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September 2022

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

John Podesta: Biden’s New Green Investment Czar by Peter Schweizer

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18943/john-podesta-green-investment

In the Biden administration’s uncanny ability to put the wrong people in the wrong jobs, naming John Podesta to be the new “climate czar” might be its masterstroke.

With so much money at stake, you might have expected the administration to choose someone with a strong background in energy technologies or perhaps someone possessing deep experience in the energy business who can spot the good (and bad) uses for all that money.

Although Podesta is listed on the corporate records, he failed to disclose his membership on the board of Joule Stichting (the holding company) in his federal financial disclosure forms when he officially joined the Obama White House as a senior advisor in 2013.

What is concerning here is the pattern Podesta has established of being involved on both sides of the table, and transiting Washington’s revolving door. When the Biden administration chooses a “power broker” to be its decider over $370 billion worth of federal “investment” money that is intended to make green energy affordable, cost-effective, or competitive with fossil fuels, we should not be surprised if large portions of that money will eventually be traced back to connections those companies have with that aforementioned power broker.

This is why you do not want the federal government to have individuals who are not experts – who are operators and lobbyists – making important decisions like that. They will pass out cash to people who have made them money in the past, and who will make them money in the future, or who have employed their family members. It is corrupt and it is cronyism. When you give people the opportunity to hand out other people’s money, they are going to give it to families and friends. With Podesta, there is certainly a history of doing just that.

In the Biden administration’s uncanny ability to put the wrong people in the wrong jobs, naming John Podesta to be the new “climate czar” might be its masterstroke.

The White House announced recently that John Podesta will oversee $370 billion in clean energy investments included in the Inflation Reduction Act. This makes him the decision-maker for handing out money to make green energy a viable, cost-effective replacement for fossil fuels. Green energy subsidies and other government giveaways have been tried before, and failed, but not at this scale. With so much money at stake, you might have expected the administration to choose someone with a strong background in energy technologies or perhaps someone possessing deep experience in the energy business who can spot the good (and bad) uses for all that money.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdogan Threatens Greece by Uzay Bulut

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18944/erdogan-threatens-greece

“We have only one sentence for Greece: Do not forget Izmir [the city of Smyrna]. Your occupying the [Aegean] islands will not stop us; we will do what is necessary when the time comes. You know what we say: ‘Unexpectedly one night we shall come to [conquer] you.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sondakika.com, September 4, 2022.

“The final years of the Ottoman Empire were catastrophic for its non-Turkish, non-Muslim minorities. From 1913 to 1923, its rulers deported, killed, or otherwise persecuted staggering numbers of men, women and children in an attempt to preserve ‘Turkey for the Turks,’ setting a modern precedent for how a regime can commit genocide against its own citizens in pursuit of political ends, while largely escaping accountability.” — George N. Shirinian, Genocide in the Ottoman Empire: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, 1913-1923.

The Turkish attacks against the Greeks and Armenians of Smyrna began [in 1922] with looting, rapes and massacres, and ended with a fire that destroyed the Christian districts of the city.

“In September 1922, the richest city of the Mediterranean was burned, and countless numbers of Christian refugees killed. The city was Smyrna, and the event was the final episode of the 20th Century’s first genocide — the slaughter of three million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire. The slaughter at Smyrna occurred as warships of the great powers stood by — the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy.” — Lou Ureneck, Smyrna, September 1922.

The Republic of Turkey actually boasts of its genocide.

Since the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, no factual information has been taught to Turkish schoolchildren about the extreme brutality, massacres, rapes, pillaging and other atrocities that indigenous Greeks and Armenians of Smyrna were subjected to at the hands of the Turks. The truth about the identity of the arsonists is categorically denied. For the past 100 years, Turkey has blamed the victims of the genocide for their own extermination.

September 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the genocide in Smyrna. Although the Turkish government still takes pride in its slaughter, everyone else would do well to remember and honor the memories of the victims and prevent further Turkish aggression. One way for Western governments to do this is officially to recognize the 1913-23 genocide, but above all, stop Erdogan’s continued threats against Greece.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Pandemic was a Grand Rehearsal for the Great Reset By Janet Levy

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/the_pandemic_was_a_grand_rehearsal_for_the_great_reset.html

Fear is the key to obtaining compliance.  And by obtaining mass compliance during the pandemic, the global elite — operating through political leaders, international bodies, NGOs, and a vast network of “experts” and bureaucrats — audaciously tested ground for the Great Reset.  “Populations have overwhelmingly shown a willingness to make sacrifices,” said Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF).  “The changes we have seen in response to COVID-19 prove that a reset of our economic and social foundations is possible.”

In his new book The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown, Marc Morano lays bare how “15 days to slow the spread” was actually “15 days to begin your conditioning to accept a new level of tyranny.”  He shows how the agenda was set decades before the pandemic and was given momentum during the post-9/11 War on Terror.  The signs of long preparation for the Great Reset are now quite evident.  Morano lists them, connecting the dots.

The goal was global governance, carbon taxes, the empowerment of unelected bureaucrats, and the stringent regulation of all human endeavors.  The gospel according to the WEF promises people that “you will own nothing, and you will be happy.”  In Schwab’s characterization of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, our physical, digital, and biological identities will fuse into one.  And in the interest of equity and inclusivity, we will sacrifice property, privacy, and liberty, remaining dependent on and therefore under the control of governments.  Meanwhile, the global elite will wrest ownership of, and power over, everything.  Hundreds of billionaire businessmen, influential financiers, and world leaders are on board with this project.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Ray Epps Matters Like Alger Hiss before him, Epps has come to bear the weight of a powerful narrative. By Jack Cashill

By on September 29th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/28/why-ray-epps-matters/

For those who do not know who Ray Epps is and why he matters—and this includes most Democrats and many journalists—U.S. Representative Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) served up a handy reference guide last week. Gosar did this in the form of a resolution of inquiry (ROI) directing Attorney General Merrick Garland to hand over all documents relevant to the Epps case within 14 days. 

“Multiple videos show Ray Epps repeatedly urging crowds of people in Washington, D.C. on January 5 and January 6, 2021, to go to the United States Capitol and breach the building,“ Gosar explained. “Epps is the one person seen on video directing people towards the Capitol seconds before violence broke out, yet he has never been arrested or charged with any crime while more than 800 others have and countless more remained jailed.”

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday of last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) went into more detail, showing numerous video clips and citing Epps’ own admission, captured on video, “I’ll probably go to jail for this. I’ll probably be arrested.” 

Epps had good reason to worry. In his red Trump hat and camo gear, a head taller than those around him, Epps was the most conspicuous of all the January 6 protestors. In fact, he was the only one caught on camera urging others to “go in to the Capitol,” which he did repeatedly on January 5. So suspicious was his behavior that his fellow protestors chanted “no, no, no” and “Fed, Fed, Fed,” over one of his many exhortations.

One video from January 6 shows Epps telling a protester, “When we go in, leave this here. We don’t need to get shot.” The unseen “this” was likely a weapon, perhaps a gun. More damning still, another video captures Epps whispering into the ear of a protester seconds before the young man helped make the first breach of the Capitol Police’s inept defenses.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization We are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions and methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.  By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 29th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/28/the-thinnest-veneer-of-civilization/

Civilization is fragile. It hinges on ensuring the stuff of life. 

To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home—only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.  

Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture. 

So, the great achievement of Western civilization—consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit—was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature. 

But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright. 

As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded—as civilization went headlong in reverse.  

We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis. 

We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish New Green Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age—as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia. 

But meanwhile Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place.  

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Maligning Israel in Print Campus newspapers and the cognitive war against Israel. by Richard L. Cravatts

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/maligning-israel-in-print/

For at least two decades university campuses have been roiled with anti-Israel activism, manifested by Israeli Apartheid Weeks, BDS resolutions pushed through student governments, and the radical activism of groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine who were often responsible for promoting this toxic campaign against Jewish students and other supporters of Israel. Incidents of anti-Semitism have been surging worldwide and universities have not been immune from unfortunate trends, even though much of the animus towards Jews on campuses is masked as mere criticism of Israel. And this cognitive war against Israel, which frequently morphs into anti-Semitism, has increasingly resulted in a campus climate that is oppressive to Jewish students who are often vilified as racist Zionists in their support of an alleged apartheid regime that oppresses the ever-aggrieved Palestinian Arabs.

Now, a new report from the anti-Semitism group Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) has revealed that university student newspapers, in skewing their coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict against the Jewish state, have contributed to Israel’s battered reputation among many college students. The report, entitled  “Institutional Bias: Campus Newspapers and Israel,” reviewed nearly 2000 articles discussing Israel that were published since 2017 in the primary student newspapers of 75 selected campuses.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will Biden Get Bailed Out On, ‘She Was 12, & I Was 30?’ Why, exactly, did the crowd laugh? by Kevin McCullough

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-biden-get-bailed-out-on-she-was-12-i-was-30/

You saw the creepy video right?

It muddied up social media feeds all weekend. People that have never expressed a single political viewpoint to me reacted with gross abhorrence to what Joe Biden appeared to seemingly imply.

As he wraps up some remarks in the video he spots someone in the crowd and in typical Biden stream of consciousness he abruptly changes subjects. Looking directly at the woman he has just spotted he bluntly instructs, “(You) gotta say ‘Hi’ to me.”

Then to the watching crowd he states, “We go back a long way, she was 12 and I was 30 but anyway…”

The crowd belly laughs.

Understanding that legitimate sexual misconduct claims abound all throughout the Biden family I began to ponder how this video—that went everywhere—can be dealt with.

In older chapters of Joe Biden’s life no one cares that Jill Biden was married when she first met Joe. They don’t much seem to care that she was still married when they began to date in March of 1975.

That Hunter Biden took up with his deceased brother’s wife also didn’t seem to matter.

Formal accusations of sexual misconduct by non-family members didn’t phase anyone. And the literally hundreds of  images of Joe Biden, touching, kissing, refusing to let go of, and of course sniffing bother some. He’s done it to women of all ages-school aged little girls all the way up to whatever age Hillary Clinton purports to be.

Yet in recent years there has been a bit of out-sized interest in some of the misconduct alleged of he and his family members.

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EDUCATION, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The “T” Piggybacking on the “LGB” Polls make clear that Americans across political persuasions have major reservations about “gender-affirming” care for minors and teaching gender-identity ideology in schools.Leor Sapir

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/the-hidden-transgender-consensus

Few issues these days inspire agreement among large swathes of voters from both parties, but one notable exception appears to be gender-identity policies.

Last April, a Marist poll commissioned by the organization Do No Harm asked 1,377 Americans about their views on the infiltration of “social justice” ideology into medicine. One question asked whether “minors who identify as transgender and want to undergo hormone treatment or gender transition surgery” should be able to do so “without parental consent,” “only with parental consent,” or not until adulthood (regardless of parental consent). Only 10 percent of all adults surveyed said that minors should be able to access these interventions without parental consent. Twenty-five percent said that parental consent should be required, and 60 percent said minors should never be subject to hormonal or surgical interventions in this context (5 percent were unsure). These findings more or less track with those from a recent New York Times/Siena Poll on (among other things) teaching “sexual orientation and gender identity” content in elementary schools, and it is reasonable to assume that the same people who believe it’s unacceptable for teachers to introduce first-graders to, say, the concept of “non-binary” also think that 12-year-old children should not be given puberty blockers for feeling like they were “born in the wrong body.”

It’s useful to compare the Marist poll with yet another recent poll, this one by Pew, which deals with gender-identity issues, as a way to illustrate the importance of how questions are phrased. The Pew poll asked whether it should be “illegal for health care professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition.” Note how this phrasing avoids specifying the procedures (hormones and surgeries), uses terms like “professionals” and “medical care,” and shifts the focus from the procedures themselves to the issue of state involvement in the doctor-patient relationship. Unsurprisingly, public opinion was more evenly divided in the Pew poll, though a plurality still favored restrictions: 46 percent said they support making it illegal for providers to administer medical intervention, 30 percent opposed it, and 22 percent were undecided.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The College Board’s Racial Pandering Rather than directing help at struggling students, it establishes a new AP course in African American studies. Jason Riley

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-college-boards-racial-pandering-education-k-12-schooling-ap-courses-exams-testing-high-schools-math-reading-propaganda-11664309793?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Ever wonder why Democrats push so hard to expand the mission of K-12 public education even while the system continues to underperform in its core tasks?

Even before the pandemic, a majority of fourth- and eighth-graders were unable to read or do math at grade level, and outcomes are even worse for minority students. New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said last year that 65% of his black and Hispanic students never reach proficiency on standardized tests and then quipped, “If everybody in the Department of Education went home and all the kids went to school, you could get those same results.”

Nevertheless, Democrats from President Biden on down advocate for “universal” prekindergarten programs, even though studies have shown little to no evidence that they improve test scores. Progressives also want explicit sex education in earlier grades and have fought successfully to introduce racial propaganda into curricula via the controversial New York Times Magazine “1619 Project.”

The latest evidence that reading, writing and arithmetic are secondary concerns comes by way of the College Board, the nonprofit organization that runs the Advanced Placement program. AP courses are offered to nearly three million students in more than 22,000 high schools across the country. Students who complete the courses take a final exam, graded on a 5-point scale, and those who score a 3 or higher can be eligible for college credit.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Biden’s Alzheimer’s Lapse He takes credit for savings caused by not paying for a new drug.

By on September 29th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-alzheimers-lapse-drug-medicare-premiums-aduhelm-biogen-11664403263?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Biden on Tuesday claimed credit for a modest decline in Medicare premiums, but he forgot to mention the reason: His Administration is rationing a novel Alzheimer’s drug.

“This year, the American people won, and Big Pharma lost,” the President said in a speech in which he accused Republicans of seeking to gut entitlements and flogged Medicare drug price controls that Democrats are using to pay for $369 billion in new climate spending. But Democrats are the party slashing Medicare via cost rationing.

He continued: “This morning, we got more even good news about lowering costs. The Department of Health and Human Services announced that the premium for Part B will, in fact, decrease this [upcoming] year,” adding that “for years, that fee has gone up. Now, for the first time in more than a decade, it’s going to go down.”

Mr. Biden wants Americans to believe that drug price controls are reducing premiums. But here’s the deal: His Administration increased Part B premiums by 14.5% this year and blamed the increase on expected high demand for Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm, which the Food and Drug Administration approved last summer.

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