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Millions flee Ukraine.

Where will they go?

Some want to come to America. But doing that legally is hard. A complex system is supposed to determine which people deserve to get in line to get in.

"The line is broken," explained Reason Magazine editor at large Matt Welch in my new video.

For example, America has a nursing shortage, but immigration authorities turn away foreign nurses. A Mexican teenager who wants to help build houses might be admitted, but he'd have to wait 100 years. No wonder people sneak across the border.

This month, President Joe Biden announced the United States would take in 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.

"He could snap his fingers and make it 250,000 if he chose," said Welch, and he should, because "we're a refugee country, and the people who come here tend to be the best."

"But they could be the worst," I point out.

Even the supposed "worst of the worst," Welch replied, made America better.

That's a reference to 1980, when Fidel Castro let 100,000 people out of jail and encouraged them to go to America. Some were his political opponents, but most were, as a Miami TV anchor put it, "bums off the streets of Havana -- murderers, thieves, perverts, prostitutes."

Castro assumed they'd cause problems in America.

But "that was wrong," Welch said. Despite their past problems, "they enriched Miami. They added to the economy and didn't detract from the people who lived there."

A study showed the Cuban exodus raised wages of low-skilled Miamians.

Immigrants improved America even when we took in people who'd tried to kill us, and who we had tried to kill. Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter eagerly took in refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. Reagan, campaigning for the presidency, said immigrants make us better.

"They share the same values, the same dream," he said.

"He was bragging on this as a conservative and American value," Welch said. "It is no longer a conservative value."

Today, conservatives are more likely to argue against letting in refugees, saying, as Ann Coulter put it, "Things can turn overnight when you're bringing in these masses of people from very, very different cultures." Then she joked, "And make it a hate crime to ask them to assimilate."

It wasn't entirely a joke. Some leftists call asking Latinos to assimilate "racist repression."

More reasonably, many Americans fear that crime will rise if we let in more immigrants. But that's unlikely.

"They commit far less crime than native-born Americans," Welch points out.

He's right. Native-born Americans were 11.6 times more likely to be jailed than Afghan immigrants.

"It's hard for us to process that fact," Welch said. "It feels like it should be wrong, but it isn't. People who go to the lengths to get to this country tend to be less criminal than the native-born population."

"What if they just feed off welfare?" I asked.

"Then they would be the exception," he responded.

Immigrants, overall, collect less welfare than native-born Americans.

Still, people feel threatened when large numbers of foreigners arrive. Polish people protested when Syrian refugees came to Poland.

But now Poles welcome Ukrainians.

Some call that racism.

"Maybe it is racism," Welch responded. "But maybe when someone you speak a common language with, and have a common history with ... lives right next door, it's just a different story. ... Can we spare a moment and say, they've just assimilated an astonishing number of refugees. And they're not in tents in camps, shivering. They're staying with people in their apartments!"

That sure seems like a good thing.

Soon more refugees will come to America. Welch argued we should let more in.

"America is an assimilation machine," he said. "It's something that we should do more of because we're really good at it!"

I agree.

As long as people are peaceful, let them come.

John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media."

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Let them in - Jefferson City News Tribune

When Donald Trumps handpicked White House photographer Shea Craighead asked him to write the foreword to her book of Trump-era White House photos, he had one thought: How can I make money off this?

Trump's first idea, according to a New York Times story, was to take a cut from Craigheads royalties. In the end, the former president decided to simply beat her to market by publishing his own book of photos and pocketing millions in royalties himself.

Craighead put her book on ice when she learned she would be competing with Trump.

The reaction today, to the Times piece and other stories about this incident, is that Trump ripped her off. Some of the people who feel Trump mistreated Craighead are former Trump employees:

Sheas a very talented photographer and this was really all of her hard work, Stephanie Grisham, Trumps former press secretary, told the Times. I just keep thinking: What a shame that he is actually now profiting off of it. But then again, this is the guy who is hawking caps and all kinds of stuff right now to raise money for himself.

Other critics are former Trump supporters:

Ann Coulter is right. Donald Trump never looks out for the little guy, the working man, or even his own supporters. He occasionally acts as if he does but really only to benefit himself. Politicians being greedy and turning their power into personal wealth is nothing new, but Trump is more blatant and more greedy than his predecessors on this score.

His campaign spent millions at his own hotels, thus funneling donor money into his own pockets. As president, he made it clear that anyone seeking his favor would stay at his properties again, converting his position of public trust into his own private profit. And after he lost the election, he has continued his charade partly in the service of filling his own bank accounts. He gets supporters to donate to what they think is a cause, but is really just him. As Grisham points out, selling Trump merchandise seems to regular supporters like a way to support a political cause, but Trump uses it simply to further enrich himself.

Nobody should be surprised. Donald Trump is a conman and always has been a conman. Since 2015, hes just added tens of millions of new marks. And now his former photographer, Shea Craighead, is just the latest in a long line of people, including his wives, who have learned that if you get in business with Trump, you end up losing.

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Trump ripped off his White House photographer because he rips off everyone who gets close to him - Washington Examiner

There is a very good reason why we here in America, Jews especially, should fear Vladimir Putin. He is the poster boy for white Christian nationalism worldwide, and especially so here in the United States.

Asked if the far right here is influencing Russia in any way, or if Russia is influencing the far right, Johns Hopkins University Prof. Thomas Rid said, they are influencing each other. They are pushing the same narratives.

Putin speaks their language. The world must be turned into a Christian world as he and they define that. Anyone elseJews and other non-whites especiallyare to be put down to the lowest rungs of the social ladder, or simply put down.

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This white Christian nationalism Putin promotes was graphically on display at the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection. Many of the insurrectionists carried large portraits of Jesus and chanted about how his blood would cleanse Congress sins. They saw in the date Congress must certify presidential elections as an omen from heaven: January 6 was once believed to have been the real date of Jesus birth. It is celebrated today as the day the Three Wise Men who heralded Jesus as the messiah.

A video taken by a New Yorker magazine reporter showed the bare-chested QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley, he with the Viking horns, offering this prayer after occupying the Senate chamber: Thank you Heavenly Father for gracing us with this opportunity to send a message to all the tyrants, the Communists and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs. Thank you for filling this chamber with patriots that love you and that love Christ. Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.

According to the Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, who chairs the board of the ecumenical Christian organization Sojourners, Putin claims to be preserving Christian civilization against the secular decadence of the West.

The University of California Riverside history professor Georg Michels, a Russia specialist, notes that Christian nationalism in the 19th century was used as a weapon to fight revolutionaries many of them women demonize civil liberties and parliamentarism, and suppress non-Russian minorities. This Christian nationalism is what motivates Putin, Michels says.

Putin, he notes, [flaunts] his religious faith; he is often seen on television praying, crossing himself, kissing icons, and lighting candles. Priests have held ceremonies to bless Putin, and [the Russian Orthodox] Patriarch Kirill has called Putin a miracle of God.

Michels also notes that Putin models himself after the Russian Orthodox saint Vladimir the Great, whose statue he ordered erected outside the Kremlin. Vladimir laid the moral foundations on which our lives are still based today, Putin said in dedicating the statue. It was a strong moral bearing, solidarity, and unity which helped our ancestors win victories for the glory of the fatherland, making it stronger and greater with each generation.

That such a victory is Putins goal is clear from what his Russian supporters assert openly. For example, Konstantin Malofeev, who heads a Russian Orthodox group known as the St. Basil the Great Foundation, said that with Putin at the helm, Christian Russia can help liberate the West from the new liberal anti-Christian totalitarianism of political correctness, gender ideology, mass-media censorship and neo-Marxist dogma.

Putin said as much in a televised speech on February 24, the day the invasion of Ukraine began. Using code words and phrases that resonate with the white Christian nationalists, he accused the West of trying to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.

As Michels puts it, Putin and the white Christian nationalists are motivated by the belief in a mythologized Christian realm, the rejection of democratic values, the attack on gay rights and feminism, and the popularity of authoritarian strongmen.

According to Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, far right white Christians see Putin as conserving white Christendom in Europe. This grouping is opposed to globalism, multiculturalism, promoting what they see as modernist values like promoting the LBTGQ community, diversity, and allowing liberalism to dominate.

Some years ago, the American Family Associations Bryan Fischer began his radio program by declaring Putin to be the lion of Christianity, the defender of Christian values.

Most Republicans today are anti-Putin, but it took some time for many of them to get there. They had two fears: Donald Trumps support for Putin in the run up to the invasion (he has since walked back some of his comments) and the very vocal support for Putin and the invasion coming from the partys extreme right.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, long a Putin booster, was unapologetic in his support before the invasion. Although he has since changed his tune somewhat, Russian media consider Carlson a strong supporter. In mid-March, for example, a Russian television commentator said of his Ukraine waffling, obviously [he] has his own interests. But lately, more and more often, theyre in tune with our own.

Others continue to be Putin-boosters, including far-right icons Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter. Another icon, Pat Buchanan, has called Putin a God-and-country Russian patriot who pits Christianity against the Western progressive vision of what mankinds future ought to be. The Holocaust-denying, Jew-hating onetime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke once described Russia under Putin as the key to white survival.

On March 22, as Russias atrocities in Ukraine were mounting, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) blamed Ukraine for poking the bear, which is Russia. She then crowed that Russia is being very successful in their invasion, even though we hear different things on television. In other words, reports that Ukrainian forces are pushing back on the invaders are all fake news.

The white supremacist America First Political Action Conference was held on February 25, the day after Ukraine was invaded. AFPAC was founded in 2020 by the antisemitic Holocaust denier Nicholas Fuentes. Greene was one of its featured speakers. She began her remarks with these words. My name is Marjorie Taylor Greene, I am the daughter of the King, the one true living God, the Alpha, the Omega, our Father in heaven, and I am a forgiven sinner washed in the blood of our savior, Jesus Christ.

The crowd responded with a favorite chant of the white Christian nationalists crowd: Christ is king! To this, Greene responded: Praise God. Amen. Christ is king.

In his speech, Fuentes praised Putins invasion of Ukraine. Said he, Can we give a round of applause for Russia? When the crowd responded with chants of Putin, Putin, Fuentes responded by saying, Absolutely, absolutely.

Here is something else Fuentes told the gathering in his speechand please recall what the neo-Nazi white supremacist thugs shouted in Charlottesville in 2017: Jews will not replace us. Said Fuentes, To the people that [sic] have thrown out and disrupted our country, we are coming for you. You think you can replace us? You are wrong. We will replace you!

Lauren Witzke, who ran as the Republican nominee for Senate from Delaware in 2020, was euphoric in praising Putins Christian nationalism. After all, as Witzke told her AFPAC audience, Russia is a Christian nationalist nation.

Another speaker was Andrew Torba, the CEO of a social networking platform called Gab, which serves as an Internet hangout for the white nationalist/neo-Nazi/white supremacist/QAnon crowd, virulent antisemites all. America is a Christian nation, he said, and it is in need of a great restoration.

Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, warns that some extremist rightwing militias even see Putins invasion as their model for what has to happen here. They see a societal collapse and need to prepare for an impending civil war, and their focus is on preparing for the battles of that here in the U.S., he says.

Torba would seem to be one of them. Echoing Jesus advice to his apostles on the morning before the so-called Last Supper, Torba told his AFPAC audience, If you dont have a sword, then sell your cloak and buy one. Whatever Jesus meant by those words, what Torba was saying was that it is time for the American people to rise up in force against what he calls the Synagogue of Satan.

Along the route of Bostons St. Patricks Day Parade a week ago Sunday, a group of roughly 20 members of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Social Club brazenly unfurled a banner that read, Keep Boston Irish. The message should be clear to everyone because Boston has a Midwest-born mayor of Chinese descent, Michelle Wu. Said Dave Falvey, commander of the South Boston Allied Veterans Council, the group that sponsored the parade, As a Jewish American, it hits especially close to home for me.

White Christian Nationalist support for Vladimir Putin should hit all of us close to home.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is http://www.shammai.org.

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Putin, the haters White Knight - The Jewish Standard

Dave Faries here, still chuckling over the Weeklys little April Fools jokes. No, Alvarado Street Brewery is not dropping beer in favor of wine coolers. Nor is Pebble Beach suddenly embracing the homeless community and converting the ritzy Inn at Spanish Bay into housing as part of a Homekey program.

Its April 1, when even news organizations succumb to the urge to play pranks we hope readers find amusing once they catch on. Such reporting can be obvious hoaxes. We think its clear from the beginning that no sane brewmaster would try to revive the wine cooler craze. Here at the Weekly, we dont have the resources for a stunt the BBC famously pulled, reporting with visuals on Switzerlands bumper spaghetti harvest one year.

April Fools stories can also be written in such a way they appear to be accurateat least until the outlandish details mount. Sports Illustrated once featured a baseball prospect named Sidd Finch who showed serious promise. His background was just obscure enough, commentary from baseball scouts and photos all came together so seamlessly, that many readers failed to catch obvious fabrications, such as his 168mph fastball.

Using satire or parody is a relatively harmless form of fake news. Entire publicationsThe Onion, The Journal of Irreproducible Resultshave been built around humor packed in a reserved format. Only the helplessly gullible would fall for The Onions jibes. Neil Armstrongs first words when he stepped onto the lunar surface in the publications backdated July 21, 1969 issue? Holy living fuck!

Supermarket tabloids teeter between the ridiculousWorld War Two Bomber Found On Moon (to continue the lunar theme)and damaging. The tabs have faced many lawsuits over the decades, but few are the informed readers who take them seriously. Advertising sections disguised as news also tip on this border, perhaps less dangerously so.

Much more harmful forms of fake news exist: Outright fabrication of news stories, images and video. Since the advent of internet-based news aggregations sites and social media, there has been a flood of fake news designed to exploit fears, confirm bigotry or false beliefs, support or slander political leaders and parties, stoke hatred and tear apart the societal seams that bring people together.

Fake news did not start with the communication revolution, of course. Headline shockers have always sold papers, and people with a cause have always been willing to distort the facts in their favor. Indeed, the phrase dates back to the 1890s and the height of yellow journalism, but the practice is much older. Sam Adamscousin of John Adams and a determined advocate of revolution from English rule during Americas colonial dayspenned many a published broadside. According to Eric Burns, historian and author of Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, Adams form of fake news might well have been the best fiction written in the English language for the entire period between Laurance Sterne and Charles Dickens.

Whether thats high or low praise, it was brutally effective at the time. A favorite target of fake news was Massachusetts Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson. Spurred on by the revolutionary press, a mob torched Hutchinsons house in 1765. An article in the Smithsonian compared the cause and effect of fabricated articles then to 2016, when ridiculous posts alleged that a D.C.-area pizza restaurant was a front for a child trafficking ring operated by Hillary Clinton.

This is a notion any sensible person would readily dismiss. By the 2016 election, however, so much misinformation had been hurled around social media, and so much distrust sown about accurate media outlets, that those who wish to cast the other side as pure evil bit on the lurid tale. Despite the fact that real news sources like New York Times and Washington Post had easily exposed the fiction, a North Carolina man steeped in fake news that he now believed armed himself with a rifle and a handgun and rushed to their rescue, his AR-15 blazing.

As a regular reader of the Monterey County Weekly and Monterey County NOW you have no doubt realized that the economic model of journalism has changed radically. In todays media landscape, direct financial support from readers is the new normal, as the world of advertising has transformed.

Join us to help hit our target of 500 new Insiders by March 31. Join over 2500 of your neighbors and contribute today an amount that works best for you. Every little bit helps, and together we can make a positive impact in and for Monterey County.

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His purpose may have been noble, but his mission was clearly flawed. Once he realized the entire story was false, he dropped his weapons and surrendered without incident.

The Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara presents an informative overview of the issue and how fake news as applied then differs from nowas well as why so many people are swayed by obvious distortion. The speed at which it is spread and the magnitude of its influence places it in a different category from its historical cousins, the CITS reports. The combination of ideological interests and technology have made foreign agentsRussians, but other nations play, tooor individuals adept at social media and at manipulating images, videos, voice and documents the jockeys of fake news volume, rather than rag newspapers. They give certain pundits with no ethical limits the fodder they require. And these individuals are willing to dive deep into distortion.

But scholars at CITS believe that how fake news is disseminated today is in part to blame for how readily some people receive it. Social media is source agnostic, the document notes. That is, they collect and present news stories from a wide variety of outlets, regardless of the quality, reliability or political leaning of the original source. In addition, fake news plucked from an unreliable site can be easily shared. Followers of Ann Coulter were dupedas she clearly waswhen she tweeted a false report that Mexico had lowered its age of sexual consent to 12.

Unfortunately, fake news can seep into mainstream outlets, if journalists are not careful. Recently it was revealed that Facebook had planted false and damning stories about its fast-growing rival TikTok. Some local and national news organizations took the bait. Some years ago I shared drinks with a Fox News reporter who was based in Tel Aviv, but vacationing in Prague where I worked at the time. He related how Palestinians were perplexed how a reporter could work for a network they recognized as distorting the news. I tell them my reporting is accurate, he said. I cant help what they do with it in the studio.

It was a disturbing cop out. But as historian Terri Halperin told the Smithsonian when discussing the pitfalls that come with an independent media, free of government control, I think [James] Madison was probably the best on that one when he basically said you have to tolerate some sedition in order to have free communication. You cant root out all.

So maybe were stuck with it. Our only defense is to lean on credible sources of information, even when politicians stung by accurate reporting or people exposed to ideas they would wish to avoid lash back and accuse the truth of being false.

Now enjoy our presentation of some hopefully harmless fake news.

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Is it fun to celebrate April Fools Day in the age of rampant fake news? - Monterey County Weekly

Great news for Joe Biden. After months of abysmal public approval numbers, President Bidens favorability among registered voters has soared by 2 points to 45%! And all he had to do was bring us to the brink of World War III.

The media are thrilled with the possibility of nuclear war with Russia. Catastrophes are terrific for ratings, and flood-the-zone coverage of a war between two faraway countries that has almost zero effect on the lives of most Americans allows journalists to act like deep-think, geopolitical strategists (after having quickly looked up Ukraine on Wikipedia).

They dragged out the COVID panic porn for two straight years. By now, the only people still interested in pandemic updates are hysterical liberal women in Manhattan claiming to have long-haul COVID.

The national pastime has segued seamlessly from watching TV anchors cry on TV about the coronavirus to watching TV anchors cry on TV about the fate of Ukrainian children.

Of course, when American kids are murdered expressly as a result of our own governments policies, the journalism protocol is: No crying, no coverage.

There will be no tears for the 5-year-old Florida girl killed in October when an illegal alien from Guatemala, Ernesto Lopez Morales, tanked up on six 32-ounce beers, then plowed into the little girl and her mother as he was driving to get more beer.

Nor for Texas teenager Adrienne Sophia Exum, killed instantly one Sunday afternoon in 2020 when Heriberto Fuerte-Padilla, an illegal alien from Mexico, smashed into the car she was driving, then fled the scene. Theres even some news: The Biden administration annou

nced that Fuerte-Padilla will not be deported.

And there will be no weeping for the still-unidentified mother and daughter, aged 59 and 22, killed last December when a human smuggler (a U.S. citizen, aka anchor baby) carrying six illegals across the border into Texas, sped through a stop sign and T-boned the pair.

Im sure its just a coincidence, but the medias obsessive focus on Ukraine is terrific for the interests of the Democratic Party. Recall that, in his 2012 book, Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, then-UCLA professor Tim Groseclose demonstrated that media bias alone costs Republicans about 8 to 10 percentage points in elections.

And that was 2012. One can only imagine what it is in post-Trump 2022. If only we could return to the junior varsity media bias of 2012!

Until the war in Ukraine, the Democrats were facing midterms after having spent the previous two years mandating masks and an endless series of vaccinations even for the vaccinated or previously infected.

Democrats flung open the border to illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, gang members and welfare recipients.

Democratic district attorneys have turned city after city into feces-smeared murdertopias that make Charles Bronsons Death Wish look like The Sound of Music.

These days, the lefts main casus belli is teaching little kids about anal sex, transgenders and the inherent evil of white people.

What could even Stalins media do with that record?

Option 1) Implement a collective mind wipe, perhaps through an electromagnetic pulse, to erase voters memory of everything thats happened since Joe Biden was sworn in.

Option 2) WAR! (Someplace in the world thats not here.)

What crisis at our border? Were reporting on a WAR.

How can you talk about murder rates when CHILDREN ARE DYING IN UKRAINE?

What vaccine mandates? COVID is over. Now were talking about war!

Everything bad thats happening is Putins fault! Hes like Hitler!

Talk about Russian collusion! Putin gave Trump Facebook ads; hes giving Biden a military invasion.

By now, the media have whipped the public into such a frenzy over Ukraine that a majority of Americans want the U.S. to start shooting down Russian planes, starting World War III with nuclear armed power.

A small price to pay for Democratic dominance.

But much like American military interventions around the globe, things dont always go as planned.

The Democrats media helpers might want to recall President George H.W. Bushs 89% favorable rating in 1991 the highest presidential job approval rating then on record, according to Gallup.

Those astronomical numbers came as a result of the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War, when we went to war with Saddam Hussein because he had invaded neighboring Kuwait violating that nations sacred sovereignty! and proceeded to commit unspeakable war crimes, including using poison gas.

The first week of that war, Bushs poll numbers shot from 64% to 82%.

Republicans had a lock on the next years presidential contest. No serious Democrats were willing to challenge him, and the party ended up with a horny hick from Arkansas as their nominee.

And then it all collapsed. By Election Day 1992, Bushs public approval rating was down to a pathetic 34%. The horny hick won the election, and Bush became an embarrassing one-term president.

On the military side, at least the Middle East was finally at peace. We never heard a peep out of Hussein again. Wait what happened?

Ann Coulter is a conservative commentator and a regular fixture on conservative talk shows. She publishes a weekly conservative column. Reach her on Twitter at @AnnCoulter.

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Ann Coulter | Opinion | fbherald.com - Fort Bend Herald