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Ruth King

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Awakening the Snoring Conservative Dragon. Part Four Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 11th, 2023

https://victorhanson.com/awakening-the-snoring-conservative-dragon-part-four/

What can we do to resist Woke? Here are steps 7-10.

7. Continue demanding changes at the university—the incubator of the entire woke revolution. The point is not to harm but to save America’s once premier institution. Conservatives should insist on a program to save higher education to ensure our national preeminence. So:

A. Tax endowment income, given the universities are not just partisan but hyper-partisan and activist. Knowing their enormous income is not tax-free might sober up presidents to eliminate the costly commissars of the DEI industry that only audit and monitor but never teach, create, or advance research.

B. Get the government out of the $2-trillion student loan racket. By the government backing these enormous loans, students more likely default, universities more likely jack up their annual costs above the rate of inflation, and school years bloat from four years to six to eight, as teen-agers become twenty- and thirty-something drifters, with 3 units here, 6 there, going into fatal debt for a major that is often pushed down their throats but ultimately worthless. Again, financial sobriety and reality would check most of the current commissar excess.

C. Cut off all federal funds to universities that will not ensure Bill of Rights protections to their faculty and students. If speakers are shouted down and attacked, or if students are not provided due process when accused of thought crimes or sexual harassment, then universities should simply self-fund and not count on the taxpayers to subsidize their unconstitutional excesses. Why do universities customarily get away with violating the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights acts by systematically segregating safe spaces, dorms, and graduation ceremonies on the basis of race?

D. Eliminate tenure and replace it with 5-year contracts that spell out required teaching performance, scholarship, and university service. Such requirements might curb politicking and put faculty back into the classroom and library.

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China readying for total war, America laser-focused on pronouns and wood-fired pizza ovens By Eric Utter

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/china_readying_for_total_war_america_laserfocused_on_pronouns_and_woodfired_pizza_ovens.html

The Chinese military is training kindergarteners in the ways of war.

According to scores of social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is teaching the kiddies how to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps all across China this summer. The boot camps reportedly feature training for both boys and girls…involving a wide variety of ‘toy’ weapons, including knives, grenades, rifles, and shoulder-fired missiles. Moreover, the children are required to adopt military behavior– such as saluting– according to the schools’ social media posts.

Government documents note that the militarization of even extremely young Chinese is occurring subsequent to a 2019 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee decision to push for increased “National Defense Education,” which includes a mandate that schools hold National Defense Education activities starting in 2022.

Brandon Weichert, a U.S. Air Force consultant, told the DCNF “There’s sort of a ‘get ‘em while they’re young’ mentality that has always been part of the communist ethos.” Weichert added, “Xi Jinping is trying to inculcate not just a patriotic fervor among the next generation, but I think he’s trying to also create actual next soldiers for the inevitable campaigns that he plans on waging militarily.”

And we in America—and the West in general—are hell-bent on fighting climate change and trans phobia while also aggressively prosecuting a war against those who “misgender” or “deadname” someone. (And there’s also the Russia-Ukraine War, a conflict which we helped bring about, and which would not have occurred if the Clinton administration hadn’t cajoled Ukraine into handing its nuclear weapons over to Russia and/or if Trump were still in office.)

In China, kindergarteners are effectively mandated to take up arms for the glory of the CCP, but neither they nor adults are allowed to own or possess a firearm privately for their own use or protection. You must know how to use guns, grenades—and shoulder-fired missiles—for the advancement of the glorious communist cause, but are prohibited by the state from owning or using them to protect yourself and your family from criminals, and, well…the state. By contrast, Americans freedoms and security are guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Or they used to be.

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Incorporating Out-of-State Regulations is Unconstitutional By Janet Levy

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/incorporating_outofstate_regulations_is_unconstitutional.html

Can one state implement a law enacted by another?

Can it enforce regulations set by bureaucrats in another?

If it does, isn’t the state ignoring the will of its people? And isn’t that unconstitutional? The commonsense answers are evident. But the practice of outsourcing is widespread in emissions regulation.

Besides Washington D.C., as many as 14 states – the CARB states, so called after the California Air Resources Board – apply the bluebook, California’s stringent air pollution control laws. In most of them, lawmakers have neither legislated on the matter nor consulted citizens.

This anomaly is being challenged as unconstitutional by Peters Brothers Inc., a trucking firm based in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania. The family business owns a fleet of refrigerated trucks. Recent changes in California emission standards have imposed unexpected heavy expenses that were never deliberated by Pennsylvania’s legislators and citizens. The Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association (PMTA), another trucking company, and two truck dealers are also petitioners in the case. The case has been taken up by the pro bono Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which takes a special interest in separation-of-powers cases.

In Peters Brothers Inc, et al. v. Pennsylvania Dept of Environmental Protection, et al, filed last month in the Commonwealth Court, Harrisburg, the PLF argues that only the Pennsylvania General Assembly can make laws for the state: the legislature speaks for, and is accountable to, the people it represents. The lawsuit’s direct challenge is to 25 Pa. Code § 126.501, which incorporates in Pennsylvania standards set by bureaucrats in California.

But it digs deeper. The Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, which adopted regulations from California, claims it has rule-making authority under the Pennsylvania Air Pollution Control Act (PAPCA). The lawsuit asserts that this is invalid. It argues that if indeed the General Assembly, in framing PAPCA, gave the board, a state agency, the power to adopt California regulations, the Assembly has violated the non-delegation doctrine: a legislature cannot, after all, give away its law-making power.

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Why Has Election Day Turned Into Election Month? By: J. Christian Adams

By on July 11th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/10/why-has-election-day-turned-into-election-month/

A case challenging North Dakota’s 13 extra election days is about helping to bring confidence back to elections nationwide.

Remember when Election Day used to be an actual day? You’d gather with your family and friends to find out who the next president was going to be. It was a time to celebrate our republic as Americans went to have their voices heard at the ballot box. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, of which I am president, is fighting in federal court to restore the “day” in Election Day.

We filed a federal lawsuit in North Dakota to enforce federal law and stop the state from accepting ballots up to 13 days after Election Day. We allege that North Dakota’s law allowing the election to drag on for almost two extra weeks conflicts with federal law.

This case doesn’t claim that anyone stole the North Dakota election. Indeed, North Dakota is only involved in the case because it is one of the most extreme states in accepting ballots weeks after the election.

The case challenging North Dakota’s 13 extra election days is about helping to bring confidence back to elections nationwide. It’s time Election Day means Election Day again.

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Americans Have Never Been Less Threatened by ‘Extreme Weather’ More die from over-the-counter headache medicine overdoses. by David Harsanyi

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/americans-have-never-been-less-threatened-by-extreme-weather/

“Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard” is the first claim in this Washington Post piece warning about the deadly summer heat — and it is almost certainly false. Similar warnings about the deadly weather appear in virtually every mainstream media outlet.

First off, the only reason “extreme” temperature kills more people than other weather hazards is that deaths from weather have plummeted over the century — even as doomsday climate warnings about heat, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts have spiked. All extreme weather accounts for only about 0.1 death for every 100,000 people in the United States each year. That is a massive drop from the time of your grandparents. The Post and others should be celebrating the fact that humans have never been less threatened by the climate in history.

The Post also warns that 62 million people in the U.S. may be “exposed” to dangerous heat “today.” That’s a lot of people, even considering nearly all of them live in the southernmost spots in the country, and it’s summer. The Post counts anyone exposed to heat over 90 F as being in some level of danger. Fortunately, most Americans enjoy the luxury and health benefits of air conditioning, one of the great innovations of the past century.

Nowhere in the piece, however, do the authors tell us exactly how many Americans have perished from the oppressive heat. Anyway, it’s around 700 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — if you liberally count heat as both the “underlying” and/or “contributing” causes. It is about 400 people when heat is the underlying cause. And that’s terrible. But, also, it’s around 3,600 fewer people than those who drown every year.

Though there has been an uptick in recent years — as Bjorn Lomborg has pointed out, this is almost surely due to an increasingly aging population that is more susceptible to heat — both numbers are still near-historic lows.

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White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities What Moynihan understood that Sotomayor doesn’t. by Jack Cashill

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/white-ethnic-flight-from-americas-cities/

In 1965, then undersecretary of labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan foresaw a problem that was about to undo the promise of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and his boss Lyndon Jonson’s 1965 launch of the “Great Society.”

In reading her dissenting opinion last week on the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, I got the distinct impression that Justice Sonia Sotomayor never read Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, likely never heard of it, and certainly had no idea of how prescient it would prove to be.

Despite the “full recognition of their civil rights,” argued Moynihan, black Americans were growing increasingly discontent. They were expecting that equal opportunities would “produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups,” but, added Moynihan, “This is not going to happen.” Nor did he think it ever would happen “unless a new and special effort is made.”

Nearly sixty years later Moynihan’s warning seems all the more prophetic. Herculean efforts have been made over the years to  achieve “equal results,” but none has addressed the core issue. Wrote Moynihan:

The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence— not final, but powerfully persuasive—is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.

In a Father’s Day speech in 2008 then candidate Barack Obama affirmed Moynihan’s worst fears. “Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important,” Obama told the congregation at a Chicago church.

Here, Obama spoke with a candor not heard since Lyndon Johnson threw Moynihan under the bus. “But if we are honest with ourselves,” he continued, “we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.”

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Donald Trump’s 2024 Panderama On ethanol in Iowa and Yucca Mountain in Nevada, he tells voters whatever he thinks they want to hear, unlike Ron DeSantis.

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-iowa-ron-desantis-yucca-mountain-renewable-fuel-standard-2024-presidential-primary-gop-6796e888?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

President Trump is leading the GOP’s primary polls by 30 points, but maybe he’s more worried about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis than he lets on. The Iowa State Fair is still a month away, but step right up to Mr. Trump’s political booth, ladies and gentlemen of the primary electorate, and he will tell you whatever he thinks you want to hear.

“I fought for Iowa ethanol like no President in history and ethanol, period, like no President,” Mr. Trump said in Council Bluffs. “Every Iowan also needs to know that Ron DeSantis totally despises Iowa ethanol and ethanol generally.” In Congress, Mr. DeSantis supported ending the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS. Mr. Trump called this “his vicious plan to annihilate the Iowa farming industry,” while saying that Mr. DeSantis wants to “outsource every American farming job to a foreign country.”

On Saturday the panderama was in Las Vegas. “DeSanctimonious voted to fund Yucca Mountain as a dumping ground for nuclear waste,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not just a little area. That stuff, it’s all over the place. What a mess.” As if that were too subtle, Mr. Trump added: “If you don’t mind nuclear waste dumped in your backyard, I suggest you vote for Ron DeSanctimonious.”

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The DeSantis Campaign Ain’t Dead. Here’s Why. By Matt Margolis

By on July 11th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/07/10/the-desantis-campaign-aint-dead-heres-why-n1709545

It’s hard to go on social media and not find someone pronouncing the DeSantis campaign as being dead in the water. I’ve seen enough posts desperately making the argument that he GOP primary was over long before it began, and anything other than crowning Trump the victor before a single debate is even held or a single vote cast is met with a chorus of mockery. I should know as I get plenty of hate mail for pointing out that DeSantis has plenty of time to eclipse Trump.

It’s not just the liberal media that seems to thrive on the narrative that DeSantis is choking. One of the common narratives is that his campaign launch was a disaster, even though the launch brought in record-breaking haul of $8.2 million in campaign donations  in the first 24 hours following the announcement. Clearly, there is a considerable base of individuals who believe in his leadership and policy agenda.

Last week, the DeSantis campaign released its first quarter fundraising numbers, and they showed he raised a whopping $20 million since launching his campaign on May 24.  The campaign noted it was the “largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade,” and that it even “bests the $18.3 million former president and quasi-incumbent Donald Trump’s campaign raised during his first two fundraising quarters as a candidate ($3.8 in Q4 2022 and $14.5 in Q1 2023).”

Nevertheless the narrative continues. On Fox News on Sunday, host Maria Bartiromo implied DeSantis is dying politically, and asked him outright, “[W]hat’s going on with your campaign? There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year.” Then she cited some media headlines about his supposedly lackluster campaign.

“Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee,” DeSantis explained. “I think that’s very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden but even more importantly, they know that I will actually deliver on all these things. We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done and so they are going to continue doing the type of narrative. I can tell you we understand that this is a state-by-state process.”

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Global Warming An Infinite Number Of Days To Flatten The CO2 Curve

By on July 11th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/11/an-infinite-number-of-days-to-flatten-the-co2-curve/

“What we should have learned from the COVID lockdowns is that tolerating petty tyranny leads to absolute tyranny. We’re not there yet, but we’re well on the road to it and it has been paved with malicious intent.”

When three years ago we were told that if we stayed inside for 15 days we could flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, there was no real effort to respond with civil disobedience. It was a profound mistake, one we paid dearly for and will again, if we don’t stand up to the tyranny.

Yes, we know it was President Donald Trump who issued in March 2020 a set of guidelines that called for 15 days to slow the spread by limiting our travel and staying away from social settings. At the end of March, under more pressure from “experts” he should have fired, he extended the guidelines for another month.

Trump eventually, though tacitly, acknowledged that he made a mistake, when during the summer he said, to great caterwauling from the “closers” on the left, that it was “important for all Americans to recognize that a permanent lockdown is not a viable path forward and would ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent.”

It was an admission no single Democrat ever made. Indeed, the Democrats wanted the lockdowns to be open-ended. They not only enjoyed taking captive society and commerce in the way that true authoritarians amuse themselves by being in control of others, they took notes so that the next time they will be able to more easily bump restrictions to the next level.

And when might that be? Impossible to say. All we can know is that attempts will be made.

In what other way can we read proposals such as the ​​“climate emergency” initiative referred to by Joseph Goffman, who holds an appointed position at the Environmental Protection Agency? How would the government deal with a climate emergency outside of placing limits on our movements as a free people?

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The States in America Where Incomes Grow Faster New federal data show a striking divergence between earnings growth in GOP-led states and progressive states.

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-states-incomes-economic-growth-bureau-of-economic-analysis-465ce23?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden will never admit it, but he has Republican-led states to thank for the resilient U.S. economy and labor market. Witness how an earnings surge in right-leaning states is helping compensate for sluggish growth in progressive ones.

New state personal income data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights how aggregate worker and proprietor earnings in red states grew significantly more in the last year than in the blues. The disparity owes to GOP-led states adding more jobs, including in higher-paying industries like tech and finance, along with faster-growing wages.

Earnings nationwide rose 5.4% on average between the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, but much less in New York (2.6%), Indiana (2.6%), California (2.9%), Connecticut (3.4%), Rhode Island (3.6%), Maryland (4%), New Jersey (4.3%), Oregon (4.5%) and Illinois (4.6%). Apart from Indiana, these states are run by Democrats—and most have been for years. They boast high taxes and a high cost of living, which along with Covid lockdowns spurred increased out-migration during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, earnings in the same period surged in North Dakota (9.7%), New Mexico (9.6%), Nevada (9.1%), Florida (9.1%), Nebraska (8.6%), Hawaii (8%), South Carolina (8%), Alaska (7.9%) and Texas (7.7%).

How to explain this? California suffered from tech layoffs. Hawaii, Florida and Nevada benefited from a tourism resurgence after Covid’s Omicron wave ebbed. Higher oil and gas prices and production boosted earnings in New Mexico, North Dakota and Alaska, though less so in Texas, which has a more diverse economy.

States with higher earnings growth also tend to have lower tax rates as well as fast-growing populations. Consider neighboring Utah (7.2%) and Colorado (4.9%), which have similar economies but diverging political climates as Colorado becomes more like California. Could that be affecting its earnings growth?

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