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Ruth King

Sheer Chaos and Anarchy on the Border? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2021/10/21/sheer-chaos-and-anarchy-on-the-border-n1525658

Afghanistan — the most humiliating defeat in recent U.S. military history?

A labor-starved supply chain in shambles and holiday shelves emptying out?

The worst inflation in 30 years that seems soon ready to match Carter-era levels?

Gas hitting $5 a gallon with winter heating fuels soaring?

Free-for-all looting in the major cities without consequences?

Joe Biden’s policies and Biden himself diving in the polls?

Never in recent American history has any administration birthed such disasters in its first nine months.

Yet most Americans are arguing not over the sheer chaos and disasters of the Biden Administration, but rather how could such sheer pre-civilizational calamity occur in modern America?

Were these disasters a result of historic incompetency? Or mean-spirited nihilism? Or a deliberate effort to create the necessary turbulence to birth a new American revolution? Or a bit of all three?

Start instead with the idea that what most Americans see as sheer ruin is not what the left-wing puppeteers, who are pulling the strings of the Biden marionette, see.

As Florida COVID Cases Plummet, Media Falls Silent By A.J. Kaufman

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2021/10/20/as-florida-covid-cases-plummet-media-falls-silent-n1525537

Florida now has one of the lowest coronavirus case rates in the nation, with around 80 percent of its adult population vaccinated.

Left-leaning media has long had a pathetic, cruel obsession with bashing the Sunshine State, mainly because of its outspoken Republican governor.

The Acela Corridor elites have been proven wrong over and over, and once infections and deaths across Florida began dropping well over a month ago, they finally relented.

Now, on a per capita basis, Florida posted fewer cases than every state but California last week.

But in August, when the Delta variant hit the South, the left effectively cheered deaths and couldn’t stop taking partisan shots.

New York Times columnists like the repugnant Paul Krugman often played pure politics with the pandemic, solely blaming red state leaders.

As Dan McLaughlin tabulated Wednesday, “the last time the columnist tweeted the word ‘Florida’ was August 19. The last time he mentioned ‘DeSantis’ was August 27. The last time Krugman mentioned the Republican ‘death cult’ was September 28. The last time he mentioned COVID was October 1, and the ‘pandemic’ October 7. The last time the Nobel Prize winner used the word ‘Delta’ on Twitter was on September 6, noting that it was “amazing to me how many news reports on the Delta disaster manage to avoid mentioning ‘Republicans.’”

Under Biden, We’ve Gone From ‘Make America Great’ To ‘Lower Your Expectations’

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/21/under-biden-weve-gone-from-make-america-great-to-lower-your-expectations/

As the economy falters in the wake of rising inflation, chronic worker shortages, and a deepening supply chain crisis, the rhetoric from the Biden administration and its defenders has shifted from “we’ve got this” to “stop your whining.” Is this what Americans bargained for when they ditched Mr. Mean Tweets for Joe “Nexnelsrent” Biden?

A perfect example of this shift is an op-ed by a contributing columnist to the Washington Post – Micheline Maynard – who says that the real problem we face today isn’t skyrocketing prices, bottlenecks at the ports, and empty shelves. It is us spoiled brats.

“American consumers, their expectations pampered and catered to for decades, are not accustomed to inconvenience,” she writes. “Time for some new, more realistic expectations.”

Maynard’s op-ed, and the Washington Post, took plenty of flak for blaming the victim. But the truth is that it is increasingly the way the White House is talking as well.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, a reporter asked White House spokesperson Jen Psaki why, given that supply chain problems were “clear in March of 2020,” didn’t the administration act sooner. “It was crystal clear that things were not improving on the supply chain,” the New York Times reporter said, trying hard to choke out a tough question. “People couldn’t get dishwashers and furniture and treadmills delivered on time, not to mention all sorts of other things.” 

Psaki interrupted the report to say, with a smirk, “The tragedy of the treadmill that’s delayed.”

THE SIERRA CLUB: SYSTEMIC RACISM IS FUELING THE CLIMATE CRISIS

https://act.sierraclub.org/events/details?formcampaignid=7013q000002FZyvAAG&id=7013q000002FswcAAC&data=2f83cf89f1573457d2d

Are you curious about the ways systemic racism is fueling the climate crisis and how we can each be a part of creating a livable future? We must build a multiracial, intergenerational, cross-class movement to end white supremacy to solve this crisis. Join us! 

RSVP now for a teach-in on Wednesday, October 20, with Allison Chin, former Sierra Club Board President, Hop Hopkins, Sierra Club’s Director of Organizational Transformation, and other Sierra Club leaders from across the country to explore our role in being part of a multiracial, inter generational, cross-class movement to end white supremacy to solve this crisis and further racial and climate justice in our communities.

Leftist Shadow Governments Control A Lot More Than Our Elections By Joy Pullmann

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/20/leftist-shadow-governments-control-a-lot-more-than-our-elections/ 

This kind of tax-exempt political interference is now standard practice for the world’s far-left ultra-rich, and it’s affecting a whole lot more than elections.

Many Americans are awakening to the fact that we seem to have no local control of a lot of local things: public schools, our terms of employment, local governments, local elections. That last one popped again recently with the release of my colleague Mollie Hemingway’s deeply reported 2020 election investigation book, “Rigged.”

That book, and some great corroborating independent reporting, show that 2020 election chaos was part of an effective and well-funded plan to help Democrats win by rigging the playing field. One key strategy deployed to that end has become default on the left yet still often goes unremarked and unchallenged. It’s called “advocacy philanthropy.”

In the 2020 election, Facebook zillionaire Mark Zuckerberg used this strategy to deploy nearly half a billion dollars to help Democrat activists infiltrate local government election apparatuses, literally paying for election equipment and the salaries of partisans who counted ballots. This kind of tax-exempt political interference is now standard practice for the world’s far-left ultra-rich, and it’s affecting a whole lot more than elections. It’s constructed essentially a shadow government that pits elected officials against their voters on behalf of moneyed interests.

How the Rich Influence Politics With ‘Philanthropy’

In the past two decades, large foundations have begun to “engage more directly with the political process by supporting advocacy organizations, investing in the implementation of major policy reforms, and ensuring that their research investments are targeted to advance specifc policy priorities,” document politics professors Sarah Reckhow and Megan Tompkins‐Stange in a 2018 paper. These large foundations are predominantly run by leftists, including Bill and Melinda Gates, Zuckerberg, and George Soros.

Soros-tied group met with FBI during Russia collusion probe, hired Christopher Steele : John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/soros-tied-group-met-fbi-during-russia-collusion-probe
” Integrity Project founder Dan Jones testifies about extensive contacts with Clinton campaign-tied figures, including Michael Sussmann and Glenn Simpson.”
A group funded by George Soros and other donors to continue investigating the Russia collusion allegations after the 2016 election met with the FBI, offering its assistance to agents and alerting them it was working with one of their terminated confidential sources in the case, Christopher Steele, according to court testimony made public Friday.

Former FBI analyst Daniel Jones’ testimony, released in a D.C. Superior Court civil case, recounts in painstaking detail how he formed the group The Democracy Integrity Project in early 2017, raised money for it and continued a private investigation into alleged Russian and other interference in the 2016 election.

Jones acknowledged in his testimony that he worked post-election with some of the key figures tied to Hillary Clinton’s campaign and its now discredited Russia collusion allegations, including recently indicted former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and investigative researcher Glenn Simpson.

But in one of his biggest revelations, Sussmann testified he hired the author of the now-infamous and discredited Steele dossier to assist his work and felt obligated to alert the FBI when he met with Russia collusion investigators in March 2017. “I proactively reached out to the FBI,” Jones testified.

“The purpose of that meeting was to alert the FBI, a place that I had worked with and who I had maintained contacts with who are still there, that the Democracy Integrity Project as an organization existed and that we were collecting information on foreign government interference in elections and that we had the information on foreign government interference in elections, as well as the fact that I had engaged the services of Christopher Steele for the Democracy Integrity Project and alerting them to that, given the public nature of what had transpired from the Bureau on this.”

By the time of Jones’ meeting with the FBI in March 2017, the bureau had terminated the former British MI6 agent Steele as a confidential informant in the Russia case for leaking to the news media. Counterintelligence agents had also debunked some of the Steele dossier’s allegations as Russian disinformation, inaccurate or unprovable and learned his research had been paid for by the Clinton campaign through its law firm Perkins Coie, where Sussmann worked.

Dr. Anthony Fauci Received Big Pay Increase To Prevent Pandemics Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/10/20/dr-anthony-faucis-little-known-biodefense-work–its-how-he-became-the-highest-paid-federal-employee/?sh=175bb6d86081

In a January article published at Forbes, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that Dr. Anthony Fauci was the highest paid federal employee, earning $417,608 (2019).

Dr. Fauci is still the top-paid federal employee earning $434,312 in 2020. Fauci is the Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and current Chief Medical Advisor to the President.

Fauci out-earned the U.S. president ($400,000); four-star generals in the military ($282,000); and roughly 4.3 million other federal employees.  

Now, new documents released via our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the NIH tell us a lot more. Dr. Fauci received a big pay hike for his biodefense research activities. In other words, Fauci was paid to prevent future pandemics.

The documents released to our non-profit organization OpenTheBooks.com reveal that Dr. Fauci was approved for a “permanent pay adjustment” in excess of his regular salary in December 2004, during the George W. Bush Administration.

From 2004 through 2007, Fauci received a 68-percent pay increase from $200,000- to $335,000-a year. This award was permanent and carried forward through 2020.

Fauci’s permanent pay raise was to “appropriately compensate him for the level of responsibility… especially as it relates to his work on biodefense research activities.”

However, critics say that Fauci was funding research that was actually creating pandemic pathogens in labs that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, might create the very human pandemic they were trying to prevent.

Why Palestinians Cannot Make Peace with Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17866/palestinians-peace-israel

The Palestinian Authority, which is largely funded by American and European taxpayers’ money, is imprisoning Palestinians for even trying to engage in real estate deals with Jews.

The Palestinian public seems generally supportive of the death sentences and extrajudicial killings of suspected “land dealers” and informants. Even Palestinian human rights organizations appear to be extremely careful when they mention such issues.

As far as Hamas and many Palestinians are concerned, peace with Israel or any form of “collaboration” with the “Zionist enemy” is an act of treason punishable by death.

Mahmoud Abbas is already facing accusations of being a traitor because of the security coordination between the PA security forces and the Israeli authorities in the West Bank.

As long as the PA and Hamas punish Palestinians who work with Israel or are willing to sell real estate to Israeli Jews — frequently by issuing sentences of hard labor or death — the hope of reviving the “peace process” is, unfortunately, a pitiful waste of time and effort.

The verdicts passed against the “land dealers” in the West Bank and the suspected “collaborators” in the Gaza Strip show that Palestinians remain as far as ever from accepting Israel, let alone making peace with it.

The verdicts are yet more proof of how Palestinian leaders continue to radicalize their people against Israel — to the point that no Palestinian who wishes to stay alive would ever claim that he or she seeks to make peace with Israel or recognize all of the land as anything other than totally Palestinian in every way.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have again shown that peace with Israel is not only extremely ill-advised and most likely doomed from the start but critically dangerous as well. The two Palestinian parties, both the PA and Hamas, do not want Palestinians to engage in any real estate transactions with Israeli Jews; they also do not want Palestinians to assist Israel in the war on terrorism.

Christopher Steele: Product of Corrupt FBI Christopher Steele is a symptom, not a cause, of what ails the FBI. The nation’s top law enforcement agency flagrantly involves itself in U.S. elections on behalf of the Democratic Party.  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/18/christopher-steele-product-of-corrupt-fbi/

Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax. 

Rather than depict Steele accurately, Stephanopoulos and ABC News social media interns repeatedly describe Steele as an “ex-British spy” or “former intelligence officer” even though Steele left MI6, the UKs version of the CIA, in 2009 to start a consulting business. (That same year, Steele presented a report on Russia to President Obama.) Steele’s now-discredited dossier, which Stephanopoulos tries to portray as “raw intelligence,” was the basis not just for the entire Russian collusion hoax but also served as key evidence to support four illicit FISA applications to obtain warrants to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.

Stephanopoulos’ goal, of course, is to convince uninformed viewers—in other words, most of Stephanopoulos’ audience on any given day—that Steele was working in an official national security capacity instead of as a Democratic political operative paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

But Steele, many folks forget, also had another funder in 2016: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An often overlooked fact about Steele is that at the same time he was being paid by the Clinton campaign and DNC, he also was being paid by the FBI as a “confidential human source,” otherwise known as an “informant.”

Without James Comey’s FBI, there would be no Steele dossier and no Russian collusion hoax. And Christopher Steele is the most glaring example of the slimy relationship between the FBI, partisan operatives, and the American news media.

Steele began working with the FBI shortly after forming his consulting business, Orbis Business Intelligence, in 2010. In addition to his work on the FIFA corruption investigation, Steele routinely passed along information to the FBI on Russian oligarchs. According to a lengthy report issued in December 2019 by Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, the FBI completed necessary paperwork in 2013 to authorize Steele as a confidential human source.

The Real Cost of Government Mandated Wind and Solar By Norman Rogers

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_real_cost_of_government_mandated_wind_and_solar.html

The government and big financial institutions promote a fraudulent analysis of the cost of solar and wind electricity. Their narrative is that wind and solar are competitive with traditional fossil fuels and that the cost of wind and solar is rapidly dropping. Academics and the media amplify and spread the fraudulent analysis.

The basis of the fraud is a simple comparison of the cost per kilowatt hour at the plant fence for electricity produced by wind or solar versus electricity produced by a traditional plant. Some or all of the massive subsidies for wind and solar are ignored in such comparisons. With such a rigged comparison, wind or solar may seem competitive.

A proper comparison reveals that wind or solar are five or even ten times more expensive than natural gas or coal electricity. To understand why this is so, we have to explain some basic facts that apply to either wind or solar.

Wind or solar is erratic, intermittent electricity. It comes and goes according to the supply of wind and sunlight. Wind is erratic from day to day and usually has a seasonal cycle. Sunlight depends on clouds, seasons and of course does not work at night. The consequence is that wind or solar electricity supply must be 100% backed up by conventional electricity plants. If 100% backup is neglected, rolling blackouts are the result when there is a lull in wind or solar production. The lull can be of short duration or seasonal.

Residential rooftop solar is backed up by the connection to the electric utility. The utility has to spend money on generating plants and a distribution network to maintain backup for the residential rooftop system. When rooftop solar is present, the utility is usually undercompensated for providing the backup service. When cloudiness happens over a wide area the backup plants go into high gear. Cloudiness happens even in sunny southern California.

The cost of backup plants for rooftop solar is borne by all the customers of the utility, not just the rooftop solar users that brag about how cheap their electricity is.

Wind or solar have both economies of scale and penalties of scale. The economy of scale results from the massive expansion of the industry. The equipment is cheaper and more efficient. The penalties of scale are more subtle.