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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Slow Joe, Bad Vlad Vladimir Putin is certainly worthy of condemnation. But that does not mean Donald Trump was wrong when he observed it would be “a good thing, not a bad thing” if America got on well with Russia. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/12/slow-joe-bad-vlad/

Proverbial sayings seem to have seasons just as fruits and flowers do. Here’s one misattributed to Mark Twain that’s in season now: “If you don’t read the news, you are uninformed. If you do, you are misinformed.” I don’t know how many times I have encountered that one recently. It’s probably always relevant, but it seems especially so now that “the fog of war” has rolled in everywhere following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February. 

It has been amusing to see the beautiful people exchange their Black Lives Matter yard signs and lapel pins for stylized images of the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag. A couple of summers ago, I had to reach for the Dramamine when I started getting emails from various corporate concerns declaring their solidarity with George Floyd and their staunch opposition to “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.” The same emporia are now emitting bulletins announcing their brave support of Ukraine and its media-savvy president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

There have been some dissenting voices. U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), for example, just described Zelenskyy as a “thug” and the Ukrainian government as “incredibly evil.” He was harshly criticized for those comments. “Let’s be clear,” sniffed one lawmaker, “the thug is Putin.” You have probably noticed that “pro-Putin” has replaced “white supremacist” as this week’s epithet of choice. It doesn’t matter that Cawthorn also observed, “The actions of Putin and Russia are disgusting. But leaders, including Zelensky [sic], should NOT push misinformation on America.”

Two points. First, it won’t matter what Cawthorn says about Putin’s invasion. He has dared to attack a sacred cow. He has arrayed himself on the side of the goats. He must be vilified. 

Second, a more general point. Two different things can be true at the same time. Vladimir Putin can be a murderous thug and Ukraine can be a corrupt country beholden to various left-wing interests. 

Rich Higgins: The Unsung White House Official Who Warned President Trump in 2017 that the Deep State Was Trying to Prematurely End his Presidency By John Dale Dunn

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/the_unsung_white_house_official_who_warned_president_trump_in_2017_that_the_deep_state_was_trying_to_prematurely_end_his_presidency_.html

No President of The United States ever before faced anything comparable to the organized effort of officials within his administration to sabotage Donald J. Trump’s presidency and drive him from office.  The Memo by Rich Higgins [216 pp, Kindle 9.99 Hard Copy 22.34 ISBN-0999705938 Washington D.C. Calamo Press 2020] is a first and only book by an American soldier and patriot who exposes the deep state and the anti-Trump coup activities.

Rich Higgins earned his early reputation as an ordnance (explosives) expert in Iraq during and after the War for Iraqi Freedom of 2002 and 2003.  Higgins went from being an ordnance man to becoming an expert on insurgency warfare, since explosives were the favored weapons of insurgents.  They are usually outgunned and out manned so they retreat to asymmetric (guerilla) warfare heavily dependent on hit and run and explosives, which demoralize and disrupt the efforts of the larger force. 

It was Higgins’s job to deter explosive disruptions planted and detonated by the opposition and that meant he developed an understanding of insurgents — their motives, strategies, limits, patterns of behavior. His depth of understanding was very valuable in Iraq and the Middle East but also at home. He transferred to the White House to provide security. He also developed a high level of expertise on IEDs and how to track and neutralize the insurgent efforts. 

Higgins was convinced that George W. Bush and those military and State Department officials who parroted his position were colossally ignorant when they asserted that Islam is a Religion of Peace.  Higgins was well informed about Islam and Islamist fanatics, and he knew that the adherents of Islam were committed to conquest and terror — obliged by their religion to wage war against the infidel and to enable by force and political action the worldwide Caliphate.

Ukraine and the Great Energy Reset If there were ever a time for energy realism, it is now. Mark P. Mills

https://www.city-journal.org/ukraine-war-and-the-new-shale-revolution

Elon Musk is back in the news. In a tweet heard ’round the world, he stated a simple truth related to the Ukraine war: “Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately.” The analogous truth—hate to say it—is that the Biden administration is right: banning and sanctioning Russian oil and gas exports is the wrong answer, even if it becomes politically necessary at some point.

Acknowledging these truths won’t change the tragic course of events unfolding in Ukraine. But naivete about energy realities is what robbed the U.S. and its allies of important “soft power” options and helped finance Russia’s aggression. In the near term, our choices are limited, but continuing down the same energy path is a formula for yet more problems in the future.

The fact is, exhortations aside, the world cannot easily, overnight, walk away from Russian energy. Europe gets 25 percent and 40 percent, respectively, of all its oil and gas from Russia. For Germany, the shares are 35 percent and 70 percent, as well as 50 percent of its coal needs.

The Chips are Down Kenin M. Spivak A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would crater American tech dominance and military readiness.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-chips-are-down/

Russia’s nuclear arsenal is the principal reason given by the United States and NATO for refusing to engage Russia directly in Ukraine. Nuclear war also will be a risk if China invades Taiwan.

There are, of course, differences in an analysis of the U.S. response to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. For one, without NATO, the U.S. would largely face China on its own. Also, China has a stronger claim on Taiwan than Russia does on Ukraine. On the other hand, much more importantly to the United States, Taiwan is the world’s principal fabricator of semiconductor chips. Semiconductors are the new oil. Whoever controls semiconductors can control the world.

According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), although the U.S. is the world’s leader in headquarters for companies generating semiconductor demand (33 percent) and for end users (25 percent), the U.S. manufactures just 19 percent of all chips, while mainland China supplies 35 percent and Taiwan 15 percent. If China invades Taiwan, 50 percent of the world’s chip production will be controlled by China.

Taiwan may manufacture only 15 percent of all chips, but it manufactures 92 percent of the world’s advanced chips. All advanced chips not made in Taiwan are manufactured in South Korea; none are produced in the United States or Europe. If China were to invade Taiwan, the U.S. and the world could lose access to almost all leading-edge chips, almost two-thirds of more-mature microprocessors, and half of all dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips.

JUST PUBLISHED – OPEN THE BOOKS OVERSIGHT REPORT: INVESTIGATING FAUCI’S FINANCES

https://mailchi.mp/e0a2af1f130f/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-58871?e=0c8ccf8e98

Where has Dr. Anthony Fauci gone?!

Noone seems to have heard from Fauci since the mid-January U.S. Senate hearing when he was grilled on his finances. Senator Marshall’s questions were premised on our OpenTheBooks findings on Fauci’s financials.

The senate hearing – where Fauci called Marshall a “moran” – was Fauci’s last prominent public event.

So, we’ve been hard at work to break down everything you need to know about Dr. Anthony Fauci and his finances. And now it’s all in one place…

We’re excited to share our newest 20-page Oversight Report – just published this week – INVESTIGATING FAUCI’S FINANCES – free to download right now.

A Couple Of Really “Smart” Guys Set Out To Prosecute Donald Trump Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-3-11-a-couple-of-really-smart-guys-set-out-to-prosecute-donald-trump

From time to time on this blog I have had occasion to note the extent to which many of the seemingly “smartest” people in our society time and again fall hook, line and sinker for the most preposterous mass hysterias. When it really counts, the people who have risen to the very top ranks of our social hierarchies prove to have no critical thinking capabilities whatsoever. For some entertaining reading about various self-made billionaires, former cabinet secretaries, and the like, making utter fools of themselves, you might try my posts from February 9, 2017 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’ — Part III”), or June 25, 2014 (“Watch Out For Rule By The ‘Smart’”). Both of those posts dealt with the topic of attempts to alter world temperatures through government taxation and spending.

A recent example of the phenomenon of the smart dopes now comes forth from the District Attorney’s office of New York County — that is, the people here in Manhattan charged with the enforcement of the New York State criminal laws. In this instance the subject of the hysteria was the idea that Donald Trump, President of the United States, needed to be charged with some sort of violations of the New York criminal law arising out of his business dealings.

Although prosecutors don’t publicly announce when they start investigations, it is clear from various court filings along the way (e.g., Trump’s lawyers opposing enforcement of subpoenas) that the DA’s criminal investigation of Trump was well underway as early as 2019, that is, in the middle of Trump’s term as President. The Manhattan DA at the time was Cyrus Vance, Jr. If you are old enough, you will recognize from Vance’s name that he is the son of the Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of State when Jimmy Carter was President, and also at various times Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Army, and other such government positions, in between stints as big-time partner of big-time law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

Biden goes bonkers over inflation Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/biden_goes_bonkers_over_inflation.html”

Joe Biden should be hopping mad about inflation, which rolled in at 7.9% and is destroying the purchasing power, wage gains, and savings of the citizenry even as he touts good economic times in his speeches.

Instead, he’s going bonkers over the voter reaction to inflation, not the inflation itself.

“I’m sick of this stuff!” he hollered.  “We have to talk about it because the American people think the reason for inflation is the government spending more money.  Simply.  Not.  True.”

But of course, it is perfectly true.  He’s wallowing in denial about it and now thinks he can yell his way into making Americans think differently.

In his wretched King Lear-like rant, brimming with rage and self-pity, Biden whimpered that Americans were just poor simpleton peasants who don’t understand inflation and don’t give Joe and all his “achievements” the credit they deserve:

Yes, they do, Joe. Yes, they do.

What do we make of this crazed rant against reality?  PJMedia’s Robert Spencer, for one, thinks it could be the dementia kicking in.

What’s happening to the American economy is entirely the fault of the old man who is shouting about how sick and tired he is of people saying it’s his fault and of the bright young Leftists with whom he has filled his administration and who are anxious to seize as much of the fruit of the labors of the American people as they can, so as to finance their various utopian boondoggles.

FEMINISM + JUSTICE BY THANE ROSENBAUM

https://whiterosemagazine.com/contributor/thane-rosenbaum/

Before Alice Sebold became a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist (the film The Lovely Bones was an adaptation from her first novel of the same name), she signaled her arrival as a writer with an important voice and compelling tale, as evidenced by her memoir entitled, Lucky. 

The book was a searing and, at times, improbably witty retelling of her freshman year at Syracuse University when in 1981, while she was walking late at night, an assailant with a knife dragged her into a tunnel and raped her. The book details her experience with the hospital that treated her injuries along with her own efforts to heal—unsurprisingly, without much success. Much of the book is devoted to her reliance on law enforcement and the criminal justice system to hold her attacker to account. 

It made for a gut-wrenching read: A woman who served as an eyewitness to a heinous crime committed against herself. 

Sebold ended up identifying the man who assaulted her and testified against him. He was convicted of rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison, serving 16.

Stories of sexual violence against women are inexorably disqualified from happy endings.

At the police station, one of the detectives thought it might be helpful for her to know that the last sexual assault victim on campus was raped and dismembered by her attacker. In this way, he reasoned, Sebold should consider herself “lucky”—hence, the book’s alluring title.

Biden Dispatches ‘The Joker’ to Europe . By Charles Hurt

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/03/11/biden_dispatches_the_joker_to_europe_147320.html

This is what you get when you take more than 200 years of hard fought history, fearless progress and unrivaled leadership in the world to build the greatest global power ever devised by humans on earth — and hand it to an imbecile.

Asked at a press conference in Poland about the massive and growing humanitarian crisis caused by the savage Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris burst into her signature cackling laughter.

The crazed woman really is the most terrorizing Joker ever played on the big screen. Jack Nicholson and Joaquin Phoenix sit in dark rooms before flickering TVs marveling in jealousy at her terrorizing performances.

And she does it all without smeared, garish makeup.

Her stunned host, Polish President Andrzej Duda, proceeded to answer the question about the refugees in light of the hilarity Kamala Harris found in the flood of widowed women and orphaned children gathering at Poland’s border.

Tech Totalitarians Are on the March Roger Kimball

https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech-totalitarians-are-on-the-march_4319982.html

The Chinese were pathbreakers.

With their system of “social credit,” which seeks to enforce conformity by “grading” an individual’s or business’s adherence to the party line and imposing penalties for deviations, they have showed the West the way.

If you don’t espouse the right attitudes, you might find yourself barred from public transportation, from work permits or travel visas, from preferred jobs and other social—which includes economic—perquisites.

It’s a totalitarian’s dream—one that was dreamt by George Orwell in the pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—and it’s made all the more total by advances in technology.

Winston Smith, Orwell’s unhappy protagonist, had to contend with a tiny two-way television set in his flat that he could not turn off and that constantly eavesdropped on him.

Chinese citizens have to contend with having their texts, emails, and internet activity constantly scrutinized, which also means having every phone conversation docketed and financial transaction tracked.

Cameras, backed up with facial-recognition technology, are everywhere, watching, listening, building up a record that can always be marshaled as an indictment.

It’s a good thing, isn’t it, that we in the freedom-loving West eschew such totalitarian intrusiveness?

Just kidding.

The American Department of Justice showed how it is done in the land of the formerly free when it employed all those techniques to track down, arrest, and incarcerate hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.

Phone and social media accounts were hoovered up and dissected; facial recognition technology was deployed and weaponized; financial transactions and travel records were subpoenaed and combed through.

Hundreds of people are still languishing in a Washington, D.C. gulag, waiting while the authorities expend vast amounts of legal ingenuity to transform various misdemeanors into felonies.