Displaying posts published in

May 2021

An election audit in New Hampshire may be the pebble that diverts the stream By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/an_election_audit_in_new_hampshire_may_be_the_pebble_that_diverts_the_stream.html

I’ve shied away from reporting on events in Maricopa because it would require more hours than I have in a day to track intelligently the back-and-forth in that recount. My touchstone there is the fact that the Democrats’ and NeverTrumpers’ ferocious efforts to stop the count strike me as the actions of people with something to hide. Otherwise, they’d be there helping to prove that they’re right. Events in a small town in New Hampshire, though, are more interesting because a low-key audit may reveal serious election anomalies harming Republicans.

Windham, New Hampshire, a town of 14,853 people, has long been a stalwart Republican stronghold in an otherwise Democrat state. As was the case throughout New Hampshire, it relied on AccuVote machines to collect and tally its 2020 votes.

When the election in Windham ended, Kristi St. Laurent, the Democrat candidate, had lost by only 24 votes. With that close a margin, she naturally demanded a hand recount.

The hand recount revealed something very peculiar: St. Laurent hadn’t lost by 24 votes; she’d lost by 420 votes. In a small election, that meant that her margin of defeat wasn’t 0.005% but was, instead, 9.6%, which is a significant loss.

Smart People Say Dumb Things: Bill Gates Edition By Norman Rogers

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/smart_people_say_dumb_things_bill_gates_edition.html

Bill Gates has written a book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Unfortunately, the book is a disaster. He doesn’t get past the introduction before making mistakes that negate the rest of the book. He claims Carbon Dioxide emissions must be reduced to zero to avoid a climate disaster. Assuming that CO2 can even cause a climate disaster, about half the CO2 emitted every year is reabsorbed by the Earth – by the oceans and by plants. Thus, you don’t need zero, a fifty percent reduction would stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is vastly more difficult to cut out all emissions compared to cutting them in half.

Gates claims we have to deploy solar and wind faster and smarter. I wrote a book about wind and solar with the title: Dumb Energy. There is no smart deployment of wind and solar. They are very dumb and very, very expensive. It is routine for solar to cost five times more than electricity from natural gas. Heavy solar deployment makes it even more expensive due to the use of auxiliary batteries.

Gates says we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies. That’s called the pie in the sky.

Bill Gates strikes me as a good guy, especially compared to the nasty guys running Apple, Facebook and Twitter. He is sincerely trying to help the poor people of the world through his foundation. He is simply out of his depth on climate and is probably talking only to the promoters of climate disaster. There are plenty of scientists that are climate skeptics.

You might think that having a lot of money frees one from the chains imposed by the need to please one’s employer, friends, family and social group. But, rarely do rich people take unpopular positions. Trump is one of the few. Rich people are as much slaves to political fashion as anyone else.

The same applies to scientists. It is unusual for a scientist to question popular wisdom among his peers. As for global warming, an employed scientist risks being fired if he expresses skepticism. Global warming fear is the source of vast funding for science. The hope is that giving money to the people that perpetrated the fraud can save us from it. Most of the scientists publicly skeptical of global warming are retired or otherwise independent of large institutions that hate dissent.

Censorship: A Personal Story They cannot debate me, so I must be attacked. Bill Warner

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/censorship-personal-story-bill-warner/

I find the biggest shift of thought in my 80 years of life is censorship. I want to share with you my personal experiences.

I have spoken as an expert on Political Islam in the US, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovakia, Kosovo, Poland, and Israel. I have spoken in the Danish Parliament and the German Bundestag. I have advised European Parliament members, politicians, heads of intelligence agencies and a future prime minister. I prepared white papers on Political Islam for the FBI.

Let me clarify my methodology. All Islamic political and religious doctrine is found in 3 texts – Koran, traditions of Mohammed (Hadith) and life of Mohammed (the Sira). The only ideas that I speak about come from Allah and Mohammed. Political Islam is the part of Islamic doctrine that deals with the non-Muslim, the Kafir. Oddly enough, more Islamic doctrinal text is devoted to politics than religion.

My books sold like crazy. I was selling books by the tens of thousands.  My Sharia Law for Non-Muslims was a #1 best seller on Islamic law on Amazon. My video “Why We Are Afraid” had millions of views on YouTube. YouTube contacted me and assigned a staff member to me to teach me how to make better videos. When you Googled “political Islam” my work filled the first 4 screens. It is impossible to dominate a topic to that degree, but I did it. What made it possible was the fact that I defined and popularized the term “Political Islam.”  Offers to lecture and for print and internet interviews poured in.

But a storm cloud appeared on the horizon. The Tennessean newspaper put out a Sunday front page article which said that I was an anti-Muslim bigot and a hater. This was followed by several other attack pieces. An organization called the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, (the SPLC is not a civil rights group, is not southern, is not poor and is not a law center) declared that I was one of the biggest bigots in the US. Indeed, the SPLC said Nashville was a hate city because I live here.

Race-Crazed Disney Backs Down Resisting woke corporations works. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/race-crazed-disney-backs-down-matthew-vadum/

A humiliated Walt Disney Corporation scrubbed its bizarre critical race theory-based employee indoctrination materials from the Internet after a think tank scholar exposed them.

Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow and director of an initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute, celebrated Disney’s conspicuous retreat from the Left’s rarefied anti-white anti-Americanism, the New York Post reported May 13. Rufo defines critical race theory as “racialized Marxism.”

Disney “has removed its entire antiracism program from the company’s internal portal,” he said, “effectively scrubbing it out of existence.”

“This is a major victory in the war against ‘woke capital,’” he said, noting a “significant backlash from the public” after his initial report.

“Disney was peddling the most toxic elements of critical race theory — and my reporting led to immediate changes within the company,” Rufo said.

The environment at Disney has become increasingly politicized in recent months, Rufo reported employees telling him. The account appeared in a City Journal article he penned, titled, “The Wokest Place on Earth.”

There are “almost daily memos, suggested readings, panels, and seminars that [are] all centered around antiracism,” one said. Disney is “completely ideologically one-sided” and discourages conservative and Christian employees from expressing their views.

100 Days of Failure All Biden had to do was not mess with Trump’s success. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/100-days-failure-bruce-thornton/

The Biden administration took over the government with the wind at its back thanks to Donald Trump. With the COVID vaccines reining in the pandemic and things getting back to normal, all Biden had to do was not get in the way of success. But a lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a leftwing, noisy base eager to complete Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the U.S., have led at home and abroad to actions and policies seemingly calculated to compromise our interests and security and erode our political freedom.

We can start with our southern border. Trump’s initiatives such as building a wall, stepping-up deportations, and striking a deal that kept asylum seekers in Mexico had slowed considerably the number of illegal crossings, leading to a reduction in violence from gangsters like MS-13 that flourished in so-called sanctuary cities; the end of the catch-and-release policy that dumped unvetted aliens into the country’s interior; and limiting the cruel deaths of children on the trek north.

But these successful policies interfered with the bipartisan need for de facto open borders to provide cheap labor for Wall Street, and more voters for the DNC. More important, no matter how successful, such polices were tainted by the “wicked” Donald Trump, the populist bull that wrecked the political establishment’s remunerative china shop. So they had to go.

The result has been a return to the Obama era’s spectacle of children and teens packed into squalid holding pens, increased infestations of cartel traffickers in people and drugs, and two consecutive months of about 175,000 apprehensions of border-crossers each month––the highest in two decades. All reports from those on the ground––from border patrol agents to residents to local government agencies––indicate a serious crisis that will insidiously spread across the country. But president Joe Biden is instructed to say that such influxes happen every year at this time, that Donald Trump left a “Godawful mess,” and that “We’ve now got control” over the ongoing stampede of border-crossers.

On a Party-Line Vote, House Democrats Reject Sanctions on Overseas Hamas Supporters By Jim Geraghty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-a-party-line-vote-house-democrats-reject-sanctions-on-overseas-hamas-supporters/?utm_

Another sterling moment in American legislative history: “Democrats blocked a bid to bring the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act up for consideration in a 217-209 vote along party lines. The bill, introduced by Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., would impose sanctions on foreign entities known to have provided financial assistance to Hamas, among other measures.” The same bill passed the House unanimously in 2019, but was not taken up for a vote in the Senate. The U.S. currently has sanctions against Hamas itself and some limits on business dealings with the Palestinian Authority.

Still, there’s some evidence that Democrats who took this stance, opposing sanctions against Hamas supporters, are simply listening to their base. A new Trafalgar Group survey indicates that 38.5 percent of self-identified Democrats blame Israel for the current violence, 15.5 percent blame Hamas, about 6 percent each blame Iran and the Palestinian Authority, and 34.4 percent aren’t sure.

Meanwhile, 12.5 percent of self-identified Republicans blame Israel for the current violence, 42.5 percent blame Hamas, 14.6 percent blame Iran, 10.5 percent blame the Palestinian Authority, and 19.8 percent aren’t sure.

The Mast proposal forced Democrats’ hand. They could either take this action, and offer the potential of a genuine financial squeeze on Hamas, boxing in the Biden administration. Or the Democrats could look soft against a group launching rockets into civilian areas. (Maybe those Democrats saw an old photo of a Hamas rally and thought it was just Robert Byrd and Ralph Northam.)

Chicago Mayor Refusing to Accept Interview Requests from White Journalists By Isaac Schorr

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chicago-mayor-refusing-to-accept-interview-requests-from-white-journalists/

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot is only accepting interview requests from “black and brown journalists” as a matter of policy, according to a spokesman.

“As @chicagosmayor reaches her two year midway point as mayor, her spokeswoman says Lightfoot is granting 1 on 1 interviews-only to Black or Brown journalists,” local political journalist Mary Ann Ahern tweeted.

On Twitter, Lightfoot defended the policy, writing that she “ran [for mayor] to break up the status quo that was failing so many. That isn’t just in City Hall. It’s a shame that in 2021, the City Hall press corps is overwhelmingly White in a city where more than half of the city identifies as Black, Latino, AAPI or Native American.”

“This is exactly why I’m being intentional about prioritizing media requests from POC reporters on the occasion of the two-year anniversary of my inauguration as mayor of this great city” Lightfoot added, before noting that “we must be intentional about doing better.”

The Democrats Have a Kamala Harris Problem By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-democrats-have-a-kamala-harris-problem/

It seems indisputable that the Democratic Party has a real interest in Harris being more popular than she is.

A mericans have never much liked Kamala Harris. Despite being theoretically well-placed to dominate the 2020 Democratic primary, she dropped out of the race in December of 2019 with just 3 percent support nationally and about 7 percent support in her home state of California. Now holding the vice presidency, Harris remains impressively unbeloved. Per a recent YouGov poll, her net approval rating is ten points underwater among all voters and 25 points underwater among independents, 44 percent of whom say they have a “very unfavorable” opinion. For a vice president to engender such feelings — especially at this stage in the cycle — is unusual, to say the least.

Still, that Harris is unpopular should come as no great surprise, given that she somehow manages to combine into a single package a transparent insincerity, an unvarnished authoritarianism, and a tendency toward precisely the sort of self-satisfied progressivism that helped the Republicans to limit their losses at the last general election. If her apologists wish to, they can pretend that the reaction Harris yields is “gendered” or “systemic” or “inequitable” or whatever other bastardized academic term is fashionable this week, and they should feel free to knock themselves out doing so. Deep down, though, they must know that America isn’t the problem here. The problem is that Harris is a phony. It remains the case that, throughout her entire public career, almost nobody has looked at Kamala Harris and thought, “Yes, she’s the person we need to lead us.” Sure, she’s won a couple of elections. But even in deep blue California, she has struggled. Her 2010 victory in the attorney general’s race was decided by just 74,000 votes out of more than 9.6 million cast, and ended up being so close that it took three weeks before the result was finally clear. There is a reason that, having been picked as Biden’s running mate, Harris was quickly shoved offstage.

Media Bias: How ‘Woke’ AP Got Caught Lying (Again) About Israel And Terrorist Hamas

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/20/media-bias-how-woke-ap-got-caught-lying-again-about-israel-and-terrorist-hamas/

For journalists of a certain age, the Associated Press was the gold standard for hard, objective news. Facts mattered, opinions didn’t. It influenced the world. Even now, its website brags that “More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.”

If true, that might not be a good thing. After recent revelations about its bias in reporting on Israel’s conflict with Hamas, the AP has again shown itself to be just another left-biased media outlet. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, AP’s reporting can’t be trusted.

This is a tragedy for journalism. Generations of reporters knew they could cull facts and quotes from AP stories and trust that they were accurate and unbiased.

That’s no longer the case.

“Once considered the epitome of neutrality and fairness,” the American Spectator recently wrote, “the AP has become a woke organization.”

Its reporting simply isn’t reliable. AP’s rage over the Israel Defense Forces’ destruction of its offices in Gaza is a perfect example.

Bassem Eid: An Open Letter to My Palestinian Brethren

https://www.investigativeproject.org/8858/bassem-eid-an-open-letter-to-my-palestinian

Thanks to Nurit Greenger for this….rsk

I know that the past 10 days have been incredibly devastating and equally bewildering. Why is the world letting the Israelis do this to you? I am writing to you, my Palestinian brothers and sisters, to open your eyes from the disinformation that your real captor, Hamas, is feeding you.

To my Palestinian brethren, I implore you: please do not let Hamas brainwash you into thinking it has “achieved” anything on our behalf.

Do not fall prey to its lies and manipulations. Hamas is not a social justice movement and it certainly does not care about me or you. It is a criminal gang that only cares about increasing its own power at all of our expense. Your lives start to improve only when the Hamas reign of terror finally ends. Only then will you actually taste the fruits of real peace with your Jewish cousins.

Yes, I know that to some in the media Hamas has more or less achieved its goal in this vile destructive war it started 10 days ago. It has spread fake news about Sheikh Jarrah being the core of Jewish aggression. It has incited violent riots at Al Aqsa by falsely claiming that the Jews are going to destroy Al Aqsa when that has never been true. And then it exploited the situation it created by starting a war with Israel to then justify its rocket attacks. All the while, Hamas showed Palestinians a clear contrast between its ability to act and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party’s inability to do much of anything.