Hungarians have voted in an election that is, by every account, untainted but the American Left has its knickers in a knot over Orban’s “authoritarian” policies. Hungary’s borders are protected. Parental rights are upheld. Anti-Semitic and xenophobic parties have lost. I take up no cudgels for Orban or his policies, but on the foregoing issues, our “progressives” live in glass houses..rsk
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/hungary-is-isnt-the-best-worst-place-on-earth/
Hungary held an election yesterday — which probably came as a surprise to a number Americans who’ve been convinced that the small Central European nation functions as a totalitarian state. The bugbear of the American Left, and false savior of nationalist conservatives, Viktor Orbán, won his fourth consecutive term. Fidesz, his party, won two-thirds of Parliament against a cluster of center-Left, socialist, environmentalist, and hard-right-wing nationalist parties (Jobbik has only recently moderated from its xenophobic and antisemitic stances, allegedly).
Trying to decipher European parliamentary elections through the prism of American politics is a waste of time. Orbán ran on a traditionalist, socially conservative platform. A referendum on a law limiting the teaching of gay and transgender issues in schools passed; the EU opposes such limits. He leaned into anti-war rhetoric as well as anti-Brussels sentiment, though Fidesz has no plans to leave the EU. It recently instituted a significant minimum-wage increase, and its economic positions have as much in common with statist progressivism as mainstream conservatism.
The truth is, Hungary is illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of modern Europe. And that’s bad enough. Hungary is singled out for ridicule mainly because it declines to share the cultural values of the European Union or the progressive Left, especially pertaining to social policies and to the flow of Middle Eastern migrants into the European Union, which Fidesz aims to block. These positions, in the parlance of modern debate, are “anti-democratic.”
https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/04/garland-feels-the-heat/
If Hunter Biden is in handcuffs before Donald Trump, the attorney general, who will turn 70 later this year, will wish he had opted for retirement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s swan song, we can presume, isn’t exactly turning out how he had hoped.
Appointed attorney general in 2021 as some sort of retaliation against Republicans for refusing to seat him on the Supreme Court in 2016, Garland, though largely a figurehead, is getting heat from members of both political parties—including the man who nominated him to serve as the nation’s top lawyer.
According to the New York Times, Joe Biden is displeased that Garland hasn’t yet charged the former president for crimes related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. “[While] the president has never communicated his frustrations directly to Mr. Garland, he has said privately that he wanted Mr. Garland to act less like a ponderous judge and more like a prosecutor who is willing to take decisive action over the events of Jan. 6.,” the Times reported over the weekend.
Although the Times attempted to portray Biden as hands-off when it comes to the business of his Justice Department, that is simply untrue. By repeatedly describing January 6 as an act of terror and comparing the protest, which resulted only in the deaths of Trump supporters, to 9/11 and other atrocities, Biden has signaled how he expects the Justice Department to proceed. His desire to see everyone from Indiana grandmothers to Donald Trump and his family behind bars hasn’t exactly been a secret.
As the chaos was still unfolding on the afternoon of January 6, Biden addressed the nation, blaming Trump for inciting “an insurrection” that “borders on sedition” while promising his administration would restore “the rule of law.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/left-attacks-floridas-new-parental-rights-joseph-klein/
Governor Ron DeSantis last week signed a common-sense law that protects school children from having to undergo sexualized classroom instruction at an impressionable age. The law also protects parents’ rights in deciding how their children are raised and educated. But the progressive Left believes that it is imperative to brainwash children early in LGBTQI+ dogma at school even if it means running roughshod over parental prerogatives.
“They support injecting woke gender ideology into second-grade classrooms,” Governor DeSantis said. “They support enabling schools to ‘transition’ students to a ‘different gender’ without the knowledge of the parent.”
The Parental Rights in Education law states: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
The law also requires, among other protections for parents, “school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bidens-budget-lies-terrence-p-jeffrey/
“Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.”
When releasing his fiscal 2023 budget proposal on Monday, President Joe Biden said this was something his father had told him.
He then made a claim about a “value” his budget proposal purportedly advances.
“The first value is fiscal responsibility,” Biden said.
That is a lie.
In his speech, Biden elaborated on this lie.
“The previous administration, as you all know, ran up record budget deficits. In fact, the deficit went up every year under my predecessor,” he said.
“My administration is turning that around,” Biden continued.
“Last year,” he said, “we cut the deficit by more than $350 billion. This year, we’re on track to cut the deficit by more than $1.3 trillion. $1.3 trillion. That would be the largest one-year reduction in the deficit in U.S. history.”
But what do the Treasury’s official numbers actually tell us about the recent history of federal spending and deficits?
In the first three years of the Trump administration, the deficit grew — but never exceeded $1 trillion. In fiscal 2017, it was $665,826,000,000. In fiscal 2018, it was $778,996,000,000. In fiscal 2019, it was $984,388,000,000.
To be sure, these were very high deficits. But they were less than what Biden has planned for post-COVID America.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/magic-kingdom-supports-sexualizing-childhood-bruce-thornton/
Once the epitome of childhood innocence and joy, the Disney Corporation has gone full “woke,” endorsing and supporting a dangerous grammar-school curriculum that exposes prepubescent children to inappropriate sexual information. Pressured by activists, including Disney employees, Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek publicly renounced Florida’s recently passed Parental Rights in Education law––dishonestly labeled by critics the “Don’t say gay” law–– which forbids curriculum from kindergarten to third grade from including content on “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
This assault on childhood innocence in the name of “tolerance” and identity-politics activism marks a dangerous escalation in the decades-long ideological transformation of sexual mores away from common sense, faith, and traditional morality. This escalation puts at risk children’s sexual development and psychological health by exposing them to materials and information they are not ready for, while sidelining parents’ responsibility and right to oversee this vulnerable period in their children’s lives.
This episode highlights several cultural and political developments that have been going on for many decades. The attempt to usurp parents’ right to raise their kids according to their morality and principles reflects the progressive technocratic hubris that they, rather than families or churches, are better suited for properly raising and educating children. The irony is, it hasn’t been science that supports that claim, but scientism: disciplines like psychology and sociology that oversimplify human nature and motivation, and impose ideologically loaded paradigms and practices on public schools.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/why_dont_the_media_ever_ask_why_previous_ipcc_predictions_have_been_so_wrong.html
Once again, the UN intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is warning that we are doomed by climate change. The media, Biden administration, and the IPCC like to scare people. This article by Yahoo News senior editor Ben Adler does not answer simple questions.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday released its latest report, which found that nations are falling short of their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate change. While the technology exists to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of average global temperature increase — the goal that virtually every nation agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and reaffirmed last year in the Glasgow Climate Pact — current policies put the world on a trajectory toward at least twice as much warming.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the report’s conclusion “damning.” The Working Group III report marks the end of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, with strong words for countries that have failed to act on climate change.
“The jury has reached a verdict. And it is damning,” Guterres said in a statement. “This report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a litany of broken climate promises. It is a file of shame, cataloging the empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.” (snip)
Without a dramatic shift in policy, Guterres warned, “We are on a fast track to climate disaster: Major cities under water. Unprecedented heatwaves. Terrifying storms. Widespread water shortages. The extinction of a million species of plants and animals.”
In 1989 the IPCC said we only had ten years left!
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-judiciary-committee-splits-on-advancing-judge-jacksons-nomination/
After the Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court on Monday in a split eleven-to-eleven partisan vote, the Senate chamber advanced her candidacy 53–47 Monday evening in a subsequent vote.
A simple majority of 51 votes was needed to advance her nomination, which Jackson garnered after Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney pledged their support, cementing a likely bipartisan confirmation.
Given that the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats is evenly divided in the Senate, Jackson’s prospects have been encumbered by a political tug-of-war, especially since both parties have the same number of seats on every committee. For the last two weeks, some GOP members on the committee have hammered Jackson on her record of perceived leniency on child-pornography cases during her hearings.
https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/05/the-cdc-massively-violates-its-pledge-to-americans-why-should-anyone-trust-it-now/
(Since Big Tech is likely to try to censor this article, we encourage our readers to share it widely with friends by email, on personal websites, blogs, or however else you share information these days.)
One of the five items on the CDC’s “Pledge to the American People” is that it will “base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively.” Can anyone honestly say that it has lived up to this promise during the COVID outbreak?
Three recent events should make it abundantly clear that the answer is no.
First, the CDC has been caught hiding vast amounts of scientific data regarding COVID. The New York Times, of all places, reported in late February that “For more than a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has collected data on hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the United States and broken it down by age, race and vaccination status. But it has not made most of the information public.” Why? Because the data, especially data on the efficacy of vaccines, “might be misinterpreted.”
Dr. Nicole Saphier, a physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering, tweeted in reaction to the news that: “The CDC’s response when questioned about their withholding of COVID data and lack of transparency is essentially ‘we don’t trust you to be able to understand the truth.’ The condescension is palpable.”
She added that “People who have blindly trusted the CDC the last 2 years are about to have their world turned upside down as the lack of transparency and manipulation of data become undeniably evident.”
So much for the CDC’s pledge to be “open and objective.” (This revelation also shows that the CDC has violated another of its pledges: to “treat all persons with dignity, honesty, and respect.”)
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-cult-of-abortion/
As the Left abandons the meaningful existence of gender, abortion remains a sacrament reserved for women in the woke cathedral.
As we all have learned by now, women do not get pregnant and have babies—“birthing people” do. Women do not exclusively menstruate—both men and women have periods. And women do not nurse babies—“chestfeeders” do. But, so far at least, abortion is still exclusively a question of women’s health.
In May of 2021, Representative Cori Bush testified in a congressional hearing about maternal death among black women and babies. “Every day,” she tweeted, “Black birthing people and our babies die because our doctors don’t believe our pain. My children almost became a statistic. I almost became a statistic.” But Bush, a radical socialist legislator who is sticking with “Defund the Police” as a mantra, was not using some arcane terminology in substituting “birthing person” for the usual “mother.” This substitution apparently reflects official U.S. government policy under the Biden administration, which used it in 2022 fiscal documents.
Tampon companies have also embraced the idea that their products are, potentially, for everyone. “Fact: Not all women have periods,” Tampax tweeted. “Also a fact: Not all people with periods are women. Let’s celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed!” The ACLU has embraced “menstrual equity” as a matter of civil rights, asking, “How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t?” Numerous colleges have installed tampon machines in men’s bathrooms, too.
