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

The Political Timing of the End of the Pandemic By Thomas Buckley

Posted By on January 19th, 2022

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

At some point in the relatively near future, President Joe Biden will be handed a speech that will read something like this:

“My Fellow Americans — Our long national nightmare is over.  The pandemic is a thing of the past and I am ordering the end of all federal COVID-related efforts and I implore those governors who have not lifted their emergency orders to do so immediately.  It’s time for all of us to get back to normal.”

Given Biden’s speech and cognition issues, he will most likely actually say ‘My Felericans — our long natural fair is covered,” but that is beside the point — his political facts of life demand that this moment must occur within the next few months.

With the abject failure — so far — of his massive wokedream spending package and the egregious attempt to federalize all elections, the Biden administration needs a very big win before November, and what could be simpler and easier than simply declaring one?  Democrat hopes that the January 6 “insurrection” would provide one seem to be coming up short, despite someone, desperately in need of a talking point, recently shaking Attorney General Merrick Garland by the lapels to get him to finally file the first and only “sedition” related charges.  (It should be noted here that people who engage in treason tend not to leave their guns at home to comply with local law, or call a few days later to ask if they accidentally left their coat behind, or make sure that the whole thing is wrapped up in time for dinner… but I digress.)

Now, predictions are like politicians — everyone’s got one and they are usually wrong.  However, as to this issue, the only question is one of timing: politics.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

There’s no cure for health-authority pig-headedness Ruthie Blum

Posted By on January 19th, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/theres-no-cure-for-health-authority-pig-headedness/

 It’s time for health authorities in Israel and abroad to stop vilifying the medical experts who’ve been issuing a reassuring message as to where the coronavirus pandemic is headed. At this point, with so many people contracting the Omicron variant of COVID-19—among them recovered patients, the fully vaccinated, the double-boosted and a combination of the three—there’s enough anecdotal evidence from every corner of the globe to suggest that the mutation is weak.

Indeed, most of those recently or currently infected report having cold-like symptoms that last for less than a week. This hasn’t prevented the Health Ministry and “coronavirus cabinet” from behaving as though there’s an upswing in an unmanageable crisis, warranting endless meetings and fights over restrictive measures. That none of these has worked where curbing the spread of the microbe is concerned doesn’t seem to register.

What does appear to be effective—other than the inescapable presumption that we’re finally heading towards herd immunity—is a drug that the Maccabi Health Services HMO has begun administering to COVID patients.
According to a report on Monday by the health fund, 92 percent of those given Pfizer’s Paxlovid pill showed improvement within three days, and some 60 percent said that they felt relief within 24 hours.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Mediocrity in Power By Jacob Fraden

Posted By on January 19th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/_mediocrity_in_power.html
The power of government rests on ignorance of the people, and it knows this, and therefore will always resist enlightenment.      Leo Tolstoy

Every nation has its fair share of people with no useful abilities, yet harboring considerable ambition and an insurmountable craving for la dolce vita. The longing is there, but with no means for its realization. So, what are they to do? Sooner or later the mediocre find a workable solution: they go into politics.

A sufficiently high position in a government structure that doesn’t require any special abilities or talents gives a nearly assured opportunity to receive lucrative benefits, including money, respect, and influence. There is a famous saying: “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”There is a corollary: Those who can’t teach, govern.

This is how the selection process works: mediocrities float to the top. Thus, government agencies accumulate several bureaucratic politicians for whom the main goal in life is to hold on to their positions and, if possible, move up the career ladder. The good of the country and its people becomes secondary and intrusive. Many professional bureaucrats possess just one talent: seizing and holding onto power.

Until recently, leaders of many countries had a clear understanding that the intellectual potential of a society can be of exceptional value to the state and for the preservation of their power. Even such bloody dictators as Stalin and Hitler allowed a certain degree of free-thinking and independence of ideas in scientific and technical academia. They were well aware that quality education and the existence of an intellectual elite were among the cornerstones of the foundation of their power.

This understanding seems to have been lost in America.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Biden Administration’s ‘Diplomacy’ with the Iranian Regime by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18125/us-diplomacy-iran

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions.
Not only has the Biden administration’s diplomatic route lifted some of the sanctions on the Iranian regime and its Houthi proxy, the administration has also looked the other way regarding the Islamic Republic’s malign actions in the region.
As #BloodyFriday [the Iranian regime’s lethal response to citizens protesting water shortages] trended on Twitter, not a word of condemnation could be heard from the White House. The organization Iranian-Americans for Liberty pleaded with the Biden administration to stand with the protesters….
Sadly, throughout history, “diplomacy” without the credible threat of a military follow-up (emphasis on the credible) can easily be regarded as just a “toothless” bore.
The Biden administration’s policy of “diplomacy” towards the Iran’s ruling mullahs seems in reality to be nothing more distressing to the ruling mullahs than a soggy pile of concessions and capitulations that, far from stopping their predations, will only empower and embolden them.

The Biden administration is perpetuating the idea that the White House is relying on “diplomacy” in dealing with the Iranian regime. However, the Biden administration’s “diplomacy” with Iran seems nothing but capitulations to the ruling mullahs.

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions. This was followed by the first concession toward Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on the Houthis that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Under Biden, Dems Getting Absolutely Crushed in New Polls Spencer Brown

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/01/17/under-biden-dems-party-preference-advantage-disappeared-in-2021-n2601938

When it comes to party preference among Americans, a new report published by Gallup on Monday showed that 2021 saw Democrats lose their advantage against the GOP in just one year. The Dems began 2021 with a new president, control of Congress, and a nine-point lead — 49 to 40 percent — over Republicans. By the end of 2021, that all had evaporated and Republicans seized the lead 47 to 42 percent, a five-point disadvantage for Democrats.

Calling the change over the course of 2021 a “dramatic shift” in party preference, Gallup’s findings are an aggregation of some 12,000 phone surveys it conducted over the course of the year, in which respondents are asked whether they identify as Democrat, Republican, or independent. Those who say independent are then asked which party they lean toward, and they are then factored into that party’s total. So what Gallup’s switch in party preferences shows is something numerous other polls have reported: Independents are leaning more toward the GOP than Democrats, and that’s more bad news for Democrats in a midterm year. 

The flip in party preference wasn’t just a slim reversal, either. According to Gallup’s report on the numbers, “[b]oth the nine-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory: Wrong for K-12 Education By Walter Myers III

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/critical_race_theory_wrong_for_k12_education.html

Critical Race Theory (CRT), a relatively young legal theory that has been circulating in legal academic circles since the 1980s, suddenly burst on the scene of public consciousness in the past year.  It continues to be a topic of controversy due to its being advocated for inclusion in K-12 instruction. As with other subjects that become political footballs, CRT elicits very strong views — especially among those with minimal understanding of the theory. Unless a person has taken the time to earnestly read source materials from CRT’s original authors, it is all too easy to fall into one camp or the other — while still remaining in the dark about its meaning.

Here I would like to provide some insights about CRT and encourage reading original source materials by authors such as Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado. A great start would be Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement by Crenshaw, et al. What you will find is that CRT writings are not light reading by any means, but scholarly and heavily academic, as the expected audience is other legal scholars and academics. Yet grappling with these works is a necessary investment if you truly want to have an informed perspective regarding CRT.  You will likely come away with a conclusion that what has been labeled and promoted as “CRT” in K-12 education has virtually nothing to do with the theory as put forward in the key writings of its authors.

Last year we heard the continual refrain, even from the highest levels of government, that CRT is needed for K-12 students because it teaches about slavery and racism in our history.  The problem with this assertion is CRT is not something you would look for in a history book because it is not an account of specific events of the dark history of slavery and Jim Crow in America. Rather, CRT is based on legal theory from the perspective of the role of law in the treatment of people of color. Specifically, CRT examines how the law, since the founding of the country, has been both central and complicit in upholding white supremacy throughout its history in terms of social domination and subordination of people of color.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Predicting 2022 – The Year of the Tiger – Part II by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18140/china-year-of-the-tiger-ii

The same inaction by Western leaders to hold China accountable for the global pandemic that infuriates Western citizens only emboldens the Communist Party leadership, which sees inaction as a license to do more.

China will be constantly assessing the political strength of its adversaries. European political leaders have never demonstrated the stomach to confront military threats. During my tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, I observed Europeans always believed dialogue was more important than confrontation. Bad agreements were better than no agreements and being party to agreements that did not work was better than withdrawing.

They also likely assess the EU will do almost anything to protect its significant economic ties with China. The EU likely would propose as the appropriate response to any CCP action against Taiwan talks and talks and talks.

The CCP will closely monitor the responses of the EU and U.S. to Russia’s aggressive posture against Ukraine. Does Russia gain major concessions from the West? Does it grab another piece of Ukraine with little or only a modest reaction from the West? If so, this would signal to China that the West is unreliable ally and ripe for the picking.

The year of the Tiger, 2022, is shaping up to be a year of escalating tension between the world’s two major superpowers. It will be go big or go home.

Not only will the U.S. go big against China, but it is likely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will see 2022 as an opportunity to go big against the U.S. The target will be Taiwan.

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

Jeffery Epstein And Bill Clinton: 8 Young Women Were Brought To White House During Visits

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://thebluestateconservative.com/2022/01/17/jeffery-epstein-and-bill-clinton-8-young-women-were-brought-to-white-house-during-visits/

A recent bombshell report by the Daily Mail has revealed that between 1993-1995, the now-deceased convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein brought a total of eight young women to the White House while he was meeting with then-president Bill Clinton.

Previous visitor logs from the White House have confirmed Epstein visited the White House a total of 17 times. His first visit to the White House was in 1993, shortly after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, and after that day he visited the White House 16 more times and also brought young women as guests.

The White House logs confirmed that three of those trips to the White House were to attend a dinner with Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Blue Room with dozens of other wealthy guests in attendance, too. There is no other information on what Epstein did during his visits to the White House, but it was reported he would go to the same wing where Clinton spent most of his time.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

More Trouble for the FBI in the Whitmer Kidnapping Case In a stunning move, defense lawyers now want prosecutors to offer immunity not to their clients but to FBI agents and informants. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/17/more-trouble-for-the-fbi-in-the-whitmer-kidnapping-case/

The media went wild last week after Joe Biden’s Justice Department finally produced a criminal indictment to support the claim that January 6 was an “insurrection” planned by militiamen loyal to Donald Trump: Eleven members of the Oath Keepers, including its founder, Stewart Rhodes, face the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy for their brief and nonviolent involvement at the Capitol protest that day.

Journalists luxuriated in the news, jeering those of us who had correctly noted that the Justice Department had failed to charge anyone with insurrection or sedition for more than a year.

But the press does not share the same zeal in covering another politically charged investigation: the imploding criminal case against five men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. The kidnapping narrative shares many similarities with their preferred telling of January 6, not the least of which is that alleged militias incited by Trump attempted to carry out a domestic terror attack.

Despite wall-to-wall coverage after the charges in the Michigan case were announced right before Election Day, the corporate media has almost completely memory-holed the abduction caper. Stewart Rhodes is a household name; Stephen Robeson, a convicted felon and the chief FBI informant in the Whitmer case accused of all sorts of malfeasance, is not.

The reason, of course, is that exposing how the FBI set a trap to lure down-on-their-luck men—one of the codefendants referred to Adam Fox, the alleged plot leader, as “Captain Autism”—into their kidnapping ruse would run afoul of the media’s insistence that the government had nothing to do with the events of January 6, despite plenty of proof that hundreds of FBI agents and informants were involved before and during the Capitol protest. (A top FBI official recently refused under oath to say whether FBI agents or assets engaged in or incited violent criminal behavior on January 6.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Forgetting Jihad The Boulder massacre took place less than a year ago. Why is it so difficult to remember? William Kilpatrick

Posted By on January 18th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/forgetting-jihad-william-kilpatrick/

If you’re a regular reader of FrontPage or JihadWatch, you’re well aware of the scope of global jihad activities:  daily massacres of non-Muslims in Congo, Nigeria, and other African nations; vicious persecution of Christians throughout the Muslim world; and the stealth jihad infiltration of key cultural and governmental institutions in the West.

You are also aware that almost the whole raison d’etre of Islam is to conquer the non-Muslim world for Allah.  And you take it for granted that America is high on the target list of various stealth jihad organizations.

Because you’re well acquainted with the realities of jihad, you need to remind yourself that most of your fellow Americans are not.  And they’re even less aware that powerful forces in academia, media, and government don’t want them to know the facts about jihad

The silencing mechanisms are highly effective.  How do they work?  Well, suppose someone becomes curious about a news item concerning jihad terrorism.  A friend recommends Jihad Watch as a good resource.  The information-seeker googles “Jihad Watch” and the first thing that meets his eye is a box on the right-hand side of the page informing him that “Jihad Watch is a far-right anti-Muslim conspiracy blog operated by Robert B. Spencer.”  “Hmm,” he says to himself, “I’ll steer clear of that.”

 Fearful that it might be one of those sites that infects your computer with a fatal virus, he googles the word “jihad” instead. The Britannica site informs him that jihad means “a meritorious struggle or effort.” If he turns to the BBC, he finds that jihad is “a believers internal struggle to live out the Muslim faith as well as possible.” Wikipedia concurs: jihad means “struggling, especially with a praiseworthy aim…it can refer to almost any effort to make personal and social life conform with God’s guidance…”  Some sites admit that “jihad” may also mean “holy war,” but they hasten to add that this usage is out of date.  The Britannica site helpfully informs readers that “it [jihad] has often been erroneously translated in the West as “holy war,” whereas it “primarily refers to the human struggle to promote what is right and to prevent what is wrong.”