FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Life after death for the neoconservatives Biden’s embrace of neocon dogma will accelerate a Chinese-Russian-European coalescence that will dominate the world economy David Goldman

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/life-after-death-for-the-neoconservatives/

Delusions die hard. The obsession of American foreign policy after the fall of communism was pro-Western democracy in Russia, and the foreign policy establishment has never forgiven Vladimir Putin for returning Russia to the sort of authoritarian governance it has endured for all but a few brief years of its history.

The obsession is back with Joe Biden – and, with it, the neoconservatives who dominated the failed administration of George W Bush.

For several reasons, President Biden’s March 16 denunciation of Putin as a “killer” without a soul ranks among the dumbest utterances ever by an American leader – and that’s a crowded field. To begin with, heads of state do not insult each other this way, except in wartime.

Secondly, the Biden administration proclaims its concern about competition from China, but American pressure has pushed Russia into a reluctant but resilient alliance with the Middle Kingdom.

Third, Washington will need Moscow’s tacit cooperation to revive the Iran nuclear deal, a key Biden foreign policy objective, and calling Putin out hardly furthers this objective.

Fourth – and most important – Western Europe is determined to improve its relations with Russia. Biden’s outburst will persuade Paris and Berlin that this administration is as loopy as the last one.

The “Russia question” appears to have surfaced in response to a March 16 US intelligence community assessment that “Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy, and the Democratic Party.”

The 15-page public document is fluff. We heard it all before in December 2020, when fifty former intelligence officials denounced news reports of Hunter Biden’s corrupt ties to Ukrainian oligarchs as Russian disinformation.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel Striking down the falsehoods – one libel at a time. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/lies-cognitive-war-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

Editor’s note: Below is Part I in a 2-Part Series on ‘Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel’. Part 2 will run in our next issue.

“That Israel has become of the embodiment of evil, that its racism, militarism, and oppression now are so powerful that they cross borders and infect minority communities in America, and that the Jewish state can now be held responsible for bigotry on campuses far from its own borders indicates how powerful the anti-Israel narrative has become, and how the obsessive hatred by activists against the Jewish state ensures that the oldest hatred shows itself in yet another hateful permutation.”

In the cognitive war against Israel, supporters of what historian Bat Ye’or called Palestinianism have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated employing traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies, abetted by the academic and media elites in the West, have been using different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war.

By dressing up old hatreds against Jews and transforming it into what comprises the “new anti-Semitism,” combined with a purported goal of seeking social justice for the oppressed and repackaging ugly biases as academic scholarship, professors, student activist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Israel’s other ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to ensure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of being: a racist, apartheid oppressor of an indigenous people; white European Jews with no historical connection to the Holy Land who are colonial usurpers of Muslim land; the main impediment to Middle East peace; and a brutal military occupier of land on which illegal “settlements” are built as a way of subjugating an existing innocent population in the quest for a Great Israel that will swallow even more territory to which the Jews have no legitimate claim.

This is the current narrative in what Melanie Phillips has called “the world turned upside down,” an inversion of truth and fiction, calumnies and lies targeting the Jewish state in an effort to elevate the Palestinian cause, delegitimize Israel, and make Israel a pariah in the world community. But this narrative, unfortunately, is based on a presentation of lies, a series of repeated tropes about the malignancy and illegality of Israel that has little to do with facts, history, or reason. These lies are repeated promiscuously until they accepted as fact, a Goebbel-esque tradition which creates a new truth through the unrelenting repetition of falsity, disingenuity, and distortions of reality.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fauci Blames Coronavirus on Our Failure to Live in ‘Harmony With Nature’ “Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior.” Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/fauci-blames-coronavirus-our-failure-live-harmony-daniel-greenfield/

“There’s a lot of folks who think that, due to climate change and due to the globalization in general, it is inevitable that we’ll deal with more and more viruses like this,” Dr. Fauci told Meet the Press.

The “lot of folks” in question include the patron saint of the pandemic.

In addition to appearing on every single news show on the planet, Fauci occasionally co-authors papers. But “Emerging Pandemic Diseases: How We Got to COVID-19” in the journal Cell is less of an academic paper and more of a survey and an advocacy editorial. It might not be all that significant except that its co-authors are David M. Morens, the Senior Scientific Advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Fauci who heads it.

If you didn’t know that its authors are prominent figures in the scientific community, you might mistake its contents for the ravings of hippies at an Earth Day rally a generation ago.

“There are many examples where disease emergencies reflect our increasing inability to live in harmony with nature,” Fauci’s paper insists. “Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who’s Really Running in Israel’s Elections? How the Attorney General and the Supreme Court are devouring Knesset. Caroline Glick

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/whos-really-running-israels-elections-caroline-glick/

In about a week, Israel’s polling stations will open and Israelis will elect their representatives to the Knesset for the fourth time in two years. As was the case in the last three elections, the upcoming elections revolve around one issue—Israel’s legal fraternity.

All aspects of public life in Israel today are dictated by the attorney general and the Supreme Court, which have devoured the powers of the Knesset and the government. Over the years, the legal fraternity has acted through judicial and bureaucratic fiat to cancel the checks and balances on its power. Today, the attorney general and the court justices determine their own powers. Not surprisingly, as far as both are concerned, their powers are unlimited.

Whether the issue is deciding who is a Jew, public funding of cultural institutions, public health policy, land use, economic priorities, military rules of engagement, immigration policy, counter-terror policies, or other questions from the mundane to the existential, the only decision makers in Israel are the attorney general and the Supreme Court justices. Elected leaders are at best advisers.

Justice system inspires fear

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Has Joe Biden Sold America Out to the Mexican Drug Cartels? Drug kingpins have waited their entire lives for this fantasy. Wayne Allyn Root

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/has-joe-biden-sold-america-out-mexican-drug-wayne-allyn-root/

“Now I ask you — use your common sense: Why is this happening? Why would any sane president or political party want to encourage an invasion that will overwhelm our country and risk disease and death — let alone in the middle of a pandemic? This is insanity.”

I told you so. It’s become crystal clear I was right on the money. I’ve said for two years now on my national radio show that the best thing that could ever happen for the Mexican drug cartels would be a Democratic presidential victory.

Mexican drug kingpins have waited their entire lives for this fantasy. They must be singing, dancing and toasting champagne right now, because President Joe Biden is the greatest gift ever bestowed upon the Mexican cartels.

Experts estimated the money made on drug trafficking by the cartels at around $500 billion a year. That’s half a trillion dollars a year — “trillion” with a T.

Who quotes that figure? Republican senators. See what Georgia Sen. David Purdue said in 2019: “At half a trillion dollars — $500 billion — that makes the cartel business and the drug traffic just in Mexico alone coming across to the United States bigger than Walmart, to put it in perspective. So this is larger than our largest companies.”

But that figure is bipartisan. Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein quotes a figure in a similar range: “The illicit drug trade is a business, valued at anywhere between $426 and $652 billion.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamala Harris, Traitor The radical veep’s virtual apology tour begins.Matthew Vadum

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/kamala-harris-traitor-matthew-vadum/

Vice President Kamala Devi Harris attacked her own country as violent and racist when she appeared on the world stage with Ireland’s prime minister this week.

She kicked off a St. Patrick’s Day online summit by assailing America in what can be seen as a tribute of sorts to Barack Obama, a mentor of hers who pioneered the globetrotting national self-denunciation when he was president.

Before much was known about a deadly shooting spree at Asian spas in the Atlanta area, Harris seditiously declared on the world stage that it was a hate crime.

“It is tragic,” she told Irish premier Micheal Martin.

“It speaks to a larger issue which is the issue of violence in our country and what we must do to never tolerate it and to always speak out against it. The investigation is ongoing. We don’t yet know, we’re not yet clear about the motives, but I do want to say to our Asian-American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people but knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our Asian-American brothers and sisters we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.”

Whether “hate” as in “hate crime” was involved in the killings wasn’t clear when Harris spoke, and still isn’t clear at time of writing.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Have We Ever Had A President Like This Before?

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/19/have-we-ever-had-a-president-like-this-before/

Some believe that Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith ran the federal executive branch after the president had a stroke in October 1919. Even the Obama White House said she “functionally” was in charge of the administration “for the remainder of Wilson’s second term.” At least Wilson started his presidency in a sentient state. Not sure the same can be said of Joe Biden.

It’s clear that the 46th president of the United States is impaired. He has yet to face the media, waiting longer to hold his first press conference than any president in the last 100 years. 

Biden’s team has finally scheduled a news conference, announcing Tuesday he’d be up for it on – March 25. Why the long run-up? Will it take his handlers that long to ensure that he doesn’t have a blowout while talking to the press? There’s a transparency problem, as Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has pointed out. Biden aides are doing nothing to inspire the country’s confidence in the man.

But then again, there’s not much to be confident about. Some recent evidence of note:

“Bubble Biden clearly not up for tough questions – or the job,” says the New York Post headline of Michael Goodwin’s March 16 column. Goodwin reminds readers that after “Biden’s lone interview since taking office,” the White House was forced to clean up his comments about Donald Trump receiving intelligence briefings, the $15 minimum wage campaign, and Iran’s nuclear program.
In late February, Biden famously rambled on about losing track of his thoughts and wondering where he was.
Earlier this month, the bumbling president called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin “the guy who runs that outfit.”
Biden ended his session at the House Democrats 2021 Issues Conference saying “I’m happy to take questions if that’s what you want me to do,” at which point he was given the modern-day version of the Vaudeville hook to, obviously, prevent him from making yet another public spectacle of himself.
Former White House stenographer Mike McCormick, who spent six years at “Biden’s side as he met with world leaders, delivered speeches and interacted with members of the news media,” told one-time Trump aide Steve Bannon in January that he estimated the president’s cognitive abilities have fallen by half in recent years. 
McCormick told the Washington Free Beacon last September that the Democratic candidate is “not the same Joe Biden,” and that “he’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Senate narrowly confirms Xavier Becerra as Health and Human Services secretary

Posted By on March 19th, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/18/politics/xavier-becerra-confirmation-vote/index.html

The Senate narrowly confirmed Xavier Becerra to be the Health and Human Services secretary on Thursday, giving the former California attorney general a crucial role in fighting the pandemic.

Becerra, the son of Mexican immigrants, is the first Latino HHS secretary.
The vote was 50 to 49. Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins joined Senate Democrats in favor of the nomination. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono did not vote.
During the confirmation process, Becerra stressed his upbringing, his father’s recent passing and his efforts for expanding health care access as California’s attorney general and a 24-year Congressman representing a Los Angeles-based district.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

New Data Show 92,367 Mail Ballots in Nevada Went to Wrong Addresses—in a Single County By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on March 18th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2021/03/17/new-data-show-92367-mail-ballots-in-nevada-went-to-wrong-address-n1433120

Hindsight is 20/20, and now numbers from the 2020 election show how Nevada made a mistake rushing to automatic mail ballots. Dirty voter rolls combined with automatic mail made the 2020 election a mess in Nevada.

Concrete post-election data show that 92,367 mail ballots sent out by Clark County election officials came back as undeliverable. They had incorrect or outdated addresses.

That means they were sent where the registered voter did not live. That means someone else could have snatched those misdirected live ballots. That means someone probably did.

This unfortunate number is unwelcome considering President Joe Biden only carried Nevada by 33,596 votes. Clark’s 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate a real vulnerability with mass mail balloting.

That’s just Clark County where Las Vegas is. The number of ballots that went to the wrong addresses statewide is most certainly much higher.

It is true that these ballots ultimately bounced back uncast. If nothing else, that’s a lot of wasted paper and postage. But how many ballots never came back because there wasn’t yet clear information about the registrants who had died or moved away?

More importantly, sending 92,367 ballots to the wrong places was a gamble our system of electing leaders should not be making.

Remember, last year The Public Interest Legal Foundation, an organization I am affiliated with, documented through video that ballots were mailed and cast from vacant lots, abandoned mines, liquor stores, and casinos in Nevada.

Nobody should want tens of thousands of ballots floating through the mails to destinations unknown. Elections don’t run well when voting is scattered and distant from election officials. The 92,367 bounced ballots demonstrate slack in the system.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Harvard Law Professor Wants Democrats to Disenfranchise Republican Voters By Dan McLaughlin

Posted By on March 18th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/a-harvard-law-professor-wants-democrats-to-disenfranchise-republican-voters/

We should not lightly disregard this as simply harmless academic scribbling.

R emember that brief moment between November and January when Democrats and their voices in the media told us that asking legislators to overturn elections and attacking the legitimacy of the results of elections was a bad thing? Well, Democrats’ old tricks of rejecting outcomes, attacking legitimacy, arguing that it is rigged when their side loses, and spinning conspiracy theories are never far from hand. The latest example comes from Democrat Rita Hart’s ongoing effort to get House Democrats to reverse the election of Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks by the people of Iowa’s second district to represent them in the House.

It is concerning enough that Democratic politicians act in self-serving fashion — that’s what politicians do — but it should particularly alarm us that the progressive intellectual class is continually pressing them to go even further. If misbehaving Republican politicians often embarrass the party’s intellectuals, misbehaving Democrats have their side’s scholars and pundits whispering in their ears like Iago, urging them to ever-more-radical steps. In this case, that means pursuing systemic and draconian “reforms” that aim explicitly at ensuring that a brief moment of narrow Democratic partisan control of the federal government is weaponized to prevent another peaceful transfer of power back to Republicans. This is branded as “majoritarianism,” but it is ultimately the politics of “one man, one vote, one time.”

Take, for example, a forthcoming law-review article by Harvard law professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos (no relation, so far as I know, to George). Stephanopoulos argues that “majoritarian democracy” is “under siege.” He draws his diagnosis from the recent writings of former Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan, who now serves in the Biden administration as principal deputy-assistant attorney general for the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice (conveniently, a post not requiring Senate confirmation). Both are activist lawyers as well as law professors: Before joining the Biden administration, Karlan was the lead lawyer arguing Bostock v. Clayton County; Stephanopoulos was one of the driving forces behind Whitford v. Gill, which tried to get the Supreme Court to throw out partisan gerrymanders. Given the close relationship between Stephanopoulos’s article and Karlan’s writings — along with Karlan’s powerful government position — we should not lightly disregard this as simply harmless academic scribbling.