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When and How Did We Get Here?—Gradually, then Suddenly. Part Four

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/when-and-how-did-we-get-here-gradually-then-suddenly-part-four/

The final catalyst that led to our collective implosion was the election year 2020 and the accelerating Trump Derangement Syndrome. As the cities burned, unbelievable madness followed in efforts to ensure the incumbent president would not be reelected.

Suddenly, congressional officials, mayors, and governors all refused to keep the peace by requesting federal troops to stop the summer riots. The more the cities went up in flames, the more the blue states blamed Trump. It was almost as if they would fault Trump for the ongoing violence and blame him even more if he sent in the military to quell it.

Had they forgotten the Rodney King LA riots of 1992, when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Colin Powell, called up President George H. W. Bush to encourage him to deploy the 5,000 Marines then ready to go into South Central and Watts to quell the violence? And so, Bush did just that and stopped the mass looting and rioting.

No matter. The nation was now a Luche Libre of open anti-Trump craziness. Mark Zuckerberg poured in a historic $419 million to absorb the work of the registrars in key election precincts. Social media suppressed news unfavorable to Biden.

Street riots and protests were modulated to aid the Biden campaign. Liberal Time essayist Molly Ball described the “conspiracy”:

There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans. The pact was formalized in a terse, little-noticed joint statement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO published on Election Day. Both sides would come to see it as a sort of implicit bargain–inspired by the summer’s massive, sometimes destructive racial-justice protests–in which the forces of labor came together with the forces of capital to keep the peace and oppose Trump’s assault on democracy.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Pro-Palestinian Group Calls for ‘Intifada’ in NYC, Tells Supporters to ‘Find a Target’ and ‘Flood’ City By Zach Kessel

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-group-calls-for-intifada-in-nyc-tells-supporters-to-find-a-target-and-flood-city/

The pro-Palestinian activist group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) plans to hold a “Palestine is Everywhere” event in New York City from March 27 to 30, the organization announced, advertised in a flyer calling for “autonomous action” and “global intifada.”

The flyer, which WOL shared on its X page, directs the group’s supporters to “get a group together,” “find a target,” and “take action to defend Palestine.” WOL is urging its followers to “flood all of New York City” by taking “autonomous actions,” which include “de-occupations, assemblies and gatherings, public testimonies, roving shutdowns, sit-ins and slow downs, painting walls, wheatpastings, & other happenings.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden’s Border Blowup Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/bidens-border-blowup/

Some 8 to 10 million illegal aliens from all over the world, as expected, have flooded across the border since Joe Biden took office.

A demagogic candidate Biden, remember, in 2019 invited those massing at the southern border to “surge” into the United States without specifying they first needed legal sanction: “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.”

In contrast, we know legal immigration is America’s great strength, but it has always depended on a few key prerequisites.

Immigration must be legal and measured.

Why? Because only the host nation can adjudicate how many immigrants it can successfully accept and assimilate. It has no desire to encourage Balkanized tribalism so common in nations abroad torn apart by ethnic conflict.

America must have some knowledge of the background of immigrants, especially whether they have criminal records, belong to gangs, are importing drugs, carry infectious diseases, or can be self-supporting.

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Terrorists who perpetrate attacks are not who ‘experts’ say they are – opinion Why do so many “experts,” politicians, and pundits still stubbornly cling to the utterly unscientific idea that poverty causes terrorism? By Moshe Phillips

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-792959

Children, clergymen, and Israeli citizens supposedly are among the Arabs least likely to carry out anti-Jewish terrorism. They don’t fit the profile. And yet all six of the most recent terrorist attacks have been carried out by precisely those individuals.

Supposedly, the “typical” Palestinian Arab terrorist is a young Palestinian Arab man, single, uneducated, and unemployed, who turns to violence because of his difficult personal circumstances.

But the terrorist who was shot dead while throwing firebombs at Israelis near Ramallah on March 4, Mustafa Abu Shalbak, was just 16. 

The next day, a Palestinian Arab terrorist named Muhammad Shehadeh stabbed and seriously wounded an Israeli near Bethlehem. The would-be murderer was 17.

And the day after that, a Palestinian Arab stabbed and wounded an elderly Israeli man standing at a bus stop in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood.

Not only was the attacker just 14 – presumably too young to fit the profile of the “typical” terrorist – but he was a resident of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem’s Arabs are supposedly more “moderate” than those who live in the Palestinian Authority territories. Well, not much moderation was on display in that attack.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany’s Murder of Europe by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20470/germany-murder-of-europe

Climate, of course, is a global issue: if Europe reduces its emissions to zero, while the rest of the world continues to increase them, the effect on the climate will be zero. As a result, the German plan will not save a single euro in terms of the damage caused by global warming and extreme events.

So, the investment needed each year would not be €1.5 trillion invested to save 0.03% of GDP per year. It would be €30 trillion — €1.5 trillion per year for 20 years — invested to change absolutely nothing in the climate of Europe.

There are no serious analysts left who still maintain that the objective of the Paris Agreement will be achieved; the Paris Agreement is obsolete and to pretend otherwise, as the European Commission is doing, is misleading, irresponsible, and not even scientific.

In practical terms, whole swathes of our populations have entered into a pattern that is the ultimate dream of environmentalists: degrowth. In other words, their impoverishment.

Ironically, if the IPCC’s projections are to be believed, global warming may occur, and we will adapt to it through innovation. All the resources that Europe is burning up in a phantasmatic “energy transition”, which has failed and will fail — will just burn through money that we will then not have for innovation. What will Europe do when these misguided ideologies have permanently broken the back of its economy?

In a preparatory impact report, a copy of which has been obtained by the Financial Times before official release, the European Commission estimates that to achieve the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 then 100% in 2050 — the main objective of the “European Green Deal” — Europe will need to invest €1.5 trillion a year from 2031 to 2050.

1.5 trillion euros a year. That is equivalent to 10% of the Europe Union’s entire GDP for 2022 — every year! Apart from a war effort, there is no objective of any kind that has ever required the diversion of 10% of a continent’s GDP by political decree.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

State of American Health Care By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03/state_of_american_health_care.html

Once the envy of the world, American medical care continues to be infected with Leftist woke ideology with abysmal and terrifying outcomes.

Under the term “health equity” the only parameter that matters appears to be a person’s melanin level, not his need for timely medical treatment.

Consequently:

More than 10 million nonblack Americans with chronic kidney disease may have seen their treatments or transplants delayed because of policy changes enacted after 2020.  Some of those patients now face greater risk of death because national transplant organizations have embraced racial activism.

Patients of all races deserve a formula that accurately estimates their individual kidney function, not one that favors one racial group at the expense of others. 

Then there is the Advil Pain Equity Project to end “systemic pain racism.”  It should be noted that Advil is owned by Pfizer. In fact, as explained in FortuneWell,

According to a study, three out of four Black people believe there is bias in how their pain is diagnosed. Now Advil, a popular pain relief brand, is aiming to address inequity in pain diagnosis and treatment with the Advil Pain Equity Project.

As part of the multiyear project, Advil is awarding grants to the Morehouse School of Medicine and BLKHLTH, an Atlanta-based nonprofit, to support the development of patient resources and a course for medical school students to address pain equity both in and outside of medical facilities.

Dare one ponder the possibility that this is merely “a plan to sell $50 million more in pills to Black people – disguised as a fight to end ‘pain racism?’”

On the other hand, keynote speaker at the 2023 Social Justice Awards sponsored by Institutional Diversity & Equity (ID&E), “author, physician, and thought leader Dr. Uche Blackstock, founder of Advancing Health Equity, is committed to dismantling racism in health care and closing the gap in racial health inequities.” 

Consequently, in 2024, is the American patient caught between the greed of pharmaceutical companies and the vise of leftwing social justice activists?  And this does not even begin to analyze the spiraling health care costs that have long confounded Americans.

Moreover, faith in American medicine has certainly been tarnished by the treatment afforded those health care workers who dared to question the federal government’s edicts concerning the mRNA Covid-19 “vaccines.” 

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo declared that “COVID-19 vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings” and called for a complete halt of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.  Ladapo issued this warning “based on overwhelming evidence that the COVID-19 shots that Pfizer and Moderna assured us were ‘safe’ are contaminated with plasmid DNA.” 

Consider the fact that the government continues to purposefully censor truthful information. In fact, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, the psychiatrist who challenged the University of California Irvine Vaccine Mandates was fired for this.  It has led to what is being called the most important free speech case in a generation known as Missouri v. Biden (Murthy v. Missouri).

In 2023 Kheriaty asserted that “[a]lthough this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Victor Davis Hanson: From Russian Collusion to “Bloodbath”—A Decade of Toxic Hysteria

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://twitter.com/vdhanson/status/1770445530646421937?t=-_2GpG8wfUWSVFbOLEmVNQ

From Russian Collusion to “Bloodbath”—A Decade of Toxic Hysteria Ever since late June 2015—following Donald Trump’s announcement that he was running for president, and his voicing of controversial agendas (on tariffs, China, illegal immigration, foreign policy, NATO, etc.)—leftwing toxic hysteria has been the norm.

In the last ten years, we’ve witnessed the Russian collusion hoax, calls from military officers and analysts for extra-legal interventions and coups, the Alfa ping hoax, the drink bleach hoax, the “suckers” D-Day hoax, the celebrities’ contest about the best way to decapitate, stab, blow up, shoot, or incinerate Trump, the 2016 leftwing postelection effort to turn state electors into “faithless” apostates to elect Hillary, the nutty Mark Milley call to his Chinese counterpart, the Antifa/BLM riotous months of 2020 and effort to storm the White House grounds, the two first-term impeachments, the laptop “Russian disinformation” hoax, the pee accusation, the “51 intelligence authorities” ruse, the FBI hiring of Twitter censors to suppress unwanted news, the Senate trial of a private citizen, the January 6 “insurrection” where “five police officers were killed” lie, the farcical two Republican members of the Jan 6 committee, the attempt to remove Trump from state ballots, the insane E. Jean Carroll suit, the Letitia James “find me the man, and I’ll find you the crime” writ, the monstrous $355 million fine growing daily to $450, the Alvin Bragg bootstrapping of an inert federal suit, the Fani Willis/Nathan Wade circus, the Jack Smith antithesis to Robert Hur’s twin investigation, the effort to bankrupt the Republican nominee, and of course the constant calls to pack the court (when the Left lost the majority), to end the filibuster (when Democrats control the Senate), to add two new states and four new senators (provided they are DC and Puerto Rico) and to end the Electoral College (once the Left lost the surety of the reliable blue wall).

What is the effect of all this decade-long civil strife on the 2024 voter?

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The Smug, Safe ‘Comedy’ of Jimmy Kimmel Anti-Trump jokes = Hollywood approval.Thom Nickels

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-smug-safe-comedy-of-jimmy-kimmel/

I’m no fan of late night comedy or even comedians for that matter, although years ago I did find something in George Carlin’s act to admire.

Carlin, though born into an Irish Catholic family, mocked religious belief as a stand-up comedian and claimed that he didn’t believe in God.

Despite this personal failing, Carlin, who died in 2008 — way before woke comedians became afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome — was never predictable as a comedian.

He never had much to say about Donald Trump, either, aside from his 1998 comment that he thought the man was a “rat” (he compared him to hotel mogul Leona Helmsley), yet at the same time Carlin insisted that Trump made “his life more interesting.”

Hilarious and unpredictable comedians are now a rare breed, thanks mainly to the spread of wokeness in comedy.

In comedy clubs throughout the country, you can no longer make jokes about gay people, trans people, feminists, the Asian predilection for gambling and casinos, mentally retarded or developmentally disabled people, blacks or handicapped people without that coming across as hate speech — although a talented comedian should be able to find something funny in all the aforementioned groups (and their behaviors) without that coming across as an incitement to organize a lynch mob.

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The Right Take Audio: Michael Shellenberger on Living Dangerously “You’d be a little nuts not to be worried.”

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-right-take-audio-michael-shellenberger-on-living-dangerously/

In this short audio clip from a recent episode of the Freedom Center’s podcast The Right Take, host Mark Tapson asks independent journalist Michael Shellenberger about the personal danger of breaking stories that expose Big Tech censorship, CIA malfeasance, and transgender medical malpractice.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Civilizational Masochism of the West We are swiftly approaching the consequences of our suicidal blindness. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on March 21st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-civilizational-masochism-of-the-west/

Last week, Joe Biden issued a schoolmarmish warning to Israel, which he has been browbeating for months to placate his party’s anti-Israel left and Muslim American voters in Michigan, a critical swing state. Speaking to the press, he threatened, “There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”

This solicitude for Muslims’ sensitivity about their faith bespeaks the West’s long bad habit of caring more about Islam––the faith that conquered and occupied, and to this day still occupies, much of the Christian Roman and Byzantine empires––than they do about their own civilization’s foundational religion, whose adherents today are being persecuted and massacred in Islamic lands.

This cultural tic does not demonstrate, as many “citizen of the world” globalists believe, a superior morality based on both an uncritical tolerance for the exotic “other,” and a haughty disdain for alleged parochial American nationalism and jingoist patriotism. Rather, it signals to the world a civilizational failure of nerve so widespread and intense that it has become a form of geopolitical masochism, manifested in conspicuous displays of cringing apologetics and shameful guilt for the West’s alleged historical sins.

For example, Biden’s foreign policy crew, products of this ruling class sensibility, seem to think that Muslims view Ramadan the way Christians do Easter, and so will be deeply offended by Israel besmirching this sacred time by continuing to fight. Actually, as Bassam Tawil writes, “‘In the holy month of Ramadan,’ according to fatwa 1566/10013/L=1431, ‘the reward of virtues is increased.’” And martyrdom while waging jihad against infidels is a theological virtue par excellence.