NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Pollsters Should Be Asking about the COVID-Stimulus Bill By David Harsanyi *****

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/what-pollsters-should-be-asking-about-the-covid-stimulus-bill/

“In this environment, a party with a slim and fleeting majority can ram through multi-trillion-dollar bills with massive inherent costs dumped on an entire country without any genuine debate. It is tragic — and certainly not something to celebrate — that we have an ignorant citizenry cheering on passage of bills that come with generational consequences.”

For starters: ‘Do you support a bill that sends only 7 percent of its funds to help alleviate the effect of COVID?’

T here is overwhelming bipartisan support for the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” No doubt about it. Every poll says so. The latest Morning Consult poll, for instance, informs us that Americans support the bill by a wide 75–18 percent margin. Among Democrats, it’s 90–5. Among the GOP, it’s 59–35. Among independents, it’s 71–20.

As the Washington Post’s lead “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler put it recently on Twitter, presidents dream “of getting numbers like this for a major piece of legislation — especially if no one from the opposition party votes for it.”

Indeed, they do. But the dream can be made reality only if the media abdicate their responsibility of critically reporting and properly highlighting the partisan boondoggles in trillion-dollar legislation. How popular would the “American Rescue Plan” be if pollsters asked voters grown-up questions rather than push-polling for Democrats?

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How Goes the Democrats’ Attempt to Steal a Congressional Race? By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-goes-the-democrats-attempt-to-steal-a-congressional-race/

The House Administration Committee held a meeting today to consider Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss a challenge from her once and forever opponent, Democrat Rita Hart. In November, Miller-Meeks triumphed over Hart in a historically close race in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district; the Republican won by just six votes, or 0.0015 percentage points. This wasn’t some preliminary result, but one arrived at after a recount. Nevertheless, Hart has persisted with her challenge and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has backed her up, observing back in December that “the issue relating to Iowa is an issue for the House Administration Committee” and adding that the “House decides who it will seat.” As National Review‘s John McCormack noted at the time, it is true that the House reserves the right to seat whomever it deems the winner, but it’s only overruled local election officials once in the last 35 years — also a project of the Democratic Party.

Today’s proceedings began with Administration committee chairwoman Zoe Lofgren announcing that she was of the opinion that “rather than granting or denying contestee Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss at this time, I would recommend that we postpone the motion’s disposition to give the committee an opportunity to consider the merits of the case.” Hart, Lofgren claimed, is making “specific, credible allegations” that lawful ballots were excluded from the count.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden Is The Commander In Hiding Biden ‘has replaced in-person meetings with video calls. He allows only a limited number of people in the building…He doesn’t leave the White House often…. He isn’t planning any foreign or domestic trips.’By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/10/joe-biden-is-the-commander-in-hiding/

78-year-old President Joe Biden is nowhere to be seen, aside from sporadic television appearances through a black mask the size of a Rawlings baseball mitt, or appearing to be on the verge of collapse from dehydration in social media videos.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced Biden’s name will not appear on the $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus direct payments being sent out to millions of Americans this month. “This is not about him,” Psaki said. “This is about the American people getting relief.”

While Psaki claims this action is due to the federal government’s efforts to expedite the relief process, it is a strikingly on-cue representation of Biden’s reclusive campaign and presidency. Biden’s name missing from the checks is an avatar of him going missing from campaigning and now the presidency. The man has repeatedly and noticeably avoided the public eye since deciding to run for the president for the third time.

According to a final count of 2020 presidential rallies, Biden hosted a total of 53 compared to former President Trump’s 86. Biden canceled public speaking events in advance, notably all rallies prior to his debate with Trump in October.

Dozens of Biden’s supposed “rallies” were performed digitally, presumably out of fear of contracting COVID or perhaps in desperation for another Botox shot to keep the facade going that he is actually in fine mental and physical condition to be the president. In a virtual town hall back in April 2020, Biden seemingly fell asleep on camera with Hillary Clinton. In October 2020, he claimed to voters in Toledo, Ohio he was running for the Senate.

The Biden “gaffes” just kept on coming. They still do.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Prophet Of The Trump Era Review of Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public,” the book that called both an uprising and a reaction Matt Taibbi

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-trump-era-255

I entered Martin Gurri’s world on August 1, 2015. Though I hadn’t read The Revolt of the Public, at the time a little-known book by the former CIA analyst of open news sources, I hit a disorienting moment of a type he’d described in his opening chapter. There are times, he wrote, “when tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday… the compass cracks, by which we navigate existence. We are lost at sea.”

Gurri’s book is about how popular uprisings are triggered by collapses of faith in traditional hierarchies of power. I felt such a collapse that day in Waterloo, Iowa, covering the Republican presidential primary. The first debate was five days away and the man expected to occupy center stage, Donald Trump, held a seemingly inexplicable six-point lead.

Two weeks before, on July 18th, Trump lashed out against former Republican nominee John McCain. Even McCain’s critics considered his physical and mental scars from years as a Vietnam war prisoner to be unassailable proofs of patriotic gravitas, but the service-evading Trump was having none of it. “I don’t like losers,” he said, adding, “He’s only a war hero because he was captured.” It was the universal belief among colleagues in campaign journalism that this was an unsurvivable gaffe, a “Dean scream” moment. We expected him to apologize and wash out. Instead, he called McCain a “dummy” and kept a firm grasp on the lead.

A different candidate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, was in Waterloo. Two years before, Time all but dubbed Christie the favorite for 2016 with a silhouette cover portrait, over the nastily shallow (but publicity-generating) double-entendre headline, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Christie was every Washington consultant’s idea of a “crossover” superstar. I’d describe the concept in Rolling Stone as someone “mean enough for the right-wing, but also knows a gay person or once read a French novel.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Policy: Covid on Steroids? By Joel Kotkin

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2021/03/09/climate_policy_covid_on_steroids_767399.html

For most people around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic seems a great human tragedy, with deaths, bankruptcies, and fractured mental states. Yet for some, especially among the green Twitterati and in some policy shops, the pandemic presents a grand opportunity to enact permanent lockdowns on economic growth, population growth, and upward mobility.

Pointing to reductions in greenhouse gases due to the lockdowns, some see the pandemic’s wreckage of much of the economy – including the mass destruction of businesses and family budgets – not as a plague of its own, but, as a British Climate Assembly put it, as a “test run” for a new climate-driven economy.

“We have an “incredible responsibility” to “actually converge the solutions – at least the financial solutions – to coronavirus to the financial solutions for climate,” hyperbolized former UN Climate Chief and UN Paris pact architect Christiana Figueres, “because what we cannot afford to do is to jump out of the frying pan of Covid and into the raging fire of climate change.”

President Donald Trump may have been responsible for the vaccine success of Operation Warp Speed, but now his fast-track approach, ironically, is being adopted by climate campaigners in a drive to change our entire economy in short order. After all, they argue, the lockdowns demonstrated that governments can impose without constitutional constraint virtually any restrictions to address a perceived crisis. And the pandemic, by killing much of the economy – particularly travel – temporarily succeeded in reducing greenhouse gases by as much as 7 percent worldwide and 12 percent in the U.S.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

No borders, no country by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA-4)

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/no-borders-no-country

Before the lockdown, the Left took a wrecking ball to our economy last year, we were enjoying one of the greatest expansions of economic opportunity in our lifetimes. Unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years; the poverty rate was at its lowest in 60 years. Wage growth was the strongest in 40 years. The wage gap was narrowing for the first time in many years as blue-collar wages increased dramatically. The unemployment rate for women was the lowest in 70 years. For African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, veterans and disabled Americans, and those without a high school diploma, unemployment was the lowest ever recorded.

The tax and regulatory relief Republicans won in 2017 and 2018 explain much of this success, but something else was going on that caused the extraordinary improvement of wages for unskilled and low-skilled workers. The Trump administration restored control of our borders and stemmed the flood of low-wage labor that had been suppressing American workers’ wages for decades.

Big business and big agriculture hated former President Donald Trump’s immigration policy because it forced them to pay their workers higher wages. But in the growing economy it produced, working Americans who had been left behind for decades finally began to prosper. Did we learn anything from this unprecedented blue-collar boom? Apparently not, judging from the Democrats’ zeal to open our borders to new waves of illegal immigration.

The president’s executive orders have already produced a new migrant crisis on the southern border.

One abandoned the border wall mid-construction. Another undermines the long-standing requirement that immigrants support themselves and not burden American taxpayers. Another ends the remain-in-Mexico policy for those making asylum claims, most of which are false. Yet another effectively releases illegal immigrants accompanied by youths under age 18 directly into the United States. Another grants what amounts to sanctuary status for a wide variety of criminal offenses, including drunk driving and sex offenses. Another restores unrestricted travel from hotbeds of international terrorism.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Dan Gelernter :Cancel Culture’s Newest Victims Cultural power is shifting, decentralizing—one might say diversifying. And it is actual, meaningful diversity—that is, diversity of thought rather than diversity of appearance.

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/09/cancel-cultures-newest-victims/

Ebay will no longer list certain Dr. Seuss books, and the Dr. Seuss Foundation has decided to “recall” six titles. The reporting on the subject, even in the Wall Street Journal, was too cowardly to tell us exactly what in these six books was offensive, but we are given to understand that they contained anti-wokeness.

Following hard on the heels of this courageous cancellation, Turner Classic Movies has decided to “reexamine” 18 “troubling and problematic” films of the past, including “My Fair Lady,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and “Psycho,” all of which are now considered deeply sexist or racist or both. (This despite the fact that “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” for example, is explicitly and aggressively antiracist.)

That TCM’s list contains just 18 movies shows how little the woke brigade knows about movies. I grew up watching classic films almost exclusively, and can think off the top of my head of more than 200 movies that the modern Left would find offensive for one reason or another: Women in traditional roles (sometimes even happy about it), other cultures being mocked (and mocking us back), blackface routines (like Fred Astaire’s extraordinary homage to the African American dancer Bill Robinson), and more besides.

It’s hard to think of a single film from more than a couple of decades ago that wouldn’t upset the Left in some way. These films are products of their times, and often great masterpieces. They can’t be blamed for reflecting prevailing prejudices any more than you could blame someone for believing in a geocentric solar system before Galileo came along. 

MEDIA Comments turned off

Criticizing Public Figures, Including Influential Journalists, is Not Harassment or Abuse As social media empowers uncredentialed people to be heard, society’s most powerful actors seek to cast themselves as victims and delegitimize all critiques. Glenn Greenwald

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/criticizing-public-figures-including?token=eyJ

“Knowing that you will be vilified as some kind of brute abuser if you criticize a New York Times reporter is, for many people, too high of a price to pay for doing it. So people instead refrain, stay quiet, and that is the obvious objective of this lowly strategy.”

The most powerful and influential newspaper in the U.S., arguably the West, is The New York Times. Journalists who write for it, especially those whose work is featured on its front page or in its op-ed section, wield immense power to shape public discourse, influence thought, set the political agenda for the planet’s most powerful nation, expose injustices, or ruin the lives of public figures and private citizens alike. That is an enormous amount of power in the hands of one media institution and its employees. That’s why it calls itself the Paper of Record.

One of the Paper of Record’s star reporters, Taylor Lorenz, has been much discussed of late. That is so for three reasons. The first is that the thirty-six-year-old tech and culture reporter has helped innovate a new kind of reportorial beat that seems to have a couple of purposes. She publishes articles exploring in great detail the online culture of teenagers and very young adults, which, as a father of two young Tik-Tok-using children, I have found occasionally and mildly interesting. She also seeks to catch famous and non-famous people alike using bad words or being in close digital proximity to bad people so that she can alert the rest of the world to these important findings. It is natural that journalists who pioneer a new form of reporting this way are going to be discussed.

The second reason Lorenz is the topic of recent discussion is that she has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about influential people, and attempting to ruin the reputations and lives of decidedly non-famous people. In the last six weeks alone, she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room in which she was lurking (he had not) and then accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist in a different Clubhouse room to attack her (he, in fact, had said nothing).

MORE HEADLINES Comments turned off

MORE HEADLINES MARCH 10, 2021

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

Kamala Harris Called for Kavanaugh’s Impeachment, But She’s Silent on Andrew Cuomo https://www.lifenews.com/2021/03/09/kamala-harris-called-for-kavanaughs-impeachment-but-shes-silent-on-andrew-cuomo/

‘The Five’ say Cuomo is ‘hanging on by his fingernails’ as allegations continue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_DqyX1qT_s

Pelosi Task Force Seeks Permanent D.C. Military Occupation That Can Self-Deploy Without

Presidential Authorization https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/pelosi-task-force-seeks-permanent-dc-military-daniel-greenfield/

Entire Staff Of Nevada Democratic Party Quits After Socialists Win Key Leadership Positions https://thejewishvoice.com/2021/03/entire-staff-of-nevada-democratic-party-quits-after-socialists-win-key-leadership-positions/

Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer May Face Charges for Order Killing Nursing Home Residents https://www.lifenews.com/2021/03/09/michigan-gov-gretchen-whitmer-may-face-charges-for-order-killing-nursing-home-residents/

The Emerging Existential Crisis at the Border https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2021/03/09/the-emerging-existential-crisis-at-the-border-n2585906?

How the border crisis could bring the end of the republic https://www.wnd.com/2021/03/border-crisis-bring-end-republic/

LA teachers warned to not share vacation pics as union seeks safe return to classrooms: report https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-teachers-warned-to-not-share-vacation-pics-as-union-seeks-safe-return-to-classrooms-report

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Switzerland: Voters Approve ‘Burqa Ban’ by Soeren Kern

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17161/switzerland-burqa-ban

The referenda reflect the determination of a majority of Swiss voters to preserve Swiss traditions and values in the face of runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

Switzerland now joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, all of which currently have full or partial bans on religious and non-religious face coverings.

“In Switzerland our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms.” — Walter Wobmann, member of the Swiss People’s Party, the biggest political party in Switzerland.

“Some Muslims also understood that the niqab is a clear symbol of radical Islam.” — Jean-Luc Addor, member of the Swiss People’s Party.

“Saying yes to the ban on veiling is saying no to a totalitarian ideology that has no place in a democracy.” — Saïda Keller-Messahli, founder and president of the Forum for a Progressive Islam.

“The full veil, which turns the woman into a faceless being without an identity, is a symbol of misogynistic political Islam. It is the most visible symbol of an overall fascist ideology, which includes gender apartheid, but also anti-Semitism and gay hatred….” — Gisela Widmer, Swiss author and playwright.

Swiss voters have narrowly approved a proposal to ban face coverings in public spaces. The measure comes just over a decade after citizens voted to ban the construction of minarets, the tower-like structures on mosques that are often used to call Muslims to prayer.

The referenda reflect the determination of a majority of Swiss voters to preserve Swiss traditions and values in the face of runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

Switzerland now joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, all of which currently have full or partial bans on religious and non-religious face coverings.

The binding referendum, approved on March 7 by 51.2% of voters, is popularly known as the “burqa initiative,” although the proposal does not specifically mention burqas or niqabs, the face-coving garments worn by some Muslim women. The ban encompasses most face coverings, including the bandanas and masks sometimes used by violent street protesters, and applies to all public spaces, including parks, restaurants, shops, and public transport.

The measure allows for some exceptions: health (anti-Covid masks); weather (scarves), safety (motorcycle helmets) and local customs (carnival costumes). Face coverings may also be worn inside houses of worship.