What Is Systemic Racism? John McWhorter, Lara Bazelon, Glenn Loury, Kmele Foster, Chloé Valdary and Kenny Xu weigh in. Bari Weiss

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/what-is-systemic-racism?token=eyJ1c2V

The longtime Democratic operative James Carville gives good quote, and yesterday was no different. In a conversation with Vox about Biden’s first 100 days he ended up mostly sounding off about the problem of what he calls “faculty lounge” politics:

You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in . . . neighborhoods.

If you have a few minutes, read the whole thing. But Carville’s bottom line is that “there’s too much jargon and there’s too much esoterica and it turns people off.”

One bit of that jargon — much like “equity” and “social justice” — is the phrase “systemic racism.”

All of a sudden, it was everywhere. We were supposed to say it. We were supposed to root it out. But what did it actually mean?

Is systemic racism merely legal discrimination? Or does it capture the legacy of slavery and segregation? Is it meant to describe ill-conceived policies, like the response to the crack epidemic? Or is it something far more expansive, sweeping up any kind of racial disparity as evidence of its existence?

Biden’s ‘Green New Deal’: Glitter, nonsense, and deception We need to rein in extreme, unattainable policies and seek realistic solutions by Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/bidens-green-new-deal-glitter-nonse

Having spent our adult lives involved with and supporting science and technology, it is frustrating and infuriating to endure uninformed politicians, pundits, and ideologues bloviating about the climate, to say nothing of the pointless dithering about whether we should be referring to climate change or to the climate crisis. But the genuine catastrophe-in-waiting is that the policies they advocate will irreparably damage the economy while leaving the climate essentially unaffected.

The United States’s small global share of greenhouse gas emissions, which is about 15% and declining due to the increased use of natural gas, means that domestic improvements can have only a minimal effect. The underlying premise of the Biden administration’s energy policy is that by the U.S. setting an example of enlightenment and probity, other nations, especially China and India, will elevate altruism above compelling self-interests and follow suit.

Thereby, the advocates of radical climate policies, whether President Joe Biden’s or the more extreme Green New Deal progressives, are prepared to exact an enormous price from the public in pursuit of what amounts to quixotic virtue signaling, a case of tilting at windmills, so to speak.

Many aspects of the Left’s climate policies are steeped in delusion and misleading propaganda. Advocates focus on largely discredited apocalyptic projections about the extent and impact of climate change and offer only favored options for a shift to renewable and clean energy that fly in the face of evidence.

Data from many sources show clearly that solar and wind, the green energy sources in vogue, have costs and disadvantages that are conveniently hidden, while the only readily available new source of clean energy, nuclear power, is demonized. We will summarize below our two lengthy analyses of these issues that appeared here and here.

Biden Risks Casting Away Trump’s Progress in Middle East By Robert Kaufman

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/biden-risks-casting-away-trumps-progress/91492/

Samuel Johnson described a second marriage as a triumph of hope over experience. This sums up the Biden administration’s determination to revive President Obama’s Middle East doctrine that failed the first time around. Worse, this reprise of past mistakes threatens to undo the significant, though provisional, progress the Trump administration achieved in the region by doing the opposite of its predecessor.

Instead of courting Iranian regime, President Trump deemed Iran enemy number one in the Middle East. Mr. Trump abrogated President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran because it would facilitate Iran crossing the nuclear threshold even were the Iranians to abide by it. It depended for verification on Iranian goodwill that didn’t exist It subsidized Iranian aggression by lifting sanctions, and relied on the UN Security Council to re-impose sanctions in the event that we detected Iranian violations.

Mr. Obama’s Iran deal also failed to tame either Iran’s threats toward Israel or Iran’s campaign to incite sectarian violence across the Middle East through its surrogates in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Nor did Mr. Obama’s nuclear deal constrain Iran’s burgeoning ballistic missile program from menacing America’s allies in both the Middle East and Europe..

President Trump’s re-imposition of primary sanctions and the threat of secondary sanctions crippled the Iranian economy, diminishing the regime’s capacity to foment mayhem beyond Iranian borders. Mr. Trump’s — and, let it not be forgotten, Congress’s — decision to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, emblematic of broader policy to embrace rather than distance America from Israel, bolstered our credibility globally.

Contrary to predictions of Middle East regional experts, Mr. Trump’s repudiation of moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies was met with the emergence of a regional coalition, with Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia as the linchpins, to contain Iran.

“Creating Problems to Secure Elections” Sydney Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

A problem endemic to successful countries is the need to create issues that get people excited when things are going relatively well. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, except for a few years following 9/11, the United States has not faced a major crisis that galvanized and unified the nation. In 2008, we faced a credit crisis. It could have undone the global financial system but, truth be told, the crisis was over by the end of calendar year 2008 when the TED spread – a calculation used to measure risk in financial markets – narrowed sharply from its October-November highs, and high-yield bonds began to rally. The pandemic caused by COVID-19 last year was seized by politicians and called a crisis. A (deliberate?) confusion of correlation with causation regarding reported deaths was used as an excuse to expand governmental power and curtail individual rights. Despite conventional opinion, however, we do not know if shutting down the economy did more harm than good.

The United States has achieved high living standards and diminished poverty because of capitalism and individual freedom. Is everything perfect? No. Should we rest on our laurels? Of course not. There is always more to be done. But the world, and especially the West, is richer and more at peace than at any time in history, which is a problem for politicians whose campaigns are all about needed change.

It is true that external problems lurk. China threatens peace in the western Pacific. Russia is flexing its muscles along borders of its old empire in Ukraine. Iran, an impoverished state with little to risk and much to gain, is disrupting the Middle East with a revival of its nuclear program. North Korea, another state so impoverished it has little to lose, is led by a man who in a normal country would be committed.

However, in this time of relative prosperity and peace, Progressives convert addressable issues into partisan crises. While there are several, two, in my opinion, are forefront: race and climate. Others include policing, guns and immigration, with the latter having become a serious problem on our southern border. Methods used to create and promote crises are insidious: claim the moral high ground, censor speech, disallow gender-specific pronouns and cancel history. A consequence is the intimidation (and worse) of those in academia, corporate offices, entertainment, and professional sports who do not hew to an approved narrative.

‘Capitol Insurrection’ v. Burn, Loot, and Murder Riots If not for double standards, Democrats would have NO standards. Mark Alexander

https://patriotpost.us › alexander

“There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong. … In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right.” James Monroe (1786)

A rhetorical question: Why have Democrats and their Leftmedia publicists portrayed the January 6 Capitol riot in a harsh and incriminating light while shining a soft and sympathetic light on the now hundreds of riots by their constituents — those “peaceful protesters” nationwide?

The disparity in this portrayal is evident at many levels, and one must conclude that Democrats have two standards of justice for riots and insurrections — one for their burn, loot, and murder constituents and a much more punitive standard for the Capitol protesters.

If the Capitol riot had been in any other venue, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and their legislative tag team, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, would have proclaimed it a “peaceful protest.”

Hunter Biden’s Laptop by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17317/hunter-biden-laptop

The book’s [Secret Empires] conclusions were based on reconstructions of timelines, records obtained through hard work done on location in foreign countries. Yet, some in the media still accused us of engaging in a “witch hunt” designed simply to embarrass the family of now-President Joe Biden.

Law enforcement sources have since confirmed a Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes, but that actually means they are looking not just at his taxes, but at the money he made that he may or may not have declared on his taxes. That investigation continues.

What emerges from all of this clearly shows what I call the “Biden business model,” in which the Biden family seems to trade off the Biden name, Biden connections, and the Biden access.

Recently, Hunter Biden has sat for several interviews to discuss his new memoir about his struggles with drug addiction. The investigative reporter in me cannot resist pointing out these interviews were done by CBS News, owned by ViacomCBS, which also owns Simon & Schuster, the publisher of his new book. He mostly dodged questions about the laptop.

[T]he deeper question that should concern us more… is whether he is covering for his father. Emails reviewed by Sen. Ron Johnson’s committee during its investigation referenced a consultant writing to Hunter Biden about a proposed partnership with Chinese businessmen. The email says Hunter will receive a 20% equity in the partnership, plus a 10% stake “held by H for the big guy?”

The identity of “the big guy” has not been established. But… [t]he modern model of corruption in politics is rarely done in a straight line, but along the branches of a family tree. As foreign governments and other interested parties have learned, the way to a politician’s heart is through his family. There is circumstantial evidence in the collection of materials now possessed by the FBI and journalists that Hunter Biden was acting as a cover for business dealings that would benefit his father or at a minimum the Biden family estate, which includes his father.

Investigative journalism mostly reconstructs events and exchanges from hidden scraps, obscure records, and third-party documents. Often the best we can do is to show that something bad must have happened based on the coincidences we find in these records. Because reporters are not prosecutors, they cannot issue subpoenas or compel testimony. It is exceedingly rare for a reporter to obtain that “smoking gun.”

MORE HEADLINES: APRIL 28, 2021

You Had One Job: Voters Don’t Believe Kamala Harris Is Qualified to Assume the Presidency

By Stacey Lennox

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/stacey-lennox/2021/04/27/you-had-one-job-a-majority-of-voters-dont-believe-kamala-harris-is-qualified-to-assume-the-presidency-n1442847

Former Cop Running for Mayor of New York City Makes the Case for More Police, Not Fewer

By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/04/27/former-cop-running-for-mayor-of-new-york-city-makes-his-case-for-more-police-not-fewer-n1443024

Current Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is a 22-year veteran of the New York City Police Department who left the force to run for state representative and is now a serious candidate in the crowded field running for New York Mayor. Leading the pack of candidates for the June 22 Democratic primary is former Democratic Party presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who got 22 percent in the most recent poll. But standing in second place is Adams with 13 percent. Winning the Democratic Party primary in New York City is tantamount to winning the election, as the Republican Party is nearly invisible in much of the city.

Never-Trump Grift Is Back: Republican Accountability Project Is Even More Tone Deaf, Ridiculous, and Irrelevant

By Stacey Lennox,

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2021/04/27/never-trump-grift-is-back-the-republican-accountability-project-is-even-more-tone-deaf-ridiculous-and-irrelevant-n1443019

As someone who once considered myself Never Trump, I feel well qualified to comment on the activities of those who still cling to that label after the 2020 election. For rational people who are not trying to cling to accumulated power or trying to recover their influence, Never Trump was over on election night 2016. It was either going to be President Clinton II or President Trump, and in hindsight, I am glad it was the latter.

The dangerous attack on meritocracy By Larry Alexander

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/the_dangerous_attack_on_meritocracy.html

The core meritocratic idea — that tasks should be assigned to those most qualified to accomplish them — is, and has been for some time, under attack.  That attack, predictably in the current identity politics-obsessed climate, has been based on race and sex.

Just recently, for example, the CEO of United Airlines proudly announced that United’s new goal for its stable of pilots and co-pilots is that it reflect the demography of United’s passengers.  So if a certain percentage passengers are women, and a certain percentage are black, then the occupants of United’s cockpits should reflect those percentages.  The CEO failed to explain whether United’s current failure to meet those percentages was due to its own race and sex discrimination, or whether instead it was due to such factors as the skills and occupational preferences of women and blacks.  Nor did he explain why anyone, including United’s passengers, should care anything about United’s pilots other than whether they were highly qualified to execute a pilot’s only job, which is to fly and land the plane safely.

The same point applies to the FAA’s policy to “diversify” air traffic controllers.  Air traffic controllers, too, have one task, which is to manage congested skies so that airplanes do not collide and land safely.  The occupants of airplanes care only that they do that task the best that it can be done, and care not a whit about to what race or sex they belong.

This point also applies to the military.  It, too, has a singular task, to win wars and do so at the lowest cost in blood and treasure.  Accomplishing that mission, regardless of the racial, sexual, or sexual orientation of its members, is all citizens should demand of it.

Burying the Lede to Help Your Friends John Kerry’s disclosure of an ally’s secret military operations is a major story and deserves prominent treatment. Instead, the New York Times buried the revelation. By Charles Lipson

ttps://amgreatness.com/2021/04/27/burying-the-lede-to-help-your-friends/

The duplicity and spin of American media continue apace. Last week, it was NBC “Nightly News’” decision to delete essential information about a deadly police shooting. NBC’s flagship news program edited a 911 call to remove the victims’ cry for help. The caller and people in the background said plainly attackers were trying to stab them. Not that you would know that if your news came from NBC. It deleted any mention of “stabbing” from the call.

But, wait, as the infomercials say, there’s more. NBC News then edited police bodycam footage to remove the picture of the knife, which was about to strike the victim. Those edits were a deliberate, malicious distortion. Gone was the lethal threat that police were rushing to stop.

NBC’s distortion may have appeased the anti-police mob and its complaisant, politically correct viewers, but the report was neither accurate nor honest. Getting it right should be the first duty of any news organization. NBC failed in that basic responsibility.

This week’s installment of dreadful reporting is more subtle. It comes from the New York Times, and it concerns a leaked tape recording of Iranian leaders. As the Times sees it, the real news in that recording is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps actually control policymaking. That is important, but it is a dog-bites-man story.

The IRGC’s dominant role has been known for years. Still, that’s the Times’ headline: “Iran’s Foreign Minister, in Leaked Tape, Says Revolutionary Guard Set Policies.” That’s also the focus of their long news report. The Times itself acknowledges the obvious. According to the “newspaper of record,” the tape “confirms what many have long suspected: [the foreign minister’s] role as the representative of the Islamic Republic on the world stage is severely constricted.”

The Times’ emphasis would be fine if that were all the news in the leaked tape. It’s not. The tape contains something much more important and much more damaging, which the Times chose to bury in the 22nd paragraph. It’s hard to bury it any deeper without striking oil.

The buried news is that former Secretary of State John Kerry divulged highly classified information about a U.S. ally to its deadliest enemy. Kerry, meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, “informed him that Israel had attacked Iranian interests in Syria at least 200 times, to his astonishment, Mr. Zarif said.” That’s the Times’ description.

Communist China’s Quest for Dominance in Antarctica by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17283/china-antarctica

Rare earth materials are necessary components in the building of such various equipment as combat aircraft, weapons systems, wind turbines and electric vehicles, among other things. They are available in different geographic locations, but are difficult to process. Last year, China produced 90% of the world’s rare earth materials.

“In 1984, during China’s first Antarctic expedition, armed PLA Navy (PLAN) personnel helped set up China’s first Antarctic station—a fact that was not properly acknowledged in China’s report to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research at the time… In recent years, PLA personnel have repeatedly participated in China’s Antarctic program without their presence being noted in China’s annual report under the Antarctic Treaty….” — Anne Marie Brady, report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2017.

China is reportedly deceiving international audiences about its intentions in Antarctica. “China adopts one message on Antarctic issues for foreign audiences and another for domestic audiences”. — Anne Marie Brady, report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2017.

“In 30 years, the Antarctic Treaty becomes modifiable, and the fate of a continent could hang in the balance.” — Professor Klaus Dodds, Royal Holloway University of London, July 12, 2018.

Both Russia and China are fighting to have prohibitions on resource extraction in the Antarctic relaxed. “A significant number of Chinese experts believe, contrary to international law, that the Madrid Protocol expires in 2048, along with the accompanying ban on mining in the Antarctic”. — Alexander B. Gray, National Interest, March 20, 2021.

It is probably not too far-fetched to assume that what lies behind the CCP’s concern for “environmental protection in Antarctica” will turn out to be desire for environmental exploitation.

Hardly a spot remains on the planet — and off — that China does not consider up for grabs, and that includes the North and South poles.