Saturday Noon ~ thefrontpagecover

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~ Featuring ~
  Trump Delays New Round of China Tariffs
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Thomas Gallatin  
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Repeal of the Cadillac Tax Would Be a 
Strategic Mistake for Both Parties
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By James C. Capretta 
realclearpolicy.com } ~ On July 17th, the House voted 419 to 6 in favor of repealing the so-called “Cadillac tax.” This is the levy, enacted in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and now scheduled to go into effect in 2022... which imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored insurance plans. The Senate may soon follow the House by supporting repeal too, perhaps as part of a larger package of provisions extending tax breaks that might otherwise expire. Both parties are making strategic mistakes by supporting repeal of this tax. For Democrats, the rush toward repeal is particularly perplexing. This is a tax that was instrumental to the passage of the ACA. The scumbag/liar-nObama administration and many House Democrats were adamant that the ACA would not only extend insurance enrollment to many millions of uninsured Americans, it would do so while also reducing the federal budget deficit over ten years and the long-term. At the time of enactment in March 2010, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed that the bill would reduce the government’s ten-year and long-term budget deficits. The Cadillac tax was an important reason why CBO projected the law’s taxes would exceed the costs of subsidizing coverage for the uninsured. Further, the Cadillac tax was part of the “kitchen sink” approach to cost-control promoted by scumbag/liar-nObama administration officials. The authors of the ACA claimed they were willing to include in the legislation any and all good ideas for reining in spiraling health-care costs.  President scumbag/liar-nObama was sold on the need for the tax as a cost-control device for private coverage despite the fact that he had attacked Senator rino-John McCain in the 2008 presidential race for supporting the taxation of health benefits for “the first time ever.” CBO and other analysts expect the tax will work to control costs by encouraging companies to seek out less expensive coverage to avoid the tax federal revenue rises when this happens because employers substitute higher cash wages, which are taxable, for untaxed fringe benefits. The president took a lot of heat for this flip-flop, but he and his advisers believed the benefits of the tax were sufficient to justify the political turbulence it would, and did, generate. Perhaps most damaging for Democrats is what repeal will do to their fiscal credibility. Democrats have spent the past two years denouncing the $1 trillion, ten-year tax cut passed in 2017 as a reckless giveaway for corporations and upper income households. But repeal of the Cadillac tax would also drain the Treasury, by $200 billion over ten years, according to CBO, including a $35 billion reduction in payroll taxes for the Social Security trust funds...
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Secret Service Clears Streets Near Israeli
Embassy Following Reports of ‘Suspicious
Person, Vehicle’
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by Adam Kredo 
freebeacon.com } ~ The U.S. Secret Service confirmed Friday morning that it has shuttered the streets surrounding the Israeli embassy in downtown Washington, D.C. ... following reports "of a suspicious person and vehicle," a Secret Service spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon. "This morning at approximately 8:00 a.m. Secret Service Uniformed Division officers responded to the report of a suspicious person and vehicle near the Embassy of Israel," the official said. " Uniformed Division officers initiated road closures to vehicular and pedestrian traffic and MPD EOD responded to the scene and cleared the vehicle. Road closures remain in effect and will be lifted at the conclusion of the investigation." Multiple sources confirmed early Friday that the streets had been shutdown and Secret Service was on the scene investigating. The incident follows a week of controversy over a now suspended visit to Israel by Reps. worthless-Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and worthless-Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). The Israeli government denied both representatives entry to the country due to their support for the virulently anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Israel reversed its decision to block worthyless-Tlaib from entering the country, authorizing worthless-Tlaib to visit on humanitarian grounds. worthless-Tlaib declined to visit...
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Israel Bans Jew-Haters worthless-Ilhan Omar 
and worthless-Rashida Tlaib
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by DOV FISCHER
spectator.org } ~ When I initially heard reports a few weeks ago that Israelis were going to allow Jew-haters worthless-Ilhan Omar and worthless-Rashida Tlaib into their country, I was quite surprised... Over the decades Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demonstrated that, whatever flaws he may have, he is no idiot. His ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, is equally perceptive. They both know that worthless-Tlaib and worthless-Omar are not that different from Nazis. Who allows Nazis into Israel — except to put them on trial? I could not believe that Netanyahu had lost his mind. Yes, he just had emerged from a national election in April that he and the Israeli right had won outright, but that was effectively nullified when the leader of one of the parties in the new right-wing coalition, hoping to double his party’s strength in the short term, pulled out last-minute in an effort to force a whole new election in September. So that can make someone nuts. And Israel’s politics — democracy on steroids, with 32 different political parties now registered to contend in next month’s Do-Over Election — can make anyone nuts. But Netanyahu has survived decades of craziness. Could he really have gone so nuts as to allow those two Jew-hating spigots into Israel? Like, what — Israel does not have enough terrorist supporters within her borders already? So it was refreshing indeed to hear Thursday’s news that worthless-Ilhan Omar and worthless-Rashida Tlaib, who seem to represent a long-underrepresented constituency of terrorist supporters and America-haters, will be barred from setting foot in Israel after all. Looks like worthless-Rashida Tlaib, to cope, will have to satisfy herself with her sense that the Holocaust was calming. And with Benjamin Netanyahu having made the decision to bar her, worthless-Ilhan Omar can tweet, “See, I told you it was about the Benjamins, baby.” Every country with even a rudimentary level of self-respect bars from her borders those non-citizens who publicly despise her and further seek to destroy her. America does. We even have banned Boy George, Amy Winehouse, and former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim from setting foot here. England does. The United Kingdom has barred more than 100 people from entering her borders, including 20 Americans — including even Martha Stewart. All self-respecting countries have such bans. So it is normal for Israel to bar Jew-haters. There are plenty of neighboring Jew-hating countries with similar weather and topography where they can visit. Israel finally passed legislation a few years ago  barring from her borders those who advocate “BDS” — Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel. Good for Israel. Thus, Israel likewise bans extreme-left self-hating Jews who promote BDS. It was long overdue for Israel to keep such people out, and no one appreciates more than do mainstream normative Jews when Israel acts publicly to tell False Jews, Phony Jews, and anti-Jewish Jews that they are not welcome...
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America Can Stop China from Dominating 
Artificial Intelligence--And Should
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by Gordon G. Chang
gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Artificial intelligence permits machines to mimic human functions such as driving vehicles, recognizing spoken words, and playing games of skill like chess and Go... Especially Go, the Chinese game of strategy. If China had an "AI Sputnik moment," it occurred in March 2016 when AlphaGo, developed by Alphabet Inc.'s DeepMind, took four out of five games from an 18-time champion in a challenge match in Seoul. By the following year, Beijing was pouring even more money into AI research. Beijing in 2017 supplemented the AI component of its Made in China 2025 initiative with its "Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, a three-part effort to lead global AI by 2030. Furthermore, Beijing made sure its determination to dominate the field was shared across society. Business chieftains and policy analysts in China are much more focused on AI than those in the West, surveys show. The nationwide effort, Webb tells us, paid off. China, for instance, now publishes more AI machine learning papers than the United States. The West should be seriously concerned: whoever wins at AI will both dominate the global economy and field the most destructive conventional military force. To borrow a phrase, we are witnessing the "Rise of the Machines." What if those "machines" are Chinese? We need to ask what would happen if the world's most dangerous regime were to dominate the world's most powerful technology. We are getting a hint what will occur in what Beijing calls the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. There, facial recognition systems, powered by AI, are helping China's leaders to continually track inhabitants...
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Is the Palestinian Authority Preparing 
for a New Intifada?
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by Bassam Tawil
gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ The Palestinian Authority (PA) spent the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha this week inciting against Israel because of Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif in Arabic, in Jerusalem... The site is also sacred to Jews and Christians: it is where the First and Second Temples had stood before being destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE. The Western Wall, or so-called Wailing Wall, sacred to Jews, an ancient retaining wall of the Temple Mount, is all that remains of them. Depicting the peaceful visits as "incursions by Jewish settlers and extremists," PA officials and media outlets accused the Israeli government of repeatedly carrying out "provocations and assaults against holy sites in Jerusalem, particularly Al-Aqsa Mosque." Mahmoud Habbash, religious affairs adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, went as far as describing the Jews visiting the Temple Mount as "terrorists." Habbash, who also serves as Supreme Shari'a Judge, also accused the Jewish visitors of "defiling the Haram al-Sharif and provoking the feelings of Muslims." He further  appealed to all Muslims to "defend Al-Aqsa Mosque against Israeli conspiracies and barbaric violations." Habbash was  echoing Abbas's notorious statement that Palestinians won't allow Jews with their "filthy feet" to "defile our Al-Aqsa Mosque." Abbas's statement came during a meeting with a group of Palestinians from east Jerusalem in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Abbas even encouraged  Palestinians to engage in violence by saying: "We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every shahid (martyr) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah. We will do everything in our power to protect Jerusalem." A few days after Abbas made his statement in September 2015, Palestinians launched the "Knife Intifada" against Israel – which included a wave of terror perpetrated by individuals inspired by vicious  incitement in the Palestinian media and urged on by Palestinian leaders. In the first 12 months of the terror attacks, mostly by stabbings and car-rammings, 40 Israelis were killed...
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Trump Delays New Round of China Tariffs
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Thomas Gallatin:  On Tuesday, the United States Trade Representative office said that it was delaying the implementation of a third round of tariffs against China — tariffs that President Donald Trump had announced two weeks ago. The White House noted that the 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods would now be put off until Dec. 15th, with the rational given of seeking to prevent Americans from having to pay higher prices on gift purchases prior to the Christmas holiday season.

While that explanation was certainly part of the calculation, as tariffs on foreign goods most impact consumers, in all likelihood the main reason for Trump’s tariff delay has much more to do with the recent news of an agreement to restart the stalled trade talks with China. It appears that both China and the U.S. are eager to get a trade deal done in the hopes of staving off a recession, fears of which have produced increasing volatility in the markets this month.

China is also clearly feeling pressure from the growing freedom movement in Hong Kong. The last thing Beijing wants is for these protests to spill out into mainland China, hence the recent movement of troops to the Hong Kong border. While China would love nothing more than to see Trump gone from office in 2020, with trouble growing in Hong Kong, Beijing can ill afford more economic contractions by putting off trade talks. Meanwhile, the tricky path Trump will have to navigate is to both vocally support Hong Kong’s freedom movement while at the same time work to secure a fair trade deal with China.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/64838?mailing_id=4470&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4470&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

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