NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Has The State Of The Union Ever Been Worse?

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/07/has-the-state-of-the-union-ever-been-worse/

Joe Biden will ramble through his second State of the Union speech tonight and will tell us that all is well. But just like the blundering president, this nation is ailing.

Three years ago, before our miserable “leaders” made the worst public policy decision in history and told us to hide in our basements, nearly half of Americans thought their country, while politically divided, was moving in the right direction. Inflation was low, as were energy prices, and employment was high. The economy had been growing steadily until it was interrupted by panicked policymakers (most of them Democrats). The country was at peace, and the only people who were talking about war with Russia or China were those who suffered most from Trump Derangement Syndrome. A Gallup poll taken early in 2020 found that nearly nine out of 10 Americans felt good about their personal lives. The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom ranked the U.S. at 17th in 2020, (eight places higher than in 2022).

Americans have noticed that life has since changed. Our I&I/TIPP Poll taken last week shows that more than three in five (61%) says they are not better off than they were two years ago. Only a third, most of them, predictably, Democrats, say they are better off.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll completed last week produced similar results: 41% say they are worse off financially since Biden took office. The scale of discontent is not as large as it is in our poll, but the ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that the dissatisfaction has grown sharply under Biden: At the same time in the Trump presidency, two years in, only 13% said they were worse off than when he was inaugurated.

Back to 2022: The portion of those who say they’re better off under Biden has fallen to 16%, the lowest figure the poll has recorded since the recession of the late 2000s.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

James Clapper the Russiagate Hoaxer Says U.S. Shouldn’t Be ‘Hyperventilating’ Over Chinese Spy Balloon By Matt Margolis

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/02/06/russiagate-hoaxer-says-u-s-shouldnt-be-hyperventilating-over-chinese-spy-balloon-n1668201

James Clapper, Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, who helped push the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, insists that Americans shouldn’t be “hyperventilating” over the Chinese spy balloon.

“I think the bigger issue here … is, you know, we don’t expend too much crisis energy, if you will, on hyperventilating over an air balloon,” Clapper told CNN on Saturday. “When you think about the crisis spectrum, the invasion of Taiwan or, God forbid, a nuclear confrontation, so I think we need to sort of put this in perspective.”

While many on both sides of the aisle have been critical of Joe Biden’s inaction over the balloon, Clapper joins the list of left-wing partisans in seeing it as a good story for ol’ Joe.

“I think the administration’s response has been measured, I understand the outcry for this affront to our sovereignty and all of that, but satellites are going by every day and collecting, and I think the issue is how high is sovereignty,” Clapper said.

“I’ve had some personal experience with using balloons for intelligence, and they are inefficient and difficult to use because of what’s happened to the Chinese, and that is, controlling them,” Clapper added.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The View From Kyiv By Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.afpc.org/publications/articles/the-view-from-kyiv

The recent U.S. and German decision to send tanks to Ukraine, thereby opening the floodgates for contributions by other governments that reportedly will bring total Western tank contributions to more than 300, brought a palpable sigh of relief from political, military, and private sector leaders in Kyiv.

That decision came in the middle of an American Foreign Policy Council delegation’s nine-day swing through Kyiv and Odessa (bookended by stops in Warsaw and Chisinau), so one could see its impact on morale in Ukraine.

The earlier U.S. and German refusal to provide tanks had been met with exasperation, and with a sense that the West didn’t recognize the following realities. First, that Ukraine can’t win a war of attrition against a far more populous Russia. Second, that existing sanctions aren’t nearly strong enough to force Moscow’s retreat. Third, and most of all, that Ukraine must prevail so that Moscow isn’t emboldened to sic its military next on other nations that were once part of the Soviet empire – and Beijing, Tehran, and other Western adversaries aren’t emboldened to move against U.S. interests in their respective regions.

The subsequent U.S. and German decision to reverse course and send the tanks renewed Ukrainian confidence in Western resolve, and it empowered an appreciative Kyiv to set its sights next on securing longer-range missiles and fighter jets from the West to better combat Moscow’s air campaign.

The tense days of decision-making over the tanks, however, highlight differences between Kyiv and Washington about the war – and those differences could become more consequential if Ukraine withstands Russia’s coming spring offensive, retakes land in the east, and set its sights on Crimea.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How ‘The Collective Voice of the Muslim World’ Weaponizes the UN against Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19376/oic-un-israel

OPEC and the OIC are infused with nearly incalculable wealth and most member states of the OIC have found themselves upbraided for questionable ethics.

One critic suggested: “If the OIC Summiteers are serious about the burning issues of justice, freedom and good governance, then they should schedule a special debate on the Transparency International’s (TI) 2003 Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which ranked 38 of the 57 OIC member nations in its latest chart of the corruption levels of 133 countries… [it] is dismal reading for OIC as it is an overall indictment of the failures of the OIC countries to grapple with the problem of corruption…”

The UN itself is certainly not above reproach in the corruption department, as evidenced, among other cases, by the “Oil-for-Food Program;” the extensive history of “food for sex” with children by “peacekeepers” who enjoy immunity from prosecution; or the trial of Chinese executive Julia Wang, who attempted to purchase an influential UN post.

One may wonder why Nicaragua, not an Islamic country, and with significant problems on its own home front, would trouble itself with submitting the motion. A cursory investigation reveals some significant motivation: “With the majority vote of the Sandinista Caucus, the National Assembly today approved the Loan Agreement signed between the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID) and the Republic of Nicaragua… The project, which has an estimated investment of 23 million dollars, of which the OPEC Fund will finance 20.5 million…”

The OIC even attempted to co-opt UN forces as a pretext for Islamic military support of Lebanon’s offensive against Israel.

Returning to the pre-1967 lines — simply the armistice lines from 1949 where fighting had happened to stop — is nothing short of suicide for Israel; it would be virtually indefensible, and the UN and all of its sponsors are well aware of that.

It would seem… that protecting freedom of religion, outside of Islamic fundamentalism, is not of any particular concern to the OIC or what now stands mostly as its legitimizing but rapidly crumbling front, the UN. The collaboration between the OIC and UN is simply a pretext to twist international law — and public opinion — to their own purposes, whether they are promoting themselves or delegitimizing the State of Israel.

It is already a tired truism to say that the United Nations has a distinctly anti-Israel bias. The US became exasperated with this laser-like focus and, in unequivocal condemnation of the agency, withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2018 and, for the same reason, from UNESCO the following year.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Lauren Smith:Dr John Money and the sinister origins of gender ideology How a cruel, amoral experiment helped birth today’s trans movement.

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/05/dr-john-money-and-the-sinister-origins-of-gender-ideology/

We are all too familiar today with the basics of trans ideology. That biological sex does not determine one’s ‘gender identity’. That someone born biologically male can become female. And that we need to affirm a person’s ‘gender identity’, even if that person is a small child. What few perhaps realise is that the intellectual origins of so much of trans ideology can be traced back to the work of one man – sexologist and psychologist Dr John Money (1921-2006).

New Zealand-born Money was a pioneer in his field of sexuality and gender. In 1955, he was the first person to use the word ‘gender’ as opposed to ‘sex’ to draw a distinction between the biological attributes and the behavioural characteristics that differentiate males from females. He subsequently popularised terms like ‘gender identity’ and even founded the world’s first gender-identity clinic at John Hopkins University in Baltimore in the US in 1966, specialising in the psychological and medical treatment of transgender patients. Above all, Money pushed the view, so central to today’s trans movement, that though we may be born with biologically determined sex characteristics, they do not determine whether we are male or female. Without Money, it’s unlikely that trans ideology, especially the phenomenon of ‘trans kids’, would exist today in the way that it does.

Not everything Money believed about gender has been absorbed by the trans movement. He believed, for instance, that when children are around two years old they pass through a ‘gender-identity gate’, which locks in their gender for the rest of their lives. Few trans activists would make such a claim today. But the central idea that Money first developed is still upheld by trans activists today – namely, that being male or female is not biologically determined. This is the idea that drives trans ideology, and the notion of trans kids, today. It means that someone can be born with male genitalia, but they can still ‘become’ female.

So why is Money rarely mentioned by those promoting trans ideology today? You won’t find him cited in Stonewall educational guides. You won’t see him quoted in any Mermaids documents. And you won’t hear the #BeKind brigade paying tribute to him. The reason for this is simple enough: John Money’s work was creepy, cruel and amoral – and left a trail of misery, pain and suicide in its wake.

ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ilhan Omar’s Empire of Censorship The accusation of ‘Islamophobia’ is cynically being used to silence critics of woke. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/02/06/ilhan-omars-empire-of-censorship/

It is now Islamophobic to talk about anti-Semitism. Dare to comment on anti-Jewish racism and you risk being called a racist yourself. Witness the media meltdown that followed Republicans’ ousting of Democrat congresswoman and Squad kween, Ilhan Omar, from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It is not really Omar’s past dabbling in anti-Semitic tropes that Republicans are concerned about, the woke set say. No, the real reason they booted her out is because they hate Muslims. As Omar herself said, they just don’t want Muslims to ‘have a voice on that committee’. These people are ‘okay with Islamophobia’, she said.

You couldn’t have asked for a better, grimmer illustration of the social poison in identity politics. It’s like racial Top Trumps. Anyone who says they’re worried about Omar’s singular hostility to the Jewish state, and the possibility that it’s motored more by prejudice than principle, will swiftly be accused of prejudice themselves. We should give a ‘hearty eye-roll’ to the Republican handwringing over Omar’s past comments, says a writer for the Guardian. Apparently the real reason these people ‘vilify’ Omar is because she’s ‘outspoken, principled, black, a refugee, African, female and a hijab-wearing Muslim’. Count the points on that Top Trump card! Every identitarian victim category is marshalled to the task of rubbishing the right’s concerns about Squad anti-Semitism.

It all adds up to a sinister silencing tactic. There’s a constant search for ‘the real reason’ people criticise Omar. As a headline in Mother Jones put it, ‘The real reason House Republicans kicked Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee’. You can guess the real reason, right? It’s because ‘she is a black, Muslim woman’. This claim that a nefarious motive lurks behind every calling out of Omar is chilling. It casts aspersions on efforts to raise the issue of anti-Semitism. ‘Why are people really talking about anti-Semitism?’, the woke are encouraged to wonder. Opposition to anti-Jewish racism comes to be seen as a disguise worn by Islamophobes. Drip by drip, concern about anti-Semitism comes to be seen as something fraudulent.

In truth, there are many good reasons, ‘real reasons’, to be unsettled by Omar’s views on Israel. She once said Israel had ‘hypnotised the world’, playing into the trope about Jews, or in this case the Jewish state, being the shady manipulators of world affairs. She also said that American politicians’ support for Israel is all about ‘the Benjamins, baby’, hinting that the filthy-rich Jewish state is buying people off. Then there’s the sheer intensity of her Israel obsession. United With Israel reports that in 2021, 79 per cent of her tweets on foreign affairs were about Israel. In 2022, 48 per cent were about Israel. In contrast, 17.9 per cent were about Saudi Arabia and 3.8 per cent were about China.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Seen Any Other Spy Balloons Lately? An $850 billion defense budget, and we can’t detect a Chinese airship?

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-spy-balloon-biden-administration-trump-administration-pentagon-glen-vanherck-11675724569?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The U.S. Navy is fishing fragments of a Chinese spy balloon out of the Atlantic Ocean, and each fresh detail about this episode raises new and troubling questions. A striking example is the news from the Biden Administration that previous Chinese balloon incursions into the U.S. appear to have gone undetected. This suggests there’s a major hole in U.S. defenses that needs closing.

A senior defense official told reporters on Feb. 2 that a balloon incursion “has happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this Administration. It is appearing to hang out for a long period of time this time around, more persistent than in previous instances.”

The Biden Team was leaking over the weekend that balloons had snuck into U.S. airspace during the Trump Administration, and the obvious implication was to absolve President Biden of political blame. More than one media outfit took the bait. But then Trump officials started denying on the record that they’d ever heard of such an event—from former national security adviser John Bolton to Defense Secretary Mark Esper to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The Administration’s attempt to muddy responsibility is bad enough, but the revelation that at least three past balloon flights evaded U.S. notice is alarming. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck of U.S. Northern Command told reporters on Monday. In Pentagon argot for the ages, he called it “a domain awareness gap.” The U.S. government ostensibly pieced the puzzle together later with the help of the intelligence community.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science An open-records request reveals that Texas Tech faculty penalize candidates for heterodox opinions. By John D. Sailer

Posted By on February 7th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-diversity-policing-fails-science-equality-equity-education-texas-tech-job-candidates-interview-dei-pronouns-11675722169?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.” Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun “he” when referring to professors. Still another was praised for having made a “land acknowledgment” during the interview process. A land acknowledgment is a statement noting that Native Americans once lived in what is now the United States.

Amidst the explosion of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Texas Tech’s biology department adopted its own DEI motion promising to “require and strongly weight a diversity statement from all candidates.” These short, written declarations are meant to summarize an academic job seeker’s past and potential contributions to DEI efforts on campus.

The biology department’s motion mandates that every search committee issue a report on its diversity statement evaluations. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, I have acquired the evaluations of more than a dozen job candidates.

To my knowledge, these documents—published in redacted form by the National Association of Scholars—are the first evaluations of prospective faculty DEI contributions to be made publicly available. They confirm what critics of DEI statements have long argued: That they inevitably act as ideological litmus tests.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A tale of two massacres The woke hatred for Israel is no longer just strange – it’s dangerous. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on February 5th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/01/30/a-tale-of-two-massacres/

“So committed are some in the West to the narrative of Israeli evil and Palestinian good that they hold up Palestinians as the pitiable victims of massacres in the very week when it was Israelis, Jews in fact, who were the victims of a massacre. Their devotion to the ideology of Israel-hate clearly takes precedence over everything, even truth. That there has not been more moral and historical angst in the West over the massacre of praying Jews on Holocaust Memorial Day is abominable. It is a blot on the Western moral conscience. It tells us more about us than we would care to know.”

Truth is the first casualty of war, they say. It’s the first casualty of virtue-signalling, too. Over the past week we have seen just how estranged from truth the West’s fashionable anti-Israel set has become. Something extraordinary happened: woke commentators and activists expressed more fury over a massacre that didn’t happen than they did over one that did happen. They made more noise over a massacre that exists mostly in their imaginations than they did over a massacre that existed in the real world, that shattered people’s lives in the most violent, horrifying and bigoted fashion imaginable. This tale of two massacres, of the real and unreal, sheds a harsh and unforgiving light on anti-Israel sentiment today.

It starts with events in Jenin in the West Bank last Thursday. Following numerous clashes over the past month between Israeli security forces and Palestinian residents of the West Bank, the Israelis launched a raid in Jenin in which nine people were killed. It was a massacre, people say. Israeli security forces slaughtered Palestinians, we were told. Democratic US congresswoman and Squad member Rashida Tlaib led the charge: Israel is an ‘apartheid regime that is killing Palestinian children [and] families’, she said the day after the Jenin incident. We must ‘honour the victims of the Jenin massacre’, she said, ‘by telling the truth about the apartheid government’. The word ‘massacre’ was widely used in the left media. Electronic Intifada called it an ‘Israeli bloodbath’. ‘Jenin’ and ‘massacre’ trended online. British people were encouraged to write to their MPs to register their disgust with Israel’s ‘brutal’ behaviour.

What really happened in Jenin? For all the talk of hateful, racist Israel gunning down Palestinian families, in truth it was a fairly straightforward military clash between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. Israel was pursuing militants that it believes are plotting attacks. Seven of the people killed were gunmen who had opened fire in response to Israel’s raid. You don’t have to take Israel’s word for it – Palestinian militants themselves have said it was mostly their people who died. Islamic Jihad said two of its members were killed while ‘battling’ the Israelis. Four of the slain gunmen were claimed by Hamas. And one was claimed by an armed wing of Fatah, the faction of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Does this sound like a massacre, or like a bloody clash between opposing groups in a war-like situation?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Cannot Delay Sending Tanks to Ukraine by Con Coughlin

Posted By on February 5th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19375/biden-tanks-ukraine

From the outset of the conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin has calculated that Western support for Ukraine would eventually wane. And, with the Russians reported to be preparing a new spring offensive, any sign of hesitancy by Washington in terms of supporting Ukraine will encourage Putin in the belief that he will meet no meaningful resistance from the Western alliance….

The Ukrainian military says it is in desperate need of the heavy armour if it is to withstand a new offensive.

The Pentagon, which has been lukewarm about supplying the tanks from the outset, says the delays are due to the fact that it will need to purchase new Abrams tanks to supply Ukraine because the Defense Department doesn’t have any available spares, which seems remarkable given that the US Army and US Marine Corps currently operate nearly 5,000 Abrams.

The [F-16 fighter jets], just like the tanks, are deemed essential if the Ukrainian military is to stand any chance of withstanding a new Russian offensive. The supply of Western fighters such as the F-16 would significantly enhance Ukraine’s war-fighting capability, and would send a strong message to Putin that the West remains committed to ensuring Ukraine ultimately declares victory over Russia.

As with so many other issues relating to Ukraine, the Biden administration finds itself unable to reach any firm decision about whether or not to accede to Kyiv’s request….

As with the tanks request, it has been left to European politicians to increase the pressure on the Biden administration to respond positively to the Ukraine request for fighter jets, with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson making a direct appeal for Washington to supply warplanes during his recent visit to the US.

“The faster Putin gets out of Ukraine and the quicker we return to stability and the more powerful the message we send to people like China that the West – America, the U.K. – will not tolerate aggressive attempts to change borders by force,” Johnson said.

Certainly, the Biden administration’s constant dithering over its military support for Ukraine is not only demoralising for the brave Ukrainian forces fighting to protect their country from Russian tyranny. It also encourages Putin in the belief that, despite the significant losses he has suffered during the past year, he can ultimately achieve victory.

President Joe Biden may feel that, by finally authorising the shipment of American tanks to Ukraine, he has demonstrated that he remains committed to the Ukrainian cause. But given the time it will take for the tanks to arrive in Ukraine, it could well prove to be an empty gesture.

Furthermore, with the White House resisting Ukrainian requests for F-16 fighter jets to protect the tanks, Biden risks sending mixed messages about just how committed his administration is to supporting Kyiv in its fight against the Russian invaders.