Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
It is a fundamental American principle that religious and racial discrimination are impermissible, unacceptable and unjust. We Americans do not let threats of violence stop us from changing discriminatory “status quos.”
Thus, the Ku Klux Klan’s and other bigots’ violence and threats of violence did not stop the U.S. government from appropriately ending the longstanding “status quos” of racist segregated schools; “white only” drinking fountains; and restrictive covenants that prevented Jews and Blacks from living in many neighborhoods. Instead, we stood up to the racist Black-hating terrorists. For instance, when nine African American children were prevented from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, then-President Eisenhower sent in 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers to assure that the African American students could appropriately and peacefully attend school.
But today, the Biden administration is arrogantly demanding that Israel must maintain an antisemitic, racist, discriminatory, unjust “Muslims only” supposed “status quo” on the Jewish people’s holiest site – the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples which stood for approximately 1,000 years, long before Islam was invented and long before Muslims built mosques on the site. Notice it’s called the Temple Mount, not the Mosque Mount.
King Solomon built the Jewish Temples as a place where all people were welcome to pray. Moreover, Israel’s 1967 “Protection of Holy Places Law” endorses free access to holy places. But now, wrongly and unjustly, Jews and other non-Muslims are denied rights to those who wish to openly pray and bring prayer books on the Temple Mount. Non-Muslim visiting hours are severely restricted. Non-Muslims can only enter through one of the Temple Mount’s 12 gates – while Muslims can use all of the gates. Jews are not permitted to drink from the water fountain on the Temple Mount because some Jew-hating Muslims publicly deem Jews to be “unclean.” Sound familiar? Jews are not even permitted to silently mouth a Jewish prayer.
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Blinken to new Israeli Foreign Minister: US committed to two-state solution
US Secretary of State congratulates Eli Cohen of the Likud on his new role, underscores commitment to Israel's security.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke today with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to congratulate him on his appointment and underscore the United States’ abiding commitment to the US-Israel partnership and to Israel’s security.
Blinken discussed continued US efforts to advance mutual interests such as Israel’s further regional integration, address shared challenges including Iran threat, and promote the values that have been at the heart of the bilateral relationship for decades.
The Secretary of State emphasized the continued US commitment to a two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.
In addition, Foreign Minister Cohen and Secretary Blinken discussed the various aspects of the Iranian threat with the Foreign Minister expressing Israel's determination to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon.
Cohen also presented his view on the Palestinian issue and emphasized the great severity in which he sees the PA's appeal to the International Court of Justice. He also thanked Blinken for his country's leadership on the issue.
Blinken and Cohen agreed to continue working directly in the face of common challenges.
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The World According to Tom Cotton
BY Walter Russell Mead
For Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, however, writing has been key to his political rise. As an Army officer serving in Iraq, he wrote a letter to the New York Times expressing hope that the Justice Department would prosecute the journalists responsible for revealing information that endangered the lives of soldiers. The Times declined to publish it, and the resulting controversy helped launch his career. Subsequent Cotton encounters with the Times have been equally consequential, wreaking havoc at the paper and boosting his standing on the right.
Now Mr. Cotton has written a book on foreign policy that one suspects the Times won’t find space to review. (Although the senator mentions my work in the text, I did not see any of the book before publication—or even know that he had a book under way.)
The title, “Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power,” is as polarizing as any Fox News host could want. But beneath the tough tone the book combines a polemical description of how leading Democrats think about American foreign policy with a subtle articulation of the case for critical American engagement in ways that a young generation of Republican thinkers can embrace. In his “attack the Democrats” mode, Mr. Cotton connects his critiques of Democratic foreign-policy thought with core conservative critiques of Democratic domestic ideas. In his “reach out to Republicans” mode, Mr. Cotton reminds readers that American interests require thoughtful engagement with allies and partners around the world.
Mr. Cotton sees Democratic foreign policy oscillating between two distinct approaches. One he traces back to the technocratic progressivism of figures like Woodrow Wilson. This tradition, valuing an all-powerful federal bureaucracy guided by well-schooled progressive administrators, scoffs at constitutional limits on federal and executive power, and it recognizes no limits on the power of the U.S. government to remake both American society and the world.
The second, more radical trend Mr. Cotton sees in Democratic foreign-policy thought is frank anti-Americanism. For this portion of the left, America is a white-supremacist power engaged in the systematic rape of the world’s resources. These activists seek to disarm the U.S. and weaken it at every turn. Less America makes for a better world.
The two trends often are at cross-purposes, but there they share a contempt for American interests conventionally understood. The anti-American radicals see conventional U.S. interests as bad by definition. For the world-shaping technocrats, it is ignoble and petty to use American power for anything as mundane as securing national interests. Wilson wanted to turn World War I into a war to make the world safe for democracy rather than a war to make the world safe for the U.S. In turn, his heirs elevate grandiose and often unattainable goals such as global LGBTQ rights over American interests such as reducing foreign tariffs on American-made goods.
The result, as Mr. Cotton sees it, is a mess of proliferating commitments and diminishing means. American attention is diverted toward dozens of competing, often incompatible priorities while the pillars of our economic and military power are undermined. We carry out elaborate plans to transform Afghan society while neglecting its defense. We are more focused on getting the military to net-zero emissions than on having enough weapons to supply both Ukraine and Taiwan.
The Obama years saw these tendencies operate largely unchecked. Grandiose plans for nuclear disarmament collapsed when President Obama’s ineffectual response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the folly of Kyiv’s surrendering its nuclear weapons to Moscow at America’s behest. The announcement of a pivot to Asia foundered as China militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea with no serious response from Washington. Declarations about healing the rift between America and Sunni Islam guttered out as Mr. Obama dithered in the face of the Syrian regime’s murderous attacks on its own people.
None of this was enough to convince Mr. Obama and his aides that their trademark mix of moralism and restraint was a recipe for serial disaster. One hopes the Biden administration will take note.
Mr. Cotton’s book is, of course, a partisan document. Democrats have their flaws, but Republicans don’t always approach foreign policy with the appropriate mix of Bismarckian drive and Metternichian finesse. Still, having senior politicians lay their convictions before the public is good for the country. One hopes more of them will take the time to share their foreign-policy views. These are grave times; we need a more substantive debate than tweets and cable-news sound bites can provide.
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J Street is honest about what it is, we just have to listen
This past year should have been the bellwether year for a left-leaning pro-Israel, pro-peace organization to prove its merits and demonstrate its worth.
America was governed by a Democratic administration, House and Senate, and Israel was led by a centrist unity government led by an Obama and Biden favored Prime Minister Yair Lapid. So how did J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization, seize this unique opportunity?
It lobbied Congress for U.S. investigations into Israel’s military, called on Biden to publicly pressure Lapid during his first official visit – and then panned the visit when Biden didn’t, defended Ben & Jerry’s boycott of Israel despite fierce opposition from the Lapid government, and pushed for adding new political conditions on security assistance to Israel despite wall-to-wall opposition in Israel and the Biden administration.
Politically, the group endorsed four of the mere eight Democrats who voted against emergency supplemental Iron Dome funding, and it spent $100,000 to reelect a congressman who took his name off a bipartisan bill to strengthen the Abraham Accords peace agreements.
If this is what J Street did to promote pro-Israel policies with Democrats in all seats of power, we can reasonably ask, is J Street pro-Israel at all?
Founded 15 years ago as a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization with the vision of being the “blocking back” in Washington for advancing a two-state solution, J Street won fans in synagogues and even some congressional offices.
But the organization has changed – and it’s time we face reality about what J Street is and what it is not. Last month, its founder and CEO Jeremy Ben Ami that “J Street is not a two-state solution organization, that’s a mistaken premise.”
Ben Ami went on to tell the Forward that the organization’s goal was now to convey to policymakers that American Jews prioritize other issues above Israel.
It is deliberately deceiving for this organization to still be branded as “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” and the stakes are too high for our community to continue to pretend they are either of those things.
The security challenges facing Israel are growing more severe. Iran is advancing its nuclear program while cozying up to Putin. Terrorism is on the rise in the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority is on the verge of collapse. And the new government in Israel may pursue policies that may inflame tensions with the Diaspora.
Pro-Israel organizations should work to diffuse those challenges – navigating us through these tense and complex times toward an outcome where America and Israel emerge stronger, not weaker — more aligned, not less. Yet recently J Street issued a new policy paper of directives for the Biden administration that would only serve to exacerbate tensions. The kindling is smoking, and J Street is fanning the flames. That’s a recipe for disaster.
The group also recently announced that it had expanded its mission to include “pro-democracy” – a noble cause that I subscribe to as well.
But this mission creep is inherently a message in line with everything else the organization has said and done in the past year: Its original priorities have changed. J Street is not what it used to be, while still trying to convince us it is. While it may still have an important role for many in our community, we do ourselves a disservice if we continue to pretend it’s a pro-Israel organization when its track record says otherwise.
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No, Iran Nuclear Deal Is Not Yet Dead and Russia Is Helping Iran Go Nuclear
by Majid Rafizadeh
Evidently the lethal nuclear deal that will enable Iran to have all the nuclear weapons it wants and missiles with which to deliver them -- and for which the Obama and Biden administrations have been pining for nearly a decade so that, most likely, Iran will not try them out on their watch but wait for somebody else's -- is not yet dead, according to reports from Israeli officials.
For the length of a coffee-break, there were rumors that, because the Iranian regime was sending drones to Russia to help crush Ukraine, the deal was – finally – off the table, supposedly for good. In what must be one of the shortest-lived policy decisions ever, that arrangement now seems off the table for good.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime is not only sending drones to Russia to crush Ukraine, but other materiel as well.
Thanks to the Biden administration, Russia and the Iranian regime's deepening and dangerous relationship appears to be reaching a peak.
Militarily speaking, Russia is moving to provide advanced military equipment to the Islamic Republic, including air defense systems, fighter jets and helicopters. This can only make the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism -- which chants "Death to America", "Death to Israel", and kills its own citizens -- a stronger and expansionist state.
Moreover, instead of just shipping its drones, Iran is planning to set up a drone assembly line in Russia to help Moscow in its war against Ukraine. Russians will be reportedly training Iranians pilots on how to use the Su-35 fighter jet.
Even White House National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby recently had to admit that Russia was offering Iran "an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship into a full-fledged defense partnership."
Regarding Russian Su-35 fighter jets, Mr. Kirby acknowledged that "These fighter planes will significantly strengthen Iran's air force relative to its regional neighbors." British Defence Minister Ben Wallace also revealed to the UK parliament regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict that "Iran has become one of Russia's top military backers..."
"In return for having supplied more than 300 kamikaze drones, Russia now intends to provide Iran with advanced military components, undermining both Middle East and international security — we must expose that deal. In fact, I have, just now."
The Iranian regime has been supplying kamikaze drones to Russia which led to the Ukrainian foreign ministry stripping Iran's ambassador in Kyiv of his accreditation and reducing the embassy's diplomatic staff there, according to the Ukrainian foreign ministry's press service. The EU also acknowledged that the Iranian regime is indeed "provid[ing] military support for Russia's unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine," via "development and delivery of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Russia".
"By enabling these strikes," British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly noted in a statement, "these individuals and a manufacturer have caused the people of Ukraine untold suffering."
The ruling mullahs of Iran have also been sending troops to Crimea to assist Russia in its attacks on Ukraine's infrastructure and civilian population, and to increase the effectiveness of the suicide drones.
Intriguingly, the White House admitted on October 20, 2022 that it had evidence that Iranian troops were "directly engaged on the ground" in Crimea supporting Russian drone attacks. According to Kirby:
"The systems themselves were suffering failures and not performing to the standards that apparently the customers expected... So the Iranians decided to move in some trainers and some technical support to help the Russians use them with better lethality."
Russia and the Iranian regime have also ratcheted up their financial dealings. Tehran, hit by draconian financial sanctions, is seeking partners to increase its trade and skirt US sanctions. According to the latest report by Bloomberg:
"Russia and Iran are building a new transcontinental trade route stretching from the eastern edge of Europe to the Indian Ocean, a 3,000–kilometer (1,860–mile) passage that's beyond the reach of any foreign intervention.
"The two countries are spending billions of dollars to speed up delivery of cargos along rivers and railways linked by the Caspian Sea. Ship–tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show dozens of Russian and Iranian vessels—including some that are subject to sanctions—already plying the route."
For the Iranian regime, militarily speaking, the Russia-Ukraine war is an opportunity for the ruling mullahs to learn from the performance of their drones on the battlefield, in order to further perfect them.
By providing weapons to a major power such as Russia, the Iranian regime is also asserting itself as a key player enjoying significant military power on the global stage.
Finally, we should not dismiss the idea that Russia will also help the Iranian regime to advance its nuclear program. Moscow and Tehran previously worked together to construct several nuclear reactors in Iran and advance the regime's nuclear technology. It has become all too clear that the Islamic Republic is rushing to cross the nuclear threshold to become a nuclear-armed state. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned:
"I have a question for you – how does Russia pay Iran for this, in your opinion? Is Iran just interested in money? Probably not money at all, but Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. Probably, this is exactly the meaning of their alliance."
The question of course is: What does the Biden administration intend to do about it?
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
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THE WAY TO END DEATH IN THE NFL IS TO MANDATE THE GAME TURN INTO 'TOUCH' FOOTBALL. ADVERTISING WOULD COLLAPSE.
AMERICANS LOVE A BIT OF BRUTALITY.
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Make 2023 the Year We Take Sanity BackBY
Derek Hunter+++
Democrats Are RelentlessBY
Derek Hunter+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Like I have said, time and again, wherever Muslims are allowed to go they cause trouble. Their culture is foreign to Western Culture.
This is why Israel's new government is correct is limiting those into their country from areas that are not in sync and we are damn fools to have done so.
The fruits of multiculturalism.
by Hugh Fitzgerald, FPM
For most of the 20th century, Sweden was held up as the very model of a modern welfare state: prosperous and peaceful, a example of social cohesion that was the product not of “diversity,” but of the very lack of “diversity.” That homogeneous Sweden is no longer. The description of quite a different Sweden, the result of more than 1.2 million immigrants, mostly from Muslim countries, can be found here: “Suicidal Sweden: Woman Gang-Raped in a Park by Five Teenage Syrian Muslim Migrants,” by Amy Mek, RAIR Foundation, December 26, 2022 (also, a Jihad Watch report on this incident, featuring a translation from a Swedish news source, is here).
Five teenage Syrian Muslim “migrants” have been charged on suspicion of gang-raping a young woman in a park in Malmö, Sweden. The brutal assault was interrupted by two police officers who happened to be patrolling the area. The victim’s attorney said her client experienced every woman’s worst nightmare.
It was around eleven o’clock in the evening on October 22, 2022, when a police patrol passed Kungsparken park in Malmö.
Police saw a group of young people near a casino located in the park. As the patrol officers approached, the gang dispersed. Only after the woman approached the police and told them she was gang raped did they realize they had interrupted a brutal attack.
Four Syrian migrants were arrested on the evening of the assault, while the fifth was taken into custody the day after. The suspected Islamic rapists are all young migrants; an 18-year-old, two 17-year-olds, a 16-year-old, and a 15-year-old.
They all have been charged with aggravated rape of the woman, who is said to be a young woman in her 20s.
According to the indictment, the migrants pinned the woman down, raped her repeatedly, and severely abused her. During the rape, the accused men are suspected of jointly holding her down. Four of the five deny the crime, and the fifth admits the course of events but denies doing anything wrong.
Though only one of these Muslim assailants said he had done nothing wrong, the other four, who simply denied the crime, no doubt felt the same. After all, the Infidel woman, out alone at night, and dressed as Swedish women in their 20s now dress was, according to their Muslim moral code clearly “asking for it.” Why should they be punished for remaining true to their own traditions and understandings? It doesn’t seem fair.
The police have found the woman’s DNA on four of the perpetrators. Belongings from the woman have also been found on one of the boys, and there are images from surveillance cameras showing how they moved around the crime scene.
“My client has experienced a woman’s worst nightmare, being raped in a park by five guys. She has felt, and still feels, very bad from this,” said her lawyer Kristina Bandrup.
Sweden’s Mass Immigration
Sweden has, in just two generations, gone from being one of the safest countries in the world to one of the most dangerous countries in Europe. Meanwhile, mass immigration has dramatically altered Sweden’s population, reports Gatestone.
While Sweden’s population remained almost exclusively Swedish for most of the 20th century, the share of migrants and their descendants has quickly soared to about a third of a total population of roughly 10 million.
Sweden has one of the world’s worst recorded rape rates. In 2018, the state broadcaster SVT revealed that 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the previous five years were born abroad. Some of the most brutal rape cases have involved Muslim or African immigrants.
The foreign-born are responsible for 58% of those in Sweden who are convicted of rape and attempted rape, while making up only 17% of the general population. That means those foreign-born, almost all of them from Muslim countries, are more than three times as likely to be convicted of rape and attempted rape than native Swedes. Yet the Swedish authorities take care not to publicize these and related figures on general criminality, fearing that the so-called “far-right” members of the Swedish Democrats would cite them as reasons for cutting down on the number of Muslim immigrants. Stockholm’s political and media elites continue to deny a worrisome reality, because they don’t want to be blamed for having caused this mess in the first place, by their criminal laxity on immigration.
Globalists’ multicultural experiment in Sweden has resulted in Swedes no longer being safe in their own country. The journalist Ingrid Carlqvist explains that immigrants have been destroying “our country”:
They are destroying our country and making us terrified of everything. It’s the violence from these immigrants, it is the rapes, the killings, and you know, just not being safe in your own country that makes people very, very scared and desperate, and they lose hope.
Swedish children are being tortured and abused in school and in the evenings throughout the country. There are constant cases of immigrant kids, mainly Muslims beating up, raping, and torturing Swedes. Carlqvist reports that the Islamic immigrants and their children “have a very aggressive culture, and they hate us.” She goes on to explain:
They think that they have a mission from Allah to take over this country. So they really enjoy humiliating and beating up young Swedes.
Is there anything here that has been exaggerated? Don’t Swedes now feel, in Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö and a half-dozen other cities, much less safe than they did 20 years go? Don’t Swedish women now fear to go out alone at night? In Malmö, once a center of Jewish life, now the the few hundred Jews who still live in the city must worry about street attacks on them by Muslims. They are especially vulnerable to attacks by Muslim gangs, who simply beat up Jews for the sheer fun of it. These immigrants, taught in the Qur’an to despise Infidels, are quite unlike those placid and industrious and grateful migrants who arrived in Sweden earlier from eastern Europe.
In the now familiar approach to these issues, the left-wing Swedish rulers and their media refuse to address the underlying cause of the phenomenon of Muslim rapists – Islam’s canonical intrinsic devaluing of women. Islam teaches that a woman is worth less than a man. And a non-Muslim woman is worth less than an Islamic one. According to the words of Muhammad and the Quran, men are in charge of women. Prophet Muhammad actually encouraged the rape of women captured in battle. He even provided instructions on how women should be raped after capture, telling his men not to worry about coitus interruptus since “Allah has written whom he is going to create.” Allah also told Muslim men to rape women captured in battle; they were told to do it in front of their husbands.
The migrant rapist’s treatment of women is learned from the Islamic faith and his Prophet’s example. There is nothing unusual or deviant in how the Swedish woman was treated in Islamic terms. Instead of the Swedish left-wing politicians and media condemning Islam’s view on women, they will insist the migrant’s crimes are isolated and protect their socialist and sanitized reconstruction of Islam, created for Western consumption. The cost of covering for Islam continues to put Westerners in great harm.”
Sweden’s welfare system is now wobbling, and may collapse as a result of the staggering sums the government must now expend on these Muslim migrants, who are masters of taking advantage of every benefit the generous Swedish welfare state offers. They live in free or greatly subsidized housing, receive free food, clothing allowances, enjoy free medical care and free education, including language lessons and lessons in “Swedish culture.” These lessons in language and Swedish culture are intended to provide Muslim migrants with the tools that will allow them to better integrate into society, but these last lessons have been singular failures. Why should a Muslim migrant who, as the Qur’an tells him, belongs to the “best of peoples,” want to integrate into a society fashioned by and for Infidels who are – again according to the Qur’an – “the most vile of created beings”? It is only when Muslim migrants stop thinking in such terms that there may be hope for some of them to integrate into Swedish society. How likely is that to happen?
Meanwhile, the Swedes themselves should recognize that their naive dream of integrating Muslim migrants is incapable of being realized, not for want of trying on the part of the indigenous Swedes, but because of the attitudes of the Muslims themselves, who are in no hurry to be employed, but are happy to pocket whatever they are offered by the welfare state, aid which they regard as a kind of proleptic Jizyah. It would be folly for the Swedes to blame themselves for this state of affairs. In fact, much the same outcome can be observed in all the European countries where large numbers of Muslims have been allowed to settle. But Sweden’s elites have been particularly naïve, and allowed into their country, during the last two decades, immigrants who mow make up close to 20% of the current population (and the Sweden-born children of migrants make up another 12%).
At the very least, one hopes that a sufficient number of Swedes will come to their senses, and work to halt all further Muslim immigration into their country. If some feel there is an economic need for migrants to perform menial tasks, instead of letting in Muslims who, in any case, are not eager to work hard, and feel only contempt for and resentment of the Infidel Swedes, the Swedish government can bring in more of the millions of Ukrainian refugees now clamoring to be let in. These Ukrainians are the real refugees, fleeing possible death in a war zone, unlike the Muslims from North Africa and the Middle East who are only economic migrants, hoping to batten on the offerings provided by European welfare states. Many of those Orthodox Ukrainians differ from the largely Lutheran Swedes in sect, but share the same religious heritage (Christianity), and have the same views about the equality of men and woman, about the natural political, civil, and religious rights of all people, and about the desirability of democracy, none of which are shared by the Muslim migrants.
If Sweden can do these things, it should still be possible for the country that gave the world King Gustavus Adolphus, Linnaeus, Ingmar Bergman and Ingrid Bergman, smorgasbord, glög, and Akvavit, and Raoul Wallenberg, to step back from the brink. Swedish elites made a big mistake in opening their doors to Muslim migrants. But all is not lost. There is still time, by voting in the Swedish Democrats, to reverse course.
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America Has Become the Greatest Exporter of Destructive Ideas
By Denis Prager
At the present time, China is the greatest threat to world stability, Russia is the world’s premier aggressor-nation, and Islamist groups are the primary exporters of terror and (religious) totalitarianism.
And, for the first time in history, America is the world’s major exporter of destructive ideas.
This is hard for me to write. One of my books is titled Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. It contrasts American values with leftist values and makes the case that the American value system is the finest ever devised. I define American values — what I call the “American Trinity” — as “Liberty,” “In God We Trust,” and e pluribus unum (Latin for “From many, one”), the three American mottos found on American coins and banknotes.
No other country has those three national mottos. The book maintains that any country can adopt those values and any country that does adopt those values will be a good society. Its citizens will be the freest in the world and that country will prosper.
Indeed, those values are the reason Americans have been the freest people in the world and America has been, far and away, the greatest land of opportunity in human history.
But America has been gradually abandoning its unique value system and is consequently becoming a less free, less humane, less prosperous, and more corrupt country. In fact, at this moment, America is no longer the best country, the exceptional country, it has been since 1776. There may not yet be a better country. But that is cold comfort.
We are in the incredible position of being feared by many other relatively free societies; more than a few European countries actually reject America’s current values. And they are right to do so.
The most obvious example of America in decline is the perverse American doctrines surrounding transgender issues: the sex (“gender”) of any individual is not a given fact, “men give birth,” men who say they are women may compete in women’s sports, and physicians and children’s hospitals are right to surgically cut off the healthy breasts of young women and even girls who say they are boys.
America’s war on truth, science, and children has rendered America increasingly an outlier in the Western world.
More and more European countries are rejecting the perverse worlds of Yale and virtually every other American university, of The New York Times and virtually every other mainstream left-wing medium, of Boston Children’s Hospital and virtually every other children’s hospital, and of the University of Minnesota Medical School and virtually every other medical school.
Switzerland has just announced that as far as the Swiss nation and government are concerned, sex is not “non-binary.” In Switzerland, there are only two sexes, as has been the case in essentially every civilization in recorded history because that is the reality.
As reported by AP (but apparently not in The New York Times or elsewhere in the mainstream left-wing media), Swiss citizens “are entered into the civil registry as male or female, with no other option.” The Swiss Federal Council declared, “The binary gender model is still strongly anchored in Swiss society.”
Sweden — the American left’s most admired society until it broke with the rest of the West by allowing its children to stay in school during the Covid hysteria — has also broken with America on the transgender issue. Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers for minors under age 18; and as of December, mastectomies will only be offered in the rarest of circumstances.
Thomas Lindén, a head of the National Board, announced, “Young people who suffer from gender dysphoria need to be able to quickly receive an investigation and be offered adequate care measures, based on the health and medical services’ assessments of the care needs. Good psychosocial care is fundamental.”
In other words, if a Swedish teenage girl says she is a boy, Sweden will offer “psychosocial” care, almost never hormone blockers, let alone a mastectomy.
Between Sweden’s new policy on gender dysphoria and its allowing children to stay in school throughout the Covid epidemic, an American must sadly conclude that at this time in history, Sweden cares for its young people considerably more than America does.
In England last October, the National Health Service (NHS) announced, in the words of the Daily Mail, that “Children who believe they are trans are probably just going through a short-lived phase.” Therefore, logic and morality say, we should not make permanent life-altering changes to their bodies with drugs and surgery.
In addition, “The NHS England draft guidelines are part of the health service’s plan to close the highly-controversial Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock clinic, the country’s only gender identity service for children. GIDS is scheduled to shut its doors in the spring after a review ruled that the service was unsafe.”
Typical of the changes taking place in the UK regarding the transgender issues, Stella O’Malley, a psychotherapist and director of Genspect, an international transgender care group based in England, advised: “Professionals working with children need to . . . make sure they aren’t inadvertently causing harm by providing short term relief that leads to long term distress. . . . At Genspect . . . . we don’t think changing pronouns helps anyone — it creates more problems than it resolves.”
In France, the National Academy of Medicine has issued a statement advocating “psychosocial support” rather than hormone blockers and surgery for young people with gender dysphoria.
Finland had already enacted a similar policy decision as early as 2020. Thirteen European countries now reject the American “non-binary” attack on human sexuality and children.
Sadly, with regard to children’s wellbeing, there are many countries in which American parents would rather raise their child.
I never imagined I would ever believe that.
I wish you a Happier New Year.
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Come together and feed him his just desert!
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The New House Majority Must Impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Impeaching Mayorkas is the only option for those who understand that playing by the conventional rules of Washington simply isn’t good enough.
BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN
As the new House Republican majority gets sworn in this week, they have no choice but to use the only mechanism at their disposal to highlight the emergency unfolding at the border: impeaching Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. His acts of nonfeasance include acting on the president’s orders and presiding over a situation in which the border is, for all intents and purposes, being erased.
GOP moderates — many of whom are members in good standing of the Washington uniparty — think they are obligated to pursue “governance.” This sets up a conflict in which anything the new majority does that is aimed more at exposing the administration’s catastrophic policies will be skewered as mere obstructionism and proof that Republicans are incapable of governing.
But they can — and must — ignore those criticisms given the almost complete breakdown of efforts to prevent illegal immigration in the last two years.
GOP moderates may be inclined to ignore the security dilemma and simply move to grant a path to citizenship to people who were brought into the country illegally as children — the so-called “Dreamers.” But the vast majority of conservatives as well as independents and many border state Democrats understand that anything, however well-meaning, that is done to encourage further illegal immigration, as almost certainly would be the case for action on the Dreamers, is unacceptable. The Democrats’ effort to secure a new, broader amnesty is at the heart of the current crisis.
Mayorkas will not be thrown out of office since the Democratic Senate will never convict him even if the GOP’s narrow House majority impeaches him, and it will be labeled as grandstanding and a colossal waste of time. But stunts like that and the hearings in which they can finally bring the various elements of this catastrophe before the public in a way that has not been done before. It is the only option available to those who understand that the consequences of what is happening at the border are so serious that business as usual or playing by the conventional rules of Washington politics simply isn’t good enough.
The latest figures for illegal immigration for November 2022 illustrate the extent of the problem. In that month alone, a record 233,740 illegals were apprehended at the border. That constituted a 1 percent increase over the total for October, which was itself a record for that month. On top of that, the estimate for the number of migrants who evaded capture at the border was more than 73,000, also a record. The fiscal year for Customs and Border Protection data, which ended in September, was 2.76 million, breaking the previous annual record by more than a million.
That means that since Biden came into office, there have been more than 4 million illegals crossing the border. Every estimate for the coming year says those numbers will be topped.
The record numbers come at a time when the general perception is that the Biden administration has not only largely ended the enforcement efforts of immigration laws and created a situation in which the border is more or less open for those who wish to enter illegally or for the vast number of economic migrants who are increasingly making largely bogus claims for asylum on the grounds of suffering persecution at home.
The flood of migrants is largely being managed by drug cartels who exact fees from those who wish to cross into the country and whom they use to help bring in massive amounts of illegal drugs like fentanyl, which is helping to exacerbate an ongoing American addiction crisis. This has resulted in one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern history, destabilizing both northern Mexico and the United States.
The toll taken on Southwest border cities and states is likely to get much worse if, unless the federal courts continue to prevent it, the Center for Disease Control’s so-called “Title 42” order issued during the coronavirus pandemic that gave federal authorities the right to exclude migrants from the United States and turn them back to Mexico is ended at the behest of the Biden administration.
For the last decade, the standard number for the total of illegal immigrants now in the United States is usually reported by the press as 11 million. But as far back as September 2018, a Yale University study found that the real number was likely at least twice that if not far higher. After the last two years of surging illegal immigration, it is likely that the total of illegals in the country now exceeds 30 million.
It can be argued that impeaching an official for following the president’s orders and policy choices is unfair even if it does amount to an act of nonfeasance and doesn’t constitute a “high crime” or “misdemeanor” that the Constitution says is grounds for impeachment. But, as the Democrats showed in the last two Congresses with their attempts to force Trump from office, impeachment is a political measure, not a court of law. Mayorkas’s actions that have essentially resulted in an open border in all but name may not technically be a violation of the law, but it is an act of criminal negligence that is doing great harm to the nation with enormous potential consequences.
Whether this gambit or any other succeeds in galvanizing the attention of the public at a time when liberal legacy media is still uninterested in the surge of millions of illegals or the plight of border communities, Republicans and Democrats who understand the consequences of further indifference must do something. The longer Washington waits to cope with this problem, the worse it will get. Anything short of an all-out effort to impeach Mayorkas on the part of House Republicans must be construed as a betrayal of their voters and their responsibility to the nation.
Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.
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McConnell has always been a Democrat at heart. Biden has been his buddy for years. It is time for McConnell to be canned.
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McConnell CROSSES LINE To Boost Biden
President Joe Biden will kick off the new year with a public event featuring an appearance with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The show of bipartisanship is enough to cause most Republicans to cringe and wonder about the state of affairs in Washington, D.C.
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Allen West:
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New Year’s Resolution for the Republican Party
Yes, it is that time when people will start making New Year's resolutions. Of course, many will center around getting in better shape, which I do recommend. Others will dedicate themselves to other aspects of a better way of life. Down South we have a tradition of the first meal in the new year consisting of black-eyed peas for good luck and collard greens for prosperity. However, if we are to have success and prosperity for our constitutional republic, then we need the Republican Party to dedicate itself to one very vital, and important, resolution.
And:
What the Biden Administration is currently accomplishing with Wokeness legislation is to insure we will lose any war in which we engage. Why? Because Biden's focus is turning our military into a social organization. Lawyers get to override tactical and strategic decisions. Furthermore, I submit, because of Kissinger, the mass media, Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite's comment, after visiting Vietnam that we cannot win the war, it laid the foundation America must accept losing.
Maybe wars, in general, are no longer winnable but I believe our mental attitude toward war(s) has been radically altered and made acceptable.
Americans, by nature, are not losers. It is not an attitude we embrace but after Korea and Viet Nam something changed and it has become a dangerous albatross.
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China ‘Preparing’ For WAR?
Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who served as National Security Advisor under former President Donald Trump...
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And
Stacey was going to run a multi billion dollar state government. She was more likely run it into the ground.
Politics has become a became played by novices and voters are duped into believing anyone who wants to be in politics knows what the hell they are doing.
We elect people based on no criteria. We know so little about their competence and then we are disappointed when they fail. It's all a game of roulette and spin the needle.
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Stacey Abrams’ Failed Financial Planning Exposed By Other Dems
(JustPatriots.com)- Democrats criticize Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams for abysmal financial planning.
According to recent reports highlighting the campaign’s outstanding debt, Abrams raised more than $103 million for the unsuccessful campaign.
A senior Democratic official told reporters that it was incredibly poor planning, and it shows where values lie. It is impossible to wake up one day and realize you cannot pay your bills.
Abrams, who became a media darling during her 2018 gubernatorial campaign and subsequent voting rights advocacy, lost to incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp in November, despite her record-setting cash haul.
Local reporter Greg Bluestein explained that Abrams’ campaign expenditures have come under increased scrutiny as new details emerged about the tight cash crunch she faced before losing to Kemp by nearly 8 points in November.
A previous report revealed how money became so tight that most of the 180 full-time staffers were given a sudden cutoff date for their paychecks just one week after the November election. Several of these employees reportedly were concerned that they would be unable to pay their rent.
More than $1 million is still owed to vendors, according to Lauren Groh-Wargo, campaign manager for Abrams, who told reporters that the team is attempting to repay debts.
Bluestein spoke with former employees who described extravagant expenditures, such as renting a home to serve as the background for TikTok videos. Some aides commandeered the vacant five-bedroom craftsman-style house, which is now available to rent for $12,500 per month, as a makeshift office. A pop-up shop and “swag truck” distributed merchandise such as T-shirts and hoodies. Staff members complained that there was no apparent strategy behind the giveaways. Abrams’ campaign also made excessive expenditures on polls that were disregarded.
Reports show that even though Abrams and her aides broke records for midterm fundraising, her campaign burned through cash at equally high rates.
In the campaign’s final two weeks, ad buys were cut in half, an early indication of the campaign’s financial problems. Another significant example is the elimination of a program that allowed staff members to schedule mental health sessions.
Bluestein noted that Abrams has embarked on a media tour, which has angered some of her former deputies.
Stacy Abrams is about Stacey Abrams and nothing else.
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