ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Go green, go bankrupt? Germany’s promise of a ‘green economic miracle’ has turned into a devastating budget crisis. Sabine Spahl

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/12/13/go-green-go-bankrupt/

The German government’s green agenda could be in serious trouble.

In November, Germany’s supreme court declared that it would be unlawful for the government to use emergency Covid-19 funds to pay for its transition to Net Zero. This prompted the coalition to announce last week that it may not be able to produce a 2024 budget by the end of this year. Public spending for the rest of 2023 has been frozen.

There is now a chance that the 2024 budget may indeed be ready this week. But the fiasco has nonetheless been deeply embarrassing for chancellor Olaf Scholz. The supreme court ruling has made a mockery of Scholz’s promise to spend billions on new ecological projects to support Germany’s flailing economy. Earlier this year, Scholz was claiming that Germany would experience an economic miracle fuelled by investment in new wind turbines, electricity grids, hydrogen power and subsidies for chip and battery production. That has now been exposed as just so much hot air.

This budget crisis poses huge problems for the government and its Net Zero agenda. Back in 2022, the coalition had intended to plug a €60 billion gap in the budget with funds that had been set aside to deal with the cost of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns. This €60 billion was to be repurposed to cover part of the immense costs of its green-energy transition plan. Doing so would have allowed the government to pretend that the Net Zero transition would place no additional burden on the taxpayer, and therefore dodge any parliamentary and public debate about its green policies.

It’s hardly surprising that the government’s budgetary trick has now been ruled unconstitutional. One reason the court gave is that emergency funds must be used for the purpose they were set up for. Another is that the ‘special budget’ is incompatible with Germany’s ‘debt brake rule’ (Schuldenbremse), which caps fiscal deficits at 0.35 per cent of GDP per year.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

We Need An Immediate Ceasefire In Ukraine, Not Israel By: John Daniel Davidson

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/12/we-need-an-immediate-ceasefire-in-ukraine-not-israel/

It’s time to acknowledge that the U.S. isn’t going to risk World War III to maintain Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington this week, once again pressuring U.S. lawmakers to dole out tens of billions of taxpayer dollars for his war effort. At issue is a $110 billion national security supplemental the Biden administration has requested that includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, as well as more funding for Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and money to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republicans last week sensibly blocked a vote to advance the bill because it doesn’t include changes to border policy, which is the only thing that would actually secure the border. But the border isn’t the only good reason to block the funding package. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the war in Ukraine is an unwinnable quagmire, and that for all the calls we hear for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, what’s really needed is a ceasefire in Ukraine, where the solution today is more or less what it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022: a negotiated settlement.

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio hinted at this in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper over the weekend, saying there’s no reason to think $61 billion will accomplish what $100 billion hasn’t. “The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous. Nobody actually believed it. So what we’re saying to the president and really to the entire world is, you need to articulate what the ambition is.”

So far, neither the Biden White House nor any neocon Ukraine hawk in Washington has been able to articulate what the endgame strategy in Ukraine should be. Instead, we get platitudes about the need to shovel more money into a bloody war of attrition from the likes of Mike Pompeo, who of course doesn’t bother to elaborate on what he means by “end the war.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

Taylor Swift is Time’s Person of the Year Just in Time for 2024 Election Tim Young (???!!!)

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/12/taylor-swift-is-times-person-of-the-year-just-in-time-for-2024-election/

There’s more to Taylor Swift being named Time’s “Person of the Year” than what it looks like on its face – and it’s pretty obvious.

Just a casual look at who has been given the title over the past 10 years should make your eyebrows raise a bit on this year’s choice – Volodymyr Zelensky, Elon Musk before buying Twitter/X, Joe Biden, Greta Thunberg, leftist journalists labeled “The Guardians,” women who started #MeToo and Trump (with the M in Time put over his head to make it look like devil horns). All of those names are directly tied to their politics and political movements – all, except for Taylor Swift.

What this should tell you is simple, they’re ramping up her political involvement. The first national political stance Swift took was against Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2018. In an Instagram post, Swift stated that she would vote against Blackburn for all the typical uninformed liberal talking points: LGBT nonsense, systemic racism and “violence against women.” And fortunately, the voters of Tennessee didn’t listen.

Then in 2020, someone handed her a plate of cookies and took a picture for her to endorse Joe Biden for President.

But that was all before the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and vaccines, which have become two critical issues for the left, the former may have even stopped the “red wave” we were promised.

It also seems almost too convenient that Swift’s current love interest, Travis Kelce is Pfizer’s current national mascot for COVID vaccines – and their relationship is pushed nonstop during NFL games. It’s a love story that could only be written by some of the biggest sponsorships in the world – and put on a national stage every Sunday, Thursday, Monday and sports newscasts.  But please don’t listen to me, I’m just one of those crazy conspiracy theorists.

FOREIGN POLICY, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Houthi Terrorists Join Iran’s Axis of Evil Against Israel and the United States Will Biden ever take action against Iran and its terrorist proxies? by Joseph Klein

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/houthi-terrorists-join-irans-axis-of-evil-against-israel-and-the-united-states/

The Houthis, who control about 80 percent of Yemen, are yet another one of Iran’s multiple terrorist proxies who are menacing Israel militarily and endangering U.S. military personnel. But the Biden administration, which ended the Trump-era designation of the Houthis as a “foreign terrorist organization” in February 2021, has taken no action whatsoever to restore the Houthi terrorist designation or to deter the Houthis with military force. And more generally, the Biden administration has allowed the Iranian regime to acquire the wealth in oil revenues and unfrozen monies it needs to lavishly fund its terrorist proxies.

Using missiles and drones launched from Yemen, the Houthi terrorists have aimed their aerial attacks at Israeli territory, have targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and have threatened at least one U.S. warship. The U.S. has only played defense so far, downing some Houthi missiles and drones. Just recently, according to  the Times of Israel, the U.S. military reported that a United States “warship shot down three drones in self-defense during an hourlong assault.”

Despite the Houthis’ multiple provocations, the Biden administration has not yet taken the offensive and retaliated by going after the Houthis’ missile and drone launching sites in Yemen and knocking out coastal radar sites. The Biden administration’s sheepishness in engaging the Houthis at their source is even more pathetic than the Biden administration’s timid responses to the scores of attacks upon U.S. military facilities in Iraq and Syria by Iran-sponsored terrorist militias.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Where Is Our Javier Milei?

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/13/where-is-our-javier-milei/

The new Argentinian president is a radical, a far-right outsider and a right-wing reactionary, if the press is to be believed. But he’s not at all the demon that the mental-case media claims he is. Javier Milei is the type of elected official – note that we didn’t say “politician” – that this country needs. In fact, every nation on the planet could use a Javier Milei.

“No country declined as rapidly or as severely as Argentina,” Investopedia said a year ago in a post explaining the country’s relationship with socialism. “In 1989 the average inflation rate in Argentina approached 5,000%, and in March 1990 it peaked at over 20,000%.” 

Also mentioned were the country’s sovereign debt default, as well as its “political corruption and an irresponsible monetary policy.” Our friends at the Committee to Unleash prosperity tells us that 45% of Argentina’s “46 million people are in poverty and the economy is on the edge of hyperinflation” and that “over the past 50 years government spending as a share of the economy has almost doubled.”

All of these problems in what was once one of the 10 richest countries on Earth, overflowing with natural resources, have been caused not by not enough government intervention into the economy and daily lives but by too much.

Will the U.S. first have to sink to the depths of Argentina before we have a free-market champion step in? We’re not there yet, but three years of economic “stewardship” under the Biden White House has taken us dangerously close to a wreck.

For good reason “voters are “feeling horrible” about the economy under Biden. According to Fortune, a “big part” of the stock market is “unconvinced economy is going anywhere” because there is “weakness underneath the hood.” In its most recent report, the Conference Board said the leading economic indicators declined “again in October.” It forecasts “that real GDP will expand by just 0.8 percent in 2024.” The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank expects “slower GDP growth” in 2024, and noted that “inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target” even as it grip “appears to be breaking.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Protestors Who Want to See Hamas Survive Make a Mess of Senate Office Building Spencer Brown

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2023/12/11/protestors-who-want-to-see-hamas-survive-took-over-another-congressional-building-n2632256

A group of “pro-Palestine” protestors — read: those who are “demanding” a ceasefire that would benefit Hamas and give the Iran-backed terrorists a chance at surviving to launch more October 7-level attacks on innocent Israelis — occupied the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building just steps from the U.S. Capitol on Monday morning. Their tantrum caused authorities to close the building to the public, allowing only senators and staff to enter the building. 

Demonstrators carried banners that claimed “AID TO ISRAEL = BOMBING PALESTINIANS,” a creative interpretation of reality that ignores the fact that Hamas terrorists are using Gazans as human shields and the death tolls being parroted by these demonstrators are known to be inaccurate coming directly from the Hamas terrorist-run government in the Gaza Strip.

Another fact these agitators taking over a Senate office building seemingly want to ignore: it was Hamas that violated the first cessation in fighting during which some Israeli hostages were released. That is — not that the terrorists needed to make their aims any clearer — Hamas preferred to try killing more Israelis than to lay down their arms to end the IDF’s justified strikes on terrorists, their infrastructure, and their weapons hidden by Hamas in hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian areas. What’s more, Hamas had a ceasefire on October 6, then launched their brutal massacre that killed more Jews in any single day since the Holocaust. Hamas again had a ceasefire for several days in late November, then chose to violate its terms and launch more attacks on innocent Israelis. Neither time was Israel to blame for setting off the war.

In addition to making noise and occupying the atrium of the Hart building, at least one demonstrator climbed a statue to continue screaming demands before surrendering his position to be arrested by Capitol Police along with his fellow agitators.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

“Free Speech” At Harvard, Penn, MIT And Other Elite Universities Francis Menton

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-12-11-free-speech-at-harvard-penn-mit-and-other-elite-universities

“At Gay’s Harvard, if your speech supports the conservative position, the thinnest allegation against you can destroy your career. If you support the woke narrative, even the most explosive allegations against you can be buried.”

Six days ago, on December 5, the Presidents of three elite universities — Harvard, Penn and MIT — appeared at a Congressional hearing to testify about their responses to pro-Hamas and anti-semitic demonstrations and advocacy on their campuses. In the most widely-viewed exchange at the hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik asked each of the Presidents whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated their codes of conduct. The three answered by emphasizing the importance of freedom of speech on their campuses, and by saying that they could not give a definitive answer as to whether calling for genocide of Jews violated their codes of conduct, because the answer was “context-dependent.”

Over the intervening days, the responses of the three Presidents have generated widespread backlash, including harsh criticism from even some mainstream press sources, and even pushback from some major donors. The Presidents’ responses appeared to be, and were, tone deaf and highly legalistic. But were they wrong?

This may surprise you, but I’m going to stand up for the three Presidents on this particular point. If you have been a reader here for any substantial period, you know that I am close to what may be called a “free speech absolutist.” I think that people ought to be able to say even the most hateful and despicable things, short of immediate threats of violence. By saying such things they discredit themselves, and for the government (or a university or corporation) to claim the power to shut them up is an even worse problem than allowing the speech.

The problem with the statements of the three Presidents is not their position as to upholding freedom of speech for the pro-Hamas and anti-semitic speakers. The problem is that the Presidents don’t apply the same true free speech principles at all when it comes to political opinions with which they disagree, or that are out of line with current woke orthodoxy.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION, HISTORY Comments turned off

Niall Ferguson: The Treason of the Intellectuals Anyone who has a naive belief in the power of higher education to instill morality has not studied the history of German universities in the Third Reich.By Niall Ferguson *****

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-treason-intellectuals-third-reich?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=286155294&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 years away from victory over France. But already Benda could see the pernicious role that many European academics were playing in politics. 

Those who were meant to pursue the life of the mind, he wrote, had ushered in “the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And those hatreds were already moving from the realm of the ideas into the realm of violence—with results that would be catastrophic for all of Europe.

A century later, American academia has gone in the opposite political direction—leftward instead of rightward—but has ended up in much the same place. The question is whether we—unlike the Germans—can do something about it.

For nearly ten years, rather like Benda, I have marveled at the treason of my fellow intellectuals. I have also witnessed the willingness of trustees, donors, and alumni to tolerate the politicization of American universities by an illiberal coalition of “woke” progressives, adherents of “critical race theory,” and apologists for Islamist extremism. 

Throughout that period, friends assured me that I was exaggerating. Who could possibly object to more diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus? In any case, weren’t American universities always left-leaning? Were my concerns perhaps just another sign that I was the kind of conservative who had no real future in the academy?

Such arguments fell apart after October 7, as the response of “radical” students and professors to the Hamas atrocities against Israel revealed the realities of contemporary campus life. That hostility to Israeli policy in Gaza regularly slides into antisemitism is now impossible to deny. 

I cannot stop thinking of the son of a Jewish friend of mine, who is a graduate student at one of the Ivy League colleges. Just this week, he went to the desk assigned to him to find, carefully placed under his computer keyboard, a note with the words “ZIONIST KIKE!!!” in red and green letters.

Just as disturbing as such incidents—and there are too many to recount—has been the dismally confused responses of university leaders. 

Testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce last week, Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill showed that they had been well-briefed by the lawyers their universities retain for such occasions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dem lawmakers have history of praise for group whose leader said he was ‘happy to see’ Hamas attack Israel Sens. Baldwin and Brown said they condemn CAIR’s ‘blatantly antisemitic comments’ By Joe Schoffstall , Aubrie Spady

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/congressional-dems-history-praise-group-happy-hamas-attacks-israel

Several Democrat members of Congress have a long history of public support for an organization whose leader recently ignited a firestorm over controversial comments regarding Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israeli citizens.

Nihad Awad, the executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), recently said that he was “happy to see” the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel and that the Jewish state did not have a right to self-defense because it is an “occupying power.”

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” Awad said at the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in the U.S. on Nov. 24. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not free to walk in.”

He continued, “And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense — have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”

Awad’s comments forced the White House to scramble and scrub CAIR as a committed partner to fight antisemitism on its website. A White House spokesperson also strongly reprimanded his comments in a statement to Fox News Digital.

“We condemn these shocking, Antisemitic statements in the strongest terms,” the White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “The horrific, brutal terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7th were, as President Biden said, ‘abhorrent’ and represent ‘unadulterated evil.'”

ANTI-SEMITISM, BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Crossing the Jordan: The New Antisemitism and How it Will Destroy the West By Janet Levy

Posted By on December 13th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/crossing_the_jordan_the_new_antisemitism_and_how_it_will_destroy_the_west.html

As Israel deals with a multi-pronged Hamas-led invasion from the Gaza Strip amidst unwarranted international pressure, Canadian writer David Solway’s scholarly collection of essays, Crossing the Jordan: On Judaism, Islam and the West, comes as a timely reminder of how multiplicity in self-identification is undermining Jewish unity.  The book, to be released today, December 12, also addresses the idiosyncratic position of Israel among the nations of the world, the threat to liberal Judeo-Christian values posed by Islam, and the Left’s catalysis of the subsuming of Western culture.

Solway is a man of many parts – poet, scholar, teacher, chess enthusiast, education theorist, and literary critic.  Born Jewish but not particularly religious or identity-conscious, he underwent a transformation post 9/11.  He began to question his rejection of Jewish kinship and asked himself difficult questions that rid him of his Leftist inclinations.  Among other things, the book speaks of his epiphanic recognition that the fate of Israel is the fate of every Jew, regardless of nationality or political view.  In the light of the October 7 attack – Israel’s 9/11 (equivalent proportionately to seven 9/11s) – this exploration of personal change along with the impersonal twists of history makes for poignant reading.

Why, Solway asks, is Israel the only nation whose right to exist is questioned and threatened?  Why is it labeled an occupier and a colonizer when Eretz Yisrael and Judah predate any Arab presence in the Holy Land by more than a thousand years?  Why is it the only country that has been pressured to return captured territory after winning wars started by Muslim neighbors who have vowed to eradicate it?  Why are its defeated enemies allowed to dictate terms of peace?