ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What’s at Stake in Georgia Here’s the difference between a Democratic and Republican Senate this year.

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-at-stake-in-georgia-11609540879?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

What’s the difference in policy between a Senate run by Chuck Schumer with 50 Democrats and one run by Mitch McConnell with 51 or 52 Republicans? That’s the question that matters for the next two years, so it’s worth explaining the stakes with realistic specificity in Tuesday’s Georgia Senate runoffs.

Start with control of committees, which would shift markedly leftward. Republicans would lose their ability to investigate issues like FBI abuse and Hunter Biden’s China dealings. A GOP Senate is likely to approve most of Mr. Biden’s cabinet picks, but Democrats would whisk through even controversial nominees like Neera Tanden at the White House budget office or Xavier Becerra at HHS. There would be no check on judicial nominees.

Democratic chairmen would include Bernie Sanders, who would try to gut the Pentagon at the Budget Committee. Sherrod Brown at Banking and Elizabeth Warren on the financial institutions subcommittee would try to change rules to steer lending and capital to their priorities and punish lending to fossil-fuel companies.

Ron Wyden, who would run the tax-writing Finance Committee, wants to tax gains in capital assets each year even if they aren’t sold. The Judiciary Committee would go to Dick Durbin, who after having deposed Dianne Feinstein would target conservative nonprofits and think tanks for political attack.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Report: At Least 140 GOP House Members Plan to Challenge Electoral College Results on Jan. 6 By Debra Heine

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/31/report-at-least-140-gop-house-members-plan-to-challenge-electoral-college-results-on-jan-6/

At least 140 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives plan to challenge the electoral vote results on January 6 when Congress meets to certify the next president, CNN reported on Thursday.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who launched the effort to challenge the “flawed election,” expressed surprise on Twitter that the number of House members joining him had grown that high.

As of Thursday, 29 House Republicans who serve, or will serve—plus Missouri Senator Josh Hawley had announced publicly that they will object to the Electoral College results.

According to Breitbart, those who have announced plans to object include:

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-Co.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Al.), Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Rep.-elect Jerry Carl (R-Al.), Rep.-elect Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep.-elect Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Rep.-elect Bob Good (R-Va.), Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Az.), Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Rep.-elect Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.), Rep. Jody Hice (R-Georgia), Rep.-elect Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Rep.-elect Barry Moore (R-Al.), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) , Rep.-elect Burgess Owens (R-Utah), Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas), Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), and Rep.-elect Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.)

Additionally, eight out of nine Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania have announced their intentions to challenge the electoral results in a joint statement on Thursday: Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Glenn Thompson, Scott Perry, Lloyd Smucker, Guy Reschenthaler, John Joyce and Fred Keller.

“The Pennsylvania election could be summed up as a free-for-all with no oversight and different standards applied throughout the commonwealth,” the members said.

According to CNN’s Jake Tapper, two GOP House members are claiming that at least 140 congressmen are on board with the Brooks’ effort to challenge the shady results of the 2020 election.

A minimum of one representative and one senator are required to mount an objection that will force an extended debate before Congress counts the votes. So far, Sen. Hawley of Missouri is the only member of the Senate who has announced an intention to object to the 2020 election results.

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach told Breitbart’s Alex Marlow that “there may very well be a big fight in Congress over whether the votes of the electors of those states where they changed the rules without legislative action should be accepted.”

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

What Will Historians Make of Our Annus Horribilis? By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/what-will-historians-make-of-our-annus-horribilis/

Amid the death, destruction, and dissension, history will show that America did not fall apart.

The year 2020 is now commonly dubbed the annus horribilis — “the horrible year.” The last ten months certainly have been awful.

But then so was 1968, when both Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. The Tet Offensive escalated the Vietnam War and tore America apart. Race and anti-war riots rocked our major cities. Protesters fought with police at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. A new influenza virus, H3N2 (the “Hong Kong flu”), killed some 100,000 Americans.

But an even worse 2020 saw the COVID-19 outbreak reach global pandemic proportions by March. Chinese officials misled the world about the origins of the disease — without apologies.

Authorities here in the U.S. were sometimes contradictory in declaring quarantines either effective or superfluous. Masks were discouraged and then mandated. Researchers initially did not know how exactly the virus spread, only that it could be lethal to those over 65 or with comorbidities.

Initial forecasts of 1 million to 2 million Americans dying from the virus unduly panicked the population. But earlier assurances that the death toll wouldn’t reach 100,000 falsely reassured them.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany’s “Shameful” Two Years on the UN Security Council by Soeren Kern

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16907/germany-un-security-council

A closer examination of Germany’s voting patterns at the UN over the past several years, however, reveals a troubling double standard on a range of issues, especially on human rights, which the German government claims to be “a cornerstone” of its foreign policy.

The record shows that during its stint on the UN Security Council, Germany voted for dozens of resolutions — many of which smack of anti-Semitism — that singled out Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

Moreover, Germany turned a blind eye as multiple serial human rights abusers, including China, Libya, Mauritania, Sudan and Venezuela, among others, were elected to the UN Human Rights Council, the UN’s highest human rights body.

In 2020, Germany voted 13 times to condemn Israel, but failed to introduce a single resolution on the human rights situation in Cuba, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Venezuela — or on 175 other countries, according to UN Watch, a Geneva-based, independent non-governmental watchdog group.

“While nearly all EU countries backed 13 out of 17 UNGA resolutions singling out Israel this year, they failed to introduce even one resolution for women’s right [sic] activists jailed and tortured in Saudi Arabia, dissident artists arrested in Cuba, journalists thrown behind bars in Turkey, religious minorities attacked in Pakistan, and opposition members persecuted in Venezuela, where more than five million people have fled government repression, hunger and economic collapse.” — UN Watch, December 16, 2020.

Germany pursued a similar policy of approving anti-Israel resolutions at the UN in 2018, 2017, and 2016, when Germany voted for an especially disgraceful UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel as the world’s only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health.”

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

How an ISIS Member Got Past Immigration and Became a U.S. Citizen Over a thousand Iraqi refugees have been resettled in Portland. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/how-isis-member-got-past-immigration-and-became-us-daniel-greenfield/

The year that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s Islamic terror state travel ban, an Iraqi member of ISIS applied for American citizenship.

Hawazen Sameer Mothafar didn’t have much to worry about. Not only was he already living in the United States, but under political pressure, Iraq had been taken off the travel ban list.

And no one would have suspected Mothafar of being an ISIS terrorist. He was in a wheelchair.

When Mothafar was asked at his immigrantion interview this year whether he was involved with a terrorist organization, he must have thought it was a formality. But three months later, Mothafar was under arrest, charged with lying to a government agency, and aiding ISIS.

Mothafar not only managed to get through an immigration interview while denying any terrorist ties, but he spoke in court through an Arabic translator, suggesting a poor grasp of English.

Not only did our immigration system make an alleged ISIS member a citizen, but took an immigrant with nothing to offer this country, who doesn’t even speak the language, and who, according to his lawyer, has to be cared for by his family, and welcomed him in.

Over a thousand Iraqi refugees have been resettled in Portland, Oregon. The small city of Troutdale near Portland, once an all-American locale perfect for picture postcards, has absorbed some of the spillover. And there was nothing all-American about Mothafar.

Mothafar hadn’t come to Troutdale for the annual summerfest parade (cancelled this year because of the pandemic) or hiking past waterfalls. When he came into town under the great ‘Gateway to the Gorge’ arch that’s Troutdale’s claim to fame, he was coming for Jihad.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

At Princeton, a Racial Reckoning and a Free Speech Battle By Julia A. Seymour & Nathan Harden

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2020/12/30/at_princeton_a_racial_reckoning_and_a_free_speech_battle_110526.html

In 2015, Princeton University became the second higher-education institution to sign the University of Chicago Statement supporting campus free speech. Yet, five years later, Princeton professor Keith E. Whittington wrote that the university stood “on the front lines” of the battle over speech. Those battle lines were drawn this summer by students and faculty demanding the adoption of “anti-racist” policies, which some on campus say run counter to free speech and open inquiry.

“The faculty were willing to write a commitment to academic freedom into the university’s governing documents in 2015 – but now, in 2020, they are being asked to carve out a substantial exception to that principle,” Whittington wrote for RealClearPolitics in August.

Princeton ranked just 29th in the 2020 College Free Speech Rankings, an ambitious survey of nearly 20,000 students at 55 schools conducted by RealClearEducation, research firm College Pulse, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). When Princeton’s conservative students ranked the school, it dropped to 42nd. It ranked 47th on ideological diversity and earned a “red” designation from FIRE, indicating a restrictive speech code.

The survey showed that many Princeton students censor themselves in classrooms and social settings. Seventy-six percent said that they would be somewhat or very uncomfortable expressing unpopular views on social media. Fifty-two percent indicated that they would be somewhat or very uncomfortable disagreeing with a professor.

A Racial Reckoning
The two most difficult subjects to discuss at Princeton were Israel/Palestine issues and transgender issues. Affirmative action and race weren’t far behind.

Rebekah Adams, a senior and president of the Princeton Open Campus Coalition (POCC), a student group committed to defending free speech and civil dialogue, told RealClearEducation that many students fear speaking freely will bring academic repercussions such as lower grades and “social ostracization.”

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

This has been the year of epic derangement When the public is absent, corporate wokeism faces no corrective from the real world Rod Liddle

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://spectator.us/year-epic-derangement-cornell/

I wonder if British universities will follow Cornell’s innovative approach to ensuring students are protected from wretched viruses? The American institution has received plaudits for its rigorous regime. Students who refuse to have the flu vaccine will be barred from the Cornell libraries and other campus buildings — or, at least, they will if they are white. ‘Students of color’ can decline to receive the vaccine. Why?

Cornell explains: ‘Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events.’ The university authorities give a little more detail about what those concerns might be: ‘Recent acts of violence against Black people by law enforcement may contribute to feelings of distrust or powerlessness.’ So, white kids must be tested and vaccinated or face being kicked out, while black students are invited to register their preference for exemption, largely on the grounds that George Floyd was killed by a policemen in a state 1,000 miles away.

I offer up this little vignette as almost the perfect postscript to 2020, the Year of Epic Derangement, seeing as it brings together the cringing, self-flagellating lunacy of white liberals when faced with people who have a different skin color, and this virus of ours, under whose suffocating shroud so many other lunacies have been allowed to flourish. I think if I were a black student at Cornell who contracted flu from another black student who had filed for exemption, I would sue the college on the grounds of a failure of duty of care and, indeed, unadorned racism.

That’s the alternative hypothesis, I suppose — that the college is actually run by the Klan and they want as many black people to die as possible. It is difficult not to feel an enormous sympathy for the US’s black population, as this sort of stuff ratchets up the loathing among genuine white supremacists and meanwhile they are treated as needy infants by the liberal left. One day black Americans will shrug off the yoke of victimhood imposed upon them for reasons of political expediency by the Democrats. This is already beginning to happen, in fact, much as it is with Hispanic voters.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sydney Williams; An Optimist’s Lament

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

On August 4, 1944, the Grüne Polizi, along with the Gestapo, raided the “secret annex” of an abandoned office building complex in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had been hiding for over two years. Less than three weeks earlier, on July 15, 1944, Anne wrote in her diary: “It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” Ultimately, peace did come. The Nazis were defeated, and Europe has been free of wars for seventy-five years – the longest period in its history – thanks to the people of the United States. But peace came too late for Anne Frank. Less than a year later, she was dead at age fifteen, probably of Typhus, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Nazi-held Germany.

One marvels at Anne Frank’s outlook, when bleakness enshrouded her environment and hoped dimmed for millions caught in the Nazi’s web and in a world gone dark. As we reflect today, in far better circumstances than were hers, is there not a lesson for us, in our pandemic, fear–filled world?

Optimism is a state of mind. Perhaps a dream over reality, or naïveté over cynicism? In retrospect, Anne Frank’s optimism appears innocent or guileless. Yet, she lives on through her Diary of a Young Girl, because in spite of everything she experienced she had the vision to see that sunlight would return and the world would move on. In her optimism, she was wise, for the two – optimism and wisdom – are linked. Optimists draw from the ancient classics, the birth of Christianity, the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Industrial Revolution and the recent victory of democracy over socialism. All have helped man’s condition to improve. Individual freedom, democracy and free-market capitalism have lifted multitudes from poverty and early death. Optimism, it should be remembered, does not mean nostalgia for an earlier time, but the expectation of enhanced prospects for a better future.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Happy New Year, Reality Denial Edition Francis Menton

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-12-31-happy-new-year-reality-den

On the last post a few days ago, several commenters raised the subject of the popular and long-running TV series Law & Order, particularly as to the race of the perpetrators of the crimes. The show purports to be based on actual incidents, and tries to give an impression of basis in reality. On the episodes of that show that I have watched — admittedly not a large sample — the perpetrator of the violent crime has seemed almost always to turn out to be white and, for that matter, rich. But are the show’s producers intentionally skewing the reality of the race of perpetrators of violent crimes? And if so, by a little, or by a lot?

I decided to look around to see if I could find some relevant statistics. It turns out that several researchers (if you want to call them that) have gone through collections of these shows to compare races of crime perpetrators to actual crime data. As suspected, the difference is staggering.

Here is a July 2015 piece with the title “Manufacturing white criminals: Depictions of criminality and violence on Law & Order,” from a journal called Cogent Social Sciences. The authors reviewed several seasons of L&O, and compared the races of the perpetrators of the crimes in the episodes in those seasons with actual New York City police data for the same years. Stripping out a lot of social science mumbo jumbo, here are the results for two of the years:

1992. In New York City, there were 51,490 arrests for violent felonies, of which 5,567 (10.8%) were white, 27,976 (54.3%) black, 16,096 (31.3%) Hispanic, and 1,851 (3.6%) Asian/other. On L&O season 3, covering the same year, the perps were 15 (65%) white, 2 (9%) black, and 6 (26%) Hispanic.

1995. In real NYC data, there were 49,549 violent felony arrests, of which 5,332 (10.8%) were white, 27,405 (55.3%) black, 15,169 (30.6%) Hispanic, and 1,643 (3.4%) Asian/other. On L&O season 6, the percentages were 26 (79%) white, 3 (9%) black, and 4 (12%) Hispanic.

Other years showed virtually identical patterns. To summarize, on L&O whites are over-represented (compared to real-world data) among perpetrators of violent crime by a factor of around 6 to 8, while blacks are under-represented by also a factor of around 6 to 8. This is not some small random mismatch, but rather a very intentional effort to paint a wildly distorted view of reality.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

If enough senators challenge the election results, Trump wins By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on January 2nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/if_enough_senators_challenge_the_

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) officially stated that he will object to the Electoral College vote count to be held in the Senate on January 6.  May this courageous man be the first of many senators to take a stand against the overwhelming evidence of election fraud.  If neither candidate wins enough Electoral College votes on January 6, Trump should win — and it’s all in the Constitution without the need for any strained statutory interpretations.

Let me start with an overview of what happens on January 6.  It’s crucial to appreciate how this can end if Hawley is joined by several senators who refuse to certify Electoral College votes achieved through manifest fraud.  I’ve culled this information from Petr Svab’s excellent article at The Epoch Times (hat tip to Dan Bongino):

The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution is the primary authority for events on January 6.  The Electoral Count Act (3 USC §15) plays a role, but, thankfully, that act is probably unconstitutional in one very specific and important way.

Under the Twelfth Amendment, the president of the Senate (i.e., Mike Pence) opens the certificates sent from the states, “and the votes shall then be counted.”  That’s all that the Constitution says about the vice president’s role.

Meanwhile, 3 USC §15, enacted in 1887, after prescribing details for conducting the count, says members of Congress can object.  If one House member and one senator object, that triggers a separate vote about the objection by both the House and the Senate.  If both House and Senate agree there’s a problem, the challenged electoral votes are gone.