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Ruth King

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Needed: A Made in the USA Policy Plus Energy Independence to Counter Inflation and the Rising USA National Debt by Lawrence Kadish

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19588/rising-us-national-debt

Sad but true, history is now all but a forgotten subject in our schools. But economic history? With luck, you may find the topic in some esoteric book written by a professor and hidden on some dusty library shelf. Yet it is there, within those pages, that you will find the history of nations who harnessed the power of a balanced budget and assumed global dominance. Of equal importance will be the parallel lesson of those that failed to appreciate that the most sophisticated military in the world can win a war only to come home to a nation that will eventually fall because of a mismanaged economy.

Without an appreciation of that history a nation’s leaders can easily pursue a disastrous course of pork spending that can destroy the promise of the future. Which is why Americans should be deeply concerned about this Administration and its reign of spending and resultant increased debt, that will be burdening us, and future citizens, far into the future. That kind of debt is a silent nation-killer.

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Pandemic and Panopticon: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State By Janet Levy

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/pandemic_and_panopticon_the_rise_of_the_biomedical_security_state.html

The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.

A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.

It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.

Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. The book traces the roots of state interference in, and control of, the biomedical aspects of citizens’ lives to utilitarian ideas that began with Galton and Darwin, and trickled into eugenics, which he says is falsely viewed as entirely a creation of the Nazis when in fact American states were enforcing sterilization from the 1900s to the 1960s.

The core idea, he says, is this: the freedom of a citizen to make health and life decisions can be annulled by the state for the greater good, especially during emergencies. The questions it raises are: Who makes these decisions and on what basis? Who decides what is the greater good? Who is to be held responsible for errors of judgement? What checks and balances do we have, then, against the dictatorial inclinations of the powerful? Ancillary to the idea, he says, is the dangerous circular logic of the state of exception: those who declare an emergency in which citizens’ rights – including the right to question the declaration – stand suspended will believe that in that instance it is morally and politically justified!

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When Race Trumps Merit How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives By Heather Mac Donald

By on April 20th, 2023

Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too.

After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, from the medical profession to the fine arts, pleaded guilty to “systemic racism.” How else explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked?

The official answer for those disparities is “disparate impact,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities.

When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population.

The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification. Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race. Police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals.

When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos. But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.

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The Useful Veneer of the Aging Democrat The new majority of radical Democrats allows the old fogies to bask in the limelight until they drop because these codgers mask their revolutionary intentions. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on April 20th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/19/the-useful-veneer-of-the-aging-democrat/

Joe Biden is now 80 years-old. He will be 82 when he campaigns for the 2024 presidency—and a clearly debilitated 86 should he be elected and fill out his second term. He has been in government for over a half-century. 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and current representative from California is 83. 

Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the second-ranking Democratic House member behind Pelosi, was House majority leader until early this year. He is 83, and has been an elected official for nearly 60 years. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is 72, with 48 years in elected government. 

Democratic luminary and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) is 89, and ailing—after 53 years as an elected official. 

James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is House minority whip and 82. 

These are the official faces of the Democratic Party. 

They came into power and maturity three decades ago during the Clinton years of 1993-1999.   

Decades ago, they sometimes supported strong national defense, secure borders, gas and oil development, fully funding the police, and a few restrictions on partial-birth abortions. 

Not now. 

Their role has changed from that of liberals of the Clinton era to serving as the thin power-holding veneer that masks the new real Democratic Party. 

The party has been changed beyond recognition by Senators Bernie Sanders  (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the so-called Squad, the Congressional Black Caucus, newly elected senators like the Georgia duo of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock—and Antifa and Black Lives Matter. 

Yet Biden and company are still familiar American faces. 

Their final role is to acculturate the electorate to the new Democratic Party. 

Its radicals are breathing down their necks to get out of the way. Yet for a while longer they still need such an ossified veneer of respectability to ease the transition to what is now essentially a socialist-European green party. 

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IRS Supervisor Claims Hunter Biden Investigation Is Being Mishandled, Requests Whistleblower Protection Brittany Bernstein

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/irs-supervisor-claims-hunter-biden-investigation-is-being-mishandled-requests-whistleblower-protection/

An IRS criminal supervisory special agent is seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly shows an investigation into potential tax crimes by Hunter Biden is being mishandled.

In a letter to Congress on Tuesday, attorney Mark Lytle claimed his client has information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” as well as information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case.” 

The letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, claims the would-be whistleblower has evidence showing “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” 

Lytle told lawmakers his client has made legally protected disclosures internally at the IRS and said his goal is to “ensure that my client can properly share his lawfully protected disclosures with congressional committees.”

“Thus, I respectfully request that your committees work with me to facilitate sharing this information with congress legally and with the fully informed advice of counsel,” he added in the letter, which was addressed to Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a nonpartisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” the letter said.

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John Fetterman’s First Subcommittee Hearing: A Train Wreck in Slow Motion By Matt Margolis

By on April 20th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/19/john-fettermans-first-subcommittee-hearing-a-train-wreck-in-slow-motion-n1688675

Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has finally returned to Capitol Hill, having spent most of his tenure as a U.S. senator at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center being treated for clinical depression. Fetterman was discharged on March 31. While it’s good that he’s progressed with mental health issues, we haven’t forgotten about the lingering cognitive impairments that became a major issue of the campaign, as it was clear to anyone that this man wasn’t fit to serve in the U.S. Senate.

His May 2022 stroke left him incapacitated for weeks, and he was lucky to survive. Despite this, he chose to continue campaigning, which could have potentially led to permanent brain damage, according to those close to him. Despite his prolonged period away from the Senate, it doesn’t appear that he’s experienced any improvement in his recovery from his stroke, and that was abundantly clear from watching him chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

Even the Washington Post couldn’t deny the obvious. “Though his voice stumbled at times while reading from prepared notes, Fetterman appeared in good spirits as he gaveled in a hearing focused on the benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,” the paper reported. “Republicans have proposed increasing the number of people who must meet work requirements to qualify for SNAP.”

Video from the hearing is difficult to watch. We all know much of these hearings are scripted, but Fetterman sounds like he’s reading from his prepared remarks for the first time and doesn’t seem to understand what he’s saying. I’d feel bad for him if it wasn’t his fault he was in this position in the first place.

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Iran’s Mullahs Use Ramadan to Crush Dissent Tyrants in a panic.

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-mullahs-use-ramadan-to-crush-dissent/

With international condemnation at their brutal crackdown on protesters during the nationwide uprising that has now continued for seven months, it might have been imagined that Iran’s mullahs would have learned some lessons in moderation. The killing last September, of the young Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, by the morality police, for not wearing her hijab properly, was an outrage that has led to a denunciation by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. The shoot-to-kill strategy that has killed more than 750 protesters, and the arrest of over 30,000, has triggered an unprecedented outcry from the civilized world. But, deaf to all demonstrations, the theocratic regime has continued on its repressive path.

Now, during the Nowruz (Persian New Year) holidays and the holy month of Ramadan, the police are demanding even greater powers to crush dissent. Hassan Karami, the commander of the regime’s Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) Special Units, has called for the number of security police to be doubled to confront the ongoing nationwide insurrection. Karami was sanctioned by the EU in April 2021 for his role in the savage response to mass protests that took place in November 2019, when more than 1,500, mostly young protesters, were killed. He has coordinated the use of lethal force for crowd control and the suppression of protests during the current uprising. His LEF Special Units have also been responsible for serious human rights abuse against prisoners detained during the disturbances. Karamihas boasted that confronting the protests would be part of the agenda of his LEF Special Units during the Nowruz holidays and Ramadan. He described the uprising as “extreme sedition” and told the state-run Mehr news agency that his units were covering the unrest and possible movement of enemies in at least 400 cities and regions and that this required a doubling of police numbers.

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The Eyes of Totalitarianism It’s not your grandfather’s Democrat Party. by John Perazzo

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-eyes-of-totalitarianism/

The iconic broadcaster, author, and legal scholar Mark Levin recently observed: “As a nation we’ve now turned the corner. We’ve turned the corner into a hard tyranny…. I just want the audience to know that we are staring into the face of tyranny, that the Democrat Party is a totalitarian party.”

And indeed, it is. To recognize this, we need only to listen when Democrats tell us – repeatedly – of their burning desire to “transform” the U.S. into a radicalized cesspool by such means as:

ending the filibuster rule so they can forcibly ram their radical legislation through the Senate;
governing via presidential executive orders rather than navigating the normal legislative process;
promoting immigration and border policies designed to import massive blocs of foreigners who will eventually become reliable Democrat voters for generations to come;
turning the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into new U.S. states, thereby allowing Democrats to permanently pack the Senate with four additional members of their party;
expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with newly appointed leftist ideologues;
openly defying that same Supreme Court whenever its rulings conflict with Democrat Party preferences;
forcibly censoring the free expression of any ideas that conflict with Democrat values; and
pursuing the impeachment and imprisonment of their political foes on the flimsiest pretexts imaginable.

Below is an abundant collection of remarkable quotes by which immensely powerful Democrats in recent times have openly and proudly promoted the objectives enumerated above, like the domineering totalitarian thugs that they are.

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The Tennessee Bullhorn Isn’t Democracy Biden and Schumer now say it’s heroic to disrupt a legislative proceeding.

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-justin-jones-justin-pearson-bullhorn-biden-white-house-chuck-schumer-gun-control-b9a4d4f5?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Democrats are free to argue that the Tennessee House went too far this month when it expelled Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for disrupting the chamber’s business. Yet it’s astounding to see prominent Democrats now justifying and outright endorsing the pair’s tactic of derailing legislative proceedings with a bullhorn to demand gun control.

Next week President Biden will roll out the White House red carpet for Messrs. Jones and Pearson, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who participated in the disruption to a lesser extent, and who was narrowly spared expulsion.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed at a Wednesday briefing that the three state lawmakers were punished “for peacefully protesting in support of stronger gun-safety laws.” She added that Mr. Biden phoned them and “thanked them for their leadership,” as well as for defending “democratic values.”

The response from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is even more unbelievable. Last week Mr. Schumer and four other Democratic Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to investigate whether the Tennessee House violated the U.S. Constitution or federal law. These Democrats also go far beyond protesting the expulsions. They argue that the ruckus caused by Messrs. Jones and Pearson was following in the tradition of the civil-rights movement.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Why “Net Zero” Is Not a Rational U.S. Energy Policy By Jonathan Lesser

By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2023/04/17/why_net_zero_is_not_a_rational_us_energy_policy_893528.html

Despite Germany’s last-ditch attempt at realism, the European Union recently approved a 2035 ban on gas-powered cars, moving ahead with its “net zero” emissions agenda. In the U.S., the cost of achieving net-zero carbon emissions would be staggering – $50 trillion if the goal is reached by 2050 – as would the demand for raw materials, which in most cases would exceed current annual worldwide production. 

The impact on world climate, however, would be negligible. Emissions in developing countries will continue to increase as those countries’ focus is economic growth for their citizens, not permanent economic misery to “save” the climate. Although a recent Washington Post article suggests that wealth be viewed in terms of “joy, beauty, friendship, community, [and] closeness to flourishing nature,” impoverished individuals who cook with animal dung – such as 80% of the population in the African nation of Burkina-Fasso – aren’t likely to find much joy and beauty in economic misery. Granted, having to cook with animal dung ensures “closeness to nature,” although probably not the one the article’s author envisions.

Rather than approaching energy policy clearly, the U.S. (and most of the western world) is pursuing so-called “net zero” energy policies aiming to fully electrify western economies, while relying almost entirely on wind and solar power. The additional required electricity – after all, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun sets nightly – would supposedly be supplied by energy storage batteries or hydrogen-powered generators. Two factors drive these policies. 

First, there is climate hysteria, which promotes claims that have either proven to be false (the “end of snow” in Great Britain, the disappearance of glaciers in Glacier National Park) or posit extreme scenarios (complete agricultural collapse, massive sea level increases, more frequent hurricanes). The actual evidence is to the contrary, including increased agricultural yields, minimal sea level rise, and no increases in observed hurricane frequency. 

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