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Ruth King

The Pentagon strikes a blow against transgender madness By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/the_pentagon_strikes_a_blow_against_transgender_madness.html

Ketanji Brown Jackson’s stupid and essentially disrespectful response to the question “What is a woman?” tells us what the official line is from the Biden administration: a woman is whatever the transgender lobby says it is.  And we know that the Biden Pentagon has been going out of its way to accommodate so-called “transgender” troops.  That’s why it’s so delicious that the Pentagon announced today that it is lowering the physical standards for women and older people.

Here’s the story from The Hill (emphasis mine):

Following a three-year review, the Army has scrapped plans to use the same physical fitness test for all soldiers, choosing instead to have some reduced standards to allow women and older soldiers to pass, the service announced Wednesday. 

The decision follows a RAND-led study that found men were more easily passing the new, more difficult Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) compared to women and older soldiers, who were “failing at noticeably higher rates.” That six-event test developed in 2019 was an expansion from the three events — pushups, situps and a run — soldiers had done prior.

The Army first changed its fitness test to include dead lifts, power throws, pushups, planks, a run and a sprint-drag-carry event, as well as a leg tuck that was eventually eliminated. 

Service leaders hoped the newer test — the first such change in more than 40 years — would better replicate tasks needed for combat while reducing the risk of injuries.

But the new fitness curriculum was quickly criticized after it became clear women, older male soldiers and National Guard and Reserve troops had difficulty passing it.  

About 44 percent of women failed the test from October 2020 to April 2021, compared to about 7 percent of men, Military.com found at the time.

Sorry, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, but after reading that, I don’t think you need to be a biologist to figure out that there’s something different going on physically when it comes to women and men.  If you have young people in their prime, the women will perform physically like old men and men who spend their days not doing P.T., but doing desk jobs.

No on Ketanji Brown Jackson By The Editors of the National Reviews

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/no-on-ketanji-brown-jackson/

Barring an unexpected plot twist, the Senate Judiciary Committee has concluded its hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Democratic senators appear primed to confirm her, but Republicans should vote “No.”

The hearings were testy at times, but they were a model of civility compared with the Brett Kavanaugh or Clarence Thomas hearings. Unlike Kavanaugh, Judge Jackson did not have senators reciting the preposterous claims of a since-imprisoned grifter that she was a gang rapist, and did not see the Capitol and the hearing room overrun by angry mobs. Unlike Amy Coney Barrett, she did not face a barrage of media attacks on her faith and her family. Unlike Samuel Alito, she was not slimed by tenuous association with racist or sexist groups, even though Jackson herself currently sits on the board of overseers of a college that is being sued for its open and notorious practice of anti-Asian race discrimination in admissions.

Indeed, Democratic paeans to the historic nature of her nomination to be the first African-American woman on the Court ring hollow due to their prior mistreatment of appellate nominees such as Miguel Estrada and Janice Rogers Brown, both of whom were targeted because Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, and other Senate Democrats feared letting a Republican president appoint a “first.”

Biden Administration’s Nuclear Deal: “This Isn’t Obama’s Iran Deal. It’s Much, Much Worse.” by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18358/iran-deal-biden-obama

“By every indication, the Biden Administration appears to have given away the store…. What is more, the deal appears likely to deepen Iran’s financial and security relationship with Moscow and Beijing, including through arms sales.” — Statement from 49 US Republican Senators, March 14, 2022.

With the increased flow of funds to the ruling mullahs, do expect an increase across Iran in human rights violations and domestic crackdowns on those who oppose the regime’s policies, as hardliners tend to be the ones gaining more power as a result of any lifting of sanctions. Iran’s hardliners already control three branches of the government: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary.

Regionally speaking, a nuclear deal will undoubtedly escalate Iran’s interference in the domestic affairs of other countries, despite what the advocates of the nuclear deal argue — just as when then US President Barack Obama predicted that with a nuclear deal, “attitudes will change.” They did. For the worse.

Sanctions relief, as a consequence of a nuclear accord, will most likely finance Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Quds Force (the IRGC branch for extraterritorial operations) and buttress Iran’s terrorist proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, Iraq’s Shiite militias, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The worst parts of the new deal are, of course, that it will enable the Iranian regime, repeatedly listed by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism, to have full nuclear weapons capability, an unlimited number of nuclear warheads, and the intercontinental ballistic missile systems with which to deliver them. In addition, as a separate deal, the US will reportedly release the IRGC from the US List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, “in return for a public commitment from Iran to de-escalation in the region” and a promise “not to attack Americans.”

Iran’s leaders, for a start, never honored their earlier “commitment,” so why would anyone think they would honor this one? In a burst of honesty, though — and a pretty explicit tip-off — they stated that they “didn’t agree to the U.S. demand and suggested giving the U.S. a private side letter instead.”

Then there is that revealingly narcissistic condition, “not to attack Americans”? Oh, then attacking Saudis, Emiratis, Israelis, Europeans, South Americans and everyone else is just fine? Thanks, Biden.

Worse, the Iranians were complicit with al-Qaeda in attacking the US on 9/11/2001. So we are rewarding them?

To top it off, the US State Department just confirmed that Russia and its war-criminal President Vladimir Putin could keep Iran’s “excess uranium.” (Excess of what?) Seriously? So Putin can use Iran’s uranium to threaten bombing his next “Ukraine”?

One can only assume that just as the region has become relatively more peaceful and stable, the Biden administration would like to destabilize it. After surrendering to the Taliban in Afghanistan and failing to deter Putin from invading Ukraine, has the Biden administration not created enough destabilization? Why would a US president want a legacy of three major destabilizations unless someone was interested in bringing down the West?

The US proposals — negotiated for the Americans by Russia of all unimpeachable, trustworthy, above-board advocates — have been described as: “This Isn’t Obama’s Iran Deal. It’s Much, Much Worse.” That sounds about right.

The Biden administration continues to disregard major concerns regarding the Iran nuclear deal, and has reportedly “refused to commit to submit a new Iran deal to the Senate for ratification as a treaty, as per its constitutional obligation.”

Forty-nine Republican Senators recently told the Biden Administration that they will not back the administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Fit to print Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War by Deborah Cohen reviewed by Anne Sebba

https://spectatorworld.com/book-and-art/fit-to-print-hotel-imperial/

Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War Deborah Cohen

In January 1936, Harold Nicolson, the British politician and author, reviewed Inside Europe, by the Chicago-born journalist John Gunther. He praised the “American type of wandering or perambulatory foreign correspondent” such as Vincent Sheean, H.R. Knickerbocker (known as Knick), the Mowrer brothers, John Gunther and (the only woman) Dorothy Thompson, as “one of those improvements to modern life that the British would do well to imitate.”

According to Nicolson, the virtue of the book, which famously described Adolf Hitler as a “blob of ectoplasm,” was not merely that it was exciting but “so personal that it may seem dramatic and at the same time educative.” Now Deborah Cohen has provided a rivetingly raw account of the group (with cameo appearances from others, including Rebecca West and “Mickey” Hahn) and the way they worked, switching focus at various points as she joins the dramatic global story with often painful and deeply personal accounts. From 1931 onward, this group of roving American reporters — friends and sometime lovers who occasionally fell out with each other, slept with each other’s partners, suffered tragedies and setbacks — saw what was happening in Europe with great clarity. They wrote powerfully about the rise of the fascist dictators before they were household names and warned about constant violations of the Treaty of Versailles: not always with the same viewpoint or approach.

For example, when Knick published The Boiling Point; Will War Come in Europe? in 1934, Thompson criticized her erstwhile junior for “a hasty production in which he had reported what he’d been told as if he were taking dictation unctuously rather than rendering judgment.” The most important attribute of the journalist, according to Thompson, was brains, not feet.

Elon Musk and the Chinese Temptation by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18357/elon-musk-china

“Other American CEOs have close relationships to the [Chinese Communist] Party. But [Elon] Musk is the only one who loudly praises Beijing while running a space company with incredibly sensitive and powerful defense applications.” — Isaac Stone Fish, Barron’s, November 13, 2020.

Musk’s dilemma is not unique. The close technology-sharing relationship between Tesla and SpaceX poses national security risks to his adopted home country, but so do Google’s and Microsoft’s work with China on artificial intelligence. U.S. government policy is predictably slow in catching up to the speed of hard-charging, globe-spanning enterprises like Musk’s, and the Chinese are only too happy to increase that gap.

At some point, however, companies such as SpaceX, Google and Microsoft, and the individual Americans who own, direct, or invest in them, will face a similar choice between their obligation to America and their pursuit of more profits abroad.

Elon Musk has fans all over the ideological spectrum. People on the Left love him for popularizing electric cars with his Tesla company, or maybe for openly smoking pot on podcaster Joe Rogan’s show. Conservatives love him for his entrepreneurial dash and penchant for standing up to politicians and Big Tech censorship of the internet. And everyone loves Musk for responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and severing of its communications links by making his Starlink satellite broadband internet service available in Ukraine and donating Starlink terminals to Ukrainians. The Starlink connectivity, according to one report, may even be helping armed Ukrainian drones target Russian military vehicles.

Less is known about Musk’s business dealings in Communist China, but that might be about to change.

The Enduring Lesson in the Gulags’ Defiant Wisdom: Michael Galak

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/the-enduring-lesson-in-the-gulags-defiant-wisdom/

The guiding wisdom of the wretches who endured a living death in the Soviet Union’s labour camps was simple: Ne ver’ Ne boisya Ne prosy — Don’t trust. Don’t fear. Don’t beg.

These short sentences crystallize the collective experience of the millions who went through the gulags and perished amid the permafrost of far-north Russia, paying with their lives for the demented dreams of world conquest by Marxists fanatics. These six crisp words summarize the resolve of the human spirit when it refuses to be broken while retaining individual dignity by resisting oppression and injustice, even when the odds are overwhelmingly against it.

Pronounced together those words are an unexpectedly powerful poem. This poetry of defiance, silent by necessity in the face of brutal force, coercion and humiliation, was the only form of resistance available to the enslaved by the totalitarian State. They are also the way for the West to respond to international bullies. But political will is required to succeed, and this is where the problem lies. 

What Lia Thomas Means The sudden prominence of transgenderism in the West owes in large part to compassion becoming unmoored from reason—and to ethics being reduced to compassion. Leor Sapir

https://www.city-journal.org/what-lia-thomas-means

If a single image could sum up Lia Thomas’s victory in the 500-yard freestyle event at the NCAA swimming championships last week, it would be that of Thomas and the runners-up taken right after they were awarded their medals. Behind a sign with the number “1” on it stands Thomas, who seems barely able to conceal embarrassment at what is undoubtedly an awkward situation. To the right, noticeably keeping their distance and a full head or two shorter, are the runners-up. Their smiles seem no less awkward.

The scene resembles an eerie propaganda video, in which a jubilant dictator can be seen waving at fawning crowds who know their lives depend on making it all look authentic. Thomas’s competitors will not face firing squads should they choose to complain, but they will almost certainly face a social media pile-on (assuming that Twitter doesn’t preemptively suspend them for suggesting that transgender women are not biological women). Their names and reputations will be dragged through the mud, their career prospects destroyed or severely curtailed, and their place on the college swim team—and, with it, their scholarships—jeopardized. A teammate of Thomas’s who criticized her participation in women’s sports told a U.K. newspaper that she would speak only on condition of anonymity, for she was concerned that future employers might Google her name and deem her “transphobic.” Meantime, those who support Thomas’s participation in women’s sports speak their minds freely and without fear of repercussions. What was that about transgender people being powerless?

On Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Terrible Judgment There is not much worse than a Supreme Court justice with a soft spot for mollycoddling pedophiles—a position Jackson has actually held since law school. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/24/on-ketanji-brown-jacksons-terrible-judgment/

The problem with Ketanji Brown Jackson, the 51-year-old federal appellate judge who is our senile president’s Supreme Court nominee, is not her on-paper qualifications. By most traditional metrics, she is “qualified.” She has served as both a district court and appellate court judge, served as vice-chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, formerly clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer (the man she has been nominated to replace) and is a double-Harvard alum. In terms of “objective” criteria, this looks like an impressive résumé.

No, the problem with Judge Jackson is that she is a left-wing ideologue who, if successfully confirmed by the Senate, will devote the next few decades endeavoring to move the Supreme Court far to the left. All relevant indications are that she will approach her job not like her (slightly) more pragmatic former boss, but like a leftist activist—in the mode of her possible future colleague, the midwit partisan flack Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Worse, Jackson, due to the outrageous race- and sex-conscious nominating process in which Joe Biden selected her, is uniquely unfit to render equal justice under the law for legal issues affecting race and sex. Even worse, she is a proponent of critical race theory and, despite getting nominated solely due to her XX chromosomal structure, appears ignorant as to how to differentiate men from women. Worst of all, she has shown a peculiar juridical soft spot for some of society’s very worst offenders—pedophiles and child pornographers.

The FBI’s ‘FAFO’ Kidnapping Plot Unravels By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/24/the-fbis-fafo-kidnapping-plot-unravels/

In the spring of 2020, or so the government’s story goes, an Iraq War veteran named Dan Chappel was scouring social media to find like-minded libertarians devoted to the Second Amendment when algorithms prompted him to a Facebook group called the Wolverine Watchmen, an online “militia group” formed just a few months earlier.

Chappel reportedly became alarmed at violent “anti-law enforcement” rhetoric posted by some members of the Watchmen, so he notified police. Two weeks later, Chappel, under the code name “Big Dan,” became the lead FBI informant in a wild plot to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, an act of domestic terror according to the Justice Department. 

Four of the six men originally charged are now on trial in a Grand Rapids courtroom facing federal conspiracy to kidnap and weapons of mass destruction charges. The other two pleaded guilty and are testifying for the prosecution this week. But defense attorneys argue the FBI entrapped the men by using at least a dozen FBI confidential human sources (commonly described as informants) including Chappel and undercover FBI agents over the course of several months to concoct the plot.

During two days of testimony this week, Chappel struggled to maintain the government’s case while revealing what might be the most egregious example of FBI entrapment in decades. Chappel was paid more than $60,000 by the FBI for less than seven months of work; part of his compensation included a $3,300 laptop, a smart watch, and reimbursement for taking a loss after selling his eastern Michigan home that year.

Glory or weakness? In the end, at times of crisis, there are no allies for the Jews. The world is unmoved by Ayatollah threats to destroy Israel. Victor Sharpe

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/

I was recently looking back at the obscene 2009 Goldstone Report which unleashed all that we already knew of the world; that it hates the Jews and hates the reconstituted Jewish state. The report’s bigotry, its lies of commission and omission, were made even more unbearable by the fact that a South African Jew foolishly gave his name to it. Such Jews have often wittingly or unwittingly stabbed the very heart of the Jewish People.

I am reminded of some of the words of Menachem Begin when he stood before the graves of three young Jewish patriots, members of Irgun Zvai Leumi, hung by the British Mandatory authorities for merely possessing one unused pistol between them. Begin said the following:

“We believe with perfect faith that the Jewish People is indestructible. A people who suffered the cruelty, the oppression, and the holocausts of the long night of exile, which descended for so many centuries upon it and which, nevertheless, survived each and every one of its more powerful enemies, cannot be destroyed …