31 Days In, Democrats Haven’t Accomplished A Single COVID Promise To The American Worker By Christopher Bedford

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/20/31-days-in-democrats-havent-accomplished-a-single-covid-promise-to-the-american-worker/

The Democratic Party woke up Saturday morning to its 31st day of leading both the executive and legislative branches of government. They had run on “immediate [economic] relief” to Americans put down and out by largely Democratic COVID shutdowns. Relief, you might notice, that hasn’t actually come.

On Jan. 14, less than one week before taking the oath of office, President Joe Biden promised, “We’ll make sure that our emergency small business relief is distributed swiftly and equitably, unlike the first time around. We’re going to focus on small businesses, on Main St. We’ll focus on minority-owned small businesses, women-owned small businesses.”

But so far in the first full month that Sen. Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and President Biden have been in control, the only money that has gone toward American relief has been from that money allocated while President Donald Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell still joined Pelosi in power, including $1 trillion that remains unspent.

Instead of their promised relief, over the past month Democrats have tried the former president, re-entered the Paris Climate Accords, locked down the U.S. Capitol, and freed up American tax dollars to go to aborting children abroad.

So what about American business owners, parents, and workers suffering under COVID-19 restrictions? Anything for them? So far nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. President Joe Biden has mandated masks on busses, for example, and Vice President Kamala Harris has claimed credit for the Trump administration’s vaccine development. Biden has also established a COVID board, created a COVID task force, developed a COVID plan, reviewed COVID, assessed COVID, and held a COVID town hall. Lovely.

“Our rescue plan will provide flexible grants to help those hardest-hit small businesses survive the pandemic,” Biden promised more than five weeks ago. His administration, he said, would “help entrepreneurs of all backgrounds create and maintain jobs, plus provide the essential goods and services communities depend upon.”

Instead, at this week’s CNN town hall Biden told Wisconsin brewer Tim Eichinger, a Democrat who is struggling to keep his employees on and his business afloat, to give White House staff his address so they could mail him that COVID plan — the one he laid out five weeks ago. It’s the same one Democrats have been sitting on for a month while they fight over things like a $15 national minimum wage hike unlikely to pass the Senate and which even the president admits likely isn’t going anywhere.

MORE HEADLINES: FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Joe Biden Calls Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Day Six of Winter Storms https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/19/joe-biden-calls-texas-gov-greg-abbott-on-day-six-of-winter-storms/

Biden Silent Over Big Tech Suspensions Because He ‘Benefits From the Censorship,’ Banned Journalist Says https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-silent-over-big-tech-suspensions-because-he-benefits-from-the-censorship-banned-journalist-says_3703543.html

Facebook Says It Will Fact Check Global Warming ‘Misinformation’ https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/02/19/facebook-says-it-will-fact-check-global-warming-misinformation/

At least 2 400 cold temperature records broken or tied in the U.S. from February 12 to 16, 2021 https://watchers.news/2021/02/18/2400-cold-temperature-records-broken-or-tied-us-february-2021/

Cities Slammed by Winter Storms Face New Crisis: No Water https://www.theepochtimes.com/cities-slammed-by-winter-storms-face-new-crisis-no-water_3703422.html

Bill Gates’s Climate Hysteria https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/bill-gatess-climate-hysteria/

Bill Gates Applauds World’s Worst Polluter China for ‘Making Climate a Priority’ https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/02/19/bill-gates-applauds-worlds-worst-polluter-china-for-making-climate-a-priority/

Politico: So, This Andrew Cuomo is Kind of a Toxic Bully, Huh? https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2021/02/19/politico-so-this-andrew-cuomo-is-a-pretty-toxic-character-huh-n2585011?

The Media Went From Hyping Cuomo to Destroying Him Because It Fit the Left’s Agenda https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/media-went-hyping-cuomo-destroying-him-because-it-daniel-greenfield/

Media Give Cruz’s Cancun Trip Far Greater Attention Than Cuomo’s Nursing Home Scandal https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/02/19/media-gives-cruzs-cancun-trip-far-greater-attention-than-cuomos-nursing-home-scandal-n2584999?

AstraZeneca vaccine faces resistance in Europe after health workers suffer side-effects https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe-astrazeneca-idUKKBN2AI237

Report: Ghislaine Maxwell Allegedly Refused to Help Find Bill Clinton Tapes Because It Would Hurt Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Run https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/19/report-ghislaine-maxwell-allegedly-refused-to-help-find-bill-clinton-tapes-because-it-would-hurt-hillary-clintons-2016-run/

Delete Facebook trends as public turn on social media giants who think they are above law https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1399748/facebook-australia-Delete-Facebook-Boycott-Zuckerberg

China plans to rule the world and we are playing straight into their hands – COMMENT https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1346074/china-news-south-china-sea-dispute-xi-jinping-chinese-military-rule-the-world?

As Trump Predicted, Under Biden China Owns the United States https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/trump-predicted-under-biden-china-owns-united-lloyd-billingsley/

U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar: Biden Administration Should Support Referral Of Israeli Officials To The ICC; U.S. Should Hold Chinese Government Accountable For Genocide Of Uyghur Muslims https://www.memri.org/tv/american-congresswoman-ilhan-omar-muslims-run-president-israel-officers-referred-icc-welcome-houthi-removal-terrort-list

Rashida Tlaib speaks at Kashmir event featuring jihad supporters https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/02/rashida-tlaib-speaks-at-kashmir-event-featuring-jihad-supporters?

Amazon’s 103 Hate Items: Serial Killers, Nazi Symbols, and Terrorist Flags https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/techwatch/corinne-weaver/2021/02/16/amazons-103-hate-items-serial-killers-nazi-symbols-and

 

With Libraries like These, Who Needs to Burn Books? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/with_libraries_like_these_who_needs_to_burn_books.html

Why burn books when libraries are doing the censor’s work?  On January 25, 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) Council reviewed the role of libraries in condemning white supremacy and fascism.

Lindsay Cronk, who helped develop a resolution to “condemn white supremacy and fascism as antithetical to library work,” believes this work to be “urgent.”  Cronk bases this assessment on the January 6 attack in D.C.

Just a little more than two weeks ago, a mob, inflamed by misinformation and disinformation in the form of ideological rhetoric and carrying fascist and white supremacist symbols including nazi swastikas and confederate flags, attempted to interrupt and counteract democratic process.  They were emboldened by inaction from American institutions.

Facts be damned as Cronk continues.

Furthermore, “Over the course of consecutive ALA conferences, white allies have interrogated our fragility, and we’ve had experts provide a vision of how we can become an antiracist profession. We’ve  listened to and amplified the voices of our colleagues of color enough to acknowledge that diversity is not the solution to racism or fascism.”

Finally, in impeccable radical leftist language, the ALA wants to explore “how we can do intellectual freedom and social justice work together.”

In order to “disrupt whiteness in libraries and librarianship,” the following titles are recommended.

Collins, P. H. (2019). Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory. Duke University Press.
Crenshaw, K., N. Gotanda, and K. Thomas. (1996). Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press.
Zuberi, T. and E. Bonilla-Silva. (2008). White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology. Rowman & Littlefield.

Signs that Iran Might Be Continuing Its Nuclear Weapons Program By Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Raphael Ofek

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-nuclear-weapons-program/

 Samples recently collected by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at two Iranian sites showed traces of radioactivity. Tehran had not reported any nuclear activity at these sites and denied IAEA inspectors access to them until just a few months ago. The findings suggest that Iran, in violation of the JCPOA nuclear agreement it signed in July 2015, has continued to conduct activities related to nuclear military development.

Samples collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed traces of radioactivity at two Iranian sites where Tehran has not reported any nuclear activity. Although the IAEA refrained from naming the sites in its quarterly report of June 5, 2020, they were identified last year by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. The identification of the sites was based on information extracted from the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled out of Tehran and into Israel in January 2018.

The first site visited by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 was a pilot plant for uranium conversion with an emphasis on the production of UF6 (uranium hexafluoride, a uranium compound which, in its gas phase, enables the enrichment of uranium by centrifuges). This site, located about 75 km southeast of Tehran, operated under the aegis of the Amad military nuclear program. In documents from the Iranian nuclear archive, this location is referred to as the “Tehran Site.” The facility was dismantled in 2004.

The other site was Marivan, located near the town of Abadeh in central Iran. This facility, also part of the Amad program, was designed to conduct “cold tests” of nuclear weapons (that is, to simulate activation of a nuclear explosive device using natural uranium rather than nuclear weapons grade uranium). This included operating a multipoint explosive system for the activation of a nuclear weapon as well as the development of its neutron initiator.

According to satellite imagery published by the Institute for Science and International Security, the Iranian authorities razed part of the Marivan facility in July 2019, more than a year before they allowed IAEA inspectors access to the facility. It is likely that this was done to prevent exposure of nuclear activities that had taken place there in the past. (This was not the first time the Islamic regime had razed nuclear sites: it did so at the Lavizan-Shian facility in Tehran in 2004 and the Parchin facility in 2012.) It is possible that the traces of radioactive materials found in samples taken by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 indicate renewed efforts to develop a neutron initiator for nuclear weapons previously conducted at the Marivan site.

Israel Policy in the Biden Administration by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16988/israel-policy-biden-administration

The Obama administration negotiated a nuclear deal (JCPOA) with the Iranian mullahs that was bad for the U.S. (which found it had only legitimized the regime that the U.S. Department of State called the “world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism”) and bad for Israel (the deal would allow Iran, after a few years, to become a full-blown nuclear power).

The Biden administration has already promised to return the U.S. to the JCPOA, provided that Iran will once again agree to honor its terms. The Iranians, based on a well-established track record, most likely will not honor those terms. That will certainly create friction not only with Israel… but also with many of Iran’s Sunni neighbors, who are also alarmed by the prospect of a nuclear-armed, Shi’ite, aspiring hegemon in the region.

The last few years… have shown that Arab counties seem tired of a Palestinian intransigence that has only held everyone back.

Even if one dislikes Trump, the recent advances in a warm peace brought by the Abraham Accords represent a truly new hope for the region and, significantly, a new willingness by Arab nations finally to leave behind an ancient and outdated hostility. Will the Biden administration be so short-sighted as to drop the ball on this initiative simply because it is associated with an earlier administration that now happens to be disliked? Or will it instead bid for a legacy based on even more successes — and perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize — by fostering even greater interdependence among regional neighbors in the Middle East?

U.S. policy towards Israel stays fairly consistent despite changing administrations. Even after President Barack Obama’s “apology tour” to the Arab world early in the first term of his presidency — and his last-minute attempt to carve out a de facto Palestinian state through UN Security Council Res. 2334 — official U.S. policy towards Israel did not significantly change. That held true despite Obama’s efforts and the palpable personal dislike between himself and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

U.S. policy towards Israel’s neighbors is what has defined the character of each administration’s relationship with the Jewish State. The Obama administration was keen to improve America’s standing among the Muslim nations of the Middle East. His administration negotiated a nuclear deal (JCPOA) with the Iranian mullahs that was bad for the U.S. (which found it had only legitimized the regime that the U.S. Department of State called the “world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism”), and bad for Israel (the deal would allow Iran, after a few years, to become a full-blown nuclear power). That deal was one of many reasons for the success of President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Turkey Ravages Cyprus by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17009/turkey-ravages-cyprus

Six years after Turkey invaded Cyprus, another military coup d’état, in 1980 in Turkey, would destroy whatever crumbs of freedoms remained. According to US secret diplomatic documents, at least 650,000 people were detained. Many were tortured and hundreds died in custody.

“There is a rule in the [Turkish] Special Warfare: To increase the strength of the people, some of their values must be sabotaged as if [the sabotage were conducted] by the enemy. [For example], a mosque can be burned. We burned a mosque in Cyprus.” — Turkish General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, Habertürk, September 23, 2010.

In addition to Greek Cypriots, Armenian, Maronite, and other non-Muslim Cypriots were also forcibly displaced. The result was that Turkey effectively crushed the Christian population.

Today Turkey still calls the atrocities it committed in Cyprus in 1974 “a peace operation.”

The international community may be unaware of it, but Europe includes a ghost town located in the Republic of Cyprus. Since 1974, it has been under Turkish occupation, which has looted and ethnically cleansed its indigenous population.

Designated a military zone by the Turkish army 46 years ago, when Greek Cypriots were forced to flee invading Turkish forces, a part of the Cypriot district of Famagusta has remained deserted.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared in October 2020:

“[T]he two main streets and the coast in the ‘Maraş region’ [Famagusta in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus], which were closed since the 1974 peace operation, have recently been opened to the use of the Cypriot people….. The closed Maraş region belongs to the Turkish Cypriots; it should be known this way…

“I call out to our fellow Turks in northern Cyprus, to my Turkish brothers. This land is yours. You have to lay claim to these lands. You also need to protect the political will that lays claim to these lands. If we can put this out fully, I believe that the future in Cyprus will be very different.”

The Iran Mediation Bazaar by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17088/iran-mediation

First, he must persuade Tehran to treat Iraq as an independent nation-state, not a glacis for the Islamic Republic in its campaign to “export revolution.”

Revival of the 1977 trade accord could help end the current chaos and enable Tehran and Baghdad to secure income from tariffs and taxation. Setting mutually accepted rules on charities could also help both curb money laundering and tax evasion through fake religious charities linked to crime syndicates and security services.

The big enchilada in al-Hakim’s imaginary mediation would be the reopening of Shatt al-Arab, the border waterway closed and clogged during the war. Re-opened, the Shatt could ensure the revival of Basra in Iraq and Khorramshahr in Iran which were the region’s largest ports for centuries. Dredging and remodeling the waterway could cost some $20 billion, worth considering if both sides created a joint navigation management agency.

Ah, we dropped the word “normalization”…. If the Islamic Republic can’t normalize relations even with Iraq, how could it normalize with the American “Great Satan”?

If wise al-Hakim wants to mediate, let him start with his two homelands.

With Donald Trump out of the White House, wannabe do-gooders have thrown their hats, or turbans, into the ring as mediators between Tehran and Washington.

First, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to seize the opportunity of Joe Biden’s victory to build a bridge with Iran. Then it was the turn of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to don the mantle of honest broker. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has also made musings about mediation.

Biden Fires Chicago U.S. Attorney Hot on the Trail of Democratic Corruption By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/20/biden-fires-chicago-u-s-attorney-hot-on-the-trail-of-democratic-corruption-n1427040

You’ve probably never heard of Chicago’s U.S. attorney John Lausch. For the last two years, he has been going after some of the biggest, most powerful Democrats in the state of Illinois.

His office indicted a Chicago alderman who had been serving since 1969. Edward Burke had been in the crosshairs of prosecutors for four decades but it wasn’t until Lausch came into office that he was indicted.

Then there’s the case of the most powerful state politician in the United States, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. His aides and cronies have been indicted for various crimes of influence over the years and Lausch has now set his sights on Madigan himself.

In fact, it’s believed Lausch has targeted some other high-profile Democratic politicians in other investigations. It’s a target-rich environment and Democrats in Illinois have gotten extremely nervous about who Lausch will go after next.

Now it appears, that bringing down corrupt Democratic politicians will be the job of the next U.S. attorney. Along with 56 other U.S. attorneys named by former president Trump, Lausch will lose his job — fired by Joe Biden. “It’s tradition,” said Biden supporters. This is true. But it’s also “tradition” to keep prosecutors in place who were pursuing high-profile cases. Lausch certainly qualified under that criteria.

Climate Hysterics Urging Biden to ‘Go Well Beyond’ Paris Climate Deal Limits By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/20/climate-hysterics-urging-biden-to-go-well-beyond-paris-climate-deal-limits-n1427096

The once-in-a-century storm and cold snap that hit the South this past week has given the climate hysterics a “told ya so” moment, which is made even more annoying by Joe Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Accords on Friday.

“The extreme weather events that we’re experiencing this week across the central, southern, and now the eastern United States do yet again demonstrate to us that climate change is real and it’s happening now, and we’re not adequately prepared for it,” Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said.

She said it herself: this was a “weather event,  proving nothing about climate change at all. But don’t stop the hysterics now. They’re on a roll.

CNBC:

“We have to ratchet up the commitments now if we are to stay on course to averting a catastrophic three degree Fahrenheit warming,” said [climate scientist Michael] Mann, the author of “The New Climate War,” during a Friday evening interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” “We have to increase our commitments and the other countries of the world have to do that.”

Climate change was not at the top of Joe Biden’s agenda that he ran for president on, and it certainly wasn’t one of the top issues of concern to Americans. But in our rush to save the planet from…something, we’re likely to destroy several industries and cost perhaps millions of Americans their jobs. That’s what increasing our commitments truly means.

Can the Truth Set us Free? The history of speculation about truth has prominently included what we might call a school of impatience that, instead of trying to solve the problem, has endeavored to dismiss it. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/20/can-the-truth-set-us-free/

I try to re-read The Confessions (the one by St. Augustine, not the one by Rousseau) every Lent. Since it is that time of year again, and since I am rather weary of the usual quotidian static, I thought I would avert my gaze from the armed camp on the Potomac and say a word or two about my reading. In a famous passage of Book XI of that deep and magisterial book, Augustine asks a simple but apparently imponderable question: “What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is,” he says, “provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.”

It is hard to read that passage without experiencing a shock of recognition.

There is a basic sense in which, like St. Augustine, we all know what time is. As Einstein once observed, time is “what the clock measures.” Any yet it is impossible not to feel that that answer, though correct, is somehow insufficient to the awesome reality of time—assuming, that is, that time is or has a reality and is not, as some philosophers have insisted, an illusion we contribute to make experience comprehensible.

When Plato described time as “the moving image of eternity,” his formulation was more poetic than Einstein’s, but not necessarily more satisfactory. The fact is that time, like many basic concepts, names an idea we are perfectly familiar with but that we may not be able to explain.

Consider the concept of truth.

There is an important sense in which we all know what truth is. We just couldn’t get along in the world if we didn’t. But being able to apply a concept in daily life does not necessarily mean we can define it. Or that we really understand it.

Medieval philosophers defined truth as “adaequatio intellectus et rei”: a “correspondence between thought and thing.”

That sounds impressive, especially in Latin, and it has a certain intuitive appeal. When we utter a true proposition—“2 + 2 = 4,” say, or “Snow is white”—we can see that there is a correspondence between our judgment and the state of affairs it names.

But what, exactly, is the nature of that “correspondence”?