nearly four years, by selfish and misguided politicians who have used every available parliamentary maneuver, prosecutorial misconduct and media spin to produce electoral instability.
The right-wing won in overwhelming fashion, with 64 Knesset seats, compared to just 46 for left-wing parties–practically an electoral landslide.
And while the left-wing opposition is lamenting what it falsely calls “the end of democracy,” the overwhelming majority of Israelis disagree with the left’s assertion.
Rather, it was the left, led by now-opposition leader Yair Lapid, that threw Israeli democracy into peril. It was Lapid who used a mandate he could not fulfill to crown Naftali Bennett prime minister when Bennett had received barely 5% of the popular vote. The bare one-seat majority government formed by Bennett and Lapid, and held together with an anti-Zionist Islamist party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, barely lasted one year.
Not only does Netanyahu’s government aspire to bring Israel four years of much-needed electoral stability, it will also focus on fixing critical components of Israel’s political system and careful liberal-traditional balance, to ensure the Jewish state is not once again thrown into chaos by destabilizing progressive forces
Speaking at the Knesset as he introduced his sixth ruling coalition, Netanyahu stated, “This new government is determined to restore governance, peace and personal security to the citizens of Israel. I hear the opposition’s constant laments about ‘the end of the state’ and even ‘the end of democracy.’ Members of the opposition: Losing the election is not the end of democracy. It is the essence of democracy.”
While the left says that the new government is anti-democratic, those claims are part of a classic left-wing spin designed to change the meaning of the word: The incoming government is not anti-democratic. The incoming government is most certainly anti-progressive.
The coalition will quickly get to work reversing many of the progressive policies introduced by the outgoing government in key ministries, including the health, energy, environmental protection and education ministries.
And while Israel’s progressives, led by Lapid and an activist left-wing judicial system, believe they are the flag-bearers of democracy, it is the voters who decide who rules and ultimately, what rules are created.
Incoming Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, who will control Israel’s legislative agenda said in his maiden address, “The sovereign is the people and not the court. The Knesset is the place to make decisions, it and no one else.”
The new government will attempt to alter the selection process for Supreme Court justices, who until now have essentially held a veto on their replacements, guaranteeing that the left-wing court remained homogeneous. The government will also seek to counter the court’s ability to shoot down legislation at will, by installing a parliamentary override clause. These maneuvers will create checks and balances that are standard in democracies but have long been absent between Israel’s executive, legislative and judicial branches.
And while the left accuses the new government of representing only a narrow portion of society (though that portion happens to be the majority), the government is committed to maintaining long-held status quos in the public realm that balanced Israel’s concurrent traditional and liberal tendencies.
Incoming Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of the nationalist Religious Zionism Party, stated, “The people of Israel are wise and understand that all the campaigns conducted over the past few months that were designed only to instill fear have no truth to them. Rather, they reflect a lack of responsibility and a rift in society, and unfortunately, there are those who make a living out of such rifts.”
Smotrich insisted that the government “will serve everyone. With responsibility and out of a sense of mission to you all.”
As finance minister, Smotrich will have his hands full reeling in the rising cost of living due to inflation and soaring housing prices. And while concurrently serving as a minister within the Defense Ministry, Smotrich will act to strengthen Israel’s presence in the biblical provinces of Judea and Samaria–commonly known as the West Bank–where Palestinians have been carrying out illegal land grabs without repercussions. Smotrich will also remove the Civil Administration which governs the territories from the Defense Ministry, placing each administrative issue–such as housing or transportation–within its appropriate ministry.
The new government will also seek to restore security, which broke down during the short rule of the Bennett-Lapid government. Incoming National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has vowed to loosen overly strict rules of engagement for police officers, which have often put lives at risk and failed to prevent attacks before they take place.
As part of the coalition agreement, Ben-Gvir has demanded that overarching policy decisions be removed from an independent police force and handed instead to the government that was elected by the voters to implement policy.
The new government will also work to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, and to further isolate a corrupt, terror-sponsoring Palestinian Authority, after the outgoing government opened its doors to the P.A. Outgoing Defense Minister Benny Gantz went as far as to invite P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to his home, and called him yesterday, on his final day in office.
Netanyahu also pledged to build upon the historic Abraham Accords he signed with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. In an interview with JNS ahead of the election, Netanyahu said he “intends to “make peace with Saudi Arabia” and “end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all.”
Most important, the government will focus on strengthening Jewish values. It is the Jewish character of the state that makes it strong and unique. Progressives on the other hand seek for Israel to be a secular extension of Western Europe on the Eastern Mediterranean.
In his address at the Knesset, Smotrich noted that “it is both our obligation and our privilege to continue to strengthen our rich and glorious identity….We must never lose pride in who we are and what we are, or where we come from, or where we are headed.”
He added that “our Jewish identity is what gives us the right to live here and my prayer is that we should know how to deepen this identity, how to rejoice in it, ourselves and our children.”
The new government has the potential to score major accomplishments for a Jewish state that has come under progressive attack in recent years. The attacks continue even with the firm election of a right-wing government. Progressive politicians and left-wing media have been working tirelessly to sour liberal American Jews on the new government. These efforts serve no purpose other than to delegitimize Israel, in an era of increasing anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Hopefully, American Jewry will recognize the folly of this strategy and return to its strong support of the State of Israel as the past, present and future of the Jewish people.
That said, angry progressives are likely to stay bitter and stay vocal, giving the incoming government a mouthful at every opportunity.
Addressing the opposition, the media and the overly loud and disappointed minority, Netanyahu stated, “A democratic regime is tested first of all by the willingness of the losing side to accept the majority’s decision.”
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org
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Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth About the West Bank -
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TO FRIGHTEN, TO INTIMIDATE, TO FORCE INSANE CHANGE IT IS CRITICAL FOR RADICALS TO GO TOTHE EXTREME AND THEY DO.
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The Four Questions To Ask Climate Change Alarmists
BY EUGENE SLAVEN:
Regardless of which side of the climate change debate you’re on, the debate’s policy outcomes are consequential. If climate change is an existential threat, you have the duty to do something about it. If you believe climate change is largely an alarmist creation, then you will want to prevent alarmists from infringing on our liberties to avert a fictitious crisis.
For us skeptics – or “deniers” as we’re sometimes known – winning hearts and minds has proven inordinately difficult. The Alarmist Triumvirate of popular culture, most media, and most global political institutions, is a highly formidable opponent thanks to numbers and reach.
The dilemma for the skeptics is somewhat analogous to how an outnumbered army might fight a much bigger, much better-resourced opponent. As history demonstrates, the absolute worst strategy is to launch a direct, frontal attack. Unfortunately, that is precisely what us skeptics have been doing.
The frontal assault in the climate change context centers around talking points on the absurdity of accurately predicting long-term weather patterns, the efficacy of curbing emissions, and these programs’ economic impacts. While these are logical rebuttals, they do not weaken the triumvirate, which bombards skeptics with the 97% consensus claim. You can point to the climate’s undeniable capriciousness, but in the face of the 97% Consensus™ counterattack, the neutral parties will view you as the anti-science dolt.
The alternative is to force alarmists to defend key claims with concrete figures. Remarkably, alarmists have been mostly spared from the rigors of the scientific method. This is why they’ve gotten away with inane assertions about average global temperature increases and alleged increases in the frequency of hurricanes and other extreme weather events.
However, skeptics’ frontal attacks enable alarmists to debate climate change with zero nuance and unbending conviction that scientists have always cautioned against across every other discipline. Immutable scientific assumptions — most notably that the very nature of science demands that nothing is above questioning — are swept aside in favor of dismissing climate change skeptics as peddlers of scientific heresy.
To force alarmists into an actual scientific discussion, every debate on climate change should be grounded in these four questions.
1. Why is the change in global temperature between 1875 and today significant?
Here’s the Weather.gov table showing the average annual temperature by year from 1875 to 2021. During this period, the temperature fluctuated to 56.3 F, up 3.8 degrees from 52.5 F in 1875. Is that good, bad, or neutral? I honestly could not tell you. But according to the alarmists, this rise represents an existential threat. It’s time for them to explain why. Would any increase in temperature over this period constitute a cause for concern? A 2 degree increase? How about a 0.7 degree increase? Yes, no, maybe, and above all, why? This critical question forces alarmists to concede that “global warming is bad” is not a scientific argument.
2. How do you explain periods of global “cooling”?
Between 1934 and 2019, the average temperature dropped from 55.3 to 53.6 degrees. How do alarmists account for the 1.7 degree drop in this 85 year span? Why was the world warmer in 1934 than in 2019? And lest you’re accused of selection bias or some other such statistical chicanery, this data sample covers 85 years of the 146-year period. Curiously, the temperature increased from 53.6 in 2019 to 55.7 in 2020 — even though 2020 saw a sharp pandemic-driven decrease in CO2 emissions. The small sample size notwithstanding, this sort of granular analysis is entirely absent from the debate. Maybe there’s a reason for the occasional inverse relationship between CO2 and temperature — but has anyone ever explained it?
3. How much warming is okay before disaster strikes?
The Paris Agreement declares that the “goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 F), compared to pre-industrial levels.” But where did this number come from? No, seriously, how did scientists arrive at this number? Could alarmists produce a study showing how limiting temperature increases would save the planet?
Ask this question, sit back and enjoy your rhetorical checkmate.
4. What percent decrease in CO2 emissions will achieve the desired decrease in temperature?
The alarmists’ thesis implicitly boils down to this: if we decrease carbon emissions by X, global temperature increases will be limited by Y. But how does the Agreement’s emissions reduction proposal limit increases? If you’re going to argue that cutting CO2 emissions by nearly half in the next decade will limit global warming, at least show your work. Together with the alarmists’ inability to explain how much global warming is acceptable and how much is catastrophic, this gap in logic presents a perfect point of attack.
We’ve all heard the 97% Consensus™ claim ad nauseam. Where does it come from and who are the dissenting 3 percent? Presumably, they’re reputable scientists, or they would not be included in the breakdown. Is it fair to dismiss them because they’re in the minority, thereby subjecting science to majoritarian rule?” Are there 3% of reputable scientists who believe the earth is flat or that heart transplants are impossible or that nuclear physics is fake?
Could the positive results bias or the file drawer effect partially account for the 97% figure? How about the stark discrepancy in grants available to scientists who sound the alarm on global warming vs. the skeptics?
The claim that “the science is settled” is of course itself anti-scientific. Science is never settled. Newton settled it, then Einstein unsettled it, then Bohr settled it, and so on. Most scientists understand that every scientific discipline, with the notable exception of climate change, advances. Scientists who normally concede the fallibility of science gloss over the climate change debate without a shred of skepticism.
I, like probably most skeptics, blame politics. However, this assessment does nothing to weaken the alarmists’ position. It absolves opponents from having to argue concrete numbers and leaves them in a position they’re comfortable defending. These four questions force them to pull out numbers, which, as it turns out, are the death knell for the triumvirate’s position.
“Eugene Slaven is a freelance writer, and the author of the comic novel, A Life of Misery and Triumph and the political thriller, The Sorghum Saga. He is the founder of humorquotient.net, a hub for relentlessly original satirical comedy.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
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