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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

And The Winner Is, Germany!

By on July 1st, 2022

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-6-29-and-the-winner-is-germany

Just over six months ago, in December 2021, I asked the question that was on the tip of the tongue of everybody who follows the subject of the ongoing massive “green” transition to fossil-fuel-free energy. Actually, that’s a lie. The question I asked was not on the tip of the tongue of everybody who follows the subject, or even of most of the people who follow the subject, for reasons that to me are completely inexplicable. The question was : “Which Country Or U.S. State Will Be The First To Hit The Green Energy Wall?”

The candidates that I nominated in that post as potentially the first to hit the “green energy wall” were California, New York, the UK and Germany. At the time, I thought it was obvious that one of those jurisdictions would hit the wall sooner than almost anybody expected. Indeed, I was quite bold in the short time frame that I predicted:

A prolonged period of unfavorable weather (calm and overcast) could cause a serious energy crunch to hit one or both of Germany or the UK as soon as this winter. Or they could get lucky and go another year or two.

Now here we are in June 2022, and I think it’s hard to deny that Germany has in fact hit the “green energy wall.” Let’s consider.

First, here is the definition of the “green energy wall” that I gave in the post:

[O]ne or another of [those states or countries] is highly likely to hit a “wall” — that is, a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof, or both, forcing a drastic alteration or even abandonment of the whole scheme.

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ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE STRATEGY BEHIND DESANTIS’ CULTURE WAR The New Yorker reveals some of the governor’s most effective tactics. Christopher Rufo

By on July 1st, 2022

https://christopherrufo.com/the-strategy-behind-desantis-culture-war/?mc_cid=8c9ddb4675&mc_eid=9bde3e8efb

“DeSantis is the man to watch. He is making the necessary transition from “culture war as performance” to “culture war as public policy.” He is writing the new playbook for conservative politics and his enemies are starting to take note.”

The New Yorker just published a report highlighting my work supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ policies on critical race theory and gender ideology. If you can set aside the obligatory editorializing—the disposition of the New Yorker is obviously left-wing—there is some valuable insight into the political strategy that DeSantis has adopted.

The article begins with some behind-the-scenes details:

In April, the conservative activist Christopher Rufo flew from his home, near Seattle, to Miami, to meet with Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, and to take part in the public signing of the Stop Woke Act. A former documentary filmmaker and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Rufo was the lead protagonist of last year’s furor over the teaching of “critical race theory” in public schools and helped advise the Governor on the Florida law, which aimed to limit discussion of racial history and identity in schools and workplaces. Rufo was especially taken with how personally invested DeSantis seemed in the policy. “He shows up to the tarmac at 6:30 a.m. with a Red Bull energy drink, ready to roll through the policy papers,” Rufo said. The bill had not come from the Governor’s advisers or the grass roots: “It’s driven by him.”

From there, the writer, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, recounts the story of DeSantis’ fight against Walt Disney after the company publicly announced its opposition to the Parental Rights in Education law, which prohibits public schools from promoting gender and sexual ideologies in kindergarten through third grade. DeSantis mobilized the public against Disney and quickly signed legislation to strip the company of its special tax and governing status—an aggressive move that most political observers did not anticipate.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why we should doubt Cassidy Hutchinson Amber Athey

By on July 1st, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/cassidy-hutchinson-january-6-trump-testimony-collapse/

The January 6 Committee geared up to deliver a potential bombshell on Tuesday with emergency testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows. But like most of the attempts to take down former president Donald Trump — from Russian collusion hoaxes to slimy porn lawyers — Hutchinson’s testimony quickly revealed itself as too good to be true.

It quickly became clear that one of Hutchinson’s most shocking claims was either misremembered or an outright lie. She claimed that Tony Ornato, White House deputy chief of staff for operations, and Bobby Engel, who headed Trump’s security detail, told her that Trump had attempted to grab the steering wheel of a Secret Service vehicle to redirect it to the Capitol on January 6. When agents refused, Trump allegedly assaulted them.

Secret Service sources said that both the driver of the vehicle and Engel had heard this allegation for the first time during Hutchinson’s testimony and were prepared to testify under oath that it was not true. Fox News reported that a source close to Ornato said he was similarly shocked to hear Hutchinson’s account and would also confirm it was not true. A spokesperson for the Secret Service said that the January 6 Committee didn’t even bother to reach out to them to confirm the story before having Hutchinson testify publicly on Tuesday.

If Hutchinson was able to get such a major allegation so totally wrong, how are we supposed to trust the rest of her testimony?

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How Desperate Are You to Cut a Deal With Iran, Mr. Biden? Shoshana Bryen

By on July 1st, 2022

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2022/06/30/how-desperate-are-you-to-cut-a-deal-with-iran-mr-biden/

Here is what happens when a country cedes control of its foreign policy. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a bad deal. The Iranians cheated on the baseline, the commitment, and the execution, and then President Donald Trump walked away. Approve of any given decision or not, the president controlled the action of the United States. Now however, looking for a way to reconstruct the deal, the Biden administration has outsourced American policy.

First, President Joe Biden agreed to Iran’s demand that the U.S. not be in the negotiating room in Vienna, but be represented by intermediaries—including China and Russia.

Then, Washington gave theoretical agreement to Iran’s demand that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) be removed from the U.S. designated terror organization list. After strong bipartisan objection in Congress—owing to the fact that the IRGC is responsible for hundreds of American military deaths—Mr. Biden appears to have told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in May that he wouldn’t do it.

But also in May, Enrique Mora, the European Union official coordinating the Vienna talks, visited Tehran. As reported at the time, “Western diplomats are expecting Tehran to put forward potential alternative demands, giving Washington a chance to think about other concessions it could offer. The aim is to find a way around the IRGC hurdle that will let both governments sell the deal domestically.”

The latest such concession is the current American plan to give visas to Iranians who have been drafted into the IRGC, trained by it, and employed by it, “provided they satisfy relevant agency authority that the individual…poses no danger to the safety and security of the United States.” According to The Jerusalem Post, other factors taken into consideration include whether the individual had any “intent or desire to assist a terror organization or activity or had prior knowledge of targeting ‘noncombatant persons, US citizens, or US interests.’”

Sleepers, anyone?

While America grovels in Vienna, it turns a blind eye to Iran’s continuing violations of its nuclear agreements.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Deal or No Deal, Iran-Israel War Is Coming to the Middle East It seems increasingly likely that Israel will strike Iran to prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring nuclear weapons. by Sean Durns

By on July 1st, 2022

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/deal-or-no-deal-iran-israel-war-coming-middle-east-203135?fbclid=IwAR05rjVvzGDMZwVFeONhM4KADWw2txcdTwb6JO37NiWgNnOlEaXvW-mOyzI

Iran,  Naftali Bennett warned on June 12, “is dangerously close to getting their hands on a nuclear weapon.” In an interview with The Telegraph, the premier pointed out that “Iran is enriching uranium at an unprecedented rate.” Bennett added: “Iran’s nuclear program won’t stop until it’s stopped.”

Bennett isn’t alone in expressing concern.

The United States has also raised alarm. In a March 2022 hearing of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) observed that “Iran has made key advances” and has “decreased its [nuclear] breakout time to several weeks from a year” compared to what it was under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal. Indeed, in April 2022, U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken said that Iran’s breakout time was “down to a couple of weeks.”

On June 6, 2022, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said that Tehran was “very close” to crossing the nuclear threshold and that it “cannot be avoided at this point.” Grossi also presented the board with a report “showing that Iran effectively already has enough enriched uranium for three bombs,” the news service JNS reported.

Grossi also told the IAEA’s board of governors that “Iran has not provided explanations that are technically credible in relation to the Agency’s findings at three undeclared locations in Iran.” Grossi noted that Iran has also failed to provide the IAEA with “the current location, or locations, of the nuclear material and/or of the equipment contaminated with the nuclear material” that was moved from the site of Turquzabad in 2018.

Adding to concerns, the Islamic Republic has begun installing advanced IR-6 centrifuges at its underground enrichment plant in Natanz and has said that it plans to install more at other sites. The centrifuges will enable the Islamic Republic to increase enrichment by as much as 50 percent.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tucker puts together the long list of political arrests in Biden’s America By Andrea Widburg

By on June 30th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/tucker_puts_together_the_long_list_of_political_arrests_in_bidens_america.html

We’ve all been aware of the stories about the FBI arresting conservatives—and by that, I don’t mean the way the FBI has hunted down every grannie and veteran who, made ignorant by the systematic removal of “no trespassing” signs and fencing, and the Capitol police holding open doors, entered the Capitol and wandered around reverently. That’s bad enough. But the FBI is also going after high-level, high-profile political operatives (advisors, politicians, journalists) who have dared challenge Biden’s rise to the White House. On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson finally put together a list of the brutal, humiliating, seemingly lawless arrests, and it’s really shocking.

What you see in Tucker’s opening monologue is something I don’t believe we’ve ever seen before in America: A presidential administration is systematically using its police power to intimidate the political opposition at the highest levels. As Tucker points out, Democrats have declared every successful Republican presidential election illegitimate since Bush in 2000, but no Republican administration has ever used its police power to silence these people.

Democrats, though, are enamored of the police state. Obama spied on both the Senate and on journalists. Then, probably heartened by the minimal pushback, he authorized spying on a presidential candidate—and got away with it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Cry-Baby Leftist Mind How odd that leftists are destroying the very customs and traditions whose loss will come back to haunt them when Democrats lose the Congress in November. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 30th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/29/the-cry-baby-leftist-mind/

Modern progressives assume moral and intellectual authority. 

Consequently, their supposedly superior ends naturally justify almost any means necessary to achieve them. 

Among the elite, the Democrats’ “blue-wall” states were once considered a testament to the wisdom of the Electoral College. When that wall crumbled in 2016 to Trump, the Electoral College suddenly was blasted as a relic of our anti-democratic founders. 

The nine-person Supreme Court was once beloved. On issues like abortion, school prayer, same-sex marriage, pornography, and Miranda rights, the Left cheered the Court as it made the law and ignored legislatures and presidents. 

Republican Court picks—Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, Lewis Powell, John Roberts, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart, and Earl Warren—would often flip leftward. How could they not be swayed by the greater brilliance of their liberal colleagues? 

From affirmative action to Roe v. Wade to Obamacare, apostate Republican justices for a half-century greenlighted legislating from the bench. 

In response, was there any serious right-wing talk of packing the court with six additional justices to slow down its overreaching left-wing majority—or of a mob massing at the home of a left-wing justice? Certainly not.

But now? 

Suddenly a narrow constructionist majority has returned matters of abortion to the states. And the once-beloved Court is being slandered by leftist insurrectionists as illegitimate. 

Every sort of once unthinkable attack on the courts is now permissible. 

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU Signs Deal with Egypt and Israel to Boost Gas Exports to Europe by Soeren Kern

By on June 30th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18663/eu-egypt-israel-gas-exports

Over time the agreement could spur new investment in gas exploration and infrastructure in Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and Israel and potentially transform the Eastern Mediterranean into an energy powerhouse.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the agreement as “a big step forward in the energy supply to Europe” and “the first step leading to a Mediterranean-wide agreement.”

“The war in Ukraine has really changed the equation in a way, including for the EU where they’re willing to overlook, at least in the short term, the desire to go green as soon as possible.” — Dov Lieber, The Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2022.

The European Union has signed a memorandum of understanding with Israel and Egypt that paves the way for potentially significant quantities of Israeli natural gas to be shipped to Europe.

The trilateral agreement, signed on June 15 in Cairo at a meeting of the East Mediterranean Gas Forum (EMGF), an intergovernmental organization, calls for Israeli gas to be sent to liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities in Egypt. From there, the gas in liquid form will be transported across the Mediterranean Sea on LNG vessels to markets in Europe.

Initially, the volumes of Israeli gas sent to Europe will be relatively low due to a combination of factors, including infrastructure limitations, the high costs of producing and shipping LNG, and the politics of climate change and clean energy. Over time, however, the agreement could spur new investment in gas exploration and infrastructure in Cyprus, Egypt, Greece and Israel and potentially transform the Eastern Mediterranean into an energy powerhouse.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Leaked Documents Reveal Wide Scope of China’s Human Rights Violations in Xinjiang by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on June 30th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18644/china-xinjiang-human-rights

One of the leaked documents, which contains “a shoot to kill order” for guards in the camp’s watchtowers, confirms that these camps are indeed prisons. Another leaked report stipulates how detainees are to be transported from one site to an alternate location: ankle shackles, handcuffs and hoods.

Previous leaks of official documents, unauthorized films, commercial satellite images and testimony from escaped former inmates have scripted a profile of the hell that the Chinese Communist state has crafted for the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang. This massive province-size gulag regime includes forced abortions, sterilization and rape of female detainees, separation of husbands and wives, removal of children from the custody of parents, obligatory retraining of workers in skills supportive of CCP economic goals, and daily ideological indoctrination of inmates.

Democratic countries should distribute these leaks globally as cautionary warning to all societies that the CCP’s projected panda bear image of China obscures the reality of a quite different animal with an insatiable appetite.

Documents and photos of thousands of ethnic Uighurs arrested by Chinese authorities, made public in late May, lend additional indisputable evidence to the Communist regime’s massive human rights violations in Xinjiang. Many of the leaked documents are official Chinese Ministry of Interior dossiers of incarcerated individuals just from Shufu, one among 61 counties in Xinjiang Province. The Shufu County in the Kashgar Prefecture is the site of several large internment camps.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Supreme Court Decision Advances Educational Freedom The timing could not be better. Larry Sand

By on June 30th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/supreme-court-decision-advances-educational-larry-sand/

Last week, the Supreme Court delivered three decisions that have the left in a snit of epic proportions. On Friday, the Court decided there is no Constitutional right to an abortion, and threw Roe v. Wade into the trashcan. The prior day, the justices made clear that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. And on Tuesday, in Carson v. Makin, the Supremes asserted that if a state subsidizes private education, it cannot disqualify religious schools.

The latter case revolves around Maine’s town tuitioning law, which allows parents living in districts that do not own and operate elementary or secondary schools to send their children to public or private schools in other areas of the state, or even outside the state, using funds provided by the child’s home district. Until Tuesday’s decision, the school a parent chose could not be a religious one. But as Chief Justice John Roberts explains, “The State pays tuition for certain students at private schools – so long as the schools are not religious. That is discrimination against religion. A State’s antiestablishment interest does not justify enactments that exclude some members of the community from an otherwise generally available public benefit because of their religious exercise.”

The Carson case was the fourth in a series that have involved the faux “separation of Church and state” argument. In the 2002 Zelman v. Simmons-Harris decision, SCOTUS ruled that because financial aid goes to parents and not the religious school, vouchers are indeed constitutional.

Then, in 2017’s Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, a Missouri church that was operating a daycare and pre-school applied to a state grant program that helps non-profits pay to install rubber playground surfaces. The church’s application was denied because “the state constitution bars the state from providing funds to religious entities.” But Trinity Lutheran pursued the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it prevailed. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the 7-2 majority, stating, “The Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment protected the freedom to practice religion and subjects laws that burden religious practice to strict scrutiny.”

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