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The Extraordinary Vapidity of Kamala Harris By Charles C. W. Cooke

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-extraordinary-vapidity-of-kamala-harris/

In Harris’s hands, the nonsensical bromide becomes an art form unto itself.

A s if to put to rest forever all of those ticklish inquiries about Providence, the grave and trying moment in which we now find ourselves has brought with it a hero capable of rivaling any other. Her name is Vice President Kamala Harris, and she is to the nugatory platitude what Michelangelo was to the marble block: All challengers flee before her, all pretenders quit their thrones at the mere mention of her name. Listen carefully and one can hear the desperation as the most accomplished rattlebrains in America issue condign sighs of dismay. How talented is Harris? Talented enough make the inanities uttered by her rival Pete Buttigieg sound substantive, concise, and apprehensible. Talented enough to make Dan Quayle seem like Pericles. Talented enough to make Marjorie Taylor Greene remind one of top-form Jane Austen. Never, in the field of human rhetoric, has an experiment in political growth been such a spectacular and unmitigated bust.

To the uninitiated, Harris’s exquisite bromides may seem all to run together, like The Ring Cycle or Ulysses. And yet, as the Eskimo is able to distinguish between 400 types of snow, so the experienced Harris-watcher will learn to differentiate between the many innovative ways in which she is able to convey that she has no damned idea what she’s talking about.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Howie Carr: Is Monica Cannon-Grant still the Globe’s woman of the year? Howie Carr

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/03/16/howie-carr-is-monica-cannon-grant-still-the-globes-woman-of-the-year/

Look on the bright side, Monica Cannon-Grant — at least the feds didn’t videotape you stuffing marked $100 bills down your bra.

But other than the Dianne Wilkerson gotcha photograph, Tuesday’s indictment of the sticky-fingered Social Justice Warrior has everything.

As you read the 38 pages of charges, it’s hard to know who is more unspeakably corrupt — the race-hustling Monica, or the Boston establishment and their media stooges who swallowed her shameless hate speech hook, line and sinker.

Is Monica still the Boston Globe’s “Bostonian of the Year?”

Does Boston Magazine still think she’s “the best social justice advocate in Boston?”

Do the Boston Celtics still consider her “a hero among us?”

Does the Boston City Council still offer her “congratulations” after her 18-count indictment?

Does the Roxbury Unity Community still consider her a “Leader of Tomorrow?”

Of all the slobbering, the Globe is probably most responsible for enabling this alleged million-dollar flim-flam to fester for so long.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Denounce Putin, or Be Blacklisted The classical music establishment demands that Russian musicians condemn their nation’s invasion of Ukraine in order to retain jobs and engagements in the West. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/classical-music-cancels-russians

Compelled speech is becoming routine in academia. On campuses, faculty candidates for hiring and tenure increasingly must attest to their dedication to diversity to be considered for a job or a promotion. At least one university requires professors to post a “land acknowledgement”—a statement declaring that the space being used was originally the habitation of indigenous people—on their syllabus page.

Now the classical music establishment is adopting that same norm. Russian musicians are being asked to condemn President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to retain jobs and performing engagements in the West. Staying above the fray is not an option, and denouncing the war will not ward off cancellation. Russian musicians must criticize Putin by name or be blacklisted.

Classical music’s recent self-abasement for its “whiteness” laid the groundwork for this presumptive group guilt. Since the George Floyd race riots in May and June 2020, directors of orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories have lambasted their own field for its historical demographics, said to be inextricably linked to racism. Music critics have sneered at Beethoven and other composers for having allegedly leveraged their whiteness to achieve undeserved acclaim. Mea culpas and promises of fealty to Black Lives Matter have become de rigeuer in mission statements and fundraising pitches. Now these coerced confessions are demanded of a subset of musicians whose Russianness makes them as suspect as whiteness does the entire Caucasian population. Even Russian music itself faces a political litmus test.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

THE WAR ON INNOCENCE A Kentucky summer camp teaches “sex liberation,” “BDSM,” and “self-pleasure,” to minors. Chris Rufo

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/kentucky-summer-camp-teaches-sex-liberation

The principles of queer theory have escaped from the college campus and made their way into a summer camp for children in rural Kentucky. Last year, a nonprofit coalition called Sexy Sex Ed organized a series of “Sexy Summer Camp” events targeted toward minors that included lessons on “sex liberation,” “gender exploration,” “BDSM,” “being a sex worker,” “self-managed abortions,” and “sexual activity while using licit and illicit drugs.”

The program is the brainchild of Tanya Turner, who calls herself a “femme, fat, queer, magical pleasure worker” who was raised by “a host of witchy women” in a “coven-like mountain matriarchy” and uses “crystals,” “sex toys,” and “tarot” in her teaching. She founded Sexy Sex Ed in 2012 and has run dozens of events across the Appalachian region, recruiting LGBTQ youth and working with a number of regional philanthropies, including the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, Southern Power Fund, Chorus Foundation, and Rise Healthy for Life, which is affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist church. According to the organization’s promotional materials, the purpose of Sexy Summer Camp is to teach “teenagers and people of all ages to openly discuss personal and political consent, sexual safety, and anatomy.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

US working to change ‘stupid’ Israeli policies; ambassador ‘infuriated’ with Jewish settlement growth “We can’t do stupid things that impede us for a two-state solution,” Ambassador Tom Nides told Americans for Peace Now. By Batya Jerenberg

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://worldisraelnews.com/us-working-to-change-stupid-israeli-policies-ambassador-infuriated-with-jewish-settlement-growth

In a Tuesday webinar with left-wing Americans for Peace Now, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides firmly espoused the “two-state solution” and said he is working to change Jerusalem’s policies that stand in its way.

“If we talk about anything but a two-state solution, it’s not good for the Palestinians, it’s certainly not good for Israel, it’s not good for the Jews, it’s not good for anyone,” Nides told his virtual audience.

There are “four or five” issues that he said he constantly brings up in order for his plan to come to fruition. Interestingly, the very first example he gave was higher internet speed.

“Who the he** has 3G [today]?” he asked. He said he’s been “pounding the table” at the Communications Ministry so that the Palestinians could all have “4G or even 5G” on their phones.

Nides has also urged the biggest corporations working in Israel today, such as Google and Microsoft, to “open offices in the West Bank” in order to provide Palestinians with better employment possibilities.

These kinds of ideas “don’t compromise Israel’s security,” he said, while if the Palestinians don’t see avenues to prosperity, “we’re going to wake up with a bigger catastrophe than we currently have.”

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

Good riddance to Dr. Fauci He’s vanished from the networks and it’s likely no accident: Stephen Miller

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/wheres-fauci-who-cares-pandemic/

Covid is beginning to spike in parts of Europe again — and sewage data indicates rising cases in the US are imminent. Online and on television, talking heads and tweeters are asking, “Where’s Dr. Fauci?”

They’re posing this question to rile up the masses and show that Anthony Fauci’s omnipresence on cable news over the last few months was largely political, and happened in concert with the Biden administration, with whom he appears to be in lockstep agreement on everything from masks to mandates.

It’s a salient point not without merit, but I would take it a step further and ask: who cares where Anthony Fauci is?

Surely it’s a bit hypocritical, especially on the right, to demand that Fauci be fired or at the very least allowed to retire quietly to a life on Dancing with the Stars…and then suddenly start wondering where the good doctor is and why his media appearances have been more limited lately.

Fauci’s legacy will be fused to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the noble lies he told about it and the irreparable damage he helped wreak on public health.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

US ECONOMY

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

U.S. Economy
Fed Lifts Interest Rates a Quarter Point Amid Surging Inflation

https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/fed-lifts-rates-a-quarter-point-in-opening-bid-to-curb-inflation

U.S. Retail Sales Soften as High Gasoline Costs Begin to Bite

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/u-s-retail-sales-soften-as-high-gasoline-costs-begin-to-bite

Wholesale Prices Soar 10% in February, Highest Level on Record

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/wholesale-prices-producer-inflation-february-2022 
 
Airlines Cutting Thousands of Flights Over High Gas Prices, Staffing Issues

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/transportation/article/Houston-airport-flights-Hobby-George-Bush-17003354.php

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A Final Warning from Arabs to Biden by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18332/arabs-warning-biden

In a message directed at the Biden administration and the other Western powers involved in the Vienna negotiations, the Arab countries said that Iran and its terrorist militias are continuing to create chaos and instability, especially in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

The Arabs, including the Arab League, are telling the Biden administration that, in their view, it is not only Iran that threatens their security, but also its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The Arabs are clearly worried about the financial and military aid that Iran is providing to the terrorist groups.

Any deal with Iran will further strengthen these groups and encourage them to step up their terrorist attacks.

The Arabs are also worried that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, they will sooner or later find their way into the hands of its terrorist proxies and other terrorist groups, including Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.

“This president [Biden] is deaf. He cannot be trusted.” – Ali Al-Sarraf, Iraqi political analyst, Al-Arab, March 12, 2022.

If the Biden administration and its friends reach a new deal with Iran’s mullahs, we are likely to see more Arabs come out against the US.

“We have made it very clear that if Iran acquires a nuclear capability we will do everything we can to do the same.” — Adel al-Jubeir, then Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, to CNN, May 9, 2018.

The Arabs consider Iran a lethal threat to their national security and the stability of the entire Middle East and other parts of the world. If the Biden administration is going to align itself with the mullahs, it will lose the support of its Arab and Muslim allies, who feel bitterly betrayed and fear that nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of these very mullahs and their terrorist groups.

In what appears to be an eleventh hour and desperate warning to the Biden administration against striking a deal with the Iranian regime, four Arab countries have expressed deep concern over Iran’s ballistic missile program and ongoing support for terrorism.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

First, Brook No Dissent The medical-school accreditation body places an increasing emphasis on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” John Sailer

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/medical-school-accreditation-body-solicits-dei-initiatives

The University of California–Davis School of Medicine has developed a mandatory anti-racism course and introduced a webinar series with talks on “Addressing Structural Racism” and “Moving from Ally to Advocate.” At Louisiana State University Health Shreveport School of Medicine, faculty must undergo annual training on cultural sensitivity, diversity, and bias. The University of Minnesota School of Medicine collaborates on its curriculum with the Medical Education Reform Student Coalition (MERSC), an offshoot of the activist organization White Coats 4 Black Lives.

All these measures exist, at least in part, to help the medical schools meet their accreditation requirements. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits medical schools in the United States, and has long required schools to bolster student and faculty diversity and teach cultural competence. Increasingly, however, these requirements appear to carry more weight, as schools have implemented far-reaching diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies with the express goal of satisfying them.

The Oregon Health and Science University, ranked first in the nation for family medicine, was reaccredited in the summer of 2020, but the LCME found it “unsatisfactory” in the area of “faculty diversity.” In response, the school’s senior associate dean for education promised a “concerted effort and sustained commitment at the highest levels of the institution.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Vladimir Putin’s Ever-Darkening Room John O’Sullivan

Posted By on March 16th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/vladimir-putins-ever-darkening-room/

“A man who starts a war enters a dark room.” I sent out this quote in a tweet a few weeks before the start of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, I pointed out that though the words were those of Adolf Hitler whom I would normally quote only to condemn, he had nonetheless established an impressive reputation as an expert on war. And I added: Vladimir Putin, take note.

Apparently, my influence doesn’t extend to the upper reaches of the Kremlin. On February 24 Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine and entered a much darker room than both he and his enemies expected. He is thought to have foreseen a lightning advance on Kiev that would last three days, be welcomed by the Ukrainian population (garlands, confetti, kisses), and climax in a victory parade for which Russian soldiers had already packed their dress uniforms. Most Western experts then forecast a longer campaign and a less welcoming victory—but a victory nonetheless.

Almost three weeks later (at the time of writing), those predictions look absurd. The latest estimates of deaths, refugees and destruction of property (gleaned from several sources) in the war are roughly 6000 to 12,000 Russian soldiers killed, 4000 to 6000 Ukrainians killed, 2.7 million refugees, and $119 billion worth of property damage.

Those estimates are already out of date as I write. His blitzkrieg having failed, Putin has now changed his strategy to a more traditional Russian one of pulverizing Ukraine’s cities and their civilian inhabitants as much as their defence forces by heavy missile and artillery bombardment. Deaths, casualties and destruction are therefore rising fast and likely to get far worse.