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July 2022

May It Please the Kangaroo Court What Cassidy Hutchinson said was certainly extraordinary. But was it really “testimony?”  By Daniel Oliver

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/03/may-it-please-the-kangaroo-court/

Oh, the thrill of being a New York Times reporter and covering the January 6 committee hearings. In a triumphant piece “contributed to by Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Chris Cameron, Carl Hulse and Peter Baker” we read that “former President Donald J. Trump, knowing his supporters were armed and threatening violence, urged them to march to the Capitol and sought to join them there, privately siding with them as they stormed the building and called for the hanging of the vice president.” Gosh, that sounds bad. Are there any details?

What the reporters describe as “the testimony” was given by 26-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson. Breathlessly (you can practically hear the reporters’ heavy breathing as they type furiously) the reporters wrote: “The testimony from the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, was extraordinary even by the standards of Mr. Trump’s norm-busting presidency and the inquiry’s remarkable string of revelations this month. In fly-on-the-wall anecdotes delivered in a quiet voice, she described how frantic West Wing aides failed to stop Mr. Trump from encouraging the violence or persuade him to try to end it, and how the White House’s top lawyer feared that Mr. Trump might be committing crimes as he steered the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.”

This is Woodward and Bernstein stuff—even though, of course, it’s happening in public. Will the reporters get to play themselves in the movie version? Think of . . . well, think of the money! They’ll be able to pay off their student loans—unless Joe Biden forgives all loans (except yours!) before they get the chance.

The reporters tell us that 26-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson “recalled being told of one particularly dramatic moment in which an irate Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of his vehicle from a Secret Service agent when he was told he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters, an account that the former president quickly denied and that Secret Service officials said would be rebutted in forthcoming testimony.”

The National Academies Have Abandoned the Sciences By adopting critical race theory, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have abandoned the sciences, which will slow, and even stall, scientific progress and debate.  By Mason Goad

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/03/the-national-academies-have-abandoned-the-sciences/

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently held an event titled: “Structural Racism and Rigorous Models of Social Inequity.” The two-day conference seemed less of a workshop, as was advertised, and more of a struggle session against enemies of “equity.” The main takeaway from this event was that we must implement critical race theory (CRT) into every facet of science. This conclusion was not drawn from inference. Throughout the conference, multiple speakers advocated explicitly for the use of critical race theory. By doing so, however, one must ask: Have the National Academies abandoned the sciences altogether?

To answer that question, one must first answer another: Is critical race theory scientific and beneficial to the scientific community? CRT contends that race is a social construct, tracing that argument back to W.E.B. DuBois, and there are good reasons to accept this claim. After all, while it is observably true that people vary by the color of their skin and other immutable characteristics, it makes little sense to divide people into “races.” Biologists, for example, talk not of “races” but of populations, and those medical researchers find genetics a far more useful analytical tool than any abstract concept of “race.”

So far, it would appear that CRT is scientific and beneficial to the scientific community. However, one has yet to consider the applied postmodernism of the theory, and its concern with language. Critical race theorists focus on issues such as hate speech, microaggressions, and cultural appropriation. In fact, they believe that speech which may lead to “racial inequity” must be censored. Such an approach is antithetical to scientific progress, as free speech and open debate are necessary to challenge ideas. Censorship will only hinder that speech and debate, slowing scientific progress, if not stalling it completely.

The Anti-Parent Biden Administration By Jack Wolfsohn

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-anti-parent-biden-administration/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

At every turn, the administration is making decisions that are antithetical to what’s best for America’s children.

The Biden administration has been so busy trying to placate the far Left and cater to every intersectional interest group that it has blatantly ignored the interests of parents along the way.

The day after Roe v. Wade was struck down, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a press release recommending a website called AbortionFinder.org that helps women and, importantly, girls find abortion providers. In describing how the site works, the homepage says, “Select whether you are 15 years or younger, 16 years old, 17 years old or 18 years or older.” Moreover, the website reads, “Some states require people under 18 to involve a parent or guardian when getting an abortion. If you need to avoid involving a parent or guardian, contact the If/When/How Judicial Bypass Helpline for information about getting a judicial bypass.”

The Biden administration is thus endorsing a website that seeks to ensure that girls younger than 18 can get an abortion without consulting their parents first. No matter what a parent’s stance on abortion is, most would want to be informed and involved if their daughters were making such a life-changing decision.

Through Dr. Rachel Levine, meanwhile, assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, the Biden administration has been encouraging the use of puberty blockers and gender-reassignment surgery for young people who are questioning their gender identity. Levine, who is transgender and reportedly has had sex-reassignment surgery, said on Monday, “Gender-affirming care is life-saving, medically necessary, age-appropriate, and a critical tool for health-care providers,” while discussing pediatricians and kids. This, despite evidence that the suicide rate among people who undergo sex-reassignment surgery ten to 15 years down the road actually increases to 20 times that of a control population.

The Biden administration has been singularly focused on the issue of transgender rights at the expense of the rights of others.

Patriotism Starts in the Classroom By Kenin M. Spivak

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/patriotism-starts-in-the-classroom/

Progressive doctrine is replacing traditional curricula in our K–12 schools. If not reversed, we could lose the next generation of Americans.

The effort to indoctrinate students in progressive, anti-American ideologies that pervades our universities is also ravaging K–12 education. State education departments issue standards that public and charter K–12 schools, and their teachers, must follow. Particularly in larger states, these standards determine the content of textbooks and standardized tests, influence private and homeschool curricula, and impact public-college admission requirements.

Traditional standards are aggressively being usurped by the principles of critical race theory, social justice, and “action civics,” which promotes student involvement in protests for progressive causes. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has identified at least 45 state education standards in 25 states that incorporate radical doctrine, including CRT, the 1619 Project, and other expressions of anti-American animus. More than twelve federal and 200 state bills have been introduced that would incorporate progressive civics education in K–12 schooling. By July 2020, more than 4,500 schools taught the 1619 Project as truth, despite its author’s admission that it is a parable. That number is likely considerably greater today.

Concurrently, states are eliminating or dumbing down tests and otherwise lowering standards, imposing, for example, “equitable grading,” which excludes factors such as class participation and returning homework on time. The motivations for doing so vary but consistently include an effort to reduce or obscure performance differences to promote “equity.”

Jeff Bezos calls out Joe Biden’s latest inflation claim: ‘Straight misdirection or a deep misunderstanding’ Lawrence Richard –

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/jeff-bezos-calls-out-joe-biden-s-latest-inflation-claim-straight-misdirection-or-a-deep-misunderstanding/ar-AAZ8m8L?ocid=&cvid=15ca4f845a4442969abdac9b8359a5a1

After President Joe Biden called on companies running gas stations to lower the price of gas, Jeff Bezos accused the U.S. president of misleading the public or said he lacked a “basic” understanding of the forces that actually drive prices.

“Ouch. Inflation is far too important a problem for the White House to keep making statements like this,” Bezos said in a tweet Saturday evening.

In the initial tweet, Biden made a direct appeal to gas stations and encouraged them to simply charge less for gasoline.

“My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product,” Biden said Saturday morning.

The president urged compliance, without any hesitation.

“And do it now,” he ordered.

Bezos said the tweet was very telling to him and may reveal how little Biden knows about the market.

“It’s either straight ahead misdirection or a deep misunderstanding of basic market dynamics,” Bezos added in his response.

Biden Plays Pretend Kenin M. Spivak

https://americanmind.org/salvo/biden-plays-pretend/

The President is economically illiterate, delusional, a liar, or all three about the probability and causes of a recession.

The Biden administration has huffed and puffed its adherence to progressive dogma and, as a result, it is about to blow down the American economy. The situation won’t improve until the Administration resolves its catalepsy.

In March, I described the substantial risk that America was heading toward a recession. A recession may already have begun, and it will certainly soon do so if the Biden White House  does not immediately change course on energy and spending.

In June, U.S. and European economies slowed sharply as surging prices weakened demand. U.S. retail sales fell in May, and existing home sales have declined for four consecutive months. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal put the risk of a recession in the next 12 months at 44 percent, a level usually seen only on the brink of, or during, recessions.

The classic definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters during which Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declines. The U.S. has just completed one quarter during which GDP declined at an annual rate of 1.5 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is projecting a flat second quarter. If results tilt down by just one dollar, that would make two consecutive quarters of decline.

Still suffering at the pump? Get used to it — it’s Joe Biden’s liberal world order By Miranda Devine

https://nypost.com/2022/07/03/get-used-to-suffering-at-the-pump-its-joes-world-order/

If you had the unpleasant experience this July Fourth weekend of paying close to $5 for a gallon of gas, you can always comfort yourself with the idea that your pain is for a good cause: the “liberal world order.” 

So said Brian Deese, White House director of the National Economic Council, when he was asked on CNN: “What do you say to those families who say, ‘Listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years. This is just not sustainable’?”

Deese, like his boss Joe Biden, is unmoved by the suffering of ordinary Americans, more than two-thirds of whom say gas-price increases are causing them hardship, according to a recent Gallup poll.

“This is about the future of the liberal world order, and we have to stand firm” until Ukraine defeats Russia, declared Deese.

He was echoing the president, who had referenced the Ukraine war a few hours earlier in Madrid, when he dismissed a similar question: “The war has pushed prices up. [Oil] could go as high as $200 a barrel . . . How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?”

Biden responded with cold indifference: “As long as it takes,” he said.

Where’s the empathy?

That’s quite some take from a president who ran on the illusion that he possesses special empathy.

Taking a page from Lenin’s playbook: Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/bons-mots-and-bad-money-inflation/

I have often been struck by the number of pithy observations — revelatory, pointed or simply true — that were not said by the person to whom they are attributed. Vladimir Lenin apparently never said (in Russian or in English) that “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Mark Twain, to whom many amusing remarks have been falsely attributed, apparently did not contend that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Edmund Burke neither said nor wrote that evil would triumph if good men did nothing.

Churchill, like Twain a magnet for orphaned mots seeking parents, did not say that “the idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.

Tocqueville, yet another favored repository of crisp admonitory apothegms, did not point out that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

One thing to note about these pairings of putative author and scintillating observation is how plausible the linkage always is. Lenin certainly could have made that remark about grinding the bourgeoisie: he was keen on deploying any available millstones to destroy the class he abominated. Unlike Chief Justice John Marshall, who pointed out during the economic crisis of 1819 the great danger that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” Lenin thought of its destructiveness as an advantage.

As for inflation, has anyone improved upon Ronald Reagan’s warning that “inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hitman”?

Yes, Ukraine has a Nazi problem, and its name is Andrej Melnyk by David Goldman

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/07/03/auto-draft-4-n1610144

 “Donald Trump is magnificently right about Ukraine.” For all his failings—and I have not hesitated to call attention to them—Trump is a realist who wants a good deal for the United States, and he has contempt for the utopians who will risk the American homeland to propagate their vision of a new world order.”

Germany’s leading center-right newspaper Die Welt posted a banner headline at the top of its page last Friday evening just before Shabbat came in here in New York: “[Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany Andrej] Melnyk’s statement trivializes the Holocaust.” In a radio interview last week, Melnyk compared Ukrainian Nazi leader Stephan Bandera to Robin Hood and vehemently denied—in the face of massive historical documentation—that Bandera had helped to murder 800,000 Ukrainian Jews during World War II.” The Banderites also helped to murder between 40,000 and 100,000 Poles.

Poland’s embassy to Berlin also denounced Melnyk’s statement.

Yet there was barely a peep in the American press—I found a single passing mention in the Washington Post and nothing elsewhere—and not a word from any American Jewish organization.

The incident was a top item in every major German news outlet, but unmentionable in the American media, not to mention polite company. Echo-chamber-driven group-think has achieved a new dimension of control.

Israel’s embassy to Germany had declared: “The statements of the Ukrainian Ambassador are a distortion of the historical facts, a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to those who were murdered by Bandera and his people. The statements of the ambassador undermine not only the values that we all treasure, but also undermine the brave fight of the Ukrainian people to live in peace and with democratic values.”

A Court for the Constitution The historic Supreme Court term that ended this week was a triumph for originalism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-supreme-court-for-the-constitution-originalism-dobbs-abortion-religious-liberty-11656711597?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

A funny thing happened on the way to the supposedly partisan Supreme Court finishing its term: It ruled for the Biden Administration on immigration. Somehow that case isn’t making the dastardly hit list of those eager to declare that the Court is now “illegitimate,” but the Justices applied the law regardless of the policy and decided for the executive branch.(See nearby for elaboration.)

This isn’t a partisan Court looking for preferred policy outcomes. It’s a Court that hews to the tenets of originalism, with different shades of emphasis by different Justices. The Court’s jurisprudence is focused more than anything else on who under the Constitution gets to decide policy, not what that policy should be.

This is the main reason Democrats and the press corps are furious about the Court’s decisions. For decades they have counted on a majority of Justices to deliver or bless the policy results they want: on abortion, voting rights, healthcare, racial preferences, climate and economic regulation. You name it, the Court found ways to deliver it with balancing tests, trimester analysis, and the discovery of unenumerated rights between the lines of the Constitution’s text.

For decades conservative critics have argued that the role of the Court should be different—supporting rights that are actually in the Constitution, but otherwise enforcing the separation of powers so each branch of government stays in its lane as defined by the Founders. With the arrival of three new Justices nominated by Donald Trump and shepherded to confirmation by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, that Court has arrived.

The result is the opposite of judicial imperialism. In the Dobbs abortion case, the Court is trying to extricate itself from abortion policy debates. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh put it, “the Constitution is neutral on the issue of abortion.” Policy will now be set by legislators in the states as informed by voters, subject to a low-level of legal review known as the “rational basis” test.

The political result may be surprising. The right-to-life movement now must persuade voters across 50 states, and most voters favor some limits on abortion but not an outright ban. If Republicans sound like moral scolds and can’t make their case with compassion for women, they will lose the debate. If Republicans seek a national ban on abortion via Congress, the Court could strike it down. The Court majority in Dobbs has invigorated democracy and federalism.