ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Democrats Introduce New Green New Deal Bill Calling Fossil Fuels ‘Racist’ By Bryan Preston

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/03/22/democrats-introduce-new-green-new-deal-bill-calling-fossil-fuels-racist-n1434177

The Hill reports that Rep. Always On-Camera (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Not An Actual Cherokee) have introduced a new bill that would “invest” $500 billion to “create” “green jobs.”

Use of multiple scare quotes is intentional. Neither the race-hustling professor nor AOC know much about job creation, having never created any meaningful number of non-government jobs.

Government “investing” necessarily entails government taxing, or government just printing more money, which neither the Democrats nor The Hill note. Those green jobs supposedly already exist anyway; why else would John Kerry tell the Keystone XL pipeline workers whose jobs his boss destroyed to go build solar panels?

The so-called green economy also relies extensively on mining and minerals processing, which aren’t very clean processes. In fact, those technologies depend on rare earth minerals, which mostly cannot be mined in the United States due to environmental regulations. They’re mined extensively in China, which doesn’t regulate as heavily, leaving the mining operations dirtier.

Buried in the two leftists’ announcement is this little gem.

“The BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act will make the big federal investments necessary to transform our country’s transportation system, confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy, and achieve the ambitious targets for 100% clean energy in America.”

“…confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy…”

I’m sorry, but that’s insane. It’s so illogical it’s barely possible to critique it, but here’s a try.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

WHO Virologists Would Say That Salvatore Babones

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/03/who-virologists-would-say-that/

In August 1967, a viral haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola hit the quiet university town of Marburg in what was then West Germany. The case fatality rate of over 20 per cent wasn’t quite on a par with the Black Death, but it was bad enough. Luckily, the initial outbreak affected only twenty-five people and was quickly contained, so total cases were limited to thirty-one and total deaths to seven. Germans, it seems, have a healthy aversion to contact with the body fluids of dying relatives, and hospitals were sufficiently well-equipped to safely handle infectious patients oozing their insides out. One laboratory technician did however fall sick after he cut himself during an autopsy on a patient who had died of the disease. Accidents will happen, even to Germans.

The mystery illness came to be known as Marburg Disease, back in the days when it was still socially acceptable to name diseases after the places where they first appeared. Its source was traced to a batch of African green monkeys that had been shipped from Uganda for use in polio research. At the time, it was uncertain whether Marburg Disease had originated in Uganda, or the monkeys had become infected en route. That’s because the monkeys had flown to Germany via Heathrow, and thus their trip was inevitably held up by strike action. During their involuntary two-day layover, they came into contact with animals from around the world, their British handlers, and the local rats, raising the possibility of cross-infection. Consider that the next time you fly through Heathrow.

The Lancet was the first medical journal to publish a paper identifying the cause of Marburg Disease, going to press with an explanation just three months after the first victims fell ill. True to form, they got it wrong, blaming a bacterial agent. Slower, more careful research revealed that the real cause was a virus.

What was known at the time, and has now been known for more than half a century, is that Marburg Disease escaped from a biological laboratory. But you wouldn’t know that from the World Health Organisation website entry for Marburg Disease, or even from the Wikipedia page. The Australian Department of Health is more forthcoming, noting that the laboratory workers had been exposed to tissue samples from monkeys, but draws no particular conclusions from that fact. And why should they? Question the safety of one laboratory, and you question the safety of all.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Warning Lights Are Flashing at Biden’s Domestic-Change Factory By Charles C. W. Cooke see note please

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/the-warning-lights-are-flashing-at-bidens-domestic-change-factory/

Good column except for this egregious statement:”Inexplicably, President Biden is well on the way to repeating a mistake that was made by his predecessor: creating a mess within the immigration system that does nothing of consequence for him except diminish his already-limited supply of political and civic goodwill. ” Why this gratuitous and false statement about Trump????rsk

Can he see them? Does anyone around him want to break the bad news?

S ince the final machines were installed on January 20th of this year, Joe Biden’s domestic-change factory has been surprisingly productive. Within days of its opening, the president had commissioned an assembly line for the manufacture of executive orders. Within six weeks, he had delivered an enormous batch of progressive spending priorities — albeit in a box that advertised a different product. Now, as he looks to ramp up fabrication, Biden is considering pushing for the construction of a second, high-efficiency factory on the site currently occupied by the Senate.

Thus far, at least, Biden’s investors seem pleasantly surprised by the yield. Were his presidency to be evaluated on Progressive MarketWatch, it would undoubtedly generate a “Buy!” And yet, despite this unbridled optimism, some warning lights are flashing down at quality control — frantic, scarlet, unceasing warning lights, of the sort that augur disaster when ignored. Can Biden see them? Does he want to see them? Does anyone around him want to tell him about them? The answers to these questions will determine the fate of the next two years, and, thus, his presidency.

The first warning light pertains to the Democrats’ next legislative priority: H.R. 1 — or, if you are susceptible to question-begging nomenclative bullying, the For the People Act. In the Democrats’ eyes, H.R. 1 represents nothing less than the means by which American democracy will be preserved: a law that will safely land Flight 93, permanently banish the ghosts of Jim Crow, and finally usher the country out of the undemocratic hellscape in which it struggled until 2019. Indeed, H.R. 1 is held to be so imperative that it is being considered as the pretext for a daring run at the elimination of the filibuster.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Project Veritas Wins Early Round In Defamation Lawsuit Against New York Times By Mollie Hemingway

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/project-veritas-wins-early-round-

A New York judge slammed The New York Times for blurring the lines between news and opinion. The paper had attempted to get a defamation lawsuit against it dismissed on the grounds that, among other things, its reporters were just expressing their personal opinions when they disparaged the investigative journalists at Project Veritas.

The judge ruled the lawsuit can go forward, finding that Project Veritas showed sufficient evidence that The New York Times may have been motivated by “actual malice” and acted with “reckless disregard” when it ran several articles against the investigative journalism outfit.

“[I]f a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,” Judge Charles Wood of the New York State Supreme Court said in his March 18, 2021 ruling.

The lawsuit stems from The New York Times’ coverage of an explosive video released in September purporting to show illegal voting practices within the Somali-American community in Rep. Ilhan Omar’s congressional district in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The video was based on Snapchat videos bragging about ballot harvesting posted by Liban Mohamed, the brother-in-law of a city council candidate named Jamal Osman. Project Veritas describes the video in its lawsuit:

Mr. Mohamed displayed a vast number of ballots littering his car’s dashboard while boasting in Somali, ‘[n]umbers don’t lie! You can see my car here is full. All these here are absentee ballots. Can’t you see? Look at al these, my car is full,’ and ‘[j]ust today we got 300 (ballots) for Jamal Osman.’ In another video, Mr. Mohamed filmed himself exiting an apartment complex with his hand stuffed with voters’ ballots and baosting, ‘[t]wo in the morning. Still hustling.’

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

A Detailed and Disturbing Overview: Joe Biden Looks Seriously Unwell Andrew Malcolm

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://redstate.com/andrewmalcolm/2021/03/22/a-detailed-and-disturbing-overview-joe-biden-looks-seriously-unwell-n347977

Something is very wrong with Joe Biden—mentally, medically, strategically—or all three.

Of course, he’s long been known as a tone-deaf gaffe-meister. Swearing on live mics. Patronizing politically. As head of administration transparency for Barack Obama, Biden closed the meetings.

Last year, as a candidate for the Democrat nomination, Joe spent much time looking lost in his own Delaware basement. All presidents since 1952 have used teleprompters, few more than Biden’s boss, Obama, who once comically used one standing in the dusty poop of a rodeo arena.

Those machines can be tricky, and the user is expected to appear to speak spontaneously and genuinely from the heart while robotically reading aloud every single word written by someone else scrolling before your eyes. Recall 2016 when Hillary Clinton, likely the worst modern presidential candidate, went on autopilot and even read aloud her parenthetical script directions “(PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE).”

Biden did overcome a childhood stutter. No easy task, but essential for politicians since the invention of radio. Biden’s problems, however, aren’t stuttering. He often appears confused, lost, unsteady, unprepared. Last fall he clearly had no idea what he wanted to say, so at times gave the teleprompter operator on-camera directions—“No, go back.” At one appearance Biden lost track of where he was, standing with his back to the camera.

He shunned spontaneous contact even with cooperative reporters, hardly taking questions. Aides, cupping his elbow for leverage, steered the 77-year-old (now 78) briskly through crowds. Before reducing personal appearances, Biden rambled, often without a point beyond being heard. One time when Jill Biden was speaking and gesturing, Biden put her hand in his mouth. Presumably, he was being silly, but it was a bizarre, worrisome action. Last month she interrupted one joint interview to finish her husband’s wandering answer.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Federal Judge: ‘One-Party Control Of The Press And Media Is A Threat To A Viable Democracy’ In a blistering dissent, Judge Laurence Silberman said The New York Times and Washington Post are ‘Democratic Party broadsheets.’By Mollie Hemingway

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/federal-judge-one-party-control-of-the-press-and-media-is-a-threat-to-a-viable-democracy/

The control of major media by one political party is a dangerous threat to the country, a federal judge warned in a blistering dissent that called for courts to revisit libel laws that generally protect the press from being held liable for their reporting.

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news,” wrote Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit for the Court of Appeals. “It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy.”

Silberman argued that it’s time for courts to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, which has shaped press law in favor of media outlets for more than five decades. The New York Times and the Washington Post “are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction,” Judge Silberman wrote in his March 19 dissent.

He said that orientation also controls the Associated Press and most large papers in the country, including the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe. “Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet,” Judge Silberman added.

Silicon Valley also has “enormous influence” over the distribution of news and it “similarly filters news delivery in ways favorable to the Democratic Party,” wrote Judge Silberman, highlighting the shocking suppression of stories about Joe Biden and his family when he was running for president.

In that case, Twitter and Facebook censored media outlets that reported accurately about the Biden family’s dealing with foreign entities. Twitter suspended users, including sitting White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, for merely sharing accurate information, and prevented people from sharing the information privately on its platform. Facebook said it would censor coverage of the Biden family corruption pending a “fact-check,” an unprecedented privilege given to Biden in the closing days of one of the closest presidential elections in history.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

On China, Biden Is an Empty Suit We desperately need to beef up our China policy. by Steve Postal

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://spectator.org/category/politics/asia/

The Biden administration continues to show itself to be an empty suit on foreign policy. In the wake of the crisis, er, challenges on the southern border, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez called Biden “the migrant president.” After President Biden confirmed in an interview that yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “killer,” Putin wished Biden good health and challenged Biden to a “basically live … open, direct discussion.”

Add China to the list of countries making us a laughingstock. The opening remarks of last week’s meeting between the Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan with China’s foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Alaska clearly reveal that the Biden administration lacks a credible, substantive China policy. There were several key takeaways from that meeting.

China does not believe the Biden administration will ever confront China, because Biden told them so.

Director Yang revealed that China is not at all threatened by the Biden administration, as “during the phone call between the presidents [of China and the United States], President Biden himself also talked about the importance of having no conflict or confrontation between our two countries.” Add to this President Biden’s past remarks seeming to sanitize the CCP’s genocide against the Uyghurs as a Chinese “cultural … norm,” the Biden administration has not given the CCP a reason to expect a hands-on approach from the United States.

The Biden team speaks of allies, but has no plan to leverage those allies.

Secretary Blinken was quick to mention that he had visited Japan and South Korea and that our two allies were “very interested in the discussions” that the U.S. and China are having, but he failed to articulate any policy from our alliances that would counter CCP aggression.

In response to what were essentially empty words from Team USA, the Chinese delegation discussed Japan and South Korea much more substantively. Director Yang replied,

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Yes, There Is A Border Crisis, And Democrats Created It Even when he was a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised the United States would accept all asylum seekers, although U.S. asylum has been studded with fraud and abuse for a long time. By Helen Raleigh

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/yes-there-is-a-border-crisis-and-democrats-created-it/

Although the Biden administration is attempting to deny and shift blame for the border crisis, its actions speak louder than words. A week ago, it had to send the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the southern border to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection bring illegal immigrants into the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., wasted little time blaming former U.S. President Trump for passing a broken immigration system to the current administration. However, it is President Biden’s immigration policies as well as Democrats’ ill-conceived immigration proposals that are responsible for today’s border crisis.

Even when he was a presidential candidate, Biden promised the United States would accept all asylum seekers, although U.S. asylum has been studded with fraud and abuse for a long time. As soon as he was sworn into office, President Biden signed three executive orders to undo the previous administration’s strong immigration law enforcement.

De Facto Open Borders from Day One

One such policy was the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” protocol, which made asylum seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration courts to hear their asylum petitions. One of Biden’s executive orders ended this Trump policy, and the United States has admitted asylum seekers into the country since then, regardless of their petitions’ credibility.

These asylum seekers can start working in the United States immediately while waiting for their court hearings. Due to backlogs in U.S. immigration courts, sometimes the wait is longer than a decade. Since many of the asylum seekers are actually economic migrants, the long wait doesn’t bother them because it helps them achieve their goal of working in the United States.

Many asylum seekers don’t ever bother to show up at their immigration hearings. This problem has been around for a long time and the Trump policy, imperfect as it was, was the first serious attempt to address it.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Calling for Civilizational War Against America and the West by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17196/china-civilizational-war

“Gunpowder” is one of those words Beijing uses when it wants others to know war is on its mind. The term is, more worryingly, also especially emotion-packed, a word Chinese propagandists use when they want to rile mainland Chinese audiences…. China’s Communist Party, therefore, is now trying to whip up nationalist sentiment, rallying the Chinese people, perhaps readying them for war.

More fundamentally, Beijing is… trying to divide the world along racial lines and form a global anti-white coalition….

Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s mostly pragmatic successor, counseled China to “hide capabilities, bide time.” Xi, however, believes China’s time has come in part because, he feels, America is in terminal decline.

Xi is serious. In January, he told his fast-expanding military it must be ready to fight “at any second.” That month, the Party’s Central Military Commission took from the civilian State Council the power to mobilize all of society for war. Militant states rarely prepare for conflict and then back down.

There was a “strong smell of gunpowder” when American and Chinese diplomats met in Anchorage beginning March 18. That’s according to Zhao Lijian of China’s foreign ministry, speaking just hours after the first day of U.S.-China talks concluded.

“Gunpowder” is one of those words Beijing uses when it wants others to know war is on its mind.

The term is, more worryingly, also especially emotion-packed, a word Chinese propagandists use when they want to rile mainland Chinese audiences by reminding them of foreign — British and white — exploitation of China in the Opium War period of the 19th century. China’s Communist Party, therefore, is now trying to whip up nationalist sentiment, rallying the Chinese people, perhaps readying them for war.

More fundamentally, Beijing is, with the gunpowder reference and others, trying to divide the world along racial lines and form a global anti-white coalition.

There was more than just a whiff of gunpowder in Alaska. The foreign ministry’s Zhao blamed the U.S. side for exceeding the agreed time limit for opening remarks from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Blinken and Sullivan overran their allotted four minutes by… 44 seconds.

The Party’s Global Times called the two presentations “seriously overtime.” The foreign ministry’s Zhao said the overrun prompted the Chinese side to launch into its two presentations, which lasted 20 minutes and 23 seconds, well over their allotted four minutes.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Beheading Children in Mozambique by Judith Bergman

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17194/mozambique-beheading-children

“I was at home with my four children,” one mother told Save the Children. “We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We couldn’t do anything because we would be killed too.” — Telegraph, March 13, 2021.

The jihadists are known in the area as al-Shabaab, but unlike the al-Shabaab that operates in Somalia, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda, the Mozambique group, also known as Ansar al-Sunna, is affiliated with Islamic State (ISIS).

The terrorist insurgency threatens not only Mozambique and its people, in addition to neighboring Tanzania, which is fighting jihadists on the border; some analysts estimate that “the insurgency in Mozambique has the potential to destabilise Southern Africa and embolden Islamists throughout the region.”

Al-Shabaab… made a far more significant breakthrough in August 2020, when the group seized a key port in the province, Mocimboa da Praia, near the country’s burgeoning natural gas field developments…. The gas field developments…. are worth an estimated $60 billion….

Al-Shabaab jihadists leading an insurgency in Cabo Delgado, the northernmost province of Mozambique, are now beheading children as young as 11. Military and humanitarian personnel working in the area reportedly say that they have never seen anything like the brutality that the terrorists have unleashed on the region with people “often hacked to death and mutilated with machetes” as well as “mass Islamic State-style beheadings”.

“That night our village was attacked and houses were burned. When it all started, I was at home with my four children,” one mother told Save the Children. “We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We couldn’t do anything because we would be killed too.”

“After my 11-year-old son was killed, we understood that it was no longer safe to stay in my village,” said another mother, who was forced to flee with her remaining three children. “We fled to my father’s house in another village, but a few days later the attacks started there too.”

“I saw my daughter trying to run to the boat with two other children. The people from al-Shabab chased them. They took my daughter and many others. Then they set fire to our village,” said Fatima Abdul, a 43-year-old woman who fled and is now homeless, living on a beach.