WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Will Putin Up the Ante? The answer may lie in his tactics in previous conflicts. Dr. Craig Luther

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/will-putin-ante-dr-craig-luther/

Geographically, Ukraine is the largest country in Europe (about the size of Texas and some 1800km across from west to east); it has a population of more than 40,000,000. The Russian invasion is being conducted along four axes: 1) from the north, out of Belarus; 2) from the northeast, along the Chernihiv-Sumy-Kharkiv axis; 3) out of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine (with the help of the two Russian separatist republics of Luhansk and Donetsk); and, 4) out of Crimea in the south. In general, while the Russian assault has been significantly less effective than anticipated, Russian forces are still managing, deliberately and inexorably, to encircle and bombard key Russian cities and towns, e.g., the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city), Mariupol. In the process, they have created the most tragic humanitarian disaster in Europe since the end of World War II, with more than 2,000,000 refugees now fleeing Ukraine.

The Initial Russian Air & Missile Strikes.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th, Western military observers expected the Russian Air Force (VKS) to unleash something akin to the “shock and awe” campaign of our first Gulf War in 1991. At the start of Operation DESERT STORM, U.S. and Allied air forces conducted literally thousands of sorties, paralyzing Iraq’s leadership, destroying its military infrastructure (including air bases), and eliminating or at least grounding the Iraqi Air Force, giving Allied air forces complete command of the air, something air war theorists call “air supremacy.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Price of Biden’s Excuses for Inflation Keeps Rising ‘Make no mistake,’ the president said last week, higher costs are ‘largely the fault of Putin.’ Gerard Baker

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-excuses-rising-putin-war-russia-ukraine-gas-prices-inflation-american-rescue-plan-build-back-better-stimulus-spending-11647275414?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

‘Make no mistake, inflation is largely the fault of Putin.”

Even by the high standards of political mendacity, the attempt by President Biden last week to assign blame for the acceleration of prices that began just over a year ago to a war that began just under three weeks ago is remarkable for its cynicism, its dishonesty and its desperation.

The cynicism is so sweeping that you have to sit back and marvel. How much contempt do they have for the intelligence of Americans to think that there are enough who would believe such a proposition?

In fact we have a good sense of the depth of the disdain the president has for Americans’ understanding of their economic circumstances. In that same speech, to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference, he bemoaned that all his hard work doesn’t get the respect it deserves.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DOES ANYONE RECOGNIZE THIS COUNTRY ANYMORE? *****

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/15/does-anyone-recognize-this-country-anymore/

The U.S. went through a historical convulsion in the 1960s, and not only survived but emerged restored and optimistic in the 1980s. This time, though, the destroyers are better organized and seem more determined than their predecessors. We hope there are still enough Americans who believe the country is worth defending.

Don’t make the mistake that the political left wants a strong and prosperous U.S., and the only differences it has with the center and right are the methods for how that is achieved. The left, especially its progressive wing of radicals that is taking over the Democratic Party, wants America to be just another country, yet one in which a loud, power-hungry, elitist mob, with the support of an army of useful idiots, rules over everyone else.

The current remaking of America differs from the 1960s upheaval in a number of ways. The most prominent, though, would be today’s war on the First Amendment. The desire to control speech, and eventually thought, has created a dynamic in which Big Tech acts as a government agent to censor speech unapproved by the ruling class.

“A growing number of governments are asserting their authority over tech firms, often forcing the businesses to comply with online censorship and surveillance,” reports Freedom House. “These developments have contributed to an unprecedented assault on free expression online, causing global internet freedom to decline for an 11th consecutive year.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Path Forward: David Malpass, President, World Bank Group

Posted By on March 15th, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/03/14/path-forward-david-malpass-president-world-bank-group/

MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. My guest today is David Malpass, the president of the World Bank. The world economy has been a rollercoaster the last two years, first with the COVID pandemic, now with terrible violence and disruption of the Ukraine war. Mr. Malpass is going to help us see our way through this turmoil. Thank you so much for joining us today on Washington Post Live, Mr. Malpass.

MR. MALPASS: Thank you for having me, David. Good to see you.

MR. IGNATIUS: So, sir, I want to begin with the Ukraine war. On March the 1st, a week into the war, you issued a joint statement with Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF, warning that the war was creating–and I’m quoting here–“significant spillovers to other countries” and that disruption of financial markets will continue to worsen should the conflict persist and that sanctions that were then being imposed will also have a significant economic effect. We’re now in the third week of this war, and I want to ask you to give us an assessment of the damage to the international economy so far and what’s ahead given current trends.

MR. MALPASS: We can see there’s a massive impact, David. It extends from energy and food supplies to the long-run problems of rebuilding or of reconstruction of all of the destruction that’s going on in Ukraine. So in addition to our horror at the human catastrophe, we have to look at the global economy and see that it’s a big negative. There’s the lost supply from Russia and Ukraine. But there’s also hoarding, which I’ve talked about, that people need to really avoid that, because that in itself drives up prices, and that has the biggest impact on the poor. What our–one of my focuses and the focus of the World Bank is on poorer countries around the world and the people in those countries, and they are immediately affected by the rise in prices that’s occurring now.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Get ready: Here comes the Biden recession

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/598084-get-ready-here-comes-the-biden-recession

At a recent confab, President Biden’s imperiled party pushed a new message: Democrats deliver.

The proposed slogan was panned; Democrats were terrified Republicans would respond with: “Yes! Democrats deliver crushing inflation, soaring crime, an open border, critical race theory for tots, full-term abortions on demand, a woke military, high taxes and out-of-control spending. And now… will Joe Biden’s Democrats deliver a recession?”

Yes, just when you thought things could not get worse, along comes the very real possibility of a downturn, thanks to Bidenomics, the war in Ukraine and an inept Federal Reserve. A year ago, during a robust recovery, such a forecast would have seemed ludicrous.

A top Wall Street economist recently conducted an informal poll of his firm’s clients. To his surprise, 100 percent thought the U.S. would be in a recession by next year.

Why such gloom? It starts with accelerating inflation, caused by out-of-control government spending and measures taken by the Biden White House that kept workers on the sidelines. Inflation is also being fueled by soaring energy prices, thanks to lower U.S. production amid reviving growth and now the disruption to Russian oil exports.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When Demand for Racism Exceeds Supply, Fake It! Guess Who Scribbled an “N” Bomb on a High School Wall This Time By Kevin Downey Jr.

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/kevindowneyjr/2022/03/14/when-demand-for-racism-exceeds-supply-fake-it-guess-who-scribbled-an-n-bomb-on-a-high-school-wall-this-time-n1566320

These stories have become as ubiquitous and annoying as that 1-877- Kars 4 Kids jingle.

A “white supremacist” writes something racist on a school wall. The students are SHOCKED! How could a drooling, white nationalist goober infiltrate their scholastic utopia? (Was it the janitor???) The angry students skip class to protest the hatred! White students tearfully rally around their black friends and vow to protect them from the tiki-torch-wielding bushwhackers who are likely patrolling the streets at night, noose in hand, looking for a minority to lynch.

The school’s principal or dean valiantly vows to oust the seething bigots and restore the racial equilibrium that has so violently been shattered.

Finally, there’s a break in the case!

A black kid did it. Again.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Atlantic: The Worst Thing About Nuclear War Is That It Would Accelerate Climate Change By Robert Spencer

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2022/03/14/the-atlantic-the-worst-thing-about-nuclear-war-is-that-it-would-accelerate-climate-change-n1566368

If you aren’t convinced yet that our self-appointed moral superiors are profoundly unserious people, full-grown children with childishly ridiculous ideas who nonetheless enjoy the serious attention of Leftists, check out the photo of The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer here. Oh, and there’s another here. Painting your face so that you look like a goofy dalmatian puppy is one thing. Getting pictures taken in that state is another, and using them for profile shots on allegedly serious articles is a whole new level of childishness. In that light, Meyer’s risible analysis, published in The Atlantic last Wednesday, posits that the worst aspect of nuclear war is that it would accelerate climate change. We were told the adults were back in charge; the problem is that Robinson Meyer is the Left’s idea of an adult.

“I mean this quite literally,” writes Meyer with a straight face, his face paint quivering with rage and fear: “If you are worried about rapid, catastrophic changes to the planet’s climate, then you must be worried about nuclear war. That is because, on top of killing tens of millions of people, even a relatively ‘minor’ exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.”

That’s right, “on top of killing tens of millions of people,” as if that were just a minor detail, with the real trouble being that the sumptuous beachfront properties of Barack Obama and Joe Biden might end up underwater. One thing you can say about Leftists: they cling to their ideology to the bitter end, and no one is a bitterer clinger than Robinson Meyer. He is so committed to his idea here that he even tosses aside the conventional wisdom about a nuclear war resulting in global cooling, a “nuclear winter”: “And even though the world would get cooler, the nuclear winter resulting from a full-blown global conflict (or even ‘nuclear fall,’ as some researchers prefer) would not reverse the effect of what we might morbidly call ‘traditional’ human-caused climate change.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hanging 81 high in Saudi Arabia By Ethel C. Fenig

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/hanging_81_high_in_saudi_arabia.html

While much of the world is coping with the fallout from the Russian-Ukrainian almost-war, inflation, ever-increasing energy prices, supply chain issues, more crime, now you have, now you don’t WuFlu coronavirus, oil-rich U.S. supplier Saudi Arabia, announced Saturday that it had executed 81 people in one day on a variety of terrorism-related offences, exceeding the total number of executions in the kingdom  the whole of last year.

All had been “found guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes,” the official Saudi Press Agency reported, saying they included convicts linked to the Islamic State group, or to Al-Qaeda, Yemen’s Houthi rebel forces or “other terrorist organisations.”

They had been plotting attacks on vital economic sites, or had targeted or had killed members of the security forces, or had smuggled weapons into the country, the SPA added.

Saturday’s announcement marks the kingdom’s highest number of recorded executions in one day, and more than the total of 69 executions in all of 2021.

Incidentally I couldn’t find any reference to this on the SPA site, but it could just be me.  But all is okay because they were tried in Saudi courts with judges.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mitt Romney accuses Tulsi Gabbard of ‘treasonous lies’ for tweet about hazards of US-funded biolabs in Ukraine By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

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

Mitt Romney has disgraced himself by reacting hysterically to a tweet by former Representative Tulsi Gabbard calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine around the US-funded biological laboratories where hazardous pathogens exist. Romney, to his eternal disgrace, accused her of “treasonous lies.” Treason itself is a death penalty crime, but perhaps in the Senator’s mind “treasonous lies” are a different offense.

Here is Gabbard’s tweet that drew Romney’s ire:

And here is the junior senator from Utah’s response:

The existence of such labs in Ukraine was confirmed by Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland last week in congressional testimony:

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Wisconsin Teachers Instructed to Hide Students’ Gender Identities from Parents By Ryan Mills

Posted By on March 14th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/wisconsin-teachers-instructed-to-hide-students-gender-identities-from-parents/

Teachers at a school district in Wisconsin are being instructed to hide their students’ changing gender identities from parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned,” according to leaked training documents.

The instruction was part of several recent staff development sessions for teachers in the Eau Claire Area School District in central Wisconsin that focused on safe spaces, gender identity, microaggressions, and oppression. According to one of the trainers, parents who disagree with their kids about gender identity issues are guilty of a form of “abuse.” The trainers also encouraged the teachers to be activists: “to vote, to demonstrate, to protest.”

Critics of the training sessions called the instruction “blatant disregard for the parents and guardians of our community’s children,” and they said it sends the message that schools are in control of children, not parents and families.

The fight over teacher training in Eau Claire is the latest skirmish in the national debate over the role of schools in promoting activism, and teaching “woke” concepts about race, gender, and sex.

The training sessions were held in late February, hosted by diversity and multiculturalism staffers from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. The training was first reported by the conservative media group Empower Wisconsin, and by Parents Defending Education, a national nonprofit that fights classroom indoctrination and activists agendas in schools.

One of the slides in the training session reads, “Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned. Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In ECASD, our priority is supporting the student.”

As part of the discussion on the topic, Chris Jorgenson, director of UW Eau Claire’s Gender & Sexuality Research Center, said that “teachers are often put in terrible positions caught between parents and their students. But much like we wouldn’t act as stand-ins for abuse in other circumstances, we cannot let parents’ rejection of their children guide teachers’ reactions and actions and advocacy for our students.”