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February 2021

It’s Official: The U.S. Has Rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement Katie Pavlich

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/02/19/its-official-the-us-has-rejoined-the-pairs-climate-accords-n2585004

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced Friday that the United States is officially back in the Paris Climate Accords. 

“On January 20, on his first day in office, President Biden signed the instrument to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement. Per the terms of the Agreement, the United States officially becomes a Party again today,” Blinken released in a statement. “The Paris Agreement is an unprecedented framework for global action. We know because we helped design it and make it a reality. Its purpose is both simple and expansive: to help us all avoid catastrophic planetary warming and to build resilience around the world to the impacts from climate change we already see.”

“Now, as momentous as our joining the Agreement was in 2016 — and as momentous as our rejoining is today — what we do in the coming weeks, months, and years is even more important. You have seen and will continue to see us weaving climate change into our most important bilateral and multilateral conversations at all levels. In these conversations, we’re asking other leaders: how can we do more together?” he continued. 

President Donald Trump took the U.S. out of the agreement in 2017, saving taxpayers $3 billion, and still continued to cut emissions at rates higher than European countries who stayed in the accords. From Forbes: 

Yesterday, The United Nations released its Emissions Gap Report 2020, an annual assessment of contributions to greenhouse gas and carbon emissions. The report has some notable information amid an array of complicated projections that may or may not come true. It claims, for instance, that “despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise.” 

Censored Hunter Biden Laptop Story Comes Back Around to Bite Twitter By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/19/censored-hunter-biden-laptop-story-comes-back-around-to-bite-twitter-n1426849

The former Delaware computer repair shop owner who gave Rudi Giuliani and the FBI emails alleged to be from Hunter Biden’s laptop has again sued Twitter for defamation. John Paul Mac Isaac claimed that Twitter defamed him by censoring a New York Post story over its alleged use of “hacked materials.” Due to Twitter’s suppression of the story, Americans branded Mac Isaac a hacker, costing him business opportunities and ultimately leading him to shut down his business, the lawsuit claims.

“Plaintiff is not a hacker and the information obtained from the computer does not constitute hacked materials because Plaintiff lawfully gained access to the computer, first with the permission of its owner, Biden, and then, after Biden failed to retrieve the recovered data despite Plaintiff’s reuses, in accordance with the Mac Shop’s abandoned property police,” the lawsuit claims. “Plaintiff, as a direct result of Defendant Twitter’s actions and statements, is now widely considered a hacker.”

Mac Isaac filed a similar defamation lawsuit against Twitter late last year, seeking no less than $500 million in damages, but a judge at the Florida court in which he filed tossed the suit over lack of jurisdiction. The new lawsuit aims to address the jurisdiction issue, The Washington Examiner reported.

The new lawsuit claims defamation damages greater than $75,000 and demands that Twitter “make a public retraction of all false statements and to issue a public apology.”

Last October, The New York Post published a bombshell story that implicated then-candidate Joe Biden in his son Hunter’s notorious foreign business deals. Hunter Biden had notoriously cashed in on his father’s name with lucrative deals in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere — while Joe Biden spearheaded Obama administration policy in Ukraine and China.

It’s official: U.S. back in the Paris climate club By Valerie Volcovici

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-usa/it-is-official-u-s-back-in-the-paris-climate-club-idUSKBN2AJ16T

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States officially rejoined the Paris climate agreement on Friday, reinvigorating the global fight against climate change as the Biden administration plans drastic emissions cuts over the next three decades.

Scientists and foreign diplomats have welcomed the U.S. return to the treaty, which became official here 30 days after President Joe Biden ordered the move on his first day in office.

Since nearly 200 countries signed the 2015 pact to prevent catastrophic climate change, the United States has been the only country to exit. Then-President Donald Trump took the step, claiming climate action would cost too much.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry took part in virtual events on Friday to mark the U.S. re-entry, including appearances with the ambassadors of the UK and Italy and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, saying the United States will try to make up for lost time due to Trump’s withdrawal.

“We feel an obligation to work overtime to try to make up the difference. We have a lot to do,” Kerry said at the event with the UK and Italian ambassadors.

Biden has promised to chart a path toward net-zero U.S. emissions by 2050. Scientists have said that goal is in line with what is needed, while also stressing that global emissions need to drop by half by 2030 to prevent the most devastating impacts of global warming.

54% of Voters Say Biden Is a ‘Puppet’ of the Left

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/biden_administration/54_o

Less than a month after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, most voters believe the Democrat is “a puppet of the radical left” and not the moderate “nice guy” he was portrayed as being during the election campaign.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 54% of Likely U.S. Voters say they agree with this statement: “Joe Biden’s not the moderate nice guy that they made him out to be. He’s a puppet of the radical left.” Forty percent (40%) of voters disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Our Dire Future Under Biden Larry Alexander

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/our_dire_future_under_biden.html Our Dire Future Under Biden Larry Alexander

We are living in what seem to me to be terribly fraught times, times that are even more worrisome than those at the height of Cold War tensions, when we schoolchildren were drilled on what to do in case of a nuclear attack–an attack that was in fact highly unlikely to occur. Why do I say this? What are these overweening concerns?

Many relate to government policies. The Biden administration seems hell bent on reversing every Trump administration policy, even those policies that were quite successful.

On illegal immigration, which the Trump team managed to reduce significantly, team Biden seeks to make illegal entry easier and its legal consequences less of a deterrent. This will almost assuredly result in a significant influx of the unskilled, themselves infiltrated by gang members, cartel mules, parentless children, and perhaps even foreign terrorists.

Where the Trump administration managed to achieve energy independence, team Biden has now halted drilling on federal lands and offshore and has killed the Keystone pipeline — which won’t reduce the supply of oil coming into the U.S. but will require it to be transported via carbon-emitting trucks and trains. Insane! With respect to the climate, which saw carbon emissions decrease during the Trump years, team Biden has rejoined the Paris accord, which will have no effect on the world’s major polluters but will impose needless costs on Americans. (And why, if team Biden is really concerned with greenhouse gases, does it not push for nuclear power, which is clean and less an eyesore than wind farms and acres of solar panels?)

Critical Race Theory Is Coming to Your Suburban Community By Linda R. Killian

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/critical_race_theory_is_coming_to_your_suburban_community.html

Radicals pushing a Marxist and racist pedagogy called Critical Race Theory (CRT) have achieved their goal of destroying quality education in K-12 school systems in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and other large, progressive-controlled cities. But if suburban parents think they are safe from these depredations due to the existing quality of their school systems and parental involvement, they are wrong.  CRT has already quietly established residence in affluent suburban communities under the benign-sounding guise of Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-S) under the aegis of state education departments, teachers’ unions and the burgeoning CRT industry.

For example, in 2018, the New York State Board of Regents engaged the New York University/Steinhardt Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools to develop a “framework for culturally-responsive-sustaining education. As a result of the Regents’ adoption of the resulting guidance document, students and parents in the affluent suburbs in Westchester County, which is immediately north of New York City, are being subjected to efforts to perform “equity audits”, “cultural proficiency training” and culturally responsive educational programs.

While the language of CR-S may seem benign at first sight, these programs are based on CRT, an ideology that seeks educational “equity” by uprooting the biases between the oppressors (white, privileged students) and the oppressed (non-white students). The New York State Department of Education gave its blessing to these efforts in its guidance document, available on the state’s website, which has the starting point that our current educational system has failed the diverse needs of children

New York’s guideline makes no bones about the alleged culprits of performance inequities and where this is headed. “A complex system of biases and structural inequities is at play, deeply rooted in our country’s history, culture and institutions. This system of inequity – which routinely confers advantage and disadvantage based on linguistic background, gender, skin color and other characteristics – must be clearly understood, directly challenged and fundamentally transformed.”

ONE WEEK IN “PROGRESSIVE” AMERICA-CAROLINE GLICK

http://carolineglick.com/one-week-in-progressive-america/

The Democrats had a lousy week. It began with former President Donald Trump’s acquittal in the Senate.

Trump’s acquittal was a major blow to the Democrats. It isn’t that anyone believed Trump would be convicted. Whether Republicans love or hate the former president, the fact is that it is unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former officeholder. And for that reason alone, there was no chance that more than a smattering of Republicans would support the move.

But once their farcical trial ended, public focus moved to the Democrats – who now control both houses of Congress and the White House. True, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is already planning to drag Trump back to center stage with her “January 6 Truth Commission.” But that won’t happen for several months. And in the meantime, for the first time in five years, the Democrats find themselves, and their actions, the focus of public attention.

The first casualties of the scrutiny have been the Democrat governors of the most populous Democrat-run states in the Union – Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California.

After a nearly a year in which Cuomo was lavished with adulation for his leadership of the coronavirus pandemic in New York; upheld as the future of the Democratic Party; touted as a possible candidate for Attorney General; and even won an Emmy for his press conferences, the truth has caught up with “America’s governor.”

Last March, as the number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized in New York hospitals mounted and fears that hospitals would be overwhelmed rose, Trump ordered the Army to set up a field hospital at the Javits Center and sent the Navy’s USS Comfort floating hospital to New York harbor. Not wanting to give any credit to Trump, Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take in COVID-19 patients from hospitals. The result was disastrous. COVID-19 spread like wildfire among the most vulnerable population and thousands of elderly New Yorkers died.

Republicans and conservative journalists long pointed out that Cuomo’s move was lethally misguided. But protected by the media, Cuomo indignantly denied the allegations.

Palestinians: EU Facilitating Hamas Victory by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17055/eu-hamas-elections

It is important to note that Israel did not stop the Palestinians in the past from holding presidential and parliamentary elections in 1996, 2005 and 2006.

Israel did not even stop Arab residents of Jerusalem from running in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election as candidates for Hamas, the Islamist movement that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and seeks to replace it with an Islamic state.

Hamas ran under the slogan “Islam is the solution” and promised to end corruption and bring good governance to the Palestinians… [and] also promised voters that it would resort to an “armed struggle” against Israel.

[W]hen Hamas participated in the 2006 election, which was also encouraged by the EU, the Islamist movement was still on the EU’s list of terrorist organizations. The EU, however, did not try to stop the terrorist organization from running in that election.

The Quartet members should have set the conditions before, not after the election. They had every right to do so: the Hamas-led government was expecting the international community to continue providing financial aid to the Palestinians.

The Hamas-led government that was formed after the 2006 election was boycotted by the EU and most of the international community. Why? Because Hamas, in their eyes, is a terrorist organization. If so, why did the EU and other Western countries not object to Hamas’s participation in the elections before the vote? Did Hamas become a terrorist organization only after it won the election?

The EU and other international parties perfectly well see that Hamas will run in upcoming election and again promise Palestinians to continue the “armed struggle’ against Israel. They can perfectly well hear Hamas saying that its goal is to “liberate Palestine, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.” It seems that Hamas’s goal — finishing what Hitler started, annihilating the Jews — is precisely what the EU and the international community secretly, or unconsciously, want.

Facing pressure from the European Union, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last month set dates for holding general elections for the first time in 15 years.

The EU was quick to welcome Abbas’s decision to hold elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, the presidency and the PLO National Council.

Politicized ‘Science’ Is Not Science at All Science exists to assist in our understanding of the natural universe, but it has no answers whatsoever to life’s most existentially pressing questions. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/18/politicized-science-is-not-science-at-all/

Most middle schoolers or high schoolers in America are taught a mode of empirical inquiry and knowledge attainment usually referred to as the “scientific method.” Although the discipline has origins dating back to classical antiquity, the term emerged in the 19th century and took on sustained life in the 20th century. The multistep “scientific method,” as it is generally formulated, amounts to something along the lines of: 1) problem; 2) research; 3) hypothesis; 4) experiment; 5) data collection; 6) analysis; and 7) conclusion.

Rational empiricism and a skepticism of the status quo inhere in the very process; they are baked into the entire enterprise. The purpose of the scientific method is to constantly contest and, when necessary, disprove flawed hypotheses and mistaken conclusions previously deduced about the workings of the natural world. A basic thought experiment is instructive: Imagine what sort of world we might have today had Copernicus, Galileo and all subsequent astronomers blindly accepted the erroneous, then-dominant belief in a geocentric universe.

True, as the conservative icon Edmund Burke taught, epistemological humility is a defining trait of political statesmanship. But science is not, contra the Left’s frequent hysterical shrieks, synonymous with politics. On the contrary, any scientist worth his salt must approach his discipline with something resembling the opposite of epistemological humility—skepticism, that is, of the legitimacy of the inherited status quo and an insatiable desire to challenge the status quo’s underlying precepts. Only through such intellectually unconstrained, methodologically rigorous testing can we approach confidence in the validity of any claimed scientific knowledge.

Alas, the Democratic Party, America’s would-be “party of science,” whose leading lights bellow, “Trust the science!” as an authoritative command akin to the tablet-bearing Moses’ descent from Mount Sinai, missed the memo. Whether the issue is climate change, COVID-19 mask mandates, pandemic-era school reopenings or any other number of issues, the Left browbeats its political opponents with the faux mantle of science and accuses those who have the temerity to ask questions as science “deniers.” Flat-earthers no doubt nod with approval, but Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein scowl from the grave.

Elite Private Schools Go Woke “Social justice” indoctrination will continue to metastasize until parents wake up and act. The cement is hardening—the time to act is now.By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/18/elite-private-schools-go-woke/

Some parents are paying $50,000 a year for their kids to be indoctrinated.

Colleges have been fertile fields of woke craziness for years now. Just a few recent examples: Middlebury College Professor Jonathan Miller-Lane claims that “To preserve American democracy, Whiteness must be demilitarized so that bodies designated as ‘White’ might become human.” A Washington and Lee University law professor insists that votes of black Americans should be counted twice as a form of “voter reparations.” Not to be outdone, students, alumni, and faculty at Assumption University, a Catholic school in Massachusetts, have attacked the school’s promotion of Catholic teaching on marriage and abortion.

It’s no secret that the wacky world of woke has also made deep inroads into our nation’s K-12 public schools. But what about private K-12 schools? Like Covid-19, the woke pandemic does not stop at the schoolhouse door—not even at the gates of the chichi private ones. For example, Brentwood School is a top-rated private institution located in a tony part of West Los Angeles. Parents of the 1,000 K-12 students who attend the school fork over—depending on grade level—about $37,725 a year. The school boasts that all its students who graduate go on to attend a four-year college.

You might think that parents paying large sums of money to educate their kids would expect them to get something of a nonpoliticized education. But no. Brentwood School has gotten into bed with the diversicrats and the segregationists. The school’s “Community-Building Sessions” are right out of the Jim Crow South.