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April 2022

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A HEARTBEAT AWAY FROM THE PRESIDENCY

By on April 1st, 2022

Kamala Harris in Jamaica”

“We also recognize just as it’s been in the United States, for Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue, that is economic in the way of its impact, has been the pandemic,” Harris said. “So to that end, we are announcing today also that we will assist Jamaica in COVID recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to what, I believe, is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy.”

HUH???

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More Scandals Envelop the Scandalous FBI For years, congressional Republicans promised to hold FBI officials culpable for various scandals but failed to act. By Julie Kelly

By on April 1st, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/31/more-scandals-envelop-the-scandalous-fbi/

“You’re in big fucking trouble.”

So said an FBI agent to Julian Khater, one of two men accused of assaulting Capitol police officers with pepper spray on January 6, during a tense interrogation last year. Desperate to sustain the falsehood that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick was killed by Trump supporters during the Capitol protest, the FBI claimed to possess video footage that showed Khater and his friend, George Tanios, attacking Sicknick and other officers with chemical spray. Khater was arrested on an airplane at the Newark airport on March 14, 2021 after he arrived home from a trip to Florida.

For more than two hours—shackled to a metal bar in a freezing room at the New Jersey FBI field office—Khater, who has no criminal record, was interrogated without a lawyer present. FBI Special Agent Riley Palmertree refused to tell Khater why he was under arrest until he agreed to proceed without counsel in the room, which Khater reluctantly did. Recently released video confirms Khater initially told the agents he “would feel more comfortable if I had a lawyer” answering questions on his behalf. An hour later, Khater again said he wanted his lawyer.

But Palmertree pushed back, presenting videos and photos implicating Khater in the alleged assault. Palmertree assured Khater that by admitting he sprayed Sicknick with pepper spray rather than a can of bear spray—an item Palmertree later testified was not used that day—a judge would go easy on him. Khater signed a statement confessing that he attacked officers with pepper spray.

Khater has been in jail ever since, housed in the D.C. gulag specifically used to detain January 6 protesters; his trial is scheduled for June 6.

But Khater’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, is now asking the court to toss the interrogation as evidence, arguing that the FBI used “coercion and deception” to force Khater into waiving his Miranda rights. Further, Tacopina wrote in a February 22 motion that Palmertree lied in his FBI report by claiming he advised Khater about the “nature of the interview” before asking Khater to waive his rights.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Just in time for midterms, Joe Biden sets off the mother of migrant surges By Monica Showalter

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/just_in_time_for_midterms_joe_biden_sets_off_the_mother_of_migrant_surges.html

The U.S. Border Patrol expects a record surge of migrants from 157 countries crossing our border illegally, with most presenting spurious claims to “asylum.”

The Daily Mail reports:

The U.S. will see 1 million migrant encounters in the first half of Fiscal Year 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as the administration plans to start administering coronavirus vaccines to those in custody as it weighs ending Title 42 as early as next month.

This figure just accounts for migrants encountered, meaning there could be thousands of other ‘gotaways’ who evaded CBP when illegally crossing into the U.S.

Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz told Fox News that in the next few days, CBP will have encountered 1 million migrants from when the federal fiscal year started in October 2022.

Sure it’s a big number — and the fiscal year is only half over.

But we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

These monster numbers come as Joe Biden has set the conditions for an even bigger surge — on two fronts.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

McGill and Tufts Mobilize Against Israel The toxic language and ideology of activists who hijack the Israeli/Palestinian debate. Richard L. Cravatts

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/mcgill-and-tufts-mobilize-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

As yet more evidence that a core group of activist McGill students is in the thrall of radical anti-Israelism, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) voted to adopt a “Palestine Solidarity Policy” proposed by the student club Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). The mendacious, one-sided policy statement asserted that “McGill University invests in, or engages in close collaboration with several corporations and institutions complicit in an entrenched system of settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians” and that Israel maintains a “system of settler-colonial apartheid [which] is characterized by a brutal regime of land theft, checkpoints, house demolitions, environmental destruction, deportation, and extrajudicial killings at the hands of soldiers, police, and settlers.”

In light of these alleged conditions, the policy called for the SSMU to “campaign for McGill University’s complete boycott of all corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians,” as well as “complete divestment from all corporations complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians,” committing McGill institutionally to a five-year campaign to elevate the Palestinian cause and demonize the Jewish state.

At McGill University, anti-Israel sentiment is already so endemic that the University’s student newspaper, the McGill Daily, refuses to run any content that is pro-Israel or defends Zionism or the Jewish state, and a 2021 editorial, seeming to speak on behalf of the whole student body, denounced Israel’s purported “colonialism, imperialism, and genocide in all forms,” condemned “McGill’s Zionist involvement, which is reflected in their continued investment in Israeli and international businesses located on occupied Palestinian land,” and claimed, in language similar to this latest policy statement, that the “Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is nothing short of apartheid.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ditching College Why not everyone has to go to an institution of “higher learning.” Larry Sand

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/ditching-college-larry-sand/

One of the numerous reverberations of the Covid pandemic and our overwrought response to it is that many young people are now skipping college. For students who graduated from high school in 2020, college enrollment was down 21.7% compared with the prior year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. And importantly, if a student doesn’t go directly from high school to college, he is much less likely to ever attend a school of higher learning. Men notably, in increasing numbers, are forsaking college. The Clearinghouse reports that at the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, and men just 40.5%.

While much of the media has descended into pearl-clutch mode over the recent college exit, a reset has been long overdue. In fact, the push for universal enrollment is relatively new. In 1960, just 7.7% of adult Americans held college degrees, but 60 years later that number jumped to 35%. Writing on the subject in 2017, the late Walter Williams reported that about “1 in 3 college graduates have a job historically performed by those with a high-school diploma or the equivalent.” Williams, citing Ohio University economics professor Richard Vedder, goes on to say that the U.S. was home to “115,000 janitors, 16,000 parking lot attendants, 83,000 bartenders and about 35,000 taxi drivers with bachelor’s degrees in 2012.”

Most universities are just not properly preparing young people for the job market. In Harvard Business Review, tech guru Michael Hansen writes that a recent poll of Americans who graduated from a community or four-year college in the past five years showed that 19% reported that “their college education experience did not provide them with the skills needed to perform their first post-degree job. Additionally, more than half (53%) of these college graduates have not applied to an entry-level job in their field because they felt unqualified, and …42% felt unqualified because they did not have all the skills listed in the job description.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Deep Dishonesty of ‘Don’t Say Gay’ By David Harsanyi

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-deep-dishonesty-of-dont-say-gay/

“The entire controversy hinges on this sentence: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

Wonder why they don’t call it the ‘Don’t Teach Kindergartners about Gender Dysphoria’ bill?

 T here’s a good reason why nearly every major media outlet and the entire left-wing punditry keep referring to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — rather than, say, the “Don’t Teach Kindergartners about Gender Dysphoria” bill. Any honest debate on the matter would almost surely be a political loser for Democrats.

Let’s turn to the Washington Post’s Philip Bump as our straw man, since his columns offer unfailingly misleading descriptions of conservative positions. Bump argues in a recent piece that Disney had publicly come out against the Florida bill because it “understands that American families don’t look the way they used to.” Of course, anyone who has read the law knows it has nothing to do with how families look or don’t look. There are absolutely no restrictions inhibiting anyone from talking about their family. Bump is compelled to discuss the acceptance of gay couples and adoption, and bring up fringe GOPers, because otherwise he might accidentally mention that the law merely prohibits adults in schools from teaching prepubescent kids about sexuality and transgenderism against the will of their parents.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE WEAKEST PRESIDENTIAL LINE OF SUCCESS EVER

By on April 1st, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/01/the-weakest-presidential-line-of-succession-ever/

As Vladimir Putin floats terrifying hints of Russia’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against countries that assist in Ukraine’s defense against Moscow’s brutal invasion, the United States is saddled with a president teetering on the brink of senility, and a woman one heartbeat away from the presidency who is as dependably incompetent as she is undependable in prepping herself on national and international issues.

Polling makes clear that the public is fully aware of, and disconcerted by, the alarming shortcomings of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris alike; but at the same time, there is little if any appreciation of the unprecedented vulnerability to the United States due to those further down in the line of succession. Old age, timidity, and lack of qualification abound among those who might be thrust into the job of most powerful individual on earth, charged with leading the free world.

On Saturday in a speech in Warsaw, Biden called for the end to Putin’s “for life” tenure as Kremlin premier, instantly sending the White House into a DEFCON 1 in crisis communications.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” the president exclaimed at the close of his remarks, apparently departing from the prepared text.

What looks weaker on the part of a superpower in the midst of one of the most challenging military crises in decades than to backpeddle a moral pronouncement of illegitimacy against one of its chief adversaries? We are not demanding that Putin go, sundry administration aides assured friend and foe.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

EVEN BIG MEDIA CAN NO LONGER IGNORE BIDEN FAMILY CORRUPTION

By on April 1st, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/31/even-the-big-media-can-no-longer-ignore-biden-familys-corruption/

At long last, the mainstream media are paying some attention to the obvious corruption of President Joe Biden’s family and its many business partners, which include the Chinese government and Russian oligarchs. These things have been known for years. Why are the Big Media only now looking into them?

And why, not really knowing anything at all about what was going on, do Twitter and Facebook still censor those who report on the Bidens’ questionable overseas business activities?

Finally, both the New York Times and Washington Post have been forced to admit that Hunter Biden’s lost laptop is real, not a “fake” or a Russian fabrication, and that it contains a trove of damning evidence (22,000 emails “authenticated”) of Biden family corruption.

The family’s dealings with the communist Chinese government and powerful officials in both Russia and Ukraine are so numerous and so byzantine it’s not possible to describe them all in this limited space.

And they’re not new. Credible reports of corruption have circulated for years in American digital samizdat circles and on alternative media and conservative web sites.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Strategic Political Petroleum Release Biden tries everything to cut gas prices, except what would work.

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-strategic-political-petroleum-release-oil-joe-biden-gas-prices-11648762807?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

President Biden knows inflation and gasoline prices are killing Democrats in the polls, and he’s scrambling to show he’s doing something about it. Except he still won’t do what would really make a difference: Take his foot off the neck of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

His latest gambit on Thursday was to say he’ll release 180 million barrels from the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the next six months. This would be the biggest release in history and reduce the reserve to its lowest level since 1984. But the oil will need to be replaced, which will push up future demand.

This is one reason markets responded with a yawn. Crude prices fell a mere 4.9%. Markets don’t respond only to short-term demand and supply fluctuations. They also take into account long-term expectations and policy signals. And the Administration continues to signal that its goal is to bankrupt oil and gas producers. But before shooting them, Mr. Biden wants their political help.

The White House underscored Thursday that it wants to “immediately increase supply” while accelerating the “clean energy” transition. The President also said he wants to make companies pay fees on wells from leases that they haven’t used in years and on acres of public land that “they are hoarding without producing.” But the law already requires companies to produce oil or gas on leases or return their leases to the government.

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HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chabad’s Ukraine Mission The story of the Jews plays an outsize role in the country’s history and present. By Dovid Margolin

By on April 1st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chabads-ukraine-communism-ussr-tsar-de-nazification-russia-invasion-hasidic-movement-jewish-community-repression-persecution-antisemitism-refugee-11648745664?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

History has been a battleground between Russia and Ukraine for years, and the story of the Jews has been part of that fight. This can be heard today in Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric about “de-Nazification” or Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s exhortations, amid Russian bombing, to remember Babyn Yar’s murdered Jews. But the past is more than a backdrop for geopolitical maneuvering.

The founding of the Hasidic movement by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) in what is today western Ukraine revolutionized Jewish life. And Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson—the Rebbe, or the seventh leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—was born in Ukraine 120 years ago and later helped spark Judaism’s post-Holocaust religious revival.

The Rebbe was born in Mykolaiv on April 18, 1902, to Rabbi Levi Yitzchak and Chana Schneerson. His maternal forefathers had been the city’s chief rabbis since 1854. During a 1905 pogrom, his mother hid in a cellar with other women, whose children’s terrified screams risked attracting the anti-Semitic marauders outside. Years later, she would recall her 3-year-old son soothing the other children.

In 1908 Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was elected chief rabbi of what is now Dnipro. There the future Rebbe celebrated his bar mitzvah while helping his parents care for Jewish World War I refugees forcibly expelled from the Russian Empire’s western provinces. But Czarist persecution paled in comparison with the destruction of Jewish religious and communal life under communism.

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