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Biden’s Short-Sighted New Health Rule The Administration is taking away cheaper insurance options from consumers to jam everyone into the ObamaCare exchanges.

Posted By on July 8th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-short-sighted-new-health-rule-96d90d3e?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Here’s a definition of Bidenomics you won’t hear from the White House: Forcing Americans to buy expensive products they don’t want or need. Behold the President’s plan to limit short-term health insurance plans in order to jam more consumers into the heavily subsidized and regulated ObamaCare exchanges.

The Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury Departments on Friday proposed rules to roll back the Trump Administration’s expansion of short-term, limited-duration insurance (STLDI) plans. Since 2018 these plans have been available in 12-month increments, and consumers have been able to renew them for up to 36 months.

Short-term plans aren’t required to provide comprehensive benefits, including pediatric services, maternity care and mental health treatment. They are thus much cheaper than the heavily-regulated plans on the ObamaCare exchanges, which must provide 10 “essential” benefits and are restricted in their ability to charge premiums based on age and risk.

These plans are especially attractive to young people whose employers don’t provide coverage. Why would a healthy 26-year-old want to pay for maternity, pediatric and other services he probably won’t use in the near future? Instead, he could use the thousands of dollars in savings from enrolling in short-term plans to repay student loans.

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Riots Again in France by Alain Destexhe

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19781/riots-again-in-france

These responses — skirting due process at the highest levels of government — show the fear that the suburbs instill in those in power: the fear of a generalized conflagration, the fear of another death, the fear that control of the situation is slipping away, the fear of the inability to control these uprisings or the root causes that breed them.

Some of these suburbs have long since become lawless zones, or rather zones of “alternative law,” where drug kingpins and Muslim imams now rule the roost, and where the police only move in force from time to time. In some neighborhoods, drug dealers have set up physical obstacles that make it difficult for the police to gain access when they decide to intervene by force, when the authorities can pretend that they still control something.

It is necessary to deal with the cause — excessive and uncontrolled immigration — both legal (through family reunification and the right of asylum) and illegal. When you are faced with a leak in a boat that is on the verge of sinking, as French society is, you not only have to have to bail out the water, but also plug the breach.

There are “two Frances” facing each other. One is violent, ready to riot at the first opportunity, encouraged by political parties who see it as an electoral reservoir. The other, still in the majority, is dignified and peaceful, outraged by the behavior of these young people of immigrant origin — but who remain silent and do nothing.

France seems slowly heading for civil war.

Following the killing of a 17-year-old boy, France is once again the scene of riots that reflect the gulf between traditional France and the suburbs — the result of immigration over the last 40 years.

Nahel Merzouk was killed by police. He was being chased in Nanterre, near Paris, by two policemen on a motorcycle for traffic violations and refusal to stop the car he was driving. After Merzouk was forced to stop the car due to traffic congestion, the policemen approached his car and drew their weapons. Merzouk then drove off, at which point one of the policemen fired his weapon at the car, fatally wounding Merzouk. If Merzouk had followed the orders of the police, he would not have died.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Making Sense of the Jenin Raid Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Israel’s military operation in Jenin has ended and the IDF has withdrawn from the Palestinian town. You can see some of the results here and weapons caches in mosques here. Evidence of Iranian-sponsored terror organizations living in the middle of the civilian Palestinian population can be seen here.

Even Haaretz journalist Amos Harel almost acknowledged that Israel avoided Palestinian civilian casualties, although the IDF entered a densely populated area of the city. However, he did not note that the reason the IDF was there was because terrorists deliberately located themselves in the heart of this area.

Harel also suggested a sort of “tit for tat” aspect to the Palestinian response: “There was a stabbing attack in Bnei Brak and a vehicular ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.”

Indeed, the headline of the piece was “Macabre Dance will Persist.”

So, for Harel this is a “dance.” Palestinian terrorists attempt to kill Israeli civilians while burrowed in among their own civilians—two war crimes in one—and this is the same thing as the IDF’s attempt to eliminate the source of this terror.

Harel is not alone in his view. As you watch and read media coverage of the Jenin raid—especially in The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC and Al Jazeera—remember that this is not Israel’s first incursion into Jenin.

During the so-called “second intifada,” Israel took the initiative and removed terrorist emplacements in the city. Western media reported Palestinian claims of 1,000 civilians killed and buried in mass graves as fact. But eventually, Western reporters proved that “about 50 Palestinians had fought and died in a ferocious battle that also cost the lives of 23 Israeli soldiers.”

With that in mind, note a recent New York Times headline: “Jenin Has a Long Legacy as a Bastion of Palestinian Armed Struggle.” The town, the article said, has “nurtured an ethos of defiance.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

U.S. Department of Defense lowers fitness standards for transgender members embracing ‘authenticity’ By Eric Utter

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/07/us_department_of_defense_lowers_fitness_standards_for_transgender_members_

The Army is still in love with woke and with Major Rachel Jones.

A recent tweet from the United States Department of Defense stated:

“@USArmy Maj. Rachel Jones found solace after coming out as a transgender female. Her journey from battling depression & suicidal thoughts to embracing authenticity inspires us all. #whyweserve”

The tweet featured a picture of Maj. Jones wearing camo and holding a Pride flag in each hand. The camouflage uniform doesn’t hide the fact that Maj. Jones is considerably overweight. Nor does it hide the fact that he she is struggling with mental illness. Tragically, the same can be said about a great many in today’s Obama-Biden military.

In fact, U.S. service members who identify as transgender can now apparently seek an indefinite fitness standards exemption. So Maj. Jones could avoid PT while he she focuses on battling depression– and transphobia.

The world has arguably never needed America’s historically extraordinarily benevolent but incredibly lethal military more than it does today. And that military, the same one that defeated the British (twice), the Germans (twice), the Japanese—and that more recently effectively defeated the fourth largest standing army in the world (Iraq’s, in the Gulf War) in roughly four days—is now a shell of its former self. Its civilian and military leadership has completely redefined, remade, and re-tasked it.

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Two Americas Collide at the Supreme Court By Matthew Boose

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/06/two-americas-collide-at-the-supreme-court/

When President Biden fumed that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is “not normal,” he spoke more truth than he may have intended. It is certainly not normal nowadays to acknowledge, even implicitly, that discrimination against whites is possible, or even wrong. The Supreme Court blasted the vaporous pretexts that elites have used to justify this invidious scheme, which has carried on indefinitely, feasting on countless dreams without satisfying a bottomless hunger of unquantifiable grievance. The sentimental and, arguably, self-serving wailing of the dissenters, particularly Justice Jackson, draws from that same source.

Although affirmative action has long been unpopular with the public, the outcome in this case is paradoxically more provocative than the Dobbs decision, which cut against popular opinion on abortion. The reason is that racially conscious discrimination has been the rule of American life for the better part of a century. When, in the majority opinion, the famously milquetoast John Roberts asserted that all racial discrimination is bad, he was appealing to a supposed truism that has been repudiated in theory and practice by this country’s ruling class.

To the left, the court’s colorblind worldview is casuistry. Judging by the fruits of civil rights, the left would seem to have the better argument. From its inception, civil rights has meant almost exclusively treating certain groups favorably and others disfavorably. Affirmative action at elite universities was merely the most high-stakes example of this system. From corporate hiring to television advertising and the way newspapers report, or do not report, crime, life in America is now encoded in the subtlest of ways by racial preferences. Even in the most informal of situations, everyone understands the power of the proverbial “race card.” Some employees are virtually unfireable because of their skin color. Freedom of speech has been throttled by a pervasive dread of retaliation for causing even unintentional offense on the basis of race.

Justices Sotomayor and Jackson envision a totalitarian nightmare where wealth, honors, and opportunities are perpetually redistributed until some intangible state of “equality” is reached. Yet this terror, indistinguishable from communism, is the reality in which Americans have lived for a long time. The disruption of that reality makes the court’s ruling anomalous. Can civil rights law now be repurposed to protect everyone, as originally advertised? Perhaps, but the role of blind luck and accident in this ruling should not be underestimated. Had Donald Trump lost in 2016, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a bit more humility, these opinions would have been flipped.

MEDIA Comments turned off

A Tale of Two Boats Valuing certain people over others. by Armstrong Williams

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-tale-of-two-boats/

ATHENS, GREECE — In the course of a single week, two tragedies unfolded, both exposing the stark, divergent responses by our media and governments based on the affected demographics and the narratives they spin. Intriguingly, both tragedies involved the ocean and rescue attempts, starkly underlining our inconsistent approaches to different crises. One tragedy revolved around the implosion and subsequent deaths of five individuals who had invested $250,000 each for an underwater journey to explore the Titanic’s ruins. The other was a catastrophe at sea off the coast of Greece, resulting in the tragic assumed loss of nearly 700 migrants in pursuit of better lives overseas. Now, take a guess, which incident garnered more media attention? If your instinct was to go for the event that claimed up to 700 lives, you would be dead wrong.

On June 13, a distress signal from a migrant vessel carrying up to 750 individuals was first brought to light by Italian activist Nawal Soufi, prompting a range of rescue efforts from different parties throughout the day. Nonetheless, differing narratives surfaced concerning the vessel’s readiness to receive aid and its overall condition. Despite obtaining supplies from the Maltese-flagged tanker Lucky Sailor and from Greek authorities, the boat’s occupants reportedly declined any further assistance, staying their course. Adding to the confusion, Soufi and Greek parliament member Kriton Arsenis alleged that the Greek coast guard attempted to tug the boat toward Italian waters, a claim vehemently denied by Greek officials. Ultimately, the boat succumbed and capsized during the early hours of June 14, with further conflicting stories on whether it was a result of overcrowding and engine malfunction, or if it was because they were being tugged by a Greek coast guard. Tragically, of the estimated 750 souls onboard, 104 have survived.

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Three Landmark Supreme Court Decisions Protecting a Free America The guardians of the Constitution take a noble stand. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/three-landmark-supreme-court-decisions-protecting-a-free-america/

President Biden and his left-wing base are furious at the Supreme Court for the three historic decisions that the Court issued on the last two days of its 2022-2023 term. President Biden disparaged the Supreme Court, claiming it was “not a normal court” and accused its conservative majority of misinterpreting the Constitution.

President Biden’s attack on the legitimacy of the Supreme Court was not only a reckless assault on a co-equal branch of the federal government. It evidenced President Biden’s complete misunderstanding of the core constitutional principles of equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and separation of powers, all of which the Supreme Court majority underscored in its landmark decisions.

With these three decisions, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority firmed up the underpinnings of America’s constitutional republic that the Left seeks to destroy.

On June 29th, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admission practices used by colleges and universities such as the defendants Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the 6-3 conservative majority, rejected the notion that one’s racial group identity should supersede the totality of one’s own individual life experiences, skills, and aspirations as a prime criterion for admission. A diverse class of entrants can be assembled without having to discriminate against one racial or ethnic group in favor of another.

The cases brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina involved admission practices that pitted one minority group, Asian American students, against another minority group, African American students, for admission purposes.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

After the French Riots “Laxity and submission.” by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-the-french-riots/

So the latest round of rioting in France seems at last to have burned itself out. In the end, it didn’t expand into a Muslim revolution; it didn’t succeed in overthrowing the French Republic; it didn’t lead to the first transformation of a Western republic into a sharia state. But this doesn’t mean that France won’t eventually be brought down in such a way, and sooner rather than later. All it will take is one more minor police action that triggers the nation’s Muslims into a tsunami of fierce and extraordinary violence – a tsunami that, unlike this time, doesn’t end until it makes the Reign of Terror look like a scene from Gigi.

Certainly the cooling-off of Muslim rage owed nothing whatsoever to the efforts of Emmanuel Macron or any other French leader. Nor did it owe anything to the French electorate which – although it’s been offered the opportunity in recent years to install in the Élysée Palace a principled and intrepid agent of change like Marine le Pen, Valérie Pécresse, or Éric Zemmour – has instead voted repeatedly for more of the same. Voted, that is, for hopeless establishment types like Macron, who over the years has spoken out of both sides of his mouth on the immigration issue – celebrating Muslim imports as an economic boon, then formulating a five-point program to defeat “Islamic separatism,” then “clarifying” his plan with a declaration of his deep respect for the Islamic faith.

Well, there’s one positive thing to be said about last week’s riots: they brought Western Europe’s alarming predicament into focus in a manner that few events in recent years have succeeded in doing, and, one can only hope, have opened the eyes of a considerable number of people who’d previously managed to avoid facing up to reality. How many people? Who knows?

Even before the rioting, to be sure, most Frenchmen understood very well what they were up against. Although heroic truth-tellers like Zemmour have been condemned in the French media for promoting the so-called “replacement theory” – i.e., the belief that native Europeans are being gradually supplanted by foreign peoples whose mass immigration over recent decades is the consequence of policies instituted by political elites without the consent of the populace. In fact, surveys have shown that most Frenchmen subscribe to the “replacement theory.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Folly of Wind-John Hinderaker

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/the-folly-of-wind.php

The U.S., like much of Europe, has supposedly committed itself to replacing fossil fuels with “green” energy, which mostly means wind. This will never happen, and the effort to make it happen will collapse in ignominy and economic and social chaos. The reason is simple: wind turbines, and even more so solar panels, fail to produce electricity a large majority of the time. Just as bad, their failures are unpredictable and often ill-timed.

Here in the Upper Midwest, we have experienced a couple of hot weeks, which means that air conditioners have been running. MISO, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, has a nominal 28,572 megawatts of wind energy on its grid. Surely the wind turbines were able to keep the air conditioners running. Right?

Just kidding. Isaac Orr explains:

The graph below shows wind capacity factors in MISO during the same period in blue. A capacity factor is a percentage of how much electricity a power plant generates compared to its theoretical maximum output.

The graph also shows the capacity value that MISO gives to wind turbines, which is intended to measure the reliable capacity that the asset is supposed to contribute during peak electricity demand. In 2023, MISO expects wind turbines to operate at an 18.1 percent capacity factor during times of peak demand, shown in red in the chart.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Here’s What You Need To Know About France’s ‘Summer Of Love’ Riots By: Shawn Fleetwood

Posted By on July 7th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/06/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-frances-summer-of-love-riots/

The ongoing situation in France bears a striking resemblance to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence that engulfed American cities following the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

French authorities have estimated that rioters have burned or looted more than 1,100 public and private buildings over the past week in their violent response to a police shooting involving a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent.

On Wednesday, a French news outlet reported that, according to the country’s Ministry of the Interior, roughly 1,105 buildings including police stations, town halls, and schools have been assaulted since riots began on June 27. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told a CNN affiliate that more than 1,000 businesses have been “vandalised, attacked or set on fire.” The damages are estimated to cost over $1 billion.

The impetus for the nationwide violence occurred on June 27, when a French police officer shot and killed 17-year-old “Nahel M.” during a traffic stop. While exact details of the situation remain unclear, early reports indicate the situation unfolded after police pulled the young man over in a Paris suburb for allegedly breaking traffic rules. According to Fox News, police have reportedly claimed Nahel “drove his car at one of the officers, while the video [of the incident] shows one of the officers pointing a weapon at him and saying, ‘You are going to get a bullet in the head.’”

“The officer then appears to shoot Nahel as the car suddenly pulls away, traveling only a short distance before crashing, with Nahel dying at the scene. Police took the offending officer into custody and opened an investigation into charges of voluntary manslaughter, with charges brought against him on Friday,” the Fox report reads. The officer’s lawyers have since claimed their client meant to shoot Nahel in the leg but was bumped into when the car took off and did not intend to kill him.