You know it's bad when Axios is calling out Jen Psaki for lying about President Biden checking his watch during a ceremony for soldiers killed during the botched 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal.
In her new book, "Say More," the former White House press secretary claims that Biden looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended, contradicting fact-checks (even Snopes) and on-the-record statements from Gold Star families who were there.
Psaki says Biden critics were engaged in "misinformation" and used the image to make "him appear insensitive, concerned only about how much time had passed."
The Associated Press photographeron the tarmac snappedtwo photos of Biden looking at his watch twice and 10 minutes apart, as fact-checkers at USA Today and Snopes noted soon afterward. -Axios
Psaki also 'mistakenly cited' a passage from the Washington Post to reinforce her lie - when what she quoted was actually from USA Today's fact check article, not the post. The fact check noted that Biden looked at his watch at the end of the ceremony, but also concluded that "photos and video show [Biden] also checked his watch during the ceremony."
More via Axios:
Many family members of the 13 soldiers killed during the explosion at the Abbey Gate base in Kabul have consistently said in interviews and appearances before Congress that Biden checked his watch as the caskets went by.
Mark Schmitz, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, told Congress in August of 2023 that "while I stood there on the tarmac watching you check your watch over and over again, all I wanted to do was shout out, 'It's two f***ing thirty, asshole.' "
The day after the ceremony on Aug. 29, 2021, Shana Chappell, the mother of Marine Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, wrote on Facebook: "I watched you disrespect us all 5 different times by checking your watch!!! What the f*** was so important that you had to keep looking at your watch????"
Psaki Responds
While initially declining to comment, Psaki told Axios that the "detail in a few lines of the book about the exact number of times he looked at his watch will be removed in future reprints and the ebook," adding "The story on Afghanistan is really about the importance of delivering feedback even when it is difficult told through my own experience of telling President Biden that his own story of loss was not well received by the families who were grieving their sons and daughters."
Professor Bill McGuire is a well-known vulcanologist and climate scientist who doesn't care much for humanity. He tweeted out a scathingly brilliant idea if you're in the mortuary business or work as a grave digger.
"If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic #climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate." https://t.co/hzga69EhV3
The Just Stop Oil and related green "Apocalypse" movements are poster children for modern Cultural Marxists - sharing similarities with the Chinese communist mobs behind the Cultural Revolution of 1966. The general goal of every Marxist movement is to undermine or sabotage any opposing culture using whatever means necessary so that it can be scrapped and replaced with a new progressive/collectivist system. In particular, such activists have long targeted western civilization for demolition with the intention of bringing about a woke revolution.
This is why we often see the same people (or types of people) involved in seemingly separate causes. It might be protests and riots in favor of BLM, it might be Antifa efforts to disrupt conservative and moderate speakers, it might be protests to control college campuses in the name of Gaza or it may even be anti-carbon protests to derail energy security in the name of "saving the planet" from a global warming threat that doesn't actually exist.
Most interesting is the habit of Just Stop Oil activists to target famous symbols of western history for defacement or destruction. One might ask what does the Mona Lisa or the Magna Carta have to do with oil production or climate change, and the answer is absolutely nothing. Protesters would claim that trying to destroy these antiquities is a way to get media attention for their cause, but the only attention they ever get is negative - These actions make people want to hate protesters rather than help them.
The real message is one of aggression, not attention. Marxist activists are saying that western culture, not oil, is their enemy. And, if they don't get what they want they will continue to try to smash our greatest works of art and historic documents as a means to tear the west down piece by piece. When protesters declare the Magna Carta fair game it's not a random decision; they know exactly what they are doing. In this situation, two gullible elderly women were obviously given a task they were not able to complete:
Rev. Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, were both arrested after they tried to smash a glass case containing the historical document at the British Library in London on Friday, London's Metropolitan Police said. The Magna Carta is a revered 13th Century treaty that held English royalty to the same legal standards as the citizenry. It is often cited as a precursor to later freedom-based documents like the US Constitution and a source for western democracy.
The incompetence of Just Stop Oil protestors is the one saving grace in this scenario, and it is likely a natural consequence of the kinds of people that are attracted to the idea (high IQs apparently don't jump at the chance to join the ranks). The group is, however, suspiciously coordinated and tends to receive favor from progressive political leaders. It is a sad reflection of the ideological hysteria holding the world hostage today. With so many different movements chipping away at the foundations of the west, eventually something will break.
Iran's hardline factions have strengthened their grip on power in a run-off parliamentary election. Most independent and opposition candidates were barred from running.
https://p.dw.com/p/4fkRP
Hardliners have taken the remaining seats in Iran's run-off electionImage: Vahid Salemi/AP/dpa/picture alliance
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Iran's hardline factions have won most of the remaining seats in a parliamentary run-off vote, the Interior Ministry said on Saturday.
Hardliners have secured 233 of 290 seats in Iran's parliament, according to a tally by the Associated Press news agency.
What do we know about the run-off vote?
The "principlist" faction won 10 of 16 remaining seats in the run-off vote in Tehran, with the Coalition Council of Islamic Revolution Forces (SHANA) receiving the remaining six. Both groups are classified as hardline factions.
Just as Hamas targeted young children, even babies, for unthinkable torture and death, pro-Hamas demonstrators in Berkeley targeted a Jewish Community Center (NOT an Israeli facility) with preschool students in class as they chanted slogans through a bullhorn and marched. Even worse, the students who walked out were reportedly accompanied by two vice principals from the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School as they intimidated the innocent toddlers, guilty solely of being Jewish.
The Scanner got multiple reports about a walkout march from King middle school that stopped to protest outside the Berkeley branch of the Jewish Community Center of the East Bay.
The protest group was made up of an estimated 60 or more middle school students who were chanting with a bullhorn and accompanied by school administrators, parents said.
When the group stopped for several minutes to protest outside the JCC, which is about a half-mile from the King campus, JCC security went outside to investigate and Berkeley police were also called. (snip)
One BUSD parent said the protest reports were concerning in part because the district had promised parents on Thursday, by email, that no school staff would accompany the student march.
In the email, school leadership said students might have a walkout Friday, and that they might march to UC Berkeley during the event.
"Site and district staff will monitor students at the school site, but we will not have the capacity to walk with students to UC Berkeley or monitor their activity while on the university campus where there will be other activities happening," King Principal Michael Tison Yee told parents in the email Thursday. (snip)"Although this was not a district sanctioned event, our administration team made a decision to accompany the students to monitor for safety," BUSD spokeswoman Trish Mcdermott told The Scanner by email in response to an inquiry about Friday's events.
Sorry, Ms. Mcdermott: sending two vice principals to accompany the tyros as they terrorized tots does symbolically sanction the activity. The “monitor for safety” excuse holds no water because walking out of school and marching up busy city streets in an un-permitted march of children is inherently unsafe. Stopping the march would be the safe option, perhaps warning students that they will be regarded as truant if they skip out of the taxpayer-funded education they are being provided.
Somehow, I doubt that outside adults were not involved in organizing and directing the teen and pre-teen students. Where is the inquiry into their likely role in encouraging truancy?
Casting an even deeper shadow of Jew-hatred on the event, it was preceded by antisemitic graffiti at the school:
The Berkeley Unified School District said it is investigating the graffiti report, in which someone scrawled, "[Name redacted] hates Jews. We stand with [name redacted]" next to a Jewish star on a classroom whiteboard.
A photograph of that message that has been shared among parents and other community members was also provided to The Berkeley Scanner along with concerns about the message.
The superintendent of Berkeley’s public schools, however, doesn’t think Jew hatred at her schools is a big deal:
Friday's reports come at a difficult time for the Berkeley Unified School District, whose superintendent, Enikia Ford Morthel, told federal lawmakers this week that "antisemitism is not pervasive" in the district.
Question: would nine complaints of anti-black racism be similarly regarded with equanimity?
Incidentally, Superintendant Ford Morthel describes herself as "an urban educator and community activist, dedicated to creating public education experiences that are revolutionary, relevant and responsive for students and families."
Others are far from sanguine over the safety and emotional wellbeing of Jewish children entrusted to Ford Morthel’s tender mercies:
EdSource reported that the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education plans to investigate allegations that BUSD "failed to respond properly to rising incidents of antisemitism in its schools."
That includes a complaint by two Jewish civil rights organizations "urging an investigation into the 'virulent wave of antisemitism' aimed at Israeli and Jewish students" in Berkeley Unified, EdSource reported.
The group pitches to school districts in California an alternative to the state’s ethnic studies model curriculum framework with a focus on dismantling capitalism, systems of racism, and Zionism, which it equates to colonialism. The group’s leaders include ethnic studies professors from California State University and the University of California. (snip)
Ford Morthel testified Wednesday that the district has not purchased a Liberated Ethnic Studies curriculum. Rather, she said, the district takes pride that teachers and community partners have written the curriculum. Teachers created lessons on Israel and Palestine because of “a lot of curiosity, a lot of questions, and quite frankly, a lot of confusion from many of our students wanting to know what was going on.” (snip)
Early in the two-hour hearing, the chair of the subcommittee, Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., forced Ford Morthel and the other two superintendents on the panel, New York City schools Chancellor David Banks and Montgomery County school board President Karla Silvestre, to give one-word answers to a series of complicated questions. One was whether the phrase “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” is antisemitic.
Yes or no, Bean asked?
“If it is calling for the elimination of the Jewish people in Israel,” Ford Morthel responded. “And I will also say that I recognize that it does have different meanings to different members of our community.”
“I’m going to go ‘yes.’ I’ll put you down, yes,” Bean said.
Kiley used that answer against her during his questioning. He referred to a slide in the teacher-prepared curriculum that cited the “From the river to the sea” phrase as a call for freedom and peace and paired it with a “supportive quote” by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, soon after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel. Congress censured Tlaib on a 224-188 Republican-led vote, with members claiming it implied support for armed resistance to abolish the state of Israel.
Many people, including most Jews, also view it that way. Others, Tlaib included, say it evokes future coexistence where everyone can live in freedom in Palestine.
“Do you think that’s an appropriate thing to have on a slide for students?” Kiley asked Ford Morthel.
“So,” she replied, “we definitely believe that it’s important to expose our students to a diversity of ideas and perspectives. And if it was presented as a perspective, I do think it’s appropriate.”
Watch as Ford Morthel responds to questions from California Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley on the curriculum in which she takes pride:
LIVE-STREAM VIDEO: President Trump Speaks to MASSIVE Crowd of Estimated 100,000 in Wildwood, NJ – “LARGEST POLITICAL RALLY IN THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY HISTORY”
Google is coming in for sharp criticism after video went viral of the Google Nest assistant refusing to answer basic questions about the Holocaust — but having no problem answer questions about the Nakba.
“Hey Google, how many Jews were killed by the Nazis?” Instagram user Michael Apfel asks a Google Nest virtual assistant. The video was later posted to X by venture capitalist Josh Wolfe on May 8.
“Sorry, I don’t understand,”
The same token answer was offered to other related questions including “How many Jews were killed during World War II? Who did Adolf Hitler try to kill? How many Jews were killed in the concentration camps? How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust? What was the Holocaust?
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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