NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Not a ‘Kitchen Table Issue,’ Jen Psaki? Actually, Our Kids Are All We’re Thinking About Abigail Shrier

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://abigailshrier.substack.com/p/not-a-kitchen-table-issue-jen-psaki?s=r

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki accused Republican lawmakers of “engaging in a disturbing, cynical trend of attacking vulnerable transgender kids,” and exploiting them. “Instead of focusing on critical kitchen table issues like the economy, COVID, or addressing the country’s mental health crisis,” she said, “Republican lawmakers are currently debating legislation that, among many things, would target transgender youth with tactics that threaten to put pediatricians in prison if they provide medically necessary, life-saving care for the kids they serve.”

Life-saving care? Surely she must mean insulin or antibiotics?

No, she means “gender affirming care” that devilish euphemism for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and experimental surgeries whose benefits are unproven, but whose risks—permanent sexual dysfunction, infertility, cardiac event and endometrial cancer are a few—ought to nudge any doctor toward soul searching. As I’ve written many times, these treatments are often recklessly administered, of questionable benefit to children, and attended by forbidding risks.

For these reasons, in the last two years, national gender clinics in France, the UK, Sweden and Finland have all reevaluated or curtailed their use. But as Psaki made clear, any legislator who tries to follow suit will face double-barreled legal opposition from the current Administration.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Leftist Judge Kills Election Integrity Laws Jeremiah Wright-wannabe likened Trump to Hitler. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/leftist-judge-kills-election-integrity-laws-matthew-vadum/

A radical Arkansas judge in the mold of Jeremiah Wright struck down four new common-sense election integrity laws approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature, declaring the statutes unconstitutional last month. The state is appealing the ruling.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen is, like Wright, also a critical race theory-friendly, black nationalist, African dashiki-wearing preacher. He is also a diversity consultant, profiting from race-mongering and dividing people. He founded his firm Griffen Strategic Consulting PLLC, in Little Rock in 2008.

Griffen is controversial in his home state, known for his strident left-wing activism. He delights in sticking his thumb in the eyes of Republican state lawmakers — they have tried to impeach and remove him as a judge. Griffen was barred from hearing cases on a death penalty track after he went to a protest outside the governor’s mansion in 2017 strapped down to a gurney, as if he were a condemned man about to be executed by lethal injection. The protest took place the same day as Griffen issued an order blocking the state’s execution schedule.

Griffen bitterly denounced then-President-elect Donald Trump days after his election in November 2016, spewing paranoid leftist conspiracy theories and racist, white-hating nonsense.

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Suppressing Pro-Israel Views at the University of Chicago The University’s newspaper removes an op-ed challenging a noxious boycott request by anti-Israel radicals.Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/suppressing-pro-israel-views-university-chicago-richard-l-cravatts/

The suppression of pro-Israel views on campus has been a troubling development in the ongoing cognitive war against Israel. Now, the silencing of pro-Israel voices even appears in college newspapers. The McGill Daily, as one troubling example, has a long-standing, publicly announced policy of never publishing pro-Israel content in its pages, deeming it to be racist or oppressive in its support of the Jewish state. 

This week, the University of Chicago’s student newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, followed that same ignoble path by violating journalistic and free speech ideals in retracting an op-ed written by two students, “We Must Condemn the SJP’s Online Anti-Semitism,” who questioned the tactics and ideology of members of the University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine(SJP), a perennially toxic and corrosive anti-Israel group of radicals. 

On January 26th, as the op-ed by Melody Dias and Benjamin ZeBrack noted, SJP had posted on its Instagram page the shocking admonition, “DON’T TAKE SH*TTY ZIONIST CLASSES.” Students were asked to “Support the Palestinian movement for liberation by boycotting classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows.” According to the SJP post, any students who enrolled in these classes would be “participating in a propaganda campaign that creates complicity in the continuation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine” and that, in its view, “Israeli-centered classes are designed to obscure Palestinian perspectives.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Terror in Tel Aviv – 2 dead, several critically wounded; terrorist on the loose

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

Several people were injured, some critically, in a shooting attack on a crowded street. Two died in hospital.

By World Israel News Staff

Several victims were wounded, some critically, in a shooting spree in Tel Aviv Thursday evening.

“Unfortunately, the deaths of two were determined upon their arrival here. Four more are in very serious condition, two more are in moderate condition, and one in light condition,” Ichilov hospital said in a statement.

At about 9 p.m., gunfire erupted on the lively Dizengoff Street.

In an update later in the evening, MDA medics and paramedics said they provided medical treatment and evacuated nine wounded to the Ichilov Hospital, Sheba in Tel Hashomer, and Wolfson.

“Two men in their 30s were evacuated to Ichilov Hospital during resuscitation operations, and after the doctors’ efforts, their deaths were determined,” the update said.

“Three were seriously injured, including a 38-year-old man, a 28-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man were evacuated to Ichilov Hospital with gunshot wounds.

“Four lightly wounded were evacuated to hospitals, including a 30-year-old man with a gunshot wound to Sheba.”

United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Akiva Kauffman, who was one of the first responders at the scene at Dizengoff Street, reported, “There were a number of very serious scenes in which attacks took place. I treated and transported one person who was in serious condition in one of United Hatzalah’s ambulances to the hospital. Additional injured people were transported in other ambulances both from United Hatzalah and other ambulance companies.

”Additionally, the Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit responded to the incident and treated numerous people who suffered emotional shock and trauma due to having witnessed the shootings.”

Beyond the police counter-terrorism units, the IDF has deployed its Special Forces in the heart of Tel Aviv.

Police are telling residents to stay indoors, as the terrorist is still on the loose. A manhunt is underway.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Report: Ballot Harvesters in Georgia Stopped at Democrat Offices In between Runs to Drop Boxes During 2020 Election By Debra Heine

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/06/report-ballot-harvesters-in-georgia-stopped-at-democrat-offices-in-between-runs-to-drop-boxes-during-2020-election/

During the 2020 election, ballot traffickers in Georgia allegedly stopped at Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ headquarters, and at least one other Democrat Party office in between their runs to stuff unmanned drop boxes with ballots.

Surveillance video featured in conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s upcoming movie “2000 Mules,” reportedly shows people coming out of their cars “night after night” with piles of ballots, and stuffing them into drop boxes funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Election integrity activists used geospatial technology to track the ballot harvesters’ cellphones to precise locations.

Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, told Newsweek in March that her group spent $1 million to obtain the geospatial information from several marketing services. In addition, Engelbrecht said she paid $20,000 “to obtain video via open-records requests to counties and cities in five states where it appeared Trump was winning, until mail-in and drop-box ballots were counted: Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”

From there, she says she and her staff cross-referenced the times and locations of the cell phones whose users visited multiple drop boxes with the 4 million minutes of video obtained from city and county governments.

“The geospatial data was the driver,” Engelbrecht said. She told Newsweek that she would be “turning over time and date stamped video that shows the same people inserting ballots into sometimes dozens of different drop boxes to various law-enforcement officials.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another January 6 Narrative Goes Boom Capitol Police did, in fact, let the protesters in the building.  By Julie Kelly

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/07/another-january-6-narrative-goes-boom/

How does a mob “illegally storm” the Capitol building when police let them in? That is the latest narrative-shifting question the media wants desperately to avoid after a federal judge on Wednesday found a January 6 defendant not guilty for his conduct during the protest at the Capitol that day. 

Matthew Martin was arrested in Santa Fe, New Mexico on April 22, 2021; he later was charged with the four most common misdemeanors related to the Justice Department’s prosecution of Capitol protesters: entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, violent entry, and parading in the Capitol building.

Those petty offenses comprise the overwhelming majority of criminal charges against the nearly 800 or so January 6 defendants. More than 150 people have pleaded guilty to the “parading” charge—many have been sentenced to a few months in prison.

But those defendants might regret accepting the plea deal offered by the government after D.C. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden not only acquitted Martin on all counts but agreed with Martin’s assertion that he was “waved” in by Capitol Police officers. Martin, who opted for a bench trial before the Trump-appointed judge and testified in his own defense, entered the building around 3 p.m. through a set of doors on the east side. He walked through the Rotunda and stayed inside for about 10 minutes.

For that activity—a right protected under the Constitution up until January 6, 2021—Martin’s life, like that of every other American ensnared in this abusive prosecution, has been destroyed. Following his acquittal, Martin spoke to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. “I am very thankful for the judge’s verdict and hoping to get my life back together, get my job back,” said Martin, who was fired as a contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy after he was arrested a year ago.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: What Happens When You Have No Freedom of Speech by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18405/turkey-what-happens-when-you-have-no-freedom

“In Turkey, human rights lawyers are particularly targeted for their work representing human rights defenders, victims of human rights violations, victims of police violence and torture, and many people who simply express dissenting opinions.” — Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, ohchr.org, June 9, 2021.

The government announced in 2020 that it had opened legal proceedings against 597,783 individuals, detained 282,790 and arrested 94,975 for allegedly being behind the 2016 coup attempt. Meanwhile, torture and abuse targeting the government’s perceived opponents have become widespread in prisons across Turkey.

“…alarmed by the fact that the Turkish judiciary displays, especially in terrorism-related cases, unprecedented levels of disregard for even the most basic principles of law, such as presumption of innocence, no punishment without crime and non-retroactivity of offences, or not being judged for the same facts again.” – Dunja Mijatovic, Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe, February 19, 2020

Erdogan, meanwhile, claims there are no journalists behind bars…

It appears that, according to the Turkish government, dissent is “terrorism.” Anyone who does not support the government might be put in the category of so-called “traitors” or “terrorists” and punished by the government.

The citizens of Turkey who are perceived to be “enemies” or simply opponents of the government are targeted, abused, jailed, or even killed. If they are suspended from their jobs, they are blacklisted by the government, so that it is almost impossible for them to find another job. They are thus put in a situation where they face hunger and poverty daily. Their lives and livelihoods are systematically destroyed. Is there any Western country that treats Muslims so cruelly and unlawfully?

“Racism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and discrimination remain the main problem for the Turkish community in Europe,” Erdogan said at a press conference in Germany in 2021.

The statement was doubly ironic, as Erdogan’s regime has arrested and abducted countless Muslims. He has apprehended them from across the world for allegedly being, or supporting, “terrorists” behind a 2016 coup attempt.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Thirty Years of the ‘Now or Never’ Climate Cry By Itxu Díaz

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/thirty-years-of-the-now-or-never-climate-cry/

The apocalyptic language of United Nations alarmists is back.

The 2,913 pages of the United Nations’ “Climate Change 2022” report make clear only that nothing is clear. Written in the incomprehensible language of climate science, there are only two things that are easily understood: the word taxes, which appears 270 times, and the word costs, which appears 1,585 times.

The entire report, full of technicalities, cross-references, and incomprehensible tables, generates more headaches than alarm. This is not for public consumption, quite obviously. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change keeps the taxes and the costs confined to the report — but it reserves the artillery of apocalyptic words for the press release. The headline reads, “The evidence is clear: the time for action is now.” (The “evidence” is the 2,913 pages that no one will read.)

In short, the apostles of the climate apocalypse are once again summarizing their strategy with the “now or never” war cry, the same one they screamed nearly 30 years ago in 1995 at the first climate summit in Berlin. “We are at a crossroads,” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee says in the press release. “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). Without immediate and profound emission reduction across all sectors, it will be impossible,” Jim Skea, IPCC Working Group III co-chair, adds, building tension.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

I agree with scientists and journalists that damaging cold weather is caused by climate change By Jack Hellner ****

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/i_agree_with_scientists_and_journalists_that_damaging_cold_weather_is_caused_by_climate_change.html

“It appears that the passage of time is the best explanation for climate change.”

Scientific data shows that the climate has consistently and naturally changed for billions of years, so yes, when we have late damaging frosts, they are caused by natural climate change. I hope a lot of money and time wasn’t wasted in coming to this logical conclusion. 

Late frost ices over French vineyards, threatens fruit crops

French vintners are lighting candles to thaw their grapevines to save them from a late frost following a mild winter (snip)

 The frost is particularly frustrating after a similar phenomenon hit French vineyards last year, leading to some 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) in losses. Scientists later found that the damaging 2021 frost was made more likely by climate change.

What didn’t cause late frosts is warming, supposedly caused by fossil fuel usage, rising CO2, humans, methane, cars and so many other things that the media, scientists, and others say we must stop using. It is a simple concept that fossil fuels and humans can’t cause both warming and cooling.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Stinging rebuke to woke Oberlin College By David Zukerman

Posted By on April 8th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/stinging_rebuke_to_woke_oberlin_college_.html

It might be said that an Ohio appellate court, March 31, struck a blow against woke-ism by upholding a multimillion-dollar verdict against Oberlin College. At issue was a tortious response by the college to a shoplifting incident, November 9, 2016, at Gibson’s Bakery in Oberlin. The incident led to protests by Oberlin students and administrators against the bakery, accusing the owners of racism and a history of racial profiling. (A black male student had been apprehended by a bakery employee for shoplifting and he and two black women were arrested in connection with the incident.  In August 2017 they pleaded guilty to lesser charges.)

The bakery and its owners, Allyn W. Gibson and his son David R. Gibson (both now deceased), sued the college and its dean of students for libel, interference with business relationships, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, winning  a jury verdict of $44 million, reduced to $31 million (comprising compensatory and punitive damages, and including attorney’s fees of $6 million).

In upholding the judgment of the trial court, the appellate panel affirmed that the attacks on the bakery were actionable, not opinion, and that the plaintiffs were not public figures.  A woke court, arguably, would have ruled that a flyer distributed by college administrators and students accusing the bakery of racism and racial profile was merely opinion  The appellate ruling noted, however, that the bakery and its owners had not voluntarily injected themselves into the controversy at issue, nor in the “extreme public criticism” that followed. This ruling rejected the claim of the college that the plaintiffs were public figures — and therefore the applicable standard for libel should have “actual malice” not negligence.