P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Richard Dreyfuss and the Difference Between Cultural Capitulation and Cultural Sensitivity To cave in here is to lose our souls. by Michael Brown

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/richard-dreyfuss-and-the-difference-between-cultural-capitulation-and-cultural-sensitivity/

There is a massive difference between cultural capitulation and cultural sensitivity. We should resist the former and practice the latter.

What do I mean by cultural capitulation? I mean bowing down to the latest cultural fad, of kowtowing to the most current manifestation of what is PC, of becoming slaves to whatever the societal elites decide is acceptable.

A current example would be the cultural mandate that requires us to give our preferred gender pronouns or to deny biological realities when talking with a trans-identified person. We rightly say no to that mandate for many reasons. (For a listing of relevant articles, go here.)

This, of course, is quite different than cultural sensitivity, by which I mean recognizing what could legitimately offend someone in another culture or be easily misunderstood. This is something we often learn the hard way, especially when traveling to other countries or hosting people from other cultures. There are cultural taboos of which we know nothing until we cross a forbidden line.

The difficult question is to be able to determine when something is a matter of unacceptable cultural capitulation and when it’s a matter of legitimate cultural sensitivity.

All this can be illustrated in a recent interview on PBS’ Firing Line with the famed actor Richard Dreyfus.

He was asked by Margaret Hoover for his views on the new Oscar rules in a which a film would not be eligible for best picture unless it met certain requirements for inclusion and representation.

He responded, “They make me vomit.”

How so? “Because,” explained, “this is an art form, it’s also a form of commerce, and it makes money, but it’s an art. And no one should be telling me, as an artist, that I have to give in to the latest most current idea of what morality is.”

He continued, “And what are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. And you have to let life be life

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Chinese Fifth Column USA Chinese entries through our southern border are up 900%. by Scott S. Powell

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/chinese-fifth-column-usa/

When the winds of war are blowing as they are now, it is essential to recognize new developments and extraordinary activities by the enemy.

Since Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021, most Americans have been dumbfounded by his open border policy and its administration by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has continued to gaslight us with the claim right up to the present that, “the southern border is secure.”  In fact, the records show anything but a secure border. In just 28 months since Biden’s inauguration, over six million illegal aliens have entered the United States—including criminals, terrorists, and human, child, sex and lethal drug trafficking cartels—all of whom put enormous burden on American schools, health care facilities and law enforcement.

And now that Biden has allowed Title 42 to expire, with record numbers of immigrants having gathered at the southern border to enter the U.S., many now recognize that this chaos may be intentional Biden administration policy.

Some have observed the parallels with what is happening with the priorities of the Biden Administration with the Cloward-Piven neo-Marxist theory that was conceived and developed at Columbia by left-wing political activist sociology professors—the husband-and-wife team of Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. That theory became an 8-step plan designed to overload the U.S. public welfare system to bring about a crisis. That plan, now updated with a mass replacement migration component, could be called Cloward-Piven 2.0, and it has even greater potential to bring the United States into collapse, chaos, and bankruptcy by expanding lawlessness in addition to exploding the rolls of  poor immigrants who become dependent on a variety of social welfare programs—including food stamps, health care and more.

The strategy is quite simple—call it “fundamental transformation,” which is to radically increase the costs and national debt from an enlarged social welfare and law enforcement infrastructure driven by the surge of millions of poor new immigrants—many from various failed states. Since these immigrant arrivals include criminals such as cartel members involved in human, sex and drug trafficking and others carrying infectious diseases, there are obviously additional large law enforcement costs in addition to the increased health and welfare expenditures. Unchecked, the overall cost becomes so great that it can bring down the targeted host country—even a rich country like the United States.

But it gets worse.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Habitual Race-Baiting Noah Rothman

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-bidens-habitual-race-baiting/

Joe Biden ascended to cruising altitude over the weekend to issue a comprehensive critique of the evil lurking in his fellow countrymen’s hearts. In a commencement address before the student body at the historically black Howard University, Biden took the measure of American history and found much of it wanting.

The story of American life “has not always been a fairytale,” the president said of the straw man he came to bury. It is a narrative of constant struggle between “the best of us” and “the worst of us,” symbolic of the “harsh reality that racism has always torn us apart.” Speaking of the permanent conflict for the soul of the nation, Biden said it demands that Americans of good faith “stand up against the poison of white supremacy,” as he has. He reiterated that “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.”

Biden’s elision of the word “domestic” from his identification of white nationalists as the nation’s primary terroristic adversary forecloses on invoking the FBI statistics that might have justified a narrower claim. But to include this qualifier would have taken all the sting out of the president’s contention, which, despite his explicit insistence that his comments were not audience-dependent, was likely designed to reinforce negative racial assumptions.

Joe Biden long ago sacrificed the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his forays into racial agitation. We don’t need to sift through the annals of history for examples of his reflexive race-baiting — the notion that Republicans sought to put black Americans “back in chains,” the idea that African Americans who declined to vote for him “ain’t black,” the implicit contrast between Barack Obama, an “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” and other “mainstream African American” political leaders. We need only look at the president’s record in his first term in office.

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Media Malpractice: Russian Hoax Confirmed by the Durham Report By Greg Byrnes

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/gregbyrnes/2023/05/16/pulitzer-prize-winning-media-malpractice-russian-hoax-confirmed-by-the-durham-report-n1695646

Seven years later, we learn from Special Counsel John Durham’s report what was obvious seven minutes into this nonsense: The Russian hoax story was a childish prank. The puerile document was created by political opponents of Donald Trump. Duh — and double duh. Those who perpetuated it helped avert peace abroad and destroy tranquility at home. Divide countries, divide the public, and engender paranoid hate; that’s one heck of a prank.

In 2016 this Hilary Clinton paid-for schlock piece of fabulist political fantasy was discussed in a White House briefing. Were these a confederacy of dunces, devils, or serious intelligence analysts? You be the judge. And ask yourself what was the collective IQ in that meeting as CIA Director John Brennan breathlessly went over Hilary’s hoax documents with President Obama, Vice President Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey ooing and ahhing. Confirmation bias? Lack of critical thinking? Lack of judgment? Or just any stick to beat a dog named Trump with?

On August 3, 20I6, within days of receiving the Clinton Plan intelligence, Director Brennan met with the President, Vice President and other senior Administration officials, including but not limited to the Attorney General (who participated remotely) and the FBI Director, in the White House Situation Room to discuss Russian election interference efforts. According to Brennan’s handwritten notes and his recollections from the meeting, he briefed on relevant intelligence known to date on Russian election interference, including the Clinton Plan intelligence [the Dossier]. Specifically, Director Brennan’s declassified handwritten notes reflect that he briefed the meeting’s participants regarding the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Debt Ceiling Deceit

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/the-great-debt-ceiling-deceit/

At the heart of all fearmongering over the debt ceiling “crisis” is the claim that if the federal government can’t borrow more money it won’t be able to pay interest on its existing debt, leading to a default.

But that’s poppycock. The government will collect more than a trillion dollars over the next three months. (It collected $638 billion in taxes in April alone.) That will be more than enough to pay interest on the debt. And it will be enough to pay all Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid bills, welfare checks, food stamps. There will even be enough money to pay for Joe Biden’s new electric car subsidies.

There just won’t be any money left for anything else. Nothing for the military, infrastructure, education, the environment, law enforcement, or any other program the federal government currently operates.

That’s because, as it stands today, every penny collected in taxes goes to pay interest on the debt and a category described as “payments for individuals.” Everything else is paid for with borrowed money.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Paper Or Plastic? The Fanatics Tell Us We Can’t Have Either The Eco-zealots never sleep

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/16/paper-or-plastic-the-fanatics-tell-us-we-cant-have-either/

The Biden administration and the Democratic regime that rules California and other states are so busy banning things that it’s hard to keep up with what’s allowed, what isn’t and what won’t be tomorrow or next year. Much of the black list is made up of high-profile targets, such as gasoline-powered automobiles, diesel engines, gas stoves and plastic straws. But the prohibitionists work in small ways too, and it all adds up.

Scolds and eco-temperance harpies never rest, their eyes always on the lookout for another modern convenience to outlaw. Having successfully interdicted single-use plastic bags in at least eight states, they’re now aiming for their only reasonable replacements: paper bags.

“Paper can’t be a solution to plastic waste,” says the headline of a recent story posted on Canada’s CTV News site. New Jersey enacted a paper bag ban last year, the first in the country, because, well, that’s just what blue states and cities do now: satisfy the deranged urges of petty tyrants.

The CTV story is as agenda-driven as any NPR article in the U.S. Various “experts,” “researchers” and activists screech and nag about “deforestation and forest degradation,” “increased pressure on the world’s forests” (caused by the plastic bag bans they have demanded), and “a really critical moment” in which “we need to take steps to keep forests standing.” One insisted that consumers have to “rethink and reorient themselves towards a reusable mind frame.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel at 75 Is Threatened but Strong It can no longer take its relationship with the U.S. for granted, but it may not need to. Walter Russel Mead

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-at-75-is-threatened-but-strong-america-alliance-oil-mid-east-russia-china-e4bf6321?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

It’s been 75 years since the Jewish community in British Palestine rejected a last-minute plea from the Truman administration and declared independence as the last British forces left the embattled land. It wasn’t the most auspicious moment. One day earlier, the strategically located Gush Etzion bloc of Jewish agricultural settlements fell to Arab assailants following a bitter siege.

Disregarding Truman’s pleas and warnings from Western military leaders that they faced certain defeat, the Jews of Palestine voted for independence. They went on to win the War of Independence, thanks largely to an influx of Soviet-bloc weapons from Czechoslovakia, but 75 years later questions about its future still swirl around the Jewish state.

In recent weeks we’ve seen rocket attacks from Gaza, reports that Russia will deliver advanced fighter jets to Iran, and the readmission of Syria to the Arab League. A few months ago, Israelis were speculating over the likelihood that Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords. Today, they are working to understand the ramifications of the China-brokered Saudi-Iranian thaw.

But the most important question facing Israelis today is the future of their relationship with the U.S. There is nothing written in the stars that guarantees its permanence. For the first 25 years of Israel’s independence, American presidents were more interested in cultivating Arab leaders and blocking the Israeli nuclear program than in aligning with Jerusalem. Only after Richard Nixon concluded that an Israeli defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War would empower the Soviet Union across the Middle East did Washington move toward a strategic relationship.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Free Daniel Penny How many wish that he had been in their subway car during a moment of danger? By William McGurn

Posted By on May 16th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-daniel-penny-alvin-bragg-marine-jordan-neely-chokehold-subway-criminal-charge-6b6ad15f?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

When Daniel Penny stepped forward on a New York subway to protect his fellow commuters from an obviously deranged man, the former Marine sergeant couldn’t have imagined that two weeks later he’d be perp-walked in handcuffs before news cameras outside Manhattan’s Fifth Precinct.

In one of the worst decisions by one of America’s worst prosecutors, Alvin Bragg on Friday charged Mr. Penny, 24, with second-degree manslaughter. The charge alleges Mr. Penny killed Jordan Neely, 30, by acting recklessly in keeping him in a chokehold too long. Neely was familiar to authorities from his long rap sheet and his presence on a list of the top 50 homeless New Yorkers most in need of help.

At first glance it looked like a replay of George Floyd, the black Minneapolis man whose death at the hands of white police officers in 2020 sparked riots. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez played her part accordingly, quickly calling Neely’s death “a public execution.” Protesters blocked subway trains in Neely’s name.

But Mr. Bragg may be losing the narrative here. Even before Neely’s death, Mr. Bragg was notorious as a district attorney who would go easy on repeat offenders but throw the book at a bogeda worker defending himself against a thug—not to mention his political grandstanding in indicting Donald Trump. Now the American people see a prosecutor who can’t distinguish between a mentally disturbed man prone to violence and a law-abiding citizen who served his country in uniform.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who Wants to Destroy Israel? You Might Be Surprised. by Guy Millière

Posted By on May 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19645/who-wants-to-destroy-israel

It is the first time in Israel’s short history that a large-scale movement has been launched using undemocratic means to overthrow a democratically elected government.
The new government, in fact, is trying to restore democracy – by reforming Supreme Court practices that were adopted starting in the 1990s, which allow unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court justices to deliver rulings based on “reasonableness” rather than on written law – often meaning, “whatever I think is reasonable”. Israel’s Supreme Court is currently said have “virtually limitless power’: it asserts the right to veto both political appointments and military decisions; it has no mechanism for recourse, and no requirement for “standing” — meaning that the litigant need not be directly affected by the decision, such as having a personal wrong righted. On the contrary, anyone can directly petition the Supreme Court, anytime, about anything. The last provision has opened the floodgates for lawsuits by “concerned” non-governmental organizations dissatisfied with decisions Israel has taken. In addition, sitting Supreme Court justices – not the electorate and not the parliament – have the power to approve or veto any appointment of new justices, leading to a closed “club” in which no one is flustered by dissent.
The Biden Administration, staffed by many of the same people who were in the Obama Administration, has behaved as an enemy of Israel from day one. The Administration quickly restored US funding to the Palestinian Authority without asking it to stop supporting terrorism or even to stop inciting violence. The Biden Administration then opened a U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs and installed, as “special representative for Palestinian affairs”, Hady Amr who has admitted being “inspired by the Palestinian intifada”.
The Biden Administration has, to its credit, during the hundreds of recent missile attacks — 1,235 rockets over five days, launched at a country the size of New Jersey — said that “Israel has the right to protect itself and defend its people from indiscriminate rocket attacks launched by terrorist groups” — yet for the past two years, has done nothing to eliminate Israel’s most serious threat – Iran’s nuclear program – apart from seemingly trying to have Iran not use any nuclear weapons during the current administration’s term.
The Biden Administration has, additionally, considerably eroded America’s influence in the Middle Easy, thereby creating a situation of extreme peril for Israel and other erstwhile US allies in the Gulf. Biden, even during his 2020 presidential campaign, repeatedly vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah”… This rebuff was followed by the Biden Administration’s refusal to promise either that it would stop negotiating with Iran for a deal enabling the mullahs to have unlimited nuclear weapons, and fears that the US would not protect Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies in the Gulf from Iran.
Iran’s mullahs also can see that the United Arab Emirates in 2021, signed a contract with the Chinese company Huawei, now building a 5G network in the Gulf state – thereby making the UAE totally vulnerable to Chinese intelligence penetration. That contract was followed by the cancellation of a $23 billion arms purchase from the United States.
The seemingly unremitting desire of the Biden administration to reach an agreement with the Iranian regime at almost any price and to realign American foreign policy in the Middle East toward a policy led by Iran was evidently what led to Saudi Arabia’s restoration of ties with Iran. Biden’s eagerness to treat Saudi Arabia as “pariah” had turned an ally into a question mark. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime, more expansionist by the day — which the Saudi regime is not — reveals that despite the decidedly unsavory murder of Osama bin Laden’s friend and Muslim Brotherhood acolyte Jamal Khashoggi, the Iranian regime is, by light years, far more dangerous to the stability of the region and beyond, as well as even more hostile to human rights than Saudi Arabia ever was.
Moreover, the strategic cooperation agreement signed in March 2021 between Iran and China has deepened the ties between the mullahs and the Chinese Communist Party, geopolitically and economically, to the detriment of the United States. The means of payment on which they agreed will not be the world’s reserve currency for oil, the US dollar, but instead, China’s yuan.
A few weeks ago, when a key official in Israel’s defense ministry was in Washington to request more American support for Israel in case the Israeli government thinks necessary to attack Iran’s nuclear program, no answer was given.
“The land of Israel and the State of Israel are acquired through many trials and tribulations…. They will not overcome us; we will overcome them”. — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, April 24, 2023.
A terrorist carried out a car-ramming attack at Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market a few hours earlier. Netanyahu was talking about terrorists, but his words could be addressed to all enemies of Israel and to all those who want to destroy it.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Of Course, Obama Knew of Biden’s Influence Peddling Schemes By Matt Margolis

Posted By on May 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/14/of-course-obama-knew-of-bidens-influence-peddling-schemes-heres-why-n1695322

In an interview with Lou Dobbs on his Great America Show podcast, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) suggested that former president Barack Obama was well aware of the influence-peddling schemes of Joe Biden involving his family.

“I believe, Lou, that it’s because he knew what Joe Biden was doing the last year of his vice presidency,” Comer told Dobbs.

Last week, the House Oversight Committee disclosed a significant collection of evidence that suggests that Joe Biden and his family received financial contributions from Romanian and Chinese entities while he held the position of Vice President. These payments were divided into multiple transactions and channeled through a network of fictitious companies with no legitimate business activities apart from money laundering. These entities lacked tangible products or services to provide. The sole valuable asset they possessed was the ability to leverage the influence of Joe Biden.

Comer also said that Obama knew that Hunter Biden was bad news.

“He knew his son [Hunter Biden] was no good, and he knew this was nothing but a political liability not just for our country, not just for the democrat party, but for Obama’s legacy,” Comer explained. “Because a lot of this happened during the Obama administration.”

But perhaps the biggest reason why Obama was aware of the Biden family’s questionable business dealings was primarily that Joe Biden’s influence was only as effective as his capacity to persuade Obama to adopt particular policies. Vice presidents have little direct influence over policy, and even when they preside over the Senate or cast a tie-breaking vote, they’re implementing the policies of the president.

Let’s not forget that Obama specifically selected Biden as his running mate due to his perceived foreign policy experience. Given that foreign nations, especially adversarial ones, could perceive Biden as Obama’s primary foreign policy advisor, exploiting his influence was really about gaining access to Barack Obama.