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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Offshore Headwinds By Jonathan Lesser

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/05/02/offshore-headwinds/

Biden’s 18th-century solution to a 21st-century energy problem

Green-energy dogma is like an ocean liner — slow to change course and difficult to halt. In Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has magnified the folly of Europe’s energy policies: Massive subsidies for wind and solar power coupled with bans on hydraulic fracturing (fracking), widespread shuttering of nuclear plants, and increased dependence on Russian natural gas have created a perfect energy-supply storm.

In the U.S., the Biden administration is using the Ukraine invasion as an excuse to double down on green-energy and electric-vehicle policies, while simultaneously conspiring to keep gasoline prices high and berating oil companies for not producing more. Only last fall, Democrats were berating oil companies to make them produce less.

To recount the full extent of the Biden administration’s ongoing energy follies would require a long and depressing book. But one particular facet typical of the administration’s green-energy fantasies warrants special attention: its proposal to install 30,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind turbines by 2030, and 110,000 MW by 2050. That’s equivalent to installing one 850-foot-tall, 14-megawatt turbine, the largest available, every 30 hours for the next 28 years.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Patients Beware: Washington Is Pushing Woke Health Care Kristina Rasmussen

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/patients-beware-washington-is-pushing-woke-health-care/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The sooner Americans recognize that Washington is introducing the disease of ideology into health care, the sooner we can cure it.

There’s a new front in the woke campaign to control our national institutions: health care. Largely out of sight of the American people, the federal government is pushing to fundamentally corrupt the principles and practice of medicine. Physicians and patients alike are set to suffer from woke health care. In many cases, they already are.

Every American needs to know what Washington is doing. It’s using taxpayer money and unaccountable regulation to embed “critical race theory” and “anti-racism” into every level of health care. The secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently made this clear when he declared that “health equity pervades everything” his department does. In making this declaration, he was following the lead of the president he serves. It sounds nice. But ensuring health equity requires taking a divisive and discriminatory approach to treating patients and providing care.

Which is exactly what’s happening. Since the start of this year, Washington has effectively bribed physicians to embrace discrimination on a day-to-day basis by offering higher Medicare- reimbursement rates to physicians who “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” That’s code for recasting everything that happens at the doctor’s office in light of race, including patients’ access to care and specific treatments. Ninety-three percent of primary-care physicians accept Medicare.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Compares DeSantis, Youngkin Parental Choice Bills to ‘Russian War Tactics’By Caroline Downey

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/msnbcs-nicolle-wallace-compares-desantis-youngkin-parental-choice-bills-to-russian-war-tactics/

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, reacting to the fury in Florida over the recently codified Parental Rights in Education bill prohibiting sexuality instruction for kindergartners through third graders, compared such legislation to “Russian war tactics” of “dehumanization.”

Referring to the Republican governors who’ve spearheaded these measures, namely Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis, Wallace lamented how effective their rhetoric and “politics of ‘parental choice’,” she said using scare quotes, have been at winning the ideological issue.

“The truth is dehumanization as a tactic for politics is from war. Russians get the soldiers to rape children by dehumanizing them,” she said.

Some conservatives have resorted to labeling those who oppose the Florida law, which empowers parents to decide when and how to teach their children about sexual orientation and gender identity, as “groomers,” an allegation of priming kids for pedophilia or sexual abuse. While the phrase has packed a lot of punch and sent many progressive proponents of sexualized K-12 curricula retreating, some conservatives argue that it’s counterproductive to the debate.

“It’s being deployed in our politics, and people like you and I sometimes lose the plot and admire its effectiveness, not its substance, but even the analysis of these tactics loses sight of what this speech brings us back to which is that dehumanization has a cost right now,” Wallace added.

“Kids will die,” she said, harkening back to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim from February that Florida’s new law, dubbed ‘Don’t Say Gay’ by progressives,” will drive up LGBT youth suicides.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Worry about illegal immigration holds at near two-decade high: Gallup

By on April 20th, 2022

https://news.yahoo.com/worry-illegal-immigration-holds-near-130349755.html

The public’s worry over illegal immigration is close to a two-decade high ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.

In a poll conducted March 1-18, 41 percent said they worry a great deal about illegal immigration, the highest total since 2007, when 45 percent of respondents said they were concerned a great deal about the issue.

Overall, around 60 percent of adults said they worry at least a fair amount about illegal immigration.

Only 17 percent of those surveyed said they worry about immigration a little while 23 percent said they don’t worry at all about the issue.

The poll was conducted before the Biden administration announced it was dropping Title 42, which allowed Border Patrol to deny asylum claims from migrants due to the pandemic and allowed migrants to be deported easier.

Gallup’s polling found the issue has become more partisan throughout the years, with Democrats and Republicans now heading in opposite directions in their concerns on the issue.

Democrats have shifted toward less concern about illegal immigration, with only 18 percent saying they are concerned a great deal about the issue while 44 percent say they don’t worry at all.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Whiteness in Physics? The Latest Front in the Woke Wars | Alex Small

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/whiteness-physics-latest-front-woke-wars-opinion-1696124

Science education is no stranger to America’s culture wars, but traditionally the battle involved right-wingers attacking biology textbooks. Fields like physics—which I teach—largely escaped this fate, probably thanks to being less directly connected to matters of evolution, sex or the origin of life. Nonetheless, education in any field is a social activity; physics instruction cannot forever stay aloof from social controversies. Thus the reported excesses of K-12 education—including claims that right answers or acronyms are white supremacy—now seep into college-level science education.

The latest salvo on the science front involves an article titled “Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study.” Physics professor Amy Robertson and her collaborator Tali Hairston use critical whiteness studies (CWS) and critical race theory (CRT) to interpret a case study of three students working on a mundane physics problem. The article has—unsurprisingly—drawn harsh criticism online.

However, the high-profile publication venue (one of the most prestigious education journals in the physics community) and the public resources underwriting the work (a $495,847 grant from the National Science Foundation) indicate that the intrusion of CRT into physics has become mainstream. Those who value rigorous science and rational analysis cannot afford to merely mock this work. We must instead shine light on it, demonstrate how stifling and unproductive CRT and CWS can be when applied to science classrooms, and highlight missed opportunities for insight.

Robertson and Hairston recorded and analyzed a six-and-a-half minute video of three students (identified as Hispanic, Middle Eastern and white) working on a problem involving heat, energy and temperature change, with occasional input from an instructor (identified as biracial). The students were asked to solve the problem using a particular technique that the instructor had previously outlined for them. Robertson and Hairston also conducted follow-up interviews with the instructor and two students.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Under Threat of Woke Curricula, Parents are Fighting Back | Jason Rantz

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.newsweek.com/under-threat-woke-curricula-parents-are-fighting-back-opinion-1699080

Parents are yanking their kids from left-wing public schools at an increasing rate and the problem will likely worsen in the country’s most progressive cities.

After more than a year of hysterical COVID protocols that were clearly not based in science or data, progressive educators switched their focus to pushing dangerous and confusing woke curricula on captive young audiences. But the indoctrination agenda is backfiring.

Public school enrollment started a downward trend after a year of unnecessary COVID regulations. Though children are the least vulnerable to COVID, they were parked in front of computer screens for hours a day, isolated from friends and classmates and forced to mask when in-person class finally resumed. Students’ academic achievement suffered as much as their emotional growth, with students underperforming on tests while growing increasingly depressed, anxious and angry.

Even when it was clear remote learning was hurting children considerably more than COVID ever could, teachers’ unions still demanded students be kept in masks or continue to stay home. Parents had had enough.

The 2020-2021 school year saw an astonishing 3 percent of pupils leave their public schools, with the largest number coming from the younger grades. This represents roughly 1.5 million students nationwide. Now, thanks to newly released data, we’re seeing the exact numbers on the local level. They’re not pretty.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden’s Middle East: Saudi Arabia Embraces China; Will They Topple the Dollar? by Judith Bergman

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18450/biden-middle-east-saudi-arabia-embraces-china

If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or various currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

“China must brace for a full-blown escalation of the struggle with the United States and prepare to gradually decouple the Chinese yuan from the US dollar,” Zhou Li, former deputy director of the Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, South China Morning Post, July 5, 2020.

That Saudi Arabia now seems to be seriously considering selling its oil in yuan signifies the extent to which the Biden administration’s Middle East policies have left countries such as Saudi Arabia hedging their bets on China, as the ascendant power in the Middle East. China, on the other hand, is simply taking advantage of the current US administration’s deprioritization of the region and its alienation of strategic US allies such as Saudi Arabia.

That alienation has mainly come, according to reports, because of Saudi “security concerns” — a diplomatic euphemism, presumably, for America’s enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. This game-changer is doubtless seen by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Sunni Gulf states, as a mortal danger.

The vacuum that the US left behind – the second one after Afghanistan — is rapidly being filled by China.

The BRI initiative seeks dramatically to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. China has signed cooperation agreements with 19 Arab countries for construction projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….

In August 2021, the fifth China-Arab States Expo took place in China; during it, agreements worth an estimated $24 billion in investments between China and Arab countries were made.

Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil to China — which buys more than 25% of Saudi oil exports — in exchange for yuan (China’s currency), according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. The move would be unprecedented. Saudi Arabia, ever since its 1974 agreement with US President Richard Nixon, has been selling oil in exchange for US dollars.

The change, if realized, would be significant. The status of the US dollar, including as the world’s reserve currency, depends on its dominance of global markets, especially the oil market, where 80% of sales are done in US dollars. If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or other currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

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BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

The Middle East: An American Vision Review of Behind the Silken Curtain by Amir Taheri

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18437/middle-east-american-vision

“If my experiences in the days and weeks devoted to this problem have taught me any one thing, it is that everywhere the need is felt for an American foreign policy — a foreign policy so firmly embedded on principle that it will hold equally for United States troops in China or the atom bomb, or Palestine.” — Bartley Crum.

[Crum’s] account … clearly shows that President Truman, who always… sided with the forces of freedom and progress, was often opposed by his own State Department that practiced a value-free diplomacy in the name of preserving the status quo.

“We can throw our lot in with the forces… who prop up feudalistic regimes in the Arab states in the hope that these will serve as a cordon sanitaire against Soviet; who believe they can successfully continue the same processes of exploitation in the future which have proved successful in the past. Or we can throw our lot in with the progressive forces in the Middle East. We can recognize that there is a slow rising of the peoples, and that we must place ourselves on the side of this inevitable development toward literacy, health, and a decent way of life.” — Bartley Crum.

He was against a status quo that subjected the nations of the region to despotism and poverty. He also realized that Arab despots and their hangers-on used the issue of Palestine as a means of diverting attention from their own misdeeds, wasting Arab energies on xenophobia and religious bigotry. The irony in all this was that Great Britain… sided with the Arab despots, and did all it could to discourage and weaken the very forces of reform and change that Crum saw as the natural allies of Western democracies.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Multiple Democratic Candidates for Senate Disagree with Biden Ending Title 42 By Eric Lendrum

By on April 20th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/19/multiple-democratic-candidates-for-senate-disagree-with-biden-ending-title-42/

At least six Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate this November have publicly called on Joe Biden to delay ending the pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42, which is all but guaranteed to cause another massive surge of illegal aliens across the southern border.

As reported by Politico, among the candidates distancing themselves from Biden’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda is John Fetterman (D-Penn.), the incumbent Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).

“We should not end Title 42 until we have a detailed plan in place,” Fetterman said in an interview. “And look, we don’t only need a long-term and detailed plan here for ending Title 42, but we still need to fix our broken immigration system as a whole.”

In North Carolina, Democratic frontrunner Cheri Beasley (D-N.C.) “believes that it is not the right time to lift this policy, especially without a plan in place to deal with a potential influx in migrants,” according to campaign spokeswoman Dory McMillan.

In the more contentious Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Wisconsin, held by incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), at least three candidates – Mandela Barnes, Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry – have all voiced their opposition to Biden’s plans to end Title 42, specifically citing the fact that the administration does not seem to have a concrete plan in place to deal with the influx that is sure to follow.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Uber Clueless By John Stossel

By on April 20th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2022/04/20/uber-clueless-n1591236

The media’s ignorance about basic economics is galling.

I expect it from politicians. I expect it from The New York Times. But it’s sad to see in the New York Post, my town’s rare alternative to Democrat media.

Recently the tabloid freaked out over higher prices imposed by ride-share companies. “New Yorkers are fed up with forking over excessive amounts for Uber and Lyft rides.”

Excessive? Just what is “excessive?” Who decides?

Prices were already up because gasoline costs more, NYC keeps imposing new taxes and regulations, and the federal government pays so many people not to work that there’s now a shortage of drivers.

That day, unusually high “surge” prices were in effect because there had been a horrible shooting on the subway. Commuters, fearful of another subway shooting, turned to ride-share services.

How should a company like Uber deal with that? Suddenly, there is much more demand for rides than supply. Should customers just wait in line? Most wouldn’t get a ride for days.

So, ride-share companies do the sensible thing: They temporarily raise prices. They lower them again when there are free cars. This is the best solution for the most people.

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