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Biden’s Colossal Failure on Iran: Redesignate the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on January 23rd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18160/biden-colossal-failure-on-iran-redesignate

The Houthis serve as Iran’s proxy in the civil war in Yemen and against Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognized Republic of Yemen government. The UAE, which hosts U.S. military forces at Al Dhafra air base, has been a part of the Saudi coalition to support the official Yemeni government.

With its decisions to delist the Houthis, sideline the Abraham Accords, and focus on diplomacy all within days of each other, the Biden administration demonstrated the lengths it would go to reenter the deeply flawed, Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran.

The State Department most likely realized early on that its decision to delist the Houthis [from the List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations] was doomed to failure. Only two days after they were removed from the terrorist list, the State Department was forced to condemn the group for its continued attacks. State Department spokesperson Ned Price lamely said that the U.S. remains “deeply troubled” by the group’s actions.

Given the clear evidence that its policies are not working, it is time for the Biden administration to shift direction. The administration must redesignate the Houthis as the terrorist organization it is.

A recent drone and missile attack by Iranian-backed Houthis rebels on Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has laid-bare the ongoing failures of the Biden administration’s approach to Iran and foreign policy in general. The attack, which was deliberately aimed at civilian instead of military targets, shows the limits of appeasement and diplomacy in a region where Iran, figuratively and literally, tries to call-the-shots for and against its neighbors.

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Kamala Harris off to Honduras: What could go wrong? By Monica Showalter

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/kamala_harris_off_to_honduras_what_could_go_wrong.html

Kamala Harris is going abroad again.

This time, she’s upping her game a little from her last one, the Paris shopping trip, and now heading to Honduras, where plenty is at stake.

Arriving on Jan. 27 or so, she will meet the new Honduran president, who’s a historic “first,” a woman president, which will provide plenty of grist for the Kamala identity politics mill, which interests her more than the border surge. She’ll talk about “firsts” and then at some point get to “root causes,” of illegal immigration as if that information were not already available in some place like Yuma, Arizona, where the latest surge is surging. Instead of going to that un-romantic place with no red carpets and saluting military men, or some other U.S. border point of entry, she’ll do her happy hunting for those “root causes” from a cossetted former first lady of a leftist stripe who’s since been elected president. She’s likely to get into some kind of trouble, given who she’s getting involved with.

Who is Xiomara Castro, the about-to-be sworn-in new president of Honduras? None other than the wife and second cousin of “Cowboy Hat,” former Honduran President Mel Zelaya, with that ‘Mel’ short for “Little Melon” — remember him? He was the former wannabe Hugo Chavez of who got booted from the presidency in 2009 on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court. Zelaya broke the law regarding an illegal ‘poll’ he was conducting with the Venezuelan military’s ‘help’ and when ordered by the Court to stop, didn’t. The Court recognized what he was doing as a disguised bid to scrap the country’s constitution through a phony coerced poll in order to replace it with a Hugo Chavez-style alternative. Zelaya wanted to join the club and have the same things Hugo had. After he ignored the Court, the Court ordered him out and he got rousted from his sleep by the Honduran military acting on orders from the high court and legislature, which forced him onto an airplane to Costa Rica “in his pajamas.” (A State department official told me that actually, he was buck naked, so somebody put some kind of clothes on him.) The global left yelled ‘coup,’ but the word on the streets in Honduras was that it was not a coup, based on the number of law-abiding Hondurans who came out to support and celebrate the ouster.  Zelaya tried to rouse a revolt from his asylum in the Brazilian embassy, but no one took him up on it. After that, he claimed the Israelis were doing radar experiments on him or something. He eventually fled to the Dominican Republic where he ran out on his hotel tab before returning to Honduras, leaving the D.R. to pay the bill. Chavez adored the mustachioed, cowboy-booted dictator wannabe, calling him “Commandante Vaquero.”

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Lessons to learn from Lara Logan By Rajan Laad

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/lessons_to_learn_from_lara_logan.html

The perils of false equivalences and overstatements are the shameful trivialization the of darkest chapters in human history.

A few days ago, former “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan was dropped by her talent agency for comments she made about Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical adviser last Nov. 29.

Logan said the following during an appearance on “Fox News Primetime”:

“This is what people say to me, is that he (Fauci) doesn’t represent science to them — he represents Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps

And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this, because the response from COVID, what it has done to countries everywhere, what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, the poverty — it has obliterated economies,” she added.

Acting a little late on the uptake, United Talent Agency said that Logan’s comments were “highly offensive” and “unacceptable” comments.

Logan also hosts “Lara Logan Has No Agenda” on Fox Nation.

Fauci is demanding that Fox News sack Logan for her comments.

Logan has not appeared on Fox News since the above comments were made. Also, new episodes of her Fox Nation show have not been aired. Warm Springs Production, which produces her series, has distanced itself from Logan.

But is Logan the only one?

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The Corruption of Science by Money and Marxism By Norman Rogers

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/the_corruption_of_science_by_money_and_marxism.html

There are many shady methids of making money. There are frauds like Ponzi schemes or pump and dump stock schemes. A more subtle scheme is convincing naïve students to take out large loans to pay inflated tuition so that colleges can milk the taxpayer. The consequences of the student loan fraud are far reaching such as delaying family formation and childbearing.

Another academic scheme is to posit a future catastrophe based on “scientific” research. What follows is a vast flow of taxpayer money to the very academic specialty behind the fraud. After all, more research is needed to study the looming catastrophe. Rather than prevent the catastrophe that is imaginary anyway, real catastrophes are created. For example, a consequence of the global warming catastrophe scheme is spending billions on impactable and unaffordable wind and solar electricity.

The enemy of truth is bureaucracy and centralization. President Eisenhower in his farewell address pointed out a great danger to transparency and truth in science is the financing of scientific research by the federal government. I remember attending a scientific conference where one of the attendees that formerly worked at the National Science Foundation severely criticized that bureaucracy as rife with favoritism and politics. No one objected. You could hear a pin drop. None of the other scientists dared say anything, much less criticize the National Science Foundation. Centralization of authority and financing is the deadly enemy of free speech and freedom of thought.

The increasing centralization of the medical industry has resulted in certain drugs being blacklisted for the treatment of COVID. The drugs ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and certain other drugs are widely recognized as being effective therapeutics for prevention and treatment of COVID. These drugs have been used with great results in many countries. A case can be made that hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily as a consequence of the blacklist.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Thanks to Biden Administration’s Weak Leadership, Iran-China Threat Growing by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18159/iran-china-threat

“China’s leading diplomat underlined his country’s readiness to expand cooperation with Iran in financing, energy, banking and cultural sectors despite” the US sanctions. – Tehran Times, January 15, 2022.

The agreement grants China significant rights over the Iran’s resources and help to Iran in increasing its oil and gas production. Leaked information showed that one of its terms is that China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses.

The partnership is not only going to assist the Iranian regime to skirt US sanctions, it also enables Iran to gain access to funds, empower its militia and terror groups in the region and continue advancing its nuclear weapons program.

The agreement between China and Iran, defying and challenging the US, also has a military dimension. Iran’s armed forces are currently holding a joint naval exercise with China and Russia. Iran, posing a threat to the region and the United States, will also, in all probability, step up its acquisition of advanced weaponry and nuclear technology from China.

As the largest importer of Iranian oil, China will also have authority over Iran’s islands, gain access to the oil at a highly discounted rate and increase its influence and presence in almost every sector of Iranian industry, including telecommunications, energy, ports, railways, and banking.

The real horror, as China and Iran’s military and strategic partnership intensifies, is that the Biden administration’s reluctance to take a firm stand against the mullahs and Beijing — as with Afghanistan and now Ukraine — can only have incalculably severe repercussions for the national security interests of the US and its allies, who may feel the need to start “hedging their bets” and seeking out presumably more reliable protectors, who may not have our best interests at heart.

The ruling mullahs of Iran are strengthening their ties with the Chinese Communist Party as well as conveniently violating US sanctions without facing any repercussions from the Biden administration.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Environmental Left Is Its Own Worst Enemy By Mario Loyola

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/the-environmental-left-is-its-own-worst-enemy/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=third

Another clean-electricity project fails because of local environmentalists.

S enator Sheldon Whitehouse has staked his legacy on the persecution of “climate deniers.” It’s a cause for which he seems ideally suited: He is the sort of person who would have been perfectly comfortable persecuting heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.

Senator Whitehouse thinks that our collective failure to do anything serious about the climate crisis is the fault of the diabolical Koch brothers and the conservative think tanks that do their demonic bidding. In fact, the senator has only himself and his environmentalist allies to blame for the daunting obstacles facing any clean-energy transition.

Consider the latest calamity to befall the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission project, which grid operators hoped would carry electricity from Iowa to Wisconsin. Like hundreds of other clean-electricity projects, this one has faced a Homeric odyssey of trials and tribulations through federal red tape and local opposition — chiefly from left-wing environmentalists with precisely the same ideological priors as Senator Whitehouse. Now, just as the project had finally obtained all the permits needed for completion, a federal district court in Wisconsin quashed the permits, almost certainly killing the project.

As Energywire explains, the high-voltage line was approved by grid operators a decade ago to run from western Iowa to southern Wisconsin. The whole purpose of the project, which would be up to 125 miles long, is to make significant new solar and wind power available to the regional electricity grid.

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Can Jeremy Hunt Unseat Georgia’s Last Rural Democrat? By Nate Hochman

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/can-jeremy-hunt-unseat-georgias-last-rural-democrat/

The young Army veteran thinks he has what it takes to score a Republican upset.

I n a nation increasingly polarized along rural–urban lines, Georgia’s second congressional district goes against the trend. Rural voters in the 2020 election broke for Republicans by overwhelming numbers: 1,302 of the 1,430 most rural counties in America were carried by Donald Trump. But out of the 127 that went for Joe Biden, three — Calhoun, Clay, and Macon — were in GA-2.

Nestled in the southwestern corner of Georgia, the second congressional district spans the western half of the state’s historic “black belt” (the term denotes a region of majority-black counties). It’s the only rural seat in the state that continues to send Democrats to Washington, D.C., and the one Republican ever to represent the district left office in 1875. But like so many rural communities across the country, GA-2 has been trending red in recent years, and the Peach State’s latest round of redistricting makes it slightly more advantageous for Republicans. The state’s new congressional map, introduced by the Republican legislature and signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp in the final days of 2021, prompted FiveThirtyEight to downgrade the district from D+6 to D+4. That two-point move to the right shifts GA-2 from the polling website’s “competitive Democrat” category to “highly competitive.”

Jeremy Hunt thinks he’s the one to pull off a Republican upset in 2022. The 28-year-old Army veteran, who announced his candidacy last week, told National Review about his two-pronged strategy: “The first is driving up Republican turnout,” he said. The second is “reaching new voters.” Hunt intends to build “a broader coalition of voters to join the conservative movement,” and he says his campaign has “a lot of momentum to do that, particularly with black voters in the area.” He sees them as “already kind of aligned with us in terms of values.”

As the son of a black pastor, Hunt is keenly attuned to his district’s culturally conservative, church-oriented voter base. He’s an affable family man, with a wife and two-year-old daughter, and his roots in the area run deep: His grandmother “was the first in our family to ever go to college, and she attended Fort Valley State University — right here in my district,” he said. “If you can imagine a black woman going to college back in the 1940s, it’s pretty remarkable.” The Hunts started the Willie Pearl Hunt Scholarship for those in the family who wanted to go to college. As Hunt said, “Only in America!”

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Public Health’s Truth Problem Throughout the pandemic, medical and scientific institutions have disseminated dubious advice, flawed studies, and even outright falsehoods. Vinay Prasad

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/public-healths-truth-problem?skip=1

Throughout the pandemic, public-health officials have omitted uncomfortable truths, made misleading statements, and advanced demonstrably false assertions. In the information era, where what one says is easily accessible and anyone may read primary literature, these falsehoods will be increasingly recognized and severely damage the field’s credibility. No doubt, officials and organizations promulgating them had a range of motivations—including honorable ones, such as wanting to encourage salutary choices. Yet the subsequent loss of institutional trust may result in harm that far outweighs any short-term policy objectives.

Consider some messages the field has promoted to the public over the last two years and their shaky relationship with the truth.

Any mask is better than no mask. Last week, CDC director Rochelle Walensky asserted that “any mask is better than no mask.” This statement was factually incorrect when she said it. The only published cluster randomized trial of community cloth masking during Covid-19—performed in rural Bangladesh—found that surgical masks reduced the spread of Covid-19 among villages assigned to wear them, while cloth masks were no better than no masks at all regarding the primary endpoint of blood-test-confirmed Covid-19. In an umbrella review of masking that I coauthored, we found no good evidence to support cloth masking. Two days after Walensky’s statement, the CDC conceded that cloth masking was inferior to other masks. Notably, however, this is still misleading because cloth masking is not just less effective—it is entirely ineffective.

You should wear an N95 mask. Now the CDC has endorsed the use of N95 or equivalent masks in community settings, which it presents as the superior choice. Here, too, the evidence is misleading. First, a masking policy involves more than just the filtration properties of the material; it should consider both filtration and human behavior. Will people wear the mask appropriately? Will there be gaps around the nose? Will they cheat to scratch or drink? Will it cause discomfort and lead to discontinuation? Will they feel invulnerable and seek out higher risk settings? Simply put, the CDC does not know that advising the public to wear N95 is good policy. It could have run a cluster randomized trial, as was done for cloth and surgical masks in Bangladesh; it did not. In fact, the agency has run no randomized trials of masking this entire pandemic.

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President Biden floats witlessly and America is on the hook with him By John Kass

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://johnkassnews.com/biden-the-president-as-a-soft-biscuit-with-putin-and-xi-jinping-salivating-as-he-floats-on-by/?utm_source=rss&utm_

Now you know why America’s real presidents—perhaps White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Susan Rice—have kept Joe Biden in the basement for so long.

The other day they let him out for all the world to see. They had to let him out, with his poll numbers dropping. Initially, he appeared somewhat competent as he obediently read what they’d written for him to say.

But then the questions came. And the world could see him fade away.

Of all he was asked at his White House news conference, Mr. Biden was not asked a single question about the epidemic of rising violent crime in American cities ruled by Democrats.

But he was able to reveal the important thing, proving in public what Americans have long suspected. His mind has become soft, like a melted dish of his favorite ice cream. And in his twilight, he offers the world a dangerous dessert, one with nuclear weapons rather than cherries on top.

There is nothing as menacing to the world as a weak president in deep political trouble who is desperate to be led by the hand. And what Biden babbled about Russia, inviting Russia’s killer Vladimir Putin, into Ukraine is chilling.

If former President Donald Trump or any other Republican acted this way, the entire country and all media would be dusting off the 25th Amendment. But Biden is a Democrat, and if he were removed via the 25 Amendment, it would mean installing the vapid and thoroughly unqualified Vice President Cackles in the White House, who has already demonstrated her incompetence. Biden (or Klain and Rice and others) chose her for immutable characteristics. Her obvious failing becomes his insurance policy.

 So Biden is given protection by corrupt corporate media. And the day after his disastrous news conference, team Biden went out on the news shows hoping to clean his mess up.

But there is no spinning out of this or cleaning it up. He’s the president and America is on the hook with him now.

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The False God of Central Planning: The Mysterious Reappearance of the Flu, Natural vs Vaccine-Induced Immunity, the Inability of the Vaccines to Control the Virus, and Other Extraordinary Lessons About the End of the Pandemic

Posted By on January 22nd, 2022

https://www.juliusruechel.com/2022/01/the-false-god-of-central-planning.html

Colds and flus mysteriously disappeared over the past two years only to return recently in many countries, often with a vengeance. While only rarely discussed and frequently dismissed as a mere curiosity, the mystery of the disappearing flu is actually one of the most important events of the past two years. Unpacking this mystery provides deep insights into the future trajectory of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, exposes the abject failure of the vaccines to control the pandemic, and puts the final nail in the coffin on futile public health measures like masks and social distancing. Get ready for more than a few surprises as you follow me on another deep dive into Covid mayhem.

Many public health officials and journalists credited masks, lockdowns, and social distancing for the disappearance of the flu. Critics pointed out that the flu also disappeared in places like Sweden, which did not have lockdowns, mask mandates, or social distancing rules. Critics also pointed to long-standing research demonstrating that virus-bearing aerosols are too small to be stopped by masks and that, even in perfectly still air, these aerosols are so small that they hang in the air for many days before settling to the ground, making social distancing a joke. 

Particularly embarrassing for those cheerleading all these heavy-handed measures is that the flu disappeared several months before the first mask mandate was imposed, as demonstrated in the chart below showing influenza cases in Canada. I’ve added dates to the chart to show when mask recommendations and mask mandates were first rolled out — it’s rather obvious that they had nothing whatsoever to do with why the flu disappeared. Clearly, we need to look elsewhere to explain the mystery of the disappearing flu.