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July 2022

Biden is exacerbating America’s energy crisis Steve Milloy

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/biden-is-exacerbating-americas-energy-crisis

“I guarantee you — I guarantee you — we are going to end fossil fuel.”

So said then-candidate Joe Biden to environmental activists at a campaign rally in 2019. The president has yet to deliver on his promise to turn the entire U.S. energy system on its head, but given the record high gas prices at the fuel pump, he’s certainly made driving and powering homes punitively unavailable to low-income households.

The administration is keen on blaming the war in Ukraine for the hardships people are facing. This attempt is window dressing at best and blatant misinformation at worst. While European nations are heavily reliant on Russian gas in particular, the United States only used to get about 8% of its supplies from Russia. Most crude oil is imported here from Canada. Indeed, even Mexico is more important for America’s oil trade than President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Another striking difference with most European nations is the fact that the U.S. has its own oil reserves. In theory, this would mean more energy independence. However, oil drilling permits have been cut by more than half since Biden came to office. Biden says oil companies should feel encouraged to increase capacity. But the industry has hit back by revealing how the Biden administration delays its activities through actions such as initially banning and then slow-walking lease sales on federal land or making drilling permits more difficult to obtain.

State Department’s Middle East policy assessed Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3zER3Ez

Conventional wisdom vs. evidenced-reality

According to the late Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith, “the notion of conventional wisdom… is commonly understood as knowledge that is accepted within a certain community or among the general public…. [They] tend to hold on to opinions and ideas that fit with their established worldviews. Accordingly, conventional wisdom provides an obstacle for the acceptance of new knowledge or novel and original thinking….

“To its adherents, conventional wisdom provides comfortable padding against inconvenient truths and the complexities of reality…. This is a prime manifestation of vested interest. For a vested interest in understanding is more preciously guarded than any other treasure…. Acceptable ideas are disinclined to change….

“In the struggle between what is correct and what is agreeable, conventional wisdom had a tactical advantage…. There are many reasons why people like to hear articulated that which they approve…. It serves the ego: the individual has the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions….

“The enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events [evidence].… The fatal blow to conventional wisdom comes when conventional ideas fail signally to deal with some contingency to which obsolescence has made them palpably inapplicable.… The concept of conventional wisdom accentuated the difference between established truths – fundamentally out-of-touch with contemporary challenges – and new knowledge….”

Yale University’s Prof. Harlan Krumholz adds: “In science, what seems obvious may not be true, and what is accepted as conventional wisdom, may sometimes be based on flawed assumptions.” 

“Donald Trump – Antihero?” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Antihero is defined as a character who lacks qualities of a traditional hero – morality, courage, an obeisance to traditional rules of behavior. Wikipedia lists such fictional characters as typifying the antihero: Shakespeare’s Othello, John Milton’s Lucifer, Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, and George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman. Do you, as does Wikipedia, see our former President among that group? I leave you to be the judge.

No matter one’s opinion, the word ‘antihero’ may make wince the large swath of Americans who see Mr. Trump as a villain – some for his character, which was revealed in his lack of positive response during the afternoon of the January 6 riots; others for his antiestablishment/anti-elitist credentials, which threatened official Washington, including members of January 6 committee. ‘Hero,’ even when preceded by ‘anti’ would not be to their liking.

Yet even those who despise him cannot ignore the fact he was (and is) a hero to his estimated twenty to thirty million die hard supporters, most of whom live in non-elitist communities and work in non-establishment jobs. His supporters, who encompass all genders and races, see big-city and suburban financial and cultural elites as sanctimonious, hypocritical, and uninterested in the social and economic mobility that has characterized the United States. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joseph Epstein, wrote “My sense is that just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump.” I agree. Mr. Trump was thrust upon us, in reaction to those who derided American history, patronized minorites and who treated millions of white, working-class Americans as ‘deplorables.’  Those who now reject him most vehemently bear primary responsibility for his political rise.

China and the US: Whose Side Is the Administration On? by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18761/china-taiwan-us

One hopes that [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s Taiwan visit is also intended to reassure free Asia that America will militarily defend Pacific democracies, despite the failure of the US either to deter Russia from invading Ukraine or adequately to defend it after it was invaded.

Above all, the US, must not submit to the Chinese Communist Party’s threats. Pelosi should proceed to Taiwan with as large a bipartisan Congressional delegation as possible. If she bows to demands to stay away, China will be incentivized to attack Taiwan effectively the next day. Backing down at this point would only establish a pattern that all Beijing has to do to intimidate America is bark.

After America’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the “far too little, too late ” response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, any cancellation of Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan would be seen the world over as yet another spineless US surrender.

The only question is if this administration finally has the political will to stop appearing weak, scared and permitting China to dictate US policy. The administration’s record so far: it has sold oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant for hurricane damage and other emergencies, not only to China, but to the offshoot of a firm there in which President Biden’s son, Hunter, had “invested heavily”; it has cancelled the China Initiative, thereby allowing China to continue stealing intellectual property with impunity; it has ignored China’s purchase of massive amounts of American farmland and land near US military bases; it appears about to lift tariffs for China that will permit China to dictate US trade policy but only negligibly curb inflation; it is permitting China to collect genetic data from Americans citizens for potential biological warfare against the US.

China this weekend, according to reports, privately delivered a message to US national security officials reinforcing an earlier Chinese Foreign Ministry statement: if US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes ahead with her planned August visit to Taiwan, it would be met with a “resolute and strong measures.”

China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated on July 19 that the visit “would seriously undermine Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

THE OLD WORLD ORDER: DANIEL GREENFIELD

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=

When President George H.W. Bush delivered a speech to Congress envisioning the emergence of a “new world order”, he had it backward. The new world order wasn’t emerging, it was over

A “new world”, Bush claimed, “is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known” and he shared that vision with Gorbachev. The Soviet Leader, a year away from being toppled, who had cut his teeth on Communist visions of a new world being born only to inherit a failing system that could no longer win wars or feed its own people, must have been amused.

Gorbachev understood what Bush did not, that no new world order was coming, an old world order was returning. Bush lasted a year longer in office than his Soviet counterpart. And yet his own farewell speech couldn’t help but echo Bush, declaring, “we live in a new world now.”

The new world we live in now is one where Russia is trying to rebuild a Czarist empire, and China, Iran, and every other power or power that was, is fighting to recreate its glory days.

The patchwork international order had been a product of the Cold War that Bush and Gorbachev were eagerly bidding farewell to. Globalism, or the post-Cold War international order based on trade, human rights and conferences proved to be as much of a joke as the UN, the WTO, the NGOs and the multilateral organizations that served as its shaky infrastructure.

Bush envisioned “a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle” and “nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice” on the brink of the original Gulf War.

But the only law that ever existed was the law of force enforced by self-interest or idealism.

The Message America’s Future Doctors Need to Hear The University of Michigan medical students who walked out of their white coat ceremony missed a transcendent lecture about staying human in an age of machines. Vinay Prasad

https://www.commonsense.news/p/the-message-americas-future-doctors?utm_source=email

Dr. Kristin Collier is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, where she has served on faculty for 17 years. She also is the director of the medical school’s Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion and has been published in publications including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Many describe her as a consummate physician and superb teacher—deeply liked and respected by her peers. That’s why, out of some 3,000 faculty at Michigan, Dr. Collier was chosen by students and her peers to be this year’s White Coat Ceremony speaker. The White Coat ceremony is one bookend of medical school (graduation is the other), where students put on their white coats for the first time, take a modified Hippocratic oath and begin the long path to becoming a doctor. 

The trouble is that Professor Collier has views on abortion that are out of step with many Michigan medical students—likely the majority of them. She has stated that she defines herself as pro-life, though she does not state the extent of her position (i.e. whether she allows exemptions for rape or incest). In that same interview, in which she talks about her personal transformation from a pro-choice atheist to a Christian, she laments the intolerance for religious people among medical colleagues. “When we consider diversity in the medical profession, religious diversity is not—should not—be exempt from this goal.”

After Michigan announced her speech, the university made it clear that Dr. Collier would not be addressing abortion in her talk. “The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues, and Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks,” the dean of the medical school, Marshall Runge, wrote to students and staff earlier this month.

Britain, the Tories, and Kemi Badenoch After Boris, what? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/britain-tories-and-kemi-badenoch-bruce-bawer/

“Briefly put, she’s incredibly smart, broadly knowledgeable, articulate, self-possessed, and gutsy – a no-nonsense expounder of good old-fashioned British common sense. In debate, she shines in a way that brings Mrs. Thatcher to mind. So, given that the Tory establishment is essentially Labour lite, nobody expected her to be the last person standing when the game of musical chairs was over. She fell out of the competition after the fourth vote, on July 19; the next day, happily, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, a slavish advocate of gender ideology, authoritarian hate-speech legislation, and other progressive rubbish, was voted off the island. ”

These days, Britain’s Tory Party is not unlike the neverTrump GOP in the U.S. The problem is that so far, at least, there’s no close British approximation to Trump. When Boris Johnson ascended to the prime ministership, to be sure, some of us who had read and admired his Spectator columns for years thought that, after being handed the reins of power, he might very well deliver the goods in a way not unlike The Donald. Alas, no. As it turned out, being a sharp, snappy political writer – even one who, thinking on his feet in front of a live audience, can put up a witty argument for the superiority of classical Greece to ancient Rome – doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be a first-rate head of government.

It’s still depressing to look back on it all. The Tories won the 2020 election by a landslide – giving them a clear mandate to take back Britain from the London-based progressives – but Boris, for all his power, did less with it, at least in that regard, than any of his admirers could ever have expected. Yes, he got Brexit done. But taxes went up anyway. So did rates of illegal immigration. He ordered a very strict lockdown (which he famously violated) and pursued an environmental policy that might have been cooked up by the EPA. As “woke” ideology spread – a far more dangerous virus than COVID-19 – he repeatedly resisted opportunities to score meaningful victories against it that would only have enhanced his level of public support. Perhaps most appalling, during his tenure, horrific revelations of mass grooming-gang rapes kept on coming even as the nation’s police, to their everlasting discredit, remained far more interested in locking up critics of Islam than in nabbing Muslim rapists. But B.J. just shrugged it all off, seeming strangely detached – perhaps, some wondered, uneasy with power.  

Which, of course, is why the Conservatives, taking advantage of a relatively trivial scandal or two, finally decided a few weeks back to give old Boris the heave-ho and find a new party leader.

Climate Change Alarmists Ramp Up Their Rhetoric and Disruptive Tactics And a doomsday voice from the past is back. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/climate-change-alarmists-ramp-their-rhetoric-and-joseph-klein/

Climate change alarmists are using increasingly strident rhetoric and confrontational tactics in an effort to accelerate an end to the fossil fuel industry. The climate change alarmists believe that the disruptive methods of “civil disobedience” they employ are necessary in order to call attention to what they claim is an imminent existential threat to humanity caused by continued dependence on fossil fuels. These activists accuse the fossil fuel industry of profiting from the suffering of everyday people caused by fossil fuel emissions that are said to be wreaking havoc with the global climate. And they accuse government officials of complicity by not doing enough to force a very rapid transition to total reliance on renewable sources of clean energy, whatever the resulting huge costs and disastrous economic fallout turn out to be.

The doomsday prophesies are sounding more and more like a broken record. Take former Vice President Al Gore’s pronouncements, for example. In 2008, before teaming up with former President Barack Obama, Gore predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2013, which he pushed out a year further in his updated 2009 prophecy. President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry made a similarly dire prediction back in 2009, citing the projections of “scientists.” Gore and Kerry were way off the mark as usual.

According to data compiled by the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC), as of mid-July 2022 there is still plenty of sea ice in the Arctic – extending 3.25 million square miles. “The decline rate of the extent through the first half of July was near the 1981 to 2010 average,” NSIDC reported, adding that the sea ice extent on July 17th was the highest since 2015.

Feds Drop Assault Charges Against Man Accused in Sicknick Attack By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/27/feds-drop-assault-charges-against-man-accused-in-sicknick-attack/

Federal prosecutors today dropped felony assault charges against one of two men accused of attacking Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick on January 6, 2021. George Tanios of West Virginia was arrested in March 2021 and charged with numerous felonies including assault on federal officers with a dangerous or deadly weapon and obstruction of an official proceeding.

In an superseding indictment filed Wednesday morning by the office of Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia handling all January 6 prosecutions, Tanios now faces two misdemeanor counts: entering or remaining on restricted grounds and disorderly conduct.

Tanios and Julian Khater, his co-defendant in the alleged attack, have been portrayed by Joe Biden’s Justice Department and the national news media as the Trump supporters responsible for the death of Sicknick on January 7, 2021. After the New York Times in February 2021 retracted its initial account of what happened to Sicknick—that he was bludgeoned to death by Trump “loyalists” using a fire extinguisher—the media then suggested Sicknick died after suffering an allergic reaction to chemical spray. (Khater remains accused of using pepper spray against a line of officers, including Sicknick, outside that afternoon.)

In April 2021, the D.C. Medical Examiner ruled Sicknick died of natural causes and suffered no internal or external injuries during the Capitol protest.

After prosecutors sought pretrial detention for Tanios and Khater, D.C. District Court Judge Thomas Hogan, 83, denied their release. Both men were sent to the D.C. gulag set aside for January 6 defendants; in August 2021, the D.C. Circuit Court overturned Hogan’s order to keep Tanios behind bars and he was released on strict home detention orders. Khater remains incarcerated awaiting an October 5 trial.

In an interview with American Greatness last October, Tanios, father of three young children, explained how the false charges destroyed his life, including the loss of his sandwich restaurant. “In the court of public opinion, we’ve all been destroyed,” Tanios told me during a phone interview. “The truth is going to come out, though, it has to.”

Tanios is expected to plead guilty today to both misdemeanor counts in Judge Hogan’s courtroom.

The Ukrainian Verdun The United States is nearing a gut-check on Ukraine. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/27/the-ukrainian-verdun/

Five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war is now reduced to one of attrition. The current dirty, grinding slog is fought mostly with artillery and rockets. Everything from Ukraine’s shopping centers to apartment buildings—and the civilians in them—are Russian targets. 

Most outsiders have already forgotten the heroic Ukrainian winter repulse of the botched Russian shock-and-awe effort to sweep into Kyiv, decapitate the government, and declare the eastern half of the country a Russian protectorate within mere days.

Months later, the long war devolves further into a contest of mass and weight—tons of explosives blowing up pathways for massed troops grabbing a few more charred miles of ruined landscape.

Vladimir Putin bets he can throw in more men and more shells than Ukraine and its Western suppliers can match. He is quite willing to “win” by laying waste to eastern Ukraine even if it means losing three Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian. 

When war becomes such gridlocked carnage, each side looks to new game-changing diplomacy, strategies, allies, or weapons to break the deadlock.

For Putin, such escalation means more flesh, steel, and explosives. His country is 28 times bigger than Ukraine, and over three times more populous, with an economy 15 times larger. 

As for Putin’s financial reserves, the Western oil boycott means increasingly little to him when 40 percent of the planet’s population in India and China are eager to secure near-limitless Russian energy. 

Another 750 million people in Europe once talked tough. But as a second winter nears, their gas and oil imports from Russia will further wither. Then their Churchillian rhetoric may chill. 

So, the Ukrainian war increasingly will depend on endless U.S. aid and escalation.

To stop the Russian steamroller, Ukraine demands sophisticated American missiles to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Kyiv requests shipments of U.S. jet fighters to knock down Putin’s missiles and planes.

It asks for more rockets and artillery to ensure tit-for-tat retaliation for every incoming Russian shell and bomb. Kyiv negotiates for more Western intelligence to take out more Russian generals and more lift capacity to stage airborne raids into Mother Russia itself.