VIDEO: Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, ‘Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’

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Barbara Jordan’s vision on immigration is more relevant today than ever before.

In a February 21, 2024 Numbers USA column titled “The Essential Barbara Jordan” Jeremy Beck wrote,

February 21, 2024 – Today is Barbara Jordan’s birthday. She would have been 88 years old. Tragically, she died in 1996, just before Congress voted on the immigration recommendations she developed over the last years of her life.

If you don’t know much about Barbara Jordan, you should look her up. She regularly appears on lists of great American orators. Jordan’s life story is full of “firsts,” including the first Southern Black woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, and the first woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.

If you are concerned at all with immigration policy, you must learn about Barbara Jordan and the last act of her illustrious life and career. Her work as chair of the last bi-partisan commission to study immigration is essential to understanding where we’ve been; and necessary for us to see where we need to go.

Growing up during the Great Migration

Jordan was born in 1936, twelve years after the Immigration Act of 1924 was signed into law (one hundred years ago this May). That bill permanently ended The Great Wave of European migration (after the Great War had temporarily halted it in 1917). The slowdown of ships from Europe forced Northern industrialists to do the unthinkable: they sent recruiters to the far corners of the deep South and recruited the descendants of slaves and American Freedmen. The result was The Great Migration of Black Americans into the North and West.  White workers’ income went up two hundred and fifty percent. Black workers’ income went up four hundred percent. W.E.B. DuBois called the immigration slowdown “the economic salvation of American black labor.” DuBois’ declaration was echoed by Black journals and newspapers.

Jordan grew up during segregation and other forms of institutionalized racism. She also grew up during The Great Leveling and the rise of the Black middle class, whose economic gains led to new political power. In the year before Jordan was elected to the Texas State Senate (another first), Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Four decades of economic empowerment had finally led to the dismantling of institutional barriers to social equality.

Righting an old wrong; creating a new one

As Jordan was on the cusp of beginning her political career in the Texas Senate, legislators in Washington, D.C. were about to make a mistake that Jordan would spend the coda of her political career trying to clean up. In the spirit of the civil rights movement, and to honor the slain President Kennedy, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. In doing so, they righted an old wrong, and created a new one.

Multiple administrations and Congresses had criticized one aspect of the immigration system created by the 1924 law: national-origin quotas made it virtually impossible for anyone outside of Europe to immigrate to the United States. The 1924 Act drastically reduced immigration from Europe, but it effectively banned immigration from other parts of the world, regardless of an individual’s merit. If the fundamental questions of immigration policy are “how many” and “which ones,” the 1924 Act was right on the former, and wrong on the latter.

“Everywhere else in our national life, we have eliminated discrimination based on national origins,” Senator Ted Kennedy said, “Yet this system is still the foundation of our immi­gration law.”

Kennedy and his fellow reformers vowed to leave the successful “how many” part of the 1924 Act in place. They promised a system that would admit 265,000 immigrants per year. Their aim was only to recalibrate the “which ones” part. The new system, they promised, would be less discriminatory.  A nuclear physicist, for instance, wouldn’t be denied just because he or she came from the “wrong” part of the world.

In the end, the bill changed both the “which ones” and the “how many.” The discriminatory quotas were abolished, but immigration numbers almost immediately doubled. Decades of declining inequality, an expanding middle class, and shrinking racial wealth gaps were halted and reversed. Inadvertently, it seems, Congress created new economic barriers to equality within a month of passing landmark civil rights legislation.

The 1965 Act was the photo negative of the 1924 bill. The legislation got the “which ones” right and the “how many” wrong. The challenge for policy makers today is to get both parts right. Nobody in the last half century has provided a clearer roadmap to achieving that sensible balance than Barbara Charline Jordan.

Read the full article.

EDITORS NOTE: This Numbers USA column is republished in part with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Woke Investment Managers Pull $15.7 Trillion from Climate Activism Pact

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BlackRock and other U.S.-based investment management conglomerates have chosen to withdraw from a controversial initiative, Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), that pressured companies to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to “net-zero emissions by 2050 [or] sooner,” in pursuit of “limiting global average temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees above “pre-industrial levels.” The withdrawals follow financial and legal pressure from U.S. state officials, as well a new phase of cooperation for CA100+ that would move “from words to action.”

As of last June, more than 700 firms had joined CA100+, controlling a breathtaking $68 trillion, or nearly 2.5 times the U.S.A.’s annual GDP.

However, last week, Reuters reported that some of the world’s largest investment managers had withdrawn from CA100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm with $9 trillion assets under management (AUM), withdrew its U.S. arm, worth $6.6 trillion. State Street (4th largest with $4.1 trillion AUM), J.P. Morgan (6th largest with $3.1 trillion AUM), and PIMCO (14th largest with $1.9 trillion AUM) all withdrew entirely. However, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton (U.S. firms among the world’s 20 largest asset managers) are still signatories.

With the withdrawal of these four firms, CA100+ lost influence over the $15.7 trillion in assets they managed, cutting its influence by 23%.

At least in part, the withdrawals were triggered last summer, when the Steering Committee for CA100+ announced a “Phase Two” for their campaign of corporate climate activism, expected to last until 2030. “In phase two, the overarching goal is to go from words to action,” explained CA100+ Steering Committee Chairman Francois Humbert. The new phase would mean “more accountability, more transparency, more seniority.” The new guidelines would require investment managers to disclose how they vote on climate-related motions at shareholder meetings, as well as how often they lobby corporations and policymakers with their climate agenda.

When CA100+ upped the ante, several major U.S. investment firms promptly folded. BlackRock and State Street cited independence concerns, J.P. Morgan said it had developed “its own climate risk engagement framework,” while PIMCO claimed it “operates its own portfolio-relevant engagement activities with issuers on sustainability.”

In other words, these investment managers do not object to leveraging their fiduciary trust to pursue climate activism. All four of them are still doing climate activism on their own. They did object to the loss of independence of having an international organization micromanage their climate activism — how very American.

However, independence concerns over CA100+’s move to “Phase Two” does not fully explain the abrupt withdrawal of these investment management firms. After all, they still basically share CA100+’s goal of leveraging the investments they manage to advance their climate activism agenda. And these firms did decide to join CA100+ in the first place, knowing that it might inevitably lead to phases that required more action and accountability. Here, grasping the full picture requires viewing the scenery from more than one vantage point.

On March 30, 2023, 21 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the largest U.S.-based asset managers, expressing concern over their political activism and warning that such behavior could violate federal securities laws. The letter, led by Montana AG Austin Knudsen (R), specifically highlighted the CA100+ agenda as “potential unlawful coordination” to “push policies through the financial system that cannot be achieved at the ballot box.” It put investment managers on notice that “ongoing investigations” would “continue to evaluate” whether the firms were engaged in “potential unlawful coordination and other violations … as part of Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative [NZAM], or the like.”

Woke asset managers have sustained considerable pressure from state governments in recent years, as the vast scale of their political activism became known. State officials have issued opinions declaring political activism with public funds illegal, published blacklists of politicized corporations the state won’t do business with, opposed woke companies’ purchases of public utility shares, and demonstrated the public support for doing so by winning subsequent elections.

Asset management firms are wilting before the ire of these state officials. Last summer, after 11 state governments pulled more than $5 billion in assets from his firm’s management, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared he was abandoning the acronym “ESG” (for left-wing “environmental, social, and governance causes) — but not the spirit. In December 2022, Vanguard (the world’s second largest asset manager, with approximately $7 trillion AUM) announced plans to withdraw from the NZAM after pressure from state governments.

The mini-exodus from CA100+ seems to be undertaken with the same goal in mind. The firms withdrawing from the climate pact haven’t abandoned their commitment to climate activism, but they would prefer not to become the next Bud Light in doing so. Re-asserting their “independence” from CA100+ frees them to evaluate the political or legal costs of any particular deed of climate activism and avoid provoking uncomfortable investigations or costly lawsuits. Even without changing their behavior, distancing themselves from the climate organization can help them avoid charges of “unlawful coordination” without distancing themselves from the climate agenda.

The backdrop to this performative calculus is that much left-wing corporate activism is neither essential nor profitable. In a 2022 survey of top executives, 59% of CEOs said they would “plan to pause or reconsider their organization’s ESG efforts” in response to a recession. That’s the sort of numbers you would expect from an optional extra — like a soft-serve machine in the breakroom. It might keep the workforce happy, and it might help mute outside criticism, but it doesn’t help a business achieve its core mission — to produce, move, or sell a product, or to provide certain services.

In the case of asset management firms, they provide the service of managing assets, in hopes of providing a better return for investors than they could obtain on their own. Climate activism is not relevant to the goal of asset management. In fact, climate activism can hamper an asset manager’s goal (obtaining the best return for his client) by forcing a company to adopt costly “green” policies that reduce its profitability and thus the profitability of assets invested in that company.

“Broadly, [federal securities] laws require you to act as a fiduciary, in the best interests of your clients and exercising due care and loyalty,” the attorneys general wrote the asset management firms. “Simply put, you are not the same as political or social activists and you should not be allowing the vast savings entrusted to you to be commandeered by activists to advance non-financial goals.” Asset management firms aren’t yet convinced of this argument and continue to pursue climate activism, but changes in their behavior indicate the pressure is having an effect.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: Prosperity is Possible with Affordable Energy

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Church Attacks Increase 800% in less than 6 Years: FRC Report

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If you believe anti-Christian attacks have skyrocketed over the last decade, you’re right. Attacks on churches have increased 800% in less than six years — and more than doubled over the last year, according to a new report released today by Family Research Council. Documented acts of anti-church hostility include attempted bombings, shootings, satanic vandalism, and numerous attacks based on anti-Christian bias due to support for abortion or extreme transgender ideology. Some constituted unpunished election interference.

The report identified 915 acts of hostility against churches between January 2018 and November 2023, including:

  • 709 acts of vandalism
  • 135 completed or attempted arsons
  • 32 bomb threats
  • 22 gun-related incidents
  • 61 other incidents, including assault, threats, and interruption of worship services.

These acts of “religious intimidation” send the message “that churches are not wanted in the community or respected in general,” Arielle Del Turco, who authored the report, told The Washington Stand. “Regardless of the motivations of these crimes, everyone should treat churches and all houses of worship with respect and affirm the importance of religious freedom for all Americans.”

The report shows that church attacks, and acts of violence, continued to explode in 2023. During the first 11 months of last year, researchers verified at least 436 acts of hostility against U.S. churches — more than double the number of attacks in all of 2022, including:

  • 315 acts of vandalism
  • 75 completed or attempted arsons
  • 20 bomb threats
  • 10 gun-related incidents
  • 12 instances of satanic graffiti
  • 59 churches faced repeated acts of hostility

These statistics likely understate the extent of the problem, because “[m]any acts of hostility against churches are likely not reported to authorities and/or are not featured in the news or other online sources from which we collected data,” says the report. “[T]he number of acts of hostility is undoubtedly much higher.”

Acts of anti-church hostility blanketed the country in 2023, taking place in 48 states and Washington, D.C. California experienced the largest number of incidents, with 91. Texas churches endured 62 incidents; New York had 58; and Florida had 47.

“The rise in hostility we identified in our December 2022 report has neither slowed nor plateaued; rather, it has accelerated,” says the new report. “The rise in crimes against churches is taking place in a context in which American culture appears increasingly hostile to Christianity. Criminal acts of vandalism and destruction of church property may be symptomatic of a collapse in societal reverence and respect.”

The raw numbers paint a grim picture of escalating anti-Christian action boiling over into bigoted action. The report totals:

  • 50 acts of hostility against churches in 2018
  • 83 in 2019
  • 55 in 2020
  • 96 in 2021
  • 195 in 2022
  • 436 in 2023

“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked,” the last such report accurately predicted last April.

Although federal civil rights laws explicitly ban religious discrimination, and hundreds of assailants targeted houses of worship, only “a minority were under investigation as hate crimes,” according to the 157-page analysis, titled “Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States.”

Deadly Shootings, Bomb Threats, and Political Ideology

The report’s longest section is a robust 97 pages of church attacks, verified through 50 pages of endnotes, which show bomb threats, shootings, politically motivated attacks, and explicit Satanism.

Transgender violence: Perhaps the most shocking act of anti-Christian bias took place last March 27, when transgender-identifying Audrey Hale opened fire at the Nashville Covenant School, operated by the Covenant Presbyterian Church, killing six people, including three young students. Hale, who frequently identified as a male named “Aiden,” told a friend she had left a manifesto and “plenty of evidence behind” attesting to her motive. Yet, aside from a few pages pried out of police hands by conservative commentator Steven Crowder, Hale’s manifesto remains hidden.

The assault is but one example of 2023’s transgender-related anti-church violence. Last January 3, a man named Cameron Storer who identifies as female set fire to Portland Korean Church, an historic, 117-year-old vacant building. Storer claimed that voices in his head threatened to “mutilate” him unless he set the church ablaze.

Transgender activist-vandals painted the message “TRANS PWR” on St. Joseph Catholic Church in Louisville, on March 3. The attack came one day after the Kentucky legislature overrode the veto of Governor Andy Beshear (D) to enact a law protecting children from transgender surgeries. Also in March, vandals cut down crosses in the cemetery of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Newton, North Carolina, shortly after it disaffiliated with the United Methodist denomination over the denomination’s liberalizing views on LGBT issues. On June 16, vandals spray-painted the words “Stay gay, stay hard, Love is 4 everyone” on Grace Community Church in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

The report does not include incidents that took place in 2024, such as Genesse Moreno — an ex-Muslim convert to Judaism who is not a U.S. citizen and whom neighbors say has identified as “transgender” — opening fire in Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston.

Bombings, shootings, and Molotov cocktails: Christian churches faced potential mass casualties from explosions or shootings in 2023. Someone set a five-gallon drum of gasoline ablaze inside Word of God Ministries in Shreveport last January, but fire personnel’s quick response limited the damage.

Last October 29, a man purloined Holy Communion from Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Church in San Fransisco. “After being confronted about it, the man punched the person who confronted him and ran out. Police pursued the man, who reportedly ‘set off a pipe bomb’ and ignited a ‘Molotov cocktail’ to deter police,” notes the report. Similarly, on July 17, a man threw Molotov cocktails through the windows of Living Stones Church in Reno, Nevada. In March, four people fired 50 rounds into Clearview Mennonite Church of Versailles, Missouri.

While some acts of violence seemed senseless, others carried a pointed political message. Many church assaults stemmed from the Christian church’s 2,000-year-old teaching that life begins at fertilization/conception, and abortion is murder.

Pro-abortion hostility: The number of church assaults peaked in June, the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. An arsonist set the Incarnation Roman Catholic Church in Orlando ablaze on the pro-life ruling’s first anniversary, although investigators could not determine if the date figured into the blaze.

But pro-abortion attacks on Christian churches continued unabated all year long. On January 18, just before the March for Life, someone vandalized the monument to the unborn at St. Rosalia Roman Catholic Church in Pittsburgh. Eight days later, someone desecrated a pro-life banner inside a Florida Catholic parish with the phrase “Women’s body, women’s choice.” Months later, on September 9, someone splattered red paint on a pro-life sign at the Second Baptist Church in Palermo, Maine, leaving behind two messages: “Abortion is our human right” and “Queer love 4 eva.” Vandals destroyed a pro-life display of 1,000 wooden crosses, representing unborn lives snuffed out by abortion, at a display in Mary Queen of Heaven Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Illinois.

Acts of Anti-Christian Election Interference

Several of Ohio’s 24 reported church attacks involved the state’s Issue 1 campaign. The controversial constitutional amendment created a “right” for people of all ages to access abortion at essentially any point in pregnancy. Many constituted acts of election interference. “In October, someone pulled the ‘Vote No’ sign at Cincinnati’s St. Monica-St. George Church out of the ground and threw it in a dumpster,” notes the report. “At St. Bartholomew Church, also in Cincinnati, between six and eight ‘Vote No’ yard signs were removed from the church’s property and replaced with ‘Vote Yes’ signs.” Additional acts of pro-abortion election interference occurred at:

  • Cincinnati’s Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains, Cincinnati, Ohio, where vandals stole or vandalized anti-Issue 1 signs one month before the election.
  • At St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in the university town of Oxford, home of (Miami University), a pro-life sign opposing Issue 1 “was cut in half, and many other similar church signs were vandalized or stolen.”
  • At the Church of the Incarnation in Centerville, “someone spray-painted the church’s front door window to cover up a sign opposing Ohio Issue 1.”

Issue 1 passed handily last November.

“Americans appear increasingly comfortable lashing out against church buildings, pointing to a larger societal problem of marginalizing core Christian beliefs, including those that touch on hot-button political issues related to human dignity and sexuality,” says the report. “Attacks on houses of worship may also signal a discomfort with religion in general.”

Anti-Christian, Muslim-based hatred: Some acts of violence appeared to spring from Islamist sources. Last October, a man claiming to be with Hamas entered Sacred Heart Church in Cicero, New York, and threatened its employees.

International conflicts invaded U.S. churches throughout the year. Last September 24, vandals painted an anti-Christian, pro-Muslim slogan on St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. The message — “Artsakh is Dead, Karabakh is Azerbaijan,” which was taped to the Armenian church’s outdoor bulletin board — referred to a violent Christian-Muslim feud over control of Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh) between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

A few attacks also involved Jewish issues, including vandalizing a sign showing support for Israel and graffiti on one church denouncing “Israel’s genocide.”

Targeting minority churches: A few attacks targeted ethnic minorities. The report documents nine attacks targeting Missionary Baptist churches and six targeting parishes of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME). Additionally, on October 28, someone burned down Holy Innocents Episcopal Church, which serves the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Parmelee, South Dakota.

Some incidents straddled the line between arson and the demonic. “In June, Ascension of the Lord Romanian Orthodox Church of Hayward, California, was broken into, and several religious artifacts were set on fire, including a Bible and a crucifix. The charred items and ashes were left around an altar,” the report notes.

Whatever the purported motivation, many anti-church attackers directly invoked demonic forces in their attacks on the church, which the Bible identifies as “the Body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12).

Satan: “At least 12 incidents included satanic imagery or symbols,” the report notes. It goes on to specify numerous examples:

  • In July, vandals broke into Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church of El Paso, Texas, and left behind satanic imagery, including writing the number “666” on multiple items. Crosses inside the church were also turned upside down, and holy oil was dumped out.
  • In October, someone spray-painted the words “Devil Has Risen” and a symbol like a pentagram on the buildings of Jesus Worship Center in Jennings, Louisiana.”
  • Last February 4, vandals desecrated the Old Philadelphia Church — the oldest church in Izzard County, Arkansas — with inverted crosses and a pentagram.
  • Last October 7, someone spray-painted “Their [sic] is no God” on the marquee of Miracle Faith Christian Center in Columbia, South Carolina.
  • A vandal spray-painted “Lucifer Lives Here” and “God No More” on Bethlehem Church in Austin, Texas, on October 29.

These attacks leave aside the largest category of anti-church hostility: vandalism.

General anti-Christian vandalism: The 315 acts of vandalism against churches include disturbing reports, including:

  • A man broke into the Roman Catholic Subiaco Abbey Church of St. Benedict in Subiaco, Arkansas, busting the marble altar with a hammer and stealing 1,500-year-old relics.
  • Last January 12, vandals attacked five churches in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. One of its targets alone, Greater Tabernacle Worship Center, suffered $15,000 of damage.
  • The next day, a lone vandal targeted three Roman Catholics churches in New Jersey, setting fire to a flagpole in one, and attempting to burn a cross in front of another.
  • In January, a vandal spray painted “Mary is the whore of Babylon” inside a Roman Catholic church in Billings, Montana, in addition to stealing $8,300 of statutes and paintings, and doing $4,000 damage.
  • Weeks later, a man poured bleach on a statue of the Virgin Mary and threw a statue of Baby Jesus down the stairs at Good Shepherd Church in Fall River, Massachusetts.
  • A woman defecated and wiped feces on the altar of the chapel inside Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati on May 13.

The Biden administration cannot plead ignorance of church desecrations and vandalism targeting houses of worship: The administration actively warned such incidents would increase for the foreseeable future. Last May 27, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a bulletin warning of “a heightened threat environment” for churches and religious institutions, thanks to “the 2024 general election cycle and legislative or judicial decisions pertaining to sociopolitical issues,” such as issues involving “the LGBTQIA+ community.” The Biden administration then opened its Faith-Based Security Advisory Council (FBSAC), allegedly to advise houses of worship on how to improve security. Biden’s handpicked FBSAC members included controversial street agitator Al Sharpton, LGBTQ activists, and “three Islamists.”

Experts say the skyrocketing number of attacks on churches mirrors the general anti-Christian tenor of the Biden administrations’ policies, at home and abroad. President Joe Biden’s “indifference abroad to the fundamental freedom of religion is rivaled only by the increasing antagonism toward the moral absolutes taught by Bible-believing churches here in the U.S.,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. The Biden administration’s whole-of-government opposition to biblical morality is “fomenting this environment of hostility toward churches.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The PLO Covenant Calling for the Liquidation of the State of Israel was Never Abolished

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Palestinians | MEMRI Daily Brief No. 572

It is widely believed that, in April 1996, the PLO abolished its notorious Covenant calling for the liquidation of the State of Israel. This belief is based on PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s statement in his September 9, 1993  letter to Israel’s then prime minister Yitzhak Rabin: “The PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist […] are now inoperative and no longer valid. Consequently, the PLO undertakes to submit to the Palestinian National Council for formal approval the necessary changes in regard to the Palestinian Covenant.” However, the fact is that this crucial commitment was never fulfilled. In order to understand the gap between the false impression and the facts on the ground we must look back to those days and see exactly what transpired.

It was Wednesday, April 24, 1996, Israel’s Independence Day. Thousands of guests were gathered for the traditional reception at the Tel Aviv compound of the Ministry of Defense. At the very same time hundreds of Palestinian National Council (PNC) members were convened in Gaza for a session at which the articles of the Covenant calling for Israel’s destruction were to be abolished (a move that requires a two-thirds majority). Another significant event was approaching: early elections to the Knesset were set for May, initiated by the ruling Labor Party, and the amendment of the PLO Covenant was important for this party’s electoral victory. In fact, it had now become crucial, because for several months, despite the Oslo Agreements signed three years earlier, Israelis had been witnessing horrific suicide bombings resulting in dozens of casualties.

The PLO leadership had repeatedly deferred the fulfilment of Arafat’s commitment in his September 1993 letter to Rabin, but in those special circumstances the time to do so had finally come. As for the Israeli leadership, after its painful experience with Arafat’s broken promises it was understandably taking no chances: it had dictated to Arafat word by word the required language of the PNC resolution. However, two days before the PNC session, Arafat notified Prime Minister Shimon Peres that it would not work – the agreed-upon text would not be endorsed by the required majority in the PNC. Without delay, another, milder text, was prepared and agreed upon by Arafat and the Israeli government. We learned of this maneuver only two years later, when it was publicized by Yoel Zinger, the legal advisor of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, who was among those who had worded the resolution dictated to the PLO (see “The Truth About the Covenant,” Ma’ariv, June 19th, 1998, in Hebrew).  Thinking the matter closed, the government’s seniors waited in Tel Aviv for the expected note from Gaza. The moment it came the good news was announced with great fanfare by the prime minister: “This is the most important ideological event in the history of the Middle East in the last hundred years.”

But it was not. It took several hours for the PLO press agency WAFA to publish the official text of the PNC resolution in Arabic. Yigal Carmon, until 1993 the counterterrorism advisor to prime ministers Rabin and Shamir, sent it to me, and later that evening I brought the text to Professor Yehoshua Porat, a leading expert on the Palestinian national movement. After reading it carefully he told me: “This is a hoax”.

And that is exactly what it was. Arafat had cheated again and disregarded the second wording he had agreed on with the Israeli Government. The trick used by the PLO will no doubt be familiar to any reader who has ever decided to stop smoking or go on a diet but never actually did. The official PNC statement stated that “the PNC has decided to amend the articles of the Palestinian National Covenant […] [and] has authorized the Judicial Committee to formulate a new Covenant”.  The PNC only “decided to amend” the Covenant, but the Judicial Committee never convened and no amendment ever took place. Former Israeli Finance Minister Yoram Aridor remarked at the time that “Arafat does not respect agreements but he has a great respect for covenants”.

The farce reached its peak when, in the weeks after the passing of this PNC resolution, PLO leaders were asked how many articles would be struck from the Covenant. Haidar Abd Al-Shaffi said two. The PLO representative in Washington DC said six. Nabil Sha’ath was not sure: “I have a feeling that the number of cancelled articles is sixteen,” he said. PNC chairman Salim Za’anun was not so vague. He stated plainly, three weeks after the PNC session, that “there are still no specific articles that [we] have decided to remove from the Covenant.”

Immediately after the PNC session, all its resolutions were published in a large ad in the Palestinian press, except for the resolution concerning the Palestinian Covenant. The reason was simple: The Israeli government understood it had been cheated but refused to admit it, and therefore negotiated a new wording with the PLO, which would be included after the fact in a letter by Arafat to Prime Minister Peres. On April 29, 1996, five days after the PNC session in which the PLO Covenant had been “amended”, the IDF Chief of Intelligence announced in the Knesset that the final wording of the PNC resolution had not yet been agreed upon. Eventually, the Israeli pressure bore fruit, and instead of the original version, “decided to amend,” Arafat wrote to the prime minister in English that the PNC had resolved that the Covenant was “hereby amended by canceling the articles that are contrary to the letters exchanged between the PLO and the Government of Israel on 9-10 September 1993.” The date of Arafat’s letter to the government of Israel in which the (false) version of the resolution was included was May 4, 1996, ten days after the PNC session.

Thus, it was all a hoax in which both parties took part. Two years later, in January 1998, in a letter to U.S. President Bill Clinton, Arafat listed 28 articles of the PLO Covenant that had been cancelled or altered. However, it should be stressed again that no article had actually been changed. The original Covenant in its evil entirety was still valid, and a second round of the PNC bluff was therefore needed. The next grand show was produced one year later, in December 1998, when the PNC convened in Gaza in order to – once again! – cancel the poisonous articles in the PLO Covenant, this time in the presence of President Bill Clinton. The hall was full of PNC members and many others. The vote took place by acclamation: all those present who were in favor of abolishing the Covenant articles were asked to raise their hands – but the raised hands were not even counted. Twenty-five years later, one fact is certainly clear: to date no alternative version of the murderous PLO Covenant has been put forward.

“So what?”, one may ask. True, these are merely words, but they are not trivial. The PLO leadership never extracted the venom from the PLO Covenant.  The fact that this document, including its message that the Jewish State of Israel is destined to perish, is still valid signifies both the unwillingness and the inability of the PLO leadership to change its attitude towards Israel. A peace treaty between two rival parties must include a specific article in which the parties declare “an end to all mutual claims”– but the PLO cannot and will not sign such a document. For them, the goal is still the establishment of a Palestinian State stretching “from the River to the Sea”, thereby eliminating the Jewish state.

One effective tool for the realization of this plan is the implementation of the “right to return” of millions of descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees to their original homes within the state of Israel. The small key on Chairman Mahmoud ‘Abbas’s jacket lapel stresses his commitment to this goal. Paying monthly allowances to the families of murderous terrorists is another way to demonstrate this approach. And since they refuse to abolish their Covenant, the PLO cannot be “renewed” as expected by some leaders. Thus, all maneuvers aimed at taming the PLO are just solemn diplomatic nonsense, and the political concept of the “Two State Solution” is stillborn.

A shorter version of this article was printed in Ha’Aretz on December 19, 2019.  

AUTHOR

Ze’ev B. Begin

Ze’ev B. Begin is a senior fellow at MEMRI.

RELATED ARTICLE: Israel and Lebanon: Do cedars line the road to Tehran?

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ELECTION 2024: $6 TRILLION in Democrat Tax Increases on November 5th Ballot

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It’s the MOAB (mother of all bombs) on America’s dwindling middle class.

No enemedia coverage of this, of course.

$6 Trillion in Taxes Are at Stake in This Year’s Elections

Biden, Republicans offer vastly different plans for handling tax cuts that lapse after 2025

By Richard Rubin, Wall Street Journal Jan. 12, 2024:

The winners of November’s presidential and congressional elections will quickly face decisions on extending tax cuts scheduled to expire after 2025. President Biden and Republicans support starkly different tax plans.

Republicans generally want to extend all expiring tax cuts from the 2017 law former President Donald Trump signed. The price tag: $4 trillion over a decade.

Biden proposed extending Trump’s tax cuts for households making under $400,000 annually but said the rest should expire. Beyond that, he would raise taxes further on top earners and corporations. That plan, including tax increases the president hasn’t fully detailed, would generate more than $2 trillion beyond current forecasts.

That $6 trillion gap is on the ballot, and the ultimate resolution will affect family budgets, corporate profits and the federal government’s fiscal health amid rising debt.

Continue reading.

Keep voting Democrat.

Election 2024 puts $6 trillion in taxes on the November ballot

$4 trillion in tax cuts expire and Biden could add in $2 trillion in additional burdens

By Ted Jenkin, Fox News, February 19, 202:

If the upcoming election in November is reminiscent of the 1993 movie “Grumpy Old Men” with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, you might want to also re-watch “The Bad News Bears” with another four years governed under what we colloquially call Bidenomics. It isn’t a dollar’s worth of difference between the two parties, it’s more like $6 trillion at stake when you pull the lever in November.

Embedded within this discourse between the two parties lies some potential deception when you peel back the artichoke and really analyze the numbers. You should never be fooled by percentages and always look at the real dollars coming out of your pocket.

Consider, for instance, a purported 5% increase in capital gain rates for 20% to 25% — a seemingly modest adjustment. However, a deeper examination reveals that this type of tax change would translate to a 25% increase in taxes in actual dollars and not 5% as might be reported. This basic arithmetic underscores the gravity of the electoral choices right around the corner.

Here’s an example. If you had a $100,000 gain and paid 20%, you would owe $20,000. If you had a $100,000 gain and now paid 25%, you would owe $25,000. The difference between $20,000 and $25,000 isn’t 5% … it’s 25%! Here’s why this simple math problem should have you think twice come November.

Depending on how the presidential election goes, taxpayers might be paying Uncle Sam trillions more. (iStock)

As a retrospective glance, the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017” ushered in a sweeping paradigm of pro-growth tax reforms, marked by several pivotal provisions. Noteworthy among these were the reduction of top marginal tax rates from 39.6% to 37%, a significant expansion of the standard deduction, and the implementation of State and Local Taxes (SALT) for itemized deductions, among others.

Yet, these beneficial measures are poised to expire by the end of 2025, wiping out $4 trillion in tax relief. Moreover, if the current administration’s proposed tax reforms materialize, an additional $2 trillion of burden may be imposed upon Americans already grappling with inflationary pressures.

Consider the ramifications: Under the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” the standard deduction, which Forbes estimates is utilized by nearly 90% of filers, was doubled, offering substantial relief particularly to middle and lower-income families.

The potential reversion to pre-2018 figures if these tax cuts expire at the end of 2025 would inflict financial hardship on many, not just the wealthy. Millions of middle-class Americans would see a pay cut.
Suddenly, the GOP and Democrats agree on taxes Video

Similarly, the prospect of reverting to a top tax rate of 39.6% and the proposed adjustments to raising federal income taxes and inheritance taxes won’t squeeze enough out of the lemons to make lemonade.

Absent an extension, the estate tax exemption levels could plummet by as much as 50%, jeopardizing the intergenerational transfer of wealth painstakingly accumulated by families. You did great the last seven years, so what? Get ready to give it back.

The proposed revisions to Social Security taxes also loom on the horizon, with discussions revolving around imposing a 6.2% unlimited Social Security tax on incomes exceeding $400,000, akin to an indefinite Medicare tax.

The president continues the rhetoric saying that, “I’m a capitalist, but pay your fair share.” Fair share! In 2022, it’s estimated by Statista that 40.1% of Americans paid no federal income tax. Here’s a question? Is paying zero fair?

Yet, these beneficial measures are poised to expire by the end of 2025, wiping out $4 trillion in tax relief. Moreover, if the current administration’s proposed tax reforms materialize, an additional $2 trillion of burden may be imposed upon Americans already grappling with inflationary pressures.

How many of those that paid no income tax got money back in tax credits and other structures from the government. When the president says wealthy people need to pay their fair share what he means is help pay more taxes to support all of those who don’t pay any. Isn’t that right?

It’s not that long before each of us must hit the ballot box in November. Before you press the button and cast your vote, there may be 6 trillion reasons to consider the future of how much of your hard-earned money you keep.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: The ‘Biden Doctrine’ Is What Happens When Stupid Meets Impossible

RELATED VIDEO: What the Income Tax Really Costs You

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Betrayed: Biden Regime Proposes Anti-Israel ‘Ceasefire’ Resolution at United Nations Security Council

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Instead of demanding that the terrorists release of the 134 hostages (including Americans), the Democrat regime is demanding Israel surrender. Biden’s UN Resolution against Israel is depraved and shameful.

According to a Reuters report, the Democrat ruling regime is proposing a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, combined with an objection to the planned IDF invasion of Rafah, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

Betrayed: Biden Proposes Anti-Israel Temporary ‘Ceasefire’ Resolution at United Nations Security Council

By: Breitbart News, February 19, 2024:

President Joe Biden plans to introduce a resolution at the United Nations Security Council calling for a temporary “ceasefire” and demanding Israel refrain from conducting an attack on the last Hamas battalions in Gaza that are the key to winning the war.

Israel has been adamant that it must attack Hamas in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza on the Egyptian border, to win the war. Rafah is the last stronghold of the Palestinian terror organization, and also the key to smuggling routes into and out of Gaza.

The White House has said publicly that it would not support an attack on Rafah, at least without an evacuation of civilians. Even after Israel promised to develop a plan to evacuate civilians, the Biden administration has opposed an Israeli operation in Gaza.

That opposition has continued despite a successful Israeli raid last Monday that rescued two civilian Israeli hostages from Rafah. It has become evident that Biden intends to let Hamas survive, to use it as leverage to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state.

The U.S. promised to veto a resolution, set to be introduced Tuesday by Algeria, calling for a permanent ceasefire. But the Times of Israel reported Monday on a draft alternative resolution by the U.S. that would use the word “ceasefire,” in a temporary sense.

The Times of Israel noted:

The United States has proposed a rival draft of the United Nations Security Council resolution that would underscore the body’s “support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable,” according to the text seen by Reuters on Monday.

Washington has been averse to the word “ceasefire” in any UN action on the Israel-Hamas war, but the US draft text echoes language that US President Joe Biden said he used last week in conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US draft text also “determines that under current circumstances a major ground offensive into Rafah would result in further harm to civilians and their further displacement including potentially into neighboring countries.”

It is unclear whether the language in the resolution opposing an attack on Hamas in Rafah would be binding.

Hamas has insisted on a permanent ceasefire before it releases the remaining 134 Israeli hostages — a demand that the Biden administration has now ratified by seeking a temporary ceasefire that it openly hopes will lead to a broader halt to the fighting, despite the fact that Hamas would survive.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Parents of Americans Held in Gaza: ‘We Are All Hostages of Hamas’

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POSTS ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Regime Considered Sanctioning Israeli Cabinet Members

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The Biden regime is desperate to stop Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

The Biden administration has a plan for the Hamas-Israel war. It’s the same plan that past administrations have unleashed on Israel. Pressure Netanyahu or whoever is in office into ignoring voters and conservative members of his coalition, push him into making a deal with the Islamic terrorists, and go back to advocating for a terrorist state. The problem is that things fundamentally changed in Israel on Oct 7 even if they didn’t change in D.C.

When the Biden administration wanted Israel to stop its offensive at the end of 2023, it didn’t get its wish. Now it’s fighting to keep Israel from going into Rafah and finishing off Hamas in its last stronghold.

So the Biden administration has ramped up a pressure campaign, much of it under the radar, but that is playing out across various fronts. The administration has enabled the “monitoring” of Israeli attacks on Hamas for “human rights violations” in a way that may trigger a shutoff of arms sales. It also tested the waters by sanctioning four Israeli Jewish activists for allegedly harassing terrorists and their supporters.

This was a trial balloon and it looks like the Biden administration is preparing to escalate.

The United States is considering imposing sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

According to the report, the US was preparing a package of sanctions that would include actions taken against the two far-right ministers who are influential members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

The sanctions were considered amid exacerbated tensions between the US and Israel due to Washington’s insistence that Israel refrain from carrying out a full-fledged invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sanctioning cabinet members of an allied government would be unprecedented, but apparently, that was Plan A and still on the backburner.

Last month, the U.S. administration was considering enacting a package meant to send a message of discontent to Israel.

The package, U.S. officials said, would have included a reversal of two Trump-era policies: one that allows products made in Jewish settlements in the Israel-occupied West Bank to be labeled as being “Made in Israel,” and another that upended longstanding U.S. policy that the West Bank settlements violate international law.

U.S. officials said they were also considering imposing sanctions on two influential members of Netanyahu’s right-wing government: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Taken together, U.S. officials said, the package could have sent a strong message of discontent. But, in the end, the Biden administration only enacted sanctions against four largely unknown Israeli settlers, once again tempering the Biden administration’s response.

Leaking this to the media however, makes it clear that the Biden administration is preparing to escalate to stop Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED ARTICLES:

Betrayed: Biden Regime Proposes Anti-Israel ‘Ceasefire’ Resolution at United Nations Security Council

Minneapolis Muslim trained at ISIS camp, said he would ‘shoot New York up. We going to come blow New York

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The Muslims of France: The Skyrocketing Threat to European Civilization

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Minneapolis Muslim trained at ISIS camp, said he would ‘shoot New York up. We going to come blow New York up’

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How many others are there like Harafa Hussein Abdi in Minneapolis? Such questions, of course, are “Islamophobic.”

“U.S. Citizen Charged with Providing Material Support to Isis And Receiving Military-Type Training at Isis Fighter Camp,” Justice Department, February 16, 2024:

A complaint was unsealed today charging Harafa Hussein Abdi, 41, of Minneapolis, with providing and conspiring to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and receiving and conspiring to receive military-type training from ISIS. Abdi, a U.S. citizen, was recently taken into custody overseas and was transported to the United States yesterday. Abdi will be presented before U.S. Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo in Manhattan federal court later today….

As alleged in the complaint, Abdi, moved from Minnesota to Somalia in 2015. Once there, he joined a group of ISIS fighters at an ISIS training camp in the Puntland region of Somalia. During his time with the group, Abdi regularly carried an AK-47 assault rifle and received training on how to use it. In addition, Abdi worked in the ISIS group’s “media” wing, where he filmed footage for distribution by a pro-ISIS media outlet.

In social media communications during his time at the ISIS camp, Abdi described how he had left the United States and joined the “Islamic state.” Abdi also stated that he had made “hijra,” an Arabic term used by ISIS supporters to refer to traveling overseas to join ISIS and engage in jihad. Abdi also sent a photograph of himself carrying an AK-47 assault rifle, as depicted below:

In or about January 2017, Abdi sent an audio clip of rap lyrics in which he expressed support for ISIS and described multiple acts of violence, including shooting and bombing individuals in New York City. Specifically, Abdi stated, “hollow tips put a hole in your Catholic vest, and chop his head off let it rest on his Catholic chest.” Abdi further stated, “We going to carry on jihad”; “Fly through America on our way to shoot New York up. They trying to shut this thing. We ain’t going. We going to come blow New York up.” Abdi sent the audio clip to at least 20 other social media users and included messages with the audio clip, such as “Fighting back the kuffar who’s at war with Muslims if [that] is not islam then I don’t know wats Islam.”

Abdi left the ISIS camp in 2017 after his relationship with the ISIS group’s leadership deteriorated. After being jailed by the group, Abdi escaped and traveled to East Africa, where he was arrested by law enforcement authorities. In subsequent Mirandized interviews with FBI personnel, Abdi admitted that he had joined the training camp, which was affiliated with a known ISIS leader in Somalia. Abdi also identified himself in an ISIS propaganda video that he helped to film at the training camp in which Abdi carried an AK-47 assault rifle, promoted ISIS and urged others to join and fight on its behalf. In the video, Abdi said, “We thank almighty God for making us His soldiers and chose us to be among the Khilafa troops,” and “So do not stay behind, brother, and get on this caravan…. Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject Faith fight in the cause of Evil.” Abdi also admitted that he was trained on and regularly carried an AK-47 assault rifle and practiced shooting the AK-47 in the Somali wilderness outside the camp….

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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Muslim 13-year-old girl forced to marry 29-year-old, ‘A girl can’t say no. It’s against our culture.’

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India: 50-year-old Muslim arrested for raping 1-year-old child

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Republican Businessman Challenges Vulnerable Dem Senator In Battleground State

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Republican businessman Eric Hovde launched his highly anticipated campaign against Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Tuesday.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) recruited Hovde, who had been weighing a campaign for months, after other prominent Republicans like Reps. Mike Gallagher and Tom Tiffany declined to jump into the race. Hovde announced his campaign in a social media video posted on X, and called for the country to unite to “find common sense solutions to restore America.”

“Do you feel like America is slipping away? Our country is facing enormous challenges — our economy, our health care, crime and open borders. Everything is going in the wrong direction. All Washington does is divide us, and talk about who’s to blame, and nothing gets done. That’s not the country I know and love,” said Hovde.

Hovde is a business executive of several companies in investment banking and real-estate. The Republican also founded a nonprofit that helps underprivileged children, and also provides funding for Multiple Sclerosis (MS) research.

The Republican made a previous Senate run for the seat now held by Baldwin in 2012, but former Gov. Tommy Thompson defeated him in the GOP primary.

“Eric Hovde’s experience as a job creator rather than a career politician makes him a strong candidate to flip Wisconsin’s Senate seat this year,” NRSC Chairman Steve Daines said in a statement. “I’m pleased to see Eric enter this race and look forward to welcoming him to the U.S. Senate.”

Baldwin’s campaign responded to the news by asking for donations on social media.

“It’s official: Republican mega millionaire & California bank owner Eric Hovde is running against me for Wisconsin’s Senate seat,” Baldwin wrote. “This will be my most competitive and expensive race yet. I need your help to fight back. Donate now.”

The Cook Political Report characterizes Baldwin’s seat as in the “Lean D” category, along with other competitive races in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada.

Baldwin did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s Why Wisconsin Operatives Think Republicans Have Yet To Challenge The State’s Incumbent Dem Senator In 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

The Most Powerful Education Idea Ever?

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→ Warning! I’ve been periodically accused of having some interesting, creative ideas before, but IMHO this may be one of the best ever!

Before I reveal a unique and powerful solution to what is ostensibly our most serious societal peril, we need to be clear about what the peril is. This is a brief outline:

  1. The worst current problem in US K-12 schools (by far), is WHAT our children are being taught — i.e., what is in (or missing from) the curriculum.
  2. IMO the part of the curriculum that has been most extensively corrupted, is the subject area of Science. This is due to 49± states fully (or mostly) adopting the progressive Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which is a frontal assault on traditional Science (e.g., they quietly extracted the Scientific Method, and are subverting Critical Thinking). See this Report for details.
  3. Although you likely haven’t heard it before, this is arguably the most significant attack on America. Every year this results in some 3 million propagandized high school graduates, who shortly become voting citizens. This is unsustainable!
  4. Essentially no one (parents, teachers, legislators, State Boards of Education, scientists, conservative organizations, etc.) is exposing the NGSS for what it is.
  5. Likewise, no one has come up with a realistic alternative to the NGSS, or a practical solution to fix the NGSS — until today!

Now that you have a glimpse of the profound consequences of this major unaddressed societal problem, let’s proceed to a unique and powerful solution…

In most US schools, the Science offerings in K-8 are general and rudimentary. In High School, they get more specific and more advanced. For example, in HS there is typically one year each of such classes as biology, geology, chemistry, and physics. (Sometimes there are quasi-fluff options like environmental science.)

The assumption is that after eight years of general science, students are prepared for (and interested in) more depth in the traditional Sciences. [Note: Based on current NGSS-oriented curriculums, the accuracy of that assumption is highly questionable.]

What’s proposed here is that a mandatory “overview” Science class be given to all 9th graders. An appropriate title might be: Real Science 101 — but be creative with the name!

The mandatory part is because Science is now an essential element of our existence, so every child needs to be taught some in-depth Science basics — which parents assume are being covered. However, due to the proliferation of the NGSS, almost all of the examples below are superficially treated, mistreated, or ignored:

  1. Critical Thinking (Properly defining, understanding, and teaching it. This includes appreciating the numerous, profound benefits of being a critical thinker.)
  2. Linear vs Lateral thinking (there are significant merits for both)
  3. Social Emotional Learning (how Critical Thinking can achieve SEL objectives)
  4. Why is Science under assault? (Science is a gatekeeper, Science is respected, etc.)
  5. Definition of Science (Science is a Process)
  6. History of the Scientific Method (4000± years of a successful process)
  7. The four key elements of a Scientific Assessment (Objective, Comprehensive, Empirical, and Transparent)
  8. Hypothesis vs Theory (explaining the different levels of Scientific certainty)
  9. Scientific responsibility (Is it the proponent’s obligation to prove their claim, or is it the obligation of skeptics to disprove it?)
  10. Science and Public Relations (Is being right enough to win the day?)
  11. Science and Public Policy (How should the two relate?)
  12. Real Science vs political science (not even remotely similar)
  13. Consensus (not a Scientific procedure, but rather a political aspiration)
  14. Peer Review (a good idea that has been co-opted)
  15. Statistics (the good, bad, and the ugly of probabilities, etc.)
  16. Data (there’s data and then there’s data)
  17. Correlation vs Causality (What is the relationship between the two?)
  18. Computer Models and projections (benefits and substantial weaknesses)
  19. Science vs Scientists (Are studies by scientists, Scientific?)
  20. Scientists and Relativism (Does the end objective justify the means?)
  21. Post-Normal Science (Are some technical issues beyond the ability of Science to assess?)
  22. Normative Science (agenda-driven scientists rarely produce real Science)
  23. Technical terminology (conveying hidden messages with carefully chosen words)
  24. The Precautionary Principle (Is this scientific or ideological?)
  25. Intuition vs Science (making assumptions can easily lead to unscientific conclusions)
  26. Scientists vs Engineers (how they differ in objectives, methodology, etc.)
  27. The Mantle of Science (How should bogus claims about Science be exposed?)
  28. Science and the Media (journalism vs advocacy)
  29. Artificial Intelligence (our best friend and our worst enemy)
  30. Science and Religion (Can Science prove, or disprove, the existence of God?)

Note 1: Essentially none of these Real Science matters are covered in the NGSS.

Note 2: Worse, in the NGSS, the opposite message is conveyed about several of these.

Note 3: HS teachers would need to have a Professional Development class to properly teach such a course.

Note 4: This would also be an excellent general Science class for all college freshmen.

Note 5: The above is a suggested chronological order of topics to cover.

After taking such a class:

  1. ALL students would be better prepared to encounter a Science (and pseudo-science) world, even if they never took another Science class,
  2. All students would perform better on state and national Science tests.
  3. Because (if done right) this would likely be perceived to be the most interesting high school course offered (in all subject areas), a higher percentage of students would become STEM-interested.
  4. STEM students would be MUCH better prepared to subsequently take traditional Science classes in high school and college.

For the above four significant reasons, this should become a state-required class, built into each state’s Science Standards.

Note: All of the states’ current Science standards that are NGSS-based, would then need to be reviewed (which was already essential to critically do anyway), as some of Real Science 101 conflicts with NGSS. That’s a good thing…

The bottom line

Requiring this one class would result in extraordinary benefits to students — and subsequently to our society.

PS — This recommendation does not mean that we forget what’s going on in K-8. 9th grade was selected as several of the above topics are too advanced for a 3rd grader. That said, having a more elemental course on Critical Thinking in early grades is very advisable. Interestingly, a textbook publisher is already offering such material.

PPS — When I get the time, I’ll fill out most of the thirty items with helpful reference links. At this point, the objective is just to convey and discuss this significant idea.

PPPS — Since this is of extreme importance, I’m posting the latest version of this material online (as a PDF), where it will be easier to download, etc.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Government-Run Education

Parents of Americans Held in Gaza: ‘We Are All Hostages of Hamas’

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They know the underground of the U.S. Capitol like the back of their hands. “I have walked more distance in these corridors than I have in my own house,” Ronen Neutra says wistfully. “I can’t believe this is our life.” The 135 days since her son was taken hostage by Hamas have been a sleepless nightmare. “We don’t have day and night,” she admitted. “… It all becomes very blurry to us.” And like the other five American families waiting for word about their loved ones, there’s no end in sight.

Omer was just 22 when he was pulled out of his IDF tank by terrorists and marched to Gaza. A dual citizen who grew up in New York City, he was born just a month after 9/11 — the last time the world was rocked by such unspeakable evil. Omer decided to join the Israel Defense Forces during his gap year before college in the U.S. He picked the tank brigade because he heard “it was among the army’s toughest jobs.”

His unit was attacked by rocket-propelled grenades, the Neutras pieced together from online videos and information from the two governments. That’s when his fate became linked to Edar Alexander, another American-Israeli citizen, who grew up a short train ride from Manhattan. At just 20, he decided to join Garin Tzabar, which trains young people from around the world who want to join the IDF. He was assigned to the infantry at the same base, one month before the attack. Not far from Omer’s tank, the young 20-year-old was surrounded by Hamas militants, standing alone with his rifle.

Now, the two families, who lived a handful of miles apart in New York, are linked by something far more tragic: the unknown fate of their sons. Almost every week, The New York Times reports, the families are on a plane to either Washington or Israel, meeting with international leaders. There’s no certainty that Omer or Edar — two of the six remaining American hostages — are even alive. Of the 130 hostages still in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal estimates that at least 50 may be dead.

“Every day has been like five days,” Orna tells reporters. Friday nights, Shabbat, are the hardest. That’s when she and her husband Ronen, both children of Holocaust survivors, would video chat with Omer at his army base. With hope they don’t feel, the families bought “new, larger dining room tables” for happier times when they’re all reunited. Willing him to be okay, the Neutras even flew to Israel to rent an apartment so that Omer will have a place to go when he’s released. “We wanted to create the reality that he is coming home very soon,” she said.

They wait, fear, and prepare for a reunion they pray will come. At rally after rally, Orna reads a variation of the same words, “We miss your laugh, and your beautiful smile, so, so much, Edani,” While they try not to think about what Omer and Edar are enduring at the hands of Hamas, both sets of parents can’t help but worry. “We are very fearful,” Ronen told The Daily Caller, “130 days without a sign of life, without knowing his medical condition, without any medical crew — including the Red Cross — allowed to go and visit him and the rest of the hostages. Who knows what his condition is? We have no idea … So how should we feel? I don’t know. I mean, we are very fearful, very nervous.”

But honestly, he said, “We don’t have time to think about ourselves and feel pity about the situation, or anything else for the most part.” Their sole focus is spending every waking second working to bring their sons home.

While the rest of America goes about its days, the Neutras and Alexanders try to keep the government focused on the innocents 5,600 miles away. As recently as last Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the U.S. is “working intensely with Egypt, with Qatar, on a proposal to bring about their release.” He talked about meeting with the families like Ronen and Orna’s. “The agony that they face … — not knowing the fate of their loved ones — is beyond our imaginations.”

Just as torturous, they admit, is watching the world turn on Israel — their one hope for eliminating the terrorists. Omer’s dad argues, “Get rid of Hamas and give us back our hostages [and] Israel will stop immediately.” Until then, he lamented, “It feels like Hamas is holding hostage the whole Western world. “They’re holding onto our kid. We are definitely hostages. And everyone’s hands are tied…”

Right now, Israeli leaders say, Hamas’s demands are “delusional.” “We want a deal very much and we know we need to pay prices,” a former IDF commander told CNN over the weekend. “But Hamas’s demands are disconnected from reality.”

Past negotiations were not executed in good faith, they point out. In other deals, Hamas promised to deliver medicine to the hostages, only for IDF soldiers to find those medications untouched “with the names of Israeli hostages on them” during the rain on Nasser Hospital.

To the people who say Israel should just back off and leave Gaza alone, Ronen and Orna say it’s time for the world to learn some history and the longtime “abuse of power by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.” “Israel has been fighting for its survival since [its founding]…” Orna insisted. “They still need to fight for their survival,” Orna told the Daily Caller. “Take the time and look at the issues before you take a stance on them.”

The important thing is for Israel to ignore the naysayers, focus on the job at hand, and eliminate Hamas. “It’s time,” Ronen urged. “It’s so urgent [for the hostages]. Every day that there is a delay in reaching a deal is putting a death sentence on some of them.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Watch “America Lives” the First AI-Animated Political Ad of its Kind

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This is the best use of AI I have ever seen. It was created by Jason Coursey and J. Youngbluth in honor of President’s Day and Donald J. Trump.

Please watch “America Lives” and share this article with your family, friends and on all of your social media platforms.

It is an endearing message on the resiliency of the American people.

Copyright 2024. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: FLASHBACK | Democrats’ “Stolen” Election Claims

There Can’t be a ‘Trans Genocide’ — Because ‘Trans’ People Don’t Exist

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Much as our esteemed psychological profession defines “gender dysphoria,” there’s also a phenomenon known as “species dysphoria.” I do understand that among mental-health practitioners it’s known as “Species Identity Disorder” (or “clinical lycanthropy”), but give it time. “Gender dysphoria” used to be “Gender Identity Disorder” (and should be “Sexual Identity Disorder”) until that was deemed “stigmatizing” to the disordered.

Whatever you call it, however, just as gender dysphoria involves the sense that one is stuck in the body of the “wrong” sex, species dysphoria involves the sense that one is stuck in the body of the “wrong” species. Examples of people claiming animal status were Texas girl “Wolfie Blackheart,” Norwegian woman “Nano” (who claimed she was a cat) and members of the groups known as “otherkin,” “therians” and “furries.”

What percentage of these people are just role-playing or looking for attention, and how many actually believe they’re animals, is not the point. It is, rather, that virtually all of us recognize this as, depending on the case, either a psychological or spiritual/cultural problem. We also know that you can’t be “trans-species” because changing your species is impossible; a corollary of this is that since trans-species creatures do not exist, they cannot be driven to extinction.

This comes to mind with yet another accusation that normal people are perpetrating a “trans genocide,” in this case because the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles will prohibit designer “genders” on driver’s licenses and will insist, once again, that only a person’s sex (i.e., male or female) be on them.

Yet in reality, the activists thus claiming have tipped their hand. That is, if we said that the racial descriptor “black” couldn’t be on government documents because being black is not a real physical state of being, the accusations would be, first, that the act would be discriminatory. The second accusation is to the point here, however:

We’d hear we were crazy for denying objective physical reality. Since black people exist, we could rightly be sized up for straitjackets.

So what’s telling about those I correctly call MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) activists is that they, quite instinctively, don’t even think to accuse us of insanity.

They may say we’re bigots.

Or “transphobes.”

Or they may accuse us of “genocide.”

But telling us we’re simply crazy for denying an objective reality never occurs to the MUSS crew (though it may become a strategy if enough of them read this piece). This is because objectively speaking, we’re not denying an objective reality. They, not we, are the crazy ones.

To further illustrate MUSS activists’ tacit admissions, consider that unicorns do not exist except in the imagination. Therefore, they cannot be driven to extinction, except in a metaphorical sense of purging them from human imagination and the works (e.g., fiction, encyclopedias) in which they’re found.

Similarly, that MUSS individuals believe the mere denial of their existence constitutes “genocide” — the elimination of their group — is tacit acknowledgment that their group (as they demand it be conceptualized) exists only in the imagination.

This truth is acknowledged, too, in so many words. MUSS-enabling social scientists often point out that “sex” and “gender” are not synonymous, that while the former concerns biological status, “gender” (which shouldn’t be applied to humans, only words) is your perception of what you are. This is why scores of “genders” have already been “defined”: There can be as many perceptions as there are people.

But crazy is as crazy does. The problem here is that cultural insanity is contagious, with too many “normal” people, to a great extent, viewing MUSS individuals as they want to be considered and not as they should be. To wit:

We should not waver in embracing the truth that “trans” people do not exist.

Yes, people with psychological problems exist.

Social contagion exists.

Sexual fetishes such as autogynephilia exist.

But as ex-MUSS individual Alan Finch told The Guardian in 2004:

Their [the MUSS activists’] language is illusory. You fundamentally can’t change sex…. The surgery doesn’t alter you genetically. It’s genital mutilation. My “vagina” was just the bag of my scrotum. It’s like a pouch, like a kangaroo. What’s scary is you still feel like you have a penis when you’re sexually aroused. It’s like phantom limb syndrome. It’s all been a terrible misadventure. I’ve never been a woman, just Alan.

In reality, “transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists,” The Guardian wrote, summing up Finch’s warning.

And Finch’s observation about “illusory” language, do note, is something normal people must be mindful of. The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. This is why I identify the individuals and agenda in question with the acronym “MUSS” — and it is why I implore you to join me in doing so. Using the sexual devolutionaries’ language enables their movement.

In truth, the MUSS agenda must be completely and totally eradicated. It’s one thing, and is a moral imperative, to treat people nobly enduring Sexual Identity Disorder with compassion and offer them counseling. It’s quite another to nod along and mainstream and normalize a delusion that is undermining our society and mutilating children’s grasp of reality (and sometimes their bodies). Such complicity in evil is evil.

Unfortunately, this counsel bumps up against that very conservative instinct to be “reasonable” and “compromise,” to say, “Live whatever life you want; just don’t shove it in my face — and leave the kids out of it.” Yet as I think C.S. Lewis put it, this is like having a fleet of ships and saying that you don’t care how they function as long as they don’t crash into each other. Of course, though, if they don’t function properly, they may not be able to avoid crashing into each other.

So it is here. The typical conservative appeal to the MUSS crew is like saying, “You can be mentally ill, just not too mentally ill. You can jump off that cliff — just be sure to stop halfway down so you don’t land on a child’s head.”

Apropos to this, G.K. Chesterton had something very profound to say about this attitude of compromise in the Illustrated London News in 1924. “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives,” he wrote. “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.”

King Solomon was not making a serious proposal when he offered to split the baby; he was cleverly revealing a poseur. Are we just poseurs to principle? If not, we can’t try to split the baby of sanity, but must slay the demon child of sexual devolutionary delusion.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe or Gettr or log on to SelwynDuke.com

Copyright 2024. Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: South Carolina Advances Bill Protecting Minors from Gender Transition Procedures

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Why Is It So Difficult To Define Anti-Semitism?

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Even among those who condemn it, there is little consensus about what constitutes antisemitism. Is it disdain for Jews as a faith community or as a people? Is it motivated by hatred of doctrine or ethnicity?

Antisemitism has been around since the dawn of Jewish history and yet the mainstream media only found it newsworthy after October 7th. Since then, it has become ubiquitous in universities and pro-Hamas demonstrations – where progressives celebrate terrorism and demand the destruction of Israel and the Jews – and in a Democratic Party where progressive radicals demonize the Jewish State.

But even among those who condemn it, there is little consensus about what constitutes antisemitism. Is it disdain for Jews as a faith community or as a people? Is it motivated by hatred of doctrine or ethnicity?

Those who mistake it simply as prejudice against a faith do not understand the nature of Jewish identity, which is at once religious, ethnic, and national. The definition of hatred, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

Some antisemitism is religious to be sure, particularly among other Abrahamic faiths that must disparage Jews and Judaism to justify their pretensions to be the fulfillment of Jewish scripture and prophecy. Christians and Muslims both acknowledge the holiness of Tanakh and yet deviate significantly from it. To rationalize their divergence from Hebrew scripture, they must claim they supplanted Judaism or that the Jews corrupted their own scriptures.

Christianity

The Christian gospels, for example, are replete with anti-Jewish invective, associating Jews with darkness, evil, lies, deceit, and Satan (e.g., John 8:37-39; 44-47), blood libel and murder of the Prophets (e.g., Matthew 23:31-33; 1 Thessalonians 2), and hereditary blood guilt (Matthew 27:25). Assertions of insidious influence and control are central to the myth that the Jews compelled Pontious Pilate to kill Jesus at a time when Rome occupied Judea and the Sanhedrin had no leverage or authority to impose or even demand the death penalty. The passion narratives likewise contain demonic anti-Jewish caricatures that inspired persecution and massacres throughout Christian Europe.

Furthermore, the New Testament alters Tanakh (e.g., misstating the number of people who accompanied Yacov to Egypt and the burial place of the Patriarchs), misquotes the psalms and Prophets, and decontextualizes passages from Torah.

Islam

Despite the myth of Muslim tolerance, Islamic scripture is not much better. Indeed, the Quran is equally unflattering when it accuses the Jews of “unbelief” and murdering their Prophets (as does Christian scripture): “So, for their breaking the compact, and disbelieving in the signs of God, and slaying the Prophets without right, and for their saying, ‘Our hearts are uncircumcised’ – nay, but God sealed them for their unbelief, so they believe not, except a few…” (Sura 4:155).

It also accuses the Jews of corruption and deceit:

“And We decreed for the Children of Israel in the Book: ‘You shall do corruption in the earth twice…So, when the promise of the first of these came to pass, We sent against you servants of Ours, men of great might, and they went through the habitations, and it was a promise performed. Then We gave back to you the turn to prevail over them…Then, when the promise of the second came to pass, We sent against you Our servants to discountenance you, and to enter the Temple, as they entered it the first time.’” (17:4-7)

Moreover, Jews are frequently accused of scriptural corruption. “People of the Book, now there has come to you Our Messenger, making clear to you many things you have been concealing of the Book, and effacing many things…” (5:15); “God assail them! How they are perverted…They have taken their rabbis and their monks as Lords apart from God.” (9:31.) Claims of textual manipulation seem necessary for explaining away fundamental discrepancies with Tanakh, for example, that Yishmael, not Yitzchak, was bound by Avraham on Moriah.

Racial and ethnic components

Christians and Muslims often misstate Jewish text, doctrine, and history. But conceding deviations from the original Hebrew would undercut their doctrinal narratives. So, both their traditions must accuse the Jews of corruption and deceit, using themes and stereotypes that have fueled Jew-hatred throughout Christendom and the Islamic world for centuries.

Historically, the aim was not merely to disparage Jewish belief, but to devalue or subjugate the Jews as a people; and this is illustrated by the persistence of antisemitism against those who submitted to Christianity or Islam (usually on pain of death). The ethnic and racial components of antisemitism are evidenced by its continuation even after the outward elimination of doctrinal differences.

Catholic antisemitism always had a racial component. On the Iberian Peninsula, for example, people of Jewish heritage were often banned from professions and public office because of ancestry, not belief. Even before the Jews were exiled from Spain per the Edict of Expulsion in 1492 (and later from Portugal), those who were forcibly baptized and designated “New Christians” were identified by their tainted blood. This was first codified in 1449 by the “Statute of Blood Purity” in Toledo; and while some church leaders denounced such enactments, the Inquisition embraced them when it infiltrated Spain in 1478, and later Portugal, Peru, and Mexico in 1536, 1570, and 1571, respectively.

Clearly, racial antisemitism existed long before the Nazis; and it also infected Protestantism.

In targeting Jews through “friendship evangelism,” missionaries strenuously deny Protestant complicity in antisemitism by blaming Catholicism for the most pernicious forms of Jew-hatred. However, Martin Luther embraced the Church’s racial antisemitism and incorporated it in his vile screed, “On the Jews and their Lies,” which advocated expulsion, enslavement, and extermination. These tropes were later adopted by other non-Catholics, many of whom were complicit or complacent during the Holocaust.

Then there are doctrines like replacement theology and evangelical fronts like the Lausanne Movement. Whereas replacement doctrine seeks to displace actual Jews (defined by ancestry and their relationship with G-d) with a faith community of self-defined “spiritual Jews” who falsely claim covenantal status, Lausanne and similar movements actively engage in Jewish evangelism while claiming to love Israel and the Jews. Though antithetical to Torah, both recognize the Jews as a people, not merely a faith community.

And this recognition had parallels in the Islamic world, where forcibly converted Jews often stayed connected to their heritage, married among their own, continued observing Jewish rites and customs in secret – and remained under lingering suspicion. Like the Anusim (Conversos) of Christian Europe, many of these forced converts forgot their heritage while paradoxically maintaining it through rituals and marriage restrictions they continued to observe but no longer understood.

Xenophobia

When the fathers of European Enlightenment rejected the primacy of faith and national allegiances, they were offended by the Jews’ continuing embrace of their religious, ethnic, and national identity. The refusal to assimilate rendered them strangers wherever their migrations took them, arousing xenophobia with religious and racial overtones. And their image as quintessential outsiders was reinforced by their faithfulness to Torah, Jewish language, and ancient blood ties – all of which distinguished them from their host societies and reinforced stereotypes that continued to fester and mutate.

Denial of connection to Israel

A unique form of antisemitism today is the denial of the Jews’ history and connection to Israel. Progressives often maintain that Jewish identity is “only religious” to delegitimize it compared to Palestinian national identity. This theme is echoed in the PA Charter, which denies the Jews’ national history and deems them colonial occupiers.

The claim that Jewishness is “just a religion,” however, is contradicted by the scriptural, historical, and archeological records, which confirm Jewish ethnicity, national heritage, and origins in Israel. The record does not similarly validate Palestinian Arab identity, which is a modern political construct.

Jewish children

Whereas the roots of antisemitism are disparate, they are not mutually exclusive, whether based on religion, ethnicity, racial theory, or xenophobia; and regardless of ideology, it is exacerbated by the Jewish refusal to assimilate. Unfortunately, many opponents of antisemitism unwittingly help perpetuate it through ignorance of its historical and theological foundations.

Even Jewish children understand this.

My generation was born less than twenty years after the Holocaust. Though my family lost collateral relatives to the Nazis and their Ukrainian accomplices, many of my friends’ parents were Holocaust survivors who constituted a significant portion of our community. And they informed our understanding of antisemitism as simultaneously religious, ethnic, national, and racial – which colored our self-perceptions and even our sense of play.

I grew up in a neighborhood where the streets had storm-sewers with removeable grates that we could crawl through. While other kids played “cops and robbers,” we often navigated our way underground playing “escape from the ghetto.” And the brutal kidnapping of the Bibas family brings that “game” to life.

Clearly, even children experience existential angst, and ours was shaped by an awareness of antisemitism in all its manifestations – something adult academics, politicians, and media personalities never seem to grasp.

But then again, perhaps it takes the untainted sensibilities of a child to recognize the nuanced complexities of Jew-hatred and understand its scope.

Copyright 2024. Matthew Hausman, J.D. All rights reserved.

Whatever Democrats Say, Trust the Opposite is True

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Every horror the left has inflicted on this once great nation is always, always, blamed on the Republicans. This is be design.

Such perfidy and dishonesty would not be possible without their running dogs in academia and the Democrat media axis.

For Democrats, reality is the biggest enemy they face.

Most troubling of all is  the Democrat election machinery — immense, meticulous, with its tentacles everywhere – even in the RINO GOP.

“The Inversion of Democracy”: Shocking Unmasking of How the U.S. Government Annihilated Free Speech, “The Nationsl Security State”

Biden and Dems’ total disconnect from reality: Whatever they say, trust the opposite is true

By: Miranda Devine. New York Post, February. 18, 2024:

Dems keep flipping the script.

It’s always Opposite Day for them: Whatever they say, the opposite is the truth.

Up is down and black is white.

And because Democrats control most of the media, they get to make the truth whatever they want it to be.

So, after three years living in President Biden’s fantasy world, we finally have fallen through the looking glass with Alice in Wonderland, where nothing is what it is because everything is what it isn’t.

Herewith, some recent examples:

1. Russia: Vladimir Putin last week told a Russia-1 TV host that he prefers Biden to win the 2024 election over Donald Trump. Biden “is a more experienced, predictable person,” opined Vlad. “He is a politician of the old school.”

Dems — and the body-snatched Drudge Report — immediately cried “psy op.” Of course, when Putin said he preferred Trump over Hillary in 2016, they took the rotten Russki at his word and spent the next four years traducing Trump as a Russian agent.

Not this time. What Putin really means is he prefers Trump! The old KGB conman is using reverse psychology to trick voters into voting for Trump. I mean he couldn’t possibly support Biden, mouthpiece of the glorious US foreign policy Blob.

Ummm, except that under feckless, obstinate, vainglorious Biden, as was the case under Obama-Biden, Putin just strolled in and stole a big chunk of Ukraine. When Trump was in office, Putin kept his head down because he feared the consequences.
see also

Trump deterred Russian aggression. Biden enabled it. Putin sees a push-over.

Putin probably shares the view of other rogue actors around the world who desire America’s downfall: Biden is an asset, whether he knows it or not.

Osama bin Laden felt the same way as Putin. The 9/11 mastermind instructed al Qaeda to shoot down any plane President Barack Obama might be aboard, but to make sure to spare Veep Joe because he believed Biden was such an idiot that, when he automatically inherited the presidency after Obama’s demise, he would wreck America all on his own.

“They are not to target visits by US Vice President Biden,” bin Laden wrote to his minions in a May 2010 letter discovered in his terrorist hideout in Pakistan after he was liquidated by SEAL Team Six. “The groups will remain on the lookout for Obama or [Gen. David] Petraeus,” bin Laden wrote.

“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there.
Get Miranda’s latest take

“Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.”

2. Border invasion: It’s all the Republicans’ fault. Biden invited illegal migrants to “surge” the border even before he took office. He promised he wouldn’t deport anyone and dismantled Trump’s “cruel” border protection policies by executive order on Day One.
see also
Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign had “surreptitious involvement” in organizing a letter that falsely claimed the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, according to a complaint.
Biden 2020 campaign had ‘surreptitious involvement’ in Russian disinfo hoax surrounding Post’s Hunter laptop story: FEC complaint

The invasion was by design: “By the way, guess what, they’re the reason — the legal as well as the undocumented [migrants] — are the reason why our society is functioning,” he said in 2020. “We … act like it’s a burden. It is not a burden … We can afford to do this.”

And when 8 million military-age men from the Third World took him up on his offer, he foisted them on blue cities, where they proceeded to commit mayhem — and then he counted on his Democratic satraps to keep their traps shut even as their constituents revolted.

But, sure, it’s the Republicans’ fault because they refused to sign onto legislation that would formalize the invasion. In the immortal words of Van Jones: “It is now the Republicans’ open border.”

3. Impeachment: US Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) says Republicans have “cheapened impeachment.” Puh-leeze.
Party of hypocrites

Democrats were vowing to impeach Trump before he even entered the White House. They impeached him the first chance they got for Biden’s sins and then they impeached him again even after he lost the election. Now they’re trying to lock him up in four different Democratic jurisdictions.

Raskin’s mini-me, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a Levi Strauss heir, accused Republicans of “cheapening the solemn responsibility of impeachment. They will come to regret this.”

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. All rights reserved.