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January 2022

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Cuomo Skates on Sex and Mass Murder  Cuomo’s narcissistic sociopathy allowed him to callously sacrifice the lives of thousands of older people for the putative greater good of getting rid of President Trump.   By Lisa Schiffren

By on January 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/05/cuomo-skates-on-sex-and-mass-murder/

Albany District Attorney David Soares on Tuesday announced he would be dropping the last sexual harassment charge against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. D.A.s from other New York counties announced the same thing last week. So, that enormous folder of harassment charges, which were the stated cause for Cuomo’s resignation in August, were as thin and unprosecutable as they appeared. 

Of far greater importance, no charges have been filed against Cuomo for the deliberate or negligent killing of 15,000 senior citizens  who had the bad luck to be housed in New York state nursing homes as COVID-19 invaded our shores.  I suppose this was to be expected.

Surely, we are too sophisticated to assume that any such politically motivated wrongdoing, critical to the imposition of lockdowns and other general deprivations of freedom and traditional liberties, would be punished. Still, it’s worth re-examining the facts we have, and the   presumptive deals that got Andy off any hook at all. 

In August, when it became clear that Cuomo would be forced to resign for various petty acts of “sexual harassment,” I noted that it was a ploy to get the obnoxious Andrew off the political stage. 

That had two benefits for his allies and bosses: First, from the point of view of the D.C. cabal running our country, it removed from contention a man who, despite his visible flaws, might have been a threat to Biden-Harris in 2024. Remember, the media loved him, his “leadership,” and his flamboyant “Cuomosexuality.” Second, in return for his exit, the cabal made clear it would ensure that Cuomo never faced charges for this heinous act of what looks like mass murder. Why else would the egomaniacal Cuomo have agreed to exit? The harassment charges were always thin. 

Et voilà. It’s a new year, and  we see that Cuomo will not be prosecuted for the one sexual harassment charge that looked provable. Or the 15,000 deaths. The presumptive deal held. Though one wonders how these women who were encouraged to gin up real anger about Andrew’s patting and comments feel today. Do they feel foolish or manipulated? Probably not. Half of them likely were in on the joke. The other half actually believe that a comment about a dress constitutes rape.

It is important to remember that the D.C. cabal, which may theoretically have requested that  Cuomo  institute policies that would kill those seniors, needed those deaths in order to make the case for a national lockdown and to institute mail-in voting practices that would allow Democrats to get rid of Trump. 

It remains true that this case—the deaths—which is central to all that is happening to deprive Americans of real self-government and constitutional freedom due to various COVID mandates—should have led to indictments and discovery. 

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Who Are the Real Insurrectionists? Stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging a far more dangerous and insidious revolution in the shadows than anything threatened by the American Right. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/05/who-are-the-real-insurrectionists/

Recently, Democrats have been despondent over Joe Biden’s sinking polls. His policies on the economy, energy, foreign policy, the border, and COVID-19 all have lost majority support. 

As a result, the Left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when they expect to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when they fear losing the presidency, Republicans will “destroy democracy” or stage a coup. 

A cynic might suggest that they praise democracy when they get elected—only to claim it is broken when they lose. Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate. Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.

After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution? Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College? Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old, 50-state union? 

Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?

The Constitution also clearly states that “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Who slammed through the impeachment of Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?

Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen. Who did both?

The Left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel’s report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.

Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration potentially lifesaving new COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of “equity.” 

The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19. 

Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny “equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof.” Who is behind the new racial discrimination?

In summer 2020, many local and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity—if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.

Currently, the Biden Administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law. 

The Biden Administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border—in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.

The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet all U.S. citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated. 

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Jihad’s Afghan Base How the mujahideen exploited our Cold War support. Andrew Harrod

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/jihads-afghan-base-andrew-harrod/

In Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, the “United States was convinced that it was supporting a genuine national liberation struggle, albeit with a strong Islamic foundation,” wrote Yossef Bodansky in 1999. In reality, as this House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare Director analyzed in his book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, this Muslim war against Soviet infidels would become a base for global jihad.

While President Ronald Reagan spoke of supporting Afghan “freedom fighters” within a worldwide Cold War struggle against Communism, in Afghanistan jihadists such as the previously discussed Palestinian Abdullah Azzam had other ideas. These mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden coming from countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia fought the Soviets and their Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) puppet regime not for market democracies but God’s rule under sharia. These holy warriors meanwhile received a warm embrace from Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ran America’s covert aid operation to the mujahideen.

This self-proclaimed Islamic republic has always pursued national security in its Central and South Asian neighborhood by supporting allied jihadist proxies such as Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar’s Hizb-I Islami. Accordingly, Bodansky noted,

ISI adamantly opposed supporting Afghan resistance organizations associated with the predominantly tribal-traditional Pushtun population, who were essentially pro-Western. Instead the ISI insisted on diverting some 70 percent of the foreign aid to the Islamist parties—particularly Hizb-I Islami—who were inherently and virulently anti-American.

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Archbishop Tutu’s Legacy – and the Apartheid Slur Against Israel The continuing slanders against the Jewish State. Richard L. Cravatts

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/mendacious-apartheid-slur-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

South African archbishop and Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, who died on December 26th at the age of 90, was justifiably hailed as a champion of racial equality, especially related to his role in helping to dismantle South Africa’s system of apartheid. But while he is widely recognized for his commitment to human rights, his relationship with Jews and the Jewish state has been more troublesome, particularly his role in helping to legitimize and prolong the slander that Israel itself has established a system of apartheid in its oppression of the ever-aggrieved Palestinians.

In a 2002 speech he gave in Boston (the transcript of which also appeared in The Guardian), in one of many instances, Tutu pointed to what he perceived to be parallels between racist South Africa and Israel. “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land,” he said; “it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.”

And in a 2014 statement in which he lent support to the toxic BDS campaign to delegitimize Israel among the community of nations, Tutu was at it again, suggesting that there was a similarity between South African apartheid and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and that the tactics to end that misbehavior could be similar.

“In South Africa,” he said, “we could not have achieved our democracy without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime.”  

Tutu, of course, was not alone in propagating the apartheid slur against Israel, even though he possessed a particular moral authority on that topic.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

California Pushes Kids to Worship Aztec Gods Welcome to the enlightenment of “Ethnic Studies.” Matthew Vadum

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/california-has-kids-worshiping-aztec-gods-matthew-vadum/

California’s long-running descent into madness continues as its bizarre Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) now encourages public school students to pray to bloodthirsty Aztec deities.

The California State Board of Education approved the almost 900-page ESMC in March 2021, saying teaching children about the systemic racism that supposedly plagues America has never been more urgent, as Fox News reported at the time.

“The curriculum’s unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice,” Frank Xu, president of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, said months ago as his organization filed a lawsuit against the state.

“This public endorsement of the Aztec religion fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment.”

The legal action, Californians for Equal Rights Foundation v. State of California, was filed Sept. 3, 2021, in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego, by attorneys from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm focusing on religious freedom. The foundation is a non-profit civil rights organization headquartered in San Diego.

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Russia’s Putin to NATO: Commit Suicide or Face All-Out War by Soeren Kern

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18096/russia-putin-nato

The Russian demands, which effectively require NATO to commit suicide, are so obviously outrageous and unmeetable that Western analysts are split over interpreting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motives. Some say he is using the impossible list of demands as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Others think he is playing a weak hand to try to divide the West and reorder Europe’s security architecture in Russia’s favor.

Germany appears to be the West’s weak link the face of Russian pressure. On January 3, the German newspaper Bild reported that Scholz is seeking “a new beginning” in relations with Moscow. This has alarmed smaller European countries which fear that Germany will reach an accommodation with Putin behind their backs.

“The Russian leader… believes he has a window of opportunity to act. He is worried that the risk of Kiev joining NATO will increase if a stronger U.S. leader… comes to power…. Regretfully, the Biden administration’s ‘experts,’ like Obama’s before them who fecklessly sought a ‘reset’ with Russia, are likely to fall into Putin’s trap.” — Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert.

“A second Russian attack on Ukraine, should it happen, ought to serve as a long-overdue wake-up call for the West about Russia’s intentions to establish an exclusive sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and assert Moscow’s claims to exercising influence in Central Europe, within NATO’s perimeter…. Europe’s security would deteriorate dramatically. The zone of competition would shift from Eastern Europe to Central Europe and the Baltic states.” — Andrew Michta, geopolitical analyst

“The West should immediately impose tough sanctions on Russia, provide serious defense assistance to Ukraine, demonstrate unambivalent support for Ukrainian sovereignty, and project moral and strategic resolve. Unfortunately, current trends and past behavior provide little cause for optimism that the ‘free world’ will rise to the challenge.” — Anne Pierce, foreign policy expert

“Westerners do not seem to understand what is at stake. They think that only the fate of Ukraine is being decided, which is of less concern to them than that of Armenia…. They resemble those who in 1939 believed that Hitler’s demands would be limited to Danzig. However, one only has to look at the texts proposed by Moscow to understand that the stakes are quite different.” — Françoise Thom, French historian of Russia.

“In 1946-7 we knew that freedom was worth dying for, something that is obviously forgotten today. After Munich in 1938, the West was ashamed to have abandoned Czechoslovakia into Hitler’s clutches. Today we are cowardly letting down Ukraine, but we do not even realize our dishonor, nor the danger of giving in to an aggressor. We are like the Byzantines who were discussing the sex of angels while the Ottoman forces were destroying the city walls.” — Françoise Thom.

Russia has threatened war if the United States and its NATO allies fail to comply — unconditionally — with sweeping demands for a new security arrangement in Europe.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Two American Crises By Kyle Smith

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/two-american-crises/

Last January 6 was terrible. The ongoing abuse of our children in schools will do far more lasting damage.

A mericans are reflecting on two important crises this week. One, last year’s January 6 Capitol riot, was thoroughly investigated and its perpetrators are being severely punished. The other, the ongoing systemic abuse of our children by the Democrat-run education system, has been shrugged at, has gone wholly unpunished, and is barely acknowledged even as millions of us observe it in horrified disbelief that such hideous mistreatment can be official policy in the greatest country on earth.

One event was properly labeled something that must never be allowed to happen again, and it almost certainly won’t. (Because the Capitol Police will be prepared next time.) One event will continue every day, indefinitely, until Democrats finally get tired of subjugating our children and decide to stop.

The Capitol riot was a series of spectacular crimes that deserved spectacular punishment, as we at NR argued at the time. But what’s going on in schools is likely to do far greater long-term damage to America. The number of children being significantly harmed by nonsensical Covid restrictions such as closed schools, forced masking, forbidden talking at lunch, and canceled extracurricular activities vital for social, emotional, and physical development is in the millions. And how many young people are we killing by driving them into depressions from which there is no exit?

The invaluable David Leonhardt of the New York Times published this week a grueling summation of what pandemic restrictions — not the pandemic, which has more or less bypassed children — are doing to the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Every day our kids spend under this nightmare regime is a day of development that is lost forever. “Kids are resilient,” we tell ourselves. Are they? It seems to me something closer to the opposite is the case: Severe psychological traumas endured in childhood rarely disappear, and very often they mutate into major problems in adulthood. Psychologically speaking, kids are fragile. What kind of future are we building if we allow this horror to continue? It’s been nearly two years of this. How alienated, bitter, antisocial, and resentful are these kids going to be when they’re grown? We are poisoning our most valuable crop.

“American children are in crisis,” Leonhardt baldly and accurately states, citing sagging test scores, a spike in demand for emergency treatment of children, a 51 percent increase in suicide attempts leading to ER visits by teen girls, and anecdotal evidence of an increase in misbehavior by pupils in school. Yet some 2,200 schools are closing this week all over the country — in Atlanta, Cleveland, and some New York City suburbs. In Chicago, in-person classes are canceled. In Massachusetts, the largest teachers’ union is calling for school closings.

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Decoding the Tyranny of the Administrative State By John Dale Dunn

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/decoding_the_tyranny_of_the_administrative_state_.html

Purchasing Submission:  Conditions, Power, and Freedom, by Philip Hamburger, 336 pp Hardcover $35 Kindle $33.25,   ISBN-13 978-0674258235, Harvard University Press, 2021.

Professor of Law Philip Hamburger of Columbia University has been campaigning for years to measure, define and condemn the growth of a powerful administrative state in America.     

The late, great Angelo Codevilla rang the alarm about the excesses of centralized oligarchic statism and an army of unelected bureaucrats eating away at liberty for citizens under the constitution in his essay, “Scientific Pretense and Democracy,” followed on by another wellreceived  2010 essay “The Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution,” about the growth of an unelected totalitarian ruling class, whose influence and power are derived from “expertise” that allowed them to exert power over and intimidate the citizenry as the self-anointed oligarchy.  

Professor Hamburger, Friedman Professor of Constitutional Law at Columbia, caught my attention with a short monographic book, The Administrative Threat, that summarized the points of his erudite 650-page 2014 book, Is the Administrative State Unlawful?  The short book is a great summary but the long book is magisterial and explains why the political geniuses of the American Founding wrote a Constitution that intentionally hobbled the power of the executive branch and created competing branches to distribute power and prevent tyrannical grasping of power by any branch, along with a federal plan to distribute power to the states.

The Founders were well aware of the history of tyranny in England — crown edicts, Star Chamber prosecutions and other abuses that flourished in the first half of the 17th century — ending with a civil war and regicide of Charles I.  These events were fresh in their 18th century minds and they were serious students of political theory.

Hamburger wrote his two books from the maw of the liberal political establishment, Columbia University in Upper West Side Manhattan, but he obviously has his legal head on straight.  He writes about administrative state growth and abuses that had emanated from that growth of a regulatory state.

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Tyranny in the Name of Climate Change By Anthony Watts

By on January 6th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/tyranny_in_the_name_of_climate_change.html

A recent paper published by Cambridge University Press titled “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change” is raising serious and worrisome questions about the role of academia in our national political debate on climate change.

The paper was written by Ross Mittiga, who self-describes as an “assistant professor of political theory at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, specializing in climate ethics.” He also labels himself an “environmentalist, vegan, and occasional gadfly.”

Mittiga’s paper explicitly argues society must prioritize climate action over democratic principles and adopt an authoritarian government if society fails to politically act on climate change. Or, in the words of the political left: “my way or the highway.”

This is disturbing because it completely ignores the will of the people to self-govern, favoring a totalitarian approach in order to tackle what Mittiag deems a “climate crisis.”

Key points of the paper in the abstract:

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature — which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights — would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.

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Think Jan. 6 Was A Big Deal? Here Are 30 Far More Significant Events On That Day In History-Read it and Weep

By on January 6th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/06/think-jan-6-was-a-big-deal-here-are-30-far-more-significant-events-on-that-day-in-history/

The rest of the nation may have moved on, but Democrats are determined to squeeze the events of a year ago for every ounce of political juice they can from the events that happened at the U.S. Capitol.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she wants to mark the day as “an observance of reflection, remembrance, and recommitment.” President Joe Biden plans to speak on the Capitol steps. The press is providing saturation coverage.

Not only does the public not care, but polls show that voters are currently more inclined to vote for Donald Trump – the supposed instigator of the “insurrection” – than Biden.

They know that the only reason Democrats want to keep the focus on Jan. 6 is because they think it will help them politically. Never Trumpers want to keep Jan. 6 alive because they hope it will keep him from ever holding elective office again.

Yes, the attack on the Capitol building was outrageously stupid, and we’re all in favor of those who broke the law being punished. But in our view, there have been many other events that also happened to take place throughout history on Jan. 6 that are far more deserving of presidential speeches, prayer vigils, remembrances and the like.

And so, without further ado, here is our list. (Feel free to use the comments section below to suggest any that we might have overlooked.)

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