DEMS SUDDEN FLIP-FLOP ON SCIENCE

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/10/dems-sudden-covid-flip-flop-it-aint-science-its-politics/

It ain’t science…its politics.

Polls show congressional Democrats face an historic drubbing in the 2022 midterm elections as voters inspect the COVID wreckage of the economy and civil society after just a year of Democrat control. So it should be no surprise that Democratic politicians across the nation are discovering the wisdom of ending their wildly unpopular and draconian COVID lockdowns and masking regimes.

According to the Washington Examiner, eight very blue states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Oregon — have suddenly reversed course and are now busy dismantling their COVID police states as they face a growing political backlash from average Americans, including members of their own party.

It’s about time. As NBC News observed Wednesday, before scheduled remarks by the White House, “The era of big mandates is over.” We’re sure the fact that President Joe Biden has a measly 40% approval rate for his handling of COVID has something to do with that.

A Very Strange Fellow Is Our Joe, Our “always evolving” president Larry Thornberry

https://spectator.org/joe-biden-constitution-always-evolving/

Our more than slightly off-plumb president is a fount of odd and counterintuitive claims. One of his latest and most cynical is that our Constitution is “always evolving.” I’ll wait here while you think about this for a few seconds.

A few seconds is all that’s needed to see that there is no difference between having a “constantly evolving” Constitution and having no Constitution at all. With an evolving Constitution there’s no guarantee that what it is said to mean on Monday would bear any resemblance to what it will mean on Tuesday. It would simply mean whatever is consistent with the policies and prejudices of the party in power. An evolving Constitution is simply words on old paper, words with no more effect on our laws and the daily conduct of government affairs than a note passed in study hall.

Of course our Joe’s positions on the large issues of the day have been “always evolving” since he chose politics over legitimate work back in the butt end of the Tricky Dick administration. The eccentric voters in tiny Delaware first coughed up this hairball in 1972 and regularly sent him back to the U.S. Senate every six years (I can see their point — it got him out of Delaware) until Barack Obama, needing a white guy to share his presidential ticket, drafted him.

Biden’s policy positions have evolved depending on where the center of gravity of the Democrat Party has been, merging effortlessly from the center-left/reasonably moderate Democrat Party of the ’70s to the present two steps left of WHOOPIE! socialist Democrat Party. The man is a political and philosophical empty suit with no center of gravity of his own. A windsock.

He’s gone from being tough on crime to the current Democrat creed that cops are criminals and criminals are victims faster than you can say focus group. He’s gone from being tough on illegal immigration to the current voter replacement stance of his party — economically stated, “We don’t need no stinking border” — faster than you can say Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos. It’s no wonder that his handlers keep him away from mirrors, for fear that the world might notice that he doesn’t reflect in them, there being nothing to reflect.

Yesterday’s Sister Souljah Moment, Today’s Costly Silence Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/02/09/yesterdays_sister_souljah_moment_todays_costly_silence_147159.html

President Biden’s quick trip to New York City was the perfect moment to assert a genuine commitment to public safety by calling out Manhattan’s left-wing prosecutor, Alvin Bragg. But Biden and his attorney general blew the opportunity. They said nothing, aside from the usual pablum about safe communities and guns coming in from out of state. That’s not enough, even in very liberal cities like New York.
 
Democrats simply aren’t trusted on crime. That’s hardly new, but it has become much more damaging politically now that voters consider crime one of their top issues. For years, the party has framed its policies as “pro-justice” and “anti-racism,” with little attention to “law and order.” Race gets pride of place, of course, because, in city after city, a disproportionate number of those arrested are African American, mostly young men.
 
Republicans say that what Democrats call “racial justice” really means “soft on crime.” More and more Independents are siding with Republicans on this issue. These critics not only demand safety for themselves. They point out that most of this rising crime harms law-abiding people in poor, minority communities. The arrest statistics, they say, reflect the hard reality of who commits crimes, not biased policing.
 
The parties’ sharply opposed views on crime, law enforcement, and prosecution have become central issues in American politics. It’s an issue that strongly favors Republicans.
 
Some three decades ago, Bill Clinton understood this political landscape and attacked the Democrats’ image head-on by calling out a black celebrity, Sister Souljah. In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she said, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” Clinton’s angry response reinforced a political argument he made during the campaign: he intended to deter crime by punishing criminals, severely if need be.
 

“It’s Still the Culture, Stupid” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Just over a year and a half ago, June 8, 2020, I wrote a TOTD, “It’s the Culture Stupid.” It was two weeks after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. I wrote: “…the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to confront and arrest violent rioters and looters was wrong.” It is that failure to distinguish between right and wrong – a failure to punish wrongdoers and to reward virtue – that haunts our nation and its people. Driven by a sanctimonious and intolerant “woke” community, the situation has worsened over the past twenty months.

In 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy had entered recession in July-August 1990 but had recovered by the end of the first quarter of 1991. However, job creation lagged, so the recovery became known as the “jobless recovery.” Unemployment continued to rise into mid-year 1992, which provided Mr. Carville the opportunity to conceive a phrase recalled thirty years later.

What we face is more onerous. Economies go through booms and busts, while cultures are fundamental to who we are. A self-important, moralizing wokeism offers a new and different threat. Traditionally, our culture has been embedded in families – passed down from one generation to the next. It is confirmed in civil behavior, in our schools, churches and communities. It is institutionalized in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and reflected in Constitutional amendments. It has been enhanced as our country absorbed immigrants from all over the world. But the underlying rules and customs that allowed this country to survive and to thrive should persist – that we are all, no matter our race, ethnicity or gender, created equal and have equal protection under the law, that private property is protected, that we live in a nation of laws not men, that we should be judged by our character, not the color of our skin or gender, and that success is a function of merit, ability, effort and diligence, and that civility, respect and tolerance are necessary for a free, civil and democratic society to exist.

The ADL Must Apologize to America’s Jews: Charles Jacobs

Like too many Jewish organizations, the ADL been taken over by radical leftists who have subverted its original mission by promoting a progressive ideology at the expense of protecting the Jewish community. As the recent Whoopi Goldberg incident illustrates, the ADL seems morally confused.

Whoopi Goldberg was suspended from The View for two weeks for saying that the Holocaust was about white people killing other white people. According to Goldberg — who was simply repeating current woke ideology — Jews are white, and so Hitler could not have hated them because of their race. The Holocaust was, she said, merely another case of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Jews who were shocked by Goldberg’s outburst were further shocked to learn that Whoopi Goldberg was actually using the ADL’s definition of racism.

A few years ago, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt redefined racism to align with woke ideology. Racism, the ADL declared, now meant the “marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

Under this definition, only white people can be racists. Acts of bigotry directed at whites — now including Jews — would not qualify as racism, and hate crimes committed by people of color would not qualify as racism. This definition of racism, which derives from an insidious ideology, has infiltrated the ADL and actually feeds anti-Semitism.

President Biden receives a strident message on Iran: hope is not a national security strategy: Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3HH60av

On February 1, 2021, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee articulated his decisive opposition to US policy on Iran, delivering a thundering message to President Biden:

*The current policy-makers seem to repeat the self-destruct errors of the 2015 nuclear accord (JCPOA), “which it appears the Biden Administration is seeking to reestablish;”

*The policy toward Iran must be based on the well-documented rogue track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs, not on unsubstantiated hopes;

*Iran’s Ayatollahs are preoccupied with missiles, not with butter;

*The Iranian threat is not limited to nuclear weapons, but includes a massive proliferation of terror and ballistic missile technologies and hardware;

*The Iranian threat is not limited to the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, but extends globally;

*A credible military option should be introduced into the negotiation process, in order to give diplomacy a chance. It should go beyond the evasive statement that “all options are on the table;”

*The Biden Administration should realize that Iran’s Ayatollahs are not good-faith negotiators.

Biden Admin and EU Silent on Iran’s Rising Persecution of Religious Minorities by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18187/iran-persecution-religious-minorities

In 2021, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed two alarming amendments to Articles 499 and 500 of its Penal Code, making it easier for the authorities to crack down on religious minorities. The amendments impose prison sentences and fines on whoever insults “divine religions or Islamic schools of thought recognized under the Constitutions with the intent to cause violence or tensions in the society,” as well on whoever conducts “any deviant educational or proselytizing activity that contradicts or interferes with the sacred law of Islam.”

Persecution of Christians in Iran has especially been on the rise. While Iranian leaders celebrate and publicize those who convert to Islam, those who convert to Christianity are severely punished.

Another religious minority that faces persecution in Iran is the Baha’i faith… [Others] include Zoroastrians, Sufi Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Yarsanis.

Meanwhile, the European powers are not only failing to hold the Iranian regime accountable, they are busy appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran and doing business with them.

Since the Biden administration lifted the “maximum pressure” imposed by the previous administration, the ruling mullahs have only escalated their persecution of religious minorities. Instead of incessantly lecturing the world on human rights, the EU and the Biden administration would sound more credible if they would stop appeasing the human rights catastrophe that Iran’s regime has become, and hold the ruling mullahs accountable.

While turning a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s increasing persecution of religious minorities, the Biden administration and the European Union are focusing only on lifting the sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The move will help to revive the disastrous nuclear deal that will empower the ruling mullahs to race toward nuclear weapons breakout; strengthen Iran’s internal militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and expand the country’s proxy militias abroad: the Houthis in Yemen, and the designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That does not even include any plans Iran might have to expand its operations, which threaten America, in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The Capitol Police have been fully weaponized against Republicans By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_capitol_police_have_been_fully_weaponized_against_republicans.html

If you visited D.C. in the days before COVID and January 6 madness, and wandered around (or got permission to go into) the Capitol, you saw Capitol police officers on duty. They were doing pretty much what all police officers do, which is to stand guard at vulnerable spots, making sure no one did anything naughty (e.g., graffiti) or downright dangerous (e.g., gun or knife attacks, etc.). However, beginning with January 6, 2021, it became apparent that Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol police officers have a different mandate: Defend the Democrat party hold on power.

On January 6, the Capitol police failed to protect the Capitol. We know this because Capitol police chief Steven Sund, after being fired on January 7, 2021, explained that he requested backup from the National Guard, which never arrived, and that his people just weren’t ready. Trump stated that he requested that 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed to the Capitol before January 6 to provide protection for his rally. According to him, congressional leaders said no. What really happened remains a mystery despite the “investigation” by the January 6 Committee. You’d think they would have figured that one out.

Also bizarrely, on January 6, someone (the Capitol police?) opened from the inside the Capitol’s 20,000-pound doors, which are secured by powerful magnetic locks. We then saw footage of the same Capitol police graciously welcoming people inside, which led many innocents to believe that they had the perfect right to be inside the People’s House.

For those of us (like me), who think that January 6 was an entrapment scheme, it would appear that the Capitol police were part of the plan.

The ugly nature of progressive race views By Mark R. Zuccolo

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_ugly_nature_of_progressive_race_views.html

We’re entering a new era of discrimination, dressed up in better sounding terms. It must not become the new normal.

When it comes to race, we are witnessing an ugly return to segregation, unequal treatment, and forced outcomes. A re-examination of our concept of race is becoming overdue.

Race is not just the coloration of one’s skin, as it may widely vary in hue and intensity and over time in the same group of individuals. For example, not all Caucasians are fair-skinned, and not all Africans are black. Generally, we ascribe to a geographic location (original or changed by migration) a racial characteristic, whereby Europe and parts of America are majority “white,” Africa is “black,” Asia is “yellow,” etc. These are mere historical shorthand words that are visual in origin and fail to convey the true meaning of race. They are what the human eye may see or have seen, and they are incomplete descriptions, at best. Indeed, these “colorations” have become stereotypes and have been further compromised by the introduction of slur words equivalent to each race group.

So what is race and how can we best go beyond our simple awareness of it, understand it more thoroughly, and make good use of that understanding in interpersonal relationships?

18 Fundraisers Aiding Riots, Crime, Abortion, And Genital Mutilation That GoFundMe Didn’t Shut Down By: Elle Reynolds

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/08/18-fundraisers-aiding-riots-crime-abortion-and-genital-mutilation-that-gofundme-didnt-shut-down/\

For all the company’s efforts to shut down freedom-minded Canadians, GoFundMe has done plenty to help unsavory fundraising campaigns on the left.

While GoFundMe races to confiscate millions of dollars from Canadians protesting the country’s coercive Covid response, the left-wing fundraising site has proven itself very willing to help raise funds for criminal riots, abortions, and genital mutilation.

“We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe wrote in the company’s Friday announcement that it would steal millions from the truckers participating in the “Freedom Convoy” to protest Canada’s Covid mandates, diverting the money “to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.” After backlash, the platform announced it would instead refund the money to donors.