Our Dysfunctional 'Race Relations' - Bruce Thornton

 

​ by Bruce Thornton

How virtue signaling and weaponizing racial discourse sabotaged the goals of the civil rights movement.

 

Commentator and radio host Larry Elder recently posted an insightful tweet: “It is a sign of progress that today in America ‘race relations’ pretty much comes down to just one thing: how black people feel about white people––and how white people feel about how black people feel about white people.”

Unpacking this comment will reveal how dysfunctional “race relations” and racial discourse have been for half a century since legal segregation was ended.

First, I suspect the word “progress” carries a double edge. Of course, the condescending and patronizing sensibility that underlies “white” America’s obsession with black people’s opinions of them is a tremendous improvement over the indifference and neglect at best, and at worst the daily demeaning humiliations and physical violence of the past.

But the goal of the Civil Rights Movement that brought down legal segregation wasn’t for blacks to become “mascots,” to use Thomas Sowell’s metaphor, of enlightened white people’s moral preening, or superficial compassion, or need for racial redemption and absolution. Rather, it was for black people to be in full possession of the unalienable rights upon which the country and the Constitution were founded, and hence to be politically and legally equal to other Americans. The color of their skin, then, would be irrelevant to their political and national identities and the “content of their character.”

So how did this goal that inspired the Civil Rights Movement starting in the early 20^th  Century become the divisive, weaponized, racialist set of beliefs and attitudes that dominate today’s national discourse on race? Of course, Orwellian clichés like “white supremacy,” “systemic racism,” and “implicit bias” are the go-to answers provided by universities, popular culture, corporate media, and government agencies. Like “racism,” they are forms of verbal graffiti that deface our public discourse and town square.

These phrases, however, are empty of any coherent meaning founded on empirical evidence. They are political tools used by one political faction to leverage power and influence in order to promote their ideological goals of increasing managerial elite’s power and regulatory incursions into civil society and private life.

The real answers have to be looked for in history. One important influence has been the communist party in America, which from the beginning per Stalin’s orders insinuated itself into the Civil Rights Movement. Racial injustices like the trial of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers unjustly accused of raping two white women in 1931, attracted various communist fronts, especially the formal Communist Party of the USA, that offered legal help as the pretext for turning the incident into a “propaganda of the deed.” Protests and violence were fomented as tools for recruiting blacks into the party and expanding communists’ influence. The goal was not freeing the wrongfully accused, but creating disorder and violence as a prelude to the revolution. In the case of the Scottsboro Boys, the communists’ goal of weaponizing their trial in the service of communism rather than getting the defendants acquitted led to needless delays and diversions from their trials, ending up with some of them having to be incarcerated for years before being exonerated.

Worse, the communists attacked the moderate Civil Rights Organizations, like the NAACP, that were already providing support and publicizing such injustices. Communism’s goal has always been violent and revolutionary, not peaceful and incremental, change. Hence moderates who work within the existing legal system have been anathematized, discredited, and delegitimized as collaborators with liberal-democratic governments. Howard Zinn’s chapter on the Civil Rights era in A People’s History offers many examples of this mentality, as Mary Grabar writes in her indispensable Debunking Howard Zinn. Discussing the neglected civil rights giant E.D. Nixon, whom Zinn barely mentions, Grabar writes:

Zinn has little time for the stories of African-Americans who worked on peaceful campaigns for civil rights, especially when they did it without the help of Communists. Zinn clearly hoped that “the frightening explosiveness of the black upsurge” could be useful in bringing about some kind of socialist revolution or other radical transformation of America.

To Zinn––who was a practicing communist activist and organizer in those years before and after the Civil Rights legislation–– achievements like the Voting Rights Act and desegregation laws were mere self-defense “cooling mechanisms” for the liberal-capitalist establishment to forestall the only real agent of transformative change–– a revolution that imposed a communist regime and economy. For leftists, civil rights was not about restorative justice for black people, but a mere “prelude of more revolutionary action to come,” as Grabar sums up Zinn’s thinking

Our “race relations,” then, have been long warped by such influences. If true racial justice can be obtained only under communism or at least socialism, no matter how much real-life improvement in black lives has occurred, it will never be enough to correct the black grievances that can be exploited to create racial divisiveness and conflict. And if those grievances are hard to find, then they will be manufactured, as Black Lives Matter––run by self-confessed “trained Marxists”–– have done with the mythical crisis of police officers wantonly gunning down unarmed black men, something belied by mountains of statistical data. And like Zinn, for BLM the only black lives that matter are those that can be leveraged for more power to hasten the socialist revolution.

This decades-old paradigm has over the years seeped into our nation’s school and university curricula, even as the factual history of the civil rights movements––a triumph of liberal democratic institutions and mores, as well as black Christians–– is neglected. Now we have generations of people, most comprising one of America’s two political parties, who have internalized that narrative of persistent racism and grievance that no amount of improvement can correct. This ideological construct permeates as well culture, whether high, middle, or low, along with mass media, social media, corporations, and even sports, all of which have eagerly embraced the doctrines and slogans of BLM.

This anxiety on the part of white people over what black people think of them is unhealthy and fundamentally illiberal. It’s a form of social and psychological apartheid, putting black people into a distinct, homogenous class whose ancestors’ history imposes a solicitude on the part of whites extended to no other American demographic, thus erecting a barrier that interferes with the daily social intercourse that helps create a national community.

And it leads to disastrous policies the malign effects of which have disproportionately burdened black people. The Great Society welfare programs in part reflected for many whites a bribe for obtaining black approval and absolution, or at least for soothing their own consciences. But such programs have contributed to the weakening of the black family and the erosion of those virtues that even during the Jim Crow era, kept black families intact and black employment closer to white levels than they have been until the Trump administration. That’s why many black commentators like Jason Riley plead, as his book is titled, “please stop helping us!”

Black people don’t exist to soothe white people’s neuroses or to be objects of smug virtue- signaling. They do not comprise a homogenous group that we can treat all the same. Black people don’t think alike any more than they look alike. Their true diversity is the most important diversity for all humanity: of individual hearts and minds that deserve respect for their freedom, autonomy, and unique identities. They should not be treated as interchangeable pacifiers for white people’s neuroses and insecurities. They, like the rest of us, should just be left alone.

 

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/our-dysfunctional-race-relations-bruce-thornton/ 

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US Urgently Needs to Challenge China's Chokehold on Rare Earth Materials - Lawrence A. Franklin

​ by Lawrence A. Franklin

China's October 13 decision to curtail the export of these vitally needed rare earth materials should serve as an urgent warning to the U.S. to begin developing an independent supply chain of these materials.

• The Chinese Communist Party's near monopoly on most of these 17 rare earth materials (REM) is by now a US national security vulnerability of enormous strategic importance.... China's October 13 decision to curtail the export of these vitally needed rare earth materials should serve as an urgent warning to the U.S. to begin developing an independent supply chain of these materials.

• The Defense Department has not acted with the sense of urgency demanded by the president.... Consequently, if US-China relations plummet to the point where conflict appears imminent, America's military would be disadvantaged should the Chinese decide to sever exports of REM to the US market.

• The US would do well... by quickly decoupling its economy from dependency on China for rare earth materials -- and if possible, from everything else.

Pictured: Mined ore containing rare earth materials on display in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China. (Image source: Brücke-Osteuropa/Wikimedia Commons)

One of China's most significant advantages in the race to dominate future hi-tech industrial production, among just about everything else, is its chokehold on "rare earth materials" (REM). These are materials -- and the raw minerals from which they are extracted and processed -- vital to the manufacture, for instance, of advanced weapons, fossil-free alternative energy systems, communication devices, computer products, and microelectronic networks.

It is an area in which China has already established dominance . The Chinese Communist Party's near monopoly on most of these 17 rare earth materials is by now a US national security vulnerability of enormous strategic importance. China's October 13 decision to curtail the export of these vitally needed rare earth materials should serve as an urgent warning to the US to seriously begin developing an independent supply chain of these materials.

The good news is that the Trump Administration had the foresight in 2017 to issue an Executive Order to begin the process of decoupling the US from its dependency on the Communist Chinese regime for REM. This Executive Order was followed up in early October by a Presidential declaration of a national emergency in mining, in an apparent effort to establish a US domestic REM stockpile for military requirements. China's announced intent to ban the export of strategic REM to foreign countries could spur the US quickly and fully to implement President Trump's directive to establish an independent REM supply chain. The Defense Department has not acted with the sense of urgency demanded by the President. In short, the DOD is dragging its feet. Consequently, if US-China relations plummet to the point where conflict appears imminent, America's military would be disadvantaged should the Chinese decide to sever exports of REM to the US.

Presently, the US Air Force's most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, requires about 1,000 pounds of rare earth materials, most of which are presently acquired from China. The US is also dependent on China for REM required for laser guidance missiles, other advanced weapons systems and space satellites.

Many US quality-of-life domestic products -- many medical devices, such as scanners, electric automobiles, and fluorescent lighting -- also rely on the availability of the Chinese REM.

To decouple, the US could establish new supply lines with countries that have unexploited deposits of REM. These include Australia, Afghanistan, India, Russia, Brazil and countries in Central Asia. The US also could capitalize on its considerable undersea technological expertise to extract REM deposits from the ocean floor. US allies, such as NATO nations, could invest in independent REM supply lines as well as create stockpiles of REM to lessen their own vulnerability regarding China,

The US, to nurture a national and internationally competitive industry, could also borrow a tactic from China by subsidizing domestic companies to invest in REM extraction and processing enterprises. Current REM sites in the US that have the potential to expand rapidly, particularly if the government provides financial and tax-free incentives, include Elk Creek Mine in Nebraska, Bokan Mine in Alaska, and Bear Lodge Mine in Wyoming. Presently, the most profitable REM site in the US is Mountain Pass Mine in California. Potentially, the most valuable US site is an area in West Texas which contains 16 of the 17 known rare earth materials.

Some of these REM and their related end products include:

• Barite - fracking process for natural gas extraction
• Cerium - camera lenses for telescopes
• Dysprosium - magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines
• Erbium - nuclear power plant rods
• Europium - lasers
• Gallium - semiconductors
• Lanthanum - specialized lighting
• Lithium - batteries
• Praseodymium - jet airplane engines
• Promethium - batteries for nuclear powered systems
• Yttrium - laser-guided missiles and bombs.

In addition to these REM, there are other critical materials that the US no longer produces. Consequently, industries are forced to import these items. An additional benefit is that the natural gas extracted by fracking helps to keep the US energy independent. Graphite, a necessary ingredient for smartphone batteries, is another critical substance.

If the US were to decide that breaking China's monopolistic stranglehold on most of these materials was a national priority, Washington could also build REM processing plants and supply chains. Not only would these investments provide jobs, but also only then could the US proceed to transform these critical REM oxides into metallic alloys from which end products are created.

If the US remains dependent on China for REM, there may come a time when America might be forced to sacrifice a foreign policy interest -- a dilemma experienced by Japan, also heavily dependent on China for REM. When China and Japan became involved in a maritime fishing dispute, Beijing cut off shipments of REM to its neighbor. The dispute was settled only when Tokyo pleaded with China to resume the export of REM and the Japanese Coast Guard in the East China Sea released the captain of a Chinese trawler that had been fishing in disputed waters. The US would do well to avoid a similar predicament by quickly decoupling its economy from dependency on China for rare earth materials -- and if possible, from everything else.

 

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16754/china-rare-earth-materials 

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Yes We Con - Lloyd Billingsley

 

​ by Lloyd Billingsley

Obama's gaslighting guide to 'A Promised Land'.

 

“The country was in better shape now than it had been when I’d started,” POTUS 44 explains at the outset of A Promised Land (Crown, 2020, 751 pages, $45.00), which he supposedly wrote in longhand. Early in his career he drafted a speech the same way, but “Axe” and his partner “made it better.” That is a reference to “media consultant” David Axelrod, proclaimed by the New York Times in 2007 as  “Obama’s narrator,” the role he continues to this day.

A Promised Land is a rehash of Axelrod’s 2015 Believer, in which Axe describes Obama, who had no record of publication before Dreams from My Father, as a great writer with the skill of an historical novelist. Axelrod is talking about himself and the elephantine Promised Land betrays the same fictional, gaslighting approach.

“Well Mr. President elect,” says Nancy Pelosi, “I think the American people are pretty clear that you inherited a terrible mess. Just terrible.” And so on, but by the end of his second term, the country was in much better shape. Boondoggles such as Solyndra were only a “PR nightmare,” not a confirmation of colossal incompetence and fathomless waste.

A Promised Land hits the bookstores two weeks after the November 3 election, and as the author conveniently recalls, Joe Biden had a “handsome face always cast in a dazzling smile.” On domestic issues Joe was smart and “his experience in foreign policy was broad and deep.” Sen. Biden had “skill and discipline as a debater,” but “most of all Joe had heart.”

For her part, Hillary Clinton had “star power,” and was “the best person for the job” of secretary of state. Too bad this first volume ends before Hillary’s escapade in Benghazi, where a video caused the deaths of four Americans.

A Promised Land readers meet “my pastor Jeremiah Wright,” the hatemongering anti-American, and learn that “the good in Reverend Wright more than outweighed his flaws.” Valerie Jarrett is “a brilliant and well connected attorney” and “like an older sister to me.” Like the president, Jarrett had a soft spot for Iran, an adversary, so the book’s take on Israel, an ally, will be of interest to many readers.

Israeli parents describe “the terror of rocket shells launched from nearby Gaza landing just a few yards from their children’s bedrooms.” On the other hand, in Ramallah, “I heard Palestinians speak of the daily humiliations endured at Israeli security checkpoints.”

Readers meet “extremist groups like al Qaeda,” and the Somalis who took over an American ship. Like many others in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, they were “warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings.” Still,  “I wanted somehow to save them, send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of hate.”

No word of any success on that front, but good to know that CIA boss John Brennan showed “thoughtfulness,” and “possessed enough appreciation of Islamic culture and the complexities of Middle East to know that guns and bombs wouldn’t accomplish the task.” Nothing about Brennan’s vote for the Stalinist Gus Hall in 1976, only four years before he joined the CIA.

Readers of A Promised Land learn that Army major Nidal Hasan murdered 13 Americans and wounded many others at Ford Hood in 2009. The author conveniently forgets that he called Hasan’s mass murder “workplace violence,” not terrorism or even “gun violence.” The former president also fails to recall that in 2014 he refused to meet with wounded Fort Hood victims such as Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford.

As the former commander-in-chief explains, the FBI, Department of Defense, and joint terrorism task force were tracking Hasan’s communications with terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, but “interagency information sharing systems had failed to connect the dots in a way that might have headed off the tragedy.” In reality, as Lessons from Fort Hood explains, the Washington office of the FBI simply looked the other way.

In a discussion of Angela Merkel, readers learn that “the Iron Curtain fell,” with no explanation of life under Communist rule that drove so many to risk their lives and flee East Germany. The author counts more than 500,000 casualties after a coup in Indonesia, but ignores the scores of millions murdered under Communist rule, most of them in Communist China.

“I considered China’s success at lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty to be a towering human achievement,” the Promised Land author writes. Several pages later, PRC premier Wen Jiabao tells the president “One third of our population still lives in severe poverty, more people than in the entire United States.”

In all areas of foreign and domestic policy, the alert reader can compare A Promised Land with what actually happened. Of greater interest is what the author chooses to leave out.

For example, the glossy photo sections fail to include the 2005 shot of Obama with Nation of Islam boss Louis Farrakhan, who gets only a single mention in Promised Land. The most notable absentee is Frank Marshall Davis, the author’s beloved African American Communist. Davis got more than 2,000 words in Dreams from My Father, which earns only a single mention in A Promised Land.

Frank was on the FBI’s security index, so no surprise that he vanished from the audio version of Dreams and failed to appear in The Audacity of Hope, Axelrod’s Believer, Michelle Obama’s Becoming, and The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House by Ben Rhodes. Also missing from A Promised Land is presidential biographer David Garrow, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

In the 2017 Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, Garrow revealed that Dreams from My Father was not an autobiography or memoir as the nation was led to believe. Instead, “without any question,” Dreams was a novel and the author a “composite character.” Garrow also noted that Frank Marshall Davis, with his pornographic exploits and Communist background, was “radioactive.” So if young Barry Soetoro was to rise in politics, he need a new narrative.

A Promised Land raises the “birther” issue without noting its origins in the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign. POTUS 44 predictably deploys it as a dodge from the real issue: the true identity of the father. As the author fails to note, the 1958-1964 writings of the Kenyan Barack Obama make no mention of a white American wife and Hawaiian-born son. By the end of the Dreams novel, Barack Obama is a nameless “Old Man,” who somehow “bequeathed his name” to Barry.

His stepfather Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian foreign student Barry’s mother Ann Dunham married in 1965, is not mentioned in A Promised Land. Neither is Malik Obama, son of the Kenyan Barack Obama, who became a Trump supporter.

Chapter two of A Promised Land is titled “Yes We Can” after the slogan David Axelrod coined. With the stench of mendacity wafting strong, A Promised Land, would be more accurately titled Yes We Con. And with so many key characters airbrushed away, to call it a Stalinist book would not be a stretch. On the other hand, the account does serve as confessional of sorts.

For the author, America is “the only great power in history made up of people from every corner of the planet, comprising every race and faith and cultural practice.” So America is indeed exceptional but the author is “not ready to abandon the possibility of America.” In the dialectical approach, from a student of “Marx and Marcuse,” thesis and antithesis have yet to produce a synthesis.

As the author recalls, “a big chunk of the American people, including some of the very folks I was trying to help, didn’t trust a word I said.” A Promised Land confirms that the American people were right to be distrustful, and as the composite character president explains:  “Having the son of a Black African with a Muslim name and socialist ideas ensconced in the White House with the full force of the U.S. government under his command was precisely the thing they wanted to be defended against.” As it turned out, they weren’t defended.

In a nation of gutless politicians, where Julien Benda’s Treason of the Intellectuals has been the reality for decades, the composite character became president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world. In the composite character’s complete transformation of America, the outgoing president picks his successor and rigs the system in her favor.

In 2016, the American people didn’t believe the nation was better than it was in 2008, and they rejected Hillary Clinton, supposedly the most qualified of all time according to POTUS 44. The composite character then deployed  the upper reaches of the DOJ, CIA and FBI against President Trump, the people’s choice. Trouble is, despite support from the establishment media, the Russia, Ukraine, and impeachment hoaxes failed to remove Trump from office.

The Democrats now deploy “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics,” openly championed by Joe Biden and obvious to all but the willfully blind. If the addled Biden succeeds in taking power by fraud, that will end America as a constitutional republic under the rule of law. Even if Kamala Harris takes over, the composite character will be calling the shots, and his leftist base is already panting for an American gulag.

Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump is still president of the United States and the case against voter fraud is headed for the courts. As the president says, we’ll have to see what happens.

 

Lloyd Billingsley  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/yes-we-con-lloyd-billingsley/ 

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Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding - Barry Shaw

 

​ by Barry Shaw

There are legal grounds to sue the UN General Assembly for antisemitism as defined in the internationally recognized IHRA definition.

Do United Nations diplomats ever read the numerous anti-Israel resolutions put in front of them? Or do they automatically raise their hand in a five-decade automatic knee-jerk reaction?

I ask because I read some of the conditions of a recently approved stab at Israel on 18 November 2020.

This draft resolution had to do with treating Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria and our capital, Jerusalem, as if they belong to a non-existing country and that Israel has no right to our ancient land and our homes.

This draft resolution passed with a 156-6 majority. The minority countries were Israel, the United States, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru.

Why do tiny Pacific islands seem to possess more common sense than all the European countries, or even Australia and New Zealand?

Again I ask, did the diplomats that approved the motion read the wording before they raised their hands? Or were they following official guidance from their capitals?

This was a resolution that has been approved annually for decades, so perhaps they can be forgiven for overlooking the wording. Wording that talks about recognizing Palestinian “sovereign rights” to the “natural resources” of the 'West Bank' and east Jerusalem.

What sovereign rights does a non-existing country possess?

As they refer to the so-called 'West Bank', could they be indicating that this territory belongs to Jordan, a country that once claimed this land as theirs? After all, the term “West Bank” refers to the other side of the River Jordan.

Another head scratcher was the reference calling on Israel “not to impede Palestinian development and export of ‘discovered’ oil and natural gas reserves.”

I would love for any UN diplomat to tell me precisely where the “discovered Palestinian oil and natural gas reserves” are located.

Do I assume correctly that they are the natural gas reserves out in the Mediterranean that Israel is currently drilling and supplying to Jordan, Egypt, and preparing a pipeline to Greece and Cyprus for delivery to Europe, a continent that voted on mass against Israel?

The entire European Union bloc, including the United Kingdom, voted against Israel.

Australia joined the countries that did not have the guts to vote against this annual Israel-hate ritual by deciding to abstain. The other abstainers were Brazil and Third World countries such as Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Cote-D’Ivoire, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Kiribati, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Togo and Tuvalu.

No other country has had so many resolutions levelled against it as has the Jewish State. Surely there are legal grounds to sue the United Nations General Assembly for anti-Semitism as defined in the internationally recognized IHRA working definition by applying the double standards that they fail to apply to more malevolent member states.

In surely a major display of diplomatic hypocrisy, two countries, the UAE and Bahrain, that recently signed normalization agreements with Israel, voted against Israel in an Israeli-sponsored resolution that called for greater global entrepreneurship and sustainable development, even as these two countries signed up with Israel for precisely that purpose.

Despite their traditional obstinacy, this Israeli sponsored resolution passed 144-26 with nine abstentions. Among the abstainers were Sudan and South Sudan who are hesitating about signing an agreement with Israel.

The foolish aspect of the behavior of Arab states was that this resolution was not connected to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It was global in nature. Yet the very nations that would benefit from this Israeli diplomatic initiative voted against it.

Mauritania spoke for the Arab group when it accused Israel of being disingenuous in its sponsorship of the resolution.

It was disappointing for Israel to see the UAE, Bahrain and others vote against Israel and get a third party to speak for them even as they are working at warp speed to develop the same Israeli entrepreneurial spirit that they voted against at the United Nations.

But, basically, this is the cynical hypocrisy that Israel has been battling against at the UN for far too long.

Despite that, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said that the passing of the resolution was a victory for Israel and for all countries that care about the future.

 

Barry Shaw is International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

 Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291685 

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No to Susan Rice - Fred Fleitz

 

​ by Fred Fleitz

Let’s be absolutely clear: Susan Rice collaborated with President Obama, Vice President Biden, FBI Director Comey, and CIA Director Brennan to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies, the FBI and the Justice Department to undermine the Trump presidency and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.

Like a bad penny, Susan Rice is back. If Joe Biden wins the 2020 presidential election, the former UN ambassador and National Security Adviser is positioning herself to be the next Secretary of State, a post she was denied in 2013 because of the lies she told about the 2011 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Rice is working closely with Biden’s team and has told the press that she is “very open” to joining a Biden administration.  Former President Obama reportedly is urging Biden to nominate Rice as his Secretary of State.

Biden has long had a close relationship with Rice and reportedly seriously considered her to be his running mate.

Rice lost out to Kamala Harris likely because of the considerable political baggage she carries.  Aside from how Rice mishandled the Benghazi terrorist attacks, this baggage includes her role in unprecedented spying on the Trump campaign and transition; unmasking Trump campaign staff from intelligence reports; leaking intelligence to smear Trump staff to the press; and leaving in place investigations of the incoming Trump administration and not telling Trump officials about these investigations.

Let’s be absolutely clear: Susan Rice collaborated with President Obama, Vice President Biden, FBI Director Comey, and CIA Director Brennan to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies, the FBI and the Justice Department to undermine the Trump presidency and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.  The false Russia collusion hoax that Rice played a central role in promoting dogged Trump throughout his presidency.

Rice also has a history of ineptitude that runs throughout her diplomatic and national security career.

As Joe Biden weighs Secretary of State candidates for his presidency (which I hope never occurs), I hope he reviews “Twenty Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Susan Rice” by Jim Geraghty and my sequel to this article, “Five More Things You Probably Didn’t Know about Susan Rice.”  Both articles appeared in National Review over the summer when Biden was considering Rice to be his vice presidential candidate.  The problems with Rice’s record that Geraghty and I outlined disqualified her to be vice president and should also prevent her from returning to the U.S. government in any national security post.

If Biden wins the presidential election and nominates Rice to be Secretary of State or to another senate-confirmable national security post, Senate Republicans should use the above articles as their justification for refusing to confirm Rice due to her record of incompetence and politicizing national security.

 

Fred Fleitz, president of the Center for Security Policy, served in 2018 as deputy assistant to the president and to the chief of staff of the National Security Council. He previously held national-security jobs with the CIA, the DIA, the Department of State, and the House Intelligence Committee staff. Twitter @fredfleitz.  

Source: https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2020/11/20/no-to-susan-rice/ 

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What did Jews learn on Election Day 2020 - Cindy Grosz

 

​ by Cindy Grosz

Many Jews voted on personality factors, not policies, some voting for Biden because he is not Trump. Now what?

 

Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at a news conference on anti-Semitism

Adi Eshman

Now, over two weeks after elections, with several local and state seats still not called, a presidential election result probably going to the Supreme Court, and the senate seats in Georgia looking to become the most expensive races in American history, I have been asked by many, “How did the Jews do? What can we take away from Election 2020?”

First and most important—we as a group are a real democracy. We have a dozen options of thoughts which in the end are only two real options. Are we Democrats or Republicans?

Second, Jews voted on personality—not policy.

Ask Jews who voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris because they were “Not Trump.” What does that mean? It meant they didn’t know policy issues of the Democratic ticket or their history of poor voting records against Israel. Or it meant that they knew and did not care. They voted against a strong economy for the American Jewish Middle Class. They could actually defend the Democrat lack of support to protect Jewish neighborhoods, Jewish places of worship, Jewish day schools or Jewish public figures and organization leaders when violence occurs and anti-Semitic statements are made.

Did any of these Jews actually research and investigate the Democrat voting records against Israel? I, as a college student and volunteer, helped open the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). In the mid 1980s, and through the years found out that although Biden attended annual conferences and visited Israel, his voting record, history with Prime Minister Menachem Begin, his work in the Obama administration and his connections with the radical left and “The Squad” are enough for any Jew to be scared should he take the oath of office in January 2021.

Kamala Harris was and is horrible for American Jews. Her California policies during both her tenure as Attorney General and Senate are biased against Jews, despite her marriage to a Jew. She never converted to Judaism nor has mentioned anything Jewish in her life except a trip as a public figure to Israel and a Shabbos dinner with constituents. Can her California Jewish constituents really say life turned better in California during her term? Is that why so many residents relocate to other states or make Aliyah to Israel?

Shame on those Jews. They were the ones who “unfriended” us on social media. They disinvited us to lunches and family gatherings and they lied to themselves saying that it is fine to be under Democratic leadership, only they are living like pre-Holocaust Jews in Europe. They live in fear, in denial and are assimilating to the point that they have forgotten that although they are Jews living in a country they love, as history has shown, that land’s leaders could decide within a short period of time to single them out — which leads to my next lesson.

Cuomo and DeBlasio

Nicole Malliotakis can thank her win on the Jews of Staten Island and Brooklyn. When Cuomo and DeBlasio targeted Jews as the cause and problem of a worldwide pandemic, Jews from all religious affiliations and backgrounds joined together to educate all the Jews of their communities to vote red in local, state and for President and Vice President. Reform, Russian, Iranian, Sephardic, Ashkenazi, Hassidic, it didn’t matter, spent hours on the phone, organizing Zoom meetings, running voter registration drives and scheduling people on Election Day to get to polls in carpools to vote against blatant anti-Semitism in the Democrat party.

Nicole ran against a Jewish incumbent who tried to distance himself from Cuomo and DeBlasio. It didn’t work.

I am proud to call Malliotakis a friend to me and the Jewish people. On a personal note, Nicole was the first person I called for advice when I decided to run for Congress. I should have listened to her more carefully. She stood next to me when I received the Woman of Valor Award from the Rachel’s Children Reclamation Foundation, she has actively supported Jewish causes and issues and visited Israel BEFORE elected to Congress. Her record is solid!

Who else had a solid record of supporting American Jews and Israel?— President Donald J.Trump.

The Trump-Jewish Vote

President Trump received a record number of Jewish votes. Depending on which poll you trust, the Republican ticket received between 36-40 percent of the Jewish vote. But, with his work in Israel, his executive orders combating anti-Semitism and his America First, Democratic agenda, he should have received every vote. Ok, realistically, more like 50 percent, given so many Jews are registered Democrats.

Here was the Republican mistake. They focused on religious Jews and ignored less observant conservatives who enjoy the freedom of the Second Amendment, school choices and a booming economy. Most Jews are not Orthodox— and they lost a great opportunity. Hitler didn’t discriminate and neither should Republicans.

There were a record number of Jewish Republican congressional candidates and the National Republican Congressional Committee did nothing to promote them as they did the other minority groups. Big mistake.

Finally, too much emphasis was made about big donors like Sheldon Adelson, while grassroots was totally ignored by the Trump Re-election Advisory Team. That is why I created Jewish Vote GOP. We educate, volunteer, donate directly to candidates and vote. We are currently working on the Georgia races, special elections and meeting candidates who have announced their runs for 2021 and 2022 in local races.

Yes, Jews do count for success in school boards, judgeships, council and state capital races and we will no longer be taken for granted by county and state GOP leaderships.

You can learn more at jewishvotecounts@gmail.com.

 

Cindy Grosz  

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291622 

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Sidney Powell: Absent software fraud, Trump 'had at least 80 million votes' - Andrea Widburg

 

​ by Andrea Widburg

America's super-lawyer explains precisely how the election played out.

Sidney Powell, attorney extraordinaire, appeared on Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports on Tuesday to explain what happened on Election Day and tell why she believes that Trump almost certainly got more votes than any president in American history.  Because Greg Kelly asks the intelligent, clarifying questions that we wish all journalists would ask, her appearance on his show is one of the best explanations of what happened with the Dominion voting software.

According to Powell, "Dominion has a long history of rigging elections.  That's what it was created to do to begin with."  Powell told about her whistleblower, a former high-ranking Venezuelan military officer who worked with Hugo Chávez when developers in Venezuela first created the software.  The whistleblower has signed an affidavit stating that the whole purpose behind the software's creation was to rig elections.

The software worked as promised, according to Powell.  "It was created ... so Hugo Chávez would never lose another election, and he did not after that software was created.  He won every single election."  Once the software proved its use, says Powell, Venezuela exported it.  "They exported it to Argentina and other countries in South America, and then they brought it here."

Powell hammered home a point we've tried to make at American Thinker, which is that the software constitutes foreign interference in American elections.  To understand the point Powell makes, you need to know that, in September 2018, Trump issued an "Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election."

In the order, Trump states that "the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference[.]"  Therefore, he declared a national emergency to justify his order.  The order mandates that the national security apparatus must investigate potential foreign interference within 45 days of an election and imposes harsh monetary sanctions on any foreign entity found to be involved in the interference.

Powell asserts that, because of Dominion's origins, as well as its Canadian headquarters, "[i]t's a foreign company no matter how you look at it, so they've already violated the president's order against foreign interference in our elections.  Our votes were actually eventually counted in Barcelona, Spain or Frankfurt, Germany on foreign servers."  Indeed, she says, "the corruption is actually worldwide.  It is going to upset countless numbers of elections across the country and around the world."

For Biden, Dominion's comforting presence in the election explains why he didn't bother to campaign.  He knew he had the election in the bag.  Incidentally — and this is I speaking, not Powell — Dominion's role in the election also exonerates Trump from charges that he campaigned wrong because one person or another will say if he'd just campaigned the correct way (more polite, less polite, more Hunter Biden, less Hunter Biden, more Wuhan virus lockdowns, etc.), he could have beaten the margin of fraud.

In fact, there was no way that Trump could beat the margin of fraud.  The traditional pre-election fraud was just icing on the cake.  The real election manipulation occurred at someone's desktop (as this older Bloomberg article explains about Latin American election fraud), with the person clicking away to ensure that Biden always ended the day with the greatest number of votes.

Powell explains specifically how Democrats rigged the vote for Biden.  What she's laying out also explains why statisticians, when looking at votes counts in the swing states, are finding crazy anomalies after 3 A.M., which is when those states temporarily stopped counting as they tried to figure out how to fight Trump's massive lead.

"The will of the people in this country," Powell told Kelly, "was that Donald Trump won in a landslide.  If we can get to the bottom of it, and I am determined to do that, I think we'll find he had at least 80 million votes.  The only reason the glitches happened in the system was because he was so far ahead, had so many more votes than they had calculated in advance, their algorithms wouldn't perform the functions they'd originally performed or were said to perform.  They couldn't make up the vote count [because] he had gotten so many hundreds of thousands more than they planned.  So that's why they had to stop the counting and come up with a way to backfill the votes or destroy votes for Trump while they fabricated votes for Biden."

In a just world, Trump's victory will be assured — and Sidney Powell, an American Amazon, is determined to make sure that justice is served.

Image: Sidney Powell on Greg Kelly.  YouTube screen grab.

 

Andrea Widburg  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/sidney_powell_absent_software_fraud_trump_had_at_least_80_million_votes.html 

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What We Must Believe to Believe Biden Won - David Catron

 

​ by David Catron

The surreal list of innumerable irregularities.

 

The Democrats dismiss any mention of the innumerable irregularities that tainted the general election as little more than crackpot conspiracy theories. This is a convenient way to avoid addressing serious questions raised by serious observers, but it will further undermine confidence in key institutions that form the foundation upon which the republic stands. Public trust in government, media, and even science was already declining before Election Day. This trend will dramatically accelerate if Americans don’t get answers to questions such as the following: Why would the voters deliver the Democrats a comprehensive down-ballot drubbing yet hand the White House to the worst presidential candidate in living memory?

The only bellwether county out of the 19 that Biden won is located in Washington state, which long ago went to all mail-in ballots and one-party rule. We are expected to believe that this is a coincidence.

The last time a Democrat “won” the presidency while his party sustained a double-digit loss in the House was in 1960, during an election tainted by probable vote fraud in Illinois and Texas. Still, we’re expected to believe that Joe Biden achieved the same feat in 2020 with no skulduggery? Moreover, as Juan Williams admits in the Hill, “President Trump set a record last week by attracting the highest percentage of the non-white vote of any Republican presidential candidate in the last 60 years.” Yet we are expected to believe that, despite the worst showing among minorities of any Democratic nominee since JFK, Biden surpassed Barack Obama’s record-breaking turnout by 10 million votes?

Biden’s “victory” seems even more implausible after an audit of his performance in remarkably predictive bellwethers. The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden had a nearly perfect record of losses in counties whose election results have presaged presidential winners for decades: “From 1980 through 2016, 19 of the nation’s more than 3,000 counties voted for the eventual president in every election. Only one … backed President-elect Joe Biden last week.” So, a candidate who campaigned from his basement lost 95 percent of these counties yet won the election? What of the fabled bellwether Ohio? Last month, the New York Times advised that if Trump didn’t win there it was over:

Four years ago, Mr. Trump built a particularly balanced coalition among Ohio’s white voters, winning across education levels. But his support in the state has waned over the past four years, particularly in the suburbs … Columbus’s growth, and the expansion of suburbs and exurbs into what used to be rural and blue-collar areas, might have once spelled an opportunity for Republicans. But under Mr. Trump the Republican Party has lost its footing among specifically these kinds of voters — and the growth in Franklin County plays into Mr. Biden’s hands.

Well, not so much. President Trump trounced Biden in Ohio, winning the state by 8.2 percent. Suddenly, AP demoted the state to a bit player in presidential politics:

As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. That’s the way it had been in presidential elections for more than half a century, until this year, when Republican Donald Trump won a decisive victory in the state while losing the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden. Biden becomes the first president elected without carrying Ohio since fellow Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960. Trump’s statewide victory — his second, after carrying Ohio in 2016 — brings an end to Ohio’s role as a presidential bellwether and even puts its future as a battleground state in doubt.

What we are expected to believe here is that the bellwether counties discussed by the Wall Street Journal and the Buckeye State have been left behind by the rest of the nation in the long march toward the mandatory lockdowns and mask mandates that Biden wants to impose on the electorate. In reality, Trump won Ohio and the vast majority of these counties because absentee ballots were managed transparently according to long-standing and coherent guidelines in place long before the election. The only bellwether county out of the 19 that Biden won is located in Washington state, which long ago went to all mail-in ballots and one-party rule. We are expected to believe that this is a coincidence.

This brings us to ground zero for election fraud — Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth illegally changed its election rules before and during the voting process. Essentially, the Commonwealth Court and the Secretary of the Commonwealth ignored the General Assembly and the U.S. Constitution to rig the election on behalf of Joe Biden. The American Spectator’s Paul Kengor and Jeffrey Lord have covered this chicanery here, here, here, and here. We are expected to believe that such stories are conspiracy theories, despite videos showing Democrat election officials evicting Republican election observers from vote-counting locations and erecting physical barriers to prevent them from watching.

Finally, we come to the Smartmatic/Dominion software that was used to tabulate votes in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As this Fox interview with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani reveals, this software was developed in Venezuela and banned from the U.S. a decade ago. It’s now been brought back into the country under the aegis of a subcontractor. Its major design feature is that it allows the vote counters to calculate how many votes they need to win. Jeffrey Lord has more here. The Democrats want you to believe this is a conspiracy theory. It isn’t. The Democrats knew they couldn’t beat Trump honestly, so they’re stealing the election.

In the end, to accept Joe Biden as our legitimate Chief Executive, we must believe the voters hammered the Democrats in congressional, state, and local elections, yet decided to elect the “leader” of their party president. We must believe that he dramatically underperformed among minority voters, yet received 10 million more votes than Barack Obama. We must believe that virtually all of the reliable election bellwethers were wrong. We must believe that all of the elections in the swing states were conducted honestly and that the Venezuelan software used to tabulate the votes was secure. All of this beggars belief. Joe Biden may be inaugurated in January, but he certainly wasn’t elected president.

Originally published at The American Spectator.

 

David Catron  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/what-we-must-believe-believe-biden-won-david-catron/ 

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Watch: Giuliani discusses new cases of fraud - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

Rudy Giuliani comments on the latest revelations of voting irregularities and how his team is responding.

 

 

Arutz Sheva Staff 

 Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291568 

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Looks like Trump got more than 72 million votes - Carol Brown

 

​ by Carol Brown

"By any means necessary" is being played out every minute of every day as the left silences our voices and threatens those who stand in its way.

This election is the culmination of a four-year-long coup against the president.  Evil, lying, malicious people at home, and abroad, are on the verge of officially pulling off the greatest heist in modern history.

Trump has been deprived of his rightful victory, and Republicans — from elected officials to writers for conservative websites — seem eager to get on board with the overthrow of our government.

The most egregious claim is that there was no election fraud, as if any of these professional do-nothings and disloyal opportunists have conducted investigations.

 
Source.

As usual, integrity, bravery, and a commitment to the truth are in short supply.

A rare exception to the clamoring voices that suggest we should just move-along-there's-nothing-to-see-here is Sidney Powell, who stated during a Newsmax interview November 17 that it appears that Trump won 80 million votes and describes corruption on such a massive scale that it's impossible to fully wrap your mind around it.

 
YouTube screen grab.

What Powell presents with increasing detail is a complex and coordinated criminal operation that is staggering in scope.  Not only does it appear to involve multiple foreign nations, but we cannot rule out the involvement of our own CIA, among other agencies.

Think about that for a moment.

And if you feel as though that's too much to absorb, don't run away from it.

Yes, it is shocking, astounding, and unthinkable.  And yet, here we are.

Now is the time to be courageous.

The left is working overtime to threaten anyone who stands for the truth.  Those who do are put in grave danger.  Many are left to choose between country and personal safety.  This is not the kind of choice anyone should face in a free society.

"By any means necessary" is being played out every minute of every day as the left silences our voices and threatens those who stand in its way.

We must do everything in our power to get this right.  And we must do it now.

We are trembling at the precipice with our toes right on the edge.  Pulling back before we go over is all that matters.

Let's push the truth out into the public sphere as boldly and as persistently as we can.  That includes being unwilling to use the 72 million number, which, every time it's stated, legitimizes the left's narrative.  And it means using language that is truthful.

This is a coup.

 

Carol Brown  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/looks_like_trump_got_more_than_72_million_votes.html 

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