NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Sotomayor’s Supreme Court Staff Sold Her Books By Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/07/31/justice_sotomayor_uses_supreme_court_staff_to_sell_books_969348.html

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s taxpayer-funded staff helped organize events to sell her books, for which she has made $3.7 million since joining the court in 2009, according to an Associated Press investigation. Her salary on the court is $285,000.

In 2019, Sotomayor hosted an event at a Portland public library for her book “Just Ask!” Before the event, a Sotomayor aide emailed the organizers, informing them they had not bought enough books. “For an event with 1,000 people and they have to have a copy of Just Ask to get into the line, 250 books is definitely not enough,” said her aide, Anh Le, in an email, the AP reported.

Staff pushed books at other events as well. Before events at UC Davis Law School, University of Wisconsin, Clemson University, and Michigan State University, taxpayer-funded staff pushed organizers to buy books, or to buy more than their original order. Some books were shipped to the Supreme Court, where her staff brought them to her to sign in her chambers.

The court defended Sotomayor, saying in a statement that, “When [Sotomayor] is invited to participate in a book program, Chambers staff recommends the number of books (for an organization to order) based on the size of the audience so as not to disappoint attendees who may anticipate books being available at an event.”

What’s more, Sotomayor’s publisher, Penguin Random House, has had several matters before the court in which Sotomayor did not recuse herself.

“Justice Sotomayor would have recused in cases in which Penguin Random House was a party, in light of her close and ongoing relationship with the publisher,” the Supreme Court said in a statement. “An inadvertent omission failed to bring Penguin’s participation in several cases to her attention; those cases ultimately were not selected for review by the Court. Chambers’ conflict check procedures have since been changed.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Bidens: “Stone Cold Crooked” (6) — What Did China Get For Its Money?  Francis Menton

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-7-30-the-bidens-stone-cold-crooked-6-what-did-china-get-for-its-money

On July 27 (last Thursday), Representative James Comer of Kentucky appeared on Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast. Comer is the Chair of the House Oversight Committee, and the guy who has subpoenaed, and little-by-little is getting, the bank records of transfers from foreign governments to Biden family companies. Late that evening, Twitchy posted about an 8 minute clip from the podcast of Comer discussing some of the things his subpoenas had uncovered. Comer particulrly discusses one large payment from a Chinese government-connected entity, much of which went to various Bidens.

Separately on the same day, July 27, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio released on Twitter (or is it now “X”?) a thread that he called “The Facebook Files, Part I.” Jordan, in addition to being the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, also serves as Chair of is Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Government. In that capacity, Jordan had received a trove of internal Facebook communications documenting pressure from the White House to suppress various true information, notably information relating to the origin of the Covid virus in the Chinese Wuhan laboratory. The Wall Street Journal on July 28 had further reporting on the Facebook emails newly released by Jordan’s Subcommittee.

In other words, we’re starting to learn what China got in return for its investment in the Bidens.

I can’t find a transcript of the Comer appearance on Cruz’s podcast, but you can watch it at the Twitchy link, and in addition, the Twitchy piece contains a summary of what Comer said, posted on Twitter by a user going by the handle @KanekoaTheGreat.

Much of Comer’s discussion deals with the remarkable fact that some six major U.S. banks have filed no fewer than 170 Suspicious Activity Reports with respect to transactions conducted by Biden family members. (Comer specifically mentions JPM Chase, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America as among the banks that filed the SARs.). Comer (who says he is a former bank director) then says that filing of even two SAR reports as to an individual could make it difficult for that individual to open a bank account. (I’m not sure that that is true. However, I have several ex-colleagues who went on to become bank regulatory lawyers, and all of them have told me that the filing of a SAR against someone is by no means a routine step. So I have no doubt that 170 is truly extraordinary.)

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Times Latest DeSantis Smear Job is Laughably Dishonest By Carpe Diem

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/25/the-times-latest-desantis-smear-job-is-laughably-dishonest/

Although almost nothing is certain in life, there are two things we can be sure of when it comes to The New York Times: their “journalists” are not only incredibly dishonest, but are also horrible at math.

Case in point, their most recent pile of nonsense—unleashed by their so-called “investigative team,” titled “The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis’s Vaccine Turnabout.”

This 3,000-plus word smear piece dressed up as journalism is nothing more than a heap of lies, omissions and easily disproven Covid theories—all in a pathetic attempt to discredit Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s strong record on Covid—in which he protected the most vulnerable, saved hundreds of thousands of jobs, allowed businesses to thrive, kept children in school and preserved the liberties and freedoms of Floridians.

Virtually every claim the Times makes about DeSantis, is either not backed by any legitimate science, data, or is a complete fabrication and distortion of the governor’s record.

Then again, no one should be surprised that one of the three “journalists” responsible for this hogwash is none other than Sharon LaFraniere, whom the Times boasts in her bio, received a “Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s connections with Russia.” In other words, she received an award for something that not only never occurred—but that this sad leftist propagandist outlet is still peddling and celebrating.

Let’s dive right into the Times lunacy.

The piece starts out hilariously enough by claiming that in September 2020, Dr. Deborah Birx who was part of the White House coronavirus task force, received what was described as an alarming call from DeSantis’s then Florida surgeon general, Dr. Scott Rivkees. What was so alarming? DeSantis no longer supported what the Times considered “preventive Covid measures,” including limiting indoor dining.

In other words, given that thousands of restaurants in lockdown states had either closed permanently during Covid, or were forced to adopt ridiculous and unscientific measures that only allowed them to operate at roughly twenty-five percent capacity, DeSantis wanted the businesses in his state to actually be able earn a profit. The governor did not want restaurants in Florida to have to close through no fault of their own; he did not want employees to be laid off and he wanted customers to be free to choose if they thought eating out was worth the risk. Oh the horror.

The Times also conveniently ignored that DeSantis only wanted to do away with so-called mitigation measures once the data clearly showed who was most adversely affected by the virus, and once it became obvious that states with extreme lockdowns fared no better than places that remained open.

What a travesty.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Biden Presidency Is Unsustainable The Harris Dilemma By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/07/31/the-biden-presidency-is-unsustainable/

Imagine if Gavin Newsom was currently Vice President amid the final meltdown of the Biden family consortium.

Does anyone doubt that Biden would then either be forced to resign by Democratic politicos (for reasons in addition to his escalating dementia), or would be impeached and perhaps abdicate Nixon-style?

The presence of the now predictable mediocrity of Kamala Harris and the impossibility, given her race and gender, of removing her, for now is about all that keeps a cognitively declining Biden still in office. The Left fears what she could do as president to the Democratic Party; conservatives are terrified of what she could do to the country.

Joe Biden’s bewilderment exempts his embarrassments from accountability in the way that Hunter Biden’s addictions excuse his past serial criminality. But the passes granted to both father and son would be now unsustainable with a viable Vice President in waiting.

Indeed, the Harris problem explains some of current Democratic strategy.

Backroom leaks and growing insider rumors of Biden dementia confirm the portrait of an often befuddled president whom the public by now knows all too well.

The aimless House Democrats’ “how-dare-you-even-consider-an-impeachment inquiry” furor, coupled with their half-hearted efforts, along with the media, to refute the actual charges of corruption of the Biden family, suggest that he will not run for reelection—but also not be impeached much less convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment.

So the Harris dilemma explains a lot: finding a way to keep her out of current power until Biden somehow finishes his first term, and thus letting the Democratic 2024 primary candidates organically abort her presidential aspirations.

There are a few problems, however, with this strategy.

One, can Joe Biden finish his first term?

That would require his staff to shorten his already truncated workday for the next 18 months to about 2-3 hours of work per day.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Kay S. Hymowitz: Barbie’s Checkmate Greta Gerwig’s film is outfitted with so many layers of irony as to disarm the doll’s—and the film’s—most ardent critics.

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/barbies-checkmate

I know. You’ve had it up to here with Barbie. You don’t care about the stunning $162 million global record-breaking opening weekend. You roll your eyes at the Barbie luggage, the candles, the ice cream, the Airbnb listing, the NFTs. You’re sick of the whole “women are so oppressed yet so wow.” You’ve heard it a million times already; the future is female.

Well, you may not be interested in Barbie, but Barbie—or more precisely, Mattel, Barbie’s corporate puppet master—is interested in you. Young children are Mattel’s core customers, but the company has set its sights on a much wider market. It sees the movie as a way for everyone—“teens, young adults, moms, glammas [a portmanteau for glamorous grandmas]” to “engage in the franchise,” in the words of Richard Dickson, Mattel’s former president and COO (now CEO of clothing retailer Gap).

Judging from the pink tsunami of the past few weeks, Mattel’s efforts are paying off. We shouldn’t be surprised. The movie is only the latest in a long series of brilliant chess moves confirming Mattel’s place as the World Champion Grand Master of marketing to progressive, relatively affluent, sophisticated consumers. I don’t know whether the company or the movie are actually as woke as some are grumbling, but I do know Mattel saw the sales potential of the woke phenomenon when Nikole Hannah-Jones was still in elementary school.

Consider Barbie’s origins. For much of commercial toy history, baby dolls were your basic girl toy. Girls would pretend to bottle-feed, dress, and comfort their dolls in imitation of their housewife mothers, who, in turn, tended to their real-life average of five (!) children. The end of the baby-doll era came in the late 1950s, after Ruth Handler, along with her husband Elliot, a founder of the young Mattel company, had a eureka moment. During a visit to Germany, she spotted an unusual doll known as Bild Lilli in a shop window. Based on a risqué comic book character, Lilli was mostly sold in tobacco shops. The character was something of a floozy, with many R-rated adventures. At the time, Lilli was coveted not by little girls but by grown men, though exactly what they did with the dolls no one was saying. To create Barbie, Mattel desexualized and Americanized Lilli, giving her a California glow, evening out her dramatically arched eyebrows and toning down her red, puckered lips. One other seemingly trivial but significant change: Lilli’s shoes were molded to her invisible feet; Barbie’s shoes are removable.

Director Greta Gerwig’s movie opens with a hilarious take on Barbie’s arrival in the U.S. market. A gargantuan doll dressed in a zebra-striped bathing suit and sunglasses suddenly appears, monolith-like, astride a group of sad-looking young girls. Dressed in dowdy, Amish-inspired smock dresses, they are awestruck at this vision of adult sexiness and glamour and immediately smash their baby dolls in angry disgust, a scene that Gerwig gleefully sets to the majestic orchestral opening of Richard Strauss’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

In the Name of Climate Change: Travel Restrictions and the Great Reset By Janet Levy

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

If you experienced unprecedented delays during air travel this summer, the airlines likely blamed it on the weather.  You might have been surprised, for bad weather wasn’t reported in the news.  But here is what should surprise and shock you even more.  The real reason – a shortage of pilots and air traffic controllers (ATCs) – is linked to the Great Reset, the agenda to control people and restrict freedom conceived by the global elite and being implemented through leftist groups and their sympathizers.

It is now well known that Klaus Schwab, chief of the elitist World Economic Forum (WEF), set the Great Reset in motion during the pandemic, calling it an opportunity to “reflect, reimagine, and reset the world.” The COVID lockdown also connects to the story of the recent flight delays, because it was during the pandemic that travel restrictions were imposed worldwide and pilots and ATCs were laid off.  At London’s Heathrow, alone, for example, traffic plunged more than 75% – from 80 million passengers daily to about one million.  The ostensible reason for limiting travel was to curb contagion and virus mutation.  But a sinister agenda was afoot.

The travel restrictions, quarantines, vaccine passports, social distancing, the lockdown itself, and other measures were not so much for disease control as for imposing the dystopian New World Order.  COVID was a smokescreen.  In the name of a recovery plan, radical steps were initiated to restructure the world economy and usher in an extreme environmentalist and statist framework of governance as the new norm

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Education Establishment’s Radical New Ploys Will increased spending, common good bargaining, community schools, and transitional kindergarten really improve student learning?Larry Sand

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-education-establishments-radical-new-ploys/

The results of a Gallup poll released earlier this month show that just 28% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in K-12 public schools. The number for Republicans is particularly damning: Just 14% of GOPers view education in a positive light.

Confidence in higher education has also taken a hit, with just 36% of those polled saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015.

Additionally, there is little hope on the horizon that things will change for the better. This month, NWEA, a student assessment organization, released a new report which reveals that students progressed more slowly in reading and math during the 2022–23 school year than in pre-pandemic years. In other words, during the past school year, most students fell further behind.

Mushrooming Spending

The money-grubbing educrats and unionistas can’t blame lack of funding as an excuse. The feds have poured $190 billion into education to make amends for the Covid-related school shutdowns. But a 10-month examination by The 74 reveals that, while some school districts have used the monies properly, some haven’t used the money yet, while others have “pumped millions of dollars into classroom additions, upgrading athletic fields and other expenditures unrelated to the pandemic.”

Some districts invested funds in silly things like “fidget cubes” and aromatherapy supplies. Worse, many districts involved themselves in shady business deals. In San Joaquin County, CA, a state district attorney launched a criminal probe into the Stockton Unified School District for spending “roughly $7 million on ultraviolet air purifiers from a company linked to a former mayor with a history of legal trouble. A state audit pointed to the board’s decision to approve the contract even though district staff gave the proposal a low rating. Less than half of the 2,200 filters purchased were installed, and the rest are stored in a warehouse.”

And the situation is about to get worse. As Linda Jacobson reports in The 74, the funds are going to run out in about a year when the drunken sailor-type spending ends. Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, explains, “Deficits will creep up quickly and really destabilize a district. In the end, the students will suffer if districts wait too long to rein in their spending.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: With Friends Like That by Amir Taheri

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19838/iran-friends

The Islamic Republic has been asking to be admitted into the BRICS group [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] club since 2010 when the “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced his intention to create a “New World Order” through a triple alliance of Iran, China and Russia.

Tehran sources say the Iranian demand, though supported by South Africa and India, has been quietly vetoed by Russia and cold-shouldered by China.

Khamenei’s dream of a “New World Order” led by Iran, China and Russia, has proven to be a pipe-dream shaped in the mind of a leader that operates in a fantasy universe.

The pipe-dream was partly punctured last week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his first foreign visit after his election victory to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, ignoring Iran altogether.

[F]or years, the former head of the Islamic Majlis’s National Security Commission Heshmatallah Falahat-Pisheh has warned that both China and Russia have treated the Islamic Republic as nothing but a source of profit for themselves.

Former Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh has warned that Russia, having pushed Iran out of the European oil market is now trying to do the same in the Indian and Chinese markets by offering mouth-watering discounts. Since last March, China’s oil imports from Iran have fallen by almost 40 percent, according to unofficial estimates, with Russia claiming the part that Iran has lost.

Meanwhile, regarding what some Iranians see as an attack by Lavrov on the nation’s integrity, many are unhappy about Raisi’s refusal or inability to read the riot act to the Russians. The concern is that Tehran’s lack of reaction to the Russian and Chinese moves could encourage other nations to adopt a similar stance against Iran.

Khamenei, aged 84, seems unlikely to abandon what he had hoped would be his “historic legacy” or, in his own words “driving the Great Satan and its allies out of the region.” This is perhaps why, as long as Khamenei is in charge, neither Beijing nor Moscow is worried about angering Iran, whatever they do.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian ‘Unity’ To Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19840/palestinian-unity-destroy-israel

Recently, the [Hamas] movement claimed responsibility for a number of terror attacks targeting Jewish soldiers and civilians in the West Bank. Hamas, in addition, continues to call on Palestinians to step up terror attacks with the declared intention of liberating all of “Palestine,” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and replacing Israel with an Iranian-backed terror state.

The Biden administration and the European Union did not condemn Abbas for meeting with the leader of a movement designated by the Americans, Europeans and other countries as a terrorist organization.

The Biden Administration and the Europeans are also likely to continue providing financial aid to the Palestinians without asking Abbas about his repeated attempts to forge an alliance with the same Hamas terrorists who murder Jews and openly call for the elimination of Israel. The Biden Administration and the Europeans apparently have no problem with Abbas preferring to meet with the leader of a terrorist group, Hamas, than with the prime minister of Israel.

Needless to say, the term “comprehensive resistance” is a euphemism for terrorism. As it has proven over the past three decades, Hamas outright rejects non-violent “resistance.” The only “resistance” Hamas endorses is one that includes suicide bombings and the indiscriminate firing of rockets at Israeli towns and cities, as well as drive-by shootings and stabbings. The only “resistance” Hamas endorses is one that results in the murder of as many Jews as possible.

One of Abbas’s close associates, Azzam al-Ahmed, recently said that Abbas is hoping to form a unity government with Hamas. Such a move would mean that the US and European Union, the largest funders of the Palestinians, would also end up funding an Islamist movement which they have already classified as a terrorist organization. Once Hamas joins a Palestinian Authority-led government, it too would benefit from American and European taxpayer funds.

At the very least, the Biden Administration and the European Union ought to call out Abbas for seeking to forge an alliance with one of the most deadly Palestinian terrorist movements, Hamas.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Wild 2024 Race It may prove to be the most volatile race in recent memory. by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-wild-2024-race/

Current polls, pundits, and politicos insist that the 2024 race is a sure rematch between former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden.

It may well turn out that way.

But in past election cycles, summer polls 15 months before the general election usually did not mean much.

In December 2003, the CBS poll headline blared, “Dean pulls away in Dem race.” Howard Dean would eventually be clobbered by nominee John Kerry.

In the Gallup Poll of late June 2007, Hillary Clinton still continued to enjoy her wide lead in the Democratic primary over eventual nominee and elected president Barack Obama.

On the Republican side, Gallup noted of its summer 2007 polls that, “There has been little serious threat to the frontrunner, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani” — who bombed out early in the race.

About this time in 2015, Jeb Bush was leading Trump in the Republican primary. Or as CNN characterized their summer poll, “He (Bush) holds a significant lead over the second-place candidate Trump.”

By January 2016, the favorite, can-do Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was leading all candidates by a substantial margin as they headed for the Iowa caucuses.

There are lots of reasons to believe that 2024 may prove to be the most volatile race in recent memory.

Not since 1912 — when third-party ex-president Theodore Roosevelt challenged incumbent President William Howard Taft in a three-way race with Woodrow Wilson — have two presidents run against each other.

Both, remember, lost that year to the far less experienced Wilson.

Second, Trump is currently the target of at least four state and federal prosecutors.