ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Celebrate Earth Day With Bright Lights And The Joy Of Internal Combustion

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/21/celebrate-earth-day-with-bright-lights-and-the-joy-of-internal-combustion/

Saturday will mark the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, one full spin of the globe in which we are expected to celebrate the modern environmental movement. Yet that great cause, if we may paraphrase Eric Hoffer, became a business, then degenerated into a racket that not only became a haven for grifters but also a platform for scolds and eco-religion zealots. We strongly suggest that rather than spend a day exalting the inanimate Gaia, the West should mark it with recognition of how far human progress has brought us.

Closely related to Earth Day is Earth Hour, usually the last Saturday in March each year when the lights of “landmarks and homes across the world” are to be turned off from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time.

The usual scolds expect us “to spend 60 minutes doing something – anything – positive for our planet.” In other words, plunge the world back into pre-modern times. This might be productive if the point were to show how far man has come – and how far he will go backward if the green zealots get their way. Instead, it’s an opportunity to virtue signal and hector.

Economist Mark J. Perry has long suggested that we use Earth Day – which has become an airing of progressive grievances, which can be addressed only through leftist public policy – to “appreciate our fossil fuel energy treasures that come from the Earth’s natural environment.”

After all, Earth is where we’ve found the raw materials we needed to protect ourselves from the hostile environment around us and to pull ourselves out of poverty. It’s as if they had been stored there for us to use. Without energy provided by fossil fuels, man would not have advanced far beyond where he was just before the Industrial Revolution.

Let’s remember this by leaving the lights on and taking advantage of the blessings of the internal-combustion engine, an invention that has liberated man like no other.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Where Did All the Biden Illegal Immigrants Go? Hard-Up Sanctuary Cities Like New York Are Only Part of the Answer By James Varney

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/04/20/where_did_all_the_biden_illegal_immigrants_go_hard-

In New York City, if the newcomers aren’t put up at the luxury cruise terminal that served the QE2, they could get $700-a-night midtown hotel accommodations with iconic Manhattan views. In Chicago, they found themselves whisked to suburban lodgings. In Denver, officials refer to them discreetly as “guests” and you needn’t bother inquiring about their inns or addresses. 

The people enjoying these free digs aren’t privacy-conscious jet-setters, but the secrecy surrounding them might be comparable: They’re some of the millions of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. since the Biden administration relaxed most border controls.  

No one knows exactly how many people have poured across the southwestern U.S. border since President Biden took office, or where they’ve gone since. The official number of encounters by Customs and Border Patrol stands at 5.2 million people, logged over the last two full federal fiscal years and fiscal 2023 through March. But that number is imprecise because it includes repeat encounters with the same people and omits the many who slipped into the country unnoticed by border agents.  

Under President Biden, the U.S. smashed past the 200,000 monthly encounters mark for the first time in July 2021 and it has repeatedly topped that record in the months since. By comparison, in fiscal 2020, which ended a month before Biden’s defeat of President Trump, the U.S. averaged 38,174 monthly encounters at the border, according to CBP figures.  

Because of an official lack of transparency, all those people and the circumstances by which they have arrived and remained have made it hard to take stock of the historic influx. Through midnight flights and buses from the border to far-flung locales, the administration has made it difficult to identify where the migrants are now living and receiving services. Also unclear are the costs associated with the arrivals.  

But flares have been sent up – especially over immigrant sanctuary cities like New York, Denver and Chicago, which have long promised to house migrants. While those cities are providing housing and other services for a small fraction of the recent migrants, the costs are significant for these budget-strapped metropolises.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Recession already here for many Americans, as buying power, credit, social net shrinks by Aris Folley

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://thehill.com/homenews/3951579-recession-already-here-for-many-americans-as-buying-power-credit-social-net-shrinks/

The stock market may be closely watching the chance of an official economic recession, but many Americans across the country are already feeling the squeeze as they contend with higher prices and borrowing costs than they saw a year ago.

While Evelyn Canela, 31, a senior program director at a nonprofit based in Harlem, said she thinks she has a “well-paying job,” which paid in the $100,000-range when she first started, she also said she’s been feeling the pressure to save, particularly as various industries have seen more layoffs in recent months. 

In a poll released by Morning Consult last month, almost half of respondents believed the nation was already in a recession.

The poll also found that about 41 percent of Americans surveyed had begun taking precautions and steps to beef up savings, but a closer look at the data revealed disparities by income. 

Adults in households with annual earnings above $100,000 were more likely than others to say they were beginning to prepare for an economic downturn or recession, with 52 percent saying they’d taken to stockpiling goods or food, cut back on spending or other steps.

By contrast, the poll found that those in households that earned under $50,000 annually were more likely to say they had not yet begun to make preparations “but wish they could.”

The poll comes as recent months have seen more Americans are feeling poorer and pessimistic about the nation’s economic forecast at a time that rising price stickers are putting a squeeze on pockets across the spectrum.

At the same time, data shows credit card debt is also on the rise; a March study from Wallethub found “credit card debt increased by $85.8 billion during Q4 2022 – the highest quarterly increase ever recorded.”

Job losses are cutting into spending power, even for six-figure earners

MEDIA Comments turned off

Justice Clarence Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-thomas-and-the-plague-of-bad-reporting-propublica-washington-post-disclosure-court-safety-def0a6a7?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

By James Taranto

ProPublica’s big scoop turned out to be a quarter-teaspoon. In an error-filled report last week, the opinionated news site got one point right: Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t disclose the 2014 sale of his one-third interest in three Savannah, Ga., properties to a company controlled by his friend Harlan Crow. He was legally required to do so. On these pages, in an article published online Sunday, I observed that he may have to amend his financial-disclosure form for that year.

On Monday, “a source close to Thomas” told CNN that the justice would do so. “The source said . . . it was an oversight not to report the real estate transaction. Thomas believed he didn’t have to disclose because he lost money on the deal, according to the source.” It is the justice’s share of the sale price ($1,000 or more), not a profit, that triggers the statutory obligation to report.

How big a deal is it to amend a form after missing a disclosure? Consider these examples, which reader Darin Bartram dug up:

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2012 disclosure amended her 2011 report, which “inadvertently omitted” the sale of shares in an exchange-traded fund that she had bought earlier the same year. “The Value Code should of [sic] been L and the Gain Code should of [sic] been A,” the amendment says.

• Ginsburg amended her 2017 disclosure to reflect that she had “inadvertently omitted” a gift of an opera costume worth $4,500.

• Justice Stephen Breyer reported in an amended 2018 disclosure that he had “inadvertently omitted” two stock sales by his wife, one in 2006 and one in 2018.

• In February 2022, three days after President Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson amended her 2020 disclosure to note that in various years between 2011 and 2021 she had “inadvertently omitted” travel reimbursements for two speaking trips, a university teaching salary, four nonprofit board memberships, her husband’s consulting income and a 529 college savings plan. No senator mentioned these omissions at her confirmation hearings.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Some Americans Support Terrorism Against Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on April 21st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19589/some-americans-support-terrorism

[F]ourteen Democratic members of the US Congress have joined the Jihad (holy war) against Israelis by urging the Biden administration to reconsider US military aid to Israel.

The Congressmen’s letter ignores the dramatic increase in terror attacks against Israelis and makes no reference to the scores of innocent civilians murdered over the past year by Palestinian terrorists. The letter further ignores that Israel’s counterterrorism measures, which aim to save the lives of Israelis and Palestinians alike, are a legitimate act of self-defense.

The Israeli measures, including raids on the homes of terrorists and confiscation of weapons and ammunition, are the direct result of a 300% increase in terror attacks over the past year… When there is no terrorism, there is no need for Israel to launch counterterrorism operations.

By stating that the US should halt military aid to Israel, the signatories of the letter signatories of the letter are in fact saying that Israel has no right to defend itself against those who are openly calling for the elimination of Israel and engaged in daily attempts to murder Jews.

When Israel uses weapons, it is with the purpose of combating terrorism and protecting the lives of its people. When Palestinians use weapons, it is always with the aim of murdering Jews.

As far as the Palestinians are concerned, all Israeli Jews are “settlers” living in one big illegitimate settlement, Israel, which needs to be replaced by a 57th Muslim state…

They outspokenly consider construction everywhere in Israel a “settlement project” and all Israeli Jews “settlers.”

Hamas and its patrons in Iran are openly opposed to Jews building homes not only in the West Bank and Jerusalem, but anywhere in Israel. The reason? The mullahs in Tehran — and their proxies in Hamas, PIJ and Hezbollah — believe that the entire country of Israel has no right to exist and state that Israel should be eradicated, primarily through Jihad (holy war).

The Iranian regime and its friends want to see no country supporting Israel — not politically, not financially, not militarily. They want to see a weak Israel that they can then rip to shreds, as they have done, and are still doing, to Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

“The U.S. State Department reports that Iran provides some $100 million a year to Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” multiple news outlets reported last week.

Iran and its proxy terror groups are already encircling Israel. They are sitting on its southern border, in the Gaza Strip, from where Hamas and PIJ continue to fire rockets regularly at Israel. They are sitting on Israel’s northern border, in Lebanon and Syria, from where Hezbollah also has a strong political and military presence.

The Congressmen’s letter, however, does not make any reference to these existential threats that Israel continues to face from Iran and Palestinian and Lebanese terror groups.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The security state says jump. The media asks ‘how high?’ As the recent leaker shows, informing the public now plays second fiddle: James W. Carden

Posted By on April 20th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/media-tows-national-security-state-narrative-leak-ukraine-russia/?utm_source=Spectator%20

The tacit alliance between operatives of the national security state and corporate media burst into view last week when the New York Times and the Washington Post did the FBI’s job for it by tracking down the leaker of documents that detailed, among other things, the extent of American and allied involvement in the Ukraine war. 

That Bellingcat, the shadowy, government-funded open-source intelligence group, played a role in helping to identify the twenty-one-year-old Air National Guardsmen Jack Teixeira proves (once again) that many media outlets are now de facto agents of the national security state.

The idea that these open-source sleuths at Bellingcat, the Times and the Post are simply reporters acting in good faith is belied by their long history of, in the case of the Washington Post’s Evan Hill, writing a hatchet job on an American combat veteran turned politician, and Bellingcat’s subterfuge in the service of a cold war against Russia and a hot war against Syria.

The leaked documents show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Biden administration, from the president on down, has been rather less than truthful about the war in Ukraine. Yet instead of taking the administration to task for, as some critics have charged, recklessly prolonging the war, the media has worked overtime to shift the focus from what revelations the documents contain to the identity of the leaker. 

There was a time when journalists in this country treated official pronouncements with skepticism and saw their role as challenging entrenched interests. Today, as the Teixeira story shows, they work to protect those interests — as those interests align with their anonymous sources inside the national security apparatus. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In Charleston, Ron DeSantis gave a pitch-perfect conservative speech By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/in_charleston_ron_desantis_gave_a_pitchperfect_conservative_speech.html

I’ve just returned from hearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speak. I went in open-minded and came out impressed. DeSantis is a very good speaker, but it was the content of his speech, which is about core conservativism, that had the audience clapping and cheering. DeSantis made the case that his very successful, focused, disciplined conservative leadership is what all voters want.

In 2018, when he was first elected, out of 8 million votes cast, DeSantis won by only 32,000 votes. Still, he took his win as a mandate to implement the policies and principles he’d promised. When he ran for reelection four years later, he got reelected by over 1.5 million votes. Voters, he believes, responded to leadership and competence.

Leading from the front means abandoning polls. “Why would I want to be led by polls? A leader is not captive to poll results. A leader sets out a vision, executes the vision, and delivers results for people.”

Leadership also requires team cohesion, which DeSantis instituted on his first day. His job was to make the decisions, and his team had to be on board. The result is no drama and, he explained, “just daily execution of the mission. And that’s the reason why we’ve been able to get so much stuff done.”

DeSantis governed proactively, rather than fearing he’d offend someone. You can’t make things happen if “your whole kind of ambition is to not upset anybody,” which can cause paralysis.

Ultimately, said DeSantis, “Leadership…is about doing what’s right when you have intense opposition and a lot of unfair criticism, but you’re still willing to chart the proper course. You’ve got to have the fortitude to stand alone, if necessary, if that’s what the circumstances called upon.” DeSantis practices what he preaches, as seen with his stand against COVID madness and tyranny. He maintained individual liberty in Florida against pressure for lockdowns, masks, and forced vaccinations. For him, keeping the economy going and people working was a top priority.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Needed: A Made in the USA Policy Plus Energy Independence to Counter Inflation and the Rising USA National Debt by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19588/rising-us-national-debt

Sad but true, history is now all but a forgotten subject in our schools. But economic history? With luck, you may find the topic in some esoteric book written by a professor and hidden on some dusty library shelf. Yet it is there, within those pages, that you will find the history of nations who harnessed the power of a balanced budget and assumed global dominance. Of equal importance will be the parallel lesson of those that failed to appreciate that the most sophisticated military in the world can win a war only to come home to a nation that will eventually fall because of a mismanaged economy.

Without an appreciation of that history a nation’s leaders can easily pursue a disastrous course of pork spending that can destroy the promise of the future. Which is why Americans should be deeply concerned about this Administration and its reign of spending and resultant increased debt, that will be burdening us, and future citizens, far into the future. That kind of debt is a silent nation-killer.

BOOKS, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Pandemic and Panopticon: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State By Janet Levy

Posted By on April 20th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/pandemic_and_panopticon_the_rise_of_the_biomedical_security_state.html

The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.

A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.

It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.

Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. The book traces the roots of state interference in, and control of, the biomedical aspects of citizens’ lives to utilitarian ideas that began with Galton and Darwin, and trickled into eugenics, which he says is falsely viewed as entirely a creation of the Nazis when in fact American states were enforcing sterilization from the 1900s to the 1960s.

The core idea, he says, is this: the freedom of a citizen to make health and life decisions can be annulled by the state for the greater good, especially during emergencies. The questions it raises are: Who makes these decisions and on what basis? Who decides what is the greater good? Who is to be held responsible for errors of judgement? What checks and balances do we have, then, against the dictatorial inclinations of the powerful? Ancillary to the idea, he says, is the dangerous circular logic of the state of exception: those who declare an emergency in which citizens’ rights – including the right to question the declaration – stand suspended will believe that in that instance it is morally and politically justified!

BOOKS Comments turned off

When Race Trumps Merit How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives By Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on April 20th, 2023

Does your workplace have too few black people in top jobs? It’s racist. Does the advanced math and science high school in your city have too many Asians? It’s racist. Does your local museum employ too many white women? It’s racist, too.

After the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, prestigious American institutions, from the medical profession to the fine arts, pleaded guilty to “systemic racism.” How else explain why blacks are overrepresented in prisons and underrepresented in C-suites and faculty lounges, their leaders asked?

The official answer for those disparities is “disparate impact,” a once obscure legal theory that is now transforming our world. Any traditional standard of behavior or achievement that impedes exact racial proportionality in any enterprise is now presumed racist. Medical school admissions tests, expectations of scientific accomplishment in the award of research grants, the enforcement of the criminal law—all are under assault, because they have a “disparate impact” on underrepresented minorities.

When Race Trumps Merit provides an alternative explanation for those racial disparities. It is large academic skills gaps that cause the lack of proportional representation in our most meritocratic organizations and large differences in criminal offending that account for the racially disproportionate prison population.

The need for such a corrective argument could not be more urgent. Federal science agencies now treat researchers’ skin color as a scientific qualification. Museums and orchestras choose which art and music to promote based on race. Police officers avoid making arrests and prosecutors decline to bring charges to avoid disparate impact on minority criminals.

When Race Trumps Merit breaks powerful taboos. But it is driven by a sense of alarm, supported by detailed case studies of how disparate-impact thinking is jeopardizing scientific progress, destroying public order, and poisoning the appreciation of art and culture. As long as alleged racism remains the only allowable explanation for racial differences, we will continue tearing down excellence and putting lives, as well as civilizational achievement, at risk.