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China Is at War With the World, And It’s Escalating Massive Microsoft hack shows Biden has no strategy for fighting a cyberwar that has already begun. Scott McKay by Scott McKay

Posted By on March 11th, 2021

https://spectator.org/china-hack-microsoft-solarwinds/

Until a few days ago, and until now for those not up on the latest developments in the tech world, hafnium was a word describing a barely known element on the periodic table included in the manufacture of control rods for nuclear power plants.

But thanks to our never-resting pals across the Pacific Ocean, hafnium now means something else.

There is a group of computer hackers based in China, and reportedly employed by that country’s communist government, which calls itself Hafnium — an indication that for all their technical prowess the Chinese are still far behind the West when it comes to creativity in describing their villainous ways.

The Chinese Hafnium hackers scored a massive coup against Microsoft late last month and into this month by infiltrating hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange servers across the globe. That let the hackers download and read a whole lot of email; one can only imagine the amount of industrial and other espionage that resulted.

And it isn’t over:

When news hit earlier this week that Chinese hackers were actively targeting Microsoft Exchange servers, the cybersecurity community warned that the zero-day vulnerabilities they were exploiting might have allowed them to hit countless organizations around the world. Now it’s becoming clear just many email servers they hacked. By all appearances, the group known as Hafnium breached as many victims they could find across the global internet, leaving behind backdoors to return to later.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Amid 2014 Border Crisis, Biden Blasted ‘Reckless’ Parents . By Philip Wegmann

Posted By on March 11th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/03/10/amid_2014_border_crisis_biden_blasted_reckless_parents_145377.html

 
Joe Biden called it a crisis and worse.

“When children travel hundreds of miles to reach the United States without their families, in the hands of criminals in the 21st century,” he said of unaccompanied minors surging across the nation’s southern border, “that’s a tragedy we all must take responsibility for.”

And, to clarify but not offend, he took care to explain who should take responsibility for that tragedy: “the country from which they come, and the country to which they are headed.”

He was the vice president then — June of 2014 — as he undertook a tour of Central and South America. There was no pandemic at the time. Unlike today, Biden also spoke at length about the illegal immigration challenge. Now, as president, he remains relatively mum, even as the Border Patrol detains a record number of kids and overall detentions in February soared to nearly 100,000 — the most in that month since 2006.  

Is there a crisis at the southern border? That’s the question RealClearPolitics put to Biden last week as he walked out of the State Dining Room at the White House. “No,” he replied. “We will be able to handle it, God willing.”

The new president is not the only one who won’t call it a crisis. That same day and subsequently, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has repeatedly described the situation as a challenge. “We’re going to approach this without labeling,” she said. “We’re going to approach this with policy, with humanity and with a focus on what we can do to keep these kids safe.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Israel just proved its true title to the Land of Israel By David Isaac

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-how-israel-just-proved-its-true-title-to-the-land-of-israel/

It’s not often that you get to see the mystical connection between the Jews and their land play out in real time.

Witness the response to the oil spill that hit Israel’s shores on Feb. 17, dumped by a cargo ship holding 600,000 barrels of Iranian crude, almost certainly deliberately.

As one would expect, Israel’s government responded, allocating $14 million for cleanup.

What was unexpected was the flow of Israelis to the beaches when the call went out for help.

“Over 11,000 people came within a week,” Maya Jacobs, CEO of Zalul, an environmental group devoted to protecting Israel’s waters, told Israel21c.

Israelis didn’t just bend their backs to the work. They did it with smiles on their faces.

They picked through the sand and pebbles across 100 miles of polluted Mediterranean coastline as if it was their own backyard.

They rescued tar-soaked turtles as if they were saving their own pets.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

LET THEM EAT CAKE: MARILYN PENN

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

We have been living through a nightmarish pandemic for the past year in which half a million Americans have died, 73,000 of whom were Black people whose death rate from Covid 19 is twice that of Whites. Survivors of Covid often have long lasting symptoms whose ramifications remain unknown. People of all races have lost their jobs, their small businesses, their homes and their ability to feed their families. Yet the Queen of Television, a woman known throughout the world by only one name chose to devote two hours of screen time to the tribulations of a wealthy privileged couple who claim they have been dissed by their royal family as well as the British press.

Given the climate of our times, in which we see daily reports of minorities who are sustained only by volunteer food deliveries, is this the best time to recount the distress of a duchess who contemplated suicide when insensitive questions were asked regarding the color intensity of her unborn child? And could this affront actually have been sufficient to produce that jaw-dropping reaction by Oprah in her interview?
“What,” she whispered dramatically, blowing it softly twice in case we reached for popcorn and missed the first shlock wave.

There are many unfair and problematic issues pertaining to race but devoting a major tv spectacle to the hurt feelings of two of the most privileged people in the world certainly is offensive at this moment. Watching both billionaire Oprah and multi-millionaire Harry and Meghan sitting in one of America’s most lavishly expensive neighborhoods while Americans can’t afford to pay their rent or their mortgages and are dependent on government bailouts is outrageously insulting to Blacks, Bi-racials and people of all races.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Pollsters Should Be Asking about the COVID-Stimulus Bill By David Harsanyi *****

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/what-pollsters-should-be-asking-about-the-covid-stimulus-bill/

“In this environment, a party with a slim and fleeting majority can ram through multi-trillion-dollar bills with massive inherent costs dumped on an entire country without any genuine debate. It is tragic — and certainly not something to celebrate — that we have an ignorant citizenry cheering on passage of bills that come with generational consequences.”

For starters: ‘Do you support a bill that sends only 7 percent of its funds to help alleviate the effect of COVID?’

T here is overwhelming bipartisan support for the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” No doubt about it. Every poll says so. The latest Morning Consult poll, for instance, informs us that Americans support the bill by a wide 75–18 percent margin. Among Democrats, it’s 90–5. Among the GOP, it’s 59–35. Among independents, it’s 71–20.

As the Washington Post’s lead “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler put it recently on Twitter, presidents dream “of getting numbers like this for a major piece of legislation — especially if no one from the opposition party votes for it.”

Indeed, they do. But the dream can be made reality only if the media abdicate their responsibility of critically reporting and properly highlighting the partisan boondoggles in trillion-dollar legislation. How popular would the “American Rescue Plan” be if pollsters asked voters grown-up questions rather than push-polling for Democrats?

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How Goes the Democrats’ Attempt to Steal a Congressional Race? By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-goes-the-democrats-attempt-to-steal-a-congressional-race/

The House Administration Committee held a meeting today to consider Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss a challenge from her once and forever opponent, Democrat Rita Hart. In November, Miller-Meeks triumphed over Hart in a historically close race in Iowa’s 2nd congressional district; the Republican won by just six votes, or 0.0015 percentage points. This wasn’t some preliminary result, but one arrived at after a recount. Nevertheless, Hart has persisted with her challenge and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has backed her up, observing back in December that “the issue relating to Iowa is an issue for the House Administration Committee” and adding that the “House decides who it will seat.” As National Review‘s John McCormack noted at the time, it is true that the House reserves the right to seat whomever it deems the winner, but it’s only overruled local election officials once in the last 35 years — also a project of the Democratic Party.

Today’s proceedings began with Administration committee chairwoman Zoe Lofgren announcing that she was of the opinion that “rather than granting or denying contestee Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss at this time, I would recommend that we postpone the motion’s disposition to give the committee an opportunity to consider the merits of the case.” Hart, Lofgren claimed, is making “specific, credible allegations” that lawful ballots were excluded from the count.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden Is The Commander In Hiding Biden ‘has replaced in-person meetings with video calls. He allows only a limited number of people in the building…He doesn’t leave the White House often…. He isn’t planning any foreign or domestic trips.’By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/10/joe-biden-is-the-commander-in-hiding/

78-year-old President Joe Biden is nowhere to be seen, aside from sporadic television appearances through a black mask the size of a Rawlings baseball mitt, or appearing to be on the verge of collapse from dehydration in social media videos.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced Biden’s name will not appear on the $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus direct payments being sent out to millions of Americans this month. “This is not about him,” Psaki said. “This is about the American people getting relief.”

While Psaki claims this action is due to the federal government’s efforts to expedite the relief process, it is a strikingly on-cue representation of Biden’s reclusive campaign and presidency. Biden’s name missing from the checks is an avatar of him going missing from campaigning and now the presidency. The man has repeatedly and noticeably avoided the public eye since deciding to run for the president for the third time.

According to a final count of 2020 presidential rallies, Biden hosted a total of 53 compared to former President Trump’s 86. Biden canceled public speaking events in advance, notably all rallies prior to his debate with Trump in October.

Dozens of Biden’s supposed “rallies” were performed digitally, presumably out of fear of contracting COVID or perhaps in desperation for another Botox shot to keep the facade going that he is actually in fine mental and physical condition to be the president. In a virtual town hall back in April 2020, Biden seemingly fell asleep on camera with Hillary Clinton. In October 2020, he claimed to voters in Toledo, Ohio he was running for the Senate.

The Biden “gaffes” just kept on coming. They still do.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Prophet Of The Trump Era Review of Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public,” the book that called both an uprising and a reaction Matt Taibbi

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-prophet-of-the-trump-era-255

I entered Martin Gurri’s world on August 1, 2015. Though I hadn’t read The Revolt of the Public, at the time a little-known book by the former CIA analyst of open news sources, I hit a disorienting moment of a type he’d described in his opening chapter. There are times, he wrote, “when tomorrow no longer resembles yesterday… the compass cracks, by which we navigate existence. We are lost at sea.”

Gurri’s book is about how popular uprisings are triggered by collapses of faith in traditional hierarchies of power. I felt such a collapse that day in Waterloo, Iowa, covering the Republican presidential primary. The first debate was five days away and the man expected to occupy center stage, Donald Trump, held a seemingly inexplicable six-point lead.

Two weeks before, on July 18th, Trump lashed out against former Republican nominee John McCain. Even McCain’s critics considered his physical and mental scars from years as a Vietnam war prisoner to be unassailable proofs of patriotic gravitas, but the service-evading Trump was having none of it. “I don’t like losers,” he said, adding, “He’s only a war hero because he was captured.” It was the universal belief among colleagues in campaign journalism that this was an unsurvivable gaffe, a “Dean scream” moment. We expected him to apologize and wash out. Instead, he called McCain a “dummy” and kept a firm grasp on the lead.

A different candidate, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, was in Waterloo. Two years before, Time all but dubbed Christie the favorite for 2016 with a silhouette cover portrait, over the nastily shallow (but publicity-generating) double-entendre headline, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Christie was every Washington consultant’s idea of a “crossover” superstar. I’d describe the concept in Rolling Stone as someone “mean enough for the right-wing, but also knows a gay person or once read a French novel.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Policy: Covid on Steroids? By Joel Kotkin

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2021/03/09/climate_policy_covid_on_steroids_767399.html

For most people around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic seems a great human tragedy, with deaths, bankruptcies, and fractured mental states. Yet for some, especially among the green Twitterati and in some policy shops, the pandemic presents a grand opportunity to enact permanent lockdowns on economic growth, population growth, and upward mobility.

Pointing to reductions in greenhouse gases due to the lockdowns, some see the pandemic’s wreckage of much of the economy – including the mass destruction of businesses and family budgets – not as a plague of its own, but, as a British Climate Assembly put it, as a “test run” for a new climate-driven economy.

“We have an “incredible responsibility” to “actually converge the solutions – at least the financial solutions – to coronavirus to the financial solutions for climate,” hyperbolized former UN Climate Chief and UN Paris pact architect Christiana Figueres, “because what we cannot afford to do is to jump out of the frying pan of Covid and into the raging fire of climate change.”

President Donald Trump may have been responsible for the vaccine success of Operation Warp Speed, but now his fast-track approach, ironically, is being adopted by climate campaigners in a drive to change our entire economy in short order. After all, they argue, the lockdowns demonstrated that governments can impose without constitutional constraint virtually any restrictions to address a perceived crisis. And the pandemic, by killing much of the economy – particularly travel – temporarily succeeded in reducing greenhouse gases by as much as 7 percent worldwide and 12 percent in the U.S.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

No borders, no country by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA-4)

Posted By on March 10th, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/no-borders-no-country

Before the lockdown, the Left took a wrecking ball to our economy last year, we were enjoying one of the greatest expansions of economic opportunity in our lifetimes. Unemployment was at its lowest rate in 50 years; the poverty rate was at its lowest in 60 years. Wage growth was the strongest in 40 years. The wage gap was narrowing for the first time in many years as blue-collar wages increased dramatically. The unemployment rate for women was the lowest in 70 years. For African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, veterans and disabled Americans, and those without a high school diploma, unemployment was the lowest ever recorded.

The tax and regulatory relief Republicans won in 2017 and 2018 explain much of this success, but something else was going on that caused the extraordinary improvement of wages for unskilled and low-skilled workers. The Trump administration restored control of our borders and stemmed the flood of low-wage labor that had been suppressing American workers’ wages for decades.

Big business and big agriculture hated former President Donald Trump’s immigration policy because it forced them to pay their workers higher wages. But in the growing economy it produced, working Americans who had been left behind for decades finally began to prosper. Did we learn anything from this unprecedented blue-collar boom? Apparently not, judging from the Democrats’ zeal to open our borders to new waves of illegal immigration.

The president’s executive orders have already produced a new migrant crisis on the southern border.

One abandoned the border wall mid-construction. Another undermines the long-standing requirement that immigrants support themselves and not burden American taxpayers. Another ends the remain-in-Mexico policy for those making asylum claims, most of which are false. Yet another effectively releases illegal immigrants accompanied by youths under age 18 directly into the United States. Another grants what amounts to sanctuary status for a wide variety of criminal offenses, including drunk driving and sex offenses. Another restores unrestricted travel from hotbeds of international terrorism.