NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Goes Totally Comeytose Christopher Wray will spearhead Dems’ offensive against Trump supporters in the wake of January 6. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on March 4th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/fbi-goes-totally-comeytose-lloyd-billingsley/

“We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribed to Antifa in connection with the sixth. That doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and we’ll continue to look, but at the moment we have not seen that.”

That was FBI boss Christopher Wray testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Wray claimed the FBI doesn’t care about ideology, but he left more than a reasonable doubt about how hard the FBI had been looking.

According to a January 13 FBI affidavit, self-proclaimed racial justice advocate Earle Sullivan, aka John Sullivan, “did knowingly enter or remain in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, or did knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct.”

As The Intercept explained, “the FBI determined that Sullivan was not just an observer but a participant in the riot, based on a review of nearly 90 minutes of raw footage of the raid that he recorded on his phone and posted on YouTube.”  Wray likely had the FBI looking for rioters in Antifa T-shirts. On the other hand, the FBI boss is experienced at overlooking events of significance.

Back in 2019, attorney General William Barr told a Senate panel that “spying did occur” against Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As the Associated Press reported, Barr “seemed to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stop The Steal: The Case For Biden’s COVID ‘Relief’ Bill Gets Weaker By The Day ****

Posted By on March 4th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/04/stop-the-steal-the-case-for-bidens-co

COVID-19 cases are plunging. Vaccination rates are booming. The economy is rebounding. States are running budget surpluses. Schools are reopening. All without the benefit of President Joe Biden’s “urgently needed” $1.9 trillion spending spree. So why aren’t supposedly moderate Senate Democrats standing up to oppose this Treasury theft, which will be paid for by future generations?

Just this week, we learned that Texas has dropped its mask mandate and is lifting limits on businesses. So is Mississippi. Biden said that vaccines will be available to all Americans by May. A report showed that manufacturing is growing at the fastest pace in years.

If you listen to Biden and his fellow leftist Democrats, none of this is supposed to be happening. To hear them talk, the economy is flat on its back, the virus raging, and the nation desperately in need of a massive dose of federal aid.

On Wednesday, Biden went on TV to say that “If we act now, decisively, quickly, and boldly, we can finally get ahead of this virus, we can finally get our economy moving again, and the people of this country have suffered far too much for too long.”

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Pelosi’s Latest Partisan Commission After Jan. 6, she follows her financial-crisis script, creating a panel to reach a foregone conclusion.By Peter J. Wallison

Posted By on March 4th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-latest-partisan-commission-11614795409?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Yes, history repeats itself, especially when it is made by the same person, for the same reason, and with the same vehicle. Unlike the 9/11 Commission, which was praised for its bipartisanship, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proposed commission to review the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol will mirror the unbalanced Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission she set up after the 2008 financial crisis, and will be a failure for the same reasons.

In the election following the financial crisis, the Democrats won overwhelming control of Congress and the White House. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said that “you never let a serious crisis go to waste,” and many on the left realized this was an opportunity to increase regulation and government control of the financial system. There was at least one other plausible cause for the crisis: government housing policies, pursued by the government-backed corporations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and strongly supported by congressional Democrats. By 2008 these trillion-dollar institutions were bankrupt and had fostered the creation of a massive housing bubble consisting of at least 31 million subprime and other risky mortgages worth $5.3 trillion. It seemed reasonable to suppose that when the bubble collapsed, the failure of these mortgages had brought the whole financial system down.

Yet if the speaker’s study had concluded that the financial crisis was caused, even in part, by those subprime mortgages, that would have weakened support for more regulation of the financial system. So the commission was set up with six Democrats and four Republicans. That would assure that the commission would place the blame for the financial crisis on insufficient regulation and not interfere with the enactment of legislation—later called the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010—that the speaker and other Democratic lawmakers had in mind.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Roger Kimball: There’s no equality in equity The advent of Joe Biden is another step on the road to the destruction (or ‘fundamental transformation’) of America

Posted By on March 4th, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/equality-equity-executive-orders/

It’s hard to keep them all straight, but among the many diktats emitted by the Biden administration during its first days in office, one deserves special commendation for its brazen mendacity. I mean the ‘Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government’.

The key word, as we’ve heard over and over again these last few weeks, is ‘equity’. The diktat (a more accurate term for what is happening than ‘Executive Order’) promises ‘a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all’ by ‘affirmatively advancing,’ well, ‘equity’. If you think you discern a little whiff of tautology, you’re right.

You are also right if, on second sniff, you catch the acrid scent of contradiction. We’re ‘advancing equity for all’, you see, but we’re doing it by ‘affirmatively advancing’ an ‘ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda’ catering to ‘historically underserved’ populations, to wit: ‘Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality’.

You might like the soothing strains of the word ‘equity’. The first definition in my dictionary says ‘equity’ is ‘the state, ideal, or quality of being just, impartial, or fair’. And that’s just what the Biden diktat says: ‘The term “equity” means the consistent and systematic fair, just, and impartial treatment of all individuals…’ But it then goes on to specify that by ‘all individuals’ it means some individuals (‘Black, Latino’, etc.). In other words, we’re going to pursue impartiality by being partial to certain groups and (just as important) by penalizing other groups.

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

HR 1 Makes Election  Fraud & Chaos Permanent The Democrat legislation aims to secure their  power by any and all means necessary.  By: Louis Debroux

Posted By on March 4th, 2021

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78116-hr-1-makes-election-fraud-and-chaos-permanent-2021-03-03

If you liked the dozens of post-election lawsuits, the ballot recounts and audits, and the utter chaos and anger that prevailed after the 2020 elections, then you’ll absolutely love the Democrats’ top legislative priority this year — passage of HR 1, the ludicrously named “For the People Act.”

With a House vote expected this week, the 791-page HR 1 is a massive power grab by Democrats that takes the worst aspects of the 2020 elections and puts them into federal law. Democrats aim to dictate from Capitol Hill election law for every single state, county, and city. 

HR 1 intentionally weakens election security, creating the very lawlessness and discord that made the last election such a nightmare and guaranteeing that it’s the norm for all future elections.

Veteran political reporter John Fund calls it “the worst piece of legislation I have ever seen in my 40 years reporting from Washington.”

For example, HR 1 would greatly expand mail-in voting, despite election officials warning that mail-in voter fraud is “vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud.” The CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project advised states to end mail-in voting because of the “significant cost to the real and perceived integrity of the voting process.” Even The New York Times admits mail-in balloting not only makes it “much easier” to buy and sell votes but also makes voters, especially elderly voters, vulnerable to fraud, threats, and coercion.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Wisdom in Knowing What We Don’t Know Peter Arnold

Posted By on March 3rd, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/03/the-wisdom-in-knowing-what-we-dont-know/

“The truth about much regarding the COVID-19 epidemic is that there is no knowledge. We do know what the virus does, and how it kills people. But why isn’t the virus killing entire families, as did the Spanish Flu of a century ago.We do not know how many the virus has killed. Yes, we see running tallies of deaths, but how many, especially the elderly, have died with it, not from it? There are not enough forensic pathologists in the world to have done post-mortem examinations to confirm COVID-19 as the prime cause of death.”

Regrettably, there is little knowledge — read that ‘verifiable facts’ — about treating COVID-19, about preventing its spread, about the facts of herd immunity, about its mutation potential, about any form of treatment, the efficacy of the vaccines and many other open questions. This has left experts, world-wide,  to respond in ignorance to the demands of the media for comment. I have seen some appallingly wrong (as it turned out) opinion pieces by experts.

In January, the respected scientific journal Nature asked more than 100 SARS-CoV-2 immunologists, infectious-disease researchers and virologists if it could be eradicated. Almost 90 per cent thought it would become endemic — circulating in pockets of the global population for many years.

I read through that Nature article carefully. As has been the norm at this stage of COVID-19 ignorance, it is highly speculative.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Race Fragility The Left has denounced the “war on woke,” but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate.Christopher F. Rufo

Posted By on March 3rd, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/the-left-wont-debate-critical-race-theory

The critical race theorists are feeling the heat. Over the past decade, they have had remarkable success in perpetuating the concepts of systemic racism, unconscious bias, white privilege, and white fragility in American institutions, beginning with universities and moving on to schools, government agencies, and multinational corporations. Their campaign began mostly without opposition, as most conservatives were either ignorant of what was happening or dismissed it as a campus fad.

That changed last year. The intellectual movements around the so-called Intellectual Dark Web, Quillette magazine, and the 1776 Unites coalition of dissident black scholars had laid down a theoretical case against critical race theory (CRT). President Trump elevated the debate into the mainstream, denouncing CRT by name at the National Archives, signing an executive order banning CRT-based training programs from the federal government, and sparring on the topic during a televised presidential debate. Since then, investigative journalists, including me, have reported on the negative impact of CRT in government, schools, and corporations; states such as New Hampshire, Arkansas, Iowa, West Virginia, and Oklahoma have introduced legislation seeking to ban CRT programs that promote the concepts of race essentialism, collective guilt, and race-based harassment in public institutions.

This shift in momentum against the new racial orthodoxy, which has now grown beyond America’s borders to England, France, Italy, Hungary, and Brazil, has rattled the American Left. Their first argument against this change is that conservatives are using state power to “cancel wokeness.” New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently followed this line, attacking my work “leading the conservative charge against critical race theory,” declaring that the Right wants to ban critical race theory because it is afraid to debate it. This is false, of course. For more than a year, prominent black intellectuals, including John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Wilfred Reilly, and Coleman Hughes have challenged the critical race theorists to debate—and none has accepted. After Goldberg published her column, I called her bluff even further, challenging to “debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times.” Predictably, none responded, catching the New York Times in a fib and further exposing the critical race theorists’ refusal to submit their ideas to public scrutiny.

BOOKS, CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

 “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency” 

Posted By on March 3rd, 2021

http://www.newsmax.com/politics/presidential-campaign-election-basement/2021/03/02/id/1012223/?ns_mail_uid=

A new book chronicles how President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, despite being his own biggest liability, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

The book “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency” will be released April 6, marveling at the winning campaign strategy of “you put your dumb uncle in the basement.”

The book, written by NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes, notes even former President Barack Obama was reluctant to endorse his former vice president, fearing he would be a “tragicomic caricature of an aging politician having his last hurrah,” so he has to be shielded from harming his own campaign.

Third time was a charm for Biden, as the “stars aligned” the authors wrote.

Also, perspectives from inside former President Donald Trump’s White House and campaign detail the conversations between 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and President Trump.

“I think if we lose to him, we are pathetic,” Conway told Trump, the book claims.

The authors also wrote the 2017 book “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” detailing the anger of Clinton on election night.

A source familiar with Trump campaign polling said the COVID-19 pandemic turned the election against the president.

“Until the COVID thing came, we were winning four hundred electoral votes,” the source told the authors, per the Post.

Not only did it damage the president, but it shielded Biden from having to leave his basement, the book noted.

“They used coronavirus as an excuse to keep him in the basement, and it was smart,” according to a Trump adviser in the book. “Biden was able to hide his biggest weakness, which is himself. And he did it with an excuse that sounded responsible.”

Even one Biden aide saw their candidate’s shortcomings.

“I cringed the entire time. He looked like he didn’t know what he was doing,” the book’s source said.

 

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Iran has already beaten Biden Pulling defeat from the jaws of defeat: Dominic Green

Posted By on March 3rd, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/iran-already-beaten-biden-syria-strike/

The Biden administration is trying to set some rules in its negotiations about negotiations with Iran. But the first rule of the Middle East is that there are no rules. There are only balances of force and fear. And this is why Iran will defeat the US in Syria just as it has already defeated the US in Iraq.

Like a tourist in a foreign restaurant, the administration knows just enough of the local lingo to order the wrong thing. After years in the region, American strategists have absorbed the crude calculus of force: to be taken seriously, they reason, we have to respond to the rocket attack on an airbase in northern Iraq earlier this month, which killed a military contractor and wounded a US serviceman.

The US has also absorbed the calculus of fear. Much as America’s politicians and generals pretend otherwise, the US was defeated in Iraq years ago. The winner was Iran and its Shia allies.

Why didn’t the US retaliate for an attack on Americans in Iraq by hitting Iran’s proxies in Iraq? Because of fear. The US is afraid of further attacks on its remaining forces in Iraq. It’s afraid of losing what little influence it still has over the Iraqi government. And it’s afraid of returning Iraq to civil war.

The US is right to fear and avoid all these outcomes. The US would be even righter if it avoided Iraq entirely, instead of leaving 2,500 servicemen there as sitting ducks. But a tough guy like Joe Biden isn’t going to tell the American people that the US has been thoroughly defeated in Iraq by Iranian IEDs, Sunni self-detonators and its own imperial vanity.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Woke Excess Causes Minority Voters To Flee the Democratic Party The cultural views of elite white liberals are not popular with many minorities. Robby Soave

Posted By on March 3rd, 2021

https://reason.com/2021/03/03/woke-excess-democratic-party-trump-political-correctness/

While the Democratic Party pulled off a complete (albeit narrow) victory over Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2020, they lost ground with nonwhite voters—despite significantly raising the salience of racial justice issues during the campaign.

According to progressive pollster David Shor, it’s time to face the facts: The cultural views of very highly-educated, very left-leaning white people are toxic for many nonwhite voters who would otherwise support the Democratic Party.

“I don’t think a lot of people expected Donald Trump’s GOP to have a much more diverse support base than Mitt Romney’s did in 2012,” Shor told New York magazine in a recent interview. “But that’s what happened.”

Shor pointed to two specific associations—socialism and the “defund the police” movement—that appear to have tarnished the Democratic Party in the eyes of minority voters. The former is an unsurprising finding, and something I’ve written on previously: Socialism is generally not popular with Hispanic voters, who associate it with the kind of political oppression experienced by people in Venezuela and Cuba.

But the latter is also noteworthy, given that “defund the police” is a mantra recited by progressive activists who purport to represent the wishes of racial minorities. These activists claim, for instance, that the role of police in society is to defend or legitimize America’s white supremacist culture. In other words, activists want to defund the police because they think doing so is a necessary component of antiracist organizing.

The trouble is that many racial minorities don’t actually share that view.

“We raised the salience of an ideologically charged issue that millions of nonwhite voters disagreed with us on,” said Shor. “And then, as a result, these conservative Hispanic voters who’d been voting for us despite their ideological inclinations started voting more like conservative whites.”