ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Majority Of Dems Want Biden To Debate RFK Jr: POLL

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/19/majority-voters-want-joe-biden-robert-kennedy-debate-democratic/

A majority of Democratic voters want President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to engage in presidential primary debates for 2024, according to a Monday poll.

Roughly 78% of likely general election voters hope Biden and Kennedy will debate, including 57.5% of Democrats, 92.8% of Republicans and 80.1% of those not affiliated with either major party, according to a Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll. The Democratic National Committee is not holding debates for the 2024 primaries, which has drawn criticism from many who want the two leading contenders to take the stage.

The Real Clear Politics (RCP) average for a 2024 national Democratic primary, based on polls conducted between May 17 and June 15, indicate that Biden and Kennedy have 62% and 15.6% support, respectively, and author Marianne Williamson has 6.1%.

Kennedy continues to gain momentum nationally, and recently received the endorsement from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey believes Kennedy is the best Democratic candidate to beat the GOP’s leading contenders, former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. (RELATED: Biden’s Primary Strategy May Lead To RFK Jr Wins In First Two States)

A majority of voters think Biden, who is already the oldest U.S. president in history, is too old to serve a second term, according to the poll. Though Republicans and other voters agree Biden’s age is a problem, only 29.3% of Democrats believe the president is too old for reelection.

The poll surveyed 1,088 likely general election voters from June 5 to June 9, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Blinken ruffles feathers by stating US ‘does not support Taiwan independence’ after meeting China’s Xi By Caitlin Doornbos

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/blinken-ruffles-feathers-by-stating-us-does-not-support-taiwan-independence-after-meeting-chinas-xi/

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised eyebrows Monday, telling reporters the US “does not support Taiwan independence” after meeting in Beijing with officials including Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Blinken’s statement ruffled the feathers of many Republicans in Congress, who viewed the statement – and the secretary’s inability to re-establish military-to-military communications – as an inappropriate kowtow to America’s greatest adversary.

“Blinken flew to Communist China to appease Xi Jinping and state the Biden administration does not support Taiwan’s independence,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on Twitter. “Why won’t this administration stand up to bullies and stand for freedom?”

The Taiwan issue is among the most contentious in the US-China relationship, with Xi making it his No. 1 priority to “reunite” Taiwan with China — though the island about 100 miles off the country’s southeastern coast has never actually been part of it.

Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) tweeted that Blinken’s statement was a “dangerous display of weakness towards our adversaries on the world stage.”

“The Biden admin is giving China a green light to increase its intimidation of our ally, Taiwan,” he said.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

I Paid for Free Speech at Arizona State The university is firing me for organizing an event featuring Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager. By Ann Atkinson

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-paid-for-free-speech-at-arizona-state-honors-college-kirk-prager-faculty-27c10a72?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

I thought that Arizona State University, my alma mater and employer, was different from other schools when it came to free speech. In 2011 the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression awarded ASU a “green light” rating for its written policies on freedom of expression. The university happily complied when FIRE suggested it adopt the Chicago Principles and protect the “free, robust and uninhibited sharing of ideas among all members of the University’s community.” The ASU Barrett Honors College has even been home to heterodox initiatives like the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, where I served as executive director for the last two years.

But beneath ASU’s written commitment to intellectual diversity lies a deep hostility toward divergent views. The latest trouble started in February when the Lewis Center hosted Robert Kiyosaki, Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk for an event on “Health, Wealth, and Happiness.” This nonpartisan program was part of a popular speaker series focused on connecting students with professionals who can offer career and life advice.

At the names of Messrs. Prager and Kirk, the faculty of ASU’s honors college were outraged. Thirty-nine of its 47 faculty signed a letter to the dean condemning the event on grounds that the speakers are “purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, [and] institutions of our democracy.” The signers decried ASU “platforming and legitimating” their views, describing Messrs. Prager and Kirk as “white nationalist provocateurs” whose comments would undermine the value of democratic exchange by marginalizing the school’s most vulnerable students.

The faculty protests extended beyond the letter. Professors spent precious class time denouncing the program. On Twitter they lamented the university’s willingness to allow donor input on campus events. Mr. Prager received a death threat, forcing municipal and campus police to enact extensive security measures.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.S. military leaders prioritizing protecting themselves rather than the nation? By Eric Utter

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/06/_us_military_leaders_prioritizing_protecting_emthemselvesem_rather_than_the_nation.html

The Intercept recently revealed that high-ranking U.S. military officials have intelligence resources charged with protecting their physical well-being…and also their egos…from criticism and potential subsequent “embarrassment,” in particular due to comments posted on social media. This is not a joke. (Okay, it is in one sense, but not literally.)

Yes, according to the left-leaning online newspaper, a new U.S. military unit has apparently been tasked with monitoring social media for mean posts about current and former high-ranking officers. Presumably, stuff like this from Twitter:

This fairly reeks of dictatorships, juntas, and other authoritarian regimes.

Forget defending against China, Iran, North Korea, et. al., the Obiden administration has fundamentally transformed what was previously the world’s most powerful and capable fighting force. It has emasculated it—and tasked it with defending against nationalism, climate change, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misgendering, “disinformation,” “domestic terrorists” (i.e. patriots and parents)…and now posts critical of military heads themselves.

Somewhere, George Washington weeps. And Patton rages.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Now They Tell Us: New Report Reveals ‘Critical Vulnerabilities’ in Dominion Voting Machines By Robert Spencer

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/06/19/now-they-tell-us-new-report-reveals-critical-vulnerabilities-in-dominion-voting-machines-n1704516

As we all know, the 2020 presidential election was the most honest, above-board exercise of popular suffrage in the recorded history of mankind, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a racist, bigoted redneck yahoo who wants to install Donald Trump as dictator-for-life of this once-proud republic. That said, however, there has been a steady trickle of revelations suggesting that the 2020 election was not actually the pristine civics lesson that we have been forced to affirm it to have been (on pain of vilification and deplatforming). The latest is the belated release this week of the 2021 Halderman Report, which shows that Dominion Voting Systems voting machines are not quite the unimpeachable fortresses they’ve been touted to be.

This is odd in the extreme, as it was just a few weeks ago that Fox News settled with Dominion for an eye-watering $787.5 million and fired its top host, Tucker Carlson, on top of that, all for suggesting that the election may not have been up to the standard of elections in bastions of democracy such as Cuba or Zimbabwe. But on Sunday, the National Pulse reported that the Halderman Report “lays bare a litany of ‘critical vulnerabilities’ in Dominion Voting Systems’ machines, currently being used in a number of states, and in all voting locations in the U.S. state of Georgia.”

The report, which according to the National Pulse was “compiled by Prof. Alex Halderman and Prof. Drew Springall as part of the lawsuit Curling v. Raffensperger,” explains how “ballot scanners and ballot marking devices (ICX) ‘can be exploited to subvert all of its security mechanisms’ and that ‘ICX could be used to change the votes of individual Georgia voters.’” And if it can be done in Georgia and the same machines are in use elsewhere, it can be done in other states as well.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Greens’ Program: The Suicide of Europe by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19744/europe-green-suicide

Beyond Growth is the annual ideological gathering of European environmentalists, and their countless relays in the world of government-funded, supposedly “non-governmental” organizations (NGOs).
What do most people remember when they look at the Beyond Growth report? The European Parliament. The link between Beyond Growth’s radical proposals and the European Parliament is presented as perfectly natural: If the European Parliament wants radical environmentalism, how could you, a small local voter, oppose it?
Most [activists] announce what, if they attain power, they will do. Let us, then, listen to the “proposals” of a charming, smiling Ms De Wever…
[T]he reasoning seems to go, it was the West, embodied by Adam Smith in 1776, that “invented” economic growth, and the West at the time was largely white, so by destroying white supremacy we destroy the very idea of economic growth.
If, according to Adam Smith, economic growth for everyone is the key to being lifted out of poverty – with the goal of making the poor richer, not the rich poorer – then destroying growth does not appear as an economic model that will provide much help. Worse, there are now those pesky choices such as: Would you rather encourage growth by allowing people in poor countries to use fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — or drive these people even further into poverty by denying them fossil fuels?
This reluctance to describe “the world after” [“degrowth”] is understandable. In the context of a Europe that is up to its eyebrows in debt and already taxing its citizens just to pay the interest on the debt, reducing economic output means facing the question of who will be left to die first. Healthcare, for instance, is already being rationed and has seemingly become more about cutting costs than delivering services, and more about growing an administrative bureaucracy with massive paperwork than investing in more doctors and better and timely patient care.
The dream EU of environmentalists starts to look like a version of Atlas Shrugged: a dystopian country in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws, regulations and bureaucrats.
[D]espite attempts by the state to enslave minds by force, people emerge victorious in their commitment to freedom. The human mind is the power that moves the world, not coercion.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Secretary of State Blinken’s Peculiar Visit to China Not a single reported Chinese apology – let alone acknowledgment – of China’s invasions of U.S. sovereignty. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secretary-of-state-blinkens-peculiar-visit-to-china/

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken traveled to China this past weekend for meetings with senior Chinese officials, months after canceling his trip there in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon encroachment of U.S. airspace. He met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang for hours, followed by a meeting with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. It was uncertain whether China’s President Xi Jinping would agree to give an audience to Secretary Blinken until, with about 45 minutes notice, Xi and Blinken ended up meeting for about a half hour.

Secretary Blinken conveyed the same message in person to China’s leadership that the Biden administration has been uttering for months. Keep the channels of communication open “to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken told Wang Yi.

China’s message during Secretary Blinken’s visit was also the same as its leaders have uttered many times before. According to China’s view of why tensions between China and the United States have risen so sharply, the U.S. has failed to show due respect for China’s vital national interests, particularly regarding China’s territorial claim to Taiwan. “State-to-state interactions should always be based on mutual respect and sincerity,” President Xi remarked.

A few days before Secretary Blinken’s visit, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang spoke more bluntly during his phone call with Secretary Blinken. He demanded that the United States “show respect” for China’s core concerns and “stop undermining China’s sovereignty, security and development interests in the name of competition.” That is a bit rich coming from the country which sent a spy balloon over U.S. sovereign airspace earlier this year to surveil sensitive U.S. military sites, and which set up a secret Chinese police station on U.S. soil.

There was not a single reported acknowledgement of responsibility by China’s leaders, much less an apology, for China’s invasions of U.S. sovereignty and security. Then again, they see no reason to do so with President Biden in the White House. President Biden showed how weak and out of touch with reality he is when he said, shortly before Secretary Blinken’s arrival in China, that the spy balloon incursion was more “embarrassing” for China’s leadership “than it was intentional.”

Secretary Blinken’s face-to-face meetings with China’s leaders were not only a waste of time. As Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York warned, Secretary Blinken’s trip would only serve to “legitimize” the Chinese Communist Party’s “continued subversion of our sovereignty.”

The Biden administration would rather patch things up with China as an end in itself than confront the Chinese regime’s increasingly provocative actions. Recently, for example, one of China’s warships came within 150 yards of an American destroyer conducting a freedom-of-navigation exercise with Canada in international waters. And one of China’s jet fighters flew directly in front of an American surveillance plane flying in international airspace. The Biden administration’s response was a feckless call to “keep the lines open with the Chinese to make it clear how unacceptable those particular intercepts are.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We have been normalizing child sacrifice for far too long Diane Bederman

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://dianebederman.com/we-have-been-normalizing-child-sacrifice-for-far-too-long/

June 12 is recognized globally as the World Day Against Child Labour. By definition, child labour is “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.”

I recently spoke to a young woman who is planning to buy a Tesla. To save the planet, of course. Great, I said. But, what about the child labour involved in creating the batteries; mining the lithium?

Well, she answered, child labour has been with us a long time – Nike, Adidas and so many others have their products made in China and third world countries using child labour.

True. Sad, but true. And very astute. But, just because child labour already exists, do we just turn a blind eye and carry on?

At what point do we say no?

Why are we normalizing child sacrifice?

Why do we not speak up against evil when first confronted?

Why do we remain silent?

To what end?

Money, in the case of product; and for child suicide bombers…?

Let’s start with child labour for cheap product.

Child labour laws were implemented in the USA with the federal child labor provisions, authorized by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), also known as the child labor laws. They were enacted to ensure that when young people work, the work is safe and does not jeopardize their health, well-being or educational opportunities.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

God Save the Queen and Biden’s Foreign Policy He’s as confused about Afghanistan, Ukraine and the Middle East as about the British monarch. Gerard Baker

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/god-save-the-queen-and-bidens-foreign-policy-blinken-china-iran-deal-ukraine-79c598c0?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

‘God save the queen, man!” said Joe Biden, in an unexpected windup to remarks in Connecticut about gun control last week. Like many of his utterances, the strange outburst prompted widespread confusion. What could this latest eructation from the presidential brain mean?

He knows that Elizabeth II, for 70 years the usual subject of the prayer, is already beyond the good Lord’s earthly protection, surely? He was at the funeral, and apparently awake throughout. Perhaps with all those tasteful Pride Month displays around the White House last week, his loyalty has been captured by a queen of the drag variety. Or maybe it was just an indication that he’s decided the nation needs to amp up the deference it’s been showing the first lady, and a more regal honorific than “Dr. Jill” will now be expected.

But to me the remark made a curious sort of sense, inadvertently reflecting the confused, uncertain and slightly out-of-touch approach to the rest of the world that characterizes the administration’s foreign policy.

What else could explain the news last week that the Biden team is putting together a deal that isn’t a deal with the ayatollahs in Iran?

The plan, according to multiple reports, is for Iran to agree not to enrich its uranium too close to the 90% level needed for weaponization and to release some American hostages, in exchange for sanctions relief and other assistance.

Aside from the naiveté you need to think that Tehran will abide by an agreement that doesn’t even require a signature, the tentative deal betrays trademark confusion and inconsistency in Biden administration policy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Barack Obama Attacks Tim Scott A black conservative President would rebut the former President’s racial and political narrative.

Posted By on June 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/barack-obama-tim-scott-nikki-haley-republicans-democrats-2024-race-9400eac?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

As America’s first black President, Barack Obama entered office with a promise of improving race relations and reducing political discord. Eight years later, rancor was worse as Mr. Obama’s Administration exploited race as a political weapon on voting rules, criminal justice, and preferences for jobs and much more. This explains why the former President is now attacking South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott.

Last week Mr. Obama, who doesn’t riff by accident, went after Mr. Scott and Nikki Haley, two of the GOP’s minority candidates for President. “I think there’s a long history of African-American or other minority candidates within the Republican Party who will validate America and say, ‘Everything’s great, and we can all make it.’ I mean, Nikki Haley, I think, has a similar approach,” Obama said on David Axelrod’s podcast.

“I’m not being cynical about Tim Scott individually. I am maybe suggesting that the rhetoric of ‘Can’t we all get along’” has to be “undergirded with an honest accounting of our past and our present,” Mr. Obama said. He added that people can be “rightly skeptical” when a Republican, “who may even be sincere in saying, ‘I want us all to live together,’ doesn’t have a plan for how do we address crippling generational poverty that is a consequence of hundreds of years of racism in this society.”

Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott both rebutted the former President’s patronizing comments. “There’s no higher compliment than to be attacked by President Obama,” Mr. Scott said. “Whenever the Democrats feel threatened, they pull out—drag out—the former President, have him make some negative comments about someone running, hoping that their numbers go down.”

Mr. Scott is right, and it’s worth asking why.