PrairiePundit

Washington Free Beacon: Never has a U.S. administration been so favorable to Israel. And Israeli Jews are full of gratitude—anything good earns a Trump comparison: "It’s No. 1, like Trump," an Israeli grocer told me the other day, pointing to an especially well-regarded mango. Yet the Trump administration, like those before it, either doesn’t grasp, or won’t face, the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Today, perhaps, the individual most voluble in telling the truth about the conflict is Prof. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer on Arabic and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University. His message is straightforward: Islam cannot accept a Jewish state in the Middle East, "not even a tiny one on the Tel Aviv coast." It’s a theological threat. Jews and Christians do have a protected status under Muslim rule "by becoming subservient to Islam in what is known as dhimmi status, which means they are legally deprived of many rights including the right to own land an...

Thomas Lifson: Study finds America's poorest 20% consume more than national averages of most European and OECD nations The study debunks some of the reporting of the mainstream media about the conditions of the poor in this country.

Jerusalem Post: With Monday morning’s jaw-dropping sharing of a wealth of IDF intelligence about the Iranian drone crew it struck in Lebanon, the power of Israeli intelligence became ever clearer. The key to the IDF thwarting the planned attack by Iran on Israel was not merely that it identified the Lebanese operatives working with the Iranians who were en route to carry out their attack, but that it traced the presence of particular operatives involved in using drones on their way to the area before they got there. Let’s analyze the information put out by the IDF. First, there were three casualties from the strike, two of whom were Hezbollah operatives being trained by Iran’s external intelligence Quds Force: Hassem Yussuf Zabib from Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, born in 1996, and Yasser Ahmed Tzahr from Beleide village, born in 1997. According to the IDF, the two visited Iran several times this year and went through training to operate unmanned aerial vehicles and explosive d...

Red States: Facebook has banned The Epoch Times , a pro-Trump outlet, from advertising on the social media platform. This came after a week of several different mainstream media outlets targeting the conservative site. NBC News took the lead, writing a “report” attacking the site which apparently caught the attention of the Facebook big wigs. Facebook has banned The Epoch Times , a conservative news outlet that spent more money on pro-Trump Facebook advertisements than any group other than the Trump campaign, from any future advertising on the platform. The decision follows an NBC News report that The Epoch Times had shifted its spending on Facebook in the last month, seemingly in an effort to obfuscate its connection to some $2 million worth of ads that promoted the president and conspiracy theories about his political enemies. “Over the past year we removed accounts associated with the Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review ...

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: Six ships carrying about 12 million barrels of U.S. crude are headed to China just as Beijing prepares to impose its first ever levy on American oil next month. While the cargoes could be diverted, the shipments highlight the growing demand for U.S. crude in Asia even as tensions escalate between the world’s two biggest economies. China, briefly a top buyer of American oil, has scaled back shipments since the trade war began. Now, in a counter move to the Trump Administration’s latest round of tariffs, Beijing plans to tax a host of American goods including crude oil starting September 1. That would make crude from the Permian Basin about $3 a barrel more expensive to Chinese buyers, rendering it less attractive. The six ships, scheduled to dock in China through October, could be rerouted and the cargoes resold for better value. U.S. oil that is sometimes shipped to the Chinese market from transshipment zones in Malaysia and Singapore or the Caribbean also c...

Phys.org: A polymer that self-destructs? While once a fictional idea, new polymers now exist that are rugged enough to ferry packages or sensors into hostile territory and vaporize immediately upon a military mission's completion. The material has been made into a rigid-winged glider and a nylon-like parachute fabric for airborne delivery across distances of a hundred miles or more. It could also be used someday in building materials or environmental sensors. The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2019 National Meeting & Exposition. "This is not the kind of thing that slowly degrades over a year, like the biodegradable plastics that consumers might be familiar with," says Paul Kohl, Ph.D., whose team developed the material. "This polymer disappears in an instant when you push a button to trigger an internal mechanism or the sun hits it." The disappearing polymers were developed for the Department of...

Elizabeth Vaughn: Since 2004, Gallup has conducted a monthly party affiliation poll party. They ask voters, “In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat or an independent?” Results from a November 1-6, 2016 poll showed that 31% of voters identified as Democrats, 27% as Republicans and 36% as Independents. A recently conducted poll indicates a significant shift in those numbers. Currently, 27% of voters consider themselves to be Democrats, 29% as Republicans and 38% as Independents. What to make of the 4% plus in those identifying as Democrats? Did half of these voters make the switch to the Republican column and the other half to the Independent column? That would account for the two point increase in those two categories. Also, while there have been many fluctuations along the way, a glance at the number of those who identify as Democrats show those figures peaking between October 2018 and February/March 2019. The results ranged between 30 and 35...

Fox News: China signaled on Monday it was now seeking a "calm" end to its ongoing trade war with the U.S., as Asian markets crumbled and China's currency plummeted to an 11-year low following the latest tariffs on $550 billion in Chinese goods announced last Friday by the Trump administration. Trump said Monday that officials from China called U.S. officials and expressed interest to "get back to the table,” The Wall Street Journal reported. He called the discussions a “very positive development.” “They want to make a deal. That’s a great thing,” he said. News of the possible opening in negotiations came shortly after President Trump threatened to declare a national emergency that would result in American businesses freezing their relationships with China. Trump's tariff barrage on Friday was a response to China imposing its own retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion in U.S. goods. At the Group of Seven summit in France on Sunday, White House officials reje...

Andrew McCarthy: The date of a meeting, that’s all the lie was about. George Papadopoulos claimed that a meeting he’d had with the mysterious Maltese professor, Josef Mifsud, happened slightly before the green-as-grass 28-year-old was recruited into the Trump campaign. In reality, it was slightly after. It wasn’t a very important lie. It was of no consequence to the FBI or the special counsel’s investigation. Papadopoulos was such an afterthought that the Bureau did not bother to interview him until late January 2017 — about 10 months after he met Mifsud. By the time Papadopoulos was charged, the Trump–Russia investigation had been ongoing for well over a year — it was already clear that there was no conspiracy. Yet that didn’t stop Mueller’s staff and Rod Rosenstein, their Justice Department superior, from indicting Papadopoulos on a felony charge. Nor did it stop them from exhorting a federal court to impose a sentence of incarceration. (The judge thought so little of the cas...

Washington Post: Environmentalists filmed Iran’s vanishing cheetahs. Now they could be executed for spying. Nine researchers, all Iranian, worked with the government and secured the right permits. But they soon drew suspicion from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces, and were arrested last year.  Arbitrary arrests are the norm for the despots who rule Iran.  They are a government that only people like Kerry and Obama could love.

NY Times: Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House A loose network of conservatives says it has dossiers of offensive social media posts and other problematic public statements by hundreds of journalists. Subjecting journalist to the same treatment they give many of the subjects of their reporting seems fair to those under attack and those who support them.  Why shouldn't they be held to their own standards?

Monica Showalter: If you want to win an election, yelling about global warming and blaming air conditioners, cars, plastic straws, and jets -- while jetting in to do it -- is probably not the best way to sell it to voters. So to the surprise of no one except the far leftists hollering about it, the Democratic Party's leadership has decided to cancel a proposed presidential nomination debate on climate change, enraging the party's extremists : "This decision is as baffling as it is alarming. Our planet is burning— the least we can do as a party is debate what to do about it," [candidate Beto] O'Rourke said on Twitter following the vote. Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez claimed that, ahem, if they do a one-issue debate with one issue, they'll be condemned to doing one-issue debates with all issues. And besides, he wouldn't dream of "chang[ing] the rules in the middle of the process" he explained. According to a much-disappointed ...

Washington Free Beacon: A Louisiana lawyer joined a growing number of attorneys challenging the payment of mandatory membership dues to state bar associations. The lawsuits argue that mandatory dues used to fund the associations' lobbying and legislative activity violate the free speech rights of individual lawyers. Randy Boudreaux filed the lawsuit against the Louisiana State Bar Association (LSBA) on Aug. 1. The insurance defense attorney told the Washington Free Beacon that the case drew from the Supreme Court's 2018 Janus decision. The majority in the 5-4 decision said that forcing workers to pay compulsory dues or fees to public sector labor unions violated the First Amendment rights of workers. "The LSBA…uses those compelled dues to engage in political and ideological speech, including advocacy on issues of public policy," Boudreaux's lawsuit says. All 50 states require prospective attorneys to be admitted to the state bar before they are able to ...

Clarice Feldman: ... ... An online poster who identity is unknown to me summed it up the party’s unappealing agenda rather neatly, I think: 1. Fred Stevens, a welder, and Joe Frisco, a bartender, neither of whom went to college, will have to pay off the student loans for Eric, an Art History major, and Emma, a Gender Studies major, because they cannot get jobs. (Elizabeth Warren). 2. Yusef Hussein, who killed 23 children by bombing their school, will be allowed to vote from prison. (Bernie Sanders) 3. Grace Thompson, who worked hard for 47 years, must give up her employer furnished medical plan and join the National Health plan. (The whole slate) 4. La'Darius Washington, who has never had a regular job, will receive a monthly income from the federal government to spend as he pleases. (Amy Klobuchar) 5. Billy White, age 16, who has trouble with subject/verb agreement in English class, still has trouble with fractions in math class, and thinks Judge Judy is on the Supre...

Roger Kimball: I was going to pass by in silent contempt the news that CNN—the network that patrons of airport lounges cordially dislike and that no one else watches—just decided to hire disgraced former FBI honcho Andrew McCabe as a commentator. He’ll fit right in, I thought, with other such mountebanks barking against Donald Trump not only at CNN but also at MSNBC not to mention The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other retirement homes for the anti-Trump fraternity. But Andrew McCarthy’s column at NRO on Saturday reminded me that the case of McCabe is important. It says something critical not just about one of the most important players in (to cite the subtitle of McCarthy’s new book) “the plot to rig an election and destroy a presidency,” but also about some larger issues, which from one perspective might be said to turn on the task of guaranteeing the peaceful transition of power in a democracy and, from another, on the ambition of our justice system to provide (as th...

Karl W. Smith: ... One school of thought argues that slavery in general, and cotton in particular, was the driving force behind the development of America’s distinctive brand of capitalism. (The New York Times’s ambitious 1619 Project contains a good encapsulation of this argument.) But not only has this theory come under fire for inaccuracies, its central narrative is incorrect. The reality is that cotton played a relatively small role in the long-term growth of the U.S. economy. The economics of slavery were probably detrimental to the rise of U.S. manufacturing and almost certainly toxic to the economy of the South. In short: The U.S. succeeded in spite of slavery, not because of it. ... Still, it might be argued that the growth of a textile industry — in either the U.S. or Great Britain — would not have been possible without mass quantities of U.S. cotton. Unfortunately, this does not appear to be true. Following the Civil War, the production of cotton in the U.S. continue...

CNBC: Home Depot’s suppliers are trying to head off some of the increased costs from rising tariffs by moving at least some of their production out of China, executives told investors Tuesday. “I’m not aware of a single supplier who was not moving some form of manufacturing outside of China,” said Ted Decker, executive vice president of merchandising. “So we have suppliers moving production to Taiwan, to Vietnam, to Thailand, Indonesia and even back into the United States.” CEO Craig Menear said the tariffs on Chinese goods are projected to have a “cost impact” on U.S. sales of about 2%, or $2 billion. With suppliers moving at least some of their manufacturing outside of China, that reduces that impact by roughly one percentage point, executives said. ... Meanwhile, USA Today says: Vietnam says that China is mislabeling products as Vietnamese to avoid U.S. tariffs Mislabeling products is a form of consumer fraud and those doing so should be prosecuted.  It does demonstra...

NY Times: Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House A loose network of conservatives says it has dossiers of offensive social media posts and other problematic public statements by hundreds of journalists. It has revealed the bias of more than one employed by the NY Times .  They can be a pretty nasty lot at Times .

Thaddeus G. McCotter: The Left’s ‘Three Rs’: Russia, Racism, and Recession For the Left, the most important “R” is missing: Reality. Because they have relied on lies and hyperbole their chances of defeating Trump are greatly reduced. The Russia allegations have been shown to be a hoax from the beginning.  The Racism charges are bogus and their allegations about a recession are dubious.  They would have done better to stick with reality. What does it say about the people who want to be in charge of your healthcare that they literally cheer the death of a political opponent ?  It is a sign of just how deranged the left has become.

Michael Goodwin: ... Rigor in reporting and restraint in judgment once made the Gray Lady noble. Now she is dead, her homicide an inside job. The transcript, leaked to Slate , reveals a confederacy of ignorance and bigotry involving hundreds of people. The ringleader is executive editor Dean Baquet, who fires the fatal shot into the credibility of his paper. By giving reporters and editors license to try to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, then letting them peddle the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, Baquet helped unleash the ­hatred that is tearing America apart. Never before has a single media institution played such a destructive role in the nation’s life. But Baquet is not finished. The 75-minute meeting shows he is now determined to ­destroy the president by painting him as a racist. “I think that we’ve got to change,” Baquet tells his assembled staff after acknowledging that the paper was “a little tiny bit flat-footed” when special counsel Robert Mueller perform...