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Ruth King

Joe Incompetent Adam Smith was trying to be consoling when he said “there’s a deal of ruin in a nation.” Yes, there is. But Joe Biden is testing the limits of that home truth. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/18/joe-incompetent/

When it comes to the Biden Administration, my advice is: forget the ideology, concentrate on the incompetence. 

Yes, the Biden Administration has gone all-in on the leisured Left agenda, throwing its hat in with the race-baiters, icky sexual exotics, climate fanatics, and other wardens of wokeness. 

All that is destructive, not to mention deeply unattractive.

But even worse than the preening, self-indulgent theatrics of these unhappy would-be censors and commandants is the mind-boggling ineptitude of this administration. 

Thanks to soon-to-be-former Representative Liz Cheney (RINO-Wyo.), we’ve been hearing a lot about January 6, 2021, lately. But not only was that the day that some of Donald Trump’s supporters traipsed around the Capitol building. It was also, as it turns out, a day that provided a nice contrast between the Trump and the Biden Administrations. I am not thinking about the differences in comportment between the two but energy costs under Donald Trump compared with those costs under Joe Biden. Since Biden seems bent on fulfilling his promise to destroy the coal industry and stop all drilling, it is not surprising that the cost of energy has skyrocketed over the last year. One wag sent around a “Never Forget January 6th” notice listing the prices of fuel on that day in 2021:

Regular gas was $1.99
Premium was $2.14 
Diesel was $2.21 

42% of Young Male Dems Believe Transgender Movement a Threat to Children Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/06/42-young-male-dems-believe-transgender-movement-daniel-greenfield/

The numbers under the hood, especially among young male Dems, are seriously bad. And a reckoning is coming.

This is a Southern Poverty Law Center survey. And I wouldn’t be posting SPLC content if it wasn’t spectacular. And it is spectacular.

Overall, 49% of people said they believe gender ideology has corrupted American culture, including 34% of Democrats, 72% of Republicans, and 45% of Independents.

The magic happens when you break down the numbers by age and gender. Among younger Democrat men, a group that the SPLC survey defines as under 50, the numbers are dramatically different than among baby boomers.

Only 20% of Democrat men over 50 agree that “gender ideology has corrupted American culture”, but 47% of younger Democratic men agree.

Only 41% disagree.

The numbers are better among Democrat women, but there’s still a sharp age split.

Only 26% of older Democrat women agree, while 37% of younger Democrat women do.

The numbers get progressively worse for lefties on the question of transgender indoctrination of children and whether it’s a threat to children.

This is War: Jonathan Pelson

https://americanmind.org/salvo/this-is-war/

Free trade with a hostile nation is a losing game.

The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Pelson’s new book, Wireless Wars: China’s Dangerous Domination of 5G and How We’re Fighting Back.

Why didn’t the regulators and government authorities in the United States and Europe stop the damage from Huawei? Why did they allow the Chinese company to sell their gear in the U.S., and all over the world, at prices that were clearly below cost, low enough to take business from most competitors, and so low they destroyed the margins on competitors who had to slash their own prices to win the business? Shouldn’t countries prevent foreign companies from entering and dominating their markets, selling products below cost? And shouldn’t countries put up trade barriers to block foreigners if their home country doesn’t also open its markets to imports?

This is often the response from governments, whether in the Americas, Europe, or elsewhere. Leaders come to the aid of domestic industries, decrying unfair competition. Companies under threat try to position themselves as “strategic,” and warranting protection. Somehow, the truly strategic telecom sector failed to earn this designation. But should any sector block foreign suppliers, even if those suppliers are selling their products at unreasonably low prices?

There aren’t simple answers to these questions, says Mike Munger, an economist and former chair of the department of political science at Duke University, where he continues to teach political science, public policy, and economics. He argues that trade deficits aren’t a problem, and he makes the case for continuing to trade even when a partner subsidizes their products and puts up barriers to yours.

“My trade deficit with Kroger’s supermarkets is gigantic,” he deadpans. “I buy a ton of groceries from them and they never buy anything from me. The last time I tried to sell them some of my stuff, they called the cops.” Munger says that if one party has something of value and the other party has money they want to exchange for it, no voluntary exchange is bad.

Celebrating with Lee Edwards as Communism Is ‘Put on Trial’ :Jack Fowler

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/celebrating-with-lee-edwards-as-communism-is-put-on-trial/?utm_source=

Last week’s opening of the Victims of Communism Museum resulted from a 35-year effort spearheaded by NR’s old and dear friend, Lee Edwards (fun fact: His first piece for this magazine, “The Way of All France,” was published in the February 1, 1958, issue). Yours Truly corresponded with Lee prior to the ribbon-cutting, asking a few questions, getting a few answers in return. It would be a shame to not share them, and so we do:

Jack Fowler: Why will the world be a better place for there being this museum?

Lee Edwards: Because the museum will serve as the cornerstone of our global educational campaign about the manifold victims and crimes of communism.

Fowler: The Nazis have been rightly denigrated, their leaders executed for crimes against humanity, the name made synonymous with evil — but there was no such justice for East Europe’s and Asia’s communist henchmen. They are not the stuff of vilification by Western media, by Western culture, at least in no way comparable to the Nazis. Is this a driving force in part behind the creation of the Victims of Communism Memorial and the museum, this sense of a lack of justice or righteous admission of just how dastardly communism is?

Edwards: Nazism was exposed and convicted at the Nuremburg trials. VOC intends to put communism on trial in Washington, D.C. We will feature witnesses from the nearly 40 nations that suffered under communism — some 1.5 billion still do so in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.

Fowler: On the memorial, 100 million are recognized — are they the murdered? What is the greater number of true victims of communism?

Poll: Young Democrats Are Souring on Feminism By Nate Hochman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/poll-young-democrats-are-souring-on-femini

Michelle Goldberg’s latest New York Times column notes a very interesting new poll regarding public opinion on feminism:

Recently the Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research commissioned a poll of 1,500 Americans to measure belief in various reactionary sentiments, including the “great replacement” conspiracy theory and the idea that trans people are a threat to children. Because misogyny is so ubiquitous in far-right spaces, Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the S.P.L.C., decided to add a question about feminism.

Predictably, most young Republicans agree with the statement, “Feminism has done more harm than good.” What was astonishing was how many young Democrats agreed as well. While only 4 percent of Democratic men over 50 thought feminism was harmful, 46 percent of Democratic men under 50 did. Nearly a quarter of Democratic women under 50 agreed, compared with only 10 percent of those 50 and older.

Goldberg, a progressive and a feminist herself, concludes that this shift is due to the fact “that feminism has been sapped of cultural vitality”: “After four years of Donald Trump, more than two years of a pandemic, and an unending right-wing onslaught, a lot of people with feminist sympathies are numb and exhausted.” I have a slightly different explanation. Feminism today is distinct from the feminism of past generations — far more radical and less tolerant, more concerned with quashing dissent than securing rights. 

Sotomayor on Thomas: ‘The One Justice in the Building That Literally Knows Every Employee’s Name By Dan McLaughlin

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sotomayor-on-thomas-the-one-justice-in-the-building-that-literally-knows-every-employees-name/?utm

For all of the acrimony around the Supreme Court these days, it is nice to hear this public tribute by Justice Sonia Sotomayor to being friends with her colleague Clarence Thomas, before an audience at the American Constitution Society that was obviously not sympathetic to Thomas:

Justice Thomas is the one justice in the building that literally knows every employee’s name, every one of them. And not only does he know their names, he remembers their families’ names and histories, He is the first one who will go up to someone when you’re walking with him and say, ‘Is your son okay? How’s your daughter doing in college?’ He’s the first one that, when my stepfather died, sent me flowers in Florida. He is a man who cares deeply about the court as an institution, and about people.

Of course, Sotomayor noted that she and Thomas have very different philosophies, but fundamentally, “we share a common understanding about people and kindness towards them.”

Brooklyn Venue Cancels Planned John Hinckley Jr. Concert By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/brooklyn-venue-cancels-planned-john-hinckley-jr-concert/

A Brooklyn venue set to host a concert by John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate former president Ronald Reagan in 1981, on Wednesday canceled the planned performance.

Hinckley was granted an unconditional release from all remaining court restrictions on June 1, and the release went into effect on Wednesday. Hinckley shot and injured Reagan and three others, including former press secretary James Brady, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity and admitted to a mental hospital. In recent years Hinckley has recorded songs and uploaded them to his YouTube channel, and was planning to do what he has called a “redemption tour” this summer.

Concert space Market Hotel announced the decision to cancel a performance by Hinckley scheduled for July 8 on Instagram and other social media outlets. The concert was already sold out.

The venue said the concert was initially booked through a “third-party promoter,” and that one reason for hosting the show was to show that “mental health issues and a criminal past” can be “atoned for.”

“There was a time when a place could host a thing like this, maybe a little offensive, and the reaction would be ‘it’s just a guy playing a show, who does it hurt — it’s a free country.’ We aren’t living in that kind of free country anymore, for better or for worse,” Market Hotel said in its statement, stressing that Hinckley’s scheduled performance would not “practically” harm anyone.

The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI) The wealthy, powerful, and sometimes very weird Pritzker cousins have set their sights on a new God-like goal: using gender ideology to remake human biology by Jennifer Bilek

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions.

I first wrote about the Pritzkers, whose fortune originated in the Hyatt hotel chain, and their philanthropy directed toward normalizing what people call “transgenderism” in 2018. I have since stopped using the word “transgenderism” as it has no clear boundaries, which makes it useless for communication, and have instead opted for the term SSI, which more clearly defines what some of the Pritzkers and their allies are funding—even as it ignores the biological reality of “male” and “female” and “gay” and “straight.”

The creation and normalization of SSI speaks much more directly to what is happening in American culture, and elsewhere, under an umbrella of human rights. With the introduction of SSI, the current incarnation of the LGBTQ+ network—as distinct from the prior movement that fought for equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans, and which ended in 2020 with Bostock v. Clayton County, finding that LGBTQ+ is a protected class for discrimination purposes—is working closely with the techno-medical complex, big banks, international law firms, pharma giants, and corporate power to solidify the idea that humans are not a sexually dimorphic species—which contradicts reality and the fundamental premises not only of “traditional” religions but of the gay and lesbian civil rights movements and much of the feminist movement, for which sexual dimorphism and resulting gender differences are foundational premises.

What the Victory of Mayra Flores Portends for the Democrats The Hispanic Republican won in a blue congressional district by repudiating Biden’s agenda. by George Neumayr

https://spectator.org/what-the-victory-of-mayra-flores-portends-for-the-democrats/

The victory of Republican Mayra Flores in a historic Texas Democratic stronghold on Tuesday punctuates President Joe Biden’s problem with Hispanics. His woke agenda appears to be driving them into the arms of Republicans. Born in Mexico, Flores won the special election for the 34th Congressional District on a staunchly conservative platform of “God, family, and country” — a repudiation of Biden’s fixation on secularism, libertinism, and identity politics.

Her victory is no doubt setting off alarm bells in Democratic circles, but it can’t come as a complete surprise to the party’s strategists. Some of the shrewder ones have been fretting recently over the party’s alienation of Hispanics.

Liberals deluded themselves into seeing Hispanics as a permanent Democratic constituency.

“Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy,” wrote Democratic strategist Ruy Teixeria last December. “They are instead a patriotic, upwardly mobile, working class group with quite practical and down to earth concerns. Democrats will either learn to focus on that or they will continue to lose ground among this vital group of voters.”

Shrug: Will the Media Ever Bother to Cover the Crime Spree Terrorizing Pro-Life Organizations? Guy Benson

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2022/06/13/will-the-media-ever-start-covering-crime-spree-targeting-prolife-organizations-n2608604

This stuff just keeps happening, and aside from stray headlines, local coverage, and scrutiny from right-leaning outlets, this spree of political violence and crime is hardly generating any national attention.  Political violence is a right-wing problem, you see, and examples contrary to that approved narrative are to be ignored, downplayed, or mis-categorized.  Here is the latest of many recent instances:

The Seattle field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said Friday it was helping authorities in Oregon investigate a fire that was “suspicious in nature” at a pregnancy center run by a Christian organization. The fire at the Gresham, Oregon facility came after a similar anti-abortion facility in Eggertsville, New York, was damaged in an alleged arson attack earlier this week. That incident is also currently under investigation, according to the Buffalo News. The U.S. government is preparing for a potential surge in political violence from the Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling on abortion rights in the coming weeks…First Image, the anti-abortion organization that runs the Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center, said in a post on its website that a fire broke out at the facility at about 3 a.m. on Friday. Extensive fire damage was mostly contained to one room but there was additional water and smoke damage in other parts of the building, the organization said. No one was injured in the incident.

Imagine being so pro-abortion, a fringe that goes well beyond ‘pro-choice’, that you terrorize and assault organizations that help women choose not to have abortions.