NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gobbling China’s exports, US sinks into dependency Illustrating the state of America’s supply chains, orders for US-made manufacturing equipment are at 1992 level David Goldman

Posted By on October 14th, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/gobbling-chinas-exports-us-sinks-into-dependency/

China’s exports rose 28% in September from the year-earlier level, more than the analyst consensus had forecast. More important is that China’s exports to the United States have risen by 31% since January 2018, when President Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports from China. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the US is buying $635 billion of Chinese goods, equal to a staggering 27% of US manufacturing Gross Domestic Product.

During the same period, China’s exports to South Korea rose by 50%, to Taiwan by 60%, and to Germany by 61%, but China imports almost as much from these three countries.

Demand for Chinese goods after the pandemic disruption has strained China’s production capacity, contributing to a power shortage that is now forcing cutbacks in key industries, including computer chips.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gas prices at 7-year high and rising as Biden wages offensive against domestic energy producers Oil and gas supply is too low to meet U.S. demand, due to a combination of factors, including halting of new leases on federal land, halting the Keystone Pipeline, and increasing regulatory burdens, industry analysts argue.By Bethany Blankley

Posted By on October 14th, 2021

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/tugas-prices-seven-year-high-and-rising-biden-offensive-against-domestic-oil

“Average gas price: June 2020: $2.21 June 2021: $3.07 President Biden’s economy!” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted during the summer. 

“You forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June 2018,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fired back. “Or that this time last year unemployment was 11.1% — today it’s 5.8%. @POTUS agrees families shouldn’t pay more at the pump — that’s why he’s opposed to GOP proposals to raise the gas tax.”

Yet, the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill reportedly includes an estimated $6 billion worth of charges on U.S. oil and gas operators on federal lands, which could effectively put mom and pop small business, and minority and Native-owned operations out of business, in addition to killing tens of thousands of jobs.   

There isn’t enough oil and gas supply to meet U.S. demand, due to a combination of factors, including the Biden administration halting new leases on federal land, halting the Keystone Pipeline, increasing regulatory burdens, and other measures that will take years to correct, those in the industry argue.

In one of his first acts in office, President Joe Biden, through executive order, halted the issuance of new oil and gas leases on federal lands, effectively stopping much production for existing operations. He also eliminated low-cost Canadian crude from being processed by mid-continent and Gulf Coast and U.S. refiners by prohibiting the Keystone pipeline from opening. 

If Biden had not severely hampered domestic production, the U.S. would have an ample supply of oil and gas and commensurately lower costs at the pump, industry experts argue. 

The $6 billion in additional costs imposed on the industry included in the budget reconciliation bill include new methane fees, inspection fees, severance fees, and bonding requirements, as well as additional requirements for operating on federal lands.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Chicago Museum Goes Woke, Fires All of Its Mostly White, Female Volunteers By Kevin Downey Jr.

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/kevindowneyjr/2021/10/12/chicago-museum-goes-woke-fires-all-of-its-mostly-white-female-volunteers-n1523179

Thank you, ladies. You were kind enough to volunteer for years. Some for decades. Now get out.

The Art Institute of Chicago has canned all of its volunteer docents—well-trained, volunteer educators—almost 150 in total. Their crime? Most were retired white women. No diversity, no inclusiveness. I’m betting many were… ew… straight. And… “cisgender.” Bah.

The Docent Council complained about the decision in a letter to Art Institute President James Rondeau:

We believe we were dismissed (1) because the museum’s perspective is that the current docent corps’ demographics do not meet the need of the strategic plan (2) the museum concluded that reengineering the docent program was a step towards achieving the museum’s important goal of creating a culture of diversity and inclusion.

“Once you cut through the blather, the letter basically said the museum had looked critically at its corps of docents, a group dominated by mostly (but not entirely) white, retired women with some time to spare, and found them wanting as a demographic,” stated the Chicago Tribune.

And if you think that’s ugly, here is the real punchline: Their “diverse” replacements will be paid $25 an hour.

Yes, you read that correctly, a volunteer crew of mostly white older women is out and a diverse, well-paid crew is coming in.

This is the work of the museum’s new Woman’s Board Executive Director, Learning and Public Engagement, Victoria Stein. Stein, who is black, was hired earlier this year.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Professor Canceled by Woke Outrage Mob Has Last Laugh By Gwendolyn Sims

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2021/10/12/update-professor-canceled-by-woke-outrage-mob-has-last-laugh-n1523199

Last week I reported what happened when tenured University of Chicago Professor Dorian Abbot questioned his university’s Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) efforts in a series of YouTube videos and articles. The professor faced backlash immediately. Soon, a small group of leftist ideologues mounted a successful Twitter campaign against him resulting in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) canceling a distinguished science lecture Abbot had been invited to give simply because the woke mob disagreed with some of his political positions.

And what were Abbot’s “controversial” political positions that provoked the wrath of the Twitter mob? Abbot posited that university hiring and admissions should be based on merit not racial “equity.” Yes, you read that correctly. Abbot had the audacity to go against the leftist narrative that DEI are the most relevant considerations in hiring and admissions standards, you know, because of “systemic racism.” Of all the white privileged nerve or something.

That’s when MIT caved to the woke mob by canceling the prestigious Carlson lecture altogether “in order to avoid controversy.” That’s where we left the story last week, however, I’m happy to report that another prestigious school, Princeton University, has invited Abbot to speak.

In addition, I’m happy to report that not only has Princeton stepped in when MIT was too cowardly to face the mob, but the embattled Geophysical Sciences professor’s audience has grown exponentially.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Palestinians Prefer To Work In Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17859/palestinians-work-israel

The fact that a large number of Palestinians are desperate to work in Israel is a sign of the failure of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to improve the living conditions of their people despite the massive sums of money they receive from various sources, including the United States, European Union and United Nations.

Instead of holding Hamas responsible for what he called the “tragedy” in the Gaza Strip, al-Amsi and other Palestinians choose to blame Israel.

This view is in keeping with the longstanding habit of the Palestinian leadership to evade their responsibility for thievery and non-governance by blaming Israel for everything.

Many Palestinians and Arabs, however, are no longer buying this nonsense and know exactly who is trying to help and who has not done a thing to end their suffering.

“Thousands of Palestinians, including those with [academic] degrees, are fighting for a job in Israel. I guarantee you that if Israel announced that it wants workers from Algeria, they would cross the Sahara [Desert] on foot to work in Israel to escape the hell they are living in at home.” — Hoda Jannat, Syrian journalist and political analyst, Twitter, October 7, 2021.

As has now become embarrassingly clear for all to see, Israel has become the only hope for the hungry workers in the Gaza Strip — who have been abandoned not only by their leaders, but by the rest of their Arab brothers as well.

Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip are excited. Israeli authorities have decided to allow thousands of them to work in Israel. The news about the Israeli decision spread like wildfire, prompting tens of thousands of Palestinians to converge on the offices of the chambers of commerce throughout the Gaza Strip in the hope of obtaining a permit to work in Israel.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard: ‘Americans Are Being Lied to’ by the Biden Administration Keely Sharp

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://dailypatriotreport.com/tulsi-gabbard-americans-are-being-lied-to-by-the-biden-administration/

On Saturday, former presidential candidate and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox News and told viewers that the Biden Administration is straight up lying to the American people about the border crisis and Afghanistan withdrawal.

Gabbard explained, “The faith and trust that the American people need to have in our leaders is dropping every day. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary recently told Congress our borders are secure. This is what he said, this kind of bald-faced lie, whether it has to do with domestic issues or foreign policy issues. We’ve seen this with Afghanistan and the tragically botched withdrawal of our troops and Americans out of Afghanistan. When people are being lied to, the American people are being lied to, it is revealing of the arrogance and the self-serving nature of leaders who are in power in this country.”

She added, “The disrespect that they have for the American people, and it’s why people are losing faith and trust in those leaders. If we have leaders who respect the people, then the people will respect our leaders. If we have leaders who trust the American people, we will trust our leaders. And that’s the problem here is we don’t have leaders who have that trust and respect and who therefore put themselves ahead of the interests of the people.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Your Vote Won’t Count There is no point in hoping the next election will be magically less fraudulent than the last one. Hope gives you an excuse not to act. By Dan Gelernter

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/12/your-vote-wont-count/

We’re coming up on another election of national importance—the Virginia governor’s race is November 2. My friends are hopefully suggesting on social media that this will be the election that turns things around, where the full anger of the common folk at being bossed around by autocratic overlords finally manifests itself and we throw the bums out.

Mind you, they were saying the same thing with the same hope about the California recall election. And I said at the time, weeks before the vote was tallied, there was no point in hoping that patriotic anger would outbalance the massive machinery at work behind the scenes: Your votes didn’t matter in the 2020 presidential election, they didn’t matter in the California recall, they won’t matter in the Virginia gubernatorial election, and they won’t matter next year.

In case you’ve forgotten the high-level overview of the situation, let’s have Time Magazine remind us:

‘Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,’ says Ian Bassin, co-founder of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan rule-of-law advocacy group. ‘But it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.’

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream—a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.

According to Time, this was a huge triumph, since the “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes” (again, their words) was designed to protect “democracy” from being undermined by stupid people like you who believe the wrong things and want to elect the wrong people. You were against the “proper” outcome!

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Racist Roots of Ethnic Studies Government schools are much worse than parents imagine. By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/12/racist-roots-of-ethnic-studies/

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 101, authored by Riverside Democrat Jose Medina and cosponsored by the California Teachers Association (CTA), which mandates one “ethnic studies” course for graduation from high school beginning in 2030. Newsom had previously rejected AB 331, a similar bill by Medina, because it was “insufficiently balanced and inclusive.” For Katy Grimes of the California Globe, the revamped AB 101 “is not any of those things,” and ethnic studies is not an academic discipline. 

Those who opposed AB 331 note that “ethnic studies” divides the people into “us and them.” Jewish organizations protested the anti-Semitic content. The authors of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) removed their names and founded the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute, and their curriculum “is expected to be even more anti-Semitic than the original ESMC.” As Grimes shows, this is hardly the only problem. 

The curriculum was already implemented at a Salinas high school, and samples include: “Intro to Critical Consciousness: The Biological Fallacy of Race and its Social Construction as a Tool of Ideological Oppression”; “Reclaiming Race As a Space of People of Color Empowerment in the 1960s—Today: Black Power, Red Power, Brown Power, Yellow Power, White Allies in Solidarity”; “Ethnic Studies Saves Lives,” and so on. This is nothing more than caustic political indoctrination based on racist junk-thought with deeper roots than embattled parents might suspect. 

Jose Medina is a former teacher of “Chicano Studies,” a form of indoctrination based on The Cosmic Race (La Raza Cosmica) by influential Mexican educator and presidential candidate José Vasconcelos. According to the cosmic racist Vasconcelos, the Ibero-American race is destined to surpass all the others. The black race, “eager for sensual joy, intoxicated with dances and unbridled lust,” will fade away. So will the “Mongol” with his slanted eyes and lack of boldness for new enterprises. The “Indian” is simply inferior,  while the “white” race ranks at the bottom for Vasconcelos.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Inside the Biden Junta Doing the opposite of whatever Trump did. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/de-nihil-lloyd-billingsley/

“The hatred and resentment of Trump is so deep,” Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Bruce Thornton recently noted, “that we now have a ruling party whose main principle is to do the opposite of whatever Trump did no matter how much it benefited the country.” That statement is freighted with meaning and based on considerable evidence.

President Trump withdrew from the Paris Accords, which gives a pass to major polluters China and India. The Biden Junta, what the late Angelo Codevilla called an oligarchy, rejoined the agreement, promising billions of dollars that will wind up enriching “energy grifters.” For all the spending, the United States gets essentially nothing.

President Trump achieved energy independence for America, reducing the cost of energy in particular and the cost of living in general. By freeing the nation from dependence on oil-rich hostile regimes, Trump also boosted America’s national security in a dangerous world.

Joe Biden, who likes to rule by diktat, canceled the Keystone X pipeline, banned fracking and called off oil and gas leases on public lands. This sent the price of gasoline skyrocketing, a severe blow to working Americans but a windfall for OPEC, where Biden showed up with his begging bowl. Thornton was correct that “our economy and our geopolitical clout have been damaged.”

While under fire from the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes, Trump began construction of a border wall. He also halted ridiculous “catch and release” policies, and tasked ICE to remove dangerous criminal illegals from the United States.

The Biden Junta not only stopped construction of the wall but gave the border an existential problem. Thousands of “migrants” from all over the world are now streaming into to the USA, with no check for COVID or other diseases, and exempt from the rules that now restrict legitimate citizens and legal immigrants. The Biden Junta vilifies the Border Patrol and welcomes the invaders. Many get shipped to other parts of the nation with no accountability to Congress or the people.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Raids Home of NYPD Sergeants’ Union Head Who Criticized de Blasio and Cuomo Is the FBI simply a corrupted tool in the hands of the political and media elites? Robert Spencer

Posted By on October 13th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/fbi-raids-home-nypd-sergeants-union-head-who-robert-spencer/

As Matt Margolis noted in July, the FBI is “corrupt and needs reform.” This reform became all the more urgent last week, when it was revealed that the feds were far more deeply involved in the January 6 insurrection-that-wasn’t-an-insurrection at the Capitol than had been previously known. But instead of moving to restore its shattered reputation and proving it hasn’t become little more than the far-Left’s muscle, the FBI on Tuesday raided the home of Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) President Ed Mullins, a Trump supporter and outspoken critic of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to the New York Daily News, the raid “also targeted the police union’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.” The FBI confirmed that it was “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation” into the 13,000-member SBA. Said de Blasio: “All I have been told is the FBI has raided the SBA HQ and it’s in connection with an ongoing investigation, but we don’t have further details on that at this moment.”

The mayor couldn’t resist, however, kicking Mullins while he was down: “A lot of what he’s done has been really, really destructive — especially in the middle of a crisis where we’re trying to unify and we’re trying to get through together. I think he’s been a divisive voice. … All I hear is the FBI raid. I want to hear the details before I comment further.”

Mullins aroused de Blasio’s ire when he posted the arrest report of Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter, on Twitter; Chiara de Blasio was arrested in May 2020 during the George Floyd riots in Manhattan. According to the Daily News, Mullins was accused of “violating department rules” in disclosing Chiara’s private information, while his lawyer, Andrew Quinn, noted that the report had already been publicized and stated: “We see this case an attempt to chill Ed Mullins’s First Amendment rights.”

Amid the controversy, Mullins “vowed to continue speaking out whenever he believes cops are vilified or mistreated” and declared: “De Blasio’s City Hall has been at war with cops since his first days in office. Charges against union activism that City Hall doesn’t like — speaking truth to those who claim power — is sadly what we’ve come to expect from this administration.”