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HEED BARR'S RECENT COMMENTS
We all should know the various trials Trump is being subjected to are contrived and when, if ever, they get to The SCOTUS, they will be ruled unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, because judicial procedures must be obeyed and take time, this disrupts Trump's ability to campaign. They might be seen as patently unfair and help raise empathy or they might be seen as negative and drive his poll numbers down.
Time will tell.
The danger is, far too many Americans are incapable of separating their dislike of Trump. his personality and his non presidential manner from the danger to our nation, twisting of the law and facts causes. Allowing these suits to be filed and to proceed is the consequence of a legal system that is two faced, This is highly dangerous, extremely misguided and goes against every intent of what our "founders" deliberately sought to avoid,
In the case of Trump, at the very least, the cases brought against him violate his rights under the 1st and 8th Amendments. That we have allowed our legal system to be politically weaponized is both anti-American and fascistic.
Those who support these kangaroo trials may take comfort, even sadistic joy, from the pain and suffering Trump and his entire family are being subjected. However, the damage being done to our legal system, to our reputation as a unique republic whose entire society rests upon a foundation of obeisance to law and order, is shameful.
Everyone who disregards what I am writing, I believe, do not realize, one day, they too could be subjected to a legal system based on a double standard simply because of their political affiliation, something they pasted on a social media blog, their religion etc. This is not the American way nor are the anti-Semitic riots occurring on campuses, as I write.
These hateful protests are the consequence of victories by neo-Marxists who have been burrowing their way into our nation for decades.
Their goal is to destroy our nation because they feel threatened by a nation advocating freedom and which believes government is subservient rather than one in control of its citizenry aka China, North Korea, Russia etc. These rioters are being financed by those who also want to destroy, control and maintain power and who profess America is a racist and evil nation.
What I have said above has been written, far more eloquently by others, in recent books, one of which I am currently reading: "America's Cultural Revolution," by Christopher Rufo. I commend it to you as well as "Controligarchs," by Seamus Bruner.
America's future is bleak if the neo-Marxists continue to be successful. This is why Bob Barr, the former Attorney General's recent comments, are worth heeding.
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Psst… I Think The President Is Totally Senile
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Bill Barr's 2024 Decision Might Irritate Some, But It Shows He Knows Who the Real Enemy Is
By Matt Vespa
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Will the "IVIES" start charging their Jewish students a fee for having to place a yellow star on their clothing?
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Jewish Yale student stabbed in the eye with PLO flag during anti-Israeli rally on campus
Jewish Yale University student stabbed in the eye with PLO flag while covering anti-Israel protest on campus. Her assailant has gone unpunished.
A Jewish Yale University student journalist reporting on an anti-Israeli protest at the school on Saturday night was stabbed in the eye with a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag while her assailant has gone unpunished, The New York Post reported.
Sahar Tartak, the editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, was covering the protest – which saw hundreds of students camping at the campus in support of Palestinian Arabs – when she was suddenly surrounded by demonstrators.
Tartak told The New York Post she and a friend were singled out for wearing Hasidic Jewish attire as the crowd formed a blockade around them to interfere with their filming.
“There’s hundreds of people taunting me and waving the middle finger at me, and then this person waves a Palestinian flag in my face and jabs it in my eye,” Tartak said.
“When I tried to yell and go after him, the protesters got in a line and stopped me,” she added.
Tartak said she tried to report the assault to campus police but that they told her there was nothing they could do.
Instead, she got an ambulance ride to the hospital to get her eye checked out.
Tartak slammed the university for not cracking down on Saturday’s protest, the latest incident at Yale, where demonstrators have blocked entrances to school buildings as they condemn the war in the Gaza Strip.
Yale officials said the university’s police department is investigating the assault and that the school tolerates no violence on its campus.
Campus antisemitism has spiked across the US since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza which followed.
The House Education Committee has launched a probe on campus antisemitism. The probe followed a December hearing in which the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT equivocated when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people would be considered harassment on campus.
Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn President Elizabeth Magill both resigned in the wake of the hearing. MIT President Sally Kornbluth testified at the same hearing but has thus far emerged relatively unscathed, with MIT's governing board expressing its firm support for her.
The investigations began with those three schools, with Harvard’s probe recently escalating to a subpoena from Foxx.
The committee has since added Columbia University and Rutgers University to its probe.
This past Wednesday, Columbia President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik testified to the House Education Committee about antisemitism on campus.
Shafik refused to condemn the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" as antisemitic during the hearing, or to say that it violates university policy. Instead, she called the chant "hurtful" and said that she would rather not hear it uttered on campus.
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Thank you Senator" Pocahontas "Warren. Tell us about your Native American sexuality. Do you sleep with your horse? Blah, Blah. Blah.
Senator "Pocahontas" rammed through the Senate a Consumer protection agency. Congress never intended for this agency to have the authority to ask more than a few basic questions that were innocuous but reasonable, ie. how long have you been in business etc.
As with all agency bureaucrats this same agency has now expanded the list of question to well over 50 and many pertain to questions about the owner's sexuality and are a disgrace. Sen. Kennedy was outraged, as he should be, in a video which I have not been able to reproduce.
These expanded questions are obviously in violation of the constitution but demonstrate how neo-Marxists operate and seek to destroy our freedoms and rip apart the fabric of our society.
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The 199th Day of War in Israel
As We Approach the Onset of Passover
By Sherwin Pomerantz
of which, in Hebrew is Z’man Cherutainu, or the season of our freedom, given the fact that the story told at the Seder is the story of the exodus from Egypt.
This year, when we begin the Seder, it will be a real challenge to see ourselves as enjoying freedom. Here in Israel, we have been embroiled for over six months in a war that began with an attemp,t by our enemy, to destroy us. We will read tonight that in every generation our enemies rise up and attempt to destroy the Jewish people, but this year we are living it. So, when we recite those words as have generations before us, they will have piercing meaning as we recall the worst one-day massacre of our people since the Holocaust, a day when over 1,200 of our best and brightest had their lives snuffed out while hundreds of others, yet alive, will have suffered physical and/or mental damage as well.
Simultaneously, we are experiencing the exponential rise of anti-Semitism across the world in the face of demonstrations calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of Jews. Things are so bad on university campuses in America, that earlier this week Rabbi Elie Buechler, the Assistant Rabbi at New York’s Jewish Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, advised the 5,000 Jewish students enrolled in Columbia University to go home as quickly as possible, as the university and the municipal police could not guarantee their safety. 1930s Europe in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Who would have thought
How do we celebrate as free people in the face of seemingly so much of the world being anxious, once again, to see Jews, who make up 0.2% of the world’s population, as the cause of all the world’s problems and for whom our destruction is the only (dare I say “final”) solution?
The answer is simply even in the face of these obnoxious and dangerous threats and actions, we see the hand of God reaching out to protect us. What we here in Israel witnessed 10 days ago when Iran launched over 350 rockets, missiles, drones and other assorted armaments against us, 99.9% of which we destroyed, was a miracle on the level of the crossing of the Reed Sea, which is the story we will tell tonight at the Seder.
Recognized experts in the defense sector readily admit that it was statistically impossible for all of the elements that came together a week ago Saturday night to have done so without at least some mission failures. Yet there were none, zero, nada…..not a one. Even countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia, who would normally not lift a finger to help us, did so as part of a coalition that included the US, France and the UK. Truth be told, some of my most atheistic friends reluctantly admitted that divine intervention is the only explanation for our good fortune that night.
So, we will gather this evening remembering with sadness those we have lost this past year to people and movements who yearn to see us dead. But we will remain hopeful for a better future, secure in the knowledge just as we have maintained our faith for 3,500 years in the face of an almost constant threat to our survival, our enemies of old are no longer around. Therefore, we will continue to outlive our current enemies as well for we believe that God is with us
May the promise of freedom, so elemental to the Passover holiday, be fully realized in our lifetimes, and may our enemies of today fail in their efforts, as those in the past have failed. Am Yisrael Chai…..The People of Israel live!!!!
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Not always right but always interesting.
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Beijing’s View of the Chinese Economy
By: George Friedman
At an economic forum last week in Shanghai, a senior Chinese government adviser named Liu Yuanchun, who is also the president of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, made some stark remarks about the state of the Chinese economy.
Liu said that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were far worse than expected and that the fiscal standing of local governments is deteriorating quicker than thought. Seismic, structural shifts are happening rapidly, and more non-economic risks are emerging than economic ones. All of this has created imbalances that Beijing is struggling to navigate. According to Liu, China’s development in the recent past and immediate future will be marked by such disequilibrium, and striking a new balance will take time.
He went on to say these challenges from within – and the economic competition from powers without – are more daunting than the ones of a decade ago, when China was able to achieve double-digit economic growth. Growth now is much more uneven, of course, and even President Xi Jinping seems to have admitted as much when he called moderate growth the “new normal.” Evidence to that effect can be seen in China’s overcapacity issues, with the producer price index declining in March by 2.8 percent year on year, while languishing in the negative range for the 17th straight month. Supply-demand disequilibrium is apparent, too, with the first quarter’s utilization rate at just 73.6 percent, down some 7 percentage points. In short, capacity is sitting idle.
Liu also warned that the consumer price index, which grew in March by 0.1 percent year on year after expanding by 0.7 percent in February, is too off-kilter to achieve Beijing’s targeted supply-demand balance of 2-3 percent.
Perhaps most importantly, Liu said that these and other economic imbalances are here to stay. The downturn in the property market is particularly noteworthy. Property-sector investments fell in the first quarter of 2024 by 9.5 percent year over year, with total sales dropping by 27.6 percent. In other words, the days of the property sector being a “super pillar” of the Chinese economy are gone. (The sector used to account for nearly 11 percent of gross domestic product but stood at nearly 6 percent as of 2023.) Beijing is looking to other sectors such as high-tech manufacturing and electric vehicles to fill the void, but so far they have yet to do so.
What makes the statements made by Liu – who is an adviser to Xi, meaning his speech was likely approved by the president himself – so important is that they indicate Beijing is finally coming to terms with the obvious. The long-held conventional wisdom was that China’s would be an unending surge, but even in the heyday of growth, its economy was limited and unbalanced. But economic risks are expanding amid geopolitical uncertainties, the root of which, for China, was a decision a few years ago to threaten the United States with potential future military action. The threat was an unrealized bluff, but its most important outcome was to convince the U.S. that it was real.
Under those circumstances, the U.S. government adopted a hostile economic posture toward China, and private corporations in the United States saw an increased risk in operating there. Rather than increase economic activity to placate the U.S., Beijing sought the opposite outcome, curbing its access to U.S. investment. That created another imbalance, this one based on the assumption that Chinese exports to the U.S. and U.S. investment in China would not dip low enough to seriously threaten the economy.
Economists like Liu focus on the economics of a given event, but the real question is political. How private industry will respond is important; more important is how the public will respond. In China, economic fumbling can create desperate citizens and launch the country into uncharted territory. The government is working hard to contain unrest, and it seems to have now adopted a strategy of honesty – a rarity for any government. Even so, its admission is less a matter of altruism than it is a matter of strategy.
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Andrea is an associate editor, at American Thinker, who I submit my own essays to when I have them prepared.
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The World’s Leaders, Including Biden, Must Learn The Lesson Of Passover
By Andrea Widburg
PostedBy Ruth King
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/the_world_s_leaders_including_biden_must_learn_the_lesson_of_passover.html
Tonight, at sunset, Jews across the world will celebrate Passover, something they’ve been doing annually for around 3,500 years. The holiday commemorates the miracle (and gift) of God leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. This was the world’s first slave revolt and led to God’s handing down the moral laws that are the backbone of the Judeo-Christian faiths. But the Passover story also tells us something important about the nature of tyranny, and the world’s governments, from Biden on down, would do well to heed that lesson.
The story of Passover appears in Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament. It explains that 400 years after Egypt took in the Israelites (i.e., today’s Jews) who were escaping a famine in Canaan (modern Israel), a new Pharaonic line had taken the Egyptian throne and enslaved the Israelites.
The Pharaoh on the throne at the time the narrative begins was so hostile to the Israelites that he ordered the slaughter of all newborn Israelite boys. The mother of one of those newborn boys successfully hid him in a basket on the Nile, where one of Pharaoh’s daughters found him, named him Moses, and raised him as a Prince of Egypt.
Because his older sister had stayed near the basket and become his nurse, Moses knew he was an Israelite, not an Egyptian. When the adult Moses saw an overseer cruelly treating a slave, Moses killed the overseer and fled to Midian. There, he became a shepherd and married a priest’s daughter.
Then came that fateful day when Moses, while tending his flocks, encountered a burning bush from which came the voice of God. God set Moses a task for which Moses felt painfully unqualified: Return to Egypt, free the Israelites from their bondage, and lead them to Canaan, the land promised to them in Genesis.
Despite his fears, Moses took up the task and went back to the court in which he’d been raised. He told Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. Pharaoh, naturally, refused.
This refusal began the cycle of the famous ten plagues that Jews have recited at every seder since the Exodus itself:
1.Blood
2.Frogs
3.Lice
4.Flies
5.Pestilence
6.Boils
7.Hail
8.Locusts
9.Darkness
10. The death of the firstborn. (That Pharaoh didn’t die, incidentally, means that he was not his father’s firstborn.)
Because the Angel of Death passed over the homes of those Israelites who painted their door lintels with the blood of a specially prepared lamb, we get the holiday’s name.
With this last plague, Pharaoh finally yielded to Moses’s demands…and even then, at the last minute, he tried to renege, sending his troops to stop the departing Israelites. It was only because Moses parted the Red Sea, leaving it to close on Pharaoh’s troops, that the Israelites finally made their way to freedom, the Mosaic code, and permanent and continuous residency in the land they still occupy today.
Some people who are hostile to the Bible or to Jews have suggested that the story of the Exodus that Jews have faithfully remembered for thousands of years (and that was the setting for Jesus’s last supper) isn’t something to be celebrated. Instead, it shows God’s cruelty…to the Egyptian people and should be viewed as an embarrassment. This is completely wrong.
Aside from ignoring the fact that Exodus marks the first recognition in human history that slaves are people and deserve liberty, this viewpoint completely misses the profound message attached to the myriad plagues that Pharaoh willingly visited on his people: All tyrants have an almost endless capacity for tolerating others’ suffering, as long as their power remains in place.
What Pharaoh discovered with the first nine plagues is that life can go on, at least for the ruler, no matter the burdens he places on his people. Pharaoh had wine to drink when the Nile turned to blood; physicians when the plagues and boils arrived; baths, unguents, and incense when the irritating bugs settled in; stores of food when the cattle sickened and starved; and a secure palace when the skies poured down hail and fire. As long as Pharaoh’s hold on power was undiminished, he could always reconcile himself to his people’s pain.
Sheltered in his stronghold, Pharaoh might have had a theoretical concern that a starving and frightened populace could turn on him. However, with his army for protection, he nevertheless felt sufficiently inviolate to take that risk. It was only when the price became too high—when the plague struck Pharaoh in his own palace, killing his firstborn—that he was convinced, even temporarily, to alter his evil ways.
One of the reasons the Bible has lasted is its deep understanding of human nature—and when it comes to tyranny, human nature hasn’t changed since Pharaoh’s time. We’ve seen that over and over in the ensuing 3,500-plus years, as tyrants without number have immured themselves in secure luxury while visiting immense suffering on the people they rule.
Just in the last 90 years, Hitler destroyed Germany, Mao and Stalin killed tens of millions of their people, and Pol Pot slaughtered one-third of the Cambodian population. When those tyrants were stopped, as often as not, it was because an outside force took on the burden of the battle to destroy them. These were brutal battles, and the tyrants’ died for their misbegotten cause. However, the battles also ended the tyrant’s grip, bringing freedom to those cruel lands.
For 45 years, Iran’s mullahs have been amongst the world’s worst tyrants. They control them through fear backed by cruel reprisals, even as they fund Islamic terrorism around the globe. Israel has long been their first target, but they’ve never been shy about the fact that America and the entire West are their primary targets. For the Mullahs, power is everything; their people mean nothing.
The Mullah’s latest strike on Israel, an out-and-out, undisguised act of war, should have been the opportunity for the world to back Israel as she struck back and ended their cruel, destructive reign. This was the time to target Pharaoh in his palace. Instead, the world, including Biden, was afraid to bring that last plague to the Mullah’s doors. It was afraid to stop tyranny, preferring the cowardice of slavery.
Even Israel was tentative in her attack, choosing to remind Iran that Israel could bring the death of the firstborn to the Mullahs if she wanted. I understand. It’s hard to have the whole world screaming, “Stop,” even when you know that stopping is an immoral act and acting is the moral path.
One day, though, Israel is going to have to bring that tenth plague to the Iranian Pharaohs. Otherwise, Israel will be destroyed, the world will be enslaved, and the chance to overthrow tyranny will be lost for generations to come.
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More Biden nonsense that simply encourages Iran and their surrogates.
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Fmr. Ambassador Oren: 'Sanctions on IDF unit will harm the US as well'
Dr. Michael Oren tells Arutz Sheva that on the one hand has to thank the US for the security partnership, but also must fight against the notion of sanctioning Netzach Yehuda.
Former Ambassador and former Knesset member Dr. Michael Oren, spoke to Israel National News - Arutz Sheva, about the latest development in US-Israel relations, mainly the apparent decision to impose sanctions on the Netzach Yehuda Battalion.
“It’s true. If there is an intention to sanction any unit of the Israeli Army, it's totally unacceptable. It's a violation of our sovereignty. It's a slap in the face of the IDF. It's also a very dangerous precedent because what begins with Netzach Yehuda, could end tomorrow with Golani or the Paratroopers, where young men and women who fought in our army, could go visit a foreign capital and find themselves being arrested at an airport. It's even dangerous for the US because what begins with the IDF could end with the American armed forces, with Marines being arrested at airports and when America goes to protest, other countries might say, ‘Well, you did this to Israel.’ So, it's a very, very bad precedent and it's also a blow to Israeli society, where we are trying to resolve the issue of Haredi service in the military and now comes along this action, which will say basically to the Haredi community, ‘You serve in the IDF and you end up getting sanctioned,’” says Dr. Oren.
Oren presumes that the level of tension between Israel and the US “is a long time coming, building up of animosity and charges certainly by the Democratic administration against the government of Israel, particularly this government of Israel. We have to now go and explain that those members of this unit who are accused of mistreating Palestinians, have actually been indicted. The unit has served on different fronts, not just in Judea and Samaria, but also on the southern front. So, again it's a violation of our sovereignty.
“On the other hand,” Oren stresses, “We have to say 'thank you, thank you, thank you' to the US for the great security cooperation that was shown last Saturday night, in bringing down 350 projectiles from Iran. We have to show thanks to the US, certainly for the Senate, which is about to approve an unprecedently large aid bill for Israel, $226 billion, all together Israel and Gaza probably about 17 billion of that money going to Israel we have to say thank you. We have to say thank you on the one hand but fight against this horrendous notion of sanctioning Netzach Yehuda. Israel has found itself in similar situations in the past.”
Michael Oren is adamant that “the answer is that Israel has to be tough with the US. You have to say this is completely unacceptable and we will not cooperate with this in any remote way. We will protect our soldiers from sanctions. On the other hand, we want to take advantage of this moment, where we can portray the war against Hamas, and the war against Hezbollah as part of one big war against Iran. We could send our delegations to Washington immediately in an attempt to get the US on board and form a regional alliance against Iran. It would include an Israeli-Saudi Arabian peace but also put teeth into that alliance, not just a passive defensive alliance, but an offensive alliance. There’s a tremendous opportunity here, which we have to take advantage of, but we cannot be passive.”
The former ambassador believes that this is, “Immediately connected to elections in the US. I think there is a history of relations between the Democrats and Netanyahu. The Democrats in this government, the Democrats in what they call ‘the settler movement’ and it's on the background of rising violence on American campuses. We're all following what's happening on the Columbia University campuses and demonstrations, not only in favor of the Palestinians but actually in favor of Iran. The elections come down to three or five swing States and some of these states have young populations, progressive populations, Arab and Muslim American populations, and that's a source of worry for the Democratic administration, which is at best tied with the Republicans and in most polls is falling behind.”
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