IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Musk Fumes After DOGE Team Discovers ‘FEMA Sent $59 Million LAST WEEK to Luxury Hotels in NYC’ to House Illegals By Debra Heine

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/10/musk-fumes-after-doge-team-discovers-fema-sent-59-million-last-week-to-luxury-hotels-in-nyc-to-house-illegals/

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was still sending millions of taxpayer dollars to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal aliens as recently as last week, according to DOGE chief Elon Musk.

In a post on X early Monday morning, an irate Musk wrote that his team had just discovered that “FEMA sent $59 million LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”

Trump signed an executive order on January 24 to create a council to review FEMA, address the agency’s failed responses to recent disasters and come up with a plan “to drastically improve the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (“FEMA’s) efficacy, priorities, and competence.”

Trump also signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to…disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities.”

The freeze affected funding on thousands of federal programs, pending review by the administration, but a federal judge put that action on hold late last month.

Musk said FEMA’s transfer of funds to the luxury hotels “violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”

He added: “That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals! A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli Hostages Return Gaunt and Skeletal A glimpse into Hamas’ diabolical depravity. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israeli-hostages-return-gaunt-and-skeletal/

During their release, the Israeli hostages have been made to suffer various indignities. Some of the girls and women, obviously frightened, have been surrounded by rifle-toting bezonians, pressing against them, screaming at them, pushing and pulling them this way and that, making it difficult for them, even with their Hamas guards, to make it to the Red Cross officials who were waiting to receive them.

Some of the hostages have been paraded on stages in front of Allahu-akbaring Hamas men. Some have been forced to sign documents expressing their “appreciation” for the “good treatment” they received from Hamas. All of them have apparently been told by their captors to smile for the cameras; some of the girls and women being released were ordered not just to smile, but to engage in joking banter with their guards, for if they did not, Hamas would take it out on those those Israelis still in captivity.

Three of the captives released — Doron Seinbrecher, Emily Damari, and Romi Gonen — were videotaped as they were handed “gift bags,” brown paper bags, really, that were said to contain mementos from their time held in captivity in Gaza. On each bag was the logo of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. In each of the bags, there was a special certificate, also bearing the logo of the Al-Qassam brigades, titled “Release Agreement” in both Hebrew and Arabic, with Israeli media reporting that the document was signed by the Red Cross at the moment of handover.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hollywood Rages Impotently About Anti-Fascist Trump Clinging to a failed strategy. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hollywood-rages-impotently-about-anti-fascist-trump/

In the wake of a recent poll which only confirmed what Donald Trump’s election landslide proved – that celebrities have become politically irrelevant – Hollywood continues to rage impotently against the new President with their tired, old, ineffective smears that he and his new administration are “fascists” and “Nazis.”

To recap: the Left has spent every waking moment since Trump announced his presidential run back in 2015 trying to demonize him as Hitler 2.0. The coordinated media smearing of Trump as a more dangerous fascist than Benito Mussolini was so relentless and demonstrably false that it ultimately backfired; last November, voters rejected the fear-mongering propaganda and embraced a positive, hopeful movement to make America great again.

But the Left refuses to take the lesson to heart. Hollywood in particular still teems with bitter, angry, self-righteous elites who cannot accept that those cisgender white nationalists in the flyover country they so despise voted this fascist strongman into the White House. To paraphrase the quote attributed to film critic Pauline Kael about Richard Nixon, “How could Trump have won? Nobody I know voted for him,” the Hollywood elites wonder.

One giveaway that the Left was hyperbolizing about Trump was their kneejerk (ab)use of the word “fascist,” which they won’t or can’t even define correctly. To the Left, “fascist” is the go-to label for anyone and anything that stands in the way of their lust for one-party hegemony – and no single person is more of an obstacle to that obsession than Donald Trump. In fact, “fascism” is best defined by the man so closely associated with it that he is called the Father of Fascism – Il Duce himself, Mussolini: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

This is a Big Government slogan. This is the slogan of a Party that wants to consolidate all power into a State that maintains that power by crushing dissent.

But Trump is a man who campaigned on dismantling the Deep State, and in whose first couple of weeks in office he has taken a wrecking ball to the bloated, corrupt bureaucracy of an out-of-control federal government. But Hollywood won’t let the truth get in the way of a necessary narrative.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Gabriel Rossman How to Get More Conservatives in Academia Universities’ ideological tilt presents an intellectual problem.

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/academia-conservatives-universities-ideological

Academia skews sharply leftward and is increasingly illiberal. Many academics have abandoned the fact/value distinction, which had long served as both a source of rigor and a sort of epistemological Peace of Westphalia. That trend is worsening, as graduate students are much likelier than faculty to support suppression of heterodox ideas. The academy’s ideological imbalance has made it easier for younger academics to define themselves around polemical, “praxis-oriented” scholar-activism.

The politicization of the university is not only an obstacle for the Right but for academia itself. Schools’ “sectarian” reputation undermines trust among those who (more or less correctly) perceive them to be hostile to their views. More important, academia’s ideological tilt presents an intellectual problem, as it gives license to theory-laden interpretations of reality and declining rigor. For instance, a 2023 article in JAMA Surgery asserted that “structural racism” may cause mass-shooting events, even though the paper’s analysis showed that plausible structural-racism measures had no effect beyond that of race itself. Likewise, a celebrated 2020 article in PNAS showed that black babies in Florida died less often under the care of black doctors—but as a 2024 replication by Manhattan Institute scholars demonstrated, that effect obtained only because the original authors had failed to control for birth weight, a variable so obvious that its omission must be considered a failure of peer review. Such a left-wing bias—and the errors that it enables—should embarrass the academy.

It also should prompt conservatives to address their human-capital problem: without right-wing academics, there are fewer experts to conduct research and staff bureaucracies. The problem is easy to see. Proposing a workable solution is much harder.

When a fire breaks out in the kitchen, the first step in stopping its spread is to turn off the stove. Likewise, a key part of the solution to the Right’s lack of representation in universities is to identify the source of the Left’s capture of the academy and put a stop to it. Manhattan Institute fellow John Sailer has thoroughly discussed the problems created by DEI statements and “cluster hires” and how trustees and state legislatures can end these anti-intellectual practices. These policies, which require applicants to profess their commitment to an ideologically oriented mission as a condition of employment, certainly contribute to the demand side of the Right’s academic-employment problem.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DOGE Cancels $180,000 Anthony Fauci Museum Exhibit David Strom

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2025/02/08/doge-cancels-180000-anthony-fauci-museum-exhibit-n3799632

Well, well, well. 

As DOGE rampages through the federal budget in the most glorious way possible, they keep finding the most egregious spending. 

The worst spending tends to be the anodyne-sounding programs that are sold to make our lives “better,” but the funniest and often most infuriating are the smaller and more ridiculous things like transgender comic books and operas. 

This spending item stands out for another reason: it celebrates Anthony Fauci as a American hero and not the evil villain that he is. 
Someday, and I hope that day comes soon enough for Fauci to see it happen, he will be exposed to all the world as the man who gifted us both COVID and the tyranny and social destruction that followed in its wake. Perhaps then it would make sense to spend hundreds of thousands or millions to expose him and hold up as an example of why bureaucrats should never be allowed to become too powerful. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Big Lie About Trump’s NIH Cuts

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/11/the-big-lie-about-trumps-nih-cuts/

As day follows night, Democrats and various other big-government parasites screamed that the Trump administration’s decision to cut back on National Institutes of Health grants to colleges and universities would prove cataclysmic.

What’s really happening? Donald Trump is choking off a slush fund that colleges and universities have used for decades to finance left-wing causes.

On Feb. 7, the NIH announced that it would pay only 15% in overhead costs to colleges and universities instead of the average 26% it paid out in 2023.

The primal screams were immediate.

Rosa DeLauro, the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee, claimed that “they are causing irreparable damage to ongoing research to develop cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, ALS, Diabetes, Mental Health disorders, opioid abuse, genetic diseases, rare diseases, and other diseases and conditions affecting American families.”

A Johns Hopkins University professor wailed that “the lives of my children and grandchildren – and maybe yours – will be shorter and sicker, because discoveries will not be made.”

Harvard President Alan Garber said that it would “cut research activity at … every research university in our nation.”

Attorneys general from 22 states have filed suit against the overhead cap, claiming the harm will be “immediate and devastating.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Tests Trump’s Resolve by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21378/china-tests-trump-resolve

If the US fails to support its ally by treaty, the Philippines, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine and Chinese diplomats will likely seek to sow doubts about US resolve into the capitals of America’s Pacific allies.

China seems to claim a lot of waters, such as “almost all” of the South China Sea, as well as land, including Tibet; Arunachal Pradesh in northern India; the “near-Arctic,” and Taiwan, which has never been part of mainland China.

The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all “exploratory” moves by China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might order Seventh Fleet and US Pacific Command’s air assets to strengthen their presence near the Philippines and the Pacific. Any firm message to China that America will stand by its allies throughout free Asia would be of help.

The “Tariff Wars” have begun.

China’s State Council Tariff Commission released a list of 72 items that would fall under the 10% tariffs. Much of that list was related to agriculture, including several types of tractors, harvesters and other large pieces of farming equipment.

The list of U.S. imports that will be subject to 15% tariffs was far shorter, listing just eight types of coal and natural gas.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) President Xi Jinping might gin up further crises to test the mettle of President Donald J. Trump, just as he has tested the resolve of all recent incoming administrations.

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Douglas Murray :Will Britain follow America’s lead on aid? Am I so immune to the obvious advantages of the British taxpayer giving $140,000 to a theater company in Bolivia?

Posted By on February 11th, 2025

http://Douglas Murrayhttps://thespectator.com/topic/will-britain-follow-americas-lead-on-aid/

The new administration in Washington has somewhat startled its critics by issuing a blizzard of executive orders during its opening weeks in office. So far the reaction from the American left might be summed up by the sentiment: “That’s not fair — it’s only us that are allowed to do things when we are in power.”

The American left are in a particular funk about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — as though railing against the proposed reduction of federal spending and reduction of the American deficit is a natural vote-winner. But good news does just keep on coming. On Monday, Elon Musk said that President Donald Trump had agreed to shutter USAID — the US government money spigot that sprays money around the world, much of it to people who hate America.

Like Britain’s Department for International Development, the British Council and others, it is one of those entities which might just justify itself if it actually promoted the values of the donor country. But all these organizations were long ago taken over by insane people who hate the taxpayers that give them their money and think the best way for a nation to act in the twenty-first century is as a sort of large NGO.

This week, various White House spokesmen had fun pointing out some recent projects which might not have been the best use of US taxpayer dollars: $1.5 million to “advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities;” $47,000 to fund a “transgender opera” in Colombia; $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala. And hundreds of millions of dollars to provide better irrigation systems for Afghan poppy-growing projects as well as hundreds of thousands of meals for al Qaeda-related terrorists in Syria. It is one thing to actually feed your enemies, or fund their illegal drugs trade, but it might be even worse to go around the world paying people to display the worst woke excesses which took over America and most of the rest of the West in the past decade.

It reminds me of that classic from some years ago, when American “educators” were paid to introduce Afghan women to conceptual art, including Marcel Duchamp’s famous urinal. The Afghan women in the class (caught on video) giggled as this poor western chump tried to get them up to speed on the twentieth century. You could see on their faces what they were thinking: if this is the crap the West is going to push on us, maybe our husbands were right about the western infidel after all. It was, as many a wag said at the time, literally money down the toilet.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

We’re the flood; we’re the day after Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 10th, 2025

http://‘We’re the flood; we’re the day after’ – JNS.org

Anyone belittling U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for post-war Gaza should observe the spectacle of Hamas monsters and their ardent supporters gathering in droves to terrorize each hostage before his or her release, while asserting “victory” over the “Zionist enemy.”

The latest example of this travesty—the least of what the kidnapped Israelis and foreign nationals have been subjected to during their captivity—was displayed on Saturday. Hate-filled Gazans of all ages, sporting Hamas’s signature green headbands, cheered while Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad Ben Ami were led to a podium and forced to put on a performance for jihadist propaganda purposes.

Hanging from the stage was a banner with the Hebrew phrase, “Total victory,” the vow-turned-slogan reiterated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the goal of the war. On each side were posters of “martyred” Hamas commanders. The graphic setup wasn’t merely an expression of ridicule; it also conveyed that the West is no match for enemies who glorify death.

The backdrop for the horrific scene of the emaciated victims, alongside their rifle-wielding brutalizers who shoved microphones and cameras in their faces, was a massive banner. It contained a fist and Palestinian flag next to a sentence in Arabic, Hebrew and English—the latter poorly translated—reading: “We’re the flood; we’re the day after.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How To Commit Democratic Party Suicide The Democrats’ radical overreach, election losses, and Musk-fueled government exposés have left them flailing, doubling down on failure instead of recalibrating for a political comeback. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 10th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/10/how-to-commit-democratic-party-suicide/

The Democratic Party is polling about 31 percent approval, a near-historic low.

Despite enjoying a huge lead in fundraising, legacy media favoritism, and incumbency, in the 2024 election, Democrats lost the White House to Donald Trump. Ever since, they have offered nothing new, no novel agenda, no innovative policies—nothing other than screaming that they are loudly against everything and anything that the president is for.

In the past, what did they accomplish by following their prior two impeachments with attempts to de-ballot Trump? Who thought sending an FBI swat team to raid Trump’s home or waging five lawfare civil and criminal suits and issuing 91 felony indictments against him would win over the public?

Was conducting a media barrage of Hitler-Trump invectives, or lowering the bar of demonization that likely led to two assassination attempts of Trump a good way to win an election?

Apparently not, given the Democrats have now lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The Supreme Court is conservative. They have no power to subpoena anyone; they cannot block any nomination. Much of their old administrative state control is eroding. All the main issues—the economy, energy, border security, illegal immigration, crime, DEI/woke, and foreign policy—poll against the Democrats. The more they shouted that biological men must be able to compete as transgendered females in women’s sports, the more that 80% of the public disagreed, women were turned off, and the absurd idea was exploded by Trump.

The power of the administrative state, the legacy network news, print media, and Silicon Valley’s social media and search engines, the billions that poured into the Biden and Harris campaign all went for naught.

The efforts of moderators to warp debates, of network news to edit out unfavorable Harris or Biden comments, of leftists to cancel, deplatform, ostracize, censor, and shadow ban their enemies have failed. More likely to succeed now are numerous lawsuits against leftwing media for chronic defamation and censorship.

Given that collective meltdown, what would a sane Democratic Party do?