Irreversible Damage: A Warning We Can't Ignore

by Tony Perkins: "They are our future, these girls. If we don't safeguard them and give them a promising [life], we have no future." --Abigail Shrier

One by one, they started calling. These weren't conservative parents or even particularly religious ones -- some were liberal, progressive, "open-minded" moms and dads desperate for help. Their stories, Abigail would find out, were eerily the same. Their daughters had started hanging out with friends who'd decided to come out as transgender together. Suddenly, these sweet teenage girls -- who'd never shown a hint of gender confusion -- were demanding breast reduction, hormone treatments, new names and pronouns -- and their parents were beside themselves for someone to intervene. No one, they found out quickly, would.

Abigail hadn't planned on telling their stories. That all changed when a mom tracked her down at the Wall Street Journal and said, "I can't get any journalists to take this on, but my daughter... decided with her friends out of nowhere that she was transgender. And they're all pursuing hormones and surgeries together. It doesn't seem right. I'm a progressive person, [but] this doesn't seem like it fits her at all. She had no childhood history." Abigail tried, initially, to get another investigative journalist to cover it. She couldn't. So she started looking into it herself and found out that this mother was right -- there were thousands of parents all across the country who were experiencing the same thing: girls coming out with their friends under social media's influence.

When she wrote a column about it, Abigail told "Washington Watch's" Sarah Perry, "It sort of exploded. It was the biggest article in the mainstream media about this phenomenon. And all of the sudden, parents from all over the country and actually all over the [Western world] were writing to me to tell me that this was happening to their daughters, too." At that point, Abigail decided, she couldn't turn back. Two hundred interviews later, she's published a book: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. And if its revelations don't rattle a reader's world, I'm not sure know what will.

She talks about researchers like Dr. Lisa Littman, an OB-GYN now working at Brown University. Littman, she said, is a "progressive, [so] she doesn't have a political axe to grind here... She just noticed [as] she was scrolling through her social media feed that it didn't make sense that so many adolescent girls were coming out as transgender with their friends." She decided to investigate, since true gender dysphoria, she knew, was "a very, very rare condition of discomfort in one's biological sex. It's extremely rare -- .01 percent, so one hundredth of one percent." Turns out, her hunch was right. These girls weren't doubting their biological sex, they were "sharing and spreading their pain."

Littman's statistics, meanwhile, shocked everyone. In friend groups where one girl identified as transgender, the prevalence rate was 70 times what would be expected. "Which meant," Abigail explained, "that this was a lot more like anorexia." In the same way eating disorders spread or cutting or other peer pressures this wasn't a gender issue. This was a social contagion. What they have, she said, "is a lot of anxiety and, in some cases depression... So the transition does not alleviate their distress." Which would explain the high levels of regret from them later on in life.

It's one of the reasons, Littman, Abigail, and others deep in this world of debate, are pleading with the medical and therapy communities to stop fast-tracking these radical interventions like puberty blockers. "These girls are self-indoctrinating," Abigail insists, "[thinking] that if they just try it, all their problems will go away." And it's not just the medical community who are reinforcing that lie, she warns. It's the education system. "[The] part of the book that I'm proudest of is my investigation into the California public school system," Abigail explains, "because I was able to learn that the gender identity indoctrination is so radical and so thorough -- it begins in kindergarten." California's activists, she warns, are very clever. "They took [gender identity] out of sexual education curriculum, so your parents are not even aware it's there. It's not part of the curriculum they're allowed to opt out of. And they put it in anti-bullying curriculum. So, of course, most parents don't want to take their kids out of the anti-bullying program, and they can't."

She's talked to parents who've flat-out asked their schools, "'What's the policy if my kid were to decide she's a boy?' And at least in in California public schools -- and I've heard from New York [and] New Jersey parents -- the policy is not to inform the parents. And this applies to kids who are 12 years old. So, very often, I will talk to parents who say that their daughter went a whole year being addressed as a boy and talked about as a boy and [using] the boys' bathroom [at school], and the parent didn't even know."

Don't think it can't happen to your daughter, she says. It can. But there are things every parent can do. Pay attention to your kids' friend groups. "It becomes very trendy to come out as one of these exotic identifications and want to change your body. Then, their friends are more likely to do it as well. But the thing to really look for is the social media indoctrination. That's a big one if they're spending a lot of time online. And the last thing is: find out what gender ideology is being pushed in your child's school." Or, I would argue, reconsider if public school is even the right decision at all. With the virus forcing families to take a long hard look at learning, maybe now is the time to make a move away from these dangerous and destructive influences.

Either way, get a copy of the book that Amazon refuses to advertise and learn what the activists, doctors, and teachers aren't telling you about the secret suffering of the transgender craze.
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Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . Article on Tony Perkins' Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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America Won’t Survive Without Private Property Rights

by Tom Balek, Contributing Author:

Photo of gutted Minneapolis Storefront by Fox 9 TV & Comments
“This was going to happen with or without us,” he says. “First thing, we decided we’d be respectful. I told our staff, ‘Let them write on the pavement and on our neighbors’ walls. Let them bring whatever they want to bring and leave it wherever they want to leave it. We’ll figure it out later.'”

“The throng . . . spray-painted and Sharpied . . . every available surface, mostly in English, but also in Spanish and Italian, along with the consonant-rich dialects of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Arabic characters flowed on downtown L.A.’s sidewalks next to Japanese kanji. [Soon] there was no room left on the streetlights and storefronts.”

You’re thinking about rioting and property destruction in Los Angeles, right? Actually this was a Sports Illustrated report about the public response to Kobe Bryant’s untimely death. It took local property owners around the Staple Center weeks to clean up and repair.

What struck me as I read the report is the disregard so many people now have for private property. Whether mourning the loss of a local sports legend, or expressing anger over the death of a criminal suspect at the hands of overzealous or malevolent police officers, or just enjoying an opportunity for mayhem, these young, urban people do not even consider that the property they are defacing or destroying actually belongs to somebody who worked hard, saved and invested. Maybe somebody who looks just like them. Maybe their moms and dads.

It’s a leading indicator of our country’s slide toward Marxism and Communism, where all property (except that belonging to the elite leaders) belongs to the government so nobody is responsible for damage. The police, at the direction of local government, will not protect private property or allow us to protect it ourselves, and even public monuments and buildings fall prey to angry mobs.

Think of Cabrini-Green, the government housing project in Chicago that in the 1960s became a violent, third-world shit-hole because its residents had no ownership, no “skin in the game”.

If you are an American who has worked, saved, and invested in a home or business, and are relying on your constitutional guarantee of property rights, don’t blink – we are 116 days from an election that could turn the American Dream on its head.
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Tom Balek (@TomBalek) is a fellow conservative activist, blogger, musician and contributes to the ARRA News Service. Tom resides in South Carolina and seeks to educate those too busy with their work and families to notice how close to the precipice our economy has come. He blogs at Rockin' On the Right Side,

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Charlie Daniels Tribute . . .

. . . MAGA star Charlie Daniels has passed on. born Oct 28, 1936; died July 6, 2020. he was also a great patriot.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco
Suggest Reading: Country Music Legend Charlie Daniels Dies At 83

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Biden's Plagiarism Continues, Pelosi's Weakness, Attacking Law Enforcement

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Biden's Plagiarism Continues
Yesterday we noted that Joe Biden's "unity platform" lifted whole sections word-for-word from Bernie Sanders's campaign. Well, now it seems that Biden is trying to steal Donald Trump's economic message too.

During an economic address yesterday in Pennsylvania, Biden inadvertently showed the power of Trump's "America First" agenda, which Trump has advocated for decades.

We saw the danger of gutting our manufacturing base when the pandemic hit. We had a shortage of urgently needed medical supplies. We are dependent on communist China for far too much.

Well, now Joe Biden says his main economic goal is "Buy American." He pledged $400 billion during his first term. That's $100 billion a year, a pitiful investment in a $20 trillion economy.

This is coming from the guy who has repeatedly praised the rise of communist China! And we know the Biden family sees China as a big economic opportunity.

Biden also said that under his administration the "era of shareholder capitalism" will be over. What he means is that American corporations must realize that shareholders are not their only stakeholders. Employees and the consumers of their products are stakeholders.

Once again, Joe is late to the party.

President Trump supports that idea, and has pointed out another stakeholder – America. Companies ought to be making decisions that help, not harm, our country. Trump has repeatedly urged American companies to "reshore" their factories and jobs back to the United States. But now Biden is trying to claim this mantle.

By the way, while Biden was talking yesterday, the stock market plunged more than 500 points. Not one talking head did the obvious -- link the content of Biden's speech and other radical policies to the steep drop.

But investors are getting increasingly concerned about the possibility of a "President Biden" empowering socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. (Here and here.)

Pelosi's Weakness
Sadly, the attacks on American monuments and memorials are continuing. A 9/11 memorial in Washingtonville, New York, was seriously damaged this week.

Most Americans are furious about the mobs attacking our history and our monuments. A recent poll found that 77% of Americans consider vandalism against public monuments and statues to be "acts of violence."

But not the leadership of the Democrat Party. They have been cowed into silence or they sympathize with the rioters. They almost never say anything about the destruction of historic monuments unless directly asked about it. And then they engage in all kinds of verbal gymnastics to avoid condemning it.

For example, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked yesterday about the destruction of a Christopher Columbus statue in Baltimore. She first brushed off the question, saying, "I don't care that much about the statues."

When pressed further about the Columbus statue being torn down by a mob, Pelosi quipped, "People will do what they do."

Vice President Mike Pence had strong words for Pelosi's weakness. He said:

"To have the Speaker of the House tacitly affirm the rule of the mob is unconscionable. For Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say 'they will do what they will do' is a surrender to the mob.

"We're not going to have it. The American people know the foundation of our prosperity is law and order and the rule of law. We're going to continue to stand strong for the rule of law against the rule of the mob."

Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson asked again, "Can you really lead a country that you hate?" It's a fair question because that is the situation we face today.

Significant elements of the progressive movement and the Democrat Party hate the United States of America.

They claim that the American Revolution was about preserving slavery.

They claim that "systemic racism" is ingrained throughout every facet of our society.

They want to tear down not only our statues and historic monuments but "the whole system of oppression," whatever that is.

Joe Biden frequently talks about "fundamentally transforming" the country. That clearly suggests Biden feels there is something seriously wrong with America because you don't "fundamentally transform" something you love and cherish.

They're Not Stupid
I know it's tempting to mock the rioters as stupid when they tear down statues of Frederick Douglass or Ulysses Grant. Of course, it is impossible to discern the minds of everyone in a mob.

But the people organizing and leading the mobs are far-left radicals, and it misses the point to mock them as ignorant. The mob understands what it is doing – it is terrorizing America.

The goal of tearing down monuments is to force you to sit down and shut up. It sends a message to the American people that this violent movement will stop at nothing and cannot be stopped.

That's why Vice President Pence's statement is so important. That's why federal, state and local authorities must continue to identify and prosecute these thugs. Because while the American people overwhelmingly see these attacks on our history as acts of violence, they are in realty acts of domestic terrorism aimed at intimidating all of society.

And I am pleased to report that Attorney General William Barr said yesterday, "We already arrested over 150 people on federal charges, and we have over 500 investigations underway across the nation focused on these hardcore instigators involved in this rioting."

On a related note, I am thrilled by President Trump's announcement today that he is ordering a review of the tax-exempt status of colleges and universities. The president declared, "Our children must be educated, not indoctrinated!"

Good for him! It's long overdue. But don't stop there. Get the Marxist "BLM Inc." out of our public elementary, middle and high schools too! As Newt Gingrich recently noted, one of the biggest problems we face is "systemic anti-Americanism," much of it coming from academia.

Attacking Law Enforcement
While the left is giving a wink and a nod to mob violence, it is also actively attacking law enforcement in America.

Incredibly, in the aftermath of the CHAZ/CHOP shootings and major businesses fleeing the city due to the chaos, a majority of the Seattle City Council is endorsing a measure "to defund the Police Department by 50%."

Now Joe Biden is piling on too. He said this week that police departments "absolutely" should lose funding, adding that in some cases the police look like "the military invading. . . they become the enemy."

The American people know the police are the good guys, not the enemy. A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 73% of Americans say police budgets should either remain the same or be increased. Only 25% say they could be cut. (Check out this Trump campaign ad on defunding the police.)

Last night, Vice President Pence addressed the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police. He told the audience in no uncertain terms, "We back the Blue!"
Here's a brief excerpt of the vice president's remarks:

"The truth is: All of you who wear the uniform . . . answered a call in your life. As the Good Book says, you knew every day you go out that you don't bear the sword in vain.

"The truth is, the day you decided to put on that uniform, you decided to count our lives as more important than your own. And for that, I promise you: We will always honor the service of the men and women of law enforcement, and we will always honor your dedicated families who support you as you serve."
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Blitz: Trump's War on the Left is Just Getting Started

. . . David Horowitz's new book takes us behind the scenes of the real war.

Daniel Greenfield: As the country seems to be spinning into chaos with cities burning and businesses shutting down, one question is on the minds of the media, the establishment, and the nearly 36 million Americans whose votes made history in the 2016 election.

Can President Donald J. Trump pull off a win one more time — in 2020?

That’s the question of the year that bestselling author David Horowitz tackles in his latest book, "Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win." In his previous book, "Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America," Horowitz had laid out the strategy and the stakes for the struggle consuming the last three years. Now, in "Blitz," he tackles the climactic battles for the next four years — and the future of America.

"Blitz" refers to both the war waged against President Trump by foreign and domestic adversaries, from Communist China to Marxist mobs in the streets, as well as his relentless defense of the Republic.

This is the year our commander in chief was emergent as a "wartime president," defending not just the moral integrity of the White House, but its very physical structure against radicals determined to burn it to the ground.

As the threat to this nation has reached unprecedented levels, so has Trump’s defense of it.

From Obamagate to impeachment to leftists bringing fire and fear to within sight of the White House, the material attacks on the Trump presidency have escalated from surveillance to lawfare to violence.

Meanwhile the moral attacks, the character assassinations and 24/7 defamation, have been used to license this unprecedented campaign to bring down our nation's 45th president by any means.

What the left fears is no secret.

The media has spoken the dreaded word again and again — Populism.

The forces that have run this country into the ground are terrified of a man who fights for the people, instead of implementing the radical agenda of leftist think tanks, activists, and their media mouthpieces.

As Horowitz writes in "Blitz," "Trump was not only not one of them, he was their worst nightmare — disrespectful toward everything they stood for — politically incorrect."

The information war waged by the media seeks to convince the public that President Trump is politically incorrect because he’s a bad man.

The truth is that the media sees him as an evil man because he is politically incorrect.

"Blitz" delves into the media’s determination to destroy President Trump by spinning and smearing his efforts to reach out to African-Americans, to heal the wounds of a divided nation, because it feared that a new revolutionary Republican leader might succeed in undermining Democratic racial divisiveness.

"As soon as Trump became the Republican nominee, he showed that his candidacy posed an existential threat to the Democrats' inner-city monopolies," Horowitz writes.

As one of the visionaries who had advocated for just this kind of Republican outreach to inner cities, the former leftist understands exactly what is at stake in the struggle for the soul of the inner-city constituencies on the Democratic plantation.

Trump’s unexpected maneuver panicked Democrats who responded by calling Trump a racist. This was not an offense, but a defense against any effort to liberate voters trapped in failed Democratic systems.

"That is the dirty secret that Democrat campaigns and slanders are designed to protect. If Democrats were to lose their control of these cities," Horowitz notes, "they could not win another election."

Both in and out of office, Trump expertly zeroes in on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of his political opponents. He knows the Achilles heels of Democratic Party ruling elites and moves quickly to exploit them. That is the quality that has infuriated and frightened those elites into launching the "resistance."

As Horowitz sums up in one title in his book, "the impeachable offense is Trump himself."

Trump’s tactics are not unprecedented. As Horowitz understands better than anyone else, these are the tactics of the left. A refusal to take prisoners, a keen eye for vulnerabilities, and a determination to win at all costs by taking the fight to the enemy have been the qualities that are the hallmarks of the left.

They are what we are seeing on the streets, not just in 2020, but in the generations of national decline.

Leftists have fought ruthlessly and been opposed fecklessly by a Republican opposition that all too often fought only to secure a short-term compromise instead of a long-term victory. President Trump frightened the radicals because, for the first time in a very long time, Republicans were playing their way.

The rush of judicial nominations and executive orders were not unprecedented.

They were how the Obama administration had done business on everything from nuking the filibuster to Obamacare. But the Democrats had assumed that no future Republican occupant of the White House would start playing the game by their rules.

But that is President Trump’s strength. He doesn’t pull his punches either, as Horowitz details, on Twitter, or when it comes to the bare-knuckled brawls of policymaking:

"Trump will not ignore the left’s war on America," Horowitz boldly concludes. "By his actions over the course of his first White House term, Donald Trump has shown Americans that in the war the Democrats have declared on him—and through him, on their country —he can lead them to victory and secure a better future for all."

Reflecting the vigor of the man who is its subject, Horowitz’s book is both a stirring call to action and a ringing defense of President Trump’s quest to both Make America Great Again and to keep it that way.

As our nation approaches the pivotal crisis of a national election, the radical forces that turned federal law enforcement into their own private Watergate spy system sending mobs into the streets last time around, are pulling out all the stops in a campaign to bring Trump and America to their knees.

But, as "Blitz" documents, Donald J. Trump has not given up and is not about to abandon the fight.

2020 is a year of promise and peril, of fear and hope, of aspiration and violence —nationally.

"Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win," more than successfully captures that promise and peril as our nation's 45th president and the nearly 63 million men and women, of all races and creeds, who stood by him, face the fury of the storm.
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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Behind the Media's Breathtakingly Dishonest Coverage

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: "I don't think I've ever seen such dishonest and biased coverage of any event." That was Brit Hume, who has been covering events for more than 50 years for Fox News, ABC News and investigative reporter Jack Anderson.

The event, as you may have guessed, was President Donald Trump's Independence (without the scare-quotes) Day speech at Mount Rushmore.

The speech was, according to The New York Times, a "dark and divisive speech" designed to deliver a "divisive culture war message." The Washington Post called it a "dystopian speech" and a "push to amplify racism."

Absent from their stories were quotations supporting racism. Nor did Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth supply any quotations to support her claim that Trump "spent all his time talking about dead traitors." Trump mentioned no Confederates but did quote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

The great bulk of Trump's speech was a celebration of American history, American principles, American leaders. He spoke extensively of the four presidents whose visages were sculpted on the mountain above him, and paid tribute more succinctly to others.

He said: "We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Douglass. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright brothers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton -- Gen. George Patton -- the great Louie Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali."

Dark and divisive? Dystopian? Amplifying racism?

What really seems to have raised the press's hackles was Trump's dissent from their reverent attitudes toward Black Lives Matter and apparent indifference to those tearing down statues of Lincoln, Douglass, Grant, abolitionists and women's rights advocates.

"Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our Founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities," Trump said, accurately.

That's not the message most in the media want voters receiving and processing in the months running up to November. Television viewers have been assured that Black Lives Matter protests are "mostly peaceful," even while fires are blazing fiercely within camera view. Newspaper readers have been assured that those seizing streets and ousting police are promoting, in the Seattle mayor's words, a "summer of love," even as their camp becomes the scene of multiple homicides.

Opinion writers are avoiding mention of the fact that homicides and murders in New York, Chicago and numerous other cities have suddenly risen far above the numbers for 2019 and previous years. Most of the dead are black, but apparently, those black lives don't really matter.

Media sensibilities may have also been injured when Trump spoke of a "far-left fascism," one of whose "political weapons is 'Cancel Culture' -- driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees."

This may cut uncomfortably close to home, coming just a few weeks after the defenestration of The New York Times editorial page editor for running an article urging deployment of federal troops, the same tactic that ended rioting and bloodshed in Los Angeles in 1992 and Detroit in 1967.

Underlining Trump's point, Harper's Magazine printed an open letter affirming (after some anti-Trump throat clearing) free expression signed by more than 150 writers of varying views -- only to have some signers withdraw their signature. "I am so sorry," tweeted one, while another said free expression "directly endangers the lives of trans people," and a non-signer tattled to her boss that a colleague signed.

For these media denizens, verbal disagreement is violence, while violent rioting is "mostly peaceful" verbal disagreement. They say, or feel compelled by newsroom pressure to say, that Trump is divisive because he's accusing them, accurately, of being divisive.

During the Charlottesville controversy around the statue of Robert E. Lee, Trump was ridiculed for predicting that statue protestors would target Washington and Jefferson. Well, The New York Times has run opinion articles coming after Washington and Jefferson.

Lest you think Trump is exaggerating about the "cancel culture," consider that Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the signatories of the Harper's letter, tweeted about "the climate of fear that led many people you know and admire to tell us in confidence that they agreed but were afraid to sign."

Or, as National Review editor Rich Lowry writes, "I suspect that the very journalists who scoff at Trump's description of the culture war all know that if they or their colleagues say something disparaging or even skeptical about Black Lives Matter, their jobs would instantly be at risk."

Hence the dishonest and biased press coverage of Trump's Mount Rushmore speech. Expect more in the months to come.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.
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Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel  and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports.

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NeverTrumpers Turn Their Backs On A Lifetime of Conservatism

Brian C. Joondeph: The so-called NeverTrumpers opposed Donald Trump’s Republican Party nomination in 2016 because they believed he was unfit for the presidency. He had not paid his dues as a senator or governor. He wasn’t part of the Republican in-crowd. He was Caddyshack character Al Czervik, played by Rodney Dangerfield, a skunk at the GOP’s country club garden party.

The most prominent NeverTrump names are familiar – Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Max Boot – at one time all advocating for conservative policies, now rabid in their hatred for all things Trump. He wasn’t a true conservative, they insisted.

But President Trump’s 200 judicial appointments have been solid conservatives, from the U.S. Supreme Court on down. He has rolled back business-crushing regulations and built up the military. He has largely defeated Islamic terrorism and confronted illegal immigration. He has stood for life and the police and is one of the few Republicans mounting a vigorous defense against the cancel culture, rewriting the history of America’s founding.

He has walked the conservative walk better than any elected Republican since Ronald Reagan. Yet NeverTrumpers oppose him in favor of a far-left Democrat party.

Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the NeverTrumpers have morphed into a new organization, the Lincoln Project - “Holding accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would put others before Americans.”[I wonder if that includes high-level government conspirators attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected president.]

Founders include notable Trump haters: Mr. Kellyanne Conway, also known as George; Rick Wilson, who famously dismissed Trump supporters as “the credulous Boomer rube demo” in a laughfest with Don Lemon on CNN, and Steve Schmidt who directed John McCain’s anemic bid for the White House in 2008.

What better way to advance conservatism, the NeverTrumpers of the Lincoln Project argue, than to elect Joe Biden and promote a Democrat takeover of America. This is the same Biden echoing Barack Obama who promises that his administration “won’t just rebuild this nation. We’ll transform it.” The same Biden who says police have “become the enemy.”

If Biden wins, his coattails will likely give Democrats control of the House and Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would immediately eliminate the filibuster, giving Democrats full control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government, and soon the Judicial branch.

What better way to advance conservatism, the NeverTrumpers of the Lincoln Project argue, than to elect Joe Biden and promote a Democrat takeover of America. This is the same Biden echoing Barack Obama who promises that his administration “won’t just rebuild this nation. We’ll transform it.” The same Biden who says police have “become the enemy.”

If Biden wins, his coattails will likely give Democrats control of the House and Senate. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would immediately eliminate the filibuster, giving Democrats full control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government, and soon the Judicial branch.

Taxes could be raised with impunity. Regulations added without resistance. The Green New Deal and Medicare-For-All would pass easily on a party-line vote. Democrats want to expand the Supreme Court and with full control of Congress could easily confirm a Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, Lawrence Tribe or Michelle Obama to the high court, creating a far-left majority to rewrite the U.S. Constitution. How is that for the Lincoln Project’s fidelity to the Constitution?

Amnesty will be granted to millions of illegal immigrants and the borders opened, all providing more Democrat voters. These new voters will be sent to red and purple states, such as Texas, Ohio and Florida, turning them blue, creating a permanent Democrat electoral majority.

How about adding Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico as new states, four more Democrat senators, firming up their majority? This means more senators in the mold of Tammy Duckworth who described Trump’s July 3 Mount Rushmore speech as “talking about dead traitors.” Do these traitors include Harriet Tubman, Jesse Owens, Louie Armstrong and Elle Fitzgerald, all honored by Trump in his speech? Or Abraham Lincoln, namesake of The Lincoln Project, one of the four presidents honored on Mount Rushmore?

NeverTrumpers have joined forces with the anti-American totalitarian left and the Marxist Black Lives Matter group all because they don’t like Trump’s style or his tweets. Because Trump did not purchase their services and won the election on his own, the Republican establishment is pouting and willing to throw their lifetime work and principles to the wind to teach the country a lesson.

America has a binary choice in November. NeverTrumpers can’t create their ideal candidate. It’s either Trump or Biden - or whoever will be in charge behind the scenes as Biden’s cognition keeps slipping.

As Benjamin Franklin observed 250 years ago when asked which is preferable a monarchy or a republic, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”
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Dr. Brian C. Joondeph (@retinaldoctor), M.D., MPS, is a Denver-based physician and writer. Shared by Rasmussen Reports.

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The New ‘Systemic Racism’ That Is Coming

by Patrick Buchanan: Is it possible to reflect the “racial composition” of Fairfax County and to remain “the top public high school In the United States”?

Before our Black Lives Matter moment, one had not thought of the NBC networks as shot through with “systemic racism.”

Yet, what other explanation is there for this week’s draconian personnel decision of NBCUniversal chairman Cesar Conde.

According to Conde, the white share of NBC’s workforce, now 74% and divided evenly between men and women, will be chopped to 50%.

Persons of color — Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and multiracial folks — are to rise from the present 26% of NBCUniversal’s workforce to 50%.

What does this mean?

White men will be slashed as a share of NBCUniversal’s employees from the present 38% to 25%, — a cut of one-third — and then capped to ensure that people of color and women reach and remain at 50%.

White men can fall below one-fourth of the workforce, but their numbers will not be permitted to go any higher.

To impose race and gender quotas like this on the workforce at NBCUniversal — half women, half persons of color — would seem to trample all over the spirit, if not the letter, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Why is Conde doing this?

“(W)e have a unique responsibility to look like and reflect all of the people of the country we serve,” he says.

But whence comes this responsibility, the realization of which means active discrimination against new employees because they are the wrong gender or race: i.e, they are unwanted white men?

America has succeeded as a meritocracy where excellence was rewarded, be it in athletics or academics. Our Olympic teams have triumphed when we send the best we had in every event.

This egalitarian and ideological revolt against excellence is also arising in Fairfax County, Virginia, at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which, concedes The Washington Post, “often ranks as the top public high school in the United States.”

Why does TJ have a problem? Writes the Post reporter, the school is “notorious for failing to admit black and Latino students.”

Does TJ discriminate in its admissions against Blacks and Hispanics? Is the school a throwback to the old days of “massive resistance”?

Of 486 students in the freshman class this fall at the school, the number of Black students is tiny, smaller even than the 3% of the class that is Hispanic. Is this yet another example of “white privilege” at work?

Hardly. Whites make up only 17% of TJ’s incoming class.

The problem, if it is a problem, is Asian Americans. Three in 4 members of the fall freshman class at TJ are of Asian heritage.

Why do Asian American kids predominate? Are they being admitted on the basis of their race or ethnicity?

No, again. Asians are 73% of the incoming class because they excelled on the admissions tests in math, reading and science, and on the essay-writing assignment.

They won admission to TJ not based on their ethnicity or race but their academic excellence as demonstrated in standardized tests taken by students all over Fairfax and surrounding counties.

Thomas Jefferson principal Ann Bonitatibus says of her school, “We do not reflect the racial composition” of the Fairfax County Public School System.

No, it does not. But so what, if Thomas Jefferson ranks among the top STEM schools in the entire United States?

And Bonitatibus’ comment raises a legitimate question:

Is it possible to reflect the “racial composition” of Fairfax County and to remain “the top public high school In the United States”?

A related issue is up in California. In 1996, in a state referendum, Californians voted 55-45 to embed a colorblind amendment in their state constitution:

“The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Clear, coherent and colorblind.

The Democratic legislature, however, wants to be rid of this amendment as it outlaws the kind of racial and ethnic discrimination in which Sacramento wishes to engage.

An amendment is on the November ballot to repeal the colorblind amendment and allow California to start discriminating again — in favor of African Americans and Hispanics and against Asians and white men — to alter the present racial balance in state university admissions and the awarding of state contracts.

If this passes, more Hispanics and Blacks with lower test scores will be admitted to elite state schools like UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, based on race, and fewer Asians and whites. Practices that were regarded as race discrimination and supposedly outlawed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will henceforth be seen as commendable and mandatory.

There will be racial and ethnic discrimination, as in the days of segregation. Only the color of the beneficiaries and the color of the victims will be reversed.

And that is the meaning of the BLM revolution, which might be encapsulated: “It’s our turn now!”
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Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

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Tags: Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, New ‘Systemic Racism’, That Is Coming To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Joe Biden's Me-Too Economic Plan

. . . He's no Trump, and his dismal record speaks for itself.

Douglas Andrews: When Joe Biden announced on April 3 that he supports President Donald Trump’s travel ban on China, he was two months late and thousands of lives short. This week, the man who first came to Washington in 1973 made another announcement — this time an economic one. And, once again, he’s both late and short — this time by 47 years and tens of millions of jobs.

Biden, as The Wall Street Journal reports, is unveiling a plan “aimed at reviving the U.S. economy with an America-centric approach to job creation and manufacturing, issuing a direct challenge to President Trump as they compete for working-class voters less than four months before the presidential election.”

If by “issuing a direct challenge to” the Journal means “perpetrating a shameless rip-off of,” then yes, Johnny-Come-Lately Joe is challenging President Donald Trump and his long-held “America First” economic platform. But why would Joe Biden want to do this? Jobs and the economy are more squarely on Donald Trump’s turf than nearly any other issue. Indeed, they’re his most powerful argument for reelection. Perhaps the Biden campaign is somehow unaware of its candidate’s weakness in this area, or perhaps it’s beginning to believe all these polls. Or maybe it’s after the low-hanging fruit of the low-information voter. In any case, this is a fight Donald Trump is more than happy to have. The question is, will the mainstream media actually cover it, or will it continue to treat Biden like a Fabergé egg?

“Mr. Biden is poised to unveil his agenda while campaigning in Dunmore, Pa.,” the Journal continued, “where the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee will tour a metalworks plant before making his economic pitch to an American public still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.”

It’s true enough that we’re still knee-deep in COVID-19, but imagine the hole we’d be in had Slow Joe been in the Oval Office. When Donald Trump was quickly cutting off travel to and from China, Joe Biden was attacking the president for having done so and appeasing his politically correct base with cries of “xenophobia” and “fear-mongering.”

The Biden economic plan is called “Build Back Better,” which tells us that he needs to fire his branding team. Setting aside how bloodless it sounds compared to, say, “America First,” it’s hard to imagine Biden reading that tongue-twister off the teleprompter, much less saying it unscripted.

The Journal eventually curbs its enthusiasm for the Biden plan long enough to mention “the embrace of economic globalization that had defined the policies of the Obama-Biden administration and two decades of Republican and Democratic presidents who preceded it.” But what about the real legacy of the Obama-Biden years — a legacy characterized by the lowest labor participation rate since the 1970s, the worst recovery since the 1940s, the lowest home ownership rate in 51 years, an additional 13 million Americans on food stamps, and more than 43 million Americans living in poverty? And that was just eight years’ worth of work. Biden, again, has been taking a government paycheck since well before most Americans were born — and he’s racked up an impressive record of economic failure over that span of time. This would include voting for NAFTA, supporting normalization of trade relations with Communist China, and supporting the job-killing Trans Pacific Partnership before Donald Trump took office and rightly nixed it.

Could a Biden economy be all that bad? You betcha. As we noted earlier this week, intelligent folks on the Left and the Right agree that his would be “the most left-wing administration in history — far to the left of Obama.”

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale summed up Scranton Joe’s dismal economic record in a single tweet: “Biden spent his career backing trade deals that crushed American jobs & manufacturing. President Trump cleaned up Biden’s mess, secured #AmericaFirst trade deals, & built the strongest economy in history.”

All that is true. And if Donald Trump can step away from the culture wars long enough, he can start drawing some sharp and compelling contrasts between his economic record and that of his opponent.
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Douglas Andrews writes for The Patriot Post.

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If Risky Chinese Investments Are Unsuitable For Federal Pensioners . . .

. . . They’re Unsuitable For Private Pensioners, Too.

by Rick Manning: The Labor Department has a fiduciary responsibility to end all private retirement investments in dangerous Chinese investments by amending the current pending regulation on Financial Factors in Selecting Plan Investments to disqualify all companies that do not adhere to the transparency requirements of Dodd-Frank and Sarbannes-Oxley.

As a former Labor Department political appointee under President George W. Bush and a member of President Trump’s Labor Transition team, I have been focused upon the importance of the Department’s oversight role on private pension investments as well as the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation’s solvency.

Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia’s assessment and decision on excluding risky Chinese assets from the federal employees 401(K) Thrift Savings Plan is spot on. His statement that stopping the inclusion of Chinese assets was necessary because it, “would place millions of federal employees, retirees, and service-members in the untenable position of choosing between forgoing any investment in international equities or placing billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security” is exactly on point.

The obvious question is if these assets are too risky for inclusion in the federal TSP, why would they be allowed to be included in private 401(K) investments where the same argument directly applies?

The answer is that they are not, and under ERISA it is the Labor Department’s job to protect private sector retirement specific investments or pensions from choices that are unsuitably risky.

In the attached July 7 letter from National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien and Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council to the head of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, they state, “The NRRI’s Trust’s investment in the PRC exposes the retirement funds of railroad workers to significant and unnecessary economic risk.”

Once again the question is why should private pension investments be allowed to be put into this risk when other public retirement funds are being urged to protect their retirees by ending these investments?

O’Brien and Kudlow continue by citing the exact transparency risk which directly puts Chinese assets in conflict with both the letter and intent of ERISA, “Another key reason why the NRI Trust’s investments in PRC companies expose American railroad retirees to substantial economic risk is because the Chinese government prevents companies with Chinese operations listed on U.S. exchanges from complying with applicable U.S. securities laws, leaving investors without the benefit of important protections.”

Recently, the Pentagon determined that twenty Chinese companies are owned or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. And in May, the U.S. Senate voted to require transparency for Chinese firms listed on American exchanges.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs annually issues a report on countries which use child and slave labor in the manufacture of goods. China is listed not once, not twice but twelve times in the latest report for using children and slaves to make goods, many of which find their place on the shelves of U.S. retailers like Walmart. Artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, garments, nails, textiles and toys are all listed as being made with child or slave labor in China.

The very Christmas ornaments we put on our trees, the toys, clothing under that tree including the latest Colin Kaepernick shoe, and the phone or other Chinese made electronics are likely the product of the blood and toil of children and slaves.

While moral determinations are not part of ERISA, it is sickening to think that American pensions and 401(k) investors are capitalizing the grotesque abuse of helpless and oppressed Chinese religious minorities and political dissidents. Americans would be appalled to learn that they were effectively providing the capital for the enslavement of their fellow man, and the Trump Labor Department can stop it.

Nothing prevents non-retirement assets from being invested in these same Chinese companies, but allowing private retirement investments to continue to invest in non-transparent, risky assets whose reliance on slavery rightfully offends our national sensibilities is not only a violation of the Labor Department’s statutory responsibility under ERISA, it is immoral.

Given Secretary Scalia’s previous statements and those which are currently coming from the National Security Advisor and National Economic Council, I am confident that he and President Donald Trump will come to the determination that Chinese assets and other risky non-transparent assets have no place in America’s retirement portfolios.
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Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government. Adapted from a letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, dated July 9, 2020.

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Tags: Rick Manning, Americans for Limited Government, If Risky Chinese Investments, Are Unsuitable For, Federal Pensioners, They’re Unsuitable, For Private Pensioners, Too To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

The Bush League

. . . A group of G.W. Bush appointees has vowed to vote for Joe Biden proving they were never really conservative.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, The Bush League, A group of G.W. Bush appointees, has vowed, to vote for, Joe Biden, proving, they were never, really conservative To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

A Modest Anti-Capitalism?

Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Socialists are so “modest”!

But how modest?

Ask Rep. Ilhan Omar, who recently proclaimed to be “fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, in the air we breathe.”

Gasp?

Well, maybe that isn’t so clear. So listen to Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant.

“I have a message for Jeff Bezos and his class,” Sawant warned. “If you attempt again to overturn the Amazon Tax, working people will go all out in the thousands to beat you. And we will not stop there.”

Does that sound like a threat? Or is it really just a harmless expression of politics-as-usual?

“You see, we are fighting for far more than this tax,” the self-proclaimed socialist elaborated. “We are preparing the ground for a different kind of society, and if you, Jeff Bezos, want to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it. Because we are coming for you and your rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. This police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it, and replace it with a world based, instead, on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality: a socialist world. Thank you.”

And thank you, Ms. Sawant, for making yourself ultra-understandable.

You want to destroy private property and free markets and robust political debate and replace them with . . . well, let’s just say that if you complain about a police state now, wait’ll you get a load of what follows from your “modest” demands.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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Mysterious Explosions Escalate Israel, Iran Tensions

by Ben Caspit: Ahead of the US presidential elections, and on the backdrop of mysterious explosions, Israel prepares for various escalation scenarios on Iran’s part.

Several days after the massive July 2 explosion that destroyed the upper level of Iran’s centrifuge upgrading and uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, reports emerged in Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had asked Mossad Director Yossi Cohen to stay on an additional year once his five-year term expires at the end of the year. However, "the head,” as the spy agency director is known, only agreed to a six-month extension. Shortly after, in the pre-dawn hours of July 3, Israel launched its Ofek 16 spy satellite carried on a Shavit rocket from its Palmachim military base. The satellite significantly enhances Israel’s ability to track events around the world, in particular Iran. Its particularly sophisticated camera enables the identification of items as small as 50 centimeters (19.5 inches) from a height of up to 450 kilometers (280 miles). Ofek 16 joins six other Israeli reconnaissance satellites orbiting earth and transmitting real-time data on developments around the world.

Intelligence officials believe Iran is now reassessing what they dub its “strategic patience policy.” The Iranians themselves admit it. A commentary on Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said, “Iran so far has tried to prevent intensifying crises and the formation of unpredictable conditions and situations.” However, it continued, “the crossing of red lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran by hostile countries, especially the Zionist regime and the United States, means that strategy … should be revised.” It now appears that the Iranians are in discussions on recalibrating their course, indeed. They are no longer convinced that their famed patience serves their ongoing military nuclear ambitions and the tense wait for the results of the November US presidential elections.

The series of mysterious explosions in Iran began in late June with a blast at the weapons manufacturing facility in Parchin. It was followed by reported sabotage at a Tehran area hospital and then by the main event, the blast at Natanz that sparked a heavy fire and destroyed significant sections of the aboveground facility at which Iran was manufacturing sophisticated IR-6 and IR-8 enrichment centrifuges.

Israel is closely monitoring the Iranian dilemma. “I have no doubt the Iranians are holding discussions these days about their patience policy,” former Military Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amos Yadlin told Al-Monitor. According to a report in Israel, the Iranians had recently tried to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli interests, such as embassies and other targets around the world, mostly in Europe, but the Mossad, along with its Western partners thwarted these attempts. “Israel is preparing for every possible Iranian response,” a senior Israeli security source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It could be carried out by one of Iran’s proxies, it could be carried out on an Israeli target abroad and it could also come in the shape of a cyberattack, the likes of which we already experienced in recent weeks.”

However, even an overt Iranian response indicating that Tehran had run out of “strategic patience” will not sway Israel from its declared goal of foiling by all means possible Iran’s ongoing attempts to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Western intelligence sources assess that the blast at Natanz set back Iran’s nuclear weapons race by two years. “They were about to complete the manufacture of the sophisticated centrifuges at Natanz,” Yadlin, currently the director of the Institute for National Security Studies, told Al-Monitor. “These centrifuges were supposed to greatly speed up Iran’s nuclear ‘breakout’ time. They are six to eight times faster than the old centrifuges, which operate in the underground part of that same site. Whoever was behind the Natanz attack knew exactly what they were doing,” he said. Yadlin declined to speculate on foreign reports attributing the sabotage to Israel.

Israel and Iran are engaged in what has become almost open warfare over the past two years. According to foreign reports, Israel and Iran traded cyber jabs in the past two months. Israel has indicated that Iran tried to sabotage a water distribution facility in April, but it has not assumed responsibility for the cyberattack that crippled operations at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port in May.

“In the coming months, tensions are expected to rise,” a Western diplomat who monitors these developments told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It has to do with the fact that Israel and Iran both are preparing for November, for the possibility that President Donald Trump is reelected or that Joe Biden replaces him at the White House. The Iranians are praying for Biden, hoping a Democratic president would sign an amended nuclear agreement, which they would find more favorable. Israel is also gearing up for such a possibility.”

Israel is concerned that Iran is constantly cutting its nuclear “breakout” time, meaning the time required to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon. Western intelligence sources told Al-Monitor that since Trump pulled the United States out of the world powers’ deal with Iran in May 2018, Iran has achieved significant progress toward its goal with the enhanced centrifuges that could speed up the enrichment of fissionable material by as much as six times. These sources add that taking out these faster centrifuges at Natanz significantly sets back the Iranian nuclear program.

Israel has not assumed responsibility for the Natanz explosion nor for the other incidents that took place in recent days in Iran, but a Middle Eastern security source told The New York Times that Israel planted the bomb. The report generated fury in Israel, as succinctly expressed by former Defense Minister and Chair of the hawkish Yisrael Beitenu party, Avigdor Liberman, who urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “to shut [the leaker’s] mouth.” Liberman was apparently referring to Mossad chief Cohen. Nonetheless, Netanyahu is unlikely to silence Cohen and, in any case, even if there was a leak, Netanyahu himself might have authorized it.

The prime minister is under heavy siege given the deep economic crisis besetting Israel. Poll results this week indicate that public confidence in Netanyahu’s handling of the crisis, especially of the economy, has plunged sharply. The only card he has left to play is the security card, and he is going for broke. That means setting back the Iranian nuclear program in order to allow Israel and perhaps the United States to block an Iranian nuclear breakout should Iran abandon its “strategic patience” policy.
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Ben Caspit (@BenCaspit) is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse. He is also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel.

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Tags: Ben Caspit, Mysterious Explosions, Escalate, Israel, Iran, Tensions To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Random Thoughts While Not Out ‘Protesting’

by Larry Elder: At a time in America when one’s race has never been less important, the left has taught an entire generation of the most privileged Americans ever to view the world through race-tinted glasses.

There were 13 Baltimore high schools where, in 2017, 0% of students could do math at grade level, and another half-dozen high schools where only 1% were math proficient. Do you really think these students even know enough about Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to be mad at him?

During the Chicago Father’s Day weekend, when 14 people were shot and killed and over 100 were wounded, how many Confederate generals were spotted leaving the scenes of the crime? Just curious.

Shouldn’t monuments and schools dedicated to Barack Obama come down? After all, Obama’s ancestors on his white mother’s side were slave owners.

In 2017, more than 60,000 cops were assaulted. In recent years, about 50 cops have been shot and killed annually in the line of duty. More cops are killed by suspects in the line of duty each year than unarmed Blacks are killed by cops.

Whoever called compound interest “the most powerful force in the universe” never encountered “white guilt.”

Next up on the “cancel culture” docket are movies whose names might be offensive under the new woke standard: “Blackboard Jungle,” fictional characters Boston Blackie and Sam Spade, and all Shirley Temple/Bill Robinson dance scenes.

Can we skip to the part where the “protesters” who burned and looted stores denounce business owners as racist for refusing to rebuild?

House Democrats voted to make D.C. the 51st state. If this new state would likely produce two Republican senators, we wouldn’t be having this conversation — just as our borders would be tighter than a clam’s behind if illegal-aliens-turned-citizens were expected to vote Republican.

“But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.” — Then-Sen. Barack Obama, Father’s Day, June 15, 2008.

San Bernardino County, California, has declared “racism” a “public health crisis.” A 2013 Rasmussen poll asked Blacks, Hispanics and whites whether “most” people, in each of these three groups, are racist. Whites and Blacks ranked Blacks as the group with the most racists. Blacks, according to surveys commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League, are more than twice as likely as white gentiles to be anti-Semitic. Now what?

If the USA is “institutionally racist,” why stop at defunding the police? Why not defund public school education? Or public transportation? Or the military? Or the Federal Reserve System? Or government-funded PBS and NPR? Or government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Or the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority and the federally and state-subsidized Amtrak? Or government agencies like the Social Security Administration; the Internal Revenue Service; the Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, etc.?
Mediavine

There are far more bad public school teachers than there are bad cops. And it practically takes an act of Congress to get a bad public school teacher fired. So, when and where can we expect the #DefundPublicEducation rallies?

Hyperleft “activist” Shaun King wants the statues of “white European” Jesus Christ to come down because “they are a form of white supremacy.” There is no shortage of candidates, but is there a bigger idiot in America?

Social justice warriors promise not to rest until there is a complete and total elimination of racism. Really? Elimination? In a country where, 25 years after his death, 8% believed “there is a chance” that Elvis is still alive? Good luck.

Winning an argument is far less important than winning someone over to a new, clearer way of thinking.

“But the truth is, and people are starting to realize this — racism as a system is often more dangerous and destructive. You know, preventing Black people from getting loans, stopping Black kids from getting an equal education, racial disparities in medical treatment. You know, racism is like the corn syrup of society. It’s in everything. So, right now, thanks to this movement, the movement in the streets, we are being forced to look at all of the ways we might be further perpetuating negative ideas that enforce racism in the world.” — Trevor Noah, June 10, 2020.
Mediavine

So says Noah, the immigrant from post-apartheid South Africa, the product of a then-illegal relationship with a white man and raised by his single Black mom. Noah comes to the United States, gets rich and famous in the intensely competitive field of comedy, lives in a Bel Air mansion, which he reportedly bought for $20.5 million — and whines about racism in America!

Because I don’t think of myself as a victim, I’ve been asked, “How many times have you been called a ‘n-word’?” Rarely am I asked, “How many times have you been called an ‘Uncle Tom’/’coon’/’sellout’?” — even though I’ve long since lost count.
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Larry Elder (@larryelder) is a best-selling author and radio talk-show host, an American lawyer, writer and radio and television personality who is also known as the "Sage From South Central." To find out more about Larry Elder. Visit his website at LarryElder.com for list of other articles.

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