NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

California Bills Would Remove Visitation Rights for Parents who Don’t ‘Affirm’ Child’s Gender Identity By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on September 7th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/06/california-bills-would-remove-visitation-rights-for-parents-who-dont-affirm-childs-gender-identity/

Democrats in the state of California continue to double down on their support for transgenderism, and have now introduced legislation that would forbid parents from even seeing their child if they do not support the child’s “gender identity.”

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Democrats in the state legislature have introduced two new bills, both of which would change California family law by making “gender affirmation” a part of children’s health, safety, and welfare. The first bill would grant judges the authority to take away custody from parents who do not “affirm” their child’s gender identity, while the second bill would force judges who are considering granting custody rights to take into consideration “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity or gender expression.”

Neither bill provides any clear definition for the term “affirmation,” nor do they give a specific age by which a child’s identity should be “affirmed” by their parents. Both pieces of legislation will be up for approval by the State Assembly and State Senate by September 14th.

“In the unfortunate event that parents are negotiating visitation rights for their children in a custody dispute, it makes sense for a judge to consider if the children are in legitimate danger,” said Lance Christensen, a spokesman for the California Policy Center. “However, classifying a parent who does not affirm a child’s gender dysphoria should not be in the same category as an abuser.”

The bills were introduced by State Senator Anna Caballero (D-Calif.) and co-authored by State Senator Scott Wiener (D-Calif.), the latter of whom is notorious for introducing numerous pro-LGBT bills that have garnered widespread backlash; his legislation has included a bill that decriminalized the act of knowingly infecting someone with HIV, as well as a bill decriminalizing homosexual acts with minors.

Wiener has repeatedly defended his outlandish legislation, blaming the most recent backlash on “a pretty massive misinformation campaign about this bill by the right-wing media.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Non-COVID deaths are still way higher than normal. Why? The increase in total deaths from all causes, not just COVID deaths, is up significantly By Edward Ring

Posted By on September 7th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/06/unexplained-excess-deaths-persist-in-post-covid-era/

According to data reported weekly by the CDC, the death rate in America remains elevated. In the six years prior to the COVID era, deaths in the United States averaged between 2.6 and 2.8 million people per year. These averages are adjusted for population growth, and with a population as large as the U.S., the numbers should be, and are, remarkably stable. During the three years immediately preceding the 2020, for example, the population growth adjusted death rate from all causes varied by only 1.5 percent.

None of that is true today. The increase in total deaths – deaths from all causes, not just COVID deaths – is up significantly. If the period between October 2019 and June 2023 had adhered to predictable mortality rates, 10.5 million Americans would have died. Instead, during that period, 12.4 people died. This prolonged period of so-called excess deaths, 17 percent above normal, is only rivaled by the estimated 675,000 deaths from Spanish Flu in America in 1918-19 when the country had a much smaller population.

To illustrate how aberrant these grim statistics are, the chart below plots on a blue line the actual weekly deaths from all causes in the United States from the Fall of 2019 through the Spring of 2023. The grey line plots how many deaths would have occurred if mortality rates had adhered to predictable trends based on highly consistent statistics from the six prior years, 2013 through 2019. The data is indisputable, even if the causes remain mired in controversy. During the so-called COVID era, nearly 2.0 million people are dead who, if it had been normal times, would still be alive today.

There appears to be no end in sight, even though the horrific surges appear to be behind us. As shown on the right edges of the chart, going into the summer of 2023, weekly deaths from all causes remained persistently higher than normal. For example, during the last week of June, which is the most recent week for which there is reasonably complete reporting, 55,000 Americans died. Based on historical patterns, only 51,000 Americans would have died. Excess deaths in the U.S. are still about 7 percent above normal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Biden ‘National Security Threat’? Majority Says Yes: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on September 7th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/07/is-biden-national-security-threat-majority-says-yes-ii-tipp-poll/

Across the globe, the U.S. faces a growing list of dangerous foreign policy challenges. But is the 80-year-old President Joe Biden, with growing signs of age-related mental issues, up to the task? A large majority of Americans, including Democrats, say no, according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

Global dangers abound. China’s engaged in a massive military buildup and poised to attack Taiwan. Meanwhile, Russia wages a bloody war with U.S.-supported Ukraine. In the Mideast, Iran’s nuclear program nears completion, and the U.S.’ 2021 Afghanistan departure has left a power vacuum across the region. This is just a partial list of growing threats.

With these in mind and a looming presidential election, the online I&I/TIPP Poll asked 1,351 adults around the country: “How concerned are you that Biden’s age and mental capacity pose a national security threat?” The poll, taken from Aug. 30-Sept. 1, has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

The response was clear: After rounding the data, 70% of all respondents said they were either “very concerned” (44%) or “somewhat concerned” (25%). Just 15% answered “not very concerned,” while 13% said “not at all concerned,” for a total of 28%.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘Even Hitler,’ Says the Palestinian President Abbas explains why his movement won’t accept peace with Israel.

Posted By on September 7th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mahmoud-abbas-palestine-israel-fatah-party-c131ddd9?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

It’s never a good sign when a dictator delivers a rambling historical lecture, in the style of Fidel Castro or Vladimir Putin. Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, proved the point on Aug. 24 before the Fatah Revolutionary Council. His subject? The Jews.

Most media will ignore his comments, which were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute. They don’t fit the liberal narrative that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a clash of two nationalisms that can be resolved in a “peace process” if Israelis make more concessions. The comments also don’t fit the narrative, gaining ground among Democrats, that the Israelis are extreme and the Palestinians progressive.

“The truth that we should clarify to the world,” Mr. Abbas began, “is that European Jews are not Semites. They have nothing to do with Semitism.” He cited the Khazar hypothesis, which speculates that Ashkenazi Jews aren’t descended from the Holy Land, hailing instead from the medieval Tatar kingdom.

This has been discredited by a century of scholarship; today, it’s a theory one expects to find only in online fever swamps. But its usefulness in denying the Jewish connection to the land of Israel has made it a mainstream claim among Palestinians.

Mr. Abbas kept going. “They say that Hitler killed the Jews for being Jews, and that Europe hated the Jews because they were Jews. Not true,” he averred. Europeans “fought against these people because of their role in society, which had to do with usury, money and so on.”

“Even Hitler,” he added, “said he fought the Jews because they were dealing with usury and money.” Yes, even for Hitler, “this was not about Semitism and anti-Semitism.”

Three days before Mr. Abbas’s speech, his Fatah party’s military wing competed with Hamas to take credit for the murder near Hebron of a Jewish preschool teacher, Batsheva Nigri, in front of her child. If you wonder why the Oslo peace process hit a dead end and stayed there, consider that Mr. Abbas and Fatah have been described for decades as “moderates.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdoğan: Willing Hostage to Putin’s Anti-West Doctrine by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on September 7th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19942/erdogan-putin-doctrine

Since Turkey’s economy is undergoing an unprecedented dive, Erdoğan needs European loans and investors.

Erdoğan seems to have a lot of wants…. [And] he wants the US Congress to endorse the sale of F-16 Block 70 aircraft to Turkey.

What to do? Erdoğan has resorted to his old trick of launching a hoax charm offensive hoping to deceive, once again, a few naïve Western minds. Too little, too late. He has been dancing within the Russian orbit to Putin’s tunes for several years so that, like a junior mafioso, he is being reminded by the capo that “once you’re in, you cannot get out.”

“We take Russian missile attacks as a Russian warning that reflects Russia’s discontent over a few Turkish initiatives… A Putin way to say ‘Hey, behave or else…'” — Senior Turkish diplomat to Gatestone, on condition of anonymity.

Once again, Western optimists are misreading Erdoğan, that he is “rekindling fraught relations with the West.” He just needs Western money, a few pats on the shoulder and legitimacy for his sultanship.

The Turkish company Beks Ship Management… help[s] Russia ship out its oil despite the Western sanctions, according to The Wall Street Journal.

An elephant painted in stripes does not make it a zebra. Erdoğan has never hidden his anti-Western ideology, or its depths.

Erdoğan comes from the ranks of Turkey’s militant political Islamism that emerged in late 1960s under the leadership of the ideologue, Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister and Erdoğan’s mentor. In Erbakan’s rhetoric universal politics is simply about a struggle between the righteous (Islam) and a coalition of Zionists and racist imperialists — all else is just details. In his thinking, the Zionists support Turkey’s membership in the EU in order to “get Turkish Muslims to melt in a pot of Christianity.”

In a 2016 speech, Erdoğan talked of European countries: “These are not just our enemies… Behind them are plans and plots and other powers.” Also in 2016, he said that jihad is never terrorism. “It is resurrection…. It is to give life, to build… It is to fight the enemies of Islam.”

Also in 2020, Erdoğan wished that “God grant this nation many more happy conquests” at a celebration where he recited from the Quran, a salute to the Ottoman invasion of Christian lands. To European leaders, he said: “You are fascists in the true meaning of the world. You are veritably the link in the Nazi chain.”

Erdoğan’s anti-Western ideology has not changed. What changes from time to time is how much Western money and favors he needs.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The political exploitation of children The UN is using ‘children’s rights’ to advance the elites’ green agenda. Frank Furedi

Posted By on September 6th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/05/the-political-exploitation-of-children/

In its wisdom, one of those unelected and unaccountable United Nations committees decided last week that children should have the right to take national governments to court for failing to tackle climate change.

Like many other international bodies and NGOs, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is effectively using children to voice its own political concerns. In its new report, it praises ‘the efforts of children’ for drawing ‘attention’ to ‘environmental crises’. It claims that it is children rather than adults who possess the kind of wisdom necessary to tackle the problems facing the planet. And it calls for the legal affirmation and validation of the authority of children. ‘[Children’s] demands for urgent and decisive measures to tackle global environmental harm should be realised’, it states.

In the view of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, adults are the problem and children are the solution. Its approach is therefore fully in line with the cultural trend of adultifying childhood, which reverses the roles of adults and children. Children are deemed wise and considerate, whereas adults are presented as selfish and indifferent to others.

Of course, the Committee on the Rights of the Child is not really interested in what children think. It is simply ventriloquising children to advance its own beliefs. The report claims that children complained of ‘the negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities’, and that they ‘asserted their right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’. The report quotes the children it ‘consulted’ as follows:

‘“The environment is our life.” “Adults [should] stop making decisions for the future they won’t experience. [We] are the key means [of] solving climate change, as it is [our] lives at stake.” “I would like to tell [adults] that we are the future generations and, if you destroy the planet, where will we live?!”’

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China: Preparing for War by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on September 6th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19946/china-preparing-for-war

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping is rapidly militarizing his country and has instructed its army to “prepare for war” and “fight and win” it.

“Chinese ruler Xi Jinping replaced the senior leadership of China’s Rocket Force, which is responsible for almost all of China’s 400 or so nuclear warheads. These personnel changes are part of what is almost certainly the most ominous development of this time. It looks like Xi is contemplating using or at least threatening to use his most destructive weapons. In other words, China is planning to go to war.” — Gordon Chang, China expert, Newsweek, August 14, 2023.

“Xi sacked Rocket Force commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo. Neither has been seen in public since. Li’s deputy, Liu Guangbin, has also disappeared, along with Zhang Zhenzhong, a former deputy. At about the same time, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the Rocket Force, reportedly took his own life in early July.” — Gordon Chang, Newsweek, August 14, 2023.

Xi is doubtless weighing the risk-reward ratio of launching an aggressive operation against Taiwan during US President Joe Biden’s term of office. Xi is doubtless aware that his “window of opportunity” may be closing in 18 months, accompanied by a felicitously distracting US presidential election.

The timing of any Chinese assault on Taiwan will most certainly be determined by Xi’s assessment of the domestic political strength of the Biden administration as well as the possible need for a strong diversion from his own imploding economy. Xi is also doubtless assessing the US president’s resolve to back up his repeated declarations that US forces would come to the defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, as opposed to the US State Department’s immediate walk-back of the promise.

The Chinese Communist Party claims that the US is treating Taiwan as an independent state and these VIP visits violate its “One China Policy.” The truth, most likely, is that the CCP’s repeated transgressions against Taiwan’s air and maritime sovereignty, after then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan, are actually just part of the CCP’s military invasion exercises on its way to an all-out assault.

The CCP’s Eastern Theater Command has, in addition, established a Joint Operations Command Center, responsible for coordinating all phases of an actual invasion of Taiwan. Military moves suggestive of the CCP’s hostile intent toward Taiwan, included recent deliveries of wheeled armor vehicles to China’s coastal province of Guangdong, an area with several natural launch points for an invasion of Taiwan.

Xi Jinping and former Foreign Minister Qin Gang both warned the US about interfering in what China claims is an internal problem, and Xi added: “Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to China’s development.” Xi has stressed that “the Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interest” and has described as “wishful thinking” any expectation that China might compromise on the eventual incorporation of Taiwan into Communist China.

China has also rolled out a campaign of intimidation that shows China calling the shots. These began with the berating the US in Alaska, to which the State Department’s response was “deep concerns” and continued with smuggling over the US border fentanyl and other drugs that have killed an estimated 200,000 civilians.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Leftists Make Great Pets but Lousy Leaders By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on September 6th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/leftists_make_great_pets_but_lousy_leaders.html

It is striking just how much leftists enjoy being dominated by Big Government.  Please make us stand six feet apart!  Please monitor and police our speech!  Please punish us for skirting COVID lockdowns!  Please mandate new experimental goop for our veins!  Every time the oppressive authoritarians in positions of power abuse that power to make outrageous and unconstitutional demands of the American people, the leftists hop to and beg for even more obnoxious restrictions.  Politicians and bureaucrats are just people (often bad people), but to leftists, they’re celebrities, (needed) father figures, and the atheist’s empty-suited pantheon of false gods. 

As Sam J. wrote in a righteous, all-caps, truth-telling rant over at Twitchy, no matter how nonsensical or harmful the government’s often-illegal-but-always-idiotic commands, the masochistic left can be heard shrieking, “YEAH, THAT’S A GOOD IDEA.  GOVERN ME HARDER, DADDY!  MASK ME UP!  TAKE SCHOOL FROM MY KIDS!  YAAAAS!”  Nothing makes the left happier than a system that insists on ruling over leftists in perpetuity.  No group is more worthy of the left’s hero worship than an army of control freaks who take pleasure in inconveniencing, voyeuristically surveilling, and intimidating the masses.  Silence the vaccine skeptics!  Force the anti-maskers into hiding!  Imprison anyone who still attends church even after the State’s Marxist priests banned the unapproved exercise of religion!  In this brave new world, the cowards demand cowardice from everyone.

Or, as the Babylon Bee insightfully observes, the reason Democrats are so irrationally offended by the appearance of Revolutionary War–era Gadsden flags is because everything they have been brainwashed to believe screams out, “TREAD ON ME!”  Perhaps it is natural for those with crushed souls to plead for crushed spines, too.  If leftists didn’t snuggle up next to tyranny, after all, there would be little else to keep them warm at night.  It is as O’Brien — the enigmatic Inner Party inquisitor from Orwell’s 1984 — tells Winston Smith: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”  Leftists alive today crave that boot stamping on their collective face.  They need the threat of that boot’s punishment to find any sense of meaning in their otherwise empty, fruitless lives.  Receiving and inflicting pain is the only way for them to feel…something.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Debating a Democrat By John Stossel

Posted By on September 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/09/06/debating-a-democrat-n1724669

Colorado has a popular Democratic governor, Jared Polis.  

He’s a rare Democrat who says, “I’m for more freedom and lower taxes.”But is he really?

At least he’s willing to come to Stossel TV to debate.

Refreshingly, Polis supports charter schools. He even founded two. Unfortunately, his state’s school choice program only applies to government schools. Florida, Arizona, Utah, Indiana, West Virginia, Iowa and Arkansas now help parents send their kids to any school.

When I tell Polis that Colorado lags, he responds, “I’m not a fan of these voucher programs with no accountability where it can be Joe’s Taco Shop and K-8 academy and they’re getting taxpayer money.”

But it’s not true that independent schools have “no accountability.” They are accountable to parents, which is better than being “accountable” to sleepy government bureaucrats.

His state also launched universal preschool. But why? Even the much-praised Head Start program doesn’t help kids. A federal study found that by third grade, there was no difference between those who attend Head Start and those who don’t.

“Why fund something that makes no difference?” I ask.

Polis responds: “High-quality early childhood education leads to better outcomes.”

It probably would. But rarely does government offer “high quality.”  

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The GOP Is in Danger of Becoming the Pac-12 of Political Parties By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on September 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/09/05/the-gop-is-in-danger-of-becoming-the-pac-12-of-political-parties-n1724628

How long will the Grand Old Party (GOP) be grand? Or even a party?

EXCERPT

As I monitor the GOP in-fighting now that primary debates have begun, my sense of foreboding is something new.

Republicans fight a lot. That’s usually a feature, not a bug. We aren’t a hive mind like the Democrats, although that does seem like it would be more functional on occasion. It’s just not in our electoral DNA.

The looming problem for the GOP heading into 2024 is that the dysfunctional, non-hive mind family has degenerated into bitterly partisan tribalism. I mean, it’s ugly out there. I’m the product of a lifetime of dysfunctional holiday dinner fights; if I say it’s ugly, it’s ugly.

The hardcore Trump supporters — I call them Escalator Magas — are very problematic. They’ve decided that Trump is a god, not a politician. I’ve been on record for ages saying that the hero worship of politicians is a lib thing, not a conservative thing. Politicians are our employees, not our gurus or heroes. America functions best when the electorate understands that.

I have praised Trump’s presidency for years, but that doesn’t matter to the Escalator crowd. One can’t offer even the mildest criticism of Trump without the Truth Social hordes launching into a collective diaper-soiling. It’s tedious.

It’s even worse if one dares say ANYTHING positive about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Should you even accidentally do so, it’s like every banshee in the history of Celtic lore begins keening in unison. I wrote a Morning Briefing last week that praised DeSantis’s actions in Florida after Hurricane Idalia and now I’ve got an email stalker who wants to make sure I know every low-t bad nickname he’s come up with for the governor.

The Escalator approach is to convince everyone in the GOP to abandon primary support for any candidate who isn’t Trump. They’ve decided that the best way to do this is to be as unhinged as possible and alienate the people they want to win over. I’ve written many times that I don’t buy into the argument that Trump can’t win the general election. His hardcore fans have now convinced me that they will do everything in their power to drive away people who might consider voting for him, but aren’t interested in joining a cult.

It doesn’t matter how many disclaimers I write, I’ve learned that no Escalator MAGA can understand this sentence: I will enthusiastically vote for Trump if he is the nominee.

On the other side of the GOP divide are the people who are trying to make a rational case for DeSantis. At first glance, it would seem to be an easy case to make. The polling thus far would indicate that they aren’t making it well. That’s because it’s difficult to do when trying to woo voters who have actually convinced themselves that the most anti-federal establishment American politician in a generation is a Bush guy and a member of the Swamp. DeSantis was a conservative rock star during COVID and the Trump crowd has completely rewritten the story to concoct an alt-reality.

One they all now believe.