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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Apart from God, Only Trump Can Stop Trump Salvatore Babones

By on April 6th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/04/apart-from-god-only-trump-can-stop-trump/

“As America’s record voter turnout proved in 2020, it’s unpopularity that drives the race. Electioneering is a blood sport, and it’s blood the voters are out for. No one watches Squid Game for the victories. Democracy, too, is all about the losers. Nothing beats the satisfaction of stepping into the voting booth, pulling a lever, and whispering to the losing candidate: “You’re fired”.

The defeat of Donald Trump in 2020 saved American democracy. Not from Donald Trump: he never shut down websites, imprisoned protesters, or sicked the security services on his opponents. No, if anything, the 2020 election saved American democracy for Donald Trump. The four-year Trump pause that began on January 20, 2021, put the grown-ups back in charge in Washington—and the world. Like grown-ups everywhere, they immediately maxed out their credit cards, mortgaged the family home, stabbed their friends in the back, picked fights with the neighbours, gave stern speeches in their coronavirus masks while posing for unmasked selfies at the Superbowl, and offered nuclear weapons to Iran in exchange for promises to stop supporting terrorism and shift to nuclear blackmail instead. Thanks to the 2020 election, we all know what adult democracy looks like.

It’s a lucky thing, too. Had there been no coronavirus; had the major media not conspired to suppress the Hunter Biden story; had the election been run under the pre-Covid rules, we would now be blaming Trump—for everything. The phase “imagine if Trump had done that” might never have entered the political lexicon. Ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan? Blame the rank amateurism of Trump’s bumbling foreign policy team. Renewed North Korean missile tests? Blame Trump’s personal courting of “little rocket man” Kim Jong-un. Russian invasion of Ukraine? Trump was only waiting for his second term to repay his true master in the Kremlin. Inflation a problem? Impeach Trump under the “emoluments clause” for raising the rack rate at the Trump International Hotel. We would never have known how much better things might have been.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

HERE COMES ANOTHER CLIMATE DEADLINE THAT WILL PASS WITHOUT NOTICE

By on April 6th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/06/here-comes-another-climate-deadline-that-will-pass-without-notice/

We’ve heard so many declarations that our “last chance” to avoid global warming has arrived that we’ve lost count of the number of times the world has ended. But the sirens continue to wail, the latest from a United Nations grandee who says humanity has to act “now or never” to avoid overheating its host planet. Pardon us while we yawn.

According to Jim Skea, a European academic who co-chairs the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III, “it’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming” to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Keeping Earth’s temperatures in check “will be impossible,” he said, “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors.”

Skea’s comment arrived wrapped up in Working Group III’s just-released report on global warming mitigation, part of the IPCC’s sixth climate assessment. The media, which loves to breathlessly report the demise of the world caused by human carbon dioxide emissions, says the 1.5-degree limit “is recognized as a crucial global target because beyond this level, so-called tipping points become more likely. These are thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life support system.”

OK, then. But let’s back up a moment. Or maybe 13 years. That’s when Prince Charles said, with a deep, trust-me earnestness, that our world had only “100 months to act” before we had done so much damage that the effects of global warming would become irreversible.

Then last year, about 150 months after his previous doomsday prediction, the prince said that the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow was “quite literally … the last chance saloon” to stop the scourge of warming.

Yes, one man is a university researcher, the other an effete figurehead. But they have a common thread. They’re both wrong. And are unlikely to be right in their lifetimes.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

MIT Leads the Way in Reinstating the SAT Expect others to follow. Selective institutions that don’t use standardized tests will fall behind.Jason Riley

By on April 6th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-leads-the-way-in-reinstating-the-sat-admissions-policies-standardized-testing-college-students-11649185773?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

During oral arguments in a 2003 Supreme Court case about affirmative action at the University of Michigan law school, Justice Antonin Scalia told lawyers who were defending the school’s racially discriminatory admissions policies that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too.

“I find it hard to take seriously the state of Michigan’s contention that racial diversity is a compelling state interest—compelling enough to warrant ignoring the Constitution’s prohibition of distribution on the basis of race,” Scalia began. “The problem is a problem of Michigan’s own creation. That is to say, it has decided to create an elite law school . . . [and] it’s done this by taking only the best students with the best grades and the best SATs or LSATs, knowing that the result of this will be to exclude to a large degree minorities.”

Scalia said that if Michigan wants to be an elite law school, that’s fine. But there are trade-offs involved if the school also wants to prioritize enrolling some predetermined percentage of underrepresented minorities for aesthetic reasons. “If [racial diversity] is indeed a significant compelling state interest, why don’t you lower your standards?” he asked. “You don’t have to be the great college you are. You can be a lesser college if that value is important enough to you.”

Last week, the highly selective Massachusetts Institute of Technology, faced with a similar dilemma, apparently chose to maintain its high standards. It became the first prominent school to reinstate the requirement that applicants submit SAT or ACT scores, a practice that MIT and many other colleges had abandoned during the pandemic.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

White House Alters Transcript to Clean Up After Yet Another Biden Gaffe Trying to make a president look competent is backfiring. Robert Spencer

By on April 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/white-house-alters-transcript-clean-after-yet-robert-spencer/

On Saturday in Wilmington, Del., Old Joe Biden’s dementia came full circle: he has previously mistaken the vice president for the first lady, and now, at the Commissioning Commemoration Ceremony of the USS Delaware, he recalled the days when the First Lady was vice president. But as always, White House.gov was ready to do everything necessary to make it appear as if we have a competent and coherent chief executive: in the official transcript of Biden’s rambling remarks, his misidentification of his wife as the vice president is quietly corrected without explanation. But the correction actually creates more problems than it solves.

Biden said of First Lady Jill Biden: “And I’m deeply proud of the work she’s doing as first lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president, and now carries on.” In the WhiteHouse.gov version, we get “And I’m deeply proud of the work she is doing as First Lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she [I] was Vice President and now carries on.”

That’s helpful in case anyone actually thought that Jill Biden was once vice president of the United States, but it’s not what Joe Biden said, and the correction blandly obscures a fact that ought to be of keen interest to contemporary observers as well as to future historians: Joe Biden is not entirely in control of what he says. His misstatement here is not just some innocuous slip of the tongue to be matter-of-factly corrected as if it were an insignificant typographical error; it is just the latest in a long string of weird statements that should arouse genuine concern about the mental state of the president of the United States, if such concern weren’t immediately dismissed as tendentious partisan mudslinging.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Ramadan intifada? Ruthie Blum

By on April 6th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-ramadan-intifada/

(April 5, 2022 / JNS) The Muslim month of Ramadan, which began on Friday night, is already proving to be the challenge that Israeli authorities had anticipated. Palestinians and radicalized Arab Israelis swarming the Old City of Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate on Saturday and Sunday attacked police, who were stationed at site to keep the peace.
The irony is inescapable. Ramadan, one of the Five Pillars of Islam, is marked by fasting and serious prayer. The 29- to 30-day period is when Muslims are supposed to focus on faith, spiritual contemplation and self-discipline. In Israel, however, the holy days are a source of potential—and often realized—peril for citizens and tourists of all religions. The proximity of Passover and Easter, rather than cause for monotheistic celebration, only serves to make the security situation more precarious for residents and visitors alike.

In a futile attempt to keep the imminent chaos at bay, Israeli and American leaders, along with counterparts in the Arab world, made a point last month of warning against the unrest that all knew was inevitable. Unfortunately, none aimed the admonition at the actual culprits—Palestinians and those among their Israeli brethren planning and carrying out mass murder.
At a press conference on March 27 following a meeting with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that he and the Israeli premier had “discussed ways to foster a peaceful Passover, Ramadan and Easter across Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, particularly in Jerusalem, a city of such profound importance to Jews, to Christians, to Muslims.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Justin Trudeau (and Canada) Differ From Joe Biden (and the U.S.) By David Solway

By on April 5th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/04/04/how-justin-trudeau-and-canada-differ-from-joe-biden-and-the-u-s-n1586861

Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau has been much in the news of late, vying for attention with the American president. Although both have earned widespread disrespect, Biden for his costly gaffes and Trudeau for his native hypocrisy, a blunderer like Biden is obviously a far more significant figure on the world stage than a dandiprat like Trudeau. But there are disproportionate differences in their national effectiveness that favor Trudeau.

Biden is a loose cannon; Trudeau is a Black Ops sniper. Biden is doddering and obviously cognitively impaired; Trudeau is relatively young and fit and knows what he is doing. Biden’s tenure as president is increasingly shaky as the specter of the 25th Amendment hovers over his political longevity. After signing a concordat with the NDP’s conniving Jagmeet Singh to create a coalition government, Trudeau has guaranteed his ascendancy until at least 2025.

Biden’s legislative initiatives are vigorously contested by Republican states and innumerable court filings. Trudeau’s forays into totalitarian territory are regularly approved in the Commons and meet with only sporadic resistance by patriot organizations and individuals. Biden is addicted to the incontinent deployment of Executive Privilege, which cannot feasibly go on forever without serious pushback. Trudeau can with impunity invoke the Emergencies Act (aka the War Measures Act), arrest people at will, suspend professional licenses, and exert centralized control over people’s lives by freezing personal assets and bank accounts.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

For Midterms, Biden Races to the Center — And Trips Over His Own Feet By Rick Moran

By on April 5th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/04/05/for-midterms-biden-races-to-the-center-and-trips-over-his-own-feet-n1587094

The last two Democratic presidents — Barack Obama and Bill Clinton — began their presidencies with grandiose plans to make America into a social-democratic paradise. Both presidents came crashing back to reality when their polling numbers went south very quickly. They began to emphasize decidedly conservative issues like the deficit, defense spending, and law and order.

Joe Biden now finds himself in exactly the same position as Obama and Clinton were in coming up to their first midterm election — dismal approval numbers and Republicans surging. He too will now look to emphasize less radical, more moderate issues.

But the difference for Biden is the party he leads compared to the party Obama and Clinton led.

The party Biden leads is the most radical, left-wing political party in American history. It can fairly be said that the kind of “transformation” desired by Democrats would leave the country unrecognizable to all but the most committed leftists.

Does anyone believe Biden’s lurch to the center is anything but an electoral two-step?

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

US pressuring Israel – reality testing Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinge

By on April 5th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3J98u1i

According to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, reality testing is the ability to see a situation for what it really is, rather than what one hopes or fears it might be.

The Ben Gurion doctrine

Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, pressures Israel to refrain from sharing with the co-equal US Congress its own concerns about the adverse impact of the US policy toward Iran on the national security of the US and Israel.

Secretary Blinken is, also, pressuring Israel to refrain from acting unilaterally, in order to avert the regional and global wrath of a nuclear Iran.

In addition, the chief architect of President Biden’s foreign and national security policy is pressuring Israel to freeze Jewish construction – while encouraging Arab construction – in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem, re-divide Jerusalem and to withdraw to the pre-1967 ceasefire lines, which were defined as “The Auschwitz Lines” by Abba Eban, Israel’s former Foreign Minister, who was a leading Dove.

Israel’s Prime Minister is advised to follow in the footsteps of Israel’s Founding Fathers – from Prime Minister David Ben Gurion through Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir – who considered the defiance of US pressure to make reckless concessions as a central factor in their national security policy. While it triggered short term confrontations, it produced strategic long term US respect for Israel. The US appreciates principle-driven allies, who do not sacrifice their national security and cradle of history on the altar of diplomatic and economic convenience, even when it entails defiance of US pressure.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Gavin Mortimer Was another tragic Jewish death covered up in France?

By on April 5th, 2022

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/was-another-tragic-jewish-death-covered-up-in-france-

Not for the first time in France the death of a Jew is dominating the news, and not for the first time there are whispers of an attempted cover-up.

Several candidates in Sunday’s election have paused from their campaigning to air their views on the death of Jeremy Cohen, a 31-year-old who was struck by a tram in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris. The candidates portrayed by the commentariat as ‘extreme right’ were the most direct. ‘Did he die because he was a Jew?’ tweeted Eric Zemmour, himself a Jew. ‘Why is this case hushed up?’ Marine Le Pen also wondered on social media if ‘what was presented as an accident could be an anti-Semitic murder’. Then she tweeted what many Jews in France will be thinking ‘How to explain the silence on this affair and its motivations?’ The Gaullist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan claimed the ‘violence was hidden for pre-electoral reasons’.

When Cohen, who according to his family suffered from a non-visible handicap, was killed on the night of 16 February the police investigation concluded that his death was an accident. On Monday evening his family released video footage in which some of Jeremy’s last moments are seen. They are disturbing. Surrounded and jostled by a 15-strong mob, Cohen is then seen running away towards the oncoming tram.

Cohen wore a kippah and his family claim he was targeted because of his faith. ‘Jeremy’s death is linked to an attack of which he was the victim – by a gang of young people immediately before being hit,’ said Gerald Cohen, in an interview with Radio Shalom, a French-Jewish radio station.

Cohen’s brother has criticised the police for closing the case too quickly. ‘A few days after my brother died, we were told that the case was being looked at as a traffic accident rather than an attack before they even watched video footage from the train and other evidentiary material,’ he is quoted as saying.

Had it not been for the determination of the Cohen family to investigate the exact circumstances of Jeremy’s death it would probably have remained an ‘accident’. They handed out leaflets and asked for information and eventually someone sent them the video footage.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Feckless in Seattle In the Pacific Northwest hub, Amazon is moving employees out, city police are demoralized, and political leadership is in short supply. Thomas Hogan

By on April 5th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/feckless-in-seattle

Citing persistent violence, including a homicide directly in front of its main building, Amazon recently announced that it was temporarily relocating its Seattle staff to a new location. The quirky but beautiful Pacific Northwest city—boasting houseboats, good coffee, and great jazz—is following a familiar formula for urban decline.

The first step in that process is to elect a mayor who cares less about the nuts and bolts of governing a city than about an ideological agenda. The last Seattle mayor who paid attention to details and had a vision for improving everyday life was Paul Schell, who served from 1998 to 2002. Under Schell’s no-nonsense leadership, Seattle built a new City Hall and several libraries, parks, and community centers, while rebuilding its opera house and symphony hall.

Then the city drifted into progressive fantasy. Greg Nickels, mayor from 2002 to 2009, decided that he should lead the charge in environmental activism but couldn’t manage the city’s own environment—a 2008 snowstorm hurt his reelection bid, while homeless tent cities (derisively named “Nickelsvilles”) cropped up downtown. Self-proclaimed progressive outsider Mike McGinn, who served as mayor from 2010 to 2013, demanded higher taxes and marijuana legalization while making clear, amid violent riots, that Seattle had no place for police officers who did not share his views on social justice. Ed Murray, Seattle’s first openly gay mayor, began his term in 2014, but resigned in disgrace in 2017 following multiple allegations of child sex abuse. In 2017, the city elected Jenny Durkan, who distinguished herself mainly by criticizing Donald Trump and allowing the formation of the lawless Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in downtown Seattle in June 2020. (Asked how long the occupation could last, Durkan said: “I don’t know. We could have another Summer of Love!”) Following a series of political blunders and recall efforts, Durkan and Seattle decided that one term was enough. Residents can only hope that newly elected mayor Bruce Harrell, who bluntly stated that he “inherited a mess,” will break the streak of ineffective leadership.

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