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

Wokester’s Delight: USA Today declares Dr. Rachel Levine its 2022 ‘Woman of the Year’ By Monica Showalter

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/wokesters_delight_usa_today_declares_dr_rachel_levine_its_2022_woman_of_the_year.html

Who’s the best woman? USA Today has declared a string of wokesters for its 2022 ‘Women of the Year’ honors, and one of them is Dr. Rachel Levine.

Seems you need to be born a man to achieve excellence in womanhood these days. Being an actual woman is no longer enough.

The awards are absurd, given that not many of the women on the list have actual accomplishments  — they’re there because they’re victims, like Simone Biles, radical activists like Janet Murguía, promoters of bad things like recreational marijuana, like Roopali Desai; people who deny the obvious, like fashion editor Nina Garcia who credits her Colombian heritage rather than the opportunities America gave her with her success as an American fashion editor; or else women who have had some sort of role in inventing or promoting things that don’t really work all that well, such as electric cars and the Moderna COVID vaccine. Naturally, Kamala Harris, whose chief achievement as a woman has been to sleep her way to the top and serve as an affirmative action placeholder for the Biden administration as well as impeachment insurance for corrupt old Joe, is on the list. And in Levine’s case, it wasn’t even necessary to have xx chromosomes, let alone merit, just that masculine energy it takes to seek promotions in order to be the alpha dog.

Levine in fact is a political hack who drew attention — and promotions — based on transgender status and nothing else. Why this person is ‘woman of the year’ is rather insulting to actual women, who apparently no longer measure up to USA Today’s standards for what it is to be female. In its hagiographic thumbnail, USA Today writes:

Levine, 64, a trained pediatrician, became the nation’s highest-ranking openly transgender official last March when the Senate confirmed her as assistant secretary of health. Levine has spent her professional life in medicine – as an academic, a clinical researcher, a primary care physician and as Pennsylvania’s physical general and secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Health – but she admits her current role has proven to be the most challenging.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Catching the Windbag By Fred O’Brien

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/03/21/catching-the-windbag/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932–1975, by Neal Gabler (Crown, 928 pp., $40)

America needs more Kennedy biographies about as much as it needs more Kennedys. As the family’s mystique peters out into ineffectuality, alcoholism, and anti-vaxxism, the assumption that any Kennedy should and will be a winner at the polls has dissolved — even in Massachusetts, where Joe Kennedy III (a grandson of Bobby) lost convincingly to Ed Markey in the 2020 Democratic Senate primary. For Bay State voters, it must have felt like that liberating moment when you finally throw out the old address book with your ex’s number in it. Nonetheless, the family still keeps biographers busy (this book is the first of a planned two volumes; don’t say you weren’t warned).

The author of Catching the Wind — Neal Gabler, until now mostly a Holly­wood historian — is nothing if not meticulous. He has, for example, catalogued each of the dozen or so times Ted’s parents moved him to a different prep school, as well as the weight fluctuations that plagued him even in childhood. Then there’s this entry in the index: “Kennedy, Edward Moore ‘Ted,’ womanizing of, xxxi, 82–83, 88, 89, 395, 538, 547–49, 550–52, 554, 581, 601–2” — and on this topic the author makes no attempt to be comprehensive, but eventually just gives up; there’s considerably more information on Ted’s love of sailing.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Joe Biden’s Policies Made This Energy Crisis By Bill Hagerty

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/how-joe-bidens-policies-made-this-energy-crisis/

President Biden’s statement that his administration ‘can’t do much’ about high gas prices is an abdication of duty.

P resident Biden has found a new scapegoat for continuously increasing gas prices.

Last Tuesday, when asked what his administration can do about record-high gas prices, the president replied: “Can’t do much right now. Russia is responsible.” This flippant response is both demonstrably inaccurate and an insult to the working Americans whose paychecks have been increasingly depleted every week since the Biden administration took office.

The truth is that the Biden administration has spent 14 months waging a war against American energy production, and we are now seeing the consequences. With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, Biden’s advisers, too stubborn to admit that Biden’s war on American energy was a mistake, have decided to use the Ukraine crisis to cover up this historic blunder. What’s more, President Biden — with his war on American energy increasing our dependence on Russian oil and the price of that oil — has funded Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The facts clearly reveal what has happened, and they stand in stark contrast to the false narrative that the White House is peddling. The truth is that American gas prices have steadily and substantially increased over the past 14 months because of President Biden’s myopic policies.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The False Narrative of Israeli Neutrality in Russia’s Ukraine Invasion By Lahav Harkov

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-false-narrative-of-israeli-neutrality-in-russias-ukraine-invasion/

The nation is not ‘sitting on the fence,’ but is playing an important mediating role.

Jerusalem — “We condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid said this week, during an official visit to Romania. “[The invasion] has no justification, and we call on Russia to stop the shooting and the attacks and solve the problems around the negotiating table.”

Additionally, Lapid said, “Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other western countries.”

But Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, has been a bit vaguer in his messaging. He’s spoken about “solidarity with the people of Ukraine” and is careful not to mention Russia when he talks about the war. In fact, he doesn’t talk about war; his messages speaking out against the bloodshed mostly say “the situation” — which is a more commonly used catch-all in Hebrew than in English, but still fairly weak — and recently, “the fighting.”

Israel also hedged at the U.N. when the war in Ukraine began. The U.S. gathered signatures for a Security Council resolution from countries that are not on the council in order to show a united front against the Russian invasion, even though Moscow would inevitably veto it. Israel declined to sign. Days later, Lapid said that Israel is “on the right side of history,” and announced that Israel would vote in favor of the resolution against Russia in the U.N. General Assembly — and it did.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Who’s Stoked for CNN+? By Kyle Smith

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/whos-stoked-for-cnn/

CNN will charge six dollars a month for more stuff nobody watches.

C an you feel the excitement? It’s already blockbuster season on the screens. Batman! Bullock! And, um . . . Blitzer!

There’s so much media chatter attending the launch of CNN+ on March 29 that incoming boss man David Zaslav (soon to be CEO of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, today known as WarnerMedia) might as well be Cyrus, warlord of all gangsters, summoning the troops to the park to inquire of all comers, “Can you dig it?” The urgent, let’s-disrupt-the-industry panel discussions have been convened at South by Southwest. The trade papers have printed leaked details. The billboards have sprouted all over Midtown Manhattan. CNN+ stands a chance to be the most dazzling new infotainment product since Ozy Media.

CNN+! CNN . . . plus? As in, we didn’t have enough CNN and needed to plus it up? Does anyone not actually employed by the company agree with this? And unlike the old CNN, which nobody considered himself to be paying for because it was part of a large lineup of cable channels, CNN+ is gambling that people are going to get out their credit card and splash out a dedicated, separate fee for it. On top of all the other things TV watchers are already paying for.

CNN+ is being offered for $5.99 a month. Disney+ charged $6.99 a month when it launched and offered an exciting slate of brand-new and much-discussed series such as The Mandalorian, not to mention a huge library including scores of the most beloved blockbuster movies ever made.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ukraine Cannot Be Asked to Sign Its Own Death Warrant By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ukraine-cannot-be-asked-to-sign-its-own-death-warrant/

The war in Ukraine appears right now in stark terms: A revanchist Russia seeks the extermination of the Ukrainian state, and the Ukrainian people, with their blood up in a fit of wartime nationalist fervor, are in the mood to fight to the last ditch for their nation. So long as Russia offers Ukraine no option but its annihilation as an independent state — at best, surviving with a foreign-imposed puppet regime — things are likely to continue along those lines. A man who is cornered with no way out will fight on until crushed, and perhaps beyond that in a protracted insurgency. American and European voices offering a “realistic” argument for Ukraine accepting peace terms to avoid further death and destruction have to reckon with the fact that, since time immemorial, there have always been things people feared worse than war.

The diplomatic dilemma in constructing an “off ramp” is that it has to satisfy both sides. As Jim Geraghty argues, it really is not apparent thus far that Vladimir Putin really wants one, or at least is willing to offer one in terms that are a remotely realistic appraisal of the mood of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the people he represents.

For all of the Churchillian rhetoric surrounding Zelensky and Ukraine right now, it still makes sense for Ukraine to accept peace terms that are, in effect, an admission of defeat. Russia may be bogged down badly and embarrassing Putin and his military on the world stage, but it is still the larger, greater power, it has already occupied Ukrainian territory, the entire war is being fought on Ukrainian soil — not Russian — and Russia has nukes and the sort of leader whose willingness to use them can’t entirely be ruled out. Much as it will batter Ukrainian national pride and the prestige of its allies to admit this, any negotiated settlement will put Russia in a better position than before it entered the war. Compared with the status quo ante, Ukraine’s borders will be reduced. And it may be compelled to distance itself in some ways from the United States and Europe. Zelensky is already floating the possibility that a deal could involve permanently renouncing Ukrainian ambitions to join NATO. Strategic ambiguity will be officially dead, as if the war hasn’t already pronounced a time of death. Ukraine may have to accept being forced further into Russia’s parlous economic orbit and away from the European Union.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Romney’s “Treason” Smear of Tulsi Gabbard is False and Noxious, But Now Typifies U.S. Discourse The Founders limited “treason” in the Constitution due to grave concerns it would be weaponized to criminalize dissent: exactly how the term is now routinely used. Glenn Greenwald

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/romneys-treason-smear-of-tulsi-gabbard?s=w

The crime of “treason” is one of the gravest an American citizen can commit, if not the gravest. It is one of the few crimes other than murder for which execution is still a permissible punishment under both U.S. federal law and the laws of several states. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were so concerned about the temptation to abuse this term — by depicting political dissent as a criminalized betrayal of one’s country — that they chose to define and limit how this crime could be applied by inserting this limiting paragraph into the Constitution itself; reflecting the gravity and temptation to abuse accusations of “treason,” it is the only crime they chose to define in the U.S. Constitution. Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution states:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Treason was the only crime to be explicitly defined and limited by the Founders because they sought “to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition.” In other words, the grave danger anticipated by the Founders was that “treason” would radically expand to include any criticisms of or opposition to official U.S. Government policy, activities they sought in the Bill of Rights to enshrine as an inviolable right of U.S. citizenship, not turn it into a capital crime.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Has Russia Been Financing Western Environmentalism? by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18330/russia-funding-environmental-groups

“I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.” — NATO’s then Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, The Guardian, June 19, 2014.

The mechanism, which can be summarized as follows: “Funds from the Russian government -> Shell company ‘incorporated’ in Bermuda -> American foundation -> American environmental organizations.” The advantage of Bermuda is that it does not require any disclosure that funds come from a foreign government, contrary to American law. Sea Change must disclose that it has received funds from abroad — in this instance a Bermuda company. Nothing more.

On March 11, 2022, US Representatives Jim Banks and Bill Johnson sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, asking for an investigation into the reported Russian manipulation of American “green groups” that are seemingly funded with “dark money” (anonymous donations). “Russia spent millions promoting anti-energy policies and politicians in the U.S. … Unlike the Russia hoax, Putin’s malign influence on our energy sector is real and deserves further investigation,” Banks said to Fox News Digital.

Below Europe’s soil lie large reserves of shale gas, also known as bedrock gas. The exploitation of these European natural gas reserves would have substantially reduced Europe’s purchases of, and dependence on, Russia’s gas — in particular on its gas giant, Gazprom. The same is true of nuclear power, which offers Westerners an abundant, non-CO2-emitting energy source as an alternative to Russian gas.

Hence the interest, for the Russian government, in mounting a vast disinformation campaign against shale gas and nuclear power in the West, by massively financing the groups most likely “naturally” to oppose it: environmentalist organizations.

Have Western environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), movements and parties been possible, even unwitting, collaborators with the Russian government for the last ten years?

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate change is not an ‘existential threat’ by David Simon

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/climate-change-is-not-an-existential-threat

The Biden administration’s climate change policies have sharply increased oil prices, damaging the domestic economy and increasing the cost of nearly everything consumers buy. By increasing revenues for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime, they also made Russia stronger and more dangerous at a critical time, thus damaging national security. It is worth noting that Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014, and Ukraine again this year each happened after an oil price spike.

But worst of all, the Biden administration’s basis for these policies, the claim that global warming presents an “existential threat,” is fraudulent. It is not based on any scientific consensus, and in fact, it ignores evidence of environmental benefits of global warming that offset its harm.

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Studies published in May 2015, July 2021, and August 2021 analyzed millions of deaths in numerous countries over recent decades and found that cooler temperatures kill several times more people than warmer temperatures. “Global warming,” environmental statistician Bjørn Lomborg wrote in September 2021, “now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually.”

Matt Ridley’s February 2022 essay explained that global warming has increased both agricultural yields and growth of forests, grasslands, and tree leaves.

The facts regarding natural disasters also do not support the “existential threat” claim. The number of hurricanes per year, a 2021 EPA report shows, has not increased since the late 19th century. Moreover, although you wouldn’t know it from the panicky, sensationalized news coverage, the total acreage burnt by forest fires annually has decreased, and most rivers flood less today than they used to.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

While all eyes are on Ukraine, China continues undermining America’s wellbeing By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/while_all_eyes_are_on_ukraine_china_continues_undermining_americas_wellbeing.html

If you travel, you know that one of the things that countries and states zealously check for is smuggling prohibited foods. That sounds neurotic and protectionist but it’s an important part of securing a country’s food supply. If pests, parasites, or diseases migrate into a nation’s food supply, it can destroy entire farming sectors and even lead to famine. That’s why it matters that China has been caught smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of potentially contaminated meats into America. (Hat tip: FrontPage Mag.)

I first fully understood the problem of a contaminated food supply in the early 1980s when I learned that England’s cattle had been contaminated with Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad cow disease). News of it broke not long after I returned to America following a college year in England. Having eaten beef in England (although not much because I couldn’t afford it), I neurotically worried for some years after that I might find myself afflicted with the disease. As it turned out, I avoided that scourge but, over the next few years, the British slaughtered over four million cattle and numerous countries banned British beef. It was a tragedy and an economic disaster for farmers.

Thus, there is nothing foolish about countries rigorously policing any contaminants that might get into the food supply. But little things like rules don’t stop the Chinese. After all, they’ve already flooded America with fentanyl and COVID, so why shouldn’t we also be a target of potentially dangerous meats?