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Ruth King

Are You Better off Today Than a Year Ago? By Four to One Americans Say NO! Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/21/ii-tipp-poll-are-you-better-off-today-than-a-year-ago-by-4-to-1-americans-say-no/

Are you better off today under President Joe Biden than you were a year earlier? And are you financially prepared for a downturn in the economy or a job loss? The March I&I/TIPP Poll suggests most Americans would answer “no” to both of those questions.

The poll asked: “Generally speaking, is your family better off today than it was one year ago, worse off than it was one year ago, or about the same as it was a year ago?”

Fewer than one in five (20%) said they were “better off.” while more than twice that number — 42% — said they were “worse off.” Another 36% said they were “about the same.”

VITAL QUESTIONS FOR KETANJI BROWN JACKSON

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/22/how-is-boofed-pronounced-and-other-vital-questions-ketanji-brown-jackson-must-answer/

By all evidence, Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court will be a shoo-in. Not because she’s supremely qualified, but because her nomination — as the press reminds us in every headline — is “historic.” Yes, there are and have been black justices and women justices, but never, ever a black woman justice! Who would dare stand in the way of history?

President Joe Biden assumed that by checking all the correct woke boxes his candidate could escape the sort of vicious scrutiny, rumormongering, character-destroying attacks visited upon Republican nominees – apparently forgetting that Democratic nominees always get a free pass from the media, and from genteel Republicans.

Nevertheless, if Democrats want to at least give the appearance of fairness, they should ask Jackson the same questions they asked the last two Republican nominees to the court.

We’re not talking about those silly questions that might reveal her judicial philosophy. Although there is plenty there worthy of careful scrutiny. Joel Pollak over at Breitbart News put together a handy list of such questions, ranging from: Do you believe current penalties for sex offenders are too harsh? What do you think of Biden’s decision only to select a black woman as a nominee? Do you support critical race theory? Do you agree with the “1619 Project” that America was founded on slavery? Do you support court-packing? Can we have rule of law with an open border?

Democrats have already labeled such questions as racist.

Pain in the Gas Inflated by taxes and regulations, prices at the pump are higher in Democratic-leaning states. Steven Malanga

https://www.city-journal.org/gas-prices-higher-in-democratic-leaning-states

The average price of one gallon of regular gasoline in the United States rose by a dollar, to $3.31, during Joe Biden’s first year in the White House. Now, supercharged by war in Ukraine, the price has soared to $4.27 per gallon. That average, though, is misleading. The actual price of gas at the pump varies widely by state, with nearly a $2-per-gallon difference between the costliest and the least expensive states. While some of those differences have to do with geographic factors that affect distribution costs, state policies—including taxes and regulations—also play a significant role in the vastly different burden consumers face around the country.

The highest gas prices are found disproportionately in high-tax, heavily regulated Democratic states, while the lowest gas prices show up in so-called red or purple states. California leads the way at a whopping $5.78 per gallon, followed by Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Illinois, Connecticut, and New York among the lower 48 states (Hawaiian and Alaskan geography make any comparisons with the rest of the country difficult). At the bottom sits Kansas, at $3.81 per gallon, followed by Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Iowa.

The price of a barrel of oil accounts for about 56 percent of the cost of this gas. Taxes on average compose about 15 percent of the price, and distribution and marketing costs amount to the rest. State gas taxes are an obvious culprit, but extraordinary fuel standards beyond the national level force up prices, too—as do regulatory constraints on building pipelines and refineries, which inflate distribution costs.

Huntergate and Putin remind us of the danger of propaganda Liz Peek

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/huntergate-putin-danger-propaganda-liz-peek

What do liberal elites in our country have in common with Vladimir Putin?

People like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai and New York TimesExecutive Editor Dean Baquet know that knowledge is power. They understand that managing the flow of information, silencing critics and providing false narratives is every bit as effective in taking control as armored columns and hypersonic missiles.

This column was meant to be about Vladimir Putin’s hideously effective misinformation campaign, and how we should combat it. He has destroyed Russia’s independent press, sabotaged internet access and consequently hidden the truth about his unprovoked attack on Ukraine from the Russian people.

Hunter Biden’s laptop got in the way.

It is impossible to rail about Putin’s egregious lies to his countrymen without acknowledging that in our own purportedly free nation, we have witnessed the very same tactic. This is not hyperbole, as Joe Biden might say; this is true.

Chinese missiles can likely sink US carriers: report Congressional Research Service quotes US commanders saying Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles can now hit moving targets David Goldman

https://asiatimes.com/2022/03/chinese-missiles-can-likely-sink-us-carriers-report/

A March 8 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on China’s naval capabilities cites the view of top US commanders that China’s arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) can hit moving targets, effectively closing an area a thousand miles from China’s coast to the American Navy.

The report states: “A December 3, 2020, press report stated that Admiral Philip Davidson, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, ‘confirmed, for the first time from the US government side, that China’s People’s Liberation Army has successfully tested an anti-ship ballistic missile against a moving ship.’ China reportedly is also developing hypersonic glide vehicles that, if incorporated into Chinese ASBMs, could make Chinese ASBMs more difficult to intercept.”

Some of the assessments by senior US flag officers have been cited before, but the CRS report gives them additional weight in the context of an overall assessment of Chinese capabilities.

If Chinese missiles can effectively clear the coast of American vessels to a distance of 1,500 kilometers or more, the United States has no effective way of defending Taiwan against a prospective Chinese armed landing.

Conspirators in Their Own Words Noble left-wing ends always justify odious means, in this case projecting one’s own conspiracist efforts by smearing innocent others as conspiracists. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/20/conspirators-in-their-own-words/

For the last five years, the Left—defined as the fusion of the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, the radical new Democratic Party, and the vestigial Hillary Clinton machine—has crafted all sorts of conspiracies to destroy their perceived conservative enemies. 

Their method has focused on one major projection: alleging conspiracy on the part of others, which is a kind of confirmation of their own conspiracies to destroy their opponents in general, and Donald Trump in particular. 

Now they have been caught admitting to such nefariousness. Apparently, they still are exuberant about their slick shamelessness and simply can’t keep quiet. Or they believe radically changed conditions, such as the implosion of the Biden Administration, prompt necessary admissions. 

Hillary’s the One 

For nearly five years anyone who objected that the partisan Christopher Steele and his “dossier” were fraudulent, that Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was a paid opposition hit team, and their joint birthing of “Trump-Russia collusion” was a myth, was smeared as a denialist or conspiracist. 

But examine what has transpired since 2016. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation found nothing. Mueller in congressional testimony was either addled or disingenuous. He even claimed he knew nothing of Fusion GPS or the dossier, the twin catalysts for his own investigation. 

The more Mueller meandered, the more it was clear that his henchman, partisan lawyer Andrew Weissmann, had hijacked the left-wing “All-Star” and “Dream Team” of lawyers and was running the charade. The more the Left boasted of the legal eagles set to tear apart Trump, the more glaring their failure to find any such evidence supporting their conspiracies. 

The Houthis, Iran’s ‘Weapon of War’ and Iran’s IRGC Must Be on US Terrorist List by Pete Hoekstra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18346/houthis-iran-irgc-terrorist-list

The Houthis are a dangerous and deadly, terrorist group based in Yemen. Recently, senior Houthi leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi went on an antisemitic tirade in support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stating, “It is because its President is Jewish. Any country run by a Jew ends up going to war.”

Does the Biden administration find such racist, slanderous statements acceptable? Will the Biden administration refute it? Or will they passively accept such slander the same way they passively accepted the Taliban taking over Afghanistan or Putin invading Ukraine?

The Biden administration would do well to make sure that something comes at a cost. It is this backwards and hateful way of thinking that underpins the atrocities being committed by the Houthis in Yemen every day.

The Houthis need to be put back on the List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations immediately — instead of the US taking Iran’s rapacious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) off it. The IRGC, which just claimed credit for attacking the Kurds in Erbil, will simply, while the world is looking the other way, take over Erbil and the rest of Iraq.

“[S]aying that the world’s largest terrorist organization is not a terrorist organization… This is too high a price” for “empty promises from terrorists” on a nuclear deal, according to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

If the US allows Iran to acquire nuclear weapons capability, you can kiss peace in the region goodbye. That will be President Joe Biden’s legacy.

America’s allies in the Middle East — Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — are raising serious concerns about any new agreement between the U.S. and Iran. They see that embracing Iran comes from a false hope that it will lead to better behavior on the part of its regime and terrorist proxies.

Those statements by one of the Houthis’ top officials give us a clear insight into what we can expect from Iran and its proxies. We should take them at their word.

Let us not make the same mistake the U.S. and Europe made by embracing Russia, or the mistake made in Asia by embracing China. We must recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran for the evil it is and redesignate the Houthis, who operate as a weapon of war for the Iranian regime, as the terrorist organization they are. The strategy of hope did not work for Russia or China, and it will not work with Iran.

Too often the West finds itself hoping for and seeing a positive outcome when reality presents something very different. Think about the West’s response to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, where we promoted Western values of openness as a replacement for Communism. Consider the vote by Congress in 2000 to grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status, a status I voted against when in Congress. Reflect on President Barack Obama negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in 2015. None of these major deals has worked the way the West and the United States had expected or hoped.

The Right Reason to Oppose Judge Jackson By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-right-reason-to-oppose-judge-jackson/

As I’ve separately contended, some of the arguments being made against President Biden’s nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson are unworthy. Nevertheless, though it seems certain that she will be confirmed, her progressive judicial philosophy is a meritorious basis to vote against her, for the reasons outlined by Ed Whelan last week.

I could not disagree more with the assertion of a moderate Republican group of Judge Jackson’s supporters that “the question for the Senators is not whether this is a nomination that they would make, but whether the President has put forward a nominee well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.” (See the letter in Ed’s post, linked above.)

That is more analogous to the question for senators with regard to nominees the president puts forward for executive-branch positions. While such positions involve critical duties, the executive appointee’s task is to carry out the elected president’s policies; thus, the principal confirmation issue is whether the nominee has the intellect, competence, and character that befits the position of trust, not whether we agree with the nominee’s politics or would ourselves have chosen the nominee.

Lifetime judicial appointments are very different, and those to Supreme Court seats are obviously significant — I hesitate to say “the most” significant because I believe a bad district judge, who is a court of one, can do more damage than a bad Supreme Court justice, who deals with many fewer cases and whose meanderings will rarely be decisive.

A funeral in Israel shows the remarkable power of faith By Andrea Widburg

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

“The most important difference, though, as those 750,000 or more mourners show, is religious people have babies, lots and lots of babies. Secular people do not. Secular Europe is dying (including Russia, which no longer has the wherewithal to throw bodies into battle as it once did), while religious communities are demographically booming.”

On Friday, March 18, in Bnei Brak, a city near Tel Aviv, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky passed away at the age of 94. I’m sure that means very little to you. Unless you are an ultra-Orthodox Jew whose life is dedicated to the study of the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible), your life will not have intersected with Rabbi Kanievsky’s. However, he was important enough to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community that, on Sunday, over 750,000 men (or almost 8.5% of Israel’s total population) poured into the streets of Bnei Brak to be part of his funeral.

Still, why should that matter to you? It matters because a religious text that’s around 2,500 years old in its present form and existed in other forms before then, and that recognizes and seeks to tame and elevate human behavior, has such power. Compared to that, today’s wokism, firmly grounded in fantasy, cannot and will not last.

Because the Daily Mail has the best photographs, I’ll quote from its report:

Born in Pinsk, Belarus, he had moved to the country when he was a child and when it was still British-ruled Palestine. He remained there for the rest of his life, becoming revered by many in the Jewish religious world, and was one of the few remaining leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community in Israel born before the Holocaust. 

Police closed several highways in Israel’s densely populated Tel Aviv area to traffic for several hours, and other main thoroughfares were expected to be gridlocked. Authorities urged the public not to drive into the area by car.

A separate women’s section was created in the streets of Bnei Brak for the funeral that the Magen David Adom, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, said was likely to be one of the largest ever gatherings in ‘Israeli history.’ 

Rather to my surprise, Reuters live-streamed all two hours of the event.

There’s A Critical Vacancy In The Oval Office By Mark Christian

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/theres_a_critical_vacancy_in_the_oval_office.html

“The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history,” said President John Kennedy on April 20, 1961. “Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined, only the courageous, only the visionary who determine the real nature of our struggle can possibly survive.”

On that fateful April day, Kennedy honored his commitment to speak to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Many presidents would have ducked it. Three days before, with Kennedy’s authorization and the CIA’s guidance, thousands of Cuban-Americans launched a disastrous landing at what we know as the Bay of Pigs. While Kennedy spoke, the final act of this sad drama was still unfolding.

Today, can anyone imagine President Joe Biden facing a roomful of skeptical editors and owning up to his disastrous blunders in Ukraine. This is no more likely than him learning anything, as JFK did, from the mistakes he has made.

Honesty has never been part of Biden’s nature. For years, America tolerated his lies because he and they seemed inconsequential. He was just one vote out of 100 in the U.S. Senate. And as vice president, a position predecessor John Nance Garner described as “not worth a bucket of warm piss,” Biden remained more or less harmless.