ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Inflation Can Crush the Democrats in 2022 By David P. Goldman

Posted By on August 15th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2021/08/13/inflation-can-crush-the-democrats-in-2022-n1469171

It’s the economy, stupid.

Five trillion dollars in helicopter money (not counting Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion boondoggle) through the underinvested U.S. economy has given us the worst inflation since the dog days of the Jimmy Carter administration, and Americans are worried — as they should be. Ask anyone who tried to buy a car or rent a dwelling in the past six months. The median asking rent jumped 19% between the second quarter of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021, according to the US Census Bureau. According to Zillow, average rents jumped 6% between last December and June, while Apartmentlist.com reports the median rent up by 10% during the same period.

Real wages are falling. Consumer prices jumped 6% during the past year, while the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s wage measure rose just 3%. That’s an across-the-board 3% pay cut for American workers.

The Great Biden Inflation hands out subsidy checks to American families and then claws the money back and more. Low-wage workers suffer the most. Heaven help the family of modest means whose car died in the past year. Used-car prices (according to the standard Manheim Index of car auction prices) jumped by 25% over the past year.

No wonder the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment fell in July to a level of 70, down from over 100 before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the lowest level since the Great Recession a decade ago.

The biggest news from the University of Michigan pollsters, though, is political: Democrats are still relatively optimistic about the economy (maybe because they expect more Biden handouts) while confidence among Republicans and Independents has collapsed. Republicans are now more pessimistic about the U.S. economy than they were at any time in history, more than in March 2009 at the depth of the Great Recession.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory Aims To Murder The Souls Of White Children Jason Riley

Posted By on August 15th, 2021

/https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/13/critical-race-theory-aims-to-murder-the-souls-of-white-children/

CRT aims to annihilate the souls of white people, to morally paralyze them via a protracted process of induced guilt, shame, embarrassment, and extortion.

A friend of mine told me a true apocryphal story. He is an old-fashioned “liberal” and a strong advocate of public education.

The Covid-19 lockdowns left him additional time to inconspicuously sit in on his sixth-grade son’s online classes. One afternoon, he observed an assignment in an English class in which all the white students were required to place their arms beside a brown paper bag.

The teacher, a white woman, asked if they noticed a difference in color between their skin and the brown paper bag. The white students verbally assented. The teacher then asked if the color of the bag looked close to the skin color of some classmates who identify as black.

The teacher then announced: “If your skin color is different from the color of the paper bag, then you are part of an American problem known as ‘systemic racism’ that does irreparable harm to all black and brown people. Further, if you identify as white, you enjoy something called ‘white privilege,’ which means you are practicing racism every day without knowing it.” The teacher then went on to ask the class if they had ever heard the term “reparations.”

Out of some sense of visceral paternal protection, my friend slammed down his son’s computer and told him to go to his room. He told me that he stood there, shaking with incredulity.

This Is Called Murdering Someone’s Soul

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

BBC: Leading the World Against Israel by Richard Kemp

Posted By on August 15th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17646/bbc-against-israel

Following accusations of slanted reporting of the second Palestinian intifada, which began in 2000, and the rise in Jew-hatred caused by it, in 2004 the BBC was pressured to open an inquiry into its coverage, by Malcolm Balen, former BBC News editor. For 17 years Balen’s findings have been kept under lock and key by the BBC, which admitted spending $500,000 of public funds in a series of legal battles to prevent its release.

“What is it are they hiding and what are they afraid of?”, Conservative peer Lord Polack asked. Responding, the Minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said that in “some instances it [the BBC] has fallen far short” of the required standards.

Three allegations that Bowen breached BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality were fully or partially upheld in 2009 by the BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee, which also said that he had failed to acknowledge there were views contrary to his own.

The BBC’s reporting on the Gaza conflict this year typifies its long-term bias against Israel. It constantly drew moral equivalence between Israel, a Western liberal democracy, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both proscribed terrorist organizations…. There was no acknowledgement that the conflict had been initiated by these groups that openly seek the destruction of Israel or that without their violent actions, no Palestinians in Gaza or civilians in Israel would have died. Instead the BBC maintained the fiction — pushed by the Palestinian side — that Israel’s actions in Jerusalem were the cause. Nor did they mention that Hamas misappropriated millions of dollars of international aid to construct tunnels, rockets and other engines of war to attack Israeli civilians.

This biased journalism was crowned by commentary direct from Jeremy Bowen, whose report from Gaza at the end of the conflict looked more like pro-Hamas propaganda than objective reporting…..

Why so much emphasis on Bowen’s role? Because all BBC reporting on the Israel-Palestinian conflict for more than 15 years has been driven, above all, by his editorial influence.

I do not blame Bowen for the influence he wields, I blame the BBC executives that allow him, with his history, to hold a position that dominates the coverage of the world’s largest broadcast media corporation. Israel. During the 2021 Gaza conflict… the BBC had to issue corrections eight times in their Arabic news coverage alone.

Senior BBC producer Alaa Daraghme recently shared a video on Twitter which he wrote was “An Israeli settler ramming a Palestinian man near the Lions Gate.” In fact the video showed a car being driven onto the sidewalk after an attempt by Palestinians to lynch the driver, who then lost control. There are many other such cases of bias and distortion among BBC staff.

Like many others, the BBC rejects or ignores historical reality in order to portray Israel as an illegal occupier of Arab lands. To underpin its false narrative, for many years it has repeated Palestinian propaganda, ignored violence against their own people, and whitewashed their Jew-hate…. Israel’s contributions to disaster relief and other humanitarian actions around the world are almost always ignored.

There is little likelihood, without firm intervention by the British government, that the BBC will relinquish its leadership of the global anti-Israel movement that has contributed to so much suffering, misery and bloodshed.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran and Its Two Damaged Wings by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 15th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17645/iran-damaged-wings

As the great Iranian theologian Kazem Assar put it: “Monarchy and Shi’ism are the two wings with which the Iranian eagle can soar to unimaginable heights.”
This time, however, things may turn out to be different as the Khomeinist regime has tried to clip off both wings of which Assar spoke.
Over the years, rather than the clergy taking over the state, it is the state that has tried to take over the clergy.
Under Khomeinism, state-appointed mullahs control vast enterprises that pay no taxes and are answerable to no one.
Isn’t it time to recognize the Khomeinist regime for what it really is: a banal despotism disguised as a clerical regime to confuse both Iranians and foreign Iranologists while trying to destroy not only Iran’s monarchic heritage but also its religious tradition?
More importantly, isn’t it time for the traditional clergy to end its often complicit silence about the damage that Khomeinism has done to Iran’s identity, culture, social cohesion, economy and even religion?

The past four decades in which the Khomeinist ideology has dominated Iranian state structures, a new breed of “Iranologists” has emerged in Western academic and media circles. Most old Iranologists saw Iran as a glorious but long dead civilization distinguished by religious tolerance, ethnic diversity and an abiding love of artistic creativity. Those who focused on Iran’s story after the advent of Islam recognized monarchy and the Shi’ite clerical institution that, while at times in conflict, played complementary roles in Iranian society.

With the seizure of power in 1979 by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a new breed of Iranologists emerged to declare the definite end of monarchy in Iran and the advent of a theocratic regime backed by re-energized clergy.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Eleven Senate Democrats Vote Against COVID Tests For Illegal Immigrants at the Southern Border By Debra Heine

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/12/eleven-senate-democrats-vote-against-covid-tests-for-illegal-immigrants-at-the-southern-border/

Eleven Senate Democrats on Thursday voted against a modest and commonsense amendment to the Senate Budget Resolution that requires illegal migrants apprehended on the southern border to be tested for COVID-19 before they are transported into the country.

The amendment, introduced by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), a physician, establishes “a deficit-neutral reserve fund relating to protecting migrants and local communities against COVID-19.”  Under the provision, migrants will be quarantined and not transported from the border until they tested negative.

This minor impediment to the Regime’s goal of fundamentally transforming the nation through mass immigration was supported by Majority Whip Dick Durbin, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.  The majority leaders urged the eleven radical Dems to switch their votes to be in favor of the amendment “to create the illusion of a united front on the issue of public health at our southern border within the Democrat Party,” according to Marshall in a statement Thursday.

In the end, the amendment passed with a final vote of 88-11.

The eleven far-left Democrats who voted against the amendment are Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Maisie Hirono (Hawaii), Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Chris Murphy (Conn.), John Ossoff (Ga.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Tina Smith (Minn.), Liz Warren (Mass.).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Justice Department’s ‘Troubling’ Discovery Delays January 6 defendants appear to have practically no shot at a fair trial in Washington, D.C. Some judges are finally pushing back. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/13/the-justice-departments-troubling-discovery-delays/

It’s been almost seven months since the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at the Virginia farm of Thomas and Sharon Caldwell. Dozens of armed agents broke down their front door, ransacked their home, and arrested Tom Caldwell on January 19. A week later, a grand jury indicted Caldwell and two other alleged Oath Keepers for various crimes related to their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6.

Despite the fact Caldwell never entered the building, carried no weapon, and assaulted no one, the Justice Department sought to keep the 66-year-old former Navy lieutenant with service-related disabilities in jail awaiting trial. Caldwell, a decorated military veteran, has no criminal record.

Nonetheless, on February 12, Judge Amit Mehta ordered Caldwell to remain behind bars: “What Mr. Caldwell is accused of is conspiring with others to plot an insurrection against the government of the United States, particularly the Congress of the United States, while it was attempting to certify the Electoral College vote,” Mehta said during Caldwell’s detention hearing. 

“So the concern with Mr. Caldwell is less what he specifically did on January 6th, like others,” Mehta continued. “It doesn’t look like he actually entered the Capitol building, didn’t assault any police officers. But what he did prior to January the 6th is clearly engage in planning and preparation for conduct that others were engaged in and that others participated in, in the incursion that took place at the Capitol and the violence that followed.” 

Caldwell interrupted the hearing to plead for mercy. “I beg your indulgence, sir. But my life hangs in the balance.”

Caldwell spent 50 days in jail before Mehta reversed himself on March 12 and released Caldwell to very limited home detention.

It now appears Mehta is having additional second thoughts about the Justice Department’s handling of the Capitol breach probe. In dozens of pre-trial detention motions filed by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the evidence against January 6 defendants rests solely in the hands of the government. Detention hearings act instead almost as ex-parte criminal trials where federal judges in Washington, D.C. declare guilt or innocence based largely on what federal prosecutors present in court, occasionally sending defendants to jail for months before a trial can begin.

Caldwell was one of more than 100 Americans ensnared in what the top prosecutor managing the first stage of the January 6 investigation called a “shock and awe” campaign to intimidate Americans out of coming to the nation’s capital to protest Joe Biden’s inauguration. But that short-term political goal doesn’t seem to be working as a long-term legal strategy for the Justice Department.

Mehta, who has denied bond to three other Oath Keepers now incarcerated in the D.C. jail for months awaiting trials that won’t begin until 2022, expressed his displeasure with the government this week during a status hearing for Caldwell and 16 other defendants in the Oath Keepers conspiracy case.

Mehta said it was “troubling” to learn that the full trove of discovery material won’t be accessible to defendants until early 2022. That means defendants like Caldwell will have to wait at least a year before all the evidence related to their case will be available to defense attorneys.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Why all the ‘climate crisis’ mumbo-jumbo doesn’t add up By Mark C. Ross

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/why_all_the_climate_crisis_mumbojumbo_doesnt_add_up.html

Fear is a great motivator, but it comes with a catch.  It tends to inhibit good decision-making.  Demagogues love it because it works so well.  Right now, the Northern Hemisphere is having serious heat waves in many locations.  Oy, vey!  But wait…let me look at this here calendar.  Oh, gee — it’s the middle of August.  Just a coincidence, I guess.

We used to learn in school that there were these things called ice ages.  The last one, the Pleistocene, ended about 10,000 years ago, and it lasted only about 2.5 million years, give or take.  At its peak, 30% of the Earth’s surface was covered with ice.  The oceans were way lower, too. 

The jury is still out on why ice ages happen and why they end.  Back in the 1970s, it was established that the sun goes through a 22-year intensity cycle…sort of.  The hockey stick guy, Michael Mann, wrote an article for Scientific American explaining that his bungled warming prediction was the result of forgetting to include the solar cycle in the data used for his computer model.  I commented online that that was a pretty amateurish mistake for someone who gets paid to be a scientist.  They then yanked my commenting privilege, thus demonstrating the corruption of science by politics.  I didn’t renew my subscription after having one for 30 years, and they spent a bunch of money junk-mailing me to send them the next check.

There’s also this pesky thing called tectonics, in which the Earth’s land masses move around slowly, sometimes bumping into each other, causing large-scale buckling such as the Himalayas.  One of the tip-offs for the establishment of this concept is the uncanny way that South America fits right into the west coast of Africa, just like a part of a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Somehow, it seems, change is now a bad thing, although it’s always been inevitable.  Oh, yeah — there are the demagogues and engineered ignorance, courtesy of your local union-thug teachers.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Obama Lies, Cashill Corrects By Theodore S. Williams

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/obama_lies_cashill_corrects.html

In November 2020, Barack Obama released his newest memoir, A Promised Land.  Now, hot on his heels, comes Jack Cashill’s Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, a savvy and ever-diligent effort to prevent fake news from becoming fake history.

Unsurprisingly, many of Obama’s newly offered truths are woefully inconsistent with those he formerly foisted on us.  I’ve lost track of whether this is version 1.2, 2.1, or 3.0.  In any event, we have yet another layer of Obama’s ipse dixits to add to his earlier ones, undoubtedly also likewise intended to be gospel and therefore ineligible for further questioning.  (Fat chance!)  

Thankfully, truth warrior Jack Cashill, the original Obamologist, continues to remind us of the earlier versions that Obama provided so we can track the layers of obfuscation, the fake corrections, and stick with the only reality that can be documented so far.

Cashill’s book also provides the omitted context within which to evaluate Obama’s claims.  The thirty-plus chapters address such issues as the curiously still evolving purported facts of Obama’s childhood, the as yet unanswered questions about Obama’s birth date and location, and related smokescreens. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Four Horsemen of the Biden Apocalypse By Jeff Crouere

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_four_horsemen_of_the_biden_apocalypse.html

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the country was showing signs of economic improvement, people were feeling more confident about battling COVID, and the border was relatively secure as the wall was finally being constructed.

What a difference seven months can make.  It has been a horrific 207 days since President Joe Biden and his radical administration were unleashed on the country.

In effect, a political apocalypse is approaching.  In the New Testament Book of Revelation, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are revealed to be “Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.”  In the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, the four horsemen are referred to as “sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague.”

In the era of Joe Biden, the four horsemen of our political apocalypse are the border invasion, the economic catastrophe, the assault on our families, and the use of the COVID plague to eliminate our constitutional rights.

1. Invasion.  Biden inherited a secure border and immediately decided to destroy the progress of President Donald Trump and create an unmitigated disaster for Americans.  The border wall was foolishly stopped, the policy of “catch and release” was reinstituted, the “Remain in Mexico” policy was ended, and illegal aliens were given an invitation to enter the United States.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Humiliation in Afghanistan By Byron York

Posted By on August 14th, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-humiliation-in-afghanistan

HUMILIATION IN AFGHANISTAN. The government of Afghanistan is falling fast in the face of a new Taliban offensive. The United States is urging Americans to “leave Afghanistan immediately.” The Biden administration has sent a small force of troops to speed the evacuation. In a particularly telling development, the U.S. is asking the Taliban — pretty please! — not to target the American embassy when they take over the capital of Kabul.

At the Pentagon Wednesday, a reporter asked spokesman John Kirby, a retired Navy admiral, whether the Defense Department “could have done a better job…in articulating what the goals were in Afghanistan and what things were supposed to look like or what they’re not expected to look like when we leave?”

Kirby’s answer was painfully revealing. He began by saying he couldn’t speak for the entire 20-year history of the Afghan war. He conceded that “the goals did migrate over time.” And then he said: “It would be wrong for us not to acknowledge that we did help enable some progress in Afghanistan. More children in schools, including girls, economic and political and social opportunities for women. A democratically elected government — not saying it’s not flawless, but a government. And living conditions that are much better, including life expectancy.”

Kirby echoed a statement made nearly five years ago, in October 2016, by then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Since the war began, Kerry said, “maternal mortality in childbirth in Afghanistan has gone down by 75 percent. Average life expectancy has risen from 42 years to 62 years. Access to basic health care has skyrocketed from nine percent to 67 percent. In 2001, there was only one television station, and it was owned by the government. Now, there are 75 stations and all but two are privately owned. Back then, there were virtually no cell phones, zero. Today, there are 18 million cell phones covering about 90 percent of residential areas connecting Afghans to the world.”