Bill Gates Angry at Elon Musk Is he joking or simply completely misinformed? by Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bill-gates-angry-at-elon-musk/

Bill Gates is angry that Elon Musk is editorializing on X about the internal politics of Europe, from the United Kingdom to Germany. The outraged Gates claims we don’t allow (hired) foreigners to interfere in our domestic politics and don’t do that to others.

Really?

Is he joking, or simply completely misinformed?

1. Does Gates remember Christopher Steele, the British subject and ex-spy who interfered in the 2016 presidential election by fabricating a venomous dossier to destroy the Trump campaign? Yes, it is illegal to hire foreign nationals to work in American presidential campaigns, but that stopped neither Hillary Clinton who used three paywalls to hide her payments to Steele nor the FBI who hired him as an informant and helped spread his salacious lies throughout the media and government.

2. Does Gates remember the British Labor callout to enlist British activists and financial support for them to swarm American swing states in service to the 2024 Kamala Harris campaign?

3. Closer to home, has Gates ever complained about Swiss national and multibillionaire Johann Georg Wyss, and his multimillionaire donations that have poured into Democratic coffers to sway our elections via his “Hub Project”? That long-standing interference makes Musk’s postings seem amateurish in comparison.

4. For that matter, surely Gates is familiar with the chronic efforts of both the Clinton administration (by its own admission) and Obama administration to interfere in elections in Israel over some 20 years in a serial effort to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu— that included inter alia funding with taxpayer monies anti-Netanyahu political groups.

So please, Mr. Gates, spare us you very selective outage about Mr. Musk, given your prior deafening silence on hired foreign interference here and Democratic efforts to interfere in the elections of others—including fueling the Ukrainian opposition in the 2014 Ukrainian election.

A Tale of Two Pardons Prisoners and double-standards. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-tale-of-two-pardons/

Just before the White House doors slammed shut behind him, Joe Biden released more pardons and commutations. First came the commutation of 33 death-row inmates condemned to execution, so that President Trump couldn’t carrying out their sentences. Then it was the turn of various federal agency bureaucrats; Biden family members implicated in influence-peddling and other grifts; and Congressmen who served on the January 6 committee whom the erstwhile Marionette in Chief claims will be targeted by Trump for retribution. Meanwhile, the new president has pardoned nearly all the 1500 January 6 protestors, many of whom have been incarcerated for years for misdemeanors.

Each side of the partisan divide is criticizing these pardons. Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans have gone into high dudgeon because Trump included protestors and rioters accused of assaults on police, or who were members of white supremacist fringe outfits. Coming from lefty Democrats, this sudden concern for the police is grotesque hypocrisy. Where was this solicitude in the 2020 BLM summer riots that targeted police and burned not just cop cars, but police precinct headquarters?

Or how about their national war on law enforcement through a campaign to defund the police? How many innocent people have died because of cutbacks in the number of those who protect us? Or how about rabid anti-American George Soros using his billions to help elect anti-law enforcement attorneys general and prosecutors? As for January 6 protests, the violence was like a picnic compared to the 2020 months of riots, assaults, and arson––all supported, excused, and rationalized by Democrats, some of whom solicited donations so the thugs could make bail. And don’t forget how few Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters were even arrested or indicted, let alone spent any time in jail.

And let’s remember how ill- prepared the Speaker of the House and the D.C.  Mayor were for handling a rally that was allowed to descend into chaos on January 6. Or why the Capitol police were escorting protestors into the building and unlocking doors for them. You’d think that authorities who believe that Donald Trump and his Maga base were “semi-fascists” who wanted to “destroy our democracy” would have been readier to defend what the Dems called our “temple of democracy.”

But the Capitol is just a building, and the heart of our Republic is the Constitution. How unseemly is it for a party that for a hundred years has degraded the Constitution and attacked the Bill of Rights, especially the First and Fourteenth Amendments, to now assume the mantel of guardian of “our democracy”? The House January 6 Committee egregiously trampled on the latter right, and its principle of equality under law, as did the prosecutors who for four years hunted down, arrested, charged, tried, and sentenced protestors for misdemeanors like trespassing, whereas thousands of 2020 rioters got off scot-free.

President Trump, Beware of Middle East Reality Yoram Ettinger

http://bit.ly/4ayqLEJ

*Ending wars and terrorism is a noble aspiration, which confronts the reality of NO intra-Muslim peaceful coexistence during the last 14 centuries. In fact, since 1948, intra-Muslim wars have featured a toll of mega-million fatalities (e.g., 3 million killed during two civil wars in the Sudan, 3 million during the Pakistan-Bangladesh war, over 1 million during the Afghan civil war, close to 1 million Syrians killed by Hafiz and Bashar Assad, 1 million killed during Iran-Iraq war, 350,000 in Yemen’s civil wars, etc.) compared with some 130,000 Arabs killed in Arab wars against Israel.

*Ending wars and terrorism must contend with the 14-century-old reality of intra-Muslim unpredictability, violent intolerance, ethnic and religious fragmentation, despotism, tenuous regimes-policies-accords, intrinsic terror and subversion. Not an “Arab Spring,’ but an “Arab Tsunami!”

*Ending wars and defeating terrorism mandates a regime-change in Iran, which has become the chief global epicenter of anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and proliferation of advanced military systems all the way to Latin America and the US homeland.

*46 years of the US diplomatic option, and 40 years of US and UN economic sanctions (including crippling maximum pressure sanctions), have failed to moderate Iran; in fact, bolstering its anti-US capabilities. Economic sanctions are relatively ineffective when imposed on fanatical, apocalyptic regimes, and in view of the litany of financial, trade and diplomatic ways to bypass sanctions through third parties, which oppose sanctions.  Moreover, as documented by the Biden Administration, economic sanctions are reversible by a succeeding President. In fact, Iran’s defiance of economic sanctions has enhanced its strategic posture, regionally and globally.

*Iran’s regime-change would remove the Ayatollahs’ machete from the throats of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and all other pro-US Arab regimes, reducing regional and global violence. It would expand the Abraham Accords to Saudi Arabia, Oman and possibly Kuwait, Indonesia and additional Muslim countries.

It’s Time To Purge The Climate Scam From The Federal Websites Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-1-28-its-time-to-purge-the-climate-scam-from-the-federal-websites

On November 12, 2024 — a week after the election — I had a post titled “Ideas For An Incoming Trump Administration: Climate And Energy Edition.” The first subject covered in that post was “Communications.” I stated there:

[C]hanging the communications of the prior administration should be an easy and obvious first priority. However, the Trump people notably did a poor job on this subject the first time out. The subject of climate and energy is pervasive through the websites of dozens of federal agencies.

I had followed the EPA website in particular during the first Trump term, and it had been little changed even a year after Trump took office.

This time around, Trump and his people are doing a far better job of hitting the ground running on many issues. That is notably true in the area of climate and energy communications: a week in, there are already some meaningful changes at the websites of various agencies. However, changing communications on these issues is not a small task; the government websites during the Biden era had pervasive climate propaganda in thousands of locations.

So, a week into the new administration, here are some of the things that have either changed or not so far.

Department of Energy

My November post noted that there was a big section, dominating the Department’s website, titled “Combating the Climate Crisis.” Today, if you go to the Department’s opening web page, it’s quite different. The front page headline is “Restoring Energy Dominance,” followed by “President Trump’s Day One Actions will Return the Department to Regular Order.” Here’s how it starts:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), effective today, is ending the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) pause and returning to regular order following direction given by President Donald J. Trump to “unleash American Energy Dominance.”

Communist China’s ‘Sputnik Moment’: Do Not Let Communist China Dominate Nuclear Fusion’s Clean Energy by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21364/communist-china-sputnik

This is no time for complacency. Communist China’s DeepSeek, a breakthrough in inexpensive AI computing that rocked US tech markets this week (tech investor Marc Andreesen called it a “Sputnik moment”) is really a wake-up to the Trump administration. Call to form a Manhattan Project as soon as possible – this week! – to ensure that America stays competitive in what is sure to be the next breakthrough – which China is already developing: unlimited amounts of totally clean energy produced by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks.

US tech markets suffered a severe shock this week, when Communist China unveiled DeepSeek, an AI program founded in 2023 by Chinese hedge fund manager Liang Wenfeng that can sort through masses of some material effectively as well as comparable US programs, but for less money and with less-sophisticated computer chips. DeepSeek professes ignorance about Tiananmen Square — “Let’s talk about something else,” it emits –but is skilled at extrapolating whatever it has been fed. Financial analyst Matt Levine notes:

“[T]here is a sort of general skill like ‘program a computer to take a huge pile of analogous data and predict the most likely next _______,’ where the blank can be filled in with ‘word in the sentence’ or ‘stock that will go up….’ now everyone has a computer that can pick stocks, while there is infinity money in building a computer that can talk. So now the people who got good at building computers that can pick stocks are pivoting to processing natural language.”

The newest frontier appears to be a country’s ability — through government or through government-private partnerships — to produce unlimited amounts of totally clean energy by nuclear fusion in donut-shaped reactors called tokamaks. China’s “artificial sun” is already well on its way to developing unimaginable amounts of nuclear fusion energy that is clean, cheap and endless:

“China’s EAST reactor set a new record by sustaining a plasma loop for 1,066 seconds at temperatures over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, marking a significant advancement in nuclear fusion research and potential energy production.”

The Right People Are In A Panic Over Trump’s Actions

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/30/trumps-triumphs/

The new president threw official Washington into a spinning tizzy when on Tuesday his Office of Management and Budget announced that he was temporarily freezing $3 trillion in “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance.” The executive order was blocked by a federal judge and the administration rescinded the memo. But the message was sent. This president is serious about removing the dead wood from the federal machine.

An interesting secondary effect of the order was to show just how dependent politicians, party and government functionaries, institutions, and far too many private individuals have become on the federal trough. They reacted as if the world were ending.

The 47th president is different, different from the 45th, and different from every president going back to the 19th century. His only rivals would be Calvin Coolidge, a zealous advocate of limited government, and Ronald Reagan, whose rhetoric about pulling back government was spot on even if his execution wasn’t always in line with his lofty goals.

Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said Trump’s first week in office “totally reset my conception of what’s possible, in two wholly different dimensions.”

The headline on law professor and Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds’ recent New York Post op-ed declared that Trump’s “unprecedented and swift action … has reset the national mood.”

Conservative Suspicion About RFK Jr.’s Long History Of Leftist Activism Is Understandable Mario H. Lopez

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/30/conservative-suspicion-about-rfk-jr-s-long-history-of-leftist-activism-is-understandable/

As the Senate debates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services, it would benefit conservatives to question whether handing the reigns of an entire federal agency to a career Democrat is in their own political best interests.

RFK Jr.’s abrupt party realignment and Trump endorsement certainly raised eyebrows this summer on both ends of the political spectrum.  From the outset, Kennedy’s calculated pivot from a long career as an advocate for enacting liberal policies as a card-carrying Democrat was met with justifiable skepticism. 

Kennedy’s ideology is reflected in both his political legacy and professional career.  As he said himself during a town hall event earlier this year, “You know, people have said to me, ‘why don’t you run it as an independent’ … and I say ‘because I’m a Democrat,” even going so far as to invoke the likes of Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a model.  

Even as Kennedy criticized current Democrat leadership and lamented the current state of the party, he made it clear he still identifies with the party’s larger agenda.  That positioning is not reflective of someone who has undergone a fundamental transformation in ideology and is ready and willing to implement any sort of conservative agenda.

The motivation behind Kennedy’s endorsement of Trump has raised questions across the nation’s capital.  Federal Election Commission filings reveal that the Trump campaign paid $100,000 to a law firm employing Kennedy just weeks after he dropped out of the race and threw his support behind Trump.

Trump’s Illegal Nullification of TikTok Law Enables China to Continue Indoctrinating and Collecting Information on 170 Million Americans by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21361/trump-tiktok-law-nullification

In short, Trump nullified the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. A president, however, does not possess that inherent power.

China is using the app to target every future American president, Supreme Court chief justice, and House speaker by accumulating information — and blackmail material — on most of America’s young.

Since when does the U.S. need China’s approval to protect itself from China’s attacks?

The U.S., therefore, has the right to expropriate without compensation — confiscate or “forfeit” in legal terms — the app, including its algorithm.

On January 20, just hours after taking the oath of office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order effectively delaying the application of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, better known as the “TikTok ban.”

This executive order is legally questionable and severely undermines the national security of the United States.

The Act provides that no person may “distribute, maintain, or update” a “foreign adversary controlled application.” The measure designates any app owned by ByteDance, including TikTok, as such an app. In short, American app stores cannot distribute that app and no American business may offer web-hosting services to it.

Holocaust envy Why the anti-Israel crowd are attacking Jews with their own history. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/27/holocaust-envy/

To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, we are publishing this chapter from Brendan O’Neill’s book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation.

One of the most striking things in the aftermath of 7 October was the silence of the fascism-spotters. You know these people. They’re the centrists and liberals who see fascism everywhere. Who think everything is ‘like the 1930s’. The vote for Brexit, Donald Trump, the rise of populist parties in Europe – all of it reminds them of the Nazi years. And yet when the Islamofascists of Hamas stormed the Jewish State and butchered a thousand Jews, suddenly they went quiet. No more Nazi talk. No more trembling warnings of a return to ‘the dark days of the 1930s’. No more handwringing over ‘new Hitlers’. It seems that to a certain kind of liberal, everything is fascism except fascism.

These are the people who lapped up Guardian articles with headlines like ‘The reich stuff’, exploring the supposed ‘comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler’. They’re the people who will have nodded in vigorous agreement when a spokesperson for Joe Biden slammed Trump for parroting ‘the autocratic language of Adolf Hitler’. They’re the folk who no doubt permitted themselves a chuckle when it was revealed that Biden staffers refer to Trump as ‘Hitler pig’ behind closed doors. They’re the self-styled ‘vigilant’ members of respectable society who will have cheered when Biden described Trumpism as a ‘semi-fascism’ that threatens the ‘soul’ of the free world.

They’re the pro-EU middle classes who fretted over the vote for Brexit, viewing it as a ‘return to the 1930s’. They’re the broadsheet readers who will have murmured in agreement with headlines saying there are ‘terrifying parallels between Brexit and the appeasement of Hitler’. They’re the royalty-sceptics who will have found themselves in agreement with princes for once when Charles, then Prince of Wales, said populism has ‘deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s’. They’re the weekend marchers who will have attended anti-Trump demos at which people waved placards showing Trump with a Hitler tache, and anti-Brexit protests at which speakers issued dire warnings about our descent into Hitlerite mania.

There was a time when you couldn’t open a newspaper or peruse social media without seeing some pained liberal hold forth on how populism will drag us back to the death camps. Fascism panic was the fashion of the day. And then it stopped. In the wake of the 7 October pogrom – the worst act of slaughter against the Jews since that period of the mid-20th century these people love talking about – their fascism chatter evaporated. In fact, they started warning people not to use Nazi analogies. Not to compare 7 October to the 1930s. Not to engage in the very fascism fretting that had been the bread and butter of their own political commentary for years.

Ray Domanico New York Schools Spend the Most, but Students Are Falling Behind A new report highlights how the state trades big bucks for middling results.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-public-schools-spending-students-ranking

For 18 years, up to and including Governor Kathy Hochul’s most recent proposal, the budget messages of New York’s last three governors have proudly noted that the state leads all others in school-district spending. What they omit is that, over that period, New York has remained in the middle of the pack on the National Assessments of Educational Progress. A recent report from the centrist Citizens’ Budget Commission, amplifying trends that I observed in 2022, presents a sobering picture of Albany’s failed policies.

The CBC observes that New York fourth-graders rank 32nd and 46th, respectively, on reading and math NAEP exams nationwide. Eighth-graders are 9th and 22nd, respectively. The state “now spends $36,293 per student, a 21 percent increase since the 2020-21 school year,” the report observes. “Given these middling results and the $89 billion New York School districts will spend this year—with $39 billion coming from the State budget—it is disappointing that education policy reform efforts have not focused on examining and rectifying New York’s unsatisfactory performance.” Instead, the education debate has “mostly centered on increasing State school aid even more and modestly shifting how dollars are allocated.”

New York’s political leaders continue to pump money into our public schools without regard for efficiency or effectiveness. If California has shown us how to fail at fire prevention, New York is the nation’s paragon of failing at educational improvement.

New York’s families have noticed. Enrollment in the state’s public school districts for grades K–12 fell by more than 320,000 students between 2014 and 2024. The drop-off is even worse in the earlier grades, with K-to-8 enrollment down 17 percent over the decade. Some of the decline is offset by enrollment growth in public charter schools, which grew by nearly 90,000 students in the same years. Yet the state legislature has capped charter school growth in New York City, home to almost 80 percent of the state’s charter school enrollment—even though charters receive less public funding than district schools, while their students score higher on state tests.