Two Standards One Penalizes American Citizens And Benefits Illegals. Is China Already Knocking At/Or Down Our Door? Mata Hari Psaki Admits Biden Blunder.

Think about this:

If you vacation in Mexico and are a U.S. citizen, upon your return, you must be tested for Covid and required to enter wearing a mask. In other, words citizens of this nation are penalized whereas illegals have no such demands made upon them.  Thank you radical Democrats, Biden and Fauci.

Subtle , no?

Meanwhile:

China To U.S. – Move Out Of The Way

Chinese have gradually reduced cooperation with the U.S. and are now sending warning signals...

Read More

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So what, who cares, what difference does it make:

Former Trump Official Goes After Biden Admin

(NewsReady.com) – The spread of Critical Race Theory within the government and schools is alarming many people. CRT, as it’s commonly called, is the idea that systemic racism has shaped every aspect of the creation of America and is still a problem today. Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official, is now investigating to find out who was responsible for spreading the theory within the Department of Education.

On Wednesday, July 28, Vought’s group, the Center for Renewing America, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all records related to the Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN). The Biden administration has cited the far-left group in school reopening guidance. Later, the White House said that was a mistake.

 In a statement to Fox News, Vought said, “The American people deserve to know who at the highest levels in the White House pushed this radical, racist group into reopening guidelines for our schools.” He called it disturbing that the current administration supports a group that essentially discriminates against kids based on the color of their skin.

Ironically, the Biden administration and Democrats claim to be against the very thing they’re promoting. Fortunately, Vought plans to find out just how far up the chain the orders came to push this horrific rhetoric.

Copyright 2021, NewsReady.com

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Did the White House's Propaganda equivalent of Mata Hari blow her own cover and reveal Biden's blunder?

It was a mistake that was tolerated for several months until someone blew the Department of Education's cover and forced them to reveal their "mistake."

Once again we discover how easy it is for government to become the enemy of "we the people."

Jen Psaki Admits It Was A BIG Mistake... It Was Bad

(PresidentialWire.com)- White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was forced to admit that President Joe Biden was wrong when he promoted an organization that pushed teachers in America to “disrupt Whiteness and oppression.” The “Abolitionist Teaching Network,” an extreme left-wing organization that promotes racist policy and school curriculums, was promoted in a Department of Education handbook.

During a press briefing, Psaki reiterated an earlier White House statement attempting to distance Biden from the organization and admitted it was an error, stating that the organization “does not represent” the administration’s view and that they “don’t endorse the recommendations of this group.”

Psaki insisted that the federal government doesn’t recommend or dictate specific curriculum decisions for schools and said that the decision about what is taught in schools will be made by both state and local governments.

…but that doesn’t change that the White House promoted this far-left organization, or the fact that Democrats in state and local governments all over the country are urging schools to adopt Critical Race Theory and extreme-left wing ideologies as part of their teachings.

The handbook in question was published earlier last week, titled, “Guide for Racial Justice & Abolitionist Social and Emotional Learning.” The booklet claims that schools are a “microcosm of society” and conversations about “race and emotional learning” are therefore essential in schools.

So if President Joe Biden is distancing himself from the booklet, does that mean he thinks the Democrats should do the same? The president said that he is the Democratic Party when he was questioned about abolishing and defunding the police, so how about now? Will the president be telling Democrats to dial down their promotion of Critical Race Theory?

We’re assuming not…

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I Am A Conservative. I Recognize The Benefit of Pendulums. I Also Accept The Fact They Too Need To Reverse. Binhak The Gaslighter? Larry Make Newsom An Elder. Jewish Power Explained.

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I affirm  I am a conservative but I also believe I try to be a rational and logical one. The principle that most drives my political thinking is if you want something pay for it currently.

Another theory of mine is pendulums are necessary evils for correcting wrongs but too often swing beyond what is healthy and need to reverse. 

In the process of correcting power and influence they must gain power and influence to be effective and that becomes their undoing.  I believe unions, the mass media, the Oval Office have obtained  levels that need reversing..

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Interesting trivia sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader:

Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941, the Secret Service found themselves in a bind.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was to give his Day of Infamy speech to Congress on Monday,
and although the trip from the White House to Capitol Hill was short, agents weren't sure how to transport him safely.

At the time, Federal Law prohibited buying any cars that cost more than $750, so they would
have to get clearance from Congress to do that, and nobody had time for that.

One of the Secret Service members, however, discovered that the US Treasury had seized the
bulletproof car that mobster Al Capone owned when he was sent to jail in 1931.

They cleaned it, made sure it was running perfectly and had it ready for the President the next day.

Al Capone's 1928 Cadillac V-8 "Al Capone" Town Sedan became the President's Limo in December 1941  .

 

Mechanics are said to have cleaned and checked each feature of the Caddy well into the night of
December 7th, to make sure that it would run properly the next day for the Commander in Chief.

And run properly it did. It had been painted black and green to look identical to Chicago's
police cars at the time.

To top it off, the gangster's 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan had 3,000 pounds of armor and inch-thick
bulletproof windows.

It also had a specially installed siren and flashing lights hidden behind the grille, along with a police
scanner radio.

"Previous Owner."

Footnote: The car sold at auction in 2012 for $341,000.00.

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CNN Interviewee Registers As Foreign Agent

(FiveNation.com)- Stephen Binhak, a former Whitewater prosecutor who vocally called on Congress to impeach former President Donald Trump over disproven Russian collusion conspiracy theories has reportedly registered to become a lobbyist…for the Chinese Communist Party.

Who else saw this one coming?

Binhak is joined by Democrat operative Tony Podesta who will also be working as a lobbyist for Chinese technology company Huawei.

The National Pulse revealed how Binhak officially registered to lobby for Huawei, the technology and telecommunications company that was originally set to assist the United States and the United Kingdom establish new 5G infrastructure. The report explains how Binhak will be lobbying to assist Huawei in obtaining foreign investment and removing various export controls and economic sanctions. He began the new role on July 1, meaning Democrat operatives are now out there in Washington, D.C., meeting with high-profile Democrats to encourage them to roll back Trump-era legislation and executive orders designed to protect America’s infrastructure from expansionist communists.

That’s scary, right?

Huawei was labeled a national security threat under the Trump administration, and American businesses and federal contractors were banned from working with Chinese military-linked companies like Huawei.

If successful, Binhak could help Huawei re-establish itself as a technological force to be reckoned with in the United States. It may mean that the Chinese Communist Party has a role in the continued rollout of America’s 5G infrastructure and could see millions more cheap Chinese-made phones sold in the United States, making millions of U.S. citizens data hubs for China.

This is the same man who said that President Donald Trump was colluding with Russia and putting the U.S. in danger.

This is the definition of “gaslighting.”

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There was a time when unions served a valid purpose because laborers were taken advantage of but now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and unions are one more organized shill for Democrats.

The mass media, unions are pawns of the Democrats who now want total control over the voting booth.  Why don't Democrats move to Russia and/or China where  where they will be more at home than in what was once a free democracy?  The reason is, they would lose all their power and would be subordinates to their dictators.

In essence, Democrats are beneficiaries of $2 billion from Union Coffers and probably $2 billion or more  from free advertising by Mass Media patsies.

Here is an article from Fox Business you might want to read, featuring a research study from the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) with National Right to Work Committee Vice President, Greg Mourad.

Big Labor spends massive amounts of forced-dues dollars to influence elections, the actual numbers are shocking.

According to NILRR, the union bosses spent over 1.8 BILLION forced-dues dollars to elect Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other radical crazies in 2020.  Make no mistake, Big Labor’s actual political spending is certainly much higher than what is disclosed.

In fact, the $1.8 billion is only part of the money spent on Big Labor political activities.  Further analysis by NILRR suggests that by the time all union reports covering 2020 are finally filed, they will show union bosses admitted to spending at least an additional $200 million on politics during the 2020 Election cycle.

Yet, this still isn’t enough for Big Labor.  That’s why they are so desperate to push the PRO Union Boss Act through Congress.  Doing so would force workers in all 50 states to join a union, and thus pay into their political coffers, or be fired.

However, thanks to your support, we are fighting back.  But it’s not all defense.  The National Right to Work Act, a one-page bill introduced in both Houses of Congress, would ultimately blow up this forced-dues vicious cycle.

Contact your elected officials TODAY and urge them to stand up to Big Labor by cosponsoring the National Right to Work Act.

Best regards,

Here is the link again, in case you missed it:  https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/organized-labor-political-spending-2020-election

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Has the tide turned in California?

Larry Elder Can Beat Gavin Newsom In The California Governor Recall

Larry Elder, attorney, author, and radio talk-show host is running for Governor of California in the recall election after Sacramento Superior Court...

 

Read More »

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Mark Dubowitz explains:

to Use Antisemitism Against Antisemites

By Mark Dubowitz

Jewish power in America? When Sapir approached me to contribute an essay to this issue, my first instinct was to decline. I was born in South Africa and raised and educated in Canada. I became a U.S. citizen only in 2015, 12 years after moving to the country. My “lived experience” as an American Jew is somewhat limited.

Then again, as the chief executive of a Washington think tank, I have had a prime perch from which to watch the exercise of Jewish power — or rather, alleged Jewish power — in this country. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) spends considerable time observing the Islamic Republic of Iran. My 20 years of studying Iranian mullahs and Iranian rhetoric have given me an intimate acquaintance with Jewish power as it is perceived through the warped lens of antisemitism.

 

In 2019, I came to see my own image grotesquely distorted through that lens when the Iranian government, in an official sanctions order, singled out FDD as “the designing and executing arm of the U.S. administration” and authorized Iran’s “judicial or security institutions” to “counter, prosecute, or punish” FDD — and me. A regime with the largest missile and terrorist arsenal in the Middle East had declared its intent to harm an American Jew who runs a 50-person think tank. In 2020, the regime also sanctioned my FDD colleague Richard Goldberg, a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve who had, for many years, worked in Congress and the White House on Iran policy.

To be fair to the mullahs, I have spent considerable time working with four administrations and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on sanctions against the Islamic Republic. I have also been outspoken in my opposition to the nuclear deal of 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But my arsenal of weapons is limited. It comprises little more than my overly active Twitter account, periodic congressional testimonies, a steady stream of op-eds and media appearances, a habit of reading the fine print of International Atomic Energy Agency reports, and a willingness to nag policymakers to keep their focus on the Iranian threat.

The Iranian government isn’t the only one to endow me with outsize power. The mainstream American media have fed the same mindset.

In a 2018 profile, one prominent Washington reporter, referencing the influence of Jewish money, wrote that “Mark Dubowitz’s campaign to draw attention to what he saw as the flaws in the Iran nuclear deal has taken its place amongst the most consequential ever undertaken by a Washington think tank leader.” It’s a great quote that has helped me raise money from Jewish and non-Jewish donors alike. The article itself, however, was woefully inaccurate and wound up being appended by a massive four-point correction. Journalistic integrity has a way of going out the window when the target is a member of the you-know-who lobby.

Who can blame Khamenei and his minions for believing in cosmic Jewish powers when so many respectable Washington insiders seem to believe in them as well?

But that will not have stopped the regime in Iran from seeing the article as further evidence that it’s the Dubowitzes and Goldbergs of America who are the puppet masters in Washington. When it comes to confirming crackpot theories of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, it helps to have the imprimatur of the same media they are said to control.

To study Iranian rhetoric on the subject of Jews and Zion is to be reminded of the old joke about two Jews sitting on a park bench poring over the news. One, reading the Jerusalem Post, is in despair, lamenting Jewish vulnerability from a new barrage of attacks on Israel and a spike of anti-Jewish violence in European and American cities. The other Jew, reading the Iranian press, is delighted by tales of Jewish power, as he reads that the Zionists control Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood, the global financial markets, and the global media. 

Halevai that it should be so — if only we were that powerful. 

Unfortunately this is not, actually, a joke. Here is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in real life: “Today,” he tweeted in 2020, “the epitome of rebellion, arrogance and tyranny is the U.S. government, which is controlled by the wealthy Zionist individuals and corporate owners.” In a 2017 speech, he declared, “The U.S. is the agent of global Zionism. There is a malicious and dangerous network in the world which is called ‘global Zionism.’” In 2015, he tweeted, “The day when Western ppl realize that their problems result from #Zionism’s hegemony over govts they will make an inescapable #hell for them.”

Here is Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, heralded in left-wing circles as a “reformer” (and apparently the spearhead for the campaign against FDD): The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, he tweeted in 2020, “dictates US — & Western — policy in the Mid East . . . #AIPAC has poisoned US politics for years, overtly giving instructions to Congress. Time to end #APARTHEID Israel’s tyranny over Western halls of power.”

And here is the 1988 charter of Hamas, an Iranian proxy, explaining the terrorist group’s reasoning (or should I say, “reasoning”) for despising the Jews: “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

It would be bad enough if these fairy tales about Jewish omnipotence were limited to Islamist anti-Semites; even worse is the way they find currency within U.S. policy, media, and academic circles. 

The idea that “The Israel Lobby” runs Washington was made semi-respectable over a decade ago by Steven Walt and John Mearsheimer, two professors at the summit of U.S. academia. To this day, it is Jewish policymakers such as Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle who are widely blamed for drawing the U.S. into the Iraq War, despite their being (respectively) second-, third-, and fourth-tier officials in the Bush administration, while all the principals — George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, et al. — were Christians. The Obama administration did much the same when its chief spin-doctor Ben Rhodes decried Jewish-American opposition to Obama’s nuclear deal. One leading American broadsheet lent a helping hand when it listed the Jewish religion of those Democratic lawmakers who opposed the deal — with graphics to match. 

Who can blame Khamenei and his minions for believing in cosmic Jewish powers when so many respectable Washington insiders, in government and the media, seem to believe in them as well?

So what is the Jewish community to do with all this perceived power? The gap between reality and perception is wide. Yet it opens up a space for skillful negotiation by thoughtful Jewish leaders who understand that, as in certain martial arts, the key to winning is to turn an opponent’s momentum against him.

By population, the Jews are a tiny people: almost 15 million worldwide, about 0.2 percent of the global population and about 2 percent of America’s. There are approximately 6.9 million Israeli Jews, compared with an Iranian population of over 80 million, more than 420 million Arabs, and almost 2 billion Muslims. By sheer numbers, Jews are clearly outmatched. The intersecting echo chambers I have described mutually reinforce one another in a way that elevates the perceived power of a people who usually haven’t had much power at all.

Yet the malignant perception of overwhelming Jewish power comes with a hidden but potent benefit: the chance to leverage the tropes used against Jews to Jewish advantage. If Khamenei, Hamas, and Hezbollah prefer to believe that Jews pull all the big levers of American might, it only feeds a mindset of paranoia and illogic that is usually self-defeating. It might even give them more reason to fear us than to fight us. If Tehran (or the Washington press corps) wants to feed the perception that my modestly sized think tank dictates U.S. policy in the Middle East, who am I to complain?

The challenge is to find a way to speak about Jewish power that neither gives aid to conspiracists nor feeds into a sense of Jewish hopelessness by decrying the decline of political influence.

What goes for U.S. policy in the Middle East goes for other areas of Jewish concern: Especially in a democracy, the perception of power is power, at least in the hands of those who know how to use it judiciously.

From biblical times onward, Jews have often proved adept at this, not for nefarious reasons but because we appreciate how necessary that perception can be to our own survival. To take one example: In 1991, after Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam lost his Soviet patron, he approached Israel as a conduit to Washington — doubtlessly on the idea that Israeli influence in Washington would surely be enough to rescue him. The belief was anti-Semitic, but it still helped set the basis for negotiations leading to the rescue of Ethiopian Jews in Operation Solomon.

Something similar might be said about the way Jewish politics play out in the U.S. By any standard metric, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is far from the biggest lobby in Washington — certainly not when compared with, say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Rifle Association, or the pharmaceutical lobby. What actual power AIPAC has derives mainly from three strengths: the talent of its staff; the passion of its members; and, above all, the instinctual support that a majority of Americans (only a small fraction of whom are Jewish) feel for a country they rightly see as an embattled bastion of democracy facing and fighting the same enemies that threaten the United States.

Yet AIPAC’s critics, at home and abroad, like to paint it as a Washington juggernaut that politicians cross at their own peril. In a city where perception counts for almost everything, such a view can work in AIPAC’s favor. As in the 1959 Peter Sellers classic, The Mouse That Roared, it’s better to be a midget thought of as a giant than the other way around.

There is a final piece to the question of Jewish power in America, which is pedagogical.

For Jewish communal leaders, the challenge is to find a way to speak about Jewish power that neither gives aid to conspiracists nor feeds into a sense of Jewish hopelessness by decrying the decline of political influence. Those leaders must also contend with different manifestations of Jewish unease with power, particularly in the form of progressive Jews whose answer to the dilemmas of Jewish power is to become anti-Zionists while echoing antisemitic allegations of Israel as a malignant, illegitimate, and even genocidal state.

Better for those leaders to explain Jewish history — a story that has often been about what happens to a powerless people in the face of the harshest geopolitical realities, from bigotry and legal discrimination to expulsion and genocide. Yet it’s also a story of how that people has used power, whether real or reputed, to flourish against considerable odds. A people without power are, too often, a people without a future. Jewish leadership has a responsibility to ensure that this lesson is broadly understood.

Jewish communal leaders also should explain that Israel and its American Jewish supporters do not wield what power they have (or are perceived to have) indiscriminately. As Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the United States, has observed: “The IDF is generally regarded as one of the strongest and most sophisticated armies in the world, yet it does not use even a fraction of its potential strength against the people who, if they held such power, would hesitate not a moment to direct it at Israel’s destruction. . . . Israelis fight, asking themselves at every stage whether in fact they are doing the right thing, the moral thing, the Jewish thing.”

Zionism, like Judaism, is not only about the relationship of the Jewish people to power. It is also about justice and peace — the return of a people to their ancestral homeland and a tireless commitment to building a society based on classical Jewish and liberal values. Judicious use of power, real or perceived, toward the realization of that goal is not only a historical necessity; it is a virtue.

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Some Oldies. Biden Owns It Now. Ask Justice Thomas. Much More Meat!

No more clowning around.  Everything serious and mostly bull s---!

https://www.theretrosite.com/uploads/videos/6c636bd484d7.mp4

 These are no clowns but those who support BLM are:

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Oldies but still funny.

 A man       was telling his neighbour, 'I just bought a new hearing aid.  

It cost me four thousand dollars, but it's state of the art.. It's perfect.'          
'Really,' answered the neighbor . 'What kind is it?'          
'       Twelve thirty..'

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Morris , an 82 year-old man, went to the doctor to get a physical.          

A few days later, the doctor saw Morris walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm.          

A couple of days later, the doctor spoke to Morris and said, 'You're really doing great, aren't you?'          

Morris replied, 'Just doing what you said, Doc: 'Get a hot mamma and be cheerful.''          

The doctor said, 'I didn't say that.. I said, 'You've got a heart murmur; be careful.'

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It's Biden's Pandemic Now. 

Spencer Brown

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Lapid is a damn fool to believe he can charm Biden.  Biden is not in control of his own thoughts and he has always been a back stabber.  Ask Justice Thomas.

Will Lapid’s charm offensive work better than Netanyahu’s realpolitik?

The foreign minister believes that his government must prioritize the sort of diplomacy his predecessor rejected. But relations with the world won’t be improved by getting warm and fuzzy.

JONATHAN S. TOBIN

(July 27, 2021 / JNS) Like all new governments determined to show that it is an improvement over its predecessor, the unlikely coalition cobbled together by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid—though formally led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett—is determined to show that it will succeed where former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed.

Thus, it was hardly surprising that Lapid would use one of his first public briefings at his new office to blame the country’s woes on Netanyahu. The narrative was a familiar one. According to Lapid, Netanyahu had de-emphasized diplomacy and alienated old friends.

He acknowledged that the Likud-led government had forged strong ties with Republicans and evangelical Christians in the United States and had, with the help of the Trump administration, made historic breakthroughs with normalization agreements with four Arab and Muslim countries. But he pointed out that as much as Netanyahu had won new friends for his country in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, he believes that he was responsible for the difficult relations it has with Western Europe and among Democrats in the United States. Not satisfied with tying Netanyahu to problems that long predated his time in power, Lapid also went so far as to link the surge in anti-Semitism around the world, and in particular, in the United States in the aftermath of the most recent round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, to a lack of diplomatic effort on the part of Netanyahu.

Rather than seek to engage his country’s critics, Lapid thinks Netanyahu and his envoys “insulted them and made speeches against them.” But now he says this will all change. Lapid says he will “work with them in a different fashion” that will emphasize “dialogue.” In doing so, he will make plain that “not everyone who doesn’t agree with us is an anti-Semite and Israel-hater.”

That this is both hyperbole and a caricature of Netanyahu’s actual policies almost goes without saying. And it is particularly hypocritical on Lapid’s part to have said that.

Far from being slow to cast aspersions on Israel’s detractors, he was quick to label the Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream company’s boycott of Jerusalem and the territories as an act of anti-Semitism, much to the dismay of so-called “progressives” in the Jewish community who are supporting this legitimization of BDS campaigns against the Jewish state.

Even more absurd, Lapid was willing to blame the surge in anti-Semitism in the United States on Netanyahu’s decision to transfer most of the responsibility for diplomacy to his own office from the foreign ministry and for the cuts he made to its budget. While the ministry has many hard-working diplomats who deserve their country’s support, Lapid was demonstrating his utter lack of knowledge about what has driven that increase in anti-Semitic activity. It wasn’t the lack of outreach on the part of consular or embassy officials that led to members of the Democratic Party’s left wing and its radical “Squad’s” demonization of Israel. Nor is there anything that even the most competent or well-funded diplomats could have done in the last decade to halt the rise of critical race theory and intersectionality—first on college campuses and then in America’s public square.

Part of the problem is that Lapid is being disingenuous about having a fundamentally different approach to these issues. As he has acknowledged, although he supports a two-state solution in principle, he has already told the European diplomats that he thinks he can connect with better than Netanyahu that it isn’t feasible for the foreseeable future. What’s more, he insists that if a Palestinian state happens “eventually,” then it can only be a peaceful democratic nation. He knows that is more or less impossible under any conceivable scenario imaginable. So that is morally equivalent to telling an international community and the Democratic Party that still clings to the delusion that the main obstacle to a two-state solution is Israeli intransigence to get lost.

Despite rightly labeling BDS as anti-Semitism, Lapid has made some moves towards his country’s detractors.

Part of this is a matter of empty gestures. His claim after his first meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he can restore the old bipartisan consensus on Israel in the United States is a fantasy, but it is probably a good idea for him to at least pretend that he can reach the half of the Democratic Party that is increasingly hostile to Zionism because of ideological reasons.

Even less helpful was his embrace of a more universalist approach to anti-Semitism at a recent conference after which he was rightly criticized for blurring the difference between Jew-hatred and any other kind of prejudice. But rather than double down on a stand that may have been applauded by his country’s foes rather than its supporters, he backed away from it this week in an op-ed published in Haaretz in which he embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism that rightly focuses in part on anti-Zionism, which won’t win him any friends in London, Paris, Berlin or in the left-wing of the Democratic Party.

While those who represent the Jewish state need to be flexible and resourceful while competing on a diplomatic playing field that is most often stacked against their country, the idea that Israel thrives when being more accommodating is a myth. On the contrary, in the last 28 years since the Oslo Accords, to the extent that Israel accepted the false premise that it was a thief in possession of “occupied Palestinian land” rather than a country with an excellent case to make for its own right to hold onto the territories, it lost ground diplomatically. If anti-Zionism has been allowed to become acceptable discourse in mainstream American discussions, it is because Israel has made so many vain concessions for the sake of peace like Oslo and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, not because it didn’t make enough of them. Such concessions validated the case being made by those who falsely accused it of practicing “apartheid” and other slurs.

By contrast, in recent years, as Netanyahu increasingly discarded even lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, it was able to greatly expand the ranks of its friends throughout the world, including in the heretofore uniformly hostile Middle East.

Just as important, whoever is in charge at the foreign ministry needs to keep a close watch on staffers who have at times in the past failed to understand that their priority should be to make the case for the justice of Israel’s cause and not be diverted into foolish digressions like its tragicomic embrace of an effort to “rebrand” Israel as a country known for beautiful scenery, attractive people and smart scientists. It has all three in abundance; however, that won’t matter if its representatives are too busy trying to be liked to label its critics as anti-Semites, and the lies about apartheid and oppression go unrefuted.

Charm offensives may have their uses. But as Netanyahu demonstrated, alliances based on common interests and realpolitik are more reliable than attempts to be warm and fuzzy in settings where pop-culture influencers are already prejudiced against the idea of a Jewish state more than they are critical of its policies.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate.

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Dear Reader,

Freedom in America is under attack.

One in three Americans are worried they could get fired for their political views.

Two in three are scared to speak their mind in public.

And almost three out of four Americans fear they will never be able to retire.

And there's a reason for it.

Former Wall Street insider Teeka Tiwari is convinced...

Elite "gatekeepers" are systematically undermining our constitution... and destroying our liberties.

The good news:

A new system is already emerging.

An $11.3 trillion "Liberty Code" that will finally bring back freedom to America...

And that's currently minting up to 25,000 millionaires EVERY SINGLE MONTH.

WARNING: What Teeka is about to show you is highly controversial.

And we cannot guarantee we will keep this information online for long.

So we urge you to see the facts for yourself, immediately.

Click here for the full story.

Sincerely,

Kyle Warnke

Managing Editor, Palm Beach Research Group

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear friends,

Since defeating Donald Trump back in 2020, President Joe Biden has routinely trumpeted his administration’s earnest commitment to safeguarding and promoting democracy the world over. He insists that under his leadership, America “is back.” But whether it’s over Hong Kong, China, Afghanistan, or Cuba, Biden has shown that while he can say the right things, he has yet to prove that he will actually do anything to defend the values he purports to hold dear. In my latest piece for The Dispatch, I argue that while the rhetoric of the Biden administration is surely welcome after four years of Trump, the former President’s policies in support of Ukraine, China’s Uyghurs, Hong Kong, the people of Cuba, and many more, were often laudable. With Biden, it seems the reverse is true. With already half a year in office, Biden needs to demonstrate that he can not only talk the talk on democracy, he can also walk the walk.

I’m also sharing our latest podcast, a dive into the Delta variant; to mask or not to mask (that is indeed the question); and the foul politics of COVID. Dr. Marty Makary joined Marc and me for our last pod of the season; we’ll be back in September! Listen here.

I’d love any feedback, and do let us know if you’d like off this small mailing list.

Best, 

Danielle Pletka Senior Fellow, Foreign & Defense Policy aei.org | @dpletka     ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Reducing reason to net zero

Climate change policy is dead in the water, along with scientific integrity

By Melanie Phillips

The British government continues to display an intelligent, informed and above all powerfully effective approach to arresting “climate change”.

Its climate change spokeswoman, Allegra Stratton, has said people should do their bit to stop anthropogenic global warming (AGW) by freezing leftover bread, ordering shampoo in cardboard packaging and not rinsing plates before putting them in the dishwasher.

Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it.

But what’s this? As the Mail on Sunday reported, the government’s flagship green policy of reducing carbon emissions to “net zero” by 2050 has been thrown into disarray. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is objecting to the cost which is currently estimated at more than £1.4 trillion. The Mail writes:

As part of the net zero plan –which would decarbonise the economy by 2050 – No 10 had been expected to publish in the spring details of the strategy for moving away from gas boilers ahead of Glasgow's COP26 climate change conference in November. But this has been delayed until the autumn amid mounting alarm about the bill.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) calculated the cost of making buildings net zero at £400 billion, while the bill for vehicles would be £330 billion, plus £500 billion to clean up power generation and a further £46 billion for industry.After energy savings across the economy, this would leave a £400 billion bill for the Treasury. The OBR also warned that the Government would need to impose carbon taxes to make up for the loss of fuel duty and other taxes.

Moreover, the government is now panicking over its proposal to ban gas boilers by 2035, so much so that it’s pushed this date back to 2040. This is also hardly surprising. As Fraser Myers wrote in the Telegraph: 

But the truth is, the sacrifices being demanded of us in the name of net zero are incompatible with democracy, and the PM knows it. The boiler ban was a key plank of the government’s net zero strategy. Gas boilers were to be replaced with heat pumps. These heat pumps are not what anyone could call a reasonable alternative to boilers. While a boiler can heat your house fairly quickly at the flick of a switch, a heat pump can take around 24 hours to heat your home to between 17 to 19 degrees celsius - i.e., not-quite room temperature.

For the pleasure of living in your not-quite warm house, you will have to fork out around £10,000 for the unit and installation. Then, according to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), you can expect to spend an additional £100 per year on your energy bills.

If you want to own a heat pump and have a house that’s more than lukewarm, you’ll need lots of extra insulation. This means yet more tens of thousands of pounds in renovation costs. The Energy Technologies Institute estimates that a ‘deep retrofit’ could cost as much as building a home from scratch. This is not money that any ordinary person has down the back of the sofa - or that the taxpayer can reasonably cover for millions of households.

Getting used to this reduced lifestyle ‘will take an attitudinal shift’, says Chris Stark, CEO of the CCC. This is quite the understatement. It means abandoning what was once a completely normal expectation in a developed country: having a warm home in winter.

In our net zero future, we can also forget having a stable and affordable supply of electricity. Boris says he wants to make the UK the “Saudi Arabia of wind power”. But we should be wary of green energy experiments. Places like California that have rushed to swap nuclear and fossil fuels with renewable energy are regularly faced with rolling blackouts. Since Germany embarked on its Energiewende (energy transition), its electricity prices are now among the highest in the world, though, ironically, this hasn’t done much to lower CO2 emissions.

As Myers observed, the government’s net zero policy is effectively dead in the water. This is a trifle embarrassing, since Britain is hosting the COP summit in Glasgow which is expected to bring together more than 100 world leaders to commit themselves to reach global net zero and limit global warming to 1.5C.

Ye gods — are they all quite, quite mad?

It’s hard to to get one’s head round the fact that virtually the entire world has lost its marbles over this “climate change” agenda.

It’s not just that net zero carbon emissions is patently undoable without returning to a pre-industrial way of life  — and unless fascist measures are used to force the population to do so.

It’s not just that the idea that humanity can change the course of a system as complex, chaotic and non-linear as climate is in the same league as Jonathan Swift’s satirical fantasy of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers.

Most astounding of all, the foundational premise of catastrophic warming caused by disastrous levels of carbon dioxide produced by human activity is just that: a mere premise, a theory, an idea, a hypothesis — but one for which the evidence is assembled to fit it, the precise reverse of the scientific method of examining the evidence to arrive at a conclusion. 

As I wrote here for my premium subscribers, AGW is a perfectly circular theory which repudiates the key aspect of scientific inquiry — that it is always open to conflicting argument and thus can never be “settled,” as zealots insist is the case with AGW. Predicted by dodgy computer modelling, the premise of catastrophic “climate change” is fed into further modelling of events such as flooding, hurricanes, rising seas, starving polar bears and so on. 

And so — amazing to relate — out comes yet another prediction of yet another dire outcome of catastrophic “climate change”. Yet away from the modelling, scientifically observable reality over time simply doesn’t support the claim that the rate of global warming is beyond the normal fluctuations of the climate over the centuries — nor that these catastrophic outcomes are happening, nor that if some of these developments are taking place at any level that this is mostly or entirely the result of human activity. 

Actual observable evidence that the predicted climate apocalypse just doesn’t stack up is being produced all the time — and yet it’s airbrushed out of political and mainstream media discourse.

For example, for decades we’ve been told that AGW is destroying the Great Barrier Reef. But on Watts Up With That Peter Ridd now writes: 

The annual data on coral cover for the Great Barrier Reef, produced by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, was released on Monday showing the amount of coral on the reef is at record high levels. Record high, despite all the doom stories by our reef science and management institutions.

Like all other data on the reef, this shows it is in robust health. For example, coral growth rates have, if anything, increased over the past 100 years, and measurements of farm pesticides reaching the reef show levels so low that they cannot be detected with the most ultra-sensitive equipment.

This data is good news. It could hardly be better. But somehow, our science organisations have convinced the world that the reef is on its last legs. How has this happened?

How indeed. Next, a new study has found that East and West Antarctica have profoundly cooled by -2.8°C and -1.68°C since 1979.

Next, we learn that everything climate catastrophists have said about Atlantic hurricanes and AGW is wrong. On phys.org, Bob Yirka writes: 

Researchers affiliated with several institutions in the United States has determined that the increase in the number of hurricanes forming in the Atlantic over the past several years is not related to global warming. They suggest instead, in their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, that it is simply reflective of natural variable weather patterns.

Fancy!

And so on and on.

Back in 2005, the eminent MIT meteorologist Professor Richard Lindzen, who is scathing about AGW theory and the corruption of science in its service, wrote: 

The primary implication would be that for over 25 years, we have based not only our worst case scenarios but even our best case scenarios on model exaggeration...

The public discourse on global warming has little in common with the standards of scientific discourse. Rather, it is part of political discourse where comments are made to secure the political base and frighten the opposition rather than to illuminate issues. In political discourse, information is to be “spun” to reinforce pre-existing beliefs, and to discourage opposition. The chief example of the latter is the perpetual claim of universal scientific agreement. This claim was part of the media treatment of global cooling (in the 1970’s) and has been part of the treatment of global warming since 1988 (well before most climate change institutes were created). The consensus preceded the research.

That media discourse on climate change is political rather than scientific should, in fact, come as no surprise. However, even scientific literature and institutions have become politicised. Some scientists issue meaningless remarks in what I believe to be the full expectation that the media and the environmental movement will provide the “spin”. Since the societal response to alarm has, so far, been to increase scientific funding, there has been little reason for scientists to complain.

All around us, the cultural institutions of the west are repudiating reason and evidence in the service of numerous ideologies which permit no challenge whatever to their driving idea and its control over peoples’ lives. Our supposed age of reason is based on science. To understand how reason is currently being destroyed, look no further than the terrible corruption of science by the politicized ideology of anthropogenic global warming.

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Keep shooting Schumer:

In fact, it never ends with this party. All they can do is point to the Republicans and whine. We wish that we were exaggerating this point.

Schumer does not have anything to say that will actually help anyone.

This little diatribe sums up the Democrats in a nutshell at the moment.

Find out more about what Chuck had to say about the “deplorables” this time! 

Fighting for Freedom, 

Jenny Davis

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Henninger and I are in agreement but this is not one of his best written op eds. Yes, Biden is sinking and he is also sinking the Ship of State.

Is Joe Biden Sinking?

How long will the president’s old pals, the moderate Democrats, hang on for the descent?

By Daniel Henninger

 

Wonder Land: With the Democratic Party's relentless leftward lurch, how long will the president’s old pals, the moderate Democrats, continue with its 'progressive' formula for success? Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images

The country’s partisan polarization has intensified every year since George W. Bush won the presidency in the 2000 hanging-chad election. From Capitol Hill to Main Street, Republicans and Democrats don’t even bother discussing anything of political substance. What’s the point if 90% of the opposition is against whatever you’ve got? That leaves “independents” as the only thing that moves, and the bad news for Mr. Biden and his party’s immovable 90 percenters is the indies are in motion.

In mid-June, Mr. Biden’s approval rating in the Gallup poll was a decent 56%. It’s now 50%. Among independents, he’s at 48%, down 7 points. If you were in a plane that lost altitude that fast, you’d be white-knuckling both armrests.

Presidential approval as a leading indicator of party fortunes carries weight among political analysts. My other preferred metric is “direction of the country,” a one-stop consideration of everything in play. When that sentiment heads south, the party holding the bag of power is in trouble.

The ABC News-Ipsos poll released this week shows 55% of respondents pessimistic about the country’s direction, a 20-point drop since May. Among independents, the downdraft hit 26 points. As Joe Biden might say, “Gee, what happened?”

If all you are tracking is Mr. Biden himself, the answer is, not much. The president routinely shows up, does a competent job of reading something in the teleprompter, and turns over the fill-in-the-blanks job to Jen Psaki.

The White House used to say the $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus bill had saved the country, but it looks as if voters have pocketed that and yet are somehow out of sorts with the Biden presidency.

The answer to the Biden decline is deeper than first-term summer doldrums. It’s this: The most significantly defining political event of the past year was Mr. Biden’s pivot from moderate centrist Democratic candidate to become Bernie Sanders’s most progressive president since FDR. For months after his inauguration, one arcane progressive issue dominated the public Biden agenda: voting access. And more specifically, passage of H.R.1, the grandiosely titled For the People Act.

This political offensive ran on and on, expanding into high-profile assaults on Republican voting-process legislation in many states. It reached a rhetorical apotheosis in July with Mr. Biden giving a speech calling the Republican state bills “21st century Jim Crow” and the “most significant threat to our democracy since the Civil War.” Only from the progressive fever swamps could such hyperbolic nonsense emerge.

The issue and H.R.1 died. Mr. Biden and the Democrats wasted tremendous political capital on this windmill, which had minimal public resonance.

Despite reports Wednesday of a negotiators’ deal on infrastructure, progressives insist a pothole bill can only pass in tandem with all their legislative goals. Which are what?

I think the general public is by turns bored, confused or shocked at the rest of the sprawling Biden legislative agenda. If you asked people to identify what’s in the American Families Plan they’d say they aren’t sure, though they hear it’ll cost something like $3 trillion or $4 trillion, which seems like “a lot of spending.”

BidenCare could have been about one big thing—child care. Instead it’s about everything—and so ultimately nothing. There’s no there there. It’s Elizabeth Warren’s endless “plans.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Biden, what’s going on in the rest of the country is no overdue day at the beach that would let him survive the summer until some legislative victories arrive, such as a Democrats-only vote on the cats-and-dogs reconciliation bill.

In the here and now, this is what the average American sees: unpoliced urban crime, a nonexistent southern border, rampant homelessness, the Delta variant and vaccination hesitancy, federal confusion about who should wear masks when or where, store owners telling customers that workers prefer the Biden stay-at-home federal payments, and prices going up. Even for FDR, that would be a heavy lift.

On foreign policy, Mr. Biden keeps kicking issues like Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline out of sight, and hopefully out of the public mind. But the implications of his decisions persist in public debate, such as the likelihood that his total U.S. pullout from Afghanistan will produce the unhappy visuals of a Taliban bloodbath.

Hey, let’s watch the Olympics! What Olympics?

I almost forgot: There’s Joe Biden himself. He’ll always be the 46th U.S. president, but Mr. Biden turns out to be an unfixably imperfect messenger for a message that on any given day is half-baked (the border, Covid masks) or overbaked (“human” infrastructure).

Mr. Biden is a lifetime practitioner of legendary House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s adage that “if you want to get along, you have to go along.” Instinctively, Mr. Biden chose to go along with the Washington-based takeover of his party by the arriviste left. Result: He has fallen fast to 50% approval. He is sinking. How long will his old pals, the moderate Democrats, hang on for the descent?

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