A Student Wants to Join West Point. But He’s the Wrong Race The people who took down affirmative action at Harvard are coming for the military. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-student-wants-to-join-west-point-but-hes-the-wrong-race/

B is a high school student with a 4.2 GPA. One of his grandfathers fought in the Army on D-Day. Three of his family members are currently serving in the military. He would like to attend West Point Academy and continue a proud family tradition of military service, but there’s one problem.

He’s white.

The United States Military Academy is highly selective, but not in the way that it should be.

In 2019, Vice President Mike Pence addressed the graduates, hailing them as “the most diverse class in the history of the United States Military Academy” with the “highest number of Hispanic women graduates”. He told them that, “I couldn’t be more proud to stand before the graduating class of 2019 that includes the highest number of African American women cadets in the history of the United States Military Academy!” That’s been the emphasis at West Point for too long.

Earlier this year, West Point put out a press release boasting of its 38% minority enrollment as part of what a new lawsuit alleges is a practice of achieving its “desired percentages … of blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities” through systemic discrimination in admissions.

As the lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions on the behalf of B, the anonymous student, lays out, “West Point sets benchmarks for the percentage of each class that should be filled by ‘African Americans,’ ‘Hispanics,’ and ‘Asians,’ and it meticulously tracks its compliance with those figures down to a tenth of a percentage point.” The problem is too many white people.

During the Biden administration’s defense of racial discrimination in Harvard’s admissions policies, the federal brief complained that, “white service members are 53% of the active force, but 73% of officers.” West Point’s goal is to match the percentage of officers to the number of enlisted men and so there needs to be only 53% white officers. The white officers must go.

Hunter Biden Received $260,000 in Wires From China. Guess Where They Were Sent. By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/09/26/hunter-biden-received-260000-in-wires-from-china-guess-where-they-were-sent-n1730134

It looks like the House Oversight Committee has found another juicy nugget that is going to complicate Joe Biden’s impeachment defense.

According to subpoenaed bank records, Hunter Biden received wire transfers totaling roughly $260,000 from communist China, and these transfers listed Joe Biden’s Delaware residence as the beneficiary address for the funds.

“As part of the investigation, Comer subpoenaed financial records related to a specific bank account and received records of two wires originating from Beijing and linked to BHR Partners,” Fox News Digital reported Tuesday evening. “BHR Partners is a joint-venture between Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital. BHR Partners is a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited. Hunter Biden reportedly sat on the board of directors of BHR Partners.”

The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.

The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.

The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address “1209 Barley Mill Rd.” in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden.

How Biden’s Record Contradicts his Pro-Union Braggadocio What pro-China policies and aggressive electric vehicle mandates really do. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-bidens-record-contradicts-his-pro-union-braggadocio/

President Biden likes to boast that he is “the most pro-union president in history.” To underscore his claim, the president has decided to join the United Auto Workers picket line in Michigan for a photo op, which will provide him with the opportunity to secure the endorsement of the UAW.

However, Joe Biden has hurt labor in the United States over the years by being a longtime leader in advocating the normalization of trade with China, beginning with his strong support for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Labor unions in the manufacturing sector opposed China’s admission to the WTO out of concern that cheaper labor in China would entice U.S. companies to eliminate many well-paying jobs in America and use less expensive Chinese workers instead. The unions were right. Joe Biden got it wrong.

According to a study published in January 2020 by the Economic Policy Institute, “The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2018 was responsible for the loss of 3.7 million U.S. jobs…Three-fourths (75.4%) of the jobs lost between 2001 and 2018 were in manufacturing (2.8 million manufacturing jobs lost due to the growth in the trade deficit with China).”

Donald Trump recognized the massive loss of jobs to China, which exploited and violated the rules of the WTO to its advantage. Mr. Trump confronted the devastating consequences for American workers during his presidency. Although he was unable to stop China’s unfair trade advantages completely, at least he tried to protect U.S. workers’ jobs. Mr. Trump imposed stiff tariffs and other measures that brought China to the negotiating table, resulting in more balanced terms for trade between the two countries.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has done nothing of the kind. To the contrary, he has long downplayed the threat that China poses to the American economy.

From Transgender Homecoming Queen to Transhumanism Can only an apocalypse save us? by Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/from-transgender-homecoming-queen-to-transhumanism/

Last week, a biological male named Tristan Young who “identifies” as a female beat out several young ladies for the title of “homecoming queen” at Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri.

In July, the Netherlands crowned a biological male identifying as a woman as its first transgendered Miss Netherlands.

Leaving aside the question of who is spearheading this annihilative agenda, we should be clear on what is the intended goal of the perpetrators. When a biological male who looks like a man in drag is crowned as homecoming queen, the adults behind this agenda are sending a clear message that this is a socially endorsed beauty contest. And further, that teenage boys should find male homecoming queens attractive and even sexually alluring.

There are two issues here to consider. One is the normalization of transgenderism. Its mainstreamed nature will brand as a homophobe or transphobe anyone who claims not to be attracted to trans “women” since they are to be regarded as actual women. The perception of discrimination, and discrimination associated with transwomen of color will increase. America will be viewed as less tolerant, more systemically racist and—if heterosexual men reject biological male transwomen—as irredeemably misogynistic.

The second factor to consider is that a form of socio-sexual eugenics is spreading like an epidemic in our society.  Boys who normally would not have been attracted to biological male trans-women will be increasingly attracted to such persons. The result will be a further increased segment of the copulating population incapable of reproducing. According to a recent survey of over 1,000 members of generation Z, 27% don’t want to have kids. When asked why, 89% of generation Z women said they enjoy the flexibility in their lives of not having children and 70% responded that they value their alone time.

Since it is women who both grant access to sex and determine if children come into the world, one can imagine a scenario in which an already declining U.S. population could precipitously slip further into an irreversible decline if a significant portion of transwomen become the partners not of gay men (not likely) but of re-socialized and sexually re-engineered heterosexual males.

The other factor to consider is that the agenda has as its end goal—the elimination of the male pronoun, men as we know them and any memory of a term such as heroic masculinity. Think about it: a biological male/ trans-woman is a feminized woman; a trans-man (biological female identifying as a biological male) looks often like a diminutive male with none of the primal and elemental raw masculinity of men. Although we live in a culture that problematizes the definition of women, it is men who are being erased.

Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness? The organization’s tagline is “ideas worth spreading.” But they attempted to suppress mine. By Coleman Hughes

https://www.thefp.com/p/coleman-hughes-is-ted-scared-of-color-blindness

TED Conferences, LLC is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”.

Like any young writer, I am well aware that an invitation to speak at TED can be a career-changing opportunity. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was invited to appear at this year’s annual conference. What I could not have imagined from an organization whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading” is that it would attempt to suppress my own.

As an independent podcaster and author, I count myself among the lucky few who can make a living doing what they truly love to do. Nothing about my experience with TED could change that. The reason this story matters is not because I was treated poorly, but because it helps explain how organizations can be captured by an ideological minority that bends even the people at the very top to its will. In that, the story of TED is the story of so many crucial and once-trustworthy institutions in American life.

Let’s go back to the start.

This past April, I gave a talk at the yearly TED conference in Vancouver, Canada. In my talk, I defended color blindness: the idea that we should treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and in our public policy. (This is also the topic of my forthcoming book.)

Even though a majority of Americans believe that color-blind policies are the right approach to governing a racially diverse society, we live in a strange moment in which many of our elite believe that color blindness is, in fact, a Trojan horse for white supremacy. Taking that viewpoint seriously—while ultimately refuting it—was the express purpose of my talk.

Over 100 masked teens ransack and loot Philadelphia stores leading to several arrests, police say

https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-store-mob-thefts-teenagers-f2351d631f691aa081233b1df1bee54d

Groups of teenagers swarmed into stores in Philadelphia’s Central City on Tuesday, stuffing plastic bags with merchandise and fleeing, although police made several arrests, authorities and witnesses said.

An Apple Store was hit at around 8 p.m. and police chased fleeing teenagers, recovering dropped iPhones and a “pile of iPads” at one spot, a police statement said.

More than 100 people who appeared to be teenagers looted a Lululemon store, NBC10 Philadelphia reported, citing a police officer.

Video posted on social media showed masked people in hoodies running out of Lululemon and police officers grabbing several and tackling them to the sidewalk, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

No injuries were immediately reported but CBS Philadelphia said a security guard was assaulted at the Foot Locker.

The flash mob-style ransacking followed an earlier peaceful protest over a judge’s Tuesday decision to dismiss murder and other charges against a Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a driver, Eddie Irizarry, through a rolled-up window.

However, several police commanders said that the store ransacking wasn’t connected to earlier demonstrations, CBS Philadelphia reported.

The thefts also occurred on the same day that Target announced it will close nine stores in four states, including one in New York City’s East Harlem neighborhood, and three in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying that theft and organized retail crime have threatened the safety of its workers and customers.

28% Of Americans ‘Not Confident’ That 2024 Vote Will Be Fair And Accurate: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/27/28-of-americans-not-confident-that-2024-vote-will-be-fair-and-accurate-ii-tipp-poll/

Will the 2024 election be fair, or marred by systematic cheating? Based on how Americans feel about recent elections and the coming presidential contest, most are confident the election will be fair. But there’s a huge political gap on the issue between Democrats on one side, and Republicans and independents on the other, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

First, the good news: 65% of the 1,223 registered voters queried in the national online I&I/TIPP Poll, which was taken from Aug. 30-Sept. 1, called themselves either “very confident” (42%) or “somewhat confident” (23%) that the 2024 election “will be conducted fairly and accurately.”

The bad news: 28% of Americans expressed being either “not very confident” (17%) or “not at all confident” (11%). So more than a quarter of the electorate harbors doubts about the legitimacy of the coming presidential election. The poll has a 2.9 percentage-point margin of error.

Further muddying the picture, the major parties and political affiliations appear far apart when it comes to questions of election fairness.

Among Democrats, 89% believe the 2024 elections will be fair and above board. That compares to just 42% of Republicans and 58% of independents. Conversely, a mere 7% of Democrats thought the elections would have fairness issues, compared to 51% of Republicans and 32% of independents.

By party, the responses have a margin of error of +/-4.1 percentage points for Democrats, +/-4.4 percentage points for Republicans, and +/-5.9 percentage points for independents.

Even Bill Gates is backtracking — the air’s gone out of the climate-crisis balloon Glenn H. Reynolds

https://nypost.com/2023/09/25/even-bill-gates-is-backtracking-the-airs-gone-out-of-the-climate-crisis-balloon/

Has the air gone out of the “climate crisis” balloon? 

It’s starting to look like it. Some other causes du jour are looking limp lately, too.

Oh, hysteria is still out there. In Boston this month, I passed a church where the door bore a lurid poster reading “DUE TO GLOBAL CLIMATE CRISIS, WORSHIP IN SANCTUARY 9-17-23 CANCELED.”

If it were really a global crisis, wouldn’t you want to be praying?

I first thought it was referring to Hurricane Lee, which had been predicted to bring apocalyptic storm conditions to Beantown. 

Lee, though, veered out to sea, and that Sunday was sunny, warm and delightful. 

(While the soldiers of God had fled the scene in advance, the armies of Mammon were out in force on the Boston Common, in the form of a massive cannabis fair. Say what you will about the stoners, they’re not prone to panic or overthinking.)

But this seems actually a case of closing church so parishioners could go to New York to “Join us in the March to End Fossil Fuels,” which is even more amusing, since traveling uses a lot more fossil fuels than staying in Boston and praying for an end to fossil fuels, which would be at least as effective.

Bill Gates, however, is pumping the brakes on climate panic. 

Speaking at a New York Times event, he observed that heavy-handed policies won’t work: “If you try to do climate brute force, you will get people who say, ‘I like climate but I don’t want to bear that cost and reduce my standard of living.’”

America Is Desperate for a New Beginning Nearly two-thirds of voters believe the system is ‘broken’ if it’s Trump vs. Biden. By William A. Galston

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-desperate-new-beginning-2024-election-voter-sentiment-polls-gop-primary-biden-trump-3fde70cd?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

We don’t need polls to tell us that confidence in our political institutions is at a low ebb, but they do help clarify what Americans are feeling.

In a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, 10% of Americans reported that thinking about U.S. politics made them feel hopeful, and 4% were excited. By contrast, 55% said they were angry, and 65% were exhausted.

This isn’t the first poll to note a pervasive sense of exhaustion, and I suspect it won’t be the last. Americans are tired of partisan quarrels that rarely reach a resolution. Issues like immigration reform linger for decades, and the Supreme Court has brought new ones such as abortion back into the arena.

Joe Biden was elected, in part, to calm this turbulence. Historians will debate whether he could have done so had he pursued a different agenda, but clearly his administration hasn’t reduced division, whether over economics, culture or foreign policy.

Americans blame both parties about equally for this situation. According to Pew, 60% of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, and 61% have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.

A recent CBSpoll found that 54% of respondents regard the Republican Party as “extreme,” one of the favorite epithets of Democrats describing the GOP. But the same percentage also regards the Democrats as extreme, and only minorities think that either political party is “reasonable.”

The FDA’s See-No-Data Approach A study showed promise in treating a rare disease. The agency wouldn’t even look at the results. By Stephen Cederbaum and Emil Kakkis

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-food-and-drug-admin-arg1-d-pegzilarginase-aeglea-biotherapeutics-arginine-deficiency-healthcare-c9e8c21f?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

We’ve spent most of our medical careers investigating and treating rare genetic conditions, including some afflicting only a few dozen Americans. Recently, scientists developed a treatment for one such condition—arginase 1 deficiency, or ARG1-D, which causes the amino acid arginine to accumulate in the blood, harming the brain and causing seizures, stunted growth and intellectual disability. The Food and Drug Administration has refused to consider the therapy. Its decision ignores the best available data and indicates a lack of understanding of rare-disease research.

Discovering treatments for rare diseases is a daunting task. Recruiting even a few dozen people for a clinical trial requires doctors and drug companies to identify a large share of the patient population. And since the market for such therapies is necessarily small, it’s nearly impossible to attract investment. So when news emerged aboutAeglea BioTherapeutics’ ARG1-D therapy pegzilarginase, we could hardly believe it. Pegzilarginase is an enzyme engineered to lower the body’s levels of arginine. The randomized placebo-controlled study of pegzilarginase included 32 patients with ARG1-D.

The results speak for themselves. The amount of arginine present in blood plasma declined by 80% for patients on pegzilarginase. After only six months, 90.5% of patients who received pegzilarginase had normal arginine levels, and this was sustained over time. The data also suggested progressive improvements in motor function compared with a placebo. And most patients tolerated the therapy quite well.

These numbers were jaw-dropping. Which is why the FDA’s decision is incomprehensible.