Displaying posts published in

February 2022

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

KENDALL QUALLS- REPUBLICAN FOR GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA

By on February 25th, 2022

Why I’m Running
There are three reasons I’m running for Governor…
The entire country should care about my first reason.

Minnesota was GROUND ZERO where the riots, looting and “Defund the Police” ALL started and then spread across the country.

In the center of it all was Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, and our weak Governor Tim Walz pushing anti-American woke agenda. Shoving CRT down the throats of parents and allowing our kids to fall behind in school.

At the same time allowing record murders, car jackings and all crime metrics go unchecked. That changes Day One when I’m in office.
Minnesotans have been leaving the state in record numbers.

My opponent enforces one of the heaviest tax burdens in the country on the business community, private citizens, and retirees by taxing social security benefits.

This is not the time to nominate a career politician. We need a leader from the private sector with private sector solutions.
Lastly, Americans are tired of being bullied by the left and exhausted by constant accusations of systemic racism.

In fact, this is the least racist period in our country’s history. My parents and grandparents would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in.

We are NOT going to be the generation that lost America.

We are going to be the generation that saved it, restored it and passed it on to the next generation.
That is why I’m running and that’s why we are going to win.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

On the Eve of the Show Trials The first trial of a January 6 defendant is set to begin next week. But jury trials should expose the government’s weak case against most of them. By Julie Kelly

By on February 25th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/24/on-the-eve-of-the-show-trials/

Guy Reffitt has been in jail since he was arrested by the FBI nearly 14 months ago.

Reffitt, like dozens of Americans who protested the unlawful election of Joe Biden, isn’t in jail because he was convicted of a crime. Neither is Reffitt in jail because he has a criminal record—he does not—or a history of threatening his Bonham, Texas neighbors or community.

Instead, Reffitt has languished behind bars for more than a year because Joe Biden’s Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep him detained awaiting trial for his participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. Since then, more than 100 Americans, including several accused of no violent crimes, have been incarcerated under pre-trial detention orders sought by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Constitutional rights such as the presumption of innocence, due process, the right to a speedy trial, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment have been stripped from January 6 defendants based on the Biden regime’s false premise that they are all “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” (None of the January 6 defendants has been charged with terrorism or insurrection.)

Now that the first trials are finally getting underway, the public can assess whether the government prosecutors and federal judges who created America’s first class of political prisoners were justified in doing so, or were shamefully complicit in Joe Biden’s vengeful prosecution of Donald Trump supporters.

Guy Reffitt is one of hundreds of protesters not charged with committing a violent crime on January 6. According to his initial indictment, Reffitt did not assault police officers—to the contrary, he was attacked by law enforcement with rubber bullets and mace—or vandalize any public property. In fact, he never even entered the Capitol building.

But based on the government’s mostly hearsay evidence, a D.C. federal magistrate last year denied Reffitt’s release—and it had little to do with his alleged criminal behavior on January 6. 

“[The] gravity of the offense is not captured by the offenses because it was an attack upon the democracy and the lawful administration of that democracy as there was a transition of power,” Judge Zia Faruqui said during an April detention hearing. “My concern is that he still harbors the belief even after the election results were certified, the Electoral College was processed, that he continued to harbor the belief, the false belief that something untoward was happening with the democratic process.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Chinese Censorship on American Soil by Peter Schweizer

By on February 25th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18268/chinese-censorship-american-soil

Americans are now familiar with the sad spectacle of their own countrymen bowing to Chinese pressure publicly. We see it done by captains of industry, Wall Street’s largest firms, the most elite universities, sports heroes, cultural figures, and politicians alike. It has become so common that it is news when someone instead resists the pressure from Chinese communist regime and suffers financially because of it.

The latest example of that is professional basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom, who was recently traded by the Boston Celtics to the Houston Rockets, which then promptly waived him. The Rockets have offered no reason for this move, but it is no secret that the team has a devoted following in and makes a lot of money from China.

“People’s willingness to speak out about these issues tends to be related to how much business they have in China…. Everyone understands that the quid pro quo of taking Chinese cash is that you never criticize them.” — David Sacks, The Megyn Kelly Show, February 8, 2022.

My latest book, Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, traces these themes…. It is surprising how little attention those chapters have received in mainstream news outlets….

Highlighted are detailed actions and pro-Beijing statements of financial giants such as Larry Fink and Ray Dalio, who run BlackRock and Bridgewater Associates, respectively. An entire chapter catalogs similar kowtowing from Big Tech by Silicon Valley’s wealthiest CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cooke, and Bill Gates. From political dynasties in the US and Canada to philanthropists and Harvard professors, from sports stars to movie actors, the Chinese money talks so loudly it drowns out every other sound.

“News conglomerates do not want to cover bad news about China. But it’s not because of a grand conspiracy theory. It’s simply because they make so much money.” — Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News and author of the book, Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption.

Even smaller media outlets such as The Atlantic Monthly and Axios aren’t immune, [Marlow] notes in his book. Both are owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, whose fortune came from Apple and Disney, two companies that owe a lot of their wealth to their business activities in China.

“Bloomberg News has to extend its contract every two years, so [Michael Bloomberg] goes over there to kiss the ring.” — Alex Marlow, The Drill Down, February 10, 2022

How much longer will our large media outlets ignore the growing threat Chinese influence poses to their core principles of presenting the truth without fear or favor?

As Albert Camus, wrote, “The Welfare of the people… has always been the alibi of tyrants… giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”

Billionaire tech investor David Sacks recently summed up the present state of Communist Chinese intimidation of American business, sports leagues like the NBA, and anyone else with commercial interests in China. He sees it getting worse, not better.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

The School Shutdowns and Lost Literacy New evidence that children have fallen far behind in reading.

By on February 25th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-school-shutdowns-and-lost-literacy-covid-pandemic-amplify-education-reading-11645653340?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Governments made many mistakes in the pandemic, and shutting down schools was arguably the worst. We’re now discovering the damage as studies calculate the learning loss.

Amplify, the curriculum and assessment provider, examined its test data for some 400,000 elementary school students across 37 states. It found a spike in students not reading at grade level, with the literacy losses “disproportionately concentrated in the early elementary grades (K-2).”

Before the pandemic, 55% of kindergartners were on track in reading skills. That fell to 37% in 2020–2021 and 47% this school year. The year before the pandemic, only 29% of kindergartners were deemed “far behind” in early literacy skills. That rose to 47% and 37% the first and second year of the pandemic.

Amplify sees some progress this year in reading as the classrooms have reopened. But the troubles persist for this year’s second graders, whose schooling has been dominated by shutdowns and disruptions. Among this Covid cohort, Amplify finds that “the number of students at greatest risk of not learning to read is slightly higher than it was a year ago.” Some 35% of second graders are in literacy crisis this year, up from 26% before the shutdowns.

Like other recent studies, Amplify reports that minority children suffered disproportionate learning loss. During the last normal school year, only 34% of black and 29% of Hispanic second graders needed intensive intervention to help catch up. This school year 47% of black and 39% of Hispanic second graders have fallen this far behind on literacy, compared to 26% of white peers.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

John Kerry’s Ukraine Emissions He frets that Russian brutality will distract from climate change.

By on February 25th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerrys-ukraine-emissions-climate-russia-vladimir-putin-11645736997?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned in an interview this week about “massive emissions consequences” from a Russian war against Ukraine, which he also said would be a distraction from work on climate change. Nevertheless, he added, “I hope President Putin will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate.”

What’s overheated here is Mr. Kerry’s brain. His comments came before Vladimir Putin began Thursday’s massive assault on Ukraine. But the BBC says the interview was taped this week, and the alarms about Mr. Putin’s impending attack have been ringing loudly. Mr. Kerry was running Foggy Bottom in 2014 when Mr. Putin invaded Crimea. How has he failed to internalize that Mr. Putin is a bad actor motivated by power and Russian revanchism?

Mr. Kerry told the BBC that he hopes Mr. Putin realizes Northern Russia is thawing, “and his infrastructure is at risk, and the people of Russia are at risk.” We’ll wait until you stop laughing. Mr. Putin deserves to be made a pariah. Western leaders like Mr. Kerry shouldn’t be wondering whether a polite tea in Moscow might induce him to slightly lower next year’s oil production when he can enrich the Kremlin by selling it for $100 a barrel.

Mr. Kerry’s defenders—assuming they exist—might say he’s merely fulfilling his role as President Biden’s climate envoy. And Mr. Kerry did express to the BBC his concerns about “the people of Ukraine,” as well as the principle of using force to alter boundaries.

But Mr. Kerry’s comments aren’t a gaffe. They reveal the Biden Administration’s obsession with climate, and with punishing fossil-fuel production, which has made the U.S. and Europe vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail. The climate lobby has made Mr. Putin more powerful. Every time Mr. Kerry visits Moscow, the boys in the Kremlin must think it’s Christmas.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Biden, not Putin, to blame for higher gas prices

By on February 25th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/595706-biden-not-putin-to-blame-for-higher-gas-prices

President Biden wants you to know that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will drive up oil prices. He warns that it may soon cost more to fill up your tank.

He’s right, but don’t be deceived; that’s been the plan all along. Not, certainly, to foster war in Europe, but to push a hasty and ill-considered switch to renewable fuels, no matter the cost to consumers. Sadly, that has also been the program in Europe, which is now dealing with the ugly consequences of bowing to climate activists. The world still needs oil, and much of it is in the wrong hands.

Russia has Europe over a barrel. Americans must understand that this is no accident. It’s the result of European climate policies just like those that Democrats want to force on Americans, substituting unreliable and costly renewable energy for oil and gas. It is the continent’s adoption of a Green New Deal-like agenda – banning fracking, subsidizing wind and solar, etc. – that has made Europe dependent on a hostile nation to power their economies.

If we continue down a similar path, we could find ourselves back in the 1970s, overly reliant for oil on Saudi Arabia, as well as Russia and other hostile nations. In 1973, OPEC cut off oil exports to the U.S.; oil prices quadrupled, plunging the U.S. into recession.

Here’s the reality: We will still be burning oil and gas to heat our homes and generate our electricity for years to come. We can either produce those fuels at home or, like Europe, import them from abroad.

Since Biden became president, he has clearly chosen the latter path; this is a grave mistake. In thrall to well-heeled and noisy climate activists, Biden has set about junking one of America’s greatest geopolitical advantages – abundant, cheap energy – in a reckless quest to drive down carbon emissions.

A quest, by the way, that even the president admitted was pointless. Last April, Biden acknowledged that 85 percent of emissions come from outside the U.S. and confessed, “That’s why I kept my commitment to rejoin the Paris accord, because [even] if we do everything perfectly, it’s not going to matter.” He was correct. Whatever we do will be overwhelmed by increased emissions from China and India.

Even as Russian tanks lined up on the Ukraine border, Biden’s administration froze U.S. drilling on federal lands and slapped on rules making it even more difficult to build natural gas pipelines. What can they be thinking?

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Frisco Frolics A remarkably dysfunctional year for the San Francisco Unified school board. Larry Sand

By on February 25th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/frisco-frolics-larry-sand/

It started in January 2021, when the school board in San Francisco decided to rename 44 public schools, claiming their namesakes were “unworthy of the honor.” The names of such American icons as Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, Daniel Webster, Francis Scott Key, et al. were to be placed on the chopping block.

February was no less contentious – and at the same time provided some comic relief – when the art department of the school district bizarrely announced that acronyms such as VAPA (visual and performing arts) are “a symptom of white supremacy.” The month also saw the school board decide that top-rated Lowell High School should no longer admit students based on their academic performance. Instead, the school was to use a lottery to admit them. This, of course, was very discriminatory toward Asian American students who made up 50.6 percent of its student body at the time. And if February wasn’t already absurd, the city government of San Francisco sued its own school board to reopen schools. After 327 days the city fathers and mothers decided that enough was enough. But in reality, kids, especially minorities, were not terribly well educated in Fog City before the shut down – just 19 percent of blacks passed a recent state test in reading – so perhaps the school board figured eliminating in-person learning couldn’t do that much more damage.

Then, in March, it was revealed that school board member Allison Collins had made some rather nasty comments on Twitter about Asian Americans in 2016, and left the posts intact five years hence. She accused them of many things, including the use of “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” The school board was pretty much forced to do something, but they didn’t fire her or take away any of her six-figure salary; they merely removed her as vice president, and stripped her of committee assignments. March went out like a lion when Collins filed a lawsuit against the district and five fellow board members, asking for $87 million in damages for violating her free speech rights. Among other things, her lawsuit alleged that the demotion caused her a significant loss of reputation, severe mental and emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, humiliation, and – I am not making this up – “spiritual injury to her soul.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin Sizes Up Biden, Invades Ukraine Weakness invites aggression. Robert Spencer

By on February 25th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/putin-sizes-biden-invades-ukraine-robert-spencer/

Russian troops are advancing briskly into Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has brushed off Old Joe Biden’s sanctions and made it abundantly clear that he is not afraid of Biden, as Democrat operatives and their propaganda arm, the establishment media, have long insisted.

This is what happens when America has a feeble president, an obvious figurehead, and our military is compromised by Leftist ideologues. Clearly Putin is taking advantage of Biden’s obvious weakness and the decimation of our Armed Forces by wokeness and Covid hysteria. He knows that there is little likelihood that Biden will touch off World War III by committing American troops to the defense of Ukraine. Putin also likely considers that even if the American military does end up confronting Russian forces, that the U.S. military’s concentration on pushing Critical Race Theory and other Leftist agendas on the troops, as well as the culling that took place due to vaccine mandates, have left our military in such a weakened, distracted, and confused state that it will not pose any significant threat anyway.

Meanwhile, Putin emphasized in his remarks announcing the beginning of the operation against Ukraine that “in December 2021 we once again made an attempt to agree with the United States and its allies on the principles of ensuring security in Europe and on the non-expansion of NATO. Everything was in vain. The US position did not change. They did not consider it necessary to negotiate with Russia on this important issue for us, continuing to pursue their own goals and disregarding our interests.”

If this is an accurate summation of what happened, and there is no reason to believe that it isn’t, then the fecklessness of the Biden administration’s foreign policy is as much to blame for this conflict as Putin is. The questions must be asked: was it really necessary to begin maneuvering to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, and to ignore all Russian entreaties that may have led to the formulation of an agreement that was mutually acceptable to both parties? Were State Department officials too preoccupied with implementing the woke agenda to bother to negotiate with Putin over NATO?

Continue reading →
MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

THE COURAGEOUS DOCTORS WHO FOUGHT THE COVID FARCE: ARMANDO SIMON

By on February 25th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/25/these-are-the-courageous-doctors-who-fought-the-covid-farce-and-paid-the-price/

“Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.”  – Martin Luther King

Doesn’t it strike anyone as being in the least bit odd that those health care workers (physicians, nurses, researchers) who have gone against the current – as voiced by the politicians, the network news and the CDC – regarding the morbidity of COVID and/or the treatment against the virus, have been subjected to a torrent of insults, to censorship, and even loss of jobs and/or certification – simply for doing what health care workers have done throughout the centuries, that is, giving their professional opinions? Meantime, on seeing the internet mob go after their colleagues, other health care professionals have cowardly chosen to remain quiet and let the grotesque COVID farce play out.

Since when is punishment the reaction to a doctor giving a medical opinion?

Along the same lines, has no one noticed that both the analysis, the prognosis, and the treatment regarding the virus has been a total fiasco?

One cannot also help but be angry over the intense attacks at doctors and nurses who are carrying out their professional duty by disagreeing with the official dogma. What a contrast from the start of the epidemic in early 2020 when they were justly called heroes, when the lockdown citizens of Paris, Rome, Barcelona and elsewhere for weeks would go out at night on their balconies and applaud, and shout praise and songs of gratitude and admiration for their doctors and nurses in hospitals, many of whom were dying doing their duty!

Unless I am mistaken, I believe that this is the first time in history that so many doctors and nurses have been threatened, persecuted, censored and tormented for doing their job, or for rendering a professional judgment.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

JOE BIDEN: PUTIN’S GREEN PATSY

By on February 25th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/25/joe-biden-putins-green-patsy/

President Joe Biden has finally come forward with sanctions against Russia and Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine. Don’t expect much. Thanks to Biden’s economically destructive climate-change policies, Putin holds a decisive advantage in this conflict.

“This aggression cannot go unanswered,” Biden said, speaking Thursday as he unveiled what he called “devastating” financial punishments. “If it did, the consequences for America would be much worse. America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”

During his campaigns and while in office, Biden has often posed as a tough guy against the Russians – even as his family pocketed millions from Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, corruption virtually ignored by the American big media.

“Putin knows, if I am president of the United States,” Biden said in a 2019 fundraising video, “his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over.” 

So far, mission not accomplished.

Then there’s this:

“Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee,” Biden tweeted on Feb. 21, 2020. “If you’re wondering why – it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.”

Well, he’s now going “toe-to-toe” with Putin for real, and it doesn’t look so good. His sanctions, which may pinch Russia a bit but don’t go nearly far enough to reverse Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, sound tough. Among them are restrictions on Russian financial institutions, bans on technology exports, and financial restrictions on some members of Putin’s government. But not Putin himself.

“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences,” Biden said Thursday, outlining his actions, which, he predicted, would “impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.”

In fact, Biden pulled his punches, leaving Russia’s economy still standing.

Continue reading →