Of course…

Following a ‘thorough investigation,’ special counsel Robert Hur is unlikely to charge anyone in connection to President Joe Biden’s classified document scandal, according to multiple reports citing sources familiar with the matter.

Hur’s report is expected to sharply criticize Biden and his aides for their handling of classified documents – the standard treatment for the protected establishment class whose name doesn’t end in Trump.

This outcome raises obvious questions DOJ sham investigations – for if a Special Counsel’s probe into potential mishandling of sensitive national documents results only in criticism and no legal repercussions, what message does it send about accountability at the highest levels of government?

Hur’s investigation, which began in January following his appointment by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has spanned nearly a year. It has involved interviews with around 100 Biden aides, including the President’s embattled son, Hunter Biden, who himself faces unrelated legal troubles following an indictment on federal gun charges. Biden himself was interviewed last month.

“The president has been interviewed as part of the investigation being led by Special Counsel Robert Hur,” reads the statement from the White House Counsel’s Office spokesperson Ian Sams (the guy who lied and had a meltdown over Hunter Biden’s $260K in Chinese wires).

Of note, Hunter Biden listed Joe’s Wilmington, Delaware home – where a bunch of classified documents were found, as his address when he received above mentioned Chinese wires, due to the Biden family’s dealings with CCP-linked businessmen.

As Jonathan Turley noted last month;

The most glaring problem is that, after they were removed at the end of his term as vice president, the documents were repeatedly moved and divided up. Some were found in the Penn Center office used by Biden in Washington, D.C. Others were found in his garage and reportedly in his library. 

Biden made clear from the beginning that he expected the investigation to be perfunctory and brief. He publicly declared that he has “no regrets” over his own conduct and told the public that the documents investigation would soon peter out when it determined that “there is no ‘there’ there.”

Now, however, it appears that a critical claim by the White House in the scandal may not only be false, but was knowingly false at the time it was made. The White House and Biden’s counsel have long maintained that, as soon as documents were discovered in the D.C. office, they notified the national archives. Many asked why they did not call the FBI, but the White House has at least maintained that, unlike Trump, they took immediate action to notify authorities.

However, it now appears that this was not true.

One of the closest aides to Biden and a close friend to Hunter Biden is Annie Tomasini. She referred to Hunter as her “brother” and signed off messages with “LY” or “love you.”

Hur was appointed in January by AG Merrick Garland to lead the classified documents probe. Prior that, he was a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who has litigation experience involving classified materials.

They’re trying to throw Trump in prison over classified documents that he DID have the authority to declassify but Biden won’t even get a slap on wrist for mishandling + keeping classified docs he kept as a VP/Senator when he wasn’t able to declassify them. Political prosecution! https://t.co/8UElp4aGx0

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 16, 2023

Notably, the investigation has also involved discussions with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, as reported by WSJ. These high-level interviews underscore the gravity of the investigation and the potential ramifications it could have had.

The House Oversight Committee wrote a letter to Hur in October requesting information on whether President Biden possessed classified documents related to his son’s foreign business dealings. The classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center and Joe Biden’s Delaware residence date back to his vice presidency and decades-long senate tenure.

Kathy Chung, a Defense Department aide and former Vice President Biden aide recommended by Hunter Biden, was one of the individuals who handled classified documents, according to the Oversight Committee. –Daily Caller

As the DOJ investigation winds down, the House Oversight Committee has vowed to continue its quest for clarity and accountability. Former White House Counsel Dana Remus was subpoenaed to appear for a deposition to answer questions about the handling of the classified documents. This move indicates that, while Hur’s investigation may not lead to criminal charges, the political and public scrutiny over the matter is far from over.

So yes, corrupt administration investigates itself – finds no wrongdoing worth pursuing. End of story.

Joe Biden’s DOJ investigated Joe Biden and found that Joe Biden had done nothing wrong by taking classified material and storing it in his office and garage floor. https://t.co/6VsDxDw3gO

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 16, 2023

And also of course…

On same day of news leaking that Biden will not be held accountable for significant mishandling of classified docs for decades, DOJ brags about convicting pro-life activist Paula “Paulette” Harlow, 75. https://t.co/zX2yLWYEJ6

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 16, 2023

Please explain…

How can the DOJ can charge Trump for having classified documents, when as former POTUS, he had the authority to have them & could declassify at any time in his term

But no charges for Biden & he did not have the authority to have the docs

Make it make sense?!? https://t.co/wWz6QUjbAh

— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) November 16, 2023

He could have papered his beach house walls with classified docs, and this would have been the result https://t.co/xjOfehXM8s

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) November 16, 2023

Authored by Bryce Buchanan via American Thinker,

The world is heading quite rapidly toward tyranny.  We are in a revolutionary period that will dramatically change civilization.  Few people understand the gravity of our situation.  Here are some of the reasons why the majority of people seem oblivious to the danger.  These psychological shortcomings explain why we are sleepwalking into tyranny.

The Normalcy Bias “is a cognitive bias that occurs in times of crisis, leading us to disregard any signs or warnings that we are in danger. … Normalcy bias is a defense mechanism that lulls us into thinking life will just continue as it always has.”  It is a reassuring presumption that things will get better, or, at least things will not take a dramatic change for the worse.

But steady progress is not the way the world works.  History is a story of the rise and fall of civilizations.  Tyranny, poverty, and servitude are the normal state of mankind, and it would not be difficult at all to return to that state.  The pattern of history is that humans make some progress, and then evil men do evil things and stupid men do stupid things, and the civilization crumbles.  The normalcy bias can stop people from seeing this.

You may have confidence in constant improvement because the people you know are good, productive people who are kind to others.  You assume that most people are like that.  But you need to notice that there are also evil people who have decided that their role is to manage your life.  They are self-appointed shepherds, and they see you as their sheep.  This is the essence of tyranny.  If these evil people are also foolish, they may think that they can manage the world economy and force all the “little” people to act in a way that creates utopia…. a great leap forward. 

Centrally managed economies have been tried many times.  They always fail, often spectacularly.

Masses of people can also be detached from reality by the Conformity Bias, which also goes by several other names.  Ayn Rand called it Social Metaphysics.  People with this cognitive defect look to their social group to tell them what is true.  There is no independent critical thinking.  This is the lazy person’s way of acquiring his view of reality. 

It is the dream of any tyrant to have a population that acquires its beliefs this way.  If a political faction can be lied to with impunity, and if blind acceptance of the lies is required to maintain membership in the group, that is a powerful means of control.  A group like that could be expected to believe, for example, that a man could choose to be a woman and even have a baby.  They could be told that “the border is secure” at a time when millions and millions of people are streaming in.  They could be told that Trump said white supremacists are fine people.  Etc.

There are no limits to the lies when the target audience is essentially detached from reality.  In the book 1984, George Orwell symbolized this by showing that the model citizens readily accepted the government decree that 2+2=5.  Many of the lies of the left are equally absurd.  They are direct contradictions of what we know to be true. 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Václav Havel, two brilliant antagonists of tyranny, said that simply and steadfastly telling the truth was a fundamental weapon that citizens should use against tyrants.  Solzhenitsyn said, “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.  One word of truth outweighs the world.”

The third unfortunate human trait that favors tyrants was explained by Aldous Huxley.  Huxley and Orwell each wrote novels predicting a dystopian future.  Orwell’s prediction involved a substantial amount of fear and coercion, but Huxley predicted a relatively smooth and easy transition to tyranny.  Huxley said the population would be distracted with trivial pleasures and would hardly notice the prison being built around them.  He brilliantly foresaw how a society could sleepwalk into tyranny.  These Huxley quotes demonstrate his prescience.

Huxley said, “There will be [a] dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.  And this seems to be the final revolution.”

He said, “By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manip­ulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms … will remain.  The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitari­anism. … [T]he ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of sol­diers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

Huxley imagined “a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping.  It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude.”  He believed that “[t]he greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and … is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.”

Huxley correctly predicted, “a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant.  [The media will cater to] man’s almost infinite appetite for distraction.”

He knew that both poor education and perpetual crisis would enable tyranny, writing, “Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements.”  And “[l]iberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing.  Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.”

While most people are not paying attention, most of the key elements protecting freedom and prosperity are now under attack by people who wish to control our country and the world.  Globalist leaders wish to put an end to national sovereignty, enforce a “New World Order,” control information, put an end to free speech, give the WHO worldwide dictatorial power on major health choices, ban our only reliable sources of energy, and impose a digital currency that will allow complete monitoring and control of every single citizen with a Chinese-style social credit system.  At home, the U.S. is in the “looting the treasury phase” of empire collapse.  Our military is weak, woke, and overextended.  The dominant media function as a branch of the Democrat party.  The upper levels of the Justice Department also function as a branch of the Democrat party.  Anti-white racism is widely taught and supported by the government.

These are not conspiracy theories.  The evidence is mostly out in the open.  The people who are planning to be your future masters are not worried about stating their plans because the vast majority of people are distracted with their trivial amusements.  They are busy watching ball games and movies and smartphone screens.  The mental weaknesses discussed above have created a culture ripe for the taking, oblivious and unconcerned about the things that really matter. 

People can ignore important things…but they cannot escape the consequences of ignoring important things.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.  That price has not been paid.  Not at all.  So here we are, at the brink.

While China keeps regurgitating the same tired and trite line about an “imminent” fiscal and housing stimulus, which reportedly is in the “trillions” of yuan, yet which to date is entirely imaginary and never actually materalizes, its housing market continues to crater and will soon reach a point where a depression is unavoidable… at which point the all too real stimulus to reboot the economy will be in the tens of trillions.

Overnight, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that last month, China’s home prices fell the most in eight years  signaling the property slump is worsening even after the government ramped up efforts to revive demand. In fact, one can argue that central planning is merely doing what it always does: makes the situation even worse.

New-home prices in 70 cities, excluding state-subsidized housing, declined 0.38% last month from September, when they dropped 0.3%, official figures showed Thursday. The decrease was the steepest since February 2015.

The drop adds to further evidence of a relentless and persistent housing downturn after official figures this week showed a contraction in sales and property investment deepened. Fresh stimulus measures rolled out at major cities since August, and which have been derided as much too small to make an impact, have done little to turn around the sector, which is dragging on China’s economic recovery and which has traditionally served as the primary source of wealth for China’s middle class.

While prices in the largest, tier-1 cities, slid 0.35%, sharply deteriorating from a 0.05% decrease a month earlier, tier-2 cities, mostly provincial capitals, fared better with a narrower price decline amid an easing in homebuying restrictions.

The second-hand market didn’t fare any better, with prices tumbling 0.58%, the most since October 2014. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of Chinese property developers fell as much as 1.4% on Thursday morning, extending this year’s decline to 43%.

Here are some more details:

• After seasonal adjustments, weighted average house prices in the primary market declined by 0.9% mom annualized in October, despite ongoing easing policies.

• The proportion of cities that experienced sequential house price gains declined in both the primary market and secondary market in October from September. New home prices dropped in 56 of 70 cities in October. Second-hand home prices fell in 67 cities, with just Xi’an in Shaanxi province and Hangzhou in Zhejiang showing growth.

Most property-related activity remained sluggish in year-on-year terms in October. 30-city new home transaction volume declined by 27.1% yoy month-to-date in November. Major cities’ inventory months (sellable gross floor area divided by 12-month rolling gross floor area sold) rose to 23.8 in October from 22.7 in September, with the increase mostly led by Tier-3 cities.

A brief housing market rebound earlier this year after China’s post-Covid reopening “turned out to be short-lived,” said Chen Wenjing, associate research director at China Index Holdings. “Homebuyers are deterred by squeezed incomes and the uncertain property market outlook.” The record high youth unemployment, which forced Beijing to suspend the data series once it crossed above 21%, is not helping.

Meanwhile, the latest October money and credit data suggested growth of household medium-to-long term loans, which are mostly mortgages, decelerated in sequential terms in October from September.

In the latest (insufficient) move to prop up the real estate sector, Bloomberg reported that Beijing is planning to provide at least 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) of low-cost financing to urban village renovation and affordable housing programs. While details of the new plan remain unclear, some economists say it will be even less effective than earlier efforts. The new programs would mostly take place in some of the largest metropolitan areas, outside the low-tier cities where the slump is most severe.

Following the slew of easing announcements on property policy, Goldman economists expect more housing easing measures in coming months, including more relaxation of home purchase restrictions in large cities, among others. However, considering persistent property weakness related to lower-tier cities and private developers, such easing measures may only lead to an “L-shaped” recovery in the sector in coming years. In other words, no recovery.

As is widely known by now, China’s property crisis has engulfed almost all of the largest developers, which have been struggling to repay debts and complete projects since a credit crunch emerged three years ago. China Vanke, one of the country’s few remaining investment-grade builders, saw its dollar bonds plunge in recent weeks on the heels of industry giant Country Garden’s default. Vanke later received an unusually strong show of support from the local government.

“Property remains the biggest drag amid the rising credit risk among developers,” Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie Group Ltd., wrote in a note this week.

As a reminder, two years ago, Goldman calculated that China’s housing market is the world’s single biggest asset class…

… however, after the spectacular implosion of the past two years, it is unclear where it ranks today.

The White House has said it is still involved in “intense negotiations” toward securing the release of hostages held by Hamas, however no deal has yet to materialize. 

US national security spokesman John Kirby issued an update on Thursday, confirming the US has a “team of the ground” which is working “by the hour” on a potential deal. These back-channel talks have reportedly centered on Qatar, which has served as a mediator with Hamas.

“We are in some intense negotiations; hopefully they’ll come out the right way and we’ll have good news to talk about with multiple hostages getting free,” Kirby told CNN. “But we don’t have a deal right now, and until we do, the less said the better.”

The day prior, on Wednesday, there were widespread – albeit premature – reports that a deal was on the table which would see the release of 50 hostages in exchange for a three-day stoppage in fighting, or temporary truce.

“The deal, under discussion and coordinated with the U.S., would also see Israel release some Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails and increase the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza,” an official privy to the negotiations said.

But Israel’s defense ministry has said Thursday it is continuing to “mop up” northern Gaza, and there are signs it intends to expand anti-Hamas operations to the south too, where the bulk of the Strip’s civilians have fled.

Qatar has thus far secured the release of a few prisoners, but still Israel has denied there are any plans for a major, multi-day halt in fighting. The IDF has only in the last half-day fully secured Al-Shifa hospital, which it claims was used as a Hamas command center.

But more bad news has emerged concerning the over 230 Israeli and foreign hostages still in captivity. The IDF on Wednesday said that during operations near Al-Shifa, the body of a deceased 65-year old Israeli woman was found in a nearby building.

“The body of the abductee, the late Yehudit Weiss, was recovered by IDF forces from the 603rd Battalion of the 7th Brigade Combat Team from a building near the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip to the territory of the State of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement posted to X.

Held hostage: Yehudit Weiss

Yehudit hasn’t been heard from since the morning of Oct 7, when she and her husband, Shmulik, were in their Kibbutz Be’eri safe room. Hamas terrorists shot Shmulik.

Yehudit’s phone was later traced to Gaza. She had been undergoing treatment for… pic.twitter.com/DF5xWe0YHw

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) November 10, 2023

“In the building where the late Judith was found, military equipment and weapons of the Kalashnikov type and an RPG missile were also found.” The statement detailed further: 

“After an identification procedure carried out by medical officials and military rabbis, together with the Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Israel Police, today (Thursday), representatives of the IDF and the police informed the family of the late Judith Weiss, who was kidnapped on Saturday 10/7/23 from her home in Bari. We share in the family’s grief.”

The IDF added that it won’t cease in urgent hostage recovery efforts: “The national mission before our eyes is to locate the missing and return the abducted home.”

Currently, the messaging out of Israeli officials and national media is that Hamas is against the ropes and on the verge of total defeat. But the IDF has suffered over 50 confirmed troop deaths since launching the ground assault – and the real figure could be significantly higher. The vast network of Hamas tunnels under the Strip also presents a monumental military challenge.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

More than a half-century ago, the world awakened to the threat of terrorism at major sporting events when eight men in jumpsuits hopped the fence at Munich’s Olympic Village and carried out an attack that would ultimately leave 11 of Israel’s athletes dead, along with a West German policeman and five of the eight assailants.

The attackers were members of the group Black September – an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organization. They had wanted to hold Israeli athletes hostage and force the release of 236 prisoners held in Israel and two leaders of the West German Baader-Meinhof terrorist group. But their mission failed, and 20 hours after it began, a botched rescue attempt by German law enforcement led to the shocking carnage, with some of the night’s events playing out on live television.

The Munich massacre that took place in the wee hours of Sept. 5-6, 1972, was a wake-up call for Western governments to the threat of terrorism and the dire need for tight security at international athletic events and greater scrutiny when selecting venues.

After the death of his Olympic teammates, legendary Israeli swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals and set seven world records at the 1972 Munich games, was forced to flee Germany in haste, hidden under a blanket and fearing for his life.

For Israeli and Jewish athletes, the ever-present threat is once again blinking red in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas that left 1,200 people dead, including women and children, and 239 people held hostage. In February, the World Aquatic Federation is set to host an international swimming competition in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The event would normally determine qualifiers for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. But the International Olympic Committee is now facing pressure to either move the event or change the qualifying regulations so Israeli and Jewish athletes will not be forced to attend or be penalized for skipping.

For the last decade, Qatar has served as an asylum for Hamas’ political leadership, and it has long provided the terrorist organization with financial assistance estimated at roughly $1.8 billion in 2021. Though Qatar is a tiny nation – about twice the size of Delaware – its influence is outsized. It’s home to the state-owned Al Jazeera news network, which often airs anti-Israeli and American angles, as well as a large U.S. airbase that played a crucial role in evacuating U.S. citizens and Afghanistan refugees after the fall of Kabul in 2022.

While Qatar has tried to burnish its image in recent years, hosting the World Cup in 2022 despite an avalanche of criticism from human rights groups, the country has drawn intense criticism in the wake of the attacks on Israel. The outrage stemmed from the Qatari minister of foreign affairs’ statement blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 Hamas assault. That position put Qatar on the same side of the war as Iran and contrasted with the reaction from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s rival and Israel’s closest partner in the Arab world. The UAE declared the Hamas attack “a serious and grave escalation” and said it was appalled by reports that “Israeli civilians have been abducted as hostages in their homes.”

Several international officials are now appealing to the World Aquatic Federation to move its world swimming championships from Qatar to a safer venue or change Olympic qualifying regulations to allow Israeli and Jewish athletes to skip the event. Officials from the United Kingdom, Germany, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Azerbaijan, and several Scandinavian countries have pressed the World Aquatic Federation to relocate the swimming event.

Eric Spitz, a Jewish tech and sports businessman whose daughter is a dual citizen of Israel and the United States and a member of the Israeli women’s swim team, is spearheading a coalition demanding a change of venue. The coalition launched a website, www.notodoha.com, and Spitz, who is not related to Mark Spitz, sent a letter, dated Wednesday, to the International Olympics Committee, pressing for a solution that would not force Israeli and Jewish swimmers to jeopardize their safety in Doha.

The letter notes that IOC President Thomas Back, during an event in Tel Aviv last year, apologized for waiting 50 years to commemorate the Israel victims of the Munich Massacre “in a dignified way” and called the event one of “the darkest days in Olympic history.”

“Since no Jews could justifiably feel safe while competing in Doha, we implore you to uphold your core tenant and heed your own words of regret,” the unsigned letter states. “This is your chance to bend the arc of history toward justice. The Olympic movement must be a force for peace, unity, and goodwill, as it was intended to be.”

The “No to Doha” letter notes that the IOC this week, from Nov. 15-17, is scheduled to hold commissions meetings. The commissions, a set of working groups on different topics impacting the games, include an IOC Advisory Committee on Human Rights. The commissions advise the IOC president and executive board on pressing matters on their topic of expertise.

Earlier this week, Bach underscored the need for unity in the sporting world amid increasing global tensions. “The current geopolitical tensions are extremely complex. In such times, the unifying power of sport is more important than ever before,” he told an audience in an opening address at the 2023 International Federation Forum in Switzerland.

“Today, millions of people around the globe are longing for such a unifying force that brings us all together in our so confrontational world,” he continued. “Our role is clear: to unite – and not to deepen divisions. Therefore, we carry an important responsibility – to stand together for the power of sport and to live up to our shared mission to make the world a better place through sport.”

Eric Spitz is now imploring Bach to live up to that promise and ensure that Israeli and Jewish swimmers can continue pursuing their sport without risking their safety or antisemitic harassment by requiring their travel to Doha to qualify for the Olympics. 

“For many, athletics serve as a sanctuary from the chaos and turmoil of life,” Spitz wrote in his letter to the IOC. “The Olympic movement, which represents the pinnacle of non-violent competition, fosters a global fellowship bound by an unwavering passion for the sport. At this moment, Jewish and Israeli athletes are navigating some of the most arduous trials of their lives … inaction on the part of the IOC would unfairly remove a source of joy these athletes cling to.” 

The IOC did not immediately return RCP’s request for comment. 

Qatar and Iran have a long history of discrimination and antisemitic demonstrations against Israeli athletes. In 2013, organizers of a Swimming World Cup in Doha failed to show the Israeli flag in their computer graphics, substituting a white flag and failing to display the name Israel, instead using “IRS” in several of the cup’s races. The international snubbing earned Qatar a formal warning from Federation Internationale de Natation, the world’s governing body for swimming. 

David May, research manager for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has written extensively about Qatar’s ties to terrorism, as well as its, Iran’s, and other Arab countries’ mistreatment of Israeli and Jewish athletes. 

“The Qataris pride themselves on being the middlemen for a lot of these engagements [with the U.S.], but one common threat is that they are very often in close contact with terrorist groups – not just Hamas or the Taliban,” he told RCP. “They host a variety of terrorist groups, many of whom the Qatari government doesn’t recognize as terrorists, so they’re more than happy to work with them.”

In the 1950s, Israel was a competitive force in the Asian soccer league, but several Asian and Middle Eastern teams refused to play against Israel. Rather than punishing those countries for violating the international sports code of ethics, the league kicked Israel out, May recalled. 

During the World Cup, international pressure forced Qatar to allow Israeli visitors and athletes, and in recent years, international bodies have tried to crack down on Doha’s and Tehran’s discrimination against Israeli athletes, May said. 

The International Judo Federation in 2021 suspended Iran for forcing athletes to forfeit or lose intentionally to avoid facing Israeli opponents. In February 2018, the United World Wrestling Disciplinary Chamber banned an Iranian wrestler for six months and two years, respectively, for intentionally throwing a match to avoid facing an Israeli opponent. Tunisia’s tennis team was banned from the 2014 David Cup for ordering its players not to compete against an Israeli athlete. 

Tunisia has no official diplomatic relations with Israel, and its government is currently debating a bill that would criminalize any normalization of ties with Israel. In 2018, the International Olympic Committee banned Tunisia from hosting the 2022 Youth Olympics after the country banned Israelis from a taekwondo event. 

“There’s been several instances of Arab or Muslim athletes who have refused to play against Israeli athletes or refuse to uphold sportsmanship, such as shaking the hands of their opponents or bowing before their opponents depending on the sport,” May said. “To varying degrees, international sporting bodies have punished those athletes violating those codes, but it definitely hasn’t been uniform.”

“There’s been times where Qatar has been a little more forward-leaning regarding Israel,” he added. “But all that is kind of null and void now when you consider the fact that Qatar is funding one of Israel’s biggest enemies and supplying the funds that allow for Israelis to be massacred.”

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ White House/national political correspondent.

A New York appeals court judge on Thursday temporarily lifted a gag order preventing former President Donald Trump from commenting on court staffers in his civil fraud trial.

Trump was gagged last month by judge Arthur Engoron, and later fined $15,000 for violations after he talked trash on social media about the Judge’s top law clerk.

On Wednesday, Trump’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against the trial judge – arguing that the Engoron had abused his power. In response to the request, Judge David Friedman of the state’s intermediate appeals court scheduled an emergency hearing Thursday afternoon around a conference table in a state appellate courthouse just a few miles from Engoron’s courtroom, where he granted their request. 

Ruling at an emergency hearing Thursday, Friedman questioned Engoron’s authority to police Trump’s speech outside the courtroom — such as his frequent gripes about the case on social media and in comments to TV cameras in the courthouse hallway.

Friedman said that while it’s true that judges often issue gag orders, they’re mostly used in criminal cases where there’s a fear that comments about the case could influence the jury. Trump’s civil trial doesn’t have a jury.

Trump lawyer Christopher Kise said after Friedman ruled that the appellate judge “made the right decision and allowed President Trump to take full advantage of his constitutional First Amendment rights to talk about bias in his own trial, what he’s seeing and witnessing in his own trial — which, frankly, everyone needs to see.” –AP

“I don’t see a reason for restrictions because Ms. James is continuing to disparage my client,” said Trump attorney Alina Habba, referring to NY Attorney General Letitia James, who is prosecuting the case.

In staying the order, Trump can now freely comment about the court and its staff while the appeals process plays out.

Separately on Wednesday, Trump’s legal team urged Engoron to stop the case immediately, arguing that his appearance of bias “threatens both Defendants’ rights and the integrity of the judiciary as an institution.”

“This constitutional protection is at its apogee where the speech in question is core political speech, made by the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, regarding perceived partisanship and bias at a trial where he is subject to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and the threatened prohibition of his lawful business activities in the state,” the filing continues.

In short, the entertainment factor with Trump’s NY trial just went up immeasurably.

Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Abortion politics propelled the Democrats to a sweeping victory in last week’s elections. The party kept the governorship in the profoundly red state of Kentucky, took full control of the Virginia legislature, grew their majorities in both chambers in New Jersey, won a state Supreme Court seat in Pennsylvania, and added the right to abortion into the Ohio constitution.

The post-Roe backlash has continued to produce victories for Democrats since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion and reverted the matter to the states in June last year.

Republicans need to focus on other issues, said Robert Shapiro, a political science professor at Columbia University.

In his view, 2024 will be a whole new ball game, and Republicans can win by focusing on issues such as reducing crime and securing the southern border.

George Allen, former Republican Virginia governor, said Republicans should message the abortion issue as a matter for the states.

“It’s a local state issue; it’s not an issue for the federal government to get involved in,” Mr. Allen told The Epoch Times. “Say this endlessly, endlessly, endlessly.”

Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has refused to endorse a federal abortion policy.

He has expressed at campaign events in deeply conservative Iowa how Democrats are turning voters off Republicans who take too hard a line on abortion while saying he believes that people should “follow their heart” when it comes to abortion policy and work to speak more clearly about the issue.

“Without the exceptions, it is very difficult to win elections,” President Trump said. “We would probably lose majorities [in Congress] in 2024 without the exceptions, and perhaps the presidency itself.”

Mr. Allen acknowledges that it’s hard to get all Republicans to take the same stance. For example, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) has introduced a bill for a federal 15-week limit on abortion with the exception of rape, incest, and risk to the life of the mother.

Mr. Allen believes the best Republican presidential candidate on the issue is former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley because she is “honest, pragmatic, practical.”

At the third Republican presidential candidate debate held the day after the election, Ms. Haley repeated that she’s “unapologetically pro-life” and continued calling for “consensus” on abortion policies while acknowledging the deeply personal nature of the issue.

“Let’s agree on how we can ban late-term abortions,” she said. “Let’s make sure we encourage adoptions and good quality adoptions.”

Mr. Allen said that the abortion issue might pose a challenge to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis because of a new law passed in his state this year, limiting abortion up to six weeks gestation. However, Mr. DeSantis could say that the law represents the will of the voters in Florida and could keep the issue on the state level, according to Mr. Allen.

At the Nov. 8 debate, Mr. DeSantis said pro-life groups were “caught flat-footed on these referenda,” whether it was on the ballot as with Ohio or by proxy in Kentucky, Virginia, and other states.

He suggested their messaging needs to appeal to Republicans who are turning out to vote.

“A lot of the people who are voting for the referenda are Republicans who would vote for a Republican candidate,” he added. “So you’ve got to understand how to do that.”

Eighteen percent of Ohio Republicans voted to include abortion rights in the state’s constitution.

Voter turnout in the Buckeye State was unusually high for an off-year election. With the abortion issue on the ballot, 3.9 million Ohioans voted, nearly matching the 2022 midterms’ voter participation level of 4.2 million.

Off-year elections—elections held in odd-number years—“do not necessarily predict the following year,” according to an analysis by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

The authors argue that while the state races generated favorable results for the Democrats, that didn’t change those states’ trajectory in partisan races, which will define 2024 more.

Bob Holsworth, a Richmond-based veteran political analyst, said the Republicans hadn’t arrived at one blockbuster issue yet to win the 2024 elections.

However, he said Bidenomics wouldn’t help keep President Biden in the White House. His read is that even though inflation has shown signs of cooling, the impact has been felt by both sides and has turned off some voters in the Democratic base.

Whether they can be convinced in 2024 remains to be seen. “I think the Democrats are making a big mistake by not challenging Biden,” he told The Epoch Times.

Recent poll numbers show that Republicans are more motivated to vote as a way of vouching their support for Donald Trump, former president and presumptive Republican nominee, rather than fending off President Joe Biden.

In a Nov. 1 Quinnipiac University poll, among 1,610 self-identified registered voters, 58 percent of Republicans said they were more motivated to vote in 2024 than previous presidential elections, compared to 47 percent of Democrats.

And more Biden votes are a disapproval of President Trump than a nod for President Biden.

In a September NBC poll, a majority, or 58 percent, of Biden voters said they would vote for President Biden due to their dislike of President Trump. By contrast, a similar share of the Trump voters said they would do so because they support President Trump.

Jim Gilmore, former Republican Virginia governor and former ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the left wing in the United States doesn’t understand conservatives’ unwavering support for President Trump.

In Mr. Gilmore’s view, conservatives “feel under threat, under assault” when they see rampant crime and the insecure southern border, and the sweeping Democratic win over the abortion issue heightens that sense.

“Here’s the bottom line: the Republicans and the conservatives in this country are looking for someone to fight for them,” he told The Epoch Times.

According to the poll, President Trump’s lead over President Biden is based on the top issues of the economy, foreign policy, and immigration.

A majority of those polled voters—600 in each state of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—said President Biden’s policies made their lives worse.

Read the rest here…

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Why does the phrase “bread and circuses” keep coming to mind?

In my previous post, I asked Can We Reverse America’s Distemper?, starting from the historical perspective of 50-year cycles of socio-economic cooperation and discord, a cycle documented by Peter Turchin.

I referenced a January 1974 essay (America Agonistes)–50 years ago–in which the author identified three key sources of decay and collapse: rigidity (resistance to change / adaption), deep alienation and the erosion of crucial institutions.

In his recent book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, Turchin identified America’s perverse wealth pump that transfers wealth from the working / middle classes to the wealthy elites as a core source of systemic risk, a source fueled by the time-honored dynamic of entrenched elites and incumbents rigging the economy and key institutions to serve their interests above the interests of the general public, i.e. the common good.

These entrenched interests resist any adaptation that might diminish their wealth and power, and this is a source of systemic rigidity. Any attempt to reverse the perverse wealth pump meets with fierce resistance: reforms are watered down, new tax breaks are secreted into legislation to replace those lost to reforms, and so on.

What’s different now compared to 50 years ago is the substitution of narratives for reality. Rather than honestly address the sources of risk and decay, the elites of 2023 America seek to persuade the restive populace that everything is going great, and their sense that things are unraveling is false.

The purpose of the misdirection and obfuscation is to obscure the rot within crucial institutions and the resulting deep alienation generated by the elites protecting their reverse wealth pump. In other words, facing the sources of systemic risk would reveal a power structure in which the only possible outcome is the perverse wealth pump eating away at the nation’s economy and social fabric.

Apologists and pundits shout that the public’s sense that things are going wrong is delusional because GDP is rising and inflation has been tamed. But these metrics are not measures of social or economic well-being; borrowing and squandering trillions of dollars boosts GDP even as it undermines the economy, and inflation is blatantly gamed to understate reality.

The tools of this effort to paper over real issues with happy-story narratives are Artifice, Suppression, Deceit, Denial and Delusion. As in the surveys that ask “Check all that apply,” if we examine the status quo response to any consequential issue, we find one or more of these being pressed into service.

Any conflicting evidence is suppressed or denied, delusions are hyped as reality (“we’re all getting richer!”, etc.), fabrications and artifice are deployed to misdirect and obfuscate, and when all else fails, deceit and subterfuge are rolled out in force.

Fifty years ago, the nation’s power elites still had the capacity to admit that the nation’s problems were systemic and demanded honest appraisals. Yes, there were the usual fumbling attempts to substitute PR for real solutions–for example, WIN, Whip Inflation Now–a PR ploy that was widely mocked at the time, but on the whole, leaders faced issues directly and serious, honest debates over the correct policy responses were open to public scrutiny and feedback.

Now we have self-serving virtue-signaling, posturing, narrative control, hearings and spectacles in which the objective is to provide cover for all that is taboo because it threatens to reveal corruption and deceit or the self-interested skims and scams of the elites benefiting from the reverse wealth pump.

The fatal rigidity unraveling the nation’s ability to adapt is the need to reassure the public with bogus statistics and narratives. Consider this chart, courtesy of the Federal Reserve, that displays the collapse of the bottom 50% households’ share of financial assets–the assets that generate income and build wealth.

In comparison, the top 1%–1.3 million households–saw their share of financial wealth soar to 35.3%–15 times the financial assets of the bottom 50%, 65.5 million households. Perverse wealth pump, indeed. But for the punditry tasked with spewing the PR, it boils down to this: since I’m doing great, everyone must be doing great. We can be relatively confident that the economists and pundits spewing the happy PR aren’t living in self-storage units. They’re jetting off to a conference in Singapore and enjoying the high life.

But what about total assets–you know, used vehicles and TVs and houses? The bottom 50% households’ share of total assets has declined, too. Quick, jury-rig some obscure metric to create the illusion that “we’re all getting richer,” something to mask the reality that “a few are getting much richer than everyone else.”

The status quo refuses to understand the problem because that would demand changing the system that rewards them so richly. And so the “solution” is to twist the narratives and metrics to make it appear that all is well, and marginalize any skepticism of the cover story.

We’re constantly assured the problems are being dealt with and resolved, yet these solutions don’t actually seem to be addressing what’s unraveling: public trust, transparency, public health and an affordable cost of living, to name a few.

If we can no longer discuss consequential issues openly and directly, the odds that real solutions that require trade-offs and sacrifices can emerge are vanishingly low. Yet that is the path we’re on: rigidly stick to the script and act as if that fixes what’s broken.

Why does the phrase bread and circuses keep coming to mind?

*  *  *

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Authored by Dave Huber via TheCollegeFix.com,

On Monday, over 100 Harvard University faculty members signed on to a letter expressing their “profound dismay” over  President Claudine Gay’s condemnation of the “pro-Palestine” slogan “from the river to the sea.”

On November 9, Gay wrote in an email that the phrase “bear[s] specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel.”

The Crimson reports the faculty letter says “from the river to the sea” has a “long and complicated history,” and that Gay’s singling out of one meaning is “imprudent as a matter of university policy and badly misjudged as an act of moral leadership.”

Apparently referencing the pro-Palestinian letter signed by over 60 Harvard student groups (which blamed Israel for the October 7 Hamas assault), the letter says “At a moment when an affiliate of the University has with apparent impunity stood in the yard and accused students of supporting terrorism, your delineation of the limits of acceptable expression on our campus is dangerously one-sided.”

The faculty also say that criticism of Israel “cannot be ruled as ipso facto antisemitic” and they request that Gay direct the new campus advisory group on antisemitism to clearly define the term.

From the story:

The faculty also asked Gay to resist “calls to set aside the University’s normal disciplinary procedures to prematurely sanction students and employees because of concerns raised about their political activity absent specific allegations of wrongdoing” and to reverse sanctions already placed on affiliates “pending a procedurally sound investigation.” …

The faculty letter also called on Harvard to “explicitly and specifically” affirm the school’s commitment to academic freedom, denounce what they described as a “‘Palestinian exception’ to free speech,” and create an advisory group on “Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism.” …

“We are firmly committed to academic freedom for our students — all of them. As should be obvious, this commitment brooks no ‘Palestine exception’ for students who harshly attack Israel’s policies,” [said the Council on Academic Freedom’s] Edward J. Hall, a Philosophy professor.

Keep in mind that “from the river to the sea,” long recognized (even by Democrats) as a slogan which calls for the annihilation of Israel, must be understood as having a “long and complicated history” — yet this is the same Harvard that, among other things, asked students to take down a patriotic Nicki Minaj flag, allowed students in course evaluations to report professors who make them “uncomfortable,” and penalized students for participating in single-sex campus organizations (which got the faculty’s blessing).

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

Either President Biden does not know about the polls that show he is trailing Donald Trump in mock matchups in key battleground states, or he’s the relentless optimist who beat the odds to win the White House and has chosen not to believe most of them. Which is it is not immediately clear.

Asked why he’s lagging behind the Republican frontrunner, Biden shot back last week that it was “because you don’t read the polls.” Maybe he meant election returns. Just two days earlier, Democrats had won off-year victories in states like Ohio and Kentucky, and Biden was bullish as he walked to Marine One.

“Ten polls. Eight of them, I’m beating him in those places. Eight of them. You guys only do two – CNN and New York Times. Check it out. Check it out. We’ll get you a copy of all those other polls,” Biden promised Fox News.

 “You don’t believe you’re trailing in battleground states?” Peter Doocy asked. “No, I don’t,” the president replied.

The polling in question, a New York Times/Siena poll of battleground states, set off what some worried liberals are describing as “a five-alarm fire.” The survey findings that shocked Washington showed Biden losing to former President Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Publicly, the administration shrugged.

“We don’t put much stock in polls,” Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday after the press secretary took a moment to note how Biden beat the odds in 2020 and braced for a red wave that “didn’t materialize” in 2022.

But when asked which polls the president was referring to, specifically the ones he said showed him “beating” Trump in swing states, the White House referred RealClearPolitics to the Biden campaign, which pointed RCP to four recent polls of three battleground states.

A Meredith College poll released Monday shows Biden leading Trump 40% to 39% in North Carolina, a state Republicans won in 2020 by a single point.  But according to the RCP average, Trump leads Biden in North Carolina by nine points.

A Marquette Law School poll published over the weekend found Biden leading Trump 50% to 48% in Wisconsin, a finding roughly in line with the RCP average in that state.

Two polls from last week showed Biden maintaining a slim lead over Trump in Michigan. An Emerson College poll found the Democrat ahead of the Republican 45% to 43%. A Morning Consult poll reported a similar result, with Biden at 38% to Trump’s 37%. The RCP average in that state, meanwhile, has Trump leading by a single digit.

The Biden campaign did not reply when asked about the remaining five of eight states that the president referenced. This far out from the election, they find this kind of scramble both tiresome and repetitive.

Worrisome polling like the New York Times/Siena survey drives headlines and sets cable news aflutter, they feel, while polling more positive to the president gets lost in the news. Pundits, meanwhile, order premature autopsies months before voters even cast their ballots. It isn’t all that different from the last time Biden was all but considered a dead man walking.

“You all declare me dead,” he told the New York Times in 2020, “and guess what? I ain’t dead. I’m not going to die.” Unconvinced, the paper’s editorial board later endorsed Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who didn’t make it to “Super Tuesday,” and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who didn’t even carry her home state.

The Biden campaign is now similarly prickly. It released a campaign memo last week dismissing again “the same polls that have gotten it wrong time and time again.”

“As pundits breathlessly make predictions based on polling, it is important to remember that President Biden, just three years ago, won more votes than any candidate for president in American history – 81 million votes,” wrote Michael Tyler, the campaign communications director. “And he is the only one to ever defeat Donald Trump,” Tyler added. “The American people had a chance to reelect Trump and they said no.”

The memo included eight recent polls. Six showed Biden up over Trump. Two had them tied. All of the surveys were national. None were specific to the battleground states that will be critical to winning or losing the White House.

“There’s no doubt this will be a very close election. Joe Biden has been counted out time and time again and proved pollsters and pundits wrong. His campaign is ignoring the noise and building the strong campaign it needs to win – just like in 2020,” the memo concluded.