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Ruth King

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A School Board Revolt in Florida Candidates endorsed by Gov. DeSantis win to control two big districts

By on August 25th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-school-board-revolt-in-florida-ron-desantis-parents-districts-teachers-union-11661377688?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Tuesday’s elections highlighted Republican midterm weaknesses (see nearby), but one exception was school board races in Florida. Conservatives flipped control of at least two big districts that had put unions ahead of children.

Twenty-five of the 30 school board members endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis won or advanced in their races, campaigning on parental rights, transparency, school choice and safety. GOP-backed candidates won three elections in Sarasota County, creating a new 4-1 majority. They also scored two big wins in Miami-Dade, which now becomes the largest U.S. school district with a conservative majority. Both school boards last year voted to mandate that students keep wearing masks, defying parents and Florida law.

The wins are a coup for Mr. DeSantis, who is turning parental control and educational choice into a GOP advantage. The elections are political vindication for his parental bill of rights bill that became law this spring that was widely criticized in the national press.

The Governor last year expanded the state’s voucher program to add tens of thousands of additional low-income students. Mr. DeSantis put these ideas to the voter test on Tuesday, working with Republicans and the 1776 Project PAC to raise money for reform candidates, and turning the school elections into the most competitive in memory.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Voters Moving to the Right Across Almost Every Demographic, Says Massive Survey By Athena Thorne

By on August 24th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2022/08/24/voters-moving-to-the-right-across-almost-every-demographic-says-massive-survey-n1623811

Morning Consult has reported five years’ worth of data from over 8.6 million participants that shows a trend of America’s registered voters moving steadily to the ideological right.

“The left is losing the battle for the minds of the American electorate, Morning Consult research shows, with voters decreasingly identifying as liberal in recent years,” writes Morning Consult political reporter Eli Yokley. “But that doesn’t mean the country is lurching to the right.”

Yokley then makes an effort to pretend the trend isn’t what it looks like: “Instead, an increase in the share of Americans who identify as moderate, or who are uncertain about where exactly they stand on the ideological spectrum, reveals a growing and electorally decisive center that is discontented with either side’s extremes.”

Except that the percentage of voters who identify as conservative actually increased slightly, while only those who call themselves liberal decreased. Call me crazy but that just sounds like Democrats are turning away from far-left ideology to become more moderate:

The share of the electorate who identifies as “very liberal,” “liberal” or “somewhat liberal” on a seven-point scale has dropped over the past five years, from 34% to 27%, according to extensive annual Morning Consult survey research conducted among more than 8.6 million U.S. voters since 2017.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

How the Elites Will Keep Their Lights On Christopher Akehurst

By on August 24th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2022/08/how-the-elites-will-keep-their-lights-on/

What would it take to end our nation’s climate madness? I used to think a few cold showers and the gas running out while the soufflé was in the oven would be enough to induce our Green-washed ruling class to take a more sceptical attitude to “renewable energy”. Now I wonder. These are the people, unassailable in towering banks or parliamentary offices, who run the country, who influence things, make them happen. Right now what they are making happen is the certainty of power shortages as a result of their quasi-superstitious fear of conventional energy generation.

This class determines its political projects and the rest of us pay for them through taxes or surcharges. They may occasionally burble about “the welfare of all Australians” but in effect, they are not interested in us lesser mortals and don’t care if our lives are a struggle, as they’ve shown by pursuing the policies that have given us shamefully rising power prices we scrimp to pay but the nobs can easily afford, and if themselves “renewables” investors, make money out of.

But once their own comfortable existence is even remotely discommoded, they demand that something be done. We saw this in Melbourne when the depredations of youthful ethnic gangs in poorer suburbs were met by lofty ruling-class denials that any gangs existed except in the “racist” minds of the householders complaining. When the gangs struck out into the districts inhabited by the people who run things, all of a sudden it turned out that, yes, they were real, they were a social problem and the police snapped into action like magic.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden White House Was Involved With DOJ Probe Into Classified Trump Documents, Memos Reveal

By on August 24th, 2022

https://dailycaller.com/2022/08/23/mar-a-lago-trump-archives-raid-fbi-biden/

The Biden White House authorized the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to waive former President Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege in the Justice Department’s investigation into his handling of classified documents, according to a NARA letter.

The letter, first reported by Just the News, was sent by National Archivist Debra Wall to Trump attorney Evan Corcoran on May 10 and shows that President Joe Biden personally delegated the decision to waive Trump’s claim to executive privilege to NARA following a request by the DOJ to view classified documents Trump handed over to the agency. Trump had voluntarily turned over 15 boxes of documents he had taken with him to his Mar-a-Lago home after he left office earlier this year, and the investigation into his handling of classified documents ultimately culminated in the Aug. 8 FBI raid on his Florida home.

“The counsel to the president has informed me that, in light of the particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal counsel regarding whether or not I should uphold former the former President’s purported ‘protective assertion of executive privilege,’” Wall wrote.

“I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” Wall wrote.

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MEDIA, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Twitter’s “Tricky” Timing Problem: Lawsuit Reveals Back Channel with CDC to Coordinate Censorship: Jonathan Turley

By on August 24th, 2022

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/08/24/twitters-tricky-timing-problem-lawsuit-reveals-back-cdc-channel-to-coordinate-censorship/

“Tricky.” Over the course of 110 pages in a federal complaint, that one descriptive word seemed to stand out among the exchanges between social media executives and public health officials on censoring public viewpoints. The exchange reveals long-suspected coordination between the government and these social media companies to manage a burgeoning censorship system. Twitter just reportedly suspended another doctor who sought to raise concerns over Pfizer Covid records. Former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson is also suing Twitter over his suspension after raising dissenting views to the CDC. In the meantime, Twitter is rolling out new procedures to combat “misinformation” in the upcoming elections — a move that has some of us skeptical.The recently disclosed exchange between defendant Carol Crawford, the CDC’s Chief of digital media, revealed a back channel with Twitter and other companies to censor “unapproved opinions” on social media.  The “tricky” part may be due to the fact that, during that week of March 25, 2021, then CEO Jack Dorsey was testifying on such censorship before Congress and insisting that “we don’t have a censoring department.”  It seems that any meeting on systemic censorship with the government would have to wait until after Dorsey denied that such systemic censorship existed.
The exchange is part of the evidence put forward by leading doctors who are alleging a systemic private-government effort to censor dissenting scientific or medical views. The lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana was joined by experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya objected this week to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents.Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Dr. Fauci’s Legacy Dr. Marty Makary on the public health risk of putting America’s fate in the hands of one doctor. Marty Makary M.D., M.P.H.

By on August 24th, 2022

https://www.commonsense.news/p/dr-faucis-legacy?triedSigningIn=true

Anthony Fauci is ending his long and celebrated government career by being widely lauded for getting so much so very wrong on Covid-19.

Now 81 years old, Dr. Fauci has spent 38 years as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. He has been rightly honored for his many contributions over the decades, most notably during the fight against AIDS, for which he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. But to Covid-19 he brought a monomaniacal focus on vanquishing a single virus, whatever the cost—neglecting the damage that can follow when public health loses sight of the public’s health.

As the lead medical authority to two administrations on Covid-19, Dr. Fauci was unwavering in his advocacy for draconian policies. What were the impact of those policies on millions of Americans? And what would the country look like now had our public health experts taken a different approach? As Dr. Fauci is preparing to leave his post, those are a few of the questions worth asking as we consider his various Covid-19 legacies.

Dr. Fauci attends the National AIDS Update Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 12, 1989. (Deanne Fitzmaurice via Getty Images)

On Children:

Very early on in this pandemic, we knew that there was an extremely stratified risk from Covid. The elderly and those with co-morbidities were especially vulnerable, while children were extremely unlikely to get dangerously ill.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Radical Gender Theory Comes to the Heartland A Missouri school district promotes the idea that “gender is a universe.” Christopher F. Rufo

By on August 24th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/radical-gender-theory-comes-to-the-heartland

Springfield Public Schools, the largest public school district in Missouri, has adopted a radical gender-theory training program that encourages teachers to believe that “gender is a universe” and to affirm sexual identities such as “non-binary,” “pansexual,” and “polyamorous.”

Last year, I reported on Springfield Public Schools’ critical race theory training program, which required teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix” and watch a video of “George Floyd’s last words.” But according to new documents obtained by the Southeastern Legal Foundation as part of a civil rights lawsuit, the district’s left-wing training program was not limited to racial ideology: administrators were simultaneously promoting the principles of radical gender theory to school employees.

The training program followed the basic narrative of academic-style gender theory: Western societies have created a “heteronormative” system that marginalizes racial and sexual minorities. To start, presenters led district employees in a “land acknowledgement” censuring white settlers for conquering North America. “As we begin our training, we want to acknowledge and honor the Native and Indigenous Peoples whose land we currently gather on. Springfield Public Schools is built on ancestral territory of the Osage, Delaware and Kickapoo Nations and Peoples,” the statement read. “In doing social justice work, it is important we acknowledge the dark history and violence against Native and Indigenous People across the world. In this work, we are committed to promoting, supporting and affirming all communities, especially those that are marginalized.”

Next, Springfield Public Schools told administrators and teachers that they must understand their “privileges” and identify their position within the “cycles of oppression.” In a “matching game,” the district provides a basic glossary for critical theory, explaining that some groups—i.e., straight, white, cisgender men—have “power” and “privilege” over others based on the categories of “race,” “gender,” “identity,” and “sexual orientation.” Teachers are then asked to classify themselves on a “social identities” wheel and account for their race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status. All of these social hierarchies contribute to the “cycles of oppression,” which are reinforced by institutions and result in “anger, dehumanization, guilt, collusion, ignorance, self-hatred, stress, lack of reality . . . [and] internalization of patterns of power.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s 87,000 IRS Agents Set to Become Woke Army of “Equity” Enforcers Katie Sullivan

By on August 24th, 2022

https://amac.us/bidens-87000-irs-agents-set-to-become-woke-army-of-equity-enforcers/

Many Americans are by now aware of the Biden administration’s plan to hire some 87,000 new IRS agents with $80 billion set aside for that purpose as part of Democrats’ misleadingly titled Inflation Reduction Act. But even more terrifying than this army of new “tax enforcers” prying into the finances of millions of ordinary Americans is the fact that, under the Biden administration’s “equity” agenda, all of them will be trained in the tenets of wokeism and ordered to advance Democrats’ far-left social agenda.

On day one of his administration, Joe Biden signed an Executive Order on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” Specifically, the Order directed every federal agency to develop and implement an “ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda that matches the scale of the opportunities and challenges that we face.” Notably, Biden included the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy in the “Equitable Data Working Group” that the Order established.

This move immediately raised the alarm for conservatives, who had by then become all-too familiar with the left-wing concept of “equity.” While the term sounds similar to “equality,” it in fact refers to the exact opposite approach – using government power to dispense unequal treatment among different groups in an attempt to force “equal” outcomes for all. As Vice President Kamala Harris explained in a tweet in November 2020, “equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.”

The Treasury Department – which oversees the IRS – released its “Equity Action Plan” in accordance with Biden’s Executive Order in October 2021 to little fanfare. But contained within the document are hints at a scheme to radicalize the IRS in accordance with left-wing identity politics – a plan that the agency will soon have the manpower to implement.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Accuses Sweden, Finland of ‘Supporting Terrorism’, Meanwhile Releases Turkish Hizbullah Terrorists from Prison by Uzay Bulut

By on August 24th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18823/turkey-supporting-terrorists

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out four major military campaigns in Syria, two of them — the 2018 “Operation Olive Branch” and the 2019 “Operation Peace Spring” — being against Kurdish-controlled areas. The military invasions have forcibly changed the demographic balance of the regions, driving out Kurds, Yazidis and Christians from their lands.

For more than two months, Erdoğan has been saying that a new military offensive is imminent. If he does invade Syria, the group that will benefit is ISIS.

Meanwhile, as Turkey’s government accuses Sweden and Finland of “supporting terrorists,” convicted Hizbullah terrorists have been released from Turkish prisons. Erdoğan releases the terrorists from prison and in return Hizbullah supporters vote for him. The Erdoğan regime enables Hizbullah just as it enables ISIS and other Islamist groups in Syria.

Turkish Hizbullah is a terrorist organization established in 1978. It has engaged in murder and torture, particularly targeting secular Kurds in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s… Hizbullah’s leaders were heavily influenced by Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution and reportedly received training in Iran. Turkish Hizbullah’s main effort is to establish an independent Islamic state under strict sharia law in southeastern Turkey.

According to a 2000 report in the Turkish Daily News, “… the Hizbullah terrorists recently apprehended by the police admitted in their testimonies that they have received military training and all required support in Iran and detailed the names and the descriptions of the Iranian guards who acted on behalf of the Iranian government.”

“I did all these actions for Allah, for Islam. If I go out right now, I’ll do it again without blinking an eye. In fact, I have done other actions that were not stated in the indictment and that the prosecutor could not solve. Our war is for salat [the five daily Islamic prayers].” — Kemal Gülşen, one of the released terrorists, sozcu.com.tr, May 16, 2022.

“I took part in every level of Hizbullah. Allah has given us the task to make Islam dominant on earth. I don’t regret anything. We have become a bomb ready to explode…” — Cemal Tutar, the head of the military wing of Turkish Hizbullah, who killed 109 people by pulling the trigger himself, and among those released, sozcu.com.tr, May 16, 2022.

The “terrorist organization” Erdoğan targets is the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) that fought against ISIS in Syria and that is a US ally.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has once again objected to the demands for NATO membership of Sweden and Finland, saying that Turkey “will not take a positive stance” unless the two countries respect their promises regarding the “fight against terrorism.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Prepares to Take Out Israel – Right after Iran Deal Is Signed by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on August 24th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18824/iran-prepares-take-out-israel

The mullahs appear convinced that once the Biden administration capitulates completely to their demands for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, they will be able to step up their already significant efforts to eliminate Israel and export their Islamic Revolution to Arab and Islamic countries. Iran already occupies four Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Iran’s mullahs appear to be so confident that the Biden administration has turned its back on its Arab allies in the Middle East that they are issuing direct threats not only against Israel, but also against any Arab country that dares to cooperate with the Israelis.

Meanwhile, the mullahs are busy trying to open a new battlefront against Israel, this time in the West Bank.

The mullahs appear to be so emboldened by the Biden administration’s weakness that they are now openly talking about using the West Bank as a launching pad to attack Israel and kill Jews.

Under pressure from the Iranian regime, Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives held a meeting in the Gaza Strip earlier this week to discuss ways of stepping up the “resistance” against Israel.

In an attempt to appease their masters in Tehran, Hamas and Islamic Jihad issued a joint statement after the meeting in which they pledged to step up the “armed struggle” against Israel “until the liberation [of all of Palestine],” a euphemism for the destruction of Israel.

As the Biden administration seems to be moving closer to reaching a new nuclear deal with Iran, the mullahs in Tehran are encouraging their Lebanese and Palestinian terrorist proxies to prepare for waging war on Israel.

The mullahs appear convinced that once the Biden administration capitulates completely to their demands for reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, they will be able to step up their already significant efforts to eliminate Israel and export their Islamic Revolution to Arab and Islamic countries. Iran already occupies four Arab countries: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

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