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June 2022

LIZ PEEK: Biden’s war on oil is funding Putin’s war on Ukraine

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3535437-bidens-war-on-oil-is-funding-putins-war-on-ukraine/

President Biden’s bizarre and implacable hostility to U.S. oil producers is helping Russia win its war against Ukraine.

No joke, as Biden might say. Not only has the president’s unswerving effort to squash domestic oil and gas production caused higher prices for consumers, a looming recession as the Federal Reserve struggles to dampen inflation and disastrously low approval ratings, it is also funding Russia’s destruction of its neighbor.

The U.S. is the world’s largest oil and gas producer. Because of the COVID-19 shutdowns, but also because of the many restrictions and costs piled onto domestic producers by the Biden administration, and in recognition of those likely to follow, U.S. output has declined from 13.1 million barrels per day in February 2020 to 11.9 mb/d today.

Taking over 1 million barrels per day off the world market amid what was until recently a global economic expansion has helped boost prices. And higher prices are funding Putin’s war with Ukraine.

Consider: On June 10 the central bank of Russia dropped its key lending rate by 150 basis points, the fourth such cut in the past few months.

This even as financial authorities around the world, including in the U.S., are pushing rates higher to dampen demand and squash inflation.

At the Supreme Court with pro-life Democrats They waited in the rain for a decision on Dobbs

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/at-the-supreme-court-with-pro-life-democrats/

When Cockburn took a rainy-day stroll past the United States Supreme Court on Thursday, he didn’t expect to see many people. To his surprise, there were several protesters outside, anticipating a decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Cockburn decided to stop and chat with both pro-life and pro-choice demonstrators, briefly catching interviews between shouting matches laced with obscenities and references to genitalia.

“Roe is a barbaric remnant of a eugenic past. [It’s] responsible for the murder of 60 million babies,” said Terrisa Bukovinac, the founder and executive director of the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising.“I believe in equity, nonviolence, and nondiscrimination. We can’t build a better world on top of dead babies.” Bukovina was one of two women who recently took home a box that was being shipped away from a Planned Parenthood clinic and found five dead babies inside.

Cockburn was astonished to see that a plurality of pro-life protesters were openly progressive or waved banners touting the Democratic Party. One of them, John Quinn, a 26-year-old affiliate of Democrats for Life, said, “We want to have a secular conversation. It is important to support women, but abortion is a violent solution, and it doesn’t solve poverty.”

Roe is gone — now what? Abortion law in America becomes a patchwork with plenty of drama to follow

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/roe-v-wade-gone-now-what/

With the recent ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, Cockburn figures it’s time to draw lines in the sand… or at least around the states. Following the decision, some states will serve as sanctuaries for the unborn, while others will be sanctuaries for women seeking abortions, sometimes right up until the moment of birth.

Let’s start with the states that have “trigger laws” to ban abortion if Roe is overturned. They are Arkansas, Kentucky, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming and Utah.

The states that codify abortion into law irrespective of the Supreme Court are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Washington, DC.

In other words, abortion states outnumber pro-life states eighteen to thirteen, while the rest have neither an immediate ban nor a codification in place. For these states, the heightened tensions will make for a vibrant debate in the coming days. People on both sides of the issue will be fighting vehemently, and abortion will become a much larger political issue in elections to come.

There are others among the nineteen states without “trigger laws” that may soon restrict abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a Planned Parenthood-funded pro-choice “think tank,” states that may act against abortion in the coming days are Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Some of these states have pre-Roe legislation that will come back into effect, such as Arizona and Michigan, while others have laws that prevent abortions six weeks after pregnancy, such as South Carolina and Ohio

Sudan: The Genocide No One Talks About by Pierre Rehov

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18632/sudan-the-genocide-no-one-talks-about

Civilian institutions and some media outlets, including the BBC, are concerned that this new puppet government is simply a cover for the return of Bashir and that, although he is in prison, he is behind every development in the Sudanese government.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61550100

This, apparently, is also the conviction of El Nur. He notes with distress that the massacres organized by the Janjaweed and the Rapid Intervention Forces have not seen any let up https://twitter.com/AbdulwahidElNur Peaceful demonstrations take place daily in Khartoum and the rest of the country. They are interrupted by the police and state militias, who fire live ammunition at the crowds, while raids continue throughout Sudan. Homes are burned. Villagers are forced into the desert without food or water. Summary executions take place. Women and children are crushed by cars. Students are mown down by bullets.

To this day, although the American government has scrupulously honored its part of the agreement, the Sudanese authorities have been careful not to respect the slightest paragraph.

In northern Sudan, the Wagner Group, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, have, with the apparent complicity of the regime, taken over the main gold mines of Al-Ibediyya. Day and night, extracting this gold is carried out by “free” Sudanese whose symbolic salary is close to slavery. Where does this gold go? No one is sure, but reportedly it could be feeding the coffers of Moscow and perhaps those of its ally, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran.

The latest news is that the Biden administration has suspended all aid to Sudan, including that linked to its normalization agreement with Israel, and has informed Jerusalem that no support should be given to the Khartoum government until there are democratic elections.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-708124

https://www.altaghyeer.info/en/2022/06/01/us-calls-on-israel-to-support-democracy-in-sudan/

We may have to wait for a new coup d’état. Perhaps, this time, it will be led by the Sudanese people at the instigation of El Nur, the “Mr. No” who has always refused to compromise with dictatorial regimes.

In Darfur, an area of Sudan, massacres have been taking place on a daily basis for several decades. This is happening everywhere in the country, even before its independence.

But who is talking about it?

The Western world seems lack empathy, perhaps due to its weariness in the watching this tragedy for so long, and masked by geopolitical and economic interests.

Israel’s failed politicians should muzzle their moralizing  By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-710246

During a heated parliamentary session on Wednesday, when Israeli lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the initial bill to dissolve the Knesset, acting coalition whip MK Boaz Toporovsky (Yesh Atid) made a speech that undoubtedly did his party leader, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, proud. But Lapid, who will serve as head of the interim government until the next one is formed, may be too obtuse to realize how terrible Toporovsky’s sentiments came across.

His colleagues in the plenum probably didn’t notice. They’re used to the mutual mud-slinging that causes much of the public to cringe while providing fodder for the Twittersphere.

In this case, the legislators were too busy shouting over one another’s words to listen to the likes of Toporovsky. But his message unwittingly exposed the cause of both the birth and ultimate demise of the outgoing government, led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

It’s old news and no secret that hostility to former prime minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was the magnet that drew disparate factions to join forces just over a year ago. The same animosity, both to him and the opposition he chairs, has been the glue holding the motley crew together since then.

SO, WHEN Toporovsky referred to the collapse of the coalition as a “sad day for democracy,” the whole country yawned. If we Israelis had a shekel for every abuse of that term, we wouldn’t be setting up tent camps to protest the exorbitant cost of housing.

What wasn’t missed in his tirade, however, was the self-congratulatory piety that has characterized the Bennett-Lapid gang from the get-go. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t coupled with an overarching arrogance towards the general electorate.

Voters: Actually, We Trust Republicans More on Protecting Democracy By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/voters-actually-we-trust-republicans-more-on-protecting-democracy/

One may argue the merits of the January 6 committee hearings, but plainly, the political aim of Democrats in the hearings, and in the torrents of press coverage and commentary on January 6 over the past 17 months, has been to present the Republican Party as a whole as an existential threat to American democracy.

How’s that working out? The latest Fox News poll actually asked voters, and the results are not going to make Democrats happy: “When asked in a new Fox News poll which party would ‘do a better job’ on ‘preservation of American Democracy,’ 46% of registered voters said Republicans compared to 45% who said Democrats.” In the same poll in January, Democrats had the advantage, 50 percent to 48 percent. Interestingly, this month’s poll showed a Democratic advantage on “voting rights” (49 percent to 43 percent) and even “election integrity” (47 percent to 44 percent), so this is not so much an endorsement of Republicans on a specific elections issue; some voters may just feel that the long-term survival of our system is better protected by Republicans, or that Democrats cannot really be trusted to let voters have their way when Republicans win elections. But either way, it is a hilariously embarrassing failure for a core Democratic narrative heading into the midterms.

Biden declares war on nicotine while giving addicts crack pipes By Chris Talgo

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/biden_declares_war_on_nicotine_while_giving_addicts_crack_pipes.html

As Americans grapple with sky-high prices at the pump, the worst rate of inflation in more than four decades, increasing crime, a wide-open southern border, a surge in fentanyl deaths, a baby formula shortage, a looming food crisis, a plunging stock market, rolling brownouts, and many other pressing problems, the Biden administration has set its sights on waging war on nicotine.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it “plans to develop a proposed product standard that would establish a maximum nicotine level to reduce the addictiveness of cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products” and that it has “issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) to JUUL Labs Inc. for all of their products currently marketed in the United States.”

For those keeping track, these anti-nicotine measures follow the Biden administration’s proposal to ban menthol cigarettes, which was announced by the FDA in April.

This makes me wonder if the FDA will also ban sugar-laden foods and drinks, seeing as how sugar is extremely addictive and too much sugar intake leads to obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and all other types of medical maladies.

Interestingly, as the FDA seeks to minimize nicotine content in cigarettes and outright ban all JUUL vaping products, it admits that, “While nicotine is not what makes smoking cigarettes so toxic, it’s the ingredient that makes it very hard to quit smoking.”

We’re All Fascists Now, Apparently Fascism for facile journalists and the knee-jerk Left is like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous test for obscenity: They know it when they see it. And they see it everywhere. By Ben Boychuk

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/23/were-all-fascists-now-apparently/

David Von Drehle wouldn’t know real fascism if a Blackshirt was kicking him in the face with a steel-toe boot while belting out “Giovinezza.” And in these exceptionally stupid times, he’s certainly not alone. Nevertheless, the Washington Post columnist last week decided to share his thoughts about a new national conservative statement of principles drawn up by the Edmund Burke Foundation and published at The American Conservative.

The manifesto, Von Drehle writes, is “a rather slapdash document” that “has an awful lot in common with fascism.” 

Yet Von Drehle’s only real support for invoking the f-word amounts to an aside three-quarters of the way through his column. The manifesto’s relationship with fascism, he asserts, is “its faceless conspiracy of the globalist imperium, its exaltation of a cultural coherence that never existed, and its casual licensing of government power to enforce conformity.” 

That certainly sounds unseemly. But is it fascism? And, incidentally, is that what the document actually says? By all means, read it and decide for yourself. But here is an executive summary. 

The manifesto affirms 10 (arguably 11) principles: National independence; rejection of imperialism and globalism; national government; God and public religion; rule of law; free enterprise; public research; family and children; immigration; race.

On independence: “Each [nation] has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people. We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.” Sovereignty, in other words. 

That isn’t fascism. That’s John Quincy Adams.

On globalism: “We support a system of free cooperation and competition among nation-states . . . But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies.”

The Accelerating Purge Buckle up, America. This only gets worse from here. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/23/the-accelerating-purge/

One week after a team of thugs working for Democratic Party activist Stephen Colbert were arrested for illegally entering a Capitol building in order to record themselves stalking Republican congressional leaders, news coverage of the incident has all but disappeared. Neither the U.S. Capitol Police, the arresting agency, nor the Department of Justice has produced any details of the gang’s unauthorized incursion into two Capitol buildings with the blessing of Representative Adam Schiff (R-Calif.) and two other Democratic House members.

It appears the Capitol Police chief has not yet responded to a demand by Reps. James Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) for all footage, photographs, and witness statements documenting the crew’s activities on June 16 including accusations they banged on the doors of female legislators such as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.); it further appears that no one is demanding a congressional ethics investigation into Schiff’s participation in leading a “tour” of Colbert’s insurrectionists through the buildings, including after hours. Following a brief detainment, Colbert’s thugs went home, spared pre-dawn raids by armed FBI agents and days, if not months, of incarceration while a federal judge determines whether they should stay behind bars awaiting trial.

In fact, Colbert’s insurrectionists will avoid the kangaroo court known as the D.C. District Court overseeing hundreds of similar charges related to the January 6 protest on Capitol Hill. Fox News reported on Thursday that the defendants associated with Colbert’s show will appear in D.C. Superior Court in late July. (The court’s website contains no information about the case.) Simply put, every January 6 case is handled as a federal crime while the conduct of Team Colbert is considered a local offense, even though it occurred in the exact same venue.

Expanding a Feminist Professor’s Education: Roger Franklin

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/06/expanding-a-feminist-professors-education/

Twitter has many things to answer for, from users’ freedom to engage in anonymous abuse to the censoring of off-narrative opinions and personalities by what must be an enormous squad of woke censors at the social media giant’s head office. But every now and again — not often, but it does happen — something worthwhile figures in the threads.

Below is one such exchange, prompted by Professor Danna Young, who is paid to teach her brand of ‘journalism’ at the University of Delaware. By way of background, the professor describes her specialty thus: “Dannagal G. Young (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, 2007) is a Professor of Communication and Political Science … studies the content, audience, and effects of nontraditional political information.” Earlier this week, she posted this tweet:

My teen told me something that’s been haunting me for weeks.

He said “I think almost every white middle school boy is in the alt-right pipeline -at some point-until something/someone pulls them out.”  
                                                        — Dr. Danna Young (@dannagal) June 18, 2022

The response was quick, with the Twitter mob initially endorsing the professor’s appraisal of boys as problems — largely, one gathers, because it is their great misfortune (and a curse on everyone else)  that they are not girls. Wading into this stream of woke drek came 18-year-old  Daniel Schmidt, a freshman at the University of Chicago. His series of tweets, copied from the originals lest Twitter’s censors take down the thread for the crime of making too much sense, are reproduced below. Each horizontal line indicates a fresh tweet in the series.