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Ruth King

Gavin Newsom’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Begun He takes on Ron DeSantis in ads urging Floridians to move to California. Good luck with that. By Kenneth L. Khachigian

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gavin-newsoms-presidential-campaign-has-begun-ron-desantis-2024-crime-education-business-environment-energy-11657118708?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

San Clemente, Calif.

Emboldened by his victory in last year’s recall election and looking toward an easy November re-election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his presidential ambitions over the Fourth of July weekend. He challenged potential opponent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with a television commercial in the Sunshine State.

Stuffing too many images into too little space, Mr. Newsom called on Floridians to flee to California, “where we still believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love.” Mr. Newsom followed with a CNN interview trash-talking Mr. DeSantis and summoning Democrats to “take the fight to them.”

Hubris is a common disease for those coming from states where the media are uncritical and political success is attained without duress. The strains of “Hail to the Chief” are enticing while staff in the governor’s corner office prod: “Boss, this is your time.”

Mr. DeSantis and the other potential 2024 Republican candidates couldn’t be happier to welcome Mr. Newsom into the mix. Putting a magnifying glass on Mr. Newsom’s inept management of what was once the jewel of the Pacific will be a joy to the campaign consultants and political action committee managers waiting to chew up another California lightweight—as they did to Kamala Harris in 2020.

Once Mr. Newsom takes his show on the road, he’ll quickly find the scrutiny that has escaped him in California. His slicked-back act won’t play in Iowa cornfields, New Hampshire snows or South Carolina towns. It is politically perverse that Mr. Newsom’s ad asks Floridians to come to California when his own constituents are leaving for friendlier business and cultural climates in Florida, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere.

Will $5/Gal Gas Be The Death Knell For Biden’s ‘I Did That’ Presidency?

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/07/will-5-gal-gas-be-the-death-knell-for-bidens-i-did-that-presidency/

It’s a given that the Democrats are in trouble in the 2022 midterms. But President Joe Biden might also be on his way out. Desperate Democrats are sending signals they’d be happy if he didn’t run again in 2024, and might be even happier if he left before that, and took Vice President Kamala Harris with him. Why? A look at his disastrous bumbling on energy tells you all you need to know.

For those around during the 1970s, the gold standard for political ineptitude has always been President Jimmy Carter. Forty-three years ago this month, Carter gave his now-infamous “Address To The Nation” on energy policy.

It was a disaster, and wrong on all counts when it came to both basic economics and energy.

Some of his most memorable quotes, courtesy of the Foundation for Economic Education:

“The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75% of our energy are running out.”
“We can’t substantially increase our domestic production …”
“Within 10 years we would not be able to import enough oil — from any country, at any acceptable price.”

These were just a few of the many defeatist fatuities in that infamous speech, not one of them true. But no one thought Carter was intentionally lying. He was just wrong. And it led to soaring prices, gas rationing with lines that lasted for hours, and economic misery.

Brace Yourself for the Biden Housing Bust David Catron

https://spectator.org/biden-housing-bust/

For many readers, the above title will conjure up memories of the 2008 housing crash caused by the proliferation of subprime mortgages and the subsequent tsunami of defaults. But a better corollary for the coming Biden bust is the Carter crash that occurred three decades earlier. During the final two years of Carter’s term, sales of existing and new homes collapsed because the Fed was forced to raise interest rates sharply to get double-digit inflation under control. This, in turn, produced double-digit mortgage rates that priced millions of potential buyers out of the market.

Like our current chief executive, Carter was delusional about the threat inflation posed to the economy. When he was elected in November of 1976, it had been slowly waning for some time. The New York Times reported that inflation was at a four-year low of 4.8 percent. This lulled Carter into a false sense of security, and he pushed a disastrous economic stimulus bill through Congress. By the end of 1979, the Washington Post was lamenting that inflation had reached 13.3 percent. In the 1980 election, Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan, whereupon Fed Chair Paul Volcker wrestled inflation into submission by raising interest rates.

President Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate during Carter’s tenure in office, but he seems to have gleaned no message from the latter’s economic failures. Indeed, Biden is repeating the very same mistakes. He was oblivious to the inflationary potential associated with his $1.9 trillion “stimulus” plan. And, just as Carter ignored the warnings of Milton Friedman in 1977, Biden dismissed the counsel of Obama-era economists such as Lawrence Summers. Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also managed to forget the lessons of the Carter era. As economists Thomas J. Sargent and William L. Silber write in the Wall Street Journal:

COVID Journalist Alex Berenson Settles Suit With Twitter, Is Reinstated Nearly a Year After Refusing to Bend Knee By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/07/06/covid-journalist-alex-berenson-settles-suit-with-twitter-is-reinstated-nearly-a-year-after-refusing-to-bend-knee-n1610725

Nearly one year after journalist and writer Alex Berenson was kicked off Twitter for being a sometimes COVID-19 contrarian, his account has been restored. He had to sue the tech platform to be reinstated.

Berenson announced a settlement with Twitter on Wednesday on his Substack page, “Unreported Truths.”

[L]ast August, Twitter banned me after I got five strikes under its Covid-19 misinformation policy. Which meant I’d supposedly made “claims of fact” that were “demonstrably false or misleading” and “likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm” (that’s the policy, that’s what it takes to get a strike, look it up).

Now we come to find those tweets “should not have led to my suspension”?

Here’s the tweet that got him “permanently suspended.”

Berenson is the former New York Times reporter whose specialty was reporting on pharmaceutical companies, dangerous drugs, health care, and government oversight. After leaving The Times, Berenson wrote novels and pamphlets. When COVID-19 burst onto the scene, Berenson began looking closely at government claims and wrote books and pamphlets about the disease.

Reining In the Fourth Branch of Government Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/07

The Constitution provides for three branches of government, sharing sovereign power. In fact, we have a fourth branch, the sprawling administrative bureaucracies. They are nominally part of the Executive Branch, which struggles to control them. Congress struggles, too, and now spends much of its time trying to oversee them. The oversight is spotty and the bureaucracies are often left to their own devices, free to write their own rules on even the most important issues.

Last week’s Supreme Court decision took an important step to rein in these bureaucracies. It ruled the regulations for carbon dioxide emissions, written and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, went well beyond the vague laws passed by Congress.

Most comments about the court’s opinion have emphasized two likely consequences of the ruling, both important. One, highlighted by the left and especially by climate activists, is that the ruling could lead to more CO2 pollution. Indeed, it undoubtedly will do so unless Congress acts. The second, underscored by conservatives and the right, is that the courts are finally trying to constrain Washington’s vast, centralized “regulatory state,” which they see as fundamentally undemocratic and a threat to our constitutionally guaranteed liberties and our right to govern ourselves through elected representatives.

This debate goes to the very heart of how we as Americans rule ourselves. The left sees Washington’s administrative apparatus as “rule by experts,” essential for controlling a technologically complex society. Their preference is for the modern equivalent of Plato’s philosopher-kings, people who understand the population’s needs far better than the people themselves.

How To Think Like A Liberal Supreme Court Justice Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-7-5-how-to-think-like-a-liberal-supreme-court-justice

Probably you think that the justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court must be among the most intelligent people in the country. Granted, the mainstream press spends a lot of time denigrating the intelligence of the conservative justices. But surely then, the liberal justices must be really, really smart.

Consider Justice Elena Kagan. She was the Dean of the Harvard Law School. Then she became the Solicitor General of the United States. That’s the person in charge of arguing the government’s positions in the Supreme Court. You need to be really smart to do that job. So if you’re looking for someone who can teach you the thinking processes of the very smartest of the smart, there is no one better to look to than Elena Kagan.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at Justice Kagan’s dissent on behalf of the three liberal justices in the case of West Virginia v. EPA that came out just last week. That’s the case where the six conservative justices held that EPA lacked the authority under existing statutes to transform the electricity-generation sector of the economy. In my last post, I already quoted in full the second paragraph of Justice Kagan’s dissent. The first couple of paragraphs of an opinion are where a judge normally tries to encapsulate the essential gist of the argument, the reasoning that will capture the reader’s attention and immediately convince him of the rightness of the judge’s thinking. So let’s look at that paragraph again:

President Biden’s July Middle East visit – nuts and bolts Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3O0lQj7

*A major goal of President Biden’s July, 2022 visit to the Middle East – in addition to increasing the Saudi and Emirati oil production – is the restoration of the US stature as a reliable strategic ally of the pro-US Arab regimes, and stop their drift toward Russia and China.

*At the same time, Biden pursues a JCPOA-like agreement with Iran’s Ayatollahs and embraces the Muslim Brotherhood.

*However, the attempt to restore the US’ strategic reliability, while aiming for a JCPOA-like accord with Iran’s Ayatollahs and embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, constitutes a contradiction in terms, since all pro-US Arab regimes view Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood as lethal threats. Moreover, they are convinced that a JCPOA-like accord would bolster (as did the 2015 JCPOA) the Ayatollahs’ regional and global subversion, terrorism, fueling of civil wars, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced military systems to rogue entities in the Middle East and beyond.

They are also frustrated by the State Department’s underestimation of the fanatic vision of the Muslim Brotherhood, and taking lightly its terror network throughout the Middle East and beyond (e.g., India and Thailand).

Police Arrest Illegal Immigrants after ‘Hero Citizen’ Tipped Off Authorities to Planned Mass Shooting By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/police-arrest-illegal-immigrants-after-hero-citizen-tipped-off-authorities-to-planned-mass-shooting/

Police in Richmond, Va., said a tip from a “hero citizen” helped prevent two illegal immigrants from carrying out a planned shooting at a Fourth of July celebration.

“A hero citizen picked up the phone and overheard a conversation there was a mass shooting being planned here in the city of Richmond, Virginia,” Richmond Chief of Police Gerald Smith said during a press conference on Wednesday.

Police said they found evidence that Julio Alvarado-Dubon, 52, and Rolman Balacarcel, 38, were planning an attack at the city’s Independence Day celebration at the Dogwood Deli amphitheater and a city baseball game.

After the citizen called in the tip on July 1, police investigated the suspects’ residence and saw “evidence in plain view” to corroborate the tip. Officers seized two assault rifles, a handgun and 223 rounds of ammunition from the home.

Officers arrested Alvarado-Dubon and charged him with being a non-U.S. citizen in posession of a firearm on Friday. Balacarcel, who is Alvarado-Dubon’s roommate, was arrested and charged on the same count on Tuesday after a weekend of police surveillance.

The pair is being held without bond. Both suspects may face additional charges, police said.

Police did not identify a motive for the foiled attack.

Joe Biden and the Circular Firing Squad By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/joe-biden-and-the-circular-firing-squad/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is the panicked divestment of elected Democratic politicians, progressive activists, and the mainstream media from the Biden administration. The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

Two weeks ago, in a foreboding sign for the White House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with a finger to the political winds blowing on Instagram — announced that she wasn’t ready to support Biden in 2024. Then came California governor Gavin Newsom, asking “Where’s my party?” as Republicans and conservatives continue to score political wins. Newsom’s question sparked 2024 speculation for him, and then he stoked the flames even higher by buying ad time in Florida, demonstrating that he could identify and take on the real Republican threat, who is sitting behind a desk in Tallahassee: DeSantis.

After the Fourth of July weekend, we are now getting the hilarious reports — usually ones that a lame-duck president faces late in his second term. The first six sentences of Edward-Isaac Dovere’s dispatch for CNN sum it up:

Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

ZIONIST UNDERGROUND POET COMES ALIVE IN NEW BOOK BY MOSHE PHILLIPS

https://www.israel365news.com/271107/zionist-underground-poet-comes-alive-in-new-book-opinion/

It’s not too often that the release of a new book of poems that are over 80 years old can be seen as a transformative moment in the American Jewish community. It can be argued that this happened in June. The Complete and Translated Poetic Works of Avraham Stern published by Yishai Edberg is the first book of English translations of history’s key Zionist revolutionary.

For decades Israel’s left-leaning academic establishment, as well as Jewish educators in the United States, successfully fought to minimize the impact the Stern’s LEHI group, and the Irgun underground Stern had originally fought in, had on London’s decision to end the British Mandate. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that English speaking readers have been able to really learn the details about LEHI’s story.

Avraham Stern (Yair)  was the founder and leader of the Stern Group (maligned by the British as the Stern Gang). After Stern’s 1942 assassination by British detectives In Tel Aviv his soldiers later formed the LEHI (Fighters For the Freedom of Israel.)

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was a member of the LEHI’s three man high command after Stern’s assassination. In 1998 Stern wrote in Haaretz about Stern stating:

“Those who revere his memory know a great deal about Yair Avraham Stern, who in the 1940s established the underground LEHI movement to fight against the British regime in Palestine. Yair –as his friends knew him– believed that only the expulsion of the British from the Land of Israel would enable the Jewish People to establish an independent Jewish state, and he foresaw that this goal could only be achieved by force. However, his admirers knew little about the “other” Yair: Yair the poet.

Edberg’s translation brings Stern’s distinctive poetic voice to English. No easy task.