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May 2019

Uprooting the EPA’s climate fraud By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/uprooting_the_epas_climate_fraud.html

During the Barack Obama presidency, a poisonous seed was planted by bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to enable radical regulation of CO2 emissions, eventually strangling the economy. That seed was an official “endangerment finding” (E.F.) that declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” — absurd on its face, since CO2 is necessary for life.

Writing at Townhall, Paul Driessen explains how the roots that have sprouted from the poisonous seed can and must be pulled up by action from President Trump:

[T]here has never been any formal, public review of the EF conclusion or of the secretive process EPA employed to ensure the result of its “analysis” could only be “endangerment” — and no awkward questions or public hearings would get in the way.

Review, transparency and accountability may finally be on the way, however, in the form of potential Executive Branch actions. If they occur — and they certainly should — both are likely to find that there is no valid scientific basis for the EF, and EPA violated important federal procedural rules in rendering its predetermined EF outcome. (One could even say the EF was obtained primarily because of prosecutorial misconduct, a kangaroo court proceeding, and scientific fraud.) Failure to examine and reverse the EF would mean it hangs like Damocles’ sword over the USA, To the consternation and outrage of climate alarmists, keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground radicals, and predictable politicians and pundits, President Trump may soon appoint a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, to review “dangerous manmade climate change” reports by federal agencies awaiting the next climate-focused president.

What’s Mitt Romney’s problem? By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/whats_mitt_romneys_problem.html

After taking President Trump’s endorsement to get himself elected senator, Mitt Romney has made quite a show of turning on Trump.

The last two incidents have been notable:

He declared GOP “maverick” congressman Justin Amash “courageous” for joining the Democrats and calling for the impeachment of President Trump in the House.

He also made this ad hominem attack on Trump over the weekend, playing Puritan for us:

On Sunday, Romney was back at it, attacking the president’s character. “I think he could substantially improve his game when it comes to helping shape the character of the country,” Romney said on CNN.

“I think young people, as well as people around the world, look at the president of the United States and say, ‘Does he exhibit the kind of qualities that we would want to emulate?’ And those are qualities of humility, of honesty, integrity, and those are things where I think there’s been some call, where the president has distanced himself from some of the best qualities of the human character.”

Why Herman Wouk’s ‘War’ Novels Deserve Remembrance Today by Warren Henry

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/20/herman-wouks-war-novels-deserve-remembrance-today/

The best way to remember—or discover—the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Herman Wouk may be his World War II epics.

Best-selling author Herman Wouk passed away last week, ten days short of his 104th birthday. Wouk is probably best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Caine Mutiny” (1951), if only for Humphrey Bogart’s portrayal of the cowardly and paranoid Capt. Queeg in the movie adaptation (of which Wouk was not a fan).

However, the best way to remember—or discover—Wouk may be his World War II epics: “The Winds of War” (1971) and “War and Remembrance” (1978). As a writer whose Jewish faith often informed his work, Wouk set out to write a novel about the Holocaust. It is a doubly impressive achievement that he first wrote another highly entertaining novel just to provide the context for the second.

The “War” novels are melodramas told through the lives of two families. The first is led by a U.S. naval officer, Victor “Pug” Henry, the other by a Jewish-American scholar and author, Aaron Jastrow (paralleling Wouk, Jastrow found popular success when his book, “A Jew’s Jesus,” became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection). The families become connected when Pug’s youngest son Byron goes to work for Jastrow in Italy and falls in love with Jastrow’s niece, Natalie.

The chief conceit of the books is that Pug, while serving as a naval attaché in Berlin, becomes an informal errand-runner for President Roosevelt. As a result, Pug finds himself dispatched to Washington, London, Rome, Moscow, Tehran, and the Pacific. Pug’s brushes with historical figures—Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill, to name a few—may give modern readers a Forrest Gump feeling, but there are historical examples of FDR using these sorts of emissaries.

Reporters Should Press Presidential Candidate Bill De Blasio On ‘Toxic Whiteness’ New York City is being sued for discriminating against white educators under Bill de Blasio’s watch. Will the white mayor defend this discrimination? by David Marcus

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/19/reporters-press-presidential-candidate-bill-de-blasio-toxic-whiteness/

According to The New York Post, four white women who work as administrators in the New York City school system are preparing a discrimination lawsuit against the city. They allege that under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s handpicked school chancellor, Richard Carranza, they have been demoted and marginalized solely on the basis of their race, and that the idea of whiteness has become “toxic” in the Department of Education.

“These decisions are being made because DOE leadership believes that skin color plays a role in how to get equity – that white people can’t convey the message,” one source told the Post. The Department has given a $775,000 contract to Pacific Education Group, Inc., a consulting firm that claims to help institutions fight racism but has some rather racist ideas about how to achieve that goal.

According to Pacific’s materials, racism is “any act that even unwittingly tolerates, accepts, or reinforces racially unequal opportunities or outcomes for children to learn and thrive.” “Outcomes” is the key word here. Apparently if there are any aggregate differences in grades or academic achievement between racial groups, it is simply a result of racism. As if, with no evidence to support it, we should believe that without racism, everyone would get exactly the same grades.

Pacific goes on to define “whiteness” as “The component of each and every one of ourselves that expects assimilation to the dominant culture.” According to sources that have been through this DOE racial training course, whiteness, or white supremacy, because, of course, are described as “characterized by perfectionism, a belief in meritocracy, and the Protestant work ethic.”

Merit-Based Immigration Reform Is Precisely What America Needs By Helen Raleigh

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/20/merit-based-immigration-reform-precisely-america-needs/

It’s time to acknowledge that the current family reunion system is broken. So a good question for Democrats is: Why would they reject changes to this system?

President Trump announced an immigration overhaul proposal on Thursday. He wants to maintain the current number of legal immigrants we admit annually at about 1.1 million, but he proposes to change our immigration system from emphasizing family re-unification to emphasizing skill-based immigrants. This is truly the best way forward to fix our broken immigration system.

For decades, our immigration laws have given overwhelming preference to applicants with family already residing in the United States. More than 60 percent of annual immigration visas are allocated for family reunification, while less than 20 percent of the annual visa quota is allocated for skill-based immigrants.

This approach doesn’t serve our nation’s needs because (a) the quota for family reunion is not based on labor-market demand; and (b) the visa preference hierarchy favors the old (parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents) and the young (children younger than 21 years of age) but discriminates against the most likely productive potential citizens, people who may not have family connections, but do have knowledge, skills, and experiences that can contribute to our country.

Byron York: Mueller changed everything

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-mueller-changed-everything

From now on, the Trump-Russia affair, the investigation that dominated the first years of Donald Trump’s presidency, will be divided into two parts: before and after the release of the Mueller report. Before the special counsel’s findings were made public last month, the president’s adversaries were on the offensive. Now, they are playing defense.

The change is due to one simple fact: Mueller could not establish that there was a conspiracy or coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to fix the 2016 election. The special counsel’s office interviewed 500 witnesses, issued 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants, and obtained nearly 300 records of electronic communications, and still could not establish the one thing that mattered most in the investigation.Without a judgment that a conspiracy — or collusion, in the popular phrase — took place, everything else in the Trump-Russia affair began to shrink in significance.

Of course, TV talking heads are still arguing over obstruction. But with the report’s release, the investigation moved from the legal realm to the political realm. And in the political realm, the president has a simple and effective case to make to the 99.6% of Americans who are not lawyers: They say I obstructed an investigation into something that didn’t happen? And they want to impeach me for that?

Spy vs. Spy Euphemism at the FBI: Eric Felten

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/18/spy_vs_spy_euphemism_at_the_fbi.html

While Washington pols and pundits angrily debate who counts as a spy, and whether any such exotic creatures have ever been employed by the FBI, new evidence is emerging that the FBI not only uses spies, but has done so extensively, including in the Trump-Russia investigation.

On Thursday, CNN host John Berman asked former FBI general counsel James Baker: “Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign as the attorney general suggested?” Baker didn’t initially say no, but rather objected that the word “spy” has negative connotations.

Baker then seemed to switch the question from whether spying occurred to its intent, saying: “There was no intention by myself or anybody else I’m aware of to intrude or do activities with respect to the campaign.” Then he continued his sentence with a clause that significantly modified even that claim. There was no intrusion of the Trump campaign, he said, done “in order to gather political intelligence to find out what the political strategies were.” The FBI was only interested in what the campaign was up to regarding Russia.

Why Did America Give Up on Mass Transit? (Don’t Blame Cars.) Streetcar, bus, and metro systems have been ignoring one lesson for 100 years: Service drives demand.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-did-america-give-up-on-mass-transit-don-t-blame-cars?utm_source=pocket-newtab

One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.

This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies’ only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.

Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations—the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative—are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. CONTINUE AT SITE

ROGER FRANKLIN: AT YOUR THROAT OR AT YOUR FEET POST ELECTION BLUES

https://quadrant.org.au/

“In order to achieve that “healing” for which Ms Wilkinson has been yearning since Saturday night, all the Morrison government need do is implement the very same slate of Left policies which the electorate rejected. Funny how that works.”

There are many misconceptions about the Left, whose louder advocates can strike those not of their tribe as being possessed by a hectoring absolutism. Don’t agree with what they say? You’re worse than wrong, you’re evil! That’s apt to be the take-home impression of any conservative who has survived a Northcote barbecue or Newtown soiree, but the fact of the matter is that it isn’t always true. Sometimes our Left-inclined fellow citizens can be the very essence of conciliation, good manners and empathy, extending much love and respect to those on the other side of politics.

This happens whenever they lose an election, as TV personality Lisa Wilkinson has just demonstrated. No sooner had it become apparent Labor couldn’t win on May 18 than she was pouring her broken, gentle heart into an open letter to once and future PM Scott Morrison.

“It might be good to start with some healing,” she begins, observing that “we” are all feeling “just a little broken right now”. We? According to the Australian Electoral Commission, some 52 per cent of the voting population has been pretty chipper for the past two days or so.

Oppressed, enslaved and brutalised: The women trafficked from North Korea into China’s sex trade Nicola Smith and Ben Farmer

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/oppressed-enslaved-brutalised-women-trafficked-north-korea-chinas/

Thousands of North Korean women and girls are being subjected to forced marriage, prostitution and sadistic abuse by trafficking gangs running a multi-million dollar illicit sex industry in China.

A report by the Korea Future Initiative (KFI), which will be presented in the House of Commons on Monday, forensically details how vulnerable women and girls as young as 12 are being tricked into escaping North Korea only to be sold as sex slaves in China.

The women ensnared by the gangs face the sickening choice of becoming sex slaves or being repatriated to the oppressive state where they face torture in bleak prison camps or possible execution.

The report – Sex Slaves: The Prostitution, Cybersex and Forced Marriage of North Korean Women and Girls in China – has been compiled by researchers who interviewed 45 women in China and South Korea over two years and will make difficult reading for MPs.

It reveals a widespread Chinese trade which plumbs the depths of human depravity.

One survivor reveals in stomach-churning detail how a girl forced into prostitution had been so brutalised that she could not stand.