ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden’s latest executive order is his most frightening yet By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

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

“It also seems as if its worst part should be easy to challenge on constitutional grounds, assuming an honest Supreme Court.”

The Democrats who now control Washington, D.C., are determined to change America’s election laws to ensure that they never lose another election. The first salvo in this battle was the House’s vote passing H.R. 1, which opens federal elections to all types of fraud and manipulation. On Sunday, Joe Biden added his bit to the effort by signing yet another Executive Order, this one ostensibly to enhance “voting rights” on the anniversary of the Selma protests in 1965. However, the Order is drafted to allow the federal government to control political speech.

As with most of Biden’s initiatives, it frames the power grab in terms of race (emphasis mine):

The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy.  Free and fair elections that reflect the will of the American people must be protected and defended. But many Americans, especially people of color, confront significant obstacles to exercising that fundamental right. These obstacles include difficulties with voter registration, lack of election information, and barriers to access at polling places.  For generations, Black voters and other voters of color have faced discriminatory policies and other obstacles that disproportionally affect their communities.

Once again, the leftist premise for increasing opportunities for election fraud is the theory that Blacks lack the mental capacity to navigate the American system without the Democrat party at their side, supporting them. It’s an amazingly offensive position but, sadly, Democrats have conditioned Blacks for decades to believe in their own helplessness.

Having established the premise – Blacks are helpless – the edict sets out the solutions: Making it easy to register to vote, vote by mail, and cast ballots; making on-line access to information easier; distributing voter registration and vote-by-mail forms; and helping people fill out the forms. The more worrisome one requires “soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iraq: Turkey Set to Attack the Yazidis? by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17151/turkey-attack-yazidis

If Turkey targets Sinjar, it will not be the first Turkish military assault against the region. In 2017, Turkish warplanes dropped bombs on Sinjar, hitting a civilian clinic.

“‘[A]nalysts should understand that the fundamental reason that Yezidis join military units is to defend the land from a genocidal invasion…. no one, including Turkey, has the right to expel Yezidis from their homeland under the pretext of the conflict with PKK.” — Pari Ibrahim, Executive Director of the Free Yezidi Foundation, interview with Gatestone, February 3, 2021.

“We want Sinjar to be under the control of formal Iraqi security forces…. according to the rule of law. Turkey wants much more than Sinjar. Turkey wants to use various excuses to expand its military presence in Iraq and Syria. The whole PKK claim is just an excuse for Turkey’s expansionism in the region.” — Murad Ismael, former executive director of Yazda, interview with Gatestone, February 12, 2021

“Yezidis literally suffered a genocide at the hands of ISIS… Turkey did not take any steps whatsoever to combat ISIS before, during, or after the ISIS atrocities. But now, when Yezidis have been left homeless and are striving to rebuild our land, Turkey warns that it may unilaterally and illegally attack Sinjar…. this is our homeland. It is not a battleground for other forces to use as they see fit.” — Pari Ibrahim, interview with Gatestone, February 3, 2021.

Turkey’s armed forces launched a military operation called “Operation Claw-Eagle 2” against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in northern Iraq on February 10. The assault resulted in the deaths of 13 Turkish hostages, including military and police personnel who were being held by the PKK in a cave complex in the mountainous Gara region.

Turkey’s military operation, in the form of airstrikes, was completed on February 14. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced that 48 PKK members had been “neutralized” in the operation, adding that the PKK had shot the hostages dead — one in the shoulder, and the rest in their heads.

The PKK, however, said that the deaths of the hostages had been caused by the “Turkish army’s heavy bombardments and intense fighting outside and inside the [PKK] camp.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Iranian Terrorists Claim to Have Active Cells in Washington, D.C. ‘Resistance cells are rooted even in America and its capital’

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iranian-terrorists-claim-to-have-active-cells-in-washington-d-c/

Iranian militia groups claim to have active cells of operatives stationed in Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities, according to chatter in online forums used by these groups.

Kawtheryoon Electronic Team, a Telegram network used by Iranian militia groups and supporters, claimed in a recent posting that Iranian “resistance cells are rooted even in America and its capital,” according to a copy of the English-language posting captured by the Middle East Media Research Institute, which tracks radical groups.

The group additionally claimed that terror factions associated with Iran are growing stronger and attracting more support than ever before. The group demanded the United States withdraw all of its troops from Iraq and the Middle East. The post included a picture of caskets containing U.S. soldiers.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Role in Global Lockdowns: The Smoking Gun

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.aier.org/article/chinas-role-in-global-lockdowns-the-smoking-gun/

This time last year, Americans were blindsided by a shocking policy to shut down the US economy to control a virus. The presumption of the officials who enacted this policy is that it would be far more deadly than it turned out to be. They further presumed that the virus could be controlled using state power, precisely as China had claimed to have done in Wuhan. 

There are so many problems with all these presumptions, and AIER has covered them almost daily since January 2020. What we’ve lacked until now is an inside look into how US officials, the architects of the lockdowns, went about their decision making. What were their influences? Who was pushing for these policies? 

For the better part of a year, evidence has been mounting that the Chinese Communist Party played an outsized role. We have Dr. Fauci on the record praising the Wuhan response, and many World Health Organization officials as well. AIER has published much of this evidence already. Our December 8, 2020, article on the topic prompted a steady torrent of DDoS attacks on our site that continue to this day. 

Thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request initiated by Judicial Watch, we now have 300 pages of emails that landed on Fauci’s email account. They are a picture of chaos. Within that chaos, there is one dominant influence: China. We learn that a US delegation actually went to China to learn about pandemic response in mid-February. We see US officials praising the Communist Party and the “lockdowns” while plotting them right here in the US. 

There is much more to discover within the Fauci emails, which are revealing despite all the redactions. For your reading pleasure or disgust, we offer them here.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

J Street’s Selective Memory on Palestinian Antisemitism by Moshe Phillips

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/03/04/j-streets-selective-memory-on-palestinian-antisemitism/

Dylan Williams of J Street, in a recent op-ed, called on the Biden administration to “rebuild the U.S. relationship with moderate Palestinian leaders.”

Since presumably J Street would not claim that the leaders of the genocidal Hamas terrorist group are “moderate,” then the “moderate Palestinian leaders” Williams and J Street have in mind must be Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas and those around him.

Less than three years ago — on April 30, 2018 — Abbas stood before the opening session of the Palestine National Council (PNC) and delivered a blatantly antisemitic speech.

Abbas stated that Jews have “no historical ties” to the Land of Israel because they are actually descendants of the Turkish Khazar tribe (a bizarre and long-discredited conspiracy theory).

Also, Abbas said that there has never been an antisemitic incident against Jews in Arab countries — “Not even once,” he declared. “Do you think I’m exaggerating? I challenge you [to find] even one incident against Jews in over 1,400 years.”

Then Abbas insinuated that the Holocaust was caused by the Jews’ own “social behavior, [charging] interest, and financial matters.”

Abbas’ previous claims about the Holocaust — described in detail in his 1982 doctoral dissertation and subsequent book — include that only a few hundred thousand, not six million, Jews were killed by the Nazis; and that David Ben-Gurion collaborated with the Nazis to kill Jews, in order to garner world sympathy for creating a Jewish state.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hitting Woke Herd Immunity?  We have become an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation.  By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/07/hitting-woke-herd-immunity/

Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.

There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.

Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.

Scattershot Immunity

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

AOC’s Coven of Spitting, #MeFirst Cobras  What makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s beguiling, baby-like behavior dangerous is that she uses the idiom of emotional anguish to derive legislative leverage.  By Ilana Mercer

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/07/aocs-coven-of-spitting-mefirst-cobras/

The media scrum framed the Trump impeachment circus, round two, as an “emotional” affair.

Headlines homed in on the “emotion” surrounding the trial. “It Tears at Your Heart. Democrats Make an Emotional Case to Senators—and America—Against Trump,” blared one of many hackneyed screamers, this one from Time.

The case made by the managers “was both meticulous and emotional,” came the repetitive refrain.

Democrat Jamie Raskin, a representative from Maryland and a lead impeachment manager, sniffed “emotionally” as he related what to him was a heartbreaking tidbit: His (privileged) daughter expressed fear of visiting the Capitol again, presumably because of the January 6 fracas. That made Jamie cry. 

And when Jamie Raskin cries, normies outside Rome-on-the-Potomac laugh. Uproariously. 

Impeachment managers had warned all present in the Senate chamber that evidentiary footage would be upsetting. Their presentations were “intentionally emotional,” intoned CNN’s Dana Bash, who had paired up with one Abby Phillips for the “solemn” affair. Phillips’ “coverage” of all things Trump, in scratchy vocal fry, was a reminder that the Left’s “empaneled witches and their housebroken boys are guided more by the spirit of Madame Defarge than by lady justice.”

A lady in an armadillo outfit emoted a lot. She was impeachment manager Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.). Although not particularly fashionable or feminine, there was a ton of “emotional” praise on the internet for Plaskett’s attire. Armani’s armadillo apparel was certainly a preferred distraction to the decibels of weepy rage emitted over the Trump protest. 

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

We didn’t start this culture war The woke left rages against increasingly bizarre things, and then calls everyone else crazy. Tom Slater

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/05/we-didnt-start-this-culture-war/

Kermit the Frog. Mr Potato Head. Dr Seuss. The culture war becomes more infantile by the day. Quite literally. The big talking points of the past few weeks have focused almost exclusively on children’s TV shows, toys and authors.

First Disney Plus slapped a warning label on The Muppets Show, due to the ‘negative depictions and / or mistreatment of people or cultures’ it apparently features, acknowledging the ‘harmful impacts’ these puppets have inflicted on generations of youngsters.

Then there was the de-gendering of Mr Potato Head. Hasbro announced that the beloved toy brand would drop the honorific, so as to make it more gender inclusive (while still keeping the Mr and Mrs Potato Head characters).

Then they came for Dr Seuss, as it were. Joe Biden conspicuously removed any mention of the beloved author from his proclamation on Read Across America Day this week, which was up until now also known as Dr Seuss Day. A Virginia school district also instructed its teachers to ‘not connect Read Across America Day with Dr Seuss’. Most strikingly, the Seuss estate said it would cease publishing six of the more ‘problematic’ titles.

This followed a years-long campaign on the part of some academics to repose Seuss as a racist, due to the old stereotypical depictions in some of his books (ignoring the fact that while his work reflects some of the prejudices of his time, he also satirised racism, fascism and nationalism).

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Jonathan Turley: Scandalous failure of big city public schools has created a lost generation of kids Many school officials seem intent on replicating past failures

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/failure-city-public-schools-lost-generation-jonathan-turley

Tiffany France is understandably upset. She is a mother of three who works three jobs to support her family.

Her 17-year-old son failed 22 classes in Baltimore and was late or absent 272 days over his first three years of high school. 

As recently reported, France’s son almost graduated near the top half of his class at Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts after failing every class but three in four years. He has a 0.13 GPA. She thought her son would be graduating from the school in June.

According to Fox45 News “only one teacher requested a parent conference, which France says never happened.”

France ultimately had to pull her 17-year-old son out of the school and enroll him in an accelerated program to allow him to graduate from high school in 2023.

Her story is tragically all-too-familiar. The coronavirus pandemic led to the closure of an already failing public school system, as evident with France’s children.

We have a lost generation of kids who have neither the education nor the trained skills to succeed in society.

As teachers’ unions fight to keep schools closed, the true cost is being felt by students who are racking up failing grades, dropping out of virtual classes, increasing drug use, and, in rising numbers, committing suicide. 

Watching this happen to the public schools has been particularly hard for some of us who are ardent supporters of public education.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Despite $460 Mil Budget for Capitol Cops, Pelosi Wants More Money Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 8th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/despite-460-mil-budget-capitol-cops-pelosi-wants-daniel-greenfield/

This is a joke. Right?

The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers and they’re the 19th largest police force in America. If that’s not enough to protect a few buildings, then maybe it’s time to ask some serious questions about the competence and corruption of the key players in this mess.

The Capitol Police have over 2,000 sworn officers. A police force dedicated to protecting Capitol Hill has more personnel in its service than the police forces of most of the country.

Congress’ private cops are the 19th largest police force in the country. It’s a larger force than the police forces of Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, or Milwaukee with a massive $460 million budget.

While Democrats advocated defunding the police, their private police force budget shot up from $375 million in 2016 to $460 million in 2020. After the Capitol Hill riot, expect it to go higher.

Much higher.

How much higher? Pelosi is clamoring for more cash.

Speaker Pelosi said they have “drafts” of security proposals, but protecting the Capitol properly will require more funding.