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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Have We Ever Had A President Like This Before?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/19/have-we-ever-had-a-president-like-this-before/

Some believe that Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith ran the federal executive branch after the president had a stroke in October 1919. Even the Obama White House said she “functionally” was in charge of the administration “for the remainder of Wilson’s second term.” At least Wilson started his presidency in a sentient state. Not sure the same can be said of Joe Biden.

It’s clear that the 46th president of the United States is impaired. He has yet to face the media, waiting longer to hold his first press conference than any president in the last 100 years. 

Biden’s team has finally scheduled a news conference, announcing Tuesday he’d be up for it on – March 25. Why the long run-up? Will it take his handlers that long to ensure that he doesn’t have a blowout while talking to the press? There’s a transparency problem, as Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has pointed out. Biden aides are doing nothing to inspire the country’s confidence in the man.

But then again, there’s not much to be confident about. Some recent evidence of note:

“Bubble Biden clearly not up for tough questions – or the job,” says the New York Post headline of Michael Goodwin’s March 16 column. Goodwin reminds readers that after “Biden’s lone interview since taking office,” the White House was forced to clean up his comments about Donald Trump receiving intelligence briefings, the $15 minimum wage campaign, and Iran’s nuclear program.
In late February, Biden famously rambled on about losing track of his thoughts and wondering where he was.
Earlier this month, the bumbling president called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “the guy who runs that outfit.”
Biden ended his session at the House Democrats 2021 Issues Conference saying “I’m happy to take questions if that’s what you want me to do,” at which point he was given the modern-day version of the Vaudeville hook to, obviously, prevent him from making yet another public spectacle of himself.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who spent six years at “Biden’s side as he met with world leaders, delivered speeches and interacted with members of the news media,” told one-time Trump aide Steve Bannon in January that he estimated the president’s cognitive abilities have fallen by half in recent years. 
McCormick told the Washington Free Beacon last September that the Democratic candidate is “not the same Joe Biden,” and that “he’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

Senate narrowly confirms Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/politics/xavier-becerra-confirmation-vote/index.html

The Senate narrowly confirmed Xavier Becerra to be the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday, giving the former California attorney general a crucial role in fighting the pandemic.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, is the first Latino HHS secretary.
The vote was 50 to 49. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins joined Senate Democrats in favor of the nomination. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono did not vote.
During the confirmation process, Becerra stressed his upbringing, his father’s recent passing and his efforts for expanding health care access as California’s attorney general and a 24-year Congressman representing a Los Angeles-based district.

Opinion: Where’s the outrage? US Jewish groups mum on anti-Israel Pentagon pick By David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-wheres-the-outrage-us-jewish-groups-mum-on-anti-israel-pentagon-pick/

“Pro-Israel groups launch blitz against Kahl nomination for top Pentagon job,” read the Jewish News Syndicate headline on March 15.

The headline isn’t untrue.

The problem is that there were just two groups, one of them Christian. How’s that line go again “If I am not for myself…”?

There should have been a chorus of protest from the American Jewish establishment at last week’s Senate hearings on Colin Kahl’s nomination for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.

It’s an important job. As The Wall Street Journal noted, “While the Secretary of Defense handles high-level defense politics, and the deputy secretary manages the department day-to-day, the undersecretary plays the leading role setting strategy — including representing the department at National Security Council deputies meetings.”

Yet AIPAC was AWOL. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s excuse is it doesn’t take positions on presidential nominations.

If you’re the largest pro-Israel lobby in America and you can’t call out nominees espousing anti-Israel policies, what can you do? Kahl typifies such policies. It should be right in AIPAC’s bailiwick. As it likes to say, “policy over partisanship.”

Tucker Carlson-Military Spat Shows Left’s Long March Reaching Dangerous Apex Wokeism has been festering in the military for years–now it has been exposed for all to see Benjamin Weingarten

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/tucker-carlson-military-spat-shows?token=e

Is the military more focused on winning wars, or Wokeism?

Americans should not have to ask this question.

But on account of doings of the Biden-led Department of Defense (DoD), Fox News’ Tucker Carlson was rightly compelled to proffer it. That he received any DoD response—and no less an almost parodic scolding, rather than an assurance that the military is singularly focused on crushing our enemies—demonstrates an existential problem for our country.

It shows that the progressives’ Long March through our institutions is reaching its dangerous apex.

This is a dangerous apex because when it comes to matters of national security and foreign policy, politicization literally kills.

Our military must be impervious to politicization, and particularly political correctness and insubordination, or it will lack the will and capability necessary to deter and when necessary defeat our adversaries.

Absent a military insulated from these ills, our peace and prosperity will erode. People will die.

Yet for well over a decade now, perhaps the last trusted institution in this country, the military, has shown dangerous signs that it is succumbing to the maladies of all of our other institutions.

This is an indictment not of our cherished military itself, but of those who have tarnished it through repudiating its core principles, and the civilian leaders who have abided such conduct, if not endorsed it.

The Tucker Carlson-Department of Defense contretemps broke this reality right out into the open for all of America to see.

One Of The Lockdowns’ Greatest Casualties Could Be Science By Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/18/one-of-the-lockdowns-greatest-casualties-could-be-science/

Politicians, journalists, and scientists have transferred the disease burden onto the working class. They’ve also dangerously undermined scientific inquiry.

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns have not only been devastating for society, they have had a chilling effect on the scientific community. For science to thrive, opposing ideas must be openly and vigorously discussed, supported, or countered based on scientific merit.

Instead, some politicians, journalists, and (alas) scientists have engaged in vicious slander of dissident scientists, spreading damaging conspiracy theories, even with open calls for censorship in place of debate. In many cases, eminent scientific voices have been effectively silenced, often with gutter tactics. People who oppose lockdowns have been accused of having blood on their hands, their university positions threatened, with many of our colleagues choosing to stay quiet rather than face the mob.

We tell the story here of five prominent scientists who have faced the modern-day inquisition.

Dr. Scott Atlas

Dr. Scott Atlas served as a special advisor to the president on COVID policy between July and November 2020. This would be a difficult job in normal circumstances when the science is more mature.

With his background in public health policy, Atlas’s advice emphasized balancing risks imposed by viral spread against collateral public health harms from the lockdowns in a rapidly changing scientific and policy environment. Scientists who did not share his views had every opportunity to do so responsibly by reporting scientific facts and conjectures and engaging with his ideas.

Instead, the Journal of the American Medical Association—the flagship medical journal in the United States—published an opinion article defaming him without engaging his actual scientific views. The editors of the journal then refused to publish letters supporting Atlas.

H.R.1 – Is It Really “For the People”? by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

H.R.1 is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech — all dressed-up as being “for the people.”

Here are just a few of the more egregious federal power grabs in H.R.1 concocted against the 50 states that run elections under the U.S. Constitution: 1. Ban voter ID laws and allow ballot harvesting; 2. Expand Election Day to “election season” by mandating mail-in ballots be counted 10 days after the election would normally be over; and, 3. Automatic voter registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare, and college, or who are coming out of prison. There is a lot more, and it gets worse. Substantially worse. There are First Amendment restrictions on political speech.

What better way to design a worker’s paradise? Or — hypothetically, of course — to make sure that a stolen election stays stolen, is never audited, and lays the groundwork for reproducible results for the next century?

Please let everyone influential know, clearly and politely, exactly what you think.

A lot has been written about H.R.1 — the so-called “For the People Act of 2021.” Former Vice President Mike Pence has opined on the bill. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm back in January. The editors of National Review come right out and call it a “partisan assault on American democracy.”

H.R.1 purports to, “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.” The Bill is 791 pages long.

Left-wing anti-Semitism just keeps getting swept under the rug By Gary S. Branfman

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/leftwing_antisemitism_just_keeps_getting_swept_under_the_rug.html

Today’s climate of woke progressive political correctness, systemic racism, and social hypersensitivity encourages anti-Semitic events committed by non-right-wing groups to be swept under the rug of white supremacism.

I am amused by the distinctly divergent pretext for Jew-hatred from the Alt-Right and the Alt-Left.  On one side of the “Anti-Semitic Spectrum,” we are blamed for the evils of capitalism, while the other side blames us for the hardships of communism.

There is no excuse for the lack of attention and condemnation placed on the increased incidence of anti-Semitism from groups not associated with white supremacy.

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) get a pass when they claim that boycotting Israel is not at all different from boycotting Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

When retired neo-Nazi-turned KKK leader David Duke praises black separatist Louis Farrakhan, we should heed prophetic wisdom: the enemy of your enemy is your friend.  We are the enemy.

In 2019, two individuals associated with the blatantly anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelites plotted with handguns, assault rifles, and pipe bombs to murder 50 Jewish children in a New Jersey day school.  They had to settle for a deadly shoot-out in a neighboring Kosher deli.

Who Is Our Military’s Enemy? Leftist administrations see the military foremost as a tool for accelerating their own progressive domestic changes. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/17/who-is-our-militarys-enemy/

The U.S. military has now turned its wrath inward on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. 

The new secretary of defense relayed his “revulsion” for Carlson’s questioning the role of women in combat—a position that had been the military’s centuries-long orthodoxy until about seven years ago.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby even compared Carlson to the Communist Chinese military: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host, or the Chinese military.” 

The now-cocky Department of Defense website further boasted, “Press Secretary Smites Fox Host.”  

So what was the biblically “smitten” Carlson’s crime? 

He objected to the military’s fixation on race and gender in high-profile appointments—and questioned whether standards were relaxed to permit women in combat units.

Carlson objected that the Capitol is currently domestically militarized. More troops are on guard against purported American “insurrectionists” than are currently serving in war zones in Afghanistan. 

He noted far too many defense secretaries—he singled out the current secretary, retired General Lloyd Austin—revolve in and out from corporate defense contractor boards and billets. 

His subtext is that too many of our retired top brass virtue signal their wokeness, while otherwise seeking to make a great deal of corporate money from their prior and often future government service and contacts. 

Aside from the fact that the military usually does not use its top officials to react to journalists, the Pentagon should try to refute Carlson rather than comparing him to the hostile Communist Chinese. 

Muslim Federation Includes Members That Traffic Violent Anti-Semitism Umbrella group calls out ‘Islamophobia,’ but ‘Death to Jews’ is not a problem. Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/muslim-federation-includes-members-traffic-violent-joe-kaufman/

This past December, the President of the South Florida Muslim Federation, Samir Kakli, had an op-ed published by the Miami Herald, where he spoke out against hatred targeting the Muslim community, what has become known as ‘Islamophobia,’ a term often used to silence critics of Islamist terror. The Federation is promoting the piece on its website. Though hate aimed at Muslims certainly exists, it is beyond hypocritical for a group to call out one form of bigotry, while embracing those who traffic even worse bigotry, in this case violence against Jews. That is exactly what the Federation is doing, as it continues to ignore incitement from its member orgs.

The South Florida Muslim Federation or SoFlo Muslims is an umbrella group for South Florida’s many Muslim extremist organizations, including radical mosques. Two of these mosques are the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR) and Masjid Jamaat Al-Mu’mineen (MJAM). Both of these mosques have promoted horrific anti-Semitism.

ICBR’s terror links are well-documented. One of its founders, Bassem Alhalabi, was a former research assistant to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian. In June 2003, the US Department of Commerce charged Alhalabi with illegally shipping a $13,000 thermal imaging device to Syria. Another founder, Syed Khawer Ahmad, was a website designer for Hamas. ICBR’s founding imam, Ibrahim Dremali, spent time on the federal ‘no fly’ list. In August 2002, Dremali was a character witness at a hearing for soon-to-be-convicted al-Qaeda operative Adham Hassoun, whose group, the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), gave the mosque $600K.

From October 1999 through September 2001, ICBR published a violently anti-Semitic essay on its website, titled ‘Why can’t the Jews and Muslims live together in peace?’ It described Jews as “people of treachery and betrayal” and “enemies.” It spoke of a “Day of Judgement” that would come when Muslims will “fight the Jews and kill them.” Imam Dremali claimed that the article was the result of hackers. It was a lie, as the ICBR website contained much material from the same source as the offending article, the website Islam Q&A. Then-mosque spokesman, Dan McBride, said they reluctantly took down the article, after receiving a number of complaints.

The Morning Briefing: President Puppet Finally Schedules a Press Conference By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/03/17/the-morning-briefing-president-puppet-finally-schedules-a-press-conference-n1433085

Full disclosure: I was one of those people who thought that the Democrats would have hit President Biden with a 25th Amendment coup by now. After a while, I realized that they prefer having him in place and pulling his puppet strings. They type up the executive orders, tell Ol’ Gropes to sign them, and the dismantling of the Republic proceeds apace.

I also wasn’t factoring in Kamala Harris’s soaring ambition. She’d like Biden to last at least two years so that she can have a ten-year run in office. If the Democrats succeed in their efforts to make the “anomalies” from last year a permanent part of our elections, we may never see another Republican president again. Madam Vice President has probably been redecorating the Oval Office in her head since Inauguration Day but she knows that patience is the best strategy now.

Back in December, though, I was telling everyone that Biden wouldn’t make it to March 1st in office.

Once it became apparent that the old boy would be hanging around for a while I began wondering how they would be able to employ the basement strategy that worked so well for them during the campaign. They can’t let Biden get too much time before the cameras. The potential for embarrassment is always just one short video away with this drooling fool.

I was asked in January how they could hide the president of the United States. Keeping the COVID panic ratcheted up gives them an ongoing excuse for the president’s lack of public availability.

One thing I didn’t consider at the time was that Team Biden would simply refuse to do press conferences. They’ve been blowing off their beloved advocacy press corps for a couple of months already.

That’s all finally changing now. A date has been put on the calendar for Biden’s first presser and I, for one, can’t wait to see the train wreck happen.