NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Warning: Biden Is Already Plotting To Restart His ‘Disinformation Board’

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/25/warning-biden-is-already-plotting-to-restart-his-disinformation-board/

No bad idea ever dies in Washington. Once it takes root, it will reemerge in another form. So, all the huzzahs about the demise of the Biden administration’s Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board” are premature.

As we note in our I&I/TIPP Poll, the board attracted widespread hatred among the public, with 55% saying that they wouldn’t trust it to decide what is disinformation fairly. Among independents, 75% didn’t trust it, which is close to the 81% of Republicans who said they couldn’t trust such a government board. Among “free speech” Democrats, in stark contrast to Republicans and independents, 73% said they trusted the board to be fair.

“No doubt, both White House and congressional Democrat internal polling showed similar results,” Terry Jones notes.

But don’t declare victory just yet.

For starters, team Biden said it would only put a “pause” on the board in the wake of a furious backlash from the public and revelations that the woman chosen to head it had herself peddled disinformation on numerous occasions.

During this 75-day “pause,” the Homeland Security Advisory Council will review the board and make “recommendations on how the department can garner public trust surrounding its disinformation efforts.” (Note statement says “how” not “if.”)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Elites Have Every Intention Of Controlling Our Lives

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/26/the-elites-have-every-intention-of-controlling-our-lives/

From the world’s largest gathering of hypocrites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, we have learned that a personal carbon footprint tracker is in the works. In the wrong hands, it would be the equivalent of the ankle monitors used to ensure that criminal offenders don’t escape their house arrest.

“We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their whole carbon footprint,” J. Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group USA, said Tuesday while on a panel discussion on responsible consumption. “What does that mean? Where they are traveling. How they are traveling. What are they eating. What they are consuming on the platform.”

This will excite the virtue signalers who will be happy to post their carbon footprint scores on social media. But for the rest of us, those still wishing to live freely, who don’t want elites establishing the limits of “responsible consumption,” it’s deeply troubling.

Evans described the tracker as if it were just another way for people to keep up with their activities – like a smart watch that monitors health.

But the existence of the technology plays straight into the hands of the wrong people, which in the developed world is roughly half of all elected officials and nearly all of the regulators and bureaucrats of the administrative state. Don’t think that they will decline the opportunity to someday require, in the name of saving the climate, each of us to have a carbon footprint tracker so that our lives can be monitored, and our behavior adjusted as needed.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Genocide for Profits by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18562/genocide-for-profits

Putin’s genocidal war on Ukraine may have less to do with empire and far more to do with profits.

Enormous profits.

There has been considerable commentary about Putin’s war motives, from a belief that Ukraine is little more than an insurgent province of Mother Russia to a fear that Ukraine is becoming a satellite of Western democracies. But those motives miss the fact that Putin rules by allowing oligarchs to enrich themselves and — by extension — himself. And like any criminal, he is going where the money is and there is much money buried in the ground of Ukraine.

While it has historically been considered a rich agricultural region, it is now considered extremely valuable. Putin understands that Ukraine is also very rich in the precious metal lithium. One source reports that for fixed contracts, the annual average lithium price in the United States was $17,000 per ton in 2021, more than double that in 2020.

Published reports reference Ukrainian experts who believe their nation’s Donbas region, now occupied by Russia, holds some 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source for refined lithium.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Terror in the Tunnels Violent crime is surging on New York subways because the justice system switched its focus from enlightened prevention to post-mayhem mop-up. Nicole Gelinas

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/terror-in-new-york-subway-tunnels

On Sunday, Daniel Enriquez became the New York City subway’s latest “random” crime victim, shot in the chest at close range and killed as he traveled from Brooklyn to Manhattan for midmorning brunch. Enriquez was the fourth person to die by violence on the subway this year, and the third to be killed by a stranger. Each of the four subway killings has something in common with the others: justified intervention by police, prosecution, or incarceration could have prevented it. A few years ago, it likely would have. New York is suffering soaring crime because it has abruptly switched its justice system from enlightened prevention to gruesome mop-up.

The city’s justice system is still good at solving the most serious crimes. Just hours after Enriquez’s murder, police identified a suspect: 25-year-old Andrew Abdullah. But Abdullah’s background points up the fact that there shouldn’t have been a serious crime to solve in the first place. He has a criminal history that stretches back to his teen years. He has 19 arrests and served a state sentence for a previous gun crime. Just six months after winning parole on that conviction, the Daily News reports, Abdullah was “quickly busted again in January 2020” for carrying a loaded gun. His two most recent outstanding cases are for domestic violence and possession of a stolen vehicle. In the car-theft case, just last month, a Brooklyn judge, following guidelines set by New York State’s bail “reform” law, released him without bail.

Like many offenders who ratchet up their lower-level violence to homicide, Abdullah, who has now been apprehended, isn’t the kind of criminal who just made a mistake in the heat of passion and deserves a second chance. When he was 16, he allegedly accosted and sexually assaulted three women in Central Park, all strangers to him, within moments. But New York State’s criminal justice system allowed this antisocial behavior to escalate until, allegedly, he killed Daniel Enriquez on the train.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What COVID Hath Wrought Joel Kotkin

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://americanmind.org/features/what-trump-and-covid-revealed/what-covid-hath-wrought/

The hard facts—and hopeful opportunities—of a post-pandemic world.

Glenn Ellmers’s analysis of COVID and Trump represents a classic, and effective, account of the situation from the perspective of declining liberty and adherence to traditional values. But though it is important and necessary to hold onto our highest ideals, I would like to emphasize what is actually taking place on the ground and its likely long-term implication.

Statistics show that COVID accelerated economic, demographic, and geographic trends which were already existent, but rarely acknowledged. These trends include large-scale migration to the south, the west, and the suburbs. COVID also, as Ellmers suggests, sharpened the conflict between many Americans and the ruling “expert” class, who, unlike most Americans, actually flourished under COVID.

I am less sure that Trump was a force for good in all this, given his profound personal failings and mixed messaging during the pandemic. Yet he did stir up dissent against the overweening policies of some governors. In this sense the health crisis intensified an already existing political one. Looking forward, post-COVID reality has seen the emergence of powerful populist politics in both parties, and a marked drop in public esteem for the nation’s once-revered institutions.

Funding the New Elites

In the short run the pandemic strengthened the position of the ruling metropolitan elites centered in Puget Sound, the Bay Area, and New York City. Financial and technology moguls’ net worth has surged during the pandemic, while many businesses in the analog economy suffered devastatingly. Overall, poor and minority communities endured fatalities at twice the average rate of other areas. Minorities and the poor also often lost their jobs, which usually could not be done remotely. Their housing, health needs, and reliance on transit made them all the more vulnerable.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Using Tragedy for Racial Propaganda Heather MacDonald

Posted By on May 26th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/using-the-buffalo-tragedy-for-racial-propaganda

President Joe Biden has been lecturing white Americans about hate again. On May 15, the day after an 18-year-old white supremacist massacred ten black shoppers in a Buffalo supermarket, Biden called on Americans to “address the hate that remains a stain” on the country’s soul. Those stained by hate were not named by race, but the reference was clear.

Two days later, Biden gave a longer speech in Buffalo about the attack. In Biden’s telling, white Americans are at best indifferent to the racist slaughter of their fellow black citizens. “We need to say as clearly and forcefully as we can that the ideology of white supremacy has no place in America. None,” Biden insisted.

Biden’s exhortations and moral clarity were the only forces impeding a slide back toward Jim Crow and the reign of the KKK: “I promise you. Hate will not prevail. And white supremacy will not have the last word. . . . We can’t allow . . . these hate-filled attacks . . . to destroy the soul of the nation.” We can’t allow this violence, the president intoned, to “be the story of our time.” To “confront the ideology of hate requires caring about all people”—something that whites, in their silent complicity with racist rampages, apparently fail to do.

Last week’s remonstrances were not new. In an August 2019 press briefing, then-presidential candidate Biden claimed that racism was a “white man’s problem visited on people of color.” “White folks are the reason we have institutional racism,” he said. On November 6, 2019, the day before the press declared Biden the president-elect, he claimed a “mandate” to eliminate “systemic racism.”

Biden carried over the conceit into his presidential victory speech—the same speech hailed across the political spectrum as “unifying.” Among the “great battles of our time” was the still-unaccomplished goal of “root[ing] out systemic racism in this country.” Millions of Americans represent what Biden called “our darkest impulses.”

The Buffalo rampage is indeed a horrifying reminder of this nation’s white supremacist past, a past that took far too long to move beyond. Because of that history, white acts of terror have an elevated significance over other racist assaults. It is appropriate to be vigilant against any revival of such racial cruelty. Blacks’ anger is understandable—as is their feeling, following any such assault, that they remain under racial siege.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia Thwarts Trump’s ‘Kingmaker’ Role By Susan Crabtree

Posted By on May 25th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/05/25/georgia_thwarts_trumps_kingmaker_role__147651.html

In the end, it was much ado about nothing in Georgia except for political grandstanding.

Since the state swung narrowly in Joe Biden’s favor in 2020, Donald Trump vowed to seek revenge. The improbable targets of his ire were Georgia Republicans, specifically Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Although both men had backed the former president in his reelection bid, neither would join Trump in contesting the GOP ticket’s razor-thin loss. Trump recruited newly defeated Republican Sen. David Perdue to challenge Kemp for his seat, appeared in TV ads, and spent millions from his political action committee on Perdue’s behalf. Trump also endorsed Rep. Jody Hice, who challenged Raffensperger.

Millions of words were written and much airtime expended handicapping whether Georgia would show that Trump had molded the Republican Party in his own likeness. It didn’t happen Tuesday night, at least not in Georgia. Kemp maintained his early lead in the polls while earning the endorsement of former Vice President Mike Pence along the way and cruising to an easy victory – as did Raffensperger. Pence, largely written off by the media, looked more prescient, if not instantly relevant. In an appearance with Kemp on the eve of the election, Pence called a vote for Kemp a “deafening message” that the Republican Party is “the party of the future,” stirring new headlines that he is positioning himself for a presidential run in 2024.

In the end, Kemp easily bested Perdue, more than tripling the votes the former senator received and setting up a rematch election against Stacey Abrams, whom he defeated in the 2018 general election.

But Georgia is only one state. Trump has racked up a mixed record in contested primaries so far this year while wading into various contests to settle old scores or establish himself as a kingmaker. J.D. Vance, the Yale law school graduate and venture capitalist turned author, undoubtedly has Trump to thank for his win in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary. Likewise, Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor backed by Trump in Pennsylvania’s GOP Senate race, leads by just under 1,000 votes in a race against hedge fund executive David McCormick, which appears headed for a recount.

In the end, it was much ado about nothing in Georgia except for political grandstanding.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don’t Surrender To Do-Somethingism On Guns By: David Harsanyi

Posted By on May 25th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/25/dont-surrender-to-do-somethingism-on-guns/

Law-abiding Americans have no obligation to take ownership of a madman’s actions.

Before we even knew how the killer of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, had obtained his guns, Chris Murphy was engaging in his customary performative emotionalism on the Senate floor, literally begging Republicans to “compromise.”

Compromise on what exactly? Murphy has never once offered a single proposal that would have deterred any of these mass shooters. Literally minutes after his routine, Murphy was asked about the obvious mental illness prevalent among most of these shooters. “Spare me the bullsh-t about mental illness,” the Connecticut senator responded, “ripping” the GOP. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world.” That’s how serious he is about compromise.

Whether America is more prone to mental illness or not, these incidents are almost exclusively perpetrated by young men who have exhibited serious anti-social behavior.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

ESG’s power grows as banker is canceled for talking sense on climate change By Rupert Darwall

Posted By on May 25th, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/05/24/hsbc-banker-stuart-kirk-suspended-for-climate-change-remarks/

Last Thursday, something extraordinary happened: A senior HSBC banker, Stuart Kirk, told the world that climate change, though real, is not something financial markets need worry about. “Unsubstantiated, shrill, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” one of Kirk’s presentation slides read.

The reaction was instantaneous. Christiana Figueres, former head of the United Nations climate secretariat, denounced Kirk’s remarks as “abhorrently outrageous,” words that might well describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — but a banker’s presentation analyzing climate financial risk for what it is?

Four hundred years ago, people were burnt at the stake for believing the wrong things about religion. Today, they get fired for questioning the climate-change catechism.

Figueres demanded HSBC immediately cleanse itself of Kirk’s remarks and fire the climate heretic. “I do not agree — at all — with the remarks made at last week’s FT Moral Money Summit,” bank chief executive Noel Quinn duly declared, avoiding any mention of Kirk by name. “I am determined that our team won’t be distracted by last week’s comments.” On Monday, it emerged HSBC had suspended Kirk

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Race-Based Illness at the Best of the Best At elite universities one must never, ever criticize students of color, especially the black students. Those individuals are sacred. By Mark Bauerlein

Posted By on May 25th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/24/race-based-illness-at-the-best-of-the-best/

It looks like the long persecution of Professor Joshua Katz by his employer Princeton University has come to an end. The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that the school president “passed his recommendation that Katz be stripped of his tenure and fired to the university board of trustees,” and the board rubber-stamped it Monday. The whole episode nicely exemplifies the cowardice and incompetence of the liberals who run elite institutions in the United States today. 

The ostensible cause of the termination is a relationship Katz had with a student many years ago, an impropriety that was handled and closed long before the current controversy began. In truth, this current situation has nothing to do with Katz’s private history. The older matter is a false pretext for his termination. Katz’s current sin originates far from the Princeton campus, on the website Quillette, where on July 8, 2020, he published a piece called “A Declaration of Independence by a Princeton Professor.” 

That word independence should clue you in immediately to the danger Katz risked when he wrote the essay, for few personality traits are more ruinous in the academic habitat than that of one’s willingness to dissent, to go one’s own way, to gainsay conventional wisdom. For all of the humanities professoriate’s praise of “speaking truth to power,” it is a profession populated by timid conformists with fearful sensibilities. Few fields in the world exert and police their dogmas more vigilantly than does that of our tenured wordsmiths. Katz was doing what all of them pretend to do but don’t—and so he had to pay.