Displaying the most recent of 90901 posts written by

Ruth King

The White House’s Hammer And Sickle

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/19/the-white-houses-hammer-and-sickle/

Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing on Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s choice to be comptroller of the currency, confirmed that she is the wrong person for the job. Flags the color of those that once were raised over Moscow were flying throughout the three-hour session.

Omarova is a professor of regulation of financial institutions, banking law, international finance, and corporate finance at Cornell. As comptroller of the currency, she would ensure that the “federal banking system operates in a safe and sound manner.”

The White House says she “​​is eminently qualified and was nominated for this role because of her lifetime of work,” and is “a leading academic” in her field. 

Her critics, however, see someone whose policy positions are far out of step with a market economy.

Britain’s Daily Mail has labeled her “​​Biden’s new comrade.” Townhall’s Katie Pavlich says Omarova is a “Communist” who “wants all bank accounts to be controlled by the Fed.” South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott said during Thursday’s hearing that “I cannot think of a nominee more poorly suited to be the comptroller of the currency based solely on your public positions, statements and the weight of your writings than you are.”

The Kazakhstan-born Omarova, educated at Moscow State University, where she had a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship, which “recently disappeared from her resume,” and also at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University, has described herself as a “free-market idealist.” She swears she knows “that Soviet-style communism doesn’t work.”

“I’ve lived through it. That system was deeply flawed. It’s dead.”

Yet she envisions the creation of “National Investment Authority,” which would bypass Congress and use public and private resources to fund “vital infrastructure and the real economy.”

This Foreign Country Ran A Misinformation Campaign in 2020 to Elect Biden By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/11/18/this-foreign-country-ran-a-misinformation-campaign-in-2020-to-elect-biden-n1534322

We have all heard ad nauseam about how the Russians supposedly manipulated the 2016 presidential election in order to ensure the election of their man, Donald Trump. The whole thing has been thoroughly exposed as a massive hoax designed to discredit and ultimately destroy Trump, but that doesn’t mean that there are no foreign entities trying to influence American elections.

On Thursday, the Justice Department indicted Seyyed Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian, two hackers from the Islamic Republic of Iran who worked for a company that has worked with the Iranian government. They are accused of spreading disinformation among American voters during the 2020 presidential campaign. It isn’t hard to figure out which candidate they were trying to help get elected, which makes it all the more surprising that Merrick Garland’s corrupt and politicized Justice Department has indicted them at all.

According to the Washington Post, Kazemi and Kashian, 27, “allegedly sent threatening emails to try to scare voters, attempted to break into several states’ voting-related websites and gained access to a U.S. media company’s computer network.” This was a major operation: “Kazemi and Kashian allegedly tried to break into 11 state voter registration and information websites, according to the indictment. In one case, it alleges, they found a vulnerability that allowed them to successfully download information about more than 100,000 of that state’s voters.”

They did all this to help their candidate, Old Joe Biden: the hackers “sent threatening emails to thousands of voters in October, including many Democrats. They allegedly claimed to be Proud Boys and threatened the email recipients with physical attacks if they did not change party affiliation and vote for President Donald Trump.”

How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids Leaked Documents and Audio from the California Teachers Association Conference Reveal Efforts to Subvert Parents on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Abigail Shrier

https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/how-activist-teachers-recruit-kids

Incensed parents now make news almost daily, objecting to radical material taught in their children’s public schools. But little insight has been provided into the mindset and tactics of activist teachers themselves. That may now be changing, thanks to leaked audio from a meeting of California’s largest teacher’s union.

Last month, the California Teachers Association (CTA) held a conference advising teachers on best practices for subverting parents, conservative communities and school principals on issues of gender identity and sexual orientation. Speakers went so far as to tout their surveillance of students’ Google searches, internet activity, and hallway conversations in order to target sixth graders for personal invitations to LGBTQ clubs, while actively concealing these clubs’ membership rolls from participants’ parents.

Documents and audio files recently sent to me, and authenticated by three conference participants, permitted a rare insight into the CTA’s sold-out event in Palm Springs, held from October 29-31, 2021. The “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities,” provided best practices workshops that encouraged teachers to “have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation, gender identity and expression,” according to the precis of a talk given by fifth grade teacher, C. Scott Miller

“How We Run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities”

 Several of the workshops advised teachers on the creation of middle school LGBTQ clubs (commonly known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs or “GSA”).  One workshop—“Queering in the Middle”—focused “on what practices have worked for successful middle school GSAs and children at this age developmentally.”

But what makes for a successful LGBTQ middle school club? What to do about meddlesome parents who don’t want their middle schoolers participating in such a club? What if parents ask a club leader—point blank—if their child is a member?

“Because we are not official—we have no club rosters, we keep no records,” Buena Vista Middle School teacher and LGBTQ-club leader, Lori Caldeira, states on an audio clip sent to me by a conference attendee. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”

Sydney Williams: A Reviews of “Woke Racism” by John McWhorter

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

John McWhorter is an independent thinker – a rare (at risk of becoming extinct) individual in today’s academy. He is professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. At age 56, with a PhD from Stanford, he has written almost two dozen books. In his spare time, he is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He describes himself as a “cranky, liberal Democrat.” He is a black man who believes that affirmative action should be based on class, not race, and that woke racism hurts those it claims to help.eview

In this book, he argues that woke racism represents a third wave of anti-racism, “…from people wishing they hadn’t missed the late 1960s.” This wave, he claims, has assumed the traits of a religion, with white privilege as original sin. The third wave “has taken it from the concrete political activism of Martin Luther King to the faith-based commitments of a Martin Luther.” He castigates the proselytizers of this religion, “The Elect,” as “pious, unempirical virtue signalers.” They resemble, in his words, early Christians who “thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems…” Like other such movements, they appeal “to an idealized past, a fantastical future, and an indelibly polluted present.” For the Elect, black people’s noble past is Africa, a glorified future is one without hate, but the present consists of oppressors and oppressed. He finds the Elect’s sanctimony insulting to blacks, who are led to believe that victimhood is destiny and success is due to special treatment. When conservative blacks deny victimhood, they are smeared by the Elect: Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears is a “white” supremacist and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott is an “Uncle Tom.”

America at the Intersection of Woke and Incompetent Brian Lonergan

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/17/america-at-the-intersection-of-woke-and-incompetent/

We may have never had such a poisonous combination of partisanship and incompetence at the highest levels of government as we do today.

For as long as most of us have been alive, there have been declarations that America’s best days are behind us and that we are in a slow, steady decline. Against this backdrop, there is a growing sentiment that our present leadership in Washington is something altogether different, and worse. 

We are still getting familiar levels of government waste and inefficiency, but along with those come seemingly unprecedented levels of radicalism and incompetence. This noxious combination was on full display with the recent Senate testimony of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Washington is filthy with dogmatic bureaucrats, but Mayorkas stands out. He is willing to parrot the most absurd and provably false statements, such as his repeated insistence that the border is closed. When called before Congress, he defends this administration’s indefensible border policies with shameless diversions and obfuscation. 

At the heart of this administration’s border policy is a zealous adherence to far-Left ideology that flies in the face of common sense and traditional American principles. When Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) asked if the border is more under control now than during the Trump years, Mayorkas replied, “We have more control [of the border] that is consistent with our values as a nation.” 

This was a reference to the White House’s favorite talking point that Trump was “cruel” by instituting a zero-tolerance policy that temporarily separated parents from their children. But in its attempt to be all things anti-Trump at the border, this administration has empowered ruthless human trafficking cartels, enabled greater quantities of fentanyl and other illicit drugs to be brought into the country, and allowed untold numbers of children to be sexually assaulted as they are stockpiled into overcrowded detention centers. Isn’t that cruel? In what way is any of that consistent with our values as a nation?

Malign Foreign Influence: China’s United Front by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17946/china-influence-united-front

Newsweek did an extensive report that linked 600 groups operating in the US to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

[FBI Director Christopher] Wray used a phrase common among counter-intelligence professionals: “malign foreign influence.” This phrase describes the covert efforts the FBI has seen in several cases where American politicians were influenced indirectly to adopt policies the Chinese regime desires, particularly in four areas: Hong Kong, Taiwan, human rights abuses against the Uighurs, and the Chinese government’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic.

That is fascinating considering that just this month, the U.S. State Department announced it would stop using that phrase.

The irony here is that those “PRC nationals” the State Department wishes not to offend are exactly the kinds of people that are employed by or connected to [Chinese Communist] entities operating in the US.

“This is the second time Chairman Meeks [D-NY] has blocked taking action against the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party, an organization which literally exists for the purpose of undermining our democracy and engaging in political warfare. It baffles me why Chairman Meeks seems to oppose any measure holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable.” — Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), National Review, September 13, 2021.

China obsesses over what the world thinks of it. Its rise to rival the US as the world’s greatest economic superpower includes a strong psychological element. China seeks not to be feared, but as having peaceful intentions. Looking at its use of “united front” tactics reveals how China’s messaging seeks to convince gullible people in the West that Chinese interests are really their interests, too. This is one example where Chinese communism borrows “Russian characteristics,” using the old Soviet tactic of “united front” groups that wittingly or not do their bidding.

Mayorkas struggles to explain what Kamala Harris does in immigration role By Mark Moore

https://nypost.com/2021/11/16/mayorkas-struggles-to-explain-what-vp-harris-does-in-immigration-role/

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris has not been “directly” involved in his department’s key policy decisions during her nearly eight months tackling the “root causes” of illegal immigration for the Biden administration.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) recalled that President Biden had called Harris the “most qualified person” to stem the flow of migrants coming to the US-Mexico border from Central America and elsewhere when he tapped her for the role in March.

“Do you report to her?” Hawley asked Mayorkas.

“Senator, I report to the vice president and the president, and your question misstates the facts,” the DHS secretary responded. “The president did not appoint the vice president to be the border czar. He asked her to lead the effort in addressing the root causes of irregular migration. Those are two very different things.” 

Mayorkas said he’s met with Vice President Harris “a handful of times” to address the root causes of irregular migration.

Can the FBI Be Salvaged? For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be moved far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/17/can-the-fbi-be-salvaged/

The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.

In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news—and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.

The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton’s email leaks. In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton’s own private computer contractor, CrowdStrike, to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike’s point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.

During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.

It was also under Comey’s directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.

The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy—the Clinton-bought dossier—to Obama government officials and the media.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coie attorney Michael Sussman.

Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.

The Real Fix for Homelessness? A new book takes on activist orthodoxy. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/real-fix-homelessness-bruce-bawer/

EXCERPT

“……I didn’t know what should be done about homelessness, but I’d come to realize that handouts weren’t the answer. What, then, is? According to most homelessness activists, it’s Housing First, which has been official U.S. policy since George W. Bush. The thinking behind it is simple: when people are homeless, the main thing they need are homes. So give them homes – permanent public housing, right off the bat, with no strings attached. What if they have other problems that have contributed to their homelessness? Well, those issues can be addressed afterwards.

Reading the Wikipedia entry for Housing First, you’d think it’s been tremendously successful. In various jurisdictions, according to that page, it’s slashed government outlays per homeless person; reduced drinking by homeless alcoholics; lowered “the number of chronically homeless persons living on the streets or in shelters”; brought down hospitalization and incarceration rates; alleviated pressure on the child welfare system; and cut the number of people who become homeless again. Which raises one little question: if Housing First is so spectacularly effective, why are the streets and parks of many American cities swarming with unprecedented numbers of homeless people? Why the seas of tents? Why all the public defecation? Why the staggering number of used syringes in the gutters? In search of the answer to this conundrum, Michael Shellenberger, a longtime San Franciscan, decided to scrutinize approaches to homelessness in jurisdictions around the world. The product is an eye-opening new book entitled San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

His subtitle notwithstanding, Shellenberger didn’t begin his project with the intention of condemning progressives. He’s a longtime progressive himself, with a degree in Peace and Global Studies and a background in environmental activism. In 2008, Time Magazine named him a “Hero of the Environment”; in 2018 he ran for the Democratic nomination for governor of California. Recently, to be sure, he’s been taking on leftist orthodoxies: last year his book Apocalypse Never, an attack on “environmental alarmism,” antagonized climate-change hysterics; San Fransicko will doubtless receive a similar response from the devotees of homelessness ideology, i.e. Housing First.

Group Biden Removed From Terror List Storms U.S. Embassy in Yemen, Takes Hostages The high cost of Biden’s appeasement policy. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/group-biden-removed-terror-list-storms-us-embassy-robert-spencer/

Isn’t great that America is back and the adults are back in charge? America is back, all right: all the way back to 1979, the last time we had a president so weak that enemies of the United States stormed one of our embassies and took hostages. On Thursday, the Yemeni media outlet Al-Masdar Online reported that Houthi jihadis in Yemen, which are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, stormed our embassy in Sana’a, seizing “large quantities of equipment and materials.” Just days before that, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), they “kidnapped three Yemeni nationals affiliated with the U.S. Embassy.” Biden’s team promised America would be back, but didn’t say anything about Jimmy Carter coming around again as well.

A State Department spokesman confirmed the Yemeni report, saying: “The United States has been unceasing in its diplomatic efforts to secure their release. The majority of the detained have been released, but the Houthis continue to detain additional Yemeni employees of the embassy.” They are being “detained without explanation and we call for their immediate release.” The U.S., the spokesman continued, is “concerned about the breach of the compound” and is calling “on the Houthis to immediately vacate it and return all seized property.”

Yeah, I’ll bet the Houthis are shaking with fear now. Because Biden’s handlers are really going all out on this one: deploying the Navy? Sending in the Marines? Immediately imposing crippling sanctions? Come on, man! The Biden team, said the State wonk, “will continue its diplomatic efforts to secure the release of our staff and the vacating of our compound, including through our international partners.” That’ll show ‘em.