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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Are Green Pet Projects Delaying the Next Energy Breakthrough?

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/08/are-green-pet-projects-delaying-the-next

Biden’s latest green boondoggle funnels money to known energy losers, while curbing the technologies that could prove truly transformative.

Joe Biden’s latest spending binge doubles down on decades of failed government policies, propping up the wind and solar industries while entirely ignoring vast areas ripe for potential energy breakthroughs.

Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act pledged to invest $369 billion in so-called “green” energy sources such as wind and solar power over the next decade, giving a windfall of cash to energy types favored by environmentalists. The IRA aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent by 2030.

America already poured almost $450 billion, even more than the amount provided by Biden’s legislation, into “green” energy between 2010 and 2019. Yet solar and wind power provided only 1.5 and 3.4 percent, respectively, of the energy produced in the U.S. in 2021, according to the Energy Information Administration. The use of solar and wind power has either temporarily increased carbon dioxide emissions or, at best, been responsible for about 1 percent of the decline in emissions, a process much more attributable to the switch from coal power to natural gas.

Pumping vast sums of money into solar and wind isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, it has been going on for almost half a century, as government favoritism towards these technologies goes right back to the origins of the technologies. (In 1974, an economical solar-power device was the object that drove the plot in the then-near-future James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun.) The solar-energy backers were wrong, and their boondoggle has cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Today, solar and wind power get, respectively, 250 and 160 times the subsidies per unit of energy generated that nuclear-fission power does, according to Forbes.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Democrats’ spin Biden success and wish upon a star for midterm magic but don’t you believe it

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/democrats-spin-biden-success-wish-upon-star-midterm-magic

Are Republicans really about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? 

That’s what the liberal media would have you believe. For the past few weeks the New York Times, Washington Post et al – the usual message boards for the Democratic National Committee – have been celebrating Joe Biden’s slightly rising poll numbers and legislative “accomplishments.”

“Biden is on a roll” trumpeted the Times recently, quoting White House aides claiming the president has enjoyed a “string of victories [that] compares favorably to the two-year legislative record of most any other modern president.” 

According to the Times, Biden recently descended from Air Force One with a “jaunty step, a playful manner and a huge grin” – that’s how reinvigorated the 79-year old president is. Once again, the Times reports, within the halls of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Biden is being likened to LBJ or FDR.

Politico ran a piece under the headline, “Wait, Is Biden a Better President Than People Thought?

The simple answer is: no. Biden is still an unpopular, ineffective president whose recent promise to get out on the campaign trail (now that he has recovered from COVID) must have Democrat candidates shaking in their boots. 

Few want the president at their side when they are trying to explain to Americans why egg prices are up 38% in the past year and why Covid-19 still haunts the land despite Biden’s promise that the vaccine would kill off the virus. They can’t imagine Biden’s response when voters ask how our booming economy fell into recession, or why Democrats are allowing some 2 million people to enter the U.S. illegally this year. Or when Americans ask how the president plans to make our cities’ streets safe again. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Anti-Racism’ and Common Sense:By Peter Kirsanow

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/anti-racism-and-common-sense/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fourth

A  short time ago, the National Museum of African American History sported a poster that most normal adults would describe as moronic if not blatantly racist. The poster purported to list indicies of “Whiteness,” such as hard work, individualism, objectivity, nuclear family, respect for authority, and delayed gratification. These weren’t presented as universal qualities to strive for regardless of race. Rather, these were  tools of oppression,  contributors to unfairness, and characteristics of white supremacy.

CRT/anti-racism training tells little white kids that they’re privileged and/or oppressors by virtue of their race. Common sense counsels that such training will almost necessarily yield negative outcomes, some of them severe.

There was a time in the recent past when the vast majority of adults — regardless of race, educational attainment, or economic background — intuitively grasped that such instruction is galactically stupid, immoral, toxic, false, and destructive. A majority might still think so, even if they’re too cowed to say it.

But that doesn’t appear to include a majority of today’s so-called “elites,” many of whom support and promote such instruction. This portends ill for our society, which seems to be sprouting ruptures in social cohesion by the minute. Indeed, less than 20 years ago, before the germination of anti-racism  training, Gallup reported that 74 percent of white Americans and 68 percent of black Americans thought race relations were good. By July 2021, those numbers had cratered to 43 percent and 33 percent, respectively. Some of that decline may be attributable to discrete events such as the Michael Brown and George Floyd incidents and the media narratives surrounding them.  But the steady harangue of idiotic — and sometimes evil — CRT/anti-racism/DEI training surely contributes.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Arizona’s Campus Disaster Can Be Stopped Stanley Kurtz

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/arizonas-campus-disaster-can-be-stopped/

The woke rebellion against America’s founding principles continues to advance on all fronts. Nowhere is this truer than at America’s universities, the source and stronghold of the cultural revolution. The pushback against the illiberalism of our universities — their betrayal of their own first principles — has so far been a paltry thing. Supposedly, this is because higher education is shielded by academic freedom in a way that K–12 education is not. But that is not the reason we have failed. The truth is, opponents of the woke revolution have barely begun to do what they can to restore liberal education to America’s academy.

The greatest abdication of all is our failure to reform universities by way of trustees (also called regents or governors). University boards of regents can do almost anything. Yet most often they do nothing but rubber-stamp the decisions of administrators. That has to change right now, and it needs to change first in Arizona.

Boards of regents at public universities are responsible to the people of their state. Regents are appointed by governors, and sometimes by legislatures, too. In a few states, regents are selected by popular vote. Yet almost never do we see the appointment of university trustees become an election issue. Well, trustee selection needs to be an election issue right now in Arizona. Here’s why.

Arizona’s public universities have turned themselves into leaders in the national movement to indoctrinate students in the tenets of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI). The showpiece of this campaign is Northern Arizona University’s (NAU) move to require four — count ’em, four — diversity courses for graduation, all of which must be grounded in “critical theory,” the neo-Marxist system that produced critical race theory, critical legal theory, and still more entries in the grand campaign to neo-Marxitize pretty much everything.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Where Is Steven D’Antuono? The head of the FBI’s field office in Washington, D.C., has a lot of explaining to do. By Julie Kelly

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/22/where-is-steven-dantuono/

A few days after the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, a tough-talking FBI chief with a Boston accent promised the American people that the bureau would spare no resource in hunting down everyone and anyone involved in the four-hour disturbance that day. 

Steven M. D’Antuono, the newly appointed head of the Washington, D.C. FBI field office, gave the public a stern warning. “The FBI will leave no stone unturned. This is a 24/7, full bore, extensive operation,” D’Antuono explained during a January 12, 2021 press conference at the Department of Justice. “As Director Wray says, the FBI does not do easy.”

His agency, D’Antuono bragged, has a “long memory and a broad reach.” Agents from 56 FBI field offices across the country “will be knocking on your door if we find out you were part of the criminal activity at the Capitol.” He urged people to turn in their co-workers, neighbors, and relatives if they had information that could help the FBI in its dragnet.

Turns out, his comments weren’t just Beantown-style braggadocio. More than 850 Americans since then have been investigated, arrested, and charged for mostly nonviolent offenses related to the January 6 protest. Armed FBI agents have conducted early morning raids at homes across the country, using military style vehicles to batter in front doors while traumatizing families, children, and neighbors in the process. It is a crusade of fear and terror meant to reinforce D’Antuono’s threats that those who dared to demonstrate against the fraudulent election of Joe Biden that day will pay a hefty price. 

Nearly 20 months later, D’Antuono’s office continues to announce new arrests.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Rushdie Stabbing and the World’s Leading Terror State The real point of the Islamic Republic’s fatwa. David Harsanyi

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/rushdie-stabbing-reminds-us-iran-still-worlds-david-harsanyi/

Last week, a man stormed the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and stabbed British author Salman Rushdie in the neck as he was being introduced. The topic under discussion was “the United States as asylum for writers and other artists in exile and as a home for freedom of creative expression.” Chances are exceptionally high that this was the work of a jihadi.

The story attracted shamefully fleeting attention. For those too young to remember, “The Satanic Verses” was published back in September 1988. And because of the book’s purportedly impertinent treatment of the prophet Muhammad, it was banned in Rushdie’s native India and dozens of other nations — including virtually every Muslim-majority country in the world. Though Rushdie would later become a powerful advocate of free expression, he initially turned on his own book, apologizing numerous times for its contents. “I profoundly regret the distress that publication has occasioned to sincere followers of Islam,” he said in one statement, asking his publisher to hold back release of the paperback edition of the book. As a matter of self-preservation, his position was understandable.

And, still, it was all to no avail. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie, contending that even if the author “became the most pious man of all time” it was the duty of every Muslim to “employ everything he has got” to murder the writer.

For the first time in postwar history, terrorism was aimed at suppressing free expression in the liberal Western world. In the United States, two bookstores in Berkeley, California, were attacked. The Riverdale Press in New York was firebombed after publishing an editorial defending the right to read the novel and criticizing the bookstores that pulled it from their shelves. Rushdie’s Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was fatally stabbed. In Europe, the Italian translator of “The Satanic Verses,” Ettore Capriolo, was also stabbed in his apartment in Milan, and the Norwegian publisher of Rushdie’s book, William Nygaard, was shot three times, but both survived. In Belgium, an imam and his aide were murdered after expressing moderate positions on the affair. Big booksellers in London were firebombed in April 1989, and there were two more explosions connected to the selling of the book and a handful of unexploded devices in other bookstores. Rushdie, author of the masterpiece “Midnight’s Children” among many other fantastic works, was forced to employ round-the-clock protection by bodyguards, compelled to spend the next decade in hiding.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fauci flees his office, fearing Republicans taking control in Congress and holding him to account By Thomas Lifson

By on August 23rd, 2022

Yesterday, in a statement posted on the website of the federal agency he runs, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced his retirement in December, one month before Republicans are expected to take control of the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate.

I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career.

As Sister Toldjah notes at RedState:

Apparently, the “next phase” of Fauci’s career will include collecting a sweet pension and possibly avoiding having to answer before Congress under oath as to what he knew about the origins of COVID-19 and U.S. gain of research funding:

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Cataloging Biden’s Lies About The Border

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/23/cataloging-bidens-lies-about-the-border/

“Sources for statements in the chart:

March 17, 2021: “The border is secure, and the border is not open.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
June 15, 2021: “The administration has made significant progress at establishing a well-managed and secure border while also treating people fairly and humanely. The American people support this approach.” White House statement.
Sept. 22, 2021: “The border is secure. We’re executing our plan.” Mayorkas.
March 1, 2022: “And if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure the border and fix the immigration system.” Joe Biden

July 20, 2022: “Look, the border is secure. We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.” Mayorkas.

As soon as President Biden took office, the number of foreigners crossing the southern U.S. border illegally exploded. When asked about it in his first press conference in March 2021, Biden brushed it off, saying “this happens every year” and “nothing has changed.”

Later that same month, Biden claimed that “this new surge we’re dealing with now started with the last administration, but it’s our responsibility to deal with it humanely and to — and to stop what’s happening.”

At his State of the Union address this year, he said that “if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure the border and fix the immigration system.”

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Is Joe Pinion? He could be the candidate to topple Senator Schumer. Ira Stoll

By on August 23rd, 2022

He could be the candidate to topple Senator Schumer.

Who is Joe Pinion?

When a colleague called with that question last week, I was stumped. It turns out that he is the Republican Party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022 in New York, running against the Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer. 

The Schumer-Pinion race is a study in contrasts, and not only when it comes to name recognition. Mr. Schumer’s campaign has raised a lot more money: Federal Election Commission data through June 30, 2022, show that Mr. Schumer had raised $39 million to Mr. Pinion’s $254,397, and that Mr. Schumer had $37.9 million in cash on hand, while Mr. Pinion had $25,150. 

Mr. Schumer, 71, was elected to Congress in 1980 and to the New York State assembly in 1974; Mr. Pinion just turned 39 and has not yet been elected to political office.

Mr. Pinion himself says in a phone interview that people thought he was “crazy” to try to beat Mr. Schumer. He says, though, that he’s in a “great position” to take on the majority leader. Two polls taken in late July show Mr. Schumer with support at 53 percent or 56 percent, down from the 70 percent of the vote Mr. Schumer won when he was re-elected in 2016. A McLaughlin poll taken in August found 42 percent of New Yorkers would re-elect Mr. Schumer, while 48 percent want someone else.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mike Pence Is Wrong. DOJ And FBI Rot Spreads Way Deeper Than Garland By: Jonathan S. Tobin

By on August 23rd, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/22/mike-pence-is-wrong-doj-and-fbi-rot-spreads-way-deeper-than-garland/

The former veep is still trying to sound reasonable by saying the GOP shouldn’t criticize the FBI — but the bureau is saturated with political bias that must be expunged.

When it comes to the way the deep state regime is at war with Republicans, former Vice President Mike Pence’s No. 1 priority is showing that his main concern is to keep playing the “good cop” to the “bad cop” of former President Donald Trump. 

Speaking in New Hampshire last week, Pence characteristically tried to have it both ways over this unprecedented attack on norms that the incident represented. After vaguely calling for transparency, Pence said:

I also want to remind my fellow Republicans that we can hold the Attorney General accountable for the decision that he made without attacking the rank and file law enforcement personnel at the FBI. The Republican Party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line at the federal, state, and local levels. These attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police. The truth of the matter is we need to get to the bottom of the matter and let the facts play out, but more than anything else, the American people need to be reassured of the integrity of our justice system.

Conservatives are justifiably venting outrage over the banana republic-style raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by FBI agents acting on the orders of Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the soft-spoken Pence thinks the priority is to reassure the administrative state that Republicans won’t be unreasonable in their pushback against attempts to delegitimize opposition to the Biden administration. 

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